#so much death... how can those sorts of numbers ever be explainable

[sophiethewitch1]

The Palestine donation scams are really like a special place in hell for these bastards. Like you are evil, you have to know it don't you?

[absurdthirst]

Kinktober 2022: October 21st

Day 21: Rimming/Analingus // Masturbation // Breeding

Marcus Moreno x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 2.2k

Warnings: Angst, teasing, public sex, vaginal sex, cream pie

|| Kinktober List || MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

It had slipped out during sex and he hadn’t even realized it. Not until you were gone and he was alone in his bed again, humming quietly in the dark while he wonders when he can tell Missy about this thing that has grown between you and him. Waffling between fear that she will see you as some sort of replacement for her mother and guilt that he has moved on so quickly, even though it’s been years since her untimely death. 

He’s almost asleep, replaying that sweaty, satisfying moment when he was just about to cum - your pussy already clamped around his cock like a vice when he had said those words. “Gonna breed you, baby.” 

His eyes spring open in horror, sitting straight up in the bed. “No, no, no.” He hisses, fumbling for his phone, for the light, for his glasses and swiping two out of the three to the floor in his haste. “Fuck!” 

You hadn’t said anything but that doesn’t mean much. You normally had to sneak out of the house pretty quickly after sex to go back to your own house. The last time you had lingered, you had fallen asleep and that would have been a nightmare if you hadn’t woken up to pee at four in the morning. He didn’t want Missy to catch him in bed with another woman before they could talk. 

Marcus curses again, feet hitting the floor, followed by his knees as he gropes for the phone so he can send a panicked text. 

Call me when you get this. 

Seconds feel like hours and instead of being drowsy like he always is after sex with you, he’s wide awake and terrified of what you might say. He stares at the delivered icon, praying that he sees the bubbles pop up where you are texting him, or even better - to see your number pop up with an incoming call. However, there is nothing. 

Baby, I can explain, just call me.

More hours tick by and he’s sweating, picking himself up off the floor and sitting on the edge of his bed, his stomach curled with fear and guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t told you about that particular kink yet and fear that you would find it disgusting. Again, nothing. 

Listen, it just slipped out. It’s not like I want that to happen right now. Or ever if you aren’t….PLEASE call me?

This is hard to explain over text. 

???

He knows you would have gotten home by now. Still the texts are delivered and not read. You are ignoring him. The only sliver of hope that he has is that the texts haven’t turned green so you haven’t blocked him. Yet.

****

He’s always had a breeding kink. It was something that appealed very early on, even when he was honestly terrified of getting a girl pregnant. He blames it on some old porno he had watched when he was twelve or thirteen. Making a lasting impression on his formative years, but beggars can’t be choosers and the ‘Pregnant Nymphos’ video had been extremely hot to him. 

He had been lucky that his late wife had been accepting of it. She hadn’t thought him weird, although he had kept it hidden until they had been trying for Missy. Then that kind of talk had been acceptable and even sexy while he was actively trying to get her pregnant with his baby. He had been allowed to explore that. Murmuring filth into her ear and moaning about how he was going to fill her up until it took. It had probably been the best sexual experiences he had. 

Now, he had been trying to keep it reined in. He wasn’t sure how you would feel about that kind of thing, even though you were pretty open sexually. Hell, you had let him fuck your ass, and slap your pussy. Although neither one of you had really cared about the pussy slapping. 

This though. This was much larger than swatting your clit or working his cock into your ass after half an hour of prep. This was something that could be a total turn off for you. He’s definitely had dates where they thought it was gross, disgusting, demeaning and even one woman had called it misogynistic, so it wasn’t like it was the top five topics he discussed. 

Marcus doesn’t sleep at all, waiting for you to text him back. Tell him to fuck off or that you weren’t going to see him again. Checking his phone almost obsessively until the late night turns into early morning and it’s time to drag himself into a shower before Missy wakes up and he has to get her off to school and himself off to work. Where you might just make his humiliation public in front of everyone at the Heroics Headquarters. 

****

Fuck. You are wearing that skirt. The one that he had first noticed you in when you started. The one that had him thinking about fucking you while he shook your hand and introduced himself although you already knew who he was. Everyone in the world knows Marcus Moreno, although he prefers to believe that they don’t. 

Your brows are lifted in greeting but you don’t say anything, making him start to sweat until his leather jacket and he swallows, looking around to make sure that no one is close by before he speaks. “We need to talk.” 

“Oh?” You play innocent, although he can see the small twist of your lips and he wonders what kind of game you are playing. “About what?”

Taking your arm, he guides you to his office. If he’s going to make an ass of himself - again - he’d rather do it in private. He wants to throw up, rubbing his hands on his pants and taking off his glasses and then putting them back on and pushing them up the bridge of his nose is a nervous tic that it more about buying time than anything. “Listen….” He cringes at the way he’s started but there’s no going back now. “About what I said-” 

“That you wanted to breed me?” You ask, deciding that now was the perfect opportunity to hop up on his fucking desk like he had imagined you six thousand times and smirk at him. “Is that what we are talking about or the hundred text messages you sent me last night.” 

Marcus huffs, embarrassed. “You didn’t answer.” He points out, as if that is any reason for melting down and sending text after text. 

“My phone was on Do Not Disturb.” You take the wind out of his sails, making his shoulder round slightly. “I didn’t see them until I was about to leave for work.” 

“Oh.” So he had a shitty, sleepless night for nothing, imagining all the ways you were ignoring him or making some mocking threat on Reddit about how your superhero boyfriend has a breeding kink. He may or may not have checked the threads about the Heroics a time or twenty. “So yeah-” 

“Do you want to breed me?” His eyes widen and for a split second nothing registers in his brain. His cock hears it loud and clear and you are very aware of that from the way your smile grows wider and you hum as you shift on his desk. 

He shakes himself out of his stupor and flusters. “I mean- not- not- not like- it’s more that- it’s a-” He stutters and stumbles over the words that are rushing around in his mind and all trying to come out at once. Until he finally just gives up and looks at you hopelessly, giving a vague shrug of his shoulders and wishing that there was some national - no, world emergency right now. Aliens would be good. 

You purse your lips, giving him a disappointed look and shaking your head. “So you don’t want me to take off my panties and beg you to fill me up?” You ask, spreading your legs as wide as your skirt would allow you to, shimmying on his desk and working it up your thighs. “You don’t want me to beg you to breed me? Fill me with your baby and fuck me full until it takes?” 

If he were a lesser man, he would be on his knees right now, begging to make that a reality. As it is, he’s already hard, mouth dropped open in surprise as his cock tents his pants and nothing but a low moan can be heard from him. Giving away that blatant desire for that exact thing. 

“Because I thought about that all night last night.” You continue on. “Even had to touch myself again. Imagining you saying that again. Demanding that I beg you for your cum.” Marcus whines, stepping closer to you as you hike your skirt up to your hips, showing off the panties you had worn today. They are sexy, like everything you wear, but the crotch is soaked. 

His chest seems to collapse and expand at the same time, unable to breathe or even think about anything but the wet spot on your panties and the warmth and wetness beneath it. The fact that you want to talk to him about breeding you while he’s buried inside that sweet little pussy. “Fuck.” 

“If you pull your pants down.” Your joke is lighthearted, meant to make him laugh but all he can do is try to follow that order as quickly as fucking possible. Harder than Miracle Man’s punches and throbbing at the mere suggestion that he gets to live out his breeding kink right now. He knows you are on birth control. That conversation has been well established, but the thought is what gets him going. 

As quick as he is pulling his cock out, your panties are pushed to the side and he is sinking into you with a groan. Kissing your lips when he’s buried to the hilt and already about to explode. “Tell me again.” He grunts out, jolting inside you when you squeeze him tight. 

Your lips against his ear makes him shiver, words cooed directly into his ear. “I want you to fuck me full, Marcus.” He smothers a groan, biting his lips so hard he will have left a mark. “I want to feel your seed inside me all day and imagine that you bred me.” 

Marcus isn’t one to growl, at least he doesn’t think that he is, but the feral rumble that echoes out of his chest can only be described as just that. A growl. His arms tightening around you and his hips pulling back so he can set a frantic pace. 

Its unhinged, fucking into you like it will be the last thing that he does. Maybe it will be because he can’t seem to draw a breath as he pushes into you again and again. Groaning and saying every filthy thing that he’s thought over the past months while he's been inside you. Hell, everything he’s thought since he’s met you. 

“Made for my cock.” He hisses, pulling your ass to the edge of the desk and pounding into you with sharp, harsh swings of his hips. “Perfect place for me to plant my seed.” 

Your pussy clenches around him, making him grin at the way you whimper his name and your legs wrap around his waist and pull him closer. Wanting him to get deeper. “Fill me up.” You beg, leaning back slightly and rolling your hips down to meet his hectic thrusts. “M-Marcus please. Want it.” 

He grunts, leaning in and nipping your ear, making you yelp and clench around him again. “Going to baby. Gonna fill you up, paint your pretty little pussy full of my cum.” He hisses, rocking forward and his thighs slap against the table. 

You whimper, nodding and holding onto his shoulders while he pushes both of you higher. Every thrust rocking deep and hitting that wonderful little spot inside you that makes your toes curl. 

“You want that?” He demands, his jaw tight and the corded muscles on his neck straining. “Tell me.” 

“I want that.” You cry out softly, conscious of the fact that you are in his office and others could possibly hear you. “Marcus bred me.” Your plea is more like a wail, dragged out of you where only he can hear. 

His fingers turn to granite, digging into your hips and ass while your world explodes. Stars burst and colors flash behind your eyes while electricity seems to flow through you, consuming you. 

Marcus moans, barely lasting another thrust before he is pushing deep, grinding into you until he cums. Pouring into you like molten heat, filling you and fulfilling that desire to spill his seed inside you. “Fuck, take it.” He hisses. “Take every drop.” 

You whimper while he rocks into you, holding him to you. “Fuck Marcus, so good.” You whisper. “You fill me up so well.” 

His eyes close and smiles as he tucks his head against your neck. He had been afraid that he was going to lose you because of his breeding kink, but it turns out you might have a bit of one yourself. 

[djwiththejd]

The Fall of The House of Usher (2023) Episode 2

I'm back, back in the New York Groove ~

Like I said before, I'm writing this because I need a hobby. I do feel like after sleeping on everything I typed up for with episode 1 that I can do with a reorganization of sorts. I simply cannot point out every one liner, clue, and reference to something obscure in this show without developing carpal tunnel.

So, with that, I'm going to change the layout of how I type up this episode and see if I like it better. At the moment of writing this, I have already finished Episode 2 and I'm chomping at the bit to write about it. SO without further ado, some analysis I was too tired to bring up in my first post.

Firstly, once I saw that The Murder in The Rue Morgue had its own episode title, I got the gist that each episode would be focused around the death of each sibling. I sincerely hope by now that this isn't a spoiler however, as the entire family has to die in order for the fall of the House of Usher to actually come to fruition. Luckily everyone in the family except for possible Lenore and Juno are shit people. So anyhow, the 8 episode layout where Episode 1 begins with the introduction, six episodes in the middle each center around the death of a sibling, and then the last episode will probably be reserved for the death of the twins. What's great is that you can assume that structure is what is intended and still be surprised by plot twists and modernization elements to make the story new, fun, and exciting. It's the journey, blah, blah, blah.

ALSO, I've never seen any other piece of Mike Flanagan's works, so this is my first time delving into a horror anthology. I am sure I liked Hill House things when it first came out bc people were very funny about it on here, but I was too much of a chicken to watch it.

Anyhow, now we move onto the next bit, background and plot!

So first, I have not read The Masque of the Red Death. I am literally just copy/pasting the first paragraph of the plot summary from Wikipedia, hyperlinks and all:

The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut to ensure no one enters or leaves.

Unfortunately, the episode does not start with our young prince Prospero. It starts with a flashback of Dupin in 1979 taking a photo of an exhumed and empty grave. At this point Dupin's plaque titles his as "Junior Fraud Investigator," and apparently isn't a police officer. The most important bit here is how Dupin pushes back against his boss and the boss asks him: "Say you win. If you could catch them all, take all of it, all the greed, the foulness, the rot in the world and sit down across from it, what would you say?" and then it immediately cuts to Dupin in that dilapidated childhood home of Roderick and Madeline Usher, and Dupin gets to ask "Was it ever going to be enough?" There's more there, but the callous way Roderick responds indicates that the mask has come up again briefly. He's defensive about Ligodone, he's defensive about his wife, he refuses to explain why there is no number of dollars in the world that will make him and Madeline feel satisfied with their success.

It was also important that in the past, Dupin tells his boss that "This world needs changing." This is the same ideal that the twins have, but the intent and the implication behind those same words these people said at approximately the same time culminates in them leading very different lives. For now, that's all I have to say on the matter.

Now, moving on. Perrie's corpse appears behind Dupin this time. This time Dupin does turn around but sees nothing, so we can assume that the corpses are just visions. The ghosts of Roderick's past coming back to haunt him, quite literally.

So when we first see Perrie in this episode, he's introduced in bed surrounded by naked bodies, sex toys, etc. I'm sure it is meant at first sight to shock the senses, but personally I couldn't stop thinking about how we are visually seeing Perrie being "boxed in" this hedonistic cage of his own making. This is Perrie's own bed, the people he chose to spend his time with, but as we see in the episode when we look at how his family interacts with him and how Verna speaks to him, Perrie has basically put himself into a box of his own deadly sin, Lust. In this vein, I wonder if I can do an analysis of each child as one of the deadly sins, omitting Pride. Pride has historically been seen as the worst sin, or the highest sin that brings forth all the other sins, so if I did do this analysis, I would immediately take Pride out of the equation only because I would ascribe it to the twins as the head of the family and as the parents of all of the other sins. I haven't watched the other episodes yet so I'm not sure if this analysis will keep up going forward but for now I have a general idea which sin I would ascribe to which child.

So moving on with the plot, Perrie wakes up and comes out to two people in his apartment and I recognized one of them! Molly Quinn, famously known for being Richard Castle's daughter and also the daughter of the other RV owning family in We're the Millers. She's a fond part of my childhood, and I'm loving her haircut. However, we see a weird, almost violent display of power when Perrie thinks his expensive eggs were eaten by his "friends" and I put friends in parentheses because I'm not entirely sure yet if Perrie does see these people as his friends, lovers, or even equals.

They discuss disappointment at Roderick vetoing supporting the Prospero club venture he had pitched, and Perrie says it might have been an overall good thing. He gets a call from Frederick, lovingly saved in his phone as Dickwad. Apparently he's supposed to be shadowing Frederick, but as soon as he walks in, his immaturity and naïveté derails the entire meeting with the Feds over Fortunato's poor environmental business practices. This enrages Freddie, and he accuses Perrie of being the mole informant. The continuous bit that Freddie struggles to differentiate between the two is actually quite funny, especially because Perrie has just shown his ass to not be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even he can keep those two different concepts straight in his head. Freddie really says some demoralizing shit to Perrie though, you can tell he sees himself above the other children, similarly to how Tamerlane's musings about the informant likely being "one of the bastards" from the first episode. Just because Roderick says you're family doesn't necessarily show that the children saw it the same way even when paternity is established.

Perrie lays out the details for the sex and drug-fueled club event to his two lackeys, and Verna briefly pops up on the roof of the building before Perrie looks back and sees that she's gone. We cut to the Rue Morgue, and Victorine and Alessandra lose another monkey. Victorine takes it hard and Alessandra tells her the last thing they should be talking about right now is human trials. However, we see that she's lying through her ass to her father, who is fast tracking this process because he's the person who needs that surgery.

Cut to Perrie asking Leo for drugs. So many drugs. Leo has funny quip in heres, but he's important because he tells Perrie that he's "better than a dealer, smarter than a DJ," and that "this is beneath you." Leo sees potential in Perrie that I saw a glimpse of when he was crunching numbers and setting entry fees for the guests. It is a shame that Perrie doesn't choose to listen to him in the end. And yes, another funny viagra quip.

We cut to Bill T. Wilson's...workout video? So that's what BILLT nation is. I will say the half-confused, half-concerned, half-disgusted, half-almost fascinated face Camille has is priceless here. We then cut to her watching a testimony from an alleged whistleblower at the Fortunato trial. Camille's willingness to find something about this whistleblower if there isn't anything to find speaks a lot about how she is as a PR manager. Ruthless, merciless, and focused on the ends to justify the means. The informant issue is eating at her because it was a factor she could not see or control. She zeroes in on Vic's clinical trial because she thinks it stinks, and we know it does, but she's got some ulterior motive that we don't know yet. The guy was admittedly fair in asking what Vic did to her, but it was one of those things you keep inside and never voice because Camille 100% has the ability to ruin you. Her glare was iconic. I was scared but also a little excited. I was hoping for some action but we cut to Perrie again instead.

A drop of water from the ceiling drips and lands on a phone. We talk about how to access the party, Molly Quinn uses her vocal fry to whisper sing an ad-libbed version of WAP, and we see the sprinkler again while Perrie asks about the water. We move to discussing the sprinklers to "make it rain" for the party and the guy for it says the sprinklers are shut off and Perrie calls bullshit because they dripped on his phone. He has this entire bit about hooking up the sprinklers to the filtered water tanks on the roof, etc, and starts talking about "The Golden Rule." I know this rule well, and while Perrie doesn't get to finish saying it before we cut to Roderick, I can confidently say as someone without money that money can solve many, many problems. So yes, whoever has the gold, does make the rules.

Roderick tells Dupin about the comic where he read about it. Before he can also finish saying "rule" Perrie's corpse appears to stand before him, and WOW he looks horrific. The SFX team deserves major props for this work, because he looks like a human anatomy model. 100% my money is that there's acid rain in the sprinklers/in the water tanks in the roof, and I'm probably right, but once again, the beauty of good media/literature/stories isn't about guessing the plot twist or the ending of the story before you get to it, it's about enjoying the process as you go along. I'm having a great time.

Roderick switches to something called CADASIL. Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. (The subtitle person for this deserves a raise.) It is apparently a hereditary form of vascular cognitive impairment. "Before it kills you, it causes symptoms very much like dementia. Affects thinking, problem solving, spatial reasoning and memory. It can even cause hallucinations."

Ah. There it is.

Roderick has this. And there's no cure. And he's refusing all the medications. AND the only hope is preventative. THE EXPERIMENTAL SMART HEART MESH HE SPENT $200 MILLION ON THAT HIS DAUGHTER IS WORKING ON?! Ah, so he is spending the gold to make sure the rules can work for him. Even if it means cutting corners and costing lives. Amazing how much money can really take away your sense of humanity though.

He brings up Rufus Griswold and that unfortunate cemetery business. What I laughed at was the dry, subtle way Roderick just calls Gris "the original gangsta." I had to rewind to make sure my eyes and the subtitles weren't playing tricks on me. So apparently all of this, as we are finding out, starts there. In Gris' office. With the Gris himself, "the original cocksucker."

Oh, it is a flashback. Young Roderick goes in to talk to Gris, but what about? Gris pours himself a drink and acerbically mocks the FDA. The "Fuck Dicks Association." Roderick is clearly not used to this kind of vibe, but he plays along poorly, not that it seems to matter much to Gris. Then again, this is a man who succeeded the helm of Fortunato. When he talks, he expects others to play along, he doesn't care how badly they do it as long as he's the one speaking and in charge. Roderick tries to make a pitch but Griswold is unhappy to hear it. He's about to kick Roderick out but decides fuck it, he's already here. Might as well just pretend to listen and kick him out. Obviously he doesn't say that, but I did debate for most of high school. Some judges walk in biased and you know you've lost before you even open your mouth. This happens with WASPy soccer moms judging their kids' debate tournament, this happens with judges on a local and federal level even though we pretend it isn't true, and it is certainly happening right now with Roderick Usher about to try to pitch something to Rufus Griswold. It is a shame Roderick doesn't know it yet.

He pitches ligodone, the same drug that dupin is in modern times currently trying to nail Fortunato and the Ushers for for falsely advertising as everything Roderick is pitching to Gris now. It is a really good pitch, very idealistic. I think Roderick may believe ligodone is the cure for everything, but I'm hooked on his line "this world...needs changing." He's as idealist as young Dupin at this time. I am so committed to seeing what goes wrong.

The pitch continues, Griswold pushes back, and Roderick suggests that Fortunato will become a miracle and Griswold will become the new Messiah. This piques my interest. We've got the ultra-religious mom, the children being allegories for the deadly sins, and a reference to the head of Fortunato with ligodone as the next Messiah. It certainly invokes a sense of hubris with inevitable downfall. But then Roderick brings it back to his mom and how much pain she was in. It really throws me for a loop because I think the humanity of it all is really at the bottom of Griswold's mind.

We cut to a new location and a crying baby. we see Madeline first and then a woman with the crying baby. We quickly figure out this is Roderick's wife Annabel (hur hur Annabel Lee) who consoles him for not winning his pitch. Madeline looks out of place, uncomfortable being there and more focused on things outside of the domestic sphere like Roderick's failed pitch. When we cut to the silent time after the baby is quiet at night, we see Roderick in the middle of these two women, with Madeline at his right hand side. When Annabel expresses remorse about the familial ties Roderick has with Fortunato, with his mother and father, Madeline seems shocked that he would have told his wife about such a detail? Like ma'am, that is your brother's wife. I just get this codependent vibe from the two of them that really gives me the ick. Annabel really does her best to bring them back to humanity by saying money isn't everything, but Madeline is not buying it. Madeline is completely jaded, turned off by men, turned off by love, basically anything where human emotion can show off even a sense of vulnerability. and she's just kind of disrespectful towards Annabel. (There's a bit here about AI writing movies and TV shows, I see that insert, I acknowledge it, I will move on.)

Madeline starts salivating at the thought of using algorithms to mimic human consciousness and ho it speaks to immortality. This is the first time I've seen her care about anything since I've seen her in this house, so I'm writing this immortality bit down as a note for later.

"Fuck that tiny little man in his big office with his tiny little ideas. WE are going to change the goddamn world, and if Fortunato won't help us get there, we will trample them on our way."

Ah. Spoken like a true capitalist, Madeline. Annabel can't fight off this insatiable, almost rabid thirst of Madeline's to move forward, and clearly since she isn't in the present with us, clearly Madeline must have won Roderick over to her side either by force or by choice. Shame, since Annabel was the paragon of virtue and humanity in this argument, and just goes to show how almost inhuman Madeline has become in this pursuit to change the world.

In the present, Madeline is talking to Lenore about answering a bunch of questions. Apparently she's making an Ai-approximation of Lenore by havingher write a journal every day for four months, answer 10,000 questions, and have it worm its way through the internet and collect all of her virtual data. This is impressive, actually. I'm doing some research on AI right now for an old law school professor so I've learned a lot about AI in the past few months and I have some background on this AI approximation that Madeline is trying to create. I might write a separate post about it altogether.

Back to Madeline. She assumes everyone wants to live on after they die, like the ancients. She had her Ancient Egypt phase, I see. This is Madeline's Roman Empire. She unboxes the mummification tools the Ancient Egyptians used to scoop out the brain, but there's a bunch of other artifacts behind her as well, propped up like trophies. She calls it her "immortality collection," so it isn't about Ancient Egypt, her hyperfixation is the concept of immortality.

Pym comes in and tells her she was right about something. Perrie's bank statements show that he's spending less. It either means he's "coming down in his old age" or that he's spending more cash. If so, he's dealing, pimping, or taking a payout in cash from the Federal government. Juno doesn't have her own accounts, she's co-signed on Roderick's. MAdeline here treats Juno with derision, calling her "the child bride" but ma'am. Once again, the common denominator here is that your brother picked these women to marry! Those are his decisions, deal with it! Either way, she's also intent on finding the informant.

Lenore walks in on Juno and Roderick being handsy in his office, but they quickly settle themselves. Juno is hilarious here, but it does highlight that Juno and Lenore are closer in age and interests than anyone else in this household. Blegh. Ok, maybe Madeline's comment about the whole child bride thing was on point. Juno is such comedic relief here, I'm not gonna lie, this actress is stellar, and I love her Irish accent. I think after all that tension and analysis, it was good to have a break. These things are too long, I need to shorten them for Episode 3.

Oh, cut to Perrie trying to drop off documents for Froderick. Dickwad. Frederick. Freddie. Morrie answers the door and tells him she's sorry about how Freddie can be. She tells Perrie she gets it, and idk, am I getting "battered wife" vibes here or is this just an act to try to get him to warm up? Perrie instead decides to be a degenerate and invite his shitty's brother WIFE to his expensive orgy. She scoffs and rebukes him, but he pulls some psycho manipulation about sex that as a demi person I can't relate to, but I appreciate her being all "How dare you!" about it. I still think if the show is going to put moving music in the background on it that she's going to end up going though, so maybe an early RIP to Morella Usher? Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Morrie is considering it, so wow.

Cut to Tamerlane. She's watching Bill set the table and then the bell rings. Off screen she invites a woman in who asks if a wig works for her? Ok, so this girl looks a bit like Chloe Fineman from SNL, but she just walks in wearing a wig and says hi to Bill like she's done this a million times before. Is this some type of roleplay? Ok, they're paying her in cash and Tamerlane is explaining her roleplay? She wants a romantic, intimate dinner? But she wants this girl to pretend to be her? Wait, she's sitting down and watching? Ok, so Tamerlane is sitting down and watching a hired girl pretend to be her, watch Bill treat her like he treats her, and Tamerlane gets off by watching it all as a third party observer? Her sexual fantasies literally start at dinner. I mean I just said Perrie's a whole ass freak, but Tamerlane kind of is one on a whole other, more voyeuristic, self-insertion level. I am confusion.

Cut to Camille watching Bill's workout video and kind of following his workout in a fascinated way? I'm also confusion. Anyway, her interns walk in and she turns it off, but then asks for updates on Vic's clinical trials and is frustrated that Toby can't get any results. She then goes into background of the testing facility "Roderick. Usher. Experimental." R.U.E. So she sets up the bit about the Rue Morgue. My favorite Poe short story. Tina goes into the paralytic nerve agent but Camille is uninterested. She looks through photographs and then..gets up to join them in bed? I had to rewind again. I didn't even realize they were undressing while debriefing her. And Camille's wearing a rope bra. And they're her interns! Besides the ethical and workplace violations from the freaking PR person for Fortunato, this whole family is FULL of sexual deviants. Wtf. I am confusion. AGAIN.

Cut to ships in a bottle. Frederick is showing Lenore how to make a ship in a bottle for Grampus Roderick. Morrie is headed out and apparently she's going to the orgy party. Great...

Everything is stuffed into lockers and masks come on. Perrie is overlooking this domain like the young Prince Prospero from the story. He gets excited when he sees and realizes his dickwad brother's hot wife showed up to his orgy. Morrie plays dumb, but Perrie tells her to try some drugs and one of the twelve bedrooms before he says he will find her later.

Cut to security cameras. Perrie points out all the famous/famous adjacent people who showed up. He reveals his plan to use the security footage form this hedonistic orgy to blackmail everyone who arrived at the party. Suddenly, inviting his dickwad's brother's hot model/actress wife makes a lot more sense, and he says it out loud. He drops a tidbit about Freddie is afraid of using elevators. Mght be useful for later. He then proceeds to give his lackeys ecstasy through mouth to mouth and they all head out to continue partying before a woman in a skull mask walks through the door. We know it is Verna, but Perrie doesn't know who she is. Verna and Morrie briefly make eye contact before Verna slips away and Perrie follows her to ask her who she is.

Verna finally removes her mask and she and Perrie somehow end up in a private bedroom. I don't know if the red lights are indicative of the seventh room in the original story, but if it is just a stylistic option, it also looks fitting. Verna tells him he can take off his mask. He asks her if she knows him, and she says she knows everyone here because this is her kind of party. She talks about the music, the lights, the beautiful flesh. She really leans into "the smells of it." And no, it isn't what you would think. "All the sweat, the perfumes, the lotions, the musk. sex, yes. But with a dash of Rome."

Verna asks him to tell her, and not lie, if this party is everything he wanted it to be. He says, "Not yet. Almost." She responds that "nearly realized is the sweetest. It is better...in the moment just before than in the moment after." She tells him he did it, and there's still time. For what? He asks. Verna responds..."To stop it."

She tells Perrie "Things like this, all things in fact, have consequences." He tells her that's not what is happening here based off of his invite (even though he KNOWS he plans to blackmail everyone in this room later.) Verna responds there are always consequences and talks about him. About choices that lead to consequences, and how his existence is a consequence. I wrote down the whole speech because those sequence of choices will likely be illuminated once the entire series is over, so I want that to reflect upon during each episode.

It is a shame, because even though Verna tells Perrie that tonight he is consequential, he doesn't even realize how serious she is. She gives him a chance to take it all back, and then the two of them could have had fun, and that she's got a weakness for bad boys. She tells Perrie "you are a pretty, pretty little thing" before she disappears into the party again. Perrie chases after her but she's gone. He takes something, puts his mask back on and returns to the party. Verna is seen whispering into the ears of the security guards, the bartender, etc before she appears behind Morrie and tells her to "Go. Now." So Morrie is given due warning. Now the decision is up to her whether to leave or stay as midnight approaches. Morrie stays, and has to deal with the consequences of her choices.

The acid rain in the sprinklers rains down and proceeds to basically liquify the entire party. Everyone looks like anatomical models, but Perrie is still moving a bit. Verna approaches his melted body and whispers "You beautiful boy" and kisses him on the lips as he dies before placing her skull mask on his face. And that's the end of the episode.

There's a lot there. I feel like I have to immediately start Episode 3 in order to recover from the whiplash of all of that, but this is going up now. I think for Episode 3 I will take it "scene by scene" as I plan to watch the entire episode in full since Rue Morgue is my favorite short story and I wanna see how it plays out with Camille. If I'm lucky I'll get Episode 3 up today but I am very much at the whim of my moods and medication.

Overall this was a good episode, we saw everyone else's freaky sex interests and I do think Perrie gives me "lust" deadly sin vibes, especially because his penchant for lust is what got him killed. Verna calling him beautiful before and after the acid rain is intriguing. She could be saying his demon-esque look is appealing because she herself is a demon. I got a google notecard/ad type of thing for an article saying that Verna is the Raven because it is an anagram, but I'm interested in seeing other explanations as to what Verna could be. She could be the literal devil that the twins made a deal with to get where they are, I'm not entirely sure. I just want to get through this series with as little spoilers as possible to see how accurate my guesses are.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Katzenjammer by Francesca Zappia

"They're all so dark, Dad said one day, watching over my shoulder as I worked at the kitchen table. Why don't you paint things like a blue sky, or a field of flowers, or a bird flying on a breeze? Something happy that your mom can put on the fridge. She can put these on the fridge, I said. Maybe just one flower? he asked. There are no flowers where I live, I said."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 4/5

About: Cat has been stuck in School for as long as she can remember. The hallways slowly expand and contract with School's breathing, the showers run red with blood, and the students have divided themselves into changed and unchanged. While the unchanged hide in the fortress of administration, Cat and her friends haunt the courtyard and hallways. Her best friend is turning into cardboard, and Cat's face has become a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh. There are no doors or windows in or out of School, and something is hunting them down one by one in the hallways. To escape, Cat will have to understand why they're trapped in the first place. Trigger warnings: Some triggers are listed at the end of the review because they include spoilers. Character death, guns, violence, blood/gore, dismemberment, body/eye horror, bullying, slut-shaming, vandalism.

Thoughts: Thanks to @ninja-muse for recommending this book, since I'm not sure I would have found it on my own. This is probably my favorite Francesca Zappia novel to date, and one of the best novels on this subject I've ever read (more on that after the spoilers). However, I believe it's best to go into it not knowing much more than the description provides. This book works extremely well as a slow reveal. What starts out as a mindfuck becomes slow understanding as we realize more or less alongside Cat what is happening in School, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to read the spoilers if you plan to read this. However, it covers a number of very heavy and potentially triggering topics (and it's difficult to gush about how I think it works without giving things away), so I'll include those thoughts at the end. I can't stress it enough though. If you're not easily triggered, stop here and go read this book!

This is also one of the best examples of uncanny horror that I've read in a long time. Zappia expertly manages to capture the quality of a nightmare without sacrificing the continuity. School is creepy and semi-sentient, and the changes it brings about in half the students are a study in body horror. Perhaps even more terrifying are the parallels it draws to some very real life horrors such as bullying and, indeed, I found the flashback chapters of Cat's surfacing memories of her former life of being targeted, bullied, and slut-shamed at school more difficult to get through than the surreal scenes of hacked up bodies or bloody showers in School. Real life horror always affects me a lot more than the supernatural, and Katzenjammer does an excellent job of balancing both. The ending is cathartic and effective, and there's less of a plot twist than a sort of inevitable, dawning horror-- which is honestly the best kind.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

Remember how I said that real life horror is always worse than the supernatural or the uncanny? I stand by that statement. Zappia draws such excellent parallels to real life in her uncanny School that it's almost impossible not to realize before Cat does that the traumatic event that put them there was a school shooting. I've read a couple YA novels that handled the subject fine, but I don't think any of them capture it as well as this one. We need something like the supernatural School and the horror of bodies changing in ways we can't explain to fully grasp the senseless horror of gun violence. Killing children makes no more sense than hallways that breathe or girls who turn into their cat masks. It takes Cat the entire novel to understand the horror and absurdity of what's been done to her and to accept it-- that there are reasons but not excuses, and that we will never know all of them. I cried a little at the end, but I think the real life horror of it is too big for tears. Instead, it's a feeling that will sit with me long after I've turned the last page.

[direw00f]

The promised (sort of) rant about Ayreon (the character)

Alright so if anyone asks me about my favourite character ever it has to be Ayreon and I want to share why I like him so much! First up a small introduction to Ayreon (the project) for my mutuals or anyone that stumbles upon this. Ayreon is a prog rock/metal project by Arjen Anthony Lucassen every album has a story and most albums tell the same story. In all albums he gets guest singers to bring his story to life and in most album the different singers play different characters. Two exceptions to this rule is The Colonist from The Universal Migrator albums but his situation has a logical explination and we are going to dip a little into the story of this album as Ayreon makes a little appearance. Now the second exception is the character I will talk about now! As I will talk about the project's first ever protagonist from the first ever album The Final Experiment released in 1995 (this year is important as I will discuss later!). Now how this will go is I will analyse every song of the album and analyse the lyrics and how it relates to the love I have for Ayreon. Now as Ayreon gets described and introduced in the first song of the album, let's get right into this!

Track number 1: Prologue

So this is our introduction to the album as a future incarnation of Merlin talks to us from 2084 about Ayreon. 2084 is an important year in the Ayreon universe as it is the death of earth, so Merlin explains that scientists have developed "time telepathy" to send visions of humanity's demise into the past with the hopes of changing the future. These visions have been recieved by a BLIND MINSTREL living in 6th century Brittain, this is Ayreon and it is his task to warn humanity about it's disastrous future. Now do I have to say anything about the fact that the only thing this poor man now can see is destruction and death? So we have our basic introduction to our story and got a basic overview of our poor protagonist, his story will not have a happy ending sadly. The melody in this is sometimes the same as in the song Merlin's Will, I guess this is our audio cue for our wizard here.

Track number 2: The Awareness (technically Dreamtime)

Soooo first up what is up with the song name well this album is divided into 4 acts, somehow The Awareness and another act got split but while this song is called The Awareness the portion of the act we're talking about is called Dreamtime (Words Become A Song). So to be clear: The Awareness is the current act of the story we're in, the segment we're talking about is Dreamtime. This clear? Ok! Let us get on with the analysis. Let us start with the banging opening lines: "A cry in the silence, a shine in the dark Like a rising star, the dream is coming Images of violence, a flight through time and space It's such a lonely place; the dream is coming The smoke is rising, the vision's getting clearer And words become a song in the dreamtime" So this is our first look into Ayreon's head and just look at those fancy words, you can clearly see that he is a poet of some sort. So these visions appeared to him in dreams and his mind immediately started writing lyrics to a song. It is also the start of his issues with the visions (yay!) he is clearly distressed by the visions and nothing shows this more than the next song of our little saga:

Track number 3: Eyes Of Time

He is awake! Yay and oh boy here comes the crisis and a beautiful description of what he feels at this moment, again I will post the first verse because it is so beautiful and Eyes Of Time is my favourite song of this album with it's catchy chorus and beautiful lyrics. "I cannot see with these eyes! My world is black, like a cold eternal night I could not tell you no lies! My words are lost, in a shroud of mystery" So yeah..... the description of his world being as black as night is a frequent one we see associated with Ayreon as we will talk about later. So this is Ayreon trying to make sense of these visions he wakes up with as he puts it later "I see the world through the eyes of time". He also describes himself as drifting through time and he has no idea what to do, he is already composing the songs about these visions but he is still very confused and does not understand what's going on with him. He is really going through it lmao, anyways these tries at writing the songs and his staring of into space which leads him into:

Track number 4: The Banishment

Oh yeah this is exactly what it sounds like, the townsfolk grow fearful of him and his songs and banish him from the village. Poor Ayreon cries out "what have I done?" as the people accuse him of being evil, this leads Ayreon to roam the forest lost and even more confused. Eventually this leads him to find a place at Camelot after gaining some strange determination. What can I say about this song other then "poor Ayreon" and hope for the best for him.

Track number 5: Ye Courtyard Minstrel Boy

A straightforward track leading into the next arc for Ayreon here, it explains that he tries to win the trust of the people there before he tries to complete his mission again. The next track also does not give further insight into Ayreon's character but it does have a link to a different album I did not see anyone talk abot before soooo:

Track number 6: Sail Away To Avalon

Just a cool track about the quest for the holy grail right? This does give us an insight in the type of songs Ayreon would write, you know except for the metal part lol. In story this is to establish Ayreon as the court musician it has no further relevance to the story right? Wellllll this is a line from Sail Away To Avalon: "You'll find the grail within you, Slay the dragon in your dreams" And this is a line from the Knight on the song Another Time, Another Space from the Into The Electric Castle album: "I have found the grail, here within" So what does this mean? Well I do not know, this could be coincidence but Arjen mostly write links like this if they're important. The whole story of that album is that humans from different time periods have been placed together as an experiment about emotions by the Forever. (A whole different rant is needed to explain them) but the time telepathy experiment was an idea by the Forever so that is possibly the link. Anyways after this little detour let us go back on track and go to the next part of our little story with:

Track Number 7: Nature's Dance

First up: emotional damage. So this song is Ayreon sitting in the gardens wishing to see the beautiful nature around him instead of those future visions. He also uses the word television which I always have interpreted as Ayreon knowing things he shouldn't because of his visions of DOOM. Anyways this is the point of no return Ayreon gathers the courage to finally fulfill his mission although he is already aware that this will most likely kill him. So the next 3 songs will be three ways he foresees humanity's demise and all three are very likely to happen, sadly.

Track Number 8: Computer Reigns (Game Over)

Yeah the classic technology will be our downfall spiel, let us go on to:

Track number 9: Waracle

Ayreon foresees a lot of wars and infighting that will never be resolved until the death of the humans on earth, fun.

Track number 10: Listen To The Waves

This one is the most interesting of these three songs as he foresees pollution and climate change being one of the reasons of earth's destruction. One line in particular stands out though: "We befoul the air and burn a hole in the sky." Eh yeah, this was written in 1995 and now we do actually have a hole in the sky and then adds: "Deadly waves from outer space, will cause our race to die." Which would also be true I cannot put to words how eerily correct Arjen was with this prediction. Now we had this it is time for more pain with:

Track number 11: Magic Ride

This is Ayreon at his lowest point, he feels his death is near and so he cries out to the people that gave him these visions to allow him to see anything other than those horrid visions before he dies. This leads to his final arc which I like to call his death arc or "Merlin is a jealous asshole, the arc." He is scared for his life and just wants anything nice to happen in his sadly short life, sadly this is not to be.

Track number 12: Merlin's Will

Merlin is jealous of Ayreon's apparent visions and wish to be the only seer and so he condems Ayreon to die while calling Ayreon's visions fake. This leads to the saddest song of the album and I will cry because I love this character a lot.

Track number 13: Charm Of The Seer

Ayreon accepts his fate after his frankly difficult life and because I do love the lyrics bound to Ayreon here is the opening of the song: "I've been lost in the valley of nightmares I've been found in the garden of dreams Speak thy charm, I know you are out there Cast thy spell and silence their screams

As I poise on the edge of life where time disappears I bow in fear, To the charm of the seer" All he wants is peace and for those visions to stop and if his death will silence them, then he will accept it with fear.

Track number 14: Swan Song

While this song doesn't have any lyrics we do know what happens in this, Ayreon finally understands where his visions came from and as he sees his future reincarnations he makes one last effort to reason with Merlin to let him live.

Track number 15: Ayreon's Fate (and the last song of the album)

Ayreon's cries fall on deaf ears and he is killed by Merlin but just as he does Merlin recieves visions of the future revealing the truth of Ayreon's words. With an anguished cry of Ayreon's name he promises that his words will be heard and that his story will be told in the late 20th century. Did you remember the year of the album's release? That is right! 1995 which means Arjen writing about Ayreon is canon in the Ayreon universe and we actually meat this fictional version of Arjen in a later album, he is actually really important to the story.

Well this is the end then right? Ayreon died but his words were still shared, humanity can change and prevent the end! Well no Earth still dies in 2084 but what do I talk about then? Well.... Ayreon does appear one more time and not as just a mention. The Universal Migrator is about the last human alive, some humans migrated to Mars but oxygen slowly ran out killing everyone except for our protagonist: The Colonist. He decides to enter the Dream Sequencer (a machine allowing you to experience yout past lives) as oxygen runs out so he dies seeing the earth he longed to visit and so he does what Ayreon wanted but never got. Interesting right? Well both the Colonist and Ayreon share a face that of our mastermind Arjen and so we have.

Caried By The Wind

So our friendly minstrel has died and he actually sounds happier in this song, wow! He floats about as a spirit free and more optimistic than ever! He describes roaming free carrying his message around and in the Universal Migrator comic we can actually see him inspire Arjen to write The Final Experiment. He is distraught as he finds out he failed but optimistically seeks out other worlds to live in. I love this version of Ayreon it is still our minstrel with the fancy words but without the pain the visions has caused he is free to just be.

That is all then right? Ah right the fictional version of Arjen, Mr L present on the song The Truth Is In Here from the 01011001 album which details some strange dreams he got including those of our minstrel friend. Again describing his vision as "black as night" just less poetic, anyways his efforts to sing about Ayreon's visions landed him in a mental hospital. Typical. However it seems the Forever have something to do with Mr L's dreams though we know he is another reincarnation of Ayreon.

In short I love the character of Ayreon for how tragic he is and his boundless optimism after his death. His story is intriguing even if it is a little sad and I love how poetic and over the top his dialog is.

This was my rant about my favourite character ever, I do hope people enjoy it.

[hrodvitnon]

Kiryu!Dagon & How He Can Still Work Without Invalidating The Revived!Dagon Idea

Have a bunch of other headcanons I want to post later, but for right now I have this neat tidbit that could help clear things up with Kiryu!Dagon: So, one of the novels (I think it's the GVK one) states outright that Godzilla - and presumably all Godzillasurus - have an ingrained genetic memory that not only stretches back very far into the past and can be used to recall events beyond what the individual has experienced, but literally goes so far back that it can recall when the Earth was still a molten ball only just cooling to give rise to land. Whilst Godzilla does state that it doesn't let him recall exact locations, shapes, or details, it's potent enough that it basically informs him of events from well before he was ever born.

Now we know Dagon died a really long time ago - specifically 11th century, B.C. and his body was used by Jinshin-Mushi as a bed for her eggs and eventually died as a result, leaving only his remains behind. Now whilst that's long enough for him to become a skeleton and for the soul to leave to be reincarnated, it almost certainly wasn't long enough for general memories to COMPLETELY fade, and definitely wouldn't have been enough to mess up the genetic memory if it can stretch far enough back that Godzilla can recall the Hadean Epoch with any amount of clarity, so I think it can sort of be justified that when the bones are recovered and used to make Kiryu, and when Dagon eventually regains sapience, they sort of just tap in to the genetic memory to 'fill in the blanks' as it were, paired with flashes of memory from his actual life.

Now this isn't an immediate process - it's very slow starting out and exact details won't come to him outside of vague out-of-context snippets, at least not at first. But due to the relative recency of his death, plus being around his son and his family, as well as other things that might trigger some level of remembrance whether personal or genetic (like say, Manda since a number of his species probably were alive when Dagon was), it's much easier for memories and experiences to be found and picked up by the genetic memory - and Kiryu!Dagon slowly and painstakingly begins to put together the context of these events until he more or less recalls a rough timeline of his life up until Jishin-Mushi killed him, with some help from Goji or Mothra as well.

But at his core, Kiryu!Dagon still isn't the original Dagon - even if he regains enough to basically reinvent himself and recall all the major events of his lifetime, the OG Dagon's soul still moved on and was reincarnated. Presumably the Gods like Mothra or Megalon (possibly Battra as well) can tell, but given how much he acts like Dagon did originally, they don't really care enough to make a total distinction (or Megalon doesn't, Mothra probably does tell him as such at some point) - he's functionally Dagon for all intents and purposes.

This essentially allows us to explain away the discrepancies between Kiryu!Dagon functionally acting like and being treated as Dagon in the Abraxasverse despite him dying and not being eternal in the manner that the deities are, whilst also keeping it so that his original soul left and was reincarnated by the Mother Dark like everyone else. And it could create a fun interaction in the event that Kiryu!Dagon ever met Anomaly!Dagon or a variant of himself who never died to begin with.

It also allows us to keep the funny and silly family plus Dagon and Barb shenanigans but that's something else entirely

---

Welp, this is one of those times where I think "oh shit time to reread the novelizations" because Godzilla's species having a genetic memory of that scale is crazy... (Plus this adds something new to the Ozymandias Space Crystal Cordyceps situation, because if Godzilla can't recall specific details then from his perspective, his brother would've been there and literally gone the next.)

Aw, I do love the Barbagon shenanigans, those are nice.

[margridarnauds]

How did you name Kitrye?

Signed,

Someone who is considering playing as an elf but doesn't know how to name an elf.

You have no idea what you did by asking this because it's one of those examples of me vibrating for months to explain why I made a choice I made.

A lot of the DND books that are focused on a given race will give you example names to work with, but, personally, that isn't an option I've ever taken. A little known Thing with me is that, when I'm naming characters, I am pretty much always very, very specific. Even if it's information that won't come up, naming a character is a big part of characterization for me.

So, I went here -- Not as canon as I'd have liked, but, given it's DND, it's as canon as I could get. And I looked at various options, but "Kitrye" was what I went for in the end, because it meant "Half." And it worked on multiple levels, first was that it highlights the sort of person Kitrye's mother is, that she would just give her the name "Half", second of all that it's something that other Drow can note and comment on if they want (even if Kitrye can ALMOST pass as a relatively pale full Drow, her name + eyes give her away), and third of all that it highlights the theme of duality that was always meant to be embedded in Kitrye's story arc. I went through a couple of designs for her in the early game, including one where she would have half white/half black hair, which was meant to be a very, very imperceptibly slight nod of inspiration to the goddess Hel from Norse Mythology, which ultimately ended up in her current design, which lost that idea of black/white duality but still has a lot of black highlights in it despite looking very silvery on the surface. I wanted to add a lot of death motifs to her at the beginning as a way of underscoring her eventual role, though most of those ended up getting cut, but the idea of duality still stayed, especially since most of her outfits feature strong contrasts between dark and light elements. (The third bonus was that it was something that was pronounceable AND something that could hold its own in a world of Quinthels, Liriels, and Malices -- just foreign enough to seem distinctively Drow, just short enough to be pronounceable and recognizable as a name, with possibilities for nicknames as well.) I knew, from the beginning, that I wanted her to be a strong contrast to Raphael, so it made sense that her duality, her mixed nature, would be front and center when naming her (in a way that it ISN'T with him -- one of them kind of intentionally hides it and sees it as a weakness, the other doesn't.) I go back and forth on whether I'll ever give an explanation of the name in a fic, because a part of me thinks it's really, really important to her, another part of me thinks it's great to leave it as something that you have to dig for.

And, from that point on, it was a matter of shopping for which house she ought to belong to, since that's central to Drow society. I toyed with a number of options -- never the most prominent house, House Baenre, since Minthara already belongs to that one in-canon, but somebody who would, ideally, be in a place of nobility and privilege while also being out of the spotlight, someone who there was just enough canon on that I had something to work with and just little enough canon that I could be very flexible with, say, matron mother names, timelines, etc. And House Symryvvin, 18th on the house ranking, but once holding some lore that said that they might be the REAL rulers of Menzoberranzan via their hyper-devotion to Lolth...it was perfect. Like, it meant that (1) Kitrye wouldn't be a celebrity, even if she had some amount of power, she is not coming from a place of HYPER privilege, even if it's still a place of privilege and (2) There was a justification for how she was allowed to be born in the first place, because she's a Symryvvin and people might have still been too scared to challenge her mother's decision.

For Mallathalra, I followed a similar pattern (minus the surname issues since I'd already selected that) -- since she actually was chosen by the family and adopted, I wanted something that was slightly more ornate for her, so I chose "malla", meaning "honored" or "honored one" and "thalra", meaning "encounter", for something that is VERY ROUGHLY intended to convey the idea of "honored encounter" -- her name is more outwardly complimentary than Kitrye's, it actually had effort put into it, but there's a double-edged sword in the sense that she very literally does not have an identity outside of the family. They found her, they adopted her, and now she couldn't even remember her birth name if she wanted to.

In a lot of ways, it would be easier to go to a Drow name generator or to take one of the suggested names from the guides, but I'm honestly really happy I didn't, since it gave me a much clearer idea of the characters by going the dictionary route.

For an elf, you have this dictionary, if you want to take the approach I did. The 5E player's handbook has these suggestions:

[wgc-productions]

The Magnus Archives Liveblog- MAG 9 A Father's Love

It's been a little bit since I livebloged the last episode, but (by golly!) I'm gonna keep going (at least until the end of season 1).

02:13- Stop whispering at me Johnathan!

02:47- Oh, you know what would be a fun premise for a show (maybe a miniseries) a true crime podcast investigates the murders of a number of people in their town. As they reveal more and more the podcaster realizes the murderer is closer to home then they like. I feel like that could be a real fun thriller.

04:56- 40 PEOPLE! GIRL WAS HE EVER HOME!!! 40 people in 5 years is 8 people a year. That is a lot of people for something like murder.

09:08- Time to call a plumber, I guess.

10:07- Oh, he was a cop! That explains how he was able to kill so many people (I'm not even talking about in the political way, I'm literally talking about the fact that his knowledge of how crimes are investigated would very much serve him on his quest for death. Not to mention he has access to things that your average murder just wouldn't.)

14:11- You know if Julia ever decides to take vengeance upon her father, she'd be a perfect candidate for the Batfamily. Who among the BatFam hasn't had a murdering father (essentially everyone but Steph and Cass (and for a period of time Jason maybe).

21:17- Uh oh, Poppa's trying to summon ~the horrors~

22:28- I just know this woman doesn't get the access to therapy she needs. I mean, as a therapist, where do you even begin with a story like this.

25:07- Oh....no.

27:40- Once again I must ask, how can Julia ever cope after this image is grafted into her brain!

28:06- Alright the silver had closed around an eye is clearly important. I will save that little image in my mind so I can pull it out when future episodes come around.

29:55- Man this guy should have gotten into butchery or Tarot lore or something other than straight up murder for occult purposes.

30:44- Oh snap! Teeth dude! Alright, it's starting to braid together.

31:15- Sound personal.

Okay, so,as I've mentioned in my other liveblogs, I'm really waiting her so I can see how all of the stories blend together and also because as a person who makes fiction podcasts I feel like i should at least listen to one of the most popular shows in the medium.

I like how it's blending together already. So we have the connection with this episode and the episode with the teeth. We also had that mention of the strange woman in a few episodes. I'm excited to see where this goes.

I will say, while I'm listening to the episodes I feel not necessarily disengaged but it feels sort of quotidian. However, after the episode ends and I really think about the implications of the episode I become more intrigued. I think that might be the single narrator kicking in. Those aren't my favorite type of shows as they are hard for me to stay engaged in, especially since Jon speaks so monotonously through the episode, but the stories he's telling are interesting and thinking about it afterwards gives more more of that imaginative thrill.

[burgundybmw]

Munson's Mixtape

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Cunningham!Reader

Word Count: 5,455

Warnings: References to sex (What are those stains Eddie?? Explain yourself!!), Mentions of Death, Angst, Mrs. Cunningham being the Momster she is, Trauma, Vecna being Vecna.

Summary: Chrissy has been acting weird, and like a good big sister Y/N drives to Hawkins from Notre Dame to check in on her. Only to find out she has plans to meet up with Eddie Munson. Things take a turn for the worse and now Y/N gets wrapped in to the horrors of Hawkins. Hey, at least she has the company of the guitarist she was sweet on back in high school for comfort.

Author’s Note: I'm apologizing ahead of time for a number of things. Don't worry, it'll happen soon.

Track Sixteen

Y/N can't remember the last time she rode on the back of someone's bicycle, if she ever did at all. When she was a kid, Chrissy was usually the one to tag along on her bike rides. She would stand behind her as Y/N peddled, small hands gripping her shoulders for balance. She used to yell at her to go faster, and Y/N would pump her legs as fast as she could and speed by the streets of Hawkins. Now Y/N was the one holding on to Lucas' shoulders, the group of kids peddling with everything they had to get to Forrest Hills. There was a gate in Eddie's trailer, and it was their only shot at getting the rest of the party back home. Y/N wasn't ready to see the trailer again, wasn't ready to stand in the same spot her sister died nearly a week ago, but it had to be done.

The gang was closing in on the trailer park, the driveway entrance just up ahead. Y/N's grip on Lucas' shoulders tightened as they got closer to Eddie's place. She feared that once they opened the gate, something else would come out it. As much as she wanted Eddie, Nancy, Robin and Steve home safe and sound, the thought that other monsters following through with them scared her half to death. Y/N held on to the idea of seeing Eddie again, it helped quench the unruly terror inside of her.

Lucas was beginning to slow down, and she knew it was time to face whatever was in that trailer. Once he finally came to a stop, she hopped off the back and ran over to the front door, Dustin and the rest of the kids followed right behind her. As Y/N swung open the door the first thing she saw was a massive red gaping hole in the ceiling.

"Holy shit." Dustin gasped. All of the kids surrounded her as they looked at the ceiling above.

"How are we gonna get them out? There's like, some sort of membrane blocking it." Lucas asked. In the corner of Y/N's eye, she saw the chair she used to try and get Chrissy down from the ceiling. She grabbed the chair and put it directly underneath the gate to the Upside Down.

"Can one of you hand me that broom over there?" Y/N asked as she stood up towards the gate. Max walked over to the kitchen and handed it to her, the old wood smooth and worn beneath her palms. Y/N took a deep breath, and shoved the broom into the membrane as hard as she could. She struggled against it for a moment, the gate stretching against the top of the broom, until it finally burst through.

Y/N could hear a scream from the other side, she couldn't see who it was but it sounded human. She pushed the broom stick further into the membrane, waving it around until the hole became wide enough for someone to get through. The gate to the Upside Down was dark, she could barely see who, or what, was there.

"Hello?" Y/N asked into the darkness.

"Y/N!" Eddie shouted as ran to stand underneath the gate. Instant relief rushed through her like a tidal wave. Steve, Robin and Nancy all huddled around Eddie to see Y/N standing above them.

"Holy shit, this is trippy." Robin whispered. Eddie couldn't think about how bizarre everything looked, all he could focus on was Y/N above him. She looked like an angel, surrounded by light, a dazzling smile on her face. Everything had been so dark, nothing but rotten decay and monstrous creatures around him for hours. She was a beacon for him, the lighthouse signal across a never ending sea, the shining north star in a bitch black sky, a candle in the window on a cold dark winter's night.

"You guys need some help?" Dustin asked with a chuckle.

"Yea Henderson, some help about now would be nice." Steve complained.

"You guys hang tight!" Y/N shouted as she got off the chair. Dustin, Lucas, and Max were already walking towards Eddie's bedroom, and Y/N quickly followed.

"Okay, Y/N and Max you guys take the blanket, pillow cases, and top sheet, off the bed. I'll tie them together to make a rope. Lucas, when they're done, grab the mattress and put it under the gate. They're gonna need something soft to land on." Dustin ordered. All three of them nodded and got to work.

As Y/N was working on deconstructing Eddie's bed, she couldn't help but remember the last time she was here. It hurt to think about, how oblivious she was to the horrors just outside the door. How Chrissy was fine one moment, and gone the next. The guilt was eating her alive. If only she didn't waste time talking to Eddie, if only she walked into that room just a second sooner, she could have sang Somewhere Over The Rainbow to Chrissy, saved her l sister's life. If only she knew then what she knew now. But it wasn't time to dwell on such things, she had a job to do.

Once Max and Y/N were finished, both girls walked back to the ceiling gate to wait for the boys to complete their tasks. Dustin was working with lightening speed on the rope, and Lucas attempted to move the mattress without wrecking Eddie's bedroom. When Lucas finally managed to drag the mattress into the living room, they all looked at the state of Eddie's bed. There were dark stains at the head of the bed, with two dark stains on either side of the foot of it. Y/N tried to figure out what those stains could be. She didn't notice them when she first came over, the top sheet was covering it. They could be sweat stains, but those usually follow the shape of someone body. They couldn't be piss stains, as disgusting as the thought was, there would be one massive stain at the center. She couldn't wrap her head around it.

"Those stains are, uh... I dunno what those stains are." Eddie stammered. He sounded embarrassed, and Y/N began putting the pieces together. The placement, how dark they were... those stains were sex stains. She felt the heat rush to her face, and her mind gravitated to the other items in she found in Eddie's bedroom while she waited for Max to finish with the pillow cases. Handcuffs, condoms, lotion, a Heavy Metal magazine with very explicit imagery on the cover. What else was he into? What other hidden treasures could she find in there?

"First thing I'm doing after this is all over is buying you a new mattress and linens Eddie." Y/N said in a peeved tone. She could hear Eddie chuckling through the gate as she said it.

"Gonna be my sugar mama now Y/N?" Eddie smirked. Y/N rolled her eyes as Dustin walked over with the rope.

"A sugar mama requires sugar Munson. I'm not gonna get that now, aren't I?" Y/N replied. She sounded bratty, testy, her feathers clearly ruffled by Eddie's comment.

"Well Princess, I could-" Eddie started before Dustin interrupted him.

"Ugh, enough already!" He complained. "Do you guys want out of there or no?" They all nodded, Eddie with a sheepish grin on his lips.

"Alright then, welp. I'm not quite sure how these physics are gonna work. But, uh... here goes nothing." Dustin said as he tossed the sheet rope into the ceiling. They all looked as the rope landed on the floor of the Upside Down trailer, the other end dangling mid air on their side in Dustin's hands.

"There we go. And if my theory is correct..." Dustin let go of the rope, and it remained steady.

"Huh, Abracadabra." Dustin joked.

"Holy shit." Max gasped. Holy shit was right. Y/N had taken physics, both in high school and in college, and she was flabbergasted that the kid's plan actually worked. Her professors at Notre Dame would have a field day if they could witness what was before her eyes.

"All right, pull on it! See if it holds!" Dustin shouted at the ceiling. Y/N watched as Robin looked over to Steve, who nodded at her silent request. She pulled on the rope as hard as she could, and it didn't budge. They all couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

"This is the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen some crazy shit." Erica said in disbelief. It might not have been the craziest Y/N's ever seen, but it sure as hell was close. Dustin held up a high five, and Erica slapped it in return, clearly proud of himself.

"Guess I'm the guinea pig." Robin whispered loudly. She grunted as she pulled herself up on the rope, slowly making her way towards the opening.

"Let's clear the landing pad." Dustin said as he slowly backed off the mattress. Y/N and the rest of the kids followed suit. Robin slowly climbed closer to the gate's entrance, struggling a bit as she went. Once her head peaked through the opening gravity finally decided to kick in, and they all watched as she fell onto the mattress.

"Oh my god!" Robin shouted as she landed. "Oh, thank God. That was fun." Dustin reached his hand out to help lift her up, something she quickly grabbed onto. Eddie, Nancy, and Steve all looked at each other to see who would go next.

"Lady's first." Eddie said as he gestured towards the rope. Nancy nodded, and made her climb up. Y/N watched as she made her way through, a bit more graceful than Robin did before her. Steve followed closely behind, leaving Eddie last in the Upside Down.

"Come on Eds, you're next!" Y/N shouted. She saw him slowly climb the rope, and every second made her nervous. What if the gate suddenly closed, leaving him behind? What if the sheets ripped? She couldn't stop the anxiety filled thoughts rushing through her brain, she wouldn't feel better till he was safe inside the trailer.

Soon enough, Eddie landed on the mattress below her feet. Y/N reached her hand out to help him up, but what she felt wasn't the smooth touch of metal against her fingers.

It happened in a second, a blink and you miss it moment. One second she was reaching out for Eddie, and the next she dangling from the ceiling, holding on to Chrissy's slowly rotting shoulders.

"Y/N... Why didn't you save me Y/N... You're my big sister... You're supposed to protect me..." Chrissy's voice was garbled, barely understandable, her dislocated jaw swinging aimlessly in the air. Blood slowly trickled down Chrissy's eyes, red tears that felt like little rain drops on Y/N's face. She screamed, and immediately let go of her sister, falling onto the hard ground of the trailer. Just like she did the night Chrissy died, but Chrissy didn't fall with her. She was still up there, pinned to the ceiling, gray skin gradually decaying before Y/N's eyes.

"No... No, no, no, this can't be happening." Y/N could feel that all too familiar feeling of panic settle in her bones. She needed to run, she couldn't go through this again, not alone.

Y/N gathered her wits and raced to the trailer door, but when she slammed it open she found herself back home. She tried to turn around and run back to the trailer, but all she saw was the entryway to the dining room. That's when she realized, this must be what Chrissy saw before she died, this was Vecna's curse.

"Y/N?! Y/N Wake up!!! Y/N!!!" Eddie was screaming at her, but she was completely unresponsive. Just like he had feared every second since Chrissy died, Y/N's eyes were milky white, nearly rolled to the back of her skull. Eddie's hands were cupping her face, so hard he was afraid he was going to hurt her.

"Where's that mixtape she asked us for?!" Steve yelled, he was rummaging through Eddie's bedroom looking for his old walkman.

"I didn't see it on her!! She must have left it somewhere!!" Max screamed as she helped Steve search.

"What's on the tape?" Nancy asked, she was trying to stay calm but she could feel her hands shaking as she moved about the trailer.

"How should we know?!" Robin yelled in a panic. That's when Eddie snapped out of it, he knew what was on the tape, he had all the songs in his bedroom. It pained him to let go of Y/N, but her life was on the line, he needed to save her, she couldn't end up like Chrissy, she couldn't.

"Her favorite song is For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica. It-It's the Ride The Lightning album, the cover is blue. That's what's on the mixtape. I, shit, I have no clue where it is but it's here somewhere." Eddie stumbled over his words as he ransacked his cassette collection, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath tapes flying out of his hands as he searched.

"How do you know for sure?" Robin asked as she caught all of the tapes Eddie threw at her.

"Because I made the damn thing 2 years ago! I know what's on it! Shit, where the hell is it!" Eddie was shouting, cold unforgiving panic nearly swallowing him whole. His eyes were growing hot, fat tears clouding his vision. He was running out of time. Every second that passed was a second closer to Y/N's demise. Any moment now Y/N's body would start levitating, just like Chrissy's was, and it would be her broken and bloody on the ceiling. He needed to find that damn tape.

"Got it! I got it!" Eddie whipped his head around to find Dustin scrambling to put the cassette in his old walkman Steve found moments earlier. He raced over to grab it out of his hands, finagling with the old hinges before it finally snapped into place. Eddie raced back into the living room to find Y/N standing as motionless as he left her. He put the headphones on her head, turned on the player, and skipped to track three. The faint sounds of bells bled through as the song began to play.

Y/N slowly walked into the dining room, her mother's long mahogany table coming into view. It was just like Chrissy's dreams, the table was filled with food, all in different stages of rot. Spiders were slowly crawling over a Thanksgiving turkey, thick black mold decorated the icing of a birthday cake, and each plate was filled with dust and ash. She looked at the decomposed bounty with disgust, until she realized she wasn't alone.

Her mother was sitting at the head of the table, her normally perfect porcelain face was warped. Her skin was deteriorated and dry, and her bright blonde hair was dull and lifeless. On her right was her father, head hanging low and defeated. And finally, on her left, was Chrissy. Just as broken and dead as she remembered.

"It should have been you Y/N." Her mother's shrill voice broke the eerie silence of the room. "Chrissy was our darling girl, our 1 in 100 shot of a real baby, one that truly belonged to us. Not some charity case we picked up at an orphanage."

This wasn't real. None of this was real. Vecna was in her head. She had to get out. She had to get out now.

"There's no escape Y/N... Not for you. Not yet." Her mother continued, slowly standing from her chair. "You always made me out to be the bad guy, oh poor little Y/N, her mama doesn't love her. Have you ever considered for once, in your selfish repugnant life, that you didn't earn it? That you didn't deserve my love?" She slowly walked over to Y/N, face twisted in a gnarled grin.

"You... You don't earn love. I-It's freely given..." Y/N mumbled, paralyzed to the spot. Her mother started laughing at her, a mocking hateful laugh that shook the walls around her. It was loud, everything was so loud.

"Oh! That's priceless! Now, who told you that nonsense, hmm? That washed up low life you're so fond of? Eddie Munson, was it?" Mrs. Cunningham mocked.

"Don't talk about him!" Y/N screamed, she closed her eyes, begging, praying, for everything to stop.

"Oh Y/N..." Her heart stopped. That was Eddie's voice. She opened her eyes to find herself inside Rick's boathouse. Eddie was standing directly in front of her, his big gorgeous brown eyes a murky gray as he looked down on her.

"No one's going to believe your sob story, sweetheart. I'm going to be punished for something I didn't do, all because of you." Eddie said as he softly gripped the side of her face. "You say love is freely given, but you're wrong. Your love gives nothing, it takes. It takes and destroys, and ruins everything you touch."

Y/N was violently shaking, tremors wrecked her body as she choked down tears. Eddie slowly walked behind her, his hand never leaving her head. He wrapped an arm tightly around her waist, the hand that was once gentle on her face wrapped tightly around her throat, the cold touch of metal stinging her skin.

"I'm going to die Y/N. I'm going to die in here, fighting a battle I should have never been a part of. My corpse will rot in the Upside Down, and it will be all. your. fault." Y/N felt blood trickle down her neck. She forced herself out of his grip and turned to face him, the sight made her wish she never did.

Eddie had a gash on the side his neck, as if the flesh had been ripped right out. Thick pools of blood gushed down his collarbone, staining the white Hellfire Club shirt red. Y/N looked on in horror as she watched the man she loved slowly get torn apart. An invisible force lacerated the skin on his stomach, flaps of skin clinging to the edge of the wound. His knees were scraped and bloody, purple and green bruises colored the exposed skin. He was dying. Eddie was dying.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Y/N screamed.

"You asked for this Y/N..." A deep, gravelly voice rang out. "My, what a bigger fish you are indeed." It sounded like it was all around her, inside of her, a part of her. It was Vecna, he was here, coming to collect on Y/N's threats.

"It's not working, why isn't it working?!" Eddie couldn't understand it. Y/N should be out of it by now. Max said it took less than a minute for her to escape once the music started playing. The song was nearly finished and she was still under.

"I don't know... She shouldn't still be under... It doesn't make sense." Dustin mumbled.

"It's not an exact science Eddie, give her time. She'll get out of it, I'm sure she will." Nancy tried to reassure him, but it didn't work. Eddie was fed up, sick of waiting, sick of wasting time. If Metallica didn't save her, he'd have to do it himself.

"Fuck this." Eddie grumbled as he made his way back to the rope, he started to make the climb before someone pulled him back down.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Steve shouted as he yanked on the back of his leather jacket.

"I'm going back, man. This isn't working and Y/N is losing time. I'm gonna kill that piece of shit Vecna myself." Eddie tried to climb back on the rope, but Steve's grip didn't budge.

"What's your plan huh? Waltz into Vecna's lair with nothing but your fists and a pipe dream?! You're gonna get yourself killed!" Steve shouted, as Eddie let go of the rope and broke free of his grip.

"I don't care! I don't care if I get myself killed! Better me than her!" Eddie screamed. Couldn't they see that their plan wasn't working? Couldn't they see that Y/N could die in any moment? Why were they stopping him!

"How are you supposed to help Y/N if you're dead?! Why would you even think about doing something so stupid!" Dustin yelled as he reached for Eddie's hand, but Eddie swiped it off. It was brewing inside of him, the fear, anger, frustration, pain, all of it. It was growing, and growing, and growing until finally, he exploded.

"Because I love her!" Eddie shouted, and the room went deathly quiet.

"I've been in love with Y/N Cunningham for half of my goddamn life! Shit, I've loved her for as long as I've known what love is!" It was pouring out of him now, and Eddie couldn't stop it if he tried.

"I love her so fucking much, full knowing she'll never love me back, and I don't even care, man. I made that stupid, goddamn, mixtape to show her how much I love her, and right now when she needs it most, it's nowhere to be found! I don't care if it's stupid, I don't care if it kills me, I'm not running away from shit anymore. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure Y/N makes it out in the end. She has to make it out... She has to..." Eddie could feel his heart pounding as he ripped it from his sleeve. It was all out in the open now. Everyone in his shitty trailer knew how he felt about Y/N. He couldn't look at them, couldn't stand the pitied looks he knew they were giving him. He held his head down in defeat, shoulders shaking with hidden sobs, then he felt someone grab his arm.

"Dustin, I don't wanna hear it. Just let me go, let me do this, let me save her." Eddie pleaded. Nobody said a word, the only sound he could hear was the voice of James Hetfield bleeding through the headphones. The hand that touched his arm slowly traveled upward, up his arm to the side of his neck. It slowly brushed away some of the hair that fell in front of his face, delicately tracing the the edge of Eddie's ear. It was soft, gentle, loving, the same touch he saw Y/N gave Chrissy when she held her in her arms.

"Eddie?"

Y/N was running. Running as fast as her feet could carry her. Everything was red, the sky, the lightening, the air, red. All red. There were pieces of what looked like a house floating around her as she ran towards the dilapidated staircase. She needed to get out of here, she could hear the melody of For Whom The Bell Tolls wafting through the air. She would make it back, she just had to find the exit.

Suddenly, the music cut out. The sounds of an old grandfather clock chimed loudly all around her. Y/N didn't see the missing step on the staircase, she barely had enough time to protect her face as she fell down the steps. Pain shot through her like the red lightening that surrounded Vecna's psychic prison. All of the air in her lungs rushed out of her, choked gasps escaped her lips as she tried to catch her breath.

"You taunted me Y/N... You shouted into the heavens practically begging for me to take you. Now here we are, I've granted you your wish." Vecna's voice rang out. With all of her strength she got back up, and stumbled into the clearing. There were these tall tree-like structures covered in vines, as Y/N got a closer look she saw the body of a young boy tangled within the vines, it was Fred Benson. His face warped and broken like her sister. From the corner of her eye she could see three more bodies inside of the rotten trees. She closed her eyes, afraid if she opened them Chrissy's body would show up again.

"Please... Stop... What do you want from me..." Y/N cried. She wanted to go home. She wanted to sit in the shitty boat house with Eddie. She wanted this nightmare to finally end.

"I need you to deliver a message for me. Your friends got so close, so close to the truth. But now it is my turn, to tell you everything I have done."

Y/N opened her eyes to find herself in a house, a family a four dressed from a different time walking through the front door. Vecna was showing her his past, how he was once human like she was. The boy looked so young, too young to have eyes as lifeless as his. That was Vecna, his name used to be Henry Creel. He had powers, abilities no normal human had. Just like the girl Dustin was friends with, but Henry didn't use his powers to help people. No, he used his powers to hurt.

He showed her how he tested his skill on animals at first, before slowly concocting his plan to kill his family. Y/N understood what it was like, to hate your parents, but she'd never do anything like this. She would never hurt them, torture them with their worst moments. As much as her mother tortured her, she would never stoop to her level, Vecna's level. And she would never hurt her sister.

He showed her his time inside Hawkins Lab, how he was tattooed like a farm animal to be experimented on. He told her this is what they did there, experiment on innocent kids. Vecna wasn't innocent, not by any means, but Y/N's heart ached knowing others were put through the same treatment. That Eleven went through it.

Y/N didn't want to see anymore, she couldn't take it. She started running out into the hallway of Hawkins Lab. As she ran, she saw blood smeared on the walls, dead bodies of kids and adults alike littering the floor, each of them one of Vecna's victims. It was ghastly, horrifying, she had to get out.

She found a boarded up door at the end of the hallway, she ran to it with everything she had in her. Y/N pulled on each of the planks, and slowly, one by one, they were coming loose.

"Y/N."

She knew she shouldn't, she should keep working on the boards, but something in her told her to turn around. Y/N slowly turned her head, and on the other side of the long dark hallway, was Vecna himself.

"What are you doing." Vecna growled, his burnt veiny body taking a step closer to her. Max was right, he did look a bit like Freddie Krueger. "It's not time for you to leave." He was getting closer now, she was running out of time.

Y/N struggle against the planks, she just had a few more left before she could push through. She could hear each of Vecna's wet, squelching steps as he stalked towards her.

"Now that you've seen where I've been..." She was almost free, the last plank barely hanging on by the nails. "I would very much like to show you where I am going."

Y/N finally broke the last plank, and rushed through the door.

Only to find herself back in the room she was previously in. One of Vecna's vines grabbed her, and pulled her into the chair the young Creel boy previously sat. She could feel their strong slimy grip wrap around her arms, legs, and neck. She was stuck, tied down to this chair, with that monster standing before her. His gritty breath bounced around the small tile room, with each step he took closer to her it got louder, and louder, and louder, till he was bending down in front of her.

Y/N looked into his cold blue eyes. Eyes that were undeniably human, underneath all of that ruined skin. A human did this. A human killed Chrissy, killed Fred, Patrick, all of those kids in the lab. A human being. It was easier to believe a monster did it, something from an another dimension hell bent on causing pain and misery for humanity. That was an easier pill to swallow than the truth. That a man committed those atrocities. A man who was once a boy, conceived, born, and raised by his mother and father. A boy who grew up and became this.

She couldn't understand why. Why Little Henry Creel had so much hate in his heart that it turned him into this monster. Was he born that way? Are all of the men who become monsters born bad, born wrong? He was just a child when he first took a life. A child who should have played baseball, or piano, or field games with his little sister, not planning a slaughter in a cold dark attic amongst spiderwebs.

He was getting closer to her now. She tried to back away from him, put some space in between her and those cold dead eyes, but the chair wouldn't let her.

"I... want you to tell Eleven. I want you to tell her everything you see." His long clawed hand was inches from her face, before it suddenly flicked up, and she saw something much, much, worse.

Y/N opened her eyes with a gasp, the sounds of heavy guitar blasting through her ears. She was back in Eddie's trailer, she was safe, everybody was safe. They were all gathered around Eddie, his back facing her. His arms were waving around, he was shouting something, but she couldn't hear it over the music. Y/N slowly lowered the headphones, the voice of James Hetfield replaced with Eddie.

"I don't care if it's stupid, I don't care if it kills me, I'm not running away from shit anymore. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure Y/N makes it out in the end. She has to make it out... She has to..." She saw him lower his head, his whole body shaking with fear. Y/N slowly walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm.

"Dustin, I don't wanna hear it. Just let me go, let me do this, let me save her." Eddie pleaded. He sounded so lost, so defeated, Y/N's heart nearly broke in half. Eddie didn't need to save her, he just needed to be there.

Y/N slowly rubbed her hand up Eddie's arm, gently tucking some loose hair behind his neck. Chrissy liked it when she did it, she's sure he would too.

"Eddie?" Y/N whispered gently. He slowly turned his head to face her, and the look on his face nearly took Y/N's breath away. He looked at her like she was an oasis in the desert, a present you've been begging for opening up in front of you on Christmas day. Eddie looked at her like she was the last thing he wanted to see before he died.

"Y/N..." Eddie gasped, before he launched himself at her. He wrapped his arms so tightly around her it nearly knocked the wind out of her. This wasn't the unescaping treacherous grip the vines had on her earlier, this was relief, this was care, this felt like it was love.

"Christ Y/N, I... I thought I lost you." He sounded gutted, tormented, as if he was tortured for hours. Y/N slowly ran her fingers through his hair, soothing the man in her arms.

"I'm okay Eddie, it's alright. I'm safe now." Y/N whispered. Eddie didn't loosen his grip, if it was possible he would have held her tighter.

"You don't understand. Shit, nothing was working, you weren't waking up. I didn't think you were gonna wake up. I was going to go back, I was so close to climbing through that gate and charging into battle alone. I-" Eddie stammered, breaths slowly returning to normal from their panicked state.

"I know Eddie, I heard you." Y/N whispered. He froze, right there in her hold.

"How, uh, much did you hear?" Eddie asked into her shoulder, too scared to look at her face.

"You said you weren't running away anymore, that you didn't care if it killed you, that you were going to save me. That's all I heard, and quite honestly, if all you were talking about before was this half baked suicide mission I'm glad I didn't hear it." Y/N chuckled, trying to lighten the dampen mood in the room.

Eddie didn't know if he should have been more relieved or disappointed that she didn't hear the rest of his confession. In the end, he decided he was thankful she didn't know. He had a plan, how he was going to tell her that he loved her, and it didn't involve her catatonic in his destroyed trailer. No, Eddie was going to do it right. He was going to pull out all of the stops for her, like she deserves. He knew he had to tell her soon, tonight was a close call. Eddie would do it. He was going to tell Y/N Cunningham, the woman he'd walk the ends of the Earth and beyond for, that he loved her.

Soon.

Taglist:

@imchangkyunned , @creativedogs , @nightless , @kik51199 , @thecraziestcrayon , @dabzzallday420 , @science--hoes , @efvyqrs , @justanotherkpopstanlol , @kikis-writing-world , @secretsicanthideanymore , @heartandhead2018 , @piperd06 , @kellysimagines , @writing-fanics , @munchabunch , @ultradangerouspie , @mrs-billyrussooo , @mselianora ,

[mishafletcher]

Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

So I got this ask a while ago, and I've been lowkey thinking about it ever since.

First: No. I am a queer, cranky dyke who is too old for this sort of bullshit gatekeeping. 

Second: What an unbelievable question to ask someone you don't even know! What an incomprehensibly rude thing to ask, as if you're somehow owed information about my sexual history. You're not! No one—and I can't reiterate this enough, but no one—owes you the details of their sex lives, of their trauma, or of anything about themselves that they don't feel like sharing with you.

The clickbait mills of the internet and the purity police of social media would like nothing more than to convince everyone that you owe these things to everyone. They would like you to believe that you have to prove that you're traumatized enough to identify with this character, that you can't sell this article about campus rape without relating it to your own sexual assault, that you can't talk about queer issues without offering up a comprehensive history of your own experiences, and none of those things are true. You owe people, and especially random strangers on the internet, nothing, least of all citations to somehow prove to them that you have the right to talk about your own life.

This makes some people uncomfortable, and to be clear, I think that that's good: people who feel entitled to demand this information should be uncomfortable. Refusing to justify yourself takes power away from people who would very much like to have it, people who would like to gatekeep and dictate who is permitted to speak about what topics or like what things. You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to explain that you like this ship because this one character reminds you a bit of yourself because you were traumatized in a vaguely similar way and now— You don't have to justify your queerness by telling people about the best friend you had when you were twelve, and how you kissed, and she laughed and said it was good practice for when she would kiss boys and your stomach twisted and your mouth tasted like bile and she was the first and last girl you kissed, but— 

You don't owe anyone these pieces of yourself. They're yours, and you can share them or not, but if someone demands that you share, they're probably not someone you should trust.

Third: The idea of gold star lesbians is a profoundly bi- and trans- phobic idea, often reducing gender to genitals and the long, shared history of queer women of all identities to a stark, artificial divide where some identities are seen as purer or more valuable than others. This is bullshit on all counts.

There's a weird and largely artificial division between bisexuals and lesbians that seems to be intensifying on tumblr, and I have to say: I hate it. Bisexual women aren't failed lesbians. They're not somehow less good or less valid because they're attracted to [checks notes] people. Do you think that having sex with a man somehow changes them? What are you so worried about it for? I've checked, and having sex with a man does not, in fact, make your vagina grow teeth or tentacles. Does that make you feel better? Why is what other people are doing so threatening to you?

Discussions of gold star lesbians are often filled with tittering about hehe penises, which is unfortunate, since I know a fair few lesbians who have penises, and even more lesbians who've had sex with people, men and women alike, who have penises. I'm sorry to report that "I'm disgusted by a standard-issue human body part" is neither a personality nor anything to be proud of. I'm a dyke and I don't especially like men, but dicks are just dicks. You don't have to be interested in them, but a lot of people have them, and it doesn't make you less of a lesbian to have sex with someone who has a dick.

There's so much garbage happening in the world—maybe you haven't noticed, but things are kind of Not Great in a lot of places, and there's a whole pandemic thing that's been sort of a major buzzkill? How is this something that you're worried about? Make a tea, remind yourself that other people's genitalia and sexual history are none of your business, maybe go watch a video about a cute animal or something. 

Fourth: The idea of gold star lesbians is a shitty premise that argues that sexuality is better if it's always been clear-cut and straightforward—but it rarely is. We live in a very, very heterosexist culture. I didn’t have a word for lesbian until many years after I knew that I was one. How can you say that you are something when your mouth can’t even make the shape of it? The person you are at 24 is different to the person you are at 14, and 34, and 74. You change. You get braver. The world gets wider. You learn to see possibilities in the shadows you used to overlook. Of course people learn more about themselves as they age.

Also, many of us, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns, or who are over the age of, say, 25, grew up in times and places where our sexuality was literally criminal.

Shortly after I graduated high school, a gay man in my state was sentenced to six months in jail. Why? Well, he’d hit on someone, and it was a misdemeanor to "solicit homosexual or lesbian activity", which included expressing romantic or sexual interest in someone who didn’t reciprocate. You might think, then, that I am in fact quite old, but you would be mistaken. The conviction was in 1999; it was overturned in 2002.

I grew up knowing this: the wrong thing said to the wrong person would be sufficient reason to charge me with a crime.

In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, clarifying that according to the federal government, marriage could only ever be between one man and one woman. It also promised that even if a state were to legalize same-sex unions, other states wouldn't have to recognize them if they didn't want to. And wow, they super did not want to, because between 1998 and 2012, a whopping thirty states had approved some sort of amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Every queer person who's older than about 25 watched this, knowing that this was aimed at people like them. Knowing that these votes were cast by their friends and their families and their teachers and their employers. 

Some states were worse than others. Ohio passed their bill in 2004 with 62% approval. Mississippi passed theirs the same year with 86% approval. Imagine sitting in a classroom, or at work, or in a church, or at a family dinner, and knowing that statistically, at least two out of every three people in that room felt you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone you loved.

Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in October of 1998. For being gay, for (maybe) hitting on one of the men who had planned to merely rob him. Instead, he was tortured and left to die, tied to a barbed wire fence. His murderers were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. This was controversial, because a nonzero number of people felt that Shepard had brought it upon himself.

Many of us sat at dinner tables and listened to this discussion, one that told us, over and over, that we were fundamentally wrong, fundamentally undeserving of love or sympathy or of life itself.

This is a tiny, tiny sliver of history—a staggeringly incomplete overview of what happened in the US over about ten years. Even if this tiny sliver is all that there were, looking at this, how could you blame someone for wanting to try being not Like This? How can you fault someone who had sex, maybe even had a bunch of sex, hoping desperately that maybe they could be normal enough to be loved if they just tried harder? How can you say that someone who found themself an uninteresting but inoffensive boyfriend and went on dates and had sex and said that it was fine is somehow less valuable or less queer or less of a lesbian for doing so? For many people, even now, passing as straight, as problematic as that term is, is a survival skill. How dare you imply that the things that someone did to protect themself make them worth less? They survived, and that's worth literally everything.

Fifth, finally: What is a gold star, anyhow? You've capitalized it, like it's Weighty and Important, but it's not. Gold stars were what your most generous grade school teacher put on spelling tests that you did really well on. But ultimately, gold stars are just shiny scraps of paper. They don't have any inherent value: I can buy a thousand of them for five bucks and have them at my door tomorrow. They have only the meaning that we give them, only the importance that we give them. We’re not children desperately scrabbling for a teacher’s approval anymore, though. We understand that good and bad are more of a spectrum than a binary, and that a gold star is a simplification. We understand that no number of gold stars will make us feel like we’re special enough or good enough or important enough, or fix the broken places we can still feel inside ourselves. Only we can do that.

The stars are only shiny scraps of paper. They offer us nothing; we don’t need them. I hope that someday, you see that, too. 

[thedreamlessnights]

Not an end, but the start of all things

{chapter one} - {chapter two} - {chapter three} - {chapter four} - {chapter five} - {chapter six} - {chapter seven} - {chapter eight} - {chapter nine} - {chapter ten}

Vampire!Viktor x F!Reader AU (Eventual NSFW)

Synopsis: Sickness brings its challenges as you work on completing your gift for Viktor. Your friendship deepens. Viktor does something... unexpected.

Warnings: Mentions of the death of loved ones, symptoms of disease. Tension.

Word Count: 4.4k

A/N: As many of you may have discerned, Chapter 7 is both going to be very long and very angsty. It'll be posted in the next couple of days. For now, enjoy this softer one, and thank you so much for all the encouragement.

After circling the perimeter of Viktor’s house, the library window ends up being your savior - the only unlocked window you can find. Your fingers are freezing and uncooperative by this point, but after several attempts, a good deal of blowing on your hands to warm them, and with the strength of sheer will, you finally manage to pry it open.

After peeking your head in to make sure Viktor isn’t around, you let the fur drop to the floor behind a nearby shelf. Then you close the window and head to the front door.

As soon as you enter, Viktor lifts his head, raising a bemused eyebrow.

“There was an interesting commotion in the library just now,” he says, eyes glittering with mirth. “Care to explain?”

Your shoulders slump. Of course he’d heard you messing about.

“It’s a surprise,” you say firmly. “Just… trust me on that.”

Curiosity flickers behind Viktor’s eyes, but he doesn’t further question you as you head to the library to collect the fur and bring it to your room. When you emerge, he remains in the same seat, reading the same book.

He appears tense. 

There’s a number of things that could make him anxious, but you know the true source. 

He’s hungry. 

He hasn’t drinken the blood he’d gotten from the market yet - perhaps in an attempt to conserve it over the next week. All the key signs of his hunger are present not only in the bags under his eyes, but also in the way he sits, back gnarled into what must be fierce knots. That tension only grows as you get a little closer.

If you could touch him now, the way you ache to touch him, you’d be smoothing the loose strands of his hair away from his eyes, placing your hands on his back, and working all those knots out one by one.

But you can’t. Not while you don’t know if he feels the same, or if he ever wants you to touch him. Especially not while you’re adding to his craving. 

Instead, you choose to give him some space, grabbing some of the leftovers of breakfast and sitting down.

“This… surprise,” Viktor starts. “I’m going to learn what it is, yes?”

“Yes,” you confirm, giving a nod of your head. “Just… not yet.”

He gazes at you with that quiet curiosity for a moment longer.

“Alright.”

It takes you a couple weeks to finish the blanket.

You start by taking some chalk from Viktor’s lab. A minor thing, but you can’t just grab it without asking, you’d drown in guilt if you were to take something without his permission. So you end up asking him to borrow it. 

He says yes, of course, but his gaze doesn’t leave you once as you exit the room. Curiosity, you recognize. He’s dying to know what you’re doing with it.

You use the chalk to map out the measurements of the blanket, and there’s plenty of the fur to go around. You might even have enough to make a smaller one for yourself.

Then, with an excruciating amount of care, considering the way your hands shake, you begin to cut it.

It takes a ridiculous amount of time to remove the full shape of it with your current state, to the point where one night, you throw the fabric down and start to cry in frustration. A year ago, this sort of thing would have been able to be done in your sleep. Now you can barely hold a pair of scissors. 

It’s a fact that kills you. 

Who are you, if you can’t make a simple blanket? Who are you now, but a scrap of your former self? How much more will you deteriorate? Until you’re only skin and bones? Until you waste away into nothingness, an unrecognizable shell of who you used to be?

After an hour of thoughts like this, you finally manage to knock yourself out of your stupor and go back to the fabric. You can’t stand the thought of not delivering on Viktor’s surprise, you’d hate to waste Jayce’s money you used to buy the fabric — and you know you can finish it.

You have to finish it.

So, after many different attempts, you finally get through cutting it. By some miracle, the lines have come out straight, and you sigh in relief looking at the finished product. If only it was over.

Next comes the sewing. 

If holding a pair of scissors had seemed dangerous with shaky hands, holding a needle is even more so. The disease has rendered your joints stiff and aching, and you have to continually stretch your hands to keep them from locking up. 

When you first start, you stab yourself more times than you’d like to admit, and every time you wind up with your bleeding thumb in your mouth, you think of Viktor. 

Would he enjoy the metallic taste of you? Would he be able to taste you at all?

Then you shake the thoughts out of your mind, sternly chide yourself for ever thinking things like that, and get back to work.

You end up accomplishing the project by wearing a thimble, going very slowly, and taking lots of breaks, mostly working on it when Viktor is busy or you’re not in the lab. It’s finished two days before the winter holiday - just enough time to place the final details on and fix anything that seems off.

Thank God you’d had the foresight to give yourself a good amount of time or you’d never have made it.

It’s a gorgeous thing, so soft you’re almost tempted to keep it for yourself. Instead, you take the extra fabric pieces and start on making yourself a smaller version of your own, not quite as nice as the original, but still soft and warm. The color glistens in the light; perfect for the chilly nights.

Once you’re ready to wrap your gift for Viktor, you sneak around the house, salvaging a box that you find in the library and wrapping the present up, using a strip of loose fabric from a large shirt as a decorative ribbon.

On the morning of the holiday, your hands shake as you carry the box out into the main room.

Viktor, who has been lounging on the couch reading, immediately focuses his gaze on your hands - or, more importantly, what’s inside them - and he sits up, the same curiosity he’s born lately showcasing itself in his eyes.

“I know you don’t really celebrate the winter holiday,” you start, “but I wanted to give you a gift.” You inhale deeply, then hold the box out toward him.

Viktor’s grip is gentle when he takes the gift from you, examining the outside of it with a sparked interest.

“It’s not much,” you add, “but I just… wanted to thank you. For taking me in.”

You cannot read the expression on Viktor’s face as he looks at you, then back at your present. Your heart is thundering in your chest, nails digging into your palm as you try to abate your nervousness. If only you could read his mind.

“I… didn’t get you a gift,” he says softly. “I’m not the most familiar with holidays. I’m sorry.”

“Please, don’t be,” you say quickly. “You’ve given me so much already - a home, a warm bed, safety. Not to mention food, medicine, and company. Consider this my ‘thank you’ for all of that.”

When he still looks hesitant, you sit on the couch, across from him. You ache to touch him - to place a hand on his back, rubbing soothing motions into it. If he wasn’t so withdrawn, you’d have sat next to him, but you’re worried about overstepping boundaries, given how little he’s touched you in the past. Instead, you give him a smile from where you’re sitting; one that you hope is reassuring. 

“You don’t have to open it now if you don’t want to, Vik.”

He frowns. 

“I want to,” he murmurs, sounding torn.

But he stays still as stone, eyes fixed on the present. 

“What’s stopping you?”

After a moment, he gives a sigh, and sets it down. 

“What kind of things are traditional for this holiday?” he asks. “Besides the gifts?”

“Well,” you start. “Usually, you get together with the people you care about. A big dinner is served, and afterward you give one another presents. Decorate a tree with ornaments. And… talk. About things you don’t know about each other.”

Viktor eyes the gift in front of him, then looks back to you.

“Would you mind if I opened this later tonight?” he asks.

“Not at all,” you say. 

He stands, grabbing a paper and scribbling something down. Then he hands it to you, along with a small pouch.

“I need these things for the lab,” he says, absently twiddling with his cane. “Would you mind going out to the forest and garden to get them for me? There’s a wooden box outside, near the door, which you can place the items in.”

You’re immediately suspicious, but you take the list from him anyway. The list is an extensive array of winter plants, mostly vegetables, and you realize it’ll take hours to forage for these items, if not more. From what you can tell, you’re not the only one who’s come up with a holiday surprise for today. Not when the market is open, and Viktor had sent you off so abruptly - as if he’d had something he intended to do, but didn’t want you to know about it.

When you finally return home, the first thing that hits you is the mouthwatering smell of some kind of roast over the fire. The heady scent of the room is intoxicating, making you tense with anticipation. Your stomach immediately growls. 

The second thing you notice is all of the candles illuminating the room with a warm, soft glow. There are more of them lit than usual, and as you scan the room, you notice they have all been carefully placed in areas where they won’t be knocked over.

Viktor has brought one of the larger pot plants out - a tiny sort of bush with lush green leaves rather than a spiny pine tree usually reserved for the holiday season. He’s placed and centered in the middle of the room. A box full of ornaments sits beside it, items that you recognize from your trip to the market. 

Your theory had been right after all.

When Viktor sees the bounty in your arms, he steps forward to take them from your hands. “Ah,” he says. “Thank you.”

He sets the box on the counter, gingerly takes out what you had foraged, and begins preparing them. For a moment, you don’t process what he’s doing, and then it clicks. He’s making dinner.

You watch him for a moment as he ambles about the kitchen, cane clicking on the floor. That familiar sound has become a comfort to you, these past few months.

“Viktor, you didn’t have to,” you say, feeling immensely guilty as you watch him inspect the mushrooms you’d collected. “You’ve already done enough for me. You don’t have to do any more.”

“I wanted to,” Viktor says simply. 

“Can I help with dinner, then?”

He eyes you warily, as if he thinks you’re up to something, then nods. “Alright.”

You spend the evening scrubbing the efforts of your labor clean and prepping them to be cooked - cutting the onions, carrots, mushrooms, and parsnips into chunks, peeling and quartering the potatoes before setting them to boil, and once they’re drained, tossing them all together with a smattering of herbs and oil, and cooking them over the fire. 

Then you two work on decorating the ‘tree.’ The branches of the bush are delicate, so you have to be gentle, but it looks very nice at the end. You stop to admire it for a moment, then continue with your work - pulling the vegetables off the fire, setting the table, pulling out a bottle of wine at Viktor’s instruction.

Then the roast also comes off the fire, and it smells amazing. Viktor has taken great care in seasoning the meat, you notice. 

When everything is done, the two of you set it on the table, taking seats opposite each other.

“Can I ask you something?” You’re incredibly hungry, but also curious.

“Anything.”

“Why season the food, if you can’t taste it?”

“Ah.” Viktor spoons some food onto his plate, then hands the spoon over to you. “I cannot taste it, but I can smell it. The stronger it smells, the more it’s like I can almost taste it. I’m surprised it’s not over-seasoned for you.”

“I’m just happy to have food,” you reply. 

Maybe his food is over-seasoned, but you’d lived off things so bland and flavorless for so long, that when you’d started living with Viktor, anything would have seemed overpowering. And it had been, but in a good way. Never too much salt to eat, or any of the like. Then again, salt isn’t exactly a potent smell.

Plus, you like a lot of garlic, which Viktor seems to frequent.

“Is it my turn now, to ask you things I don’t know about you?” Viktor questions.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

You’re wondering what he’ll ask as you dig into the food, trying to combat your gnawing hunger. After all, you’d had so many questions about him when you’d arrived. Did he have the same amount of questions about you?

It seems so.

“How do you know Jayce?” he asks first.

“We were… together… when we were younger,” you answer. “Almost ten years ago, now. My parents didn’t like that.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Viktor says dryly, and you laugh.

“Yes, well, they didn’t like any monsters, and they made sure to tell him that. He hadn’t known they were hunters, and I should have told him, but I’d never known how. We moved away after that, and I ran away from them six months later. After I got sick, I was desperate and alone and starving and… I didn’t want to die like that. He wasn’t very far from where I’d ended up, so I went to him.”

“And your parents are…?”

“Dead,” you confirm.

He inhales deeply, his fork poised over his plate. Slowly, as though deciding how he should respond, he slices his parsnips into smaller pieces. He’s barely eaten anything from his plate. His attention has been focused solely on you.

“We have that in common,” he finally says.

“I’m sorry.” You pause for a moment, then crack a smile. “They didn’t happen to be human hunters, did they?”

“No,” Viktor says. He’s smiling too, though. “Quite the opposite. They avoided humans at all costs.”

“I see.” 

“The… animal blood lost its effectiveness for them,” he continues. His voice has tightened, and his jaw is clenched. His grip is stiff on his fork, knuckles flushing white from his grip. “It’s a very common thing, with vampires,” he murmurs. “It only works for fifty or so years. Then it suddenly just stops.” 

He takes a moment to breathe in, his grip relaxing on his fork as he sets the fork down. 

“With no other replacement, they starved. Human food does nothing, when you’re like that, and… they were… unwilling to be reliant on human blood for the rest of their life.”

“I’m so sorry,” you say.

He just shakes his head.

“After they’d gone, I was alone. Until I met Jayce.” 

Gently, he pushes his plate away from him, as if he’s lost his appetite. You doubt he had one in the first place.

“When Jayce and I fought, and he left, I had forgotten what that felt like. I thought loneliness would drive me mad.’

He pauses, then smiles at you, a flash of the gap between his teeth catching your eye. You’ve always loved that part of him. You can’t help but mirror his expression.

“I’m glad to be here,” you reply.

But as his words sink in, you’re suddenly met with the terrible image of what will happen when you’re gone. 

Viktor, alone again, tucked away in his lab as the days pass one after the other. Would Jayce visit him sometimes, or would he remain in his solitary isolation? Completely and utterly alone until he died, still young, grey only just beginning to streak his hair?

It makes you upset enough to push your plate away, too. But what can you do?

“May I ask you another question?” Viktor asks, tilting his head as he gazes at you. He’s probably picked up that you’re upset, given the way his brows pinch together in concern as he watches you.

“Yes,” you say quickly, pasting on a smile and welcoming the distraction. Anything to move your thoughts away from where they were.

“What did you used to do? Before you got sick?” Viktor asks.

You have to take a moment to reflect on it before you answer.

Since your time living here, with him, a life so different from how yours used to be, you’d almost forgotten the way you used to live. It’s strange to you now, that there’d once been a time when you hadn’t been sick. Life had seemed to stretch out in front of you, a hallway with a thousand open doors full of opportunity. 

Now that’s closed off. All those doors are locked and shut to you forever.

Nevertheless, you cherish the time you had then, and all the simple joys you’d lived with. You miss the person you’d used to be, tucked into your bed at night, safe and warm. You’d give almost anything to experience that sense of calm and safety again.

So you tell him.

You tell him how you sewed, cleaned, and gardened, which he laughs at, considering your ironic lack of knowledge of plants. However, once you begin to talk about your work, his amusement is replaced by a keen sense of interest - he seems to cling on to your every word. 

You speak of how to plant complementary crops, how to rotate vegetable plots each year to maintain the health and productivity of the soil, how to cultivate and maintain perfect lawns and tranquil paths for those with more wealth than you’d ever possessed.

He seems entranced by your words, leaning toward you as you speak, eyes shining with interest. It gives you the courage to continue on.

You tell him about your parents: how you’d hated them, how they’d raised and buried you in fear before you even started life, and how utterly sweet your relief had been after they’d passed. 

You tell him about your old house that you’d worked so hard for, with the creaky floorboard you’d fixed, the drafty windows, the sparrows who’d chirp their hello in the mornings as they ate from the feeds you left for them. 

You tell him about the old lady with the cake, who’d made you cry with her present. 

You tell him about how your body had slowly withered and crumbled against your will - how you had woken, breathless and choking for air in the nights, filled with grief beyond words. 

How, even then, you hadn’t realized everything you’d worked so hard for would be lost. Not until you’d ended up on the streets, cold and alone, soaking in the devastation of your reality.

You tell him about the isolating cold of sleeping under trees, buried beneath pine needles for warmth, hunger stabbing deep in your belly but too weak to forage anything beyond dandelion weeds, pine bark and any discarded scraps you could find in trash bins behind the shops in town. His expression changes when you share this. It sort of tightens - a somber sobriety.

Then you tell him how you’d found Jayce and what a change it was to find somewhere safe. The full-body relief of having somewhere where basic needs weren’t a luxury.

You tell him you’re not the person you used to be, but that you’re also not afraid to die. Just wistful, sometimes.

He seems to understand that more than anything.

Then Viktor begins to speak - with initial hesitancy, about himself. About how he was raised to dislike humans, in the same way you were raised to fear vampires, but he’d grown to live in avoidance, not in pursuit. 

How isolating that had made life for him, so secluded from everyone and the world, and how his dedication to ending the dependency on blood had become his drive. 

How he’d met Jayce, who was eager and passionate and unlike so many others; who wanted to help the people around him. Then he’d met his future wife and eventually got married and, well… changed. 

Viktor goes quiet for a moment after that. 

“But, I continued my work,” he says. 

He goes on to add that he believes he’s very, very close to making a breakthrough for the blood - a full replacement, not a half-competent one like animal blood. And how, once it’s done, he intends to give it to every vampire he knows. To give it to anyone it could help. He wants to help as many people as he possibly can.

Once he’s done speaking, you let the words sink in for a moment.

“You’re really inspiring, you know that?” you ask.

Viktor’s cheeks dust with pink. You wish you could paint the sight permanently into your mind, and stare at it forever.

“Thank you,” he says. He pauses for a moment, then adds, “You are, as well.”

Heat warms your cheeks. “Me?”

“You persevere,” he says simply. “You’re dying, but you’re still… determined. You went out of your way to make a gift for me. The world has treated you terribly, but you still choose to be kind.”

You blink in disbelief before forming your reply. “One could say the same thing about you.”

“Perhaps,” Viktor replies. He seems to dwell on that for a moment before he breaks from his trance, shaking his head and sitting up straighter.

With all your talking, you’d almost forgotten about the gift. Viktor clearly hasn’t. He picks it up again, eyes lighting with anticipation. “May I?”

“Of course.” Your voice is tinged with nervousness, but Viktor doesn’t seem to pick up on it. As he begins to take off the ribbon, your anxiety spikes. 

“It’s… not much,” you say, echoing your words from earlier. 

Viktor only frowns at you. “You keep saying that. I wasn’t expecting anything at all. I will enjoy anything.”

“I know, but… I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Viktor replies. “Not to mention, you’re one of the two people to ever give me a gift; the other being Jayce. I guarantee I’ll appreciate it.”

Your curiosity piques up. “What’d he give you?”

“Equipment.” He’s gotten the ribbon off now, and he gently sets it down next to him. “For the lab.”

“Oh,” you say, your heart sinking. There’s no chance your blanket would compare to that in any way. You don’t really know how to redeem it any further, so you watch in silence as Viktor opens the box.

He reads the card, first - a brief thank you for all the things he’d done, then pulls out the actual present.

“It’s. It’s a blanket,” you explain. “I know it gets really cold at night, out here, so…”

Viktor is examining it, running his hand over the soft fur.

“You… made this?” he asks. “For me?

“Of course, for you,” you laugh. 

“I… Thank you.” He looks overwhelmed. “How long did it take you?”

“Maybe two and a half weeks?” you recall, thinking on the long nights you spent pulling needle and thread whenever you could, running your fingers down to the bone. “I worked on it in my free time, but I’m slower than I used to be. That’s what I snuck into the library - the fabric. Then I sewed it up. That’s what I used your chalk for. Marking out the measurements on the fabric before I cut it.”

He looks absolutely stunned, like he doesn’t know what to say. He stands, almost robotically, fiddling with his cane as he looks at you.

“This is amazing,” he breathes, awe written into his voice. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

It feels wrong for you to remain sitting, so you stand too, coming over next to him to fluff out the blanket. Then he steps closer. Hesitant. Apprehensive. Close enough for you to feel the heat of his body next to you. His eyes don’t leave your face, not even for a moment, and you ache for his touch enough that you almost step away before you do something foolish.

But something in you is telling you to stay. It’s telling you to freeze under his gaze and wait, and you’re inclined to obey, choosing to meet Viktor’s stare. 

With his arms slightly trembling, he finally reaches out to you, and… hugs you. 

You’re so shocked that you don’t know what to do with yourself. 

It takes you a moment to hug him back, enveloped in the most contact you’ve ever had with him, leaning into his touch like it’s a lifeline.

It’s a quick, tight hug, but when he lets go, he doesn’t move away. Instead, his eyes trail over your face and down to your lips, focusing on them for… much longer than he should.

Your breath hitches in your throat. Agonizing seconds pass.

Is he going to kiss you?

For a long second, you think he might. You can almost swear that you see a deep, persistent yearning written into his eyes. 

Then he suddenly pulls away, and you’re left to suck in a nervous breath, knees shaking like a leaf.

“Thank you again,” he says, exhaling sharply. His cheeks and the top of his ears are flushed rouge, and he’s not meeting your eyes. “For the gift.”

“You’re welcome,” you say breathlessly.

He just nods. 

Tucking a strand of your hair behind your ears, you clear your throat and head back to the table to start cleaning up the dishes. 

After a moment, Viktor helps you, and everything else gets put away in complete silence. Then you bid each other good night, and turn into bed, heart still hammering from what had happened. Sleep finds you quickly that night, submerging you in murky dreams of Viktor’s lips on yours. When you wake, you have to press your fingers to your lips to remind yourself that it hadn’t really happened. Just a dream, you think, turning over and going back to sleep. Just a dream.

Every day for the rest of the season, Viktor keeps the blanket fixed on his lap as he reads.

tags: @modernamilf @mischievous-piltovian @yeehawbvby @dianounais @avid-main @stararctic @doctorho @mello-jello29 @silco-my-love @am-3-thyst @thefiasco-onyourblock @glowstick-cafe

[elvisabutler]

okay now i NEED to know lisa marie’s opinion of all of this in ur hcs…..omg especially bc i feel like she’d have such a soft spot for austin while priscilla wants to kill him sometimes

so let me preface this with saying i do not know lisa marie or priscilla but damn if i am not hella protective over them both naturally because those are two women who have lived their lives the best they can and lisa in particular has been through a whole hell of a lot. i mean no disrespect to her or her family and especially and i cannot make this clear enough the memory of her son. tw: mild slut shaming and mention of death.

anon you are 100% correct on that. to be honest lisa marie and priscilla tend to be on the complete opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to you and austin. or at least, they each favor one of you over the other.

lisa marie essentially ends up adopting austin as sort of a son figure. in real life, she literally says she's protective over him post watching the film so for arguments sake? she'd be protective no matter what when she saw him acting as her dad and seeing how much effort he's put into embodying him.

so consider what do parents do when someone starts dating their child. they investigate said person dating their child. so guess what lisa marie does to you.

consider! those rumors that austin knew about you? lisa also finds out about them. they are not the best of rumors you have never ever confirmed them neither have any of your costars. but they're there and it's a universally acknowledged truth that at least one of them is true. hilariously the one everyone thinks is true? totally isn’t. you and him always laugh about it when you run into each other.

basically you look like someone who sleeps with costars or costar adjacents so their friends. this is not necessarily a lie but before austin you had kind of learned your lesson by this point and had told yourself you wouldn't do it again and then you know that Dick though.

she does not like this she figures that you are going to move on like you tend to always do once you've got a new movie to do. never mind that literally you are always the one getting broken up with never are you the one doing the breaking up.

point being she thinks this is a bad idea she tells austin as such that this is a bad idea. he disagrees and doesn't necessarily explain why he disagrees. consider this mildly changes when you break up with him like you do.

her mom has to remind her to not murder you because you hurt her surrogate son. because she thinks this is mildly all your fault and not just you know both of your faults.

but she's an adult and still interacts with you just fine. eventually, actually talks to you at graceland's private showing because again, actual adult. and by this point you and him are back together again.

"you hurt him." "we hurt each other." "do you love him?" "more than anyone i've ever known." "you hated admitting that to me, didn't you?" "you're the closest thing he has to a mom now, figure i kind of have to since i can't really tell lori it." "get my number from him."

she settles down once she sees how honestly happy the two of you are. and once she knows you two are going to therapy and working on your issues.

she is invited to your wedding when almost no one else is. she comes and enjoys it well enough. she thinks you look too much like her mom in your something borrowed hair piece. austin agrees and they both kind of hate it.

she let's the two of you give your son benjamin as a middle name.

she declines being his godmother.

"be careful with them." "they're my boys, i can't be anything but."

[kyberphilosopher]

Fensterln

“I can’t get up. You’re sitting on top of me.”

Warning(s): some allusions to sex, explicit-ish language, fluff, reader has a whole ‘Black Cat’ thing going on. Word Count: 3273

Notes: This is a requested work. This is a headcanoned canon version of Superboy, meaning he is no version in particular and simply the character I figure as a whole. Reader can be any gender.

“Fensterln is when you have to climb through someone’s window in order to have sex with them, without their parents knowing about it.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You know, most people think that climbing up the side of a building is easy. Like it’s nothing. They see it on TV, and in the movies, and in cartoons even, and they think, “That doesn’t look so bad!” because it doesn’t. Cartoons and actors don’t have to deal with the wind whipping their hair, constantly pushing their whole body all around, the butterflies of anxiousness making their heart thump, threatening the scenario of falling to their death. It’s terrifying. It takes a lot of skill, a lot of courage, and a lot of luck. 

“Shit.”

Your right hand releases from the glass, arm slowly swinging back until it’s at your side. The same sides foot follows this pattern of rotation, until only your left fingertips and toes are stuck to the wall of the building, suctioning you to life. Below you, hundreds and hundreds of feet, is an island of grass and sand, encompassed by a large body of water. Over the tidal waves chip chopping away, there’s a distance. And in that distance, is the city, just under the inky blackness of the midnight sky. 

Jump City, it’s called. You’re not too familiar with it. Most of your time is spent in Metropolis, or Gotham. Luckily, both of those cities have plenty of skyscrapers to practice scaling. One could say that you’d perfected the art of this sort of thing. The finger pads on your suit are sophisticatedly sticky, seamlessly letting you latch onto anything with grace. Your feet are the same. 

The wind hits your face like sharp needles, amplified by the cold air and the incline. Your hair whips around wildly, also different from how it flows, softly, in the movies. The harsh breeze roars in your ears, louder than the thousands of explosions you’ve heard in your lifetime. Although dangerous, nothing beats the view. Those thousands of lights in the distance, the cars, the buildings, this building that you’re on now. Titan’s Tower is far larger and closer and more important than anything else at the moment. 

“Okay then,” you mutter, twisting your body over to the right twice more, until finally both hands and feet are connecting against the glass in a stealthy, perfect crawling position. 

You work your way up, one foot and hand at the time. You resemble that of a spider, or perhaps a cat. One, two. One, two. 

His room is on one of the top floors, if not the top floor. From the two other times that you’ve done this, you remember the number of steps, the distance, the little cracks in the glass panes to look for so you know you’re close. Even from the outside, hundreds of feet up, hanging above death tantalizingly, you know exactly where you are and where you need to be. And you know, of course, that you are close. 

Your right hand leaves the wall once more and reaches down to the belt on your hips. “Coming, my love,” you mutter as you flip open a small pouch attached. From the inside you pull out a slim switchblade, made specifically to cut through glass walls like this- designed it yourself. 

The knife springs open. In a circle big enough to fit your entire body, you trace the blade in a wide arc from up to down, left to right. Then you flip the blade back inside, place the whole thing back into the pouch on the belt, and shove your left elbow against the middle of the glass in front of you. 

It pops free immediately. The circle of wall falls forward into the room, with you not far behind.

Landing like a gymnast on your toes with your arms overhead, you are immune to the sharp pain in your femurs that comes from a sudden pressure like this. The glass pane is still intact on the floor ahead of you, which is coated with a red carpet that you recognize so well. It’s much warmer inside than it was outside, although you can still feel the night wind from behind you.

“Silent,” a voice remarks from beside you. It’s not an amused tone, really. It’s genuine and full of awe, surrounded by something casual. 

You hum as you stand before throwing a look over your shoulder. Sure enough at your back, splayed casually on a bed against the wall you just broke through, is your favorite boy toy. Dark, curly hair framing his classically handsome face, nose scrunching slightly on instinct. He’s wearing the black and red super shirt he always does, coupled with the plaid pajama bottoms you’d gotten him as a gift in spring.

You want so badly to quip something back, but you both know you can’t right now. Not when you’re so close to the door. And yeah, that’s partially Conner’s fault, if not all. Too much noise would attract the attention of his team mates, the Titans, and then something probably not that great would happen. Maybe they’d throw you out. Maybe they’d fire him. Maybe things would just get weird. It’s not as if you and Connor are an official couple, even after all this time. You could stop sneaking around to see each other at any sense of danger.

You take a step towards the bed he lays on, noting the big, bright smile that lights up Superboy’s face at the motion. “Can you fix the hole?” you whisper, just loud enough for him to hear.

Conner’s eyes go wide and the smile gets bigger.

“In the wall.”

The smile turns into an eye roll. “Yes,” he sighs, almost dramatically, pushing himself up. The boy crosses to the center of the room a few feet from you and begins picking up the perfect circle of cut window- wall while you look around the area.

You’ve snuck into Conner’s room before. Twice, in fact. It’s not clean, not horribly messy. His leather jacket is usually hanging off the dresser or door handle. Sweatshirts of different colors are littering the floor in a collective pile. It looks like a normal teenage boys room, really. It just feels very ‘Conner’.

First, he pushes the glass back into place in the wall, then he takes a few steps back. You throw him a smirk, nudging your head to encourage him to do the thing.

Conner’s eyes heat up. Little at first, as a soft yellow. Then into an all consuming scarlet that hisses out in two beams meeting in the middle between them. They move in a circle around the pane until you can’t even tell it was ever not there, and the wind you once heard no longer exists. The wall is perfectly in tact.

“Thank you, Superboy,” you tell him, tone laced overly sweet. Your hands, freezing from the cold even through the gloves of your costume, wrap around Conner’s upper arm.

“Yeah,” he tosses, back, voice low. His cheeks are turning pink.

You unhook your arms and saunter over to his mattress. As you throw yourself on and relax as you sink into the pillows, you let your eyes close. “You’re lucky I like you so much,” you tease. “Mm, do you know a lot of people who would climb up the Tower for you? I don’t.”

Upon hearing him take a single step forward, one eye pops open. “I know you missed me,” you continue.

Conner lays himself on the bed beside you, hands behind his bed with his arms bent. You turn to face him, propping your head up with your palm.

“You never answer my texts,” Conner says, Adam’s apple bobbing.

“You text me?” you smirk, watching Superboys eyes sink close as he releases a sigh of defeat.

Your left leg slips over Conner’s hips. Then you pull your whole body up and over into a straddle over him, looking down at him. He’s handsome in the way nobody can argue with, so perfect and soft and structured. When you squint, he looks like Superman. But Conner’s not Superman, he’s better. You can’t explain why, or how, but he just is.

You place your palms forward on his chest at first, then backwards, behind your back, on Conner’s thighs. Your chest puffs out at the slight change of position.

Below you, the boy bites his lower lip softly in thought for a second. “What if I got you a phone?” Conner asks you. His light eyes holding yours through thick, dark lashes. “Just so you can text me back sometimes?”

“Us?” you gasp with wide eyes. “Talking? During the daytime?”

Conner glances away. “Message received. Very funny. Forget it.”

“I’m messing with you,” you promise with a smile. “Loosen up Super-Annoy.”

“So you’ll let me get you one?” Conner pushes himself up with a snap, eyes wide with some kind of excitement.

Well… would you? You haven’t had a lot of long term partners, if any. Your time with Conner has been the longest with anyone, and he’s not even really your boyfriend. He’s just… you know… the guy you kissed on a rooftop one night. The guy who once surprised you with a cone of ice cream, again on a night time rooftop, whilst you were sitting on the side of the building to watch the city below. The guy who remembered your birthday, the guy who keeps sending you the many, many texts reminding you that you can watch your favorite show on the TV in the tower. The guy who once lied to get you to ice skate with him.

Something about Conner has been enough to keep you hooked for months and months, always coming back. Sneaking into the Tower, taking more and more trips to Jump City, keeping notes of events throughout your week to tell him about when you see him. 

How silly. Never giving the time of day to any other partner of yours, but for Conner? Conner has gotten at least eight months of it. 

“I’ll think about it,” you roll your eyes. 

“You promise?” Conner urges. 

“Yes. Jeez, I promise. I will think about letting you get me a phone that only you have the number to.”

“Please don’t laugh at me about this.”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“It feels like it.”

“Connor,” you clasp a hand on his shoulder, pushing back laughter. “Have I ever laughed at you?”

“W- Is that- is that a serious question?” Conner’s eyebrows raise. 

“Get up,” you roll your neck. “I want to change positions.”

The boy below you shifts. For a quick moment, something pokes between your hips from underneath. Your pupils dilate in response, but by the time they finish, the movement has ceased. “Tell me about your day.”

“I want to lay down,” you say as you stretch. “I just scaled up the side of the skyscraper-”

“You love it.”

“-and it was oh, so cold. I’m tired.”

“That’s not your day.”

You just stare at him expectantly, not quite sure what it is you’re waiting for. 

“I can’t get up. You’re sitting on top of me,” Conner concedes. “You chose to be up there.”

“Prove it,” you challenge.

“Yeah, yeah,” the boy below you hisses as if annoyed. “I get it,” he says, but his arms are already snaking around your torso to pull you close and slowly pull you into a new position. 

You lay on your side, back against Conner’s broad chest. His arms stay wrapped around your middle as he curls up against you on instinct, legs quick to tangle with your own. You know he must really be interested in you if he’s not going to mention that your ‘work’ shoes are still on while in bed. 

“You’re an ass,” he mutters into your hair. 

“What was that?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Ha,” you chuckle once. “Douche.”

“Please tell me about your day now?” you hear Conner almost plead. “Please?”

One of your hands, your right one, rests on top of Conner’s against your stomach. “Oh, you know. The usual. I helped out a small jewelry store today, snuck into a big building, currently hiding from Nightwing- you know how it is.”

“There wasn’t much crime today. I mostly just stayed in. You know that big building you snuck into?”

“Such a douche,” you breathe.

“Jealous much?” Superboy rumbles against your ear. 

“I’m gonna tell Dick,” you tell him. “I’ll send an anonymous tip that one of the Titan’s is a big poop face.”

Conner puts his whole face in your hair. “Shiver me timbers.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s not fair you guys get a whole building to yourselves. What are you even using half these floors for? People in Gotham are struggling.” You frown. “Well, except for Wayne. But you know what? He’s a douche too. You’d get along.”

Conner squeezes you once. Then you feel him still from behind you, not even breathing. And then-

“Move in then.”

At once, your brows furrow. “What?”

Your companion squeezes you once more. “Move in. Move in with me. In the Tower.”

Your mouth opens and closes a couple times, eyes looking around. You can’t see Conner, but you can feel him out. His eyes are closed, still inhaling the scent of you shamelessly. It’s hard for people to catch you off guard, not just like this, but at all. You just have that sarcastic, witty, sultry reputation. And for him- Super-Annoy, of all people- to just throw you off so easily?

“I’m not a Titan,” you decide on explaining, almost asking. 

“Become one, then.”

“I don’t have the money to move in. The rent must be crazy.”

“I’ll pay for you.”

“Conner,” you swallow. “This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking.” His head pops up. When you turn yours a little, you can look up at him, and he can look down at you. “Move into the Tower.”

Now your eyes are wide, and his are relaxed. No, Conner’s are focused, drilling into your own. “I’m... hardly Titan’s material.”

This was true. You’ve been skirting the gray line far longer than you’ve known Superboy, and he’s been super since the beginning of his creation. The first time you’d met was about ten seconds before you’d robbed a bank and sent him a wink before disappearing. 

“You just told me, not five minutes ago, that you helped a small business. Helping people is what heroes are all about. You can do this, Y/N. You are Titan’s material.”

Shit. He’s right. 

“Why not?” Conner questions. 

“I... um...”

You’ve never lived with another person before. Your family, once upon a time, sure. Not friends. Not Dick Grayson, or Kori, or Rachel fucking Roth. And certainly not Superboy- Super-Annoy. Not someone you have a ‘thing’ with. What would that mean for the two of you? And when things go terribly, terribly wrong, what then?

Gotta’ think fast. 

Your face is wiped clean, replaced by your signature smirk. “Get me a phone first. Then I’ll consider it.”

Conner doesn’t budge though. You wonder if X-Ray vision can see through lies too. “I mean it,” the boy tells you. “I want you here.”

“I have to survive the night in the building with boy prodigy and star flame.”

“Starfire.”

“Whatever. I have to do that first. There’s a reason we sneak me in, you know.”

Your free hand reaches up and cups Conner’s cheek without you telling it to. You ask your brain why, but yet, your palm doesn’t move. It feels over Conner’s cheekbones, encouraging you to look deeper into his somehow soft eyes. Your fingertips can even feel his hair, which is in need of a wash, as they get comfortable. 

“For you,” you finish the sentiment, voice now genuine- also not predicted. “Sneaking in for you.”

“I don’t want you to feel like a secret,” the boy above you whispers, pouring his entire heart into it. 

You answer with a snort. 

If anything, Conner’s the secret. If he had his way, the two of you would probably be on your honeymoon at this moment. Hell, your whole relationship and subsequent marriage would be a honeymoon. You’re the one letting him follow you around. You’re the one never giving him just what he wants. 

But then again, you’re the one who keeps coming back. Conner’s the one that never left. 

“Trust me,” you nod with a humored grin. “I don’t.”

Conner sighs and falls back down to rest behind  you. “Good.”

Besides his breathing, then there is silence. 

Really? Telling you to move in? Of course it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to him. Of course he has the solution to all the reasons why not. Your fairly certain that Conner hasn’t thought about this until mentioning it, but even then, how did he have all the answers so fast? Where would you stay? With him? Sandwiched between Conner and Wally West playing video games for the rest of your life? Dying after Donna Troy catches you accidentally stealing her lunch?

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Conner begins, “but you should really stay the night.”

In response, you practically burst. “You hate being told what to do!” you say as you squirm in his arms. “Now you’re giving me suggestions?”

Conner sits up again so he can look down at you with a little frown. Luckily, it’s too nice of a view to be really scared of anything he could do. “Shh! You’re gonna get caught, Y/N.” Then Superboy’s eyes widen a little. “If you lived here, you wouldn’t have to be so quiet, either. You could just come through the front door.”

“Oh my God,” you squeeze your eyes closed. “Conner...”

One battle at a time. 

“Fine,” you begrudge. “I’ll stay the night.”

Conner tightens his grip around your form happily in response. “Will you need any help in the morning?”

“No. No, I got it.”

Silence. 

Say it. Say it. Say it. 

“Conner? I, uh...”

Say it. 

“I don’t have any sleeping clothes,” you lie. 

“Sleeping?” you hear the boy behind you whisper. “I didn’t think we were going to be sleeping.”

“Now who’s going to get us in trouble?” you smirk. “Seriously though. I’ve been wearing my suit all day.”

“I can get you out of it.”

“You can’t just see through it?” you question. “Don’t you have X-Ray vision?”

Conner groans. “You’re ruining it.”

You smile. Conner’s the only partner of yours you realize you’re actually happy to be around. “I think you just want us to get caught.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Yayyy. Request finished. Next I have a Reverse Flash request, and then I should be good with the DC requests for now. Other than that I have some Jason Todd things, something for Damian and 2 fics for a character I haven’t written for before but are looking pretty good. I hope this satisfied the prompt that I was given in the request. Let me know anything you want or whatever. 

[bucksfucks]

𝙁𝘽𝙍𝙊 ; 𝗯𝘂𝗰𝗸𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘀 [𝟳/𝟭𝟭]

summary┃bucky’s past comes back with a vengeance and you’re determined to get the answers you’ve been searching for. 

pairing┃roommate!bucky x f!reader

word count┃2,682 words

warnings┃bucky’s past is revealed, character mentions; [sam wilson, natasha romanoff, tony stark], pet name [kid (platonic), sweets & baby], threats made against bucky + reader, trust-issues, mention of hit-men, brief mention of death, phone sex, praise kink, masturbation, mention of toys, slight angst, soft ending — 18+ ONLY • MINORS DNI

notes┃there is A LOT of plot here but also some filthy goodness and a sprinkle of angst <<3

SERIES MASTERLIST

     Ex-wife.

    Bucky’s words echoed in your ears as he didn’t dare to look at you.

    His ex-wife was threatening you.

    And he didn’t think to mention her? Ever?

    “Can I please explain?” Bucky croaked finally, voice sounding broken as you shrugged your shoulders — in a state of shock.

    That was all he needed before he recounted his previous relationship with the woman who was now sending you threatening emails.

    Married young, too young and too fast and it ended up blowing up in their faces.

    Well, clearly she hadn’t gotten over it.

    “I thought I lost her,” he explains. “I thought that moving halfway across the country would be enough.”

    You finally looked up to meet his eyes, glossy, sad and terrified as you sniffled.

    “There’s a reason only Tasha calls me James.”

    It broke your heart hearing that, the way his head hung low and he nearly winced at the sound of his own goddamn name.

    But you didn’t know who to trust anymore.

    Bucky always glossed over how he, Sam, and Nat knew each other — telling you that they were old friends that go back.

    How far back?

    You needed to know, but clearly you weren’t about to get answers from him.

    “Buck,” he stopped you, taking a step closer as his eyes begged and pleaded you not to finish your sentence. 

    “I can’t,” he shook his head, “I need some time.” 

    You couldn’t bring yourself to say those words that would shatter both of your world’s. But you had no idea what the hell you had gotten yourself into and you needed answers. 

    And you knew exactly who to go to for them. 

    “I understand,” Bucky sighed. “I’ll stay at Sam’s for some time, okay?” 

    You could only nod your head, watching him walk past you and into his door. 

    Then he shut it, something he never did because his door was always open for you. No matter what you needed and no matter what time of day it was. 

    It felt...wrong. 

    But you couldn’t dwell on it, grabbing your keys, phone, and whatever other important things you could think of being you nearly bolted out of the front     door. 

    You plugged your headphones into your phone, hitting shuffle and descending down into the subway. 

    The entire ride made you anxious, slowly approaching your stop and you were way out of place in this crowd. 

    People rushed by you in expensive suits and what you could only guess were the infamous red-soled shoes that were worth close to your monthly rent, if not more. 

    You cringed, thinking of the man you were about to see in his stupidly tall office building that you had to crane your neck at an uncomfortable angle just     to get a look at. 

    The elevator could not have taken longer, tapping your foot impatiently as you rode up to what felt like the heavens before the doors opened to revel smooth wooden doors that reach from the ceiling to the floor. 

    You were so close, before you were stopped. 

    “Ma’am, I’m sorry, you can’t be here right now.” A man’s voice stopped you, dressed in a security guard uniform and oh, this was so him. 

    “I know him,” you said, intent on seeing the man probably sitting behind those large doors. 

    “I’m sorry, I can’t let you do th—”

    “It’s okay, Marv. I know her,” his voice came not from behind the doors, but from the long hallway to your left. 

    The security guard, Marv, nodded his head as he looked at you once more before retreating back to where he was leaning against one of the walls. 

    “This is a surprise,” you rolled your eyes, “Tony, please. I don’t wanna hear it.” 

    He walked over to you, embracing you in a hug, “oh c’mon, I’ve missed you, Kid.” 

    You shook your head, “I haven’t been a kid in years,” you tried to remind him, but it was Tony, he wasn’t going to listen as he just laughed it off and welcomed you into his office. 

    It was much different from last time, all new furniture and appliances, but nothing lasted more than a year with Tony. 

    Tony was an old friend, sort of.

    He was an old friend of your father’s, something like an uncle, but also like your older brother. 

    So just one giant pain in your ass.

    “So,” Tony sighed. “What trouble did you get into this time, Kid?”

    You told Tony everything. 

    From being roommates with Bucky to the way he asked you to be his fake girlfriend to Sam’s wedding and all the way to the situation you were in now. Confronted by his ex-wife without any idea of what she was going to do. 

    Tony had that look on his face. The one where he was going to tell you that you were crazy. 

    “I don’t know how you manage to get yourself into these situations,” he chuckled, hand clamping over your shoulder as he walked around his desk and typed something into his computer. 

    “Last name is,” he looked at you. “Barnes.” 

    He nodded his head, typing away at his computer again before he stopped. 

    There was a brief moment of silence, Tony hiding behind the computer screen before he stood up and walked back around the desk, “I’m gonna need some time.”

    You understood, shaking your head. You were asking Tony to hack into any known database and collect as much data on Bucky as you could. It was wrong, but you just needed to know who you were dealing with. 

    “Thank you, Tony. I-I really appreciate it.” You weren’t good when it came to...well, the heartfelt side of things but luckily neither was Tony. 

    “Don’t get sappy on me now, Kid. You know it makes me sick,” he joked playfully, smile on his lips as you stood up to give him a half hug. 

    “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.” He promised before you walked out of the too-tall building with far more questions than you came with. 

    It was a waiting game that you didn’t want to play, but you didn’t have a choice. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    It seemed like your relationship with Bucky was doomed from the start. 

    Friends to lovers rarely, if ever, works out in anyone’s favour. 

    The fake dating trope you could handle, pushing your feelings aside to help Bucky win a bet didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world. You had a great time, great fucking sex, and a trip out of it. 

    Then Steve wouldn’t leave the picture. Going as far as coming to the wedding as Natasha’s boyfriend to spite you not realizing that you and Bucky had gotten married. 

    Married. 

    You and Bucky were married. Bonded in a whole other way and now, his ex-wife was out for you and him. 

    Maybe this was a sign from the universe, a big red fucking flag telling you that it wasn’t worth it and yet...you couldn’t let go. 

    The apartment felt empty without Bucky, his bedroom left the way it was in the morning with your favourite sweater of his laid out on the covers and a little post-it note on top of it. 

    You never could really decipher Bucky’s handwriting. It was absolute chicken scratch as you picked it up and managed to make out in case you get cold scribbled onto it. 

    It was an easy decision to pull it over your head and drown yourself in the scent of Bucky’s cologne as you fiddled with the small gold band you now wore around your neck as a necklace. 

    You didn’t want anyone other than Bucky. There was no in the world who understood you better. Who knew how to make you laugh when you were having a bad day. 

    Everything led you right back to Bucky. 

    So when your phone rang from the other side of the couch, you were secretly hoping it was Bucky. 

    Instead, Tony’s name flashed and your heart sank into your stomach as you quickly hit answer and held the phone up to your ear. 

    “You’re not gonna like this, Kid.” Tony’s voice flowed through the speakers as you took a shaky breath in and braced yourself for what Tony was about to tell you. 

    “He did a damn good job at erasing his history, but you can’t erase all of it,” Tony chuckled as you rolled your eyes, “quit stalling.”

    He sighed, “the Howling Commandos was an organization tasked with,” he paused, “tasked with collecting intel and making sure that information never got released to the public.” 

    This time, it was your turn to fall silent. 

    “Like, spies?” You asked and Tony hummed, “sort of.” 

    “They had spies, agents, hit-men.” 

    No. You shook your head, no. 

    “James Buchanan Barnes was their highest ranking hit-man. Him, along with Sam Wilson and Natasha Romanova worked as a team. A spy, agent, hit-man trio.” 

    You had to shake yourself out of spiralling, what you needed was everything Tony could possible tell you. 

    “Anything on his ex-wife?” You then asked and heard shuffling on the other line, “not much. Mary Barnes, but I doubt that’s her real name, was part of a training initiative the Howling Commandos were testing.” 

    You bit your lip, at least you had a name, even if it wasn’t her real name. 

    “By that point it looks like James—” 

    “Bucky. His name is Bucky.” 

    Tony cleared his throat after a moment’s silence, “Bucky looks like he had disappeared. Blipped off of the face of the Earth. There’s nothing in his file after 2014.” 

    That makes sense. Bucky was perhaps the most old-fashioned man you knew, only upgrading from his flip-phone just a few years ago. He barely knew how to unlock it, though. 

    “Sam and Natasha went on to live normal lives, Kid. I’m sure that’s all Bucky wants.” Tony tries to assure you and you laugh, “you sound like my dad.” 

    He laughed on the other line, “oh gross.” 

    “Thanks for everything, Tony.” You said, “you know what number to call in case you’re in trouble.” 

    With that, you both hung up, tossing your phone away from you to digest everything you’d just been told. You knew you had to talk to Bucky, but you didn’t know when. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    “So you’re tellin’ me,” Sam was confused. “That this is the same Mary that tried to get you killed?” 

    Bucky rolled his eyes, taking another swing of his beer as he rounded Sam’s kitchen island. 

    “That’s the one, you know, the undercover agent working for Strucker.” Bucky scowled at the name. 

    He was angry, beyond angry at the fact that his past was creeping up on him despite how far he had gone to erase it. 

    “But why now? Why come after you now?” Sam poses the question that even Bucky doesn’t have an answer to. So he just shrugs his shoulders and finishes off his beer. 

    “Unfinished business.” 

    They stand in silence for a little while longer, listening to the old ticking clock hanging on the wall before Sam takes a step towards Bucky. 

    “Whatever you need, you know that Tasha and I are here for you, right?” He whispers and Bucky feels the warmth blooming in his chest as he gives him a half-smile. 

    “Yeah,” he nods his head, “thanks, man.” 

    Sam knows that Bucky was never really good at the sappy shit, so he doesn’t force it. Instead, he offers him another beer, bottle necks clinking as Bucky’s thoughts race. 

    He was worried. 

    Not about himself, but about you. 

    And you were worried about Bucky, curling up in his bed as you sighed and tossed and turned. There was no way you’d be able to fall asleep alone tonight. And hugging his pillow just wasn’t enough. 

    So you grabbed your phone, hitting his name and waiting for the ringing to sound before he picked up — tired and groggy.

    “We need to talk.” You didn’t give him a chance to greet you. He sighed on the other line, but hummed in agreement, “tomorrow?”

    You hummed in response to his question, the sound of his voice soothing as you played with the sheets of his bed.

    “I miss you, Sweets.” Bucky whispered, your breathing hitching at how low and raspy his voice really was.

    “I miss you too, Bucky.” You admitted, shifting as you got comfortable on the pile of pillows against your head.

    There was a moment of silence before Bucky spoke again.

    “You know what ‘m really missin’ right now?” His words sent a shiver down your spine as you shakily inhaled, “what?”

    Bucky sighed, reminiscent of how he sighs when he runs his hands all over your body. 

    “I miss that sweet cunt of yours.” Bucky purrs, you know he’s smirking, possibly even dragging his tongue across his bottom lip as he closes his eyes to imagine you under him. 

    You’re at a loss for words, feeling your panties grow damp, core aching and you’re going to have to touch yourself soon. But that’s all part of Bucky’s plan, you think. 

    “Here I am, all alone, with my hand wrapped ‘round my cock,” he whispers, but you can hear him stroking himself. 

    “And all I can think ‘bout is that way your tight little pussy grips me and milks my fuckin’ dick, baby.” Bucky was always so good with his words, knowing exactly what to say to make you melt. 

    And it was working, because you were a squirming mess in his bed. 

    “Well,” you could tell he was smirking by his tone, “what’re ya waitin’ for, Sweets. Go on, touch yourself. I wanna hear you work your clit.” 

    Your hand flew under your panties, being given the permission only made it sweeter as your fingers came in contact with your soaking folds. The sensitive bundle of nerves needed desperate attention as you slowly circled it. 

    “Good girl, that’s my girl.” Bucky praised, continuing to work himself. 

    “God,” he hissed, “can’t wait to have you all to myself again. Bury myself deep, maybe even have you sit on my cock as you beg me to do somethin’.” 

    You worked yourself a little faster, applying some more pressure as you let out a whine at his words. 

    “Add two fingers, Sweets. I know how much you love bein’ stretched,” Bucky chuckled deeply, “been thinkin’ of gettin’ you a mould of my fuckin’ dick for when ‘m not home.” 

    Oh my God. Oh my God that shouldn’t be so fucking hot so why does it make your walls flutter and breathing uneven as you have to stop yourself from actually fucking cumming. 

    He chuckles again, “yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” 

    You can’t verbally respond, too focused on the tight coil in your abdomen that’s ready to snap. 

    “I know you’re close, can hear it in how fuckin’ desperate you sound,” he pants, “so why don’t you make a mess all over my clean sheets.” 

    You gasp, how did he know, but you don’t get to dwell on it for much longer than a moment because your orgasm rips through you and leaves you panting Bucky’s name. 

    Both of your breaths are uneven and ragged through the phone’s speakers, bed springs creaking on Bucky’s side as he hums. 

    “If only you could see the miss I made for you, Sweets,” you shuddered at his words, closing your eyes to relish in the moment. 

    “Now get some sleep, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.” His tone has changed, entirely sweet and caring as you grab the phone to bring him closer to you. 

    “Okay,” you reply, another lick of silence before you hear Bucky going to end the call but you stop him. 

    “I love you, Bucky.” You quickly blubber out and it feels good to finally say those words because there’s no more denying how you really feel about him. 

    “I love you too, Sweets.” 

    It’s a bittersweet ending to the phone call, thoughts and emotions running wild as you’re forced to remind yourself that Bucky has a lot of explaining to do. 

[after-witch]

White Room White Walls [Yandere Overhaul x Reader]

Title: White Room White Walls [Yandere Overhaul x Reader]

Synopsis: He’s going to come back soon. When he does, you’ll be waiting. 

Prompt: Overhaul + “No live organism can continue for long to exist under conditions of absolute reality.”

Word Count: 1939

Notes: yandere, kidnapped reader, starvation/malnutrition, implied character death

He’s going to come back soon. When he does, you’ll be waiting.

Waiting for what is a little difficult to decide. Waiting for his praise? Waiting for his attention? Waiting for his mere presence, something to break up the monotony of the days that you’ve been in this room, all alone?

Four walls, all white. Decorated with a few hard-earned personal touches, tiny pops of color that make you far more grateful than you’d ever imagined they could. Your bathroom is adjacent, thank goodness, but quite sterile; he didn’t want bacteria building up on the pictures you’d asked to hang up against the white walls.

Every morning starts the same: you wake up to the sound of your alarm, you make your bed as neatly as possible before showering and changing into something clean.

It’s very important to be clean. Overhaul told you so.

Though, it’s a shame your room doesn’t have laundry facilities; after a while, with no clean clothes left in your drawers, you realized that you had to wash them by hand. Then you threw them over the curtain rod in the bathroom to drip dry. Some of them smell a bit mildewy now, but it’s nothing that another rub-down with your scented strawberry shampoo can’t cover up, right?

After you’re clean, you can officially start the day. Your schedule is blocked into exercises for your body and mind. Reading time and puzzle time and journaling. When Kai gets back, he’ll probably want to read your journal, so you keep it up even though there’s not much to say anymore. You’re running low on books, but it’s all right; you limit yourself to a chapter a day to stretch them out and, in any case, when he comes back he’ll surely agree to buy you new ones.

He has been gone longer than he originally said he would be, but you try not to mind. You try not to let it wheedle at you. He is so busy, after all. And he’s trusting you to take care of yourself while he’s gone. You don’t want to disappoint him.

In addition to schedule blocks for entertainment, you’re expected to keep up your health. This means eating and exercises on time, every day, and getting to bed early.

It used to feel good to exercise, but lately all it does is make you feel dizzy. Probably the stale air, you think, when you’re bracing your hands on your bed and waiting for the wooziness to pass. Once, you thought about skipping your exercises, thought that maybe it would be better not to use up the extra energy, considering--but the thought was quickly smoothed over when you remembered that he expected you to do it and you’d better stick to the schedule he laid out for you.

Besides, he was coming back soon, and you’d be able to ask him about the dizziness. Maybe he’d know what was going on. He liked to give you check-ups, even though you once insisted that he wasn’t a doctor, you learned to let him touch and poke and record numbers in the chart pinned to his clipboard without a fuss.

You hope he’ll give you a check-up when he gets back, because you just aren’t feeling like yourself lately.

It’s not his first trip away from you. It’s not the first time he sat you down and told you in his patronizing way that he was going away for a while, that you needed to be good until he got back.

But it is the first time you were given so much responsibility all for yourself. Before, there was always someone else who came in to bring you food and take your laundry and anything else you needed.

But this time, no one showed up the next morning. He told you someone was coming, but they didn’t.

It took you a while to realize that it was clearly a test. Kai wanted to know how well you could take care of yourself, how well you could follow routine, without him there to hover over you for most of the day.

If you want to pass, you need to keep going. Stick to the schedule. Stick to his expectations and everything will be fine.

Today, your alarm didn’t go off. The batteries must finally be dead. But it’s okay, you woke up at just the right time, anyway. Old habits and all.

You grab one of the least mildewy day dresses from your drawer and head into the bathroom.

The mirror in the bathroom is all white, muddy-streaked with soap so you can’t actually see yourself. The sight is startling, but only for a moment. Silly you. You must have forgotten to rinse it off with water while you were cleaning it, that’s all. But the thought of wetting down a rag and wiping it away makes your stomach clench--it always feel clenched, lately, tight and hurting--so you walk by the mirror and prepare to step into the bath instead.

The shower is cold. But you like cold showers. They’re the only kind you’ve had for quite some time. It’s another thing you’ve added to your list, to tell Kai when he gets back--hot water’s broken.

You have to remember not to make it sound like you’re complaining, though. You don’t want to seem ungrateful. Especially now that you realize just how much he does for you. You understand now what he meant when he called you ‘spoiled,’ the last time you acted out. You were spoiled. Now you know how hard it is to be without Kai, to be without his direction and guidance and overbearing need to keep you going.

But it’s not all bad. You still have your favorite shampoo. It’s been watered down a few times now, but there’s no more left in the cupboard and you have to make do. You’re resourceful; another way for Kai to test you, right? To see how you can keep yourself clean without all the pampering.

Besides, in a way, you like it watered down: you’ve noticed less of your hair on the bottom of the tub now that you’re not lazily rubbing thick gobs of strawberry shampoo into your hair every day. It doesn’t seem to stop the hair from lining your brush after you comb it dry, but that’s fine, you’ll take the little victory.

For a moment as you scrub yourself with your thinned bar of scented soap, you think too much about your body. About how strange it looks as you scrub your skin red. Certain parts are just too pointy now, hollow even. Like your stomach and the space between your hips and--you toss the soap back in the little dish and let the cold water run over you. You think about how you get dizzy when you sit up too fast or do your exercise or sometimes for no reason at all.

Then you remind yourself to stop thinking about those things.

Best not to think about silly things like that at all. Best to just get clean and get on with your day. When Kai gets back, he’ll figure out what’s going on with your body. Probably a cold or a flu or something. Or maybe your vision is a bit wonky, and that’s what you’re seeing when you glance over your stomach, your hips--maybe your depth perception is off and you need glasses. Kai will know.

After dressing, it’s breakfast time, so you pad back into the bathroom with your water cup and fill up the glass as fully as possible.

Gingerly, you carry the full glass back to your table and sit down. You glance at the clock and wait for it to get to just the right time before you take your first sip.

Water from the tap is cold but refreshing. You have water for breakfast and water for lunch and water for dinner. Sometimes, you mix in paper from one of your journal pages and stir it around the glass with your finger. It’s mushy and pulpy but paper is tree bark, isn’t it? And tree barks have some sort of nutrients, you think, so you’re doing the best you can to stick to your schedule--three healthy meals a day--with what you have.

Will Kai be mad that you’re drinking paper smoothies instead of normal meals? He’ll understand that you couldn’t exactly get a fork or spoon from thin air. He’ll understand that he forgot to put food in your room for your test, so you had to make do.

When he comes back, you’ll just have to explain that you didn’t have any other options.

Though, you confess… you are eating much quicker than the designated blocks for meal-times that he generously created for you. It’s not that you want to deviate from the schedule. But eating too slowly makes you miss the meals you used to have, mounds of steamed vegetables and freshly cooked fish and so many things that get your mouth watering and your stomach growling. It makes you worried that you’ll spend another night in the bathroom, stomach cramped and pain, crying out into your hands, begging for the pain to stop.

You won’t tell him about these things when he returns, except maybe the bathroom stuff, because you would like for something--a pill or special diet or treatment--to make that go away. You wish knew what was causing it. But that’s why Kai’s the expert and you’re just you.

So you sip quickly and grab a book from the shelf as soon as you’re done, and curl up on your bed to start reading today’s chapter. If you focus hard enough on the story, you can forget a lot of things.

You can forget that you’re so, so hungry. You can forget that it’s been days and days and days and he still hasn’t come back, even though he promised he would. You can forget that one of the light bulbs in your ceiling went out a week ago, and one day they’ll all go out and you’ll be here in the dark. You can forget the deep, deep fear that one day you will turn on the bathroom faucet and nothing will come out.

If you try hard enough, you can forget all of that. And when reading time is over, and your bleary eyes glance at the wall, you can focus on the next thing to help you forget: journaling.

You sit up, slowly, carefully, to avoid feeling too dizzy. But instead of grabbing your journal from the shelf, you make your way to your bed and pull back the warm, slightly musty covers.

The strap of your gown falls down your shoulders as you go to lay down. They keep doing that, lately. You had to stop wearing pants altogether, because they just wouldn’t stay up. You like the billowy gowns more and more, because they cover up all the parts of your body that make you uncomfortable, lately. You feel okay when you wear them. Just as long as you don’t look down in the ever-widening gaps created by the loose fabric on your chest.

It’s true that there are no naps on your schedule, and Kai might not like you inserting your own decisions into the fray. But you’re just so tired lately. 

Wouldn’t it be okay if you napped, just sometimes? You’ll write in your journal tomorrow. You’ll confess that you eat too fast and you worry too much and that you hope Kai will come home soon, because this test he’s putting you through is confusing and hard and you might be losing. 

You feel dizzy again. Must be the air. Or maybe the book was too exciting. It’s just too hard to figure out. 

He’s going to come back soon. If he does, you’ll be waiting.

[writingfics-passingtime]

Family Feud

Word count: ~5700

Pairing: Loki x female!reader (romantic)

CW: difficult family relationships, light swearing, mentions of violence

Based on a prompt from the lovely @okamiyami93, who asked for Loki comforting a female!reader after she has a late-night fight with her father over the phone 💜

Family can be tricky. Politics can be tricky. Put family and politics together, and dammit it made your life difficult.

“Dad, please,” you sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose and shutting your eyes. “It’s late, and I can’t keep explaining the same things over and over-”

“That’s because you can’t argue with my logic!”

“You don’t have logic!” You shot back. “Nothing you say has any logical conclusion. It’s all designed to make you feel smart, feel superior,” you finally lost it. “Do you seriously think I, your only daughter, would willingly engage in something that harms people?!”

“Well, that’s exactly my point,” he snarked through the phone. “You can’t see all the little lies they’re spinning. You can’t put out the fire from inside the house!”

“Everything I do is to keep the world from setting on fire, Dad. Do you honestly think I’ve been duped? You really didn’t raise me better than that?!” You started getting more targeted with your attacks, noticing your voice was raising but being unable to completely stop it.

“And now you’re attacking me instead of my argument,” your Dad replied, an air of victory to his voice. “That tells me everything I need to know. Sweetheart, we love you, but you need to take an honest look in the mirror.”

You felt hot tears of frustration sting your eyes. “There is nothing I can say that will ever convince you you’re wrong,” you seethed, standing and pacing your room. “Dad, it scares me, the way you think,” you choked out. “I’m scared you’re gonna do something stupid and illegal in the name of these little groups you’ve joined. In the name of the people you’ve put your trust in.”

“And it scares me knowing my daughter is so involved,” he replied, disappointment dripping from his voice. “Do you know how hard it is, explaining to my friends what you do? How you’re so complicit?”

“Hey, Dad,” you almost yelled. “I dismantled a hostage situation in a classified Middle-Eastern country last week. I saved thirty-six people, including twenty-one children, from certain death! When’s the last time you did something for the world other than posting on social media?!” You cried, breathing heavily as he was silent on the other end.

“… You still can’t answer my questions about-”

“Dad-”

“-the government’s involvement in-”

“DAD!” You shouted, then immediately lowered your voice to a loud whisper. “Dad, just… stop. Stop,” you sniffed, feeling tears roll down your cheeks. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t.”

It broke your heart to have these same conversations over and over again. Trying to reasoning with someone who didn’t want to be reasoned with - not in a real way, anyways. It sucked to watch the man who raised you get sucked into all these crazy divisive theories, to watch those theories turn you into the enemy, to see the seeds of his mistrust grow into a mighty thorny bush that strangled the life out of your family.

You’d lost count of the number of conversations you’d had with him, trying to explain (around what was classified) that you weren’t invovled in some evil government scheme. Not at all. Your entire career with the Avengers, everything you did to train and fight to get here, was to protect everyone. Protect as a first priority. Avenge if you fail the first time around. It was simple, it was good, you trusted the people you reported to. It was an indescribable pain, to have your own parents think you were some sort of villain.

You didn’t know how much of it your mother believed and how much of her agreement with your father was just her trying to not rock the boat. Either way, there was very little reasoning with either of them.

After this evening, after another long and frustrating phone call, when you hung up, you let out a loud groan of frustration and spoke to the void, “Why does he have to be like this?!” It came out louder than you’d hoped, but it was said. Sitting on the edge of your bed, you put your face in your hands and let yourself cry out your frustrations.

No one on the team knew about your parents reservations. Or, perhaps a more accurate description would be, their downright distaste. They were so supportive when you were growing up, of anything you wanted to do. Halfway through your Agent training, something changed. Your Dad started spending a lot more time online, started sending you links to strange websites that looked satirical at first, but you soon realised he was falling down a rabbit-hole. By the time you’d had a week off and went home to try talking some sense into him, it was far too late. Now, here you were, wondering if you would one day see your father’s name on a list of National Security Threats. The worst part was, it felt hopeless. Like watching a car crash in slow motion.

After crying until you’d had your fill, you did some breathing exercises to calm yourself down. Tonight, however, it hit you much harder than before. Maybe it was his parting comment, maybe you were tired from a few weeks of taxing missions, but you were finding it hard to calm down completely. Remembering some kind of lavender sleepy tea in the kitchen, you pulled a hoodie over your tank top, propping the hood up to hide your face in case you passed someone, and set out for the kitchen to make a hot, soothing drink.

Making your way down the hallway, you closed your eyes and rubbed the sleeves of your hoodie over your face to wipe away the tears. That proved to be a mistake. Two more barefoot steps with your eyes closed, and your foot hit something that felt frustratingly familiar.

“Dahammit, Peter,” you sniffed, grumbling aloud as you looked down to see you’d stepped in a discarded pile of his web fluid. The kid had been walking around for days with defective web shooters, this was bound to happen. But why you, and why now?

Quickly wiping another silent tear, you sat down on the cool marble floor and got to work trying to pull the webs from your skin. The more you tried to untangle it from around your foot and between your toes, the more frustrated you became. At least this web couldn’t say things that hurt your feelings - it was a safe thing to be mad at; it couldn’t discount your entire career, make you feel helpless.

If it wasn’t late in the evening, if your eyes weren’t still tear-stained, maybe you would’ve yelled out for someone to come help you. But it was past midnight, your fingers were getting sticky, your foot wasn’t becoming any less trapped, and you felt more hot tears springing to your eyes by the second.

“Dammit,” you sniffed again, then pulled yourself forwards to rest your elbows against your knees, your forehead against the heels of your palms, careful to not get your sticky fingers near your hair as you let your chest shake with a few silent cries. You were so focused on being silent, on keeping the sobs trapped in your chest, that you barely heard the approaching footsteps. Not until the towering form was directly behind you did you realise he was there. “Oh god,” you sniffed, hiding your cheeks that weren’t just red from tears, but were now red from embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m fine- fine, I’m fine,” you babbled, trying very quickly to pull yourself together as Loki knelt in front of you.

Your trapped foot was between the two of you, still fixed to the ground. He inspected it carefully, wordlessly, perhaps trying to show that he wasn’t looking at your face. Bless him, for not making some quip about crying over spilt web fluid. “Is there any kind of solution to dissolve this?” He finally looked up into your eyes, and gave no indication of pity. You wiped your face again, just in case any tears remained, and racked your brain for the answer.

“Um, maybe in the lab. But if you could just cut it away, I… I can find that later, I just wanted some tea,” you kept fumbling words out, trying to explain why you were up so late at night. Loki looked at you for a few more moments, finally breaking the charade that you hadn’t been crying. You sighed and pulled on your foot again, prompting Loki to look back down and conjure a blade.

As he sliced away at the webs with great care, you couldn’t help the blush that crept back into your cheeks. Here you were, face puffy from crying, old pyjama shorts peeking out from below a faded grey hoodie, in the presence of a god. It seemed foolish, that he’d be helping you so delicately. Part of you wished anyone else would have found you, but the selfish part of you was relieved to have an opportunity to see how he would respond to a situation like this; a situation in which you were vulnerable. As mortifying as it was to sit here like this, you were comforted by the kindness in his tone, in his touch.

Once he finished cutting away large parts of it and only the smaller bits remained, he stood and held a hand down to you. You stood on your non-stick foot, hesitant to put in on the ground where it could become stuck again. Letting go of his hand, you spun on your good foot and took a hop towards the lab.

He let out an amused breath, and was by your side in a second. One arm slid around your waist and one took your hand, throwing it around his shoulder before you could fully get your protest out. “N-no, Loki, I’m okay,” you sniffed. “I can get there myself.”

“I’d need to follow you anyway,” Loki said, guiding you down as you hopped beside him. “Make sure I wouldn’t awake in the morning to find you fixed to the floor down a wayward hall.” You let yourself smile in thanks as you kept hopping beside him, struggling a bit to manoeuvre around the sheer height difference. He paused and let out a breath. “Might I-”

“Go for it,” you sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose. “My pride is already irredeemably shattERED!” You almost squeaked, gods could you imagine squeaking, as Loki swept you into his arms and carried you bridal-style towards the lab. He bit back a smirk at how he’d caught you off guard, and you tried to not be too obvious as you let yourself feel all the places your body touched his. His strength was impressive, evident, his body solid and warm and… safe. Being in the arms of the God of Mischief should probably have made you feel insecure, inadequate maybe, but you just felt safe. “Sorry for intruding on whatever you were doing,” you mumbled, finally breaking the silence as FRIDAY opened the doors to the lab.

Loki walked over to a workbench. “You didn’t intrude,” he assured, setting you on the table with your feet dangling over the edge. “Would you like to ask the machine?” He stood up straight and looked you in the eyes, his own not showing any indication of annoyance or disdain. That made you relax, and then you realised what he’d asked you.

“FRIDAY? Web-fluid dissolvent? Safe for human skin.”

“Over here,” the voice replied, then a light flashed next to a cabinet. Loki walked over and opened it without you having to ask, sorting through the labelled bottles and canisters until he found a large bottle with a spray top. He read the instructions for a few moments and then pulled out a box next to it, bringing them both over to the workbench.

“He’s left an apology,” Loki told you, handing you the bottle as he flipped open the small metal box. The latches of it clinked against the table as you smiled at Peter’s note he’d left.

Sorry if you have to use this!! It doesn’t sting, I promise.

“That’s cute,” you commented, then read that he’d instructed you to administer a few sprays against a rag and soak the webs until they break down, the wipe them away. Loki reached out to take the bottle from you and you stammered, “O-oh, I’ve got it, it’s okay,” you smiled, holding your hand out for the rag.

“You’ve put your fingers on that, haven’t you?” Loki smirked good-naturedly and watched as you tried to release the bottle, having completely forgotten the fluid had gotten your fingertips too. Biting your lip, you felt yourself blush again. “Allow me,” he reached out again and you held it away. He gave you a questioning look.

“This is so far beneath you,” you sighed, hanging your head in embarrassment. “You don’t need to wipe webs off my vile feet.”

“Nothing about you is vile,” Loki chuckled. So casually, in fact, you nearly believed him. It threw you off enough for him to grab the top part of the bottle and squeeze a few sprays onto the rag. He held it to your fingers around the plastic bottle and let it soak in. “This’ll have to settle for longer, since they’re stuck to something,” he said, still smirking.

“Is this funny to you?” You challenged, but with humour in your voice.

“Humour is a tool to cope with difficulty. What can we do, lest sometimes laugh at ourselves, and others,” Loki replied, holding the rag to your free fingers, letting the solution soak in before wiping away the stickiness. He was thorough, going one finger at a time. “Are you okay?”

His abrupt question nearly made you flinch, and it certainly made you hold your breath. Not knowing how to reply, not wanting to lie to him, or tell the truth, you took your time and thought of what to say. In the meantime, Loki looked up to your face, then looked back down. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I find it a rather reprehensible thing, actually. The walls are surprisingly thin for a place such as this.”

“Ah,” was all you could muster. You sniffed again, shifting in your seat as he closed the rag around your middle finger.

“I’m not asking you to trust me with your interpersonal secrets,” Loki clarified, wiping the webs away with a delicate and firm pull of the rag. “I just want to know if you’re okay.”

A soft smile found it’s way to your lips, and maybe a bit of heat to your cheeks, as Loki closed the rag around your ring finger and lightly squeezed. “That’s very kind of you,” you said, just above a whisper. “I’ll be okay,” you nodded.

“You’ll be, or you are?”

“I don’t know. It’s just my Dad,” you sighed, letting out the tense breath in your lungs. “He’s… difficult. He doesn’t understand what I do. Or he doesn’t like it. I don’t know.”

“But you’re good,” Loki’s brow furrowed. He twisted the rag around your ring finger and pulled it away. You then realised how calming the sensation was. You smiled at that, and at his compliment.

“Politics and family don’t really mix well,” you admitted sheepishly. “My dad is convinced I’m working for the government. He’s convinced the government is a front for an evil underground cabal and that by being an Avenger… I’m in on it. In on hurting children, in on spreading fear and hate and all the bad things in the world.”

“I’m sorry.”

Thinking back on it, that was perhaps the first time you’d heard those words from his lips. It caught you a little off-guard, but you quickly recovered and tried to shift the focus from your over-sharing.

“You understand difficult fathers,” you shrugged.

“It’s different,” Loki hummed thoughtfully, wiping the webs from your pinky and then inspecting your hand for more. “My father had reason to mistrust me.”

“My father thinks he has his reason,” you bit your lip. “He thinks he’s doing the right thing, by telling me to get lost.”

“He what?” Loki looked up and placed the rag, and his hand, against the bench and looked at you with such pained confusion in his eyes. Seeing Loki‘s heart hurt for you threatened your eyes with tears once again, so you looked away and tested your fingers against the bottle, finding they were loosening but not quite unstuck.

You shrugged, willing the tears away. “Holidays coming up,” you mumbled, feet fidgeting nervously. “He’s made it clear I’m not welcome at home until I’ve seen the error of my ways,” you sang his words, trying to use humour to deal with the difficulty, but the smile dropped as fast as you’d formed it. “I’m okay,” you lifted your head to look Loki dead in the eyes, hard as it was to not get lost in them. His blue gaze flashed with an anger, a pain, a familiar feeling of being cast out. An unlikely comrade, he was, here, cleaning webs from your fingers.

He reached over and sprayed the bottle onto the rag once more, then reached down and grabbed your ankle in his hand. You tugged on it in protest, “Wait, Loki, I can do it.”

“If you‘re uncomfortable I’ll relent, but if you’re worried about being any sort of burden, know it’s my pleasure to assist you,” he said earnestly, and you finally dropped your protests, nodding that it was fine for him to continue. Truth be told, it was nice to have someone to look after you.

“Is there another rag? I think my fingers are coming off the bottle,” you looked to the box, and Loki reached over to grab another. He held it up for you to use your free hand to spray against the fabric, then passed it to you for you to begin working away at the sticky fluid with the dissolvent. “I’m really okay, Loki. It’s been this bad since I joined SHIELD. I mean, it got worse when I joined the Avengers, but he got sucked into this stuff when I was a teenager. I’m used to it.”

“Are you aware there are small corners of your World Wide Web which believe my attack on New York was staged by your government?”

“Are you aware my Dad believes that?” You laughed, lest you cry. Loki eyed you warily as he pressed the rag to the heel of your foot, lifting an eyebrow to question you. You chuckled, shaking your head as you freed your thumb. “I know,” you muttered. Desperate to get your mind off your family, you looked at him and tilted your head in question. “What else have you heard about yourself?”

“Let‘s see,” a smirk spread across his lips. You pulled on your fingers and managed to free them all from the bottle with a victorious hiss. Getting to work on them as he thought, you looked over to your foot. “I had a woman approach me on the street and ask how it felt to be playing a Greek god in a grand scheme.”

“The audacity,” you gasped in mock horror. “Don’t worry, the people that matter know you’re a Roman god,” you teased. He snapped his head up and you winked, showing you knew he was Norse. Chuckling, he looked down and wiped away the webs at your heel just as you’d finished cleaning two fingers. Your eyes widened and you tried very hard not to flinch.

Oh... no. Oh no. This was going to end badly for you.

Loki reached for the bottle, careful to avoid the residual sticky patches left by your fingers, and sprayed more onto the rag, blissfully unaware that his swiping against your foot had tickled you.

You knew your body well enough, had enough physiotherapy and sports massage appointments, to know how ticklish you were and where. Even though your feet weren’t your worst spot, they were at the level where you couldn’t bear getting a professional pedicure. You also knew: the closer to your toes, the more ticklish your foot was. Loki’d started at the least ticklish place on your foot. It could only get worse from here.

Wringing the rag around your middle finger, you decided to attempt getting your fingers clean as fast as you could and then take over from Loki before it got to the point where you couldn’t hide the ticklish feeling anymore. “Any others?” You asked nonchalantly, hoping that keeping him talking would slow his progress on the webs.

“Hmm,” he smiled, then began telling you a story of when he was visiting Norway with Thor, checking in on New Asgard, and how a group of people had set up a covert operation nearby to spy on them, to prove something or the other. They were most shocked when Thor and Loki knocked on their door, telling them to get lost. In the meantime, your ring finger was almost clean. “This is working well,” he commented, then wiped away the webs at the sole of your foot. You sucked your teeth silently and tried to send your mind elsewhere, disguising the involuntary tensing of your leg with a shift on the table, feigning movement to get more comfortable. “I spoke too soon,” he hummed, pressing the rag in and taking another swipe. You cleared your throat and got the final bits off your ring finger.

One finger left. Maybe you should leave it sticky and get the hell out of dodge.

Loki pinched at the very centre of your foot with the rag, pulling a string of web away, before flipping the cloth over to spray on the cleaner side.

“I can take it from here,” you nodded kindly, casually. He gave you a look and brought the rag back to your skin to soak at the place where your arch became the ball of your foot. The mere feeling of the rough fabric shifting against the skin made you want to flinch, so you knew you wouldn’t be able to handle when he wiped it away. The fluid soaked into your pinky finger and you willed yourself to be patient, waiting for the moment you could wipe the last of it.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Hmm?” You met his eye and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, fine,” you smiled. “I appreciate you helping me out. Here, I’m all done. How about I take over there and you do the bottle.” You picked it up to hold it out to him, then accidentally slamming it down from instinct when Loki swiped the rag across the soft skin just beneath the ball of your foot. Facade broken, you spluttered out a few giggles and braced your hands against the edge of the table, jerking your foot in his grasp.

Loki looked at you with an insufferable smirk on his lips, an endeared smile laced between the mischief. “Ah,” he clicked his tongue. “It all makes sense now.”

“Yeah, alright,” you rolled your eyes and tried to pull your foot from his hand, but he didn’t let go. “Loki…” you warned as he shifted the rag in his hand and sniffed, widened his smirk and locked eyes with you.

“We’re not done, darling,” he said in a low, dangerous drawl. He pulled a swift turn and secured your foot in the crook of his elbow, pressing the rag against the ball of your foot and holding it there firmly.

“Noho, Loki,” you whined and tugged on your foot. In order to prevent you from yanking yourself forward to tumble off the bench, he allowed you bend your knee to the point where his backside was against the counter, your legs either side of him. “Loki!” You tried to hold in your giggles.

“Nearly there,” he promised, the grin evident in his voice.

“Loki, I’m being serious,” you scolded, but if you could hear the playfulness in your own voice, Loki certainly could.

Loki would probably have relented if he thought you meant it, but part of you was grateful for the distraction. Especially a distraction from the person who made your heart flutter with a mere look.

“Ready?” He turned his head to look at you from the corner of his eye and began wiping roughly against the ball of your foot, not trying in the slightest to be careful.

You burst into frantic giggling laughter, pulling helplessly on your foot as Loki’s fingers pressed against the sensitive skin through the rag. “P-plehease,” you leaned forward and grabbed his shoulders, squeezing and shaking them as you shook and jolted with the ticklish sparks being sent through your entire foot.

“I think I need more solution,” Loki teased, holding up the rag.

“Hell no, you’re not making me compLICIHIT LOKI!” You fell back into laughter as he resumed swiping at the skin.

“I can’t move on if you don’t help me,” he shrugged. You whimpered and tapped on his shoulders to signal defeat, picking up the bottle to spray the rag with a defeated groan. “Cahalm down, love,” he chuckled. “Last one.”

When he closed the rag over and around your toes, you immediately tensed and began twitching with every shift of the fabric.

“Oh dear,” Loki commented.

“I can d-do it myhyself,” you twitched, then winced, trying to hold in your giggles.

“You’re not going to smack your head on anything, are you?” Loki turned to get a better look at where he’d sat you. Pouting at him, then glowering, you shook your head and pushed at his shoulders in a futile attempt to ward him off his attack. “Do you need something to bite down on?” He teased.

“Oh, shut it,” you huffed, resting your forehead against the back of his shoulder, too tired to really think through the implications.

“It’s rather adorable.”

“Really,” you rolled your eyes, twitching again when he readied his hold to wipe the last of the webs away.

“Mhmm,” he agreed. “I rather like seeing you laugh.”

“There are easier ways.”

“Quite the contrary.”

A split-second later he began squeezing and grinding the rag all over your toes. You let out a giggly scream and shot backwards from his shoulder, catching yourself against the large work table to be propped up by your elbows, pulling on your foot as Loki kneaded the scratchy rag all around your toes. Your laughter pitched up as he slotted the rag between them, and you fell with your back against the clean, metal surface as he picked up his pace and roughly cleaned the last of it. Slamming a fist against the table, you growled through your laughter at Loki’s amused chuckle.

After several more agonising moments of him running the rag over the space under your toes, he finally released your foot and turned to face you. “Alright, there?” He laughed, sliding a hand over to squeeze at your side. You squeaked, dammit squeaked, and shot a hand down to catch his, finally sitting up.

When you did, it caught you off-guard to be face-to-face with Loki. He was so much taller than most mortals, even taller than the super soldiers, so you’d never been level with his face before. A ticklish smile still on your lips, your hand still on his, his hand still on your waist, you tried to give him a playfully firm look. “Thanks for your help, Loki,” you nodded, and turned to pick up the bottle. When you did, his ducked his head to follow your gaze.

“I am sorry,” he nodded. “About your troubles with your father.”

You smiled, this time with a hint of sadness, nodding to accept his kind words.

“Would it perhaps help, if I…”

You lifted your head. “If you what?”

“He doesn’t believe in me. Should I instil the fear of Odin in him? I could conjure some blades, show my power- why are you laughing?”

Giggling into the back of your hand, you looked at him, beyond smitten. “That’s very sweet of you,” you grinned. “He’d no doubt find a way to explain it away, but it’s sweet of you to ahask,” your giggles turned to laughter at the though of Loki performing magic in your parents’ living room.

“Are you laughing at me?” He asked, mischief in his voice. You knew what that meant, so you tried to pull yourself together.

“No, I Nono, I’m nohot,” you snorted, unable to hold it together from how flustered you were by his playful glare, and how tired you were from it being the early hours of the morning.

“Agent, you’re just asking for it now,” he scoffed and shot his hands over to knead his thumbs in beside your hipbones. You shrieked and jumped, curling in on yourself as you tried to push your hands away through your laughter.

“Lohokihi,” you snivelled and squeaked, squirming under his ticklish touch. “L-Lo-LOKI!” Crumpling further, your forehead this time rested against the front of his shoulder as you tried to put your fingers in between his fingers and your hips. He merely responded by tickling up your sides and digging his fingers into the middle of your ribs, clawing all around the spaces where your back met your sides. “NO!” You exploded in laughter and tried pulling yourself away, already substantially weakened.

With your arms helplessly clamped by your sides, and your knees lifting to curl yourself into a little ball, your abdomen tensed with laughter at the ticklish onslaught. Loki suddenly retracted his hands, shifted your half-curled body to be fully on the table, then attempted to worm his way into the tightly-shut spaces under your arms. “Noho wahay!” Eyes shut tight, you shook your head in protest, completely giving away the one spot you didn’t want him to reach.

“Have you always been so ticklish?”

“PLEHEASE!” You laughed and turned to face him to protect your back from his digging fingers. He shot a hand down between your limbs to claw at your belly though the thick fabric of your hoodie, making you bubble in streaming giggles. A few quick squeezes at your knee made you kick out, so he grabbed your hip and drilled his thumb and squeezed up the length of your side, making you fall into a new spout of laughter.

“Come now,” he chuckled, grabbed both your wrists in one hand, and pulled you off the edge of the table, forcing you to outstretch your legs to land on the ground standing.

To your surprise, he released you. Smiling fondly, lingering his gaze for several moments, Loki then turned to place the elements back in the cabinet. You relaxed and yawned - a yawn he caught when he turned back around after shutting the door.

“Still need that cup of tea?” He looked on quizzically. You thought for a moment, and then nodded. An outstretched arm motioned for you to lead the way, and Loki trailed behind you through the tables until you reached out for the door. The second your arm lifted, after you’d finally let your guard down, he slotted both hands up and dug harshly into the soft skin beneath your arm.

You genuinely screamed out and collapsed to your knees, your blow softened by Loki holding your weight and following you down. “TRAHAITOHOR!” You shrieked and thrashed against his fingers as they pressed in hard to compensate for the thick hoodie. His deep laugh rumbled as he knelt behind you and continued his attack. Your laughter soon went silent as you lurched forward, completely weakened, hiccuping for air as you squealed breathlessly and you finally managed to flip onto your back and knock his hands from their place.

Loki was grinning down at you, amused at how you were disheveled from the struggle. Huffing, blowing a piece of hair from your eyes, you reached out and swatted at his chest. “The hell, Loki?” You laughed with a whine.

“Couldn’t resist,” he winked, then reached his hands down again. You squeaked and slapped them away but Loki laughed, a warm smile across his features. “I’m done. Promise.” Eyeing him warily, you nevertheless accepted his help to pull you up to your feet. Leaning in closer, he tacked on, “For tonight, at least,” in a dastardly rasp.

Blushing, you rolled your eyes and began the short journey to the kitchen, watching keenly for any renegade pools of Spider-man’s webbing. Accepting yet another gesture of kindness, you allowed Loki to tell you to take a seat at the kitchen island and prepare you a cup of tea. He brewed it in silence, one for himself as well, then set it before you.

“Thanks again for… you know,” you smiled sheepishly and took the mug in your cupped hands, shielding your palms from the heat with your sleeves.

“I couldn’t leave you stuck there like that,” Loki chuckled. “Not after hearing you leave, knowing you were upset.”

“Oh, s-so you-”

“Hmm?”

“You didn’t come across me. You came looking for me,” you pieced together. Loki’s lips tightened into a polite smile, whereas yours melted into a grateful one.

“I hope I didn’t overstep,” he cleared his throat.

You smiled, at him, “Not at all.” After perhaps lingering a little too long with your adoring stare, you felt yourself blush and you looked back to the steaming hot aromatic brew. “Before this hits me, you think you have time for another story?”

Loki looked at you fondly, cleared his throat again and then sniffed, setting the scene for a fringe group of internet sleuths who were convinced they’d found an opening to the bi-frost.

You listened and laughed and joked with him, being told stories well into the hours past when you should have been asleep. By the time he refilled your tea for the third time, he‘d subtly moved you two to be sitting on the couch. By the time he’d told his last story for the night, you’d fallen asleep with your head in his lap, and his fingers laced through your hair.