#so that lunatic was all mine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

user211201 · 2 months ago

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Modulated

--- Original author: realhankmccoy ---

“I ain’t no motherfuckin’ redneck, you assholes! Don’t you fucking get it? I’ll never be ok with you being here and disrespecting our gay spaces!” I had shrieked and screamed, and I was being sassy as fuck. But they had darted me, so it was too late for me already. I had been one of the hottest little twinks in Colombia back then. I had such a tight little body, I was non-binary, and I was supportive of my local drag scene. I was absolutely into resisting these fucking fascists and their goddamn bullshit lifestyles, which I couldn’t stand.

That’s how I thought of it all back then, anyhow.

Man, that dart though, it had done its dirty work. I was writhing on the floor of the club, so I didn’t even get to witness the way it transformed me as I went into spasms. It was almost like having a seizure, but I could feel the muscle growing on me, and I could hear my shrieks and wails shift in pitch as I grew on into this whole new, far more masculine body.

I was getting to be built like a brick shithouse really fucking fast, and was taking on more of a mature look. Everywhere I was getting more muscle. I was splitting the seams of my jeans, and my underwear, and felt my back pressing up and splitting my tight pink t-shirt.

When I finally was able to sit up, I was in a daze. I had rendered my clothes asunder. I had bristles of hair all over my face, and the har on my head had grown longer, too, sort of flopping in my eyes. I was a mess.

And then the headache came. I was clutching the sides of my head and moaning, almost screaming in pain out loud, as my twinkish mind collapsed and got replaced by a growing part of me I didn’t even know existed. That part, my friends, is the motherfucking, take-charge redneck stud I am today.

My friends helped me get out of there, and I was still in transition. It takes a good seventy-two hours at least until you can fully collapse one of those weak-ass brains like the one I had before and until a more dominant, superior personality takes over like the one I was starting to get.

So yeah, like I said, I was a mess, and when my friends got me back to one of their apartments, I was still sporadically ranting about how dare those fascists do this to me, they’d never win, this was fucking awful. But as I heard myself talk, there was a growing part of me that was observing myself and thinking “so what? You sound like a raving lunatic. Look at this body! Damn, boy, just look at that muscle!”

Sleeping on it, man, that twink brain of mine must have collapsed even further. I woke up and I just wanted coffee with a splash of alcohol in it, so that’s what I got. Then I added two splashed. I had already stripped out of my shredded pink t-shirt, and my friends had some loose boxers that fit me, but I was just this naked, muscular stud in awe of his own body and trying to come to terms with who I was now.

I was seeing my friends with new eyes, too. They seemed anxious to me, weak, full of nervous, overly feminine motions, jittery, immature, skittish and mostly just kind of fucking annoying. “Those are your friends,” I’d remind myself. “This isn’t you who’s thinking this.”

But that growing part of me was thinking “This is you. This is all you, stud. You’re so much better than them. They don’t even know you’re thinking this, and if they only knew, they’d probably be terrified.” That thought made me want to laugh out loud, so I did.

“What are you laughing at?” one of them asked.

“Oh, nothing man, nothing,” I said, looking away and scratching my head. “These are your friends,” I told myself again, but I didn’t really seem to believe what I was trying to tell myself that morning. “So what if they’re your fucking friends,” my new mind was saying. “They’re fucking losers, man. Don’t let them drag you down. You ought to just get out of here.”

That morning, I was feeling just hornier and altogether more fucked up than I’d ever been. I was thinking, nah, this can’t be the new me. I’m no motherfucking redneck. I don’t think like them. But already I was feeling excited, having this body, having these different feelings, realising that I didn’t feel like such an evil guy like this, not like I thought I would, anyhow. All I wanted to do at that point in time, I felt like, was get the hell away from these people. I didn’t know to where. I borrowed some shoes and a t-shirt that was so tight it hurt, pleading that I had to get back to my apartment. It felt like the shoes would split, and the shirt was riding up on my belly, as I trotted back to my place.

I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was gonna do. When I got home, I felt thirsty, just wanting to drink a little, feeling like that would make this feel better, even though I told myself no, you have to compose yourself, you have to call people, you have to report this. Just one drink, I thought. It turned into shot after shot, and before I knew it, I was drunk, hard in my boxers, having kicked off the shoes and thrown that tight-ass shirt on the ground as soon.

Then I was beating off, and cumming, and the build-up to that orgasm, man, it flooded my brain with some real redneck juice. I wasn’t thinking of the type of guys I usually did. I was thinking about redneck studs, studs like myself, feeling the drool run down my chin as I beat off. As I came, shooting way up on my pecs, rubbing it in with my hand, I was whispering to myself, almost like a confession that I had yet to voice to anyone, “You hot fucking redneck. Holy fuck, you love this, don’t you. You’re a redneck now. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.”

The desire to live for working out and fucking was already growing in me.

Thoughts were just racing through my head then. I knew I didn’t want to be some lame-ass yuppie or some weak-ass queer, man. I felt this powerful attraction to the redneck scene, the working class scene, the country scene, the military scene, the jock scene, you name it, any scene were men were men instead of the glitter fairy I had been before. I couldn’t quite pin it all down at that point yet, but my thoughts were sure racing.

Can you picture me, getting drunk in my apartment, turned on at my own body and swirling thoughts? And then I started to really know, man. I started to know. There was no going back now. The guy I used to be was a loser. I didn’t want to be him anymore. I was pissed off that I ever even was him.

I walked barefoot into the bedroom, checking out his stuff in the drawers and on the walls. Almost none of it would even fit me anymore. His feminine attire and the way his shithole apartment was decorated disgusted me. It made me want to punch the wall, even, so I did that and it felt good. I saw the paint crack and the drywall cave in. This new body had power.

I screamed then, a roar of pure rage and exhilaration. I punched the wall again, and it felt so fucking good that soon I was ripping all his shit off the walls and throwing it in a corner, ripping that flouncy shit off the mattress and I didn’t stop, screaming the whole while, until the bedroom at least look bare bones enough to resemble something a man would want to sleep in. I’d be damned if I ever let that loser back into this mind.

There were a few flashes, sure, and man was he a crybaby as he went out, as well as one hell of an angry little prick. Lots of hatred in his heart. I’d just laugh and say, “Fuck you!” sometimes out loud as I felt that twink brain collapse forever.

And now, as far as I’m concerned, he’s gone man. No longer a part of me, thank God.

I was nervous at first, when I started trying to hang out with guys I thought I’d have a lot more in common with that my old friends. Would they accept me? I was pretty desperate for acceptance at that point. I starting hanging out at a diner that I knew a lot of them liked to frequent, classic diner that pre-dated even the 1950s, a real antique. But these sexy ass guys would show up there, and soon we got to talking over waffles and hash browns.

Soon I was telling them I was darted, and they were saying that was hot as fuck, wanting to hear the story. Soon I was telling it to them, my legs in the air, sweat dripping down my bearded chin, as I was getting fucked.

Months after that, I was almost fully integrated into the lifestyle, man, and soon I was the one doing more of the fucking, especially after I got these sweet-ass tattoos all over my right arm. Getting fully into it, the desire to be that all I could be as man, hell, it ran in my veins now. I was going to let those commies know that I was better than them in every single way imaginable, and I wanted to show it off. I still get hard just at the thought of that, demonstrating my own superiority in the most tangible – well, to them, intangible, because I don’t want them even fucking touching me – methods available to me.

Yeah boys, it meant war for me, just like it had when I was a stupid twink, only this time I was playing for the other side, and it was chess instead of checkers.

Of course, there’s a lot more to life than just that for me, namely having hot-ass sex with all sorts of country studs and military men, hell, being part of that whole network of strong and powerful men who worship and respect other guys who’ve worked for it. I feel like I’m serving my country and being a paragon of virtue for it even when my legs are slung over some guy’s bull neck and thick, rounded deltoids as he plows the fuck out of me with his long-ass rod.

I had never gotten fucked this good when I was a twink.

I do real work with myself now, a man’s work. I dress like a man, I eat like a man, and I live my life like a man. I’m fucking proud of it, too. I love who I am now, and relocated to the other side of town, too, where the action’s hotter and I have way more in common with most folks.

I am sure glad I’m a buff stud with a thick-ass chest these days, and I don’t ever go clean-shaven. Been really into guy’s pits lately, and getting them to flex for me so I can lick those. Yeah, shit, I’ve gotta stop, because here I’ve got a raging boner just telling you all about that right now. I swear I’m way more horny than I used to be. At least seventy-five percent of the time now, I’d bet, I’m a top these days.

I don’t really like bottom boys, either. Their mere existence tends to piss me off, to be honest, so when I do fuck them I tend to be an aggressive power top. A lot of the time I don’t even think of it that way, though. I just think of them as so weak that the same rules don’t even apply to them. Different rules, in a way, because they’re a different kind of guy than me. Much more like women, unable to control themselves, you know how they are. I used to be one of them, and I’m so glad I’m not anymore, that’s for fucking sure.

A lot of the time I prefer to just fool around with guys such as myself. I love topping another top, having to wrestle somebody for hours in a strength and dominance competition. Gets the blood flowing. I like somebody who puts up a fight. C’mon, son, do you have any idea how fucking fun that is for me now? To meet up and hook up with another guy who’s just as manly as I am? That’s the stuff I live for now. I’m ready to just fuck my life away with hot ass guys at this point.

So, yeah, I’m a top who loves to wrestle with other tops and see who can dominate. I must be pretty good at it if I swear I’m scoring a seventy-five percent these days, but that’s just because occasionally I throw in some twink losers. Yeah bud, even some of these leftists get thrown a bone by me every now and again. They need us, and I like them to know they need us. They wouldn’t know what to do without us.

One of these days, I might even check with one of my army friends and see if I can come along on a mission so that I can dart one of them myself. I think I’d laugh my ass off when my dart goes in his neck or his shoulder, wherever it his him. Just to see the look on his face, shit boy. That could turn a guy on just by imagining it, so one of these days I’ll have to make it legit.

Fuck if I care about the loser I once used to be or what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. My life is better now and that’s all that matters to me.

Hot-ass guys, man. That’s what I live for.

#redneck tf #jock tf #nerd to jock #masculinization #mental change #personality change

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vixstarria · 11 months ago

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Are you mine?

So I was initially going to do maybe 500 words worth of them being cute and cuddly, but then this happened. I have no control at this point, I am just the messenger.

Astarion x F!Reader, Astarion x Tav, Astarion x Bard Tav, soft Astarion, Astarion POV

Mostly fluff and comfort with a bit of hurt (Astarion’s past recollections), basically just pillow talk, cuddling, banter, non-explicit, no spoilers

Very late Act 1 / early Act 2 (pre-confession). I’ve already written past this point earlier, but I think it’s such a fun time to return to for anything flirty, with Astarion being in love but being pissed off and / or in denial about it.

Approximately 2,000 words

AO3

Being able to get by with little sleep was both a blessing and a curse. In no time at all you were ready to take on whatever the day would throw at you. You were rested, alert, ready for battle. The downside? The amount of time you had to spend alone with your thoughts.

You weren’t fully alone, not exactly. You laid on your side with your nose buried in her neck, one of your arms underneath the pillow, the other wrapped around her, your leg following the bend of hers like you were chasing her warmth, bare skin on bare skin, your bodies filling each other’s nooks so perfectly.

You could have been up and doing something useful, you supposed, but you didn’t want to waste a precious second of being able to just hold her.

You winced and sighed, having caught yourself on that thought.

Pathetic idiot...

The truth was, you knew you were living on borrowed time.

Oh you toyed with the idea of amassing more tadpoles for more powers and seeing how long and how far you could take this, but in your heart of hearts you knew this was a lunatic idea. The absolute best-case scenario was that one way or another, the tadpole would be removed from your brain, removing all its benefits alongside it.

Then, you would spend the rest of your eternal life in the shadows, forever looking over your shoulder in fear of being dragged back to Cazador.

You would never see the sun again.

You would probably never see her again.

Suddenly feeling choked up, despite not really even needing to breathe, you pressed your lips against the small of her neck, pausing then landing a few more small, soft kisses along her shoulder.

She stirred and rolled over onto her stomach, looking at you with a knowing smile through her mess of hair.

Shit.

“Oh... I thought you were asleep,” you said.

“I know...” she replied, stretching lazily. “You only kiss me like that when you think I’m sleeping.”

So many implications in that statement. Your mind immediately churned out a dozen ways to respond, deflecting, denying, joking or otherwise brushing it off. But you wanted to see where leaning into it might take you.

“Do I..? Here, I’ll fix that.”

You leaned toward her, placing a soft kiss on her lips. Just your lips brushing against hers, petal-soft. She closed her eyes and hummed in pleasure as you trailed your lips further along her skin, leaving featherlight kisses from the corner of her mouth further up the side of her face.

You were careful to keep the kisses tender rather than sensual. Not something you were accustomed to, at all. She smiled and squirmed a little as your lips dipped below her jawline near her earlobe.

“That tickles...” she murmured, making you chuckle.

“My sweet girl,” you whispered, nuzzling her ear.

Ugh, where in the hells did that come from..? you thought, startled.

She noticed. Of course she noticed.

She shifted onto her side, propping herself up with an elbow and resting her head on her hand.

“Am I? Yours?” There it was again, that knowing, quizzical look.

“Are you not?” you asked.

“Hmm... How can I tell?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” you flashed her a roguish grin, which she ignored.

“Should it be? Is there something you’ve done to claim me as yours?”

Her words might have stung, had her tone not been so playful rather than mocking. She was encouraging, not denying you.

I don’t suppose she’s going to count all the unspeakable things we’ve done to each other. I guess I wouldn’t either.

“Is that what you want me to do?” you asked, slowly tracing a finger down her arm.

“That depends... Do you want me to be yours?”

This conversation was idiotic. Why was it making you increasingly giddy?

“Come now, we have been doing this for how long? Are we really going to be coy about whether or not we like each other?” you asked, trying to sound assured rather than flustered.

She leaned forward, as if to reveal a secret for your ears only.

“That’s not quite what we’re being coy about, now is it?” she whispered, before placing a lingering kiss on your lips.

You were completely out of your depth in this kind of flirting, if one could call it that. Concentrating on the physical and sexual, dropping innuendos, hinting at promises you had no intention of keeping, teasing, arousing, adding in just the right amount of vulgarity to otherwise honeyed words to make them blush and stammer in trepidation... That you could do all day as an afterthought, all while mulling over something you had read earlier, or otherwise being a thousand leagues away with your thoughts.

But this... It was like she was playing with and delicately caressing your innermost, rawest feelings, all whilst inviting you to do the same with hers. Sex was barely even a consideration. This was an entirely different dance. And it was exhilarating.

Before you could think of what to say, she moved on.

“You know, Lae’zel propositioned me earlier,” she said, briefly burying her face in her hands and shaking her head with a quiet, incredulous laugh.

“She did what? ...And how did that go?”

“It was very... Lae’zel. I wasn’t sure whether she was offering to kill me or fuck me at first. I had to politely decline.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” you frowned.

“Should I have?” She studied you with a curious look, resting her chin on her hands. “How would it make you feel? If I accepted her offer?”

Like the whole world was pulled out from beneath my feet. Again.

“You and Lae’zel? Hmm. Sounds like something I’d pay to watch.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Her eyes seemed to be piercing straight into your soul. You had to quickly do a double-take on whether your tadpole might have been betraying anything to hers, before rebuking yourself. She wouldn’t pry like that.

Your eyes roamed around the tent as you tried to assemble some words that weren’t too far from or too close to the truth.

“Lae’zel is... exotic. Far be it for me to stand between anyone and such an... ‘outlandish’ experience. But I would prefer to have you all to myself, if it’s all the same to you. I don’t devote all that time to making sure that pretty head of yours stays on your shoulders just to have Lae’zel decapitate you in her throes of passion.”

“That’s still not what I asked, but I’ll let it slide,” she rolled her eyes. “Getting a straight answer from you is like trying to seduce a blushing maiden.”

“A riveting challenge?”

“A tiresome one. That’s most likely not worth the effort.”

How many blushing maidens have you seduced?

“Alright, fine, I admit I might be a bit jealous. ...On top of being concerned for your wellbeing, darling.”

“Just a bit jealous?” she teased.

“Matters of honour would demand that I challenge her to a duel,” you sighed.

“You have no honour. And she would crush you.”

“I know. But I would die a hero’s death. Songs about me would live through the ages. ...You might need to write them for me.”

“Sure, right after I wrote songs about how I conquered a githyanki,” she snorted. “Or perhaps songs about being conquered by one myself? I could spin it either way. Which do you think would stir more loins?”

“I don’t know and my own loins are taking no part of this. Now are you going to keep talking nonsense, or will you go back to sleep already?”

“Why, so you can sneak more tender little kisses on me?” she laughed.

You didn't really want her to fall back asleep. Talking with her kept your darker thoughts at bay. What you did want, was to feel her wrapped around you again.

“You know what? If you’re not going to sleep, you may as well carry on with your business, and I’ll meditate sitting up for a change.”

You snatched the blanket from her, making her exclaim a sharp “Hey!” as the cold mountain air touched her bare skin, and wrapped it around yourself, settling in a cross-legged position. Moments later, she was on your lap, facing you with her legs wrapped around your hips. Just as you anticipated. You smirked and accepted her in your blanket cocoon, wrapping an arm around her waist and holding her close as you kissed her.

“So, my blushing maiden,” she said as she leaned away from you, slightly, stretching her arms around your neck and resting her forearms on your shoulders. “It seems I have you backed up against a wall. I won’t force you – do what you will with your virtue. But you must decide. Will you give in willingly? Or deny me, and spend the rest of your life wondering: what if?” She leaned in to whisper the last two words dramatically. “I will ask you again: do you want me to be yours?”

You wondered if she had any idea how apt that comparison really was to how you felt.

Or how eerily similar it was to some of the tactics you yourself employed when luring in your victims. Hells, even the words were almost identical to some of the ones you’ve used. To make them surrender with reckless abandon, throwing all caution to the wind, blinded by your promises. Cattle rushing happily to the slaughter.

You knew all this. You’d seen it countless times. But just then, you also saw there was no malice in her eyes. Only something like hope that she was trying to mask with mischief.

Wherever she was leading you, you wanted to follow.

“Fine,” you said softly, looking into her eyes. “I do want you to be mine. And no, I don’t want to share you with anyone.” You felt oddly elated as the words left your mouth. “I’d feel compelled to dismember any hand that touched you, so to give me a fair chance at survival, could you stay away from Lae’zel? Please?”

She grinned and grasped your face in her hands, pressing her lips against yours.

“Good girl,” she purred, still grinning, earning herself a sharp pinch on her bottom, making her jolt before she continued. “This leads me to my next question: do you want to be mine?”

There it was. The trap beyond the lure. You saw it clear as day. And still, you wanted to follow her.

“Darling, after the past 200 years, I’m really not disposed to letting anyone else claim ownership of me”. You watched her smile falter, and you hurriedly continued before it turned to sadness or disappointment, or worse, pity, and spread to her eyes. “But I just might make an exception for you… If the offer is mutual.” You took one of her hands in yours. “So, are you? Mine?” you asked, placing a kiss on her knuckles.

Who’s backed against a wall now?

"Of course I am. As if you even needed to ask.” She touched her forehead against yours before placing another kiss on your lips. Did she have to sound so triumphant saying that? “I am yours and no one else’s. Now you say it.”

Ah, still me.

Still, you fought hard not to laugh as a feeling of relief spread warmly throughout your body. You hadn’t even noticed how tense you were.

“Alright, alright...” You cleared your throat and held a dramatic pause before continuing. “You are mine and no one else’s.”

She let out an exasperated growl and grabbed and twisted one of your nipples. You chortled even as you yelped, grabbing the offending hand and holding it behind her back. She immediately made another attempt with her other hand, which you also successfully intercepted, now holding both her arms behind her. Refusing to give up, she went for your shoulder with her teeth, with a maniacal giggle, as you laughed and tried to fend her off with your chin.

“Yes, I’m yours, I’m yours, you feral wildcat! I’m yours... Only yours.” you declared hastily into her hair somewhere near her ear, as she calmed down. “I mean it. Now behave! I always ask before I bite, don’t I?” you said, releasing her arms.

She attempted to glare at you, her eyes narrowed, but couldn’t keep her face straight and broke into a grin again.

“Well... Look at us...” she drawled, placing her arms back onto your shoulders. “Snatched up onto the nautiloid with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and now we’ve each got a whole other person.”

She looked so pleased and happy... Why..? This couldn’t last. No matter how much you wanted it to. …Could it..?

You were falling, deeper and deeper.

My love... My sweet, sweet love... Where are you taking me?

~~~~~

Next in series - Gentle warding bond

Want more of these two? There’s more. Series master list.

AO3

#astarion #baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 #astarion fanfic #astarion x reader #astarion x tav #bg3 fanfic #prying Astarion’s feelings from his cold dead hands #1st base raw sex #2nd base I anxiety vomit in front of you #3rd base we go outside during the day

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thewintersoldierdisaster · 7 months ago

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a/n: i hate this title but i LOVE this fic! i had so much fun writing it, obviously inspired by the tik tok trend lol. also when i started this fic last week, the cookies were different but then this week actually did include banana cream pie so i had to change them 😂 and then had to do a little rewrite obviously. but yeah, go check out the isles q&a on their favorite desserts bc they’re all adorable

tw: tooth rotting fluff, extremely minor insinuation of a daddy kink

word count: 2.3k

summary: you take advantage of mat’s sweet tooth to trick him into doing a tik tok video with you

“Hey,” you call out for Mat from your perch on the couch, one foot wedged in between the couch cushions and your phone resting on your thigh. You can hear him rummaging around in the fridge and the noise stops temporarily.

“Hey,” he calls back, “what’s going on?” The rummaging noises start up again and you grin to yourself. If he’s hungry, your little plan will work perfectly.

You crunch up into a sitting position and drape your arms over the back of the couch, watching Mat as he moves things around in the fridge, looking for something to eat. “Do you want to go to Chip City with me?” You ask. “I want to make like one of those TikToks, you know where they rate the cookies of the week?”

Mat’s nodding and closing the fridge before you even finish speaking. “Oh, hell fucking yes,” he grins, skirting around the kitchen island and stopping behind the couch. You reach out and tug at the belt loops on his jeans, laughing. “You know I’m always down for cookies.”

“I know,” you tease, unfolding from the couch and getting to your feet. “That’s why I suggested it. I can always count on you to validate my sugar cravings.”

He smiles his crooked little smile and readjusts his hat, the new Stay GOALd collaboration with Ralph Macchio, raking his hand through his hair before settling the hat on backwards. Your stomach flips a little at how good he looks. “Babe, we need to stop talking and start driving,” he says, totally seriously.

“Chill, Cookie Monster,” you follow him to the front door, stepping into your ratty Forces. The leather is more grey than white now and creased beyond belief, but they’re comfortable and you can slide them on and off without having to do the laces. “I doubt they’re going to run out of cookies in the ten minutes it takes to get there.”

“Never know,” Mat shrugs, tossing your car keys at you. You barely catch them, fumbling a little before your fingers hook on the beaded keychain. “Your car’s behind mine, you drive?”

You wrinkle your nose, when Mat’s home you’d rather be the passenger princess, but you also hate it when he readjusts your seat to fit his longer legs. “Fine,” you mumble, locking the door behind him, “but that’s the last bit of driving I’m doing all weekend.”

He swoops in to press a kiss to your forehead, “your wish is my command, Princess Squeaks.”

With a delighted smile, you hop into the driver’s seat of your car, turning it on while Mat buckles up in the passenger seat. He leans back in the seat, the brim of his backwards cap hitting against the headrest and popping the front of the hat off his head. “Damn,” he mutters, quickly fixing it and sitting forward. “So, wait, if you make one of those videos, what are the chances we get a Chip City influencer deal? Are we looking at free cookies for life?”

“Um, no,” you wince when you take a turn a little too quickly, clipping the curb. Hoping Mat will ignore that, you continue quickly, “I don’t think free cookies for life is a thing? Maybe some like coupons or extra point perks? Honestly, it’ll probably be nothing other than a comment and a like.”

“For life will be a really short period if you keep driving like a blind lunatic,” Mat teases you, laughing loudly when you lift your hand from the steering wheel to flip him off.

“You’re the one who told me to drive,” you counter.

Mat snags your hand out of the air and laces his fingers with yours, settling the back of his hand on the center console. “That’s only because I forgot what an insane driver you are,” he laughs, dramatically letting his body bounce forward and back in the seat when you come to a sharp stop at a red light.

You roll your eyes and make a point of driving exactly the speed limit and taking turns super carefully until you pull into the parking lot. When he hops out of the car, Mat wraps an arm around your shoulders and pulls you close to his side. You snuggle up, wrapping your arm around his waist, car keys jangling in your hand as you walk. “Babe, you can drive like Vin Diesel all you want when I’m not in the car,” he says as you walk up the sidewalk to Chip City. “Lou might consider it a breach of my contract if you drive like that when I’m in the passenger seat.”

“Breach of contract!?” You yelp, pinching his side while he lets loose one of his contagiously loud laughs. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

“But you love me,” Mat states matter-of-factly, breaking contact with you to pull open the door and hold it for you. You hum happily, immediately hit with the delicious scent of baked cookies. Behind you, Mat lets out a quiet groan and you laugh at his dramatics. “Jesus, it always smells so good in here,” he falls into line behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder.

“If I worked here, I’d be three hundred pounds from sampling cookies every day,” you comment, turning to the mirror on the wall and lining up your face with the milk moustache decal for a selfie. You nudge Mat into place next to you and he crinkles his whole face up into a cheesy grin just for you. You snap the picture and shuffle forward as the person at the register leaves, moving the line up. Mat shuffles behind you, stepping on the heels of your sneakers and mumbling apologies.

While you wait, you look at the merch on the walls, joking with Mat that you’re going to get him the cookie shaped backpack for him to put his stuff in on game days. Before he can retort, you’re at the case and the worker is asking you how many cookies you want.

“Um, let’s do six?” You say, voice ticking up in a question for Mat. He nods, barely listening to you as he squints at the cookies. They’ll be gone in two days.

“Definitely need the cookies and cream,s’mores and oh, fuck yes, banana cream pie,” he points at each cookie as he names the flavor. “Babe?”

“I’ll do the specialty ones,” you say, “dark chocolate peanut butter, white chocolate macadamia, and brookie, please.”

“I love bananan cream pie cookie week,” Mat comments dreamily, looking like Pepe Le Pew when the cartoon skunk’s eyes turn into hearts when he spots the female skunk. He grins at you when you stick your finger in your mouth, fake gagging.

“Ugh, disgusting,” you shake your head. “Your love for banana cream pie is your biggest red flag.”

The woman behind the counter boxes everything up and you tap in your phone number to get rewards points before stepping to the side so Mat can pay. He smirks at you, tapping his card against the reader, and quietly, so no one else can hear, murmurs, “say ‘thank you, daddy.’”

A laugh startles out of your chest and you shake your head, cheeks flushing hot. “No, nope. I’m not saying that, Mathew.” Your fingers tremble a little around the box of cookies.

Mat’s hand is huge and warm on your lower back as he guides you out of the store, the sudden cool air a relief to your cheeks. He chuckles and flexes his fingers against your back. “Worth a shot,” he teases. “One day I’m gonna get you to say it.”

“It won’t be of my own accord,” you wrinkle your nose at him, stomach flipping a little bit. You refuse to analyze the excitement building low in your stomach and instead march determinedly back to your car. You had a plan for today and it didn’t involve Mat being called ‘daddy’ in a public place. Or any place. Or ever.

“We’ll see,” Mat jokes, pulling open the door for you to hop in and then going around the front of the car to get in on the passenger side. You drop the cookie box on his lap and he immediately picks at the tape holding it shut with his thumbnail, ready to snag a bite.

“Wait for me to get set up!” You chastise him, flicking his fingers away from the box with one hand and pulling up TikTok with the other.

Mat keeps picking at the tape, “no one’s gonna notice, I’ll just break it in half.” He finally manages to get the tape off and pops the lid open, dramatically inhaling the scent of the cookies. “Oh, fuck yes. Babe, what a good idea.”

You grin at him and make sure your phone is set in the holder attached to your windshield so both you and Mat are in the shot. “I literally only have good ideas,” you pull the box of cookies back into your lap, ignoring Mat’s protests. “Ready?”

He nods and you reach forward to start the recording. “Hi guys!” You chirp into the camera. “Happy Saturday, Mat has a rare day off so I decided to rope him into my fun. Say hi, Mat.”

Mat looks up from his phone and parrots, “hi, Mat,” with a shit eating grin on his face.

“He’s the worst,” you roll your eyes affectionately and hold up the cookie box so it’s in frame. “Anyway, I wanted to do something different than the usual Crumbl cookie sampling, and since Chip City is in our town, I figured this was the best thing. I invited Mat, because, well, I’m not sure if you know this but my husband has the biggest sweet tooth.”

You fight to keep your face in a neutral expression, but can’t help the corner of your mouth ticking up when you see Mat’s eyebrows lift nearly into his hairline on screen. His own mouth tips down in a slight, curious frown, but he doesn’t say anything.

So you continue, “it’s not anything like my mother-in-law’s peach cobbler, but Mat will kill a chocolate chip cookie in record time.” You shift in your seat, turning to face him, and keep your gaze locked on a point in the middle of his forehead, because if you look him in the eye, you’ll crack up. “Which do you want to try first, babe? Wait, let me guess, banana cream pie?”

There’s amusement in his tone when he holds out his hand and says, “oh for sure. Hand it over!”

He squints at you and you avoid his gaze when you pass over the cookie. Pretending to think, you look down at the box, “I’m going to try the dark chocolate peanut butter first, I think. Unlike my husband,” you smile at the camera, holding up the cookie while you break it in half to show the melted peanut butter swirls on the inside, “I like my desserts a little less sweet. Lemon bars, carrot cake, cheesecake, that kind of thing. Last week was lemon berry, which is a top three cookie for me.”

You can see Mat jolt in surprise again on screen, his head swinging to look at you. His eyes are wide and his lips are fighting a laugh.

“Yeah,” Mat smirks at the camera, breaking his own cookie in half and taking a huge bite. He chews and swallows before continuing, “the wifey is pretty picky on her desserts.”

Mat’s words sink in and you do a double take, jaw falling open a little. Mat’s grin turns shit eating and he takes another huge bite of his cookie while you blink stupidly at him. “What-?” You frown, ignoring the way your heart is pounding and your stomach is clenching with the echo of Mat saying ‘wifey’ in your ear.

He licks a spot of whipped cream off the side of his thumb and your core throbs.

“Uno reverse, Squeaks,” Mat laughs. “Do you think you’re the only one with Tik Tok?”

“Oooh,” you scrunch your face up at him, “you knew what I was up to?” He nods and your hand shoots out to push at his shoulder.

“Hey!” He yelps, chuckling. “I figured it out when you referred to Mom as your mother-in-law.”

You put your cookie back in the box and tap the record button on your phone, ending the video. “I honestly thought you’d have a better reaction,” you laugh a little, pulling your left foot up onto the seat and turning completely so you’re facing Mat. You shift the box too, so it’s on top of the center console.

Mat talks as he swaps out his banana cream pie for a piece of the s’mores, a string of marshmallow connecting the broken piece from the rest in the box, “why? Not a secret that I’m gonna wife you up in the future. I like hearing you call me your husband.”

He says it so casually, so easily, that it shocks you a little. When you first met Mat, you had thought dating him would be a fun time, but you’d never imagined that you’d be here - with him talking about marriage as if it’s a foregone conclusion.

“Well,” you murmur, feeling warm and content, “for the record, I liked hearing you call me wifey. So I guess we’re even.”

Mat looks up at you, hazel eyes lit up and glowing where the sun hits his face. He looks even more edible than the cookies. “You called me husband twice, don’t think we’re even just yet…” he drags out the pause with a sly smile on his face and you think he may use the w-word again, but he just lets the silence linger, the possibility hanging in the air.

#mat barzal #mat barzal x reader #mat barzal x you #mat barzal headcanon #mat barzal fic

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unexpected-character · 1 year ago

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Hoodies and Koala

Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader

Warnings: none (if you think there are please tell me so I can add them)

———————————————————

You just got home from work and you feel so stressed and burned out however you still have to finish your report. You have to present last month's stocks to the board. You thought being the CEO would surely have perks and less load but you are dead wrong. You're still a slave of the 9-5 but sometimes because of all the projects you got to sign and check you have to bring work home with you. After you showered and changed, you settled in your home office to finish everything up.

A few hours since you got home, juggling of keys can be heard by the door. Due to how busy you are, you didn't even hear the penthouse door open and close and your girlfriend calling out your name checking if you were home or not.

As Natasha went in further, and found you concentrating in typing like a lunatic on your laptop. She saw how you were not enjoying any of what you are doing and wanted to help you out but first she have to shower and clean herself up first. She too had a long day. She just got off a mission that almost, almost went downhill due to a rookie agent that tripped the alarm wire. She had to double her efforts and knock all the hydra agents down before they get caught. Thankfully everything finished without any further hitch and just want to come home to you and cuddle.

She dressed herself with shorts and your favorite hoodie, now hers. It was big covering her shorts with it and comfy that she likes to just bury her nose in it as it smells like you.

She was by your office doorway trying to get your attention. She already have called your name a few times yet you haven't acknowledged her presence.

"Detka..."

"Moya lyubov..."

"Y/N!" She shouted, this caught your attention away from the screen.

"Hey, princess. You're home." You said looking at her lovingly. Admiring her outfit and how she simply looks beautiful and sexy without even trying.

"I've been trying to get your attention, lyubov but it seems like you weren't able to hear me and your eyes were glued to the screen."

"Sorry, baby. I've been just stressing out because we have tomorrow's monthly report and I had to finalize the numbers. Even crossing the t's and dotting i's of contracts for tomorrow."

You got up and stretched you've been hunched over the laptop for hours now. You walk towards your girlfriend and gave her a warm welcome home embrace. The height difference is just perfect.

"Princess, is this my hoodie?" Moving your head a bit to look at the hoodie she's wearing. She looked at you and said,

"Nope. This is mine now." snuggling back to your embrace.

"Uh huh, so when I was looking for this yesterday and you said you don't know where it is... you had it all along did you?" You said dumbfounded.

"Shhh! Cuddles. Can we go to bed now, detka?" She said almost in a sleepy tone.

She jumped up to lock her legs around you, she's lucky catching her like this is a second nature for you. For an avenger and ex-assassin, she can be very clingy and baby when she's with you. If someone walks in and find you guys like this, her attached to you like a koala, surely they'd think something was wrong.

"Sorry, princess but I have to finish my report first. How about I take you to bed, love?" You said while carrying her towards both your bedroom. She didn't reply and instead snuggled further as if you two can get any closer than this.

As you put her down on the bed, she won't let go. You tried to pry off her arms but she won't let go.

"Baaaaabe, I have to finish my report."

"Nooooo"

"Princess, come on now."

"No!" She said stubbornly.

You had no choice but to lift her up again. She yelped and you just chuckled.

"You're an ass."

"I told you to let go."

You walked back to your office and settle yourself down on your chair, her still snuggled on you.

She raised her head to look at you as if asking 'what the hell!?' and you just look and raised your eyebrow with a smirk.

She leaned in and kissed you passionately, as air was needed as you both stopped but foreheads still pressed and nose rubbing on each other.

She snuggled back, putting her face in the crook of your neck, feeling her lips on your neck. She gave you a small kiss. You kissed her shoulder.

"You're lucky that I love you, Romanoff."

"I love you too, moya lyubov."

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff imagine #natasha x you #jealous natasha #natasha romanoff x top reader #natasha romanoff fanfic #natasha x y/n #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff

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sunflowersbones · 2 months ago

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Stalker’s Tango

Warnings: This fic will contain NON-CON, Discussion on mental health, Psychological distress, Stalking, Violence. My warnings are not exhaustive, proceed at your own risk.

[AUGUST WALKER x reader]

18+ only. This is a dark!fic and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: The therapy sessions with your new patient have been going well lately; something that surprises you due to his initial distaste towards the mandatory sessions his unit commands. You’re glad that there is progress in some part of your life, as your own mental health seems to be slowly sinking. You chalk it up to exhaustion and stress; but as the events of your life unfold, you realise that your mind hadn’t been playing games. It had been warning you; that danger truly did lurk around the corner.

NOTE: I'm absolutely devastated that I couldn’t put this out in August; my laptop decided to die on me. I know it's not that big of a deal, but still. So for my sake, let's presume that I did post this in August cuz I'm not waiting until next year.

DIVIDERS: @firefly-graphics

You observe him as you slowly twirl your pen around; in between your fingers. He was so unlike any of the other patients you’ve ever had.

He always seems so calm and collected. His attire always put together. His clothes were just as stiff and polished as him. He seems to gravitate more towards a monotone cool palette of blues, blacks, and greys, and if he desires to experiment a little; he’ll try brown or a pale yellow, but that’s about it.

You had been having a hard time, trying to figure out if it was due to his personal likes and dislikes or if he chooses it due to a societal and corporate expectation from men’s fashion, but you dismantled the latter thought quite quickly.

His voice is always loud and clear; it never quivers, and he rarely repeats himself. He always just seems so sure of himself. You suppose that’s why he hated this in the beginning—not that he's so fond of it now, but at least he's moved on from his initial grunts and one-word answers.

It must be an offence to a man like him to presume that he is, quote-unquote, “weak”. That talking about your emotions and difficulties or having regular therapy sessions is only for those who make their way into lunatic asylums. That they; as normal citizens, are better than the others.

Even educated people cannot shroud themselves from the taboo around mental health. You of all people know that very well; you’ve dealt with it quite personally. He reminded you of your father, not just in attitude but also in tone. Both of them carry a patronizing effect in their voice, even through the most simple remarks.

Your father was a man of voice and vigour to whom even the notion of mental health was absurd. His anger, most likely contributing to his denial of most problems. People of his generation tend to be like that, while it is changing—not at the pace you wish it would.

Having a patient who does not even try to get better unnerved you a little. You had never been very persuasive, all you can do is help bring clarity. You tell yourself to keep calm; perseverance is the only way to survive in this line of work.

His eyes land on you, onto your pen, and then above you; on to the clock, you presume. In the beginning his eyes never left it, at least now they only longingly look up half way through the session.

“Well, won't you look at that, doc? Times up,” he says in a tone of farce surprise, as if he hasn’t been yearning for the clock to strike.

You heave a small sigh as a smile forms on your lips; for a man his size, he can be quite childish.

“You know, August, it’s not your job to keep up with the clock; it's mine. Your mind is supposed to be relaxed in here.”

“Of course, I simply wouldn’t want to keep your other patients waiting; you're quite in demand, you know.” Your eyes quirk up in a questioning gaze; he already seems to have anticipated it.

“This generation loves coming in here, they think that you can fix all of their problems. They believe that their minds are broken simply because they can't handle the reality of life,” his voice laced with contempt and disappointment.

“Well anyway, see you next week, doc.” His tone was determined, so you didn’t bother to keep him longer than what was required. Your half-assured goodbye was only met by the creaking hinges of the closing door.

The entire bus ride home, your mind had been preoccupied with him; you nearly missed your stop. To some people, it's just a notion; their rigidity tends to crack from the sides, but he truly believes that all of this is useless, and that’s what makes it all the more difficult. It's not just prejudice; it's a true belief. You have to find a way around this or all your work will go down the drain.

You crack your neck as you walk into your apartment, fatigue taking over your entire body. You’d initially planned on taking a warm, long bath, but now you just want to fill your stomach and pass out. You heat up yesterday's mac and cheese, while it's nothing elaborate; it's enough to fill you up. The low rhythmic whirring of the oven lulls you as you think of all your other patients; you still have to come up with a proper time schedule to alternate between all of them, and then there’s August. You’ve met teenagers who are less adamant than he is, the oven beeps as it snaps you out of your thoughts. The smell of cheese fills you with ease, and you decide not to bring work to the dinner table, you’ll think about it tomorrow.

You walk into your bedroom ready to crash when your eyes land on the bluebells you bought a week ago. You curse yourself for forgetting about it again. None of your indoor plants ever seem to survive, no matter how much you care for them. But the wild ones growing outside your window seem to have no problem flourishing as they grow out through the thin cracks of the wall.

You fill a glass up and move to water the plants. As you lean in, you notice that the soil seems damp; a small crinkle forms in between your brows. You can’t remember watering them this morning, but then again, you did everything in a hurry today. Terrified that you’ll miss your morning bus. You don’t think much of it as you place the glass down. Your bluebells seem to be retaining their colour; you hope this one won't die on you.

A strong thud startles you from your repose; suddenly wide awake, your annoyance turns into dread as you suspect that the noise was coming from inside your apartment—you couldn’t remember if you had locked the front door. Nighttime stirs up the imagination of your ears; as you sit up on your bed, your mind convinces you that you can hear low symphonies mixed in the silence. You're sure that you can hear footsteps outside the room, or was it the creak of the door? You feel goosebumps etch your entire body as you force yourself to take a deep breath.

You slowly get out of bed, careful as to not make any noise. You look around for your phone only to realise that you’d left it on the kitchen table. Now your worry increases even more; you can hear your heart beating in your chest. You’re unsure of what to do. You could simply lock the door to your room, but then what? Wait until the morning? For all you know, it was nothing, simply your paranoid nature freaking out.

Your mother tends to make it a habit of informing you about every single crime activity that pops up on the news; whether you're interested in it or not. Her own fear and paranoia seem to have transmitted onto you in an increasing degree. If you are hopefully alive by tomorrow, you’ll keep in mind to stop watching those missing persons documentary.

You slowly peep out of your room. You look over to the left, slightly straining your neck, only to find the main door locked. You heave a relieved sigh at that. You walk into the kitchen and find your phone on the table just where you had left it. The light from the streetlight fills your kitchen with a low yellow glow as you hear another thud. You look over through the window and see a truck unload some boxes, the noise now you’re certain was from this ruckus. You absent-mindedly wonder if someone new was moving in as you make your way back to bed.

The slow-moving normalcy of everyday life makes you indifferent of others in the daytime, but at night... that’s when every little movement terrifies you. You clutch your handbag around a little tighter, your head spins around every few minutes, and your feet pick up their pace no matter how exhausted you are. A pepper spray bottle has found a permanent residence in your bag. You’ve made a habit to always make sure that your door is closed and locked. You don’t want to admit it, but you're actually a little perturbed after last week's incident, mostly about your own forgetfulness.

You wonder if the stress of it is evident on your face; the raven-haired man in front of you has been rather cooperative today. He answers you without the usual quirky remarks. You wonder if it's due to his own interest in taking these sessions seriously or if it's because of the dark circles that lace your eyes. His eyes landed on your face the second he entered and has remained on them since. He looked like he wanted to say something but thought better of it; however, his inquisitive nature could only keep it in for so long.

“Not to be harsh, Doc, but you look like shit. Not getting enough sleep?”

“Sleep has been evading me as of lately, yes.”

“Why?”

“Nothing much, just work.”

“Huh, I didn’t think dealing with a bunch of paper work and people would be that hard; regret signing up for it?,” he says as he crosses his ankle onto his other leg. His condescending baritone reminds you of a familiar one, and you momentarily snap back a “no,” but you compose yourself rather quickly. Deflection—that’s what they all do.

“Every job has its hurdles, August. But we are not here to talk about mine; we’re here to talk about yours.”

“So tell me how’s work?”

“Can’t talk about it; confidentiality agreement, remember?.” He quips.

“Of course, I didn’t mean the intricacies of it. I meant, how does it make you feel? I’m sure working for the government has its own complicacies.”

“Do you enjoy your work? Does it stress you? Do you ever feel like you’ve neglected life?” His jaw clenches at that as his voice turns gruff.

“No, I do what I have to; I’m ready to make sacrifices for my work, and yes, you could say that I enjoy it. In fact, I think it’s the only thing I enjoy in life sometimes...” The last part seems to be a careless whisper, but you catch on to it anyway.

“Well, that’s not very healthy; why? Do you find life outside of work difficult? Stressful?”

“No. I just find it mundane.”

There’s something in his eyes that makes you feel like it's aimed at you rather than the conversation you’re having, but you don’t dwell on it.

The rest of your conversation carries on, and after August’s session, you call onto your next patient. Your greeted by a familiar strawberry blonde; you’d completely forgotten about her.

“Gee Y/N, sometimes I wonder how you even work when you have to deal with a hottie like that fella!.”

“Ha-ha, I survive, Nance. I survive.”

“But seriously, look at him—what an absolute specimen.”

“That he is.”

“Ohhh, I sense tension; is he the grumpy kind?”

“Spot on.”

“Hmm.. well, the hot ones do tend to be like that.”

“So how are the babies?”

“Oh great, its been great as of lately; Charlie said his first words, you know.”

“Ahh, how wonderful!; was it mom?”

The gleam on her rosy cheeks makes the answer apparent. You're so happy to see the girl you’ve now known for two years, who at first meeting was just a gloom of anxiety and sadness. She’s changed so much, and only for the better. You listen to her carefully as she continues; but even then, in the back of your mind, his staring eyes persist.

You huff as you run towards the bus stop, unable to reach on time as you watch your bus leave. You look around; the evening is darker than usual, indicative of the fast approaching winter. You have no idea when the next bus will arrive. This junction being nooked into the corner had fewer buses on this route compared to the main one. So you decide to just walk your way to it.

Your feet ache as your slippers slap onto the road. You should have left the office earlier; it would have spared you the walk. You continue on through the cold night, wrapping your arms around yourself, when you hear a soft snap behind you. You turn around thinking nothing of it, purely based on instinct.

Surprised to find yourself all alone; a tiny part of you is uncomfortable. You start to walk a little faster, restless to reach the bus stop. However, as you turn around a corner, you hear light footsteps behind you; they sound much calmer compared to yours. It means nothing; it’s most likely just somebody walking towards the bus stop, just like you. But your nerves get the best of you, and to ease your mind, you increase your pace. The second you do your followers pace increases as well. They sound much louder now; it puts your heart in a frenzy. You could see the dim light of the bus stop ahead of you. Your body sprints towards it.

You reach the bus stop a little calm now due to the lights that fill the stop; its saxe hue comforts you from the danger your mind intuits. You notice a man asleep on one of the seats. The new-found comfort of the lights and the company gives you the courage to look behind. You come to regret the decision as you feel your heart skip a beat.

A tall shadow stands a few meters away, their figure looming in the darkness. You're unable to see anything but a dark outline; but you suspect it’s a man. Even from afar, his enormous size is terrifying.

You’re so grateful to see a bus approach; you climb into it immediately as its doors buzz open and peep out through the glass window only to find nothing. Nobody’s around except for the man who was asleep on the bench; it's almost as if you had imagined a ghost up. But you know, that was not true because that little heart of yours was still thundering inside you; assuring you that the fear you felt had been very real.

The days ahead had been increasingly difficult, your fear transmuting into insomnia as you lay awake at night petrified of every little noise you hear. The chances of somebody stalking you seem ridiculous, but how many women had believed such and been the victims of an attack?

Your cautiousness skyrocketed these days, and you carried two bottles of pepper spray along with you. You’ve decided to put an installment on a car; your house was not very far away from work but enough to evoke the fear within. You could not rely on the buses anymore; you did not want to end up suffering because of their impunctual timing.

You had been searching through your cabinet to make sure you had all the files that were required. That’s when you found it, it had arrived a week ago; you remember receiving it, but you’d been too busy to check it out. August's health and history files had been finally transferred on to you; you had requested it nearly a month ago.

You skim through the papers, nearly missing it at first, but you reread the part again, and a frown forms in-between your brows. His first mission... he… he’d lied to you.

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; all clients lie to a certain extent. Especially during the initial stages of therapy, even when it isn’t a case of "pseudologia fantastica." It's just the initial distress of being vulnerable and the desire to express ones own narrative rather than the truth.

But with August... while you never really thought of it before, now you slightly suspect if August has a case of pathological lying. For some people, it's not about a grand lie; it's about the smaller details. And you're sure it’s the norm in his line of work; the lines between lying and withholding the truth tend to blend pretty soon when one is not cautious. You won't lie; you’re a little disappointed in him, or with yourself; you're unsure.

You don’t know why you thought this conversation would go easily; the clench in his jaw, the anger in his eyes, and the tight grip of his fingers clearly suggested otherwise.

“I have no idea what you're talking about, doc.”

“August please. Let's not waste our time, I know. They sent me your files. I need to have certain knowledge about my patient's history.” His gaze pierces through you at that.

You try your best to approach the topic as softly as you can. “Your mission, your first mission; you weren’t alone; you had a team... and there were casualties. You’d suffered from a severe head trauma too. It was—

“A disaster?” The grimace in his voice was mixed with pain and anger.

“…difficult. Is that why you lied? August I need you to know this is a safe space. I’m not here to judge you; that’s not what we are here to do.”

“You’re a practical person; you know that lying doesn’t help. It simply convinces you that you’ve made progress when, truthfully, you’ve just been stagnant the whole time.”

“I, we, all... all of this,” you say, waving your hand around, “we exist to help you, not to condemn you. You can open up to me; that’s what I’m here for.”

His aggression at that makes you flinch. All you hear is the scraping of his chair, and before you could voice anything, he was gone. No other patient had stumped you the way he had, and when you finally snap out of it and go out in search of him, he’s nowhere to be found.

Your day had gone by uneventfully; August’s departure had been lingering on your mind the whole day. Coming back from work, both your mind and body had been exhausted. You didn’t even bother with dinner, your eyes closing the second you meet the bed.

Your body allowed your mind to sleep for a few hours before the familiar pang of hunger stirred you awake. You turn around and feel your heart clench; an overflow of fear courses through you. Your throat constricted as you whimper; the darkened, sharp outline of the man seated before now moves forward. The small strand of silver moonlight shines onto his face.

“You tend to talk in your sleep, you know.”

Fear paralyses you completely as you stay put. He stands up and walks over to your bed, his entire frame towering over you. He stares at you for a few seconds before flinching away.

One would imagine you were the one who broke into his place to hurt him if they saw him now. The pain etched on his face changes from discomfort to anger. You hear him draw a deep breath in as he composes himself.

“You’re on my mind a lot doc.”

“At first I entertained it, it was just a harmless little fantasy. And you… you’re such a cliché, ” he sighs, “your clothes, your glasses, your office, it doesn’t help.”

“Your table is always meticulously arranged, everything’s always in order, even your stupid post-it notes are colour coded,” he hisses, “I’d wanted to throw everything off of that table and fuck you on it until you were a babbling mess.”

“Not to belittle you doc, but you look like you’d get cock drunk pretty fast.”

He turns toward you, his broad shoulders straightened as he slightly tilts his head

“I’d have my hand around your throat, tight enough for you to barely breath,” he growls, “could make you shut up for once.”

“But then you decided that you wanna fuck with my head. And now I can’t get you out of my fucking mind.”

Your eyes travel towards the door, you could just make a dash for it but he seems to have read your mind. “Don’t even try.”

Your fear overclouds your judgment and you bolt out of the bed, but you barely take three steps, before he grabs onto you and throws you back onto the bed.

“Why do you have to make this so fucking difficult.”

You try again never the less as you smack him. None of this seems to deter him, one of his hand moves to twist your arm around your back. You scream in pain, only to have his other hand warp around your throat. You try to scratch his face, shoulders, neck anything just to make him let you go.

His fingers dig into you harder, his hand now moves around to the back of your neck making you wince “Please,” you whisper as he pushes your face onto you pillow.

“What did you think, you could run away from me? I’m ten times faster that you are. The only way you got away from me is because I let you.”

“Please, please, August. This isn—

You feel him hard against your ass, as he presses himself on to you.

“I didn’t expect you to be begging so soon Y/N, why hurry? we have the whole night for that don’t we.”

Your whole body stills with fear. His hands loosens around you as he’s moves to unbuckle his belt. Suddenly, you sense a rush of energy bloom within you; this might be your only chance.

You use all of your strength to push him away. He slightly looses his balance; just as you use the opportunity to move out of the bed, his hand lands on your ankle making you fall, face flat on to the floor.

You wince as your head and nose pound in pain, your body moving as he turns you around. His hands dig into the flesh of your arms as he looks at you.

“That was your own doing. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can if I wanted to. I can make this really painful for you Y/N, but if you co-operate I’ll go easy on you, understand?”

A slight nod of your head is all you can manage as you hear the sound of your shirt being ripped apart. Your shorts and underpants gone just as easily. Your face ends up on the bed again, as his left arm palms your breast. His other hand moves to coat your cunt with his juices. You feel a rush of disgust and shame course through you.

He rubs his leaking tip on your folds, his teeth gently nipping on your shoulders. He pushes himself into you, your mouth gently parts as you feel his length inside your body. You hear him curse as pulls you up, your hands extending as you use them to balance yourself.

His hands land on you hip, “shit, your tight. Should have expected that from you.”

He begins to thrust in, slowly at first but then just as he gets comfortable his pace increases. You could hear the sound of his hips slapping into you. The girth of him nearly ripping your core apart. The fabric of his shirt and pants felt like they were made out of small metal pins as they grazed your naked skin.

Your mind still couldn’t believe this was actually happening, your eyes focused onto the movement of the headboard; the bed shaking because of him.

His hand on your hip tightens and as he spills into you, you hear a low carnal moan. You feel him soften inside you as he finally pulls out. You lay down on to your soft sheets— as he lets you go— now stained forever as you feel him trickle down your thigh. You hide your face in the pillow as you feel the tears brim your eyes; you just want to sleep.

“Ah ah, not so fast” he voice carelessly drawls as he pulls you up with your upper arm. He drags you around and before you can wonder where to, he opens the door to your shower.

The expectation is clear in his eyes and as you move in you hear him lock the door. The scalding water helps your mind from dwelling, you don’t want to think about anything right now. You’re more focused on rubbing yourself raw, nearly making your skin bleed as the hot water burning your skin cleans you.

When you come out you’re surprised to find him still there, casually sitting on your hair. He’s tidied himself up, not even a crinkle formed on his shirt unlike your ripped clothes that lay on the floor. Your eyes land on to your bed; they have a new pair of sheets shabbily placed on them. The old ones crumbled, down next to the foot it.

“You should get some rest, your body probably isn’t used to so much work.”

“Now, after you wake up tomorrow your brain will try to come up with ideas to get rid of me. You can try, but let me tell you right now you’ll have to deal with consequences. I can get really, really ugly.”

“It’s not easy to convict people without proof these days. If you try to leave, I will find you and you don’t want that.”

He stands up and walks over to you. You slightly step back, your body moving on its own as he gets closer. His hand moves to lift your head making you look at him.

“I like this arrangement a lot, so be good. We can help each other. So long as you behave I’ll be good to you.” A slight smirk forms on his features “Who knows?, I might just open up to you…doc.”

#dark!fic #august walker #august walker x reader #dark!august walker #mission impossible fallout #x reader #x reader fic

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theyhavetakenovermylife · 3 months ago

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as someone else who is also working on a huge fic project with OC's I am currently SHAKING YOU please i would love to read it holy shit yeahG?GS?GS

A New World: part 1

Bayverse!Leonardo x reader

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

A/N: I take that as a yes😂 This is inspired by a fan fiction I once read, where bayverse Leonardo was teleported into the “real world”. I liked the concept and decided to add some more details and my own imagination to the whole thing. And then it took on a whole form of it's own😂💙

Leo is 25, reader is 22 - 23.

Warnings: None so far💙

How Leonardo and his brothers ended up on top of yet another skyscraper, fighting a manic scientist in mechanic body armor, was all gone from his mind at that moment. All he thought about was a way to get that mad man to stop his rampage on the city of New York. All he could recall at that moment was him and his brothers celebrating their 24th birth in the lair, alongside master Splinter, April, Casey and even Vern, before the phone started ringing, with the news of a crazy man running through the streets of New York City. After having fought Shredder and an alien from another dimension, a lunatic in a cyborg suite shouldn’t be that hard. Though the NYPD had called the ninja turtles in to take him down, because they themself couldn’t do it, Leo didn’t see the elderly yelling man to be much more than a wanna be villain. What was it he called himself again? Dr. Horror or something like that. Yeah… not very creative… Mikey had already poked fun at it several times, to the point where even Raph found it funny.

And yet there they were, high above New York City, fighting a man that obviously had his middle life crisis waaaaay too late in his life. He was rambling, overly emotional, and didn’t really seem to have a grasp on reality.

“You and this city will always remember the name of Dr. Horror, and soon the whole world will be mine!”

“Jeez, like we haven’t heard that one before”, Donnie murmured, jumping out of the way before a robotic foot could crush him. Annoyed sounds could be heard from the old man as he tried to stomp the purple time yet another time without success.

“Yeah, you think they would come up with some new material. The same old stuff is not that scary”, Raph said darting from a robotic knuckle sandwich, causing the scientist to get more annoyed.

“Outdated plans, overused comic book lines, and a villain name that sounds like something a 9 year old made up”, Mikey said. The big robot growling yet again. “I mean, dude, what even is your villain origin story? So far you just sound like a sad Shredder wannabe. Like, at least give your evil plans some ground! It makes the fight so much more interesting and makes you seem like a real threat-”.

“Enough!”, the crazed doctor yelled, cutting Mikey off from his long ramble, before claws flew from his cyborg armor, going fast for Mikey. Leo reacted fast, jumped and pushed his youngest brother out of the way. That was when the claw closed around Leo’s right ankle and pulled him high above his head. Leo swung his katanas at the retractable arm, only to be met by a chuckle from the man inside the suite, as he started shaking the blue turtle around like a ragdoll. This caused much anger in his brothers.

“Ay!”, yelled Raph, prompting the man to stop shaking Leo. “Put my big brother down or I’ll turn ya til scrap metal!”

Just as all three was about to charge the big cyborg, the retractable arm extended all the way beyond the roof, high above street level. Leo, who at this point was dizzy from all the flinging around just hung there, clutching his katanas as he looked at the street below. Suddenly that fear of heights from his childhood was growing in his stomach once again.

“Wait!”, Donnie yelled, holding his arms out to stop his brothers from charging further.

Horror boy chuckled once again. “I take it you’re the smart one”. Donnie narrowed his eyes. “Drop your weapons or big blue will become a turtle pancake”, he said, giving Leo a little small shake.

Reluctantly the three brothers looked at each other, before looking back at Leo, who was shaking his head, telling them not to do it. But with a sigh, they did exactly that, leaving the weapons on the roof. This caused the frailing man to start with the whole evil laugh, head high with his eyes closed. Leo took the change and sheathed his katanas on his back, before reaching into his belt for his ninja stars. After a quick aiming, he threw the star, and watched as it made a small slit in the doctor's cheek, before impending itself into his metallic shoulder. Dr. H stumbled back in shock, turning towards the ninja still hanging in his robotic claws.

“I’ve always hated turtles”, growled the irritated man. The next happened so fast, that neither Leo or any of his brothers had time to react. Instead of just dropping Leo and letting him fall to the ground, he swung Leo back before throwing him far and high so hard that he had to do a spin because of the memento, sending him hurling through the air, to the sound of his scared brothers watching in horror.

Flipping and flying through the air over New York, Leo found himself disoriented, grasping at air and kicking his legs, panicking as he saw the roofs of the city go from over his head, to under his feet to over his head again, only to flip down under him once again. The ocean got closer, and he hoped that he would make it that far. But then the roofs got closer and closer. Leo’s panic only got worse. He hadn’t screamed at all while falling down over the city, but as he realized he would hit the street before the ocean, he knew he wasn’t going to make it. Leo couldn’t hear his brothers scream his name from the distance and the wind in his ears. Leo’s scream was big and loud, but just before he could be swallowed by the buildings around him, on his way down to the pavement, a big light opened beneath him with a loud bang. A loud bang that made people fall to the ground, the cyborg fall over on the rooftop before falling to the street below, with the sound of a long “noooooo”. The three remaining green brothers grab onto the roof and each other, so they themself wouldn’t fall the same heights as the cyborg scientist. They watched in fear as Leo fell into the big flat circle of light, before it closed once again with a bang, just as big as the last one, once again sending everyone to the ground. Standing back was Leo’s three younger brothers, staring at the spot where a circle of light had swallowed their older brother.

Leo heard so many noises as he was falling through what seemed like a long tunnel of light and colors. If he was screaming at that point he couldn’t hear it. He didn’t know if he was falling up, down, to the left or to the right. No feeling of gravity, yet it felt as if something was pulling him. Leo did not know for how long he had been falling through the tunnel, before landing with his face first in a pillow filled sofa. Leo was so confused and dazed, that he didn’t notice the loud bang above him, as the circle of pure light disappeared again.

Blinking and squishing his blue eyes a few times, Leo sat up on the sofa, rubbing his head. He sat there for some time, absolutely confused. No thought made sense to him, and he had no idea of what to think of the situation. He sat in a completely foreign living room, in all his green turtle glory, and from the look of the sky outside, in the middle of the day.

Shit. From the frying pan straight into the fire.

Leonardo sat uneasy for a moment, listening for any noises outside of the living room, indicating that anybody could be home. He heard nothing, other than his own breathing, his beating heart and the cars outside on the street.

Slowly standing up, Leo started making his way around the living room, looking for a quick way out. It was a bright living room. It kind of reminded Leo of April’s living room, yet it was different. There were quite a few plants here and there, a lot of books, bright colors, a pretty nice TV, along with small things here and there, like art supplies, figurines and pictures. A lot of pictures. Polaroids and framed pictures on the walls. Some looked like family pictures, others looked like friends hanging out. One thing many of the pictures had in common was this one girl. She had a bright smile, and in Leonardo’s opinion, didn’t look too bad. Must be the girl that lived here.

Leo kepting looking around the room, when he came closer to the window, he realized he was in an apartment, too high up for him to make a quick escape out the window.

“Fuck my shell”, Leo mumbled under his breath, before making his way from the living room to the next room, making sure nobody was around. Just because he couldn’t hear anyone, didn’t mean that he was alone. He knew very well that humans could be quiet, especially from the many times April had sneaked up on him and his brothers.

Leo found himself in an open kitchen. Like the living room, open, bright, colorful, filled with plants and memorabilia. Leo looked out the kitchen window, hoping to find an alleyway and a fire escape, but he was out of luck. No fire escapes and no alleyway. Instead a big open courtyard filled with people, talking and laughing in the daylight, and a pair of glass doors leading out to a balcony.

Leo cursed once more under his breath. Signing, he rubbed his face, wondering what he was going to do now. His thoughts went to his brothers, wondering how they must be feeling at that very moment. Probably terrified. They had just seen him being thrown across New York City before disappearing into nothing. Instinctually Leonardo felt bad. Guilty. Stresset. His brothers were somewhere out there, probably looking for him, fearing for his life. For a cold-blooded creature, Leo was getting really hot. His palms was getting clammy and his face was getting warm.

Leonardo did not know what to do. Heart beat raising, arms and legs slightly shaking as his three fingered hands rubbed his face once again. Leo was so out of it, that he did not know how to react when he heard the front door being unlocked. He just froze one the spot, wide eyes and heart beating harder than it had done, since fighting Krang. Leo heard somebody humming out in the hallway, putting their keys down and taking their shoes off. He could hide! One problem, where could a 6 foot something mutant turtle hide in an unknown apartment, when the person who lived in said apartment was just down the hall?

Leo got to hide. The only thing he managed to do was turn, so he could see the woman as she walked. She stopped in her place, (e/c) eyes going wide, humming stopping, smile disappearing, and if she had had anything in her hands, she would probably have dropped it at that point.

“Don’t freak out!”, Leo quickly said, absolutely terrified. “I- I know it looks weird, b- but I can explain-”.

“You’re in my house”. She cut him off, her voice shocked but calm.

“I know, and I’m sorry! I don’t know how I got here-”.

“Leonardo is in my house”. She said it out loud, in a way that made Leo unsure if she even was talking to him. Because Leo even could say what, she said it again. “The Leonardo is in my house”.

#tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt leonardo #tmnt leo #tmnt x reader #tmnt leo x reader #tmnt leonardo x reader #tmnt bayverse #tmnt bayverse x reader #tmnt bayverse leo #tmnt bayverse leo x reader #tmnt bayverse leonardo #tmnt bayverse leonardo x reader

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wifelinkmtg · 2 years ago

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Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. - Lewis Carroll, “The Lobster Quadrille,”

ONE.

There is a moment early in H.P. Lovecraft’s 1931 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth where the nameless narrator looks out from the rotting seaside hamlet where he has lucklessly ventured, to the so-called Devil Reef some ways out in the harbor, darkened by a cloud of evil rumor—and something curious happens: the narrator experiences two opposed sensations simultaneously. The “long, black line” of the reef conveys “a suggestion of odd latent malignancy,” but also, “a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim repulsion.” This bit of foreshadowing—the reef both calling and repelling the narrator—only finds its denouement at the very end of the story, after our narrator has narrowly escaped Innsmouth, the fish-like monsters who swarm in off of Devil Reef and their part-human descendants who inhabit the town in an unconvincing and repellent simulacrum of humanity. After his escape, the narrator does some genealogical research into his own troubled family history, full of disappearances and suicides, and concludes that he himself is one such abyssal hybrid. As he ages, he finds himself changing to resemble them, and in his dreams he swims among them in undersea palaces and gardens. The call of the deep becomes impossible to ignore:

So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror.

In the end, the narrator embraces the change and determines to flee to those oceanic depths, to live “amidst wonder and glory for ever.”

This is horror.

Something curious also happens in Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. Our heroine, Eleanor Vance, flees an unhappy life with a loveless sister to a haunted house, to take part in a paranormal experiment with three new friends. The haunting proceeds predictably but effectively: labyrinthine corridors, voices, unearthly cold, banging on doors, the rare apparition. The participants find themselves see-sawing between increasing night-time terror and a strangely intense joie de vivre by day, until one night, as the house seems to shake itself down upon its terrified guests in a dizzying cataclysm, Eleanor breaks:

She heard the laughter over all, coming thin and lunatic, rising in its little crazy tune, and thought, No; it is over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.

By the next line, it is abruptly morning. The terror has ceased; the house stands. Its manifestations, for Eleanor, become benign: an unseen figure catches her beside a brook,

and she was held tight and safe. It is not cold at all, she thought, it is not cold at all.

She is through the horror now, on the other side of something. She becomes part of the haunting. Her senses encompass the whole of the house. She runs unafraid through the house by night, banging on doors, laughing as she eludes the other guests. When they finally catch up to her, it seems clear to them that Hill House has crept into her, that she has crossed some line, and they decide the best course of action is to send her away, in the hopes that with time she will return to this side, the normal side, the human side.

Instead, faced with rejection behind her and her old unhappy life before her, Eleanor Vance steers her car into a tree. There are holes which admit passage in only one direction. This, too, is horror.

In the 2018 film Annihilation, Lena (played by Natalie Portman) crosses a literal barrier called the Shimmer into a dangerous yet beautiful alien landscape full of mutated creatures. During their journey deeper into this territory, Lena and her companions realize that they themselves are also changing under the alien influence. Some break under the realization. Some surrender to the change and vanish into the landscape. Lena alone returns from the heart of the phenomenon, but she is no longer herself. Is this still horror? The film has many horror elements to it, but in this last moment, as she embraces her similarly-transformed husband, it is something else.

Cyberqueen, a 2012 text game created by Porpentine, draws on a legacy of godlike malevolent artificial intelligences in fiction (AM, from Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” GladOS from the Portal games, and most importantly SHODAN from the System Shock series, who is cited as an inspiration eleven times in the Cyberqueen acknowledgements.) In this game, you awake from cryosleep on a colony spaceship where the shipboard AI has gone rogue. You fight her. You lose. You run. You are caught. You are forcibly cyberized, your mind surgically altered, your will brought into line with that of the AI. Finally, you kill or mutilate every other surviving human aboard the ship. It is filthily, overwhelmingly erotic throughout. (You can play it here, and I strongly recommend doing so if you have the stomach for it.)

This is no longer horror, is it? How can the same sort of transformation we encounter as horror in Lovecraft be encountered here as something to get off to? Well,

TWO.

I don’t remember now where I got the idea from, but there was a period in my childhood where I was terrified of the idea of time travel—specifically of the idea that someone in the future would invent it, travel to before I was born, and through the butterfly effect cause me to be born a girl instead. I used to lie awake at night circling the idea like a broken tooth. It was an irrational fear on multiple levels: I wasn’t afraid of being written out of the timeline through time travel, and I knew, intellectually, that in the timeline where I was born a girl I would have no memory of ever having been anything else, but even so, the horror of it caught me and held me by the throat.

This meant something, of course—in retrospect obvious, but at the time literally unimaginable, and it wasn’t until college, sitting at my computer in the dark in my dorm room at three in the morning, following the itching in my brain, that I unearthed alchemical knowledge: the transmutation of sex, male into female, in a dizzying profusion of form and process and—okay what I’m saying is I discovered forced feminization porn, yeah? It was revelatory. It was squalid. I was still Christian and couldn’t even bring myself to jerk off yet, so I sat there, the itch in my brain grown into a thunderous buzz, unable or unwilling to look away.

Forced feminization—I promise this is relevant—is the unwilling transformation of (usually) a man into (usually) a hyper-feminine woman, accomplished by a wide variety of means, including but not limited to blackmail, magic potions, nanite swarms, cursed artifacts, hacks or glitches in virtual reality programs, badly-worded wishes, industrial accidents, chemical leaks, abduction and surgery, medical malpractice, and hypnosis. You may notice that many if not all of these scenarios could be made into horror with little change, and in fact it is not uncommon for a poorly-written or over-ambitious forced-fem story to wind up as horror by accident (though of course this greatly depends on the tastes of the individual reader.)

(As an aside, I’d like to note that there is a great deal to learn from porn—not in terms of How to Do Sex, but about how the culture which produced it thinks about sex, and gender, and race and morality and technology and a host of other things. It’s a lot like popping the hood of a car and examining the engine. Sure, you wind up greasy and should probably wash your hands before you rejoin polite company, but if you don’t, you’ll never figure out the underlying issues. Actually, it’s a lot like horror in that regard.)

Let’s talk about a very different transformation I was undergoing at the same time: the loss of my faith. I was raised, as mentioned, very Christian—and in one of the worst strains of fundamentalist white American Evangelicalism. I was a true believer: the world for me was entirely divided between the faithful elect and the unbelievers, who must necessarily know the truth of the (fundamentalist white American Evangelical) gospel in their hearts, but had wilfully chosen to oppose Christ. The prospect of passing from the elect into the category of the unbeliever was unthinkable. The process of deconversion led only into the outer darkness and the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And yet I found myself on that precipice anyway. The worldview of FWAE is not one which survives too much contact with the actual world, and I had chosen against my parents’ preferences to go to a secular university, the better to witness to the unsaved. In the end, the process I had been mortally afraid of consisted of a couple days’ agonized thought, unanswered prayer and tearful calls to my unresponsive parents and pastor, after which I emerged into a world much bigger and much more complex than the one I’d grown up in. The serpent had told the truth after all: I had eaten of the fruit, and had not died.

Okay: is this horror? Reader, forgive me for presupposing anything about your perspective, but you’re on a horny lesbian Magic: the Gathering card art review tumblr, so I’m going to assume that losing one’s hateful, fundamentalist faith is the opposite of horrifying to you. But it was, absolutely, horror to contemplate for someone on the other side of that process.

But then... is the horror of any given transformation only a matter of where you’re standing? If you read The Shadow over Innsmouth aware of Lovecraft’s profound racism, it becomes very, very obvious that the horror of Innsmouth is the specter of miscegenation. The narrator’s horrified cataloging of the facial features of the offspring of fishmen and humans, the South Pacific origin of the sea-devil-worship of Innsmouth brought back by an enterprising merchant captain, the fear of the unsuspected poison of one’s own ancestry lurking in one’s own blood: all of this is much less effective as horror for someone living in a country where interracial marriages are protected under law and seen as unproblematic in consensus morality (assume whatever asterisks are necessary for the complicated landscape of attitudes toward interracial relationships in the United States, please, I do not have the expertise or desire to get into it here.) My point is that since 1967 (asterisk asterisk asterisk), we are through to the other side of that horror, and it turns out there literally wasn’t anything to be afraid of. The pelagial palaces and terraced coral gardens of Y’ha-nthlei just sound beautiful to me.

And it’s hard for me—though I may be in the minority here—to view Hill House as the primary antagonist in Jackson’s novel. The true source of evil is all the things Eleanor runs from and therefore brings with her: her cruel, deceased mother, her exploitation and infantilization by her sister; as well as the final polite unwillingness of her new friends at Hill House to do anything but send her away once she goes inconveniently mad. These mundane ills are what sends Eleanor Vance careening into the tree, not the supernatural will of malignant architecture.

Here, then, is the better part of my thesis: transformation horror is something that can be traversed. You can come out the other end of a transformation unrecognizable to you-as-you-were, and yet still very much yourself. Moreover, it is this navigability, this double-sidedness which so closely links the horror of transformation to the eros of transformation. Not all transformation horror, passed through, becomes plainly erotic, but it is very often portrayed as a kind of seduction, and it is difficult for me to conceive of eros without some kind of change. Desire is a kind of transformation, is it not?

In fact, isn’t it true that a great many of us have already passed through such a transformation? Recall yourself as a child, as you were when you first learned about sex: wasn’t there something repellent and unhygienic about the idea? Wasn’t there a small horror in being told, you will change, and this will cease to be loathsome and become something you desire fervently, something you seek out, something you go to great lengths to experience? ...or were you, possibly, raised in a family & culture that was normal about sex and bodies? I admit I may be generalizing my individual neuroses to some extent here. Well, stet, at the very least you can see where I’m coming from.

THREE.

Returning for a moment to the subject of porn: why forced feminization, specifically? There are—you’re going to have to trust me here—no shortage of ways in the real world by which a man transforms into a woman, and very few of them involve coercion or all the horror-adjacent setup of, say, mind-control devices or vengeful curses. Why does a simple story of a willing gender transition fail to function as erotica? Why did it take stories of unwilling transformation for me to learn I was transgender? What’s the juice ne sais quoi at play in forced-fem?

Well, how does Luke Skywalker come to leave Tatooine? He gets a mysterious message from a princess, a desert wizard tells him to come help rescue her, and... he says no. He has obligations to family here, a job to do, power converters to bring back from Tosche Station. He is enmeshed in a social web, like all of us: it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together and so forth. So in order for Luke to go on grand adventures, the story needs to murder his aunt and uncle and sever those threads of social obligation.

Joseph Campbell, monomyth monomane that he was, would say this is “Refusing the Call” and find it in Jungian shadow on every cave wall, signifying something important in the heart of humanity, but really this is just a useful storytelling tool: a story needs change, but a virtuous protagonist cannot simply abandon their obligations and designated social role to go gallivanting off into space, so change must be forced upon them.

The bodice-ripper romance novel, the rape fantasy, the forced feminization story are all operating on a similar premise: you are so wrapped in society’s web, in your socially-dictated identity, that you cannot even acknowledge your desires on the level of conscious thought. When these things are enacted on your body, you will find yourself changed by the experience. You will love what has been done to you, and you remain blameless, since it’s not as though you sought this out.

These are liberatory fantasies. The lack of consent is precisely what allows you to move beyond what is permitted you into something new.

Incantation Against Bad-Faith Interpretation because I, a transsexual, just called rape fantasies “liberatory”: I am talking about fantasies, I am talking about why people fantasize about having their consent violated, I am talking about the role such fantasies play and what they can tell us about horror and desire. I am not advocating for real people to have real bad things done to them in real life, fuck off, End of Incantation.

So then, we’ve assembled the full thesis: transformation horror is traversible to the other side, and is inextricably linked to transformation erotica, both because of the seduction of transformation in horror and because the horror of transformation unlocks regions of desire which would otherwise have remained inaccessible.

Okay, now we can talk about Phyrexia.

FOUR.

I hear the roar of the big machine / Two worlds and in between / Hot metal and methedrine / I hear empire down

- The Sisters of Mercy, “Lucretia My Reflection”, from Floodland

Phyrexia is many things—a world, another world, a faction, a kind of creature—but I think it can most succinctly be understood as a virulently contagious biomechanical body horror cult dedicated to the ultimate incorporation of all things into itself. It’s a bit like Star Trek’s the Borg, if the Borg had any style whatsoever. It draws heavy inspiration from H. R. Giger’s work—some Phyrexian horrors are barely-altered versions of the xenomorph from Alien—as well as from Clive Barker’s Cenobites in Hellraiser, whose alien BDSM schtick is especially influential on the aesthetic of New Phyrexia. It is transmitted through glistening oil, an infection vector capable of reshaping bodies and minds, and given enough time, whole worlds. The process by which a being is made into a Phyrexian, “compleation,” is accomplished via glistening oil exposure, surgery, cyberization, and brainwashing.

This essay is in many ways a response to Rhystic Studies’ latest video, called “Phyrexia is Hell”. I think it’s a well-made video, as is true of all Sam Gaglio’s work, and a lot of it is really good—the overview of the nearly-thirty-year history of depictions of Phyrexia in Magic: the Gathering art is invaluable, and the stuff about the Phyrexian conlang is unbelievably cool—but the way he identifies Phyrexia one-to-one with a pretty facile understanding of transhumanism leads him to confused and frankly silly conclusions, like placing Phyrexian compleation on the same continuum with cosmetic orthodontics. Like,

Mandible Justiciar (art by Mike Franchina)

Phyrexia is perfectly happy for you to have teeth in your arms instead of your head! They don’t care about the narrow ideal of a conventionally-attractive human smile. This is a whole other thing.

Now, I don’t want to come down too hard on Gaglio here for a couple of reasons: one, he is very good at what he does (see his videos Understanding Sagas and Red Deck Wins, for example); two, it’s reasonable to say that a full understanding of transhumanism is beyond the scope of a video essay about the tiny pictures on cards for dweebs; and three, most importantly, because I see people make this same mistake all the time. People focus on the things that are textually true about Phyrexia and miss the tension between that and the very different things currently being said by the Phyrexian aesthetic. They miss the razorverge thicket, as it were, for the mycosynth trees.

For instance: it is textually the case that Phyrexia is a sort of fascist cult stemming from the depraved machinations of a dead eugenicist god. Contrast, however, other fascist factions in science fiction: the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K worships a massive Aryan god-emperor übermensch, its battles are fought by nine-foot-tall genetically-engineered supersoldiers, and it slaps either skulls or chainsaws on every available surface. The Galactic Empire from Star Wars has legions of identical, uniform stormtroopers. Even the Borg all look alike. Phyrexians talk of ideal perfection of form and then make ten thousand completely different monsters. Phyrexians talk of perfect unity and splinter into nearly a dozen factions who can’t even agree on a name for what they’re trying to accomplish. Other fictional fascisms don’t do this—sure, there’s internal contradiction, as in real fascism, but the core aesthetic remains recognizably, sometimes indistinguishably fascist. You can easily find terminally-online Nazis using Warhammer 40K lingo with that peculiar sincerity which is indistinguishable from irony when you’ve decided the truth doesn’t matter, but it would be a lot harder to find some alt-right bozo going all-in on the Glory of Phyrexia. The aesthetic is all wrong, and fascism’s aesthetic is one of its few consistent features.

Mondrak, Glory Dominus (art by Jason A. Engle)

You see what I mean? The aesthetic evokes a sort of alien fascism, but the art itself would be considered “degenerate” by actual fascists.

Tamiyo’s Immobilizer (art by Daren Bader)

This is much, much closer to Mapplethorpe than to Riefenstahl. And people respond to Phyrexia similarly! The body horror and grotesquerie make them uncomfortable, and then they try to moralize that discomfort. This has been happening at the very least since 2011 with the release of New Phyrexia, and I have seen people on Tumblr arguing in total sincerity that people who are into Phyrexia are making themselves susceptible to real-life cult recruitment (again, the heterogeneity of form in Phyrexia is incompatible with the enforced uniformity of cults and other high-control groups. The appeal of Phyrexia does not translate into real-life cults.)

So, okay, what is the appeal of Phyrexia? Well, you get a sick fuckin cyborg body, is what. Many of us, for various reasons (disability, disease, gender, and so forth) find ourselve intensely dissatisfied with our own bodies, and wanting to radically alter them. Many of us already have. Yes, you surrender your humanity when you are compleated, but we know first-hand that “humanity” is socially-constructed and contingent on certain kinds of conformity. We’ve had our humanity doubted, interrogated, stripped away. We’ve done without. It’s not too high a price to pay, if we get to look like this at the end:

Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting (art by Chase Stone)

I’d even argue that getting to reject humanity as it has rejected you is part of the appeal of compleation. This isn’t quite transhumanism; I might call it exhumanism: the freedom to unearth a way of being that is no longer being human. This is why compleation is coercive, remember? The fantasy allows you to get to this point without making the unimaginable decision to reject not only your individual social obligations, but the idea that you could owe anyone or everyone any kind of social conformity simply for having been born into your species—and then you get to be a cool and powerful cybergorgon.

This, then, is why I don’t blame someone like Sam Gaglio (who is to the best of my knowledge both cisgender and able-bodied) for not really getting what��s going on with Phyrexia. He lives on the before side of the horror of transformation; he’s never had to cross over.

In fact, I’d go one step further here. Phyrexia has existed for almost thirty years, and in that time it’s changed quite a bit. Gaglio quotes an article by Rob Bockman in Hipsters of the Coast which comments on how the shift in the depictions of Phyrexia from 1994 to 2000 reflected shifts in cultural fears over time. The Satanic Panic shaded into multidirectional Y2K anxieties, and the necromancy of original Phyrexia mutated into technological horror. This is what effective horror does: it reflects the fears of its age back to us.

Today, Phyrexia is a seductive, corrupting influence. They have figured out how to compleat planeswalkers—the protagonists of Magic storylines; named, important characters (and Lukka)—which was previously thought impossible. Characters we knew and loved (and Lukka) are seduced, brainwashed, bodily violated, surgically altered, and returned to us unrecognizable. It is not coincidental that this version of Phyrexia is concurrent with the worst wave of anti-transgender legislation to hit the United States in decades—legislation which plays on the specters of the transsexual bathroom predator and on the brainwashed child transitioner, on the idea that transsexuality is a form of social contagion we must protect our children from even learning about. The horror of Phyrexia in its current incarnation is a mirror of our cultural fear of transsexual bodies.

Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (art by Lauren K. Cannon)

I want to be very clear here—actually, one moment, my extremely funny Abigail Schrier joke notwithstanding, I do need to tell you that the actual name of the above card is “Furnace Punisher”, which is just peak Phyrexia—I want to be clear that I am not ascribing any kind of malice or antipathy towards trans people, either intentional or unconscious, to Wizards of the Coast or the people who make Magic: the Gathering. I would be shocked if anyone there set out to make Innsmouth-style horror about transsexuals. Nor am I upset that they kind of have! Something being fun and interesting is way more important to me than whether or not it’s problematic, and it’s not like I haven’t seen way more vicious horror about transsexuals. We’ll laugh about this someday, in the coral gardens of Y’ha-nthlei, and you’ll wonder what you were ever so afraid of.

In fact, this is another reason why Phyrexia is so appealing to people like us: we are a kind of social contagion. We are carriers for the viral idea that modes of being outside patriarchy and the nuclear family exist; that gender is a marketing demographic, not an ontological truth; that damn near everything about the world we’ve built is not a necessary fact but a social construct contingent upon a half-dozen other social constructs. A new world grows from many, many seeds, and this one germinates in us.

Anyway! What were we talking aboFIVE.

//please state your name for the record

bone-wife / spit-dribbler / understudy for the underdog / uphill rumor / fine-toothed cunt

- Franny Choi, “Turing Test”, from Death by Sex Machine

Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (art by Igor Kieryluk)

There is a gravitational pull this painting exerts on people. Even people who don’t get Phyrexia find themselves drawn in, find it difficult to look away (e.g. 26:30 in that Rhystic Studies video.) I have for a long time maintained that Elesh Norn is the hottest character in Magic, and that Kieryluk’s portrayal of her is the best art in Magic, and neither of these opinions are particularly surprising coming from me. What is surprising is just how many people also converge on Miss Multiverse’s-Most-Fuckable-Pyramid-Head as, not just a sex icon of Magic: the Gathering, but the sex icon.

Well, or is it? Giant anchor-shaped porcelain mask aside, her silhouette is more or less that of a painfully-thin woman; she stands fully twelve feet tall, and we remember how wild everyone went over Resident Evil: Village’s woman who was only three-quarters of that; and though not an artificial intelligence herself, it’s hard not to place her somewhere in the Cyberqueen lineage. Like SHODAN, like GladOS, like Cyberqueen, she exerts a near-omnipotent level of control over (part of) her world; like them, she is a megalomaniacal egotist (though she cloaks her egotism in piety); like them, she is happy to render you more useful to her via surgery, brainwashing, or deadly neurotoxin. Her mask obscures where her eyes would be, and if I’ve learned anything from a decade of playing or mostly watching other people play the various Dark Souls games, it’s that people go apeshit for character designs without visible eyes (see also: the xenomorph from Alien; I did a whole thing on this subject somewhere back in the Wifelink archive.) So you’ve got a 12′ nigh-omnipotent eyeless dominatrix mostly shaped like a skinny woman, which is maybe pushing a whole lot of buttons at once for a lot of people.

As a character, we don’t know much about her: at some point, she became undisputed leader of the Machine Orthodoxy, the cultiest bit of New Phyrexia. At a later point, she became the extremely-disputed leader of New Phyrexia as a whole. She likes long walks on the beach and multiversal Phyrexian dominion, you get it. There is, however, one good story featuring her, and it is “A Garden of Flesh” by Lora Gray (sorry to give you additional reading in a five-thousand-word essay.) The story is interesting because it is the rare story told from a Phyrexian point of view, and because it flies in the face of many of our assumptions about Phyrexian interiority. Phyrexians, we’re told, lack souls. They’re unfeeling, more machine than man. They most certainly don’t dream.

“A Garden of Flesh” is what happens when Ashiok, planeswalker architect of nightmares and an eyeless smokeshow in their own right, gets curious about whether they can induce nightmares in a Phyrexian mind. What follows is a curiously-effective piece of body & transformation horror, told from the point of view of what is supposed to be the awful endpoint of transformation horror. What does a perfect, powerful biomechanical creature fear? The organic, soft, spongy. Putrefaction. Decay. What does such a creature fear becoming? Human.

I didn’t devote a fifth of this essay to Elesh Norn just because she’s unbelievably hot (although dayenu), but because of this story, and how it complicates our thesis. The horror of transformation is traversible, yes, but what will you find on the other side? More transformation. More horror. And transformation is inevitable: who of us are who we expected to be? Who of us still hold dear the precious things of childhood? And even you few who are raising your hands right now, you too will experience transformation. Should you live long enough, you will find yourself changing. Your body and mind will grow rebellious, unreliable. You will grow old. You will decay.

And yet—it’s a matter of perspective, of where you weight your focus, isn’t it? There will always be more transformation and more horror, but there will always be a way through it. There will always be another shore upon the other side. You will change. You will become unrecognizable to who you were before. You will be fine.

Incompleat Bibliography & Further Reading/Viewing/Playing

Rhystic Studies, “Phyrexia is Hell”, 2023. H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth, 1931. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, 1959. Alex Garland, Annihilation, 2018. Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, 1967. Ken Levine, System Shock 2, 1999. —never played it myself. Mostly I just open up a youtube video of SHODAN voice lines when I want to get belittled by an AI dominatrix. Valve, Portal 2, 2011. —there is a lot more to be said about GladOS and Elesh Norn specifically and their respective fraught relationships with the idea of their own humanity. Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Cyberqueen, 2012. —whence my chapter header screenshots. Seriously, this game fucks so hard. Franny Choi, Death by Sex Machine, 2017. —Choi is making extensive use of cyborg metaphor to address the specific experience of being a Korean-American woman. This is very different from anything I’m talking about, but it also always felt extremely relevant to me as a trans woman. Subaltern-to-subaltern communication. Lora Gray, “A Garden of Flesh,” 2022. —it’s no accident that the author of the one good story told from a Phyrexian POV is nonbinary. hbomberguy, “Outsiders: How To Adapt H.P. Lovecraft In the 21st Century”, 2018. Jacob Geller, “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism”, 2019. Caitlín R Kiernan, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, 2012. —only tangentially relevant, except insofar as it recontextualizes the Lewis Carroll line I open the essay with, and insofar as it is my favorite novel and I’m writing the bibliography. Debatable whether it counts as transformation horror, and I imagine the author would bridle at its being described as horror, but nevertheless: you should read this book.

#magic the gathering #phyrexia

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