#sonic with fire coming from his chest is so cool
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enthusiasmize · 8 months ago
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MAKE BELIEF REBORN!
Words cannot express how much I absolutely adore this game. Today, I redrew the beautiful box art of the game. If you look real close, you will notice that Sonic's hands are really messed up on the box art. I tried my best to keep them the same while making them less messed up. I also tried a heck ton of things. Like the chromatic abberation, textures, making Sonic cel-shaded but the background soft shaded.
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erictmason · 1 year ago
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“BOUND FOR FREEDOM, YEAR FIVE, DAY FOUR: “Game”
“A Game of Thrones”
"There's no avoiding it, is there?" The tiredness in Sally's voice was clear, but Sonic could tell it ran much deeper than mere physical exhaustion. The two had been on the run for quite some time, and he had never heard such a weary tone in the princess' words before. "In my experience, that's how it usually goes with the worst stuff," he replied, trying to play it cool without sounding dismissive.
Sally drew her knees close to her chest, ears flattening to her head as her gaze turned to the simmering camp fire. "...I've always known my father was a hardened man," she said. "I was his prisoner as much as his daughter, after all."
She fell silent then. Sonic watched the fire dance in the reflection of her eyes. "But...?" he prompted softly.
It took a moment before Sally reacted. "But even after I met you...even after I learned how cruel a King he really was..." She paused again, arms tightening around her legs. "...somewhere, deep down, I think there was still a part of me that hoped..." A low sigh mixed into her words, "he could still see reason. That somehow, I might be able to...talk him down." She let out a low, coughing laugh. "I know how foolish that sounds, but-"
"It doesn't," Sonic quickly spoke up. "Hopin' that things can be better...'s'what keeps people like me..." He rolled his fingers along the ground. "...like us...going."
Sally's eyes moved from the fire to the hedgehog. "...I suppose it is," she said. Then she looked away again, now into the rising smoke drifting into the night sky. "Now, though...we know. I know. He sent Elias...my own brother...to kill me." Her voice grew a little more ragged with each word. "He was prepared to sacrifice both of his own children to hold onto his power." Sonic could see the growing tension in her shoulders...her hands...even just her brows. "There's no other way. If this world is ever going to be free...he has to die. And I have to kill him."
The resignation in those words struck Sonic. He realized then it was why he'd been so keenly aware of the difference in Sally's tone from the very beginning. It was the first time he had ever heard defeat overtake her spirit. He did not care for the feeling it stirred in him. "Maybe," he said, "...or maybe not." Sally closed her eyes then, letting out another bitter sigh. "Don't get me wrong," the hedgehog continued, "however all of this ends...it was never going to be easy. But you..." He chuckled just a little, in spite of everything. "...you've already surprised me in a whole bunch of ways."
The squirrel's eyes popped back open, and she suddenly turned her gaze to the hedgehog. "You said it yourself," he told her. "The King was ready to see you and Elias dead t'get his way. But because of you...that's not what happened. You and your brother are both still alive."
"For now," she whispered back.
"Yeah, for now," Sonic said. "Folks like me? 'For now' is all we can ever count on. It matters, a lot." His fingers flexed lightly, as if remembering a certain sensation. "I'm just sayin'...maybe better things aren't possible for the King."
And with as much sincerity as he could find, he smiled for her. "But that doesn't mean they aren't still possible for you."
((lol yeah my plans for keeping pace with my own Event Week just completely fell through this year, so enjoy me playing catch-up over the coming days even more so than usual. XD As for this particular pic, I decided to take the chance to revisit that "Empire" AU of mine I keep teasing at.))
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sonicasura · 1 year ago
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Personal Headcanons #4
Some more headcanons for you folks but this one is gonna be a bit special. I'll be including an OC and an AU version of a character as well! Enjoy!
Knack
Absolutely shy and skittish in the first two weeks of his creation. It wasn't uncommon for Doctor Vargas or Lucas to find Knack hiding somewhere. A few spots were creative while some... I think the 13 foot fellow made out of relics hiding behind a potted plant is very obvious.
Sporadic copycat. Knack tends to copy certain things he sees from actions to basic body movement. Blinking? Definitely copied despite not needing to. Homing Attack? He saw Lucas play Sonic once and thought it was cool. Knack even mimics the Doc's way of stimming which is tapping his fingers to make a random beat.
Can actually purr funnily enough. Even when he's in his smallest form, 2'6 and mute, Knack somehow able to purr. The only explanation the Doctor could think of is the chest orb is just copying the action via a loud acoustic hum. Still doesn't stop Knack from rumbling like a mini jackhammer as a 32' giant.
He sometimes hates being small. Without the ability to use relics to manipulate his size, Knack is effectively mute and has difficulty pulling down a large lever. Although his 'cute' appearance doesn't scare the crap out of people like a relic behemoth with sharp claws, large teeth paired to a scary mug.
Jim Lake Jr (Half Troll)
Has multiple cases of dysphoria after being transformed. Sometimes Jim thinks he's smaller like as if he was still human. Blinky or Claire had to pull him out whenever he got stuck. In need of food therapy too as Jim keeps trying to eat human food only to make himself sick later.
Sensory overload in the smell and hearing department. Jim tends to get overstimulated so much that sometimes he will just shut down. Claire gotten him some noise cancelling headphones while his troll mentor got a face mask to help with his heightened sense of smell.
Gets the zoomies. Considering he's technically an infant in troll years despite being 16-17 half human, Jim has a LOT more energy to burn. Blinky might've stolen a drone for his half troll student to chase. No one wants to deal with a hyperactive kid on a long ass exodus fron California to New Jersey.
Decides to learn how to make troll food. Jim can't really eat most of the stuff he used to as a human and eating just utensils tends to get stale. Plus he misses being able to eat his own cooking. Blinky got him a lot of cooking books and tries to procure any ingredients he can.
Tikki Cho (OC)
Likes collecting various stuff akin to a tame hoarder. Tikki has an organized stash of various items from books, collectible figures, movies and videogames. Any duplicates are given to children related charities, the local library or friends.
Tikki's love language in general(both platonic and romantic) is physical affection. She likes to hug or nuzzle people if given permission. Even holding hands is enough for her. It's easier to notice Tikki's Angora Rabbit traits as it isn't uncommon for someone's arms to vanish in her fur via hug.
There are often misconceptions when it comes to Tikki's eyes. Some people tend to think she's blind or imagine what her full face looks like. A bias stemmed from how her hair practically covers everything the nose. Tikki politely clears any misconception whether verbally or brush her hair aside to show her green eyes.
Rarely curses. Tikki doesn't swear much as she doesn't care about foul language in general. Is in the 'Will Say Fuck' section cause any big emotional reaction guarantees a curse from her. Rage tends to get the most.
Jim Lake Jr (Beastformer/ Troll or More)
Has accidentally set trees on fire multiple times with his horns. Jim had quite a temper when he was younger which usually led to fire shooting out than smoke. He gotten better since he began living with Barbara but it still happens.
Mischief maker. It isn't uncommon for Jim to prank others in the dead of night. Most of his antics are harmless like burying someone's bird fountain in acorns or a water balloon trap at the door. Although folk he doesn't like will find a bite taken out of their cars and goats in their backyard.
Definitely had to take a bath multiple times cause he got really dirty. Sometimes punk teenagers would dump paint over him in vehicle mode or Jim lands to a big mud puddle in beast mode. Barbara always hoses him down as going through a car wash feels too weird.
You know how a octopus will suddenly punch a fish out of spite? That's Jim right here but it's just a bad habit. In vehicle form, he often opens his car door just for a cyclist to crash into it or punch an unsuspecting troll before hiding his robotic arm. In Beast form he just headbutts people like a goat. Jim lightly tap his horns against Barbara a few times at best and rammed Strickler twice at worst.
And that's it! Until next time folks, I'll see you later!
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sixpossumsinatrenchcoat · 2 years ago
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Regrowth
(I wrote ch 1 as a oneshot, but life comes at you fast.)
Basil sleeps on his side with his knees hugged to his chest, like a seed that’s only just begun to sprout. 
It’s warm. He’s warm and there’s an arm draped heavily over him. When he starts to stir, it tightens around his belly.
“Mh,” he mumbles. “S’ny?”
The arm slides up his chest, pulls him in closer. 
“You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type,” a voice rumbles in his ear. Not Sunny’s. Aubrey’s. Aubrey. He’s in bed with—
Basil is suddenly, violently awake. 
“Ohhh,” he whispers. “Oh, wow.” 
There’s a rough little snicker, a puff of warmth against his neck. “I haven’t even done anything.” 
“M-Maybe you could, though?”
“Heh heh. Yeah, I think that could be arranged.” 
So... The good news is, Aubrey likes him back. Even though that’s insane, and illogical, and completely impossible… Against all odds, it also appears to be true. 
—Or is that the bad news? Basil isn’t sure. Because an unrequited crush is, it’s—inconvenient, obviously. Personally. And of course it’s more than a little painful. But at least it’s self-contained. The only one who gets hurt is you. You can’t blow up a relationship that doesn’t exist. 
Requited feelings, though. Dating, though. That’s—wow. That is a lot more pressure. There are a million trillion ways it can go wrong, even if you’re a normal person who doesn’t go around systematically setting fire to everything you love.
So… Once more from the top! The good news is, Aubrey likes him back. The bad news is, Aubrey likes him back. And the really bad news is: there is no way that Basil isn’t going to fuck this up.
###
Aubrey’s cute in the morning. Obviously. Aubrey’s always cute. She’s cute when she kicks down the door to his apartment on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and she’s cute when she’s picking a bar fight with some loser who won’t stop hitting on the nice girl she met in the bathroom. Aubrey is cute with a bow in her hair and a spark in her eye, and she’s cute with a bat in her hand and blood in her teeth. 
(Basil squeezes his eyes shut, a little overwhelmed. She’s just. She’s so unfairly cute.)
But she’s especially cute in the morning. Her eyes are puffy and her voice is scratchy and she’s unusually soft, not yet armored in her usual threat-display of bravado and brute force. By light of day, Aubrey is fiercely self-reliant. But in the gray haze just after waking, she's almost needy. When Basil moves to sit up, she grumbles and pulls him closer. 
“Nnn…no.”
He giggles. “No?” 
Aubrey’s grip tightens. “...F’ve more minutes.”
“Ehehe…” He wouldn’t mind if she asked for five more days. “Okayyy.”
Waking up with Aubrey is nothing like waking up with Sunny (which, for all its benefits, is not unlike cuddling a bag of hammers). Aubrey is soft all over. The small of her back, the nape of her neck. The wild tangle of her hair. Even the short fuzz of hair on her legs is flour-fine, like goose down. She smells like salt and honeydew, musky and sweet. 
Basil doesn’t realize that he fell back asleep until Aubrey’s alarm goes off. Violently. With all the sonic force of a pipe bomb.
Basil jerks awake like his life depends on it. Aubrey doesn't even flinch.
“Aubrey?” he whispers. Then he realizes that whispering is probably not all that helpful, in the circumstances. He tries a gentle shake instead. “Auuu~breeyy. Do you want me to turn off your alarm? Or do you have to get up?” 
“..F’ve more minutes…”
“I think it’s been a little more than that.” 
She cracks one eyelid and squints up at him. “Ohhh… Cool hair. Cute.”
His hand flits to the end of his hair. He’d completely forgotten about that, given everything that happened after. Wow, he was totally right. Makeovers really are a great date idea. Sunny is going to eat his words. 
Aubrey blinks a few times, bleary. Then all at once, she stiffens. “Wait. Is that my alarm?”
“D-Definitely.” Basil prefers to wake up gently. Soothing vocals, minor chords. Cat Power, Bon Iver. Widowspeak. Joni Mitchell, if he’s feeling really lively. 
“Fuck.” 
She rolls toward him and then swings a leg over him, trapping him against the sheets. She’s so so close. Her hair falls in sheets around him, blocking out everything else. A total solar eclipse. 
“A-Aubrey?” 
She presses in closer and then, just as his eyes fall shut, kisses him on the forehead.
“Oh,” he mumbles, strangely disappointed.  
“Heh heh. Sorry. Just wanted to see that one more time. But my mouth tastes like a dumpster.” She rolls off of him and roots around in her hamper for a sports bra; gives it a quick sniff and grimaces, but pulls it on anyway. “I’d like to make you breakfast, but I kinda gotta run. Forgot I agreed to cover someone’s shift in—” She glances at her phone. “—yikes. Like… twenty-something minutes. You can stay as long as you want, though! I won’t be back till late, but, you know. Mi casa es su casa. Or if you’re cool to leap into action, I could walk you halfway?”
“I’m coming!” he says hastily. He’s sure that Aubrey’s distressingly hip warehouse-mates are very nice people, but that doesn’t make them any less terrifying. 
###
Their departure gets briefly delayed when they climb out of the basement and find out that it’s pouring. Basil looks despairingly at his pants, which are real linen and also really very pink. 
Aubrey follows his gaze and groans. “Guhh, okay, let me get you something else.”
“I don’t want to make you late…” 
“I’m already doing it!!” she shouts, from halfway down the stairs. 
Half a minute later she’s bounding up with a long gray skirt in one hand and a pair of sweatpants in the other. “Sorry, jeans totally suck in the rain, but I didn’t know if—”
Basil’s already stepping into the skirt and sliding out of his pants, which he rolls up neatly and slips into his knapsack. “I’ve never seen you wear this! It’s cute.” 
“You’re cute.” Aubrey yanks the door open and nods at him to lead the way, slipping him an umbrella on his way past. Basil looks at it and frowns. It doesn’t look like she has more than one. 
“You’re going to get—”
“Fuckin’ soaked, yeah,” she says cheerfully. “Aw, c’mon, don’t look like that. I’m a bike jockey, remember? Staying dry was never in the cards.”
###
She walks her bike beside him for the first half a mile, undaunted by the deluge. Basil is very slightly daunted, but it’s easy to feel brave with Aubrey leading the charge. 
The rain makes her cheeks flush. It beads in her eyelashes, makes her eyes sparkle. And it makes the world feel appealingly small. The patter of falling water washes away the clamor of the city, and blurs the stares of passersby to a vague faceless haze. It feels a little like they’re the only two people in the whole harbor. It’s not a bad feeling. 
When their paths diverge, Aubrey gives him a guilty smile.
“I really am sorry to run out on you,” she says, swinging a leg over her bike. “I’ll make it up to you. So for now just—I guess—try not to freak out too much? Uh… This wasn’t a one-off, it’s not all in your head, I haven’t taken a blow to the head in weeks… Am I missing anything?”
She’s not off-base, but Basil feels a little wounded anyway. “I’m not made of glass.”
“Thank god for that,” she tells him, and winks. “I’d hate to break you. Sunny’s home?"
“H-He should be.” Shouldn’t he? Sunny doesn’t have any classes today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s home. Oh, god. It hadn’t even occurred to Basil that Sunny might not be home. Who’s going to stop him from being insane if Sunny isn’t home?
Aubrey looks at her phone and grimaces. “Sorry, I can’t get away with being any later than this. But I’ll see you?” 
“Don’t tell anyone,” Basil hears himself say. “Y-Yet. Sunny, and the others... I don’t think I’m ready to… I just think it still feels. Private.”
“Easy,” she promises, pedaling away. “I’ll text you!”
Alright. Okay. That makes him feel a little calmer. If no one knows what happened, last night can remain… a sort of waking dream. A kind of quantum state, where it only happened if either Basil or Aubrey are thinking about it. 
(...Basil is definitely thinking about it.)
The warmth swelling from his chest feels almost too large to contain. For a second he can’t stop himself from grinning, a big dopey smile hidden by the wind and rain and Aubrey’s umbrella. Aubrey likes him. Aubrey likes him. 
It’s almost inconceivable. If they hadn’t spent the last four years painstakingly piecing together the shards of their broken trust, he’d assume it was a prank. But Aubrey wouldn’t do that. Sometimes she doesn’t think about what she’s doing until after she’s done it, but she’s never cruel. Which means that she maybe actually likes him. (For now.)
It’s good. It’s good, it’s impossible, it’s insane, it couldn’t possibly have happened. It couldn’t possibly happen again. Why would Aubrey want to date Basil? Basil wouldn’t even date Basil. Dating Basil sounds like some kind of grim Sisyphean torment, divine punishment for hubris or blasphemy or committing the wrong kinds of war crimes. A fate much, much worse than death. 
God, he’s pathetic. Aubrey’s been out of sight for two minutes and he already can’t believe that she’d ever look his way. And because no one else knows about it, it’s almost like it never even happened. Like the whole night was just some kind of waking dream.
Basil unlocks the front door with shaking hands and bursts into Sunny’s room.
“I slept with Aubrey,” he blurts out. Oh, god, what is he doing, that is the absolute worst place he could have picked to start. He just asked Aubrey to keep it a secret and now she’s going to know that he’s not just a tweaked-out little freak, he’s also a hypocrite. “N-No. Sorry. I didn’t—Let me start over. I might be— I think I’m dating Aubrey???? But I can’t understand why she would want to, if it’s a guilt thing or some kind of, I don’t know, penance, or something?” 
Sunny looks dubious. “That doesn’t sound like Aubrey.”
“R-Right, but—” Hm. No, it really doesn’t. Aubrey mostly does what she wants. “Um. Um, but— Even if she did really l-like me, it’s… God, it’s almost worse. It just means that when I m-mess everything up, it’ll hurt her, too, and not just me. Everything is f-finally good again and now I’m about to Yoko Ono our whole world, our entire family, just because I have some stupid crush?”
“The Yoko Ono thing is mostly a misconception.”
“You know what I mean, Sunny!!!!!”
Sunny nods evenly. “But I’m not worried.”
“Why not????”
“Well. I guess I think… If killing Mari didn’t break us up. Probably dating won’t either.”
“...R-Right.” There is an undeniable logic to that, yes. “But—!! No, yeah, you’re p-probably right.” 
Sunny gives him the look that roughly translates to, Obviously. “Did you have fun?”
“Huh?”
“Sleeping with Aubrey.”
“I didn’t mean to say it like that!!!” Basil wails. “...B-But. Um. Yeah. A lot. She’s… really cool, huh? She’s, like. Ehehe... She’s, wow, she is really sort of ridiculously cool.”
Sunny nods firmly. “Then I think it’s fine.”
“I agree with Sunny!” Kel chimes in, popping up from the mountain of blankets heaped behind Sunny. “Oh, woah! Cool hair, Basil!” 
Basil literally falls over. “Kel??? S-So you—I guess you guys… worked things out?” Kel and Sunny have been doing the will-they-won't-they thing for ages. But it looks like they finally actually did.
“Oh. Yeah,” Sunny says calmly. “And Kel and I are in love.”
“Ehehe,” Kel chuckles, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Totally.”
…Like it’s that easy.
For some people, maybe it is. Kel seems like the type to love recklessly. Obviously Sunny is a more complicated case, but. It’s like the years he spent alone instilled him with a certain carefree nihilism. Like all the fear was burned out of him, and now there’s nothing left in the world that can scare him. 
Not like Basil. For Basil, fear and love have always been two sides of the same Mobius strip. He doesn’t even know what it would mean to love without fear.
He can feel it even now, jolts of lightning fizzing in his blood. It’s with him always, always readying to run. 
Basil’s therapist says that his anxiety is a survival response. It’s just his brain doing its best to protect him against predators and bookkeeping errors and grief and embarrassment and heartbreak. She says that he should try to sympathize with it, if he can. Some of her clients find that it helps to think of it as—a sort of pet. A very poorly-trained, poorly-socialized, violently reactive pet. Like a high-maintenance working breed whose owners really only wanted a puppy, so now it stands at the foot of the stairs all night and screams. 
He squeezes his eyes shut. He shouldn’t have told Sunny. Not like he should never have told Sunny, but he—he should have asked first, at least. He should have texted Aubrey to make sure it was okay. He's familiar with the old, 'ask for forgiveness, not permission’ gambit, but it's always struck him as dangerously optimistic, and just all-around ill-advised. Because some things can never be forgiven. Some mistakes are too big to forget. 
When he opens his eyes, Kel is watching him worriedly. “You okay, dude? Anything I can do?”
“I have to text Aubrey,” Basil says, overloud and abrupt. That might be the biggest thing he learned from the black hole of his past. The longer you hold onto a secret, the worse it festers. Rotting away at your insides till there’s nothing else inside you. So when you screw up, the safest course of action is to come clean, immediately, and skip to the part where everyone’s already mad at you. Because you’re going to get there anyway. All you get to decide is how long to torture yourself first. 
Hi Aubrey. I just wanted to apologize. I know I told you to keep it a secret but I panicked and accidentally told Sunny, but I didn’t see that Kel was here too, so I guess it’s not a secret anymore. I know I’m the one who asked, and I understand that it was really hypocritical of me. If you want to talk about it I’m around all day but if you don’t I don’t blame you. It’s been less than a day and the FIRST thing I did was break a promise and that’s obviously not a *great* sign so if it changes how you feel, I definitely get it. And I’m sorry that this message is so long, I already made you late and I really don’t mean to waste your—
It’s suspiciously quiet. When Basil glances up, he finds Sunny tapping away at his phone. 
“What are you doing??? Y-Y-You’re not texting Aubrey, are you?”
Sunny gives him a scathing look. “Of course not.”
Basil breathes a sigh of relief. Right. Right, of course not. Even Sunny knows better than to do something like that.
“I’m texting Hero.” 
Basil chokes on his breath. “Um??? About— About you and—”
“No.”
“About me and Aubrey???”
Sunny nods. 
“Why???????”
“I’m not good at this stuff,” Sunny says, shrugging. “Neither is Kel. No offense.”
(“No, yeah, I am super not good at this stuff!”)
Basil looks from one to the other. “But—what even is ‘this stuff,’ though?? I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about???”
Sunny raises an eyebrow. “So you’re not freaking out?”
“I’m—” Well. Well… Well of course he’s freaking out. But it’s not like that’s particularly unusual. It definitely doesn’t merit an emergency summons for their most chronically overworked friend. 
Sunny just shrugs. “I told him no one’s dying.”
###
Hero bursts in 45 minutes later, looking windswept and a little gray around the eyes. Somehow, the rain just made his hair look even more artfully tousled, even though it makes Basil’s hang in lank chunks and then frizz up like a dandelion gone to seed. 
“Is everyone okay??” Hero demands. “Sunny said there was a—“ He squints at his phone. “‘Non-medical emergency?’ What’s going on?”
“Basil is dating Aubrey,” Sunny says calmly, from the couch.
“Oh, uh—congratulations? Or—” Mid-word, he notices his brother, who's wrapped around Sunny like a huge spindly overcoat. Hero's eyes bulge. “Sunny??? Are you— After we, uh, talked last night, did you guys…”
Sunny’s eye glitters. “…Onii-san.”
Improbably, Hero turns bright red. 
“I hope that one day, you can think of me as a part of your family,” Sunny tells him solemnly.
Hero massages his temples, at least in part as an excuse to hide his face. “Sunny. You are part of my family.”
“Wow. I never thought it would happen so fast.”
“We must be really good at this!!” Kel agrees. 
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upalldown · 1 year ago
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King Krule - Space Heavy
Fifth album under the King Krule moniker from Archy Marshall, the indie trip-hop singer-songwriter
7/13
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A King Krule song tends to sound woozy, even slick, until you get close enough to smell the rot. Blue notes curdle in grimy pools of reverb. Hooks wilt in the muck. Then he sets loose that monstrous voice and it hulks through the swamp, holding each delicate line aloft like a swaddled newborn. It is the voice that protects the poetry, neither viable without the other. Each signals vulnerability and strength; each signals the pursuit of absolute authenticity. Since 2017’s The OOZ, Archy Marshall has cooled the fire in his lungs. But even his prettiest songs seem negotiated out of that old pact with rage.
Marshall is now 28, father to a four-year-old girl, and he wrote much of his fourth King Krule album in C major. But aside from naptime ballad “Seaforth,” Space Heavy subverts the key’s easy charms. His chords are arpeggiated as if by torture, drawn and quartered across wide, yawning bars. Any melodious pleasantries occur in spite of Marshall and Dilip Harris’ production—the clogged frequencies and sonic glop that make Krule’s dwellings so oppressively dank. The contradictory feeling of claustrophobia in vast spaces evokes the sound worlds of Arthur Russell and, lately, Mica Levi and Tirzah—expressionistically abstracted, gorgeously inhospitable. Even Space Heavy’s alt-rock songs sound twinned in spirit with Levi’s recent LPs, stirring the sonics of grime and dub into some listless form of ambient grunge.
Marshall seems pretty sad, as usual, and that seems to make him angry, as usual. But not angry like he was—perennially thwarted by the social system or romantically pummeled by whatever woman. “Flimsier” spins a gorgeous, creaking lament for a disintegrating relationship; “Hamburgerphobia” comically frames a lover’s jibes as “harsh” but “valid.” “From the Swamp,” a sunnier postcard from domesticity, describes a nagging temptation, a nostalgic throb, that he finally resists. “If it’s from the swamp,” he murmurs, flirting with the anthemic, “Then back it goes.”
As his melancholia comes up against the demands and rewards of fatherhood, Marshall experiences love in “a fugue state,” feeling himself “separate into the minutest minuscule gaps of time and space,” as he grumbles on “Hamburgerphobia.” His existential displacement manifests in a preoccupation with space: He sings of vacuums, pauses, in-betweens; empty heads, chests, and stomachs; the incomprehensible gap between one consciousness and another; the way parental love can close it.
The fixation on transitory states reflects Marshall’s long-held antipathy for rock and pop form, his shift from the primacy of hooks to vaporous transitions and antic ad-libs. On Space Heavy, his most straightforward, live-sounding production since 6 Feet Beneath the Moon yields mixed results. The barren feel suits uproarious highlight “Pink Shell,” with its James Chance-via-Big Black jitters, and Ignacio Salvadores’ sax contortions on the otherwise dreary “That Is My Life, That Is Yours.” By contrast, “If Only It Was Warmth,” a fierce plaint in live recordings, sounds pallid and defanged, though the similarly economical “Wednesday Overcast” gleams, closing the album with conspicuous neatness: “My head was empty/My life was discreet/A lot has changed/Now a lot means to me.”
What is haunting, and Krule-ian, about those lines’ delivery is their palpable anhedonia—he sounds, for all his resolute purpose, as fatalistic as ever. His supposedly fulfilled narrators are granted a fate little better than nihilism. Their burly melancholy emanates from a dysfunctional masculinity that muddles ego and love and self-loathing, that stokes paranoia and distorts beauty, but that can express vulnerability because it needs, above all, to not be fake. One interpretation of Space Heavy’s limited scope is that Marshall, knowing all this, has grown wary of masterpiece thinking and the macho ideal of tortured genius. His songs have always felt close to home, charcoal-smeared with London dusk and the nocturnal cadence of London jazz. On Space Heavy, for the first time, the great London singer-songwriter’s ambitions feel accordingly local, too.
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https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/king-krule-space-heavy/
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lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks · 3 years ago
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fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh
yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it
this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly
and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers
so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found
this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed
it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important
they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled
the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him
there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check
Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning
even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence
Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him
and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home
a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down
Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids
over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions
Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities
this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves
he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers
Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)
so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs
Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time
a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen
Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else
then there's the teachers
adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids
Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry
Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk
so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up
but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers
this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it
until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)
the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful
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gojira007 · 3 years ago
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🌊👑😏
Blackness.
Silence.
A low ache in his head…a salty burn in his throat…
Sonic knew he wasn’t dead, but then what…?
Water. The last thing he remembered was water, all around him, pulling him down, filling his lungs…!
The fear carried in that memory was enough to snap the hedgehog awake, and he sat up with his eyes open wide, gasping and coughing all the way.  His rise was stopped, however, by a gentle yet pointed hand pressing onto his chest.  Its cold, wet feel caught Sonic by surprise, but even so it proved the right anchor for him to hold onto as his breath calmed and his senses adjusted.  He was…in a cave?  Yes…with a small fire as the only light, and a deep pool of water as its entrance.  And the hand belonged to…
“…holy crap…” the hedgehog whispered hoarsely.
There in front of him knelt a creature covered in shimmering amber scales (though the scales that ran along the center of her chest were thicker and shined a crystalline blue), sharp fin-like ears pointing out from a sleek round head which was topped off by a shock of curly auburn hair.  She looked at him with large shimmering eyes the color of the deepest briniest ocean, little fangs lightly poking out of a mouth that was set in an inquisitive bent.  “Holy crap,” Sonic repeated, voice a bit stronger this time, “it’s you!”
His tone visibly puzzled the creature, who tilted her head and quirked her brow.  “You…?” she repeated with a curious tone, her voice at once coarse and bubbly, but also warm and calm.
Sonic’s eyes widened, quills fluffing up a bit.  “Do you…do you understand me…?” he whispered eagerly.
The creature nodded.  The hedgehog’s whole face lit up.
Before she could stop him, Sonic was on his feet, pacing in excited circle around the cave floor, fingers wiggling up and down.  “Thisisamazingthisisamazingthisisamaziiiiiiiing!!!I” he practically hummed.  “You’re real!  Like, actually factually real!  I knew it, I knew it, oh I can’t wait to rub this in his smug stupid face…!”
He stopped with a squeak, however, when he felt that cool hand pointedly take hold of his tail.  He looked down to see the creature staring back at him with a bemused grin.  “Very…talky…” she said, “for Lander…who almost…drown.”
“…heh…right, that….” Sonic chuckled, scratching his head a bit.  “Sorry, I just…I’ve been looking for you for a very long time!”
He sat back down, curling his legs around each other and folding his hands behind them; the creature almost seemed to giggle as she watched the little way he rocked back and forth on his haunches.  “You…know…me…?” she asked, and though her smile remained there was caution in her tone.
“Sort of…” Sonic replied.  “There have been rumors ‘n’ legends about you for as long as I can remember.”  He looked up and moved his hand dramatically across, as if gesturing to a marquee.  “The Queen of the Waves!”  The creature snorted irritably at that, prompting Sonic to bring his hand down in a placating gesture.  “Hey, don’t lookit me, I didn’t come up with it!”
“You…come hunting…for me?” the queen asked, her expression coming now to match her guarded tone. 
“No!” Sonic answered quickly.  “Not ‘hunt’.  ‘Search’.  We didn’t wanna hurt you, just…prove that you exist, y’know?”
“’We’…?”
“Me ‘n’ my team.”
“Other…Landers…?”
Sonic nodded.  “The Chaotix, we call ourselves.  Explorers ‘n’ adventurers by trade!”  He gave a playful little flex at that, and the creature’s guarded expression slipped for just a moment as she had a little laugh. 
“You get…into danger…often, then?” she asked amusedly.
“Oh, all the time,” Sonic answered in kind.  He scratched the back of his head before adding, “…which I guess is how I wound up here in the first place, huh?”
The creature nodded.  “Black Tide,” she said, making a wave-like motion with her hands, “…very powerful.  Keeps…most Landers…away….”
“’Cept the really stubborn ones,” Sonic chuckled.  “Hell, I hate the water ‘n’ I still risked it, that’s how hard-headed I am.”
“Stubborn,” the queen repeated with a nod.  “But…stubborn…survives.”
Their eyes met then, and Sonic gently sat back down, a little closer to her this.  “With a little help from a living legend, anyway,” he said.  “Thank you for that.  I owe you, big time.”
She broke her gaze away from his at that.  “I…know…the Black Tide…well.  It is…my duty.”
“Well, duty or not, I’m still grateful,” Sonic answered earnestly.  His tone lowered a bit, however, as he added, “Did anyone else from the Chaotix…?”  She quickly shook her head, and the hedgehog let out a relieved sigh.  “Hope that doesn’t change while they’re out lookin’ for me.”
“Good reason…to help you…find them…quickly, then,” the creature said, promptly slipping into the water behind her.
“Whoa, hold up a sec,” Sonic said, approaching the pool carefully.  “What about you?”
“What about me?” the creature replied confusedly, and Sonic noticed her voice sounded a bit stronger now, no longer pausing between words. 
“Well…I mean, like I said, I came all this way t’see you, ‘n’ you’ve listened t’me yammer on about myself long enough.  I’d…like to know about you, is all.”
She hummed lowly, her fin-ears drooping a bit.  “…I mean, if that’s OK…?” Sonic quickly added.
Her humming continued as she sank deeper into the water, brows deeply furrowed.  After a moment, however, she rose back up.  “Alright,” she said, “you can know.  A little.  But only if you promise to keep that knowledge safe.”
Sonic flashed her a big thumbs up.  “The hedgehog’s word is his bond,” he said with a wink.
Again the creature laughed, and again Sonic noticed that, while she was in the water, it sounded even brighter than before.  “So,” she said, “what do you want to know?”
“Well, given how much you don’t like ‘Queen of the Waves’,” Sonic said, “how about we start with your name?”
She scratched her chin thoughtfully.  “It’s difficult for Landers to pronounce,” she said, “but…”
Her teeth chattered and she let out a high-pitched hiss, her claws trailing the water in swift intricate patterns.  It took Sonic a moment to register her meaning, and once he had, all he could say was, “…wow, you were not kidding.”
“Don’t worry,” the queen chuckled wryly, “my father taught me a long time ago, there’s actually a Lander equivalent to it.”
“Couldn’t lead with that?”
She smirked.  “I thought an explorer like you might appreciate it.”
He smirked back.  “And you were right.  But I can’t say I’d mind knowing a name I can actually say for you.”
“Sally,” she said.  “You can call me Sally.”
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viacursecasting · 4 years ago
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A Blooming Mistake.
{ Read on AO3 }
Summary: Sonic is hiding his hybrid roses, meant for someone special, but Shadow's determined to uncover the truth...
In a way rivals know best.
~
Radiant light of the full moon streaked through the leafy embraces of forest branches, illuminating freckles upon the well-trodden path for the cobalt quilled hero. His buckled cherry shoes crunched upon dried foliage as he ambled toward his destination. Normally he would’ve utilized his renowned speed, but he was wary of disturbing any critters peacefully slumbering in their nests. Even so, as he heard the pitter-patter of startled animals, he cupped the corner of his lip with a gloved hand, whispering apologies into the darkness.
As he clutched a shovel in one hand and a basket of rose stems in the other, he continued onward through mossy trees and flowering bushes until he reached a clearing, grassy and kempt, overlooking the vast sea, which stretched across the horizon to kiss the distant mountains. The serenade of gentle waves lapping against the cliffside soothed his upright ears. A spring breeze combed through his quills. He inhaled deeply, the aromatic scent filling his nostrils, the air so briny he could practically taste its salt upon his tongue. Moonlight reflected divinely across the waves, a sparkle rivaled only by his toothy grin. No matter how many times he trekked here, it always felt like the first.
Refreshed from admiring the landscape, he then glanced at the bundle of stems in hand. This species was a unique hybrid, one that bloomed crimson petals with ebony splatters. The hedgehog recalled the laborious hours he poured into growing these for weeks on end—planting monochrome roses adjacently, watering them each day, breeding the resulting hybrids into super hybrids, not to mention the painstaking chore of pulling out weeds and debris by burying his knees in the dirt. If the buds successfully bloomed, he would take it as a sign to pursue his crush. Was all this effort going to be worth it?
More importantly, could he handle the answer?
As he set the woven basket down he simply… stared. At nothing in particular. Why he couldn’t bring himself to start the final stage of planting the crossbred stems, he didn’t know. He groaned, rubbing his temples as if just now realizing what a ridiculous idea this was.
What are you doing here?
He thought his inner voice was berating him until his ears perked at the unmistakable sound of a familiar, confident gait.
“I said, what are you doing here?”
He swore his heart raced faster than his feet ever have as he peered into the forest, searching for the source of the low voice. Then, as if materializing from the shadows, a jet black lifeform stepped into view, his rosy highlights complementing his fiery gaze.
“Shadow?” The royal blue hedgehog blinked repeatedly to make sure his emerald eyes weren’t playing tricks on him from lack of sleep.
Once he realized this was no illusion, Sonic discreetly held the shovel behind his quills, subtly adjusting his footing to hide the basket at his heels. But there was no fooling his dark counterpart, who analyzed his body language suspiciously.
Shadow crossed his arms. His cool and collected tone sent chills down Sonic’s spine. “Don’t toy with me, hedgehog. What are you hiding?”
“Nothing!” Sonic blurted. “What are you hiding?”
The agent rolled his carmine eyes at the feeble attempt to deflect the question. As he took several steps closer he glanced toward his rocket skates, feeling the ground get considerably flatter, devoid of twigs and stones. He observed, “This clearing appears to have been tended to.”
Sonic laughed nervously. “Nature at its finest, I guess.”
“Is that so?” Shadow humored him. The closer he got to his parallel, the softer the earth felt with every step. “I suppose nature also watered this specific plot despite having no rain all week?”
Sonic glimpsed skyward, feigning a motion as if he felt a raindrop despite the unassuming clouds. “It could start pouring any minute. We should head back—”
He stifled a breath as Shadow, nose to nose with Sonic, scrutinized him as if he could find the answer in his irises, green as a hill zone. Suddenly he reached around Sonic’s waist, fingers brushing against the underside of his back spikes.
Sonic’s muzzle reddened intensely. “Wait, what are you—?”
Shadow seized the digging tool from his rival’s grip. “Look what we have here.” He chided with a smirk, “Shame on you, hedgehog. Wrecking the beauty of nature so you can play buried treasure.”
“This isn’t a game!” Sonic cried. “Now give that back!”
Shadow kept his foe at bay with an extended arm against his chest. As Sonic clawed the air in an attempt to retrieve the shovel just out of reach, the agent spotted the basket of greenery at Sonic’s contrasting sneakers. Shadow halted, curiosity getting the better of him as his counterpart finally yanked the tool from his grasp.
But that was the least of Shadow’s worries.
Before he could get a closer look inside the rattan basket, a glowing streak of cyan made it disappear and then reappear a few feet away in Sonic’s grip.
Shadow glared at the speedster, at first with annoyance. Why would he hide a few measly plants? Then it dawned on him. Slowly his expression turned into one of horror, staring wide-eyed at the so-called hero.
But Sonic paid no mind as he refused to make eye contact, red with embarrassment. He could practically feel that scarlet gaze burning his azure fur. “Please, Shadow. Just go home.”
“Sonic.”
Shadow said it with such bleeding concern that his sapphire twin regarded him. Aghast, the ebony hedgehog paled as if he’d seen a ghost, troubling Sonic. “Stop looking at me like that, Shads. You’re scaring me.”
Shadow ignored the request. “Is that what I think it is?”
Sonic tightened his clammy grip on the wicker handle. “What do you think it is?”
Shadow’s hesitation was brief, as if his hypothesis would somehow become true if he voiced his suspicions. “Performance-enhancing drugs.”
Sonic laughed at the notion. He had never touched a drug let alone taken one. He wasn’t even sure he knew what one looked like. “Don’t be ridiculous—”
“That’s why you’ve been so secretive,” Shadow mulled distantly, rubbing his fingers under his chin as if he solved the case. “Either you plan on outperforming me, or you’ve been taking these to get on my level.”
Sonic’s expression twisted into one of confusion. “What? No! You’ve got it all wrong!”
Shadow remained skeptical, requiring proof. His eyes bore into his foe like daggers stained crimson. “Then hand it over,” he demanded, the golden power inhibitor on his wrist gleaming menacingly around his outstretched hand.
Sonic’s heart seized at the thought. His fingers clenched the woven handle so tightly he nearly bled. He swallowed before replying, “I can’t.”
Neither of them wavered. Not even the void’s icy breeze could make them flinch. Was that the wind or Sonic’s internal cry for help?
Then Shadow sighed, tightening his gloves as if foreseeing this outcome. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
In a flash he leapt forward, trailing an amber aura in his wake. Sonic’s mind deconstructed the act in slow motion, perceiving Shadow’s feet leave the ground, his limbs curl into a ball, his attack home in on Sonic’s beating organ.
Sonic dropped his possessions, steeling himself to block the spindash with crossed arms, the force so powerful his heels dug trenches in the dirt. He grunted with the effort of holding Shadow off as the high-pitched rev of the spinball deafened his ears. It was like preventing a screeching tire from burning rubber on his vitals.
Seeing as this was getting him nowhere, Shadow performed a backflip, landing gracefully on his feet. “Hmph. I’m just warming up.”
Sonic chuckled, stretching his legs like a marathon runner in a show of confidence. “Sure thing, faker,” he emphasized, knowing this would warrant some aggression.
Shadow couldn’t help but clench his fist with ire, drawing his arm back before zooming forward with a punch.
The blue blur easily sidestepped to dodge but Shadow expected this, extending another blow at the last second, hitting his opponent square in the jaw.
Sonic reeled back, more out of shock than pain, rubbing the soreness away. Regardless, he found himself smiling. It wasn’t often he brawled someone who matched his abilities. After crushing laughable badniks for days on end, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t itching for some excitement. “Lucky shot.”
“Calculated shot,” the agent corrected. “Are you as slow in the brain as you are with your feet?”
Sonic gasped dramatically, tossing the back of his hand to his forehead. “Alas! You have discovered my fatal flaw!” He bowed humbly. “Teach me, O Wise One.”
Just as Sonic was about to straighten, his opposer kneed him in the abdomen. He doubled over with a groan, sinking to his knees.
“Lesson one,” Shadow advised, “never let your guard down.”
In his kneeling position, Sonic took the opportunity to grab Shadow’s ankle and yank him to the dirt, knocking the wind out of him as he landed on his back. Shadow coughed, attempting to regain control of his lungs as Sonic loomed over him, boasting, “Lesson two, surpass the master.”
Shadow sprung to his feet. Meanwhile Sonic revved up into a concussive ball, billowing dust, and charged forward to knock over his contender like a bowling pin. But Shadow performed a handless frontflip like a gold-medal gymnast, easily dodging it.
“Chaos Spear!”
Upon hearing Shadow’s battle cry, Sonic serpentined throughout the clearing to avoid numerous bolts of energy the agent’s palms emitted. But no matter how quickly Shadow fired, Sonic managed to evade every shot by a hair.
At one point the blue blur skidded to a halt, and suddenly a glowing spear jutted out of a tree right before his face.
Sonic let out a nervous chuckle, grateful to still have a nose. “Someone’s getting antsy.”
He ducked in the nick of time to avoid a jet-boosted roundhouse kick to the head. Sonic then swept his leg to trip his assailant, but to no avail as Shadow leapt high into the air, backlit by the witnessing moon, before clasping his hands together to pummel Sonic into the ground.
CRUUUSH!
The hero narrowly somersaulted clear, shaking dirt from his quills. When he looked up to see the crater Shadow formed with his fists, his stomach churned. “Whoa, Shads, take it easy!”
Tired of this dance, the lifeform was tempted to execute a Chaos Blast right then and there, but instead he sneered, “Not until I get what I want.”
He dashed forward. His parallel instinctively did the same. However, a vine caught Sonic’s toe, hurtling him straight into Shadow. The hedgehogs were a mass of flailing punches and kicks, their limbs a blur as their tangled bodies rolled in the grass like a prickly tumbleweed.
Their careening stopped dead in its tracks as Shadow straddled Sonic, their panting faces inches apart, their arms wrestling for dominance with Shadow’s fists against Sonic’s palms.
Through grunts, Sonic tried to reason with him. “Okay, Shadow… hff… This was fun at first… hff… but now—” He cried out as his wrists bent at a dangerous angle.
“It was never a game, Sonic.” Using gravity to his advantage, Shadow pushed harder.
Pain shot through Sonic’s arms. “Shadow, stop!” he pleaded, his biceps nearly giving out. “It’s not what you think!”
Shadow snarled, his fangs gleaming like dual blades. “Don’t lie to me!”
Sonic’s muscles screamed. He didn’t remember his counterpart being this strong, didn’t understand where such passion was coming from. “Why are you so worked up?”
“I won’t let you destroy yourself!”
Shadow’s guttural cry echoed throughout the crisp air, followed by a chorus of flapping from retreating crows. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he almost wished Sonic would run away, too, as he shut his eyes tight to suppress his hot tears.
Witnessing such raw emotion made Sonic yield, letting Shadow pin his wrists to the dirt beside his spiky head. Though Sonic took shallow breaths, his peach torso still brushed against his rival’s ivory chest fur, soft and full, making his back spines prickle. “If it matters so much to you,” Sonic relented, “then you can take what’s in the basket.”
No sense of victory hailed Shadow as he sulked from revealing a shred of vulnerability. Instead a numbness washed over him like a waterfall. He crawled off the sapphire hedgehog, taking a few steps to retrieve what he thought was a performance-enhancing substance. But what he found was much more tame.
Perplexed, Shadow inspected a leafy stalk carefully. “These look like rose stems.”
As Sonic stood to brush grass off his quills, he could feel his face grow warm, resorting to sarcasm as a defense mechanism. “That’s because they are rose stems, genius.” He almost laughed. This was G.U.N.’s best agent?
It still didn’t add up. “Why were you hiding these from me?” When Sonic failed to answer, Shadow read his flustered face instead. “Are they intended for Amy?” Sonic shook his head. “Blaze?” Another shake. “Knuckles? You are aware he’s in love with a rock—”
“It’s you!” Sonic blurted, immediately slapping his palm over his mouth. He had to say something—he felt as if he were going to explode any second. But the regret was instant. He wanted to be cremated right then and there and have his ashes flung over the cliff into the depths of the sea below, dissolving into nothingness.
Shadow was taken aback but quickly composed himself, clearing his throat. “I see. Yellow roses?” he surmised, knowing that this flower hue symbolized a strong bond among friends.
“No,” Sonic replied, downcast. There was no point in lying anymore. “They’re a hybrid. Black for eternity and red for luh—! …Ove.”
That last word caught in his throat, so foreign on his tongue. Unconsciously he rambled, desperate for some sense of control again. “I thought that maybe once these bloomed, I’d have the courage to… ask you out.”
Shadow had difficulty masking his bewilderment. He opened his mouth as if to say something but failed to express a coherent thought, unable to recall the last time someone rendered him speechless.
Sonic rubbed the back of his neck, elaborating, “I know it’s stupid. Even though you get on my nerves, you also… get me, you know?” He reminisced over the moments they were forced to team up against a greater evil, racing side by side, occasionally stealing sidelong glances at each other.
Then images of the Finalhazard flashed in his mind, followed by the harrowing sight of Shadow plummeting to his supposed death. “When I thought I would never see you again, it made me realize I had taken you for granted.”
I should just stop talking, Sonic told himself. But his lips betrayed him. “Since then, I just couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
What are you doing? “I mean, look at your speed. Your strength. Everything about you screams danger.”
Shut. Up. “But instead of running away from you, why is my heart telling me—”
Shut up shut up shut up!
He growled, yelling over his thoughts, “—to run with you!?”
Sonic was practically on the verge of a cardiac arrest. His breath was short, his ears were numb. He felt as if an anchor pulled him by the pit of his chest to claim him as part of the earth’s core. He expected a witty comeback. A kick to the stomach. Anything! But what he got was worse. Shadow stared at Sonic as intently as a sniper through the lens of his scope. As pervasive as a bullet, what really killed Sonic was the silence.
Sonic shook his head to clear his mind. It was all so ridiculous, devoting so much time and effort and emotion to someone who couldn’t care less. “But it doesn’t matter.” He hastily gathered his belongings and began to head homeward. “Clearly you don’t feel the same way so let’s just move on and pretend none of this ever happened—”
“Wait.”
Sonic froze, feeling Shadow’s grip around the crook of his elbow. His heartbeat pounded so incessantly he thought his eardrums would burst. “Yeah?”
The crimson-eyed hedgehog averted his gaze, though Sonic thought he spotted a faint rosy tint across his tan muzzle. “It appears as though your sentiments mirror mine.”
Cogs slowly turned in Sonic’s mind, trying to process the confession. But then he laughed in denial. “Come on, Shads. You’re not serious.”
Shadow squeezed Sonic’s arm in affirmation, finally locking his ruby irises with his counterpart’s emeralds.
Fixated, Sonic read no hesitation, no amusement in that scorching gaze, straight as a gun barrel. That’s when he knew Shadow was indeed telling the truth.
It finally clicked. Then Sonic turned bright red, realizing just how close Shadow was standing, feeling his warm breath on his lips.
Shadow stroked Sonic’s cheek with the back of a curled finger, a touch that was extra gentle in case he miscalculated his own strength, before resting it under Sonic’s chin to slightly crane his neck. The agent found his blush quite endearing, and being its trigger was icing on the cake. They were in such close proximity that Shadow could breathe in his admirer’s scent, sweet as freshly cut grass. Shadow’s blood pumped so madly he thought Sonic could hear it. He briefly wondered if he would ever get used to the hero’s presence. Perhaps he would find out at a later date.
If so, it would be a date to die for.
With slowly lidding eyes, Shadow leaned in, parting his lips just as their muzzles were a quill’s breadth apart—
“Shadow, come in!” urged an electronic voice.
The hedgehogs jumped out of their trances. Shadow cursed under his breath, realizing the command came from his wrist communicator. He pressed a button as he spoke into it. “Yes, Rouge?”
“You’re supposed to report every hour so we know you’re safe while patrolling,” his bat coworker scolded.
Shadow grimaced. “I can take care of myself.”
“It’s just a precaution,” Rouge stated. “In any case, that cheery attitude of yours lets me know you’re fine. Bye~!” The call ended with a beep.
A forlorn sigh escaped Shadow’s lips, the moment officially tainted.
But with his ever-present smile, Sonic brushed off any disappointment he may have had. “You should get back to work.”
Shadow glared at the blue hedgehog, feigning annoyance. “This area is well within my jurisdiction, and I haven’t finished inspecting it,” he claimed, watching Sonic’s grin grow wider, so contagious he wore a hint of a smile himself. He then graciously took the shovel from Sonic’s grasp, walking toward the primed plot. “Come. I hate leaving a job unfinished.”
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lea-andres · 3 years ago
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More info on my CS91 AU, because I should probably tell you guys about my other fankid OC in that universe: Rosella the Seedrian.
So... Remember how at the end of Sonic X, Tails receives that seed? And how he's still depicted to have that little potted plant even now?
That plant always felt like a Chekhov's Gun to me, so I decided to do something with it.
(Chekhov's Gun, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is a theatre rule about foreshadowing and properly utilizing all elements of a story. The specific example used [that the rule gets its name from] is if there is a gun onstage for Act 1, someone needs to fire it during Act 2)
At some point during the period of time between GUN making Maria (CS91), and Shadow finding out about her and going berserk, Tails was experimenting with three Chaos Emeralds they'd tracked down and were keeping away from Eggman. I haven't decided what he was trying to accomplish with them yet, but he overloaded the machine and it exploded. The Chaos Emeralds then unleashed a mysterious wave of energy that blasted through his entire lab. On one hand, it healed the injuries Tails sustained during the explosion, so that was cool. But on the other hand, it knocked everything in his lab over and made a huge mess, which was less cool.
Amy swung by later that day, and offered to help Tails clean up the mess, and while they were doing so she discovered the plant had been overturned and its pot shattered. She was trying to locate the plant itself to see if they could re-pot it when a tiny hand reached out and grabbed her wrist, scaring the SHIT out of her.
So Amy grabbed Tails and insisted they call Sonic, because there's SOMETHING running around the lab now. He comes over, and the three track down the mysterious creature.
It's a little Seedrian girl, who looks eerily like a very young Cosmo, except she has a yellow gem on her chest instead of a red one, and two yellow rosebuds placed further back on her head like a set of pigtails. She's hiding out under one the planes because Amy's scream scared HER.
Tails manages to coax her out of her hiding spot, and almost immediately is just like "this is my daughter now, hope no one has any questions or criticisms because I'm not taking either right now." And everyone just kinda rolled with it.
Tails's theory after running some tests and scans on her is she needed pollen from another Seedrian to help her transition from plant to Seedrian (which was impossible obviously, since they were all wiped out), but that energy wave the Chaos Emeralds gave off was able to serve as an acceptable replacement.
Everyone assumed he was going to name her Cosmo, but he did not. He felt weird about naming her that (she's Cosmo's daughter, maybe, not another Cosmo!), so he named her Rosella instead.
Rosella ended being a "it takes a village" child. Tails and Sonic (*Uncle* Sonic, he proudly insists) are her main caretakers, but Amy, Cream, and Vanilla + Vector all pitched in to help out too. (Mostly because Tails and Sonic really had NO CLUE what they were doing at first, lol)
Tails insisted Rosella learn all his tech and mechanical knowledge, and to his delight Rosella was very excited about it and eager to learn everything he knew. A little TOO excited, they all quickly discovered, as Rosella seems to have a special knack for arson. (Like, Seamus Finnigan from Harry Potter levels of exploding things/setting things on fire.) Tails blames it on the circumstances of her "birth", but pretty much lets her get up to whatever she wants as long as she's not endangering herself or others.
Time jump ahead to after Shadow, Omega, and Maria (CS91) go on the run for three years, Rosella and Maria finally get to meet each other as the whole GUN situation finally starts to be resolved and de-escalate. Much to Shadow's horror, the two end up becoming instant best friends. (Shadow's pretty overprotective of Maria still, and isn't wild about her best friend being a mad scientist arsonist. 😂) Rosella spreads mayhem and destruction in her wake, and Maria's virtually indestructible. It's a match made in heaven. 😍 (No joke, the two become childhood BFFs to lovers WAY off in the future. Poor Shadow, he didn't think the "Maria's running around with the dangerous Seedrian Faker and his mad scientist brother are raising" situation could get worse, but it did. 😂)
Rosella's the definite leader of the duo (despite being younger by a year or two), considering she's got the confidence and social skills to actually talk to people and make decisions. BUT, she values Maria's opinions and ideas, and always checks in with her before making a decision or concocting a plan. As for Maria, she really appreciates having Rosella to support her and stick up for her, and enjoys that no idea is a bad idea to Rosella (even when it is, in all actuality a really, REALLY bad idea. 😂)
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barnesandco · 4 years ago
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Blame it on the Heartache
A broken woman finds a lost man, and they try to put each other back together.
This is an entry for @star-spangled-bingo​​ 2020. Word count: approximately 2219. Square filled: “Morning Sex”
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader
Warnings: Mentions of violence, warzones, and one brief mention of persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya. Oh and also smut. Lots of smut (18+ only). It was supposed to be just smut, but then angst happened, and here we are. 
A/N: There’s some talk about blame in this fic, and honestly, I blame (and thank) @heli0s-writes​, this post, and this one. Also, there will be a part 2 some time next week.
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You find him by accident. Kiev bar just after dawn, with wooden bar tops and table tops all rotting with the steady decay of time and too little money, disguises his head of dark hair and grimy outline in a corner booth perfectly but your eyes lock onto the side profile, the slope of his nose and the bow of his lips arching against the light of the snow outside. The Winter Soldier, or the shell he has left behind, sits with a shot glass clutched loosely in a gloved hand, the other one’s fingers decorated with rings.
They’re intriguing things, that you watch closely from the bar, pounding head distracted by the scent of hot chocolate and the jewellery that is both the manifestation of wishes for a prettier life, and the mark of a roughened man at the same time. The light catches on a round ruby set on a silver band on his forefinger. It reminds you of the red star painted on gleaming gray you first saw smuggling political refugees from one warzone into another. The time you were a spy, before you were an activist, before you gave up all hope of NGO pretenses and took things into your own hands, helping people with only the wind to guide you.
Not that you succeeded much. Now, days after desperate depression and harrowing hopelessness thanks to only having managed to rescue half as many queer Chechen teens from their torture cells as intended, you are aching with the weight of your uselessness. The air around you, the tonnes of the morning sky are pressing down on your shoulders, and the whiskey in your hot chocolate is doing little to relieve the tension.
The sorrow is what you will blame, later. Or perhaps, the alcohol, although there is barely a syringe’s worth of it in your system with less than half your mug still empty and going cold quick. You’ll fault the loneliness of decades helping a world that does not want to become better for how you rise from your stool and sit down across from the man who thinks he is a stranger to you.
You’ve read the stories. Seen the videos of the helicarrier falling apart above the Potomac, the camera footage captured by a daring chopper, and the Smithsonian’s exhibit on Bucky Barnes. The eyes staring back at you, calculating, clever, above cutting cheekbones, are the same as the ones on the wall in the museum. He’s had a century of pain and you only tenths of one, but the hurt rings out and resonates clearly, a sonic bell of a distress signal, captured by wandering eyes and inexplicable want.
You wonder what he will blame for his response to you unbuttoning the top of your shirt, and your hand over his. Possibly, the fact that he’s been on the run for a year. A year out of the cryostasis detailed by the files the Black Widow leaked in D.C. A year of running, of being alone and sometimes worse -- only the haunting nightmares for company. Your sympathy, the same one that pushes you to keep at your job when it is forever hopeless, is what pulls your heartstrings closer to him.
His fingers tighten around yours, and you blame desolation. You blame the flaming burn of want that shines from his eyes when he sees a face that is not just friendly, but maybe familiar, too. Something tells you you ought to be scared, as he rises and drops a hryvnia bill on the table, and leaves, still holding your hand, but the strength of his grip deters you. The hold is gentle, calloused, the rings grazing your palm as he adjusts to intertwine your hands, so each metal band comes to rest against the sensitive skin between your fingers. Tight enough to feel coarse skin and trembling desire, but loose enough that you can easily leave. Run. You are not being forced anywhere.
The streets of Kiev become a shimmering, white backdrop to his face that looks even more stunning in the light. How much of your last encounter does he recall, if any? New Mexico, 2001, protection detail for war scarred children who needed to evacuate, one of which was an heir to a throne. A brawl in a market, sweat-sticky sundress flaring furiously, the heat of the American sun no match for that of his arms around you. A dance, a twirling battle, and the gasping from breath in the aftermath was one hell of a challenge. Something that restored your faith in your job.
But you’re far from Albuquerque, now, and are reminded of that fact as he leads you to the polar opposite of a southern tavern. It’s an inn. A quaint, small place, more wood, this one gleaming brown on the walls and the hardwood floors and the mahogany counter, all well kept. He strides past the burning fireplace in the lobby and climbs the stairs two at a time, as you struggle to keep up. Part of your lust-addled brain thinks to joke about how he has you panting before he’s even gotten you in bed.
All thought of laughter evaporates when he shuts the door and presses you against it with his human forearm pressing on your neck. Tight enough to threaten but loose enough to let you breath. Your heart beats faster, the pulse of your veins thrumming a little closer to the surface. 
Who are you? he growls in Ukrainian, eyes shifting between threatening and offering little hints of fear. When you do not answer, he asks, who sent you? 
The material of his jacket is rough where it pushes into you. You have to fight to speak. “Nobody.” The English makes his eyes widen, and you barely have time to question whether this move killed you or saved you, when he takes his arm off your neck and replaces it with his mouth.
Heavenly heat, hellish white light, blinding ecstasy erupts like a volcano where he begins to devour you like he hasn’t for centuries, for millennia of loneliness, and there, in the innocent hotel room, your head fills with images of everything but. Hands find his hair, knock the woollen hat off his head while his teeth trace a pleasure-trail down your neck and to your collarbone, his fingers clenching on your hips. 
You push back, off the door and into the room, standing now, supporting your own weight on weak knees and shaking breath. He steals the last of it you have left when he leaves your collarbone -- a bruise blooming ripely in the color of a plum -- to find your lips, and this, this is what salvation tastes like. Vodka and whiskey and chocolate, on lips chapped but lush and soft beyond the rough exterior. A gasping sound of want released in a hurried exhale between kisses makes him growl from somewhere in his chest. 
The vibrations reach your heart, heavy and loud and beating a march of deathly desire on your rib cage. You hold onto him with tight fists, like he will float away, because this is the only way to let go. There is a reassurance, in his hands clutching your jeans tighter, that he isn’t leaving. His fingers slip under your sweater, and then under your shirt, and you break away with a gasp as cold metal -- full hand on one side, and slim rings on the other -- meets your skin.
Then you press his hands to you tighter, let him tear your upper layers away, tug his jacket and sweater off his shoulders as he becomes well acquainted with the tops of your breasts, the parts visible above your bra. Head bowed in sacred confession, he finds rescue in your body, skin shining in the light of the beginning day behind you. A new start.
A new hiding place, he goes down on both knees, laving at your belly button, leaving you spit-shiny and cooling in the chilly air. He takes your jeans off slowly, a contrast to every other step made so far, and mouths at your mound, soaking your underwear further with slow, maddening movements of his tongue. You’ve had enough. This buzzing heat has turned to forest fire in your pulse, and you take your bra off and pull him up and towards you. 
His chest is warm against you when you fall back against the bed, his weight recognizable. The Soldier -- James, you think, for now -- buries himself in your neck with a renewed vigor. Begins to move down your body to the apex of your thighs, where you are wet. Dripping, soaking wet, just for him. The first touch of his tongue to your honey-sweet slick is an electric spark, and he lights you up like the fourth of July with every touch after. Fireworks in your irises mirror the flames licking up your spine, and his eyes meet yours when he opens them in moments of reprieve from enjoying the taste of you.
Purgatory, this limbo between right and wrong, is the closest you have been to joy in as long as you can remember. It aches in your limbs as you inch closer to the cliff’s edge of delectable joy. 
“Enough,” you say, when you ache for more, when you are empty and wanting only him inside of you, all of him, and he moves away. Trepidation in his eyes at the thought of being pushed away evaporates when you pull him back, the flow of your pushes and pulls echoing with the power of the moon, and how it brings the waves to lap at the land a reflection of how James’ chest meets yours when you have opened the buttons of his shirt.
It hangs open, a curtain around you, and you dexterously strip him of his jeans as well, toes pushing at the waistband and belt falling off the bed with a clink that sounds like the final nail in the coffin. You’ll gladly die a little death here, if he’s the executioner. 
His cock is leaking with arousal, hard against the lines of his abdomen begin to smear a shiny trail against you as well, and you take him in hand and he groans. Throbbing hot in your hand, velvet heat over solid steel hardness, and you spit in your hand before slicking him up a little more, his moans louder and unreserved in your clavicle, teeth grazing the spots he has made tender. 
Desperate man. Lonely, sweet, sad man. Your heart aches for him, and you want to give him more than his cruel lifetimes have so far. You want to give him warmth, starting with the warmth of your silk body, as he slips inside of you, slumping, his forehead pressing into your shoulders and murmuring what you think is a prayer into you. 
His hands are moving with feverish intensity over you, metal warmer now, as he throbs and pulses and then adjusts to your heat. All that while, you hold him. Hands first over his shoulder blades, then moving your right hand to his left, slipping under his hold on the sheets to entwine his fingers with yours the way he did in the street that feels miles below wherever you’re flying.
He’s so big, and you are so full, nerves prickling with electrostatic lust, that you have to focus on the swell of him above you, the hand holding yours and the shape of the rings on his fingers not to lose it right there. Then he starts moving.
And you’ll swear you’ve never felt true bliss before this moment, because James moving inside you, with slow thrusts, stretching your walls in delightful pain, is a luxury you’ve never lived before. Stealing your breath, his pace picks up, and you feel every ridge along his length on the inside of your body. Fire pools in your belly, and his hand is drawn to it. He supports himself on his metal arm, and trails the other down your torso. Obsidian shimmers on his ring finger and there is the unmistakable wink of vibranium on his little finger, as his hand dips lower to your clit, and you watch the spot where he moves in and out.
Lascivious eyes watch you watch his fingers circle your nub, tracing the path to your gratification, and they shine when you mewl, arching up, circling your hips. Climbing higher and higher, he moves faster, hits a spot in you that burns brighter than the Sun rising in the sky, and everything explodes in a supernova of heat, color behind your eyelids and warmth flooding your insides as he spills deep, growls against your throat, hand clutching your wrist when he falls forward. 
You are marked up in his artistry, a painting of pleasure in the mouth-made bruises on your neck and the fingerprints on your hips, and the circular indentations from his rings on your neck. He softens inside you, as you overflow with your combined pleasures, and you hum against the crown of his head, as you run your fingers through his scalp. Sated man, grateful man, miracle pleasure, purring in your arms, too dangerous to keep, but too comfortable a weight to let go of so soon.
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cutegirlmayra · 4 years ago
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*Slurps on ice coffee* ey yo Mayra what's cracking? I need some good ole fashioned protective Sonic of Amy I̶'̶m̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶i̶c̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶l̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ . Maybe something like the press or newspaper attack Amy's character which upset her and Sonic defends or tries to comfort her? That'd be great thanks *Puts on shades and skateboards away*
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What up, homie? How’s the skate? Don’t get home to late, my man, you know how these streets be at night. OUR TOWN. That’s what’s up! -slaps hand into yours and does a bro-hold-
You can see my response and thinking for this on the Pajama Blogs! (x) Timecode: 28:12
Referencing my fanfiction: Trying to ‘Tap’ into Love
PROMPT REQUESTS ARE ON SHUTDOWN, DO NOT SEND ANY TO ME, please and thank you ;3c
Prompt:
It was a pretty late night. I hadn’t seen Amy so upset before.
Usually, in the past, it wasn’t uncommon for Amy to come rushing to me--arms flung out and moving like a speed train with tears that sprawled into sparkling stars against the sky.
I always, usually, kinda-sorta, caught her and just let her cry it out with an awkward smile to my face.
But this time... Amy wanted to be alone.
That was weird. I first heard about it from Tails, who said that she had been reading some articles about the team and how they’ve said some pretty critiquing things about her... I’ve never really dealt with anything like that.
Joking, completely, I’ve totally had my fair share. But what about Amy? I always figured... well, she came off as pretty independently confident all on her own. I didn’t think she cared that much about what everyone thought of her.
So I was a bit concerned by Tails’s words, but I thought nothing of it. Waved it off as a momentary sadness for her, after all, this was Amy! She could bounce back from anything.
If it was really serious, I figured she would have come charging after me like before.
The stars weren’t here tonight... odd.
Sorry, where was I? Oh, yeah. The second time I heard anything a little more alarming was from Knuckles. Apparently, Amy had come to seek some solace from the unconditionally loving Chao--now this had been a solid day and half since I’ve heard about the incident of her wanting to be alone after reading some bad commentary on her--and she would shake the chao away from clinging to her.
He said he didn’t get it, cause she used to love to cuddle them and they all were really hurt by her wanting to keep her distance and just pat their heads.
Now, if anything were to set me and Knuckles off, it was that.
His face was so strained as he talked to me about it, I’ve never seen Knuckles trying to hold back so much worry and anger before. He said he tried to go over and give her a piece of his mind, but when she turned around, her eyes were vacant of anything but tears.
“It looked like she thought she had done something wrong before she even did it.” He stated, “I didn’t have the heart to continue yelling at her, so I just shooed her away, telling her to pick on someone else if she was feeling that crummy.”
“Harsh, Knuckles. Harsh.” I joked, but there was a low-key truth to what I said. “Tails said something about harsh comments on some articles she likes to read about us.” The old alter of the Master Emerald’s shrine was as stony and gravely as ever. The little pieces of chipped pebbles always grinded and dug themselves under my fur and into my skin every time I sat there, but Knuckles acted like nothing ever phased his tough skin.
I was acting kinda tough, too... to be real honest with you.
Knuckles huffed, grumbling as he picked up some berry juice he had squashed into a half-coconut  bowl and passed one over to me. “Doesn’t excuse telling a kid they can’t hold ya.” He was right... but then again...
“Maybe she just didn’t want the sympathy.” It was hard to look at it from a girl’s point of view, I didn’t quite understand what would tip her over the edge like that. Maybe they said she wasn’t pretty enough..? Ehh..?
“Girls really care about how others view them, you know?” I took a sip. It did in fact taste good, and I leaned back to let the slight acidy feel tingle against my throat as its favorable burst went down the ol’pipe. “Ahh~ That’s the spot!”
“...I don’t think you should be acting so carefree about this, Sonic.”
His sudden tone made me stop enjoying the berry sensation and look back to him, a little surprised but not by much. Knuckles always chose the direct route in any conversation, it’s what made him so easy and frustrating to talk to.
I smiled and closed my eyes, putting a foot down a step to stretch it out and sighed.
“...Yeah. I know.”
“If you know, then why don’t you do something about it!?” Knuckles, always ready to pull his voice out and speak up when he sees something he doesn’t like. “The very fact that she’s a girl means you should do somethin’ about it! Girls aren’t meant to mope about, they gotta be treated decently! Ain’t that half your job?!” ...Still, it made me like him like that. He was a good guy, and had the real makings of a hero--at least, to my standards--and a good friend at that!
“Half, huh?” I took another sip. Did everyone think me and Amy were something more..? After all these years, I hadn’t the slightest clue. Seems everyone else held a standard in their mind about it though...
“I’m serious! Aren’t you planning to do something about it?”
“Am I?” I smirked, not liking to be asked direct questions about myself. I took the coconut drink down and set it to the side, getting up and stretching my arm out in a few simple gestures. Spreading it across my chest and pulling it with my other hand, then twisting my torso right and down as I put the other arm back and used the one I’d momentarily stretched to reach sky high with it. “Boy, that feels good!”
“Grr... Sonic... if you’re making fun of this, I’ll-!” Before getting Knuckles too wound up, seeing him lift his fists again, I flicked myself in my usual--Sonic Charm~
I winked and wiggled my pointer finger, turning one leg to be slightly bent as I was about to speed off anyway.
I had heard what I wanted too, now time to do some more digging before investigating it right at it’s source.
“Don’t worry so much, Knuckles! Like I’d ever leave Amy to her own assumptions.” I still wasn’t sure what she was struggling with... but wanting to be alone and not have anyone clinging to her in affection?
Didn’t sound like Amy Rose to me.
While heading to dart off the island, I stopped by the chao and asked them what their story was.
Squatting down, I think I mustered up enough of my expertise in games to figure out their charaded play. It seems the chao could tell something was off from Amy’s usual, cheery nature. To try and help, they tried to swarm her as she usually did with endless hugs, but she delicately plucked each one off at a time and set them back down.
All she wanted was to sit, looking sadly between her arms and legs--I’m guessing the chao were trying to do the fetal upright position but their budgy bodies just can’t do it.--and pat their heads.
It made them uncomfortable to not be able to love on her, I assumed, and they continued to show me great concern as they held my arms in different places and showed me their adorable eyes.
“I get it, don’t worry, Amy’s gonna be just fine.” I smiled the best I could, but hearing... well, seeing their side of the story really... heh, opened my eyes?
Puns. Always a defense mechanism when you don’t intend to use them that way.
Something had me wanting to wait before I saw Amy again, though. Usually, that wasn’t like me, but I wanted a bigger picture.
I sped over to Cream’s and Vanilla’s, where I thought more insight might be had.
Tails had already called them, doing his own work to try and collect the pieces before directly asking Amy. We all knew Amy could be a bit... Nah, I won’t say it. But we wanted a better idea before we approached her about it.
Just safer that way...
I rubbed my head, remembering how easily one could fall into that hammer’s swing if they didn’t word things a bit more carefully, as Cream and Vanilla recounted Amy’s strange melancholy behavior, and how she wanted to seem less-
“Feminine?” That threw me for a loop, and trust me, I’ve had my fair share of running through loops.
“Well, not quite.” Vanilla was sitting on her lovely coach with Cream and Cheese sitting adjacent but slightly on her lap. She looked down at Cream who held her chin up a moment, wanting to be polite as she addressed me.
I did my best to hold a steady and kind eye-contact, but I could tell she was struggling to admit what she heard and saw.
“Miss Amy kept asking me strange questions. Like... Was she too much on something. I didn’t understand and she kept insisting I shouldn’t coddle her or lie to her. I didn’t know how to take that... I would never lie to Miss Amy! I just... didn’t understand what she wanted from me.”
It pained me to see that Amy had hurt someone from her own insecurities.
That was everything Amy stood against, and that’s when I knew this was getting out of hand.
I had let her be for a day just to see if she would either work it out on her own or come crying to me... but she hadn’t done either.
She was now hurting those close to her... and so it was time to intervene.
“Thank you for telling me that, Cream.” I purposefully spoke as tenderly as I could, “I’m sure that was hard for you. I’m very grateful you told me what happened.”
She buried herself into her mother’s chest, still hurt, and that drove a powerful fire through me.
That does it, Amy.
You don’t hurt people when you’re injured.
You come to someone stronger to help heal you if you can’t do it yourself.
At the time, I was really upset. Amy must have been polarized by the media.
They call her too traditional? Is that why she wanted to be more ‘tough’ like? Too protected? Too appeased?
Feminine... did she feel like a damsel in distress instead of our trusted friend?
I was trying to keep my head leveled, but I ended up closing my eyes during my run and letting the night’s air beat against me to try and cool myself off before finding her.
She wasn’t home, I checked the windows. No lights.
Unless she was sitting the dark, Amy always had a reading light on. She only turned every light off in her house when she was going to bed, so she could see the stars and feel like we were watching them together, no matter if we were far apart or not.
I looked to see she hadn’t any dirty dishes in the sink, and while peeking through the window, I noticed her drapes were down as well. That means she hadn’t been cooking or baking, and that she hadn’t opened the windows and pulled the drapes to let the smells carry, hoping I’d catch wind of it and invite myself in for a dinner with her.
I sped over to the city, thinking maybe she went on one of those ‘journey walks’ where she just window shops but ends up buying too many bags and waiting for me to bolt by and help her with them. She liked to think and experience things outside the home too... but I didn’t see her struggling with shopping bags anywhere.
She wasn’t watching Twinkle Park’s lights from her favorite outdoor restaurant, or purposefully losing her hat in hope’s I’d somehow see it and return it to her. She wasn’t sitting on her favorite spot with her favorite outdoor umbrella with her typical strawberry and vanilla shake and pretending she was too cold to finish it, bundling up and hoping I’d make a move and pull her closer or something.
She wasn’t in the fields where she’d pick flowers with Cream, or stare up at the clouds and reminisce about old times and stories we used to tell each other, or have her head on a bed of flowers so butterflies would come and sit on her still face as she dreamed of a future with me in it. Waiting for me to zip by and have the butterflies spread out and fly through my backdraft as the air around where I just blazed through would slowly return to a even, equilibrium.
She wasn’t anywhere I usually found her at.
I came up to my last spot I could think of. Why was this so hard? Amy could find me in a heartbeat... which... I couldn’t quite feel right now because it was fluttering dangerously like my shaky breaths.
I kept a strong look on my face, simply because I was worried my fear at not finding her would leak through and make her feel bad about being too well hidden.
I didn’t want her to feel bad... I didn’t want her to be alone for this long.
It had been the dark of the second day... I just wanted to see her. Make sure she was okay...
That anger that once fueled me was now popping in sparks of concern that made me walk around the rolling hills of Green Hill zone.
If she wasn’t here... looking for me... then I truly didn’t know where she was.
Eggman... would have been my next guess.
That, or Amy was replaced by a robot of his and was terrorizing the living daylights out of her friends!
... It was concerning. I wouldn’t worry. I couldn’t worry... Amy wasn’t a little girl anymore and hateful, spiting comments were to be expected when you live in the spotlight.
But I was just wanting to know where she was... how she was... It was starting to drive me crazy.
“Where are you... Amy?” I looked up to the sky, blank and black, and I didn’t like the omen it sent me. Like chills down my fur, the wind finally got to me. I felt the cold... empty world for the first time... realizing Amy was out in it without me.
Was she without her coat? Was she silently re-reading those awful articles?
‘Amy... Amy... Hear me... You’re not alone.’ My thoughts channeled through to my feet and I kept searching, darting here to there, scouting out east and west, north to south was like zig-zagging till every blade swayed left and right to make sure she wasn’t hiding somewhere in it’s darkened shade...
A crescent moon... not a full one. She liked the full moon.
‘Amy...’
As I ran through a rather flattened terrain of another zone, I watched to the side of me how the treelined slimmed down and the edge of the world rose up on a hill... that soon became a mountain.
Blocking my view... of any light the night could have brought to her.
She only liked the dark when she was about to sleep... it’d be too dark to really see her way home, soon.
I had confidence she knew her way home, that the world wasn’t that dangerous... but I wondered if her mind could be.
‘Amy...’ I bit down my teeth, charging forward in a streak of blue.
“AMMMMYYY!!!!”
----
As though hearing something in the distance, I raised my head and looked back over my shoulder.
Something kept telling me Sonic was looking for me... but I wondered if that was true this time.
I turned my solemn head with a sigh back to the last shred of light from the fading sun... I felt like... if I got any closer, I would feel it’s warmth envelop me completely... and I’d disappear from this world.
All these awful words in my head would cease, all this terrible feeling of not being enough, or too much, or just dull and unwanted... I wanted it all to go away.
I had cried and thought so much, self-reflected to the point of not even knowing where I was or how far I had traveled off too.
Tails said I was acting too sensitive to words that random people that didn’t even know me had said. Knuckles yelled at me when I tried to change my behavior so I wasn’t what those people had written about. Cream even got tongue-tied trying to voice her own thoughts about me... and ended up just saying something to ‘feed my ego’ as they put it.
No... Cream wouldn’t do that. Tails wouldn’t try and be so dismissive of me like they said they all are. Knuckles... Okay, Knuckles is loud and yells a lot, but he meant well..!
She groaned and let herself flop back to lay against the cold grass, still holding her arms around herself as she was getting terribly cold in her heartache.
Knuckles just didn’t like how the chao were reacting to my new behavior... it’s understandable they would have been apprehensive to me trying to love them a little less directly... But practicing my new, refined self on them didn’t seem to have any good effects...
Maybe I’m overthinking... but I just want someone to tell me... I’m alright.
She put her arms over her eyes, refusing to look up at such a dark and ugly sky tonight.
“I just-” she sniffed, feeling the hot tears break through her already stained, sticky cheeks full of her earlier dried tears again. “I just want someone to tell me I’m perfect the way I am..!”
A sound arrowed itself into a bow along the plain of where Amy was, a sound that soared through her like a sonicboom that cracked through to her heart and made her sit up, looking as though with outrageous hope towards the last lowering light of the sun’s touch...
The grassy hill behind her seemed to have made a sound like something was moving quickly across it’s tundra... like something was refusing to let her sit in the quietness to let her thoughts overwhelm and consume her.
Her thoughts could hear someone calling her name...
“Sonic..?”
She lightly whispered his name out.
Then, as though pushing her lips back to not bother him, but wanting more than anything to jump into his arms-!
“SOOONIICCC!!!”
-----
He zoomed back to the sound, his eyes raising as though elated to finally get a trace of her.
And those tears that sparkled and lit up the entire night sky with stars...
And those arms that reached out for him, as though stretching on for eternity... a never-ending yearning he always accepted, granted a little half-heartedly, but never refused.
That scene was forever imprinted on him... and he wasn’t letting Amy leave his sights till she was her usual, teasingly flirty and emotionally unbreakable, spirited and youthful self again!
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forestwater87 · 4 years ago
Note
(first apologies if this is a duplicate; I got a "bad request" notification the first time I tried to send this ask) but anyhow; I saw your tags on my Lucretia post and i am not sure how to reply to tags?? but i want to see your version of that scene! (if you still want to share) I love Lucretia very much and love to see other peoples' takes on her. anyway, I hope you are having a good day!
OH MY GOD YAY!! 
I mean, cool, whatever. I guess I could share a little bit of that fic. That’s fine.
(yayayayayayayay eeeeeeeeeee)
Okay, part of me wanted to blast you with the entire chapter, but that’s 25-ish pages so I’m forcing myself to show restraint here and only include the tail end. There’s a little bit of context missing, because it’s the last section of Chapter 10 of a fic that so far has at least 32 chapters, but I think it all makes sense. It’s basically just “here’s what happened in that cycle when everybody else was a statue person” and it was, you know, not a good time. (There’s some implied Magcretia, sorry not sorry.) 
Plus it’s really good. I know that sounds arrogant, but I’ve spent the last 4-5 years hating every word I’ve ever written, and I’m going to enjoy this confidence for as long as it chooses to stay.
So anyway, I hope you enjoy! 
There are no line breaks on tumblr anymore so this is the part where the actual writing starts:
When the Hunger arrived, it was a relief more than anything.
Lucretia had been in the middle of defending The Starblaster from a group of marauders climbing like ants all over the dented and hastily-repaired sides of the ship, trying to figure out if she could possibly shake them all free without having to resort to the magic she’d deduced made it possible for the court to find her, when the sky turned dark and everything went gray. 
And her first thought was, Oh thank Pan. (She wasn’t a religious person at all, but enough time with Merle had made the casual prayers second nature.) This nightmare was almost over. In less than an hour, she’d have her family back.
She was so close to seeing Magnus again.
“Fisher, get back in your tank!” she shouted, abandoning the shield she’d been summoning and sprinting to the helm — she’d spent so much time this year running for her life that she could race from one end of the ship to the other without becoming winded. None of the marauders had made it onto the deck, but she felt the air above her head crackle with a spell that blazed past, and as she reached the controls she heard the now-familiar amplified voice call, “You are under arrest for multiple counts of evading the authority of the co — what the hell’s going on here?”
Oh, great. All her friends were here. Now all she needed was for the boar and crocodile to make an appearance.
As the officer began to interrogate the marauders (his side of the conversation still blaring loud and clear), Lucretia took advantage of the confusion to throw the ship forward. She’d had enough foresight to keep the way in front of The Starblaster clear for just this purpose, and while a few hundred yards of ash-colored grass were flattened, she was able to get the ship into the air.
She pointed it up, away from the Hunger — up into space, into nothingness, into any universe except this one, somewhere she’d stared at and imagined but now was finally going into . . .
If she could get the damaged, shuddering ship up to speed and break through the atmosphere, that was.
If not, everything ended here.
A tentacle of swirling darkness stabbed into the ground inches away from her ship, forcing her to swerve hard and nearly lose her footing. She threw all her weight on the acceleration as more of the Hunger’s tentacles latched onto the planet, the labored roar of the engines nearly drowning out the screams of panic from the people below.
As The Starblaster rocketed over a shining city with strange statues and up into the sky, a whisper made Lucretia look around — before realizing it had come from inside her own head.
We’ve been looking for you.
She frowned, clutching at the helm even tighter. Was this some sort of new thing the Hunger could do, or one last awful trick played by this hostile planet?
Another whisper, louder and lower-pitched: You’ve been evading judgement for some time now.
A massive column of the Hunger collided with the planet directly in front of her. It was so close, she had no choice but to try and blow through it, even though that meant taking the biggest risk she had all year. But The Starblaster’s momentum was impossible to halt, and the mile-wide column was impossible to go around, so she gritted her teeth, hunched over the controls, and slammed on the accelerator.
The second she crossed into the Hunger, everything went silent and black.
Everything, that was, except for the whispers: 
Lucretia, you have always let others take action and responsibility while you sit back and watch. You tell yourself this is worthwhile, but you know it is a lie. And yet when it is smartest and safest to proceed with caution, you take the most reckless path, because you refuse to admit you might be wrong. Your past sins are sloth, envy, and pride. How do you plead?
How did she plead? She didn’t plead for much of anything, except to survive long enough to fly them into the next cycle. The Hunger buffeted at the ship, wrapping smaller tentacles around its sleek metal body and trying to keep it from plowing forward; it might kill her — kill them all — but not knowing what else to do, she used Mage Hand to open the nearest window without leaving the helm and cast Fire Shield around the ship. It was weak and flickering compared to the spells of protection Merle could create, but the Hunger fell back with deafening shrieks of pain as flames licked the air around The Starblaster. 
The awful whispers weren’t letting up, though, digging cold fingers deep into her mind and sending a chill shudder down through her very soul.
Your present sins are no less grave. You kill without remorse. You have allowed yourself to become vindictive and spiteful. You have not abandoned your past failings, but have added new ones since our initial audit. We see fit to add to your current list of transgressions the crime of wrath. How do you plead?
Suddenly there was a break in the shimmering darkness, a bolt of ash-gray sky widening like a tear in heavy fabric — and then she was through, outside of the Hunger and so far above the doomed planet that she couldn’t see the ground below. She let out a scream of triumph, the noise tearing like sandpaper along her exhausted and dry throat, and angled the ship until it was almost vertical. The Starblaster shot forward as though with one last burst of strength, shuddering as its engines were pushed to the absolute limit . . .
The ship suddenly jolted to a halt, mechanisms whirring like a swarm of angry bees.
Lucretia turned to the still-open window and saw the entire view had been replaced with blackness, oily-iridescent tentacles spilling into the ship as others wrapped around it. She threw all of her weight on the acceleration, but it didn’t move; then, after a single grinding moment, The Starblaster began to fly backward, pulled back toward the core of the Hunger. 
She could hear its gnashing teeth.
“NO!” The word exploded out of her, coming from somewhere far below conscious thought. She abandoned the helm just long enough to run to the window, ignoring the tentacles that curled around her ankles as she pointed her wand at the offshoot of the Hunger that had its hold on her, aiming for where the base met the rest of the massive column, and shot off a burst of lightning. There was another hideous wail and the tentacles around the ship shuddered and pulled away, just a slight loosening of their incredible grip.
Her entire body shaking with terror and fury, she pointed her wand at the same spot and cast Finger of Death. 
The screaming was like a sonic blast — a thousand million voices filled with rage and pain and fear — knocking her onto her back and sending her skidding across the bridge. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling over her robe and lurching to the helm. The sound of the engines returning to full blast was like the roar of a furious animal loosed from its cage, and the last of the Hunger fell back as the ship threw itself up into space. It felt like the air was shouting with every conceivable emotion.
As the panic subsided and her head cleared, she realized it wasn’t the air screaming; it was those whisperers.
So much rage. So much wrath.
No remorse.
No different than the monster she tries to flee.
They were growing louder with every word, overlapping and running together until she struggled to pick out individual phrases —
She betrays the people she supposedly loves most
She destroys a family — destroys the memory of the family
Robs them of themselves
Who has the right?
No one has the right
The sound was becoming unbearable, deafening. Her ears felt like they were leaking; she lifted her hand to one and her fingers came back covered in blood.
It didn’t make sense — it wasn’t an external sound — it wasn’t an external force, but something ripping her apart from within.
It was the sound of going mad. 
At that point she was barely able to understand anything 
leaves him to die in agony in a hell she helped create
takes advantage of the innocent who make the mistake of believing in her
such a sweet boy, and all you do is lie to him
do you think you can make these decisions for the world?
the heartbreak you will cause
the betrayal
pride — such unfathomable pride
the deaths you will cause
the lives you will ruin
the blood that stains your hands
coldhearted — cowardly
wrath — envy — sloth
pride
PRIDE
Our judgement is decided.
You have been found wanting.
Something hardened in her chest, calcifying her lungs and making it impossible to breathe. Lucretia doubled over, her hands scrabbling to keep the ship moving, as her flesh turned hard, brittle, the feeling like casting Stone Skin but somehow it’d gotten inside . . .
She couldn’t move her tongue. She couldn’t breathe. Blackness crowded the edge of her vision — not like she was blacking out, but like her eyes just suddenly weren’t there anymore
everything went wobbly, the universe becoming untethered just for a moment
And when it stabilized, she realized she could move again, see again. She took a deep, tremulous breath and turned back from the helm, sliding to the floor in a heap.
It was less than a second, before the I.P.R.E. crew fully materialized, but she didn’t see it happen. As soon as the surreal, smoky outlines of her friends wavered into being, she dropped her head in her hands, a sob she’d been holding back for months finally escaping her throat.
She did it.
Magnus’s hands closed around her upper arms and he gently tugged her into an embrace. She could feel the cool steel of the bridge under her knees, heard the voices of all her friends speaking all at once. She was dimly aware she was talking, mumbling nonsense to herself as she waited for the world to stop spinning.
The last thing she was aware of before slipping into unconsciousness was Magnus’s breath on her forehead and his warm fingers combing through her hair.
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isis-astarte-diana · 4 years ago
Text
Milk and Honey: Day 3
Day 1 ‖ Day 2 ‖ Day 3 (Fin)
Summary: “I think we need to talk about yesterday.” Inches are lost; miles are gained; things are said that can’t be unsaid.
Warnings: Tiny bit of non-sexual nudity and also, separately, a sexual reference. Dodgy dynamics (I tried to fix them!). Angst with a happy ending.
Word Count: 3880
NB: This chapter was such a struggle to figure out and I think it shows (!!) but I hope you enjoy it anyway! Also, yes, I did write another ‘Missy and reader watching a horror film’ scene, and no, I won’t apologise for it. (Maybe there should be a seasonal Hallowe’en film night fic?) I consider this the end of the story!
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You think it’s the rain that’s woken you.
It’s deafening against the window, a downpour that floods the road outside so that the sound of each passing car is turned into a crashing wave. The room is black as pitch. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust and make forms of the shadows.
“Go back to sleep.”
Missy’s voice close behind you makes you jump. You twist around awkwardly, tangling your legs in the duvet, and almost smack your face into her elbow. She’s reclining on top of the sheets beside you. In the inky gloom you can just make out the pillows propping her up against the headboard, the open book she holds in her lap.
What time is it? The first hazy thought shakes loose in your mind. Almost immediately afterwards, how long has she been awake?
What comes out is thick and groggy. “Too dark to read.”
“Hmm.” It’s not quite a chuckle. She turns the page, a slow, rasping sound near your ear. “Is it dark to you?”
There’s something low and melancholic in her voice that makes you frown. You try to sit up, propping yourself up with one arm, but the duvet pulls tight and stops you halfway. You’d hoped to see her face better by moving; the shadows give no such clarity. She’s featureless in the dark.
“Go back to sleep,” she says again, not waiting for an answer. “It’s early.”
“And you?” Your head falls back to the pillow of its own accord. Wakefulness is still out of reach, a tendril of smoke that you cannot grasp. “Will you sleep?”
No response.
Even as your eyes close and you slip back into unconsciousness, you can feel her gaze on your face, warm and ticklish. Or maybe it’s her hand.
+++++
Missy is brushing her hair.
Eyes half-closed, you pretend not to watch her. She stands in front of your mirror, purple housecoat flowing around her like something from a fairy tale, sweeping a wooden brush through the tangles. Four hairpins jut from her mouth.
I’m glad you changed your mind about the bed.
The swelling there is gone. A ragged line is all that remains, dark through her pale pink bottom lip. She sets the hairbrush down and drags a pin from between her teeth, running it across the scab. Her eye twitches.
I think we need to talk about yesterday.
Red splotches on her cheek mark the place where the graze had been, new skin that looks tight and itchy. Parts of the large cut are healed completely. It’s only by the faint purple scratches - one below her eye, one on her jaw - that you can even find where she was injured. She twirls a lock of hair around her finger and pins it at the back of her head.
I don’t know what to do.
Your throat feels tight. She finishes putting her hair up, skilful and unhurried, eyes never flitting from the mirror.
I wish you would look at me.
Slender fingers chart the healed cuts on her face.
I wish you would touch me.
She unbuttons the housecoat and drops it from her shoulders, revealing her chemise. She twists as if to look over her shoulder. It’s no significant state of undress but you clamp your eyes shut all the same.
A long moment of silence passes.
“Could you look at my back?”
Her voice is soft. When you open your eyes, she’s turned back to the mirror, having shrugged off the gown and hooked it over her arm. The white linen chemise ends just above her knees. Her pale calves are dappled with fine, dark hair.
“Please. I can’t quite see it in the mirror.”
You throw the duvet off and sit up, skin prickling with goosebumps as it meets the cool morning air. Outside the rain is torrential. “Of course.” Your voice is still groggy.
She tilts her head as you approach. A single strand of hair hangs loose at her neck. It stirs with your breath.
“Can I-?” Your fingers hover at the embroidered straps on her shoulders, not touching, not asking. Just waiting.
“Please,” she says again.
There is no right way to ease the top of the dress down her arms. You search for something to look at that won’t make your chest hurt but there’s only her bare shoulders, her bright eyes in the mirror. Closing your eyes would be insulting. So would turning your face away.
You can do nothing but watch her shoulder blades twitch as you guide the straps down past her elbows. The fabric droops, falling clear to her waist. She shivers but makes no effort to cover her chest. Your eyes drop to the small of her back.
“Well?”
There’s an indent, a quarter of an inch deep, maybe more. The new skin that lines it is a furious shade of pink. It’s sickle-shaped, with jagged edges, curving to the left of her spine. You catch your fingers drifting towards it and clench them into a fist at your side.
“It looks good.” You clear your throat. “It’s healing. No swelling or anything.”
“But not healed yet?” A strange sort of optimism tints the question.
“No, not- not properly. It still looks...” Painful. “Fresh.”
“Good.” She tugs her chemise back into place hastily. “That it’s healing. That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Still cold, you reach for your dressing gown and draw it around yourself. “I’m, uh - I’m gonna go for a shower, okay?”
“Of course.”
She fastens her housecoat with quick fingers. 
+++++
When you find Missy reading on the sofa, there are two steaming mugs on the coffee table in front of her.
She’s gotten changed.
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before - the dark floral blouse, the wool skirt - but it feels uncanny. Somehow, seeing her in her chemise or in a pair of your pyjamas is less bizarre than this, her usual clothes with a softer silhouette, no corset, no boots. She has her legs tucked beneath her and her back angled away from the cushions in a way that’s startling unfamiliar. She looks relaxed. She looks comfortable.
“I made tea,” she says, and you realise that you’re staring.
“For me?” It sounds pathetically surprised.
“No. They’re both mine.” She glances up at you with a raised eyebrow. “Yes, for you.” An arrogant, sarcastic sort of lopsided smirk; a faint flicker of her usual self. It makes your heart flutter.
“Thank you, Missy.”
She blinks. When was the last time somebody said that?
You take the cup and sit beside her. Her foot, stocking-pale and peeking out beneath the folds of her skirt, brushes your leg. You don’t flinch. Neither does she. To keep from reaching down and resting your palm on her ankle you wrap both hands around your mug. In times of desperation you can undress her, in darkness or in anger she can lay her hands on you to push you away or pull you close, but by the cold light of a rainy noontime you don’t know where you stand.
You don’t know the rules of this game.
As you drink your tea in silence - save for the occasional drag and rasp of a page turning - the words roll over and over behind your teeth, a tangle you try and fail to straighten out before speaking aloud. There’s too much to unravel. Too many thoughts, emotions, sensations are knotted together, and how do you ask if she feels what you feel when you don’t know what that is?
How do you ask if you can touch her?
How do you explain that you want to?
Missy watches you from the corner of her eye. It’s clear from the set of her jaw that she can sense something of the tumult in your skull. You wish she would put the book down and stop pretending to ignore you. You wish she would speak first.
You wish she would hold your hand.
“What are you reading?” You ask, and immediately wish that you hadn’t when she lifts her eyes from the page and sets them on you. They crinkle at the corners with her smile.
“Immensely dull,” she admits as she shows you the cover. It’s a nondescript black hardback titled in an unfamiliar language. “He’s been telling me to read it for centuries. I let it gather dust in the vault just to get under his skin.”
You can see where this is going. “And now he’s conveniently forgotten to bring you any other books?”
“Clever girl.” You hope she doesn’t see the way it makes your fingers twitch. Dropping her gaze back to the book in her lap, she shifts just enough that her foot rests against the outside of your thigh. She leaves it there.
“I think-”
The words come out before you can stop them and now it’s happening. You’ve lit the fuse. Missy looks at you again, properly this time, and you’d do anything for her to jump in and plug this gap with a derisive, do you? or, try not to strain yourself  but she doesn’t. She just waits. It hurts to meet her eyes.
You do it anyway. She deserves that much.
“I think we need to talk about yesterday.”
She nods, almost imperceptible. Something cracks behind her smile but it stays put, too wide, too false to be comfortable. “Do we?” It’s hollow. Not a question, not a snarl. Maybe a scoff.
Maybe a plea.
The doorbell rings.
+++++
In the doorway to your flat the Doctor proffers a damp plastic bag. The smell of hot oil and chip shop vinegar rises from it in a haze. It instantly makes you hungry.
In his other hand he carries a folded umbrella, wet from the rain.
"I brought food,” he says, and you realise that you’re staring.
“Is that-”
“Yes.” He taps the end of Missy’s sonic umbrella against the ground. “Can I come in?”
Uncertain. Like he thinks you might actually say no. He looks down at his full hands, the chips, the sonic; peace offerings. The closest to an apology you could ever expect, and one you aren’t quite ready to accept.
You don’t know when you got so angry with him.
“Did you do anything to it?”
“No,” he says, fire in his eyes, and it means I would never. You know his vehemence is supposed to be an olive branch, too, but it incenses you. He understands the notion that some things are sacred. He knows that there is a line and this is where he’s drawn it, too far on the wrong side of cruelty.
You stand to the side to let him through the door. When he’s close enough, you snatch the umbrella from his hand.
+++++
Missy is so different when he’s there.
She sits up straighter. Even when he takes your seat beside her, banishing you to sit cross-legged on the floor, she keeps her distance. Her feet are back on the ground. The book that she was reading is, you can see from your low vantage point, hidden beneath the sofa.
The umbrella is propped up against the coffee table in front of her. It doesn’t leave her sight for an instant.
“So,” he inspects a chip on the end of his fork. “You look better.”
“Than you?” A tilt of her eyebrow. “Always.”
He ignores it. “How’s recovery going?”
“Tiresome. Next time I get stabbed I’ll make sure that it kills me.”
Next time I get stabbed. Your stomach twists painfully and you put the remains of your meal aside. Their tight back-and-forth continues for almost half an hour.
When the Doctor gets up to leave, Missy sees him out, closing the living room door behind her. In a bid to ignore the low murmur of their voices in the hall, you tidy up as loudly as you can.
+++++
Four knocks against the doorframe, just audible over the rolling boil of the kettle.
You’ve never drunk this much tea in your life.
Even before she speaks your stomach is dropping. The kitchen feels smaller than it ever has before. Counters and cabinets press in on you, claustrophobic, like the room is shrinking around you in the silence.
“It’s time for me to go back.”
Squeezing your eyes tight, you fight not to make a sound until you’ve steadied yourself. Horror and sorrow and pain tug at your throat. When you finally manage to reply it’s terse, partly with anger, partly because your voice will break if you say any more. “Do you want to?”
“Does it matter?” She asks, and somehow it’s worse than yes. “The Doctor and I- agree, that I’ve recovered enough to travel again.”
“Did you show him your back?” There’s an ember of something too much like jealousy in the question.
“No.” I would never. A trace of disgust in her voice. Some things are sacred. “No, but we spoke.”
You scoff. “You mean, he said jump and you asked how high?”
She doesn’t even argue and god, you’d take being thrown against the bathroom sink over this, any day. “Yes. That’s how it has to be.”
“Does it?” For the first time you throw a glance over your shoulder at her. It’s a mistake. It makes your bottom lip quiver. “Why?”
Her brows draw together, a soft sort of torment on her face. “You know why.”
“I don’t.” Squaring your shoulders, you turn to face her, bracing your hands on the countertop behind you. You set your jaw against the plaintive whimper that races up your throat. “Tell me.”
“I’m not- ready. To be around people yet.” She waves a delicate hand in front of her face. “I thought I was, but obviously I was mistaken.”
“You look ready.” You gesture to her. “You’re standing here with me.”
“I’m not safe.”
“You haven’t killed me, have you?” You indicate your very-much-still-living body. “I’m still here.”
A quick hand wraps around your extended arm, just over your wrist, where she’d grabbed you yesterday. It’s not a tight grip but the joint is stiff and, despite your best efforts, your face twitches with discomfort. Spotting the movement, she loosens her hand until she’s just barely touching you.
“I hurt you.”
Your eyes flicker over her face, the pain written into it. It’s not a question, but you answer anyway. “Yes.”
Her gaze drops from you and she lets go of your wrist, but you catch her hand in yours and take a step towards her. She could pull away easily, you know that; but she doesn’t. Her fingers lace between yours.
“Do you want to go?” You ask again, making a conscious effort to keep your voice soft. She doesn’t look at you.
“I have to,” she murmurs to the floor.
“You don’t.” Closer still, letting your clasped hands swing between you. Less than a foot of distance from chest to chest. “And that’s not what I asked.”
Missy lifts her bright eyes to you and the desperation there makes your breath catch. She doesn’t speak.
“You can stay.” It comes out like a plea. “If you like.”
Her voice is a cracked whisper. “I can’t.”
“Why?” You reach for her other hand and she doesn’t flinch, letting you slot your fingers together with hers until you can feel her heartbeat through both palms. “Why can’t you, Missy?”
“Because-” with a steadying breath, she sets her jaw and twists her lips in contempt that you know isn’t directed at you. “Because I am not a good person.”
“Then be a good person!” 
You don’t mean for it to be so loud. Her eyes widen and you squeeze her hands, closing the distance until you’re almost touching. Your faces are inches apart.
“It’s not something you can learn. You’re not stupid, and you’re not helpless, and, whatever, the Doctor thinks, you are not his pet monster. If you lock yourself up with him until you feel like you’re good enough you’ll be there forever.”
Her face crumples, tears shining glassy in the low light of the afternoon, and it looks like she wants to lunge and pull you close but she doesn’t. She parts her lips and takes a breath and lets you carry on. You can feel a mutinous sob building at the back of your throat.
“You don’t have to save the world. Most people never do. You don’t have to be kind all the time because nobody ever is but you have to choose, Missy. You just have to choose not to be cruel. Every day, you choose. That’s all you do. That’s all there is to it.”
She laughs, low and tearful, a strangled sort of noise. “You say it like it’s easy.”
“On a good day, it is.”
With a shaky breath like she’s drowning, Missy asks, “and on a bad day?”
“On a bad day, you do the best you can.” When a tear streaks down her face you can’t stop yourself dropping her hand, reaching up to cup her cheek. It’s cold. Her mouth falls open with a quivering gasp when you wipe away the moisture with your thumb. You feel your own eyes burning and offer her a watery smile. “And then you try again tomorrow.”
She covers your hand with her own and looks at you for a moment as if she’s waiting for permission; and then she holds it there and tilts her head to press a soft kiss to the inside of your wrist.
The tears you’ve been swallowing back escape with a choked whimper.
“Stay, Missy.” You crook your fingers and curl them lightly against her jaw. She shivers. “Please. I’m asking you. Stay here with me.”
Closing her eyes like she’s struck with pain, she moves your hand from her face and rests her forehead against yours. Slowly - so achingly slowly - her hands release yours and come to rest on your waist. It makes your breath hitch. You mirror her, just as tentatively, pressing your palms to the line where thin blouse and thick skirt meet.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, the breath of the words ghosting over your face. “For yesterday, I-”
“I know you are.” Her fingers tighten on the fabric of your clothes. “Don’t do it again.”
“Never.” She opens her eyes, so close that you can hear the moisture on her lashes. “I promise you. I would never.”
“I believe you.”
“I want to be good.”
You chuckle through your tears, breathless and high-pitched. “For what it’s worth, I think you already are.”
She makes a fractured sound in the back of her mouth and slides one hand into the small of your back. Lifting her head, she moves closer, pressing her chest to yours. Her fingers are cool and feather-light on your face.
“Everything,” she murmurs, brushing the tears from your cheek. “It’s worth everything.”
The kiss is damp, and salty, and it knocks you breathless.
For a second you worry about hurting her, feeling the rough line of the scab through her bottom lip drag against your mouth, but she has no such concerns. She kisses you like she’ll die if she doesn’t.
You know how she feels.
When, too soon, she pulls away, you can’t help whining and trying to chase her mouth with your own, but she steps back, just enough that you can’t reach. For a long moment you’re terrified that she’s changed her mind, that this has been some mad and frenzied mistake, but she presses her lips to your forehead and tucks a stray hair behind your ear.
“You’re cold.”
It takes you a moment to even process the words. “Am I?”
Smiling, she reaches back to move your hand from her waist and show it to you by way of explanation. It’s trembling.
You hadn’t noticed.
“Oh. Yeah, I s’pose I am.”
She kisses your knuckles, just once, just lightly, and you realise that you are, in fact, shivering.
“You go and sit down.” Gentle fingers brush the underside of your chin. “I’ll make tea.”
The touch has you ducking your head shyly and you tease, “twice in one day?”
“Only for you, poppet.”
+++++
“It’s obviously the little girl.”
“Is it?” You glance away from the gore on the screen and down to Missy. Her head rests in your lap, over the thick blanket that covers you, her eyes fixed on the horror film playing out on the television. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, first of all, I don’t recall telling you to stop.” She looks up at you with a quirk of her eyebrow, rolling her eyes to indicate her hairline. With a fond scoff you resume gently scratching her head. “Thank you.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
“Mistress is fine.” Judging by the sharp smile that flashes across her face, she doesn’t miss the choked noise you make. “It’s a revenge film. I mean, look,” she gestures to the screen, “everyone who was nasty to her is dying. It’s poetic justice.”
“Like Carrie?” You prompt helpfully, smoothing a frustrated line from her forehead.
“Exactly like Carrie.” She wrinkles her nose. “But with worse practical effects.”
“I s’pose they all look fairly bad to you.”
“Hmm. It’s like pornography.” Your fingers falter against her scalp and she chuckles. “Pales in comparison once you’ve done the real thing.”
You look back at the television, debating for a moment whether to speak, but curled on the sofa here with her it all feels so much simpler. With forced casualness, you ask, “do you miss it?”
“Pornography?” She snorts. “Sometimes. I had a lot of me time in the vault.”
“No!” Feeling heat rise into your cheeks, you swat the side of her head very gently with your palm. She laughs. “I mean-”
“I know what you mean.” She takes your other hand - the one resting on her shoulder - and brings it down to her lips, kissing your palm. It makes you melt. “Which answer do you want? The good one, or the bad one?”
“Just the real one, Missy.” You lace your fingers through hers. “I don’t mind what that is.”
With a soft exhale, she clutches your hand to her chest. You can feel her hearts beating. “Like I said. Sometimes.” She throws a sideways glance up at you and you smile.
“That makes sense.”
“Does it?” So much aching vulnerability in the question. You squeeze her hand.
“Yeah. Makes sense to me.”
She nods like she doesn’t quite agree, and the movement turns into a nuzzle against your thigh. Taking the hint, you set up the rhythm of light scratches through her hair once more. “We still have to talk, don’t we?”
“Yeah. I think so.” She presses your palm tighter into her blouse. Her eyes are still red and puffy. “But not right now. Unless you want to.”
“Not right now,” she echoes softly, and ducks her head to kiss your knuckles. Her head twists in your lap as she settles herself again.
“Are you sure you don’t want a pillow?”
“Positive.” Her lips tilt at the corners. “This is perfect.”
Yes, is all you can think, watching the red-and-blue light of the television flashing on her pale face. She hums contentedly when you scratch behind her ear.
This is perfect.
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curly-bangtan · 5 years ago
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A Drop of Heaven III: Broken Skin (M)
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[Series Masterlist]
Pairing: ot7 x reader // this chapter: Yoongi x reader, Seokjin x reader
Series summary: Seven vampires have secretly been roaming the darks of your world for millennia. Each brother selects a Feed who becomes supernaturally bound to him, whose blood will be fed on until their inevitable mortal death. They have spent their eternity hunting for the exorbitant rarity that is angel blood - the most heavenly of food for vampires that fuel them with desire, lust and satiety. So what happens when they all find you, the first angel-blooded being they’ve encountered in two centuries?
Genre: vampire au, poly au, smut, angst, enemies to lovers (e2l)
Warnings in this chapter: blood drinking, soft!Seokjin, mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts (gets a little dark), graphic violence, Yoongi being abusive and sadistic, dom!Yoongi, rough unprotected sex, BDSM I guess?, spanking, biting, choking, hair pulling, feeding during sex, degradation, ass job, hate sex, own cum consumption
Word count: 11.4k
A/N: I do not condone Yoongi’s behaviour at all, it is horrible and not intended to be romanticised!! He is obviously a vampire so violence is a habit built from centuries, but it’s also still not okay. And everything that happens is consensual. I’m honestly so scared that this is too much but I might just be overreacting. I hope you like this update because there were parts that were so difficult for me to write. :(
[prelude, i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii, epilogue]
Kissing Seokjin feels like sinking into a cloud after plummeting from the heavens, soft, cold, delicate. You don’t think you’d truly realised how plump his lips are until they are on yours, catching your every breath. You sense his initial shock, feel the fumes of confusion swirling in his chest. Because still, you haven’t stopped feeling, just feeling, him.
His body is tense at first, unmoving. Yet his lips contradict its language by slowly moving around yours, the motion so natural, so fluid, that it doesn’t feel like the first time you’re kissing.
Despite the coolness of his skin, all you feel is a warmth enshrouding your every sense, but mostly your heart. The sire bond doesn’t stop forming, building brick by brick between your souls like a bridge crossing the vast ocean. You see him on the other side, so far, yet so clearly. You’re walking towards each other, no, maybe even running. Full speed.
And then you collide.
And coalesce into one entity.
You don’t register it until your leg has swung around him and he has pulled you onto his lap, hands so gentle that you wonder if you’re imagining his touch. There isn’t a single thought in your brain right now, just a humming, faint colours swimming.
Every single movement is slow, heavy, as if you’re underwater and a pressure is resisting you, but pleasantly so because it makes every movement feel more impactful. Your eyes flicker open just a moment to confirm that this isn’t a dream, and you’re met with such dazzling beauty that makes you question your reality more.
This doesn’t feel real.
Yet at the same time, you’ve never felt anything more real.
Especially as your hands travel to his face, cupping his smooth cheeks, fingers gripping onto him so not to get washed away by the current. Every time you touch, you melt into him.
Not to mention all his sensations overwhelming yours, the way you feel his turmoil at his own conflicting emotions for you. How he cares deeply for you already, wishing just to be close to you in any shape or form because he craves the humanness of love. Yet also how he knows that love, be it platonic or romantic, has long since been vetoed as an option in his life, and given your dynamic, will never not crumble.
Seokjin shudders under your caress, as if he also cannot believe this is true. His hands sliding up your legs on their own accord, not greedily, but not of innocence either.
Then he’s guiding you onto your back and up the bed until your head meets the plush of your pillow, tongue rolling over yours like evening waves. Neither of you think to stop, take a breath, assess the situation. Because the bond between you doesn’t allow you to do anything except be together.
But when his fingers reach up your top, he freezes. Rather than your skin that he was expecting, is the rough lace of the bodysuit you are wearing.
You had both forgotten about that amidst all this. And suddenly, the few minutes before where he had entered the room to the sight of you trying on this raunchy undergarment feels like an eon ago.
His eyes lock onto yours, fingers stroking the patterned material as he softly asks, “Can I?”
“Yes,” you sigh into him, “please.”
Heartbeat unsteady but strong, you feel your whole body tremble under him as he smoothly slides your cotton joggers down to reveal your bare thighs. And when you pull your sweatshirt over your head too, Seokjin thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe.
His insides feel warm from the feeding of your blood, but his groin feels even warmer. He doesn’t think he has ever experienced such a strong physical desire for any of his Feeds in the past. Never anything so potent, compelling. He feels as though he is flotsam, swept away by the ocean into the depths of you.
You look up at him, eyes wide with a confounding innocence that you somehow have maintained throughout the affliction you’ve endured. The thin white material of the lingerie hugs your body so dearly, the floral lace like grapevines across your torso and up to your breasts. The sheer mesh does little to hide the colouration of your nipples. Seokjin feels his bulge growing painfully.
Your hand droops down his front, an action of harmless intent, yet sets fire to his gut. He falls back into you, mouth finding yours as his fingers dart up your legs, marvelling at your soft spotless skin, the same skin that used to be painted with scars and bruises and cuts that dig deeper than flesh, but have miraculously been wiped clean. It had felt like a rebirth.
It is evident from his hesitant touch how nervous he is, his throat quivering. It has been so long since he has remotely felt so alive; it moves him beyond his comprehension.
And it is as if you can sense that he wants you to do so, you break the kiss to flip him around so you are straddling him once again. From the way you sat over his crotch, dressed like a doll in white, Seokjin knows that he’ll come undone under you.
Rather than sealing his lips again, you just watch him for a moment, chest rising from the fervour. Your thumb traces his forehead down to his chin, then brush the corner of his mouth. His eyes fall shut, quaking under your touch, trying to calm the storm in his mind.
Then it darts down his chest like a little mouse to palm his arousal over his slacks. Seokjin gasps, a sound that you enjoy too much. He feels hefty in your hands, already, throbbing at the friction you rub. Your core is blazing at his reaction, his whimpers.
But then, in a flash, he sits up and holds up a finger for you to stop, eyes that are trained on the door shifting immediately. “Wait here.” is all he says before he zooms out from beneath you and through the door that joins your room to his.
You don’t even have time to register that he’s gone until you’re plopped onto the mattress, alone.
What?
Sense is slowly starting to ebb back into you. Had you done something wrong? Wait, well of course, you hadn’t even asked his permission to kiss him. But that doesn’t explain why he had asked you to wait before leaving so hurriedly. This scene reminds you of…
And lo and behold, as you creep up to the door to his room, you hear someone knock. Your attention quickly turns to the second door that opens to the hallway, but you realise that the sound was too muffled for it to be coming from there. No, someone knocked on Seokjin’s bedroom door.
Ears straining to listen as you press the side of your face against the wood, you hear powerful steps enter the room.
“Good night. What can I help you with? Why do you look so troubled, Namjoon?” Although the words are barely audible, his name rings sonically into you. A strange yet familiar rope tugs on your soul.
You think you hear him sigh, and you can imagine exactly the frustrated frown he must be plagued with. “I… I don’t even know how to begin to talk about it, hyung. You know what I’m like…  with words…”
“Yes, of course.” It could be your imagination but there is still the smallest hitch to Seokjin’s breath, yet to his credit, he is hiding it well. “Your debility in expressing your true feelings is second to Yoongi. What’s the matter?”
“Have you felt it yet?”
A pause.
“Felt what?”
“The bond.” Namjoon’s voice is a husky rasp.
You tense because it almost sounds as though it pains him. Unconsciously, your hand grips at your chest, the memory of its violent cinching when your soul was first tethered to his haunting you.
“Th- Why…?” Seokjin sounds as though he’s been asked a deeply personal question. You suppose it is.
“Hell, it’s so- so intense this time. In our centuries, I don’t think any Feed bond has ever been this powerful. When I fed on her yesterday, it felt like we were physically bound together, like the Gods tied us together and I couldn’t walk away from her no matter how much I struggled. I didn’t feel myself, I felt so… human.”
Your blood freezes. You hadn’t known, or even considered, how the sire bond must have felt for him. Do vampires feel everything more heightened due to their superior senses? Or less because they have been numbed over time? That bond with Namjoon felt vastly different from Seokjin. It’s true what he said, it was like your souls were bound by rope. Supernaturally unbreakable rope. And though the initial impact has eventually worn off, everytime your mind lingered a second too long in the thoughts of him, you felt its reminder tugging at your core again.
“I…” Seokjin seems slightly dumbfounded. Whether it’s because he finds himself relating so much to that feeling, or because he’s surprised it had been that strong for his brother too. “Maybe it’s because we haven’t tasted angel blood in too long; it has always driven us a little wild in the past, this time only exacerbated by how much we’ve missed it.”
“Possibly… But, I mean, I really wasn’t myself. I k- I lost control. I felt things, emotions that I can’t make sense of. I can’t even begin to describe them to you.”
“You mean, you felt affection for the girl?”
Silence. You hear your own heartbeat.
Affection?
There was a longing in the way Namjoon had kissed you, like all the anger and frustration you had riled up in him had somehow melted into a flood of desire. And you, yourself. Something had felt warm, pleasant, in your core. You hadn’t wanted him to stop, not even an inkling.
Such contrast to the spiteful words you had been throwing at each other only a minute before he fed on you.
It’s definitely the bond.
“Affect- No- Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you say that?” Namjoon splutters. You can imagine his cheeks staining in colour.
“Namjoon. I know you like to distance yourself from your Feeds, maintain a dynamic in which you always view them as your prey. But you are allowed to grow fond of her. It’s happened to us all before.” There’s a resignation in Seokjin’s tone, like this is a conversation that has been had many times before.
“I’m not growing fond of her! It’s the bond, it’s overriding my sense.”
“Namjoon-ah.” He sighs, exasperation crisp in his muffled voice. “Yes, it is all very much the effects of the sire bond. But you know that the bond manifests in such that reflects on the vampire right? Its shape and form, its intensity, its hold over you. It tells you more about yourself than you’re willing to admit.”
You perk up straight. You don’t think you want to continue listening. You don’t think you want to face the knowledge of what this magic means; it would elicit too many unwanted thoughts, confusion, dilemmas. You don’t want it. You don’t want to think about the deeper reflection of Namjoon’s feelings, and yours too.
So, stealthily, you sneak back onto the bed in your best efforts not to make a sound that would announce your eavesdropping to the vampires next door.
Sat near the edge of the bed, you stare at your wrist, at the fresh wounds that Seokjin’s fang had punctured. It’s starting to hurt now, as you stray away from the state of euphoria that came with the settling of the bond between you. You hadn’t noticed before when you were kissing him, but your hand is slathered with dried crusted blood.
You pick at it. Even licking it to see if your blood truly tastes that divine. It tastes metallic all the same.
Don’t think about the magic. Don’t think about Namjoon. Don’t even think about Seokjin. Just stop thinking for a second. Stop questioning. Stop wondering. Stop before you go crazy.
Thus you sit there blankly until Seokjin finally raps softly at the door after his conversation.
“Come in.” You remember you don’t need to speak up for him to hear you - he’s got vampire hearing.
Visible bother is worn on his expression as he enters. He gazes at you differently now. And once again, it’s like you’ve both awoken from a trance. No longer leaping into each other. The realisation sits bitterly in your stomach.
It wasn’t real, was it?
“Let me heal you first.” It’s the gentleness in his voice that make you sad.
And so you obediently lap up the rich scarlet liquid oozing out of his own wrist. You try to ignore how its taste threatens to tip you over and fall back into him again. You try to ignore that warm embrace you feel around your heart.
Is any of it real?
Soon, the two holes disappear along with the growing sting of your raw flesh. As good as new.
You refuse to look at each other at first, as you put on your clothes to conceal your suddenly very self conscious body and he fiddles with the embroidered collar of his shirt. This isn’t regret, but there might possibly a drop of shame, at what you had been doing.
“Um… That was Namjoon…” Whether or not he knows that you were eavesdropping, he doesn’t show.
“Oh.” You simply utter.
The tension is a tangible thing between you. The residual buzz from the bond is still present, tingling under your skins. If you focus hard enough, you can just about hear whispers of his emotions, but only barely.
After a silence that pains you both to be a part of, Seokjin clears his throat. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression of the kind of person I am. I’m not usually… The sire bond that fixes between a vampire and an angel has never been very well understood in my time no matter the research I’ve done. It’s guarded not only by witch magic and demonic powers, but also celestial strength of the heavens. It… warps the mind and senses.”
It’s a factual statement, yet you feel many underlying implications. It warps the mind and senses. As in what you did wasn’t really of your own wills, is that what he means? It stings, because it had felt so real. It was real. For you anyway.
“But…”
He realises your interpretation, and his eyes soften. “It’s complicated, the paradox of reality. I don’t wish to offend you in any way. I… care about you. I don’t wish to confuse you. So, it’s best if… it doesn’t happen again. For our own sake.”
He’s right, you know. But it feels bitter. Because just as you begin to taste a sweet thing in your mouth, just as you feel yourself healing through a person, it all just vaporises. But there’s no way of knowing if that was all just a trick of the mind anyway.
Or maybe Seokjin’s withdrawal is because of Namjoon. There’s too much confusion, muddle of emotions and incomprehensible feelings. And the more you try to wrap your head around his words that you overheard, the more you find yourself falling into a vortex of unknown.
It’s best not to start down an uncertain path, than realising too late that you’re falling off a cliff’s edge.
You had hope in Seokjin, that you could be close, because he holds that normalcy that you crave amidst this chaos. Could you still be friends? From the way you’re avoiding each other’s eye, you’re not sure.
“I understand.” You stare at a fleck of blood on your hand.
.
You’re staring at your pristine, spotless hands, folded around each other atop your lap. Sitting in the middle of the mattress’ end.
Waiting. Trembling.
It’s Wednesday.
The very day you’ve dreaded the most since learning about the vampire who you’ll be sired to today. The vampire who will enjoy inflicting pain onto you. The vampire who hasn’t a single drop of empathy left in him.
Yoongi.
You’re not unaccustomed to men with power complexes who like to seek validation from harming those weaker than he is. So you’re not sure why you’re scared right now. You should be immune to such fears at this point, but you guess it’s the little human instinct left in you that’s invoking it.
Your life hadn’t always been a saga of continuous abuse; you were a normal teenager once, with a loving family, many friends, a regular content life. But one stroke of bad luck, one tragedy, and your cloudless blue sky was ripped apart. It was a stormy Friday night, you suppose that was your first foreboding from the gods. You had begrudgingly agreed to stay in because your parents were adamant that you shouldn’t go to that Minho’s party again after they heard that he dealt weed to everyone. Still, you had snuck out with the help of your then boyfriend without a single ounce of guilt and scurried off together to Minho’s. Your parents didn’t usually check up on you, so when you had received a furious phone call from your father a little past midnight, you were shocked. Oh fuck, you remember thinking, accompanied by that distinctly horrid heart-sinking feeling.
There wasn’t much you could say to persuade them not to come pick you up right that instant, even as you begged them with tears of humiliation as your peers looked at you in pity, you knew their mind was set. And though it wasn’t very justified at all, you had felt a surge of anger towards them. Resentment.
You had slammed the car door particularly hard when you entered the vehicle, your boyfriend’s worried expression in the corner of your eye as you couldn’t bare looking at him. “Y/N. You lied to us.” You stayed silent. “We asked one thing from you, and that was to stay away from Minho, and you couldn’t do that.” “Minho is my friend!” “Minho is a bad influence!” “I don’t even smoke weed! Have you ever seen me high? No. Do I smell like weed right now? No. Why do you want to control me so badly?” “We weren’t banning you from all parties, it was just this one party. And you couldn’t do that for us.” The disappointment in their calm voices riled you up even more. “And why not? Why can’t I go to this one party if I wanted to? Everyone went to this party tonight, everyone. Did any of their parents stop them? No. Because none of them are as controlling as you!” “Because none of them know about the weed!” “Oh next thing I know, you’ll be saying that my boyfriend is a bad influence too and that I can’t date him anymore.” “You know what, that’s true.” “Oh, For God’s sake! you guys are so annoying. Why do you have to be like this?”
Every time you think back to that argument you had in the car, your nails dig into your fists. If only you had just shut up. If only you had just accepted that you were in the wrong. It was just one party, one stupid fucking party, that means so little in the grand scheme of your life.
“Y/N, mind the way you’re speaking to your parents.”
It had started pouring down heavily on the drive back home. You couldn’t even look out the window because everything was a rain-blurred mosaic. The windshield wipers were wiping vigorously, that unbearably annoying sound now forever etched in your mind in this memory.
“I can speak however I want to.” You watched the digital clock on the screen of the car switch to 01:01. “You guys are the worst parents in the world. I wish I wasn’t your daughter. I wish-”
In movies, car crashes happen in slow motion; the audience sees the shock register in the driver’s face, then watch the whole vehicle flip in 0.5x speed. In real life, all you feel is a violent collision, a loud ringing, a flash of light, all in a split second. Then everything is black.
01:01.
You had still been staring at the time. It was the last thing you saw before your world was torn into shreds.
You had barely made it, by the miracle, or perhaps more accurately punishment of God. You were unconscious for 72 hours after the crash; you parents were unconscious forever. They gave it a day before they broke the news to you.
You had cried until you fainted again and woke up another 20 hours later.
It took months for your injuries to heal, during which you had all day and night to replay that last scene in the car over and over again in your head. Those words you said to them before they died.
Your elderly grandmother who was living with you and your 2-month old sister at the time took the burden of the family. She hadn’t scolded you, blamed you, nor resented you. She just came to the hospital every day with warm porridge and soup and your sister carried on her crooked back, smiled at you and told you to keep fighting.
You didn’t have many relatives; your father was estranged from his family, while your mother only had your grandmother and your uncle. Your uncle was a kind, supportive figure once. But you could tell he didn’t see you the same way after the accident everyone knew you’d caused. You didn’t blame him, you hated yourself too. Still, he moved in to help your elderly grandmother; babies are a lot to handle after all, especially for those who can’t even walk up the stairs without wincing. Your uncle became the breadwinner of the family, working hard every day to pay for your medical bills. You had admired him once, had been so tremendously grateful.
But then your grandmother died.
Heart attack due to stress, fatigue and exhaustion. It was the day before you were set to be released from the hospital.
Everything fell apart. It was like a switch was flipped because all of a sudden there was hatred in your uncle’s eyes every time you saw him look at you, something that burned so deep that it didn’t feel human. It was a demonic sort of evil that emitted from his gaze. Alcohol was his remedy for his sorrows, you were his relief.
The first time he hit you felt like you deserved it. The second time, maybe fair enough. But by the fiftieth time, it felt like it had evolved into something of a habit. It became a spiral of abuse, he became less and less human, more and more a senseless drunk monster. There was a basement where you were locked in as he insisted it was the only way to keep you from causing another tragedy in his life; you weren’t permitted to leave the house, you couldn’t and it wasn’t to do with a lack of trying. Sometimes you were fed and watered, if he was in a good mood. Sometimes your face was burned on the stove if you tried to dispute.
And for a while, you’d found some sort of excuse, justification for him. You killed your parents, his sister. You killed his mother. They had all died in consequence of one bad, selfish decision you’d made. But as the abuse worsened, it became more apparent that he enjoyed watching you bleed, he enjoyed painting your skin with bruises and burns and cuts. In a sick twisted perversion. None of it should be excused or justified.
Your sister grew up in a house of violence, watching your torment in her big round eyes, not uttering a peep. On her second birthday, you had given her a stuffed bear that you found in the basement. She smiled so widely and hugged it so tight to her chest. And you remembered why you were staying alive.
Escape was never an option - your leg, broken from the accident, was never allowed to heal properly before it became your uncle’s favourite batting post. Suicide - you’d thought about for a very very long time, every morning, every night, every waking breath. But if you were to kill yourself, you would have had to kill your sister too. And you couldn’t, you just couldn’t. One evening, while she was asleep, you had held a pillow over her head, centimeters away from suffocating her. But then your uncontrollable sobs woke her up, and she asked in her small innocent voice, “What are you doing? Why are you crying? Did he hurt you again?”
You couldn’t do it.
And so you endured years of being a prisoner of a mad man. Waiting for your deaths. Physical pain became tolerable when you learnt to shut off your mind, transport your consciousness to elsewhere. If you didn’t think about how he was kicking your head, you wouldn’t notice your skull cracking open.
It was only when your uncle realised your attachment to your sister that he found a way to hurt you. That, you couldn’t be immune to.
Growing footsteps at the door rouse you from your deep thought. You feel a dampness in your cheek and you hurry to wipe it away. The footsteps are slow, light, almost a drag.
He’s coming.
Deep breaths. Just remember: state of inertia. Pain is an illusion, a choice. You don’t have to feel it if you don’t want to.
The door opens softly. Inhale. He pads in, black hair a ruffled mess. Exhale. His eyes land on you, sat tensely on the bed of his Feed room, awaiting him. Inhale. He walks closer, each step absolutely soundless. Exhale.
When he arrives in front of you, you scan his face: paper-white skin, droopy eyes heavy from sleep- But wait. His eyes are already shifted; they don’t contain a grain of white.
Just a pitch dark ocean.
His touch is ice when he tilts your head to the side as he slumps onto the bed beside you. Without a single word, he yanks your neck to him and bites into you.
To you credit, you don’t cry out. Eyes clamped shut, you try to focus your attention elsewhere. Don’t mind his rough fingers around your throat. Don’t mind the excruciating pain that feels like a saw digging into your neck. Don’t mind the gush of blood surging out, droplets flying from the pressure. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt.
Pain is fake. Pain is an illusion. Pain is a neurological response. Pain is fear. Pain is a choice.
Think about something else.
You recall the conversation you had with Seokjin early this morning before you went to sleep, after he had tried to resume a normal dynamic between you, and brush what had happened under the rug. He had told you about the origin of the seven vampires.
Yes, think of that.
.
“It was over two millennia ago, when the Roman empire began to dominate the word’s seven seas and cruel dictators lead our people. We were seven brothers, sons of a rich influential man, fortunately born into a wealthy family that was favoured by our ruler. We were never particularly close to begin with as siblings, each of us absorbed into our lives. Namjoon was a fine public speaker, a clear born-leader, an intellectual, favoured by our father who had high hopes for him. I was a literature student, and despite being the eldest, politics was very evidently not my set path; I had always been more of an advisor. Yoongi had always been an odd, quiet one, but an extremely talented musician. My father didn’t particularly approve of the arts, yet we had so much fortune that he didn’t need all his sons to work. Hoseok was wild, popular amongst the people, held the best most-renowned dinner parties with endless entertainment such as dancers, drinking games and one time even an elephant he’d bought from Africa. Jimin was a hopeless romantic, a lover not a fighter, chasing lady after lady, promising that he was foolish last time, but this time he knows that she is the one. Taehyung loved art, an extraordinary painter and sculptor, even helped us design our new house once. Though he tended to spend too much time with men and women at inns and left a trail of broken hearts after him. Our youngest, Jungkook, was an Olympic athlete; anyone who competed with him accepted their defeat. He was the long-reigning champion, the pride of our family.
“Life was incredible for us seven, perhaps too incredible. Because soon, we realised that we didn’t want to stop living. Namjoon in particular was so magnetised by the idea of immortality, it became his mission, his obsession. This only worsened after the death of our father, as it made us realise that death is inevitable, even for the greatest. But to Namjoon, it was incredibly unfair. Why must the greatest die? The greatest deserve to live and rule for an eternity. That only made sense.
“There were rumours from ear to ear that the Olympian Gods worshipped by all were living among us, hiding. Pluto, or more commonly known as Hades, was said to hold the key to immortality. He was the God of Death after all, if you managed to find him and prove your excellence and worthiness, he shall grant you eternal life, youth and health. Of course, we were all entranced by such possibility. Though, whereas we saw it as folklore, Namjoon saw it as a goal.
“It was four years of seeking, four years of endless obsession, four years of dead ends. But he alas found something - a rumoured family of witches, descendants of Pluto according to the people from their village. They were outcasts for their strange ways and the weird happenings around them. It was said to best leave them alone, lest you wish for malfortune upon your kin. Namjoon paid the warnings no heed, had our slaves cease them from their home and brought to ours.
“At this point, Namjoon’s sanity was toppling. This family was tortured for answers, whipped like slaves for answers and cooperation. And when they continued to refuse, Namjoon had the husband slain, and threatened to kill the two children as well. The female witch who remained finally gave in and agreed to perform a spell of immortality for us.
“Witch magic is a complex matter, even for us now. We discovered that a witch’s promise is irrevocable, magic irreversible, so Namjoon was careful with his demands. He asked for immortality, eternal health, youth and beauty, which had been our original wishes, but he grew greedy and also asked for superhuman abilities such as speed, strength, stealth, healing, heightened senses and much more.
“To our surprise, the witch complied and promised to grant us these things. She concocted a spell which put us into a hibernation of seven days, and sure enough, when we awoke, we were different. We could run at lightning speed, lift boulders, jump the heights of arenas. We could fight lions and bears, and we would win. And so the witch was released with her children, never to be seen again.
“However, as the days passed, more and more began to shift. The taste of food grew bland in our mouth, light from sun grew increasingly blinding and sensitive to our skin, and the canines of our teeth felt like they were remoulding… Then came the unquenchable thirst. For blood.
“One night, Yoongi and Hoseok had gotten in a fight at an inn with some travellers. At the scent of fresh blood, they turned from angry men to black-eyed demons in a split second, ripping into the throats of every single person with a pulse. They had killed nearly a hundred people that night, in the span of an hour. Namjoon masked the incident as a bear attack. But then the same ill fate fell upon us all - a sudden loss of control, then an unstoppable feeding until our hunger is satisfied. It became too much to cover up. And soon, for some reason, the sun began to burn our skin.
“It became apparent that, though the witch did grant our wishes without fail, she had also bestowed a curse upon us. For the rest of our immortal lives, we would never be able to step foot in the sun again, and will be plagued with a monstrous thirst for blood. That was our punishment for our greed and cruelty.”
.
Yoongi finally releases your neck, carelessly ripping his fangs through your flesh and tendons. You fall lifelessly onto your back, head faint and spinning frantically.
You made it through. You hadn’t felt a thing. You managed to block it out.
But now, a searing agony overtakes your senses, so concentrated on your neck that you think you’re going to lose consciousness. Your vision is dark and blotchy as you stare at the ceiling, unmoving.
Is he going to heal you? Or is he going to watch you suffer first?
You lay there, trying to muster some understanding for the vampire who had just tore through your neck and drained what feels like half your body fluids. He hadn’t asked to be a vampire, he is a product of his brother’s greed, which he has to live with eternally.
But that doesn’t give him any reason to be this cold, this heartless.
Blood is pouring out of your wound incessantly, like a perpetual waterfall onto the bedding. You think you’re going to die. But it’s not the first time you’ve thought you’re going to die only to be disappointed, so you don’t have high hopes this time.
And sure enough, as your eyes begin to fall and breathing shallow, a wet warmth is pressed onto your lips. You refuse to open your mouth and be brought back to life, but calloused fingers force your jaw open and the potion flows into you once more.
You hate how good it tastes, how your body knows that this is what heals you. But something tastes different about Yoongi’s blood - there’s a zingy bitter aftertaste, like what petrol smells like. You want to spit it out.
Finally, gasping, you sit up. Yoongi carelessly wipes his already healing wrist on the covers, and you wonder if his reasoning behind getting white bed sheets for his Feed room is for the purpose of staining it red with blood, a display of his wreckage.
You glare at him, watch him pick at his nails. “Fuck you, you wanted me to suffer.”
He meets your eye, and you feel a spear of eyes pierce into your soul. “And what about it?” His voice is low, a hum, a purr, indicative that he’d just woken up.
Unbelievable. He’s fucking sick in the head.
“Not even a hello? A self introduction? You could have at least warned me.” You rub at your right neck where he had terrorised, the ghost of the brain-melting agony haunting you, and you don’t think it will ever stop haunting you.
“Do you talk to your breakfast before you eat it?” He grunts.
Truly, you’re at a loss for words. Gawking at him, you’re incensed to see the indifference in his pupils that have returned to normal now. He doesn’t back down from your gaze. For many, silence is an awkward discomfort, a moment where your brains are scrambling for the next topic of conversation. With Yoongi, silence is powerful; the silence speaks volumes, it tells you more about him than when he is speaking.
“I’m not a fucking waffle. I’m a living, breathing human; I have feelings, I-”
“I don’t care.”
His eyes are still locked onto yours as he climbs further up the bed. It takes every fibre in you not to shrink back against the headboard. You can’t show your fear, you can’t let him know the power he has over you.
“You think you have a hold on me, that I’ll give you the reaction you want,” he’s hovering over you now, your frame trapped between his arms, “but I know men like you. You-”
“There are no men like me.” Yoongi rumbles, his shadow towering over you but you refuse to lay on your back, refuse to cower.
“You act so cruel because you think the world owes you. You act like you don’t give a fuck about anyone except yourself. You abuse the power you have to hurt other people because it validates you. But it’s men like you who have the weakest minds, who are the most afraid and lonely.”
The growl that rips from his throat silences you. You wonder if you’re pushing too far. But what have you got to lose anyway? Might as well gamble with your life. “Shut the fuck up, you know nothing about me.” He clutches your throat in one swift motion.
“I know that you’re just a scared little boy inside who is trapped in this immortal body with no escape from his bloodlust.” You choke out despite his constricting grip.
“Shut up!” Yoongi lifts his other hand at you, but halts before he swings.
You don’t even flinch. Because you know you’ve won. If the game he plays is abuse and violence, you’ve definitely won, you’ve been practicing for it for years. Staring deep into his eyes, you know he knows too. So his arm slowly droops down, and he lets your neck go with an unnecessary shove. You splutter a cough.
He gets off you and hops off the bed, making his way to the window where he flings open the curtains and stares through the window into the dark night. Though he is facing away from you, you can tell that his mind has transported to some place distant, some place in the past, you wager.
He was going to hit you. He was going to hit you.
But he also didn’t. He stopped himself. Why? May there be a shard of hope left for his redemption? Maybe he does have a seed of humanity buried deep somewhere, awaiting its saviour droplets of dew to liberate it from centuries of misery, so it can sprout into a fresh green sap.
But why are you hoping? Why are you giving him the benefit of the doubt? He has no respect for you, or anyone; he views you as beneath him, not even worthy to speak to. He’s worse than Namjoon. Your pain fascinates him. He’s unsaveable.
Just try. He needs you. A voice sounds in your head, so clear that you look around for its source. Save him from himself. It’s your duty.
Duty? You frown. He can rot for all you care.
“What happened to my uncle?” Yoongi’s trance is stirred by your blunt question, though he doesn’t turn to you.
“Dead, Jungkook killed him.” He says it so casually, as if it was nothing more than a fleck of dust, as if he’s pretending not to know the impact it would have on you. Your chest caves in.
Dead.
Why is he dead while you are kept alive here, as a prisoner, as a toy? Why was he allowed to be set free from his crimes just like that while you are being endlessly punished by the one sole mistake in your past?
Drip. Drip drip.
The tears flow out soundlessly. You watch them splatter onto your shirt into dark splotches.
Yoongi notices and peers over at you, frowning. “Why are you crying? Don’t you hate him?”
“I… I fucking despised him. I wanted to be the one to kill him, but only after I do to him everything he did to me. It was my right, my right, and you guys took that from me.” It’s getting harder and harder to breathe as your pulse rises. You’re on the brink of hysteria, you feel it. You’re going to crack open and finally detonate.
If there was one thing you wanted, it was revenge for your suffering at the hands of your uncle. And you couldn’t even get that. What do you have to look forward to anymore?
A scoff leaves Yoongi, almost humoured, but dark. “You wanted to kill him?” He meanders back towards the bed. “Little girl, let me tell you that we did you a favour by killing him for you. Killing is an irremediable curse. It would have robbed your innocence, tainted your purity and haunted your dreams for the rest of your life. Revenge on your enemy is poison for your soul. Be glad you have never and will never kill.”
You suck in your breath, and hold it there. The significance of his words sink into you like a heavy vessel, pushing through the screams of madness wreaking havoc in your brain right now, and planting itself into your heart.
Killing is a curse.
Of course, of all beings, Yoongi would know best.
You sniff and look up, to be greeted by the soft cotton of his sleeve roughly wiping your eyes. “Stop crying, you look ugly.”
“Wh-”
“Plus,” he jabs his sleeve at your drying cheeks, “angel blood runs in your veins. You’re supernaturally inclined to virtue and righteousness. You wouldn’t have been able to commit such sin.”
Is that true? Your angel blood forbids you to sin? Thinking back, you had always been a good chaste child, obedient, caring, sweet and innocent. It was only towards the very end of your parents’ lives where you became more and more corrupted. And if you’re not wrong, it was only that very last month where rebellion arose from you and your relationship with them deteriorated out of the blue.
Where was your angel’s virtue that night they died?
01:01.
“God, you’re going to be a fucking pain.” Yoongi rumbles and the scene dissolves. “You’re lucky the seven of us are sharing you, or I would be making your life more of a nightmare than it was before.”
You ignore his comment; you’re learning that the less of a reaction you give him to his attacks, the more it will bother him. “How come I’m not sired to you yet?” For Namjoon and Seokjin, the bond had formed on the second time they fed on you, while it hadn’t happened with Yoongi yet.
“I don’t fucking know. Sireship is a tempermental thing, I guess. It has always taken me longer. If you’re so prone to be sired to me, I guess I’ll just accelerate the process.”
“N-” You protest as you register what he means but it’s too late. Yoongi has once again clambered over you, disregarding your discomfort as he situates his knees on either side of your lap and bites into your neck.
This time, you can’t suppress the surprised squeal of pain. And fuck there should be a new word to describe the hot white inferno at the laceration of your flesh because agony is a pin prick in comparison. You try to shove him off; it’s been too soon since his last feeding, your skin still feels incredibly raw. But instead, your efforts only cause his fangs to tear through you even more, and you scream at the rupture.
His rough hands hold you in place, pressing down onto your throat until you’re struggling for breath. You pray for the sire bond to come, to alleviate you from the pain even if it will leash you to this demon and cloud your judgement about him. You didn’t think you would ever rather be magically submitted to Yoongi than have to endure his vicious methods every time, but God. The pain is toppling your mind; you’d choose anything and everything so not to feel it right this moment.
But the bond doesn’t come. The universe enjoys watching you suffer, the heavens stand by idly watching.
Fuck, you really think you’re going to die this time. You really just wish you would already.
Yoongi’s body sits on top of you as he pulls you up, closer into him, one of his arms slithering behind your back. Adrenaline filled, your hand flies towards his head in attempt to slap him, though it would’ve been futile anyway. But his own hand releases your throat and catches it in the air, speed frightening, as he slams your wrist against the headboard.
The pounding in your head is growing, the familiar blurring vision as your eyes are fixed on one point in the ceiling, blank. You stop struggling.
He can’t hurt you if you don’t let him. So don’t let him.
Distract yourself. Think about something else. Someone else.
Seokjin.
Imagine it’s him feeding on you right now, rather than this monster. It doesn’t hurt when it’s Seokjin; it doesn’t hurt now. Let him drink as much as he wants because he will most likely starve himself as much as he can postpone the next time he feeds.
Seokjin just wanted to be human. He never hopped aboard on Namjoon’s quest for immortality, he was never greedy and sought power. He just wished for a normal life, with his studies and his beloved brothers.
It’s okay for Seokjin to feed on you. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.
No pain. No pain. No pain.
You picture his soft curved features, round button nose, smooth cheeks, plump tender lips. His lips. You two shouldn’t have kissed, but it means something that you did.
Ow. Yoongi pulled away only to bury into another spot nearby again, this time closer to your shoulder, his fangs scraping your joint.
Seokjin’s lips. Think about how safe you felt with him, how understood, how respected. Your sire bond had not only allowed you to feel each other’s emotions, it had also been in the form of a bridge. You felt like equals.
You heart clenches at the memory of his words. “I don’t wish to offend you in any way. I care about you. I don’t wish to confuse you. So, it’s best if it doesn’t happen again. For our own sake.”
Why must you feel this way for him now? Why must you confuse the sense of security he provides with affection? Why do you want more?
God, you want more. You want so much more. You want to feel alive from the rush of kissing someone. You miss the bliss of falling in love.
Why must this world be so cruel? Why must it rob you of all things that keep you sound and grounded? You have nothing left - truly nothing left. You’re just lifeless vacancy.
Your thoughts are going in loops, a downwards spiral. Yoongi devours his meal that is you, delighting in the whimpers you unknowingly let out every now and again. Your back has slid down against the headboard; he is now completely on top of you, your wrist pinned onto the pillow, his face buried in your neck, his body laid between your legs.
Yoongi noticing your consciousness waning again as you chant something over and over again under your breath like a broken doll, so he releases your neck for a moment. Your lips are paper white, eyes glazed, blood surging out of your right neck area like a riptide. It’s a lovely thick crimson, Yoongi’s favourite shade. And he’ll admit that it’s possibly the best he’s ever tasted.
He bites into his own wrist and feeds it to you. The six of them would be dreadfully unhappy with you if he manages to kill you on his first day. This time you don’t resist his blood; it trickles down your throat as you continue to mouth those inaudible words to yourself. Maybe he’s fucked you up for good already. Psh. The thought arouses him.
You choke on his blood as he knew you would because you hadn’t known to swallow, coughing out of your daze. You try to say something, but it comes out as a splutter of his plasma.
“What are you muttering?” Yoongi eyes down at you with a quirked brow, smearing red all around your mouth until it’s dripping off your chin, mirroring him. What a pretty sight.
“M-more.” Your voice is hoarse, as if you’d been screaming. But you hadn’t been.
“What?” He frowns, thumb freezing mid-stroke across your lips.
You think you’ve lost your mind. No, you’ve definitely lost your mind. There’s a hollowness within you that stretches beyond physicality, an outcome of torment after torment, tragedies that keep digging this hole of depression inside you. And you’ve never given up trying to climb out of this crater, you just kept trying and trying.
Until now.
“Give me more.” The lack of emotion in your voice sounds foreign yet familiar. “Make me feel more, fucking please. Because I honestly feel nothing, I don’t even feel the pain anymore. I’m so fucking numb and empty and I just want to feel something again.”
Yoongi blinks at you. Of all things, he hadn’t expected this. He knew you would be an interesting one, given the hell they had found you in. He thought the angel blood would have compelled some shred of purity and naivety in you still, even after your unfortunate past. He had been excited to strip you of your hope and sanity. But it seems like that has already been done.
“What the fuck do you want me to do then? Rip your arm off?”
“I don’t care. Just make me feel more, more than this bleak fucking void.”
He himself is all too familiar with this feeling - of being beaten down so much by the world that nothing even fazes him anymore, nothing even hurts. Unsure of what to do at first, he leans back down, hovering over you. He can’t read your eyes, or perhaps there’s nothing for him to read. You’re just blank.
Should he rip you open? Maybe you’ll feel that. But he knows you mean something deeper.
You watch Yoongi hesitate over you, sniffing at the drying blood on your skin. You do feel something right now: anticipation. What’s he going to do to you this time? Or is he even going to follow your request? Why should he care that you’re just a husk of a person now after all? You’re just his food.
But then his eyes flicker up at yours again, and you hadn’t realised that there are different shades of black until now. There are bright blacks that strike at you, soft blacks that soothe the soul, then there is true black where the darkness is so strong and absolute that it captivates you. Yoongi’s eyes are true black.
“Be careful what you ask for…” The danger in his low voice sends a creature crawling down your back. “You want to feel something? I’ll make you feel something.”
“Just-”
You don’t have time to react when he cuts you off by pressing his lips onto yours. Mind empty. Chest clenches.
Anyone would suspect he was a heartthrob if they felt his lips without any prior knowledge of the kind of person he is. They’re soft, inexplicably soft. You don’t understand how a monster like him has such soft lips… Another thing you don’t understand is why he is kissing you. Why the fuck is he kissing you?
You place your hand against his shoulder and push weakly. Not even a push. Your muscles are numb from the shock. He pays you no attention.
But then, soft as they are, his mouth soon begins to move roughly to claim yours, sucking on your bottom lip as you can’t help but shut your eyes and allow yourself to drown in this feeling. Because, God, you are feeling something, feeling more. You feel the rush in your blood, that exhilarating surge of adrenaline. And you hate that of all things, this is what makes you feel - kissing the man who delighted in hurting you. It’s a joke how damaged you are.
Kissing Seokjin had felt safe, secure, like curling up in bed after a long day. Kissing Yoongi feels dangerous, fatal, like injecting something deadly into your veins just to experience that high, not knowing if this will be the time you’ll overdose or not. It’s precarious. It’s the not-knowing that brings the thrill.
Yoongi bites down on your lip, not at all delicately; you wince as you taste your own blood. It’s twisted but when his tongue flicks out to lap at your cut, something in your core throbs. His hand comes around your throat, digging his fingers into you. Your breath hitches and he takes the opportunity to kiss you deeper. Your own hands stay lingering on his shoulders, not daring to touch him more because that would feel too affectionate.
And this is anything but affectionate. It’s raw, carnal. Tongue laced with hatred, but need for relief.
With his body positioned between your legs, he doesn’t hesitate to announce his arousal as he grinds into your core. Even as you think about how much you despise this man, your traitorous cunt leaks at the feeling of his hardness rubbing against you.
“I can smell how responsive you are.” He growls into your mouth, hand running down your front to slide into your pants. You feel the hairs on your neck rise as his cold fingers meet your pubic bone. “It must pain you so much, how much you hate me, but how wet I make you.” Something in you sets on fire when he finds your clit, pulsing under his thumb.
Fuck, you’re definitely feeling more. More than you bargained for.
“It’s because I’m thinking about your brother.” You spit back.
He slaps you- down there. The wet clap resonates embarrassingly loud. Cool air licks up your thighs to your dripping cunt when he rips off your bottoms, literally rips, and tosses the fabric carelessly onto the floor. “I’ll fuck you until you’re crying my name, you slut. I’ll fuck you until you’re begging me to stop because you can’t feel your legs anymore.”
Your foreheads are pressed together, as you stare at each other ferociously, warm breaths infusing, blood oozing from your lip. His threat sends another thrumming through your veins, which settles itself in your clit. You know he means every word he says. You know you should shove him off and yell for him to stop because that’s the sane thing to do. Instead, you say:
“Fuck me then, you piece of shit.”
In a brute vigor, he flips you onto your stomach. You hear the ring of the smack before you feel his palm collide on the tender cheek of your ass. The tingling sting imprinted on your skin is laced with a sick pleasure. Of all people, you should be the last to enjoy someone hitting you. Yet here you are, as a groan slips out you mouth.
“Do you fucking feel something now?” He spanks you again, this time on the other cheek. “You want to feel something so fucking badly.” Spank, this time harder than last. “Then I’ll make you feel.” Another spank. You bite down onto the pillow that your face is buried in.
You hear him tug down his own cotton joggers and your heart squeezes in anticipation. And when you feel him fit his stiffened velvet length between your ass cheeks, your heart plunges all the way down to your cunt.
Fuck. Your entire body is practically trembling for him, and you fucking hate it. “I hate you.”
“Good.” Yoongi grumbles into your ear as he grinds himself into your rear, gripping onto your hips so hard that it will surely bruise. “I hate you, too.”
“You get hard from watching someone bleed, you’re a sick fuck.” Even as you say that, you’re tilting your head back so the sensitive shell of your ear brushes his lips. The touch drills a twisting pressure in your pussy.
“And you get wet from kissing someone who made you bleed, you dirty fucking slut.” Cock still burrowed between your cheeks, you feel his tip dribble a trail of warm precum. Purring, he nips at your lobe, piercing through your skin as if it were paper. You yelp.
Abruptly, he sits up again and spanks you once more. In the absence of his cock humping into your rear, your backside feels barren. But you soon realise what’s coming next. “Get on your hands and knees.” He commands. When you fail to move quick enough, he wrenches your hip up to the height of his twitching member, liquid still streaming out his slit profusely as he lines his head to your damp entrance.
You’re all but whining for him to put the damn thing in already when he takes your hair and wrap it around his fist like a rein, yanking your head back. Still, he toys with your apparent impatience, slapping and running his bulging tip through your wet folds. Your exhale comes out as a quivering pant.
Just as your string of irritated curses at him are on the brink of tumbling out, he sinks his entire length into you without warning.
“Fuck!” You cry out. It’s been so long since the last time that your walls feel as though a train has run through them, stretching so thin to encompass his size.
And there it is - the vulgar, mind-twisting, irreplaceable feeling of being fucked.
Sparing you no time to adjust, Yoongi slams into you again, and again, in a stable strong pace, pulling your hair back harder until your back is bent upwards sorely. The ache in your cunt is trying to claw its way into you and fester in your flesh. Your knuckles whiten as you close your grip around the pillow cover, creasing the fabric in your fists. Grunting, he tears off your shirt from your back, freeing your breasts to the cool air.
His thrusts are merciless, the slapping of his hips to your rear echoing in the air. Fuck, he feels massive, cock punching into your weeping walls while you clench around him from the pain and the pleasure - two indistinguishable sensations. He tugs on your hair so hard that you have to yield and lift off your hands so you’re balanced on your knees, his greedy hand taking this chance to fondle with your breasts, pinching your nipple and twisting them roughly between his fingers.
Then his hand snakes around your neck once again, squeezing the air out of your lungs. Wheezing, you grab onto his thigh behind yours in retaliation and dig your fingers so hard that you feel his skin crack.
“You’re fucking asking for it.” He snarls. You twist to look at him just in time to see him bare his fangs, then digs into your neck. The sensation of his cock pounding into you at the same instance as your blood being drained into his mouth sends a shock through you. He seems to tense at the impact too.
Wait, no, it’s not a shock.
You feel every single cell in your body quake, dissociate. When you shut your eyes, your soul is sucked into a hurricane of darkness, whirling you deeper and deeper into the black hole. Closer and closer to Yoongi. Even when you try to open your eyes, all you see is black. Endless black. True black. In a state of matter and antimatter at the same time, it feels as though you’ve been transported to a dimension between Earth and Hell, human but not quite, substantial but not quite, real but not quite. You’re a mere essence, a whisper of a soul, yet you can feel the ground beneath your feet. There are chains around your ankles and wrists; you can’t see anything aside from the darkness but the shackles are still ever present, holding you down.
Something trickles down your face - a tear. You touch it, but it feels too thick. You taste it, and it tastes of Yoongi’s blood. Bittersweet. You tug on the chains but they don’t budge, so you follow them, padding through the darkness as you pass metal link after link through your hands. Until you reach a mass.
Not a mass, a person, hunched over. You can just vaguely make out his silhouette that reflects a particularly sad darkness.
His shoulders are shaking.
Dazed, you bend down. Put your arm around him. Nuzzle his neck. And whisper ‘it’s okay’.
You stay there, chained to one another, tears of blood still streaming from your sightless eyes. Huddled together in the darkness.
With a gasp, you return to your body, mind distorted by the magic. And though you’re no longer in that place, wherever that is, you still feel the phantom shackles secured around you. Yoongi is still drinking you in large gulps, but his breathing is noticeably different.
He felt that too, the bond.
His fangs feel different to your flesh, no longer a sharp weapon to break your skin. They feel like an anchor, holding him onto you, letting him enter your soul. You shudder at the intimacy it imbeds.
Despite the trance he appears to be in, his pounding has not once faltered, but more even, as if the bond has driven him on. If he was an animal before, he is a beast now. The weight of his body forces you down, face pinned onto the pillow under him while his hands assail your breasts.
This new sensation is so raw, so undiluted, relentlessly filling you with a fervorous want for Yoongi. Your cunt is furiously clenching around him, the pressure begging to be released from its cage.
“Fuck-” He groans as he finally stops drinking. “This stupid fucking bond feels- Fuck.”
Each thrust he slams into you, you feel another unbreakable chain forming, binding you to him. And each time you close your eyes, you’re back to the darkness where you’re holding the crying boy. Something is clawing your heart, scratching it, tearing it, ripping its chambers open. You realise tears, actual tears this time, are rolling off your temple. You can’t tell if it’s because of the penetration of sadness from that boy made of darkness, or the penetration of Yoongi’s unceasingly brutal cock.
Then finally - ignition at every nerve ending in your core, rupturing through your entirety as if you are a mere vessel. You think you’re screaming but you can’t hear over the roaring of your pulse. The pillow you’re pressed onto suffocating you. Your walls squeeze as the pleasure wrenches you completely.
Yoongi watch you come undone beneath him, pace fastening to chase after his own climax. You’re panting, crying, bleeding from your neck down to your spine, yet features twisted in such pleasure. The juxtaposition. His member is throbbing inside you, veins bulging out on the sides. Hell, he is going to burst. And the moment he feels it coming, he pulls out and watches himself shoot onto your back, splattering your red hand-printed ass with his milky ejaculation.
“Fuck…” He moans, stroking out his high as he feasts on how you are still convulsing under him. Your trickling sweat mixes with your tears.
You don’t think you can move at all, even as Yoongi gets off you. His fingers play with his cum on your ass, smearing it along with your blood to paint himself all over you. You suspect it’s a mark of possession, a mark of victory. Because you definitely feel defeated.
You feel alive, but dead. You feel ashamed.
His tongue trails up your back, tasting himself along with your scarlet liquid. Angel blood has always been a favourite of his, because he loved how crazy it made him, how feral. But now, after the sireship, its taste is… untaintedly holy, like ambrosia, the food of the Gods. Unmatched by anything he has ever drank. He doesn’t think he can go back to drinking any other moral’s blood after this. You’ve ruined him for good.
And the bond… Yoongi stops licking. There are foreign emotions whirling within him right now, and one of them, he thinks is fear. Fear of the strength of this bond. Fear of the intimacy it threatens between you.
He had felt you - your arm around him, your gentle voice tickling his neck - during that complete blackness where he had fallen back to a deep dark past. It was a vulnerability that he had never experienced before. He was powerless against your intrusion.
So Yoongi pushes himself off you and clears his throat. “You dead yet?”
No response, no movement.
He rolls his eyes and commences to heal you. Mortals are annoyingly fickle creatures, you drink too much of their blood or fuck them too hard and they pass out, he thinks.
This time, it takes you a while to regain your consciousness, during which Yoongi dresses himself, but doesn’t bother cleaning you up. You sit up, naked and shamefully exposed. When you meet his obsidian pupils, you don’t know how to interpret the confusion in them.
“What the fuck?” You ask as if you hadn’t willingly took part, even though you both know you clearly had. There is a raw soreness blaring between your thighs, and you’re embarrassed to find yourself glancing over at his crotch.
“You asked me to make you feel something. Why are you acting surprised?” His lids are half closed, bored, as he surveys the puddles of red on the bed. Your eyes follow his, trying to process how the sheets had been spotlessly white not three hours ago, yet now they only possess one corner that isn’t stained in crimson. It looks as though cattle had been slaughtered here as a sacrifice to the divinity. It’s all your blood.
And when you lock eyes with him again, you feel the weight of the chains hanging from your limbs. Bound forever.
“You feel alive now, don’t you? Dead inside still, but at least your heart was racing when I was fucking you.” He taunts, slowly rolling off the bed in an indifference that boils your blood.
You hate how true his words are. That was the very feeling you wanted, the thrill that you were seeking to break you out of that inertia. You hate how it was with him, of all people. It could have been anyone under this roof, yet you picked this monster. And you hate how, even now, you don’t think you regret it, not even with the disgust and resentment raking at your chest for this vampire.
“You should get used to it. Sex is a faultless coping mechanism for those of us who are too hollow to feel anything else.” Yoongi continues, as he heads towards the door. “Wash yourself up and stay here until I come back when I’m hungry again.”
A response still trying to formulate in your brain, all you can do is stare at his back in silence. Quietly fuming.
Yoongi pauses before twisting the doorknob. “Oh, and don’t think I did that for you. I couldn’t wait to fuck you as soon as I tasted your blood.”
It was all you could do to restrain yourself from leaping across the room and hammering his face. Not that you would’ve been able to anyway. Motherfucker is so insecure that he couldn’t risk you thinking that he would ever not act out of self interest, so he masks it with spiteful words to try to hurt you.
“You tried so fucking hard to break me, but I was already broken.”
His head turns, shadows casting over his profile. His lips purse into a smirk that holds no amusement at all. “Join the fucking club, you’re nothing special.”
“I fucking hate you.” You spit back at him, the venom imbued in your words is more than you thought you were capable of and it surprises you.
He gazes at you over his shoulder, unfazed. Cold and unfeeling. And somehow the words he reply inflict an ache in your heart that shouldn’t be there because, all of a sudden, you see a flash of the small broken boy before you.
“I fucking hate me too.”
Then he slams the door behind him.
@taexxxiiaa @serendipity-secrets @killcomet @askingtheimportantthingshere@blackpanther4550 @comingjimin @unatempesta-dipensieri @dapppphhhhh  @unatempesta-dipensieri @beach-bitch-bitch-beach @queerloser17 @linyi-lovbts @somewhereinthestarss @xxqueenwxtchxx @whitefeatheredwyvern @embrace-themagic @brokencrownqueen @i-dont-even-know-fck @bangtandimples @kalkeegan @beetaeass @confessionsofascientist @chimycthulhu @hisunshiine @shooklier @livetay84​ @runlikeabuffalo​ @nanna022 @berryjam17​ @thelouhvre​ @bluemooncnblue​ @enigmaticlove-03​ @lanu-la​ @bangtanfancamp​
23/11/2019
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oswildin · 5 years ago
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My Doctor ~ Dhawan!Doctor x Reader {featuring Whittaker!Master}
~ Yes again I should be doing requests but I’ve seen people doing the whole character swap thing between 13 and the master and damn I didn’t know I wanted it. So here is a little fic about it. Let me know if you want a part 2 👀 Drew inspo characteristics from 11/13. Also inspired by @lilaccoats fic - go give it a read! ~
Summary: You’ve fallen through the void into another universe. You don’t know how you got there or why... And everything is just... wrong.
Warnings: Angst, some fluff
Part 2 - https://oswildin.tumblr.com/post/612203741821714432/my-doctor-part-2-dhawandoctor-x-reader
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You couldn’t remember much. Your head felt heavy, foggy. You hissed as you felt your body ache with pain. Slowly, you began to sit up, feeling a wave of nausea flew through your chest. You coughed as you tried to fight the feeling. You looked around, realising you were in some sort of med bay. No. The TARDIS med bay. What happened? You clutched your head, searching for any sign of a gash, or bump, but found nothing.
“Ah! You’re awake!”
You felt your body freeze with fear as you heard the familiar voice. You slowly drifted your gaze towards the voice as you saw the person you dreaded to see. He could see the shock and fear on your features as he furrowed his brows in worry.
“Whoa, you look like you’ve seen a ghost...” He commented, walking towards you to see if you were ok. You stayed still, looking confused at the Timelord. Why was he in the Doctor’s TARDIS? Where was she?
“Where’s the Doctor?” You asked, voice strong as you pushed yourself off the med bed. He gave you another confused look. “Why are you on her TARDIS? What did you do to me?” You asked frantically, as you steadied yourself. The Master continued to look concerned and confused as you asked questions.
“How do you know the Doctor?” He raised a brow, as you looked back at him in confusion. What did he mean? Wait... Could it be before you met the Master? Did he not know you yet?
“You don’t know me yet, do you?” You raised a brow.
“Erm...” He seemed to search his mind for an answer until he came to nothing. “Nope, don’t believe I do.” He rested a hand on his hip. “So, what’s your name? Or will it mess up timelines....” He paused. “No don’t tell me. Can’t risk rewriting time!” He exclaimed, putting his finger on your lips as you frowned, pushing his hand away.
“Don’t touch me, Martian!” You cried, narrowing your eyes warningly. He seemed shocked by your outburst.
“So... You know future me?” He almost smirked. “You remind me of someone I used to know.” He smiled, thinking of how Donna used to call him Martian. You shook your head, trying to figure out why he was acting so different to how you knew him.
“This doesn’t make any sense! Why are you being... Like this?” You gestured to him up and down.
“I’ll try not to take offence.” He pursed his lips, dusting down his waistcoat as you groaned in frustration. “Am I not always like this?” He raised a brow.
“No! You’re mean! Annoying! Scheming!” You exclaimed, trying to understand what was happening. He seemed taken back by your words.
“That... doesn’t sound like me. I know I can be grumpy, bossy and maybe a bit irritating at times, but scheming? I would prefer the term crafty.” He ranted, as you recognised a similar look in his eyes as he spoke... There wasn’t any anger, or fire. They were welcoming, soft and wise. They felt... familiar.
“You have no clue what I’m talking about do you?” You softened your tone as he looked lost.
“No. Apparently it’s a very common occurrence I have during human interaction.” He said casually. “I think you call it social awkwardness.”
“You sound like the Doctor...” You mumbled, expecting him to explode with anger, disgust, but it never came.
“I’d hope so.” He laughed lightly. “Considering I am the Doctor.” He looked amused as you felt confusion take you over.
“No you’re not.” You argued, folding your arms. “You’re the Master.” His eyes widened in shock.
“Did you hit your head?” He questioned, stepping forwards once more to check you over. He pulled out a sonic screwdriver as he scanned you over. You hit his hand away. “Ow!” He exclaimed, frowning like a kicked puppy.
“Stop pointing that thing at me!” You cried, as the sonic made a beep sound, alerting him to something. He lifted it cautiously, eyeing you, as he looked at the readings.
“But that cant be...” He muttered, furrowing his brows. “This... this says you’re from a different universe.” He looked you in the eye as you narrowed your own.
“Why should I believe you?” You spat, defensively. “How do I know this isn’t apart of a mega evil plan you’ve come up with?” You retorted as he sighed.
“Ask me anything. Anything the Doctor could answer.” He told you, placing his hands behind his back after putting the sonic away. You thought for a moment, before thinking of a few questions.
“What do you think of humans?” You began as you searched his eyes for any hidden emotion.
“I think...” You saw his lights light up, as a small smile appeared on his lips. “I think you are wonderful. Flawed, yes, but overall... You’re so huge and strong. You don’t give up. You are so much bigger than you know in the universe.” You hummed at his response, feeling his sincerity.
“Okay. Bow ties?” You raised a brow, waiting for him to finish the sentence.
“Are cool.” He grinned. “I still stand by that.” You placed your finger on your chin as you thought of one last question.
“What do you always do to a book?”
“Rip the last page out.” He told you, a sad smile on his face. “Never liked endings.”
You looked at him, searching his eyes as you took a step closer to him. You noticed the differences in his appearance finally; instead of a beard, he was more clean shaven, just stubble, his shirt was no longer a deep blue, but a lilac, as his jacket looked similar to his eleventh incarnations. You peered down, as his socks were still visible, the purple showing blatantly as you couldn’t help but chuckle to yourself.
“Ugh, you really are you aren’t you?” You looked up at him in wonder. “How is that possible? Where’s.... Where’s your thirteenth self gone?” You inquired as he furrowed his brows.
“I am thirteen.” He told you. “Well.. technically fourteen, but we don’t talk about that.” He rambled.
“So you don’t know me yet? How did I get on the TARDIS?” You asked, looking up at him.
“Well, I found you in the console room. You just... appeared.” He explained, shrugging. “I always like a mystery. So... You know a different version of me?”
“I guess... You’re a woman for starters. Blonde. Quirky. Trousers that don’t reach your ankles.” You smiled fondly at the memory of your Doctor. His face seemed to shift as you saw his sudden uncomfortable stance. You raised a brow, before coming to the realisation. “Oh God... She’s the Master... isn’t she?” You exclaimed, gasping as he sent you a sympathetic glance. “So what? Am I in a alternate world or something? Where you’re the Doctor and she’s the Master?!”
“Most likely a parallel universe...” He explained. “There are many different versions of us all out there... There’s probably a you here too... Just maybe a bit different.” You felt anxiety rising within.
“How do I get back?” You asked, glassy eyes, fearing the worst. He sighed, sending you a sad look.
“I’m sorry. You can’t.” He told you gently. “It would cause a tear in time. Trust me. I know.” You felt your world crashing around you. You’d most likely never see your Doctor again. And even if you saw her face, it wasn’t hers in this world. The Doctor reached out, placing a hand on your arm, bringing you out of your daze. “So... what is your name?”
“(Y/N). (Y/N) (L/N).” You introduced as he gave you a soft smile.
“Great name.” He complimented as you tried to see him as the Doctor. He had the mannerisms... He was similar to the Eleventh... But different... But he wasn’t your Doctor. You didn’t even know if he was the same as the Doctor.
You ducked into the TARDIS through its wooden doors as you yelped in surprise. The Doctor followed behind as he flailed his arms around, closing the door behind you both as you continued to hear the blasts being shot at you both.
“Really?! Why does every adventure with you end with us running for our lives?!” You exclaimed as he rushed to the console. His TARDIS was different from your Doctors. It looked similar to Twelve’s, but had splashes of purple and blue around, instead of feeling colder, it felt warmer. You followed him to the console as a large bang made you flinch away from the doors.
“Would you have it any other way?!” He teased, grinning as you rolled your eyes. “How I was supposed to know he was the King?!”
“Doctor, you told him he was an idiot!” You cried, exasperated. “He was wearing a bloody crown!” You shook your head, before realising he was staring at you intently. You furrowed your brows, folding your arms. “What?” You questioned as his lips twitched slightly.
“You... You just called me Doctor.” He said gleefully as you realised you had in fact called him Doctor.
“Yeah well...” You cleared your throat, shifting your gaze around the room. “Suppose I should probably start believing you. And admit that I’m stuck here. And that you are the Doctor.” You mumbled, before you felt arms wrap around your waist, lifting you up, twirling you around as you looked behind him in shock at his reaction. Finally, he placed you down on the floor, as he beamed down at you.
“Don’t get used to it.” You pointed at him. “It’s still gonna take time.” You admitted, playing with the sleeves of your shirt as he gave you one last tight smile.
“I’ll take what I’m given.”
“Doctor!”
You cried, panic rising as you looked around the darkened room. Alone. You were all alone. You didn’t know where you were, or what was happening. You feared you would be thrown into another universe once again. You’d just begun to settle and face reality. You couldn’t handle it again.
“Doctor! Doctor!” You heard someone mimic before a dark laugh filled the room. “Oh, my dear (Y/N)....” You froze, recognising the voice. Tears filled your eyes as you shook your head. “Shouting for her wonderful Doctor.”
Finally, you could see where the voice was coming from, as a figure stepped out from the shadows. You felt your heart skip a beat as you saw the one face you’d hoped to see again for months...
“We meet at last.” She spoke, raising a brow. You saw the Doctor. Or not the Doctor, rather the Master in this universe. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes had dark circles under them, whilst her lips sported a red lipstick. Her outfit was reminiscent of your Doctors. Her shin length trousers were instead a dark red, and her rainbow top black, as her long jacket was also a deep red. She looked menacing.
“No.” You whispered, backing up slightly. “You can’t be...” You shook your head.
“Oh I am...” She grinned, but you didn’t feel warm from the smile, you felt scared. “I know all about you... From a different universe... My face... The Doctors.” She hissed, growling almost as she wore a disgusted face. “What an awful world you must have lived in.”
“Shut up!” You cried, overwhelmed.
“Ugh. Sentiments.” She rolled her eyes, hand on hip. “You humans love your emotions don’t you?”
“Better than to be cold and calculated.” You snapped back.
“Oh, careful, what would the Doctor think of you complimenting me?” She purred as you flared your nostrils in anger. “Naughty.” She teased as you bit your lip. “I can see it in your eyes... Your love for the Doctor. Well... Your Doctor.” She pressed as you let a tear fall, looking away from her gaze. “I can hear the thoughts racing through your mind...” She stepped towards you, but you refused to react. “I can smell the fear... The sadness...” she laughed, almost manically. “Pathetic, really.”
“I know you. Just because you have a different face, I still know you.” You argued, glaring at her as she raised a brow.
“But it’s not just any different face, is it?” She retorted. “It’s your Doctor’s face. God was she lucky.” She winked, resting her hands on her hips.
“I’m not scared of you.” You ignored her, trying to stand strong.
“Oh really?” She questioned, shock in her voice. “Well... we need to fix that then, don’t we?” She said, before pulling out a tissue compression device, aiming it at you. You flinched slightly, but stood strong. “Say you fear me.” She ordered. You tightened your jaw as you bit your tongue, refusing to give into her game. “Say. You. Fear. Me.” She hissed, finger on the trigger as you rolled your eyes. She pressed the trigger, moving the direction of the beam beside you, inches away as it shot out. Your breath hitched. “Say you fear me!” She roared, voice bouncing off the walls.
“Oh a party!”
You sighed in relief at a similar voice.
“Can anyone join the party?”
The Doctor stepped out from the shadows as you watched the Master roll her eyes, seemingly frustrated with his intrusion. She sighed, twirling round to face her enemy.
“Of course!” She beamed. “More to kill the merrier...” She smirked.
“How did you escape?” The Doctor asked, sighing. He looked almost tired. “Every time...”
“I have a knack of getting out of tight situations.” She shrugged. “But I also have a talent for getting myself into them to.”
“Either way. You know I’m going to stop you.” The Doctor glared at the woman. “I promise. Cross my hearts.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Doctor.” She poured for a second, waving the device around in her hand, before it landed back towards your direction. The Doctor tensed, glancing at your face as he saw the fear in your eyes. “I’ll do it.” She warned. “You know I wouldn’t even hesitate.” The Doctor stayed silent. “Imagine the possibilities... If I could work out how to travel to the other universes!” She cheered. “Imagine the destruction! Across worlds...” She laughed. “Multiple versions of me... I would be unstoppable.”
“Also multiple versions of me.” The Doctor argued. “And how many times have I stopped you.” He stated as her jaw tightened, grip on the device tighter.
“Barely.” She raised her brows. “By the skin of your teeth...” She smirked. “It could be a masterful world, Doctor.” She laughed, her body moving with her voice. “Or should I say worlds...”
“Not this time.” He almost growled, pulling a device from his pocket, throwing it in her direction. She looked down at the ball shaped device as she glared at the fellow Timelord. She hissed as she fired the tissue compressor, as you narrowly missed the shot, throwing yourself to the floor. As you looked back up, you saw the ball open, exploding around her in a bright light as she disappeared. You felt your breath rise and fall quickly as you looked up at the Doctor.
“What happened?” You asked, slowly getting up from the floor. “Where did she go?”
“Back in time. Far enough for me to come up with a plan at least.” He explained, walking towards you as his eyes roamed your body for any damage.
“I’m fine.” You waved him off, feeling saddened by it all.
“You’re crying.” He told her, furrowing his brows.
“I’m fine.” You insisted.
You sat in the console room, twiddling your thumbs as the Doctor kept eyeing you, ensuring you were ok. He knew you weren’t. You’d just seen the Master... with your Doctors face. He licked his lips before slowly approaching you, almost cautious.
“It’s ok you know?” He began, getting your attention. “To be sad...” He said softly, sitting beside you on the steps.
“I’m...” You sighed, glancing down at your hands. “I loved her.” You blurted out, as the Doctor listened carefully. “My Doctor... I’d known her for years... Met her by accident... As always.” You sniffled, laughing lightly. “Saw her regenerate. Multiple times.” You explained. “Fought Daleks... Cybermen... The Master...” You glanced over at him as he almost shrunk under your gaze. “And it’s like I’ve started all over again.” You whispered.
“Stories don’t always have to end.” He told you gently. “Picture it as... An extended chapter... The Sequel even.” He gave a small smile. He offered his hand as you glanced at it, before eventually taking it softly. “I know I’m not her.” He paused. “But, I am the Doctor. I’m the same person. Just a bit different.” He said as you gave him a small smile in return.
You watched the Doctor with a smile on your face as he rambled about something or other. You didn’t have a clue what he was on about, but the excitement in his eyes when he spoke of it was enough to keep you interested. It had been a year since you fell into the other universe... A year since you met this Doctor. You had to admit, he was the same. He was the same man, woman, you once knew. Had always known. The Doctor furrowed his brows, turning to you as he saw your stare.
“What?” He asked. “Have I got something on my head again?” He reached up, patting his hair in confusion. You shook your head, laughing lightly as you walked towards him.
“You really are the Doctor aren’t you?” You smiled. “You are... The same Doctor.”
“But different.” He said as he gave you a small smile, moving his hand away from his head, shifting under your stare.
“My Doctor.” You said quietly. His eyes fell back onto your own at your words, his mouth slightly parted as he looked at you, shock evident in his eyes.
“Did you just-“ He pointed at you as you rolled your eyes, cutting him short, jumping on him as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, giving him a hug. You’d never really shown affection towards him. It was about time for it.
“Thank you.” You said into his ear as he held you close.
“For what?” He questioned.
“For putting up with me.” You laughed lightly. “I’ve not been the nicest to you... I’ve been waiting to prove you wrong, that you weren’t the Doctor... But you are... All along, you have been. My Doctor.” You smiled into his shoulder as you felt him rub your back comfortingly.
“Hey, it’s ok.” He told you softly. “You reacted normally. Hell, even I would’ve been cautious.” He told you, pulling away as he held you at arms length.
“Oh shut up and just take the compliment.” You teased as he let out a breath of air, seeing the playfulness in your eyes.
“So!” He exclaimed, twirling around, his jacket almost hitting you in the process as the ran around the console. “Where to next?!”
“Everywhere.”
~
Taglist: @drapetxmaniia @dannighost @imagine-whatever @yourlocalspacebisexual @the-sweet-space-bi @blamerogertaylor @koschei-taylor @koschei-studies @lostshadow12 @hannahlilyyx @wonders-of-the-multiverse @ettorah @nikey-no-likey @imthedoctorlove @twentysomethingloser92 @startrekkingaroundasgard @sometimes-i-feel-like-falling @hellothedoctorisreal @tragic-and-tried @kind-sober-fullydressed @ateliefloresdaprimavera @chiswicknoble
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morganaspendragonss · 4 years ago
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Bad Things Happen Bingo Masterpost!
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And that's a wrap on my @badthingshappenbingo card! Thanks to anybody and everybody who requested a square - this has been so, so fun! I've had this card for years and have been actively working on it for a year and a half, so it's incredible to have finally finished it 🥰
Prompts and Fills listed below the cut:
Used in Sacrifice/Ritual - Filled
you would be the one to rescue me | BBC Atlantis | Jason x Pythagoras
When Jason wakes, Pythagoras is gone.
This in itself is not so strange. What is strange, however, is that his cloak has been left behind despite there being a significant chill in the air. And when Hercules begins to wake, and there is still no sign, Jason knows.
Something's wrong.
Rage Against the Reflection - Filled
out, damned spot | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
TK wakes up gasping, choking on air. The sheets are suffocating him and, when he tries to free himself, they only seem to get tighter. The hands reaching out for him, trying to calm him, are the final straw; TK throws himself from bed and sprints to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind him as he collapses against the sink.
On some level, he is aware that the hands were Carlos’s, that the sheets were theirs, that his hands are clean, and that the dream was just a dream.
But they weren't always that way.
Falling Through the Ice - Filled
ice in my veins | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
Carlos only turns away for a second, he swears. Unfortunately, a second is clearly ample time for his boyfriend to get into trouble because when Carlos turns back around, TK is no longer standing where he left him.
Instead, there’s a sizable hole in the ice.
Flashbacks - Filled
start again from the beginning | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK & Owen
Owen trusts his son. He’s watched TK fight his addiction and stay sober for the last six years, and he has faith that he can handle himself.
But when TK doesn’t show up for work the night after proposing to Alex, Owen knows that something is wrong. After all, they've been here before.
Branding - Filled
setting fire to our insides for fun | Supernatural | Meg x Cas
Cas had been prepared to find demons. Frankly, he would have been concerned if he didn’t find demons, given that that was his mission here. What he hadn’t been prepared for, however, was to find two demons torturing another, pressing the hot end of a branding iron into her forearm.
He killed the two torturers with practised ease, barely wasting a moment before they were both on the dirty, wooden floor, eyes burned out their sockets. Only then did he allow his surprise to catch up to him, breathing heavily as his gaze settled on someone he hadn’t seen in a long time.
Meg.
Memory Loss - Filled
focal point | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
Waking up in the hospital is becoming all too familiar. Being the one in the bed is less so, but Carlos has had his fair share of hospital trips. He knows the drill.
As soon as he sees him awake, TK breaks out in harsh sobs. "Carlos," he breathes. "I... I thought I'd lost you."
Caught in an Explosion - Filled
can we skip past near death cliches? | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
It’s the kind of call every first responder dreads. A bomb threat in an apartment block, civilian’s lives on the line, the whole situation a hair’s breadth away from disaster. And Carlos is right in the middle of it.
tw: explosions, bombs
Forced to Kneel/Bow - Filled
in case you don’t live forever (let me tell you now) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
His teammates were still sitting in the communal area when TK entered, eyes glued to the tv screen. Paul was the first to notice him, and TK’s concern only grew as he got everyone else’s attention, their worried gazes falling on him one by one.
“There’s a hostage situation at that big, fancy hotel across town," Marjan explained. "Apparently it’s pretty serious, they’ve had to send police in, and, um, well…”
Marjan paused, and TK felt dread wash through him, knowing what her next words would be.
“Carlos is there, TK. He’s gone in.”
tw: references to gun violence
Be Careful What You Wish For - Filled
can you beat back the night? | The Witcher | Geralt x Jaskier
He misses the bard. Geralt won’t admit it, not even to Roach, but he misses him. After months—years—of Jaskier’s constant chatter and the sound of his lute, the silence, once valued above all else, is too much.
It’s been months since the dragon, since Geralt lost both Yennefer and Jaskier in one fell swoop. He’s cursed himself many times over for the words he said—to both of them—and cursed himself more for the mistakes he made to get in this position in the first place.
*
this is the lot of witchers, to be alone.
Blood From the Mouth - Filled
I Got You | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & 126 Crew
“I’m just sayin’,” Judd says, waving his arms around. “Somebody’s gonna get themselves killed in there one of these days. I had to come out here three times last year because of some idiots who think they know better than the ‘Keep Out’ signs.”
The team are called to an abandoned house where some kids are trapped. Everything is going smoothly, which, naturally, means that it won't be that way for much longer.
Trapped in a Burning Building - Filled
a little unsteady | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
9-1-1, What's your emergency?
'Please, help! My house is on fire and my husband’s inside!'
or
t.k. sometimes wonders if the universe is out to get him
Worked Themselves to Exhaustion - Filled
In Your Arms | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, Michelle & TK
T.K. and Carlos agreed when they started dating to check-in on each other that they were both okay. Reassurance that nothing bad had happened. So, when Carlos hasn't replied hours after his shift is supposed to have finished, T.K.'s definitely beginning to panic. 
Locked in a Cage - Filled
running out of time | Shadowhunter Chronicles | Kit x Ty
When (if) they got out of here, Kit wanted the record to unequivocally state that this wasn’t his fault. Not that it was Ty's either, but it certainly wasn't Kit's.
or
kit and ty's first hunt together after three years goes wrong and they wind up trapped in a cage with no way out. naturally, this leads to a heartfelt conversation.
Demonic/Ghostly Possession - Filled
Haunting | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Owen
T.K. is five when he first sees a ghost, though, of course, he doesn’t know that it’s a ghost. His name is Joey, and he lives in the playground, which T.K. thought was a little strange, but he doesn’t want to ask. Dad says it’s rude to ask questions like that to someone he’s just met.
Fingore - Filled
ease my mind | 911: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
Briefly, Carlos considers calling TK and telling him about the accident. But… He only broke two of his fingers and it barely even classifies as a minor injury in his book, so there’s really no reason to bother his fiancé while he’s still on shift himself. He pockets his phone then looks around to figure out where the exit is.
Only, an all-too familiar laugh distracts him from his task, drawing his attention to the nurses station.
Where TK is standing, smiling as a nurse swats at him for stealing one of their lollipops.
Carlos is, beyond doubt, fucked.
Verbal Abuse - Filled
this is a song about somebody else | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Marjan
TK doesn't notice the 126's latest visitor until it's too late. He freezes as Alex smiles at him, knocked off balance by this sudden intrusion of his old life into his new one.
or
alex vists tk at the 126. luckily, tk has his family to help him through it.
tw: abusive language
Dying in Their Arms - Filled
can you hear me screaming (please don’t leave me) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
As a cop, Carlos has to deal with all kinds of cases, and not all of them end well. But never in his life did he imagine that he'd have to respond to an incident involving his own boyfriend.
tw: major character death
Blindfolded - Filled
find you here inside the dark | Doctor Who | Thirteen x Yaz
Yaz has walked this room too many times to count now; she’s traced her fingertips over the walls, searching for any cracks or crevices to indicate where there might be a door.
If the Doctor were here, she’d have her sonic out by now, spitting out words, only half of which Yaz could understand. She’d find a way out in no time. Or, if not, at least she’d be here. Talking a mile a minute, probably annoying the hell out of their captors. Yaz can almost hear her now—
Wait.
She can hear her now.
Water Torture - Filled
soggy clothes and breezeblocks | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
Carlos wakes up slowly. He cracks his eyes open, wincing at the pounding in his head. He lifts his hand to massage the pain away, only to discover that his hand won't move, the cool metal of handcuffs biting viciously into his wrist.
After an undercover mission goes wrong, Carlos is forced to fight for his life. And to make matters worse, his kidnappers are making sure that T.K. is watching the entire thing.
tw: torture
Fighting from the Inside - Filled
and curse the gods | BBC Atlantis | Jason & Medusa
Jason knows what it is to be cursed.
Slammed into a Wall - Filled
mind over matter (matter over mind) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Owen
After a night out goes wrong, TK and Carlos are left to deal with the consequences.
tw: homophobia, hate crimes, hiding an injury
Suicide Attempt - Filled
be done with this now | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
Once upon a time, Carlos had thought that watching as his almost-boyfriend was whisked off in an ambulance, bullet wound in his chest, would be the worst moment of his life. Then TK had been kidnapped, and Carlos had spent hours not knowing where he was, if he was alive or dead, and he thought - this is it. Nothing can top this.
But, having to perform CPR on his husband, having to hold him as he slipped away in his arms?
That was worse than even his nightmares.
tw: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, depression, drug abuse, overdosing
Bleeding Through the Bandages - Filled
pull you in to feel your heartbeat | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
The call comes at the tail end of Carlos’s shift, and he instantly hates whichever idiot decided to ruin his night by mugging someone.
What he's not expecting is to find his boyfriend on the ground, bleeding out from a stab wound.
Arm in a Sling - Filled
have you been involved in an accident at work? | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK & 126 Crew, TK x Carlos
T.K. was on his way to the hospital. Again.
At least this time he could say with absolute certainty that it 100% wasn't his fault.
Self-Harm - Filled
but god i wanna feel again | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos
Carlos blames himself for not noticing. It's not like he had much choice in the matter; he hasn't seen T.K. all week, and his texts have been going unanswered, but he can't help but feel like it's partly his fault.
If only T.K. would actually talk about himself, instead of keeping it all in.
tw: self-harm
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