#specifically his room into a fire hazard

[shunukitrash]

Also this is deadass the only place I can vent about something this stupid so please bare with me

[vulpisnocturna]

Binding Vow

This is purely self-indulgent because I was consumed with the idea of Chrollo and specifically, Yandere!Chrollo. So here it goes. This is filthy and Chrollo is unhinged. Nothing new.

Read on AO3

Part II

Part III

I do not condone this behaviour in real life. This is purely fictional. Please read warnings and avoid if any of them are triggering to you.

Warnings: Yandere Chrollo, dom Chrollo, coercion, dub con (I mean it), psychological manipulation, kidnapping, captivity, possessiveness, obsession, fingering, oral sex (f!receiving), vaginal sex, creampie, praise, slight humiliation kink

Summary: Abducted because Chrollo could not steal your Nen ability, you are ready to give in and trade your power for your freedom. But the choices Chrollo decides to lay in front of you are wholly different. One would say, the illusion of choice. You make him swear a vow to let you go as you make your choice. But one should pay close attention to the words used in a binding vow...

Word count: 7k

One would think so many candles would be a fire hazard, to be frank. They were everywhere, on every wooden surface, on every shelf that wasn’t overcome with books of all sizes with leather spines, on the nightstands and even on the ground. It was as though the leader of the Phantom Troupe had an obsession with a certain type of aesthetic, and would not refrain from littering his surroundings with candles every time he found a new place where his gang could crash. Perhaps, he had a candle for every person he had ever killed.

Though you supposed one would lose count after a while.

If you were to ingratiate him, you knew what he would appreciate having as a gift; although who needed gifts when your profession was stealing whatever you wanted, whatever thing you had a passing whim for?

As far as you were aware, you were the last passing whim Chrollo Lucilfer had stolen. You had known of his power to steal abilities, and even though you had tried to escape when the Troupe had come to abduct you, it seemed he hadn’t been successful in stealing your power. Yet.

Your Nen power wasn’t meant to fight, really, so the possibility of forcing your way through the Troupe had been preposterous. Your ability was that of having regenerative power, to the point where you could heal fatal wounds to yourself and others. He obviously must have wanted it for himself, and you hadn’t exactly had any way of escaping his wishes.

After a month of captivity, though, you weren’t sure you could bear it for much longer. If all he wanted was your power, why not let him “borrow” it, as he so nonchalantly put it? So you could go back to your own life, so you didn’t have to be locked up in that house, so that he would let you go? Would he even let you go, if you gave him the ability? Or would he want to tie loose ends and get rid of you? You shuddered in the cold air of the bedroom you had been confined to in his absence. 

He had left you to your own devices that day for the entirety of the morning, whilst he had spent all his time with you previously. Studying you, asking you questions, letting you know between the lines that he knew who you were, who your loved ones were, where they lived. He had called you a “treasured guest” in the same sentence, with such audacity that you had been left stunned at the complete lack of morals that man had.

But then again, he also seemed to have some twisted attraction to you. They did say the forbidden fruit was always the sweetest, and because you knew of his power, he couldn’t get to your Nen ability if you did not reveal how it worked and fulfilled his conditions. In the last two weeks, he had taken to something you could only define as an attempt at seduction.

He would sit with you in the living room, inviting you to get closer to him, reassuring you he had no intentions of harming you. He would stare at you with those stormy eyes of his that seemed to burn through you like electricity, and his gaze would rake over your body like he was appraising some kind of rare, expensive object he planned to take for himself. Which he probably was.

Despite knowing who he was, despite knowing how sticky with blood his hands were, you were only a fallible human. And he was... a murderer, a manipulator, a thief; and he was also cunning, intuitive, soft-spoken, caring with you in a sick way, and the most handsome man you had ever met. Despite all of your efforts, it was not possible to deny the effect he had on you. And it was not possible to hide it from him. Observant as he was, obsessed as he was with watching your every reaction, every little twitch of your body, every time your breath faltered when he was too close, every time he commented casually how your pupils were dilating, every time his long, willowy fingers grazed your skin, he could see all of it. And all of it was a twisted game of cat and mouse to him.

Another heist, another plot to strategise and accomplish. He was always composed, always neutral, if not for his sly looks, wily smirks and piercing eyes. He always seemed to have the upper hand. It did not matter that he did not have your power, he seemed to be a patient man.

Until that day.

You had assumed he was waiting for you to break by keeping you captive, although treated with enough civility and never physically harmed, because he had not mentioned wanting your Nen power since the one time he had told you he wished to borrow it. In your mind, he was simply determined to stir the pot and then leave you to stew in it for a while, knowing at some point, your desire for freedom would overcome your attachment to your ability. Letting you run your mind wild with suppositions and conjectures that led nowhere as you tried to analyse his reasons and predict his behaviour. And it was working. You were almost done with it. If he asked you to choose between your power and your freedom, you knew what you would pick.

When he came back from whatever the hell he’d been doing that morning, his appearance was pristine. He was wearing his hair down, no headband in sight, a white shirt with the first two buttons undone and smart black trousers. All in all, he was the picture of what you could only define as sex appeal and sophistication mixed together in a heady blur of sharp eyes, chiselled, angular features and a mellow voice that still managed to sting.

He unlocked your door using a Nen ability he’d probably also stolen and closed it behind him, smiling softly at you as he appraised you.

‘Hello, darling. I hope you did not feel too lonely without my company’ he said easily, conversationally. You disliked the pet names he had started to throw at you in the last two weeks. They made it seem like there was more to this relationship than a prisoner and their warden. More he wanted. But not your ability. No. You. And it made your stomach churn every time. 

You decided to ignore him, because what else could you do? You were locked in a room with him, with no escape, and you had been held captive for a month now. What could possibly make it worse than it already was?

But you were so very naïve. You should have paid heed to his shrewd grey eyes, to the way his lips twitched as though he delighted in knowing something you didn’t, in watching you rack your brains in trying to figure him out.

You had been so naïve in thinking that he had kidnapped you and held you captive to steal your ability. After all, he could torture it out of you. 

Did he just enjoy the game? What did he want? Was there another condition that needed you to be willing to share it with him? That must have been it. He needed you to give it to him willingly, that was why he was going after your mental sanity instead of torturing it out of you.

‘You seem quite tense. Sit with me. I have a proposition for you’ he said, gracefully stepping to your side, brushing his fingers on your lower back, sending shivers down your spine just as your nose caught a whiff of his expensive cologne. His scent was just as intoxicating as he was, something masculine yet refined, a blend that made your lower stomach hot. You fought to keep eye contact as he sat on the plush loveseat by the fireplace, tapping the empty space right next to him, his eyes boring into you with curious amusement. 

You grimaced, feeling weak and dizzy as you sat down on the armchair, the only other surface available to you aside from the bed and the loveseat, which was out of the question. Chrollo’s lips twitched in amusement, his eyes glinting with interest as he rested his cheek against his fist. 

‘I have a few choices for you. I assume you are quite unsatisfied with your current predicament, therefore, I am giving you the chance to escape all the doubt that must be swarming your mind by now’ he said calmly, that little smirk still on his lips. You did not give way to hope. You did not lower your guard. Thieves did not return goods. If they got rid of them, it was after getting something else in return. So what was he playing at? What was his angle?

‘Your distrust is quite strong, dearest. You should learn to hide your emotions more, if you plan to attempt to play me. Though I must admit the thought of it is quite thrilling. So feel free to try it. Your first choice is to give me your Nen ability in exchange for the end of this predicament. Your second choice is to give yourself to me now. I trust you understand the meaning behind my words. If that is your choice, you can start by getting up and walking over here’ he said, smoothly, easily, seductively, his eyes mischievous. 

You blinked, swallowing heavily, your lips parting. He… was making you choose between your Nen ability or having sex with him in exchange for your freedom? The choice was not really that. It was an illusion of it. Perhaps he merely sought to humiliate you, because of course, the reasonable choice would be to get it over and done with, have sex with him just that once and walk away with your life and your ability intact. Who in their right mind would pick the first choice? 

He was hot, charming, attractive. So long as you could separate the part of you that knew what he was, what he did, and the shame that came with prostituting yourself to your captor, it would not be that bad. It would be over quickly, you only had to focus on his physical attributes, shut out his horrid persona.

‘You want me to prostitute myself to you’ you said, your cheeks burning with humiliation. He let out a wilful sigh. 

‘That is an uncouth appraisal of it. It is quite clear from your reactions to me that you desire me, too. Is that prostitution? More of a mutual desire, I’d wager. Rather a small price to pay to retain your power, is it not?’ he asked, smiling sweetly, smugly. You ground your jaw, your whole face feeling hot, your eyes stinging with the embarrassment of your current predicament, as he loved to call your captivity.

‘Why would I want to... have sex with someone like you? A... murderer- a thief, a kidnapper?’ you spat, repulsed, sitting rigidly in the armchair, quite the opposite picture to his nonchalant lounging. He let out a soft laugh.

‘Oh, darling. Are you pretending to have steadfast morals now?’ he crooned, voice soft and mellow. Completely unbothered by your accusations.

‘What are you trying to imply?’ you chewed on the corner of your bottom lip, a movement he followed with a hint of ravenousness in his silvery eyes.

‘Your morals seem somewhat flexible to me. You have been eating food paid with stolen money for a month, sleeping in a stolen mansion, wearing stolen clothes. I trust you were clever enough to know this from the beginning of your sojourn here’ he said casually, seeming almost enthusiastic about debunking every argument you could bring to the table. It was as though he found pleasure in discrediting your beliefs and making you vacillate. Perhaps it stroked his ego.

 ‘I had no choice about sleeping here. Should I have starved? Should I have wandered around naked for a month?’ you snapped, regretting your words immediately when you saw him look at you so intensely. As though he was undressing you himself with his eyes.

‘Well, you certainly could have tried to starve yourself. I would have admired your efforts to cling to your pride and ethical dilemma, and you would not be in this moral conundrum now if you had. You would be able to blame me for it. As to your last point, that would have certainly been a sight. Again, the choice was there. I would not have stopped you’ he said slyly, his voice getting lower and more seductive, like a caress on your spine. You bristled.

‘Those are not choices. Like these aren’t’ you pressed, and he sighed, still smiling like nothing could make him waver.

‘Are they not? You have two paths before you. Every human being is offered choices. Now, be a darling and make one. What will you choose?’ he mused. You closed your eyes, your fingers curling on the fabric of your skirt.

‘You will not steal my power if I- give my body to you now. Right?’ you asked slowly, trying to find a loophole in his words.

‘I will not. If you choose to indulge me now, I will not steal your power’ he said. You gulped. You did not want him to lose his patience and take away your opportunity. You also wanted his word that you would be let out alive and unharmed.

‘And this- this predicament will be done once I do that too. You will not kill me- nor harm me after that. I will be allowed to leave this place alive’ you said cautiously, weighing your words. He smiled.

‘Of course. In order to ease your worries, why don’t I make a vow with you? A condition, if you will. And if I break it, I will die. If this is your choice, and you want reassurance before you continue with it, I will of course be willing to ease your worries. Stand up and come closer’ he said, and you tried not to show your relief. If he was promising, there was nothing to worry about. You could do this, keep your life and your well-being, leave with your power. It was not a bad deal. Not a bad deal at all. You should be happy that he seemed to be attracted to you. That he was even giving you a choice in the matter.

You slowly got up, and your legs felt weak as you stepped closer to him, feeling like his gaze was burning through you. You stopped in front of him, tense like a violin string as a grimoire appeared in his hand.

‘Sit on my lap, darling’ he murmured, and you found yourself feeling all kinds of things in your body, from nerve-wracking anxiety to butterflies in your stomach to warmth in your gut and weakness in your legs. You inched closer to him, gingerly sitting sideways on his lap.

You were immediately engulfed by his enthralling cologne, and his arm wrapped around you, fingers curling on your waist to keep you in place. You squirmed, gulping when he dipped his head to breathe against your neck, making goosebumps appear on your exposed skin.

‘Your scent is intoxicating, dearest’ he breathed, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear to expose the side of your face to him. You could not deny how seductive he could be, how tantalising his touch felt. But you would not be swayed from the promise he’d made.

‘The vow first’ you said somewhat nervously, and he smiled, nodding and keeping an arm around your torso as he picked up his book of stolen abilities and flicked through it, stopping in front of a binding vow.

‘Now, I vow that I will not make your Nen ability mine and steal it from you. It will remain yours. I vow I will not kill you, nor will I ask anyone else to do so for me. Should you respect the terms I have presented to you, you will leave this place unscathed within a day, with your power still in your hands. Should I fail to respect these terms, I will die on the spot. Do you accept?’ he said, and you tried to find any loophole that would allow him to kill you or steal your ability in his words, even though his fingers stroking your ribcage were distracting, but you could not find anything. You nodded.

‘I accept’ you said, and he picked up a small dagger from his pocket, shushing you when you gasped and tried to get away. He pricked his thumb, showing you the small droplet of blood that was forming on the surface of his skin.

‘I won’t hurt you. I just need a drop of your blood. Your hand, if you will, darling. Or the vow won’t work’ he said, and you gingerly let him lift one of your hands and prick your thumb. He pressed yours against his, and you could see the aura surrounding your fingers working. You relaxed a little when he threw the dagger away, supposedly letting it pierce the wood of the highest bookshelf so you could not reach it in an attempt to attack him.

He wiped your thumb and his with a handkerchief, tossing it on the table and letting the grimoire disappear.

‘I hope I was successful in easing your worries. Now, where were we?’ he murmured, round, pretty eyes heavy-lidded, lust-laden as they scanned your face. You felt as though you were in the lion’s den for the first time, or more fittingly, a small butterfly trapped in a spider web. Just waiting to be devoured.

He cupped your jaw, stroking your cheek with the pad of his thumb, leisurely taking his time in savouring you. Part of you wished he would just get it over and done with, another part of you, a shameful one, burnt at every action he took, at his stifling seduction. You might as well enjoy it and hope he was good at the very least, right? No one could blame you for it. Your survival was at stake, after all.

You stopped thinking altogether when his lips grazed your jaw, your cheek, the corner of your lips. He was slow and sensual in all of his movements, but there was something that slipped through the façade, something possessive about the way his fingers curled around your throat, trapping you in place as his lips pressed against yours.

They were soft. Soft and smooth, warm and demanding. You could not deny the pull they had. You were coaxed into seeking them out whenever he pulled away slightly, pressing them against you again, more and more passionately each time, almost manipulating you into wanting him to get rougher.

And he did. His teeth sank into the pliant flesh of your bottom lip, pulling lightly, and his tongue was quick to soothe the sting, taking advantage of your little gasp to slip in your mouth and lay siege on your tongue. It was all akin to a game of pull and push with him. He wheedled you into letting go more and more with each time he gave you something only to take it away and revel in how you sought it again. Just as he had presented the illusion of you wanting this from him, he was now making you act on it as though you had always desired nothing more.

Until your fingers were tangled in his soft raven hair, pulling lightly at it, and you were seeking his soft lips and their taste reminiscent of rich red wine to suck on his bottom lip languidly. Until his teeth nipping at your bottom lip had you mewl in his mouth.

‘Eager, are we? How sweet’ he breathed, and you felt the trap snap, the mechanism trapping you like a helpless doe caught by pincers. All of his teasing had led to this, to making you see that you wanted him, wanted this to happen. And as much as you could deny it, your actions spoke loudly, and your body’s reaction did too. The knowledge that you were already turned on and that if he decided to reach between your thighs he would see just how responsive you were to him made the mortification burn in your chest.

You had wanted to keep your dignity and show your distaste for what was happening, but he had managed to reduce you to a docile doll just by kissing your lips. And his sardonic smile and eyes told you that you were right in that assumption.

And before you could hope to collect yourself, his mouth was on your throat, hungry but still slow, leaving you wanting more. He licked a long stripe along your pulse, making it shoot up as his fingers curled around the roots of your hair and pulled, exposing your vulnerable neck to him. You could not restrain the whimper that escaped you as he kissed and started sucking a sensitive spot between your neck and your shoulder, sure to leave a mark to remind you of what you had done, of your flexible morals, as he’d called them.

His fingers clutched your side, wandered down to your hip and the swell of your ass, grazed your thigh and snaked under your skirt to grope at the plump flesh of your backside. You were too lost in the pleasure of his mouth and tongue on your throat to truly consider your situation and who it was that was touching you so possessively, so greedily. If anything, it only stoked the fire within you.

‘Good girl’ he crooned, sending a jolt to your clit with the dirty praise. You squirmed on his lap, eliciting a soft chuckle from him and a graze of his thumb over your stiff nipple. You were wearing a simple satin shirt with a flimsy bralette, and the friction of the material was torturous against your nipples.

Chrollo pulled the shirt out of your skirt, making quick work of the buttons with one hand whilst the other was still kneading your ass and his mouth was still on your throat. He slipped the garment off you, pulling away to observe you. You gulped, averting your eyes at the sight of his hungry stare, quivering as his fingers ghosted your sternum, your ribcage, the swell of your breasts.

‘You are so beautiful, darling’ he murmured, his lips softly pressing against your collarbone, his fingers deftly lowering the straps of your bralette and unhooking it. He tossed it aside, groaning softly as his hand cupped your breast, kneading it in his fingers, pinching your nipple and rolling it between thumb and index finger.

You tried to stifle a moan, to which he seemed to take offense, because he stopped and bit down hard on your shoulder, making you whine in the process.

‘I want to hear you. The more you stifle your voice, the longer I will tease you. Understood?’ he said, and you meekly nodded, only to speak up when he gave you a meaningful glance.

‘Yes’ you hissed, and he seemed pleased, because he hummed and made you arch your back so that his tongue could lick your stiff nipple and flick it. You were careful not to stifle the small whine that left your lips, and he rewarded you by sucking your nipple in his mouth, scraping it with his teeth and making you cling onto his shoulders.

He bunched up your skirt up to your waist, leaving you exposed as he trailed his fingers to your inner thighs, in a silent request to spread your legs. You were not wholly aware of how swiftly you complied, you only knew that when he first cupped you through your panties, your eyelids fluttered and a soft moan poured out of you.

‘You are soaked for me, pet. Your morals do not seem to extend to your body. Try as you might, you want this, and you cannot lie to me’ he purred, dragging his fingers and pressing against your clit, holding you still when you squirmed away from his touch. You let out a loud moan, your hips jerking. He pulled your panties to the side, rubbing your clit and dipping two fingers inside you, curling them, making your head drop on his shoulder as you moaned against his neck, enveloped by the scent of his cologne.

‘That’s it. That’s my good girl. If I knew how much you liked being fingered on my lap, I would have done this much sooner. No matter. I’ll make it up to you, darling’ he breathed, voice slightly strained as though he was holding back something much more primal from taking over, but you were too dazed to take much notice of all the filth he was spewing and how he sought to humiliate you further, because his touch admittedly felt like heaven. His willowy fingers inside you kept pressing against all the right places, and you could not help but clench around them, your hips twitching into his hand every time his palm rubbed against your sensitive clit.

You were lost in the motion of his fingers as you rutted against his hand, shamelessly chasing your own high as he continued to praise you and kiss you, rewarding every sound you made with a curl of his fingers that had you melting in his arms. Until you could not take it anymore.

‘Can’t- ‘m close’ you huffed out, breathing erratic, chest heaving as his fingers pumped inside you, and he hummed, licking your neck and sucking on it again.

‘Cum for me, pet’ he urged, and your eyes scrunched up, a lewd moan ripping through you as you tensed up on his thigh, sound fading away as you came undone.

You slumped on him, breathing heavily, your cunt throbbing around his fingers as he lazily fucked you through your aftershocks, your hair clinging to the back of your neck from the light sheen of sweat that had formed there.

‘Suck’ you heard, and dazed as you were, you obediently opened your mouth when he presented his fingers, sucking and licking the pads of his fingers, tasting yourself. You had to cling to him as he stood up and walked over to the bed, lowering you on it and observing you as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off.

There was no denying it, he was attractive. Lean but toned, with graceful abs adorning his flat stomach, jutting collarbones and well-defined biceps; with the way the candlelight danced on his pale skin, making it glow with soft orange hues, he truly looked like he might be a fantasy of sorts.

You supposed he looked like a fallen angel, as his name suggested. Like the Alexandre Cabanel painting of the fallen angel, dangerous but so tempting. It was unfair that he should also be able to make you come undone so easily, when you had vowed to not give him the satisfaction.

He smirked at you, undoing his belt, slipping it through the hooks, catching you staring first at the clear dampness on his thigh, then at the evident bulge of his erection.

You supposed he would fuck you now. If you were being honest, you had thought he wouldn’t have taken such interest in your pleasure, but now, it seemed only fitting: it was all to aid his game, to stroke his ego in humiliating you by showing you how you could not abide by your morals, how you’d moaned and whined to be touched by those blood-stained hands.

Instead, he kept his trousers on, only going so far as to unbutton them to give himself more space. He seemed... quite gifted in that area too, you thought with a grimace. Was there anything that did not favour him? It seemed that fortune graced the wicked in that nonsensical world, because he had it all.

He caged you underneath him, his hair tickling your face as he drew you into a heated kiss, his hands roving down your body, fingertips digging into your hips, tongue pressing against yours.

He was quick to unzip your skirt and slide it off you along with your panties, leaving you completely exposed whilst he still retained his power by not undressing completely.

‘You were so precious squirming on my lap, so good for me. You deserve a reward’ he crooned against your ear in that soft, melodious voice of his, making you swallow heavily as you wondered what he might do to you now.

He did not leave you guessing for long. His mouth traced your collarbone, his head lowering as he licked your sternum and left a dark lovebite above your nipple, another reminder that would bring you back to this room, to what he was doing to you for the following week. He seemed intent on marking you whenever he could, and until he had littered your chest with purple brushstrokes, until you were but a moaning mess, he refused to move on, no matter how much you tried to squirm away and whimper at some of the harshest ones on your ribcage.

He continued to kiss down your stomach, massaging your thighs, cupping your ass and lowering his head to kiss your thighs. You were rendered breathless and unable to stop thrashing and moaning as he sucked another lovebite on your inner thigh, keeping you pinned down and at his mercy. You just wanted him to bury his head between your thighs, you were close, close to begging for it, were it not for your pride. Were it not for who he was.

Fortunately, you did not need to stoop that low. His tongue flattened and dragged up your cunt, tensing and flicking your clit from underneath as he got to the top, tearing a breathless moan from you.

‘You taste so sweet’ he huffed out against your skin, blowing cold air on your clit and making you whine and scoot away. He dragged you back, a wicked light in his stormy eyes as he glanced at you and licked your clit, rolling it on his tongue.

‘F-fuck’ you breathed, your hands shooting to his hair, pulling lightly, trying to ground yourself as he continued to toy with your clit, sucking it and licking it fervently. You could not hold yourself. If he was amazing with his fingers, he was incredible with his tongue. Judging by how he seemed to have a way with words, you should not have been surprised that he was so maddeningly good at pleasuring with his tongue. It was making you lose your mind.

Even if you had tried, you would not have been able to restrain the need to keen, whine and moan every time he sucked your clit, dipped his tongue inside you or drew figures around your clit.

He was insatiable as he flung your thighs on his shoulders, seemingly unbothered with the way you trapped his head and rutted against his face. In fact, he seemed thrilled to follow the movement of your hips, giving you more and more until you were babbling and keening incoherently, unable to even speak.

‘Fuck- Ch- Chrollo...’ you whined longingly, unable to realise your slip of moaning his name in the throes of pleasure. But he heard you loud and clear, because he groaned, and his name on your lips only seemed to spur him on. In a few seconds, he was sucking on your clit, giving you more pleasure than you’d ever thought was even possible, until the torturous knot in your stomach snapped and released and you came with a cry, tears prickling the corners of your eyes, your hair tousled and messy on the pillow, your muscles tensing, toes curling and fingers clawing at the sheets.

You kept your eyes closed for a while, easing into your breathing, feeling as though your body had completely melted, feeling as though you couldn’t even move.

‘You can still take my cock, can’t you, darling? After all, I have made you feel so good. It’s only fair. Do not worry, you will not mind. You seem to love being fucked by the one you spoke of with such revulsion. It’s quite endearing, watching you struggle with your morals’ he crooned, and you opened your eyes, watching him stroke his cock a few times. It was quite long and fairly thick, slightly tilted upwards.

You were too fucked out to consider his taunting, but you knew he was right. Both mindsets could not peacefully coexist in your mind: how could you be so willing and find so much pleasure in someone like him? How could you hate him and love what he was doing to you? It might have been an involuntary physical reaction, but you should have had more resolve, more restraint. Otherwise, what did that say about you?

Chrollo lined himself between your legs, rubbing his cock along your labia, on your clit, instantly making those thoughts fade in the haze of pleasure as you let out a soft sigh and automatically tried to hook your legs around his slender hips.

He gripped your thigh, pushing the tip of his cock inside you, easily slipping inside inch by inch with how shamefully wet you were, and yet, you already felt so full, like he was stretching you to the limit. You clawed at his back, raking your nails across his shoulder blades, gasping and whimpering along with his soft moan.

‘Fuck. So tight... so wet. Such a perfect little cunt’ he huffed out, his lips parting in pleasure, dark eyebrows furrowing. You tried to steady your breathing, tried to relax your muscles to accommodate his size, clung to his shoulders for support.

He wiped a tear from the corner of your eye, continuing to push inside you, albeit slowly, until he was buried to the hilt. You clenched around him, and the soft groan he let out made your stomach drop with a surge of pleasure. He bottomed out and slammed back in, tearing a broken moan from you as he set a ruthless pace, his eyes darkening with lust and the slip of his mask, hunger palpable in his every movement and the way he sought to fully claim you.

He lifted your legs higher up around his waist, his fingers tightening around your throat, not pressing on the front, leaving you room to breathe but making you even more dizzy than you already were.

His pelvis kept slapping against your clit, drawing out whines and pants from you, and with every thrust, he seemed to grow more accustomed to where you liked to be touched, because as soon as his cock pressed against your g-spot, your back arched and your head thrashed from side to side, a lewd moan echoing in the room as you clamped around him.

‘There, huh? Let me do it again, darling’ he breathed, one hand lifting both your legs and bending them at the knees, letting you rest them against his chest as he rammed into you, hitting the same spot again and again, relentlessly building the pressure inside you, making you see stars.

‘Mhh- too much... Chrollo’ you whined, trapped underneath him, feeling as though you might implode if he didn’t stop- or if he stopped, for what it was worth.

‘Moan my name again, pet. Let me hear how filthy it sounds on your lips’ he grunted, the sound of skin slapping against skin both enticing and dirty as he continued to fuck you into the mattress.

When you didn’t reply, suddenly aware of how you were moaning his name, reinforcing how you knew- wanted it to be him to fuck you at that moment, he let out a breathless laugh.

‘Looks as though you might need some convincing’ he said, slowing down and eventually slipping out of you, letting your legs down. You whimpered, desire clawing at your gut, your cunt clenching around nothing as you opened your bleary eyes and set them on him. He gave you a smirk, flipping you on your stomach and lifting your hips, spreading your knees with his and pushing on your lower back to make you arch into him. You lifted yourself on your elbows and heard his tongue click against his teeth condescendingly before he pushed your head against the mattress and smacked your ass with a resounding slap.

You yelped, biting down on your lower lip, mortification once again mingling with pleasure as he pushed his cock back inside you, letting out a soft groan.

‘Use your hands one more time and I will tie them up behind your back. It will feel better like this. For me- and for you’ he said, fisting your hair and gripping your hip, starting to pound into you from behind once again.

It did feel better like this. Deeper. Unbearable. He stimulated your clit with every thrust, the tip of his cock kept pressing against your cervix, and you did not know if you could bear it much longer.

You found the bridge of your nose damp with tears, and struggled to recognise your own voice in the filthy moans you were letting out. It was humiliating and it was impossibly pleasurable, and the mix was somewhat addicting, tainting. It was ruining every shred of sanity left in your brain.

Until he got what he wanted. Because it seemed as though he always did. He could steal anything, including his name from your lips said with such want and bliss that had you not been fucked stupid, you would have wanted to die.

‘Ahh- Chr- Chrollo! Fuck. Gonna cum’ you screamed, sobbing, clenching around him, getting even closer to a mind-shattering orgasm with every moan and groan he graced you with.

‘Good girl. My girl. Mine. You love this, mh? Tell me how much you love this. Tell me how badly you want to cum all over my cock’ he urged, voice possessive and low, and you could not stop yourself, could not do anything but acquiesce, because you needed- needed to cum.

‘Yes! Please. Please let me cum. Please. Need it so bad’ you whined, sobbed even, desperate for reprieve, hoping he would have mercy on you, hoping he would let you finish. His fingers reached under you to rub at your clit, and you could hardly contain a sob of wild pleasure and the jolt of your hips.

‘Since you asked so nicely. Go on, pet, cum for me’ he huffed out, still thrusting inside you at that unrelenting pace, and as though he had power over your own body, you felt the release hit you like a wave of overwhelming pleasure that made your vision white and your ears fill with static.

He was quick to cum with a breathy moan as you squeezed his cock through your orgasm, holding you tightly as he spilled inside you. He continued to push in and out slowly, until you stopped throbbing and squeezing around him.

‘Fuck’ he breathed, letting you collapse on the bed and doing the same next to you. You both stayed silent for a minute or two, catching your breath, feeling the cool air on your feverish skin.

‘Let me clean you up, darling’ he said, and you didn’t have the strength to object as he got up and walked away, the sound of his footsteps quiet as you kept your eyes closed until he came back with a glass of water and a wet towel, his trousers back on, but still shirtless. He wiped your inner thighs gently, with more care than you wanted to admit someone like him could be capable of, and carefully lifted you up so you could drink the water he’d brought you.

You took small gulps, finding it felt amazing trickling down your dry, raw throat after all that crying and screaming. He only put the glass on the nightstand when you had finished it all.

‘Thanks’ you said absent-mindedly, your mind slowly coming back to you in coherent thoughts as you attempted to cover yourself with the duvet. He gave you a languid smile, tucking your hair away from your face and lying next to you.

But it was finally over now. You could leave. Your deal had revealed itself to be better than you wanted to admit, but now, you were finally free. You could put this all behind you.

You tried to get up and gather your clothes, but your body felt like a ragdoll. He had really done a number on you.

‘Careful, dearest. You should wait a little’ he said, smiling at you, his eyes soft, his expression unreadable. You let out a shuddering breath.

‘Want to get... my clothes, and leave’ you said, getting up and hastily putting on your clothes, feeling a little dizzy. You walked back towards the bed, retrieving your underwear and your skirt, putting them on, almost falling were it not for his arms catching you and holding you still.

You felt weird. It had surely been intense, but so intense that your vision was slowly darkening around the edges and your arms and legs felt as heavy as lead?

He pulled you on his lap, and you protested weakly when he started to stroke your hair and kissed your forehead.

‘No- you said I would be free after this. Let me leave’ you slurred, and he shushed you, tenderly stroking your back in soothing gestures.

‘Oh, darling, I never said you would be free’ he said softly, still holding you. You blinked, confused, his face blurry as you stared at him.

‘You said- I’d be leaving this place- with my power... un...scathed within... a day. What d’you do to me?’ your words were garbled together, slurred like you were drunk. And you felt so heavy and tired.

‘I put a few sleeping pills in the water I gave you. Nothing that will harm you, so don’t worry your pretty little head. I don’t need to steal your power if I keep you. You will leave unscathed, but I never said you would leave alone. You should really pay more attention to the words of a vow, my love’ he said, stroking your hair, his soft voice lulling you into sleep despite how horrified you were in your mind. He had tricked you. Had no plans of freeing you. You hadn’t considered he might keep you. Hadn’t considered the depth of his obsession with you. Hadn’t considered there was more than one reason why he had kept you captive.

‘I cannot be parted from you, my love. Your place is by my side. Now close your eyes. Sleep. We have a long journey ahead of us’ he said gently, soothingly. And you could not help but do as he said, your eyelids growing heavier and heavier, your thoughts muddying and fading away along with your consciousness.

Part II here

Part III here

[toxictigertonic]

Alright, I've been cursed with new blorbos (don't worry DJ will always be my number one). Outlast trials has me in a chokehold, specifically Franco, but all the prime assets are running around in my brain causing problems. I'm subjecting you to my stupid food headcanons as a result:

COYLE

- This mother fucker drinks hot sauce. Like. Chugs the shit. You can't take him anywhere without him bringing a bottle of Tabasco.

- Takes his coffee black, but will add a little sugar if no one is looking. Can't let people know that he doesn't like plain black coffee.

- He feels like a big breakfast kinda guy, with all the fixings. If you took him to a diner that'd be what he'd get, no matter the time of day.

- Would he disgusted by energy drinks EXCEPT classic redbull. Now imagine this man hyped up on caffeine.

- Would still eat his scrambled eggs if he got shells in them. Would say some shit like "the shells put hair on your chest"

- Trusting this man to bake anything is a fire hazard, it doesn't matter if it's those pre cut cookie rolls, they're catching fire.

- Says he hates desserts then stares down a slice of pecan pie from across the room like it owes him money.

MOTHER GOOSEBERRY

- The only one I trust to cook tbh, and that's not saying much.

- If you took her to get coffee she'd get the sweetest thing on the menu (and Futterman would bitch and moan about it the whole time) or she'd get a chai latte. Futterman would demand a black coffee.

- I would trust her to make me an apple pie and then she'd put the drill in it bc the crust came out wrong.

- She feels like a woman who really likes jam. Maybe I am projecting but jam is cool.

- She will not touch an energy drink bc they taste bad to her, and bc Futterman would throw a fit about how bad they are for your teeth. No caffeine fueled death sprint for her, but based on her singing and the whole angel dust thing I don't think she needs it.

- I would make her pancakes she seems pretty cool.

- Likes the batter for desserts more than the finished products.

FRANCO

- God help us where do I begin

- On one hand I wanna say he makes some bomb ass Italian food. On the other hand I wanna say he burns cereal.

- Speaking of cereal, he's the kinda guy who let's his cereal turn to paste in the bowl before he eats it.

- Considering what we know about the wolf's milk drink, I'm frightened by this man's palette. Genuinely terrified.

- I think he would die if he tasted hot sauce. I think Coyle is aware of this fact and has plans.

- Give him an energy drink if you wanna see him start doing flips. He thinks they're gross but he's also like "fuck yeah pure sugar I love these"

- Likes his cookies so underdone that they're basically raw (me too chief)

- If you cooked him a homemade meal he'd cry while eating it. Then he'd get pissed because you made him cry.

- He's my little skrunkly doo so I'm feeding him wet plaster ❤️

If I'm wrong about anything bc it's actually stated in the lore I do not care tell Red Barrels to get their facts straight (/J I SWEAR)

I haven't had time to look at Gooseberry's or Coyle's lore so I don't know if they have some super important amazing cooking skills that I'm missing out on. Feel free to tell me if you think I'm wrong or have your own ideas about these idiots.

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

reader pronouns: she/her warnings: allusions to past trauma (no specific details)

”Might as well settle in,” Daryl drawled, dropping his pack and testing the stiffness of the dusty couch. “We ain’t goin’ anywhere ‘til it’s light out tomorrow.”

You hummed your agreement and turned away from the boarded up window just as Daryl was flopping back. You gave him a surprised look. “Are you actually gonna sleep?” you asked him.

”Me? Hell no,” he growled. “But might as well be comfortable anyway.” He considered you for a moment. “You wanna sleep? I’ll get up. Ya can have this couch.”

You shook your head and sank down in an arm chair next to him. “No. I won’t be able to sleep...”

”Mmm,” he hummed. “Well—could be worse. Could just be one of us stuck here alone. Ain’t ya glad I didn’t let ya go by yerself?”

You smiled at him and he glanced over and met your eyes. “Yeah. I am.”

He nodded his agreement and settled in more deeply to the couch, one hand resting on his chest and the other tugging at the frayed edge of a patch on his pants. He could feel your eyes on him still and eventually met them again. “What?” he asked.

”Nothing,” you said.

Daryl rolled his eyes at you. “I know that look. It ain’t nothin’.”

You laughed lightly and his heart jumped at the sound. “Tell me something I don’t know about you,” you said, leaning forward. Daryl swung his legs off the couch and planted them on the floor, sitting up again and peering at you. 

”Why?”

”Come on! It’ll help pass the time.”

He ran a hand back through his hair and sighed. “I dunno...”

”Sure you do,” you encouraged him. “I’ll tell you something about me after!”

For some reason this made Daryl smile and now your heart skipped a beat. God, you loved his smile. It was so rare. “ ‘M pretty sure I already know everythin’ about ya,” he quipped. “Ya talk a lot when yer drunk...”

"Excuse me! You’ve seen me drunk once,” you shot back. “I’m sure I didn’t talk that much.”

He laughed again. “ S’alrigh’. I didn’t mind,” he drawled.”

”Quit dodging the question, Daryl!”

He sighed again and shook his hair out of his eyes. “Mmm. Alrigh’, fine... uhh—” He chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip. He gulped. This felt strangely intimate. “When I was a kid, we had this big tree in the front yard—the house, ya know, before the fire... and there was a storm that blew down a squirrel nest. Had three kits in it. The mom must’a died, so me and Merle—we hid ‘em in the garage and bottle fed ‘em kitten formula he shoplifted until they were big enough to be on their own. For the rest of the time we lived there, they’d come down and eat peanuts outta our hands, hang out on our shoulders...” When he hazarded a glance up at you again, your expression was so soft his whole body felt warm. 

“That’s so sweet... That might literally be the cutest thing I’ve ever heard,” you said fondly. Your eyes seemed to be smiling at him.

“Yeah, it was—was nothin’. Wasn’t like I was just gonna let ‘em die, ya know?” You nodded, your eyes bright and fixed on him. He cleared his throat nervously. “Alrigh’, what ‘bout you?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” you said, waving him off. “You already know everything about me,” you said sarcastically. “Tell you what; why don’t you tell me something about me that only you would know? Since you’re such a smartass...”

Daryl chuckled a little. “Fine.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Ya used to be scared of motorcycles.”

”It’s not like that was hard to figure out!” you laughed.

”I ain’t done—Blueberries are yer favorite food. When ya were like ten, ya had to get stitches in yer right knee from a bicycle accident. Ya never learned how to swim—”

You were staring at him in surprise. “Okay, but all these are things I could have told anyone when I was drunk. I said tell me something only you would know.”

”Mmm,” he hummed. There was another long thoughtful pause before he spoke again and suddenly the room felt thick and heavy. “I dunno what exactly happened for this to be true but... ya dun trust men easy. I’ve—I’ve seen it. Even Rick, ya weren’t sure about at first. Ya saw the real Shane from a mile away...” 

You gulped at the sudden tightness that had materialized in your throat. You thought you were better at hiding it. But of course Daryl would notice. Of course he would. 

“‘S’part of why I feel so lucky I guess—that ya—that ya trust me.”

You nodded and managed to unlock yourself from your frozen state. “I do. I do trust you.”

“Good. ‘Cuz I would never, never do anythin’ to hurt ya. And if anybody else tries to—if anybody else does, well, I’ll deal with ‘em.”

Your fun little game to pass the time had suddenly turned wholly serious. You nodded. “I know.”

Daryl nodded again. “Good.”

You ducked his gaze, feeling suddenly overwhelmed at what he’d inferred from simply watching your behavior thoughtfully, but also from his protectiveness and his goodness. “I’m lucky to have you, Daryl. I mean that.”

He mumbled some vague response and flopped back down on the couch. “Oh, and yer slightly dyslexic.”

You laughed a little and sat back in your own chair. “You win.”

Prompt: “Tell me something about me that only you would know.”

[glitteringcrab]

Frying his backups

I'm wondering if various stuff was taking place during this scene that went right over our heads:

(First of all, I'd like to say that I absolutely love the composition of this scene. Rick Prime is bathed in light, yet is almost indistinguishable from the machinery in which he's confined. Evil Morty, on the other hand, is standing on the dark side of the room, yet he's clearly visible; a bright figure among the darkness. Simply a manner of color balance and scene composition?? Symbolism ??? Symbolism of what????)

(Rick C-137, on the other hand, is almost as dark as Rick Prime; his color scheme shifting towards red from all the blood, his body as much machinery and tubes as the chair Rick Prime is currently confined in. Symbolism of their lost humanity? Accidental symbolism?)

A) What exactly happened before Rick Prime came to? This room is clearly wrecked. These metal panels are cracked or broken.

Did Evil Morty break them or did another battle, with some other enemy of Rick Prime's, take place soon before Rick C-137's battle?

Did Evil Morty accidentally wreck the whole room while attempting to extract/insert those thick cables from/into the metal panels in the wall?

Were the thick cables originally part of Prime's chair, or part of the machinery in the wall?

If they were part of the chair, what was their original function? Where were they supposed to connect to?

There are no empty sockets visible on the control panel to accommodate them, and wouldn't they be a trip hazard unless they were to go into the floor, which doesn't appear wrecked?

If they were part of the wall, how did Evil Morty connect them with the chair?

Admitedly, this doesn't look like a chair-oriented chair: it's a piece of machinery. Like, it seems to have served a specific function and not just Prime's butt. It has lights, and the thinner cables that are connected to Prime's brain via fingergun seem to emerge directly from the chair, with in-built openings to accommodate them. The thinner cables emerging from the bottom of the chair and to the tablet seem to be in their normal position, too...

The chair doesn't seem wrecked, either; just the walls, which points towards the thicker cables being part of the chair as well (but then what were they supposed to connect toooo?? And did Evil Morty stuck himself in the wall panels to connect the thick tables to whatever system was hidden in the wall lol?)

And, shouldn't the chair be facing the control panel?? No wheels are visible, can it even rotate?

What was the actual purpose of machinery of the chair?? We've seen Rick Prime fire the Omega Device while standing, using only a tablet. Why did he need his chair to be so sci-fi? What purpose did it serve??

Am I overthinking this?

B) What "picture" are you getting????

You are being murdered. This isn't complicated. This isn't something for you to "get".

Is he surprised that he found himself tied in his own chair in stead of, I dunno, not waking up at all?

...Could he tell from the cables stuck on his head that Evil Morty was messing with his brain? Was this the picture he "got"? In a "ooh, you are reading my mind" fashion? (But Evil Morty did not start stealing his secrets until the end...)

C) Notice that whenever the ends on the mini implanted cables from Eyepatch Morty's fingerguns go bright red, the thin black cables attached to Prime's forehead become visibly overloaded or something, and he always grimaces in pain...

But the mini implanted cables going red and Rick Prime being painfully electrocuted don't seem to coincide with Prime's clones getting fried...!

I'm counting 4 times Prime's clones getting visibly fried that weren't accompanied by a painful electrocution and the mini fingergun cables going red.

It seems to me like two separate things going on: (1) Evil Morty frying Prime's clones and (2) Evil Morty's fingergun weapon doing... something. Interacting with Prime in some fashion.

Either punishing him whenever Evil Morty got slightly mad (but this seems unlikely, Prime did not get electrocuted neither when he offered Evil Morty a job, nor when he insulted Evil Morty's murdering abilities) or... I'm leaning towards the theory that Prime was stealthily trying to override the fingeguns by using his own implants, and his attempts were halted? (whew) And, maybe, he was trying to distract Evil Morty from these attempts by talking to him...?

D) Why was Prime criticizing Evil Morty's murdering technique????

What do you think it is???

Was Prime simply confused that getting tied on a chair preceded getting murdered? In a "why take an unnecessary step" fashion?

Did he think that Evil Morty planned to torture him?

Is this the torture lol?

Cause this insult doesn't really make sense... Sure, it's kinda funny, but it doesn't make particular sense. Prime had just witnessed Evil Morty shooting him, attacking him physically and having a buttload of weapons implanted on his person. Did he think Evil Morty was incapable of finishing him off for some reason? I mean, I wouldn't say "ooh, what are you gonna do to me, huh???" to a guy armed to his teeth lol

Did his own hidden implants interacting with Evil Morty's fingerguns grant him some insight on the nature of Evil Morty's own brain implant and whatever limitations it might have?

Was it just an insult? In a "oh, you like to play tough but you're just a kid" fashion?

Was he confused that the murder wasn't concluded already?

Now you get it??

(I have to give it to Rick Prime for not fearing death, though. He looks slightly worried when Evil Morty drags Rick C-137 into the room, but he gets over it pretty soon. He also looked slightly nervous while Rick C-137 was disconnecting the cables from his head, but he got over it very fast, too. He's a horrible jerk but he ain't a coward)

E) Am I obsessed and do I need to find another hobby?

(Why, yes. Definitely.)

(Part 2 here)

[hyperfixat]

HAIII!!! ive been browsing your blog a lot recently and i love your writing sm!!! i wanted to ask if you'd be interested in writing the brothers (+ datables, luke, and others, if youd like!) living with an mc who is obsessed with plants? like to the point where the HoL has at least a few plants in every room? idk i just think it'd be interesting to see how human world plants behave in the devildom, and if special equipment (think grow lights, nutrient rich soil, etc) would need to be involved! im also picturing mc ordering plants off of (human world) ebay and the sender being confused like "wtf who is this what is the House of Lamentation"

UAAHHH first of all i love the idea of more noticable differences in the human realm vs the devildom and the game (understandably) keeps it more toned down and appealing to the average connoisseur.

like i own a few plants and have a small garden, and they stay alive and well in my house. bcs i live on earth. But. the devildom being soooo different in terms of soil and atmosphere… delectable.

i may make more stuff involving this idea but for now..

moving on (~500 words):

It’s been a rough few weeks in the Devildom, and not for the reasons many may suspect. It’s not the literal demons, rather the environment, more specifically the death that seems to cling to the air. The atmosphere, both in and outside of the House of Lamentation is suffocating.

It’s not like a couple of house plants would fix this issue, but perhaps the placebo of having some fresh living plants from the human realm would help ease the atmosphere.

Eventually you build up the courage to knock on Mammon's door to ask about and if he could get you an indoor plant. You aren’t picky, truly. After a little discussion you leave a victor, with Mammon having assured you he’d get you the best plant he can find.

It’s a dinky thing and looks like broccoli, but you love it. It’s green, a far cry from the toxic purples and deep blues that the Devildom flora holds. It’s home.

And what is Mammon to do when he sees the look on your face when he gave you that plant, but to get you more? He’s a weak demon! (for you alone.)

The others catch on, save for Lucifer (too closed off to associate so intimately with you), and Belphegor (trapped).

It starts small, Asmo presenting you with a bundle of live herbs he had imported from the human realm, assuring that they’d help with getting your beauty sleep. Beelzebub would occasionally gnaw on some of the leaves in your room, so together you grow some lettuce, so he would avoid getting a tummy ache from the inedible plants.

While you were doing some schoolwork for RAD in the library Satan had sat across from you, a large encyclopedia in his hands, detailing all human realm plants and their care and upkeep. He explains that he noticed your interest in keeping plants and is here to offer his assistance with acquiring and maintaining your collection.

Having all the plants around really does help improve your mood. It provides a hobby and a connection to nature that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Though you may have underestimated how much space your room has, because it’s a battlefield trying to navigate your bedroom without knocking a vase or pot over. It seems your tripping as you try and place a eucalyptus (a gift from Mammon) had gathered some attention from a hallway passerby.

Lucifer stares.

He doesn’t visit your room often, but he’s fairly certain the only human realm plant they had installed was a tree, not whatever jungle you have going on. And jungle is a bit of an understatement.

You’d roped Leviathan into helping you set up some moss and algae tanks, just to add to the green that is your room.

“This is a fire hazard, MC.”

And with that, your greenhouse of a room gets spread throughout the HoL, a few plants in each room. It is a little frustrating to have to walk the whole length of the house when you need to water them and give them the concoction Solomon mixed up for you to help the plants not wither away in the hellish environment.

[questionableratatouille00]

ᴍʏ ʟᴏᴠᴇ (ᴍɪɴᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴍɪɴᴇ)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Bath time with Bucky? On Valentine’s Day? Hell yeah.

Warnings: Handjobs (B receiving), bath sex, fluff, slight allusion to HYDRA trash party/non-con.

[Collection M. List]

“You did this?” You gasp, looking into the bathroom. There’s rose petals in the tub, which is filled with hot water. There’s candles placed around the room in specific spots so that there’s no fire hazards.

Your boyfriend nods, smiling gently. “All for you, doll.”

You press a kiss to his lips, smiling. “You’re awesome, Buck. I love you.”

He smiles, feeling absolutely proud of himself.

“C’mon, aren’t you gonna get in with me?” You chuckled, quickly stripping your clothes off of your body.

He nods, quietly doing the same. “You want me to sit in front of you or behind you?”

“Mmm…in front of me.” You smile. “So I can hug you.”

“Alright.” He nods, watching as you get in the tub. You spread your legs to the sides of the tub as he settles in between them.

You gently rest your back against the back of the tub, and Bucky rests against your chest. You wrap your hands around his waist, setting your chin against his shoulder.

“I love you.” He says after a moment.

“Aww, babe, I love you too. I think this is one of the best Valentine’s Days I’ve ever had.” You murmured. “Me too.” He sighed happily. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to go to the party. I know you wanted to see everybody.” He said after a moment.

Every year Tony had a Valentines party. You loved the damn things, but Bucky did not. And he was so willing to just bear it for you, but you could tell that deep down he wanted nothing to do with the event—or parties in general.

Loud noises, drunk people, large crowds? Yeah right.

So you didn’t go. And you were perfectly fine with that.

“Baby, it’s okay. I’d much rather be here in the bath with you.” You said.

“Are you sure? I..you were so excited to go. You love those parties.” He frowned.

“Yeah. But I love you more. I have no regrets. Period.” You expressed. You pressed a kiss to his left shoulder, where flesh meets metal.

“I love you too. With all my heart, dollface.” He confessed.

“You set up the little iPad in here. You wanna watch a movie?” You offered.

“Sure. What do you wanna watch?”

“How about the rom-com Valentine’s Day?”

“Sure, hon.” He set it up and the movie began.

You rested your hands on his thighs, rubbing circles into them with your thumbs.

You were distracted from the movie by a hitch in his breath.

“Babe?” You looked at him, adjusting do you could see his face better. And then your eyes trailed down and…oh.

“Shit, did I—my bad.” You moved your hands off his thighs, but he grabbed them, moving them back into place.

“No—it’s, it’s okay. I uh, I like it.” He murmured.

There was a complicated history with Bucky and getting an erection, one of which you knew most of.

Sometimes you’d be in ‘sexy’ situations and he’d get hard, sometimes he wouldn’t. You never minded.

Normally him getting hard without the explicit intention to have sex would make him uncomfortable, and he’d try and get out of whatever situation he was in. But not now.

“You sure?” You raise a brow. You want him to feel as safe and comfortable as possible.

He nodded quickly. “Mhm.”

You weren’t entirely sure what the vibe was here. “Do you want..do you want me to—“

“Touch me.” He said suddenly. “Yes. I want you to touch me. If you want to,” he added.

“I do.” You murmured against his shoulder. “Let me know if you need me to stop, yeah?” You breathed.

“Got it.” He hummed.

You trailed your hand down his abs, resting at his base. You gave his hard cock a slow, steady stroke as you rested your forehead against his shoulder.

You rubbed your thumb over his tip, and he sucks in a breath. You glide your hand back up his shaft, slowly settling into a rhythm he seems to like the best.

Slow and gentle touches turn into satisfying pumps at his aching cock. He even bucks his hips once or twice, and you revel in the soft sounds he makes.

“Fuck—I’m close.” He warns, his brows furrowed and his cheeks a gentle pink.

“It’s alright, baby. Just let go; I’ve got you.” You whisper gently.

And he does, letting out the most beautiful noise you’ve ever heard.

“Fuck, doll.” He whispers out into the air. “I love you. So fucking much.”

You press a kiss to his neck. “I love you too. But we’re not done yet.” You grinned.

A/n: choices were made. Uhhhhhhhhh ok bye

graphics by @saradika-graphics

[sneakyfordethklok]

Murderface Headcanons

Appearance, backstory, and other related hcs for my favorite stinky scrimblo.

He's 5'11", surprisingly tall. He's about a quarter of an inch short of 6 feet. Though, honestly he would look taller if he wasn't around Skwisgaar and Nathan all the time.

He's quite heavy, over 200 lbs. However, despite his physique, there's an surprising strength to him, especially in his arms. He worked outside for most of his life before joining Dethklok, and he retains some of that muscle to this day. However, he lacks the stamina and determination to ever really defend himself, and can't fight worth a damn.

He's around 28 years old.

He deals with eczema, specifically atopic dermatitis. He is unfortunately very bad about genuinely taking care of it, even though he has creams for it. He's just very stubborn.

How I draw his hair is more closely inspired by Geezer Butler, the bassist of Black Sabbath, whom Murderface is based off of. Dense dark brown curls, but Murderface as usual takes poor care of himself. His hair is dry, his scalp oily and rife with dandruff, and he rarely brushes it. As a result, its quite matted and frizzy, with lots of dead ends and uncontrolled curls.

Speaking of taking poor care of himself... He's a bit stinky.

Seriously. He doesn't shower enough. And rarely wears cologne or deodorant. Though, rather than necessarily being a gross slob, it comes from him never being taught to look after himself as a child. He was quite neglected, and so he never even was taught how to properly wash his hair or himself.

He grew up in the deep south, but his parents were living in Jersey before their demise. His grandparents' house is a simple one-story property, with white siding and a green roof. The windows were always covered with thick blinds, and the porch had a ramp up the three steps for Stella and Thunderbolt. An ancient porch swing that didn't exactly look safe anymore sat on their porch for as long as he could remember.

Stella and Thunderbolt Murderface were terrible hoarders. Really, the whole house was a maze of trash and rot. The second you stepped inside, you could smell the piss and shit from Stella's yappy little dogs that William always despised. How much of a fire hazard and generally unsafe environment it was influenced his interest in fire safety as an adult.

His grandparents abused and neglected him frequently. Murderface was never given affection, positive reinforcement, encouragement of any kind really, and not an ounce of acceptance or interest in who he was. It was always expected that he do whatever they say without question.. else his grandfather would get The Belt.

Murderface lived in the basement of the home, which was surprisingly one of the least cluttered parts of the house. He had his own bathroom and living area down there, on top of his room, and he spent most of his youth in that cellar. He picked up his first guitar, acoustic, at age 13, and bought a bass at 15. He's been playing ever since.

His internalized homophobia was heavily fueled by his abusive upbringing, and generally unaccepting environment. Murderface knew there was something different about him, but he always overcompensated for his bisexuality by fixating on perving on women. His childhood room's walls and ceilings were plastered with cut outs from nudie mags and the Victoria Secret and Sear's catalogues by the time he was 15.

He was a chronic bedwetter until he was almost 10 years old, and the ridicule and beatings as punishment didn't exactly help him improve. Part of his fixation on urinating in inappropriate places may be fueled by this trauma.. not to mention the cause of the bedwetting itself stemmed from the abuse he suffered at their hands to begin with.

He joined Dethklok a few months after he turned 18, and was almost 19 when Toki joined af 16. They've been close friends since Toki joined, being the two youngest members of the band. Despite their arguing, it's a beneficial relationship.

Personally, I like to think the band is in a big polycule, but Murderface and Toki (Warface) is one of my main pairings.

NSFW BELOW THIS

LAST WARNING

His main kinks are BDSM, degradation, humiliation, impact-play, pet-play, bondage, edging, masochism, and body worship.

He can get overly excited from the smallest things. Just a gentle touch on his arm, looking at him a certain way— it all gets him going. He's big on physical touch, though he would never admit it, and not only desires affection but gives it constantly. He caresses, touches, and kisses at any chance given. In general, he's very needy. Especially during sex, he wants all of your attention and affection and gets very upset when he's denied.

Mostly the submissive type, but he can get in a mood sometimes where he just needs to fuck. And he can be very aggressive about it. Because he's likely much bigger than most partners he'd have, he can overpower easily and be pretty rough if he's in the mood for it. Spanking, choking, hitting, biting, etc are all on the table with him.

When he's in a subby mood (which is usually), he's a total brat until he's pushed to the edge. Defiant, snarky, and mouthy. He'll disobey orders, talk back, and generally be a disobedient slut. That is, until he's edged, teased, and overstimulated enough. He'll go from complaining to begging pretty damn quickly.

When it comes to his downstairs... William is excessively hairy everywhere, but especially in his pubic area. There's a thick nest of hair above the base of his dick, so dark brown its almost black. He's about 6 or so inches in length, but he has a pretty.. well, girthy one for lack of a better word. It has to be big enough to play bass with, after all.

Yea. He has calluses. On his cock. Its Murderface idk what you expected.

He won't admit it, but he loves being on bottom with male partners.

[ninyard]

Hey! Do you have specifics for your prompts? Do you want just one person or is a couple ok? If just one person could you do something with Seth? Maybe a what if he didn't die and got his shit together?

And if a couple Kevin and Seth getting along?

(I'm in my loving Seth era...)

Thank you for sharing your writing, you are awesome!

THANK YOU okay so here’s what I offer you: Seth survives and nobody believes him when he says he didn’t do it (but Kevin can’t live with himself if he doesn’t tell him he knows who did) TW: drugs, suicide mention, overdose

-

It was Halloween, and Seth was not stupid enough to think that the bar would be quiet. Wall to wall bodies in costumes, a fire hazard waiting to happen, he wasn’t even sure they would get in, but when the bouncer noticed him and Allison at the back of the line, he waved them up and let them go ahead. He was a decent guy like that. A larger man with a buzz cut, tattoos creeping up his neck, donning a pair of devil horns on his head for the night that was in it. He smiled at Seth when he entered the building.

It was his third drink in when he started to feel wrong. He chalked it up to too many sweaty people in one room, each ones body heat raising the temperature a few degrees. Only a minute after he noticed something felt wrong, did he really start to know that something was really wrong.

Allison had asked him if he was okay. He didn’t remember answering. One minute they were there, stood by a table they’d managed to squeeze their way over to, and the next he was sat on the cold and dusty sidewalk out the front, not enough cool air in the world enough to ease the growing nausea that grew from the pit in his stomach. “I feel like I’m coming up off a real fuckin’ bad pill.” At least, that’s what he thought he said, what he meant to say. He could barely hear his own voice, his neck not strong enough to hold up his head.

“Look at me, open your eyes.” Allison held his head in her hands. “Oh, your- what the fuck?” Seth wasn’t sure what she’d seen in his eyes, but her phone was in her hands, and then by her head, and then he woke up in the hospital two days later. For some reason he was surprised that Allison was still by his side, her hand wrapped so tightly around his, as if letting go would mean she would never hold it again. She didn’t look like she’d slept, or taken a break from crying, either, hair unkempt and out of her face, makeup non-existent. She was wearing his sweats with a hospital blanket across her lap, and she cried and kissed around the medical equipment when she finally got the courage to touch him. She was so gentle, like he would break; It felt like he would, more fragile than he’d been in a very, very long time.

Allison told him that he’d overdosed. His heart sank at that, disappointed in himself before he remembered that he hadn’t taken anything. Then he noticed the nurse sitting in the corner, who smiled his way. The psychiatric team came up not long after they were informed that he was awake. He was confused, but given his history, he wasn’t that surprised. He was surprised, however, when they told him what the concoction was that he’d overdosed on.

The blood test showed a toxic level of his anti-depressants, alongside traces of both heroin and painkillers that had been an opiate he favoured when he was actively using back in the day. He should’ve died. It was a miracle that somebody in the queue had naloxone in their bag, and they’d saved his life by administering it. He would never find out who they were, or why they’d helped him, but the consequences of surviving were much more painful that the death he would’ve never remembered anyway.

He wanted to die when Allison looked at him with tears in her eyes and whispered, “how could you do this to me?”, or when the psychiatry team asked him for the tenth time in an hour if he had plans of ending his life. He wanted to die when the nurses who had him on 24/7 suicide watch had to accompany him to the toilet, and when Dr. Dobson accompanied David to the hospital the day he was allowed to leave. They’d proposed an involuntary stay in a psych ward, but Betsy had managed to convince them to let him go.

Nobody wanted to hear it; somehow he’d overdosed on his own medication, and even when he counted out the pills and tried to prove that he hadn’t done it, nobody seemed to believe him. They only sent him this look of pity, as if a failed attempt was worse than a successful one, as if he was simply trying to cover for the fact it hadn’t worked. Allison tried her best to support him, but it was hard for her. She’d watched him seizing outside the bar, foaming at the mouth and choking on his own vomit. She’d sat in the ambulance as the paramedics resuscitated him the whole way to the hospital. Betsy told him she hadn’t left his side since he was admitted; and it was really difficult for her to watch him lying there with tubes and wires blocking her view. She’d broke down two days after they returned to campus, and begged him to just be honest, that there was no way he’d been coincidentally spiked with his own medication, one that had seizures at the top of the list of warnings. Even just doubling the dose of his meds had the potential to be fatal, and he knew that. He hadn’t been depressed for a long time. His meds worked, so much better than any of the others that he’d tried, and he wouldn’t have risked being taken off them by doing something so stupid for no reason at all. It felt as though he was being gaslit into believing he had in fact taken too many pills before leaving, but none of it made sense. He took his pills in the mornings. He had been clean from hard drugs for months. Even on the off-chance that he had taken a handful of the little circular pills, how did the heroin get there, the opiates he hadn’t touched in years?

He’d been curled up in a ball in the corner of the couch, alone in the dorm when a knock came at the door. It was no more than two weeks after the incident, and he’d just returned from a session with Betsy. He didn’t respond to the knock, but kept his eye on the door as it creaked open. The last person he expected to see peeking around it was Kevin, but there he was. He shut the door behind him and sat on the opposite side of the couch. If he tried to sit any further away, he would’ve fallen off.

“I’m not interested, man.” Seth glared at him. “Fuck your game, and fuck you if you’ve really just come in here to ask me to come back to practice.”

Kevin sighed and looked away. “That’s not why I’m here.” His hands were clasped together on his lap, thumb running over the opposite hands knuckles. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

Seth snorted and threw his head back. “Yeah, right, asshole. You don’t give a shit.”

“Did you do it?” Kevin had paused for a second before blurting out the question. His eyes searched Seth’s for the truth, with his shoulders practically touching his ears and hands locked together as he stopped himself from fidgeting.

He laughed again, shifting positions so he was better facing him. His voice turned serious, and he pointed towards the door. “Leave my room.”

“I’ll believe whatever you say, I just have to know.”

“Oh, you have to, do you?” He said. He was angry, and after a draining session with Betsy, he couldn’t handle another person insinuating he was lying. “You don’t deserve a fucking thing. None of you do. Stop looking at me like that. Tell them all to stop fucking looking at me like that.”

“We’ve not friends, Seth, and I don’t give a shit about your history. But I know you didn’t do this.” Kevin considered his words. “Because I think that… If you didn’t do this to yourself, man, I think I know who did.”

Seth froze and sat up, far more alert than he’d been in days. “How dare you, you pretentious piece of shit? How fuckin’ dare you? Are you going to give a status report back to your little toddler squad, is that what this is? Finally your fucking…” He mimicked dangling something in front of his face. “Ammo? Something you have over me?”

“I get it.” Kevin didn’t look back to him. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me.”

“I haven’t trusted your crippled ass since the day we met.” Seth leaned forward. “But humour me, then. Who somehow knows exactly what meds my crazy ass is on, and tried to murder me in a packed bar, busiest night of the week? Because your explanation is bound to be better than mine.”

“I owe it to you to let you know.” Kevin lowered his voice. “But I can’t explain it. I just have to tell you that I think it was Riko.”

“Fuck off, now, or I’ll start screaming.” Seth was frustrated, feeling like the butt of a joke, feeling like Kevin was just trying to stab another dart into a board that was already full. “This is not a fucking joke. Al has to give me my pills because nobody trusts me with them right now. The shrink calls me twice a day. Everyone is so fuckin’ disappointed in me, man, I could’ve died, and you’re telling me your little bestie over there did it? You’re a coward, Kevin. You’re a fucking liar and a fucking coward.”

Kevin held up his scarred hand as if that was explanatation enough. “Neil humiliated him on live TV. He wouldn’t think twice about killing someone to get back at him. You’re an easy target.”

In all the chaos that had ensued, he’d forgotten about what Neil had said on Kathy’s show. None of it made sense to him, why he would be an easy target out of all of them, why, if Riko was capable of such a thing, he would go after him and not Neil himself. As if reading his mind, Kevin continued. “Neil’s too public now. He couldn’t have done it to him.”

“Who else believes this shit?”

Kevin held back on whatever he really knew, and settled for, “Anyone who understands it, agrees with me.”

“Explain it to me like I’m a helpless little kid.” Seth said, straight faced and seething. “Tell me how it could have possibly been him.”

“Did they check you for track marks?” Seth shook his head, but in all honesty, he wasn’t sure. They’d seen the evidence of his pills in his system, and his charts said he was a past user. They didn’t have to, really. Everything they needed to know was right there in his blood work. “If you have a prescription out there, it’s not that hard to find out your meds. You wouldn’t even feel a needle through your clothes with so many people around you. Mix it with your drugs of choice and nobody is going to believe that you didn’t do it yourself.”

“You’re joking.” Seth repeated again, disbelief at how serious Kevin was, at how his face sunk as he spoke, how his eyes trailed off somewhere into the distance while he explained. “And you really believe that?” Kevin nodded. It was infuriating to Seth to finally hear something so outlandish still that actually made a little bit of sense. He knew himself he hadn’t done it, so why was it so hard to believe it had actually been someone else? It hadn’t happened by the grace of God. Somehow the drugs had gotten into his system, and by the amount they’d found, they hadn’t been there long before he’d lost consciousness. So he’d been spiked in the bar. It also made an annoying amount of sense that he’d been poked by a needle and not had something sprinkled into his drink, because Allison had been across from him the whole time they were there. She was smart with her drinks in that way, and she was always aware of wandering hands near their beverages. She would’ve noticed. “So he fuckin’ failed, then. What happens next? He’s gonna just, what, try again?”

“I don’t know.” He said. “I just had to let you know. You’ve been going crazy in here trying to understand it.”

“If I mention your theory to anyone other than your little gang, they’ll fuckin’ have me committed. They’re just waiting for an excuse.” Seth rested his head on his knees, his feet up on the couch. “Nobody is going to actually believe this other than you, you know that, right?”

“I’m sorry.” Kevin’s voice was small. “And for what it’s worth, I know what Riko is like, and you’re just a meaningless pawn in his game. I don’t see you that way. I don’t hate you like you think I do.”

“Don’t push it.” Seth grimaced. “You only tolerate me because your lineup can’t handle the loss of another body.”

“Maybe.” Kevin admitted, and Seth laughed, because he didn’t even try to hide that it was the truth. He didn’t say much else before nodding at Seth and leaving the room, and suddenly Seth felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulder and quickly replaced by another, heavier tonne of bricks. He hated Neil, he hated Kevin, he hated Riko. If it was the truth, if it really was him who’d orchestrated this whole thing, he’d fucked with his life in ways he didn’t even understand. He had people he cared about in his life, people he wanted to live for, but Riko was happy to ruin it all, all for the sake of petty revenge. For a week he’d been in some sort of state between withdrawals and a heavy craving to fall back into a hole he’d assumed he’d crawled out of for good. Nobody trusted him, and everyone looked at him differently, no matter how much they tried to hide it. He looked at himself differently, a brush with death an untimely reminder that his life was finite. He’d avoided death too many times, and his chances had to have finally been depleted. Riko didn’t know what he’d done to Seth’s bare minimum instinct of survival by fucking up and letting him live.

He had looked Kevin in the eye, as the only one who seemed to understand him when he felt like screaming from the rooftops it wasn’t fucking me! Kevin who he’d despised since the first time he opened his mouth, Kevin who was too good for them all, full of himself, in love with himself; he’d felt so alone since waking up in that hospital, and God, did it feel terrible that Kevin Day was the one person who seemed to understand.

[vixendoesstuff]

So. Transformers.

AAAAAAAAA-

So I got some OC ideas for this godforsaken fandom yipee. Not sure which continuity these guys will be in since I haven't got into them yet (I've only been exposed to the Bayverse, Earthspark and Prime (not the entire Alligned continuity)). But I think, with the ideas I have for them right now, they lean more towards Prime specifically. But as I get deeper into this robot rabbit hole, I'll make them more flexible so that they can exist in other incarnations. Probably.

But anyway, I'll be putting them in bullet points 'cause these plans aren't concrete yet. So here goes:

H-055/Hurricane/Horizon

Name is undecided, but it starts with an H

I'll probably change it if I somehow find a character with the exact same names, I know the series has loads of 'em

But anyway

He's a Decepticon turned rouge then turned Autobot once he meets the gang

Due to some events happening with the 'Cons, he ran away, declaring himself a deserter

He's based on a helicopter vehicle

Probably some fancy space lookin' helicopter before he got a makeover when he visits Earth (this is important)

I'm not sure yet on what his Alt-Mode's exact model will be, but it's either something like this (Sikorsky X2):

Or this (Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk):

Either way he's a helicopter boi

And he's moderately fast. Not as fast as the jet planes, but he's somewhat speedy

His role in the army was mostly cargo lifting, he's not much involved in the fight unless absolutely necessary

So in terms of personality, he's definitely textbook introvert

He'd rather stick to the sidelines than lead, so when it comes to task he's somewhat reliable

At the start, he can be kind of aloof and cold, but it's not intentional; he just doesn't know how to set up a proper conversation

In other words he's socially awkward

And he's somewhat infamous for looking one second away from falling to sleep; guy got eyebags (can robots have eyebags? Or is it optic-bags?) and moves kinda slow when not in combat, and and talks very softly

He takes a lot of naps, but the feeling of lethargy remains

Probably why his role in the army is not one of combat

But he's hella loyal, and very caring to those who earned his affections

Just try to remind him to take a break before he falls into pieces lol

Now, moving on to the next OC idea:

V-V0X/Velocity/Boombox

Name is also undecided, but it's one of those two

But anyway

He's an Autobot who specializes in support, where he essentially acts as a debuffer for the front liners, stunning enemies and creating hazards to make an opening for the army

That's the best way I can explain it

Anyway

For what vehicle he's based on, I'm still deciding on what kind; initially I wanted him to be a sports car, but then I was thinking of a pickup truck or a tow truck of some kind

Maybe something like this (Chevrolet Silverado):

Just like before, his Alt-Mode is possibly some futuristic looking car similiar to the picture above until he got a new make over

Anyway, onto personality

Hmmm

Best way I can describe him is that he's basically Pandreo from Fire Emblem, but more subdued

He's not as cheery as, say, Bumblebee or Jazz or Hot Rod or any other energetic character in their many incarnations, he's still noticeably lively

He has difficulties reading the room, especially when he's excited, so maybe that's why he's called rude

But nah man, he just wanna have fun

But he's also kinda scared of authority? In a way? I don't know how to describe it, but he'll get kind of scared when in the presence of someone like Optimus Prime and even Megatron

Just basically people with a noticeable air of authority around them

Heck, maybe he'll even be scared of someone like Ratchet or Bumblebee, even

Even with that, he cares alot for his friends, he'll try and comfort them in whatever ways he can, like music

This guy really loves music, especially when he encounters Earth music

He's definitely the type of guy to jam to some rock music with an air guitar all obnoxiously lol

Conclusion; he babey

Alright, that's all I have. For each of their lore, I'm still trying to work the kinks out, 'cause WOW Transformers has so many things I didn't even know about. Like, Velocitron, Praxus, Kaon, and all that jazz (heh)? Titans? Predacons? Eukarians? I don't even know at this point lol.

But anyway.

So like I mentioned before, these 2 guys' story will primarily take place in the Prime universe (or the Alligned universe, I guess) since that's what I'm most familiar with for now. The gist of it is;

Hurricane runs away from the 'Cons, Velocity gives chase, they both crash landed onto Earth at different times with Hurricane being the first to enter, when they found each other they got damaged badly by an intense hurricane (which is where Hurricane got his name from), they got found by their designated human partner and got fixed up, some plot happens, they all bond, Hurricane decides to join the Autobots, and he and Velocity leaves their human to keep them safe and to explore the world as they search for more Autobots together.

And also they fell in love and became Conjux's together, I don't make the rules.

Also also they landed in Florida. Just because.

That's all I got for now, I'll make another post once I got more stuff for them, like their lore and all tht stuff. Until then, take care!

[thevagabondexpress]

Can't believe I've never asked you for them, but could I please have some Christopher headcanon 🤲🏻

Okay. Christopher headcanons. Go.

A) He hates ties. He feels like the kind of person who'd just. Hate ties. And also collars because of the way collars were starched back then. It's too restrictive, and something scratches every time he turns his head. So whenever he can he wears sweaters (which were just barely coming into fashion at the time) to avoid that, and if he can't then he wears bow ties because at the very least those don't pose an occupational hazard if they come untucked from your shirt/waistcoat.

B) He sets stuff on fire on purpose more often than you'd think. Specifically he burns old paper that he knows for sure he's never going to need again (grocery receipts once the taxes have been done and notes telling his mum he'll be late for lunch and stuff like that) and clothes he's irreparably ruined. It's an efficient method of disposal, it serves a practical purpose in keeping the laboratory warm, and depending on what it was that ruined the shirt he's burning, it might turn the fire blue or green. Matthew keeps a hawk's eye on this practice to make sure Christopher doesn't set fire to anything anyone is actually going to care about, but Kit doesn't have any intentions to.

C) He's also not, actually, a shit cook. I see this a lot in fanfics but I actually think he'd be reasonably good at it. Baking is an edible form of chemistry, and I think he'd enjoy stir fry because pop! sizzle! spatter! There's plenty of appeal there for someone who's not afraid of explosions. However he's not really into cooking for other people (he already doesn't like parties that much, the idea of entertaining is a huge no) so nobody will probably ever know this unless they're actively living with him.

D) He seems to be well known and well loved at the Shadow Market. While he obviously interacts with that world differently from the way Anna or Matthew do, I think Christopher also thrives in the Downworld spaces he visits. He's not threatening, he doesn't have his nose in the air, but he's also not scared of these people, he doesn't get nervous being in a room full of werewolves. He's just a guy who pays well for mushrooms and maybe he's not going to remember your name but for some reason he'll remember that your little brother sprained his wrist doing something stupid last week and probably ask after him.

E) Speaking of memory, I think his works a lot like mine does. The things neurotypical people think are important, like names and deadlines and grocery lists, just get lost in the ether. But if it's a weird little detail? Oh, he'll remember it to the end of time. Does he remember your name? No. Does he remember what medals your grandfather earned when he served in the war? Yes. Does he remember that he was supposed to buy celery? No. Does he know eight common names for celery as well as the scientific one? Yes. Stuff like that. At first you think he never remembers anything. Then you begin to think he never forgets anything. Come to find out, both are equally true, at the same time.

F) He grinds his own glasses lenses. He employs a jeweller at the Shadow Market to make the frames, but he makes the lenses himself and adjusts their strength on his own. While he needs the glasses to see they also can be really annoying in some circumstances, especially battle, so he's spent years developing glue that he can use to keep them on his head in a fight (and solution to safely dissolve the glue later), and shatterproof lenses, and more effective cleaning solution, and even a primitive antifogger.

G) Personally I headcanon him as having both autism and ADHD and one of my reasons for the autism headcanon is I think he's a hyposensitive/low-pain autistic. He tolerates cuts and burns to a far greater extent than other people would. While he'd never hurt himself on purpose (in fact, if you ever brought up the idea, he'd probably look at you like you'd suggested he was an elephant), he'll take, say, a pretty good cut to the shoulder from an exploding beaker, and only realize he's bleeding when he goes to see why his shirt feels wet. He's the kind of person who could get an absolutely massive full-color tattoo and it'd just feel like little scratches. What he would want a tattoo of I don't know though, I don't think I could see him with one.

H) This is a lot less lighthearted than stuff previous, but I'm going to dig into that "if he lived" hypothetical again. Personally I think, once he woke up from the coma/came back from the dead/what have you, I think he would've been disappointed and maybe a little annoyed with Grace about the fire messages. She credits the first one as "invented by Christopher Lightwood and sent by Grace Blackthorn" but I think in his eyes, while she used his research, Grace was the one to complete the invention and she ought to take equal credit for it. I don't think he'd ever really understand what she was trying to do there with saying only that she sent them. As you've probably noticed, while I like both of these characters a lot, I don't need them to have a completely tragedy-free story and this is one of those pieces of how I think it would realistically have panned out.

[nightowlwriting]

summary: be flexible, be unreplaceable

in a world of heavy footprints, be untraceable

OR

you're activated. bucky, steve, and tony each have regrets. someone stalks the city at night. your cell is very nice, and so is bruce. his tests are easy and he's amiable to be around. bucky watches from the sidelines until he's at your door, telling you about the next test.

word count: 5.1k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: self-loathing, brief descriptions of torture, mentions of imprisonment, lapse of reality, paranoia, brief mentions of forced food/water restriction, flashbacks, ptsd, trauma responses

note: this is the part three of an ongoing series, find the series masterlist here. also sorry this is kind of a filler chapter? i can't put everything i want in it without it being too long and cutting it off makes it short. sorry!

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Steve takes a deep breath, inching closer and closer. He's not registering as a threat to you but your eyes are still flickering between his looming frame and the visibly frightened woman. At the same time that he says your name, low and calm, Bucky says your name in a tone that's achingly familiar. You hazard a glance over your shoulder and see him shielding Wanda, Tony, and Bruce much the way that Steve is shielding the woman who had been wearing the jacket. His face is hard, lined with stress, and his jaw moves like he’s chewing his next words carefully. Your gaze slides back to Steve, furniture and faces leaving trails like you’d only ever experienced when they first injected you with the serum.

Time is getting weird, and it probably has something to do with the way your chest is heaving or how thin the oxygen is around you because of the dancing flames on your arms. Your heart is still racing in your chest and now it’s almost starting to ache. How long has it been since the woman - Helen - walked off the elevator? How long had you and Wanda been in your memories? Natasha has moved from the doorway to standing at your flank, finger still on the trigger.

Steve is looking over your shoulder now, heartbreak on his face. You watch his head shift left and then right, minuscule movement that’s telegraphing something to someone behind you. Conflict crosses his face and then he looks back to you and the dying fire dancing across your skin. The expression looks wrong on Steve’s face and he shakes his head at you, hands lowering slowly but surely. “I’m sorry.” His voice is low and strangled and the fire on your body surges. What does that mean? The heat in your stomach, anger and resentment and revenge, fuels the oxygen suck weighing your shoulders down.

Seconds later, Steve’s mouth not even shut into a thin line yet, Bucky speaks up again. “Serdtse,” His voice is low and sharp, cutting through the air between you like a knife. It slides between your ribs and cuts into your lungs. The fire goes out even before he continues, “Potushit ogon.” Your hands shake worse than your knees as a high buzzing begins in the back of your mind. Eyes locked on Steve, you’re far, far away in a microsecond. The words are familiar but it’s in Bucky’s voice. For a brief second, you see him, laying bloodied and barely alive on the metal table. You hear the plans for the Program, for a new test to see if they could meld metal to flesh, you feel his blood flexing underneath your power. Gasping shallow breaths, the room spins around you. Steve smiles, small and sad, and approaches you faster - but not fast. Just faster than before. Bucky gives another order, “Uspokoit’sya.”

Steve wraps his long fingers around the wrist shaking in front of you as the weight of the order presses you down. Your breathing slows even though your mind is spinning out at thousands of miles per hour, and your stance relaxes. Steve smiles again, his other hand smoothing over your shoulder. “Helen is a friend,” He says, ducking his head so that he can keep eye contact with you as he says your name, “We just have to make sure that you’re healthy.”

For what? For battle? You know about the tests that doctors run - stress tests, blood pressure, cognitive tests. You know that they run all of that and more, sometimes through the excruciating pain of electricity in places that it shouldn’t be. Still, you can’t freak out because your mind is still stuck between this place is not that place, these people are not those people and uspokoit’sya. It leaves you in a strange fugue state that makes you incredibly malleable for Steve to steer you toward a chair. Your mind struggles to protect itself and it’s like you’re watching what’s happening through a dirty window - there, but not. Steve doesn’t seem to notice.

Once he has you sat in the chair, everyone else moves. Bruce and Tony escort Wanda out the door, holding her up as she sags under her body weight. Or, maybe, the weight of your memories. Natasha lowers her gun but doesn’t take her finger off the trigger, even as Bucky works his way around to face you in an arc until he’s standing next to her. There’s a small trickle of blood over his forehead, following the slant of his eyebrow around his eye. It’s probably already healed, you think blithely as you watch Steve present your arm to Helen. She’s talking to you but her voice isn’t anything but a hum of syllables and incoherent sounds. She takes a lot of blood, more than a normal human could stand having drained at once, but you don’t even flinch.

You’re waiting for your next order. There has to be more - Bucky had activated you. They were going to use you for something, right? Maybe they’d just wanted you docile for the tests, or maybe they were going to trick you into agreeing to what Wanda had seen you in your mind. It doesn’t matter because your thoughts come and go like an even breeze. You barely remember them once they’re gone, despite being very quick-witted usually. They’re an afterthought to you - they have to be if you want to survive. If you rely on your own thoughts they will punish you when you tell them no. If you fall away, watch your life trapped in your own body as if You is different from the you that your body is, it hurts much less. So you let Helen run her tests and take her blood; you answer her questions in a flat and quiet voice. Almost fully opposite of you, the You inside of your body is screaming. Every answer burns like fire as it comes out of your body; every test, blood draw, and reflex check is a reminder of what you and You actually are. Sure, you can look like a person and act like a person and even fucking think and feel and love and cry like a person but nobody in those jackets sees you (or You, for that matter) as a person.

You are an experiment. A tool. A weapon. An asset.

You are Serdtse.

You are the Heart, the beginning, the end, the middle, the catalyst, the deterrent. You are all of these things in one and Bucky must see it.

He has made his way from being all of those things, but he must see it in you. He watches you as Helen continues for another hour, two, three - you’re not sure. There’s no time where You are and it’s hard enough to watch everything happening, let alone know how long you’ve been stuck inside of your own body like this. The weight of your title doesn’t even seem to impact his shoulders, or the way he sends Natasha away with the strangle tile she’d dropped. When Steve escorts Helen back to the elevator, Bucky approaches less cautiously than his friend had. He says a name but you stare blankly back at him. Inside, behind the glass, You scream. That’s Your name, that’s who You are. He’s saying Your name and You desperately want to react but you can’t, you won’t. Bucky sighs and finally the weight settles over him.

Through a frown, he says, “Serdtse, poydem.”

“Gde?” Your voice is hollow and Bucky flinches.

“V svoyu komnatu. Tebe nuzhno pospat’ seychas.”

You nod but it feels heavy. On numb legs you stand, eyes rolling toward Bucky as he watches you, analyzing how you’re reacting - or not reacting because you’re still stuck, trapped, reliving your life in brief flashes and phantom pains. The phrase they always expected falls out of your mouth before you can stop it and, for a moment, you’re afraid you’re going to vomit. “Ya ponimayu.” He turns to lead you to your room and you follow, gait strong and flawless. It’s unlike any way that you’ve carried your body since you’ve unthawed and if you had more control, if you were closer to the surface of the fugue state, you might clench your jaw and crack your neck to relieve the stress compressing your spine. As it is, you just follow Bucky’s broad back to your room and follow your orders, laying back down in your bedding and falling asleep before you can become You again.

When Bucky gets back to the apartment he shares with Steve, the first thing he does is empty his dinner into the toilet. The second thing he does is get into the shower fully clothed, turning the water as hot as Friday will let him. The third is cry.

The city skyline is dark, a storm having just passed over the heart of New York. The rolling of thunder still echoes from where the cluster of clouds has moved on, but the figure clad in all black, shapeless clothing doesn’t care. As long as the storm doesn’t come back for seconds, everything will fall into place today.

They’re on a mission.

They have to find the perfect place - it has to be perfect. If it’s not perfect there’s a good chance they’ll lose their life. There’s a good chance their family will die, too. The video had gone viral. The headlines had conspired that it was a movie shoot.

But they know better. Their bosses know better. The day after the video was posted, the plan was in place. It just has to be perfect.

Every alley that they pass is inspected, but those are too hidden. The parks are too filled with people walking dogs or gathering after the raucous storm in the fresh post-rain smell. The figure huffs, pulling a dark hood tighter to obscure their face from security cameras or appearing in the background of smartphone photographs.

Grinding their teeth, they search well into the night. Finally, finally, they find it. Hidden enough to be discovered long after they’re gone, but in plain enough sight that it will be discovered.

The paint runs like blood and the artist disappears like a ghost.

Steve presses his forehead against the elevator doors after he sends Helen off. There’s a bad feeling growing like a parasite in his spine. He’s almost afraid to go back to his apartment, to see what’s happening to Bucky now, but he has to. He wants to, more importantly.

When he said I’m with you ‘till the end of the line what he really meant was I love you, I have always and will always love you, and I will be here through everything.

Tony sits on his balcony, an untouched glass of whiskey in his right hand. Every so often, he smells it. He does not take a drink, but his throat stings like he does. The skin around his arc reactor burns. It’s a phantom ache. He knows that.

You’re a phantom ache to him, too.

If he closes his eyes, he can still feel the heat of the fire on your skin pressing against his face. If he closes his eyes, he wonders if that’s what it feels like to die.

If he closes his eyes, he wonders if that’s the last thing his parents felt.

Tony doesn’t close his eyes. Instead, he pours the whiskey over the balcony, thinking about every Yahrzeit he’s missed, every kaddish.

A storm rolls in.

When you wake up the next morning you feel like shit. There’s residual heaviness in your head, a fog you can’t break through. There’s also shame. When Natasha comes to get you, laptop and gun in hand, you straighten your shoulders and decide that you’re going to be the best fucking prisoner these people have ever had. You pick out your clothes on the laptop, keeping an eye out for what Natasha likes, and then you go for more blood tests.

It continues like that for the next month. Sometimes Steve comes to get you in the mornings, sometimes it’s Natasha. It’s never Bucky, never Wanda, never Tony. It makes bile rise in your throat but you press on. You have to.

When Bruce comes to get you in the mornings, it means he’s running tests, too. You remember these tests from your time with the Handlers so it’s easy. It’s like breathing. Sometimes the Avengers - though you’d learned that they don’t really call themselves that anymore - come to watch. Bruce doesn’t make you run mazes, but he hooks new tech up to you and monitors your reactions to running at a flat-out sprint for as fast and as long as possible, or jogging for as long as you can stand the boredom that comes with your endurance. He told you once everything that he monitors like it matters to you, or you’re going to do anything with that information. You know your place - you’re nothing more than a shiny new lab rat, another super-soldier with a serum that they can study. Still, there’s something about the look on Bucky’s face when he’s watching you deadlift or catch softballs barehanded from a machine that pitches them to you at superhuman speeds. It reminds you of you when you were watching him die.

But you’re not dying. You’re getting stronger throughout the tests. The Handlers ran tests, sure, but they never kept you fed well enough to gain any muscle. The Avengers give you three protein shakes a day, still unbearably sweet, and after a few weeks you end up eating breakfasts and lunches of solid foods with just a shake for dinner. You bulk up, but not visibly. It’s just noticeable on your tests and it becomes another variable that Bruce measures. He’s the nicest of the bunch - the most prone to trust you. Maybe it’s naivete, maybe it’s because there’s something lurking under the surface that you can see. He’s repressing something and you wonder if, like you, he’ll explode one day.

You also take to writing in the month since you nearly lit poor Helen on fire. It’s easy enough to request a pen and journal from The Voice That Lives In Your Ceiling, something that’s never really explained to you. Every night after your tests are done and you’ve drank your dinner shake, you find yourself at the desk in your cell writing. You’ve filled four journals with just what you remember from your childhood so far, and there’s still so much more information that you have left to give. The finished journals are all in a pile next to where you sleep, new crisp journals appearing outside your door after you add another thick, written in journal to the pile. You’re not sure who’s buying them for you, but you figure they’ll be repaid tenfold when they get their hands on everything you know.

The Handlers were never worried about what they said to you, or around you, because they thought they had your undying loyalty. They programmed you with a near-perfect memory which, now, is both a blessing and a curse. Their plans, their thoughts, their names - you write them all down because you can remember them.

But that means you can remember what those people became. The monsters that humans can turn into when corrupted by greed, or power, or the ideologies that led to the second war.

It also means you can remember being outside, no matter how much you don’t want to. Asking to go outside seems like it’s breaking some unspoken rule about what you can and can’t have, so you don’t even risk it. You just think about asking; remembering the sun on your face, the ground beneath your feet. You just look longingly out the window when it rains or when the stars come out.

Nobody notices.

Still, they are eons nicer than the Handlers. You learn about them over mealtimes when they all come together to laugh, catch up, and break bread. You’re only there because Steve makes sure to come to get you so that you can eat with them. Sometimes, he drags you into the conversations like he wants to get to know you.

(“What about your favorite book? It has to be one that Buck and I have actually read.” Steve says one day when the rain has lulled you into a small appetite. You’re already done with lunch, listening to the team describe the bare-bones plots of their favorite novels. His direct question startles you so badly a heat you can feel crawling up your neck.

“Yeah,” Wanda says, still not able to look you full in the eyes after what she’d seen in your head, “I’m sure yours are more interesting than ours.” You blink slowly, trying to think about the ten or eleven books you’d read in your life.

“Oh,” You say to fill the silence, shifting awkwardly when you realize that even Bucky is watching, waiting for your answer, “There was a book I stole when I was out once,” You cough awkwardly when you realize what you’ve revealed, “It was in Paris - in the late thirties. Just a few years, uh, before I was frozen.” Not a few years ago - decades. Lifetimes. “The Handlers weren’t too keen when they found it, but it was a good book. Nightwood was the title, but I’m not sure of the author. Djuana? Something.”

“Djuna Barnes,” Bucky says, “My cousin. I remember hearin’ Ma talk about the book when it came out in ‘36. She didn’t like how it talked about different groups like they weren’t all people, and I have to agree. Really sent the neighborhood into a tizzy when she published that, but she was a good journalist in Greenwich ‘fore she went off to travel.” He shares a fond look with Steve, “Gave us our first smokes too - nearly killed Stevie with his lungs back then.” You don’t understand the look on his face.

“It’s a good book,” You offer, wilting under the unreadable look on everyone’s faces, “I read almost the entire thing before it was taken away from me. I didn’t appreciate how she played into stereotypes, either, though.”

“What was your favorite quote?” Bucky leans forward, commanding the conversation as he watches you think. “What?” “From the book - your favorite quote.”

You think, running back the parts of the book you’d read over and over in your head. There were a few lines that had stayed with you, sure, but only one that had brought you to tears when you first read it in the moonlight at the Underground. “But death is intimacy walking backward. We are crazed with grief when she, who once permitted us, leaves to us the only recollection.” Bucky leans back, satisfied.

“We have to get you some new books.” Tony cuts in, grumbling into his coffee cup and never looking at you. The next day there is a stack of books in front of your door when Bruce comes to get you for breakfast and testing. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, and a thick book with all seven books in a series called The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis. You have a sneaking suspicion that Tony sent them, but don’t know why.)

Exactly a month after you’ve woken up from the ice is the second time that Bucky Barnes shows up at your door to fetch you. He knocks as they all do, but then he opens the door before you can even stand from your makeshift studying nook. “Today is goin’ to be different,” He says. Something about the way his voice is flat and grave makes your stomach twist. “We need to see how powerful you are.” You turn to look at him but he won’t look at you. “I don’t know - did they ever make you fight other people?”

“Sometimes,” You answer, but your voice doesn’t sound like yours. It sounds like theirs- every person you fought, every person you killed. Thankfully, it does not sound like Bucky’s. “I don’t have to kill anyone, do I?”

“No!” He looks at you now, pale. So he knows, then. That part of the Program wasn’t written down anywhere except in the notes you stole, but it was always the Handler’s favorite part. They loved to take bets but it was a lost cause and mostly for fun. You never lost. “No,” Bucky repeats, calmer, “We just want to see how much you can manipulate. You’ll be fighting us.”

In your shock, you nearly forget to breathe. Fighting them - fighting the Avengers… Even the Handlers didn't fight you themselves. There are so many things that can go wrong; they know that based on the fact that Bucky has been sent to collect you. He watches you go stock still, chest barely rising with your breath, and wrings his hands. "How hard do I have to fight?" You finally ask, standing from your cramped position over a notebook.

"Just hard enough to not lose," He holds your door for you, "I… I had to do the same thing after I was pardoned. They only had me fight Stevie and Tony, though." You follow three steps behind Bucky as he leads you toward the training gym, "We're goin' to have you switch it up for each person because I don't think anyone could handle takin' you on with all four elements, y'know?"

"Right." You clip off the word before it's fully out of your mouth. You know that nobody could - you're not sure you'd survive that experiment.

"So the plan is one-on-one, one element per combatant." Bucky explains everything tactically, lips pressed into a hard line between each sentence, "It's up to you how you fight and what you fight with. This is a test of your cognitive capabilities when it comes to fighting - and how you strategize."

"And how dangerous I am."

He sighs, "It's not really about that, but it is being measured today." For a brief second his hand ghosts over your elbow before lightly tugging, like a warning he was going to touch you. "We're not goin' to the gym today."

You look blankly at the doors to the gym you're in nearly every day. "Where are we going?"

Bucky furrows his eyebrows, frowning lightly. "Outside, where else?" You hesitate, seeing the door at the end of the hallway. Once you pass that threshold you're not sure what will happen to you. You'll fight, sure, but after? When they see the extent of your power? What will they do to you? "Is everything okay?"

"I just… Haven't been outside in a long time." You finally muster up, "I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to take me out there.” He looks back and forth between you and the door before he takes the few steps to the metal and pushes it open.

“C’mon,” He jerks his head toward the yard - you can feel the breeze pushing past you and the smell of the freshly mowed grass makes your bones sing. You want to be outside so badly it aches, but you know that once you get a taste of that equilibrium, that freedom, it’ll be just that more bitter to go back to you cell. “I won’t let anythin’ happen to you.” Maybe Bucky doesn’t really know why you’re standing with your knees locked, fingernails digging into your palms but maybe he does. Either way, he’s giving you an out to pretend that you’re scared and not already thinking of what you’re losing before you get it.

You follow Bucky outside. The sunshine on your skin makes your breath catch and then your bare feet hit the grass and everything is whole again. The feeling of being perfectly balanced within your body and everything you can do with it sits heavy, but light, on your chest. Your toes spread and your eyes close without your permission - Bucky chuckles softly, barely heard over the wind, when your head tilts and seeks out the sunshine. “It’s been so long,” You whisper back even though he hadn’t really asked a question, voice clogged and choking on emotions you don’t dare let show on your face, “It feels so good.”

“We’ll have to get you outside more often,” Steve’s voice scares you because you hadn’t heard him leave the compound and you’d been so focused on how being outside makes you feel inside that you hadn’t been paying attention to the outside. Your eyes snap open and instinctually you hike your shoulders to your ears. For a second you’d forgotten who you are, what you are; that’s a surprisingly big feat when Bucky is around and he’d been appointed your de facto Handler. (Or, at least, that’s what you assumed when he kept showing up to every test with Steve and Bruce. Plus, he’d been sent to get you today, when there was a higher chance that you’d react poorly.) “Woah, hey, it’s okay,” He’s dressed in a familiar suit and holding his hands up to appease you. Bucky looks concerned, his left hand flexing as he warms his arm up. “I know these few weeks have been a lot, but we’re almost to the end, okay?”

You nod robotically, “Of course,” It’s hard to hold eye contact with either of them, so you settle on watching how their shoulders brush against each other as they stand, “I’m almost done writing down everything I know.” You’ve been working on that for a while and of course they know, but it’s the first time any of you have mentioned it out loud.

“That’s really amazing,” Steve says earnestly. It’s hard not to believe him when his voice is so sure and full, but you have to remember who you are. You have to remember who you’re not. “Well,” He claps once and then looks back at Bucky, sharing nonverbal communication that you’re not equipped to understand, and then back to you, “The others are waiting for you. I’m sure that Tony wants to go first.” He telegraphs his movements so that it’s not a shock when he claps you on the shoulder. You let Steve lead you toward the others - they’re standing in a group on the other side of a large field watching the three of you. Bucky takes up the rear and you try to ignore the tingling down your spine at having such a formidable opponent behind you.

By the time you make it to where Sam, Tony, Natasha, Bruce, and Wanda are standing you've already figured out the situation. Automatically you know that you’re not going to be facing off against Wanda or Sam - they're dressed far too comfortably. Bruce is wearing what he always does when he’s observing you which is what he wears all of the time: a nice button up shirt and slacks. You can feel incredibly compressed metal around Tony’s wrists and Natasha is in her tactical suit. Cutting a glance to Bucky lets you know that you missed his tactical suit as well. You immediately begin to strategize even though Tony is definitely speaking to you about what this is for - none of that matters because you understand. They either want to know what you can do so that they can control you better or that want to turn you around and use your powers for themselves.

Bucky knocks you out of it by tapping his fingers against the back of your hand as he passes. “You’ll be fine,” He whispers without really moving his lips or speaking up. The only reason you can hear him is because you’re teeming with serum, “Just show us what you can do, okay?”

He follows the others about forty yards away, leaving you and Steve standing next to each other. Steve says something that you can’t hear over the blood rushing in your ears and then moves to stand across from you maybe ten or so feet away. When you finally meet his eyes he gives you that same smile that he gave you when he was trying to calm you down in the dining area so long ago.

Pity. Uncertainty. Maybe a little bit of fear.

It makes your stomach turn.

Instead of saying anything to Steve you just bounce on the balls of your feet and shake out your hands. “I’m ready,” You announce, trying to keep the shake out of your voice but raising it enough that everyone can hear you. Immediately Steve shifts his center of gravity backward and schools his expression. If you weren’t who you are and you didn’t have the training you do, it would be scary how quickly he could go from open and friendly to locked down and determined. There’s a flicker of confusion on his face when you don’t move, instead opting to let your natural senses take a backseat to your supernatural senses. His face swims behind a fog but you can feel his heartbeat picking up with adrenaline, his muscles coiling as he gets ready to move, his lungs expanding and compressing as he breathes.

Once again, you’re stuck with how easily you could kill Captain Steve Rogers. Every instinct that was shocked, beat, burned into you tells you to - you’re made to kill him, and Bucky, and anyone who gets in your way. But you don’t want to kill him, you don’t even want to hurt him. In fact, you’d be perfectly content if they let you stay in your cell for the rest of your damn life and put food through a doggy door. You begin to float away, waiting on orders, but you can’t. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. You have to stay tethered to your body, fight the Avengers, and prove that you’re worth it.

(Worth what?)

Bucky’s voice comes back to you in wavy echoes. What had he told you? You’d asked him - something, God you’d asked something - and he’d said… Just hard enough not to lose. What had you asked?

Steve’s muscles tense again and it gives you barely a second for your question to tumble through your mind before you have to do something.

How hard do I have to fight?

Just hard enough not to lose.

Steve, with the shield on his back, kicks up dirt as he sprints toward you. It’s easy to dodge left out of the way and avoid the sweeping leg he tries to take you out with. Everything snaps back into place and then you’re using your natural senses and supernatural senses in tandem, in equilibrium, in synchronicity. It’s been so, so long - like stretching a muscle after they’d kept you in a room that was too cramped for too long. It feels exhilarating.

The adrenaline must show on your face because Steve whirls to attack again and stops, cocking his head. You watch him as he watches you and then he’s grinning. “There you are,” He rumbles, looking almost feral, “There’s the fire you woke up with.”

live once, you get to pay twice

keep your nose clean, keep your wheels nice

Potushit ogon - put the fire out

Uspokoit’sya - calm down

Poydem - let’s go

Gde - where

V svoyu komnatu. Tebe nuzhno pospat’ seychas - to your room. you need to sleep now

Ya ponimayu - i understand

[speedlimit15]

my mom and uncle spent time unhoarding my grandparents’ garage in preparation for my arrival/putting the house on the market and my mom kept telling me i wouldn’t believe how bad it was

but she forgets that when i was growing up, we’d at least spend a few weeks every year (and she sent me to live permanently as a teen) in their original house, which had all the living spaces hoarded that way for decades, no walking room fire hazard can’t see the walls or floor at a time. they had 15+ cats at any given moment and some of them lived in their own specific rooms. like i’m realizing my mom had no idea how bad it was maybe? because they didn’t start really hoarding until she’d gone to college. i lived in an upstairs room with just a pullout couch and floor to ceiling stacks of books and magazines and a huge whirring pc somewhere with a singular footpath to access it and it smelled like cat piss and litter and that was my summer fun and junior year. maybe they really didn’t know how bad it was bc they only ever used an intercom system to talk to me (the stairs were too steep for my grandmother to climb safely and my granddad did not acknowledge his mess and collection as an issue). okay well typing this out makes me feel like i was a zoo animal anywayayyyyyayayay DONT tell me i wouldn’t believe something i’ve seen a million times

[avernusfuries]

The really fun thing about being friends with @spiderwarden is that the things we spoke about before, can be used for meta. Thank you, Melody, for being gracious enough to allow me to use the tags of this post.

Now, we all know Karlach as our happy-go-lucky, kind and caring friend / lover who we would destroy entire worlds for, but I think something that gets briefly looked over on occasion is the fact that she is used to being in danger. Constantly. It shows in her eyes, most of all, when we look past some of her body language. Everyone's eyes move because they are taking in their surroundings, and being able to assess the dangers / people around her based on what's in front of her and in her peripherals. This is something of second nature to her because she spent ten years being in constant peril.

This has given her a somewhat predatory nature when it comes to her environment, and how she can almost immediately assess what's where in a room from sight and sound alone. This goes hand-in-hand, also with the danger sense feature that is offered by barbarians as they level. She can quite literally pick out when something is a little off just from stepping into a room. Threat assessment is as natural as breathing and she doesn't need to specifically look around to know when something is fishy or where people / creatures are.

After all, despite how friendly and open she is, she was used as a weapon and old habits are trecherously hard to kick, especially when you've done all you can to survive.

While Karlach spent a good portion of her young adult years in service of Enver as his bodyguard, she did not develop these skills as his bodyguard. While I personally headcanon that she excelled at that (he's alive, ain't he), there was actually very little outside of thugs and the occasional assassin (probably, this notion may change when I'm done researching), they were very easily disposed of in comparison to what Avernus threw at her. Avernus was an experience all on her own. While no stranger to the occasional scar, the most notable of which, before she was sold to Zariel, is seen in the gifset about.

Trivial, minor scars that come from the life she led before the hells. Hazards of the job, really.

Karlach's most notable scars are the burn marks over her shoulders and upper torso. While I like the idea of them being from the actual fighting, in actuality it was likely from the initial installation of the infernal engine that replaced her heart. Chances are, they did not quite realise that that much heat needed somewhere to go, and I mention this because that particular burn scar is localised around where they've littered the vents to let out steam.

Literal trial and error (maybe trial by fire huehuehue). The infernal engine scorching her like that is what led to her not only having vents installed, but the eventual inclusion of a similarly crafted slot where they would have given her soul coins to juice her up.

We can also see that the vents are on both shoulders, and the backs of them. This was likely their notion of protecting their "investment" with a little more of a careful hand. A dead champion is not a good champion.

This, she thought at the time, is all her life would be. A series of upgrades that would sculpt her into what Zariel wanted her to be as her hard-bought champion.

Now, if we look carefully at her arms and stomach, those are scars I think she got when she was actually fighting. The endlessness of the war does come with its price, and the fact that she has no fresh ones? Shows that not only did she do what she did to survive, but the fact that she was good at what she did.

[baelpenrose]

Project Praetorian 35: After the Battle

The kids recover from their first major battle, cuddling, recovering from wounds, and talking in the dorms after the fight. It also features discussions of where, specifically, they want to go, what they want to do with their magnificent hazard pay. Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight.

Molly 

She clutched the steaming cup of hot cocoa as she shuddered under the blanket on the battered couch in the dorm. The team hadn’t really “debriefed” after combat - or more accurately, Mark, Echo and Xavier had, and had staggered off to go do an in-person debrief while Jonathan physically carried the other, more exhausted kids back to the dorm, where Casey had thrown a kettle on for tea and cocoa, changed into her customary ‘at home’ long skirt, and grabbed blankets out of the sleeping quarters, with Shiloh and Jonathan helping her.

They’d shared a fuller decontam shower than they’d all had in the field, before that started, but those not forced to attend a meeting were now huddled together, shivering in their sweats, in the dorm. The TV wasn’t on - no one could remember, through the brain fog, where the remote was.

Molly was still looking at her hands - her fingers were calloused from pulling the trigger of her weapon, and for just a moment she thought she could still see blood on them from when Shiloh had asked her to put pressure on something - a wounded trooper who was wounded by shrapnel from an exploding rock, which had allowed that man to be saved without Shiloh exhausting themself.

How long had she been here? The spa day had been last Tuesday, maybe, her fingernails were back to their normal…Then, she saw her feet, and realized that her toenails were still painted, and it abruptly clicked for her that the spa day had been this Tuesday.

The battle had been Friday.

Casey tried to force herself to her feet as the kettle started whistling, but Vergil stopped her, standing up, shakily, to walk over to the tiny kitchen of the dorms, with Jonathan joining him, ever the steadiest of the bunch. They retrieved the tea, Vergil quietly asking who wanted what, and then refilling the kettle and setting it back on for when Mark, Xavier, and Echo got back from their officer’s briefing. 

It wasn’t long before they did, and Mark slumped down on the couch, holding Casey’s unwounded side. She shifted her legs to make room for him, leaning her head against his shoulder as he took deep breaths to try to steady himself. The doctor on the base had determined he’d be under observation and bedrest for a few days, since it turned out he’d caused himself several cardiac microevents during the fighting when he’d cut loose. One of his hands was burned - he apparently hadn’t noticed, and wasn’t having it healed. Something to do with the fact that his heart wasn’t in good enough condition to undergo surgery to get skin grafts yet, and he was willing to wait for Shiloh to recover enough to heal him - the healer was still exhausted, bags under their pale eyes.

“Anyone want to watch a…?” Echo started, her eyes practically crossed. “Where’s the remote? I can’t…I can’t turn it on for us. Brain’s too scrambled from fucking around with the alien computer…”

Molly glanced around, feeling helpless, useless. “What…what are we supposed to do?”

Echo put a hand out. “Mostly just supporting each other, but I don’t really…”

Mark grunted. “We all kicked ass…” He started uncertainly. “And hey, we proved we could survive a head on battle. That’s…pretty hardcore.”

Casey made an unenthusiastic “yay’ sound but didn’t move her head off Mark’s shoulder. 

Xavier took a breath. “We proved that Shiloh can in fact keep us all alive under fire? That Molly can breach their shields? Actually that’s something worth noting - Molly can’t blow up their guns in their hands but she can make their shields stop working. That’s pretty spectacular to know.”

There was a long quiet and Molly squirmed. She couldn’t actually protect - just make them able to kill their enemies faster. Echo groaned. “No more talking about war, right now. Can we…look. Uh…Okay. Ask something else, anything else?” 

“If we could blackmail them into letting us have a pet on base, what would we want?” Vergil made the suggestion, sounding uncertain. 

“I love dogs,” Casey replied, quietly. “I miss my golden retriever. It’s just nice, having something big and friendly, super excited to see you come home.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Nah. Too many bad memories of big dogs. And the little ones are way too loud. Maybe a cat though. They’re quiet, soft, sweet…”

Mark nodded. “Yeah, cats are really good. They’re smart, too, lot of personality.”

Molly shook her head. “I want to like cats so badly but I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to them. Every time I went over to a friend’s house who had one I kept getting hives.”

“Yeah that pretty much adds up to allergy. What about a rat?” Everyone turned to look at Vergil.

“Say what?”

“No, really! One of the homes I was in had one, it was named Marshmallow and it was super cute.”

Echo started laughing. “That’s wild, but…Eh, my little sister was always saying she wanted a snake or something so I can’t judge. Wait, though. I think weird pets are probably harder here.”

That brought everyone down for a moment. “Yeah,” Casey said, darkly. “If we got something weird, there’s no way it wouldn’t be used against us. I don’t know that a cat or a dog wouldn’t.”

“Easier or at least cheaper to threaten an animal than our families all the time. Rather not give them the leverage.” Mark’s voice was bleak. “Change the topic again. We’re getting a ton of money - like, actually, a ton. So much. Yeah, it’s sorta a hush money deal but we’re gonna be set if we survive. What do you guys want to do with your money after the war? Like, that plus hero status, we’ve got, ‘go anywhere, do anything’ kinds of access.”

Jonathan thought about it. “I want a big house. Built big and heavy enough that I can’t break it by accident. Plenty of room if I ever have kids. A pool in the backyard - and a big backyard so I have plenty of space. Some form of fences, though. So I can keep out people who want to take pictures of me. If we’re gonna be famous I don’t want to deal with people taking pictures or wondering when I’m getting spied on, like I did back when my family lived out of a van. Maybe…Oh, I’d want a fast car. I’m…” He trailed off. “Honestly, I haven’t…really thought about it. I’ll…probably have to talk about that with Leon, won’t I?” He trailed off, anxiously.

Shiloh shook their head and signed. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I want something similar. I thought maybe I wanted to travel, but we’re gonna see most of the world with or without a passport because of this. Maybe I want to go to college for something I pick rather than to be a better medic, but I don’t know what I want to study yet - or, maybe I’d rather just fuck off. Get some rig, go on the road, travel wherever I felt like and pay the way with free medical care provided via my powers. Or maybe build myself some big ass fortress in the middle of nowhere where there isn’t so much overstimulating shit and I don’t have to deal with anyone but you guys ever again.” 

Molly waited til that was rendered to her via translation - she was still learning ASL, and was surprised by how quickly everyone else around here had apparently picked it up. “I mean…doesn’t anyone want to…see the world when it isn’t in flames? We’re only going to tour it as part of a military unit, wouldn’t it be nice to see it after the war?”

There was a long pause, then Molly added on. “I mean. I want to travel. I want to keep being a musician, after the war. Maybe go on tour, or…I don’t know, build some big memorial concert hall for Tanglewood?” Molly thought about the fires, thought about Annette. She’d seen the news footage - how the fires had raged hard enough to destroy the evidence, and she was fairly sure that Imperator had disposed of the evidence of the clash.

“Tanglewood - that was the place that…oh, wait, right, happy thoughts. Uh…” Mark was thinking. “Honestly, I don’t know what I want? I do want a house big enough for kids, but I think that I’d…after the war is over, I probably want to spend time figuring myself out first. Maybe traveling for a while, with whoever I’m with, and trying to push on our postwar vision, before I settle down. College, probably, maybe buy my way to a seat in office…” He shook his head. “Wait, no. I think…I think a lot of my wealth will probably go into helping impacted communities, and I can get into office by fame alone, at that point. I…”  Molly saw him break off again, though whether it was from exhaustion or because he was thinking she couldn’t tell. “I don’t know how long I’d want to stay in office. I think after all this, I’d probably…I mean, real talk, who am I going to be able to be with but another Praetorian? Who else is going to understand what we’ve been through? I don’t necessarily want to leave that person watching the kids or facing anything alone, not after all this, because I want kids, I think, and I don’t want to be shut up in an office. Oh, and buy my family a nicer place.”

Echo shrugged. “I want to go get my sister. Maybe teach people, but if we’re all going with what we want just for us…Big house, like Jonathan - probably out in the countryside. I don’t want to be so close to a million computers after all this shit - want appliances that don’t try to talk to me now. Probably could stand to live pretty close to the big guy, though - help him out if he needed some techie shit done, get him to help me if I needed my oil changed and I didn’t want to go to a mechanic for a car jack. Set us both up with some nice network for surround sound. I don’t know, I feel like my little sister always felt safer when we had friends or cousins around, so I’d want to be close to at least one of you, and it seems like he’s going for the closest to what I want. Have you guys over for barbecue or drinks, have all your little kids over to swim if I could handle the noise, stay up swapping war stories when I could stand it and doing anything else when I couldn’t. I don’t know, maybe a fashion tour or two, but with the kind of screening keeps people the fuck out of the parts of my life that I don’t want them in.”

Molly could see Jonathan blush crimson, and she glanced between Mark and Casey, then Xavier…she wondered who else made plans to stick close after the war. Vergil clearly had it on his mind too, since he blurted, “Wait. Aren’t we all sticking together after the war?”

“I mean, are we all gonna live together, probably not. Are we all going to stay in contact for the rest of our lives, and probably charter private planes, or just captured alien craft we seized as personal war trophies to go visit each other? Yes. Actually,” Mark said, exhausted. “Fuck it, I draw officer pay. Add ‘giant ass mansion we can paint the Praetorian insignia on that is free to use for any of us and we can all stay in’ to my shopping list.”

Vergil blinked. “Heh. I mean…somewhere quiet, maybe? But I…Yeah, I want a big family. I want somewhere close. And while I’m at it, I need to get myself a fast car, and maybe hurry up and seize an alien speeder so I can visit you guys, and make sure you don’t go anywhere on me.”

“Alright, Verg gets first dibs on the first alien speeder we capture and are allowed to claim! Everyone got that?” Everyone chuckled. 

Then Vergil kept going, and Molly realized what crowd she was in. “But…I actually do want to have somewhere I can settle down. Not necessarily somewhere fancy, but somewhere permanent. I mean, I’m a sniper, so odds are I’ll be bagging a lot of what Curtis calls ‘high-value targets’ so maybe a few bonuses here and there. I’ll chip in on the big Casa Praetorian.”

Casey shifted. “What about college? Think you’ll go?”

Vergil paused. “Yeah, sure. Now that I’ll have the option, why not?”

Xavier shrugged. “I dunno, man, college isn’t for everyone. I figure…big car, probably don’t want a big house, actually. Given this powerset, don’t want somewhere with huge acoustics. Or…actually, yeah, big house, but in the city. One for my family, and a few for my cousins, too. I want speakers, I want a slick car, and I’m keeping you all on speed dial. Visits, bringing you all in for cookouts, and oh, yeah, a rack full of hardware I take home from the war. Because after the way I got here, I feel like that much money just appearing is gonna require some explaining to the police. Or maybe it won’t, by then.” He grinned. “Maybe we’ll be so famous no one questions it.” Waving that thought away, he continued, “Pool, gamer pad, home theater, quiet room for if certain people want to visit,” this was with a glance at Shiloh and Vergil. “That kind of scene. I do want to travel though - I really want to check out the world, after we’re done with it. Probably going to go to college, study. If we’re taking over, we gotta know how to do it.” 

Molly wondered nervously why so many of her new friends were chuckling at the idea of a fight with the police - but admitted that Xavier’s set up sounded really nice. 

Casey

Casey shifted. “Uh…I want a place big enough for you guys to come over, and for…I want kids. I probably want to give a lot of the money to charity, or to making sure I can manage things for my family…”

“No, come on,” said Mark. “We already agreed this is what each of us wants just for ourselves. You can say you’re going to use the money for charity if what you want is something you can get out of just being famous.” 

Casey blushed. She wanted something for herself, didn’t she? “A…place for my family. I want to make sure me and my siblings can all go to college.” 

“What’s your place going to look like, aside from just…big? What’s it going to have in it?” 

“Uh…Bunch of bedrooms. Huge kitchen - I know you guys are gonna make fun but I actually like cooking - um….” What did she want?

“Wait, what are you going to go to college for?” Echo asked.

“I think I already said, social work, back when we were on the camping trip.” 

“No, you said you were gonna parley your influence to make the system better for kids like Vergil, you didn’t say you were gonna go to college to study it. Big difference. Is that actually what you wanna do?” 

Casey felt trapped. “Why didn’t you guys drill Mark or Xavier when they said they wanted to go into politics?” 

Shiloh started signing. “Because Mark visibly loves the game, and he’s good at it. Him wanting to do something he’s passionate about, even for a little while, doesn’t change that he’s doing it for him. Xavier, same deal. You’re not really saying anything that seems like you love it all that much.” 

“What do you mean? I love doing…” She froze. She liked helping. Right? She was really good at it. She’d been doing it forever. 

“If you want kids and need to help at the same time you could adopt,” Vergil started to say before an offhand cuff from Echo stopped him.

“Good idea, not the time. Casey, what is it you actually want? Like for yourself? You actually want kids?” 

She nodded. She did want that, some day - but probably not a bunch, not like her parents had had. Too many kids meant not enough attention for each of them. 

“Okay, what about a house - city, country, where?” 

“Either - but I want room for the kids to run around, and I want them to be able to go to a friends’ house, without necessarily needing to be driven. Uh…I don’t want to be bugged by guys with cameras all the time.”

Mark added in, “You said you wanted a big kitchen. What other kinds of things did you want in the house? Pool? Garden?”

“Yes, both. Den - maybe a real fireplace. I don’t know, I kinda like the old school fireplaces. They look so cozy.”

“And…what kind of big kitchen?”

“Honestly? Uh…Six burner gas stove, built in griddle. Double fridge. Top-of-the-line appliances. Good oven, like professional quality.” 

“Damn. Okay, you really like cooking.” 

“I do, yeah.” She flushed. “Uh…”

“For the amount of time you spend trying to fit some kind of femininity into your wardrobe, guessing a big closet?” Echo probed. 

“Yes! With lots of soft dresses, pretty ones. Pockets. Uhm. Sandals and flats or heels, or like, decorative boots rather than the brutal stompy combat ones.”

“See, now you’re getting there. What kind of car?” Mark pushed, just a little.

“Hm…Honestly, for day to day I’d want something practical, maybe an SUV for family stuff, but at this point,” she added, “maybe I want something fast for me, or maybe I want a captured speeder. I don’t know yet. Something fast that lets me visit you guys, or just lets me travel wherever I want and be back in time to do what I need.” 

“Camry for the family, war loot speeder for Casey.” Xavier grinned. “Sounds about right, okay.” 

Casey blushed. “Alright, point taken.” She leaned back into Mark. He suddenly whispered, “Ever thought about a firepit in your backyard? Not like there’s anyone safer to have one?”

She grinned, then winced - her wounded arm was aching again. “Yeah, that’d be good. Hey, could you move your hand just a little - thanks.”

Shiloh started standing up and Casey shook her head. “No need,” she signed - “you told me after you healed it it’d ache for a bit. It’s just doing that, is all.” 

“Hey, so once we’re healed up a little bit,” Casey said, “Like, Mark’s not on bedrest, and all that. Anyone want to cook a meal together? Big group dinner, just us?”

“Wait until your arm stops burning,” Shiloh signed. “Seriously. But yeah, sounds good.” 

[misty-lake101]

Live and Learn AU - Headcanons

Hey guys! I haven't updated Live and Learn for moment cause life has been so busy and now I have COVID which absolutely sucks! But I am trying to work on the next few chapters. I'm not sure how long it will be, but until then, I thought I'd give y'all some headcanons in the meantime! They mainly pertain to everyone's career choices and house habits so you'll get an idea of their dynamic.

Sonic - Major: Sports Communication

Sonic cannot cook. Period. All of his roommates agree that leaving him unsupervised in the kitchen is a fire hazard. He tends to order takeout more and microwaves leftovers. But as he got older and was forced to manage his money a little more, he did learn a few basic things at least. The fact that he’s on a meal plan with the college helps as there are some places that serve decent food. Given how athletic he is, It’s a wonder he’s managed to stay healthy this whole time.

He’s also a huge slob. His room is a disaster and he’s the type to just throw his clothes on the floor when he gets back, and then toss it in the laundry at the last minute. He's also that person who can easily find items in a messy room, but feels lost when the place is sparkling clean.

Sonic and Shadow were on rival sports teams in high school. They didn’t see each other for awhile after graduation, but then meet again when Shadow transfers to GMU and becomes their roommate.

Silver - Major: Pre-medicine

Grew up in foster care, and therefore not used to treating a place like his own home. He used to always have a mindset of ‘I'm in someone else’s house and have to follow their rules’. Moving in with Sonic changed that for the better, of course. But of all the inhabitants, he is the most flexible as far as habits go. Like Sonic, his own room can get pretty messy, but he's more conscious of others and therefore a little better at keeping common spaces clean.

He mostly relies on his college’s meal plan but over time, is trying to learn how to cook. He's pretty bad at it too, but it's more because no one taught him anything. Espio uses his restaurant job to his advantage to help him in this area.

His sleep cycle can be a mess since he works night shift for his job. Keeping days of the week and dates straight is often a challenge and he often has to be reminded that no, it's Saturday morning - not Friday night. His daily routine depends on his class/work schedule or what he feels like doing that day. Without that as some kind of structure, he can have almost no concept of time

Shadow - Forensics, but at some point, Undecided

Being in military school and having a strict guardian as well as a chronically ill and severely immunocompromised sister resulted in some extreme habits for Shadow.

He is the epitome of a neat freak. Every nook and corner of the house will be subject to a good vacuuming and mopping if he can help it. He’s an early riser and has a specific morning routine. Comically, these things end up being a source of conflict between him and Sonic when he first moves in.

Unlike Sonic and Silver, Shadow is very good at cooking and becomes the de-facto chef of the house. He's very adept at everything from basic to gourmet meals and knows how to tailor in dietary restrictions of all kinds. He also won't allow anyone but Amy to help him out in the kitchen.

Amy - Nursing, but is thinking of changing her career

At the start of the story, Amy's life was a bit of a mess before she moved in with Sonic and Silver. She lived with three girls in another house and they were generally pretty awful to her, as was her boyfriend. After thirteen months of that, she moved out early when the stress reached a boiling point.

Yet in terms of house habits, she (and to a certain extent, Silver too) is the obligatory "how am I the most normal one here???"

She generally gets along with everyone. Though she and Sonic dated briefly in school, there's no bad blood between them and they're good friends. She bonds very quickly with Silver since they're both in the medical field and can understand each other's struggles that are unique to that career. Silver also looks to her a lot for dating advice. Amy has a pretty civil relationship with Shadow and they gradually become very good friends as well.

Her house habits don't really have anything too extraordinary about them. She's pretty good with cleaning up after her self and is flexible with others. Amy's expectations aren't very high beyond, "please clean up after yourself" and "don't do the nasty in shared spaces and leave 'evidence' of it".

When Shadow first moved in, he and Sonic would bicker a lot. Amy did her best to stay out of it, but there were times she had to intervene. When this happened, she and Silver would take turns deciding who would be the one to break them up.