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reinvent-and-believe · 3 years ago

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my blood is singing with your voice

Written for, but not posted in time for, @thewitchertransweek

Ship: Jaskier/Regis

Rating: E

Tags: Trans Masc Jaskier, Smut, Body Worship, Oral Sex, Marking, Desperation, Secret Relationships, Very Mild Power Play, Jaskier and Regis Both Figure Out They Have a Vampire Kink, explicit and gendered language around Jaskier's genitals, referenced top surgery scars

Summary: Jaskier is lithe and beautiful in the moonlight, marked up from collarbone to hips.

Regis draws back to survey his handiwork.

A crimson abstraction on pale canvas turned pink, a dozen bloodred constellations just beneath the skin, so close Regis can feel against his tongue the very moment the blood vessels burst. It’s intoxicating, so close he can taste it. Just the slightest scrape of teeth, the most natural thing in the world to expect from an ardent lover, the gentlest pressure from too-sharp canines and the dam would give way, flood his mouth with the sweetest wine.

“Please,” Jaskier whimpers beneath him. He tries to press himself closer against Regis but he’s utterly at the mercy of the iron grip on his hips. “Mark me up.”

“That might not be entirely possible, I’m afraid.” He’s fixing the panting boy with a look that he imagines quite like a predator salivating over its prey. Jaskier’s moan confirms the suspicion. “It seems as though someone has marked you rather thoroughly already.” He returns to that same still pink patch of skin, one of the few places across his bare chest not mottled in various yellows and purples and greens. He kisses the hot flesh, sucking at the thin skin against his collarbone, dangerously close to the clear, unblemished expanse that remains visible when he’s clothed. “If we venture much further up, this clandestine affair will quickly become public knowledge, my dear. After all, your penchant for leaving your shirt open for the world to see has nearly taken care of that for us already.”

“Are you shaming me for the way I dress?” There’s a giggle in his breathy voice. Jaskier digs a toe playfully into Regis’s side. “Well, deepest apologies, darling, I didn’t mean to inflame your delicate sensibilities.”

“On the contrary, I’m quite certain that’s what you meant to do.” Regis grins, not bothering to cover his fangs. He runs his hands indulgently over the bard’s broad chest, memorizing the defined pectorals, the raised, rope-like scars, the soft, young tufts of hair. “Goodness knows I appreciate the view. I’m simply pointing out that it makes it a little harder to keep things, well. Discreet.”

They haven’t told Geralt.

Nor any of the others in their little band of companions. Regis is fairly certain Geralt’s sussed it out regardless, but he’s not spoken a word, taciturn as ever, and Jaskier seems to get a bit of a thrill from sneaking about, so Regis is more than willing to humor him. It’s new, and it’s exciting, and it’s…

Gods, it’s good.

Jaskier flirted with him idly since that first night with the mandrake spirits, touching his arm and fluttering those long lashes and knocking their knees together and dipping his eyes slowly across Regis before getting inevitably pulled back to Geralt with that lonely, distant expression. Regis couldn’t help being flattered by the bard’s attention, distracted as it may be, but had no intention of taking him up on his unspoken offer.

“Are you planning on fucking me or just looking?” Jaskier quips. Regis ignores him, spreading cold fingers as he continues to caress every inch of the flushed, blotchy torso. Patience is a virtue.

It had changed when the boy was wounded escaping the Nilfgaardian raid. Then Regis admitted quite stupidly that Jaskier’s blood smelled nice when he found no infection, because it had smelled nice and because he found himself horribly worried over Jaskier’s injuries, unexpectedly distraught at the thought that he might not again hear that flirtatious laugh or gaze into those eyes so endlessly blue. And suddenly the vampire found himself cleaning Jaskier’s wound and bandaging his head twice a day with deft and tender fingers, even though it meant defying the witcher who’d told him in no uncertain terms that coming back would mean death.

The revelation of Regis’s vampiric nature took an understandable toll on the budding relationship, of course; he heard the way Jaskier’s pulse raced at his approach, noticed the new edge to the nervous ramblings around him, the distracted fluttering, the awkwardness and stress and fear. This torture last nearly a week until one cold midnight, Jaskier slipped into Regis’s bedroll, eyes hooded, and asked, “Did my blood really smell nice?” with a flushed, curious expression, breathless and wanting.

“Regis.” And if the long, drawn-out whine weren’t enough to pull the vampire back to the present, Jaskier grinding up against him hard with a pout on his kissed-red lips certainly is. “Any minute now one of them will wake up and notice we’ve gone. Stop thinking and get on with it, if you’d be so kind.”

Regis tuts, slipping down his body. “You’re awfully demanding tonight.”

“As opposed to what night?” Jaskier lets out a contented sigh as Regis unties the overly ornate trousers and runs his cold fingers down their front, raking through dark hair and ghosting over everywhere warm and wet and delightful. He pulls the trousers down creamy hips and off, sitting back on his heels to take in the sight before him.

Jaskier is lithe and beautiful in the moonlight, marked up from collarbone to hips.

“Appreciating the view some more?” He’s wearing a sly, flushing smirk as he slides a hand between his legs. For all his talk of haste, he’s adopted quite the leisurely pace.

Regis rocks forward, catching him in a kiss full of heat and something else, something soft and unspoken. The bard’s practiced hand surges between them. Regis cradles Jaskier’s jaw, stroking his thumb against a stubbled cheek. “There’s quite a lot to appreciate,” he says. It sounds painfully sincere in his own ears.

Jaskier beams.

Regis can’t help taking his time. He luxuriates as he works his way down: the feeling of soft, blazing skin and silky hair against his lips; the smell of the boy, juniper and sage and sweat and need; the gradient bruises perfectly marring gorgeous flesh; the little skips and jumps of the boy’s excitable pulse.

He settles between Jaskier’s thighs, sliding his hands beneath to knead him and pull him close. The moan Jaskier lets slip is rich and full and lusty as he wriggles into the cold, careful touch. Regis leans in, savoring Jaskier’s little anticipatory gasp, and kisses the sharp hipbone, long and thorough. He chokes back a groan as he feels the blood rushing toward the surface of the skin, and he desperately follows the sensation.

Lust and bloodlust swirl together in every bracing breath, in every brush of lips and fangs against perfect searing flesh. It’s intoxicating, dangerous. It’s far too much and nowhere near enough, an absolute tease.

Regis mouths at him desperately and can’t help the little whimper that escapes as he wets his tongue through the bard’s folds. He’s not sure anymore if even blood ever tasted so sweet.

“Gods, Regis, your mouth.” Jaskier’s breathy voice carries an unexpected hint of a rasp. “I don’t know how I’ll ever survive it.”

He shouldn’t moan at the reminder of how vulnerable, how truly powerless the boy beneath him is. Shouldn’t revel in it, shouldn’t have to stop himself from rutting against the ground beneath him at the implication. A better man wouldn’t get off on it.

And yet...

“You look positively monstrous, love,” Jaskier moans, his heels against Regis’s shoulders urging him closer, harder. “As though you mean to suck me dry.”

Jaskier’s wet lip is trapped between his teeth. A delicate blush lights his face, but there’s no shame when he meets Regis’s glance, and no fear, only arousal and trust.

Regis kisses and sucks his way to the juncture of Jaskier’s thigh and groin, eliciting a most delightful cry when he carefully drags his fangs across the delicate skin. His long, cold fingers move to stroke Jaskier with deft, familiar motions.

He can feel the blood flowing through the femoral artery just beneath the pale, unblemished skin. And without thought or plan, Regis sucks, hard, until white skin throbs purple in his mouth and the boy beneath him is shaking and whimpering, and it’s too much, the skin threatening to give way and Regis tears himself away to mouth desperately at Jaskier’s cock.“Please,” Jaskier begs, “so close, darling, please...” His listless fingers find purchase, roughly tugging at silver locks of hair.

And it isn’t that it hurts, not really, but that shock of pain-pleasure is enough to stir something deep and primal that has him moving on pure instinct until he’s snarling down at the wide-eyed boy, pinned to the ground with an icy hand on his throat, a thumb just barely pressing down on the carotid artery.

After centuries of restraint, Regis craves nothing quite so much as indulgence.

“Beautiful.” He lowers his head to brush his lips against the racing pulse.

Jaskier chokes back a sob. “Please, Regis.”

“Please what?” The slightest graze of his tongue, a cool wet trail following the artery several inches. He feels how close Jaskier is, would feel it pounding within them in tandem even without the thick, heady arousal carried on the night breeze. When the boy doesn’t answer, Regis looks up to him.

Jaskier’s staring at his mouth. “Suck me dry,” he breathes, flushed all over.

And when Regis moves back to his neck, he covers his fangs carefully with his lip before leaning in to taste him, to suck at the boy’s sweet, smooth skin, feeling the quake of each tiny blood vessel burst with the pressure. He slides his fingers on either side of Jaskier’s cock, rubbing him off desperately as he sucks at his throat, never quite enough, never the perfect pleasure of the skin parting, melting away between…

Jaskier comes with a cry, clutching the back of Regis’s neck as he rides through the aftershocks. Regis pulls away, grimacing yet reveling despite himself in the deep crimson bruise, so prominent, obvious. “Apologies,” he murmurs, tracing the splotchy skin. “I’m afraid I got a little carried away.”

Jaskier waves away the apology with a lazy gesture, still blissfully drifting in an exaggerated post-orgasmic haze that Regis finds utterly endearing. The vampire allows himself a few tentative touches, and when Jaskier leans into them eagerly, Regis indulges, kissing down his body until he’s back between the boy’s thighs, nuzzling gently against warm, wet folds until he’s licking him open again, a starving man, ravenous.

Jaskier holds Regis’s hand as he eats him out, the utter romantic.

Regis adores him.

#the witcher fic #trans jaskier #jaskier x regis #what even is their ship name?#my fic

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badfey · 4 years ago

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is there anything u wish u had known pre-top surgery? I’m trying to schedule mine next yr and I’m worried I rushed into picking my surgeon even tho I looked at a Lot. I’ve got a list of questions to ask but curious if there’s anything you can think of! Thanks, if u get a chance to reply 🥺

firstly congrats and good luck with your top surgery, i hope the wait goes quickly!!

There were a lot of things i wasn’t expecting about top surgery - not necessarily that i wish i’d known in advance, just that i didn’t anticipate. I wrote a document of them not long after surgery which ill post soon and link back to here :) right now ill go through the main stuff i wish i had known, and any questions i had (under a cut because it got long)

Stuff I Wish I’d Known

Some of this depends on how your surgeon does things. I had 6 days before my post-op appointment w chest reveal.

That first week is tough. Ymmv, but for me it was really hard. I knew that post-op depression was a thing, i didn’t realise what it would feel like. For me it was a lot of being tired and not being able to sleep because of not being able to get comfortable (having to sleep elevated for a few days & pain), so getting more tired and bored but too fatigued to do anything in that classic frustrating cycle. Once i slept decently for the first time i felt human again (nytol is a lifesaver). It’s also tough bc ur sweaty n uncomfortable and u haven’t showered or taken off the post-op binder for a week, and with the dressings and swelling it doesn’t feel like its really happened yet? After chest reveal thats a lot easier

Sometimes moving around you’ll feel something like pull or pop and you get so so paranoid about pulling a stitch i seriously thought id pulled a stitch but its usually like the dressings adhesion or something, you don’t need to freak out. My best friend here was this uk trans fb group because i could search and find years of posts with ppl having the same problems, or ask and ppl would give advice and calm me down, so it’s good to join a community like that ready for if you inevitably get stressed about something (also good for post-op boredom)

You cant use your arms to move. Sounds obvious but like i never realised how much i reflexively rely on using arms to move sitting positions on a bed, and how you need to pay attention to override that impulse.

Peeing after anesthetic is weirdly hard. It really helps if you practise consciously releasing the specific muscles to pee beforehand

I was so hungry. I got fed sure (great food too) but i wish i had taken snacks.

Questions to ask

Im gonna list some stuff that you may already know/have on your list but it might help fill any gaps :)

When are your post-ops? Are they included in the surgery price? Mine were at 6 days (chest reveal) and 8 weeks (normally 6 weeks but my surgeon was on holiday lol) and both included in the price of surgery (which is standard for here i think). Its good to have rough timeframes in advance so you can plan around it.

Ask about revisions - are they included in the price, what is the timeframe you can get revisions for, how you would start the revision process if you need it? Hopefully you won’t need it but its important to know just in case & so you don’t need to worry about it. I think my surgeon got a bit touchy when I brought up revisions but i was just clear that if I’m getting this surgery and paying a lot of money for it i need to know this stuff in advance which as a professional he should be fine with.

Can you have a say in scar shape and/or nipple size? Usually you can, and this is often at the pre-op when they draw all over your chest before surgery. Don’t feel like you can't weigh in - this is your chest. Also even at consultation they might be able to give you an idea of what your scar/s will look like.

If you’re getting nipple grafts, ask about their graft success rate!! I was super stressed about my nipples falling off, but my surgeon said that even though stats say about 10% of nipple grafts r unsuccessful, in practise he sees a much smaller percentage than that, and even ones that do reject often grow back (lmk if u wanna know more what i mean) or can just be easily touched up with tattooing. Also if theres anything they recommend for graft success.

Does your surgeon recommend using arnica? Arnica is a homeopathic remedy for bruising, swelling, and wound healing. There’s differing views on whether it actually works, but in my case i took arnica tablets 1 week before and 2 weeks post-op and i think it really helped. They also tasted nice. Some people use arnica gel to aid healing once you can start massaging.

Where will you be for overnight recovery? Will you be on a ward or in a room? Do you have access to a TV? Do you have access to a plug socket or charging point? Do you get wifi? Chances are you’ll be bored at some point over the time you’re in there, especially if you struggle sleeping. It’s good to know whats available in advance so you can come with things to keep you entertained.

Does your surgeon use drains? You probably already know/have an idea of this bc its something a lot of ppl consider when choosing surgeons, buts its good to know if you don’t. Also, it can change - I chose my surgeon partially because he only uses overnight drains so you don’t have to deal with them in recovery. When i was there i found out he has stopped using drains altogether for smaller guys so i never actually had them (pleasant surprise).

Does your surgeon want you to wear a post-op binder? Do they supply the binder? Post-op binders r a good idea they stop swelling soo much, so even if your surgeon doesn’t recommend it i’d definitely ask if it’d be safe for you to wear one. You can't wear regular binders. If you’re sourcing your own, again trans groups r great bc they can give local recs and lots of people sell/pass on their old ones. I am happy to give anyone recs, but they’re all uk based.

How will you communicate with nurses post-op? Most people don’t live too near their top surgeon, so you’ll probably check-up remotely. I just sent nurses emails of my nips and incisions and anything i was worried about the healing of and they’d let me know if it looked okay.

If you have any conditions/disabilities/illnesses, ask if they’ve ever operated on someone with them/similar before. I have fibro + hypermobility and tbh it was reassuring to hear him talk about experiences other patients with chronic pain had had before and how they coped.

Okay sorry that was really long, but its pretty much everything i could think of question wise! I hope it helps! Let me know if there’s any other questions you have at all :)

#asks #anon #trans stuff #top surgery #top surgery advice #DI top surgery #double incision #transition advice #ok to rb #Anonymous

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evildilf2 · 4 years ago

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When I inevitably draw trans ash I will probably give him top surgery & abdominal phalloplasty scars since those are most visible w/ his outfit in evil dead 2, but know I see him as more of an MLD guy

#horatio speaks

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riverboundao3ff · 4 years ago

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Riverbound Chapter 7

You are THE GUARDIAN, which is kind of unfortunate because you’re currently face down and up to your chest in a medicalizer, which has clamped down on your torso so hard you think you’re going to throw up. It’s not like you’re not grateful for the opportunity to heal your broken ribs, but feeling the machine forcefully fuse the bone and muscle back together is not a pleasant experience. Even advanced technology has its setbacks, you suppose.

“If it hurts too much, we can take a break.”

You look up to Mallek, who is sitting beside you like a very anxious guard dog. Somebody put a big plastic bowl underneath you in case you puke, but you guess he wants to be ready to either hold your hair up like a drunk sorority girl at a party or pull you out of the medicalizer.

You manage a wheezy laugh. “Nah, I don’t feel pain. I’m a robot, remember?”

An unhappy whine rises up from the back of Mallek’s throat, kind of like a stressed cat. “These things can suck even for highbloods. Are you sure?”

“Yeah, dude. I just--” Something clicks back into place in your side, and your vision goes fuzzy for a couple seconds. “Augh. Just need to be uncomfortable for a little while longer. I’m not running around Thrashthrust with broken ribs any longer than, than I have to, oh shit.”

Your stomach rolls like a fighter jet and you let loose into the strategically placed bowl beneath you. Hey look, there’s the grubflakes you ate for breakfast.

Mallek grimaces, and you feel a cool hand rubbing circles into your upper back. You turn your attention towards breathing in and out, in and out, just focusing on the physical contact. It’s only a little after midnight but you’re already exhausted. The painkillers Lynera gave you early in the evening have long since worn off.

“What happened to you?” you hear him whisper.

You force your eyes back open. “Daraya already told you? I got thrown into a tree by a goddamn cholerbear. Nasty sonuva bitch.”

“No, I know that! Why did you disappear for like, half a sweep?” he demanded.

His voice cracks about halfway through, and guilt hits you like a sucker punch. You just want to see him smile again. Granted, you’re looking down at the bowl-o’-puke instead of your friend, but you don’t really have the strength to do anything else.

“Long story short, I got kidnapped. Made some new friends to cope. Escaped, made sure my new friends were okay, and then I came back here. I’ll tell you the full version when I’m not on the verge of passing out,” you explain.

“Kidnapped?” Mallek explodes. “The hell you mean, kidnapped?!”

You wince at the noise and reach out to pat his knee. “Sshhhhhhhh. Shhhh. Calm down. It’s fine now. Be calm.”

His face lights up blue. It’s only then you remember telling that shushing a troll is considered lowkey sexy or something. Whoops.

“I would never leave you on purpose, Mallek,” you say, quickly pulling away before it can get weird. “Or… or anybody. Okay?”

“... Okay,” he mumbles.

You smile encouragingly at him. He grabs your hand and squeezes it. It would have been a really sweet moment, except you’re sweaty and shaky and everything stinks like vomit. You can’t imagine how much it must reek to Mallek and his better sense of smell.

The both of you stay like that for a few more minutes, and then the medicalizer goes off with a sharp buzz and releases your torso from its clamps. You immediately inhale as much as you possibly can, groaning with relief when there was no more stabbing pain. There’s still a bit of soreness; a medicalizer can only do so much for bruising, but by all the horrorterrors have you missed breathing like a regular person.

“How’s it feel?” Mallek asks. You can feel the anxiety coming off him in waves.

“So much better.” You’d fall asleep right there and then if he gave you the chance, but you feel him gently grab your hands and pull you out of the medicalizer. A pair of strong arms lift you up, carry you a short distance away, and then set you back down on a sofa.

You accidentally let out a squeak when you feel a chilly finger poke your stitches.

“Sorry.”

“Nah, you’re good. You’re just cold.”

Mallek huffs and touches the scarred-over gash again. “The medicalizer took care of this big wound right here, but the stitches need to come out. I don’t know how, though.”

The fun never ends. “Lanque did ‘em.”

“I’ll go get him. Be right back,” he promises. You hear him jump to his feet and leave the room, the door creaking slightly on his way out. Downstairs, you can hear your friends discussing something, most likely Tyzias and Daraya cooking up a crazy new plan for the rebellion.

You can’t wait to join them and help save the planet. Vriska’s demand that you return in ten nights is a constant reminder of what you came here to do, but it also makes you nervous about the inevitable teleporting you’ll need to do. What if you messed up and ended up somewhere you shouldn’t? Causing a paradox wouldn’t just screw up your mission, it could ruin the fabric of reality. That fear kept you from so much as doing a measly little jump down the mountainside when you left the caverns.

Having powers was handy, sure, but sometimes it made everything, like, a thousand times more stressful than it actually had to be.

The thumping of footsteps up the stairs gives you the distraction you need to calm down. You crack open an eye in time to see Mallek and Lanque striding in.

“Hey,” you croak.

“Damn, Adalov, did you have it up in the highest setting?” Lanque mutters, turning from you to Mallek with his arms crossed. He doesn’t look very happy with what he sees.

“Medicalizers are made for trolls, not aliens,” Mallek shoots back. “You know they hurt.”

“That thing was old when you let me use it.”

“I’m sorry, did you know any other highbloods with top-notch medicalizers that could do that surgery you wanted? I don’t think so, fucker.”

“Boys, can we save the pitch stuff for later? I want these stitches out so I don’t have to keep laying around like a dead body,” you growl.

Mallek and Lanque glance back at you, both looking a little sheepish, before Mallek slinks away to sit down at your feet while muttering something about never being pitch for pretentious assholes who can’t even wear their jackets right. Lanque messes around with a few first aid kits on the shelf beside the medicalizer before finding what he’s looking for-- a small scalpel and a pair of tweezers.

“Alright, you know the drill. Off with the sports bra,” he orders.

You groan but obey, pausing with your hand through one of the straps when you notice another pair of wide eyes on you. “Mallek. Turn around, my guy.”

A very interesting squeaky noise escapes Mallek’s chest before he turns around and all but slithers over the armrest he was leaning on. You hear him hit the floor with a thump. Lanque rolls his eyes.

“You two know each other?” you ask as you flip over to lay on your stomach.

“We’ve met a few times, yes,” Lanque confirms, kneeling down to start picking at the stitches with the scalpel. The way he says it makes you suspect there was a lot more to the story than he was letting on. “Have you already told Mallek everything?”

That was Lanque’s way of saying “Let’s change the subject”, so you let it go. “Not… everything. Are you listening, Mallek?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, because I only want to explain this once. Basically, the multiverse is a whole lot more complicated than anybody knows, and there are a lot of… powerful beings out there that like to meddle. Like, with timelines, and universes, and that kind of stuff. Are you following me?”

“I… okay?”

“So basically, this fucker called Doc Scratch is one of these god things, and he was using me to control his timeline… area… whatever. That’s why I was running around Alternia before I left, because I guess I had to help bring certain people together for the timeline to work? I don’t know. Anyways, he kidnaps me when he’s done making me do his business and makes me read this fucked up comic in his own fucked up dimension, which is also on one of your moons. Long story short, the comic’s about some other friends I made and the shit they get into in another timeline. Eventually I manage to escape from Doc Scratch with only moderate trauma. Yay, me. How are we doing so far?”

You can’t see him, which is probably a good thing. “You… the multiverse and the… okay, sure. Why not.”

“I end up on Alternia again, but in the future, and then Earth, which is my home planet. Well, not that exact version of Earth, but whatever. I end up befriending all these kids and try to help them lead better lives than they would originally in this other timeline where they all play a game that destroys the universe. I should also mention that Doc Scratch somehow wiped my memories before I escaped, so until I meet this cool chick called Aradia I… had completely forgotten about you guys.” You swallow back the lump in your throat and try to focus on Lanque pulling out your stitches. It stings.

“The last kid I made friends with was this boy called Dirk. Good kid. So we’re hanging out, and this other version of Dirk rocks up from another universe, and this bastard is a kind of god called an… Ultimate Self, I think. He tries to stop me from rewriting the timeline and then tries to kill me or whatever. I get away from him and manage to…” Crap, how do you explain this part without telling your friends you created an entire universe? “I get him to go home and leave me and the kids alone. He can’t hurt us if he’s in his own universe. After all of that I wanted to come back to see you guys again. So I did.”

Like before, you don’t mention the Director, or the little showdown between you, her, and Ultimate Dirk in Doc Scratch’s mansion. You definitely don’t tell them you’re here to help them win the rebellion. You remind yourself you’re not lying to them, you’re just… not telling them everything. To protect them.

Yeah.

“What worries me is this Scratch character,” Lanque mutters. “You said that Ultimate Self god went back to his own universe, but if Scratch still has influence over our reality…”

“I… have no idea about Scratch,” you say truthfully.

“What is he, exactly?”

You release a long sigh. “Every planet with intelligent life has a thing called a First Guardian to guide it and its people to their destinies. Timelines can have Guardians too, I think? I know that sometimes entire universes have Guardians. They keep time and space in order, basically.”

“... If this universe has a First Guardian, why can’t it go beat Scratch’s ass?” Mallek jokes.

It’s a good question, and you know he’s just trying to lighten the mood, but it still fills you with misery, anger, and a fear so powerful you almost start shaking. If… when you meet Scratch again, what will you do? Would you be able to fight him? Protect your friends from him?

If your friends knew who you really are, would they still care about you?

“That’s something I would love to see, believe me,” you manage to say.

“I’m so sorry that all of that happened to you. It’s so fucked up,” Mallek says hoarsely. “I was so pissed that you were gone. I just spent six perigees of my life thinking one of the best friends I ever had was dead and I didn’t even stop to consider that they might be having it even worse.”

“It’s not your fault. Grief makes people do and feel weird shit,” you assure him. You’re trying not to cry yourself, because you’re half-naked with a super hot guy pulling out your stitches and another hot guy hiding behind the sofa. Your life is a lot of things but boring is not one of them.

Your pain tolerance must be through the roof by now, because you don’t even feel it when Lanque pulls out the last couple threads. “All done.”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. “Thanks, Lanque.”

He pats your back. “Come join us downstairs when you’re ready. Tyzias has something I think you’d be interested in.”

Your tiredness instantly fades away. “Oh?”

“You can’t be serious, Bombyx. They’re still recovering,” Mallek protests.

“Then get off your privileged highblood ass and come with us,” Lanque calls over his shoulder as he saunters out the door.

Mallek yelps and dives back behind the sofa when you hop up to get dressed. Your shirt was slung over the desk chair, which you gladly yank back on over your bra as you start to shiver. Mallek’s place was always pretty chilly since he ran cold, so you’d always have to bundle up a bit when you came over to hang.

“Alright, I’m decent. My pasty white ass won’t blind you anymore,” you tell him.

“You’re more of a really pale… pinkish tawny?” he notes, tossing you your hoodie.

You decide you’d explain the different ethnic and racial categories humans have to him later. “Yeah, sure. Thanks for letting me use the medicalizer.”

“Duh. I don’t let my friends run around with broken ribs,” Mallek snorts. “Yours sure break a lot, though. Maybe I should just stick you back in there from time to time, just in case.”

You pretend to chuck the puke bowl at him and cackle when he instinctively dodges. Once upon a time, you might have told him that human vomit is acidic. Granted, it definitely is; you can feel your throat and tongue burning like a bitch, but you never specified that it wasn’t deadly or anything.

“Just put it in the load gaper!” he begs, and you laugh as you follow him down to the bathroom. You forgot how much fun it was to fuck around with him. Maybe you’d introduce him to Kuprum and Folykl, you just know that the three of them in one room would be the best thing that ever happened. That, or they’d all kill each other. Those kinds of things could be a little difficult to predict with trolls.

The puke bowl gets cleaned with water, soap, and a lot of vigorous scrubbing. Your hands get the same treatment. Once you gulp down some water and splash your face in the sink, you turn, only to realize Mallek is staring at you again. His eyes are much more blue than when you last saw him. He’s an inch or two taller as well.

“... Yeah?” you ask. Did you have vomit on your face? Fuck.

All at once, Mallek wraps you up in a hug that leaves you breathless. You hug him back instinctively, and then really go all in when you feel him shaking ever so slightly against you. He smells like chips and something vaguely smoky.

Neither of you say anything for a while. There’s something incredibly fragile in the air, and it warms you from the inside out and fills you with worry.

“I missed you,” he mumbles into your hair.

“I missed you too. So much.”

“... You don’t have to join in on whatever crazy shit they’re cooking up down there.” He chuckles nervously. “Really. You can just… I dunno. Stay with me, if you want?”

You bump your head against his chest and gently squeeze his arms. “Mallek. The world is going to change, and I want to be a part of it. Don’t you?”

“I don’t want you to die.”

You reach up to gently cup his cheek. “I’ve died before. It’s not so bad, really.”

Mallek leans into the contact, looking at everything but at you. You let yourself be held by him for a little while longer before pulling away. He doesn’t say anything else, but he does follow you down the stairs to the rest of the group.

You grin at Tyzias when she looks up at you, hopeful. “So whose lives are we gonna ruin tonight?”

#hiveswap #Hiveswap Friendsim trolls #homestuck #pesterquest #MSPA reader #The Guardian #riverbound #jadebloods #teals #AND MALLEK #lol

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gingernastyy · 4 years ago

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oc matchup time!! Kenneth Shaw, he’s 26 and a gay trans man. He’s about 5’8, messy/wavy brown hair, brown eyes and big sunshine smile. He’s got small scars here and there from fights and five finger fillet, and top surgery scars. He ran away from home at 13 to be himself, he came from a big fish family with four other siblings and had an older brother and younger brothers and sister. He was just trying to get distance and space at first before hearing about a doctor who could help him. (1)

I pair your oc with-

Javier Escuella!

(I know sweet Kenneth boy so I’m going to go Buck Wild and add information I know you didn’t include)

When Dutch or Hosea brings someone into the gang Javier doesn’t really bat much of an eye. But in Ken’s case, he’s joining because Arthur and Christ, Ken doesn’t look that good... bruises on his neck and a grazed shot in the side. Javier trusts Arthur’s judgement and he’s never come off as a knight in leather chaps before so he’s curious what his reasoning behind helping Kenneth.

Unlike others, Javier is less focused on what Ken can bring to the gang and more on what happened to him.

Those weeks of healing he sees the desire that Ken has to get going on jobs. Others in the gang have made their snide comments about thinking he’s just dead weight but Javier knows not to make quick judgements of a man who’s injured. Maybe it’s because Kenneth has been bunking with Javier and Charles that he can see the fact that the stitches in his side hadn’t even fully healed and he’s wanting to help.

Javier hasn’t ever been one to keep newcomers at an arm's reach, he makes an effort to get to know as much about Ken that he can. Javier can’t help but match Kenneth’s big smile when they're talking to one another.

And Javier is sure that big ol smile of his is going to get him into trouble… which it inevitably does. He develops a deep admiration of Ken, in the way he talks and about his upbringing. It completely baffles Javier that Ken was able to make it so long without knowing how to shoot a gun and seeing how capable Ken is with knives and a bow and arrow is more than impressive.

Javier offers to teach him how to shoot, knowing that he’s probably one of the most patient members. He wants to make sure Kenneth is as skilled as he can be, he cares a lot for him and if he’s going on jobs, especially the bigger ones, he has to know how to use a gun. Arthur is the main member who teaches Ken how to shoot though a few times when Arthur knows he’ll be gone he has John teach Ken. Javier knowing how much John and Ken really don’t like each other suggests he takes over in helping Ken. During practicing Javier shows off a bit but hey he knows he’s a good shot, why would he not show it off? It offers them some closeness of when Javier is helping Ken aim and when they are practicing and talking about how and why Ken didn’t know how to shoot a gun.

Kenneth is very talkative and loud when he’s speaking but when Javier and Ken are alone talking around the campfire, he gets quiet when family gets brought up. Javier opens up about his family first and explains how long it’s been since he’s seen them. The last thing he heard was that his mother had died and his sister got married. He assures Ken that the gang has been the next closest thing he’s had to family since losing his own and hopes that Ken can find the same comfort in the gang.

Their connection is rooted in how they are able to see bits of themselves in each other.

There was almost no time between Kenneth joining the gang in Blackwater before they were stuck up in the snow and having to save John. Who would have thought they would be up in a snowstorm, freezing their asses off after that Ferry job?

Javier doesn’t even have a winter jacket of his own, finds himself trembling in his poncho but if he had one he’d offer it to Ken. He’s thankful to see that someone else in the gang has given Ken one of the spare coats. It’s one of the few moments he feels a slight amount of jealousy, thinking Ken was involved with the person who’d been kind enough to him to share and a little on the fact that he was still without one.

When moving to horseshoe, running from the law has quieted down, as much as it can for them at least, Kenneth’s and Javier relationship starts to really blossom. They already have an understanding of one another and nothing is more bonding than talking while playing Five Finger Fillet.

Javier can’t help but fall in love with that shit eatin’ grin that Ken has on his face when they are working on a job together or showing off their knife skills.

The looks that Ken gives him while he’s playing his guitar and singing always makes he feel all sorts of special.

Both men are pretty optimistic or at the very least try to be. A simple rainbow without any rain has Javier stating how he thinks they’ll be okay, no matter what the situation becomes, they will make it out okay.

It’s charming in a way on how Ken is so willing to fight with the shitty members of the gang, anytime watching Williamson be knocked on his ass is a good day. Javier is in the background laughing as Bill makes contact with the ground.

Javier and Ken are great partners in crime when it comes to robbing. Their combination of stealth allows them to hit a homestead and be on their way for celebration drinks before anyone besides them knows what happened.

They both drink and praise each other for how the job went. Javier says something about loving working with Ken and really glad he joined the gang that flusters the both of them. It’s unprompted praise that almost feels like a confession of liking each other.

They are confident guys so they both kind of make the first move. Thankfully Kenneth comes off as such a flirt that it’s easier for the both of them to feel comfortable to do so.

It’s been awhile since Javier has been in a relationship, the gang life isn’t exactly the best at allowing connections but compared to Kenneth he’s had much more of a love life. Javier’s affections are always sincere and he knows that Ken knows that. He’s loyal, honest and loves Kenneth so much he can hardly put it into words.

#rdr2 matchups #rdr2 #matchups #Javier Escuella #I hope you like it!!#Knife boys!

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bubonickitten · 4 years ago

Link

Chapter 2 is up. Cross-posting the full text below the cut:

CW: angst; grief & loss; (temporary) major character loss/absence (left intentionally vague); flashbacks re: canon-typical trauma; brief mention of past self-harm; some blink-and-you'll-miss-it internalized ableism; one (1) very persistent spider; SPOILERS through MAG 169.

Chapter 1 can be found here: tumblr // AO3

Jon waits until he’s safely out of sight before he lets himself fall apart. He’s trembling all over as he sinks to the floor, fighting back tears, his breath coming in shallow gasps.

He underestimated what seeing Jonah Magnus again would do to him. Staring into the eyes of the man who stripped him of agency and humanity, taunting and gloating as he led him into trauma after trauma, setting him on the path to becoming a weapon and a monster and a hapless victim all at once…

Jonah’s statement wormed its way into his head on the day the world ended, and it’s lived there ever since, playing on a loop and consuming him from the inside out.

…when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you…

Did the Web choose Jon from the very beginning, or did he just have the bad luck to stumble upon the book, and only then catch the Web’s attention? How much of this broken future is due to an insufferable child’s inability to stop being such a nuisance and just sit still for five minutes? Even back then, he had that restless, insatiable curiosity, driving him to wander off and ignore any sign of danger.

…attacks on the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be…

He had always been fumbling in Gertrude’s shadow. Tim and Basira always thought that everyone would be better off if Jon had tried to emulate her. He disagrees with that now, but still, Gertrude wouldn’t have fallen for such obvious traps. She never let the Eye turn her monstrous, never let Jonah turn her into such a pliable sacrifice.

…I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones…

And he did, he did; the sense memories still haunt him, as marrow-deep as the worms once were. Some days he can still feel them burrowing and his fingers curl around an imaginary corkscrew as he’s swept away by the panicked urge to get them out.

…it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you…

At every turn, Jon had played right into Jonah’s hands. Georgie warned him that his stubborn investigations would destroy him, and he pressed on anyway. He may have been dependent on the statements by then – though he didn’t know it at the time – but he didn’t have to seek out Jude Perry or Mike Crew, did he? Was it any wonder Georgie gave up on him?

…I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right here, a ready target. I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise…

Melanie. God, Melanie. She had fought tooth and nail to make a place for herself in a world that underestimated her. She was the protagonist of her own story until Jonah forced her to play a supporting role in Jon’s. It was never Jon’s intention, but the fact remains: if it wasn’t for him, Melanie would never have been trapped.

…you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things…

More meat for the grinder, more lives sacrificed solely for the Archivist’s progress. Tim died for nothing, Daisy was subjected to the Buried for nothing, and –

…it inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate…

– Martin was ushered into Peter Lukas’ machinations, all for nothing.

…you should have seen my face when you voluntarily went to him…

Jon feels sick imagining Jonah’s unbridled delight at watching his ignorant, malleable chosen one so willingly offer himself up to the Boneturner. Could Jon have made it any easier for him to win?

…how is Martin, by the way? You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that…

He’d promised, he promised he would protect Martin, and his best just wasn’t good enough.

Jon leans against the nearest wall, curls in on himself, and gives in to the wracking sobs. He hates Jonah – hates him in a way he never thought he was capable of hating anything – but even now, the anger is still eclipsed by the fear and the scars it left behind. He feels more like a victim than a survivor. Jon could take retribution on Jonah in a million ways and Jonah would be powerless to stop him, but it doesn’t change anything: all the power in the world won’t chase away the grief, the nightmares, the incessant fear and pain the Eye filters though him every moment.

One look at Jonah, and the memory came rushing back: Jonah using him as a mouthpiece, slithering into his mind and commandeering his tongue, forcing his eyes to open, moving his jaw like a ventriloquist’s dummy, only to cut the strings and send him buckling to the floor as soon as he’d served his purpose. He had tried to scratch out his eyes, claw out his throat, but every wound would heal before the pain even registered. And Jonah –

…I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious…

– it wasn’t enough for him just to get the result he wanted. He had to take the opportunity to degrade his victim one last time, had to use Jon’s own voice to do it. There are times when Jon can’t even listen to himself speak without flashing back to that moment and shattering into full-blown panic. He hadn’t felt human for a long time by that point, but the Ritual… it was dehumanizing in a way he could have never imagined. He’ll never be free of that memory, no matter how far he runs, no matter how much Jonah Magnus suffers, and no matter whether he manages to reverse the damage –

Stop. Spiraling isn’t helping. Breathe. Play it back again, slower this time, and think. How would Martin respond, if he was here?

Running was never an option. You’re probably right. Jonah Magnus’ suffering has no impact on Jon’s recovery. He still deserves to have his eyes gouged out – yes, okay, fine! Priorities, I know. (A nearly imperceptible smile tugs at the corner of Jon’s mouth at that.) Reversing the damage, though, making things right – that’s still on the table. There’s still a chance. Then I’d say it’s worth a try, Martin would say, and between the reassurance of his smile and the sincerity in his eyes, Jon would believe him.

Jon imagines Martin sitting beside him, arm around his waist, a warm and comforting weight for him to lean on. Thankfully, blessedly, it’s just as strong a sense memory as the nesting worms and Jude’s searing handshake and the Boneturner’s groping fingers in his chest cavity. Martin helped him relearn that physical contact is not always synonymous with pain and fear and violence. Safe hands, warm eyes, gentle touch. Jon holds fast to that thought and lets it anchor him until the storm passes.

Eventually – Jon doesn’t care to Know how much time has passed – his sobbing dissolves into broken hiccups, and then into exhausted sniffling. He sits up, scrubs at his face, and forces himself to breathe. The guilt is still there, the pain is still acute, but he has a job to do.

Once he’s composed enough, he forces himself to stand and lets his feet take him to where he Knows he needs to be.

As Jon mounts the spiral staircase leading to the top of the tower, Helen’s door creaks open on the wall ahead of him.

“That little confrontation was a bit dramatic, Archivist.”

Ten many-jointed fingers curl around the frame. Or twelve, or maybe sixteen, or – it’s not important. Jon stops counting and continues climbing.

“And what did it accomplish?” Helen’s face peeks through the opening now. “You've changed nothing.” When Jon does not reply, she leaves her doorway and plants herself on the staircase a few steps above him. She leans down close to Jon's eye level and tilts her head at a disquieting angle. “Ah, but that wasn’t the point, was it? That spectacle was all for you.”

Jon doesn't have to Know to determine that Helen is bored, which means she isn’t going to leave until he entertains her. Better to get it over with, he figures, and so he finally focuses on her and shakes his head fervently.

“Oh, of course. Martin.” Helen smiles – cruel and condescending as always, but Jon can detect some fondness there as well. “He really did rub off on you, didn’t he? He would have enjoyed that little performance. The sheer pettiness of it all.”

The corner of Jon’s mouth twitches up in a rueful little smile. She’s right – Martin would have loved that little standoff. Jon can picture the moment of awe in the aftermath – the lopsided grin, the stammering insistence that Jon, that was amazing, and the inevitable moment once the adrenaline wore off when Martin would tell him: I know I keep saying this, but I didn’t think it was possible for me to be any more attracted to you. And much later, once they were safe and the dust was settled, they would joke about it: Martin would do a terrible impersonation – always fond, never cruel – and Jon would point out that it did have the intended effect –

“Daydreaming, are we?” Helen barks a laugh when Jon startles, his face heating with embarrassment. “Even after all this time, you really are adorable.”

Jon groans and makes a shooing gesture in Helen’s direction. Her laughter reverberates even more than usual; it leaves Jon with the distinct sensation of chewing on tinfoil, and his teeth begin to ache.

As the echoes fade away, Helen pantomimes wiping a tear from her eye. “So, do you really think this plan is any better than your standard fare?”

Honestly, Jon has no idea.

“I’m well aware that” – a brief pause as he skips ahead in the statement – “to try and prevent whatever fate is coming – is likely impossible anyway, but after what I saw, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”

It’s odd, using Oliver’s original statement like this to express a worldview so antithetical to his current stance. Comparing the person Oliver used to be – desperate to change fate, then desperate to escape it – with who he is now… it’s still unsettling, to see how much a person can change after coming into contact with one of the entities.

“Hmm. I still think you're fighting a lost battle. But I can say that I am very curious to see what happens when you try.”

Jon shifts from one foot to the other, hitching his bag higher on his back and giving Helen a pointed look.

“Impatient to meet your god? Well, don’t let me keep you.” Helen steps back over the threshold of her door. “Try not to get vaporized, will you?”

The door swings shut on Helen’s delighted cackle and Jon lets out a long, exhausted breath before continuing his ascent.

Jon doesn’t know how long it takes, but eventually he reaches the top of the staircase, which opens up into a circular, empty room. Stone walls, stone floor, stone ceiling. The only interesting detail is a stylized eye carved into the very center of the floor. As far as Jon can tell, there’s nothing arcane about the symbol at all – just a bit of trite aesthetic flair for an otherwise bare temple. Still, now that geography has ceased functioning, it marks the exact center point of the wasteland, and it’s exactly where Jon needs to be.

He has no way of Knowing whether this will work. He still isn’t even entirely sold on the idea of the Fears being sentient, rather than just… forces of nature, no more or less conscious than gravity. But it’s the only idea he has left, and it’s something that he and Martin planned together, which makes it worth trying. If it doesn’t work, then… well, with any luck, hopefully he won’t live long enough for it to matter. Not that Jon has ever been particularly lucky –

Several of his eyes swivel and train themselves on a single speck moving down the far wall, and he hears his voice before he even makes the conscious decision to speak:

“Leave.”

The word comes out as a cacophony of overlapping tones and Jon staggers with the force of it. The spider, for its part, scuttles through a crack and out of sight at the command, leaving Jon alone and swaying with vertigo.

This is why he hates vocalizing single words – it means replaying every instance of the word stored in the Archive simultaneously, and it always leaves him feeling like a blown out speaker. It’s safest to stick to full, unique phrases – anything with an exact combination of words that occurs only once in all of the Archive’s records.

Ears still ringing, Jon shakes his head and tries to reorient himself. If he’s quick, maybe he can get what he needs and retreat before the Web interferes again. He hurries to the middle of the room, stands on the pupil at the center of the eye motif, and –

As Ceaseless Watcher turns its gaze on him again, Jon prepares himself for a repeat of its earlier scrutiny. It starts slow – a searing, infectious ache jumping its way from cell to cell like a charged current, seizing upon every scrap of conscious thought, building up to a crescendo of rending, electric agony.

This time, though, the Archive Watches back.

Helen had said it best: “There are exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: The Watcher, and the Watched. Subject, and object.”

What happens when a part of the Eye allows itself to embrace both roles? What happens when the Eye’s pupil shifts its focus on itself?

“An eye can’t see within itself,” Jon had said. And much later, out of the blue, Martin had mused: “But what if it could?”

Jon had averaged at least one identity crisis a day ever since becoming the Archivist, and Martin grew accustomed to sitting through Jon’s hand-wringing over how much of his humanity remained. Martin had always maintained that, first, it wasn’t as simple a dichotomy as Jon wanted it to be, and second, Jon was human in all the ways that mattered.

One day as they journeyed through the dying world, though, Martin suggested a new theory. Jonah Magnus had presented a one-way progression from human to Archivist to Archive. The Watcher’s Crown Ritual was meant to be a final act of dehumanization, wherein Jon would cease to exist as a person and become instead a perpetual conduit for the Eye. But Jon had never fully lost himself, had he? It was more like he had shattered into multiple states of being.

He could – was forced to, really – See everything that the Eye could See. The part of him that was Jonathan Sims felt the fear and suffering as it was (that is to say, horrific); the part of him that was Archive felt only detached fascination and a sense that everything was just as it should be, because this was the role it was born to serve. The result was a dissonant, twilight emotional state wherein everything felt both right and horribly, irredeemably wrong.

In a way, it reminded Jon of how he felt reading statements. When he first started out, he hated it – he could literally feel the fear of the statement givers as if it was his own, and it always left him feeling exhausted. Then, at some point, came the physical dependence on statements – without his realizing, they had become life-sustaining rather than draining. Even then, though, the fear never actually went away – he was just forced to vicariously feel the Eye’s perverse satisfaction in it. Sometimes it felt like being made complicit in his own terror; sometimes it just made him feel numb. It was like having a parasite tucked away inside his mind, passing its own wants and needs onto him and making him feel them as if they were his own.

After the Ritual, every instance of fear in this new world was a statement to be taken in by the Beholding and dutifully filed away inside the Archive, and all of it had to go through Jon first.

Jon also had some control over the Eye, though: he could focus its gaze and, as its Archive, he did theoretically have access to most of its knowledge, as long as he knew where to look. He both took to it and hated it, constantly flitting between roles from one moment to the next like a moth wavering between funeral pyres.

“What even am I now – human, Archivist, Archive?” Jon had stormed one day, only for Martin to take both of his hands, meet his gaze, and tell him, very seriously: “How about all three?”

Jon had taken it as a dig at his habitual indecisiveness, but Martin was being sincere. He suggested that Jon try to embrace being a walking paradox, to use that multiplicity to his advantage – and that was the premise upon which they’d built their future strategies. As they pressed on toward the Panopticon, they each took turns acting as the other’s anchor, and Jon practiced compartmentalizing. Now, finally, it was time to put the hypothesis to the test.

So, what does happen if an Eye learns to See within itself?

What happens is this: the Archive Beholds the Watcher –

…the Eye in the sky scans forward, back; stares into, through; sweeps above, below. Nothing escapes its gaze: not the bloated bodies swaying listlessly in the vast deep; not the cooling cinders of an endless building at last consumed and rendered to nothing but ash in the wind; not the algal bloom suffocating a corpse-choked lake long-dead and fetid; not the merry-go-round with its rusted gears and peeling-paint horses…

…far away, the Falling Titan drifts aimless in a void where the stars flicker in and out and eventually not at all; emaciated beasts of the Hunt stagger listless in search of a chase, falling one by one in the dust as the prey remains scarce; the endless war has been reduced to pilotless technology running through the same protocols over and over, few human minds remaining to witness or suffer the collateral damage…

…closer, the paint continues to flake away from the Distortion’s doors; the Sandman is running out of eye sockets to plunder; the Forsaken despairs the absence of lonely souls to appreciate its embrace; the Corpse Routes continue their inexorable crawl toward the center of creation, wilting all the way…

…there is nothing new under the roving Eye; moments blur together, time runs down, and every grain of sand in the hourglass is the same, the same, the same, the same…

…closer, closer, honing in: follow the woven threads and observe how all the lines converge on a single point…

– and the Watcher blinks first.

When Jon finally comes to, he’s sprawled on the floor, all twitching limbs and exhaustion. Dazed, unfocused eyes blink in and out of existence around him, making his vision go pixelated and wobbly. He swats uselessly at them – or tries to, anyway, before realizing belatedly that he can barely lift his arms. Like a cat waking up from anesthesia, he thinks with a delirious little chuckle. What he wouldn’t give for a cat video compilation – no. Focus.

Standing up is out of the question right now, but the brain fog is starting to clear. It was so much all at once, but he tries to parse it.

The world is running through the same loops now, over and over and over again. He could revisit every domain he trudged through on the way to the Panopticon and any statement he could offer up would be identical to the one he gave the first time around. Victim after victim fed to the endless slaughter, sacrificed at the eternal maypole, retracing the same lonely paths in the fog. The same buildings burning again and again in the exact same way; the same worms struggling one-step-forward, two-steps back in the same tunnels day after day; the strangers on the merry-go-round trading the same limited supply of faces in a closed economy of uncanny horror.

It’s… monotonous. Predictable. Stale. And the Ceaseless Watcher never was satisfied by stale statements – oh. Oh.

The Eye is bored, Jon realizes all at once. Or – no, maybe that’s not the right word. Malnourished, perhaps? Or is that still too anthropomorphizing? Even after coming into direct contact with the Beholding, he still can’t say with any certainty whether it has any mind or will of its own. It could just be that the metaphysical concept itself is unraveling without anything to challenge it – or, ironically, perhaps it’s simply weakened by its visibility in this new world.

The Beholding is the fear of being watched, of being judged, of having one’s secrets exposed. Or, how did Gerry put it… “the feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch.” Jon thinks back on his months-long bout of paranoia, and he remembers that one of the most frightening things about it was his inability to trust his own judgment. There was always that creeping fear that perhaps it really was all in his mind, and – when he thinks about it, that paranoia might not have had the same bite to it if he knew for a fact that he was being watched and precisely who or what was doing the watching.

The fear of the unknown is an important variable. Once all your secrets are known, what else can the Eye take from you? Once your suspicions are confirmed and the source of your fear has a name, how can it use your doubt to taunt you? In this new world, everything can behold the Eye in the sky. Everyone is fully aware that they are being watched, and the identity of the Watcher is indisputable. It dilutes the fear. The Ceaseless Watcher may well have been at its most terrifying when it was at its most subtle, in the world where the Dread Powers still lurked in the shadows.

And now – now, on top of all that, the End’s promise looms nearer and nearer every day. What is an observer with nothing to observe? What is the Watcher without mortal minds to experience the terror of being Watched? Jonah Magnus’ nightmare kingdom is as inimical to the Ceaseless Watcher as it is to all the other Fears and all of their victims.

It takes a minute before Jon realizes he’s laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Jon still feels a bit lightheaded as he exits the Panopticon, mind abuzz with hypotheticals. He’s jittery, excited – afraid, yes, but the anticipation is tinged with hope. He still isn't prepared for Helen's abrupt appearance, though.

“So, how did it go?”

Jon scowls at her before he can think better of it, and her mouth quirks in amusement as she soaks in his momentary burst of alarm. He closes his eyes and begins to shuffle statements in his mind.

“…spent so very long staring into” – a brief skip ahead – “infinity and knowing, truly knowing.”

“You’re telling me you had a staring contest with the Eye?”

It’s a simplistic and annoyingly flippant way to put it, but she isn’t entirely wrong. When Jon doesn’t deny it, Helen claps her hands together in delight.

“It just sat there and stared at me,” Jon continues. “I didn’t like staring back at it. It made me feel strange, like it was sorting me into cuts of meat. There was more in those eyes than I’d ever seen -"

“Jonathan, won’t you stop speaking in metaphor and get to the point?”

The twinkle in her eye tells him that she’s enjoying his struggle to communicate. He really should know better than to let her rile him, but he feels himself growing irritable all the same.

“…a new door,” he says. “And it wasn’t there before. The man asked me again what was inside –”

In a flash, Helen has her deadly sharp fingers at his jugular, just barely brushing his skin. A few tiny pinpricks of blood well up and heal almost immediately. “Don’t you dare repurpose my words, Archivist,” she hisses.

It’s not easy to press Helen’s buttons, and he won’t deny the flicker of spiteful self-satisfaction the flares up that for once the tables have turned. He doesn’t plan on provoking her further, though; they both know that she can’t kill him, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still hurt to have his throat skewered.

But he wasn’t using Helen Richardson’s statement just to antagonize her. It’s just that his library isn’t forthcoming with accurate words. After a few moments of perusal, he finds something that might work. There’s a risk of further inflaming Helen’s temper by using a statement about the Distortion right now, but…

“…staring at them, measuring the patterns they created – the maths behind them – he was on the verge of a great truth.” Jon pauses, watching for Helen’s reaction.

The dangerous look in her eyes remains, but she lowers her hand. “I’ll allow it,” she says. “Go on.”

“He was going to shake mathematics to its foundations once he figured out the truth, hidden in those cascading fractal patterns.”

To Helen’s credit, she seems to be seriously attempting to interpret his meaning now.

“You Saw into the Eye’s inner workings,” she begins slowly, waiting for Jon’s affirmative before continuing. “And you think you learned something about the underlying patterns of this reality.” Jon nods again, more vigorously this time. “You think that you can use that understanding to… what, close the door you opened?”

Not quite wrong, but not quite right, either.

“He wanted to close it, lock it back in place and get some semblance of control back,” Jon concedes.

But there is no other side of the door anymore, and the Fears can’t be exiled if there’s nowhere to send them.

“It was, to put it quite simply, impossible, and I must have approached it from a hundred different angles trying to make sense of it.”

“Then what?” Helen lets out an incredulous little laugh. “You think you can… unravel this reality? Tug on the strings holding it together, reshape it to your liking?”

He doesn’t quite approve of the phrasing – to your liking – but it’s close enough. He’s actually pleasantly surprised that she managed to read that much into his clumsy attempts at an explanation, so he gives another nod.

“…to circumvent physics, and suspend natural laws,” he says excitedly, gesturing with his hands and tripping over his words as he stitches the sound bites together. “Rewrite them wholesale – petty rules like space or time –”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that, Archivist?” Helen scoffs. “You may be overpowered now, but even you don’t have the capability to meddle with the fabric of reality.”

“You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked.” Jonah’s words leave a bitter taste on his tongue, but hopefully it gets his point across. “The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you – in the world that we have made.”

“That’s… you’re giving yourself far too much credit.” Helen sounds flustered now. That’s… rare, and Jon doesn’t quite know what to make of it. “You’ve always been a – a conduit, not a conscious actor. A tool, not an architect. All you did was open a door.” She pauses briefly and gives him a severe, almost affronted look. “Reality is malleable, but that doesn’t mean you can manipulate it. You are not the Worker-of-Clay. You are not of the Web. The only ‘power’ that the Ceaseless Watcher grants you is voyeurism. You Watch, you observe, you… you sit on the sidelines and curate reality. You do not shape it.”

But I did, Jon thinks.

Compared to some of the other Avatars, his powers can seem passive. He has no command over insects or disease; he can’t reach into someone’s chest to turn their bones or cook their heart; he can’t drop people into the sky or disappear them into the fog; he doesn’t have the prowess of a Hunter or the berserker strength of the Slaughter. He Watches, he Knows, he Sees. He asks questions and he compels answers. And yet, he’s just as dangerous as the rest. He doesn’t have to draw blood in order to prey on others - he invades them like the Crawling Rot and haunts them like Dark and traps them like the Buried, and all he has to do is use his voice. The insidiousness of it is part of what makes it so terrifying.

So yes, Watching and Knowing may not seem like much compared to the flashier abilities of the other Avatars, but being marked by each of them in turn molded him into something new – something with a voice that shattered and reshaped the world with a single invocation. The concepts of Watching and Being Watched are the metaphysical building blocks of this universe, and both of those are within his purview. The most fundamental law now is the interplay of Watcher versus Watched, and Jon balances precariously on the tightrope of a boundary between the two – likely the only living being that doesn’t fit neatly into one category or the other.

The power threaded through the tapestry of this reality is a part of him as much as he is a part of the Eye. And if he pulls in just the right way, in just the right place…

“All you did was open a door,” Helen repeats, but softer this time, almost to herself.

But there’s power in the small things, isn’t there? Helen owes her current state to the simple act of opening a door, after all. For Jon, everything was set into motion when he opened a book. Curiosity is so very human, Jon thinks – it seems unfair that it could lead both of them so far astray from their humanity. Perhaps Jon’s life is a Rube-Goldberg machine painstakingly orchestrated by the Web, and finding the book was just the first domino in a long chain of missteps; or maybe his fate was just a perfect, unfortunate combination of bad luck, his own restless curiosity, and an entitled old man’s god complex. It doesn’t really matter – the consequences are the same.

As Jon starts walking, Helen paces after him. He watches with faint surprise as she wrings her hands uneasily – or a close enough approximation to it, anyway. It’s disorientating to watch, like an Escher woodcut in fluid motion. Several eyes attempt to track her movements, but it only succeeds in making Jon dizzy.

“Where are you off to now?” Helen asks, voice leaden with uncharacteristic uncertainty.

“It felt like if you picked a line, any line, you could follow it through to the center, to some deep truth, if only your eye could keep track of the strands that had caught it.”

“The Panopticon is the center.”

Jon stops, turns, and shakes his head. “A stronghold of the Web.”

“Oh,” Helen says, eyes brightening in realization.

Jon rubs the back of his neck and grimaces. “I was returning to Hill Top Road, no matter what I might feel about it.”

“The axis of the Spider’s web…” Helen gives the ground a long, pensive look. Then her eyes narrow and flick back up to meet Jon’s. “And what exactly do you expect to do there?”

“A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

“Yes, we all know about the rift,” Helen says impatiently. “What do you plan to do with it?”

“She was going to wait and see.” With that, Jon begins walking again.

“I changed my mind,” Helen practically whines. “This Archive nonsense was funny before, but now it’s just obtuse.” When Jon doesn’t bite back, she heaves a theatrical sigh. “Fine. As usual, I would offer you a quicker route, but you’d be something of an allergen in my corridors.”

Without turning to look at her, Jon flips her off over his shoulder.

“Rude,” Helen calls after him, and apparently she’s recovered enough to goad him, because he can hear the smile creeping back into her voice. “Try not to get lost traipsing back through the Lonely, Archivist. I would hate to have to come in after you.”

Her laughter is still ricocheting inside his skull when he hears her door swing shut, and he can already feel a headache blossoming in his temple. He takes a moment to collect himself before turning his back on the tower.

Jon sets out into the wasteland again once again, and he doesn’t look back.

End Notes:

- Jon's dialogue was taken from the statements in the following episodes, in order: MAG 011; 057; 103; 047; 008 (x2); 124; 57; 162; 160; 59; 139; 59; 139; 160.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #long post

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kinkymagnus · 5 years ago

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Henlo!! I love your blog so much 😍 it gives me life and makes me happy when I have a bad day. I was wondering if you had any headcanons about Malec’s first time or something where Magnus is a nervous wreck cause he has to tell Alec that he’s trans? Thank you and sorry for the bother 😭♥️

y’all it is a CRIME how long this has been in my inbox, im really sorry and ur not bothering me at ALL i just love this ask and wanted to do it JUSTICE 👏

also im!!! so flattered!!! aaaaaAAAA im glad my blog can cheer u up :)

okokok so trans magnus + malec’s first time + magnus being nervous about coming out lghkjgfh

ok i have no fucking idea why but i’m making this twi malec. i’m just. in the mood for twi malec i guess. fuck it amiright

magnus is just. he has a lot of secrets. there’s a reason he hasn’t gotten close to anyone in a long time, there’s a reason he only talks to two or three people who actually know him, there’s a reason he hasn’t been how he used to be--out and about, flashy and showing off and wearing armor made of glittering beauty and colorful silks and bold makeup, instead of comfortable cardigans and twitching hands and quiet.

speaking of which: def headcanon twi magnus wasn’t always the way he is in that episode. he was a lot like canon magnus once upon a time, charismatic (well, he’s still charismatic, but like, in that bold flashy way, you know?) and open (closed off, but with the illusion of having all his cards on the table) and bold

anyway. there’s a reason. lots of reasons. mostly all the secrets he hides.

the fact that he has magic, that he’s immortal, a dusty relic of a time long gone, of an age past, clinging on past his due date. he feels like he doesn’t belong in the modern world, like he should have died with the shadow world, like he should have been sealed out with all the other demons.

the fact that he is a prince king of hell, son and slayer of the greater demon asmodeous himself. even tho he’s sealed it all away, he has a huge amount of power, both from just. originally being the son of such a powerful demon, a fallen angel, and also from managing to kill one.

i don’t think it fits with canon twi lore but i don’t care, i’m saying twi magnus was involved in the sealing of the realm, and he managed to kill asmodeous and basically absorb his power, so a) he actually did this huge incredible feat that changed the whole world, whether on purpose or not i’m not sure yet (it has something to do with asmodeous, but i’m not seeing the whole picture yet) and b) he’s actually. more powerful than canon magnus. it’s partially why he sealed away his magic for so long, he was afraid of what that power could do.

honestly i dont have this super well thought out but i like the potential

but anyway! barely related to this! let’s get back on topic!

and. the fact that he’s trans. a decidedly more mundane secret, but still one he keeps close to his chest. he’s lived through a lot of eras with bad very transphobic times? like he’s lived through places/times with very accepting atmopshere, but he’s also lived in like, victorian england, you know? and canon magnus had a chance to be more out of his shell and open in the modern world but this magnus has completely closed himself off. he mostly talks to people other than his close friends to give them a tarot reading. he’s not like, totally cut off, i can’t imagine him like. not helping people. you know. idek. but the point is he’s more isolated. canon magnus was closed off in a lot of ways, but still surrounded by people. he had a job to do, people to protect, and parties to attend. not to mention going to pandemonium and stuff. twi magnus isn’t really doing that. man i really went on a tangent here but the point is i feel like that would contribute to how he feels about being trans. feeling isolated, having less friends to be open with and to help him you know? in my experience it’s a lot harder to feel like. valid? without that sense of community. even with a few close friends, it’s hard. if you’re “passing”, which magnus is, it feels like a secret.

the point is! i am getting so off track! magnus has got layers and layers and layers protecting him, both literal and metaphorical (he doesn’t wear the more flashy and revealing clothing canon magnus occasionally favors, preferring thick and comfortable sweaters and cardigans and stuff like that. bonus headcanon: whatever happened that ended in asmodeous dead and the walls of the world sealed, it left magnus with more scars. not to mention top surgery scars he may have, or even just hiding a binder, or using thick layers to disguise small tiddies since binders are great but you can’t bind all the time or every day for centuries and still be like, healthy. anYWAY)

and when he starts dating alec despite that little cautious voice in his head insisting he needs to not get attached, alec begins to just. effortlessly peel those layers away

he’s so blunt and honest, unlike people who have lied to and manipulated magnus in the past (CAMILLE, anyone? i feel like she’d still be a thing in the twiverse. also asmodeous, albeit in a different way) and he’s gentle and loud and bold and he’s funny and sweet and he just. fucking cares about magnus.

when he finds about magnus’s magic he’s like “oh my god that’s so cool” he just fucking accepts him so easily!!!

and even when magnus ends up tearfully confessing he may or may not be a literal king of hell (or, one of the hell dimensions) alec’s like “damn, i’m dating royalty?” and maybe makes a joke about not everyone getting to make a king scream with pleasure and magnus is just so relieved???

but that’s later

anyway

they haven’t had sex yet and magnus is just like. he feels like inevitably this relationship is gonna fall apart. he has too many secrets, too many hidden parts of himself that if he ever shed light on, alec wouldn’t see him the same way

and as much as he wants alec to fuck him, as much as he wants to be in bed with alec and cuddle with him and have sex with him and show him everything, he feels like he can’t, it would be the beginning of the end

he keeps pulling back just as alec begins to initiate, and alec never pushes but wonders if he’s doing something wrong, or if maybe magnus is asexual, or just doesn’t want to have sex for other reasons, and eventually he broaches the topic with magnus and magnus is so surprised alec noticed something is wrong (he expected alec might confront him over not “putting out” but alec doesn’t seem to care about the sex--he makes sure to emphasize while he is attracted to magnus and would lvoe to have sex with him if that’s what magnus wants, it’s by no means a requirement--but more about. magnus. and communicating with him.) that he just blurts out i’m trans.

and alec kinda blinks at him. his beautiful, wonderful, nervous and scared boyfriend. and he ends up blurting out oh thank god. because he would be more than okay with magnus not wanting to have sex--he’s super gorgeous and absolutely smoking hot, but alec doesn’t ever like, want to have sex with him unless magnus wants to. obviously. but he was honestly worried it wasn’t magnus but him, that he’d done something wrong or wasn’t attractive or something, and honestly worrying about something being wrong with him was not a feeling he was used to. then he realizes how bad that just sounded, and he’s like, aaaaaaaAAAA WAIT and ends up panickedly rambling like i mean sorry i just was kind of worried i was doing something wrong but like, i love you so much and you being trans changes nothing about that, and if you never want to have sex that’s totally okay and i love you, but if you’re worried about me still being attracted to you that’s not a problem, but-- and magnus is like y-you’re not?? but you’re gay! and i’m-- and you know that feeling of like. internalized [insert form of bigotry towards yourself, in this case transphobia]. where you think something bad about yourself. and if you think about it you’re like “no that’s transphobic i would never think that about anyone else” and your brain is just like “yeah it’s true about you tho” that’s this. magnus is like. i’m not a real man, how could you be attracted to me? and alec (not to be all Cis Savior, but look, magnus deserves a loving supportive boyfriend who comforts him and shit, okay! i am PROJECTING) is like yeah i’m gay and you’re a gorgeous, beautiful, stunning man?

and they end up talking it out and get it sorted that yes, magnus does want to have sex, but it would be okay if one of them didn’t want to, magnus being trans does not make alec unattracted to him, it’s okay, they’re okay, because malec are Kings of Communication,

ANYWAY

ACTUAL FIRST TIME

probably not the same day, that day they cuddle and talk

but like later

>:)

alec is just so gentle and reverent y’all. like. them big hands on magnus’s body, all warm and gentle and magnus is like oh fuck this is nice

they do have to kind of communicate boundaries--alec’s asks if there’s anywhere magnus doesn’t want to be touched because dysphoria (or any other reason) and vice versa, magnus trying to be like “you know if you only want to fuck my ass or have me wear a strap-on or anything like that it’s fine, i understand you’re not necessarily attracted to those parts of me” and alec’s like “we’ve established that you would enjoy me eating you out and i WANT TO EAT YOU OUT”

their first time probably is pretty simple, “vanilla”, idk why but im thinking they just exchange oral sex tbh like magnus blows him and then alec eats him out

also magnus cums pretty fast bc he hasn’t been touched like this in a long time and he’s very embarrassed about it but alec is like “damn that’s hot can i try to make you cum a few more times”

ok but imagine their first time it’s just alec holding him down and eating him out until he sobs and squirts? yes

anyway tho they have like, lots of “other” first times too like. first time alec fucks his pussy. first time alec fucks his ass. etc.

first time alec slides that Thick Dick balls deep into magnus’s cunt he’s for sure immediately on the edge of orgasming he’s so full and it feels so good--

and alec’s like holy SHIT bc he’s warm and wet and tight and he clenches every time alec praises him or dirty talks him and it feels amazing

first time alec fucks his ass is also very fun for both of them ;)

it’s just a good time all around folks communication and magnus getting pounded the way he deserves :’)

not to mention when they first start getting into kinks

alec, carefully broaching the topic of bondage: how would you feel... about handcuffs?

magnus, barely looking up: mm, padded or not? and what kind of padding? the normal kind hurt my wrists after too long and not really in a nice way, so i like padded. furry can get a little itchy sometimes but they look real nice. also, are we talking above my head to the bedpost, and if so, am i on my stomach or back? because stomach is a little uncomfortable. or like, behind my back? especially bent over, mm. good view for you ;)

then he like looks up and realized he’s said all of this very casually and alec’s looking at him with 1. shock and 2. lust

like. “i wasn’t expecting this, but i really should have, and now i want to bend you over and tie you up and fuck you hard”

and he blushes just a lil bit like o shit i just said all that and alec’s like “padded it is. behind your back or above your head... hm... both have potential, but maybe the latter? i love you on your back under me, i can see so much of your beautiful body and all of your gorgeous face :)”

and like TOYS

aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA ANYWAY

#trans magnus smut #twi malec #twi

18 notes · View notes

let-me-vibe · 4 years ago

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Fine the first 10

Well now it feels like a challenge.

Full name- Spark Iguchi

Age- 18

I'm afraid of dolphins, the dark, and the inevitability of death

I love my family, Aimi, and Link the nonbinary legend we all deserved

I'm a minor, I can't legally be turned on you weirdos :P I'm like a broken car

My best friend is either Dai or Uncle Jin

I like gorls

Only had one first date, and that was... 😬

I'm "short"

I miss the house not being so loud all the time

We already discussed when Dad's innocence was truly lost

My favorite color is neon pink

I guess you could call it a crush? I have a girlfriend obviously

I don't have a favorite quote

I like this tea shop down the street

My favorite food is salmon

I absolutely use sarcasm

I'm listening to Ember, Kin, and Zome try to impersonate Dad's screamer music

The first thing I notice about a person is how aggressively they're looking at me

I have gecko feet, so shoe sizes don't really apply to me

My eyes are purple

My hair is naturally red, but I dye it blue

My favorite style of clothing is *aggressively hides all my curves*

I've done several prank calls

27 not applicable

My favorite movie doesn't exist for you yet

I don't have a favorite song

Or a favorite band

I feel alright

I lovvvvvvvvvvve Aimi

I still have a girlfriend somehow

My dads rock

My favorite holiday is Valentine's day

I don't have any tattoos or piercings

Nor do I want any, which works out, cuz scales (RIP Papa)

38 not applicable

I don't have an ex

I do get "good morning" and "good night" texts

I last texted Kurogiri, and I have kissed him in a grandkid way

I last held hands farrrr too long ago, poor lonely hand :(

It takes me about an half an hour to get ready.

I can't shave my legs, they are barren

I'm on my couch

Anybody on the team would handle me if I was drunk, it's just a matter of who finds me first

I don't listen to music a lot

I live with my dads and other various weird kinda family members

I'm excited to be an adult

Yes, I can speak to men

I don't fake smile unless it's for pictures

I last hugged somebody, like, ten minutes ago

If Aimi was making out with somebody else I think I'd scream so loud she'd assume I'm a dragonborn or something

I don't think I trust anyone I shouldn't

I still dislike my lack of toenail

If I could meet anybody, I'd meet God so I could punch him

No thoughts head empty

I can lick my eyeballs

I'm scared of dolphins

I hate having my picture taken

The last lie I told was promising Ash that I didn't find her annoying sometimes

I'd rather call people than video chat

I guess I have to believe in ghosts, and I don't see why aliens wouldn't be real

Obviously magic's real, look at Uncle C

I don't see why luck would be fake

Very sunny over here

I last read a Star Wars fanfic

I like how gas smells

I have too many nicknames to list

My worst injury is probably just binding stuff

I save money

I can touch my nose with my tongue

Ash is pink and in front of me

My favorite animal is Le Gecko

At midnight I was calling my gf

Satan's last name is Todoroki

Can't say I have a happy song, but MCR does make me feel nostalgic

Win my heart by feeding me and giving me ripped black jeans

On my tombstone, write "wasted"

My favorite word is "flabbergasted"

81 not applicable

If the whole world were listening, I'd say "****"

I don't think I have relatives in jail

If I could have a superpower, I'd fly

I'd be afraid to honestly answer anything about my sex life

Desktop:

I've had sex

Never bought condoms

Never gotten pregnant

Never even been to a class

I've kissed a guy

I've kissed a girl

I've kissed in the rain

I have a job

I have left the house without my wallet

Never bullied anyone

Never had sex in public

Never played on a sports team

I've smoked weed

Never done any other drugs

Never smoked

I've tasted alcohol

I'm not vegitarian/vegan

Never been overweight

Never been underweight

I've been to a wedding

I've been on the computers for far longer than 5 hours at a time

I've watched TV for more than 5 hours at a time

I have left Japan

Never had my heart broken

Never been to a sports game

I've broken several bones

I cut my finger cooking once, but that's nothing compared to training with Papa

Never been to prom

Never been in a plane

Or a helicopter

Or been to a concert

I have a freAking girlfriend

Never learned another language

Never worn makeup

I lost my v card when I was 15

I have had oral sex

I have dyed my hair

Never voted

Never been in an ambulance

Or had surgery

I live with famous people

Never stalked anyone

Or peed outside

Or been fishing

I have helped a charity

Never been rejected by a crush

Or broken a mirror

Uhhhh I dunno what I want for my birthday

No kids 😤

I wasn't named after anyone

My handwriting's great

My favorite toy as a kid was Papa's face

Don't have a favorite show

I want to have a big rich person house

I don't play any instruments

I got a scar from itching my face too much

Only cheese should be on pizza

I'm afraid of the dark

I'm afraid of heights

I have been caught making mischief

Never dissapointed myself

I suck at knitting

My greatest achievment is beating Papa at Mario Kart once

Never really had anything specifically mean directed at me

If I won the lottery, I'd get top surgery

I like everything about myself

153 not applicable

I want a chocolate pool

#spark

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unfolded73 · 5 years ago

Text

In Sickness and in Health (1/1) - schitt’s creek ff

When Johnny is rushed to the hospital with more than just heartburn, Patrick has to try to hold David and the rest of the Roses together. I promise, no permanent angst in this fic, don't worry! Set in some future time after David and Patrick are married.

Thanks to @startswithhope, aka @language-of-love for giving this a read-through and for the title!

Rated Gen, 3850 words. (ao3 link) (schitt’s creek fic masterpost)

--------------------------------------------

He should have known something was wrong when he saw Ted’s name pop up on his phone’s lock screen. Patrick and Ted were friendly with each other in the way that the partners of siblings often are, friendly but not really friends. They were on a family group text chain together, one that was often dominated by arguments between David and Alexis or David and Moira over the logistics of everyday family life. But he and Ted did not call each other. He and Ted had never called each other.

“Hey, Ted, what’s up?”

Ted sounded out of breath. “Patrick, get David and get to Elmdale Hospital. It’s Mr. Rose.”

Patrick felt his heartbeat accelerate, a rushing sensation in his head and extremities: fight or flight. “Is he okay?” He was already moving out from behind the counter toward the back of the store, where their new sales associate Bethany was reorganizing some of the inventory, probably to David’s eventual annoyance.

“Not sure yet. Moira called Alexis but she wasn’t… I couldn’t make sense of a lot of what she was saying.”

“Yeah.” He could imagine what that phone call must have been like, although oddly Moira’s hysterics could fall away in the more dire of circumstances. He’d experienced it first hand when he’d been hit in the face by a line drive at one of his games last year (the quantity of blood had been disproportionate to the injury, but that hadn’t stopped Moira and David from freaking out in their own unique ways). The incident had left him with a hairline scar above his eyebrow that David had taken to running the pads of his fingers over during tender moments, and which Alexis assured him made him look ‘a tiny bit less like a puppy,’ a comment he tried not to be offended by. The point was, perhaps Moira being hysterical was a good sign.

“We just got on the highway so we’ll meet you there, okay?” Ted was saying.

“Okay. David’s on his way back from a pickup, so I’ll… we’ll leave as soon as we can. In the meantime, call me if you learn any more, okay?”

He pulled up David’s number on his phone, thumb hesitating over his husband’s name. Calling David and telling him that something might be terribly wrong with his father while he was driving their car seemed like a bad idea. Instead he busied himself ensuring that Bethany had instructions to handle everything at the store for the rest of the day by herself (not that she really needed them; she was young but eminently capable).

The bell announced David’s arrival about twenty minutes later, ostentatious sunglasses on his face and the handle of a cooler in each hand filled with Heather Warner’s prize cheeses. Bethany was ready to take the coolers, nodding surreptitiously to Patrick as he steered David into the storeroom before any customers could waylay him.

“David, you and I need to get to Elmdale Hospital, something’s happened with your father,” Patrick said, trying to just rip the band-aid off.

“What? What happened?”

He put his hands on David’s biceps, trying to keep him calm just through the pressure of his touch. “I don’t know yet, but your mom is with him, and Ted and Alexis are probably almost there by now, so if we get on the road we should hear more news before too long, okay?”

David put his hands over his mouth, his flat gold rings on one hand and wedding band on the other winking in the light. “The store--”

“Bethany’s going to watch the store today, so you and I don’t have to worry about that.” Patrick kissed David’s cheek. “It might be nothing, so let’s not freak out yet, okay?”

He got David into the car and on the road after just a few minutes, trees rushing past on the narrow highway that led to Elmdale. “Dad had that heartburn thing before, remember?” David said after a while. “The day we got engaged.”

“Exactly, it might just be something like that. Alexis will call and we can have a laugh and turn around and head back home.”

Alexis called. No one laughed.

“They said it’s a heart attack,” she said, her voice coming out tinny and high-pitched from the speaker of David’s phone. Patrick’s car didn’t have bluetooth, something that David had brought up multiple times recently while they were beginning the process of shopping for a second car. Feeling an immediate surge of affection and worry for his husband, Patrick vowed to himself to make sure David got the bluetooth thing for the new car that he wanted. All of a sudden it seemed terribly important.

“Are they sure? Maybe--”

“Of course they’re sure, David.”

“Is he okay? Is he conscious?” David’s voice trembled, and Patrick reached out from the steering wheel to take hold of his hand. David squeezed his fingers, his wedding ring pressing into Patrick’s skin.

“Yeah, he was, but they’re getting him prepped for surgery now so we couldn’t see him much at all.”

“Surgery?” David squeezed his hand harder, and Patrick gritted his teeth against the discomfort of it. “What surgery?”

“A bypass, I think? I don’t…” He heard another voice, too low for him to make out the words, and then Alexis said, “A quadruple bypass, which Ted says is very common, and…” -- more muffled talking away from the microphone -- “... and has a very high rate of success.”

After the phone call ended, David didn’t talk; he just stared straight ahead through the windshield as Patrick continued to drive one-handed and stole glances at him when he could spare them. “He’s gonna be okay, David.”

“You don’t know that.”

Patrick’s parents were nominally Christian, but they’d not attended church very often when he was growing up: Christmas and Easter and occasionally when his aunt guilted them into going with her. But that didn’t mean his parents didn’t believe in a higher power, and while Patrick had his doubts when he was younger, now if someone were to pin him down on the topic, he’d say he believed there was something. Some kind of guiding force in the universe, at least. Right now, he mustered all of that belief and he squeezed his husband’s hand and he said, “I believe it.”

David went straight over to his mother as soon as they entered the waiting room, leaving Patrick to accept a wobbly hug from Alexis, her perfume enveloping him in a floral cloud. She felt like a fragile bird, hollow-boned and vibrating with restless energy, and Patrick tried to communicate as much support as he could through the hug and a gentle pat on her back.

“You okay? Need anything?” he asked. Ted hovered nearby.

“No.” She pulled back and shot him a watery smile. “I’m just scared.”

“He’s gonna be fine,” Patrick said, calling on all of his acting skills to seem certain of what he was saying. “What happened?” he asked the group at large.

Stevie lifted her head from her hands. “He was up on a ladder cleaning the gutters at the motel again, which I’ve told him not to do, and I told him again today but he didn’t listen to me.”

David threw up his hands in exasperation. “You have multiple employees who can do that now.”

“I know that,” Stevie shot back. “Anyway, he’s lucky he didn’t fall off the top of that fucking ladder. I happened to be coming out of the office when he was climbing down, and right after his feet hit the ground, he collapsed. I called an ambulance as quickly as I could...” Her lip curled with fresh tears, and David pulled her into a hug, his flash of anger forgotten by them both.

Mrs. Rose was uncharacteristically silent, staring into the middle distance. Patrick knelt down in front of her and took her hand. “Moira? Is there anything I can get you? A tea, maybe?”

She shook her head. “No, Patrick.” Her voice was raspy. “Thank you, but I’m fine.” Her subdued affect worried him more than anything else had so far. Patrick pulled himself up into the chair at her side, continuing to hold her hand. Hand-holding seemed like all he was good for today, and he felt the lack of anything productive to do keenly.

“I was only able to talk to him for a few minutes before they took him into surgery,” she said. “What if that’s the last thing I ever get to say to him?” She said it quietly, her normal, loud voice smothered under her fears.

“It won’t be. Bypass surgery is very routine.” Her hand felt tiny in his, the skin thin and papery over her knuckles. Suddenly this inevitable part of his and David’s future seemed too immediate: parents aging, getting sick, dying. It felt commonplace and ordinary and at the same time like too large a mass of grief to contemplate. He was overcome with a sudden compulsion to talk to his own father.

“And this morning I was complaining about the neighbor’s garbage cans. Maybe he went to the motel to get away from my grousing. If I hadn’t--”

“Moira, I’m sure that’s not it.” The Roses finally had their own house, and Patrick imagined that if Mr. Rose had survived those years sharing a single motel room with his wife, surely things were smooth sailing these days. Not that he was going to say that now. “There’s no sense in blaming yourself.”

She smiled and patted the top of his hand. “You’re a good boy, Patrick. Such a good husband for David, have I told you that?” Tears filled her eyes. “Appreciate every day of your lives together, dear, before one of you ends up on an operating table, life hanging in the balance!”

“Okay, Moira, okay.” Patrick found the dramatics oddly reassuring, like as long as Mrs. Rose was catastrophizing, nothing truly bad could happen. She was an inoculation against true tragedy. Continuing to hold her hand, Patrick settled into the hard, plastic chair to wait.

~*~

“Hey, I was wondering if I could get an update on Johnny Rose?” Patrick asked the nurse at the station. Her scrubs were cheery and pink with little ice cream cones on them. David would hate them, he thought.

“Are you family?”

Patrick hesitated for just a second before he remembered, oh right. I am officially family. “I’m his son-in-law.”

“Just a moment, please.” She tapped on her keyboard for a minute, and Patrick stared at the Toronto Raptors sticker on the back of her computer monitor, his mind fixating on the fact that the dinosaur depicted in the drawing had claws sticking through its basketball shoes. The nurse cleared her throat and said, “He’s still in surgery.”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Patrick said evenly, “I know, I was just hoping there was…” What? Did he think the surgeons took time away from their work to update the front desk on their progress? “I was hoping there was news. Sorry.”

The nurse gave him a kind smile. “No need to apologize. Tell your wife to hang in there.”

This was exactly the kind of thing that David would probably let go without a comment. David’s identity didn’t hinge on the gender of the person he was married to, and so he didn’t often care to correct people’s assumptions. But after all the years that Patrick had struggled with his own sexual identity and while he envied David’s lack of concern, he didn’t share it. “My husband, actually,” he said, picking up a couple of wrapped mints from the bowl on the desk.

“Sorry,” she said. “Your husband.”

Giving her a tight smile, Patrick made his way back to the waiting room. “No news,” he said, flopping down next to David and holding out one of the mints to him.

“It’s been a long time,” David said, ignoring the mint and rubbing his palms on the tops of his thighs.

“Heart surgery takes a while, babe.” Patrick stuck the mint in his shirt pocket and reached out and started to take David’s hand, but David stood up abruptly.

“Fuck, I hate hospitals,” he muttered. “Can we go get some air?”

“Of course.”

They passed through the revolving door of the hospital’s main entrance. The front of the building was all glass, bringing an incongruously light and airy feel to the place. David came to a halt abruptly as soon as they were outside, as if he didn’t have any idea what to do now, so Patrick led him over to a large stone planter filled with flowers. Crossing his arms and leaning against it, Patrick tried to puzzle out what he could do to help David through the next few hours.

“We could go get some food,” Patrick said.

David shook his head, fidgeting from one foot to another. “I’m not hungry.”

“Okay. We could just get some tea, though, or we could go for a walk--”

“I was always closer to Mom.”

Patrick could see it now that he was looking for it, the guilt etched into David’s expression. “David--”

“Dad’s the normal one of all of us, you know? He just stands there a lot of the time and absorbs our madness, and I used to actually find it irritating? Which I know is stupid. But when I was a teenager, I wanted to get a rise out of my parents.”

“That’s totally normal, babe--”

David didn’t appear to have heard him and continued talking. “I’d drag myself home from a rave, high out of my mind, and yeah -- most of the time neither of them noticed. They were too wrapped up in their own lives to pay attention to whether I was… anyway.”

After all their years together, Patrick knew something about what was going unsaid there. To pay attention to whether David was safe. To wonder if he was having sex way too young with the kind of people who liked to prey on kids like him -- wealthy and insecure and starved for affection.

But that didn’t seem to be the point of this particular speech of David’s, and Patrick kept his mouth shut.

“Sometimes my mother would notice, though, and her anger was weirdly satisfying. She’d yell and scream and…” He gestured vaguely in the air.

“And it made you feel seen?” Patrick guessed.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“David, your dad sees you and he loves you. Regardless of the past, you’ve got a good relationship with him now. There’s no reason to have any regrets.”

“I just… I wasted a lot of years not appreciating him. Even after we ended up here, I spent too much time resenting him, as if it was his fault that we lost everything. Resenting that he couldn’t fix it and save us.”

Patrick smirked and reached out for David’s hand. “Well, I’m glad for my sake that he didn’t do that.”

David laughed a little hiccupping laugh. “You’d probably be married to Rachel.”

“Or maybe some other hot guy in Schitt’s Creek would have caught my eye.” He pulled David into a hug.

“You’d be in a throuple with Stevie and Jake.”

“Ew, David,” Patrick said in his best Alexis impersonation, making David laugh again. Holding hands and making people laugh -- it was the job of the spouse in situations like this, he supposed. “Hey, can I tell you something?”

David pulled out of the embrace and gave him a curious glance. “Yeah?”

“The morning of the wedding, your dad came to talk to me.”

“Oh, God. What did he say?”

Patrick smirked. “He told me that when a man and another man love each other very much…” David looked suitably horrified, which made Patrick grin widely. “No, he didn’t say that. He wanted to talk to me about you.”

“And what… did he say?” David said with more emphasis on each word.

“He said that you were a lot like your mother. And that the key to staying happily married to your mother was enjoying the whirlwind.”

“Mmm. I’m a whirlwind, am I?”

“I mean, yeah, sometimes.” Patrick took David’s hand again. “A whirlwind I enjoy. Also, he said that seeing you happy with me and successful with the store was more than he could have hoped for, and it made him so happy and so proud that he could barely contain it.”

“Well, that’s… very sweet.” David’s eyes glassed over. “And he needs to be okay so I can tell him I love him and I’m proud of him too.”

Patrick tugged on David’s hand until their chests collided, and he wrapped his arms around his husband again. “He will. You will.”

~*~

It was the following day before Johnny’s children could really visit. The recovery nurse told them to limit visitors to the ICU, so when David accompanied his sister back to the hospital, their partners stayed at home. Moira had spent a good bit of time with Johnny that morning, and Stevie was finally driving her home for much needed rest. Alexis had been impatient to get to the hospital today but now she moved haltingly, as if she could put off acceptance of what had happened through delay. David understood her hesitancy -- he shared it -- but he took her hand and led her into the room anyway.

The tubes and wires bristling around the bed made their father look small and drawn and weak, but at least the intubation tube David had caught a glimpse of when Johnny was freshly out of surgery had been removed from his throat, and he looked moderately alert.

“Hi, kids,” he said, offering them a smile. His voice sounded scratchy and his skin was pale, but otherwise David thought he looked pretty good for someone who’d had his chest opened up the day before.

“Hi, Dad,” Alexis said, shifting from foot to foot by his bedside. David went and got her a chair, encouraging her to sit and electing to stand behind her, using Alexis as a shield from the reality of his father in a hospital bed.

“I hope you weren’t too worried about me. It’ll take more than that to take Johnny Rose down,” he said, all false bravado and cheer.

“You had a heart attack, Dad; of course we were worried,” Alexis said.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Johnny said, waving away their concerns with a hand, an IV coming out of the top of it.

“Ted sends his best wishes,” Alexis said, then glanced up at David. “And Patrick.”

“Yes,” David agreed, nodding, his mind suddenly blank of any of the things he’d wanted to say.

“Do you need us to bring you anything? Clothes? Some magazines?” asked Alexis.

“Stevie’s taking care of it. Just…” He gestured to them. “Come here and let me look at the two of you.”

“Daaaad,” Alexis protested, but she scooted her chair closer. David moved around and perched on the edge of the hospital bed, cautious not to jostle his father too much.

They made small talk for several minutes -- about their jobs and homes and lives, nothing about how scared they had been. How it had made David think hard about what losing his father would feel like. How he’d seen his mother’s worry and spiraled into thoughts about what losing Patrick would feel like. How he’d woken up from a nightmare of that very thing last night and had pressed himself against his sleeping husband’s back, heart hammering as he squeezed his eyes shut and repeated to himself that it wasn’t real.

When Alexis excused herself to use the bathroom, David’s silence became obvious, and he groped around for something to say.

“You know,” Johnny said, “When I was being prepped for surgery yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about what would happen to you all if I didn’t make it through.”

David shook his head quickly. “You don’t need to talk about that.”

“There would have been a time that I’d have worried about what would become of all of you without me.” Johnny leaned back against his pillows, eyes closing. “I don’t have to worry about that anymore. You’re all so capable and well-loved and well-taken care of. And you take care of each other.” He sighed, seemingly exhausted by the short visit. “I don’t have to worry.”

“Of course you don’t have to worry, but also you’re going to be with us for a good, long time,” David said, wanting to reach out and touch his father but afraid of hurting him, or dislodging is IV. His hand instead fluttered uselessly above the bedspread. “Dad…”

“Yes, David?”

He swallowed against a big lump in his throat. “You know I love you, right?”

Johnny Rose smiled widely. “Yes I do, son. Yes I do.”

#david x patrick #david x patrick ff #schitt's creek #schitt's creek ff #my fic

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