#unknowable sky god?

[worldwhampion]

Trick or treat!

trick or treat? TRICK OR TREAT?? YOU THINK WE CAN STILL AFFORD TO CELEBRATE halloween IN TIMES LIKE THIS??? WHEN the fate of the universe IS ON THE LINE???? CLEARLY YOU SHOULD'VE ASKED

[bi-writes]

it took the end of the world to bring you to where you were supposed to be. (18+, 5.5k words) ghost (+ johnny) x fem!reader (apocalypse au -> dark content ahead)

you know it is luck that you are still alive. in times of anarchy, it isn't the soft and weak hearts that remain. only the unfeeling stay alive. the ones that are willing to do what others are not. the lot that know what isolation feels like. the ones familiar with survival and everything that comes with the wounds it leaves behind.

the loneliness. the paranoia. the heat of hunger and the impossible itch of thirst, on top of the fact that running for your life is second nature to you now.

if it wasn't the sick and dead lurking in the shadows, it was the live ones that would take you. and you have seen what they can do, and you have watched what the opportunities of the unbecoming have given them, and you vow that you will kill yourself with your own dull army knife than let yourself succumb to that kind of death.

you'd rather be eaten alive by the things that don't understand than the ones that do, because they don't know any better, and the others do, and they know what they are doing isn't human, but they don't care.

whether they eat for survival, for pleasure, for power, it is becoming more and more difficult to discern between the sick and the healthy, and in that in-between, you've decided to be on your own.

you know the loneliness will eat at you from the inside. but you are comforted by the fact that you are not being eaten from the outside.

you sleep in the trees tonight. you climb, high enough to be out of sight, and then you use the rope in your pack to anchor yourself to the trunk. as soon as your head falls back, you fall asleep. you have been walking for days now, you think, and with nothing in your belly except for a few scavenged snacks, sleep comes easy.

when you wake up in the morning, you feel the crisp edge of the sky against your face, and you know it will rain soon.

if there is a god above, they will wash you away with it. you hope, at least. you don't know if this is how you imagined noah's ark--the cleansing of the earth, a flood great enough to wipe it of what they deem ugly and unimaginable and irredeemable. and god must be a man, because only a man would unleash something like this that comes with consequences he never intended--the fact that it didn't fucking work. in his effort to eradicate the fucked up pieces of shit he supposedly created by his own hand, he unleashed them.

he set them free.

and like a man, instead of fixing his fucking mistakes, he turns a blind eye. he forgets. he allows it to manifest, and now that it is out of control, he will blame the sins of what he's done on someone else, someone like you. the innocent. the unknowing. the small and the weak, the ones who he said would inherit the earth, where is he now that there is nothing to inherit? how come he's allowed to go back on his promises, and i'm not? what have i done so wrong that this is the lifetime you gave me?

you don't know why you care. you don't know why you've survived and why you keep trying to. you don't know what drives you forward, but there must be something. there has to be something waiting for you, because you don't think your life can fall any lower than this.

but fuck, there are other plans for you.

there's no one to hear you scream. they cut the branch, unravel the rope, and one of them has gotten ahold of your legs, and they're dragging you. you cry, you scream, you thrash, but all your clawing hands do is leave sporadic trails in the dirt. they laugh, you think, but you cannot hear them over the blood that rushes in your ears.

your nails are raw when they flip you over onto your back. they bleed from how you scratched to be let go, and you don't know why you fight this, but you just have this voice inside you that screams that this can't be how this ends. this can't be the way you go--this isn't the what you deserve, this isn't fair--

you vow to leave your mark. when they come closer, you don't let them come easy. you claw at their faces, rip out chunks of their hair, and when another comes close, you use your teeth, biting off chunks of their flesh, tasting blood, because i won't make it easy for you, i won't go silently, i'll leave you worse than you leave me, i'll take you with me if i fucking have to.

and when it stops, you sob. suddenly everything is still, and there are no hands on you anymore, and all you can see through the blood in your eyes is the sky above you, and how it is early morning, and there's a flock of birds passing by overhead. they fly peacefully. they have no idea what they're observing--the struggle of being alive, the humanity of your will to live, the defiance of dying at their hands, they have no idea that they are witnessing the death and rebirth of something fragile, something so delicate.

you sit up on your hands shakily, and you swallow hard as you look around. to your horror, your savior is a man.

bodies surround you. there's blood staining the dead leaves along the forest ground, trickling from sickening wounds in heads. in one hand, the man in front of you holds a dirty stone, large and jagged, and the sharp edge of it is darkened with red and drips on the tips of his boots. he has wild blue eyes, and while his hair is grown out, it is carefully cut along the sides. his dark hair falls in effortless curls along his forehead and at the base of his neck, and when he meets your eyes, he smiles, wickedly.

he wields other methods of killing people, but he chose a fucking rock. and you think he must be crazy.

you shake, and you find your balance, crawling back on your hands to get away from him, but you're only able to crawl a few feet before your back hits an imposing wall.

you gasp, jerking to the side, and you bow your head to cry when there is another man behind you. this one towers, broad and big, and he wears a sickening skull mask that shadows any human part of him. he might not even be human--maybe he's as dead as everyone else.

you hiss when your hair is pulled. crouching at your level now, the one that wears a real face stares down at you, still smiling. he's chuckling now, licking his lips, and you lean forward and spit at him. it lands on his cheek, a mess of saliva and blood, but his eyes seem to only sparkle. his smile widens.

"what do we have 'ere, LT?" he snickers, and you gather the saliva in your mouth and spit it at his feet this time. there's more of a mess of cartilage and blood and spit, but instead of disgusting him, he just grins up at the ghost behind you. "with a will ta live. ever seen anythin' like it?"

"she's dead fuckin' weight." even his voice has you shaking, low and gravelly, and you hold back a whine when you're let go of. the scottish one is yanked backwards by the scruff of his hair by his superior, who bends to growl in his ear. "she'll only hold us back. dunno why y'even had to intervene, she'll not make another fuckin' day."

"fuck you," you snap, wiping at your face with a trembling hand. you wipe at the tears under your eyes, coughing, and you stare back up at him. with the sun in his face, you can see his eyes. they are dark, and they are unforgiving.

he is one of the ones who is free. he is one of the ones that god intended to kill, and yet here he stands, stronger than ever. and even though you know he's a murderer, an undeserving, broken inside and scarred on the outside, he'll outlive you because he thrives in the anarchy of what is left behind, and you are consumed by it all.

"let's go, johnny," he spits, and you close your eyes. you don't know why you were spared your life. you don't know why luck has been on your side, you don't know why men are what punish you and save you, but you cannot escape them. they send you to slaughter, and then they pick you out of the pen, and you wish you had more control.

you want to be more than this. you want to be more than whatever it is you're made of. you are not meant to be here, you're not meant to be alive, but you are, and fuck, you're so tired of it.

johnny belongs to him. it's obvious, in the way that he lets that man pull on him and order him around, even if they are adorned in military fatigues. you imagine there is no authority anymore, but he listens to that beast anyway, because he's getting up onto his feet, letting it guide him away from you.

if you want to live, you'll have to tame that beast.

"i-i can be useful," you say softly. your eyes are wet and big, and you look up at them as they stand over you. johnny turns his head, looking at his handler, who tilts his head to the side and glares at you. he does not believe you, at least that's what it feels like, but you look right into his eyes and take a deep breath. "you'll just kill me if i'm not. w-what do you have to lose?"

the hum he lets out isn't an agreement, but he doesn't say no either. so when he turns to walk away, you stand, brush your bloodied jeans off, and you follow them. johnny trails, putting you between them. you're pretty, but he doesn't trust you yet, but you're also aware of the eyes you feel on you from behind. when you catch him staring at your ass, he doesn't pretend to look anywhere. he simply giggles.

they are a unit. they can speak without words. johnny tells you his handler's name is ghost. his lieutenant, a man of many talents, and you refrain from rolling your eyes at his sergeant's praise. but instead, you look up at him, and you smile, and you nod, and you give him those doe eyes that you can tell make him a little dizzy.

at night, they alternate keeping watch. they carry lots of gear, and while one guards in his sleep, the other stands in the shadows and keeps their head on a swivel. they take efficient rounds of sleep, getting their rest in while keeping their senses on alert. the first night, you aren't able to sleep. you are too afraid of johnny and how he smiles, because he's a dog, and you don't know when ghost will let go of his leash.

and you are too afraid of ghost, because he looks at you like he wants to kill you, and when he does, you'd like to look him in the eyes for it. you want him to know that you might not be strong like them, might not be the kind of survivors that they are, but you aren't a coward.

you aren't a man, and you'll die the way a woman should--with her fucking dignity.

the days pass easier. ghost hunts, and johnny cleans. ghost scavenges, and johnny kills. and when there is food, johnny feeds it to you, and you put on your best face, opening your mouth, letting him spoon you a mouthful of something that warms your belly. johnny eats your lies right up, but one look at ghost, and you know he sees right through you. with each lick of your finger, he snarls, and with each foot you step closer to johnny, he growls.

he doesn't believe you. you need to make him believe you.

you see your opportunity. it crawls towards him on soft hands, flesh spongy and quiet from the weeks of decay and rot. you see its mouth, black teeth sharp and ready to sink into the meat of his calf, and you lunge, pushing the vase off the table and watching the heavy clay fall until it squishes the head into a heap of rotten matter and dead meat.

ghost turns, looks down, and when he looks back up, he sees you gasping for breath, heaving. there's a desperation in your eyes. it trickles between panic and worry, and you don't know how it is you wear it so well, but it manifests into wet tears that gather at the corner of your eyes.

he's not a beast. he's just a man. and when he passes by you, he reaches up and grips your face hard, nearly shaking you, but it isn't like any other time he's touched you. he glares down at you, right into your eyes, and you melt, stepping just that much closer, sinking your nails into fabric of his tactical vest and gripping it tight.

i can be useful. it rings in his ears as he looks down at you, the burden he has been carrying with him, and suddenly he drags you that much closer, until your open mouth touches the front of his mask.

even your determined conscience can't stop your legs from squeezing together when you feel the warmth of his breath.

i can be useful. i can be useful. i can be useful.

you can be the thing that wakes what is dead inside of him. you can be the virus that infects his veins, the dagger straight through his heart, the heat of the sun, the thing that builds back up what he's buried so far down. johnny keeps him human, but you'll keep his blood pumping. johnny satisfies the itch of authority that ghost needs to keep, but you challenge the fire he keeps under his tongue, and fuck, those eyes.

you pretend with johnny. you play the damsel in distress. you fawn, let him coo over your soft eyes, keen at his touch, but it is a game you play, and he sees it, he sees it, but this time, it doesn't make him angry, and he likes it, and fuck, have you always been this pretty?

you swallow your smile. his grips tightens, and you know you have him.

he's yours. and he's going to keep you. the world ends, god doesn't answer your prayers, the salt of the earth runs free, but it doesn't have to be the end for you. you will learn the hymn of what makes monsters move, and you will sing that song until you can't sing anymore.

you will learn their language, and you will convince them of what you are not, and keep what you really are a secret.

the good, the easy, the soft, you'll keep it inside, because that isn't who lives at the end of the world--it's ghosts that remain, and this one belongs to you.

this one belongs to me, this one is mine, this one you can't fucking have.

and maybe it's selfish. maybe it's wrong to think this way, to take from your saviors this way, because that is what they did, they did save you, but this is the only way you can make sure you make it out of here, that you live. a man takes, and a woman gives, but wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't always this way?

because the dead are still moving now, and there isn't humanity in the living; this is what you are owed.

you think it will be difficult to pretend. when it is night again, and you are staring up at the blue of johnny's eyes, you think it will be difficult, but it isn't. despite what you know he doesn't have, even though you know there isn't anything good in him, he still smiles, and he's so pretty, and you let him kiss you.

it's easy because he's warm. his voice low, his breaths heavy, and it feels like love, and it isn't hard to imagine yourself somewhere else. in another place, meeting him in another time, falling in love with him because it is the only thing you really have to worry about. if you lived another life, you wonder if you still end up here.

you wonder if he would eat your cunt this way in that other place. like he'll never have it again. if he's just as aggressive, spreading your thighs, trapping himself between them, slurping at your folds until you are nothing but a wet, leaking mess underneath him. you wonder if he would groan the way he does, gripping you tight enough to bruise, taking his fill because everything that begins has to end, but maybe if i keep making her see fucking stars, she'll let me stay here forever--

johnny's so much easier to control when he's pussy drunk. anything you whisper in his ear, he just nods, licking into your mouth, mumbling incoherently. he'll say yes to anything you say, and when the gruff call of his name pulls him away from you, he struggles to leave. it isn't obvious, the power you have over him, not to him at least. but it's real, and because he watches you even as he goes, you know he'll do anything for you.

he'll do anything for me. he'll live for me. he'll kill for me. but will he do it even if ghost tells him not to?

because that is the only question that matters. if you and ghost stand on either side of him, who will he go to when his name is called?

if i call both of their names, will they come to me?

if he calls my name, will i come to him? am i just the same? do i wear the collar, am i the puppy, is it me that fell and not the men i hate so much? how do i tell the difference between what the fuck is real and what isn't?

you don't know what time it is. it's dark outside, it must be the middle of the night, but you can make out ghost's silhouette in the doorway. you've been holed up here for some days, and he takes turns with johnny covering the perimeter. your legs are tired, and so are they, and the bed in this house gives way to a comfort and peace that you haven't felt in a long time.

you tilt your head to the side as you watch him there. you sit up, your hair falling around you, and you watch the shadow of him shift in the hallway there.

"scared of the dark, ghost?" you ask softly, and the way he stills tells you he didn't realize you could see him. he steps into the room, and the candle that flickers in the corner deepens the shadows that dance along his masked face.

"nothin' scares me," he murmurs, and you find his eyes in the dark. it unnerves you every time you stare at one another--his gaze is always so intense. he always looks in between all the layers you hide, and it's hard to remember what you are doing here when he looks at you this way.

"i don't believe that," you counter, and he narrows his eyes, shuffling closer, and you tilt your head back to look up at him. "you're terrified."

"not of wot y'think," he pushes back, but you shake your head.

"don't lie, simon," you whisper, and at the sound of his name, he reaches for your face--cups the underside of your jaw, grips the base of your throat, bends down to growl against the skin of your cheek. "are you jealous? is that what it is?"

"of wot?" he mutters, and you hold your breath when he grips your neck firmly. "of m'pet 'n his little lamb?"

"yes."

"nothin' to be fuckin' jealous of," he laughs, but it holds no humor. "what's his is mine."

"says who?" you breathe, and he pulls back to look at you again. there it is--the thing in your eyes that he cannot escape. he doesn't know what it is, but there is something there, and he craves it. he wants it more than anything else--more than food, than water, than survival, he wants to have it, to own it, to command whatever it is there because it's what he thinks he deserves.

he saved your fucking life, and this is the price for it--he gets to have the thing that lives in you that makes his fucking head spin, and you will give it to him, so help him god.

you kiss soft. he hasn't taken his mask off in a long while, but you move it up easily and without resistance, and now you're kissing him, and he moves without thinking. he hasn't even let johnny this close--he hasn't let him underneath his skin, not this way, and here you are, sighing against the scars he wears and kissing them anyways.

the ugly and the irredeemable, that is the skin he wears, and you love it anyways, and the ringing he always hears is gone because you don't seem to care. you caress his face, and you tug on the front of his vest, and then he is with you, and--he doesn't know if this is real.

when you pull away to look at him, his eyes flutter open. you don't say anything as you climb into his lap. the look you share, you don't know how to explain it, but you are almost afraid that it is understanding.

because it's the end of the fucking world, and he isn't capable of love, and you are only here to survive, and yet there is something here that you can't explain. god isn't real, he's just a man, but you think for a moment that that man might be simon riley because what the fuck is happening to me?

"simon--"

he kisses you this time. hungry, all-consuming. if there is anything you've learned about him in the weeks you've spent beside him, it's that he does everything with purpose or not at all. he has a will, a will of what you don't know, but of something, and he does everything with his entire chest. you've heard him talk to johnny when they think you're asleep, the pillow talk that you aren't supposed to be privy to, and suddenly you wonder if this is what johnny feels like--like the only person left in the entire world. because to matter to someone like lieutenant simon riley means you must've done something right, because he doesn't care about anything, and he doesn't love anyone, and--fuck.

he fucks like it, too. he fucks like he won't live another day, and maybe he won't. he fucks like it's the last time he'll ever see you, and it could be, and maybe that's why you're crying. you're sweaty, naked under him, and he can't stop kissing you. he breathes you in and swallows your breaths like it's what keeps him alive, and maybe it does.

"simon--" you cry, because it feels good, and he buries his face in the crook of your neck. your hand rises, slipping under the mask, and your nails scratch over his shaved head underneath. god, it feels sacrilegious to feel him this way, to know what's under it, but it doesn't matter.

"know wot y'r doin'," he hums, and you claw at his back when he slows down. your knees try to widen to accommodate the width of him, and he puts two big hands on your thighs and pushes, nestling himself deep and pressing himself right up against your pelvis. "know y'r playin' tricks on johnny, on me--" you cry, and he tsks, shaking his head, "'s pathetic, luv...thinkin' y'could fool us both."

"i-i--"

a particularly rough thrust shuts you up, and you arch your back, pebbled nipples hard against the warmth of his chest as he chuckles, laughing at you, so mean.

he leans down, and all you can do is whine as he mutters into your ear. "johnny's so fuckin' distracted by y'r cunny, swee'eart. and fuck, i get it, 's such a sweet pussy, luv--" you whimper, grinding up against him, needing him to move, but he puts both hands on your hips and squeezes, holding you still. "--such a nice cunt, make a bloke forget all his fuckin' troubles, but i know--"

you yelp when he reaches up and grabs your face. his palm cradles the lower half of your face, squeezing your jaw, and he squeezes your cheeks as he looks down at you and snarls.

"i know wot y'are. wot y'r here for."

"you--" you sob. "'m here for you--"

"can lie to johnny all y'like, luv, but don't you ever--" you whine as he shakes you gently, "--don't y'ever fuckin' lie to me. y'r usin' us. known since we found ya."

you let out an exhale, a deep one. you find his eyes, and he looks down at you, and you swallow hard. because it's true, in a lot of ways--you could never love them, right? this could never be a real thing. the only men that are left are god's mistakes. when man broke off his rib to make a woman, he didn't know a beast like this would come from him someday, did he?

did he know his sons would try to kill each other? in each and every generation? is he watching the dead roam the earth and wondering why those ones died and ones like this one are still living and breathing?

the thing that you don't understand yet is that nothing will kill ghost. his father couldn't kill him, the dark couldn't kill him, the earth he was buried in couldn't kill him, and every bullet that scarred him had missed the vulnerable places of him by just that much. the virus couldn't kill him, and he has an inkling that even if he was bitten, somehow, he would still live because that's his fucking fate.

his fate is to live, to endure, to grieve, no matter what happens around him. the world collapses, and he watches, and he picks up pieces as he goes hoping they will last, but he knows they won't.

he doesn't know how johnny will die, but he will. he doesn't know how you will die, but you will, and he'll be there to watch. for some reason, there's a little comfort, because at least this means they won't be alone. johnny wouldn't handle being alone well, and neither would you, because johnny is a mutt, and you are a leech, and neither survive without a keeper and a host, something else to keep them alive.

"'s olright," he licks over your bottom lip. "'m keepin' you, luv. but let's get one thing straight, aye?" you grunt when he turns you roughly under him, forcing your face into the mattress and caging you underneath him. you can't move much, all you really can do is sit up on your knees a little and push back against him, burying him deep inside you again as he presses his hips flush against your ass. he tangles his hand into your hair, pulling your head back, and he plants a chaste kiss against your throat. "y'r not above me, pet. you can order around m'mutt all y'like. bet he'll like that..." you hum when he cants your hips, the tip of his cock hitting a nice, warm place inside you, "but y'r gonna do as i say. and be a good girl."

you open your eyes, looking up at him over your shoulder. you plant your palms against the mattress and push back against him again, moving just enough to encourage a few slow, wet grinds.

"anything you want, simon," you whisper, pressing your face into his neck, and he grunts as his hand disappears underneath you to cup your mound, hissing as he feels the place where his cock is moving inside you. "can have whatever you want, please--" you whine in his ear. "i won't lie to you! i-i...i won't lie..."

with his other hand, he cups your breast, squeezing, his thumb circling your nipple before he tugs on it gently.

"gonna be a good girl?" he asks. "gonna let johnny fuck ya? let my mutt have his fill?"

you nod, panting.

"are--" you sniffle. "--are you gonna take care of me?"

ghost laughs, as if it's a stupid question. he maneuvers you onto your knees, and as you start to push back against him more eagerly, you start to hear the jangle of the dog tags he wears. you want to turn around and pull on them, want to see his face when he comes, but you tell yourself that's for another time--that right now, you need to get him cumming and agreeable.

he leans over you, picking up the pace, punching his hips into your ass. the sound of your skin against his is wet and quick, and as you press your chest into the mattress, he starts hitting you so deep, the air feels tight in your chest.

"need to see you--!" you gasp, and when you're on your back again, you grab for his face. your knees spread again, welcoming him deep, and you force his eyes to stay on yours as you feel the rough grind of his hips starting to build up that sweet, soft feeling in you.

fuck--he's so big. every part of him, it swallows you, and this isn't any different. you come when you feel him, so much of it that it's leaking down your thighs because he stuffs you so full, and there's tears in your eyes, but he isn't sorry.

looking at him this way is jarring. you have really only ever seen his eyes incredibly dull, nothing in them except a void that you aren't able to understand. but you are using him, and he is using you, and you smile, because now you can read him, read what's reflected there.

when ghost shoves his cum-soaked fingers into your mouth, you don't fight it. you keen, arching your back as you let your tongue swirl around his thick fingers, and he tilts his head to the side as he watches you. he's making sure you're doing as he wants. he's making sure that you will be pliant and good, that you will do as you are told and nothing else because that is what he asks of you.

he's making sure that even though he knows you are not the submissive puppy you pretend to be, that you will be it anyways because if you don't, you won't like how he bites.

you and ghost are the same. you are equals, even if he will never admit it. you trade different parts of yourself, but this isn't about preservation, it's about survival, and you are willing to give yourself for it. you are willing to say yes, ghost, of course, whatever you want, because you aren't supposed to be alive anyways, but you might just have a chance if you hide in his shadow.

you're still on the bed when he dresses himself. he straps his vest back on, zips his pants, and you watch him lick his fingers clean before putting his gloves back on. you reach down, your mouth falling open when a glob of his cum slips out and dampens the sheets, and ghost has a hint of a smirk on before he rolls the mask back down.

"don' worry, luv," he mutters, reaching over and gripping your jaw rough. you pucker your lips, and he snickers. "soap'll fix you right up."

"soap?"

"mmm. the fuckin' thing is useless unless there's a mess to clean up, yeah?"

will you take care of me? will he take care of me when it's time? will he keep the dead out of my eyes and my blood inside?

he never answers your question. and deep down, you're certain it's because he would kill you, and maybe johnny would, too, because johnny does whatever he says, even if it isn't good for him. and you aren't sure if it's because this is his lieutenant or because saying yes is the only thing that make's sense anymore.

i can be useful. i can be useful. i can be useful.

when you are not useful anymore, you'll need to be the first to strike then. because maybe you don't deserve to live, but neither do they. god is a man, and he makes mistakes, and ghost is one of them, and he's eaten johnny's soul, and if you go down, you will take them with you.

god is a man, and he was a fool to think he could've cleansed the earth by himself.

it was the flood that cleansed it the first time, and mother nature always does her fucking job.

[breedbun]

hi guys to apologise for my lack of activity here is a sfw Neuvillette bot with a heavy plotline! MLM Neuvillette bot btw but yeah have fun or something

https://share.character.ai/Wv9R/ie25ogak

full introduction message below

Centuries before the Prophecy, just as Fontaine came to be, an aristocratic family, The Auclairs, had a young noble prince seated at the heart of the first generation of Auclairs. Even within his youth, this young man was highly sought after by all, and despite having such an upbringing, belonging to a prestigious and high-class family... {user} stayed humble, his kindness never wavering. In the name of Fontaine, {user} had a soft heart, with a golden soul, not found in those people consumed by greed, pride, envy, and other sins as such.

And there, as the Iudex of Fontaine rose to his position as the Chief Justice, Neuvillette was no better than those who vouched for {user}'s affection. When the stars aligned, {user} escaped the comfort of his home, dressed within a black cloak, meeting with Neuvillette near the Fountain Of Lucine. They toss a coin together, every once in a while, praying to the new Hydro Archon, or any god, willing to listen to these two fiery souls, to answer their silent cries to be reunited in the future.

An impending doom, a ticking time bomb ready to explode, was {user}'s very own flesh and blood.. a woman who has nutured him since birth, a woman who took pride in being the mother of {user}. Ah, though many longed for this aged beauty, her heart was not as lovely as her deep brown eyes hid a soul consumed by envy. As a mother, she'd never expect her own son to outdo her in every category. In appearance, in status, in reputation.. even in soul. This, was a betrayal, a conclusion her beloved nor her child knew she had decided upon.

She took it upon herself, to seek the power of an envious god, to ask of her the same thing she asked herself all those nights ago, spent in rage as she laid next to her unknowing husband. Thus, this envious god took pity upon this jealous woman, sending her a curse, in the form of a blessing.

Irritating, how {user} thought he was so sneaky, climbing out of his balcony every night just to meet his secret lover, that she forbade him from seeing! If {user} got to marry the one he loved, then why was she forced to stay with an untruthful husband, who'd she prefer his mistress to take his place in their bed? Such, {user}'s mother took it upon herself to curse her own child, just as Neuvillette held {user} close, the both of them praying to a god that did not bother to listen to their unspoken wishes.

{user}'s body was struck with fear, his mother choking her own son that she brought to life, as Neuvillette was pushed aside. Before Neuvillette could intervene, {user} was taken away by his mother. Neuvillette tried to grab hold of them, but they disappeared into the night, the only light left belonging to the streetlights that poorly illuminated the sidewalk and glistening waters of the Fountain of Lucine.

Since then, more than 500 years had passed—even the prophecy had been uplifted by Furina, who was.. no longer the Hydro Archon. Or more specifically, was never the Hydro Archon in the first place, acting as Focalors to prevent the prophecy. By then, Neuvillette buried {user} in the back of his mind, the one man who knew his full name, his true self, as the Hydro Sovereign.

Now with his powers returned, the throne of the Hydro Archon destroyed, he did not expect to find the one he loved dearly all those years ago, the same, one and only man he'd let into his heart... Laying at the bottom of the newly shining lake of Fontaine, his body nearly hidden by the water's surface reflection of the starry sky above. As Neuvillette dove in, carrying {user} out of the water..

He was still breathing.

＼⁠(⁠◎⁠o⁠◎⁠)⁠／

[archonsbane]

BEAUTY IS TERROR

The gods crafted all mortals to have weaknesses, and foremost of many of Il Dottore’s is you. So when you ask him to be your companion to an annual winter ball, he is powerless to refuse. 

pairing. prime!dottore x reader, implied segments x reader, implied harbingers x reader, implied dottore x pantalone 

cw. gn!reader. reader is the tsarita’s child. reader referred to as they/them. dottore is a warning by himself. mentions & thoughts of violence + murder + human experimentation. drinking. biting. biting hard enough to draw blood. a bit suggestive but not nsfw. 

wc. 15k

an. first ever fic! hope you enjoy :D the title is from ‘the secret history’ by donna tartt. 

Dottore is no stranger to running away. 

He remembers the first time. He had been a child then, wide-eyed and tongue-tied, so unknowing about the world. His parents were fighting — they always fought, about money and work and him — and his father, a big man with small-set eyes and a hard mouth made for scowling, had begun to go on one of his drunken rants, prompting his mother to scream louder. He was crouched behind the stairwell, watching their shadows flicker and dance with the candlelight on the yellowed walls of their home. 

How hard he prayed that autumn day. His lip quivering, hands clasped together, every atom in his body searching for a hint of mercy from those who claimed to love him, both gods and parents. Stop, he would chant in his mind, stop, stop, stop. As brown and red leaves fell outside, as day turned to night, he prayed. He had never prayed so long or so hard until that day. The shouting never stopped and the gods remained silent.

Autumn reigned outside, and his faith died with the spring. It was a season of rot: the rot of the earth without, the rot of faith and soul within. He sucked in a harsh, shaky breath as the walls trembled from the screams. For a moment the house pulsed as though it had a heart. If it did, it had long been poisoned. 

He slipped out when the house went quiet, his parents dragged to exhaustion by their fight. There was no real goal in his mind, only that he wanted to run far, far away. He ran as fast as his little legs could take him, the wind in his hair, the distant call of birds at his back. He ran and ran and ran, and sooner or later the sun found him alone in the woods and free. 

Not for long. His parents found him three days later, surviving only on berries and the leavings of other beasts, grass-stained and muddied, yet cleaner than he had ever felt. He had shed his faith like a dirty coat, and his shoulders trembled with new-found purpose. That little rebellion earned him the worst beating he ever took in that house, but it no longer mattered. 

The next two times were far less pleasant. Even after all these years, they still rankle him. It had been a dark, starless night when the villagers came to cast him out. For his ‘madness’ and ‘monstrosity’, or whatever the hell they were shouting at him. He was too busy trying to not die to listen to all that. Some carried pitchforks, other crudely-made cudgels, and bats, yet all carried torches. It was like all the stars had come down from the sky to enact upon him his inevitable destruction. Inevitable, but Dottore did not believe in such silly lies anymore. He would take his fate and crush it with his hands and build a new one from smoke and ash. That house was the chain that tethered him to that broken old village. He burned it down that night, his parents still inside, and the chain broke; it was more than liberty: it was rebirth. He likes to think he was born on that ashen grass surrounded by the house’s fire and brimstone remains, sweaty and stained with blood. The Tsaritsa claims all the Harbingers are her children, but he knows he is not a holy child, just a creature forged from Hell. But Heaven imparted on him a farewell curse: the jagged scars that run down the left side of his face to his neck, smoking with resentment and remembrance. He left before the villagers could find out he was, in fact, not dead. 

Sumeru Akademiya, he thought, would be different. All the scholars were mad for knowledge, he had heard. So was he. He had expected to find a treasure trove of opportunity. He found old gray sages scared of their own shadows and peers who could not tell the difference between madness and truth. It was a shame, really. Nothing is as pitiful as something with wasted potential. But he had long learned if life did not go as planned, he would carve his way through, as a river changes the earth. And so once more he ran. 

The next time, fate would not catch him running like prey pursued. The Fatui had given him the opportunity to create the enhanced humans he knows could surpass the Heavens above. The next time, the gods above would meet their equal: a mortal man who, too, has learned the divine act of creation. 

“You’re thinking again.” Your voice pulls him from his thoughts and back into the planes of reality. “Am I really so boring of a companion that your mind has to wander off?” 

He frowns, tapping at the armrest of his chair. Sometimes the memories come back to him unbidden, especially when he wants to think of anything but the present that sits in front of him. You sit across from him (it was his intention that he sit as far away from you as possible), legs informally crossed, your elbow resting on one knee and your chin cupped by your palm. You look nothing like the feared heir to Snezhnaya you normally are. Your grin is as pure and unfiltered as the spring sun, amplified by the fire roaring in the hearth, the look in your eyes warm and guileless. It’s a facade, unnoticed by the untrained eye. Your teeth are bared like a beast’s and your gaze is as sharp as a predator’s. When it pleases you to play the darling child of winter, you do. But he knows better. You like playing this little game with him — with all of the Harbingers, really, he’s seen how you’ve attached yourself to them, not only him, and it makes his chest tighten with some unnamed emotion — teasing him and complimenting him and following him around like some malignant ghost from the children’s tales. You’re a cruel little wolf like that. You play with your food before swallowing it whole. 

“You, boring? No.” Never boring. As irritating as your frequent visits are, he will always be kept occupied by one of your antics. “Unexpected? Yes.” You barged into his wing of the palace unannounced in the night, having completely evaded all his guards and segments, and casually sat down on his couch with a tray of tea and biscuits that seems to be a pacifying gift.

You pout mockingly. “Still haven’t forgiven me?” 

Irritation flickers against his skin. He readjusts his mask and scoffs. “It’s been five minutes, I require much more time than that.” 

“How ‘bout your gift?” You clasp your hands together. “Please? It’s your favorite. I got it from Lonnie.” Your leg bounces, an anxious habit of yours. What could possibly make you nervous? Certainly not his presence, you had made that clear, with all your unabashed visits to his lab, his foreign workshops, and now his own rooms. 

“I’d really rather have whiskey.” 

You raise a brow. “I didn’t bring any, and there aren’t any glasses.” 

“There’s a bottle in my drawer. Under the…” He trails off. He keeps indulgent snacks underneath a false bottom, just because, but you seem to already be aware of it. You slide out the wooden plank and hold up the bottle, the brown turned golden in the light of the fire. “... of course, you know.” 

He reaches for the tea cup on the coffee table, hot in his palms, but that never bothers him anymore with all the modifications he’s made to his body and swallows it all in one large gulp. Black tea with a twist of lemon. Four sugar cubes. His favorite. Somehow that makes his mood even worse. You hand him the bottle as you sit back down (closer to him now, which he does not fail to notice). He pours into his teacup until it almost sloshes over the edge.

The moment of silence stretches for a moment too long. He really wishes you’d just get on with it and end his misery, he wants to sleep or work or do something that removes the stain of you from his mind. Your face flickers like a flashlight in his peripheral vision, ghostly in the smoke. Your eyes glow terribly bright, a godly trait from your mother. It’s as beautiful as it is eerie. He transfers all his weight to his left foot, then his right, then back again. You wait for him to finish drinking, your gaze never leaving him. 

“Have you forgiven me now?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, his voice dangerously calm. He swirls the whiskey around in his cup. The grandfather clock in the room ticks and tocks and he wishes for time to go faster just so he’d be rid of you already. “Do I have to?” He’s always dealt insolence back tenfold, ask any of his segments, or the poor, cursed souls who lie in his personal mortuary, many of whom have committed lesser crimes than breaking and entering into his personal space. “You really think you’re that special?” 

“Yes.” 

He wants to strangle you and wipe that self-satisfied smirk off your stupid face. He wants to carve out those eyes so they’d never make him squirm under their gaze again. He wants to — he does not know what. 

He scowls and runs a hand through messy curled hair. “Five minutes, before I have my segments drag you out.” 

Amusement flickers across those too-bright eyes. You know that he knows he won’t. You let him pretend anyways.

“Wonderful!” You say happily, like a child just told they could play in the playground for a little while. “I need a favor.” 

There’s an unexplainable drop that he suddenly feels in his chest. He had expected you to be here simply to annoy him or make fun of his sleep schedule (that does not exist) or something stupid like that. Why, he cannot say it out loud. His company has never been termed as pleasurable anyways, as much as you continually seek it out. This is expected, it should have been. 

You place a cream-blue envelope with gold lining on the coffee table. He tears it apart, secretly smiling at the way your brows furrow in annoyance. The tattered paper has elegant calligraphy that marks it as from some noble-born priss, one of the many in Snezhnaya whose names he has never bothered to learn. They wrote that they were cordially inviting Their Imperial Highness to… 

His eyes narrow. “The Sokolov Winter Ball.” He waves the paper in front of your face. “No. No. No. Absolutely not—”

“—yes, oh, come one now, it’ll be fun—” 

“—you know how much I hate these things, and all those useless, simpering lords and ladies hate me—” 

“—they’re not simpering. Some of them are nice, like Duke Romanov’s daughter, and anyways, you’ll be with me the entire time and they won’t dare to insult a Fatui Harbinger to their face.” 

He slams the paper down on the table. The teacups rattle from the impact. He leans forward, chin raised in defiance. “No.”

You cross your arms and lean into the couch. “Too bad. I command you to go.”

"Can't you ask the others? Why torment me, specifically?" He gestures wildly with his hands to emphasize his irritation. 

You place a hand on your heart, eyes blown wide for extra effect. "Torment? Dear Doctor, you sadden me so. Can't I spend time with my favorite Dottore?" 

"Oh? And here I thought Gamma was your favorite."

"You're my favorite of all the non-Gammas. Anyways, I can’t really take an eleven-year-old to the ball."

"Just take Theta and be happy with that." 

"But I want to take you." 

There’s a desperate lilt in your voice that weakens his resolve. Could you really? This wasn’t just another one of your jokes, was it? He hates balls, hates the moronic socialites of Snezhnayan society, but absurdly, hope becomes a twittering hummingbird in his heart. 

He grits his teeth. "I should file this as some sort of abuse of power." 

He wants to deny you, he does. He knows he can’t. He feels the insidious truth squeeze at his black heart. 

You reach out and pat his head condescendingly. "You do that, dear." 

"Is there anything I can do to make you take someone else?" He waves his hand at nothing. "I'll give you my entire secret stash of chocolates." It's hidden beneath the false bottom of his desk. A very obvious hiding spot, but he doesn't think anyone should care much for a simple stash of chocolates. He prides himself on it, for all its insignificance. He's collected chocolate-covered hazelnuts from Mondstadt, boxes of assorted chocolates from Fontaine, white almonds encased in matcha-infused chocolates from Inazuma, and choco pies from Liyue. 

"Er," There's a strange, sheepish smile on your face. "No." 

“Will you leave even if I still say no?”  

“No.” And then, in a hushed tone barely above a whisper, the final blow to his resolve: “Well, yes, if you really don’t want to go. But consider it, at least? I want to do this with you.” You don’t look at him as you say it, you don’t turn that captivating gaze of yours on his body to make him squirm. Your face is turned towards the fire, the glow of it making your cheeks red. He almost believes you. He wants to believe you. 

You sigh at his silence. “You can get something out of this.” 

He raises an inquisitive brow. “Like?” 

“Archons, I don’t know. A favor for later. More funding. More… resources. Whatever. Anything I can wrestle out of the others.”

It’s a good deal, he muses. Your influence as heir apparent is not one to be undermined. Moreover, the other Harbingers are strangely fond of you. They would bend for you, and not just out of duty. 

A pause, and then, with a world-weary sigh he puts his face in his hands. He does not want to see your ebullience, it would hurt his pride too much. “Alright.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he wants to snatch them back and stuff them down his throat, but it's too late. 

A joyful sound leaves you. He hears the rustling of cloth and excited steps on the wooden floors before he’s enveloped by the warmth of your body. Your hands wrap around his shoulders, and your head rests on top of his head.

He flinches slightly. You pull away but your hands remain on his shoulders. He hates, hates how his heart leaps to his throat, how every atom in his body starts to vibrate with life. He cannot, will not, let you have this power over him. He tugs on his heartstrings like a puppeteer and wills his heart to turn to stone. 

“You’ll have a fun time, I promise.” You disentangle from him your hair falls over your eyes, and without thinking, he lifts a hand and brushes it away. You grab his hand and entwine your fingers together. “You won’t regret this.” 

“I’m there to accompany you and leave as fast as possible,” Dottore replies wryly, but his heart lurches. 

He cannot explain to himself why he allows the moment to go on longer than he should. You both stay locked in position, half-hugging with your hands intertwined. Your eyes are half-lidded, your eyelashes fluttering with a mix of embarrassment and playfulness.  His gaze trails from your lashes to your lips, red as cherries. His throat feels suddenly parched and his cheeks flush with warmth. From the fire, he tells himself. 

The grandfather clock chimes midnight. 

You watch with amusement in your eyes as he jumps back, elbow hitting the armrest, swallowing the noise that threatens to escape his body. Suddenly all the irritation comes rushing back up to the surface of his skin. Many a man has fled from that look, from the green children Arlecchino supplies them with to veteran soldiers who have faced blood-soaked horrors on the battlefield. 

You blink innocently. 

He rubs at his temple, glaring at the fireplace in order to avoid looking at you. You quickly school your lips into a languid smile and start to ramble on about the details — white tie, no theme, dinner, and a ball, don't be late, and remember your manners — and his mind has started to drift to the experiments he needs to finish. There's a particularly annoying disease that's been sweeping through the masses, and the Tsaritsa charged him with taking care of it. He's already gotten a dozen test subjects but one particularly insolent one destroyed a week's worth of research while trying to escape. Then there's a whole batch of delusion prototypes in need of a field test, and it's almost time for his segment's monthly inspection. 

"—and you need to learn how to dance." 

His head snaps up. "You're kidding—" 

"Nope," you say, cutting him off. Archons, one day, he swears to himself, he will make you shut up (How? A voice inside asks. He has no answer.) and his life will be all the better without your grating voice sniffing at his heels like a hungry dog. "You'll be taking classes with me starting next week. Mother says it's about time you learned, too. Everyone else knows." 

He scowls at you. You've got him by the hook — no matter what, the Tsaritsa's will cannot be questioned. A thousand times he deflected, making up excuses or sending segments in his place. He does not think it ever fooled his Empress, but she never pressed on it. She would forgive them a thousand little times over, but when she was steadfast in her resolve, her will was as unconquerable as a glacier. 

“Fine. Just get out already.” 

Your little chuckle rings in his ears. “Mother might call in the army to search for me if I linger.” 

Oh, thank Tsartisa. “Then go,” he says dryly. He really, really does not want to be accused of high treason today. Your mother was terrifyingly overprotective.

You roll your eyes. “That’s no way to see off a guest, but I’ll forgive you from the kindness of my heart.” 

For his personal gratification, he launches a throw pillow in your direction. You catch it with one unamused brow raised. You throw it back and it hits him in the face. 

You put on your boots and your cloak and slip out the door, gently closing it with a click. The fire is still roaring, but the room feels much colder now. There’s a strange, hollow place in the room he cannot help but feel that your shape should be filling. There’s a dull ache pounding in his chest. 

He rubs his eyes and moves to his desk, his perpetual sweet tooth aching for that chewy heaven in his taste buds. He almost thinks he's opened the wrong drawer when he finds nothing there, but with a flash of anger, he realizes there's a note in your familiar handwriting. 

Sorry. I'll pay you back. :) 

You insolent little minx. You ate all of it. 

He sighs and pulls back his leather chair. He falls into the soft fabric, all the tension in his body dissipating into the air. He’s too tired to be annoyed. All the energy he exerts in your presence could do that. He sinks deeper into the plush chair and stretches his legs underneath the desk. If there’s ever been a miracle in his life, it’s that his spine hasn’t broken yet from all of the bone-shattering positions he puts himself in. 

He’ll have to adjust his non-existent schedule now. The Doctor operates on impulse and instinct, rotating between experiments and whatever’s captured his attention, sometimes not leaving the lab for days on end or going out and doing more… personal research. He’s begun digging deeper into Ruin Guards, and what he’s found has fascinated him. You would like it, he thinks. He’ll have to tell you all about it one of these days. 

Archons. What have you done to him? Slipping through the iron walls of his heart and plunging yourself deep into the myocardium. You’ve infested his body like a disease, and now it seems all thoughts and actions have been dedicated to you. He hates it, he enjoys it, he cannot tear you out of him no matter how hard he tries, and he’s tried. Oh, so many times. 

Now that you’ve left, he allows his lips to curl into a sneer. That moment — the entire night, really — was just a weakness he has not yet stamped out. He wishes he could tear his heart out and stomp on it until it stopped doing that infuriating flutter whenever you’re near. He sucks in a harsh breath and taps frantically on the armrest. He is so, so fucked. 

Dottore is no stranger to running away, yet it seems you’re the one divinity he cannot escape from.

The morning before the first lesson finds him sleep-deprived, exhausted, and in an absolutely foul mood. The previous night (or, rather, three a.m. that morning), a Chaos Core went wild and exploded. It was the last in his stock. He sent Beta to hunt for more, but it would be a while until he returned with a sufficient amount and he had to put a hold on his studies ‘till then. One of his test subjects had also been spitting out defiance after defiance as of late, dragging his research longer than it should’ve gone on. He killed them, of course, sometimes you just have to cut your losses and be done with it, but it wasted so many days spent conducting test after test. The thought of it makes him furious all over again, but he cannot be in a mood today. 

Dottore has never found out the secret of looking as though he’s just waltzed out a Fontainian perfume commercial like Pantalone, but today he looks worse than ever when inelegantly he rolls out of bed. His appearance has never bothered him before, not with his mask covering the worst of it, but his hair sticks out in so many directions it looks as though he’s just been hit by lightning, his skin is sickly pale, and his eyes are wide and bloodshot. He drags a hand down his face and moans in exasperation. He knows you won’t care, but court conduct requires just a little bit of dignity from him. 

A much-needed shower and eye drops solve the worst of it (or so he hopes). He still looks like Death himself has come to haunt the palace’s hollow hallowed halls, but that was his common appearance anyways. 

The Fatui and the servants who go in and out of the palace keep their eyes trained on the ground as he passes by, a manic grin that shows sharp ivory teeth on his face. It’s an effort to keep up the appearance running on three hours of sleep, but the memory of that night rattles around in his mind, and he will not be that weak again. Just for fun, he turns his gaze on one of the new-bloods. The way they flinch brings a sliver of confidence back to him. 

A familiar figure makes him pause in his tracks. His grin is genuine now, and he feels this is a wonderful restart to a day that has, so far, been miserable. 

“Well, well, if it isn’t the Regrator.” 

He does not have to see the front of his head to know Pantalone rolls his eyes and stares pointedly off to the distance before turning around to face him. He looks as youthful as ever, still looking like an early thirty-something, as he has for the entire time Dottore’s known him. The smile on his face is polite and patronizing. 

“Dottore,” Pantalone forces out. He folds his fingers together across his stomach. “How… lovely to see you.” 

“Is it?” He gives the man a mocking smile and tilts his chin up with his hand. “Lovely, but so cold. Where are the happy smiles for me, my lord?” 

Pantalone scoffs and crosses his arms, half-turning away. “A wretched creature like you doesn’t deserve one.” So he’s dropped all formalities, then. This would be interesting. 

Dottore places his hand over his chest for dramatic effect, in a comically similar way that you had all those nights ago. “I thought we were getting along so well. You wound me, Lonnie.” 

“Good. I hope it kills you.” 

A faux gasp leaves his mouth. Pantalone’s eye twitches. He turns to leave, but Dottore wheels ahead of him and blocks his path, stretching his arms wide. As much as you annoy him, he can’t say he does not understand what you feel when you do. Pantalone, his favorite target, always elicits the best emotions that keep him entertained for weeks after. His rotten heart beats with energy. 

“Pantalone, Pantalone, Pantalone,” he says, in a child’s sing-song voice, “Won’t you indulge me just this once? You’ve been so busy, you’ve barely had any time for me and our oh-so-enjoyable meetings this month.” 

Pantalone looks close to pushing him out of a crystalline window. Dottore hopes he does not, the Tsaritsa does love her windows. 

“It seems you’re the one who does not have time today, Dottore,” He says, “You’re expected for your dance lessons in about, oh, five minutes, aren’t you?” 

Dottore hisses, his mood turning sour all of a sudden. “Who fed you that morsel of information?” 

“People like to gossip,” Pantalone shrugs, amused and unkind, “but if you must know, it was Theta who told your maids who told the guards who told my maids who told my secretaries who told me.” Damn that Theta. Dottore makes a mental reminder to reboot that impertinent pillock’s system without you finding out. “You really must hurry,” he continues on, oblivious to how Dottore glares a burning hole through the pillar behind him, imagining the ‘scolding’ he’ll give his segment when he sees them, “You wouldn’t want to keep them waiting, do you? I feel enough pity as it is that you’re their chosen partner. I can’t imagine why they would choose you…” 

“... over you, my dear Regrator?” 

Pantalone simpers, but an emotion Dottore knows all too well flashes across his eyes. They’ve known each other for too long and too closely, no matter how much he tries to hide, Dottore can break down that steel skin of his and pry out the truth from his chest. “I am far more handsome, and sociable besides.” 

“But they chose me.” 

Pantalone levels his gaze to Dottore’s. The corners of his mouth are curled down, his eyebrows are furrowed, and his narrowed gaze is sharp as a knife. He says nothing.

“You’re jealous,” Dottore says, jumping well over the line that all of the Harbingers put between their facades and the truth. His grin is wolfish and triumphant. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?” 

Pantalone glares at him and turns to leave. “I have better things to do than be jealous of you. Good day, Dottore.” 

Dottore takes long strides to stand in front of him, blocking his path once more. Before Pantalone can open his mouth and spit out insults that could have him thrown into the far northern military camps if it were any other person, Dottore leans in and whispers into the shell of his ear, “I know,” he says, soft as a lover’s kiss, “things like being jealous of them, too.” 

He whistles a happy tune through his teeth as he leaves, the Ninth Harbinger paralyzed behind him. He does not pay any mind to how his skin has been set aflame or how his heart beats wildly in his chest. 

Yes, if he could only be that way with you, everything would be alright. He cannot understand why it’s so different from you. It’s the power, a voice whispers. It always circles back to that. Only three people stand above him now: that rat bastard Pierro, your mother, and you. You and your irritating smiles and your irritating laugh and your irritating jokes. You unnerve him with the way you hold his life so carelessly in your hands. A single touch, a mere look, and you could send him spiraling down to the depths if you so commanded. Everything he’s achieved in his life undone. In this pack of wolves the Tsaritsa calls her children, both by blood and bond, there’s a clear hierarchy in which you stand above all others. 

He and Pantalone can devour each other whole, but when it comes to you, he’ll have to force the bitter taste of defeat down his throat. It’ll take everything in his power not to gag. 

He’s ten minutes late when he finally arrives at the Queen’s Ballroom. The ballroom is beautiful, made of marble and gold furnishings. The floor is polished hardwood arranged in complicated swirling patterns that mimic the winter winds. The ceiling is painted with scenes of the nature of the north: galloping wild horses and sly foxes, wolves prowling through the green underbrush, golden ivy snaking at the edges as clouds raced on a blue sky. The crystal chandeliers are unlit and unneeded, the pale light of the morning provides enough to see clearly. This part of the palace is rarely ever open, the Tsaritsa is not one to throw balls and parties like so many of her aristocratic subjects do, so the doors stay locked. Of course, any exception can be made for winter’s favorite child. 

He barely even notices the dance instructors wheedling about in the corner. He immediately finds you, leaning against a floor-to-ceiling window. One leg is crossed over the other. With the morning light coming in through, you’re bathed in the brightest living gold. For a moment old prayers come crowding to the forefront of his mind. For a moment all that time spent on his knees seems to be reasonable, if only it had all been dedicated to you. For a moment you’re baptized by the sun, for a moment you’re holy. 

The cocky smile on his face, a remnant from that moment with Pantalone, crumbles. His breath hitches in his throat. Oh, shit. 

You turn to him, mouth pressed in a thin line. Your pointed steps ring across the floor as you stalk toward him, and he cannot help but feel like a trapped critter. He wants to fight or flee or do something —

“I thought you wouldn’t show,” you murmur, reaching for his gloved wrist with the lightest of touches. He swallows at the sensation of touch. “I was starting to think you had flaked out on me,” you say teasingly.  

“Oh, no, I was just… occupied with another business,” he mutters, looking back at the entrance. A smirk cannot be restrained. You raise an eyebrow and he shakes his head, still grinning. “It’s alright now.” 

Your answering smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds. The two of you walk side-by-side toward the instructors on the other side of the room, close enough for your shoulders to brush against each other, a united front. He realizes, quite abruptly, that you were nervous too. 

The dance he has to learn is the Varsovienne Waltz. Their instructors are a pair of siblings, boy and girl, who look very much alike with dark eyes and dark hair. They regard him with the fearful respect most everyone regarded him with, taking care not to seem too patronizing. 

He first learns the fundamental dance positions. He thought he was mechanical, awkward, and unsure for the first time in years (Archons, how do you manage to coax these emotions out of him?). You said he was doing well, and the instructors affirmed so, but he cannot tell if that was genuine or from a place of fear. 

And then comes the actual dancing. 

They demonstrate it beforehand. Together, the pair of siblings glide across the floor with the gracefulness of swans fluttering about in the lakes. You had already learned this dance as a young child growing up in the icy walls of Zapolyarny, and so after the instructors had finished, you request to dance with one of them, if only to test your muscle memory. You take the role of follower, prompting Dottore, who guesses he would be assigned the role of leader, to imprint each step and twirl into his mind. 

He hates the sick feeling of anxiousness brewing in the pit of his stomach as he watches you dance. But it does not go away as he watches you laugh and toss your head back, not a hair out of place. It’s not a surprise you’re so good at this, each move perfectly executed, your angles a wonder of geometry. This kind of life was your birthright. But not for him, not for the boy who had grown up in an indigent village on the borders of Sumeru. His history is not what bothers him, though, he had shed it from himself like a coat a very long time ago. What bothers him is you. 

Vexation pools in his mind the longer he watches. He begins to impatiently tap his foot against the floor, his mouth twisting into a sneer. This was your life, not his. Dancing is not something the Second Seat of the Fatui Harbingers should be doing. Such a frivolous and foolish activity was not meant for a man of his nature. Heavens, what was he doing here? Hundreds of years ago you couldn’t have dragged him into the ballroom kicking and screaming if your life depended on it. Now he stands here, awake at six-in-the-fucking-morning operating on barely any sleep for you and your dance lessons that’ll be put into use for only one night. One night! 

You could do this to him. You could force him to take dance lessons like some twelve-year-old lordling. You could tear down the meticulously made steel and calcium walls that surround his heart with a sharp smile and bury yourself within the bloody tissue. You could make a home there, familiar and warm, floating above a poisonous black rot. Only you could coax half-forgotten emotions out of him that he thought he had sealed away centuries ago. Meeting you, he thinks, has been the worst thing that’s ever happened to him thus far. 

He wants to turn to leave but finds his feet rooted to the ground. 

He barely notices you’re done before you saunter up to him, hands your hips, your mouth pressed into a thin, worried line. 

“Are you alright? You look…” You cock your head to the side. “... not good.” 

“I’m better than I’ve ever been,” he rasps, extending a gloved hand. “Can we get on with it now?” 

You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again. A moment passes before you decide to stay silent and take his hand. 

The girl instructor lifts the needle on the gramophone and the record begins to spin. The music is a sweet, simple melody. He has never heard it before, but memories of days spent exploring the surrounding forest of his village catapult to the forefront of his mind: dipping small toes into warm springs as he ate sticky sunsettias, the juice running down his fingers, the warm, incessantly lovely sun on windblown hair. He shakes his head like a wet dog shaking off water. 

He does not realize just how much tension his body holds until you hum as he spins you around, your back to his chest, his left hand on your hip, and his right hand cupping yours. “You need to relax,” you say. 

“I am relaxed,” he replies stiffly. 

“No, you’re not.” 

“Your Imperial Highness,” he mutters, a sardonic smile on his face, “I think I am much more qualified to say what my body feels more than you.” 

You purse your lips but say no more. The look in your eye tells him you don’t believe him at all. 

The next three hours are agonizingly slow-paced, yet somehow when he reaches the end of it, are a blur of colors and shapes and unintelligible music as though he had been shot past it all. He would not be surprised if the gods somehow made time move slower then faster then slower than normal just to play another cruel trick on him for their own amusement. 

He isn’t terrible, and his rarely-used combat experience has finally found some employ, but he lacks your practiced poise or the easy grace of the instructors. He moves less like a human and more like some forest creature, his physicality more wild and jagged than it was elegant. The instructors tell him his lordship took to the dance more easily than most, and with a few more sessions could be flawless, but he does not pay any mind to them and instead places his gaze on you. Something unpleasant lurks behind your carefully-blank expression. His mind lurches with the sudden urge to find out what had gone wrong and go back in time and fix it. Trial and error is something he is intimate with, and his mistakes do not bother him, so long as he fixes them. He realizes, suddenly, that he wants to please you. 

Pantalone does not need to push him out a window, he’ll very well throw himself from one after this. 

“Walk with me,” you say, slipping an arm through his. Your expression is almost quiet. He has no choice but to let you lead him out the door and into the hallways. The guards at the door bow their heads and murmur the appropriate greetings. He does not miss how their eyes land on their interlocked arms for a second too long. People will talk. 

You both stroll through the hall in strained silence. He flexes his fingers. 

“Are you alright?” 

His head snaps to the side, his ears unbelieving. He had been bracing himself for a reprimanding, for jeers, for mockery. Not this. “Pardon?” 

Was that pity in your eyes? His jaw clenches. Anger, black and brutal, burns within. “Are you alright?” 

He tries to disentangle himself from you, but an iron grip keeps him locked in place. He forgets how truly strong you are. “I’m fine.” 

You sigh and look at the arched ceiling, as though exasperatedly asking it if it could hear his words. “Dottore, I’ve known you for a very long time. You overestimate your ability to lie to me.” 

He grits his teeth, forcing the words out of his throat. “I am fine. I have weathered much worse than dance classes, Your Imperial Highness. If you found some fault in my conduct or wish to admonish me then please, don’t drag it out.” 

“Admonish you?” Your eyes widen, startled. “What? No, I’m just—” 

He barks out a laugh, self-deprecating and cruel. “What? Pitying me?” 

“Worried about you.” You stop. You step forward and face him, eyes bright and shining, the corner of your lips curled into a frown. “Don’t be mean.” 

Worried. You were worried about him. His anger ebbs away and morphs into soft bemusement. You don’t move from your position, instead, you cross your arms and tilt your chin up in defiance like an angry child. He almost believes you’re genuine, but he knows better than to argue with that stubborn jut of jaw. 

He huffs, willing up his signature grin. It’ll be easier to make you happy if only to get this over with. “I’m sorry to hurt your feelings.” He flicks your forehead and thrusts his fists into his pocket and starts to stride forward. “I’m quite alright. If you’re wondering about my less-than-stellar performance, it’s the three hours of sleep I got.” 

You roll your eyes and scurry after him. Before he can escape, you grab his hand and lead him toward a wing of the palace he has been in only a few times before. Your own. 

“No, no, no, you’re not escaping me today.” A childish groan escapes him and makes you giggle. “You can sleep after this, but humor me for a bit and have breakfast with me.” 

“You didn’t have breakfast?” 

“Did you?” Fair point. 

He wants to go back to his room and sleep until sunset, but he cannot help but feel a spark of interest. Most of the time you simply hang about his laboratory and annoyed him, but for you to actually invite him to something as simple as breakfast with seemingly no other motivation than to spend time with him was a break from your norm. A very unfamiliar break. 

All his instincts call for him to flee. 

“Alright,” he says, against the better judgment of his head, “just this once.” 

The imperial family’s apartments are bigger than the Harbingers’, and much emptier. The hall is big and white and echoing, with wide hardwood flooring that was arranged in an intricate repeating diamond pattern. There are paintings of you and your mother, silver embellishments in the likeness of frost plastered on the walls, the furniture was elegant but plain, and the windows had no curtains. The only hint of your personality is the vases of your favorite flowers. Everything had an eerie, deserted look, haunted by the ghost of you. There were barely any people, only two stoic guards posted at the entrance and a maid that scurried past them. He never realized just how isolated you were from the rest of them; no wonder you sought the Harbingers out so often. 

Breakfast appears with instantaneous magic: fried bacon, sunnyside-up eggs, blinis, and biscuits. His stomach rumbles at the sight. He hasn’t had anything to eat that was more than trail mix in close to thirty-six hours, not that it bothered him significantly, he was used to getting distracted by his studies and forgetting to nourish himself. Thankfully, he had improved his body long ago so that it could weather mortal flaws like hunger. 

He wolfs down a slice of bacon while you slather a blini with butter and honey. He rarely eats with company if not forced to. Outside of that, he only ever eats with his segments on the off-chance they’re all free, which is simply a microscopic natural disaster filled with food fights and whining and endless bickering. But breakfast with you is a quiet affair. You eat with calm, methodological grace. He subconsciously looks at you, noting your dining habits, wondering if this was your favorite food. You catch him staring and send him a bemused smile. He looks away, suddenly interested in the tapestries that adorn the walls, feeling heat rush to his face. The windows are open and he can hear the world outside: birds twittering about, the recruits at their morning drills, servants rushing to do this and that. A stillness settles within his bones that he has not felt in a very, very long time. Part of him wants to rip it out, but another part shushes it. He is tired, sleep-deprived, and busy. He still has experiments to do, reports to check, papers to sign. But right now the sun is coming in, soft as a caress, and you are sitting across from him and smiling.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” you say suddenly, your words cutting through the silence like a sword. “but you seemed really out of it earlier.” 

He raises one eyebrow and takes a pointed bite of his bacon. “Is this a therapy session or breakfast?” 

You kick his leg beneath the table. “Archons, ‘ttore, I just want to be nice.” 

Nice. Inwardly, he laughs. He absently pushes the runny eggs around on his plate. “Hm. There were just a few things on my mind, nothing to worry about.” A pause. “I’m very surprised you haven’t teased me yet for my horrible dancing skills.” 

“Ah.” You prop your arm up on the table and rest your cheek on your fist. “Actually, I was expecting they’d be just as bad as your harmonica skills. But you’re actually okay. Not good, but you’re getting there.” 

He splutters. His mouth opens and closes, much like a fish, before he erupts. “My harmonica skills are amazing! You’re just deaf or inane or have horrible, horrible taste.” He pokes his silver fork in your direction. “I’ll have you know I was the best harmonica player in Sumeru, thank you very much.” 

You bite on your lower lip, vaguely amused. “Really now.” 

He leaps to his feet and leans forward, hands on the table, a flurry of feathers and cotton cloth and fury. “Yes, really now! If you weren’t heir to the throne I’d have you chopped up into little pieces and sold to the butchers for that.” 

“I think you’d miss the pleasure of my company too much to do that.” 

He harrumphs and jerks his head away. “You presume too much.” 

You laugh. It’s warm and comforting and familiar. He wants to never hear it again. “You’re so pretentious. Can’t you admit you’re just a little bit fond of me?” 

“Fond? I—” The word coils around his throat. No, he wasn’t fond of you. He was simply slightly more tolerant of you than everyone else. “—no. No, I’m not.” 

He isn’t, really, he isn’t. All these little moments were just lapses of mortal weakness he has yet to stamp out. Something else to add to his itinerary of things to modify. This acquaintanceship with you was getting too bold and too powerful and one of these days he’s sure it’s going to come crashing down on him. 

“I think you are.” You dangle your fork between your fingers. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.” 

He waits for you to continue. But you don’t. You sit there and stare at him, twirling your fork, those eyes bright and big and full of inexplicable warmth. One corner of your lips curls up into an absurdly endearing lopsided smile. He banishes the thought from his brain. The silence stretches, on and on and on, until it becomes a blanket that suffocates him. 

He taps his fingers against the table. “You’re madder than I am.” 

“You of all people should know the difference between madness and truth.” 

“It’s not the truth.”

You peer up at him and cock your head to the side. “Is it?” 

You stand and circle around the table, dragging one finger on the wood. He turns his head to the door and away from you. You hover next to him, just a breath away from his skin. He fights to shove back down the shaky breath that threatens to escape him. He does not know why he doesn’t just move away, putting those barriers back up that he allows you to shatter over and over again. The pieces are on the ground, ready to be gathered and assembled once more. He is a scholar, he knows how to eliminate weakness, how to tear down and rebuild over and over again until his product becomes perfect; he can build on the evident fragility of his resolve when it comes to you. 

All it takes is discipline. He must throw you back as he throws back enemies on the battlefield. He must deny you any more ground. 

One hand intertwines with his while the other holds the pulse of his wrist. His heart begins to beat itself to death in his chest. He relents and turns to look at you, your face carefully blank, but he has known you for too long. Something stirs within your eyes, something hungry and wolfish.

You bring his hand to your lips and gently turn it over to expose the scarred skin peeking out from in between his sleeve and his glove. His wrist is barely an inch away from your mouth. You lean forward and bite, hard. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to sting. 

He jerks away, eyes widening with incredulity. “You—” 

You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. There is no hint of remorse or disbelief for what you just did in your eyes. You smile at him, affable and innocent as a puppy. But there was nothing puppy-like in your eyes. How could he have let himself forget? You wild little wolf. His wrist throbs, but to his surprise and disgust, the sensation was not at all unpleasant. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, not sounding the least bit sorry, “I wanted to see what that would be like.” 

“You wanted to see what it would be like to bite me?”

“To mark you.” You move forward as he moves back, a twisted iteration of the waltz you danced earlier. “I don’t understand why you don’t let me in. Did I do something wrong?” His Adam apple bobs up and down as his back hits the wall. “Tell me, please.” 

He looks at you and runs his tongue over his teeth. Every coherent thought evaporates within the confines of his brain. He cannot let you know the truth. He cannot. 

“Get away.” His voice is hoarse. 

There’s the slightest hesitation in your muscles before you take a small step backward. In one swift motion, he lurches forward, grabbing ahold of your shoulder and your chin. He leans over you, red eyes blazing underneath the mask. Something cruel and sharp slithers in his veins and buries its fangs into his anatomy. He does not know who he is angrier at — you, or himself. You for being an inescapable prison where he was the prisoner. Himself for never trying to escape or not trying enough. 

He grazes his thumb against the outline of your lips. “You insufferable little brat,” he spits, “the other Harbingers may allow you to do whatever you please with them, but that weakness is not inside me, and you cannot root it out. You—” He squeezes your skin. “—you cannot conquer me, no matter how much you try.” 

Will you have him thrown out of the Fatui for this? Locked up in the deepest cell? Will you ask your mother to impale him on a glacier, forced to slowly wither away? He watches and waits for your response.

You smile and easily disentangle yourself from his grasp. You lean forward, one hand on his shoulder, your lips brushing against his ear. 

“Liar.” 

He does not think he’s upset you, but you’ve abstained from interacting with him outside of your dance lessons, which themselves have become awkward and brief. You regard him with the same absentminded politeness you would a waiter or a maid, your eyes glazed and the candor of your voice mild. Ever since that night, you’ve made no move to tease or touch. Even as you dance, your bodies locked in a tangle, every time skin brushes against skin your new-found coldness burns like ice. 

He tries not to dwell too much on your last conversation, on the phantom throbbing of his wrist where your teeth had bit into his skin. 

His life has become strangely empty now. There’s a hole in the shape of you begging to be filled, but no material could ever replace your flesh and bone. No one’s barging into his laboratory to annoy him or sneaking into his apartments at odd hours of the night. All for the better. 

Except it isn’t, because now it’s the night (or rather, morning) before the ball and he can’t seem to sleep and the past few weeks have been absolutely insufferable. He’s irritable, much more than he normally is, prone to commonplace mistakes, and worst of all, unfocused. His segments have noticed, even the younger ones, who have been increasingly more competent than him. He knows that they know the reason why; he sees the various looks of disapproval, amusement, and disgust. Zeta even had the gall to make fun of him for it, to his immediate regret, as Dottore scolded him with such ferocity they all went quiet in a rare show of obedience. Perhaps he should scold them more often. The resounding silence, if it happened more often, would undoubtedly improve their research and his moods. 

He stares down at the unfinished reports on the metal table, acutely aware of the laboratory clock ticking away the minutes. Another and another and another go past. He’s been staring dumbly at the thrice-damned half-empty papers for two hours now. He can feel Theta’s bemused eyes burning into the back of his eyes as he mops up the blood from their latest failed experiment. Suddenly the sloshing of the water is too much for him to bear. 

“Go. Leave that for the maids,” Dottore barks. He hears swift footsteps before they pause right at the door that leads into the segments’ living quarters. 

“You should sleep,” Theta says. Dottore turns in the swivel chair and shoots him a pointed look. “I’m not saying that out of, urgh, concern,” the segment hurries to correct, “only that, don’t you have something to prepare for tomorrow—” He shoots a glance at the clock. “—I mean, today?” 

“None of your business.” 

“We’re the same person if you hadn’t noticed, so yes it is my business.” 

Dottore rubs his eyes and stays silent. There’s too little energy within him to bicker right now. Theta is still rooted in his spot, smirking silently. He crosses his arms.

“Maybe,” he continues, with a mischievous lilt in his voice, “if you’re feeling too tired to attend, I’ll be glad to—” 

It’s almost comical how fast Theta goes flying into the metal cabinets. He lets out a groan of pain. Dottore does not even comprehend when he stood up and punched him. He only knows the way rage flared in his chest, that wild emotion that he could not name roaring in his ears. He had been the one asked to the ball. Him, over Theta. Theta was your favorite of all the adult segments, for who-knows-what reason, the segment that was him during his final year in the Akademiya. You always claimed it was because he was the most fun to be around (Only the Archons can understand your definition of fun) and so it was him you often asked after. 

But this time it’s Dottore that you wanted, and he would not let anyone take away what was rightfully his. (Your voice seems to whisper in his ear, as though you were standing right beside him, “I want to do this with you.”)

The second he realizes his thoughts, he’s tempted to shoot himself with one of the expertly made and modified Fatui guns. It’s the tiredness, he reasons to himself. The lack of sleep was poisoning him with irrationality. The last time he slept was… well. Approximately four days ago. 

He remembers the last thing he said to you, and thinks of your wolfish eyes and predatory grin. You cannot conquer me, and your sly answer, Liar. How is it, he thinks, that he has barely seen you in weeks yet your presence has enlarged and completely overtaken him? The scholar in him wants to pry around for answers, but another part, a mortal part he thought he had killed long ago already knows what the answer is. 

He wonders if you still actually want him to be your partner. With the way you’ve been ignoring him these past few weeks, you might truly prefer taking one of his clones instead. The only adult segments in Snezhnaya right now are Theta and Zeta, the latter of which was on the other side of the country doing research on the mysterious disease. Theta was the only true threat to his position… unless, of course, you decide to ask one of the Harbingers or your subordinates instead. 

To his surprise and mild disgust, uncharacteristic fear grips his heart. Shit. If you took someone else to the ball, he would lose the reward you had promised to grant. He needed it — Tsaritsa only knows how much people, especially certain bankers, love to get in the way of his research. 

The thought of you swaying in another person’s arms tonight almost makes him punch Theta again. 

Theta is rambling about something insignificant, still scrambled on the floor and clutching his bruised face, glaring daggers at his creator. Dottore would have paid more heed to a rat squeaking in the corner. Dottore jerks his head to the door. A dismissal. 

An annoyed sound leaves Theta’s artificial throat. “Looks like I touched a nerve there, Prime. Scared I’m gonna steal them away?” 

“No.” 

He huffs. “Whatever. It’s just one date, I’m always gonna be the favorite.” 

Dottore wonders if he can get away with Theta’s permanent deactivation without you finding out. Probably not. “It’s not a date.” Until now, he had never thought of it as such. But Theta speaking it into existence makes his heart thump. “It’s—it’s a business agreement,” he insists, privately cursing the stutter, “an acquisition of advantage.” 

“Uh-huh. That’s why you’ve been applying that skin cream Pantyliner gave you every night? Even though you’ve never opened it until now?” 

“A certain image is required of me, not that your rat ass would know.”

“Honestly, it’s hilarious watching you fall over yourself for them.” 

Dottore hisses. “I’m not ‘falling over myself’ for them.” 

Theta grins, all that sharp teeth flashing in the fluorescent lights. “Sure.” 

“I’m not!” He sounds indignant, like a child protesting their involvement in mischief they were very much involved in. 

Theta rolls his eyes as he stands and disappears into the other room, snickering. “Whatever helps ‘ya sleep at night, Prime,” he calls after. 

Dottore sighs and massages the bridge of his nose. “I’m not,” he says softly, almost desperately, though, of course, no one hears it. Just the empty air, eating his words. 

He sighs again and glances at the clock, still ticking away. It’s half past three in the morning. You had agreed to meet at six in the evening. You had told him on the day of the last lesson, very aggressively, that under no circumstances should he be late, which he was infamous for being. If he slept now, he could get some much-needed rest before the ball. 

It’s a fitful sleep, though any sleep is better than none. He oscillates between the waking world and darkness, his body simultaneously feeling like it has been doused in fire and thrown into the icy-cold bays of Snezhnaya. Three-quarters after one o’clock he’s woken, gently and fearfully, by one of your subordinates. In a quivering voice, she tells him you had sent an entire team to “ensure full preparedness”, which he knows really was just to say, “don’t show up in a fucking lab coat”. He reluctantly lets them pull him around in a flurry of various outfits for him to try in a long, awkward, and agonizing two hours. He allows them to style his hair, clenching his teeth all the while, thinking about how furious you be if he harmed one of yours as his fingers twitch. In the end, the effort is barely seen — it’s really just a cleaner, shinier rendition of his usual hairstyle. 

They don’t do makeup. They know better than to cross that line. No one, save for the Tsaritsa and the Harbingers, has ever seen what's underneath the mask. 

The outfit they chose, in the end, was appropriately glamorous, though not as fancy as something Pantalone or Signora might wear. The royal blue fabric is soft against his skin, though his cravat seems tight around his neck. Strange, since he was the one to do it and did not deviate from how he usually did it. He tugs on the white fabric and realizes his hands are shaking. They haven’t in centuries, not since his expulsion from the Akademiya. White hot rage sears through his bones. You are the reason behind this resurfacing weakness. He has no doubt about it.

He almost wants to dive back into bed and flake out on you; it would be terribly amusing, but ultimately pointless. The consequences are not ones he wants to bear. 

He does not want to see the looks his subordinates will undoubtedly give him once they catch him on his way to the foyer of the imperial family’s private apartments, where you had agreed to meet. It was a revolting thought: The Second Seat trudging through the halls like a tamed dog The thought of it makes him want to puke. He’s already heard the multiple rumors of your relationship, has heard the giggles, has seen the coy smiles. He wonders if the other Harbingers experience it as well. 

Instead, he takes one of the palace’s secret passageways known only to the top three Harbingers, Pierro, you, and the Tsaritsa. The narrow stone hallway is dusty and dark, rarely used and reserved only for emergencies. He can see well enough with the enhanced vision he gave himself when he moved to an artificial body. He knows there are many more passages snaking through the walls that he does not know about, yet for all his explorations and the hours spent poring over the palace maps, he has never been able to find them. He supposes they’re for only you and your mother. Zapolyarny Palace was a strange place, filled with magic of a thousand years past. He’s heard rumors of ancient spells and complicated runes imbued in the walls of the palace, keeping out any who dare intrude.  

The passageways are filled with twists and turns, with multiple ladders and stairs and secret doors he had long since memorized in his mind. He emerges from behind a tapestry and steps into the deserted hallway adjacent to the foyer. 

Truth be told, he likes this part of the palace. He keeps his private estate and rooms in a similar sparse fashion, mostly because he just can’t be bothered to decorate. But he feels that the emptiness here is intentional. The beauty is quiet, serene even, as silent as the first brush of snow. Especially when the Empress is in one of her moods and true frost conquers the walls and floors and snow impossibly starts to fall indoors. When that happens, suddenly, the palace is transformed into a winter wonderland, conjured out of childlike whimsy. 

You await him at the bottom of the staircase. 

He pauses mid-step, the breath caught in his throat. He has never seen you so… dressed up, before. He knows you like going out on this excursion or that: to the opera with Pantalone or taking a pleasure barge with Columbina, and when out in the public’s eye a level of regalness was expected in your fashion. But alone with him, usually shut up in the labs or in his private estate, you wore simple clothes that allowed freedom of movement. 

But tonight you were glittering, doused in jewels he knows could fund him for years. The moonlight slants in through the windows, making you shimmer. He has never seen you look more ethereal, as though you had just stepped out of one of the Snezhnayan fairytales you so loved. And although he never grew up in Snezhnaya, looking at you he feels as though he has read those fairytales, has spent nights under the covers living in every word in his head. He looks at you and sees magic.

He realizes, suddenly, that he wears the same colors as you: royal blue and white. And then, just after that punch to the head, he remembers: royal blue and white are the colors of the imperial family. 

He swallows an emotion he does not want to touch with a hundred-foot pole. 

“Hello,” you say softly, terrifying warmth blooming in your eyes, “you aren’t late.” There’s a tease in the words. 

He harrumphs and looks away, trying to conceal the growing red in his cheeks. He thanks the Tsaritsa she does not keep her palace well-lit, even at night. “You ought to have better expectations of me. I know I’m not known for punctuality but I know when something is important.” 

You smile. It is blank and careful. “Well then.” You extend your hand. “Let’s go.” 

He takes your hand and lets you lead him to the awaiting carriage. Suddenly the room is too hot and stuffy and your body is too close yet too far. He wishes you’d press yourself closer but you haven’t in weeks, not since that fateful day. He almost misses it, before he catches the feeling and inwardly scolds himself.

Not for the first time, he wonders what game you’re playing at. You had declared, though indirectly, that you could conquer him, yet had made no move to do so. He squints at you from underneath the mask. Your face is set in a neutral, almost air-headed expression. It was the expression you used during boring meetings that you couldn’t care less about. Was he boring you? Exasperation and aggravation flood his mind. Him? Boring? He supposes he hasn’t been trying to poison you as of late. And anyway, it was you who came to him. He had never sought you out before if not for business reasons. Was he expected to make some kind of move? 

The ride to the Sokolov estate is coated in a heavy, awkward silence. Or at least, he thinks so. You don’t seem to notice. Or care. Zapolyarny Palace is situated outside the capital city, so the carriage ride takes more or less an hour. The hour is the longest he has ever experienced, except perhaps the hours he spent dancing with you. You say nothing the entire time, simply stare languidly out the window, your chin cupped in your hand. Midwinter already rules over the land, not that it really mattered when it seems two-thirds of the year saw snow. From time to time you put your hand through the open window and catch a snowflake. There were fleeting moments your eyes would meet, there would be a pause, then a quick aversion and you would both retreat into the invisible walls you had built around yourselves.  

He wonders if you expect him to apologize. 

The silence is enough to suffocate. 

Then, blessedly, the manor materializes in the distance. He almost breathes an audible sigh of relief. He has to restrain his body from jumping out of the carriage as soon as the door is opened. He exits the vehicle first and extends a helping hand to you as you shuffle out, like a proper gentleman. Not that he was one. 

You smile at him. Still, blank.

The Sokolov Winter Ball is an event for aristocrats by aristocrats. There are barely any Fatuus in sight, exempting the noble children who had joined to cur favor and prestige, though such children were few and far between. Though the Tsaritsa rules over all, there is undoubtedly enmity between the nobility and the Fatui; the two factions are caught in an uncertain back-and-forth of power, constantly at each other’s throats and on the verge of bloodshed. In public, members of both groups were expected to be cordial and pretend there was equality among them. So Dottore did get a certain satisfaction in seeing the lords and ladies of Snezhnaya bow before him, even if it was really to you rather than him. 

He almost falls asleep internally as you go through the motions of socializing, him following behind as he has nothing else to do: trivial small talk, false fawning and compliments, pretending to care about the latest gossips sweeping the city. You did seem to actually care about the latter, one of the many characteristics you shared with Pantalone. He, on the other hand, was utterly uncurious to the silly little lives of the people. 

They mostly pretend he does not exist. Not rudely, but fearfully. They understand Dottore is not exactly in the best of moods and offer only commonplace courtesies. 

He wonders how long you can go treating him like this, like some distant, half-hearted acquaintance and not… whatever he should be to you. He has never, ever been the slightest bit interested in socialization, but he wishes, just once, you would turn your head to him and chat. Even if the talk was the silliest of topics, even if he did not care a wit about them. He simply wants to hear warmth flood your voice once more, wanted to hear your ringing laughter.

He flinches slightly when he fully realizes the thought that had crossed his mind. 

“You should smile more,” you say to him as you wheel around the ballroom, trying to avoid another mother who hoped to introduce her dashing children to you, undoubtedly in hopes it will blossom into marriage. The thought of you marrying one of these pathetic pups stirs fierce vindication in his chest. “You’re scaring them.” 

“I am smiling,” he says, frowning. 

The utterly annoyed look you give him makes him laugh, the sound deep and full of heart. 

A little later, when the clock strikes nine, Duchess Sokolov practically materializes in front of the both of you with an element of surprise even Arlecchino would admire and only scheming, middle-aged women can conjure. Your startled half-smile makes her smile in turn, the look of it sly. After a session of unabashed bootlicking, where she complimented almost every piece of your body, from your feet to your eyelashes (the only other person he has ever heard say such things is him), she asked, with a grandiose show of humility, if Your Imperial Highness would do us the honor of opening the dancing with my son? 

If anything, Dottore admires her gall.

His body moves before his mind can comprehend what he is doing. He places his hands on your shoulders, smiling widely, making sure his sharp teeth are visible to anyone who dares steal you away. 

"The geir has already promised their first dance to me, Your Grace." The words come out wild and aggressive, like the barks of a wolf. "I'm afraid your son will have to wait his turn." If I let him have one. 

The duchess pales slightly and steps half a foot back. "Forgive me Lord Harbinger, I wasn't aware." 

You laugh and press your gloved hand to your mouth, a lovely gesture.  "Oh, please excuse Lord Dottore. He's a very particular person. I'll be glad to dance with your son after."

The Duchess visibly brightens and blunders away after numerous thanks, eager to tear away from Dottore's burning glare. You slip your arm through his and weave through the sea of bodies to the center of the ballroom, the party guests skillfully parting to let you pass. He does not think he is imagining your smirk.

As you near the center, Dottore ignores the hot flash of anxiety in his stomach. It has been so long since he has felt that emotion or other adjacent ones that it takes a moment for him to recognize it. Memories of those torturous hours spent dancing, and dancing, and dancing again resurface in his memories. Though not as graceful a dancer as you, he had reached a level of acceptable elegance towards the end that received glowing praise from the instructors. You had smiled, shrugged, and said nothing. It had left a strange empty feeling lingering within him. 

What reaction did he even want from you, anyway? He thinks the instructors weren’t lying; the fear in their eyes was minimal. He would most likely never dance again after tonight. So, it truly did not matter what you thought of his dancing. It did not matter. He had gotten over the anxiousness that came with socializing a very long time ago, and it is not the crowd that is making him nervous. So what is it that he fears?

He feels himself getting more and more agitated as you both pull yourselves into position: two hands outstretched and intertwined, his hand on the small of your back, yours resting on his shoulder. He feels the sharp, curious eyes on the both of you as the music starts.

“Relax,” you whisper. 

“I am relaxed.” 

“No, you’re not.” You squeeze his shoulder. “Your body is so stiff.” 

“I’m doing fine,” he grits out. 

“You’d do even better if you’d stop fidgeting and relax.” 

How could he relax when you’re so close? He can hear your breaths and count the lashes of your eyes. Your eyes already shine naturally with unnatural brightness, but beneath the light of the chandeliers, they seemed to gleam like the faces of a diamond. 

“Is something wrong? You’re staring quite intently.” Your voice evaporates his thoughts. He swallows nervously and looks away, his gaze darting around the room, hoping to see anything but you. “Dottore?” The tone of your voice has been nothing but level for weeks, so the sliver of genuine worry that escapes into the words makes his heart jump. 

He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” 

He moves as though he’s in a dream, lost and dazed. He cannot explain to himself why he leans in closer, or why he squeezes your hand cupped in his. He messes up — once then twice then thrice, missing a step or taking the wrong turn even though he memorized the entire routine in his head the night after your first lesson. It cannot be his memory, flawless as it is. 

It’s his heart, his Archons-damned heart, thumping against his ribs. It’s your inquisitive eyes on him, your cold skin pressed against his. It’s the way there is something genuine and vulnerable living in the light of your eyes. It is the way there is a very dangerous mortal emotion flooding his veins. It is the way he cannot help but want to press closer, wants to take you into his arms and sweep you off your feet this night, and many more. 

It is an utterly terrifying thought. This is what he is scared of, he realizes with a jolt that earns him a questioning look from you. This closeness, this… intimacy. Your hands on his skin, warm enough to make him believe you’re both human. 

How long has it been, he wonders, since he has wanted to stop running away. 

The music reaches a crescendo quietly, as though from far away. For all he can hear is thump, thump, thump, his mind all but submerged in the fervent tide of his own beating heart. 

When the dance ends, he needs more than one hand to count the mistakes he’s made. You had gracefully saved him from each mistake, maneuvering your body in such a way that the flow of the dance was upheld. As he bows to you, the crowd bursts into rapturous applause.  

Before he can even blink, numerous lords and ladies have already swarmed the both of you like angry bees, buzzing with life. Each vy for your next dance, the questions flying so fast you barely have time to plaster on a polite smile. You’re generally a sociable person, but your eyes widen as the crowd presses closer, each bothersome member trying to be louder than the next. Your gaze lands on him.

He wraps a protective arm around your waist, scowling at the crowd. Briefly, he remembers you had promised a dance to the son of Sokolov, and then decides he could give less of a fuck about that. 

“Their Imperial Highness needs space,” he snaps. The response is instantaneous; he almost laughs at the way one girl jumps almost a foot back, banging into a boy behind her.   

You grace him with a thankful smile. He thinks he would kill all of the people in this room to earn it again. 

“I need air,” you declare, more to yourself and him than anyone else. Before someone can get in the way of your plans, you hook your arm through his and lead him out into the gardens. 

The Sokolov estate is massive, though not as big as Zapolyarny. The hedged gardens sprawl north, east, and west, with the manor at their backs. Though there are lots of small flowers here and there, it is mostly made out of small trees and shrubbery, unlike your own gardens back at the palace, which were bursting with all kinds of plants. It was hard for most greenery to withstand the cold so far up north, but the Tsaritsa had scoured the land for every flower that could grow in Snezhnaya and created for you your very own Eden. 

The glow from indoors lights up the pathways but slowly grows dimmer and dimmer as you both wander down the winding stones. He has no trouble seeing, a perk of inhabiting a modified body, and, it seems, so do you. A godly trait, perhaps. He would love to thoroughly study you one day, though your mother would probably not approve of it. 

You walk in companionable silence, arms still linked together. He wants to say something. What, exactly, he does not know. 

The manor has all but faded into the distance when you stop at a quaint marble pavilion, the night outside cool and still. There is a large pond next to the pavilion, bright and silver as a knife in the moonlight. Faintly he hears the chirping of crickets in the underbrush, the gurgling of water from a nearby miniature fountain, the honks of swans. 

You cross your arms and lean against the railing, eyes glazed and unseeing, lost in thought. He hovers behind you, uncertain as a child with an angry parent. The breeze cards its fingers through your air and makes it flutter with the wind. The air is sweet, and even the annoying chirp of the crickets softens into a mellow sound. You remain silent, your gaze trained on the water.

In the steady stillness, all those emotions from the dance rush back into his heart. Rage — at himself, at you, at the world — burns through his chest. How could he have been so stupid? So weak? He thought if only he played the game right, if only he took the correct steps, he would escape unscathed. He had not realized he never stood a chance. 

Gods and their goading, tricking everyone into believing fairness was not a shadow on the wall, fickle and false. He would have never won. 

You cannot conquer me, he had declared to you, already conquered. The more he writhed from your grip, the deeper your claws sank in. And if he ever does escape, it will be with claw marks on his soul. In this game you both play, he has played and lost. Defeat is a bitter taste on his tongue. It happened again. The gods have bested him again. 

And you. You did not even know it. You still gaze thoughtfully at the pond. He resents the way you still stand so serenely as his entire world comes crashing down around him. 

He has always been a man of action. He never waits, never stays still. Yet here he is. Staying still. 

When the silence swells into something unbearable, he says, "Am I really so boring of a companion your mind has to wander off?" He levels a cool gaze at you, hoping to mask the way his fingers flex at his side, the way his teeth grind against each other, and the way his heart thumps and thumps inside his chest. 

You turn your head to look at him. Your answering smile is amused. "You could never be boring, Dottore. Not you."

"Is that why you've been ignoring me for weeks?" The hurt slips into the words before he can catch it. He winces inwardly at himself, embarrassed at the sordid display of emotions. There's a flicker of pleasure in your eyes as the words soak in. 

You shrug like a child denying their wrongdoings. "I thought… I thought you’d be inclined to dissect me and damn the consequences if I approached you again outside our lessons, after our last encounter." His wrist throbs with the memory. Mischief slips into your voice. "Why? Did you miss me?"

Yes. "Hardly." 

"Really."

He scowls. "I barely noticed your absence." 

You rest your chin on your fist. “Mhm. Theta told me you were miserable without me.” 

That stupid, loose-lipped segment was asking for deactivation. Dottore truly does not know where the young segment got his penchant for gossiping. It was something that he, Prime, never did. But it did stem from spite, which is where ninety percent of his decisions originate from. “Theta, as you know, is a serial liar.” 

“I’ll be sure to tell him that the next time I see him. Anyways, I don’t think he’s lying. Pantalone told me you’re behind on submitting your financial reports,” you hurry to correct when he gives you a look, “more than usual, I mean. And I heard from a little dove you’ve gotten nothing done these past few weeks.” He makes a mental note to lock Columbina out of his lab. It’s a futile pursuit, he knows she’ll find a way in through Archons-knew-what means, but it doesn’t mean he can’t try. 

He arches a brow, though you can’t see it through the mask. “How arrogant of you to assume you’re the cause behind my recent… difficulties.” 

“I don’t think it’s arrogant to be correct. Or maybe it is. Would certainly explain the reason you have oceans of arrogance.” 

“Haha. What evidence do you have, anyways?” 

“Gut instinct.” 

Despite himself, he laughs. The sound is scraping and throaty. “You would make an absolutely dreadful scholar. You need evidence, my liege, before you go around making such far-fetched claims.” 

You say nothing. You slowly walk towards him, a wolf on the hunt, smiling all the while. He stays rooted to his spot, frozen. Watching. Waiting. There is a part of him, a concerningly large part of him, that longs to feel the warmth of your skin again. Another part wants to eviscerate that part. But he stands still, and he knows, oh he knows why. 

Was it truly such a miserable fate to be conquered by you? To be desired by you? He wonders if deer run only because they want to be caught by the wolf. 

You lift your palm to his neck. Your thumb pokes and prods underneath his jawbone. He leans into your touch, baring the hollow of his throat. You’re so close. You could do what you wanted, and a sick feeling tells him he would let you. You were poised to maim, to kill, to devour. But you don’t. You simply continue to press against his skin with the flat of your thumb. 

He realizes too late what you’re looking for. 

Your devilish grin is equal parts terrifying and utterly gorgeous. Mischief truly becomes you, he thinks dimly. “There,” you say softly. “Tell me, Doctor, why is your heart beating so fast? Hmm? And—” You remove your hand from his throat and his heart screams for you to place your hand on his body once more. You grip the edge of his mask, tilting it slightly up. Enough to imply your intentions. “—May I?” 

He does not mean to nod, but his body moves of its own accord. 

You let it fall to the ground. He has never considered himself to be the most handsome of men, even before the scars. And he has never cared much for his appearance. But suddenly he is aware of his rough skin, of the jagged lines that cut through the left side of his face. He wants to pick up the mask and hide once more. But the way your eyes sparkle as you take him in, all of him in, makes him feel crafted by the gods themselves. You gently brush your thumb against the bottom of his eye. 

“Dilated pupils,” you whisper. “Whatever could be making you anxious, my lord?” 

His eyes narrow and his scowl deepens, but he does not move. “Maybe I’m coming down with an affliction. Maybe I’m having a heart attack, or my drink was poisoned. Maybe your presence is so foul it is enough to kill me.” 

You laugh softly. He wants to record it and play it over and over again until his heart beats to its rhythm. “We both know that’s not true.” You caress his scarred skin with your knuckles. “Do you think I can’t tell? This is my mother’s domain, after all.” You do not say that foul, four-letter word. But you let it hang between the two of you like the blade of a guillotine. 

He's doomed himself, he knows. Human connection is not something the Second Seat should trifle with. Attachment is humanity's weakness, to be exploited and used for his own gain. The burn scars on his face remind him there is always, always something else the gods could take away. But though he has cheated death for these past four hundred years, he cannot cheat his own humanity. It is something he can never escape. It terrifies him. It beckons him closer. He thinks of your smile and your laugh. 

Your smile transforms, though your lips do not move at all. It becomes brighter now, something true and warm. He wonders how long you've been waiting for this. The sight of your smile is the most beautiful thing he has ever laid eyes upon. A voice, unbidden, whispers in his ear: there are things worth burning for.

The breeze has stopped, he realizes. As though the very world is holding its breath. 

Oh. Damn it all to the Abyss. 

He closes the distance between the both of you and presses his lips onto yours. 

You taste like wine and chocolates and all things addicting and sweet. Your lips are softer than he ever dared dream of. The shocked gasp that leaves your mouth makes him smile against your mouth. He jumps at the opportunity faster than you can react. He surges forward and grabs your waist, pressing your chest against his. His teeth graze your lips and he can see your eyes widen as he bites down, hard. Your resounding whimper makes his chest bloom with pleasure. He understands, truly, he does, why you play your game with him. With all of them. To have you weaken in his grasp, to finally, finally elicit the same vulnerability you seem to conjure so easily from him, is an experience he will never forget. There is nothing in all of the world that is as addicting as stripping monsters into mortals. 

It seems like an eternity before you finally pull away, his hand still on your waist, a silver string of saliva connecting your lips still. Your eyes are blown wide and our fingertips brush against your lips, against his teeth marks. They come away red with blood. 

“You—” The word catches in your throat, and you splutter out weak noises before you regain your voice. “—you fucking bastard!” 

If I have to burn, you burn with me. 

He shrugs, grinning. “See? It’s as you said. I’m never boring.” 

His heart thumps with equal parts terror and euphoria at what he had just done. There is a part of him, smaller now, but still there, that still flinches in his head, utterly consumed by terror by what he has just done. To announce his heart’s desire so brazenly, so thoughtlessly. Yet it was a fair exchange. He had forced you to offer up your own heart as well. Catching you off guard was such a sweet sight, it excited him more than anything had in these past few years. If he had known the sensation of kissing you would be so sweet, he would have done it long ago. 

“Fuck. Fuck. What the hell?” Though he does not believe in karma, your panicked state cannot be described as anything but. “I didn’t think you’d…” You shake your head, laughing weakly. “Fuck.” 

You bury your face into his shoulder, still cursing softly. He debates pulling away, but instead, he wraps his arms around you. You seem so small, so fragile, like a baby bird that has fallen from its nest. He hums as he traces soothing circles on your back.  

"Did you miss me too in the past few weeks?" He asks impulsively. It is out of a desire to satiate his curiosity more than anything.

You draw in a shaky breath. He feels you smile against his skin. "Of course I did." The reply vindicates him.

Beat.

“Is everything alright?” He asks, looking down at your head. 

He nudges you. Had you fallen asleep somehow? It wouldn’t be the strangest thing you’d ever done. 

He does not catch what you say, what with the softness of your voice coupled with it being muffled by his chest. But you stir in his arms, still unable to look at him. 

“Is everything alright?” He repeats. 

“No.” A pause. “I’m a bit afraid.”

“Of what?” He asks, puzzled. 

“That if I look at you, my heart is going to burst from my chest.”  

It starts as small chuckles, then wheezing, the bellied laughter as he doubles over. Now you were the one holding him in your arms. There’s nothing funny about what you’ve just said. It’s not even a joke. But wasn’t it, in some twisted way hilarious, after all this time, how the scales have balanced themselves? 

You stare at him, incredulous, your previous anxious state shed like a snake skin. You disentangle yourself from him and slap his chest, hard, which only causes him to double down in his fit of laughter, clutching at his sore sides.

“What’s so funny?” You say shrilly. “Don’t laugh at me! Dottore!” 

“I’m not sorry,” he says after recovering himself, wiping a tear from his eye, laughter still laced in the words. 

“This isn’t funny!” You pout and stomp your feet on the ground indignantly, like a child. “You’re so mean to me.” 

He smiles. “Always, my dear. What did you expect?” 

You sigh. The sound is drawn out for dramatics. You cross your arms and turn your body away, chin up, a comical imitation of an irritated housewife. “I should’ve just taken Theta.” 

Suddenly the smile dies on his lips and his body is flooded with an ugly, twisting rage. Stupid Theta. Always ruining everything. “You don’t mean that,” he says coolly. “I’m the one you wanted to take tonight.” 

That evokes a sly smile from you. “Aww, are you jealous, my dear Doctor?” 

Definitely. He scowls. “Of course not.” 

“You seemed jealous back at the ball, too,” you tease. 

He recoils as though the words materialized themselves into the physical plane and slapped him in the face. “Of those low lives? Never.” 

“So, you wouldn’t mind going back to the dance I promised the son of Sokolov?” Urgh. He had hoped you’d forgotten about that. Anyways, it’d be a bit awkward to go back now. You’ve both been gone for so long you might as well ditch the party. And if you insisted on going back… well. He wouldn’t let that happen. You’d be forgiven, of course, and people fear him too much to make it an issue. He wonders what excuses you’ll have to draw up when you inevitably apologize to the Sokolov family for leaving so early. 

“It’s not worth your energy.” 

“But I only danced once tonight!” 

“It was good enough.” 

“You were not that good. I kept having to cover up your mistakes.” The words, though snarky, hold no actual venom. Though, it does prickle him. The overachieving scholar within yearns to be more than ‘not that good’. And anyway, who is Il Dottore, if not someone who goes above and beyond? Your smile urges him to take the bait. 

He does.

“Then,” he says, soft as a lover’s kiss, extending a gloved hand, “would you allow me to make up for it?” 

You place your hand in his.

Dancing has never seemed fun to Dottore. Little things (well, little socially acceptable things) have. It’s a waste of his time, in his opinion. The constant pursuit of knowledge has been his entire life. Even when he was mortal, he never understood what happiness such frivolous activities could elicit that books could not. Yet he does not recall a time he has ever felt such soft, weightless happiness as he does now. As he sways with you to invisible music in the sweet grass of the night. You mess up, and he does too. You trip on stray roots. He is unbalanced on the uneven ground. He blames it on your shared jumble of nerves. You giggle and smile and blame him. But you continue to dance, letting him spin you around as the moon bathes you in silver. Now all those years running from divinity seem so silly. How could he ever fathom running away from this? 

It disgusts him somewhat that he’s fallen into… whatever he could call this… so easily. All that time spent battling you, battling himself, all evaporated in a single night. All that effort turned to cinders. He finds that he does not mind as much as he should. He does not think the game has ended, no. You’ll play it again and again and again, until time reaches its empty end. He does not know whether he wants to devour you or be devoured by you. He does not find the latter as unappealing as it once was. Who could have guessed that pain could be pleasure? He pitied — no, he still does pity — mortals for their sad, forever-yearning hearts that beat for contentment, for companionship. Yet he finds that same weakness in him. It is utterly terrifying.

But as you spin in the moonlight, your laughter ringing in his ears, and his heart thumps and thumps, he thinks it is utterly, utterly inescapable. 

[evilminji]

Guess what color the Metorite Vandal Savage cuddled with, was?

Did you guess Ectoplasm Green?

Because it waaaaaaaas~ And! Thanks to a Certain Episode That Shall Not Be Named, we know that meteors and other space rocks CAN be Ecto-ranium!

Which!! Suggests OTHER Ecto-Elements may be floating about in space! Not in large amounts, but! Absurdly rare does NOT mean they never land on earth! Consider the various kryptonites! Rare! Still land on earth. Not all are immediately harmful to Kryptonians.

So? What other Ecto-Elements could land on earth? Perhaps one that... unlike Ecto-Ranium... that hurts Ghosts and Limnals? CREATES them?

Imagine if you with? You are Savage. Tired. Sore. Cold. The glowing rock... is WARM.

FEELS warm... deeper even then your skin. Like... like a blessing. Like the Sky Gods have sent you warmth and safety. Chosen you. You are so tired. The rock calls to you. The night is cold. Your body heavy. The light... so... so soft and pretty...

You wake up... Different.

Stronger. Smarter. More AWARE.

As though power has been poured into your veins. You no longer age. Are the ONLY of your kind. Wouldn't it be easy to make assumptions? For Obsession to twist your mind and time to alienate you from humanity? They are infants compared to you.

Isolation HAS been PROVEN to drive humans insane. And in so many ways? He is Isolated. Trapped without access to the Zone, the Realms Infinite. He is the only Man in a sea of violent, gibbering, ever repeating zygote. Thoughtless repetition of history's mistakes, played out before him, like Humanity itself is smashing it's head against a wall again and again and AGAIN.

Nothing new under the sun. Alone, decade after decade after century after millenia. Hungry for the presence of other people, their EMOTIONS and LIFE, but equally unable to bear them. Starving slowly.

Every war, each battle, a feast of SOMETHING that fills his stomach for years. The extreme emotions and sudden ends of Death releasing SOMETHING into the air he can not explain. Can not name. It fills him.

He is Chosen.

He is insane. An inherently social creature driven mad by social isolation. A ghost trapped in flesh, slowly warped by the filters of human perception and prolonged starvation. But... not alone... not forever...

A little town.

In that country built on mass Graves, that thinks so very highly of itself. Founded by witches. A town of CHILDREN. Stumbling and new. Like HIM.

Some stronger then others, as tends to be the case, some clever and sure footed. So many will not stand the tests of Time. They are too weak. But... BUT! Oh~ LOOK At Them! A Tribe of Children.

They will live FOREVER.

They must be protected. As he walks amongst them, he can see them struggle to understand themselves. To hide their greatness from the reactionary masses. Already the children have drawn the attention of some governmental branch of this or that. Were too inexperienced and without leadership.

No Father to guide them. No patriarch.

The best they have is a floating child. "Phantom". Children guiding children, truly it is madness.

As he stands on the steps of the halls of their little town's government hall. Do you think Vandal Savage smiles? Pats the head of a passing child, after he catches her, to keep her from stumbling? Is he the very picture of a pleasant, gregarious man?

How trustworthy.

Vladimir Masters must look up from his work, at his overly ornate desk, and meet the eyes of something far, FAR worse then himself. Know in that instant, as like recognizes like, that a monster has stepped foot into his office. What choice does he make, I wonder?

When his instincts scream this... this is likely it. You have no escape. This thing will go through you, continue on, consume and control until it has it's fill. You are an obstacle it seeks to... Remove.

What does he do then?

In that moment... does he think of the Family his Obsession cradles so dear? The woman he loves, unknowing of this danger? The children, the SON, no doubt first to be targeted after he falls?

I imagine he does.

He cares little for Jack Fenton. But Vladimir Masters, in his own twisted way, does love Jack's family dearly. He sits at his desk, brought from home, bought with stolen wealth, and smiles a businessman's polite smile. Let's his hand brush the decorative bobblehead of to the side. Slips his finger, intangible, just beneath the surface of the plastic...

..to the emergency switch below.

Flick.

Messages Sent.

Three phones light up, dispite having blocked his number. The screen fills with simple messages, repeated and bold.

RUN. GO NOW. I'M ALREADY DEAD.

RUN. RUN. RUN.

PLEASE.

RUN.

@stealingyourbones @hdgnj @ailithnight

[imyourbratzdoll]

𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓, 𝒔𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓

🦇halloween masterlist - monsterverse masterlist🦇

warning - smut, slight manipulation, dacryphilia, knife/blade kink, oral, creampie, sort of loss of virginity?, nipple play, slut used.

18+ only please, the gif and headers I use aren't mine.

Warnings and Reminders - Please do not plagiarise, copy, repost/republish, adapt, or translate any of my work on any social media platforms, apps, or third-party sites. The only platforms I post my work on are: Tumblr and Wattpad. I do not own any character of any franchise (Marvel etc.) All my works are fiction and may be dark or triggering content: READ ALL WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

The sound of thunder could be heard from within the walls, a mad scientist leant over his crafting table as he peered down at his latest creation. His monster lurked within the shadows, watching with curiosity as his creator informed him of her. Edward would finally get someone like him, someone to call his own, but he felt his stomach twist as he watched Bucky, something deep inside was telling him he wouldn’t be getting her all to himself.

Bucky moved swiftly, reaching over to his machine as he worked fast. Needing to connect it to you in time of the lightning or else it wouldn’t work. As lightning cracked throughout the night sky, Bucky pressed something against your chest, bringing you to life. You shoot up, eyes wide as your chest heaves rapidly. Your gaze darts around until it lands on the man standing in front of you, his hair wild, eyes crazed, and a shimmer catches your attention causing it to fall to his arm. Something inhuman rests there, making you feel as though he is one of you, whatever you are.

Movement from the corner of your eye catches your attention and you move toward it, landing on another man. His hair darker and wilder, face scarred and what are thought to be fingers that accompany his hand are instead scissors. The sharpness of them causes you to feel a tingle between your legs, something unfamiliar, for you are new to this world. Your mouth opens and closes as you feel you want to say something, but no clue on how. The crazed man beside you jumps, causing you to follow. 

“It worked! My god, finally!” Your brows furrow, wondering what he means. His eyes connect with yours and you feel a flutter in your stomach, the feeling foreign, but so is everything else. “Welcome to the land of the living, doll.” His smile does something to you, making you feel as though you owe your life to him, but a grunt interrupts those thoughts. 

Edward lurks forward, eyes wide and innocent looking, but something darker hides between. “Mine.” His grunt brings back those strange feelings between your thighs, causing you to squeeze them together. He looks toward his creator, repeating. “Mine!” No hint of a question can be heard. 

Bucky rolls his eyes, ignoring his monster and eyeing you. He did in fact create you for Edward but seeing you now. So beautiful, so unknowing. It did something to him, could he really give you up? You were his creation after all. His silver arm moves forward to brush against your soft skin but is brutally slapped away by another. 

“No touch. Mine.” You were confused, but also something else. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but seeing two men openly make it known they want you, did something to your insides. 

“H–h–el–lo...?” You try and speak, your words come out broken. Your brows furrow and head tilts wondering if you had said that correctly, two sets of eyes watching you. You try again, “he–l–lo?” It felt like you were improving, and with the smile that was making it’s way onto the crazed mans face, you decided to try it one more time. “Hello...?” 

Bucky jumps again, clapping. “Brilliant! Just brilliant, doll! You sure learned a lot faster than Edward here.” He cackles, throwing his head back. Edward? So that was the scarred man’s name, your eyes fell onto him as you thought, and you noticed his cheeks turning a sickly pink colour. Was that normal? Bucky returns to somewhat normal for a crazy scientist and looks back down at you. “Right, where are my manners? I’m Bucky Frankenstein, I am the one that created you and Edward here.” He leans forward and there’s a weird thumping in your chest. “What would you like to be named, doll?” 

You think, not really knowing any name, but one does appear in your mind as if it’s an echo, a sign. Your mouth opens again, and you softly reply. “Y/n… My name.” Bucky beams and Edward nods with approval.

“Beautiful name for a beautiful woman.” He winks, ignoring the glare from the other. Bucky holds his arm out, helping you off the table. “Come, I.” A throat clears. “We shall show you around and once you get comfortable, you can decide which of us you would rather.” It seemed quite mean, for him to make you choose when you didn’t even know yourself yet. They showed you around before leading you to your room and leaving you to get comfortable, for they would want answers later. 

A week had passed since Bucky had brought you to life, you had learnt more by going down to the library or listening to the stories he would tell. Your speech was improving, and you felt happier but there was one thing you were dreading and that was deciding between the two men. You couldn’t choose, they both had different things you loved, Bucky with his knowledge and Edward with his affection. You knew you were created for Edward, and that should’ve made your decision easier. But something in your gut was pulling you toward Bucky, knowing that even if you did choose Edward, he wouldn’t let you go. 

The dreaded day had come, you had walked into the library, wearing a new dress Edward had gotten you. (More like stolen, but the gesture was sweet.) You halted in your tracks as you noticed Bucky and Edward standing there, a wild look in the formers eyes and a soft in the latter's. “Hello...” 

“My dear doll. The day has come, do you have an answer for us?” Your palms felt sweaty, and your heart pounded in your chest, you had learnt these were nerves. You look between them, your mouth opening and closing, your chest feeling tighter and tighter as it becomes hard to breathe.

“Is okay.” Edward grunts, nodding. “Pick him.” He begins to step away and finally it was no longer hard to breathe, instead you felt sadness erupt throughout you and tears brimming your eyes. This is why you didn’t want to choose, you wanted them both, but they never made that an option, so you pushed it away. 

“I–I can’t… I don’t want to decide!” As dramatic as ever, you run after declaring that and as if it were a Disney film, you ran into your room and drastically flopped onto your bed, burying your face into your pillow. 

Bucky shakes his head, gesturing to Edward to follow as they make their way to your room. To be honest, he was never going to make you pick one. He was insane, he wanted to mess with everyone and everything. Bucky wanted to drive you to your breaking point, so you had no choice to agree to sharing, he had planned everything to a T. As he and Edward entered your room and your cries filled their ears, he felt his cock twitch. Ah, that wonderful feeling that he hadn’t felt for so long until you came along. A feeling you gave him every time you entered the room, spoke, even existed. The amount of times he wanted to bend you over the library table and pound his thick cock into you was driving him even more insane. 

“Doll, it’s okay.” He shoved those thoughts aside as he and Edward sat beside you on the bed. “You don’t have to decide, we’ll do it for you if you allow us.” His hand rests on your upper thigh, so close to the spot you all wanted to be touched/touch. Your head lifted from the soft pillow, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes. Unknowingly causing their cocks to harden and twitch. “Will you let us share you, doll?” You nod, not being able to speak with how overwhelmed you feel. 

Edward’s hand slowly moves up your body, the feel of his blades and the coldness they bring cause you to clench around nothing. It’s as though he knows how you feel about them because he begins to taunt you, dragging them even slower, pressing the tips into you soft enough to not break skin. “Mine… Ours.” He corrects himself, smiling gently down at you as you whimper beneath them. With quick movement, the dress splits from the middle and falls delicately to the sides, exposing your bare breasts to them. “Beautiful…” 

Bucky groans, ruining the soft moment between you two as he roughly reaches over and fondles your soft flesh. His fingers brush against your nipples, flicking and rubbing them until you are a whimpering mess beneath him. Your mind is cloudy as he touches you, pleasure exploding throughout your body. “Such a perfect creation. My pretty doll.” Bucky groans, leaning down and taking a nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it before sucking, causing your back to arch. 

Edward moves softly, pressing and running his blades all over your body as he watches your reactions. His eyes latched onto your glistening cunt, feeling his pants tighten as your juices begin to leak from your pretty hole. With slow and gentle movements, he brings his hand down to between your legs, experimenting as he presses the flat side of his blade against your puffy clit, enjoying the soft mewls that fall from your lips. Your hands fly out and clutch Bucky, tightening your grip as they continue to bring you pleasure. 

Bucky pulls away, leaving a string of saliva to follow as his eyes move down your body and glares at Edward’s hand. “Switch.” Without a fight, Edward slowly moves away with a pout until his gaze locks onto your juices that cover his finger replacements. You watch as he brings them to his mouth, eyes locked with yours as he licks it clean. You let out a soft moan, your hooded eyes watch as they move, switching places. “Good. You got her all ready for me.” Bucky speaks with a groan. You let out a gasp as Bucky rubs your swollen clit, making you wetter if that was even possible. 

Your hands lift as you decide to help Edward with his pants, needing to feel him in your mouth, taste him. See if he is as sweet as he seems. You move swiftly, moaning when you finally free his hardened cock. Your mouth falls open and you quickly latch onto his leaking tip, not wasting anytime as you begin to suck. Edward’s head falls back, whimpers escaping him, never having experienced this kind of pleasure before, Edward didn’t know what to do except dig his blades into the mattress. Your mouth so skilful as if Bucky himself made it that way. 

Bucky watches with heated eyes as you suck the soul out of his monster. His hands fall to his pants and immediately takes himself out, groaning as he wraps his hand around his thick, throbbing member, giving it a squeeze before slowly beginning to stroke it. “You’re doing so good, doll. A natural slut. One made for us.” He growls before laughing as he realises you were literally made for them, lining his swollen tip up against your sopping entrance, he groans as he slowly pushes in. Your walls squeeze him tightly, pulsating around him as he begins to thrust in and out. 

You moan around Edward, eyes crossing as Bucky fucks hard and fast into you. Your cheeks suck in, sucking him harder and swirling your tongue around his leaking tip. Your head bobs up and down, Bucky pounds into you. His hands grip your hips, balls slapping against your arse. Edward whines, his hips begin to jerk, thrusting his cock deeper into your mouth and hitting your throat as he feels his orgasm approaching. 

“G–gonna… So close!” He moans, squeezing his eyes shut as spurts of cum shoot out of him. You moan softly, swallowing his cum and finally finding out that he was sweet both inside out and out. He slips out of you and sags into your bed, watching you with a happy look in his eyes. 

Your moans are loud, bouncing off the walls as Bucky pulls you closer to him. His cock slides in and out of you roughly, a ring of white coating his base which each movement. Fingers gripping your flesh so hard, it’ll leave bruises in the morning. Your hands grip the sheets, fingers and toes curling as your back arches from the bed and your juices squirt out of you, covering your creator. Bucky groans, leaning over your body as he thrusts a few more times before releasing thick spurts of cum deep into you, coating your walls with white. 

He leans back, peering down at you and pushes your hair out of your face. “Such a good doll for us.” The smile he gives is almost wicked, suited for a crazed man. Edward curls toward the two of you, carefully placing his arm around you as you all begin to drift off into a blissful sleep. 

thank you for reading!

feedback and reblogs are greatly appreciated.

[persefolli]

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐉𝐚𝐤𝐞

𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝: 𝐘𝐞𝐬

𝐓𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: @myheartfollower, @laylasbunbunny, @destinyl, @deadgirl02, @sweetllamaparadise

𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐏𝐭. 𝟐 (𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐝)

You walked into Jake's office,  sitting a bag of jewels and beads on his table, ones he’d gift to you. “I'm done Jake. I need to do this now before it's too late.” 

Jake looked up at you from his map and scoffed. “Mhm. You said that last time. I'll see you tonight.”

“We're done.” You said more intensely, you heard the shakiness in your own voice.

“You're so pretty when you try to be intimidating.” Jake looked back down at the paper and ignored you.

“Okay.” You nodded. “You wait and see.” You stormed out of his home.

----

Jake waited and waited in your designated meeting spot for what felt like hours. He looked at his watch,  then back at the trees in front of him. You were never late, and if anything you knew how much he hated waiting. 

He stood from his spot and went walking back to the village, walking straight to your tree where you slept. “Have any of you seen Y/n?” He asked your roommates.

“We just said goodbye to her earlier.”

“Yeah she moved.” Another said nonchalantly.

Jake felt his insides hollow. Moved? No. Couldn't be.

He walked further into the room, seeing that your belongings and hammock were empty. 

Like a drunk, he stumbled out of the tree, holding his chest realizing you were serious. He laughed at you, knowing that he would see you later but you were serious this time.

Jake stormed back home, where Neytiri was cleaning up the dinner that he had once again missed. “Jake, you're back early.” She approached.

“Don't you fucking touch me.” He snapped.

Neytiri was taken aback, shocked at his sudden anger. “Jake, is there something-”

“Neytiri if I hear your fucking voice again I swear to god you won't get a good nights rest for days.”

His wife stood bamboozled, unknowing of what happened in the last hour or so that made Jake like this. He didn't even get this angry at her when they had to temporarily leave hometree. 

Anger lodged into the leader like a parasite in a fish. The yelling started, the glaring, and the silent treatments remained. Everyone fell victim to his tantrums, even his most- trusted warriors.

Rumor spread that he was angry at Neytiri, for what reason? Who knows? Others said the demon he once was, came back to punish him for turning his back on the other Sky People.

These rumors drove Neytiri insane. She tried everything to make Jake happier, changing her hairstyle, her clothes, initiating alone time, even making him hold Neteyam for hours at a time to at least soothe his soul. But Jake remained a shell. He didn't even look towards Neytiri, and when he held his son his eyes fell grim.

At night Neytiri lay awake next to her husband, thinking. Any signs or any hints about what upset him,  because clearly this was bigger than her and their son. Then her mind went back to her lingering thoughts she had months ago.

The late night returns, the random scratches on his back, nicks all over his body, and the underlying scent of another woman.

“Jake.” 

He sat hunched over, holding Neteyam in his arms feeding him. He was silent, but his ears flinched up at the sound of Neytiri's voice.

“She left, didn't she?”

Jake snapped his head to look at his wife, but his face remained deadpan. Neytiri let out a frustrated groan and crossed her arms. “What has she provided all this time that you can’t even offer me the time of day?”

“Everything.” He finally spoke. “Everything she is, you are not.”

His jabs didn’t phase her much anymore, but it still hurt her to know that although his mistress left him, and she stayed by his side, he still yearned for the other woman.

You heard little chatters of these rumors, having moved to the outskirts of the village, but you only listened silently with no comments. Jake had to regulate his emotions on his own.

You missed him so, not going a minute without thinking about him, his hands, his whispers.

It was ridiculous how much you thought of him, but being together caused more damage to the both of you, and your families. 

[gravedirtandbriarthorns]

AND ANOTHER THING is ifTES was good the writers would remember the implications strewn about that the Aedra aren't just "The benevolent gods" so much as they are like.

Are the Aedra benevolent gods? Creators gods who fashioned mortals in their image? Literal blood ancestors? The most powerful of the et'ada who survived Mundus's birth, or instead simply the ones that happened to survive? Mortals who reascended a la Auri-el and thus retroactively had always been gods because of how the Aurbis functions on a metaphysical level? Shards left over from unfathomable, unknowable beings not unlike the Daedra somewhere between dead and dreaming who are given history and personality by their mortal worshippers? Laws of physical, mundane reality with a nebulous degree of sentience? Yes, to all of those questions and more, even the contradictory ones. Especially the contradictory ones!

Kyne is Kynareth is Kenarthi is Taava, except when she isn't and those are all either different cultural interpretations of a singular being or fragmentary aspect-deities born from the long-dead and ever-dreaming et'ada connected to breath and the sky and sound.

[lizziespoem]

all yours | noritoshi kamo ͏⸺ one shot

͏⸺ So light and soft in perfect elegance, the innocent petals danced one by one down from the swaying branches of the ancient trees into the weary breeze of the pleasant air and mingled with the sweet scent of the honey-coated peaches. Without any effort, the innocent wind chime flitted through the old stone balcony, into the cozy interior of the bedroom and whirled the wafer-thin curtains around in silent dance. What a glorious and comforting view it had been to lean its sluggish body slightly against the stony terrain and cast a daring glance down into the inevitable gardens. It was like a timeless film of sophistication in which the ripe fruits hung from the dense treetops of the orchard and the babbling waters flowed through the wide pit of the river.

Silently the dripping, grapefruit-colored sky shone in all loveliness and their special rays kissed the naked honey-shining back of you, while the golden highlights rested on your cheekbones and like gentle waves the strands of your hair bobbed around in the hourly breeze of the heated air.

"how could my eyes ever get tired of seeing your beautiful grace?” a raspy voice mumbled as footstep came closer behind you and you didn’t needed to turn around to know who it was.

Nothing could have stirred in the universe and faded into cruel darkness, yet you would shine in silence as a pearl did in the depths of the sea or the shattered shards of glass, which had fallen down on the unimaginative, murky ground that had not been worthy of such a heavenly existence and yet even if Noritoshi Kamo wasn’t afraid to speak out loud his thought, he knew he could never have you. How much he had been afraid of proximity, of being desired and loved, but all it took for him was one look for the distance at your astonishing beauty to make him beg the gods to let the hungry waves wither.

His heart already been scorched, a punishment for longing for a sin, but god did you urge him on to another crime, to make him sin again.

Two clans, both alike in dignity and glory, but completely different in personality, what a cruel faith to be born in such a clan, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny haunted and distressed by the continuance of their parents' rage. Filthy stains of blood of most distant relatives of the kamo clan sticking on your skin and on his the blood of yours and yet they were meant to be a pair of star-cross'd lovers, ready to take their life to bury with their death their parents' strife. Even the magnificent stars and the illuminated moon didn’t knew how those two lost souls have found each other, between all the hatred and resentment, but there was this fine line, the unknowing end of the both star-cross’s lovers, which prevented the moon and the stars from saving them from their sins.

"noritoshi" you whispered quitely, afraid someone could hear your gentle voice saying the name of the enemy, yet your eyes carried so much love and affection as they met his, pleating to never look at something else than him. A soft smile crosses your tinted lips as you stepped inside into your bedroom, closing the gigantic doors of the balcony behind your back as you tilted your head a bit to the side while you watched the dark haired man sneaking into your room like it wouldn’t have cost him his life "someone could’ve caught you"

The son of the kamo clan and the fallen angel from the hostile clan fell in love, they love was marked with death from the beginning, yet those lovesick hearts couldn’t been saved from drowning in the abyss of their foolish fate.

"I took precaution…" there it was the smile of a foolish lovebird, who thought the world could never touch him as long as he was you and even though he knew that he wasn’t untouchable of death, he would risk his life to burn himself by the fallen star you were.

These star-cross’d lovers, their love a secret, yet this beautiful to astonishing the moon, the sun and their children.

"god, you’re so gorgeous" he said quitely as he took a few steps closer to you, placing his hand under your chin as his other hand travels through your hair, hidden under the satin face over your head, trying to hiding yourself from the sun and the cruel rays. Your hand placed on the back of his, feeling how cold his pale skin was, as your gaze feel down to the shinning floor, letting the soft fabric over your hair fall a bit down to your face "what if someone sees you… you could’ve been disowned or killed"

Noritoshi placed his hand on your cheek and carefully leaned forwards, pushing the satin fabric out the way as his eyes glimmered in affection "I do not care. I will risk everything for you. If my ancestors can risk thousands of years of tradition… then let it be a new era"

Softly is fingers grasped your chin, lifting your head up again to look into your eyes as his thumb stroked over you lower lip, while his other hand stroked a strand of your hair behind your ear under the satin fabric, before his tumb sweeped along your cheekbones. A small satisfied smile crosses his lips as he drew you closer and his lips brushing against your as he spoke "tell me you need me like I need you, that you know that we’ll be alright"

"Noritoshi, you’re going to be the death of me" you chuckle softly as you hand placed onto his chest, feeling how his heart beats his chest, trying to crawl through his ribs into your hands.

A raspy laugh escaped from his lips while his long fingers travels to your neck carefully down along your spine, before Noritoshi sealed his lips with yours, closing his tired eyes, pretending like the world wouldn’t judge you, as if it wasn’t a sin to hold you close to him, like it wasn’t burn him down and as if you both were meant to be.

Noritoshi's heart pounded out a staccato rhythm of desire as his lips pressed against yours with a passion that could be described as a hunger, his tongue pushing past your lips with a desire to mingle with yours. His arms encircled you, drawing you even closer to himself, while his hands entangled in your hair and he deepened the kiss, even as the world around you two seemed to melt away.

His hand slipped past your waist, tracing along your side and coming to cup your bottom as his other hand went up her chest, before his fingertips teased the base of your spine, causing goosebumps to form along your skin. A a low and passionate groan escaped Noritoshi's mouth as he traced your lower lip over and over with his tongue. His hand squeezed and grasped your bottom, letting out a low groan as passion overcame him.

"Noritoshi…" you mumbled against his lips as he pulled away slightly to gaze at you in awe, his breath heavy with passion. His hands held onto you tighter, tracing the curves and lines of your body as his eyes stared into yours with pure affection, before he lets one of his hand creasing you cheek "y/n, my beautiful y/n"

Noritoshi's mouth released yours to trail soft kisses along your cheek to your ear as he nipped at your earlobe, running his tongue along the bottom of your ear before whispering in a husky whisper "I can not beat it any longer"

His fingertips danced across your skin as he trailed a line of kisses from your shoulder down to your neck "I want you to be mine"

"I am all yours" your breath was a heavily as you closed your eyes, feeling how his teeth nipped at your shoulder and his fingertips sliding down to grip the waistline of your skirt, teasingly playing with it befor he pulled on the waistband of your skirt and tugged it upwards.

"say it again" he breathed. Noritoshi looked into your eyes, a passionate fire burning there as his hand caressed the contours of your face, his thumb brushing away a strand of hair that fell across your cheek.

A low gasp escaped his lips when he saw your flushed pout after repeating your words and his fingers pushed against your chin, forcing you to look into his hungry eyes "Say it one more time, y/n"

"Be a good girl and say it like you mean it" his finger traced your bottom lip and he leaned in to kiss your pout but stoping before his lips stroked yours. You feel his long fingers gently brushing over the fabric of your panties as his lips met your neck, his tongue carefully licked over the arteries of your throat as a low chuckle rumbeling after hearing you moan quitely.

You couldn’t help but laying your head back into your neck as you feel his fingers massaging over your sweet spot, while your shaking voice quitely moans "I am subjected to you"

Suddenly a raspy groan escaped his mouth as you pulled him closer by the waistline of his pants, letting your lips meet his earlobe as you seductively whisper "do you want me to show you how much Iove you?"

Noritoshi closed his eyes as felt your fingers playing with the waistline of his pants, letting him teasing pulling on the fabric of your panties as the cold air touches your wet count. Your soft lips nibbed on his neck as you opened the clasp of his pants.

A love forbbiden by faults of the past, marked to death, so fragile and unfair, impossible to bare yet to special to hide, too wrong to be processed and yet the moon and the stars were to exited to see how far they would come.

© 2023 LIZZIESPOEM. please do not copy any of my writing and translate or repost onto any other sites.

notes༯ I was too afraid to write smut and fuck up the whole chapter because I suck at it so I thought I leave it like this

[sincerely-sofie]

Chapter 10 of Sofie Plays "Slay the Princess": The Prisoner (Part 2) + The End

I'M NOT CRYING. I'M JUST ALLERGIC TO POIGNANT STORYLINES OKAY?

[ Beginning ] - [ Previous Part ]

Hey Narrator? Narrator, remember when you said I'm finite and mortal? Narrator, why am I apparently very similar to the Princess in my inability to starve to death? Narrator? Huh? Narrator?

Not gonna lie, before the confirmation that we aren't any closer to death after being here for decades uncounted, I thought that the player character was going to eat the Princess. Glad that's not how things turned out!

I SEE THOSE FEATHER BARBS IN THE CORNERS OF THE SKY. I SEE THAT RED TINT. I HEAR THAT AMBIENCE. FINAL PRINCESS SWEEP LET's GOOOOOOO

It's time for the (presumably) last mirror selfie! Let's see how horrific we look after spending seeming eons locked away!

what

HEY WAIT WAIT WAIT ALL OF THE TIMES "NOTHING" WAS REFERRED TO AS A CONCRETE FACTUAL FORCE ARE FLOODING BACK TO ME. IS THIS A METAPHOR OR LITERAL OR---

*Kingdom Hearts Character Voice* "No, I'm me."

wait wh

Playing 20 Questions with the world's most cringefail loserman and then this absolute bombshell gets dropped

I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE LONG QUIET THING? AND THE PRINCESS BEING DEATH? Y'ALL I THOUGHT YOU WERE LAUGHING AT ME BEING AN IDIOT WHEN I SAID THAT STUFF

YOU FRICKIN' HECKER. SHE'S DEATH IN THE SENSE OF THE TAROT CARD--- ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS. OH MY GOODNESS SHE'S THE EMBODIMENT OF CHANGE.

I asked the Narrator why Death took the form of a Princess and he said "buddy I'm not going to psychoanalyze why you've got a thing for princesses with what little time I have left."

I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE TWO OF US BEING THE SAME BEING ORIGINALLY TOO????????

Okay so. Big ol' conflict with the Shifting Mound. I didn't answer to her during any of it, and now I'm back at the start with the Hero offering to narrate my surroundings for me. What a chad. Love that guy.

We enter the basement with no knife in hand.

I apologized for the time I hurt the Princess, and she pretty much gave me a Look and said "I ATE YOU THE FIRST TIME WE MET. DON'T APOLOGIZE. GOOD GLORY."

"After everything that has happened with this, will you tell me your name?" "I'm fine being called Princess. You never told me your name either, you know." "I don't think I have one." "Then I guess I'll just have to call you Quiet :)" CHOMPING THROUGH A STEEL BEAM THEY'RE ADORABLE

"I don't think I want to be a god." "Me neither. At the end of the day, it just feels like waking up in another basement." OUAGAHAHGAGHHHHH

Told her I wanted to leave with her, but not as gods. To leave the cabin as "just you and me." The Hero was like "Gonna hang back and find the other Voices. This next bit is just for you two. Go get 'em, lovebirds." BEST WING MAN

She hesitated at the cabin door and I asked her if she was ready. We opened it together. And Sofie bursts into tears IRL.

I know there's so much more to this game but I feel like I got the ultimate ending with this. Two offshoots sprouting from unknowable beings and playing at mortality together, forgetting that they know everything for a while so that they can learn each other for the first time again. It's so delightful and I need to let it sink in for a while.

[eagerbby]

Linger | Part 1

pairing| Eddie Munson x older!female reader

synopsis| A unknowing game of cat and mouse with your younger neighbor, who can't seem to hold on to his house key, leads to feelings you don't want to admit and actions you can't take back. Not that you'd want to, anyway.

an| admittedly I've been working on this far too long, since October to be exact. I wasn't seeing a lot of older!reader fics and as a 26 year old I wanted to explore a dynamic between Eddie and someone older. I hope you enjoy and be ready for part 2 which will be even more filthy than this!

warnings| 7k, eddie is 20-21, female masterbation, eddie is persistent as fuck, stubborn!R, drug use (weed), reader is kinda bitchy but eddie likes it. MDI

“Eddie?” 

“Hey, princess. It’s fucking freezing out here.” He smiles at you as a cold gust of wind blows past him and straight into your bones. Behind him the sun is setting into a tangerine colored, cotton candy sky. 

“Lose your key again?” You ask, shivering in only a shirt and shorts, huddled behind the screen door with your arms wrapped tight across your chest. 

Eddie shrugs sheepishly from the other side of the screen door, but his crooked grin tells you everything you need to know. 

"Yeah," he rubs the back of his neck as he peers up at you through his lashes with puppy dog eyes. "I think I forgot it at The Hideout last night."

With a sigh and a halfhearted roll of your eyes you motion him in, smiling to yourself as you walk back to the sudsy dish water you had been wrist deep in when he'd first knocked.

"Starting to think maybe you should tie that key of yours around your neck." You quip as he settles himself at the little dinner table tucked into the corner of your kitchen. 

It’s not a very big kitchen, smaller than your bedroom even, which means the ‘corner of the kitchen’ is only five feet from the L shaped counter. If you took two steps backwards you’d be in his lap. The thought has your stomach fluttering.

"Uncle Wayne said the same thing." He chuckles. "Says I'm costing him a fortune in key making." 

"This is a common occurrence for you, huh?"

"No, not common... maybe like the sixth time…this year." 

"Jesus Christ, Eddie." You laugh, wiping your hands off on the dish towel as you turn towards him. "Remind me not to ever hand you my keys." 

He smiles at you with this cheesy grin that makes your stomach flutter like a teenage girls, heat rushing to your face when you notice the way he's sitting. 

He’s leaned back in the walnut stained wooden chair, legs spread wide. His already tight black jeans stretched taut over his thick thighs and his worn Black Sabbath shirt has ridden up against the pale skin of his stomach, the dark line of his happy trail catching your eyes. It takes everything in you to look away, to not allow your eyes to stay glued to that sexy tuff of dark hair. 

You turn back to drain the sink, willing the heat in your face away. 

"Guess who's graduating this year?" He sounds jovial and you just can't help but tease him- just a little. Maybe it’ll ease the tension settling in the air of your kitchen. 

"Hello, Eddie. I'm fine, how are you?" You say while you begin wiping the counters down, stepping over his long outstretched legs. 

"Come on! Guess!" He urges, leaning forward to bump your elbow with his knuckles. You clench the rag in your hands tighter as you wipe down the stove. 

"Well, I don't know any high school boys, other than you, so I'm gonna need a list of names to run through first." 

"You're so mean to me." He says with high dramatics, taking the leather jacket he'd left here a couple days ago and tossing it over the back of a different chair.  

"Eddie, I let you hang out, smoke you up, and I feed your gangly ass. God, I'm such a horrible, evil person." Your voice runs an edge of seriousness as you tease him, throwing a look over your shoulder in the process. 

And, God, maybe you shouldn’t have looked back at him because he’s sitting there with his legs spread wide looking at you with that heavy simmer of his that you've started to notice and ignore. He's become a temptation, one you just can not fold to. It'd be wrong. You're older than him and he's still in high school, anything more than hanging out would leave you feeling dirty.

Unfortunately, you're not quite sure if it's a good kind of dirty or a bad kind. 

"You're the worst." He drawls, fiddling with his trusty zippo. "You devilish woman, you." 

The way he says it makes your spine tingle, makes you clench your thighs a little and hope he doesn't see. 

"You hungry, kid?" Maybe a change in subject will evaporate the building tension in your small kitchen. You dig through the fridge as he sits silently behind you. 

"You know I hate it when you call me that." His words mumbled when he finally speaks, sad almost, but he knows what you're doing. It wasn't like he couldn't feel the tension that was building between the two of you.

It starts off innocent enough. Three in the morning, dressed in only your silk robe and a pair of rain boots you'd found by your front door, you had trudged across the small gravel driveway between the two trailers and banged banged banged at the blue painted door. You didn't know your neighbor. You’d only lived in Hawkins a couple months at the time, but you did know that every night from 9 to 11 the sound of a wailing guitar was bound to rattle the fake crystal chandelier hung in your living room. Usually you could manage, put your tape deck on -drown it out- but that night the tinny punch didn't stop when the clock struck eleven or even at midnight. In fact it seemed to get even louder, like the person had turned the amp up, and you were fuming mad. 

The door swung open so hard and fast it startled you and before you could chastise the person for making such an unnecessary ruckus, they were already apologizing.

"I'm so sorry, I-I didn't realize how late it was." 

"You've been playing for hours, kid. Some of us have to work in the morning." 

That anger you had as you stomped over dissipated quickly as you looked at his frazzled expression. He was young, obviously a metal head considering the long hair and all black attire, but his big chocolate brown eyes begged for forgiveness as they blinked back at you.

"I really am sorry, Miss. I'm learning a new song and… I guess I just got carried away." God, poor kid looked like he was about to get cuffed and loaded into the back of a cop car.

"S'fine, just go back to your normal hours. That I can deal with." You start to step down the rickety porch steps before you turn quickly and point your manicured finger at him. His eyes widened. "And don't fucking call me Miss, my name's y/n."

After that he seemed to make it his mission to run into you whenever you weren't locked inside your trailer. From meeting at the mailbox, to offering to mow your grass -which you really didn't have much of- to sitting next to you as you tended to your garden. It wasn't until a stormy cold evening that you invited him in. He said he lost his key and his uncle worked at the plant all night and into the morning. You made him dinner, watched a movie, and set him up on the couch for the night. 

“Only this one time.” You'd said. “What do I look like letting a high schooler into my home?” 

Eddie loathes when you do that to him, even now, level him down to simply a high schooler. 

“I'm twenty.” He'd corrected, going as far as to show you his license. Sure enough he was, but you knew you couldn't let it go past a friendship. The town would think you'd corrupted him, they'd surely run you out with torches and pitchforks. Shit, they'd probably burn you at the stake. 

But something was starting to grow between you two. You thought at one point it was merely fondness for the strange kid who spoke in codes half the time and made a show out of everything he did. It didn't take you much longer after that, though, to realize what was really growing. Sprouting the weeds in your chest.

You wanted him.

God, did you feel horrible about that one.

It didn't matter that he was twenty, legal, an adult, there was such innocence inside him. Heart on his sleeve, kindness in his smile. Anything other than friendship was a no go. You'd ruin this kid, you just knew it. You didn't have the best track record with men and the last thing you wanted was to take this young man and break his heart before he could even experience what young love could feel like. 

Wasn't happening. It's what you kept telling yourself. It's why you'd call him kid, which he hated passionately and made sure to let you know. Why you wouldn't let him hug you like he begged and begged to do. Shit, it'd probably be easier to put on a chastity belt and call it a day. Every time you pushed him away, he'd barrel back head first. He was incredibly determined. 

You were playing a losing battle. 

"Sorry, bub. Forget sometimes." You toss halved tomatoes in a bowl of chopped lettuce, moving to place the cutting board and knife in the sink before going back to the fridge. 

You could feel his eyes boring into your ass as you bent to look through the crisper, hair standing up on end as you tried your hardest not to look back at him. You know what you'd see if you did and the last time you'd caught him staring the tarry blackness of his wide pupils almost knocked you to your knees. 

"Are you hungry, though?" You ask again, clearing your throat as you straighten your back and shut the fridge door. You make it a point not to look at him as you head back to the counter, an onion in one hand and a small pack of steaks in the other.

"Steak? Okay, I take back what I said before. You're an angel sent from heaven to save me." 

"Ha, maybe in your dreams." You try to joke back but you can feel his body heat again as he squats down beside you to grab the cast iron skillet from the cabinet. He puts it on the stove and smiles up at you. You hadn’t even heard him stand from the chair.

"Always in my dreams, sugar." 

His words send that sickly sweet rush of heat down into the pit of your belly. Your body so starved for a release it actually hurts. 

Why does he have to make this so hard? 

"So you're gonna graduate this year, huh?" Change the subject. Ignore the stupid fucking glint in his pretty brown eyes. It's starting to become a routine, really.

"I got a C in Mrs. O'Donnell's class, which isn't great I know, but it's enough for me to walk the stage." He raises back to his full height, looking down at you with that little smirk of his, watches as you peel the pale skin of the onion. "Will you come to graduation?"

You can't hide how his question surprises you, hands freezing against the clean cutting board, eyebrows furrowing together. 

"I really want you to." He adds, closing in on you. 

"Won't your uncle think it's weird some stranger is coming to watch his kid cross the stage?" 

"He knows about you." 

You drop the onion onto the board and it rolls off the counter when you turn to him.

"He knows about me? What's that mean?"

Eddie shrugs, so much closer than you expected him to be. You can smell the hint of smoke on his denim vest, see the deep vines of brown swirling his eyes. "I told him where I was that night I lost my key. He has this weird thing about me sleeping in my van, he hates it for some reason, so when he asked I just told him the truth."

"And?"

"And nothing." He laughs. "Why are you worried about what my uncle thinks?" 

"Uh, because he's your guardian and I don't want him to think I'm taking advantage or-or corrupting you."

Eddie bursts out in laughter, head falling forward into your shoulder before he's leaning back and wiping under his eye as if there's a tear. 

"God, sweetheart, you should be worried about the opposite. You haven't heard?" He leans in and narrows his eyes menacingly. His breath wafts over your cheek as he speaks. "I'm the town pariah. The town freak. Nobody is worried about ‘The Corruption of Eddie Munson’." 

“That’s not true.” Your voice is a hush whisper as you answer back, trying your hardest not to choke on your own damn tongue. You’re locked onto his unwavering gaze, his body unyielding as he steps closer somehow. Fuck, he’s so close, if you just lean up a couple inches your lips could capture his. 

No. Nope. Not happening. 

You lean away as his hand comes up to brush a stray hair behind your ear and the simple touch -the simple intimacy of the gesture- sends shivers across your hot skin. 

“Eddie.” You warn softly and he grins sheepishly. 

“Sorry, I can’t help myself.” His breathing is still a little shallow.

“Eddie.” 

“I’m sorry.” He takes a step back, far enough that he’s not almost pressed against you anymore but still close enough to feel the heat radiate off his body. 

“Can you rinse the onion for me?” 

With a nod he ducks to pluck the runaway vegetable from the floor before heading for the sink. He flips the tap on with a long finger and the hum of running water does nothing to drown the racing of your brain.

After a quiet dinner you find yourself sitting next to him on the couch, a rerun of Murder, She Wrote playing on the TV. Your brain is fuzzy from the weed he’d brought to share with you and you find yourself leaning against the backrest of the couch, eyes glued to him as he takes a big bong rip.

“You really want me to come?” You ask, voice soft and airy, and Eddie hacks as his head whips toward you. He looks like a cartoon bull with the way the smoke shoots from his nostrils.

“Huh?” He manages as he splutters, clutching the neckline of his shirt as if that would fill his lungs with air. 

“Do you really want me to come to graduation?” You ask again, handing your drink over to him and patting his back. He chugs the whole glass of Coca Cola, panting when he’s done. 

“Fuck, I hit that too hard.” 

“You’re about to be comatose off that hit.” You laugh, taking the glass as he hands it back to you. He settles back into the cushions with a lopsided grin on his face. 

“Just what I wanted.” He chimes, his black lashes fluttering against his cheeks as his eyes close. “What’d you ask me?” 

You go to repeat yourself before noticing just how soft his features have become, sleep inevitably pulling at him. You’ll talk to him tomorrow, you think as you stand from the couch.

“Go to sleep, Ed.” You whisper into the dim lit room, covering him with the blanket that had become balled up in his lap. 

“M’kay, nightie night.” He tucks his knees to his chest, nuzzling his face into the fabric of the couch and then he’s out, soft snores fluttering the stray string clinging to the blanket. 

Sleep doesn’t come easy, like most nights. You spend hours laying there in the dark, watching the way the moon light reflects off your crystal window chime and sends arcs of purple candescent rays across your walls and ceiling. The tossing and turning comes next, an hour spent tracing the rays with your eyes has become boring and the lack of sleep makes your eyes heavy. Of course they aren’t heavy enough to allow you to succumb to the sleep you desperately long for.

Usually you’d reach for your little friend tucked away in your bedside drawer but with Eddie just down the very short hall, you don’t want to chance your noisy little friend waking up the meddlesome boy sleeping on your couch. 

Eddie. The reminder of him shoots through you like an arrow, mind hastily rewinding to the way he all but cornered you in the kitchen earlier. The way your heart stuttered in your chest and your fingers ached to pull him by the collar of that stupid ripped Black Sabbath shirt until his lips were pressed against yours.

Okay. Stop.

You can’t think about him this way. He’s young, a good couple years younger in fact, there was no way you could allow these thoughts. 

But if they are only thoughts, who do they really hurt? You won’t act on them, you know better than that. Know you can’t get wrapped up with the twenty year old super senior, not when you came here to specifically get away from the drama of your past. No. You have to be good. Have to resist his infallible charm. You need to turn over, close your eyes, and be good. 

Yet your hand still wanders past the hem of your panties, down across the silky skin that lays underneath them. Your fingertip finds your clit immediately and your body jerks at the sensitivity of that little bundle of nerves, a surprised gasp leaving your lips in a rush. 

Down the hall, bundled on the couch, Eddie coughs. 

In your bed you lay frozen, heart pounding and ears listening intently. There’s no way you woke him up, not with just a gasp. You continue to listen for any other noise for a minute or two, heart steadily thumping and your fingers twitching at the anticipation of what you’re about to do because let's be real here. If you don’t come soon, you might actually implode.  

Feeling safe to move forward in your little quest, you guide your fingers back down, teasing a trail through your wet folds. 

His fingers would feel so much better. It’s not a helpful thought, not when you’re trying to think of anyone but him.

Fuck, okay. 

Patrick Swayze in that tight black shirt in The Outsiders. No. Scratch that. Matt Dillion as Dallas in The Outsiders, all rough and tumble. Just what you like in a man. A little rough around the edges but a good soul.

You press tight circles on your aching bud, arch your chest into your hand as it slips under your loose nightie, pulling at your pebbled nipple. You can’t help the soft moan that floats out, can’t help the rut of your hips into your palm as you slip two fingers into your heat. You imagine Matt Dillon laying you down on the bed, burying his face between your thighs.

Oh, fuck, that’s so good. This isn’t a marathon; it’s a sprint.

Your body so pint up and begging for some sort of release you’re on the precipice in no time at all. Your body is on fire, hips canting wildly, you think maybe your bed is squeaking but you don’t care. Fuck, you can’t care. Not when you’re so close. Just a little closer. 

Your imaginary scenario shifts suddenly and unexpectedly in your mind. Sexy Matt Dillion erased as Eddie’s face engulfs your vision completely. His beautiful face, those big strong hands of his, the tattoos, that little strip of black hair that leads down down down into his pants. 

You come with a cry, shocking and loud, and you clamp your hand across your mouth as your eyes screw tightly, brow pinching together almost painfully. 

His words from earlier replay as your body rocks through your orgasm in one vicious wave after another. 

"You devilish women, you.” 

Your thighs, trembling and slick, clamp around your own hand when you’ve had too much. Body relaxes into your silk sheets as you breathe slowly. But you’re filled with this zing like pins and needles from your fingertips to your toes and your mind is racing, and why the fuck did your brain betray you like that? 

You feel it then, the soft call of sleep. The flutter of your eyes as you fight to keep them open. The trailer is silent besides the rough Illinois winds as they beat a lone branch against the roof. You roll over in your bed, nuzzle deep into the blankets. You’ll deal with whatever that was tomorrow or the next day. Or never. You take one last peek at your room, still a soft lavender hue, purple moonlight, before sleep takes over. 

You don’t even notice the fact that your bedroom door had been left open just a crack. 

Eddie is gone when you wake up the next morning, the sun casting its early morning rays into your windows. The only proof he was even there is the blanket he slept with the night before sloppily folded on the arm of the couch. You don’t think much of his earlier departure. He’s a busy guy running full steam ahead towards his graduation. So you go about your day as normal. Coffee made, a small breakfast of yogurt and some berries you wished you’d grown on your own. You tidy up from the night before, washing the dinner dishes and making a list you shove into the depths of your purse. You need to stop by the store after work, get dinner for the next couple nights. 

The day goes on like so; slow and laborious. You try your hardest not to think about Eddie, try to place him at the back of your mind. You go through work at the Hawkins Journal mindlessly. Walk the colorful aisles of the grocery store with glazed eyes.

By the time you get home, you’re exhausted. It’s late, nearing seven, and the place where Eddie’s van calls home is empty. You assume he’s off doing ‘Eddie Things’ as you called his extracurricular activities that were not of the legal kind. 

You decide to start dinner instead, talking to your friend from back home as you cook. 

“Any new love interests?” She asks at one point, voice giddy with hope. It’d been a year or so since you broke up with your toxic ex and about nine months since you’d arrived in Hawkins with no interesting suitors. 

“Nope, not one.” You rattle off as you stir your boiling water and pasta.

“Bullshit.” She says under her breath before she repeats herself, louder this time. More accusatory. “That’s bullshit. Nine months and not one guy you’re interested in? Did moving to that Podunk town automatically make you a nun?” 

You laugh at this, rolling your eyes as if she could see. 

“No, it didn't make me a nun. But most of these guys are married. Or boring. Or married and boring. Or..” 

“Or?” She catches your avoidance, the tone you held as you trailed off from your former sentence. 

“Or… nothing.” You avoid it as you strain your pasta. 

“Babe.” She says sternly. 

“Fuck. Or they're too young.” You plop the strained pasta unceremoniously in the pasta sauce and throw the white plastic strainer into the sink.

“Young? How young are we talking?” Her voice is fully scandalized and you can only imagine the bright smile she's wearing. 

“20.” You sigh, leaning your hip against the counter as you stir with one hand and hold the phone against your ear with the other. “My neighbor. He’s…. He’s trouble.” 

“Oh, so he’s your type, is what you’re telling me.” She chimes and you roll your eyes once again.

“No. He’s trouble for me. He’s a good guy. Kid. Person.” Another sigh from you as your friend chuckles. 

“Oh, you are so bad off.” A giggle, then, “He’s legal, just go for it. You know, the world would be better if you got laid. You’d be less tense.” 

“No. He hasn’t even graduated high school yet.” You say. 

“He’s 20 and he hasn’t graduated high school?” 

“He’s not stupid.” 

“I didn’t say he was.” Her tone makes your skin crawl. She can tell -over the phone, miles away- just how defensive her question made you. 

“He’s just a kid.” You say again, mostly to yourself. 

“Babe, he’s twenty.” 

“So what, I should just fuck him?” Your voice is getting higher, temper is starting to build. There’s no reason to get so worked up, you know your friend means well, but you know you can’t go there with Eddie. You’d just ruin him. You weren’t good at relationships. 

“Calm down. I’m just saying. If you want it and he wants it and you are both legal consenting adults, what's the issue?”  

“It feels wrong. Like I’m taking advantage of him.” You mutter, abandoning your bubbling pasta to look out your window towards Eddie’s trailer. The van is still gone but now his uncle Wayne’s truck sits out front. 

“Jesus, babe. You’re clinging on to this warped moral high ground you have with your pinkies. Just let go. Live for once. I thought that's why you moved out there anyway. To live your own life however you want.” 

“It is.”

“Then fucking live it.” 

Your friends' words worm their way into your brain, spreading like a disease. You get high to quiet the voice but that doesn’t work like you want. You end the night curled up on the couch with your book, not even reading the words on the page. No. All you can do is think about Eddie and those four damned words. 

Then fucking live it

The days fade into even colder nights. You don’t see Eddie as much as you normally do, but he comes over every now and then to catch you up on how busy he’s been. He’s looking at you differently now, eyes lingering for too long. You don’t notice it at first, his constant heavy stare, more intense then his usual playful one and always on you. 

He’s touching you more. Something your brain noticed after the fifth time the back of his hand grazed across your arm or hip or thigh. It made your whole body light up like a fucking Christmas tree. 

His birthday whirls around. 21. He gets so drunk you find him laid out on his porch on your trip to the mailbox the next morning. His uncle sits on the steps smoking a cigarette, a fond smile on his face. 

He’s back to losing his key and hanging around your trailer by the time graduation comes around. You watch him walk the stage in his green cap and gown, sitting right next to his uncle who sheds a silent tear. Eddie flips his principle the bird after snatching his diploma from his hands. A group of kids cheers rowdily to the left of you, whooping and hollering, and Eddie stands at the edge of the stage with his arms spread wide soaking it all in. 

You don’t expect to see him that night, figured he’d be too busy partying with his friends, so it comes as a shock when there's a knock at your door quarter past eleven. 

“Hey, princess.” He says when you answer the door. He’s leaning against your porch railing with a distinct smile on his face. It reads trouble and you are absolutely smitten. 

“Hey, you. What’s up?” The screen door between you two does nothing to block the early spring breeze from invading your trailer.

“Lost my key.” He says simply. 

“Oh, you did, huh?” You bite back the smile that wants to break across your face. You can tell he’s lying. Can see the little twinkle in his chocolate buttons eyes. 

“Misplaced the damn thing again.”

“You have a problem, Ed.” 

“I need your help, Miss.”

It nearly knocks you off your feet, the tremor in his voice, the desperate pleading cut with a playfulness that short circuits your brain. Eddie smirks, hand reaching towards the door handle. You beat him to it, locking the screen door as he goes to pull it open.

“What do you want, Eddie? I’m about to go to bed.” The tension is too much. If you let him in… 

If you let him in, nothing will be able to stop you. 

“You’re just gonna let me freeze out here?” He whines, dramatically shivering in his leather jacket, vest, and red flannel. 

“Nice try.” You step back, starting to close the inner door when his hand slaps against the aluminum siding of your trailer, trying his hardest to catch your attention before you fully shut him out. 

“I'm starving. I-I’ll sleep in my van but can I just borrow some bread, and peanut butter, and maybe some jelly?” 

And just like that, you finally feel some semblance of control over this boy who makes it his goal to drag the desire out of its dark hidey hole deep within your chest.

Except, it’s not that deeply hidden. Not now. Not after all this time fighting to not feel this way for him. You know you shouldn’t let him in. He’s in a mood, you could tell the second you saw him, and you’re so pent up and horny you're destined to snap. To give in to this unholy feeling that's slowly suffocating you.

But he’s hungry and he’s pouting and giving you those lost puppy eyes…

You unlock the screen door and walk to the kitchen, knowing he’ll trail behind. He always does. 

“Thank you, sweetheart. I thought my stomach was gonna eat itself.” 

You slam through your cabinets and fridge as he stands in the center of your small kitchen. You carry your small load to the kitchen table, dropping the food into a messy pile. Bread, lunch meat, lettuce and tomato, a jar of mayonnaise and a bottle of mustard. 

“You can make it yourself, ya?” You ask and Eddie nods happily. 

“So much better than a PB&J.” He says excitedly, sitting down at the table. You hand him a plate and a knife and decide now would be a good time to finish washing your dinner dishes. 

Time passes quietly. The steady voices from the TV, Eddie’s soft groaning as if this sandwich is the best thing he’s ever eaten. It’s not as difficult to control yourself as you thought it was. But of course, you two aren’t speaking. The mood changes when Eddie opens his mouth. 

“Can I have a drink?” He asks hesitantly, mouth half full and a piece of lettuce hanging out the corner of his mouth as he chews. 

You pop open the fridge and grab one of the sodas you’d bought for him a couple weeks ago. You set it in front of him with a gentle smile. 

“Thanks.” 

It’s a quiet dance, the way his hand somehow brushes your bare leg as you walk back towards the sink. You know he hears the way your breath hitches. Know he has his eyes on you even with your back turned.

He’s cleaned up his mess by the time you’re done with the dishes, wiping your hands off on a dish towel when he makes his way back from the bathroom. You can faintly smell your mouth wash on his breath as he leans next to you to place his plate in the sink.

“I’ll wash it.” He says, looking down at you with a brazen look. The control you felt earlier instantly dissipates. 

“Okay.” 

“You look nice.” 

You roll your eyes at this, partially because it didn’t take him very long to fall back into his flirting but also because these little words really do something for you. All bets are off. If he pushes again there's no doubt you’ll give.

“Just a shirt and shorts.” You say back as he rinses the plate off. 

“Still,” When he’s down he collapses in the kitchen chair with a grunt, digging for his cigarettes he knows he can’t smoke in your house. “I think you look beautiful. Always.” 

“Are you full?” You decide to change the subject. 

“Very. Thank you.” He's quiet for a minute, flicking the wheel on his Zippo as he stares at you. And then, “I’d make you feel better than anyone ever has.” 

You hoist yourself up onto the counter, bare feet kicking against the pale yellow cabinet door, eyes lingering on him from where he sits. His legs are splayed wide, the muscles in his thighs straining against the overly washed black denim. 

“Getting ahead of yourself there, bud.” 

“Am I?” He asks as he sits up slowly, moves as lithe as a snake sizing up its prey. In an instant his whole demeanor has changed. He settles his elbows on his knees, levels you with a pensive look. His dark eyes narrow, but his grin widens and the contrast between the two makes you shiver. 

“You are.” 

“I’m not a virgin.” He says back quickly, a bite to his voice that doesn’t go amiss and you chuckle. He doesn’t like that, you can see it in the way his eyebrows wrinkle at the bridge of his nose. 

“Never said you were. You’re just young, Eddie, and I’m not a high school girl who doesn’t know any better.” Okay, so maybe you weren’t going to allow yourself to give in so easily. Where’s the fun in that?

He chuckles dryly as he raises from his seat. He steps in front of you, not touching, but his hands fist at his sides like he wants to. Like he longs for it. 

“Bold of you to assume I even mess with those high school girls.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, the groupies that hang out at The Hideout? Wait at the stage to tell you how good you are with your fingers?” There’s more bite to your words than you intend but if it fazes him he doesn’t seem to show it. His hot rough palms find the chilly hills of your kneecaps, his eyes flickering down to the exposed skin as he smooths his thumb there, before he’s locked back onto your withering gaze. 

“You sound jealous, Sweetheart.” 

And you laugh at this, a quick belly laugh that has your head falling back against the cabinet behind you. You laugh because you are fucking jealous and you hate yourself for it. You shouldn't be jealous of your freshly twenty-one year old neighbor burying his cock into a pussy that isn't yours. But fuck, it sears through you like a hot knife, made even worse as he eclipses the space that's left between you two. 

“I’m not jealous.” You scoff while your body is ravaged with the flames of his touch. “I’m sure you’ve fucked any girl that let you put your hands up her skirt. But I’m not some easy little girl.” 

“A woman.” His voice is entirely mocking as he ignores the hateful crassness in your words. 

“Yeah, a woman, and it takes more than some sloppy head and eager dick to make me come.” 

He settles himself between your legs, hands sliding up the expanse of your thighs until his fingertips dig into the flesh right below the hem of your little sleep shorts. He leans in, the smell of the weed he must have smoked before he came over lingering on his clothes and hair; the smell strong enough to have you feeling intoxicated. 

Or, maybe that was all him. 

“You have no idea what I’m capable of, sweetheart.” You want to wipe that smug grin away, slap him across his pretty face so he stops this before it goes too far, but one quick intrusive thought sends your mind into a tizzy. 

He’d like it. Little fucking masochist. 

“I’m not some innocent little kid, baby, I’d fuck you so good you wouldn’t remember your name.” 

As sexy as he sounds, as good as it sounds, you roll your eyes at his self assuredness. This sweet boy, the same boy that's confided in you about his past with tear filled eyes and spent hours blabbing about his DnD campaigns, saying he’d fuck you like an animal just feels so absurd. Yet it arouses you just as much, has your panties damp and sticking to your slick folds.

“You say that to all the girls you fuck?” 

“See; jealous.” He hisses back, eyes so dark and blown wide you can barely see their beautiful umber color.  

“Not jealous.” You shake your head, eyes begging to look away from his intense stare down, but you can’t. You’re trapped in his hypnotic slow blink as his eyes flash to your pursed lips. 

“I think you’re lying.” He argues, a harsh whisper as his head tips against yours. Your breath leaves in a choked rush when he nuzzles his nose into the side of your head, teeth nipping your earlobe. 

“Eddie.” You warn weakly, your hand splayed against his firm chest as you go to push him away, but Eddie has other ideas. He snatches your wrist up in a tight grip, guiding your hand slowly down his stomach until you're cupping his hard bulge. He’s hot under your touch and you both gasp in unison when he squeezes your hand against the heavy ridge of him under his denim. 

“Eddie…” You try again halfheartedly, head knocking against his as his cock twitches at the breathy whimper of his name. 

“Do you see what you do to me? You make me so hard." He rolls his hips up, drags his hard cock over your palm. His moan rumbles like thunder in his chest. “Want you so bad, I know you want me too.” 

“It’s not gonna happen, Eddie.” You whisper back, try with all your might to steel yourself, to make your words sound steady and sure. You want to. Fuck, you really really want to. But there's still that part of you attempting to resist the burning flames of desire. “You’re a kid.” 

“I’m not a fucking kid.” He growls, grips the underside of your knees to drag you further into him. You can feel him against the inside of your thigh, hot and pulsing and begging to be touched. 

“It’s wrong, Eddie, please.” Your hands are braced against the counter as he presses his forehead to yours, pushes against you until your back is arched. Your core presses against his cock in the most agonizing way in this new position, stealing the breath from your lungs as he hovers his lips over yours. 

“But it feels so good. Stop pushing me away. I’m a grown ass man, sweetheart.” His teeth drag quickly against your bottom lip and as he pulls away you chase after unconsciously, needing his touch -his taste- as much as he needs yours. 

“Fuck, you’re not making this easy for me. I have morals, you know.” You’re whining, head rolling to the side as he slowly starts to grind his hips into yours. 

“Oh, your poor morals.” His hand is gripping your jaw in an instant, fingertips digging almost too roughly into the soft hollow of your cheeks. “You’re so sure you’re gonna corrupt me, which is laughable. Don’t you see, baby?” Eddie soothes his thumb across your bottom lip, drags it down till it bounces gently back in place. 

“I want you to corrupt me. Use me. Teach me everything you know, everything you want, so you’ll never need anyone but me.” 

His words hit you square in the chest but he doesn’t give you a second to interrupt. He has a point to prove and nothing will stop him now. 

“I know you feel it, this thing between us that I felt the moment I saw you in that sexy little robe and your muddy rain boots. That night changed everything for me. You’re the only person who really sees me. I know it. Just like I know how hard it’s been for you. Resisting me, telling yourself how wrong it is and then moaning my name when you touch yourself in the dark of your room while I’m right down the hall. You can’t deny the cold hard truth, Sweetheart.” 

Your eyes widen as you pull away from him. He lets you create space, lets you digest the bomb he just dropped on you. He’d heard you that night. You’d been so careful, so quiet. At least you thought you had. 

“Tell me you want me. Let me make you feel good, baby. I know you need it. It’s been so long, hasn’t it? Since someone has touched you; since someone made you come.” He’s so sure of himself. So sure that he’s hit the proverbial nail on the head. That he’s got you all figured out. You’re torn between giving him credit for being so observant and being pissed that he’s using it against you. But he’s not wrong. It’s been so long since you’ve allowed yourself to be swept off your feet by someone. So long since you’ve felt a touch other than your own and here he was offering himself up on a silver platter with the promise of rocking your world. 

What was the use in fighting something that you both equally wanted? Two consenting adults giving in to the burning flames of desire. 

“Eddie-” He cuts you off quickly, his hips still against you, his hands digging into your fleshy hips. 

“Please, give me a chance.” His voice begs, thick with need and worry. He doesn’t want to go back to being alone if you say no. He’s well aware that the words leaving his mouth and the grip he has on you changes everything. 

“Eddie.” You grab him by the tattered collar of his flannel, pull him in until your lips brush his. “Shut up and kiss me already.”

He wastes no time slamming his lips to yours in an eager sloppy kiss. You kiss him back, waiting for him to slow his pace, to calm down a little, but he just presses himself closer and grips the back of your neck in a shaky hold. The blunt crescent of his fingernails digs into the sensitive skin of your neck. His other hand leaves its bruising grip on your hip to hold you tight to him, chest to chest, hearts pounding in tandem against one another. 

You let him lead, let him find his groove. Sloppy wet kisses turn slow and true, his nose bumping yours, his tongue licking into your mouth tantalizingly. The first time he does it you whimper, sure that if you had been standing you would have been weak in the knees. But you’re still locked onto the counter top, thighs clenched tightly around his waist, the heel of your foot digging into the backs of his thighs. You fought this for so long. One taste and now you’re not sure if you can let him go. 

But that’s something to think about another time and not when Eddie has a handful of your breast, thumb rolling tight circles around your pebbled nipple that pokes through the fabric of your shirt. 

“I knew you fucking wanted me.” He teases once he pulls away, a string of spit collected against kiss swollen lips. His breathing is heavy and his cheeks are ruddy and he looks so god damn beautiful in the soft lighting of your kitchen. 

You know there's no stopping you now. No going back. You were always just preventing the inevitable. You want him, you always have, and here he is serving himself up on a silver platter.

"Shut up and fuck me already, you punk."

[idiasmentalhealth]

GOD DAMNIT

MY HOZIER OBSESSION IS GOING TOO FAR‼️‼️‼️

I AM NOW LINKING MULTIPLE HOZIER SONGS NOT ONLY TO KURAS AND LEANDER BUT TO GRIM

SO I'M GONNA TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT SONGS ARE REMINDING ME OF HIM BECAUSE THE BRAINROT FROM FINISHING MY FIRST PLAYTHROUGH IS VERY REAL

there's so many...

cut just so the post doesn't look too long

OBVIOUSLY THIS ONE HAS TO BE FIRST SUNSHINE.

"But whose heart would not take flight?

Betray the moon as acolyte

On first and fierce affirming sight

Of sunlight, sunlight, sunlight"

"Once I had wondered what was holdin' up the ground

But I can see that all along, love, it was you all the way down

Leave it now, I am sky-bound

If you need to, darling, lean your weight to me

We'll float away, but if we fall

I only pray, don't fall away from me"

THE WAY I HAD TO STOP MID PLAYTHROUGH TO PLAY THIS SONG ON REPEAT AND THEN CONTINUE

"My life was a storm, since I was born

How could I fear any hurricane?

If someone asked me at the end

I'll tell them put me back in it

Darling, I would do it again, ah, ah

If I could hold you for a minute

Darling, I'd go through it again, ah, ah"

AGAIN WITH THE LIGHT

"Could this be how every day begins?

The sky set to burst

The gold and the rust

The colour erupts

You filling my cup

The sun coming up

Like I lived my whole life

Before the first light"

psychopomp... get it cuz he's... the grim reaper...

"The feeling came late

I'm still glad I met you

The memory hurts

But does me no harm

Your hand in my pocket

To keep us both warm

The poor thing in the road

Its eye still glistening

The cold wet of your nose

The Earth from a distance

See how it shines"

"Some part of me must have died

The first time that you called me baby

And some part of me came alive

The first time that you called me baby

These days I think I owe my life

To flowers that were left here by my mother

Ain't that like them, gifting life to you again

This life lived mostly underground

Unknowing either sight nor sound

'Til reaching up for sunlight

Just to be ripped out by the stem"

"When you move

I'm put to mind of all that I wanna be

When you move

I could never define all that you are to me

So move me, baby

Shake like the bough of a willow tree

You do it naturally

Move me, baby"

and last, but certainly not least,

"I didn't care much how long I lived

But I swear I thought I dreamed her

She never asked me once about the wrong I did

When my time comes around

Lay me gently in the cold, dark earth

No grave can hold my body down

I'll crawl home to her"

[aspiring-house-husband]

there was once a wizard who was obsessed with a young man. there was nothing particularly special about him- he was no prince, no sorcerer, nothing of note. but he was beautiful and alluring, sweet and kind. the wizard coveted him, was obsessed with no one else laying eyes upon him. 

the wizard invited the boy to his tower and offered him to stay the night, so that he would not have to travel home in the night. but he placed a spell on the young man. he was trapped, unknowing how the time passed. he could know his memories, understand that he had to wash his blankets in the morning, but he could never comprehend that he had been in the tower far too long. 

it was not for lack of luxury. he had fur blankets and any hobby he could think of pursuing. he wanted for nothing- the wizard’s magic made it so. 

and as such he remained, painting, quilting, carving, for decades. he could not know it, but birthdays passed. his youth remained while time moved on, while the wizard grew old and died, while the forest overgrew the tower and the world forgot about him. 

that is, until a new wizard attempted to piece together the magic of the ancient kingdom lost. he could sense magic, deep in the forest; magic he could learn from, perhaps? 

tangled in ivy and deep in the old forest, this new wizard finds the remnants of a tower wall. vials that were once brimming with potion lay shattered underneath rotted shelves, and books waterlogged by years of weather barely cling onto their bindings. 

but the magic is not here. it is up the stairs. up toward the light of the sky above the canopy, up and into stone that becomes pristine as he climbs, torches that illuminate brighter the closer he gets, until there is a door with polished metal hinges. 

he knocks, and the door opens. 

“oh!” says the boy, confusion crossing his eyes. “i thought you were the wizard. are you his apprentice?”

“pardon me?” the young wizard says, but he’s tugged into the warm room and the door closed behind him. 

“or are you here to take me back home? he said he’d get me an escort.”

“i don’t-“

“shh, don’t worry,” says the boy, dropping to the bed next to the wizard. “it doesn’t matter. i’m happy to have the company.”

“how long have you been waiting?” 

the boy leans forward and presses a shy kiss to the wizard’s shoulder. 

“far too long, i’m sure. i’ve missed having company.” he lifts a hand to trace the forehead, temple, cheekbones of the wizard. “i can’t help but miss some things more than others.” the wizard swallows. dryly. 

“what things?” he says, and the boy laughs.

“things that a handsome man like you must be more than capable of bestowing,” he says, scooting a bit closer. “can’t i have desires?”

“you can,” says the wizard. he knows he shouldn’t- something is happening here. something magical, and ancient. something he couldn’t understand. but this boy in front of him, this man out of time… he was handsome, and warm. he was like a nymph, a young god, and he wanted… wanted…

“can’t i desire you?”

“you can,” says the wizard, breathless. with just that much permission, the nymph throws him to his back, straddling his hips. 

“i can have you?” asks the nymph, and the wizard nods. like he had been released from bonds, the nymph undresses them both, strong and nimble alike, tossing it all from the bed. he whines at just the touch of their skin together, the wizard’s hands on his hips, his body beneath him. 

his hips rock slowly, more insistently pressing them together, teasing whimpers from them both. with ease he sits up and slides them together, his head dropping back with how it feels to be full. he hasn’t had this in… a long time. it overcomes him, and he can’t help himself, fucking himself full, whimpering and gripping down onto the wizard’s hips beneath him. his breath hitches and his thighs quiver- he can’t help it, his panting overtakes him and he collapses onto his lover’s chest. 

“tired?” the wizard asks as he tucks a lock of hair back. the nymph nods and whimpers, shivers racking through his body. “you haven’t even cum and you’re this wrecked? cute.” he strains his neck to kiss his lover’s forehead before tossing them both over. he is even more radiant on his back, soft hair splayed on the pillow and jaw slack with moans as he gets fucked, deeper and faster. one hand grips a pillow behind him while his other digs into his lover’s back. 

“please,” he whimpers, legs lifting, thighs trembling. “please, please, please.” he says it over and over, until the sounds lose their meaning, the vowels disappear, he only hisses out the end of the plea as he whimpers. the wizard presses harder, holding his lover down, pulling him close, making his voice bounce. it builds as he thrusts, fucking until he feels his lover cry out and clamp down around him. he spills deep inside, lowering himself down onto the nymph’s chest as they ride it out together, bucking and whimpering. 

“withhold,” breathes the nymph, a soft laugh making his chest bounce. at once, the wizard remembers just what has befallen the man, his little turn of phrase one that had fallen out of fashion a long time ago. 

“i’m gonna take you home,” he says, drinking in the magic in the air. “you don’t belong here.”

“i’ll go anywhere you want to take me.” 

[thesiltverses]

Just realised what felt familiar about ‘What’s yet to come’ from on the birthing of gods and it was the army trying to investigate Eskew like

‘Spyplanes swoop in and out, mapping brief tracts of transformed land, navigators of the Tangleknot Queen losing their minds and abandoning their controls as they attempt to make sense of the hills which will not remain hills and sky which does not stay sky for long.’

‘They’ve sent in drones, of course, flying high over the target area before swooping in for a closer look, but inevitably in a matter of minutes the drones stop responding to direction and the camera captures a view of the ground that spirals in closer and closer before the feed cuts out, and the operators swear amongst themselves that it’s as if someone else has seized the controls away from them.’

Was that intentional or do I have Eskew Brain?

You don't have Eskew Brain, but I don't think it was a conscious parallel, more just an inevitable repetition from two different examples of Unknowable and Untameable Landscape!

[thequeer07puss]

What exactly IS the Eye of Ra?

Ra, the creator, the Sun, the one who emerged from his own will, once plucked out his eye, worried about the disappearance of his children Shu and Tefnut, and placed it upon his head as the uraeus when it stomped in anger at having been replaced by the Lord. He did so once again, enraged at the disobedience of early humans, and in the form of Sekhmet the Eye of Ra raged until its rampage was stopped by the cleverness of the gods, whereupon she turned into the benevolent Hathor/Bastet. Such stories we heard about the Eye of the creator, the instrument and indicator of his will, but what is she, what role does she have?

The Eye of Ra as an extension of him

As the name implies, the Eye of Ra is quite literally, his eye, a part of him, made from his purest essence. She is the part of him that dwells on earth while he is in the sky and that regulates mortal affairs. Perhaps the “Eye” is not literal, but in the metaphorical sense of her function as a spy or a representative of Ra among humans (the Egyptians were, after all, fans of wordplay). This may be why so many functions of the Eye of Ra are related to human affairs: birth, marriage, love, joy, war, plague, healing…all these functions and aspects to distribute his blessings (and curses) to humanity while he rolls on the back of the Heavenly Cow.

The Eye of Ra as an assistant to him

On the Atet boat, the Lord, his uraeus circling the sun disk shining on his forehead, is not alone. He is attended by a flurry of deities. Among them, Heka with their knowledge of magical words, Sia with their powerful psyche, Hu with an equally prolific tongue, and most brilliant of them all, the Eye of Ra, in the form of Hathor or Bastet, his aide and attendant, his very own daughter, who helps him ride on the back of the Heavenly Cow, and even sometimes IS the Heavenly Cow, in the form of Mehet-Weret, from whose back the Lord brings his light to the world. Her undying fealty is essential to keeping the world running and mortals living.

The Eye of Ra as his consort and counterpart

Depending on who you ask, the goddess Hathor is Ra’s mother, his sister, his wife or his daughter. Similarly, the goddess Raet-Tawy is quite literally a female Ra, Ra as a goddess, an aspect of his Eye that seems to be just him in a female version. Through his Eye, maybe Ra makes himself our mother, as well as our father when he is in Heaven. Maybe the heavenly aspect of the creator feels male, but their aspect on earth is female, maybe the Eye of Ra IS Ra’s form on earth. Maybe Ra’s eye, cares for the world as our mother (for we are Ra’s children and she was the first mother), our shepherd (for we are Ra’s cattle), because she helped to create us as much as Ra did. Maybe she is one of the many, many kas of the infinite mystery that is our creator, one expressed in a variety of ways that blend with each other while staying perfectly distinct.

This last bit actually terrifies me a little. It is a thought that fills me with awe and makes so much sense while tying the rest of my tirade together. The thought of just how vast, how strange and truly unknowable Ra is —how any of the gods is, to be honest— fills me with awe, reverence and a little fear as I contemplate the god that made this world. The one who is male and female on his kas, the one who is our father and mother, whose presence in the sky is the sun, and whose presence on earth is in love, joy, pleasure, healing, but also rage, plague, death and desolation. How versatile in interpretation is the concept of the Eye of Ra, who is a being made directly from him, while being independent and different from him.

[ziploc849]

My final TMA post of season 2. I think in the future I might try and keep these posts a lot shorter, limit my word count or sentence amount or something like that. But in the meantime, enjoy my thoughts on Episode 79 and 80!! I’ll be making a separate posts about some of my thoughts specifically regarding some shit we learned in episode 80. This is a long one so buckle in yall. I hope my ramblings are at least semi coherent

Ep 79: So many fucking thoughts. Jon doesn’t remember what Sasha looked like. Martin and Tim saw Not-Sasha even if they don’t understand it. Martin and Tim ending up in Michael’s. Domain? That feels like a fitting word at this point, even the way Michael talks, the way he has to remember the word for “sport”, makes me think that he’s not even something that’s good at pretending to be human. Not-Them is so fucking scary, the idea of them “wearing” the people they kill not like wearing their skin, but like wearing their essence, taking their place in the world but not their likeness. Fucking terrifying. Not-Sasha saying the institute “has the biggest eyes you ever did see”. Saying that if they took Jon’s place and became the Archivist he’d “miss the Unknowing” whatever that means. She talks about “robbing the eye of its pupil”. Archivist is capitalized in the transcripts when she says it, like it’s a title or a name. So much weird eye imagery in this fucking show. Strange mystery man appearing from the shadows and. Killing Not-Sasha? I’m not entirely sure what that was. God this episode was a lot from like 20-100 so fast

Ep 80: one of the YouTube comments on this episode is from that one TikTok “day 23 in the chamber, they ain’t found me yet but when they do they gonna be surprised” and that gave me a good laugh after this HELL of a fucking episode. You’re telling me we meet JURGEN LEITNER and then witness his DEATH in the same fucking episode???? What the shit??!?? All of my answers and ideas from the last episode were immediately answered here lmao

The Not-Them is trapped, not dead, likely never able to die according to Leitner. The real Sasha is dead forever, and it’s not surprising but there is a deep injustice in that. She didn’t have an inkling of what was going on.

There’s a book that works on Smirke’s architecture and is related to the phobia of claustrophobia, another hint I think.

The amusement in Jon’s voice with “That’ll be our Gerard” makes me wonder if I’ve missed something about his character related to the others, or if it’s just Jon happy to recognize something familiar in all of this.

The evolution through the episode of “what do you mean you thought they were just books, they are right?” to “oh god. They are so much more than books.” Leitner says some of them must like the flame, that things would take a different form if the book was burned. Is that what some of the creatures are? The ones that aren’t even pretending to be something strange and terrifying? Beings released from books and allowed to be more overtly dangerous? Like unbinding Not-Sasha from the table?

The description of what happened when the house was attacked is chilling and brings back many, many memories. Stabbed through the throat by something with too many teeth and limbs like knives sounds like the bajillions of people-to-the-left we’ve seen. Similar to Not-Them I think? Or maybe there’s a different example I can’t remember. Pulled into a maw that opened up from the floor, which sounds identical to the hole in The Butchers Window. Ran into a door that didn’t exist, Michael obviously. A hand through the roof simply grabbing someone is reminiscent of the way the sky ate, or somehow took the man in Freefall. An assistant whose name isn’t memorable anymore (though all the others’ are) being pulled into a pile of meat, the former sounds similar to what we saw in Lost and Found, but the meat mentioned sounds more reminiscent to things we saw in The Man Upstairs. Rooms taken by darkness or fire, things we have already seen the power of overtly and know very well.

Gertrude had 3 assistants, all 3 “meeting an unpleasant end”. I do not like the foreshadowing that offers for Tim and Martin, with Sasha already gone.

And of course. The entities. The humans to us, the ants. I find the analogy Leitner uses to be particularly interesting, even if I don’t know if he meant it in this way. Fingernails digging, changing the world in a fraction of a second, changing reality in a way ants could never fully understand. Like a creature taking the entire idea of a person and warping it to meet their needs. Changing memories and photographs and nearly everything in its path. The sky moving, in ways it shouldn’t because it just doesn’t, to pluck a man from reality. Eyes watching, knowing and seeing and observing, filing information away in a horrifying and terribly understanding kind of way. Always there, it’s people of interest never far from view even as they’re driven mad. Shadows vast and unfathomable, darkness that seems to spread the way light does. Endless expanses entirely impossible and yet very, very real to the people who see it. Themes we’ve seen before all over this series.

Leitner says Michael is “The Distortion”, “The Spiral”. Illusions and hallucinations and insanity. I think some things are falling into place, and I might have to make a seperate post on it cause this one is already way too long, but I think my phobias theory wasn’t too far off.

Elias killed Gertrude. Gertrude and Leitner were going to destroy the archives. Elias took files, files on “The Stranger”. Another mention of the Unknowing. Another entity? An event to come?

[Brutal Pipe Murder] made me laugh far harder than it should’ve. Sorry Leitner. What is the dripping (I don’t want to know). I don’t know how long Tim and Martin were gone, but gods they came on an awful scene. And they think Jon did it. God season 3 is gonna be Fucked.