#watching her own corpse rot

[arolesbianism]

Moon *screams and sobs*

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

Can't sleep brain too full of death

[lukolathoughts]

Dearest Gentle readers,

I have been a member of Tumblr for a while without posting a blog entry. I suppose I have been getting the lay of the land and trying to formulate my thoughts. As most of you know, I am a tarot reader on YouTube and I also share my thoughts on X. I am a Lukola through and through and no amount of bullying, intimidation, nasty comments etc. will deter me from my mission. The last few weeks my trolling comments have increased exponentially from what I can only assume are desperate Jakehole's, (apparently I am credited for making the term 'Jakehole' up, I actually have no idea if it was me or not, but I like it) trying to convince me that Nicola is with Jake and Luke is with Antonia. I will come to my thoughts on this in a moment.

I do realise that a public tarot reader, I put myself at risk to exposure and criticism from these types of people. I am fully aware of that. What I underestimate sometimes is the sheer vitriol they come with. I am an empath also and I absorb a lot of a energy, not just from the fandom, Luke and Nic and adjacents, but from my own life as well. I am a teacher and I am surrounded by a lot of people daily. I have always used my television shows as a coping mechanism to detach from reality and 'switch off'. I never thought this time last year I'd be sharing tarot readings on YouTube about a real life celebrity couple that I was barely aware of in January 2024. But here we are. Bridgerton season 3 took hold of my brain and injected some sort of magic crack into it and I haven't been the same since. Don't get me started on the press tour. I've never seen anything like it and it was honestly like a spiritual awakening.

But I digress, I have been reading for a few years and learning the tarot cards and their meanings. I have watched countless YT videos by other readers and I came into this fandom watching the OG tarot readers of the fandom. I do not see myself as any different or special, I just read the cards as they come out. I also repeatedly say 'this is for fun and entertainment purposes only, I do not personally know Luke and Nicola'. And the fact of the matter is I don't know them, none of us do. I do not follow them around all day like some weird little psychic Martha from Baby Reindeer. I merely read the energy of the cards and I observe.

Why I love teaching English so much for me, is there is never a right or wrong answer in English Literature. It is up to your interpretation and all about reading the subtext of what is really going on. Now you might call me delusional, but I have always had an uncanny knack for predicting who the murderer in a story is before the end of a novel. It's called critical thinking. This drives my husband mad because he is very black and white and for him 2+2 = 4. Simple as. For me, I'm like wait a minute, what if... My brain is like a whimsical, magical unicorn sometimes, but I always go with my gut and my intuition. I will NOT waver on my intuition because I believe it is stronger than my rational mind.

Ok, so here we go. In my opinion haters!! Nicola is not now or ever has been with Jake Dunn romantically. My readings tell me he sees her as mother figure and mentor. Jake is clearly gay and most likely in some sort of relationship with Dylan. I think the Jakehole ship is a dead, rotting corpse. Nicola and Jake have reached the end of their agreement where she provides him with networking opportunities in exchange for some possible PR diversion to take the heat off Nicola's real relationship. William Tell is out. Luke is home from Rome, there is no need for Jake anymore. I also get the feeling from my readings that Jake is tired. Nicola is tired and Dylan is doing his best to set the narrative straight. I do not need tarot cards for this, it's blindingly obvious. As far as I know, Jake has no straight male friends. It is extremely rare in UK culture for straight men to hang out with all gay men and feel secure about that. It's just the way things are. I am not saying Jake and Nic are not friends, of course they are and I won't begrudge them that. I think he has a lot of genuine affection for her, but he also sees her as someone who can get him places and opportunities which we have seen time and time again.

And now we come to Antonia. I know she is only 23/4 and young and whatever. I have taught students older than her. But I will be truthful and say I don't like her energy. I don't like reading on her. I don't trust her little dancing self. I did have some sympathy for her in October as I had big crushes on boys when I was young, I get it. Luke is hot. But that pasta video she shared in Rome (a video she could have got from anywhere and shared an hour after she had seen Luke had been there) by her was mean, malicious and intentional to hurt the fandom. Her flouncing around with a shitty red bag always implying she's in Luke's vicinity is also callous and calculating and she's shared so much pasta stories now, it almost puts me off eating it. Almost, I love pasta. The biggest takeaway for me is she was not with Luke this Christmas and NYE. It is well documented where she was. We do not not know where Luke was, but we do know Nic was spotted with a lovely tan at the WT premiere. Could Antonia be PR? I sigh, because I think it's more complicated than that. In my readings, I do pick up a delusional obsession from her in regards to Luke. But she is convenient to bring up when they need her. I know the haters will call me delusional for thinking this and as my husband would say if 2 + 2 = 4 then it's 4.

But is it 4? Is it so straightforward as that? My intuition is telling me no, it's not. We have had no sign of Luke being anywhere near Antonia since July in Sorrento when he jumped on a plane and left two days early alone. All Antonia has are literally pasta videos and photos, that I am convinced, enraged Luke. She is giving me serious Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction vibes.

Let's address the elephant in the room. The comment by 'Luke's mum' on her private FB account to a relative. I think it's bullshit. I have three boys and I'm telling you now I would walk through fire if anyone touched a hair on their heads. I will go to prison for my kids. If I was Luke's mum and some 23 year old dancer had systematically tried to ruin my son's career, and she did folks, I would not be writing on a public page outing her as my son's girlfriend. It is all too suspicious and convenient. I could speculate for hours on what has happened, but you guys have group chats and your own brains for that. As one ship falls, another one rises in an unexplained manner.

In conclusion, yes I do believe Nic and Luke are together and this is a very important time for them right now. The silence is LOUD for me. I keep getting the four of swords for Nic. She is resting and taking care of herself in the way that she should. Luke is in a besotted Emperor mode. All is good. Until Nic and Luke specify otherwise, that is what I am sticking with.

[naffeclipse]

Charm Brought It Back Pt. 4

Reader x Witches!Sun, Moon, & Eclipse

Commission Info

Once more, I return with @jackofallrabbits and I's Hocus Pocus AU, and I'm so excited to introduce @deliasmilkshake's cover art as well! Thank you so much to Delia for their beautiful work! <3 Now we return to the boys hunting down their darling bride while the reader discovers more of what unfolded in the past.

Content Warning: Suggestive themes, heavy kissing, heavy touching, injury, blood, violence, (temporary) animal death, and (temporary) character death.

———

In the far distance, a thick column of gray smoke chimneys up into the night sky, blotting out the light of stars. You look back again. The road has curved and how bends around homes and the beginning of small-town business. Windows are decorated with stickers of pumpkins and cauldrons with glowing green soups, and scarecrows line the corners. The pavement becomes a sidewalk underneath your feet. In an awkward gait, balancing upon the stint of his one leg and his only good foot, Michael stays close beside you.

A tear drips from your chin onto the bloody, dirty fur of the rabbit in your arms. Vanessa’s body is warm to the touch. You clutch her to your chest.

“It’s okay,” Michael murmurs. He lifts a putrid, rotten hand as if to pat your shoulder, but stops and lowers it again. “She’s not dead.”

“Michael,” you half sob, half snap. “She’s not breathing.”

“She will breathe again.” He holds your gaze. Twin pinpricks of white flame burn in his black, sunken eyes. “It’s part of the curse. She can’t die.”

You stare at him, disbelief squeezing your throat. You gently slot your fingers through the soft white coat of the woman who no longer has her own form. The brothers did this. The witches’ curse clench Michael tightly in a dark fist of unholy power. His body has dissolved into a walking corpse. 

Will the same happen to Vanessa? Will she now return as a rotting rabbit corpse? Your gut twists at such a thought.

Why can’t the witches take it back? Why can’t they stop and make it right? Is this the reason they were hanged by Michael’s ancestor—because they casted harm upon everyone?

You can’t bear to think of this anymore. The rabbit is small in your arms and you want to clean away the blood drying on her pale fur. 

A few cars honks at another. The night is well past the witching hour. The faint pounding echo of music from a party pricks your ears. Hunching over Vanessa, you wonder if she’s ever been outside of the brothers’ home for all the years she was cursed. 

Her long ears fall flat against her skull. You gently pet her and whisper an apology. It’s your fault.

You rest your hand over her and weep again, almost stumbling down the sidewalk before Michael pulls you closer to a brick wall of a building. A soft movement pushes back against your fingers. You stop and look down at the rabbit.

Her little torso expands in the slightest, then deflates. Then again. Her body moves with life.

“Vanessa?” You touch her in the slightest. Have you gone mad or is she breathing?

“Augh.” You hear her voice slip out from the rabbit’s mouth. “How did you escape? Is Michael with you?”

In dumb silence, you watch Vanessa lift her head and blink her green eyes up at you.

“Where are the witches?” she asks, terribly serious.

The gears of your mind spin. You’ve read accounts of sickly and comatose people being buried alive through the 17th and 19th centuries. Premature burials. Sometimes, out of fear of the person not truly being passed, bells would be fastened to their fingers with a string so if there were any movement. The ringing struggle would alert any grave attendant or family members nearby that the deceased was, in fact, alive. A few days would be spared to ensure death is final before they would be buried.

But you held her motionless body in your hands. Her body is caked in blood.

“You were dead,” you say, breathless with horror.

“Now I’m not.” Her pink nose twitches. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Are you alright?” Michael’s brow creases in the slightest while looking over her. “That couldn’t have been… pleasant.”

“Dying never is.” She pauses. Her ears prick before falling back against her skull. She presses a paw to your collarbone and pushes herself up in your arms to be face to face with you. A whisker brushes your chin. “Are you crying?”

“No, well, yes, but I was so scared you were gone!” You wipe a hand across your cheek, smearing salty tracks of tears as you try to stop another sniffle. “How did you survive?”

“I didn’t. I died, and the curse brought me back.” Her ears give an annoyed twitch. “Aren’t you listening?”

“I’m sorry.” You bite your bottom lip. You pet her head once. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

She falls silent. The weight of her green eyes falls over you, and for several breaths, she simply stares before the quiet of the street is broken by her small voice.

“When the brothers cursed me, the villagers knew they had done something to cause my disappearance but no one mourned me. I only had Afton…”

Michael shuffles a little closer. You ignore the stench of rotting flesh and hold Vanessa’s gaze. A weariness lays upon her head, a kind of exhaustion that a hundred years of sleep couldn’t cure. More than that, she seems sad and alone. 

You hold her tighter.

“I tried to get his attention.” Her eyes slide to Michael for a heartbeat then away again. “He said he could do nothing for me but give me a clean, painless death. I allowed him. He snapped my neck in his hands.”

You gasp sharply. How could he do that so quickly, without hesitation? A sickness swirls in your stomach.

“That’s horrible,” you utter. “He didn’t try to help you break the curse?”

Her paw falls down from your collarbone and she sinks deeper into your arms. She avoids your gaze.

“When I came back to life, I begged for his help. He told me to never return to him again—there is no hope for me and he would not tolerate the presence of dark magic. I would leave or else he would sic his hound on me.” She stops a moment, the silence thick. “He thought his hound’s teeth would kill me for certain. It did not.”

The unmistakable air of shame clings to her small body. Michael’s fists clench as his eyes widen. You catch the grind of his molars through the threads of flesh stretched over his cheeks and share the same fury over such an injustice. 

She was his right hand.

“Vanessa…” You touch her little head. “I’m so sorry.”

“He should not have abandoned you,” Michael seethes through his teeth. “Why would he toss you aside so heartlessly?”

Vanessa doesn’t look at Michael, the descendant of the man who betrayed her in her hour of need.

“Afton was right.” Her eyes turn upon you like shards of emerald, glinting in shattered pieces. “The curse can’t be undone.”

“No,” you whisper. “There must be a way.”

Your thoughts spill slowly like molasses. The brothers knew she would come back to life—even if throwing her off the roof is cruel and horrifying. Did they care? Did they think they could have you then if they removed every last obstacle between you?

Are they capable of being better?

Michael turns towards the street, his brow furrowed and his teeth set in a furious grimace. His darkly rotten flesh catches on a yellow streetlight, slashing over the angler cavity where his nose once was. The silence twists into you as you gaze at both of your companions.

They need your help. But how do you undo curses in a night when you just discovered witches and their magic?

“We have to keep moving.” Michael straightens like a soldier, his words faraway while his fists continue to hang at his sides. “Come on. Follow me.”

Further along the pavement, you spy a couple of people walking. You stiffen in place, glancing at Michael in alarm but he nods back at the people. He continues walking forward, undaunted. You follow him closely, peering back at the strangers to find them dressed as aliens and cowboys and devils. 

Costumes.

“We can blend in for a while, hide out,” Michael says.

“But…” You look down at yourself, your sweat almost falling off of you due to the tears and holes littering it, and the rabbit in your arms looks no better than a murder victim. Not to mention that Michael is the living dead.

“The witches only have one broomstick left and they’ll have to pick us out like needles in a haystack.” He tugs on your elbow and you follow. Vanessa nestles against your chest, strangely silent after coming back to life. Is that usual for when she resurrects? Is she in pain or does she need to rest after such an ordeal?

Deeper in town, the streets become bustling with people wearing pirate eye patches and waving hooks around, and bad, neon printed 80s costumes. They flow towards a high school, the gym doors held open where you find flashing orange and white lights with a sharp backdrop of music pounding through the air. The threat of a headache scrapes against your temples.

“We just need to hide until dawn. Then they will die.” Michael glances back at you while he drags you further inside, past the doors and into the crowded, stuffy floor of the gymnasium. 

Your shoulders sink. Scratching softly at Vanessa’s back, gently scraping away flakes of drying blood, your mind becomes lost in the thunderous overlap of voices and music. Michael keeps weaving through the crowd in a relentless march.

Death sounds too cruel of a fate for anyone. You gently pet Vanessa while she scans the room with a slight alarm. Has she ever seen a modern celebration of Halloween? She may know it better as All Hallows’ Eve. The brothers will be no better in facing such a commotion of shifted cultures and costumes and technology. 

The brothers were hanged, and Vanessa remained trapped in a rabbit form.

If the brothers die, Michael and Vanessa will remain trapped in their curses. Your heart is heavy and your feet are slow to keep up with Michael. There must be another way. 

The ceremony.

You bump into a person dressed as a firefighter and Michael glances back impatient before he drives you deeper into the gym. He finds a dark space behind the punch bowl table and tucks you both into its shadow. The flare of bright, orange lights dances across your feet before darting away. 

A twist in your chest tightens around your lungs and you become breathless. You don’t know what to do. The ceremony could mean giving up your very life to spare the witches of their untimely demise at the bells tied around their wrists. Maybe you can convince them still to give up the dark hold they have over your friends.

You could marry them. You blush softly at the thought, but your insides are knotted and caught in tangled. Can all three of them share you? Would they love you or use you simply to save themselves? Will they hurt your friends again?

Vanessa’s death and revival leaves you raw and thin-skinned, and the night spins you endlessly on uneven footsteps. You hardly notice the spill of fog beginning to sweep over the dance floor. The people in colorful costumes and makeup hoot and holler as the music changes to a slow, haunting speed.

“No.” Michael curses right beside you. “How did they get here so fast?”

Shooting a look at him then following his glance towards the entrance, your entire being grows hot and cold in a snap.

The brothers stand in the entranceway. Their cloaks and capes fall over them, hiding their unusual attire for the era but little masks the strangeness of their disk-like faces and the array of sun rays and a glittering dark hood upon another. They survey the room with a bewilderment that is both fascinating and disgusted. Eclipse stands between Sun and Moon, his head high while his eyes scan the many people, hunting for you.

The breath in your throat hitches. You could tell them that it’s alright, it’s only a festive celebration. It’s become a holiday to dress up and eat sweets and sugars, and have spooky fun and get scared sometimes. Would they understand that? Would it be less frightening and otherworldly to them if you did?

“Michael,” Vanessa hisses. Her little paws press sharply against your arms as if she means to bound away.

“Stay low,” he instructs firmly. “Stay close beside me.”

“Wait, Michael, please,” you utter but he’s already grasping your arm and striding onwards. The music swallows your voice. The pressure of tears builds until you blink and register how wet your eyelashes have become.

There shouldn’t be any more death tonight.

As you’re pulled along like a lost soul, you look back to the entrance way. For the briefest moment, Eclipse skims over the party. You suck in a sharp breath. 

He snaps his head, as if called, and locks eyes with you. You startle but can’t look away. The molten hues of his gaze holds you in place like chains. His smile expands to show off a mouthful of sharp teeth as he mouths two words.

Found you.

You duck your head, your heart in your throat, and scurry after Michael. Vanessa wriggles out of your grasp. Jumping to the floor, she hops between people’s feet and stays perfectly close to Michael despite the fog filling up the space and causing you to cough. It tastes fake and syrupy. Did they curse a fog machine? Or is this something more supernatural? 

The music begins to murmur and strike strange chords. You twist your head, briefly searching the floor in your confusion for the cause of the thick, velvet smoke. Michael almost knocks into a couple dressed as a bottle of honey and a bee. Vanessa says something, lost to the crowd. The song begins to rise and envelop the room in a haunting echo. Your head begins to swim.

Someone takes your hand. Warm digits wrap claws around the bones of your knuckles and hold tightly. You gasp. In one motion, the dancer slips you out of Michael’s grasp and spins you back into the crowd. 

For a heartbeat, Michael whirls around, his eyes, pinpricks of ghostly white, flash to you. Vanessa cries your name. Smoke and party goers cut you off from your friends as you’re effortlessly lifted over the floor.

Lost in a dizzy haze of pale wisps and swinging footsteps, you twist in the hands of your abductor and find an all too familiar crown of yellow sun rays and a beaming, wicked smirk.

“Sun?” You try to wriggle out of his hold but he’s locked onto your hips.

“Hello again, sunshine.” Sun spins you effortlessly, his cape pillowing behind him and summoning more thick fog to cloak you between dancers, stuck fast in the song as if they were sinking in mud, unable to notice the witch slipping his palms higher to hold off your waist. He pulls you flush against his chest. “I adore meeting you like this, but perhaps we might spare the rest of the night for such events? Perhaps after the ceremony.”

Your heart flutters within you like a bird. The heat of his touch sends goosebumps prickling down your flesh as you rest your hands on his shoulders. You look up into his pale eyes with desperation dripping from your every edge.

“Wait, Sun, I can’t leave Michael and Vanessa.” You try to twist back to search for your lost companions but the fog and party lights cutting over the thickness blind you equally.

He bares his pale bone teeth. Effortlessly, he twirls you over the dance floor as your poor feet attempt to keep up. The witch balances the delicate art of keeping you just on the verge of collapse without leaving you embarrassed and fallen. His arm wraps around your waist and lifts your hands above your hand to spin you like a top before reclaiming you once more.

“Of course, you can! Let’s take you far away from all these dreary people,” Sun whispers into your ear. His lips brush the shell of it. Your breath catches. “I will keep you warm. I will keep you safe. I will dance with you forevermore.”

Your lips are locked, caught between pleas to spare your friends of their curses and a temptation far greater. The promise of never being alone. The hope of kindness throughout your days and love throughout your nights. You never realized how cold you were before the brothers traced your body with their hands—how warm another person is when they hold you with care.

“Please,” you whisper. You cling to his shoulders. “I can’t leave them.”

“You will have your husbands,” Sun lifts his head, haughty but steadfast, “You will have me.”

He lowers himself to you and you are caught under his mouth as it travels slowly down your cheekbone. A heat surges through your core. He dots your nose with a peck before his eyes, sultry and softly glimmering, lower to your lips.

“There’s no need to fear now that I have you.”

Carefully, you hold still, waiting for the snap of teeth or the tenderness of his lips Sun slowly, agonizingly closes the gap between himself to you, and his mouth brushes your own—

Hands hook your hips from behind and lift you into the air, twirling you out of Sun’s stunned grasp and then furious gaze. You squeak in alarm. The world spins with music and lights and smoke.

“Brother,” Sun snarls in the way one lion might at another for stealing its meal.

“Share, brother,” Moon speaks as calm as a lake-surface at midnight. “You’ve squandered enough time with your foolish antics.”

Your hands immediately fly to the arms supporting you above the crowd. For one brief moment, you see above the thick concoction of smoke and party-goers and find Michael on the edge of the dance floor, frantically scanning the gymnasium.

You try to lift your hand to signal for him, but Moon sets you back to your feet before you have a chance to regain his attention.

“Come with me, my little mouse.” Moon shadows your back. “It will soon only be us. Alone.”

His hand slips over your waistline. Driven by pure instinct, your fingers curl around his claws while the sleek, sharp tips slide through a hole in your sweater.

“Moon?” You turn your head back, confirming the dancer holding you hostage now. He glides you forward through the crowd. His scarlet eyes are sharp with focus, but they soften the moment they meet your gaze. Weaving through costumed individuals, Moon takes you into a dark alcove along a wall, where the smoke swirls in lazily wisps and the other dancers remain at bay.

“I have wanted for you far longer than tonight.” He gently turns you back to face him and he clasps your hands between his. His black cloak falls against his back like a shield. An unmistakable understanding washes over you: you are safe. Even if you are separated from your friends.

“Moon, I…” Your tongue fails to locate the words stuck behind your molars.

He gently opens your arms and takes you against him. With one hand wrapping around your waist, his other slips up the nape of your neck. He gently cards through the hair at the bottom of your skull in a lulling, gentle motion.

Your eyelids flutter. In your weakness, you rest your head on his shoulder. Moon hums a low, harmonic sound in his chest—a lullaby for a lover. It rumbles sweetly against your heart.

He steps softly, swaying in a sort of moonlight waltz that would be better suited for a homey kitchen than a busy dance party. Regardless, Moon pays no mind to any other bodies in the room.

“Come with us,” he whispers against your hair. “Leave the witch hunter and rabbit.”

Your fingers curl against the soft fabric of his white, billowy shirt. The urge grows stronger still. It could be a fairytale. A Grimm storybook of a lonely historian and three witches.

But you screw your eyes close, and breathe.

“No.” Your footsteps follow his lead so much better, slowly twirling together. “Moon, Michael and Vanessa have suffered enough.”

Moon’s teeth flash like fangs in the dark. 

“You don’t know what they have done, what they will do,” he growls so dark and low.

A shiver overtakes you, but you gently lift your head. Moon clutches the back of your neck in the manner of a man fearful of losing something and never getting it back, despite your closeness to his body.

“I don’t know what you and your brothers have done,” you speak softly, truthfully. “I don’t know what you will do.”

A gentleness overtakes Moon. His hand slips up your cheek to cup your face.

“We would never harm you,” he whispers. “I will never hurt you.”

You lift your hand to cup his own. The coolness of his palm cradles you sweetly, a longing tipping his claw as he carefully keeps them from your flesh.

“Brother.” A new voice sounds gently beside you. “Allow me.”

Beside you both stands Eclipse. He holds out a hand. Moon gently nods, but scarlet gaze eyes linger on you with longing as he slowly takes your hand and sets it in Eclipse’s. Moon slips into the supernatural smoke and the movement of bodies enchanted by music. A backwards glance, then he’s gone.

You face your new dance partner. His gaze is golden and gleaming in the dark alcove you’re pressed against. He gently holds your hand up in a proper position of a dance—at least you think so. You’ve never danced with someone before. He touches your waist and on instinct, you place your palm on his shoulder. His black cape swishes gently around him. His crown of red rays circle the air like a king above his queen, and you find yourself blushing under such a thought.

“There were festivals in the village when we were alive,” he says in a low, sweet voice, “We could never attend. Sun longed to dance with others to proper music and Moon could have been compelled out of the shadows for just a night, but the people wouldn’t have us.”

You listen carefully as he swings you gently across the small space. Smoke spills at your feet but Eclipse sweeps it away with the sway of his cape, and endlessly, you revolve together.

“No one would have us. No one would give us a moment to speak for fear of curses.” Eclipse’s eyes lower, and a grim smile touches his lips. “They weren’t entirely unfounded. Afton was right to fear us, but he turned the village against my brothers and I. He accused us of stealing their children.”

A sharp, hidden anger, like a blade sheathed, flashes behind Eclipse’s eyes. Your heart grows heavy while you try to not step on his feet, but he always seems to move his black shoes out of the way before you can.

“Did anyone know?” you ask softly.

There is so much lost to history. Tablets and clay figures and marble sculptures cracked and buried. Letters. The truth.

As true witches, they were framed, used as a scapegoat. 

Eclipse softly presses his palm to the small of your back. You step closer. He looks down at you, his golden eyes wide and tittering between dreams and despair.

“No.” He gently steps back to lift your arm above your head and allows you to twirl slowly. An enchanting moment of twisting. Then, you return to him, clasping his hand tightly. 

“I’m sorry.” Your fingers curl over the soft fabric of his cape. “So many have been killed because of false accusations or ulterior motives… but I don’t have to tell you that.”

He chuckles sardonically. “No.”

He looks you gently over. He waltzes and you follow him in a small curve of soft steps.

“I was bone scrying one night.” Eclipse sweeps back a strand of your hair from your face, his touch velvet and light. “The villagers’ hatred was growing and I was afraid for my brothers. I needed… hope.”

You close your eyes briefly as he turns his hand, and using the back of his finger, strokes your cheek.

“Then I saw you.”

Your eyes fly open. Brow crinkling, you think of ancient fortune tellers and seers, those who claimed to see what was to come and to promise those who sought their advice that all would be well.

But that is history. This is magic.

Eclipse holds your gaze unflinching.

“You couldn’t have,” you whisper, despite yourself. “I am no one.”

His hands tighten upon you. He stops dancing. Your heart flits within you until he clutches you close in an embrace that melts your bones and loosens your muscles. 

“You are everything to us. You are our bride. You are the one who lit the starry candle to save my brothers and I. You are the one whom I love so dearly, and have waited centuries for.”

He bows and presses his forehead to yours. You breathe in a soft gentle musk and spice, and it’s as if you were home. Not your empty, cold house, but home.

“I would wait a hundred more to behold you. I would crawl out of my grave to find you. Little comet, you have been the one light in my dark death, and I will vow myself to you as your husband for as long as you will have me.”

A thickness cakes your throat. Emotion, heavy and dripping, spills into your chest. You clutch his hands. 

“Will you say ‘I do’ my bride?” 

Everything within you sings to answer him. Your silence paints your lips with faltering and fear. The sting of sorrow in the corner of your eyes begins to wet them. 

His claws curl tighter around you. His expression burns low and hot, desperate and fierce.

“Are you not lonely?” he asks in a husky tone. “Do you not understand all that my brothers and I can give you? You will know only love and certainty. You will be warm and safe. You will have all our powers at your fingertips.”

“Eclipse.” You lift your head.  A bubbling sorrow overtakes you, and your cheek drips with a tear. “I can’t. Not until Michael and Vanessa are free of their curses.”

The damning of his silence is lethal. Eclipse doesn’t move as smoke wisps by and your heart skips a beat in your rib cage. His eyes are wide and unreadable. They bore into you. You almost squirm but hold fast against his crushing attention.

“Can’t you take away their suffering? Can’t you undo the damage done?” you ask softly, your voice threatening to break. “Please. I will perform the ceremony with you and your brothers before sunrise. All I ask is this.”

A battle unfolds within the witch. His claws twitch and his lips long to curl into a snarl, but he breathes softly instead.

He moves once and presses one soft kiss to your mouth. You close your eyes.

“Very well.” He straightens. He mumbles something low under his breath, overlapping and thick with magic, and you still as he gathers you closer.

You almost can’t comprehend that you’ve agreed to marry the witches.

In the midst of a swell of energy so hot and dark, you wonder if a summer night could be conjured on an October early morning hour, Eclipse lowers his lips to your ear and whispers, “I put a spell on you.”

Your heart thunders. Your fingers twist into the white flowy fabric of his shirt, and the witch takes you into his arms. The fog swirls, beginning to rise and circle you both as if you stand in the heart of a cyclone. Faster and faster still, until you’re forced to close your eyes and hide your head against Eclipse’s chest.

His fingers stroke your spine softly. The air changes, the music ceases, and you breathe in crisp, forest air. You don’t dare open your eyes.

Eclipse hums.

“And now you’re mine.”

[dmwrites]

The End seemed safe. Cleo thought. Nothing was safe, therefore, the most dangerous place to be would probably be the safest. She knew it didn’t make any sense, but nothing did, with gravity losing its pull and blocks getting sucked up into the sky and the damn moon not so much setting anymore.

Cleo went to the End by herself, and she regretted it. Not just becasuse the endermen were agitated and began pulling her rotting corpse of a body apart, but because she was alone. But the endermen were annoying too. Cleo understood it, to some extent. The world was ending, and it was either pulling up the few blocks of endstone that made up the ground under their feet, or pull her apart. They tore at her, her skin and bones taken from her body with screams to echo her own. They stayed angry, even if she didn’t look at them.

Cleo stopped fighting after a while. As far as she knew, everyone in the overworld was probably dead or gone now, so what really was the point? She was alive, but in the hands of terrified endermen. Soon, surely, she would join her friends in the afterlife. At least, that’s what she hoped.

And when the end of the world came and went, what remained in its wake was everywhere. Cleo lay in pieces, watching the world around her fall apart in ways that didn’t even make sense. She tried to call out for death, but there was no sound. The very little bit of her undead consciousness that remained held on, watching in horror.

And then, there was silence. For a long, long time. And Cleo was alive. Well, she was dead, but she’d always been dead. Death, it seemed, didn’t want her.

Her body lay in pieces, unseeing, hurting, and she wondered, in thoughts that took eons of effort to construct, if she would remain in this vacuum of time and space forever- almost nothing, but painfully enough.

And then, something changed. It wasn’t obvious at first, as the pain consumed her constantly. But then something touched her cheek. Something smooth, soft, warm, so different from every feeling that had consumed her for so long. Cleo couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, was torn so far apart that she was hardly anything at all, and yet she felt the warm touch of a human being. And then, a touch on her eyelid. Then her bottom lip. Then her neck. Someone was putting Cleo back together.

The pain was still there, but lessened now, day after day, as her body was reconstructed. Nerves and muscle and tissue were woven into place, and Cleo became more and more aware. First it was touch, the tugging of string, the swipes on a hand. Then smell. The person smelled of flowers, of sun-soaked soil. Then she could hear, a gentle humming that soaked into her very skin.

And then, one day, Cleo could see. Hands pulled away from her eyes, and there was a face hovering over her own. Long brown hair curtained Cleo’s face from the outside world, wherever that might have been. Cleo blinked hard, and the face came into focus. A long, angular face and wide blue eyes. Familiar. Not here, not in the reality Cleo had been pulled apart in. But familiar.

“Hi Cleo,” Pearl said. “You can hear me, can’t you? Blink twice if you can- your voice box isn’t re-installed yet, sorry ‘bout that.”

Cleo blinked twice, and Pearl’s face lit up in a huge smile.

“Cleo! Oh, I’m so glad you can understand! Golly, I… I’ll keep plucking away at this- you! Just… stay with me, okay?”

Pearl sewed Cleo back together with strings of sunlight and moonlight, all intertwined together to make her skin whole again. Gentle touches as she moved muscle and bone back into place, somehow reforming Cleo like she was clay. Pearl talked as she worked, fingers flying with hesitant assurance over Cleo’s body.

“I just never expected my cousin to actually come to visit. Silly girl.”

“It was horrible, just horrible to fall into that hole and not know where we were going to come back out. My wonderful friends, each one of them popped out of existence, one after the other.”

“They’re safe now, though. I saw to that. You will be too, Cleo. We all will. I promise.”

“I knew I had to find the rest of you, bring us to our new home.”

And at some point, Cleo opened her mouth and spoke.

“Pearl.”

“Oh golly goo! Cleo! Oh my god! You scared the life out of me! Does it hurt at all, does everything seem right?” hands flew to Cleo’s throat, gently palpating and examining. Pearl had a huge smile on her face.

“It doesn’t hurt. Not at all,” Cleo answered.

Pearl laughed, a kind of choked up noise that was so painfully human, something Cleo thought she’d never hear again. For the first time in a very long time, Cleo felt hope.

“Oh, I’m so glad, Cleo. You don’t know how afraid I was. Still am, because you don’t exactly have all your bits back, now do you. There is still your legs, and more nerve endings…”

As Pearl went to put a hand to Cleo’s face, Cleo grabbed her wrist. “How are you doing this, Pearl? This shouldn’t be possible. What you’re doing is… I don’t know, magic?”

Pearl shook her head. “Cleo, please just let me work. It’s not… just trust me, okay?” She wrenched her hand out of Cleo’s grasp.

Cleo knew this was real. She could reach out, touch Pearl’s hair, her face, her hands. She could see Pearl work now, leaned against an obsidian tower, looking out over a vastness of endstone, and darkness beyond that. An end island she distinctly remembered watching fall apart into nothingness. But here it was. Whole. Here she was. Almost whole. And there was Pearl, finishing up the stitching on Cleo’s legs with golden string that seemed to shine with a light that came from within itself.

Cleo stood.

“Who are you?”

Pearl walked her, arm in arm, to the portal in the middle of the island.

“I’m Pearl.”

Cleo looked at her. Underlit from the swirling portal like this, she looked tired. Her sunflower crown was wilting. Her green dress was coated with endstone dust. She was Pearl, but Cleo knew she was someone else too.

“Are you coming with me?”

“No. I’ll meet you there. I have others to find,” Pearl reached forward and hugged Cleo tight before stepping backwards into the end portal and disappearing.

The End was quiet now. Endermen had reappeared at some point, strolling among the reconstructed pillars and paying her no mind. Cleo looked over the island in grim amazement, more questions in her mind then answers. She ran a hand down her arm, assuring herself once more that she was real, she was as whole as a rotting corpse could be, and all of this was real too. It was. She was. Despite it all, she was going to be okay. She was going to see her friends again.

Cleo jumped into the end portal and closed her eyes.

——

The first day on the Hermitcraft season nine server, Cleo found herself counquoring a woodland mansion (“who on earth does this first day?” Cleo asked herself multiple times) with Impulse, Gem, and Pearl.

Pearl and Cleo died to a creeper explosion at the same time, and ended up respawned in the bed they’d set just for that purpose.

“Hi.”

“Hi Cleo.”

Cleo looked at Pearl. She was dressed in a pair of shorts and a hoodie, hair thrown back messily. Cleo almost wouldn’t have believed that this was the same girl who had stood over her in a flowing green dress, with her magic needle and thread, if it wasn’t for the knowing smile Pearl gave her.

“I guess I owe you,” Cleo said.

“You don’t owe me a thing,” Pearl replied, shaking her head.

“But-”

“Cleo! Pearl! Impulse just found a library and I’m pretty sure he’s gonna get blown up by creepers! You gotta come watch this!” Gem interrupted, yelling at them from a broken window.

“Coming!” Pearl replied, and took Cleo’s hand. “Come on, Cleo. We’ve got much more fun ahead of us. The past can wait.”

Cleo followed Pearl, still with more questions then answers. But Pearl was right. They were all together again, and there was much fun to be had. Cleo pushed the memories of pain, of light, of hope, into a small corner of her mind, and went to watch Impulse climb a ladder. He did get blown up, as it turned out. And it was hilarious.

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer Park Steve AU part 4

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

September

He doesn’t talk to the Munsons much. (Doesn’t talk to anyone, really, aside from his mom and Robin and that one older woman who keeps renting and returning Gone With The Wind as an excuse to leave her house.) He keeps his head down and his nose clean, doesn’t care to make friends with the neighbors; just wants to get by.

One day Eddie approaches their door, waving a gas bill that got mixed up in their mail, and Steve greets him pleasantly enough.

“Stab anyone today?”

“Eat glass, Harrington.”

So it goes.

Steve watches the world pass and the weather turn, lets the hours bleed into weeks and squeezes his eyes shut against the flashbacks when they threaten to overwhelm.

Things with his mom are weird.

They don’t really speak, preferring to shrug their way past each other with careful, tight-lipped nods, and his mom takes these pills the doctor gave her that keep her perfectly pleasant and calm. Silent. Physically present but not really here.

And he can’t imagine how it feels to be her: Florence Harrington, ripped from the comforts of the upper crust and left to rot in a tin can seven miles across town. She spends most of her time letting out weary little sighs as she swans from room to room, drifting like a shade on the banks of the River Styx. (He can make that reference now because Robin won’t shut up about mythology. “It’s so gay, Steve. The Greeks were literally so gay.”)

Anyway.

Shit’s weird with the kids, too. He still drives them around — lets them loiter at Family Video when it’s slow; hangs around when they need a ride to the arcade or the movies or the skating rink; and he’s still on the hook for ‘ice cream. for. life,’ so…

It’s just not the same.

Like. Not to be dramatic, but who the fuck is Steve Harrington without the house and the pool and the free-for-all fridge? Just some kid with a car and a bat and a punchable face. And he can barely afford to keep the car now, anyway, so pretty soon they won’t need him for that, either. They’ll learn to drive; they’ll get their own jobs. Maybe Lucas builds enough muscle to take over as the party tank.

Maybe it’s better if he shelfs himself now before they realize he’s become obsolete.

“Oh, my god, you’re being pathetic,” he groans to himself. His voice is muffled where he’s lying face down on the couch. Ridiculous behavior, because everything is fine; Steve is fine. In the grand scheme of things where there are monsters and melted corpses and all kinds of crazy, horrible shit?

Yeah.

He’s being obnoxious. It’s a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon with just the right Autumn breeze going — gentle but cool; long sleeve polo weather; his favorite kind — and he’s sitting inside throwing himself a pity party.

Fucking absurd.

…Five more minutes.

Just five more minutes, then he’s getting off this couch.

He gets to a minute and a half when he hears the crunch of tires against the gravel, the clanging of a little bell from the handlebar of a bike, and then:

“STEVE!!!”

And that’ll be Dustin, trying to bang the door off the hinges and piss off the whole park at the same time. Kid’s nothing if not a multitasker. Steve lets another aggrieved groan loose into the couch cushion.

His mom’s out with the car; the lights are all off. Maybe he can just play dead ‘til Dustin leaves? He loves the kid, he really does, but his left ear is full of static, and he just wants to fucking sleep. Or sulk. Or both.

“STEVEN CHRISTOPHER, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE.”

Jeeeeesus Christ. “Okay, chill,” Steve grumbles as he hauls himself upright and throws open the front door. His limbs feel like lead; there’s drool on his chin. “Wake the whole goddamn neighborhood, why don’t you?”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, and half the people here work nights.”

“Oh-kayy,” Dustin drags out the word, “but you don’t.”

Ugh. Whatever. He’s not gonna be shamed by a toothless teenager for his depressing loser tendencies. “Did you need something?”

Steve scratches at his belly hair through his shirt, feels a muscle twinge in his shoulder and send a spark of nerve pain skittering up to the base of his skull.

Dustin either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Steve’s body is falling apart where he stands, because he just rolls his eyes and says, “Uh, yeah. I need to know why you’re avoiding everyone? Mom’s tried to invite you to dinner six times now.”

“I was working.”

“All six times?” Dustin glares. Steve feels a little pinned by it, feels guilt seeping through the cracks as he fidgets with his bad ear. This kid’s gonna be the scariest lawyer some day. “She’s worried.”

Goddammit.

Guilt squeezes hard behind his ribs; he knows Dustin uses his mom as a mouthpiece for the feelings he can’t express. “I’m fine,” he sighs, letting his eyes and voice go soft. “Honest.”

Dustin holds firm, gaze fierce and fists clenched. “Bullshit,” he insists.

“Man, don’t—”

“Bull. Shit.”

Suddenly, their impromptu interrogation gets interrupted by a crashing drum fill, a shriek of electric guitar as Munson’s van squeals into the lot. He’s blasting some melodramatic metal shit about wizards or whatever; Steve doesn’t know. He only knows that the skitter of nerve pain he felt is ramping up to a fullblown migraine now because this guy has to listen to his racket at full fucking volume, apparently, and isn’t this all just “fucking great.”

—

part 5

[qwimblenorrisstan]

Happy Accidents | König x Reader

Day 22: Shelter w/ König

Summary: König has always had trouble feeling safe and secure, that was until he accidentally stumbled into your apartment late at night.

Word Count: 713

Warnings: mentions of blood, death, corpses, family, technically break-in but nothing bad happens

A/N: I love this big beefy austrian man, it’s a fatal addiction, hope you enjoy<3

Requests are open!

He’d always known he had needed some sort of safe space.

And König had managed to create his own, for the most part. No one questioned how the big scary Colonel slept holding a pillow against his chest, the pillow never quite replicating how his little brother had cuddled up to him so many years ago. He journaled, too, using the highlighters and pens his sister had always used in her school notebook, lecturing him on his terrible handwriting that still wasn’t much better.

He would always snatch a second pumpkinseed muffin at the mess hall, the flavor reminding him of his mother’s cooking. Or how his tongue would dart out to barely brush against his thumb pad, using it to get to the second page of a report he was going through in the same way his father had done with his books.

But he still had never managed to fully reach that level of comfort where he felt as if he was in a warm bubble, protected, safe, not in harm’s way, and able to relax.

And maybe it was because König didn’t think he was safe. Not on base. Not at home. Nowhere. He’d watched men be cut through in less than a second, bullets shredding through their bodies and leaving nothing more than rotting corpses and living memories behind. He’d seen it happen to his men before, and he’d done it to other men. There was nowhere that the violence he displayed and observed every day wouldn’t follow him like a shadow, silently judging and whispering in his ear.

He had never felt fully safe before. That was what he believed, and he thought he’d never feel safe again; until he met you.

You, the shy, quiet neighbor who had let him in even when he’d gone to the wrong door, showing up after being gone for almost three months, grumbling German cursed when his key refused to work. You knew the giant next door, it’d be hard not to, with his huge stature, brusque voice, and reserved but respectful nature.

“Hello?”

You’d meekly asked while he’d just gone lumbering in, pushing past you and falling onto the couch in what he thought was his apartment. He didn’t question why you would be in there, not then. Not when his head felt like it was splitting apart at the seams, his glacial blue eyes were watery and drooping, and his body was running out of strength before shutting down.

He wasn’t too worried about what you’d do when he finally passed out. You were nice, having brought him a tray of cookies when he first moved in, a tray he’d promptly devoured in less than an hour as the tiny cookies crumbled in his hands.

You brought him soups sometimes, or leftover dinners, claiming you’d just cooked too much. But König knew someone didn’t consistently cook too much, eventually one learned their lesson, and he knew that you were worried about him. You saw the fatigue in his steps when he came back from month-long disappearances. You never asked him, and he never told.

Truly, he didn’t know how you’d moved him from the couch to the bed. He just registered something soft under his head, his clothes being gently pulled off by uncalloused hands, and a warm rag brushing against the blood that was staining his skin, the now-wet fingers massaging his bruises as he grunted.

A silent plead for you to just get in the bed and let him finally have a warm body to hold while he drifted off.

You must’ve gotten the message because he heard you walk off for a moment, then came the sound of water dripping into the sink, and then you reappeared. You slid into the bed, the bed he realized must’ve been yours, and kicked the blanket up, hitting your pillow to fluff it up.

You pulled the blankets over both of your bodies, and he unconsciously reached, pulling you in, feeling the thin, breathable fabric of your pajamas. It was soft, like you.

When he held your warm body against his that night, he came to two realizations. The first being that, he really could feel safe, and the second being that he needed to do this more often.

Tags:

@hawke1917

[thegnomelord]

Shark Merperson reader is real gud.

- 🦈

(HOLY FUCK. THANK YOU TO WHICH EVER ANON REQUESTED THAT BECAUSE I FUCKIN LOVE SHARKS.

Now Im thinking of a Price x Reader, because shars are the oldest species known to exist. Obviously sharks arent immortal, they've just been on this earth way b4 tress bloody existed.

So Im thinking the readers an eldritch creature, they represent sharks as a whole, as long sharks exsist they exsist. Heck they mights of even of been Prices mentor when he was in his draconic 100s? (Late 20s?).

Imagine Price missing his friend calls him up to see hows hes doing. Reader elated to meet an old friend, accepts the invitation to meets up with him. Reader definitely scolds him for lossing a wing, honestly is pertrified Price lost a piece of himself and thought he was retiring due to it. Cut ahort to him smacking him slap dab on the head when he learns he's lost it a long time ago and didnt tell him.

Cue wholesome interactions th 141 and etc. Heck maybe some romance with Price.

Just a blurb i had yo tell you abt)

Okay, this tickles my eldrich abomination trying to act human itch

CW:SFW, eldritch reader, kissing

Price knows you're there the second he steps onto the old wooden pier, able to smell seaweed and brine and something in the air — what he thinks the bottom of the ocean smells like, old rot of decaying whales and older heat of geothermal vents — the soft wind billowing his hair like the breathing of an elderly beast.

He knows you're watching him, passively at least, washed up mermaid purses dotting the beach to give you a glimpse of the world above the waves through the yolks vital for the pup's survival, able to dream of the warm sun and course sand while you slumber beneath the waves.

"Oi, ser, yer look like a wee lass waiting for her sailor." Soap's sharp voice cuts through the air, the werewolf far too energized for his own good, the sand in his fur not dampening his mood when he can just shake himself off and flick the grains on Simon.

"Hah," Price snorts, "Maybe I am." He tilts his head back to the sea, sharp eyes watching the breaking waves. "Time to wake up old friend." He mutters your mangled name under his breath, mortal lips and vocal cords unable to replicate your own voice.

The young ones in his team lack the sight needed to notice your form slowly rise from the sea like a submarine breaking through the ice, only the visible flicker of air and the receding water keying them in. Price old enough to see you without needing the inner surface of his skull to be dotted with eyes. Though even he sees your real form like a man having a stroke — vaguely familiar at first yet the details are undefinable — flesh and sea melding together without rhyme or reason, long strings of seaweed bearing miniature eyes with pups wriggling inside, cookie cutter sharks boring holes through finless corpses so long eel sharks may form ever reforming sinews, fossilized bone and old rock giving giving support to the massive insult to reality's laws; birth and life wrapped up in death.

You're an affront to logic. And with one sneeze from existence itself you're human standing in front of him.

Eerily human.

Perfectly human.

Almost.

"What the fuck?" He can faintly hear Gaz's voice, all of them only now noticing you stand where you weren't previously.

Your hand touches his back before he even registers you move, always slightly damp, "When did this happen?" You ask as you trace the spot where his wing used to be. "What did this?"

"And a 'hello' to you too sweetheart." He clasps a hand around your waist, purring softly in greeting as he pulls you closer to his chest. Even if he sees you once every few centuries, even if you don't possess the ability to reciprocate, his love for you is as youthful as it was when he was but a wyrm.

Your facial features remain neutral like the ones of sunken statues, but you blink, and for a few seconds he can see that yawning abyss in your eyes. "Hi." You say, your hand still tracing the bump created by atrophied flight muscles, trying to judge how fresh it is. "Explain."

Your tone sounds like a predator baring it's teeth, but he knows you wouldn't harm him. "In a lil' bit." He snorts, puts pressure on your back until he forces your legs to move. "Come, want you to meet my boys."

The introductions are odd on both ends considering you hadn't spoken with people other than Price since that Icarus of a passenger ship mistook your fin for an iceberg and they've never met an old one like you. But you like them, they compliment Price just like the small scale he gave you makes the pearls and gold offered to you through the ages shine more.

Even if your face is unreadable, somehow they can figure out you're not too amused when you hear he'd lost his wing during a mission. "I told you arrogance would cost you." You at least you can mimic a sigh as you rub your head, "At least you retired." You say,

"We wish!" Soap snorts before he can help it, and the next thing they hear is a horrific crack that has them jumping out of their skin.

Your head had whipped 180 degrees with the rest of your body remained in place, the laws of nature nothing more but blurry guidelines. "You. . .did retire?" You ask, voice like the roar of a whirlpool.

"About that," Price starts, unable to finish his thought as you slap him upside the head as if he's still the whelp who thought he could brave an ocean storm.

"You'll put me in the grave." You growl, holding him by the ear, words spilling from your mouth like seawater filling the empty bowels of a ship. "I swear your scaly hide hasn't learned a single thing-"

"Should we help?" Gaz wonders as they watch you chastise their captain like he's a boy.

"No, this is great entertainment." Ghost chuckles.

"Want me ta grab the popcorn?" Johnny ads, already snacking, tail thumping against Simon's leg and growling playfully when Gaz reaches for the snacks.

Eventually your anger relents, mood changing as swiftly as the tide. You spend the time they have left learning about the men he's chosen as his hoard. Kyle's a bit weary of you just due to his harpy nature, but soon enough you two can be found sitting on the pier and fishing, and if you purposely make the waves flow so a big fish snags on Kyle's line, Price never says anything about it, not when his boy has a smile as big as the sun when he looks at the gigantic fish flopping on his hook.

You attempting to help Soap cook the barbeque, but you're fine motor skills are rusty after all these years of slumber, so the food is slightly burnt but Price loves when his food's basically charcoal and eats it with a smile, especially as it keeps you from telling all the embarrassing stories you have of him, from when he got his ass bit by a squid to when he was so horny he ended up rutting against an extra curvy piece of rock, though the rest have already heard enough dirt to bury him for the next several decades.

Unfortunately for Price, you and Ghost hit it off like a house on fire, and Ghost ends up learning far too many ways to hurt people without killing them that most definitely are against the Geneva conventions but you pull seniority on it. Simon in turn, teaches you how to play cards, which, when you're literally a god that can see almost everything including your opponent's cards, means the shmucks Simon ropes into playing you and Simon end up with empty pockets.

As the sun stars to dip behind the horizon you wind up sitting next to Price by the fire, the others splashing in the water.

You feel his wing spread behind your back to pull you closer to him, "I missed this." He says, knowing you won't comment on the 'I missed you' hidden behind his vellum words.

"Last time we met like this Napoleon was still emperor." You hum, a small yawn escaping you, sharp tips of shark teeth peeking from human gums. "And you had two wings." You can't help but point out, making it clear you've not forgiven him about not informing you.

Price pointedly ignores your later comment, his hand tentatively, almost shyly, reaching down to sit on top of yours. "Afraid I'll forget about you?"

His pulse picks up when you shift your hand to hold his, fingers lacing together when you don't have a tail as a human. "You wait for me." You shrug, holding your free arm up, reality wheezing for a few moments before his scale is suddenly in your hand, shiny and unharmed just as it was when he'd given it to you all those years ago. "And I dream of you."

His eyes widen and heart melts, a purr rumbling in his chest "C'mere sweetheart," He rumbles and pulls you into a kiss, free hand holding your chin stable.

You taste of salt and blood, of chilling cold and boiling heat, of something ancient and familiar and Price drinks it all down like a babe, tongue licking in your mouth and fangs nibbling on your lip, feeling you respond, the touch of hungering god as soft as silk, just to him.

But he knows this won't last.

A shark has no reason to stay on land, and a dragon can't survive underwater regardless of how much he wants. Soon you'll return to slumber, and Price won't know when he'll see you again, if he'll see you again, or if you'll learn of his passing when your waves swallow up his ashes.

He doesn't notice the prickling in his eyes but you do, wiping a stray tear with the pad of your thumb, your other hand still wrapped around his. "Don't worry John," You say, statue features finally cracking into a small smile, "I'll stay for a little while." You say and lead him into another kiss, the other members of TF141 leaving you two to catch up on lost time...

[miryum]

"The Box"

Summary: Detective!Jason Todd x detective!Reader based on Jake and Amy’s relationship

Series Warnings: Swearing, descriptions of violence (but nothing descriptive), guns and other police stuff

Series Masterlist

“I'm Lex Luthor.” A man strode into the precinct and rapped a fist on Damian’s desk. He was wearing a crisp suit and his bald head had been shined. “Detective L/n asked me to drop by.”

Damian’s eyes flickered up to the man before going back to his origami knives. He had found a new tutorial on YouTube that promised sharper cuts. “Mm, yes. The CEO who murdered someone. Spoiler alert: they think you did it.” He flagged down another officer. “Duke, can you show him to interrogation room C, please?” He waved to Lex and snickered. “Have fun in there.”

“Thank you.” Luthor drew his lips into a thin line.

A couple minutes later, Captain Wayne stood by Y/n as they watched Lex Luthor behind a two-way mirror. “What are you smiling about?” he asked.

“How uncomfortable this guy is,” Y/n replied. “I jacked up the thermostat, got the table all sticky, made one of the chair legs too short, and worst of all, I had Damian greet him.”

“What did you have him do?”

“I told him to be himself.”

Wayne shook his head. “Poor son of a bitch.”

Y/n glanced at her capitan before asking, “Why are you wearing a tuxedo? You look like Fred Astaire.”

“I take that as a high compliment, but I’m not off to sing the number one song of 1935, Cheek to Cheek, which was top of the charts for fifteen weeks and the following year was nominated for the Best Song Academy Award to The Way You Look Tonight.”

Y/n stared at him until she muttered, “I’m not even surprised anymore.”

“Clark and I are attending the opera,” Wayne explained simply.

“Ooh, the opera. Is it the one Bugs Bunny sings?”

“Yes.” Wayne turned away from Y/n and asked, “So, who's this?”

“Lex Luthor,” Y/n said proudly. “We have a clear motive, clear means, a nonexistent alibi, but the DA won't bring a charge because it's all circumstantial. If we wanna bring this guy down, we have to get him to confess right here, right now.”

Wayne raised a brow. “An interrogation with a ticking clock and everything on the line? I better call Clark and tell him I won't be attending the opera.” He pulled out his phone and began dialling. “There's someone else I'd rather hear sing.”

“Oh, damn!” Y/n covered her mouth appreciatively.

“Hello, Clark. I won't be joining you at the opera tonight-”

“Oh, sorry,” Y/n shushed herself. “I didn't know-” 

Wayne cut her off, saying, “it's under my name, W-A-Y-N…”

Y/n squinted at him and finished her sentence, “you were on the phone already….”

Wayne poured over the case file which stated facts, showed pictures, and other minute details. “You're right.” Wayne nodded. “He did it. But we have no murder weapon, no witnesses, and you really didn't find any usable forensic evidence?” He was doubtful that his best detective found nothing.

“The body was discovered rotting in Ocean View. It'd been rained on for weeks and chewed up by coyotes,” Y/n explained. ”The only other DNA other than the victim’s was some bear semen found in the hair.”

“Right. Who found the body?”

“Hikers,” Y/n replied. ”You're really just gonna blow past the bear semen detail?”

“I imagine a bear mistook the rotting corpse for a female of its species and had intercourse with it.” He waved her away. “Nothing I haven't seen before.”

“It isn't?” Y/n stared at him, aghast. “I am fascinated by your life,” she whispered.

“Let's get in here.” Wayne cracked his knuckles. “Start working this guy.”

“Oh.” Y/n clicked her tongue and crossed her arms. “You're gonna come in with me? I just thought maybe you'd watch from out here, you know, pull me out when I'm getting a little too hot, possibly?” She waved her hands around. “Call me a loose cannon. You know, classic captain stuff.”

“L/n, do you know what I miss about being a detective?” He answered his own question, “a good interrogation.” He clapped a fist into his open palm. “Breaking suspects down.” He lowered his voice. “Talking quietly and then talking real loud! Looking away and then looking right in their eyes.” His eyes flared at Y/n and then he leaned casually on the desk. “Leaning.”

“That was amazing,” Y/n gaped.

“So, can I join you?” Wayne straightened his cufflinks.

“Well, a lot of these techniques do work better with two people: you know, good cop-bad cop, crazy cop-sane cop, chill cop-ADHD cop. Wanna be ADHD cop?”

Capitan Wayne deadpanned, “I think you have that covered.” He turned away and said, “let's do this!”

Y/n strode into the interrogation room where Lex stopped fidgeting with his uneven seat. “Hello, Luthor.”

Lex hummed and greeted, “detective.”

“This is Captain Bruce Wayne,” Y/n gestured to Wayne who was brooding in the corner like a vigilante watching over their city. “He's a bit of a legend in interrogation circles. Hey, Cap-i-tan, who's the scariest person you've ever gotten a confession out of?”

“Abner Krill,” Wayne said. “He was known as Polka-Dot Man.”

Y/n’s nose scrunched up. “Okay, I thought it was gonna sound a little cooler, but whatever.” She clapped her hands together and sat down across from Lex. “So, shall we recap the night that Axel Granite was murdered? Friday the twenty second? I believe you were the last person to see him alive, correct?”

“No.” Lex raised a brow. “I'd imagine whoever killed him saw him after I did.”

“Ooh, nice dodge,” Y/n complimented and  leaned back in her chair. Finally; a challenge. “Tell us about Friday.”

“I had a late afternoon meeting.” Lex matched her stance, leaning back as well. He seemed relaxed- one leg was propped on the other, hands were loosely clasped on his lap, and eyes smiling. “A simple board meeting. It wrapped up around six o’clock, and Axel and I talked after. He had just wrapped up his last appointment.”

“And why do you have a doctor on sight?” Y/n asked.

“In case of any emergencies,” Lex answered easily. “We also take blood samples for some of the experiments we conduct at LexCorp, so we need him handy.”

“And who else was in the office?”

“My secretary and driver had gone home, and Cheryl, who‘s usually one of the last to leave, left early because her niece had a school play,” he explained.

“So it was just you and Axel? No witnesses?” Y/n hummed. “That's lucky.”

He shook his head. “Not lucky at all. There was nothing to witness. Axel just wanted to talk about firing one of our employees, Gretchen.”

“And that's all you discussed?” Y/n clarified.

“Yeah.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nah.”

“Zero other subjects were mentioned?”

“None. We just talked about Gretchen.”

“Right.” Y/n squinted at him. “And, of course, there's no way for me to check if that's true, because whoever took Axel’s phone wiped all of his calendars. Except…” She flipped open her notepad and sucked a breath through her teeth. “It was all backed up on his home laptop. Would you like to hear what he said the meeting was about?” She cleared her throat and read aloud, “Seven P.M. talked with Lex about-" 

“Missing equipment,” Luthor finished. Once again, he mimicked Y/n and sucked in a breath. “Ooh. Did I get that right?”

“Uh, yeah.” Y/n closed her notebook and said, “But ‘missing equipment’ hardly sounds like ‘firing Gretchen.’ So maybe you want to explain…”

“He thought Gretchen was stealing lab equipment. That's why he wanted to fire her.” He inspected his nails. “Any other questions?”

Wayne suddenly started chuckling. Honestly, Y/n had forgotten that he was there. “Boy, you really thought you had him with that one, huh?”

“Well, I…” Y/n’s mouth dropped open.

“And you got so excited for it… Let me guess, you, ah, practised the notebook flip?” 

“Uh, Captain, something's come up in the case. Can I talk to you outside for a sec?” Y/n interrupted. Once they were outside, she cried, “What the hell are you doing in there? You totally undermined me.”

“I know, and I apologise.” Wayne held up a hand. “But I'm executing a strategy.”

“Oh, really, and what strategy might that be?” She placed her hands on her hips. “Make Y/n feel like an idiot?”

“No, I want Luthor to underestimate you and fear me. I'll badger him with my superior intellect, while simultaneously belittling you. Once Luthor dismisses you as a threat, I'll leave you alone with him, and he'll let his guard down.”

Y/n glared at him and mumbled, “ If I didn't know any better, I would say you're describing smart cop-dumb cop.”

“Look, I thought you had him on the calendar reveal,” Wayne conceded. “But he was a step ahead. You got flustered, and I realised in the moment we could use this to our advantage.”

“So what do you want me to do, ask stupid questions?” Y/n shrugged dramatically.

“Stupid questions, grammatical errors, lose your train of thought, just ask him to confess.” Wayne listed on his fingers. “This is not a comment on you, L/n. You’re a brilliant detective. I only want to bring this guy down.”

“Yeah, that's all I want too.”

“So, the night of the murder, you met with Robert in his doctor's office,” Y/n reiterated. “Why there? Why not your office which is much better suited for business meetings?”

“He was preparing for the next day's appointments. By taking the meeting in his office, we saved time. And time is money.” He mimicked tapping a watch.

“Right, and did…” Y/n trailed off. “Nevermind. I forgot what I was saying. Come back to me.”

Wayne swept in easily, “now, we did a sweep of the room where you and Axel fought-”

“Talked,” Lex corrected.

“Right. ‘Talked.’ The entire room had been scrubbed. It had undergone industrial sterilisation to remove all traces of blood and DNA.” Wayne crossed his arms.

“It's a doctor’s office,” Lex reminded them. “Blood draws happen every day. Per law, we have to sanitise it.”

“Ooh!” Y/n butt in. “I remembered what I was gonna ask. Did you kill him?”

“No,” Lex answered calmly.

Wayne redirected the conversation back on track. “So, after you and Robert fought-”

“Talked.”

“You left the office, but you didn't take your car?” Wayne asked.

“I went to a bar, The Scotchman,” Lex said. “I didn't want to drive drunk, so I took a cab. You know, like a responsible person.”

“And you didn't have your phone?” Clearly, Wayne didn’t believe this story.

“I left it charging in my office and I didn't realise till I was already out of the building,” Lex offered easily.

“Oh, man, if I go ten minutes without looking at my phone, my pumpkin crop dies on my little farm.” Y/n shook her head sadly.

“This is not the time for stories about your digital squash, L/n,” Wayne said sharply.

“What does it matter that I forgot my phone?” Luthor completely disregarded Y/n’s comments. A look of realisation dawned on his face and he chuckled, “I had it on me, you could've seen it pinging off the cell tower.”

“So you took a cab to this bar,” Wayne narrated. “However, we talked to the employees of The Scotchman. Nobody saw you there.”

“Nobody remembers seeing me,” Luthor pointed out. “It's not surprising nobody remembers seeing me. The bar was extremely crowded that night and I spent my whole time in the corner talking to this woman, Helen.”

Wayne hummed. “Oh, so you say. But when we ran all the credit card receipts, nobody named Helen bought any drinks that night.”

Lex chuckled and held up a hand. “Trust me, Helen wasn't buying her own drinks.”

Suddenly, Wayne’s phone rang and he said, “I need to deal with this. Let's take a five.”

“Or…” Y/n suggested slowly, “I could keep this interview going solo.”

“Yes,” Captain Wayne said after a moment. Luthor regarded their interaction closely. “I'm sure that'll be, um… pretty helpful.”

Once Wayne had left the interrogation room, Y/n sat herself down at the table and smiled broadly. “I have some questions,” she said brightly. “What kind of car did Robert drive?” She flipped open her notebook and suddenly rattled off, “also, what colour was Helen’s hair, which night does the cleaning crew sterilise your office, have you ever been to where the body was found, when you left your phone at the office was it plugged into your computer or an outlet, did you kill him, and what did your cab driver look like?”

Lex rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. “This is a huge waste of time. But, here you go: Robert drove a Saab, Helen’s hair was brown, they sterilise on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I haven't been to Ocean View in twenty years, the phone was plugged into the wall, I did not kill him, and the cab driver had a beard and an earring… I'm sorry I didn't get his licence number.”

Y/n clicked her tongue and smirked. “Wow. Very impressive. You didn't even fall for my ‘did you kill him’ gambit.”

“Nope,” Lex grinned.

“Although,” Y/n tapped her chin. “It is interesting that you knew the body was found in Ocean View, New Jersey, when that information hasn't been released to the public yet.” When Luthor’s gaze flickered to her, Y/n muttered, “Got ya.” She laughed and said, “I can't believe you thought I was the dumb cop. I mean, Tim made me watch Planet Earth with the British narrator. I can tell you anything you want to know about three-toed slow-ths,” she said in a farcical manner. “I totally got you to say where the body was found, which kinda seems like something only the murderer would know.”

“Actually,” Luthor’ jaw twitched and he sat back. “Axel’s wife told me. I've been comforting her a lot lately. To help her through the pain.”

Y/n growled, “we asked her not to share that info, and she promised us she didn't.”

“Well, she's been distraught,” Lex said. “She might not remember.”

“Flimsy.” Y/n rolled her eyes. “So what did you mean when you said you hadn't been to Ocean View in twenty years?”

“My uncle has a cabin there. I would visit him as a kid.”

“So your uncle owns a cabin in the town where the bear-semened body was found. That is quite a coincidence,” Y/n commented.

“I haven't been there for twenty years. You can call my uncle if you want,” Lex waved his hand.

“Oh, we are.” Y/n nodded reassuringly. “So you might as well just confess now, or we can take our sweet time like the mer-jestic slow-th.” Her British accent came out once again. “Either way, we've got you.”

“We don't have him,” Y/n sighed behind the two-way glass. 

“Luthor’s uncle said he hasn't been to the cabin in months and he hasn't spoken to Luthor in over a year,” Wayne said, tapping on his phone.

“What about the neighbours?” Y/n asked.

“There's only one other house on that road and we haven't been able to contact the owner.”

Y/n poked her tongue in her cheek. “Yeah, but Lex doesn't know that. If we tell him the neighbour saw him that night, he'll crack for sure.”

Wayne glared at her. “You want us to lie?”

“No,” Y/n sassed. “I want me to lie and you to stand behind me and say, three ‘oh damns’ when I defeat him.”

“There will be no ‘oh damns.’” Wayne said, “we're not lying.”

“The Supreme Court said that we're allowed to lie in an interrogation,” Y/n argued. “Couple of days ago I told a perp I knew Selena Gomez. It had absolutely nothing to do with the case, but I can say it.”

Wayne shook his head. “What if Luthor never went to the cabin? Suppose you're wrong. Then Luthor knows we have nothing. There goes our credibility and our leverage.” He scratched his nose. “No, we need a different strategy. Admittedly, all this dental talk has given me an idea.”

Y/n barged into the room and announced, “We have a few more questions for you, genius.”

Wayne snickered. “Genius.” Luthor slowly turned to look at him. “It's funny when people call businessmen ‘geniuses.’ Especially male CEO’s.”

“I had to build my company from the ground up,” Lex said.

“That doesn’t make you a genius,” Wayne retorted.

“I have an IQ of two hundred twenty four.” Luthor smirked. “Does that qualify?”

Wayne’s jaw ticked. “Have you made any notable contributions to science? Have you discovered a new element? Building up a business hardly qualifies you.”

“My company has contributed to many scientific endeavours, thank you very much.” Luthor’s voice was tense and Y/n’s eyes flickered between the two men. 

“But were you the one actually experimenting?” Wayne pounded a fist on the table and it rattled. “We live in a society where CEOs take credit for the things-” A few moments later, Wayne was sitting in the viewing room and saying, “Apparently that’s a trigger for me.” His cufflinks were undone and his tie was loosened.

“Yeah, apparently.” Y/n handed him a glass of water. “So… now can we lie?”

“No. But you know what works? Making him confront his victim.”

“Look your dead friend in the eyes and say his name,” Y/n demanded, holding up a picture of Axel Granite.

Luthor looked at the picture. “Axel.”

“Okay, maybe say his full name,” Y/n suggested.

“Axel Granite.”

“His middle name's Holt.”

“Axel Holt Granite.”

“His wife called him Axe. Work that in.”

“Axe Granite.”

“Work it into the full name.”

“Axel ‘Axe’ Holt Granite.”

“Now say it with a frown on your face.”

“Axel ‘Axe’ Holt Granite.”

“Don’t blink so tears come to your eyes.”

“Axel ‘Axe’ Holt Granite.”

“Man, this guy is a good murderer!” Y/n cried once she and Wayne were back behind the two-way glass.

“There's got to be some way to break him.” Wayne rubbed at his temples.

Y/n’s eyes lit up. “Wait a minute. I just had an idea.”

Y/n held a guitar and chanted, “two, three, four!” She strummed the guitar haphazardly and started screaming loudly. 

“Yeah, I really gotta stop trying that.” In the viewing room, Y/n set the guitar aside, huffing out a breath. “It never works.”

“Tell us more about your relationship with Axel.”

Lex exhaled. “We've been over this a thousand times,” he said. “We got along well. I mean, we disagreed sometimes, but we had a good partnership.” Luthor smirked and muttered, “he never, for instance, skipped a party so he could micromanage me as I tried to do my job. That's what's happening here, right?” He pointed towards the two officers. “That's why you're wearing the tuxedo?”

“I skipped the opera, not a party,” Bruce said. ”It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, it's the Bugs Bunny one!” Y/n piped up.

“And I'm not here to micromanage anyone,” Wayne frowned. “I'm here because I enjoy interrogating scum.”

“You don't think the fact that he skipped the opera has anything to do with him not believing in you?” Lex asked slowly.

“He believes in me!” Y/n defended before pointing an accusing finger at the CEO. “You're not interrogating us. We're interrogating you. Tell us about the missing equipment! If Gretchen didn't take it, then who did? Because we're pretty sure it was you. Honestly, it could have been any of your employees. They all have access to the storage room.”

“You know, it's silly, but, uh…” Luther glanced up at them knowingly. “I trust the people who work for me.”

“Captain Wayne is only here because I want him here,” Y/n said.

“Really?” He pointed at Y/n. “So you're in charge? And all these strategies have been your ideas?”

Y/n stuttered and then said after a moment, “the guitar thing was mine.”

“And you signed off on that?” He then pointed at Wayne.

When Bruce didn’t say anything, Y/n turned towards him and scoffed, “seriously?”

“I just feel bad for you,” Luther shook his head. “Your boss thinks you're an idiot; that can't feel good.”

“Alright, listen,” Y/n snarled. “You son of a bitch, you think you're smarter than us? You think you've gotten away with it? You haven't.” She wagged her finger. “Imma find something. One skin cell, one eyelash, one tiny inconsistency in your story, and you're gonna spend the rest of your life in prison. Everyone who loves you will leave, and you will die alone! And at that time, it will be your head that a bear has sex with!” A few moments later, Y/n was sitting in the viewing room and saying, “Apparently that’s a trigger for me.” Her sleeves were rolled up and she tugged at her collar.

“Yeah, apparently.” Wayne handed her a glass of water. 

“He just gets us so riled up!” Y/n complained. She furrowed her brows and stared at nothing for a minute before murmuring, “I got it. I got it!”

“He's not answering any questions,” Luther’s lawyer, who had just joined him, said firmly as Y/n burst into the room.

“That's okay.” Y/n grinned. “I have no questions. That's right. I'm about to monologue, son!” She snapped her fingers theatrically.

“You better make it quick,” the lawyer said. “You have eight minutes until I file a harassment claim.”

“Alright, let me paint you a picture.” Wayne strode into the room and stood in the corner, arms crossed, listening to Y/n. “Lex Luthor, CEO of LexCorp, has been stealing equipment from his own labs.”

“Why would I steal from my own labs?” Luthor asked incredulously.

“What’s the point of this?” His lawyer demanded.

”I'll get there,” Y/n held a finger up. “One day, I'm working late when my colleague, Axel Granite, surprised me. He found out I was stealing equipment and said he's gonna file a police report. My reputation could be ruined. We fight, and something in me just snaps, so I grab the first thing I can find and I hit him with it.”

“You still have no murder weapon,” the lawyer reminded her.

“I do now.” Y/n slammed a picture down on the table. “I found a picture on Yelp of the doctor’s office six months ago, and here is a shot that our crime scene photographer took of the same room two weeks after the murder.” She slammed down another photo. “Notice any differences?” she asked.

“We're not answering that,” the lawyer said.

“That's all right, I can just tell you myself.” Y/n shrugged before continuing, “the Yelp picture has six of these glass awards in the background, whereas this shot only has five. What happened to number six?” Y/n asked rhetorically. “Murdered Axel with it!”

“I didn't,” Lex glared.

“You lost all control and you bludgeoned him to death,” Y/n, true to her word, kept monologuing. “There must have been blood everywhere, but you got lucky. You never would have gotten away with it in your carpeted office!”

“That's not what happened.” Luthor’s hands curled into fists.

“Don't say anything, Lex,” his lawyer reminded him.

“And Cheryl would’ve heard all of the screaming but she was at her niece's play. Lucky again.”

“You're wrong.”

“You put Axel’s body onto a dolly and shoved it in the elevator. It's a miracle there wasn't blood everywhere.”

“That's not true!” Luther insisted.

“Now you're in the garage with a corpse. You panicked and left your phone in your office and you don't have your car keys, but Axel’s are in his pocket so you put him in his car and take off.”

“No.”

“You simply can't believe what you've done.” She fans her face dramatically. 

“No.”

“Luthor,” his lawyer placed a hand on his forearm.

“You're flustered,” Y/n placed a hand on her forehead, faux swooning. “You have no GPS, so you just start driving.”

“No!” Lex pounded the table.

“Lex! Stop!” his lawyer cried.

“Next thing you know, you're in Ocean Views, and it hits you: your uncle's cabin! He has a place there. You're the luckiest son of a bitch ever.”

“It wasn't luck!” Luthor shouted and Y/n’s jaw twitched.

“Yes, it was,” she laughed. “You got lucky at every turn!”

“No!” Luthor fumed, slowly rising from his seat. ”I knew exactly where I was driving, I left my phone in the office on purpose, I was in the doctor’s office by design, and I didn't use some glass award that any idiot would clearly see was missing. In fact, a cleaner had broken it a week before!” He leaned forward on his fists, rings shining fully in the dim light. “I made a rod out of lab glass, killed him with it, then melted it back down. It's already another test tube, son!” His face morphed into one of shock and he fell back into his seat. His lawyer’s eyes widened before rubbing him sympathetically on the back.

Wayne’s mouth dropped open and he mumbled, “oh, damn.” In a louder voice he repeated, “oh, damn.” Shocked, the police captain cried out, “oh, damn!”

Y/n spun her finger in the air victoriously. “And that is three oh damns!” she shouted out. In a whisper, she said, “I feel so cool right now. Like I’m in a fanfic.”

[balrogballs]

Oh i would love your take on Thranduil’s grief in losing his wife! If your Celrond angst can shatter me and never piece me back together, I can only imagine how you’re going to annihilate readers with Thranduil angst 🙏🏼

Here you go go go, and I made this one a little cute/hopeful because feral baby Legolas is something I can never resist…

A year ago when Legolas was just three, Thranduil had brought him in to council with him because Irimë had stayed up with the teething toddler all night and it was only fair. Legolas had crawled up and around and onto laps, toddled barefoot across the table, and overall made a complete nuisance of himself but Thranduil, clearly struck down by what he normally refers to as Insufferably Elrondesque Behaviour, had indulged him.

Legolas was a curious child. He’d gotten into the habit of pointing at various people, from wardens to cooks to stableboys – asking, me? It was more an interrogation of his own future than actually wanting to know. Questioning what might one day come to be, what he would one day be. Me? he would ask, and always Thranduil would say yes, baby. Yes, if you wish it.

Me? he asked, pointing at Elrond’s twin sons, tall enough to be any little elfling’s ideal. Yes, baby, Thranduil would sigh somewhat reluctantly. Yes, if you wish it.

Indulging in Elrondesque Behaviour on that morning, unfortunately, had meant he also suffered the side effect of Elrondesque Luck. And that was why when he’d taken his eye off the boy for a second, Legolas had toddled into the garden just as his wardens brought in a bloated corpse, spider venom threading across his skin, a missing soldier. Legolas had watched wide eyed and when Thranduil rushed down, grabbed the child into his arms, Legolas pointed at the body. Me? all wide eyed in wonder.

No! Thranduil had exclaimed, wrenching his son away, pointing a finger at the body. No! Not you, baby. Never, never you.

It is a different kind of squalid, rotting emptiness now, as Irimë lay pale in state, the two-day wake. He remembers going to Imladris after Celebrían sailed, remembers how corpse-like Elrond had looked, as if performing an awful mummery of death, shrouded in paper-white skin. It is like that. He is the corpse now, holding a squirming child who keeps peering over at where his mother lay. Blue, befitting something killed on the road — the sole road the Elvenking had not appointed patrols to. Not something Thranduil can extricate himself from, like pestilence and spiders and fever, no, there’s a clear finger to point and it’s directed right at him. He cannot take his eyes off her. For two whole days, he cannot take his eyes off her, her own staring straight back at him.

And then there are starfish-hands on his face as he peers over at the body one final time before they take her away. Something pink-cheeked stroking his own, patting it. Legolas, in whose world nobody dies, only disappears, four by account of shyly held up fingers, who woke up without a mother in a suddenly-quiet world and took it in his stride. Guilt curls in his stomach, bloats him from head to toe.

No, baby, Legolas says, patting Thranduil’s face so hard it stings, pointing at the body. Not you.

Thranduil must be going insane. For there is no other explanation for how he clings to his son there, right in public, like he’s a lifeline, asks the child truly? Do you truly think so?

Not you, baby, Legolas parrots his own words from a year ago. Not a mummery of death but of love. He keeps saying it, unknowing, until his father believes it despite himself.

There’s no such thing as a blameless death in Mirkwood. This is no Imladris. Everything here, from shell-shocked rabbits to dead queens has a cause and every cause leads to death. In the swampy, wet cold under the Shadow, it is easy to decay, to rot, to turn into things that feed trees. It would have been so easy for Thranduil to have sunk into the freezing earth and let himself be taken. But on his knee sits Legolas, patting his face methodically, like a healer pressing breath into a dying thing. The beating heart of the Greenwood: warmer than every pyre, and so contagiously alive.

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[deakyjoe]

Not A Place, But A Feeling

Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader (fem, she/her)

Category: angst and maybe a little fluff idk

Summary: They say home is where the heart is. And your heart is with Joel Miller.

Warnings: 18+, age gap (reader is mid 20s and Joel is 56), a rewrite of episode 3 basically, kissing (!!), groping (!!), implied smut, mentions of death & suicide (Bill & Frank, Sarah), reader is Bill & Frank’s adopted/surrogate daughter, guilt, sadness, grief, loss/bereavement

Word count: 3.9k

A/N: In celebration of Pedro’s birthday, have something I’ve been working on for literal months <3

Consider buying me a coffee :)

Bill and Frank were dead.

Their corpses sat rotting away in their bedroom, the door locked shut, as Ellie read their goodbye letter, a note of upbeat confusion in her voice. You couldn't blame the kid, she'd never met either of them.

Joel stood next to you rigid, unsure what to do or say as he just listened to the final words spoken by two of the few people he'd chosen to trust in this world.

You, on the other hand, felt as if the universe was crashing down around you. All blood had escaped from your body, seemingly draining out from your feet, as your head floated around in a storm of lightness that threatened to knock you unconscious at any moment.

Bill and Frank had raised you, the former finding you abandoned as a toddler when the outbreak had started. You'd stayed shut away in their own private community for years, Tess and Joel being the first people you could remember meeting that hadn't been your surrogate parents. And when Frank had come up with the genius idea to dump you in their responsibility so you could socialise some more and see the real world, you'd been all too eager to sneak back into the QZ with them.

You were beginning to regret that enthusiasm.

"And take care of our girl for us, we know you will." The final words of the letter hung in the air for a moment as Ellie lowered the paper into her lap, eyes flicking between the two people stood in front of her.

Joel said nothing. And you ran.

The front door almost fell off its hinges with the force of you swinging it open to get to the front yard. Barren flowerbeds were quickly flooded with the contents of your stomach. You retched at the floor, nothing else coming up but the feeling of needing to vomit still strong.

They were dead. Dead. Gone. Forever. What were you supposed to do now?

Your legs trembled beneath you, struggling to keep your weight as every fibre of your being just wanted to give up and collapse into the ground. This wasn't supposed to happen.

Trying to shake the feeling off, you pushed yourself into an upright position and started walking. To where? You didn't know. But this is what you used to do when you needed time to think, time to clear your head, time to escape. You walked the town. You hadn't had that same ease in the QZ, it was nice to have it back now. Even in the worst scenario.

You couldn't dwell on this for too long. People died. Regularly in this world you lived in for that matter. It was an inevitability. The loss of Tess had been a warning sign of that only recently. You'd been taught not to grieve too much, you didn't have the time for it. And it wouldn't change anything.

But you still ached, feeling as if a part of you had been ripped away and stolen for eternity. So, you walked.

Joel had watched you leave out of the corner of his eye, not surprised by your reaction at all. It was a little understated if anything. The men who had raised you were dead. Nobody coped well with the loss of family, he knew that better than most.

"You should probably follow her." Ellie said, looking towards where you'd abruptly left the house.

"She'll be fine." He insisted, rolling his shoulders back and taking in the room around him. He'd have to figure out everything for himself now that Bill wasn't around to help. So he got started on that, distracting himself by creating a mental list of inventory the group of you would need for your journey. And all of it was bound to be lying around here somewhere.

Ellie could only watch as Joel ignored what he really should have been attending to and took to wandering around the house instead, staying careful to keep clear of the downstairs bedroom.

It took two hours for you to reappear in the house again, acting as if nothing had happened.

You strolled in to find Ellie rummaging through a dusty old box with your name plastered on the side of it in block capitals, the black ink slightly smudged.

"Hi."

Her head snapped up to meet your eyes. "Oh, hi. I found this."

You shrugged. "My music collection, right?"

She visibly relaxed and smiled. "Yeah." Ellie wasn't a shy kid by any means and she certainly didn't have any trouble with her confidence or prying, but she liked you and didn't want to overstep since you'd been nothing but nice to her since you'd met.

You nodded. "I think I've got an old Discman around here somewhere if you want to take some of it on the road with you."

Before she had a chance to respond Joel stomped back into the room, gaze landing on you. He didn't say anything but his expression was questioning. You just gave a short nod which was enough for him.

"Take a shower and I can find some clothes for you both." You said, collapsing into one of the wooden chairs. It creaked under your weight but you paid it no mind.

The both of them could tell you still were not feeling quite right but didn't push it, Ellie disappearing upstairs to take advantage of the luxury of a shower that was actually hot with good water pressure. Joel silently followed you to a closet where the stash of unused clothes was stored away.

You found jeans for him and Ellie, a t-shirt for the young girl and a plaid shirt for him. It was one of Frank's. Joel watched you silently as you hesitated before passing it over to him. Luckily, neither of you had to fill the tense silence that followed as the shower switched off upstairs.

“I’ll go give these to Ellie then you can shower.” You mumbled, pushing past him when he gave no more than a grunt of acknowledgment.

You don’t know what you expected from the man, he wasn’t exactly well-versed in emotional support. Just something a little more would have been nice. You pushed the thought aside as you knocked on the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” Ellie called back.

“It’s me. I’ve got you some clothes.” You were slightly turned away from the door in case she decided to open it.

“Oh! Okay, hang on.”

There was muffled rustling from the other side before the bathroom door opened a crack and a hand stuck out.

You laughed and gave her the pile of clothes. “Should be some spare toothbrushes under the sink too. Maybe some toothpaste. If you’re, I don’t know, feeling extra hygienic.”

“Feeling extra hygienic.” She echoed back in amusement. “Thanks!”

The bathroom door slammed again and you rolled your eyes.

“You’re welcome.”

You trotted down the stairs to find Joel hovering by the door to the kitchen, surveying his surroundings. You recognised that look.

“What do you need?” You asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

You sighed. “Don’t tiptoe around me, Joel. What do you need?”

His gaze shot back to yours.

Tense silence hung in the air for a few seconds.

Just as he opened his mouth to reply, Ellie came bounding down the stairs and collapsed in front of the box of CDs again. She didn’t seem to notice the staring contest going on between the two of you as she rifled through the music rapidly.

Joel’s mouth closed again momentarily before he appeared to change his mind. “You good here for a while?” He directed at Ellie.

The young girl glanced up from the box and nodded, finally noticing the atmosphere in the room.

Joel turned back to you and tilted his head towards the front door. "Let's take a walk."

You followed him silently as he walked past you and out the front of the house, not stopping his fast pace until he was well away from the building.

Falling into step beside him, you debated whether you should be the first to speak. Thankfully, you didn’t have to think on that for too long because as you reached the point where the boutique was coming into view, Joel stopped and suddenly turned on you.

"You should stay here."

The statement felt like a knife in your chest. The way he said with such finality, such conviction. Like he’d been thinking it for a while. You wondered if that had been his plan all along.

"What?" You didn’t let your confusion and hurt go amiss from your tone.

Joel could only repeat himself. "Stay here."

You scoffed. "Why would I do that?"

"It's safe." He pushed through clenched teeth.

You nodded. "Safe."

"Your home."

He’d completely lost you.

And yet you nodded slowly again. "My home."

He nodded tightly, wishing you'd stop repeating everything he said in that sardonic tone.

You clicked your tongue quietly. "You think this is my home?"

"Yes."

You glanced at the row of derelict buildings next to you, the cracks on the ground, the dead grass. "The place I left years ago, where I had no friends, where my parents have recently killed themselves, you think that's my home?"

Joel had never heard you directly refer to Bill and Frank as your parents. It pained him to hear the word used in such a horrific scenario. But he didn’t let up.

"You grew up here."

You laughed humourlessly. "You grew up in Texas. Do you still refer to that as your home?"

He'd like to. But didn't. "No."

"And what is your home, huh? What do you think of your home as, Joel?" Your brows furrowed together as you watched him thinking about it.

Sarah.

Tommy.

Tess.

...You.

You didn’t let him answer. "Bet it's not a place, is it?"

You were right.

You knew that so you carried on. "Bill and Frank were my home. Now they're gone. Tess was my home. But guess what? She's gone too. Tommy's gone fucking M.I.A.! So what am I left with, Joel?"

Him.

"I'm left with you." You shoved at his chest, surprised by your own strength when he took an unsteady step back. "So if you think that I'm going to stay in this fucking ghost town alone instead of following my home wherever he goes with that girl who needs us, then you really don't know me at all."

You went to push past him, to leave his ridiculous suggestion behind and maybe go clear your head with a hot shower, when he stopped you with a statement that felt like the knife he’d already plunged into your chest was being twisted around to hurt you even more.

"Tess promised Bill and Frank that we'd look after you."

The scowl on your face deepened and Joel knew he'd given the wrong answer but it was the only answer he knew to give.

"Is that what I am to you, Joel? A promise that Tess made?"

He didn't respond.

A sting that threatened tears bit at the back of your throat. "Because if I'm a promise that someone else made for you then fine, I'll stay. I won't burden you with having to take care of me anymore." You ran a hand down your face. "You've got your hands full with Ellie anyway."

“That’s not what I meant.” He tried.

And failed.

“Then what do you fucking mean?!” You wailed, fingers clawing at your scalp in frustration. “Do you want me to stay here for me or for you? Just spit it out, Joel! So I understand what the fuck you want!”

Joel Miller was an intimidating man. He marched around with a permanent frown on his face, his tall and broad figure parting any crowd that saw him coming. That's why, when he took a few sudden paces towards you, you inched back a couple steps. It was instinct. He was a killing machine. And he didn't look too happy with you right now.

But the pure shock that rocketed through your system when his large hands landed on each of your cheeks and he crashed his mouth against yours would have been enough to keep a whole city's electricity running for a month.

You froze for a moment, eyes fluttering shut in surprise, not sure what to do with yourself. Joel Miller was kissing you. Joel Miller was kissing you. Out of every possible outcome, you never could have predicted this. The older man who you had adored quietly for years and trusted with your life, with your soul, was kissing you.

Your fists curled into the front of the shirt he’d been wearing for days, fabric a little stiff with dirt and grime, using it as leverage to meet his lips halfway.

He kissed you hungrily, like a man starved, devouring everything he could possibly take from you. Fingers tangled in the back of your hair, tugging roughly to elicit soft whimpers out of you. He licked into your mouth hotly, tasting as much of you as possible.

The feeling of your palms sliding up his chest seemed to knock him out of his stupor, detaching himself from you and taking a couple of unsure steps back.

He looked at you surprised, almost like he couldn't believe he'd done that. "I-"

"Joel..." You trailed off when he gave you a warning look. So you went for another approach. "I thought you and Tess..."

His face tightened in frustration. "No."

You didn't believe that. "No?"

"No." He gave a subtle shake of his head. "Never."

He seemed adamant. And sincere. So you chose to believe him.

You weren’t shocked when he looked at you for just a couple of seconds more before spinning on his heel and started walking back in the direction of the house. He was like that. Joel seemed to enjoy ignoring his feelings.

But then he changed his mind and looked back at you again. "We can stay a couple of days and then we need to move again."

You nodded slowly. "Okay."

He tilted his head up towards the dull sky for a moment before turning again and stalking off.

You waited until he was out of sight before following him. If he was conflicted on what he’d just done, then pestering him with your presence certainly wasn’t going to help.

When you got back to the house, Ellie was still sat on the floor.

She didn’t even look up as she spoke to you. “The old man’s showering, thank god. Thought my nose was going to fall off.”

You stifled a laugh and set about finding out if there was any food in the pantry that was still good to eat. You knew there was an endless supply in the basement and garage, but something slightly fresher was more likely to satisfy the three of you for the next couple days you were apparently staying. Managing to find something mildly edible and leaving it out for the two of them to eat, you informed Ellie she could help herself to anything in the house before making your way upstairs to find some of your own stuff to wear in what used to be your old bedroom.

You’d miscalculated how long it would take Joel to wash away the days worth of dirt as he emerged from the bathroom just as you walked past it, hair damp and slicked back and new-ish clothes on. He looked good. Very good. And somehow better than usual.

You swallowed thickly and slid past him into your old bedroom, not saying a word as he watched you go. The knowledge that he felt something for you, you didn’t know just what yet, was weighing down on you. What were you supposed to do with the idea that he maybe liked you just enough to want to kiss you? Joel wasn’t the kind of man to suddenly open up about his feelings and tell you he was hopelessly in love with you. Maybe he was pre-outbreak, you thought. You’d like to have known the him that existed pre-outbreak, you decided. But he certainly wasn’t that man now.

You pushed your door shut behind you, leaning against the wood and letting out a long exhale. God, why had he decided now was a good time to make this more complicated than it already was? You almost despised him for it.

Shaking the thoughts away, you found yourself some clothes and traipsed to the shower. The hot water and steam would clear away the temporary worries whilst you figured out how you were going to address your own feelings for him. Sure, you’d always known you’d silently harboured a thing for Joel. But you’d always assumed that nothing would ever come of it, he was a lot older and Bill would kill him if he ever caught wind of anything, so you’d buried the feelings deep down inside of yourself. Until today apparently. When he’d decided to dig it all up by kissing you.

You scrunched your eyes shut and forced that thought out of your head. The memory of the way his lips felt against yours, the way his hands, his very large hands, held you, the way his tongue licked into your mouth, the way he groaned lowly deep in his chest.

Thoughts. Forced. Out. Gone.

The rest of the day was uneventful. The three of you ate in silence before Ellie declared she was tired and you told her she could sleep in your old bed. She seemed ecstatic with that as she’d admitted to snooping earlier and thought that the mattress looked comfortable. You’d laughed and waved her off. Joel had then mumbled something about supplies and had disappeared into the basement.

You took that as your opportunity to speak to Bill and Frank, something you’d wanted to do since Ellie had first read that letter. So you hauled yourself up from where you were sitting, padded down the short hallway to the room where their bodies rested, and promptly sat down right outside the door.

You spoke to them silently in your head, giving them updates like you would’ve done were they still alive and you were just visiting. Telling them about life in the QZ and what you’d been up to. In retrospect, it seemed ridiculous. But at the time, it felt right.

When you were done, you just closed your eyes and leaned your head back against the door.

"Don't go in there."

Your eyes shot open at the deep voice to find Joel standing a few feet away from you. Of course. Who else would it have been?

"I'm not. Just wanted to sit with them for a minute." You sighed and squinted your eyes at him. "I know that sounds crazy."

He shook his head in disagreement. "I understand."

There was a brief moment of silence.

He broke it. "It's late. You should go to bed."

"Ellie's in my bed.”

"Master bedroom." He countered.

You frowned. "I thought that's where you were sleeping."

"Couch." Joel’s line of defence was unwavering; you didn’t really know why considering you were having a simple conversation about sleeping arrangements.

So you pushed on. "Couch? Why? Isn't that uncomfortable?"

"I've slept on worse."

"What's wrong with the master bedroom?"

He hesitated. "That's where Bill and Frank used to sleep. Feels like an invasion."

Oh.

You hummed and nodded your head. "That's why I can't do it either."

"You can't stay here all night."

"I've slept on worse." You repeated his words back to him, surely he would understand.

He nodded and slowly offered out his hand. “Come on.”

You almost didn’t take it, shocked that he was doing it. But after a moment’s pause, you slipped your hand into his and let him pull you up. And when he didn’t immediately let go, and started to pull you towards the couch instead, you thought you might have a heart attack.

When the two of you reached your apparent sleeping grounds for the night, Joel turned back to look at you. Only to find that you were a lot closer than expected. He didn’t like the way you looked up at him because it reflected a grief he’d only ever seen in himself. It was too personal, what you were feeling. He hated it. And yet, he couldn’t help but feel tempted by it.

He’d already crossed that boundary once. What was once more?

You were less surprised the second time Joel Miller kissed you. In fact, you were more relieved.

One hand cupped your face, keeping you grounded, the other clutched at your waist, keeping you close. Whether that was for him or for you, you weren’t sure. But you weren’t going to complain either way. And when the two of you fell back onto the couch all bitter memories of loss, of grief, of confusion, of him all went away.

Joel could only wish that he was on the same mental path.

This was so unbelievably selfish of him. Bill and Frank trusted him with your safety and security. And here he was on their couch, the memories of their lives still dancing around him fresh, kissing their daughter as he groped and grabbed at you with lust fuelled energy. It was more than lust, Joel knew that, but the ghosts of Bill and Frank didn't.

You were on top of him, full weight pushed against his body, and Joel could think of nothing but how fucking soft you felt under his touch. He ignored the betrayal of two of his only friends, ignored the glaring age difference, ignored that he was feeling what he should have felt for Tess. None of it mattered when your skin was warm and velvety in his palms. None of it mattered when your tongue slid against his and you swallowed the soft groans he'd accidentally let loose every now and then. None of it mattered when you whispered his name against his lips almost checking like his was still there with you. And of course he was. He'd never leave you from this moment on.

He'd continue to be selfish and ignore all the reasons why this was so wrong because it just felt right. Like you'd said, he was your home. And you were certainly his. Maybe he could afford to be selfish for once in his life.

The kisses were sweet, almost as sweet as you, but Joel could feel you yearning for more. Your fingers itched against him, twitching in anticipation. He understood perfectly as he felt the same, letting his hands drift to wherever they wanted. And you had no complaints, arching into his touch as much as you could.

The two of you were like horny teenagers, making out on the couch and trying to stay as quiet as possible so as not to wake the rest of the house. The rest of the house being Ellie in this scenario. Although the teenager wasn’t stupid; she’d felt the tension as soon as she’d met the two of you. Even if you both appeared unaware of it.

The sun dipped below the horizon.

Hands dipped below waistlines.

A war raged through Joel’s mind. This was wrong. So unbelievably wrong. But you felt so right.

He broke away momentarily, running a thumb along your bottom lip. “Maybe you should sleep.”

You only nodded at him, eyelids half closed and pupils blown. Joel just kissed you again. Maybe his moral dilemma could be a problem for the morning.

A/N: When I say this has been sitting in my drafts for ages, unfinished, but calling to me. Glad I finally got around to completing it :)

[taintandviolent]

feed my Frankenstein ; Frankenkyle x reader

summary: stripper!reader decides to dress up like a zombie for Halloween, and when the girls bring Kyle to the strip club…. He makes the decision for himself that he’s going to be with his kind. w a r n i n g s: 5k words! stripper!reader, female reader, cunnilingus, rough sex, violence, mentions of blood, biting, graphic descriptions. kyle being a big, horny zombie who doesn't understand his strength. a/n: [🎃 part of lizzie's halloween fics! 🎃] probably some errors, whoops. I didn't want to label this as dead dove don't eat, but Kyle literally tries to eat reader, so be warned, I guess??? also my ending is very... cliff-hangery. don't come for me, this fic took on a life of its own very quickly. thank you for reading if you did!!! full fic & taglist under cut!↓ / ao3 link here! / ♪ recommended playlist here! ♪

You dab a stippling sponge against your neck, hiding an edge with a speckle of grey makeup. You’d put a lot of effort into your silly little zombie look - but it was Halloween after all, and hardly any of the other girls had dressed up. Sure, they’d started out in low-effort costumes of Dorothy Gale and Snow White, but as soon as those came off, they were just their normal selves again. You… not so much. You went the extra mile. You’d spent hours applying prosthetics on your limbs, and painting your flesh to mimic the rotting corpses seen in cult classic horror films. Specks of blood around your perfectly lined lips, uneven skin, stitches from your neck down the front of your body.

It wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, you knew. Some of them would lose their boners at the sight. It was time for your first shift. The club was rowdy, you heard it from behind the door. You lean against it, gulp down the last of your water, and fluff your hair before spinning on your red, patent leather heels and pulling open the door.

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea, Madison…” Zoe confesses, nervously. She holds onto Kyle’s arm tightly, guiding him around a booth like an elderly man. He was already entranced by the vibrant lights that swept back and forth in shades of orange and green. It reminded him of his show. Colours….

“Oh, please.” With a roll of her eyes, Madison flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. “This is the best place to put a braindead man… look, they’re everywhere.”

Men cluster around the stage, watching hungrily as women take their clothes off, gyrating their hips close enough to their faces that they could reach out and take bites  out of their full asses. The bouncer in the corner makes sure that doesn’t happen, though.

Over the PA, a loud voice says: “Alright! Put your hands together for our resident nerdy girl, our very own reanimated sexpot…”

As though it was on hinges, Kyle’s head swings heavily to face the stage. H

“Look, he’s already fitting in.” Madison nips.

You prance forward, reaching for the pole in the centre of the stage. Men holler your name, the few regulars that came every night you were working. You’d earned yourself a reputation as the nerdy girl because of your penchant for dressing up on the themed nights. Your hips roll to the beat of the song, coming daringly close to the hands that hold dollar bills. When they don’t get the chance to slip them into your outfit, they flutter at your feet, decorating the stage. You undo the tie of your shirt, revealing white bikini with gratuitous blood spatter. You’d done that yourself.

You wrap one leg around the pole, latching onto it. As it spins, you reach behind your back, undoing the tie of your top. Your breasts fall free, nipples hardening in the air conditioning. You hold the bra out proudly, smiling as the hoots and cheers fill the room.

“C’mon,” she starts, taking hold of Kyle’s thick wrist. His skin is always slightly cooler than everyone else’s. She remembers how cold the inside of his mouth was when they first — She blinks away the thoughts, actually disgusted by the idea. After all, she’d never really wanted to fuck a dead guy…

“Hey!” “Watch it, sweetheart!” “Get outta’ the way, you’re blockin’ the view, toots!”

Madison ignores the heckling, and continues to the front, pressing her bony hips against the lip of the stage.

“Hey! Dead bitch!”

Her voice is loud enough that it carries over the music, and you furrow your brow. She wasn’t wrong, but the bitch part seemed unnecessary. Still, you make your way over to the cluster of them, and bend at the waist to hear her.

“Yeah - what?” You ask, still swaying to the song.

“This is our little zombie — ”

“His name is Kyle,” The other girl interrupts pointedly. Madison throws a look towards the other girl, who nods with a fake smile. Truly, she didn’t care what you called him. As long as she didn't have to deal with him, she was happy.

“Kyle — and he needs a babysitter. He’s a little…” she makes a face, stretching her mouth out in a sneer. You knit your brows together again, unsure what that means.

Kyle, you think to yourself. What a frat boy name. In fact, he looks like a frat boy with really really good makeup. Full head of curly blonde hair, dark eyes, strong but soft features… looks like he can absolutely devour a keg.

He’s wearing an open black shirt and jeans, and beneath the black shirt, you can see raised flesh, scars like he was put back together. Funny that you’d chosen to do a dance number to Feed my Frankenstein.

“Do your job and keep him entertained, okay?” She pulls the peeking string of your thong far enough out to freely press a one hundred dollar bill against your hip and lets go. It snaps back against your skin, hard enough to sting. You wince.

Before you have time to protest, the girls are walking back towards the entrance without their little zombie in tow. One of them casts a woeful glance over her shoulder, and you’re left wondering why if she cares so much, why was she still walking away? You fill your lungs with air, exhale and lower yourself down onto your haunches.

“Hey baby,” you coo, wrapping a single blonde curl around your index finger. It’s angel-soft, and bounces back as you let go, straightening up. He seems to melt towards your touch, starved for it. “I like your costume.”

He watches as your ample cleavage sways with the gentle motion of your body. He repeats the word back to you, laboriously. “Cos…tume….”

“That’s right,” you say, running your hands over your thighs as you stand upright. The long heels of the shoes elongate your legs, making you tower over the club’s patrons. “I like it, it’s cute.”

Kyle watches wordlessly as your hands glide over your body, carefully skipping over the stitches at your knees, along your stomach, and finally up to the long stitch around your neck, which to him is holding your head on. Kyle’s eyes blink repeatedly with recognition.

You dip down, reaching for his hand. The crowd woooo’s as you hand him the string of your skirt. He grips it hard before looking at it deeply. You take one step back, flashing a coy expression to the men in the front row. Another step, and the tie begins to slip through the bow, unravelling. Another step and the skirt falls to your feet. A cacophony of approval fills your ears.

You’re in nothing but the blood-spattered bikini bottoms now, and you sink to your knees again, flashing Kyle a bright smile. He blinks, your skirt awkwardly hanging from his hand by the string.

On all fours, you crawl towards him, popping your ass to the beat of the song. Dollar bills shower the stage,  and when you slide your knees out to the sides, allowing men a delicious view of your backside, someone tucks another $100 in your bikini.

Kyle is watching you, but his hands drop to his groin where he makes a fist, and rubs it awkwardly over his now-throbbing erection. You immediately notice this, and your eyes widen. That’s a sure fire way to get kicked out, and for whatever reason, you’ve clocked him as too innocent to let that happen. There’s either a) something wrong with him, or b) he’s really committed to acting like a clueless, braindead boy. Both options require action.

“Okay, okay,” you murmur, guiding him to the side of the stage. There’s an empty chair, and with a heel, you push him back into it. Sit. Stay. He does. Good boy.

He never takes his eyes off you though, and every time you’re looking at him, his jaw hangs slack, staring at you with half-lidded eyes. He keeps trying to get up, and you have to slowly shake your head at him, teasingly. He seems to understand that gesture, and stays put.   

As you dance, you find yourself watching him, too. Inexplicably drawn to him, for whatever reason. You don’t usually take guys to the back, but $100 is a pretty good tip. Besides, you didn’t want to run into that girl again, and especially not angry.

As your routine comes to an end, Kyle gets up out of his chair, knocking into the edge of the stage. A few guys turn their heads, trying to figure out what this guy’s deal is. You’re too busy picking up your tips, and gathering your clothes to notice. With arms full, you race to the back, throw on a t-shirt and bolt back to the front, praying that Kyle is still where you left him.

He is. He may be trying to climb up on the stage, head craning in the direction of where you exited, but he's still there. You heave a relieved sigh, and saunter up to him, softening your expression.

“Hi, Kyle…” you murmur sweetly. You slip your arm underneath his, linking it with yours and softly pulling him down into a normal standing position again. There’s a small moment of processing and trust before he looks at you and smiles very weakly.

Destinee is next, and while she’s a nice girl, you absolutely loathe her taste in lighting. You enjoy a good rave, sure, but this is like the Electric Daisy Carnival in a much, much smaller space.

You learn very quickly that Kyle doesn’t like it either. At all. In fact, he might dislike it more than you. As soon as the beat is thumping and the bright red and orange lights are washing over the establishment, Kyle wrenches away from you, covering his ears. A low groan starts in his throat, bubbling up through his lips until he’s practically screaming.

“Shhh, shh it’s okay!” You try desperately to console him, but he can’t seem to hear you. Glancing nervously at the guests around you who are starting to take notice of him now, you smile apologetically. “Kyle, it’s okay!”

There’s only one solution - the private dance rooms. They’re quiet, secluded and a perfect spot to store a stressed out zombie boy for a few hours. You looked towards the spiral staircase that led upstairs, and hesitated. You were a dancer who rarely used the private rooms. You had been hard pressed to avoid being alone with any man, especially one that had paid you and felt entitled to whatever he wanted to take. Kyle, however, didn’t seem like the type to… well, do that. Or even articulate that he wanted to do that — did he even understand that you’d been paid to babysit him? Likely not.

You force his hand down as gently as possible, interlacing your fingers with his. “Kyle,” you say. “Kyle, look at me.”

His head moves sluggishly, and his eyes gradually follow. He looks at you with big, black eyes, the surrounding skin darkened and mottled. In the changing lights, he looks so lost, and your heart throbs desperately. Shucking the worries of whispers aside, you lead him through the club towards the wrought iron staircase.

“Hey Lance,” you say. “Private room open?”

“They sure are…” he replies with a large grin, his heavy accent coming through. Lance was one of the bouncers and rotated positions, so you had gotten semi-close with him. He enjoyed your presence and penchant for the strange. “Last door on da’ left.”  

With Kyle in tow, you head down the long, red hallway. Each of the doors were painted black, with gold trim. Kyle’s gaze travels from each door, picking up on the various sounds that seeped from behind them.

“Okay…” You say, your voice a touch softer than before as you push open the last door, praying that it’s been cleaned adequately. You cock your head to the side, urging him inside. His concerned eyes swept from you to the door and back to you before he finally decided that it was safe enough for him to enter. “Look, no strobe lights. No loud music. Just you and me.”

“You… and me….” He grumbles. The door clicks shut behind you. His words are painfully slow and slurred, but you can’t help be charmed by the innocence of them. “You…. You’re…. l-like me.”

“That’s right, baby… I’m like you.” In a quiet, joking whisper, you say: “Raaaaauuuuggghhhhhh…. Brains.”

Kyle seems to like this. The tiniest of smiles forms on his mouth. His chest heaves, and without warning, he lunges for you. His strong arms wrap around you in a steely grip that at first terrifies you; your arms are pinned at your sides, locked into place. His tongue slips over your collarbone, wet and cool like he’s just finished eating ice cream. It slips over your neck, along your jawline, and up behind your ear. He’s licking you, devouring you with such pressure that he has to have eaten some of the makeup by this point. You wince as he nips at your ear lobe, his teeth grinding down on the flesh. With some inhuman gurgle, he descends, covering your chest in his saliva.

You were used to men being hungry for you, acting like rabid dogs the second that they caught a glimpse of your plump tits or your juicy ass. It was part of the gig, came with the territory. But not this. This guy was on something. Had to be. Without warning, he yanks your cropped shirt up, and his jaws clamp down on the meat of your exposed breast. You yelp, pushing him off. He looks hurt or confused, or maybe both. Immediately, you scramble, feeling like you’ve just taken candy from a child.

“Hey no.. it’s okay. You can bite me… I like being bit. But not too hard, honey… that hurt.”

He doesn’t understand. Or he doesn’t look like he understands. His brows knit together sadly, while the dark, ink pools he has for eyes glaze over.

“….biiiiiiiiiiiiiite….” He says.

“Softly,” you finished, with your cutest zombie voice. “Biiiiite soft…ly….”

He cranes forward, mouth finding your flesh again. His teeth continue to graze your skin, slightly softer than before though, so maybe he does understand. His tongue lolls out sloppily to taste every inch. He nears the jumbled up mess of liquid latex on your elbow, and you expect him to stop, or skip over it — but he doesn’t. He feels uneven, soft flesh and his front teeth clamp down on it with a guttural sound. He rears his head back far enough for the liquid latex to streeeetch, and snap.

This gorgeous, blonde boy has a chunk of faux flesh hanging from between his teeth. Fake blood dots his pale lips, and he’s looking at you with the most confused expression you’ve ever seen on a man. It’s a grisly sight, really, but it fits the theme of the night. He’s committed to the zombie act, you’ll give him that.

“Hey, hey, take it easy, spit that out…” You reach up, rubbing the fake blood off his bottom lip. flatten your slender fingers on his broad chest, skin smooth like stone except for the deep scars. These are really good prosthetics. You can’t even see the seam. Because there aren’t any…

Like a dog, he drops the wrinkly skin-toned mass from his mouth and frowns. He looks genuinely disappointed, like he expected blood and guts. “B-bad… th-that… didn’t taste….. gooood…” he stammers. "Hun..gry…..”

For a moment, you’re frozen. Your realization clicks into place painfully slowly, slower than his brain seems to move. He’s really too good at the whole zombie act, and a panicked thought writhes its way into your mind, penetrating it the way that a tissue absorbs blood. Just sucks it in, becomes a part of it. No, no way.

Heavily masking the nerves in your voice, you clear your throat and reach for his shoulder. You stroke the smooth roundness of it, raking your nails against his skin.  “You want something that tastes good, baby?”

That ‘something good' is your cunt. You’ll let him eat you out so you can think. You assume he’ll eat you out like most men do — boringly — and you can process the realisation that this poor creature in front of you is actually really badly scarred, and possibly, a victim of head trauma, or something. Because there’s no way you’re meeting an actual zombie. Even on Halloween in New Orleans. That’s insane. So, you’re going to let him eat you out while you sort this out in your mind.

That was the plan, anyway.

Except the second you sink into the vinyl chair, he’s on his knees, looking at your pretty cunt with hungry eyes and the visual wipes your brain clean. It was like you put a plate of food in front of a starving man. His mouth opens. You untie both sides of your underwear, letting them fall to the floor. His eyes drop heavily, watching every move.

At first, his tongue juts out, curiously tasting what you’ve put in front of him. It presses between your folds, pauses, before wiggling around. Your eyelids flutter; you were ready to zone out, but Kyle’s inexperience, his curiosity feels so good.

“Good,” he growls, the word vibrating your cunt. His cool breath washes over your core, sending a chill up your spine. He delves deeper, tasting more of you.

His tongue flicks at your clit, flipping the swollen bundle of nerves mercilessly. Your whole body is trembling, and you feel the first of your orgasms rushing towards your centre. Carefully, not wanting to scare him, you grip his angel curls and ride his mouth slightly. Shit. Almost instantly, the throbbing starts and you make a mess of his poor boy’s face, squirting over his lips and chin.

“You like that?” You ask, through uneven pants. The first of the night always feels sooo good.

He nods heavily on your cunt, still lapping up the juices that leak from your slick hole. Your legs start to quiver and a fire burns deep within your cunt. You try to pat his shoulders, wordlessly telling him to stop. His tongue delves in, and he freezes.

“Kyle?” You ask nervously. Unconsciously, you clench around his tongue. He snaps to life, like someone flipped a switch in his brain. His strong arms wrap around the front of your thighs, tightly. Very tightly. He starts to pull you off the chair, lifting you up into his arms. Your ass cheeks are pressed against his chest and the back of your head is on the chair’s cushion now. He’s holding you tightly, upside down, still swallowing mouthfuls of your sopping wet cunt. He can’t seem to hear your desperate, pleading cries to stop.

You blink back tears, your vision throbs. You don’t know if it’s because the blood is very obviously rushing to your head, or because you’re coming again so quickly, but he’s drilling his tongue into your cunt like there’s a cream centre. If there is, he’s found it.

A scream fills your lungs and your body lunges upwards, trying to find leverage — something, anything to hold onto. She clenches again, pulsating around his cold, slippery tongue. Kyle’s practically drinking you with each clench. The overstimulation is crippling, and you can’t help but scream out.

“KYLE! STOP!”

At the shrill sound, he immediately drops you and your body hits the ground with a heavy thud. Your ass aches a little from the fall, but it’s nothing that’s going to ruin the night.

He’s frowning at you, his lips and chin glazed with your cum.

“S-sorry…” he grumbles. “Sorry. Bad.”

“No, no… not bad. Accident. Accident. Kyle?”

You call his name and he’s looking at you with those big, hopeful, dark eyes of his. You can tell — he isn’t sure if you’re going to scold him, or praise him and the uncertainty terrifies him. You get to your knees, crawling towards the sofa. Once you’re up on it, you pat the spot next to you three times.

“Can I see?” You gesture to your own body, tracing the remaining prosthetics with a single finger before pointing to him. He looks down, his bottom lip jutting out. He nods after a few seconds and lumbers over to you, sitting down heavily.  

Your fingers dance over his skin. He was literally pieced back together. His head, his arms, his legs, the lower half of his torso… he was sewn back together like Frankenstein. Different parts connected as one. You’re sitting next to an actual zombie.

And then it dawns on you. Those girls. You’d seen them before. You knew their faces. They lived in the massive mansion on Jackson Avenue. They were witches. Witches were a dime a dozen in New Orleans — in fact, it was weirder if you didn’t practice some kind of craft. But zombies… you’d only ever heard stories. You’d never seen one, let alone be eaten out by one.

You stroke Kyle’s broad chest. For being a zombie, he’s surprisingly soft. You’d always imagined them as dried out, crusty creatures, but he only had a few patches of dry skin. In fact, he had more patches where you could see dark blue pooling underneath his skin, where blood had settled after death. He is cold however, and that’s the most jarring part.

You ease him back on the leather sofa, making sure his head goes down softly onto the arm rest.  

“It’s okay, Kyle…. I like your body.”

“Costume….” He says. You shake your head.

“Body. Body.”

His hips give the tiniest little buck, and it slips between your ass cheeks. He whimpers, trying to get a visual of what he’s feeling. Gradually, his thrusts increase in pressure, and you adjust for your own pleasure.

When you adjust, forcing his cock to slide in between your cunt instead, he feels the slick warmth, and his feral nature returns, stronger than before. His thrusts pick up, and he seems to realise that you are a living thing, with pulsing blood and a throbbing heartbeat. Something else is throbbing again, too.

You whine and match his thrusts, letting your head loll back.

Kyle has a different idea, and before you can stop him, he has your forearm in his mouth, teeth clamped down on the soft, warm flesh. It only takes a few seconds for you to feel the stinging ache consuming your arm. It hurts… bad. The muscles in your fingers contract, twitching limply. He aggressively shakes his head, and your heart drops. The terror sets in, and you’re suddenly running cold.

“Kyle, no- OW! KYLE!”

He shakes his head again, biting down harder and digging his the ridges of his teeth deeper into your skin. You don’t necessarily feel the flesh tear, somewhere near the top, but you certainly feel the warm flow of blood that drips down your arm, dribbling onto his chest. Your pupils dilate. The blood keeps flowing, and you feel him start to rear his head back. Something pulls back with him. The ache is replaced by a searing burn, and you realise that if he pulls back any further, he’s going to pull off skin. You’re panicking now, and don’t know what else to do but try again. This time though, you roar at him, bringing back your zombie voice. It’s not so cute this time. “Raaaaaaaaauhhhhhh, KYLE. KYLE STOP. STOP!”

You try to rip your arm away from his mouth, while pushing his head. Thankfully, his powerful jaw goes slack and your arm slides out, strings of spit stretching from his lips. Your blood is smeared across his chin and bottom lip, and collects in the corners of his mouth.

With your vision bouncing thanks to Kyle’s furious thrusting, you look at your arm, watching the bright crimson well up in the indentations of the bite mark. Amidst the rest of your makeup, the bite doesn’t look out of place. You hold your arm out further, trying to come up with a story for this one. Maybe the makeup had stained in an absolutely mind-blowing way. And you had a reaction to it, hence the bizarre swelling and scabbing. That sounds good, sounds believable.

“Want… more…”  He says, and your stomach drops, praying that he doesn’t mean more flesh. You’re not sure you can handle another one. Mid-thrust, Kyle’s thick, veiny cock angles just right and slips into your cunt. She swallows him easily, still wet from being eaten — a mixture of cum and Kyle’s viscid, slimy saliva. You plant both hands on his chest, letting out a breathy, melodic moan. He feels good enough to make you forget about the bite, and as you begin to ride him, it seems that he forgets too.

You’re taking control, grinding on top of him, using his cock like your own personal toy. It’s hitting every spot you want it to, pressing into your walls with its girth, and you can’t help but whine about it. Pausing to smear your blood across Kyle’s chest with your middle finger, you leave deep, red streaks across pale skin. You shouldn't find that hot, but you do.

Kyle wraps both hands around your waist, pulling you down onto his cock relentlessly, each thrust feeling harder than the last. You lean forward, pressing your tits against his almost bare chest, and allowing him to take control, thrusting his cock up into you. The slightly bent positioning of his cock, head grinding against your spongy insides is enough to make you cum right then. You don’t though, holding back, clenching your pussy as tight as you can.

“You like it, Kyle?” You ask, through shaky pants. “You like that?”

Kyle nods, heavily, his darkened eyes watching the way that your body quivers on top of him, wordlessly marvelling at the way your thigh muscles contract and shake on top of him every time he slips out, and buries himself inside your dripping pussy again. He loves how it feels, even if he can’t articulate it the way he wants to, the sensations are everything he wants. Everything.

He grips you harder, lifting you off his cock and slamming you back down, repeating this violent display of strength over and over again. Your cunt shudders, unable to hold back your orgasm any longer. Kyle feels it first, and the sudden tightness has him growling, snarling and pushing his length into you as deep as he can. Kyle digs his heels into the sofa, lifting his legs. You feel the pressure against your cervix as he bottoms out, and press against his cock, forcing his cock deeper into you, until you feel the ache. You ride out the waves of your own orgasm, feeling his as it comes in thick, sticky ropes.

There’s a gentle knock at the door, and you quickly get to your feet, pulling your shirt over your head. You scramble, trying to find the bikini bottoms and once they’re tied, you throw open the door. It’s Lance, who is looking very concerned. Your legs are pressed tightly together, in fear that Kyle’s load is going to start dripping down your thighs and onto the floor.

“Miss Y/N. The club is closing… are you alright in there?”

Closing? What? It was bareley eleven when you brought him into the room. The seedy, slick realisation that you’d been fucking this zombie for almost four hours made your cheeks blossom with heat. You immediately tuck your bitten arm behind the door, flashing Lance a charming smile.

“Yes! Fine! Just uh, finishing up a dance. Hey - Lance… did two girls ever come back, asking for this blonde guy in here?”

He pauses, thinking. After a few moments, he shakes his head and apologises.

Okay, guess he’s coming home with me, then. “Thank you, Lance. I’ll be down in just a second.”

You shut the door and lean against it, looking at the zombie on the sofa. He’s staring up at the ceiling, a small smile on his face. “Kyle, do you live on Jackson Street? Where do you live?”

He sits up abruptly, turning his head to face you. “Uhm…” He murmurs. “Big…… white.”

“Big white house?” You repeat, making a house shape with your hands. He nods.

“You wanna’ go home?”

~

After throwing on a pair of dolphin shorts, collecting your duffel bag and giving Lance a generous tip, you have Kyle in tow, fingers laced tightly with his. Jackson Street was maybe a twenty minute walk, something you both could handle.

Despite it going on 3 AM, the streets were still filled with partiers, people in masks, and drinks in their hands. You and Kyle blend in as you walk, heading down the busy roads. Once you arrived at the Mansion, the gates were open, a fine mist spilling into the sprawling yard.

The woman who answers the door is beautiful, graceful and composed. She wears all black, her honey blonde hair cascading graceful over her shoulders.

“Good Evening,” she says.

“Good Evening. Um.. this is going to sound strange, even for Halloween, but, um…”  You want to continue. Desperately, but for some reason, you already know the answer. He does belong here. As though she’d said it to you, plain as day, he belonged here, this is where he stayed.

Zoe and Madison must’ve forgotten him.

Your brows furrow, indignantly. How could they?

Cordelia’s plump lips flatten into a knowing smile. You swallow, suddenly feeling uneasy. You scratch at the liquid latex on your neck, fiddling uncomfortably with one of the edges of the prosthetic.

“Well, Kyle… here you go. Go with…?”

“Cordelia.”

“Cordelia. Go with Cordelia, you’re home now.”

Kyle seems somewhat hesitant, but when Cordelia holds out a hand, he obeys and lumbers inside, looking over his shoulder at you one last time.

“Thank you for bringing him home,” she says, softly. “Would you like to come inside?”  

You consider that for a second. Deep within the wetness of your bones, and the warmth of your blood, you feel like you should. There’s something extremely comforting about this place, but… “No, no thank you. I should be getting home. It’s Halloween. Weird things happen on Halloween.”

She smiles again. “That’s quite a bite you have on your arm… did Kyle do that?”

“Oh, uh… yeah. He got a little excited earlier, I’m a dancer, and uh, y’know. Men.”

“I have something for that.”

You look down at your bite again, it looks nastier than before. You clear your throat, ready to reject and explain that your older sister is a nurse and she’ll help, but instead, and you’re not quite sure how that happened, you’re walking through the doors. Kyle is delighted to see you again, pausing on the grand staircase to look at you.

Cordelia’s hands end up being very, very soft.

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[valneedsvalium]

𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓦𝓮 𝓗𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓕𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓭 𝓐𝓵𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓦𝓪𝔂

pairing: will graham × dolly!reader

find the series masterlist here ꨄ︎

overview: will graham never planned to like you - if anything, you were suspicious, with those wide, doe eyes and oddly childish way of behaving. the only girl found alive amongst the rotting corpses of her dead mama and papa? he's bound to be suspicious, but you pull him in like bait.

warnings: mentions of sexual abuse, reader has childhood trauma and unexplored mental illness, gore - pls tell me if i've missed anything!

the first thing that the neighbours complained about was the vile smell. 'it's the mould, im sorry. ill call someone,' you had said, shifting from foot to foot, eyes wide, anxious. but it wasn't mould, was it?

your cheeks had become sallowed over the week. body oddly thin, brows permanently creased with worry. the neighbours visited again and again until they called the local authorities. your excuses of 'mama and papa ain't home' became unbelievable, but how would you understand that? there was something strange, the townspeople used to say about you, when you were a girl. you didn't like to interact with the other school children - they didn't like you. mama thought it was your fault, she'd lock your bedroom door at seven pm, 'worried for your safety,' as if the middle-of-nowhere texas was unsafe. the most that happened was a hitchiker coming through your town.

it was odd, the way your daddy would hike up your gingham skirt and press strange, unwanted kisses to your cheeks before they strayed to your jaw, then your neck. it was your fault it had to happen, he'd tell you. your mama knew, and after, she'd pet your forehead with cooed admonishing words.

you'd first understood it was wrong when you sat on a tree with your friend, emmeline jacobs, and asked her if her daddy ever kissed her. she'd snorted and looked at you like you were stupid. 'yeah, when i was eight.' the two of you were fifteen, at the time, and only much later did you realise you knew less than your parents made out that you did. you were not smart, you felt rather dumb, instead, like a lamb that has known it's entire life being prepared for slaughter. you did not know your wrongs from rights or your goods from evils.

so, when your papa had handed you a mallet to make the chicken for the night and your mother had dutifully boiled potatoes over the gas stove, you had stood in the doorway, watching him slink off to the lounge and sit in his armchair, old and worn, much like him. the television was turned on, playing a hunting channel. bear hunting with halloran james. the mallet hung limply in your slender hand as you watched him rest a hand his stomach with the kind of lazy 'masculinity' that made you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.

you'd crept behind his armchair, quiet, brows pinched together in concentration, and stood still, contemplating, before the mallet had swung with a surprising amount of force for someone with little muscle mass. the crack heard before the sickening squelch of flesh sounded more appealing - it sounded quicker, more painless than the sound of oozing blood and squishy tissue - but then he was turning his head sluggishly, groaning in pain, eyes hazy and unfocused, and you'd wondered if you'd done it right, so you swung again. again. again, until your mother ran into the lounge, screaming, pleading with you to stop and attempting to rip you from your fathers now-deceased body.

your mother never had the gall to hit you - apart from that one time you had come home late from school, skipping merrily with one of your friends who later seemed to dissapear from your life like everyone else - although, when she wrenches you away from his body by your shoulders, her hand gripped your jaw with an unusual type of agression, hissed words coming out with drops of saliva that made you recoil.

she was next to fall. you don't even remember prying the knife from her left hand - she'd cut her right, and had to struggle with something you did not, or at least, that's what she said - and forcing it between the curved cage of bone that resided in her chest. she'd fallen back, head hitting the corner of the table.

perhaps it was a psychotic episode - something your teacher had said when you used to go to high school - but you felt far too calm for that. strangely in control, despite the way you could hear the ebb and flow of your own blood in your veins or the way you could not bear to sit in the living room with the bodies. you had found residence on the kitchen floor, mother and father out of sight - if you saw them, you might have vomited the minimal food you'd had before dinner.

two days passed before you found it in yourself to stand on shaky, unstretched legs and lean on the counter. you felt as if you had underslept and overslept all at once - head groggy and eyes tired.

the police weren't equipped to handle the issue - or you, for that matter - and it went to someone else. when officer kepler peeked through the window, she realised she had less stomach for police work than she'd thought. the someone else gave it to someone else, and it ended up in the hands equipped for what you'd done - what would remain on your hands for the rest of your life.

a week later, you still could not bring yourself to lay eyes upon the now rotting bodies - come to think of it, you dont know how you'd stood the putrid smell coming off your mother and father or brought yourself to walk past the living room without looking at the bloated, stale corpses. people in navy waterproof coats had dealt with the weak locks on the front door and flooded the house and a part of you felt dead, unsure of what to do or what to say. it felt as if you could not physically bring yourself to speak.

'i didn't do it,' were the only words you'd uttered, tucking your legs to your chest and subconsciously sinking your teeth into the skin of your knee.

paramedics checked you, lifting your eyelids in a way that made you squirm, but perhaps what made you more uncomfortable - or perhaps it was the breath of relief that you let out that discomfited you - was when a man sunk down next to you. he was average height, with curly brown hair and brows that seemed to be constantly pinched in worry, or perhaps concentration. your mother would have called him 'rustically handsome.'

"my names will graham- can you tell me what happened?"

do not plagiarise - @valneedsvalium 2024.

[minxmut-cafe]

Withered Love

Pairing : YANDERE!! Jimin x reader (referred to as princess)

Genre : modern Au, YANDERE.

Warning : tooth rotting fluff, smut, spanking, vaginal sex, cunnilingus, spanking, oral sex (f. Receiving). Breeding kink, dirty talk (fairly tame ngl)

Word count : 3.5k

Authors note : I hope you guys enjoy this smut. Istg there something about Jimin as a YANDERE that just gets me going. If you want more stuff like this you can request it on my page and if you'd like to support me you can go on my KOFI page. I'm also currently writing a Fantasy au fanfic about jimin so be sure to check that out as well. Enjoy!!!

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Jimin pulled on his jacket, preparing to leave for work. His princess, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, lay on the bed, her eyes wide and pleading as she gazed at him. "Jimin," she whined, her voice laced with sweetness and desperation. "You can’t leave me today. We were supposed to spend the whole day together."

He paused, glancing over at her with a small sigh. "I know, princess. But I have a really important meeting today. It won’t take long. I’ll be back before you know it."

Her lower lip jutted out, and she buried her face back into the blankets with exaggerated sorrow. "I don’t feel good... maybe I should stay in bed all day," she muttered, feigning illness in her most dramatic fashion.

Jimin, who knew her better than anyone, smirked knowingly. "You're pretending to be sick again, aren’t you?" he teased, his tone both affectionate and amused.

She whined louder, her voice thick with mock resignation. "Fine. Go, then. But when you come back, you’ll find my cold, withered corpse. You didn’t water me with enough love," she sighed dramatically. "I’ll be shriveled up, forgotten."

Jimin chuckled softly, unable to resist the warmth in his heart. "Princess, you’re not going anywhere. I’ll make sure to give you all the love when I get back. I promise." But as he continued preparing to leave, she started sighing even louder, fueling the playful yet furious tantrum brewing inside her.

He stopped, watching her for a moment, his resolve faltering as he saw how upset she was. But he couldn’t delay his meeting.

He walked over to her, scooping her up into his arms and sitting her on his lap. "Come on, don’t pout," he said gently, pressing a series of tender kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, and finally, her lips. "I’ll be back early, I promise. Just a few hours. You’ll have my love and attention when I return."

She stiffened for a moment, then playfully slapped his chest with her palm. "You better, Jimin," she muttered under her breath, a sly smile curling on her lips. "Or I’ll have to punish you when you get back." Her eyes narrowed mischievously. "I’ll make sure to leave you a little reminder of what happens when you make me wait."

Jimin smirked, his gaze sharpening. "That’s my job, brat," he replied in a low, teasing tone, the underlying possessiveness lacing his words. "You leave the punishing to me."

Her face flushed with the familiar rush of both excitement and challenge. "You better come back on time, or else," she warned, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Deal," he said with a wink, standing to leave. But as he reached the door, he turned back one last time. "And princess, don't go withering away on me. I want that lunch waiting when I return."

Her eyes softened, and she let out a heavy sigh, flopping back into the blankets. "You better hurry, Jimin," she mumbled. "Or I’ll have no choice but to make sure you're sorry."

Jimin smiled at the playful threat and stepped out, knowing the hours ahead would be filled with her anticipation and her playful, possessive heart waiting for his return. He was already counting down the moments until he could come back, ready to deliver on his promise—and maybe indulge in a little punishment of his own.

The moment Jimin arrived at his office, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to find a series of playful and silly pictures from his princess. The first was of her pouting dramatically with an empty plate beside her, clearly pretending to be starving. The next was a close-up of her face with exaggerated eyes, followed by a shot of her tucked under the blanket, looking like she was fighting off an invisible army. Each photo was more ridiculous than the last, and Jimin couldn’t help but smile at her antics.

Despite the brief moments of amusement, his focus remained on his work, but in the back of his mind, he couldn't stop thinking about her. He had promised to return early, and he fully intended to keep his word.

When he finally stepped through the door later that day, he was met with a sight that made his heart skip. His princess was sitting on the sofa, glaring at the clock with a scowl so intense it almost looked comical. The moment she heard him, her expression softened, and she practically jumped off the couch, squealing as she rushed toward him.

Jimin barely had time to react before she jumped into his arms, her small frame practically tackling him. "You're back! You're back!" she squealed, her face lighting up with a mixture of relief and overwhelming joy. She sniffed him, as if making sure it was truly him, and peppered his face with aggressive, hurried kisses.

He laughed at her overzealous greeting, slightly overwhelmed by her energy. "I kept my end of the deal, princess," he said, once he managed to catch his breath. "So, where’s my lunch?"

She giggled, her eyes sparkling mischievously as she pulled a plate from the nearby table. With a dramatic flourish, she set it in front of him... then promptly sat on it. "Here’s your lunch," she said proudly, handing him a jar of jam. "I’m your lunch. I’m your favorite, right?"

Jimin raised an eyebrow, intrigued by her little game. "Is that so?" he smirked. "Then I’ll need a knife to properly... disassemble my food."

Her eyes widened in concern, her hands hovering over the plate protectively. "A... a knife?" she asked, frowning. "Jimin, don’t you dare..."

Before she could protest further, he burst into a fit of giggles, his laughter filling the room. She pouted at him, crossing her arms in mock annoyance. "You’re such a meanie," she muttered, but her lips betrayed her with a small smile.

The moment she was distracted, Jimin didn’t waste any time. He scooped her up effortlessly, holding her close to his chest. "Guess we’ll skip the lunch and go straight to dessert," he teased, his voice low and playful.

She gasped, her face flushing with a mix of surprise and excitement as he carried her toward the bedroom. "Jimin, what are you—!" she gasped, her voice cutting off as he continued to walk, the playful tension thick between them.

He grinned, his eyes glinting with mischief. "You’re my favorite dish, princess. And I’m starving."

As he carried her, she let out a little squeal, her hands nervously clutching at his shirt. "I was joking! Jimin! I’m not really food!"

He winked at her, his smirk only growing. "Oh, I know. But you’re exactly what I need right now."

With a playful laugh, he kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. The game had only just begun, and his princess was in for a whole new level of attention.

Jimin threw his princess on the bed, the shorts of her camisole set riding up. She looked perfect in it. He leaned over her, giving her butt a harsh slap, making her moan. He giggled as she moaned knowing she loved when he spanked her.

“I hope you don't mind me taking a bite off my sweet lunch” he murmured against her necks, leaving open mouthed kisses all over her jaw, neck and collar bones. The princess blushes “I hope you know I won't taste as good since I don't have any meat on my bones” gasping as he licked her sweet spot,

Jimin giggled at her response “oh princess who said anything about eating meat off your bones…I want another taste of your sweet cunt” her face burst into red when he said that. Scandalized by his dirty words she looks away. He moves down sliding the strings of her camisole off her shoulder. Leaving hickeys as he goes. “You've been a good girl and kept my cum in your cunt right?”, the princess nods. Jimin sighs and lands another sharp spank on her ass.

“Words princess. If you don't say it out loud I'm gonna have to punish you by making you scream yeah?” he ordered.

The princess whimpered upon the harsh slap spitting out a pathetic yes. He spanks her again. “Louder” he said. “yes…I was a good girl i promise. I kept it in”. Jimin lets out a satisfied hum as he rips off her cami making her gasp and look at him in betrayal.

“JIMIN! You promised you wouldn't rip another one of my favourites” she pouted but soon forgot when he started sucking on her nipples, while twisting the other one between his index and middle finger, pinching it ever so slightly.

She lets out soft whimpers of his name as she sucks on her nipples teasingly. “Mini…more please” she pleaded. Jimin, wanting to reward her for being a good girl, rewards her by wedging a knee between her legs. Grinding slowly. Her pleased moans filled the air. Jimin moved down from her boobs kissing his way down to her waist band.

He bites the skin right above her belly making her whine. Not wanting to wait longer he pulls off her shorts with her panties and sees the remnants of this morning. He clicks his tongue “awh princess it seems like you lied about being a good girl hmm?” He tuts. She looks up at him with bleary eyes “I was good! I promise. You— you came so much in me it just– some of it leaked out—” she pleads.

“Some of it?” he asks, dipping a finger in her hole. Slowly pushing the finger in and out as he hummed disappointed. “See? it all leaked out my precious.” He sighed “I told you to be good and keep your cunt nice and clenched so you can keep my cum inside, didn't I?”

She nodded, her face flushed as she conjured up some words “I tried I really did I promise..” she said, her voice shaky as her head hung low.

Just as she was about to say something more a harsh spank landed on her clit making her throw her head back moaning his name.

“Tch— seems like I'm gonna have to punish my sweet girl,” he said. His voice strained. The sight of her splayed out like this. Her cunt covered in his cum ignited a fierce possessiveness inside him.

“Nooo minie I promise I'll be good and keep it all in— I swear’’ she pleads. Jimin sighs, flipping her over.

“That's not how it works. My pretty girl.”

He frowns, looking down at her. She was looking at him through Glossy eyes. “Can't you make an exception please?”

She asks, hoping to tug at his heart strings.

Jimin looks down at her thinking. “I can't make any exception princess. Can't have you thinking you got a wiggle room right?” He replied, “— But since you were a patient princess for me I'll try and go easy on you okay?— I'll try not to spank your ass anymore. It seems it's still a bit red from the detour from yesterday afternoon” be said examining her ass cheeks, spreading them apart

Princess blushes letting out a small but firm yes. He plunged two fingers deep inside her. Pushing them in and out— and in and out. She lets out small moans of his name, grabbing the bed sheet as he speeds up.

Jimin leans down licking her clit covered in his cum. “Fuck you taste so good covered in my cum like the dirty little girl you are.” Jimin reaches his spare hand down, palming himself. Moaning against her clit. He continues his assault on her clit adding an additional third finger.

“Ahn–! Jimin, it's too much,” she moaned. “Awh princess but my cocks thicker, If you can't take three fingers how am I supposed to fuck you brainless just how you like it hm?” the princess blushes at his words moaning his name. Jimin curls his fingers up hitting her g-spot making her legs quiver.

“Jiminie faster please” she pleaded. “Tch tch this is a punishment remember?” He teases.

Jimin loved seeing her like this so needy and desperate for release. It was in moments like these when he felt the most desired.

Jimin slowed his movements making her whine and push back “hmm? don't make me spank your bratty ass” he warned. “Can you please just fuck me? Please I've been needy the whole time I was alone” she pleaded, the heat of the moment getting to her head. In this moment all she wanted was for him to fuck her

Jimin hummed for a moment and then unbuckled his belt, zipping down his pants. He pulled out his cock slowly stroking it. The princess lifted up her head wanting to look at his cock. She loved it and he knew it. It wasn't necessarily the biggest cock in the world but his girth sure made it feel like it. He's thick.

In the earlier days of her captivity the princess used to struggle a lot with sucking him off or taking him nice and deep. Jimin started rubbing his tip against her clit moving it up and down teasing her hole. Jimin pushes just his tip in and out teasing her. “Jiminie please wanna be full of you” she mutters, shimmying her butt for him.

“Hmm my sweet sweet girl. Always wanting to be full of cock. Tell me princess, is that all you ever think about?” He asks “my cock pumping in and out of your desperate little hole filling you up to the brim with my cum?” He teases her by pushing his cock in slowly. Painstakingly slow. Princess blushes at his words. She loved it when he fucked her hard. Sometimes that's all she could think about. Him pounding inside her over and over again

Filling her up.

Breeding her. She loved it all.

“Jiminie! More please I promise I'll be good for you and keep it all in” she requests her voice heavy with need as high pitched moans spilled from her lips. He was stretching her out so good with his cock she felt like she was high on ecstasy.

“Hmm my pretty girl wants more?” He asks, his voice was low with a hint of mockery in his tone. “You think you can handle more princess?” He questioned her. As he reached down, pulling her up by her hair as she whimpered. His cock now deep inside her.

“Yes please Minnie” she sobbed.

Oh how he loved it when she sobbed. Jimin starts by slowly grinding against her. Thrusting a couple of inches in and out. Soon he switched to pulling all the way out to his tip and pushing in slowly as she squirmed underneath him.

Jimin pulls her against him, kissing and biting her neck. “Mimi…can you please move faster?” Jimin groans “if I give everything you want it won't be punishment right? We are teaching you how to be patient and do exactly what you're told to hmm?”

The princess whines against him letting out small pleas, promising him she'll behave to which he replied “the next time I tell you to keep my cum inside your—Ahn cunt I'm gonna plug it up nice and tight with the replica of my cock you like so much”. Her breath hitches at that. The thought of her being filled and plugged by him for hours made her salivate.

Jimin speeds up “you want more princess? Beg for it. Tell me how much you want me to pound into you.” he chastised.

“Please, I want it so sooo bad—ahn fu-uhk been so needy since you left. Kept thinking about how i wanted hnnghh to suck you or–or feel you so deep in me the whole ti-IMe” she moans trying her best to formulate proper words. Jimin moans at her words, increasing his pace as he encourages her to keep going.

“ahn—I thought when–ahn fuck Minnie” she whines arching her back as he hit her sweet spot. “Thought when you'd get back you-oh you could eat lunch and then I'd make sure to keep your cock wa—Ahnnn warm~ until you decide to fu–uk me again and again so please please please please please please please please please fuck me please”

Jimins breath hitched. He pulls out, flips her over and swiftly enters her again with a needy moan ripping off his shirt as he starts pounding in her. Jimin, when going fast abandoned all sense of rhythm so his sweet girl had to lay there, hands clawing at his back, back arched against him as he pulled her closer and put her legs on his shoulder.

She laid there taking it all in moaning loudly as he whispered her ears “ahn fuck fuckfuck you like this princess?” He groaned. “You love it when I fuck your cunt like this don't ya?” He whispered, moaning as she clenched around him.

“Fuck you do. You love it when I fuck your needy cunt and whisper dirty little things in your ears hmm,” the princess lets out moans of his name, one hand scratching his back while the other pulled on his hair.

Jimin continued pounding into her but just as he felt she was close he slowed down making her whine.

“Minnie please” she pleaded. “Tch tch tch dirty girl thought I'd let her cum just like that” he scoffs, giving her shallow thrusts

He continues this way for a while making her whine in return. “Who do you belong to princess” he asks.

“Jiminie” she moaned.

Jimin reaches down rubbing her clit. Her legs start shaking. She had always been such a sensitive little thing for him. So sweet. So responsive to his touch.

Jimin starts moving again. Harder and harder until he was pounding in her again. “Minnie please…don't Stop AHN— DON'T Stop pleaaase” she sobs, her body overcome with pleasure as he continues

“Are you ahn~close princess?” He asks, the princess lets out a guttural moan too fucked out to even hear him.

Jimin takes that as a yes and continues till he feels his cock throb. He felt her clenching around him as well. Jimin speeds up going harder and faster

Princess starts moaning his name with each thrust. Jimin too lets out a loud moan before they both cum together. Their orgasms crashing down on them. Jimin came deep inside her. "Fuck..there you go" he exclaimed.

Jimin lay beside her, breathing heavy. After a while his arms wrapped securely around his princess. He peppered soft, lazy kisses across her face, his warm breath fanning her flushed cheeks as he murmured sweet nothings. She let out a contented sigh, nuzzling into his chest like a satisfied kitten.

After a moment of silence, she tilted her head up to look at him, her lips curling into a pout. "I did prepare your favorite lunch, you know," she said, poking his chest lightly. "And I even made some strawberry lemonade to go with it. But now, thanks to you, I can barely sit upright." Her pout deepened as she poked his abs in retaliation, eliciting a soft giggle from him.

"Oh, really?" he teased, grabbing her hand and holding it hostage as he started tickling her sides. She squirmed under his touch, laughing uncontrollably as he grinned down at her.

"Jimin!" she squealed, gasping for breath as she tried to wiggle away. "Stop! You’re gonna make it worse!"

He finally relented, his laughter mingling with hers as he leaned down to kiss the tip of her nose. "You’re too cute," he said, getting up and stretching lazily. His shirt rode up slightly, giving her a glimpse of his toned stomach before he tugged it off and tossed it aside. She watched him swap his formal trousers for a pair of comfortable shorts, her brows furrowing.

"Why am I the only one nakey here?" she asked, frowning in mock indignation. "This feels unfair. You’re completely clothed, and I’m... exposed!"

Jimin turned to her with a smug grin, running a hand through his slightly tousled hair. "Because you love it when I wear formal clothes," he said, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to her forehead. "Admit it—you were practically drooling when I walked in earlier."

Her cheeks turned crimson as she slapped his arm lightly. "You’re impossible," she mumbled, crossing her arms. But she couldn’t deny that he was right; she always had a soft spot for the way he looked in a suit.

"Stay here," he said, ruffling her hair before heading to the kitchen. A few minutes later, he returned with a tray holding her carefully prepared lunch and two glasses of chilled strawberry lemonade. Setting the tray on the bedside table, he handed her a glass before settling back beside her with his own.

"See?" he said, taking a sip of the lemonade. "You didn’t even have to get out of bed. I’m spoiling you now."

She took a sip as well, her pout easing into a soft smile. "You better be," she said, nudging his arm. "After all, you were gone for so long. And you completely wore me out."

Jimin smirked, leaning down to brush his lips against hers. "I guess I’ll have to keep spoiling you then," he murmured, his voice full of warmth. "After all, you’re my favorite princess."

[bayeis]

I've joked about it in the tags a lot but I've decided to sit down and actually compile a list on why I'm only half joking when I say my job is conditioning me to be the next Jonathan Sims

The Buried: A lot of my job involves putting people in small confined spaces, often with no windows and and a single, locked door. We frequently have people with claustrophobia that realize agreeing to be locked in a small space means being locked in a small space. 9.9/10 times they are peer pressured into doing it anyway, and have a miserable time

The Corruption:

The Building is rotting. There is no nice way to put this. The walls are slick with mold and soft to the touch, the ceiling drips despite us being on the ground floor of a two story building, the carpets squish with unknown water, and yet people's eyes just glaze past it. Our landlord for the building is a thick accent russian man who, for the past 4 years I've worked here, has changed his name on the emails several times, despite it undoubtedly being the same man, who I have met in the flesh twice before. The first time was to come into the building, shake my hand, and leave. The second time was to ask me to bring him upstairs (not apart of our business but we still have the key for some reason), which I did, and then have not seen him since. Speaking of upstairs, the handful of times I've been there it's just. Bizarre. An entirely furnished office space, completely abandoned. There's everything from paintings on the walls to files still in the cabinets and scattered across desks. I could not tell you what the office space used to be, or whatever the employees that worked there used to do, but I do know it was officially, genuinely abandoned because it was deemed unsafe to be in, from the sheer amount mold and rot. How it is somehow safe for us to work directly below with leaking ceilings I have no idea. I've occasionally had to dart up there with our key to snag a pair of scissors off one of the desks or some other office supply we can't locate in our own half, though I always disinfect them the second I bring them downstairs, and always wear a mask when I'm up there. There's also the bugs. I am so genuinely serious when I say one day I swept the lobby of our building and discovered the shelled corpses of around 300 dead superworms. Like the kind you would feed a pet lizard. I have no idea why they were there, how they got there, or anything. I just swept them up and disposed of them as my coworker watched in horror. Weird worm sightings aside, the building is frequently swarmed both in and outside with bugs, despite weekly exterminator visits. The stairwell to the second floor (located outside) spends about half the year covered in what has to be hundreds if not thousands of moth caterpillars and cocoons. Walking in that back porch area is near impossible as you cannot look anywhere without seeing the walls, floors, stairs, doors all bumpy and withering with the sheer amount of caterpillars (of the not so friendly verity as well. They feel like shattered glass to the touch and will frequently leave a rash). My old manager once found one in her ear. There. Are. Bugs. Everywhere.

The Dark:

Fairly self explanatory. The building gets zero light. The lobby has full glass doors, and walls of windows facing multiple directions but no matter how many blinds you open or what time of day it is you'll find your eyes slightly straining in the just slightly too dim setting. It's never bright enough. When we can get our lights to work (frequently blow out, and when they are attempted to be replaced we find that nearly every light fixture required a different kind of special bulb, meaning that to fix it requires hunting down that kind of random bulb, which will be different from all the others. An effort frequently left undone, dotting the building with random spots of shadows) they don't really help, not because they aren't bright enough, but because the building was designed with weird corners, so all the light the fixtures could be potentially giving, is almost immediately blocked out with odd shaped walls and randomized corners. Some rooms just don't have windows to even attempt to sap out some of the sunlight. The room the employees are made to sit in (about an 8ft by 8ft room) for the majority has no overhead lights, no windows, and like the rest of the building, the walls are painted solid black to sap any remaining light out. The only way you can see in there is from the glow of the monitors and two dim lamps shoved in opposite corners. We get complaints from customers that it's too dark and they can't see well, and we've tried everything to fix it, a desperate combination of lamps LEDs, and fairy lights, but no matter how hard we try, how many blinds we throw open, it's never bright enough.

The Eye:

Remember that employee room I mentioned with the monitors? Workers are instructed to sit in the room (control room) and watch their designated cameras. This is not a security job. Off the top of my head, our (relatively small building floor) has about 30 cameras. There is no where in the building you can be that doesn't have a camera. Even the control room has a camera so we can watch the employees watching people. Some of the cameras are on (all the cameras are always on, with the only way to shut them off being to physically rip them from the walls) but we have yet to find out how to access their feed. The cameras like to frequently switch, in that I mean their security codes, IPs, and registration numbers will jump and switch with each other to no rhyme or reason. When that happens I have to grab the notebook dedicated to writing down whatever this weeks IP numbers are and attempt to metaphorically shove the cameras back into place. We are not a security job, but we are, if you didn't know or guess, an escape room. The entire job, as I previously mentioned, is to sit and watch people freak out through the cameras. Everywhere a guest turns if they look up, there is a camera. Every word they say is recorded and logged. Every action they take is carefully judged. All while a worker sits in a completely dark room, all day, watching their designated cameras intently. I think, for the sheer inherentness of what this business does and advertises, we are the most closely working with the eye. I am one of the managers now, and there are even cameras pointed and trained at where I sit, even thought there shouldn't be anyone to watch them.

The Lonely:

This one applies less to our customers and more to the poor employees. This job is soul crushing. You can go an entire shift, sitting alone in a small dark room, watching people have fun, as you silently observe. I have thankfully graduated out of the control room into front desk, and yet I can go entire days not seeing a soul, watching people chattering as they enter and exit our neighboring buildings through windows that never seem to catch the sun. The "employee area" where we are supposed to be able to hang out in between games isn't really built for socializing. It has been overcrowded and shoved with chairs, so many fucking chairs, that it becomes near intimidating to try and navigate. The most use the room sees is when an employee shoves some of them together and takes a nap, because there is nothing to do. It's not like the employees don't like each other either, we all get along wonderfully for the most part, as well as coworkers relatively around the same age can (helps that we're all queer too), but once you're halfway through a shift, and absolutely nothing of interest has happened you start to drift. A typical lull between games (which can stretch for days in the off season) will usually result in me sitting alone at front desk, answering an occasional ghost call that hangs up immediately when I answer it, an employee sitting in the back area, surrounded by empty chairs facing the graveyard where we write old employees names, and another employee choosing to nest down in the control room, in the dark surrounded by monitors reflecting myself and the other worker being alone, angles scattered across the dozens of cameras. Even when we are busy, there's almost no time to socialize. I still sit alone at a front desk made for two, mindlessly checking people in with no altercation to the script, and the game hosts focus on their game, crammed into the control room with several other game hosts, all willingly silent as they watch whatever designated family they have through their cameras.

The Spiral:

Again, we are an escape room. The whole appeal is to present ourselves as confusing as possible. From room layouts, to our hallways, to the way the building wraps and twists, dumping people out at one door, opposite of where they just entered from, it is designed to drive people crazy. Honestly we don't help either. For our own entertainment, game hosts are particularly obtuse and confusing, partially because we don't want you to get out too early and partially because we have been watching the exact same thing over and over and over and it's starting to drive us a little crazy. People always do the exact same thing in the rooms, there's very little variation from the jokes made the to ideas brought forward. So if the game host wants to keep a little sanity, it's up to them to reek havoc on their game in hopes of startling out a new response, which, if one does occur, gets snapped up and thrown around the control room to the other employees for a slice of entertainment like a sliver of meat thrown to a starving pack of dogs.

The Stranger:

The doll room. Not a traditional "the stranger" kind of presentation, but gives that same prickling unnerving feeling.

In the exact center of the building layout there is a tiny room that is decked in as many old porcelain dolls as possible, all strung up from their necks and twisting around gently in non existent wind. Walking past the only physical door into the enclosed room, you'll usually hear the door rattling in it's frame, or one of the dolls knocking against the door. The room has no vents, no fans, no overhead lights. It's only light source is two red light bulbs, and the room was custom built by our owners. And like, I get it. It's an escape room. There's a creepy room. 1 + 1 equals 2. I cannot even being to describe the feeling this room gives or brings. Almost every time there is a group in there, one person in the group will become more unnerved then the rest, because one of the dozen of dolls looks uncomfortably similar to a doll they or a family member had as a child. The doll will sway on it's string noose as the cameras pick up the trickle of "doesn't that one look just like grandmas doll?" "this one kinda looks like my Betsy doesn't it?" with a chorus of agreements and half given glances, as the rest of the group gets absorbed with the next puzzle, and the single member who brought it up stares, and eventually leaves the room, typically not reentering the rest of the game. It is the strangest thing to watch (no pun intended). Occasionally, the similarity is met with delight, but more often then not it just seems to unnerve. The doll room also shares a wall with the control room, which means nothing, but is occasionally fun to kick.

The Web:

There's the obvious ones, our rooms are meant to trap people, the game hosts jobs besides watching the cameras is to manipulate the line of thinking the customers have, ect, ect. The most unnatural thing to note here isn't the standard workings of an escape room however, but the sheer vast amount of spiders in this goddamn building. I have never seen so many spiders in my life. We can't shake them. From how disgustingly rotted our building is at this point I think the spiderwebs are one of the only things keeping our building together. Again, we have an exterminator come by every single week both in and out of the building. The spiders refuse to let up, every day is a constant battle of knocking down their webs only to turn around and see they've put several more up. We've all but given up on trying to get them out of the employee only areas and now focus our war to the battle grounds of where customers can see to only mild success. This isn't even a regional or habitat thing, no other building I have lived or stayed in in this town has ever even come close to touching the spider infestation happening here.

In terms of other entities such as the Hunt, Slaughter, and Desolation, I can think of a handful of things that might align my job and them, but nothing solid enough that's worth mentioning. There has not yet been anything that reminds me of the End, Vast, or Extinction.

Other things to note,

Quitting is weird? People do, don't worry it's not a genuine hostage situation, but once they leave they are very rarely every sighted by coworkers again. I don't just mean not visiting the building, I mean like going completely off the grid and moving states if not in some cases countries. The entire time this business has been open and operable I've been the longest standing employee, at a record 4 years of the 7 it's been open. I could not name a single employee that has ever truly quit and has been easy to contact again by anyone. If you are able to, it's usually polite conversation with any mention of how you know each other (meeting at the job) being laughed and shut down quickly. No one whose left this place wants to talk about it and I get it, believe me. When we get an influx of summer employees to help with the rush the heat brings, I'm no longer allowed to help train because I would try warn the employees to pace themselves so they didn't experience Game Host Death too early (what we call when a game hosts snaps, having watched the same thing over and over and eventually loosing their mind over it, resulting in crying when told they have to run a game, weird twitching/manic-esque break downs, or in some memorable cases, game hosts just walking out in the middle of hosting a game). This is incredibly ironic considering the majority of employees have admitted the only reason they stick around is because they like working with me but I'm not here to toot my horn. There's also a large collection of employees who are neither employeed nor not, who have moved an hour or so away and have gotten a different, closer, better paying, and enjoyable job, and yet inexplicable will show up once in a blue moon asking for a shift at the escape room for no other reason then they felt compelled to. Typically anyone whose worked here for more then a season falls in this category. Currently we have four official employees for the off season (including myself) and yet if I count this stragglers who all genuinely hate this job (also including myself) our employee numbers easily go over 20. I cannot even imagine what the owners taxes look like for that (all paychecks and stubs are handled by a women who I have only ever emailed and never met). The owners themselves actually don't even live in the same state as us, and we are not apart of a chain. This is the only escape room they own. They're main business? Sheep farming. Which actually, that might be the slaughter right there. Despite working for them for so long, the amount of times I have met them can be counted on one hand. They are completely uninvolved, this business is no mans land. I've thought about quitting multiple times, even briefly lived in another city states away, and yet still found myself back, inexplicably every time I think about leaving again a nice little bonus or raise hits my paycheck, a system I can't really complain about. As for the other managers, I've outlasted several. The only way I have ever seen anyone on the management team leave is to have the biggest mental breakdown known to man and disappear. That's literally it. I've watched it happen so many times. The only employee that came close to being here as long as me was my original manager, who, a couple of months before she left, started loosing her mind, twitchy, paranoid, at her wits end. She isolated and locked herself in one of the rooms for about a month, only emerging at the end of the shift. I tried to approach her once about it and she shaved her head as a panic response. This fucking job, it was choking her from the inside out. Eventually she couldn't handle it and left, effective almost immediately. In the span of a month I watched several new managers cycle in and out, from the women who would sit behind me and silently cry, to a previous employee who realized the jail cell of a role she was being forced into an dipped before the owners could lock the door on her. The current manager is the ex fiancee of the women who locked herself in a room for a month. The horrors are a cycle fr