#y'all are terrible and I shouldn't be surprised.

[agent-cupcake]

grimm

Pairing: Death (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish) x f!catgirl Reader

Synopsis: The series of unfortunate events and clichés that lead you to meeting a familiar nightmare in the middle of the woods beneath a full moon. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

Warnings: 18+, explicit smut w/ a nonhuman character (not a nonhuman cock though), noncon, death, violence

Tags: alternate universe, angst, size kink, object insertion, masochistic reader, praise (voice) kink, outdoor sex

Words: 18.5k

Notes: It's been a while, huh? Yes, today we are going to fuck the furry from a kids movie, I'm not sure if y'all are even surprised but. Anyway. On the one hand I'd say I feel shame but on the other they shouldn't have made him talk so sexy, which is not my fault. All the Spanish is from DeepL and context.reverso. Hopefully any mistakes aren't too bad and you don't find it too cringe, or you can manage to look past it for my sake.

Once upon a time there lived in an unassuming little corner of the world a man. A husband to a beautiful wife and a father of two lovely children. He was strange, perhaps, for the ears atop his head, and the vertical irises through which he looked, and the spry springiness of his limbs. Stranger too for his chosen lifestyle, a traveling merchant whose blood couldn’t get any lower. Ravi, sons and daughters of Bastet, relics of a bygone era. For all that he was strange, however, he was steadfast. Bolstered rather than weakened by the critical eye of other men, the unyielding cut of his silhouette and unshakable confidence made the man a lord in his own right. He had been here, and there, traveling wherever the wind called him, and always with certainty. If his chosen path was obstructed by a swath of trees, he would see the forest leveled before he so much as considered choosing a different route. A further measure of his determination, however, would prove that if he were told that those same obstructing trees were sacred, he would scorch the earth so thoroughly that not even ash dared remain beneath his boots when he trampled on the hallowed ground. 

One day, the man looked down to admire how far he had come throughout the years, to smile upon the many grand achievements he had stacked up along the way. But then, looking a little closer, he couldn’t help but notice how long his shadow had become. While he had been distracted, the sun made its arc above him, and now it was falling towards the horizon, casting him in ever dimming light. Taking with it, he thought, Ra’s blessing. He began to tally up all of the things he had been ignoring. A stiff back, sore joints, fatigue after a day of travel, a headache after a night of frivolity. He noticed that while his son had grown tall and strong, he had been shrinking. The lovely apple cheeks of his beloved wife had begun to dull, wrinkles forming around her eyes. This realization filled the man with a feeling he had never experienced before—uncertainty. And then, fear. 

Unable to face the dark, he vowed that he would not allow it, he would do whatever it took to escape such a terrible fate. Unbeknownst to him, this audacious belief invited the attention of a creature with a unique penchant for mischief and an appetite for fear. A wolf. He told the man that he could run, he could fight, he could rage, he could try to pull the sun back with all his might, but in his desperate frenzy to escape the night, he would only incur a great debt. An immeasurable bounty. One, perhaps, that would condemn not only him, but his family and the legacy he had created. A terrible fate.

“I do not fear you,” the man said. 

The wolf laughed. 

It was to be a chase, then. A hunt. The man ran, searching for something, anything, that would save him, traveling here and there with purpose, scouring the shadows, tracking down myth and rumor with a passion bordering mania. There had to be, he reasoned, a way to remain in Ra’s boundless glory. Circling ever nearer, the wolf harried his prey to the last. 

Until, on the lush outskirts of a certain small village, a small ravi family set up their wagon for the night. The woods swarmed with the sound of bugs, the early summer heat simmering back down into the cold dampness of spring nights. Haunting and dreamlike, echoing in the dark, signaling finality, a song. And then, a figure in the dark. A familiar face, a frightening foe. 

There, in the night, beneath the full moon, the hunt ended. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run, his obsession had taken him so completely that the only remaining recourse was a final fit of fury against the dying light. Perhaps, in those last moments, the man realized what a fool he had been. Too late. The wolf had grown bored of the game.

Horror of horrors, serendipity struck. A child who should have been tucked up tight in her bed, sheltered and safe from what lurked in the dark, grew bored of counting sheep. She hadn’t yet learned to fear the night, thinking her father to be playing a delightful trick. Creeping, quiet, curious, and ignorant to the cruelty of the dangerous unseen, she breached the forest’s uncanny shadows. Deeper, deeper, until she discovered the truth. Her father’s corpse hit the ground, his empty eyes never seeing her terror, his deaf ears never hearing her scream. 

The gray wolf bid her to run, and she did. It was inevitable that they should meet again. 

one chance.

Before that night, you never gave much thought to death, or luck, or malevolent forces, or tragedy. It was only when you were huffing, puffing, screaming for help, crying wolf, that true fear crept into your life. Once the door opened, it could not be closed. Although the monster was long gone, its shadow remained. 

And they said: you were lucky to have escaped. They said: ravi law, loose as it was, could not be counted on for satisfactory justice. They said: the murder could not have been committed by any of the simple townsfolk. They said: it would be a blight upon the poor ordinary people for the case to drag on and on. And so the crime was tried thus—your brother, suffering a fit of drunken rage, donned a mummer’s wolf mask and murdered your father. 

Not even a day passed before the so-called trial was held. The only building that could accommodate the gawkers and jury was the local barroom, a place that stank of old wood and fermentation. You didn't know the man acting as judge, you did not recognize any of the faces around you, only that they were indifferent, cold, and your brother's life rested in their callous hands. He sat near the front as the case was laid out for the gawkers, his face drawn and shadowed. Clapped in irons, his mouth covered to protect his jailors from his sharp ravi canines, ears as low as you’d ever seen them, looking not so much a man on trial than livestock on auction.

"You’re the daughter, are you not?” the judge called. It took you a moment to realize he meant you, his dull eyes signaling you out. 

Someone spat at your feet. 

“Filthy half breed."

"They’re incestuous, the father must have found them in the act."

“They’re both guilty.” 

“Go ahead. Run. No one escapes me.” 

The low whisper, practically a growl, made your ears twitch, your heartbeat racing as you scanned the faceless crowd with dry eyes, blinking fast to try and find the source of that terrible voice. But the faces were all human, drawn with cruelty and disgust, but human. 

The judge banged on the table, catching your attention. “Young lady! You witnessed the crime, yes?” 

You shook your head in rejection of the phantom voice and cleared your throat, breaking free of your mother’s grasp to stumble towards the judge. "Yessir," you said. "Yessir, I am… I-I did."

“Go on, then. We’ll hear your testimony.” 

It was difficult to breathe, the air was stuffy and hot, your skin too tight. You could feel the people watching you, the weight of their eyes.   

"You've got it all wrong, sir,” you said. “It-it wasn't him. He couldn't-"

"The facts only, if you please," the judge said, cutting you off. "Did you or did you not see the man who attacked you?”

Hot, heavy tears formed in your eyes, primed to travel the same salty tracks down your cheeks left by those before. Fear, pain, sadness, exhaustion, all of it compounded and ached within you. You didn’t want to remember. You didn’t want to think. But you had to.

"It was no man, sir," you said, your voice choked.

“Do you mean to tell me a woman killed your father?” 

“No sir, it was an… an evil spirit.” Behind you, people muttered and whispered with disbelief. Shock. Doubt. Anger. The judge's jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing. “He had the head of a jackal, or a-a a wolf. ” 

“A mask.” 

“No, sir. It was not a man.” You heard your mother’s scolding voice from behind you, and your brother raised his head to look at you with shock, but you ignored it all.

"I should hope I don’t need to remind you of the severity of these proceedings,” the judge said, his eyes narrowed into slits.

"I know what I saw,” you replied, your hands balled into tight fists at your side.

"Your testimony is that an evil spirit with the head of a wolf murdered your father and attacked you?" The judge clarified, not so much as pretending to believe you. The question pulled a bit of laughter from the crowd. Your mother grabbed at your arm to pull you back, but you refused to let her. Instead, you set your stance and jaw.

"Yessir." 

More laughter, as if there was anything humorous about this situation. 

“I know,” the judge said loudly, silencing the crowd with a wave of his hand. “I know that you’ve been through a terrible thing, and I am sorry about that. That’s no excuse, however, and I mean this, it is no excuse for you to lie. You might think you’re defending your brother, but anything less than the absolute truth only strengthens the case against him. And, if I’m to be completely honest, I find this behavior deeply troubling. Perhaps it is acceptable among your kind to believe in stories of evil spirits and the like, but it is not appropriate here. We’re a good, God fearing people.”

“This isn’t a story. I saw it,” you insisted, your throat swollen and the world blurring up with tears. “The beast might still be in the woods, if you just look-” 

“Look for the big bad wolf?” the judge asked, a bushy gray eyebrow rising high, inviting further discontent and disbelieving laughter from the people behind you. He sighed, once again calling for order and shaking his head. “It pains me greatly, you must understand, I want to be fair considering your circumstances, but this really is unacceptable. If you won’t testify against him, your father’s killer-” 

“I told you,” you insisted, a little louder.

“No, young lady. And I repeat—no. What you have done is insult me and the fine people of this town with your absurd heathen fiction,” he told you.

“That’s not-” 

“Your kind think you are above civilized law, but understand that we are giving your father the justice he, as a son of God, deserves by right. Your father brought fear and tragedy into the hearts of these people, and your scoundrel brother committed an unthinkable crime. There are those who don’t believe your brother is deserving of a trial at all, considering the substantial evidence against him. Indeed, this is a kindness I am extending to you and your mother. So, for the last time, I will not tolerate your pagan fiction. Do you understand?” 

“I do,” you said, although you could feel your confidence wavering, a shaky cold sweat beading up on the back of your neck, pooling acidically in your stomach. He wasn’t going to listen. He didn’t believe you. “But I haven’t lied, I know what I saw.” 

That caused an uproar, the people’s voices overlapping, a relentless and meaningless wave of noise. Demanding you be silenced, removed, executed. 

“That is enough,” the judge exclaimed, and you didn't know if he spoke to you or the people. “So far, I have disregarded accusations that you were complicit in your brother’s crime, but if you continue to behave in such a manner, I may have to reconsider. That is a charge of patricide, young lady. Do you not have enough decency to spare your mother the loss of another child?” 

You looked at him, really looked at him, overcome with a dizzyingly caustic rush of pain and disbelief at the injustice. He didn’t care if your brother was or was not guilty, or who had actually killed your father. To him, the death of a ravi man was meaningless, let alone two. Let alone three. He saw your eyes and ears and that was it. 

Trying to fight back the thick swell of fear and pain and anger, you breathed carefully in and out, staring straight up in an attempt to fight the tears.

“It wasn’t my brother,” you said, forcing the words from your mouth without inflection. "He would never, ever… he wouldn't."

“Did you,” the judge asked icily, bluntly, “or did you not see the face of the man who attacked you?” 

Red eyes, a long snout, a canine mouth full of deadly sharp teeth. A spirit attempting some approximation of the god of death with twin sickles in hand, trying to twist the kind shepherd’s image into one of terror, a creature wearing the face of evil itself. But the truth cowered away from something far more potent, shamefully grotesque. Self preservation.  

“No,” you said, realizing too late the damning significance of that answer, wanting to add more but not knowing what. When you looked your brother in the eye, you understood. And it didn’t matter what you said after that point. You were the girl who cried wolf.

 

two times questioned.

That night, a great storm blotted out the stars and made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of yourself. You made off into the night with your meager possessions packed up in a sack and some vague idea of where to go in the back of your head, mostly memories of better times. Anywhere was better than the home for wayward girls you had been shuffled into, a place that was a charity in name only. 

Ultimately, you didn’t make it far, not even out of the city. There was no place in the world left for you, and you were afraid of the dark, and it was so, so cold. 

Falling to your knees at the side of the road, mud splattering you with the force of each raindrop, you cried. Sobbed, curling in on yourself, desperate to wish it all away, wailing louder than the winds could blow as if your misery would overcome nature itself. You tried not to cry much anymore, tried not to show your weakness, but now it all came flooding out. Agony deep enough to drown, heavy enough to crush. 

Until you heard a song beneath the gale. Impossible that it should reach you above the riotous storm, impossible that you should know its melody. Panic slushed through your veins in an instant, and you stumbled upright, ready to run from a danger you had so desperately tried to convince yourself didn’t exist. Red eyes and silver sickles and-

When you whirled around to run, you were not caught by a wolf, but by the man you could only think of as the prison warden. 

Caked with mud and soaked to the bone, he dragged you back to the home, and you let him, fearing what lurked in the darkness more than you feared the punishment your escape attempt would earn.

Although it wasn’t bright, the light blinded your glazed eyes. You slipped when he released you, but felt nothing when you fell, leaving a muddy smear upon the tiles. Your fingers, bleached of color, were numb to all sensation, slipping when you tried to support yourself. The cold burrowed into your very core. You shook. Violently, as if your soul itself trembled.  

Fear had kept it all locked up tight in your chest. Fear of your shame for crying wolf. Fear that if you gave breath to the creature that haunted your dreams, he would be made real. You told yourself that your father was murdered by a man in a mask, but the wolfman haunted you, the face of oblivion, that song and that laugh. 

Distantly, you became aware of a commotion, and then the headmistress appeared before you. A towel was forced into your clumsy hands by the same girl who helped you get to your ice-block feet, muttering something about drying off. You doubted a single towel would manage that feat, but you held fast onto the fabric with fingers you couldn’t feel. 

“Where in God’s name,” the headmistress demanded, haughty even in her dressing gown and curlers, “do you think you were going?” 

You hugged the towel to your chest, feeling the fluffy material grow heavy and limp from your embrace. Ruined by your touch. Shaking so hard your teeth clacked, the entire world jittered and hazed, your bones practically vibrating, tears and snot dripping down your face with the rainwater.

“I asked you a question,” she said, her tone a little more shrill. Anger smoldered in her voice, but your eyes found purchase only on the lacy hem of her nightcoat. Such fine lace would have been imported from the north, your father had sold more than his fair share of it. You owned several pretty dresses decorated with similar frills, once. A lifetime ago. A life that ended with one decisive slash of silver. “Where were you going? Running off with a boy?” 

Wide open fields of rippling golden wheat, smooth red cliff sides overlooking deep drops into the abyss, frothy blue waves licking pale sandy shores. Places you knew, places you had only heard about. Ravi weren’t meant to stay in one place, yours was a people of wanderlust and breeze. 

The lady stepped forward and slapped your cold, numb cheek. You stumbled, slipping back onto the floor. “You will answer when I ask you a question,” she said. “I will not repeat myself again.” 

“I wanted to see my mother,” you finally told her, your voice barely comprehensible from the way you were shaking, more tears welling up. The pain was there, was always there, and it burned hotter than the biting blue on your fingers and toes. 

“Oh, for the love of… you’re well on your way to joining her,” she said. “What in the world was I thinking, allowing you into my home…”

You stayed silent. There was no defense you could offer, no excuse you could provide. She sighed, annoyed. 

“I’ll decide your punishment in the morning. Assuming you don’t catch cold and die.” She laughed once, a short sound. “I should be so lucky.”

Die. Your sluggish brain was slow to process that word, churning it round and round in a swirl of equally unpleasant thoughts. When you breathed, the air rattled in your chest. Your mother made the same sound at the very end, as if death had already planted its seed in her body, slowly infecting her from the inside out. Fear had never come for her, not like with your father or brother. There was only vacuous ecstasy, the madman’s bliss of fever. When you pictured what she looked like, it was her hollow eyes staring into nothingness, her bones poking out beneath waxy skin in unnatural angles and blood bubbling upon dry lips. “I am going to see them soon,” she told you, smiling. It was the first time since your brother’s execution that she didn’t look at you with blame smoldering beneath her pained eyes. “We’ll be together, and it will be beautiful.” 

But it was not beautiful. 

Death was a hideous, terrible thing. Despair and empty eyes and rotting flesh without poetry or resolution. Blood dripping from curved blades, lives harvested without mercy, red eyes flashing with glee. A neck snapping and a body gone limp at the end of a rope. Agony in a small room that smelled of human waste and sickness. Death was not beautiful. 

three failures.

The other girls called you, among other things, murderer. 

“She pushed her.” 

“Her kind are all like that, thieves and murderers.” 

“Freaks.” 

The two of you were stuck cleaning windows, balanced precariously high up in the air. The platform got loose, teetering uncertainly two stories up. It could have just as easily been you rather than her, but it wasn’t. Of course you hadn’t pushed her, but who would believe the word of a ravi?  

And who would believe you when you told them of the shadow which greeted her down below? A monster you couldn’t believe in. The bastardized form of a benevolent god. The real murderer. 

They saw your fear as guilt. And that was that. Murderer. You hadn’t pushed her, that was a fact. But it was suspicious, wasn’t it? There was a pattern of death surrounding you. Punishment.  

Every night, you begged forgiveness, begged for freedom from the creature that haunted you. Bastet did not answer. Ra did not answer. Your prayers became pleas, and your pleas weakened into whimpers. Eventually, you stopped asking.

It followed you. Death, less an intangible concept than a lurking threat circling ever nearer, followed. Your father, your brother, your mother, other girls in the home. But not you, no matter how close you came. Accidents happened. Punishment became more and more brutal. Part of it was because of what you were, a belief that a beast could handle rougher treatment. Part of it was your attitude. Punishment. Live, but live in misery. Survive, but survive endless torment. And they said that you were lucky. The beatings were never deadly, although they should have been. The accidents were never fatal, although they could have been. You shouldn’t have survived, but you did. 

four minutes.

It was spring, then. The river beside the road gushed with newfound force, overeager after an especially snowy winter. Even the season of life and rebirth was ripe with violence and death. The scent of it seemed to cling permanently to your dirty clothes, cloying in the chill of night. You and three other girls from the charity house followed by the riverside on the way back to town, your faces dusty and feet heavy from a long day of work. There was, as it turned out, quite a bit of money in renting out orphans to satellite farm estates who could launder clothes, clean carpets, polish silver, and scrub cast iron. No money for you or the other girls, but money nonetheless. 

The three chatted as they walked in front of you, a conversation you tuned out. Long had you grown accustomed to walking behind them, ignored and withdrawn. Trailing behind like a shadow, an afterthought. In so-called polite society, that’s all ravi were. They—they with their round irises and human ears, with their unmarked faces and smooth canines—didn’t want you at their side. You understood things like that now, things you had been so blissfully unaware of in your childhood. 

You watched their worn-out shoes marching on in synchronized steps. Watched when they suddenly stopped, your eyes drawn up in confusion as they turned towards you with big smiles. 

"Those flowers are awfully nice, you should see if you can cross the river to pick some for us."

"I’d go myself, but your kind are more agile than real people, right?"

"The rocks make a perfect bridge for you to cross."

Requests from them, although you weren’t sure they could be called anything other than orders, weren’t abnormal. The only thing lower than an orphaned girl was an orphaned ravi girl. That was the way of it. Rather than forming a bond of solidarity, they emphasized what little status they had left by pushing you around. Surely there were similar flowers on this side of the river, but that wasn’t the point. 

Biting your lip, you looked at the rocks spanning the river’s violent course to the other side. It wasn’t much of a bridge. Attempting to cross was, at best, stupid. If you fell, you would be helplessly carried away by the water, thrashed about against the rocks. Dead, surely. But if you denied them, they would almost certainly do worse. Whisper words of your supposed misdeeds to the headmistress, spread lies that would earn you punishment. Malice gleamed in their empty, hollow eyes. 

"All right," you said, feigning indifference as you sized up the river. 

The girls smiled and tittered as you faced the river. The water roared. Nerves had your hands shaking, but you didn’t let them show.

With a big breath and a mental prayer to Bastet to steady your feet, you stepped onto the first rock. Beneath the worn sole of your boot, the rock was slippery. You set your jaw, going to take another step. 

Something knocked against your back. While it was a light touch, the surprise jolted your balance. 

Just like that, the rock slipped out from under you. An undignified squawk left your mouth, and your arms flailed around empty air desperately to regain your footing, but you couldn’t manage it. 

The water hit as hard as the ground might, immediately dragging you under. 

For a moment that seemed to consume forever entirely, animal panic. You inhaled a lungful of water, thrashing wildly. You tumbled sideways as the river dragged you along, hitting rocks on the way. You violently struggled against its unstoppable current in an attempt to get your head above the water. 

Unable to breathe, unable to orient yourself, you were as good as dead. 

Then you slammed against a rock. The agonizing impact gave you enough of a painful shock to find purchase against it, slicing your palms against the rough edges as you held fast against the water’s oppressive tow. Blindly, you managed to find which way was up and dragged yourself to it. And then you were vomiting river water, hacking it out of your lungs and desperately trying to suck in gasps of air.

Feeling as heavy and broken as a corpse, you managed to flop onto the bank, covering your entire front with mud, crawling through it to drag yourself out of the water completely. It was there that you came eye to eye with three familiar pairs of shoes.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bump into you.”

“I guess cats can swim after all.” 

“You’re lucky that rock was there, huh?” 

You coughed up more water, coughed until you were hacking up blood, wheezing and shuddering with bone-deep violence. There would be a terrible bruise on your stomach. But you were alive because of it. Pain, and life. Lucky you. 

five years.

Barely into your lanky teens and with nothing more than meager pocket change to live on, you made your final escape from the charity house and went west. The most recent beating was proof enough that if you stayed, you would die. The woman who stitched you up said you only narrowly avoided it this time. You knew a coffin was the sole eventuality waiting for you there. So you left. Despite the time spent there, you parted with no sentimentality for what you would be leaving behind, or excitement for what laid ahead. 

In a way, you were following your father’s example. His legacy. In his final days, you heard him muttering about the sun going down. Your brother whispered that he’d grown paranoid of his own death, that it was why your family never stayed in any place for too long. He was driven by a mean, feral fear and even aggression towards death, the cornered-rat instinct to defend your life at any cost, to protect the pitiful remains of existence as an animal would. You thought you understood. So you pressed against your bruises and exhaled slowly, accepting the pain as proof that you were still alive.

Dust kicked up a big cloud behind the wagon, baking beneath the heat of the sun. Although the world was alive with birds and bugs and the sound of hoofs on the road and wheels crunching over ground, you couldn’t empathize. Crusty from a night of fitful sleep, your eyes cringed away from the garish sunlight, your head pounding angrily. Pain and anxiety from your first night on your own kept you awake and, when you did manage a few hours of sleep, you had bad dreams. A fiction where your family was restored and you were all together again. Whole, untainted by horror and death. You woke up hollow and sick and empty, unalive but breathing. 

“Are those real?” the girl beside you asked, breaking you from your thoughts. She pointed at your ears, her eyes wide with curious innocence. You imagined that question had been building up for a while, ever since you hitched a ride on her father’s wagon to the nearest town, the two of you sitting in the back of the bed with your legs swinging over the passing road. She was very young, her round-cheeked smile missing a single tooth and bright colored ribbons in her hair. He was going to the next town over to sell goods from his farm.  

"Quinta!" her father scolded sharply. 

“It’s okay,” you said. It was better to be asked outright than to endure the side glances. “They’re real.” You tilted your head to show her. Quinta reached out to pet the fur, her chubby little hands cautious.

“What are you?” she asked, getting another stern look from her father over his shoulder. Not that you blamed her. He probably didn’t know either, ravi didn't often leave their small communities, and they were practically unheard of in this part of the world. Little wonder, some establishments wouldn’t so much as let you inside. It was a very positive mark on his character that he allowed you to ride on his wagon in the first place, most people wouldn’t. 

“I’m ravi.” 

She blinked. “Is that why you look like a cat?”

“I guess so.” 

Quinta considered that for a moment, staring at you unabashedly. It wasn’t just your ears that were different, otherwise you could have covered them up and avoided the scrutiny. With round eyes and vertical pupils, markings seemingly painted over your cheeks, you stood out regardless of what you did or where you went. Ravi were strangers to everyone, uprooted and adrift, low as the dust trailing beneath your feet. That fact hadn’t changed after you ran away from the charity house, you merely traded the title or orphan for that of vagrant. 

“My mom won’t let us keep cats, we only have a dog,” Quinta finally announced. “Do you like dogs?”  

You shrugged. 

“Are you afraid of them because of-” She put her hands over her head, mimicking your ears. 

“We are natural enemies,” you said, although the comment didn’t come across as the joke you intended. Perhaps because it wasn’t a joke. 

Quinta didn’t say anything, looking back at the passing road and her swinging feet. The warm air smelled like trees and dust and the stacks of straw piled up on the back of her father’s wagon. When the breeze blew, you got whiffs of the approaching town. Manure, cooking food, fire smoke, and that tangy, sweaty scent of so many people all crowded in one place. 

“Where are you going?” she asked. 

“Somewhere else.” 

“Oh.” 

You looked down, staring at the road. The sun beat down on your neck, sweat beading up on your hairline. You could hear the chorus of a small town’s buzzing crowds as the wagon pulled closer. 

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Quinta said. “Will you come to our house? I bet you’ll like my dog, he’s really, really nice. My mom is there, you can meet her.” 

You smiled, feeling a sharp little pang at her sweet innocence. “Thank you, I’ll think about it.” 

“Oh, please say you will.” 

“Quinta, that’s enough,” her father chided. She frowned, but said nothing else. 

The wagon pulled to a stop where the animals could be hitched. You hopped off and stretched, looking around the town. You weren’t really sure where you would go next. Far away. As far as possible. 

“Thank you, sir,” you told the man, bowing politely.  

He nodded gruffly, and you knew you shouldn’t linger. Still, you couldn’t help but glance back at the sound of his heavy grunt. When he passed the wagon bed, Quinta jumped up onto his back, her arms wrapped tight around his neck. He was quick to rebuke her, scowling as he put her on the ground. That clearly hurt her feelings, turning away with a trembling lower lip and furrowed brows. You felt, for a terrible moment, a great pain in your chest. 

You wanted to tell her that he was just busy. Maybe he could be cold and stern, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. You wanted to tell her to love him while she could, that time was finite. Right then, you weren’t looking at a stranger and his daughter, but at a little girl with ears too big for her head and a man who waved at her from the driver’s seat with a sun-crinkled smile, a man who tweaked those fluffy ears with calloused fingers, and a man who kissed her forehead with paper-dry lips.

But then you blinked, sunblind and a little dizzy, and turned away from the scene. 

You thought of your father, love for him tender sweet and swelling in your chest, overwhelming. But quickly, always so quick, his smiling, twinkly eyes were emptied as his body fell to the ground, deprived of dignity in those final moments. And the monster turned from him to face you with a wild expression, a growl in its throat. He said you would meet again. The big bad wolf was not real, he was a masked madman, a creature of fiction. All the same, your anxious, cold gaze scanned the crowd of many faces around you. Haunted. Hunted. 

sixth sense.

Blisters covered your hands, and you couldn't stop coughing, your body seizing with fits of it. The tangy sour stench of smoke infected every pore of your body, saturated your lungs with its acrid excretions. Somehow, despite the horror of escaping a building as it burned down, you were alive. You had no idea what had woken you up, but it happened before anybody even noticed the fire. Others weren’t so lucky. The girl who slept every night two beds down from you, who was innocent, who had never done anything at all to you, was dead. 

"It's not your fault that you couldn’t get to her in time. You were lucky enough to get out with your life," you were told, an attempt at consolation. A lie. 

It was your fault. Your punishment. Your presence invited the flame to spark a blaze in the boarding house for working young women, and yet you had lived while someone else died. Above the sound of so many voices, of a chaos world attempting to fix such a tragedy, you could hear it. She screamed for as long as she was able, until her lungs were too coated in sooty black smoke to make a sound, until her flesh melted by the infernal heat. Other women boasted swaths of charred skin, blisters popping bright red and gruesome, bones broken from leaping out windows. Their lives would be ruined by this, by the sheer misfortune of being near you.

And as the flames licked the sky, you could have sworn you saw an inhuman face at the flickering orange edge where the light tapered into shadow, his eyes not so much reflecting the blaze as they were consuming the fire’s callous violence, soaking in the terror which mingled with the smoke. 

Then you blinked watery eyes, and the shadow was just a shadow. 

There was nothing for it, you left town as soon as you were well enough. Not soon enough, clearly. 

It was your fault, your punishment, but terribly, shamefully, you kept thinking, over and over and over, at least it wasn’t you. You breathed in air that still stank of the memory of murderous smoke and felt grateful that you would recover from this incident. 

That selfish drive was the crux of it all, the reason you could never allow yourself to move on. After so many years, most people would have found a way forward. They took their anguish in stride and did something with their life. But you didn’t. For you, there was no forgetting, and there was no moving on. You couldn’t be allowed happiness in a life others had been denied, a life that you hoarded so rabidly. Even cowards had to draw a line somewhere, didn’t they? No matter how miserable, you struggled to squeeze one more day out of the harsh world, to carve yourself another miserable hour, and then, crippled by pain and smoke and fear, felt a coward’s joy when facing tragedy because at least it wasn’t you.

Lucky, lucky, lucky you.

seven rainbow hues.

"Watch out!"

It happened so fast. That was the cliche, but the truth. Time did not wait for you to catch up in moments where survival came down to muscle memory. Panic and surprise cut up your perception in choppy little bits. One second you were walking down the road, you noticed a man beneath a falling beam and lunged, and then you were flat on your ass in the middle of a road, adrenaline spiking your heart rate and your entire body shaking with it. So little time had passed that the warning was still tangy in your mouth, the sound stifled by the echoing impact. 

Someone was shouting. Screaming.

Sitting up, little rocks grinding into your skinned palms, you looked at the fallen beam not even a foot away. Had you erred even a few inches to the right, you would have been, at the very least, catastrophically injured. Just like the man you tried to push out of the way. He was screaming. His leg was crushed.

But you were fine. Alive. 

People swarmed the man to free him from the beam while the world blurred extra bright, the colors of shock overloading your brain, dozens of different voices buzzing together. Someone asked if you were okay. You were. Of course you were. Alive. The carpenter jumped down from his ladder, finally getting the man out from under the beam. A gruesome mess had been made of his shin, bloody and broken. You only watched, a sort of cool numbness had taken the place of adrenaline. 

The man's leg was a ruin of flesh and bone, and your only injuries were a bruised tailbone and skinned palms. You should not have survived that. 

eight shots of moonshine. 

“He reared up real tall, howling like a beast, and that’s when I stuck him,” the hunter said, his expression animated as he recounted the story. It was, by your count, his ninth drink, and the fifth version of his story about how he fought, and escaped, the terrifying half-man-half-wolf beast—el hombre lobo, in the local dialect. It made sense that some cruel spark of fate would invite the subject matter wherever you happened to be, especially now. That’s the way these things always happened, wasn’t it? The world had a way of kicking you when you were down.

You listened to him with half an ear, staring at your chapped, cracked knuckles. Working as a laundress was not kind to your skin. Unfortunately, being ravi and having a limited skill set meant that simple labor was just about all you could get. So you did odd jobs and, once you had enough money, you would be on your way to the next place, and then the next, and the next. Passing through like a ghost, and then gone. Temporary. Just like this bar, this drink, this man and his story. Transient. 

“The sound he let out was deafening, and I mean that,” the hunter continued. “I’ve never heard anything like it, not in all my years.” 

“That’s not true,” you said loudly, pulling the story to a screeching halt before its predictable conclusion. You hadn’t meant to speak, but you did. If nothing else than to just make him stop. Details changed, but the ending was mostly the same each time. The creature put up a fight, but the hunter was stronger and smarter. Maybe he’d mention the bear trap again, how he watched the wolfman trying to gnaw off its own leg. And it wasn’t like you cared what some random drunk had to say. You didn’t, really. It was the alcohol, and the memories the alcohol was meant to be suppressing, and some misplaced well of fury crammed deep into your gut, unable to be reached or drained or expressed in any meaningful way. Or maybe it was something else, something less palatable. You had a way of testing people’s tempers. Pain was proof of purchase, after all. And you had paid more than your fair share. 

“What was that?” the hunter asked, glazed eyes surprisingly lucid when they landed on you, twinkling with an amused sort of incredulousness at being challenged. He had on a sweat stained red shirt and the ruddy complexion to match. Everyone around you was in similar states of drunken disrepair. So were you, for that matter—a shot of something hard and foul tasting past reasonable. Two shots away from having the energy to engage in this stupid argument, which was ridiculous considering you were the one to involve yourself in the first place. 

“That didn’t happen,” you said. The few people who had been paying attention in the first place laughed at you, but the hunter seemed intrigued, if irritated, by your attitude. 

“Are you calling me a liar?” he asked.

“Do you expect us to believe you fought the big bad wolf?” Those words were old and mean, that of a horrible old man without a shred of mercy in his heart. 

Red-shirt’s eyes narrowed. A couple of the men laughed again, sending a few drunken jibes in your direction. 

“Is that what you’re supposed to be?” One of his friends called, gesturing at your ears, which twitched under his attention. 

“No, no. She’s one of those cat people. The eastern savages,” the man sitting next to you responded, roughly tweaking your ear. He’d made a few friendly comments in your direction throughout the night. And then a few less friendly ones as the liquor loosened his tongue. You winced and ducked away, scowling at him. He grinned. “Have you got any wares to sell us, gata? Or maybe you’re here to put on a show.” 

Another laugh, a playful wolf whistle.

“Ah, I understand. I was mistaken,” red-shirt allowed, a mean grin spreading across his face. “It was no wolfman after all. You ought to tell your pa to keep away from these parts. Next time I see him, he won’t get off so easy.” 

That drew a bigger laugh from the few people bothering to pay attention. A part of you hated him a little bit, hated him with a riotous, evil sort of passion. His ignorance, his audacity. You hated yourself more for not holding your tongue. 

“No, it was her ma,” another man chimed in. “Must have been in heat if she was so focused on you.” You felt a red hot flush rise to your cheeks at that, some uncomfortable mixture of embarrassment and anger. 

Needing to calm the impulse of rage, and kicking yourself for having spoken at all, you took a deep breath. 

“Aw, pobre gata, don’t be upset,” the man next to you said. Poor cat? He drew out the condescending pet name with a sugary sweetness, going for your ears again. You scooted back to avoid him, nearly falling from the alcohol-induced sway of the world. The men laughed again. “Where’re you going?” he asked. “They’re just teasing.”  

You licked your dry lips. You needed to leave, it wasn’t the sort of place you should have been hanging out in the first place. Part of you worried that he might try something. He looked hungry. Worse, part of you wondered if he would, wanted to stick around and find out what kind of situation you’d dug yourself into. Curiosity didn’t come from desire or lust, but from something darker, the impulse of deserved violence. Alcohol made it worse, made you think that maybe you could want it, that you might enjoy being roughed up and used in a vulgar game of intimacy. 

“Let me buy you another drink,” he offered. “I promise not to tease you.” 

You pursed your lips, and knew you would hate yourself later, and decided that it didn’t matter all that much anyway. “Okay.”

Hours later, you were sweaty, sour with alcohol but no longer drunk enough to tolerate the discomfort, and ultimately dissatisfied with the interaction as you stumbled through the quiet town back to the room you had been renting. The unpleasant scent of sex was all you could smell, it clung to your rumpled dress and messy hair. Evidence of your mistake. Despite being so forward, he hadn’t been what you hoped. Whenever you pulled back, he thought to coax you further with sweet words rather than rough hands. You’d have been better off trying to antagonize the man in the red shirt to get what you really wanted, not a quick upright with a man who wanted to slobber on your neck and call you beautiful.

Disgust, shame—a sickening feeling of wrong had you ducking into an alley, vomiting up a stomach full of bile and alcohol like a homeless wretch, shaking hard enough that your teeth clattered. Snot, stomach acid, and tears smeared against the side of the building when you pressed your fevered cheek against it, the material rough on your skin. But it was cool, and solid, and you were breathing. Alive. 

Miserable. Beautiful. That was your mother’s word. An ugly, ugly word. Your shoulders heaved with half-hearted sobs, your skin crawling and stomach twisting. You were alive because the only thing you feared more than the hideous pain of living was beautiful death, and that was the ugliest feeling you could possibly imagine. 

Eventually, you collected yourself, wiping your mouth and eyes, and completed your walk of shame, your thoughts lingering on el hombre lobo and the furious hollow in your chest, and the sort of hatred which begged violence and cried for pity. 

nine lives.

Afternoon faded into sunset as you walked, and you weren’t too concerned. If anything, you felt the same relaxing sense of relief you always felt when you left one place for another. 

No, you didn’t worry at all until twilight gave way to the rise of the moon. That’s when you stopped, frowning up at the sky. Either you were lost or you had severely misjudged the distance. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done other than continue on and hope that you reached civilization soon. You pulled your cloak a little closer to fight off the chill, adjusting your bag uncomfortably. Summer was coming, but the air retained the cold damp newness of deep spring. 

And so you trundled along, reminding yourself over and over that it was okay. While possible, it wasn’t likely that anything would happen to you. 

Your anxiety wasn’t helped by the full moon. A morbid coincidence, and a mixed blessing. It was full that night. Illuminating your father’s twisted expression of fear, haloing the impossible beast looming above you, lighting your way when you ran, dying your blood into the color of ink. As always, it was a bit of mischief the universe was having at your expense. It shone the same steady pale silver, bleaching the world in imitation sunshine just like it always had, always did. 

A gentle breeze shook the tree canopy, the leaves shivering. Above them, the perfect velvet blue veil of sky was mostly undisturbed by clouds. The stars twinkled and winked, dulled slightly by the radiance of the moon. Bugs wailed and frogs sang their nighttime dirge, an unsettlingly miserable sound. No matter how uncomfortable the sun could be, blinding and revealing, the night was worse. It was the place where nightmares lived, after all. And the woods, the place where the big bad wolf hid. 

Right. These were the woods where the hunter claimed to have seen the wolfman those few weeks ago. A chill slithered down your spine at that realization. While it was most certainly a lie, in the dark, it troubled you. It frightened you. There were many things in the deep, dark woods to be afraid of. Hiding, lurking. 

Huffing with annoyance at your paranoia, you vigorously shook your head and focused on the path instead. Everything was fine, you just had to keep going. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, the wind began to blow a lot harder, catching the hem of your cloak and loose strands of hair, crawling beneath your clothes to make you shiver. At the same time, a shadow slowly closed in around you, a stray cloud covering up the moon. The sudden lack of light made the shadows darken significantly. Goosebumps crawled across your entire body in response to the windy chill, hairs standing on end and visceral discomfort lurching in your gut like a hook behind your belly button. Surrounded on all sides by darkness, stranded in the woods, you were completely and utterly vulnerable. 

Then it all—bugs, the frogs, and the wind—everything died. Not slowly, tapering off naturally, but all at once, as if a great dampener was suddenly pressed into the air. And that was strange, that was eerie, that was cause for fear, but the first whistled note shot straight into your core.

Trees were hungry things. They, with their thick wood and big bodies, had an appetite for sound. Echoes, however, were mischievous. They would rather play tricks than be eaten. Back and forth, from everywhere and nowhere, a tune you knew all too well danced amidst the silent forest. The notes jumped from one to the next in a song that should have been cheerful but wasn’t. You didn’t move. You felt like you couldn’t. Standing there, ears perked and twitching in search of any noise aside from the whistling, heart racing, cold sweat gathering on the nape of your neck, you suddenly knew, with an alarming degree of certainty, that you weren’t alone. 

Slowly, eyes watering from the sudden burst and disappearance of the wind, you looked up. 

The whistler, seeming not to notice you, was no more than a dozen feet ahead, a darker shadow amidst the void, a little off the edge of the clearing. Jarring surprise shot like lightning down your spine at the sight, at how close you were to somebody you hadn’t noticed, so powerful that you stumbled backward on pure instinct. But your foot landed on a mossy rock and the squishy material slid out from under your boot. You tried to find your balance, but you wound up overcorrecting, sending you forward instead. With a yelp and a loud thump, you tumbled onto the ground, landing hard on your elbows and knees. 

The song ended.  

“¿Tan deseosa estás de ser engullida?” the man asked, amused. You looked up, terrified, but without any moonlight to help you see, the most you could make out was the vague shape of a hooded figure leaning against a tree. 

Fear made your hands shaky, your body unwieldy and awkward. Scrambling, unsure if you should have been embarrassed or scared, you got up to your feet. At least you weren’t hurt.

“I-I don’t… no entiendo,” you said, wondering, hoping, fearing, unsure. At least it was just a man. That shouldn’t have been the consolation it was. It shouldn’t have been any consolation at all. 

“I asked if you needed any help,” he clarified in an accented voice, amused in a way that made you think he was making fun of you. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“I, um… I was just surprised, bu-but it’s okay,” you said, trying very hard to calm down. “I’m fine.” 

“Are you sure? I would hate for you to wind up like the last girl who got lost in the woods,” he said. You squinted into the dark, but you couldn’t see any details beyond a shadow. Covered moon or not, the dark was borderline unnatural. “She was gobbled up whole, her granny too. You’ve even got the red hood.” 

It took you a second to register that he was messing with you. Entertaining any sort of interaction was foolish, but you couldn’t help your nervous laugh, pulling your cloak closer. “Oh, yeah.” 

The stranger laughed in turn, forcefully friendly in a very uncomfortably stilted way. The sound sent a fresh shiver down your spine. “They don’t get very many people coming all the way out here to visit,” the man said. “Are you here to see family, gatita?”

Your ears twitched nervously. “Um… Excuse me?”

“Is that offensive? I can never remember what you beast types call yourselves. Ra… something.” 

“Ravi,” you said.

“That’s right. I’ve never been much of a cat person myself, but I can see the appeal. The big eyes, the fuzzy ears… Very cute.” He paused. “Hey, can you purr too?” 

You drew back, your awkward moment of uncertainty giving way to dread at the underlying danger of a question like that. While many people scorned you blindly, there were those with a particular taste for half-breeds. 

“I need to get going, it’s late,” you said slowly. You didn’t want to turn your back on him, and you had no idea how close you were to town, but anything was better than here. 

“Wait, before you go, I heard a story recently,” he said, unconcerned with your response. “It’s about your kind. Stop me if you’ve heard it before.”

“I don’t-” 

“Once upon a time,” he said, speaking as if you hadn’t, “a gato got it in his head that one life wasn’t enough for him. Even though he had everything he could ask for—a wife, two children, a successful career, he was proud. He didn’t see why he should have to abide by the same rules as everyone else. Of course, he was warned that it was a bad idea, but it became a… preoccupation of his. He traveled just about everywhere, certain that he could do what no one else had.”

The man paused, giving you a moment to register his words, to feel the slow drip of horror pooling in your stomach. 

“It didn’t work out for him, in the end. It never does.”

“Who are you?” you asked, although you had a feeling. A very strange, awful feeling. “How do you-”

“Do you know how it ends?” he asked, pushing away from the tree and standing up, stepping out of the shadows, only a few feet in front of you. Your eyes were better adjusted now, taking in as much light as possible. His hood fell back, letting you see the man in full. 

Only, he wasn’t a man. 

For a second, the ears on the top of his head made you think he was ravi too. But they were too small. Pointed. Distinctly canine.

Then the rest of it registered.  

He wasn’t a wolf standing on hind legs, or a person with wolf features, but some inhuman, impossible mix of the two. His long, toothy snout was distinct to a dolichocephalic skull. A beast. That’s what you would assume given all that thick gray fur, round eyes, and the pointy ears directly on top of the head. But somehow, despite all of that, something about his face registered as perfectly, sickeningly, uncannily human. 

And you knew him. You saw him in your nightmares, in the shadows, in the darkest places of your mind. No matter what resolve you had before that moment, all you wanted was to run. You needed to run. But fear, pure and distilled, paralyzed you.

“No? That’s fine, it’s just a story, after all,” he said, the words far too well articulated considering the wolf’s muzzle they were coming from, the shiny sharp teeth through which they were spoken. 

You opened your mouth to respond, and instead you whimpered as you exhaled.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You remember me, don’t you? I remember you. Although, you were a lot smaller back then. Who would’ve thought that you’d turn out to be such a looker?" He laughed at that, a stilted chuckle. When you didn’t respond, his demeanor dropped, darkened. “Your fear was intoxicating.”

 Leaning forward, he closed his eyes and sniffed at the air like a dog. You couldn’t do anything, your limbs refusing to move even though every cell in your body screamed at you to run. When he leaned back and exhaled, his lips pulled back in what was very distinctly a smile, an expression that should have been impossible for a wolf to make. 

“I’ve waited a long time to see you like this again, I worried that it would be disappointing,” he told you, red eyes opening. They were mad. His smile was mad. Dread overwhelmed your system. “But you smell even better than I remember.” 

He took a step forward. With a few unnerving exceptions, his body was human enough. Tall, broad shouldered, slightly hunched, wearing clothes like a person. His hands were almost like paws with pads and claws, but were articulated like your own—short one finger. He was no monster. He was a nightmare come to life. 

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Surprised to see me?” 

“No,” you whispered, shaking your head. “No, you’re not… not real.”

You could see the excitement in his eyes as he licked his lips with a long tongue, another entirely animalistic motion. The perfect meld of human and wolf traits was fascinating. Sickening. Something that should not exist. 

You did nothing other than stare at him with wide eyes as he leaned in. And you did nothing as he raised his hand, dragging the claw in a butterfly kiss over your cheek. “You think?” he asked, the growl in his voice almost like a purr. 

That woke you out of your trance and you stumbled back, covering the skin which tingled from the very real touch.

He laughed and straightened out, but didn’t follow you. “It’s not safe to be out here so late. You never know what you’ll find lurking in the woods.”

You swallowed hard, your breathing picking up, the old well of fury cracking open just a little. There should have been more, but the fear was too intense, cold in your veins. “What are you?” you asked, barely audible. Frightened of the answer, but desperate to know. 

“Your father called me Anubis. That’s one of your gods, right?” 

“You are not a god,” you said, an objection because you couldn’t allow this nightmare, any degree of holy pedigree that you had feared for so long. There was doubt in your voice though, doubt you couldn’t stifle. 

“It depends on how you look at it,” he allowed. “But it’s true that I have no interest in being worshiped, and I certainly don’t want your faith. I prefer fear.” 

You swallowed hard, shaking your head in a hazy attempt to fight back the swelling tide of fear, to deny him that. “I'm not… not afraid of you, wolf."

That didn’t so much as make him blink. "You fear me more than you fear anything else."

"No! You killed my… my—I hate you."

“Sure you do."

“And because of you, my brother was…” You couldn’t finish the statement, your entire body nearly vibrating from the way you were shaking. “And then mm-my mother...” 

“Execution and, what was it, some kind of sickness?” The wolf clicked his tongue. “It’s a harsh world.” 

“You took them from me,” you said softly. “You took everything.” 

“Do you want revenge, gatita? You wouldn’t be the first.” 

The mocking tone of his voice was as bad as a slap across the face. Even if you wanted revenge, what fight could you possibly put up against an impossible creature like him? You flexed your hands and clasped them together, your breathing picking up with the confusion of old fury and sadness and fear. 

“I want to know why,” you finally said.

The wolf sighed, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated—and far too human—way as he continued to circle you. “Everybody thinks there’s a reason. There isn’t. Who lives, who dies, it’s all the same to me in the end. But there are those who… tempt fate. Although, I prefer to call it tempting death."

"You're saying that my father wanted to die? You're crazy,” you argued, your shoulders tensing in some form of defense. 

"He was especially tempting. His pride, his ego, his fear… I gave him several chances, and he chose to insult me over and over again.” He paused for a moment before continuing, “I may have gotten carried away. You can’t blame me for wanting some fun now and again."

Despite the relative warmth of the night, the air chilled whenever you inhaled, your skin raising with goosebumps. Something in your head clicked, the understanding you had been trying very hard not to acknowledge. 

"What are you?" you asked again, but you were thinking that you knew. Of course you knew, it was something you’d known for a long time. 

"You know who I am."

"Death," you whispered. 

“And you know all about tempting death, don't you? To be honest, I’m starting to lose my patience, gatita,” he practically whispered the pet name, leaning down behind you so the word brushed intimately against your ear, his breath disturbing the fine hairs and making them twitch. 

You yelped and jumped away, twisting around. All you could think about was how close all those teeth had been to your ears. Your neck. Death watched as you stumbled even further backwards, hitting a tree and falling against it. 

“Watching you survive things that would kill anybody else over and over, it’s unbearable. You throw yourself into danger like you’re trying to tease me.” Genuine irritation glowed in his eyes. Frustration. You shouldn’t have been able to see an emotion like that on such an inhuman face. 

You needed to run. Whether or not that was a good idea no longer mattered. Surely he wouldn’t follow you out of the woods, surely sanity would take his place once you were back among civilization, out of the moonlight’s pure lunacy. Your insides squeezed sickeningly. Your heart raced.

“Is it a cat thing? You inherited the ears, the eyes, and, what, the nine lives? I guess that skipped a generation,” Death mused, his demeanor shifting completely right back into amusement. “Or maybe it’s just dumb luck. What do you think, gatita—are you feeling lucky tonight?” 

Run. You needed to run. 

Death stepped forward. 

You had to run. 

Rather than get any closer to him to follow the trail, you rolled off of the tree to the side so you could escape into the trees, letting your pack drop to the ground to avail yourself of the extra weight. With your back to the wolf, you sprinted, not caring where it took you, only that it was as far away from him as possible.

Behind you, you heard him calling out to you. You heard him laughing. You gasped and choked for breath, your feet pounding against the forest floor, your streaming eyes blind to anything other than what was directly in front of you. Running, catching the sharp fingers of trees across your arms and face, stray logs and squishy moss and wet grass threatening to trip you with every step. All around, you could hear his laughter, echoing around amidst the trees and in your head. 

And for what? Your escape had been doomed from the start, nothing more than the animalistic instinct of prey. 

It really only made sense when you realized that Death stood directly in your path, a hulking shadow with red eyes. Your body jolted on instinct and you skittered into a hard stop, momentum pushing you forward while your feet tried to backtrack. 

“¿Dónde vas, gatita? Haven’t you heard that it’s dangerous to stray from the path?”

Thoughtlessly, you twisted around, but you were too slow. Or he was too fast. Grabbing a fistful of fabric from the back of your cloak, Death dragged you backwards. And then you were looking into a pair of bright red eyes, choking as your cloak’s tie tightened around your windpipe.

He growled as a wolf would, and you felt base terror in your very core. No matter how humanly he expressed emotion, his face was very decidedly that of a wolf, of a predator that you were naturally wired to fear. A rising surge of bile burned in your throat from running and all you could hear was your heartbeat, thundering ever faster. You choked out a yelp, lashing out however you could in a bid to get free. He easily avoided every attack you threw out, seemingly bored by the attempts, casually holding you at arms length. 

“What I really can’t stand,” he told you, his voice low and calm, “is how you waste it. Fighting so hard to stay alive, and for what? Nothing will be lost when I end it.”

“Shut up!” you cried, choking the words out through gritted teeth. You would live. Survive just like you always did. He considered that, licking his lips before irritation once more gave way to excitement.   

“Then again,” Death said, letting you down enough to stand on your toes, allowing you to take a breath. Oxygen hit you in a hard rush, you might have fallen over if he weren’t steadying you. “I’m in no rush.” 

“Let me go,” you demanded, your breathing ragged, your ears buzzing and ignorant of his words. 

Death smiled, his wolfish muzzle pulled back in an expression so human it bordered on obscene. His face was right to yours, you could practically count each of his deadly sharp teeth, see into the soulless depths of those evil eyes. 

“Your fear is positively mouthwatering. The poor little kitten is really terrified of el lobo feroz. That fear is the only thing that’s ever given your life purpose. If you think about it, I’m the only reason you keep going. It’s almost flattering.” He licked his lips again, considering you intently. “You don’t mind having some fun before I kill you, right?”

“No!” you screamed the word, but all it did was make his eyes flash with hunger. 

“I’m going to eat. You. Up.” 

Every muscle in your body went taut, seizing with a different sort of horror. That confounded curiosity to know what he intended, the disturbing impulse to tempt violence, was only heightened by the adrenaline in your system. You had no word for the dark feeling, for the disturbing impulse. Only disgust, swirling dark twisting up hot and low in your gut. With shaking hands, you finally managed to undo the tie around your neck, dropping out of your cloak and onto the ground. And then, before you could even stand up, you were running. 

This time, Death didn’t react. No laughter or jeering taunts followed your escape. Dampened beneath the rush of blood in your ears and your feet pounding on the forest floor, the woods were full of the normal sounds. Bugs and frogs and birds and the breeze. 

All the same, you knew that el lobo feroz wasn’t far behind. You knew that, and you knew you wouldn’t escape from  him. Not this time. But you couldn’t just stop. So you made your frantic flight through the trees, sprinting as fast as you could to escape a creature which existed in opposition to all that was sane or safe. Death himself. 

From behind you, in front of you, on both slides, all around, the lilting whistled tune finally began. Panic, bright red and raw, caused you to trip. There was a jolt when your foot caught on something, sending a little shockwave all up your body, then a lurch as gravity forced you down and momentum dragged you forward. For a moment, true weightlessness. And then you were skidding and somersaulting along the ground, skinning your hands and knees all over again before you collapsed, your chin painfully knocking against the ground when you completed your tumble. No pain registered, just numb confusion. You were breathing so hard your lungs burned, your tongue paper dry and sour. Despite the deafening sound of your heart beating and the wheezing rattle of air in your lungs, you could hear his song. 

Everything, everything hurt, but you forced yourself up, to shamble into the bushes, curling into a ball to wait. 

The song ended. 

Seconds—less than that, really—passed before anything happened. Then you heard him. He allowed you to hear him, your pursuer wasn’t concerned that you would manage to escape. He didn’t need to bother running after you, or disguise the noise of his approach. You squeezed your eyes shut until you heard heavy feet crunching through the grass and twigs right in front of you, peeking them open to watch a figure emerge from the darkness.

Death stopped to sniff the air like the predatory beast he appeared to be. You pressed both hands over your mouth and nose, your entire body shaking with the tension of staying stiffly still. For a moment, you hoped he would move on. You didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. 

“This has been fun,” he said conversationally, “but you’re not exactly the most challenging hunt. So, make this easier for yourself and come out, or make it more fun for me and stay put. Your choice, gatita.”  

Your sore, overworked body twitched, wanting to obey and spare yourself. But if he knew where you were, he wouldn’t be looking around randomly like he was, right? Unless this was another game and he was trying to trick you, to see how you’d respond to that threat. But he could be bluffing. You didn’t know, and that uncertainty kept you in place. 

Death chuckled ominously, leaving your line of sight. Somehow, that was worse than anything else, the nothingness of blind anticipation. 

For a fleeting moment, you hoped he had moved on after all.

“Did you really think you could hide from me?” Death asked. Behind you, above you. A short little scream ripped from your throat as he grabbed you by the hair, wrenching you upright so fast that your body went limp with dizziness, head spinning with terror and a fresh rush of energy. He kept you up by exchanging a fistful of hair for the front of your dress. “Me temo que no tiene suerte.”

Getting your bearings, you yelped, thrashing out of his grip. Death let you go too easily, causing you to stumble. You went down hard. This time, it did hurt. Your hands and knees were skinned raw. But still, you crawled. It wasn’t a choice, it was instinct.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” Death said, crouching down behind you. He laughed. “I’ve got a feeling that you will too.” 

“No—no.”

“You can’t lie to me. I can smell it. Fear mixed with desire… It's delicious. I can’t wait to have a taste.”

All you could do was grunt when he grabbed you by the waist, easily lifting you up and manhandling you onto your back. You fell with a heavy sound, dizzy all over again. 

“I’d say I was surprised, but… Well, I’m not,” Death said, straddling you. His legs were completely wrong. They bent like a man’s at the knee, but bent again with the backwards angle of a wolf’s legs, ending in a set of thick paws. His face was worse. He spoke with such vivid animation. It shouldn’t have been possible for a wolf’s face to emote like that, it shouldn’t have been possible that Death himself could look so gleeful, so excited. When you attempted to drag yourself away, he settled more of his weight on top of you. “This is how you like it, right? Rough. It makes you feel alive.” 

Even in your terrified panic, you knew what he was talking about. How long had he been watching you? How intently? Had you ever managed to escape from him, or were you just running around like a headless chicken, never knowing you were doomed? Furiously rejecting that, you bucked upward, bowing your back to throw him off. When that didn’t work, you grasped fistfuls of fabric from the front of his shirt to get leverage. 

Death growed low and grabbed your face, slamming your head against the ground, claws digging into the soft skin of your cheeks. He followed while you were still reeling, leaning down to talk directly into your ear. 

“Do you feel alive now, gatita?”

You whimpered, squeezing your eyes shut so you couldn’t see his frightening face. El lobo feroz. His nose was cold and leathery when it brushed your face as he pulled back, air ghosting across your cheek and making you whimper. Death laughed, sitting up. 

“The ears really are cute,” he told you, releasing your cheeks to take hold of your ear instead. The rough pads caught on the delicate skin, brushing the fur up in a way that made you shudder. He saw that, you could tell by the way his red eyes flashed, the way he licked his lips again. “Who knows, maybe you’ll change my mind about cats.”

“Stop it,” you said, covering your face in an attempt to find peace from this absurdity. He hadn’t broken skin with his claws, but your chin and palms were busted up, your cheeks latticed with shallow scrapes from the trees.

“I told you. You can’t hide from me,” Death said, his voice dragging with a growl. The threat was emphasized by the sudden cold edge dragging lightly against your neck. 

Stiffening, you lowered your hands, looking up at him with wet eyes—looking at the humanoid wolf claiming to be death, who had killed your father and ruined your life, who had haunted you every day since, whose mere shadow terrified you to your core, and once you came to grips with the unbelievability of what you saw, you had to contend with the knowledge that you were powerless to such a nightmare. Utterly, completely powerless.

Death groaned. Or hummed. Or growled. It was a happy sound, excited. “Está buena, gatita,” he told you, saying it like praise. “I don’t normally go for this sort of thing.” Casually, he nudged your chin upward before dragging the sickle down so the point caught beneath the neckline of your dress. “I shouldn’t. It’ll have to be our secret, hm?” 

Willful ignorance had done nothing for you thus far, but you still clung to it. He couldn’t be talking about what you thought he was. He couldn’t be that human. 

In a sharp movement, he pulled the sickle downward. Fabric ripped loudly in the quiet night. Yelping, you tried to pull the scraps back together, to cover yourself because that indignity was too far, wasn’t it? Nudity could mean nothing more than a prelude to violence to something like him, but it was different to you. 

Death growled in annoyance, pressing the weapon’s tip into the soft give of your stomach. 

“Hands off,” he told you. You didn’t move, and he pressed down. Not too much, just enough to break the skin, to draw blood. 

“Stop,” you said, clinging even more desperately to the front of your ruined bodice, “that hurts.”

 “I’ll keep going. To. The. Hilt.” Death drew out each word, pressing down with each word to make his point, the sickle’s edge disappearing into your skin. He meant it. Obey or suffer. 

Looking straight above at the uncaring night sky, you released your bodice. He chuckled as he pulled the weapon away. It might have been that sound, or the crushing disgust of being exposed. There was very little thought behind the way you lashed out, capitalizing on his moment of distraction as he readjusted himself. 

Your pathetic attempt at escaping the inevitable lacked any art or intelligence, only the final burst of energy that came from knowing you’d have no more chances after this. Death avoided your thrashing limbs, letting you wriggle your way upward, twisting around to try and crawl away. And then he drove the sickle into the ground right beside your hand, the blade only narrowly missing your fingers as he drove it into the dirt. You yelped, flinching away. Death used the moment to flip you around again, slamming the air out of your lungs.

"Delicious," he growled, curling over you to get at the exposed skin of your torso. Fabric that hadn’t been properly cut was torn away by his hands. Hands, paws. Human finger articulation and the thick pads of a dog’s feet, each tipped with dangerously long claws. They caught your skin, the rough pads like sandpaper on your sensitive flesh. Just as quickly as the fabric was out of the way, his nose replaced it, his hulking form hunching over your body. Each rapid inhale tickled your skin, pairing disturbingly with the cold of his nose. Unlike his hands, his tongue was soft, lapping up the blood he’d drawn on your stomach before he moved up. The uncanny mixture of sensations made you squirm. 

“Stop, stop now,” you said, jerking in uncoordinated little bursts beneath him more on instinct than rational thought. Fur filled the spaces between your fingers as you tried to push him off. He didn't react to you tugging on it, all it did was remind you of how bestial he was. The whole situation was terrifying, yes. But, more viscerally, it was gross. Deeply uncomfortable to feel his long, smooth tongue, to endure the threat of teeth as he moved up, to choke back disgust and terror as he passed over your nipples. “Stop,” you whined the word despite yourself, your eyes screwed shut in an attempt to separate from reality. Death chuckled, moving up across your flushed chest, to your neck, leaving you flushing bright red and slick with his saliva. 

“Impatient?” he asked, the words brushing over your fluttering pulse. “I’m not surprised. That’s fine.”

The waistband of your dress didn’t part as easily as the top. He worked from the other end instead, making a slit to tear the fabric up and expose your stockings and panties. Claws made short work of the thin, well worn cotton, carving shallow lines into your skin to strip you entirely. 

“Nn-no, what are you doing? Stop, st-” your words cut off with a heavy ‘umph’ when he pushed you back down. Death didn’t so much as look at you as he admired his handiwork, let alone respond to your plea.

“Just like I thought,” he said. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” 

“No,” you said, desperately shaking your head. All you could see was his sharp, sharp teeth, those deadly claws. And your body was electrified, covered with drool and chills and thrumming hot with blood. There was no way out of this, you couldn't even comprehend the pain he could cause. Out of options, you pushed down the remains of your skirt, attempting to close your legs. 

Claws dug into your thighs as Death forced them back open with a little growl, sparing you no indignity. The moon deprived you of the cover of darkness and it shouldn’t have been so embarrassing because he wasn’t a man, but it was. Just like he had with your torso, Death explored the exposed skin. The puffing brushes of air as he sniffed and licked along your thighs was humiliating and obscene on its own, nevermind when he nipped at the sensitive flesh to make you whimper, forcing you to contemplate the damage those teeth could do where you were most vulnerable. 

The thought of such agony had you try a final time to close your legs, only to have them spread even wider, giving you the perfect view of el lobo feroz with his muzzle pressed against your pussy, his long pink tongue lolling out to drag across your slit. It wasn’t the pain you anticipated, but it was just too strange, too surprising, too disturbing. Having the snout of a beast between your legs, regardless of the creature's perceived humanity, was enough to make you feel sick, twisted and filthy. 

“No, no, don’t,” you demanded shrilly, kicking in an attempt to displace him. Death growled, claws puncturing into your skin as he pushed your hips back down, peering up at you. His eyes didn’t reflect or catch the moonlight. They glowed. Empty. Evil.   

“Ten cuidado, gatita,” he warned. “Haven’t you ever been warned about getting in the way of a wolf and his meal?”

“Please,” you said, unable to comprehend that this could happen. That this would happen. “Please don’t… don’t. You can’t do this.”

“What are you going to do to stop me?” 

That was awful, too awful for words. Fight and risk more pain, or let it happen and… And what? What rational response could you possibly have to this other than disgust and despair? Maybe you should have been glad he wasn’t about to rip you to bloody shreds and feast on the remains, glad that you would be spared pain and immediate death, but that consolation felt terribly cheap when confronted with the equally unimaginable. 

“You can’t,” you said, your voice too high, terrified into a whine. “You’re not even… I mean it’s not like you can… like you’ll… you can…”

Death hummed in annoyance, you could feel the vibration of the sound. “Te voy a comer. Y luego te voy a coger,” he told you, the words easy like he was explaining something very simple which, considering you couldn’t understand them, only made it that much worse. “¿Está bien, gatita?”

“No,” you said. “No, I don’t…” Understand. Believe. Consent. 

Death laughed, arranging your legs into a more comfortable press towards your chest to make room for his hulking form. There was nothing you could do to make him stop. 

The pads of his fingers were painfully rough against your pussy’s outer lips, catching on the sensitive flesh as he parted them. His tongue, however, was softer than anything you’d ever felt, lapping at your entrance, up to your clit. You squirmed uncontrollably, locked in some limbo of disgust, discomfort, and embarrassment. 

You thought that if you just closed your eyes, if you just blocked it out, you could pretend that this wasn’t happening, but Death hummed out an animalistic growl, and his tongue was far too long and dexterous to be human, and his fur bristled against your thighs, and there was no way out. Already, your body was waking up to the stimulation. Responding. There was something wrong with you. You knew that, you’d known that for a long time, taking pleasure in beatings, wanting sex to be rougher and rougher, needing to be brutalized like it was an itch to be scratched. This was a new low, the grotesque indulgence of those most perverse.

Like you. 

“Please stop,” you whined, another plea to add to the string of ignored requests. Death made a sound you could feel more than hear. For reasons other than fear, you shuddered at the noise. 

With your clit acceptably swollen, your body twitching with every movement, his tongue slicked downward. Your hips jumped, legs closing and opening with surprise, but Death wasn’t deterred.

“No-oh,” you sounded so weak, your rejection coming out pathetic and breathy.  

Death made another growl-like sound, pushing you down flat with mean claws that poked fresh holes into your skin. You hadn’t been trying to escape, you just couldn’t stop from squirming as he tested the flinching muscles of your entrance. This was new, and different, and terrible, and foul. His tongue was soft and long and far too dexterous, pushing into you with a few hungry strokes. No human man could do that. It wasn’t physically possible. 

You whimpered, your head falling back in some vain attempt to block it all out. Escape wasn’t so easy. While his tongue lacked the pressure and weight of something solid, he attacked your g-spot with precision. Eating you out. Eating you. Given that long snout, it had to have been awkward, but that didn’t seem to deter him. And every time his head moved, his nose ground against your clit. He was probably watching you, watching you twitch and gasp and writhe helplessly, but you kept your eyes squeezed shut. The sight of a wolf’s head between your legs like this would kill you, surely it would. 

Unbidden, you remembered telling the child Quinta that dogs were your natural enemy, and your penchant for seeking the companionship of those who promised animosity, and the wicked sort of sense it made that you would find yourself here, and you could only laugh at it all but the hysterical sound came out like a sob, and then a low groan, and then a sharp whine when Death pressed the rough pad of one of his fingers against your clit instead, dragging small little circles against it while his tongue continued to torment you. 

“No, no, no, no-” 

Whatever you were denying, it was pointless. Noise for the sake of it, words getting all tangled up with your choked moans and sobs and hiccups. The little addition of pain from the too rough texture on your clit was enough to give you what you really wanted, what you always ached for. 

Pleasure lurched in your core, your hips bucking wildly. Death growled again and it was mean. Aggressive. You seized up, mouth open wide as if for a scream, your feet planted so you could tilt your hips up for more. More pleasure, more pain. Disgust, shame, fear, all of it became white hot and foul, agonizingly sexy in the few moments where the high of orgasm negated the living nightmare between your legs.

And then you were coming down, hips jerking into the tongue of a wolf monster, the creature that had killed your father, Death himself, and you actually sobbed, shying away from his touch as little sparks of overstimulation promised something worse. Unable to escape in any material way, you covered your face. Tears, dirt, and blood smeared together on the feverish, sweaty skin, nearly suffocating as you panted.  

Death let you be and sat up, laughing. Laughing at you.

“That was faster than I expected.” 

Peeking out from between your fingers, you saw the way his muzzle was glistening before his tongue swiped it away, saw the way he was smiling as he mocked you. “Ah. Unh-no, I-”

Death leaned over you. You flinched away, but he only grabbed the sickle he’d driven into the ground beside you. Casually, he flicked the blade out. The cool metal winked in the moonlight. Although you were still trembling with the aftershocks of orgasm, you weren’t too far gone to feel a fresh wave of fear. Immediately, you curled in on yourself, covering as much of your vulnerability as possible. 

“You cower in fear, but I can taste your desire,” Death said, licking his lips. “It’s not half bad.” 

“Please just… just stop.” 

“I’m doing you a favor. You’re too tight.” 

Death didn’t elaborate on that, positioning the weapon’s hilt between your legs, pushing the flared base between your folds before you could figure out what was happening. Everything was wet with a mixture of saliva and your own arousal, slick enough for the weapon to press against your entrance. You figured it out then, but he pinned you in place with a hand on your stomach, claws pressing against the flinching skin. There was nothing you could really do to avoid it, and you didn’t dare close your legs around the blade itself. 

“This might hurt.”

“Stop, please stop, you can’t—” 

Death didn’t say anything, watching your expression as he pushed the weapon’s grip into you. To see such a sharp blade between your legs in any capacity was dizzying, and that was without the intensely physical pressure of its grip rubbing against your inner walls.

“I told you, didn’t I?” he asked. “To. The. Hilt.” With every word, he drove the weapon deeper, your body jerking with each movement. 

“Stop, just stop, please, take it…take it out.” 

“I’d do it myself, but,” Death said, holding up his off-hand, “I’m not so sure you’d like that.” His claws practically gleamed in the moonlight, and you knew exactly how rough the pads were. The idea of those inside of you was enough to make your insides wither, although all that really amounted to was your cunt tightening around the weapon. You grunted at the feeling, shook your head fast, panicked. 

“No! No,” you told him as coherently as you could. Your tongue was dry as bone, you choked on the grit. 

“Thought so,” he replied, pulling the sickle back only to slam it back in. 

The textured grip felt disturbingly good in some mad, broken way. His tongue had been so smooth and soft, but this was solid and firm, forcing itself into you. He used it like a tool, not bothering to simulate sex, twisting it this way and that, forcing your pussy open. Making room. You couldn’t help but writhe with each movement, your cunt tightening around the grip, hips tilting up as you were consumed by a confusing twist of disgust and need. Violence and pain were things you knew and understood. Familiarity had you dripping around the weapon, you could hear how wet you were, and his harsh motions only emphasized the vulgar sound.

“Not bad,” Death said, amused by the sight. You shut your eyes. “This weapon killed your father. It’s only fair that you should die by it too—una pequeña muerte.”

“Don’t,” you said, body going painfully tense with disgust, with hate, with fear. Death pulled the sickle out, pushing it back in with an ugly squelch, dragging a pained yelp from your mouth, and then a distinctly less pained one when he twisted it slightly. “No, no, I…”

Little death. You belatedly realized the implication of that. You’d already come once, it wasn’t nearly as difficult to build you up again. Especially not when he was being more deliberate with each thrust, when the sandpaper-rough texture of his finger nudged at your clit again. 

Nothing in particular set you off, maybe it was just the acceptance of sensation, the acknowledgement that it would buy you a few moments of madness from this unthinkable situation. Gasping, flushing, writhing like a creature possessed, you seized up, pleasure flushing through your system with a white-hot sort of frenzy. You didn’t think it could be compared to death, not really. You felt distinctly alive for a few seconds of shivering, wet heat. 

Until it ended, abruptly dropping you back in the middle of an unfathomable predicament. 

Death hummed as he stopped, letting you wilt back onto the ground, trembling and hot. “I prefer a fight, but-” Without much ceremony and a disgustingly wet shlick, Death pulled the weapon out of your pussy. “You put on quite the show, gatita. This is going to be good.” 

“What are you doing?” you asked, drawing your legs in, wincing at the feeling. Some part of you still rejected what was happening, what he was capable of doing. Of course that got a little harder to believe when he pushed his pants down. Was it flattering that a monster would be turned on by torturing you? You wanted to think that it couldn’t be, that you weren’t that depraved, but the part of your deepest self that stirred in reaction to the sight frightened you. It seemed that the human shape and build of his body carried over to his primary sex characteristics. It was sick that the revelation should be relieving, but at least you would be spared the particular grotesque indignity of inhuman genitalia. Maybe if you shut your eyes, if you blocked it all out, you could pretend that it was just a man raping you. 

Because that was so much better.

You weren’t even aware that you were trying to crawl away until he clicked his tongue, grabbing your waist to pull you back into place. The pads on his fingers were so rough, claws threatening to rip the sensitive flesh. He licked his lips with wolfish excitement. Fur brushed your bare skin. There was no way out of this, to escape el lobo feroz. Not mentally, not physically. 

You pressed your thighs together as tightly as you could, ignoring how slick they were.

“It’s too late for that,” he said, easily prying them apart. Fur brushed against your skin, but you were more concerned with the sight of his cock as it bobbed up before settling against your abdomen. 

Heavy. That was your first thought, right before the comparison between your body and his cock really settled in your feverish brain. The head alone was thick enough that you couldn’t fathom it getting past your entrance, let alone that you’d be able to take the rest. 

“No, no, no, you-you can’t do this,” you said, staring at his dick with a crawling sense of fear that had nothing to do with his inhumanity—in all regards—and everything to do with the size. “It won’t fit.” 

“You can accommodate new life,” he said, a hand going under his cock to press against your abdomen, right above your womb. “Let alone Death. You’ll be fine.” He said it like a joke, like it was amusing. He was sick. You were sick. This was…

When he moved, the slap of his dick on your abdomen was audible, punctuating a joke that wasn’t funny to begin with. Death clearly wasn’t concerned as he rearranged you, pushing your legs up and apart until your thighs screamed, his body bearing down against you for leverage. The unyielding press of his cock between your legs made you panic, but he had you utterly pinned. You couldn’t do anything other than feel it slide across the sensitive flesh, settling right against your entrance. You couldn’t do anything to stop this. Death grunted as he readjusted you, claws digging fresh lines into your flesh, and began to rock his hips forward. When you yelped, bucking up against him, the sharp points broke skin. It would be easy for him to rip you up with nothing more than those claws. 

“Quédate quieto,” he growled. You didn’t need to understand to be still.

So close like this, you realized that you could smell him. Not the stench of a dog, of wet fur or a poorly maintained pelt. Not the scent of a man either, familiar and human. Death smelled like a cool summer night, and torrential rain, and a river’s violent rapids, and acrid smoke, and the dry dust of an old road. Although it wasn’t entirely unpleasant in the way you might have expected of a wolf man, it made your stomach churn, doing nothing to help you relax as he continued to press the thick head of his cock against your pussy.

For a moment, you thought that it really was impossible, that you would be spared. That single second of relief was all it took for the head to pop past the initial barrier of muscle. Your mouth dropped open at the feeling. Surprise, maybe. Your legs were spread wide enough to mitigate some of the dragging pain as he forced himself a little deeper, just past the ridge. Death made a sound low in his chest, but all you could manage was stiff, cold shock. Surprise at how surreal it all was. But reality marched on all the same, with or without your comprehension. You weren’t sure what you expected it to feel like, but you would have been wrong anyway. Stretching, aching, too much, too much, too-

Grunting, he rolled his hips, pulling back just enough before thrusting deeper. Little by little, letting you adjust and relax ever so slightly before pulling back to go further. You whined each time, back arching, your pussy tightening around him. It was probably a protective measure, trying to keep him out, but it hurt, pulling a rumbly growl out of his throat, his hips pushing forward despite the painful resistance. 

“No more,” you got out, the words tight, pained. 

Muttering something under his breath, Death leaned back to let drool drip from his long tongue. It landed heavily where the two of you were joined, splatting with an unattractive slap onto the place where you were joined, onto your swollen clit. He laughed at your girlish yelp of surprise. 

You let your head fall back, your hands covering your face. They smelled like dirt and blood. At least the extra lubrication helped, and you knew your body was responding to this. Whether to protect itself or out of some truly disturbing reciprocation, your pussy was soaking his cock, making way for him as he rolled his hips back and forth. 

Deeper, further. You were going to split apart. 

“Stop, please,” you finally broke enough to beg, pressing against his stomach, ignoring the sickening feeling of fur beneath your hand. You were almost surprised when Death stopped, huffing hard. Worse, you were grateful.  

“Too much, gatita? And you were doing so well.”

A pathetic little whine tore from your throat when you looked down at the remaining few inches of cock between your straining pussy lips and his grotesque inhuman body, despairing at the sight. “I can’t,” you whimpered. “No more.” 

Death growled in frustration, claws digging painfully into your skin as he shifted back and forth a few times, trying to ease himself deeper. You could see the shadow of distension shifting across your abdomen as he did, proof of how deep inside of you he already was. But no matter how he rolled his hips, or twisted you around, there was no more room. 

“Stop,” you said, the word getting caught in your swollen throat, your body desperately straining to get away for fear that he’d just force it in.

Death stilled, exhaling hard to steady himself. It sounded like a growl. Your pussy unintentionally clenched hard around him at the noise. It hurt, the muscles unable to adjust to his size. The reaction had his breath catching, and that became a throaty laugh.

“Fine,” he said, finally dragging his hips back. It was what you wanted, but it still hurt, the stretch worsened by the way your pussy squeezed and pulsed around his length. Death stopped when only the head remained inside of you. “You just need to be broken in. That’s fine.” 

You looked, stricken, from the dizzying sight of his cock—now, at least partially, glistening with your own arousal—to the sickening expression of manic glee he wore. How could a canine face express such viscerally human emotions? 

And then, in the back of your empty, dizzy head—why was this happening?

“No more,” you begged, squeezing your eyes shut, your pussy trying to push him out despite the discomfort of it. Claws ripped into your skin when his grip had to tighten to keep you in place, his hips chasing yours as you tried so desperately to escape. It hurt all over again. Maybe not as bad, but now you knew what to anticipate. 

“It's better like this.” He stopped when he was as deep as he could go and you were grateful that he didn’t push it further, grateful that he was taking it slow. The stretching, pinching ache wasn’t any better, but it wasn’t worse either. “What is this… Two? Three inches?” You looked down, realizing that he was referring to how much of his cock couldn’t fit inside of you. It had to be more than that, although you were stuck on the sight of your pussy stretched around him. “By the end of the night, there won’t be anything keeping us apart. That’ll be… poetic, don’t you think?” 

It wasn’t fair that his voice should be that of a man, should be low and dripping with a villain’s dangerous charisma. All you could do was groan weakly, your breathing shallow. Despite what he said, there was nothing poetic to the sound of it. Slick, filthy, disgustingly wet. Every thrust punched a sharp noise out of you, although most of them were nothing more than heavy breaths. Death wasn’t very quiet either, making noises that fluctuated seamlessly between that of a man and that of a beast. 

“Hurts,” you whimpered in protest, willing him to slow down. He didn’t. 

“Good.” 

The single word, the cruelty of it and the accompanying set of a harsher pace, hurt in more ways than the physical. You couldn’t help but wail in despair, writhing with pain you couldn’t escape, unable to get away as he fucked you. Deeper and deeper, forcing you to stretch out to accommodate him. 

“You like the pain, right?” Death asked mockingly, his voice low enough to nearly get missed beneath the filthy squelch of each thrust. And all you could do was whimper. Did you like the pain? No, but there was a perverse satisfaction of justified destruction. You had no idea how he knew that.

“I don’t,” you said, needing to reject him. To reject all of this because otherwise you were afraid it would end like before, that you would give in. That you’d enjoy this. But it was too late. You couldn’t help your hips from twitching of their own volition, and a particularly sharp thrust pulled a surprised gasp from your open mouth. 

“Buena gatita,” he said in a low voice, half growl. The sound, the language, the speaker, none of it mattered because your body knew praise, and the kind that came with cruelty was what you craved in the sickest part of your brain. “Muy buena.” Your cunt fluttered weakly around him, your hips rolling upward to meet his next thrust. It hurt, and it felt good. 

As soon as you admitted that to yourself in any way, you were lost. A few more thrusts and you had to bite your lip to keep from moaning. There wasn’t a single place within you that wasn’t full of him, not in your head or your pussy or your chest. Consumed entirely by Death. 

Gods help you, you could hear the fresh wave of wet arousal your body provided with that awful thought, so eager to submit to his dominion. As if sensing that, he stilled, his cock buried deep into you. Your eyes opened unintentionally, confused by the sudden break.

“Well, well, would you look at that,” Death said as a way of explanation, self satisfied. You followed his eyes, looking at where the two of you were joined. There was nothing between, his pelvis flush between your legs, the fur matting with how wet everything was. You opened your mouth to say something, but nothing came out. His hips shifted and you could see the bump of distension, more pronounced now. “Like I said—poetic. All you’ve done for years is tease me and now-” He laughed. “Now you’re mine.”  

Death pulled back slowly, letting you see how much of his cock he’d forced your body to accept. It looked about as impossible as it felt, you couldn’t really comprehend it on any level other than the most base—sickening satisfaction. Ensuring you were still watching, his hips snapped forward. Once, twice, three times, making sure each thrust was solid and steady, filling you up entirely, the thick head of his cock brutalizing your cunt in a way no human man ever could. The battering against your cervix hurt in a profound, electric way, a way nobody had ever managed to hurt you.  

And you took it. Your mouth open dumbly, your head tipping back into the dirt, your body rolling with each movement.    

Even suffering such intimate, awful pain, you couldn’t deny your feeling of pleasure. Sublime friction, pressure in every place you needed it. And, to a dreadful degree, Death seemed to be aware of your reactions. Aware enough, at least, to take note when you couldn’t help but moan aloud, to exploit the angle that had you seeing stars. He grabbed you off the ground, forcing you to throw your arms around his neck. Like that, you were even more at his mercy. Full enough to split, you could understand the indulgence of size, of craving excess. Beautiful. Your boiling brain pulled that word out from its scattered nothingness, and it was beautiful. Repulsive, disturbing, grotesque, and beautiful.

“That’s right,” Death practically purred into your ear. “Look at how well you take it, you’d think you were made for this.” 

“Oh, gods, oh—please, I can’t, I…” You weren’t even sure what you were begging for, it was too late from the second he praised you, sending you spiraling, coming hard, your pussy squeezing his cock so hard it hurt, your fingers pulling hard at the fur on his neck. Death laughed breathlessly, not slowing down for even a second. You didn’t care. If it hurt, it felt good, an endless feedback loop of madness. 

Holding so close to him, you were more aware than ever of how terrifyingly powerful his body was. He could easily destroy you if he wanted. 

This was Death at his gentlest. 

Dizzy, reeling, hardly able to scrape together any coherent thought beyond that, all you felt at the realization was the vague veil of fear. Letting yourself get fucked by the big bad wolf. Coming on his cock, moaning like a whore for a being that shouldn’t exist in the middle of the woods beneath a full moon. 

His hips stuttered then, a groan catching on a growl in his chest. 

“Delicious,” he said. “Your fear, I could just…” Death didn’t finish that thought, or maybe you couldn’t hear it as his thrusts became well and truly punishing. Seeking his end like a man would. That was what you expected, in a distant way, but you didn’t expect that a mystical—mythical?—creature would ejaculate, only that you’d had enough encounters with men to know you shouldn’t let it happen. Not inside. Never inside, that was way too dangerous. 

“Nn-no-”  

He didn’t listen. You couldn’t escape, and you stopped caring after a moment because the heavy, carnal weight of him coming inside of you was enough to make you squeal, your pussy squeezing his cock, your body straining in an arch against his. You didn’t know if you were coming again or if it was just a continuation of the onslaught of stimulation that your brain couldn’t make rational sense of, but there was a sort of lunatic’s bliss in the feeling, in the agonizingly hellish ecstasy of pleasure. Of complete and utter excess. You could feel the rumbling vibrations of his growl, it entwined with the human groans. The two shouldn’t have suited one another, but your broken mind accepted both gleefully, losing yourself in the sound.  

After a few jerky, halting movements, Death released you. 

He was slow to pull out, which was probably a mercy. Even softening, his cock was painfully big, you couldn’t hold back your pained whimper when he pulled out. The absence was immediate, cold, and hollow. You wilted when he let you fall limp onto the ground, defeated. Deflated. Breathing as if you’d run a marathon, it was all you could do to keep it together, the gravity of all that happened setting in.  

Something landed on your naked, sweaty body. Scared, you opened your eyes. But it was fabric. A second passed before you realized it was your red cloak. The one you left behind to escape from him before. It felt like a lifetime ago. You gratefully used it to cover your nudity, glad for the moment to catch your breath with some dignity. 

“Ah, that was good,” Death said, satisfied, rolling his neck and shoulders. He’d already fixed his pants and retrieved his weapons. “The fun’s over now. For you, at least.”

“I don’t know… how to get back to the trail…” you said, wincing as you sat up and looked around. His cum dripped out of your gaping, sore pussy, sticky on your thighs. Vaguely, you wondered what sort of monsters would come from such a coupling, but you disregarded that thought just as quickly. If he was done, you needed to get away. Then again, you weren’t even sure if you could walk. 

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” 

Death’s less than friendly tone rolled over you like ice water. Slowly looking over at him, you exhaled a big, shuddery lungful of cool night air. He stood high above you, his looming figure blotting out the moon. Right then, he looked no different than he had all those years ago. Brilliant red eyes, gray fur, silver sickles. The big bad wolf in all his glory. 

“What?” 

Those bright red eyes held a different sort of intensity than before. Swirling, passionate madness without any of the ravenous hunger. “You know, I’ve been watching you ever since that night. Every time you narrowly escape death, and every time you get other people killed. But you know that, you’ve seen me. That’s why you run, thinking you can escape the inevitable. For whatever reason—luck, fate, the blessing of those gods you claim to believe in—your life has been spared over and over. And yet, you do nothing with it.”

There was malice in those words, a visceral sort of disgust that reflected what you so often felt for yourself. You considered trying to stand up, trying to run again. Fear thundered in your chest, urged you to escape as you always did. But, honestly, you didn’t think your legs could support your weight. No. You couldn’t run. You never had really managed to escape him anyway. 

“So, I thought, why does it matter if you die now or later—your life has no meaning. If I finish it now, you won’t be able to keep teasing me, and we’ll both have some peace.” 

“I don’t want to die,” you said, your voice hushed to hide the tears. 

Death looked down at you, and you wondered if it was disgust or pity you saw on his inhuman face. But then you realized, it was neither. His jewel bright eyes gleamed with glee, passion of a type you couldn’t understand, that belonged to something beyond the realm of what you could possibly comprehend. A living nightmare. 

“Your fear,” Death said, inhaling deeply as he took a step forward, his sickles in hand, “has the most intoxicating smell. I might even miss it.” 

[misc-obeyme]

Couples Discount! - Secret Scene

Well, I shouldn't be surprised I guess. My "should I post the smut?" poll had some pretty definitive results. It's not yet over, but really I don't think I need to wait for it. Y'all voted for the smut.

I would like to begin by apologizing for my smut writing skills. I'm not at all confident in them, which is why this is the first time I'm really posting any.

So this is the secret smut scene that would come after the end of this daily chat scene I wrote, though you don't really need to read it before this. This right here is pure smut, so you know. Context isn't really required.

Please tell me if it's terrible. My anxiety is high so I need to know if it's really bad lol. Also I really tried to keep MC gender neutral so hopefully that turned out okay.

GN!MC x Diavolo - NSFW - MDNI

Warnings: oral sex, penetrative sex (reader receiving in both cases), please let me know if I should add anything here

Any thoughts you'd been having about the repercussions of the kiss you shared with Diavolo on the plaza bench were completely discarded now. You sat on the edge of Diavolo's bed with the demon prince on his knees between your thighs and thinking wasn't something you'd managed to do at all for the past several minutes.

One of your hands was in Diavolo's hair, the other one gripping the sheets beside you as you melted into the feeling of his tongue, his lips, his mouth giving you untold amounts of pleasure. He had placed one of your legs on his shoulder and his hand still rested on it. You could tell from the way his fingers flexed against you that he was trying not to grip you too hard.

You hadn't been sure what spending the night with Diavolo would be like, but so far he seemed to want nothing more than to worship you. He especially seemed to enjoy hearing you moan, deliberately doing things that he thought might draw one out of you.

You were slightly annoyed about the fact that he himself was still fully dressed while your clothes were already in a heap on the floor. However, you couldn't hold onto this thought for long enough to call him out on it. Not when he was using his tongue so expertly, the tension building up in your body as your pleasure intensified with every second.

It was almost teasing, though, never quite enough to bring you over the edge. Your fingers clenched and unclenched in his hair in both frustration and enjoyment.

"D-diavolo," you managed to say. "Please."

That single word apparently had quite the effect because Diavolo responded immediately. Where before he was only using his tongue, now he put his entire mouth on you. There was so much more sensation that you cried out, the hand in his hair becoming a fist. You had a vague thought about how you hoped you weren't hurting him, but it was gone in an instant as Diavolo sucked.

You moaned, unable to keep yourself from doing so, the feeling building and building. Diavolo didn't let up. He could tell you were close and he was determined to make you come. You felt your thighs shivering, squeezing slightly as the intensity increased.

Your body began to tense as you felt yourself nearing your climax until it finally hit you in waves. You couldn't even manage to spare a thought for what might be happening to Diavolo as your thighs clenched, your fingers still holding tightly to his hair.

You took several deep breaths as you let yourself relax. You let go of Diavolo's hair. He looked up at you from between your thighs with a smile so bright you couldn't help but laugh a little.

You cupped his cheek as you caught your breath, bending forward a little to lean your forehead against his. "You have way too much clothing on," you said, pulling at one of the buttons on his shirt with the other hand.

Diavolo chuckled. "I'm sorry, MC," he said. "Won't you help me remedy that?"

He didn't have to ask you twice. You started using both hands to unbutton his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor. You let your hands linger on his bare chest, truly a glorious sight to behold, before reaching down for the pants. But in the position he was in, you couldn't quite reach them.

Diavolo kissed you before standing up to take his pants off himself. You watched as he did, finally freeing his enormous cock. Just looking at it made your skin flush and your body throb as your mind went wild with the possibilities.

It was very tempting to take it into your mouth, since it was right at the same height as your face. But you were more interested in putting it somewhere else.

Despite this, you couldn't resist reaching out and taking it in your hand. Diavolo made a soft humming sound at the contact and you looked up to see him biting his lip.

It was such a cute expression on him that it made your stomach flip. You found yourself suddenly impatient, letting go so you could grab his hands and pull him onto the bed.

Diavolo let you take control, moving easily as you positioned him so he was sitting up against his pillows. Once he was where you wanted him, you straddled his lap, putting your hands on his chest and kissing him deeply.

His mouth opened for you instantly, your tongue sliding in and tasting the salt of your cum on him. You tried not to let this make you rabid. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, your hands running through his hair again, your ass rubbing against the hardness of his cock.

You pulled away and looked at him. He was breathing hard with his pupils fully dilated. He looked like he was dizzy with lust, but there was an edge of concern on his face. He reached over to the bedside table, taking out a bottle of lube.

Certainly Diavolo was quite large, so you thought it best not to skip this step, even though the look on his face sent another stab of heat through your body. He slathered his fingers and you gasped as he put first one and then another inside you, stretching you gently.

Diavolo took his time and you were losing your mind with need by the time he pulled his fingers out of you. You put your hands on his shoulders and rose up, preparing to take him inside.

"MC," he said, voice quiet as he settled his hands on your hips.

You didn't let him finish whatever he was going to say, instead sinking down onto his cock. This elicited a moan that was like sweet music to your ears and he practically whimpered your name.

You decided to go slowly, moving down inch by inch until you had him fully inside you.

The feeling of him was exquisite. Your body flushed with heat as you squeezed yourself around him and he moaned. His hands gripped the soft flesh of your hips tighter.

Diavolo nuzzled into your neck, peppering you with kisses. "Are you all right?" he murmured into your skin.

"Don't worry," you said. "I'm fine." You tangled your fingers in his hair again, holding him to you as you began to move yourself slowly up and down his cock.

Diavolo's head rested on your shoulder and for a moment he seemed too overwhelmed by the sensation to do much of anything. But then his hands began to move you, too, increasing your pace. You matched him easily, speeding things up, but sitting down fully every time, allowing him to hit that spot inside you perfectly over and over.

Diavolo seemed to be unable to stop himself from thrusting up into you, but you didn't mind at all, moaning in response to the feeling of it. Diavolo's hands moved from your waist to your back, his head falling a little to press against your chest. Both of you were moaning now and you could already feel the tension of your second orgasm tightening in your belly.

It felt so good, you were completely lost in him, your hands roaming over his skin, the lingering scent of his cologne mixed with sweat and sex. The feeling of him inside you, thick and powerful, the way his hands moved you so easily, the desperate sounds of him mumbling your name over and over again.

Until at last, you felt yourself tightening, your body responding to the pleasure. You cried out his name as you came, your hands on his shoulders, your nails piercing skin, your head thrown back.

As you were just beginning to come down from this high, you felt him clutch you hard, a soft groan from his throat, and the warmth of his cum spilling inside you.

Exhausted, you collapsed against him. Diavolo's arms wrapped around you, holding you to him as you rested your head on his chest.

This was only the beginning of your infamous night with Lord Diavolo and you would be pleased to discover just how much stamina the prince of the Devildom really had.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

[mrs-monaghan]

there’s so much misinfo going round atm, see lots of people saying that after jk enlists with jm and does the boot camp he can apply for some special ???something and will leave separately where he is stationed or that just because jk / jm are enlisting on same day, they only will do basic training together then go to separate places ? and that they only chose the enlisting together option because it meant they could make sure they were out in time for june ?

ik it’s a bit hard to follow maybe with different sources and not real confirmation but do you know if any of it is true? my understanding was that they did the “enlisting together” scheme thing, (ie. it’s a purposeful application, they knew they were choosing this way) which meant they’ll at least be in same living quarters etc the whole time until they’re out ?

sorry for long Q! it’s ok if you dk it was just confusing D; thank you!

Hi anon. 😳 I am terrible when it comes to the serious stuff and have the attention span of a toddler when such topics arise. My mind registers them as boring and so I don't retain the in4. But my friends delved deep into this so I will gather as much as I can and do my best to explain the sitch

Let me start by correcting the biggest misinformation of them all. Thanks to fucking Mina with her fake subs and reaching conclusions, the vermin are confusing "Special Task Force" with "Special Forces"

JK said he wanted to join special forces. Well and good

But thats not what V is doing. V applied for Special Task Force which, while not easy (he said in the live its why he enlisted there, to challenge himself) its nothing compared to special forces. Special forces is HARD CORE. Its no joke. It's for those who actually want to go to war and proper fight for their country. Not for those fulfilling a mandatory duty... One they wouldn't do if they had the choice. Special forces, those people actually wanna be there. And if u know JK then u shouldn't be surprised that he would say something like this. Of course our dare devil bunny would enjoy joining something as risky as special forces.

But guess what? No one stopped him. He still could have gone there if he really wanted to. Just like in Winter package. No one told him to give up zip lining for beer tasting. He did that off his own volition since Jimin was going beer tasting. JK's happiness is where Jimin is. Period. (Suga's presence played a big part but we don't talk about Yoonmin)

(Edit: the whole thing takes almost 8 years to complete which again, is not something JK would actually do if he wanted to still stay a member of BTS. And of course satellite Jeon would again, never do it)

Jikook wanted to use the buddy system and they applied where Jin is on purpose because since the location is so risky, (front lines) not alot of people apply to serve there. So the chances of them being accepted were pretty high. I already talked a bit about that here.

Coldest and most dangerous. But before we panic, Jikook love snow so... thats good. But also;

2 things to note before we continue; 1) Tattoos are a none factor on why Jikook applied together or why JK couldn't be with V. They had 0 to do with that. And 2) All members and where they ended up it was their decision

So, here is a Korean explaining

They shall not be separated. They will train together and continue to serve together

One body. Shiet.

Nice. Even the breaks they will take together. Basically spend every minute together for those 18 months y'all.

They had to pass 3 rounds. Applying wasn't all. They had rounds to pass before getting accepted. So as we can see this was a whole ass process. They really worked hard on this to make it happen.

Apparently there is a show you can watch that explains the buddy system. Its 8 episodes, its called real man

The holding hands thing is legit 🤣🤣🤣

Jikook shouldn't have an issue then 🤭

Anon, people are in denial and the other half are trying to explain this away. If Jikook only went in together just so they could come out at the same time then they could have done what Vmon did. Apply separately at the same time.

This is one tough pill to swallow for antis. It's like the biggest fuck u Jikook could have ever done but at the same time I really don't think they factored anyone else but themselves when they made this decision.

18 months is no small amount of time so let's call a spade a spade; Jikook couldn't be apart that long. Fax 💯 JK wanted to be there for Jimin, Jimin wanted to be there for JK, of course. Them in the same place looking out for each other is all I as a fan who loves them can ask for. But at the same time, they needed this.

Anon, they will be together 24/7 for the entire duration of their time there.

Yes. Sleeping in the same quarters. It wouldn't make sense for companionship if they were separating the recruits who applied together. To be companions. Of each other.

The buddy system is there to help friends cope with this difficult mandatory thing that the government insists on doing to their young men. It's there to help them cope in any way possible. I imagine mostly mentally. So why would they train them together then separate them? ❓❓❓

It is said that you should make sure the person you apply with, is a person u get along with super well because for the next 18 months you will be together every moment of everyday. It's krazy to imagine that JK wouldn't rather do this with his actual boyfriend V, instead. Krazy. 🤯

Anygays, no need to worry my good people, Jimin and JK have got each other's back. All that's left is to wait for them and pray for them. May they always hold hands 🤭

Tihihihihihihi

[cherrywhite]

TSV Fan Favorite Survey Results

Last week I made a small TSV survey for the heck of it and ended up getting way more results than I originally expected!! Wanted to share the results.

When I'm in a "Who's your favorite TSV main character" competition and my opponent is Carpenter 🤯 (Okay but.. is anyone surprised?)

Fun fact: for a while Hayward had only one or two votes and idk why that surprised me so much. Though I'm shocked he got more than Faulkner overall

Top 5 minor characters, as voted: Val > Shrue > Sibling Rane > Gage > Sid Wright

Also unsurprising! Though I regret that I didn't word the question as "Pick up to 5" instead of top 5. Val almost got 100% of the votes in this category... off by 4.. I respect you but also who are you 4 I just want to know

Top 5 side characters, as voted: Acantha > Nana Glass / Greve > Charity / Elgin > The Homesick Corpse > Chuck Harm (though Cross came very close to tying!!)

Acantha at the top is also unsurprising! Though.. looking at the top one.. looks like we all have a thing for old ladies, huh? Definitely my mistake in that I didn't add Em and Vaughn in there to begin with💦 Shoutout to the one person who voted Helen. Also, we love to see that Daggler got 0 votes.

Favorite God, as voted: Th Cairn Maiden > The Many Below > The Trawlerman > The Watcher in the Wings > The Saint Electric

The Beast that Stalks in the Long Grass and The Last Word each got one vote. Also, The Chitterling got a vote. Henge, the god Hayward mentions in s1, the one that takes things people wish to lose, got two votes! :D Idk why, but it's such an unexpected pull to me, it makes me happy to see it was remembered!

Top 5 s1 episodes, as voted: Chapter 4 > Chapter 7 & Chapter 15 > Chapter 1 > Chapter 13 > Chapter 3, 8, 11, & 12 (tied with 3 votes)

Fun fact: of season 1 episodes, only 4/15 episodes weren't picked as someone's favorite!!

Top 5 s2 episodes, as voted: Chapter 24 > Chapter 29 > Chapter 19 > Chapter 17 > Chapter 23

Also not surprised because chapter 24 is also my favorite (probably my most relistened to episode and it still makes me cry). Though, I will say, I was surprised chapter 20 didn't have more votes since that one also seems to be a favorite writing wise!

Fun fact: of all s2 episodes, only 1 episode wasn't picked as someone's favorite! (okay, idk why it's important to me to point out, I just think it's interesting!! Though I can admit I could probably phrase it better. I think the fave episodes are spread out pretty evenly for each season though, which is really neat in my opinion.)

Top 5 s3 episodes, as voted: Chapter 46 > Chapter 38 > Chapter 37 > Chapter 36 (we are not immune to a good tragic love story, I see) & Chapter 43 > Chapter 44

For a while, Chapter 38 had the most votes which I thought was.. idk how to better phrase it, but.. sweet. Because Carpenter's returning home episode was the fave of s2 and if Faulkner's returning home episode had also been the fave... something something we sure do love these terrible siblings, huh? But! Unsurprisingly the finale is the big fave of the season. How many of us have recovered from it??

Fun fact: Of season 3, only 3 episodes weren't chosen!

Boooo I shouldn't have given y'all the option to abstain from picking!! "Don't make me choose," you cowards!! /lh

mandatory link to this recommendation

Favorite episode title:

Hi. So, um. I'm an idiot. And didn't realize that Google Form automatically turns short answers into a bar graph. So unfortunately, the results for this one is..well

And half of these are the exact same title with slightly different phrasing 🙃

BUT I'm nothing if not determined so I went through and organized everything though I didn't make a pie chart. Needless to say. I think we all know the favorite episode title (care to make a guess?)

Favorite episode title: But We'll Never Be Rid of Each Other (25%)

Its Wrath Shall Scald the Sun came second with only 9% of the vote. We sure do love our doomed siblings, huh?

[juiceinpanties]

A Proper S'more

Pairing: Eddie Munson/afab!reader

Rating(s): E

Words: ~3k

Tags: smut!, humping, nipple play, semi-public sexual activity, drug use (just some pot), flirting through food, friends to lovers, established friendship

Summary: Your best friend Eddie Munson invites you camping, and while you're reluctant at first, you realize this might be just the chance you need to finally show him how you feel.

Notes: I was rage-inspired by the TERRIBLE take on s'mores they recently featured on Great British Bake-Off. Pretty sure this is the first time the British have inspired hot, sexy smut. Thanks as always to @tonybourdain for her invaluable help as beta, idea bouncer-off-ofer, and just all around wonderful and amazing human.

This is meant as a one-shot, but if y'all want I can add more.

Feedback is always welcome and appreciated and PLEASE reblog if you can! It's how posts spread around here; likes are appreciated, but they do nothing to boost interaction. :)

part 1 | part 2

In case you wanna read on Ao3 instead

“Camping?” You blink at him, confused. “Eddie, you hate camping.”

He scowls and kicks at the ground. “Yeah, I do, but Henderson and his friends wanna go, but their parents want some older kids to go to make sure they don’t set the woods on fire or something.”

You lift a brow, struggling not to grin. “And they nominated you?”

He smirks a little. “Dustin’s mom loves me.”

“Uh huh, I bet.” He's weirdly popular with moms, even your own. You'd think the whole metalhead thing would be a turn off, but they seem to like it.

It works for you, so maybe you shouldn't be that surprised.

“Look, Nancy and Steve are going, but I don’t wanna third wheel it. They’ll be makin’ goo goo eyes at each other all night.” He rolls his own eyes, then gives you puppy face. “Pllleaaase? I’ll be your best friend!”

“You’re already my best friend, doofus.” You sigh. “But fine. I’ll go. Anything to get out of a weekend with my parents’ passive-aggressive bullshit.”

“Fuck yeah!” He lifts your hand so he can high five you (you’re known to leave him hanging) and spends a few seconds jumping around before he comes back to you. “Okay, so, Saturday morning we’re meeting at the lake and then hiking to the campsite. It’s not too far, but far enough to feel like the wilderness. Should I pick you up?”

“Sure,” you say, amused by his excitement. “Anything special I should bring? Besides the obvious.”

“Junk food.”

“You don’t have that covered?”

He shrugs. “I’ll bring some stuff, but I like the way your mind works, snack-wise. That snack mix you brought at Christmas? Blew my fucking mind.”

“My aunt makes that, so I won’t be bringing it, but I’ll come with something good. Now we both have class, and you can’t cut again. I’ll see you after for Hellfire.” You say your goodbyes and head to class.

Maybe camping with Eddie Munson and a band of young miscreants isn't a great idea. The kids you're not worried about, but Eddie? Alone in the dark woods with Eddie? Okay, not alone, but...

What if Nancy and Steve decide to share a tent? Will you be sharing with Eddie? Maybe it's a sign: this is the time to finally make your move. You can roll over in your little shared tent and kiss him and slide your hand down his shorts and—okay, whoa, you're at school. Save thoughts like that for tonight, in bed, by yourself.

Today, math class. Saturday, possibly finally making a move on your best friend.

Eddie picks you up bright and early Saturday morning, and he's more or less dressed for hiking: that is, boots instead of his usual Reeboks, and his long hair is pulled back with one of his many bandanas. He also left his bigger rings at home, which makes him look almost naked.

"Hey!" he says. "Lookin' good, Camper Bob!"

You roll your eyes. "Such a dweeb," you say, but with affection. You're wearing a t shirt and jean shorts, plus hiking boots and a jean jacket. It'll be much cooler tonight, but for now it's warm, and hiking in jeans is always a mistake.

He helps you stow your pack in the back, then you hop in and you're off.

Everyone's already at the lake when you get there, and it's chaos. How can so few people make so much noise?! You give Eddie a Look, and he wades in.

"Alright, alright! Pay attention! Boy Scout Steve is leading this dog and pony show, so listen to him and don't be little shits! We're here to enjoy nature, and you can't do that if you can't keep the volume below a dull roar. So shut the fuck up for 5 minutes and look around!"

You muffle a giggle behind your hand and share a grin with Nancy. Steve is rolling his eyes and grimacing, but he loves this shit. He takes his place at the front of the group and gets everyone organized for the hike. Finally, after what feels like forever, you set off into the woods.

You hike until mid-afternoon, and by the time you stop everyone's tired and cranky. Steve gets people setting up tents and digging pits for fires while you, Eddie, and Nancy organize the food. There are enough hot dogs to feed an army, plenty of chips, baked beans (gross), and...

"Fuck yeah, s'mores!" Eddie says.

"Thought you'd like that," you say. You add another bag of marshmallows to the pile and his grin widens.

"You know, that'll go perfectly with this," he says and pulls a baggie from his jacket pocket.

Nancy's eyes widen a little. "We can't give that to the kids!"

Eddie makes a face. "I don't give kids drugs, Nance. It's for us! The more-or-less grownups."

"I'm in," you say with a shrug. "I need it after today."

"Knew I could count on you, pumpkin patch."

The two of you have this old running joke in your friendship: you are firm in your belief that he's actually a human Muppet, and nickname him accordingly. As a sort of payback (he has a rep to maintain, and "human Muppet" is not it) he comes up with the weirdest, most random shit he can think of to call you. This is a new one.

"What does that mean?" you say.

He shrugs and stuffs the bag away. "I dunno. It's fall. Pumpkins. It made sense in my head!"

"Weird things make sense in your head, Grove."

"That's the truth," he says with an unbothered grin. "Lemme go help Steve with the fire."

It's dark. Everyone's fed. The kids are around the fire telling scary stories. Eddie gives you a subtle nod and the four of you wander off to sample his product.

"This is probably a terrible idea," Steve says as he puffs and coughs, then passes the joint to Nancy. "We're responsible for these kids!"

"They're 14, Steve, not 6," Nancy says. She takes a delicate puff before handing it to you.

"They seem pretty good at handling themselves," Eddie says. The night's turned chilly, especially away from the fire, and he has his arm thrown around you in easy camaraderie. He's gained a little weight recently; still skinny, but not a rail; and it looks good on him. Feels good too, you note as you lean into him.

He takes the joint from you and inhales deeply before handing it off to Steve. He nuzzles your hair. It smells like wood smoke and leaves and under that, your usual shampoo. He tries to keep his eyes off your bare legs, but it's a struggle. "Not so bad, huh? Camping?"

You look up at him with a little smile. "I could learn to like it. Maybe."

You continue passing the joint around until it's nearly gone. Eddie carefully puts it out and adds it to the Sucrets tin he carries, then you head back toward the group. He grabs your hand and pulls you close. "C'mon, it's s'mores time," he says.

"Oh god I could murder a s'more!"

"Did someone say s'mores?" Dustin says.

"Grab sticks," Steve tells them. "It's time for marshmallows!"

He tosses the bags to Nancy and they all scatter to find roasting sticks. Soon you're back, stick in hand, eager for a roasted marshmallow-and-chocolate treat.

Nancy hands you a couple of marshmallows and you drop down onto a rock next to Eddie. "Burnt or bust," you tell him, and thrust your marshmallow-laden stick into the fire.

He laughs and does the same. Your marshmallows catch fire at the same time and you quickly pull yours out to blow out the flame. It's black and brown on the outside, oozy on the inside, and when you smash it between the chocolate and graham cracker, it goes everywhere.

"Oop!" You hastily lick trailing bits of marshmallow off your fingers and down your wrist, and when you look up Eddie's eyeing you, his own stick forgotten in his hand. "What?" you say.

"Nothing." He dips his head back to assembling his s'more. "Nope, nothing at all."

You lift a brow. That was...interesting. You aren't blind: you know Eddie checks you out from time to time. Or at least you hope so, but sometimes you think it's just wishful thinking. That clearly wasn't. Apparently sucking sticky sweet mess off your fingers is the way to his heart. Or at least his boner.

You squish your s'more together and take a bite, and of course chocolate smears on your lips and all over your fingers. You make a little noise of protest and start to suck your fingers clean again, and when you look over Eddie once again can't take his eyes off of you.

"Munson," you say with a little grin. "Are you going to stare or help?"

"Help?" he says, his voice breaking a little. "Help with what?"

"The mess I'm making. And look!" You point at his little marshmallow sandwich. Chocolate is dripping onto the back of his hand. "Silly," you say. You lean in and carefully lick the chocolate off his skin.

He freezes. You licked him. With your tongue. Now you're sucking more chocolate and marshmallow of your hands and fingers, all while looking right at him. Marshmallow. Long, melted strings of white that ooze just like—

No! Nope. No. He is NOT going to think of you and come in the same sentence. Your little pink tongue darting out over your full pink lips, licking the white off with a happy noise that he feels right in the cock.

He carefully sets his own uneaten s'more aside and grabs you. "C'mere," he says, voice rough.

"Eddie—!"

He pulls you into the woods, away from the noise of the kids and the heat of the fire, and pushes you against a tree. You stare up at him, wide-eyed, and he looks down with a frown of concentration between his brows.

"You're kinda evil," he says.

"What the hell are you doing?" you breathe. Your heart is pounding, your cheeks flushed, and you still have marshmallow and chocolate on your fingers.

As though reading your mind, he grabs one of your hands and carefully sucks a finger into his mouth. He swirls his tongue around it, licking and sucking every bit of sweet off your skin, and you feel your knees go weak. You let out a soft moan and lean against the tree to support you.

He does the same thing to each finger and even your thumb, and by the time he's through you're panting and squirming. He rubs his thumb across your lower lip, tugging it a bit, and smiles at you. "Maybe I should get you back to camp," he murmurs. "You look a little...out of it."

"Oh shut up," you breathe. You grab his shirt and pull him in for a kiss.

His hand slips around to the small of your back while the other grips your bare thigh below your shorts. Your arms go around his neck and you're biting and sucking his full, gorgeous lips. "Eddie," you breathe. "Is this why you brought me camping?"

"What, to make out in the woods?" He shrugs a little. "No, but it's a really nice bonus."

You laugh as he kisses you again, his tongue slipping into your mouth and swirling against yours. He presses his hips into you and you slide your knee up against his thighs.

"Mmmm what's that?" you whisper. "A roasting stick in your pocket?"

"Not exactly," he says. He rocks against you just right, so that the bulge of his erection rubs you through all your layers of clothing. You bite down on your lip to muffle a whimper and he kisses you again, harder. "Goddamn I've wanted you forever, baby. To touch you and taste you and make you moan my name."

He rubs his thumb over your lip again. You're looking up at him with big, dazed eyes, pupils blown and mouth soft and swollen. He slowly reaches down to unzip your shorts. "You can stop me," he says.

You shake your head. "Don't stop, Eddie," you breathe. "I've wanted you too. I never—I was afraid to say anything, but—please?"

He kisses you hard and shoves your shorts down to your ankles. You kick them away as he drops to his knees and kisses your thighs. He bites. Sucks. You bury both hands in his hair and try to keep breathing.

He kisses his way up your body, completely ignoring your panties, and pushes your shirt up. He tugs the cups of your bra down and spends ages licking and sucking your nipples. He switches back and forth between them until they're both swollen and aching and you're wiggling against the tree.

"Eddie, please!"

"Please what, princess?" he murmurs, lashing his tongue back and forth across your nipple while he squeezes your tits with both hands. "Tell me what you want."

"My pussy! Please!" you gasp. "I'm so wet! I need you!"

"Fuck!" he rasps. He kisses your tummy. "Whatever you need, baby." He grips your hips and kisses just above your panties. Your head falls back on a quiet moan, but the tree's closer than you thought.

"Ow!" you say, sharply.

"Babe?" He jumps to his feet, but it's too fast. He reaches out to grab you, but you're a little dizzy from smacking your head, and you both end up tumbling to the forest floor.

You lie there a moment sprawled out on top of him, shorts off, tits out, and then you start to giggle. He barks out a laugh and soon you're both laughing so hard you can barely breathe. You move a little, your legs falling to either side of his hips so that you're straddling him, and you're both still laughing and gasping.

You rock your hips, and the next breath he sucks in is entirely different. "Babe—"

"Shhh. I can feel you, Eddie. Mmmmm you're so hard for me!"

He gets over his surprise quickly and grabs your hips again, this time to guide you as you move. "Yeah, princess. All for you. I swear to god every erection I've had for the last two years has been for you." He laughs. "And there've been a lot of 'em."

"Mmmm bad boy," you breathe. You rest your hands on his chest and grind against his erection. The rough material of his jeans makes your panties slip and slide along your dripping slit just right.

"Fuck, baby, that feels so fucking good! Don't stop!"

You lean down to kiss him, changing the angle just right, and he rubs his hands over your ass. You love the feel of his guitar callouses, how soft his palms are. "Eddie!" you gasp against his mouth. "God, Eddie, I'm so wet!"

He groans. "For me, princess? Is that all for me?"

"Uh huh, every drop! Fuck, I need—!" You rock faster, grind against him harder. You can't believe you're just out in the woods humping Eddie Munson's erection through his jeans. You feel wanton and incredible and you know you're close.

"Take what you need, angel," he breathes. "Anything you need. You gonna come, baby?"

"Uh huh!" you whimper. "Oh god Eddie oh fuck!"

"Good girl, fuck, that's so hot, you're so fuckin' hot! Take it, baby, come for me!" he mumbles in your ear, his breath hot and his words slurred by his own need for you.

"Eddie!!" you cry, a little louder than you intended, and the orgasm takes you. He holds you down against him while he bucks his hips to drive you higher and higher.

"Good girl," he says, almost a moan. "Good girl!"

You finally start to come down from it and fall against his chest. He kisses your temple, runs his hands through your hair. You lift your head to give him a long, easy kiss. "Your turn," you murmur.

"Fuck!" he gasps, and you're just starting to work your way down when you hear a familiar voice echoing through the woods.

Calling your name. Then, "Eddie!"

Your eyes widen. "Oh fuck!" You scramble to your feet and cast around for your shorts. Your panties are soaked and sticking to you, but there's not much you can do about it.

Eddie jumps up as the voice gets closer and helps you fix your bra and top, tug your shorts on and zip them up. You're barely decent when the flashlights bob into view and Steve and Dustin appear in the little clearing.

"Shit, there you are," Steve says. "We thought you got lost."

"Nope!" you say. You run both hands through your mussed hair. "No, just ate a bit too much. Needed some fresh air away from the fire."

"Dude!" Dustin says. He has his light trained on Eddie's crotch. Luckily his erection has gone down, but... "Did you piss yourself?!" he says around barely-contained laughter.

"What?!" He glances down and sees the big wet spot you left on his jeans. You feel your face catch fire.

"You did! You pissed yourself! I gotta tell everybody!"

"I didn't piss myself, Henderson!" Eddie says. "I spilled my flask."

Dustin shines the light in Eddie's face, and he winces away from it. "You brought alcohol and drugs on a camping trip with minors? Edward Munson!"

"How did you know about the drugs?!" Eddie says.

Dustin shrugs. "I've got a nose, dude."

"Okay, okay," Steve says. "Let's get back. You feeling better?" he says to you.

You glance at Eddie. "Much!" you say. "Eddie?"

"Feelin' great," he mumbles. "Hate that I spilled my flask."

Dustin just rolls his eyes and turns back toward camp. You fall in next to him while Steve and Eddie bring up the rear.

Steve nudges him. "You really spill your flask?" he mutters.

"Left my flask at home," Eddie says. "But I had to think of somethin'!"

"Uh huh." Steve's trying not to laugh. "That you or her?"

Eddie doesn't say anything, just looks away with a shrug. "I don't kiss and tell, man. But." He frowns and carefully adjusts himself. "It ain't me."

Steve muffles a bark of laughter in the crook of his elbow. "Okay then. Nancy owes me ten bucks."

"What?!"

"We had a bet that you two would hook up on this trip. I said yeah, she said no. I knew I'd win."

"Jesus," Eddie says, but he's struggling not to grin. He got the girl! For once in his life. You glance back at him with a soft, pretty smile, and his grin breaks through.

Yeah, he thinks he could probably get used to camping too.

[crowfromfoggyforest]

Okay but we need to talk about how easily Charlie was manipulated in this scene.

Of course, it isn't surprising - she wants to see the best in everyone. But y'all don't realize the extent of this. I know, in this scene, it's not even her that Alastor was targeting, but still: If she didn't even find it weird or suspicious that Alastor - who had always acted rather reserved until then - suddenly said she was like a daughter to him... Alastor will be able to manipulate her into doing everything he wants. And he knows it.

Honestly, this is my new theory for a season 2 plotline:

Alastor will get Charlie to do things that benefit him, and she won't realize how objectively bad these things are until it's too late?! because she's blinded by her faith in everyone around her. She really thinks he's part of their found family now, she trusts him - until she finally realizes that he had his own evil plans all along. This will teach her another important lesson, after "you can't fix everyone's problems just by being nice": That she shouldn't trust everyone, that some people can't be redeemed.

Even with Sir Pentious, her naive decision to give him a second chance turned out to be the right one. Imo, in order for her to learn her lesson, she needs to not only be deceived, but her trust and optimism have to be actively used against her. As in, the terrible consequences have to be directly her fault, because her trust lead her to do things that harm others in the end.

I really want to see the show explore this.

[pagodazz]

NO SERIOUSLY HOW THE FUCK DO YOU WATCH EMH AND SKIP STEPH'S BLOG WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT WHAT'S THE POINT. Like I get why someone might skip the tapes even though they're important because they might assume it's less connected or something, BUT HOW THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE SKIPPING CYSTW WTF

you would be SO surprised at the amount of people who have not taken the time to look at ANYTHING. I've literally gotten so many people telling me they never knew Vinnie had been taken advantage of by the priest. like MF. DID YOU READ THE CORENTHAL LETTERS??

I think alot of people in this fandom are actually very sexist (even if they think they aren't) because they'll ignore all the women who even DARE to interact w the emh guys which is so unbelievably frustrating. They have to be purposely ignoring that stuff bc so many people are unaware of the terrible things HABIT has done. And yk from one look at my acc I obviously enjoy his character, but I'm definitely not gonna DEFEND this mf shouldn't be DEFENDED. cuz he's AWFUL.

They'll see Steph as an obstacle in their way to Evan even though she's literally JUST as important as the rest of the guys. LIKE Y'ALL SHE WAS WITH THEM IN FAIRMOUNT... SHE WAS THERE!!!!! they're so unaware of emh's connection with Bible verses thanks to Steph's posts with the floods.

Steph's story is something that is majorly needed for the plot AND to advance forward, if we didn't have Steph we WOULD NOT have an answer for Jessa. The dead characters of emh haunt the narrative, even when they're long forgotten, Vinnie still carries around the guilt for it all.

It's honestly SO UNBELIEVABLY UPSETTING HOW PEOPLE TREAT STEPH, I'd say recently maybe it's gotten a little bit better, but PEOPLE STILL ACT AS IF SHES A BAD GUY. like no she didn't bully your favorite emo dude, she was a WOMAN GRIEVING THE LOSS OF HER ONLY FRIEND, HER ONLY FAMILY and they could not HANDLE HER!!!!!!!

[a-forger-and-a-point-man]

Oppenheimer / immediate thoughts

ok nolan fans let's talk, i just got back.

i am very well acquainted with 20th century american history but i did not do any additional research on oppenheimer the man or the trinity test because i wanted to be surprised by the movie's narrative and imagery, so keep that in mind as you read. i'm not fact-checking for the time being... i want to go do my own reading at my leisure when it's not past midnight.

DON'T GO SEE IT IN IMAX. SAVE YOUR MONEY AND A HEADACHE. it's not inception or dunkirk or the batman films or interstellar. just go to your local theater or wait until it's available to stream. trust me on this. i'll explain why in the spoilers section below.

YOU'RE BEING WARNED. SPOILERS AHEAD.

-this was the least nolan-y film that nolan has ever made. i see more of following in it (his very first film) than i do any other project. it was definitely a bit of a different direction for him.

-this is basically a biopic of sorts about oppenheimer. it's not about the war nor is it really about the bomb. it's about an awkward, conflicted, and possibly mentally ill physics genius who seems to not know how to do much in life beyond quantum physics theory. like yes, he's got a brilliant mind, but he's far from a well-rounded, impressive human being. the guy was a hot mess long before anyone mentioned the word bomb.

-taking that into consideration, i can see how the suffering of humans (whether the navajo nation in new mexico, or the japanese people) doesn't play a role in the film. japanese victims are mentioned, but briefly in one scene. that doesn't make any of this right. in fact a more entertaining, eye-opening, and timely film should have included more of both - but i see now that nolan wanted to focus on ONE man and cillian is indeed in practically every. single. scene.

-cillian should be nominated for an oscar and win it.

-humans are very complex and you CAN both build the bomb AND feel bad about it, yes it's entirely possible and normal, but the film is still 3 hours of white guilt. i'm openly saying it. the reason you shouldn't see it in imax is because it's 3 hours of middle aged white men sitting around making terrible decisions. it's SO MUCH TALKING, jesus.

-IMAX cameras are stupidly loud, which is why most filmmakers don't use them. you can't hear dialogue. they're for action scenes. so that very much explains why i was just ITCHING for subtitles on this. so many different accents and everyone mumbling and the score was louder than their voices and ARGHHH nolan why.

-female characters are unremarkable and underused. i know nolan and i know how he uses female characters. at this point i'm convinced he just doesn't know how to write them, and he can only work with male-driven stories and you know what... fine. it is what it is. unless he brings female writers on board, nothing will change, because he can't do it himself.

-why are there sudden bare tiddies in a nolan film. fanboys, did u love it? did u get what u wanted? was that it? finally, a sex scene in a nolan film? it added nothing and i could argue it took some things away. sorry folks. entirely unnecessary.

-ok THE BEST PART was the surprise cameos. cillian was in every scene and yet he was the least famous person among big oscar winners sometimes! it was wild! i was internally screaming at gary oldman as harry truman. excellent choice to play him like the clown he was. AND EINSTEIN??? did y'all catch that or no??? i knew it right away from the voice and the kind eyes. it's the GUY FROM THE PIT IN THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. he helps bruce recover, and narrates the ascent of "the child". terrific casting! and i haven't checked IMDB yet, but is borden (not named after the character from the prestige!) played by the arkham patient from the dark knight? the one who gets shot in the leg and interrogated by harvey dent?? tell me i am recognizing the right guy! and then we had matthew modine... casey affleck... rami malek who appeared for like 3 mins maybe?! AND Y'ALL, JOSH HARTNETT????????????????? OMG my biggest crush when i was 15. that was craaaazy. but i do like seeing nolan bring back his friends... it's very much a nolan circle as we all know. and once you're in it, you're in it!

-the use of sound was VERY GOOD. the explosion actually being silent, because light reaches us before sound? but also the way the buildup was so intense and so hyped up and then just.... complete silence to reflect on the monstrosity being produced, and how nothing will be the same.

-there was a lot of train sounds to emphasize the railroad, but also... anyone notice that the stomping noise in oppenheimer's head almost felt like a train was coming through? TELL ME YOU DIDN'T THINK ABOUT COBB'S GUILTY CONSCIENCE IN INCEPTION, and how a train would ram through the dream. nolan doing an homage to himself is absolutely hysterical and i am here for it i guess.

-i'm not sure how audiences abroad will feel about all the scenes in washington with congressional testimony. does that stuff carry over well? do you get the references? it's such inside baseball, i know, and it adds so much time to the film, and yet MORE scenes with middle aged white men talking. i could have done with less of the black and white "present day" scenes and more about the impact of the bomb, or maybe more about kitty's life and how she overcame her (presumed?) alcoholism and depression.

-the casual discussion about the 11 cities shortlisted to drop the atomic bomb "but not kyoto because of its cultural importance" made people laugh in the theater as intended, but honestly like... nothing in the movie is funny. it's really heavy stuff and i still stand by the fact that the bomb should never have been produced, despite what oppenheimer and others tried to say. because even its production is incredibly dangerous. it's not just about where you fucking drop it.

-did i mention there is too much matt damon. like, too much.

-rami malek is the only person of color with a speaking role in this film. that's right.

-ok what else guys??? i wanna hear thoughts. there's a lot more but i'm so tired at this hour

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 1 thoughts

here we goooooo!

(i started to imagine the sound of a really long and celebratory air horn to commemorate starting s2... but then that mental sound was awful so we ended that pretty quick)

it opens with mulder providing some gentle asmr about aliens and space with a thinly disguised undercurrent of rage in his voice, nice...

he starts talking about a guy named "richard bryan" cutting an alien survey program and that is such a generic name i figured they made it up for the show. and wrote "haha wouldn't it be funny if that was a real guy. and they made this whole episode just to mess with him."

chat. you're never gonna believe this. richard bryan was real and he did in fact cut the alien program. how do you think he felt being name dropped here? neeeeed to get his side of the story

(they also talk about the voyager a bit here which is really cool i won't lie)

now, what has our duo been up to in the time away from the x files? mulder is listening to men talk about lap dances and spitting sunflower seeds... i am not surprised here... all in the name of Research...

but scully is teaching at the academy!!! oh this delighted me to no end!

she starts getting emotional over the concept of a life being contained within tissue and her student is like "you sound spooky" ha. ha. i see what they did there. mulder you're a terrible influence.

they run into each other and she is so happy to see him but he totally blows her off! i was so sad!!!!

AUGH HE HAS HIS SISTER'S PHOTO ON HIS NEW DESK. aughhh man hold on. hold on.

scully is waiting outside watergate (wild they hadn't rebranded at that point tbh) for a shadowy figure and it is mulder! a very cranky and tired looking mulder! he's like we shouldn't be meeting, what do you need me for.... omg rude??

"so what did you want?" "to see if you're alright" (sound of me being sucked into emotional quicksand rapidly)

to answer her question of "are you okay" he begins to ramble about telescopes which is very in character

he says he saw deep throat's funeral but i remain suspicious....

the x files project being shut down has destroyed the man we used to know as mulder! he says that he isn't even sure if what happened to his sister is real anymore! they killed his spirit! "seeing isn't enough... i need solid evidence. i learned that from you" HEY OUCH?????

he's on the ground filled with a deep sadness and she runs her fingers through his hair, at which point i made this note: "y'all i'm only on season 2 i can't do this. i'm gasping so aggressively my mouth is hurting" so safe to say that i will be in for a hell of a ride moving forward... keep me in ur thoughts

baby fox flashback! we see his sister's abduction, which is obviously supposed to be very heavy and traumatic but i was laughing at the skinny little alien throwing her through the window lmaooo i love you 90's cgi <3

PAUSE. we see mulder waking up in a cold sweat from reliving his worst memory. but i see something new in the background: a fish tank in his room. this is a striking development that shall not slip by unnoticed.

and then some guy bursts into his room? and takes him to "the hill" to meet with a politician, who keeps calling him fox? who says they're being listened to? and tells him he needs to go to puerto rico where they're hiding evidence?

(tbh that sequence raised a lot more questions than it answered but i did love that mulder can name the bach piece that is being played because of his college music class lol)

SKINNER MENTIONED!!!! okay i figured out who he is: he's the one with the glasses and the fancy desk and the sidekick who is ALWAYS smoking. glad to have a name to the face. like yeah he was there last season but i had other things to focus on i guess.

cutscene to mulder lounging in a truck bed in puerto rico. niiiice. climbing compilation- niiiiiiice. and busting things open? hell yeah niiiiice

gasp... scully broke into his place (which i think is an entirely new set? or at least from a different angle. but um. okay i'll try and ignore that. but can anyone confirm or deny...?)

anyway she puts her glasses on and slips into password guessing mode and succeeds... i would have thought the FBI would keep tighter passwords on their personal devices than "trustno1" but hey maybe he did that so she could strategically break in!

and some dudes bust in and ask why she's here so she's like ummm i feed the fish lol.....

(and then she refuses to endanger the fish by overfeeding them because that's the type of person she is... and if it provides cover for sneaking out something printed from his computer well that's just a bonus!)

back to puerto rico!! guy in the bathroom reveal!!! mulder cannot speak spanish (smh mulder you were supposed to be the humanities one) but the dude draws a picture of an alien so i guess that proves that art is a universal language <3

scully is taking his paper she printed to some guy to analyze idk her freckles were distracting me again. sorry. NOT! i refuse to apologize. not during june.

(but she goes through some flight records and sees his alias and realizes where he's going and follows)

again, back to puerto rico! our new friend jorge is running for his life into a storm so our patient pal mulder naturally runs after him. into the jungle. and ohhhh jorge is dead now? that was quick.

he does a DIY autopsy on jorge while speaking into the voice recorder- which he addresses as "scully", while sounding like he is going to get sick, kicking things, sweating profusely, and doubting himself. hell yeah baby this is tv! i wanna see that man in situations!

"before i could only trust myself, now i can only trust you, and they've taken you away from me... my life up until this point has been about seeing her again, but what would i do if they really came?"

(now the first part of that is WILD. they've taken you away from me. that phrasing... also, they have successfully gotten the man to doubt his entire existence. sneaky little fbi trick there, making "trust no one" include himself)

BUT the skinny legend aliens return and he is brought back to his sense quickly. he gave it a good go (shot at it a bunch of times) but weirdly the gun didn't fire... probably a good thing. imagine the complications to alien diplomacy that would create!

he wakes up on the floor to scully explaining who she is and asking if he remembers her. he bolts awake, grabs her shoulders, and says that it was the same alien that took his sister. she is already deeply concerned when he then kicks aside a dead body and says we have to analyze it and her face in this moment was delightful. it was very much giving "mulder you're scaring me" just with the eyes

she has to make him realize they can't smuggle a body back to the states OR any of the paperwork really so he just grabs an audio thing that was clearly a better choice. but i want to know how he thought they were gonna get jorge out of there. because the alien hunters were coming to kill him and speed is hard enough for alive people.

"evidence doesn't matter if you're dead!" -dr. dana scully

they crash their way through the jungle, getting shot at and generally destroying what i'm sure is a very important ecosystem but still. they made it out! sorry to the environment </3

mulder gets called into skinner's office (i know that guy's name now!!! i'm so proud) and yelled at for blowing off his case work... and cigarette sidekick is also yelling at him but skinner kicks ciggy man out... is he... an ally? he tells him to go back to work on the job mulder finished like 2 weeks ago...... okay so what i'm seeing here is a boss who is willing to let a man pursue his passions

at the very end we see our duo reunited and it appears the audio he smuggled out of puerto rico had nothing recorded on it!

she tries to encourage him and he seems to be doing better: "i may not have the x files, scully, but i still have my work... (looong pause) and i still have you... (looong pause) and i still have myself" <- okay so looks like we're getting our boy back!!! who cheered?! meee!

he returns to the recording of men discussing strippers and she grasps his hand and then leaves him to his task...

BUT! the minute she leaves, he puts the first audio file back on and it seems to be working now... so why didn't he want her to know???

what is going on!!! i thought "trust no one" would logically mean mulder not trusting himself, but to not trust scully? well, this is madness! what have they done to the man?!

i suppose i will have no choice but to stay tuned and see if his mental state improves a bit with the return of the aliens...

i was really excited to start s2 and i took a lot of notes even for me LMAO some of which i cut out because it would take me forevvvver to capture all of my thoughts in even more detail than i have here but-

as the kids say: we are sooooooo back baby!!!!

[hopefulromances]

not necessarily from the prompt list but would u do a drabble based on a SNTV song???

Okay I had a few different ideas for this one. But I think that "Innocent" is so Jamie Tartt season 2 coded.

Also y'all are always free to send any idea you have to my inbox. Or just like... rants and ramblings. I'm always here for a vent sesh!

Jamie sat alone in the boot room, kicking his feet as he stabbed at a protein bowl. His first day back had not gone well. He spent most of the day being beaten down by his teammates. And why shouldn't they? He was a terrible person, who did terrible things. He'd ruined any chance of ever getting back with this team. Ted was right he'd burned too many bridges.

He missed being a teenager. Back when things were so easy. He'd mess up, fall over or get picked on and he'd run home to his mom. She'd scoop him up into her arms and tell him that he's still got a lot of learning to do and the had was going to be okay.

Now his mum called but he didn't answer. Couldn't get himself to. His dad called and he'd feel angry. Angry that he'd let his spite for his father ruin his life. But now he couldn't run home to mum cause somehow he'd managed to burn that bridge too.

Jamie was so in his own head he hardly noticed when you walked up to him.

"Jamie?" You prodded, gently. He looked up at you, not really seeing you. "Sorry I just... need to grab some towels."

He looked behind him and saw a stack of towel sitting on the counter behind him. He shifted over so you could grab them. You got the towels you needed and could go. But something held you back. You, like many others, had qualms with the return of Jamie Tartt. But you, unlike many others, had a soft spot for him.

You'd seen the way his father treated him. Being the one to come into the room to ask them to leave at the end of last season. Mr. Tartt was cruel to his son. Shouting at him, throwing things at him, hitting him. It made a lot of things make sense. Since he'd been back, he was different, you could tell. He was really anxious. It was iminating from every pour in his body. Even if he tried to act enthusastic.

"Jamie... you know..." You struggled to figure out exactly what you were trying to say to him. "I think... I think you're okay. I think that you just need to give them time, yeah?"

He scoffed. Not in any rude way, just unbelieveing. "Yeah... well... they've got no reason to trust me now. Why should they?"

Seeing Jamie sit there, wallowing in his own sadness, made your heart ache in a way you didn't like. It was like he was just a kid who got kicked on the playground.

"Well, I think your future is still bright," you told him, sitting next to him. "I know things are weird right now. With everyone being against you and all, but just wait and see, yeah?"

"How do you know that?'

"I don't," you admitted, shrugging. "But I get it. You were on top of the world. And you made a lot of mistakes. But who you are is not where you've been. And I think you're not that person that you were pretending to be." Jamie looked down at you, surprised at your comment. "There's more game to play, just remember that."

You gave him a smile. Despite himself, Jamie felt himself smiling, too.

"Thanks."

You're cheeks started to burn as he stared at you, a genuine smile on his face. You cleared your throat.

"Yeah, of course. Just uh," you stood, grabbing your towels and backing up towards the door. "Just know I believe in you."

You ran into the door, hitting your head. You cursed, rubbing your head, embarassment flooding your stomach. Then you gave Jamie a nod and left. Jamie couldn't believe that you were supporting him. After everything he did, he had you on his side. And with you on his side, maybe he was still an innocent.

[roonotrue]

Cult of the Lamb: Redemption: Chapter #4 Preview

(Thoughts & opinions are welcome as always! Be nice, and enjoy.)

Realizations - Narinder

Narinder is not a poet. Not a writer, or a master of words.

So it is no surprise that Lamb's confession stunned him into silence.

"And I wanted you to care so much, but you didn't."

How is he supposed to care if he didn't fucking know? That's not fair of them to hold that against him. It's not fair for them to act like some heartbroken beau that he led on, and then tossed aside.

And then they had the audacity to leave before he could even find a way to respond.

He supposes a part of him is relieved they're not kneeling in front of him anymore while he's trying to sort through his thoughts.

They cared about him. What does that even mean? In the context of a god and a follower?

He thinks he knows exactly what Lamb means, but he'll be damned if he just assumes...

He tries to look back and pinpoint the moments that could give him some kind of hint, or insight into what they mean. Moments that he somehow missed the first time around.

But looking back, all of his memories feel hazy.

Like a terrible, violent fever dream of being so angry, in pain, waiting... Then the betrayal. Every time they try and think back on moments with the Lamb they are greeted by that moment.

When they refused to give the Red Crown back, and instead chose to raise their blade to him.

And every time he is reminded of that moment, he is filled with this cold, dead weight in his chest that he wants to call rage but he knows it's something different.

Hurt.

And hurt made him angry.

Why did it hurt so much? Because he let himself become fond of the wretched beast, he tells himself. He grew attached, even though he knew exactly how things were meant to end.

But they didn't end that way, did they? And now here he is. Alone.

Looking down at his bandages, he can still feel the cooling, refreshing sensation of the medical salve, easing the soreness of his wounds. It didn't help at all with the cramping in his muscles, or aching in his bones, causing the horrible shaking throughout his limbs.

But a feeling that trumps the cramping, or the cooling of the medicine are the traces... The traces of Lamb's touch linger all over his body. His arms, around his ankles, his back and torso. Everywhere he tries to focus his attention he feels them.

Such light, careful care, embedded all over him deeper than the injuries left by his chains.

It had made him forget how angry he was, and say things he shouldn't have... Feel things he shouldn't have.

~~~

Well, guys, this chapter is going to be a doozy. I've decided to attempt to speed things up a slight bit, so there are some cute moments that I hope y'all will enjoy.

The full chapter will be posted tomorrow at 4:00 pm on Ao3 and at 8:30 pm to 9:00 pm, here on Tumblr.

[justiceforfelicityfeatherington]

I recently binge watched (in the course of one night) season one and half of season two of Blood Of Zeus. As an avid lover of mythology, particularly that of the Greeks, since the moment I was able to read the words on the pages, I have both been excited and hesitant to at some point dig my teeth into this show. And after watching the chunk that I have i definitely have some thoughts.

So I'm going to start with the negative first.

I was told before watching this that it was a very good take on the myths and that there was more nuanced than most adaptations. And while that was true in many parts which I will discuss at the end of this post, I feel that two characters in particular were done very dirty, and I shouldn't have been surprised as most media does portray them in this manner.

Hera & Ares.

It is 2024 y'all. I feel like it is a disservice that we are still painting them as power hungry villains and that we are handling them with very little nuance (in Hera's case) or none at all (in Ares case, at least so far as I've seen in the episodes I have watched).

Yes, they showed us Hera's softer side to an extent, but they worked very hard to make watchers see her mainly as a tyrant.

And I do not even have words for how disappointed I am in Ares portrayal. This is the man who ANNIHILATED the person who sexually assaulted his daughter. And they have him trying to FORCE himself on Persephone.

These are two gods who are known specifically for being protectors of women and they were reduced to caricatures. It was badly done, and nothing anyone says will make me feel differently.

And then there's Zeus. Yet again we're treated to the story of how Zeus was unfaithful and cruel to his wife over and over again. But also force fed the idea that he is the great hero and king in the same breath.

But now that we've got the negative out of the way, I will say that the positive far outweighed the negative.

The artwork and voice cast were phenomenal. As were most of the storytelling and character arcs.

I particularly adored especially the way that Hades was portrayed in this show so far. Because instead of the evil villain we usually get, we got the wronged brother and star crossed lover, we got the kind father, we got a man who is making choices because of things that were done to him but still managing to not be the most terrible person on the screen.

I could say so much good about just about every other character. Alexia. Heron. Even Seraphim. But if you make it to season two Hades truly does steal the show.

I'm going to reserve final judgment till after I finish season two. But overall, your girl is glad she finally watched. And this might need to be added to the list of things I need to write fics for.

[ms-cartoon]

Alright... I'm seeing more gifs and news of HB than I'm seeing Hazbin Hotel. Wasn't it confirmed it was gonna come out this summer? Shouldn't we be seeing more posts of Hazbin Hotel, Viv?? I can hardly give a sh*t about Helluva Boss anymore, especially when the writing has gone to sh*t. The start of June had already gone and all we got was ONE GIF, which I could hardly call a teaser!! There was no trailer, no release date, no nothin' like that!!

Just, "What do you think Alastor is smiling about? We'll see?"

Well, when are we going to see??? In August? When school will start back up again??? I'm sorry to sound impatient here, but I just feel like we should be getting feedback for something that is supposed to be released THIS SUMMER!!

Anyway, this mostly gonna be the episode where Blitzo's sister, Barbie makes her debut. And since this is about Barbie, how much y'all wanna bet this is gonna be another "Poor Blitzy" episode where it's revealed that Blitzo had a history with someone that went from fun times to sh*t times because of some stupid misunderstanding, and we're supposed to feel bad for him??? How much you wanna bet that this gonna be just like Verosika and Fizz where they treat Blitzo terribly and we're supposed to see them as antagonistic because of Blitzo's unwarranted behavior???

I just KNOW Viv is gonna make Barbie another Verosika character where she's b*tchy and petty toward Blitzo for no reason, even though she probably DOES have a valid reason, but the show is gonna make it to where Blitzo is the victim here because he's just misunderstood, he didn't mean any harm, he means well, yada yada yada, that nonsense.....

I feel like Moxxie and Millie are only there as an excuse to put Moxxie in drag ONCE AGAIN for fanservice! Also, not surprised in the slightest that by them dressing like that, they show Moxxie is the woman of the relationship while Millie is the man who protects her lady friend. I honestly don't what else I can say about these two since they're just THERE. They're supposed to be the main characters and yet so far, they have served no purpose in this season.

[starseneyes]

Chenford REWIND- Lucy Chen / Tim Bradford - The Rookie - Season 4 Ep 12

The Knock AKA "Who's Dating Who, Again?"

This one's been requested a few times, and it seemed like the PERFECT one to help me come down from the labor that was S2E10/11/12. Plus, it has one of the first scenes of Chenford I ever encountered on Twitter that left me thinking, "Okay, they're right. I need to know about this 'Chenford' thing."

SPOILER ALERT: Standard operating procedure for these Metas (if you're new) is to warn you that there will be spoilers. I try to write these as though I'm watching for the first time without forethought (so that newbies can read through without fear), but I'm gonna spoil ALLLL of this delicious episode.

All that out of the way? Everyone clear on the rules? Awesome, because I'm ready to dive in.

"I hate beach calls. Getting this close to the water without being able to dive in is torture."

Hey! I "dive in" to each Meta. So that kinda made me warm and fuzzy inside.

"Not for me." "There's no surprise, there. Hating one of nature's greatest gifts is totally on-brand for you." "I don't hate the beach. I'm just not a fan of the ocean."

I. Am. Horrified! All this time I've been mis-remembering that Tim hated sand, but it's the ocean he hates. I feel like a terrible fan! Tim, can you ever forgive me for getting it wrong?

Oh, wait, he's fictional. I'm good. But I hope y'all can forgive me. Gee wiz, Rachel, get it together!

"You know, psychologically speaking, fear of the water equates to a fear of not being in complete control of your environment. Again, on-brand. Uh, you know, also, good luck dating a lifeguard."

Lucy is teasing him, and I love it. Look, we are in an era where Tim and Lucy have some feelings stirring that they are not ready to deal with. So, throwing jabs and jokes at one another feels safe, but outsiders are looking at this thinking, "Geez, these two need to stop talking and start kissing."

"Did you hear her say the hottest?"

Tim, dear, you don't need your wife to validate your hotness when your placeholder girlfriend calls it out. Like, I know you care about Lucy and what she thinks of you, but you shouldn't care if she notices you're hot when you're dating another chick who is literally five feet away from you.

Just sayin'. If you're looking for Lucy to call you "hot" maybe you should, y'know, be dating Lucy. Just sayin'.

*giggle* "What's that look?" "Nothing. What?" "You wanted to strangle that guy last week. Now you're all sweet on him?" "'Sweet on him'? What, did, did we suddenly just get dropped in the 1950's? What?"

It should be said that all it took was a look. Tim knew from one look that Lucy had an attraction to this guy. It took one look. And Tim's none-too-happy about it. But he can't say that and he wouldn't acknowledge it.

Especially with the biggest mistake of his life hovering behind him. Tim turns to face her, but as he does, he steps over alongside Lucy. Because, at the end of the day, Lucy is who he wants by his side.

Is he fully aware of it, yet? No. Tim's a champion at repressing thoughts and emotions. But, subconsciously, he shifts closer to Lucy, even as he turns to face Ashley.

"Hey, do you have plans tonight?"

Watch how Lucy presses her lips together and turns away, finding some way to occupy herself so she doesn't have to listen to this.

"I'll have to think about it." "What's there to think about?"

She can't understand why Tim isn't jumping at the chance to spend the night in the sand eating experimental food, and that just goes to show that she doesn't know the man at all.

His wife has to step in to help.

"Uh, the control freak in him doesn't like to try new things. So..."

Tim is so annoyed, he turns to face his wife. Like, he turns away from his girlfriend to face Lucy.

"I'm not a control freak."

Tim, have you forgotten who you are? You orchestrate Tim Tests that kept Lucy under your thumb as a Rookie. You like to do the same thing every weekend, if you can help it. Maintaining control of your environment is completely your brand (or "on-brand" as Lucy would say).

Lucy cocks her head to the side in a silent, "Really?"

"I would be happy to go to your dinner thing."

Wrong move, Bradford. Spiting your wife by going to something supremely uncomfortable with the Baywatch Bitch is not going to go well for you.

"It's Ash."

Yeah, that relationship's gonna be "ash" soon enough. Trust me, this isn't sustainable. You can't spend every day with the girl of your dreams and every night with a person who doesn't even know you and pressures you into doing what she wants.

"I was thinking of asking Byron and his girlfriend-"

Tim isn't into that. He doesn't like Byron. We can see in one glance that he doesn't want to be even more uncomfortable at this thing.

His eyes turn to the woman right beside him—Lucy. Because, let's be real, we're at a point where Tim would love to share a dinner outside of work with Lucy.

Watch the wheels turn as he realizes he could have a buffer against this horrible night.

"You know what, Lucy's been pining after that place all day. Maybe we ask her."

Ashley doesn't know that Lucy's right in front of him. But Lucy's thrilled. And this is the epitome of their "Grumpy/Sunshine" relationship because while Lucy's beaming in front of him and holding her hands in prayer position, Tim's glaring at her and trying to get her to calm down with a wave of his hand.

"Cool. Does she have a date to bring?" "Hey Sanford. You got plans tonight?" "What are you doing?"

Picking an awful boyfriend for you because he's too afraid to pick himself. Look, Chris and Lucy started out butting heads, and we can argue that so did Tim and Lucy. Starting points for relationships can happen in any combination of scenarios. But the trajectory is what matters.

Baywatch Bimbo doesn't know Tim at all, and I don't have high hopes for this dude.

Also, can I just say that whenever Tim and Lucy say, "What are you doing" to one another, the other is usually up to no good or trying to do the best thing. Trust me. You'll see.

"Lucy needs a date to a fancy dinner." "It'll be fun."

With Chris gone, Lucy gives him a look. Reminds me a little of the first time Tim met Caleb and how embarrassed she was by him. Like, "what the hell, man?!"

"What? Don't be such a control freak."

Look. At. Tim's. SMILE. Because he's purposefully needling at her. It's part of their rhythm and language. And at this point in the show, it's safe. He's not ready to acknowledge that there might be something else there besides friendship.

And Lucy glares (as she should) at her husband.

"I told a food friend I was coming here and they flipped."

I once made the mistake of bringing food to the beach on a windy day. My twin sons' first birthday weekend we went to Cape Charles armed with two smash cakes and good attitudes. It ended with sandy buttercream and a stranger helping bathe our kids in the ocean water.

Some people may love eating at the beach, but I'm not a fan.

"I'm sorry, but who puts a restaurant on the beach? I mean, you're just asking for sand in your food. I don't get it."

Tim! Mi amigo!! But this is a case where Lucy is "used to you" and the others aren't, necessarily. Tim's going to call it like he sees it, sometimes, and he doesn't care what people think of him.

But, he needs to care a little because his girlfriend is right there and she is super excited about... sandy food.

"Was any of that English?" "Let me translate. All you need to know is that pancake is made of mushroom, which I know is not your favorite, so I'll just-" "Oh, no, yeah, take it."

Did you two, just, like, totally forget who your dates are here? Tim. Lucy. That is married behavior. Forget dating. Y'all've skipped it and gone straight to marriage.

Lucy scooped the pancake off his plate.

Ashley's eyes follow the fucking pancake because she's never seen Lucy and Tim in the wild, before, and holy shit she just took the food off his plate, and he didn't care. In fact, he invited her to do it.

Ashley has never been so mad at a pancake in her life. Be mad, Budget Barbie. You're the one who made him come here.

"... once on vacation I did have curry goat." "Was his name Gerald?" "God, shut up! *laughing* Don't." "It's a great story." "It's nothing." "No, it's something."

You know that couple that tells tag-team stories at the table? That's Tim and Lucy right now. My husband and I do it, and when we had my cousin and his wife over for dinner a few months back, we learned they do it, too.

And Tim's "It's a great story" isn't subtitled (probably because of how quickly it's said), but I love that detail. He wants to tell the story with Lucy. It's their story that they're sharing together.

And the clueless idiots still don't realize they're already married.

"Okay, we had a 2-11 at a petting zoo." "All the animals got lose."

Tim's the rambling husband who is so excited to share, he's forgotten everyone at the table doesn't speak the same language. And Lucy's the one translating. Because Lucy speaks Tim. It's not just the cop-code, but just the Tim-code.

She knows the meaning behind the words, and like a good and patient wife, she's not making him feel bad for speaking in a manner that's clear for him. She's simply providing context to the others on the outside.

Because, no matter how physically close Chris and Ashley get to Tim and Lucy, there is only one Tim for Lucy and one Lucy for Tim.

"So, we nab our suspect. We get him back to the Shop and that's where we find-" "Gerald the Goat. He is so cute." "And he's sitting in Lucy's seat." "Because I forgot that I had rolled down the-the window. You know, who knew goats could jump?"

I love her looking back to him on this. Like, "right, honey?" And have we ever heard them speak like this? No, no we haven't. Because in this moment Tim and Lucy have both completely forgotten themselves and are just having fun together.

They don't realize they've stepped outside of the paradigm of the evening—acting the couple instead of dating the people across from them.

Also, mad respect to Melissa O'Neil for actually rolling the window with her hand. Kids today have no clue, but it looks like she remembers! It was a tiny detail that made me smile.

"She tries to talk him out of the Shop, but it's a goat, right? So she spends 5 minutes making goat noises at this thing." "Yes, he called me 'goat whisperer' for all of last February."

Awww. Her first pet name from him. Come on, if Isabel could dub him "Eagle Eye" and it turn into a pet name, I can definitely see this being their first, even if they didn't realize it.

Also, can we please appreciate that some hapless suspect witnessed this whole ordeal?

Like, there was someone in lockup saying, "man, my cops must've been high because one of them was making goat noises the whole time".

And. Look. At. Tim's. Smile. He beaming. All of him is alight, engaged in this conversation with the love of his life. He just doesn't know it, yet.

"It was great." "Darn thing wouldn't move! So, you know, we finally had to call Animal Control." "Right?"

Look. At. Them. The framing of this is so perfect. We're on the inside with Tim and Lucy, who are looking at one another with pure joy. And on the outside, looking in, are Chris and Ashley.

Tim and Lucy are smiling and I bet Ashley's never seen him smile this big with her. That's because it's not for you, Beach Girl. Step off, now, before you break our boy's heart.

And we end on Ashley's face. Because we don't know Chris well enough to hate him (trust me, Rachel from the Future knows we will), but Ashley's realizing there's a kink in her "Enslave Tim Bradford" plan.

She's met a guy with a nice house, a steady job, a strong moral compass, and a heapful of loyalty. It's like a diamond in the rough if you're talking LA dating. And she likes the idea of this life—but not necessarily with Tim.

He's a project for her. She wants to mold him into the right man because the rest of the package is so appealing. But, honey, that'll never work.

Tim is growing and changing, sure, but that's the result of years of learning to bend. And I'm so horrified you think you can break him to get what you want.

"Well, people don't like the idea of experimenting on the dead for emotional reasons, but it's an important tool in the medical field." "Yeah, I'm not arguing that. All I'm saying is turning people into cyborgs is how the world is going to end."

Look. At. Their. BODY LANGUAGE. Tim and Lucy are turned towards one another, their eyes locked on each other. It's as though Chris and Ashley don't even exist.

"So, then I guess you haven't volunteered to be an organ donor when you die."

This is like the child at the table trying to enter the adult conversation. Famously, when I was 4-years-old, I was frustrated to be left out of the adult conversation. I set my elbows on the table very determinedly and said, "So, what do you think about peas?"

Ashley's giving off those same vibes.

"Tim? No."

Because his wife knows him best. Like, Lucy doesn't even give Tim the room to answer. It's not that she's cutting him off, but a husband and wife know one another so well, sometimes, it just flows.

"He wants to be cremated and spread over Dodger Field." "I was joking when I said that. My ashes would screw up the pH level of the grass." "I can't believe you actually called and asked." "I like the Dodgers."

Third wheel energy, my man. Third wheel.

Look, this whole date has been a massive disaster... for Chris and Ashley. For Chenford, it was actually a fun time. And for us viewers, it was kinda validating. We don't get to see every second Tim and Lucy are together, so knowing that they can speak so easily and volley off of one another so naturally in a different setting? Pure magic.

"Anything in these videos that can lead us to where he's hiding?" "Not that I've seen." "Well, let's keep looking."

The staging's been really interesting, because Tim is standing over Lucy, in a position of authority. But here, he chooses to sit alongside her at the table. He's joining her in the effort. Much as Tim protests their partnership, it's there.

And the inclusive language, too. It's beautiful. Tim is acting like they are a unit, here, and I really love it.

When Angela comes into the room, Tim has turned his body to face Lucy and the laptop. And it's eerily reminiscent of the night before over dinner with their separate dates.

In the morgue hallway, Lucy is the first one to spot the blood on the floor, and Tim's gaze follows hers. I love that touch. Yes, Tim is Senior Officer, but Lucy's damn good at what she does. And Tim knows it.

This next sequence is really beautiful to watch, just the way that Tim and Lucy move in sync. They don't need to check in with one another, too much. They don't have to worry if the other is doing the right thing. They're united in this effort. They both know this dance very well, and they're great dance partners.

"It's him. He's got hostages."

Tim gently pushes Lucy where he needs her, and it reminds me of the gentle pressure of a lead when you're dancing ballroom. One of my instructors said I was a great follow, and I swear it's the only time in my life where I excelled as a follower.

He's not shoving her. He's leading her. And she trusts his guide to go where he needs her for their next move.

Also, can we please applaud Tim Bradford for that genius move with the body cam? Way to use what you have to get the job done!

"So, what's our game plan?"

Look, we're far past Tim being her TO and her being his Rookie. But, I don't think we're past these two teaching one another lessons. That's going to be a life-long thing, methinks.

And, look, that plan looks like a "Tim" plan to me (he does like to come at things from a different angle), but I'm cool if it was Lucy, too. They both think creatively, and I think that's part of their appeal to one another.

"Have to be honest, I wasn't really feeling last night... hanging with Ashley and Tim." "I am so sorry. Tim and I spend so much time together on the job, we have a shorthand."

Lucy Chen. He didn't tell you why he wasn't vibing. He just said he wasn't vibing. But you already knew you were having way too much fun with your husband last night.

And now that Tim's conveniently opened the "Chris" door for you, you're going to keep walking through. Because Tim's not an option, right? Might as well have some fun, right?

"... and then you spent the whole night talking to Lucy. It didn't feel good."

Goooooodddd. Let that hate grow inside you so you leave our boy alone. What? I can dream, right? This is only going to end in tears for one of them, and I'd rather it be Asinine Ashley than our boy Tim.

"Life can't just be about watching the Rams game on the couch, or talking about the job with your partner." "She is not my partner, okay? I am her Sergeant. And, that's not the point."

He is so caught up in trying to keep himself separated from Lucy that he's explaining away his feelings and setting up road blocks in front of his girlfriend. Because as long as there are obstacles, Tim can keep himself from thinking of Lucy as... Lucy.

This beautiful, bright ball of sunshine that fell into his world, warming his chilled skin with her radiance, piercing the darkness of his thoughts with her rays of light.

It was a close call at that dinner, and he already knew he needed to apologize when he next saw Ashley.

But the walls that separate Tim and Lucy are thinning—so he has to cling to his mental roadblocks to keep himself from falling through and running to her.

This is the era of Tim and Lucy running from one another. Not directly, of course, but as a way of avoiding their feelings. Because at that dinner they were downright married. And it was fun. And it was nice. But he's dating the Blonde Bimbo and she's going to Pinks with Cockblock Chris.

Someday I have hope these two'll get it together. In the meantime... we enjoy the ride.

As always, thank you so much for reading! This one came together quicker than anticipated.

And thank you to those who have messaged to check on me and my blasted back. I have a long list of things wrong with my body. Whenever I orient a new doctor, I welcome them to the freak show.

I still live a beautiful life. I love my treadmill, my stationary bike, and way too many Jillian Michaels DVDs I've horded over the years. I can bike ride and roller skate and trampoline. But I'm always in pain. I can't remember the last day of my adult life that I wasn't in pain.

This back thing hasn't happened since before my twins were born (they're 8, for reference) and is a result of life circumstances that will pass.

Today was my first day all week of not being on a heating pad half the day, and I only took pain pills once, which is good. Progress. Moving forward. Getting better.

Life isn't simple or easy for any of us. We're all up against something, whether it's physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological. Or some combination of the aforementioned.

The point is, I'm thankful. I can be bitter and angry about the body I've been given, but this body carried three babies. This body has gone amazing places. This body is still moving and shaking and doing.

And maybe my stomach's not as tight as it once was, and I have deep scarring on my tailbone from surgeries, and I have to adapt my exercises constantly... but I'm alive. I'm here. And I'm going to make the most of every moment I'm given.

One breath at a time, loves. That's the only way through.

[jedi-enthusiast]

Me? Making another Hazbin post on my Star Wars blog? It's more likely than you think.

Tbh I'm probably just gonna post all my fandom stuff on this blog instead of limiting myself to having to post on separate blogs, which means I may or may not change my username, but anyways-

Getting back to the point, I can't believe I'm actually going to make a post defending people for liking Valentino, of all people, and also---apparently---Stanakins and anti-Jedi people, but here I am and here I go!

JUST LET PEOPLE LIKE VILLAINS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!

I just got on TikTok- (which, yeah, always hosts the most rancid discourse, so I'm not exactly surprised) -to see that someone made a video basically saying- "if you like Valentino at all and don't just hate him, then you're bad/crazy/a horrible person/etc." -and like...y'all have got to get past this whole- "liking this fictional thing = excusing it irl" -because it's really fucking weird and it can lead to some very bad places.

This actually ties into two of my Star Wars posts, the one where I explain why I call out most anti-Jedi arguments as antisemitic and the one where I explain why you don't have to justify a villains actions to like them- (I can't find that post, it's too far back on my blog 😭).

-----

For the first one, the overall point of it was that I'm not saying that people who hate the Jedi are horrible people, or that liking someone like Anakin or Dooku or Palpatine makes you a terrible person, but that, firstly, yeah I'm gonna defend the Jedi and get passionate about it when someone comes onto my blog to argue with me about how "they were the REAL bad guys" but also---and what actually pertains to this post---that people are allowed to hate the Jedi and love the villains, so long as they're not perpetuating harmful bigoted rhetoric.

People want to hate the Jedi? People think they were arrogant and should've let people get married? People think they were emotionally stunted and "didn't let people love?"

Fine, whatever, if those ideas make you enjoy Star Wars more, then believe whatever you want!

People say that the Jedi- (who again, are based on Jewish and Buddhist culture) -"deserved their genocide?" People say that they "kidnapped kids?" People say that they "needed to be wiped out by Anakin because they had lost their way" and other such things that are literally taken verbatim from antisemitism 101?

That's where I take issue, because then you're just perpetuating bigoted beliefs about a culture based on the culture those beliefs are literally used against, only it's acceptable because it's popular to do so.

In that post I used the example of the difference between shipping a problematic ship, calling a fictional serial killer "babygirl," and writing about dark topics vs. the "angry black man" stereotype and the "cheating bisexual" stereotype. Something that doesn't cause harm vs. something that does cause harm.

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For the second, my point was mainly that people are just allowed to like villains and they shouldn't be judged for that, and the characters shouldn't be changed- (whether in the actual media or in fandom) -to make them "actually a good person" so that fandom purists find it "acceptable" for people to like them.

People don't have to "justify" liking a villain or only like the good palatable characters, and it's ridiculous to expect them to do so.

If someone likes Anakin? Likes Dooku? Maul? Palpatine? Tarkin? Thrawn?

Cool! Great! I'm glad they've found characters that they enjoy and find interesting, that's part of what makes being apart of fandom so fun! And they don't have to justify those characters' actions, just to be "allowed" to like them.

The Jedi don't have to be "the REAL bad guys," the Rebels and Republic don't have to be "just as bad," the Empire doesn't have to be good...people are, in fact, just allowed to like the bad guys and that doesn't make them terrible people.

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So yeah, my point here?

Is Valentino an abuser? A manipulative, toxic, asshole? A literal fucking pimp that treats his contractees like shit and takes advantage of them? Is he a heinous person and nothing short of a villain?

Absolutely!

But people are allowed to like his character design, or find his character interesting, or enjoy how he interacts with the other Vees, or whatever people find enjoyable about his character---because liking a fictional character does not equate to excusing their actions.

By all means, if people start saying that Valentino is "a good person actually" or start victim blaming Angel Dust, tear em apart! Have at it!

But, until then, y'all just have to accept that not everyone is going to have the same opinions as you on characters or have "totally pure fandom beliefs." Because perpetuating that sort of purity culture around fandom is how we get people justify villains and victim blaming, because y'all won't just leave people be about liking the bad guys.

Just get over yourselves and don't make me have to explain this shit again, for fuck's sake.

[luescris]

Listen. Guys. Listen.

As you all may or may not know. I have a massive, huge despise for 2012!Shredder. The rage I feel against him will never die. I am one of his biggest haters.

..... However.

What if I told y'all. That I also have a Oroku Saki redemption au. Not Shredder. But Oroku Saki.

Don't get me wrong. They're both terrible people, one just less so than the other.

But here's the thing. Here's where this all started.

You all remember the episode when Shredder came back again in season 5 right??? How he was not at all himself, very much more of a mellow, depressed "follow instead of lead" kind of person???? And how he quite literally shoved Kavaxas back into hell??????

Hell must have done some real fucking shit to make Shredder rethink his entire life like that. Like no way in hell would he have ever helped the turtles out like that by his own free will before. It's something that I think about daily and I have not been able to get it out of my head because it was SO out of character for him and as much as I hate him and know that I nor the Turtles would never, in a million years, give him a chance of redemption for all the shit he's done...

That part has got me thinking.

Like. Imagine this. Somehow, someway, because of that sudden out of pocket good deed, Oroku Saki is more or less cursed. Cursed to go back to the living, but not as a living, breathing human being. Not exactly a zombie, but not alive either. And he is cursed to watch after the turtles until every single one of his wrongdoings are at least somewhat forgiven and he's able to maybe move on to the next part of life.

So like. One day, the turtles get back from a patrol in a mostly good mood, only to absolutely stop and freeze when seeing they have an unknown visitor sitting on the couch, waiting for them.

Said visitor being Oroku Saki. No burns, no helmets or armor, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, cargo pants, sunglasses and holding a coffee in his hand. And all he does is stare back at the turtles completely and utterly calm.

It takes a minute for something to click, but immediately Leo is on it, moving within the blink of an eye to press his sword against Saki's throat and hissing, "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't chop your head off right here, right now."

And Saki, ever so cooly, takes off his glasses and stares right into hate filled glare and goes, "You can't."

He then explains why they can't kill him, and how every time they try he would only bleed and nothing more, making a complete mess of their lair. April of course reads his mind (A bit too forcefully too because She Mad) but is surprised to learn that he was telling the utmost truth.

Saki then tells them that he's cursed to watch over them, and can't do anything else until his sins are attoned for, and none of the turtles know what to do about this entire thing, utterly stumped.

I'm not sure what happens in between them and the time he attempts to apologize after a few days of the turtles begrudgingly letting him stay but more so as a prisoner (at one point the man attempts to apologize but that only makes Leo snap and he runs a sword through him while saying, "You gave me these scars! Gave me this voice! This knee! You killed are father three times! The time for apologies is over!!! Do you understand?!?'' Will probably break down about it later with his brothers but yeah lmao) .

And of course once Karai finds out, she also immediately tries to attack, only to be completely baffled and betrayed when the turtles stop her, and even after they explain she's not only in denial, but filled with hatred, and vows to find a way to kill Saki before storming off.

I'm not sure what bonds there'd be. If any at all. Because this concept is SO odd to me and I could NEVER see the boys wanting ANYTHING to do with Saki in any form. But if anyone has any ideas they may want to add PLEASE say so I would like to hear them gfhfhdhd

Anyway. There's my super weird "Uncle(?) Saki" au. Do with this what you will fhdghxhddh