#Car Scrap in Harrow

[januaryembrs]

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x Reader [6]

description: Summoning a council with the gods sound easy enough, right? Except the man on trial knows the dark secret she has yet to tell Marc.

word count: 14.5k

trigger warnings: gore/violence (as per) blood, nakedness? Fear of drowning. I have said this before, Dove has a dark past with themes that include abuse in a relationship (torment, manipulation, prostitution etc) drug use, please do not read this if this is not okay with you. Inspired by Last Night in Soho (dir. Edgar Wright) which is rated 18.

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“So? What about the other gods?” Marc asked, witholding a heavy sigh as he looked over at Khonshu, Dove still nestled into his chest. The vibrations of his words rattled against her forehead, and she wished that for just a single second she could get a fucking break from the life she lived, from the virus that seemed to spread to every area of her life, from knowing the only denominator that linked every awful thing brought upon herself was her.

If it wasn’t her every waking moment spent pining after any scrap of kindness Marc could give her, then it was wishing Steven was here to talk to. He always knew how to make it better. How to cheer her up. He was a lot like Grace in that sense, that he knew exactly which part of her brain was troubling her and managed to weasel his way into the darkness, draw out the sickness and replace it with only good. And if it wasn’t wishing Layla would understand she was not a home-wrecking mistress, then it was her dreams being riddled by Grace, the one sore spot in her heart that seemed to never heal.

She was starting to forget what Grace looked like, she’d realised with a numbing pain. Started to forget where her freckles were, the way she smelled, the shades of honeycomb blonde in her soft locks. She was forgetting, an ailment no amount of healing armour could eradicate.

She’d rather be ripped to shreds all over again if she could see her in the flesh just one more time. Even as a ghost, even as a mirage, she’d take it all again.

“Are they just gonna stand by and allow someone to unleash Ammit?” Marc asked his keeper, his large hand still resting on her crown with a warm softness. She sniffed, pulling away from him with a troubled frown.

“To signal for an audience with the gods is to risk their wrath,” Khonshu explained, resting his goliath form in an oddly casual sprawl on an abandoned car.

“What’s the worst they could do?” Dove asked emptily, her tired eyes catching sight of the dead bodies for a split second before she quickly looked away, pretending her stomach didn’t lurch at the puddle of red sap that pooled beneath them.

“Anger them enough and they’ll imprison Seth and I in stone,” That had her head shooting up to the bird-like god, brain whirring at the golden ticket out of this whole mess.

“What?” She asked, stepping towards him, “You mean they can do that? They can relieve us of duty as your avatars?”

“See how you fair against Harrow without the protection of healing armour, little mutt,” Khonshu snapped, and the girl deflated on the spot. That was something she hadn’t thought of. Even if she were no longer Seth’s avatar, Harrow would still be planning on eradicating innocent lives. It was too late for taking back that duty now, she was in far too deep to bury her head in the sand now, no matter how much she’d wanted to.

How many moles had Grace had? Four, in a horizontal line from her ribs to her spine, or was it five? Fuck, what colour were her eyes? Blue, she knew, but what colour exactly, what shade, what hue?

“Alright, so what?” Marc bit back, throwing his hands up in defeat. He, too, had had the fleeting jump in his chest at the idea of being free from his servitude. “You got any good ideas?”

The god thought for a moment, his skeletal chest taking a deep, weighted breath behind its linen robes. A sigh of dismay.

“I have a bad one,” He said, and with a small movement he disappeared into the cool breeze passing over the two of them, as if he were nothing more than a pile of ash, or a thought thrown to the ether.

The two of them spared a glance at one another, Dove’s demeanour still shaken when Marc surveyed her with a soft, cocoa gaze. The wind picked up around them before either of them could speak, Dove’s hair whipping around her sticky face, catching on her cheekbones, the need to peel and scratch and gnaw at her skin overwhelming her with the texture, anything to get the damned blood off.

“What is he doing?” She asked, her hand subconsciously reaching out for Marc’s when the world around her began to darken. But not just for herself, she realised, but because the sun was disappearing.

No, that couldn’t be right. Throwing a squinted, pained look at the clear blue sky, the smell of the metallic tang on her skin slapping her in the face. Her eyes locked on the white orb in the sky that was indeed being devoured by a slightly smaller black circle moving in front of it, the moon. Khonshu was creating a solar eclipse. Switching the light out on an entire section of the world, drawing far too much attention to himself than would be allowed by the gods.

“Sending the gods a signal they can’t ignore,” His deep voice echoed around the clearing, the wind carrying the sound to their sensitive ears.

She felt Marc take her hand as darkness swept over them, unnaturally fast for any solar eclipse, tugging her back towards the town where cries of startled citizens were beginning to meet her ears.

“Come on,” He murmured, his warmth grounding her astonished mind, her eyes quickly adjusting to the shadow that swallowed the sands.

“I don’t know whether to applaud him for the guts or curse him for putting you in danger,” She mumbled, not missing the way their hands seemed to gum together from the equal amount of ichor on them. She didn’t miss the way Marc’s knuckles were blown open, the flesh around them sore and sliced from his fist fight with the mercenaries. She made a note to fix them later.

“That tends to be the way with Khonshu,” Marc replied sourly, the two of them taking a long set of old sandstone steps back down to the city.

She huffed, more agitated than he had ever seen her with a solid frown on her normally gentle forehead.

“Well maybe when all of this is over, we find a way to get rid of them both together?” She proposed, and he couldn’t help but lurch at the fact she saw a together for the two of them after all of this. Not together in love, he chided himself, but Layla had been the only other person to ever see him as worth sticking around for. It was nice to have Dove too.

Flashing her a barely there smile, he squoze her hand lightly. It fell the second he caught sight of the bird headed god and his jackal like companion waiting for them at the bottom of the steps as if they heard their devious little plan.

“That was abit over the top, don’t you think?” Marc sassed, keeping hold of Dove’s hand and steering her away from Seth’s looming gaze, even if to hold off his intruding presence for a second longer than necessary.

“Hurry, they’re gathering their avatars now,” Khonshu demanded, the two of the goliath gods trailing behind their own minions.

“Aren’t they scattered all over the world?” Marc asked, and Dove was glad he was here with her at least, she was sure by the way her stomach was twisting so painfully she would have retched her breakfast by now. She was going to have to meet more gods? Not just any but the Ennead, the effective high council of Egyptian Deities and plead their case to the ancient beings? The current track record set by the Gods she had met had caused nothing but misery for her short life, so the idea of introducing eight more to that mix sent her chest pounding.

“Yes, but for a meeting with the Ennead, a portal presents itself anywhere,” Seth cut in, halting the two humans in their step. His face, his presence, was not one that they simply could get used to. A chill ran down both their arms, and she felt him tug her just a bit closer to him.

“Okay, so where’s ours?” Marc asked, and as if to summon the portal in question, a low rumble only they seemed to notice rocked the earth beneath their feet, though it seemed too delicate to be an earthquake, too harsh to be oncoming footsteps. It was then that bricks in the nearby building began peeling away, crumbling in on themselves to form a long archway corridor. The walls were lined with hieroglyphs she was certain wasn’t part of that building, more likely wherever it was the portal led to.

“Last time I spoke to the gods, they banished me,” Khonshu spoke solemnly as the two of them stepped towards the doorway. A faint, amber light flickered against the symbols etched into the stone walls, illuminating them with a golden glow that reminded her of Seth’s staff.

“Join the club,” Seth growled with a bitter chuckle, and Dove fought the urge to point out the sheer amount of times he had slaughtered his own brother for power that had led to his banishment, but she thought better of it than to be the one receiving his wrath. “Our case against Harrow must be indisputable,”

The two of them hesitantly stepped forward, Marc subconsciously moving in front of her as if to want to head in there first, check if it was safe. But there was no time for heroics, and he didn’t doubt Seth wouldn’t have her defend herself if things started to go south. Hearing the two gods retreating behind them, Dove whipped around to see the beasts slinking off through a nearby street.

“Aren’t you coming?” It was perhaps the only time she would ever want the God of Death there to support her case. Though, upon thinking about it, she guessed Osiris seeing his killer may not go down well considering the god’s reputation.

He snickered darkly, throwing a glance to her over his muscled shoulder that rippled with corded tendons with every movement.

“You know I love a family reunion.

Dove’s jaw slacked, her eyebrows shooting up into her hairline. They were so fucked.

Marc huffed, and the two of them stood looking down the long corridor with a shared hesitance. Once they went in, they were going in blind. Into a space where there were beings even more powerful than the gods they were bound to. Who knows what the Ennead were capable of, whether they were known to hold grudges around two exiled gods and the humans they deemed worthy of their service. Would they see right through her? Right through this innocent little marionette she played every single second. Would they see her for exactly who she was, would they see the chaos festering in her heart? The rot eating away at her bones?

“Ready?” Marc whispered, the sound barely meeting her ears. He looked over at her gently, eyes wide and anxious, though he seemed more worried about her than himself. Her eyes were glazed over, tired. Her hand was cold in his palm, yet she gripped onto him tightly as if he were the only thing she had to ground herself. She looked back at him, though he could tell she was far away, she wasn’t here with him, the same as this morning in the room, when her smile had cracked for just a single second and he saw the sadness behind her eyes that rarely appeared. He hated it.

She didn’t speak, just nodded and it was enough for him to draw her even closer, hold her hand even tighter.

The two stepped into the tunnel, their footsteps echoing down the long chamber, engulfed in a cloak of darkness from the lack of sunlight. It certainly wasn’t a new building they were entering judging by the erosion on the crumbling walls, though the hieroglyphs were surprisingly well preserved. A light flickered at the end of the passage, the only thing giving them any idea where to go as they clung towards one another. A large figure of a head came into view, starting small but the closer they got it became clear the figurine was actually huge, large enough to tower over both of them ten times over. She guessed by the head piece and the jewellery they were royalty, or at least the spouse of a pharaoh, well respected. Revered. A tomb for an esteemed member of Ancient Egyptian society.

She remembered Steven showing her a special edition guide to Egyptian myths they had in stock just three weeks ago, how he’d been waiting for them to get the shipment in for months since it was so low stocked everywhere else. He’d nudged her every chance he could get when they finally got to take their lunch break, turning his new prize to her to show her every diagram or photo or excerpt he could, telling her more facts that he’d read in other books, talking her ear off the entire train ride home too. She thought him the smartest man she’d ever met; thought his intellect, his sheer excitement to share his interest with her was the sweetest and most attractive thing she’d ever seen. He certainly didn’t make it easy for her to not kiss him silly right there on the spot.

Two more figures came into view, two behemoth statues flanking each side of the head, one a falcon, a distinctive crown atop his stone head, the other a woman with two large ostrich wings as her arms, curled around herself.

“I can’t believe it,” Marc’s head whipped to the side, Steven’s face reflecting in the polished golden engravings on the stone walls, his chocolate eyes lit up in wonder like a boy on christmas. His hands clasped together in front of him nervously, though his mouth was pulled into a gobsmacked smile, his gaze flicking around the enormous expanse of the room as if to take it all in at once. “Oh- my days. We’re inside- we’re inside the Great Pyramid of Giza,”

Marc’s head flicked to the room that opened up into a colossal square, unmistakably a pyramid built for the worthiest of pharaohs.

“Steven said we’re in-” Marc started, his voice low, gentle as if to not alert whatever it was waiting for them at the end of the corridor, only for her to cut him off with an equally hushed tone.

“Great Pyramid, yeah” She nodded, her eyes stunned and overwhelmed. Nodding towards the Falcon statue, she pointed with their joined hands, “That’s Horus wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.”

“God of Healing and Protection?” Marc asked, recalling the few things he knew about the other gods. She nodded, her eyes never ripping away from the expanse of priceless relics in front of them.

“As a man, yes. Horus as a Falcon represents Kingship,” She explained, watching his eyes trail over her face with a strange look, softening just a touch more if it were even possible. Turning back to nod towards the other statue, “The woman with the ostrich wings is Ma’at, judge of the hearts of the dead. She represents justice and order, balance and morality. This was a Pharaoh who wanted the greatest of respects and fortune in his afterlife,”

Marc’s jaw slackened at her brain, practically seeing the cogs turning in her bright eyes, the flame from the torches dotted around the tomb giving her face a beautifully warm glow. She looked divine, as if it should be her with statues erected in her honour, as if she were the one who deserved a wonder of the world in her name.

“I think I’m in love,” Steven’s besotted voice came from the reflection behind him, feeling the alter’s eyes enraptured with her face just as much as he was. Marc nodded once, ripping his gaze away from her to focus on the unfamiliar territory ahead.

Now was not the time for childish feelings, he chided himself, though Steven’s words had cut him deep, confirming for Marc something he already knew. It wasn’t just a little crush he was in the way of - Steven was in love with this woman. And he was wrecking it, he was simply a wall in between two gentle creatures that deserve nothing else but each other.

He always knew he ruined everything.

A frown settled on his face, avoiding her gaze with a sneer as they ventured forward into the tomb.

“Come on,” He murmured, unclasping her hand and quietly stepping into the cold catacomb.

“One evening,” He had said, waving his finger in her face at the door like a master scolding its pup, “You girls can have one evening out,”

It was probably because the neighbours had started getting suspicious about the two girls that would sit in the window but would never leave, or perhaps it was a treat for being such good little victims and remaining complacent. They didn’t know. At first Grace had said it was a test, a test of loyalty. It wouldn’t be unlike him to give them a sick game to test if they really were faithful to his command. But perhaps it was a treat? After the two years they had remained in that house, remained together, this was the first time they were allowed outside that wasn’t the garden.

They were ecstatic.

Don’t be fooled, he was sure to collar the two of them before they could step foot out the door, his fingers squeezing just the slightest bit to tell them exactly what would be waiting if they were to run or go for help. Don’t be stupid, now girls, he reminded with a low grumble. And they were gone.

It had started with a brisk walk down the street, past the abandoned hotel that sat opposite their bedroom window, its welcome sign springing to life every evening even after its years out of business. The girls had a prance in their steps, truly with no idea where they were headed since they couldn’t see past a certain point from their spot in the window. Once the road turned into a long slope down, the houses getting bigger, the yards getting greener, the road getting quieter, was when it settled in that they were outside again.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” Grace whispered, her head tipped to the heavens, the crease on her brow ironed out. She took a deep breath, her mouth pulling out into the biggest smile she had ever mustered, Dove swore she could count every single one of her teeth. “We’re fucking OUTSIDE!” She yelled, no doubt waking up the neighbours. It was dangerous, drawing attention to themselves, but Grace couldn’t care. The Summer breeze filled her lungs, the seven o’clock sun fell over her face in full force, the feeling seeming to be extra warm than what she was used to. Because there was no window there. Because they were free.

Until eleven, in four short hours, but they were free nonetheless. The birds had never sounded louder, the air never tasted so sweet.

She couldn’t help but join Grace in taking a long, deep breath, a laugh bubbling out her throat, loud and joyful. Perhaps the happiest she’d felt in years. Like slipping out of a cage, a bird with its wings spread. She rose her arms to her sides, feeling the wind whip entirely around her middle, and suddenly the two of them were running. The street was empty, save for the two sets of footsteps slapping against the concrete as they sprinted down the descending hill, their fingers brushing against each others every now and then before Grace reached over and clasped her hand tightly against hers.

They were free.

It wasn’t long before they’d reached the beach, the one mother showed her as a child, the one she’d been to when the boys were little. It was nothing spectacular, nothing like they’d see in a foreign country. The sea was cold as anything since it was still England after all, the sand was mostly rocks, but the sound of the waves rolling in on their little slice of heaven.

The two lay on the hard sand, shoes kicked off and fingers buried into the course grain, just feeling. The sea was far from lapping at their feet; though ice cold, they wouldn’t find it in themselves to care anyway. The freezing water would barely even scrape the surface of the elation they felt now, there truly wasn’t anything that could simmer the way their hearts pounded in their ears.

“Three hours left,” She reminded, only to have Grace tut her and swat at her arm.

“We won’t be late, stop worrying,” The blonde chided, sand sticking to the side of her cheek as she turned her head in the sand to see her companion, “Just breathe,”

She knew she’d meant ‘breathe it all in’, the day, the feeling of their cage door being blown open, but she couldn’t help but do as Grace had commanded and take a deep salty breath in.

The sun warmed her as the shore breeze cooled her. A balance. An equilibrium. Her mind was blank for the first time in a long time. The waves may as well have been the thoughts ebbing and flowing from her mind.

“In some other universe, this is our life every single day,” She finally muttered, as if too scared to speak it into existence and risk waking up from whatever dream they were having. Grace snickered, their fingers meeting once more. Grounding. Warm.

“Do you think so?” Grace asked, her cornflour eyes squinting in the sun, watching the way her friend’s eyes remained closed, soaking up the entire thing. “You think we’re together in other universes too?”

“I hope so,” She responded, her toes sinking into the warm sand just a touch more, clinging to the back of her bare calves. “I hope I’m with you in all of them,”

Grace smiled, and her eyes opened then, meeting the sky with a tired blink before she turned to where Grace was staring at her. The two simply looked at one another, as if looking in a mirror of themselves though their shell was entirely different. Like their souls had met an equal in their gaze.

“I don’t care which one I’m in as long as I have you,” Grace whispered, clenching onto her hand with a soft desperation. She sighed, turning back to stare at the sky, a new openness at the difference the vast blueness held from her bedroom ceiling.

“I hate that house.” She confessed, though Grace already knew she did. “I feel like I’m-” She welled up, and Grace shifted to rest her forehead on her shoulder, “I feel like I’m in a coffin. Like I’m in a tomb. Like I’m screaming and banging on the door but everyone assumes I’m dead already,” Her brothers. They never responded to her letters, texting was too risky. But the envelope with the money made it to them once a month, she always sent it with the hope they would understand, understand she hadn’t left, that she wasn’t gone. But perhaps she was. She felt already gone. Felt like a corpse walking. “Maybe I already am dead,”

“I would never let that happen to you,” Grace whispered, nuzzling her face into her bare shoulder, “Me and you in every universe, right?” She asked, nudging her arm against hers to make her point, “Cage, house. Beach, tomb. I’m with you in every one of them,”

Dove’s breath was caught in her chest when she saw the sheer size of the pyramid. They didn’t call it the Great Pyramid for no reason, she supposed, but the sculptures alone were some of the biggest pieces of art she had ever seen, larger than any relics they had at work.

Marc took a slight lead, heading towards the centre of the room, where the floor lowered into a pit-like square, the floor a cold stone and undisturbed. Nine smaller, seated statues lined the steps down to the trench, one for each of the Ennead they guessed quickly. Eight doorways, similar to the one they had just exited from, dotted the remaining walls. A slight flash of light came from two of them, where a young woman stepped through the door to the close right.

She was beautiful, Dove noted immediately. Her sepia skin glowed in the dark lamp light, her midnight black hair silk over her shoulders. She was effortlessly graceful, beautiful gold jewellery winding over her wrists and neck, her eyes fox like yet gentle as she peered at the two newcomers.

“Khonshu’s antics are unparalleled.” She said with an accent Dove couldn’t place other than the melody it spelled over her every word. “You must be his avatar,” She said with a glint in her eye Dove knew was not just from the fire light. She was only a single pace behind Marc by the time he reached the bottom of the steps, yet she felt entirely lost, as though she were just floating her way down to where the woman met them, her legs jelly and wobbling.

“And who are you?” Marc asked politely, though she could sense the wariness in his tone. Untrusting. Ready to make a run for it if it came to it. She saw how his shoulders held the tension he rarely seemed to displace, she wished she could simply shove her face in between his shoulder blades, hug him like she had in the room. Feel him relax under her touch. She wished they were anywhere else but here. Anywhere but where the walls seemed inevitable, seemed to seal in around her, their very purpose to keep the dead inside.

“I’m Yatzil, Avatar of Hathor,” The woman announced, nearing the pair with a smile. Friendly, Dove noted, but she saw the way Marc tensed even further as she reached them, a look of plain fear flashing over his expression, as if she were about to be snatched away from him by the relatively kind looking woman. “Goddess of Music and Love? Surely Khonshu mentioned her,”

Marc shook his head slightly, a grimace on his battered face, “The gods aren’t exactly his favourite topic,”

“Not even when they are old friends?” Yatzil pushed, and Dove straightened up when she saw the playful way the avatar studied Marc with. Something boiled in her chest, something hot and sour, like her lungs were trying to choke her from the inside out. She didn’t like the way she was looking at Marc. To say he was hers only to look at drew even more tumultuous feelings in the pit of her stomach, but unlike Layla, who could barely stand the sight of him without steam blowing out her ears, she was interested. She was flirty.

She wanted out of this sinking ship already before she did something she would regret.

The woman looked over Marc’s shoulder then, only just noticing the shadow that seemed to peak from behind him, her eyes wide yet calculating, a vast contrast to Marc’s furrowed brow that glared at everything.

“And who might you be?” Yatzil’s voice was mellow as she took in the new figure, her gentle gaze never wavering. Perhaps she wasn’t so much flirting as she had guessed, and she wanted to chide herself for getting so worked up so quickly. Maybe she was just overly friendly to everyone, being the Goddess of Love and all that.

She was almost embarrassed with how quickly she had become possessive over Marc. It was hard not to when she was accompanied by an extremely attractive man that seemed to draw eyes everywhere he went. She thought she had enough trouble with Steven and Dylan, let alone a Goddess.

Chancing a look at Marc, the two of them agreeing solely with a single silent exchange, she told Yatzil her name.

“I’m Avatar of Seth,” She confessed, not missing Yatzil’s face tightening, her smile becoming a tad more forced. Her once gentle eyes became intrigued, looking the girl head to toe, before turning back to Marc.

There it was. The turn. The moment she realised she was not to be trusted. That she was rotten to her marrow.

“I did not know Seth had a new avatar,” She said, all traces of warmth gone as she surveyed the younger woman with a new suspicion, “How did this happen?”

“It’s a long story,” Marc cut in, sensing Dove’s anxiety by the way she fidgeted with her fingers, grabbing her hand back into his own to stop her from picking at the skin around her thumb. He hated it when she did that, saw how sore it made her digits, how she would bring band aids with her in her bag in case any of the scabs broke skin, “It’s not why Khonshu called this meeting,”

“Yatzil,” A voice called down to them, and it was then that the pair realised the rest of the avatars had made it, standing behind each of their podiums that represented their gods. They looked like regular people, though she supposed so did she and Marc. That was the point of them. It made Dove wonder if there were hundreds of them out there, if she had walked past them in the street before, thinking nothing of them.

Yatzil gave them a strained smile, leading them towards where the four other avatars stood, waiting to pass conviction on the two of them. She couldn’t help but feel like a lamb being led to slaughter after that stilted introduction, as though they were heading to a chopping block with cuffs and a bag over their head, the avatars facing them all judge, jury and executioners.

Her trial was over before she had opened her mouth. Just the very sound of Seth’s name had set Hathor on edge, let alone when she faced the god Seth had repeatedly assassinated. His own brother, Osiris. Or even his sister, Isis.

“Have they told you how this works?” Yatzil asked calmly, heading to the steps towards her own podium, where Hathor’s proud statue watched them approach, a pair of long cow horns straddling a large sun disk signalling her seat.

“Not really,” Marc answered for the two of them as Dove naturally fell behind his shoulder, gaze flicking to the new sets of eyes that peered down on their lowered figures. She hated the way they picked her apart with their unfriendly glares, vultures circling a carcass waiting to dive in and clean her off to the bone. They would have her for breakfast any second now. “Is there somethin’ we should know?”

No, they wouldn’t. Marc would never let that happen. Marc would protect her. She trusted him with every fibre of her being, trusted him as much as she trusted Steven. He would protect her.

“I try not to fight it, it’s a strange sensation but you’ll get used to it,” Yatzil said vaguely, bunching her rust coloured dress in her hands to ascend the ancient steps, her satin-like hair rolling down her back as she turned away from them. Her head flicked back jarringly, Hathor’s spirit consuming her body smoothly, as did the other avatars, the humanity flickering from their harsh stares and swirling into a bright white, the gods taking place in their vessels.

“In attendance,” Yatzil’s voice was still the same, though it held a new level of power, a confidence that only an other worldly being could carry, the clarity of a creature that had seen the earth for thousands of years, “Horus, Isis, Tefnut, Osiris, and Hathor. To hear the accounts of Khonshu and Seth,

A cold spread down her spine, minimal compared to the other few times Seth had taken her body as his own, gentle almost. A soft whoosh of power flooded through her vertebrae, spreading up her neck and through her throat, releasing through her lips as a small sigh. It was benign, as though there was simply a hand stroking down her back compared to the leg numbing force he usually took her with, the kind that made her head dark and fuzzy, the force of being locked out her own body, this felt nothing like that. Perhaps Seth was on his best behaviour in front of his older brother who they both knew could exile the God of Death to stone.

Tormenting and breaking a young girl's mind did not send the message of urgency the four of them needed the Ennead to understand.

She felt Marc’s hand twitch in her own, causing him to drop her palm once more, and she guessed Khonshu had also taken his place inside his avatar. Yatzil would have had a heart attack had she been put through what Seth had tormented her with if she thought this was a ‘strange sensation’.

The weight of Osiris’ glare fell upon her shoulders, and it became clear there was no love lost from the God as she looked upon his frown.

“Brother,” The growl emitted from the human man’s throat, a sneer tugging at his lips, “I trust this is your doing, you and your newfound play thing,” He eyed Dove’s cowering body with disgust, a calculating scowl on his relatively young face. The man couldn’t have been older than thirty five, dressed in a smart business suit and a face that not a single laugh line marred, as though he hadn’t smiled a day in his life. Fitting, she thought snidely, for a god so serious.

Yet those thoughts felt like Seth’s. And with it brought a new wave of peril, unlike the one that came after she would black out. Could he hear her thoughts? Had he buried herself into her head, her only place of solitude? Or maybe was her brain just that cruel all on her own?

“You should be on your knees thanking me, brother,” The words spewed from her chest unprompted, and it took everything in her not to clasp her hand over her mouth to stop it. It felt like someone had reached into her lungs and dragged the accusation up her oesophagus. It was a clap of thunder that echoed around the enclosed chamber, a dark cry that met her ears, leaving her gobsmacked that that was her voice.

“And why is that, brother?” A woman to Osiris’ right, his sister-wife Isis, snarled. Dove wanted to sink to the floor and beg for forgiveness from the two deities that looked at her with a disdain that tainted her skin. She wanted to plead for them to send her home, send her away from all of this mess, just please stop, stop looking at me like that. But instead what came out was the voice, his voice, ripping from her throat with a ferocity that was nothing like hers.

“Were it not for me, dearest sister, and Khonshu, we would not be here meeting to discuss a matter that threatens us all,” Seth’s growl seemed unnatural coming from such a small creature, her eyes wide and afraid as she cursed at the gods with his tongue. Whether it were Seth speaking or not, she was the one they looked to with hatred.

A slender, dark-haired man flanking the other side of Osiris, undoubtedly their son Horus, snorted bitterly, his eagle eyes gazing down the steps to the woman whose head snapped to him.

“You threaten us all, Set. You and your chaos. Your need for vengeance.” He spoke with an Irish lilt, his mouth sneering just as well as his father’s, “It is clear by your actions there is no end to the darkness and turmoil you wish to cause mankind, as well as to your own kind.”

Osiris raised a hand to his son, taking over the brunt of the reprimanding. Dove didn’t doubt this had been what it was like for centuries, she knew the pain of being the oldest and having to mother her own brothers. Though, exiling them to a stone for all eternity for endangering lives was a new concept even for her.

The eyes narrowed in on her as Osiris puffed out his chest to speak, his voice a calm command that rattled her bones.

“It is our job in these vessels to remain unseen, to keep the peace between our world and the humans,” He was rather quiet despite the petrifying effect he held over Dove, the way his and every other god sized her up as she quivered in her place. “Do you not hear how they cry out? That is fear. You scare them, brother, for your own personal enjoyment. We have long since understood you love the taste of their horror. Imagine the hatred they would feel if they saw what lay beneath that young flesh.”

Dove’s eyes lined with tears. She knew the insults were directed at her counterpart that could hear them just as well as she could, that she felt bristling uncomfortably in the back of her mind at the sound of the offence, yet the darkened eyes and sneers they accounted her with churned her stomach in guilt as if this were her own trial. Her own sentencing.

They would fear her if they knew who she really was. What she really was. And the sick part of her knew the darkness had laid under her skin long before any of this. She choked on the words Seth tried to force out of her, gritted her teeth for him to keep quiet, to just let the onslaught end. Let her sentence be carried out, let her be hung, drawn and quartered under their resentful gaze even if to let the pain end, just let it end, just let me go, release me from this life-

“Alright now-” Marc’s voice was fuzzy behind her, the slightest step he took forward towards the gods was stopped by Osiris’ angered voice, a firm look snapping to the new culprit.

“And you. You’ve been banished once for nearly exposing us Khonshu,” Just like that, their attention had been stolen from the pitiful girl that shook in her spot as if no more than a street dog, mangy and yet guilty looking. “And you know we despise your garishness,” He continued, Marc stopping in his place to hear what the high immortal had to say, “Your showy masks and weapons. But manipulate the sky again, and we will imprison you in stone.”

“Spare me your self-righteous threats,” Marc’s voice was a strained call of anger. Clearly Khonshu had a lot to say to the council, Dove mused to herself behind a weakened expression, “I was banished for not abandoning humanity, unlike the rest of you,”

“We have not abandoned humanity,” Horus chimed in, a pinched glower on his young face, “They abandoned us. We simply trust our avatars to carry out our services without calling undue attention to ourselves,” His eyes shifted back to the young woman who gulped under his fire. “Is this why you’ve resurrected the one who caused them so much pain? In the name of aiding the humans? Look at the bloodshed that has already been drawn under her hand,”

He nodded to the state Dove was in, the gummy redness that stuck to her arms, that buried under her nails, that smeared across her face. There was no denying that she had caused such a massacre. There was no running, no hiding from their judging eyes.

“Avatars are not enough! We need the might of gods. Return from the opulence of the Overvoid before you lose this realm. Seth has been the only one brave enough to unleash his strength on those who deserve it,” Marc jolted back as Khonshu left his body, a deep draw of breath expanding his lungs. Dove’s eyes flicked to him in sorrow, seeing the toll the god was taking on him, even if just for a second, the urge to bury her face into his arm and ask to go home overwhelmed her.

“The avatars that remain here are simply meant to observe. We decided long ago we did not wish to meddle in the affairs of man,” Osiris spoke calmly, though the order was clear. The two of them were to submit, to yield under their commands.

“We will decide our best course of action,” Tefnut cut in, under the guise of a glamorous earth-brown woman, her shirt a pop of reds and oranges that brought out her hooded dark eyes even in the lowlight of the tomb. Her gaze was just as intimidating as the others, though she looked at Dove with something more akin to understanding than the rest. The eyes of an elder, who had seen more than the others. A wisdom that only came with thousands of years on the earth they deemed unworthy of their protection. “Speak your purpose,”

“We call for judgement against Arthur Harrow,” Her own voice constricted at the rage that had now overcome Seth’s words, the vitriol that settled under her skin, that boiled her blood for a fight that was not hers.

“The charges?” Came Isis, in the form of a placid, moonlight woman, her doe-like, hazelnut stare serene yet piercing when accompanied with the disappointed purse on her cherry blossom lips.

“Conspiracy to release Ammit,” Khonshu’s exclaim ripped its way through Marc’s chest as a single tear dropped down the man’s tawny cheek from the effort in which the god tore at his psyche.

“That is a heavy accusation, Khonshu,” Osiris said seriously, bringing his hands together as if to search himself for guidance. The man took a deep breath, a silence settling over the room for a moment, the five avatars awaiting to hear their superior's judgement.

She practically felt Marc’s heart pounding in his bones, heard the way the deep breaths rattled his lungs, how his chest burned with effort. She was glad for them at least that Seth had listened to her plea to hold his, her, tongue, allowing Marc to take the brunt of the conversation. She knew the recklessness of the god would only dig them their own grave, that they would be left with little to no hope of taking on Harrow without his help.

Osiris sighed, looking to one of the smaller doorways burrowed into the side of the pyramid. “Let us summon the accused,” He ordered, an orange flicker of light emerging from the catacomb. Dove felt her chest seize at the whoosh of fresh air that came through the doorway, hearing two weary footsteps making their way towards them, scraping against the sand that dusted the hard, stone floor.

And with them, Arthur Harrow appeared.

Handsome for a man of his age, yet his eyes were soulless blue pits, little to no remorse for his schemes behind them. Instead, he seemed to be excited, jumping for the chase, the cat and mouse game the three of them had going. He seemed almost animated to see their newest intervention to halt his plans as he stepped into the tomb, a fake look of bewilderment on his older face.

His hair was greying wisps around his jaw, his suit a plain mahogany two piece that dragged against his espadrilles. He slowly stepped towards them with a cold stare, his jaw clenched in a hidden smirk as he sought the attention of the Ennead.

“So I see from Khonshu’s current makeshift avatar, the purpose for this meeting must be nefarious,” He said plainly, the false innocence in his expression causing a hot anger to wash over Dove’s face.

This time it was her own. Seth was still there, dormant behind her cranium, still seething from his reprimanding from his older brother, twisted with hate at the sight of Harrow, but the overwhelming feeling of outrage was hers.

“Not to mention this poor little soul Seth has taken as his own,” His blue pools of nothing slid to her, the dare to retaliate set and matched in his eyes, “The young one knows nothing of the trouble she’s causing, this is business well beyond her understanding,”

A threat. A call for a challenge. A taunt for her to show what she hid from the world, what festered inside her this whole time. What he had seen with a single touch of her wrist the first day they’d met in the museum.

There is a darkness in you.

And then it was that night all over again. It was the screaming, it was the pure, visceral hatred she had felt for him, for the man that had put her there. It was knowing she was never going home, that she was never going to see her sweet niece grow up to run rings around her teachers. It was knowing her brothers wished for nothing to do with her. It was knowing every one of her letters went unanswered.

And chaos, oh there is chaos,

It was remembering Grace’s laugh through a sob and the fact she would never hear it again. It was the way the light from the abandoned hotel sign next door lit up her room with red, something she had always hated, she could never sleep for the brightness of it. Then again, she struggled to sleep anyway. It was the red of the shoes the girls wore, the other girls, the others from the club. The emerald room, the way they watched her dance like a puppet on a string before things truly went wrong.

Something wicked this way comes.

It was knowing her brothers couldn’t stand the sight of her because of him, because of the choices she’d made for him. For love. She wanted to scoff. It was the men that came at night, the ones that she saw in her dreams even now, the ringleader of them all being the one to tell her what a good little lapdog she’d been for him. The one she’d called boyfriend.

It was the knife, it was the blood. It was the body that burned as she’d torched the house in her escape.

And I see you are truly something wicked.

“You know exactly why we are here,” Khonshu cried from behind her, though Harrow took no notice of the call, his mouth twitching to fight off a smirk as he saw the way her chest deflated at the sight of him, knowing he knew her. He knew her, the way Seth knew her.

The way she was terrified even now that Marc and Steven would someday know her.

“Rip his tongue out,” Seth hissed into her ear, chomping at the bit to be let out from the slight control she had over him in front of the Ennead.

“I must admit I do not miss the sound of that voice.” Harrow turned solemnly to the gods, the nervousness falling over his face like a performance. “But speak, old master, to the point,”

“Do you not seek to release Ammit from her tomb?” Khonshu accused, Marc’s body being seized by the god’s might. Dove grabbed his wrist in her own when she saw his chest heaving heavier by the moment. The man looked as if he might throw up any second from the weight of it.

“I was in the desert, but if visiting the sands were a crime, the line of sinners would be longer than the nile” Harrow said calmly, his hands weaving together in front of him to solidify the guiltless ploy he was giving, “Khonshu has searched for Ammit’s tomb since he ensnared be into his service. His vision is obscured by jealousy, paranoia and his-”

“COWARD,” Seth struck her chest with a lightning bolt of fury, the growl drawling from her throat in a volume that made her jump, Marc glancing her way when he felt her fingers clutch him ruthlessly, “Filthy, conniving CRAVEN,”

“Do not trust the word of shamed gods,” Harrow countered, turning to glare at the pair that looked at him helplessly, their chests pounding with the strain of a deity overtaking their vocal chords, “These two are unhinged, as willing as one another to cause destruction in the human world. And as for their avatars themselves,” Harrow huffed, though a smarmy smile shadowed his face as he looked between the two of them, “Well, they are about as unwell as the gods they serve,”

“How do you mean?” Hathor asked, a small frown scrunching her gentle almond eyes.

Harrow considered the two of them, his piercing gaze falling on the young woman first, a hint of malice flicking over his face as he watched her squirm under his ruthless stare, as if waiting for the killing blow, waiting for him to run a sword clean through her sternum. Get it over with, her eyes pleaded, let this be done, shoot me between the eyes and set me free.

“This girl,” He began, her breath catching in her lungs, “She seems innocent enough, what with the crocodile tears and the deer in headlights look about her,” Harrow gave her one last sneer, before turning back to face the gods with a faux woeful look plastered on his face, “But this fawn is in fact the hunter with a loaded rifle. I have seen what she is capable of, the anger and vengeance the tortured soul wishes to unleash on those who stand in her way, the corruption in her heart- it’s no wonder Seth found her suitable for his needs,”

Her mouth had gone dry, she realised as she swallowed roughly, tears burning behind her eyes, she felt Marc staring at her. Fuck. He saw her, he saw right through her. And if he saw her, then what would Marc think of her? What would he see if he were to crack open her muddled little mind and peer in? He would hate her. And oh god, Steven-

Her throat bobbed with a silenced sob, her chin wobbling pitifully.

“And as for him- This is a man who literally does not know his own name.” Harrow continued his onslaught, making Marc clear his throat uncomfortably at the fact his biggest wound was bared open for the taking, the scar that wouldn’t close having salt poured into the crevice. “He has a marriage certificate under the name Marc Spector-”

“LIAR!” Khonshu’s agitated attempt at regaining composure was thwarted by the glisten in Marc’s lost, cocoa eyes that seemed to do nothing but watch as his chest was pried open.

“Employment records under the name Steven Grant,”

“Stop,” This time it was Marc speaking for himself. His voice hoarse from Khonshu’s yelling, yet it was more of a wounded yelp, a plea for mercy from the man who knew everything about him, knew all of his darkest corners, and threw it out in the open for them all to see.

“I have seen him speak to himself-”

“Shut up,” Marc yawped, an animal in a cage yowling for release.

Dove felt the anger begin to rev under her skin once more. Marc had been immovable since the moment she knew him, the moment she saw him in her bedroom stiff as a rock as she’d hugged him. Had rarely shown anything but a cold indifference, if not the occasional smile. He had been the only thing keeping her sane between the entire situation, the one person she trusted to quite literally drag her back from the depths of death a thousand times over. Because, while he was a moody sod most days, it was Marc. And Marc would fight tooth and nail for her.

“I have no idea how many personalities he must possess,” She felt Marc weaken under the hold she had on his wrist, “The man is clearly insane,”

It was happening in slow motion. Just as Marc crumbled into a disheartened sigh, the frustrated tears welling in his eyes, the final chord holding together her growing temper snapped. She felt her vision blacken for a moment, as if she had taken a long blink, which she wished she had in hindsight, she’d read on the internet closing your eyes and taking a deep sigh temporarily relieves stress. Something about giving the synapses a moment to process information. But she hadn’t. And neither did she feel the imposter crawling up her spine the way she did when Seth wanted her body as his own. No this was her, this was her entirely alone.

By the time she had come to, she had taken two quick steps towards the snide man, fingers outstretched for a sharp slap across his high cheekbones when she felt five metal claws hugging her fingertips, the razor edge of each enough to take a sizeable chunk out of his face had she made contact.

But she didn’t. Because no sooner had she gotten an inch away from doing so, her hand was stopped by a cerulean ring cuffing her hand mid air, preventing her from moving in the slightest.

Osiris. His hand held the same bluish-grey energy between his two fingers as he seethed down at his younger brother’s avatar.

“We will not tolerate violence in this chamber,” He bit, forcing the girl to her knees to face him, her head hung to the floor. She felt Marc’s eyes burn the back of her skull, his legs itching to approach, to wrap her up in his embrace, if only to protect her from Osiris’ hate. She chewed her cheek in guilt, when a thought quickly struck her as she looked to her knees ashamed.

Her suit, the one Seth usually donned her in. She was in her suit. She had never summoned her suit before, had steered clear from the fact entirely actually, yet the material was stretched comfortably over her skin as it was all the other times Seth shoved her consciousness aside to make room for his own deeds.

But she had summoned it herself.

“It brings me no pleasure to tell you these are two deeply troubled individuals. Khonshu is taking advantage of him the same way he abused me, the same way he aspires to abuse this court. As Seth is preying on a chaos-filled, young woman whose only goal is nemesis. Take action before it is too late,”

Dove tuned him out, her own internal crisis weighing far heavier than the insults Harrow was hurling to her. She had brought out the Hellhound herself. Not as Seth’s puppet or as his doll for toying with but as herself. As a reflection of what she wanted to do to Harrow.

For the first time in almost a decade, her body felt like it was almost her own again.

“Let us speak to Marc Spector. He seems the more reasonable of the two,” Horus ordered, and Marc almost scoffed at them had he not been so hurt by Harrow’s words, not been so defeated by the doubtful looks the Ennead had in their once cold glares now that his illness had been revealed. “Are you unwell?”

It was direct. Inescapable. And yet he didn’t care for their judgement anymore, just the fact she seemed uncomfortable being forced to her knees so harshly, a mongrel forced to sit quietly for a bone.

“I am.” He breathed hoarsely, “I am unwell. I need help. But that doesn’t change the fact that this man is-” Marc could barely finish his sentence without trailing off in angered tears as he glowered at the floor, knowing there was very little he could say to change their minds, “Would you just let her go? Please?”

“This is a safe space for you to tell us if you feel exploited by Khonshu-”

“This is not about my feelings, I am not the one on trial here, nor is she. It is him,” Marc seethed at Hathor, Yatzil, who’s pitiful eyes bore into his skin, flaring his anger, god would he just let go of her, look how her head hung low, how her knees pressed painfully into the cold floor, how she was forced to submit, “This is about how dangerous he is if you would just listen for a second,”

“He has committed no offence,” Osiris ruled coldly, tired, as if the situation bored him completely. “This matter is concluded.”

And that was it. The bonds that held Dove into low obedience were ripped away from her, her hands finding the floor gently as she stayed there, her head dipped to glare at the stone, the anger ebbing and flowing at her hot face like the banks of the Nile.

“And brother?” Dove’s head perked the slightest amount, though it was not her, but Seth responding to his counterpart on his behalf. She looked up at the god through broken, reddened eyes, a tear glistening on her cheek that she let fall to the ground with no fight. “Cause chaos like this again and you’ll be begging for a ushabti when I’m finished with you,”

With that, the avatars were returned to their bodies with moonlight white eyes, a jolt in every one of their spines, before they began heading back to their portals with not a single word uttered between them. As if Marc and Doves lives hadn’t just been raked out for all to see, all to judge. All to sentence.

Walking past the girl still crumpled in defeat on the floor, her heart too heavy to lift herself, Harrow watched Marc’s angered eyes carefully, a final sneer on his shit-eating expression.

“I’d leash that bitch of yours before she hurts anyone else, Spector,” He murmured, loud enough for the two of them to hear, not loud enough to cause a scene.

Like a dam breaking, her shoulders sank in on themselves, Marc quickly rushing to meet her on his knee, a warm hug wrapping around her where he could, just as she expected.

“Hey come on, we need to go, princess,” Marc whispered to her, and she could do nothing but give a sad nod, avoiding his eyes at all cost.

“I’m sorry,” She whispered, a sob crawling up her throat that felt even more present when she saw her clawed fingertips staring back up at her, “I’m sorry I tried, I tried to push him down, I-”

“Shhh,” Marc soothed, nosing her hairline, “It’s alright, it wasn’t your fault,” He murmured, hands going under her arms to lift her off the ground carefully. She stood, not without clutching onto him, gently of course since her suit and weapons made it difficult to not hurt him, and the entire idea that she had conjured it herself seemed tainted by the way they had looked at her. The way anyone would look at her if they knew.

“Marc,” A voice whispered, but Dove was too lost in her own self pity to take note. She felt as if she was back on that beach, her eyes lost in a canopy of blue, the wind cold on her skin. Lost in the world, yet seen, too seen, by those gods, by Harrow. Too trapped in her past, in what she’d done, knowing there was nothing stopping what Seth wanted her to do. Feeling for the first time, with the suit around her that she had summoned, she had ownership over herself, feeling as if she entirely wanted nothing to do with it.

Release me, release me from this wretched body, release me from this head, take me from this pain with a quick death.

Yet.

Keep me here, grant me control, let me greet my own demise.

An equilibrium yet to settle. A scale tipping to and fro, a puzzle with no solution. A set of coordinates with no longitude. Continuing. Unanswering. A person missing half their soul.

She, impossibly so, felt worse than she had when she woke up.

She found herself again laying back on the hotel bed, staring at the white, plaster ceiling. After Marc had spoken with Yatzil about a possible solution to finding Ammit before Harrow and his followers, the pair of them had headed back to the hotel in silence. Well, Marc had attempted to make conversation as he led her to the taxi, but it was clear from her lack of response, only broken by the occasional sniff or nod of her head, that she was in no mood to talk.

Taking a deep sigh from her place on the cot, she lifted her hand to run over her tired face when she was stopped by a crusted sap rolled up between her fingers at the touch, and she let out a clear gasp, jumping up from the sheets.

In the daze of it all, she’d forgotten she was covered in blood under her suit that she coaxed into disappearing before the taxi pulled up. Her face, hands, legs, all smeared with the sticky substance that now stained the white duvet.

“Fuck, oh fuck, for bloody fuck sake, fucking shit-” She swore violently, bunching her fingers into fists at the sight, Marc ducking into the room from the small balcony faster than she could let out another curse.

“What’s going on?” He took one look at her sad eyes, the way the redness smattered over her face, guilt flashing in her expression as he saw the mess on the sheets.

“I’m sor-”

“I’ll have my guy tip the cleaners, it’s no biggie,” He brushed off, taking a step towards her, attempting to uncurl her fists manually with his much larger hands that had just as much blood on them. Though, it was mostly his from where his wounded knuckles were now weeping. “You should probably take a shower though, we’ll raise too many questions looking like this,”

She barely nodded, eyes glazing over as she understood what he was saying. Clean yourself up, you’re scaring the locals.

“They only have a bath,” She murmured quietly, avoiding his eyes, scratching at the blood that quickly dried on her arms, picking at it like the glue that stuck to your skin as a kid making crafts, coming away in thin, onion peel layers.

“I’m sorry if it’s not the nicest hotel around, but my guy did his best-” Marc snipped slightly, watching her face scrunch up in frustration.

“No, no, not that, it's lovely, I’m just-” She took a deep breath in, her lungs rattling, her throat constricting with the secret she’d never had to tell. He’d think she was ridiculous, a woman of her grown age. “I can’t take a bath,”

“Of course you can, I’ll go run it for you now,” Marc headed for the bathroom, sick of this back and forth. He just needed her clean, needed to get that shit off of her, get rid of that guilty look in her eyes, needed to fix everything-

“No, wait,” She stopped behind him as he turned the brass tap, hot water gushing into the luxurious, square bathtub that had been built into the nude marble, stacks of ‘freebies’ and candles lining the edge. This was definitely meant for a honeymooning couple wanting a sexy week away under the Cairo sun, banging in every room, not two people who were barely friends possessed by gods and racing to stop the end of human lives. “Wait, Marc,”

“What?” He barked, turning back to face her with the first annoyed glare he’d given her all day. She knew the pair of them were at the end of their tethers, and that he was trying to care for her in the way Marc always did, the kind that only half the time involved actual any affection. “Look, I know it’s full of rose petals and shit, but I’m trying, princess,-

“It’s not that it’s-”

“I know it’s shit but it’s the best we’ve got, and I know Steven would have gotten you somewhere better-”

“I’m scared of water, Marc,” He shut up at the sight of her deflated expression looking at him through embarrassment, shut up at the sight of her squirming on the spot at his irritated rant.

“Huh?” He hissed, utterly thrown off by her words, feeling as if he hadn’t heard her correctly, “You’re fine with water, you’ve showered at Steven’s before. Is it me? I can go if you want privacy-”

“No, Marc just stop, please,” She mewled, turning her head to her hands ashamed, picking at the skin that had come loose, no matter if it pained her so. “It’s not you, I- I can’t be underwater, like under under water, not like showering when it’s only there for a second, it’s more drowning than anything, so baths are just a no go,”

But she sounded far away. Because the realisation for Marc had set in, the understanding of being scared to be held down, to feel the water rising up your legs, past your knees, up into your lungs. And then he was back in that cave again, he was feeling the water trickle in, he was screaming for RoRo to talk to him, to take his hand, he was hearing his brother’s little body splashing, hearing the water crowd his throat, drown out his cries for help. He was climbing out of that wretched cave soaked and running back home to tell his parents what had happened.

Taking a laboured breath to remind himself he was in the bathroom, with her picking at her nails, the tap running being the only sound between them for a moment. Sighing heavily, he fought the tears that burned behind his nose, forcing them to be swallowed down in the interest of helping her.

“What if I stayed?” He asked, her head shooting up to look at him in shock, mortified he was being so brazen. Rolling his eyes at her naïveté, he continued, “I’ll turn around and just sit on the toilet seat, but I’ll stay. Make sure nothing bad happens,”

She went quiet for a moment. She needed to get clean, get this forsaken muck off her, it was driving her insane. The smell of it alone, fermenting under the hot sun, was turning her stomach, not including the fact she felt rotten every time she thought about where it came from. Those bodies, that boy.

She nodded, the hot water steaming up the window by the time she’d decided.

“Okay, yeah. I suppose that would be okay,” She murmured to herself, fidgeting nervously. “You’ll just sit right there?”

He nodded gently, his hands coming to pull her fingers from mauling themselves, “Absolutely. Right there.”

“And you won’t look?” She asked shyly, eyes batting up at him through tired lids, to which he smiled slightly.

“Not a peak, now come on, bath’s almost full,” He ducked out of the bathroom to allow her to get undressed, not missing the way her fingers seemed to cling to his hand for as long as possible before he left. “Call me when I can come in,”

“Okay,” She replied through the thickness of the door. Taking a deep breath, she tucked her clothes into a neat pile under the sink, despite the fact they were wrecked with the same red gunk she was going to have to scrub off her skin. Switching the taps off gently with two squeaky turns, she held onto the bath edge with a deathly tight grip. It was only a foot of water, and Marc was right there. He wasn’t here anymore. Bath’s had once been her favourite part of the day. She loved a bath, had never felt so relaxed. She wanted to scream at the way her chest locked up as she stood in the water.

It was piping hot, scalding her skin, and maybe it was the punishment she deserved for all the blood she’d shed. Maybe it was the toll she had to pay to get clean.

Sinking to her bottom, she couldn’t help but clench onto the side of the bath for support, eyes locked on the way the water swayed towards her. It was just a bath, she’d had one millions of times before him, he wasn’t here to-

“You can come in,” She called, conscious of the way her back was to the door, swishing some of the french lavender bubble bath in to make the water milky, obscuring any sight of her body he would have caught a glimpse of.

Not that he would try. Marc was much too respectful for that.

He came in wordlessly, shutting the door behind him to keep the warm air in the bathroom. Plonking himself down on the toilet seat, he saw her hair spill over the lip of the tub edge in his peripheral vision, but little more.

For a moment they were both silent, uneasy at the new atmosphere created. The humid air was thick in their throats, the excuse they gave themselves as to why they weren’t talking. Marc inhaled the sweet vanilla and floral notes of the bubble bath, cursing himself when his mind ventured as to that being what she would smell like all evening.

“I’m sorry the room is so…” Marc trailed off. What was he to say, so clearly meant for two people on a nonestop fuck-a-thon? Aside from the fact the minifridge was stacked with whipped cream and chocolate spread, not for breakfast he’d had to explain to her, the bedside table full of condoms, the bathtub filled with rose petals, it was very obvious they stuck out like two sore thumbs with their rare and short affections in a place like this.

“What? Straight out a porno?” She quipped, earning a short laugh from him, symphonying the splash that came as she began scrubbing at her arms finally.

“A high end porno atleast,” He corrected, the tension in his shoulders loosening when he heard her giggle.

“Right,” She drawled, leaning over to grab the chamomile scented soap, “No one’s getting stuck bent over a tumble drier any time soon in a place like this,”

Maybe it was the fact she couldn’t see him, or it was the least shitty thing that had happened all day, but Marc couldn’t help the way a laugh, a real, chest tightening laugh, spilled out his throat. It was completely out of character for his glacial demeanour, usually the best she’d get is a smirk he’d try to hide or a huff through his nose. But it was a true, amused laugh. She smiled, despite the water coming away pink in her fingers as she scrubbed.

A brief moment passed over them where the only sound came from her hand dipping in and out of the water. This wasn’t so bad, she supposed, if she ignored the way her stomach rolled with bile every time she felt herself slipping further into the water. The milky pool itself wasn’t what scared her, it was the waiting to be pushed under, held under despite her clawing and scratching at his arm. It was his way of keeping her in check, reminding her even in the bathroom she was not permitted to privacy, to her own thoughts. She still felt his hand weaving its way into her hair, shoving her down until the water rushed up her nose, the gasp she’d let out choking on the exotic scented liquid. It was all just another one of his little games, and when she’d resurface, spluttering and clamouring out of the tub, he’d simply laugh and tell her to stop locking the door.

She hated the smell of that soap anyway. Too rich, too perfumed, too fake.

“I used to bath my brothers when I was younger,” She said after a while. She didn’t know why, or what had made her think about it, or why Marc needed to know, but she said it anyway.

“Yeah?” He replied, sounding distant as he picked at the blood under his own fingernails. “How many?”

“Four, all younger,” He blew air out of his cheeks solemnly, “We didn’t have much money, it was just my dad and he could never keep a job to save his life. I tried getting a job but turns out minimum wage for thirteen year olds is pennies,”

Marc stayed quiet, chewing at his lip. He had yet to ever hear her talk about brothers, or parents, or anything other than Steven and how much she wished he was here. That and of course why James Bond is a chauvinist, though he knew the first one was much dearer to her.

“Sounds rough,” He bit out, feeling the need to remind her he was still listening. He saw her shrug from behind the curtain of hair that fell behind her, obscuring his view.

“We got by. I was hungry some nights, but we were happy. They were happy. That’s all I cared about,” Marc felt a guilt gnawing at him. Sure, after RoRo passed his mother became a beast that had yet to release him from her claws, but they had never worried about money. Their house was easily three stories high, he had a meal three times a day, Elias always took him out to buy a new toy when Wendy had been particularly cruel. Birthdays, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, he always had whatever he wanted. Anything, except his mother’s love, but that couldn’t be bought, could never be earned back for what he’d done.

He felt disgusted with himself for being so self piteous about his childhood when Dove had barely afforded to eat at risk of her siblings going hungry.

“I used to get Matty in there first, he was the oldest. Only a couple years between us but he loved when I would give him his toys the others weren’t allowed to play with. We used to have to share everything, clothes, toys, school books, so having his own boat in the tub made him feel special.” A smile, achy but good, passed over her face, a warmth blossoming in her chest at the thought of the life she hadn’t had in so long. “He knew he had to be quick because there was only one tub of water to last all five of us, so we used to play ten rounds of I-spy and then he’d have to get out. Eventually he’d pick the most difficult thing to spy so I’d never guess and he’d get to stay in longer.”

Marc stopped then, watching the back of her head with a silent stare, quickly understanding she was in her own world entirely. “Then it was Sam’s turn, he was a year younger than Matt. He hated getting shampoo in his eyes so insisted I washed his hair for him, even though he made me swear to never tell his friends because it would damage his street cred,” She chuckled to herself, sounding far away from where Marc cracked a small smile, “Kid was seven years old and thinking he was tough enough to take on the world.”

“The other two?” Marc prompted with an ache, a need to know more. More about the little Dove that tended to her hatchlings, to her nest, whose voice sang with something he had never heard from her, a sad kind of happiness he never thought possible.

“Joey was next. He’d start to complain that the bath water was getting cold by this point so I’d sneak some water in from the kettle. He was a little younger than us, I think mom and dad had thought three was it for them. But two years after Sammy, out popped Joey. Fattest baby you’ve ever seen. Refused to speak until he was three, and then suddenly he was blurting out full sentences.” She smirked, eyes glazed over as the pink swirled into the water, beginning to run out of where it dried in clumps in her hair. She would need to wash properly, she realised. Wetting a flannel, she held it behind her, careful not to get any droplets on Marc’s leg. “Marc?”

He snapped out of the reverie he felt he shared with her, his head filled with the image of four little boys, a mirror of her. Maybe their noses were a little bigger, their jaws sharper, but their hair would fall over their shoulders the same way, unless she’d trimmed it for them. He pictured her running ragged after them, reminding them to floss, to tidy their rooms, to do their homework.

“Yeah?” He asked, taking the cloth from her hand.

“Would you be able to get the…” Blood. Blood. Blood. “Stuff out my hair please? I can’t get my head under but it’ll dry soon if I don’t get it now.”

“S-sure,” He said softly, almost caught off guard that she was inviting him to get even closer to her nude form. Setting a towel on the floor, he turned the small bin over to give himself a seat as he gently ran the wet cloth over her locks. He would need to use shampoo probably, there was some on the side of the sink but he refused to push her. “What about the youngest?”

“Micheal,” She said, her voice pure with sweetness. “He was definitely a surprise. Came three months early, came out kicking and squealing like he had a vendetta against the world.” She chuckled to herself. “He was so tiny I could get away with washing him in the kitchen sink. Matty would say we could peel him and put him in a stew with the rest of the potatoes. But he was so good, he would follow me around when I got home from work, even when he turned into a teenager he would never leave for school without hugging me and making sure I had lunch. I never did, but I would lie because otherwise he would worry too much about me,”

The crimson seeped out of her hair with every brush of Marc’s hand against the locks, but he didn’t care. He was too caught up hearing her bliss. She was different like this. Yes, she was usually happy, bar the few times she had gotten teary over the blood and gore, but speaking about her brothers made her glow with something new. A bliss he hadn’t seen in her yet. One he wished he could cling onto with everything he had, keep her wrapped in like a bubble of her happiest memories.

“By the time I got in the bath it was cold, like fully cold. And the water was dirty, I tell you three boys and a baby get into so much mess than I’d give them credit for,” She continued, her eyes fluttering closed at the way he gently stroked her head, stopping every once in a while to re dampen the flannel in the water. There was no way he could see anything since the soap had made it so cloudy, but she didn’t think she could find herself to fully care with how loose her body felt, floating under the heat. She found herself trusting him enough to lean back into his hold, relax under his touch instead of flinch. Because it was just Marc. And Marc would never do that.

She tipped her head back to give him an easier access to her scalp, sighing when his fingers seemed to pick at a clump, removing it manually when it wouldn’t release with the cloth alone. Her stomach flipped as to a guess as to what it could have been.

Flesh? Brain matter? You tore those men to pieces like the savage you are, it’s no wonder Osiris said the people were scared of you, you’re beastly, disgusting loathsome creature who deserves every bit of pain Seth gives you-

“Four brothers and a father? You and your mother must have been ripping your hair out in testosterone,” He said, gently smoothing the tangles out of her tresses, continuing to wipe at the tangles until the water ran clear.

“Just me. Mom ditched when Mikey was born,” She said calmly, though she felt his hands stutter as she did. “It’s fine. She believed that giving her son’s biblical names meant god couldn’t see her drug benders. I think she forgot her kids could though,”

Marc hesitated. Words, some that he couldn’t fathom putting together, caught in his throat. He hated the pity people would give him whenever he were to divulge his own secrets he kept hidden in the dark rooms of his mind even Steven had no access to.

“Please say anything except I’m sorry, otherwise I may have to give you a big wet slap across the mouth,” She quipped, relieved when she heard a small snigger, finally. She’d hate to lose that calm, carefree version of Marc she’d had this evening. Hate to scare him off like the spooked rabbit he was, send him racing down into his dark burrow again. “But yeah, it was grisly being the only girl until Billie was born,”

“Billie as in another brother?” Marc asked with a confused frown.

“Billie as in my niece,” She replied, making a gentle start to clean the gummy resin off her face, “She was named after Billy Joel when Matty lasted all of one week being sixteen and got a girl pregnant. Girl bailed on the kid as soon as she was born, Matty felt like he could do a better job of it than our dad could, and Billie was family. Although she somehow got it in her head that she was only allowed to listen to Billy Joel since that’s where her name came from,” She snickered, remembering the countless mornings she chased the naked toddler as she screamed ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’.

“How old is she?” Marc asked, the water running mostly clean now, yet his gentle pawing at her hair had yet to stop, more for his own state of mind now than her own. She was so soft, soft everywhere. Even the way she sighed into his touch, the few times his fingertip had met her neck, met the top of her spine. Soft, warm; inviting, addicting. Clean, good, pure, god she was heaven on earth. Fixed, he could fix it, fix her hurts.

“She’s…” Dove quickly counted in her head, coming up with a thick throat when she figured the answer. “Nine. She’ll be nine now,”

Nine. She’d missed so much of her little life, she’d barely been at school when she’d left home. Missed her losing her first teeth, missed her learning to ride a bike, missed moving to bigger school.

She’s better off without me. Dove chided sourly, though tears built in her eyes.

“You see her much?” He prompted, letting the short bout of silence settle over them as she rinsed her face carefully.

“No, I uh-” She cleared her throat, her head tilting down to play with her fingers, picking with her thumb nail under the rest, “My brother’s don’t speak to me anymore,”

Marc froze. This, unlike the other time he’d been ready to apologise, felt like dangerous territory. While her mother walking out had felt like passing news to her, this felt like a rope unwinding thread by thread, getting ready to snap in his face at any point.

“Oh,” He eventually came up with, stuck between wanting to ask more and wanting to keep his distance. A tug of war between himself and wondering what she wanted him to do. What Steven would do. “How come?”

“Just you know, life got in the way. We all said some things, did some things,” She sniffed, her eyes closing as she skirted around the truth, “Truthfully I don’t deserve their forgiveness even if they did want to talk,”

“Come on now,” Marc reasoned, his eyes filling with a softness only she saw, his fingertips caressing her scalp with a gentleness he didn’t know his battered hands could muster. “I’m sure that’s not true,”

“It is,” She cut him off definitively, “I think, sometimes, maybe I was just born wrong. Like I just came out the womb rotten. Like I deserve the way the gods looked at me today, like I’m every bit as revolting as Harrow says I am,”

“Hey,” Her head flicked over her shoulder at the anger in his tone. She hadn’t meant to spill, hadn’t meant to overflow her brain like that, have the words jump right out her throat. Maybe she was too relaxed here. She expected judgement, or disgust, or pity. But no, Marc just looked pissed. “That is not true, do you hear me? Everything he said about you is wrong,”

“But if he’s wrong, then why does all this happen to me? Why does it happen if I don’t deserve the badness?” She asked him quietly, because Marc knew all the answers. Marc knew everything, always knew what to say even if he didn’t realise it.

He took in her damp, clean face that stared up at him in naive grace. Her eyes gazed right up at him into his soul, seeing past every defence he had tried to throw up against her, everything unintimate between them gone as she soaked away the blood.

“Sometimes these things just happen to people. Sometimes there is no deserve,” Marc said after a moment to chew on his words. His hands cupped her face gently, her eyebrows furrowing as his thumb wiped the wetness from her cheek that rolled down in a couple glistening bubbles. “You are amazing, do you hear?”

She was silent.

Marc, in what was possibly the most tender thing he’d done since he’d first met Layla, slowly leaned forward, his lips coming to rest on her forehead. Her eyes fluttered closed, a held breath exhaling on his clavicle, cold unlike the warmth of her cheeks.

He drew back, the scent of french lavender and vanilla invading his lips, tasting sweet on his tongue.

And yet the pit of guilt only sank in Dove’s heart at the gesture. The pit that devoured her every second of every day. She didn’t deserve his kindness, his sweet words or his saccharine kisses. Marc would hate her if he found out what she was, who she was. If he knew the reason she left home, left her brothers.

If he knew she was a murderer.

MCU

@blackcat420---69

KNIGHT IN SOHO TAGLIST

@shirukitsune @s-u-t @ahookedheroespureheart @willowseason @imonmykneessir @acceptedbyace @broadwaytraaaaash @mythicalmo @stevenknightmarc @avery8895-blog @fandombrackets @thelostlovedone @raythecomputerart @nyctophile-moon-child d @unknownduck0 @emily-roberts @cheshirecat484 @lockleywife @strangeobsessed @thebestrouge @0bsessedwithfictionalcharacters @dumbhxeredrose @badbishsblog @jvexoxo @sxftie-mari @mythical-goth @cillmeslowly @seraphimcollections @katboops @kmhappybunny240

PERMANENT TAG LIST:

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[wellenklavier]

everyone’s always like “ohh using someone else’s shower is sooo hard lol” well why don’t we talk about how driving a different car is the most harrowing experience on this earth. what the fuck does this button do and how quickly can i reform the man-machine mindmeld i had with my other car so i don’t turn us both into scrap metal

#thought occured to me while driving my moms massive boatlike car #i was scared. needed my compact sedan back #klavier.wav

[avvail-whumps]

‘guns for hire’ — uncharted territory #28

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content warnings: psychological whump, mentioned multiple whumpers, intimate whumper, manhandling, restraints, untreated broken bones, untreated injuries, forced to eat, punishments, past minor character death (and self blaming for it), manipulation to the highest degree man, stockholm syndrome, dub-con kissing (it’s technically consensual but...eh)

Leo wasn’t able to get even a scrap of sleep or rest. No matter how exhausted he was, with his mind straining from the sheer weariness, the throbbing pain in his fingers ripped any sort of relief from him. 

The concrete was cold and uncomfortable on his ribs. He hadn’t moved from that spot against the wall, curled up and shivering, his face damp with tears and drying blood. His fingers had gone a deep red, angry and sweltering with pain, enough that it brought Leo to dry tears anytime it would begin to swell. 

The pain made nausea press against the back of his throat, but Leo had already emptied any last food out of the contents of his stomach, so luckily he didn’t have to worry about the idea of throwing up. 

That same, harrowing sense of depression began to sink its claws into him. It was torture in of itself just being down here; the single dim bulb hanging over the chair, the bleak, crusted walls blocking him in from every direction. The alignment of terrifying tools on the walls only seemed to make his mind bend with horrible images and scenarios. Keeping him paranoid enough to not want to fall asleep. 

It wasn’t like he could anyway. 

Clammy, cold sweat clung to his forehead, a cold shiver wracking through his bones. Leo wanted any form of comfort, Roy’s jacket wrapped securely around him, but there wasn’t anything to cling onto. Not a single scrap or crumb. He was horribly alone down here, with the terrible events replaying in his mind. 

Guilt stung his stomach. Michael. 

God, the man had only been trying to help. He had picked Leo up without question and was helping him back to safety. If he’d never heard his car, then maybe Michael would have never been killed. His mind cruelly reminded him about the photo on the sun visor. The one where he stood smiling beside a red headed woman. 

Leo pinched his eyes shut miserably. 

That could have been his wife. His friend, his sister. Michael would have a family waiting for him back home, or god forbid any children, and Leo had got him killed. Remorse settled deep within his chest, settling there like a parasite. 

He swallowed heavily. His throat was dry. Too dry. It must have been hours since he’d been dragged down here; maybe less. The basement was like a tortuous vacuum, warping any sense of time he might have had. Unable to even sleep, he was left feeling utterly hopeless and small. 

Through his crusted eyelashes, Leo blinked hazily as he heard the sudden screeching of metal. His heart lodged in his throat and his stomach sank to his feet, head lifting up from the ground. It caused his vision to swim slightly, black spots guarding his vision. His joints popped uncomfortably as he unfurled himself from his position, watching Roy enter the room. He shut the door behind him, noticing a bowl and cup of water in his hands. 

Leo instantly licked his lips. He eyed the water with an aching throat, the air like ash with each unsteady intake. The man’s hair and clothes were slightly damp, and he wondered if it had been raining outside. 

Rain. God, Leo would do anything right now just to feel the rain on his skin, the pleasant wet smell lingering in the air. Roy shook off the little dew drops, setting down the bowl and cup to pick up a roll of duct tape as well. As he approached, he tore a long strip open, tearing it off with his teeth. 

Dread pooled into his stomach. 

“Roy?” Leo croaked, fearfully staring up at the man once he got closer. 

“Stay still,” he ordered, grasping his arms and pulling them behind his back. The duct tape wrapped around his wrist, before he took the roll and began to pin his forearms together uncomfortably behind his back. A quiet whimper escaped his lips, but Leo biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself quiet. He was dreading making any of this worse for himself. 

Roy brought over the bowl and water. He set it on the ground, and with a churning stomach, he realised it was porridge. A horrible sense of déjà vu swept over him, trying to swallow down the bile at the back of his throat. The man tilted his head, brow cocking after a few seconds of intense silence. 

“Well?” He hummed. “Aren’t you going to eat it?” 

Leo’s head tilted back, meeting his eyes in a mix of fear and confusion. His bottom lip wobbled open. 

“But…But my—” 

“Don’t tell me you’re getting picky now, lion,” Roy drawled, a hint of frustration in his tone. His arms were folded over his chest, cold gaze pinning him down. “Are you being ungrateful again?” 

“No!” He blurted, frantically shaking his head. “No, I-I’m not. I promise, Roy. Please, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, I swear…” 

The man let out a curt sigh. His fingers were suddenly winding through his hair, scalp screaming at the ruthless tugs. Roy shoved his face into the bowl without a care, hand pressing uncomfortably on the back of his head. Leo gagged against a face full of mushy porridge, the food almost suffocating him, but Roy’s grip was unrelenting. His back was arched painfully from the position, scuffed knees digging into the concrete ground. 

Only when he felt like he was losing air did Roy finally grant him mercy. 

His head was jerked up violently, a pained gasp escaping his throat as he desperately gulped in enough air as he could possibly manage. He could feel the lumps of porridge smeared around his mouth and nose, spluttering. Roy’s face was twisted into a small grimace. 

“Please, stop,” he wheezed, his breathing ragged. “I-I’ll eat it, I promise. I’ll do it…” 

The mercenary hummed, yet he let go of his hair. His scalp throbbed, but he bit back burning tears in his eyes. Leo took a moment to suck in a shaking breath, not daring to even twist the duct tape in case he bashed his already throbbing fingers. His glossy eyes flickered up to Roy, who was watching him intently with a dark, awaiting expression on his face. 

A burning shame crept through his heart. 

He shifted on his knees to try and relieve the crippling pins and needles, but it was useless. Even as he leaned downwards, his back arched in a way to stop him from falling, Leo’s cheeks flushed in humiliation from the embarrassing position. The porridge was knocking him sick, the urge to scrub it clean off his face completely overwhelming. It was hard to get any food in his mouth like this. Not unless he made a complete fool of himself, which was exactly what he had to do. 

It only took a few minutes before Leo’s stomach was going queasy, and he struggled to lean back. 

“Please, I can’t…” He broke, eyes welling with tears. “I-I think…I’m going to be sick.” 

Roy scoffed, and soon Leo found his head being shoved abruptly into the bowl of porridge once more. “Are you really going to waste it?” He sighed curtly. “Because you aren’t getting another one.” 

The secretary squirmed slightly, but he knew there wasn’t anything he could do. He hesitantly let his tongue dart out, licking the remains of the porridge from the bowl with a queasy stomach. Roy’s fingers were cruel and tightly fisted in his hair, nothing like what he would usually do. Right about now, those fingers would have gently been carding through his hair, and Roy might have even been praising him for doing a good job. 

The tense silence, and only the sounds of eating was making tears run down his face. He was tired of all the rough touches that brought him nothing but pain. Why was Roy doing that now? Even after his initial escape attempt and the agonising whipping that had come after it, Roy would still hold him and whisper sweet nothings in his ears. Leo really needed that. He needed it more than anything, and it felt like it was breaking his heart in two. 

The touch left him once he was finished. Leo choked on a little sob. 

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, his shoulder shaking. “I’m really sorry, Roy.” 

He hated the fact that he meant it. That there was sincerity in each word he produced. Because Leo was sorry; he should have never ran in the first place. 

Roy wasn’t looking at him, instead moving the bowl away. 

“Please,” he whispered shakily, choking on a wet sob. “Please, I-I need you.” 

That got him looking. 

“Need me?” He repeated, eyes narrowing slightly. “What you did just showed the opposite, lion.” 

He frantically shook his head. “I thought you were going to hurt my dad,” he choked. “I-I wanted to stop, I swear, I-I wanted to go back, but I was so afraid that you were going to…that my dad was gonna—” 

His chest collapsed, and he melted off into incoherent murmurs and whimpers as Roy gripped his jaw in a bruising grasp. He poured water into his mouth, a good amount of it spilling down his chin and chest, before he was wiping away the now cold porridge from his face. Leo relished in the contact as much as he could, but it didn’t last long, like tiny little scraps for a starving lion. 

“You’ve been really bad, you know that?” Roy murmured coldly. Leo hiccuped, frantically nodding his head before he had the chance to even think. 

“I know,” he whispered quietly. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” 

“And you got some poor sod involved too,” he sighed, shaking his head in disappointment. He was crouched down now, arms resting on his legs as his eyes bore into him intensely. Leo wanted him to reach out, or do anything to ease his aching heart. He was almost annoyed at himself for locking himself away when he did, when he’d become so used to garnering Roy’s affections after so long of being hurt by the other mercenaries. After how long he’d genuinely missed him. “You do understand he’s dead, right?” 

Leo weakly nodded his head this time. “I-I know. I didn’t mean to…to…” 

“Didn’t mean to do what?” He frowned. “It was your fault, lion.” 

He’d told himself that. Over and over again, and it still made a stab of pain slice through his feeble heart. Michael was dead because of him. 

“I know,” he choked, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. More salty tears leaked down his face. Roy tilted his head, his frown deepening. 

“What was that, lion?” 

“It was my fault,” he sobbed, head hanging slightly as he struggled to steady his hyperventilating breaths. “I-If I hadn’t asked for his help, then he’d be—” 

“Alive?” Roy cut in cruelly. “Yeah, lion. He would be.” 

“I killed him.” 

His voice broke off, the horror in that statement sinking straight to his core. If only he had never been able to fight off Roy, then maybe Michael could have found his way to wherever he had been initially headed. He could have reunited with the red headed woman, and he might have continued to live a fulfilling, happy life. Leo had ripped that away from him, and nobody would know what happened. 

“These are the kind of things that’ll happen if you break the rules,” Roy pressed, seemingly uncaring about the broken expression on Leo’s face. “Isn’t that right, lion?” 

Leo bit back a sob, nodding his head. 

“So you understand why you need to be punished?” He questioned, making his clumpy eyelashes flicker open slightly. “Because I’m not doing this because I feel like it. I’m doing this because you broke the rules. You only have yourself to blame.” 

He numbly nodded his head again. 

“I know,” he whispered. He had always known, really. He only had himself to blame, and blame he did. His eyes hesitantly flickered upwards, sucking in a ragged breath. “I promise I’ll be good.” 

Roy’s lip twitched into a slight smile. “Say it like you mean it.” 

Leo swallowed the lump in his throat. 

“I’ll be good for you,” he whimpered. “Only you. Please, I-I just want to be good. I’m tired.” 

He was tired of fighting. He was exhausted down to each little cell in his body, and no matter what he tried, no matter how many times he attempted to go home, he knew it was never going to happen. He didn’t have anything left in him to try. 

“I know you are, baby,” the man hummed, his voice taking on a softer tone. His breathing almost hitched, pulse thumping against his skin at the different nickname. “That’s why you have to do one last thing for me, okay?” 

Leo nodded his head eagerly.

“Those lot are leaving by the end of the day,” the mercenary informed slowly, and Leo’s heart skipped a beat at those words. “But I’ve promised them twenty minutes with you before they go. To do whatever they want, within reason, of course. That’s your punishment for what you did.” 

His bottom lip quivered open, but he didn’t say anything. A shock of horror flashed on his face, cultivating a look of amusement on Roy’s to match. The idea of being alone with the mercenaries again was making dread pool into his stomach. For twenty minutes. 

The man’s eyes softened, and his head tilted in this alluring way. “That was why you ran away, wasn’t it? Because they gave you a hard time?” 

Leo stared at him. His mind wrapped around those words, viciously sucking them into his thoughts before he had the chance to think for himself. The other mercenaries had caused the most damage, that much he believed. That much he knew. At least Roy cared for him. At least Roy was kind and didn’t beat him within an inch of his life for no discernible reason other than sick torment and pleasure. At least Roy held him when he so desperately needed it.

He opened his mouth, but the man beat him to it. 

“Or did you also run away because of me?” He murmured gently, a feigned look of pity on his face. “Because if that’s the case, lion, then I’d have to have twenty minutes with you too.” 

“No!” Leo cried, shaking his head frantically without thinking. “It wasn’t because of you! I-I couldn’t stand being alone with them anymore. Roy, please, you have to believe me. I only need you, n-no one else.” 

“Again with that,” the man chuckled, his eyes running over his face for a brief moment. Leo sucked in a sharp breath, subconsciously leaning forward when he reached out to cup his jaw. He seemed to instantly melt into the touch, leaning keenly into it. He was warm. Warm, and gentle, like he might break. His thumb gently brushed against his lip, and Leo’s ears flushed red. Roy tilted his head, something gleaming in his eyes that was making his spine shiver. 

“You say you need me,” he murmured quietly, the sound like a pleasant rumble in his stomach. “Why don’t you show me exactly how, lion?” He paused, shrugging his shoulders. “If you want.” 

Leo swallowed, his lip quivering under his touch. He hadn’t realised he was so close, his words like a tempting fruit just in reach of his greedy fingertips. There was a distinct, rapid banging in his head, and Leo realised in shock that it was the sound of his own heartbeat. Simple touches suddenly weren’t enough. He felt like he could hardly think, so maybe that was why he slowly leaned forward, and gently placed his lips on Roy’s. 

The man didn’t move, only breaking apart not even a second later when Leo winced backwards slightly, as if realising what he’d done of his volition. 

Because you wanted to, his mind hissed, clouding the judgement that was struggling to breach through the thick padded walls. You know you wanted to. 

The mercenary’s quiet chuckle dragged him from his poisoned thoughts. 

“Well,” he grinned. “Not what I had in mind.” 

Leo’s eyes widened. “It…wasn’t—?” 

His breathing instantly picked up. The last time he’d done something like that, it had been because he was willing to do anything to avoid punishment, thinking it was what the man wanted. Roy’s eyes had looked miffed and angry back then, shoving him away after a fraction of a second their lips touched. Now, Leo had genuinely done it willingly. He felt a horrible sense of loathing for himself for kissing that man of his own volition, and not even to get out of a punishment. He was terrified he was going to be angry again. Like he’d made another mistake. 

“But, lion,” Roy purred, yanking him from his destructive thoughts. The hand under his jaw slipped back so he could swoop down and kiss him, taking him by surprise. His words were breathless against his lips. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

His hand pressed against the back of his neck, and Leo allowed himself be drawn closer. A sudden hunger hit him, and when Roy went to deepen the kiss, the secretary eagerly let him without a second thought.

tag list – @unorganisedalienrubbish @d-cs @rabidrabidme @sordayciega @burningkittypoet @whumpawink @mannerofwhump @suspicious-whumping-egg @welcome-to-the-whumpfest @whatwasmyprevioususername @crilex29 @firefly017 @dutifullykrispyland @wibbly-wobbly-whump @there-will-always-be-blood @anonintrovert @justawhumpjunkie @whumptastic-world @ha-ha-one @whatwhumpcomments @whumpterful-beeeeee @anonymous1235 @sonder35 @unforgiven235 @whumpasaurus101 @mj-or-say10 @professional-idiocy @seaweed-is-cool @theelvishcowgirl @atomicsandwichprince @sunshiline-writes

#guns for hire #whump #whump writing #whump series #whump fic #whump tropes #whumpblr #whump community #whump scenario #whumper #whumpee #leo and roy #stockholm syndrome #writing #my writing #avvail whumps #oh leo #getting into a dangerous game here #although its not really his fault 🤭 #roy is so mean #but he also has a soft spot #can't blame him

[grandgrief]

The last time Nero clashed with Androth, it had been somewhere during the 1700s. Androth would not allow him to face another, and as was his advantage, he commanded his fellows among the ranks of the musketeers to intercept him and his would-be opponent.

A damning thing for one so fresh from the harrowing reveal of first death. All Nero had to his name was an inherited short sword and its sheath, and he fled for fear of being accused as a demon in masquerade from his own home. Learning with the times how to falsify his identity and the arithmetic of its lifespan.

Then, it was 1991.

The game of immortals was underway as it had been for centuries. And even those who sought to avoid it one way or another could not help but take notice of "The Gathering," for all immortals could detect each other. An inescapable buzz that refused to pinpoint the presence, and the unprepared would soon lose their heads.

"You've made it this far because I am not dishonorable. Let the last of the musketeers live to old age, you did. I got to say goodbye. And no doubt you've become a richer bounty!"

Nero still had his old blade tucked away inside his trenchcoat, or perhaps a masterful replica kukri. The slight curve of the short sword caught Androth's cavalry sabre, a wider thing than the pinpricks of his flexible épée in days long past. The two had elected to do battle at a junkyard in the morning, under grey skies. The owner of the lot knocked unconscious on the way in to prevent police intervention.

"Your devils ought to take you already, you cocky bastard."

Androth clambered up a hill of car scrap as Nero cursed at him, hoping the height advantage would help, on top of his superior reach. But this time Nero had no qualms with a few major injuries, anything short of dismemberment. Something he hesitated to endure in previous combat.

Yes, Androth could see it: no longer was he facing easy pickings. Another immortal had taken Nero under their wing, taught him how to wield his sword, to complement the inner buzz that warned of other immortals with keen induction so as not to mistake and murder mortals in a hurried fright before retreating to the nearest holy ground. And victories granted growth.

And then, while fending off the cavalry sabre again with his sword-arm, Nero's free hand caught Androth by the ankle, and he yanked him back. The two went rolling down the hill of metal refuse, Androth's ribs shattered by collision with an engine block, and Nero bouncing off of a car seat into the ground. No time to sit and heal: He limped after Androth, catching his sword-arm by the wrist and bringing his own blade down onto the one point that would halt him forever: The neck.

*KTH-THULCH!*

The severance meant the duel was finally ended. The cavalry sabre fell to the ground. Lightning crackled: A storm was not meant to occur for at least another hour. Nero just shut his eyes, never able to fully embrace the sheer chaos of... The Quickening.

Sword gripped firmly while he levitated slightly above the ground, the electromagnetic anomaly ripped through his very being, leaving him a howling host. Glass shattered, and manmade electrical sources would spark, if not exploded outright. To the victor, an immortal would gain their opponent's power and knowledge. Something to help them on their way towards claiming the ultimate Prize.

But once his feet were back on the ground, all he could think of was to take the cavalry sabre as a keepsake, and to run before anyone spotted him there.

#[drabbles] lies r us #//highlander AU...!! #[ic] activation

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

The Duchess Of Sussex has discussed the trope of ‘the angry black woman’ in the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast. Meghan who – allegedly – has been characterised by royal aides as a “rude bully”, says she finds herself “cowering and tip-toeing into a room” because she worries about how she might be perceived by others. Interesting. I’m sure Harry was principally attracted to her because she was a “rude bully”. Not! This reminds me of a group of black, female wine lovers, who were on the Napa Valley train, excitedly looking forward to a holiday of wine-tasting (and buying!) What happened? They got thrown off the train because some white people said they were making too much noise and destroying the sanctity of the Napa Valley experience. This is very ugly cultural warfare. It’s not your way or it’s not your style, so you shut it down!

Temporary traffic lights are the bane of everybody’s life. Sometimes they’re necessary? Sometimes they’re erected just to cause frustration and misery? Manor Park Road is a crucial road than runs through Harlesden. Cars come off the North Circular with the express purpose of getting on to the Harrow Road and down into Central London. The 18 bus carrying people from Sudbury to Euston station has to come down Manor Park Road. Right now, during rush hour, we don’t just have temporary traffic lights, we have temporary paralysis and many non-productive hours! On Monday, I went to pick up The Trouble from the station and, after 15 minutes, I called her and said, “I can’t get to you! Start walking home!” I then tried to get home. No joy! The side roads and the side roads off the side roads were jammed with cars trying to get out of traffic. Our son called to say he’d been stuck on Neasden roundabout for 20 minutes! Just when you thought life couldn’t get any worse, the boss of some construction company makes it worse!

On Tuesday, WhatsApp went down for two hours and approximately two billion WhatsApp users lost their mind! And now they want answers from Facebook owners Meta! Show me a business that runs smoothly 24 hours of every day, 365 days of every year. It doesn’t exist. Show me a person that is totally efficient 24 hours of every day, 365 days of every year. Do me a favour!

University bosses have come under fire after they stopped using students’ names for their emails and usernames because it is not ‘inclusive’. The practice has been scrapped for reasons that include people changing gender part way through their course, the University Of York said. No, this is not a joke.

This time last Thursday, I said, don’t worry about Cruella Craverman. She’ll be back in an influential job in no time. And, lo and behold, Fishi Ballsack has appointed her Home Secretary and that really tells you all you need to know about him. If he’s endorsing pain, torture and cruelty, creating a functioning economy is probably not top of his priority list. Cruella doesn’t just want to restrict your human rights; she wants to deport you! As in every authoritarian state, dissenters are dealt with!

Yesterday’s status and comments was again dominated by farting and, as I listened to Luther’s ‘Never Too Much’ on Mi-Breakfast, I was amused by the lyrics. What if Luther sang, “ Woke up today, looked at your picture, just to get me started/The beans last night were very tasty but I almost farted.”

Have a throbbing and thrusting Thursday (with hopefully a few thrills through your thoroughfare?) I love you all.

#mixcloud #mi soul #dj #music #new blog #lockdown #coronavirus #books #weekend #democracy #brexit #cronyism #election #autumm

[onlyexplorer]

Britain's cheapest electric 'car' that tops 28mph is now available for £20 a month

Britain’s cheapest electric ‘car’ that tops 28mph is now available for £20 a month

Between rail strikes and record fuel prices, getting to the office has become one of the most harrowing parts of the working day. Electric cars are cheaper to run but still have a high initial price, which rose this week as the government scrapped its £1,500 subsidy. For those who don’t feel like braving the elements on their motorbike, the new Citroën Ami will take you to and from the office on…

View On WordPress

[rhino-scrap-car]

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[jacobfreddie1005]

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#Scrap my car Harrow On The Hill #Scrap car salvage Harrow On The Hill

[adamworu]

Recently someone got the Blu-ray version of 3.333 and that has the storyboards of 3.333. Some patched up a few of those minutes here. There’s quite a few things that didn’t make it in the final cut and they go from heartwarming to subtly unsettling to downright terrifying. Some of the later scrapped concepts feel like a completely different beast. They’re way more on-brand with OG Eva! Because these feel more faithful to the original series in how they’re handled, some of the imagery shown below isn’t for the faint of heart.

(warning for body horror under the cut)

One of the most warm, most talked about moments from these storyboards is Kaworu and Shinji’s close moments together. These boards expound a bit more on these characters’ relationship dynamic. One of these has Kaworu and Shinji in a car together. 

It’s a warming scene with a slight tinge of foreboding knowing that these Evas were made for furthering Impacts during Shinji’s absence. Seeing this many Evas introduced in great numbers never fails to chill me to the bone. If you look closely, there’s even more Evas being stored (second picture: an Evangelion is actually being sent and loaded somewhere). Eva 3.33′s unnerving atmosphere has been cemented by noxious hellscapes caused by Third Impact. 

Kaworu’s DSS Choker appliance scene was handled a bit more differently.

In the final version of this scene, Kaworu takes the choker, in more accepting way. He alludes to Lilin’s fear of him as the reason for the device’s inception, but takes in upon himself to save lilinkind. Kaworu sheds that enigmatic front here, showing more emotional openness in these boards. There’s a deeper subtlety in this choker appliance board alone. Kaworu knows once again that he must play the martyr. There’s a sort of tiredness in his eyes from those many failed timelines. Those harmful cycles that were, will be again.

He’s tired of being the sacrificial lamb.

The scene with the spear retrieval treats us to some up close horrors (note the Rei).

Rei’s appearance in 3.33 was already unsettling enough (a large Rei with hollow, bleeding eye sockets), but the boards ramp that up with seeing Rei in various states of pain. Note the anguished Rei in the first of these pictures. 

Shinji’s absolutely writhing when Unit-13 impales itself via the twin spears. There’s something about the way in which Shinji aches here that vaguely reminds me of the psychological angel sequences of the original series. There’s a mix of fear and terror, accentuated with the character’s gruesome bodily contortion.

One of the biggest differences in these comparisons is the location of Unit-13 during the retrieval.

Buildings. The one toward the right is partially destroyed. Likely implying civilization or perhaps what’s left of it.

With each Impact that happens, the human population wanes more and more. Seeing these buildings after the mass casualty from Impacts is in and of itself something unsettling. The Evas from the Kaworu car scene make an appearance here as well. These armored beasts that have been conceived at the expense of humanity are amongst civilization. 

This also makes the outcome of the retrieval even more harrowing. 

We get another shot of a sad Kaworu in these storyboards, crying instead of smiling and uttering “We’ll meet again.” before the choker detonates. 

Kaworu comes back...but in spirit. He shows Shinji the very jarring aftermath....

3.333 actively crosses into up-close body horror territory and perhaps the most graphic of Kaworu’s wounds.  When Shinji is shown these wounds, he naturally recoils in nauseated, abject horror to the sight of the detonation. 

Kaworu is no stranger to gruesome deaths, and when we do see them, they’re far away, with the extent of the death being insinuated. Kaworu’s crushed and decapitated in episode 24 as well as Sadamoto’s manga. Kaworu’s demise goes from far to upfront and center, from the sickening to the downright visceral. Ode to Joy plays throughout, there’s no bittersweet song while the world slowly sinks to even more of a hellscape.

Kaworu’s spirit has more involvement here. In the final cut, he’s only shown when Shinji is ejected from Unit-13.  

Mari arrives, ready to open fire.

The ejection scene is a bit longer, too.

As Shinji is ejected from 13, he drifts from Kaworu briefly and Kaworu reaches out to him. There’s a sense of sadness that hits Shinji, that this may be the last time they may see each other again.

Mari opens fire and the shots find their mark. What’s left of Kaworu’s chest is a core shaped like a human heart.

These storyboards are a goldmine of scrapped content in Eva, traversing more into personal horror territory than the final version. 

Even though I wonder why these weren’t put in because they were on-brand with Eva, I can understand why these contents were scrapped from the version we saw. Eva often highlights the horrors of humanity: the series has already covered the personal horrors aspect. That’s probably why it’s darker, because the audience has gone through adolescent anxieties or the sometimes contemptible nature of humanity in a microcosm.

Rebuild horror is more environmental. We see red toxic landscapes because they were caused by Evangelion. It still borrows the concept of the sometimes contemptible, but it’s more quelled.  We not only need to be kind and empathetic to each other, but also to the world around us. If you hurt the environment, you hurt its people.

#neon genesis evangelion #kawoshin #kaworu #shinji #nge #body horror #body horror warning #correct me if i'm wrong

[argyrocratie]

How difficult it is for a child to have any real independence of attitude could be seen in our behaviour towards Flip. I think it would be true to say that every boy in the school hated and feared her. Yet we all fawned on her in the most abject way, and the top layer of our feelings towards her was a sort of guilt-stricken loyalty. Flip, although the discipline of the school depended more on her than on Sambo, hardly pretended to dispense strict justice. She was frankly capricious. An act which might get you a caning one day might next day be laughed off as a boyish prank, or even commended because it ‘showed you had guts’. There were days when everyone cowered before those deep-set, accusing eyes, and there were days when she was like a flirtatious queen surrounded by courtier-lovers, laughing and joking, scattering largesse, or the promise of largesse (‘And if you win the Harrow History Prize I'll give you a new case for your camera!’), and occasionally even packing three or four favoured boys into her Ford car and carrying them off to a teashop in town, where they were allowed to buy coffee and cakes.

Flip was inextricably mixed up in my mind with Queen Elizabeth, whose relations with Leicester and Essex and Raleigh were intelligible to me from a very early age. A word we all constantly used in speaking of Flip was ‘favour’. ‘I'm in good favour;’ we would say, or ‘I'm in bad favour.’ Except for the handful of wealthy or titled boys, no one was permanently in good favour, but on the other hand even the outcasts had patches of it from time to time. Thus, although my memories of Flip are mostly hostile, I also remember considerable periods when I basked under her smiles, when she called me ‘old chap’ and used my Christian name, and allowed me to frequent her private library, where I first made acquaintance with Vanity Fair.

The high-water mark of good favour was to be invited to serve at table on Sunday nights when Flip and Sambo had guests to dinner. In clearing away, of course, one had a chance to finish off the scraps, but one also got a servile pleasure from standing behind the seated guests and darting deferentially forward when something was wanted. Whenever one had the chance to suck up, one did suck up, and at the first smile one's hatred turned into a sort of cringing love. I was always tremendously proud when I succeeded in making Flip laugh. I have even, at her command, written vers d'occasion, comic verses to celebrate memorable events in the life of the school.

(...)

Before Flip one seemed as helpless as a snake before the snake-charmer. She had a hardly-varying vocabulary of praise and abuse, a whole series of set phrased, each of which promptly called forth the appropriate response. There was ‘Buck up, old chap!’, which inspired one to paroxysms of energy; there was ‘Don't be such a fool!’ (or, ‘It's pathetic, isn't it?’), which made one feel a born idiot; and there was ‘It isn't very straight of you, is it?’, which always brought one to the brink of tears. And yet all the while, at the middle of one's heart, there seemed to stand an incorruptible inner self who knew that whatever one did — whether one laughed or snivelled or went into frenzies of gratitude for small favours — one's only true feeling was hatred.

- George Orwell, “Such, Such Were The Joys”  (1947)

#George Orwell

[amerrierworld]

Babysitter (pt 9)

Thor (Ragnarok) - fanfiction

Pt 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 

Summary: A Loki interlude.

Characters: Hela, Loki

Word Count: 2,111

Warnings: Idk, swearing?

Loki was incredibly annoyed at the current situation. 

He’d woken up on a random, clunky spaceship with a pounding head and a bruised neck. He remembered the world going blank and being quite certain that he’d been dead until, frustratingly so, his lungs gasped for the most painful breath he’d ever taken. 

A janky pirate ship had snatched him from floating in space amongst the debris, stripped him of his armour -no doubt to sell or melt down into other knick knacks- and left him in the back amongst the cargo. They’d presumed he was dead, so when he had woken up, they had a bit of a shock. 

Not a word was comprehensible, Loki couldn't understand whatever gibberish language they spoke, so he ignored them and shuffled to their food supply. That got him a whack on his back from a whip and a kick to the back of the knees. 

Trying to take back his armour also earned him a few bruises. They didn’t seem very dangerous, but quite a nuisance. 

Amongst the cargo he found familiar debris that struck an icy chord inside Loki. There were piles of Asgardian clothing- ripped and filthy, but Asgardian nonetheless. Bags with very few belongings, and metal scraps of the ship they had been on. 

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the remainder of the ship of refugees was probably lost. When the pirates began to beat him again for rummaging through their stuff, a rusty old pipe amongst the stolen goods helped quiet them down immensely. 

With his kidnappers knocked out, Loki scarfed down what measly rations they had and set course for Earth at light speed -well, the closest speed they got to light speed which was more like a quick paced jog. 

He tied up the crew and tossed them in the back, and lounged in the cockpit as the ship traveled on autopilot, picking scraps of food from between his teeth. 

Communications on this ship were absolute garbage, he concluded. There was barely any signal and he couldn’t figure out where the closest planet was. So, he took a nap, ate some more food, and tried not to think too much about the harrowing experience of Thanos choking him to death.

Hours later, they entered a very familiar atmosphere. Loki let the ship crash-land, grabbed a bag of few supplies and hopped out just before they hit the ground. 

He marched on through the thicket of trees where they landed. Angry shouts that were no doubt curse words echoed from the smoking ship as he left them behind and tried to gather his bearings. 

An old cabin was the first building he saw. With a rusty dagger at the ready, he inspected the home around the back, looking for a vehicle he could take, something to get him moving faster than his legs, when suddenly a high pitched shriek nearly shattered his eardrums.

A young girl, no older than six, was staring at him with big brown eyes. Rain boots covered in mud, an aged stuffy in her hands. Loki put his finger to his lips, dreading that he was going to have to kill the girl before she gave him away or screamed bloody murder. 

“Daddy! There’s an Avenger in the yard!” she sped off towards a shed, where there was a light on inside. Loki’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. Whatever outcome he was expecting, this was by far the worst. 

“I’m not- fuck.”

He shoved the dagger away and out of sight and stomped towards the shed, fuming with annoyance. He was about to go off at the man for letting his daughter talk to random strangers and how he certainly was not an Avenger, but the man in question had a large saw in hand and about 200 pounds of muscle to carry, so he snapped his mouth shut. 

“Oh, hello there,” he said, his daughter bouncing about the workshop. “What brings one of you all the way out here?”

“And where exactly is out here?” Loki asked.

“Canada! What, you superheroes never been to Canada before? Always hanging around New York, eh? Are you taking a trip or something?”

“No. I, uh, crash-landed here.”

“From space?” the girl piped up, gawking.

“Yes, from space,” Loki said through gritted teeth. “Fighting angry aliens.”

“I told you, Daddy! He’s a hero!”

“I bet you’re trying to find your way to America, then? Lord knows why, there’s all kinds of weird things happening around town nowadays.”

“What do you mean?”

“Half the world’s gone! Poof! Just like that, some alien business I bet.”

“Are you going to save us from them?” his daughter asked again. Loki sighed.

“I’ll try my best. Now, can you please show me how to get to New York as fast as possible?”

The lumberjack’s husband took Loki and his daughter in his jeep and drove a merry long way to the nearest airport. On the way, the little girl asked him all sorts of questions about the Avengers, that he could only half-answer.

“Is it true Thor is super powerful?”

“Well. He's not that powerful. He just uses a hammer. Anyone with a hammer can use it as a weapon and suddenly be considered powerful.”

“I wish I had a super powerful hammer. Then my brothers would stop teasing me so much.”

“Hey,” her second father softly scolded.

“They’re mean!”

“Sibling feuds? I know the feeling,” Loki muttered.

“Do you have siblings, Mr. Avenger?”

“Sure do,” he smiled wryly. “Absolute bullies.”

“Me too!”

“Hey now, let our guest settle down a bit,” her dad said. “She gets a little excited around new people, so sorry.”

“It’s no problem.”

“The local airport’s just up here. It’ll take you to Detroit, and then you gotta get a connection flight to New York.”

“Thank you,” Loki said, genuinely.

“Why are you going to New York, Mr. Avenger?”

“To find my siblings,” Loki sighed. “At least, one of them should still be there.”

“But they’re mean to you?”

“Yeah,” Loki pondered as the car came to a stop. “But they’re family. I suppose.”

-

A few cunning lies and disguises later, Loki was suddenly landing in New York, amidst chaos. It had been a few days since he’d woken up, and apparently a few days since what they call the ‘Blip’. Humans clearly don’t like having their realities altered. 

Your home was abandoned. Alfred didn't even greet Loki at the door, and no amount of pulling and prying opened it for him. The lights were off, and he feared the worst.

It wasn’t until he was in the streets and overhead muttering about some crazy goth lady terrorizing a nearby street that Loki thought he had finally found something.  

He marched down the street until, to his surprise, he found Hela sitting hunched on the side walk, scowling and daring anyone to come close to her. She looked incredibly tired and disheveled, but her eyes were clear and angry, and recognized her idiot brother immediately. 

“What the hell brought you back here?” Hela snarled. 

“A toddler’s wisdom, if you’ll believe it,” Loki said, ignoring her glare as he sat down next to her. 

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks. So do you.”

Hela grumbled. 

“Have you eaten?”

“Since when did you become Mother? I don't need your help.”

“Really?” Loki picked up a filthy scoop from a pile of three ice cream tubs that were fully devoured. He dangled it from his fingertips for a moment, pulling a face. “I think you do.”

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Glad to see you too, sister.”

Silence. Hela really did look like shit, Loki noted. Her hair was mussed, and there were rips and broken pieces in her armour, reminiscent of the time they’d met. She had to be weak not to bother fixing it with her powers, or was just too preoccupied to even think to fix it. 

“Where’s Y/N?” Loki asked. 

“Beats me.”

“Did you kill her?”

Hela’s eyes snapped to his, a sudden fire in them. “How dare you say that?”

“Well, her home is abandoned and no one answered the door, and you’re here  cowering like a criminal. One makes conclusions.”

Something changed in her expression, and she turned her body to face him. “Abandoned?”

Loki frowned, “yes. Didn't you know?”

“No- I.. I’ve been here, the last time I saw her...” 

Hela jumped to her feet, nearly kicking Loki in the process. “That bastard, he took her, didn’t he? Him and his awful, forsaken pieces of shit he calls friends.”

“Who?”

“Our darling brother,” she spat. “He came in and- and threatened me, and then took her from me.”

She paced in front of him, green fire trailing behind her heels, hot with anger. She had expected you to come find her, take her back to your home, make her feel safe. But when you never came she had assumed you had abandoned her. Now, knowing Thor had taken you instead, filled her with rage.

“Where does your little posse hang out, hm? Some supposed secret lair? A great big castle in the sky?”

Loki blinked at her, at her sudden outbursts, at the scared glances from passerbys, and didn’t know what to say.

“Fine then, I’ll get her myself,” she growled, turning away from him. 

Loki nearly let her walk away, let her walk into whatever doom she was getting  herself into, but with a groan and a mad realization, he knew she was the only one he could rely on right now.

“Wait,” he said, reluctantly, hurrying after her and grabbing her arm. “You can’t just go running off. Tell me what happened.”

Hela spat at his feet. “I don’t need to tell you anything.”

“You care about her, don't you? Y/N? Why else would you want to ‘rescue’ her from our brother?”

“Be silent,” she hissed.

“No, no, I’m right, aren’t I? You care for her, but you messed up, and now you have no one on your side. That’s why you left, and that’s why Thor had to take her.”

Hela yanked her arm away before Loki could see her face, but he knew what she felt; remorse, and loss. 

“Tell me.”

And so, reluctantly, knowing she had no other choice, Hela sat him down, this time on an actual park bench rather than the ground. She told him what had happened, how her mistrust had turned to affection for you, and how Thanos had destroyed everything in the end, and how the Avengers had fought her out of fear.

“I know the feeling,” Loki agreed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watching an elderly lady feed a bunch of pigeons as if nothing drastic had happened to the world the past few days. 

“And now I don't know where she is, and she probably hates me, but who am I to blame her for that?”

“If I know anything about Y/N, is that she cares about everyone, but it takes a lot more to win her love. She doesn’t hate you. She’s just afraid. I mean, you did after all break her window and run off into nowhere.”

Hela stayed quiet, made an annoyed sound in her throat, and looked away.

“I’m starving, how did you get all that ice-cream? Why not an actual meal? Or were you just eating your feelings?”

“Y/N doesn’t like it when I kill people, so it was either massacre the street or steal their dairy products,” Hela bristled. 

“Fair enough.”

“Now what, hm? You come out here, seemingly from the dead, chastise me for messing up, and now judge my diet? What do you really want, Loki?”

“Not sure, to be perfectly honest,” Loki said. “I thought I was dead, and then I wasn’t. Frankly, my priorities are shifting.”

“And what is your current priority?”

“Getting you back to Y/N so you stop moping around and fix this.”

“And how do you suppose we do that?”

Loki grinned, standing up. His armour shimmered and regained its full glamour; horned helmet and deep green cloak. 

“Taking notes from me, are we?” Hela grumbled. Loki glared at her.

“I was wearing this look long before you got here. Now, get up, we’re going to infiltrate the Avengers and give you your romantic happily-ever-after so you stop being such a pain in everyone’s neck.”

“You think we’ll just be able to get in? You really are as mad as Father was.”

“I’ve broken into quite a few places over the years, I’ll have you know. I’m the God of Mischief after all.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Hela stood, her own armour strengthening again. 

“Shut it.”

A/N: Loki is not dead! I know he’s technically alive in an alternate universe or whatever.. but I wanted the Odin Trio to be together sooooo here we are. Let me know what you think!!

taglist: @midnight-lestrange​​ @cheerfullyvenomous​ @germansarechill​@gaylorrds @amii-nyc​ @waitingfortheendtocome​ @novakitten0901​@marvels-writings​ 

#hela #hela x reader #hela/reader #hela x you #hela odinsdottir #thor #thor ragnarok #thor ragnarok fanfiction #loki #loki odinsin #marvel #mcu #marvel fanfiction #cate blanchett #tom hiddleston #best siblings amirite #wlw #lgbt #merry writes

[whumpiary]

whumptober 2020 | day 1: let’s hang out sometime

[content warning: discussed past self harm, referenced past abuse, mild dissociation/depersonalisation, intimate whumper]

-

There's something harrowing — gut-wrenching — about seeing a grown man cry. It's almost painful. Just watching someone with utter poise and dignity let it slide and crash because they don't care anymore who sees them crumble.

It's enough to make the one watching crumble a little, too. Just a little. It doesn't even matter what it is that they're crying over. A loved one in a hospital bed. A job that came to an end too quickly. A lost pet. Some spilled milk.

A boy strung up in the middle of their parlour, hands high above his head, barely standing where he's chained.

Christopher sobs silently, one hand clamped over his mouth as the other grips the edge of the desk he’s leaning against like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. He had started tearing up as soon as he’d started taking away Cass’ clothing: a soft little gasp as he caught sight of the first scar, and then growing grief as more skin was exposed.

The first sob took the man over as the last scrap of clothing fell away and he’s been braced against the desk since. Shoulders softly shaking, eyes squeezed shut. As though he can barely stand to look at the boy in front of him without being overcome.

Cassius is cold. He registers it dimly. Distantly. This body, right now, isn’t his own. His senses seem to know that, relaying everything from a distance. Like hearing the radio from someone else’s car. Like watching the TV in the reflection of a window. 

The cuffs around his wrists cut in and his calves are starting to burn and his lungs ache from breathing against stretched out ribs and he also doesn’t care about any of it. He’s back here again. A whole new cycle that he always knew, not so far below the surface. And every scar across his body is a road map of a world that Cass already feels like he never escaped to to begin with.

Christopher  brings his hand to Cassius’ cheek and as though on muscle memory, Cass leans into it.

“My darling boy,” the older man whispers. His eyes are tear-filled still, searching Cass’ own desperately, as though for some sort of answer. Cass has none. “My darling, darling boy. What have they done to you?”

Cass holds Christopher’s gaze and for a moment wants to share with the man the entire history of the last few years. Every secret. Every truth. Give them up. Give them over. Undo. But he feels muzzled. Gagged. Like his lips are sewn shut.

There’s nothing to say. There’s everything to tell. 

“I’m so sorry, Cassius,” Christopher says. His hand skirts over the scar near his shoulder, the one down his arm, the one at his ribs. Like a fucked up dot to dot. “I’m so sorry. If I had known… My god, darling boy, if I had known…”

Cass nearly laughs at that. He would have what? Bought the company just to win his contract back? Stolen him away? Killed Tucker with his bare hands? Or would he have shaken the man’s hand and given him a bonus? Asked to sit in for the next blood letting?

Christopher starts with the obvious.

“This one,” he says, pads of his fingers tracing the gnarled, raised scar along Cassius’ ribs. “Tell me about this one.”

“Got stabbed,” Cass mumbles. His mouth feels full of cotton wool. “Job went wrong. About a year in. Maybe later. Can't remember. Had to have surgery.”

Christopher sucks in a breath, deep and shuddering, covering his mouth on the exhale as another silent tear slides down his cheek. He brushes his cheek dry again with his knuckles and takes another breath to calm himself, lowering his head. For a moment, his hand sits heavy on Cassius’ hip, as though he needed it to steady himself. Cass rocks back on the balls of his feet just barely and the man’s grip seems to tighten in kind, keeping him still and close. 

They stay just like that for a moment until Christopher manages to collect himself, fingers pressing to the bridge of his nose, drying his eyes with a sniff. He drops his hand from his face to trace the scar again, breath stuttering. Cass feels seasick with the the touch. A dragging back of forth over scar-tissue he can’t quite feel properly.

“The scarring is terrible,” Christopher says.

Cass closes his eyes for a moment. If he imagines enough, the cool, dry hands are warm and steady instead. They’re firm and sure instead of claiming and caressing. They’re pulling him back together, stitch by stitch. The memory is such a sacred indulgence, he has to shake his head a little to clear it again.

“Yeah, they... fucked the stitches,” he says, voice croaked. “Had to get it redone.”

Another shaking breath. Another sniff. Cass keeps his eyes lowered. He doesn’t need to see the grief.

“Well that surgeon deserves to be fired.”

They go on like that. Christopher touching each scar, having him name and catalogue them, one after the other.

The thin one over his bottom lip. “Bar fight.”

The short thick one at his collarbone. “Lab test.”

The nick up by his brow. “Beat down.”

The curving long one down his arm. “Don’t remember.”

There are a few like that. More than he’d have expected. The burn on his arm. The glossy skin on his knuckles. The twisted one at his knee. Don’t remember. Don’t remember. Don’t remember.

And Christopher in between, mourning each one. Touching them, pressing his hand to them as though he could will the scars healed with his grief. Christopher has to keeping taking breaks for more tears and sobs. Like over, and over again he’s realising what he’s lost. Of what he once had. What he’ll never have back.

“My God, what have they done to you, darling boy?” He whispers it over and over again and over again. “You were so beautiful. So perfect. What have they done to you? What have they done?”

It takes them a while to retrace every new mark on him since Christopher has seen him last. The man is methodical and thorough. Scrupulous. Cass is almost startled by how many he finds. More than Cass would’ve discovered on his own, he’s sure. By the time they get to the last few, Cass can’t feel his hands. 

“I’m so sorry, my love, I know you’re tired,” Christopher says with a kiss to the cheek, a hand cupping his jaw. His eyes are filled with sympathy and apology. As though he isn’t the one who’s doing this. As though this is some necessary procedure instead of his own predilection. “We’re nearly done. Last ones.”

Christopher holds Cassius’ gaze as his hand drifts low, skirting a decent gathering of little scars at his hip, over his thigh. They’re smaller, these ones. Harder to see. Only a shade or so lighter than his skin these days but piece by piece, bit by bit, they stack up, start to look noticeable. Little fine nicks and cross hatches, some raised, some flat, all faded.

“These ones here. The lab again?”

Cass drops his eyes. He stares at them for a beat, stares at what he can see beneath the man’s hand anyway, before looking back to Christopher.

“No,” he says. He feels a thrill to say it. “Me.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Excuse me?”

“I did those ones myself.”

A beat. “I thought we broke you of that little habit.”

And they had. For a while. – You’ll be hurt on my terms or not at all. – But Christopher should’ve known it would be one of the first things to resurface once he was out of reach. Why shouldn’t it be?

Cass smiles at the older man, eyes dead. “If it helps, I thought of you every fucking time.”

Which isn’t true entirely but shit does it feel good to say it.

The slap that flies hard and brutal across his cheek feels good too.

“Don’t you do that to me,” Christopher says, after a moment. His voice is soft and quiet and sad. Shaking with what was maybe a little anger. Funny. It was rare to see Christopher show that card. “I’m hurting badly enough today, I don’t need your cruelty on top of it.”

Cass keeps his head turned, staring at the arm of the leather rancher’s sofa beside him. His cheek burns, hot and tingling with the blood rush, as Christopher’s hand trails up and to his shoulder. As the man steps behind him, both palms pressing at his shoulder blades. At his back.

“And these?” he says. Cass’ eyes shutter closed, breath all at once catching high in his chest. Christopher’s been saving these, he knows. The crosses and lines on his back. One after the other after the other after the other.

Cass can’t answer to these. He can’t say. Can’t bear to. And, by some virtue of generosity, by some kind of twisted, fucked up grace, Christopher doesn’t make him. “He gave these to you?”

It takes him another minute. A long, hard minute of trying to breathe. Christopher allows him the mercy of the hesitation. And then, shakily, he nods his head.

Christopher sucks in a shaky breath as his palm presses to the scarring and Cass can tell he’s crying all over again. The sob shakes down Christopher’s arm, into his hand and hits like a jolt of electricity through Cass’ spine. It feels like it shakes his

“My God. This is cruelty. This is… this is cruelty.”

And Cass could laugh at that. He really could. After everything, everything this man has done. After everything he’s put his head through and his heart through and his body. This is cruelty, is it? Finally, this is cruelty.

Nah, it’s not cruelty. He wants to say. Penance.

He’s glad the words don’t actually make it past his lips.

Christopher’s hand runs across them over and over, again and again, and the feeling is so strange, so tender, so violating that Cass finds himself pressing his face against his arm and screwing his eyes shut, as though to hide. Skin then scar then skin then scar. Numbed then felt. Hot then cold.

Every trace of the crosses feel like he’s being stripped bare. As though with every caress, Christopher is peeling away a layer of numbness, a layer of armour, an exoskeleton. The world is like a burning thing without it all.

Cass hangs his head, arms still stretched up and aching, and he sobs, voice pulling out of him in a broken whisper. “Please stop.”

The plea seems to bring Christopher to the surface of whatever grief laden fascination he’s lost in and the man circles in front of him, hand cupping his cheek, thumb catching the tear that slides down it. Christopher’s tears mirror Cassius’ own as the man presses their foreheads together and Cass is sure they look a lovely picture of grief.

Shared martyrdom. Saint and saviour.

Maybe the man should have crucified him instead.

“I’m so sorry, Cassius,” Christopher whispers again, and Cass cringes and cries and keeps his eyes shut. “If I had known… I promise you, if I had known…”

It’s a mercy beyond measure that the man never finishes the sentence.

#whumptober2020 #no.1 #let's hang out sometime #oc #fic #self harm tw #dissociation tw #referenced abuse tw #cassius #christopher #return to whumper #possessive whumper #intimate whumper #nell does whumptober

[putas-in-suffering]

Nuestro Planeta

Pairing: Angel Reyes x Female Reader/You

Summary: You come to terms with the man Angel is and all that he can’t give you. 

Warning: NSFW 18+ only please! Explicit smut, oral sex (female receiving), unprotected vaginal sex, angst to last a lifetime

Word Count: 4.1K

A/N: @negansdirtygirl22 & @irrelevantwriter are back to give you a very angsty, very emotional, very moody Angel/Reader fic with a side of smut. Our inspiration and title comes from the song “Nuestro Planeta” by Kali Uchis (its a whole ass mood and bomb ass song). Angel is our precious baby, but we were really in our feelings with this and asked ourselves many times “who hurt you” while writing it. We assure you, we are in fact fine. We promise to bring the fluff next time. Hope you all enjoy and share with your friends! Feedback is the preferred drug for our addiction and greatly appreciated 💖💖

You made your way through the crowd of inebriated strangers, savoring the warmth of bonfires lit throughout the scrap yard. Ezekiel had invited you, only saying it was a big night for Angel and the club. And so you found yourself in this place that seemed like another world— another facet of who Angel was away from you.

In private Angel was everything you’d ever wanted in a man, walking that perfect line between a duality of extremes, hot and cold, tender and rough. It was a lethal combination, one that left you yearning for more of something you knew he could never offer you. It was only in serene moments laying awake in bed, caught in a tangle of limbs that you felt like he was solely yours. Moonlit confessions and hollow words, witnessed only by the crickets serenading the night before the cruel morning came, taking the darkness and Angel with it.

The thunderous revving of engines in the distance startled you, thick plumes of dust rising into the air as you approached the steps of the clubhouse. You saw a few familiar faces, smiling at EZ in passing before stopping dead in your tracks when your eyes finally settled on Angel.

He had been promoted to Secretary of the club, the blonde woman perched on his lap sewing on his new patch. You watched, feeling like you were being gutted as his hands slowly wandered up her thighs, tears stinging your eyes as he looked back at you with an icy glare before returning his attention to the blonde. He inched his face closer to hers, their lips meeting in a kiss that twisted your stomach in knots, the bile rising in your throat keeping the tears at bay as you fought back the urge to retch, unsure if you felt more enraged or betrayed.

You wordlessly walked up to EZ, took the bottle of liquor from his hands and brought it up to your lips.

“Hey-, whoa…” EZ attempted to greet you, but was cut off by your abrupt need for intoxication.

The liquor stung your throat and the sudden rush of tears didn’t help. The sour taste only added to your nausea, your whole body feeling warm from both the alcohol and humiliation. You tried hard to keep the sob threatening to spill out inside. The last thing you wanted was for either Reyes brother to see you cry.

“You okay?” EZ asked cautiously, arms already outstretched in case he needed to steady you. The sweet gesture made you hastily wonder what would’ve happened if you had instead fallen for the younger brother rather than the one who currently held your bleeding heart in his careless hands.

“I’m fine.” You assured him, though it was unconvincing. Your voice broke and your eyes naturally found Angel through the crowd. He was talking to Bishop, a look of boyish glee crossing his features as his president congratulated him. Your fingers tightened around the bottle, your anger and hurt running so deep that you felt you could crush the glass with sheer force.

EZ caught your expression and who it was directed at, hearing him release a disappointed sigh. You knew that sound well. The prospect and you shared the same sentiments when dealing with the elder brother. For as much as Angel made you blindly happy, he also ripped you apart savagely, his own insecurities sabotaging any real chance at true joy. It was a fight you’d been fighting for far too long, and yet you continued to do so.  

“You know he cares for you, right?” EZ whispered softly, his hand taking the bottle from your hands. You let him, no fight left in you.

A sad smile crossed your lips as you met EZ’s warm gaze. “But it’s not enough, is it?”

The question clearly caught him off guard, a response not readily available. You took that as an answer and started to dig in your pocket.

“What are you doing?” He sounded panicked as you pulled a ring of keys from your jeans and began walking to the gate to where you’d parked your car on the street.

“Home.” You replied simply. He was following you, but stopped just short of running into your back when you turned to face him. “Tell Angel I’m fine. Tell him I was tired and went home. Do not say anything else. Okay, EZ?” You demanded, unwilling to let EZ be the middle-man. If Angel cared he’d call or follow you. You didn’t need his younger brother to do your bidding.

“Alright.” He finally agreed with a single nod of his head. You could see the worry and what looked like pity in his eyes. The sight made you sick.

“Thanks.”

“Wait, lemme take you home.” He called as you continued on without him, ignoring his request.

“I had one drink. I’m good.”

And with that you were gone, leaving the crushing weight of abandonment and desolation behind. No one came after you.

You’d survived the drive home without breaking down, the weight of the world finally collapsing as you closed the front door behind you, Ezekiel’s words replaying heavy in your mind.

“You know he cares for you, right?”

You scoffed at the sentiment, a part of you still holding onto the notion that Angel had the capacity to care, but deep down you knew. You knew that you didn’t fit into his world, that he kept you at arms length to shield you from the all-consuming darkness, afraid that it would snuff out your light.

In his eyes you were untainted, the only pure thing left in his life that had become so marred in violence. Being with you washed away all the blood and grime, your baptismal warmth absolving him of all his sins. It was only when things felt too perfect that he pulled away, hoping that you would tire of his bullshit and leave, the persistent voice in his head telling him he wasn’t good enough for you to begin with.

His insecurities drove him to hurt you more times than he’d care to admit, each time making him more callous and distant, each time chipping away at your resolve. Still, you remained loyal to Angel and it killed him.

You didn’t bother turning on any lights as you dragged your body into your bedroom, snagging a bottle of tequila from the shelf in passing. Every bitter swig was in vain as the memory of Angels lips on another woman remained vivid, the pain still harrowing and tears overflowing.

As if the thoughts of him weren’t enough, you felt your heart sink at the sound of a rumbling engine coming down the street, silently praying it would drive past. Deep down you knew it was him, having heard his bike enough times to memorize its distinct sound, you body responding to it out of instinct. It came to a rolling stop in your driveway, your heart beating wildly now, anger blending with anticipation as his heavy footsteps reached the door. He knocked harder than he usually did, a hint of aggression behind it that made you roll your eyes indignantly.

You entertained the idea of making him wait outside, maybe not open up at all, but your addiction to Angel was too strong and as much as you hated to admit it, he was the only person you wanted to seek comfort from, so you opened the door.

His dark eyes looked you up and down, taking in the runny mascara staining your cheeks and the bottle of tequila clutched firmly in your hand.

“Look, that shit back at the clubhouse,” he started, hands nervously tucked into his kutte as you let him into the house.

The sound of his voice was grating, your anger bubbling dangerously close to the surface and after every horrible thing he’d done, you still wanted him— badly.  

He looked stunned as you approached him, stopping inches from his face, your eyes devoid of the softness he’d come to love.

“Shut the fuck up, Angel,” you spat full of venom before kissing him roughly.

He grunted, returning your fervor, tasting the salt from your tears and the liquor on your tongue. You dropped the bottle, unconcerned with where it landed. You gripped his hair instead, pulling at the roots. He grunted against your lips, signaling he’d felt the sting of pain. You took pleasure in that.

His ringed hands grasped your hips as you walked each other back to your bedroom, your bodies knowing the path by heart. You collapsed on the bed, your limbs entrapping him against you.

“Wait-, we need to talk…” Angel said between kisses, his facial hair leaving a delicious sensation in its wake. It was one you were used to and one you longed to feel over and over again.

“Nothing to talk about.” You mumbled against his lips. You were done with the talking. Nothing ever came of you and Angel talking....in fact, it only got worse. You just wanted to feel. To feel anything besides the anguish you were consumed by.

Your hands removed his kutte and began unbuttoning the flannel he wore. Your fingers had gone down this route many times before, your body completely and utterly attuned to his. His own hands were tangled in your shirt, wanting to remove the garment completely. You lifted your upper body, allowing the piece of clothing to clear your head and sail across the room. You tore his own shirt from his torso, consumed by desire and fury. Logic no longer resided here. You were fueled by pure want; the yearning too much to ignore.

His mouth trailed down your neck as you arched into him. His tongue tasted your flesh, the heat radiating off him making you feel dizzy. His hips pushed yours into the mattress, feeling the hardened outline of his arousal against you. The notion only made your hunger for him soar. Your hands drifted to his belt buckle, your energy focused on releasing him from his confines. His mouth continued to move across your flesh, marking you, though for what purpose you weren’t sure.  

“Fuck,” He cursed once your frenzied hand met his heated skin. You moved as best you could, wanting him to get lost in you as much as you got lost in him.

His mouth traveled down your body and over your bra-clad breasts. He pulled the cups down, exposing you to his feverish tongue. Your fingers threaded back into his thick locks as he suckled at a nipple, your thighs clutching him. You were both moving carelessly, your excitement fueling the moment, as it often did. You back bowed off the bed as he bit down, the sensation making you see stars behind your eyelids.

“Angel…” You moaned, urging him to consume more of you.

His hands palmed your breasts as he continued his way south, his lips dancing over your stomach and belly button. His dark eyes caught yours, but you refused to keep contact for long. You pushed him down, coaxing him to continue his exploration. He relented, though you could see the displeasure in his face. He knew what you were doing. Knew that you were fighting hard to keep the moment physical. Knew that you were rejecting the thought of something more. And it was all because of him.

Angel’s hands undid the button on your jeans and pulled them down your hips. You helped him to remove the restrictive clothing, pleased to be moving the moment along. You bit your lip as his calloused fingers danced over your lace panties, the throbbing of your lips becoming downright uncomfortable.

“Don’t tease.” You admonished, angling your hips so that his finger caught your clit. A moan escaped you, your body surging forward to repeat the action.

Angel’s mouth landed over your cloth-covered slit, his tongue dancing against your opening. The fabric slipped inside of you, baring yourself to him. His tongue darted out to taste you, pulling more of your slick from the confines of your internal walls. You threw your head back as he moved the panties to the side and feasted on you, his whiskers making you hiss as a result. You gyrated against his mouth, feeling the fuse starting to ignite within you.

“Right there.” You pleaded, forcing his face further into your opening. You widened your legs, wanting him to practically melt into you. His tongue and fingers worked in tandem, knowing the exact motions to make you soar into space.

He was relentless as he continued to fuck you through your first orgasm, letting you pull and scratch at his hair and shoulders. You bit your lip as your hips rolled with each wave against Angel’s mouth, hating and loving that him and only him knew you so well.

Your chest heaved with quick breaths, the beating of your heart thundering against your ribcage. The moment never lost momentum as he ripped your panties down your legs, your bra still haphazardly attached to your body. You readied yourself as he hovered above you, his hand between your bodies as he positioned himself at your primed entrance. You thrust up and into him, signaling what it was you wanted. You dug your nails into his back in case the message was missed.

It wasn’t.

He pushed in, the sensation making you whimper as your body persuaded him in deeper. He groaned lowly in your ear, forehead pressed tightly against your cheek.

“Jesus,” He breathed, his tone indicative of just how much you overwhelmed him.

He didn’t move at first and the longer he sat still, the more reality tried to crash around you. You forced the emotions aside and took charge, clenching your walls around him in a vice grip. The action made him fist the sheets beneath you, an animalistic moan leaving his lips. Only then did he start to move, the passage of him eased by your immense appetite.

It was needy and desperate with a hint of something deeper...something more meaningful. It was always like that. It was what kept the two of you coming back. Angel could satiate his sexual appetite with anyone at any time. You could too, though you rarely indulged in that. The reason you two were pulled together was that specific something no one chose to name. It was that underlying power and longing that was always present, but never acknowledged. You knew what it was and you were sure Angel did too. But neither one of you ever said the words. You guessed it was too painful. He was afraid of feeling that strongly for someone. You were afraid of someone never feeling that strongly for you.

And the cycle continued on, perpetuated by the insecurities of two lost lovers.

He brought his hand up to your throat, holding it with a reverence that broke your heart, vulnerability sneaking up on you so forcefully you had to turn away from him. You couldn’t bring yourself to look him in the eye, afraid of what you would find there if you did, afraid of falling into your old ways when it felt so inevitably over.

“Look at me,” he pled between throes, a sadness breaking through his voice that made you forget just how heartless he could be.

You felt the mood shift as your eyes met the deep brown of his irises, the weight of things left unsaid suddenly feeling unbearable.

“Angel…” you murmured, your eyes speaking volumes when words had failed you.

It was like a punch to the gut, his heart suddenly feeling heavier in his chest. He wished he could be the kind of man you deserved instead of the coward who was afraid to admit how much you meant to him. It was easier that way, it kept you safe and though it pained him, that was enough.

You could feel him begin to pull away, hating that he only gave you so much when you’d always given him everything. It left you pathetically starved, desperate to tear down the impenetrable walls he put up.

You pulled him down in a delirious kiss, no longer interested in anything he’d have to say, good or bad, his hesitation burning like salt on an open wound. He swallowed your anger and tasted your rage, accepting it as penance for every awful thing he’d done to you, every brutal drive of his hips atoning for what he was sure to do in the future.

Angel felt your urgency, your need to feel anything but the pain, both of you chasing the same blissful end. You dug your nails into his back, leaving deep indentations, your teeth baring down on his lip until you tasted the metallic tang of his blood on your tongue. He let you take from him as you pleased, letting your catharsis fuel him to fuck you deeper, kiss you harder until you were both numb.

His pace quickened, two thick fingers finding their way past your swollen pout, his dark eyes swallowing you whole. You rolled your tongue around them, his grip on your jaw firm, girthy rings cool against your skin. He knew how close you were by the way your legs tightened around him, your moans becoming less graceful with every deep stroke.

He pulled his saliva soaked fingers from the warmth of your mouth, moving them down your body to work tight circles around your clit. The added stimulation had you arching off the bed, pussy clenching around him as you gave yourself over to Angel one last time. You brought him down with you, his name falling from your lips like a prayer and a curse, hating and loving him all at once.

In that fleeting moment nothing else mattered, it was only you and Angel, broken and battered, flesh and blood. It was the only time the walls ever came down, soft words sounding especially cruel once reality sank in, the indulgence feeling transient and hollow after the fog had cleared.

He laid above you, head nestled in the crook of your neck, hand cradling your face. It was almost too overwhelming, the same force that brought you together now viciously tearing you apart.

A lone tear escaped and made its way down the side of your face, falling back into your hair. You hastily wiped it away, but Angel caught the action. His lips danced over your neck, his hand easing your mouth towards his. It was an attempt to kiss the pain away, to ease the ache. It was a feeble one. Even with him still inside of you, he was never fully with you. He was never fully yours. No matter how much you tried to tether yourself to him, he always found a way to sever the tie.

“Angel,” You sighed against his insistent lips. You gently pushed at his shoulder as you shifted beneath him. You knew his swift exit was coming; you were just trying to beat him to the punch. It always hurt just a little less when you initiated the coldness.

“Fuck.” He cursed loudly, head collapsing against your shoulder. “Don’t do this. Not this time.” He whispered desperately, hands back to cradling your face.

He forced you to look into his eyes, the glossy sheen of them making you pause. He was visibly upset, his face showcasing the inner turmoil that lived inside him. It was enough to make you break...for a second. Then the flames of rage began to burn, reminding you of the kind of man he was, despite his words.

“You should go.” You insisted, slipping from beneath him and adjusting your bra. You found your panties and quickly pulled them up your legs. Angel was already sitting up with his pants fastened, flannel unbuttoned and hanging from his shoulders. His kutte was clutched in his hand, his hair disheveled and out of place from his normal slicked back style. You reached for your robe lying carelessly on a nearby chair and secured it around your waist, feeling far too exposed with Angel’s stare burning into your flesh.

“You really want me to leave?”

It was a loaded question and one you were not prepared to answer, despite your words only moments before. You didn’t want any of this. But it was the only thing he could give you and you’d reached your limit. As much as you cared for Angel, the energy he drained from you was immeasurable. How long could you both really go on like this. How much more rejection could you take, knowing he wanted to give you more but couldn’t. It was a cyclone of toxicity and devotion that kept you both whirling, unable to remain on solid ground. And it had to come to an end.

You didn’t answer, instead choosing to walk towards him. He watched you closely, his defeated expression making you want to turn away. You cursed his abilities to make you second guess yourself, the overwhelming need to please him trying to take hold. You ignored it.

You caressed his face, feeling the way he leaned into your touch. He was desperate for warmth and yet he didn’t know what to do with it when he got it. You tried hard to commit every line and curve of his face, forcing yourself to come to terms with this being the last time. You could feel your heart breaking in your chest, feel it starting to ache for the excruciating goodbye that was coming.

“Querida…” He breathed, hands resting on your hips and bringing you forward. It was a plea for mercy.

Your fingers tangled in his hair, feeling his forehead resting on your stomach. “You know we can’t keep doing this.”

His grip on your hips tightened, as if physically rejecting your words. You heard him sigh heavily before he brought his gaze back up to yours. “Yeah, I know.”

You could see the hint of something else splayed across his features. There was an obvious need to verbalize, something Angel didn’t often do. So you waited, unsure if you were prepared to hear what he had to say.

“You know I care about you, right?”

The words were a punch in the gut. They sucked the air from your lungs and tightened the invisible hold on your heart. You’d been plagued by those words all night, a victim to the romantic idea of Angel caring just enough, but never more. It was pitiful. You knew he cared, in his own way. You didn’t need to be reminded. Because that sentiment didn’t do a damn thing except highlight what he couldn’t give you.

“But it isn’t enough.” You replied dejectedly, mirroring the words you’d spoken to his brother only hours before. You swallowed the tears that threatened to escape. You didn’t expect anything from him once you said those words and you were right. He looked away, unable to face what he’d done. What you’d both done.

Instead, in hopes of saving the moment from complete and utter despair, you held each other. Your bodies always had a way of voicing what neither one of you could. So, you let them. You let his hands graze your curves and his head rest on your stomach, his lips leaving an errant kiss behind. You caressed his hair and face, soaking up the feel of him. There were a plethora of unsaid emotions dancing in the air, but they went ignored. You only focused on the present, continuing to not let reality burst the bubble.

The distant alarming of a car shattered the mood. You broke apart, Angel standing and adjusting his shirt and kutte while you pulled the knot of your robe tighter. He followed you down the hall and towards the front door silently, his heavy footsteps echoing in your ears. You reached for the handle of the door when he stopped you.

“You mean a lot to me. More than I can really say.” He waited for you to respond, but you didn’t. There wasn’t anything to say. His placations no longer had the same effect they used to.

He leant down and placed a soft kiss to your lips, the longing palpable.

“Bye, Angel.” You whispered once he’d pulled away. The moonlight peered in through the curtains, highlighting his thinly veiled regret. You looked away, taking a page from his book.

He smiled sorrowfully and then kissed you gently on the forehead. “Goodbye, preciosa.”

He was out the door and gone within seconds, the engine of his motorcycle shaking the entire house. You listened as it glided down the street until it was a faint rumble in the noiseless night. Angel was gone, and it was meant to be forever. But you knew there was a high possibility neither of you would heed the hurt. He had a key to your heart and to your house, and he would do with those things what he wanted.

#angel reyes x reader #angel reyes x you #angel reyes fanfiction #angel reyes fic #mayans mc fanfic #angel reyes #mayans mc #mayans mc fx

[tambourgi]

tagged by the wonderful @ithvka

three ships: iiiiiii have not been super into fandom for A While because I kind of got burned out by the Old Bad Days of tumblr, and I also have terminal “they all seem nice” disease wherein I don’t commit to anything, because any time someone makes a case for their ship i’m like “oh, seems legit” ad nauseum.

last song I listened to: “bang” by AJR because both of my siblings are very into AJR and I am both 1) trying to Support Them and 2) it slaps and it’s a very fun song and features the MTA voiceover man.

currently watching: currently catching up on dimension 20′s Unsleeping City after lapsing over the holidays/during my move. and then gf watches Critical Role and it’s been fun to secondhand watch it. we are maybe going to start the witcher approx. 500 years after everyone has seen it but, y’know.

currently reading: JUST finished Gideon the Ninth, have just ordered Harrow the Ninth because i have had a hell of a time getting sucked into things so i’m gonna try and follow this thread as far as it can go. also reading the Dungeon Master’s Guide because I am about to DM my very first D&D session!

how it’s going: off and on, you know? recently did the big move i had planned for spring of 2020 (totally cross country and indeed out of country--east coast MA to Vancouver BC) and it’s been... surreal. weird. my car (first and only car i’ve ever had, for about 8 years now) died the day i left home, and just got towed and sent to scrap, which has been harder than maybe it should be.

feels very out of time to be in a new place and yet not, y’know, going out. trying not to let the existential panic set in! i am very happy to finally be here and be with my partner but it’s also not in the way i had planned, but overall i am lucky and i am grateful for what i have.

tagging (only if you would like to!) @kardomahgangster @doglore @axforthefrozensea @pit-of-acheron @mondo-bitchin

#ask meme #pls just do it if u feel like it!!!

[hacash]

last man standing

summary: June 1947. After a particularly bad day, Meyer realises he’s the last one left.

-

It occurs to him, sitting out on the balcony in the sticky-sweet miasma of Miami heat, that there’s no-one left he can talk to about this.

Oh, he has friends – it’s funny how many people want to be pals with the little man when he, more or less, owns Cuba - and associates, and a wife, God bless her, asleep in the next room. Still, Meyer thinks as he pours himself yet another scotch, it’s not the same.

It’s not…the people who were there, they no longer…look, it’s one thing to know people now when you’ve made it, but the people who knew you then, still running in the Lower East Side, still reaching for it all…well, it’s just not the same, is it?

One by one, the old faces seem to melt away, and now… Well. People like them don’t plan on growing older, and if you don’t plan for something it never happens.

Fucking Benny. Never the world’s greatest planner.

Another scotch. Shit. He finds himself remembering, as if he were an old man already – alter kocher, comes Benny’s voice, and he nearly vomits over his shoes -  that afternoon down at Atlantic City, when the world spread out before him like some sort of fucking dream and everything was theirs for the taking. The big man, he thinks sourly to himself, your first time around the table like some kind of damn equal instead of waiting at the door for A.R. and Charlie to finish their yammering, and you thought nothing could possibly go wrong.

Look how well that little escapade went. In the long term, barely worth the trouble. Damn, they’d all been kids back then. Taking on Chicago, Atlantic City, New York, it’s all ours, gentlemen, the old way of doing things has passed – how long ago was that? Years; fucking years ago.

I thought I was invincible, and all my friends with me. I thought no-one could make me do anything I didn’t want to do ever again. Some fucking joke that turned out to be, huh? Look at where he is now. And there he was still…knees to the ground, gasping little immigrant kid, doing precisely what he didn’t want to do.

They were meant to be invincible. Look at them now. Jimmy Darmody, abandoned in an unmarked grave. Al had been barely recognisable as the man that ruled Chicago by the time they buried him, thanks to all that cocaine and his whores. Richard Harrow, the quiet one – Meyer remembers flicking through an ancient newspaper and finding out they’d found him beneath the boardwalk riddled with bullets. As for Mickey Doyle…well, he’d always said one day that man’s lip would get him in trouble, and Charlie proved him right.

(Benny wanted to come with them to Atlantic City back in ’21. Charlie had nearly had a fit at the idea. Jesus Christ, Benny had snapped, I won’t embarrass you in front of your new fancy friends; as far as dangerous goes, I’d like to meet the guy who can get the drop on me. At the time Meyer had thought it was funny.)

And Charlie? In fucking Palermo, of all places. What fucking use is he in Palermo? He doesn’t even like Italy, had been Meyer’s first thought when the news came, as if the elevated minds of the US government concerned themselves with where a criminal would like to be deported. He’s a New Yorker, not an Italian. He came from Sicily anyway, it’s a completely different land mass, you’re not even sending him to the right place. As if Charlie would have cared, all that shit was for the Mustache Petes who actually thought which village your grandfather was born in determined who you were as a man. But at the time it seemed important that they gave a damn where they were sending him. Recognised just who they were dealing with – not just shipping a parcel back to where it came from, whoops, wrong address, just toss it back to the post office with the rest of the scrap and let those dagos sort out the mess for us….

He’s drunk, Meyer realises – not just drunk, but wretchedly, miserably fucked, the sort of drunk he hasn’t been since Charlie’s deportation, or since they dug up A.R. in that alley outside Park Central. Sweat creasing over his skin, head reeling; maybe he was in better shape to deal with grief as a younger man. Maybe tragedy has a sense of timing, like some punk kid in an alley; wait until a man is nice and relaxed and stupid and thinks life’s going his way, then bam – over the head with a blackjack, and suddenly the world’s not the place you thought it was.

He’s in Florida. Charlie’s in Italy. And Benny…

And there’s no-one left who knows them as they were. That’s the thought that tears him apart from the inside. He’s spent so long crawling out from that tenement basement flat, dragging himself from the Lower East Side step by step, and now the thought of no-one knowing him as he was – as they were, hungry young men always searching for the future – nearly breaks him open.

Atlantic City. 1921. A memory flickers clumsily in him. The graceless twin impulses of grief and alcohol drive him to grasp for the telephone, cradle it as if it were a life preserver.

The operator says it’s an Illinois number. Funny that. Then again, Meyer wouldn’t have expected him to stay in New Jersey.

“Yeah?”

“Mr Thompson? Eli. It’s Meyer, Meyer Lansky. From New York.”

A clunk, the sound of someone shaking off the remnants of sleep. “For fuck’s – ” There’s a muffled burst of expletives on the other end of the line. “What the hell do you want?”

He finds himself spluttering, sniggering like a schoolboy in on the joke, because the bottle of scotch currently pickling him from the inside out finds it very funny indeed: ringing up some poor bastard – must be pushing sixty, sixty-five – in the middle of the night to unburden his soul like some Catholic kid with their, what-you-call-it, confessionals crap. Well, fuck you, he thinks cheerfully, you and your fucking brother, everything you did. You always wanted to survive above all else, well congratulations, you did it, which means you’re the one who has to listen now.

“My apologies. The late hour, of course,” he forces out, trying to inject whatever clipped good manners he used to rely on back in the day – anything to stop richer men, bigger men, from shooting him in the head. It was always a shield, but right now it isn’t working; his voice is shaking and Jesus, why does it feel like he’s dragging every word up from his guts? “I hope I didn’t disturb.”

“You’ve got no reason to call me. I’ve had nothing to do with the business since my brother…Fuck. My wife’s going to wake any minute. Why’m I even explaining to you?”

Good point. Why exactly is he on the phone to someone he hasn’t spoken to in over twenty years: save that it’s the middle of the night and his oldest friend is dead and he doesn’t know what time it is in Italy, and all he knows that if he doesn’t speak to someone who knew him as he was back in the old days, even as an enemy, he’ll go mad.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“I’m sorry, Eli,” he says hastily, tripping over the scotch. “For disturbing you, your wife, and all that. You’ll come down to Miami, my expense, isn’t that how you Thompsons used to do things? I just…” - his tongue’s running away from him and God, he’s so tired, when was the last time he slept? five days ago maybe, when he finally gave the okay to…to what happened – “Felt like talking to someone …and I just had some news. About an old friend.”

There’s a grunt from the other line. “I’ll bite. Who?”

“Benny. Your brother kidnapped him once, back in the day.”

A snort. “Bugsy. Little shit, I remember him. Nucky told me he was the screwiest little wiseass he ever came across. What about him?”

“He died today.”

Silence. Meyer hasn’t given the hows or the wherefores; still, maybe there’s something in their line of work that enables you to sense it, that dead doesn’t just mean the tragedy of a car crash or a sour bout of pneumonia. Sheriff of Atlantic City: probably Eli visited no end of widows to tell them that someone was dead, in that particular way. “My condolences,” he says finally. “But you fellas all sign off on that sorta thing these days, don’t you? Do it polite, civilised. So who gave the okay for Siegel to go?”

“I did.”

I did. Me. I thought I could hold them off for long enough, I got careless – kidding myself that as long as I asked, they’d listen. You thought you were a big shot, didn’t you? Benny could do whatever he wanted – spend other men’s money, fuck around in the desert, none of it would matter if you were protecting him. How many times did you tell him that? How many times did you lie?

‘Fuck’s sake, Ben. You’re a grown man now, you need to take some responsibility for what you’re doing out there.’

‘Christ, hocking me with this again? You’re worse than my mother, Meyer.’

‘I’ve been taking care of you for long enough. I’ll sort it, alright, but get it together.’

Big joke. Thinking you can do it all, and you can’t even protect your oldest friend. What does that say about you, Little Man?

Eli hasn’t spoken, he realises, for a good while now. Just breathing on the end of the line, like a death rattle.

“Jesus Christ.”

A half-laugh, contemptuous. “I don’t know him personally. Maybe you could put in a good word.”

“Huh. Well.”

“You’re right though,” the words come gushing out of him, the way they always do when Meyer’s frightened, or angry, or drunk, or all three, “we do keep things civilised. So when Benny started getting in over his head, borrowing big money and looking as if he wasn’t going to pay it back, well, we thought – I,” he gives a bitter laugh, “thought it could be kept from getting out of hand. So I talked, and I talked. And they listened,” another laugh, “for a while, at least. But the project – the hotel – he was putting together, it…well. Didn’t look as if it was going to pan out. You remember what the business was like, back in your day.” For a moment his voice turns sour. “Everything has to pan out right. And Benny. Jesus. There was no reigning him in one way or another. And everyone else was gunning for it, and I – ” Fuck. “I couldn’t see another way out. So.”

“Sounds like you did the best you could.”

“If I did the best I could Ben Siegel would still be alive,” Meyer spits, a hot line of anger running through his voice.

“Why aren’t you talking to your partner about this? The Italian one, the asshole?”

Good point. He has the number after all, there’s no excuse. Charlie ought to hear it from a friend. But that would involve telling Charlie what he’s done. Admitting that at the end of the day, he had no choice.

A sigh. “Alright then. Why call me?”

“Because you’re the only one left. I wanted to talk to someone… who remembers what we were. The work we did back then, with Jimmy and the others…” God, he doesn’t know where he’s going with this. Maybe he just wants to be reminded, even for a second, that there was a time when they was young and fierce and had it all still to come. “And you’re the only one who knows what this feels like.”

(Sitting there in Darmody’s ballroom suite, or near enough, in a new suite he’d had made that week and feeling like a fucking king – watching Jimmy hem and haw and feeling nothing but pitying contempt for this little schmuck who’d gotten in way too deep with no way of backing out. Eli’s voice, rough and cynical even then. Jesus Christ, just kill him.)

There’s a chill on the other end of the line. “You ought to watch what you’re saying.”

“I’m not judging you. I’d have killed your brother myself, given the chance.”

“Is there a point to this, Lansky?”

“The point is…” he feels himself sway, or rather slip, down below the depths of what is sensible or real, down into the mire; there are waters closing over his head with the truth that his oldest friend in the world is dead because he gave the all-clear for the trigger to be pulled, “when you’re the one whose back is against the wall and you can’t see a way out, and you say those words – and it’s your friend – how do you come back from that?”

“Think you already know the answer to that.”

He does. Doesn’t want to though. That would mean accepting the fact that matters have changed irrevocably, that outside forces have changed him against his will, and he’s powerless to stop it. He doesn’t like being powerless.

“Twenty minutes afterwards my associates took control of the hotel. One of them called me to say the Sidecars were the best he’d ever tasted.” Fuck, he wants to be sick.

“Get some sleep, Meyer. Then call your friend.” Eli’s voice is almost gentle, as if it were one of his kids calling up over a skinned knee or an ugly date. “Oh, and Meyer?”

“Yeah?”

“If I ever see you near my family again, I’ll gut you myself.”

The line goes dead. Well, Meyer thinks as he replaces the receiver, that’s fair enough. He doesn’t respect Eli for a hell of a lot, but he supposes he’ll credit him with that much: he knows how to be a father.

Sipping Sidecars in the Flamingo while Ben Siegel bled to death. And twenty minutes after you gave the order, he remembers, you were drinking at the Regent, because Moe Sedway invited you and you didn’t want him to see how rattled you were. How’s that for class, Little Man?

Would Benny have known? If they gave him time to think before that last bullet snuffed him out, surely he would have realised. Benny might have been reckless, but he wasn’t stupid. For him to be killed, the right people had to give the order.

Fuck. Fuck it all.

And he has no choice. Again, he knows precisely what he has to do. It’s out of his hands. Again.

Clumsily he fumbles for the telephone. Mutters his name when it’s finally picked up.

“Meyer? Jesus, what time is it over there?”

“Charlie.” He draws in a breath, closes his eyes. “We need to talk.”

#boardwalk empire #meyer lansky #eli thompson #benny siegel #my fanfiction #i don't pretend to have a fraction of the historical knowledge needed for this show #for the record i definitely know there were plenty of gangsters from meyer's old gangs who still would have been around at this point #but going strictly by show canon at this point is a little more fun #this literally came about from realising that for show!meyer at least after benny dies he really doesn't seem to have anyone else around

[itsclydebitches]

Car - Even after 6,000 years they still need a bit of a nudge. Maybe the Bentley can help with that.

***

Everything went to shit the morning Crowley parked the Bentley across from the shop, music blaring so loud that it shook the panes of every window a block down and drew him a record number of dirty looks. Crowley grinned at all the little humans, enjoying the feeling of hot metal against his arm and the vibrating base. When Aziraphale stuck his head out the door with a comically offended expression, well. Crowley most certainly enjoyed that too.

“Hello, Aziraphale!” he called. His voice had to rise past the capabilities of normal vocal cords to be heard.

“Turn that down!”

“Sorry?”

“Turn it down, Crowley!” Azirphale’s arms did a funny kind of pressing motion.

“Yeah, no, really didn’t catch that. You’ll have to speak a bit louder!”

Which resulted in Aziraphale puttering across the street to join him because the day his angel raised his voice above a gentlemanly reprimand was the day the world ended.

And as they now both knew, that was permanently on hold.

“Enough,” he growled, reaching across the steering wheel to press uselessly at all the knobs. Crowley shut the music off himself with a secretive snap. “Are you trying to deafen every one of my neighbors? Or summon the cops? Really, Crowley, the last thing we need is them poking about when I still have texts whose placement here I can’t exactly explain in writing. Do you want to tell them why there is a Georgian Bible without a paper trail?”

Crowley just grinned and set himself to the task of enjoying this interaction. It was all a little goldmine: Aziraphale’s arm pressed against his chest in an effort to reach the controls. How his hair lifted slightly at the tips because he tended to unfurl his wings when annoyed and even across dimensions those could produce a breeze. The way he still, after centuries, had no real idea how the police force worked. Yes, Zira. They’re going to respond to a noise complaint and then segue into breaking down your door, terrorizing a pouty bookshop owner purely for the fun of it.

...actually, that sounded like a lot of coppers Crowley knew. Maybe Aziraphale understood more than he gave him credit for.

“Sorry, angel. Just got real into that song.” Crowley wouldn’t have been able to name the song if his immortal life depended on it. He’d just let the Bentley pick whatever on the way here. “Up for a spot of lunch?”

It was their routine. A planned interaction that Crowley knew by heart and was thus safe to indulge in. He’d show up ‘unexpectedly’ outside the shop. Do something to invoke Aziraphale’s ire. He’d then spend a few moments memorizing his reactions like after 6,000 years there was anything left to learn (there was). Then Aziraphale would make his token protests, cave, and off they’d go. In the face of change—of the biblical sort. Of the “We’re on our own side now” sort—Crowley sometimes felt like routine was the only thing holding him together.

So something cracked when Aziraphale ignored his question entirely.

“Zira?” Crowley leaned out the window to get a better look. Aziraphale was now circling the car with a staggeringly guilty expression, hands twisting at the lowest button of his vest. Crowley was a second away from tumbling out and finding whatever had put that look on his angel’s face when he began to speak.

Not to Crowley though.

“I am so very sorry, my dear,” he said, seeming to address the Bentley’s hood. “I was quite cruel to you the other day, wasn’t I? Hardly sparing you a glance when you went up in flames like that. Yelling at Crowley to hurry things along. Oh... it must have hurt. Did it hurt? I’d imagine so. But please know that wasn’t at all an accurate representation of my feelings for you. Those were some rather extreme circumstances and I fear I was a bit out of my depth at the time. You see, I was forced to possess a woman by the name of Madam Tracy—a rather harrowing experience, all things considered—and there was an angry man pointing a gun at us, and the world was just about to end, you see, though I suppose you probably already knew that part—”

Crowley stared. Aziraphale was apologizing to his car.

Aziraphale. Was apologizing. To his car.

By the time he was done (finishing with a kiss to the front left light) Crowley had slithered down into his seat and was desperately trying to remember how to function.

“Crowley?”

“Hngg.”

“Whatever are you doing?”

“Suffering.”

“Suf—? Really. You show up here doing damage to all our eardrums and have the nerve to talk about suffering? Are you taking me to lunch or not?”

He’s perfect, Crowley thought, fumbling with his keys. He’s perfect and he just gave my car a more passionate love confession than I could ever hope to get.

If the Bentley seemed to have more of a purr to its engine that day Crowley chalked it up to his damaged hearing.

***

Scratch that, everything went to shit the day his Bentley realized they’d escaped the end of the world.

“It’s not alive,” a child had once told him, staring as Crowley yelled at the car for daring to stall on him. That was in the early days of their relationship. Winter of 1926, before they’d crossed many thousands of miles together, outrun other demons, discovered a shared love of music, had that wonderful romp across the Thames. Walking on water? Please. Try driving on it. Watch and weep, Jesus Christ.

That was far in the future though. Crowley had grown soft in his old age—really—and 1920s him wasn’t quite as forgiving. He’d figured a good reprimand was better than just magic-ing the problem away. This new Bentley needed to learn who was boss.

And here was this kid saying the stupidest things.

Crowley had looked her over. Wealthy little thing if that coat and frock was any indication. She’d been sucking a lolly and watching him like she’d ditched her shopping-obsessed mother and now had nothing better to do. Which was probably exactly what had occurred.

“How old are you?” he’d asked.

“Twelve.”

“Twelve years old and you’re saying nonsense like that?”

She’d gone so far as to stamp her foot, cheeks bulging from candy and indignation. “It’s not nonsense!”

So Crowley made a faulty approach—damn ice patches—and knelt down in front of her. He pointed upwards at a chaffinch. “That bird alive?”

“Well of course,” she’d said.

“Don’t ‘of course’ me, I’m about to blow your mind. Is the tree it’s in alive?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah, right, both agreeing on that. Okay, how ‘bout the sun shining through its branches?”

For the first time the girl had hesitated. Crowley jumped on it.

“Ah ha!” he crowed. “Bit tricker, eh? Lots of science folks out there who might try to make that case. Is a river alive? Maybe not, but if it is does that make the rain alive too? All the pretty things it freezes into?” Crowley scooped up a handful of snow, dumping it over the girl’s head. She had jumped and squeaked but didn’t run. “Life’s a messy thing, kid. All those blurry lines for metal and heat and water and light. So if I take those blurry things and change them up until they’re a car—” he waved both arms at the Bentley. “Don’t you think the car’s a bit of a blurry thing too?”

The girl had bit into her lip. It was red with cold and nibbled raw. “...Maybe.”

Crowley nodded. “Last question: am I a man or a snake?”

“A man!”

“And that’s why you don’t go telling strangers their cars aren’t alive.” Crowley stood. He made a sound like a buzzer in the back of his throat. “Wrong answer, kid. But you’re asking questions so I guess you’re not all bad.” He’d miracled up another lolly and shooed her off. “Go find your mum.”

Crowley never had the slightest doubt that his Bentley was alive. Maybe it appreciated that certainty because their relationship got a whole lot better after that. Ninety-three years and no more stalling.

Today, in 2019, Crowley wished dearly that the Bentley was just a hunk of metal.

“Surely this is bebop,” Aziraphale said. Crowley resisted the urge to lay his head on the steering wheel and just give up completely.

Actually, who was he to deny himself anything?

“Please watch the road!”

“You watch the road,” Crowley mocked, swatting Aziraphale’s hand away as he attempted to gain control. During it all Diana Ross crooned from the speakers.

Two hearts, Two hearts that beat as one Our lives have just begun...

He didn’t own any Diana Ross. He hadn’t turned on the radio. The song was just there as soon as they’d started off and Crowley was this close to selling the Bentley for scrap metal.

Because it had been doing this for days now. Anything Crowley wanted to listen to while out and about on his own? Sure. That was just fine. When Aziraphale decided to join them?

Cheesy love songs galore. Crowley’s hands tightened until his knuckles went white. He hoped the Bentley could feel it.

“Angel, do you have any concept of what bebop actually is?”

“Well...” Aziraphale faltered. “I know all the young kids are into it and this woman’s voice is quite risqué.”

“Literally none of that is right. Not a lick of sense. It’s 2019 how do you even function?”

The music increased in volume.

'Cause no one can deny This love I have inside And I'll give it all to you My love, my love, my love My endless love

“I’m setting you on fire again,” Crowley growled and pretended like he couldn’t hear Aziraphale humming along as the song repeated.

***

The next day Crowley opened the Bentley to find a bedazzled BEBOP charm hanging from his rearview mirror. The tacky monstrosity caught all the light as it slowly, spitefully rotated.

With a yell he chucked it into oncoming traffic. It was back again by lunch.

Aziraphale loved it.

(So fine, yeah, he guessed it could stay.)

***

After that more changes started to appear. Things that Crowley had never even thought about, let alone purposefully brought into existence. His Bentley suddenly had a cupholder for Aziraphale’s mugs of tea. There was extra space in the back for transporting books. One minor, throwaway comment about the sun being too bright and suddenly there were tinted windows, for heaven’s sake.

Crowley understood that his Bentley was alive, but it wasn’t supposed to have agency. Theoretically none of this stuff was bad, but who the fuck did the Bentley think it was, coming up with it all first?

By the time Aziraphale was commenting on how soft the seats were Crowley had had enough. He drove the blessed machine out to Tadfield with the express purpose of accosting an eleven-year-old.

“Did you give my car free will?!”

Adam was, objectively, the child most used to dealing with weird shit in his life. (Outmatched only (perhaps) by a young man named Warlock who’d had the dubious honor of growing up with a literal angel and demon over his shoulder. Both of whom were fools.) After coming into unfathomable power, nearly bringing about the end of the world, watching your not-Dad rise from the Earth in a fiery display, and then re-writing said world back to its basics, having a scrawny man yelling about free will while you were trying to eat ice cream didn’t even make the list of Top Ten Things I’m Dealing With Right Now.

So Adam dug more forcefully into his soft-serve. “Hey, Crowley.”

“Yeah. Hey. Nice day I guess.” It had occurred to Crowley right after he’d nearly hit the low wall of the Madisons’ garden and started shrieking at a group of children that this display would, perhaps, not be well received by the locals. And who wanted to deal with locals? So he reigned it in a bit and tried for a cheery wave at Mrs. Madison.

She scowled like a pissed-off peacock.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to us too?” Pepper demanded. She sat on the grass between Adam and Brian, the three of them trading ice creams every few moments. Adam now had the popsicle while Pepper had the soft serve and Crowley was decidedly not imagining him and a certain angel doing the same.

Wensleydale was off collecting ants to do Things with later.

Crowley sighed. “Hey, Piper.”

“Pepper.”

“What was your name again? No wait, never-mind, really don’t care. You. Antichrist—”

“Adam.”

“Adam. Did you mess with my car or not?”

Adam took the cup of cookie dough from Brain and exchanged a Look. The sort of Look that only children could pull off after numerous adventures together, filled with an hour’s worth of conversation boiled down to just a few ticks and movements of the mouth. He then exchanged the same with Pepper. Wensleydale was still too far off to hear the conversation, but he looked back as if hearing an unvoiced call, giving Adam a thumbs up. Throughout it all Crowley stood with hands halfway mashed into his pockets, shifting weight from foot to foot. He could feel Mrs. Madison boring into his back.

The moment was a short one, but what passed within it was given a great deal of consideration and weight. See, the Them hadn’t the slightest clue what Crowley was on about and Crowley, it seemed, was working under a number of assumptions that led to him not explaining himself one bit. Cars? Free will? Adam’s eyes strayed to the Bentley and while he could admit that it was a very nice looking car—if old—that was really all he had to say about the thing. He hadn’t exactly composed an itemized list of everything he’d wanted during the confrontation at the airbase. The only thing he’d been able to articulate within his mind was a Dad, Daddy, my Daddy in a voice that had sounded far younger than he actually was. Everything else had just been a ripple coming off of that. Now Adam experienced the same feeling as when Mr. Fell had called him up to thank him for the new books and Adam had responded with a “Wut?”

What the Them did know was that this was all very important to Crowley. Adam’s potential involvement got him riled.

So Adam gave the only logical answer he could in that moment.

“Yes,” he said.

The result was, to use a phrase, bloody spectacular.

Adam got back his original soft-serve. Pepper had the cookie dough. Brian the strawberry pop. They ate contentedly as Crowley went on a surprisingly creative rant about how kids could not and should not and in the future would not be messing with his car. Off to the side Wensleydale pulled out his phone to record the display, taking time to zoom in on Mrs. Madison’s expression.

Adam was still pretty out of his depth, but after a detailed account of all the Bentley’s new behaviors he felt a niggling suspicion and was compelled to say, “Kinda sounds like it’s trying to tell you something. Maybe you should listen?”

Crowley turned the same shade as his hair and Wensleydale, cackling, started uploading to Youtube.

***

“Dear, Adam tells me there’s a record of you on one of these social media sites. Would you perhaps show me how to—”

“Don’t click that!”

***

One week later the Bentley stalled.

Crowley stared in shock as it inched a couple feet, a couple more, and then stopped completely, out in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Well, not really. After hearing a highly edited version of Crowley’s visit to Adam, Aziraphale had insisted on a proper get-together the weekend following. Now here they were, partway between rural visit and urban home. There’d been food and drinks and piling far too many people into Anathema’s little cottage, all the things that might have interested a demon if Crowely had been able to focus on anything other than the smell of Aziraphale’s skin.

Another new cologne.

“Ah, Crowley...?” He spoke now, light and hesitant. “Did you mean to stop here?”

‘Here’ was a deserted stretch at 9:13pm, the stars their only light for miles. 

“No.”

“Can you—?”

“No.”

Crowley knew it with a certainty that set his teeth on edge. He couldn’t just miracle them going again. The Bentley wouldn’t allow it. Maybe it really was the influence of a kid capable of warping reality in ways no angel or demon ever could. Maybe it was just the result of decades spent in the presence of occult and celestial entities, soaking up a bit of power then and there until it had something worthwhile. (And if that was the case Crowley was terrified to think about what Zira’s bookshop might be turning into.) All he knew for sure was that his Bentley was different now.

Acting like a goddamn, meddlesome brat.

Aziraphale had shifted this way in his seat, that way, perhaps finally acknowledging to himself that he knew nothing about cars and therefore could do very little to help. Crowley heard a few more noises on his left and then, “The doors are locked.”

Of course they were.

“Angel—”

“Dear—”

Something about Aziraphale’s tone made Crowley pause. Swallow down the rising excuse and finally look at him.

It was quite the sight. Aziraphale’s cheeks were pink from Anathema’s wine and one of his curls was plastered to his forehead, a victim of the heat. Through the window Crowley could see the play of shadows along the fields, the stars he’d help hang, the moon nearly full. All of it paled in comparison to Aziraphale’s eyes though. Crowley figured 6,000 years, an unknowable amount of time before that... he’d still never seen anything like them. Most days he chalked it up to Aziraphale being all angel-y. On rare occasions he acknowledged that none of the other wank-wings’ eyes looked like that.

Love had a tendency to color the things it touched.

“Are you perhaps trying to tell me something?” Aziraphale whispered, a soft smile playing at his lips. It drew Crowley’s gaze.

He swallowed. “Not me.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh. It’s the Bentley’s doing...”

“Ah, I see. Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint your precious Bentley now would we?”

Aziraphale moved first. Six goddamn millennia and now he crossed the divide, pushing himself into the driver’s seat and half into Crowley’s lap. His hands made a beeline for his hair and cheek—one thumb tracing up towards the tattoo—and Aziraphale only paused for one more moment, six millennia plus one, his expression one of absolute rapture. Then he sighed and closed the gap.

Their first kiss tasted like something ineffable.

The Bentley began slowly making its way back towards London, leaving its occupants free to continue what they’d finally begun.

“I think,” Aziraphale laughed, pulling back as the scenery flashed by. “That this is the perfect speed for us.”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #air conditioning #good omens fic #figured I'd upload the whole thing here too #when I have the energy #in case people prefer reading here instead of AO3