#Fantasy Twist | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dilatorywriting · 8 months

Text

Monster Mayhem: Siren's Song [Part 2]

Gender Neutral Reader x Vil Schoenheit Word Count: 4.6k

Summary: Fish are friends (?). You are not food.

[PART 1] [PART 2]

The Siren wasn’t leaving.

Which a part of you had been expecting. Because surely if there had been a snowball’s chance in Hell of him making it out into the open ocean alive before you’d cut through the ropes, he would have taken it and left you stranded without a second thought. And his odds weren’t that much better now—his fins were still a mangled mess and the wounds all along his scales and dainty featherings were still raw and oozing. It only made sense that he’d take at least a few days to try and recover.

But… But still.

Did he have to make it so obvious that he was sticking around?

The glint of the light off his tail was a constant distraction—always bright and eye-catching even at the cloudiest points of the day. Always flashing just out of the corner of your eye as a perpetual reminder that there was something in the water that would very happily gobble you up if you bothered making a swim for safety.

He’d also taken to sunning himself. Like some kind of overgrown mer-cat. Stretched out languidly on a flat rock with the tips of his violet fins hanging over the edge—just enough for the gauzy edges to play along the surf and avoid drying out entirely. His pale hair splayed out in a halo around him as he snoozed softly in the heat of the afternoon.

Which! No fair! This wasn’t a vacation! This was a stranding! An SOS! A Rose Queen Procedural Rule Four-Hundred-and-Four! And him taking up the whole of the cove to, I don’t know, tan, felt like another intentional slap in the face. The sun rose over the bay, which meant this stretch of shore was facing East. Which was the direction your vessel had been coming from. Which meant that this was the place on the little islet where you needed to be. Subsection Three of Procedural Four-O’-Four. ‘In the case of Crew Overboard, we will always travel the same route as planned. In order to give the Strandee a chance to map out a reconnection point.’ Riddle always had been so smart about these kinds of things.

‘It’s just until he’s better,’ you reassured yourself for the umpteenth time that morning. ‘Then he’ll leave and I can get rescued or die here alone and in peace.’

A fin flicked up from the shallows to spray you with saltwater splatters and you spluttered indignantly when it ran down into your eyes. You glared at the Siren’s retreating back, musing bitterly about how you’d never thought it was possible for someone to make the tuck of their shoulders look smug.

‘Alone and in peace,’ you repeated hopefully. And it sounded like such far off dream.

On the second day post-rope-removal, the Siren waved you down with a sharp flick of his wrist.

You approached the waterline hesitantly, still mostly waiting for him to turn on you and make toothpicks out of your bones. But instead of murdering you and getting crafty with your corpse, he just pointed to some scribbles in the sand. You squinted at the loop-de-loops suspiciously. It almost looked like an illustration of dancing bubbles—the lot of them curling and popping along the ground in a line like a limerick.

“Uhm, very nice,” you tried, and the fins flattened pissilly all along the side of his head.

He jabbed his claw towards the mess again. Then firmly at your eyes (hopefully not as a threat that he’d be happy to take them right out of your head if you continued to be obtuse). And then back again. He made a point to move the tip of his sharp nail from one swirl to the next in a little hop-hop-hop. It reminded you a bit deliriously of Riddle trying to teach some of the more socially bereft members of the crew their letters, and—

“You want me to read that?” you gaped, staring at the elegant curls of nonsense in the sand.

The Siren crossed his arms across his lean chest with a scoff that puffed past his lips hard enough to fluff out some of the paler, purple-tipped, hair hanging by his chin. He rolled his eyes at you and muttered something thin and spicy under his breath that you just knew had to be some sort of insult.

“I can read!” you defended, because it felt like it needed defending.

He leveled you with an entirely unimpressed ‘Oh, I’m sure you can’ sneer and you dropped to your knees, incensed. You dug your fingers into the sand and started sculpting out your own very cheery message into the muck.

When you were done, you waved a hand towards your proclamation and watched his brows pull together at the center into a teeny, pinched sort of expression. He let himself roll forward with the seafoam to lay more fully on the shore, and stared down at the mess you’d made like it was some strange code. Even reaching out to poke softly at the straight edge of a ‘T’ with one of his knife-sharp talons.

After a long moment of contemplation, he looked back up at you with an arched brow that was so unintentionally poised and not full of spite that it almost took your breath away. Who knew how pretty an already stunning face could become when it wasn’t twisted up in absolute vitriol? You shook away that absolutely damning thought in horror. That’s exactly what he’d want you to think. Siren, and all. Using his hotness to lure people onto his dinner table. Not you, baby. Because you were smart. And so gross from being stranded under island sunshine for a week that surely you’d taste like some absolutely rancid jerky at this point.

“Oh no,” you droned, and immediately that subtle curiosity of his ticked right back into irritation. “Two creatures from entirely different species and ecosystems have somehow managed to develop unique alphabets. What a completely unpredictable complication.”

The Siren puffed up like an angry lionfish and turned with a snarl to dive back into the shallows—making sure to whip his tail in your face and slam into the water with a huge splash as he went. The salt spray pelted down like rain and you snickered as it sloughed off your cheeks in rivulets, content to sit merrily in the wet sand beside your hastily scribbled: ‘Mermen Are Vicious Bitches. Hit Me if You Agree :)’

The next morning, there were more fish on the shoreline. Though these ones looked a bit less like they’d been dragged up by their souls and left to writhe in the wake of Siren-Screaming-Agony and more just like the unfortunate victims of a pair of too sharp claws.

You frowned down at a brown, sad-looking flounder that had clearly found itself at the very wrong end of a certain merman still swanning about in the bay not fifty feet away. It was mostly intact, and pleasantly plump for a flat, pancake-looking blob of muck. Your stomach gurgled and the thought of a nice, coal-charred, fillet really seemed quite nice. You chanced another peek at your resident Asshole, debating if it was worth swiping his snack. Another ominous rumble from your abdomen and you reached down to steal your prize and scuttle off deeper inland like a troll returning to its layer.

It didn’t take very long to get a small fire going, and within the hour you’d been fed and were more than ready for a cozy, full-bellied nap in the soft sand.

By the time you began to make your way back to the cove, the sun was high in the sky and you were already dreading sitting beneath its weighted rays for another afternoon. So you slowed your pace to a near snail crawl, dragging your feet as you went.

The little octopus from earlier was still swaying contentedly around the tide pool you’d shoved it into. It probably needed to be carried back out to the bay at some point so that it could swim back into the depths of the ocean, but the poor thing was just so small and round. Surely it’d get devoured by the first sharp-toothed thing that caught sight of it. Especially with your merman apparently being out for the blood of whatever other scaly things were swimming about in his temporary home. So for now you slipped it some small bits of leftover fish instead. You sat, crouched at the pool’s edge, and watched raptly as it grabbed the shredded bits of pale meat with its chubby tentacles to shove towards an eager beak.

“You’re the only friend I have left in the whole world,” you told the octopus miserably, wiping the greasy remnants of your lunch off your chin with a sigh.

The traitor hurriedly moved to snatch up the treat you’d offered it and hide itself away between some rocky crevices. You sighed louder. Rejected. What a time to be alive.

The next morning, the Siren was singing again.

That familiar prickle danced its way up your arms, leaving pinpricks of goosebumps in its wake. Some pirates told tales of storms leaving their mark in such a way—that seasoned sailors could feel the tickle of thunder against their skin long before they could spot dark clouds on the horizon. You’d have to amend that little legend whenever you found your way back to The Rose Queen. Siren Sense was a lot cooler, anyways. Any idiot with arthritis could tell you when rain was due.

But either way, Mister Merman was back to idly circling the bay and calling into the distance. At least it wasn’t as miserable as it had been the other day—more of a leisurely pacing than the frantic, near-feral caterwauling that had soured your gut so terribly.

There was another fat fish on the shore. A bright, red snapper so brilliantly crimson that it was almost impossible to make out the garish wounds in its side. Almost. And even if it hadn’t been, the drooping, rust colored, rivulets dug into the sand would have been enough of a clue.

Why the Siren was bothering to leave his clawed-up kills at your feet like some overgrown cat dragging in mice, you had no idea. Maybe he was poisoning them, and subsequently you. Maybe he was bored and it was some sort of fishy enrichment. Maybe he just didn’t want to bother leaving dead things around to contaminate his favorite sunning spots, and tossing his leftovers in your vicinity was as close to a reliable dumpster as he could find on a remote island. Who’s to say.

Either way, you dutifully ignored the magical tingles racing up your shoulders and brought the newest fish back to your makeshift firepit. You grilled the snapper in silence, debating. Then you fed your octopus friend and returned to the beach, cooked fillets in tow.

You waited in awkward silence for a few moments, fish burning your palms, before raising your fingers to your lips and whistling loud enough to make your teeth ache. The mystical static faded from the air and you watched in pleasant (?) surprise as the Siren made his way back to where you’d set up camp. He rolled in with the tide, cresting on a gentle bit of surf and coming to rest neatly in the shallows—fins splayed out beneath him like a lord lying amidst his many silken robes. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at you with an arched brow and slanted frown.

You awkwardly extended a hand—roasted snapper still resting in your open palm and burning the absolute fuck out of your fingers.

“Uhm,” you said, feeling a bit too much like the local idiot trying to feed one of the rabid, wandering, strays around town. “Food?”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes at you.

“Do you want food?” you tried.

The other brow joined the first, nearly rising all the way into his hairline. It wasn’t a pleasant sort of surprise.

“It’s better cooked?” you coaxed in the face of his outright constipated scowl. Be fed and full, you thought hopefully. Maybe then you won’t fucking look at me like I’m a boxed lunch.

He jabbed a sharpened, black talon in your direction, and then pointedly again angled up towards your mouth. Then back to the fish still roasting your poor cuticles straight off your fingers.

You blinked, a bit thrown.

“What? It’s supposed to be for me?”

He nodded, throwing in another one of those bombastically snarky eyerolls for good measure. ‘Obviously,’ that sneer said.

“Well,” you huffed, plopping down to sit cross-legged in the sand and offering up one of the fillets. “There’s plenty for both of us.” When he stared at you like you were attempting to serve him up a choice pile of literal dog shit, you wiggled your hand and entreated, “Please just take it before my skin melts off.”

The Siren huffed and reached out, plucking up the fish with the tips of his claws. He observed your meager meal as one might a particularly unappealing cockroach, and after a long moment, his nose scrunched (cute, you thought absently before immediately suffocating every wayward braincell that would dare call your murderous shore-neighbor anything of the sort) and he leaned forward to nip at a crisped, pink corner with the barest edge of one canine.

When your culinary creation didn’t immediately strike him dead on the spot, he took another, equally dainty bite. And then another. The tight pucker of his mouth eased as he chewed, and you watched as the harsh cut of his purple irises warmed with that same intrigue as they had when you’d first scribbled your foreign letters into the sand.

He readjusted his grip on the fish between his claws to get a better angle and took a proper bite, chewing thoughtfully. Before you knew it, you were watching him nip at the pads of his fingers, his gaze going a bit round and shocked when he realized that he’d devoured the entirety of it.

“See?” you hummed, tucking into your own portion with gusto. “Not all things humans come up with are terrible.” He harumphed and turned to glare back out over the bay, slouching into the surf with an expression that was most certainly not a pout. “But maybe you’d know that if you bothered to do anything other than murder and devour us on sight,” you chirped.

To which you were immediately doused with an armful of water for your troubles. The Siren glowered petulantly from where he’d just wave-bombed you, and then dove back into the deeper waters of the sandbar. He immediately started up his stupid singing all over again—pointedly keeping his chin high above the surface and splashing brine into your face anytime he looped close enough to shore.

“I don’t know why I bother,” you huffed, and ate your sopping snapper in grumpy silence.

There was a ship wrecked off the coast.

Nothing overly cool, and definitely only a small chunk of what had probably at one point been a rather impressive vessel. But it was something. The first change in pace you’d had in days and oozing with possibilities.

The only problem was that the great, rotting, hull of the thing was dug up into a jagged skerry about a hundred yards off the shore—wedged into the pointed rocks with no chance of any wave or breeze sending it adrift. You could swim perfectly well. I mean, living your life on a ship surrounded by tumultuous, depthless, ocean would have been a hugely stupid career move otherwise. The issue, naturally, was the thing currently making its home in these waters. Sharks and barracudas, blablabla. They were just animals, no matter how many teeth they had. The Siren had a grudge. And just as many teeth.

Right now, said spiky pain in your ass was lounging in the shallows like the froth was an elegant daybed made just for him—shredded fins swaying in the soft tides and his hair floating about him that same, white-gold halo that made him look far too peaceful for anyone’s good sense. He wasn’t singing today, which was great for the local wildlife population but terrible for your Siren Sense. Once you waded into the waves, you’d have no real way to keep track of him. Hope, maybe, that he didn’t think fucking with you was worth messing up whatever tan-line he had going on. But nothing concrete that you’d be willing to bet the safety of your limbs on.

You wiggled your toes in the sand and stared longingly out at the stupid, wrecked ship that was so stupidly close. If you swam your fastest you could probably make it there in under two minutes—less than that, even. But that was still more than enough time for the Siren to rake those dark claws of his across your throat and drag you down into the depths to drown.

Riddle’s angry, red face swam through your thoughts, and you could practically see him shoving that beloved law tome of his under your nose for the umpteenth time.

‘Rule 32, never make dangerous bets that you’re certain you won’t win, particularly if you are betting against a Blue Nosed Beetle.’

‘Rule 15, do not needlessly sacrifice your life in the name of curiosity, excluding—of course—if you hail from Cheshire or are a Cat.’

‘It’s only a dumb shipwreck,’ you thought miserably, if rationally. ‘It’s probably not even that cool.’

Your captain would be so proud.

The next morning you were rolling up the cuffs on your pants and wading into the cool shallows, silently lighting a candle in your heart for your beloved, steam-faced leader and promising that you would at the very least cover the costs of your own funeral so as not to inconvenience him further.

The waves lapped against your ankles and the waters themselves were shockingly clear and blue. You could practically see each grain of sand beneath your heels—make out each pointy rock and the little, red crabs that scuttled away from your tromping like civilians fleeing from the shadow of a leviathan. The Siren was back to singing today. Perhaps his poor, overworked throat simply needed a break every now and again. But either way, your Merman Magic Missive was working in full force. The hairs on your arms stood at full attention and you liked to imagine you could see them twitching in circles to follow his long, looping arcs through the bay.

You made it up to your knees and waited, eyes scanning the open water and nose twitching like maybe you could smell the fucker. There was nothing but a familiar prickle along your shoulders and that deep sense of ‘tug tug tug’ with no answer, so you took a deep breath and pushed further, the water sloshing up to your hips, your chest, and finally you were floating—paddling slow and cautious towards the wreckage.

It really was insanely close. Even moving at your most cautious, sneakiest crawl, you’d made it nearly three-quarters of the way there within perhaps five minutes. And no signs of a vengeful, hungry Siren circling the waters beneath you either. More rules that perhaps that you’d have to tell Riddle might need some amending once you finally made it back home to your crew. ‘Dangerous bets,’ who? ‘Needless sacrifice,’ what? You might as well have outsmarted the whole ocean.

As you moved closer, you could make out a strange coat of arms on the side of the hull that you didn’t recognize. Twining, silver songbirds soaring against the sparkly backdrop of an otherwise plain faced crest, which honestly looked far too delicate to be heading the broken remains of what was no doubt at one point an absolute monster of a vessel. You reached out to brush your fingers against the shining plaque and then you were underwater.

You fought the immediate impulse to gasp in surprise, because expediting the process of your inevitable drowning just seemed stupid even by your standards. There was a clawed hand wrapped around your calf yanking you down, and you squinted through a stream of panicked bubbles to see your terrible, horrible, completely thankless co-strandee snarling up at you with sharp teeth and a sharper flail of his delicate gills. Thankfully the water wasn’t all that deep, so by the time you’d been dragged to the bottom you were maybe only ten feet under. But still. It was the goddamn principle! And besides, you’d heard about enough drunks drowning in puddles to know that this was more than enough Liquid Death to put you in an early grave.

The Siren looped around you in tight circles, and you could feel the brush of his tattered fins against your skin like the ghostly fingers of a reaper trailing down your spine. You’d known he was big—giant, even. Long, and impressive, and built to rule the very depths he’d dragged you into. Large enough to wrestle with sharks and capsize lifeboats. Big enough, no doubt, to eat you whole and still be hungry enough for seconds.

The salt stung your eyes and you blinked hard to keep his vibrant, amethyst tail in focus. Would he strike from the back, where you couldn’t see? Or would he go right for your throat—a direct, full frontal, ‘fuck you, human’ if there ever was one. And honestly, what were you expecting? That a good deed and a few pieces of cooked fish would sway him from devouring you whole? Maybe the island sun had fried whatever remained of your rattled brain.

He stopped in front of you and hissed—a stream of tight, tiny, bubbles jetting past his canines. You glared in petulant confusion, absolutely refusing to give your would-be murderer whatever reaction he was hoping for. His brow pinched into a tight, angry, v and he snarled again. You snarled back, and with that, the last breath in your lungs swooped out of you in a tight squeak. You choked, and struggled, and kicked at the claws holding you down. The Siren reared back, eyes widening in something that looked insultingly like genuine surprise, and you used his moment of hesitation to propel yourself off the sandbar and back to the choppy surface.

You gasped in a hasty breath, expecting to immediately be dragged back under. But when you weren’t pulled back down to your watery grave, you took in another and another. Gasping, and hacking, and spitting up seafoam. The Siren’s head crested the surface beside you and you flailed away, nearly pushing yourself under all over again. You paddled frantically, trying to keep your nose above the tide, and then suddenly there was something under you. You squawked and kicked it on instinct. The Siren snapped his pointy teeth in your face and you realized with a start that oh. That was him, wasn’t it? The long, winding, scaled muscles of his tail curled beneath your toes in what almost seemed like an attempt to keep you upright.

He stared at you with those unnervingly bright eyes of his—blonde hair curling softly at the edges where it plastered elegantly along his finned ears, and those too-long lashes dripping with small, sparkly, drops of salt water.

“What the hell is this bullshit?” you choked, coughing up more bubbly froth. “You don’t get to look so—so put together after trying to murder me!”

The Siren huffed out something that the delusional, still half-drowned, part of you wanted to classify as a laugh. And then he organized that bemused expression back into its usual, haughty, iciness and began to carefully make his way back towards the shore—towing you along like a poor, little, lost buoy with nowhere else to go.

You let him drag you up into the sand and only flopped around a little. He flicked his tail at you and your dramatics and you turned on him with a fierce, waterlogged scowl—a bit more confident now that he didn’t have the home field advantage.

“What was that for! I just wanted to look at the ship! I wasn’t even doing anything to you!” you wailed. “I haven’t done anything to you at all! Ever! Why do you keep—" you collapsed back into the sand with a miserable whine that rattled all the teeth in your head, and ground the heels of your palms into your eyes until you saw stars.

After a long moment of nothing, you felt a gentle tap at your shoulder.

You looked back up with a start to see Mister Merman looking nearly sheepish.Or as much of an equivalent that his aloof mask of a face was capable of pulling off. The clawed finger resting at your collarbone dropped to the sand by your hip, and he carefully began to draw more of those squiggles. No, scratch that. Not the dancing, popping, ones from the other day. These actually looked sort of like the silver songbirds from that shipwreck. More jagged, certainly. But similar enough that you felt something a bit too coldly cautious to be confusion seep through your guts.

Once he was finished, he looked up and met your gaze—sharp, pointed. And then he reached back out and smeared the birds into nothing and shook his head, firm. His red lips moved slowly, exaggerated, again and again. And you could make out the vague shape of words you’d had shouted at you a hundred times over.

‘Not safe.’

That same, shivery, nervous feeling bit at your limbs.

“…okay,” you said after a moment. And then leaned forward to dig your own fingers into the sand, dutifully ignoring how your elbows knocked against his own.

‘Not safe,’ you wrote, and watched his eyes trace each letter like a treasure map.

There was another tap at your shoulder. And then he pointed to the words in the muck, then to himself.

You rolled your eyes. “Yes, yes. You’re not safe either.”

He sighed dramatically enough to ruffle the ends of your still soaked hair. And then pointed to the words again, tapping at the ‘N’ with the curved tip of a claw.

“Nnnn?” you mouthed, confused.

He moved to the ‘o’ next and it clicked.

“You want me to teach you how to read my letters?” you asked, flabbergasted. Another sigh, like you’d dropped the weight of all the world on his pale shoulders. Or perhaps that your idiocy was enough to put that hearty mass to shame. You decided that you were still feeling a bit too much like you’d only just barely escaped a brush with death, dismemberment, and dinner plans to push your luck with sassing him back too harshly, and just blinked owlishly in dazed surprise. “But why?”

His purple eyes trailed in the direction of the shipwreck and something cutting and poisonous clouded his expression. He pointed to the words again.

‘Not safe.’

“Alright,” you said, looking out over the water with a strange sort of sinking feeling in your gut. You leaned forward and began to draw the alphabet at your feet. His tail twitched by your fingers and you ignored the soft brush of his still-healing fins. “This one’s an ‘A’, like in ‘Asshole’—"

Whomp went the tail as he cracked it across your knuckles like a school matron with a ruler. And you couldn’t help the startled burst of genuine, tinkling laughter that bubbled past your lips for the first time since you’d been dragged overboard.

[TAG LIST - CLOSED]

@marvelous-maxi, @ilikefanfics4, @jackalope08, @crocwork-clockodile, @cosmicobubisi, @buttplugs-stuff, @pomefleur, @decemebercircus, @ailynyan, @genzombie, @meliade-ot, @sunlightocean, @theofficialantitherapist, @hermiona18, @sailorenthusiast, @fantasy-dating-sim-trash, @thefiasco-onyourblock, @insideous-beez, @its-clockwork-princess

@novaloptr, @imlost-sendhelp, @matcha-berry @preciosayorgullosa @whoretaglia, @kookygirlwholikescookiesandcoke, @nanauedorian, @trixeraptops, @voxnipop, @starkling25, @thedum1, @horcrux-alchemist, @sleepykitty21, @apathicace, @instantregret101, @nekanecorvus, @looney-mori, @re-ducing, @my2phetaliaheadcanons, @naughtybodypillow, @rendy-a, @carmen-404, @candy284, @thealiennamedterry, @their-name-is-fake, @huetolog, @glacticrose, @seraphinariddle, @rabioa, @sn00zl4x, @dreasimping, @jeidoreech, @ai-dev, @galaxyshine24-7, @fatally-incorrect, @juulranch, @camrastuff, @nocteetdie, @stargaryengirl, @warmsmilesandhugs, @01paige01

#twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #Vil Schoenheit x Reader #Vil x Reader #vil schoenheit #Mermay #Monster Mayhem #My Writing #vil shoenheit #Siren!Vil #Mermaid!Vil #Fantasy AU #Monster Mayhem Vil Part 2

1K notes · View notes

dilatorywriting · 1 year

Text

Monster Mayhem: Donkeys & Dragons [PART 2]

Gender Neutral Reader x Malleus Draconia Word Count: 3.1k

Summary: Everything's all fun and games until everyone assumes you're just being a Horny BardTM when you have, in fact, actually been kidnapped by a dragon.

🌶️ Obligatory Warning for Mild Spice

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4] [EPILOGUE]

“Wow,” Ace whistled, long and low, and you fought a twitch in your jaw.

He and Deuce were certainly beat to shit, but not quite ‘hurled dozens of feet through the air and a roof’ level of shit, so your spell must have cushioned at least a little of the fall. The pair of idiots stood at the entrance of the cavernous room, shifting back and forth on their heels and faces twisted up in varying degrees of horror.

“I mean, I know there’s a stereotype about bards and whatever,” he continued, aghast. “But, really? Really?”

You grit your teeth. The pointed chin resting atop your head shifted and you felt claws flex at your hips.

‘My friends will probably be coming back here soon to find me,’ you’d entreated, not five-minutes prior.

‘Your friends?’ the dragon had repeated, slow, like the concept of comradery was something completely alien. And then his eyes had narrowed. ‘Ah. They intend to steal you away,’ he’d said with all the indignation of someone who’d clearly forgotten he had literally just proclaimed his intent to the do the exact same thing.

Sparks had shot out from between his teeth, and the already too-sharp black nails tipping his fingers had curled into talons—ashy darkness trailing up his arms like a seeping stain.

‘What? No,’ you’d lied. ‘They would never. I’m sure they’re just curious. Whether I’m still alive or not, I mean.’

‘Oh,’ he’d blinked, that venomous ire seeping from his gaze as if it’d never been there to begin with. ‘I suppose that does make sense.’

So when your loveable idiots had eventually stormed in—swords drawn, banners flying—you schooled your countenance into something as placid as possible. Something that perhaps conveyed ‘I would love for you guys to help me out here, but also I would really like not to see the three of us become tonight’s entrée. So like. Maybe sit this one out.’ But whatever expression you ended up making clearly wasn’t doing what you were aiming for if Ace’s first instinct was to accuse you of Horny Bard Shenanigans.

Or maybe your face wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was just the nearly seven-foot-tall, naked, dragon man draped across your shoulders. Who’s to say.

“This has nothing to do with that,” you snapped, ears burning.

“Do with what?” The newly dubbed Tsunotarou rumbled. He was pressed close enough that you could feel the worlds roll through his chest—annnnd you were going to stop yourself right there and focus very, very, intently on getting through this conversation alive.

“Human things,” you spluttered frantically.

“Ah,” he hummed, his chin shifting from the crown of your head to dip down and instead rest atop the curve of your shoulder. “You’ll have to explain it to me later, then. I do find our cultural differences very intriguing. You humans are so… new age.”

“Explain it to you later…?” Deuce frowned, and you could see the words zipping around behind his eyes to slowly put themselves together into a cohesive thought. He shot ramrod straight and whipped his arm out accusatorily. “You’re staying?!”

“Of course,” you said, with all the enthusiasm of someone with a knife held to their throat. You locked eyes as obviously as you could—hoping he’d get the message. “It’s in everyone’s best interest.”

You could see the pinched look on his face, the heavy weight of discontentment tugging at his brow. There was a war being waged in that man’s head—a battle between what lingering, frail, shreds of rationality and comprehension remained, and the desire to be a good friend and save our bard! Because mama said I should be good to my friends! You stared him down hard, silently begging, pleading, to just let it go. The fingers gripping his axe tightened and you could hear the leather of his gauntlets creak with strain. Tsunotarou hummed, something like amusement coloring the throaty rumble, and it tingled all the way from the tips of your toes to the cheek he was tucked up against. The claws at your side flexed—not deep enough to hurt, but firm enough to know that funny as the notion of a teeny, human, barbarian hurling themselves at a dragon was, it wasn’t going to be a good enough joke to earn said dragon’s mercy.

“Well, duh, you’re staying!” Ace interrupted slickly, sliding in front of Deuce and his burbling rage like a fox finally skulking from its hole. “Look at what a great new friendyou’ve made! You can’t just leave him here all on his lonesome, now can you?”

The low rumble skirting along your back melted into something that was very nearly a purr. Your eyes flickered to your captor’s face—or as much of his face as you could manage to make out, considering he had plastered himself to your side like an overgrown cat. His lips were curled back into that smug, contented, smirk—the tips of his sharp canines just barely peeked out over his bottom lip.

“We’ll come back and check on you, of course,” Ace continued. He waved his hand at the dragon, like they were old chums shooting the shit over a pint of ale in a tavern. “You know how it is. Gotta make sure they’re settling in all right—make sure you’re keeping with your honorable intentions and whatnot. How’s two weeks from now sound?”

“Two weeks?!” you wailed.

Tsunotarou grumbled, clearly also displeased. “I agree. That seems far too soon.”

“Two months?” the ginger countered easily.

“Ace!”

The dragon seemed to consider this new proposal quite thoroughly. You could feel his long lashes flick down against your cheek as his eyes went hooded, heavy—slipping back into his thoughts to ponder upon this newly proffered timeline. After a long, long, moment, he lifted himself from your neck and plonked his chin back down atop the crown of your head.

“That is acceptable.”

Deuce looked entirely unimpressed. You had a feeling you looked like you were about to shit yourself. Ace, naturally, seemed more or less content.

“Well then!” the traitor chirped. “We’ll see you when we see you then, yeah?”

You grit you teeth, but your gaze flicked to your other, kinder, friend and you bit back the slew of heinous insults brewing on your tongue. Deuce still looked more than ready to jump into the fray, consequences be damned. And you were not going to let your terrible, horrible, no-good, rotten luck end all his valiant attempts at redemption when he inevitably attempted to go toe-to-toe with the business end of a dragon.

“…Are you sure you’re gonna be alright here?” Deuce asked, face twisted up in distaste.

There was a pissy rumble from over your shoulder.

“Do you doubt my abilities as a host?”

“Of course he doesn’t!” Ace cut in, ever the bootlicker. “And besides,” he drawled, elbowing his companion in the ribs. “You know how bards are. I’m sure this is right up their alley.” He wiggled his eyebrows and Deuce went pale—then green. Ace turned on you with a smile that was all vinegar. “Right?”

‘I should not let them be murdered horribly,’ you repeated to yourself past the crimson rage leaking into your vision. ‘I should not let them be horribly murdered—’

“Righteo!” you forced yourself to spit. And if you somehow managed to survive these next two months, you were going to string that red haired traitor up by his pinkies and feed him to the crows that lived outside your window.

Your friends slipped away slowly, hesitantly—Deuce looking like he’d been struck down by a horrid case of food poisoning or something else equally as stomach churning. Once they were gone, Tsunotarou lifted his chin from your head so that he could crane his neck over your shoulder and look at you more directly. Not that he had to try very hard, seeing as he was gigantic, whether on two legs or four.

“What was the small, ugly, one referring to?” he asked curiously. “About your profession?”

Your life flashed before your eyes.

“Bards are known for their hearty curiosity and drive to experience new situations,” you repeated, verbatim, from the little adventurer’s handbook you’d been gifted by Lord Crewel all those years ago.

“Oh,” he hummed, nodding into your hair. “Of course.”

The first major hurdle cropped up barely two hours later.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

The dragon blinked slowly, as if mentally tallying through a list of human bodily functions to try and figure out just what on earth you were talking about.

“Ah,” he said after a moment. And then he began to melt away—limbs stretching and cracking, and porcelain complexion bubbling up with inky miasma so thick and dark it may as well have been tar. It was both horrifying and awe-inspiring to watch, like some great creature of old emerging from an arcane cocoon. And not two minutes later, a familiar, ebony, dragon was standing before you in all its glory.

He lowered his snout and nosed around your shoulders for a moment, snuffling and searching. And then he pinched your collar between his teeth and hauled you into the air.

You tried not to scream. Really, you did. But humans just weren’t meant for flying, let alone while suspended between the jaws of a beast that could swallow them whole. By the time you landed, you were so wobbly and windswept that you nearly collapsed to the ground then and there, bladder be damned. Tsunotarou warbled something deep in his chest, and you glanced up past the thin veil of icy sweat dripping into your eyes.

He'd placed you into a blown-out enclave that had probably once been a very nice hallway. And in the corner was the remains of what indeed looked like a bathroom. You straightened yourself as much as you could and began hobbling woozily towards what you hoped was a proper, enchanted, toilet and not just some block of stone with a bowl at the bottom.

There was an echoing thud from behind you and you jumped, startled, and turned to see what the ruckus was all about. Tsunotarou had sat his massive head at the entrance. And he continued to sit there. Watching.

“Uhm,” you mumbled. “Thank you.”

He stared, unmoving. You sighed and squashed your fingers into your temples.

“…We’re going to have to establish some boundaries,” you said. The dragon’s gigantic, neon, eyes closed and opened—like a question. “Boundaries,” you repeated. “Things that we do on our own.”

The beast’s lips flattened into a grumpy line and he grumbled something unintelligible at you, spitting loose sparks from behind his overly long canines.

However, mouthful of razor-sharp teeth in your face or otherwise, everyone had to draw the line between pride and self-preservation somewhere. And having to piss in front of an audience was apparently yours.

You waved your hands in a shoo shoo motion and those amethyst crests flattened irritably atop his skull. He settled in further, the structure of the terrace groaning beneath the weight of his scaly chin. You worried your lower lip between your teeth. It wasn’t exactly like there was a door or anything that you could just, like, shut in his face. And beating him off with a broom or something like a stray cat was out of the question—just out of sheer impossibility. You were going to have to get creative here…

An idea popped into your head and you leaned forward with a charismatic little smile that you’d unleashed on so many traders, and shopkeepers, and unsuspecting bakers that it ought to be considered a weapon in its own right. You’d practiced it in the mirror for weeks.

“I’ll tell you a story,” you offered, and his slitted pupils rounded a bit—intrigued. “That’s what I was before all this, you know. A storyteller.” You had his full interest now, those purple crests rippling behind his horns. “But you have to close your eyes,” you said. “It makes it easier to imagine that way.”

He stared you down curiously for a heartbeat or three, and then Tsunotarou’s gigantic, luminous, eyes slipped shut.

You sighed and plopped yourself down on the decrepit, stone, toilet.

“Once upon a time,” you began, sweeping your cloak out in front of you to give yourself at least a little bit more dignity. One of those crests twitched at the sound of swirling fabric, but his eyes remained dutifully closed. “There was a bard who made some very terrible life decisions—"

The next bump in the road came the following afternoon.

“People tend to wear clothes,” you said.

He canted his head at you. “I am not a person.”

Oh for fucks sake.

Tsunotarou was stretched out along one of the many, grand, banisters lining what you assumed had once been a ballroom—lounging in the dim light like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. Apparently, before your arrival, he’d very rarely, if ever, shed his wings and scales for this more compact form. And he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying spreading himself out across all the new surfaces that the change in size allowed him. Part of you would have thought it was a bit endearing—seeing this eldritch monster merrily falling into the ‘if I fits, I sits’ way of life. The other part was sick of nearly collapsing in cardiac arrest every time you caught sight of his very naked self reclining across some new piece of furniture.

“Yes,” you intoned, deadpan. “But you look like one.”

He blinked slowly, as if putting together a thought. “I see. The dissonance of observing a vestige of humanity which does not actually fit the mold of a human must be disconcerting to you.” He rested a knuckle lightly against his chin as he pondered. “In the same way I may feel uncomfortable if you took on the form a dragon with no teeth or tail.”

“Sure. Whatever,” you bemoaned. “Just. Pants? Please?”

He observed you quietly for a moment, amusement dancing across his features. And then he grinned, putting the pointed tips of those impressive canines of his on full display.

“Well I suppose if you’re going to ask so sweetly.”

He sat up with a stretch that was outright spitting in the face of your plea for modesty, and then spread his hands. His black-tipped fingers twisted gracefully, artfully, and the cavernous room filled with the scent of packed earth and ozone. Soft puffs of emerald light glided along his arms, and in their wake sprouted tendrils of sheer, silken, sleeves. Those dancing lights traveled merrily from his shoulders to his hips, and then back again—spinning magic into fabric like little, ghostly, seamstresses as they went.

The soft glow faded and the silk settled around him with all the delicacy of a cloud. It was stunning, certainly. A true work of beauty. With billowing sleeves that cinched neatly at his wrists, and swept into an open window across his front. The fabric wrapped itself snuggly at his waist and draped low enough to offer at least what should have been the bare minimum of modesty. It pooled across his shoulders, splaying out into a split cape that looked eerily similar to the wings he dawned in his other, scalier, form.

But this lovely new ensemble—as gloriously shiny and magical as it was—was still nearly fucking transparent. And yeah, the shadows curling along the spiraling silk did a decent enough job at obscuring what ought to be obscured. But at the same time, somehow this impression of cloth, of loose fabric that dipped below his collar bones and hung uneven and open across his pale chest, was worse than the outright fucking nudity. Scandalous. Like walking in on a seduction scene in a trashy novel.

“…maybe you should just do whatever makes you comfortable,” you managed to cough out, gaze slipping downwards of its own accord. And then more down. You gulped. “D-Don’t feel the need to change yourself on my account.”

He stared grumpily at his swanky new outfit. And then back at you. His lips pursed into a pout.

“You don’t find it pleasing.”

Your eyes rolled up to stare miserably, tormentedly, at the ceiling, and you began reciting every religious verse you could think of. Thou shall not steal or covet. In the name of the Mother, the Crone, and the Hallowed Throne. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Aye, Macarena—

“It looks perfectly nice. I just think that you have as much of a right to be happy in your skin as I do,” you reiterated. “I—I mean, you’re already keeping yourself human more often than not just so we can talk.” Which was true enough, but also mostly an attempt to make it seem like your concern was genuinely aimed at him and not your steadily rising blood pressure.

“…you’re incredibly strange,” he grumbled after a moment, his brow tugging low on his forehead. More pouting. “And impossibly frustrating to read.”

The heat radiating off your face like a fucking active volcano felt ‘possible’ enough to you, but what did you know.

“That’s why you’re keeping me around,” you reminded him.

Ten minutes later, he was sprawled out with his head in your lap, the ridges of his horns bumping your hips and inky black hair spilling over your thighs. Naked as a jaybird.

“Tell me another story,” he hummed, eyes slipping closed.

“Sure,” you agreed, gaze once again firmly locked on the hundreds of cracks in the ceiling. You’d probably have them all memorized by this evening, or at the very least have managed to count them all up a dozen times over.

You were halfway through some yarn about armies made of playing cards and worlds beyond looking glasses when Tsunotarou sighed, heavy and bone deep. Content. And then he turned to bury his cheek into the rough fabric of your traveler’s pants with a rumbling drawl that was not unlike a purr. His nose pressed itself into the inseam of your thigh and your brain fuzzed out like you’d been shot pointblank with a Wand of Lightning Bolts.

“Child of Man?” he huffed after a moment—one, neon, eye flicking open to glare up at you grumpily. “What happened then? To the cat that smiled too wide and the man with the mad hats?”

“R-Right,” you squawked. “Uhm—so as I was saying—”

You stared back at all those cracks and started counting again from zero.

#twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #Malleus Draconia x Reader #Malleus x Reader #Malleus Draconia #Malleus x Yuu #Dragon Malleus #Monster Mayhem #My Writing #Twst Fantasy AU #Monster Mayhem Malleus Part 2

3K notes · View notes