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danses-with-dogmeat · 7 months

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Day 26 -- Vault Tec Rep

The (nsfw) details for Kinktober 2023, Day 26 are just below the cut!

Minors, please don’t interact.

Pregnancy with Vault Tec Rep x f!Sole

This poor man deserves a damn break, and so here's this! The vault tec rep seems to have a little following of people that love him, and I'm here for that. If he's a sad ghoul, I love him too, darn it. So, here's a bit of love and softness for this sweet guy.

I hope you like it! <3

*Also, just a note, I used the name that Death Shroud headcannoned for him, cuz I couldn't fathom writing "vault tec rep" 70 or so times 😅 Plus... it's not the most romantic name in the world for someone to call their partner by.

"Oh, vault tec rep, please keep loving me!" Yeah... no.

So his name is David Dwecker. But feel free to give him any name you see fit! I really did like that name for him though, so that's what I went with.*

and if you haven't seen/heard Death Shroud, do yourself a favor and give it a watch! chadfallout76podcast is the creator, so be sure to check out their blog as well! I would link him here, but... He doesn't need to see this, lol.

Here is the link to my Kinktober 2023 Event List so you can stay up-to-date, or re-visit these works as you please.

Included: Pregnancy, pregnant sex, dancing, kissing, lovemaking, tiny bit of a voice kink, body worship, little bit of a belly kink, fantasies, simultaneous orgasms, creampie, aftercare, cuddling, so much sweetness, it might give you a bellyache.

Words: 4k

Blue, speckled beams of light poured through the half-open window, bathing the room and highlighting the points of Sole’s face, the wisps of her hair, drifting with the pair’s subtle movements over the living room floor. Soft, sweet tunes, so delectable he could very nearly taste them on his tongue, weaved through the air, caressing their ears and setting their souls alight with romance.

She was warm and plush in his grasp, her arms wrapped around him tightly, hanging on his shoulders as the pair swayed with the delightful melody. Though Sole's face was a bit too far from his for comfort, it was a necessary deprivation, David supposed. The need for that distance being the great swell of his love’s stomach pressing into his as they leaned in close as they could.

The Vault Tec representative hummed along with the tune, some well-known romantic din with Sinatra or Nat King Cole or someone of the like, but he was too focused on her to decipher the exact words, the correct artist. David could feel the fatigue beginning to drag at her, felt her weight resting more heavily on his shoulders, and he felt his hands grasping more tightly to her hips, to help steady her pace, her steps, as they swayed about the room.

It was something he always made time for. No matter the work, no matter the life disasters and the fleeting time, he and Sole were never to miss a date night; and what was a date night, without a dance? Without song? Without this blissful closeness?

He swears, her state only made it more necessary.

She was everything to him, even when she wasn’t holding his very future within her. Now, though? He wondered if there was anything he wouldn’t do for her.

“You really are perfect, love.” David whispered, and heard her smile in the way she sighed.

“I don’t feel perfect.” She mumbled, looking down at nothing in particular. “I feel bloated and clumsy and sore and tir–”

“Sweetheart," He interrupted gently, "Why didn’t you tell me?”

He’d felt her growing heavy, sure, knew that she was fatigued, that bedtime was definitely upon them very soon– sooner every night as the months passed– but sore? She was in pain, and still danced with him?

“Come here.” Gently, David stepped back, keeping his hands in place as he began to guide her to their bedroom.

“I’m a little sore, not helpless.” She chided lightly, as he helped her take a seat at the foot of the bed.

David only shook his head as he bent to his knees and pulled her slippers from her undoubtedly aching feet. Despite her weak protests, Sole’s head fell back with a sigh as he began to massage over her and ease the soreness within.

The room was cool from the breeze that blew inside from the open windows. David could smell blossoms in the air, whatever grew below their bedroom window, so light and fragrant. The room was dim, with only one bedside lamp to keep the night at bay, but it cast a warm glow that only emphasized his love’s natural radiance. Crickets sung outside, frogs croaked from their place down by the stream, life teemed all around them and lulled him into a deep sense of safety, of belonging.

It felt… unfamiliar, fleeting almost, and something pressed to the back of David's mind, like a knock at the back door, like someone speaking to him through water, he couldn’t quite make it out.

Sole’s hand grabbing his shoulder pulled him from those thoughts easily, and they blew away like winter leaves.

“I can hardly feel my feet now, after that.” She smiled warmly, if not tiredly, her eyes half-lidded. “Thank you, baby.”

“No trouble at all, love.” His hands moved up her calves, squeezing and kneading as they went. “Any more… requests while I’m, um, down here?” He ended his question with a chuckle, as fizz seemed to bubble and tickle in his stomach.

You’d think, after all this time, as many times as we’ve been together, I wouldn’t get so flustered at the mere thought of it.

He couldn’t blame himself though, not when his Sole was, well… she was his everything. His home, his happiness, his family, his love, all wrapped into one.

David didn’t know a single person could be so many things to him.

“Kiss me?” Sole spoke up in a quiet voice, one that sounded just as bashful and breathless as he felt.

Another boon of her current state, he thought to himself, as his lips immediately pressed to the bare inside of her thigh. She was so needy when she was pregnant, she made him feel like a different man, one worthy of those heady desires. Not like he usually felt, like some Joe Schmo who’d only ever existed on the other side of someone’s front door. A man in a suit and a hat. No discernable personality, no passions beyond his subpar job.

She made him feel wanted, exceptional, desirable on more than a ‘average man who has a steady job’ level. It was a biological one, instead. She wanted him, in every way a woman could. And she wanted him, she chose him to be with, even with every possible alternative out there available to her.

That, beyond all things, made him feel truly... feral.

It was a state David Dwecker didn’t know he could find himself in, not ever in his life, but it was how he felt in this very moment.

He fought with that instinct as much as he could, taking his time moving up her body, being gentle with her, despite the way his hands shook and his breath picked up with desire. Her words had been clear, but vague at the very same time. Kiss her, yes, he could very much do that, but where? Down where he was kneeling? Should he rise up and capture her lips with his, kiss over her rounded belly? Should he just opt for all of the above?

Sole didn’t seem to protest, when he did in fact, decide to act upon that final thought. David’s lips traveled up over her thigh, his hands following the movement, asking, as they reached the hem of her sleep dress. His eyes met hers, voicing a silent question with raised brows, and she nodded, her expression already ripe with yearning.

His fingers glided along the soft fabric, swiping it up over her stomach, revealing her bareness beneath it. David felt his breath catch at the sight of her, her little belly button, mere days away from popping from the pressure of her growing stomach, squiggly marks lining the skin there, so lightly, so endearingly, her sweet folds, already glistening with that want that always astonished him.

“Beautiful.” He rasped out between kisses, “So beautiful.”

He felt the slight raise of her stretch marks against his bottom lip, and her belly quivered from her catching breaths. She didn’t have it in her to refute him now, not with arousal bubbling up inside her.

Sole’s hands went to his head, one caressing the back of his neck, while the other had fingers digging into his scalp, massaging him back in her own way.

Soft music drifted in from the living room, romantic and sweet as it met his ears. Her growing sighs and breaths were no less melodic to him, and he felt heat building and building beneath his skin. As such, David’s kisses became feverish, more hurried as his hands reached her chest and his mouth followed close behind.

Sole raised her arms up for a moment, allowing him to pull the dress completely off over her head. He couldn’t even pause to take her in, as he almost always did. Instead, his lips went straight to her now-bared breasts, mouthing over the warm mounds softly, so as not to hurt her.

David knew the way they must ache, and by the way she gasped as his lips dragged over a nipple, he held himself back from his over-impassioned appreciation of them. His arms braced on either side of her head, holding his body up enough that he wouldn’t put any unnecessary weight onto her, and finally, his lips moved upwards to meet hers.

This kiss was different from the others, sloppy and unrushed, exploring each other like they hadn’t a hundred times before this, and he felt affection wash through him, felt it ebb and flow like ocean waves within the sheltered harbor of their shared contact. Sole’s hands returned to him, nagging at his cotton t-shirt, until he pulled back to remove it in a flash. His lips returned to hers in an instant, incapable of being away from her any longer, as she gratefully explored his skin, running her fingers like lit matchsticks over his flushed chest, his heaving shoulders, and trailing blazing marks over him. David pulled breaths in between his teeth, straight from her mouth to his, tasting every last bit of her, of the dessert they’d shared, of the nighttime tea she’d sipped while he’d readied the radio for their dance. He savored all of it like this would be the last time he had the chance.

“I love you, darling.” He said into her, and Sole released a whine that sent surges of energy through every vein in his body. “There isn’t a single thing about you that I don’t love.”

“Mm, love you too, honey.” She gasped out her response, and he pulled back to let her catch her breath. “Need you. Need you, David, please.”

Her hands squeezed at his shoulders, dragged over the soft swell of his chest, pressing there and encouraging him downward.

He smiled, feeling a sort of prideful contentment swell inside him.

She needs me.

“Where, sweetheart? Where do you need me?”

Sole bit her bottom lip so prettily, looking away with a shy little grin; and though, at that point, she didn’t need to answer for him to know what she wanted, David waited with his brows raised in expectation.

“You’re being rude to your wife, Mr. Dwecker.” She said with a pout, and he could only chuckle, giddy at the way she spoke to him. The way she called him her husband.

It'd been long enough that he should be used to it by now, but how could he be? Every day with her was a novel event.

“No, come on, sweetheart.” David braced himself on one hand, so the other could press to one soft cheek, and turn her eyes back to meet his. “Tell me where you need me.”

A roll of her eyes and a bit of a whine later, and finally Sole broke.

“Need you in me, baby. Need you inside, need your… your cock.”

David’s breath caught at that, at her words. They were more than he could’ve hoped for, and he felt his head reeling, his cock aching in his pants, his vision clouding with a hazy little vignette at the way pleasure surged through him.

“Yes, ma’am.” He leaned down to kiss her one last time, short but passionate as he dragged his tongue over hers, and then backed away.

His hands helped her scooch further up on the bed, fluffed the pillows so she could lean back comfortably. He moved away, but for a moment, to remove his sweatpants and drop them to the carpeted floor. Then, crawling his way back onto the bed, he lovingly spread her soft thighs as far apart as they could go, and slotted himself between them.

Now, he paused, taking in the glorious sight of her.

Her thighs were warm in his hands, smooth to the touch, her hair was mussed against the pillow, her eyes half-closed, her chest heaving with her breaths. Sole was the very pinnacle of attraction, of vivacious, robust health that had him gawking at the marvel of her body. She was bursting with life and glowing like the rays of the setting sun. She was a natural wonder. David felt she could do anything, if she could do this. If she could love him, hold his entire future inside her, if, through everything she’s been through, and everything that she would go through still, she could be her tenacious, gentle, passionate, self, if she could be that and more, his Sole was surely divine.

To see her spread this way, just for him, he felt privileged, like he didn’t deserve to even lay his eyes upon her, but gracefully, Sole allowed it.

He would never squander that, David promised himself. Not when the baby came and he lacked sleep and sanity, not when she was weary and cross with him, not even when they were old and wrinkled and the world had changed beyond the point of recognition, he would always treasure the fact that he was the one lucky enough to be able to love her like she deserved.

“What?” He heard her voice through the haze of his own thoughts.

David blinked at her.

“What are you looking at?” She wasn’t teasing him, no, Sole sounded almost worried.

How long was I staring?

“Is something wrong?”

“No!” He said, quickly as his clumsy lips could manage. He still felt like he was in a dream, somehow. “No, sweetheart, just… can’t get enough of you.”

He scooted himself forward, releasing her thighs to let them fall on either side of him as his hips met her, and he let his stiff member rest overtop her pubic mound. One hand went to his erection, pressing it so the underside of his shaft would put pressure onto her clit as he began to rub it forward and back over her.

“Didn’t mean to make you nervous, love.” He said apologetically as he moved, “Sometimes, I just can’t believe this is all real. That we’re doing this, starting a family, that… that some schmuck like me gets the privilege of being with you every night.”

Sole’s breath caught, and he saw her eyes glisten in the dim lamplight.

“You’re not just some schmuck to me, David.” He could see the way she wanted to reach for him, to comfort him, but her gravid belly wouldn’t allow for that kind of movement.

He reached for her instead, leaning forward so his free hand could grasp with one of hers. She squeezed it tight.

“I love you, I want you, want this for us.” She was growing more and more breathless as he rubbed over her, and David felt her slickness beginning to collect on the underside of his cock. "No matter what you think, honey, you’re– ahh, you’re worthy of it. All of it.”

A groan left his throat at that, at the way his chest utterly ached at her words, as he felt emotion collecting in his eyes just the same. On the next rub of his length over her, he felt the tip of him catch at her entrance and, almost unwittingly, he pressed inside.

Sole gasped, and her eyebrows creased together at the sudden feel of him, but she opened up easily. Her wetness eased the way for him, letting his length slide all the way in on the first stroke, until his hips met the back of her thighs. David couldn’t help the lewd moan that left him. He felt heat rise all the way to his ears, felt a primal satisfaction warm his chest, tighten the muscles in his stomach, automatically causing him to begin little pulses of his hips against her.

Sole's walls sucked him in in response, her sweltering heat clenching until he felt like she was choking him. It was difficult, then, to begin his first few thrusts, as she tightly held onto him like a vise.

“Feel so good, darling, s-so warm.” His voice came out somewhere between a breath and a growl from his efforts, “So perfect.”

He took care, as she loosened enough for his pace to increase, as his words and actions made her gush more wetness onto him. David had to catch himself, had to make sure he was being mindful of her state. He watched her expression for any sign of discomfort, but all he could discern was bliss.

Sole’s fingers gripped at the bedsheets as she felt him spread her apart, rubbing against all those sensitive spots inside. She gasped and moaned with his attention, with his effort, with the heightened pleasure that her hormones only exacerbated. One free hand moved down to where they were connected, David’s fingers gathering a bit of her slick before he began to rub over that sensitive little point nestled in her folds.

Sole’s hips began to buck up towards him at the new pressure, and he tried to angle his hips along with her. He pushed forward just as she reared up off the mattress, rubbing the head of his cock as deep inside as he could manage, until he felt another telltale squeeze of her walls around him.

“D-David…” She moaned his name, and he thrust harder than he meant to.

“Hngh, yes, darling?” His voice was labored as he continued, feeling himself grow harder, more desperate, with every press into her searing warmth. “What is it?”

“I’m close, honey.” He saw the way her rounded stomach tried to clench with the pleasure flowing through her, how sweat had begun to shine over her glowing skin.

“Yes.” He nodded, breathless. “I feel it.”

David leaned back somewhat, his hands going to her hips to haul her closer, as close as he could manage, and he lifted her just a smidge to get the proper angle before he pounded against that soft, spongy spot at the very back of her.

Sole cried out, and he felt his cock pulse inside her tellingly.

“M-me too, dear.” David nearly choked, “‘M close.”

Sole couldn’t respond though, not with words, as she arched her back, as her hips stuttered and she came with a broken moan. He felt her wetness gush onto him, felt her body tremble in his grasp, and the pressure of her, that desperate, wanting squeeze around his member was more than enough to set him over the edge, and he released with a cry of his own.

David’s hips bucked shallowly as his cock pulsed out ropes of his seed into her still-clenching walls. His grasp on her was tight, the way his hands held her to him and kept himself steady, kept him from collapsing overtop her as his energy faded from a roiling flame into a pleasantly sizzling bed of coals.

Sole’s eyes were closed as he felt the last of his spend leave him, as he felt himself growing soft within her, and reluctantly, David eased himself out.

The air was suddenly cooler than he remembered, against his clammy skin, the wetness coating his hips. He shivered as he stepped off the bed and grabbed a towel from their bathroom. It happened in a daze, as he moved to clean them both, as he gathered the blankets together and wrapped them about their tired, spent bodies, and blissfully, he held Sole in his embrace as she drifted off.

He didn’t sleep right away. In fact, David found he couldn’t, even with his fatigue, he felt… a sort of unrest that made fear prickle beneath his skin. It was back, that whisper at the back of his head, that woeful sound that had his eyes wide and his heart racing.

Something was… was wrong, even though everything felt right with the world. With Sole asleep in his arms, with the cool night, the warm blankets, the crickets’ song outside, the radio droning from the other room.

Suddenly, David felt very far away from it all. Like he was in another’s skin, like this world wasn't his own. He was afraid to sleep, in case he woke up somewhere wrong, afraid to even blink. But he could only hold out for so long.

Then he was blinking awake.

The ghoul sat up with a start, feeling the blanket gather around his heaving waist as he looked wildly around the shadowy room.

It was a hollow ruin of his dream.

The smell around him wasn’t fresh blossoms, but stagnant water and stale dust. No cricket song poured in, only silence and the groan of the wind through bare tree branches. It wasn’t pleasantly cool, but cold with the drafts whispering through the cracks and holes in the shabby walls of the Sanctuary home he found himself in.

It all came flooding back, and sadness permeated his skin, his heart.

Slowly, with a shaking hand, David pressed the pads of his fingers to his scarred and textured face. His breath caught momentarily, but a movement stopped him from despairing.

Sole…

She was the commonality. The one constant in this world, and the one of his wildest dreams.

“Honey?” Her voice asked tiredly. “You okay?”

“Fine, sweetheart.” He whispered, all the warmth of his dream contained in those words. “I’m just…”

David turned to her, and leaned down before he could even finish, kissing her lips, her cheeks, caressing her with his time-ruined hands with all the gratefulness of a man that thought he'd lost his love for good.

Sole giggled at his attention, trying to kiss him in return, but he was too feverish, too unpredictable with his overwhelming affection.

“I’m so happy to see you.” He kissed her again, until she groaned against his lips.

“Mm, David, sweetie, I’ve been here all night, all week.”

“I know, love, I know.” He moved over her completely, and Sole wrapped her legs around him, rubbed her smooth hands over his shoulders.

“So, what’s brought all this on, hm?”

“Missed you when I was asleep.” He breathed against her neck, “Love you so much, Sole, I want… I wish…”

His movements paused as he remembered.

In his mind’s eyes, he saw her before him, he felt the delicate raise of her stretch marks against his lips, he yielded to the soreness of her breasts, moved slowly and carefully around the swell of her belly.

“What?” She prodded gently, and David blinked.

His throat was tight, his mind fearful, apprehensive.

“I… I dreamed we, that you…”

He looked into her eyes as his confidence wavered, and she made him feel brave. The affection he saw there… even when he now looked like this. After 200 years of suffering, after her hardship and grief, they’d both lived. Survived through it all and made it here, to this.

“I dreamed that we were having a baby.”

Sole stared with wide, vibrant eyes, first looking at him, and then at something far past him, deep in thought.

“Is that…” She started, being careful with her words, “Is that something you want? Something that’s… possible?”

He shook his head mutely.

“I-I don’t know if it’s possible, but… But I dreamed about it, and when I did… Well, it’s hard to think of anything I want more.”

Her smile almost caused him to faint, the genuine joy he saw there made his arms shake.

“Y-you think you would want to, well, that you might…?”

Sole was nodding even before he trailed off, and David’s grin mirrored hers.

A second chance. He thought, as he leaned down to kiss her, and she met him easily, pressing in until they were both breathless.

“I… I want to try, at least.” She panted out, “In all honesty, I’ve been thinking about it too. Just… didn’t know how to approach it.”

She leaned in and kissed him this time, her hands on either side of his face as their lips met in a cacophony of feeling.

“A family…” Sole breathed out with a contagious smile as her head fell back onto the pillow.

“A family.” He repeated, his voice firm, stubborn in the way it wanted this. The way he would dream and hope and speak it into his reality.

So help him, that dream would come true. One day.

One day soon.

#fallout #fallout 4 #fallout companions #fallout 4 companions #fallout 4 npcs #fallout npc #fo4 #vault tec rep #david dwecker #vault tec rep fo4 #fallout vault tec rep #ghouls #sole #sole survivor #f!sole #dwd.nsfw #kinktober 2023 #kinktober

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toothpastecanyon · 2 months

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The Comfort of Agony, Chapter 8

For the first time in his eternal life, Alcor had been bound. He couldn't leave even if he wanted to... so it was just as well that he didn't want to leave, right? After all, this was what Mizar wanted.

He didn't know what she was so angry with him for, but he probably deserved it.

See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.

Nxlar the Antithetical is from @gnomewithalaptop awesome TAU Dash Simulator!

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Piper had never in her life been so tired at eight PM. Her whole body felt so sore and clumsy and heavy, like lead was running through her veins. She was so tired she wasn’t even quite sure she was awake; she kept jolting up, opening her eyes, looking around the motel room as she tried to get ahold of herself… and then opening her eyes again. It was confusing, and half-formed dreams followed her into the waking world. She was sure there’d been a unicorn here, but she was…

She was drawing a circle. Or more aptly, Alcor was drawing a circle, with her hand. It moved smoothly and steadily, a focused presence sharing her body as it drew a complex array of symbols on the tile…

Piper jolted as she opened her eyes again. Had that been a dream too? No. That was real.

Stars, her neck was killing her. She cast a longing glance at the bed just a few feet away, and then slumped down to look at the mirror in her lap.

“Alcor…” she started. “When are we… when’s this done?”

“Nearly done with this binding circle.” He said, and she could feel her eyelids drooping lower. “I picked a more powerful demon to quickly ward off the angel, so the circle had to be a little more complex. Nxlar’s a good choice, she’s dangerous, sure, but pretty sensitive to…”

“…and that should hold her! You ready Piper? Piper?”

Piper sat up; there was a wetness on the side of her mouth. Eww, she’d been drooling.

“Jeez,” Alcor gave a sympathetic frown. “You really are tired. You wanna just go to sleep?”

“I’m…” she rubbed her eyes. “I can’t sleep until we do this, so let’s just do this, right?”

“I mean, I can do it alone,” he said, sheepishly. “I, uh, sort of have already been doing it, rather than telling you what to draw. If you just wanted to go to sleep while I, uh, use your body…?”

Piper gave a slow blink. She could tell he was trying to broach something to her… but she was fried. She just sat there fighting her eyelids as he made a few more quick markings.

“Uh, alright,” Alcor said, and had her stand up. “I’ll do the talking, then.”

Grabbing twenty three candles, he walked around the chalk, setting them down in a zigzag pattern on an inner and outer circle. Once that was done, he took a look at his work - and rolled his eyes a bit at the clutter of her circle. Twenty three candles? Alcor thought any demons with more than twelve were being a bit extra. And Nxlar - ever the contrarian - didn’t even want you to light them, so it didn’t have the pretty candlelight glow while you chanted. Not to mention all the intricate chalk symbols you couldn’t even make out in a dark room…

Alcor shook his head. Well, aesthetic concerns aside, the circle was done. Raising Piper’s hands up in the air, he began the summoning.

“O, Nxlar the Antithetical, O Great Mistress of Decay, I draw upon your darkness!”

The room seemed to drop ten degrees, and Alcor let out a subtle scoff that fogged the air. Putting ‘great’ in your own summoning chant - a little gauche, don’t you think? But a sickly rotting smell was starting to emanate from the circle, so he put it out of mind.

As he watched, the unlit candles started to sag and bloat at their bases; the white wax greyed and split, and a dark, stinking sludge oozed fourth and began to pool in the center of the circle.

As tentacles slowly took form, Alcor slipped the mirror behind Piper’s back, and opened her eyes. He watched a dripping maw form, and smiled as a rumbling, frustrated growl rattled the walls.

“A̷ b̶i̶n̸d̵i̶n̸g̶ c̷i̶r̴c̵l̵e̴?̵” Nxlar’s voice was a staticy echo. One of her tentacles snaked out towards the edge of the circle; it stopped short, and she hissed as she drew it back. “Y̷o̴u̶ ̸d̷r̴a̷g̴ ̸m̶e̸ ̶o̴u̵t̶ ̶h̴e̵r̵e̵ ̵w̴i̴t̶h̵ ̴n̷̬̚ō̴̺ ō̸̩f̸͎̎f̸͎̅ë̴͇́r̴̝̈i̷̠͆ṉ̴̀g̶͔̓,̶ ̷a̸n̶d̵ ̸t̵h̶e̵n̶ ̷y̴o̴u̸ ̶t̶r̴a̵p̷ ̵m̶e̵ ̵i̵n̴ ̶t̵h̵i̵s̵ ̴t̶i̵n̶y̸ ̸c̵i̴r̶c̴l̴e̸?”

“Tiny? Oh, please, it’s not tiny.”

Nxlar snarled. “M̵a̸k̴e̸ ̴y̸o̵u̷r̶ ̴d̴e̶a̶l̷,̴ ̴h̶u̵m̴a̷n̷!̵ ̸A̸n̴d ̵y̴o̶u̶ ̷b̸e̷t̶t̷e̸r̸ ̵c̷h̷o̷o̶s̵e̴ ̵y̵o̵u̷r̷ w̷o̵r̷d̸s̶ c̴a̶r̷e̶f̴u̵l̷l̵y̵ - I’̵m̸ ̸n̷o̸t̸ ̸f̴e̴e̴l̸i̸n̶g̸ ̴g̴e̷n̵e̷r̴o̶u̴s̵!”

“Actually, that’s the best part about this.” Alcor couldn’t hide a grin as he stepped closer. “I don’t need a deal at all.”

“W̸h̴a̷t̸?̴”

“I just needed to summon you.” To the demon’s astonishment, Alcor carefully rubbed out a compelling ward with his foot. “There you go, you can go now.”

“You - you don’t want a deal?” Nxlar’s tentacles began to writhe beneath her; the confusion was turning quickly to anger. “ Y̴̤̆ȏ̶̘u̵̥͠ fo̷͍͒r̵̘̊c̸̜͆ḙ̸͂d ̵̔m̴̺͌e̵͙̿ ̴͕̀tŏ̶̥ c̷̣̿ö̸̘́m̸̲͐ȩ̷̓ h̵̢̛e̸̡͐r̷̨͒e ̶f̵̹̂ȯ̶͖r̶̳̋ ̶̧͗ n̶͙̚o̷̯͌t̵̼̓h̴̦͐i̵̢̕n̵̜̿g̸̹͆?̷̧̊”

“Yep!” Alcor gave a cherry wave. “You’ve been so helpful - thanks for coming!”

“̷Yo̷u - g̸o̴r̵e̷ ̴a̶n̵d̸ ̴m̶a̶g̵g̸o̵t̵s̴,̴ ̶I̸’̵m̴ ̴n̵o̵t̶ ̵g̴o̶i̴n̸g̵ ̴a̴n̵y̶w̴h̴e̶r̸e̶ ̸W̶̛̮̙̰͓̙̩̫̗͈̲͂̈́̾͗̐͊̊͒͝͠Į̷̱̖͐̌̏̒̄̓̔͒̄̔̓̏̕̕T̵̯̺͔̰̈́̔͋̿̌̄̅̑̄̾͌͝HO̶̞̼̖̣͚͉̻̻̪͒̇̀͌̆̾̔̂͗́́̈͛͛̕͜͠͝Ṳ̵̢͚͈̳̠͒̕T̶̻̹̠͖͊̇̈̋͜ Ỵ̸͎̟͇̦̳͎͇̳̞̭̤̲̣͜͝ͅO̸̺̖͎̲̲̳̠̖̳̅̑̑Ṳ̸̗̬̐̉͆͘͜͜͠͝R̶̢̗̪͉̲͖͉͉͓̹̾̀̈̈́̃̃͒̕̚͘͠͝ H̵̨̘̩̫̖̻́̀̊̆̒́̓̆̔̀́̍̕͠͝E̴̡̢̥̝͚͉͔͚̦̦͖͎̳͌̏͆̎͑͊͒͝Ā̵̲͇̻̬̜͉̫̹̳̼D̷̨̡̛̰̰̳̫̯̱̜̳̀̈́̌͑̌͛̊̅̍͐̒̑!̶̧̢̡͇͚͇̖̭̯̹̗̫̥͛͑̉͛͌͒͂͊̌̀̔͌̽̕͝͠"̶͝

With a shriek, Nxlar launched herself right at him - she shrieked again as she bounced off, and started battering at the binding circle with her tentacles. Alcor stood at the edge with a cheshire grin; when her assault slowed, he gave a wink, and chuckled as she screamed in frustration and fought even harder.

“You can do that all you want, Nxlar, you’re not gonna get through. You might as well…”

Alcor felt something bubbling up in his throat; he had just a moment to notice it before it came up as a loud, ripping snore. He covered his mouth, but Nxlar paused, her four eyes frowning.

“̴W̶h̸a̴t̴ ̵w̵a̸s̷ t̶h̸a̷t̷?̷”̴

“Nothing!” Alcor waved her away. “Anyway, you should go, so-“

“No, that was a snore. Are you s̶l̶e̴e̴p̵i̶n̸g̸?̴ Or…” she peered closer, at the faint glow in his eyes and the mirror clasped behind his back, and realization dawned. “You’re no human. You’re possessed!”

“I… uh…”

“You’re Alcor!” Nxlar said, and recoiled in fear - but almost as soon as she did, she was leaning forwards again. “I can barely feel you! What happened to you?”

“Uh, nothing!” Alcor felt his face starting to burn. “Nothing, you should go, I-”

“Are you…” Her jaw dropped open, and her tentacles froze in place. “Are you bound?”

“No! N-no, I’m, I just-“

“You are bound, aren’t you? You’re bound to that mirror!” All the anger was gone; Nxlar was grinning with pure glee. “The mighty Dreambender, bound away and pleading for my help… this is the best day of my existence!”

“Pleading for your help? I’m not-!”

“Oh, just wait until the Midway Bar hears about this!”

“No, don’t tell the- ugh.” Alcor dragged a hand down his face. “Okay, fine, I might be kind of slightly bound right now-“

“Kind of? You’re more stuck to that thing than the last piece of flesh on a bone!” She cackled with delight. “Aww, little Alcor, don’t look so embarrassed! Getting bound happens to the best of us - or wait, what am I saying, of course it doesn’t!”

She then collapsed into a fit of laughter. Eyebrows drooping, Alcor picked up the chalk again.

“Okay, cool, we’ve had our fun. I’m just gonna draw a banishment ward now.”

“You’re a little - a little weakling!” Nxlar was wiping yellowed tears from her eyes. “A little human-born weakling, trapped in a mirror! How’d they trap you, did they pwomise to be your fwiend?”

Alcor rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you’re very funny, Nxlar. Goodbye.”

He finished the ward and pressed a hand to it. Nxlar was still cackling away as it began to glow.

“Sure, I’ll leave!” A tentacle waved as she faded away. “I got such a story to tell at the Midway Bar - why don’t you come down there sometime? Oh, wait, you-“

And she was gone mid-quip, though Alcor didn’t think he was missing much. He pinched his nose and let out a low groan; there goes his reputation. He was never going to hear the end of this after he got unbound, wasn’t he?

Oh… well. That was a problem for another day. Staring down at the thick grimey sludge left behind in the circle, he was glad at least that he got what he wanted.

“Here’s our demonic essence,” he said through the mirror. “I’ll just spread this over the room, and then you can get some well-deserved sleep, okay Piper?” A pause. “Piper?”

No response, and after a moment, another snore broke through. Oh, she was out , and he didn’t blame her. He could feel her scattered dreams, her flashes of fear as the dangers replayed themselves in her mind… Alcor made a face, and touched the mirror to her forehead. He wondered if he could still do this. Concentrating, he sent a pulse of his power through the mirror, and into her mind.

He felt her dreams settle down, felt the edges smooth out into a soft, pleasant grey, and he smiled. Good. It was the least he could do for her. And this body was exhausted as well - he just had one thing left to do, and then he’d let it rest.

There were a couple plastic cups over by the motel sink, and Alcor grabbed them and started scooping as much sludge into them as he could fit. It was thick, disgusting ooze, and he shuddered as he stuck his hand into one. He started painting along the baseboard, moving beds and tables that got in the way, leaving a black, smelly continuous line through the entire room.

Once that was done, he stepped back, careful not to wipe his forehead. There. The angel wouldn’t be able to maintain a consistent hold on Mag in this room; if it was trying to keep him in the dark, it wouldn’t come in.

His face tightened. Mag… he was going to find a way to reach him. But for now, he couldn’t help him. He could only help Piper, and he swore, he was going to find a way to get her out of this mess.

He finally walked her body over to the bed, lay her down on the mattress, and pulled the covers over her body. He kept a hold on the mirror as he propped it up on the other pillow, adjusting his view until he could keep watch on the door.

“Goodnight,” He said, softly, and then he closed her eyes.

His own stayed open, a soft yellow glow shining in the darkness.

______________________________________________________________

It was a cultist. It was a cultist.

That was the first thing running through Mag’s mind as he came to. The wave of agony that crashed over him; everything, everything hurt. His ribs felt broken, he couldn’t breathe through his nose, he tried to move his arm and felt such a spike of pain it made him sick to his stomach - oh, that was dislocated. Ow. Ow.

“Oh my stars!”

Bright headlights were torture to his pounding head. Through his swimming eyes, he saw a silhouetted figure approaching him.

“Are you- are you okay?!” He watched them cup their hands over their mouth. “Oh my… d-don’t move, dude, I’ll… I’ll call an ambulance! Hold on!”

An ambulance, shit. Mag gritted his teeth, and dragged himself forward. Every movement was a herculean effort, and he could feel the little pebbles of the tarmac scraping themselves along raw and shredded skin. A car on the highway zoomed past so close to him - he needed to get out of here. He needed to get out of here now. Come on, he needed to heal!

“H-hello, 911? Yes! Yes, oh my stars! I-I found a man on the highway! He’s really hurt, you gotta send someone quick!”

It came slowly, reluctantly. Mag squeezed his eyes shut as his shoulder snapped back into place; there was a pop in his chest as his rib reset itself. He got to his knees, and the tattered rags of his clothes hung loosely from him as he got his feet underneath him.

“Y-yeah, I’m on the 101, exit… Oh, I don’t know!” The man had his back to Mag, peering desperately into the darkness as he approached. “I-I don’t, maybe I can drive to find the nearest one? O-or should I stay with him, he really needs help! I-I can…”

Mag’s foot scraped on the tarmac, and the man glanced back - glanced, and then turned around with wide, horrified eyes.

“I-I can…” His eyes traced up, up the filthy orange prison jumpsuit, all the way up to meet Mag’s eyes. He backed up against his car. “I… I…”

Mag could hear the 911 operator still talking in his ear. He reached forwards, plucked the phone out of his hands, dropped it to the ground and stepped on it.

“Sorry, man.” Mag said, and tried the car’s handle; it swung open. “And sorry about this, too. It’s a bad day for both of us, eh?”

Then he squeezed himself into the car and started the engine; the man, standing frozen in front of the headlights, quickly scampered out of the way. Stepping on the accelerator, Mag sped up on the shoulder before merging onto the highway. Hair was in his eyes - he shoved it back, then put two hands on the wheel and leaned forward.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Can’t lose her now. Hold on, Piper.”

His hands tightened on the wheel - tightened on the gun pointed at-

It was a cultist.

That voice… his voice, but not his words, he knew. And the memory that flashed in his mind now, the gun pointed at a hooded figure with a knife, it was blurry, surreal.

It wasn’t his own, he knew. The angel altered his memories sometimes; there were things it knew he couldn’t handle, things he could sleep better at night without. It knew what was best for him.

It was a cultist.

All he had to do was trust it, and it’d keep him safe.

It was a cultist.

It’d keep his family safe.

It was a cultist.

It’d show him how to bind Alcor away, and they’d work together to dismantle every sick cult that tore families like his apart, to make a world where what happened to Scarlett would never, ever happen again.

It was a cultist.

He didn’t need to think. He didn’t need to feel. He just had to give himself over, give himself completely, let himself become a hammer to be wielded, an instrument through which the angel could reach into the world and wipe away the darkness wherever it existed.

It was a cultist.

He didn’t need to think, and that was good, really. He wasn’t a smart guy - he never had been. He was a warm, mortal body, and that was all he needed to be. He just needed to trust in the angel, and everything would turn out okay.

It was a cultist.

He just needed to trust the angel. It knew what it was doing. It knew what it was doing.

…

Why was that giving him a pit in his stomach?

Mag grimaced; he could feel his arm pulsing. A cold presence was pushing itself into his mind, pushing him to the side. He closed his eyes, letting him swallow him up, and he thought no longer.

Glowing eyes opened in his place, and peered into the darkness.

There was a motel coming up on the side - the sign read ‘COZY JOE’S CHEAP MOTEL ROOMS’. It looked at the sign, looked at the long, squat building just off the side of the highway.

It looked… and it drove on.

#transcendence au #toothwrites #magnus wright #Nxlar the Antithetical #mizar #alcor the dreambender

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mylevisdontfitanymore · 8 months

Note

do you have any more thoughts about your stevebucky werewolf au? i love it very much, it holds a very special place in my heart ❤️

Original werewolf Steve

Follow up werewolf Steve

Aw, thank you! ❤️

I was having trouble thinking about what more I could add to this alternative universe that wouldn't be redundant because werewolf puppy Steve scrambles my brain so hard.

If anyone brings him up, suddenly I don't know anything. There are no words but lots of in-my-pants feelings. Nothing but big, fat, dumb puppy Steve that crawls on all-fours with his belly dragging on the ground for as long as he's still able to wobble forward. Still mobile. And even when he can move…

He's too big.

That belly is blubbery and thick and heavy. It leaves his back arching deeply. Bloated full of enough meat to satiate the ravenous wolf inside him along and bloated full of sloshy alcohol because the wolf inside Steve is obsessive, relentless, and it's been trained to crave, to ache for enough alcohol to drown in.

BUT inspiration struck ✨️✨️✨️

And as I was thinking about Steve, blubbery and wobbling, I had a new thought that scrambled my fragile little brain.

What happens when Steve fattens up from the monthly gorges?

I-

*gulp*

I have some ideas.

Unbeta'd stucky belly kink nonsense. Warnings for stuffing, weight gain, mobility issues, immobility, animal play (werewolf/puppy), etc.

Eventually, with month after month of gorges under the light of the full moon and the eyes of his indulgent lover, Steve begins to blow. up. His wolf form and his human form. Both go through rapid transformations that have nothing to do with the moon's cycle.

Steve's wolf form: his lean, all-muscle, powerful frame blooms into the body of a soft, excessive, lazy housepet. He's more of a puppy than a wolf than ever before. He gets softer and softer until even when he's bloated beyond belief with food and alcohol - taut and flushed red under his fur - his belly fits in with the rest of his frame. He starts to look fat all the time in wolf form. Bloated or not. It's unmistakable. It's not just a belly that looks like it's fake, sticking out. His legs don't ripple with muscle. Instead, they jiggle with fat. His belly hangs hugely underneath his swollen chest and forces his legs apart wider, altering how he prowls. He lumbers. It's much less intimidating and much hotter. Clumsy and uncoordinated because his hunger is so out of control. His spine is buried by not only his thick fur but his new blubber as well. Nowhere on his body is immune to the weight he packs on. His muzzle even fills out. Bucky didn't know wolves could get fat faces! His puppy-wolf has a chubby face. So cute.

Steve's human form: his lean, all-muscle, powerful frame becomes buried under layers and layers of fat. His human form fattens much faster than his wolf form; somehow, the wolf has a faster metabolism than Steve's serum-fast metabolism. His chin doubles sweetly, and his cheekbones go from model-sharp to biscuit-dough soft. Those broad shoulders round out with fat. His biceps look even fucking bigger than usual - pillowy, not hard - and strain all of his shirt sleeves, no matter how fast he sizes up, he just can't keep up. He's growing too big too quickly. Plumping up. His chest swells and swells from masculine and hard to swollen and flabby. He doesn't have pecs, he has tits. "Worst" of all, his belly explodes out. Despite how soft his gut gets, it retains the most mouth-watering round shape. It's a perfect dome. The tight, pale surface of the ball attached to him is only broken by the stretch of his belly button and his white, healed stretch marks. His ass is monstrous, as are his thighs. Jiggly. Pale. Big.

Big.

Steve gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Until…

He's vast.

He is massive.

He is so fucking oversized and fattened that he struggles to move in his human form.

Steve is so fat that his gut and swollen tits weigh down on his plush thighs so heavily and seemingly overnight he can't, without Bucky's help, heave himself to standing. At that point, even with Bucky's help, by the time he gets to his feet, he's panting and sweating. Every breath makes him jiggle. He's red in the face and so hot. In more ways than one. All this insulation is hot and it's heavy, heavy on his cock. It's hot and humiliating. He used to run miles and miles without breaking a sweat, yet now he can't get from reclining on his fat, cushioned ass to his feet (which he hasn't been able to see for… a while) without panting and growing damp with sweat.

Oh, God.

What happened to him?

How did he get like this? 😫

How did he get like this? 🥵

He's never dreamed that he could overpower his body ever again. Not since the serum entered his veins. But. Here he is.

He's overcome his super muscles.

He's transformed his body again. He is huge.

Mammoth.

So fucking fat and soft and plush and-

So hungry.

He can't ever stop eating. He constantly has something in his mouth and much more inside his stomach. Filling him. Bloating him. Stuffing him. So fucking hungry.

It gets worse when Steve's in wolf form. His appetite increases exponentially. Steve can not control himself. He has to gorge. Feast. Glut. Devour. He feels absolutely starved in wolf form. He can't pack anything and everything into his hungry yet overfed maw fast enough. He can't swallow anything that ends up in front of his face for more than five seconds fast enough. He can't get enough.

No wonder he ballooned… 😮‍💨

But with all the fat that's piled up on his frame -

Steve can't move.

He's overpowered the serum in his veins and he's overpowered the wolf inside him.

All he can do, now that he's grown so fucking unbelievably massive, is lay on his bloated side and whimper. Desperate for food; desperate for prey to fill him deliciously.

Filling up is the only thing that stops him from complaining. It feels so good. Too bad he always needs more.

When Steve tries to roll over onto all-fours, needing so badly to hunt, he can't actually make it. He's too heavy. Too fat and clumsy. He can't get there.

Besides, if Bucky helps roll him onto all-fours, Steve can't go anywhere, anyway. He's all belly. His belly fills the space between him and the floor and more. On all fours in wolf form, he lays out on top of his gut, a little wolf attached to this obscene, huge belly.

His days of hunting are long behind him. The closest Steve gets to hunting these days are growling and snapping his teeth pathetically, non-threateningly at Bucky when Bucky teases him and doesn't push the end of the funnel straight into his mouth, instead dangling it just out of reach. What's he gonna do? He can't fucking move. He's all fat. Plush, wobbly fat. Bucky can do whatever he wants to his puppy. He can funnel endless amounts of beer and melted ice cream into him until he's lifted a few more inches off the floor from the inflation of his tanker gut. He can grab handfuls and handfuls of his fuzzy, jiggly fat. He can roll his puppy around if he likes. There are no hard edges left to his wolf. Only soft fat. Perfect to grope and admire.

Steve is a blimp. He's not a werewolf. He's pathetic. Perfectly shaped. He went from dragging his belly against the floor to his belly being the only thing resting on the floor. It's unbearably hot.

Bucky isn't sure how Steve could possibly get any bigger but… if he can, he will. Bucky will make sure he will. Human Steve and wolf Steve. Human Steve can still walk after all. That has to change, doesn't it? 😈

I hope you enjoyed ❤️

#mylevisdontfitanymore #ask #stucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #fat steve #chubby steve #werewolf steve #belly kink #text #stuffing #weight gain #immobility #animal play #werewolf #dog #alcohol consumption #intox kink

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drpeppertummy · 10 months

Text

another dogshit little prompt thing super tiny what ever

[post-stuffing tummyache, tummy rubs]

"Say, Timmy, are you alright?" Lemon peered down at Tim with a worried look on his face. Tim nodded. The two were sitting together on the couch, and Tim had been even quieter than usual. Lemon also thought he looked uncomfortable. Something in his face, ever pensive, seemed just the slightest bit tense. Maybe something was worrying him, or maybe he wasn't feeling well. Silently, Tim curled up against Lemon's side, laying his head on his bony shoulder. Lemon gently wrapped his arms around Tim and planted a kiss atop his head.

"Are you sure? You seem, I don't know, you're a little quiet tonight," said Lemon, running his fingers through Tim's thick curls. "I mean, you're always quiet, but you know."

"I'm okay," Tim said softly. "I just ate too much at dinner."

"Oh!" Looking at him again, Lemon could see that Tim's belly was indeed a little rounder than usual. He thought for a moment, then placed one hand on his belly. Tim looked up, a tiny hint of a smile forming on his cherubic face. His big dark eyes were filled with adoration. Lemon was still for a moment, utterly lost in Tim's eyes, then he smiled softly at him. With one hand fixed comfortingly on Tim's back, he gently rubbed the other in slow circles, following the curve of Tim's soft middle. As he did, he could feel Tim beginning to relax.

Tim nuzzled his cheek against Lemon's shoulder. He had eaten far more than his fill tonight--Lemon had made his wonderful homemade spaghetti--and his stomach felt bloated and achy. He didn't necessarily regret eating so much; it was excellent, and it always made Lemon happy to see Tim enjoying his cooking. Tim, in turn, was always happy to see Lemon's big beaming smile. Still, he hadn't intended to go so far overboard. His belly gurgled quietly as it worked to digest the heavy mass of pasta, which felt more like it was expanding than breaking down. He shifted uncomfortably, and a tiny moan escaped him as he did.

"Aw, Timmy." Lemon leaned down to kiss him on the forehead. He ran his hand along the underside of Tim's belly, brushing against his belt, and his eyebrows bounced up.

"Hey, why don't you get changed? This doesn't seem comfortable," he said, tapping Tim's belt. Tim nodded and sat up with a soft grunt.

Once they were both in their pajamas, they got into bed and snuggled up against each other. Lemon returned his hand to Tim's belly, taking in the softness and warmth of it as he caressed it. Tim, much more comfortable now that he wasn't crammed into his snug daytime clothes, melted instantly at the soothing contact. Lemon wasn't known for his careful touch--in fact, he was infamously clumsy--but when it came to handling Tim, he always seemed to know just what to do. Tim shifted even closer to Lemon and kissed him.

"You're so sweet to me," he said quietly, smiling. Lemon grinned.

"You make it impossible to be anything else," said Lemon. "I love you, Timmy."

"I love you too."

#writing #belly kink #tummy kink #xtimx #xlemonx

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ablogofchanges · 1 year

Note

Ive always wondered what it must be like to be super old and fat. The idea makes me semi-nervous yet intrigued. I want to be the type of very elderly man who relaxes in a retirement home for the rest of his life.

Hmph, intrigued and nervous huh? Heh, fear no more…Waving my hand at you with a smirk, im gonna show you what you had you expect upon yourself

A strange sensation happens to you as your arms change to a more elderly state as As fat accumulates in the fingers. The transformation continues, you feel the aches in your back as it stoops. You sense your joints become stiff, and the arthritis pains you as you grow older. your back aches a lot and you're getting on in age, as the years go by you get older and your back aches more and it starts to effect your walking as more and more bones in your back start shifting. Your legs become heavy and massive. Their size increases as much as possible as they swell and bloat without limit. Soon, they will become so heavy that they will be unable to hold your body up while you are standing. Eventually your legs give out making you unable to stand at all. The legs bloat uncontrollably and soon become so big that they can no longer fit in ordinary clothes. Your butt and thighs become wider and puffier as your legs give out. As the life drains out of your body, you become weak and frail. You start to lose all of your teeth as your bones become brittle, becoming bald while your skin starts to wrinkle and sag. Your eyelids are losing elasticity are heavy, dull and wrinkled as you begin to lose the structure in your eyes as your ears hang lower. You slowly start to lose control of your bodily functions. Now, the hair that is left begins to turn shorter, grayer, and thinner with the nose is sagging, expanding from age. Your stomach ached as your body started to grow and stretch, shredding his shirt and exposing your older body. Your hair crept down his longer arms and covered his torso. You started to pack on muscle but it quickly vanished under a layer of fat, your stomach growing and pecs sagging. As your chest hair started turning white, you searched for a mirror while being clumsy at your new height and weight and astonish by how rough and deep your voice now. And by seeing your reflection on the mirror, the change is now complete and permanent with me teleporting our place to a nursing home.

Sadly, your health declined with your heart beating faster and faster with every constant short of breath you try take. And now you can no longer play video games, due to your eyes becoming unable to focus. You feel more tired than you've ever felt.

You must have dreamed of your once strong self now.

(Sorry, this one is extremely messy and unpolished, even when i spent pretty much time on this, i promise i wont make these too long and this bad in the future )

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sickstarlight · 3 years

Text

different causes of sickness

a friend had asked me for some advice on how I write differences between different types of sickness or reasons someone could get sick! so I typed up a reference of details I try to keep in mind in my writing. not by any means meant to be comprehensive but these are some of the more common things I see used or use myself!

eta: if you found this interesting or useful consider tipping me on kofi (/jallyns) or getting a $5 commission so I can fix my computer

drinking related:

drank too much: everyone’s threshold for this is going to be different obvs both in terms of how much alcohol they need and how wasted they’re able/willing to be before getting sick. also ime you have to be QUITE drunk for being drunk alone to make you sick, to the point where it may be dangerous, so personally I like this combined with something else - motion, something not sitting right in their stomach, etc - but it can be good otherwise too. probably the first thing the character will notice or be aware of if they have any warning is that being drunk stops feeling good at this point. they might feel flushed and/or clammy and will probably feel dizzy, their mouth might feel really dry depending on what they’ve been drinking. this is probably also the point where they recognize they have limited control of their body, feet might feel too heavy to move or head might be spinning, may feel very clumsy and suddenly become AWARE of it.

they might FEEL motion sick even if they’re not moving too because their motion sense is fucked at this point. might feel heavy but this is likely to be a whole body heaviness NOT just their stomach (though they might be very aware of it); might or might not be able to place the feeling of nausea. maybe burping but it depends on what they’ve been drinking (carbonated or not, mixed with soda, etc) and what else they ate! they MIGHT feel okay after throwing up but their friend probably shouldn’t let them drink anymore even if they do.

also this might come with very little warning, they may go from feeling fine and giggling with their friends to suddenly feeling Wrong to hurling all over the floor in a matter of minutes or even a few seconds. if they have friends with them who have been with them drunk regularly, depending on who’s more sober their friends might notice they look unsteady and/or queasy before they realize they don’t feel well.

other good things here: alcohol that tastes so strong it’s all they can taste when they throw it back up, feeling dizzy but not placing it as nauseous right away, feeling like their head is too heavy to lift. reeling on their feet when a drink hits them too hard and feeling the whole room spin.

drank too quickly - more likely to come on SUPER suddenly, but they’ll probably recognize it right away (unless they’ve already been drinking) because the alcohol hasn’t had time to get to their brain yet. so with gradually drinking more than they should they will get drunk first and THEN get sick, but if they drink too much too fast right off the bat they’ll start to feel some effects probably but they’ll also know pretty quick that their drinks aren’t gonna stay down.

hung over - throwing up from a hangover is a combination of a buildup of alcohol byproducts in the stomach, and the stomach lining being irritated + producing more acid. a headache is also a significant part of the misery of a hangover but (unlike a migraine, where the pain directly leads to vomiting) isn’t necessarily related to any queasiness, so the headache might get worse with sound, light, or movement, but their stomach likely won’t. they might feel a little like they have heartburn (or actually GET some acid reflux) from acid buildup, and their stomach might be sore or feel too warm as well as being upset.

the only real cure for a hangover is slow sips of clear fluids and bland foods to help settle the stomach and reduce the acid, but lots of people swear by other things - certain kinds of foods, drinking more alcohol, etc, so that’s something you can have fun with! depending on how much alcohol is still in their bloodstream, they might also still feel a little drunk/tipsy and have some issues with their balance, thinking clearly, etc, which could make the nausea worse; also some people might always get sick from hangovers but others might not so consider how your character deals with that! They also might wake up sick, or feel sick right away, or might not feel sick at all until trying to get some fluids or take meds for their headache (especially since ibuprofen/aspirin also irritate the stomach lining).

food related:

ate too much - character will likely feel bloated and tight, food might feel heavy in their stomach. depending on what they’re stuffed with there might be burping esp if there’s a lot of gas in their stomach, or a lot of gagging and unproductive dry heaving if it’s very heavy/solid. might need to drink something to get anything up, or have help from someone, or might just take a while to finally puke as their overstuffed stomach struggles to break down their meal enough that their stretched out muscles can get anything moving. any firm pressure on the stomach is gonna feel worse and likely to make them gag even if they’re not ready to throw up yet. maybe weak strained tummy noises as they try to digest. (side note if a lot of their stomach contents are liquid like soup, drinks, etc they’ll throw that up a lot faster; also a good excuse to discuss sloshing/jostling/swirling around in their tummy)

ate too quickly - ties in well to eating too much since it’s easy eating in a hurry to not realize you’re full until it’s already a little late - eating or drinking anything too fast can also make some people’s stomachs hurt or get upset in general, and is an easy way to end up swallowing a lot of air which can obviously lead to feeling much more full and tight with lots of burping that could easily bring up more!

ate something bad - this could be rotten, poorly prepared, or just something that upsets their stomach but what it is might change the feeling of it so there’s definitely variety here. probably also feels heavy but more localized, like they can feel the specific food they ate and where it’s settled in their stomach. might also be painful and cause cramping and tenderness. imo nausea from this is more likely to come in waves and recede but might also be more readily recognizable as nausea. some things I like in this scenario - character thinking about what they ate and feeling worse, imagining they can feel individual parts of their food in their stomach, burping and tasting what they ate (possibly noticing the taste having gone sour / etc in their stomach). good place to describe stuff like how greasy smt was/feeling the grease coating their stomach, or otherwise talk about the specific way the food feels in their tummy and how much it makes them want to puke. unlike with eating too much, they’re likely not to feel better until ALL of the offending food is out of their stomach (while with overeating, they may throw up a few times and then start to feel better once there’s less pressure on their stomach).

general notes - if something the character ate is what’s making them feel sick, a lot of focus on hyperawareness of how much food is in their stomach/how heavy it feels are gonna be big sensory things (as well as maybe taste, pressure/tightness, stomach contents moving around)

illness

appendicitis - if you’re looking for something more serious than food poisoning or a stomach bug, this is sure to end up with a character in the hospital as they’ll need surgery! the big distinguishing thing is pain, which will be sharp and located on the lower right side of the abdomen (or may start near the navel and move down). any kind of exertion or sudden muscle movement can make the pain worse. if the character or one of their caretakers is knowledgeable and suspects appendicitis, they might do the rebound test, which causes pain to get drastically worse AFTER placing pressure on the area and releasing it. sickness usually begins after the pain starts and may get worse when something exacerbates the pain as well.

in addition to nausea and vomiting, other symptoms can include fever, bloating, and bowel issues (either diarrhea or constipation), which will usually get worse over the course of the infection. if the character is treated soon enough (within 2-3 days) they’ll usually feel better after surgery and recover relatively quickly, but if they’re not seen by a doctor and the appendix ruptures they’ll likely need more extensive treatment including antibiotics and a longer hospital stay to make sure they won’t develop sepsis. (in some cases, symptoms could seem to suddenly go away when the appendix ruptures because it releases pressure, but worse symptoms would rapidly develop!)

rarely, there’s also such thing as chronic appendicitis, where milder symptoms may appear and recede over the course of weeks or months before developing into acute appendicitis and prompting surgery.

coughs, colds, strep, etc - can all cause vomiting as secondary symptoms thanks to postnasal drip, throat irritation, or forceful coughing. serious enough throat irritation or buildup of mucus can make a character gag, or feel the need to, and so can coughing up phlegm from their chest. if they’re sniffly and have their sinuses draining down the back of their throat, they may end up swallowing a lot of mucus too which can make them feel nauseous as their stomach gets full of sticky snot. I think these work best as emeto scenarios for characters with weak gag reflexes!

food poisoning - separate from eating something bad because food poisoning from a virus or bacteria is a longer lasting illness with a later onset; the character may first get sick within a few hours of eating the contaminated food, or it may incubate and make them sick within a day or two. like stomach flu (also frequently foodborne) many types can cause both vomiting and diarrhea, but symptoms vary depending on specific cause. characters also might puke early on and then develop more symptoms and become sicker later as bacteria multiply and produce toxins, and may take several days to recover from the later onset where they could have persistent nausea, or might feel okay and even regain their appetite if they don’t try to eat but be unable to keep much or any food down. most types of food poisoning also cause pain, swelling, bloating, and cramping, usually in the lower part of the stomach and upper intestines, so those are other symptoms your character might have to deal with in addition to puking!

stomach flu - character may be feverish or achy as well as nauseous while their body fights the infection, which is an additional great source of hurt/comfort fuel! can cause both vomiting and diarrhea, so even food they manage to keep down might still sting them later. because it directly causes irritation and inflammation in the stomach and lower GI tract, character might throw up frequently or after every meal, or might be able to handle clear fluids but no solids, or some bland foods but nothing with significant sugar, spices, or fat. they also might only be able to drink or eat in very small amounts without bringing it back up. their stomach may hurt and feel like it’s cramping even if they haven’t tried to eat, and they may get only very brief relief of nausea after each time they’re sick because it reduces the immediate pressure on the stomach but not the inflammation; they might feel nauseous constantly or end up dry heaving even when there’s nothing in their stomach, and might need to keep a basin of some kind nearby for a couple of days since they can’t be sure if they’re done. dehydration is a common complication and can cause headaches, weakness, and dizziness in addition to other symptoms! the most common stomach virus, norovirus, is also EXTREMELY contagious, and virus particles can aerosolize and scatter widely during vomiting, so the caretaker may not be safe either.

injury, other medical

anaesthesia - people react to this in all kinds of ways but getting sick is really common so it can be combined with just about any reaction. character might be disoriented or dizzy and have trouble with balance, walking, other coordinated movement. some might be really confused and have trouble communicating their ideas clearly or say things that might not make any sense to other characters. from the anaesthetized character’s perspective though they’re probably making total sense so it can also be fun to include their muddled thought process and what they’re feeling or thinking that they express in weird ways! other characters might feel pretty clearheaded and be able to communicate clearly though. they might feel “light” or like they're floating, or very detached from their body; this may cause more dizziness and vertigo. they may also be cold they might feel nauseous right away and persistently from the anaesthetic irritating their stomach, or might only get sick from moving that makes the “floating” feeling worse. general anaesthetic is usually used for surgery so if they aren’t immediately nauseous the character can also wake up really hungry from fasting before, so eating too much or too quickly might also make them realize they’re nauseous and end up with them puking.

concussion - there are a lot of reasons someone might get sick from a concussion, but the most common (non threatening) are vertigo / vestibular disturbance and headaches! the character might get nauseous or throw up when they turn too quickly or stand up too fast if their balance center is disrupted, or might have head pain similar to a migraine that makes them sick and can have similar sensitivities. mild concussions without other complications can still last up to a week after the injury, but the character should get sick less and less often as time goes on, so the most intense phase for sickness caused by a concussion is shortly after it happens! Frequently repeated or prolonged bouts of vomiting are often signs of more serious injury though, so if you’re keeping it mild they should probably be brief and a little spaced out even early on, though a character might have intermittent nausea between them. other symptoms of concussion are important too here - big ones are short term amnesia, loss of coordination, difficulty concentrating, and confusion. they might also hear ringing in their ears or sometimes have visual disturbances like in migraines!

migraine - the pain from migraines can directly cause vomiting, especially when it’s at its peak, but it might also be caused by aura effects on balance and vision! (some people get tunnel vision or “kaleidoscope” vision with migraines, some just get dizzy, some people even hallucinate strong smells or tastes which could also lead to nausea!) for some people, the headache gets better after throwing up, but not everyone; they also might or might not feel the buildup of nausea or persistent nausea throughout their migraine, or alternately might retch or throw up almost IMMEDIATELY when any trigger makes their pain worse (common triggers are bright or flashing light, loud or high pitched sounds, strong smells, and sudden movement, but people have lots of different triggers so they can be a lot of things!) many people can’t chase off a migraine until after they’ve slept so you might also include them trying to get comfortable only to have their head start hurting worse or their stomach get upset and make them scramble to get over the trash bin.

motion sickness - anyone can get motion sick but some people are more prone to it than others! so you might have characters who always get motion sick in any moving vehicle, or who are okay in cars but can’t travel on water, or who only get sick with intense movement like on roller coasters - or characters who aren’t prone to motion sickness in general, but discover they get it when fatigued, anxious, etc. different characters might also experience it differently - for some there may be a cycle of gradual buildup of nausea until it becomes unbearable and they throw up, while for others it might come on suddenly, or they might have low level nausea throughout a trip but only puke when there’s a more sudden or violent movement. some people also only get motion sick after a period of time, and might be fine on short trips but get sick if they’re traveling longer.

other notes: many people who get carsick don’t get sick if they’re driving! being able to get fresh air also helps many people, as well as focusing on the horizon if possible. some people prone to motion sickness will also experience the opposite when sitting still but watching movement onscreen like in a video game. likewise, reading or looking at a still object for long while moving can trigger motion sickness, even in people who are less prone to it otherwise.

#sicknario #ish #emeto prompt #emetophilia #sickfic reference #illumivomi #I think that tag is for accounts w no rpf or p*dophilic ships ?#pls feel free to use as reference!

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heartsofbeskar · 3 years

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the red wolf

chapter four: breaker of chains

oberyn martell x named fem!reader

warnings: language, discussion of death, brief assault (not sexual)

words: 4.7K

a/n: hellooo, long time no update! thank you to everyone whos hung in there, im trying to get back into a more consistent routine with writing so fingers crossed 🤞🏻 you'll probably notice a change here; ive decided to make this story with a named reader, since there's already so much character that has to be molded from the family name — i'll still be keeping physical descriptions to a minimum but im more in the mindset of this being an OC from second person perspective! i hope this is okay 🥺❤️ let me know what you think!

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The bells rang out loudly.

The tolls chimed in your ears, piercing their hollows, echoing through to the inside of your head, settling uncomfortably behind your eyes. You could barely think.

The hands on your upper arms were tight, urgent, just shy of the edge of pain.

They rang the bells again. Why were they ringing the damn bells?

Pale skin, tinged purple and stretched unnaturally. Bloated with death and sick.

More bells.

Bodies pressed on you from all sides, but the same one remained behind you. It molded itself to your negative space, firm and warm and urging your clumsy feet forward — to where, you had little clue.

The piercing shrill of Cersei’s cry, her face twisted with rage and tears. Her mouth, spitting venom at her brother. At your sister.

There were no bells. The ringing was in your ears alone, you realized. Oberyn pushed you through a tall doorway.

The bells came to a stop.

——

The midday sun cast a warm glow over the study, highlighting the tones and patterns of the deep wood furniture. Uncovered windows let in the air that smelled of the garden plants and the sea, trickling through without a worry of a chill to those inside.

The man who sat at the desk was hunched over, his shoulders set with clear tension as the quill perched in his hand moved furiously over parchment. He didn’t spare a look back when you entered the room, his pace of writing not faltering.

You padded across the stone floor, quietly as you had been taught — proper highborn ladies never stomp nor drag their feet, Raya — but not so quiet as to sneak up on the man, almost certainly alerting him to your presence, though he still showed no signs of recognition. His hair, usually brushed and kept, was mussed, as if his hands had been running through it for the entire morning. Maybe they had been. You rested your hands gently atop his shoulders; his quill paused.

“I thought you might like to join me and Sansa for a meal in the gardens, Father.” You smoothed over the fabric of his shirt absentmindedly, trying not to let your eyes linger on the words you could see written in his hand on the wrinkled parchment. You felt his exhale of breath underneath your hands before he turned, placing one of his over yours with a weight that felt uncharacteristically heavy.

“My daughter,” he smiled up at you, but it didn’t feel genuine. The stretch of his skin was too tight across his face, the smile not the one you had known since childhood. “I’m afraid I cannot join you; but, I do need to speak with you.”

——

The walls of the room seemed to be in motion around you, shifting back and forth as if you were in some enchanted maze from the stories your mother had read to you as a small girl. You had loved those stories, begging her to let you listen when she later read them to Sansa, and then Arya in turn. Robb had teased you mercilessly for it.

You supposed you had always wished to submerge yourself in those stories, to enter a world so much more exciting and different from your own. You realized, now, how much better a boring life could be. Longing surrounded your heart for the monotonous days in Winterfell, filled with nothing but studies and sewing practice and dinner in the main hall.

A hard surface was underneath you. Reaching down, you felt the familiar legs and back of a chair. A lot was familiar, you realized; the walls finally began to still. This was your room. Oberyn had brought you back to your room. The entire journey across the gardens back to the Keep was a blur that had already leaked from your mind.

Oberyn was in your room.

The man in question kneeled in front of you now, brow furrowed in worry, bringing out the wrinkles that rimmed his eyes. You had the urge to reach out and run your fingers over them. Not to smooth them, but simply to revel in their texture.

“Raya,” he said softly, his accent gently coating your name.

His own fingers, tanned and strong, settled over your knee, thumb rubbing small circles over the skirt of your dress. It was a soft fabric, dyed a rare hue of muted gold that you had never seen the likes of in the North. Fabrics were rarely dyed there— the resources needed were too out of reach and the early sunsets rendered the brilliant colours less spectacular.

“Are you alright?” Oberyn continued. His dark eyes were focused on yours, intense and deep. You wished you could fall into them, leave behind the cruel worlds of King’s Landing and Westeros with men who killed fathers in front of their own daughters’ eyes. Was Dorne a world like this? You found yourself longing to investigate the home he often spoke so fondly of.

“Sansa.” Your own voice was choked and alien to your ears, clawing its way out of your throat with a rasp and surprising you. You swallowed thickly. “I need to find her, she—”

“She’s gone, little wolf,” Oberyn replied, his other hand coming to provide a heavy weight on your shoulder as you tried to rise from the chair. The muscles of your legs shook when you tried to use them. “She fled the wedding. If she knows what is best for her, she is far from here already.”

You shook your head violently, feeling some of your hair come loose from its intricate arrangement your handmaiden had crafted that morning, laying onto the back of your neck. “Oberyn, you don’t understand—”

“I do, I—”

“You don’t!” Your yell echoed across the room, filling the space. Tension settled around Oberyn’s features. He squeezed your knee. “They’ll kill her, they won’t even hesitate to take her head and parade it through the streets like a circus act! The Lannisters killed my father because he knew their secrets, Oberyn … he knew and he told me, and they took his head for it.”

Your vision was clouded by tears and your voice shook as you finished. Your chest heaved, flushed where the adorned neckline exposed your skin. Oberyn’s eyes moved slowly downwards before they rested on his own hand. The sun that streamed low through the window glinted off of the gold of his rings. He didn’t look back up at your face when he spoke.

“I know the horrors that family is capable of.” He spoke softly and guilt twisted in your gut. Of course he did. “They ordered the butchery of my sister, and her infant children. I have never forgotten the day I heard the news.”

You opened your mouth. For what, you weren’t even sure. An apology? The blame for the atrocities of the Lannisters did not sit on your shoulders, this you knew. But you felt it all the same. Before you could speak, Oberyn’s hand rose to cup your cheek. It was warm where it sat on your skin, and you exhaled in relief as you leaned into it.

“I cannot imagine having to see such horror in person.” His tone was steady but serious. You thought maybe — possibly — you heard a subtle tinge of venom on his tongue. “As for what your father knew … it is the truth we all know but dare not speak inside these walls, little wolf.”

Again, you shook your head, slowly this time. You laid your hand over his, anchoring it to your skin.

“She told him,” you whispered, as if the walls themselves had ears to listen. “Cersei did. From her own mouth, he heard it to be true. From that moment … it was as if he was a dead man even as he still drew breath.”

There was a long pause as Oberyn seemed to process your words. His thumb brushed over your cheek, wiping away a wet trail of tears that you hadn’t even realized was there. You were struck in this moment by how close he was. It wasn’t the first time, but every time felt as if it were. His lips, still red stained from the wedding wine, were so close to yours. Your breath intermingled in the small space between.

“They will have sealed the city by now,” he finally said. His eyes finally met yours again. He leaned forward only slightly, coming to rest his forehead on yours. “With any luck, Sansa is already outside of the walls. But if she is here, rest assured I will find her. And I will keep you safe.”

He closed the remaining space between you with an unhurried, gentle press of his lips. You closed your eyes, relishing in the feel of him, fisting your hands in the loose fabric of his overcoat. You inhaled, as if you could bring him inside of you by his breath, and consume the quiet strength he seemed to possess. It was short, and soon he pulled back, but stayed close enough that his nose brushed against yours.

His eyes, dark and serious, bore into yours once more. They seemed to convey everything that did not — could not — be translated into words. It felt as if you were diving off of one of the many tall and imposing cliffs that lined King’s Landing’s shores, crashing head first into the cool waters. You did not want to come back to land.

“Do not repeat this to anyone, little wolf.”

——

Your hands shook at your sides as your feet glided over the cobblestones, a gentle wind rustling your skirt to one side. You could feel the cool air whenever the hem lifted off of the ground, as it slipped underneath and kissed the bare skin of your legs. You had forgotten your slip when you dressed yourself this morning, dismissing the confused handmaiden who had stood at your door shortly after you woke. It was silly — she seemed like a sweet girl — but you couldn’t find it in you to trust her, despite her persistent attempts to do her job in tending to you. And beyond that, you had been in no mood to be tended to.

It reminded you too much of when you’d aided Sansa and Arya when they were young, insisting on helping to raise and care for your sisters whenever possible. Now they were both lost to you, drifting in the world alone and isolated. Or, in another possibility, they were—

No, you stopped your thoughts. You would not even entertain other possibilities.

It was nearing high noon, and the sun had risen far up into the sky, your shadow all but disappearing under the direct light. You didn’t even know how many days it had been since the wedding. Since the King’s death. Since he’d lain on the dirty ground, in his own mother’s arms, and choked on his own breath until he was blue in the face, skin grotesquely bulging in a way so unnatural that it haunted your dreams now — and you suspected it would haunt them forever.

The dawns had been blurring hurriedly into dusks, blurring in turn into the next dawn, and it was impossible for you to count their passings. You slept sporadically, waking covered in sweat and heaving as if you’d run the length of the walls of Winterfell, as Bran used to do. You’d been thinking of all of them even more lately. Of your sisters. Of Rickon, and Jon, too. Of Robb the most. His gentle smile, his steady presence, the one that had accompanied you since you were both in your mother’s womb. You would never have that again.

The burning hole that the loss of your family had caused in your chest was deeper now than it ever was.

With your head so lost in days of the past, you failed to notice a figure approaching at the edge of the path — until it was upon you.

You were whirled and shoved backwards, feet tripping over the uneven stones until your back made contact with a solid wall. Cooler than the heat of the day, you had been pushed into one of the many alcoves that lined the Keep’s walls, the arched entrances giving way to shadowed corners where one could find relief from the sun bearing down upon them. But there was no relief to be found for you here.

Your heart pounded in your chest, and you drew a gasping breath as weight pressed down onto the front of you, pinning your breasts painfully down. Reeling, you willed your eyes to open and focus on what — or rather, who — was in front of you.

A golden hand swam into the edge of your vision, and ice ran through your blood at the sight of it.

Jaime Lannister loomed over you, mouth twisted to marr the features that were praised far and wide as classically handsome. His eyes were dark, shadowed and deep set, and burning with a rage you could never begin to understand. You knew in your own heart that what your father had told you was true — what you saw was a deep hurt and anger of a father grieving his son.

You dared not voice this aloud, even if you could have.

His lip snarled even further upwards as he spoke.

“You little Stark bitch,” he spat at you. His living hand tightened where it had a grip on your arm. The fabric bunched around it, the seam on your shoulder digging into your skin with the increased tension. “You walk around our halls, eat our food, sleep under our roof.”

“P—please,” you choked out. He shook you, your back grating against the stone of the wall. The braid you had half heartedly put together that morning gave way, pieces falling out and down to frame your face. It burned where the bare skin of your back was exposed and subsequently scraped.

“If I had my way, I would have your head on a spike.” His eyes burned into you, and you felt tears well in your own. You willed them by all the Gods you knew not to fall; not to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was terrorizing you. “But first, I would force you to watch as I mounted your sister’s. I’d bet that pretty red hair would look good with the blood dripping from her neck.”

You said nothing, the fear of provoking him further roiling in your gut. Would he kill you here, so close to the light of day? Leave your body in this alcove for the next passing figure to find? You thought that if you even opened your mouth, you would surely vomit.

The flesh of his hand left your arm, but before you could find a moment of relief, it quickly rose to ensnare your neck, stoking panic anew inside you. Despite the heat of his words, the blazing anger that was laced in them, his skin was cold, and you failed to suppress a shiver at the contact.

“I— I did not—”

“You Northern half-wits have had it over on me one too many times for my liking, and I—”

“Jaime! Cease this foolishness at once!” A stern voice cut through the air, slicing a wedge between you and the enraged man. His hand dropped from you as if he’d been burned by your skin. You sputtered with the sudden release of pressure to your throat, hurrying to cover your mouth and dab away at the tears that had leaked unbidden from the corners of your eyes.

Tywin Lannister reached out a steady arm and grabbed roughly at the back of his son’s robes, yanking him — mercifully — further away from you. You would’ve felt gratitude, except for the fact that you were sure he was most angry that his son had chosen such a public and easily accessible venue to lash out at you. Had he accosted you in the privacy of one of your chambers, where prying eyes were blind to closed doors, you know he would not have been so quick to come to your rescue.

“You idiot boy,” he continued. If Jaime’s words were vicious, his father’s were pure venom, still dripping from the fangs of a snake within striking distance. “You would put your hands on your future wife in the open air? Make accusations of treason against her where any gossip can overhear? Have you no sense at all?”

“Future wife?” Jaime bristled on this particular detail. “Even if I was to betray the oath I took to the Kingsguard, I would not do it for some scheming, murderous little bi—”

Before the final expletive could leave his mouth, a sharp smack rang out through the air. You jerked back, as if you had been the one Tywin had just slapped. Jaime, cheek utterly reddened, seemed to freeze to the spot in which he stood, jaw slackened, eyes cast down to the dirt at his feet.

“Nothing about this has changed,” Tywin’s words seemed to burn the air now, leaving a charred path towards his son. It was as if you could feel the heat of them. “You will marry her, and you will produce heirs with a claim to the North, as we discussed. Is that clear?”

Jaime could do little else but nod, thoroughly embarrassed and undressed by his father. He didn’t look at you, and you were glad for it. His hand, hanging by his side now, shook now — with anger or fear, you could not be sure. Perhaps it was both.

“Go.” Without another word of protest, he rushed to leave, adjusting the length of his clothes where they had been disturbed by Tywin’s grip. Your body sagged, releasing the last of its tension that you hadn’t even realized you held on to as you watched his retreating figure. His head remained hung low, no doubt to hide the colour in his face.

You expected Tywin to make his leave shortly after his son, but he stayed, turning more fully towards you. He stood at the edge of the alcove, the shadow of the arch bisecting his aged and pinched face. He appeared more tired than when you had last seen him.

“If I find out you had any hand in the death of my grandson,” he spoke to you in an even tone, matter of factly. Somehow, it felt worse than Jaime’s passionate anger. “I will personally arrange for your execution. Walk with me.”

He extended a hand — sheathed in a black leather glove — in front of you. Nothing about it gave any clue that he had just presented a threat to your life. You knew it was not an optional request. Despite the wave of repulsion inside you, you reached out and grasped it, allowing him to pull you completely upright once more.

Tywin said nothing more as he walked alongside you, half a pace ahead to steer you in his desired direction. You passed servants and maids, hurrying back and forth to fulfill the duties of the day. Knights and guards, some marching in regimented steps while others stood watch over their designated areas. Nobles and merchants, enjoying the warmth of the sunwashed day, strolling with languid paces. All of them looked to you as you proceeded, clear suspicion written over their features. Did she have a hand in the King’s murder?

You wanted to yell, cry out, shove the truth in the face of everyone. You, who had done everything the Lannisters had asked of you since leaving Winterfell. You, who had stood by and watched as they’d first killed your sister’s loyal direwolf and then your own father. You, who Tywin Lannister freely moved as a pawn about his personal political chessboard. You, who had stepped not a toe over their lines, and yet were still suspected of the most egregious of crimes because of the name you carried.

You wished that you had done the things they imagined.

You recognized that you were being led on a route to Tywin’s own office. Your insides churned at the sight of the large, wooden doors, as they loomed in front of your vision. You recalled the last time he had summoned you here. You are a virgin, yes? The conversation echoed in the recesses of your mind, filling the space that had yet to be occupied by Joffrey’s face in death. So caught up in the moments past, you didn’t see the other figure in the office until you had almost reached him.

Oberyn had stood upon your entrance to the room, lips parted in a similar sense of surprise at seeing you enter with the lord. His hand lingered on the back of the decorated chair he’d been waiting in, fingers spread over the ornate peaks and valleys of the wood, adorned with all his usual rings. He wore a robe that was familiar to you, with brilliant red Martell suns sewn into the stunning colour of the fabric. But more striking was the absence of underclothes, the deep vee falling open to reveal his naked tanned chest, before it was secured at his waist with a golden belt. A trail of dark hair crossed the plane of his skin, leading down past where you could see. You had the undeniable urge to see just how far down the trail of hair went, and you struggled to pull your eyes back to his face.

“Prince Oberyn,” Tywin announced. He strode around his grand desk, scattered with parchements, settling into the chair. He began to make neat piles on the wooden surface. You knew that he wasn’t the least bit surprised to find the man here. Avoiding Oberyn’s eye contact, you took a small step back, reaching for the door handle as a way to excuse yourself. “Lady Stark— please, stay.”

You moved to sit in the unoccupied chair, as it was clear you were not dismissed. Oberyn waited for you before cautiously sitting again. “I’m sorry about your grandson.”

The older man’s eyes narrowed shroudly, finally looking back up towards the two of them. With a bitter laugh in your head, you thought it felt almost the same as when you and Robb would be pulled into Ser Rodrik’s armoury to be dressed down for another bout of antics. Almost. “Are you?”

“I don’t believe that a child is responsible for the sins of their father. Or his grandfather.” Oberyn’s brow twitched upwards. You weren’t sure if only you noticed. “An awful way to die.”

In your lap, hidden from Tywin’s view, your hands clenched into fists.

“Which way is that?”

Oberyn’s eyes slid quickly over to you before settling back on Tywin. “Are you interrogating me, Lord Tywin?” When he did not answer, “Some believe the King choked.”

The image of Joffrey’s purpled face surged to the forefront of your mind. Even with your limited experiences, it was hard for you to believe he’d died of something as innocuous as choking on his pigeon pie. The idea was on the edge of comical.

“Some believe the sky is blue because we live inside the eye of a blue-eyed giant.” You didn’t miss how Tywin’s eyes briefly flickered to you.

“The King was poisoned,” Oberyn asserted. Your head snapped to him in surprise.

“I think I should go, my Lords,” you tried to insist.

“Sit,” Tywin snapped, before you could do little more than rise from your seat. His gaze returned to the man beside you. “I hear you studied poisons at the Citadel.”

That was new information to you. You suspected Tywin knew as much.

“I did,” Oberyn nodded. “This is why I know.”

Tywin leaned forward onto his elbows. “You arrive at the capital, an expert in poisoning. Some days later, my grandson dies of poisoning. Rather suspicious.”

“Why haven’t you thrown me in a dungeon?”

Tywin bypassed the question entirely. “You spoke with Tyrion in Littlefinger’s brothel on the day you arrived. What did you discuss?”

“You think we conspired together?”

Again, he ignored Oberyn’s question. “What did you discuss?”

“The death of my sister.”

You drew in a shallow breath.

“For which you blame me.” It was a statement, not a question. Tywin sat back once more, hands braced against the edge of the desk. “She was raped and murdered by the Mountain.”

“The Mountain follows your orders,” Oberyn said simply. “Of course I blame you.”

Tension seeped into the room, spreading out among the three of you. The air seemed to haze with it.

“Here I sit, Prince Oberyn, unarmed and unguarded. Should I be concerned?” Despite his words, Tywin seemed at ease. You knew he would not be so careless as to place himself in a room alone with a man whom he truly believed would kill him.

“You are unarmed and unguarded because you know me better than that. I am a man of reason.” Oberyn shrugged. “If I cut your throat today, I will be drawn and quartered tomorrow.”

A pause. Then, “Men at war commit all kinds of crimes without their superior’s knowledge.”

“So you deny involvement in Elia’s murder?”

Tywin waved a hand through the air, as if they were discussing the afternoon weather. “Categorically.”

“I would like to speak with the Mountain.” Oberyn’s face was hard, more serious than you had become accustomed to. But you supposed much had changed in a short amount of time.

“I’m sure he would enjoy speaking with you.”

“He might not enjoy it as much as he thinks he would.”

For a moment, Tywin seemed to ponder on it, though surely he already knew what he was going to say. “I could arrange for this meeting.”

“But you want something in return.”

“There will be a trial for my son.” He spoke as if he wished he could do away with such a formality. “And, as custom dictates, three judges will render a verdict. I will preside. Mace Tyrell will serve as the second judge. I would like you to be the third.”

It was fruitless to comment on how a trial presided over by the victim’s grandfather and father-in-law seemed far from impartial.

“Why?”

“Not long ago, the Tyrells sided with Renly Baratheon. Declared themselves enemies of the throne.” His eyes slid to you again for a brief moment before he continued. “Now they are our strongest allies.”

“Well, you made the Tyrell girl a queen. Asking me to judge at your son’s trial isn’t quite as tempting.”

“I would also invite you to sit on the Small Council to serve as one of the new king’s principal advisors.”

Oberyn’s mouth upturned into a slight smile — but it was not the one you were used to seeing, rather much colder and more ingenious. “I never realised you had such respect for Dorne, Lord Tywin.”

“We are not the Seven Kingdoms until Dorne returns to the fold. The King is dead. The Greyjoys are in open rebellion. A wildling army marches on the Wall. And in the east, a Targaryen girl has three dragons. Before long, she will turn her eyes to Westeros. Only the Dornish managed to resist Aegon Targaryen and his dragons.”

A wildling army. Three dragons. Your head spun as you tried to take in as much of Tywin’s quick words as you could. You wondered why he was divulging so much with you here — you knew nothing the older man did was accidental.

“You’re saying you need us? That must be hard for you to admit.”

“We need each other. You help me serve justice to the King’s assassins, and I will help you serve justice to Elia’s.”

As they sealed their agreement, Oberyn refused to meet your eyes.

🐍

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sadoeuphemist · 4 years

Text

With the dragon dead, the knight could see quite clearly now the thin gold chain tightened around its neck, the hunched and scoliotic curve of its spine as its body lay crooked, bleeding into the dirt. Curled around the tower, it had seemed a fearsome beast to be sure. But with the beast cut down it was evident now that the tower had served as a sort of crutch, a stone stake in the earth that had trained the dragon to its dimensions, left it clinging and deformed.

“It was a pitiful old thing,” the princess was saying, coming into view as she descended the spiraling stone stairs. “My father’s men found a clutch of eggs in a raid, and on my orders brought one home. We raised it. It was quite a chore, honestly. God only knows how many times it set the curtains afire. And dragons attract dragons, or somesuch. Great red matriarch kept harassing the kingdom after that, until my father finally assembled a force to slay her, and that was that.” She flicked her fingers carelessly through her flowing hair, her movements light, insubstantial. She lowered her eyes and smiled at him mischievously. “I wouldn’t advise it, should you ever get it in mind to keep a dragon for yourself.”

The knight said nothing. His hand wavered, and he looked down in dull realization to see he was still holding his naked sword, the blade bared, ichor dripping down its length. It felt unusually heavy, his sword. As if the point were weighted, threatening to sway it in another direction uncontrolled. He blinked, and looked up at the princess’s fair face. “Of course,” he said. “My lady.”

“And at last, you have freed me from the foul beast,” she said, floating to him gracefully. “Freed it, too,” she added, looking down at her reflection in its lifeless amber eyes. She eased a lock of hair back into place. “Thank goodness for wandering knights. And for their swords, that can slice through any bond or obligation.”

Beneath his armor the knight shivered, and with an effort sheathed his sword, releasing his fingers from the hilt. “Could you have not -” he said, and shook his head and hesitated. “Could you not have simply set it free yourself?”

“After so long? After we had accustomed it to civilization?” The princess lowered herself upon the curve of the dragon’s neck, tucking her dress beneath her, and although her eyes were clear and hard, there was a tenderness to her touch as she ran her hand across its scales. “It could not fly, dear knight. Could barely breathe fire. It had all the viciousness of its kind bred out of it.” For a moment the gleam of a bared grin crossed her mouth. “This was a princess’s project. The idle fancy of a girl without a kingdom yet to rule. I had thought to raise it as a captive flame, a leashed destruction that could wreak vengeance upon the earth.” She smiled up at him, her lips soft, no hint of teeth. “Alas, such qualities, at least in dragons, proved incompatible with civility.”

She was almost tender, nestled in the dragon’s coils, her fingers toying with its filigreed leash, and the knight felt a revulsion building in him, erratic and irrational, towards both her tenderness and her scorn. “So you - you regret it?” he said.

She eyed him sharply. “Do you regret it? The way you charged right in - surely you’ve slain more dragons than this.”

“Yes, but - but those ones were fearsome! Wicked beasts! Had I known -!” He had indeed slain dragons. He had held his shield against their flame, feeling the heat of a furnace, moved nimbly to avoid their darting strikes, the searing venom of their breath. They had been wicked indeed, but at least vibrant in their wickedness, creatures that yearned to devour, to inflame, to sunder. Nothing like this piteous dead thing, this malformed creature that had never known anything but the thin allowance of leash chained around a tower. He could feel the blood rushing in his ears now, as if he was again charging in to do battle. “The dragons I slayed were true threats! Plundering the countryside! Terrors to both man and beast alike!”

“And so I should have ordered the eggs to be left where they lay, to be raised into wickedness?” she countered. “I should regret my efforts to indoctrinate this rapacious beast into the service of Christendom?”

‘No, but -” His knight’s armor was heavy on him, and clumsy, and he wished the dragon was not dead, or that there was some vile beast in front of him still, some reason for him to unsheathe his sword and rely on his knightly talents. “It - it is cruel,” he said, “to hold a wild thing in captivity, to force a thing to go against its nature! The dragons are fearsome, yes, but only in the manner of beasts, as a hawk rends apart its prey! And a beast - To be trained, it -”

The princess laughed, high and scornful. “Cruel? For a beast? To be trained? Will you say the same about the horse you rode in on?”

Ill-equipped for parley, the knight began to stumble over his words. The stink of dragonblood hung heavy in the air, clung to the insides of his nostrils. All he needed do was look down upon the dead dragon, from the thin gold chain lacerating its throat to where its body lay twisted like entrails, and then the indignation rose in him hot again. And yet, in his fumbling arguments, he found himself retreating to the image of a trained hawk swooping slow to disembowel a hare, soon again to bear willingly the darkness of the hood. He looked upon the dragon’s thin reptilian face, inscrutable and inert, as if it had been beyond suffering or humiliation even at the final stroke of his sword, and found himself abruptly at a loss for words. “I -” He fell silent and bowed his head. “Forgive me, my lady, I do not know what I say.”

She rose to meet him, gentle once again, her soft hands stroking the unfeeling metal of his gauntlets, and there was pity in her voice. “It is true,” she told him. “We must all of us, regardless of the circumstances in which we are raised, act according to our natures.”

This did nothing to untangle his thoughts, but she spoke to him softly, and soothed him, and he allowed himself to be soothed. “You have won me,” she whispered to him, her lustrous green eyes looking up into his face. “You have slain the dragon. You have freed a princess. And now your questing is over, Sir Knight. You have found your glory. You have found your vindication.

“Now take me far from here!” she said, and flung herself into his arms. “Return me to my father’s castle, and we shall wed, and you shall inherit my father’s kingdom and so justly be rewarded!” She broke out into a laugh, this one traipsing and melodious, with such easy joy that his heart could not help but be lifted.

With hands around her slender waist, he lifted her onto his horse, the both of them now moving so as to put the sight of the dead dragon behind them, its bloody carcass beginning to attract a bloated swarm of flies.

He mounted his horse to sit behind her, the soft curves of her body nestled into the space between his thighs, and as he reached around her to take the reins, his nose for a moment pressed into the soft fragrance of her hair. He spurred his steed into motion and they rode, through forest and through dale, the trees opening to meadow so that her hair was made golden by the sunlight, and all the while she laughed and spoke fondly to him. Now and again she would turn, peeking at him teasingly, showing him her smile, and each time he was struck anew by her beauty: the shine of her eyes, the curve of her cheek, the way her hair fell across her face, the glint of golden chain across the delicate length of her throat.

#fiction #repost

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debiteful · 3 years

Note

Hey, when you’ve got time, think you could write a story about a predator, through inebriation, swallows someone about a third their size and don’t remember, and the story’s mostly about the prey’s attempts to get the predator’s attention over the course of a week while hijinks ensue? Preferably anthros, nonfatal, if possible?

Content: soft vore, safe vore, unaware female anthro owl pred, trapped male anthro dragon prey, drunk pred, struggles, exhaustion, minor belly bulge, pred in discomfort, descriptive internal, food in with prey, multiple stomachs, awkward end, secondhand embarrassment

Graffa woke up with a belch. She stretched and wiped drool from the corner of her mouth. She couldn't remember a single thing about last night. Well, that wasn't quite true. She remembered taking someone home with her- a dragon! The little fella has been an absolute hoot at the party.

She rubbed her eyes with clawed hands, then scratched a feathered forearm. She looked around, her head turning more than 180° thanks to her owl anatomy. Well, he didn't seem to be here now. She got up to get ready for the day.

Despite appearances, Herbert, the dragon, was still there. In a bashful, daring gambit he had convinced the far from sober lady to eat him whole. She had been clumsy about it, hands fumbling to stuff him past her beak and down her gullet. He had helped as best he could, wriggling in and not fighting the waves of contracting muscles.

From there he had slid into her first stomach. Its small capacity was stretched to its limits around his scaly body. It had made lovely gurgles and threatening growls as it filled with fluids which gushed around him. They stung his nose and eyes a little, but they couldn't do much else to his tough hide.

He could feel her patting or pounding at the bulge he made high in her abdomen. The repeated blows helped move him along, deeper into her digestive tract. One short squeeze through a sphincter sent him into her gizzard. This was much more spacious, the tough, smooth walls bulging only slightly around the little guy.

Suddenly he was squished firmly from one side. It felt like a tight hug, but in reality she had flopped into bed and passed out. When he tried to wriggle into a more comfortable position, the stomach walls flexed around him. Muscular folds clenched around a limb or his head, only to slowly release it after a.few moments. The entire gizzard shifted as the walls tried to grind him with little success. They relied on the enzymes to soften what came through, and those had failed to affect him.

It was there, in her second stomach, that Herbert now lay. After a restless night of a churning stomach, he was drowsy and limp. When he felt her move, he was startled into alertness. Now was his chance to get out! He squirmed weakly, legs kicking and sinking feet into squishy muscular walls.

She burped again, just a small one this time. She had gotten changed into clothes and was headed to the kitchen for breakfast. Oddly, she didn't feel too hungry. In fact, now that she thought about it, her stomach felt really strange. Was her gizzard doing backflips inside?

She gave it a firm rub. He felt it- it was rather nice- and pushed out against where he felt it. Yes, she was noticing!

Graffa frowned as she felt her gizzard move. It sure felt firm. What had she eaten last night? If only she could remember- then she could avoid it. Whatever it was, it was making her awfully bloated. Fairly unappetized, she settled on a piece of fruit for breakfast.

While she thought, her small meal made its way to the gizzard. Herbert didn't feel the food so much- it was all the same warm body temperature- as he felt the stomach respond. The entire thing clenched around him and began to grind at its contents. He groaned and tried to relax, not daring to resist the muscular organ's will as it squished him this way and that. Slowly but surely, whatever she ate became a paste. Then it easily slid into the next portion of her digestive system, unlike him.

She went over to the couch and flopped down. She smoothed her ruffled feathers and rubbed her aching belly. Maybe some TV would help.

While she relaxed, Herbert was finally able to doze off. It seemed the stomach was satisfied with her meager offering.

She changed position a few times, and eventually it jostled him awake. She was on the move again, this time getting a snack. Resting didn't seem to be helping, and eating hadn't hurt.

As mushy chips joined him, Herbert was now energized enough to cry out. "HEY! YOU! Uh- Graffa!"

When he was only met with silence he wriggled his head closer to the outer wall and yelled, "You big feathered beaut! Let me out! I'm still in here!"

Between flesh, feathers, and a TV turned up to beat the sound of her crunching, he didn't stand a chance of being heard. He shouted and hollered until his voice was hoarse. The humid air trapped with him tasted slightly of salt.

He tried a few more times throughout the day with similar results. By evening he was reduced to whines and whimpers, "Please Graffa… hear me… let me out of here, I don't want to be a midnight snack…"

He coughed weakly. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't form a single word. So much for that.

The day after the next day, the owl was still feeling bloated. It was like a bowling ball had settled in her gut. No amount of rubbing or snacking or medication could soothe it for long. Whatever she had eaten to do this, she would certainly avoid it like the plague- once she figured out what it was.

She considered calling in to work briefly. Remembering the big meeting with her supervisor's supervisor ended that line of thought. Graffa knew she had to go to work. The drive was uneventful, and that heavy feeling in her gut didn't fade.

When she got there and sat down in the board room, she absently rubbed at it a bit.

When her boss' boss arrived, and the meeting began, trouble started. Herbert had finally gotten a few winks of sleep during her drive, but the movement to get into the building and sit down had brought him back to wakefulness. How had she not noticed him? It was time to make her notice.

The doll sized dragon kicked and failed as best he could. Her stomach reacted immediately, pushing back and growling. The more he moved, the louder her stomach noises got. Surely this would draw her attention. It might even make her stomach release it on its own.

He was not so lucky. Beneath her feathers she blushed hard as her stomach imitated a whale with its rumbling sounds. It was clear the boss had noticed, though he had the professionalism to say nothing. Maybe it was her place to?

During a lull in the conversation she cleared her throat, "Sorry about the ah- noises. Stomach's been feeling off all day."

"Well thank you for coming in anyway. I'm incredibly busy, as you know."

She nodded. Speaking didn't make her feel much better. Thankfully the meeting moved on from there. Even better, Herbert had exhausted himself. She made it through the rest of the day with little incident.

The unfortunate prey had a lot of time to think. How could he gain her attention? He certainly didn't want to live in here forever! Even if it was warm, and soft, and the walls embraced and just about massaged him. Whenever he thought about the nicer points, he found himself stroking the nearest fold of flesh. In different circumstances this would be a fantastic stomach.

It took him a whole day to think of another way to vye for her attention. As she sat down to supper, he wriggled into position.

She still hadn't found her appetite. As a result, meals were small and snacks were frequent. It was almost like something was taking up her stomach space rent free. She ate slowly, doing it more because she knew she had to than because she felt hungry.

As the sludge joined poor Herbert, he was jostled by the stomach walls. He squirmed to keep his position. His hand slid along the undulating wall beneath him until it found the place where the mashed food left. He plugged it with a hand. He yelped in surprise as it sucked in his arm a bit. All the better to keep the food out, he mused.

Graffa felt a cramp low in her belly as it clenched around his arm. She groaned and pushed at it, trying to move whatever it was along. Her probing rubs squished the walls against his arm and face, and she did succeed in pushing his arm deeper.

He yelped, "Hey! Careful! There's someone in here!" But the stomach drowned him out. All she heard was loud gurgles which rumbled across her abdomen.

Terrified of being sucked in entirely, he struggled to get his arm free. His free hand pushed and slid at the shifting walls while trying to brace to pull. The trapped arm wiggled back and forth. When he tugged on it, it pushed himself down against the bottom of the stomach.

The continual downward strokes from outside the stomach did nothing to help his cause. He struggled vainly for quite some time. At last, he was too tired to fight it anymore. He couldn't stop whatever would happen. He was almost too tired to feel terror at that prospect. Almost.

After making her way to bed much earlier than usual, Graffa belched. She grimaced as her gizzard cramped and another burp came up. The movements jerked Herbert upward, freeing his limp arm. They weren't enough to send him all the way up like he dared to hope.

Relatively free, he settled curled up inside her stomach. His numb arm was cradled gently against his chest.

They both drifted off to sleep with difficulty.

After the failure of his last attempt, Herbert was stumped on how to make her notice him. For days he just lay curled up in her belly, letting it churn around him. Nothing had worked. Maybe he would be stuck like this forever…

His salvation was a phone call.

One of his friends had been asking around when he didn't answer his texts. The sleuth had figured out that at last weeks party his pal had gone home with Graffa. Mutual friends of friends were able to get him her phone number.

Graffa answered the phone, "Hello? Graffa speaking."

"Hi. I'm a friend of Herbert's and I've been really worried about him. Do you know when he left your house? Assuming he made it there," he added grimly. He had had too much time to over think.

"No, I'm not sure actually. I haven't seen him since-" A memory of holding the little dragon in her hands popped up. She trailed off. Eyes slowly sank to her own belly. "Oh- I'll call you back maybe. I might know where he is."

"Wait can you-" She hung up.

With a grimace she poked at her belly, "Herbert..?"

His name rumbled around him. Heart leaping to his throat, he struggled hard, "Yes! YES! In here!"

Her amber eyes widened. At least- well, at least he was alive.

She scurried off for a towel then let him up and out with great effort. She rubbed him with the soft, dry towel while not daring to look at him.

He inhaled deeply, savoring the fresh air. His cheeks were hot, unsure if he should be explaining what happened. She felt much the same way.

They both awkwardly started, then cut off at hearing the other. He spoke up again, "I guess I should be going…"

She nodded mutely. As he tracked down his things from where they had been tucked out of sight, she just stared at the floor. Belatedly she remembered, "Hey, let your friend know you're okay- I assume you're okay?"

He nodded and left without another word.

#soft vore #safe vore #female pred #male prey #anthro pred #anthro prey #owl pred #dragon prey #endosoma #size difference #pouch anon #lol

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

Note

an angsty 50 for darklina, pretty please?

50. Beyond the Veil

She hears him for the first time at dusk at the autumn equinox, the very moment when the days tip over into darkness, rushing toward the domain of the Starless Saint, Ravka's endless cold winter nights and heavy snowfalls. She's put the chickens out to their coop, and she's bending down to make sure the latch on the cage is secure -- there have been too many foxes recently -- when the voice comes. She thinks it's just the wind. And then she doesn't.

Alina.

She drops the bag of feed and straightens up, whirling around, her heart pounding in both terror and-- well, there's no other word for it, hope. "Aleksander?" she says, looking at the empty meadow, the line of twilit trees that border the farm. "Aleksander, is that -- is that you?"

He came to her before, after all, regardless of physical distance or emotional estrangement -- their secret meetings in the dark of his old chambers, now hers, in the heart of the Little Palace. Death is different, but perhaps for the most powerful Grisha who has ever lived, not eternal. Alina wipes her hands on her apron, waiting. Speak to me, she wants to say. Tell me that you're there. That you're safe.

Alina, the wind sighs again. It does sound like him, or maybe that is only her wishful thinking. You left me no choice, she wants to shout at him. I would have done anything -- anything -- to save you, but you forced my hand. She can't regret that the Fold is gone and Nikolai has become king, that Ravka has a chance to make amends for what it has gone through, but Alina remains profoundly unsettled about her own part in it. She knows that the man who kissed her so tenderly was also the tyrant who would have unloosed the volcra on every one of Ravka's enemies, real or imagined. You cannot reckon with the sum of Aleksander Morozova's life and leave out the poison and the destruction and the hatred, as well as the idealism and fervor and heroism. I had to kill you. I had to.

And so, here she is. On the farm with Mal, her Sun Summoner powers relinquished, the wider world believing her to be dead, the future that she always said she didn't want. How has this happened to me? Alina tries to be kind to her younger, traumatized self, the girl forced into a war she didn't want and didn't understand, the burden that was heaped on her shoulders far before her time, and which would have buckled anyone twice her age. All the hungry eyes, the desperate hands, the plaintive calls. Sankta Alina, Sankta Alina, help us, help us. It was never something that one barely-grown girl should be asked to bear. No wonder Alina cracked. No wonder she fled, back to the idea of the one place she had always felt -- however wrongly -- safe.

The farm is... fine. As farms go. Mal is still Mal, sometimes. But you can't go back. You cannot pick up the threads of an old life as if nothing has changed. Alina's hands curl and ache in longing for her vanished power, the ability to matter -- she threw it out with the rest, too frightened to understand what it meant. But Aleksander knew. Aleksander tried to tell her, to warn her, even in his clumsy and damaged way. There is no one else in the world like us, Alina.

Her head starts up; she isn't sure if that came from her memories, or if the ghost of him -- or whatever is here, haunting her -- said it instead. She peers at the shadows in the fields. Is that peculiarly man-shaped thing -- is that him? Or just another of the strange creatures that gather by twilight, and should not be looked at too closely?

"Aleksander?" she says aloud, into the stillness. "Aleksander, please, are you there?"

She would give anything to hear him answer. Anything at all.

There is only silence. The bloated red sun disappears behind the horizon. The wind blows cold, and Alina Starkov -- no more, no less -- feels more profoundly alone than she has been in her entire life. And with that comes the simplest and most difficult of realizations.

She has made the wrong choice. Her time is not done. She needs to go back. She needs to find what is hers. Her power and her dark prince alike, and make it better than it was before. Is that not the entire premise of history, the arc of the universe? They are not simply doomed to a repeat of the disaster that came before, mindlessly following the same dark path to the same shattering end. They can make it right, and raw, and real. Aleksander Morozova may yet achieve his dearest dream after all, theirs. Alina only needs to be brave enough to face it, and, she realizes, this time, she is ready.

You and I are not done, she tells the shade of the Darkling, wherever and whatever he might now be. I'm coming to find you.

[spooky season fic prompts]

#fic prompts #spooky prompts #darklina #darklina ff #i WILL fix canon with this and the helnik one #nobody can stop me #anonymous #ask

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lady-of-the-lotus · 3 years

Text

“I’m trying,” says Xue Yang bitterly. “I’m trying, and it’s still not good enough for you.”

Xiao Xingchen sinks his fingers into the dirt. Crawling over his cheek is a beetle, moving over his lips, trailing along the curve of his nose.

Xue Yang watches the beetle’s process, the muscles in his jaw growing tighter and tighter, fixating on the insect as it nestles in the dip of Xingchen’s left eye.

“I’m trying,” he repeats, and Xingchen thinks of the tongues, of one particularly small tongue at the end of the row, and hears himself saying, “You’re not trying very hard.”

Xuexiao - E - AO3! - Read on Tumblr - Ch. 1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3

Chapter 4 - Rot

Xingchen wakes to Xue Yang bending over him.

He shoves him away, scrambling backward. “Get off me!”

Xue Yang settles back against a tree. “Don’t do that again. What if I hadn’t caught you?”

Xiao Xingchen manages to roll over onto his side, getting a better look at Xue Yang. Xue Yang is stripped down to his inner robe, face streaked with blood, crimson liquid seeping through the green silk at his side.

He grins weakly down at Xiao Xingchen, teeth red. “One of those fuckers got me,” he says ruefully. “Guess I shouldn’t have shown off so low on blood.”

“You didn’t have to kill them all. And you killed some townspeople too, I saw you…”

Xue Yang’s head droops forward, as if he’s too weak to keep it upright. He doesn’t seem to have heard Xingchen at all. “Lend me a hand, will you?”

“I can’t move…”

Xue Yang groans. “Figures.” He slides over, sprawling over in the grass beside Xiao Xingchen, and lies still.

Xingchen rolls over as much as he can and laps at the blood running from the gash in Xue Yang's side. He drinks until he’s strong enough to sit up. Xue Yang is still unconscious, lying in the exact position he fell in.

With clumsy hands Xingchen cuts bandages from an extra robe in the qiankun pouch. He washes his wounds as best he can with the small amount of water left in the canteen and binds them. Finds a medicinal pellet in Xue Yang’s sleeve, makes him swallow it, places a rolled-up robe under his head.

He sits up with Xue Yang all night. He’s surprised when Xue Yang opens his eyes at dawn and begins to struggle to his feet.

“Well, that was fun,” he says. He’s on his hands and knees, as if too weak to get all the way up. “But let’s not do that again for a while, shall we?”

“How do you feel?”

“I’m fine. I’m always fine. I'll go find some water."

“Don’t strain yourself.”

Xue Yang eyes Xiao Xingchen narrowly. “Is that supposed to be sarcasm?”

“Am I ever sarcastic?” Xiao Xingchen lies down. It’s obvious they won’t be traveling today.

“Let me put down a blanket for you.”

Xiao Xingchen shakes his head, inhaling the dirt beneath his cheek. There’s a blowfly crawling across his temple, just visible out of the corner of his eye. “I prefer this.”

“But—”

Xiao Xingchen closes his eyes.

“I won’t be able to give you blood for a few days. Or anything else.”

Xiao Xingchen nods slightly.

Xue Yang shoos the fly off Xingchen’s face. “I’ll wake you up as soon as I can.”

Xiao Xingchen could get up and bring Xue Yang the water, if he wanted to, but it’s been too many days without yang and he has no will to stir. Besides, he likes lying on the ground and doesn't want to get up. A dead tree frog lies a foot from his face, and he spends the morning watching a trail of ants swarm the bloated carcass, mesmerized by the endless black dots as they march back and forth through the grass.

He’s asleep when Xue Yang returns, and wakes late the next day. Xue Yang is sleeping beside him, face white, chest barely rising and falling.

It’s because of me, Xiao Xingchen thinks groggily. Because of me he’s too weak to heal, to seal his meridians and stop his bleeding…

What if Xue Yang were to die...?

Oddly fitting, rotting side-by-side for eternity…

But he reaches out, lays a cold hand on Xue Yang’s throat. Either he hadn't taken enough blood the day before to return him to full strength, or the blood isn't working as well as it used to, becuase his fingers are too numb to sense a pulse.

Xue Yang stirs at his touch. “You need something, daozhang?” he murmurs.

Xiao Xingchen closes his eyes again.

It’s morning when he next opens them. He’s lying on his stomach, one arm extended, something sharp digging into his back.

Pain in his ear, something tearing at his hand.

A snapping sound.

Rustling of bushes, feet thudding on the forest floor, the whistle of a blade cleaving the air.

“Get off him! I’ll fucking kill you—”

A bird-like squawk, a whirl of black feathers. The smell of blood. Something cradling his head, touching his ear, his hand. The sound of muffled cursing.

Xiao Xingchen drifts off.

It’s night when he next wakes. Xue Yang is on top of him, planting a soft kiss on his forehead as he slides out from between Xue Yang’s legs. They’re surrounded by a wall of reeds and grasses, the air heavy and sweet, a stork winging its way past the moon.

“Welcome back,” he says. “Here.” He lifts Xiao Xingchen into his lap, holding his arm to this mouth. Xiao Xingchen dutifully sucks blood from his veins, sensation flowing back into his limp body.

There’s relief on Xue Yang’s face as he lays him back down on a blanket covering the damp ground.

Xiao Xingchen sits up. His limbs feel oddly… loose at the joints. He looks around, keeping his left eye closed. A half-dozen yellow talismans are pinned to his robes.

“Every little bit helps,” says Xue Yang, reaching for them. “Or doesn’t help, in your case. Here, I’ll—”

Xiao Xingchen reaches up to brush him away, and freezes.

The little finger on his right hand is missing.

Nothing but a bandage-wrapped stump.

Raising his gloved hand, Xue Yang grins at him. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “We match now.”

Xiao Xingchen stares at his missing finger. “How...how long was I asleep?”

“Two days.”

Xingchen glances up at the moon, shining brightly down on their little clearing in the tall grasses. “There’s a full moon. It was waxing last I saw it. And—is this—we were in a forest—”

“Three days.”

“Three weeks.”

Xue Yang folds his arms defensively. “I woke you up as soon as I could. I almost thought you wouldn’t wake at all, I’ve been trying for days—”

“Were are we?” Xingchen's sounds strange, and he reaches up to touch his left ear as he speaks. There’s nothing there, just a soft, slippery ridge of missing flesh.

“Fine, so we flew a mile or two or hundred or whatever.”

Xingchen looks around. Laid out on a second blanket are rows of—

“Are those tongues?” he asks. His voice is strangely mild, emotions still deadened. Slowly he begins removing the talismans from his clothes.

Smiling to himself, Xue Yang settles back, tossing his knife in the air. “Would you like to see them?”

“Why…why are they all laid out like that?” And dozens of small animals, too. Water rats, birds, frogs.

Xue Yang nudges one of the talismans with his bare foot. There’s one pinned to the smallest of the tongues, and dozens more lining the neat rows of tongues and swamp creatures. “Do you want to hear?” he asks, and dives into an explanation without waiting for a response. He’s always animated, but he comes to life as he explains the talismans he’s created, how he devised them, and his current experiments.

“…keep them fresh, and they are fresh, except…”

Xiao Xingchen only half-hears him. He’s too busy watching him, the moonlight lighting up his far-too-pretty-for-what-he-is face, and thinking, not for the first time, about Xue Yang’s immense wasted potential.

What could Xue Yang have accomplished had he only been taught properly? Been guided down the proper path? Given a solid cultivation foundation and the opportunity to channel his genius and creativity for good?

What could he still accomplish?

Xue Yang is explaining how he fixed Xiao Xingchen’s shattered soul and channeled his qi into Xingchen’s corpse. He’s using his hands to speak, drawing shining red symbols in his own made-up alphabet as he explains what, even from the limited amount Xiao Xingchen absorbs, sounds brilliantly innovative.

Perhaps it was a good thing he had never had a formal education. From what Xingchen has seen since leaving the mountain, education, after a certain point, is just another way to enforce a set way of thinking, inhibiting free thought and encasing minds in narrow little boxes. A traditional cultivator couldn’t have accomplished half of what Xue Yang had achieved.

Xue Yang has stopped talking. He seems to be waiting for a response.

“That’s very impressive,” says Xiao Xingchen, vastly understating things.

“For a demonic cultivator.”

“For anyone.”

Xue Yang’s grin nearly wraps around his head, then winks out like a snuffed candle. “Doesn’t matter. I failed.”

“They look fresh to me.” Xiao Xingchen takes a closer look. “There are extra tongues.”

“I killed more than just the bandits, remember? You were all bent out of shape about it.”

“Do you want to pick a fight?”

“If you’re disgusted by the tongues, just say so.” There’s no trace of animation left on Xue Yang’s face. If anything, there’s an odd dead look in his eye as he sits cross-legged across from Xiao Xingchen and stares unblinkingly at him. “Don’t pretend to be interested.”

“I am interested.”

He doesn’t understand why Xue Yang throws this knife suddenly, spearing one of the tongues, or understand the sudden nasty change in Xue Yang’s tone. “Know who that one belonged to? That old man with the fucking eggplants!”

Xiao Xingchen shakes his head. “You needed it for your experiments.”

“How do you know he wasn’t alive when I took it?”

“I…I suppose I don’t.”

“Then stop faking it!” Xue Yang snaps. Xingchen wonders how long this has been building inside him and what spurred it to finally erupt. “Stop faking it all just because you need me right now! I knew you were a hypocrite, but I thought you were at least an honest hypocrite—”

“I’m not—”

“Liar! Were all those things you said in the inn just lies too?”

Xiao Xingchen can’t remember exactly what he said. Something about not wanting him to be hurt—

Xue Yang produces another knife from his sleeve. He seems more comfortable with a blade in his hand. “I was an idiot for believing you, I knew it at the time!”

Xiao Xingchen looks at the extra tongues. Xue Yang follows his eyes.

“I saved them all from those bandits, so if a few people got in my way, what of it! They would have been dead without me, I saved them, their lives belonged to me—”

Xiao Xingchen looks down at his hand, runs a hand over the bandage covering his finger stump. “I saved your life; does your life belong to me?”

“Had you killed me back then, think of all the lives you could have saved! For all we know that old man with those stupid eggplants would have gone crazy and poisoned half the town; they should be thanking me for killing him!”

Shaking his head, Xiao Xingchen pushes aside the blanket so he’s lying on the swampy ground and breathes in deeply. All he wants to do is sleep. Shut out Xue Yang’s voice. Sink back into oblivion, nestled in the tall sweet-scented grasses…

“I’m trying,” says Xue Yang bitterly. “I’m trying, and it’s still not good enough for you.”

Xiao Xingchen sinks his fingers into the dirt. Crawling over his cheek is a beetle, moving over his lips, trailing along the curve of his nose.

Xue Yang watches the beetle’s process, the muscles in his jaw growing tighter and tighter, fixating on the insect as it nestles in the dip of Xingchen’s left eye.

“I’m trying,” he repeats, and Xingchen thinks of the tongues, of one particularly small tongue at the end of the row, and hears himself saying, “You’re not trying very hard.”

Xue Yang hunches forward, a curtain of hair covering his face, digging his nails deep into his scalp and pulling his hair hard enough to hurt. He looks up through the curtain with red-rimmed eyes that almost glow in the eerie orange moonlight.

“Fuck if I care,” he says. “I’m going to go get some water.”

“Xue Yang—”

“Oh, just shut up! I should have left you unconscious!”

Xiao Xingchen turns over on his back. Better this way. More of his body touching the earth. “Are you coming back? Or are you going to leave me here to rot?”

“You’ll rot whether I leave you here or not—”

And suddenly Jiangzai is out, and Xue Yang is hacking at the tall grasses around them. He lays waste to the walls of reeds before falling to his knees, supporting himself with Jiangzai, teeth bared, breathing heavily.

Xiao Xingchen watches him without moving or flinching.

“Well?” he says as Xue Yang stabs the earth with his knife, raking a deep gash in the moss-covered soil. “Are you coming back?”

“Right, you need me!” Xue Yang stabs the ground, slashing it again and again with his blade as if trying to make it bleed. “How do you like it, daozhang, being bound to someone you hate?”

“I don’t hate you,” Xiao Xingchen says quietly. “Do you hate me?”

“I wish you had stayed dead, I wish I had never brought you back—”

All Xingchen can feel is pity. Xue Yang sees it in his eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that!” he snaps. “You say you don’t hate me? Fucking liar!”

“I don’t hate you,” Xiao Xingchen repeats. “I don’t know why, but I don’t.”

“How about this, then? I killed your precious A-Qing!”

“I know,” Xiao Xingchen says quietly.

Xue Yang drops his knife. “You know?”

“I saw her name on the talisman. I guess you were telling the truth about needing a name, and actually learned how to write it..."

“And you don’t…you don’t care?”

Xiao Xingchen closes his eyes. “Of course I care.”

Xue Yang grabs his wrist, shaking him, forcing him to look him in the face. “And,” he grins, “whose eyes do you think are in your head?”

A chill creeps down Xingchen’s spine as he reaches up to touch his eye.

Xue Yang is laughing now, a manic laugh he doesn’t seem to be able to control. “Just giving you back what was yours! I killed him before you woke up. Tossed him in the same ditch I tossed A-Qing. I’d say he wasn’t yet cold when you opened your eyes, but he’d been cold ever since you stabbed him through the heart!”

And suddenly Xingchen needs to feel. Needs to be choked by the shock, the hate, the grief.

A-Qing and Song Lan deserve it.

He wrenches his wrist away from Xue Yang. He’s weak, but Xue Yang’s fingers slide easily off his slippery, waxy skin. He shoves Xue Yang on his back and straddles him, the mere sight of Xue Yang lying beneath him in just a thin inner robe activating his muscle memory, his cock springing to life.

“Ah, there’s the daozhang I remember! Want to go over to the marsh? You can half-drown me again—”

“Shut up shut up shut up—” Roughly, he thrusts into Xue Yang as Xue Yang continues to giggle, not bothering to take it slow. Tears slip down his face as he thrusts into him, splashes of blood on Xue Yang's chest. "Just shut up—”

“Ah, see, this is what I’ve been missing all these weeks—”

“Stop talking, for once in your life, just stop talking—”

“I’ll do you one better: I’ll do my hair up all stupid, and you can pretend I’m Song Lan.” Xue Yang laughs harder, as if this is funny, body shaking beneath Xiao Xingchen's. “You ever fuck him like you’re fucking me?”

“Be quiet!” Xiao Xingchen thrusts harder, trying to shut him up, but Xue Yang only arches his back flirtatiously, one leg raised onto Xiao Xingchen’s shoulder, a demented smile plastered over his face.

“Was that a yes, daozhang?”

He closes his hand around Xue Yang’s throat. “Stop talking about him, and stop calling me that!”

“You fuck him in your fancy free inns? Pin him down and pour filth in his lily-white ear?”

“Stop talking—”

Xue Yang pries his fingers from his throat. “Were you the one to corrupt him, or did he corrupt you first? You seduced him, didn’t you? Just look at you, you’re like a dog in heat, there’s no way you didn’t make up some perverted priest ritual just to get your di—”

Xiao Xingchen slaps him across the face.

Xue Yang reaches one hand up to splay over Xiao Xingchen’s chest. “Did Song Lan like that? Did you choke him too? Bite his lip so hard you could suck his life out through it?”

“I never so much as touched him!”

“Too bad. He wasn’t a bad fuck for a corpse; was probably a lot more fun when he was alive—though knowing him, he was just as boring when he had a tongue—”

Xiao Xingchen freezes, then turns Xue Yang onto his stomach and fucks him from behind. He doesn’t want to see his grinning face, doesn’t want to pretend this is anything other than a necessary interaction, two animals rutting in a swamp out of necessity—

Xue Yang is still laughing.

Xingchen pulls Xue Yang’s robe down over his shoulders down to his waist. Digs his nails into Xue Yang’s back, leaves long scratches in his scarred skin. Several blackened fingernails come off in Xue Yang’s flesh, and his fingers feel loose where Xue Yang pried them off his throat. He spreads his purple-red hands over Xue Yang’s wiry muscles, pressing him down into the damp, fetid soil.

“Disgusting—”

Xue Yang stops laughing and Xingchen comes abruptly, the sigil on his chest glowing brighter as he fills Xue Yang. He pulls out with a shamefully wet sound, bloody cum oozing out of Xue Yang and dripping to the grass.

Xue Yang rolls over onto his back and Xiao Xingchen, suddenly weak with exertion and the flood of new emotion, falls forward on his hands, framing Xue Yang.

As his palms hit the earth, his head snaps forward slightly, and suddenly one eye goes dark.

Xue Yang scrambles out from under him. A look of shock has frozen his face. He cups his hands, staring.

An eyeball lies nestled in his palms.

Xingchen reaches up to touch his left eye.

It’s empty.

Xue Yang’s mouth opens and closes a few times. “I—I should have sewn it in better—”

Xiao Xingchen pulls his robe closed and holds out his hand.

Xue Yang drops the eyeball into his cupped palm.

“What’s happening to me?” Xingchen asks quietly.

His emotions are in full bloom, but somehow instead of anger, or horror, or shock, all he feels is resignation over what's happening to him and regret over what he'd just done. Knowingly done, unlike that time in the stream...

Silence, just the rustle of the tall grasses in the warm evening breeze, a distant splashing in the nearby marsh, a trill of a night bird.

“I think you already know,” says Xue Yang finally. Slowly he reaches into his sleeve, pulls out a long white bandage, and ties it at an angle over Xingchen’s eye socket.

“Now you look almost like your old self again,” he says.

Xiao Xingchen holds him at arm’s length, swallowing hard. “Xue Yang, how—how long have you known?”

“Rather roguish, your new look. I like it.”

“Xue Yang…”

“I can try sewing the eye back in, if you’d like, but I don’t think it would take…”

“Is that what you were doing these past few weeks? Trying to stop me from rotting?”

Xue Yang winces at the word “rot.” He squirms away from Xiao Xingchen, sitting facing the swamp. Xiao Xingchen wonders if Xue Yang chose this spot to hide the smell of his decaying flesh.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. Xiao Xingchen can hardly hear him. “Didn’t work, clearly…”

He lies down, his back to Xingchen.

Xingchen lays beside him, resting a hand on his arm, his eyeball still enclosed in his other hand. The skin over his knuckles is very thin, with small gas bubbles rising under the delicate bones along the backs of his hands and soft purple lines running up towards his wrist. Blackened lesions mottle his skin, eating down to the bone in some places, and his remaining nails are brownish gray.

He starts to remove his hand, but Xue Yang reaches up, closing his gloved hand around it.

“I didn’t mean to kill A-Qing,” he says, so low that Xingchen has to strain to hear him. “She just bled out so quickly after I cut her tongue out—she was trying to bring cultivators—I tried using a talisman, but it…it clotted the wrong blood…”

“There’s no excuse you could possibly give to make me forgive you for what you did.”

“I turned her into a sentient fierce corpse.” Xue Yang turns, mangled hand still on Xiao Xingchen’s rotting one, and looks at him. “She’s out there somewhere. That was the truth. Practically alive…”

Xiao Xingchen closes his remaining eye. He hates how that does make a slight difference. “Did you truly abuse Zichen?”

“I cut his eyes and tongue out, if that's what you mean.”

“You know it’s not.”

Xue Yang wrinkles his nose, gazing up at the scraps of cloud drifting past the full moon. “I never laid a finger on him. He’s not my type.”

“And was that the only reason?”

“What are you getting at?”

Xiao Xingchen is suddenly tired. So very, very tired. Dealing with Xue Yang is like dealing with a pet fox who keeps killing his chickens. “You understood what that man in Tanzhou did to his wife was wrong,” he says, "at least on some instinctive level. Unless you were simply guessing at how I’d feel on the subject and using it to excuse yourself.”

“Right, wrong, it’s all the sa—”

“Don’t start that again. You knew it was wrong despite the fact that many people wouldn’t think so. You—”

“I’ve killed children.”

“I know.”

“I’ve made you kill children.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t care?”

“Of course I care.”

“Then say something better than ‘I know’!”

“There is nothing I can possibly say to that that would express how I feel.”

“Why is killing children worse than killing any other person?” Xue Yang bursts out. “They would have died in another fifty years, at most. So I sped it along a little!”

“Is that truly how you feel?”

“Why isn’t it how you feel? If you think about it, early death is a mercy! And once they’re dead, it makes no difference to them.”

“Their family—”

“I killed the rest of the family, too. The Changs, all dead. Villagers, all dead. Nobody to mourn them. And it’s not like I would have cared either way, but it wasn’t like I went around killing random children for fun.”

“I never said you did.”

“Entire families, gone, just like that!” Xue Yang snaps his fingers. “As if they never existed, so what difference does any of it make? Some of them should be thanking me. Dying of gout at sixty is worse than being killed quickly at twenty.”

"Gout isn't fatal."

“Missing the point, as usual. So they would have died of something peasanty like plague or gangrene. Really, dead is dead. I don’t understand why you care. I really don’t.” Xue Yang looks legitimately puzzled. “It doesn't affect you. It barely affects them.”

Xiao Xingchen shakes his head. Xue Yang is gazing at him intently, eyes burning with frustration, as if he doesn’t understand why Xingchen is just lying there calmly and listening to his poison.

“You knew what that man did to his wife was wrong,” Xingchen repeats, “meaning you do have something in you that points in the right direction, telling you right from wrong, something not reliant on law or social customs. And you simply choose to ignore it.”

“You think too highly of me. A first.”

“ ‘Highly’! Meaning you know it’s something desirable!”

“I’m just using your own shitty rhetoric. Are we done? I’m tired…” Xue Yang looks up at the moon again, filling his lungs with the fetid swamp air that, to Xingchen, smells sweet.

“No. Xue Yang, why did you hold onto A-Qing’s tongue all this time, and turn her into a sentient fierce corpse?”

“Because I—” He stops. “Getting sneaky, daozhang, throwing in these questions.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t call you what?”

Xingchen shakes his head. “Never mind. Why did you spend six years trying to bring me back, and the past three weeks camped out here on a swamp trying to stop me from rotting?”

“Stop saying ‘rot’!”

“Xue Yang, I am trying to understand you.”

Xue Yang is playing with the long tendrils of hair framing his face, not so much as looking in Xiao Xingchen’s direction. “Are we done?”

“Why did you leave Song Lan alone?”

“I didn’t leave him alone. Are you deaf? I cut out his tongue—”

“Xue Yang.”

“Well, he wasn’t you!” Xue Yang explodes. “Is that what you want to hear? You were coming back soon, I just…” I only wanted you. Perhaps even, I couldn’t betray you like that. “I kill people. I don’t hurt them. It’s not like I enjoyed hurting A-Qing.”

Xiao Xingchen can’t let such a blatant lie slip past. “You enjoy killing people. I have every reason to believe you enjoy hurting them as well.”

“That’s not what I meant by that.”

Xiao Xingchen wonders what Xue Yang went through while living on the streets, to make someone like him not want to “hurt” people in that way. He can imagine some of it. Xue Yang had practically told him, that night in the inn...

There’s an odd quivery look on Xue Yang’s face. As if realizing this, he gets to his feet. “Are we done? I’m thirsty.”

“Xue Yang…”

Xue Yang takes a step, wincing. “Be more careful next time, won’t you? I’ll be walking with a limp for a week.”

“Don’t do that, don’t turn everything into a joke or vulgarism—”

Xue Yang flies off through the grass.

Xingchen picks up A-Qing’s tongue and follows him. His legs are weak, but he pushes his way through the chest-high grasses, finding Xue Yang sitting on the edge of the water, arms wrapped around his knees.

Xingchen kneels at the edge of the water and buries his eye and A-Qing’s tongue in the soft sweet-smelling mud. It’s a beautiful warm night, the dazzling gold moonlight glimmering off the wide stretch of marshland. Dark clumps of tall, graceful reeds grow from the rippling water, with the hushed sounds of the night creatures carrying clearly over the water. The song of the crickets, the chirping of frogs. A stork strides through the water not a stone’s-throw away, gleaming white in the moonlight, and stars speckle the deep purple sky, brilliant and clear, here at the edge of the earth.

Xingchen imagines stepping into the shining gold water, letting it close over his head, envelope him, embrace him.

One more dead rotting thing…

“Does it hurt?” Xue Yang’s voice breaks the stillness. “Your eye.”

Xiao Xingchen touches the blindfold. He wonders if it’s the same one he used to wear, kept by Xue Yang all these years. “No.”

“Maggots hurt.” Xue Yang glances down at his gloved hand. “I know.”

Xiao Xingchen swallows. “I’m fine.”

“And your hand and ear?”

“Not much.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone. Those vultures—”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Xue Yang rests his chin on his knees. He looks more worn-out than Xiao Xingchen has ever seen him, as if the gamut of the night’s emotions have wrung him out and left him empty. “I don’t know how to fix you,” he confesses, his voice almost inaudible.

Xiao Xingchen sits down beside him. He doesn’t think those words have ever passed Xue Yang’s lips before.

“I tried,” says Xue Yang. “I really tried…"

Xingchen looks down at his black-mottled hands. Even in the moonlight he can detect their soft, half-slimy, half-waxy coat.

As he watches, a fly lands on his hand, and another, and another. Or perhaps they had been there all along. He can hear the buzzing of the nearby insect life feasting on the swamp’s rot, drawing life from death, and he’s suddenly reminded of the fungus growing on the dead fox in the Coffin House courtyard, the writhing white maggots making a home in its carcass.

Creating something new.

“You’ve carried this too long on your own,” he says. “Let me take it from here.”

Xue Yang tilts his head slightly, eyeing Xingchen with dark-circled eyes. “You know how to stop the rot?”

“No. But Shifu will.” And she might be able to fix you, too, he wants to add, but doesn’t dare.

“And you know how to find her mountain again?”

“Promise me you won’t bring up your past grievances with her when you meet.”

“I promise, I promise!...” Xue Yang rests his head on Xingchen’s shoulder. He looks very young, small and almost fragile. “I promise, Xingchen…”

It’s the first time Xue Yang has used his proper name since he’s woken. It’s strangely nice to hear. Xingchen, the person, decaying as he is, instead of Xiao Xingchen, the daozhang.

They sit in the stillness, watching the golden moonlight reflected in the water as it moves along with the moon. Listening to the splash of the frogs, the rustle of grass, the call of the night birds.

Surrounded by the sweet scent of rot.

Xue Yang falls asleep with his head in Xingchen’s lap. Xingchen trails his withered purple fingers through his hair, along his jaw, letting his hand rest on his head.

He does not sleep.

He’s at home here, among the decay…

One more dead rotting thing.

They leave the swamp the next morning and travel across the open countryside. Xingchen is too weak to fly, but Xue Yang holds him when he can despite his own growing weakness. Xingchen needs more and more blood just to stay upright, needs Xue Yang’s yang every night, every morning, needs to rid himself of tainted yin, just to keep his mind half clear.

One night he forgets where he is, rises, wanders off, trips, falls.

“Xingchen!” Xue Yang helps him to his feet. “Be careful—”

Xiao Xingchen’s hand comes off in his.

The same hand Xue Yang had pulled him by back in the bandit village what seems like a lifetime ago, he remembers the next morning, after Xue Yang pulls out of him and settles back on Xingchen’s legs.

Xue Yang is staring down at him with a hazy look in his eye.

“I shouldn’t have grabbed on your hand like that,” he says, reaching out to touch Xiao Xingchen’s wrist stump. He'd bandaged it during the night, but dark brown juices have seeped into the still-damp material, staining it with sweet-smelling liquid. "I keep pulling at your hand—”

Xingchen closes his eyes. “It’s not your fault, and I can’t feel anything…”

Xue Yang presses his forehead to Xingchen’s. Xingchen’s skin is still slippery to the touch, still covered in rancid black spots where the reddened flesh has necrotized. “We’ll be there soon,” he says, “won’t we?”

Xingchen nods.

Xue Yang kisses him. He doesn’t seem to notice the blowfly eggs hatching in Xingchen’s mouth, the rice-like maggots living in his empty eye socket, the beetles in his nostrils, the flies that swarm his body and lay eggs on his oozing wrist stump.

Flies that settle on Xue Yang’s own face, attracted by the slimy rot rubbed off on his skin.

It’s late afternoon when they arrive at Baoshan Sanren’s mountain, days later, weeks later.

Xue Yang collapses to his knees at the foot of the mountain. He’s been too weak to fly these past few days, with deep purple circles under his sunken eyes and white hands that tremble as he fixes Xiao Xingchen’s hair every morning.

“Is that it?” Xue Yang asks, looking up at the mountain. “It’s nice and all, but—”

“Wait.” It’s grown harder and harder to speak, Xingchen’s tongue swelling in his mouth, his throat muscles growing soft and loose under the hot sun. “Here.” He fumbles with his white jade hairpiece, but can’t get it out. "I—this—”

Silently Xue Yang gets to his feet, slides the hairpiece out of Xingchen’s topknot, sets it in Xingchen’s hand. Xingchen covers his hand with his fingers before he can remove it, nodding at him.

“Magic hairpiece? I like it. I used to have a gold one that—”

“Shh.”

Xiao Xingchen nods again, stepping forward on legs held together with gauze. Holding the hairpiece, they step through the invisible barrier.

All around them the mountain bursts into sudden radiance, the tall spirit gathering grasses around them sparkling with gold light. The air is thick with curling mists, catching the golden radiance and diffusing it, surrounding them with a warm yellow glow.

Xue Yang opens his mouth as if it speak, then closes it.

“Come,” says Xingchen.

They walk up the mountain, wrapped in the glowing mists.

Just a little farther now to the spot he remembers so well.

A pretty forest glade, gently shaded from the sun. Tall spirit-gathering sparkling with gold light, soft green moss carpeting the bank of a small stream, tiny white mushrooms growing on the fallen logs. Slender trees bent to trail their leaves in the water, the air sweet and warm and lightly perfumed.

Just a little longer...

He stops when they reach the stream that flows up the mountain, flows up past that secluded forest glade.

He turns and touches Xue Yang’s arm, doing his best to articulate. “One last time, before things are set right.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to…”

“I want to.” Xingchen slips his robes off as they settle down in the grass. Xue Yang kisses him, heedless of the fact that his lower lip has been half eaten away by insects, showing a row of teeth in shriveled gums. The kiss is long and slow and deep, his hand slipping down between Xingchen’s legs.

Xingchen gently presses him down into the shining gold grass and lowers himself onto Xue Yang. They don’t need oil, his insides smooth and slippery with decay.

“Soon,” he says. “Soon...”

Xue Yang gazes up at him, one hand on his arm, breathing in deeply, as if he wants to fix Xingchen’s scent in his mind, remember the way he looks now, rotting and desiccated with maggots in his mouth, his eyes, nestling in the soft skin under his cock and under his arms. The tip of his nose eaten away, the bones of his jaw visible through the decomposing flesh.

Xingchen leans forward, sinks his teeth into the curve of Xue Yang's throat, and drinks.

The sigils on their chests glow brighter as he rocks forward, the blue and red spirit light mixing with the golden radiance around them.

He drinks deeply, taking more blood than he has in weeks, filling his throat with Xue Yang’s lifeblood as Xue Yang comes, filling him with his yang. He remains locked in place on top of Xue Yang, arms around him, lapping at the blood trickling from his throat. Xue Yang’s hand is buried in his loose hair, lips brushing the rotting purple skin of his throat, breath warm on his ear stump,

He can feel Xue Yang now, more clearly than he ever has till now. Feel his desperation, his fear, his desire to be—consumed—

He drinks until Xue Yang’s hand falls limply to the grass, his pulse slowing. Drinks until he knows Xue Yang is too weak to follow him.

He can drink him to death, if he wishes. Absorb all of him, the good, the bad. Take him into himself...

"Xingchen." Xue Yang moves slightly beneath him. “Take it all. Find her…”

Xingchen raises his head. He rises, draping his robes over the shivering Xue Yang.

“Don’t leave me here!” Xue Yang grasps at him, bloodless fingers clutching at his arms, crushing the small white mushrooms sprouting along Xingchen’s limbs. “Take me with you,” he says weakly. His eyes are bleary and sunken, lips gray. “I can carry you to Baoshan Sanren—”

“Shhh.” Xingchen kneels beside him, raises him up. It’s like maneuvering a large limp doll. “I’ll always be on the mountain.”

For the first time since he’s woken, he fixes Xue Yang’s hair, braiding the sides, looping it around the topknot, using his mouth as a second hand. He slides his white jade hairpiece into the topknot and lays Xue Yang back in the grass.

“She’ll find you, now,” he says. “She’ll know I sent you.”

Xue Yang tries to move, can’t. “Don’t—don’t—”

“Let her help you.” Xingchen kisses his forehead softly, leaving a smear of red on the ivory. “Don’t forget me, Chengmei.”

“Xingchen...I…” Xue Yang makes one last struggle, but the exertion is too much. His eyes slip shut and he lies stretched out in the spirit gathering grass, covered in Xingchen’s white robes, the jade hairpiece gleaming gold.

Xiao Xingchen removes the jade flute from the qiankun pouch and, naked, drifts along the stream, up the mountain, towards the glen. He’s feeling weightless, almost as if he’s floating. The light around him grows brighter as he nears the clearing, surrounding him, filling him as his legs give out and he collapses to the earth.

He lies on the mossy bank, green and black flute resting beside him, sunlight streaming through the trees. The wildflowers are in bloom all around him, their perfume mixing with the sweet smell of decay. The damp of the soil, the song of the trees, the deep roots spreading through the earth, all surround him. Flowers he’ll soon nourish, trees he will slowly feed, fungus he’ll one day nurture.

Consuming him slowly.

The earth hums beneath him, around him. Embracing him, enveloping him.

Welcoming him home.

The breeze has picked up, rippling through the grasses, rustling the trees, caressing his bare skin, soft and warm.

In the distance, he thinks he hears a familiar voice on the wind, calling his name.

Xingchen! Xingchen…

Smiling to himself, Xingchen sinks deeper into the earth.

The inherent eroticism of losing an eyeball atop your lover

liked it? AO3...or even spare a reblog?

#mdzsnet #xiao xingchen #xuexiao #heed the tags #the untamed #cql #theuntameddaily #fytheuntamed #fymdzs #katie after dark #Consume Me Slowly

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stab-the-son-of-a · 3 years

Text

And We’re Live

“This ought to be fun.”

The man, the being, the figure, doesn’t introduce himself, of course not. He needs no introductions, not because he’s notable or particularly renowned, but because he refuses to. You may call him the announcer, capital and article optional, as that’s what he is, and all he will be.

The Announcer adjusts the display on the screen for the optimal viewing experience. On it is a dim, possibly damp even, basement, with a small crowd of people huddled inside. Three is company, but four is a crowd, and this collection of people is certainly a crowd crammed inside.

Three men, one woman, but only one of the men stands. He’s one of the only ones who can, as one man is clearly too weak to, and the other, the older man, has a broken leg. The woman could stand, but her faint wavering even while sitting down belies the fact her balance is not yet restored from the head injury that left a streak of blood dried in her hair.

“You recognize these, don’t you?” The Announcer asks. He asks you, in fact. You can’t recall the color of his eyes, the tone of his skin, or anything, though you can recognize his attentions on you even through the screen. “Yes. You. It’s been some time since you’ve last seen or heard from them, but I’m sure you remember.”

The Announcer smiles. It appears, a flash of expression, but you can’t remember the emotion behind it or recognize any other feature of his before he fades away in your mind again to nothing more than a vehicle of your entertainment. He knows this. He is not the star. Your gaze slips back toward the more interesting people. Thom nods off, cradled against Dale’s side opposite to Jaden, and Summer is half hidden behind Dale’s bulk. Half, because her focus, even as fuzzy as the concussion leaves her, never wavers from Jaden. Focus, and wariness.

“When last you saw the unfortunate guests of the Pierce couple, they were not enjoying their stay. I’d wager they enjoy it less and less as the days pass. How long?” The Announcer laughs. It’s as unremarkable, and unmemorable as the rest of him. He answers his own question. “Long enough, let us say. Such trivial matters don’t lessen your enjoyment of the main event, does it?”

You feel like maybe the announcer winks, inviting you in on some inside joke or exclusive club.

On the screen, Jaden Pierce towers over a floor-bound Dale Gibson, an ugly smirk on his features, and dangles a water bottle in front of them.

The Announcer speaks a final time. “I’ll leave you to enjoy your show, my whump aficionados.”

Jaden slowly uncaps the bottle, the seal crackling being the loudest thing in the room. Preening under the cumulative weight of his captives’ stares, he asks, “Aw did you guys want any? There’s only one bottle and really it’s like, unsanitary as hell and super nasty to share so. Take your pick, babes, which of you is desperate enough to earn it?”

“Go to hell you bastard,” Summer croaks. Clearing her throat, she glares, as if that would cow him. Instead, it seems to encourage him, a smirk growing on his face.

Jaden rolls his eyes at the display. “Ooooh I’m so scared.”

“Please. You can’t mess with this like you have our food,” Dale reasons. “We can’t last as long without water. I’ll- I won’t eat. Just please, they need water.”

“Pretty sure you’re showing every sign of dehydration too, so why aren’t you arguing for more water for all of you?” Jaden shifts the bottle to hold it in the crook of his arm before he crouches down and cups Dale’s chin, forcing their gazes to meet. “Oh that didn’t occur to you, did it? Look at those eyes. Anyone ever tell you that you got eyes that tell a story?”

Dale doesn’t justify that with a response, setting his jaw and silently returning Jaden’s curious stare with a furious glower.

“Get your disgusting hands off him,” Summer snarls. Jaden’s attention flickers to her, and Dale immediately moves to reach out for Jaden’s face, cupping his cheek and bringing their gazes together once more. Or at least, it did, but surprise has Jaden jerking back from the contact, eyes wide and jaw clenched. Unsure of what to do with his hand, or if his impulsive action just ruined any hope of good will from their captor, Dale slowly withdraws his hand back to cover Summer from Jaden’s potential retribution.

After a few more tense moments, he seems to find whatever he was looking for, or come to some sort of decision.

“Jesus H Christ but you’re boring these days,” Jaden grumbles half-heartedly, but he does shove Dale back. The older man tips, just barely catching himself from dragging an semi-conscious Thom to the floor with him. Noticing the fact Thom barely reacted to the motion, the young man stands back up and takes a few curious steps to the side, an odd expression on his face as he studies his collection from a new angle, and especially the branded man. “So… Uh. What’s up with Thommy boy? He seems a little... not poggers.”

“You branded him,” Dale points out evenly, forcing his panic down. “He needs proper medical attention.”

“Well, yeah, he got branded sure, but Sunshine there looks right as rain after her little Jack and Jill impression down the stairs, and she didn’t even need anything. So why hasn’t he gotten over it yet?”

“He’s starving,” Dale explains, right as Summer snarls, “Are you really that dumb?”

That’s the perfectly wrong thing to say, as Jaden flips- his eyes dark and hateful, lips twisted into a sneer, focus entirely on her now. Dale flinches back on instinct, free arm extending to block Jaden’s path to Summer. Dale knows, Summer knows, Jaden knows, that it won’t do anything concrete to stop him, but the younger man still does not advance.

Silence descends on the room, heavy and oppressive like the midday heat leaching into the basement.

Though Dale pushes her back, bodily places himself between Jaden and his two charges, Summer continues. “How could you be this... stupid? I can see your report card now. ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moron, look into McDonald’s applications’.”

Emboldened by the silence, and undeterred by the way Dale whispers for her to stop, Summer adds, “Now I know we’re going to go free. You’re going to forget something so fucking simple and get yourself in trouble. And the whole world will forget all about you, you miserable mistake of a human being.”

At the almost petulant look on Jaden’s face, Summer bursts into short, sharp laughter. “I can’t be the first to point out you’re a failure! You’re going to ruin your worthless life-”

“Be quiet,” Jaden orders. Growls. His grip on the water bottle has the plastic bloating and deforming, the flimsy packaging crinkling. “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you. Do not test me.”

“You’re too incompentent to make me do anything, idiot,” Summer fires back.

“Fucking BITCH!” His shriek ends with an abrupt and solid crack.

Dale hurries to gather Summer in his arms, to check her neck and her head. A heavy, purple bruise blooms on her face and jaw even as the swelling shuts her eye. “Come on, Summer, come on,” he whispers, “just open your eyes and look at me.”

Thankfully, despite the lurid color, she is only a little unsteady and dazed and forces her clumsy arms to prop herself up properly. Swallowing a furious sob, Summer screams at Jaden’s retreating back, “You’re fucking pathetic!”

Three hours later, Lab Coat Lady entered the basement, flanked by Jaden bearing that damned pistol. When Dale tried to get his attention, Jaden silently raised the gun to the center of the older man’s forehead. Only when Dale slumped and allowed the woman in pink access to Thom, even as his heartbeat climbed ever faster and higher in his throat, did Jaden lower his threat.

Sluggish and flushed with fever, Thom struggled to cooperate as the woman ordered, except for her last demand- to remain still- as she readied to pour a faint yellow liquid down his throat. She glanced up at Dale, then Summer. Quietly, she offered little explanation (“Hydrocodone”) before tipping it back, and, when Thom realized what had hit the back of his throat, she expertly covered his mouth and nose and held his jaw shut.

Dale watched it all, feeling like Judas.

Only after his motions slowed and his eyelids drooped did the woman in pink release her hold enough to settle him onto his back.

From there, she debrided his burn, slathered a generous amount of antiseptic cream, and bandaged the wound with a silvery material, all under Dale’s watchful eye.

The woman approached Summer next- and again, as soon as either she or Dale moved, Jaden leveled the gun at Thom’s head. Both captives froze, a single, too long moment of realization that despite this effort, he might still decide to blast a bullet into Thom’s skull; blissfully unaware, Thom dozed in a drugged haze.

He kept the gun trained on Thom the whole time the lab coat lady attended to Summer’s head injury, cleaning out blood from the wound and her hair. Summer, even if only for a moment, leaned into the rhythmic sensation of fingers gently carding through the freshly detangled locks. After that was settled, the pink coated woman checked her pupils and eye tracking, and apparently gave her a clean enough bill of health. Her carving on her lower stomach received the same treatment Thom’s branding had.

The silence began to itch, like a week without a shower, and Dale clenched his fists as best as his broken wrists allowed. He just wished someone would speak and explain this abrupt change. Was it because of what Summer said? Had they gotten through to him somehow?

Dale stared at Jaden, expecting him to say something, make some sort of joke or verbalize his threat or name what they owed for this kindness. Jaden acted like Dale didn’t exist at all. It was unnerving, the same way it was unnerving to see teachers outside school hours, or parents when they were children- someone with a previous persona acting entirely differently from what one could expect of them. Unexpected was never a good sign when it came to Jaden.

“On your back,” Lab Coat Lady directed him, pushing him back, powerless, helpless in everyway. He couldn’t defend himself on a good day, let alone stuck supine. He couldn’t even fight back as she pushed down on his chest and drew his hands away from his body. “Cooperate. Things will go smoother.”

They did. His wrists were rebandaged, and his leg braced. That simple act alone brought tears to his eyes, both from the metal pressing against the swollen flesh, and the relief of loose bone finally finding stability. Again, he tried to find Jaden’s gaze, to lock eyes and try to understand, but the man didn’t glance in his direction at all, though he had to feel the weight of his stare.

Wiping her hands down with sanitizer again, the pungently clean smell permeating the poorly ventilated basement, Lab Coat Lady pulled out three prescription bottles. Haphazardly, Boomer, Thom1, T2, and a sun were written on the bottle lids in sharpie. The lids themselves had timers on them, presumably counting down to the next doses. Next to emerge from the bag was four more water bottles. Just as silent as Jaden had been the whole time, the pair left the basement and latched the door behind them.

“What the hell was that?” Summer whispered after a few minutes.

“I don’t know,” Dale admitted, struggling to sit back up, even as Summer reached over and helped him to change positions. His gaze dragged back to the locked door, and his mind to the man who had walked out. He didn’t know that man at all. He hadn’t considered that sort of behavior in Jaden’s abilities. His palms began to sweat and shake as he checked the bottles left behind.

Thom’s was more hydrocodone and an antibiotic. The instructions were clearly detailed on the side of the bottle. The same for Summer’s, another antibiotic. Dale had been… not prescribed, but given, pain relief. Tylenol-3, codeine. The bottles were light, and almost more full of air than medicine, but they contained an unimaginably heavy question within: Why.

#live feed series #lf lab coat lady #lf jaden pierce #lf summer ramirez #lf thom grisham #lf dale gibson #drugs tw #medical whump #brief unreality #mild body horror #ask to tag #broken bones #starvation mention

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lambourngb · 4 years

Text

This Hard Journey

Fic prompt: “There’s something you should know…” Michael Guerin Day 2. This picks up after yesterday’s “This Hard Life” - a part of interconnected ficlets of an AU after the shed, where Alex doesn’t join the Air Force. Mentions of Malex and an Alex/Other here. Finished on ao3 here.

***

He finally got a dog, was all that Michael could think as he sat outside of the house that matched the address Max pulled from the DMV. They had always wanted to get a dog together, but with pet deposits and the tight budget for rent and food, that had always been a non-starter for them. Not anymore.

The quiet shaded street just off of the Buchanan Arts District was lined with old-style Craftsman homes among the peppered in new, renovated sprawling McMansions born of the house flipping obsession during the real estate boom. New construction sprouting between old, mature trees, juxtaposing progress with tradition.

Alex had chosen one of the older homes, untouched by the remodeling fad with a large fenced in yard filling the property footprint, and a dog house that mimicked the main house in style. Two solid years of song-writing had rewarded Alex with financial security, and of course, after three years living in cramped efficiency apartments and noisy neighbors with Michael, the first thing Alex would want again was a house. The roots of his upper middle class childhood were never far away.

Pressing his forehead against the steering wheel, Michael worked to gather the courage that kept him propelled down the over 1,100 miles from Roswell to Nashville. He had made it here, the least he could do was knock on the door instead of freaking out over the fact that Alex had a house with a mortgage while all Michael could muster in the two years since was buying a bank-possessed Airstream.

At least it was better than sleeping rough in his truck again, something he had done when he fell behind on the rent after Alex had left.

Michael took a deep steadying breath and pushed himself out of his truck. The spans of sidewalk suddenly seemed longer than I-40 through Oklahoma. Another deep breath, the irony of borrowing Alex’s self-soothing habit not lost on Michael at all, he tucked his left hand into a pocket to hide the old damage and knocked firmly on the front door.

There was a long silence extended, shoving anticipation into chagrin as Michael turned his head to peek at the tiny side-carport, confirming there was a car there. A loud, chorus of deep barks picked up from within the house. The dog sounded big, but none of that registered as he picked up Alex’s voice, muffled and indistinct.

“-calm down, buddy. Stay- no, stay- It’s probably Daddy’s new speakers arriving-”

After two and half days of driving, Michael had perfected his speech to Alex. It hit every open wound between them, from the fact he was sorry he hadn’t gone with him, to the weak but true explanation that he wasn’t ready then, but he was now. Then finally the big dice throw, the gamble of everything, that every city needed a good mechanic, Nashville was no different, it was no pressure- but maybe? Maybe they could start over?

The door swung open, and like a bag of spilled marbles, all of Michael’s words scattered away from him.

“Michael?” Alex’s polite smile for an expected delivery dropped into disbelieving shock. He did a comical double take, looking back into the house, then to Michael, then over Michael’s shoulder. The classic Chevy truck parked on the street chased away the shock. “Jesus Christ, it really is you.”

“Alex.” Michael swallowed, his eloquence gone. “You look good.”

They had had three years together, and during that time Michael had seen so many different versions of Alex Manes. He had seen Alex tired, dark circles shading his eyes more consistently than eyeliner with an off-kilter alien antennae from the Crashdown. He had seen Alex resolute, using his shoulders to impart a warning in his black clad Wild Pony shirt to any drunk who dared to give him a hard time. He had seen Alex awkward, as he helped Michael with his chores at the Foster’s ranch when it came to cleaning out a cow pen or pulling the twine efficiently off baled hay. He had seen Alex ashamed, as Michael patiently explained during their first grocery store visit that the EBT card only covered certain items.

This Alex was new. Clean, well-rested, skin clear and not tight on his cheekbones from lean meals or bloated from cheap food. An earring shined from his ear, he was dressed in a soft v-neck shirt and artfully cut frayed jeans. Good was an understatement.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here- I’m here because Isobel got married, and um, she wanted to invite you, but I talked her out of it. I’m sorry. I mean for that, but also for like, everything. Not following you here was something I regretted every day since, but I thought- I thought I had to stay back then, but I don’t anymore- and there’s something you should know-”

“Babe? Is that our new speakers at the door?” A new voice called out, cutting off the word vomit that was spilling from Michael’s mouth beyond his control.

A male voice.

The wince and apology on Alex’s face told Michael everything he needed to know. Well. He probably should have seen that coming. Only Alex’s reaching out quickly to grab his hand as he turned away stopped him from bolting from the house.

“No, not our speakers, but an old friend from back home is here-” Alex called back, before turning back to make deliberate eye contact with Michael. “He wanted to stop by to say hello.”

A tall well-built black man came into view, holding a squirming pit bull in his arms, walked toward them both with a bright welcoming smile, “A friend from Roswell? An actual flesh and blood human who knows you? I was starting to think you were an alien, Alex.”

“Just because you’re related to half of Nashville and went to school with the other half, Dennis, doesn’t mean I sprouted from a pod-” Alex shot back playfully, clearly picking up a well-worn argument.

Like a couple. A real couple. With a house and a dog. Michael licked his dry lips, forcing his muscles upward, they probably had retirement accounts. In two years Alex had built something more secure than he had in the three years in Roswell.

“Well any friend of yours, Alex, is one of mine,” Dennis greeted, turning his head to avoid an excited dog kiss before transferring the bundle of fur into Alex’s arms in a fluid movement of trust. “I’m Dennis, welcome to Nashville, um-?” he prompted, extending his left hand to Michael.

“Michael Guerin,” he answered politely, before Michael lifted his left hand awkwardly from his pocket and offered his right in return. His name didn’t alter the warm smile on Dennis’s face. Ah. So he must be a nameless ex for Alex then. Swallowing hard, Michael continued, this time a little meanly, “this hand doesn’t shake so well after I got on the wrong side of a hammer, sorry. But good to meet you.”

The stutter of the clumsy interaction hid Alex’s wince and flash of pain of the reminder.

Feeling no joy from that, Michael picked up the conversation lightly, “I’m a friend from high school. Been doing some transport work, and a job sent me here to pick up a car to drive back to Roswell, so I thought I might stop in and see what the famous Alex Manes is up to…”

“I’m not famous, I just write the words,” Alex protested quietly, before backing away from the doorway. “We were just about to have lunch, if you want to stay-”

“He’s famous, don’t listen to him,” Dennis interjected proudly. “Did you hear that new song from Paramore? Alex wrote that.”

“Oh I know, I have all the singles Alex wrote,” Michael smiled, looking around the house and at the couple with another deep breath. “I’m his biggest fan, I think. But um, thank you, I can’t stay, I gotta hit the road back to-” he started to say home, but that hadn’t been true for a long time. “Back to Roswell.”

***

Hours later with his heart heavy, Michael checked into his room at the Super 8. Normally the expense would have bothered him, but after his day, he figured he was entitled to a little bit of spoiling. And if it was sad that plain wrapped soaps and tiny shampoo bottles constituted spoiling, well, he was content with that.

The clunky black case of his small portable DVD player was propped open on the hotel bed. It was a hand-me-down as technology and electronic gadgets moved into smoother, more versatile means. For him, it was perfect to watch a borrowed DVD in his Airstream since he lacked cable.

With the entire contents of a motel conditioner in his hair, Michael started the paused video file. The shaky dark footage started playing, the sound crackling with amateur hands, before the clear, strong voice of Alex Manes filled the air.

It was probably pathetic to watch this cribbed footage from YouTube, but the romanticism that fueled his journey down 1-40 was also the same sentiment that preserved this moment in amber for Michael. Pulling open his old notebook from high school, he let Alex’s voice singing about love and loss carry him through the calculations of point atmospheric entry and the parallax distance of habitable stars.

It would be a hard journey, but Michael didn’t know any other kind at this point. Roswell wasn’t his home. Nashville wasn’t going to be home either, but the universe was ever-expanding, surely there was a place for Michael?

#mgweek20 #guerinweek20 #malex fic #the lost decade #au after the shed #michael guerin #alex manes #roswell new mexico #Malex #angst here but eventual happy ending #will it show up in the tags?#no one knows certainly not me

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