#Y'all are so fucking volatile
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People will complain about Cass and Duke not getting enough fan content but the moment you post about them they tear it apart completely if it isn't 100% what they want.
You can turn Jason into a Jekyll&Hyde or make Dick abusive or Tim a mass murderer and its just like "Eh, I don't like it, but to each their own!" but you say something like "Duke can't braid his own hair" or "Cass isn't great with computers" and people act like you want them retconned out of existence.
#Cassandra Cain#Duke Thomas#Dick Grayson#Jason Todd#Tim Drake#Batfam#Black Bat#Orphan#Batgirl#Robin#Red Hood#Nightwing#Red Robin#The Drake#Signal#I refuse to stop posting about Duke and Cass because I love them#But every single post where either of them is the focus turns into a Biblical stoning#Y'all are so fucking volatile
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Napoleonville [Chapter 2: The Jailhouse]
Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.
Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, historical topics including war and discrimination, smoking, blasphemy, kids, parenthood, alcoholism, y'all know exactly who is in jail come on now, Pizza Hut, a wild ex-husband appears!
Word Count: 7k.
Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.
Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @eltherevir @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @aemonddtargaryen @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @libroparaiso @bluerskiees
Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰🧁
Amir is sitting at the kitchen table and icing peach cobbler cupcakes; he has a single white flower from a dogwood tree poked through one of his cornrows. He wears a short sleeve button-up shirt with a kaleidoscopic geometric pattern, high-waisted khaki shorts, and eyeglasses with large rectangular, tortoiseshell frames. He has one leg crossed over the other and is kicking it absentmindedly as he works, a habit he’s had since long before you met him in your 9th grade English class. The microwave is humming. Walk This Way is blaring from the little pink boombox.
“Ho, I mean it this time, I gotta get the hell out of this town.” Amir uses a fork to place a small peach wedge—sauteed in butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla—atop the swirl of buttercream frosting, then sprinkles the cupcake with cinnamon before moving on to the next. “Guess what some inbred neanderthal swamp creature did last night. They busted a window out of my car again.”
“I told you to take that thing off it.” Amir has a homemade bumper sticker on his Ford Escort that reads, in holographic rainbow cursive: Fuck Ronald Reagan (not literally)!
“That war criminal can let 50,000 people die of AIDS but I belong on America’s Most Wanted for exercising my First Amendment rights?”
“I know you’re not wrong. You know you’re not wrong. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true. Bayard Rustin said that.”
“And I’m sure he was a very smart man, but he didn’t have to live in Napoleonville.” The microwave beeps, and you remove the sweet potato inside with an oven mitt and place it on the counter alongside the others. This is a trick you’ve learned: they’re so much easier to peel and slice once they’ve been microwaved a bit, thirty seconds for a small potato, one minute for a larger one. “You want me to ask Willis to do a stakeout or something?”
“He might be the one committing vandalism.”
You frown down at the sweet potatoes as you peel them over the cutting board and toss the skins into a bowl so Cadi can feed them to the squirrels later. You doubt Willis is responsible, but one of his friends very well could be.
Amir sighs, acquiescing, wistful. “Six months from now I’ll be in San Francisco.” Yes, he will; he’s been saving up for years. The thought of him leaving is practically apocalyptic. You can’t envision a future without Amir. It’s like the very worst version of when you’re a kid and some event—Christmas, your birthday, summer break, prom—is so glimmeringly monumental that whatever life will exist beyond it is incomprehensible, a haze of other people’s dreams and warnings. Surely you won’t exist in that timeline; surely you will dissolve away once that fateful checkpoint is reached and become nothing but sun and sand.
You don’t tell Amir any of this. You don’t want to make him feel guilty. Instead you tease: “You sure you don’t want to stay and get a job on one of those shiny new oil rigs?”
He laughs as he pipes buttercream frosting onto the last peach cobbler cupcake. His artistic talents far surpass yours, but you bring the baking techniques and recipe ideas. Still, you have always split the bakery profits—however meager they might be—equally. “Yes, how could I possibly pass up the opportunity to lose half my skin in an explosion caused by company negligence? Or inhale toxic fumes, or have my limbs ripped off, or fracture my skull? Or fall off a platform in the middle of the night and be eaten by a gator before anyone bothers to fish me out? I will surely regret all my life choices when I’m lying on the beach in Pacifica next to my new boyfriend who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
The front door opens. It’s Mr. Fontenot, the town pharmacist. You call out: “Hi there! Come right on in! We’ve got your cake ready. Blue velvet with marshmallow cream and topped with candied blueberries. We read up on how to make them just for you. So thank you kindly for the learning opportunity.”
Since you’re wrist-deep in sweet potatoes, Amir leaps up to retrieve the box. He opens it so Mr. Fontenot can inspect his order. “When you cut into it, you’ll see that it’s a dark royal blue on the inside. Cookie Monster blue, not robin egg blue, just like you wanted.”
“Will ya look at that,” Mr. Fontenot says, beaming down at the cake. Written across the marshmallow cream in blue icing is (in Amir’s most elegant script): Happy 8th Birthday, Corey! “My grandson is going to get such a kick out of a blue cake.”
“He sure is,” Amir agrees. “Now can I talk you into anything else for the party? Some peach cobbler cupcakes, perhaps? Praline brownies? A brown sugar pie? Homemade Fruity Pebbles Rice Krispie Treats? Kids love them…!”
You say once Mr. Fontenot has gone: “He works for the company, you know.”
“Huh? Who?”
“Aemond. He works for Jade Dragon. He’s an engineer.”
“Ho, you are obsessed with that man!” Amir says. “You’ve brought him up, like, four times already!”
“Yeah,” you confess, a humiliation that is futile to deny. Parts of you are still sore from what he did to you; other places are aching for more.
“And you didn’t even get to see the dick?!”
You shake your head as you cut the peeled sweet potatoes into haphazard chunks. Amir puts a pot of water on the stove so you can boil them until they’re soft enough to mash into filling for a sweet potato pie. “Didn’t see it, didn’t touch it…”
“Didn’t lick it, didn’t suck it?”
“Okay, that’s enough, Dr. Seuss. But no.”
“Secret dick, scar on his face, missing an eye…” Amir mutters. “Maybe he’s a veteran who lost his andouille in combat! Yes! That’s it! He was there when we invaded Lebanon or Grenada or Libya and now he’s horribly disfigured and can’t bear the prospect of your inevitable horror and rejection!”
“His andouille is definitely unchopped. I could…uh…tell. Through his jeans.”
Amir closes his eyes and presses his palms together. “Sweet baby Jesus, please send me a gainfully employed big-dicked blonde man too.” He looks at you again. “But he really wouldn’t use it?!”
“Aemond said he wanted me to trust him first.”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust you. Maybe he thinks you might be on the prowl for Shotgun Wedding #2. You should tell him he’s got nothing to worry about in that department. You’ve been on the pill practically since Cadi was born.”
You murmur: “And I will be forever.”
“I know,” Amir says gently, pausing to squeeze your shoulder before taking the sweet potato hunks you’ve sliced already and dropping them in the boiling water. “So! When are you going to call him?”
You startle. “I can’t call him! I called him the first time. Now it’s his turn to call me. I can’t call him again, that would be desperate. Right?” Right?!
“Does he even know your number?”
“He knows my name, and he knows about the bakery. The number is publicly listed, he can find me in the phone book.”
Amir groans. “Lord have mercy, just call him! Pick up that pink phone right there beside the refrigerator and press those cute little buttons and say, loud and proud: Come on over here, big boy, I want to see that traumatized war veteran dick.”
The phone rings. You trip over your own feet as you lunge for it.
Amir snickers. “Pathetic!” He takes over slicing the rest of the sweet potatoes.
“Hello?!”
You hear a deep, slothful drawl; Willis’ family have been bayou people for longer than the United States has been a country. “Hey sugar, you want to bring your favorite ex-husband some dessert?”
You sigh. “Hi, Willis.” From across the kitchen, Amir makes retching noises.
“So what’d ya say? I just had a late lunch and got to thinkin’ of you. Gave me a sweet tooth.”
“Um, I don’t know, we’re really busy right now.” Amir snorts; you’ve had three customers in the last hour. There’s usually a rush first thing each morning and then again around closing time.
“Ya ain’t got time for me? Well, alrighty then. Maybe I won’t have time for you when you need a wild hog chased off your porch or a flat tire changed out there on Route 401.”
This is the eternal dilemma, the balance you wrestle with like a boat in a storm: not making him angry, not letting him get too close. You and Willis don’t have a formal agreement for custody or child support. You’ve worked it out yourselves, and he typically doesn’t make it too difficult. You’ve always felt that appeasement is the wisest course of action. As the elected sheriff of Assumption Parish, Willis Boudreaux is responsible for all criminal investigations, court proceedings, and tax collecting. Even when he was just a deputy, he had plenty of friends at the little white courthouse in the heart of downtown Napoleonville. You’re better off working with him than against him. “Okay, fine, I guess I have a few minutes. What do you want?”
“Why don’t you make a professional recommendation?”
You glance irritably at the kitchen table. “We have brown sugar pie, peach cobbler cupcakes, praline brownies, lemon blueberry cookies, uh, I’ve got half a strawberries and cream cake left in the fridge…”
“Definitely the cake,” Willis says. “I love strawberries. Remember how you fed them to me on the beach when we went to Grand Isle?”
That was…what, eight years ago? Ugh. “Barely.” You like when Willis has a girlfriend; then he mostly leaves you alone. Tragically, he and his most recent fiancé Colleen broke up last month. “I’ll drive the cake over now.” You slam the phone receiver into the base before Willis can respond.
“Let’s kill him,” Amir says.
You laugh. “I’ll consider it.”
“We can feed him to that gator out in the tree row.”
You grab a flat white bakery box off the pile, fold it open, and fetch what remains of the strawberries and cream cake from the refrigerator. “You’ll get that sweet potato pie in the oven if I’m gone for a half hour?”
“Yup. Then I’ll start working on the brown butter oatmeal raisin cookies. Is the recipe…? Oh, I see it, it’s right here on the counter. Got it. Have fun with your awful ex-husband. You sure you don’t want to add a little something special to that cake? Windex? Rat poison? He sure looks like a rodent to me. That nose? Those eyebrows?!”
“Amir, he’s just French.”
“He should be exiled to Saint Helena.”
“I’m going to have to put my own ad in the Bayou Journal,” you say, smiling sadly. “Who’s going to run the shop with me when you’re in San Francisco?”
Amir winks. “Maybe your traumatized, half-blind, hung-like-a-horse war veteran knows how to bake.”
Outside, the gator is sunning herself by the gravel driveway. She’s only about five feet long and dozing with her muddy green eyes closed, jagged upper teeth on display, missing toes here and there, back scarred by boat motors. It’s 90 degrees and sunny, warmth flooding over your bare legs and arms: denim shorts, lime green tank top. You can hear cicadas, doves, chickadees, starlings, goldfinches, ospreys, the benign droning of bumble bees. You throw the white box in the passenger seat and start your Chevy Celebrity, yellow paint, wood paneling, brown velour upholstery. You crank down the windows—the air conditioning is broken, that’s one reason why Willis’ brother was willing to sell it to you so cheap—and turn on the radio: 867-5309 by Tommy Tutone. You pull out onto Route 401, headed northeast towards downtown Napoleonville.
You pass fields of sugarcane and soybeans, shacks and trailers, grass green like emeralds. The hot mid-May air, humid and stagnant, blows through your hair. If the ride was any longer than ten minutes, you’d have needed a cooler for the cake. You find a parking spot on the street outside the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office and grab the box containing half a strawberries and cream cake, probably just starting to get melty around the edges. Deputy Melancon is on his way out when you arrive. He holds the glass door open for you.
“Comment ca va, cherie? Is that for me? I hope so!”
“I think your boss would chew your arm off if you tried to get between him and this cake.”
Deputy Melancon guffaws as he ambles towards his police car. “Have fun in there! It’s a zoo today.”
“What…?” But now you can hear the noise coming from inside the building: howling, banging, Willis telling someone to sit down and shut up, his Cajun drawl lethargic and calm. Willis is not a yeller, and you’ve never witness him raise his hands in violence. The being a cop part of his job is the aspect he enjoys the least. But sitting around jawing with his deputies until long after midnight, regaling them with tales of supposed glory acquired while you were home with a screaming baby, scrubbing floors, fixing dinner, still bleeding eight weeks after birth, waiting—because it was all there was to look forward to—for him to walk through the door and shuffle to the couch and collapse there with an ice-cold can of Bud Light in his fist, dripping condensation down his sinewy forearm? That’s what Willis lives for.
Willis is at his desk and grudgingly plodding through an intake form. His sunglasses have been shoved up into his dark curly hair; his hat—which he loathes wearing—is resting atop a mountain of deserted paperwork. There’s a poster of Heather Locklear on the wall along with a dartboard with a cutout of Tommy Lee in the center. There’s a man in one of the three holding cells that you’ve hardly ever seen used. He has slicked-back blonde hair, an aristocratic wisp of a moustache, an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and tiny red shorts and thick foam rainbow-patterned flip flops. He’s the person responsible for the ruckus.
“I want my phone call!” the prisoner shouts as he beats his palms against the iron bars. “Hey! Hey, mullet boy! I want my fucking phone call!”
Oddly, the stranger has a British accent. Aemond? you think for a split second. But no; this man couldn’t possibly be related to Aemond. He is short, slouched, soft all over, uncoordinated and uncomposed, pathetic, petulant, innately pitiful. Willis ignores him. He speaks to you instead.
“Bienvenue, sugar. Ya got something sweet for me?”
Obediently—though not entirely willingly—you bring him the white box and set it on his disorganized desk. Willis produces a stack of Styrofoam plates and a Ziploc bag full of plastic eating utensils that he keeps stocked in a drawer specifically for such occasions. He opens the box and sighs euphorically, his eyes on the moist pink cake and layers of whipped cream frosting as if it’s the flesh of a naked woman.
“Hey!” the prisoner shouts, gripping the iron bars and pressing his flushed cheeks flat against them. “Hey! I like cake too!”
“Just what I needed,” Willis tells you, as if the man isn’t there. “Sit down, eat with me.”
“I really don’t have long.”
“Ya got five minutes, don’t you?”
I guess I do. You sit down but don’t take any cake. As Willis cuts himself a slice, you can’t help but watch the man in the holding cell. He stares back at you, a little ashamed, a little defiant, palpably weak. You ask Willis: “What did you book him for?”
“DWI,” Willis says with his mouth full of cake. “Driving While Intoxicated.”
“Huh. You don’t usually pick people up for that.”
Willis points at the prisoner with his fork for emphasis. “This one was very intoxicated.”
The man kicks the bars with his flip flops. “I want my fucking phone call!”
“Ya already used it,” Willis says pragmatically, and nods to something on the floor of the holding cell: an empty, grease-stained Pizza Hut box. The prisoner looks at it, regretful.
“I didn’t know I’d only get one,” he admits. “But also! You ate three slices of my pizza!”
Willis chuckles. “Consider it payin’ your taxes.” Then, to you: “It was tres bien. Meat Lover’s. Ya can’t argue with that.”
“Hey cake lady,” the prisoner says, his prominent eyes weepy, needful, a deep stormy blue. “Can I have a piece? Please? Please? I’m having a rough day here. My flip flops are giving me blisters and your redneck husband committed pizza theft. And I’m in jail.”
“Ex-husband,” you correct him.
“Good for you. Smart cake lady.”
Willis says: “You just settle down and I’ll drive you over to the parish jail as soon as I’m done with my dessert.” He shovels cake into his mouth; he eats like a gator, like a pig.
At last, you cut a portion of strawberries and cream cake—the whipped cream frosting turning thin and runny—and place it on a Styrofoam plate. Then you get up to take it to the prisoner. You have a soft spot for the freaks of the world. You and Amir, you know exactly what it’s like to be freaks.
“Don’t give him no fork or nothing,” Willis says around a mouthful of cake. “I can’t have him tryin’ to kill himself.”
“As if I’d give you the satisfaction, Sasquatch!” the prisoner flings back.
“It’s the Rougarou we got down here, son,” Willis replies, unbothered.
You set the plate on the beige linoleum floor close enough for the prisoner to reach out and drag it to his cell. When you step back, he retrieves the cake and eats it with his bare hands. “Oh, fuck, this is so good!”
You turn to Willis. “Cadi keeps mentioning some horseback riding camp that a bunch of her friends are going to this summer. Can we make that happen?”
“Are you kiddin’ me?! It’s over $300! That’s a new boat!”
“I think it would mean a lot to her.”
“Tell her if she grows her hair back out, maybe she can go next year.” Willis licks pink cake crumbs from his fork. “Why the hell’d she ever get it cut like that?”
You shrug, irritated. “Because she wanted to.”
“Never wears no skirts or dresses, doesn’t care about jewelry, always got dirt on her face…ain’t she gonna want a boyfriend in a few years? Who’s gonna take her out lookin’ like that? Who’s gonna marry her one day?”
“She’s ten years old, Willis.”
“She’s been spending too much time with your little friend, that’s the problem.”
You glare furiously at him, but are interrupted before you can say something unwise. The man in the holding cell has finished his slice of cake. He sucks frosting off his chubby fingers and then yanks on the iron bars in vain. “I gotta go home! I gotta feed my ferret!”
“Guess ya should have thought about that before driving 70 miles per hour in a school zone, Mr.…” Willis glances at the intake form to refresh his memory. “Targaryen. What the heck is that, Italian? Polish? It ain’t French, that’s for sure.”
“It’s Greek, you dumb hick.”
Willis jabs his plastic fork at him. “You oughta watch that, son, or you’ll catch yourself a nasty case of what the liberals call police brutality.”
“He’s a Targaryen?” you ask, stunned. The man in the cell peers back at you with large, ever-wounded, ocean-blue eyes, glassy but not entirely unintelligent.
“So what?” Willis says.
“Willis, those are the oil people. Jade Dragon, the new rigs on Lake Verret? The Targaryens own that company.”
“Well I’ll be damned!” he marvels. “Really? This bon a rien right here, his family are a bunch of millionaires?”
“Yes. And you should probably let him make another phone call.”
“Yeah!” the prisoner says excitedly. “Listen to the cake lady!”
“Alright, alright,” Willis grumbles. “Guess I don’t need no legal trouble.” He picks up the phone off his desk and walks it to the holding cell; the cord stretches just far enough. “Make your damn phone call, gros couillion.”
Mr. Targaryen snatches up the receiver, punches some buttons, and listens as it rings. “Hi. Okay, don’t yell at me. Here’s the deal. I’m at the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office and I need you to pick me up. Wait, I said don’t yell at me! Stop yelling!!”
“I really need to get back to the bakery,” you tell Willis as you make for the door. “I’ll see you around, okay—?”
“Hey, sugar.” You stop and wait for him to finish. He’s considering you in that way he does sometimes: mild, thoughtful, vaguely sad, how’d we end up like this? He should know, you’ve told him a hundred times, but that doesn’t mean he understands. “I’m supposed to be gettin’ a new deputy next week. When he shows, I’ll send him down your way, recruit ya another customer. Charge him a little extra if you want. He won’t know no better.”
“Thanks, Willis,” you say, and you mean it. Then you step outside into sun glare and the shrieking of cicadas.
~~~~~~~~~~
It’s almost dinnertime when the phone rings. You’re heating up the turtle soup that Amir brought over earlier, stirring the pot as the sky outside turns from a crystalline blue—just like Aemond’s eye—to rust and amber and fool’s gold, as the twilight air breathes into the room warm and ancient. There’s a plump nutria nibbling on grass at the edge of the backyard. Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go pipes from the boombox. At first you’re too startled to race for the phone—too terrified that it won’t be Aemond, too afraid to get your hopes up—and you hesitate just long enough for Cadi to answer instead.
“Hello?” she says, and then: “Yeah, school was good.”
Everything sinks in you, heart, spirit, the sweltering pressure of blood ebbing in your veins. Oh. It’s Willis.
Cadi continues chatting away obliviously. “Uh huh. Not really. We learned about robber barons and cannons of Italy. Yeah, captains of industry, that’s what I meant. Uh huh. Yup. It was okay, I guess. Yeah. Today it was pizza, but it’s always shaped like a rectangle. Exactly, no crust. It’s weird. Pepperoni. I always sit with Michelle and Erica. Erica has this totally tubular book about horses she showed us. Yup. I like the Appaloosas the most. Uh huh. Okay, I will. Yup. Bye.” Then she hands you the phone. “For you,” she says, then resumes setting the counter: cups, bowls, spoons, folded Bounty paper towels, dinner for two. You never eat at the kitchen table. The table is reserved for business.
You raise the pink phone receiver to your ear with some uncertainty. What does he want now? “Willis?”
“No,” Aemond says, amused. “Though we’ve been to some of the same places.”
You try not to let the smile fill up your face. You fail. “You were asking Cadi about her day?”
“Evidently.” You don’t know what this means; you don’t ask. “When are you free?”
“I usually have the house to myself on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” It’s currently Monday.
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow. What time?”
“I should be done in the bakery at around 5:00.”
“I’ll be there at 5:01.” Then Aemond hangs up. So do you, your skull suddenly abloom like springtime, colors and promise and warmth. He’s going to be here in less than 24 hours. I really am going to see him again.
You turn towards the counter. “Cadi, what are robber barons?”
“Rich people who are mean to their workers to get as much money as possible. They don’t care about others. They just want more and more and more. They’re very greedy and are never satisfied.”
“So like the Rockefellers and Standard Oil,” you say, thinking back to your high school American History class. It feels like a lifetime ago, it feels like trying to catch lightning bugs in your bare hands.
“Yeah.” Cadi pours herself a cup of Tang. She’s wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and green corduroy pants; her father would not approve. “Or Jade Dragon Energy.”
~~~~~~~~~~
It’s Tuesday, 5:03 p.m., rattling cicadas and golden light like the lit coil of a stove burner. You’re still scrubbing dishes, and Amir is icing the last of the orange creamsicle cupcakes for the next morning. Aemond opens the unlocked front door and strides purposefully into the kitchen: ripped jeans, red t-shirt, Converses to match, Marlboro jacket. He is carrying a neon teal duffle bag that he drops on the sloping wooden floor where the living room meets the kitchen. He is momentarily taken aback when he sees Amir, then recalls what you told him about your friend who helps run the bakery. Aemond pulls out one of the kitchen table chairs and sits. He lifts the glass lid from a cake plate, takes the last peach cobbler cupcake for himself, makes unflinching eye contact with you as he licks the frosting off it with long, slow, sensual drags of his tongue.
Amir says: “Hey Scarface, that’s $1.”
“Amir!” you scold, mortified. But Aemond doesn’t seem offended. He smirks, extracts his black leather wallet from the pocket his jeans, and fishes out four singles. He slides them across the table.
Amir sighs. “This bitch can’t even count.”
“I’m sure he can count,” you say, smiling. “He’s an engineer.”
“He’s mouth-fucking this cupcake right in front of me, he’s clearly unstable.”
Aemond looks to you. His voice is low, imposing. “I need to know what your limits are.”
“Oh my God!” Amir squeaks, bent over the table and icing as quickly as he can.
“Okay,” you tell Aemond. You rinse the pearlescent soap bubbles from your hands, wrists, forearms. Then you step out from behind the counter and watch him, remember him, imagine what will happen next.
He gives the peach cobbler cupcake another lap. Buttercream frosting coats his mischieviously curled lips and then is swiftly licked away. “Can I spank you?”
“Yes.”
Amir mutters to himself: “Grandma is never going to believe this.”
“Can I tie you up?”
“Yes.”
“Can I bite you hard enough to leave bruises?”
You pause. “Only places that will be covered by my clothes.”
“And what should you say if you ever don’t like what I’m doing?”
“I just tell you to stop.”
“Exactly.” Aemond grins. His right eye skates from your face to your chest to your hips to your thighs to your ankles, drinking you down like the earth swallows rain, like the vines and cypress trees and Sanish moss of the bayou thieve sunlight and never give it back. His left eye doesn’t move at all, though this is not something you would notice if you didn’t know to look for it. “Good girl.”
“Done!” Amir announces triumphantly, completing the swirl of frosting on the final orange creamsicle cupcake.
“Can I pull your hair?” Aemond asks you.
“Yeah, I think so. Not hard enough to yank it out though.”
Aemond scoffs. “Of course not. I don’t actually want to hurt you. That’s what some doms are after, but not me. Not here, not with you. You don’t want real pain, do you…?”
“No, definitely not,” you say, relieved.
“Brilliant. Then we’re on the same page.”
Amir could leave, but he doesn’t. His eyes dart between you and Aemond from behind his large rectangular glasses, fascinated, scandalized, too astonished to move.
Aemond continues: “Birth control?”
“I’m on the pill and have been for years. I can show you the pack if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you. I saw them in your bathroom last time I was here. I’m in the practice of using condoms regardless.” He tilts his head impishly. “Can I fuck your ass?”
“Um.” You hesitate. This is uncharted territory, though you cannot say that you are entirely unintrigued. “Maybe one day.”
“Noted. Some people find the sensation, the taboo, the fullness…quite pleasurable.”
“Do you?” Amir asks flirtatiously.
Aemond gives him a lazy, ludicrously charming smile. “Well I’ve never been on the receiving end, but I’m game to give it a try if you are.”
Amir bursts out laughing, then says to you: “He’s alright. He can commit abominable sins with you, I guess.” He stands and shakes Aemond’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Kind of.” Then he saunters off through the living room and out the front door. After a moment, you and Aemond listen to his blue Ford Escort rumble to life and then the crunching of gravel as it rolls out of the driveway. From the boombox drifts Just What I Needed by The Cars.
Aemond licks the last of the frosting from the peach cobbler cupcake and says: “Now you’re going to be the cupcake.” He crosses the kitchen, kneels down in front of you, roughly yanks down your denim shorts. He presses his face to your royal blue satin panties—hastily purchased this morning while Amir watched the shop and changed into just one hour ago in anticipation of Aemond’s arrival—and inhales deeply, desperately, like a drowning man gasping for air. Then, through the sheer fabric, he begins to tease you: nudges of his nose, nibbles of his lips.
Your fingers tangle in his short blonde hair. Blonde like the drunk man in the holding cell, you think randomly. “Aemond, why didn’t you want me last time?”
“I wanted you. I wanted you then and I want you now.”
“But I disappointed you. You didn’t finish.”
“Oh, I came,” he purrs. “Went home, got in the shower, thought of you. It didn’t take long. I would have disappointed you terribly. Woke up in the middle of the night thinking of you. Tried to miraculously get some work done yesterday while thinking of you. Crawled out of bed this morning thinking of you. Are you noticing a theme?”
You smile as his tongue presses forcefully against the satin. “I might be.”
“How many times in your life has a man treated his orgasm as essential and your own as an afterthought, if he considered it at all?”
Oh God. That’s the fucking truth. “A lot more than once.”
“So consider what we did on Sunday as one little notch in the other column. Just restoring a bit of much-needed balance to the universe.” He hooks his thumbs under your panties and tugs them off. “Open your thighs for me,” he orders as he pushes them apart with his palms: large, smooth, artful hands. You brace your own hands against the kitchen counter as he buries his face between your legs, not lapping in a tentative, exploratory sort of way but feasting on you, drowning in you, lips and tongue and then fingers that skate up the downy inside of your thigh to taunt you, enter you, fuck you expertly yet leave you wanting more of him, all of him. Your nerves are on fire, your blood is simmering. Outside the birds of prey are emerging from their liars and battle-scarred gators stalk boldly through the green prehistoric wildness of the Deep South.
What happened to his eye? you think through the lust-pink haze, knowing you cannot ask him. Aemond respects your rules. You must abide by his as well. How was he injured so gravely? Who hurt him? Did they atone for their misdeeds, did they pay the cost?
Suddenly, Aemond stands and pulls you against him by your waist, rips your yellow tank top over your head and unhooks your bra, kisses you fiercely. His mouth is dripping with you, clean mineral longing; his right eye is gleaming, famished, not just lustful but half-mad. No one else exists. No one ever has or ever will. “Go to the bed and wait for me there.”
“No.”
He spanks you once with his open palm; the sound is sharp and exquisite. “Go.” And this time you obey, counting the seconds in the dusk-lit splinter of time before he joins you.
In Aemond’s duffle bag—among other things, surely—are silk scarves the color of sapphires. First he fastens one over your eyes as a blindfold. Then he ties one around each of your wrists and binds both to the same bedpost, low enough that while your hands are kept up by your head, you still have some room to maneuver on the freshly-laundered, wildflower-patterned duvet. “Not different posts?” you ask Aemond.
“No. Tying your arms far apart like that can cause cramps in your back and your shoulders. It can even make it difficult to breathe. I want you to be comfortable. I want you to be focused entirely on what I’m doing to you.”
You moan as his fingers slip between your legs and circle over the place that makes your muscles yearn and twist and tighten until you feel they might snap, until you can imagine every string of you breaking and dissolving from the prison of flesh into water, air, gravity, the eternal silent progress of time. He bites and sucks at your nipples, flicking his tongue over them, admiring them, praising them, ravenous for them. You are enraptured by the weight of him on top of you. Without your sight, everything else is more noticeable, more real: his warmth, his sweat, his every brush of skin against yours, his smoke and cologne and gasps and sighs, the grinding of his bare cock against your thighs as he makes you ready for him. And you beg for it long before he gives it to you.
“Roll over,” he commands breathlessly, and then guides you: your fingers clutching the scarves that secure your wrists, your elbows propped on the mattress, your back arched and hips angled up towards him, his lips murmuring against your shoulder, your cheek, the side of your throat. He’s telling you so many things, perfect things, delicious things you’ll never hear enough of: how beautiful you are, how badly he wants you, how well you’re doing. There is the sound of Aemond opening a condom wrapper, and a strange sorrow ripples through you. I wish I could have him raw.
One of his hands reaches around to stroke you, keeping you soaked and supple for him. The other begins to guide his cock into your aching, starving wetness. You stretch for him, you accept him eagerly…and then there is resistance. He stills immediately and tries a slightly different angle. Nothing. He could force it, probably, but he won’t. He recedes from you, agonizing emptiness, dire unfulfillment. I’m disappointing him, he’s too big, I’m too tight, too nervous, too inexperienced at being dominated, I can’t please him. You whimper: “Aemond, I’m sorry—”
“No,” he says, more ferocious than any words you’ve ever heard from him. You are not allowed to criticize yourself. You are not allowed to give up so easily. He leans down and whispers into the shell of your ear, his ribs against your spine, his heat entombing you: “Relax. I’m in charge now. I’ll take care of you.”
You want him to. You need him to. His commandment rolls through your blood and bones like a wave, loosening those last vestiges of anxiety, shaking grim psychological heirlooms from the highest shelves. You can surrender yourself completely to Aemond. He is worthy, he is safe, he is euphoria made flesh. His fingertips are still stroking you. He pushes your thighs just a little farther apart and—slowly, cautiously—eases his cock into your throbbing warmth. He hisses in a breath, though he tries not to break character, to show you that he might just be a little bit at your mercy too.
You moan loudly and shamelessly, letting him know you’re alright, more than alright, in ecstasy, in bliss, in torment, on the edge. When Aemond thrusts, he finds a place that’s never been hit so directly or so well. The climax is on you before you are aware of it, one of those swells that rises out of nowhere, capsizes the boat, fades back into the endless blue of the ocean. It jolts through your pelvis, your spine, your skull, and then evaporates like steam from a bathroom mirror. And now Aemond is trying to finish too, but something is off. He tries a few different rhythms, can’t seem to get it right. You think you can feel him beginning to soften. No no no, I can’t leave him unsatisfied again.
You look back, though you cannot see him through the blindfold; instinctively, you want to be closer to him. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing,” Aemond says. “Nothing, nothing, nothing is wrong. You’re perfect. You’re so fucking perfect.” He turns your face so he can kiss you deeply, his tongue in your mouth, swallowing you down, entangled in every way possible. And only then he is able to come: powerfully, trembling, crying out like he’s in the kind of pain that leaves scars for life.
He glides his cock out of you, and you can hear him snap off the condom. Then he unties your blindfold and your wrists. You reach for him, then stop yourself; he reaches for you—a reflex, surely—and then shakes the notion away and collapses beside you on the duvet. You both lie there panting, gazing dizzily up at the long shadows of centuries-old oak trees that cascade across the ceiling, minds drained, bodies spent.
After a moment, Aemond clambers off the bed to grab a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Reds out of his jeans pocket. Then he flops back down next to you, lights a cigarette, takes a deep, slow drag. “So, cupcake,” he says nonchalantly, exhaling smoke, hand shaking. “Where’d you get married?”
You laugh; this is ridiculous. “Why on earth would you want to know that?”
“I want to know things about you. Things other than your tits and your pussy. I mean, those are great. I enjoy them tremendously, and I plan to keep enjoying them. But I also enjoy you.”
You sigh. Aemond waits, puffing on his cigarette. “The parish courthouse.” Plain, boring, economical. “I wanted a wedding at Saint Honoratus, but…”
“Saint…who?”
“The Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens,” you say. “It’s this gorgeous place in a town called Belle River on the other side of Lake Verret. Very small, very old, it’s a historic site or something, they can’t ever knock it down.”
“Why couldn’t you get married there?”
You shrug; how much could the details matter now? Someone needed to organize it, someone needed to decorate, someone needed to pay for food and drinks, someone needed to send out invitations, someone needed to care enough to make it happen, and that someone would have been you, just you, seventeen and broke and bedridden with morning sickness until noon every day. “It just didn’t work out.”
“Sounds like a lot of things didn’t work out for you.”
You raise your eyebrows. Aemond winces.
“Sorry. That was…not the way I meant to express that sentiment.”
You forgive him. You’d forgive him for anything right now, right here, in a bed stained with his sweat and your wetness and the seed you wish he could have spilled inside you. You taunt him: “Should we meet up at your house next time?”
He recoils, horrified. “No. Definitely not.”
“Why? What’s at your house? An abandoned wife and six tall, blonde, prominently-jawed children?”
He chuckles; he has collected himself again. “No. It’s just that…well…I have family in town currently. They’re staying with me while I get set up with the new job and everything. Quite a lot of people. And my family is…unorthodox.”
You wish he would stop using words you don’t know. That’s the hazard of affiliating with a highfalutin petroleum engineer, you suppose. “So they’re strange?”
“That’s a kind word for it.”
“I like strange people. I like you.”
Aemond smirks warily. “You wouldn’t like them. Just trust me on that.” He traces the border of your face with his fingertips, contemplating your secrets, tending his own like a nightscape garden. “Do you ever want to do something…not in your bedroom?”
You grin and he kisses you, nicotine and quelled desire; he can’t help it. You say when you break away: “What, like dinner or flowers or any of the other activities that were very clearly not a part of this arrangement?”
“Arrangements are flexible.”
“Are they?”
“This one is. Increasingly so.”
You ponder his proposition. “There’s this new restaurant I really want to go to. I’ve never been before, but it looks pretty rad in the commercials on tv. It’s up in Gonzales.”
“The same town as your illustrious Kmart engagement. How fortuitous. Pease continue.”
“It’s an Italian place,” you say.
“I love Italian.”
“It’s called Olive Garden.”
Aemond’s mouth falls open. He is bewildered, appalled. His cigarette smolders forgotten in the crook of his fingers. You might as well have told him you wanted to run over puppies with lawnmowers. “You want me to take you to Olive Garden? Seriously?”
You are wounded. “What’s wrong with Olive Garden?”
“Cupcake, Olive Garden is not real Italian food. That’s like saying Taco Bell is Mexican.”
“…Isn’t it?”
“Okay,” he capitulates. He smiles as he smooths your disheveled hair and touches his lips to your forehead. “It’s fine. We’ll go to Olive Garden.”
“Really?” you reply, beaming.
“Really. You’re free Thursday?”
“Unless Willis has to switch nights for some reason, yeah.”
“Then we’ll go Thursday.” Aemond rolls off the bed and finds a mug—Return Of The Jedi, Princess Leia and the Ewoks—left on your dresser to put his cigarette out in. He looks through the screen of your open bedroom window as the sky turns ever-darker, as the moon and stars begin to rise, and he breathes in the verdant, humid, ageless witchcraft of the bayou. “You have no idea what the last few days have been like for me,” Aemond says softly, his bare back turned to you, the ridge of his spine like a road cut through a swamp or a forest or a field of sugarcane. “You have no idea how badly I needed this.”
#aemond targaryen#aemond targaryen imagine#aemond targaryen x reader#aemond x y/n#aemond x you#aemond x reader#aemond targaryen x you
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Not related to lore Olympus but this discussion seems a bit uhh strange. Some of the comments are calling Mattie bites a right woman hater. If you don't believe me,check this out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/webtoons/s/4zaDi6fWos
god okay I feel like I'm opening Pandora's Box with this shit but I have lots to say about it so... yeah fuck it, let's do this, I'm brave-
So I can absolutely agree with OP's sentiment that BlackLightJack's content has become uh... more aggressive and mean-spirited , and don't get me wrong, that was always sort of his vibe, but now it feels like he's straight up just weaponizing his fanbase and like... y'all know how curt I get about LO here, I can be a real asshole about it, even I think what BLJ is doing feels really shitty, immature, and frankly just uninformed? Because most of his videos are just him pout-screaming profanities into the microphone, like I know this is gonna sound nitpicky and petty but I can literally hear it in his voice that he's enunciating his words the same way an 8 year old would so that spit would land on the person they're yelling at ("STOOOOOOOOO-PPP-UHHHHH") and lately his content just feels like what it used to feel like being in CoD lobbies back in the day. Him having the name 'webtoon killer' just gives me such a sour taste in my mouth. Like... this feels like some kind of Batman villain in the making LMAO
But maybe no one wants to hear that opinion from someone like me who's literally called themselves the "far superior off brand" as a gag LMAO and that's fine honestly if you think I'm full of shit, this is also just my opinion!
But like... and I know I'm being an asshole going 'b-but-!' but... BLJ is also building an entire ass monetized platform off his vibe and using that platform to specifically go after Canvas series and creators. And let me tell you, while many would argue "well it's just the webtoons that are grossly negligent / breaking Webtoons' ToS / etc.", his fanbase is also constantly just sending him new comics to read and trash on and I feel like it's only a matter of time before he goes after a completely innocent creator whose only crime was being not great at webcomics which... shouldn't be viewed as a default crime punishable by pitchforks. That sorta already happened with the Fulcagay situation, I don't know Fulcagay and he almost definitely wouldn't know me, but he's a fellow Canvas creator who I've run into and shared a space with, and BLJ's original comments about him just felt incredibly off-base and volatile without giving even a shred of benefit of the doubt. I get the sense BLJ doesn't know about Hanlon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity") because EVERY video he does about every comic and creator he's addressing assumes maliciousness always.
This is the same shit we got with Youtube creators like Leafy who became infamous for just taking the piss out of everyone until they took it too far. Like, take it from me, it can be VERY easy to get so entrenched in being an asshole and taking the piss out of everything that completely innocent people get hit with splash damage, and if you're not willing to take responsibility for that, then you're gonna look like a bigger dick than the people you were aiming for. This pee analogy working for y'all? 😆
As for what Matty Bites has to do with that, I don't really get it? Like maybe I'm just misinformed here, maybe I haven't watched enough of her stuff, but she's never given me anywhere near the amount of red flags I get off listening to even one episode of BLJ. Matty feels like someone who actually reads and analyzes and researches the stuff she's criticizing in a way that's relatively harmless with her own flair sprinkled in (and her humor is hilarious btw, her opening skits are great LOL); BLJ meanwhile feels like he's constantly one opinion away from starting a #victimofcancelculture campaign because he's just trying to be as edgy and angry as possible LMAO (and ironically they're both often criticizing the same thing, but it goes to show how delivery makes a hell of a difference when it comes to dishing out criticism)
All that said, if there is something with Matty Bites that I'm missing here, I'm fully open to being informed because I haven't watched many of her videos and there could just as well be something that I've missed. But I don't think she's anywhere near as hostile as BLJ tends to be, I don't think Matty Bites' comedic video editing and sassy commentary has ever resulted in creators actually being attacked and bullied like BLJ's have.
Overall I think anyone who builds a platform or audience off criticizing content (and this includes me!) needs to practice responsibility and accountability in what they put out and what they choose to focus on and criticize. It can be really easy to accidentally use "criticism" as a get-out-of-jail-free card to just be a bully. It can be really easy to wind up leaving your criticism so unrefined and surface level without any deeper reflection that you never actually open your mind to anything and you just end up echoing out hate speech without even intending to. And it can be really, really easy to ruin your own palate from willingly consuming nothing but shit all day.
Just to quote some very famous words from a fictional character that absolutely apply here:
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Ok, I have a request based on your new prompt list. The names got me thinking, and I was wondering if you could do just the Gladers x Fem!Reader who joins them and is a total badass, and has a title, like in the books, and she’s “the warrior.” And she’s named Joan after Joan of Arc. Could be a fic or just headcanons, whichever is easiest for you. Thanks!
Ooo this is a really fun idea. I'm gonna do some headcanons simply because that is easier for me to do.
Also, not my normal headcanons with separate sections for each boy - this is about your life in the Glade and relationships with the Gladers.
Also, fem!reader, so no romance with Newt as specified on my masterlist, but y'all are buddies.
And I've decided to use another one of my ideas, so you're even more of a pain in WICKED's ass :).
THE WARRIOR
MASTERLIST | MULTI-CHARACTER MASTERLIST
SUMMARY: See above. Book based fic.
WICKED stole your name and called you Joan - and there's a good reason for that. You were a test Subject and WICKED prodigy that broke into the Maze to help your friends - and WICKED couldn't really do anything about it.
(If you're actually called Joan, congrats, this is for you, I guess.)
WARNINGS: Inappropriate language, actually follows the naming canon so no (Y/N), awkward Glader flirting. I fully don't how I'm gonna write this so prepare for me to butcher this prompt. This is a bit of a different layout so I decided to have some fun with it.
LOADING SUBJECT INFORMATION
SUBJECT NUMBER: A3 "The Warrior"
BIRTH NAME: (Y/N) (L/N).
SUBJECT GIVEN NAME: Joan.
NOTES: Subject A3 shows signs of rebellion and aggression. This is not surprising considering the means she went through to enter the Maze Trails. Though, her efforts may have been beneficial. Due to being the only female Group A Subject for the majority of the Maze Trails, she is volatile and untrusting. However, A3 does display close relationships with several other Subjects.
LOADING GLADER EXPERIENCE
You had an eventful first week in the Glade.
As eventful as a first week can be, really.
Initially, you freaked the fuck out.
You woke up in a dark box with nothing but your name and the smell of burning oil.
And then the Box opened up and you weren't the only one freaking out.
Surrounded by a couple dozen boys - no one knew what to do.
Unbeknownst to you, not only were you the only girl the Gladers had ever seen - but you'd also shown up between Greenie days.
They weren't due another Greenie for another week and a half.
Confusion spread through the Glade like wildfire.
The first person you met was Newt.
He seemed to be one of the few boys that weren't going absolutely savage at your presence.
He offered you a hand, which you refused to take at first.
Until the Box jolted again, and started to move with you still inside it.
"Oi, come on! Jump!"
"What's happening?!"
"I don't shuckin' know! Jump!"
With the help of several other pairs of hands, you decide to jump, and Newt yanks you up.
And you see the the Glade for the first time.
And the opening in the Walls.
You don't even have to think about.
When Newt tries to talk to you, you clock him square in the face and book it towards the exit.
AKA. The Maze.
Which results in a kind of stampede as you rush to escape.
Which, is where you meet Minho.
It's late in the day and Minho has finished his route early so he's coming back to chill out for a bit.
Except that doesn't happen because you come whizzing past him.
"Minho! Stop her!"
"What?"
"Stop the shuckin' girl!"
Admittedly, you are faster than he expected.
But not faster than him.
You manage to get around a corner before he tackles you, rugby style.
He manages to restrain you, and Alby and Newt come to help and wrestle you back to the Glade.
You're put in the Slammer.
Bummer.
The Gladers use the time you're locked up to figure out what to do.
Alby puts a very strong no touching rule in place and threatened to Banish anyone that dare break it.
After that, he goes out of his way to try and calm you down and explain what's happening here.
Eventually you oblige.
And Alby shows you the place.
He introduces you to people of note - Winston, Zart, Gally, Frypan and the other Keepers.
And he reintroduces you to Newt and Minho.
You learn things about yourself over the next following weeks.
You're feisty and forward.
You have a short fuse.
You're somewhat skilled at hand to hand combat and could probably put up a good fight against most of the Gladers.
You're sarcastic and quick witted.
Though, you remain level headed and fast thinking.
You try out all the jobs.
You settle on being a Builder for a while.
Which Gally is thrilled about.
You, surprisingly, actually get along with Gally quite well.
Sure, he's a bit of a dick and has far too many opinions.
But, he's a good boss.
He's strict and hard-working; pushing his men to the bets of their ability, and in your opinion, what they need.
This lands you in Gally's circle, which includes Frypan.
Gally isn't well liked.
Which is fine with you.
It means the boys leave you alone.
And, you get the opportunity to build your own little hut.
You like working as a Builder.
This also leads to the first of the boys developing a crush on you - Gally.
Frypan is quick to second that.
The third is Minho.
It's not like the pair of you are particularly close, but after Newt suggests you be a Runner - that changes.
You're fast and resilient; both of which Minho is looking for in his men.
You decide to try out, which makes Minho your boss.
Gally isn't very pleased, but you work where you're needed.
It's not that difficult, the worst part being not getting lost.
But Minho isn't going to leave you alone until you're ready.
Spending time with you, he learns you have a similar sense of humour.
And you've forgiven him for flooring you.
So, he starts crushing on you too.
As in my other headcanons, Alby really doesn't care about you.
Well, he does.
But just as another Glader.
Though he does appreciate the hard work you do, and the fact you keep the majority of his most problematic men distracted.
Newt is probably the person you're closest to.
Mainly because you never catch him staring at your ass or tits.
He's respectful.
And not attracted to you.
Because he's gay.
You're a fully fledged Runner by the time Thomas shows up.
You don't really think much of him at first.
Because absolutely no one did.
But he admired you.
He thought you were cool and skilled, very much the same way he looked up to Minho.
You were devastated when Thomas, Minho and Alby got stuck out in the Maze.
Gally tried his best to comfort you, but he didn't get very far.
"If anyone can survive the Maze; it's Minho."
"No one survives a night, Gally - we both know that."
Frypan's attempts weren't much better.
Newt was too busy figuring out how the heck he was going to run the Glade without Alby.
Yet, somehow, they both survived.
You don't think you've ever hugged someone as hard as you hugged Minho when you saw him.
Everyone's jealous of Minho for that.
Oh yeah, Teresa.
She showed up the day after Thomas.
You were thrilled to have another girl.
And then she wasn't conscious.
Bummer.
You kinda forgot about her after that.
Until she woke up, and everything went wrong in the Glade.
The sky disappearing, the Doors not closing, Grievers taking someone every night.
Including Alby.
And Gally disappeared.
A devastating blow.
You became one of the faces of the escape.
Cracking the code wasn't easy, but you all managed.
Thomas and Minho's theory about jumping into the void had you skeptical but you didn't have anything better to do than throw rocks off the Cliff for hours.
Thomas then gets stung.
And once awake, tells you how you were never meant to be in this Maze. You broke in, presumably to help your friends.
No wonder Newt and Minho wanted you to become a Runner.
Anyway, you escape.
Gally pops up again.
Kills Chuck.
RIP.
Thomas flips his lid.
And you escape.
Definitely not my best work but I really didn't know how to do this.
I'm stressed and I tried my best lmao.
Hope you're cool with that. Kinda.
:))
#🌿 petri writes#🌿 petri writes tmr#🍃 petri tmr#tmr fanfiction#tmr imagines#tmr minho#minho the maze runner#minho tmr#minho maze runner#minho tmr x reader#the maze runner#newt the maze runner#thomas the maze runner#tmr gally#alby maze runner#tmr frypan
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don't look at me like that unless you mean it
seasons don’t fear the reaper ♫ nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain
|| series masterlist || main masterlist ||
a/n: hello hello hello!!!! i am crawling back from the trenches to update for this series!!! i've gotten a few comments here and there of people telling me how much they've enjoyed it so far which has made my heart grow 3x bigger. thank you to everyone who has been so patient with me and still following along <3 y'all mean the world to me!!!! enjoy buddies <3
word count: 1.3k (for good reason i promise)
pairings: joel miller x f!reader
warnings & tags: minors dni, abby's group pov, direct consequence of the last chapter, swearing, lots of tension!, depictions of violence, whatever you know of TLOU part II- throw it out the window from here forward — please tell me if i missed anything!
The gas station stood under the muted glow of the moon, its once-red sign now an overgrown relic, its letters lacking the shiny luster they had decades ago. The windows were boarded up with rotten wood, and the interior had been stripped down to its very foundation. It was the best refuge offered in the miles they trekked– the only, really.
Abby stormed across the linoleum floors, the rubber soles of her boots striking with an angry cadence, one maintained from the moments they stopped running. She carelessly slung her pack off her shoulders, letting it land haphazardly on the side, and drove her knife into the countertop. Planting her hands to steady herself, she murmured curses under her breath, a volatile symphony of emotions reverberating in the stale air.
The others trailed behind her, one attempting to make themselves inconspicuous by being the last– a futile effort given the charged atmosphere.
"Couldn't think of a name that didn't start with the same letter as your own?" Abby's voice cut through the silence, her anger evident even without turning to face her target.
Mel avoided looking at her hunched figure. The tension between them had been going on for months, and this was certainly the breaking point. Abby had been set on one mission for years, and all it took was five minutes for Mel to screw up. Your escape forced them fleeing farther than Abby preferred, dismantling their camp in haste and running until they felt some semblance of safety over the border into Idaho.
Embarrassment colored Mel's face as she weakly rationalized her guilt, "I told you it wasn't a good idea to begin with."
Abby scoffed and rolled her eyes, a sardonic smile curling on her lips, "What you should've told me was that you're totally fucking incapable. Would've been crystal clear, then."
Mel swallowed hard, feeling Abby's rage descend upon her like a palpable force. Glancing at the others, most avoiding eye contact due to their own discomfort, Mel crossed her arms and tried to find the courage to defend herself once more.
"I did my best."
"Well your best wasn't good enough," Abby retorted without missing a beat, finally turning to face Mel. The moonlight streamed through the cracks of the boards just enough to illuminate the intensity of her glare and furrowed brows.
It was clear that Nora and Manny's sentiments aligned with Abby's, yet they chose silence over confrontation. Jordan and Nick, perpetually indifferent, remained on the fringe, more interested in the thrill of hunting and hurting enemies rather than the unfolding of drama within their group.
"Listen, what's done is done, alright?" Owen placed his hand on Nora's back, an action that sent a pang of jealousy through Abby's stomach. She eyed them both with disgust and forced herself to swallow down the brewing nausea. "Now, our best bet is to head back to Seattle. We can regroup–"
"Se- What?" Abby's eyes widened at the suggestion. "No– We're not-"
"We don't have a choice," he cut her off and took a step towards her, concern evident on his features.
"The hell we don't!" Her voice thundered. "We're not going back!"
"You're being reckless!" Owen snapped back with an accusatory finger, "We can't afford-"
"Four years!" Abby seethed, her frustration pouring out, "Four fucking years, gone to shit because of her!"
Owen's jaw clenched, tired of the constant hostility towards Mel. "You're looking at a whole town to go after us, you know that, right?"
She pressed her lips into a thin line.
"What then, Abby? You wanna start a war with these people, is that it?" His voice raised with each word. "We can barely keep up with the Scars!"
The weight of the past bore down on Abby, her blind rage and need for retribution chaotically clashing with the pragmatic choice he presented, one that resonated with the others as they too recognized the impracticality of her rage.
Her clenched fists trembled at her sides, torn between her relentless pursuit of revenge and going about it all sensibly. She would've almost agreed with him– almost– if it hadn't been for the small voice that came from behind him.
"He's right."
The room plunged into a deafening silence, the air undeniably thick with tension now more than ever. Mel's figure was almost entirely shielded by Owen at this point, her provocation igniting an instant outrage.
Abby's features darkened and she ripped her knife from the counter, raising it as she stormed towards Mel. How dare she? It was bad enough that she embodied a constant reminder of everything Abby and Owen could've been, but now she had the audacity to defy Abby despite being the one responsible for this entire mess?
Owen caught her arm and she lunged against his hold with a powerful shout, "Fuck you!"
He pushed Abby back just enough to create distance, opening his mouth to speak but only being met with a forceful shove and resounding slap. "And fuck you, too!"
Abby's chest heaved as she backed up and glared between the two; one a former friend, the other a former lover– both nothing more than traitors to her now. She scoffed and shook her head, swiftly turning on her heel to retreat through a backroom and subsequent door outside. Manny exchanged a quick look with Nora before slowly trailing after her, while Owen watched her storm out with an apathetic expression and a loose arm wrapped around Mel in a half-assed attempt of consoling her.
Outside, Abby leaned against the cool brick of the building, her skin radiating a heat that would surely be more welcomed in the winter versus now. The bitter taste of frustration lingered in her mouth and it seemed like nothing could soothe the tumult within, not even the loud buzzing and ticking of insects around could snap her out of it.
She slid down the wall until she hit the ground with a soft thud and rubbed her hands over her face. She felt so much all at once– anger, grief, sorrow, resentment. This was all she could think about, all that she worked so hard for, only for it to be ruined. She couldn't fathom being forced to take ten steps back when she was so close to ending this nightmare.
Quietly, Manny joined her side. Her leveled counterpart, the one that could ground her when she was too close from flying off the handles. At one point in time, Owen had been that for her, but it ended long ago– back when he still believed in this mission, when he still believed in them.
Manny understood Abby's turmoil well– hell, he harbored the same resentment. He figured him to be another asshole left in this world to begin with, but the belief was solidified once he broke Abby's heart.
However, he also recognized the necessity of unity.
"Abs..." His tone was soft, "you know I've got your back, right?"
She shifted slightly, nodding and meeting his eyes. "And you know I hate Owen just as much as you do... fuckin’ idiot seems to forget these two are the reason we winded up here, but–”
Abby gave him a pointed look, to which he defensively held a hand up, "Maybe we should go back to Seattle."
All Abby could muster was a half-hearted scoff before Manny spoke again, "I know it's not what you want– but now they know, and now they'll be expecting… Think of it as a chance to make no mistakes next time."
She looked back down between her knees, reluctantly acknowledging the wisdom in his words with a nod. She sighed, her shoulders easing a bit of tension, "We were so close, Manny."
"I know, Abs," he placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, his voice carrying the weight of shared disappointment. With a gentle jostle, he infused a touch of optimism reserved for moments like this, "But listen... Just when they think we're gone, we'll be right under their noses, yeah?"
The thought was enough to make her crack a smile.
#joel miller#joel miller x reader#joel miller x f!reader#joel miller fic#tlou#the last of us#tlou fanfiction#annasmasterlist#anna writes
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Hi Kyra! this post will just be me commenting my favorite moments from this chapter ( it’s so funny bcs this IS my favorite chapter so far… to be fair, every chapter that you post becomes my new favorite chapter….) so don’t be surprised of how LONG this will be…
I ABSOLUTELY ADORED THE FIRST SCENE!!!! how could you think of not putting it in??? it’s SO GOOD!!!! i loved edward getting conflicted about telling his fantasies to the mc, only to say it anyway bcs she basically said: “pretty please with a cherry on top 🥺🥺🥺” and after it he even strokes her hair??!!?! what a man….
I want to congratulate you on the build up and immersion that you created when Jonathan was guiding us to the basement! Holy fuck! that was INSANE!!!! i was genuinely scared while reading it, like i knew that he wasn’t going to actually hurt us BUT STILL!!!! and him (angrily) taking his glasses off when talking about Bruce (like i have this gut feeling that he still holds a resentment to him for dancing with us) was TOP TIER!!! and jesus fucking christ i don’t even need to say the smut part of it all so fucking good… the small gestures of yearning that he did (that could -it is- be him manipulating us BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK?) the “have you missed this?” YEAH I DID!!! and i KNOW he did too!! you can’t fool me!!! everything about was just perfect… goes to show that Jonathan Crane is intoxicating…. that jerk…
Bruce Wayne is the people’s princess, he IS the ultimate damsel in distress, EVERYONE IS OUT TO GET THAT MAN!!! but seriously, the scene where the reader is deciding that she is going to betray Bruce and he just smiles at her and she realizes that SHE CAN’T HURT HIM!!!!! IT MELTED MY HEART ❤️ him being worried and still being there for her…. BRUCE NATION WE WON SO HARD WITH THE PECK IN THE ROOFTOP AND WE ARE GOING TO A PARTY WITH MISTER WAYNEEEEEE!!!!!! WHAAAAAT??!!! him asking was so funny and cute too!!!! i absolutely LOVE their dynamic!!!
Thank you so much kyra!!! thanks for sharing your amazing story! i know how personal they are! i don’t think you get thanked enough!!! i love your art, i love the passion you have for it… so yeah thanks!!!
ahh! thank you so much! I love getting these asks, I love hearing everyone's thoughts and analysis of what I've written it really makes my work feel appreciated!
I was very nervous that the first smut scene would feel unnecessary or OOC but decided that it didn't matter! I also don't really think there's going to be anymore Edward smut (in this fic, at least) so I wanted to treat you all to some more since a lot more people liked their dynamic than I thought would when I was planning the fic! He's sweet now but he is also... volatile.
Thank you! I was so excited to write the basement scene with Jonathan and I'm glad you all are enjoying it! Jonathan definitely doesn't like Bruce, the extent of which will be revealed slowly. I also loved writing the contrast between Jonathan's downright tender moments and the gross filthy stuff. Both of which are, indeed, ways he's trying to regain his control over the reader.
Bruce and the reader's relationship is FINALLY moving somewhere lmao. I know y'all have been SOOO patient. It is so funny to me, though, that the reader is like to Batman "please please protect Bruce!! he's a lil baby, he can't protect himself!" because girl.... that IS BRUCE. he'll be fine. It also adds another layer to their conversation that is, to me, delicious. I really enjoy dramatic irony, can you tell?
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Disposing Of Baneful Material
Ok couple things first one I'm coming off a cold and my heads still a bit fuzzy so if anything is incoherent opps my bad,
second use of general you ahead so if you're not doing what I'm talking about them this is not aimed at you,
I am not looking for an argument here,
I'm writing my own post cause I didn't want to possibly start shit with someone on another persons post,
Ok so some of y'all might know my mama is on Tumblr now @silverphantom72 she's slowly learning the ropes and slowly learning to follow people and such,
She came up to me yesterday morning, about this post that scared the crap outta her, the op was asking how people get rid of used magic material, all fine till ma got to where one person said they dump baneful material at the gas station,
Ma works at a gas station has worked at a few, understandably this freaked her out,
I couldn't really reassure her given the more thought I've given it the more it's freaked me out, let me break down my problems with this,
I'm not a love and light do no harm type, cause that's not possible that's not the world we live in, someone is always going to get hurt, but I prefer to be a sniper over a bomber, I try always to do the least harm, and putting baneful shit in a volatile area is not the least harm,
Most people likely don't get just how dangerous gas stations are so let me explain, and by dangerous I'm not only talking robberys,
People are awful at gas stations, their pissed off, and they are never paying attention to what their doing,
When COVID first started it became clear to my ma and her manager that the higher ups weren't going to put screens across the registers the way they did in the main store for those cashiers, so they asked for permission and then rigged up one themselves, and people went ballistic over it, 'whats that here for?!' they'd demand, and as soon as the word COVID left ma and here coworkers lips the person would spit on the covering and slam out the door yelling about how they hoped the workers there would catch COVID,
A man not long ago demanded ma give him free gas and she was like I literally cannot do that he started coming over the register at her til another costumer (big guy) yelled at him to knock it the fuck off, ma worried for weeks that he'd come back with a gun,
Or as she worries every day that someone will be pissed enough to follow her home,
Speaking of guns there was the time a shit ton of cops surrounded a murder suspect right on the street in front of her station and she hit the deck as they all took aim at this guy,
Or
there was that time in her old gas station job where two guys got into a knife fight inside the station and she had to run out the side door,
The coworker who got hit by a truck (she lived and is mostly ok, last ma heard)
The amount of people who run over cones sectioning off a down pump then come running in to scream about the pump not working,
All the people who pull out with the pump still attached to their car
Ect.
Gas stations are highly volatile spaces putting baneful magic scraps into that is in my opinion asking to kill someone,
Now onto the more mundane side,
Do you know who collects that trash from the trash cans, the cashiers themselves, and at least where my ma works they don't have gloves, they have to pull those bags out bare handed and trag them to the nearby dumpster,
Often ma has to push bulging trash down into the bag, or because people empty their whole car into these trash cans, beer bottles, full bottles of water, full Starbucks coffees, she often has to pull some of that trash into another bag because she can't lift it out because the bags are too heavy, (ma's almost 70 btw)
If I put something into a bag then put it in there that bag WILL get ripped open and then people like ma WILL be touching it with their bare hands, meaning any poisonous to the touch herbs? congrats you just poisoned someone, glass shards/ mirror fragments? just shredded someone's hands, a poppet with needles in it? now there in a persons hand,
When I brought this to ma's attention she gasped and told me lots of kids tend to squish the top of the trash down when it's bulging up so they can shove their trash on top, that lots of people do,
so throwing anything poisonous or slicey in the trash is very fucking likly to hurt someone.
I can't tell y'all what to do, but maybe think twice on what you're doing, just like how people have brought up don't put salt on the ground because you're killing the environment, I'm speaking up for gas station workers who, trust me, do not want to be there,
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I don't wanna sound bitter. Cuz I'm not. But I am very much disappointed. And probably a tiny bit mad.
Larian, I very much appreciate it that we get a new patch every 4 weeks or so and that you guys continously throw in "new" content, but; please for the love of everything that is holy take your time.
Patch 6 broke the game. Hotfix 18 made it even worse for modders, those with modded games and even just the vanilla experience. Patch 6 was very much still playable, whereas Hotmess 18 crashed the game round about every 30 minutes for reasons beyond human comprehension. Hotmess 19 fixed the .exe resulting in most script mods working again and Aron stopped his personal vendetta against me, but even now there's random funny lil bits and bobs of what the hell? and apparently some lines are marked as impossible again.
Please, for the love of god, test your patches. This is a fully released game, not EA and your players didn't sign up to be your beta testers. I know it's modern custom to treat your user base like they are, but speaking as part of the user base; I'd rather not.
I don't want to start the game directly from its .exe, continuously stay offline in Steam, or turn off auto updates for fear they will break everything yet again. I know my game is volatile because of mods; I understand that, and I'm not complaining about it, but mods didn't cause the bugs and crashes I've faced, and y'all confirmed it with the patch notes. Especially since I had the very same issues on my very much vanilla Steamdeck myself.
I do appreciate the work you do, but I don't appreciate the way how it is done. There will always be bugs and all. That much is normal. But they shouldn't be this severely game breaking or change the whole fucking .exe. That, to me, screams 99% untested, maybe on 1 particular notebook or PC and in some very small capacity, but not really. That's not a simple "oversight" anymore.
It happened before with Patch 4 which was incredibly broken and caused me to stay away from the game for weeks and I'm seeing it happen again right about fucking now.
Also the whole discord drama bit. If you know what I mean, you know how fucked up it was. Shall I add that some characters received a bunch of idles and some barely any or straight up none? If you commit to such updates, why not wait until you have something ready for everyone instead of stoking the flames by yourself voluntarily? Your players don't mind waiting longer if the end result is worth it, you know.
Please get your shit together Larian. You guys advocated for your players, but this isn't that anymore. This feels like a sellout. The very thing certain people tried to complain about at the Game Awards. Love you guys, but please. Please. Get it together again.
Okay. Got it out of my system. Back to my usual bullshit. On the bright side, this did trigger me to go write again after spending the entirety of yesterday asleep.
FYI; even if this was caused by the whining, get mad at the devs, not at your fandom. It wasn't their fault, the devs made these changes. Some of these people were right to complain (can we be adults about it this time pretty please? We all just want our ships to sail smoothly and our blorbos to be as developed as they deserve.)
#sorry but yall those last few days#needed to vent about this shitshow#the line removal was really just the cherry ontop#bg3 spoilers#bg3#bg3 gortash#bg3 durge#also belgium isnt too far away from my place so please expect a very noisy neighbour if this was on purpose#im joking ofc about that last part#but i am kinda mad
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Hungry are the Damned
As promised, here's the gross and fucked up Mary fic lmao. Thanks to everyone who wanted me to post it, y'all are sweet! I haven't written anything in 10 months so I hope it isn't too shabby.
Tags/warnings: Necromancy, zombies, graphic depictions of violence, blood & gore, body horror, cannibalism, major character death, pov character death. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.
Read on AO3 if you like:
Fic under the cut.
Night has fallen over the forest as Mary’s boots crunch through the underbrush, loud amidst the quiet of the evening. It’s nearing midnight, and darkness clings to the landscape, broken only by moonlight filtering through the dense trees. A light breeze barely rustles the leaves overhead, deepening the chill of early autumn.
A relatively new recruit of the Ministry, Mary has come into a somewhat unusual occupation—necromancy. Or rather, he will come into the occupation if he manages not to fuck up his first real assignment. They’ve read plenty of theory, and practiced on chickens and goats, so really, how much harder can it be to revive a human corpse? Much harder, Sister Imperator’s voice echoes in Mary’s head. She’d warned them (looking not at all confident in Mary’s necromantic abilities) that humans prove much more difficult to handle once resurrected than simpler animals—volatile, she’d said. Dangerous. A brief flash of nervousness turns Mary’s stomach, but they ignore it, cranking up the volume on the old Nihilist demo blasting through their janky headphones.
Finally, the forest grows sparser and the graveyard comes into view, nestled behind a quaint Victorian-era church. Hopping the rusty fence surrounding the mismatched array of headstones, Mary makes their way through the overgrown yard, scanning headstones until they find the one they’re looking for. It’s no more ornate than any of the others, and nothing about it stands out as unique or important—no pentagrams or Baphomets or anything. Mary kneels next to the headstone and squints at the engravings, trying to discern any clues as to why this particular corpse is worth the Ministry’s trouble, but to no avail. Shrugging, he pulls his headphones down around his neck and gets to work.
Mary rifles around in his numerous pockets for the materials required for the ritual: a lighter, a bundle of herbs, and a small, scuffed-up book containing the necessary Latin incantations (his cheat sheet, Mary calls it).
The lighter clicks as he sets fire to the herbs and sets them on the ground in front of the headstone. Reaching under their jacket, Mary draws a wickedly sharp bowie knife from a holster at their lower back. The silver blade glints in the moonlight, and Mary wastes no time in slicing it across their left palm, letting the blood drip onto the burning herbs. They wipe the leftover blood on their already filthy jeans and re-sheath the knife. Now for the fun part.
Mary picks up the book and starts flipping through the pages, searching for the right spell. “Ah shit, where was it…?” he mumbles, flipping past the spells for goat and chicken resurrection. “Okay, yeah. Right here. Got it.”
Squinting at his own nearly-illegible handwriting to make sure he isn’t about to revive any farm animals, Mary begins to recite the Latin incantation from the book, stumbling over some of the words. Hopefully flawless pronunciation isn’t required.
A gust of wind extinguishes the burning herbs as Mary finishes reading, and they glance around apprehensively. Everything is very still and silent for a long moment, and they start to worry they’ve fucked the spell up. Right as Mary is about to try reading the spell again to see if it works better the second time around, a hand shoots up from under the ground, dirt crunching around it. Mary yelps and scrambles backward, nearly smacking his head on another gravestone.
The hand is gray and bony, with long, dirty fingernails and peeling skin. It is (as expected) connected to the rest of a corpse, which slowly drags itself up from beneath the ground. The zombie is desiccated, what remains of its moldering skin stretched taut over its bones. Its eyeballs have rotted out of its skull and its lips are pulled back to reveal discolored teeth. Its joints creak and pop loudly as it pulls itself the rest of the way above ground, chunks of dirt and tufts of grass falling off it with every move. Mary scrambles to their feet and stares, wide-eyed in both horror and fascination.
“Hey, so, uh… I hate to disturb you, but—”
The zombie makes a horrible screeching, growling sound. Mary swallows nervously and forges on.
“Listen, I’m just the messenger. It wasn’t my idea to dig up your old bones. And I sympathize, man, I really do. One time my friend woke me up before 10 when I was hungover, I clocked her in the face and broke her nose. Payed the hospital bills though, don’t worry, I’m not a complete asshole. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I’ll make this real easy for you. All ya gotta do is–”
The zombie takes a step towards them, rumbling in a distinctly displeased manner. Mary glances over their shoulder, very much wishing at this moment that he’d brought backup. A ghoul would be very helpful right now. Preferably a particularly vicious one. With giant teeth. Mary sighs, resigned to his plight of trying to reason with a corpse, and continues.
“-All ya gotta do is come with me, meet the higher-ups, and do whatever it is they want. They all seem to think you’re real important. Once they’re done with ya you’ll be back six feet under. Scout’s honor.” Mary holds up three fingers in a Boy Scout’s salute.
The zombie tilts its head to the side with a crackling sound, seemingly considering. Then it lunges forward, latching its teeth onto Mary’s shoulder.
“JESUS CHRIST!!” Mary shrieks, tripping and falling backward over a headstone and taking the zombie with him. The zombie doesn’t let go, and Mary attempts to pry its jaws open, to no avail. They kick the zombie in the ribcage, their heavy steel-toed boot connecting noisily with the zombie’s emaciated chest, and it goes flying, taking a sizable chunk of flesh from Mary’s shoulder with it.
The zombie stands back up, blood now dripping from its teeth down its rotting chin. It levels its nonexistent gaze on Mary, who is staggering to their feet, glaring back at it.
“Dude,” Mary pants. “What the fuck.”
This assignment is not going at all the way he’d hoped. He draws his knife again and brandishes it at the zombie with a sigh. He really does not have time for this shit.
“Look, can we maybe not do this? My band’s got a gig Saturday, and they’ll be royally pissed if their vocalist gets eaten by a goddamn zombie before then.”
The zombie, unsympathetic to Mary’s musical endeavors, lunges forward—directly into his knife, which makes contact with a wet crunch. Mary drags the knife upward, snapping several of the zombie’s ribs until its torso is nearly split in half. The zombie makes a rattling, gurgling sound somewhat akin to a laugh. Mary’s blood runs cold and he attempts to yank his knife back, but finds it stuck.
The zombie shoves Mary back onto the ground, gnashing its teeth. Mary grabs it by its neck and tries to keep it at arms length so it can’t bite their face off, but instead it rakes its long nails down Mary’s face, leaving several bloody gashes. Mary screams and manages to snap the zombie’s neck.
The zombie falls to the ground next to him, where it lays still. Mary thinks—rather ridiculously, given the circumstances—how embarrassing it’s going to be to face Imperator after this. He’s barely finished the thought when the zombie—because of fucking course a broken neck wouldn’t slow it down—grabs Mary by the throat and lifts him off the ground.
The zombie’s neck is bent at a full 90 degree angle, and the moonlight illuminates the blood smeared across its mouth in a gleefully macabre imitation of a smile. Mary chokes helplessly and tries in vain to pry the zombie’s hands away from their neck. Don’t panic! he thinks to himself, but he’s starting to get a really sick feeling about this whole thing, their heart pounding like it’s trying to bust out of their ribcage.
The zombie throws Mary onto the ground like a ragdoll and their head smacks against the dirt hard enough that they black out for a couple seconds. When they come to, every nerve in their body is exploding with pain and for a moment they can’t figure out what’s happening; it feels like they’re being burned alive. The zombie gurgles and Mary realizes with nauseating horror that its teeth are sunk into his stomach, ravenously tearing into flesh. Its teeth make wet, crunching sounds as it feeds. Mary screams in agony, tears mixing with the blood streaming down their face and obscuring their vision. They kick weakly at the zombie, but to no avail—any movement sends the pain in their abdomen coursing from head to toe and threatening to knock them unconscious, and the zombie was more than a match for Mary even before they were bleeding out on the dirt.
Mary chokes on a sob and blood fills his mouth, thick and metallic. He coughs and gasps for air, blood splattering over his lips, and fumbles in his jacket pocket for his lighter. He can’t die like this, this is so fucking lame. Pathetic. All his own fault, really. Shaky fingers close around the lighter, and Mary brings it up over the preoccupied zombie’s head. It takes several clumsy attempts before they manage to turn the flame on, and as their clammy, trembling fingers scramble with the lighter Mary prays earnestly to Satan below—please, please, please don’t let me die like this. Please.
It takes a horrible few moments before the fire catches, and Mary’s head pounds as they try to focus on anything but the zombie’s head disappearing further and further into their stomach, teeth scraping against bone and slurping up pooling blood.
Slowly, finally, the flame begins to lick over the zombie’s decaying skin. Every millisecond that the zombie doesn’t notice and continues tearing into Mary’s insides is fucking biblically hellish and they realize they’re screaming, their own voice sounding very far away. Maybe he’s been screaming this whole time.
The zombie finally takes notice of the fire as its face begins to be consumed by it, and roars in confusion, finally pulling away from Mary’s decimated stomach. For a split second, before its head is fully ignited and the fire begins to take over the rest of its body, Mary notes with no panic left inside him that its jaws are full of meat. The zombie falls backward in a cacophony of inhuman shrieks, the smoke from the burning corpse drifting up into the starry sky.
The pain isn’t so bad anymore. Mary’s arms and legs are tingling, and mostly he just feels woozy. Everything is wet, warm and wet and sticky, and he doesn’t try lifting a hand to touch the gaping wound in his abdomen. Doesn’t know if he could move if he wanted to. Mary stares up at the inky sky and wonders vaguely if he’s seeing double or if there were always that many stars.
A crow caws twice in the distance, and everything is dark.
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Y'all I live in Bangladesh right? So
My university had a recent women in careers seminar thing, and they invited a trans woman. One of the few "out" transwomen in the entire goddamn nation. This happened amidst finals and basically some unofficial student unions got together and protested it. In the middle of finals. The protests got so volatile they had to cancel her talk because of "security concerns". She's been getting all sorts of threats since then. This woman has been backed by the Prime Minister in some indirect ways. And yet here they are, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, you name it. Standing against her.
I'm queer and deep in hiding in this fuckall university. I see people I cared for and respected sharing about how trans people are the end of the world. People that were my friends and people I cared for and I respected. Sharing posts about how trans people are a blight upon humanity. I had to delete Facebook off my goddamn phone because it was triggering me so badly.
Most of these people are Muslim, and so am I. I was born and raised Muslim. I flip flopped around the religion and circled right fucking back. If I could, I'd go up to these people and say
" I have seen you commit sins. You are in an unmarried relationship which is therefore deemed haram. You smoke cigarettes and weed and drink plenty of alcohol. You guys sing and dance together. There's no respect among any of you women, it doesn't even matter if you're a woman yourself I've heard shitty remarks from men and women alike about women that don't fit your standards. I've seen you all play Hindus in plays. If you all can dare call yourselves Muslim, then I stand on equal fucking ground. I'm just as Muslim as you are. Allah as my witness I hope you see how hateful each of you are to each other and learn to be fucking compassionate and to be kind in those different than you. Clearly that's something that you never picked up from the Qur'an."
I wish I could say it. But I'm a coward. And there's nobody that can speak for me either.
So I will hide behind my stupid Tumblr blog, screaming into a void that rarely screams back, and I hope that when you and I inevitably die, I hope by then you've learnt to love humans that are not like you in the slightest.
#trashbag#tw transphobia#queer#tw religion#tw religious trauma#queer muslim#i cry every fucking time i think about this#i wish it was easier#but no#you would think international intervention would be better#but noooo#the US is on our ass#for other reasons#seeking to turn us into Afghanistan 2.0#we're already under civil unrest because of the spotlight the US put on us#there's no winning in Bangladesh#there's no joy Bangla#only pain and suffering#I'd like to think this is not what Bangabandhu wanted#but the man's dead#and he likely would be just as bad#desi queer#bangladesh
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i'm just thinking out loud here, but y'all can consider this a general psa as for how i'll be writing dio moving forward.
i clown on him a lot, and don't get me wrong! i love it when y'all join in on the clowning 🤡 that being said, i can't emphasize enough how incredibly dangerous and volatile dio is. i worry that's gotten somewhat lost amid all the crack threads i write on here (which i still very much enjoy! please keep those coming, they always bring a smile to my face).
i guess i feel i've been holding him back a little too much for the sake of other muses, and that's something i want to remedy as it isn't in line with his character. so i'm warning y'all now that if your muse provokes dio, the outcome won't be pretty. his reaction will be dependent on his mood, of course, and his relationship to your muse. but if he feels disrespected, the best case scenario for your muse is that they escape with a stern warning and a scathing insult. piss him off any further, and he won't hesitate to seriously fuck them up.
please remember that canonically, just being in dio's presence is intimidating at the very least, and fucking terrifying for the vast majority of people. many of his followers are so overwhelmed by his unfathomable power that they earnestly perceive him as their god. this bastard visibly oozes evil. he has an oppressive, inescapable aura surrounding him that's at once menacing, awe-inspiring, and dangerously alluring. combine that with his supernatural charisma, and almost everyone he encounters falls in line with his demands. because despite how horrifically wrong everything may seem, pleasing dio feels like the right choice - their only choice.
again, i want to reiterate that i genuinely love my silly threads! they're the easiest for me to write and bring me lots of joy and laughs, and i feel really grateful that y'all like my dio enough to clown around with me. i wouldn't trade them for the world (pun unintended 😉). i just don't want there to be any sense of whiplash when dio inevitably acts out like the homicidal freak that he is. i can goof on him all day, but that doesn't change who he is at his core: an abusive, power-hungry narcissist who revels in cruelty and violence, thinks of all humans as either food or pawns, and is willing to sacrifice anyone, even those he considers loyal friends, to pursue his twisted ambitions.
tldr; yes, dio's a silly bastard. that won't stop him from brutally murdering your muse on a whim. don't fuck around unless you wanna find out 🙂
#// i can't focus on writing rn so y'all are getting my jumbled ramblings instead#// this isn't directed at anyone specific! but i needed to get my thoughts out and it's important to me that y'all understand this#// ch study.#// ooc.
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Lord I've been getting suggested the NPD side of tumblr and while I myself am no psychiatrist, the way these people I've seen treat their self diagnoses... it's so flippant and casual. It's like they want to have NPD.
While I support/advocate for self diagnosis, I draw the line at some certain conditions because some things are too complicated for even a well-researched and well thought-out self diagnosis. Plus, jesus fucking christ y'all... some of these self Dx'ers just take it too far. They make it seem so cute and quirky and fun, meanwhile NPD is not only one of the most stigmatized personality disorders, it is also one of the most debilitating to live with. I'm not saying they're faking... but I am saying they're omitting a huge chunk of the truth from their story and using what's left of that to play whatever fictitious character they want to online in order to manipulate and ridicule people from the very community they claim to be a part of.
I do not have NPD (at least I do not think I do- I have never been assessed for it specifically, nor have I ever been diagnosed). However, I will still advocate for those with it for the same reason I advocate for anyone else who is marginalized and stigmatized- because it's the human thing to do.
I find cluster B personality disorders to be interesting and want to learn more about them because my partner has one (not NPD). And to read official fucking psych journals and articles that demonize cluster B'ers fucking breaks my heart, and it breaks my heart when those same journals/articles warn "normal" people to never be involved with one because they're all abusive/manipulative/controlling/volatile/violent/etc.
NPD is not something most who are diagnosed with are proud of. Ergo, it's not something to claim just because you want to seem quirky and cool, it is not a label that's gonna magically change you into a hot and mysterious movie villain and have people flinging themselves at you, it is not something you call yourself just because you think you're a "toxic bitch" (news flash, youre just a bad person trying to drag people who are suffering down with you).
Ugh. Sorry for the all over the place vent. I saw a few too many "NPD" posts- there is only one person I follow on here who has actually been diagnosed with NPD and honestly? Great blog.
Also I'm not using any NPD tags or personality disorder tags because I don't want the weirdos flooding my post.
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Ok, now I really want to know what exactly Adonis's powers are, cause he is doing stuff I don't we've seen any other butterfly do.
Oh, on the contrary. He's on par with Absolution!Papilllon and quite possibly Salvation!Colt. Allow me to explain without spoiling Adrien's reasoning or what he's aiming for. Because, honestly, it's kinda twisted and completely tied to why he uses his powers the way he does. Maybe as dark as Absolution!Papillon, but no. Absolution!Papillon is fucking broken. Anyway!
See, he still retains the powers of transformation, much like a lot of other butterflies. Each butterfly uses their powers in interesting ways. Now, this will contain spoilers for their powers. So, here's your warning if y'all even care.
Absolution!Papillon uses her powers like a mad scientest that violates every part of the Geneva convention. She places akumas into the hearts of people to find the others that are as broken as her. Those she twists into horror abominations, similar to what Adonis is doing with the faerie food and fog. Aside from her work on the living, she works with the dead. The cocoons she has? Yeah, those are the corpses of the main heroes parents that she's currently merging with miraculous to turn them into superpowered super horrors. Oh! And let's not forget the hordes of reaper guards she has patrolling her lair and the, uh, "homemade" bombs that line it made from those that die from having an akuma in their heart that she also uses their corpses as incubators for her butterflies.
Salvation!Colt, well, you need to look no further than Felix. See, Felix once was like Adrien, a scrawny twig, but full of terrible anxiety being raised now only by his abusive father. Once Colt became an avatar, he warped Felix's body, turning him into the buff, obedient statue he is. It was also due to Colt that Felix became an avatar as well. And let's not forget that Colt also took control of Chloe to do as he wanted in an attempts to subdue her and make her the perfect pawn like Felix. Then he got Marinette when she used her Bond Creation powers on him, but then he uno reversed her and made her obedient to him, giving him a powerful, if not volatile, pawn. There's also that I've daydreamed a few times where Colt, as punishment, would painfully manipulate and distort Chloe and/or Marinette's body to "teach them a lesson" like he would have done to Felix to break the boy's mind.
Now, Amaranthine!Adrien. So, heh, he's not actually human anymore. The whole faerie food thing was an experiment he was working on, first to make him more than a human (essentially a fae). He retains the usual monster thing like most others do, but the faerie food is what he's going to use to, uh, change things up. Starting with Marinette. The pomegranate thing is a reference to Hades and Persephone where he's now transforming her soul and body to make her like him and, uh, seeking to fill the world with their love. Especially once he seeks the mass genocide of the entire human race. (No I won't elaborate yet)
Also, is it strange that I find Nathalie and Colt's methods not as bothersome as what Adrien is doing? Nah, I'm mentally stable. Why do you ask?
#miraculous au#au#alternate universe#colt fathom#adrien agreste#butterfly kwami#butterfly miraculous#amaranthine au#absolution au#nathalie sancoeur#salvation au#au info#ml au info
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could you give us some spoilers for who armand is? i've seen him talked about a lot by people who have read the books and he seems important
Yeah, sure! Under the cut for spoilers! And an obvious disclaimer that he'll probably be at least somewhat different when he appears in the show, this is just the book version of him.
I really love this art for anyone who wants a visual!
So, quick and dirty backstory: Armand is a Ukrainian-born vampire from early 15th century Kievan Rus'. He was turned at 17 by the ancient vampire Marius and is described as being cherbic looking and somewhat short with amber eyes and wavy, auburn hair to his shoulders.
He was kidnapped from his homeland at 12, but rescued by Marius and brought to Venice where he was raised in something of a boy's school before being kidnapped by a Satanic vampire cult and brought to Paris. He's Armand, so he eventually becomes their leader.
He's crudely "cult deprogrammed" by Lestat in the late 18th century and ends up the leader of a coven of vampires who run a theater in Paris. When Louis and Claudia travel to France, they meet him and he becomes obsessed with Louis, eventually having Claudia killed to get to him. He and Louis travel together for several decades before parting ways.
In the 80s, Armand tracks down Daniel, the interviewer from IWTV and stalks him until they end up in a fucked up romance as Daniel guides him through the modern world. More things happen to him past this (I only covered up to Queen of the Damned on the VC timeline), but that's the core of his story/what generally defines him as a character, as well as his affection for Louis, fraught paternal relationship/romance with Marius, and frenemy antagonism with Lestat.
Personality-wise, he's extremely volatile and manipulative, very violent and Machiavellian but also very traumatized (a nice combo of CSA, gaslighting, physical abuse, and religious/cult abuse). The "victim becomes the monster to protect themselves" trope x10, basically. He has all the mood swings and anger of a mentally ill teen with the impulses and abilities of a centuries-old vampire.
He's educated, refined, and plays his cards close to the chest, but also very curious and childlike because of how isolated he's been. Equal parts philosophical mastermind, serial killer, and kid desperate for love.
He's a really interesting character and I can't wait for y'all to meet him! It sounds like that'll be in season 2.
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I sincerely hope all y'all who have been creaming yourselves over daemon grooming his niece now realise why a man who was shown in his FIRST 10 MINUTES OF SCREENTIME to be volatile, violent and selfish sucks. you think daemon wouldn't abuse his daughters? he hugged them in a cut scene, so he's dad of the year, despite rhaena saying openly he ignored her! you don't acknowledge his first TWO wives, one of whom was killed by him, the other who committed suicide rather than be killed by him? Sara Hess was right lmao fuck this guy
#VINDICATIOOOON#daemon targaryen#rhaenyra targaryen#house of the dragon#hotd#hotd spoilers#house of the dragon spoilers#to be clear. HE GROOMED. HIS. UNDERAGE. NIECE#AND YALL CELEBRATED#the guys as bad as aegon. he's just less pathetic about it
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