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gaiuswrites · 3 years

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King of Cups || Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Hanged Man

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | eight

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: After some time apart, new conclusions are met.

Word count: 7.8k~

Rating: Explicit

Warnings/tags: SMUT, fingering, unprotected piv sex, emo emo emo (are we even surprised any more), mature themes, abandonment/family trauma, loss

Notes: Friends, wow. I'm honestly embarrassed by how long this took. Thank you for your patience. I hope you find the reward worth the wait. This chapter is nearly all in Din's POV until it switches and blends in the last chunk. If you’re new to KOC, you’re more than welcome to start at this chapter! Love you guys x (gif credit: @bestintheparsec)

“Din.”

Familiar fingers brush through his hair, a hand he knew once combing over his overgrown locks. He feels the drag of nails across his scalp, tucking a truant curl behind his ear, and the act feels like home— like hearth.

Somewhere beyond his open window a morning bird trills, perched in its roost nestled into the forked branch of the elm.

He breathes a sigh, the sound thick with sleep, and turns to his pillow, burying himself deeper into the linen.

“Din, honey.”

He blinks— lazily, molassesed— her shape clearing into focus.

Green eyes peer back at him, fine lines framing the corners of them, and crescents crease around her lips, pulled warm into a soft curve.

Small toys— wooden things, baubles and bits, dolls made from scraps of old fabric—litter the floor, spilling from the chest butted against the stone of the wall. A book, well-loved and dog-eared, rests on his nightstand—the one he insisted she read from each night, the story he couldn’t possibly fall asleep without hearing—the images written on the page, dancing in his small mind to the tune of her voice.

It’s all there now as it was then before.

“It’s time to wake up.”

She sits at the edge of the bed—his bed—the weight of her arm draped over his shoulder like a blanket— like shelter. Like never being fearful again. Like never dying. Like summer, forever.

“I am awake,” he murmurs, and it is with his own tongue that he speaks. Not that of a boy, but a man—unfiltered, unmodulated. Stripped of his helmet, he hardly recognizes the tenor of it, of its richness, but he feels the words reverberate against the hollow of his throat and he knows they belong to him.

Light casts through the window behind her—particles of dust, trapped in the tines. Floating there, suspended on strings.

She only smiles, and strokes a thumb across the sweep of his cheekbone, there in the room he last felt safe.

“No, not yet.”

It’s time to wake up. It’s time to wake up. Wake up wake up wake—

“Not yet.”

His eyes blur open with a flutter of his lashes, the lifeless durasteel ceiling coming into view—the jade of her gaze fading, fading. Blowing away.

He shifts a hand through his hair— through the long strands in dire need of trimming— lying on his bedroll, spine knobbing into the thin mattress. The cold metal overhead stares back at him.

His chest rises. Falls.

Din can still feel her, the warmth of her, there on his cheek.

///

There is no part of this that comes easy.

He knows what you’re thinking, he can see it in the guard you’ve encased yourself with— your glass walls, your glass house. Transparent but impenetrable, Din can only look. A spectator, watching as you go about your routines— a stranger on the outside.

And he sees how you look at him.

You think he’s fine.

You think he’s marble. Unbreakable. Impervious to time, to cold, and he does nothing to correct you; no, he allows the belief. He lets you believe the calloused veneer of his beskar— lets you assume he is more machine than man.

Din thought it would be simpler. Convenient. Din thought it would hurt less.

Because how can he tell you? How can he possibly communicate the imprint you’ve left on him— how his mind revolves around the imagery of that evening in vicious figure-eights. How he can’t unremember your heat curling around his fingers, how he can’t unbridle the pulse of his cock in your palm. How he can’t unspeak that which he called you, his virgin tongue flicking new and flighty around the word.

Cyare.

It tripped—in the midst of his pleasure, it sprang clumsy from him how the inevitable always seems to where you are concerned: transport to Coruscant, his past, his history, his identity— it just happens, reasonless, illogically. Some driving magic beckoning him to buckle, wishing him to give.

Your moans, your gasps, how you prayed his name— this is the white noise murmuring through the ship, harmonizing with the tinny mechanical beeps and settling groans of the bulkheads. You churn like smog through his helmet. Ever present, the memory of you is constant— invasive. It’s suffocating him.

He’s been dealt plenty of injuries and contusions— he has the scars enough to prove it— but it’s this. It’s this that’s killing him. It’s you.

All of these paintings, life-like and lurid, and yet it is this wound - untended, uncauterized - that scalds most: the moment Din, that beskar apparition, slipped away from you. You were there, hip under the weight of his glove, and he simply

went, like fog.

He watched your face crest and fall—felt your heart, skipping nervous like a stone over a morning pond, little waves rippling lightly, lightly out and out until it puttered quiet and

sank.

He abandoned you there. He left you before you had the opportunity to convince Din that you wouldn't do the same to him. Because Din has learned this, his suit of armor a trudging reminder of the inherent fact: good things leave.

You’ll be gone soon. You’ll leave him—he’s taking you home and you’ll leave him. His son will leave him.

He’ll be alone again. He’ll have the Crest, he’ll have the Guild—he’ll have the life he once cast in stone for himself, the life he’s worn as proudly as the Mudhorn emblem he boasts on his pauldron. But that was then - before - and he can never find his way back to that now; now that he knows what he knows—of breakfast and bitter caf and laughter like church bells and warmth and goodness and you.

There is no part of this that comes easy.

There in the galley, lamp-lit iridescence caressing your countenance, you asked him once if he was scared of anything and he told you he wasn’t sure— not yet.

Din lied.

As a rule, he doesn’t make a habit out of dishonesty; it doesn’t typically suit him, he is blunted to a fault— earning allies and enemies alike with the very attribute—but he lied to you then. Maybe his fears are the same as everyone else’s, maybe they’re simple. Human.

Maybe he’s scared that you’ll unchain him from his armor, of his shortcomings and tragic flaws and see the pulpy heart of him—that you’ll look and look and look, and you will like nothing that you find there. That he’s just a man.

And perhaps, he’d rather remain unknown than risk the chance of being unlovable.

For there is a certain hollow you befriend in the aftershock of loss—there is an aperture loss gores you with. There are some holes time can never fill; they remain trenched, dug from rusted trowels— left to fester, left to ill.

Sometimes, in the surly vacuum of space, in those dulled moments in which he has nothing but to count the seconds as they tick clocklessly away, Din attempts to conjure the last word his mother gave to him. He didn’t know it then—he didn’t know it was intended as a gift, boxed and ribboned and bowed. He didn’t realize—a child, wide-eyed with naivety, drenched in fright—that he should cherish it. Remember it. Keep it safe.

No matter how hard he tries, how hard he strains, he can’t recall it. He practices the nightmared memory of it, transports himself into that war zone, dodging shrapnel and brimstone just to catch sight of her face— and he can see her lips moving, can feel the fan of the flames as his world is reduced to cinders, but he cannot hear her.

Was it goodbye? Was it I love you? Was it be safe? Was it hide? Hide hide hide for me. Be good and hide, kind boy—

It dogs him. The nothinged mumble, his silent passenger.

There is no part of this that comes easy.

He heard you. There in Valentia, the city buzzing cacophonously like an orchestra tuning their instruments, he overheard the Twi’lek translate for the older woman.

Family, she said. You have a beautiful family.

Din has never in his life considered forsaking his Creed— forgoing the thing that saved him, made him, honed him to tungsten, sharp as a blade.

But he did then.

It was a flash, something fickle and brief— like the flicker of a candle before it diffused to smoke— but in that nanosecond he saw himself ripping off his helmet. He saw himself going to you, pulling you close to his plated chest. He saw the surprise wash over you—the shock that bubbled to elation. He saw you smile, that crippling gorgeous thing, with his own naked eyes and—

And then suddenly you were there before him, snapping Din from his reverie, blanket snug to your chest, the child — his child— slung beside you. He wished he had an explanation, but before he could process his actions his hand was drawing itself to your body, tugged by some unseen force—robbed of his autonomy— and rapturously, he touched you. He felt you.

His knuckles grazed your arm—your warmth, radiating past the aged leather of his glove—and the wisdom that woman uttered, the plain truth only the ancient could learn— only a mother could know— rattled around his mind, unanchored and barreling.

Yearn for the past. Reclaim time.

Hold onto them hold onto them hold on—

Never let them go.

Ready? he asked you, arm resigned to his side, feigning monotony beneath the cover of his visor.

You threaded an even smile to your lips, as if Din were none the wiser— as if he hadn’t catalogued every lick of your expressions, every curve and bow and wrinkle as your emotions sung across your face. As if he didn’t know when you were lying. As if he didn’t know when you were falling apart.

Ready, you replied, swallowing past the disappointment welled in your throat.

Both your hearts broke then. Perfectly—the same.

This is the Way.

///

Din is gone over a week. It’s the longest he’s ever been away for a hunt—it’s the longest nine days of your kriffing life.

The ship feels vacant without him; she’s cumbersome, too cavernous for the likes of only you and his foundling. Her durasteel sidings yawn morose against the wind beating restless against her—her metal stretching like a lothcat in a patch of sun. The doors and hatches complain ajar and gripe shut, as if she’s recalcitrant to go about her standard operating procedures without Din’s presence. The old gal misses him, down to her steely bones and dual ion turbines, and in truth — and despite yourself— you suppose a small part of you feels the same, shares an inkling of that same loneliness.

The rituals and dog-eared routines you’d drawn comfort from are now rinsed in a forlorn wash.

The single bowl of food you prepare looks wrong without its twin beside it.

You scroll a finger over your display screen, flicking through various articles, the faint light from the holopad basking the contours of your face in a lonesome shade of inanimate blue.

Anything good you hear him ask, there in your inner ear— the memory of his voice leaving a nick among the many wrinkles of your brain.

You sigh, quietly— alone. Never.

Even Munch misses him, although he expresses it differently. He’s been a downright terror with Din gone. At first it was a vacation, a luxury retreat; you and the child gorged yourself on crackers and grava berries and dried bantha meat—mindful of sweeping up the crumbs on whichever surface you snacked. You giggled and ran amok and shared secrets in code only the two of you could decipher.

But one day grew to two, and two to three and three to four and by the fifth you were out of treats and your patience too had dwindled to short supply.

The child is special— unquestionably unique. And as much as you adore him, would lay down your life for him if it came to it, Maker he is uniquely qualified to send you round the bend twice over. He’s baffling, infuriating— just like his father. Of all the things he could have inherited from the man, of course he decided to latch on to his vexing penchant for mystery.

You lost him for half a day. He was somewhere aboard the Crest, of that you knew that for certain, but he managed to enact a stunt that could’ve puzzled even the most illustrious of illusionists with how quickly and effectively he vanished, seemingly out of thin air.

He emerged eventually for dinner, babbling wickedly. There was that, at least: you could always count on Munch to — well, munch.

Over a week of this— nine days, sixteen hours, and twenty-two minutes, to be exact… But who’s counting.

The sky glitches with lightning, sparking like a bulb in dreadful need of changing, and veins of violet skitter along the horizon, chased by the clapping hammer of thunder. Fat drops of rain trace down the transparisteel, the metalled drum of their pattering against the Crest lullabying your eyelids to a slumbered close. You drift, weightless, waxing and waning in and out of a reoccurring dream that always blurs to mere suggestion - to shadow - as soon as you wake.

The harsh sound stirs you—the ramp’s gears springing to life, signaling the Mandalorian’s return. Rapidly, you blink clear the slog of sleep from your eye, re-emerging from the forgotten depths of your subconscious and half-roused, you bound from the copilot’s chair. You rally from your stupor, instinct urging you to meet the bounty hunter by the entrance—some tittering, foolish part of you still so glad and girlish just to see him.

Hobbling down the ladder with veteraned coordination - one leg one arm one foot one hand - you hop the last two rungs to land catlike on the balls of your feet, heading towards the stern of the ship and—

You don’t make it three steps.

He’s there. Din is there— nine days later and finally, like a hallucination, he’s here— ominous and backlit by the glow seeping in from the galley. An obelisk, undaunted.

Your gut somersaults, flipping until it dizzies.

Knee-jerked and reflexive, the basest part of you demands you go to him, to cross the threshold separating you— the time and space and uncertainty dredged like a moat between you two. But instead of greeting him as you wish— two arms thrown around him, welcoming him home—back to the Crest, to the child, to you—you stand there, dumbstruck and wanting.

The passage of the corridor is like a strait. It's so narrow you can smell him— his carbon musk, his petrichored sweat—and it furls thick into your sinuses, fogging up your vision, clotting the faulty wiring of your mind. He’s brought the wet in with him, drip dropping from his hulking frame to splat puddled onto the deck.

plop

A beat ferments, hanging ripe from its branch as the tempest rages outside the sheltered hull of the ship. Distantly, thunder booms from above.

“Din— hi.”

“You’re up.” He doesn’t move from the archway. Stiffened, composed from granite, the man hardly breathes. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” you offer hastily—untruthfully.

Din scans you: your obviously tousled hair, the drowsy flush kissing your jaw, the tell-tale crinkle of your tunic. Your tongue darts out to skip over your lip and his lungs pull, aching beneath his ribs.

Maker, you’re pretty even when you lie.

“Go back to sleep,” he assures, but you hardly register it; it’s scarcely above a murmur by the time the words hum through his modulator.

“Can I make you some food? Can I—"

There’s a tarred shake of his helm, tiredly dissuading you. “No, you—you’ve done enough.”

“But you must be exhausted, Din. Let me help you,” you urge, sincerity shaping the lilt of your voice. “Please, I—” You falter. Vision finally adjusted in the dimmed hall, it is then that you spot it.

Your mouth runs dry.

He’s dappled in a violent scarlet, foreign red splatters contrasted against all that silvered grey, bleeding with the rainwater to roll sanguined down the rounded edges of his armor.

Blood. He’s covered in blood.

Something pitted—something vital— in you contracts; horror, prickling the fine hairs along your forearm. “Maker, what happened?”

Eyes gaping fearful, you skitter around his breastplate, his vambraces, the paneling of his flight suit, roving meticulously in search for the source of his injury. Thoughtless, consumed with only one concern - is he hurt? - your hand flies to his chest where it rests—solid. Fretting. “Stars, are you—”

He can see it—he can see you, always—how your gaze swells, laced with a surge of adrenaline, of care, and Din lays his broad palm flat over your knuckles, grabbing your frantic attention. “It’s not mine—hey, it’s not mine.”

Your shoulders deflate, relief visibly relaxing the rigidity in your spine, and for the first time in what feels like minutes you release the breath you’d fostered high behind your teeth.

He doesn’t know what overtakes him. Perhaps it’s your sleep swollen lips or the soft petal of your cheek— taunting Din, daring him to feel you again, as he did before— or perhaps it’s the all too apparent fact that you simply give a shit about him— despite everything he’s done, all of that which he has left unsaid. That you worry. That you care.

Puppeted, arm hoisted by some invisible strings of fate—those unseen threads of inevitability—he reaches for you. Din’s thumb roams the slope of your cheekbone, the buttered hide of his glove gliding over your skin. Something rattles flustered in your chest, and you must look pathetic— how your eyes bat at him and your mouth parts, breathy and demure.

“Dala.” He sounds pained when he says it, as if it’s poisoning him; the very syllables like hemlock dripping down his tongue—slowly gradually, ending his life— this life.

This life as he knows it.

You nuzzle into the cradle of his palm, encircling a hand around his wrist, urging him still. You both know he could break away from you without an ounce of strength squandered, but he doesn’t; he listens, he quiets for you. Enchanted, neither of you dare move— neither of you, willing to shatter the profound spell of intimacy you’ve stumbled onto.

He holds you like this, and you hold him to you. His hand on your cheek; yours over the birdcaged throb of his heart— burning - devouring - its entombed aril like the heart of a dying star.

“Where’d you go?” you whisper, heathered, into the heel of his hand. There is something broken in your cadence, like the chipped rim of a fragile cup, and it punctures him just there beneath his sternum.

Where’d you go?

Where’d you go before? When you left— where did you spirit away to?

Why didn’t you take me with you?

A sick wave rots his stomach. He couldn’t answer you then, not when you were wobbly and coltish beneath him—Din can barely answer you now. His digits twine into your hair, cupping the arc of your neck. The gesture is not unkind. It is delicate— urgent, too—and the following hush you share speaks tomes for the both of you, the sob of his leathered fist admitting what he cannot utter.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

Maker, if you could see him. See how his face folds for you, grief lined into the shallow grooves that mark him. The cycles of it— how they bend him into something contorted. Something in need - I need you I need you I need - something ugly, he thinks. Leftover. Hidden. Hide hide hide hi—

You turn, pressing a kiss into the rough of his palm. It’s a soft thing— trepid and cautious—too worried you might frighten him away to offer anything more than a chaste brush of your lips—too worried you’ll send him scurrying back into the cratered unknown he crawled out from.

But he doesn’t.

Din doesn’t turn tail and run, he stands firm—weaving his hand further into your scalp, guiding you closer to him with a throaty sound. The forehead of his helm sinks to yours, and through its filter you discern the tremor of Din’s breathing, made fuzzy by the tinny modulator.

This is nothing like before. Din was hot blooded and vicious then, possessed by the infernal likes of some great beast, but he has since been tamed, if only momentarily—coaxed into a certain meekness by the frail ache of his heart—by the grace of your kind mouth, kissing his gun-worn glove.

He groans your name, mumbled and brassy. The two of you so close, so merged, that if it weren’t for his helmet, you’d feel the tickle of the syllables as they sweep over your face. Din repeats himself, repentant—praying for forgiveness on the cross of your name—your kiss, a benediction.

Again, he calls you. I’m sorry.

Again, you kiss him. There is nothing to forgive.

Again. Again.

With a flutter of bravado, you sling a lumbered arm over the span of his neck, notching yourself into his chest, an interlocking piece finding it’s match. Din’s forearm comes to coil around your waist, wide hand spanning the small of your back, and if possible, gathers you nearer— a growl emanating somewhere from under his beskar.

“Tell me to stop,” he breathes, bullet riddled—grating—warring with the countless shards of himself he has yet to reconcile; but his body betrays his intentions as Din’s grasp finds itself lower, filling his fingers with the plush of your ass. “Tell me, please.”

Arousal rushes to pool in your depths—at the proximity of him, the hungered way at which he paws you—and it’s a reaction you feel mimicked by the iron rod straining against Din’s flight suit, pressing into your thigh. You shake your head, gaze colored earnest, and you shift, applying a grind of your hips against him in response.

Din lets out a defeated groan; weak to you, a fabled Mandalorian warrior brought to trembling knees by the guile of a good woman. And suddenly, like striking a match in a room swarmed with gas, you are incendiary.

He’s everywhere— groping and kneading your arms, your ass, your neck and waist. You are malleable beneath him, sculpted like wet clay under his eager touch—as if he is committing your form to memory; the fervor of his grip, reclaiming time.

He hooks a hand under the crease of your knee, yanking you to the column of his armor, sealing your bodies together. Gyrating your hips against him, your clit yearns against his thick outline as you dig into the cowl draped over his shoulders.

Sliding his hand down your backside, he presses his palm into your clothed heat from behind, pads of his fingers insistent as you saddle your spine into his touch, granting him better access. His cock brays, straining beneath his many layers, and a withered moan breaches past your lips.

“Gods, Din.”

Din. He can’t stand that—his name, lush in your wet mouth—and without ceremony, drops your leg from where he’d glued it to his hip. Like a beggar, impoverished and need-stricken, he begins to fight with your clothing, half tempted to rip the damn things off you, leaving you tattered; he’d happily buy you a new wardrobe if it meant having you as he’s wanted for these long months—naked and vulnerable and his.

Your tunic and pants come off in a flurry, your underwear too, discarded hastily in some forgotten corner—and with a hand on your chest, he walks you backwards until your bare ass connects with the durasteel, a jagged inhale tearing through you at the chill. A question knits your brows to meet as Din paces away from you, increasing his distance.

“What are you-”

He interrupts you with a groan. “Just - gedet’ye - just let me—”

His gaze drips like wax down your body—eyes dressing over your clavicle, the supple weight of your breasts, the gorgeous dusting of hair at your mound, the sweet press of your thighs as you clench them together, your pretty knees, your pretty ankles, your pretty feet, pigeoned inward nervously.

Pretty pretty pretty—fuck, all of you. So fucking pretty.

With the cock of his chin, his gaze returns to the heave of your breasts—tracing over your nipples pebbling in the everpresent draft of the Razor Crest— and you rile under him, heart stammering loud—so loud you’re convinced he can hear it with the aid of his helm. And Maker above, the way you’re fucking staring at him—all hooded lids and flushed cheeks. Din wants to fucking ravish you.

Dismantle you.

Pick you apart bit by bit until you’ve come undone completely.

And as if slogging through gravity itself, movements prowled, he steps to you. Din finds your hips, running the whisper of his gloves along the slopes of your sides; a master of patience, commanding time to his will, he crawls up your skin

slow

deliberate.

You’re all but helpless to the shiver that traverses the planes of your body, zipping along your synapses like the fault lines of a quaking planet—cracking you open, exposing your molten core. You’re not proud of the noise you make when he cups your breasts. Starved, you whine as he takes you into his hands, pinching and groping until you’re pert and sore and you drive your pelvis into him, rutting yourself against his frame like some flea ridden slum-mutt in the prime of her heat.

Din seethes, mumbling in Mando’a—spitting curses you can’t pretend to comprehend, but that blot warmth along your cheekbones at the oaky depravity of which he utters them.

He seals over your mound, blood pumping at your seam, bundle of nerves pulsing steady against the heel of his hand. Immobile, he waits, hovering stagnant and teasing before his lust to feel you outweighs his desire to make you be good and wait—and parting through your curls, he kisses the tips of his orange gloves into your honeyed cunt.

It’s dirty. He’s dirty, he’s fucking filthy—covered in foreign blood and alien soil—and you feel depraved, unclean. Powerful. You feel, perhaps, as the Maker intended—wild and without shame, to roam his gateless garden and sully the soles of your feet.

You feel raw. Din Djarin sands you raw.

The pump of his wrist is merciless, pistoning in and out in shallow thrusts, knuckles angled to prod at that spot— that piece of primordial heaven sequestered at the channel of your cunt—and he keeps discovering it over and over again with a sharp shooter’s precision—zeroing in on his mark and releasing the trigger. Dead eyed.

You grab greedily at his bulge, at his cock begging for regard beneath the protective fabric covering him, and you squeeze the best you can. The angle is awkward and unweildy and it’s not nearly enough for either of you, but it conveys your intention well enough.

Can I have this? Will you give this to me?

Din growls his reply, leaving your pussy to fumble with the waist of his trousers, fidgeting over the pesky buttons—the final of the flimsy holdouts separating you and the tempered steel hanging solid between his legs. It bobs free from his pants, ruddied tip straining and pining for you, and without spending another moment idle, he rediscovers the warmth of your naked body— molding himself to your form, his grip once more finding the pit of your knee and bracing it to his side.

He ruts the underside of his shaft through your slick folds, his blunt head nudging at the swollen cleft of your center—each pitch of Din’s hips sending bolts of pleasure crackling through your core. He’s stifling a string of moans while he does it, while he undulates against you, the sighs and gasps digitized to near silence as he coats his cock in your gloss—and not for the first time do you find yourself considering how fucking colossal Din is. How fucking virile and engulfing, like blaster smoke and tabacco and cedar. Like coaled smog from a cremulator. Like giving life, like taking it away— like mercy. Vengeance.

Din swipes your standing leg up to match the other in a fluid motion, effectively levitating you off the ground with only his palms secured beneath your hamstrings and your strangled hold around his neck to suspend you.

“Tell me to stop and I will.” He’s practically begging you now, anguish wrecking through the timber of his voice—grasping blindly for an excuse not to lose himself in you completely, not to bury his primal drives and fears into the chasm of your sex.

You’ll leave him you’ll leave him he’s terrified you’ll leave him

“I-I don’t want you to stop— I want this. Din, I want you, I missed you. I miss you.” You miss him. He’s right here, cock streaking through your middle and still, you miss him. You’ll never stop missing him—wanting him. An unscratchable itch at the median of your back, burning for his affection, for his touch.

He releases a husked sound at that, as if hearing it from you hurts— your words, purpling a bruise into the bloody beat of his heart—and like a dipping sun sinking below the crust of a darkening planet, the last of Din’s resolve fades to utter black as he finally - finally - buries himself into where you weep for him.

Oh Maker. Fuck, fuck—

You muffle a relieved cry, forehead collapsing to the slope of his shoulder. Your walls shutter, blinking and gasping around his cock as he rolls up into you, lips pulling taut around his girth with each drag through your cunt. Din fucks you slurred and languid—his pace, sweltering like a summer fever—heavy, punitive. Smothering and thick. You can feel every vein, every silken ridge, as he notches himself inch by inch— the cant of his hips meditated, aiming to melt you open with each wave.

Stuffed to the hilt inside you, he rakes in a ragged breath, calming the race of his bloodstream drumming percussive in his ears.

It occurs to you then that he might be trying to be careful with you, curled around him like this, crushed up against the bulkhead. You think he might be treating you as a jeweler would handle a rarified gem— gentle and tip-toed, afraid of letting you clatter to the counter, of scuffing your facets— devaluing you.

But you don’t want that. You don’t want cautious or considerate or any of those awfully pious things. You want to be owned. Devoured. You don’t want to feel anything else but him. You want him to need you so terribly, so primally, he bleeds. You want to forget your own damn name and replace the memory of it with his—just his, to sit besot like liquor on your tongue. Din Din Din.

“Fuck me— please - please - fuck me harder Din.” Fuck me like you need to. Fuck me like you want me— please just tell me you want me. Tell me I’m wanted. Tell me I’m worth this.

You can see the deliberation span over his mask, the light glinting off the steel there hesitant, wary. Are you sure?

“Fuck me.” I want this. I want you.

He wants to give this to you somewhere soft— somewhere you deserve. With a feathered mattress and molted down pillows and gauzy curtains billowing in a sea breeze as light dapples prismed patterns on your dewy skin. He wants to give this to you somewhere beautiful—perhaps on that planet you once probed him about - Adega - with its red trees and warm nights and friendly natives you’d cherish and keep aloft in your breast.

He wants you to feel safe. Adored.

But what he wants and what he needs are two vastly different things—two opposing extremes at odds with the other. Because he needs to fuck you here— it has to be here. Needs to score your backside with metaled bites from the Crest’s unforgiving interior; needs you crumpled and sloppy, panting out his name to echo shamelessly into the deviled bowels of his gunship.

He needs you charred for him. Scorched earth.

And with your panted pleas, lilting addictive and irresistible, he is all but helpless to deny you— to deny himself. Relenting, resolved, his voice bottoms out.

“I-I’m gonna fucking ruin you.”

He fucks you frenzied. The snap of his hips drives you into the wall; he lifts you off his cock just to spear you on it once more, fucking up up up into you, unleashing all his strength— his neglected need—into the grail of your womb. The salted slaps of skin are loud enough to make a lecher blush. It’s a chorus of beskar rattling, wet and ugly and Maker, he’s splitting you open and all you can do is mewl.

You screw your eyes shut, lost to oblivion—crown of your head shoved back, jugular bared for him like prey before the slaughter.

“No.” Leveraging his mass against you, Din clasps at the nape of your neck to command your focus, forcing your chin. “No, look at me,” he orders, brutal and sinewed and there’s desperation there. Din needs you looking at him — seeing him— the embrace of your gaze like a life raft, tethering him here, grounding him to this plane of existence, the one where he has found salvation—if only fleeting, if only like hourglassed sand sifting through his fingers—within the temple of your body. Struggling and led-lidded, you pry your lashes apart, shivering as you drink in the punishing expression leering across his visor; and as you always do, you peer past the murky T there, meeting his eyes camouflaged in their sockets behind it.

“There you are. There you are, my pretty thing - hnng—” He silences himself with a hoarse moan, the sensation of you clenching firm around him, gripping Din like a man would a rope, dangling some feet above the ground, hiccuping him to stutter. “T-That’s it, dala—fuck, y-your pussy is so godsdamn tight.”

You go boneless at the praise—at how he tongues out those fond epithets, vehement and covetous and brined in sincerity—and your breathing quickens as you soak the coarse weave of Din’s flight suit, chafing your clit to shambles with each bow of his starved sex.

You’re close. Stars, you’re so kriffing close—reach out and touch it and you’re there, a promise fulfilled dancing at your fingertips—and you almost tell him; you wish you could - don’t stop don’t stop please right there Din - but you’ve lost your voice, vocal chords stricken with tension. More than that, you’ve lost the wedge of your brain that recognizes articulation all together. Speech itself. You’re wasted. You’re shattered. You’re being fucked within an inch of your sorry life.

Nimbled, without a word of warning, Din relocates— grappling under the plats of your thighs and bracing you featherlight to his chest—negligible in comparison to the ton of armor he dons cycle after cycle, weightless when compared to that of his Creed, hanging like a yoke around his gullet. You yip in surprise and scramble around him, calves digging into his back, forearms clamped around his shoulders—his cock remaining delved within your pussy with each footfall.

Four long strides and he’s reached his destination: a large crate, stranded just outside the hallway leading to the galley. Stooping at the waist, he lowers you down with astonishing ease until you’re flush on your back, knees flanking his frame. You heave a sigh, petulant and wanting, when he slips from you mid-adjustment, a lewd squelch accompanying the movement. It is to the fervor of your clawing, desperate nails scratching down metal - please please please - that he glides back into you with one deft sweep, a satisfied gasp tumbling loose from him.

He looms over you now— Din, a tower unyielding—thrusting into you rough and hard and perfect. He’s filling you in undiscovered places long gone unrealized, nooks you didn’t know you had—the length of him completing you, making you whole.

“Tell me to stop,” he pants, orange pads of his gloves dimpling your hips.

With a tremor of your chin, you moan—broken and chirping. “Don’t - please - please don’t - shit - don't stop—” Your prayers convulse, dying in your throat, sentence cut short as he circles his thumb over your clit, catching at your slippery bud. Ever the marksman, he’s debilitatingly attentive to you, the hide of his glove snagging against your cleft, and combined with the steady rock of his dick shredding you open, you’re all but defenseless to the dawning of your release, crawling closer and closer and—

“Din,” you pant, ”Din Din Din, I think I—I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna, oh Maker—”

The muscles in your stomach seize, a twisted expression cramping your brow. You scamper to his arms, reaching out for something - anything - a parcel of real estate to clutch onto while you unravel. You’re grappling with his pauldrons, the pulsepoint at your wrist humming over the symbol welded to his shoulder, and you mage into starlight. You’re fizzing. You’re blind. You’re atomic and phasing in and out of realities and you burn— a meteor hurtling through the upper atmosphere crashing crashing crashing and—

Language exhausted, all there is left for you to do is cry, the evidence of your orgasm ricocheting like a hail of gunfire against the Razor Crest walls.

“That’s a good girl, that’s a good girl for me—f-fuck." It’s like taking a jab to his solar plexus, how you cinch around him— the corset of your walls milking his cock until he’s shaking, stumbling. The drive of his pelvis has gone erratic, the throbbing bloom gnashing its teeth in his gut—that rabid thing desperate to be released, uncaged—teeters on the identical ledge you’d just leapt from.

“Tell me to stop - please - tell me to, tell me to stop—” You’re all eyes. Your whole face, swallowed by the sweet, glassy orbs notched below the quiver of your forehead, and you’re looking at him like he could hang the damn moon and it’s too much— it’s too much too much he can’t levee this raging need— and with a hurried gasp he pulls out of your heat to tug at his slicked cock— panting ragged as he gushes onto your stomach, your legs, your pretty pussy made pink and puffy with abuse.

His breathing is labored; you can see it in the mountainous rise and fall of his chest plate as his strokes slow, his other hand digging into your flesh, indenting you. He exhales, scraping clean the fissure between his lungs, and Din tips his head, angling it backwards— granting you a rare sliver of the stubbled swath along his neck. The sightly patch, treasured behind his silvered grotto, shouldn’t be the thing that plays upon your heartstrings like one would pluck a harp— not after he’s burrowed himself inside you, not after he’s carved you to his likeness— but it does. You’re butterflied and cherry blossomed and you grin— not so much on your lips but in your soul, and there is a purring warmth that’s radiating like candle flame from the anima alive beneath your breasts and—

And then, suddenly — like time, like memory— he is gone.

He leaves you. Mirrored, he does as he did that night—laying a squeeze into the meat of your hip, he transpires to atoms, dissipating round the unknown bend of a corner and you’re alone again—alone, with only the citric bile steeping in your insides to accompany you, threatening to rise up your windpipe.

No. No no nonono—

Din’s presence, a beacon in the moonless night, disappears— leaving you orphaned and moored and mortified. He’s done it again— he’s left you, he keeps leaving you— and it renders you sick; viscerally, you’re angered and ill and green-washed with naivety.

Fool you once, shame on them. Fool you twice, and what in Maker’s name did you expect? A declaration? An about-face? As if a Mandalorian could let the beskar from his blood. As if Din could reanimate the cadaver of his past—could slip into that old snakeskin he’d shed cycles before.

It paralyzes you. Immobile, you are chambered flat on your back in the resin of your embarrassment, bereft of your vision as you stare sightless into the steel. You’ve separated—your mind and your body disjointed like oil and water, and you don’t hear it. You don’t hear the tread of Din’s feet, you don’t register his aura, Illuminous in the archway; you don’t see the stray towel fisted in his grip, you don’t feel the clench of a frozen hand around your heart as he does his. For he sees you there—a tick in your jaw; eyes distanced, fogged—and he knows he’s done this to you. The scarring of how he derelicted you then tarnishing the new-leaf flesh of the present.

He steps towards you, closer now, and your alerted gaze pins to him. A surprised expression makes a home there, astoundment freckling your face— and although he hasn’t earned the right, it strikes him bullseyed between his plated ribs because it hurts— the obvious shock of him returning for you hurts. Din is not a good man— not all of him. Sometimes, you and all your heaven-lit gleam, you make him forget that.

But sometimes, you make him remember.

And Maker, if you don’t look good like this. Streaked with his seed, creamy white pearling the maps of your body, the shine of it catching in the cannistered shafts of filtered light.

There’s a word for this—for you, for how you look, splayed and painted with his cum—with him. It puffs up like petals would, there in the square of his center. He’s never said it. His mouth doesn’t know the feel of it, his lips don’t know its shape. It’s scribed in Mando’a, and as native as the language is to him—as fundamental as Basic, if not more so—the word itself is foreign. Gawky. The thought of it alone hobbles through his mind on foaled legs. Din keeps this word barred, its essence clinging to the iron partitions of his skull, its perfume clouding his senses, his better judgement, his confounded rationality dangling precarious by a string.

Beautiful. Mesh’la.

You shift under his watchful eye, knees steepling mousy, and gingerly, he prizes the two apart and you let him.

You let him you let him of course you let him.

Din runs a damp cloth up your seam, up those hypersensitive folds, towards the expanse of flesh leading to your belly, and you hiss—a startled chill icing through your body.

“It’s cold,” he informs you, well after the fact, and you chortle a note in response. He continues to lave you clean, the drag of the material smoothing over your stippled planes and it’s intimate—how he takes you under his care, how he unmakes his mess.

Your heart, silly flustered thing it is, it tells you the act feels worshipful—reverent, maybe—but your head convinces you to look away, to cower, to do anything but address the blaze left in the wake of the rag he’s swiping over you. It’s too much. You feel vase-like— fragile and dainty, for the bounty hunter to either fill with wildflowers or crush under the heel of his boot— and it’s too unbearable. Bringing a hand to your sweat-sheened face, you shadow your eyes, ostriching shyly— if I can’t see him, he can’t see me.

A clipped tone escapes his helmet and it’s a sound you can’t place— it’s short, a blip—and you presume he’ll remain mum until he speaks. “You don’t have to hide from me.”

You don’t have to hide from me. I don’t want you to hide from me.

You nearly whimper at that. There’s something endearing and bronzed about how he says it, something torn, too—and you peak through the curtain of your fingers to watch him perform his ministrations. Almost begrudginly, you remove your hand from it’s shelf, resting it on the swell of your breast while he passes the cloth along your inner thighs, erasing the sticky traces of himself. There’s a quiet pause, a moment of distilled nothing before—

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” you admit, small.

He soothes his thumb into the crook of your hip, voice blunt with guilt. “I know.”

Sighing, you nod a little thing, a half-gesture, practically creeping under the Mandalorian's radar undetectable. Thunder shouts, lightning cracks— the bombastic storm outside apathetic to the lull within. Din clears his throat, rasping. “Was that okay?”

You resist the temptation to snort. Din is such a juxtaposition—one you don’t imagine you’ll tire from any time soon. He’s dangerous and protective and clever and strong and kind, despite his best efforts to snuff his compassion to ash like the butt of a dead cigarette. Lifting your palm from its perch, you extend to him, measuredly sliding your fingers against the crate— stretching stretching until he meets you, dubious and toddling like a child’s first steps, orange-dipped digits touching nude flesh. Your everbright grin brightens all the more— bewitching, back-breaking—as you entwine your hands to mesh.

“More than okay,” you say coyly. “Was that-was that good for you?”

Din huffs out an airy chuckle rich with disbelief, like he can’t fathom you’re even asking him—like you’d even have to ask at all. “That was—that was good. Very good,” he confesses gruffly, never a man for poetry, breathlessness still apparent in the bleed of his vocoder. “Even better than I imagined.”

A feline grin unfurls your lips, boldly quirking the droll corners of your mouth. “You imagine this often, Mando?”

Smirking wry and devastating, Din ushers you up by your woven hands, your body pliable and easy to his will; uprighted, his hips slot between your pretty knees, and he expertly twists your arm behind your back, snaring it there. Spine swooped, breasts brushing against his beskar, your nipples pebble cold. “Don’t let it go to your head, dala,” he gravels, visor tilted down at your dwarfed form, tenting you.

“Well," you tease lightly, "I’ll try my best.”

And you look at each other with all the tender awkwardness of two people standing on the edge of a brave new unknown.

Nervous, girlish, you smile.

Fluttering, pussy-drunk, he smiles back.

///

Nested in the pronged branch of a tall tree spindling up from the graveled soil, Din— a man, a boy too— reclines supine against the bark. His feet dangle like they did then, back when he wasn’t so afraid, and the air is dusted with a rosy haze as dusk settles upon the tired day.

The sun sets. The world twinkles a midnight blue, winking starshine as she spins.

Somewhere, behind him, his mother calls him home for supper.

tags: @girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @pedros-mustache @miranhas-art @djarrex @djarinsbeskar @bookloverfilmoholic @keeper0fthestars @misguidedandbeguiled @bookishofalder @helmet-comes-off @grumpymuffinmama @niiight-dreamerrrr @spideysimpossiblegirl @janebby @greatcircle79 @gracie7209 @thatonedindjarinfan @altered-delta @email2ash @stevie75 @shegatsby @onebrownoneblue @uniquebiscuitmongerdonkey @severinsnape @kirsteng42 @justanothersadperson93 @mrsbentalmadge @radiowallet @librariantothejedi @whataperfectwasteoftime @babydarkstar @punkremus @mandobloggin @alma-rt1 @not-the-droids @pedrostories @kylieann0716 @jk7789

#King of Cups #din djarin x reader #din djarin x fem!reader #din djarin x you #din djarin x ofc #din djarin #the mandalorian #mando x you #mando x reader #mando x fem!reader #din djarin fanfic #din Djarin smut #the mandalorian fanfic #star wars fandom

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powdermelonkeg · 3 years

Text

Doctor’s Notes: Sparks

Disclaimer: My work is intended for the Transformers: Prime continuity, but will draw reference from other Transformers series’ to incorporate more worldbuilding.

Spark and Spark Chamber Function

Sparks are source of Cybertronian life, and every living thing from Planet Cybertron has one, from Prime himself all the way down to the tiniest scraplet. If I had to choose only one human organ to compare it to, it’s closest in nature to the human heart; its primary function is to keep the flow of energy rolling through the bot it powers at a steady, consistent rate.

However, Cybertronian physiology rarely lines up 1:1 with its human counterpart. A spark fills a number of other functions, as follows:

Energy conversion: The spark takes the broken down energon from the fuel intake (digestive) system, refining it further and sending it through the spark chamber walls to be infused with nanites, essentially converting fuel-grade energon into blood-grade.

Thought and movement: This function is partially split between the spark and the Cybertronian processor; while the processor does the actual thinking and long-term memory retention, it’s the spark that dictates emotions, short-term memories, and functions of the body. The spark sends energy pulses to the processor, and those pulses are converted into usable signals for the frame to react to.

Soul: Far more clearly (and physically) defined in a Cybertronian body than a human’s, the spark, as the source of Cybertronian emotion, is often referred to as their soul. If you were to power up an empty frame without a spark, you would have a programmable drone rather than a person; the difference a spark makes is literally what gives them life.

[Image ID: An illustration of the Cybertronian spark chamber, which shows a glassy blue sphere contained in a metal frame. Each piece is labeled accordingly: the circular chamber reads “Spark chamber: the holding place of a spark, contains circuitry that connects directly to the processor, as well as energon capillary tubes and nanite infusion gateways.” The spikes holding the sphere in place read “Spark tines: these keep the spark from falling through the forward opening in the spark chamber, and are responsible for carrying spark pulses to the central processor.” The narrow space between the edge of the spark chamber and the sphere reads “Conductive gap: the narrow space between the spark and its chamber, allows for uninterrupted energy transmission. The spark is suspended in this gap by its electromagnetic (EM) field. Usually filled with visible, plasma-like energy threads.” The sphere reads “Spark: the life force of a Cybertronian, responsible for their emotions, energy conversion mechanisms, default protoform shape, and bodily functions.” End ID]

Sentio Metallico and Spark Formation

The spark itself forms in a place called a hotspot. Hotspots are exceptionally rare, especially beyond Cybertron’s grounds. A hotspot forms when a concentrated burst from the Allspark—the wellspring of Cybertronian life—comes into contact with ground rich in a category of metal known as sentio metallico. Metals included in this category are as follows:

Cyberium, a common component of a bot’s outer plating

Cybernite, the main component of spark chamber metal, and the most commonly found sentio metallico variety to surround a spark

Cybertitanium, an incredibly durable and lightweight metal used in the wings of flying bots and the plating of smaller bots

Cybertonium, a green substance used in the creation of the processor’s memory chips, which needs to be carefully repaired as a bot ages

Durabyllium, an incredibly hard yet brittle metal commonly used to make and replace Cybertronian denta, but has found other use in drills and medical equipment

Tritanium, a metal that turns gold when tempered and functions as the main component of a bot’s skeletal frame

Trithyllium, a strong, dark grey metal that makes up the bulk of a bot’s body. It’s rare to come across someone who’s composed of pure trithyllium, instead most protoforms being made of a dilute alloy of it and steel

Ununtrium, an incredibly rare metal that’s impossible to break without being heated to its softening point, and used to reinforce the skeletal framework of bots fortunate enough to be made with it in ready supply

It is unknown why these metals specifically are found in hotspots. One prevailing theory is that the Allspark only generates sparks in the presence of materials it deems essential to life.

[Image ID: a table of the 8 types of sentio metallico, each labeled accordingly. The first is dark gray, labeled “Cyberium, outer plating,” the second is pale gray, labeled “Cybernite, spark chamber,” the third is dull gold, labeled “Cybertitanium, wings and light plating,” the fourth is vibrant green, labeled “Cybertonium, memory storage,” the fifth is light gray, nearly white, labeled “Durabyllium, denta and tools,” the sixth is split between dull reddish-gray and bright gold, labeled “Tritanium, skeletal framework,” the seventh is dark gray, nearly black, labeled “Trithyllium, inner plating, protoform base,” and the eighth is pale gold, nearly white, labeled “Ununtrium, skeletal reinforcement.” End ID]

The spark itself is pure light, and as such, has to be contained in a physical object to keep from scattering. When a hotspot produces a spark, the sparklight is sealed inside a bubble, and that bubble fills in with silicon material that the spark rearranges into a photonic crystal, which it then inhabits for the full extent of its lifetime.

[Image ID: A detailed, labeled map of a cross-section of a photonic crystal. The central light is labeled “Scintilla lux: a Cybertronian’s spark, at its simplest, most concentrated form. It consists of pure energy.” The innermost layer is mirrorlike, labeled “Speculo mica: the first layer of a photonic crystal, built to contain sparklight and allow energy to pass through as efficiently as possible. This consists of many mirror-like layers that keep the spark from overextending itself.” The middle layer is full of bubble-like markings, labeled “Iris opalum: the second layer of a photonic crystal, responsible for refracting light throughout the spark to extend its reach to the edge of the crystal. This is an amorphous crystalline structure full of rounded silicon particles.” The outermost layer is cloudy and full of threads, labeled “Secare pallium: the final layer of a photonic crystal, this consists of various silicon nanotubes that allow the spark to both take in and extend out energy.” End ID]

Spark Color

The color of a Cybertronian spark varies wildly from Cybertronian to Cybertronian, each one having a different shade. However, despite this variance, spark color is usually only indicative of age, rather than spark type itself.

Normal sparks follow the same color patterns as main-sequence stellar classification; new sparks are bright blue, while old sparks are deep red. It takes, on average, a million Earth years for a spark to change its color, and after they turn red, they remain that way for the rest of their lives.

Green sparks are an anomaly referred to as “Point One Percenters,” due to the mistaken assumption that they make up 0.01% of all sparks found (the actual percentage is far steeper; a green spark is found once in maybe every ten hot spots to occur). These sparks, upon discovery, are incredibly dangerous and must be handled with care; the first flash they give out is known to cause rapid and irreversible spark failure in other normal sparks in proximity.

Point One Percenters have an INCREDIBLE output of power. Known Point One Percenters include Megatron, Ultra Magnus, Grimlock, and Shockwave.

These sparks are born green and stay green, though under a doctor’s trained optic, one can notice subtle changes in the shade the spark takes.

[Image ID: A labeled chart detailing spark colors. The blue spark is labeled “> 1 million, O class minor.” The light blue spark is labeled “2 million, O class major.” The pale blue spark is labeled “3 million, B class.” The white spark is labeled “4 million, A class.” The pale yellow spark is labeled “5 million, F class.” The yellow spark is labeled “6 million, G class.” The orange spark is labeled “7 million, K class.” The red spark is labeled “8 million +, M class. There are also three green sparks: the grass green spark is labeled “< 3 million, P class,” the emerald green spark is labeled “3 - 6 million, S class,” and the seafoam green spark is labeled “6 million +, N class.” End ID]

Spark Type

Spark type is decided by a number of factors that can be broken down into three categories: base type, spin, and input/output.

A spark’s base type refers to the structure of its photonic crystal.

Ferrous sparks are formed in hotspots that are dense in metals besides sentio metallico. They have broad etchings in anticipation of mineral-heavy energon, to allow it to pass through without obstruction. The most common metallic contaminant of hotspots is iron, from which ferrous sparks get their name.

Isomeric sparks are the most common, “default” sparktype. They have a fine network of etchings that give it a sandy appearance; these etchings can be viewed with the naked optic, but have to be examined closely to see.

Vitreous sparks are the rarest, and make up bots with a high immune response—and thus, a low tolerance to poison, venom, acid, and allergens. These are most common where there’s heavy electric activity in an area. Their etchings are microscopic, giving them a cloudy, glassy appearance, thus their name.

[Image ID: Three sparks, their brightness lowered for clarity. The first one has visible lines in it, and is labeled “Ferrous: coarse grain, large etchings.” The second one has sandy specks in it, and is labeled “Isomeric: sandy grain, small etchings.” The third one has smooth color fade, and is labeled “Vitreous: cloudy grain, microscopic etchings.” End ID]

A spark’s spin refers to the direction in which energy flows through it.

Positive sparks are the most common, and the energy flows counterclockwise from the top down, seen as moving from the left side of the spark to the right from the spark chamber opening. These are also called prograde sparks.

Negative sparks are less common than positive; in isomeric sparks, it’s a 60/40 split, but in the other two varieties, they’re much more rare. In a negative spark, the energy flows in a clockwise motion from the top down, moving from right to left from the spark chamber opening. These are also called retrograde sparks.

[Image ID: A chart detailing the flow of energy through a spark. The first spark has waves going from the left side to the right, with counterclockwise arrows circling a smaller blue circle beside it. It’s labeled “Prograde/Positive: Energy rotates in a counterclockwise motion around the spark, taking in processed energon from the left side and outputting refined energon on the right, as seen from the spark chamber’s opening.” The second spark has waves going from the right side to the left, with clockwise arrows circling a smaller blue circle beside it. It’s labeled “Retrograde/Negative: Energy rotates in a clockwise motion around the spark, taking in processed energon from the right side and outputting refined energon on the left, as seen from the spark chamber’s opening.” End ID]

The final factor in spark type is their I/O, or input/output settings. There are five varieties: output, input, high input, hybrid, and high output, though only the first four are found in normal bots.

Output sparks extend as much energy outward as they can into their frames. These belong to bulkier bots, like the majority of the Wrecker team, and bots with boxier frames. They’re stronger than most bots, but they have a predisposition towards spark failure.

Input sparks are the functional opposite of output sparks; they store energy rather than extend it, leading to bots with leaner frames. These tend towards racecars and other fast vehicle modes.

High input sparks store as much energy as possible. These sparks are relatively rare, and most commonly lead to what we call a “femme” frame. They need surgery before their first upgrade in order to properly handle the plating weight; those that don’t get surgery are stuck in tiny, human-sized forms called minibots/minicons.

Hybrid sparks are, from a combat perspective, the “ideal” spark, having traits from both output and input sparks; they give off enough energy to support sturdier frames, but they still get a distinct speed advantage over other bots.

Despite this, it’s important to note that hybrids are an anomaly in spark formation, caused by a tectonic shift mid-photonic crystal formation. As such, their protoforms have some irregularities; Starscream, who’s skews towards high input, has a very fragile frame, despite possessing the back strength to support wings. Knockout, an even 50/50 split, has delicate digits that don’t handle weight well. Nautica (MTMTE), who has higher output to input, has a very strong upper body, but a weaker lower body that requires bracers to support her weight.

Finally, high output sparks are the rarest; it’s hard to identify a high output before putting it in a protoform, and if it doesn’t form the right system immediately, it offlines from expending more energy than it can handle. However, if it does form those systems, or it’s accommodated for before being placed in a protoform, then high output sparks lead to titans like Metroplex and Omega Supreme.

[Image ID: A chart detailing the different spark input/output variations. The first spark is surrounded by blue arrows pointing outward, and is labeled “Output spark: configured to extend energy as far as safely possible, generates slow, bulky frame types.” The second spark is surrounded by red arrows pointing inward, and is labeled “Input spark: configured to store high quantities of energy, generates speedy, lightweight frame types.” The third spark is surrounded by many red arrows pointing inward, and is labeled “High input spark: Stores as much energy as it can, requires surgery in order to handle more than the most minimal frames, generates fast, small, fragile frame types.” The fourth spark has four red arrows pointing inward and four blue arrows pointing outward around it, and is labeled “Hybrid spark: both stores and extends energy, but occurs as an anomaly which can lead to physical complications. Leads to fast frame types that can withstand high amounts of damage and weight.” The fifth spark has many blue arrows pointing outwards, and is labeled “High output spark: extends far more energy than a normal spark can handle, only viable if caught quickly enough or, through a miracle, configures the proper protoform from activation. Generates titanic frame types. End ID]

On pronouns (and mech/femme frame variation)

Pronouns in Cybertronian society are not used for gender expression; rather, they’re used for identifying spark type for medical purposes, and have no relation to the human pronouns a Cybertronian may choose to take. The five sets of pronouns are as follows:

Output: per/co

Input: sor/be

High Input: tra/vo

Hybrid: aes/tu

High Output: vit/sa

Originally, all Cybertronians used per/co to refer to themselves. However, with the rise of the Functionist Regime, spark type was given higher priority; bots of all castes needed their spark types identified so as to be treated faster (and therefore put back to work faster), although the higher caste bots also wore their spark type as a badge of pride. These found further use during the war, where medic bots had to work fast and with little time to check each individual feature of a spark, and so despite their origin are still widely used post-war.

As far as translation goes, the most common use of he/him and she/her are the result of a mistranslation; the English language prioritizes masculine pronouns as default (until extremely recent times), and thus, defaults almost every set of Cybertronian pronouns to he/him. In the case of high input pronouns, however, the frame type associated with them parallels the features of a stereotypical human woman (a lightweight body, higher voice, and more delicate features), so the translation approximant marks them as she/her.

It’s common for Cybertronians to correct this once they have knowledge of the human gender expression, adopting the pronoun set they feel best matches their identity rather than their spark and frame type. This is why bots like Nautica take on she/her, while bots like Transformers Animated’s Bumblebee and Prowl instead go by he/him.

In the complete opposite direction, the terms “mech” and “femme” were adopted by Cybertronians in close contact with humans, as equivalents to “male” and “female” when speaking about themselves. The Cybertronian language has no gendered terms for bodies, referring to them all as “mobilis.” In recent times, bots that don’t care to gender themselves within the human binary have started using “machina” instead, regardless of which species they are conversing with.

On Sparkbonds

Sharing a sparkbond is the most intimate connection a Cybertronian can have, and falls into three distinct categories: amica endura, conjunx endura, and cognatio endura.

Amica endura is the only sparkbond with no physical effects. It involves baring your spark in the presence of a close friend, and pledging your very spark that you’ll always be there to back them up, comfort them in times of need, and make sure you both are happy. In human terms, it’s a platonic marriage. Amicae endurae often live together, and if they do, are practically inseparable from one another.

Conjunx endura is the romantic equivalent to the amica bond, and involves bringing your spark chambers close enough that the sparks are drawn together and merge briefly. Post-bond, each spark carries a small amount of the other’s light within them, and the two can sense each other’s emotions, no matter the distance. Conjugae endurae almost always live together, share intimate interactions often, and periodically go on dates together.

Cognatio endura is a familial bond, most often between caretaker and sparkling, but occasionally made between siblings. When forging a cognatio bond, the spark chambers are bared and held close together, but not so much that their sparks merge; over the course of several hours, spanning 3-5 sessions, the two sparks will carry each other’s energy in a ring around their own. This bond allows an “at will” variation on the conjunx bond; while conjugae endurae exchange all emotions unfiltered, cognatii endurae choose which emotions to send, enabling a sparkling to communicate their needs, and a caretaker to send comfort when necessary. Congatii vow to protect the one they’re bonding with until the end of time.

On divorce: A conjunx bond is permanent, but love often isn’t; when a pair of bots divorce, a filter has to be installed in their spark chamber to keep them from receiving the bond’s signals. As technology’s advanced, however, so have the filters, having gone from bulky covers to a single pane of configurable circuitry that allows for future sparkbonds to be made.

On cognatii endurae: With the rise of functionism, sparkling care shifted from individual caretakers to mass sparkling centers. At the regime’s peak, the concept of cognatio endura was tested in order to deem whether it was necessary.

According to them, it was not.

However, the lack of a cognatio bond leads to sparklings that struggle emotionally, have trouble developing a sense of risk, and tend to neglect their own needs as they grow older. So while a sparkling can survive without it, it’s an integral part to proper, healthy development to have one made. Unfortunately for all bots born earlier than 9 million years ago, cognatio bonds were refused, and thus fell out of younger bots’ knowledge and vocabulary.

[Image ID: A chart detailing the different spark bonds. The first pair of sparks are slightly differing shades of red, with their glows not touching, and are labeled “Amica endura, Optimus & Ratchet. An intensely close platonic bond in which one pledges their loyalty, honesty, undying friendship, and support to another bot. Plural form: amicae endurae.” The second pair of sparks are yellow and red, each one having some of the other’s color in it, and have their glows touching, mingling in the center. They’re labeled “Conjunx endura, Chromedome & Rewind. An intensely close romantic bond in which one pledges their loyalty, honesty, affection, and companionship to another bot. Physically links the two sparks, allowing each conjunx awareness of the other’s emotional state. Visible as wisps of the other’s spark color in the spark. Plural form: conjugae endurae.” The third pair of sparks are gold and bright blue, each with a ring of light around their centers, and whose glows mingle and begin to bleed into each other. They’re labeled “Cognatio endura, Knockout & Cloudrunner. A close familial bond, often one-sided, in which one pledges to care for and protect another bot. Physically links the two sparks, allowing voluntary transmission of emotions. Visible as a ring of light around the spark. Plural form: cognatii endurae. End ID]

Other bonds

There are, of course, other bonds out there; those that take other forms, such as when a Cybertronian adopts an alien custom, those that have different implications, such as Seeker Trine bonding, and those that are fundamentally unique, such as the connection between split-spark twins. The list can go on forever, but as they are not involved with the vast majority of the Cybertronian race, they will be saved for another post.

In conclusion

Sparks are complex, diverse, fascinating aspects of Cybertronian physiology, and the more we study them, the more our definitions update and adapt.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this read. It was an incredible study to make. If you have any more questions about Cybertronians, feel free to hit up my inbox. Thank you for reading!

☕

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jojotichakorn · 2 years

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Hiiii, hope you're having a nice day so far.💓

Soo I just discovered your blog and I was stalking it sksksk and I've noticed that you say 2gether and ATOTS? get ruined in act 3 (or sth along those lines I'm sorry i dont remember) and your fear that Bad Buddy would fall in that trap as well. I'd like to know more about your thoughts on that matter, because although I felt like sth went wrong with both atots and 2gether (beyond repair unlike atots), i was never able to put it into thoughts? Also are there any bls that didn't fall into that trap? I'd love to know more!

P.S. if you've talked about this before and choose to not to answer this, it's completely fine!!

hello!! thank you so much, i hope you are doing great as well 💛

first of all, here's a bit of fandom lingo for you, we usually call this act 3 nonsense "the penultimate episode curse", because the second to last episode is when - if shit hits the fan and things are bad - it's usually already irredeemable.

second of all, prepare yourself - this is gonna be the size of an essay:

so, i wouldn't go as far as to say that atots was ruined in act 3, but (controversial opinion incoming) i didn't find the conflict of the finale, in particular, to be believable at all. i feel like they did a lot of telling and not showing, and they also ran with the assumption that we all agreed tian must leave the village and go abroad to study, and that there are no other options for him, which i don't understand to this day. ultimately, they wrapped things up pretty well, and overall i still find atots to be a fantastic series, but the final conflict felt very much like "oh, this thing could potentially be an obstacle to their relationship, but we won't explain how exactly it is an obstacle to their relationship, we just want the angst before the ultimate happy ending".

now, 2gether was indeed ruined for me because of act 3, and though still2gether (while i have some qualms about it as well) did a great job fixing and explaining away those mistakes, it couldn't fix them to the point where i would be satisfied with the last two episodes of 2gether. i don't think anything could do that at this point.

in terms of the specific issues act 3 of 2gether had, i could sum it up as 1) negating all your characters' development, 2) making them act completely out of character, and 3) writing in a lot of nonsense - all in order to make it rain angst before the rainbow happy ending can appear.

sarawat, in particular, wasn't sarawat at all (him going to sleep when tine is clearly in distress and not visiting him at the hospital (which was canon at the time)? like,,, who is this guy, i don't know him); the sudden lack of communication after episode 11, the whole point of which was that they decided they should always talk to each other about what they think and about how they feel; and the whole structure of the finale, the majority of which we spent deep in nonsensical angst, and the conclusion to which was ultimately unsatisfying (also, there were way too many flashbacks taking up space that should have been utilized in literally any other way). there are many more details, and also likely things i am forgetting (because i did - in fact - not watch those two episodes ever since they premiered), but i am hoping the general gist of the issue is clear enough as is.

in general, i think the problem a lot of creators run into when writing act 3 is that it's almost customary to follow this narrative. they think there must be a huge conflict, which leads to absolutely devastating angst, and which is resolved last minute - regardless of whether it actually makes sense or not. which is why, i think, the series that had the easiest time escaping this issue were series with a plotline separate from the relationship/romance plotline.

the best example here would obviously be manner of death, where we did have our huge conflict and high stakes, but all those things were connected with the investigation/police plot point, which allowed tan and bun to stick together through it all, as that made complete sense and overall made for an incredibly satisfying ending. i think another thing that manner of death did really well was that they made a point of settling us into the happy ending if that makes sense? it wasn't just a small "but in the end, they were happy" - they showed us a good bit of tanbun's relationship after the main plot point was resolved, and we were left with a real feeling of "yes, in the end, they are happy".

at the same time, it's fair to say that there have also been instances where the relationship actually had a satisfying ending, but the other plotline was wrapped up in a way that kinda sucked - history 3: trapped case in point. that being said, i feel like the reason why an unsatisfying conclusion to the romance, in particular, annoys us all so much is that most of us are ultimately here for the relationship, and only then for any other plot.

as for your question, i think the majority of mlm kdramas didn't follow this structure (or at least presented it in a very different way) - i would point out light on me and color rush here specifically. and, out of the series that did follow this specific way of narration in act 3, but which have done it in a way that makes sense, and that followed it up with a satisfying showcase of a happy ending, i would definitely point out manner of death (of course) and cherry magic as the series that had the best, most satisfying endings. quite a short list, i realize, but that should tell you why i'm so worried for bad buddy.

#welcome to my blog!! i hope you stick around #this is for all my ogs out there who miss my longer posts #archer responds #archer speaks #hkm2

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orangerosebush · 3 years

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Perfume headcanons

Let me start out with a bit of background.

There’s a common misconception that perfume = for women, cologne = for men. This is false. Although the scents we think of as feminine versus masculine are ever-shifting (many vintage women’s scents would now be considered more unisex, for example), whether something is a perfume or a cologne doesn’t even have to do with whether the scent is feminine or masculine — perfumes contain a higher concentration of essential oils in the water and alcohol base, whereas colognes contain a lower concentration.

To address what makes a scent ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine' : feminine scents are generally soft florals or vanilla, and certain woods, whereas masculine scents may be muskier (cedar and oak rather than sandalwood) and be cut with spicy notes (cinnamon, tobacco, etc).

Early in his career, I think Butler would make a point not to use cologne or perfume — having a signature scent would be identifying during missions, and smelling of anything strongly could interfere with sneaking about. However, when he is older and semi-retired (think: post-book 5), I think he would go for older masculine perfumes. Essentially: ‘sports’ colognes are off the table. I think very, very light applications of scents that have a vibe like… an autumn walk through the woods on a sunny day. Rich, woody notes with a slight mossy undertone (though in a way that smells somewhat bright rather than musty), and lighter notes that have tines of cinnamon or cumin. Alternatively, darker fruits like pomegranate or honeyed figs that interplay with an underlying musk that captures the smell of a fire pit that’s just been extinguished (and perhaps a few notes of dried herbs). Another musk note I could see in perfumes for him would be a kind of... natural leather scent? Very much not a new car smell. To sum him up: you know those children’s books with witch houses, where there’s perpetually smoke coming out of the chimney while the smell of canned jams and jellies floats across a garden, mixing pleasantly with the dry thyme and rosemary that’s been left out by the window? That, basically.

There’s an evolution with Artemis as well, I think. Similar to his sartorial preferences, I think that with age, he’d come to understand what his personal aesthetic is beyond his initially childlike understanding of what constitutes the presentation of someone of his social class. After the sinking of the Fowl Star, I think (and I didn’t pick this because of the name) Creed Green Irish Tweed. It’s sometimes described as being akin to a walk through an herb garden on a sunny day. It’s a classy, versatile scent that isn’t season or setting specific (it could work as a scent for the office or after work), and when worn correctly, is almost like an aromatic ghost trailing after its wearer. I do think he’d keep with more conservative scents when he gets older and actually futzes around with finding a perfume he finds fits his aesthetics, but he’d move a bit away from lighter earthy notes and more towards richer, more unisex earthy notes. I like the idea of Une Rose by Frédéric Malle for him, which is a rose perfume with a woody, amber base. The florals and muskier notes combine nicely to create this soft, earthy-creamy base which remains intriguing with bursts of peppery notes that sneak through now and then. Similar to Angeline, there’s an almost cerebral, yet home-y warmth to the perfumes that he uses.

I think bright, unusual, and borderline unisex perfumes would work for Juliet. I would point to Iris Gris (by Jacques Fath) which, in combining the odd bedfellows of iris and peach, created something that occupied a liminal space between the two scents, all mouth-watering plummy notes and earthy, ‘spring-when-it’s-about-to-rain’ bases. The clean, freshness of lemon seems fitting for her, also, and I like the idea of this being given more depth by smoky vanillas that seem almost tinged by tobacco. Or, perhaps, given more earthy, musky undertones that are kept youthful by just a dash of spice, like cinnamon. You know on road trips, those strange small businesses that seem to be hawking exclusively lawn ornaments and incense? Think… a more youthful version of some of the diffused essential oils that seem to have seeped into the old wood of the building over the years.

With Holly, I think any perfume she’d wear (though I do sort of have the minor headcanon that the People naturally have a kind of… perfume-like scent about them) would be earthy, yet cut with notes that make the scent less old-person-y. I actually like the idea of Creed Green Irish Tweed for her as well, as I think herb-y notes like dried rosemary and sage are quite fitting. However, I think there’d be more unisex notes as well, such as lavender and a mature iris or germanium note. If you could somehow bottle the woods themselves — I’m not talking about a walk through the woods, I am talking about the forest as it exists beyond human exploration — and let a citrus note waft in, sly, I think you’d have her aesthetic. I’m reminded of a story told by Diane Ackerman in her book A Natural History of the Senses:

My mother once told me about a drive she and my father took through the Indian River orange groves in Florida when the trees were thick with blossom and the air drenched with fragrance. It overwhelmed her with pleasure. “What does it smell like?” I asked. “Oh, it’s delightful, an intoxicating delightful smell.” “But what does that smell smell like?” I asked again. “Like oranges?”[…] “Oh, no,” she said with certainty, “not at all like oranges. It’s a delightful smell. A wonderful smell.” “Describe it,” I begged. And she threw up her hands in despair.

How do you describe the smell of moss before it rains, as the drop in pressure leads the earth to yawn out those peculiar, musky notes? It’s like the ground is aware it usually isn’t the center of attention and is finally tapping you on the shoulder to make sure you are aware of the beauty hidden between blades of grass and warm, wet dirt. You do not articulate nature, you experience it, and that’s 100% on the money for Holly.

#artemis fowl #long post

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datawyrms · 3 years

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Irresistible

For PhicPhight! On Ao3

“Earth to clueless one, walking through walls isn’t something you should be doing right now!” Sam’s hiss made him notice the fact something had grabbed his wrist.

“Right, sorry!” He said it without thinking, eyes flicking to Tucker. His other friend looked just as concerned, great. “I don’t think I got enough sleep.”

“When do you ever, dude? You didn’t even sneak out last night.” Still, his more technically inclined friend released his wrist. “Something your parents working on keeping you up?”

“You know we’re fine if you crash in our rooms.” Sam was a little less gentle. “So do that instead of whatever sleepwalking this is.”

“No! Like, I don’t remember not being able to sleep or anything?” Not that it helped, he felt like he’d been awake all night thanks to the weird dreams. “I swear I’m not being a tough guy or whatever.” He rubbed at his forehead, privately wishing his fingers could just push away the fog of exhaustion instead of just making him more aware of how sluggish he felt.

“Maybe you should crash with one of us anyway? You don’t look good.” Tucker’s frown only made the half ghost grumble. “‘Course you never look as good as me, but lately? You’re pulling the two thirds ghost look.”

“Harhar.” He shrugged the suggestion off, even if he was pretty tempted. There wasn’t anything weird in the house that he noticed, and his parents weren’t being any more anti-ghost then usual. He probably slept in a weird position or something. “I don’t think weird underwater dreams are a Fentonworks exclusive.”

“Underwater?” Sam just looked puzzled. “From what? I can’t even remember the last time any of us went swimming.”

“How should I know?” He couldn’t even say it was like flying, because it wasn’t like one of those dreams at all. Too sluggish, none of the freedom he normally felt. “I’ll just nap in math class…”

It had been a joke, really. He didn’t actually mean to sleep in math class, but his desk was cool and his head felt so heavy that he couldn’t resist nodding off. He just wished it had helped more, the bell ringing just made him want to sink into the floor and stay there. Which would probably freak everyone out. Not a good idea. At least the stern talking to he earned for ‘being disrespectful’ went right over his head with it so hazy.

“Dude. Just skip if you’re gonna sleep all day.” Tucker was poking him in the face with a fork. Rude.

“I’m not gonna sleep all day. Relax.” The tines were annoying, but doing more than blindly pushing it away from him was beyond him for the moment.

“Spacing out all day isn’t any better.” Sam’s voice wasn’t a surprise, but the fact she wasn't telling Tucker to stop poking him in the face was.

“I’m not.”

“Tucker’s been poking you for five minutes.”

“Oh.” Really? Hadn’t felt like that. Maybe he had like a ghost cold?

“Just go hide out in the attic, you obviously need it.” The poking stopped, Tucker’s voice low as if he’d leaned closer.

“Can’t miss even more stuff guys…you know that.” Even if he really, really wanted to take that offer right now.

“Well here you’ll just get the teachers angry by snoozing through class. We’ll try and see what’s messing with you after school.”

“Nothing’s messing with me! I think.” His objection wasn’t great, but Sam didn’t seem up to argue with him about it anyway.

Tucker adjusted his hat, avoiding his eyes. “Kinda hope something is, you’re kinda freaking us out.”

Well, that didn’t feel good. He scratched at the back of his head, trying to ignore how his friends kept looking at him like some kind of wounded kitten. He was fine, really! “Well uh. See you after school?” He didn’t give them time to answer before stumbling away from the table to find somewhere quiet to vanish from. He sort of hoped being in his ghost form would have shaken some of his muddled need for sleep, but being colder just made the throbbing behind his eyes feel worse. Not enough to keep him from keeping invisible and slipping into Tucker’s attic, but enough that becoming human again actually made him feel a little less ragged.

It shouldn’t be this easy to huddle in the musty old chair and drop off in the middle of the day. The guilt for doing so alone should make him twist and struggle to get comfortable, but sleep welcomed him eagerly. A part of him worried Nocturn was afoot, but it wasn’t enough to keep him awake.

“You think his parents made something that makes ghosts go dormant or something?”

“Or drain all their energy?

He kind of wanted to ignore the voices and keep sleeping, but shook himself awake. He didn’t need this much sleep, he was fine. If they were here he’d been sleeping for hours already!

“Sleeping beauty awakes.”

Danny rolled his eyes at Tucker’s attempt to pretend they hadn’t been talking about him. “You better not have kissed me.”

“If you kept sleeping for another hour he totally would have.” Sam smirk only grew when Tucker let out an offended squawk.

“Under duress!”

“The meat stench on your breath could wake the dead, so it had to be you.”

“Not dead yet, thanks…” Even if he’d been feeling tired enough to be a corpse today. “Anyone notice?”

“Told Lancer you were sick. He bought it.” Tucker shrugged, tossing a thermos between his hands. “You were really out of it huh?”

“Wait, was there an attack?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle.” Sam snatched the thermos away, glaring at Tucker as she did so. “You stay here, we’ll check out your house.”

He’d just slept through a ghost attacking? Really? “No way, how would you explain why I’m not with you?”

“Easy. We’ll just say you are, they won’t notice.” The goth scoffed, already halfway to getting the attic door open. “If you can hide being a ghost, we can hide you not being there for an afternoon.”

She sort of had a point there. “Fine. You aren’t gonna find anything. If it was some new gadget I’d say so.”

He kind of hoped they’d prove him wrong, but the concerned and frustrated looks on their faces betrayed that there were no new plans or even an idea to what had gotten him ‘out of sorts’. It was probably just a one off thing anyway, he’d be fine. It wasn’t like his parents were bragging about a new discovery or anything. He probably wouldn’t be able to sleep since he spent so much of the day doing so, though he was still tired...he actually looked forward to dinner being over so he could snuggle under his blankets and look at the little glowing stick on stars of his ceiling before drifting off again.

Only the dream came back. A small, pitiful ghost underwater while something kept calling at him. It wasn’t warm or inviting, more like the command from someone respected. The wisp of a creature couldn’t really ignore it either, it was like a pulse that burrowed inside and thrummed until he responded. They weren’t asking for much. Just wanted him to go hunt ghosts. He always did that anyway, that part was easy.

He didn’t like how the commanding one grabbed him under the chin at his return, but couldn’t find it in him to struggle. They were stronger than he was, he was a subordinate not strong enough to challenge them. A pair, stronger and unknowable with how they’d speak in a language he didn’t understand. He could only watch, green eyes wide for any hint of anger, wanting to make himself smaller, but the creature was little more than a shadow to begin with. Hunt, bring them the prey they wanted, and they’d allow him to exist. A fair trade, really. His core trembled at the idea the clawed hands at his face could easily sink into his chest, he couldn’t risk angering them. Their red eyes saw everything, knew everything. He didn’t want to be around them, but that call was too strong. Those eyes lurked on every surface, a burning red that cut through the weight of the water that was everything as if it wasn’t even there. Their commands became a sort of second skin, but didn’t protect him from the beings deciding to come uncomfortably close, or clutch his thin limbs and take something before letting him slip back into undefined chaos again.

He preferred being told to hunt. Leaving other ghosts, the smaller ones, lesser than even the inkblot he was in the universe to be looked over and examined while he remained mostly untouched. Still wispy, mostly undefined outside of his eyes, unlike the remains of those who ‘earned’ the greater ones full attention. No time to rest, just going and going until they claimed he’d done enough.

Being dismissed wasn’t a free pass to do as he pleased though. It was still a command, something he had to obey lest they show him why they were in charge. To go in hiding, be unseen, do nothing until they wanted him to hunt again. That should be easy, simple, but it made his tail ache and his heart lurch. He didn’t only want to hunt, he wanted to do not-ghost things.

Yet the figures didn’t care what a weaker ghost wanted to do. They’d find out. He had to hide.

Danny just felt exhausted. As if the dream had made him as tired as the ghost he was in that nightmare. Which couldn’t be true, he didn’t care about stronger ghosts and what they wanted. He’d fought the king of ghosts! He had a track record of flipping off authority when it suited him better. It didn’t push away the heavy weight in his head that only begged him to go back to sleep. Maybe he really was just sick.

Sick enough to get sent right back to bed by his mom when he slumped down for breakfast, her concern nice, but also discomforting. She held her hand at his forehead for a touch too long, seemed to stare into his eyes enough to make him want to avert them. Her gentle nudging to get some more sleep nearly had him bolting up the stairs. Like he had to go that moment. Rubbing at his temples didn’t dissuade the feeling, but the pressure lifted somewhat when he was back in bed and covered in blankets. Some stupid leftover feeling from that dream or something. He wasn’t hiding.

“Danny? You okay under there?” Jazz’s question just felt like a nail to his skull, and he hoped she could see the displeasure in his eyes as he poked out from under the blankets to glare at her.

“I might be if someone didn’t wake me up.” The sunlight peeking in from the windows only soured his mood, he should have closed the blinds.

“Well, someone’s grumpy.” Either she didn’t see his annoyance, or she was deliberately ignoring it. “Mom said you don’t have a fever, but you run pretty cold...do you want something for it?”

“It’s just a headache.”

“Sure, mister ‘I ignored a bone fracture’ is crippled by a headache. Not buying it.”

“That was meant to be a secret, who snitched?” His frustration just made him feel uncomfortably warm, they knew he hated it when Jazz fussed over that stuff. Maybe he should ignore their calls for a bit.

“No one did, I actually pay attention when you start favouring your left hand.” Her frown just made him want to duck back out of sight. “You sure you don’t need anything? Anything mom and dad wouldn’t think you need?”

For a smart person, Jazz could be incredibly unsubtle. “No. I’m just worn out, or something.” He didn’t feel like coughing or sneezing, or even the gurgling discomfort of an upset stomach. It couldn’t be that serious. “You’ll be late if you keep standing there.”

“Let us know if you think of anything!” She was already halfway down the hall while saying that, not getting to see how her brother rolled his eyes and ducked back under the blankets. Her biggest weakness, other obligations. Not that it would help after school. He’d be fine by then, probably. Just some peace and quiet and he’d be back to normal. Just like he said yesterday. Only for real this time. Positive thinking, or whatever.

He did feel a bit better now that it was quiet. Still tired, but his head wasn’t pounding as much as it was whenever someone insisted on talking to him.

He figured he’d just sleep, maybe play Doomed once he was more awake. Step one, sleeping had been going well, but Mom and Dad had other plans jeopardizing that. Since when did they listen to music while they worked? With enough base that he could feel it rattling his bones no less. Covering his ears couldn’t do much about that. Trying to ignore it, or hope they were just messing with something for a minute and it would stop wasn’t getting anywhere either. So why was he just hesitating up here? They probably didn’t even notice it was so loud, or forgot he was home sick. He shook his legs to try and wake them up after he wobbled with his first steps to the door. Maybe he could- no, there wasn’t any reason to just wait.

When had they gotten so many stairs anyway? Danny found himself gripping the railing as if he was seven again, worried about slipping as if he didn’t run down them two at a time normally. He hesitated at the bottom, eyes scanning the ground floor for a sign of the scientists. The awful noise didn’t seem much louder, but he felt every beat of it as his heart seemed to slip into sync. He didn’t want to risk more stairs, he was imagining things. He opened his mouth to speak, coughing instead over how dry it felt. Sleeping with his mouth open, duh. His second attempt went better, but was not as much of a shout as he planned it to be. “Mom? Dad? Can you turn it down?”

He waited. Nothing. It must be too loud for them to hear him over the din of that deafening pulse. Keeping one ear covered the boy edged to the lab’s staircase, staring down them as if he was looking from a mountaintop, a deadly drop. He so didn’t want to go down there, to go closer to whatever the heck it was. “Dad? Mom?” He called again, trying to ignore how his voice cracked at the question. He wasn’t scared of a staircase! His heart kept pounding in his ears, knuckles going white as he kept his hands in anxious fists. Everything told him to get back, to stay away, but couldn’t stand the noise. Besides, what if it was hurting them? Maybe that’s why they didn’t answer? Worry for them helped push back the seaping cold, heading down to the lab faster than he’d managed to get down from his room.

It was brightly lit, normal but cold. He could see them, hunched over a work desk and unharmed. The glare made his eyes hurt, pausing to rub at them. They seemed blurry, even though he wasn’t that far away. “Uh, Mom, Dad? Can you turn down whatever you’re working on? I can’t sleep.” He asked, unable to convince his legs to step a bit closer, feeling too tired to make any extra effort.

“Turn down what sweetie?” She turned to face him, making his blood try to turn to ice in his veins. She sounded right, said the right thing-but he was already trying to back up the stairs. Was she taller? “Sweetie? You look pale.”

“T-The noise.” The answer sputtered from him unbidden as he tried desperately to figure out what was wrong with-with-his mom? The echoed pounding told him no, it wasn’t, but who else could it be. “I can hear it upstairs.”

She approached with a too long stride, his own legs slipping in his blind step upwards. Pain from his elbow slamming into the edge of the staircase managed to rip through him even while everything else felt slow. She only quickened towards him as he cursed, trying to crabwalk backwards from the mother-that-was-not.

“Danny! Are you okay? Let me help you.” She grabbed him around the shoulders and he froze, a rabbit being watched by a hawk. She was too real, too solid, she could easily rip through him. “Maybe we should get you to the doctor honey, there’s isn’t anything on down here.”

Should he squirm away? She was lying about the sound, it kept pounding against him like a tide and he had no way to ride the wave clutched as he was. “There is, the thing over there-” He didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it, that it was over with the other figure, the one who hadn’t come to snag an intruder.

The hand on his forehead burned, but he couldn’t flinch away. “Sweetie, I think I’d know if your Dad was playing it.” The eyes bore into him, scanning him for any slight movement. “Jack, can you start the RV? I think we should take Danny to emergency.”

The other figure moved, massive, larger than he could imagine. It might hurt him, it might hurt his mom! “S-Stay back!” He yelled, a spark of energy finding its way to him. He couldn’t let his mom get attacked by whatever this was- no wonder she seemed strange, this thing was doing it.

“Well I gotta get up the stairs Danno! You don’t look good, you just wait there.” It was speaking as it came closer, but all it did was make the bile rise in his throat as it pretended to be his father. He squirmed free to stumble forward and block this thing from his mom, eyes burning green as he tried to shove past the exhaustion and fight.

“I said STAY BACK!”

The figure paused at his shriek and wild eyed fury, face unreadable. “Danny?” His voice was low, booming in a way that started to drain all his prior hope to fight the thing off. “Madds? I don’t think emergency can fix what he’s got.”

Claws sunk into his back, his neck aching at the speed used to look back at his mother, too long fingers tight on his shoulders and keeping hims still as he stared up and felt even smaller. “You don’t think he’s possessed?” She wasn’t talking to him, and that was a relief even as his heart tried to run off without him with how fast it wanted to go.

“Y-You did something to my mom.” The accusation made it easier to keep on his feet, but didn’t lessen her grip or stop the giant from approaching. “Take your noisemaker and get out!” If it was gone, it’d be fine, they’d be safe, he was sure of it.

“Danny, that’s your dad sweetie. Not a monster.” The voice was gentle, but he could feel how the arms shook, how she increased the strength of her grip so he couldn’t pull away again. “You keep doing your best to fight that ghost off Danny, dad will help you.”

The larger figure grabbed the horrible silver device, the red gems adorning the horn’s buttons making him feel empty and helpless. “S-Stop it, you can’t let it use that mom!” He pleaded, but she didn’t release him, just pulled him closer to the smothering warmth. “Please, listen to me!” Of course she didn’t, controlled by that thing, twisted into thinking it was Dad, that it was quiet. Becoming intangible let him slip free, but he only managed two steps before the behemoth blew a long sustained note that made his skin vibrate and eyes swim. He crumpled to the cool floor, staring up at the monster in a silent horror. He couldn’t fight this thing- he’d been a fool to try and the red eyes promised retribution for his behaviour.

“Get out of my son right now, ghost.” It snarled, pointing directly at his crumpled form so he could not pretend to misunderstand. Yet he’d given an order he couldn’t follow. His core screeched in terror as his heart pounded, he couldn’t get out. Yet he had to, or this thing would devour him, shred him to nothing with nothing but sound. He could only try the closest he could get to ‘out’ of his own skin, shuddering as flesh melted to ectoplasm, trying not to scream as suit replaced skin. Not his normal transformation, this one was too slow- too confused by the order he couldn’t follow to make it an instantaneous change. He had to show he wasn’t wearing his human skin, show how completely he changed. Dying slowly, bit by bit to be someone else. Not ‘his son’. His enemy. Green eyes stared back at the red ones as he panted, unsure if the monster was pleased.

It was furious, stepping forward as he shrank back and pulled his ghostly tail around himself. “I told you to get out.”

“I can’t.” He whimpered, wanting to look away but unable to.

Another voice behind him, the mom that wasn’t spoke. Yet he didn’t understand a word of it, too terrified by the being in front of him to even process it as language.

“Don’t lie to me Phantom. Get out of my son before we tear you out.”

His name made him flinch, gloved hands clutching at his head as the impossibility of that tore at his mind. “I’m not, I swear, I can’t get out of myself!” How could he not be in his son when he was his son? He had to find a way, his slowed but still pounding heart offering some idea.

“Don’t you dare pretend to be my son, ghost.”

He wanted to explain he wasn’t pretending, that he wasn’t disobeying on purpose but the massive thing had him by the collar of his jumpsuit, leaving him busy trying to breathe enough to speak. If he wasn’t a hybrid, then maybe the monster would be satisfied? He didn’t get much time to wonder before getting tossed in a containment cell. “I’m not pretending- the accident…” he mumbled, trying to make himself look smaller as if he could hide from the hateful eyes that way. They stared at him, spoke gibberish to one another as the previous exhaustion came back with a vengeance. Keeping still felt like the best idea. When the bigger one locked eyes with him and ordered that he sleep, he did.

Dreaming and waking became one and the same. He stayed in his cage unless ordered out. They kept asking him the impossible, until he tried to rip out his heart to ‘separate’ through death. They didn’t want their son harmed- didn’t see how separating was harm, but did not destroy him for that blunder. He hunted, brought them what they wanted. They kept watching as if expecting him to disobey, to slip his leash even as he practically groveled when they approached. He hoped Mom was okay, wherever she was. Maybe Jazz could rescue her from the monster with the cornet on spring break. A ghost couldn’t. A ghost simply obeyed.

Prompt: Danny hasn't been feeling himself, blacking out and having strange dreams. Unbeknownst to him, Freakshow's staff was not the only artifact that could control ghosts. Even worse, Jack and Maddie are the ones who get their hands on that object.

#Danny Phantom #Phic Phight #phic phight 2021 #i didn't show the prompt at the start this time!#gasp #tho tbh i wrote something similar for dannymay #because ghost control is neat #and TERRIFYING!#someday one ya'll gonna shake me and go HAPPY ENDING DARN YOU

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banyanas · 2 years

Text

So! This makes very little sense if you’re not the recipient or a few other people but happy birthday @jampreserves !1

Space’s monsters are so fun to describe to the point where I'm not even sure what to call this. Slightly eldritch-flavored comedy? I don’t even know when in the ‘timeline’ this would take place I just took a discord convo and ran with it. (Context below)

Maybe an impromptu ‘study party’ (translation: watch the ‘background noise’ TV while nominally pretending to study) wasn’t the greatest idea, Cedar thought, watching his classmate flirt with the pointed tines of death.

It happened like this. Cedar met Jammy through familial osmosis- that was to say, she was his sister Luna’s friend, met through their shared entomology passions. They’d hung around often enough that Cedar could comfortably call her friend; Jammy was interesting, and chill in an almost intimidatingly self-assured way- some people just wore the assumption that they were the strongest person in the room around their shoulders like a cloak. Given that they were friends, Cedar found it pleasant.

The ‘intimidating’ part came from the fact that despite witnessing Jammy rescuing moths from window frames and setting them free outside, fingers gentle as dandelion fluff, Cedar was certain she was slightly closer than the average college student to just snapping one day.

She looked even closer today, standing in the hall of her apartment with Luna and Cedar in tow, all three of them staring at the young man in the kitchen doing his level best to un-wedge a fork from the toaster. Which was still plugged in.

A man who Cedar recognized from his astrophysics classes- he was hard to miss, given that he gleefully corrected the professors with all the sharp confidence of thrown knives. “Jam? What the hell are you doing?” slipped out of Cedar’s mouth.

Jam looked up from his activities, continuing to attempt to unearth the stuck fork by sticking his hand down in the toaster’s grid. “Oh, hey Cedar! I didn’t know you knew my sister.” The toaster spat out his un-burnt hand and the slightly-bent fork with a concerningly loud spang.

“Your brother?” Luna peeked from behind Jammy’s shoulder, clearly wondering what the holdup in the hallway was. “Oh my god, there’s two of them…” she whispered softly.

Okay, maybe looking between them, the relation was kind of obvious. Cedar had never been great with faces, but names… “Wait, ‘Jam’ and ‘Jammy’? Did your parents hate you or something?”

Too late, he slapped his hands over his mouth. Can the ground open up and swallow me please?

“Yup,” Jam said casually.

His sister just sighed, aggrieved, and bustled them into the living room to sit. “It’s complicated.”

Which most likely translated to ‘Yes’.

Luna waved to Jam from the other side of the bar. “Well, it was nice meeting you!”

“Hey, you too.” Jam’s pleasant smile managed to be both crooked and somehow charming. “Don’t mind me over here while you watch your shows. I’ll join you once I’m done fixing the toaster.”

Cedar exchanged a glance with Luna as she sat on the chair across from him. ‘Fixing?’ she mouthed.

Cedar just shrugged in response.

“We’re going to be studying. The TV is just background noise,” Jammy lied automatically.

Jam hummed to himself, an odd spark-slicing sound that put up the hairs on Cedar’s neck. “If you say so. Hey, Cedar, if you need any help feel free to ask, you know the professor’s notes suck.”

Cedar saluted him with a thumbs up as he dug through his bag for the astronomy books. Professor Larsen’s lectures and notes were fine, but Jam’s knowledge of the world beyond the stars was impossibly flawless. To the point that the last time Cedar was on a group project with Jam, his main job was toning the complexity down.

It was a fun way to learn, at least.

Something hissed in the kitchen. Like molten steel exposed to chill air. Cedar studiously propped his textbook higher above his eyes and focused on the background-shimmer of dialogue from The Office. Knowing Jam he… probably was safer not knowing what was going on with the toaster in the kitchen.

“Um, what exactly is he doing?” Luna asked Jammy quietly.

“Fixing the toaster.”

“Because he stuck a fork in it?” Cedar said wryly.

Jammy flushed, fidgeting with the hem of her cardigan. “Um, that was me.”

So they were both like this, then. Luna was right. There are two of them.

“But that’s beside the point. The point is that you can ignore him, he won’t blow the kitchen up or anything, so long as he keeps his feet on the ground.” Jammy shook a bladed hand across her neck, unsubtly signaling her brother to stop doing… something. Cedar wasn’t quite sure- Jam looked perfectly innocent, if a little put-out.

… Was he always that tall? Cedar couldn’t tell, not with the bar counter in the way.

Silence. The rustle of pages. The faint static hum of the TV, muted words from the show fading into silence.

Complete silence. An utter, airless thing that was entirely unnatural.

Cautiously, Cedar closed his book and set it aside, about to ask if it was just him, or if anyone else felt-

He nearly bit his tongue when the lights flickered, each flash illuminating his sister’s creeping worry before stabilizing back into pleasantly harsh fluorescence.

“Shit,” Jammy hissed, abruptly getting to her feet. “Is now really the time-”

“Hey, you should probably head home.” Jam’s head popped around the corner, brows drawn together and grave. “Like, right now.”

“But it’s dark out, and Jammy was our ride,” Cedar pointed out. Mostly he just really, really didn’t want to go outside right now. Maybe he’d played a few too many horror games as of late, but the thought of stepping foot out the door gave him the heebie-jeebies like nothing else. Frowned. “Wait, since when did it get dark-”

Something snarled like the ghost of a thunderstorm, loud enough to surround the entire apartment.

“Down!”

Jammy’s iron grip fisting into Cedar’s shirt and pushing him to the floor with nearly rib-cracking force, his sister screaming as a lightbulb burst over her head-

Glass shattering and fragments of drywall pelting him as the window behind them exploded, something plague-dark and void-cold sailing over their heads to crash into the living room, talons gouging perfect scores into stained carpet.

Cedar looked up.

He really, really wished he hadn’t.

It was big. Black-wind hide constantly shifting and curling into smoky fins and tails and claws and disturbingly humanlike hands, insectoid mandibles and canine fangs lined with fire-banded black-hole eyes.

That is not a coyote.

It hissed-snarled-chittered, chitin plates melting into shadow-shifting feathers as it whipped its head to face Jammy and Luna.

Faster than his eyes could follow, Jammy grabbed Luna and pulled her away from its snapping jaws, eyes glowing with a rage that could shatter glaciers and that thing was going to kill his sister-

Cedar hadn’t even consciously picked up the pen. Or consciously thrown it, only realizing what he’d done when the pen sailed through the monster.

It shimmered into plate-armored scales, and every single eye glared at him with fantastically deadly annoyance.

Well. He had its attention while Jammy got Luna away.

It didn’t take a single step but suddenly it was right there, head dipped low for tongues of literal fire to flick out and scent Cedar’s paralyzing terror.

The more reasonable thing to do would be to scream, run away, or most likely die.

However, at heart, Cedar could be a fundamentally unreasonable person.

So terrified he almost forgot to breathe, he searched for the nearest heavy object and walloped the- the thing over its razor-furred head.

His astronomy textbook sank into the monster’s skull like swamp-muck, and he had all of a second of relief when it didn’t bury its mandibles into his gut before each strand of the monster’s fur-feathers-spines reached out of their own accord and clawed at the offending protrusion.

Something at his fingertips burned.

Yelping, Cedar pulled his hands away from his impromptu weapon and the water-waving strands of the monster’s hair, heaving for breath as the textbook disintegrated, like a sped-up clip of decaying paper, like all of entropy pressed into the span of a breath.

Every single black-hole eye glared directly at him.

I am so dead.

Mandibles and fangs and chitinous plates whorled into a maw that split the monster’s entire body, ghastly lava-light welling from the monster’s core-

Choked, as something long and too fast to see cracked across its face.

Cedar cringed back, covering his ears as the thing’s multifold shrieks crawled down his ear canal and stabbed into his brain like hot pokers. Over the silence-ringing pain, he heard-

“Yeah! Get out of here, asshole!” Jam swatted at the monster like he was shooing out a particularly aggressive raccoon with a broom. “Piss off!”

The monster wailed like a dying star each time Jam's staff struck it, shifting shadows tearing away as if burnt by lightning. One mouth lunged out, eel-like, to snap at the offending weapon.

Jam yanked the staff and shoved, choking the monster as he stabbed it directly down its throat and twisted.

Its whimpering death knell sounded less like any animal on Earth, and more like a six-pack of batteries rotating in a microwave.

The ash-shard flecks of its dissolving corpse drifted into nothingness, leaving only the four humans and wrecked apartment behind.

“What,” Cedar wheezed, shaking hard enough that his teeth clacked together. “The fuck was that!?”

“That…” Jam trailed off, black eyes slanted thoughtfully. “There is a perfectly reasonable explanation, I think…”

Wait. Black eyes, dark sclera and ghost-blue pupils- What-

“No there isn’t.” Jammy had one arm around a shivering Luna, drumming fingers on her shoulder in what might be intended as a calming pattern.

Her other hand gripped a pulsating… thing, like a lump of raw black-glowing glass. Rather like what the monsters looked like on the inside, past the void-

Casually, she squeezed, and the burst- Core? Heart?- wisped away as ash.

Eeep.

“Yeah, okay, there’s no good excuse I can think of,” Jam sighed, dismissing the staff into stardust and leaning down to offer a hand. “C’mon, man, the floor can’t be that comfortable. Especially with the space-monster bits.”

Cedar took it, gritting his teeth against the sting of his burnt fingertips as Jam hauled him up to his feet.

He nearly went down again when Luna almost crashed into him, wordlessly frantic and thank whatever gods were out there that she was okay.

“Ugh, gross, I think some got in my hair.” Jammy scowled, running her fingers through her star-specked bob, blue shifting and wavering as if underwater.

“Seriously, who- what are you?”

Luna’s shaky voice was met with choking silence, before the war of shrugs and glares and helpless gestures between the siblings finally ended with Jam’s sigh. “Okay, but you might want to sit down- wait, no, hold on.” And with a gesture, gravity seeming to tug on the humans like playing winds, the chairs and couch righted themselves, the curtains drew shut, and the shattered glass swept itself into a corner.

“I… think we’ll stand,” Cedar said.

“Suit yourself.” Jammy shrugged, and sat- on nothing, floating casually in the air, legs crossed and chin propped on his palm.

Cedar and Luna sat heavily.

Jammy remained standing, looking uncharacteristically as she rocked back on her heels. “Where to start…” she muttered, half to herself. “Well, put simply… We’re gods.”

If not for their obviously-supernatural quirks and the aura of charged ozone, Cedar would have thought they’d gotten into the law majors’ coke stash.

“You… Gods? You’re gods?” Luna swallowed hard.

“Huh, you actually sound like you believe us.” Jam’s voice was light, airy and yet weighted with reassurance. Were they freaking out that obviously? “Yup. Space gods, to be a bit more specific.” He frowned. “We’re also hiding, for the moment, which is why it was extremely inconvenient for Mom’s pests to send one of their slivers now of all times.”

Slivers. That death-furred monster was only a part of something bigger?

Voice quiet, Luna asked, “What are you hiding from?” What could threaten a god?

“Hmm.” Jam snapped his fingers, blue sparks cascading from his fingers. “Oh! You know how you asked if our parents hated us or something?” At their incredulous nod, he continued. “Our mother is the previous space goddess- and she’s not thrilled with the ‘previous’ part of that. So yeah, I guess you could say at least one of our parents kinda hates us.”

“She doesn’t!” Jammy’s regret at her outburst was visible as cracks through lava for only the briefest moment before she bulled onward. “She- she’s really mad, and I don’t want to ever be back with her again, but I don’t think she actually hates us.”

“... Okay,” Jam said, saddened, and obviously not believing his sibling at all. “Point is, Jammy was on Earth-vacation to study the bugs, I came to get her, Mother Dearest sent some nasty shit after us, so for now we’re pinned.” He gestured to where the curtain fluttered in the wind from the night-chilled breeze. “Good news is, the monsters are way too big to actually find us when we’re down here, so all it can send are little offshoots of itself.”

“Wait, there will be more of those things?” Luna’s distress was evident, and Cedar pressed his leg against hers as a grounding point, much as he was freaking out too.

“... Most likely, yes,” Jammy admitted, feet leaving the ground as she joined her sibling’s floating. “We’ll probably have to move again-”

“You can’t!”

Three sets of eyes, one human, two not, swiveled to look at Cedar curiously.

He jabbed a finger in Jam’s direction. “You can’t leave! We’re still in a group project and we haven’t finished yet!”

Jam stared at him, slowly un-twisting himself from his sitting position as he wheezed like the whistle of a sword through void-

And started laughing, helpless snorts interspersed between breaths he didn’t need to take. “Oh, man, after all of that shit, you’re concerned about school?” He mimed wiping a tear from his eye. “Hey, Jammy, wanna stick around, actually?”

“Of course I do,” she huffed, arms crossed. “Transfering is a pain, and I’d miss our friends.”

Luna brightened. “Aw, I’d miss you too, you big sap.” A hesitant glance to where the glass-pile sat innocuously in the corner. “Although I hope all this isn’t a regular thing.”

“Nah, just luck. Really bad luck,” Jam said. “Gotta say, though, you’re taking this surprisingly well, the whole ‘gods’ thing.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m probably going to have a freak-out in private,” Cedar said evenly. “But for now, you owe me ten slides for the presentation.”

“I only had five, though.”

“Call it recompensation for almost dying.”

“... Y’know what, that’s actually fair.”

#bañana post

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lgbtqlegends · 3 years

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you think sara would break the rules of tine-space if ava died?

ooo angst i love it. thank you for the ask n hope you enjoy!

-ok so for this one i think it might depend,,, like,, kind of on the situation in which ava died, and also if breaking the rules of space-time, in this particular instance, if it would fuck with the lives of everyone else that sara loves and cares about. we know that time & time travel and the rules of space-time are kinda tricky, and things could have disastrous consequences in a number of ways, so i just,,, think it would depend

-she would for sure want to break like,,, every single rule of space-time if it meant getting ava back, alive, but it would just,,, there's variables that would go into whether she actually did it or not. okay so imma do like,, a two scenarios type thing here:

Scenario 1

-breaking the rules of space time, in this instance, in this scenario, would have consequences too disastrous and would cross a line that sara just isn't willing to cross, so she doesn't break those rules. she wants to, god, she wants to so bad, and it takes so much self control not to, but she knows she just,,, Can't so she fights herself to make sure she doesn't

-it's not at all easy, bc this is ava,,, the love of her life, her co-captain for life, her safe place, etc,,, and it hurts So Much that she's gone but she can't Do Anything about it,,, like,, technically yes, she could,, but she Can't and she Knows this

-but it's so hard and a lot of times she finds herself really tempted to just say to hell with everything and break the rules of space-time anyway bc she just,, really wants ava back,, wants to hold her again n hug her again,, kiss her again,,, just,, everything,, she wants all of that back, she wants ava back bc g o d,, she was finally Happy and she finally had all these things that she used to think she'd never be able to have so she just,,, Hates that she can't fix it

-but she also, in a way, like,,, she thinks she deserves it, n she thinks that ava dying was the universe's fucked up way of telling her that she isn't Supposed to be happy, that none of this was Meant for her, so she just kinda,,, deals with it and it Hurts,,, a lot but it's also,,, not really anything she isn't used to like,,, before the legends + ava, sara had been in pain for so long that it was just,, normal for her so she just,,, pushes through even though she hates almost every minute of it

Scenario 2

-in this instance, in this scenario, breaking the rules of space-time would Not cross a line that sara isn't willing to cross,,, like,,, it still would fuck with a lot of things and have some pretty big consequences,,, bc,, y'know,, rules of space-time and all,, but it doesn't cross any lines that sara won't let herself cross (and she knows this bc she spends So Long researching it and trying to find any scenario in which she could get ava back without like,,, crossing those lines. she spends most of her time in the library or in the captain's going over things with gideon trying to figure out any possible way they can get ava back. she hardly sleeps or eats and the legends end up having to both beg and force her to take care of herself bc they know none of this work will do any good if sara's not taking care of herself enough)

-as soon as she figures out that Yes she can pull this off without fucking things up beyond what she'll allow herself to do, it's like a weight is lifted off her chest and pretty much her whole demeanor changes like,,, before she'd been working herself half to death n she'd been in pain n like,, starting to lose hope a little bit that she'd find a way to get ava back,,, but then she Did n so her whole demeanor changes n now she's smiling more n she has hope n all that

-she makes a plan, bc she's not gonna go into this one half-assed, not when it's so important and there's so much riding on it. so she makes a plan n like,,, she knows it probably not gonna go exactly how she wants it to, but a plan that will probably end up falling apart but still working is better than no plan, and she'll take what she can get

-once ava is back, and the rules of space-time have been broken, ava is just like,,, dammit this is a giant Mess and now we have to repair all of time Again,,, and sara thinks she might be mad at first but then ava reassures her like,,, no no she's not mad n like she's really touched that sara broke all of space-time to get her back but it's also just like,,, oh yay fixing all of time on this Massive scale Again,,, is just,, exhausting lmao

-sara just laughs (kinda watery) and then tells ava that all of them are already exhausted so time can wait a bit they all need to Rest. usually ava would disagree but no one decided to tell her how exhausting it is to be dead and then come back so,,, yeah she just agrees with sara this time bc all she wants is like,,, food,, a hot shower and a warm bed and like,,, a week long nap minimum

-as soon as they're like,,, alone in their room sara just,,, hugs ava Super Tight and just,,, does not let go. they finally manage to get fall into bed (bc sara still just,, would not let go) and they just lay there for a while holding each other and taking comfort in each other

#avalance #sara lance #ava sharpe #legends of tomorrow #headcanons #headcanon prompts

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victorineb · 4 years

Text

Bloodletting

An omegaverse fic for @hannigram-a-b-o-library‘s Reverse Bang, featuring vampires, reunited lovers, and lots and lots of blood. Huge thanks to @idontfindyouthatinteresting for the inspirational artwork and idea, and to @desperatelyseekingcannibals for coming onboard as co-writer to save my hopelessly blocked self. All the love to both you guys 💖💖💖

---

“So you want me to tell you the story of my life?” Will asks, silhouetted by hazy golden light from the large windows of Hannibal’s office, an edge of red staining him where the sun filters through the drapes.

“Not all of it,” comes Freddie’s reply. He can tell she’s smirking without having to look. “Just start from when you met Hannibal Lecter. You are clearly very close. Is that usual for a psychiatrist and his patient?”

Will doesn’t respond, merely lifts an eyebrow at her, at which she smirks.

Will huffs and turns back to the window, a smile playing across his lips. As if she even knows what she’s asking. He has to admit that his only reason for agreeing to this interview is for his own amusement. It is always a pleasure to watch Freddie’s misplaced confidence that she has the upper hand. But he hadn’t expected her to go straight for the throat.

“Whatever you wish to tell me,” she encourages.

“I see,” Will prevaricates.

He turns to look at her. She’s made herself comfortable in her chair, dictaphone in hand and note pad on lap. Intending to capture absolutely everything.

She doesn’t have to attempt discretion this time round. Not like the last time she’d been in this office, with her cover story and polite persona, thinking she could easily dupe some fussy shrink into giving up the goods on Will and the Stammets case. As Hannibal had told him after - unethical, even for a tabloid journalist.

Though, in truth, Hannibal’s irritation came mostly from the spanner she’d thrown into their plans. For she had seen the painting, carelessly left poking out of its packing box. That had piqued her interest all the more, turning her from a mere nuisance into a potential threat, and she had hounded Will until he had, so she believed, given up and granted her demand for an interview.

An interview, and some answers as to why Hannibal Lecter owned a clearly timeworn painting of himself together with an unstable FBI profiler who had only recently become his patient.

And so now she sits once again in Hannibal’s office, having been graciously allowed the space for their tête à tête, the cat that got the cream after all.

“Do you mind?” she asks, holding up the recording device and tipping it towards him as if asking for consent. As if she wouldn’t use it anyway, regardless of his agreement.

“You’d need a lot of tape for my story,” Will replies, drily, ignoring her question.

“It’s all digital these days, Mr Graham.” Freddie smiles that snake-like smile of hers, truly believing that she’s the predator in the room. “So, let’s get started.”

Will strolls slowly over and takes the chair opposite her. Hannibal’s chair, usually.

“Where should we start?” she asks, pleasant and patient and completely false. “Perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself.”

“All right then, since you asked. I’m a vampire,” Will says, cocking his head and waiting for her reaction, holding her gaze. It’s clear that she’s trying desperately not to roll her eyes.

“Funny,” she replies with a raised brow. But as his expression remains unchanged, hers sobers and she asks, “You mean this literally, I take it?”

“Absolutely.”

Freddie glares at him.

“Mr Graham, I appreciate your leaning into the crazy angle but if you’re going to waste my time-”

Will sucks in an unneeded breath and lets out a sigh. “You want to know how I met Hannibal.”

“Please,” she replies, firmly.

“How I met him this time, anyway,” Will clarifies and her eyes narrow again.

She settles in to listen to him anyway.

---

Will Graham is something of a legend amongst the students of the FBI Academy, known by all as brilliant, demanding, and intense. Rumour has it that if you have the temerity to ask a spontaneous question during one of his lectures he will eviscerate you with nothing more than a few cutting words and a scowl. And his ruthlessness with a red pen is enough to strike fear into even the most confident and diligent of students — the papers they receive back bear a striking resemblance to the crime scenes he lectures on, stained with red in cruel, ruthless slashes. All this perhaps explains why the halls of the Academy are currently clearing at an exaggerated rate, as students fling themselves out of the path of Professor Graham as he storms down the hallways towards his office. Or perhaps it’s just the look on his face that suggests he might finally have flipped, the way certain cruel rumours say he inevitably would, one day.

It is the unhappy fate of one student to have chosen this moment to visit Professor Graham’s office, a foolish thing in any case, as Will has no office hours scheduled for this day. He is loitering just outside Will’s door, leaning against the wall with his phone in hand, completely unaware of the unhinged professor stalking towards him until they are inches from each other. In fact, the student – name of Miller, Will thinks – only becomes aware of his professor’s presence by his scent, that weird, unsettling mix of alpha and omega that means no one ever knows what designation Graham is, or likes to be in close quarters with him for too long. Miller can never understand why the Professor doesn’t wear scent blockers; at least then he might avoid the hisses of freak that follow everywhere he goes.

Then again, Will Graham is exactly the kind of stubborn asshole who’d enjoy making people feel uncomfortable.

Miller looks up into the blue eyes of his professor and squeaks, an embarrassing noise that he immediately attempts to cover up with a cough.

“What?” Professor Graham growls, actually growls, a rumble of irritation that would rival any alpha in rut.

The boy squeaks again and stares, petrified, at his teacher.

“Intelligent commentary as usual, Miller.”

The kid flees and Will watches him skid down the corridor without a backward glance. He sighs, and scrubs a hand down his face. He’ll make it up to Miller somehow, give him easy credit for something. Will stares into nothingness for a moment longer and then slides into his office and closes the door firmly behind him. That little performance should have ensured no one will bother him for the rest of the day. Possibly the week. Will leans back against the door and finally allows the smile he has been holding back to burst onto his face.

The bone arena of my skull, he thinks, rolling his eyes. His beautiful boy has not changed, then, still as pretentious and as annoyingly brilliant as ever.

Hannibal Lecter.

Will’s grin broadens. His fangs ache.

---

Later, he stands in the middle of a field, regarding Hannibal’s field kabuki, and wonders if he should feel offended. Patronised, at least. Apparently Hannibal believes that Will needs some help to see the Shrike and has gifted him some perspective.

Really, Will has no idea how to feel. Hannibal’s art has always been beautiful and this is no exception – shows, in fact, that his boy has progressed far beyond even the skill he had developed under Will’s watchful eye (and doesn’t that come with a dull ache, the knowledge that Hannibal did not spend the years apart pining, but continued to pursue his pleasures with the singular focus that Will had never liked directed at anything but himself). But it also suggests that Hannibal has not learned the lessons Will had hoped he would. Asked him to.

That is… disappointing, in a way Will finds unmooring, forcing him to step away from the scene, pretending overwhelm and upset in order to placate Jack. Childishly, he snaps out some retort about Jack preferring Dr Lecter’s opinions to his own and storms off, shaking his head at the daddy issues he thought he’d long shaken off. Hannibal’s getting to him, as he always knows how. He takes one last backwards look at the tableau, sees the tenderness in it, not for the girl, but for him. Its black tines curve upwards to the sky and the points meet and melt into the sparkling sunlight.

It is a beautiful gift.

---

Will smells him before he knocks. Scent-blockers do nothing to mask him, not from Will. He suspects he could freeze Hannibal in ice, or seal him in plastic and still he would find that scent, maddening and delicious. Still, he makes the good doctor wait, taking his time to slide out of the motel bed and stretch his muscles into wakefulness, before flinging open the door. The sunlight blinds him for a second, his eyes still sensitive to it even after all these years, and then there is Hannibal, smile on his face, food inevitably in hand.

“Good morning, Will,” he says, and the bastard has the gall to sound amused. He always did enjoy unsettling Will. “May I come in?”

Will raises an eyebrow. “You need to ask?”

“It’s only polite. You know how I abhor rudeness.”

Will hums, unimpressed. “Where’s Crawford. You didn’t eat him, did you?”

Hannibal smiles, close-mouthed, no teeth. “Agent Crawford is deposed in court. The adventure will be yours and mine today.”

Will sighs, lets his shoulders sag, turns away into the darkness. Hannibal takes this as the invitation it’s meant to be, stepping over the threshold, closing the door gently behind him. The second he does, Will is on him, shoving him against the wall, one hand around his throat, lifting, lifting until his arm is at full stretch. Hannibal’s feet dangle above the floor. He appears wholly unconcerned, looking down at Will with a serene expression and adoration lighting his eyes.

“I told you to stay put until you were summoned,” Will growls.

“And so I did, until I was.”

Will flexes his hand around Hannibal’s neck, feeling it ripple under his grip. “All right, what loophole has your clever little brain come up with this time?”

Hannibal grins, delighted by Will’s disdain. “You did not specify that it must be you who called. Jack Crawford summoned me to help the noble ranks of the FBI, I could not find it in myself to refuse. That he specifically wished me to support a gifted yet troubled profiler by the name of Will Graham was a mere technicality, albeit a happy one.” Hannibal slides his arm up and over Will’s and rests his hand on Will’s cheek. “And it was truly happy, Will.”

It’s an old trick and one Will is hard-pressed to resist. Soft words and soft touches, Hannibal’s always known how to wriggle under his skin.

He tries not to let Hannibal see the effect it still has on him but there’s no hiding the fact that his grip loosens a little. Nor that the smile it pulls from Hannibal makes Will want to kill him, or kiss him. He’s never quite sure.

“I ought to put my teeth in your neck right now,” Will snaps, trying to wind up his anger once more.

Hannibal, though, knows exactly the wrong – or right – response, smiling down at Will as he tells him, “I have missed your mark on me. I wept the day the last one faded.”

Will’s nose twitches for a moment, taking in Hannibal’s scent and finding little of his own evident there. Every instinct tells him to do just as his alpha suggests, but he doesn’t wish to give the petulant child the satisfaction.

“I don’t find you deserving.”

“You will.”

Will lets it go. Hannibal’s right, after all; this was never intended to be a permanent separation, just a few years to remind his boy of his priorities. And he’s been planning their reunion proper since the moment he caught Hannibal’s scent in the halls of the BAU.

Truth be told, he’s been planning it – in the abstract at least – ever since the first Ripper murder dropped, years ago. But he isn’t going to let Hannibal know that, not yet. And he certainly isn’t going to reward his bad behaviour without making him work for it first.

“All right, you can stay. Show me what you brought for breakfast.”

Will drops Hannibal unceremoniously on his feet and Hannibal reaches down to collect the bag he brought with him, unflustered, unfazed, as though nothing had just happened. Will watches as the alpha delicately removes the containers of food he has brought, setting them on the table like the offering they are.

When Hannibal takes a seat, Will does so too. He deigns to offer Hannibal nothing but a cool gaze as this old, familiar scene plays out like it has so many other times.

“Hardly a suitable offering,” Hannibal demurs as Will’s mouth twitches. “Or sufficient.”

The momentary glance between them then is an acknowledgement. Hannibal is aware that Will hasn’t fed in quite some time. A fine shiver passes over Will at the memories of them feasting together, before, in circumstances quite different from this. He feels his control slip ever so slightly at the thought of what Hannibal might have brought, his eyes following his alpha’s elegant hands closely as they set out their meal.

“A little protein scramble; eggs and sausage,” comes the familiar refrain.

“Used up all your creativity on unnecessary theatrics, none left over for the leftovers?” Will asks, forking his share onto a plate, deliberately uncouth, and trying not to drool at the scent. It isn’t exactly his preferred source of nourishment – nor Hannibal’s, to be sure – but Hannibal can do things with even such plain fare that just the memory of his kitchen has, on occasion, caused Will to kick himself for leaving.

“I elevated those parts of her that were worthy of it; the rest I did with what I could.”

“And here I thought you were just catering to my plebeian tastes,” Will says, looking up from under his lashes with a sneer.

“I do not recall your tastes ever being less than exquisite. Save perhaps that time in Constantinople.”

“Matthew,” Will says on a sigh, momentarily submerged in their shared memories. “He had such potential, a shame he had no control over himself.”

“I never liked him,” Hannibal sniffs, flicking out his napkin and setting it on his lap.

“You never liked any of the strays I brought home,” Will counters. “I wonder where he is now.”

“I should have killed him,” Hannibal glowers, and Will can’t help the swell in his chest at the reaction, even as Hannibal settles back into eating as though nothing has been said. Perhaps Will should have let Hannibal kill Matthew, but there is something pleasing still about having denied him. He has to admit to enjoying Hannibal’s still-piquant jealousy over that particular event.

It’s not the time to bask though, so Will decides to move on from this teasing and clears his throat.

“I give lectures on you, you know.” He watches Hannibal’s pupils dilate and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, thought you’d like that.”

“I will not deny that I always enjoyed being the focus of your attention. And I think that it would not be inaccurate to say that the opposite was true as well.”

“Yeah, well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Your distraction.”

“My disobedience.”

“Stop. It was never that. Don’t make me out to be some cruel master,” Will snaps, unimpressed by Hannibal’s attempt to play the victim.

“Are you not? You may have preferred to dress us up as equals but the control was always and ultimately yours.”

“Really, alpha?” Will hisses.

“Really, sire.” Hannibal touches a hand to his throat, smooth, unmarred skin a lie and an insult to them both. Will longs to remedy it. He had always been so diligent about maintenance in the past. Instead, he takes another bite of his food, just to watch the way Hannibal watches him.

It seems clear to Will that despite his intentions, there is no avoiding this conversation. Even if he hadn’t intended to have it here and now. Hannibal is here. Now.

Will swallows his bite and places down his fork with a deliberate click, a movement that Hannibal notes with a raised brow but doesn’t comment on.

“I was three hundred years old when I met you.” Will knows Hannibal doesn’t need reminding. Their meeting is seared into both their minds. Will, an omega of thirty when he had been sired, had been selective for those three hundred years in regards to who he would sire himself. They had been few, and mostly for the sake of power orstrategy, rather than any great desire to keep them with him.

And then there had been Hannibal. A beautiful young nobleman bent on vengeance for his murdered family. They had encountered each other as Hannibal’s search brought him to the final murderer, by then a vampire of Will’s acquaintance.

Will is still unsure, all these centuries later, justwhy he agreed to help the young upstart, other than Hannibal being Hannibal and refusing to take no for an answer. He’s only a little clearer onhow he wound up allowing the alpha to seduce him so thoroughly. Will might have been irritated by the human, albeitgrudgingly impressed by his prowess as a killer and his passion for revenge, but Hannibal was beautiful and wild and utterly self-possessed. It tickled Will’s ego to let him attempt a courtship. He just hadn’t expected it to work.

“We had centuries together, Hannibal. And then you got distracted.” Will spits the word, imbuing it with the betrayal that still burns in his veins.

Hannibal’s eyes narrow for a moment, and Will knows what he’s thinking despite his tense silence. That it wasn’t his decision to separate them. That perhaps if Will had expressed his displeasure instead of exiling Hannibal without discussion, they could have worked things out. That they didn’t have to spend so many years estranged, alone, suffering heats and ruts that would always synchronise regardless of their distance, all for the sake of unfounded jealousy and petty resentment.

The thought makes Will wince, and his glare at Hannibal makes clear that he doesn’t want to hear anything from his mouth on that subject. And so Will brings them back to the point, Hannibal – amazingly, uncharacteristically – taking his scolding without riposte.

“We had a good thing in Florence, and then you got so caught up in playing cat and mouse with Pazzi that you lost focus. You, and your ego, were distracted to the point of endangerment.” Will tries not to growl the words; his ire will do no good.

Hannibal’s jaw clenches at the truth.

“And so you have tortured me with the denial of your presence for decades,” he grits out, finally.

“I wanted you to learn your lesson. I said I would let you return when I was ready to deal with you.”

“Are you ready now, Will?”

“Does it matter?” Will asks, with a poison-sweet smile. “You’ve forced my hand.” He picks up his fork and resumes eating the remnants of Hannibal’s gesture.

Hannibal’s smile returns, despite Will’s harsh words. Pleasure at being back in Will’s company, and being allowed to feed him in this way, apparently outweigh any fears of imminent rejection. In truth it’s enough to inflame Will’s desire for his alpha anew, that feeling of being the only thing in existence that matters. Not that he’s about to allow said alpha to see that. Will swallows and looks at Hannibal with a stern expression.

“What do you want, Hannibal?”

“Only the pleasure of your company,” comes the reply, all pleasant and proper and precision- engineered to piss Will off.

“You’ll spend another thirty years without it if you don’t cut the crap.”

If anything, Hannibal’s smile only broadens at this and Will unexpectedly finds himself hoping for his lips to part, to allow him a glimpse of fang. “Impossible boy,” Will says and it has the desired effect, Hannibal’s lips skinning back to reveal the points of his teeth. Will sighs, and aches for them in his neck, and says nothing.

Instead, Hannibal fills the silence with exactly what Will had expected. “I have but one request.”

“Of course you do.”

“Come to my table, allow me to make you dinner, permit me one conversation. I could live a very long time on one conversation.”

“You can live a very long time regardless.”

“Without you, it is mere existence.”

Will stops, his fork halfway to his mouth, and raises his eyebrows at Hannibal. “That was excessive, even for you.”

“Perhaps. The truth often is.”

Will hums and there is a lull before Hannibal rejoins.

“You know, Will, Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup, the finest china. Only used for special guests.”

Will’s chuckle is genuine and lightens his chest. As does Hannibal’s clear appreciation at having triggered that amusement. Will sits back in his chair with a sigh, smile still lingering. He missed this. Missed having an equal.

“How do you see me?” Will can’t help asking.

“My beginning and my end. My everything.”

Will’s chest aches and he bites back the words that try to claw out of his mouth, the admission he feels the same, that he’s been lost for so long, that Hannibal is the missing part of his soul (assuming he still has one). Instead, Will hums again before replying, cool and apparently unaffected.

“One dinner.” He forks the last of his food into his mouth and speaks as he chews. “To prove yourself to me again.”

Hannibal smiles and nods his agreement.

---

Later, sitting in front of the Hobbs’ front door, Will steals a glance at Hannibal and rolls his eyes.

“What are you smiling at?” he asks, not quite conjuring the detached disinterest he’s aiming for.

Hannibal, who might as well be purring with delight, takes a moment to consider, his eyes roving the homestead before them, denying Will the whole of his attention. It needles, just as it’s supposed to, bright little points of irritation biting their way out from under Will’s skin.

Will huffs, a release of pressure. “I got a criminology degree, you know. A good one, too, could have gone for the doctorate but…” He shrugs, one-shouldered and easy.

“Been there, done that?” Hannibal inquires. Will shoots him a smile, small but fond, acquiescent. “I did know,” Hannibal continues, returning to Will’s earlier remark. “I have even read your monograph. You were always fascinated by the creepy crawlies.”

“Says the man obsessed with cochlear gardens.” Will watches Hannibal let him have that and then, in for a penny, asks, “What did you think of it?”

“Your writing has improved greatly since I last read any of it. You have mastered your old weakness for the run-on sentence.”

“Damned with faint praise,” Will says, waiting Hannibal’s teasing out.

“You know what an imago is?”

“A flying insect.”

Hannibal smiles, soft lines by his mouth that will never grow any harsher. He knows Will knows that is not the answer he was looking for but he will indulge his sire’s intransigence. “An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives.”

“An ideal.”

“The concept of an ideal. Reading your book brought me as close to my ideal as I have been these last several decades. Still, it was only a concept, trapped and pinned to the page with its colour fading and its lifeblood drained.”

“Remind me never to ask you for a blurb on anything I publish,” Will says, burying himself under humour while the creak of his voice betrays him. “We should go,” he adds, unprepared to deal with the extent of Hannibal’s wanting him, even as he recognises the same urge building anew inside himself.

“Indeed,” Hannibal answers but neither of them move. “Was there something else?”

“What were you up to in that office?” Will asks, needing some kind of forewarning. He knows Hannibal did something, his antics with the box files deliberately obvious. And his alpha always did have a troublesome habit of setting things in motion out of idle curiosity. Just to see what would happen.

“I suppose we will find that out together,” Hannibal says, infuriatingly.

Will briefly considers punching him in the but he does have a job to do. He exits the car, stalking off towards the house and leaving Hannibal to follow or not as he may. The sound of the passenger door opening and closing provides the answer to that and Will doesn’t bother to look back, instead steeling himself to deal with Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ no-doubt polite but unconvincing front-door deflections.

Or not.

Will’s head snaps towards the door, beyond which he can hear the sounds of struggle, sense the outflowing of blood. He makes to sprint for the house but manages only a couple of steps before the front door is opening and the shadow of a man is pushing a bloodied, struggling woman into the light. The door slams and Will catches the woman – presumably Mrs Hobbs – in his arms. She is bleeding, bleeding, bleeding and Will’s vision is red, his eyes large and greedy as he goes to his knees under the deadweight of departing life. He pulls in a great breath of copper and fear and feels a fang slice his lip, shudders at the spark of pain, an echo of the agony beneath him. He can taste that pain as he tongues his lip, as he gazes into the woman’s shuttering eyes and he wants more of it. It’s been so long, he’s left it so long…

“Will.”

Hannibal. He shifts the woman so Hannibal can have access too. A life extinguishing in his arms and Hannibal at his side. This is right, this is how it always should be, this is-

“Will.” Hannibal’s voice is hushed, gentle but insistent. He places a finger beneath Will’s chin and lifts it until Will’s eyes are forced to lift and look at him. “You have a job to do, mustn’t forget.”

“Don’t you want to…” Will begins, hazy through the cloud of hunger that has enfolded him. He blinks. He knows Hannibal is right, and yet the instinct is almost too strong to resist. Why is it so hard to resist? Will whines, pained and overwhelmed.

“My love,” Hannibal says, stroking Will’s hair with such easy familiarity that Will cannot help but lean into it. “I have wanted nothing more for so many years but I think you wouldn’t thank me for it when the FBI arrives.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Will hisses.

Hannibal pauses at that, regards Will thoughtfully. “Have you been waiting for me to come and rescue you all this time, sire? From undeserving masters who use you like a dog in the endless pursuit of justice and you with no reason to leave? You who has razed cities to the ground, drained kings of their lifeforce, been a god of blood and terror, have you been hiding, waiting, craving for a reason to live again?”

Will whines again and does not deny it.

“Will.” Hannibal says it on a breath and his hand tightens in Will’s hair. “We have been foolish, haven’t we?”

Will can only nod.

Hannibal is right. He should have swallowed his stupid fucking pride and told Hannibal to stay. Should have kept him by his side at all times, through all ages, ‘til the end of everything. Should have circled the world with him, well-fed and well-loved, and then done it a thousand, thousand more times. Instead, he is shivering and famished on the doorstep of some dismal human killer, wracked with hunger of every imaginable kind, punished by his self-pitying refusal to feed more regularly.And now, despite his great age, the mere presence of his alpha is causing primal instincts to surface. He can feel it rising in Hannibal too,the instinct to come back together, to renew their bond;it’s almost strong enough for Will to beg for them to leave now, to be away from this farce of an existence, no note, no explanation.

Hannibal’s presence there is cause both for his weakness and his strength, as he pulls himself together as best he can.

Hannibal looks down at the body in his arms and for a moment Will’s unbeating heart gives a phantom spark. He can already taste her blood in Hannibal’s mouth. But then Hannibal moves away and takes the body with him, freeing Will from its weight.

“Go and play the hero,” Hannibal tells him, nodding at the front door, “and afterwards we will begin again.”

---

Somehow, Will finds himself inside the Hobbs’ front door, bracing himself against the hallway as he gropes for any trace of composure. He has his gun up, his eyes darting to the sides to check for activity, but he knows where he’s going. The stench of fear and panic is sharp in his nostrils and he follows it like the bloodhound rumour would paint him as.

Into the kitchen, then, ducking into the doorway and the sudden feeling of steel through his heart. He staggers, more from shock than pain, and grabs the door jamb for support, slicking it red. The knife is warm inside him, painted with another’s blood, and uncomfortable as Will’s body attempts to reject it. He looks up, into cold blue eyes that sparkle with triumph and then dull into confusion and fear as Will grasps the knife’s hilt and slides it from his body with a little groan of relief.

“Do you see?” he asks the bewildered Garret Jacob Hobbs, letting the blade fall from his shaking fingertips to clatter on the ground, the sound cacophonous in the stricken silence of the kitchen. Even the child lying on the floor has grown quiet, her life leaving her in great gouts; like mother like daughter.

“Monster,” Hobbs rasps, poised between fight and flight.

“Takes one to know one,” Will hisses, then lifts his gun and puts every bullet he has into the pathetic creature before him.

Hobbs is shoved back into the corner by the of Will’s shots and drops to the floor in a ragged heap, wet noises bubbling up from his throat. Will doesn’t pay him any further attention – he will die in that corner unwatched and unheard – instead folding to his knees beside the girl exsanguinating on the floor. Her breath is shallow but still there and Will clasps his hand around her neck, thinking to stem the flow despite the likely uselessness of the gesture. Her father used the same move on her as he did on her mother – uninspired – a deep cut to the neck, opening the carotid so her blood would be pushed out, fast and forceful, her young, healthy heart speeding her death along. An attempt at mercy, Will supposes, but a pointless one. She will still die in pain and confusion, life snatched from her by a man who should have lived to protect her.

“So easy to take a life, so hard to save one,” Hannibal remarks from the doorway. Will lifts his head, shaking, overwhelmed, suffused with blood and death and desperation. He’s covered in it, not an inch of him spared, and he looks up at Hannibal through glass blooming with crimson. Hannibal looks back at him and, without another word, crouches at the girl’s other side and gently replaces Will’s hand with his own.

“This won’t save her,” he murmurs, as Will’s knees finally give out from him and he slumps into a heap, still trembling and panting for air he doesn’t need. Even now, human instinct is still buried inside him, the urge for survival seeking out every last route, even the pointless ones.

Will shudders as he looks at the girl. A mere child.

A child. And his body burns.

“Hannibal, fuck, can you smell it?”

“Yes,” comes the reply, Hannibal not looking up from his examination of the damage to the girl’s throat, “you are in heat.”

“The blood, the fucking… there’s so much of it and…” Will trails off, whining.

“And your alpha is here,” Hannibal finishes for him, clinical and matter-of-fact, belying the need Will knows he is feeling.

Will is panting, sweating.

He should have fed. He shouldn’t have let Hannibal so close. He shouldn’t have agreed to help Jack. So many recriminations litter his path to this point, and none of them matter now.

Not with the girl bleeding out before them, and his whole body screaming for Hannibal to take him and knot him for the first time in decades, not when Will can barely focus on anything beyond the three of them.

“What?” Will looks up, tries to focus, realising Hannibal had said something.

“I asked if you want me to save her, Will?”

Will blinks, looks down at the girl, blinks again.

“She could be ours. We could be her fathers.” Hannibal’s words sound encouraging though his tone is matter of fact. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? A family? Let me give it to you Will. Let me make this future for us.”

Will winces and clasps his abdomen as a sharp pain strikes. His nostrils are filled with the scent of his would-be daughter’s blood. Could-be daughter. She’s choking on it, her eyes almost unseeing as her life continues draining inexorably from her.

An almost hysterical chuckle breaks from Will’s lips.

“Will she be your Claudia?”

Hannibal’s smile is soft, amused. “And which of us do you see as the scoundrel Lestat?”

Will finds a smile of his own, somehow. “Both. Neither. Can we just be ourselves?”

Hannibal looks like he would very much like to reach over and touch Will but he keeps his hands tight around the girl’s throat. “We certainly can try. But the point still stands. Do you want her, Will?”

“Yes,” the word escapes him like a cry.

Will seizes with longing and arousal as Hannibal’s fangs reveal themselves. He watches as he takes the near lifeless body into his arms and sinks his teeth into her, as Will sank his own into Hannibal so many centuries ago.

The girl convulses slightly as the last of this life flows from her and puts up no resistance as Hannibal nicks his wrist with a fang and streams a little of his blood down her throat. Will considers doing the same but it’s not necessary – Hannibal is his and she is Hannibal’s, the connection will flow through them all, it’s inescapable.

She will be nothing more than a husk now. At least, for a little while. Her new life will come with time and they will find her when it does. Hannibal will be drawn to her essence when she revives and will take her from whatever morgue or grave she has been stowed in.

And then they will be a family.

The thought sends another sharp pain through Will, his womb contracting with need.

“Hannibal.”

The alpha looks up and lets the girl slip from his arms, back into the pool of her own blood.

Will’s body cries out to be taken. So it is damn near excruciating when Hannibal simply raises a brow and tuts.

“You really should take better care of yourself, Will. Had you eaten as you should…”

Hannibal trails off when he hears Will’s desperate snarl.

“Hannibal,” Will growls.

Hannibal flinches, succumbing to the effect of his sire’s heat on him, helpless no matter how righteous he tries to seem.

Jolting into movement, Hannibal pulls Will to him and lifts him in his arms, getting to his feet in one smooth motion as though Will weighs nothing. The scent of Hannibal’s oncoming rut serves only to make Will’s womb clench all the harder, for his slick to run all the freer.

They are dripping with blood.

The little they had been flecked with from Mrs Hobbs, and the splatter on Will from shooting Garrett Jacob Hobbs, was nothing compared to the blood of their daughter. The Hobbs’ daughter once, but now – and forevermore – Will and Hannibal’s.

Will cries out as his body shakes through a painful tremor, instincts driving him to create new life inside him like a good omega, regardless of those organs having been rendered defunct and useless since the day and hour he was made.

“Breed me…” Will growls, trying not to whimper.

To which Hannibal sucks in a sharp breath and replies, “Claim me.”

Will trembles, and grins.

Trailing thick globules of blood, Hannibal carries Will from the kitchen, and towards the stairs. At that, Will can’t help a smirk. With backup doubtless on the way, Will can’t argue with the desire for privacy but Hannibal could have easily removed them to another room on the ground floor of the house. Instead, of course, Hannibal carries him to a bedroom and lays him gently on the soft blankets like a new bride.

Such a careful, caring action, deliciously at odds with the animalistic glean in Hannibal’s eyes that shows exactly how close the alpha is to descending into his rut.

And indeed, any restraint is gone in moments as Hannibal begins to tear at Will’s blood- soaked shirt. When it is shredded enough to fall apart, Hannibal crawls over Will like the predator he is, and lowers his mouth to Will’s right nipple.

Blood has soaked through to skin and Hannibal whines his pleasure as Will’s body contorts with need.

He needs to be naked, he needs Hannibal inside him.

But there is something else in this. Something in Hannibal sucking the blood from his chest, the girl’s blood. Their daughter.

The sight of it solidifies something within Will, a familial bond between the three of them. This will join them together irrevocably. Irredeemably. This is the promise of their future. The promise that he will never separate them again.

“Alpha…” Will gasps and wriggles and finally Hannibal pulls back.

His eyes are wide and feral, pupils dilated,

the expression Hannibal only wears when he’s killing or fucking. No, more than that, the one he only ever wears when he’s with Will, with his mate.

Will trembles at the sight. Has he ever understood what it means to be in love before this moment? How could he have? How could he have felt this and ever pushed Hannibal away?

“Mine,” Hannibal growls, moving back, ripping Will’s pants from him and throwing them away. They hit the wall next to the bed with a wet thunk, leaving a bloody impact stain.

Will tries to reach for Hannibal’s clothes, but it’s too late for that now.

He’s hazy, unfocused on anything but Hannibal’s scent.

But this is nothing compared to Hannibal’s loss of control. His rut is completely upon him now, vicious and unyielding until he knots his mate.

Hannibal pushes Will’s hands away. With motions quicker than even Will can follow, he reaches out and grabs Will’s throat, pulling him close enough to nose at the healed mating scar.

Oh, how Will hates that they heal this way.

It’s not a new regret, he has felt it every time they’ve renewed their claim on each other, but it’s all the more profound this time for how long it has been, how completely time has eradicated the proof of their bond.

Will whimpers as Hannibal pulls back and uses his grip to manipulate Will onto his front. He collapses to the bed when Hannibal releases him, but drags himself quickly onto all fours as he knows he must. As instinct drives him to in order to receive his alpha’s seed.

The sound behind him is unmistakable, Hannibal ripping open his exquisitely- tailored pants with no attempt to otherwise undo them.

“Stay,” he growls, an order and a plea, his hand now gripping the back of Will’s neck, forcing him down as he slides in tight against Will’s ass.

It’s only when the tip of Hannibal’s cock presses against his entrance that Will is aware of exactly how wet he is. Even for a heat, the slide is almost frictionless as Hannibal slips into him for the first time in decades, burying himself to the hilt.

The alpha pauses for a moment, shaking.

And Will wonders what is to come. They have never been so long between matings and now Hannibal has given him a child. Will shudders. Whatever is next, he wants it all.

There is some pain as Hannibal’s grip tightens on his neck, but it’s quickly soothed by the comfort of the alpha blanketing over his back, only the tattered remains of their clothes between them. He fucks Will hard. Harder than Will can remember.

And even with that, it is loving.

Hannibal’s grip loosens and he strokes over Will’s faded mating mark, before leaning in to nuzzle at it. Graze it with his fangs.

“Please, Hannibal.”

“Mine,” Hannibal grunts again and then sinks in his teeth.

Will comes.

He’s not sure if it lasts moments or days as his body drags Hannibal closer, further inside himself. He can feel the press of Hannibal’s knot against him but, beyond that, everything is dreamlike.

He is lost. There is nothing else but Hannibal’s body sliding in and out of his own.

It might last hours, Will can’t tell. He drifts in sensation, basks in their closeness, wishes that eternity could be nothing but this. But then Hannibal cries out as he pushes his knot into Will, and Will’s body locks around it, triggering another climax, this time for both of them.

Hannibal’s teeth are in his neck again, biting deeper.

Deeper.

“Enough, Hannibal,” Will commands in that voice that he so rarely wishes to use. The voice of a master over that which it has sired.

Still Hannibal grips, his tongue moving over flesh a moment longer, and Will wonders for a moment if it will be necessary to use force to settle his alpha. Hannibal’s remarkable discipline does not always extend to his indulgence in Will and they have sometimes come to blows before Hannibal’s control re-establishes itself. Will tenses slightly, in readiness for a fight but then Hannibal is pulling back, releasing. Collapsing.

Hannibal falls to his side and takes Will with him, his hips still pumping.

Both addled with pleasure and relief, Hannibal continues to fill Will with every drop of his seed, until they both black out from the exertion of their continued climaxes.

If time hadn’t lost meaning before, it has now.

Will has no idea how long has passed since they tied.

It’s still light out, but Will can’t be sure if they are even on the same day.

The initial haze of his heat has lifted, sated for now by the mating bite. Still, he will not be truly satisfied until he’s returned it.

Hannibal murmurs and then is awake.

He growls and Will shushes him gently.

He growls again, pushes up against Will and Will pulls away, seed spilling from him in the wake of Hannibal’s softened cock. This only brings another snarl from the rutting alpha, at which Will turns and snaps his fangs.

“Damn greedy boy. Insatiable boy. Behave and I’ll give you what you want.”

Hannibal proves his point by humping his now hard- again cock against Will’s thigh.

As quick as Hannibal had been before, Will pushes the alpha to his back and sinks down on his twitching member.

Hannibal’s growling fades into a howl and he almost doubles over, baring his teeth and snapping at Will.

Will chuckles, and smooths Hannibal’s hair back from his sweat -damp face.

“Oh, Hannibal. Always so beautiful in your rut. I have missed this.”

Hannibal’s lip twitches, his fangs exposed, when Will leans down into a biting kiss. He doesn’t know if the blood he tastes is his own or Hannibal’s as they catch fangs in each other's lips. He doesn’t care to know.

Will begins to rock gently, working Hannibal’s knot up. It swells quickly, and Will is glad that their bodies are reacting with such speed given that they won’t be alone for long. In fact he’s surprised they haven’t already been happened upon. Perhaps it’s a sign that not much time has passed at all.

“Remember this time, dear boy,” Will whispers, hovering above Hannibal’s lips before sliding his mouth down to Hannibal’s neck. “Remember it like the first time. Like every time.”

When Hannibal whimpers, Will sinks in his teeth.

And that’s all the alpha needs to howl once more and resume his impossible task of impregnating his omega. His sire.

Will sighs and lets Hannibal ravish him.

Lets him work through his rut.

For now, at least.

They have so much time ahead of them now.

---

“Will!” Jack’s voice is quickly followed by a heavy rapping on the bedroom door.

Will shakes his head, pulling himself from the muggy feeling of a heat temporarily sated by knots and bites. He’d passed out after their last round, straddling Hannibal’s hips, still securely knotted despite having collapsed face first onto the alpha’s chest.

He blinks and turns his head to the door, raises a brow.

“What do you intend to do?” Hannibal asks, casually curious, on his back with his arms crossed above his head. His knot pulses with his words.

Will squirms pleasantly at the sensation but keeps looking in the direction of the disturbance a moment more. Then he turns his head slowly, a sweet smile just for Hannibal bursting across his face.

“I intend to do nothing more than see just how you get us out of this mess. And you will get us out, Hannibal, because immediately after you do, I am taking you to my home, sating your rut, and then never letting you out of my sight again.”

Hannibal grins and calls out, in a professional tone that feels foreign in this intimate setting.

“Jack, this is Hannibal. I respectfully ask that you don’t come in.”

“Doctor Lecter? What the hell is-”

“I will write a full report for you, but suffice to say, Will was unexpectedly overcome. The adrenaline and shock of the experience, of the deaths downstairs, has driven his body into heat. A perfectly natural, if rare, side effect for an omega in these circumstances.”

Jack murmurs something on the other side of the door that neither of them can quite make out. Likely something about how he understands how delicate omegas can be.

Will raises a brow at Hannibal. Follows it with a scowl.

Before either of them can say anything further, Jack replies again.

“I will have this room restricted until you are ready to leave.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

They can hear retreating footsteps and Will bites back a growl.

“I would be mad at you for pulling that misogynistic bullshit with my boss, if I thought for one moment you believed it. Or that I’d have to work with him much longer. I’m surprised you didn’t just invite him in for us to feast upon.”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to be so indiscreet. Though it’s not too late-”

“No,” Will growls.

Hannibal hums his agreement, then rocks his hips slightly and makes Will sigh at the feel of his knot still locked firmly within him.

“I will endeavour not to do anything rash. We’ll have to wait until we can steal Abigail away from the morgue. Once she’s fully recovered, we will start anew elsewhere.”

“Not Florence,” Will grumbles, clenching around Hannibal’s knot hard enough to make the alpha draw a sharp breath.

“No, not Florence,” Hannibal agrees, mouthing at the renewed mating mark on Will’s neck.

Will smiles, a happiness descending on him that he has missed all these years. Except now it holds the promise of so much more, all just waiting for the moment Abigail wakes in her bed to see her new fathers sitting beside her, each holding one of her hands. Ready to begin their life as a family.

---

“And here we are now,” Will ends, his hands spreading with a flourish.

“That’s it?” Freddie frowns, angry. “You really expect me to buy that?”

Will shrugs. “Up to you, Freddie. The evidence is all there, you just have to interpret it.”

She glares at him, clearly trying to decide just what kind of crazy he really is. Will thinks she’s this close to storming out of the room, off to write an exposé of his bizarre fantasies, when her eyes alight on his chest, which hasn’t risen for a breath for several minutes now. Her gaze widens into a full-blown stare and Will allows himself a smirk as he sees the wheels turning in her mind.

“You… you…” she stammers, before pulling herself together. Will always has admired her gumption. “You smell wrong, nobody could ever tell what you were until Lecter claimed you. And – wait, he did claim you, everybody saw the mark…”

She trails off as Will, smiling indulgently, lowers his shirt collar to reveal the smooth, unmarred flesh he’d allowed to regenerate (much to Hannibal’s heated protests) just for this moment.

Freddie’s pen drops to her lap and rolls off somewhere into the office, forgotten, as she raises a hand to her mouth. She leans forward, on the edge of her seat, as she scans the patch of skin which she had posted pictures of, bloodied and torn, just mere days previously. She looks as if she wants to touch; maybe she would have, if her attention hadn’t just been gripped by something new.

She peers into the darkening room and finally registers the boxes, the packing that has already begun in readiness for a new life, elsewhere. Her eyes snap to his, suddenly frantic. “That’s not the end. It can’t end there. Or, tell me something else, tell me about before, before meeting him this time.”

Will can’t help but smirk at how quickly her smug entitlement has melted into eagerness.

That, and the fact that she believes it all and yet apparently has developed no concerns for her safety.

He smiles at her, almost kind if not for the momentary flash of points behind his lips.

“For you, there is no more to tell. No more stories, Ms Lounds.”

“There has to be more… What people wouldn’t give to have your life! What I wouldn’t give!” Her eyes glow with the burning desire he has seen so many times before, so predictable in this type of human. Only one had ever surprised him… but then, Hannibal hadn’t really ever been human,not even as the young Lithuanian man who had looked into Will’s eyes and told him the bite could wait until he was ready.

“You agreed to this interview for a reason, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” she presses.

Will smirks.

“And what reason would that be?”

“To make me one of you. Another companion. You can see we are all alike, that I was meant to-”

Will cuts her off. “Ms Lounds, I can assure you, we are nothing alike.”

He laughs, a cruel chuckle, watching as she stands from her chair, places her hands on her hips, every bit the entitled brat.

“I’m not leaving here until-”

Will moves so swiftly from his chair to hers that he knows he is nothing more than a blur to her. And the fear in her eyes confirms it.

She shrieks as he looms over her, taking hold of her shoulders with a crushing grip as he growls at her.

“Is that what you want? To be one of the immortals?” he growls, enjoying the fear that grows in her eyes, replacing the passion of moments before. He leans in close and whispers, breath cool against her ear, “You’ll never be more than food to us.” And there it is, the difference between him and Hannibal, and the likes of Freddie Lounds. Her eagerness has been replaced by terror that marks her as fodder, not friend.

Freddie screams and, with a grin, Will lets her go.

He watches her run but he doesn’t need to follow.

He can hear as she comes to a sudden halt just beyond the door. And then he hears Hannibal croon words dripping with charm… and other, deadlier things.

“Ms Lounds, we’ve been remiss. I believe it’s about time my sire and I had you for dinner.”

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