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blindmagdalena · 3 months

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Eat Your Ego, Honey ( Ch 8 )

homelander x oc 18+ escort services, sex work, voyeurism, stalking, Homelander in general. see ao3 link for detailed tags. chapter index. check out the playlist!

chapter summary: After the disastrous spectacle that was Homelander's birthday celebration, America's "disgraced" hero is forced to reconcile with the demons in his head, and what that means for Layla, the woman standing precariously in their path.

additional tags: unhealthy/codependent dynamics, threats of violence, themes of abuse, canon deviation. 🖤

Sleep is a scarcity. Homelander fades in and out of consciousness, but he never truly rests. It’s strange to sleep somewhere he can't see the comfort of his own gaze endlessly mirrored back at him. Those mirrors make the world so much bigger, but for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t mind how small it is. What would normally be a dark, claustrophobic thing is now a great deal safer than the open expanse of a stage.

Layla’s warmth and the faint weight of her arm around him is the only thing that keeps him somewhat tethered. Her heartbeat is a steady metronome against his back, her breaths warmly ghosting over his neck and shoulder. It’s been hours, but it feels too soon when the covers move on his skin as she readjusts in her sleep, pulling her arm from him. He lifts the blanket and rolls to face her.

She’s turned away from him, her dark hair fanned out in a wild splay on the pillow beneath her. Light from the unsleeping city spills in through the window, illuminating her figure. It’s strange to see her sleeping in day clothes and not the sleepwear he’s used to seeing her in. She didn’t have the time to change tonight. She was too busy taking him back into her arms, into her bed, into her life. He brushes his knuckles down between her shoulder blades, the disheveled silk of her blouse soft beneath his fingers.

He’ll find out why Starlight’s scent is lingering on her when she wakes.

Sliding closer to her, he flattens his palm over her hip and noses at the line of her throat, inhaling deeply, chasing the scent beneath shampoo and lotion until he finds what’s simply her. Her wine flush has followed her into sleep, her skin warmer than usual. She responds to his touch with a sleepy sigh of pleasure. Even now, the sound of her voice does so much to quiet the storm in his heart. He screws his eyes shut and buries his face into the soft tresses of her hair, gritting his teeth against the urge to squeeze too tight.

The urge to keep.

The urge to break it all apart and let the storm rage. Instead, he keeps himself perfectly still, trying to swallow the thrumming energy coiling in his tense muscles. End this, the darkness in him hisses, tempting him. How many days has he resisted the urge to reach out, not with his hands but with this thing inside him, and ruin everything? Everyone? A flash of crimson is all it would take to cleave this world in half.

But he can’t afford to. Not then, not now.

The only way he made it out of the cold isolation of the lab, far away from the bad room, was by convincing the staff, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was good. He was their perfect man-made hero. Logically, he knows they can’t ever put him back in the bad room. He’d never let them. It doesn’t stop the nightmares.

He folds in on himself, doing his best to forget that he even has power to wield against others—a whim as sharp as glass. Now, just as then, he orders his body and mind to still, to calm.

If Layla had stayed yesterday morning, things would have been different. His tightly controlled grip on her hip flexes minutely. How can she sleep so deeply knowing that she’s ruined him?

What was she doing with Starlight?

The inkling of a deeper betrayal slithers into his mind. He slides his hand up the length of her torso, traversing the familiar scape of her body, and into her hair, coiling his fingers into a gentle fist of it. One twist is all it would take to quiet her soothing voice forever. Would hair ever feel the same to him again, or would it start to smell like burning tears and cornea? The stench of grief hits him so suddenly that his eyes sting with it, and he recoils from Layla like he himself has been burned.

Has she been scheming against him all along, too?

Fucked. He’s so completely and entirely fucked.

He exhales harshly, curling his hand into a tight fist and biting into the meaty curve just below his thumb, muffling a tearful keen. He can’t think back to that morning without reliving how horribly it went wrong, and how the dominos just continued to fall until he was losing his senses in front of the entire world.

Those moments on stage play over and over in his mind, but each instance of them grows more warped than the last. He’s starting to forget what he really said, conflating memories with nightmares. How much of himself did he really let slip? How ugly does the world think him to be now?

He can see the headlines now.

Homelander: America’s Fallen Hero

Homelander: Vought’s Poster Boy Throws a Tantrum

Homelander: Deranged Freak Snaps On Stage

He’s spiraling worse than he did during Stormfront’s smear campaign against him. It isn’t just dissenting opinions and slander—he’s finally given them real ammunition to use against him. The question is: how much, and how will he refute it? He needs to be able to recover from this.

His voice of reason is treacherously quiet. Nothing but the dreadful echo of I warned you.

With his thoughts twisting in on themselves like a pit of angry, writhing snakes, he finds it impossible to stay still any longer. His whole body is plagued with a restlessness that turns into agony. Carefully, he extracts himself from Layla’s side and slips out of her bed. He needs to see it for himself. He needs to understand the degree of damage that’s been done to him.

Stepping out into her living room, Homelander picks up the remote for her television and flips it on, dropping the volume to such a miniscule level that he’ll be the only one to hear it. He lowers himself down onto the couch and stares, watching his body move and speak, seemingly puppeteered by someone other than himself, operating in ways he’s never seen himself behave in front of a camera before.

“I’m done being persecuted for my strength–”

Erratic.

“Persecuted for my strength–”

Unhinged.

“Persecuted–”

Alive.

If they want to take us down, we’re going to take every last one of them down with us.

The sky is just barely beginning to turn with dawn’s light when Layla wakes to a chill that rolls up her spine. Her bed feels colder than it has any right to, and as the fractured events of last night spill back into her mind, it doesn’t take her long to figure out why.

Homelander—who knows if he’ll accept that name yet—is nowhere to be seen.

Her temples throb with the aftermath of emptying a hefty bottle of wine as she lifts herself from bed, running her hands through her hair, breaking apart the tangles with her fingers.

The breadcrumb trail of Homelander’s suit leading from her balcony to her bed tells her that he hasn’t left. The image of him streaking through the sky in the nude does occur to her, though. Straightening her borrowed blouse and tucking it back into the waist of her skirt, she steps lightly through the dark of her apartment, head on a swivel, until she spots her quarry.

Reclined on her couch, Homelander paints an image somewhere between a renaissance painting and a billboard for depression, his body illuminated by the flashing light of the television. His expression is morose, his hand sitting on the couch next to him at an angle, the remote tilted in his loose grasp. As she approaches, he begins tapping on the volume until his own recorded voice fills the empty space between them.

It’s his tirade from last night.

“Hey, babe,” he drawls from the couch, voice pitched low and despondent. The way he pops each consonant makes the pet name sound downright derogatory. “So, what’s the verdict?” He asks, lazily gesturing to the television with the remote. “Is it everything you thought it would be?” His gaze slides from the screen to her, his head lolling to the side with it.

Any concern or lingering sleepiness in her face is swiftly replaced with bewilderment. “Excuse me?”

“‘Excuse me?’” He mocks, pitching his voice up condescendingly. Her expression hardens as he stands, the remote bouncing along the couch cushions where he tosses it. “Don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not playing anything with you,” she responds tersely. She’s never been a morning person. Compound that with the ache in her skull and the naked pain in the neck standing in front of her, she’s not feeling her usual bounty of patience. Last night, he was a weepy, sopping mess. Now she doesn’t know what to expect from the tight line of his shoulders, or the agitated curl of his upper lip. “I have no idea what it is you think you’re picking at.”

“Since when are you and Starlight pals, then?” He hisses through his teeth.

Shit. Annie. She never sent that text.

“Since yesterday,” she answers, her calm stretched thin. “She saw me at the elevator. She offered a shower and a change of clothes. That’s all.” She doesn’t find it necessary to explain why Starlight might have offered such a thing. He knows exactly how she looked when she left his penthouse, bruised and disheveled.

The memory looks to serve as a crisp slap, some level of clarity filtering into the incensed glaze of his eyes. His grip flexes, and he bares his teeth in an animalistic flash of frustration. He isn’t willing to accept fault for that yet.

“Stop fucking lying to me!” He snaps, the sudden jump in volume startling her. He advances on her sharply, halting her step backwards with an iron grip, his palm against her throat, his thumb and index finger notching perfectly behind the curve of her jaw below her ears. The contact is minimal, and yet the strength in those two fingers alone is more than enough to hold her firmly in place.

“You’re all the fucking same! Agendas, lies, all of you trying to control me, use me, and you—you’re exactly the fucking same. You’ve taken everything from me,” he snarls. Despite his fervor, his grip remains remarkably controlled. Sometimes it’s as if his mind and his body are two independent entities: one an unstable, emotionally malnourished psyche, and the other a finely tuned weapon.

The human mind wants dangerous things to be ugly, but even now, Homelander’s twisted, angry expression is not an ugly thing. Though adrenaline surges the thrum of her heart, it isn’t laden with the fear any reasonable person would have. The thrill coursing through her isn’t rooted in some comfort that he won’t hurt her. It’s the knowledge that he—more devastating than any man she’s ever known—absolutely will if not handled correctly.

It’s like holding a thundering storm in her bare hands.

Layla stares wide-eyed and astonished, so thoroughly unaware of what he’s accusing her of that she struggles to speak around the hard lump in her throat. He leans closer yet, clutching her with all the same strength, tenderness and menace of the ocean cradling a ship.

“I killed her,” he whispers, the words passing between them like a confession to God himself. He’s so near, she could rest her forehead against his if she wanted. “I killed her for lying to me. I’ll kill you, too.”

Madelyn Stillwell. The name returns to her like a ghost, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling. Or was it Stormfront? The unnamed mother of his child? One was the victim of a domestic terrorist, one committed suicide, and the third is yet undetermined. All of them are apparent casualties of Homelander’s turbulent presence in their lives. Is she to be the fourth in a string of tragedies? Rage swells so suddenly in her heart that she almost chokes on the fire of it. What right does he have to interrogate her and threaten her?

“Are you glad?” She asks, her voice steady despite the tremble in her hand holding his wrist in turn. “Are you glad to have killed her?”

His expression flips as if he’s been struck, crinkled brows shooting up. “What?”

“Will you be glad to have killed me?” She asks tightly, her nails biting ineffectual crescents into his titanium flesh. Her tone is sharp and no longer meant to soothe. She speaks to cut. “Or will you just be even more alone?”

Like hers, his eyes turn glassy. “No,” he says softly. She doesn’t know if that’s an answer or a plea.

“Let me go,” she tells him firmly, fighting to hold onto the fires of her own indignant anger. His abrupt flashes of softness and vulnerability compromise her resolve.

“Go where, Layla?” He snaps, suddenly loud again. His broken desperation and seething anger make his voice reedy. “Where the fuck could you go that I wouldn’t still feel you? Kill you, fuck you, love you; you’re in my fucking head!”

You’re all the fucking same!

She isn’t dead, but he’s treating her like a ghost nonetheless. As if she’s already one of the many specters haunting him.

“You love me?” She asks him, snatching that precarious lifeline out of the messy slurry of his words. She’s not sure that he knows the meaning of it.

Does she?

The tension in Homelander’s face goes slack, stricken to hear those words fall from her lips. His mouth opens and closes as he tries and fails to form the right words. It’s too vulnerable to say yes, and too complicated to say no. Ultimately, he can’t bear to answer first.

“Do you love me?” He asks, defensive, as if she were the one who brought the terrifying gravity of love into the equation in the first place. The weight of it turns her tongue to lead.

There’s an adolescent sense of fumbling in this moment that would be endearing if he were not clutching her jaw with inhuman strength, the whispered promise of her death hanging over them like a creaky guillotine. In another life, this could have been a very sweet confession.

“Do you?” He prompts her again, desperate. He cups the back of her head with his other hand, taking a step closer. His chest bumps her forearms where she has them tightly braced, hands clamped tightly over his wrist. It’s a meager barrier to uphold, but she does so steadfastly. His hold on her is suffocating, his agonized ocean eyes filling up her vision. He’s larger than life, leaving space for little else in her life ever since he crashed into it.

Even when he’s gone, she is consumed by him like a fever that refuses to be sweated out. When her career first began, she knew well enough not to entertain superhumans. It wasn’t a bias she held against them per se, but the opposite: she knew from the start that she would become intoxicated on the danger of them. Homelander is the epitome of everything she’s ever been too afraid to let herself love. He’s the first person to ever be enough of a risk to scare her, and enough of a reward to satiate her. She can feel her destruction lurking in him just as plainly as her parents found their own in their shared thrill seeking.

“I want to,” she whispers, a secret she’s denied even to herself until now. “But you’re making it so fucking hard.”

He exhales roughly, something like hope softening the tension in his expression before he screws his eyes shut, another wave of agony contorting his features. His forehead thumps gently against hers. “I don’t know—I don’t know how else to be. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to make it easy.”

Finally, he releases her jaw from the snare of his grip, only to take either side of her face between his hands, pulling away to look at her. He’s always been younger than her in a multitude of ways, but in this moment, the agonized youth in his eyes takes her breath away. “I was—I was made to be loved. I was supposed to be everyone’s hero. They poked and prodded me, manufactured me in a-a fucking lab to be perfect, but no one—”

Layla’s eyes widen, her heart seized. What?

Homelander bares his teeth like a wounded animal, breath hissing in and out of his clenched teeth as tears roll down his cheeks. “But no one does, no one fucking does, no one loves me,” he says through his teeth, nearly choking on the words. “I don’t understand how to make it easy, Layla,” he sobs, hands shaking on either side of her face. She can’t tell if it’s from sheer emotion, or the restraint it takes not to crush her between them.

“So just—tell me what I need to do, please,” he begs her, devastatingly beautiful in the same way the sprawling webbing of a shattered mirror is. “Tell me how to be easy to love.”

Breathless, Layla stands there with her heart bleeding so freely, so painfully, that she swears there’s warm blood soaking onto the pristine white blouse she wears.

There is a monster in Homelander. At times, she can feel the claws of it in his grip on her. Hear it growling in her ear. When it comes to handling monsters, banishment is always the remedy. Slay the beast, free the man. Homelander’s monster is not so easily felled, nor is she certain it should be. He was not born with sharp teeth and claws. From what she’s gathered, they were filed into fine points long before he was a man.

People like to think of the monster within them as an outside force. Corruption, propaganda, the devil. Layla has spent enough time in bed with people’s deviance to know better. The proverbial devil is not outside of humanity, but embedded deep within It cannot be safely extracted any more than a beating heart can.

But corruption isn’t a heart—it’s a stomach.

It craves and yearns, it twists and aches and growls when hungry. Just as Eve ate of the apple, humans take bites of sin to satiate their monster. Like people, monsters come in a wide variety of shapes, temperaments, and cravings. Some beasts can be satisfied with a nibble here and there. Others require more. Some never learned how to know when they’re full.

After all he has been deprived of, Homelander may never be truly satisfied, but does that mean he doesn’t deserve to be fed at all?

No, Layla thinks. It doesn’t.

Both of their faces are streaked wet with tears as they hold one another’s gazes. Gingerly, she brings her own hands up to cup his face, wiping his tears with her thumbs. “Okay,” she whispers, afraid her own voice of reason will hear her. “Okay, my darling.”

Relief helps smooth the crease between his brows, but it doesn’t dissipate entirely. “Say it,” he urges her, the hands still upon her face giving the faintest nudge. “Say you love me.”

“I love you,” she says, teary and quiet, but with conviction. She leans in, and he allows her to, no longer holding her firmly in place for fear that she might suddenly vanish. “I love you,” she says again, a promise that ghosts his lips. He shudders. “I love you. You’re in my head,” she says, echoing his own words back at him. Her lips brush against his in a not-quite kiss. “You were from the start.”

He exhales a pained, keening sound, pushing his fingers into her hair and pulling her deep into a feverish kiss. His hunger for her is voracious, and his desire is a force she might not withstand—not by virtue of its violence, but because of its sheer magnitude. He kisses her fiercely, one arm slipping around her middle to keep her body from bowing under the weight of his love.

“I love you, too,” he breathes, the relief in his voice palpable. She takes the air of it into her lungs like it might save her. “I love you so fucking much.”

It’s dangerous, she knows, to trick herself into believing she can satiate his mountainous hunger. Danger is like an ice bath, though. You grow accustomed to the bite of it.

Morning light creeps slowly into Layla’s condo. Homelander trails her as closely as her own shadow, breathing in against the crook of her neck while she cooks breakfast. He’s partially dressed in his undershirt and underwear, his suit folded neatly upon her vanity for the time being. It’s nice to feel his arms around her without the obstructive padding of his suit. Without the bulk of it, she fits more closely against him, his superhuman warmth like a particularly cuddly space heater pressed against her back.

“One egg or two?” She asks him, plucking one from the container on the counter.

“Mmm… Two,” he says, the deliberation making it sound more like a trivia answer than a preference.

She cracks four eggs into the pan, one at a time. “Over easy, medium, hard…?”

He grins against her neck, and she gives his hand at her hip a playful little swat with the back of her silicone spatula. “I dunno,” he says, nuzzling her. “However you like it.”

“Have you never had eggs before?” She asks, looking back at him.

He’s got his chin propped up on her shoulder. His gaze flickers up from the sizzling pan to meet hers. “Just scrambled.”

…I was made… manufactured in a fucking lab…

She swallows a small lump in her throat, turning back to the eggs. She flips them all over easy and plates them with the toast. When she takes the toast off of the plates and begins slicing them into strips, Homelander makes an inquisitive noise.

“You’ll see,” she says cryptically, shooing him to the table as she plates their breakfasts and carries them to the table.

Homelander sits, and she sets his plate down in front of him. She sits on the adjoining corner to his, but within seconds he has a grip on her seat. The chair legs groan as he slides her closer to him, smiling at her look of surprise. “That’s better,” he says, his knee bumping hers.

He’d likely prefer she be in his lap. There’s always a lingering sense that she’s never quite close enough, even when they’re pressed tightly against one another. He might not be satisfied until he finds a way to open her up and crawl inside.

Huffing a small laugh, she gestures to his plate. “Use the toast sticks to break the yolk,” she tells him, and then demonstrates on her own meal, jabbing a piece of toast into the soft yellow yolk, coating it properly before taking a bite.

Blinking, Homelander does the same. He hums appreciatively, nodding with a mouthful of food.

“My gramma insisted that all food tastes better when it’s dipped. She always made my breakfasts this way,” she explains, her smile tinged with bittersweet nostalgia. “I can’t remember the last time I did it for myself.”

Silence follows. She glances up to find Homelander staring intently at his plate, a cut of toast pinched between his fingers, dripping yolk back down onto the egg. Layla takes a breath to speak, but that inhale is all it takes to snap him from his thoughts, his sharp blue eyes meeting hers.

“Ryan would like this, I think,” he says. She can tell he’s working to keep his voice conversational.

“Ryan?” She echoes, though it clicks a second after she says it.

“My son,” he confirms, clearing his throat gently. She shares his trepidation as he enters this particular topic of conversation, considering the fallout the last time it was broached. He dips the toast again and takes another bite, seemingly buying time with deliberate chews.

Layla bites her tongue, choking back her own knee-jerk response. She likes children just fine, in theory. She’s had very little practical experience. Still, words of unbidden advice bubble up on her tongue as if she’s an expert. She wants to tell Homelander to go to the boy, talk to him. He told her that she had taken everything from him, presumably referring to his very public meltdown, but that isn’t true in a number of ways. He has a son out there somewhere, confused and without either of his parents.

It sets a sympathetic churn in her gut. Grieving her own parents as a child made an adult of her far too soon. She may not have raised any children herself, but she can speak as a child who was left behind.

“He’s nine. He’s strong,” Homelander continues tentatively. “I mean, really strong. Strong like me,” he says, pride underlining each word, driving out the hesitance. “He’s so much like me. I never thought I’d see it, but he’s real. He’s—” he breaks into a small, incredulous laugh. “—He’s a miracle. A real, born miracle.”

Unlike you, she surmises from his tone. He said that Vought had made him. The world has been rocked by the revelation that supes are the result of Vought’s pharmaceutical ventures, but the way Homelander talks of his son makes him sound different. An exception to that fact, somehow.

“You should go to him,” she encourages, still holding onto a level of cautiousness on the matter. “I was left behind by my parents. I don’t wish it on anyone.”

“I didn’t leave him behind,” Homelander corrects sharply. She was right to tread lightly. “He left me,” he says, though he doesn’t speak with anger so much as he does woundedness. He’s never expressed anything but love—bordering on reverence—for his son, and yet he has completely roadblocked himself from reaching out.

It’s complicated, he told her before.

“He’s nine. It’s not his job to uncomplicate things or bridge the gap,” she says as gently as she can muster, though even she can hear the weariness in her own voice. “It’s yours. He needs you to be the adult, to help the world make sense. It’s one thing to give him space, but you can’t abandon him.”

At first, there is a flash of petulant defiance in Homelander’s eyes, obvious in the tight set of his jaw. To Layla’s relief, however, it fades into quiet consideration. He looks back down to his half-finished plate.

“You can’t take personally what anyone, much less a child, does out of grief,” she says softly, reaching out to put her hand atop his where it rests on the table. “Ryan needs wisdom. Support. People who love him. He needs his father.”

He looks up at her with a level of vulnerability in those ocean blue eyes that never fails to pull her into the depths. “You think so?”

“I know so,” she says firmly. To this day, she can’t imagine what she wouldn’t do for just one more day with her own father.

Slowly, the wateriness of his gaze becomes a sparkle. Homelander smiles. He has as many smiles as an ice cream shop has flavors, and this one says he’s just had an idea.

“What?” Layla asks after a beat, an edge of suspicion to her tone.

“Nothing,” he says placatingly. His smile shifts. She knows that flavor of smile. That one means he’s lying. “Just relieved is all. Could I use your phone?”

It’s a wonder the ease with which Homelander glides from mood to mood, as if he puts each one neatly in a box before he takes out the next one. Layla only hesitates for a second before she nods, sliding out of her chair to go and fetch her cellphone. She still needs to text Annie.

“Jesus,” she says softly, staring at her screen with a deep crease in her brow.

“What?” Homelander asks, leaning in his seat.

She has thirty missed calls, and about as many text messages.

THIS IS ASHLEY BARRET. HAVE YOU SEEN HOMELANDER? IF YOU KNOW WHERE HOMELANDER IS, PLEASE CONTACT ME. PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU KNOW WHERE HOMELANDER IS. MISS ALDEN PLEASE CONTACT ME AND ONLY ME IF YOU HAVE SEEN HOMELANDER. IF YOU CAN PLEASE INFORM HOMELANDER HE IS UP.

Ashley Barret. Layla recalls the name from Homelander’s initial booking. She had been the one to handle the details and arrange payment.

“Ashley Barret is very desperate to find you,” she says, reading the texts as she walks back towards him. “She says that you’re… up.” She stops at the table, looking at him. “What does that mean?”

The chair legs scrape audibly against the floor when Homelander stands up. “Give me that,” he says, taking the phone from her outstretched hand. His expression pinches tightly as he scrolls through the messages, lips parted. “I’m… up,” he says slowly, processing the words that mean nothing to Layla. With a tap, she hears a dial tone. Homelander holds the phone to his ear.

“Miss Alden–” answers a feminine voice immediately.

“What do you mean I’m up?” Homelander interrupts, a harshness to his voice that Layla doesn’t expect to hear outside of an argument.

“21 points with your base,” Ashley says breathlessly.

Homelander’s expression softens, becoming wonder-like. “What did you say?”

“21 points. They loved your speech!”

He looks at Layla, familiar glassiness returning to his eyes. He lifts his loose hand, which curls slowly into a fist, as if he’s taking hold of something precious, some nebulous concept of grace he had thought lost.

“A massive 44% uptick with white males in the Rust Belt.”

“Yes,” Homelander hisses through his teeth, pumping his fist triumphantly. “Fuck yes! Yes!” With that same hand, he suddenly takes hold of the back of Layla’s neck, pulling her into a deep kiss. Her noise of surprise is muffled against his lips, his tongue a slick demand on hers.

“They’re saying you’re confident and unapologetic!” Ashley’s voice continues to prattle from the phone, though Layla’s finding it hard to pay attention with the way Homelander’s taking a fistful of her hair, bowing her back, kissing her hungrily. “That you’re not afraid to be yourself!”

He outright moans against her lips. She breaks away from him with a gasp, hand pressed against her chest. “Should I give you a moment alone with Ashley?” She asks breathlessly, only half-joking. The man is absolutely alight against her, heat radiating in his touches. The news trips an alarm bell somewhere in the back of Layla’s mind, but she’s struggling to process it in the wake of his voraciousness.

“Christ, no,” he says. The phone hits the ground with a clatter, Ashley’s confused voice continuing distantly on the line. He cups both sides of Layla’s face and pulls her back in, exhaling a pleased little growl against her lips. “Did you hear? They love me. They fucking love me,” he says between kisses, breathless and downright giddy.

Drawing back, he strokes her cheeks tenderly with his thumbs, his smile broad, eyes shining with relief, joy, and something Layla can’t quite place, though it causes a small knot to form in her gut.

“They want me to be myself.”

#this chapter took everything out of me but it's here and i hope to god it doesn't take this long for the next chap #bc i already have portions written and i know where it's all going!!!#blood sweat and tears in this fic fr lmao #homelander x oc #homelander x original character #homelander fanfiction #eat your ego #my writing

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oryst · 9 months

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my turn with the TCOM OC braincell

i had tried to make a character out of the one shown in the prison concept art, but he's been kind of dormant until recently. i got stuck on calling him Clave... still sorta fond of Reel as a name, too. maybe

haven't yet got too much of him sorted out. was thinking that he was born in Metronome to people who moved there permanently for work, so he grew up in the city. if travel outside of the city is allowed, he might do that to visit the people in his family outside of the city... that's the reason on the travel paperwork at least. can see him doing some work in smuggling and transport. sometimes brings back things that are difficult to get or expensive to buy

his "real" job might be in construction or factory work. very much a labourer. he's worked alongside metrognomes and while he doesn't /know/ what they really are, he likes them. gets along with them well. might feel protective of them, in a way? like they're just lil fellas...

very tentative connection to main plot: his smuggling work would have gotten him in written contact with New, and he was supposed to help her get into the city in a slightly more legitimate way (forged papers)... but he was caught and imprisoned before the plan got put into motion. New might think that he flaked out or something, so they could have conflict until it's been explained

i also like the idea of him helping out with @/kordeliiius's Axis in whatever kind of surveillance/hijacking stuff she might do. someone to help move the big heavy stuff, really. i kind of like the idea of him perhaps having an accent in some way and/or speaking a bit more than one language, too, cos his parents aren't locals (though the amount of business + work in Metronome might make it a "melting pot" of many different people and cultures and languages all in one place!)

#occam ert #occametronome

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dreamsofalifeold · 1 year

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((TBH I had ideas today for an NSR verse/offshoot of my favorite bastard man oc Anatole.

Goes by Doktor Metronome or some bullshit and he has a literal metronome for a head and uses it as well as weird sound frequencies and binaural beats to put people in trances and get them to do stuff for him. He has a shabby little mafia going in Vinyl City's underbelly and wants to get his claws into NSR so he can spread his particular brand of manipulation to anyone and everyone, basically making them vulnerable to doing whatever TF he wants them to do.))

#cryptie's other oc's #cryptie shut up (mun speaks)#out of the grave (ooc)

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shirogane-oushirou · 2 months

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────⌈ tags ⌋────

📌 [ my posts. ] ; 💭 [ my thoughts. ] 🎨 [ 046 art. ] ; ⚙️️ [ 046 wips. ] ✏️️ [ my scenarios. ] ; 💤 [ 046 dreams. ] ✨ [ oc lore. ] ; ⭐ [ canon lore. ] 🫧 [ 046 moodboards. ] ; 📻 [ 046 playlists. ]

⎯⎯⎯⎯ [ ◆ ]⎯⎯⎯⎯

[ official. ] ; [ imagines. ] [ affirmations. ] ; [ aesthetic. ] [ fashion. ] ; [ memes. ] ; [ misc. ] [ music. ] ; [ videos. ] ; [ voice. ]

⎯⎯⎯⎯ [ ◆ ]⎯⎯⎯⎯

[ asks. ] ; [ ask games. ] ; [ tag games. ] [ other ppls ships. ] ; [ promos. ] ; [ gifts. ] [ prompts. ] ; [ need to draw. ] [ irl. ] ; [ resources. ] ; [ favs. ]

───⌈ top romantic ⌋───

🍄 [ lying on the blade of an emotion. ] - ♫ ¬ ren brunet (oc) ¬ referred to as doc!ren ¬ anniversary: 3 may 2023 ¬ wedding: tbd 🧃 [ who is in control. ] - ♫ ¬ ren brunet (oc, villain au) ¬ referred to as v!ren ¬ anniversary: 24 jan 2024 ¬ wedding: tbd 🦦 [ can’t escape it. ] - ♫ ¬ ren brunet (oc, Just Some Guy™ au) ¬ referred to as r!ren ¬ anniversary: 21 sept 2023 ¬ wedding: tbd 🐸 [ look ahead. ] - ♫ ¬ ren brunet (oc, poke.mon au) ¬ referred to as poke!ren ¬ anniversary: 9 march 2024 ¬ wedding: tbd

──⌈ primary romantic ⌋──

📷 [ phantom hearts. ] - ♫ ¬ shirogane oushirou (starry☆sky) ¬ anniversary: 17 may 2011 ¬ wedding: 28 april 2012 🦎 [ chasing starlight. ] - ♫ ¬ gray ringmarc (hnkna) ¬ anniversary: 1 june 2010 ☣️ [ good in red. ] - ♫ ¬ mars (oc) ¬ anniversary: 5 sept 2012

──⌈ secondary romantic ⌋──

🏹 [ purple eyes. ] - ♫ ¬ raven (tales of vesperia) ¬ anniversary: 2009 💣 [ lost in your charm. ] - ♫ ¬ sirius (starry☆sky, polestar au) ¬ anniversary: 2011

────⌈ platonic ⌋────

🌱 [ elastic. ] - ♫ ¬ cass brunet (oc, ren's sister) ❄️ [ as the snow melts. ] - ♫ ¬ the winter crew (starry☆sky) ¬ tsukiko, tsubasa, kazuki, hayato, shiki 🐛 [ sleep well tonight. ] - ♫ ¬ nightmare gottschalk (hnkna) 🐈 [ say it back. ] - ♫ ¬ boris airay (hnkna) 🪶 [ ring a bell. ] - ♫ ¬ brave vesperia + friends (tales of vesperia) ¬ yuri, estelle, rita, karol, judith, repede

────⌈ crushes ⌋────

◆ saber (fate/stay night) ◆ bazett (fate/hollow ataraxia) ◆ beatrice (umineko) ◆ ukyo (amnesia) ◆ skadi + the corrupting heart (arknights) ◆ garry (ib) ◆ darcy (misericorde)

──⌈ self insert & misc ⌋──

🐐 [ been up all night. ] - ♫ ¬ ro (self-insert) 🦔 [ used to be easy. ] - ♫ ¬ ro (self-insert, pokemon au) [ ❤️ ] ; [ 💜 ] ; [ 💙 ] ¬ all romantic ; platonic ; crush f/os [ suggestive. ] ¬ not 18+ but a bit steamy [ 🪽🦔 ] ¬ kin posting

──⌈ dormant romantic ⌋──

🐝 [ step on bug. ] - ♫ ¬ utsuro (jooubachi) ¬ anniversary: 2013 ¬ no longer actively tagging 🤖 [ city of ghosts. ] - ♫ ¬ nika (oc) ¬ anniversary: 2022 ¬ no longer actively tagging ◆ sans (undertale) + ht + bhc ash ◆ saint germain (code:realize) ◆ misyr rex (café enchanté) ◆ no onyu (metronome) ◆ kai (yttd) ◆ jaehee (mystic messenger) ◆ saeran (mystic messenger) ◆ saeyoung (mystic messenger)

──⌈ dormant platonic ⌋──

◆ joe (yttd) ◆ sara (yttd) ◆ impmon (digimon)

───[ back to pinned post / byf ]───

#[ pinned. ]#📌 [ my posts. ]

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supraandhergoreshia · 4 years

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Livestream goes FUCKING BLOOD POOL

#my friend pedro #my friend pedro vigilante #my-friend-pedro #my oc #PS1 error #PS1 Fearful harmony #PS1 #the city of metronome #city of metronome #gore

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iamespecter · 3 years

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Might post old Little Nightmares drawings that I’m actually proud of every once in a while

So have some old Little Nightmares sci-fi AU concept, inspired by the gacha game ”Arknights”

‘Mono and Six’s combined splash art’

The Lady and The Thin Man, combined splash art

Defenders/Nome Squadron showcase [RK, RCG and Fitz, an original Nome OC inspired by city of Metronome]

[also RCG is deaf in this AU]

Shadow “Six” standalone showcase

[their tail indicates how many times the cycle has repeated]

And lastly, Ghost Kid standalone showcase

[he’s kinda... asthmatic in this AU]

I’ve yet to do the rest, which I [admittedly] procrastinate on

but I will get to them, I promise :]

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bebepac · 3 years

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Six Sentence Sunday 08.15.21

Original Post: 08/15/21 at 3:23PM EST

We’re back again for another Six Sentence Sunday, which I started on Saturday because I had to work Sunday, so I wanted to have the bulk of it done, so I could just put finishing touches on it and post it on on Sunday.

What are some of my fellow writers up to @dcbbw @phoenixrising308 @secretaryunpaid @sirbeepsalot @ritachacha @lilacsandwhiskey @burnsoslow @sincerelyella @ao719

I am in countdown mode of two things. first I have Tuesday and Wednesday off of this coming week and I have vacation starting the second of September, and don’t go back to work until the 13th. You guys know every couple of months I do a vacation because my job drives me batty, it’s time again.

Here’s what I posted in the past week in case ya missed it and want to catch up.

University Student Ellie: Going Away Bash: Beaumont Style

Just the Way You Are: End of Watch

And here’s what I’ve been working on.

The City of Oaks

A Special Birthday Fic one shot for @dcbbw

The Book: TRR AU: No Royals

The Pairing: SGL x Riley B

Status: Still in the writing process

She opened the letter knowing completely what it was. A loud groan escaped Riley's lips and she flopped down on her couch to think, still holding the letter in her hand.

Every three years her family got together in the JoCo, the cut of North Carolina and had a weekend of family togetherness….a family reunion…. that usually resulted in someone getting arrested, getting in a drunken fight, the law being called, or a combination of all three. But that’s what the JoCo was. It’s the country, and it’s out in the cut, and it’s a state of mind. People take their drinks out on the porch and drink it on those summer evenings with their friends. A place where having a bonfire has nothing to do with the temperature but more to do with what your uncle’s cousin’s sister’s husband's ex wife’s baby daddy had to burn.

Music could be heard from the lawns of the people, not utilizing the cooler temperatures in the evening to be on their riding lawn mowers cutting grass to avoid the heat of the day, and not to mention the smell of cut grass, the long fields of corn and cotton, and tractors and farm hands everywhere.

Riley remembered those summers well with her cousins Mia and Jilian on the back porch being told by her Grand Mommie Ethel to ‘go outside and play.’ They instead got on her bike and rode down to the creek bridge to play and swim in the water playing spin the bottle and truth or dare with the neighborhood boys Nico and Jaiden. Grand Mommie Ethel was turning 98 this year, and was still in fairly good health and was the matriarch of the Brooks family.

“What’s wrong Riley B?” Liam asked as he came out of the kitchen, heading towards the couch. “I know that particularly loud Drake-ish brooding sigh.”

Skipping Across the Pond

University Student Ellie: Chapter 4

The Book: Beyond TRH

Pairings: Liam x Riley / Ellie x Nic (Ellie x M!OC)

Status: Still in the writing process

Ellie woke up the next morning hearing Nicolai’s heart beating softly in her ear. His heartbeat was slow and steady like a metronome. She remembered the steady sound from when her father tried to teach her piano when she was young, which she was good at but she didn’t love it and her father could see right through her.

Eleanor Alexandria Rys had more in common with her mother than meets the eye. At first glance everyone would swear she was a carbon copy of her father however, bearing her mother’s strikingly beautiful features. Ellie’s true love for music came from her mother singing at her crib, and when she came home from California with her brothers, and her family was whole again, lulling her to sleep strumming a white and gold guitar.

Ellie enjoyed playing the guitar like her mother, and had her natural talent for it. And well, even though Ellie didn't want to admit it, she had similar taste in men like her mother.. A Karahalios man pulled at her heart, the way Nico had pulled at her mother's before she was queen. Ellie was in a way following in her mother's footsteps.

She glanced down at Nic, finding him still sleeping peacefully. She had never woken up to him next to her before, and there were butterflies in her stomach as she stared at him. He was so handsome to her. Her eyes traveled down his bare chest, her stomach did a somersault. But as much as she cared, he never told Ellie those three words that truly mattered. She would miss him dearly indeed. But as far as Ellie was concerned she was going to America, to Hartfeld as a single young woman.

Eating For One

The Meet: Chapter 8

The book: TRR (no royals)

The Pairing: Liam x Jilian (Liam x F!OC) / Leo x Bebe (Leo x F!OC)

Status: Still in the writing process.

Bebe glanced at Leo. Damnit, Bebe had ghosted people and put them on block for less. She wanted to still be mad at him, but looking at his face, he was beating himself up enough for the both of them.

“I’m going to have to take a shower before we go out to dinner, I feel disgusting.”

“Alright.”

Once back at Liam and Leo’s apartment, Bebe quickly greeted everyone and made a quick beeline for the shower to get freshened up for their night out.

The restaurant was crowded but thankfully they had gotten reservations so there wasn’t a wait, as they were quickly seated when they arrived.

When the waitress arrived for drink orders Leo ordered himself a drink and one for Bebe.

“I’m not drinking tonight, can you make that rum and coke a sweet tea instead?”

He looked surprised at Bebe.

“I have to work tomorrow, and early. I’m not trying to be all messed up at work.”

“I understand.”

He took Bebe’s hand, and she smiled at him.

Jili raised an eyebrow at Liam.

“You guys know i’m indecisive. What's everyone getting?” Bebe asked.

“The whole left side of the menu looks great, I think I’m going for that.” Jili chuckled.

“You’re worse than me Jili.”

There was silence as everyone looked at their menus and ate the complementary bread and butter.

Liam affectionately put his arm around Jili as she sat in the booth with him, they smiled at each other.

“Jili and Liam… there’s actually something we wanted to tell you.” Leo started saying.

Jili’s eyes widened.

“Oh my GOD!!!! You’ve never turned down alcohol Bebe, are you pregnant?”

Bebe spit out her drink she had been sipping.

“OH GOD NO!!!!!!! Bleh!”

#bebepac writes #six sentence sunday #cfwc sunday six #trr fanfic #trr fandom #university student ellie #sgl #riley b #the meet #trr liam #trr leo

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snowolf-69 · 9 months

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Fine evening

#city of metronome #the city of metronome #city of metronome oc

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kordeliiius · 10 months

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been wanting to make a basic personal ref of how i draw these two,, i've also decided they're twins in case u haven't heard

#might update as needed we’ll see #city of metronome #metronome ocs #the one in green that is #oc #character design #character reference #digital art #keiArt

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brazenautomaton · 3 years

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and then here’s another Sailor Moon space colonist OC!

Sailor Yellow Sky

Real Name: Jeanna D'Trelli

Birth Date: March 29, 2482 (Sol-Aires)

Species: Human-analogous (Planet Mermaid)

Homeworld: Yellow Sky orbits the star Tychus. Due to a series of impacts that were prooobably meteors, Yellow Sky has two biospheres: its high plateaus are an oxygen-based environment where humans and similar species can live, while its hot, wet, lowland swamps are home to chlorine-breathing lifeforms, breathing caustic air that will kill human beings.

It was colonized by the peaceful Orlamu Theocracy (who seek to understand the nature of the Divine through scientific research) and established the city of Mount Illumination in 2346. But in 2369 -- during the Second Great Sailor War -- the Orlamu world that launched the expedition was scourged, and the colonists were stranded with no FTL communications, no spacedock, and no industrialized manufacturing or resource extraction. Their knowledge was from the Gravity Age, but aside from preserving what they already had brought with them, their technology was regressed to the Age of Reason.

Combustion is impossible in Yellow Sky's chlorine-based environment, so no species could have discovered or used fire there. Yet, the swamps are littered with ruins of an incalculably advanced, incalculably ancient starfaring species known as the "Stoneburners". From them, emerge shambling youma-form creatures known as the Untouched Ones.

That is their name. How did the colonists know to call them that?

Appearance: Jeanna is well-tanned and well-muscled from lots of field work at a farm, and about 162 cm high. Her dark aquamarine hair goes down to the middle of her back when it's not done up in a ponytail. Her blue eyes usually aren't haunted, they're usually bright and charming... but there are always deep, dark circles under them.

On Yellow Sky, she wore one of two sets of coarse, itchy, undyed tunics and leggings, the kind made by people who landed on a planet with lots of technical documentation but not a lot of records on "how to operate a shuttle loom effectively". After the colony was rescued and she got some wealth, she got herself a huge wardrobe of outfits in varying levels of formality; even her green T-shirts and blue jeans she wears most of the time are custom-tailored and nothing that touches her skin ever has a thread count below 1000. She tries not to have a big head about things, but there are rules, come on.

Once exposed to current technology again, she's also found with an earbud in her left ear at all times, as civilian and Senshi. If you were to pull it out, you'd hear a metronome ticking at exactly 108bpm, and she'd claw your face off to get it back.

History: Jeanna was reincarnated, from a backup singer to a 22nd century pop star that died tragically young in a boating accident. She didn't think her distant memories of fame and stardom and performance would ever be relevant; she was a farmer, her parents were farmers, eking out enough to keep Mount Illumination alive. She went to school. She learned state of the art (for the 23rd century) computer interfaces on printed parchment, and how to perform FTL navigation calculations with slate and chalk. She learned archery, as the number of functional guns in the settlement was getting smaller and smaller.

And there were only 13 environmental suits left. One of which was sized for a young girl of her proportions. They couldn't afford to let it go unused. Because the settlement needed her, because she ignored her own fears, she suited up, loaded in an air canister that had been filled by a wooden hand-cranked device, grabbed her bow and arrow, and descended with the expeditions into the chlorine swamps, hunting for deposits of precious iron and animals with hides thick enough to bear useful leather. It was hot. Miserable. Her lungs burned. She was drowning in her own sweat. But she bore on, because people needed her to be brave. They even listened to her sing sometimes, to make her feel more valued back at the camp, but she'd never had any coaching and wasn't any good.

One day, they strayed too close to a Stoneburner ruin, and the Untouched Ones were upon them. She was closest to the edge, so she tried to sacrifice herself so others could get away safely. She couldn't tell if it worked -- she couldn't see, couldn't hear. Their spindly claw fingers rent her body. Her breathing line was severed, and she rapidly choked to death in the toxic atmosphere.

11 hours later, she came to, breathing unimpeded, as Sailor Yellow Sky. Around her were 11 corpses of the Untouched Ones, arrayed in a circle.

All dead by their own hands.

Sailor Yellow Sky

Origin: Jeanna is not the first to hold the title of Sailor Yellow Sky... or at least, let's say, not the first to be Sailor Guardian of this planet. She surmises that the previous title holder was one of the Stoneburners, who lived millions upon millions of years ago, and left her the title, the powers, and the profane alien relic/guardian that screams at her in a language she can't possibly understand and protects her by injuring her friends.

How long ago did the Stoneburners die out, do we think?

And how long ago did Sailor Galaxia seal away Chaos?

And how come this Sailor Guardian outfit doesn't have a Sailor collar?

Transformation: "Atlach a natai. Aatal oorn. Ab a dhuttai om!"

Sailor Yellow Sky's outfit resembles the environmental suit she used to stay alive on her terrifying expeditions into her planet's corrosive lowlands. It covers everything below her neck in a pale off-yellow, with a dark burgundy skirt and back ribbon, and dark green highlights and piping. Her wrist adornments are shackles; anyone else who touches them finds them unbearably heavy, but she can't imagine not having to bear them. As alluded above, she has no Sailor collar of any kind. While transformed, she can survive in absolutely any environment regardless of heat, pressure, chemical composition, radiation... but she still feels the echoes of its effects on her body, even if they cause no damage and don't really happen.

Attacks and Powers: Sailor Yellow Sky's element is corrosion. Form and space break down. Boundaries erode, and definition melts. Nothing can be kept out because there is no out or in any more. She corrodes the boundaries of space and distance, she corrodes stone and flesh, wearing all away into a singular point of nothing, just as her fellow colonists' needs wore away any boundary she could claim around herself.

- "Atlach a natai. Abhai a shudde." Sailor Yellow Sky conjures fistfuls of horribly caustic acid. Due to the possibility of awfully maiming people, she never uses this with others around, or on living opponents. She uses it to melt materiel, terrain, obstacles and walls, etc.

- "Warp." Sailor Yellow Sky bends space. This point and that point become adjacent, regardless of distance in between. There are plenty of tricks to be pulled by sending sound and energy and devices through warped space, or bending the geography of a location past sanity. She can create full-on portals between locations, but she never allows any other living being to cross them, even her enemies -- when she does it, she's always incapacitated by weeping and vomiting blood.

Special Items: Sailor Yellow Sky has two of these, to her chagrin. The first is her Stellar Bow, a compound bow engraved with star-pattern designs from her personal notebook. The system of cams and pulleys allows her to put on a draw weight that matches her heroic strength; it's made out of cutting-edge alloys and polymers that don't actually exist, but she imagined would exist by the time she was rescued. It is her primary means of attack (since she can warp arrows to their destination as long as they stay in line of sight), comes with an 8x scope, and fires arrows that pierce, explode, or leave clouds of corrosive gas to melt through force fields and magical protection. It appears to have nothing to do with the Stoneburners.

The second doesn't have a name that she can pronounce. It's a spherical cube -- a cubic sphere -- of weeping magenta stone that hovers around her and only she can see or hear. It’s eerily silent most of the time, until it suddenly screams at her in a language nobody has spoken in millions of years, especially to wake her up, or tell her to do things. She has no idea what it wants. She wants to keep it that way. Any time she's injured, the stone strikes someone nearby with red lightning, healing her and wracking them with pain and injury. The lightning only hits enemies if it can't hit an innocent bystander, and only hits innocent bystanders if it can't hit a friend. It does this if she squishes her thumb in a cabinet door, or drops something on her foot. She'd much prefer if it went away, please.

Mission: Mount Illumination needed her. How could she say no? Once she became Sailor Yellow Sky, she was there for every expedition into the lowlands. And then, well, she was so much safer, she was at so much less risk than everyone else because her air supply couldn't be ruptured and her suit couldn't be corroded... can't she just go down alone, and protect everyone else by completing the missions solo? Mount Illumination needed her, so that was what she did.

And now that she's going out on expeditions solo, isn't it an amazing opportunity to map the Stoneburner ruins in a way that nobody else can? Sure, it's frightening, but she is courageous, and she's willing to step up for the sake of advancing human knowledge, right? So she spent less and less of her time hunting slow beasts with inefficient chlorine-based metabolisms, and more in the weeping stone ruins, gathering up relics, trying to snipe down the vulnerable bulbous eyeballs of the Untouched Ones before they came at her as a blizzard of impossibly thin fingers. It was impossible to map the ruins, of course. Every one had a totally different layout every time she entered. Three rights didn't make a left. The horrid laboratory-tombs were filled with impossible, non-Euclidean geometry that hurt her head to try and understand. A horrible droning came from inside her ears. Bas-reliefs seemed to depict hundreds of scenes of her being mutilated and killed, annotated in perfect modern French. It all went deeper. Everything went deeper, deeper than she could go, deeper than she could fathom. Why were there hallways, but never rooms? Why were there rooms, but never hallways?

Sailor Yellow Sky didn't originally have the power to warp space, until she'd been to the ruins. Is that even one of her powers? Or is it something Jeanna has seen about the world, and can't unsee?

But she kept going. She beheld more and more impossible things, things Man was not meant to know, things she could not understand beyond knowing she never should. Because people needed her to. Because she was protecting others from enduring this peril. Because she was brave.

Mount Illumination did their best to keep her spirits up, and she did her best to keep her spirits looking up. They christened her "Sailor Discovery", an Orlamist saint of courage and inquiry. There was a feast day every week in her honor. She liked those. There were lots of people there to talk to and that meant she wasn't alone with her own thoughts. She sang terribly, and people politely clapped.

In 2497, the Orion Arm re-established contact with the frontier, and the colony of Yellow Sky was rediscovered. The Theocracy swooped in with much needed medicine and clothing and armaments and modern supplies. Her expeditions continued, under closer scientific guidance, for about a year and a half, deeper and longer than she ever wants to talk about.

Her name and likeness as "Sailor Discovery" were marketed as a character in educational children's programming, with tales of her courage and heroism that had been "massaged" to make them more palatable to audiences back home. She didn't actually get a huge cut of the royalties, and Sailor Discovery isn't a massive well-known household name, but a small cut of a minor character going out to an audience of 745 billion is still a very decent chunk of change, and Sailor Discovery got herself rich. She didn't walk out on her duties, until someone suggested she could -- then she was gone before that sentence finished echoing in the air. She became a free agent, fighting what evils she could find when she could find them, in nice normal happy predictable Euclidean space against things that had a consistent number of limbs and experienced time in an orderly, coherent fashion.

Joining up with the Verge Senshi was a no-brainer, they provided emotional and tactical support and if she wasn't the only one around who did Senshi things she wouldn't be pushed into doing everything. Sailor Lison is a great help in particular, because she doesn't mind being asked a lot of questions like "how many people are in the room with us?" and "do the angles of this triangle still add up to 180 degrees?" and "Is e still less than pi?", without trying to draw conclusions about what is going on in her head based on the questions.

Personality: Jeanna is outgoing, friendly, gregarious, giving, courageous, self-sacrificing, and clearly about 5 millimeters from losing her goddamned mind at any given moment. She loved being around other people, and that's even better because now being around other people means not being alone with her thoughts! She pushes for lots of time together, lots of talking, or playing lots of games, or watching lots of movies -- lots of TOGETHER TIME. She can seem normal in short bursts, when you don't have enough time to see the patterns, and she just seems outgoing. But the longer you're with her, the more likely you are to notice how much she laughs at inappropriate things, how random words startle her like gunshots, how she keeps looking behind her like she thinks something is in the room with her. She's terrified of being alone. She's terrified of what will be there with her when she is.

She's always jumping into danger (she can't refuse it) and trying to solve other people's problems (if she solves someone else's problems she doesn't have her own). She's proactive and forward looking. Extremely forward looking, lots of forward momentum, because if she stops moving forward she collapses. She has seen Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Her courage has almost destroyed her by exposing her again and again to mind-shattering sights, taking on the most awful burdens and obligations of everyone. If her awful experience allows her to help someone, she has to do it... because if she doesn't, someone else might have to see those things, and that's something she can't let them do.

She's not comfortable with most modern technology (it's 150 years past what she learned about) and prefers other people do computer things for her. She does all her FTL navigation calculations by hand, on paper. They get the ship to its destination much faster than the laws of FTL physics allow. Only Sailor Lison is allowed to input them, because she's the only one who is able to conclusively delete information she's seen from her own memory, and nobody else is even allowed to look at them.

Battle: Sailor Yellow Sky is a sniper and harrier, dealing precision damage to high-value targets from extreme range, using her space-warping powers to extend the range of her arrows. Corrosive clouds restrict her opponents' movement, and deal devastating damage to those who can't move away from them. Bent space leaves her enemies lost and confused. She's most effective alone, but she needs to be in contact with others or she'll lose it. Her floating cube-orb has nothing to do with how she uses her powers, provides no benefit she cares about, and she'd rather be rid of it, but nonetheless it means that her being close to her allies while enemies are near endangers them. Being close to others hurts them, because of course it does. If she's outnumbered or caught with an ally, she has to escape through a hole in space, which will incapacitate her and take her out of the fight. If her allies are in danger and sniping off attackers isn't a viable course of action, she's going to have to do something dangerous to save them.

#my fiction #sailor moon #otaku senshi

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profanetools · 4 years

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Kagrenac! I know that, theoretically speaking, they're not an OC, but..you know.

:^) !!!!!

Thank you!!!! Always down to talk about her.... my city now... my character now. (these ended up being very much bthemetz/kagrenac centric but like! whatever)

OC Ask Prompts

Something really awesome they can do

An extremely high number of things, if I am honest. She’s like. That insufferable polymath who can speak several languages, play several musical instruments, sing and dance extremely well, and that’s before we touch on tonal architecture or any of her achievements she’s actually known for. Name a cool feat that defies the laws of nature and she has probably calculated her own special method to bring it into being through Tonal Architecture. Ugh.

I think her favourite thing that she can do, that is also pretty awesome, is probably making Bthemetz a ring that 1. is shaped like an intricate jewelled scarab 2. contains a serviceable clockwork metronome inside of it, and 3. can shoot a 40ft wall of flame on demand, at any time, because why the fuck not.

A person, creature, or thing they adore

Bthemetz :^)

Also, I think in her heart, she loves to sing and to dance more than anything. She’s passionate, extremely passionate about science, about Tonal Architecture, about all of that - but she pursues it out of a sense of necessity, out of a sense that pursuing the impossible, by divinely changing the world and her people’s place in it, is the only way to protect them. Whereas I think she likes to dance simply because she finds a lot of joy in it.

A secret they’re hiding

Oh, she’s hiding at least a dozen at any given moment, if I’m honest. I think she uses favours and secrets as a key method of manipulating the political arena to her own ends.

A juicy secret they are sitting on is that she is 100% sure that it was Bthemetz who told the Chimer about Numidium. She has no basis beyond 1. reasonable assumptions and 2. knowing Bthemetz’s character inside out. She has not told anyone about this suspicion - which is a correct suspicion, actually - nor does she intend to.

A funny secret that she is hiding is that while she is well acquainted with a lot of Dwemer poetry, a good 50% of it goes over her head. Art, architecture, music, novels, all fine - but something about poetry doesn’t stick. Led to a very awkward date once early in her and Bthemetz’s relationship where Bthem took her to a lesbian poetry evening.

Something they truly fear

Oh, the Nords conquering her people again. Or the Chimer managing to accomplish the same feat. I think she really has this sense of duty, of belonging to her whole people more so than any one clan, and I think what she fears the most is being subjugated again, being humiliated in war again. I think she fears that the next invasion would lead to libraries being burnt, knowledge being destroyed, and their whole way of life being lost - either by destruction or by assimilation.

Part of the reason I think she acted rashly at Red Mountain was because her worst fears came true.

A place or item which gives them strong feelings

A lot of these in honesty. I think the Grand Debate Chamber/Cathedral that once lied at the heart of Red Mountain (I headcanon it was destroyed in the erruption and that Dagoth Ur is the remnants of it) inspired a lot of strong feelings of awe, aspiration, but also, a sense of dread, a sense of expectation, a sense of that this was the enormity of her task in pursuing the divine.

In terms of an item, I think the knife Bthemetz gave her as a bond gift has a lot of feelings attached to it - love, a lot of love and care and attention and detail, but also, this sorrowful sense that it was given because they had accepted the peace between the Dwemer and Chimer would never last, that it is not a dainty ornament, but will be used one day, to protect her, and to hurt another.

A dream or ambition for the future

Pretty much entirely:

1. Achieve godhood, securing the future of my people for infinity.

2. Retire to a cottage by the sea with my wife where she eventually opens a tea shop in an ill-advised business venture despite our remote coastal location. In the mean time, learn to garden, and not simply kill plants. Perhaps adopt an animal companion.

In that order.

An angsty fact about them

In my canon, she originates from a stronghold in the Velothi mountains that was one of the first in modern-day Morrowind to be hit by the Nordic conquests, when she was in her late teens. Her family was separated as her home was taken and the clan attempted to flee the stronghold and seek refuge in another. The Nords chased them down the spine of the Velothi mountains, before a number of ‘refugee’ clans bent the knee under false pretences, to then stage a shady, cloak-and-dagger counterattack that was very misinformed and turned into a total bloodbath. After her involvement in that fiasco - after the first man she ever killed - she fled the scene all the way to Vvardenfell. She has grudge against Nords, and a distaste for Nordic culture in all forms, as a result (can’t entirely blame her for it either).

I don’t think she heard word from her family for years. At least one person - probably a sibling - died. Everyone was separated, and impossible to get in touch with until the Nords were driven out of Resdayn entirely, and even then tracking everyone down was a task. It turns out one of her parents ended up abandoning Dwemer clan life entirely - an action in of itself traditionally considered pretty shameful, but to add insult to injury, eventually they ended up living in a Nord settlement, and marrying a Nord.

Kagrenac just never speaks of them; they are dead to her, quite honestly, and they never do reconcile, and it just sucks a lot.

A domestic fact about them

Absolutely not a morning person. Bthem often makes her breakfast in bed on days off (I think Bthem enjoys spoiling her like that). If Bthem tries to get up early without her, she will sometimes get out of bed just to try to pull Bthem back into it with her (’I miss my wife so I will annoy her on purpose with my sleep-deprived grumpy antics’; sounds cuter than it actually is lmao).

She really enjoys cooking meals with Bthemetz, but honestly she’s not particularly domestic. She has most of her clothes made for her, she is a notorious houseplant killer, her main contribution to the household is finding nice ornaments and paintings and adding a decorative touch, but honestly, she’s not particularly homey, and only values it insomuch as it is quality time with Bthemetz (but she’d much rather go somewhere with her wife, if given the choice). She can cook and clean and has survived by herself, and her extensive travels as a young woman have left her far more self-sufficient than most dwemer, but left to her own devices I think she would survive entirely on whatever the fantasy equivalent of cheap store-bought ramen is.

#rena #bthemrena

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primal-screamer-blog1 · 5 years

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Mutually Assured Destruction

Rating: Mature Pairing: Nikki Sixx/F. OC Playlist Here Description: Growing restless in his discontent, Nikki Sixx is plagued with past anxieties that he never could find the courage to confront. He’d seen and done it all but when it came to Ruby Moon, he’d always felt he had unfinished business. Now, years after their tumultuous relationship had seemingly come to an end, Nikki finds himself compulsively recounting memories and asking questions only she would have the answers to. ***Warnings: mature themes, sexual themes, descriptions of sexual encounters, alcohol, drug use, violence, cursing

1981

Clad in all black and asleep in a patch of sun on the floor, Nikki resembled a big black cat snoring the afternoon away. It was warm in California but even warmer in the apartment where they refused to clean or open a window. Smoke hung thick in the air, thick as the smell, creating an unfortunate atmosphere completely unique to the apartment’s toxic ecosystem. In the corner of the barren living room, Tommy’s stereo clicked a constant metronome since last night when Nikki fell asleep with it on, eating up his favorite X tape in the process He couldn’t be bothered. Nikki is not home right now. Summer demanded more from him than his usual rough-n-tumble; more kids in town meant more shows meant more girls, more sweat, more parties. His spot on the floor, not four feet from the couch, was a testament to that.

However, none of that mattered. Not when addicts were concerned, least of all. Ruby had her own problems and her own pressures. Right now, her main concern was the growing tension in her jaw and how she hadn’t been able to pull her tongue off the roof of her mouth since she woke up that morning. She was hungover, she was fiending and she had to go to work - with a smile on her face- in just a few hours. None of this would have been a problem if she had been able to find her drugs to get her head straight. When she couldn’t, however, she knew she wouldn’t have to look much farther than the Crue house after spending last night there.

There was no need to kick in the lock, though. The door was always unlocked.

“Wake the fuck up, Sixx!” A heeled red leather boot stuck him in the thigh. Awareness flooded in.

“God! Damn it!” Nikki’s eyes shot open, curling in on himself before he was able to understand what was going on. Ruby stood over him, her long legs wrapped in black denim, shaggy black hair falling in her face; her long leopard print duster flapped wildly around. “Give me my fucking drugs, Nikki!” She shouted in her thick New York accent. He shielded his tired eyes from the sun streaming in around her silhouette. He propped himself up on one elbow and felt around in his motorcycle vest pockets for sunglasses and cigarettes.

“Why don’t you fuck off, Ruby?” He croaked, his throat coated with phlegm from a night of chain smoking and snorting pills. He slowly pulled his sunglasses on and was able to see the pissed off look on her face.

“ Me fuck off?!” She stared at him in disbelief as he lit up a Parliament.

“Yeah you! Fuck off! What the fuck are you even doing here anyway?” He groaned.

“My fucking drugs, Nikki! I know you took them!” She snatched his cigarette out of his hand and pushed him in the chest.

“I don’t have your drugs!” He swatted her hand away and backed up from under her. “Get one of those assholes at the strip club to buy you some if you snorted em all up.”

“Bullshit!” She whipped off her coat and threw it at him. “Where’s my speed, Sixx?”

“I don’t even do speed, you fucking psycho!” Nikki stood up, rising a foot taller than her, still in his platform boots from last night.

“Oh, I’m the psycho?!” She challenged him as he approached her, towering over her and taking his cigarette back. Nikki bit his lip and held back a spiteful grin, taking a deep drag. “You might wanna reconsider your angle, Moon.” He looked down at her, smoke pouring from his nostrils.

“Ruby!” Vince swung around the front door frame, hanging into the living room. He was panting from having to follow her for four city blocks while she mumbled to herself about kicking Nikki’s ass. “Ruby, knock it off!” He took two quick, long strides across the room and got in between them as Nikki stepped to her. “Both of you, stop being fucking crazy.” He put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder and attempted to push her away from Nikki. “C’mon, come smoke a cigarette with me, let’s go calm down.”

“Oh, fuck off, Vinnie! He fucking stole from me!” She threw her arms out.

“Yeah, fuck off Vinnie.” Nikki laughed from behind him.

“Hey, fuck you, man! I don’t gotta be part of this!”

“Then don’t be! You should both fuck off!” Nikki threw his arms out and turned to the kitchen for a morning beer.

“Ruby,” Vince ignored him and turned back to her. “Ruby, c’mon, let’s go smoke and relax, he’s not gonna give you your drugs back.”

“Because I don’t have them!” Nikki shouted from the fridge.

Ruby gritted her teeth while she locked eyes with Vince. He knew Nikki was lying. She knew he knew Nikki was lying “Please.” He pleaded with her quietly, watching her try not to explode. He knew he’d be the one dealing with Nikki’s side of the argument long after it was over. He just wanted it to stop. He felt like they’d been having the same fights for as long as he’d known the both of them.

“Fuck you, Nikki!” She stomped towards the kitchen, almost colliding with him as he rounded back into the living room. She shoved him in the chest, hard, and he actually stumbled back a bit. She finally took her voice down. “Just admit it! You were being all nice and sweet to me last night, getting me all fucked up and stupid so that you could fucking steal from me! Just say it!” She shoved him again, almost begging at this point.

Nikki chugged his beer and looked away from her. He offered her a lazy shrug.

“To be fair, that does sound like something I’d do.”

Vince rolled his eyes. “God damn it.” He said under his breath.

Ruby barked a sarcastic laugh. Her face flushed hot and she had to turn away from him, feeling like tears might start falling. She shook her head and held her hands up, still laughing spitefully. “You are so fucking awful, Nikki Sixx.”

“Oh, like you’re not!” Nikki shouted and held his middle finger up at her as she stormed out the front door, finally slamming it shut.

“Dude!” Vince shouted, feeling eternally frustrated.

“What, am I supposed to feel bad?” Nikki was still heated, still pacing and nearly shouting. He finished off his beer and tossed it onto the kitchen pile. “She’s fucking nuts, dude! I’ve been telling you that!”

“You’re both nuts!”

“Yo! Shut the fuck up!” Tommy’s muffled shouting and pounding came from the other side of the living room wall, still attempting to achieve his full 12 hours of beauty rest. A knowing grin cracked across Nikki’s face when a high pitched squeal started making its way out of the bedroom. Vince had to fight not to laugh with him. A messy blonde came teetering out on tiger print heels, pulling down her lime green banded dress and wiping her nose. She paused, looking from Nikki to Vince and feeling exposed as she interrupted their conversation.

“Um…sorry.” She squeaked, hanging her head and squaring her shoulders in as she stalked past them, well aware of them both checking her out.

“Later.” Vince smiled at her flirtatiously and watched her ass wiggle as she left. Once she was out of sight, she was out of mind and Vince turned back to Nikki.

“Listen, Ruby doesn’t need speed anyway, dude.” Nikki waved him off and threw himself down on the couch, groaning and stretching out.

“She clearly fucking needs speed, dude. Fucking find some. You owe me, man.” Vince pointed a finger at him before ducking back outside. “Not a good favor to cash in on, Vin!” Nikki shouted out at him.

Outside, Ruby stood against the brick wall of the boys apartment building, slapping a bic lighter against her palm and failing to light the cigarette hanging from her red painted lips.

“Shit.” Her hand cupped around her cigarette tip, the black nail polish on her thumb chipping away.

“Here.” Vince showed up with his silver zippo and lit the tip. He watched her as she took three short nervous puffs, anxiously averting her gaze to the cracks in the pavement, the spiders crawling across the outside awning, trying to look anywhere but into his searching expression.

“What?” She spat at him, sounding harsher than she had meant. Vince didn’t pay it any mind.

“Are you okay?” He asked her, knowing no one had in quite some time. She still couldn’t help but let out a short derisive laugh in spite of herself. “Yeah, Vin.” She gave him a cheeky smile that came across more like scowl. “I’m just great.” She hung her head and looked away again. He cocked his head at her and moved into her field of vision.

“I’m serious, Ruby.” He stroked her sad face with his thumb. “What’s wrong?”

Ruby finally pulled her green eyes up to his and almost smiled. Vince was sweet and Vince was hot. It’s what made him so easy to deal with; Vince was simple and he wasn’t insightful enough to understand why she wasn’t interested in doing anything other than momentarily distracting herself with him. He came with little complication and close to no baggage. He wasn’t concerned when she lied to him about sleeping with other men, because he was sleeping with other women and he didn’t feel bad endough about it to tell her. That’s the way she wanted it with him. But over time, as he got to know her and as he got used to her, he had started caring about her. And it was beginning to become obvious that, despite being extremely unattentive, he was becoming infatuated with her.

“I uh…” She began, shakily. “I dunno, Vince.” She gently pushed his hand away. Whatever hopefulness his expression may have held dropped. Somehow, he understood what it was she hadn’t been saying this whole time. She wasn’t thinking about losing her drugs; she was thinking about Nikki. Despite the nature of their relationship, Vince and Ruby had gotten close and had a lot of fun together. But he wasn’t so clueless that he didn’t see her walls were up. For awhile he couldn’t figure out why, but eventually he started catching on to how Ruby and Nikki reacted to each other. Vince never minded it; it made sense to him. Besides, her distance allowed him more freedom to do what he wanted, which was perfect for a guy like him. But after awhile, it was becoming hard on his ego the closer he tried to get to her.

A tear finally fell down her cheek.

“He just used to be my best friend.” She admitted, offering a sad shrug. She didn’t know why that wasn’t the whole truth, but it was true enough that Vince could understand with a bit more sympathy.

“Yeah.” He leaned up on the wall next to her and frowned. “Yeah, I know. You two used to be a lot closer, actually.”

“I just don’t get it.” She exhaled smoke. “He’s so mean to me now.”

“Yeah, but I mean….” Vince hadn’t known either of them long, but he was immediately reminded of cheap shots, screaming matches, pushing and shoving and endless taunting between them. “You two have always fought. Y’know, you’re both pretty volatile and headstrong in that way. And Nikki’s never really been the nicest guy.”

“Yeah, but not like this, Vinnie. He never would’ve stole from me before. He knows what it’s like.” She sighed and put her cigarette out on the bottom of her boot.

“That is really…..fucked up, actually.” Vince agreed, considering the breach of trust for the first time since this whole thing began in the morning when she kicked the sheets off him in bed.

“Yeah.” She shook her head and tried to brush it off. “I gotta head to the Veil. I gotta score something before my shift so I can at least try to get through it. Thanks for….I dunno, trying to talk to me I guess.” She offered him a weak smile.

Vince saw the sadness in her smile and despite everything, he didn’t want to send her off feeling this low. She was, after all, still his friend too, and he didn’t intend for that to change. He shoved her in the shoulder. “Want me to ride with you?”

“I dunno, Vince…” She felt like she was leading him on whenever he got so eager. “They don’t really like us bringing guys around.”

“No way, I can’t stick around anyway. We got a gig later! But we don’t gotta talk and I’ll totally eat you out in the parking lot.” He flashed a gorgeous crooked smile at her and winked. She rolled her eyes at his frankness but couldn’t help smiling too.

“That does actually sound really nice.”

“There’s a smile.” He laughed.

“Don’t over do it, Neil.”

From inside, on the couch, Nikki watched out the window as Ruby and Vince sped off in her white Trans Am. He shook his head and sneered, pretending to pick at the bass in his lap while he listened for her loud exhaust to fade out of ear shot. He picked up his head again and peaked out the window to be sure they were gone before pulling a small plastic wrap of white amphetamine powder out of his back pocket.

Tommy stumbled out of his bedroom, all arms and legs in nothing but a pair of Reeboks. He held onto his big swinging dick to assume the illusion of modesty in front of his friend. “Hey man.” He mumbled sleepily at Nikki on his way to get a beer out of the fridge. Nikki gave the bag a hard snort and thumped his foot on the floor. “Woo!” He threw his head back and swallowed the drip hard, feeling warmth spread behind his face. He was finally awake.

“Whatchu got, homie?” Tommy laughed and fell down on the couch next to Nikki, spreading his legs out and covering his junk with the one dirty pillow they had.

“What’d you think I got, man?” Nikki laughed, plucking away on his bass, his head cleared of tension.

“Dude! Is that Ruby’s? I thought you were yellin’ all morning about how you didn’t have that!” He slapped Nikki on the shoulder. Nikki grimaced and smacked him back harder.

“Of course it’s Ruby’s. She’s the one with a job, man. Besides, it’s not like she pays for this shit anyway.”

“She doesn’t?”

“Fuck no!” Nikki exclaimed, dipping his finger in the bag. “She gets it from this rich foreign dude she fucks in the Valley. That’s why it’s so goddamn good!” He shouted before shoving a finger up into Tommy’s gums without warning. Tommy laughed. “Fuck yeah!” He lapped at his gums as Nikki buried his nose in the last of it. “You mean she’s not fucking Vinnie anymore?” He asked. “I kinda liked them together, dude, I thought that was nice.” Tommy smiled, ever the romantic. Nikki pulled back before screwing up his face and frowning. “Are you fucking demented?”

“What?!”

“Nothing.” Nikki shook his head and pulled his notebook out from under the couch cushion. “She’s still fucking Vinnie. She’s fucking everyone.”

“Dude, that’s not true at all! You gotta like...not talk about her like that.”

“The fuck are you a feminist for all of a sudden?” Nikki kicked Tommy’s foot, getting agitated with the direction this was going.

“Yeah. Right.” Tommy laughed again, kicking the heel of Nikki’s boot in return. “I dunno, man, I just think it’s kind of fucked up. Ruby’s our friend and shit. It makes me real sad to see you two fighting so much. She like….gave you a place to stay when you first showed up here. She’s always at our shows. Her band rules. Why are you stealing shit from her, man?”

Nikki wasn’t expecting to have this conversation, not with Tommy least of all people and not this early in the day. He shot Tommy a suspicious look.

“You know, I really thought you’d have my back on this.”

“Have your back on what?! I just don’t get it.” Tommy slapped Nikki playfully in the chest. “C’mon, dude! I really wanna know what’s going on.”

Nikki shrugged, nodding his head to a bassline he was scribbling out in his notebook. He honestly didn’t know what to say. His disdain for Ruby had arrived seemingly out of nowhere. Where she once made him feel seen and heard and understood, warm and familiar, she now made him feel isolated and awkward; uncomfortable in his own skin and less than. He liked it even less than he understood it. He shook his head, deciding that thinking about it made him feel worse. In his anxious and urgent mind, he decided that Ruby was causing him more harm than good. All he cared about right now, all he wanted to care about, was finishing this bass line. He didn’t need an interrogation from his only other friend. “She’s just some girl Vince is fucking now, man.” He shot.

“Damn.” Tommy stared at him. He didn’t laugh this time. In fact, he looked pretty upset. “You are one cold mother fucker, bro.”

Nikki didn’t look at him. Instead, he stopped writing and stood up, throwing his bass down to the floor and shoving his rolled up notebook in his back pocket. He made his way to his bedroom. He wasn’t going to listen to this.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

***fan fiction writers are creators too! we work really hard and put a lot of time into our stories. if you enjoy someone’s content, please consider leaving them a comment. it’s really helpful! thank you.

#motley crue #nikki sixx #douglas booth #fan fiction #motley crue fan fiction #fanfic #fan fic #motley crue fan fic #tommy lee #vince neil #mick mars #mgk #machine gun kelly #colson baker #iwan rheon #the dirt #the dirt fan fiction #the dirt fan fic #@triplehaitches

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