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the-insider · 6 months

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I speedran the Corpse Bride AU because who needs sleep anyways am I right.

The Outsider (going by Leviathan) is ofc Emily, Corvo and Jessamine are Victor and Victoria. I'm unoriginal and lazy so Daud would be Barkis.

Would love to hear your thoughts on that!

May or may not be looking for someone to RolePlay the idea idk

[Referenced screenshots from the movie under the cut]

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screwtheprinceimtakingthehorse · 9 months

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Empress: saved, Attano: captured, Daud: bullied into a rescue mission by a princess

Daud: I have not one but TWO women in my ear all day about saving your sorry mug, bodyguard Corvo, unconscious: Daud, adjusting his hold: huff Corvo: Daud: Who's Royal Protector now, you big tree

#dishonored #corvo x daud #knifecrow #incorrect quotes #dishonored au #conveniently this is adapted from a fic i wrote myself ages ago lol

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annettecheshir · 7 months

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Cobb Vanth but it's Dishonored (I imagine him as Daud 🫠)

I'm too lazy to finish his legs lol

#cobb vanth #the mandalorian fanart #the mandalorian #fanart #fan art #traditional drawing #dishonored au #dishonored #annette's art

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meowmeowriley · 2 months

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Hi costume anon here!

I am severely sleep deprived rn so I blame that for this… What are your thoughts on a Corvo Attano Ghost and an Outsider Soap from dishonoured?

I feel Iike most people would hc it the other way around but Ghost fighting to get back to and protect Joey after being betrayed + the mask fit his character better especially as he “dies” in prison.

Soap being an unknowable eldritch abomination with a fondness for whales and their explosions oil who just wants entertainment someone to talk to.

If you want more rambles I can tell you who I think other characters would be

Anyway I’m going to sleep now have a great day!

Hi, Zuko here! - That's what I think of every time you leave me an ask 🤣 You have Zuko energy. Have you had a redemption ark? I think you'd make a great Firelord. (Do I know you? Nope! Does that matter? Also nope! You've got great taste, that's all that matters.)

*Stares intensely at my old PS3 and my copy of Dishonored. I FUCKING love Dishonored. I never got to play the second game, but I did very nearly get the outsiders symbol tattooed on my hand. Still could... hmmm...

I know Ghost is a stealthy man, but God imagine him getting pissy and summoning a swarm of plague rats. Stealthy? No. But Outsider!Soap would love the chaos of it. And really, I think a fic where Ghost *started* being stealthy and high honor/low death count, but progressively got more vicious and killed more people in more creative ways because the way the Outsider's laugh peals like a bell warms his cold dead heart.

Outsider Soap feeling true glee for the first time in a long time as he watches Ghost freeze time to move some whale oil in front of someone who'd just shot at him, but not before unbuckling the shooters pants and lowering his trousers, just for the hell of it.

By the end of it there would be chaos, all of Dunwall would fall to the plague, but the Outsider wouldn't be so alone anymore.

BTW you got me to start binging Danny Phantom. That's your fault. 😘

#ghostsoap #soapghost #ghoap #cod mw2 #fanfic #call of duty #text post #ask #ask answered #dishonored #dishonored au #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish

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embbu · 1 year

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Jun's Magma session was once again a lot of fun! This time I smashed two of my favorite game series together; Pokémon and Dishonored! ♥

#EmBBu's art #Pokémon #pokémon legends arceus #PLA #Volo #Melli #Adaman #ウォロ #ツバキ #セキ #Dishonored #Dishonored AU

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wolfgirl-valentine · 17 days

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Tried to draw Jango in Dunwall fashion, not sure about the results 😅 again inspired by @cabezadeperro very excellent Dishonored AU Jangobi fic(I really want to draw them kissing!)

I have a lot of fun drawing Mr Morrison face, it's not perfect but I think it looks great (ok also still struggling to draw textiles)

Overseer!Obi Wan

#dishonored au #Jango fett #fanart #Fanart inspired by fanfiction #Jangobi #My art #I'm so tired still!!

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toyfriskman · 9 days

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i hate when im listeing to music, and I think of my silly little animations with my silly little charatcers

i wanna show people the silly little things in my head

but i cant

all i have are my words

but i dont wanna write

so this is the best i can do until I can find better words in a better order:

Dishonored AU, where the Outsider is being controlled by some outside force. This causes all his marked (so long as they have held his mark for a certain length of time) to become corrupted and turn into monsters Corvo, being in Dunwall, ends up driving everyone out of the city. Void stone grows around the Tower, and people start to call it "The Mountain"

This is, Corvo Attano, The Mountain King, within my Corruption (Name is a WIP) AU

the song that inspired it:

i have a whole fight scene in my head to this song

#dishonored #corvo attano #dishonored au #au idea #bramble the mountain king #i will bring to reality one day #ill have a whole story planned out and everything #its thoughts like this that make me wish I knew how to start animation when I have no money #one day ill be able to do it #just not today #Spotify

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icedjuiceboxes · 6 months

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Whaler! Emily AU - Canon divergence. [LONG POST WITH ALL MY THOUGHTS OF THIS AU

High Chaos!Corvo dies from the plague/poision during the Flooded District. He asks Low Chaos!Daud to rescue Emily in his place. Daud complies.

Daud rescues Emily from the lighthouse, and when he returns to base with her, his whalers informs him Corvo passed. Daud decides to take Emily with him to Karcana, much to her dismay and anger, but there's nothing left for her. She will be nothing but a pawn in the games of men wanting her throne. At least staying with Daud keeps the possibility of driving a blade through his heart open.

They leave for Karcana. Their relationship is strained and Emily becomes cold, bottling everything in. Her mother dead. Corvo- revealed to be her father via his last audiograph- a murderer. The loyalists' slaughter. Her mother's assassin the closest thing to an ally.

Emily accepts Daud's training. In hand, she teaches herself on various topics- biology, medicine, politics, etc. She breaks into anywhere she can find books. Daud hardly understands her ramblings half the time. At some point she breaks into Anton's office at the academy and threatens him for his research on the plague. HE happily gives them to her- he's happy to see her alive and well. When Emily returns to Dunwall, she will continue where he left off.

On her 18th birthday, she challenges Daud to a duel to the death. She fails to kill Daud, and of course Daud won't kill her. The failure hangs heavy on her heart. She was still set to leave for Dunwall, but she wanted closure before she did it. She must still leave. She takes Daud's whaler uniform, and Corvo's blade and mask.

Emily returns to Dunwall. Her first thought was to take up resdisency at the whaler's base, but it since been long abandoned, and nature have reclaimed the space. She really tried looking for another base, but there was no where better than the Hound pits club. Her tower still stood tall. The buildings was in decent shape. The only problem was corpses that still littered the grounds, and rats and weapers have claimed the space. It took her weeks to take it over and make it liveable. She buried the bodies of the loyalists- Callista, Wallance, and Lydia. She burnt the rest.

Emily becomes a vigilante for the people. She saves whoever she can, threatens aristrocats, negotiates with gangs. She also builds a lab to make a cure for the plague. She experiments on weapers and any aristrocats that didn't take her threats seriously. She was a woman of her word.

She calls herself Black Sparrow. No one will ever speak her real name again. That little girl is dead. Dashed up against the rocks at the bottom of the lighthouse with Havelock. The public calls her the butcher of Dunwall, occasionally the crown killer. They speculate she's Daud bastard daughter, here to take up his legacy. She hates that. She didn't think it through wearing a whaler's uniform. She made a deal with a tailor for something new- something her- after saving their life.

At age 21, she did it. She made a cure for the plague. With the help of Slackjaw, she distributed it amongst the public.

After many years of working alone, a woman she saved imprinted on her. Alexi Mayhew. She talked about revolution and democracy. Emily didn't know what to think, but she knew Dunwall deserved better. Emily joined the cause, and together, they built an rebellion.

The Hound Pits club became livier than ever as recruits joined one by one. It was renamed to the Crow Nest Club, in honour of Black Sparrow, the face and soul of the rebellion. Martha Collings is added to the leadership.

Alexi is the only one who knows who Black Sparrow is. Emily- Daugther of Jessamine Kaldwin, true heir to the throne, missing empress alledged dead. She also knows the off-limits tower of the club holds a shrine honouring her mother and father. If anyone found out Sparrow's idenity, the whole rebellion would fall apart.

Delilah knew that. When she came back and heard about the rebellion and its leader, she pieced all the pieces together. She had a plan. A few days before the 15th anniversary of Jessamine's death, she raided the base of the rebellion. Their defences for no match for her coven and clockwork soliders. The grand guard was only there to make the arrests.

Sparrow was powerless. She watched as everything she built was torn apart. Everyone getting slaugthered again. When she confronted Delilah, she was held by large vines. Delilah ask her to say the truth to the rebellion. Lying was a bad look on her after all. Emily was too stubborn to. Alexi tried to stop Delilah and drove her sword through Delilah's heart, which did nothing. Alexi was turned to stone. Delilah revealed the truth of Emily. She made an offer to spare the remaining lives of the rebels in exchange to cease the rebellion, and to take Emily.

Delilah then took Emily back to Dunwall Tower. Delilah took the throne for herself and sentenced Emily for her treason.

(Details are loosey-goosey here because I don't really have anything here)

Emily is sent to Coldridge. She breaks out and finds Meagan.

Emily gets marked sometime. Then the events of dishonored 2.

During Emily's time in Karcana, her allies either support her to retake her throne, or denouce her and her ideologies.

When Emily returns to Dunwall, depending on chaos level will:

Low Chaos: Retake her throne and builds a govermemt on democracy.

High Chaos: Destroy Dunwall tower and bring ruin to the city. Because she'd be dammned if she lets Delilah do it first.

#dishonored #emily kaldwin #dishonored 2 #dishonored au #daud #daud dishonored #corvo attano #my doodles #I DID NOT MEAN TO MAKE THIS SO LONG #OOPS #ANYWAY I MIGHT DO COMICS FOR THIS AU EMILY NEEDS TO BE UNHINGED #my dh doodles

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void-damned · 1 year

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The 'Worshipped Outsider' AU

This is the masterpost for the Worshipped Outsider AU, originally developed by me and one lovely person that remains anonymous for now. Additionally, thanks to these wonderful people for being interested and asking questions that helped me develop this story further, @no-light-left-on, @kg-clark-inthedark, and @astheturtlemoves Additional information will be added over time! Feel free to send asks about this - I will be using the Worshipped Outsider tag for people to keep track of the AU!

_______

The Outsider functions as the primary God worshiped through the Isles - he's a funky guy, honestly. Things are very religion-heavy - instead of being purist and violent, the Abbey preaches about His Intentions (instead of the Strictures), though it is merely their interpretation of the things the Outsider supposedly stands for*. They are still the Abbey of the Everyman, but the everyman here is dedicated to their God and behaves accordingly, denouncing any false God, leaving offerings, etc. But otherwise it isn't too strict about any form of worship. They are more oriented towards spreading faith and keeping it alive among the people, while the Oracular Sisters/Oracular Order are more spiritually based and focus on communicating with their God.

The people carve charms and runes out of bones and antlers to leave him as offerings; everyone flies indigo and various purple fabrics decorated with gold. Households. commonly hold such cloth and hang it on their walls or drape them across private shrines. Even the Abbey's banners match the very same colour scheme.

The Outsider himself scarcely appears, sometimes speaking to the Oracular Sisters, but there are many instances documented across the millennia - people speak of the Outsider walking among them, always in the same shape and same Void-filled eyes (but sometimes he appears with pale Pandyssian eyes when he is feeling like blending in more). They never talk about him doing anything big or remarkable, any miracles, nothing, really. He's just kind of there, though sometimes he's seen watching the whales or people in general.

(Speaking of the whales, they would be sort of sacred but that does not mean that they aren't poached and used. The people believe their existence is a benevolent act of their God who wants them to use his gift. It's an Abbey made excuse, though*. )

Paloma used to be particularly religious and often took to carving charms, even as much as including pieces of carved bone in the clothes she would make; when Corvo was younger, she would make him kneel (even by force) at their makeshift altar and press a piece of singing whalebone into his hands for safekeeping - he was never as pious as his mother, nor as his sister - there was always with a streak of rebellion in him.

Jess, much like his mother, had been an image of faith and as an Empress, she was an Avatar often said to be aided by the Outsider himself - she certainly had to be approved by him to reign; both her and Paloma would have often joined the pilgrimages across the blackened erratics that climax in the Shindaerey Peak where the Outsider had been made once. The pilgrimages happen once every 2 or so years as a 'celebration of suffering' or whatever the Abbey calls it.

The Marked are respected for being blessed by the Outsider, no matter who they are and what they do; in fact, they are rather hounded and sheltered, considered too precious to be left wandering around freely, lest something happens to him. In a way, they are also seen as Prophets. Those like Corvo and Daud hide their marks, not wanting those to define them - neither could ever bear to live such a. lifestyle. Some tend to fake their marks, and such an act is often seen as offensive and punishable by the Abbey. So is worshiping false Gods and icons. Vera Moray was a Marked kept like a precious pet but the treatment had made her insane, leaving the Abbey to further isolate her and pretend that she's doing just fine. Meanwhile, Delilah yearns to be treated like a Queen and keeps threatening the Outsider, trying to take his position as a God.

That and either Jessamine never died of Daud's hand and Corvo had never been blamed, a different man held the blade and paid for his transgressions,or, well, honestly, the Marked are pretty much worshipped, though the way the Abbey goes about it is more or less forcing the other Marked people to hide their marks overall. Corvo could still get labelled as a false worshipper and framed for murdering the Empress as an act against their God. It is eventually revealed that his marking has been real this entire time and that he was framed by people who wanted to oppose the Outsider. Still not Daud's job, though.

There is a potential connection here to be made, a parallel where the circumstances of the Empress' death also lead to the metaphorical death of the Outsider.

*Not to mention that the Abbey is still very much eh and often seems to hide sacred texts, preach about everything in the wrong way, and only ever interpret them the way they see fit. The shit His Intentions speak of are hardly anything the Outsider would have ever said/meant. Some bits do hold truth to them but the way they are presented indicates a lot being lost in translation or simply being translated falsely. Any runic expert who had been asked to see the scripts or tried to research them had been chased off in fear of translating things differently and therefore invalidating the Abbey and their preaching.

There's still a lot of ground to be cover but this is the gist of it. And in case you're wondering why the Outsider doesn't correct them or do much himself, he absolutely refuses to speak to the Abbey or have anything to do with them.

#Worshipped Outsider #all three people tagged have already been subjected to my rambling and I am so sorry #but this thing is seeing the light of the day now #or more like the light of my computer screen #but yes #I am completely normal about them #dh #dishonored #the outsider #corvo attano #jessamine kaldwin #vera moray #daud #dishonored au #the abbey #the Outsider as a God

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graedari · 14 days

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-slides into your asks- ok but. Details on the aquarium au? Like yess i love the idea!! Void man the marine biologist!! Both families going there!! Em making friends!! Its all so wholesome and you know what? They deserve itt :D

hehehhe!!! I have so many ideas you couldn't even imagine babeygurl. I just really wanted this au to be super wholesome for everyones faves. If you have a dh character you like- they are likely in this AU somewhere just know that. It's sorta just morphed into my own feel-good modern au rather than just an Aquarium AU

Some misc Fin-Tastic AU notes (also featured in the art):

Corvo has a motorcycle (as does Daud and the Whalers. They actually have a Motorcycle Gang in town)

Daud also runs a definitely legit Self-Defense Class (that definitely isn't an underground fight-club)

Emily attends the classes as part of the "Jr. Knives of Dunwall" course)

Delilah owns an upscale Art Gallery in town (and has been told to not visit after claiming to know Corvo's sister and gas-lit him that some random child she paid was his nephew)

Billie and Thomas live with Daud in his apartment and brought home some dogs one day. Daud told them absolutely not. The dogs love Daud. They have dogs now.

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knownangels · 4 months

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rot

wc: 6.8k

He thinks that maybe Dunwall is a place built on grief. One quick glance into the pages of its history is marred with plague, with suffering, with tragedy and loss and horror and subjugation and hate. It must be built upon the bones of something ancient and angry; or worse, exhausted.

Maran teases when he insists all of this one evening, when they’ve broken into his father’s liquor cabinet and sit together, alcohol-leaden and curved backs slumped together. Maran leans over more, draping himself over Benji’s shoulder. His prickly scalp scrapes against his cheek, and it’s about as comforting and familiar a texture as he’s ever known.

Perhaps the last swig had been one too many, though.

“The whales,” Maran repeats, a sullen and soulful impression of Benji, his deeper tone. “Mar, the whales.” He giggles high and mad, hiccups at the end. “Whale revenge.”

Benji scowls, although Maran can’t see it, and plants his feet to push back against his best friend’s weight. He’s liquid in his limbs, though, and accomplishes little more than toppling them both in a laughing heap to the ground. The upending of the world makes his head spin, and when his doubled vision shimmies back into something he can parse, something whole and relatively steady, they’re shoulder-to-shoulder and gazing up at the sky.

The garden is cool and quiet this time of year, buds opening to blossoms with every slow-creep day of warmth. Soon, everything will burst forth. Soon, the color and smell of new life.

Despite that, beyond the yard and far walls, the bustle and toil and stench of the city remains. For all potential of goodness, the beauty and loveliness that might happen within the confines of the city, it still is there. It still lingers.

Benji wonders how long things linger. Like poison.

“I’m not saying it were them,” Benji slurs in a way that only a handful of people in his life can parse. Maran is, fortunately, one of them. “M’saying s’another thing. The whales. But another fuckin’ thing.”

“You drank too much.” Maran points out, though his words mush together just as sloppy. “Leave ‘em out of your fuckin’…your melodrama. What’d they do?”

“Nothin’ but get ev- eve—eviscerated.”

“Evi—Eviscerated?” Maran pushes himself to his elbows. When he leans over Benji, he obscures the stars and the moon. HIs eyes gleam, liquid and syrupy as off it as he is. “Fuck’s sake, man. You are sloshed.”

“Wiped out!” Benji insists. “Gone. What’s left, anyway? Shoulda left the oil where it was, in ‘em — now we’ve got it in the land and the water and the lungs. Y’know people are gettin’ sick? N’it’s all worry about the plague come back. Ery’body old’s wringin’ their hands.” Benji blinks. “Dunwall’s fucked. Not just the whales.”

Maran laughs again. It sounds less humored. More concerned, a little higher in his head. “You’ve got to get a grip, mate.”

But Benji has seen what comes from the desire for a fist around something, even if that something is one’s own mind. He’d rather it unspool and worry and panic than keep himself properly contained. So few people talk about the struggles of the city in the way they sometimes do, when off a few glasses. Like a tattered, tragic history, suffering is a staple of Dunwall. A simple fact of reality. As unavoidable as the seasons, as the river’s currents, as the month of harvest. Nobody talks about why.

Benji thinks there’s a reason. He isn’t afraid to share it:

Dunwall is a thing rotted. To the quick, to the core.

And he doesn’t just say that now, because he’s stood in a line slowly shuffling. Each quiet occasional (never quick enough) shhhf of boots on tile is a machination of bureaucracy; that, to him, is just as evil as eviscerating an entire species.

Slightly less evil than the price he’s got to pay just for a copy of a piece of bloody paper to be put in his waiting hand — but only very slightly.

“That’s it, then?” He asks, staring down at the parchment. It’s got a neat roll of twine, an official shiny red wax stamp of the Empire’s symbol embossed.

“That’s what?”

He glances up at the official, seated on the other side of the window in a little clerk’s station. She’s old, but not ancient, with golden spectacles perched on her upturned nose and smile lines around her pursed, bored mouth.

“I mean —” Benji lets out a laugh, although it’s more huff than anything amused. Air in, air out. His hair messes beneath a clammy palm; they keep this particular government office so warm it’s stuffy. “Fuck. Oh, sorry — I mean, fuck.”

“Have I given you the wrong document?” She leans forward in her seat, peering back at him from behind glass so clean it’s nearly invisible. A long finger taps at the desk her side of the window, near the shiny metal slope beneath that allows them to pass things back and forth. “I’ll gladly check, but I’m sure that’s the correct one. The deed? I’ll check, but it’ll cost another two hundred to have it resealed.”

His eyebrows hitch. “Two — no. No, it’s right. Sorry. I just, it’s a big deal, isn’t it?”

The woman looks at him for a moment, then casts a glance over either shoulder. Then she leans forward until her breath softly fogs the glass.

“You’re holding the line up for me, lovey, but this bit—” she taps the desk, finger pushed into the groove where the rolled parchment has just been passed to him. “It’s been the talk of the office this week, do you know that? Good bit of land you’ve got, abouts Poolwick even? That market’s been nasty for decades, so few of us were privately — privately, love, it don’t bear repeating— excited to see it given back to family. Whatever strings you managed to yank to have this done, well. They must have been more ropes, yeah? You’re entitled to enjoy it.”

He beams at her properly now, unable to help the expression from slipping forth. “I intend to.”

She points a slim finger at him. Perhaps fighting a smile of her own: “And you keep it out of the hands of those industry beasts, you hear me? Won’t hear nothin’ about another factory being built on that pretty lake.”

Benji has no plans to build a factory, and assures her as such. He’d like to return his family there. He’d like to invite another family to join, and Maran, and maybe whoever Maran would like to invite, and maybe — well. He has time to figure the specifics out.

Only when he’s back in Maran’s room at the estate does he fully accept the reality of what he’s just managed to do. The clerk had no way of knowing how right she’d been, with that off-handed remark about pulled strings. The paper, wrinkled now from being excitedly clutched in his fist the whole trip back, holds more than just a bequeathed acreage sold to the empire several generations back. It’s years of work, of saving every single coin he could find, of picking labor shifts after a day guarding, of meetings and letters and delayed appearances before magistrates and solicitors.

The latter of which he only managed to successfully hire as representation for this goal (to sort the language of the law, something he’s never had neither desire nor respect nor time to pick apart) is Maran’s father. So, the man’s grandiose office of mahogany and golden trinkets and shiny lacquered imported trim should really have been his first stop.

Gabriel, as only Benji’s internal thoughts flippantly refer to him, is sat at the massive desk when the guards usher him inside. He knows firsthand how heavy that piece of furniture is — on more than one occasion, the duke had insisted someone “help” move it to catch light when his manic whims decided the sun was necessary to accomplish his day’s tasks. Or, task. Benji has only ever seen the man judging with hands tucked behind his back. Or signing a document. Or flipping a coin between his slim, tan fingers.

Benji knows this man hails from the western shore of Serkonos. Maran’s mother — the thought of whom pains him — from the east side of the island. Both had been pushed from these places with the northern islands’ settlement, vacationing elites, and Gristol’s upperclass. He thinks this is the reason the man had any interest in helping Benji secure his own family’s land once more. He knows it is the reason for Gabriel’s iron grip on Dunwall politics, his cultish drive for possession; for more and better and greater than what had been taken from his own lineage. He’d known power and prestige, had it taken.

Maran has his will. His stubborn, spiteful sense of accomplishment without the ugly tarnish of ambition. Benji hopes he stays that way. Benji wants to help him stay that way.

“It all worked out, then.” Gabriel says, even before Benji has taken the paper from behind his back and relaxed his dutiful, respectfully tucked pose. He makes himself smaller in the presence of this man — not because he’s scared for his own safety, but because Benji knows hate. He knew it far longer than before he’d met Maran’s father. And yet it had been Gabriel, his cruel and authoritarian reign on his own family, who made Benji understand hate.

Benji had been just eight the first time he witnessed one of the old bastard’s punishments. Just twelve when he realized: a father was not always the man who tucked the blankets to your chin, who retold an exciting bedtime adventure story with new details each time it was spun, who gently kissed your mother’s fever-hot forehead before tying an apron around his waist and happily undertook both share’s responsibilities of the house during the week she rested.

“In the end.” Benji says. He slides the paper across Gabriel’s desk. Although it hurts to watch, although he’d like to have the honors, although it’s his family and their acreage, he allows that wax seal to be broken by the duke’s thumb. He knows what Gabriel wants — what he expects. Benji will work the land back to baseline and then, because it’s a lovely plot in a good location near a burgeoning neighborhood of Poolwick’s growing enterprises, and because Benji has so far only ever been a grateful, loyal boy who follows the rules, Benji will sign over the property.

But Benji is only a loyal, rule following boy with certain eyes on him. And for certain strings to have pulled, ropes to be hefted, money to be made, his deal to be closed….Benji had moved outside the range of vision. It had required a path outside the constraints of legality and politics and respectful citizenship.

Benji had lied. Often. Benji took dubious jobs requiring hired muscle to move in the little hours of the night. Benji had smuggled, and stolen shipments of weapons, and rooted himself into some of the deepest, most rotted-through parts of Dunwall. And some of it, he had enjoyed.

The trickery the most.

So he smiles when he watches Gabriel unfurl the piece of paper. He thinks only of his plans for that land, and the look on the man’s face — far in the future — when Benji denies him the luxury of a purchase. Getting one over on this bastard will feel so good.

He keeps the secret for months. He’s saving it for a specific, special day. One that is always warm and golden in the height of summer. It’s one of his favorite days of the entire year, and for the past ten, he has never spent it alone.

Until now.

Gabriel has plans to open a resort in the hills above Karnaca, a sprawling vacation estate in which he can conduct business during the warmer months, when Gristol is even morewet and depressing than usual. Benji suspects it’s also being constructed as a destination to which he can send potential allies and partners. Only those, of course, with sway both social and material. Guests who will, by coercive wooing or outright threat, ingratiate themselves into a one-sided deal with a clear favor.

In true ruthless fashion, he’s offered hefty bonuses and leave to any of the current estate staff willing to travel for the summer and help see the Karnaca grounds is developed to specific, strict standard. Few of those who have this offer extended, including Xavier, decline it. It will put a sea between them for far longer than Benji is ever wiling to part from him, but —

“It’s fine. It’s fine. It will be fine.”

Warm hands clutch his cheeks. Xavier holds his laughing form in place while an absolute barrage of kisses are sundered over his face. There are wet tear tracks there, because despite the words, it will be the longest they’ve spent apart in years.

“It’s not fine.” Xavier says, rapid-fire between each of Benji’s assertions. “I’m going to wither away and die. I need to get these in —” he interrupts himself to smack a few more loud, wet kisses to Benji’s mouth. He squirms half-heartedly, squeezing Xavier’s ribs and shaking him as if this isn’t exactly where he wants to be.

“It’ll be good money.” Benji assures him, because that — it will be great money — is one of his few comforts. He wish he could say in addition to Xavier’s guaranteed safety, traveling in such a large and affluent group with familiar faces from the estate who care for him nearly as much as Benji himself. But nothing is assured in the isles but suffering and the need for money.

Fuck’s sake, he’s been in Dunwall too long. Maran is right about the melodrama, although he’ll die before he admits that.

They spend the week before Xavier’s departure largely in bed, of course. But also in their favorite places. Their chosen pub in the Financial District that boasts a chunk taken from the southern wall, weathered by age and rumored to be from the age of the last dynasty. Xavier, secretly, is a great fan of that particular tale; its romance and intrigue, its stalwart yet compassionate empress, and Dunwall’s victory over plague.

Xavier is hopeful like that. Benji is reminded of this again and again as they travel between their familiar roosts. The pub, the park, a botanical garden, an occult shop that serves as both an exhilarating terror to Xavier but unignorable temptation to his curiosity. They hold hands as they walk, or hook elbows together, or otherwise touch in ways previously deemed too intimate for public.

Xavier is hopeful, but when Benji is tugged laughingly down an alley for kissing (different, of course, then two warm palms slid together and must be private), he doesn’t feel that way at all. In fact, he feels quite the opposite. So stiff and panicked is he, even with Xavier in his arms and free with affection, that the kissing tapers off. The sweet, needy noises that he lives to hear slip into something questioning. Then, concerned. Benji doesn’t realize there are tears on his cheeks until fingertips touch to them, all the gentleness contained in his lover poured into that gesture.

“What?” Xavier smooths a hand up his chest. It becomes a gentle, comforting pressure around the back of his neck

Their noses nudge together and Benji takes a shuddering breath. It does nothing to help the strange tightness in his chest, the vice clutch of unsourced panic crawling up his throat.

“I don’t know.” He admits in a whisper. He moves his hands from their lusty grip to a slim waist in favor of a more chaste embrace. It feels good, maybe even better in the moment, to be held that way instead. And he’s so grateful for this — Xavier’s understanding, his desire and compassion alike — that the tears start afresh.

“Crying because I didn’t give you the last piece of taffy? Manipulative.” Xavier teases. They’re aside a busy street. The bustle of the crowd is a din of vendors and traveling merchants, out-of-towners and city natives alike. No one can hear them, but still Xavier pitches his pretty voice low. Just for Benji. Just for them.

The sweetness gets to him. He’s properly crying about it all, now.

“Shut up.” Benji rasps. His fists are locked in the back of Xavier’s jacket. “You like that shit better.”

“You like it better.” He argues, broad shoulders rounded and spine bent to put their faces together. He’s smiling. That wonderful, messy thing that flashes teeth whiter than any working class city boy has a right to have. Something like grief stabs strangely into Benji’s chest; he has no idea why, no knowledge of its source. He feels silly for it. There’s nothing darker there, nothing other than the vague looming he’ll be out of reach soon, a whole sea away. There’s nothing darker there, even though they stand on a paved Dunwall street, and there is always something darker, deeper, disgusting in Dunwall.

So Benji lurches up to bring their mouths together, a quiet sort of sob lodged silent in his throat.

This can’t be healthy, he thinks as they kiss and kiss, but he’s satisfied to find that another pair of hands clutch as desperately to him. And even when Xavier begins to make noise into his mouth, that fear in his chest stays tight and present. He can’t shake it. He chalks it up to the simple fact that they’ve never been apart this long. Not since they were young, not even for visits outside the city to family, on jobs, on other trips.

He wants to say something romantic, then. Something like I’ll miss you or I’m going to be here waiting or Did you know the fee to have a marriage certificate officiated in Gristol courts is only a little bit cheaper than a whole fucking land title?

Instead, he’s silent as they kiss again. It only lasts a few more seconds; sometimes, the way they come together feels too intimate even for this sort of tucked away privacy.

Xavier spends his final day in Dunwall with his family, and takes his final meal in Dunwall with his family, and sleeps his final sleep in Dunwall with his family. Much later, in his bitter recollection of those twenty four hours, Benji will reflect on the irony of these facts: it is his final day, final meal, final sleep at all.

And at this realization not yet to be had, Benji will experience something new — aside grief, that is. In time, the rot he knows infects the city will creep from its resting place beneath the cobblestone streets he strides. The choking miasma of suffering and tragedy and loss and horror will twine from the soles of his feet up, traveling like poisoning of the blood. Inside to out, always to follow, always to be a part of him.

One day, soon, Benji too will become victim to whatever lingering legend or curse has slithered into Dunwall’s being.

He’ll be worse for it. He doesn’t know that yet, though.

For now, sitting in the parlor with Maran, their shoes off and liquor once more uncorked in the absence of his father (gone ahead to Karnaca, as if he’d ever travel with the staff), all Benji knows is the sweet rush of alcohol.

“It’ll pass so quick.” Maran assures, not for the first time that evening. “And I’ll only have to deal with your moping for a season.”

Benji offers him a loopy smile and raised middle finger in response. Then, just as quick as it flit to his face, the grin falters.

“I—”

Maran groans loudly, fists pressed into his eyes as he tips his head back — and chair, so severely on its wobbling legs that only Benji’s heel hooked around one keeps him upright. “Don’t fuckin’ start! You kick off again and I’m in this state and then we’re both here weeping on the floor, worrying like hens.”

Benji sniffles to contain himself, at least for Maran’s sake. “You’ve stressed yourself more worried about him than you are bein’ in charge of this absolute shitshow.”

Maran makes a face then. A contrite, bratty twist of his brow, a bullish and annoyed pull to his mouth. “Xavier’s more important than any of this.”

Benji agrees. Benji scrubs his eyes with the back of his fist, and then opens his arms for Maran to crawl into. They fall asleep in the middle of the floor just like that.

His back hurts in the morning when they see Xavier off at the docks.

He wheezes when Benji squeezes around his waist, holds them tight together. And even though he’s the one leaving, doing something new, it’s Xavier who rubs a firm, soothing pet up and down Benji’s spine to ease that sleeping position strain.

Maran stands to the side, teasingly whistling and not making eye contact with the rare display of affection.

“Bring me taffy,” Benji mumbles into his chest, uncaring for the rain-slick fabric beneath his cheek. He can’t say anything else dancing around his skull, and it feels a silly thing to settle on, but:

Xavier response is a hearty, sweet laugh. The rumble of it vibrates into him. He holds that feeling until the ship disappears over the horizon, across the sea.

He wishes he could say that the moment it happens, he knows. That he feels it. That there is some deep and preternatural awareness that travels him, heart to veins to limbs and digits, of Xavier’s own steady beat. Of when it ends.

But he doesn’t know.

He isn’t there to see the flash of knife through the wind churning, ever constant currents, above Shindaerey Peak. He isn’t there to comfort the sting of it to Xavier’s cheeks, wet with tears and pale with fear. He isn’t there when blood pours between cracks of ancient stone to trickle down below, where the thin, corrupted veil separating the weak remnants of the void drink from the red rivulets. He isn’t there when the magic of the world sings anew, when a new entity is chosen, or when this age’s new cult discover there is no body to cart away into an accident scene worthy of covering their sacrifice — their crime. Benji isn’t there for the crackle of ozone in the air. For the way the wind stops, just briefly; the way the turbines still, and the way a burst of energy sends a ripple of outages throughout Karnaca’s upper district.

But only for a moment. There is profit to be made, and so there are backup generators and staff to see that they’re kept in good maintenance because it’s power, after all, that runs it all. And it’s power that leads Xavier, sheep to slaughter, and it’s power that slides the knife through flesh that ought to be kissed lovingly, and it’s power that ensures control remains in the fists of those this choice benefits.

Someone must be chosen, after all. It’s worked that way for as long as anyone can remember. Longer than the whales, the boy who came before, the one before that, the one before that. Even the deepest, oldest slate of the mountain itself forgets.

Benji isn’t there in those final moments, doesn’t feel the moment it happens although he will wish he did, and he isn’t there to know that the truth of this is revealed to Xavier in his final seconds.

What would you have become, if not this? Someone asks him, petting hair from his face as the blade descends. A dockworker, doomed to die of injuries at too young an age? A feeble, crippled thing with nothing to offer except burden? You’ll save us all this way, you know. The void is everything, holds us all in its cradle, and there must be someone to reign over its domain.

Benji isn’t there to know that this simple city boy is told he’ll be more, this way. Worse — he isn’t there to assure him that all he had been, prior to his death and rebirth, was good and wonderful.

Perfect, even.

The news comes in the form of a letter to the Wolffe family. It is Xavier’s eldest sister who brings the news to Benji. He will respect her forever for delivering it in person, rather than parchment, and suspects that the lack of tears in the moment are nothing more than a drought of them after an initial torrent.

There is a month left to Xavier’s contract at the Karnaca estate. Per its terms, the remaining money due goes to his family. They have plenty to put it towards, the number of mouths in that home.

One less, Benji thinks, and feels the threat of manic laughter so severe that he has to excuse himself immediately.

But, even as he withdraws to his quarters and locks the door and wedges a chair beneath the handle, the laughter never comes. In retrospect, he doesn’t recall what does: whether he cries or wails or tears chunks of his hair or mourns however gracefully or violently is lost to those initial few hours. They’re a blur of nothing when he reaches for them in his memories, and so he eventually stops trying.

He remembers Maran’s grief well enough, anyway.

Like his initial mourning, Benji can’t recall the first clue he had that something more foul than an unfortunate, reasonless tragedy had taken place. Surely at the instance that there was no body. Surely the quiet, guilty averted glances of the surviving staff that returned at the end of the summer. Surely it’s something. Surely there is a clue.

He is unwilling to admit that it’s a gut feeling, that sense of suspicion. Because what does it say, that he holds within him some knowing of something terrible, something rotten having taken place— and not a knowing of the exact moment the most important life to him was snuffed out?

A little over a week after the remaining staff returns — and one month after Xavier’s death — Maran catches him in the estate’s east wing, leg slung over an open window ledge.

Benji freezes and glances over his shoulder. They stare at each other for a long, long moment.

“If you fucking toss yourself to the yard, I swear —”

Benji snorts, even though he has felt devoid of humor for so, so long. Devoid of anything but…well. Nothing, really. He’s only felt empty, and so the recent wash of rage and suspicion and paranoia had been welcoming. Like a warm, familiar embrace.

“M’not killing myself, you arse-faced bastard.” He fires back, tugging the dark cloth from around his nose and mouth so Maran can better hear the insult.

Maran crosses the room in a few strides, bare feet padding across parquet without any thought to how loud he’s being. His skills of stealth and diversion are only so honed to the point of occasional sneak-outs and late night trysts off the estate require. Maran isn’t like him. Maran doesn’t know how unalike they have grown to become. And he might have his own suspicions, but Benji doubts they run as deep and vile as his own.

As he’s enfolded in a tight hug, Benji imagines the rot of Dunwall creeps from him onto the edges of Maran’s soft sleep shirt. Stains it and the little thread of embroidered vines gracing its edge.

He drops his head to Maran’s shoulder, squeezes his eyes shut, and then shoves his best friend away by the shoulders.

It’s so strong and unexpected a motion that Maran doesn’t just stumble backwards; he trips toe to heel, arms pinwheeling, and falls on his hip with a loud, sharp cry.

Hate me, he thinks. Hate me, hate me, hate me.

“What the fuck?” Maran hisses, maimed more to the heart than anything else. He stares up at Benji from his prostrate place on the floor, brows pinched in annoyance. Otherwise, his expression is nothing but wounded.

“I’m going to Karnaca.” Benji blurts. He hadn’t meant to reveal anything. He’d meant to slip out, unseen. But —

Maran gapes at him. He starts to gather himself, to get to his knees — and if he does, if he comes forward, if they touch again, Benji knows — Benji knows himself.

“Benji —”

The stars no longer twinkle above the city skyline. Although luminous, they’re distant. They’re muffled by the smog and smoke and ever-flickering lights. When they were children, before oil was replaced by a new wave of technological innovation, the constellations could be easily picked out. Now…

“Finally sorted my shit. Bucked up enough this year. I was gonna—” He thinks about a piece of parchment crammed into a fireproof safe beneath the floorboards of his mother’s home. He has resigned himself, perhaps out of some sick sense of duty, never to step foot on that land. He can’t bring himself to walk it alone. “I told Saha and everything. Had a script. Made her read it, wanted to be sure it didn’t sound —” he chokes up then, clears his throat. “I was going to ask. I — I have to go.”

Maran has fallen silent. And Benji knows he shouldn’t, but he casts another look over his shoulder as he swings both legs out the window. Maran kneels, hands uselessly loose in his lap. His eyes are shiny with rapidly welling tears, and now Benji has to look away.

“Please don’t, Benji. Please.”

And that plea comes so, so close to enough.

Benji’s determination is all that it takes to begin unweaving the underbelly of Dunwall’s shadier dealings. He grew up in the city, already aware of the shadows — but now he has reason to delve into them, reach in and pluck specifics. He has suspicions that need dragged into the light of day, and it’s only the fierce (perhaps mad) drive to accomplish this that allows him access to criminally-adjacent interworkings.

When he catches the Rhoades girl around her slim throat, he has to temper how hard he shoves her against the ugly wallpaper. She’s a sleight thing, gracefully and fragile in that birdlike way some noblewomen tend. He doesn’t want to hurt innocents, no matter how intwined they are in this work. It’d be hypocritical. It’d be wrong.

(And still, he isn’t sure how long that line will remain uncrossed. He has to know.)

There’s nothing meek or caged about the way she angles her chin and clamps down on his wrist hard enough to draw blood. Benji clenches his jaw against the sharp pain, waiting for the bluff — and she cedes first, if only to make a disgusted face at the metallic taste on her tongue. Benji has never dealt with this broker of information before, in his occasional black market dealings, but she has a reputation.

He spots the source of those rumors in the fierce, narrowed judgement aimed from her pretty eyes.

“Name your —”

“I’ve no price you can match.” Benji interjects. He lets her go and steps back so that she can slump to the ground with at least a bit of dignity, but she doesn’t do more than wobble on long legs. A slim, well-manicured hand wraps around the flushed skin of her own neck, but that soothing touch is the only weakness from their encounter she displays. Benji is, begrudgingly, impressed.

“If it’s blood you’re after just make it quick. And make sure to arrange me some way nice. There’s a chaise I like in the library — but I’m telling you now, if I’m not found dead and pretty, I’ll haunt you until you wish it’d been you.”

Alright, fine. He likes her.

“One of your little network’s agents is working for Giarrizzo-Cohn. She’s better at pretending to be a skilled maid than keeping secrets, bless her.” Benji holds his palm flat, even between them; she’s taller than him by several inches. “About here? Curly hair. From Tyvia, I think?”

He’d tried to fuck someone from Tyvia, recently. Auburn hair (wrong shade). It had gone no further than a hand (wrong size) on his shoulder for Benji’s stomach to turn enough to make him flee.

At the mention of Odette (and probably the cruel insinuation of her safety at stake), Matilda Rhoades’s face shifts entirely. The bravery fades into obvious concern, although the rage still simmers beneath the surface.

“What do you want.”

Benji shrugs. “I’m headed to Serkonos. I need to know where Lethe holes up.”

She snorts, which seems to him a very unladylike thing to do. And yet it makes him think of Saha and her freely given amusement; it’s a flash enough of recognition to soften him more. She’s dangerous, if not the way brutality is — but charm.

“Do you understand how very upset a broker of Lethe’s caliber will be if I give out information like that?”

“So you know.”

Matilda opens her mouth then closes it. “I just woke up. You pulled me from bed.” She squeezes her eyes shut and pinches the bridge of her nose.

Benji raises his hand in cheeky apology. “Not at your best. Things slip.”

Matilda gestures towards a little folding desk in the corner of the room, and Benji goes to it — without turning his back. When he returns with a dull, sharpened-short pencil and notepad, she scribbles on it before tearing the paper and smacking it into his chest.

“There.” She waves her hand at the door. “Close it on your way out, you sad fucking goblin. And say hello to Maran for me, will you? He owes me gossip.”

Benji makes the mistake of falling into fitful sleep on the ship over. Just one quick, short nap. One snap of his eyes shut. When he wakes, his pack is gone from between his ankles. He had tied the strap tight around one calf, and still the thief had managed to finesse it without waking him. If he were in a better state of mind, he might respect it. But he isn’t — and because he knows only one contact on the whole accursed isle, because the fears them, Benji winds up in a tavern with the only coin lining his pockets. He’d been traveling light, after all; he’d embarked on this trip with little thought as to where it would lead him, if anywhere but the grave, when it was over.

He can only face Lethe several drinks in.

Until now, they have exchanged dealings through only written correspondence. The letters come coded; he takes them to Dr. Sullivan for a price.

When Benji drops through the skylight into the messy studio, it seems that his arrival is expected. He had no idea what to expect of this strange and mysterious merchant of information. He is not expecting an artist, and he is not expecting the fantastical array of gore on canvases scattered about the room. Some of them span from floor to ceiling; others are no larger than his palm. All of them are stomach-churningly detailed, rendered with care, skill, and a suspiciously precise amount of detail. These are works with love in every brush stroke

“Kitschy.” Benji comments into the darkness of the studio. “How much d’you budget for red pigment, I reckon?”

“More than your life is worth.”

Benji turns to the voice, which sounds to him as androgynous as its owner. Lethe, or the person he assumes has taken that moniker, steps from the shadows like a wisp, a phantom. They are as light as one; a blank canvas to be projected upon, to be painted by others. Benji is no painter. He has no idea which colors he’d used to begin to render them. In the low light, he sees only the glint of silvered skin and hair, and eyes a muddy ruby-red.

“Rude. Haven’t done anything to you, have I?”

Lethe spreads their arms, striding into the slice of moonlight. They seem to disappear, plains of a wide nose and full lips only visible in slight shadow. Anonymity makes sense, considering their — condition? He’s never met anyone that looks the way they do.

“You broke into my studio.” The broker says, gesturing with one hand to their surroundings. “If you had good intentions, you’d visit the gallery like the rest of my patrons.”

Lethe rounds the diameter of the moon’s spill. Benji mirrors it slowly, keeping them at the same distance. The hair on the back of his neck is standing on end.

“What do you want?”

“Just like that?” Benji fires back, masking twinging nerves with as much cheek as he can muster.

Lethe glances towards the wall behind him, and stupidly, he looks too. A clock ticks gently, both arms pointed upright. When he turns back, Lethe stands directly before him. He finds a step back impossible. It isn’t often Benji has felt…cornered.

“It’s late.” Lethe correctly points out. “And I have a showing in the morning.” He must imagine that twitch of their mouth. “If you don’t mind.”

“I’m looking for someone.” Benji admits, and winces. He hopes not too much is betrayed there, in that look, because somehow it feels as though all of the pain he’s held onto since Tess visited bleeds in. “Or, uh. I’m looking into what happened to someone.”

The mystery unravels quickly, once Lethe pulls that initial thread for him. What he discovers in the subsequent weeks, is done in a period of depraved obsession that he spends either in a rented room, researching into the long hours of the night, or roaming Karnaca’s backstreets and hovels and paved streets in neighborhoods of wealth alike. The whole story is a bit more nefarious than the murder of one poor boy from Dunwall. And, if perhaps he had a bit of distance from the details, it would be downright horrifying. A cult intent on restoring controversially powerful magic — the weavings of the world — seems an awful children’s story. The sort meant to sway little ones onto the right side of morals, of society.

A fantastical notion, in of itself. It’s a bit late for Benji anyway. He stops recognizing the face in the mirror. Soon, he’ll stop looking at all.

The first one — a proper cultist, judgment bequeathed by way of the myriad of writings in her office and the vast amounts of books on the void stacked in the adjoining library— happens to be one of Lethe’s many patrons. He’s expecting a shadowy cloaked figure. A beautiful witch, maybe. Someone kept forever young by dealings with the powers of the void. Someone more concerned with their own life than that of an innocent.

She isn’t any of that. She’s a kind looking old woman with pictures of grandchildren in golden frames tacked to the wall and knots in her gray-touched hair. He suspects it’s because several of her fingers are curled towards her palm, gnarled by the touch of arthritis. It must make it hard to hold a brush, and the pride of her upbringing must make it difficult to ask for help. He discovers later that she was from Tyvia. Same town as Odette, it turns out — he wonders if she moved for the warmer air. Better for the joints, he’s heard.

When he corners her in her sprawling estate’s quaint study, she drives a knife tucked up her lacy sleeve into Benji’s side. He pulls it out with a grunt and pushes it through her heart.

It certainly isn’t painless, but he makes it quick. It’s the only one of the subsequent six lives he takes that is. By the end of it, on the other side, Benji returns to Dunwall and wishes he had saved that mercy for himself. He’s only sick that first time, emptying his stomach in a back alley several blocks from the Tyvian elder’s estate. He’s only sick the once. That first life. He’s heard it before, and is only a little horrified to find it true: after one, the rest are easy.

He thinks that maybe he was right, in the end. There is something rotten in the city. It corrupts, and it takes, and it kills, and it is horror. It is suffering, inescapable; and rather than fear it has seeped into him, Benji knows. Benji knows a lot, now. Namely, that there is something rotten in him.

The worst of it is maybe the secret he keeps tucked closest to him, only to him. It isn’t one meant for brokers, or traded for coin. It is the sort of secret whose worth is more precious to him than any amount. Because it would do more than devastate Maran to know the role his own father had in a ritualistic sacrifice, one of his friends. It’s the kind of secret he can’t carry. It’s the kind of secret Benji can. Better the rot is shouldered by him than someone else. Someone innocent.

But then again, his mind winds to him late at night, curled and knees-tucked alone in a bed that had once barely fit two, what had innocence done for Xavier?

#writing #bp #xw #mgc #mmr #bp x xw #dishonored au #elliot was quicker to the angst for this au than i was #so i had to get revenge #very sorry everyone u are collateral

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hauntedjpegcollection · 4 months

Text

two years

wc: 1959 au: dishonored au ch: xavier, benji

Xavier will die in two years.

His throat will be cut so deep bone is exposed; he won’t even have any last words, they don’t let him. He’s drugged, unconscious on a stone slab as a sacrifice (gone wrong, or right, depending on who is asked)—and Benji dies in a lot of ways that day as well. His heart and humanity. They both die, physically and metaphorically and every other sense, two untethered souls, a throat not the only thing cut.

Maybe they both come back too; come back wrong or changed, but come back. Searching for each other.

But that’s two years. Right now it’s

—

When Xavier moves the sword to defend his neck, he isn’t paying close enough attention to Benji’s right hook. He’s never paying enough attention to fists, which is always his downfall in sword fights with Benji. He feels the knuckles skate off his ribs, only half meant to hurt. They’re sparring after all, and even if Xavier has countless times asked Benji to take it seriously, he’s never walked away with anything worse than a shallow bruise here or there.

Xavier dances backward, sword coming up once, twice, three times to deflect wicked and pursuing jabs from Benji. Sweat rolls down his face, drips from his chin. He has to lick some off his lips—which hilariously does distract Benji for a moment. He can see sleepy eyes widen with interest. Xavier get’s his in, slips past a well guarded defense and slaps the sword across Benji’s side.

“Oh, fuck you,” his partner hisses, swatting at the blunt blade. Xavier laughs, giving it a playful twirl in his hand.

“Later,” he winks, wiping a hand down his face to wick away sweat. “You’re the one throwing fucking haymakers during a sword fight.” Which they’re always argued about relentlessly, never to come to a good conclusion. Xavier loves the art form behind blade work. He wants to be good—he wants to own a real sword and feel the weight and responsibility of it. He studies books stolen from the giant library on Maran’s estate. He practices in the early morning hours, different forms that work for his slender grass blade of a body.

Benji usually dissolves into something closer to a fist fight when he spars.

It suits him though. The passage of time always makes Xavier nervous to think about (perhaps, because deep down he knows he’s going to die in two years—don’t worry, not really, he won’t become omnipotent until the sacrifice, but sometimes people simply know when a blade is secretly hanging above them all their lives), so he doesn’t often spare time to think about how Benji has hit mid twenties and bulked up from that awkward teenage boy Xavier had first kissed.

But it’s also undeniable whenever Benji is using his body like this, sparring or the occasional manual labor he gets tasked into doing. He’s hefty and defined and strong and Xavier is still a little too slender for his own liking. It makes him self conscious occasionally, until Benji’s warm calloused hands close around his waist and tug him closer. He likes looking down and seeing himself held.

“Again?” Xavier asks, trying to stop himself from spiraling on thoughts of Benji, heavy and solid and holding his waist. Yanking that waist back and forth—and Xavier’s face to the pillow and—he easily blames the heat on his face to the work out. He fans his shirt, plucking at the middle with a little bit of an anxious hand.

“Alright,” Benji snickers, falling into his easy defensive posture. His smug expression makes Xavier’s heart throb a bit. Maybe Benji isn’t the best sword partner.

Easily proven when they come together again, the loud clang of swords striking against each other. Xavier’s long reach should provide him advantage—he is much taller than Benji. But maybe it’s because they know each other too well (they know each other to the ends of the earth, untethered souls, don’t forget, that are going to always be reaching for each other, even after deaths both metaphorical and literal) but Benji consistently finds the weaknesses in Xavier’s form.

They become a bit unkind to each other for a moment—competitive as they are. They weren’t always lovers, once they were just two boys who grew up together who could not help but try and one up the other. The strikes become harder and quicker and meaner. Benji’s expression turns from smug to wicked and Xavier curses more than once, face red now because he’s annoyed and not thinking of a few nights ago when Benji had—

His leg is swept out from underneath him. Xavier crashes to the floor, breath knocked clean from his lungs. The only reason his head doesn’t snap down against the floor as well is because the front of his shirt is held in a tight fist, keeping him just shy of collision. He’s still dizzy, even without the head injury. His sword lays a few feet from him, discarded from a weakened hand. Xavier stares up at Benji, who half crouches over top of him.

“Cheater,” Xavier seethes.

“How is that cheatin’?”

“That’s not how people actually—”

“If you’re in a fight,” Benji continues, slowly settling himself down onto Xavier’s lap and making stars pop up in front of his eyes. “You should probably lose the honor shit and fight like you want to win.” The weight of him is so warm and satisfying, his knees slid perfectly around Xavier’s trim waist. He’s panting through his words and his hair is messy with sweat and exertion. He has a flush to his cheeks that makes Xavier momentarily light headed. His pale, giant palms slowly slide up and over Benji’s thighs.

The swords are forgotten as Benji leans down. His fist slowly releases Xavier’s shirt and lets his back fully hit the floor. There is the soft thudding sound of his head meeting wood. It makes both of them giggle, strangely high pitched—a crackle of energy between them is arousing and electric and immortal.

They are both still breathing hard when they kiss, so it’s messy. Open mouths panting against each other. Xavier’s hands become a crueler hold, tightening so hard he feels a bit of shake to his limbs and that only encourages Benji to grind himself back and forth, harder and harder with each new way they fit their mouths together. They’ve been kissing for nearly ten years now (in two years, it will be ten years, and Xavier will be dead), and yet it never feels dull.

Nothing about Benji could ever feel dull.

When they part for more than just air, Xavier is sitting up frantically. Their chests bump together and it isn’t enough. Kissing isn’t enough.

“Please,” he says in a desperate little whisper, brushing back sweat slick strands of hair from Benji’s face. “I want—”

And he doesn’t even have to ask for more.

—

Xavier was allowed to convert a small, wooden storage shed on the Giarizzo-Cohn estate into a home for himself. He was no longer able to live at home—not just because of the overwhelming amount of bodies in the Wolffe household, but because Xavier and his father didn’t see eye to eye on things. It was a simpler way to put it, and it sometimes hurt less if he thought of it that way. But Maran’s father had been oddly gracious, had been welcoming even when he’d let Xavier in.

It was easier to save money this way, because Maran’s father also didn’t ask for anything in return except manual labor here and there. Which Xavier was always happy to provide—he was not turning the profit he thought he would by working on the docks. Xavier wouldn’t sacrifice himself (and he doesn’t, mind you, but they do sacrifice him) to become a fisherman, because it means long stretches at sea.

He doesn’t want to be away that long, even if the money is better.

It’s such a meager little place, but somehow has become the most comfortable shed in the world. His mattress sits on a plank of wood he’d constructed, just high enough that as he and Benji lay on it together, they can look out the window. It doesn’t have a good view, but that isn’t necessary. It’s just a view at all, a little glass world that they bask in together.

Xavier runs his hand up and down Benji’s spine, appreciating the way occasionally he’ll twist or turn away or into the movement. His lover makes a soft sound and then a groaning one and then a rough huff whenever Xavier stops. It makes him laugh.

It should be uncomfortable to lay together, bodies pressed when they haven’t showered. He can feel the snag of skin together, Benji’s coarse body hair, the sweat that sticks to them. But it isn’t unpleasant. He likes this, he feels them glued together almost. Xavier brushes his hand up once more, curling around Benji’s shoulder blade, where he then presses a gentle kiss.

“And I think we should have a dog,” Xavier finally says, sighing contently.

“You’re not enough of one?” Benji mumbles, his head pillowed on Xavier’s chest. His own hand grips possessively at Xavier’s hip. His thumb traces a pattern there that seems the same every time, like it is a morse code that he hasn’t figured out yet. Xavier loves that feeling, that parts of his body have a little secret from Benji. He rolls his eyes and then rolls them. He puts Benji on his back, watching a bit of a wince through his expression.

“Oh?” Xavier grins widely, his ego swollen.

“Fuck off,” Benji snaps, settling more into the blankets. A maid had given him extra because Xavier had a pretty smile. “And why am I the one buildin’ the house? Let’s go back to that fuckin’ part ‘fore the dog. You’re lazy, you know that?”

“I am not.”

“Layin’ on your back the whole time, grinning just like that.”

“You’re so cranky when you’re sore,” Xavier purrs, pressing swift and sweet kisses to Benji’s chest. He smells so good after sex. Like sweat and body and that for some reason, is when Xavier can’t get enough of him. He rubs his nose and cheek into Benji’s sternum, eliciting a low, husky laugh.

“I want you to build the house, because—” Xavier rises up slightly, his hand soothing over Benji’s arm. He comes across the significant swell of his bicep. He squeezes and smiles, not his sleazy satisfied post sex smile, but something softer. A little gentle—maybe just emotional. He squeezes once more, a soft appreciative gesture. “I like when you—when you’re strong for other shit. Not—You’re good at fighting, Benji, alright? But, build me a house, okay? Before all this strength goes somewhere it shouldn’t go.”

A strong breeze batters the side of the shed. Benji stares up at Xavier, his dark eyes pooled with emotion. Neither of them can seem to say anything for a minute, Xavier’s words hanging between them. Dunwall has become a disgusting place; has done a slow crawl into something horrible and rotten. Men become worse just living in the city. Xavier wants them to escape. He wants to live somewhere quiet, where neither of them ever have to have a sword for anything other than just fun. Where Benji slowly forgets to throw a punch.

(Unfortunately, as we know, this is not what happens, but for now…)

“What color?” Benji asks, folding hands behind his head. Xavier sits up slightly to admire the shape of him. He bites his lip, sinking down to kiss Benji’s chest and lower.

“Green.”

#writing #dishonored au #xw #bp #xw x bp #:)

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screwtheprinceimtakingthehorse · 1 year

Text

wanted posters (crack played straight)

Dishonored AU I'll probably never write but that's fun to think about

Corvo and Daud each kept each other's wanted posters, long since Daud left Dunwall after the confrontation with Corvo

Corvo uses Daud's as a bookmark in whatever he's reading (and sometimes absently strokes it with his thumb) - at some point, he started talking to it because he found/kept one of Daud's journal-cum-ledgers and, reading through it, realises he could really do with Daud's help around some of Dunwall's nobles - it is well-worn from handling, folding, and touching it, and Corvo just doesn't use any other bookmarks, ever - Emily knows and, after a decade, finds it hilarious rather than concerning

Daud ripped one of Corvo's wanted posters off a City Watch guard post, kept it, and put it up in his office (pretending that it's for when Burrows tasks him with eliminating Corvo; as though that would ever seriously happen) - when he flees Dunwall, he takes it with him as a reminder, and it turns into his constant companion - wherever he lives, he puts it up on the wall, and he talks to it - his inner voice is basically Corvo at this point, heckling him - it has a smudge near Corvo's face where Daud touches it when he passes by in greeting

Daud returns to Dunwall, watching Corvo, and when Corvo talks to his imaginary Daud, Daud doesn't think and answers as though talking to his imaginary Corvo; result: both of them nearly falling off the roof

#dishonored #corvodaud #corvo x daud #knfecrow #dishonored au #crack fic #i'm sorting out my list of wips because at this rate it'd take me ten years lmao

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