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#jon is in rough shape
fissions-chips · 1 year
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Saw this post and- extremely specific and niche AU but, AU ft. gorgon Tim and Jon where the world is aware of mythical creatures- Tim lives at a sanctuary for them run by the Butlers after being rescued from the Mafiya (poor fella). Jon is ‘wild’ and thinks he’s trapped and keeps causing trouble trying to free him/leave him food (he’s got a crush on him).
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Halloween prompts year 2 day 5
Danny slid in through a sliding glass door, soaked to the bone and practically salivating at the smell of whatever the butler guy-Alfred, his name was Alfred-had in the oven.
"Master Damian, would you like a towel?" Danny nearly jumped when the man spoke, "Yes, please." Danny replied without thinking. Alfred raised an eyebrow before Danny hurriedly corrected his posture, "I mean, that would be lovely Pennyworth. Thank you." He managed to slap on a pretty convincing 'Damian Wayne' accent if he did say so himself but the butler didn't look convinced.
Danny silently chastised himself. If he wanted this to work out he needed to be convincing! Luckly Alfred didn't really question it and just went to go get him a towel.
Aka: Damian Wayne runs away at the beginning of summer break and homeless and starving Danny Fenton shape-shifts and takes his name and place.
Featuring: Alfred knowing something is up but not entirely sure what
Tim fully convinced Damian has been replaced Pod Person style but no one believes him
Bruce thinks Damian is making a bid for independence, especially since he's refusing to patrol with anyone and doing it solo (in reality Danny doesn't have any Robin training and he knows everyone will notice the difference)
Jason finds Dannys hidden stash of stolen food and survival supplies and thinks Damian believes they're gonna kick him out of the family or something and is bing extra nice and offered him a place to stay if things got too rough between him and Bruce. Danny accepted as Damian but was crying inside cause he knew this offer was for Damian and not him
Cass was in Hong Kong so Danny didn't have to worry about her but Talia caught wind of a second Damian acting as Robin and confronted him alone on a rooftop on night
Steph just thought Damian was maturing and becoming nicer
Damian himself had run away to the Kent farm and occasionally having adventures with Jon, unaware that any of this was happening
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orderforbrian · 2 years
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ouuugghhh this comic is OLD but it's still one of my favorites 💖 i made rough blocks when the liveshow came out because jon and martin's meet cute/ugly is SO in character and so wonderfully funny
[Start ID: A two page comic of Jon and Elias from the Magnus Archives with Martin as a side character. Jon is a Persian man with short, dark curly hair and rectangular glasses. There are streaks of grey in his hair and eyebrows. He is wearing a green jacket with a grey sweatervest, white dress shirt, and green tie. Elias is a tan white man with slicked back brown hair, there are streaks of grey in his hair. He is wearing an expensive looking blue suit jacket, vest, dress shirt, and tie. He is also wearing long gold earrings in the shape of a closed eye. Martin is a mixed Polish/Korean man with dark wavy hair and glasses, and a beauty mark on his left chin.
1st panel: Jon slams open the door to Elias' office, looking the picture of rage. He is gripping a piece of paper angrily in one hand. A thought bubble shows a meme image of Spongebob choking Mr. Krabs from the series Spongebob. Elias appears unfazed by the interruption and greets Jon, "Oh! Hello, Archivist. I was wondering when you would finally catch me at my desk, haha."
2nd panel: Off panel, Elias asks "How was your first day?". Jon pushes up his glasses, gripping the paper even tighter and responds, "Undoubtedly horrendous".
3rd panel: Elias gives him an apologetic smile with his hands folded in front of his chest. He says, "Oh dear, that dreadful? Apologies you had to endure such unanticipated distress. What exactly happened to cause this reaction?". There is an arrow pointing to Elias that says "As if he didn't spend relish in every chaotic second".
4th panel: Jon begins to list things off, pointing to each finger as he does. Elias responds intermittently to these.
"Well, to start, the Archives is an ungodly mess. It's going to take ages before it gets sorted out. Why you didn't fire Gertrude is beyond me."
"Mm."
"None of the statements are compatible with modern technology so we've had to resort to using archaic tape recorders."
"Oh."
"And-"
"Oh, there's more."
5th panel: Jon tightens his fists in rage, gradually yelling, "I spent a large portion of my already stressful workday chasing after a bloody dog that your library transfer let loose into the Archives!"
6th: Jon begins to rant, shaking one hand back and forth in frustration. "Why is he there? What qualifications does he have? And absolutely what right? He's from Library, why do we need Library in the Archive staff, much more why him specifically? I requested Tim and Sasha who are far more competent than that - that bumbling idiot! Mr. Bouchard, I'd hate to overstep my boundaries but I really must say this was an unwise decision-". Elias cuts him off, a dialogue bubble with a simplified person smiling. "Oh dear - Archivist..."
Next page
1st panel: Elias gives Jon another apologetic smile. "I sent someone from Library because the Archives desperately needs someone skilled in cataloging. And, evidently, he has a Masters in parapsychology so give him time to prove himself a necessary addition to your assistant team."
2nd panel: Jon appears disgruntled and crosses his arms, grumbling, "Mmn. Well, he has quite a lot to prove after today...Apologies for doubting your decision, but if he continues to hinder our progress I will make my objections very clear." Elias says off panel, "I believe that's a fair compromise. Well, apologies again. As always, I'm open to feedback."
3rd panel: Elias continues off panel. "I'm a bit surprised though...". Jon looks up with wide eyes, a bead of sweat on his face. "Huh?". Elias continues, "You didn't find him the least bit charming? I thought he was rather amused the day of his interview, haha."
4th panel: Jon pushes up his glasses, attempting to hide a blush, and says, "A-as of my current opinion, no. I did not find his ineptitude charming if you'd kindly, Mr. Bouchard."
5th panel: Elias says off panel with a simplified smiling face, "Well, I do hope you all get along soon enough...". Jon presses the paper in his hand to his chin, looking off to the side. He appears disgruntled and is blushing too. Thought bubbles of Martin surround him. One is Martin appearing flustered, his eyes appearing as swirls within his glasses. Another is Martin hovering over Jon, asking if he is okay. Another is Martin looking up with a hand to his chin, stating "I mean...yeah, probably!". The last is Martin holding his glasses and giving a flustered smile, saying "Haha, s-sorry!". Jon thinks to himself, "Hrmm...He might be cute, but he's a complete airhead! Ugh. Hopefully today was just a singular incident."
End ID.]
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spacedace · 1 year
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Here have a quick blurb I wrote partially inspired by that AU where Kon thinks Danny is a clone of his that has been mixed with Kryptonite, but it's Elle who's just escaped from the GIW instead (as always feel free to use this as a writing prompt if anyone is interested):
Trigger warning for mild gore in the form of implications of dissection/vivisection, torture, dismemberment/amputation as well as implied starvation. Nothing too detailed, but Elle is in bad shape and I want to give fair warning that it is there.
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Kon was the closest when the glowing green tear in space and time ripped open in the sky above Metropolis.
Which meant he was the first to see the tiny, injured figure falling out of it, plummeting to the ground in tattered hospital scrubs stained red and green. He moved before he could think, darting forward in the air to grab the battered body, not caring what else might come out of the ominous tear in reality above them. He didn’t care if he got chewed out for being careless, not when the body in his arms was so light and the hazy eyes looking up at him were so scared.
It was just a girl.
White hair darkening to black at the ends, blue eyes ringed with glowing green, little fangs and ashen skin with an arm severed at the elbow and a horrible Y incision carved into her chest seeping through the thin fabric of the medical scrubs she was wearing. She couldn’t be any older than Jon, weakly grabbing at his jacket with her one remaining hand as Kon flew her away from the - thankfully? - closing portal and towards the nearest emergency medical team as quickly as he could. Super strength meant he never really felt the weight of anyone he carried, but there’s something about how gaunt and thin she was that made her seem as solid as sea foam and shattered glass in his arms.
“D…anny?” The girl asked weakly, voice a painful rasp full of such weak hope as she blinked up at him through tear filled eyes. Her head lolled so she was tucking her face into his chest, fragile body shaking with sobs she wasn’t really strong enough for. “Th-ank you, thank you.”
He looked down and saw this injured girl and all that’s been done to her - her green-red blood is seeping into his uniform, her body going cold, cold, cold - and all he wanted was to crush her close and give her the kind of protective hug he’d give Jon after a rough battle. He was too afraid of hurting her more to dare to try though, instead settling on the soft hushing reassurances that she was going to be okay, that he was going to get her help as he pushed himself as hard as he could to get her to medical as quickly as possible.
When he touched down at the nearest JL base, a swarm of doctors and nurses already there and waiting with a stretcher and a crash cart, the girl in his arms gave a weak wail of terror, clinging to him as hard as her frail body would allow her to. “Please don’t let them take me again, Danny, please I can’t - I can’t…”
“Hey, hey, hey,” He shushed her, “It’s going to be okay,” He said, careful as he gently shifted her down onto the stretcher. “They’re here to help. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” It took barely a touch to pull her too-thin hand from his jacket, her small body trembling as she laid there looking up at him. The green was bleeding further into the blue, but the glow of it was starting to dim. The white in her hair sunk down further, leeching all the color out of the black, letting him see the green and red of her blood staining it as it did.
“Promise?” She was so small, Kon felt his heart breaking at the hoarse desperate whisper in her voice as she wept. He wanted to find whoever did this to this girl and tear them apart with his bare hands.
“Promise.” He swore, giving as much of a squeeze to her hand as he dared. “They’re going to fix you up and I’m going to be right here. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Tim found Kon exactly where he expected to: curled up in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to the bed of the mystery girl in the med bay.
Kon hadn’t left since he’d brought the girl in, stubbornly staying at her bedside and only able to be separated from her for as long as it took for the medical staff to stabilize the girl. She’d apparently not reacted well to the doctors, even less so to the prospect of the sterile white medical bay, and Kon had been the only one that had been able to get her to calm down long enough for them to actually work on her. Eventually the doctors confirmed that she was at least enough human that standard sedatives and anesthesia would work on her safely and they were able to knock her out, but even then Kon had refused to leave.
Looking at her in person for the first time, Tim could see why.
Their young Jane Doe was cleaned up compared to the state she’d been in when Kon had caught her falling out of the portal, but she was still a long way from out of the woods. Bones predominant beneath thin, sickly skin. Bruising and scars evident and recent. Left arm already partially gone when she’d appeared, now amputated up to just below her shoulder due to the amount of damage the doctor’s had found when going over her injuries.
She was small, smaller than Damian, and best estimates had her at about the same age as Tim’s youngest brother. Same age as Jon, too. And with some of her features similar enough - the blue in her eyes, the black in her hair, the glint of fangs - that it wasn’t hard to tell that Kon saw a nightmare of the things that could happen to his baby brother when he looked at the injured girl.
There’d been a bleak joke, when medical had sent pictures over of the girl for their investigation, to try and break the painful silence that filled the room when they all looked at this battered kid. That she had Bat-adoption written all over her face and that Tim should get ready to have another sibling. Tim had a feeling though that Kon wouldn’t let her go without a fight.
“Hey,” Tim said quietly, knocking softly on the door of the room. Kon blinked up at him blearily, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, clearly tired enough to have not even noticed Tim’s arrival to the base. “She still hasn’t woken up?”
Kon shifted on the chair, rubbing his face with his one free hand - the other still firmly curled over the sleeping girl’s where it lay on the hospital bed - before shaking his head. “No. Doctor said it might be awhile. She has some kind of regenerative ability, but from what they can tell her body is so stripped of energy and resources it’s not able to fully kick in.”
Tim sighed softly, closing the door behind him before walking over to hold out the bag he brought. “I grabbed you a couple changes of clothes and some stuff from your apartment. I figured you’d need it.”
His boyfriend looked relieved, “Thanks. One of the nurses grabbed me some spare scrubs they had lying around, but uh,” Kon lifted his foot and wiggled it, showing off how short the pink and blue bunny scrub pants were on him. “They’re not exactly the most comfortable thing. Can you?”
He motioned towards the bed and the girl laying motionless and Tim nodded. “Yeah, go ahead. I’ll watch her.”
They swapped places, Tim taking over the chair Kon had been keeping vigil in, his gloved hand reaching out to cover the girl’s instinctively as his boyfriend slipped into the adjoining bathroom to change. The girl was cool too the touch, another oddity that the medical team hadn’t been able to say for certain if it was normal for her or a sign of something wrong. She had an abnormally low heart rate as well, though any attempt at raising it to healthy levels hadn’t proven successful.
DNA tests had been attempted on the blood they’d gotten off of Kon’s uniform, but there’d been…difficulties…with the system. Bruce and Barry were working together to try and fix the strange errors they were receiving, but there was no telling how long that would take. With the portal closing as soon as it opened and no good explanation of what had caused it or where it had led to, their only real source for answers was the unconscious girl. A girl who, while perhaps not at risk of flat-lining any second anymore, was still hanging uncertainly in the balance.
“Any news on her DNA?” Kon asked as he stepped out of the bathroom, looking softer and more comfortable in a pair of sweats and a hoodie. He moved to curl up in Tim’s lap, neither of them caring that the chair was in no way meant to hold two grown men, his eyes were back on the girl again nervously chewing on his bottom lip as he did.
Tim shook his head. “No. Every time they try the system just,” Tim made a vague motion to try and explain went up in sparks, “Flash & B are trying to work it out.” He studied Kon’s face, noting the lines of worry that crept in at the corners of his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Kon curled an arm around him, other hand moving to cup the girl’s so that her frail hand was cradled between their larger ones. “I think…” He paused, huffing for a moment before letting out a soft rumbling purr. One of those that Tim understood was meant for self-soothing. “I think she might be Kryptonian. Partially, at least. She’s obviously has more going on but…” He motioned with his hand, “Here, listen.”
He pitched his purr a little higher, smoothing it out to that low murmur that never failed to pull Tim into a comfortable sleep. Tim kept quiet, head tilted as he waited for what Kon was showing him. It took a moment, but at length he did hear it. So faint he could almost dismiss it as the hum of the AC, but no. It was the girl, still unconscious, but softly, softly responding with her own weak little purrs.
Tim frowned, mind casting back to the fact that the girl had bled both red and green. They’d assumed it was due to her alien biology, but if she was at least somewhat Kryptonian…
“I’ll have B test the samples for Kryptonite.” He said, curling around Kon a little tighter as he saw his boyfriend’s eyes widen at the idea before reaching for his com. “It’s something they can look at while waiting on the DNA results. We have an antidote if it comes back positive.” He tried to reassure.
He kept his hand curled around the girl’s fingers twining with Kon’s. He would make sure she made it.
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fridayyy-13th · 16 days
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💛 jmart? 👀
💛 reunion kiss / relief
coming right up!! it uh, got a bit long, i don't think nearly 900 words counts as a "snippet"...but i had a little idea and ran with it lol.
[ask game]
Martin woke up.
He was…not expecting to do that. Not when just moments ago the Panopticon had been crumbling around them, debris raining down as he’d clutched Jon’s dying body close, trying to shield him from further harm as he awaited his own end. “Somewhere else” had been Jon’s final, clumsy attempt at comfort, yeah; it hadn’t been anything serious. A nonsensical, end-of-the-rainbow wish in a universe that didn’t get those sorts of happy endings.
And yet.
He lay sprawled across the ground, now, in a place he did not know and did not care to understand. Jon was gone from his arms, and that was all that mattered.
The love of his life was dead by his hand. That mattered, too.
Maybe his body was nearby, so Martin would at least have something to bury.
Every part of his body protested as he rolled himself over, pushing up to hands and knees. There. Blurry through his fractured lenses, a Jon-shaped heap lay just a meter away.
No, wait. Not just lay. It—Jon’s body—Jon was shaking. Curled up in a fetal position, back to Martin, sobbing quietly.
Alive.
Crossing the distance between them, Martin hardly noticed the several dozen tapes scattered across the rough carpet, the would-be-familiar stacks full of unsorted files on either side. He was far too focused on the man before him.
“Jon,” he managed, afraid of what he would see if Jon turned to him. The knife, still buried to the hilt in his love’s chest? His face twisted in rage at the sight of the man who put it there? The final sliver of light fading from his eyes?
Jon froze. Martin heard his breath catch. He turned slowly, so slowly, like he was working through the same fears as Martin, until he faced him fully and their eyes met. His clothes were soaked with blood, but his eyes were bright and alert—wide as saucers in shock, before his expression crumpled once more. “Martin,” he sobbed, reaching for him.
Something in Martin’s own chest dislodged as he reached back, and soon they were both crying in earnest. He pulled Jon up to him, marveling at each shuddering breath, pushing aside the ragged tear in his shirt to inspect the bloody skin underneath.
A single, thin scar lay over Jon’s heart, looking as though he’d had it for years. Martin’s stomach churned—I did that. Oh God, I gave him that.
Jon’s hands cupped his jaw, tilting his head up and away from the mark. “Don’t,” he whispered, “I asked you to. ‘S okay.”
It’s not, Martin wanted to scream, I killed you. You should hate me. I want you to hate me. His throat was too choked to let the words out, though, and he instead sobbed harder. Damn you. I love you. Why did you go against the plan? Don’t ever do that again. Leave before I hurt you even more. Stay with me, please, please.
Jon, wonderful Jon, simply cried with him, a solid weight in his lap that gently thumbed away his tears until finally, they began to subside. His thoughts were still roiling through his chest, but—Jon was here. He was alive. The rest could all come later.
Jon tipped their foreheads together. Martin leaned into the touch with a sniff.
“I love you,” Jon croaked.
Martin let out one last sob, nodding fervently. Me too. I love you too.
Jon seemed to understand.
He still asked, before kissing him. A hesitant “May I?” that reminded Martin of their first days in the safehouse, of that same shy question before Jon kissed him for the first time.
“Please,” Martin said, and Jon’s dry, gentle lips met his own. He tasted of salt, ash, and blood, and all the things Martin was certain he’d never get again. Martin kissed back like Jon might shatter, gripping his jacket like he might disappear, and time slipped away as he embraced the man he thought he’d lost for good.
His world was nothing more than this kiss.
(Neither noticed the twin footfalls passing. An amicable conversation stuttered with a “Hold on, Martin, did you see—?" A sheaf of papers fluttering loose-leaf to the ground.)
Parting for need of air, Martin took in the gorgeous sight of Jon’s private little smile, like they’d just shared a secret, tempered though it was with the burden of how they’d hurt each other, of what they’d done.
Martin didn’t care about that right now. Now, he simply wound his arms around Jon’s shoulders and smiled in turn. “I love you, Jon,” he said softly.
Jon’s smile caught, and his expression shifted—Martin thought for a moment he’d said something wrong, but Jon simply turned his head, looking at something down the way. What had caught his eye, Martin wondered, turning as well to look at…oh.
Two figures stood at the end of the shelves, staring back at them in shock. One was a tall, bespectacled woman with curly hair tied back into a high bun.
The other, blushing a furious shade of red, was a three-years-younger copy of himself. Whatever papers he’d been holding in his slack hands now lay scattered across the floor.
Oh, Martin thought distantly, finally taking in his surroundings. I know where we are.
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incorrectbatfam · 2 years
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Hey, do you have any headcannons with the batfamily celebrating a birthday? I hope you have a great day and thank you if you would actually do it.
For Dick's birthday, they threw a classic surprise party where they kept from away from the Manor for the day so everyone can work. Except the one tasked with distracting him is Damian, who broke into his apartment at 5 AM saying, "Wake up, I'm here to distract you from your surprise party"
Jason's birthday included hamburgers for breakfast, Shakespeare in the park, joyriding in a stolen Batmobile, a piñata full of free ammo, beating his siblings in paintball, and a bookshelf that Bruce spent all night building
When Bruce asked Tim what he wanted for his birthday, Tim sarcastically said a ball pit. Fast forward 2 weeks when Tim went downstairs and found the living room turned into a ball pit that Kon picked him up and threw him in
And when Bruce asked Damian what he wanted for his birthday, Damian said "nothing." So he went to school like normal and got ice cream with Jon, and afterwards Bruce took him to see Nothing, the 2003 Canadian philosophical dramedy that got 40% on Rotten Tomatoes
Duke's birthday was a whole mapped quest that took him and his friends to all his favorite places, including a shawarma stand, a science lab, and a local League of Legends tournament before ending at an open mic where his siblings each dedicated a poem to him
For Cullen's birthday, Jason snuck him out to do all of the things that were "too unsafe" because Cullen wasn't a vigilante. That means axe-throwing, swordfighting lessons, flaming archery with villain-shaped targets, and caffeine after 5 PM
Steph's birthday started with waffles (obviously) before Bruce flew her to his island, Dick took her ziplining, Cass and Tim showed her the best scuba diving spots, Babs got her a new outfit, Jason and Duke made dinner and cake, and Damian gave her a random baby quokka he found
Cass's birthday fell right in the middle of a mission abroad, so they had a Zoom party with movies, Jackbox games, and a drone bringing her Alfred's cake and cookies, and they hyped up each and every tiny victory she had that day
The morning of Barbara's birthday, she went to breakfast with Dick and her dad, where Dick pretended to give the Commissioner the same shovel talk he gave him. After that, they went to an app developer convention where she pitched her her half-joking idea of a dating site that matched people based on the coffee shops they go to
Harper's birthday was the same day as the bot-fighting tournament, so the batfam all showed up in brightly colored custom fan merch and Tim found a loophole in the rules that let her add even more spinning blades
Carrie's birthday came after a really rough week and all she wanted to do was smash something with a hockey stick. So that's exactly what happened—the batfam and Maggie took her to a scrapyard where they played floor hockey surrounded by junk cars
For Kate's birthday, she flew them out to Italy where they spent the day sightseeing and in the evening, they went to one of those "local gems" restaurants followed by box seats for The Phantom of the Opera
To Alfred's relief, Bruce didn't try to bake a birthday cake this year—he opted for a fancy bakery one instead. Meanwhile, Damian followed him around all day as a personal assistant while everyone else cleaned the house so spotlessly that you could make soup in the toilet
Selina's birthday included getting "stolen" by Harley and Ivy and going to a resort where they got drinks, watched dolphins, and tried to use a water jetpack (they all failed epically). Then, Bruce "stole" her back for an evening dinner date and dancing
And for Bruce's birthday, all he asked for was a roast. So Alfred made pot roast with roasted potatoes and dark roast coffee, Clark started a backyard bonfire to roast marshmallows, and his kids passed around a mic to roast him in the best way possible
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Radical manager against conservative artist: Jon Landau / Bruce Springsteen, Cover me. Landau loved its modern sheen
'The times are tough now, just getting tougher This old world is rough, it's just getting rougher Cover me, come on baby, cover me Well, I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me'
"Radical manager against conservative artist: Bruce Springsteen was indifferent to the track from the start, often outright hostile to it. It struck him as too light, too pop, too obvious. These were among its virtues, Jon Landau insisted, and anyway, none of that belied the intensity with which Bruce whipped home the crucial line: “Wrap your arms around and cover me!”
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Bruce Springsteen: Cover Me (Live at LA Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA - September 1985)
"Meantime, a friend of Landau’s, record executive David Geffen, asked if Bruce would be interested in writing a song for Donna Summer, who had just been signed to Geffen’s label. Summer was recording her first album with producer Quincy Jones, who was hot off making Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. There was even some talk of Bruce and Donna performing a duet. It was an intriguing idea: the King of Rock and Roll recording with the Queen of Disco. Bruce wasn’t entirely certain how he wanted to proceed, but he did write a song. While in the studio with Bonds, he gathered the E Street Band for a demo session. When Jon Landau heard the result, a song called “Cover Me,” combining Springsteen’s rock combustion with a sledgehammer version of the typical Summer dance beat, he smelled a hit."
...
"While making Born in the U.S.A., this conflict centered around one song, “Cover Me.” Landau says he knew the song belonged in the next (rock) album the moment he heard what was supposed to be nothing more than a tossed-off demo. Bruce was indifferent to the track from the start, often outright hostile to it. It struck him as too light, too pop, too obvious. These were among its virtues, Landau insisted, and anyway, none of that belied the intensity with which Bruce whipped home the crucial line: “Wrap your arms around and cover me!” Although the song was closer to pop than rock—and in its rhythms closer to postdisco dance music than either—it had a stinging guitar solo. Landau loved its modern sheen; Bruce knew its value—he’d created it, after all—but he wasn’t sure what it said about him. The more anachronistic shape of his soul and rockabilly-based tunes was secure and comforting. In all their discussions about the album, Landau kept dredging up “Cover Me” and Bruce kept kicking it back under the rug, radical manager against conservative artist."
Dave Marsh
youtube
Bruce Springsteen - Cover Me (from Born In The U.S.A. Live: London 2013)
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Just a Little Side-Quest, Part Three: GRIEF, a TMA x Malevolent series taking place in the Dark World
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Egg storms. God-eating monsters. Mysterious machines. The Dark World responds to minds and hearts in a way no one can predict, and sometimes, even with a baby god on their side, harm still happens.
That doesn't mean it all has to be bad. Today, it starts bad, though. Boy, does it ever.
Just a Little Side-Quest: part three of A TMA x Malevolent crossover taking place in the Dark World. Spoilers for the entirety of TMA. Spoilers up to part 35 of Malevolent.
AO3
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“Who is dreaming eggs?” Martin cried. He didn’t dodge quickly enough, and lukewarm horror splattered him from behind. “Oh, gross!”
“Keep moving, keep moving!” Jon shouted, dragging him with a fist around his denim suspender. “Arthur! Follow my voice!”
I can’t fucking see! John bellowed, because the first bomb had landed egg all over Arthur’s face.
“This way! This way!” Jon cried.
Arthur was good at following voice commands, and he kept up.
It had been like this for nearly an hour. The rising sun brought a storm of eggs. Huge eggs. Massive eggs. Eggs the size of lorries, splattering everything with sulfuric goo and sticky, gelatinous white, and the only thing there was to do was run.
They’re aiming for us, I swear!  
“No, she’s weeping!” Jon said, which made no sense to anybody. “Follow! This way! This way! It’s going… godsdamn it, that’s not east anymore, but it was, but it’s going that way , so we go this way!”
“East changes?” Martin’s voice cracked. Then he started spitting; some of it had gotten into his mouth.
“Keep going! ”
What else could they do?
Eggs hit with the power of grenades, denting the earth, shell-shrapnel flying. All three runners understood that they didn’t really have bodies, that they couldn’t die, that receiving injury made no sense—but they felt like they might be cut and bled, or brained by eggs, or choked in goo, and so they ran.
“Damn this place!” Arthur snarled.
“Here! Down here!” And Jon did the unthinkable: he abruptly darted right and into the Chasm.
Martin screamed. “Jon!”
“Right here!” Jon called, his hand waving above the sharpened edge. “Here! There’s a ledge!”
Why would a ledge in a hole help anyone? John bellowed, but Arthur was already scrambling down.
Martin made a small sound. He couldn’t see them. Jon’s hand seemed to be sticking up out of pure shadow.
Then so did Jon’s head. “Martin.” He reached. “Come to me.”
Martin met his eyes and did. He reached, and was pulled down.
#
The eggs did not penetrate. They did not even hit the Chasm. There had to be some horrible reason for that, but none of them had the mental space left to figure it out.
“I am so… sticky,” Arthur moaned.
John kept flexing the fingers on his left hand, breaking the strings of goo trying to dry between them. So… this is sort of like the Dreamlands.
“The what?” said Martin.
Dreamlands. It’s… fuck, it’s another world, apart from Earth’s universe.
“Interstitial,” said Jon, leaning against the rough Chasm wall, eyes closed. “An in-between place; the playground of gods and monsters. People who dream vividly can go there, and even make something of a life.”
“Right,” said Martin. “No idea how to respond to that.”
“I think I get what you’re saying, John,” said Jon. 
The Dreamlands are formed by the power of dreams, said John. Human minds and imagination shape it even more than the will of gods and monsters. They create reality there.
“Ephemerally,” Jon added.
Sure, but that’s my point. This like that, but… so much worse.
“On speed, or something,” said Jon.
“On speed?” repeated Martin, amused. “Jon, just out of curiosity, what do you think speed is?”
“Well, it’s methamphetamine,” said Jon, and several more eyes than expected opened. “Chemically, it’s C10H15N. It’s a central nervous system stimulant, highly addictive, related to amphetamine which has a common medical use, but with worse side-effects. Generally  a white, odorless, bitter-tasting powder, it dissolves easily in water or alcohol, and…” He realized they were staring at him. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Wow, said John.
Martin was smiling. Dried egg shone on his face and made his hair stick in all directions, but he was smiling. “Gods, I love you,” he said. “You’re adorable.”
“I am not … look. We need to get out of here soon. The Chasm isn’t a safe place. There just wasn’t anywhere else to go right now.”
“Was this ledge even here?” said Arthur. “Or did it appear because we needed it?”
“I don’t know ,” Jon cried after a moment. “Why don’t I know?”
“Hey, easy,” said Martin, leaning in and placing one sticky hand on Jon’s sticky arm. “It’s all right. I don’t expect you to know everything, and neither do these two yahoos.”
“Yahoo, yourself,” said Arthur warmly.
I don’t think you can know everything, anyway. Can you?
“I don’t know that, either,” said Jon. “I just want to know enough to get us out of here and safely to—” He stopped.
“To?” said Martin. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Jon looked at Arthur.
He’s looking at you, Arthur.
Arthur went still. “You know, don’t you? You know… that.”
“I do,” said Jon quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t try to know it. I’m not… attempting to be invasive.”
Martin looked back and forth, eyes wide. “Should I ask?” he said slowly. “Or is this one of those things where if I find out too soon, I’ll just go mad?”
“It’s not mine to tell,” said Jon. “But we are headed in a specific direction.”
Arthur’s face turned toward him. “We… we are? You’re doing that?”
“Of course,” said Jon, sounding posh. “Naturally.”
Arthur ducked his head. He was crying. John’s hand wiped at his tears. “Gross,” said Arthur, because there was goop everywhere, and he and John both laughed weakly. “Martin, I… Jon, you can tell him. I…”
“I’ll wait until we’re out,” Jon said. “You don’t have to listen.”
“Thank you,” said Arthur, softly.
“What is making the eggs, anyway?” said Martin, wisely changing topics. “You said ‘she.’”
Jon looked so solemn. “She’s a gh’pluh from a planet I can’t pronounce. Sort of a… sapient… chicken dragon one-eyed giant. Her species lives its entire life in the air.”
“How?” said Martin. “That can’t—how?”
“It’s a wildly different ecosystem than what we know,” said Jon. “The thing is… she lost all her eggs. They are laid… well, her cloaca is on her back.”
“That would be really messy,” said Martin slowly.
“They’ve adapted. It’s more hygienic than you might think; but the key here is she was deeply ill, and her eggs couldn’t stay attached.”
“Oh, fuck,” said Arthur. “So all her babies fell to their deaths.”
“Yes.”
Then she did? John said.
“Then she did. She… she hasn’t found her children. What we just experienced was a storm of her grief.” Jon looked into the Chasm, not at Arthur.
Arthur swallowed. He tried very hard not to consider what his own grief-storm would be. “Is it… hard to do that, here? Find someone?” he finally said.
“Yes,” said Jon. “They imagine, too. You’re trying to sail two discrete tidal waves with one will.”
Arthur fell silent.
Martin again steered them clear. “Wish I had a way to make us some tea.”
And in the gloom of the Chasm, Jon’s eyes seemed to glow briefly green. “There’s water up ahead in the red forest.”
“The… the what?” said Martin.
“The red forest. It isn’t far.”
There was no forest in sight, said John.
“It will be when we climb out of here, which we should be able to do soon,” said Jon.
Martin touched his arm. “You don’t have to be the one taking care of all of us, you know. That isn’t… that isn’t owed.”
Jon turned his face away and did not answer.
Heavy with thought, they all sat for a while, silent  as the pounding of eggs continued overhead, and did not speak again until it quieted.
#
Martin peeked over the Chasm’s edge. “What?” he said, climbing out. “There’s no egg.”
“How can there be no egg?” Arthur said, climbing out alongside him. 
Fucking hell, he wasn’t wrong. There’s no egg. But there is… well, that’s a red forest if I’ve ever seen one.
“Like… like fall colors?” Arthur said hopefully.
Uh. No.
The ground was unnervingly like brain matter—gyri and sulci, but a brilliant red instead of pink. The trees that grew out of it were tangled , thick and impossible growths, sharp-edged and disturbingly lacy where the wood joined. 
There were no leaves; merely a dull red glow, filling the spaces. John thought it might be pulsing. 
This red forest stretched as far as he could see from left to right, only skipping the Chasm. There was no way forward without going through. Uh, he said again. Maybe we can… go back down and reset this view?
“No,” said Jon. “We have to go through it. Besides, it won’t be that dangerous for us. It’s not occupied by any living thing, exactly. There’s fresh water in there, too.” He accepted Martin’s hand and climbed out.
The moment he did, the ledge they’d been on broke and fell, tumbling, crashing into the sides of the Chasm, echoing forever.
“Was that… what we were just on?” said Arthur, his eyes huge.
“We… didn’t need it anymore?” suggested Jon, weakly.
“Reassuring,” Arthur mumbled.
Did you make it? said John.
“I don’t know. I just knew it was there,” said Jon.
It sure seems like you conjured it, somehow. Kept it for us.
“I don’t know how,” Jon said. “I don’t know what I did, and if we depend on that when I don’t know how to do it—”
“Hey. Shh. It’s all right,” said Martin.
Jon fell silent.
“What did you mean, ‘not occupied by any living thing, exactly ?’” said Arthur.
“It’s a grief-place,” said Jon. “We can’t die here, as you know, but we can… succumb. Give up. Remain in one place and feed the Dark World with unending, spiraling sorrow, and some people do. But it isn’t… it’s not inevitable, even for them. They could wake up. They’d have to choose this.”
John audibly gulped. So the trees are people.
“Yes.”
“Oh, gods, it’s horrible,” said Martin.
Jon took his hand. “Some places are, here. But I need you to believe me that other places are as good as this is terrible. It comes down to us. It’s our choices.”
Martin exhaled slowly, cheeks puffed out. “Why do we have to face this grief-forest right now?”
“I don’t know. It seems to be a theme, today," said Jon.
Arthur hung his head.
It’s not you. 
“Sure, John.”
If you were powerful enough to bring a forest of grieving souls to us, you'd be powerful enough that we would have already found her.
Arthur made a small sound.
John held his hand.
They walked in silence, inevitably toward the forest.
#
The red forest smelled vaguely like strawberry ChapStick. 
“Pink and waxy,” Martin said, stepping carefully. “I swear, I can taste it.” The ridges in the ground were solid and did not give way underfoot as he’d feared, but the gaps between them were just wide enough to threaten twisted ankles. (Which he did not even have to twist. He reminded himself. He told himself. It sure felt like he had ankles, though.)
“Familiar with that taste, are you?” Jon teased.
“I mean, yeah,” said Martin. “You don’t know all my phases.”
Jon laughed softly. “I want to. All of them. Everything about you.”
“Will I be boring to you then?” said Martin, only mostly joking. 
“Not as long as there is love within me,” said Jon. “Not as long as I have eyes to see.”
“Jonathan Sims! That was positively poetic.”
“I’m trying,” Jon said, cheeks flushed.
Sappy, pronounced John.
Arthur smiled weakly. “Let them have it. Do we just… keep walking straight?” 
“Yes,” said Jon. “Specific direction doesn’t matter. We intend to leave, and so we will.”
Arthur’s jaw set. “I’ll go on ahead a bit,” he said, stuck his hands in his pockets, and hurried.
Martin swallowed. “That bad, huh?”
“He lost his daughter in a tragic accident,” said Jon softly.
"Gods, no!"
“She drowned in the bathtub. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but…”
“How could he not feel like it was?” said Martin, softly. “I still feel guilty over my mum dying, and that had absolutely nothing to do with me.”
Jon took his hand. 
"So you meant trying to find his daughter."
"Yes."
"I'm in."
"I knew you would be," Jon said warmly.
They walked in silence for a moment. “Anyway, if you can figure out tea on our route, I’d consider that a good use of your godly powers.”
Jon laughed. “Sure. Tea plants. I can do that. Probably.”
Martin kissed his cheek.
“I am all over egg!” Jon protested.
“So am I. I still love you.”
Jon leaned in. “We’re both insane.”
“Long as we’re complementary in it, I don’t care,” said Martin.
“Pathetic,” said Jon.
“Absolutely pitiful,” said Martin.
“Particularly fascinating,” said a hissing voice they’d never heard before, and something long, white, and heavy tackled Jon from behind with enough force to tear him away.
#
You’re not in danger, John said. As if I’d let you drown here, after everything we’ve been through.
“I wonder, John,” said Arthur, “just how fair it is, though.”
Fair?
“You’re a god, or part of one. You shouldn’t be experiencing all of this with me.”
What the hell are you saying?
“I’m not good for you. There. I said it. You're probably supposed to be in some weird heaven for your kind, and instead, you're stuck here with me.”
John’s hand rose and lightly smacked Arthur in the face.
“Ow! What the hell?”
Stop being stupid. I chose to stick here with you. I clung to you on purpose when we died. I'm doing it now. Shut up.
“I’m not… look here, you.”
No. You don’t get to have it both ways. If I’m part of a god—-“
“Which you are!”
Then I damn well get to decide what I do with me, and you!
“I didn’t say you were my god.”
You little punk , said John, who had no face to smile, but gave the impression, anyway.
Then, behind them, Martin screamed.
Arthur spun on his heel and ran toward the sound, tripping on the odd surface, half on all fours, unstoppable.
#
Jon knew he had no real body. He did; he knew it, fully understood and believed this, but he didn’t feel it yet, the power of it, the freedom.
What he felt now was pain.
The thing had clomped horrible jaws right on the back of his neck, as if to sever his head from his body. The pain—electric, heavily limp— ragdolled him as the thing’s inertia wrenched them both forward and away from Martin, who screamed.
Jon’s eyes opened. Searching for Martin, whose voice had gone distant and panicked.
“Pleh!” said the thing, spitting Jon roughly from its mouth. “What is that! Rotten egg? What have you been doing, little god?”
Shouting, shouting in the distance, but Jon knew they couldn’t see him, wouldn’t reach him on time. 
It was going to eat his brain (was it?) and his heart (how?) and digest him, absorb all he was, become him in a way only gods could end here, a death everlasting, an action verb forever, and he was too scared to do anything more than cry out.
“Well,” said the thing. “It won’t be the worst marinade I’ve ever had.” And it opened its mouth too wide, too wrong , and bit his head, and it didn’t matter that he had no skull because it was cracking and that long tongue was pushing inside—
Arthur hit it like a train.
Slammed into it, full-speed, with a weight and density he did not possess but the will of a battering ram.
The monster wrenched off Jon, tearing skin, its black tongue sliding out of his skull in the worst feeling he had ever known, and panic followed: had he already lost himself? Was he lobotomized? Was he damaged now, half devoured, useless?
“Jon!” cried Martin, landing beside him to grab him up. “No, no, no, Jon!” His scream was—
He thought Jon was dying. Was Jon dying? He didn’t know!
Horrible sounds rose from where Arthur fought the thing, vicious yowling like some bobcat in a blender.
Jon didn’t want to die (he couldn’t , he knew , but Martin’s grief—)
Damn you! John roared.
The creature gasped. “ H'aaztre ?” it said in terrible awe, and Arthur cried out as the battle changed from a monster trying to get away to a monster trying to eat him.
Martin let out one sob.
That sound rocked the world. Slowed time. Turned it all to low and terrible distortion, and in that moment, Jon saw three things.
One was Kayne, barely visible behind Martin, a man-shape blur with sharp red eyes,  watching with clinical and unmoving focus.
Two: The other was truth. He was damaged, because he believed he was. Except he wasn’t damaged. He was fine. It was fear speaking, making him wrong, an unreliable witness to himself.
Three: the god-eater currently trying to eat John contained within itself a multitude of the eaten, and if Jon ate it instead, he would gain what they used to be.
“Jon!” Martin cried in long, bass tones, stretched in time like taffy.
Kayne watched.
It all seemed distant, and strangely clear. If he ate that thing, Jon could know so much. Could have it all, immediately upon swallowing. But that would be doing what he dreaded being done to him.
No. He would not eat the creature. That’s not what Martin would want. Those suffering god-bits needed to be freed, able to renew themselves. That’s what Jon would have wanted for himself. Jon knew .
“No, you don’t!” Arthur snarled with glacial speed, somehow avoiding the black tongue striking like a snake, attempting to get into his eyes. 
Jon couldn’t explain what he did. It was instinct. It was Jordan Kennedy all over again. It was no Ceaseless Watcher, but his will, and he had no idea how it worked.
But it did work.
Jon woke the trees closest to Arthur and showed them Martin’s grief. They didn’t know he was still alive—that Martin wept though he did not have to. They knew Martin’s despair because Jon fed it to them, and knew what was the cause and, with absolutely terrifying silence, slid through the sulci of sad, red soil and descended on the god-eater. 
Arthur was simply knocked aside. Martin gasped. Arthur cursed. The god-eating creature screamed as the trees widened their impossible lacy wood and took pieces of this monster into every small eyelet. 
The incorruptible within this thing could no longer be contained, and it exploded. The trees nearest popped into shrapnel, spraying everywhere, and everybody cried out. There was wood-creaking weirdness for a moment as nearby trees shifted, then silence.
Arthur panted. “What? What the fuck?”
I… I don’t know! It exploded!
Martin held Jon, still sobbing. “Jon.”
Jon was fine. He knew he was fine, and as he leaned into that, he was. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.” He touched Martin’s cheek.
Martin stared. “The… it’s gone? The hole’s gone! You’re okay? You…” He clutched so tightly that if Jon had needed to breathe, he wouldn’t be able to.
“I’ve got you,” said Jon, clutching back. 
“Did we just… murder a bunch of grieving souls?” said Arthur.
“No,” said Jon. “They’re freed, like the gods that thing already ate. They’re all free. Maybe the grievers will choose to take root again, but they don’t have to.”
Okay, what? What the fuck?
“What did that thing call you, John?” said Arthur.
I don’t… I don’t know. I mean, it was Hastur’s name, but it wasn’t.
“Tried to eat you, anyway,” Arthur growled. “Fuck him.”
Yeah, said John less optimistically. Archivist, what the fuck did you do?
“I don’t know,” Jon said into Martin’s chest.
“Where did that thing come from?” Martin moaned.
“I didn’t see it,” said Jon. “I don't even know how long it was following us. I think I... can’t see them unless someone else I’m connected to does first. They’re camouflaged, somehow.”
“Shit,” said Martin.
“Okay,” said Arthur. “Okay. We just… we need to keep our eyes out. That means you, John.”
Of course it means me, nitwit.
“Did it come from the Chasm?” said Martin.
“I don’t know,” said Jon. “I don’t even understand what they are.”
Hey, maybe I’m crazy, said John dryly. But we should probably get the fuck out of here?
“Yeah.” Martin stood, lifting Jon. “I thought I lost you,” he whispered into Jon’s egg-thick hair. “I don’t… I can’t tell you how afraid I just was.”
Jon shuddered. “You can’t lose me,” he said.
“Sure.”
"You can't. You won't. I'll never leave you."
Martin shuddered, too. “Hey, Arthur,” he said slowly. “How did you do that, by the way? You… moved so fast, and hit it so damn hard. And you avoided that tongue-thing.”
“Fuck if I know,” said Arthur, apparently unbothered by that weirdness.
I don't know, either.
“Great,” said Martin. “We’re all mysteries today.”
Move, people, said John. If I have to take point, I fucking will.
“I don’t think anyone minds,” said Jon.
Oh. John paused. Okay. Uh. Sure. Arthur, turn left and go straight. Not that far left.
“Fucking place needs public transport,” muttered Arthur.
“They do closer to the cities,” said Jon. “I don’t know if you understand how far away we are from any reasonable parts of the Dark World.”
There are no reasonable parts.
“There are… slightly more stable parts,” said Jon. “And that’s where we need to go.”
Nobody said the reason. Then Arthur did. “She’s there?”
“I don’t know yet, but I believe so.”
Arthur swallowed.
“We’ll go wherever’s needed to find her, you know,” said Martin. “You get that, right? You won’t do this alone.”
“You don’t even… you never knew her,” said Arthur.
“So?”
Arthur turned his face toward Martin. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Martin scoffed, still holding Jon under his arm. “Spend as much time with the Lonely as I did, and you’d end up knowing exactly what you’re saying, too. Besides… ask this guy how easily I give up when I’ve got a goal in mind.”
“You don’t,” said Jon. “One thousand, one hundred, and fifty nine cups of tea before I finally realized you were trying to tell me something.”
"Worth it," Martin said and kissed his forehead. “So Jon’s stubborn, too, is what I'm saying. You've got help."
“Thank you,” whispered Arthur. "Thank you both."
We’ve got this, said John.
"Hey, listen," said Arthur. "What's that?"
The red forest was finally thinning out, and at last, they found the water Jon had promised. It was clean, crystal-clear, a patch of water flowing quick and cold like a river saying hello from deep underground.
They were all silent as they stripped and bathed, sputtering in the cold and deeply grateful for it.
Their clothes were gone when they finished. Somehow, it made sense. “Offering to the woods?” suggested Martin.
“Fuck if I know,” said Arthur, and fished a new outfit from his pack.
#
At long last, the ground stopped being made of ridges and valleys. “That was a big place,” said Martin softly.
“You have no idea,” said Jon, tucked under his arm again. “It stretches the whole width of the Dark World, and it’s growing all the time."
“That doesn’t seem right,” said Martin. “Not everyone there deserves to be there, I’m sure.”
“It’s not about deserving. It’s choices,” said Jon. 
“I think it’s more complicated than that,” Martin gently chided. “Though… not to change the subject, but my ankles shouldn’t feel better? I know I don’t have any. I know I don’t. But damn, they feel a lot better.”
“I still want a damn car,” said Arthur.
“Naw,” said Martin. “We need the Mystery Machine. Because we're mysteries, you know?”
"Ha," said Jon.
“The what?” said Arthur.
“It’s this van from a cartoon called Scooby—” He stopped.
The fuck.
Arthur stopped, too.
Jon started laughing. 
Before them sat an egregiously teal van. It was without question a 1965 Dodge A100, painted wildly with love-child flowers and a deeply groovy font proclaiming it The Mystery Machine.
“What?” said Arthur. “What?”
Apparently, Martin really wanted that cartoon van, said John dubiously.
“Let’s see if it drives, shall we?” said Martin. “And nobody imagine monsters inside it, or something.”
“Well, now I am,” muttered Arthur, but followed Martin’s voice.
The van inside was lovingly pristine; it had shag carpet and a horizontal bench seat in the back, all an eye-watering orange; up front were two more bench seats, still orange, and—to Martin’s delight—a full tank of gas.
He turned the key, and it started.
They all took this in, the rumbling of the engine and the acrid smell of the exhaust more mind-blowing than anything they’d experienced today.
“So let’s try,” said Arthur. 
“We’ll be a target,” said Jon. “This thing is noisy as hell.”
“But we’ll also make a lot more distance,” said Arthur.
“You’re thinking too logically. It’s possible we won’t make any distance at all,” said Jon.
“Jon,” said Martin. “Get in the damn van.”
Jon laughed. So did Arthur and John.
The seats were shockingly comfortable, and though the steering wheel was not on the side Martin was used to, he drove it just fine; happily, he knew how to drive manual. "Worked delivery for a while. I was fifteen and it was so illegal, but whatever," said Martin.
Jon settled against him, meaning to stay awake, to keep track of it all, to try to keep him safe. "What are we, I wonder?"
"Hm?" said Martin, pulling out.
"We're all weird, you know? Or maybe everyone is weird, and I'm just assuming, but..."
"No, you're right," said Martin. "We're... I don't want to say special, because that's the wrong word, but it all feels terribly chosen, somehow."
"It does," Jon murmured, soothed by the softness of Martin's belly, soothed by the warmth of his jumper. "We should... think about it."
"Rest," Martin murmured back. "You've got to be exhausted."
"Can't be," Jon mumbled, and then he fell asleep.
He dreamed of Kayne repeatedly poking his sleeping form, going, Why did you do that? But Jon had no reply.
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ollieofthebeholder · 5 months
Text
to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic
<< Beginning < Prev || AO3 || My Website
Chapter 65: April 2017
The first thing Martin heard when he surfaced from unconsciousness was a high-pitched voice crying in evident delight, “Oh, it’s you!”
Martin groaned as the voice grated on the raw edges of his throbbing head. There was almost certainly a lump where Breekon or Hope had struck him, and his first addled thought was to wonder if Jon could be prevailed upon to bring him an icepack. Then awareness sludged through the pudding of his brain of something tight around his wrists and something unpleasant-tasting stuffed in his mouth.
He forced his eyes open and immediately wished he hadn’t. Someone had taken his glasses off, which was the opposite of helpful in his current situation, because his eyes immediately reached for the Ceaseless Watcher to compensate before his rational mind could get up to speed enough to stop them. A thousand glowing indigo eyes stared at him impassively and unblinkingly, and looming directly over him was a person-shaped flare of the same indigo light. Off to one side, he thought he could see something glowing brownish-tan, from which a low sort of humming came, indistinct and melodic but grating at the same time. None of it was as bright as he might have expected. The static that always seemed to hiss on the edge of his hearing when he used his powers sounded wrong, and it hurt, but he wasn’t in any kind of shape to force it back.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, or tried to. It came out as muffled upset.
“Now, that’s not good,” the voice said from the direction of the person-shaped blur in front of him. So an Avatar of the Stranger, then. “Where are my manners? Give him back his glasses.”
Rough, unkind hands shoved Martin’s glasses onto his face, forcing his head back and making him grunt as the sore spot impacted with something hard and wooden. Pain made his vision white out for a second. When it cleared, the indigo glow around him was gone, replaced with a sputtering light from a bare bulb dangling overhead that didn’t so much illuminate the area as give interesting edges to the shadows. It was, from what little he could see, a warehouse of some kind. He seemed to be sat on a chair, a wooden one, but sturdy; ropes bit into his wrists and ankles when he tried to move. There was some sort of foul-tasting cloth shoved into his mouth and tied in place. He was cold all over, and needed no more than a quick glance down to confirm that he was totally naked. Waxwork mannequins, not very well-done ones, crowded the space around him in near-regimental lines. Standing next to him was a tall, burly figure he almost recognized as one of the delivery men who had dropped off the table, arms folded over its chest and scowling; another, similar figure he almost recognized stood a few feet away, also scowling, and between them was a wooden box that Martin immediately hated very much. Directly in front of him was a mannequin of a different kind, this one plasticine, shiny and smooth and graceful, like the ones you saw in shop windows at the higher-quality department stores. It had slim, cruelly sharp fingers at the end of arms just slightly longer than normal, and it wore a red-and-gold jacket and matching top hat reminiscent of the one the ringmaster had worn the time Martin’s class had gone on a trip to the circus, but its face was smooth and blank, even more than shop mannequins usually wore. As he blinked the last of the spangles out of his eyes, though, the figure tied on a Venetian volto mask, a Pagliaccio, with its black tears stained red and its lips—most unusually for the style—parted, baring its teeth in a preternaturally sharp grin, and stared at him with its blank, hollow eyes that revealed nothing beneath.
Martin’s muffled exclamation this time was one of fear and panic. This had to be Nikola Orsinov.
Orsinov clapped its (her?) hands. The sculpted expression of the mask, of course, never so much as twitched, but the pleasure certainly seemed genuine enough. “So you’re Martin! You know, when Breekon and Hope told me they had brought me—how did they put it? Oh, yes—‘some fat schlub’—”
Martin couldn’t suppress a muffled bark of annoyance. He knew he was fat, but really, coming from those two…
“—instead of the Archivist, well, I was very unhappy,” Orsinov continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I was all set to just kill you and use you for spare parts. But imagine my surprise to see…you!” She gave a merry giggle that sent chills up Martin’s spine. “Oh, yes, I know all about you. You’ve been quite the nuisance these last few years—you and your little friend. What’s her name? Melanie.”
It was difficult to sound threatening with a gag in his mouth, but Martin gave it his best go anyway. Orsinov ignored him. “We really wanted an Archivist for this, but from everything I’ve heard, you’ll do just fine.” She giggled again. “Do you know, Jude actually thought you were the Archivist? I didn’t have the heart to set her straight.”
Martin wanted to point out that Orsinov didn’t have a heart at all, unless she’d stolen that from somewhere too, and that Jude Perry was by no stretch of the imagination “straight”, but it was extremely difficult. He pushed at whatever was jammed into his mouth with his tongue, trying to dislodge it, but it was firm and unyielding. He settled for glaring.
Orsinov waggled a finger at him. “Ah-ah-ah! We’re letting you keep your glasses so you can see, but don’t think you can See here. I’ve heard all about your eyes, Martin! I know what you can do. But try to do that here, and it will be very bad for you.”
Martin grumbled at her through the gag. He wasn’t trying to See; he didn’t enjoy it, and he didn’t really need to, either—he knew she was the Stranger. Besides, it would only drain his energy, and he was going to need that if he was going to escape.
“Now then. Let’s see what we have here.” Orsinov picked up something from a nearby table—Martin’s jacket—and began rifling through the pockets. “Two train tickets from Newcastle to London…dated today. My, my, we are being nosy! A canvas case…” She unzipped the case. “With lock picking tools. I wouldn’t have thought you would go for that, Martin. And…oh? What’s this?”
She held up the tape recorder that Martin had tucked into his jacket on a whim before he and Jon set out for Newcastle; he hadn’t necessarily planned on recording anything per se, but he’d figured it couldn’t hurt to have. He directed a sarcastic mumbling in Orsinov’s direction about whether she was too young to know what a tape recorder was.
“I wonder if it’s any good?” Orsinov turned it over several times in her hands, then pressed the RECORD button experimentally. Since she was right under his nose, Martin was able to see the wheels begin turning, which meant there was still room on it, not that he knew for sure how long each side was. Long enough for statements, that was all that mattered. “Oh, it does work! What have you been recording? Anything spooky?”
Martin tried to tell her that he’d been recording the truth about her assistants, but it still came out as just muffled nonsense. Orsinov didn’t seem to notice. “Is it…your Elias who listens?” She held the recorder up to the mouth of the mask. “Hellooooooooo!”
Martin mumbled a few choice words about Elias’s parentage, the species of said parents, and the validity of their marriage, most of which were swallowed up by the gag. Orsinov continued to address the recorder. “He’s mine now, and you can’t have him back.”
Martin was about to tell Orsinov she was welcome to Elias—even though he knew she likely meant him—but then he realized that the low background humming had increased in volume until it was practically an angelic chorus. He looked at the box again. This time his eyes had adjusted to the dim light of the warehouse, and he recognized the shape of it: a coffin, made of some old, dark wood, with chains wrapped around it. His skin crawled as he recognized it as the one from Joshua Gillespe’s statement—the coffin that was clearly the Buried. But why was it here? He tried to quell his panic and ask Orsinov what the hell she wanted it for; it just came out as vague, questioning mumbles.
Orsinov actually seemed to understand him. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s not for you. You won’t even need a coffin—we’re going to use every piece of you.”
That part, at the very least, was…not a surprise, actually. Martin found himself humming a couple bars of “Every Little Piece” from Pete’s Dragon. Orsinov turned to the two men Martin presumed to be Breekon and Hope. “Now, could you two please move that thing somewhere far, far away?”
Martin found himself emphatically agreeing with Orsinov, not something he’d ever have believed he would do. One of the deliverymen, though, just shrugged. “Not really.”
“Needs to be near us,” the other said, which Martin found interesting.
Orsinov’s expression never changed, but somehow, Martin suspected if she could, she’d be scowling. “Well, just…move yourselves away, and take it with you.”
“Gotcha,” said the first.
“Right you are,” said the second.
They picked up the coffin as if it were an ordinary bit of furniture being moved, one at the front, one at the back. With an ominous rattle of chains, they lurched off into the depths of the warehouse. The eerie chorus gradually faded away until the only sound in the warehouse was the sound of rain, faintly drumming on the roof or windows or both. Martin breathed a bit easier despite the gag in his mouth.
“Right,” Orsinov said cheerily. “Where were we?”
“Oh, really.” Martin almost managed to make that spit out distinctly despite the gag.
“Oh, of course!” Orsinov returned her attention to the tape recorder. “So, Elias, can I call you Elias? Let me set the scene, as I know you can’t actually see this. He’s tied to a chair—Sarah wanted to use nails, but I talked her out of it because I’m a good friend. You’re welcome. And he’s absolutely surrounded by waxworks. Not…good waxworks, though. Weird ones. Wax faces where you almost recognize who it’s meant to be, but then…ah, it’s downright uncanny!”
Martin swore at her in three languages, secure in the knowledge that she probably wouldn’t care even if she could understand and translate them. Orsinov scoffed at him. “Excuse me! I’m talking to your boss, and I would thank you not to interrupt.”
If the gag had permitted him to physically bite his tongue, Martin would have. He didn’t know where the recorders were coming from, but he did know they were hardly a direct line to Elias. Still, better to let Orsinov believe that for now. She might say something indiscreet.
“You know,” Orsinov continued to the recorder, “I must say, Elias, can I call you Elias? You have not raised this one very well.”
At that, Martin couldn’t restrain himself from telling her he’d been raised by someone a lot scarier than Elias, but she ignored him. Or just couldn’t understand him. “He is rude. And he just will not stop asking questions. Ooh, but now, I can ask the questions! How are you feeling?”
Cold. Annoyed. Probably not as terrified as he should be, because this was an objectively terrifying situation, but he was quite a bit less tense now that the Buried coffin was gone. Worried about Jon and whether he’d made it back to the Institute, although Orsinov had said they’d got him instead of Jon. Slightly hungry, seeing as he hadn’t eaten since early that morning and it was…however late it was now. Relieved that it was him and not anybody else trapped in this position. Martin tried to convey all of that in as simple a way as he could, but since he couldn’t twist his wrist, restrained as it was, to flip her the bird properly, he settled for another muffled sentence.
“Oh, wonderful,” Orsinov said brightly. “Now, about the whole skin thing…did the Archivist tell you about that, by the way? Well! We had an ancient relic one we wanted him to find, and originally I was just planning to have him followed until he did. I mean, my goodness, it is very powerful. And if he didn’t come through, well, he’s quite powerful himself, and more than that, he is…symbolically appropriate, so…” She giggled again. “I thought he’d make a lovely frock!”
If Martin had tried to threaten her before when she’d brought up Melanie, he was definitely more emphatic now when she brought up a direct threat to Jon. Orsinov just giggled again. “Exactly! And, well, I was going to wait, but…y’know, have you ever had one of those backup plans that, when you think about it, they’re—they’re just more fun? So I told Breekon and Hope I changed my mind. Only you got in the way, Martin. Just think, you could be safe and secure…but you had to interfere, and get in the Archivist’s way.” She clucked her tongue (did she even have a tongue? Had she stolen that too?) almost sympathetically. “But as I said…you’re plenty powerful, too. In fact, if I hadn’t known who the Archivist was, I might have agreed with Jude. So…out with the old, in with…well, in with the you!”
Martin’s long-suffering groan needed no words or translation. Orsinov reached out and caressed his cheek with one long, plasticine finger. It felt wrong, unsurprisingly, and he shuddered at the unpleasant sensation that ran through his entire body. “You understand, don’t you, Martin? You know all about the power that can be written on a skin. And you’ve been so beloved of your patron for so long…is it any surprise that I realize now you will make the very best outfit for the Dance? You’ll fit me so much better than the little Archivist.”
That, more than anything, finally broke the dam that was holding back his fear. Martin had tried so hard not to be afraid, or at least not to show he was afraid, but now he couldn’t stop himself. He garbled at her incoherently as he struggled against his bonds, trying desperately to break free. He’d always been strong, surely…but no, the ropes were thick and tight and no matter how he fought, he couldn’t even so much as shift the chair.
“Oh, no, I’m afraid he can’t See you, can you Elias, can I call you Elias?” The mask’s expression didn’t change, but Martin envisioned Orsinov baring her teeth a bit more in a sharp grin. “What’s the point of having a secret place of power if you can’t hide it from a big, stupid Eye?” She set the recorder down on the table without turning it off, then patted his thigh, which he enjoyed even less than her touching his face. “Anyway, you sit tight. Lots to do!” She stood up and paused. “Ooh, also, do you have a preferred brand of lotion? Because you have not been taking care of your skin, and we really do need it in better shape before we peel you.”
Martin, with malice aforethought—on the off chance she would actually understand him—rattled off three brands of lotion he knew had been discontinued and one that was only available from those door-to-door salesladies. Orsinov either saw right through him or couldn’t make out a word. “All right. I’ll just ask them to pick up a selection.”
With a flutter of her fingers, she strode away. A door closed in the distance, sounding incredibly ominous and final, and Martin was alone. He took several deep, heavy breaths, trying to settle his racing heart and turbulent mind.
The recorder shut itself off with a preternaturally loud click that seemed to echo in the cavernous space.
A small whimper of fear and despair clawed its way out of his throat. He closed his eyes, trying to force back the tears, but one escaped and wended its way down his cheek anyway. He’d been afraid plenty of times, threatened by the Fourteen and their servants more times than he could count, trapped and injured and manipulated…but this was different. Every time it had happened before, he’d been with Melanie or Gerry…or Jon, or at least known one of them wasn’t far away. Now he didn’t even know where he was, let alone where the others were, and they likely had no idea where to find him either. He’d dropped his phone, so they couldn’t call him and track that, and there was no way for him to contact them. Now even the tape recorder had abandoned him, which was probably a stupid thing to think—they weren’t sentient. Still, they did feel like a presence, a comforting one at that, and if it was off, if it wasn’t listening…
He allowed himself a few moments to break down, then gathered himself and tried to think rationally. Jon was safe, he had to be, even if Martin hadn’t actually seen him make it to the Institute doors. The others would look after him. And he had the log book from Breekon and Hope. Surely, surely they had logged deliveries to…wherever this place was. Surely Jon would be able to figure it out, and they’d be able to rescue him. Or better yet, they’d figure out what was going on with the Unknowing and how to stop it, before it got to the point where…where Martin would be needed. They’d be okay. He would be okay. And maybe he hadn’t been able to break away right off the bat, but if he was just patient, if he worked at it, he’d be able to make it.
For now, he was going to rest. For now, he was going to breathe slowly and deeply and just…relax. He could do that. He could. And then, when he felt a little stronger and calmer, he’d get to work on those bonds. He’d get himself free.
Quietly, he began humming, then singing softly, even with the gag in his mouth. It was the song he always used to ward off the Lonely, or just when one of them was upset or scared, and even if someone listening couldn’t have made out the words clearly, Martin knew exactly what he was singing.
Let the lower lights be burning, send their beam across the waves…
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antiquery · 1 year
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re-listening to the magnus archives for the nth time and man the quality drop-off after the episode where gerard kaey just Explains the Lore to jon is astonishing. I'd thought the decline was mostly confined to latter season 4 and 5, but nope! it's there halfway through the series!
I think a number of things about the show's premise are fundamentally unworkable, but one that really stands out to me now is the extent to which it wants to be a drama when it has done very little to establish, specifically, what its characters are like around each other. I have a pretty good idea of who Jon is, and a reasonably solid sense of who the rest of the cast is, but I don't really understand how any of them fit together. even Jon and Martin, ostensibly the central relationship of the show...I don't really understand what that is! what's the shape of their dynamic? what do they see in each other? what do they like and dislike? why are they together (even in a platonic sense)!
(sidenote: honestly I feel like the most well-developed relationship in the whole thing is Jon and Elias, because there is a very clear rationale for what's going on there: Elias is grooming Jon and has some emotional investment besides that because he thinks of Jon as his property; Jon at first isn't aware of this and then struggles with wanting to leave but also wanting to stick around because he's curious, and because on some level he wants Elias's approval. yep, check the box, that's A Relationship)
now this lack of character stuff isn't so much a problem in the early series when it's primarily about the shortform statements— a frame narrative, and a handful of constant characters to populate it, are handy for all kinds of reasons! there's a much better version of this series that casts Jon as a kind of occult Hercule Poirot, and afaict that was originally what the series was supposed to be. but once the show makes its ill-fated pivot towards drama, it has to be about the characters because that's all a drama is ever about, and the gaps become blindingly obvious especially because of the decision to make the first part of season 4 about Things Falling Apart
and like, listen, if you have a group of characters who are friends, and you're a drama, you kind of always want to do this, right? the Platonic ideal of this kind of thing is the lead up to the Buffy season 4 finale, where Spike tries to get everyone at loggerheads, and then all of season 6. but the reason that works on Buffy is that the viewer has a very clear idea of what all of these relationships are, and why they exist. take Xander and Buffy: Buffy loves Xander because he's a goof and he's sweet and he does the right thing when it counts, even though he's not special or strong; she needs someone like that, who knows and sees everything she is and yet still loves her from the ground, and it was never going to be Willow because Willow is also, in her way, part of the supernatural world. where's the wedge? Xander feels inadequate and like he has nothing to offer Buffy! boom, done, conflict generated.
but like...what is the conflict between Martin and Jon in early season 4? Martin used to be super involved and now he's not and there's kind of nothing to be done about it? Basira just randomly despises Jon because...she lost her partner, but never expresses it in a way that reads as anything other than petty sniping, which isn't really in line with the rough sketch of her character we've gotten so far? it really feels like the writers' room (well, one guy in this case) decided that there would be A Conflict at the beginning of season 4 between the characters, but never stopped to realize that with the board state as it was, there wasn't really a way to do that that made any sense, because we have no idea who these people are when they're together.
it's such a shame because the early season horror shorts really are so strong. I know the author cites MR James as his inspiration, and that shines through in a way that I'd confidently call an improvement on James' work! really well-crafted, minimalist horror with a laser focus on the story's core idea, the Thing that makes this tale scary— there's a wonderful intention to it that makes them a joy to listen to. I just wish it'd kept going like that...
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enchantedpalia · 4 months
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Home disaster, but yay for community!
I'm not even sure where to begin, but it's best to begin at the beginning.
When I last wrote here I wrote about how autumn was setting in and there was decidedly a nip in the air. I also wrote a bit about the autumn storms. Well, a few days after my last entry, I ended up going to bed early one night because I was feeling a bit under the weather. I'd already been taking the draft Chayne had given me, and dosing myself on hot lemon and honey like Kenyatta had told me to do, but doing a bit less and resting, and sleeping early, was helping too. Anyway, that night, I was restless, because the winds were so loud, and I was huddled under my blankets just listening to the howling outside, when suddenly, I heard a creaking, in the distance. I imagined that's how a ship would sound in a storm out on the ocean, with the wood creaking and the hull groaning. As I listened, the creaking sound got louder and louder until something seemed to be coming towards me, towards the house. I got out of bed and just as I was reaching for the candle beside my bed, there was a tremendous crashing sound. I screamed in fright, and I couldn't see what was going on, but suddenly I felt the wind and rain on my face, and I looked up to see a great shadow yawing and coming towards me. I fled away from the bedroom, towards the living room, and huddled there on the sofa, shaking and crying. I feel a little silly now when I think of how shaken I was, but it was terrifying!
The next morning I could fully inspect the damage by the light of day, and neighbours and other villagers came up to bring me food, blankets, supplies, and anything they could think of. It was utterly shocking and terrifying to see a big hole in my roof right above my bed. The tree came to a stop very close to my bed, and I don't think I was in too much danger, since I heard it falling, but I was still in bed when it first crashed through. Everyone was talking about what a lucky escape I had. Ashura forced me to go to the inn right then and there, whilst everyone else assessed the damage. In the inn I went to bed right away, as I was apparently burning up with fever. I kept trying to get out of bed and tell people I wanted to go help my house set to rights again, but Ashura, Badruu, Chayne, Jon, Eshe, Hodari, and everyone else wouldn't hear of it.
It took weeks, and effort from everyone in the village, and beyond, from my neighbours and friends, and even from Hassian, who insisted on helping. I recovered, and went right back in to work, and help. Getting that roof fixed was a community effort, and if not for the amazing community in Kilima, I could have been in for a rough winter. But the roof was fixed, as good as new, and my room was restored to the way it was. The first evening at home with my brand new roof, there was another storm, and I felt a slight panic in my heart, but I just went to my study, lit the fire, curled up on the couch under my blanket, and read a book as the storm raged outside. That night I went to bed as I always did, and after some tossing and turning, I slept.
When you don't know where you're from, who you are, whose you are, or what you are even doing in the world, having the only thing that is wholly yours taken away from you is a terrifying thing. My house is my place of safety, and when that tree came crashing down and destroying my home, it took that away. It was a forcible reminder that life can happen at any time, and that even my safest refuge could feel less safe. But thanks to the love, friendship, and support of this community that has become as much home to me as my house is, my feelings of safety and security are as restored as the roof of my house. My hair may be scruffier and longer, but as you can see from my house behind me, it is in great shape.
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I'll be writing more, now that my life is back in order. I have so much to catch up with, but all in good time.
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bvannn · 5 months
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Weekly Update October 27 2023
This week wasn’t the best but hopefully things should be shaping up for a bit. I’m still trying to get art stuff done
I’m still behind on all my prompt lists, but I’ll still keep chipping away at them until they’re done (except the handful of cringetober prompts I’m skipping). I finished some inktober and a goretober drawings tonight so I can queue those up for this weekend, which should carry me to Sunday, which is a mostly free day I can draw some more for. I may be able to get stuff sketched tomorrow too, but no promises.
TRGA I’m still behind pace but I’m getting caught back up. Provided my mood and body stay stable I should be back to a reasonable pace this week. I got Emile all keyframed generally, there may be some bounces and stuff that need to be done, since I want Emile to come off as bouncy and energetic like he is, so that may be annoying to do but shouldn’t be that much harder than the high inertia stops I did on Jon’s movements. I’m getting better, just a bit slowly. I can probably brush up some earlier animations too, since they’re already tweened. Generally going well.
Music is also generally going well-ish. I tried pulling out my old guitar, sucked, had a meltdown because I sucked, and found a nice free vst. Also found a hole in my schedule next semester that I can hopefully fill with real guitar lessons through the university. Adding in a bass guitar would be the next step which shouldn’t be too hard. At the rate I’m learning things I should hopefully be able to do proper songs reasonably consistently in the future, provided I keep at it.
I’m doing things. I’m trying. Sorry is short tonight I didn’t realize it was so late, was playing a game with a friend (and drawing while doing it). Life stuff is kinda sorting out, even if today started off rough. I’m still going to prioritize school above all else though.
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goddamnwebcomics · 9 months
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Oh. I see someone brought up Jon again. Alright. I’ll give my two cents. 
While the gaslighting, self-victimization and guilt tripping isn’t new information to me, the whole “therapy speak” thing feels kind of odd and a little insulting to me when I think about it. It’s extremely ironic considering Jon himself has mentioned multiple times in the past that he’s never once stepped into a therapist’s office in his life and unironically claims P&C to be his form of “self-administered therapy”. Yeah, it’s fine for someone to have an outlet to deal with their stress and mild depression over something in their life, but I really wish Jon would realize the abridged retelling of his rough childhood is nothing more than a form of him coping with it. Being around him in his little community of parasocial “fans” made me realize that he really should’ve seeked actual professional help for his issues. There are only so many times you can hear about mini-female mafia dons, getting targeted, talks about loneliness and heavy neglect, gaslighting adults and other occasional self-pitiful convo parties before you start to question his supposedly healed mental state. 
The guy, overall, just doesn’t seem to display a lot of self-confidence and empathy. He’s surface-level nice, but doesn’t really display too much interest or care for other people’s problems compared to his own. He generally just spends most of his time, when he’s in the mood at least, feeling sorry for himself and relying way too much on others (mainly his wife and/or the Peterverse community) to make himself feel better. I really want to believe there are some general friendly vibes in there, but this guy uses everybody like an emotional crutch so much that it’s hard to ignore the dependency issues going on with him. A man in his early 40s should not need to be coddled this much or be this oblivious/blind with how he recklessly portrays his gripes and lingering grudges in his work and to others. 
Along with his anti-confrontation/negativity rules, his utter dismissive and deflective behavior when dealing with “troublemakers”, favoritism/over-obsession with his wife, and his weirdly convenient silence during negative/uncomfortable situations always just comes back to the same issues I and some others have had with him and the arrogantly toxic community he created. Guy needs to wake up to reality and seek actual healing than the artificially fake one he’s been relying on for years. It won’t happen, he’s too steeped in his own echo chamber of a server to even think he needs it, but it’s something I often like to wish for him, lost cause or not.
Thank you for rewriting it. That is a very good summary of it all. Only thing I would add is that I think Jon is terminally online. His understanding of the world is based on the internet warping his mind and shaping his perspective. He often falls into echo chambers and surrounds himself with like-minded individuals who reinforce his views, which in turn fuels his toxic behavior.
Rest assured, there will never be anyone who will help him in his life. That is why this blog is here so we can show the world that Peterverse should be avoided because quite frankly, everyone there is a lost cause
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bluejayblueskies · 2 years
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live wire
written for @jondaisy-week for the prompts prey/mark/the woods
cw: dubious consent, non-con elements, predator/prey, biting, blood, sexual undertones (but no actual sexual content)
see Ao3 link in source for expanded content warnings!
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Jon stumbles across the temple quite literally, his foot catching on a piece of loose stone and nearly sending him chin-first into another one. He catches himself on the rough bark of a nearby tree, narrowly missing a squirrel that chirps angrily at him before scurrying into the foliage above. Then, after his brain has processed the almost-fall adrenaline, he studies the ground in front of him with mounting excitement.
It’s not much, to be completely honest. A few pieces of rubble here, the vague shape of a foundation there, some scraps of color that Jon thinks might be broken pottery. It’s certainly not the kind of find that his colleagues at the institute would consider anything close to a success, much less a near-fulfillment of their life’s work, but—well. Jon’s learned to lower his expectations since he began this particular line of research.
There’s not much to be found in the way of old gods. Not old as in ‘ancient and incredibly powerful’ like Melanie’s written a few books on, and not old as in ‘predates written history and requires intensive fieldwork and transcribing of oral tradition’ like Sasha can lecture him about for hours. No, Jon means properly old. Forgotten by history. No relics, no temples, no mention in any tome or whispers in any folktale or song or story. The kind of god whose existence is only speculated about via their absence. An event from thousands of years ago, perplexing in its origins, with no clear cause. A cultural practice based on no current religion or deity, its roots long since forgotten. An empty space in a mural, like something was once there but has long since been erased, by human hand or by divine providence.
No, there’s not much to be found in the way of those kinds of old gods. Which is why Jon finds himself shaking—actually shaking with excitement as he carefully, meticulously, reverently picks his way through the sparse ruins of what he is so desperately hoping is what he thinks it is.
(For his own curiosity, of course, but also for his job. He knows Elias is starting to grow impatient with his lack of progress, starting to not-so-gently suggest he move on to other pursuits or—barring that—other careers. He needs this.)
Jon spots a shard of something bright red, bigger than the others, and he quickly pulls a pair of gloves and a dusting brush from his backpack and crouches down to study it. It’s coated in a thick layer of dirt, but it’s the dry season, so it takes Jon no time at all to dust off the grime and reveal beneath it the remnants of a painting. It’s been worn away by time and erosion, but it’s still surprisingly vibrant given that it must be at least a few thousand years old based on Jon’s patchwork timeline of when the old gods were at their prime. It depicts a hunt, but instead of the typical scene with armed men chasing down any manner of beast that Jon is familiar with from museum exhibits and pictures in books, it instead shows a beast—tall and lanky, with ears of a wolf and claws that narrow to sharp points—sinking its teeth into the neck of a man. The expression on the man’s face is that of pain and fear, lovingly rendered by whichever artisan created the pottery, and Jon feels a shiver run down his spine.
He can’t help reaching out and brushing a gloved finger across the place where teeth meet neck, where deep red blood spills down faded flesh and coats bright white teeth. It’s like he can feel it himself—the heart-thumping terror of the chase, the bright-white pain of skin tearing, the hot puffs of breath on the back of his neck as the beast closes in on its prey with a grin.
Jon’s hands shake for an entirely different reason as he sets the pottery back on the ground. This is what he’s been looking for—he’s sure of it—but it still feels, inexplicably, like he’s made a mistake. He feels on edge, taut as a bowstring, like he’s suddenly become the focus of all eyes at a party for an inexcusable social faux pas. He feels … hunted.
He shifts, making to stand, and the hairs on the back of his neck raise. He freezes. The unsettled feeling resolves itself into the realization that, while the terror and pain he’d imagined while touching the pottery had faded, the hot breath on the back of his neck had not.
He knows, with sudden and horrifying clarity, that there’s something behind him.  
Jon very much does not want to look.
Jon turns to look.
The next thing he knows, he’s flat on his back, the ruins of the temple digging into his spine as something heavy and warm settles on his chest, keeping him pinned to the ground. The wind is knocked out of him, and he can’t decide if it’s that or the sharp claws digging into the side of his neck that makes it so hard to breathe. His heart beats hummingbird-fast in his chest, his brain is a wash of hazy fear and adrenaline, and the first thought that comes to mind as he stares up at the being perched atop him is hunter.
The second is that he hadn’t told anybody where he was going, and it’s far too late to try to call for someone even if this place weren’t so completely isolated from civilization, and he is completely, utterly, helplessly alone.
The third is that despite the claws and fangs and fur, the eyes that meet his strike him as surprisingly human.
It’s this last thought that prompts him to say, faint and raspy and breathless, “Are you the … god of this place?”
The being above him—he can’t for the life of him parse if they’re a wolf or a humanoid or something in between—lets out a low growl. They don’t immediately rip Jon’s throat out, though, which he takes as a good sign. “B-because if you are, I’m … I’m terribly sorry for any disrespect I may have shown you. I’m, uh. I’m a researcher, studying—”
The growl deepens, and Jon feels warm liquid trickle down the side of his neck as the claws dig incrementally deeper. He takes the hint and snaps his mouth shut around the words. After a silent moment, where he says nothing and the creature—the god—does nothing in return, he takes a chance and speaks again. “… Please. I only want to help. I—I promise, I’m not here to—to steal, or to do anything that might harm you. I just…” He swallows, the motion sending needlepricks of pain across his skin where the claws are. “I know you’ve been gone for a long time. I want to understand why, a-and … I want to fix it. O-or at least try, if … if that’s what you want. If you don’t, I’ll—I’ll leave—”
(It hurts every academic bone in his body, the thought of turning away from this, of leaving all this untouched and forgotten knowledge behind. But contrary to what Elias and Sasha and Melanie and the rest of his coworkers might believe, he does have a sense of self-preservation, and he understands when to let things go. Like, for example, when the alternative is getting one’s throat ripped out.)
“I’ll leave,” Jon says with finality, “a-and I won’t come back. I won’t tell anybody about this place either. I—I don’t have a way to prove to you that I’m telling the truth, but—I promise, I am.” He hesitates, weighing the nebulous pros against the likely very severe cons, before reaching up—slowly, slowly—and placing a hand atop the one pinning his neck in place. He desperately hopes that it’s perceived as the act of goodwill that it’s meant to be.
The god doesn’t move for a long, tense moment. Sweat beads at Jon’s temples; the god’s hand is an unmoving, deadly object beneath his. Then, just as Jon is beginning to resign himself to the fact that he’s not getting out of this one and he’s going to end up decaying on this forest floor, the god speaks in a rumbling, ragged voice that sounds like it hasn’t been used for millennia. “Help,” they croak, and then the pressure of their hand on Jon’s windpipe eases and he takes a deep, gasping breath.
“Okay,” Jon says hoarsely, feeling grateful despite it all because—well, this is what he’s really here for, right? He’s here in search of knowledge, yes, but he’s never bought into the whole ‘study and research, don’t interfere’ mentality that Elias is always impressing upon him. He wants to learn more about this place, but he doesn’t want to stare with impassive eyes upon a broken temple and a forgotten god, call them fascinating, then leave to go write a book about it all and be done with it. This matters to him. So he truly means it when he says, “Tell me what I should do, and I will do it. T-to the best of my ability, of course.” And as long as it doesn’t involve my death, he does not say. He doesn’t want to give them ideas.
The god growls, low in their throat, but not like they’re threatening him—more like they’re searching for the words, unfamiliar and unpracticed with human speech. Finally, they manage to say, “Hunt. Chase. N-need to … hunt.”
“Oh.” Jon swallows. He recalls the scene on the pottery—the man caught in the jaws of the beast—but he still feels the need to clarify. “Animals, or…?”
The god looks at him for a long moment. Then, quick as a flash, their head is inches from his and their nose is buried in his neck. They inhale deeply—catching his scent, gods help him—and Jon hopes they can’t feel the pounding of his heart. That hope is quickly dashed when their tongue darts out and licks a stripe across his pulse point, like they can taste the fear and adrenaline already coursing through him. Maybe they can.
“You,” they say into the crook of his neck, breath tickling his skin and making him shiver. “Hunt … you.” They hesitate, then pull back and look him in the eyes. “No … kill. S-safe. Promise.” It’s the most coherent thing they’ve said to him, and he can see in their eyes that they mean it. And a god’s promise, no matter the god—young or old, forgotten or not—is unbreakable.
Jon isn’t stupid. He knows that there are still dangers—that even if he’s safe from the hunt, there are other things that can hurt just as much. But he’s also been called reckless once or twice, accused of not quite thinking things through before doing them. He always bristles—he plans, and it’s not like he intentionally seeks out danger. But when he nods slowly and says, “All right,” he ignores the voice in his head that tells him he’s being very reckless indeed. He knows, thank you very much, but it’s not like he’s got much in the way of options right now, and he could really do without the subconscious lecture.
The two of them remain there for a still, breathless moment—the god’s eyes staring into his, intense and hungry and wanting, and Jon staring back, trying to understand what he’s about to do, why he’s about to do it.
Whether he’s about to do it is a question that’s already been answered. No need to linger on it further.
Then, the god rocks back on their heels, and the pressure on Jon’s chest and neck releases all at once. It leaves him feeling strangely weightless and bereft, like he’s unmoored within his own body. He lies there for a moment, recalibrating himself, before scrambling quickly to his feet lest the god change their mind and decide to rip out his throat anyway, unbreakable promises be damned.
The god doesn’t move, simply watching him with pale yellow eyes. He gets a better view of them—long legs with knees where they should be but not at the angle they should be, arms the same, made for running on all fours. Dark brown hair covers their hands and neck, fading away into the pale skin of their cheeks. Their ears are pointed and alert, teeth long and sharp, and their tail swishes slowly back and forth in a way that Jon would call lazy if it weren’t for the tension coiled throughout the rest of their body.
They’re beautiful, Jon thinks. In the same way that poison dart frogs are beautiful and belladonna is beautiful and a knife is beautiful right before it buries itself in your lungs.
“Run,” they say, the word bleeding into a growl that rumbles through Jon’s chest and nestles in his heart.
He turns and runs.
.
.
.
Athleticism has never been a trait Jon would ascribe to himself, so it’s not long before he’s breathing heavily, chest and legs burning as he races through the trees. His foot catches on a root and he nearly stumbles, catching himself on a tree. The bark digs painfully into the palm of his hand, but he pays it no mind as he resumes his breakneck pace, all too aware of the sound of snapping twigs and pounding footsteps behind him. He’s sure that, if they wanted to, the god could pursue him silently and he would never know that they were there until their teeth sunk into his throat. But this is a hunt, a chase, and he needs to be constantly and unequivocally aware that he is prey.
He is meant to be afraid. He’s not sure why he feels it with such conviction, but he knows as he runs and runs and runs that the fear he feels in every fiber of his being is what this long-dead god needs. He knows, logically, that this hunt will not end in death for him. He knows, logically, that he will be safe. But he still fears what will happen when the chase is over, when there is nothing left but the satisfaction of captured prey.
That moment is in the future, though. For now, Jon simply runs.
In the end, it’s not his screaming lungs or wobbly feet or general lack of physical strength and stamina that does him in. It’s curiosity.
He’s been running for … gods, it must have been hours. He feels like he’s going to die, like he can’t possibly take another step, but something—adrenaline or divine power—keeps him moving forward. The footsteps are drawing ever closer by the minute, and Jon feels like they must be on top of him by now. They echo in his chest and his ears until it feels like he’s surrounded by them, like no matter where he turns, he’ll come face-to-face with sharp claws and sharper teeth.
How much longer until he is caught?
He needs to know. He can’t run forever—he needs to know that this has an end, something he wants and fears in equal measure. So before he can think it through, before he can do anything but react to the base instincts of cornered prey, he looks over his shoulder.
All he has time to see are yellow eyes and a mouth pulled into a broad, toothy grin before he trips over an unseen hazard on the forest floor. He falls, ankle screaming in pain as it twists, and then the god is upon him, pinning him to the ground. He writhes and squirms and struggles, but the god simply huffs in amusement and turns him over so he is no longer pressed into the cold, unforgiving dirt, inhaling it with every breath. Their face is that of a predator—eyes slitted and focused, mouth curled into a self-satisfied, dangerous smile, every inch of them vibrating with anticipation. Jon has never felt so much like prey.
He's also never felt quite so alive.
Without making the conscious decision to do so, Jon stills, going limp underneath the god in clear submission. The god purrs, and Jon’s mind purrs in kind, and before he can tell himself that this is really not a good idea, actually, and also what is wrong with you?, he tilts his chin back and bares his throat.
The god doesn’t hesitate. They lean over him, their teeth finding the soft flesh at the junction between his neck and his shoulder, and they bite, hard enough to draw blood. Jon makes a high, keening noise, scrabbling with ineffective hands at the strong arms that bracket his chest.
The god chuckles, which feels … strange, to say the least, as their teeth are currently buried deep in his muscle. They pull away—and Jon does not make a noise of distress when they do, he doesn’t—and run their tongue across the wound.
“None of that,” they say, their words clearer now but no less rough and rumbling. They shift their weight so they’re sitting on Jon’s stomach, legs bracketing his hips. Then, they collect his wrists in a surprisingly gentle hand before pinning them to the ground above his head. The other hand cups his cheek. Their claws brush against the tender spot on his neck that throbs and aches with something not-quite-pain and not-quite-pleasure. He yelps and writhes beneath them, but their weight is solid and their grip on his wrists holds firm, so all he can do is wriggle ineffectively as they lean down and nibble at his neck and clavicle. It’s a light brush of teeth, not breaking the skin, and Jon viciously suppresses the disappointment he feels at that fact.
Maybe he doesn’t do as good of a job as he thought, or maybe the god can smell it on him, but they pull back slightly and say, humored, “Eager little thing.”
The words hit him like a jolt of electricity and he shudders, intimately aware of the heat beginning to coil low in his stomach. He feels like a rubber band, stretched taut and filled with something begging to be released. And when the god strokes a single claw down his cheek, catching at the corner of his mouth and tugging lightly, he snaps.
“Please,” he whispers, tilting his head back further, as far as it will go.
The god smiles and leans in. Jon can’t help it; the anticipation nearly consumes him, and he shakes with it as the god pauses with their lips next to his ear and breathes, “Mine.”
Then, their teeth sink into the other side of his neck. It’s like every one of Jon’s nerves is on fire, like he’s been struck by lightning, like he’s a live wire with nothing to ground him. He bucks uselessly against the weight atop him, and his fingers scrabble in the dirt even as the god presses tight enough on his wrists to bruise, and his mouth drops open in a breathless, wordless, gasping moan, and he whites out in a haze of pleasure.
.
.
.
Jon is lying on the forest floor. There’s a root digging into the small of his back and dirt caked underneath his nails, and every part of his body aches. He blinks up at the canopy above, tinged gold by the setting sun. A muddy, foggy haze envelops his brain, and he tries to push past it to figure out where he is and how he got here. Did he sleep here? That feels … unlikely, and it wouldn’t explain the fact that he feels like he’s been hit by a small car.
Okay. Okay. Jon presses his hands against the dirt, preparing to lever himself up into a sitting position, but the moment he pushes, his entire back twinges with pain and he loses his grip, falling back down with an oof.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Jon startles and turns his head toward the voice. The person sitting beside him is pale and freckled, dressed in loose-fitting clothing that blends into the trees behind them. Their thin brown hair is collected into a braid that hangs down to their mid-back, and Jon can just barely see the shadow of a scar peeking over their bare right shoulder. They’re not looking at him, gaze fixed instead on the trees around them. “What?” he says, his voice a bit hoarse. He clears his throat and adds, “Who … who are you?”
The person doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, they sigh and turn to face him.
Their eyes, when they meet his, are a pale yellow.
Everything snaps into place, the fog clearing away in an instant, and Jon’s breath catches in his throat. “Oh,” he says quietly. Then, after a moment: “You, um. You have a lot less … fur now.”
The god stares at him, face inscrutable. Then, slowly, a corner of their mouth lifts and they laugh through their nose. “Yeah. Suppose I do.” They hold out a hand. “You want to sit up?”
Jon takes the hand. It’s warm and soft, and Jon feels heat flood his cheeks as he’s pulled into a sitting position. His neck twinges as he moves and he automatically reaches for it, expecting to find the skin there raw and bloody or, at the very least, scabbed-over and sore.
Instead, his hand brushes against scar tissue. The area is tender to the touch, and Jon sucks in a breath, a shiver running through him as he strokes a finger gently across the bite mark. It feels … well. It doesn’t feel bad. Not like it should feel after being bitten so deeply that he ought to be bleeding out on the forest floor right now.
The god makes a small sound in the back of their throat, and Jon drops his fingers like he’s been burned. When he looks at them again, they’re staring intently at his neck, eyebrows furrowed and mouth pressed into a thin line. “I … hm.” Their eyes leave his neck and scan the rest of his body before returning to his neck, and they hum again.
Jon feels a bit like he’s being appraised, and his flush deepens. “What?” he says, a bit self-consciously.
“Tiny little thing, aren’t you?”
Jon’s hackles raise. “I am not.”
“Hm. Sure.” The god sighs again, then meets his eyes. “What’s your name?”
Something about that strikes Jon as funny—that after all of that, they still don’t know what to call each other. He suppresses the instinct to hold out a hand and says, “Jonathan Sims. But, uh. Just Jon is fine. Er, he/him.”
“Jon,” the god repeats, like they’re seeing how his name tastes upon their tongue. “I’ve known a lot of Jons. Popular name with humans.” They eye him curiously. “Never known one quite like you, though.”
Jon can’t tell if he’s being insulted or not. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Their mouth curls into a faint smile. “You know you’re meant to hide from predators. Or run away, if you’re quick enough.”
All Jon can think to say is, “I do recall doing a fair bit of running.”
Their smile widens. “I like you, Jon. That’s good. Makes this whole … marked thing a lot easier for both of us.”
Oh, gods. “Marked?” Jon says nervously. “What—what does that mean?”
In lieu of an immediate response, they shift, extending a hand toward him. Jon freezes as it brushes the side of his neck, their palm curling so the heel rests against his pulse point and their fingers tickling at his nape. The touch is like a jolt of electricity down his spine, and a small, mortifying sound escapes him.
“I didn’t mean to do it, so … sorry about that. Should have asked first or something. I usually do—well, people usually ask me, but the idea’s the same.” They pinch their lips together. “Just got kind of … caught up in it all. I haven’t done a chase in a long time, haven’t … haven’t been this version of myself in a long time.” They must be able to feel his racing pulse because they add, “It’s not a bad thing. You’re not in any danger, and it doesn’t mean that you’re—I don’t know, bound to me or something.” They hesitate. “Well. Not strictly bound, anyway.”
“W-what?” is all Jon can manage through the knot in his throat. The god’s hand is like a searing brand on his skin, and it’s making it a bit difficult to think clearly.
“It’s not a mating bite. It can be, but that’s not what it’s meant as. It’s more a … mark of ownership. Divine ownership, that is. Other gods see it and they know you’re mine.” They say it matter-of-factly, like this isn’t something so far outside of anything Jon has ever experienced. “It requires certain things from you in return.”
Jon is almost afraid to ask. “What … things?”
“Hunts, mostly. Nothing as intense as the marking itself, but … similar. You run, I chase, I catch you, and you submit to me. Or variations thereof—it doesn’t always have to be a run-through-the-forest situation. The point is that I need to feed, which means I need something to hunt, and marking makes it easier for both of us. When I start to get hungry, you’ll feel it, and you’ll be able to find me. Doesn’t happen often, at least on human timescales—maybe a few times a year? Pretty simple, really. Nothing too complicated.”
Nothing too complicated. Jon wants to laugh. This has been nothing but complicated from the first moment he stepped into the ruins of that temple. Still, it’s … well.
Jon can feel the god’s nails at the very edge of the bite mark, brushing lightly against his skin. It makes heat blossom low in his stomach, and the sensation is … far from unpleasant. He remembers the chase, what it felt like to be hunted and caught and pinned and claimed, how pleasure had begun to override pain and panic, how he’d known, somehow, that even though he was helpless beneath them, the god would not hurt him. It’s not an ideal situation, no, and probably not one Jon would have chosen under normal circumstances, but…
It’s not the worst position he could have found himself in, all things considered.
He swallows, feeling the god’s hand move alongside his throat. “A-and that’s all?”
“Mm. Pretty much, yeah.”
Jon lets out a long breath. “… Okay.”
The god strokes their thumb across the bite mark one last time, eliciting a truly shameful noise from him that he doesn’t quite manage to swallow, before retracting their hand. Jon thankfully manages to hold in his whine as he is suddenly left bereft of touch. He’s embarrassed himself quite enough today.
“… Thank you,” the god says at length. They look out at the forest again, not meeting Jon’s eyes, but their shoulders are tense and their voice vulnerable when they continue, “This place—my temple, the forest—it’s been lost for a … very long time. People haven’t known what to look for, I guess. Space can be tricky like that. Finicky. Cares a lot about desire, intentionality, giving you what you’re seeking and all that. So … yeah. It’s important to me that you’re here. Intentionally or not.”
Jon opens his mouth to say that it hadn’t been, but … he’s not entirely sure if that’s true. He’d been looking for something, and he’d found something. Maybe it hadn’t been quite what he’d anticipated, but a good researcher learns to appreciate the unexpected.
So instead, Jon says, “Are there more? P-places like this, I mean. Lost places, with lost gods.”
“Yeah, ‘course.” As if anticipating his next question, they add, “I can show them to you. Don’t know all of them of course—I’m not one of the knowledge gods, so I can’t just know stuff any time I want to—but I know a few. Enough.”
Jon feels a thrill of excitement go through him. “I’d—I’d like that. Thank you.”
They shrug. “Sure. It’s no problem. ‘t’s been a while since I’ve aided in a hunt anyway—might be nice to stretch my legs, you know?”
Jon had never considered his work a hunt. But he supposes that, whether it’s animals or people or knowledge, a chase is still a chase. And he’s been chasing this for an awfully long time.
Desire, indeed.
Jon’s legs are wobbly, but they manage to hold his weight as he stands and follows the god back to the temple. It takes less than five minutes, which seems … off—he’s sure he’d run for hours, and his body certainly feels like he had—but he supposes that the rules of time and space need not apply when one is a god. He retrieves his bag, which he’d honestly thought he’d lost for good, and a few pieces of pottery that the god allows him to gingerly pack away so that he has something to show for the whole endeavor other than some bite marks and bruises (which he will not, under any circumstances, be showing to Elias as proof of contact).
Then, farewells exchanged, the god turns to bleed back into the shadows of the trees. Just before they’ve disappeared, a thought strikes Jon. “Wait!”
The god pauses. Their eyes as they meet Jon’s glow in the fading twilight. “Yes?”
Jon grips the strap of his bag tightly. “You haven’t told me your name.”
The god’s smile is sharp-toothed and soft, and it makes something in Jon’s chest squeeze. “Daisy. You can call me Daisy.”
And then they’re gone, swallowed by the hungry shadows of the forest beyond.
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kingsansa · 2 years
Note
"I have it outlined" This made my day ok? I love that series a lot. I wanted to send you a prompt for it but I felt like may be you won't like to write it idk why. But in case you want to write, here is a prompt : champagne diamonds, breath
Bulgari ice
word count: 1115
tags: swarovski crystals compliant, established relationship, daddy kink, could be read as a stand-alone
She can feel it underneath the flat of her tongue; the moment the rise and fall of his abdomen ceases to a halt.
His hand—cradling the side of her face, thumb stroking the plane of her cheekbone, fingers carding through the hair at her nape—tightens in warning.
Sansa presses an open mouthed kiss to his warm skin, meeting his gaze through lowered lashes with a hum.
She can’t see his eyes. Dark sunglasses perch atop his nose, as his phone leans up against his ear. But she can feel it, the weight of his gaze, hot and heavy. The stroke of his thumb, as it drops from her cheekbone to her mouth, presses against her lower lip lightly.
In warning.
Sansa nips at it with her teeth. He responds with a tug at her hair she feels all the way to her toes.
“Have they said what they want?”
His voice is quiet. Brisk. Her stomach swoops low.
Sansa shakes granules of pink Himalayan sea salt onto the damp dips of his abs.
Underneath her, she can feel the impatient shift of his hips. The hardening shape of him through his shorts, up against her chest. The ragged edges forming around his words as frustration erodes them.
“I don’t care what it takes. Don’t let them drag their feet. Finish it.”
Her mouth waters.
Sansa reaches over for her shot glass, sweating with condensation, and knocks it back with little more than a wince.
His hand moves down from her face to her stomach, spreadeagled from thumb to index finger, middle finger hooking onto the tiny bit of string separating the pink triangles of her Dior bikini. He keeps it there; doesn’t tug at it. Doesn’t yank her down to him. He just wants to know that he can.
He wants to know that he’s in control.
Sansa barely allows time for the taste of the lime reach the back of her tongue before she’s leaning down to lap at the smooth expanse of his stomach.
His lips part, tongue touching the corner of his mouth.
She arches her back, and though the salt is long since gone from his skin, she begins to suck.
A fisted grip finds her hair, sending a jolt through her, pressing her thighs tightly together and curling her toes.
“Happy?”
His phone is face down on the bed, discarded. His attention is hers again, as well as both of his hands. The one his phone previously occupied is at the back of his head. The fingers he used to pluck at the center of her bikini span the width of her shoulder blades, rough palm rasping against her skin. His brow is knitted in irritation.
Sansa crawls over his legs to straddle his waist, grinning. “The things I have to do to get your attention.”
His hands are on her hips before she even has time to blink. “I was on the phone for five minutes.”
“You’re lucky you got to answer the phone at all.”
Jon sits up so fast that she jolts back in surprise, only for his arms to wrap her waist, holding her close to him. She giggles, and he takes that opportunity to kiss along her throat. Up her jaw. Along her chin.
Sansa drags her mouth down to his, rocking her hips.
His hand comes down against her ass, sharp and promising, before he kisses her back. The punishment before the reward—to him.
It doesn’t feel all like that much of a punishment to her.
Her breath hitches. She’s distantly aware of the strong purr of a speedboat engine. More than one. Vaguely. But she doesn’t think to pay it any mind until his fingers skim up her back, winding the string that holds her bikini together around his finger—
Right before he stops.
Jon pulls back only a little. Just to say, “Fuck.”
Just over his broad, sun browned shoulder, she can make out three different speed boats. All crammed full with paparazzi with mega lenses.
Sansa sighs inwardly. “We have visitors.”
He snorts at that. “You have visitors.” He takes off his glasses and pushes them up onto the bridge of her nose. “They don’t care about me nearly as much.”
40 feet or so away, the paparazzi are setting up shop. Getting their lenses ready. Some of them are already snapping pictures. The wind carries the shuttering sound across the water.
“Good afternoon!” She calls out with a wave.
They seem almost perturbed at her acknowledgment of them. Still, most of them call out, “Hello!”
“Don’t encourage them.” Jon murmurs into her ear.
“I’m not.” She smoothes her hands over his shoulders. Kisses his nose. “I’m being polite.”
“They’re parasites. Parasites don’t deserve your politeness.”
“No.” She admits, leaning into his ear. “But if I’m nice to them, maybe there won’t be a story about me trying to ride you on the front page of page six.”
His responding chuckle rolls over like a cool summer breeze, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Raising goosebumps on her arms. “Not likely.”
Sansa leans back on her elbows, stretching out. The rest of her still in his lap. She feigns a dramatic sigh. “So much for being domesticated.”
“Domesticated?” His brows raise.
She presses her heel into his back. “You domesticated me, you know.”
That was how a lot of magazines saw it, once word of them finally got around. They’d managed to go unnoticed for more than an entire year before she moved back and shit hit the fan. A paparazzo caught them leaving a restaurant together. Wrong place, wrong time. For an entire month, all anyone could go on about was the heir to the New York Targaryen dynasty taming Sansa Stark; professional poor little rich girl. Way too young, way too flighty, and way too known for her impulsive romances.
This amuses Jon. He strokes her stomach. “Were you not house trained before?”
She was plenty house trained. Plenty well bred. Plenty perfect. And then she couldn’t be perfect anymore, so she just wasn’t for awhile.
She still isn’t. But he’s teaching her how to be okay with that.
“Not according to page six.” She teases.
He looses another one of those heart stopping, world tilting laughs, and she can’t help herself. She crawls back into his lap to kiss him.
Right before his mouth brushes hers again, his phone rings.
“Don’t even think about it.”
The edge of his smile gleams like a knife in the afternoon sun. “Yes, ma’am.”
When she pushes him back down on the bed, he laughs again, and she feels the warmth of it all the way down to her toes.
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expended-sleeper · 7 months
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I'm going to ask about your Adopted NPCs because..... GIMME. But it was kind of funny going through this list, because asking things like "Do they have a family?" and "What are their opinions on consorting with Daedric Princes?" felt like... squeezing lemon juice on a papercut. Brutal.
For Miraak:
Which areas of Skyrim do they find most beautiful and most dangerous? [Bonus: where would he settle down if he could?]
What are their religious affiliations, and how does their worship (or lack thereof) affect their day-to-day life? [Specifically, what is Miraak's relationship to the Divines post-FFO?]
What is their favorite kind of food that can only be found in Skyrim?
For Sophie:
Who is their mentor? Who do they go to most for lessons?
Would they be able to live off the land if they were lost in the wilds of Skyrim? How skilled are they at foraging and hunting?
Thanks for the wonderful questions, friend!
Miraak
Which areas of Skyrim do they find most beautiful and most dangerous? Bonus: where would he settle down if he could?
"In my youth I could hardly have considered beauty without danger; these days, as my hair begins to gray and Skyrim's winters seem ever more bitterly cold, I have rather lost my taste for discomfort. One cannot appreciate the grandeur of a glacier whilst shivering in its shadow. The supposed Nord endurance to frost is mostly bravado and bluster, and for myself I set both of these to the flame some time ago.
"In short, I avoid the north when I'm able. For bitter reasons beyond the weather, I have no love for the region comprising Labyrinthian and its outlying ruins. Too much there has changed, and too much has remained the same.
"I find my greatest happiness anywhere where I have friends, a warm fire, and a bed that's up off the floor. Rough living is the providence of youth. There is more beauty in the lines of my lover's face than I will ever perceive now in any lonely vista.
"As to where I might settle? Well, fate seems to draw me to Whiterun time and time again, and I have my eye on a particular house in the Plains District. The former occupant and I did not part on the best of terms, but that is all in the past now. Breezehome sits as an empty memorial to an absent dragon. I wonder if it might not fare better as a living home to a present one."
What are their religious affliations, and how does their worship (or lack thereof) affect their day-to-day life? Specifically, what is Miraak's relationship to the Divines post-FFO?
"The Divines and I tolerate each other well enough. That may sound cold, but it is benevolent in comparison to my previous relationships with certain darker deities. I have great admiration for the teachings of Kyne, as I have witnessed the power and meaning of her unerring cycles. However, I do not afford time out of my day to fall down and profess my love. I have spent quite enough of my life in structures devoted to faith. Skyrim's wilderness is Kyne's only true temple, and the minutes I sometimes spend on my knees are decidedly not for the glorification of any god."
What is their favorite kind of food that can only be found in Skyrim?
"I have a new answer to this question with every new dish I taste. The environment of my upbringing did not lend itself to culinary appreciation. There is such a difference between people who see eating as a chore to be done with, and those that know every meal is an opportunity for satisfaction and joy. To provide a specific answer: I did not know food could make one warm and happy, until I sampled Jon Battle-Born's rabbit meatballs."
Sofie
Who is their mentor? Who do they go most to for lessons?
"'Mentors are best kept at arm's length. Most just want to twist you into the shape they want you to have. If you don't bend to them, they'll push until something breaks. It's rare to find someone who truly wants what's best for you. My first mentor, a priest of Boethiah, was a man who killed as easily as he breathed. I had all my fingers, before his sharp lessons.
"The Companions taught me there was more to life than taking lives. Farkas showed me what friendship was, and the meaning of honor. Aela, in her wisdom and in her failure, warned me of the consequences of losing yourself. Miraak and Vilkas helped me see that a life lived alone, in paranoid safety, is no life at all.
"It's rare to find someone who truly wants the best for you, but I found her. Lucia shows me the difference between living and being alive, every time we touch. I don't understand why she likes me. It took me a long time to believe her. And it's not always easy, even with Lucia—but she makes the struggle feel worth the pain."
Would they be able to live off the land if they were lost in the wilds of Skyrim? How skilled are they in hunting and foraging?
"There is more to fear in a Windhelm alley than the tundra of Whiterun. Beasts are predictable in ways that people are not. I have faith in the hunger of bears and wolves, in merciless blizzards and stupid hares. Survival outside the walls is a matter of luck and ability. Inside, it's about how much people like you. It's about trust, vulnerability, knowing when to let your guard down.
"I feel more myself in a darkening forest than I ever will in a crowded square. In the city, every soul has their own motives. Greedy shopkeepers, sly pickpockets, all wearing false smiles. A long time ago, my survival depended on the kindness of strangers. Ask any beggar what kind of life that is.
"No, I wouldn't starve out there in the great alone. I have my axes and my bow. But from what Miraak has shared of his years in the wilds, I don't think I would be happy. Lucia tells me people aren't meant to be all by themselves. I think I might believe her on that, too."
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