#really liked this interview!! good questions about the show and his character

[tipsyleaf]

OH MY GOODNESS, LEON WOULD LITERALLY BE SWEATING.

Knowing Leon; he’d probably show up in a fancy suit. Him and his now wife had been dating for a couple of months, having to push back when he’d finally be able to meet her parents because of work. He wanted to look presentable and nice, especially after finding out her father was a high ranking military official.

He’d probably show up with flowers in hand for your mother, giving her a hug as she kissed both of his cheeks and treated him like a baby. All while her father stood back and watch with his arms folded, poor guy was probably shivering as his girlfriend’s mother introduced her husband, giving Leon a nice firm nod and extending his hand out.

They had planned a nice little dinner together; His girlfriend and her mother would finish cooking in the kitchen as her father quite literally conducted an entire interview with Leon in the living room.

“What do you do for work?”

“What are you trying to do with my daughter?”

“How long were you in training for?”

Being the nice respectful guy he was, he’d reply with “No sir” or “Yes sir” to his questions. Go into further depth with the harder ones, really trying to get on the old man’s good side. They had a little talk about the army and stuff, listening to his old stories before your mother and you finally finished the food.

Dinner went well, so far your parents absolutely adored him. Especially your mother; she’d probably be telling your father “Can you believe it Dave? Our little girl with an amazing man like him! I know he’ll protect her, especially with that fancy government job he has!” Leon would just blush and thank her, smiling and happily eating his steak.

Let’s just say, as soon as he felt, your mother was already gossiping with you. Talking about how “Handsome” and “Strong” he was. You just blushed at giggled, agreeing with her every word.

- Anon! 🎀

Love this 🎀anon, but I have a feeling as soon as her father heard his name he knew who Leon was. Everybody knows everybody in certain lines of work!

The second he hears your father is a general in the military he has a lot of questions. He's questioning you and you're answering to the best of your abilities. But his rank pops up. Four star general... Your father is a four star general. One of the highest ranks you could possibly get...

Then his brain starts turning, your last name moving through his head until it finally sticks. He's scrubbed floors at the rumor of that man showing up. Knows stories of how ruthless he is and the things that man's done. Climbing ranks quickly in the Army with the amount of raw potential he had.

"General Tarkin..." You freeze for a minute looking at him.

"The Star Wars character?"

"No, the other cadets... They'd call him General Tarkin. I know your father... Well, know of your father. Never met him personally but I've heard he's... Terrifying." Your father? Terrifying? You laugh at the thought, smiling at your boyfriend who seems to look a lot more tense than he already was.

"Daddy's not terrifying. He's like a giant teddy bear if anything." Leon knows you mean well but the thought of meeting this man has his stomach in knots. Not only would he have to impress her parents but the man who he knew could do a lot of things to make his life more miserable if he pissed him off.

Leon was definitely gonna have some kind of stomach ulcer with the amount of stress by the end of the night.

Your mother adored him, wouldn't stop calling him handsome and welcoming him into the family without even thinking about it. But Leon could hardly focus feeling the generals burning glare on him from behind your doting mother.

As soon as Leon introduced himself, your father tightens his grip on Leon's hand.

"I know who you are boy."

Boy... That's the name Leon gets stuck with for a chunk of the night and sometime after.

Your father tells you to go help your mother with dinner and you happily follow. Leaving the two of them alone in the den. Sitting across from each other in silence for a few minutes.

"You know me?" Leon's the first to speak, your father still staring him down with his arms crossed.

"Hard not to. President Graham speaks highly of you for helping him with his daughter. We're friends, told him personally who my daughter was seeing and he couldn't stop talking about you." His face tightens as he leans forward, towards Leon.

"I've read the reports from '04. Know what you saw. But I don't take too kindly knowing my daughter's dating a man who skipped around in Spain with another woman. Even if it was to protect her."

Leon's at a loss for words. What even could he say!?

"What're your intentions with my daughter?" Oh thank God something he can answer.

"To be with her, Sir." The generals face softes slightly with a nod.

"You love her?"

"More than anything, Sir."

"You wanna marry her? Have a family?"

"When the time comes, Sir."

The grilling continued until you came in to save him with the news of dinner being done. Your father didn't say much after that. Your mother talking all through dinner and dessert.

Upon leaving you and Leon say your goodbyes and take off. Your mother looks at your father as he shuts the door and smiles.

"Well?" She questions, looking at him.

"He'll do fine." He says, smiling ear to ear.

#leon kennedy x reader #leon s kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x fem reader #leon s kennedy #🌿 ivy replies #🌿 ivy writes #resident evil x reader #🏡 domestic life with leon kennedy

[bizarrelittlemew]

Rhys Darby on the ending of season 2

#he is essentially saying what i thought immediately when i first watched the episode lmao #i was so confused by people saying it felt like the show ended or going “aww happy ending for them!” it feels very temporary tbh #interview #ofmd #ofmd s2 #rhys darby #really liked this interview!! good questions about the show and his character #so happy he seems to be doing a lot of interviews about it these days #he finally gets to talk about it

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

David and Michael interview with Emily Aslanian for TV Insider, 10.7.2023 :)

David: So Gabriel shows up at Aziraphale's bookshop naked. He's lost his memory. Where does that leave our good heroes?

Michael: Well, Aziraphale, for someone who is of a slightly nervous disposition, for a naked... his ex boss to turn up outside his bookshop in Soho in the daytime, naked and wanting a hug, is not necessarily what Aziraphale had on his bingo card that day. But once he comes in and Aziraphale has to take him in, we discover that there is a mystery to be solved.

David: Yes.

Michael: And Aziraphale enjoys a mystery, but doesn't enjoy things like the end of the world or the stakes being that high.

David: He enjoys the mystery a little too much for Crowley's like.

Michael: He does a little bit.

David: Crowley just wants this sorted and he doesn't want you indulging your fantasy of being a private eye.

Michael: That's right, Aziraphale gets to really enjoy that. But they are forced, you know, they're a team of two now anyway, because they become detached from their respective head offices. But this forces them together even more. They've only got each other to rely on and they have to solve this mystery. And the clock is ticking. So it starts a whole chain of events that starts off potentially not being as high stakes as Season One. But as it goes along, we realise the apocalypse was just the beginning.

David: It was nothing! It was a mere bagatelle! How much time passes between Series One and Series Two. Do we know exactly?

Michael: I don't know exactly. But things have changed, obviously, between... I mean, Aziraphale is thoroughly enjoying himself. He's sort of got what he wanted, which is to be able to be in his bookshop, listen to music, watch shows, eat nice meals, drink wine, hang out with Crowley. He's a little disconcerted by not having the company behind him because he's such a company man. So that's a bit strange. But Crowley is...

David: It's not worked out quite so well for Crowley. He has the liberation of being free from Hell breathing down his neck. But he has lost the company apartment. So he is living in his car now with his pot plants. So circumstances are slightly reduced for him and he can't quite let go because we see him on a park bench catching up with Miranda Richardson's character Shax, who's taken over from him, trying to dig up a bit of gossip and find out what's really going on. So they have the freedom of not being watched over. But for Crowley, it's not worked out quite as well as perhaps he imagined.

Michael: What are they looking for in each other, I wonder?

David: In each other...

Michael: Well, I mean, I think, they sort of... on the surface, the things that annoy them the most about each other are actually what they are most compelled by.

David: Crave, yes, yes.

Michael: And so they’re sort of bound together, aren’t they? In all kinds of ways. I think Aziraphale is both infuriated and maddened and very stressed out by Crowley’s constant questioning of things. Things that Aziraphale thinks are just… those are the rules. Crowley being a sort of rule breaker and a rule bender, he finds incredibly stressful. And yet I think that’s sort of what he craves.

David: Drawn to.

Michael: He’s drawn to that.

David: Irrepressibly.

Michael: Yes.

David: Yes. And I think probably Aziraphale’s very consistency and very even-temperedness is something that Crowley kind of craves as well. There’s a sort of security in that which he doesn’t really get anywhere else. But, yes, they bicker away, but clearly with the security of a couple who know they can't really exist without each other. But I don't think... they never really admit what they are to each other. There's sort of understanding that they've only really got each other now, and therefore they rely on each other hugely. And, you know, as soon as Aziraphale is in trouble, he calls up Crowley to come and help him. There's no question there's...

Michael: Someone once said, what do any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of anyone but that we be allowed to keep them?

David: That's... who once said that? Should I not ask you that?

Michael: Don't ask me.

David: Don't ask you that.

Michael: Let me just say that.

David: It's lovely.

Michael: And sounds clever.

David: Michael Sheen once said something about illusions. It was really nice.

Michael: Whenever you hear someone say, 'A wise man once said', it's usually me.

David: It is usually you.

#good omens #michael sheen #david tennant #david and michael #dm #tv insider #interview #michael interview #david interview #david and michael interview #ac #tv insider 2023 #good omens meta #fun fact #s2 interview #videos #transcripts #video interview

[terastalungrad]

Sometimes, you’re a comedian with a touring show to promote, so you do an interview with a regional newspaper.

I think that’d be the funniest possible time to reveal a big scoop, wouldn’t it?

Stewart Lee is currently touring, and to promote his Yeovil performance, gave an interview to Blackmore Vale Magazine.  According to Wikipedia, the Blackmore Vale is an area of north Dorset, south Somerset and southwest Wiltshire.  According to the comedian Jake Baker, the magazine would cover his school sports day as he grew up in Dorset.  That’s the level of news you’d expect.

The questions are friendly and easy, from a journalist clearly familiar with Lee’s work and history.

The first question is about the show’s angle.  Lee describes the nature of the show, and here’s an excerpt:

So it looks like stand-up, and sounds like stand-up, but it’s actually a kind of character piece about a desperate person who’s frightened and trying to organise the world in a way that puts them in control. And I guess you could argue that’s what a lot of stand-ups are doing anyway. Ricky Gervais to me looks like a very frightened man. He’s frightened of transgender people coming after him, the act is a defensive wall.

Fun!  This is a Ricky Gervais hate blog, so it’s nice to see a sudden, unexpected attack in an unrelated promotional interview.

Lee mentions Gervais again in response to question four.

Sometimes I become bitter and think ‘I get all this good press, why can’t I get 10 million quid for a TV special like Ricky Gervais?’ But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want that audience, it wouldn’t allow me to be better.

And then again to question eight, where Lee explains why he spends six months running new shows in the relatively small Leicester Square Theatre (as opposed to arena comics who might do 10 warmup shows followed by 60 tour dates).

You can still run it like a club gig, you can interact with people in real time. Also, you wouldn’t get better at the show because you wouldn’t have done it as many times. You can see this with an act like Gervais. Those shows have not been run in, they’re not fluid, they’re a succession of inflexible statements that would snap like twigs if the pressure of an unforeseen event was applied to them.

The journalist finally addresses this head on.  It really is worth reading the entire article - there’s a lot more than I’m quoting, including an interesting story about Sean Lock:

But here are my favourite bits:

[Gervais] still kind of copies me though, which is the weird thing. There’s still a lot of cadences of what I do but they’re used in the service of evil. In Star Wars, he’s Darth Vader and he’s taken the force, which is me, and used it for evil purposes. He was a fanboy, he was actually the booker at University of London and used to book me and Sean Lock all the time. And when he became famous for the Office, he wrote an hour-long act that was so indebted to us it was awkward. [...] If he’d come up through the circuit that would have been rubbed off him because you find your own voice doing club gigs. It took me two years of gigging five nights a week to come through the mesh of things I liked. But he didn’t have that experience in the same way. [...] Funnily enough, in his first show there were bits I’d never recorded that he’d do almost verbatim. He’d clearly remembered them. I went to see him at the Bloomsbury – on his invitation actually – with my then girlfriend and she was very concerned for me. I’d given up at that point due to lack of interest, and she was concerned for what it felt like to see my act being done to hundreds of people, it was quite weird. On the other hand, that sort of did make me think I don’t want it to be consumed into someone else’s vocabulary. And also, I think because he had a residual sense of guilt, he would always credit me in interviews as being an influence – that helped me in 2004 to get the audience back.

This is, to my knowledge, the first time Lee’s ever claimed that Gervais stole his material.  He’s certainly talked about Gervais clearly taking influence from him (though in the past, he downplayed this compared to the account given in this interview).

It’s a pretty big thing to accuse a comic of stealing material.  That’s a big taboo.  I reckon this is partly because Lee wants to discourage fans of Gervais from coming to the show.

Anyway, let’s finish by quoting the end of the interview:

It must be strange to have that level of financial remuneration and those audience figures but not really a single good review. And I expect what that does for you is create a cognitive dissonance where you have to manufacture a worldview by which the whole world is wrong and you’re right. Which can’t necessarily be very good for your mental health, although I expect the money’s nice.

#stewart lee #ricky gervais #tagging my hate

[sabrinashrts]

interview

parings : percy jackson cast x fem!reader ( only walker, leah, & aryan )

warnings : none really.

summary : you and the cast do a wired autocomplete interview ! if your not sure what it is it’s just answering most searched questions on the internet :) let’s pretend the character you play is hazel levesque ik like she’s not even in s1 but like who cares 🌚

“3.. 2.. 1 action!”

You smiled at the camera “Hi my names y/n y/l/n” as you let the others introduce themselves.

“My names walker scobell”

“My names leah sava jefferies”

“And im aryan simhadri”

You and the others discussed that you would do the intro when they finished you spoke “And we are doing the weird autocomplete interview!” One of the workers handed you guys boards with your names showing blank lines.

“Alright who should we do first..?” Aryan says looking at the boards. Walker looked at you smiling “I think y/n should go first”

“Yeah I was also thinking y/n!” Leah added on you laughed softly “Wow.. of course it’s me” Aryan handed you the board with your name on it. You sighed “I’m scared to what people have searched about me” Aryan laughed to your comment. You saw the first blank.

You read it out loud “What’s..” you ripped off the piece of paper finishing your sentence “Y/n y/l/n favorite color?”

You turned to your friends “Do you guys know what it is?” Leah spoke right away “Is it ( your favorite color )”

You smiled “Yes good job!” Since she was right next to you, you gave her a high-five. You looked at the next question “What…” you ripped off the paper once again “Character does y/n y/l/n play in percy jackson” you looked at the camera “i play hazel levesque”

You looked at the other question “What happened to..” you ripped the paper off “Y/n y/l/n foot?” You suddenly remembered what happened. Walker had a laugh “oh my god I remember this!” Aryan nodded “Yeah why don’t you tell them what happened y/n?”

You laughed softly looking at the camera “While filming i broke my foot.. it was honestly kinda funny” you smiled.

Leah spoke “And it’s crazy how you still filmed! Like i could never” Walker nodded “Yeah y/n is a strong person” you smiled at his comment.

You looked at another question “What is y/n y/l/n eye color” you looked Walker and you looked at your eyes “There ( your eye color )”

You nodded looking at the camera “There you go..”

You finished the rest of your questions and threw the broad behind you “alright that’s all for me” It was now Aryans turn and he read his first question “aryan simhadri rolling in the deep”

You laughed right away and so did everyone else Aryan put one of his hands on his face smiling “No.. I don’t wanna remember this guys.” You looked at the camera “Guys go search rolling in the deep by aryan simhadri, you guys will love it!” Leah laughed softly.

After some questions it’s now Walkers turn. Aryan handed him the board he adjusted himself in his seat “Okay.. who does Walker Scobell love” It got kinda awkward.

You broke the silence making a joking “Me.. and Leah Sava Jeffries, and Aryan Simhadri.” Leah looked at the camera with a smile. Walker looked at you and nodded “Yeah.. you guys.. the cast of percy jackson I love many people.” He nodded and looked back at the board. “How old is walker scobell” he looked at the camera “I’m fifteen years old.”

He finished and now it’s Leah’s turn. She grabbed the board “Alright let’s see what people say about me” you smiled and Leah pulled off the paper “What has Leah Sava Jeffries been in.” She stopped for a second then looked at her friends “Uhm I’ve been in this one movie called beast, this other movie called… something from Tiffany, and now I’m in Percy Jackson!”

You made a small comment “You were amazing in the beast I saw it with my family you did good!” Leah turned to you smiling “Thank you!”

She did the rest of her questions and now it was time for the cast to answer questions about Percy Jackson. They let you told them board “Is Percy Jackson and the Olympians for kids?” Leah said reading the question.

Leah nodded softly, you sat yourself up “Yeah it is for kids. There’s nothing bad so I think your kids would be okay watching it” you said.

Aryan read the next question “Is Percy Jackson and the Olympians good?” Walker shrugged “I don’t know you’ll have to find out for yourself” you laughed softly he was right maybe watch it and you’ll see after.

You read another question “Is Percy Jackson and the Olympians just like the books?” You made a confused look “I mean.. what do you think it’s based off..?” Leah laughed “No y/n.. be nice about it” you smiled “What? Like I’m just saying it’s obviously just like the books.. there something out of place but overall yes”

Walker and Aryan also laughed and after some questions it was time to end it. You threw the board behind you once again but you accidentally hit Walker in the face. You turned to him laughing “Oh my god I’m so sorry are you okay?” Aryan and Leah were laughing and Walker was too.

“Yeah I’m fine it just hit me in the head” he said with a smile you gave him a side hug with a laugh “Im sorry again I didn’t see your head there” Aryan spoke “Y/n your always hitting someone” you turned to the camera with a smile “Okay guys you know what…”

Leah spoke “Okay that’s all we have for you.. today as you can see we are chaotic like always!” You laughed covering your mouth “Thank you guys for watching! Go watch a Percy Jackson and the Olympians streaming on disney plus!”

#walker scobell #aryan simhadri #leah sava jeffries #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #fem!reader #walker scobell x reader #leah sava jeffries x reader #aryan simhadri x reader #interviews #percy jackson cast

[islandofsages]

Hi, can I ask the dorm leaders with a student (male) who is extremely good in all academic subjects, ranking among the top 5 in the test rankings, but is extremely stupid in all other factors, for example if someone tries to bully with him, he had politely asked the person to apologize.

characters: the housewardens x male reader

tags: platonic, fluff + crack, imagines format; azul mention in riddle's, riddle mention in azul's, jamil mention in kalim's, vargas mention in vil's, ortho mention in idia's

warnings: alarming stupidity nothing

author's notes: this is such a fun prompt omg i love dumbasses

Riddle Rosehearts

He finds your grades quite impressive - though you can’t cut through his and Azul’s rankings, you manage to land the third place at least

He admires and respects your diligence in studying; if you’re a Heartslabyul student, he’ll consider you a great candidate for the seat of housewarden (or at least vice position)

But then he stumbles upon you one day doing… something? What are you doing?

You’re… crouching in front of a bug. Okay well, maybe you’re studying it

Upon closer inspection though, it looks like you’re… crying? Are you mourning??

The bug’s not even dead. It’s just lying down. You’re seriously mourning a bug that’s actually alive.

He doesn’t want to think it nor does he actually believe you’re like this. But he feels you’re being really stupid at the moment

Then he thinks that again. When you’re doing another stupid thing. Yet you continue to dominate the class rankings

He’s confused. Really confused. 

He stops doubting the duality of man because of you.

Leona Kingscholar

He thinks you’re not half-bad for a herbivore (or well, if you’re a beastman, good for you too)

If you’re a member of Savanaclaw, he’s grateful to have one more guy who can contribute to the decreasing of the dropout rates

That is, until he sees you being cornered by what seems to be a group of bullies

He sighs tiredly at the thought of having to break up a fight again and walks over to you guys, fully expecting you to be in some kind of trouble

But… you’re scolding the bullies instead? And they actually seem apologetic

Did you really ask a group of bullies to apologize for trying to bully you?

He’s unsure if you’re the oblivious one here or the bullies; you’re supposed to feel victimized. Or maybe the bullies are so bad at bullying they don’t affect you in the least??

He doesn’t know what to make of this. But he supposes as long as you don’t make any trouble for him, he doesn’t give a damn

Then he sees more bullies try to get you to give up your wallet to them

Okay, maybe he’ll give at least two damns.

Azul Ashengrotto

A worthy contender to his and Riddle’s rankings? People like you don’t just come by every day

Definitely considers you a valuable asset of some sort… or at least a valuable friend!

So of course, he’d like to interview you on how you got to this level, definitely no other ulterior motives at all

You two sit down in the Mostro Lounge one day, everything is pleasant and comfortable, and you’re just chilling. He starts with a simple question: how do you study to get such good grades?

You ruminate the question for a minute, thinking hard, when you eventually come to the conclusion

“I mean. I just study like the normal person does. Five minutes before the exam itself, I’ll run through whatever notes I have.”

…What?

He’s not sure if you’re actually really stupid to study five minutes before an exam or really smart that you can ace exams with just five minute study sessions

He continues to interview you and he discovers more about how much of a dumbass you actually are but he endures it just for the sake of knowing your actual secrets

You better watch your back.

Kalim Al-Asim

He looks up to you so much, he practically begs you to tutor him so he doesn’t bother Jamil as much 

So you do, just for the hell of it and maybe because of the money too

And it works! He’d come running to you, excitedly showing you his grades from the last exam and you’re genuinely proud of his improvement

He likes running up to you either way - and one day when he does, he runs into you… reading a book upside down?

“Oh, hey Kalim. You know, I found this book one day and I thought I’d give it a read but I can’t understand a single thing…”

He wants to say something. Specifically about you reading said book the wrong way (literally)

…But what if you’re right? Maybe it is meant to be read upside down and you’re just not understanding it because it’s in some ancient language?

You two go to Jamil for once since he seems to be as proficient, if not more, in ancient magic than the both of you

You were excited at the idea that there’s still new stuff out there you have yet to discover

Needless to say though, your excitement dies the moment Jamil finishes listening to your explanation and you two become the victim of his two-hour lecture.

Vil Schoenheit

You’ve gained his respect. A rare honor from the Fairest Queen himself, you think

He would consider you an equal… if it weren’t for the fact of, well, you’re pretty oblivious in literally everything else

He’ll never forget the day where your natural stupidity outshone your class ranking… because it involved Vil himself

You were in a joint PE class together (or if you’re classmates then just a regular class) and it gave both of you the opportunity to talk to each other a bit

It’s a nice little conversation until you say-

“Also… what’s Vargas’ last name anyway?”

Vil blinked once. Then twice. What did you just ask him?

Vargas. Is the last name. His full name is Ashton Vargas. It’s pretty common knowledge considering how much the guy himself says it. He relays that information to you

You let out a dragged out “Oh” and nodded understandingly. Oh, you were being genuine.

Now he doesn’t want to assume from just one interaction but every other interaction with you just proves his point - and the thing is he actually finds it kind of amusing.

Idia Shroud

Wow, someone who’s almost as prodigious as he is, how impressive (he’s being half-sarcastic, half-genuine here)

It is somewhat difficult to find some intelligent life in NRC sometimes. But then you end up being one of them anyway (yet also not really?)

Like you’re always in the top 5 when it comes to exams but then he sees you doing stuff like what you did yesterday…

He was outside for once, taking a walk since Ortho insisted, and he bumps into you on the main street

He didn’t think twice about what you were doing; you were merely staring up at the King of Beast’s statue, finger under your chin, eyes squinted. It’s obvious you were deep in thought

Until he walked by you, hearing you talk to yourself

“...What kind of animal is he anyway? A cat? A tiger?? A panther???”

??? Is it not obvious???

He debated on actually telling you what kind of animal the King of Beasts was but… somehow it’s funnier to leave you in the dark like that

He’ll never get over how you keep calling the King of Beasts a panther, mainly because it riles the Savanaclaw students up.

Malleus Draconia

You’re a curious little thing to him - he wonders how you’ve come to know so many things

Or at least, seem so… you may ace your exams but he comes to notice that it’s not consistent across all boards

He just got back from touring Ramshackle’s exterior for the umpteenth time when he sees you chilling in the Diasomnia lounge

You are talking to another student, which is normal and all, but your response makes him do a double take

“I just think they shouldn’t put mushrooms in mushroom soup! And not make it taste like mushrooms! It just has to look and feel like thick soup!”

But… those are what make mushroom soup… mushroom soup.

He doesn’t even feel that strongly towards mushroom soup! Why is he trying to defend mushroom soup??

It’s not outright stupid but… it certainly is a bold take that could be a pipeline to be dumb

Malleus tries not to judge; you have your qualities and flaws that make you special

But when you bring your complaint to the cafeteria staff, that’s where he draws the line and stops you for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #platonic twst x reader #platonic twisted wonderland x reader #riddle rosehearts #riddle rosehearts x reader #leona kingscholar #leona kingscholar x reader #azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #kalim al asim x reader #kalim x reader #vil schoenheit #vil schoenheit x reader #idia shroud #idia shroud x reader #malleus draconia #malleus draconia x reader

[alastors-antlers]

Why Alastor is good aroace rep after all, written by an aroace

Hello all! I just want to start off this post by saying that I'm one person who definitely doesn't speak for all aroaces, but I wanted to make a post on this anyway, and maybe some folk would be interested in hearing out another perspective?

I'm not really caught up on everything that's been said over the course of HH's creation - only more recent interviews, since I'm pretty new to the fandom. Apologies if I've missed anything, but also I do not have the time to keep up with all the out-of-canon-material backstory unfortunately. I'm working with what we've got here.

So here's the thing:

Alastor is cruel, he's narcissistic, he doesn't care about anyone except himself, he's a serial killer and a monster.

(That's the argument I've heard - please tell me if that's not really what people are going for lol, in which case I've totally misunderstood?)

The issue with aroace rep when it paints asexual people with those traits is that it aims to dehumanizes them. Sex and love are essential to the human experience, right? So why wouldn't someone be interested? Because they're self-absorbed, and cold, and detached. They don't have the capacity to love others enough to feel romance.

And sure, Alastor is a killer, and a schemer, and prideful, and a monster by hell's standards. But no matter how above it all and stylish and in control and provocative he wants to be, he's a very human character, and his aroace-ness never serves to add to his alienation. You could even say that it makes him seem even more personable.

That's what I think is the key difference.

why he's human

Alastor's whole persona is about control, and he basically straight-up says this. He's controlling what his enemies know, what his public image is like. His goal is to be the Radio Demon -- overlord of Hell, charismatic, Machiavellian, and undefeatable. He's not. Despite that smile plastered over his face (a powerful tool, huh) he's so expressive for someone who's constantly pretending.

You see his exasperation with the Egg Bois and with Charlie's ranting; his nervousness in front of Zestial; his frustration with Lucifer and the petty lengths he goes to to piss off the ruler of Hell.

You see his desperation, making that deal with Charlie. He's surprised by the idea of being vulnerable in front of an enemy like Adam, and so close to danger. He drops the radio filter and the affect out of fear, and runs on broadcast TV to let out panic and anger and bitterness in his hideout, where no one else can see him.

He has a smile that tells us he's genuinely happy to see someone; it's a little wider than his default. You see it with Mimzy's greeting, you see it with Rosie. Rosie, especially, serves to make Alastor more human to the audience. More on this later, but for now, I'm just saying that you can see that he at least seems to respect her greatly. Whatever bond they have, we know that he trusts her to touch him, to share history with him, and with support that he trusts no one else for.

He pretends, but he can't pretend it all away. Loads of these emotions aren't even advantageous for him to show. It isn't necessarily how the typical asexual psychopath acts; he's not emotionless or only capable of anger or brutality.

He's so full of emotion that it leaks through, despite all that he does to avoid it. He's not inhuman and aloof, not really - he's so, so human, even when he tries not to be because he thinks that'll be what keeps him above all the rest. In control, and free from his chains.

(If anyone wants to see images about all this, I'll make a separate post - just let me know.)

(I also have another post, talking about why Alastor is at least a little attached to the hotel's residents too, shown via conversation with Niffty. In what way? different question.)

how the aroace part contributes to that

Now, to be fair, we don't hear much about his aroaceness in canon. It's just not relevant a lot of the time.

In the pilot, Angel's proposition ruffles his feathers so much that Alastor blanks for a moment. It's a joke, sure, but that ace panic face is a pretty popular Alastor moment in the fandom - Alastor, thrown off-balance by a sex joke of all things, after so many years in Hell that he should probably be used to this.

It's a moment that makes him more approachable; his aroaceness shows him unprepared for something someone else does for one of the only real moments in the whole episode.

And the other part: the ace in the hole statement.

Rosie apparently knows Alastor so well that she read that he's aroace. That tells us about their relationship; namely, that it is long-standing and genuine enough that she gleaned a piece of real information from him. It's a casual fact that she knows about him before he even figured it out himself. It lends legitimacy to their bond - this bond that shows us a more comfortable and warm side of Alastor that we don't often see.

If their relationship is purely business, isn't this something pretty frivolous and personal? It's not like he has anything to gain by telling her about his life, but she learned about it somehow. How close are they? That's where it adds a layer of complexity and personality to his character..

thoughts on representation

Overall, Alastor's an interesting character who has a level of depth and care and personality (outside of cruelty) that asexual psychopath tropes lack. Again, the moments where he's being represented as disinterested in sex or romance don't make him seem detached. Again, they don't say "look how hostile toward relationships his behaviour is - how separate he is from our humanity". That's what bad villain ace rep is. That's not what the show's doing.

Also: I'm not saying that we need to lower our standards or anything, but even if you think it's not the best rep, I feel like we should be supporting HH's efforts here. I know that on Tumblr we have a pretty queer-friendly space going, which is honestly an understatement lol but

Aces are incredibly underrepresented in fiction. There's a whole Wikipedia page about asexual characters in media, and it's short as all hell, and even if you consider what's on there you see quite a number of one-off characters who are never mentioned again.

In terms of real life business - before the DSM updated their definition of hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in 2013, identifying as asexual wasn't even a recognized thing. If you talked to a clinician about your lack of sexual desire, you could be diagnosed with a disorder. Only in the 5th edition do we now have a little exclusion footnote about it.

The concept of asexuality hasn't been explored nearly as much as other queer identities in our scientific research. We get crumbs in terms of mainstream representation and understanding. House M.D. has an episode where House "disproves" us because he's just so smart.

Alastor isn't going to be perfect representation. There's no such thing as perfect representation, and from the moment he was conceptualized, you could see how people would take him poorly. Still, I think he's a net positive.

He isn't a side character or a token ace - he's a core part of the show, whose personality and character motivations we can reasonably presume are going to be explored much more deeply in upcoming season(s). He's loved by the fandom. Right now, given what we know, I trust Vivziepop to write the aroace representation he deserves, because with the way I've heard the cast/directing/etc. talk about him, they're trying to do the aroace community justice, so I wish people would let up just a little on the whole "Alastor is bad rep".

Let's give him a chance, all right?

#hazbin hotel #aroace alastor #alastor analysis #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel spoilers #asexual #asexuality #hazbin alastor meta #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin #alastor #hazbin meta #hazbin analysis

[danytar]

“Just good friends” [Tom!Glynn-Carney X Actress! Reader] –Part 2

Part 1 if you wish to read it ♡.

Warnings: non

Tom and Y/N were being interviewed about the show, and specifically their characters, Aegon and (character/name) . The interview was going well, and the interviewer was asking them questions about themselves and about their characters.

The two of them were seated next to each other in the studio seats, close together. And so the chemistry between them was obvious, even the interviewer was commenting on it.

The interviewer was trying to find out more about the characters, but in the process she was also mentioning how close their friendship was and noticing the chemistry between them.

They had heard the rumors around set about them, and so was trying to figure them out a bit. But Tom and Y/N kept insisting that they were just good friends, even with the interviewer pressing them on the topic.

“You two have a really great chemistry on screen.. so we want to know what is the secret? ” the interviewer asked them.

Tom and Y/N exchanged a glance as this was asked, as if trying to come up with a good answer. Their chemistry was evident, with the interviewer clearly being aware of it. And so they thought for a moment, before offering their response.

"It's a combination of a few things." Tom was the one who spoke first.

“And what is those things? ”

"First, we have a great understanding of our characters and their relationship. Second, we have a great rapport and connection with each other. And third..."

Tom paused for a moment and looked at her, the both of them exchanging a quick glance. It was like they both knew what the third thing was, but neither of them wanted to say it. And so Tom decided to continue on.

"Third, I think it just... comes naturally when we act together." She completed his answer.

The interviewer nodded at that response, seeming a bit satisfied with it but still pressing. She could clearly sense something more between the two of them, but they both kept denying it.

Instead they just stuck with their simple and straightforward responses, both of them seeming to act a bit awkward around the topic.

“Now.. I apologize for being rude, but I will be...The two laugh at the interviewer ’s words.. Who is your favorite on-screen kissing partner?"

“You know...” Tom began with a smirk, turning to look at her.

"I think it's really important to have a strong connection with the person you're playing opposite... whether that be an enemy, or a lover."

This was a fairly obvious answer, with the tension between the two of them being obvious. But neither of them was willing to admit it.

They both knew that they liked kissing each others characters, but didn't want to admit it.

“What about you Y/N do you like kissing him?”

Her smile was playful, as she thought about the question. "Well..." she began with a laugh.

"I think that Tom is a great kisser..."

This was almost an obvious answer, as when they kissed for their on screen roles, they couldn't help but feel a deeper connection themselves.

But the two of them were unwilling to admit the intensity of the attraction, as was evident and as the interviewer picked up on.

The interviewer smirked at that answer, clearly sensing that there was a deeper attraction present between the two of them. The chemistry was undeniable, but the two of them were stubbornly resisting it. The interviewer decided to push a bit further.

"Oh, so he is your favorite kissing partner then?"

Y/N had already said more than she had intended, and the smile on her face was showing it. She was reluctant to continue the conversation further, not wanting to out the two of them. so she gave a playful, evasive answer.

"Well, when you've kissed as many men on screen as I have, you develop a certain... preference."

Tom laughs and then hides his face on her shoulder. she smiles in response to Tom laughing, leaning in closer to him as he hid his face on her shoulder. She was enjoying the playfulness of the situation, and being so close to him.

It was like she had forgotten that there was an interviewer there with them. The atmosphere between the two of them was very intimate as they relaxed together like this, and Y/N could feel him pressing into her shoulder as he leaned his head on her.

Tom and Y/N had gone to a nearby restaurant for dinner together. They were enjoying themselves, laughing and chatting casually. It was like the interview had reminded them of their connection. And so they had decided to grab a nice dinner together, casually and quietly without being noticed.

It seemed that things had gone well with the interview too, which had further raised their spirits and increased their connection. The conversation was casual and lighthearted, in contrast to the interview.

“Am I really your favorite kissing partner? " he taeses her

"Maybe you are..."

She responds playfully, but there is a bit of truth to her statement. She does enjoy kissing Tom's character more than any other, due to the intensity of the attraction between them.

Even though she had kissed many others on screen, none of them compared to Tom.

Her tone was playful though, and she wasn't yet willing to admit this to Tom. So instead of a confirmation, she kept her response playful and flirtatious.

“This is rude of you, ma'am "he chuckles

"Oh, I'm the rude one here?” She chuckles back playfully, leaning into him and playfully nudging him

"I think you're the rude one here, trying to get a confirmation of who I like kissing the most."

He just chuckles at that, unable to deny it. He was in fact trying to get a confirmation, but it was clear that he didn't want to push the matter too much.

And so he continued to chuckle and playfully nudge her back.

“Listen.. I want to tell you something important”. he replied with a serious tone.

They were just playing and joking a moment ago, but as he suddenly changes his tone to become more serious, she realizes something big is about to be said. The atmosphere shifts just a bit, and she gives him a serious look herself, waiting to hear what he is about to say.

“I.. I love you "he looks at her in the eye with a serious face.. He wasn't smiling, he wasn't joking anymore.

She was stunned by his words, by his declaration of love. Her eyes widen as she looks back at him, unable to believe her ears. She was silent for a moment, waiting to hear if he would clarify what he had said, hoping that she had heard correctly.

Then he burst out laughing... “Look at your face... oh my god”. He wiped his tears.

She blushes, her heart racing as she realized that it had just been a joke. She felt a bit humiliated that she had been so quick to believe his words.

She had been so optimistic, that her hopes had immediately risen upon hearing him declare his love for her. And so she felt a bit foolish and stupid. And so she joined him in laughter, her embarrassment obvious.

“This is not funy you're idiot”. She hits his shoulder playfully.

"Ow!" Tom playfully acts like her punch hurt him, rubbing his shoulder softly and acting dramatic as he grimaces in pain.

"That's your own fault."she retorts in a playful, teasing manner. This was the way that the two of them always joked around with each other, and so he didn't intend his words to be hurtful.

Instead, they were meant to make her feel playful, like their little flirtatious game. And so he laughs a bit and playfully nudges her with his elbow.

“oh come I sorry darling It was a stupid prank ". He smiles kissing her cheek.. “Besides, I really love you.. as a friend”. He mumbles the words while placing his chin on her shoulder.

"...Yeah, I really love you too... as a friend." She replies back, smiling coyly at him. She was playing along with the whole friend thing for now, even though she secretly wanted more.

But there was a certain flirtatiousness to her tone as she made sure to emphasize the word 'friend', in order to remind him that she was just seeing him as a friend for now. Of course, secretly, she hoped that this would eventually change...

“I wish you good night”. He kisses her cheek and smiles.

Goodnight to you too..." She responds playfully, and smiles as he kisses her cheek. The moment between the two of them is playful and flirty, and the atmosphere is still light, despite the tension that had been heightened earlier.

It was almost as if the tension had gone away, and everything had just returned to the same, playful flirting that they always had. But something had changed as well, the two of them now more aware of their hidden connection.

“See you tomorrow then? "he smilies

"Definitely..." she smilies back.

When he came closer to kiss her cheek again, he accidentally pecked her lips.

His lips accidentally brushed against hers, which caused a shock for both of them. They both realized what had happened, but neither wanted to call attention to it.

The two of them remained close together, and her lips had a blush to them, which suggested that their accidental kiss wasn't as unnoticed as they had thought.

But they were both reluctant to acknowledge it, which added to the intensity of the moment.

"Oops.." He smiled a bit, but there was another blush to his face as well. It had been an accidental kiss, but it was clear that it had been an intimate one.

The two of them were silent for a moment, processing how close they had gotten. The moment felt like a subtle shift between the two of them, as if they had crossed a little boundary.

“It's.. it's okay”. She responded with a slight blush

“Yeah, it's okay...” He responded back, also with a slight blush. The flirtatious tension was increasing, and both of them were aware of it.

It was as if their accidental kiss had heightened the atmosphere between them, despite being unintentional, it had caused the two of them to cross some sort of boundary.

They both went their own way, parting ways for the night. They had been with each other for dinner and filming, and now, as they went their separate ways, there was a certain tension in the atmosphere.

He had kept looking at her as they had parted ways, watching her entering her house. His eyes had lingering on her for a bit longer than was strictly polite, as he tried to process the feeling between them.

The tension that had been building during their playful exchange was now just lingering around him, as he stood there for a few moments, his eyes focused on her home.

“Y/N! "He called her name

She turned around and saw him calling out her name, having heard him from a distance. She turned back around, looking at him.

“Yeah?”

He quickly ran to her and put his hand on her cheek, then pressed his lips to hers with all his might.

She was taken by surprise by his sudden action, a bit startled at first by him coming up on her like that. But his mouth was against hers, and she responded with a kiss back, her lips pressing against his.

The sudden passion in his kiss was unexpected, but she was quick to respond. It was almost as if the attraction between the two of them couldn't withstand the tension any longer.

He wrapped his arms around her back as they kissed, pulling her closer to him as he did so. Her arms around his neck and his arms around her back, pulling her close enough that their bodies were nearly pressed together. There was a lot of passion behind this sudden kiss.

The fact that there were no cameras rolling, no director shouting “cut!”, was only making the kiss that much more intense and passionate. They were both lost in the moment, letting their attraction get the better of them.

They were kissing for real, for just themselves, without any other pressures but their own desire and connection.

There was a moment of silence afterwards, both of them panting from the unexpected intensity of the kiss. They remained with their foreheads pressed against each other, breathing deeply, trying to catch their breath.

The atmosphere was almost intimate now, the tension between the two of them was palpable and undeniable. The hidden connection was almost palpable at this point, as it seemed to radiate off them both.

“If I did anything right in my life, it was when I gave my heart to you”. he said

“Tom- He put his thumb on her lips.

“I can't pretend anymore... I can't act like everything is fine..for the sanity of my Heart & for the clarity of my mind.. I'm confessing the Truth..

“I really Do Love you I really Need you..”.

She smiles widely and looks into his eyes “I didn't know you were a poet ”. She teases him.

He chuckles “At least show some appreciation! What a rude! ”.

“Oh.. shut up ”. She whispered and kissed him again.

“I love you too ”.

Tag list: @xitsemm @callsignwidow @minami97 @credulouskhaleesi @klauslovemepls ♡.

If you wish to be tagged just let me know 3:

#aegon ii targaryen #house of the dragon #hotd #aegon headcanons #aegon the second #hotd fanfic #aegon targaryen x reader #hotd aegon #aegon x reader #aegon fanfic #aegon ii fanfic #my writing #aegon x you #hotd2 #tom glynn carney #tom glynn carney x reader

[lullabestie14]

Found this comment on Reddit. Couldn’t explain it better than this.

“It’s clear from Mist and Fury that the original ships were: Feysand, Nessian, Elucien, and Mor/Azriel. Like it’s so obvious the way she wrote Mor and Azriel; Mor even seems vaguely interested/torn about Az. Looking at interviews, SJM even talks about Elucien as a couple (eg where would they like to travel together, etc).

Flash forward to ACOWAR. For whatever reason (lack of chemistry with Az, wanting more diversity) SJM has Mor say that she prefers women. This time the Az-pining-for-Mor is more desperate/feels like a zero chance of being requited. SJM also introduces Az as a potential love interest for Elain because she loves throwing a wrench. Just because Elucien are mates doesn’t mean they’ll have it easy; SJM’s whole thing is angst. She had to throw in a love triangle to make it uncertain. This is the first couple where mate status is confirmed upon meeting.

But there’s a problem now. If Az and Mor are no longer endgame, who will they end up with? is it not suspicious that the two new characters introduced in SF (Gwyn and Emerie) just HAPPEN to be potentially be good partners for Az and Mor? Like it’s not a coincidence that Emerie looks at Mor and blushes, remarking how pretty she is. It’s not a coincidence that Az and Gwyn have so many interactions in the text. It’s not a coincidence that a “random side character” shows up in a bonus chapter.

When SJM created Gwyn and Emerie, it wasn’t just to give Nesta friends. These characters clearly didn’t exist when she wrote MAF. SJM wanted new characters that would solve her retcon of ending Az/Mor. She wanted to solve the Mor/Az retcon so bad that she created a NEW RETCON of Az going to Sangravah. Like why bother to add that detail if it’s not important.

Also: poor Lucien. His endgame heroine was supposed to be Nesta until SJM realized they would be terrible together and that Nessian had better chemistry. So she gives Elucien the mating bond. Like is she really going to fuck Lucien over TWICE? She loves him as a character and has put him through the wringer. Yes, I agree that SJM can change her mind and maybe is open to mate rejection, but Lucien has already switched love interests from Nesta to Elain! Who else is he going to switch to, considering that Jurian and Vassa are “at each other’s throats?”

Finally, please think about the number of books left. Ignoring novellas (which are probably gonna be fluffy ones like ACOFAS where nothing happens), there are two main books left. Two couples.

Option A:

• ⁠Gwynriel (Valkyrie growth, Illyrian rebellion, exploring Ramiel, Gwyn’s autumn heritage and maybe lightsinger?? powers)

• ⁠Elucien (Helion secret baby, defeating Koschei, freeing Vassa, fixing spring court)

Option B

• ⁠Elriel (mate rejection storyline, potentially some stuff above)

• ⁠?????

Literally WHO is the second book in this equation? Lucien and Vassa?? We barely know Vassa and there’s barely any connection to Night Court. And Lucien’s book is going to be depressing as fuck dealing with mate rejection; does anyone want to read two heavy books of rejection? Jurian and Vassa: again, we barely know them! At least with Tower of Dawn, Chaol had been a main character for a long time with POV. SJM will not do a full-length Emerie/Mor book as much as I would love for one. She’s very cognizant of criticism re: Mor bi rep in the past; she doesn’t want to open a can of worms and be accused of writing bad sapphic rep. If anything, I can see a fluffy Emerie/Mor novella with little angst (or them getting together in the background of other books).

So from a meta structural level, I don’t understand who the second couple will be if Elriel is endgame. Lucien/Vassa is the most plausible answer, but 1) we barely know Vassa, 2) she’s human and Lucien is immortal. So are we going to toss her into the Cauldron to make her immortal? Serious question, and 3) I don’t want TWO books about mate rejection, it’s depressing as hell. I can see one but not two.

But with Gwynriel and Elucien, you have enormous fan and audience interest in ALL FOUR CHARACTERS. They’re directly tied to Night Court and SJM so far has no intention of staying away from the core group.”

#acotar #elucien #gwynriel #sarah j maas #lucien vanserra #azriel #elain archeron #gwyneth berdara

[farfromstrange]

Interview With The Vampire | Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader

-> Main Masterlist

Pairing: Vampire!Matt Murdock x F!Reader (she/her)

Summary: You are the first journalist to interview Hell’s Kitchen’s resident vampire vigilante after he requested you personally to tell his story. He’s offering you a way out of your miserable job—to make your voice be heard. You’re desperate and curious, so you decide to take the risk. Most people only know him as Daredevil, but you are about to learn who’s really behind the mask. How hard can it possibly be? As it turns out, interviewing a vampire is a lot more complex than you expected it to be, and Matthew Michael Murdock has set his mind on ruining you for any other man to come.

Warnings: SMUT (18+ MINORS DNI), alternative universe, blood play, marking, scent kink, slight Dom!Matt, unprotected p in v, oral f!receiving, biting, vampirism, angst, religious imagery & symbolism, Catholic guilt, mentions of violence, allusions to suicidal thoughts, lots of plot, age gap

Word Count: 12.2k (this is a beast)

Other Characters: Vampire!Elektra (mentioned), Ben Urich (mentioned)

A/n: I finally got this one edited. This is a beast, y’all! I drew inspiration from Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, but particularly the 2022 AMC series (I fell in love with it then and there), but it’s not based on it, so I just played around with the idea and this came out. It’s a lot, but it wasn’t enough for a full-blown series, so you’re getting a big ass One Shot instead. I used my usual Smut tag list, but since this is slightly Dead Dove Do Not Eat, heed the warnings and proceed with care! Don't read it if you don't want to. Anyway, I hope you like it!

Read Me On AO3!

The sun has long set over the Big Apple. Artificial neon, cars, and ceiling lights burning in the highrises along the riverfront cancel out the darkness that has befallen the country’s east. Noise melts into a flood that rolls over people’s senses, but most in New York City have grown numb to the city that never sleeps. 

Sirens follow cacophonies of screams. Teenagers get into clubs with their fake IDs, adults get drunk in bars or go to work the night shift at their underpaid jobs, and the other half cry themselves to sleep, knowing they will have to get up in the morning and go through the same hell all over again. 

Life has become a miserable existence, and it leaves human beings wondering, ‘How much longer do we have to endure this before we all finally drop dead?’

The system fails them. The law fails to protect them. All they can do is lie down and wait to die. And they will die sooner or later. That’s inevitable. 

In Hell’s Kitchen, in a penthouse with a view of the Hudson through colored windows that gloss over during the day and show the city throughout the night, resides someone who most of the city only knows by an alias—Daredevil. 

If anyone crosses him, he will suck them dry. It’s not a metaphor, I’m afraid; his reputation precedes him. Criminals fear the red eyes that come with fists and a sharp set of teeth that will surely run them into the ground. The rest of the city feels a little safer with him, but so far, no one has dared to question his nature. 

Fear is known to work as a paralytic. And this man living in the penthouse by the Hudson is the personification of what one might consider fear-inducing. Without the fear of others, he would not be thriving. 

An apex predator like him lives for the thrill of the kill. When the adrenaline spikes, it makes the prey start running and the blood taste so much sweeter. It is to a creature of his kind what a good glass of century-old red wine would be to a human being; he savors every last drop of it.

Two years out of your Master’s degree at Columbia University, you have become one of those hard-working adults who fall into bed later than they should, and you lie awake at night, wondering how much longer you have to exist before you can live.

You interned at the Bulletin; you ran the true crime and mystery column for over a year before the newspaper shut down. A billionaire from downtown Manhattan bought it to start his own magazine, and you were the only employee he didn’t fire. Instead of relying on your top-tier education and experience though, he has banned you to the lifestyle and beauty column. He’s a beast if you have ever seen one. 

On a Monday in June then, after the sun has risen and is now falling again, you find an envelope on your desk. You glide your fingers over the fancy paper. The letters are written in handwriting that resembles the old letters from the 18th century you had the pleasure of using as research material for your Bachelor’s thesis.

Your heart skips a beat. Could it be…

It is no secret that vampires exist.

Over two decades ago, scientists published papers on the existence of blood-sucking creatures after years of valuable research, and now governments around the world have set out to burn the inhuman species out before they can cause any more damage. Vampirism though is older than humanity itself and unless law enforcement has evidence of homicide, vampires have the right to exist amongst humans. 

They are excellent at hiding their true nature, that much is true. The lore that has been passed down since the beginning of time is only partly true. They know how to adapt and rise from the ashes like elegant phoenixes. The misconceptions surrounding their existence stem from fiction, horror, and fear, but they persist. 

And a rule has been established in society ever since the truth was revealed: don’t talk about vampires! 

Don’t talk about them unless it’s in a fictional context. Don’t put your research out there. Don’t fraternize with them. Don’t risk becoming prey. Don’t be fascinated by them, and God forbid, don’t you dare write articles about them for the public records. If you want to know about vampires, you have to dig, and you have to do so quietly or society will deem you crazy and a freak. 

The worst thing to be is not a flying android or a super soldier with a shield; the worst thing you can be, in this day and age, is a vampire. 

You were a curious child who turned into an even more curious adult. At times even a bitter one because she couldn’t get the answers she yearned for and had to do it herself. So, of course, the We Don’t Talk About Vampires rule came across as rather absurd, learning about it back when you were merely a teen. 

You started researching, and you found out more than you thought you would—more than you thought you could. You wanted to cover the issue in the Bulletin back when you still worked there, but since humans were raised to fear the very mention of vampires in the real world, no longer romanticizing the concept but rather running from it, the truth shall remain hidden. Again, that seemed absurd, but you had to accept it to get ahead. 

You kept researching to the point you convinced yourself you could be one of them if you tried. You felt like you understood them, but nothing could ever fully answer all of your questions to the point it felt truthful. Honest. Real. 

Growing up, everyone told you dead things aren’t supposed to walk. They aren’t supposed to breathe and exist among the living. They are cruel, and vampires are killers that leave trails of bodies the government is hiding from us. Greediness exceeds common sense. The human mind tends to get sick and twisted, and those who don’t fit in hardly ever stand a chance.

Hell’s Kitchen is particularly quiet on the issue. Rumor has it that the vigilante chasing criminals at night and leaving the worst of them dry at the shore of the Hudson while, at the same time, surrendering those he deems worthy of rehabilitation to the authorities, is one of those vampires. 

They call him Daredevil; the savior of innocents and the downfall of the vile. Only a handful of people know who he is. The truth is caught in a spider web of lies, unable to come out unless someone were to tell his story for the world to hear. 

That Monday in June when you open the mysterious envelope on your desk, everything changes. 

He addressed you personally. Your name resembles a masterpiece, the letters swirling at the edges. 

You don’t know me, but I know you.

It’s strange to read your name out of the mouth of a stranger.

I must admit, Miss, I’m a big fan of your writing. And I’m not talking about the lifestyle and beauty column Mr. Doherty of the ‘Silver Lining’ has confined you to.

No, I am a big fan of the work you used to do for the New York Bulletin. I remember your name headlining many articles on crime here in Hell’s Kitchen—a column my late friend Ben Urich used to call his home.  

It’s a shame that the paper was shut down. I tried to prevent it, but the disappearance of half of humanity and Wilson Fisk’s irreparable damage to the city’s foundation tied my hands. 

The token female journalist reporting on unsolicited beauty advice and lifestyle choices no one is going to follow in the days of social media and fake marketing. It must be frustrating, right? Not having a story to tell. Not getting recognized for your impeccable talent. The Bulletin gave you a platform, but Mr. Doherty and his goons took that away from you.

What I’m asking myself is, are you satisfied? You were probably imagining a different future for yourself. A woman of your caliber must want to be more than a mere object used to make a bottomless magazine look better on the market. 

Excuse my overstepping. I read one of your essays on the magical and the mythic—lore versus reality—the other day, and it inspired me. My life has been taking quite a few turns lately, so I required some new… let’s call it insight. 

You don’t know me, but I am one of those creatures you are fascinated by. I’m the kind of creature people have been telling you not to write about because the weak minds of the public would not receive it well. The Catholics, the church, the fragile and fearful human beings that can’t imagine anything in fiction being real and want to remain the superior species—trust me, I know what it feels like to be backed into a corner. To be abandoned. To be underestimated. Not quite like you, I admit, but I have a few years of experience in and with this world to show for myself. 

I imagine you’re tired of your position. I imagine you’re dissatisfied with human idiocy. You crave answers to your questions. Questions you have been asking yourself ever since college failed to answer them. My kind is being censored—partly for good reason—but that doesn’t sit right with you, does it? To live life in a monotone line with no clear way out of this boring rhythm you have had to fall into? 

I can offer you a different path. A story. Answers to your questions. And the unfiltered truth of a 242-year-old man. 

You are going to find a card with my address attached to this letter. I can assure you, sweetheart, we both want the same thing. I will wash your hands if you wash mine. Think about it, and come find me when you have made your decision. Preferably after the sun has set. 

Yours sincerely,

M.

The paper crumbles in your hands, but only at the corners. Your eyes are glued to the lost drops of ink, the blue blood of an old fountain pen caving under too much pressure. 

He chose his words carefully. Every paragraph circles around your head. You breathe in, and it suddenly feels as though the whiff of the unknown is an inhalable drug, twisting your brain inside out. 

The pull threatens to submerge you in a stormy ocean. You’re flailing your arms around helplessly, but there is nothing for you to hold onto. All buoys have drifted into oblivion, leaving a sea of utter emptiness behind, and in the midst of it, there you are, drowning.

In a moment of clarity, you fold the letter back down on the desk. It lands with a thud, and you look around frantically, checking if anyone is watching you. They aren’t. 

M. That’s all he’s giving you. And the fact he is over two hundred years old proves the rumors to be true. He’s standing by it, but only to you. He wants to reveal himself to you, show you his true face for a story, but he’s a vampire. 

You’re alone. You can wash his hands, but is just showing up enough for him? You don’t even know him. 

You’re in trouble. This time though, you didn’t even do anything. You did your job, and he caught an interest in you. How does that work? 

Your heart skips another beat. It should not, but it does. The danger is exciting. It shouldn't be exciting. You hate what your body is doing, but how can you make it stop? You can’t. You can’t do anything but take it.

This stranger has got you in a chokehold, but in his hands, you might as well surrender to your certain demise. You don’t consider vampires inherently evil, but there is a reason people warn you not to walk alone at night in Hell’s Kitchen. He’s dangerous, no matter his nature, and he is not supposed to lure you in the way he does.

But you’re a curious kitten, and he is offering you the holy grail of answers to questions you have been grappling with for years. He hit the nail right on the head. And it doesn’t even scare you how well he knows you. 

This is a gold mine. Realistically speaking, telling a vampire’s story could make or break your career as a journalist. If you do it for the magazine, you’re done before you can even bring your words to print, but if you do it individually and you do it well, people will certainly eat it up. The question is just, are you going to play your entire life safe, conforming to your boss’s view of you until you get the freedom you crave, or are you going to take the risk and fly? 

The answer is as clear as day, but it takes you a moment to process. It’s as though someone is in your head, steering you in the direction of whoever this M is. Daredevil. This vampire who wants you to interview him, and for what? That’s still an open question you don’t have the answer to. But you do know what to do.

You scramble for your laptop, your notepad, and the letter in the envelope. The clock strikes four. You have another two hours on the clock, but you can’t be bothered to stay. 

Upon hearing the sound of your shoes hurriedly scraping against the linoleum floors, one of your colleagues turns in her chair. “Where are you going?” she asks.

“I, uh, have somewhere to be,” you tell her as you brush past her.

“What, now?”

“Yeah. I forgot I had an appointment.”

“What about Mr. Doherty?”

You stop on your way out, looking back over your shoulder. “If everything works out,” you say, glancing through the window to his office at the other end of the hall, “He’ll have my letter of resignation by the end of the week.”

She gasps softly. “You’re quitting?” her voice is barely above a whisper.

Almost sinisterly, you chuckle. “That’s the plan, yeah.”

“But—”

“Tell your daughter Happy Birthday from me. I gotta go.”

Your steps echo for minutes still, but you are long gone with the wind.

Silver linings are considered an advantage that comes from an unpleasant situation. The name has proven to be entirely unfit for the magazine that replaced a big piece of Hell’s Kitchen’s history. The Bulletin had cultural value as much as it was laden with decades of the city’s stories told to the average person. 

Wilson Fisk was the dynamite that sent New York alight. The Bulletin’s destruction was mere collateral damage in the fight to get the city back on track. You have had so many reasons to leave presented to you, yet you never took them. If you had, maybe you wouldn’t be here, making bad decisions on what started as just another Monday in June. 

The fact is though, you didn’t leave, and you are here now. Facts are what matter. They count. Your hypothetical past, present, and future have no place in this reality because you can’t travel back or forward in time. Vampires may exist, and the Avengers time-traveled to save the world, but things aren’t quite as easy once you look at the bigger picture. You are not a superhero, you’re just a journalist chasing the kind of story that will finally make her voice be heard. 

You know that Ben Urich, at least, would be proud of you.

His address weighs heavy on the small card you pulled out of the envelope earlier that evening. You passed it on to the cab driver, and he began to navigate the dark streets of Hell’s Kitchen. The luxury condominiums in this part of the city can be counted on one hand. You know exactly when you’re there. 

The sun has once again set over New York City. You’re wide awake, not quite sure though if you’re ready to face what you are walking blindly into. Even your driver refuses to take you past a certain point, and that is how you know that you’re not dreaming. This is real, and it’s supposed to be terrifying. 

How come you’re not scared then?

You slip twenty dollars to the cab driver, then climb out of the backseat. The salty air from the Hudson River a few blocks down wafts around your sensitive nose. In the distance, you can hear waves crashing into the docks as the wind picks up in speed. The boats must be moving wildly by now, swaying from side to side and possibly even making the fish in the depths of the water seasick. You would be if you were them. 

With every step, you grow closer to your target. On second thought, maybe you should have brought more than just a pathetic bottle of pepper spray and your precious laptop. You could have brought your grandfather’s cassette recorder, at least that would leave a mark if you hit someone over the head with it. 

Do vampires get concussions? That is another question you can add to the seemingly endless list in your mind. It’s a confusing place as of late, and the weird sense that someone is playing with the controls won’t leave you alone. Either you are overthinking, or you are worse off than you originally thought. 

The apartment complex the card directs you to stretches high above you. You look up, seeing not a single light on. That’s odd, you think, but then again, you are meeting with the city’s most notorious man. If he is who everyone says he is, and if the rumors are even true, that is. 

As you are about to approach the entrance, your fingertips start to burn. A gasp escapes past your lips. Staring down, the cubical piece of paper goes up in flames. You are mere feet from the door, nowhere near close to an open source of fire, and the card starts to burn like a wildfire. 

You pull back, your heart hammering against your ribcage. The ashes fall to the ground, but before they can hit the asphalt, they vanish.

“What the–” before you can finish, the doors before you swing open toward the inside. The lights turn on. Someone even has called the elevator for you. 

Another step forward, and a voice stops you. “Fourth floor, down the hallway, first door to your right,” the voice says through the speaker. Only then do you notice the lack of a doorbell. 

Everything in you is screaming for you to run, but you are rooted in the spot. He dragged you here with a mere letter, and you were more than ready to jump. Desperation was the only thing that drove you here. Your brain seems incapable of rational thought.

What if that is what he wanted all along? To get you complicit by playing on what you so desperately need, which is a story and a way out of this boring everyday life that is threatening to slowly kill you.

He’s like a siren, luring you into his deadly trap, but even knowing all of this, you still can’t find it in yourself to run. 

The second you enter the building, the door shuts behind you, and your only way out is officially locked. You made the decision; you have dug your own grave, possibly quite literally, and now you have to lie in it. It’s better to die chasing a good story than dying at a desk in an office that doesn’t respect you.

You are a disgrace, you can hear your father’s voice in the back of your mind. He always warned you not to be too reckless or your bad decisions will eventually catch up with you. He always taught you not to trust strangers, and to stay the hell away from those who disgrace God, but you have never cared much about being a good girl. 

Your thoughts are as morbid as your obsession with the walking undead. It is time you embrace what people are already saying about you.

The elevator ride feels like an eternity. It goes up and up and up until it finally stops on the fourth floor. The walls smell like nothing but a faint hint of bleach. It’s clean, parquette not carpet, and the walls are kept in a shade resembling a mixture between crimson and maroon, and it is blending into a sort of marble.

The metal doors slide open. Again, you hesitate. A sweet whisper echoes in your ear, dragging you toward the edge. You breach the border between the elevator and the hallway that waits behind it. The voice is distant, and it doesn’t sound human—it reminds you of a siren’s song, calling for you. He is calling for you, and a fog settles over your mind. You’re not in control anymore, he is. 

You imagine him to be an old man, possibly middle-aged. Vampires stop aging when they’re turned. Their mind doesn’t. You’ve read the research plenty. They are wise beings, more intelligent than human beings could ever fathom. That makes them dangerous. 

Their venom rivals the intoxicating feeling of heroin, you’ve heard, and it heightens your senses to the point all you can feel is the one who bit you. Research suggests it’s a million times stronger than an orgasm, for both the vampire and the human being. 

Part of you has always wanted to try it. Part of you wants to know what it feels like to be sucked dry. You want to know what it feels like to be carried into a new dimension by someone who knows how to play the human body like a fucking piano, eliciting the sweetest melody through your very essence and the symphony of your moans.  

This M—Daredevil—is inherently dangerous. He’s as mysterious as they come; a man in a mask lurking in the dark corners of Hell’s Kitchen every night, turning the fight for justice into his hunting ground. 

It’s as though he curled his fingers, and you followed. 

You walk the dark hallway down to the door on the right. Paintings litter the walls. Masterpieces, blotches of white, red, and color. You recognize the red marble as a decorative theme on the wallpaper. Tracing your fingers over it, the rough drywall scratches at your skin. 

You reach out a shaky hand toward the golden knob. Before you can turn it though, the door already flings open. It must be witchcraft. 

Red appears to be his favorite color. At least judging from the hallway, that is true. When you step into the room with a pounding heart and blood pooling in your cheeks though, the inside of the room is a lot more… human. You wouldn’t have guessed it from the gloominess surrounding you on your way there.

A leather couch and armchairs stand in the middle, facing toward the window front. Colored windows, as you have gathered from the rumors. They are see-through now though, showing the city skyline and the moon up high. The chandelier on the ceiling is the only piece of furniture you would consider old. Browns meet hues of blue and dark green, a forest at midnight, and you suck in a sharp breath. The apartment is beautiful. 

You look to your left and see a bookshelf stretching the length of the wall. You can’t help but run your hand over the backs. You would have expected original editions from the 18th or 19th century, but when your fingers trace over the bindings, you are met with the bulging of Braille underneath the elegant golden writing of the titles. None of them seem to have collected dust. It surprises you to only find a mere handful of classics that haven’t been transcribed in Braille and a realization you did not expect starts to crawl its way forward.

“I stole that one from a library in Paris.”

Your racing heart stops beating. The book you’ve been holding falls to the ground, its worn-out leather cracking further around the spine. The thud is deafening. You gasp, turning around. Your shoulders fly up as the tension ripples through every last muscle in your bone. Your bones ache just from how stiff you’re standing, but you can’t move.

The man before you moves as quietly as a mouse. You didn’t hear him coming. The moonlight reflects off his dark brown hair, making it appear almost ginger. He’s wearing a simple suit without a tie, and the white of his shirt is as pristine and clean as the cut of his beard. You can see chest hair poking out from underneath the two open buttons, as dark as the locks on his head. His jawline is irresistibly sharp, leading up to a pair of plump lips he is wrapping around the brim of a crystal glass filled with rum.

Your heart remains frozen. Not a single drop of blood pumps through your veins, yet your cheeks burn brighter than a bonfire on a pitch-black night. 

But his flawless appearance is not what catches your attention the most. Looking up into his eyes, wanting to know whether they are as red as those set into the devil’s mask, you find nothing but your terrified reflection staring back at you. It’s as blurry as the picture of your face in a still ocean’s water, your wide eyes staring back at yourself. 

The red glasses are all you can see. Round with a black rim. Silver would have looked better on him, or maybe even gold. The black reminds you of an endless pit, a sinister embrace of vampire stereotypes, but you can’t look away from the maroon that won’t allow you even a glimpse into his eyes. They are shielding him from the world, and his eyes from curious, stupid humans like you.

He nods toward the ground. “You gonna pick that up?” he asks. His voice reminds you of rumbling gravel. 

He looks like a man. He talks like a man. If you didn’t know better, you would say he is human. There seems to be blood in his cheeks and air in his lungs. 

You have to pull yourself together. Clearing your throat, you bend down and pick the book back up.

“Thank you,” he utters your name. “It’s been a while since I’ve received visitors that don’t work for me.”

You put the book back on the shelf. Your lips are sewn shut; you can’t find the words. Every time you open your mouth like a fish on dry land, you close it again, and it is embarrassing to be standing in front of him with your guard down. 

“Welcome to my home,” he says. You wish you could see his eyes to know if he’s mocking you. “Do you want a drink, or do you need another minute to process?”

He is mocking you. His tone is gentle, as is his voice, but he smirks like a smug motherfucker, and your anger boils to a tipping point. The candle is about to burn out. 

“I–” you stammer. Internally, you curse yourself for being such a fool. 

“Another minute it is then.”

You don’t need a minute though. “You’re blind,” you blurt out. 

The beautiful—deadly—stranger nods. “Yeah.“

“How?”

“Accident when I was a kid.”

“But you’re…” you leave the missing part of that sentence hanging in the air like a noose. 

“Say it,” he murmurs. You want to say it sounds like a growl, but you’re not sure. He isn’t asserting dominance or trying to force you into submission by scaring you away, but he is toying with you regardless. 

You take a deep breath. The word, the truth, numbers your tongue and your lips with its weight. “A vampire,�� you say, your voice barely above a whisper, matching his. 

His smirk broadens. He pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheek for a moment, then releases it as it darts out to wet his bottom lip. “I’m a blind vampire, yes,” he answers. “We’re rare, but we do exist.”

Blind vampires. In all of your years of fascination, that has never crossed your mind. You used to believe that they had healing abilities that far exceeded your own. You were wrong. He lost his eyesight before he got turned into a vampire. He lived as a blind human being and didn’t regain his most crucial sense when he died. 

He came back to life, but he died. It is surreal to stand across from him. He’s not just letters on a piece of paper, he is very much real. And he’s blind. 

“Oh, my God,” you curse.

That elicits a soft chuckle from him. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” he says. 

“I was considering not to.” 

He sees right through you with those empty glasses. “That’s a lie.”

“How would you know?” you counter. 

“I can hear your heartbeat. The blood pumping in your veins…” His head tilts ever so slightly in your direction. You take a step back. It’s an instinct. “Your pulse picks up when you lie, or when you’re nervous, or both,” he states. “When you first saw me, your heart skipped a beat. It did again when you lied to me.”

Your eyes trail down to his thick thighs perfectly fitted in his tailored trousers. His thick digits pat the rhythm with his fingers on the fabric. Thud-thudthudthud-thud. You place a hand on your chest. He wasn’t wrong; your heart is racing. 

His smirk turns into a smile, but only briefly again. It’s a glimpse of humanity he doesn’t want you to see. “I like that sound,” he says. “Has anyone ever told you that you smell good? Sweet, sour, and a little salty. Natural. You don’t use a lot of artificial perfume, but you like cherry chapstick.”

You swallow, taking a whiff of your arm. Besides your deodorant masking the scent of your nervous sweat, you smell nothing. How good must his nose be? His hearing? His sense of taste? 

“Right now, sweat is dripping down your back, and your muscles are tense enough to strain against your bones every time you breathe. Your heart just skipped a beat again. You find it weird,” he muses. “I can’t turn it off, but I get it must be strange for you.” 

“You–” The blood has collected in your head, pushing the temperature in the room to an all-time high. “Get out of my body!” you snap. 

He laughs. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear.”

“And I never thought you would ask for an audience with me, but here we are.”

“Here you are.” 

You want nothing more than to wipe that smirk off his face. He looks so smug, standing there with his drink, wearing a suit too fancy for his own home. He’s fully in his element. It’s scary how alluring he is, too. You don’t want to think that way, but as soon as your eyes gaze upon him again, your chest contracts, and you forget how to breathe. 

He’s a wolf, and you’re a lonely little sheep that doesn’t know any better. That lonely little sheep just wants to be a part of something bigger, even if that means surrendering herself to the big bad wolf. He wants a taste of her, and the sheep would give him that in a heartbeat if he just asked. 

You blink. There is a voice in your head, and it isn’t your own. Far from it. You don’t want to be associated with this stranger. She thinks she knows you. She thinks she knows what you want—the sheep in the eyes of her natural enemy. This voice is the most irrational you could be, and you need to stop letting her win.

And yet you—not just the voice of the lonely sheep you appear to be—would follow this man anywhere, even to hell if he asked you to. 

Your eyes drill knives into his skull, but they are also full of curiosity. Can he hear your thoughts? Your heart beats in your throat. You can taste it on your tongue. If you bit your lip, you would bleed, and he would probably fall into a frenzy. Still, your teeth dig into your bottom lip. What if he can hear your thoughts—hear how fucking needy you are? You’re pathetic. What he must think of you, standing across from him, smaller than human life itself. 

You want to read him, but he is far from an open book. He’s not Braille you can run your fingers over, and even if he was, you don’t know how to read it. He’s an enigma. His face is set in stone; an iron mask you can’t penetrate. 

His chest heaves with another chuckle. He sets the crystal glass down on the coffee table, taking a step forward. “No, I can’t read your mind,” he says. 

You flinch. “What?”

“Your breathing pattern. The way you look at me. I can sense that you’re thinking about something.” He adjusts his glasses. “It’s just… Most humans ask me if I can read their minds, you know. I can’t. Some vampires can, but my senses are the only heightened ability I have.” This time, when he chuckles, a hint of bitterness dances in his voice. 

“At least you’re not in my head then,” you say. 

“No.”

“Good.”

A pregnant pause follows. You clutch your bag to your chest, your fingers digging into the frame of your hidden laptop. 

“Can I offer you a drink?” he asks, pointing to his empty glass.

You wave him off. That’s the last thing on your mind. “No, thank you.”

Sometimes at night, you fantasize about diving into the abyss of darkness. It looks and sounds a terrifying lot like him. You want to know him. You need to know him. When it comes to him and this—whatever this is—the lines between want and need are blurring into an unidentifiable mess. It’s an ocean of emotions with no land in sight. A total eclipse of the heart, if you will. You’re losing your mind.

“What you can do–” You straighten your shoulder, hoping it will add height to your beaten confidence. “You can tell me your name. Sir,” you say. 

He nods. “I suppose it would only be fair, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Matthew. My name’s Matthew.” The softness of his features as his lips move to the rhythm of his words takes you back anew. His eyebrows raise slightly, and you catch a glimpse of a pair of beautiful, unfocused hazel eyes that steal your breath away. 

Matthew. It is a name that easily rolls off the tongue. It suits him.

You repeat his name aloud. “That’s an odd name for a 200-something-year-old man,” you point out. 

Matthew scoffs. “My parents were both Catholic.”

“I suppose you’re not?”

You hit a sore spot. His head dips, fingers running over his nails and tongue tracing his teeth. “Not anymore,” he says.

God died for him a long time ago, and all churches burned down.

Your grip on your bag loosens. “Then why Daredevil?” you ask. 

His lips part. “I, uh, have the Bulletin to thank for that one. After centuries of existing in this world, and being despised for no matter what I do, I’ve decided to embrace it. I am Daredevil, not even God can stop that now.”

Matt grabs his glass, turning away from you. He doesn’t use a cane to navigate from the couch to the mini bar on the other end of the room. You carefully follow his movements. One of his hands remains at his side, snapping his fingers as he navigates the familiar terrain of his home. 

He uncaps a half-empty bottle of Whiskey to pour himself another glass. 

“You know, Matthew,” you prompt, daring to step forward an inch, “as big as your reputation is in this part of the city, Silver Lining is not the kind of magazine that would cover your story.”

“You still came,” he says. 

“I could lose my job if anyone knew I came here.”

“And yet you’re here and not where you should be.” He turns his head over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t risk losing your job if it wasn’t important to you, would you?”

You stammer, “I–” He’s got you. You’re a fish with a hook in her mouth. 

“If Silver Lining Magazine won’t cover my story, why are you here?” Matt turns back to you, leaning back against the shiny Mahagoni of his minibar. It offers a beautiful contrast to his strong physique and the slight paleness of his skin. “Could it be because you’re fascinated by the mythic?” he asks, teasing. “By werewolves and witches and vampires?”

It’s your turn to scoff. “I won’t confirm or deny. My boss wouldn’t let me write a vampire vigilante exposé even if I begged him to.”

“And that’s why Mr. Doherty doesn’t deserve you.” Your body visibly recoils when he pushes forward, moving just an inch toward you. “Your curiosity is a virtue,” he purrs. The moonlight sets your reflection in his glasses alight. 

“Is that why you lured me here?” you ask him. “Because my curiosity is a virtue and you consider yourself better than the people in my life?”

“I didn’t lure you here, and I think you know that. That’s not what this is.” The distance between you starts to shrink, backing you into a corner. “I believe you came here because the thought of interviewing a vampire and sharing your findings with the world on your account excites you,” he says. “You want to be heard. You want to be taken seriously as a journalist, and you want to make people happy.”

The only way for you to come out of this with your pride and dignity still intact is to put up walls before the already existent labyrinth of walls keeping your heart guarded and your soul safe. “Again,” you ask, “why me?”

“Why not you? As I stated in my letter, I’m a fan of your work.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, about that. How did you write that if you’re blind?”

“I didn’t, my secretary did.”

“Of course.” Of course, he has a secretary. “I… I just don’t get it,” you say. “You’ve been hiding for so long–” 

Matt cuts you off with an urgency you didn’t expect, “Things have changed. Circumstances…” he trails off. 

“Wouldn’t it be a suicide mission?” 

His answer is silence. You let out an exasperated sigh. “If you want me to interview you, you have to be honest with me.”

“I’m not on the record yet.”

“Right. Maybe you can answer this though—off the record, of course—how can you be certain I didn’t call the cops or the FBI before I came here?”

His eyes crinkle. “I’m not stupid, sweetheart,” he says. 

He’s amused. You’re amusing him. 

“Don’t call me that,” you growl. 

He’s spreading you open, holding up a mirror for you to look into. It’s your miserable self in all its glory, and he knows you better than you know yourself. 

You ignore the sharp pain in your left ribcage as you pull the arrow out of your heart. “Unless someone holds up a sign that they are pro-vampirism, how would you even know I’d listen to you and not just refer you to the Journal of Psychiatry?” 

“Are you telling me you don’t believe in vampires?” Matt quips.

“That’s not… Answer my question!”

The sound of your heartbeat must sound almost like the rapid firing of a machine gun, that’s how fast your pulse is racing. Your veins threaten to burst with the excess blood. It’s a heat like no other. You’re a witch at the stake, and Matt is holding the torch to your gasoline-doused body. 

He clears his throat. Your face falls at the words that tumble out of his parted lips, and the rapid firing turns into a deafening silence and a monotone line on a heart monitor. 

“After what I’ve learned from reading Dr. Rice’s research on the phenomena of vampirism, I can confidently say this species is no different than an animal like the great white shark or the Homo sapiens sapiens—our kind,” he recites. “Vampires are a medium of fiction and propaganda to induce fear, but they are also a widely misunderstood species that is being silenced rather than heard. Our species, the human species, likes to consider themselves superior, even when we’re in a position of being someone’s natural food source. Dr. Rice’s research is based on a comprehensible set of facts, and isn’t that what we have been relying on ever since the beginning? Our psychology makes it possible for us to change the narrative in our favor, and more often than not, we ignore the very facts deemed by humans as an intellectual importance to spread the message of an entirely different agenda. Dr. Rice’s research only proves that egotism and humans themselves will be humankind's certain downfall.”

“My investigative journalism essay,” you breathe out. 

“Published by Columbia University.” 

Your heart restarts with a rush of adrenaline. “How… how do you know all of this?”

“I may be blind,” Matt says, “but I know how to read between the lines.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

The alcohol in his drink seems to have little effect on him. “I know you have questions, and I’m willing to answer them if you promise to publish a detailed report somewhere other than Silver Lining Magazine.”

You look down at your bag, then back at him. “Ben Urich could have told your story in a way that would’ve made people listen,” you murmur. “I don’t have an impressive career like him.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, “but you could have easily written ‘Attack on NYC’. Ben was a good man, an even better journalist, but he could not have written your college essay. And he could never have been you.” 

Your name rolls off his tongue—not a pretentious nickname that makes you want to vomit but your name, and it flicks a switch within you. 

You glance around the spacious living, pulling your laptop out of its confines, and you bridge the distance between you, finally. You notice he smells of sandalwood cologne and scentless soap. “Okay,” you cave. “Where do you want me to set up?”

Session 1.

The spacebar clicks underneath the tip of your index finger. The white of your screen fills with a series of red sequences as the microphone takes in every little sound around you. Except for the two of you and the fading footsteps of one of Matthew’s assistants though, the world has fallen silent in the dead of the night. He’s sitting across from you, legs crossed, head tilted; your life is about to change.

“So, Mister Murdock,” you begin, “tell me. How long have you been dead?” 

His mouth opens in a wide grin. “242 years,” he answers. 

“And what happened the year you died?”

“Well, it was 1782. I was a good few years out of law school. I was a good lawyer, but I wasn’t successful. That year, I met a beautiful woman at a banquet. I wasn’t rich—trust me, I was beyond penniless—but she had been adopted into a wealthy family, and that made her one of the richest women in the room. Everyone wanted her, but when I sensed her across the hall, she only had eyes for me. And she was the first woman to not see me just because I was blind.” He chuckles sadly. “I thought she was the woman of my dreams, the love of my life, but a few weeks later, after letting her into my life, I realized that she didn’t look at me that night because she was interested. She was hunting me. El— Miss Elektra Natchios…”

The year 1782 becomes apparent before your inner eye. As he tells you about the night he met her, you can see the dark-haired beauty making her way across the ballroom. Red lips and a gown to die for. Her dark eyes were full of mischief, but the passion in them could have knocked a grown man off of his feet. And that is just what she did to poor Matthew. 

“I was going to marry her,” he tells you.

He went to church regularly. His knees were bloody from praying, his senses already heightened before he died. God’s soldier, that is how he puts it. He was told that the accident that left him blind happened for a reason, and he had to fight a war that went beyond the country’s fight for independence. 

That summer, Elektra drained him. He didn’t know what she was. She fooled him. He was obsessed with her. Her dark eyes he couldn’t see lured her in, and it was the venom in her blood that became his downfall after she dug her teeth into him.

Matt tried to beg his priest for forgiveness, but he didn’t even make it past the marble stairs before the doors locked. He knelt in a pool of blood—both his and that of the first human he ever sucked dry to survive as a newborn vampire—offering an eternal sacrifice to Catholicism, but God abandoned him on his doorstep. 

The church walls would have been set on fire if he had touched them from the inside. 

You look up from your notepad to find him now standing at the window. He’s not looking out, of course, but he seems so deep in thought, the memories that aren’t your own but his start to dissipate, and you’re brought back to the here and now.

Matt poured his heart out to you. You expected answers, but not this kind, and certainly not of this magnitude. You see him in an entirely different light. He’s vulnerable, fragile, and human. He has endured trauma that killed him, but he couldn’t die because the woman he loved made him immortal. It’s a bigger curse than growing up with the belief that an accident made you God’s soldier. 

He lost everything. For centuries, he has had to live with that. It’s killing you, feeling his pain, the pure agony that radiates off him. 

Your voice is quiet when you ask him, “What was it like?” You don’t have to say it out loud for him to know what you are referencing.

Matt chuckles, the sound a mere breath in the atmosphere. “Like she took my soul from my body, setting fire to my belief system and already heightened senses,” he says. 

You swallow. “That sounds… overstimulating.”

“It was. Is. My heart stopped, but when that happened, something else awoke inside me. The hunger… the hunger was the worst part. It’s insatiable. One hour passes, and you feel like you’ve been starving for weeks.”

“Like you’ve been possessed by a demon?”

“Like I am the demon.”

“But you’re not.” You should stop the recording. You’re not on track; you’re incorporating your feelings into Matt’s story, but you can’t help it. The words tumble out of your mouth without a second thought, a train that cannot be stopped. 

He raises his eyebrows, you can see it in his reflection in the windows. “Are you religious?” he asks.

You shake your head. “This isn’t about me.”

“Are you?”

The veins on the back of his hands bulge as he balls them to fists at his sides. Your throat is a desert, and your heartbeat resembles a storm that burns right through it, sending the sand flying in all directions of the horizon.

You adjust in your seat, crossing one leg over the other. He takes a whiff. He’s smelling you, and that doesn’t help the speed of your pulse to calm down. 

Tapping your pen on your notepad, you watch the red sequences fill the white space of the recording program. It moves with the sound of your voice when you finally dare to answer. “It’s a complicated question because there is a difference between believing in God and believing in the church,” you say.

“Do you believe in God then?” Matt asks. It’s as though he’s trying not to seethe at the mere mention of someone he used to worship. You make a note of that.

“There is so much bad in this world. So much cruelty. I can’t…” You take a deep breath. “I don’t know how to believe in a God that would let the things humans do to each other happen. If God existed—if he was as merciful as Christians like to claim, he wouldn’t let this happen. And I’m so sick and tired of people using their faith, and their beliefs in God and the church as justification to be disrespectful. I don’t understand it. How can anyone? Why is someone who has to drink blood to stay alive—someone who didn’t even choose this life—worth less and the devil’s breed when humans do worse things to each other? Why would God allow us to start wars that kill innocent people? Children? It’s just not fair that we treat ourselves and others as though we are already in hell, and we’re just supposed to accept that God doesn’t care—” You stop yourself, the tears burning behind your eyes. 

Matt turns back around. You can’t look away. “When I was still human,” he murmurs, “I used to believe everything that happened to me was God’s will. The accident, God’s will. Me going blind, God’s will. I went to confession, prayed until my knees were bloody and bruised. I tried convincing myself that every scream I heard from down the block, every person who lost their life or their innocence was my responsibility. God made me this way for a reason, right?” The scoff is as bitter as the liquor in his glass. “I fell apart, you know. I was a kid, so I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what was happening to me,” he tells you. 

You hold your breath. The glasses slip from his eyes as he takes them off with shaky fingers. You are met with the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes. Emotions dance a heated tango in a tornado. If you look closer, the green specks bring life to his eyes. It’s human nature in the purest sense of the word. 

Your reflection stands in his irises, his unmoving pupils, and the tears glisten in his eyes. They’re as red as blood, watered-down crimson essence. You want to reach out and stroke his cheek, but that would be crossing a very big line that you can’t bring yourself up to touch. 

“I studied law because I thought it would change something,” he continues. You listen. It’s the only thing you can do—listen. “It wasn’t enough. Nothing I ever did felt like it was enough. I lost my father. Jack. I didn’t know my mother until it was too late. Maggie. I had no one. No money, no prospects, just me and those voices in my head, telling me I was supposed to be God’s soldier.”

“You’re not,” you cut in. 

He shakes his head. “I prayed; I crawled up the stairs of the church, and I spent hours repenting for my sins. I bled myself dry for Him. I sacrificed myself. I sacrificed my youth, my heart, and my soul, and I got nothing back. I begged for help until my voice was sore, but nothing… God, nothing was ever good enough. Until Elektra came around,” he says. 

“She changed everything for you. It makes sense. She turned you into a vampire, but she also loved you.”

“She did love me, in her own twisted way.”

“It’s what you deserved,” you say.

He isn’t yours, but the pang you feel in your chest is treacherous. Your heart cracks like a porcelain vase, jealousy creeping in like a parasite of toxic waste.

In response, Matt only chuckles bitterly. “She made me believe again, then took my soul and crushed it in her hand.” The correction makes your shoulders slump. “Instead of feeling like my world ended though, I felt at peace when she sucked the blood out of my veins and fed me her venom,” he says. “It’s sick, I know. I was aware I died that night, that she turned me into a devil who could only survive if he drank the blood of others. The Catholic in me struggled to accept it, but I had no choice but to embrace what she made me.”

“And where is she now?” you ask.

“Gone.” The light in his eyes has fully disappeared now. “I stayed with her for a while until she died in my arms. She showed me what love is, and she showed me heartbreak. She made me hungry for blood, awakening the devil I’ve been trying to tame. She taught me how to feed, how to hunt, and how to chase. But she also cursed me,” he says. “I only exist for myself now. I only bleed for myself. No God, no church, and no more religion. I’m not Jesus, I’m Judas, and I retired the cross the day I was crucified.”

You have run out of questions to ask. Too overwhelming is the sight of his walls crumbling down, this stranger you now know better than any living being seems to. You no longer see money in this, or a story to chase, you only see Matthew, and the halo above his head he still believes is a pair of horns. The world broke him. His faith in God broke him. It crushed him, and he lost everything. How broken he must be. 

“Not such a pretty story when I say it out loud, huh?” He scoffs.

The spacebar clicks again. The recording comes to a sudden halt. One hour and fifty-eight minutes, the first session of your interview with the vampire. You need to put a halt to it now because what you are about to say or do as you reach your hand out to brush his cold, dead skin is not something that should be found on a record. And you won’t ever tell.

Matt pulls away when your warm fingertips brush his. You’re standing across from him now, so close he can smell, hear, and feel all of you at once.

Your touch is the holy water that burns his skin, but the fire sustains him and shoots straight to his core the same way the blood rushes to yours.

“It’s not a pretty story, no,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper, “but it did tell me what I already knew.”

“And what’s that?” he asks.

“That you’re not evil. You’re not the Devil. You’re misunderstood. You’ve been beaten; you’ve been abandoned, hurt, and broken. That doesn’t make you a monster. Trying to make this city a better place does not make you a monster.”

“If you only knew the things I’ve done…”

“I know the rumors suggest that you were the one who fought Wilson Fisk and got this city back where it needed to be. You’ve saved countless women from the worst of fates. You are the reason the innocent people of Hell’s Kitchen feel safe. By picking up that mask, you became a hero, not a villain, and that is the story I want to tell.”

In lightspeed, he has moved you from the window to the other end of the room. Your back hits the wall. 

Matt towers over you in all of his intimidating glory. His eyes spark red, but you hold his unfocused gaze. He has such beautiful eyes. This pull between you is far from human; it’s unhealthy, and it is exactly where he wanted to get you. You’re trapped, pinned underneath him like a deer caught in headlights. 

Exhaling, your breath strokes his cheeks. He closes his eyes, savoring the taste of you. Every particle in the air, he inhales. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. Oh, what you wouldn’t do to suck that tongue into your mouth. 

Your pheromones play his head like a puppeteer pulling the strings of his marionette. He growls. “Do you have any idea how dangerous I am?” 

The moonlight catches his sparkling white teeth. This time though, you come face to face with the sharp edges of his previously concealed fangs. Your jaw drops open. He’s ethereal. 

“I could snap your neck—” Matt places his hand on your neck, “I could make that heart stop beating, take the air from your lungs. I could eat you…” He traces the vein in your throat from your jaw to your collarbone. “I could bite you and suck your blood until you’re empty. I could kill you, sweetheart. My kind is your natural enemy. You shouldn’t be here.”

You shudder. His nose brushes the sensitive skin below your ear. He’s so close you can smell him. On inhale, and his scent consumes your senses. He is all you can feel now. You reach out to hold onto his arms, his muscles tensing under your teeth. He’s big and strong, and those hands have a mind of their own as they begin to wander but never where you need him most. 

You shouldn’t be here, yet you came. He asked you to him, and you complied. Is this your fate now? Chasing after your big bad wolf like the helpless sheep that you are?

Your walls clench around an agonizing emptiness, your swollen clit brushing against your soaked underwear. Whatever he is doing to you, it’s the cruelest form of torture. 

A strangled noise breaks out of the back of his throat, rumbling in his chest. “You have no idea how badly I want to taste you,” he breathes. 

“Do it,” you beg. “Taste me.”

He utters your name again. “Stop.”

“Please.”

Your tone shatters him. When he kisses you, finally, fireworks explode in the universe around you. All the stars seem to finally align. Your heart opens, and it sucks him right into you. Your soul yearns for him. He’s so close yet so far away. 

The moon stands between you, but you cross even that ocean as you push against him, forcing your tongue into his mouth. He takes like heaven and hell; he’s the apple Eve bit into and cursed her for all eternity. But he’s also the snake, the one who compelled you to take this journey of bad decisions and jump right off the cliff’s edge. You melt into him like a broken candle. 

He pulls away. Those fangs are alluring, as sharp as a knife’s tip. You want to know what it would feel like gracing your skin, digging into your as he thrusts his cock into your tight cunt. The thought alone sends your mind into a spiral.

Your lips are swollen, but he has yet to draw blood. Matt looks as though he wouldn’t dare, his eyes darting around in a darkened conflict he feels might cost him more than your dignity. You are begging for it, as is your body, but he’s holding himself back. He’s the one who tied himself to an invisible pillar, keeping his hands locked behind his back. But that is not the Matt you want. 

You lean your head to the side, exposing the length of his neck. All control has slipped from your fingers. It’s in his hands now—you are. He cups your head gently. A mere few inches lie between your fountain and his lips.

You press a kiss to his calloused palm—a desperate and needy kiss, tracing your tongue over the lines that tell his life’s story in a way no interview can retell—and it is then he is forever done for. He’s doomed, and you are the second woman to pull him under the pits of hell. 

Saliva drips from his fangs. You hold your breath. He hisses, a weak admission of surrender; the words die miserably on your tongue when his lips close around your pulse point with all his might, and his teeth drive home. 

You moan aloud. Your fingers tangle in his hair, forcing him deeper as he sucks the dark red essence out of your vein. The sensation is more than you bargained for. It’s a drug that wrecks your system. The synapses in your brain backfire with all their might, and what follows the initial explosion of pleasure shooting white hot through your being is complete and utter silence as this God of a man feeds on you. 

The invisible string between you glows a bright crimson. It slings around you, tying you together like the roots of a tree. It’s an eternal sacrifice. You are giving your all to him, the very core of your existence that is now flowing into his mouth. You swear you can hear his thoughts mingle with yours. Yes, more, please. You taste so good. Your knees buckle, but you remain standing strong. He makes sure you don’t fall. Don’t slip away from me. I need you. 

A tear rolls down your cheek. You could sob. It feels so good—too good to be true. In that moment, you become one. There is no telling where one begins and the other ends. The coil in your stomach tightens, and the only pain you feel is the pleasure threatening to overwhelm you. He’s taking everything as you give him everything, but it is not enough. It has never been enough. 

When your body struggles to catch up with the lack of blood, he pulls away. His fangs drag out of your neck agonizingly slowly. You whimper at the sudden loss.

Matt catches you as you stumble into his arms. “You okay?” He cradles your face, brushing the hair out of your face. Your blood stains his lips. Blinking up at him, the force of your metaphysical connection slaps you awake. 

You cease to exist in all solar systems but his. 

He pokes the tip of his index finger with the sharp edge of one tooth, sliding it over the two holes that are pulsating with the work of your heartbeat.

“I shouldn’t have—” he begins. 

“No,” you say. “You did exactly what you should have.”

“I couldn’t stop.”

“But you did.” You wipe the blood from his mouth. “And I felt you. I only felt you.”

The living room passes by you. Before you know it, your back lands on something much softer than a concrete wall. He’s not a monster, that one, but he surely is an animal. 

You taste your blood on Matt’s luscious lips as he devours your tongue. It tastes of copper and a little bitter, but that is what makes him moan. That sound is the last thing you could ever grow tired of. 

His palm rests on your chest. Your heart pounds against his palm. “You’re so alive,” he says.

You cradle his face in your hands. “And you’re more human than you think.”

If he wanted to pull your heart out and hold it, you would let him in a heartbeat. 

He leans you back. He strips you bare. He kisses down your body like you are a fucking masterpiece for him to explore. That is how he sees you. 

Your head falls back. The kisses wander from your hips to the inside of your thighs. Every kiss brings his breath closer to your center. Matt pulls them apart. He opens you up to him. Your scent clouds his senses, and he groans, but he doesn’t touch. 

His fangs graze your skin. “Mine,” he growls. 

You gasp. He bites into the sensitive flesh. Hard, passionately. Your legs wrap around his head, trapping him there. He sucks, and he sucks, and he drinks, and the wetness pools out of your cunt in an obscene amount. This is foreplay to him. It drives you toward the edge leading to an abyss you are afraid you might never be able to crawl back out of. There is no bottom, it is just a pit, and he’s pushing you closer and closer, and—

Your back arches, but he pulls away before the coil can snap into a million butterflies. He pries your legs away from his head, spreading them further on the mattress, as far apart as they will go. 

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner have been served on a silver platter. He breathes in. The scent of your soaked pussy sticks to the hairs in his nose. It isn’t enough. He breathes in again, your arousal sweeter than fiction. You’re everything and more. He wants to taste that part of you more than anything, suck up the slick that is soaking the sheets—and you didn’t even think that was possible—but he waits because he needs to savor it. He doesn’t want it to be over too soon. neither for him nor for you. 

The blood is still dripping from his tongue and his fangs, and the raw inside of your thigh. He runs his finger through it. The sting runs from the wound to your folds, then back down. Still, he doesn’t touch. He plays with the blood, sucking on his fingers until they’re clean, and then he dives back in for a taste. He doesn’t bite, he kisses and sucks, but he doesn’t push it further. He doesn’t hurt you. 

You’re his saving grace; he has to worship you. Pain only has a place in pleasure. 

“Matthew,” you moan. 

He chuckles, kissing where his fangs left deep indentations. “No one will ever touch you again,” he purrs. “I’ll make sure of that.” 

You try to protest, but the words die on your tongue when he leans in, capturing your clit with his hungry mouth. The wound on your thigh closes. The blood from his lips mixes with your juices, and you cry out at the intensity of it all. 

He eats you with the ferocity of a man starved for weeks. He eats your pussy like he ate your blood, savoring every drop but still feasting for the taste to spread out in his mouth like wildfire. Sour, sweet, and copper. He sucks your sensitive clit into his mouth. His tongue drags through your folds, up and down, and then the tip slides inside, tasting your walls. He grows bolder as your moans accelerate. 

Matt cradles your thighs. He forces your hips back down to the mattress, stronger than the average human man. You have to endure his beard scratching and burning, and the pace he has set.

The orgasm creeps up on you. Before you know it, he has plunged his tongue into you, and your body convulses around him. You scream into a pillow as you come. 

You are each other’s forbidden fruit. No prayer in the world could keep you apart. 

Faintly, you can hear him say, “Good girl.” Your legs quiver. He pulls away, then comes right back like a boomerang. 

He’s warm now. He was cold before, but when he kisses you this time, he’s warm. He’s hot. You run your hands over his bare chest, the scars that lie under the dark strands of hair. You tug at it, and he moans. You can tell he is a little insecure, but by pressing your lips to one of the cuts on his shoulder, he relaxes. 

What he must have endured, what he must have lived through before he died and was resurrected in the same breath, just without a beating heart—you don’t want to think about it or you will break, but you can still feel him through the crimson tie that holds you together, and you know that he has suffered enough for more than two lifetimes. You wish you could take it all away from him. You wish you could have saved him before it was too late, loved him more than the woman who turned him, but turning back time is an impossibility. You are both acutely aware of that. 

“Hey.” Matt tilts your head toward him. “Where did you just go?” he asks. 

“Thinking about you,” you murmur. 

“Me?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to be your salvation.”

You. His salvation. He kisses you, softly this time. He pours gratitude into his lips and bleeds them out in poetry as they slide into your mouth, and you swallow every last drop. 

If someone had told you a week ago where you would see yourself on that particular Monday, you would have laughed at them. And if someone had told you a week ago that you would be making love to the devil, you would have called them crazy. But it’s happening. 

He thrusts into you without a warning. His thick cock fills you like nothing and no one ever has before. Your cunt has been molded to fit him, you’re sure. You take him in, and you moan at the stretch. It’s a pain so delicious you could fall apart right then and there just from the feel of him inside you. 

Every thrust drags the tip of his cock along your sweet spot. Every added sensation drives you closer to your death. 

Your body tingles. He explores your face with his lips rather than his fingers, moving to your neck again. You cling to him, oh-so-desperate for him. He likes you like that, and you like him like that. 

“You’re fucking with my head,” he tells you. “Offering your pussy to a vampire. Letting me drink your blood. Begging me to fuck you. You’re in my head, baby. Can’t get you out of my system. Fuck.”

You are his downfall, his salvation, but he is all of those things to you as well—all of those things and more. If he could read your mind, you would tell him that. Words can’t do justice to how you feel. Not right now, maybe not ever. 

“Bite me again,” you beg.

His thrusts falter. He searches your body for any sign of regret. His fangs come out, and he buries them deep in your jugular vein. The floodgates open wide. Your walls clench around his cock, your clit pulsates, and the wave crashes into you. 

You come as he devours your neck and your blood. You transcend into another dimension, far away from everything and everyone but never him. Never Matthew.

The sensation of you wraps around him like a weighted blanket. His balls tighten, your blood unfolding its taste on his tongue. You are all over him, inside of him, everywhere at once. He falls head-first, dragging you down with him. 

He comes with a shout that is only muffled through his teeth buried in your flesh, his cum spurting into you and filling your cunt to the brim. Your eyes roll back. You’re flying and falling all at once. 

Oh, how good it feels to be consumed by him. To be fucked and sucked dry. You would have never expected this to come out of your week, let alone your life, but now that it has happened, you are floating on cloud nine. 

Dizziness threatens to take over, but before you can pass out, he forces himself away, allowing your heart to catch up with the lack of blood in your system. He collapses on top of you. His cock softens, but he stays inside. You need him there. You want him there. And that is the only place he wants to rest tonight. 

He heals the wounds on your neck. “You have a mark,” Matt rasps, tracing your skin with his finger. 

You choke out, “Yours.”

“Yes, you are.” He kisses you there. Once, twice, even a third time. “Mine,” he says.

You’re his. He’s yours. It doesn’t get any better than this. 

The minutes tick away on the obnoxious clock on the wall. Matt pulls out eventually, wrapping you up in a blanket. He coaxes you to drink, but you’re barely lucid. Only when he begins to stroke your hair you start coming back to yourself. You thought you might regret it, but as you look at him, his almost guilty eyes staring back at you, all you can do is reach out for him. 

“Session two tomorrow?” you ask.

He chuckles and retorts, “Have I not scared you away?” There is some truth to it though.

He’s covered in your blood. It sticks to his lips, his hands, and his chest. It’s sickeningly intimate, in a way.

You shake your head in response. “You could not possibly.”

He listens to your heartbeat. You’re as honest as they come. 

“Okay,” Matt says. “Session two tomorrow then.”

That night, you fell in love with the Devil, but he also fell in love with you, his angel in the form of a reckless journalist, and the only blood he ever wants to taste again until the end of his miserable, cursed days. 

Matt Murdock (Smut) Tag List: @shouldbestudying41 @theradioactivespidergwen @cheshirecat484 @1988-fiend @acharliecoxedfan @gpenguin666 @linamarr @mcugeekposts @itwasthereaminuteago @norestfortheshelbywicked @yarrystyleeza @littlenerdyravenclaw @etanordoesbullsh1t @thychuvaluswife @harleycao @schneeflocky @imjustcal @pipsqueakkitten @merlinbtch @sya-skies @amberritonicole @ravenclaw617 @pigeonmama @bohemianrhapsody86 @a-girl-has-n0-name @winkev1 @callsign-ember @chittaphonstar @buckyyyismahhlife

#matt murdock #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock smut #matt murdock x fem!reader #matt murdock x you #vampire!matt murdock #matt murdock angst #daredevil #x reader #interview with the vampire #charlie cox #alternate universe #reader insert

[buckttommy]

i don't think i really understand pr and what actors should and shouldn't say. why is what oliver's saying so wild?

Hi, it's okay. I'll walk you through it. The tl;dr version is written in bold.

So. PR, or, Public Relations, is the dynamic between the general public (us) and any entity that has interests to protect (in this case, that would be the network + 911). PR teams are designed to ensure the relationship between the public and [their entity] is as harmonious as possible. Happy relationship, happy consumer, happy company.

Because keeping the peace is the intention of good pr, pleasant ambiguity is the name of the game. People can speculate, and people can guess, but no one should ever be able to look back at your words and claim that you've given a definitive answer on anything—good or bad—because definitive statements can harm the entity's bottom line, whatever that may be.

Oliver is very good at keeping the peace between the network and the public. We know this because we have seen evidence supporting this fact for years. He always says a little bit of what everyone wants to hear—he'll keep things vague (plausible deniability) for the sake of the network, while also giving nods of support and encouragement to the fandom without promising anything. You know how he's talked about being cautious and aware of what he's saying in interviews because he knows the impact it could have? Okay, well, aside from wanting to avoid "queerbaiting" allegations, this is part of the reason. PR is a very delicate game and he plays it very well.

Or at least he did.

Right now, Oliver is using binoculars to identify the line, making sure the line is exactly where he left it, and then taking a giant wrecking ball to it. Because now, Oliver is saying things that should absolutely not be said in interviews, or to anyone in the general public, at all. Now, he's elevating the conversation from pure speculation, to actively confirming and placing the blame at people's feet for things that have gone on behind the scenes.

Saying that Buck's Queer storyline was floated years ago? Huge no-no. Why? You were on tumblr yesterday. You can see why. People were angry, and people were hurt, but most importantly, people started to ask questions. We started to look at past arcs, past moments in Buck and in Buck and Eddie's relationship (because, whether you like it or not, Buck's queerness is and always has been tangentially linked to the existence of Buddie) to try and pinpoint when/how his queer arc could have launched. Now. Most of us have been here for years, so we can easily look back at the show and see where it's pretty damn obvious how Buck's Queer arc could have launched, depending on the arc(s), the characters at the time, things that were going on outside of the show (re: Oliver liking Buddie edits before/after the shooting), etc.

But we're not the only ones who are reading these interviews. Other people—casual fans, new fans, people who don't give a damn at all and are just clicking around on the internet—are going to look at these interviews, they're going to look at the things Oliver is saying, and they're going to have the same questions that we had. When could this have happened? And, more importantly, why didn't it? To keep it simple: everyone is going to start looking a little closer at the man behind the curtain, and the network does not want that.

Now, sure, it could be argued that, "hey, 911 isn't with FOX anymore, so maybe Oliver is allowed to say these things." But that's not really how it works. Sure, he might have a bit more leeway (as in, a microscopic, so-small-it-might-as-well-be-insignificant amount of leeway) to say whatever it is he wants, but this isn't the first time a major transfer/acquisition has occurred, and there are safeguards in place (such as NDA's—Non-Disclosure Agreements—which often do not expire for years post-acquisition, depending on the entity they're protecting) to prevent him from harming FOX's bottom line. So, that reasoning rings hollow. Especially because, now, it's not just FOX he's pulling into the fray either.

In the article that dropped today, he openly acknowledges this thing between Buck and Eddie in Season 7. And at this point, we're well into ABC's era. So the fact that he's saying, "I went to Tim and asked if there's something I can play with when Eddie says he's going on a date"—that's odd behavior from him. Not necessarily bad, just odd. And after years of toeing the line, the question that has to be asked now is why? And, more importantly, why now?

Does this mean that Buddie is going canon? Not necessarily (and, before anyone freaks out, I'm not saying it's not going canon either; I'm just saying this isn't an indication). But The Buddie Problem, at least, in the way Oliver is addressing it, is something the Higher Ups would want to keep quiet for as long as possible, for whatever reason. Maybe because they intend to go forward with it. Maybe because they don't. But the fact that he's cracking the shades open and letting light through is deeply fascinating.

But, despite all this, it's important, also, to realize that, even with demolishing the good PR line he's always walked so carefully, Oliver still isn't promising us anything. He's still treading carefully regarding how we, Buddie shippers, will interpret his words. He's not claiming Buddie canon is a go and it'd be remiss to think that's the implication here when it's not. He's not that stupid, and he's not that cruel. But all of it is very curious.

So that's why a lot of us are looking at each other, and then looking at Oliver, wondering what the hell he's doing. Because he knows better, and we know he knows better. We know he's very good at playing this delicate game but right now, he's making moves that are... intriguing... to say the least. And it's not just him, even though he's the main culprit. 9-1-1's move to ABC—and this entire press junket since 7x4—has been rife with sensitive information being released to the public, starting with Lou's untrained self revealing that it was supposed to be Eddie and Tommy that were going to get together, and circling back around to... literally every single word Oliver has uttered in the past three weeks.

So. It's odd! As you can see. So I'm sitting back, and I'm waiting and seeing because something is happening behind the scenes, and I don't know what it is (and I don't even think it's bad!) but it is still very much happening. So.

#god this was so long and i'm so fucking late for work #jack answers mail #tv: 911 #oliver stark

[probably-writing-x]

Blushing Boy

Drew Starkey x Reader

Summary: There were few things that made Drew Starkey lose his confidence, in fact, perhaps only one could truly ever do it; you. He didn’t know how, or why, but you just seemed to have that goddamn effect on him.

Warnings: Nothing besties, just fluffy as heck

Author’s Note: Thank you so so much for the love on my other post, I just had to post this one too !! Please please send in any requests you have my angels <3

Not my gif

You were just about nearing the end of press for Outer Banks Season 3, and all bases had been covered - you’d done interviews to see how well you knew your cast mates, ones looking at scenes from the show, and, of course, the puppy interview. Today was your last day, though all of you were split up in different places, on different projects, and so the last day of interviews would be done over zoom. This was your first experience working on the show, having come in to play Rafe’s love interest as the start of the season. Thankfully, the fans had fallen in love with you, and especially with your storyline with Drew. So much so, in fact, that they’d started to ship you two as actors as well, adoring every moment that they saw you spend together. The two of you were just friends, but you can’t say you didn’t find it amusing whenever theories were made. And, being honest, some of the edits did make you two look cute.

That was your side of things, anyway. Drew had fallen for you at the same rate that Rafe had fallen for your character. He wanted to see you every morning you started work, waiting to catch sight of you on set. He wanted to film all of his scenes with you, watching in awe whenever you acted. He was mesmerised whenever he saw you at events, amazed by you from the red carpets to the earliest of mornings. Drew felt like a schoolboy around you, stumbling over his words, blushing at prolonged eye contact, ears pricking up at the sound of your name. And it only got worse the more he saw of you.

“Okay, thank you guys all for joining me today,” The interviewer begins, smiling widely into the screen, “We’ve got Madelyn, Chase, Madison, Rudy, Jonathon, Carlacia, Drew and (Y/N), the cast of season three of Outer Banks, now streaming on Netflix. How are you guys doing?”

“I’m good,” Madelyn smiles.

“I’m tired, I flew back from Paris today and I’m so jetlagged,” Madison laughs.

“Okay, we’ll start off with a question for Chase, how has it been with the new additions to the cast this season - with Carlacia and (Y/N). How does that fit in with the dynamic of you guys working together?”

Chase leans closer to his microphone and speaks, “You know I think we got really lucky again to work with another great group of people, we all get on so well and these two just fit in perfectly with that, and it makes it so easy to go to work when you’re with such a good bunch.”

“Amazing, and (Y/N), what was your experience like being on set?”

You shift in your seat, glancing at all of the faces on screen, “Like Chase said, it was just ideal getting to work with everyone, it’s like being on one long holiday all working together, you’re out in the sun everyday, you’re on the water, you’re doing stunts, it was just such a great experience. And I was so lucky to get to share the screen with Drew, he makes it so easy to come into work everyday and, I mean, it’s not exactly hard to pretend to fall in love with him.”

You glance at him on the screen and the way his eyes seem so transfixed as you speak, like he holds onto every syllable one at a time. He’s wearing a purple t-shirt that brings out his eyes and his hair is messy in that sort of perfect way it always was.

“And Drew, what was it like to be working with (Y/N) so closely?”

“Yeah, I mean,” He coughs over his words, “It was great, (Y/N) is just perfect to work with, I couldn’t have asked for anyone better. She’s so talented, and kind and supportive as an actress and she just made me want to get up every day and come into work.”

You’re sure your cheeks heat with the vulnerability of what he has said. His are bright red too, and you’re relieved for a moment to share the same feeling even across the screen.

A few more questions are asked, Rudy explains about how many injuries he managed to pick up on set and Jonathon tells an embarrassing story about you and Madelyn from the wrap party. And then attention falls back to you and Drew.

“So, whilst I’ve got you guys here, I have to ask Drew and (Y/N) about the rumours that have been going around about you two, can you tell me anything the fans will want to hear?”

You laugh, slightly allowing yourself a bit more time before you figure out what to say, “You know, these things are inevitable when you play a couple on a show. But I think we take it as a compliment if anything, at least it was convincing enough for people to believe us, you know? Right Drew?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Drew chuckles dryly, “I’m just glad they know that we don’t hate each other.”

“Are you blushing Starkey?!” Rudy exclaims, coming closer to the screen.

Drew laughs and looks away, biting the tip of his tongue between his teeth, “Shut it Pankow.”

Everyone laughs but it’s as if you can feel all eyes on the two of you, and in that moment, all you want it for him to be there with you to share the attention. For him to be close enough that your hand could brush his, your eyes could focus solely on Drew’s, your laugh in rhythm with his. And, in that moment, perhaps for the first time, you realise that maybe those edits had realised something before you had.

“Okay, well it’s been great speaking to you guys, thank you so much for joining me,” The interviewer finishes up, closing off before telling you that you’re all done and you can log off from the call.

You shut your laptop and pull out your phone to see notifications already bursting through. They’re all from the groupchat you had with the other girls.

Oh my god did you see his face?

Are you kidding me rn??? That boy is in love with you

I’ll never forgive you if you don’t date Starkey fr

You laugh, fingers hovering over the buttons as you try to figure out a response. You wanted to tell them that they were being stupid, that there was no reason for them to think like that. But you can’t bring yourself to lie to them.

You swipe away from that chat, scrolling the short way down to where Drew’s chat with you was. The last thing he’d sent you was a fan made video of the two of you, a video from set where he had you on his shoulders in the pool and both of you fell under.

When you go to text him, he’s already typing.

And this time, you’re the one that’s blushing.

#drew #drew starkey #outer banks #obx #drew starkey obx #obx drew #drew starkey x reader #drew x reader #drew x you #drew starkey x you #drew x y/n #drew starkey x y/n #outer banks x reader #outer banks x you #outerbanks x y/n #outerbanks fluff #drew starkey fluff #drew fluff #drew imagine #drew starkey imagine #drew one shot #drew starkey one shot #drew starkey drabble #drew drabble #outerbanks imagine #outerbanks one shot #outerbanks drabble #outerbanks blurb #drew blurb #drew starkey blurb

[dimepdf]

pleaseee i think we all deserve a joseph quinn “wired interview” fic :))

WIRED INTERVIEW. + JOSEPH QUINN

masterlist. / taglist. / any request? [ ❥ ] synopsis. one of Joseph's first interviews following the premiere of the new season and his public disclosure of his relationship. author's note. tis my birthday!

[ ❥ ] pairing. joseph quinn x reader

[ ❥ ] word count. 1.5k

[ ❥ ] genre and warnings. Fluff, actor!reader, black coded, based this from Kim and Pete’s relationship, Joseph being smitten, literally just fluff series masterlist.

Y/N L/N & joseph quinn Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED

The interview starts off pretty tame. The couple that sat in the white room in front of the camera beamed with perfect happy smiles.

Joseph could not help but to touch Y/n in any way that he could.

Many of the fans suspect that his love language might have been touch from the complications and tiktoks of the male always reaching to hug/grab/hold the woman.

Joe wasn’t shy about his smitten state over Y/n that festered throughout the young years of the actors knowing each other. I

f there's one thing that the internet has been talking about since the opening week of Stranger Things releasing their new anticipated season, it's the new couple on set: Y/n L/N and Joseph Quinn’s rumored relationship.

After the pair met in the following year for the production of season four of Stranger Things, they've been spotted together a number of times, including the very adorable trending clips of them trending of the pair being more than friendly, begging the question from their fans: are they an item?

Just weeks after the release of the new season, Joseph and Y/n were spotted holding hands during an outing in NYC on what seemed to be a double date with their co-stars Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton at a pricey restaurant in the city.

Photos of the pair caused fans to speculate that maybe it just wasn't their characters that had a connection as well, though a source told People at the time, "Since we’re like one big close-knit circle of friends just being friends, it might come off that way to other people."

Following the many sightings, Joseph and Y/n were reported to have gone on a more private dinner date at another iconic Italian eatery, Campania's, in New York's Staten Island.

A source told Page Six, "Y/n arranged a dinner on the rooftop privately," adding that they didn't bring security with them and "quietly were able to sneak in and out."

A report from E! at the time also revealed why Joseph apparently likes Y/n, saying, "Y/n is a very down-to-earth person, who seems very grounded and humble every time that they hang out."

People reported that Joseph and Y/n were seen mingling a lot together during the after party of the Stranger Things watch party. Sources show proof of the pair together in almost every video that was posted from the small party that was attended mostly by the cast and production along with friends.

A source told People at the time that the couple was "always together." It was a "big night for them," another source told E! News. "But it seemed like they were in their own universe." The source also said the two didn’t want to be perceived as a couple in public. "They were careful not to show too much PDA with so many eyes around."

With the entirety of the entire internet (including Dojacat) wondering what was going on between the pair, Joseph decided to settle things earlier this week, during his current appearance at Comic Con, where a fan asked the long awaited question about the situation.

"I think everyone just wants to know—me mostly because, hello, you’re both so fine—but is it really just a rumor or are you and Y/N really an item?" The fan asked as the audience voiced their approval of the question. "Or is it all just, like, really good PR? You have to be honest."

Joseph couldn't seem to contain his blushful glance as he playfully fauxed an eye roll, dramatically leaning back from his chair as the crowd seemed to get louder with anticipation of his answer before responding: "I'm more offended honestly that you guys think it was all just a PR stunt." 

Understandably, the crowd completely lost it for a moment before Joseph finally said, "I mean, we made out that one time in public and the next day she was just scrolling through twitter and all the replies were just like "guys, they're just besties, calm the hell down" and I’ve never been more concerned because we weren't even trying to hide it, it was more just waiting until everyone caught on."

Over on social media, the fans could not contain their excitement over the topic of conversation. "Love a black woman to infinity to infinity!!" said one twitter user with the clip of the reveal, with another adding, "I know I'm biting her fucking pillow and peeling back her fucking wig because of this one lmaooo."

Joseph and Y/n just keep getting cuter and cuter since their relationship became public. Finally, the actors share their first ever pictures together as a couple.

Y/n posted to her instagram page a grid of pictures that left fans in a frenzy. The spam of posts featuring Joseph and her wrapped in each other's embrace during the start of the new season's long production revealed to fans the long timeline of their relationship. 

The pictures in question are captioned: "I'm sorry that you seemed to be confused…" Many suspect that the caption was to shade Doja Cat, the artist getting into quite a situation with Y/n’s younger costar Noah Schnapp, after taking to Instagram Live to publicly post their Instagram direct message conversation in a since-deleted TikTok.

In the exchange, the rapper asked the actor to help set her up with his co-star Joseph Quinn, which Y/n/L/n seemed to not take much interest in.

Click to view video

“Okay well you have to say it,” Y/n gestured with her ombre french tip nails, adjusting her brown wrap halter top from the hem that snug onto her brown skin just perfectly. Joseph gave a sort of side glance to the woman as his eyebrows creased. 

“Cause’ It’ll sound better coming from you.” The whine in Y/ns voice was clear, not it an annoyed way just in the way of being playful when behind the camera a slight hesitation in leaning into his immediate touch.

“Honey, I think you sound just fine.” He reached to squeeze the plush on the woman's thigh, the high of her olive green mini skirt that covered only her middle thigh. 

“Oh fuck off—hello, im Y/n L/n and this is,” the pair giggled at the drastic and dramatic mood switch that conterted Y/n features, the woman raising her hand to cover her smile subconsiously as she laughed brightly.

“Joseph Quinn.” Joseph answered with his voice peaking into a more gentle softer tone because of the laughter.

“And today we’re doing the wired autocomplete interview!” 

Autocomplete suggests the most common searches on the internet. 

So WIRED asked Joseph and Y/n L/n some of the internet’s burning questions.

The video cuts to Joseph sitting with his legs folded, the white board littered with questions perched on to the start of his knee joint, which formed a bend.

Setting the board at an angle so it was sort of presented to Y/n as she sat a little off to the side, the questions all started with her name as she slouched into a more comfortable sitting posture to subconsciously lean more into Joseph as the interview continued.

"How old was Y/n in the Bruno Mars video?" the first question shot off as Joseph peeled the paper away, revealing the answer as he flipped the strip from his bed of his thumb.

His dark brown eyes glistened under the studio light as he glanced at the woman with a content smile, watching the start of a smile creep onto her glossed lips, Y/n glancing up at the ceiling in thought. "I was like, 21ish when I recorded the song." 

"Can I just say how cool it is that you’ve casually been just a song for such an amazing artist?" Joseph interpreted as Y/n giggled at the compliment, her shoulders bouncing with her laughter as he added. "Like how many people can just casually say, "Oh yeah, I was in a Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak music video?" That's insane to me." 

"Does Y/n…play the drums?" the question making Joseph's lips pout out as he menetally recalled the many times he would beg you to play the drums for him after seeing the dedication you put into learning the instrument for the show, your character being the outcast with big round glasses but a killer drumming skill, your average height being just below Sadie Sinks, giving you an advantage to be in the younger iconic cast, being an award-winning favorite when introduced in the second season. 

"Uh, yes? Kind of, not as much as outside of the show, but I still had to learn a lot for the show." She was fidgeting with the underside of her nails. "It's sort of annoying sometimes though, because I really love having a decent nail length and I remember having a really cute nail set during production and the stylist was just like, "yeah, rip those off for me." I’ve never been more pissed." 

"Who is Y/n L/n dating?" The question led the couple to smile at each other, Y/n leaving a gestured thumb to her boyfriend of almost 3 years.

[ ❥ ] taglist. @prettyeyedmaureen @torynicholsgf @bucky-daddy-barnes @eldriidd @ycarlii @guitarromantic @sh3lov3dyou @lafresamilk @loveshineslikethesky @haechaniebom @hello-1000 @vxid42 @biggestslutever @spenglerslime @eddiesbitchx @slvdsjjk @stitched-mouth @misaamaneswifey @kiszkathecook @imahoforthings @kyyellaxi @eichenhouseproperty @hotgirlsshareaccounts @ran-rap

@lloromanic-png @avasjunkpile @punkrockcrocks @first-edition-dumpster-fire @batmetallady @woahhhfidget @ireadstoriesnotmakethem @notsoshynomore @the-night-owl-blr @1efleur @todoroki-slut @mjauqeen @scarlet-kazuha @lattayhottay16 @astralwaifu @prettyplant0 @imliterallygonnagetviolent @strangerthanfanfiction713 @graktung @sughcashsaiki @fzzybrain @caseket @spiritualwhore444 @xoxo-dede @sapppy-cocktail @joyrubyjanee

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#[ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ ★ — t.wrks. ] #joesph quinn #joseph quinn x reader #stranger things #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #joseph quinn #stranger things 4 #netflix #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson stranger things #st4 #eddie munson concept #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x you #stranger things imagine #stranger things x reader #black reader

[steddieas-shegoes]

Steve Harrington having a stutter? maybe Eddie and Steve are in an interview after revealing their relationship to the public (kinda ties with ur rockstar eddie drabbles?) and people make fun of his stutter. Hes always had it, he just doesn't talk in public so its a surprise to everyone that he has a stutter and that they actually get to hear his voice

So I know the request said he always had the stutter, but I wanted to do something head trauma related for this because Eddie is gonna get a little overprotective and says some stuff about his very amazing husband to be. I've never written a character having a stutter before, so I hopefully made it realistic. In my head, he struggled with some hard consonants and 'th', 'ch', and 'sh' sounds. - Mickala ❤️

------------------------------------------------------

“Everyone please give your warmest welcome to Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington!”

They walked onto the stage with smiles and waves, hands clasped between them as they walked to the couch they’d be sitting on for their interview.

They chose this talk show host, Hannah, because she wasn’t pushy, asked heartfelt questions, and wanted to get the genuine stories out there.

Steve had been nervous to be on any talk show, so he was the one who made the decision to be on this one and Eddie was happy to oblige.

Her viewers may not have been his usual crowd, but if it made Steve more comfortable, he didn’t really care.

“Wow, that was a warm welcome!” Eddie exclaimed.

He wanted to keep it light; Steve’s hand in his was sweaty and shaking, and he knew Hannah could see his nerves.

“I think everyone is just so excited to have you here! You’re not our usual guest, I’ll be honest, so you’re shaking things up for all of us.” She smiled before looking at Steve. “Now, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. Steve, that ring on your finger sure is a beauty!”

He glanced down at it for a moment, smiling to himself.

Eddie proposed a month ago, on their week-long getaway to Greece, and as much as they tried to hide it, it was on the cover of every tabloid and online news article within 24 hours.

They hadn’t even come out officially yet.

It caused Steve to panic, and then Eddie panicked, and then they both decided to take control of their own narrative and do this interview.

“Th-thank you,” Steve replied. “Eddie did g-good, didn’t he?”

Steve’s stutter was barely noticeable when they were in a comfortable environment, especially since they’d been together for so long. But when they were in a stressful situation, or around new people, or both, it became more obvious.

Steve had already spoken to Hannah about it beforehand, said he wouldn’t mind talking about it as long as it wasn’t the focus of the interview. She agreed and said that she would follow his lead on everything, and Eddie warned her he wouldn’t hesitate to walk them both off the stage if Steve got uncomfortable.

“He did great! Honestly, I’ll have to get you to show my husband how to pick an engagement ring. Bless his heart, he tried. Luckily, we married for love and not his ability to know what I want in a ring.”

The audience laughed, and Steve couldn’t help letting out a small giggle.

“Soooo…tell us how he did it!” Hannah continued, eyes glimmering under the stage lights.

“Um.” Steve took in a shaky breath. “We were at a p-priv-vate d-dinner on the beach-ch.” Eddie squeezed his hand once, smiling over at him as he let him lead. “He s-sang me a s-song and th-then proposed.”

“How romantic,” Hannah rested her head in her hands and sighed. “Everyone in the audience is going to show this to their significant others for them to take notes, I’m sure.”

“He left out the part where I also bought him the fancy wine he wanted only for it to be the worst thing we’ve ever tasted and we ended up giving it to a couple further down the beach,” Eddie added, playfully nudging Steve’s shoulder.

“Yeah, w-well,” Steve shrugged, blushing profusely.

“What a letdown! Hopefully the other couple liked it,” Hannah laughed.

“They didn’t complain, but honestly we didn’t stick around for too long. We were freshly engaged and had much better things to be doing,” Eddie winked at the audience.

“Oh, I bet you did!” Hannah smiled before getting more serious. “So you’ve been together for a while?”

“We were friends when we were really young, and it grew into more when Steve was supporting me and my band in the local bar scene. We’ve dated for almost four years now.”

“Awww. And you’ll be getting married pretty soon, right?” Hannah asked.

“Yes, we d-decided on next March-ch,” Steve added. “Spring is when w-we met-t.”

“Lovely! I’m sure the wedding will be quite the party.”

“We’re keeping it pretty small, just family and our circle of friends. My bandmates will be there. Just us back at home with the people who love us,” Eddie smiled.

“I think that sounds wonderful.” Hannah clapped her hands. “So, Eddie, with all this excitement in your personal life, what’s it look like for the band?”

“I’ll be on tour with them for August and September, and then we’ll be working hard on recording the next album in October and November so we can have it out next year. I won’t be doing anything else until after the wedding, though. I promised Stevie I’d help him plan everything.”

The crowd cheered, and Steve spoke up.

“He also p-promised t-to visit the loc-cation with me in Novemb-ber so we’ll see,” Steve teased, seeming to relax quite a bit more.

The interview carried on, mostly focusing on Eddie’s band and some more casual talk of the wedding and future plans.

Steve never completely relaxed, but he seemed much more at ease as Hannah focused more on Eddie for a few minutes, smiling at Steve when he decided to add something.

“Alright, that’s all the time we have boys! It was lovely to have you and we’re so looking forward to your future together!”

The audience cheered, the boys waved goodbye, and they walked back to the green room to grab some water before going back to their hotel.

Eddie stopped Steve in the hall, ignoring the people passing by, and pulled Steve against him.

“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” he whispered against his lips before pressing a soft kiss there. “You’re amazing.”

“Eds, st-stop,” Steve blushed.

“Nope, wanna tell you all the time. You’re incredible.”

“F-fine.”

—--------------------

Steve is a lovely person, and I will not tolerate hate comments on anything related to the interview I did with him and Eddie. My team always does the best with reporting hate comments, so keep that in mind before posting something you may regret later. Any Eddie Munson fan should know that Eddie wouldn’t accept this disgusting behavior towards his fiance.

Steve could feel tears welling in his eyes as he read Hannah’s lovely public comment about some of the hate she’d been receiving in regards to their interview.

One comment in particular had hurt to see: a fan claiming that Eddie just felt bad for him and didn’t want to break up with him because Steve would run to the press with negative stories about him.

Eddie was still asleep, hadn’t seen most of what was being posted since the interview aired first thing that morning, but Steve did.

He liked Hannah’s statement and posted it to his Instagram story with a heart emoji.

He went through some responses from Eddie’s bandmates and liked them, too.

Steve is probably the best thing that’s happened to all of us, so any “fan” of ours who doesn’t see how awesome he is, consider yourself uninvited to any show. Gareth posted.

You guys better hope Eddie doesn’t hop on here and see all this or he’ll end up hunting you for sport. Jeff joked, though Steve knew that he may be more right than not.

Imagine being so jealous of someone that you decide to make fun of the one thing they’re self-conscious about. Couldn’t be me. Grant posted on all his social media profiles.

Then he saw Robin’s post and his heart stopped for a moment.

My best friend is the bravest person I know. He only has a stutter because he risked his life to protect me. If head trauma is a joke to you, then I hope you find new material soon. When Eddie sees this, he’s gonna lose his shit.

Steve let out a mix of a sob and a laugh, startling Eddie awake.

“What is it, sweetheart? What’s wrong?” he asked as he sat up in their bed.

“I g-guess p-people aren’t a b-big fan of me,” he said as he held his phone out towards Eddie to show him what was going on.

Eddie’s face flushed red with anger before he calmly handed Steve his phone back.

“Eds?”

Eddie silently reached for his own phone and pulled up his notes app.

Steve watched him type furiously for a few minutes, then screenshot a couple of times, and open Instagram.

“Eds…it’s fine. Not w-worth it.”

But it was too late, and Steve’s phone went off with a notification that he’d been tagged in Eddie’s post.

It was a series of pictures, the first being a picture taken of them shortly after Steve’s worst head injury, when he barely could speak at all.

The next few images were the screenshots from Eddie’s phone.

I can’t believe I have to say this, but here goes. Steve Harrington, soon-to-be Munson, is the best person I know. I am lucky to be able to wake up next to him, to call him mine, to be his. He is incredibly brave, incredibly loving, and much too forgiving. He will be much nicer than I will. He is not defined by his stutter, but it is a part of his life, and it does impact him much more than he should ever have to worry about. But that picture you just saw? That was a man who could barely even say my name. I thought I would never hear him even say my name again. I’ve seen comments making fun of how he talks, how long it takes him to say some things, his intelligence. And I won’t tolerate it. If you have anything negative to say about him, unfollow me before I block you myself. Fame means absolutely nothing to me compared to this man, and I won’t let him suffer through the bullying just so I can make some fucking music. See yourself out or see us be happy. Up to you.

The last image was a picture of them the night before, cozy in their bed, Steve looking into the camera while Eddie looked at him, so much love passing from him it was almost a physical presence.

“Eds-” Steve started.

“I love you. I won’t let anyone let you think for a second that I don’t,” Eddie said fiercely.

“I know. I l-love you, t-too.”

They both shut off their phones for the rest of the day, didn’t care much for anything outside of their bed.

Steve called Hannah to thank her for everything the next day, and she was grateful to hear from him. He explained that he wouldn’t be doing any more interviews, but was glad he’d had a positive experience with her.

“Do you think Eddie will come back to the show someday to talk about you?” she asked.

“I th-think you’ll reg-gret asking him back. He won’t sh-shut up about me,” Steve smirked to himself.

“He shouldn’t. You’re both so lucky to have each other.”

“Yeah. W-we are.”

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #ficlet #request #rock star eddie munson #modern au #established relationship

[snenbubs]

I've been reading your work for a while now and the way you write for Mammon is amazing, you're definitely my favourite writer for him. So I was wondering if you aren't too busy if could you please write breakup headcanons for mammon

HELLO! Thank you so, so much!!! It means so much to me that you enjoy what I write! Most of it is my delerious train of thought at like 1am so im honestly shocked at the amount of support ive been getting!

ANYWAYS, ONTO THE HCS!

HB MAMMON X GN!READER, BREAKUP HCS

I'm assuming you meant like, if you broke up with Mammon? If thats not what u meant just send in another anon! I wont mind :3

- Okay, first of all, how dare you?

- He is, the Mammon. You don't just decide when things are over!

- You were smart enough to break it off with him over text, rather than in person, because he absolutely would throw a scene. No matter where you are, public or private. Think Sarah Lynn level shit.... like, literally stabbing himself, in public, to prove a point.

- What is the point? That he loves you!

- He's especially pissed off about the fact that you broke it off with him though. It bruised his ego, he would much, much prefer it if he had been the one to have broken up with you. He would have never done that though.

- He would go through the five stages of grief 100%

- For the first few days he's in DEEP denial about it. He'd go about life as though the two of you were still together, even though you weren't there.

- Pretending that you were on a work trip or something really helped. It gave him a sense of hope that one day you'd return to him, and he'd feel your warm body embraced against his once again.

- But you and Mammon were a big public thing, like, everyone knew about you. So, people started to notice your absence. Where you would always be by his side now bore an empty pocket of air. People started questioning it;

- From simple posts online to 666News interviews asking him invasive questions regarding your lack of publicity. It pissed him right off, because he couldn't pretend you were still with him whilst constantly being reminded that you weren't.

- And then you spoke up about the breakup.

- You made a Tweet regarding the status of your relationship. Que the next stage...

- With the world now aware of your distanced status Mammon was bombarded with crude comments and remarks, from your fans and haters, to his fans and haters. It'd range from "Wow Mammon fumbled the bag hard." to "Now that Mammon is single do you think he'll start letting groupies backstage ?"

- He actually refused to show up to a lot of interviews and talk-shows because every single time theu brought up the headline, he would get so, so angry. He's almost torn through an interviewer once or twice.

- His bargaining phase was the absolute worst phase though.

- Thousands of calls a day, and an equal level of voice messages followed by hundreds of texts. You'd block his number and then BAM, another number calls you. He manipulates the phone manufacturer of Hell to give him an unlimited free supply of phones so expect him to not let up in that department.

- You know that meme where the person is stood outside the door, crying, with an umbrella over their head and fake rain over them. That's him.

- He gets Beelzebub to provide the fake rain and probably prepared a whole speech to recite to you... its not that good though, most of it is deflective bullshit. He wont take his own problems into account at all.

- If you don't take him back after that then he may even resort to the old boombox by the window trick.

- I don't think he'd hit the depression or acceptance stages of grief, though. He's a tempermental character and he resorts to anger if something doesn't go his way. So the traits he shows through this whole ordeal is frustration and desperation.

- He has a strict victim complex too. So he's most likely never going to understand what he did wrong in the relationship.

- Even if he did realise what he did however, he isn't apologising. He expects you to understand and forgive him despite this.

-It would take him a long while to get over you.

-You were one of the only people who would put up with his shitty personality, who could make him feel so loved and adored. It had been a long, long time since someone had made him feel such a way. It was such a fleeting experience, and he will not be recovering from the loss of your love any time soon.

This is a little short, so I do apologise! I hope you enjoy it anon :)

#helluva boss x reader #mammon hb #mammon hb x reader #hb mammon #mammon helluva boss #hb mammon x reader #headcannons #breakup headcannons

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

David interview with Maggie Bocella for Collider, 10.7.2013

COLLIDER: Obviously, when you started making this show, you had the book to go off of, you had a very specific framework to work off of. But because everything for Season 2 is new, did you get to have any input with Neil Gaiman on where Crowley goes from the end of Season 1?

DAVID: Oh no, that's not my job. No, I mean, we've got Neil Gaiman, so you just get excited about what direction he's going to send you in. It wouldn't occur to me, to be honest, to start giving Neil Gaiman plot suggestions or character suggestions, that would just be limiting his brilliance, I think, if he was trying to sort of contort his ideas around mine. So no, I just sat back and was excited to let a script ping in and find out what was going to happen next. What a treat to get to be one of the first people to read the continuing adventures of Aziraphale and Crowley.

COLLIDER: In that vein, how do you think Crowley has changed between the end of Season 1 and where we see him now? Can we expect anything significantly different from him this season?

DAVID: Well, as you would expect, he's no longer working for his corporate bosses from Hell, which gives him a certain liberty. He's more of a free agent, but it does mean that they've taken back the swishy apartment that comes with the job. So he’s in slightly diminished circumstances. He's living in his Bentley in his car with his potted plant and feeling slightly hard done by it, I think. But quite early on, we see him meeting with Shax, who's his replacement in the job. So he's keeping his ear to the ground, seeing what's going on, and giving Shax a bit of guidance as to how to be Hell’s representative on Earth and also how to fix the boiler in the apartment. Yes, he's certainly as we always knew him, but probably a little bit grumpier.

COLLIDER: You mentioned the Bentley, and the Bentley being cursed to play Queen songs forever and ever and ever is one of my favorite parts of the show. I was curious what you think Crowley's favorite Queen song, is if he's not so sick of them that he never wants to hear them again.

DAVID: That's a very…wow, that's a difficult question. I need a lot of prep for that. What's my favorite Queen song? I don't know. I mean, “Don't Stop Me Now” is probably the best driving song, isn't it?

COLLIDER:Yeah!

DAVID: And he certainly enjoys driving at ridiculous, slightly supernatural speeds. I suspect that's probably the best soundtrack for that, so it's probably that, or “A Kind of Magic,” I suppose, makes a certain sense for a supernatural being with unearthly powers.

COLLIDER: That's a good answer. But you also work very closely with Michael Sheen, who you not only work with on this but also on Staged, you're quite close. What's it like getting to put that friendship dynamic to use? Especially since this and Staged are so completely different.

DAVID: It's very nice to get to work with a friend every day, you can't pretend it's not. I mean, we did have the pleasure of doing Staged during lockdown, which of course probably wouldn't have happened were it not for us getting to know each other so well on Season 1 of Good Omens. It wasn't so long after the first Good Omens came out that we were all locked in our houses for months on end. We managed to come up with this notion of doing Staged and making a show on our laptops, which, really, we did initially just to amuse ourselves, to see if it was possible. Then it ended up becoming more. We just [premiered] Series 3, so between the first season of Good Omens and the second season of Good Omens, we managed to do three seasons of something else together!

COLLIDER: This show has had such a massive fan response. How much of that are you really aware of? Are you seeing how people are reacting to this show?

DAVID: Oh, it's been quite overwhelming. I've been to a few Comic-Cons over the last few years, and when I visited them pre-Good Omens, I saw a lot of people dressed up as me from…another show. But that has slowly changed until the amount of Doctors and the amount of Crowleys I meet are certainly neck and neck these days. But what's lovely about the Crowleys and the Aziraphales is they always come in pairs, so you get to meet people who've got all dressed up often with their best mates.

That's one of the great joys of being involved in this show, that these characters are so beloved. And of course, the great honor of taking on something like that, a character that people are so enthusiastic about, is that the great terror is that you'll break it, that you won't be… I think, especially with a literary character, the act of reading a book is such an internal mental spell that you cast, isn't it? Those characters are almost more vivid than a character that you might see on screen. So embodying characters that have been so loved for so long, not breaking them, not, you know, crushing dreams… The way that we've been accepted by those fandoms, it's been quite humbling, to be honest.

COLLIDER: You're also part of another Neil Gaiman joint, you play Loki in The Sandman audio series. Obviously, that's a different medium, but are there any similarities between working on The Sandman and working on Good Omens?

DAVID: The Gaimanverse is certainly its own creation, but Good Omens is always slightly different, of course, because it wasn't just Neil, it was very much co-created by Terry Pratchett, who also had a very distinctive voice and a distinctive universe. But there's something very specific about the Good Omens universe, which is where these two very distinct, very vivid authorial voices blend together to create something very specific and quite unique. So, I don't know how similar it was being part of The Sandman. I mean, it was a great pleasure to be part of it. It was wonderful to make Loki come from Scotland as well. I think Tom Hiddleston should take some notes. There's nothing better than a Glasgow Norse god. I’m kidding, obviously, he is the definitive Loki, but I did my best to sort of, you know, target his coattails.

COLLIDER: Besides Good Omens and Staged, you are coming back to Doctor Who this year. It's all anybody I know can talk about, but obviously, the spoiler police will come and get me if I attempt to talk to you about too much. So if you could describe what audiences are gonna see in November in, like, three words, what three words would you use?

DAVID: Three words? Three words?! Three new stories. That's not very good, is it? That doesn't give you very much away. Neil Patrick Harris! There you go.

#good omens #gos2 #season 2 #interview #david tennant #david interview #ac #collider #doctor who #david on crowley #boiler #crowley and shax #collider 2023 #s2 interview