#she shows too many teeth when she smiles and the first time she appeared before them Wynric took a step forward in spite of everything- they | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shawtuzi · 1 year

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i’m having thee worst plug!eren brainrot rn so here’s some random hc’s for himmm

mdni///cw include: black coded reader, SMUT, a whole lotta tooth rotting fluff, drug usage, major gun kink, talks of mommy and daddy issues, some grisha slander heh, not proofread so there may be some spelling mistakes :((

♡ so it’s goes without saying he is one of those ppl that has no idea what to do when someone’s crying in front of him. he grew up in a household where if he was ever caught crying he’d be told to suck it up and act like a man :(( so it’s very hard for him to find the right words to say or do the right actions when comforting someone. on the bright side he has gotten better at it since he’s met you.

♡ the first time you cried in front of him was when you made the horrible decision to show him the movie ‘my sisters keeper’ and you were an absolute mess by the time the credits rolled. “are you….are you crying?” he asked absolutely flabbergasted that you were crying, sure the movie was sad but was it really that sad?? (yes it is). “of c-course im sad *hiccup* did you not watch any of the damn movie?” you sniffled crossing your arms over you chest. instead of talking about it any further eren just pulled you onto his lap and tucked your face in his neck muttering out a ‘whatever you say weirdo.’ after witnessing many moments like that he’s wayyy better at handling your lil emotional self.

♡ he’s surprisingly a natural with kids!!! one of his homeboys has a three year old daughter who is absolutely too precious for her own good and every time eren sees her he can’t help but turn into a pile of mush. he doesn’t do the whole baby talk thing though he’ll talk to that little girl like she’s one of the homies much to your dismay. one time he bought her a barbie car as a present and the gesture was adorable a first until he opened his damn mouth, “and if any of those kids at the park mess with you just run them over with this and they’ll leave you alone okay? listen to your uncle eren he knows his shit.” that earned him a smack upside the head from you and an exhausted head shake from his homeboy. he rlly is too much.

♡ seeing you with his homies daughter also ignited something in him he’s never ever felt before. eren could never see himself as a dad, maybe the cool uncle but nothing more than that. but goddamn seeing you handle kids makes him wanna buy a big ass house and give you as many kids as you’ll let him—hence his raging breeding kink that appears from time to time. you always wondered why he got so riled up every time he saw you with his friends daughter and then it all started to make sense one night when he was fucking you like a madman and kept moaning n panting about how pretty you’d look carrying his kids. you both came to an agreement that kids were off the table for a while but it didn’t make it any less fun when he stuffed you full of his cum until he was basically shooting blanks.

♡ “g-goddamn fuck y/n,” eren groaned into your ear, emptying his fourth load into your aching pussy. you were absolutely spent—nothing but a babbling, brain dead mess. you thought eren would’ve been too tired as well, but when he pulled his face outta your neck he still had that mischievous glint in eyes that had you folded up in the first place. “m’still hard,” he whispered making you whimper. “no…n-no more ren too sensitive,” you whined making eren hum. he glanced at your thighs that were still shaking from the aftershocks of you previous orgasm, then looked back into your eyes. you knew what he was hinting at and meekly nodded your head making him smile. he slowly pulled out of your pussy, gently shushing you when he heard you whine before sitting back on his knees. he pushed your thighs together and quickly slipped his dick between the pillowy skin, groaning at how soft you felt. “yeah…that’s it you feel so good mama,” he grunted pulling his kiss swollen bottom lip between his teeth. every once in a while he dick would glide across your overly sensitive clit making you mewl. it didn’t take long for eren to reach his peak once again and without warning he parted your thighs and shoved his dick back into your pussy knocking all the air out of your lungs. “so good….always so good for me. my perfect girl i love you do much,” eren muttered breathlessly into your ear.

♡ his love language is words of affirmation hands down!!!! he practically purrs like a kitten when you tell him how much you love him and how much he means to you :((

♡ i don’t think it’s any surprise he’s got some pretty bad mommy AND daddy issues. losing carla at a young age had a monumental impact on him as a kid and grisha didn’t even deserve the title of being a father. his whole life he’s never been able to be vulnerable in front of anyone until he met you ofc. you were his light, his safe haven and he didn’t know what he did to deserve someone as caring and nurturing as you but he never dared question it. you’d only seen him cry one time in front of you and it was when you went with him to visit carla’s grave. he looked like he was holding so much in and it absolutely broke your heart. “it’s okay to be upset eren you don’t ever have to put on that tough façade for me,” you whispered pressing a kiss to his trembling lips that was full of so much love and care he could’ve sobbed. he still has his moments where he closes his emotions off from you but day by day you’re slowly breaking down those walls he built up all those years.

♡ he is a true crime girly!!! he’s one of those ppl that can go to sleep watching the i.d. channel and still sleep peacefully.

♡ you’re a tad bit too clumsy for your own good so eren keeps a thing of bandaids and alcohol in his car and then a small lil box of sanrio themed bandaids in your purse. you thought he was absolutely ridiculous for keeping them on standby until you used damn near all the sanrio themed bandaids.

♡ “not so ridiculous for keeping these around now am i huh?” he chuckled putting the bandaid on your scraped knee. you didn’t say anything instead letting out an annoyed huff, but the annoyance quickly went away when he gave your knee three kisses. “my clumsy girl,” he snickered giving your pouting lips a kiss. “s’not my fault these heels are just too tall,” you mumbled kicking them off in annoyance. eren smirked and reached behind his seat pulling out a pair of fluffy slides, “i knew you’d get annoyed with them eventually—put these on instead,” he said setting the slides on your lap. you tried to your bratty act up but you just couldn’t stop the smile that crept on your glossed up lips, “you’re the best renny,” you giggled giving his cheek a kiss. “i know i am.” cocky ass mf.

♡whenever y’all are at your place it’s such a sight seeing this big, strong, mean man all comfortable in your pink fluffy blankets n cuddling with your squishmallows even though he supposedly has beef w them—but let me not even get into that seriously. sometimes after he’s done beating your pussy up he’ll grab two of your plushies and make them hump each other pretending it’s the two of you.

♡ “yes yes yes eren!” eren moaned on a high pitched voice making your cheeks burn in embarrassment. you tried snatching the plushies from his grip but it was no use he was too damn strong. “oh my godddd eren enough!” you whined smacking his chest, leaving a red handprint in the making. eren’s jaw dropped and he turned to you his brows furrowed, “now that wasn’t very nice was it?” he said turning his head to plushie. “not very nice at all,” he said dropping his voice an octave making you giggle. you moved yourself onto his stomach and grabbed the plushies, tossing them aside. “m’sorry baby,” you pouted giving the red mark a sweet kiss, “let me make it up to you.” and that’s how you ended up face down ass up while eren pounded you from behind, the force making you grab onto your plushies for dear life.

♡ he’s very very into gunplay and it’s all your fault. that day you asked him so nicely to fuck your mouth with his glock was the day you created a monster.

♡ one night you both were at a block party and ‘get low’ by lil jon started playing and you couldn’t help but make your way over to where everyone was dancing and join in. eren admired you from the side taking a hit of his blunt every once in a while. you looked so damn good it was criminal. the way your denim mini skirt began to ride up your thick thighs from dancing had eren’s dick jumping in his pants. while you were dancing you suddenly felt a pair of strong arms around you and knew exactly who it was. “you look so fine dancing out here you’re killing me baby,” he chuckled pushing your backside into his front and that’s when you felt it. you froze in your spot making eren smirk, “you okay mama?” he asked pressing a wet kiss to your neck. not even five minutes later you dragged eren to his car and bounced on his dick while while you sucked on his glock. even though the windows were blacked out anyone with eyes could tell what was happening with the way the car bounced and jostled. “fuck just like that baby make a mess on this dick,” eren groaned, pushing the glock deeper into your mouth.

♡ it didn’t stop there either sometimes eren liked to have you point the gun at his head while he fucked you. “look at my sweet girl holding my—goddamn m-my fucking gun. so damn naughty hm?” he grinned loving the way you were struggling to hold it against his head.

♡ his only social media is instagram and it’s basically a fanpage dedicated to you. his profile pic? a picture of him laying on your ass with the biggest smile on his face. his pinned photos? a picture of you and him with matching grills, one of you both wearing ski masks while his gun is pointed at the camera beam on and everything, and the other one is a pic of you two in a photo booth—you were smiling oh so prettily while one of your boobs was in his mouth. he only follows a few of his friends and the only girl he follows is you ofc not bc you made him only follow you he just chose too <333

♡ now after eren gets locked up life is a little bit different than it used to be. since being a dealer was out of the question he started working at an auto body shop w connie and although he wasn’t making as much money as he was before he still provided for you in every way. you didn’t mind the lack of expensive gifts in the slightest you were just happy your renny was back in your arms. he worked a lot more than he used to which left you a lot more needy for his touch and attention but he always made sure to take care you even after an excruciatingly long day at work.

♡ “missed you so much ren today went by so slow,” you whined against his lips as he fucked into you. he was pretty tired so he went a little slower than he usual fast pace but you didn’t mind in the slightest. “missed you too mama. you’re so sweet f’having dinner ready for me n’ helping me out in the shower,” he groaned pushing his thumb into your mouth which you greedily sucked. he always took a shower as soon as he got off, not wanting to get any oil or other grime from the shop on your pretty clothes. you couldn’t stand to not be in his arms a minute longer so you followed him into the shower and just wrapped your arms around his toned stomach while he showered not saying a word. little did you know in just a few days he’d be taking you on a vacation to barbados (somewhere you’ve been dying to visit) and while you both were there he planned on making you his forever by putting a fat rock on your finger.

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babydollmarauders · 5 months

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ONE PRESENT — ALEX TURCOTTE

alex turcotte x fem!reader

12 DAYS OF KINKMAS

summary: in which Alex lets y/n open one present on christmas eve, and puts that present to use

warnings: NSFW CONTENT, toy use, oral (m receiving). (2.6k words)

notes: merry Christmas eve!! it’s day 11 of the 12 days of kinkmas, which means tomorrow is the last day! fair warning; i wrote this while sick and on multiple medications.

“it’s not a christmas movie.”

my hand is covered in salty butter from fresh popcorn, my glasses perched high on the bridge of my nose as i argue with my boyfriend.

“it absolutely is!”

my head snaps towards Alex, lips parted in disbelief.

“Die Hard is not a christmas movie!” i huff, my butter covered finger pointing at the tv, in which said movie is playing, “it’s an action thriller!”

“but it takes place during christmas time, therefore making it a christmas movie!”

“therefore.” i mock in a squeaky, high pitched tone, my boyfriend gaping at me in disapproval.

“you are such a child.” he shakes his head, but i can see the way he bites his cheeks, fighting back a smile.

“and yet, you’ve been with me for two years.” i grin, leaning forward to peck a kiss to the indented dimple that appears when he cracks his smile.

“you didn’t let your immaturity show until a month ago, when we moved in together.”

“bullshit,” i roll my eyes, grabbing another handful of popcorn, “i let my immaturity shine in all its glory on our first date, when i laughed after you said ‘balls.’”

Alex grins, pressing a kiss to my forehead before he responds, “i love it.”

it’s not too much longer before the movie ends, my boyfriend clicking off the tv as i get up to wash my hands and put the popcorn bowl in the dishwasher.

“do you think my mom is mad?” Alex questions, his eyes glued to his phone screen. his brows are threaded together and he appears in deep thought as i walk up to him, “she’s being pretty short in her responses.”

i peer at his phone screen, his message thread with his mother open.

“i’m sure she’s just busy,” i tell him, “she said she understood you not coming home.”

“yeah, but maybe she was just being nice.”

i smile softly, pushing his phone out of his face before climbing onto his lap, legs resting on either side of him.

“babe, there comes a time when almost everyone stops going home for christmas,” my words are spoken gently, my hands rising to cup his face as he stares back at me, “we both agreed that we wanted to spend christmas together, in the new house. it was your idea.”

he nods, turning his head to press a kiss to my palm.

“i know, i just feel bad, y’know?” now it’s my turn to nod in understanding.

“i know, baby. but, we’ll have a great christmas tomorrow! i’m making my cinnamon rolls, and you’ll make the coffee, and then we’ll open not only our gifts from each other, but all the gifts our families sent.”

my eyes flicker over to our christmas tree, piles of presents extending far beyond the branches.

“my parents went overboard,” i whisper, “i’m pretty sure you have more presents from them than i do.”

Alex barks out a laugh at my words, arms snaking around my waist to pull me tight against his chest, “they love me, what can i say?”

“you can say ‘stop, don’t love me more than your own daughter! that’s not fair to her!’”

he clicks his tongue against his teeth, “but then i wouldn’t get as many presents!”

i scoff, hitting his shoulder, but i don’t get a chance to respond before he’s got us falling sideways onto the couch cushions beside us, our faces lining up so we can stare at each other.

“i love you.” he mutters softly, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to my lips, and i hum in satisfaction.

“i love you a googol.” i cheese at him, my response earning me a hearty laugh.

“did you just tell me you love me as much as your made up number?”

“it’s not made up!” i gasp, “it’s one followed by one-hundred zeroes!”

“i’m dating a nerd.” he groans, prompting me to giggle before kissing the tip of his nose.

“you chose me.” i remind him.

“yeah, and i would choose you again.”

“you’re so cheesy.” i roll my eyes, but my smile never leaves my face, my hand running up and down his muscled arm.

we sit there in silence for awhile, eyes closed as we cuddle up on the couch, nothing but the sounds of our breathing.

i’m enjoying the peaceful quiet until he pushes my glasses up to my forehead, pulling one of my eyelids up to open my eye. i swat his hand away, groaning.

“what?” i snap.

“hey, i have a gift for you.”

“yeah, i know,” i huff, battling with his hand as he reaches up to try and forcefully open my eyes again, “i’m opening all your gifts tomorrow.”

“no,” Alex drags out, “i have a gift for you to open tonight.”

my eyes fly open and i let go of his hand, allowing him to push my glasses back down to my eyes so i can see him clearly.

“a christmas eve gift?”

he nods, “like you said your family does; although i think mine is better than pajamas.”

“hey, don’t knock the pajamas! that tradition will carry onto our children one day.” i reply.

“and i can’t wait for that. but right now, pajamas don’t sound like a fun gift, but i think mine is.”

i allow him to sit up, pulling me up with him before he leads me to our bedroom. my silk pajamas slip across the bed when he tells me to sit and i watch as he disappears into our closet, returning with a small, poorly wrapped present.

“oooh, what is it?” i ask, excitement filling my body as i make grabby hands toward him.

“open it and find out.” he smiles, handing me the gift.

watching intently as i slowly rip off the wrapping paper, he sits beside me on the bed. as the red paper falls away, i’m left with a box in my hand, a picture of a pink object on the front with words reading ‘Bullet Soft-Touch’.

“is this-” i trail off, looking up at my boyfriend in amusement.

“a vibrator,” he shrugs nonchalantly but his cheeks twinge pink as he speaks, watching me open the box and pull out the object, “i figured it would help when i’m on roadies, and i thought maybe we could test it out tonight.”

my brows furrow as i cock my head to the side.

“test it-” i echo, momentarily speechless by his bold statement, “what, you wanna watch me masturbate?”

Alex chuckles at my confusion, shaking his head, “no, although i’ll definitely file that for a later date. i wanna use it on you.”

“oh.”

i let the idea ping around in my head for a few moments, my legs pressing together at the thought of him holding this toy between them, controlling my pleasure.

“okay.” i nod.

“yeah?”

“yeah.” i repeat, setting the box to the side, as well as the vibrator that fits perfectly in my hand.

i turn, climbing over to straddle his waist as i pull his lips towards mine, “thank you, baby, i love it.”

our lips meet in the middle, slow yet crude kisses shared between us. his tongue slips past my lips, exploring my mouth with fervor, as though it hasn’t been in the same position a million times before.

“i already charged it and washed it yesterday.” he tells me, his sentence broken up by my lips pressing against his.

i acknowledge his words with a soft moan, the energy between us heating rapidly as i gently grind my hips down against his. my silk pajama shorts, slide easily over his sweatpants, which i know for a fact is the only layer covering his slowly hardening cock.

we had changed into pajamas hours ago, before the movie, leaving him in only sweatpants, in which he never wears boxers underneath at home.

“crawl up on the bed, doll.” he pulls away, his hand slapping against my ass as i follow his demand, making my body jolt in surprise.

i lay with my head on my pillow, watching with baited breath as he moves the vibrator box onto my dresser before grabbing the vibrator itself off the mattress.

“take your shorts off.”

my thumbs tuck into my waistband, sliding not only my pajama shorts, but my panties down my legs. i flick them onto the floor as my boyfriend joins me back on the bed, sitting on his knees in front of my parted legs.

his free hand smooths over the skin of my leg, the other clicking the toy on and repeatedly pressing the button, trying out the different speeds and patterns before turning it off.

“relax.” he coos, nudging my legs open a bit more for him to fit between them.

he drops down to his stomach, his hot breath hitting against my damp pussy, and a mild shiver racks my body. his lust-blown eyes meet mine, holding contact as he lets a string of spit drop from his mouth and onto my clit.

turning the toy onto the lowest level, he gazes up at me as he lays it against my clit, my hips jerking at the sudden vibrations that reverberate through my core. his hand sprawls across my lower abdomen, holding my hips down as he circles the toy around my clit.

he watches with a grin as my head falls back against the pillows, my breathing turning into heavy pants.

“Alex.” i cry as he applies more pressure.

he presses the button again, the vibrations picking up in intensity and making me squirm underneath his touch. my back arches, eyes squeezed shut as my hands fist the sheets.

“look at you,” his hips grind gently against the mattress, his words barely heard over my cries of pleasure, “so pretty; getting wetter with each second.”

he rubs the vibrator on my clit, my stomach tying in knots with each passing minute that he holds the toy against me. pressing one last time, the vibrations gain intensity once more and my eyes roll back as my teeth sink into my bottom lip, biting so hard that i’m surprised i haven’t drawn blood.

my walls tighten around nothing, my hips wiggling as much as they can under his touch as i begin lightly grinding against the toy.

“Alex, i’m so close,” my words are whimpered in a hurried breath, my legs tensing and shaking as i resist every urge for them to close, “don’t stop! please, don’t stop!”

“i’m not gonna stop, doll,” true to his word, my boyfriend holds the vibrator still against my clit, my body trembling as my breath catches in my throat, “cum for me.”

as though i was awaiting his approval, i let go, a strangled moan escaping my lips as i reach my orgasm.

“holy fuck.”

Alex chuckles at my reaction, turning the toy off when my hips jerk away from it. he tosses it to the other side of the bed, crawling over me as he smiles.

“that was so fucking hot.” he whispers, leaning down to press a kiss to my lips.

as he pulls away, i can feel his fully hardened erection pressing against my thigh, and i immediately feel guilty that he didn’t get to cum. but spotting the look in my eye, Alex shakes his head.

“it’s okay, promise. i don’t wanna overwork you tonight when you still need to be able to walk on christmas.”

my head pushes back into the pillows as i laugh, my cheeks turning pink at the reminder that i can’t go multiple rounds without feeling it the next day.

his cock still pressing against me, my head finally clears enough to think, and i’m quickly nudging him off of me.

rising from the bed on wobbly legs, i pull my boyfriend by his hands until he’s sitting on the edge, taking my glasses off and setting them on the nightstand.

“what are you doing?” he questions, but i don’t respond, rather choosing to let my actions speak for themselves.

i sink down to my knees, watching as realization brightens in his eyes. i reach up, one hand trailing down his stomach and making his abs clench as my fingers tickle the area, and as soon as my fingers hook into his waistband, he’s lifting his hips; helping me nudge the sweatpants down his legs until i can finally pull them off.

tossing them beside me on the floor, i spit into my palm making sure it’s well lubricated before i wrap my hand around his length, his tip bright red as it glistens with precum.

running my thumb over his slit, he lets out a grunt, biting his lip as i spread the precum down his shaft for extra lubricant.

i lean forward, peering up through my lashes as i press my lips to his tip, kissing gently and coaxing a hiss out of his lips. his hands tangle in my hair, pulling it into a makeshift ponytail.

my tongue darts out, kitten licking his tip before i take him in my mouth, sucking gently as i begin jerking his length. his grip on my hair tightens, curses falling from his lips as his head tips back, and his reactions only urge me to continue, letting my jaw go slack and relaxing my throat as i go deeper, breathing through my nose as my hands work whatever doesn’t immediately fit in my mouth.

“fucking skilled,” he gruffs, looking back down at me as i flatten my tongue against the underside of his cock, “that pretty little mouth, just for me.”

i moan in response, making his hips buck up, and his tip hits the back of my throat, making me gag around him, tears pooling in my eyes.

“shit, fuck!” Alex groans, eyes squeezing shut at the sensation.

i pull back, my lips releasing him with a pop, and gulp in a deep breath, my hands still pumping him as i catch my breath.

once i’ve deemed myself ready, i let my tongue loll out, relaxing my throat as i taking him in again, this time, as deep as i can go. one hand drops from his length, falling down to massage his balls as i try hard not to gag around him.

tears run down my cheeks as i bob my head and despite my greatest efforts, i gag each time the tip of his cock hits the back of my throat. hearty moans drop from his lips, and i watch as his abs clench, his dick jerking in my mouth, signifying to me that he’s close.

“doll, i’m gonna-” he barely gets to finish his sentence before he tenses, his grip on my hair becoming even tighter as a grunts, cock pulsating in my mouth as ropes of cum coat my throat.

i continue pumping him, milking him dry until he finally sighs, using his hand in my hair to pull my mouth off of him. he stares down at me with darkened eyes as i open my mouth, showing off his sticky cum, before swallowing, opening again to show him it’s gone.

“fucking hell,” he sighs, hands dropping from my hair in order to lock around the back of my neck, pulling me up for a kiss, “i’m gonna marry you, you know that?”

i laugh, my throat sore and voice raspy from my previous actions, “yeah, i know.”

Alex grins, rising from the bed. he pulls me towards the en-suite bathroom, nodding his head towards the shower.

“wanna join me?”

i nod, pulling my pajama top over my head and throwing it on the counter, “but no more funny business! i can’t make breakfast tomorrow if i’m limping!”

he nods, holding his hand up as though he’s under oath, “i’ll be on my best behavior!”

my eyes roll as i turn the shower water on, looking over as i wait for it to heat up.

“somehow, that doesn’t comfort me.”

#faithlynn’s 12 days of kinkmas #alex turcotte #alex turcotte x reader #alex turcotte imagine #alex turcotte blurb #alex turcotte fic #alex turcotte smut #nhl fic #nhl imagine #nhl smut #faithlynn’s writings <3

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cordeliawhohung · 4 months

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hey! i love all ur fics sm (esp the bodyguard gaz ones omg i ate those up like candy 😩)

u don’t have to write this if u don’t want, but tf141 (and lv, if u write for them) and body worship?(separately, not poly) like fem reader’s had a tough day or wtv, n she’s feeling insecure so they js like show her how beautiful she rlly is

could be sfw or nsfw it’s ur choice

if that’s too many characters then feel free to leave some out!

have a good day/night ‼️

babygirl gaz my beloved <3 i need to write more on that. that unofficial series is a train wreck honestly but i love them so much. and oo i do love some good body worship. i don't really write for our sweet cowboys because i'm not all too comfortable with characterizing them yet, but i'll give you some hc's of our 141 boys!

Simon

he is honestly really surprised when he first learns that you're insecure about yourself. you're the most beautiful thing in the world to him, and really he's dumbfounded you don't see yourself that way.

i feel like he's one to stand behind you in the mirror with his hands on your hips and whisper sweet affirmations to you. how he loves the curve of your nose, how your teeth peek through your lips when you smile, how your eyes always shine when you look at something you love.

he whispers this all while you're looking in the mirror because he has to make you see what he sees. he's spent his fair share of time looking at his reflection, the scars on his face, his crooked nose, and hating every moment of it. he refuses to let you do the same, and so he plans to rewrite all of those emotions.

or he can just fuck you like he does in this drabble i wrote a while ago lmao.

Kyle

he always calls you pet names that are along the lines of "pretty girl" "my girl" things like that, so when you mention something about disliking your appearance, his brain literally restarts. his pretty girl? feeling insecure about herself? that simply won't do.

i feel like his immediate reaction would be to just kiss the pain away. sort of like how parents will kiss their child's injury if they scrape their knee or bruise themself, he does that but like all over.

he's kissing your nose, your forehead, your lips (of course) but more than that. he's trailing kisses down your arms, along your stomach, your legs, all the parts of you that only the sun had ever kissed before.

and of course he's whispering praises to you the entire time. doesn't even have to be in a sexual way either. you're the love of his life, and it saddens him that you feel down about yourself. so he'll just kiss away the bad thoughts until there's nothing left but his love.

Johnny

when he hears you say something degrading about yourself, Johnny is a little too enthusiastic and excited about correcting you. you're the most beautiful thing he's ever laid eyes on, and he's going to make sure you see yourself that way too.

he's definitely the most handsy out of all of the boys. he's rubbing his hands up your arms, over your stomach, tracing your spine with his fingers. but then it escalates. he's groping your tits, pawing at your thighs and ass.

really, you can't blame the man when he eventually ends up between your thighs. you're just too pretty to resist, after all. look at what you do to him! bewitching him with your beauty, turning him into a pussy drunk man that can't get enough of you.

also, this might be his way of pavloving you. conditioning you into loving yourself as he draws orgasm after orgasm out of you. no, you'll stop shying away and disagreeing when people call you pretty or compliment you, you'll just get insanely horny lmao

Price

i actually just wrote a little thing about him and body image issues last night! and really, i think he would totally do this.

the whole getting on his knees in front of you as if you were royalty, holding your hands in his, just looking up at you with so much love and adoration. he'll caress you softly while he speaks because honestly he can't get enough of you.

he'd meet your insecurities with mostly rational ideas. how your body is normal, your appearance is perfect, you're beautiful inside and out type thing. i feel like out of all the boys he might have the hardest time appealing to you emotionally with that stuff.

doesn't mean he won't try, though! he'll constantly affirm you, treat you like royalty and all that good stuff. he'll cook you a nice meal, and maybe the two of you will cuddle on the couch. really, he'll just try and fill you with so much love until you forget about what had upset you in the first place.

#simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #john mactavish x reader #soap x reader #john soap mactavish x reader #price x reader #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #f!reader #fem!reader

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fanfic-compass · 1 month

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~Deal?~

Alastor X Reader

Summary: You're the newest Overlord and meet Alastor at a Meeting, tempting him to offer you a deal.

Word count: 1.3K

It was your first overlord meeting. Nobody knew who you were when you suddenly appeared in hell and killed a man who was coming just a little too close. Little did you know you killed an overlord on your very first day in hell but that asshole deserved it with the way he was trying to touch you and talking you into becoming a porn star.

Anyways, as soon as you killed that guy you felt a weird tingling sensation as if you could feel power running through your veins. And then you started your own little business in hell by building a casino. Who doesn’t like to gamble? And soon your casino attracted thousands of visitors every week and thanks to some of them being completely delusional with their stakes you also got many of their souls.

And then you got an invitation to a meeting of all the overlords of hell. You were excited and curious to see what they had to discuss and who they were. You stepped into a dark alley and you immediately stated questioning whether or not everything was just some prank or revenge. They alley looked so dark and shabby but then you saw another man. He was much taller than you, wore an elegant red coat and a monocle and he had red and black hair. But what you definitely saw first was the big smile on his face that showed his sharp teeth and simply looked creepy. For a moment he looked into what appeared to be a surveillance camera and then he got into an elevator. After carefully watching him you decided to follow him and see where he would go.

So you got into the elevator too and when you stepped out you found yourself in a big hallway with many other people. There were more elevators than you could see on the outside and so you couldn’t help but wonder where they all came from. But you did notice that they were all walking in the same direction and so you simply followed them into a big meeting room. There was a large table in the middle with many different people around it. When you stepped closer you were immediately greeted by a woman you’ve seen before, her name was Carmilla Carmine. You knew she was selling weapons but other than that she was a mystery to you. However she seemed rather friendly.

“Ah, our newest addition. Take a seat.” She gestured for you to sit down somewhere which you quickly did. You sat next to a woman who introduced herself as Rosie and you went along really well. She told you about the tasty side of cannibalism and invited you to come over to have a cup of tea. You agreed, although you were kinda scared that you were her next meal. When you wanted to ask her something again you heard someone clearing their throat which made you turn around in shock. And then you stared into the face of none other than the man you saw at the elevator earlier with his smile that sent shivers down your spine.

“Excuse me, my dear but you’re sitting in my seat. So would you please move?” He said, sounding awfully polite and not once dropping that smile.

You quickly wanted to move, scared of what he would be able to do if you didn’t but before you could get up, Carmilla spoke up.

“Brave words for someone we haven’t seen in seven years, Alastor.”

“Well yes, I have been absent for some time, I’m sure you’ve all been missing me, wondering where I am.”

“Not really.” Carmilla answered bluntly.

Somehow you could see that Alastor didn’t like the fact that she didn’t really care but yet his smile didn’t drop a bit which was honestly impressive and a bit scary too.

“But welcome back anyways. However you will simply have to find another seat if yours is taken.”

“Oh, I can move, no problem.” You offered, standing up but you were quickly pulled back onto your seat by Rosie.

“Don’t you worry, darling.” She said. “Alastor can find another seat.”

Shortly after that the meeting started. It was quite boring business about extermination day and you had to admit you weren’t really interested in all that. So after the meeting you quickly made your way out and went back home.

You were exhausted from your day so you quickly headed off to bed and fell asleep. In the middle of the night though you quickly got woken up again by weird noises. You got out of bed and investigated when you suddenly saw a figure standing in the corner of your bedroom, staring right at you.

“Hello?” You asked, trying to hide the fear in your voice.

The person stepped into the light and you saw that it was Alastor.

“Hello, my darling.” He said in his charming voice that carried a heavy radio static.

“What are you doing in my bedroom?”

“Well, I noticed you at the meeting today and I was absolutely intrigued by you. What a stunning young lady you are, down here in hell and immediately an overlord. Not many people got so high so quickly. Nobody except me actually.”

You knew his story, Rosie told you after the meeting. He was the radio demon who broadcasted the screams of everyone who tried to harm him.

“I know about you.” You told him.

“Very well, my dear. Then you are aware what I am capable of doing once you get in my way.” His smile grew a bit.

“I do not plan to get in your way. I am running my casino, I have my fair share of souls, I’m happy.”

“I don’t believe you are. Which is why I am here.”

“To kill me and broadcast my screams? Am I too powerful for your liking?”

Alastor laughed. “Oh no, darling. You are perfectly powerful. In fact I came to offer you a deal: We will combine our power to become the most feared pair in hell. We would be working closely together to get everyone under our command.”

It did sound tempting. “And how will I know once we did that you won’t kill me to have everything for yourself?”

Alastor chuckled. “That’s part of the deal, if one of us dies, the other one dies too.”

“That sounds too good to be so simple. So tell me, what do you want in return?” You knew that a deal would never be so easy. A deal always had a catch.

“We will work closely together, we will be partners. Not just in the conventional way like two business partners.”

Ohhhhh, you understood. But he didn’t seem like the type of man who cared about something like that. And Alastor must have noticed that because he quickly started explaining.

“You see, I was enraptured by you today. How you weren’t scared, how you didn’t care and the fact that you’re so powerful after such a short time… truly inspiring, darling. So what do you say? You will be mine and I will be yours… I’ll give you twelve hours to think about it.”

With that he was gone as quickly as he came, leaving you speechless and confused. You started thinking about it and finally made a decision. In the morning you walked o his radio station where you knocked on the door and were quickly greeted by a smiling Alastor. You didn’t need to say a word before he stormed towards you and kissed you fiercely.

The feeling of his lips on yours was a new sensation and you were startled for a moment before melting into him. He held you tightly but he didn’t force you into any position, he was a gentleman after all. After a moment he pulled away and grinned.

“I assume we have a deal?” He asked and without letting you answer he kissed you once again, sealing the deal.

#hazbin alastor #alastor #hazbin hotel #alastor x reader #hazbin alastor x reader #overlord #hazbin hotel x reader #alastor hazbin hotel x reader #reader #fanfiction

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impala-dreamer · 4 months

Text

Slow Like Honey

A Supernatural Story

~When Dean makes a deal with Michael, things go really well. Until they go really... really wrong...~

Dean x Reader, Micheal!Dean x Reader, Sam Winchester, Jack

3,124 Words

Warnings: Grace!Kink, NSFW, Show spoilers for 13x23, Mind Control through Grace? Idk it's awesome.

Impala-Dreamer’s Masterlist ~ Patreon ~ Published Works

Everything was happening at once and all Y/N could do was stand by and watch. She kept her arm around Jack, let him lean on her a bit, sure that he was more broken than he let on. Blood was pouring from his nose and mouth, but the stream appeared to be slowing a bit as the seconds ticked by.

Sam wasn’t as bloody, but just as hurt, if not more than she was. The ringing in her head wasn’t stopping anytime soon and her back ached as if a few vertebrae had been shattered after Lucifer had thrown her across the chapel and into the stone pillar. How she wasn’t dead, she couldn’t fathom, but the questions would have to wait- they still had a job to do. Not that it was going very well at the moment.

Michael- Dean with Michael inside of him- she wasn’t really clear what was going on- was hovering above them, held tight in one of Lucifer’s fists while the other pounded into him, surely breaking each bone in his face. He hung, limp and suspended over the ornate chapel floor while Lucifer sought to put an end to Dean and Michael in the same moment.

The Final Moment.

The Last Showdown.

This was it. This was what the history of earth and every damned thing that had ever happened to them had been leading up to. This single moment.

And for the first time in a long time, Y/N had no hope inside of her. Every ounce of faith in herself, Jack, Sam, Dean, Chuck, everything had vanished.

They were going to lose.

And then they were going to die.

She couldn’t decide which was worse, the dying or the losing after everything they’d gone through, but she figured after Lucifer ripped her apart, she wouldn’t really care.

Above them, Dean groaned painfully, his head snapping back awkwardly and dangling in the air. Lucifer reared back for one final strike and Sam shook his head, refusing to let it end with his brother’s body broken and tossed aside.

Lunging forward, he dropped to one knee and grabbed the golden blade from the floor.

“Dean!”

Somehow, beyond any belief Y/N had left, Dean managed to catch the sword and jab it into Lucifer’s chest.

His scream was deafening, the light of Archangel Grace escaping him was blinding.

Dean crashed to the floor and all eyes were on Lucifer, watching as the Devil Himself was defeated.

This was not the Final Moment.

It was not the end of them, but the End of Lucifer.

They hid their eyes as a final burst of light illuminated the chapel and when the searing heat cooled, they looked to find Lucifer dead, his massive wings smoldering on the stones.

It was dark, the church cast into shadow without the shining blast of Grace. Silence covered them; awe forced them to move. Dean rolled to his feet and Y/N ran to him, hugging him close for a split second before curiosity got the better of them both.

The group huddled around Lucifer, staring down in utter disbelief.

Jack was the first to speak, barely able to give a voice to his shock. “Is he…”

Sam answered, nearly breathless and stunned. “He’s- he’s dead.” A gasp of relief pushed out of him and Sam’s lips quivered in an unbelieving smile. He turned to Dean who was gawking at the corpse, exhausted.

“Holy crap.”

Sam took a step, the smile growing on his face. “You did it.”

Dean looked up with tears rimming his eyes. He tried to take a deep breath but the weight of what had happened was pressing down hard on his chest.

“No.” He grit his teeth, inhaled a little deeper, grabbed Y/N’s hand. “No. We did it.” A smile tried to tug on his lips but there were too many emotions trembling inside of him. Y/N squeezed his hand. He looked to her and then his brother, to Jack. “We did it.”

Sam broke; a strange laugh of relief bubbling out of him. He bent over, smiling, free from Lucifer for the first time in his life.

Jack stood there frozen, grateful but lost.

Y/N dropped Dean’s hand and covered her face, hiding the tears that were falling. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “I can’t fucking believe-”

Relief was short-lived.

As always, the other shoe dropped.

With a pained groan, Dean doubled over, his breath racing, his head swimming. He clenched his body tight, fighting against something the others couldn’t understand.

“Dean?” Y/N’s hand hovered over his shoulder.

Sam closed in. “Dean?”

His brother dropped down, nearly tumbling to the floor in pain. He gasped for air, grunting as if he were being torn apart inside.

“Dean!”

Y/N watched in horror as Dean struggled, shaking and panting with pain.

His voice rang out, echoing through the chapel. “We had a deal!”

She went to touch him, to wrap her arms around him, do something, anything to ease his pain, but suddenly, it was over.

His frantic breathing ceased, his muscles eased, his body unclenched.

Dean stood up straight as if a metal rod had passed down his spine. He took a small breath and his features relaxed into eerie calmness.

Sam jerked back, seeing a change that Y/N could not see from her stance beside Dean. His lip quivered and fear flooded his hazel eyes.

“Michael.”

Sam’s whisper shook Y/N to the core and she held her breath, turning to face Dean.

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then down at the burned wings on the floor. Finally, he set his eyes upon Sam and nodded slightly.

“Thanks for the suit,” he said, voice chillingly unlike Dean’s yet completely the same.

Y/N’s heart was racing with panic and she did the only thing her body would let her, she reached out and grabbed Dean’s hand, holding it tight.

A rush of wind, the flap of wings. Something tugged at Y/N’s insides and she felt her body lift from the ground. She squeezed his hand tight, refusing to let go, refusing to lose Dean again.

She’d been with him through horrors and a hundred deaths, stood by his side while the Mark of Cain had burned his soul to the point of demonic takeover. She’d followed him blindly to Hell and Heaven and back again. She would not let him go. Not ever.

The wind was pushing down on her, striking her from every side, the force of flight nearly killing her. She gasped, suffocating as the air around them thinned and her eyes lost focus as the world around them went dark, spotted by the clearest stars she’d ever seen. Below was gray and misty, above them nothing but blackness.

They were in the sky, above the clouds, she realized and her lungs protested the lack of oxygen. Her eyes went wide, mouth fell open, skin paled, fingers slipped from his hand.

A strong arm wrapped around her back and pulled her close. The tightness of his grasp around her shoulders felt strangely reassuring as she slipped quickly into unconsciousness.

It was raining.

She could hear it beating against the broken and rattling windows; smell the sweetness of the storm as it fell through the holes in the old, rotted ceiling.

Y/N woke up on the ground in the middle of a large empty space. The stone floor was cold and dotted with puddles as it rained down, collecting in the dips and dents of the old building. Large rusted machines lined the back wall and busted hanging lights dangled equidistant from each other down the length of the room. It was an old factory, she surmised, but where, she had no idea.

Her right arm was tucked beneath her head, her left dangled in the curve of her waist. She was sore but not from falling, as if she’d been placed there gently to wake on her own. She shivered at the thought and pushed herself up to sitting, rubbing her hands down her bare arms.

“You’re cold.”

Dean’s voice made her jump and Y/N stood quickly, spinning around to find him a few yards away. Everything she had inside wanted to run to him, kiss his lips, throw a comforting arm around him, but memory kept her feet frozen. Her pulse quickened.

“You’re not Dean,” she said bluntly, mouth dry and skin crawling.

He smiled softly, just a simple turn of lips that she’d seen a thousand times before, but this was different. His stare was sharp, his stance ridgid. It made her heart ache and her panic rise.

“No,” he answered easily. “My name is Michael, but I’m sure you have figured that out already. You’re not as… stupid as you appear, I’m sure.”

He took a step forward and she countered, almost stumbling over her own feet to get away. Her heel fell into a puddle and the sting of mold hit the air and her nose.

“Where are we?”

Slowly, he looked around and then shrugged. “What does it matter?”

Blood was pounding in her ears. Fight or flight making her bones tremble. She stretched out her fingers at her sides to try to calm herself, but it did little to mask the fear in her voice.

“It matters because I want to know,” she snapped, forcing as much confidence in her tone as she could. There was little left inside of her, but she always knew she’d go down fighting.

“So inquisitive.” He smiled again and turned to the left, one step starting a circle around her. “Well, I have a question for you.” He clasped his hands behind his back and walked slowly, boots thudding through the open space. “What did you think you were doing by clinging to me like that? What was your plan?”

She swallowed hard; tried to think. “I wasn’t clinging to you. I was… hanging on. To Dean.”

An amused laugh passed his lips and her stomach flipped.

“Dean is… gone now.” He stopped his circuit and spun on one heel, turning to stare at her. “So why don’t I just get rid of you?”

Y/N held her ground, spinning to look him in the eyes. She was shaking, but stood upright, exuding what little strength she had. “You won’t.”

Michael tipped his head to the side, intrigued. “Really? And why not?”

She bit the inside of her cheek, forcing herself to keep going. “I don’t… I don’t know. But you could have let me go at any time. Hell, you could have dropped me somewhere over Chicago and yet you didn’t.” She lifted her chin, daring to quarrel with the most powerful angel in the universe. “I woke up here. Safe.”

Michael jerked forward, suddenly a breath away from her. She sucked in a deep breath and smelled the air on him, Dean’s faded gas station cologne. He clenched his jaw, annoyed. “Oh, you are far from safe.”

If this was the end, she wasn’t going to cower. She was going to face it with pride and grace. She dropped her shoulders and cocked a brow. “Well, if I’m wrong- Kill me.”

“We’ll see.”

Annoyance melted into something new. Michael narrowed his eyes, let his gaze drift down her face, her body. It chilled her and excited her in a way she couldn’t stand.

“He liked you… Dean,” Michael told her. “He cared for you. Loved you, even.”

Her chest ached. Past tense. He’s really gone. “How do you know?”

Michael stepped back, let his arms relax. “Because I can see inside of his mind.” He tapped one finger to his temple. “I know what he knew, I know what he felt… did… said, didn’t say. I know… everything.” He grinned at her shock. “I know you.”

Y/N shook herself. His tone was entracing but wrong. Everything about him was wrong. “You don’t know shit about me,” she spat.

“Don’t I?” He blinked slowly, capturing her attention even deeper. “I know how you came to hunt with the Winchesters after your family was killed by wolves. I know that Sam took a liking to you because you were good at research and liked… science fiction things. Dean didn’t care for you at first, did he? But… you gained his trust, learned from him, slowly became his lover. I know how you pined for him for years before he even saw you as anything more than a little sister. I know how you moaned when he first kissed you… How your fingers wrapped around his flannel whenever you were scared. How you… let him inside of every… part of you. How you would scream when he touched you just right-”

Enraged by his intrusiveness and her own whispering arousal, Y/N cut him off with a growl. “OK, enough! You’re just being crude.”

“Am I?” His smirk returned. “Funny how all human life depends on sexual intercourse and yet you find it so distasteful to discuss.”

Y/N scoffed and crossed her arms, symbolically closing herself off. “Well, we’re all a little fucked up, I guess.”

Michael’s eyes fixed on hers. “Yes. You are.”

The green was there, just as always. Deep and dark in the dim light, with flecks of gold that always mesmerized her. But behind the green was something else, a monster, a liar, another problem they had to solve.

Y/N looked away and took a breath to cleanse her soul. Without looking back, she changed the subject. “Why’d you break your deal with Dean?”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. A blank expression wiped his face smooth and he spoke slowly and truthfully. “Because I could. Because I… wanted to. Because there never really was a deal.” He paused for a moment, considering her frailties. “Dean was… desperate and stupid. I played him for the fool he was.”

Tears stung her eyes and Y/N grit her teeth, jolting forward with fists clenched. “Don’t you dare-”

“Or what?” Michael dipped his chin and looked closely at her. “How can a tiny thing like you hurt a powerful being like me?”

Fire burned inside of her and she went all in. “I don’t know, but I’ll die trying, you son of a bitch.”

Michael laughed. Fully and loudly. It was only a second, but he was clearly entertained by her vigor. “I enjoy your fire, your passion,” he explained. “I find you interesting. I’ll let you live.”

Surprise ran through her but Y/N kept her rageful sneer. “Gee, thanks.”

Michael was dismissive of her sarcastic appreciation. He shrugged and went on. “And in return for my mercy, you will be my slave.”

The laugh that echoed was her own and Y/N stared back in utter confusion and offense. “Excuse me?"

His foot fell against the stone as the circuit began again. “I need someone to show me around this new world. To explain to me about life here, help me move through the world unnoticed until I’ve worked out my plan.” He paused and regarded her with a possessive gaze. “That someone will be you.”

She stared back and jeered. “The fuck I will.”

Michael spun to her. His jaw tensed. “You will obey me.”

His tone sent a shiver down her spine but Y/N took a dangerous step towards him, testing fate. “I will… stab you in the neck.”

A spark of Grace flickered in his eyes and the blue made her gasp.

“I don’t think so.”

She could feel herself weaken, as if the glow was burning away at the resolve lodged inside of her.

“I… No, I won’t. You’re…” Her mouth watered, her eyes glazed over slightly. His face blurred, but the Grace was bright, sharp, digging deep into her. “No…”

Michael leaned in ever closer. “You like this, don’t you?”

She struggled to clear her head but he was already doing it for her. “S-Shut up.”

His eyes widened and the blue expanded, floating out to caress her cheek. She swooned; a heavy gasp making up her last breath as everything around her slowed.

Michael studied her, fascinated.

“You find it… intoxicating,” he said, sending out another wave to sweet down her body and she moaned. “Arousing…”

The very word made her pussy ache and Y/N’s knees shook. She clenched her thighs together tight and dug her nails into her palm to stay steady. She just had to fight him, had to remember to fight.

The blue was everywhere, bright and warm. It ran slow, like honey across her skin, hitting every sweet spot that made her breath hitch and her eyes flutter.

“You’re so… easily manipulated.”

Michael’s songlike tone washed over her and Y/N crumbled, her body giving in to the pleasure. She swayed on her feet and Michael caught her, wrapping an invisible wing around her back, holding her upright but at a slight angle. She sank into the feathers, amazed at the strength, terrified by the feeling, but too light headed to speak.

Grace swirled around her nipples, rubbed between her thighs. She moaned and Michael watched intently, studying her, taking notes.

“A flick here, a touch there…”

Every word was like a tongue flickering over her clit, every stroke of Grace was a thick, delicious cock thrusting into her slick heat.

“A bit of pressure in the right spot… A taste of pleasure… And you’re a weak, helpless mess. Totally at my mercy… totally under my control.”

She tried to think of Dean, of how he’d want her to keep fighting, but the more she thought, the more Michael’s Grace flooded her system. The harder she fought him, the stronger his pleasure became until there was no more fight, no more worry, no more Dean.

“Your body… Mine.”

She moaned loudly, near to panting as his Grace pulsed inside of her, curling, thrusting, stretching, pounding.

“Your mind… Mine.”

Her eyes rolled and she cried out, cumming hard and squirting into her jeans. The warmth dripped down her thighs and she held back tears as her body shook, consumed with his power, lost in the ethereal magic in his eyes.

When she could stand, he pulled his wings away, leaving her shivering and feeling exposed. She trembled when he came close, held her breath as his fingers tipped her chin upwards.

The green was back, but she couldn’t remember why that was so important.

Michael swept through her mind and grinned. “That’s better.”

She sighed happily and smiled back, dazed and awed.

“Now…” Michael let his fingers slip down her throat, gently squeezing against her pulse. “Let’s get started.”

2024 Forever Tags (Always Open! Send an Ask!)

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#dean winchester x reader #michael!dean #michael!Dean x Reader #smangsty #grace kink #one shot

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januaryembrs · 9 months

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LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x reader [5]

description: Marc and Dove adjust to their new mission in Cairo: catch Harrow before he can release Ammit and for the love of gods don’t let Seth have the body again.

word count: 8.1k

trigger warnings: major gore and violence warning (he is the God of violence after all :/) hints at Dove’s dark past, hints at prostitution/sexual exploitation. All involved are of age however. Feelings of worthlessness. Swearing.

main masterlist | series masterlist

“Do you ever feel dirty afterwards?” The soft voice asked from her right. She’d know that voice blind. Know it in any darkness. A call to a home she could never go back to.

“I feel like taking ten showers and walking through a car wash naked, and it still wouldn’t be enough.” Her own voice came. There was a tinkle of a laugh like a bell, yet the bitterness was clear in the single note. Her head turned to see her, her, the blonde girl that haunted her every thought, her every breath.

Grace.

Her face as supple and innocent as any nineteen year old, unmarred by the horrors of the world despite their place in it. Her eyebrows curved high on her face, forget-me-not blue eyes that watched the world outside their window with a longing she, herself, was more than familiar with. The two of them sat opposite each other on the wide window sill, legs bunched up to their chests, the gentle, first rays of morning sunlight falling on their faces. The two of them stared out into the rest of the world, a world they were not permitted to go without his say. The small trees that dotted the street swayed, the slow, warm breeze washing over them. The rare chance they had to take in fresh air. The two girls preened to its caress instantly.

“I sometimes think at least I’m useful here,” Grace said, her honey locks falling as she rested her head on the window, if only to get closer to the freedom on the other side, “I could be sleeping on the streets or in a place half as nice as this, alone, but at least here I’m with you,” She said, her bluebell eyes following as a pair of collared doves wove in between one another, their small, grey figures dipping through the air freely.

“It sounds fucked up, and maybe it is,” Her own voice came, her eyes also following the birds that seemed to be gloating about just how untethered they were to any place other than the winds that carried them, “But part of me, the disgusting part that I try ignore, feels wanted. Like those men want me, so much that they would even pay hundreds to see me.” Her breath steamed up the glass as she took a deep sigh, the confessions rolling off her lips. Because she knew Grace wouldn’t judge her. Grace would never. “It makes me think that maybe there’s some part of me that is actually worth wanting.”

“I’ll always want you,” Came the soft reply, her heart jumping into her throat with a small choke. She could never deal with mushy words, blatant affection from another being, the one way they differed. Grace was all about kind words, telling her how her heart felt, “Every bit of you,”

A tired grin spread on her face, “I wish it could be this easy with other people,”

“Why? Are you planning on replacing me any time soon?” Grace asked, leaning up to open the window further to let in the breeze. They only had a couple of hours before he would be back, and he hated when they sat in the window. Too many eyes, too many people to see them for free.

She chuckled, nudging the other girl with her leg in a small chastise.

“Never.” She said earnestly, watching Grace’s cerulean eyes follow a leaf fall to the ground elegantly. “Although, if we’re making requests, I’d like a best friend that would stop stealing my bras,”

“Maybe if the machine didn’t wreck all mine I wouldn’t have to-”

“Oh, give over, you like the lacy ones. Just admit it.” Grace blanched, her eyes flicking to the girl before a guilty smile appeared, showing off every one of her perfectly straight, white teeth.

“I didn’t realise they were so dear to you,” The girls giggled, the sun stroking both their faces, warming their cheeks gently. “I was wondering why I could see your nipples through your top,” A smack to the ankle closest to her.

“I’d like them back please. I’ll have you know the desperate ones pay extra for that shit,” She replied, the carelessness in her eyes dropping at the thought of their evening. He’d be back with clients, one for each of them, sometimes more.

He always came back with clients.

“And to think, I get to see them for free,” Grace teased, nudging her socked foot into her friend’s thigh to try garner some kind of amusement. But the moment was gone. The small bit of heaven they’d had between one another was gone. Because they knew this was it. This was all it would ever be.

Her bottom lip quivered. She wanted her brothers. She wanted her home, her real home, she wanted her old bed, her old room. She wanted her mother, she hadn’t wanted her mother in years. She even wanted her father, even if he was drunk as a skunk like the last time she’d seen him. She would take it. She wanted her normal job back, she swore she’d never complain about waitressing again if it meant being away from this. She wished she could bundle Grace up, disappear, just the two of them, far far away from all of this. Where they would never be able to touch either of them ever again. Where they would never be used as slabs of meat for his amusement.

A small, pale hand slipped into hers, her fingers warm and grounding as they intertwined with hers. She hadn’t realised she was crying until she looked up and saw Grace with her eyes welled up too. The pair had never been able to stand seeing the other cry without choking up.

Grace’s summer sky eyes were wide; fat, remorseful bunching tears on her perfect lash line. They were still in their pyjamas, hair still messed up, love bites and mysterious fingerprints lining her throat from where last night's customer had gotten too rough.

She was dragged into a hug, an embrace she only ever felt from Grace. Those men, those vile men only ever sought pleasure, cold, aggressive pleasure that soiled the very meaning of the word. But Grace was soft. Warm. Gentle. Grace was everything she needed to keep her head on her shoulders. Grace was every bit of her she wasn’t, like the pair had been cleaved apart atom by atom at birth and when they hugged it was as though their bodies knew one another the way you only know yourself. Like two halves trying to stitch themselves back together.

And they were both crying. Crying for the lives they’d had before all of this. Before those men that came at night, handing him money at the door, before they put on their bedroom voices and sultry eyes. The performance of a lifetime. She missed her brothers, she thought of what she was going to write in her next letter home, though she knew she would never get a response. She wished she hadn’t been so hard on them. She wished she’d gotten a chance to say goodbye properly.

“I want to go home,” She sobbed, a calming hand running through her hair as Grace soothed her, though she could tell by the way her face nuzzled into her neck that the sentiment was shared.

The two nineteen year olds held each other, the only solace they had in this world being one another’s gentle embrace. The only person they would ever need in the cruel hands of a world like this.

“I’ll be your home,” Grace mumbled, the words dying on her skin as the tears fell down her own cheeks, “I’ll be your home as long as you need one,”

She nodded, a silent thankyou for the selfless offer. Golden curls surrounded her vision, Grace’s arms squeezing her tighter. As if to assure her that this was it. This was all she would need. That she was never, ever letting go.

And then, silently, tiredly, Dove woke up alone.

“Good morning,” She chirped, Marc wincing at the perky nature of her tone. He sat up with a wince, his back screaming in aches from the hard sofa. It was a wonder he’d gotten any sleep at all, let alone not woken up when she’d seemingly left the room for a wander around.

“Where have you been?” His voice was gravel, a rumble of fatigue erupting from his throat. He took in the flowy bottoms she wore, the basic white shirt she’d thrown on over it and the sunglasses perched on her messy hair. In her hand was a loose, netted bag, entirely crammed with fruits. Mangoes, pomegranates, bananas, the biggest oranges he’d seen in years. He remembered Layla feeding him one at their wedding, remembered thinking they were the best thing he’d ever tasted. As if to read his mind, she took one for herself and handed him the entire bag.

“Exploring. Getting breakfast. Your phone’s been buzzing, I think your friend needed you,” She said, the spirited tone in her voice never dropping as she slumped on the bed, “I still stink of airport,”

“Go take a shower,” Marc resolved quickly, peeling back the orange, the sticky juice running over his fingers immediately. Fresh, better than any fruit he’d had in England that had been packaged and stored and frozen.

He barely saw the way her eyes twitched at the word as she tucked into her own fat slices of the citrus. “Can’t, there’s only a bathtub,” She said, cheeks full with syrup, “I think they were expecting a honeymoon, there’s all petals and candles and shit,” She said, her eyes flicking to the window to see the outside world.

“So just have a bath-”

“What’s your friend say?” She cut him off, though there was no malice in her tone. Only intrigue.

Wiping his hand clean, he reached into his pocket for his crappy burner phone. The single text from his friend with a thousand connections all over Cairo read:

Harrow is here. Aali’s waiting in Khan el-Khalili for you and your friend, said he’s got insight where they’re heading. Said some of Harrow’s men are on his tail. Better hurry, Spector.

Marc expected as much, though he’d have thought he’d have at least enough time to have breakfast before the day’s stress would already begin.

“One of his informants is waiting for us not far from here. I’ll call us a cab,” Marc replied, scarfing down the last of the tender segments, trying not to groan at how they exploded in his mouth.

“Informants,” She echoed, her eyes wandering the ceiling as she herself let the saccharine juice slide down her throat, “Makes us sound like James Bond. Although I’m pretty sure the movies would have gone a lot different if Bond got killed and resurrected by some ancient deities,”

Marc said nothing, focusing his attention on looking for a nearby taxi rank.

“I mean I suppose they do kind of have him die over and over again, when they need fresh meat to keep their movies running. I never really understood the whole thing for Bond, he seems narcissistic, arrogant at best. If you ask me, the movies don’t need more men fucking the pretty women and killing anyone they can get their hands on. The entire thing is just sixty years worth of men tugging themselves to fast cars and blood and the two dimensional women getting seduced by the hot sociopath-”

“Something’s wrong,” Steven said from inside the body, the first he’d spoken up in two days, “Something’s wrong with her,”

“Aside from the fact she doesn’t know when to shut up?” Marc asked, though he too had noted the unusually chatty mood she was in today, “No wonder you two get along so well,”

“Marc,” He snapped, his brown eyes large and concerned as he stared at her from the mirror, “I’m serious. She never waffles on like that unless she’s bothered by something,”

“And the whole shaken not stirred thing? Talk about pretentious-”

“She’s talking about the politics of a martini. I think she’s just had an extra dose of sugar this morning,” Marc shut his phone off after confirming a cab, his own hardened eyes flicking to where the woman seemed to be lost in her own spiel to even notice he hadn’t yet said a word.

“Talk to her,” Steven ordered, though his eyes never tore from her troubled gaze at the ceiling.

“And like, were it any other franchise, twenty seven movies seems ridiculous. Imagine twenty seven Harry Potter movies? Everyone would be old as hell by the time they finished. Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis sounds shit-”

“Are you feeling okay?” Marc cut her off, her head snapping to his as if to be yanked out of a train of thought. Her eyes looked bleary, as if she still had yet to fully awaken.

“Huh?” She asked, briefly looking away to grab a plump, fuzzy peach out of the netted bag, “Yeah, I’m peachy,” She snickered to herself before realising he wasn’t laughing at all. Not even a small smile. “Come on, that one was too obvious,”

“Steven said you’re trying to distract yourself,” He said, a hint of an accusation in his tone. He caught the moment her innocent expression faltered for a slight second, before the mask slipped back on and her bright smile was plastered across her too tightly scrunched cheeks.

“Nonsense.” She brushed off, though her eyes quickly trailed away from his, leaning for a small backpack of her belongings. “Are we heading out now?”

With that, the woman strode towards the front door, dropping her sunglasses back over her eyes.

“I’ll meet you down there,” She said over her shoulder, briskly leaving Marc to get some real clothes on for the day, having only slept in an old shirt and some shorts.

“I’m telling you, mate. There’s something up,” Steven said, finally turning to his alter who stood, lost for words, his eyes softening at her retreating figure.

And Marc knew he was right. He could deny it all he liked, but it didn’t stop it from being true.

And just like that, the woman had become a total mystery to him once more.

“So where exactly was it you said your informant was?” She asked, the two of them standing in a back alley, Marc’s eyes glued to his phone as he awaited further instructions.

“Somewhere around here- you know it’s kind of difficult to type these things when he’s being tracked by trained mercenaries,” Marc snipped, making the woman roll her eyes as she leaned against the sandstone wall. Sighing through her nose and pursing her lips, she readied to open her mouth again, no doubt about to say something that would only serve to piss him off more when her ears caught the sound of a muffled scream.

Head flicking up to the top of one of the buildings, she scanned Marc’s face for any sign of alarm, only to find him still staring at his little black phone in frustration. Thinking she was simply imagining it, she readied herself to brush the sound off, when she heard it again, a moan of pain accompanying the yelp.

“Did you hear that?” She asked, standing up straight, her ears pricked to the rooftops.

“Huh?” Marc sounded annoyed, though his face melded into concern when he saw the focused look in her eyes, attention caught between the terraces, “What? Hear what-“

“Shhh,” She raised her hand to silence him, slapping her hand fully over his mouth when his lips parted with a pissed off quip ready to roll off his tongue. Her head snapped to one rooftop in particular, her eyes wide and worried as she heard the switch of a blade, a gasp of a beaten man and a chuckle of five, sinister voices. “They got him, they got your friend.”

“Where?” Marc asked, phone long forgotten as he grabbed her hand off his mouth, barely needing to question how she knew. His senses had become so far enhanced with Khonshu’s suit as well, it was only natural that she’d started to feel the full effects of her powers too.

“Over there,” She pointed in the general direction as Marc immediately set off for a fire escape leading to the upper levels.

“You stay here, I’ll go get him-”

“What- Stay here?” Came her immediate protest, “I can help! Let me help,”

“Absolutely not, you’ll just slow me down,” Reeling back in offence, Marc cast her a glance when he saw the hurt in her face, her lips pouting slightly and eyes drooping in sadness, “Don’t give me that look. I just don’t want you to see something you might not like,”

Marc knew what those mercenaries would do to his informant, what they would do to them if they so happened to stumble across them. The thought of their dirty, blood stained hands on her, hurting her, it was enough to have Marc disregard any kind of puppy dog eyes she gave him. No matter if it did make his chest twinge with guilt. He should be nicer to her, he chastised himself.

“Let the mutt have a chance,” Teased a booming voice from behind the two of them. Dove whirled around, stumbling backwards into Marc’s chest when she saw a ten foot tall skeleton of what seemed to be a bird-man type animal. Its concave eyes leered down a long beak at her smaller figure, the huge creature seemingly quite relaxed as it leaned in, its chest broad covered in wraps of linen as if he were once mummified.

Jumping back in freight as the bird got closer, Dove yelped as she felt Marc’s arms wrap around her biceps to stop her from stumbling over herself, “What the fuck is THAT?”

Khonshu only laughed, his deep timbre shaking her to her bones.

“This is Khonshu, I’m his avatar. Same way you’re Seth’s.” Marc said bitterly, glaring at the stupid bird that seemed to find her terror hilarious.

“I think my little lamb would do nicely, Spector,” Came another voice, and a dark phantom emerged from behind the silhouette of the bird headed god. The air escaped her lungs, and she would have stumbled even further back had Marc not been behind her, Seth’s dark face coming into view as if he had been summoned by the very mention of his name, as was the rule with every child’s nightmare.

His night black eyes peered down at her from atop a set of grinning, blade-sharp teeth, jaws pulled into a mix of amusement and threat. His body towered over even Khonshu once he stood at full height, broad arms muscled and fleshed out unlike the skeleton, his own staff also grinning at the horrified woman.

“Come now, little lamb,” His dark growl of a voice had her knees weakening and bones shaking the moment she heard it. The voice that had been haunting her since that night in London, when she’d woken up with blood covering her head to toe. “We’ve got a job to do,”

She couldn’t go back, she couldn’t go so easily this time.

“Keep away from me,” She hissed, Marc releasing her as she trembled and retreated when Seth began prowling towards her, “I’m warning you, I am not going back to being your little puppet again- this is my body- you’d do well to get that into your head real fast-“

Seth simply laughed, Khonshu echoing him, making Marc’s head whip towards the moon god with an irritated frown. It was clear she was terrified, as would Marc be if he had a master so cruel and heinous to be controlled by. The thought only twisted the knife of guilt chiselling away at his gut further.

“Can’t you get him to leave her be?” Marc snapped, turning his attention to his own god with a sneer and a cold look in his once soft eyes, “We’re more than capable of handling a few mercs, why drag her into this?”

“I am not the one who dragged her into this, I would remind you, Spector,” Khonshu’s words cut deep, hardening the man’s expression more, “And even if I wished to stop this, Setekh is brother to Osiris. He holds more power, both in the eyes of the Ennead and in his own being, than I ever will. To go against him would be a death sentence for us both.”

Marc sucked his teeth, not ignorant to the commotion between the two to his right. Seth leaned in, a large, clawed hand outstretched as if to stroke her hair in an unnervingly gentle fashion. The same way he had the first moment he’d met the god of death. It reminded Marc of a patronising father, caressing a dimwitted child, or even an unsuspecting dog heeling for treats. The hand was met with a swift strike away by the human woman, eyes wide with fear, chest rattling with dread, akin to a cornered cat lashing out in self defence.

The four beings seemed to stop with her action. Marc’s eyes went between her and Seth, and for once Khonshu seemed to have gone quiet. And then, after a moment of painful emptiness, Seth chuckled once more. Not amused anymore, but a bitter rumble of fury, one that had Dove’s heart plummeting into her stomach, feeling as if the entire contents of it would come up any second now.

“The little lamb has fire?” Seth’s canine like head tilted, his tall, pointed ears going with it. Though, they didn’t flop like a dog’s would, no. They seemed to point towards her, sensing the unfiltered terror that washed through her bloodstream. A predator locked in on its prey. A wolf descending on a lone sheep.

“Keep away from me,” She repeated, the anger still in her tone, though it had now been diluted by the fear, the tremble in her throat giving her away. Seth grinned, though the smile was tainted. The jaw pulling into a snarl, his face becoming all the more sinister.

“I told you. You’re mine now, lamb,” He barked, his hand darting out and roughly grabbing a thick knot of her hair from the back of her skull, a mewl of shock slipping past her lips, “You’d do well to obey me next time,”

Obey. Obey him. She could think of nothing worse. She wanted to just kick and scream and spit and lash out all the more, writhe away from his touch, his touch that reminded her of his. As if he was no longer a ghost from her past, but was now haunting her still through the God of Death. She was tired of her body being taken from her; tired, so fucking tired of being told to sit and obey. She had obeyed. She had sat patiently, been the compliant little girl bending to a man’s vile words, she had been putty in his wretched palms.

She had obeyed him before, and now Grace was gone.

There was a single second where her gaze cut to Marc’s, eyes pleading with his coffee brown irises that seemed to diminish in all of their anger the moment she locked eyes with him, begging for help with a childlike terror, mouth pursed open ready to scream.

“Mar-” Was all she whimpered, before Seth’s claws latched onto her and her expression froze.

Marc was sure he’d killed her, was sure he’d crushed her fragile cranium in his bare hand just to prove to her the consequences of lashing out, the breath escaping his own lungs as he watched it happen, half guessing he was about to bite down on her soft face with those monstrous teeth of his.

But there was no blood, no chunks of flesh ripped from her as he thought. No scream of pain and torture.

Instead her scared face morphed into one of an entranced nothingness, eyes drooping from their usual expressive nature, chest evening out into calm breaths. Her pupils swirled in their pools of inky blackness, growing, devouring the rest of her iris, the whites of her corneas disappearing as the darkness took over, until she, too, looked down at him with malicious black sockets.

Her suit grew around her. Spreading over her clothes: a tight, black second-skin, gold bone-like details spindling around her limbs as the sable suit spread down her entire body. The muzzle slipped over her mouth and nose, as if she were a dangerous mutt in need of chaining. Controlling. Being taught to heed to its master. Marc knew it was Seth’s way of making her feel even less in control.

He said her name, taking a wary step in her direction, approaching a cornered animal in a snare. Her head seemed to tilt, midnight eyes locking in on his wary figure, though there was nothing behind those pools of darkness that gave hint to any recognition from the woman.

Because she was not there anymore. This was not her. This was Seth’s pawn, his puppet. His mongrel of a marionette. His Hellhound.

He called for her again, raising a large, olive hand in her direction, even if to lower the muzzle, even if to make her more human and less animal, only to be met by a husky growl from behind the wretched thing, a warning to keep away.

Marc’s chest felt pierced seeing her like this. Entirely not herself, entirely Seth’s play thing. A wild beast that would rip him to shreds if she got the chance. The healed bite on his thigh burned where she’d attempted it last time.

Seth laughed again, releasing his grip on her skull, where the two, upright ears now grew out of the hardened metal mask, no doubt an ego boost to his own handsome features.

“Don’t bother, Spector,” The god rumbled with sick delight, the woman’s head lowering at her master's voice, “She is entirely mine until I say so,”

Marc’s chest puffed out in annoyance, daring to stare down the God of Death for the offending comment. She was not his, she was a person. She was her own person, with her own mind and body that had been stolen from her, if a mind and body could even be taken from someone. Her soul; her sweet, gentle soul that Marc had started to adore was lost from those eyes, those feral caves of shadows that scanned the rooftops for their target. The life was gone from them, smothered by the darkness, by the bloodlust. The Hellhound was all that remained.

She stopped at one particular point as she had done when she was once again herself, waiting obediently by her master's side for a command.

He gave none, simply looking down at her approvingly before nodding a head in the direction of the mercenaries. That was all the signal she needed.

Marc had barely any time to prepare himself before he was scrambling after her darting figure, a black streak in front of his eyes that seemed to move faster than even his own brain could keep up with.

The hunt was on. The Hellhound had smelled blood.

She had given him a run for his money, quite literally. The Hellhound was fast, lithe, stealthy. Silent even when running at full pelt towards her target, even when jumping between buildings and sliding under thick planks of wood left over from decaying furniture. Never ceasing for breath, never slowing down for her partner in crime who was struggling with his human lungs to keep up with her.

Finally, the five mercs came into view, along with his informant who had certainly seen better days. His bloody nose and busted eye seemed the least of his worries however when Marc caught the glint of a switchblade in the sunlight, the knife being plunged into his gut before the two of them could get there, no matter how fast they had been.

Hellhound made the vault between the buildings in one, landing on the edge of the rooftop effortlessly, her demonic eyes narrowing in on the five men that stared back at them. Marc was shortly behind her, hopping down the short wall to the rest of the terrace he huffed as he caught his breath, coming to stand beside the woman.

“Oh shit,” Marc started, the mercenaries turning to look at the odd pair that watched them tensely, “You killed him? We needed to talk to that guy about a dig site,”

The men smirked, eyeing up the Hellhound with malicious intrigue. They missed the way her gloved fingers extended out into deadly claws, or the way her eyes honed in on the large blades they wielded, thinking of every way she would be able to disarm them.

“Guess I’m gonna have to talk to you instead,” Marc sighed, taking a single step towards the men as Hellhound widened her stance, two of them breaking away from their group to come near her.

“You’re too late. You’re never gonna find Harrow,” The tallest one commented, tossing his blade into the air in a gloating fashion, his smirk never leaving his face.

“Really?” Marc asked, watching the display with a tired eye roll, “Oh, what are we dancin’? We fightin’? What are we gonna do?”

The man carved a line in front of him with his blade stepping towards Marc while two of the others headed for the woman who had yet to show any sign of alarm at the scene. Marc readied himself to avoid the blades, his fists coming up to block his gut, hoping she would leave some part of them for the crows to pick at atleast.

He had seen what she had done to those Jackals. Men with knives wouldn’t touch her.

As if on cue, the men lunged for each of them. Marc busied himself with the three coming his way, a boy no older than sixteen following his peers blindly with a knife that looked uncomfortable in his young palm. But the bloodshed came from Hellhound.

The more broad of the two went first, serrated blade outstretched from his meaty arm. His hand was soon stopped by four blade-like claws digging into his wrist, slicing his veins down to the bone, blood spurting from him near immediately. He squealed, though the shock of his hand nearly being ripped off was nothing when her other palm was brought across his face in a slashing motion.

A centimetre higher and his eye would have been taken clean out.

The knife was dropped, a petrified look in the man’s eyes as thick blood streamed down his jaw, the second man ducking out from behind him with his own knife ready. He threw one slash towards her neck, already protected with a thick layer of the leather like suit, making the small weapon effectively useless had he even gotten close to her.

Which he didn’t.

She’d already easily dodged his advance, coming up to grab the back of his shoulder and smash his face against the stone wall behind them with a sickening crunch. Three of his teeth spilled onto the stone floor, nose flooding with the metallic liquid that dripped into his mouth. Claws dragged up into his hair, pressing harder than Seth had when he had grabbed her in a similar way, until she felt flesh squish and blood trickle over her palm. The man screamed, squirming under her grasp, which only had her holding on tighter, wrenching at his skull until he dropped to his knees and the knife slipped from his grasp with the white hot pain he was in.

Her gaze dropped to her left where Marc was still fighting the men that had headed for him, only to hear the younger boy behind them.

“In your face, foreigner,” He spoke in his Arabic tongue, throwing his smaller blade towards Marc’s head as the man was busy fending off an attacker.

But the blade never made it far. Her black, leathered hand snatched the knife by its serrated edge, though the woman did not show any signs of wincing at the sharp blade. Why would she? When all she felt was a lust for revenge watching the boy shrink back in fear, realising he was now without a weapon and had drawn the attention of the wolf looking creature.

She was a picture of a nightmare as she tossed his knife to the ground effortlessly, the darkness of her eyes swirling with rage as she stepped towards him. Hellhound wasn’t sure who that man was, the man who had tried to touch her infront of her master, the same man who had tried to caress her last time she was freed. She didn’t know him, but there was part of her writhing with anger that he had almost been harmed. Didn’t care for him, but was ready to rip this boy to shreds for attempting to hurt the man.

“Wait!” Marc called, knowing what she was about to do to that child. The two men that cowered, soaked in blood, were evidence enough that she was just as brutal as she had been the last time she’d been freed. But that boy was just a kid. Hellhound may not have a moral compass but he sure as hell did. As did Dove. And he knew she would hate herself if she knew what she was doing. If she hurt a kid. “Stop!”

But he didn’t have to intervene as the other man he’d been fighting tackled her from behind. The distraction seemed to have been her downfall as he managed to restrain his arms to her sides. She let out a snarl of anger, throwing her head back in an attempt to fend him off, only for him to wrestle her towards the edge of the building. Digging her heels into the floor, she squirmed, thrashing in his hold enough to have him loosen the slightest amount. She managed to dig her claws into his thigh, the man yawping in pain, shoving her hard to the side, aiming to have her over the side of the rooftop.

Call it luck on the man’s part, but his desperate strength seemed to be enough to toss her over the sharp drop, over the edge of the four story building, high enough for anyone to break enough bones to cause serious damage. If not death.

Marc had barely been able to stop her, though he knew better than those men that Seth would heal her, since he’d been so preoccupied fighting his own challenger, one he’d only just been able to disarm before she’d been thrown.

“Marc, don’t do it, Marc” Steven begged from the reflection of the knife, “Stop it, go help her. Just stop this,” The English man pleaded, his eyes worried as Marc began to feel a pull from inside the body.

His breath drew short, his head switching between the alters as Steven used his moment of weakness to take over, his only thought being to help his Dove.

Marc took over the body once more, ripping his consciousness back from Steven, to find himself in a taxi?

Taking a quick moment to understand where he was, he turned to the driver with a panicked tone, “Stop, please!” He asked, his Arabic rusty from what he’d been able to pick up on his missions and through Layla.

“You’re speaking Arabic, eh?” The driver asked, bustling around in his seat to glare at Marc. “Why are you acting like a foreigner?”

“Where are you taking me?” The man demanded, sure he already seemed batshit crazy to the innocent driver who looked just as confused as Marc felt.

“You said picking up your friend?” He replied, a pissed off look on his face. As if to have summoned the beast herself, a loud slam hit the bonnet of the taxi. It happened almost too fast, Hellhound stood tall on the car, a dent where she had dragged herself up onto the metalwork, her targets back in her sight. It wasn’t until Marc ducked out the car that he saw the five guys coming out of the building, seemingly relaxed until they saw the seething woman staring at them.

“Let me talk to you,” Marc yelled over the bustle of the traffic. The men looked at one another, the two of the more bloodied men taking one glance at where the woman hopped off the bonnet and scrambled to get away, leaving their other three partners on their own.

“You just let us go man,” The youngest said, watching the two with confused eyes, though the mercenary that had thrown her off the roof seemed to sicken visibly at the sight of her standing alive and well, looking more than furious.

The trio booked it before either of them could take a step further.

Taking off into the crowd, a whippet of a dark phantom once more, gaining on the three perpetrators faster than they could have imagined. Her boots were silent as they pounded on the stone floor below, as if she were a wraith coming to haunt their souls for running, a demon chasing their shadows. Inescapable. Inevitable. A hunter descending on its kill.

Marc took off after the leader and the youngest one as they skidded around a sharp corner of the bazaar, Hellhound pouncing after the other who decided to take the next corner in a desperate attempt to lose the two pursuers. But he was not so lucky. Hellhound was faster.

Two clawed hands latched onto his shoulders, shoving him roughly to the wall. The man was lifted clear off his feet, the beast of a woman scraping his body against the sandstone as if he were dead weight. He could do nothing but squirm as her grip tightened, thumbs sinking into his collar bones beneath his thin jacket. He hissed in pain, eyes widening as she leaned in with those sinister black sockets.

“Where’s Harrow?” A deep rumble came from her feminine chest, Coptic falling from her muzzled lips, the sound of it so vile he worried of pissing himself. Unlike anything he had heard before. Something so ancient he cursed whoever the being was that had disturbed the monster within her.

The man whimpered like a babe, squirming under her hold, only to have her force him harder into the wall until cracks appeared behind his frame where her strength concaved the material.

“Where is he?” She snarled in Arabic this time, her muzzle dropping around her jaw to reveal her elongated canines, snapping at his jugular in impatience.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” He mewled, his head twisting to get away from the creature, eyes squeezed shut in the hopes of his death coming quick and painless. “I swear, Abdulla, th-the one your friend went for, he was the one hired by Harrow. I don’t know anything,” He begged. She took a moment to stare him down through those soulless eyes of hers, before she gave a final grumble of feral anger and dropped the mercenary onto his shaking legs. Within a single blink, she had tore off to find wherever Marc had gotten to, not sure who he was yet but knowing he was different from these other men she saw through her puppeteered mind.

When Marc came to the second time after being dragged from fronting, his face was wet with sweat and something thicker, more copper smelling. His hands were sticky with the same substance, and it took him just a moment for his eyes to adjust to realise he had plunged a knife into Abdulla’s chest, a look of distant terror on the man’s face that soon dissolved into lifeless eyes rolling back as he fell to the ground.

The knife dripped with the last moments of the man’s life, Marc’s hand gripping the weapon tightly as he tried making sense of where he was. Somewhere out of the city, further away from prying eyes and civilians that a scene like this would alarm. A rocky causeway, a clearing atop a cliff of sorts, deserted and quiet where he could have his crisis in peace.

That is until he heard the laboured breathing behind him, a grunt echoing through the clearing. A dragging sound across the grainy sand beneath his feet, scraping against the rock that jutted out of the embankment.

Marc whirled around, Hellhound standing over the body of the man she had gone after, whether he had returned to help his friend or she had killed him on the spot he didn’t know. She stood eerily still, watching his face for any sign of life, to which Marc saw there was none at all, as if waiting for anything else to cross her path and end up on the receiving end of her claws.

A yawp of pain snatched their attention before Marc could approach her, though he was still unsure if that person receiving her wrath would be him. The man’s heart fell to his feet when he realised it was the kid, the young boy who had no clue of the world he was getting himself into, that had decades ahead of him to change his life around. He saw himself in those scared, almond eyes; saw himself at seventeen angry and hating the world, wanting only to hurt and be hurt by everyone around him as if to prove his bitterness right.

But there, on the sandy floor, the boy tried to crawl away with whatever strength he had left in his tired limbs that already seemed to have taken a slashing. By his own knife or Hellhound’s razorblades, he wasn’t sure.

A mean look settled on the man’s face, knowing what they had to do with the sole remaining witness, the last person who could give them information.

“Where’s the tomb?” Marc bit, but the boy was not listening.

His eyes were settled on the Hellhound, her figure silent, still. Black eyes trained on him, never wavering, never blinking. The boy, too scared to so much as rip his attention from the woman, dragged his lame leg away from the creature, knowing she would take the single second he looked away to strike. A jackal circling a rabbit in a snare.

“Take him to the ledge,” Khonshu murmured behind the two of them, Marc’s eyes turning down for a split second in sadness. He didn’t want to do this, he thought he was better than this. Hurting children, threatening little boys for problems that weren’t their’s.

He was no better than his mother.

“He’s just a kid,” Marc all but whispered, as if he knew how pathetic it made him seem to the god. But it was true. The boy couldn’t have been older than his late teens. He was just a boy.

“He’ll talk,” Khonshu reassured, though Marc knew he had no problem hurting those that endangered their mission, all in the name of protecting the greater good. But Marc knew better. There wasn’t a single bone in his body that wanted to threaten that kid any longer.

Just as the man pursed his lips to refuse, drawing a line in the sand that even he wouldn’t cross, another behemoth figure appeared behind the three of them, the warmth seeping from the humid air as if he had washed the group in a numbing haze the second he arrived.

“Go show him your bark is as bad as your bite, little beast,” Seth purred into her ear, his figure towering over her statuesque body. The two were a mirror of one another, her demeanour a projection of Seth’s darkest wishes. A phantom of chaos. An angel of death. A reaper of whoever Seth condemned to her paws.

A dog now with a command, Hellhound stalked forward, yanking the boy by his front with a single hand, dragging his body across the rough terrain as if he were no more than a sack of flour. Lifting him into the air, he was held by little more than his shirt and tie, the fabric snatching against his throat tightly.

“Where’s the tomb?” Marc reeled back, the voice that erupted out of her chest was not her own at all, was not even of this earth. It was a dark hiss, and gave his body the same goosebumps as Seth’s had the first moment he heard it. The boy stammered, moving his mouth as if to want to give her the answer but to come up empty. It only served to anger the girl as she scruffed his collar tighter, snarling into his face for a response, “Where is it?”

But the kid swallowed whatever words he was going to give, pulling a switchblade out from his trouser pocket.

“Praise Ammit,” He murmured. It came out forced, as if he’d been told those words by the people around him, as if he didn’t entirely believe them himself but had been programmed to cut his losses if he were at an interrogation like this.

Swiftly, before Marc could intervene and save the poor kid’s short life, the boy brought the knife up to the shirt that seemed to be the only thing stopping him from plummeting off the cliff edge and slit the fabric clean in two.

As expected, his body could do nought else but fall, fall silently and morbidly down the twenty-foot edge until something cracked with a loud thud as he hit the ground.

Which was exactly the moment Dove returned to her body.

Her consciousness was all but dragged from the pit of her mind, a surge of breath entering her lungs as if she were coming up for air from being held underwater. Where the hell was she? Why was she stood at a cliff’s edge?

Her face felt sticky, hands coated in a honey like wetness. In fact her entire body felt tight with the stuff. And the smell, the bitter iron that burned her throat with every breath.

A frown settled on her features, looking down at herself only to see a tight black suit that covered her entire body, metallic prongs ribbing the gear like bones. But that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was the reddish sheen reflecting off the black in wet patches, the viscid liquid entirely covering where her hands were exposed, the only trace of the suit being more boning up to her fingertips where lethal sharp claws lay, dripping with more of the claret vermillion substance.

Blood. She was covered in blood. Why was she always covered in blood?

She must have made some sort of wail of freight because then hands were grabbing her shoulders. Yelping, squirming, shrieking some more, she quickly realised the hands were turning her around, hands that were equally as bloodied and bruised. Olive shaded hands she had come to know quite well.

Hands that were stroking her hair, holding her head to try get her to calm down. All sound had run away with her in the midst of her terror, it took her a moment to understand he was talking to her.

“You’re okay, you’re alright,” He cooed, the blaring panic clear as day in her eyes as she drank him in, her mind ticking at the fact he had blood on his face too, trickled from a large gash on the side of his head down his jaw.

“Yo-you’re hurt,” Was all she could say, his big hands encompassing both sides of her head as she raised her own fingers to touch his wound gently. It was then she was reminded, as Marc unintentionally drew away from the sharp claws, that she was indeed a weapon. She would hurt him with a single touch, and then there would be more blood, his blood on her. She couldn’t bare the thought of hurting him. She’d rather cut her own throat here and now than harm him. “Marc, what did I do-”

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” He repeated, stroking the side of face carefully, her eyes turning down in utter hopelessness. Her gaze briefly wondered over his shoulder to the bodies on the floor, her breath choking in her throat at the sight of them, the blood, oh fucking god theres so much blood- “Don’t look at that, you don’t need to see that, you’re okay,” Marc shushed her as her face filled with remorse, pulling her head into his chest, circling his muscled arms around her shaking body for a tight hug.

She squashed herself against him, hugging him back just as hard with the need for his comfort, burying her face into his top, eyes squeezing shut as if to hope to erase the nasty sight of the dead in front of them.

“Marc, what have I done?”

Taglists.

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO TAGLIST

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Authors note: I’m really sorry if you’re names here and you’ve not been tagged. I have tried y so double check your settings that you are tag-able by accounts who do not follow you. Hope youse enjoyed this update!

#marc spector x reader #steven grant x reader #marc spector imagine #marc spector fanfiction #moon knight x reader #moonknight imagine #moonknight x reader #steven grant fanfiction #steven grant imagine #jake lockely fanfiction

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w0lp3rtinger · 6 months

Text

Maria, Who Smiles as She Pulls the Lever

You know how this ends. Still, Shadow and Maria. Maria and Shadow. This was meant to be, if only for one glorious, beautiful moment. (Read on A03)

This has been a labor of mine for months.

Listen I’m a bit of a masochist and I may have been obsessed with rereading the ‘unedited’ version of Ann Frank’s diary and subsequently been up late listening to the isolated vocals for ‘Cancer’ by MCR a few too many nights in a row but even then, this has been boiling over in my brain for... ages.

So here we are.

This publication would not have been possible without some tremendous characters to whom I wish to give thanks.

@biolizardboils

@shadowsfascination

@killingthecringe

@bimboamyrose

@lambpaca

@mellow-elbow

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

Maria is from Earth. Sometimes she has to remind herself of this, so that the sterile steel of the ARK doesn’t become too comfortable.

“Dziadzio Gerald will fix you and keep you safe.” “He worked so hard to get this contract.” “You need to be brave.”

This is what she remembers more than the faces.

This is what all the letters keep saying until they stop coming.

Maria works hard to stay well. When she’s well, Grandpa’s there with her, laughing with her, telling her about the work he’s doing. Grandpa is a gentle man, with big calloused hands and wily eyes magnified behind coke bottle lenses.

But the sickness grows. Illuminated x-rays and CT scans seem to almost grow against the wall like strange mold. Silent. Deadly. Grandpa gone for weeks at a time, only to appear weary and quiet as he checks her vitals before giving her new medicine.

Of course he loves her, else he wouldn’t be doing all of this, but she wishes he’d be her grandfather a little bit more and her doctor a little bit less.

Maria, being told not to leave her room.

Why did the letters stop coming?

Maria, being poked and prodded and talked over, rather than talked to or talked with.

When did she start to feel so lonely?

Maria, growing up from a toddler to a child to a teen. The sterile steel world is home now. She doesn’t even remember what flowers smell like anymore. Once, she thought her favorite was poppies. Now, she clings to the idea, even though she can only recall them in their still, cold photos from the biology book on her nightstand.

Maybe that’s why she cries tears of joy when she first spots Abraham, with his sharp pressed trousers and his two-toned eyes. And of course, this scares him. And of course, Maria chases after him as best she can.

She so badly wants a friend.

But he’s younger than she is, he doesn’t want to play the same games. He throws tantrums that leave her with deep black bruises which take ages to heal. Still, it’s frustrating when Abe asks her why she hasn’t been able to play for months, and she turns to the nurse who gives no answer.

She’s never been sure what exactly is wrong with her. Nobody will explain.

They read a lot, and when they run out of books, they make their own.

And one day, when Dziadzio is doing a checkup, with all of the wires and sensors attached to her head when she’s in that big silver tube, she just starts talking. About nothing. About everything. About how little Abe is so annoying, but fun, like a baby brother, especially when they read his kid mysteries together, or when he tells her scary stories, like that of the three-eyed monster man he swears he saw with the goblin in the jar.

When Grandfather snaps at her to be silent, she’s shocked.

Then, she seethes.

Maria, with Abe’s story running through her head.

Maria, gritting her teeth as Abe now keeps insisting, gloating even, that he knows more than she does.

Maria, sitting up in bed one night with a growl, hands bunching the scratchy hospital quilt up in her fists.

The fabric crunches in her hands, and when she beats her palms against it, it crackles. He can be such a brat! She’ll show him! She’ll find the thing he was talking about!

Over-planning is key. There’s no way she can pull off the cool sneaking tactics she’s read about. Instead, she puts on three pairs of socks, both to keep her feet warm and to dull the sound of her footsteps. A few capsules of fish oil she’s supposed to take are broken open, and she’s on the floor, gritting her teeth against the pain in her knees as she rubs its contents all over the wheels of her IV poll, willing it to keep them from squeaking.

Maria creeps through the dark. The hum of the ARK, that constant white noise of her existence, can do nothing to drown out the pounding in her ears. Her lungs are burning as she measures her breaths, knuckles white against the IV poll she’s gripping as she shuffles along. The blackness stretches forever until, from around a closed door, she sees a faint green glow.

She licks her lips as she eyes the keypad at the door, tasting iron.

No matter.

There’s only one shot at getting this code right, but she’s got a pretty good guess as to what it is. And when the lock opens with a beep after she punches in the last letter of her name, she rolls her eyes.

She pretends not to notice the shaking of her hands.

Maria, who cannot help but gasp when she sees the strange dark thing floating in a tube of radioactive green goo, like something straight out of one of Abe’s stories.

No, it is Abe’s story. There is the jar goblin.

She found it.

And it opens an eye to look at her. One dark eye, wide and wild.

Panic swells within her.

Maria, quickly shutting the door, shuffling back to her room as fast as possible. She crawls into bed, but cannot sleep. In the morning, when she is pale and sweaty, when her feet are swollen and her hands stiff, Grandfather comes in only to tell her she’s bed-bound for two weeks.

She spends the time fixated on that single eye.

When Abe slips into her room with arms full of toys and books and crawls into bed, she can’t help but smirk. She has now seen his creature. Now the two of them must keep the secret.

And she knows Abe will keep it, because despite her complaining, Maria also knows he’s probably the best baby brother anyone could ask for.

But it’s not enough.

Maria, heart pounding and fingers tingling with adventure, even if she’s still recovering from her last escapade. She starts stashing away some of her anti-inflammatory medication, keeping it tucked in the bindings of one of her books that has come loose at the spine.

That dark thing in the tube, she wants to see it again.

Abe says in the false whisper of children that he once saw it move, says that he thinks it responds to people talking.

There’s only one way to find out if he’s right.

When she snatches a nearly empty bag of morphine from the pile on the nurse’s cart, Maria almost feels guilty... almost. Just when she’s about to confess, just when she’s about to give up, the faintest flame lights up within her.

She’s angry at the time taken from her. She’s angry at this bed, at this body, at these people who keep poking and prodding and talking at her.

Maria settles down on her pillow, feeling the bag squish underneath her head. She smiles when the nurse asks if she is comfortable, and she promises that she is.

Maria, creeping through the halls, the painkillers already in place and working. She’s slower this time, she knows she has to be, but when she gets to the room, there’s an impossible excitement that builds up within her and cannot be restrained. The door barely has time to close behind her before she’s at the tube. Leaning in, she places one hand on the glass, and the eye opens once more.

Its eyes are so dark. They don’t look black, but she can’t tell what colour they’re supposed to be.

“Hello,” she whispers, smiling. “You are a strange little thing, aren’t you.”

She spends the night slowly moving around the tube, taking it in. It makes sense now why Abe called it a goblin, but Maria is pretty sure that’s just because it’s just all wrinkly skin right now, like a very ugly baby. Still, it has such a soft face. Maria can’t help but hope that whatever skin, or feathers, or- or whatever, is soft. It should be soft.

She thinks she remembers what soft is.

Maria, alone the next day as she brushes her hair, cursing the knots and the burning in her eyes, remembering how Dziadzio promised her that he’d teach her how to braid it, but that was before, and this is now.

She’s stuck in her room again.

The pain isn’t as bad as last time, but it’s still pain.

She still can’t walk.

The rage inside of Maria blooms once more as she looks at her rat's nest of a brush, and she throws it against the opposite wall with a shriek.

With tears staining her cheeks, she falls asleep and dreams.

She dreams of having thick golden hair, the kind that frames the faces of the angles on the pendants she used to get from her one aunt. But suddenly, there in her mind, she sees the dark eyes of the ugly baby. They sparkle as though they’re full of starlight. When she leans in to have a better look, suddenly, she’s falling headfirst into the open and inky void between the ARK and the planet below. Her hair, her beautiful golden hair, it grows longer and longer until it turns into wings. She tries to fly to Earth, but it just keeps getting further away no matter how hard she reaches for it.

Maria, who screams at the professor when she’s told that she can’t see Abe anymore.

“He’s too rowdy,” he keeps saying, “It’s making you sicker.”

It doesn’t matter. She can see him clutching his father’s pant leg, acting as though the camouflage of the fatigues may hide him too, as she rages against the hands trying to hold her down. Her monitor is going wild. The IV poll is overturned. Maria keeps calling his name, keeps hoping he’ll run into the room, into her arms, but instead, little Abe’s father picks him up and leaves.

She stays awake and waits for him, but Abe never arrives. She does this for three straight days.

He never arrives.

Maria, silent in her own tube, the wires and sensors all over her, staring straight ahead. The lab tech tries to make small talk, but even if Maria wanted to answer, the professor tells them to shush.

“We have work to do,” he says, “We must preserve what we have as quickly as possible.”

As if he is talking about perishable groceries. Maria can feel her nails break in her palm as she balls her hands into fists.

One of the nurses does finally bring a card from Abe. It’s a drawing of the two of them playing in a field full of flowers, a bright sun overhead wreathed in birds. Maria smashes it into a ball and throws it in the trash.

Later that evening though, she stretches as far as she can to dig through the bin and find the card. She cries as she tries to smooth its creases. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Maria, being fitted for an oxygen tube. She hasn’t had to wear one of these in a while, and can’t help but fight the nurse a little. Over their muttered curses, Maria can hear the professor in the hallway talking to some looming shape she cannot make out.

“I’m hoping the gizoid will keep them distracted, but I’m not sure how much time that will buy us. Especially if this one dies on us like the others.”

And everything in her clenches.

Maria, pouring her IV nutrients into a spare commode in the closet.

Maria, stashing vitamins away in bent bookbindings.

Maria, sweat on her brow as she pictures that tiny creature all alone in that room, darkness closing in.

They will not die. They will not die. They will not die.

Maria, who gags when she combines her ill-gotten goods into a foul slurry. With one hand over her mouth, she takes deep breaths before pulling the commode out of the closet.

She’s slow. She’s careful. She’s thankful this thing has wheels that can lock and unlock, because she’s going to use it as a walker. There is no other option if she wants to carry all of this.

She squares her shoulders and slips out into the hallway.

She will not think about how much this is going to hurt tomorrow. There’s a job to do.

Maria, who punches her own name again into the keypad, who grits her teeth as she wheels herself over to the little baby in the tube.

Their eyes flicker open when she lays her hand atop the glass. What light was in their eyes from before is fading fast.

She will not let it see her fear.

“Hello, you.”

They blink, a slow, lazy movement. She can’t help but laugh a little.

“My name is Maria. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself sooner. Don’t suppose you can tell me your name, can you?”

Silence. They blink again.

“I heard you were sick, so I’ve brought some stuff that might make you better.” she says as she moves around the tube, looking. “It won’t taste good, but… ah!”

There are two large drums that hook into where the little thing floats silently, and they open when Maria presses a button on top. She can see the same green liquid, viscus and thick, as it is slapped about by a rotating filter.

There’s no way she can lift the commode up to pour everything in.

Maria, who stays there for well over an hour. She’s cupping the nutrients in her hands, letting it go through her fingers and into the vortex below.

She hasn’t prayed in a long time. Truthfully she’s not even sure a god would listen.

Instead, she just hopes.

She hopes the filter won’t suck all of her hard work away, hopes she doesn’t get caught, hopes that maybe, please, maybe, the ugly baby will live.

When she has to take a break, she closes the lid of the commode and sits there, watching those large eyes watch her back, and somehow, she finds the will to keep hoping.

Maybe she’ll find out what colour their eyes become, if this all goes right.

By the time Maria gets back to bed, it’s nearly morning. Her limbs ache, and she can’t eat breakfast, but she’s grinning from ear to ear.

Maria, writing letters back and forth with Abe for weeks through the nurse whose name she now knows is Eleni. Eleni, with dark eyes, and dark skin, and the darkest, curliest hair that Maria had ever seen in her life. She can’t help but feel a bit guilty that she’s never taken the time to get to know this woman. Eleni doesn’t care though. She waves a hand, “You have been sick, too sick for anything else, and you’ve only gotten sicker since they took that little boy away. You have nothing to apologize for.”

And Eleni says she comes from Apotos, and Eleni sighs wistfully about the way the breeze smelled coming in from the ocean, and Eleni talks with both hands about the way the sun burned into dusk over the olive groves near her home.

Eleni, Eleni, Eleni.

Maria repeats it, paying attention to the way her mouth and tongue and teeth come together around her name.

She feels so bad when she steals front the medcart now, but somehow, she thinks that Eleni would understand.

Perhaps that’s just to ease her conscience.

Maria, who feels a gloom call from the hallway.

“And how does Project Shadow proceed?”

There is no voice, and yet, the words cut the air like the imagined hiss of a very real gas leak. It conjures strange visions of swirling pitch behind Maria’s eyes.

Every hair she has left is on end.

A threat. It moves, it breathes, as a threat.

But then there is her grandfather’s familiar rumble of a voice, low and tumbled on his tombstone teeth. She’s almost grateful the speaker and the professor go further down the hall, away from her doorway, taking the murk with them.

That night, she holds her pillow tight and curls inward, as if her whole body can protect the name it dropped in the hallway, the name she now keeps tucked in her own mouth. She imagines spikes growing from her, like great big sharp spines, keeping them safe by filling the room to the point where that voice and its owner would never be able to get near them again.

Still, it haunts her.

“Are you Shadow?” she asks, standing at the tank as she dries her hands off on the skirts of her shift.

The baby is now covered in dark fur, rich and deep, with little curls in the quills atop their tiny head. There’s a little scarlet, too, starting to show from under the black almost like the faint fingers of a polar aurora as they stretch toward the equator. What makes her most excited though, are their eyes. They’re a livid red now, flecked with gold, wide and wild. When they tilt their head at her words, it’s hard not to imagine an actual glint of curiosity flashing in them.

She giggles. “I wasn’t sure at first if that was a good name for you. In fact, I had started a list of alternatives.”

Maria tilts her head opposite the way the little baby tilts theirs. After a moment, it adjusts to match her.

“Darkness is just darkness. I know the books and all try to make it out to be something bigger, but it’s not.” She shakes her head. “But the more I thought about it… well, maybe it is fitting. You can always turn to a shadow to find the light, you know. That’s sort of poetic. At least, I think so.”

Maria purses her lips against the tightness in her heart. When she rests her hand against her chin, bowing her head to think, they copy her.

She laughs, and the gloominess is dispelled.

And she keeps laughing every time she thinks about that moment, even if it hurts.

Maria, who keeps visiting the baby in the tube, though now she has to admit it looks less like a baby and more like a- well, she’s not sure. Her grandfather used to show her photographs and sketches of ancient artifacts from excavations on the Earth below, things that inspired him with his research.

Perhaps this is to look like that one thing in that mural he is so fond of.

Maria sneers. She knows the professor only likes that mural because he thinks the other figure depicted there in the ancient tilework is him.

How egotistical.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she will not let Shadow die.

There are nights where, with tears staining her cheeks, she falls asleep and dreams of Shadow, dreams of them growing the most beautiful dark curls, dreams of knowing how to braid so that she can teach them how to braid, dreams of being friends.

There are nights when she hears that murky whispering in her head though, and the dreams turn to nightmares.

Eyes, watching. Thoughts, hissing. A hunger unlike anything else, eating.

Maria, who in the morning wakes up and draws her and the tube baby dancing together on the backsides of used sticky notes. She can’t get the stars right. They always end up upside down. It doesn’t matter though. In this moment, all she thinks about is watching Shadow learn to crawl, to walk, to run, to dance. She wants to teach them how to dance. She wants to grab them and run through the halls to dance through the wide space of the observatory like she used to.

She wants them to dance for hours on end until they run out of breath and their feet are sore.

Maria hums a tune she heard Eleni singing.

She keeps humming even as she shreds the drawings to hide her dreams.

Maria, who finds one day she cannot hold the pencil. Her hands feel numb, fingers thick and fumbling. She keeps trying, but it doesn’t get any better no matter what she does, so she hides it. Everything becomes gross motor. Everything becomes careful. Her hands don’t need to be perfect in order to take what she needs, but she still needs to fit the part of perfect patient.

So she is patient.

But Maria can’t steal the used IV bags anymore, can’t cup her hands to move the slurry from the commode to the vats anymore. She has to change tactics.

Maria, who holds onto a shaky smile for her little friend as they watch her struggle to flip her sweater pocket inside out and shake the fat pills into the swirling tank water below.

“You’re getting so big,” she whispers, “I knew you could make it. I’m so proud of you, Shadow.”

Maria places a hand to the glass and watches amazed as they lift their own and try to press it against hers. They’re so close. They’re right there. Only a thin panel of glass separating their two palms.

And all the little hand-drawn, upside-down stars in her head alight.

But the empty days start to become longer, become worse.

These are the hours where she is too tired to think.

These are the moments when she can’t even cry.

The next time she sees the professor, it’s been ages. He’s smiling. She had almost forgotten what that looked like, but there he is, mustache twitching upwards as he throws his hands into the air.

“I have wonderful news,” Grandpa says as his big hands settle on her bony shoulders. “We have potentially found a cure.”

Maria can’t speak, let alone understand much of what is being said. That doesn’t matter. The professor just keeps talking about his latest medical advancements until Eleni comes in for the evening meds and tells him he has to leave.

There’s no letter from Abe this time.

She doesn’t sleep that night.

The rage boiling in her doesn’t let her rest.

Maria, watching the injection dissipate through her skin as it enters her bloodstream. There’s a golden glint to it, glittering like what she imagines fairy dust to glitter like, moving like what she imagines ambrosia to move like. Still, there’s something about it that stops her cold if she squints too hard. Maria takes measured breaths through her nose, expression blank, as the professor lectures the attending aids and scientists on what is happening.

Then, she recognizes it. That glowing pallor. Even if the red hue underneath it is vibrant and rich, and the golden glitter shines so invitingly, she would know that glow from anywhere.

All it takes is one attendant to point at her spiking heart rate and it all goes south fast.

She stares at her hands in the dark of the room when it’s all over. Her skin carries that light within it now, a soft radiance, and she swears to herself that if they hurt her friend, she will cut these hands of hers apart to return what was taken.

But the next day, she can pick up a pencil again.

She can talk again.

She hates it. Hates the professor, hates the nurses, hates the scientists and the attending aids and the way it takes the blood of her little friend to feel this alive again.

She hates herself.

It’s another month before the professor finally outfits Maria in an electric wheelchair. It’s not particularly fast, but it doesn’t need to be. He says he didn’t do it sooner because they didn’t see her as being strong enough. The professor laughs at this while he ruffles what is left of her hair. She’s been so good, he says. She’s gotten so much better.

Maria smiles to hide her gritted teeth.

She imagines the flesh of his hand between them.

She wants to see Shadow. Needs to see them. Every night in her mind she walks herself down the hallway. The pinpad appears on the ceiling of her room like a mirage, and she has found herself reaching out a hand to input her name.

How dare it be her name. How DARE he use her name in that way. Like this is even about her anymore.

But she must be on her best behavior, no matter what happens. She will do whatever they ask of her, smiling.

She’s worried they’ll take her new wheelchair away if she doesn’t, and she’s already figured out how to take the speed limiter off.

“You can say something if we’re pushing you too hard.” All the nurses say that. It’s the first thing out of everyone’s mouth when she slips up, and it loops like a broken record around the room.

But she just shakes her head and keeps on smiling.

In her dreams, she floats in space with her golden hair and golden wings and her little Shadow, where together they watch the ARK sail straight into the sun.

When did she become so angry?

It frightens her some days, but then pain sets in and she remembers.

They will not take everything from her. They might try, but they won’t succeed.

Maria, back in her wires, in her tube. She doesn’t even feel it when they push the needle into her anymore, her wrists and inner elbows pockmarked by the years spent watching a slow dripping life.

But now, she’s watching the life of her little friend, bagged and hooked up to her IV pole. Now, she’s watching that spark in their eye, distilled and packaged and scrubbed for her consummation, make its way down the tube.

She hates it. Get it out. Make it stop.

Stop.

But Maria is so, so tired.

Was this the moment to say they were pushing her too hard? Or had that moment passed? Or had it only been offered as a formality?

It had been so long since she had been here. She forgot how tight and lonely it is inside the tube, and she wonders if this is how Shadow feels all the time.

Where is her little friend? She wants to hold her little friend.

She doesn’t realize she fell asleep until she wakes with a start, back in her own room, in her bed. When she presses a hand to her eyes with a yawn, she hears something shift beside her.

There sits the professor, watching.

He’s not smiling.

“Maria, is there something you have to tell me?” He says, but the way he speaks has that coiling, hissing gloom within it.

She says no, and she says no as sweetly as she can, hiding the way her heart monitor starts to go faster by sitting up in bed and feigning dizziness. Normally, that works.

It doesn’t this time.

“Maria, I need you to tell me. What is the little creature you keep harping on about?”

She freezes at that.

What has she done? Did she say something in her sleep?

But again, she says no.

“You’re lying to me.”

How does he know?

Just an imaginary friend, nothing more.

“Maria, what have you done?”

It’s like he’s reading her thoughts.

It’s been lonely since they said she and Abe can’t play. Please, she’s tired. Please, go away.

Instead, he stands up, reaching for her with wide empty eyes.

Eleni saves the day just in time. “Doesn’t your granddaughter need rest, sir?” The words break across her teeth, as if she is shattering a glass in warning.

The professor doesn’t even react. He just stands there, still watching Maria. It takes Eleni using the call bell to get help from the aids to remove him, and even then, he turns his head to stare as he leaves.

It is the first time Maria has cried in a long time.

Eleni holds her. She puts Maria’s head to her chest and rocks softly, humming the song she loves so much in that voice she loves so much, smelling of something that makes her heart cave in around a black hole of hurt.

It’s Eleni who dries her tears and teaches her how to braid.

She takes sets of spare shoelaces from the nurse's supply room and spends hours with her, going over all sorts of different techniques. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she whispers everything like it’s a secret until all that fills Maria’s head is the soft sounds of her voice that roll over her brain like ocean waves.

Eleni lets Maria keep the shoelaces, and Maria stays up all night practicing to beat back the memory of how the professor looked at her.

Maria, weeks later, who sits up in bed when Abe walks in. It’s been- how long has it been? How much time has passed since she has seen him. He’s gotten taller, and his face has gained a sharp edge around the chin.

They stay there, watching one another. An aid tries to chip through the silence with a few surface-level pleasantries, but neither one of them give. Ultimately, the aid leaves.

Abe steps forward. “We need to get you out of here.”

How much can a voice change? And how severe can a person become? The boy standing before her now is no longer the baby brother she had loved. No, this person is a stranger, both the boy and the weight he seemed to carry about his shoulders.

Maria stays silent.

“Something bad is going to happen.” Abe walks closer, but stops short of the bed. He could reach out, he could sit down. Instead, he stands there, just a little over an arm's distance away.

Something bad has been happening. He just hasn’t been paying attention. Brat. Selfish brat. She wants to hug him and cry as much as she wants to beat him with her IV pole. Where has he been? Why did he stop writing?

Abe isn’t looking at her. His gaze is fixed on nothing over her shoulder as his hands slowly come up and twist their fingers into knots before him. “That thing the professor talks with, it’s been hanging around, and my dad’s been getting nervous. He’s been talking on the phone he’s not suppose to have. That’s bad.”

Maria grits her teeth, hands curling into fists in her sheets. Abe’s gaze finally shifts to hers, hard as stone.

“We have a plan. When we go to leave, I’ll come get you. You can’t tell anyone though, got it?”

She nods, and Abe leaves.

Jokes on him. She’ll already be gone.

Maria, braiding the laces over and over as cold fire certainty seeps into her bones. Abe might not have the patience to get many details in his stories right, but he did have a good sense of danger.

She looks at her hands. Perhaps it is just her imagination, but she swears she can still see her veins glowing faintly.

They’ll both be long gone.

It feels like every day is a day in eternity, waiting to see them again. She has nightmares of the light in her veins growing brighter as the light in their own eyes fade. Her friend shrivels before her, curling into a ball as their skin turns ashen. Eyes struggle to stay open, rolling under closing lids, breathing labored and heavy as they try to look for her and can’t.

Maria, drowning in her golden hair, screams and screams and screams.

Her hands still hurt when she wakes from visions of trying to break the glass.

But finally, she is well enough. Finally, she can be with her friend.

The braiding shoelaces in her hand shake, soaking in sweat, as she checks to make sure they are alright.

“I don’t know how well you can see,” she mutters as she knots the laces around the head support of a nearby office chair at the base of Shadow’s tube. “How’s that? Is that okay?”

When she looks up, she can’t help but smile. They’ve gotten so big. The colour along their arms and legs is a deep and healthy red, their eyes bright and alert.

Those quills, oh, those thick dark curls, just like Maria had dreamed, streaked through with that red.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I had hoped you’d be.”

Shadow bends down slowly in their tube, crouching toward the bottom to come closer to where Maria sits. It was then she noticed the faint eruption of white hairs coming in just under their collarbone, over their heart.

She smiles. “Still so full of surprises.”

It takes another two months for Shadow’s chest fur to come in. It’s a beautiful shock of white against the black, like a moon against the infinite sky.

Reflecting the light, pointing the way.

Maria imagines what it will feel like as she runs her fingers through the fresh peach fuzz on top of her head.

Shadow really is a poetic name.

Maria whispers their name over and over, placing it next to hers.

Shadow and Maria. Maria and Shadow. Say it often enough and it sounds like it’s meant to be true.

They are friends. It doesn’t matter that they’ve never held hands, or braided for each other, or danced.

Though she really wants to dance.

They are friends. She etches it into the wall behind her headboard with an errant safety pin just to see it somewhere that cannot be erased.

Maria and Shadow.

One day. One day. It’ll happen. Shadow will be strong enough to get out of the tube and they’ll do whatever they want forever.

But she’s out of time now.

There is screaming, and gunshots, and screaming, and bursting pressure valves, and screaming, and crying, and just so much screaming.

Maria, who leaves Abe in the care of Eleni, telling her of Abe and his father’s plan, telling Abe to take her and run, telling them both to be safe.

There’s so many tears. There’s so many grabbing hands.

The way Abe’s big eyes glow under the red lights, the way Eleni’s voice snaps when she screams her name.

Maria, rocketing down the hall as fast as she can. Even with the limiters removed from her wheelchair, she feels like she is moving in slow motion. The flashing lights throw strange shapes across her vision, things that make her jump away from the edges of hallways and peer around corners.

She hopes Abe and his dad will keep Eleni safe. She doesn’t want to think about what might happen if Abe’s father says no.

Maria’s wheelchair skids to a halt just outside the door. She measures her breathing as she stands to push her name into the pinpad. The thundering of boots is getting closer and closer.

They round the corner just as she slips in through the door. There’s no time to get back in the wheelchair and bring it inside.

“Shadow!” She’s gasping, stumbling towards the tank. “We’ve got to go!”

And Shadow looks at her, eyes blazing.

The inquisitive brow, the near ethereal calm they normally possess, is gone. Now, there is a panic in them, palpable and real as they spin in helpless circles. She watches them shake as she collapses atop the console.

Maria, pushing every button she can, throwing every switch. Lights start to flash. Somewhere, there is a high-pitched beeping, followed by a low-toned alarm. Nothing works. It’s all in lockdown.

They’re spinning faster.

There’s shouting from the other side of the door. More gunshots. Down a hallway, there is the sound like a bomb going off. Something roars.

She freezes at the horrid, strangled sound. What could have caused that? What has the professor really been doing?

Focus.

She strikes the glass with a snarl as she viciously tugs on the lever, but nothing budges.

She smacks the tube again. Something in her wrist cracks. It doesn’t matter. She clenches her hands and beats the glass.

Again.

She’s screaming.

Again.

She’s beating the glass with her firsts and screaming. Every atom of her being seems to burst into flame as the rage she’s worked so hard to keep in check bursts forth from her skin.

Again.

Her forehead is pressed to the cool glass, though it does nothing to dull the burning ache in her brain. Tears stream down her face, and she’s biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, when suddenly, she feels a thump.

Then there’s another thump, a rippling vibration, and Maria snaps to attention.

Shadow is hitting the glass. It’s gentle, but they’re doing it, eyes darting between two sets of fists under that perpetually knotted brow.

Maria, gasping, smiles.

“That’s it.” she says, “just like that!”

And she hits the tube with both hands, making sure Shadow can see her, making sure they can understand just how hard she’s trying.

“You can do it. I know you can. Come on, Shadow!”

There’s a pause. Something comes over Shadow’s face, an expression she doesn’t know the name for. As they rear back, she swears she sees a flash of that green glow in their eyes just before they slam the glass with clenched fists.

The tube does more than shatter, it explodes. Maria ducks just as water and glass go flying. Overhead the alarms reach a new frenzied pitch, then buzz, then break their speakers. Bulbs buzz brightly and burst.

It’s dark, save for a few errant lights on the edges of the room. As the last tinkling pieces settle on the floor, she looks up.

And there they are.

Finally.

Maria, grinning so hard it hurts. She watches them take their first breath, chest expanding as their eyes go wide, as their hands come up in front of them like they’re just now seeing them for the first time.

Finally.

Maria, laughing, sobbing, as she struggles to her feet, only to fall forward as she wraps her little Shadow in the tightest hug she can.

Finally.

He’s so gross. Slippery and soggy and damp. It doesn’t matter.

Maria and Shadow.

Shadow and Maria.

Together at last.

Maria, who wants to say so much, who wants to do so much, but there’s no time. There are soldiers outside, their guns still warm. They may think to check here. They may beat down the door to shoot her where she stands, and what is she doing?

Hanging off of her friend, her knees give out underneath her as her lungs struggle to catch the air. The room is spinning, but she feels Shadow’s arms come up and around her, she feels them hold her, hug her back.

Their quills are cold to the touch and smooth like laquer, but the fluff of their chest, damp as it is- she knew they would be soft, she knew it.

There’s another boom, closer this time. She holds Shadow tighter.

It’s getting so hard to see.

Maria, who tries to be brave, who takes a deep breath she cannot keep as she looks into her friend’s wide, innocent stare.

“There’s an escape pod room. I-I think I can figure out the way. If we get there, then we’re free.”

Her voice is a rough whisper, but swallowing just makes her throat hurt. Instead, she takes Shadow’s hand in hers and smiles as she points to the door.

Their first steps to the door are tottering, unsure ventures, and she cannot help but groan when she sees the broken remains of her wheelchair. But it’s fine. This is fine. Her knees are screaming. If only for just this moment, she wants to take it slow.

She’ll need her energy when they make a run for it.

Maria and Shadow, looking up and down the hallway. Shadow just stares, tightening and relaxing their grip on her hand. Though she would love to marvel at the feeling, her hair is standing on end as she listens with bated breath.

But no one is coming.

Maybe there is no one left.

Maria and Shadow, shuffling down the hall. It’s all small steps and furtive glances. The gunfire sounds further away now, moving toward the ARKs core. She swears she can feel the floor shake beneath her feet, and wonders if something has exploded below.

From the belly of the beast, she hears another roar and shivers.

“Left,” she says. It comes out as a croak.

Shadow just looks at her. Maria has to point, and then lead them down the hallway to the left, to get them to understand.

Maria and Shadow, wandering the halls. Neither say much. Truthfully, there’s nothing Maria can think of to say. Her whole body feels like it’s being shaken apart by her own frail bones

But her little friend’s hand feels so warm in hers.

She sees blood.

“Wait.”

Shadow looks at her again, at her hand tugging on their own. The growing pool of blood creeps closer, closer, closer to the tips of their bare toes against the steel.

They step back to her.

Maria licks her lips.

“Close your eyes.”

She tries to pantomime for Shadow to understand. It’s not working. All she accomplishes is that slow, lazy blink. Maria pulls them to her, turning them around as she rests her forearms on their shoulders and covers their eyes with her hands. She pushes lightly, and they walk forward.

Good. She can do this. She can do this.

Maria and Shadow, rounding the corner. The body is slumped against the wall closest to them. Maria’s mind played tricks, told her she surely knew them, but that grey hair and those wrinkles could have belonged to anyone. She swallows as she leads Shadow forward, wincing against the warmth as the blood soaks into her socks.

Focus

She doesn’t want to look at the body.

In the periphery of her vision, she sees the brackish red smattering their teeth.

Her eyes narrow on the center of Shadow’s quills.

She doesn’t remove her hands until they make it to the other side, down the hall, and around the corner. The bile in her throat burns, but her little friend will not see. They will not know.

Maria and Shadow, their hands slowly coming up to cover hers atop their eyes, and she pulls them away. As they look around, their gaze begins to drift towards their feet, towards the bloody footprints they have left behind them.

“Don’t!” The word snaps in her mouth like a firecracker.

Keep their eyes on her.

Maria catches their face in her hands. She turns them toward her, and maybe she is gripping too hard, and maybe they know something is wrong, but she smiles against her singed tongue anyway.

“It’s nothing. We have to keep going. Okay?”

She nods. After a moment, Shadow nods too, and Maria’s smile softens.

The hallway behind them collapses in a burst of fire.

Maria and Shadow, falling to the floor. Smoke and ash fill her lungs as her ears pop from the sudden change in pressure. She reaches for them, curls one arm about their thrashing head and the other around their body as she pulls them under her as best she can.

Not that she could shield them from much, but that will not stop her from trying.

It’s all too much. The burst of heat that throws her skirt about her knees, the sudden onrush of gunfire and popping flames. Her legs feel useless. They kick and fail and can gain no purchase against the steel, but she has to find something. If she doesn’t—

There’s that roar, louder, closer. Maria lifts her head just enough to see a soldier screaming as it pours bullets into something moving through the din.

She covers Shadow’s ears just before it gets to the soldier. The sound it makes–

She gags, looking away.

They have to run.

She can’t run.

She has to find a way.

Maria and Shadow, sliding slowly down their dangling piece of hallway. Maria reaches out to grab a piece of twisted rebar. She can feel the flesh of her hand prickle against the heat.

Her grip tightens.

They will not die here.

From seemingly nowhere, there are soldiers flooding their hallway. They’re yelling, pointing. One lifts their gun to aim.

She clutches Shadow tighter to her.

And in an instant, they’re gone.

The monster rises from the dark corner, trailing behind its arm that now lies embedded within the chest of the soldier. The man twitches like a puppet, limbs jerking as their head rolls back onto their shoulders, before being cast aside.

Pandemonium.

Gunfire and flames, explosions, sirens. It is too much. An errant bullet tears through her nightgown and on instinct she recoils, almost losing her grip.

Figure it out. She has to figure this out. She has to get them out.

“Shadow!” Maria looks at her little friend, uncovering his ears as she shifts her grip. “I need you to help me.”

They just stare, fear in every inch of their face.

“I need you to pull me up.”

Can they understand her? Do they know what she’s asking for?

She hoists her arm holding him as best as she is able, just a little, then pulls on the arm clinging to the rebar. Joints pop. Tendons strain.

She wants to cry so badly, but she will not. She will be brave. They have made it so far.

And against all odds, she sees the light of understanding come through the fear in Shadow’s eyes.

Shadow twists out of her grasp. They move in ways they shouldn’t, their body contorting as claws reach out and pierce the steel of the dangling hallway floor like it is made of cotton. Shadow doesn’t crawl. They scuttle. It’s the only word she can find to describe what she is witnessing. They scuttle like a bug up the floor and out of the hole back into the hallway.

Don’t think about it too hard.

And then their hands come down, red and black and clawed, but still such gentle palms, and with one movement, it grabs her own hand still clinging to the rebar and gives an almighty tug.

And she flies up-

(her shoulder dislocates)

- and out of the hole.

The impact against the floor forces the air from her, releases the sounds of pain she has kept locked tight for so long. She’s gasping, choking and coughing on tears.

“Damn it.” She curls in on herself, clutching her shoulder. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

Shadow and Maria, there on the floor.

Safe, but for how long?

Her little friend is crouched next to her, huddling over her, and through watering eyes, she realizes they are trying to shield her just as she did them. Their face is close, eyes etching a pattern into her skin as they rove across her.

They’re afraid.

For her, of her - doesn’t matter.

Maria takes her good arm, the one that can still move, and lifts it to pat Shadow’s face.

“Thank you,” she says softly. “You did such a good job, and you’re being so brave. I’m so proud of you.”

Their eyes soften.

But this moment cannot last.

Maria and Shadow, one dragging the other to their feet, stumbling down the hall. She swears they’re close to the escape pod room, but she can’t be sure. And then what? She not sure she’ll know how to work the controls. Nobody ever told her. Nobody ever thought Maria Robotnick, after all the attempts at saving her Grandfather has done over the years, would have to save herself, let alone her little friend.

Maria grits her teeth. Nobody ever thought she could do anything by herself, and here she is, not even able to walk alone.

Useless arm. Useless legs. Useless, useless. She was too slow. Deadweight walking. The sounds of gunfire behind them echoes through the hallway. She’s going to get them killed. She should have just told Shadow to leave. Maybe then it would have been her body slumped against the wall, her blood they would have to run through, but at least they could run.

But who saved Shadow in the first place?

She looked to her little friend, who looked back up at her with those wide, bright eyes.

Maria feels her heart beat in her chest. It vibrates in her fingertips, shakes the air in her lungs as she breathes.

She did. She saved them.

Her good hand grips Shadow’s shoulder.

“Right,” she whispers, pointing.

Shadow carefully steers them around the corner, and there stands the door she’s been looking for. The sign panel next to it is a little melted, the floor pockmarked with bullet holes from one level down, but it’s a door, and it looks like the power here is still on.

Shadow doesn’t have to worry about the raw-edged metal around the holes in the floor, but Maria does. She stands on her toes, ankles wobbling, as she opens the panel next to the door. A hand scanner, not a pin pad, stares back at her.

She breathes a sigh of relief as she places her hand atop the screen.

Shadow hisses.

Maria fumbles, turning around to see Shadow’s eyes wide, claws and teeth bared. No longer do they look like her sweet, soft friend. In this moment, they are alien. The sound coming from them – maybe it isn’t a hiss, maybe it’s something else– there’s a strange clicking in there somewhere- it echoes along the hallway, rolling like a rogue marble, only getting louder as it goes on.

Maria grabs him by the head, palm flat against his quills.

“Stop! Someone will-!”

She turns a little further, and there, turning back around down the hall, was a soldier.

Shadow’s hissing grows louder. Maria could feel their quills under her hand bristle and bite flesh. The soldier seemed frozen in place.

Then, the door opens.

Maria, grabbing Shadow and falling backwards through the opening, rolling out of the way as a shot rings out. The door closes behind them again and two deep dents break its sterile smoothness.

Shadow wriggles in her arms, teeth gnashing they try to break free. Maria clings to them tighter.

“Shh!” Maria doesn’t have a good grip. “Shh- it’s okay! We’re okay! Shadow, please!”

She pets them even though it hurts her hands. It’s the only thing she can think to do. For a moment, Shadow goes still. Their gaze flickers back to her, and Maria can see them recognize her once more.

The soldier beats his fist against it. “You need to open this door! If you don’t, I can’t guarantee your safety!”

Shadow’s hackles start to rise once more.

“Ignore him!” It comes out as a wail despite her best efforts, “Leave him alone, we’re almost out of here!”

“Open the door!”

“No!”

Maria and Shadow, one dragging the other. She’s doing her best but they’re being so stubborn, and she’s only got one working arm. Tears are rolling down her face as her knees scream in protest. She can see the last escape pod right there, in the middle of the room. And there, against the wall, that looks like the control panel. If she can figure it out, they’ll be out of here!

But Shadow is not making this easy. They want to fight, but there is no time to fight.

“Go!” Maria points to the open pod. “Go stand there! Now!”

Shadow won’t comply. It’s getting hard to touch them, let alone hold them. Their quills pierce her skin like needles.

With a snarl, Maria changes directions, moving for the escape pod with Shadow in tow. She has to push and shove to get them up and inside, but eventually, they get the message.

Behind her, there is a burst of gunfire, and then the door is forced open.

Maria’s hand hits the red button at the base of the escape pod faster than she can think. In an instant, the glass door comes down between her and Shadow. She can hear Shadow’s muffled screaming as she turns to face the gun.

“Stop!”

Maria blinks. She looks past the shaking barrel to the person holding it, watching as they seem to almost shrink as she makes eye contact with them through their visor.

They’re a boy, not much older than her. It’s obvious as soon as she sees it. They’re just a boy.

The gun jerks.

“Get away from there.” There’s a hard edge to his voice, a falsehood of control. He’s trying to be brave, just like she is.

She hears thumping behind her, the screaming getting louder. Maria is sure if she were to look, she would see Shadow pounding on the glass.

The boy cocks his gun and fires a shot just to the side of her, making her jump.

“I said get away from there!”

The lights in the room flicker

Something shifts deep within, and for a moment, Maria is outside of herself looking in, watching, knowing what is coming. The anger- that burning furious need to cry, to scream, to fight- in an instant, it is choked out by the crystalline peace that floods her soul.

She hasn’t prayed in a long time.

Maria, slowly reaching behind her and grabbing the lever labled ‘emergency’ at the base of the escape pod.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” The boy is yelling again, but that can’t hide the fact his gun is shaking in his hands.

She’s not even sure a god would listen, but it doesn’t matter.

Maria, slowly turning to Shadow to look one last time at the light in those wide, bright eyes. It’s as if the two of them are alone in the silent vacuum of space. Everything is cold. The view is clear.

Shadow and Maria. Maria and Shadow. This was meant to be, if only for one glorious, beautiful moment.

She hopes she’s been a good enough friend, hopes the escape pod does its job, hopes that maybe, please, maybe, Shadow will get to Earth, and live, and be happy.

Maria, who smiles as she pulls the lever.

77 notes · View notes

fanficimagery · 2 years

Text

Forging a New Path

When your best friend ignores you for his girlfriend of the month one too many times, you open yourself up to a new friendship that eventually evolves into something more.

Words: 8.2K Author's Note: Stranger Things AU - no Upside Down. Eddie will also be moving to Hawkins at the beginning of your and Robin's senior year.

High school wasn't as terrible as you had feared, but you are so ready for your senior year to be done and over with after only a week of it.

One would think that you were over your senior year because of the onslaught of work or because of bullies, but nope. You were over it because out of every possible scenario, it was your best friend who made you feel a bit awkward and ready to move on.

Sitting atop the table of a concrete bench just outside of the school, you're talking through your English assignment with Robin when someone knocks into your knees. Your smile falters as you look up and your best friend grins, turning so his back is towards you and wiggling between your knees to rest. Your jaw clenches as you lean back, refusing to wrap your arms around his shoulders like you would have had it been last year. Robin arches an eyebrow at you, but you chuckle softly and shake your head at her, so she knows to drop it.

As more and more of your friend group show up, Robin takes her leave to get ready for her first period band class and you find yourself leaning forward. Your left hand ends up on your best friend's shoulder, fingers tapping rhythmically against his neck.

With less than five minutes to the first bell, a dual-tone colored van screeches into the student parking lot. Everyone watches as the driver and passenger doors open, followed by the side door being slid open. Several familiar looking freshmen scramble out of the van, but it's the driver who draws your attention.

You can hear your friends wondering about the newcomer, but you're not adding much to the conversation other than a hum here and there. Instead, you're solely focused on the shaggy-haired individual who the freshmen are looking up at with adoration in their eyes. The denim vest and leather jacket combo pique your interest and your breath lightly hitches when brown doe eyes meet yours as they approach the entrance doors.

A smile blossoms across the newcomer's face which makes his eyes crinkle at the corners and dimples appear, and you mentally swoon. Oh no. He's cute!

Letting your lips twitch into a faint grin, you nod in greeting, but then pressure around your thigh draws your attention to your best friend who's staring up at you with an unimpressed expression. "Are you done eye-fucking the new dude?"

His tone makes your friends laugh and you grit your teeth, but you paste on a smile. "Nope. Still have all day." The bell finally rings, and you push at your friend until he gets up so you can walk off to your first class of the day.

You seriously couldn't wait for graduation.

. . . .

Lunchtime rolls around and Eddie Munson is surrounded by his people.

Well, mostly.

There's Jeff, Gareth, and Tommy- three juniors who happen to have the same taste in music and style as him, and then a handful of freshmen he'd picked up that morning when one of their bikes had a flat tire and he decided to be a good guy and drive them to school. The one thing they all had in common, however, was that they were all fans of Dungeons and Dragons, and he couldn't wait to start planning their first campaign since he clued them in to the fact that he was a fantastic dungeon master.

As he nibbles on the soggy fries the school has to offer, Eddie's gaze travels over the different cliques at Hawkins High. This school was nothing like the school he attended before where all cliques were set in stone. There were the usual jocks, the stoners, the band geeks, and the art nerds, but the thing that threw him for a loop was the fact that there were two different cliques of metalheads.

He was part of the metalheads that had a knack for playing a fantasy game whereas the other group of metalheads consisted of actual metalheads, a couple of jocks, and a few band geeks who all seemed to have music and style in common.

And then there was you- YN YLN, or so he's heard- a girl who flitted from clique to clique, garnering smiles and greetings instead of rude comments as he would have expected from the jocks. You were part of the second group of metalheads, even if it confused him a bit since you didn't seem like you would belong to that group.

As Eddie continues to watch you, his mood dips when he watches the same boy who'd been sitting between your knees that morning appear, making you scoot your chair back as he takes a seat on your knee even though there are two empty chairs on either side of you. You smile at the boy but slap his hand away and shove him off your knee when he starts picking food from your tray.

"What's up with those two?" He finally asks, determined to get to the bottom of whatever's going on between you and the boy.

Jeff, Gareth, and Will are the only boys seated on the one side of the table to where they don't have to turn to see where Eddie's staring. Will shrugs, not knowing who he's speaking about, but Jeff and Gareth chuckle.

"She caught your attention, didn't she?" Gareth muses.

Eddie pops another fry into his mouth, dragging his gaze away for a few seconds. "She doesn't really belong to one group."

Jeff shakes his head. "She's a chameleon, man. Her brother was a jock and made a name for himself. He graduated right before she made it to high school, but all the jocks that played on a team with her brother kind of looked out for her after. She's friends with a lot of people, but her main group is wherever that guy James is. Those two have been attached at the hip for years."

"Are you talking about YN YLN?" Dustin asks, smiling as he glances over his shoulder to spot the girl in question. "We've only started high school this year, but even we knew about YN down at the middle school."

"Really? Why?" Eddie asks.

"Her and her best friend are kind of infamous around here."

"Best friend?" Eddie's eyebrow arches, glancing back at you and your friends.

"Yep." Gareth takes a bite out of a chicken strip. "Her and James are close- touchier than normal friends. They've never dated, but with the way James is around her it'd make you think there were some feelings there."

"Everyone figured they'd finally date this year, but I don't know," Tommy singsongs. "I have the two of them in second period and something definitely happened over summer."

"Good or bad?" Gareth perks up at the potential new gossip.

"Definitely bad." Tommy eats some more of his food. "Things were awkward between the both of them at first, but James quickly went back to normal. YN, on the other hand, seems uncomfortable when James is nearby. I swear that I saw him attach himself to her side and tangle their fingers together, but YN let him go and made an excuse to quickly speak with the teacher so she could get out of her seat."

"Huh. Interesting..." Eddie drawls.

"Mhm. Yeah. Sure," Mike says. "Moving on now. When can we play D&D?"

Another couple of weeks pass you by and it's gotten easier, more interesting, and it's all thanks to the new guy Eddie Munson and the freshmen he's apparently taken under his wing. You've yet to talk to Eddie, only smiling at each other when passing each other by in the hallways, but you have two freshmen- Dustin and Mike- in your PE class where you got to speak to them here and there. They're such nerds, but they're also such a breath of fresh air.

And even though James had gotten clingier, you knew it was only a matter of time before he had himself a girlfriend and was ignoring you once more in order to assure the girlfriend that there was absolutely nothing between you and him. You're used to this behavior by now and while you should feel grateful that his attention is elsewhere, you also kind of hate it because James is your best friend.

You just really wish he had never made it all awkward right before the start of your senior year and could go back to the way things were.

. . . .

You're sitting outside for lunch this time, enjoying the crisp breeze while nibbling on a small bag of chips and sipping on a Coke. You're zoned out, not really paying attention to your surroundings, that when someone says something to you, you can't help the words that follow.

"Hey. YN, right?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

"..." Eddie Munson slowly grins at you, freezing from where he'd been about to take a seat across from you at the picnic table. "What?"

"What?" You blink at him. When your words register in your brain, you feel the tips of your ears burn in embarrassment.

He takes a seat, chuckling softly. "I have no idea what you're talking about, but now I'm curious. What didn't you do on purpose?"

You gape at him. "I-" His grin slowly widens and you deflate a little. "I thought Henderson and Wheeler snitched on me and you were here to defend their nerdy little honors."

Eddie laughs. "What happened?"

"We played dodgeball in PE yesterday." You shrug. "You would think that one would know how to dodge when a ball was heading their way."

"You beaned the poor freshmen?"

"They were supposed to dodge!" As Eddie chuckles, you pout at him. But the pout doesn't last long because a tray of chicken strips is suddenly set in front of you. You gasp and turn in your seat just in time to see another one of your good friends taking a seat next to you. "Robin! Are you trying to get me to fall in love with you? Because it's working," you tell her as you immediately dig in.

"You'd make a terrible life partner. We'd never work out," she muses. Her gaze then travels across the table, and she arches an eyebrow. "Munson? What brings you out here?"

Fortunately for Eddie, you're so distracted by the food in front of you that you don't see the faint blush heating his cheeks. "Came out for some air and saw YN sitting all alone. Thought she'd want a bit of company."

"Mhm." Robin hums, briefly narrowing her eyes at him. She's grinning a second later and Eddie is left reeling with how fast she perks up. "Speaking of, why are you outside all on your lonesome?"

With a mouthful of chicken and ketchup, you wrinkle your nose at her. She grins and patiently waits, and you take a sip of your drink. "I didn't feel like being sneered at by James' new girl and her friends. Plus, it's chilly out and you know how much I love this weather."

"Ugh. The new girlfriend is giving you trouble?"

You shrug. "I've been asked at least four times already if there is anything going on between James and I or if there was anything going on in the past."

"That sucks." Robin glances at your forgotten bag of chips and you grin while nudging the bag closer to her. As she takes a few of them, she says, "Well if you need a new table, you can always sit at the band table."

"Thanks, but no thanks."

"You can always sit with me and my friends," Eddie then says. When you glance at him, even he looks surprised by the words that just came out of his mouth. Slowly but surely, he grins. "You already know Wheeler and Henderson."

"Yeah? If I sit with you, do I get a matching shirt too?" You ask, gaze falling to the white tee emblazoned with a devil's head, dice, a flaming dagger, and a mace. You'd seen the Hellfire Club shirts for a couple of days now, the owners proudly wearing them altogether today.

Eddie perks up. "Do you play D&D?"

"Unfortunately, no." You frown. "I don't have the mind capacity to immerse myself into roleplaying."

"Or the math skills," Robin mumbles, but both you and Eddie hear her loud and clear.

"Bitch," you grumble.

Both Eddie and Robin chuckle, and you smile before finishing off the rest of your food.

Not knowing how to carry on the conversation, Eddie starts to stand while rapping his knuckles on the tabletop. "Well, ladies, nice chat." He then looks directly at you. "The invitation to sit with Hellfire during lunch still stands."

"Thanks."

"I'll see you around."

As Eddie takes his leave and disappears back into the cafeteria, Robin elbows you. "What was that all about?"

"No idea. He just sat down and started talking."

"Good. You need more friends. Friends who won't ditch you the second his new girlfriend gets insecure," she tells you, earning a soft chuckle from you.

"If you say so." As Robin picks through the chip bag once more, you grin. "So, is Harrington picking you up today? I need a ride. I'm officially walking to and from school for the foreseeable future."

"Yeah. I'll tell Steve to wait, just don't make us wait too long. We have a shift at Family Video."

"Got it. Don't hold you up. I'll be on time."

For a few days, you continue sitting outside during lunch. Robin joins you when she can, but other than her you sit alone uninterrupted.

But on day five, the air gets colder, and you're forced back inside.

James is still with his girlfriend, so your usual table is a no-go. Robin smiles as if inviting you over, but the band table is really jammed packed these days. The Hellfire table, however, has more than enough room. So, after grabbing a tray of food, you head toward the table where your fellow peers look up to Eddie Munson as if he were a god of some sort.

"Room for one more?" You ask, standing near Dustin Henderson towards the middle of the table. He looks up at you, beaming at your appearance which makes you grin down at him.

"Sweetheart," Eddie coos. "There's always room for you." He looks to his left where Tommy- a heavy set student in a leather jacket sits. "Scoot. You're in her seat."

Tommy grins as the entire side of his table shuffles down a seat and you playfully roll your eyes. "So, you're a sweet talker, huh? Keep it up and I just might share my food with you." Then looking at Tommy, you nudge his arm. "Thanks, Tom-Tom."

He chuckles. "You haven't called me that since middle-school."

Across from you, Jeff and Gareth chuckle and you're quick to greet them as well.

"Wait a sec." Eddie glances between all of you. "You know each other?"

"Haven't you learned by now, Eddie? I'm a social butterfly." You bat your eyelashes at him, leaning back in your chair and snuggling further into your hoodie. It really was cold today. "We all grew up with each other, we just kind of drifted in high school as most friends do."

"You drifted, you mean," Gareth says.

He doesn't say it to be mean, but his words still cause a little bit of hurt. Your expression softens. "Sorry about that. I got lost for a while there, huh?"

Gareth's eyes subtly widen as he sits a little straighter in his seat. "Y-Yeah, but I mean.. you're here now so that's all that matters."

You chuckle softly and then look further down the table. "Hey Henderson. Wheeler," you greet. You then nod at the other two freshmen you don't know. "Hi. I'm YN."

"Lucas."

"Will."

Leaning back into your seat once more, you pick up your legs onto the chair and hug your knees while laying your cheek atop of them.

"Uh, sweetheart, are you going to eat?" You hear Eddie ask.

"Nope. Have at it, Munson. Just don't drink my Coke."

"You okay?"

"Mhm." You sleepily mumble. "It's the cold. It makes me sleepy."

"That's right." Jeff laughs as if suddenly remembering something. "As soon as it gets really cold, you'll find her asleep anywhere she can get away with it."

"Oh, thank god," you hear Henderson say. "We're playing dodgeball again in PE and if YN is tired, she won't be so brutal."

"Dude!" You hear a slap and pick your head up to glance down the table. Wheeler is glaring at his friend. "Shut up."

"We're playing dodgeball?" You ask, smiling. Then glancing at the other boys, you ask them, "Whose had PE?" Will nervously raises his hand. "Is it mixed teams or girl versus boy?"

"Girl versus boy."

"Yes! You're going down, Henderson and Wheeler."

"Goddammit."

"I told you," Wheeler grumbles.

Eddie smiles as you tease the freshmen. "You're a menace."

"But a cute one, right?" You immediately retort. His smile widens and that's all the answer you need.

Eddie Munson was smitten and you? You were starting to realize how seriously cute this boy was as well.

You're not surprised when James is single again, demanding all your attention and practically gluing himself to your side in the following days. But you deal with it- smiling and partially happy to spend some time with your best friend again. Another part of you, however, is annoyed because now the only time you have to talk to Eddie is in between classes. And most of the time, James is there and trying to tug you along to your next class.

One day, the last bell of the day had rung, but you were still stuck inside the school building ten minutes after. You and Robin had been lucky enough to be dropped off in the mornings by Steve Harrington, but you'd been walking home after. Right now, however, there's a thunderstorm raging outside that even the school buses have yet to depart from the parking lot because of it.

"YN?" You startle at your name being called, turning to see Eddie walking up to you. "You okay?"

"Yeah." You smile tiredly at him and then gesture outside the doors. "Just waiting out the storm so I can walk home."

"If you need a ride, I can give you one."

"No, it's okay," you tell him. "I wouldn't want you driving more than what you have to in this weather."

"Come on." He smiles. "This is nothing." Just as the words leave his mouth, a loud rumble of thunder sounds off in the not so far off distance.

You smirk at him. "You were saying?"

"Yeah, yeah. But seriously, driving you is no problem. The sooner you get home, the sooner you can snuggle down and sleep."

Eddie remembering that little tidbit about you- about being sleepy when it's really cold out- makes you melt for some unknown reason. "Fine," you agree with a faint grin. "But if I slip and bust my ass in the parking lot, I'm slashing your tires when you least expect it."

He laughs. "Deal." Then offering you a hand, his eyes practically twinkle. "Now come on. Let's make a break for it."

You groan, smiling all the while, and take his hand. As soon as they're clasped, Eddie is pushing open the door and the two of you are racing towards his van. Running between cars and buses, you and Eddie laugh as the rainwater pelts you, uncaring for the many gazes on you- especially one gaze in particular that's not too happy with your new friendship.

You yelp as lightning strikes nearby, slipping in a puddle, but are lucky enough that Eddie quickly rights you.

You would've been fine, decently wet from the storm, but Eddie fumbles with his keys when he's trying to unlock his van. You scream at him, he laughs even more, and the two of you are soaked to the bone when you finally manage to make it inside his van. You're lucky you left your bag in your locker.

"I hate you."

"You look like an angry wet kitten." You reach across to punch his arm and he laughs when you land the hit. "Okay, okay." He turns his van on, wincing as music blares from his speakers, and then quickly cranks the heater. "Now give me the directions to your house. You need dry clothes asap."

As Eddie drives, you peel out of your hoodie and drop it at your feet. You scoot closer to the vents, letting the hot air dry you off.

Your house isn't too far, but by the time Eddie is parking in front of your house, the rain is really coming down. It's coming down so hard that even the windshield wipers aren't doing anything to help either you or Eddie peer out the window.

"Well shit," he sighs.

"Shit," you agree. Then grinning softly, you glance over to him. "Do you want to hang out here until the storm passes? I don't feel comfortable letting you drive off when you can't even see."

Leaning over his steering wheel, Eddie squints to try and see through the rain with no such luck. "It won't be a problem?"

"Nah. It's just me. My parents are gone for the weekend."

He turns towards you, eyebrows arches. "And what about your brother I've heard about?"

"Lives in the next town over," you say. Lightning strikes too close for comfort and the thunder is so loud that it shakes the van. Eddie's eyes widen and you flinch. "You'd, uh, you'd also be doing me a favor because I'm kind of scared of storms."

"Well why didn't you just say so in the first place."

"Stop smiling at me." You pout at him.

"You're adorable."

"I change my mind. Have fun driving in this shitty weather."

Eddie laughs and promptly kills the engine to his van. You smile, grateful, and then the two of you are waiting for the perfect moment to make yet another break for it- this time aiming for the porch of your house.

"Screw it." Eddie throws open his door and you yelp at his sudden movement, quickly doing the same for yours. After the doors are slammed shut, you chase after him until you're under the safety of the porch. Soaked yet again, Eddie beams. "Please tell me you have your house key."

"Duh." Teeth chattering, you reach into the pocket of your jeans and struggle to get the key out. You're both shivering by the time you make it inside, both heaving a sigh of relief at the warmth that greets you. "Shoes by the door, leather jacket on the rack," you tell him.

"We're gonna get water everywhere," Eddie muses as he glances around the place.

"That's fine. It'll dry." After kicking off your shoes, you gesture for him to follow. You lead him to your room, still shivering and letting him look around. "I, uh, I think my brother left some clothes behind. We can both take hot showers and then I'll toss our stuff into wash."

"Oh, uh, yeah. Cool."

Stumbling into your brother's old room, you go through the chest of drawers to find some clothes for Eddie. Pulling out a pair of boxers, gray sweatpants and a black long sleeve thermal, you head back to your room and hand them over. "There are some towels in the closet in the bathroom. You can take mine while I go shower in my parents' bathroom."

"Thanks, sweetheart."

You grin at him before grabbing a change of clothes for yourself and then show him to the bathroom before hurrying to your parents' bathroom. You let the water run lukewarm after stripping, letting your body slowly adjust to the warmth before letting the water run really hot. You stand under the spray, your trembling limbs eventually stilling, though you still jerk every now and then with the storm raging outside. Then after washing your hair and body, you get out and dress in pajamas and towel dry your hair as best as you can.

By the time you make it back to your room, you find Eddie studying your wall of polaroids. The sweatpants fit him surprisingly well and even though the long sleeve thermal is a little loose on him, he still looks really good in it. You can tell he attempted to dry his own hair, but his hair and bangs are still very damp.

"You got quite the collection of pictures here," he quietly muses.

"Only the best make it to the wall." Seeing as he's still distracted, you grab your polaroid camera from your vanity and get as close as you can to him without startling him just yet. Then holding your camera up to check his image in the viewfinder, you grin, "Come on, Munson. Give me your best smile."

He turns at your words, smile instantly blossoming when he sees the camera. The devil horns he gives himself and tongue out makes you laugh as you press the button to capture the moment. "That's a keeper," he says. "And it better make the wall."

"It definitely will." Taking the picture out, you set it aside so it can develop on its own.

"Good. Now hand the camera over. If you have a picture of me, it's only fair I get one of you."

Your nose wrinkles as you hand him the camera. "Fair, but we're taking it together. I hate taking solo pics. Sit on the edge of the bed."

Eddie happily does as he's told and you crawl onto the bed behind him. Laughing, you wrap your arms around his neck from behind, positioning them lower so his face is still visible. Your head ends up pressed next to his and the two of you flash the biggest smiles ever as he holds the camera out in front of you to snap the pic.

You blink against the flash, still smiling. "Take another. I need one too."

"As you wish, sweetheart."

Eddie quickly snaps another picture and while those two develop on your vanity, you tape up the picture of Eddie by himself onto your wall. His arm slides across the back of your shoulders, pulling you closer to him and admiring his place on the wall when the outside world comes rushing back in. The power flickers and your eyes widen as you whip around to see the wind picking up right outside your window.

"If the power goes out, I'm going to cry."

"Don't worry. I'll protect you from the big bad storm."

You elbow him, huffing at his light teasing. "Shut up and gather your clothes. We need to throw them into the dryer."

You grab your clothes from the bathroom while Eddie grabs his, the two of you then wringing them out as best as you can before leading the way towards the washroom. Your clothes get tossed in and then you hurry towards the living room, grabbing up a blanket from a small hamper of lap blankets your mother kept on the side of the sofa for times you just wanted to snuggle down on the sofa.

"Help yourself to anything," you tell Eddie. "The kitchen should be stocked and the remote is there on the coffee table if you want to watch anything."

He takes your words to heart, raiding the kitchen for snacks and a drink before joining you. You're already curled up in the corner of the sofa, legs curled so Eddie can take a seat on the opposite end. You watch as he makes himself comfortable, reaching for the remote to find something to have as background noise beside the storm still raging outside.

"So why storms?" He eventually asks.

"Hmm?"

"Out of every phobia out there, why thunderstorms?"

You twist your upper body a little so you can face Eddie without uncurling your body. "I used to love them when I was little," you tell him. "But then as I got older, I realized how destructive they could be." Yawning a bit, you pause in your answer. "We had a really bad storm pass through one day and a tornado spun up not far from here. It didn't cause any damage here, but it was close enough to hear as it passed by. Then later that night, we saw how it destroyed the next town over. Been scared of 'em ever since."

Eddie takes a moment to think about it. "Okay, that's fair. The destruction of a tornado does seem terrifying."

Grinning, you reach out with one leg and tap his thigh with your foot. "I didn't say it earlier, but thanks. For staying with me," you then clarify.

"You're welcome." He finishes off the last of his drink, setting the empty can and empty snack bag on the coffee table in front of him. "But if I'm being completely honest here, I also stayed because I live in a trailer and I didn't like the idea of riding this storm out there."

You chuckle. "Oh, I see how it is. You totally stayed for yourself and not because you were being a good friend. Some hero you are, Munson."

Eddie laughs with you, but then a too loud rumble of thunder makes you flinch and curl tighter in on yourself. He places a hand on your foot, rubbing his thumb over your ankle. "So, what's the deal with you and James?"

You tense, his question catching you off guard. "W-What?"

"You and James, sweetheart. I noticed that there's an awful lot of pictures of him on your wall. I was just wondering what the deal was there."

You slowly grin, noticing that Eddie's refusing to make eye contact with you. His gaze is set on your ankle and focused on the rhythm he's tapping against your skin. "He's my friend. And only my friend."

"Are you sure about that?" This time you do turn so you're lying on your back, legs hesitantly stretching out and settling in Eddie's lap. "Because when I first got here, he was all over you and then like a week later he was ignoring you. When I asked about you, I was basically told you were off limits because you and the best friend were something of an unspoken item."

Unable to help it, you bark out a laugh. "First of all, James and I are only friends and will only ever be friends."

"Really? I hear best friends make the best couples." His hands settle on your shin.

Your nose wrinkles. "Eds, I'm going to tell you something that only me, James, and one other friend know about. Okay?"

"Uh, okay."

Taking a breath, you tell Eddie about one of the most embarrassing nights in your life. At least to you it was. "When we first started high school, I had a bit of a crush on James. I thought I kept it under wraps, but apparently another mutual friend of ours found out. So, when we planned a sleepover at my house, she tried to get any information out of James about how he felt about me. He figured the sleepover was a setup and kindly let me down by stating that I wasn't his type."

"Shit."

"Yeah. I liked the kid, but I didn't want to date him," you admit. "Him finding out, however, and letting me down was a bit embarrassing and I had to clear the air that I hadn't planned for him to find out or anything. I think that's what made us close because we both got upset with that friend of ours afterwards."

"So, how'd you go from friends to whatever you guys have going on now?"

"I honestly have no idea. I dated, he dated, and slowly but surely, he started to get all touchy-feely with me. And if I'm being honest, part of me liked the attention."

"As you should. You're a very pretty girl, YN. You should have all the attention on you."

"Shut up." You lightly kick out at him, and he chuckles, grabbing you by the ankle to keep you from kicking him anymore. "Anyway, any feelings I had for him became strictly platonic. And then before we came back to school this year, James had the bright idea to kiss me. When I pushed him away, he then had the bright idea to tell me he was in love with me."

"Fuck," Eddie mumbles.

"Yep. Now it was my turn to politely let him down. Our friendship is a bit strained now, especially since he's trying to pretend like summer didn't happen and continue to try and press his luck with me during the times he's single."

"So, is that why he's been giving me the evil eye?"

"What?" You huff a laugh. When Eddie grins but doesn't refute his question, your smile slowly falls. "I am so sorry."

"It's fine. As long as I'm not stepping on any toes, I'll gladly ignore every jealous glare. I like.. your company," he says, slowly dragging it out as if afraid to admit it.

"Aww." You coo and smirk when Eddie starts to blush, hiding behind his mane of hair. "I like your company as well, Munson."

"Yeah?"

"Yep." When he finally meets your gaze, your heart beats faster as his boyish smile. The moment is ruined, however, when thunder booms and the power flickers, causing you to yelp. He laughs. "But, uh, I'll like it even more if you cuddle me and keep me safe."

"Alright, alright." He pushes your feet off his lap, leaning over and scooting up so that when he lays between your legs and the back of the sofa, his head rests against your abdomen while his arm hugs your legs. "This good?"

"Mhm. Perfect." One hand falls to the back of Eddie's head, fingers delving into his hair and scratching at his scalp. His quiet moan makes you smirk. "Don't fall asleep though. I'm ordering in pizza when this stupid storm passes."

"Sounds good, sweetheart."

Over the weekend, you and Eddie continue to hang out. He had stayed until after midnight Friday night and then called your house phone just after one in the afternoon on Saturday to see what your plans for the day were.

Saturday consisted of hanging out in your room, talking about likes and dislikes. While your taste in music was only somewhat similar, your taste in movies was the same. You ate lunch at your house, but then Eddie decided that the two of you should go out for an adventure (the adventure was surviving his terrible driving) before buying dinner for the both of you and then watching yet another movie at your house.

Sunday found the two of you at Eddie's so he could introduce you to some of his other favorite bands. You had taken your polaroid with you, snapping pictures whenever the mood struck. You got to meet his uncle Wayne when the man was getting up for work, and then you and Eddie pulled some cash together for dinner yet again.

Eddie had a lot more energy than you were used to, but the weekend consisted of laughing and smiles that rarely faded.

All in all, it was a very good weekend that led you and Eddie to realize the mounting tension between the two of you was of the good variety.

Then Monday morning, you're riding in the middle of the backseat of Steve's car as he drives you and Robin to school. Robin's trying to apply some eyeliner in the visor mirror and you're grinning at Steve ranting about his lack of a love life.

"Mhm. Okay. Bummer," Robin drawls which causes Steve to huff. She then turns in her seat, staring at you. "But what I'm more interested in is where you were all weekend?"

"What?"

"You heard me. I called Saturday and Sunday to see if you wanted to hang out, but you never answered."

"Yeah. She even got me to drive her over and you weren't home," Steve says. "So where were you? You weren't with me and you weren't with Robin."

"And we all know you don't hang out with anyone else outside of school, so spill."

"Oh, um.." You trail off, cheeks heating up.

"Are you- are you blushing?" Steve asks incredulously.

"No!"

"You are!" Robin laughs. "Spill it right now, LN! Where were you and who were you with?"

"God you two are so nosy." You huff a short laugh, lightly groaning when Robin continues to stare and Steve keeps stealing glances at you in the rearview mirror. "Fine. I was with Eddie."

Steve frowns, unfamiliar with the name, but Robin's eyes widen. "Munson? You were with Eddie Munson?!"

"Yeah." Your cheeks burn brighter, but you're smiling nonetheless. "He, uh, he drove me home Friday after school and then stayed with me to ride out the storm. Then we just hung out Saturday and Sunday as well."

"Oh my god, you like him!"

"Maybe?" You sink in your seat, hands covering the bottom half of your face as you smile. "He's fun and we have a bit in common."

"Wait a second." Steve quickly glances at you through the mirror again. "I thought you were with James? Aren't you guys like high school sweethearts or something?"

"What?" You scoff. "No."

"Yeah, dingus, get with the program," Robin says while flicking Steve's shoulder. "Something happened and those two are awkward as shit now. No offense," she then tells you with a quick glance.

You laugh. "None taken. It is awkward."

"What happened?" Steve frowns. "You two seemed good together."

"We were good together," you tell him, "but then he had to go and ruin it by kissing me."

Robin whips around in her seat, eyes wide. "He didn't?!"

"He did. And then proceeded to tell me he was in love with me." You chuckle softly.

"And you didn't want that?" Steve asks.

You shrug. "Had this happened two years ago, I'd have been ecstatic," you admit. "But feelings change when his girlfriends get a little too comfortable with the best friend and talk about just how good he is with his tongue."

"Ew." Robin grimaces.

"Yep. And it's also not a good look when his girlfriend is telling you all about his oral skills and then he shows up to school with a cold sore on his lip two days later." Steve laughs as Robin continues to exclaim her disgust and you chuckle in the backseat. "I haven't liked him for a while, but he continues to do shit in hopes of changing my mind or something."

"And now Eddie is in the picture," Robin says.

"He is."

Glancing down at the binder in your lap, you smile at the pictures there behind the plastic cover. You had made a mini collage of your favorite pics of all your friends, but the one dead center is one of you sitting behind Eddie in his bed as he holds his guitar in hand. The both of you are cheesing hard.

You reach forward, holding the binder out so Robin sees. She does and she coos at the picture before zeroing in on the one you had wanted her to see. "Aw. Cute," she says. She shows Steve and you can't help but relax when you see your older friend smile.

You get to school in no time, assuring Steve that you don't need a ride after school since Eddie had already agreed to drive you when he was able to. Your two friends tease you, but then you're sliding out of the backseat and leaving your friends to laugh at their own antics.

And almost as soon as you step through the front doors, James is on you and tucking you under an arm to keep you close. You force a smile, hugging your binder and keeping your hands to yourself as he goes on and on about something he and another mutual friend of yours was talking about before you had showed up. You add input here and there, slowly feeling at unease the more James touches you.

But when you catch Eddie's gaze in the hall and he winks at you, your shoulders slump just a little and you take a deep breath.

You can't wait until the lunch hour rolls around and you can just sit there without being so guarded.

. . . .

With your lunch tray in hand, your gaze darts between two tables- the table you've sat at for years with your usual group of friends and the newly dubbed Hellfire Club table. You know that none of your friends would make a big deal about you sitting elsewhere, with the exception of one person, and before you can make your decision that same person is tugging you by the arm towards your usual table.

"Come on," James says. "What are you waiting for?"

Once upon a time, James was all you could think about- the dark clothing, hair shorn close to his head and lip piercings that made you yearn. But now- now Eddie Munson has taken root in your mind and you're more than a little let down when your feet carry you alongside James without a complaint.

You pick at your food, mind going numb the second James starts going on and on about something while completely ignoring you. Lately this has been pretty typical of him- dragging you away from someone so your attention was solely on him, but then ignoring you in favor of other people so long as he knew you were by his side. But the moment you hear Eddie's name being tossed around, you perk right back up.

"I don't know what you're talking about, man," someone says. "He seems pretty decent. Even has nearly the same interests as us." You smile, grateful that someone else doesn't deem him a freak.

"He doesn't even look like he bathes. Or fuckin' combs his hair," James grumbles.

"Are you serious right now?" You frown, turning to stare at your best friend. "What the hell did Eddie do to you to garner this dick-ish attitude?"

"Oh it's Eddie, is it?" His eyes roll and you tense up at his tone, the rest of the table's occupants falling silent. "What? Is he your new best friend now? He gives you one ride and you're ready to fall to your knees?"

A beat passes and then.. "Fuck. You." The words are spoken quietly, but the table hears you loud and clear. James startles and looks at you with slightly widened eyes. He opens his mouth to retort, but you shake your head and push back quickly from the table. Your chair screeches and the people around you glance up to see what the disruption is all about. "You know I am allowed to have more friends, right? You're not my fucking keeper."

"I didn't-"

"You did," you say, cutting him off. You've dealt with his possessive behavior long enough and you're done. You're so done. "All these years, my attention has been solely focused on you because you are my best friend, but you're only my best friend," you remind him. "So whatever this is," you gesture wildly between the two of you, "stops now. You do not get to dictate who I spend my time with and you sure as hell don't get to speak down on Eddie because you saw him give me a ride home."

James' jaw clenches and his gaze suddenly hardens. "But it's more than that, isn't it? Don't think I didn't hear about you and your new friend being out and about all around town this weekend."

"So what!" You practically shout. "If Eddie was even remotely attracted to me and wanted to date me, he's allowed to! And I'm allowed to say yes or no to him because you are only a friend. I do not have to cater to your feelings."

"Hey, freaks, keep it down! Some of us are trying to eat in peace," you hear someone shout.

Glancing around and still very much heated, your gaze lands on Jason Carver who's laughing and high fiving his basketball friends. "Oh shut up, bible humper!"

One of your friends snorts. "It's bible thumper."

"Oh I said exactly what I meant," you say. Then smirking cruelly, you glance back at a slowly reddening Jason. "Cum on any more bibles lately, Carver?"

As the lunch room explodes with laughter and shocked gasps, hands grab onto your shoulders. "And that's enough for today." You're amped up to tell whoever it is to fuck off, but Robin's amused expression instantly makes you calm. She marches you out of the cafeteria and into the student parking lot before releasing you. When you turn around, she finally explodes with laughter of her own. "What the hell was that back there?"

"I don't know." You groan, finally letting yourself relax some. "James was talking shit about Eddie and I just lost it. He's jealous and I'm just- I'm over it. He needs to be too."

Robin continues to giggle and eventually you join her. Then as the giggles taper off, she asks, "So what was that about Jason you said back there?"

Immediately, you snort. "Uh, I might have busted him jerking off in the confessional." Her nose scrunches in disgust. "He had a bible in hand and well.. he came. All over the good Lord's sermon."

"Oh my god. I didn't- I shouldn't have asked!"

"Asked what?" The question makes you jerk in surprise and you turn around to see a sheepish Eddie walking up. "Hey, sweetheart, you good?"

"Perfect." You lazily smile at him.

"And that's my cue to go," Robin says. As she passes you by, she squeezes your arm while winking at you.

Sighing, you wait until she's out of earshot to say, "That girl does not have a subtle bone in her body."

"She really doesn't," Eddie muses. The two of you share a laugh and then he's slowly opening his arms as an invite when he sees just how done you are with the day. You sigh and readily step closer, wrapping your arms around his waist and hiding your face against his chest. His arms wrap around your shoulders, cocooning you in his embrace. "Now answer me honestly. Are you really good?"

"Now I am," you mumble. "I don't think I can go back inside after that."

"Of course you can. Hardly anyone was talking about you and James. Everyone was still laughing about the bible humper comment on my way out."

"Ugh." You groan, laughing. "That was bitchy of me to say in front of everyone. And to rip into James like that."

"Hey. Nope. None of that," Eddie says. He pulls back, hands cupping either side of your neck as his thumbs rub against your jawline. "You stood up for yourself. Never apologize for that."

"Yeah, but-"

"Nope. I don't wanna hear it." Your lips twitch at his adamancy and he slowly grins. "But what we can talk about is the fact that you don't think I'm even remotely attracted to you. FYI, sweetheart, I am. And you should know that after we spent the entire weekend together."

Cheeks blushing, you shrug. "I didn't want to assume and embarrass myself further."

"Assume away." Eddie's smirk makes you giggle and then your heart pound when his gaze drops to your lips. His grip on you slightly tightens as he lowers his face towards you, but he stops mere inches from your lips. "Can I kiss you?"

Your cheeks burn hotter and you groan, eyes falling shut. "No."

"I- what?"

"It's just-" Your eyes open and you laugh at his confusion, grabbing his wrists to make sure he doesn't go far. "I'm stoked that you paused to ask for consent, but also very annoyed."

"Why?"

"Because if I know the kiss is coming, I get awkward and shy," you whine. Eddie blinks and then starts to laugh, letting his forehead rest against yours. "So just let it be known that from here on out you can kiss me whenever you want. Just not right now because I know it's coming and I just- it's weird."

"You're weird," Eddie reiterates. And then before you can say anything, he closes what little distance there is between your lips for a quick peck. "But that's what I like about you. We can be weirdos together." As he puts a little distance between you, he smirks and holds a hand out to you. "Now come on. I think after the spectacle you made in the cafeteria, we deserve the rest of the day off. We'll pick up a pizza and crash in your room."

"Food and snuggles," you muse while slipping your hand into his. "You really know how to turn a girl on."

Eddie trips over his own foot on the way towards his van and you cackle at him. "Jesus Christ woman. You can't say stuff like that to me."

You grin at him. "Get used to it, babe. You haven't heard anything yet."

#eddie munson x reader #eddie muson imagine #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #eddie munson #stranger things #robin buckley #steve harrington #dustin henderson #mike wheeler

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princessamericachavez · 1 year

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6x15 spec

Eddie doesn’t know what’s come over him. One minute he was fine, the next he sees Buck tenderly checking a pretty girl’s hand wound and he’s very vividly transported back to the day he reconnected with Ana.

A familiar panic creeps up his throat. At first, he assumes he’s just triggered by the memory of his old panic attacks (it wouldn’t be the first time something happens and the memory overwhelms him), but he’s been working with Frank to pay better attention to his emotions and properly pinpoint where they are coming from and, after a moment, it hits him that his sudden fear has nothing to do with the girl. It’s Buck, the way he’s smiling at her, flirty and gentle, the way he leans in with sudden interest in whatever she’s saying, the way he smiles and looks away, suddenly bashful.

Panic is then replaced by the sudden and undeniable urge to intervene, to walk over and insert himself in the conversation, to divert Buck’s attention towards whatever Chris said this morning before school or send him over to help someone else. The urge to —he’s startled to realize— mark his territory, show the girl Buck is his best friend, his person.

Where did that even come from? Eddie can only guess. He tells himself it is because Buck’s too nice, too sweet, too loving, to quick to give himself away to anyone that will grace him with a little kindness. He tells himself it’s just that he wants to protect Buck from making the exact same mistake he did with Ana. He tells himself it’s because Buck should be focused on the emergency at hand and not on whatever the woman in front of him is saying with those big dark eyes and a sweet smile.

Eddie squashes down that instinct though, like he’s done with so many impulses in his life, and continues tending to his patient with gritted teeth until, an eternity later, Buck comes over.

“Hey you ever heard of a death doula?” He asks later, causally, as they walk back towards the engine.

“A what?”

“A death doula. They are like- like people who help prepare others for death, you know? That girl back there, that’s what she does.”

The memory of his abuela’s curandera hits him suddenly. The protective instinct from before resurfaces, it feels like he swallowed a mouthful of hot smoke.

“How can she prepare you for death? Like, paperwork and funeral arrangements?” He asks, and he knows how dismissive he sounds but he can’t help it.

“No, it’s- it’s more like, they help people accept death, you know? Old people or terminal patients, and their families…”

“So that’s what this whole living funeral show was about?”

“It’s not a show, Eddie. It’s- Well, I guess it is sort of like a performance. But, you know, when someone dies and people talk about their life and how great they were and they say their last goodbyes, they always say how they wish they’d been able to tell them while they were still here. So why not do that?”

Eddie thinks of a grave, of his son talking to his mother, of all the things Chris will never get to tell her now in person, on how much he’d needed to believe that Shannon can hear them when they speak to her.

“I suppose it makes sense,” he concedes, reluctantly, “if you know that you’re dying, anyway.”

“We all die in the end, Eddie,” Buck says, matter of factly, with that lingering darkness that sometimes appears in his voice ever since the lightning strike. “It’s just… we never know when it can happen. It can catch you by surprise.”

Add heavy concern to the list of complicated emotions swirling inside Eddie’s chest.

“That’s just life, Buck.”

“And death.”

“I suppose. Still… having a whole funeral before you even die sounds like a lot.”

“I died and didn’t even get one,” Buck huffs.

“Three minutes and seventeen seconds isn’t long enough to plan and throw a funeral.”

“Right,” Buck frowns, still clearly uneasy. Maybe Eddie should have intervene when he saw him talking to that woman. “Anyway, I thought it was interesting.”

“You’re gonna go do a deep dive on the subject as soon as we are back in the firehouse aren’t you?”

“Nah, I figured she’ll tell me more about it later.”

And there it is again… the panic.

“Later?”

“Yeah, I sort of got her number. Thought it’d be good to talk to her, you know, all things considered,” Buck shrugs as he climbs into the engine.

“You said she helps people who are dying soon, Buck. And, unless there’s something you aren’t telling me, that’s not your case.” Not as long as I’m around to help it.

“Eddie, if there’s one thing we should’ve learned by now it’s that anything can happen when we least expect it. I just- I just wanna be ready next time.”

And isn’t that the most absolutely terrifying idea Eddie’s ever heard? Buck being alright with dying. Buck accepting death. Buck just embracing the fact that he could be gone any second. Buck actually dying and not coming back to them.

“Or you just wanted a date with the hot death lady,” Chim intercedes, smirking as he sits opposite to them.

Buck doesn’t even have the decency of denying it. He just flashes them that wide bright smile and looks horribly smug.

Eddie finds himself furious, suddenly, at Buck, at Chim, at whoever decided to drive a car through a funeral house and landed them here in the first place. The reason behind that anger… he’s going to need to examine it later, alone, because he suspects the answer is going to be more complicated than he can deal with, right now.

“If you make us throw a fake funeral for you, I’m not coming,” he says.

Buck looks suddenly devastated. Eddie meant it as a joke, but he should’ve known that even his hypothetical absence to a fake and ridiculous scenario would make Buck twist it somehow into thinking Eddie really truly wouldn’t bother to show up to his funeral, as if he thought that Eddie couldn’t care enough, as if he didn’t know that the three minutes and seventeen seconds he was gone were by far the worst of his life.

“You’re not?” Buck says, voice small and shaken.

Eddie decides to commit to the bit.

“No way. If we are being realistic about your fake funeral, I will probably be in jail after killing whoever killed you.”

That startles a laugh out of Buck, at least.

“Oh, so he was murdered, now,” Chim snorts.

“Not completely unlikely,” Hen adds, playfully.

“Hey, that’s not fair, only one of my three near death experiences as a murder attempt. The other two were just… nature.”

“Then I fight God,” Eddie says. And it’s meant to be ridiculous, an exaggeration for laughs, but as the words leave his lips he realizes he maybe sort of means it, despite the impossibility.

The other’s laugh, as intended, at least, even Bobby. But there’s a curious twinkle in Buck’s eye as he does, like he suspects deep down that Eddie meant it.

“You can’t end up in jail if I die, Eddie. Christopher needs you.”

“Oh, he’d be my accomplice when avenging you.”

“Chris can’t go to juvie, Eddie! You can’t let that happen,” Buck pretends to be appalled.

“Then, don’t die, Buck!”

“Fine, fine, I won’t. Can’t let the Diaz boys lives be ruined because of me.”

Oh, little does he know that’s exactly what would happen. They can’t afford to lose him. The idea is too terrible to even fathom.

“Good! Finally.”

“If only we’d known there was a way to get you to be more careful all these years,” Hen teases.

“You’re still going to that date, though, aren’t you?” Chim asks and Eddie could strangle him.

“Yeah… I guess I am. I just- I don’t know. It feels like the universe is trying to tell me something. Maybe she’s my- my destiny or something. Like I was meant to find her.”

Eddie snorts a humorless laugh and rolls his eyes.

“Buck, the universe didn’t kill you to get you laid.”

“Who said- that’s not- I’m not saying that!”

“Besides, what’s so wrong with Buck going on a date?” Hen shrugs, side eyeing Eddie. “There’s no way it’ll be worse than Vanessa brushing you off fifteen minutes in.”

Right. That.

“That’s not the point,” Eddie huffs. “That was my Tia setting me up. Not the universe…”

“Well, maybe the universe is better at blind dates than Tia Pepa,” Buck declares, grinning.

“I’m telling her you said that. She’s never gonna make you chilaquiles again.”

“You wouldn’t do that, Diaz.”

“Try me, Buckley.”

“God, get a room you two,” Ravi says, from the copilot seat.

The silence that follows is the weirdest and heaviest Eddie can remember. Chim and Hen’s eyes share an entire conversation. Eddie cannot bring himself to look Buck in the eye. Buck’s leg (a constant bouncy presence next to Eddie’s thigh) stills completely, like he’s turned into stone.

“So,” Chim finally says, “anyone know anything about tax fraud?”

#buddie #Eddie Diaz #Evan buck Buckley #911 fox #911 fic #buddie fic #911 spec

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respectthepetty · 8 months

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I have to confess that I don’t usually pay attention to the colours when I am watching any series. But I thought that it was interesting that while Ai Di was wearing Little Red Riding Hood’s costume Chen Yi was in a gray top and also otherwise was somehow very ‘wolfish’ with teeth-baring smile. He looked like he was ready to devour poor Ai Di.

ANON! You opened a flood gate!

Fun-ish Fact - In Taiwan where Kiseki: Dear to Me comes from, there was a group within the feminist movement in the 80s and 90s called the Little Red Riding Hoods. Their purpose was to call out the "wolves" and bring awareness to sexual harassment. There are several other academic reads on this subject but most are behind paywalls (boo!).

The story of "Little Red Riding Hood" is very symbolic of sexual development and aggression plus a ton of other stuff, so whenever Little Red Riding Hood pops up somewhere, I think "this is the work of a feminist!"

So I was THRILLED when I saw Eddie was our sinful yet sexually maturing protagonist while Bai Zong Yi played the dangerous and transformative antagonist.

Many people's qualms with the couples is the age difference since it's anywhere from five to eight years difference (17 vs. 22?) which would paint Fan Ze Rui as the predator, yet Bai Zong Yi was the one who confessed his feelings first and initiated the intimacy between them.

Then, like you mentioned, there is Eddie, in his bright passionate red running back to Chen Yi who must rescue him from the gang of men trying to hold him back.

But let's rewind! Eddie made fun of Chen Yi for being a virgin and unable to confess his feelings to his boss

but Chen Yi haphazardly responded if Eddie was possible of teaching him . . .

Then quickly dismissed the notion since Eddie is "too young to know it"

This pissed off Eddie, so he hit at the true heart of this discussion - Chen Yi's sexual prowess.

And that caused Chen Yi, who was too drunk to stand on his own let alone walk, to jump up and attack Eddie.

And it escalated in Chen Yi sexually assaulting Eddie (non-consensual kisses are a form of sexual assault)

Eddie fought back and ran away, leaving Chen Yi without any notice of where he was going or how long he would be gone, yet Eddie runs back to Chen Yi only to have to be rescued by him.

And Chen Yi smiled about it.

In earlier tellings of "Little Red Riding Hood" before the Grimm Brothers' version, she rescued herself from the wolf. There was no hunter. So in a story that represents the dangers of sexually awakening and desire, having the lead save herself from the sexual predator is pretty powerful especially because it requires her to face her assaulter.

Chen Yi isn't a horrible person, but if we apply the wolf character to him, the wolf attacked as a form of sexual dominance. Red Riding Hood is in the unknown forest, but the wolf knows the exact layout. The dark scary (sexual) unknown is his territory, so Chen Yi needed to prove to Eddie he wasn't impotent. He normally doesn't prey on Eddie who is younger and, if his questioning was intentional, is also sexually inexperienced. In fact, he rescues Eddie, several times. And he prefers Eddie to not appear as someone who needs rescuing.

Yet Eddie is the one who suggests to Chen Yi to be a predator. Interestingly enough, in a similar color scheme, Eddie in red tells Chen Yi in darker blue, to knock their boss/father out and take him (assault him).

Eddie goes a step further noting that Chen Yi is too weak (double speak for impotent) to knock him out; therefore, he will have to prey on him when he is older and weaker because only then will Chen Yi will be stronger (experienced), which is the reason the wolf eats the grandma first since she won't fight back.

To which Chen Yi responds by telling Eddie to "grow up"

All of this rambling is simply to say that out of all the fairy tales to incorporate within the show, the one about maturity, sexual acts, and consent was the one used, especially when Eddie willingly volunteered to be Little Red Riding Hood who must grow up, deal with his conflicting sexual autonomy, and understand responsible ways to act on his desires.

Because suggesting Chen Yi attack someone deemed weaker did not work out well for either of them.

#kiseki: dear to me #I'm obsessed with them #eddie x chen yi #ai di x chen yi #little red riding hood and the big bad wolf #the colors mean things #like sin lust and passion

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sl33paholics · 6 days

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Josuke Higashikata Dating / Relationship Headcanons!

(He's so baby lowkey)

Song: Always Forever by Cults

How does he realize that he's in love?

He always finds himself fumbling and stumbling over his words whenever talking to you. Josuke always tries to keep his conversations between you two as SHORT as possible.

He cheeses up whenever your name is mentioned. A huge smile appears on his face, teeth showing and everything. Josuke experiences the butterflies! His heart races so fast, and he's red to the ears. Josuke even tries to get his friends to stop talking about you around him, gets him all jumpy and scared.

Josuke often finds himself daydreaming. Whenever it's so hot Josuke can't focus, or the lesson is too long and boring, he can imagine himself sitting next to you. Just goofing around, passing notes, and cracking jokes. It's only until his teacher slams on his desk to make him snap out of it.

The lovestruck boy feels a longing and yearning for your presence whenever you're not around. If you gotta get to your classes, he'd watch you disappear within the crowd as he wished for you to stay a bit longer.

Without a doubt this man would be jealous as FUCK whenever you're around other people than HIM. Josuke could chuckle and giggle around you and the other person, but as soon as you leave he can't help but have the urge to punch the wall.

What would Josuke do in his private time with his partner?

I can see Josuke enjoying quiet time. He's so energetic around his friends and at school, just being with you throughout the night, watching movies, or talking to each other in general. The boy loves the peace and intimacy together.

Playing video games can be a big factor. Competitive video games always get Josuke pumped and in the mood to overthrow you in any way possible. Just don't be surprised when his mom walks in and shouts at you two to be quiet 🤭

Swapping out and exchanging music tastes. Josuke is going to fein over showing you music like Prince (since it's his favorite artist) the two of you would be listening to people such as David Bowie, Whitney Houston, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, and many more all evening.

Cooking together. This. Boy. Can. Not. Cook. For. Shit. Josuke is always relying on you for assistance on whatever meal he wants to make, but he's not embarrassed to learn from his partner to improve on his own skills in the kitchen 🧑‍🍳

Most importantly, CUDDLING. Oh, how much Josuke loves to be intimate with you while watching TV before lights out. He craves physical touch, so expect to be in his arms all night.

Does he see having a future with you? Where would your relationship take y'all?

I can see Josuke being so head over heels for you. I mean, you're his first ever serious relationship. The boy is only 16. Only time would tell what could happen as the years go on.

Despite being very popular at school, he's sticking to the loyal code. As if Josuke wasn't already overwhelmed by the girls huddling around him beforehand, now he's confident to shoo them away and show you off. Intentional or not.

It would be nice to celebrate anniversaries. Josuke has always been infatuated on surprising you on the day with gifts! Maybe not expensive ass gifts, but possible handmade that he did with his mom 🥰 or jewelry that he can afford (if he can learn how to save up 🙄)

His mother hounds Josuke about his relationship, but not in a bad way. Tomoko wants the best for his son (and lowkey doesn't want him to end up like Joseph), so she's heavily involved in what you two do. Sure, it's very annoying, but Josuke knows his mother doesn't mean any harm.

Josuke can see himself years down the line having a family with you. He's really that lovestruck and delulu, so you have to remind him that you guys are only teens and don't know what life has for the both of y'all at the end of the tunnel.

Josuke just really loves you <3

#anime #black writers #female writers #jojo no kimyō na bōken #poc writer #black reader #x black reader #fluff #wholesome story #wholesome headcanons #fluff headcanons #yandere josuke #josuke higashikata #jjba fanfic #jjba part 4 #josuke higashitaka #jjba #jojos bizzare adventure diamond is unbreakable

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cilil · 16 days

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𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 | 𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬

𓄌 Characters/pairings: Melkor x Mairon 𓄌 Synopsis: Melkor decides to join the hunt to search for fire spirits. Mairon's hunt is cut short when the Dark Vala finds him. 𓄌 Warnings: Ultimately consensual, but I'll issue a slight dub-con warning to be safe. Also rough sex and some fighting 𓄌 Oneshot (~2.1k words) | AO3

That little game of Oromë's was entertaining, he had to admit.

Melkor had been informed by his spies that another Feast of Horns was about to take place and had decided to join the Hunt as well, looking for his favourite prey: Fire spirits. Two in particular that had caught his eye, to be exact.

He hadn't attended the other festivities, of course, being at war with his brethren and not welcome in their realm as it was, but to sneak past any and all who might hinder him to secretly mingle with the Hunters as they dispersed in the fields and forests around Almaren had been laughably easy; on a night like this, vigilance was low.

Now all Melkor had to do was locate his prey and claim his catch, ideally far away from prying eyes where he would be undisturbed and any cries for help would not be heard. Discarding his raiment for the time being, he concealed his presence and began his search.

Arien was the one he found first. She was running through the fields of Arda, laughing and carefree, hand in hand with Ilmarë. Eönwë and Tilion were in hot pursuit, and Melkor glared at them from the shadows. Too many others around. He would not have her today, that much was clear, and the thought angered him. Having to yield his prey to lesser Ainur, how utterly irritating.

Mairon better be alone tonight. Melkor's impatience would not allow another unsuccessful hunt. He had no intention to settle for something other than what he wanted.

His anger quickly disappeared once Arien and her companions were out of sight and he caught Mairon's trace. The other Maia indeed appeared to be hunting by himself at the moment, as he was wont to do; he preferred working alone and having the fruits of his labour to himself, driven by his ambition to surpass his kin.

Melkor found him sneaking around in the deeper parts of a nearby forest, golden eyes gleaming in the twilight as he searched for something, most likely a good vantage point or the trace of whoever he had deemed worthy of his attention. A pair of artful spiral horns adorned his head, revealing that he was indeed one of the Hunters for this feast, but that meant little to the Vala pursuing him. He was going to have him regardless.

Mairon froze when Melkor stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself, wearing the shape of a tall and beautiful lord. His hair, blacker than a starless night, nearly reached his waist and a matching pair of horns grew on his head like a crown of darkness. He smiled at him, showing off deadly sharp fangs.

"Well met, little one," Melkor greeted, his voice low and resembling the purr of a huge cat. "I have come to claim my catch."

"Your catch?" Mairon let out a small, arrogant laugh and shook his head.

The way his flame-like hair moved around his bare shoulders only heightened Melkor's excitement and prompted him to come closer.

"Yes. Mine."

"I am a Hunter, as you can see. Find someone else."

Melkor regarded him quietly for a while, torn between irritation and amusement.

"You think I would care for the rules of Oromë's silly game, but you are mistaken," he said eventually. "For I am the greatest hunter this world has ever seen, and all that is therein is my prey if I wish it."

Mairon merely scoffed at him, though something akin to intrigue flashed within the golden depths of his eyes. "Still you have not claimed me, so you have not earned a favour from me."

"Then I shall."

Melkor was on top of him before he could even attempt to flee. Letting out a vicious snarl, Mairon bared his teeth and began clawing at every inch of skin he could reach. His nails, turning into deadly claws as his rage flared and burned hot within him, drew no blood even as he fought the Vala with all of his strength.

Yet no matter how much he struggled, how hard he kicked, how much pain he attempted to cause, Melkor held him down with ease.

"Feisty," was all he said, and Mairon gave an indignant hiss. Seeing red, he attempted to bite the Vala's neck, only to be met with cold, nigh impervious flesh, reminding him of marble and diamonds — deceptive in the way it yielded like flesh should, yet refused to be broken.

"Are you satisfied now, little flame?"

The question caught him off-guard, allowing Melkor to pin him to the ground with a satisfied smirk.

"What do you mean?! Unhand me!"

"But this is what you asked for, no? You wanted me to properly stake my claim, and I believe I have shown you my strength just now and successfully subdued you."

Dazed, Mairon let go and looked up at Melkor. As outrageous as this capture was, there was a certain truth to his words. Brief as their struggle had been, it had undeniably gone in the Vala's favour — unsurprising though it was. Even so, the way he could so easily withstand anything a powerful Maia could do against him, within the constraints of Oromë's rules at least, was impressive.

Melkor grinned down at him. "Well? Are you not going to call for help?"

"I would be surprised if you didn't anticipate that possibility and made sure to catch me all the way out here to avoid it," Mairon remarked dryly. Perhaps he should be afraid, angry or disgusted, but he couldn't help feeling some sort of begrudging respect.

"Of course," Melkor admitted, utterly nonchalant as if it was a normal thing to do.

At least he isn't attempting to lie about it, for what it's worth.

"I could still try," Mairon said.

"You could."

They stared at each for a moment.

"Well? Would you stop me?" he challenged.

"It depends. Could it perhaps be that you would not be doing yourself a favour if you tried?" Melkor bent down to nuzzle his hair.

"You think I might be amenable to your advances?" Mairon hissed, but made no move to bite him again.

"No prey you could have caught on your own would be the greatest of the Valar."

"You would be correct, but my other prey also wouldn't have dared to hunt me."

"You would claim that you don't enjoy being hunted?" Melkor brought his full weight down on top of him to press their fánar together. "What if it is merely a matter of pride because you don't allow yourself to be hunted by lesser spirits?"

"You would know all about pride, wouldn't you?"

"Naturally." His fangs gleamed in the twilight. "And I also know to make this worth your time, little flame."

"Do you now?" Mairon hated that his righteous anger was slowly but surely replaced with intrigue and curiosity.

It was true; he thought himself greater than most of his peers and would never submit to them. To be made to submit by a greater power, however, was new and strangely exciting, even if his pride was wounded.

He licked his lips. The Feast of Horns was the time to indulge, and nobody had to know.

"Very well then. You may have your favour, even though your catch was rather clumsy."

Melkor laughed, then captured his lips in a greedy kiss. It was nothing like the tender caresses Mairon had seen his lord and lady or other Maiar exchange, it was teeth and tongue and violence, and he bit the Vala's bottom lip in retaliation for his shameless claiming of him. Again soft skin yielded to the force of his bite, but didn't break; the taste of Valarin blood continued to elude him.

"Fiery creature," Melkor purred, drawing back to admire his prey. Despite his best efforts, Mairon was unmistakably flustered panting heavily and pouting at him, cheeks flushed.

He felt angry. Aroused. Alive. Defying the Dark One's withering grasp, his flames burning bright inside him. And Mairon saw these strange sensations mirrored within Melkor's eyes, cold like splinters of ice yet glittering like frost in the light of Illuin and Ormal, aglow with a fey light set within Void-like darkness.

It was as unsettling as it was exciting to do this to a Vala.

Mairon bared his teeth, showing fangs of his own; a challenge that wouldn't remain unanswered.

With just one large, clawed hand, Melkor flipped him around as if he weighed nothing. Mairon found himself lying on his stomach, arms and legs spread wide, vines slithering out of the ground to restrain him. What little he wore was torn to shreds within seconds, and he was left exposed to his enemy — enemy turned lover.

Even so, he wasn't going to make it that easy.

Mairon fought against his restraints, struggling, biting, setting them on fire, only to make no progress. Hearing Melkor laugh at him once again enraged him.

"You would force me to endure such treatment?" he hissed over his shoulder.

"Easy there, little flame. You will enjoy this."

Before Mairon could ask how the Vala had the audacity to make such assumptions — ignoring the way his arousal spiked with every futile attempt at escaping — he felt two hands taking hold of his ass and a tongue pressing against his entrance. A strangled moan made its way past his lips when Melkor proceeded to lick and kiss him with such vigour that he feared he would be devoured if his muscles relaxed just a bit; a prospect so tempting that he did, inviting him in.

Nobody had ever touched him like this. Nobody had such strength and passion alike.

Mairon rested his head on the ground and let himself be eaten out, even pushing his hips demandingly in Melkor's direction as far as he was able.

"Naughty," he heard his voice again, this time through ósanwë.

When that wonderful tongue was withdrawn, Mairon protested with small, impatient whine, though said no more; he knew what would be next, and after Melkor's efforts he was convinced that this illicit coupling, too, would bring him pleasure unlike any he had previously known.

The first thing he felt was pain. Had his fána not been restrained and cleft in two by a Vala's cock, he would have responded with a snarky comment, but all he could do was gasp and groan and frantically adjust to its size.

"You must not be used to this," Melkor whispered in his ear, now coming to rest on top of his helpless lover to cover his fána with his own. "But I prefer it that way. I want you to feel me and remember it well."

"Do not... think for a second that I will be yours... after one night," Mairon hissed through gritted teeth.

"You will want no other."

Melkor accentuated his words with one well-aimed thrust, and suddenly pleasure bled into the pain. Now that his fána slowly grew accustomed to the Vala, the only thing Mairon could think about was how nicely his cock filled him, how it rubbed and pushed against his sensitive spots with every movement, how it caressed his rim as if it had been made for that purpose. The intensity of it all made it feel divine, so much more than anything he had experienced in his existence.

Mairon relished every moment of it. Every thrust, every small noise Melkor made, every inch of skin against skin, every time hands dug into his flesh with fierce possessiveness. Perhaps he would indeed want no other after this, as he doubted that any other Ainu would fuck him like this. Without his arrogance, without his pride, he was well and truly stripped bare of all bravado and reduced to his base instincts, to a being filled with hidden desires, lust and a secret craving to be made to serve another, one greater and more powerful.

He loved that he had made a Vala chase and catch him. He loved that Melkor showed him how much he wanted him. He loved that he was taken in a manner worthy of one who called himself a hunter of hunters.

And he loved that, in the end, his flesh and his voice were what made a Vala come undone.

Melkor held his hips in a bruising grip as he came, seeking to leave his mark with jealous determination. He didn't know if there were any others, and Mairon felt no obligation to tell him; perhaps he could retain the Vala's admiration and attention if he kept him on edge.

"Mine," Melkor growled in his ear.

Whether or not it was intended as a threat or a warning, all Mairon heard was a promise.

Thanks for reading! ♡

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