#this fucking this sticks out and it’s not like a wire so they can’t trim it and i have to suffer to the end of june to wait and get it off

[cucumbers-and-olives]

.

#so idk if you all know #but i have braces #basically one of my teeth wasn’t coming out/was also in the ‘wrong spot’ #so thy did a bunch of shit and now the tooth is coming out in the correct spot #and now there’s this thing called a button on my tooth #i’m in pain #that was a long was to say that #this fucking this sticks out and it’s not like a wire so they can’t trim it and i have to suffer to the end of june to wait and get it off #owwww #it’s hard to eat #or anything honestly #my lip kinda stuck to it #like inner lip gum whatever #i’m using wax and stuff but if you have any tips let me know pleaseeeee #cucumber rants?

[alwaysbethewest]

Narcos fic: Where the Love Light Gleams

Title: Where the Love Light Gleams Pairing: Steve/Connie + Javier Rating: Teen Word count: 830 Content/warnings: Just lighthearted and sappy. For some inexplicable reason I didn’t make this babyfic and it’s not even ot3 (though you can read it as pre-ot3 if you want!) I haven’t written anything in about a month so I guess I’m trying to ease back into it. Christmas fic, as the title probably suggests. Contains drinking and a little bit of kissing and a little bit of swearing.

  It’s clear they’re expecting him—the door is propped open and warm light is spilling out into the hallway along with the familiar scent of a Sunday pot roast cooking—but the sounds of domestic squabbling nearly give him pause on the threshold.

“You’re doing it wrong!”

“I’m not—baby, there’s no wrong way to do it. Maybe we have different styles—”

“Ohh, no, there is absolutely a wrong way and that is it,” Connie insists.

Cautiously, Javier steps foot inside the apartment. The two of them are standing in the far corner of the living room, next to a partially constructed faux Christmas tree. Steve is wearing a felted headband with antlers sticking out, looking for all the world like the most irritable reindeer Javi’s ever seen.

“It’s a tree,” he says, frowning. “Have you ever seen a tree? They—”

“Have I ever seen a tree,” Connie cuts him off, offended. “Stephen—”

“Hey, Javi’s here.”

She whirls to face him, annoyed expression melting into relief. “Javier! Come inside. I need your help, please.”

“Sure,” he offers, making his way over to her side.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, “Are you suggesting Javier Peña is better at Christmas decorating than me?”

“I think at the very least he’s better at following directions,” she retorts. Javi’s not sure it’s a great compliment but he smirks at Steve anyway and slings his arm around Connie’s shoulders, taking in the view of the slightly cockeyed tree.

“I was about to grab a stepladder and do it myself,” Connie tells him. “See how he’s got the branches all…” she trails off and gestures vaguely, in a movement Javi interprets to mean, fucked up. “They need to be fanned out, more flat.”

“Got it.”

He steps forward and reaches up to one of the branches Steve had attempted to fluff in his own jumbled way, now a mess of needles sticking in all different directions, and twists the coated wire branches to flatten them out.

“Yes,” she says, satisfied. “Like that.”

“My way gives it more character,” Steve says petulantly, but he retreats to the couch and sprawls out, watching Javi work. “If you want to settle for a cookie cutter tree, be my guest.”

“My way gives you a happy wife,” Javi murmurs, catching Steve’s eye as Connie squeezes his shoulder appreciatively. Steve raises his eyebrows.

“So maybe I’ve found other ways of making my wife happy,” he says, and he grasps Connie’s wrist as she walks past him towards the sideboard, tugging her gently to fall into his lap. “Baby, why don’t you sit here with me while he fixes the tree,” he says in a low voice, like he’s trying for sexy. “And after that, if you’re up for it, maybe we can… make him untangle the lights,” he finishes suggestively.

She laughs and pulls away, standing up again. “I was going to mix him a drink so he can catch up to us.”

Steve lets her go and Javi continues fixing the branches while she pours his martini across the room.

“You have plans for Christmas morning?” Steve asks him.

Javi thinks about it. He might stay in bed an extra hour, or laze on the couch with an old movie on the TV. Make a dent in the bottle of scotch he’s bought himself for a Christmas present.

“Not really,” he says.

“You should come over here.” Steve nods to the space over Javi’s shoulder and he turns to look, dropping his hands in surprise when he spots three stockings hanging on the wall nearby. “Connie was worried Santa might not visit your apartment,” Steve explains.

“Here you go, honey.” Connie is behind him, pressing a drink into his hands when he turns back around. He still feels a little stunned as she falls back to sit with Steve again on the couch.

“That’s for me?” he asks, looking again at the red-trimmed stocking next to their matching pair.

“Yes. Unless you already have one.” Connie frowns thoughtfully. “I didn’t think you probably would.”

Javi huffs a laugh. “Probably in an old storage box back home, from when I was a kid.” He can’t remember the last time he’d gone home for the holidays. “That’s—really nice. Thank you.”

She beams at him but Steve shakes his head. “She’s just trying to get in good with the big guy. Two days before Christmas, making sure she’s on the Nice list. Shameless.”

“At least some of us are nice. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get coal in your stocking,” she warns him, and he pulls a face and then draws her into a deep kiss that goes on long enough Javi averts his eyes, focusing back on the tree. He takes a sip of his drink, feeling the warmth of the vodka and Connie’s soft laughter spread through him, and reaches out to fix another of Steve’s fucked up branches, thinking, this might be the closest to home he’s been in years.

#my fic #fanfiction #narcos fanfiction #steve murphy x connie murphy #javier peña #pedro pascal #boyd holbrook #steve murphy #narcos

[aurorawest]

Hi! I’d love for a directors commentary on the real Asgardians of the galaxy, any section you choose, it’s my favourite story! Also I was wondering if you could do a commentary on chapter 7 of you come to me wild and wired please? Thank you!

Of course, thank you for asking! I’m so glad you like The Real Asgardians! 😄 I went with this section from chapter 25. Loki, Thor, and Mira have stopped on the Market Planet (aka Promachos), a place entirely of my own invention. Promachos is a planet that’s one giant, sprawling market. The section that the three of them visit looks very much like a souk in my head—I was definitely imagining the Arab Souk in Jerusalem as I was writing it. But you know, think the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, that sort of thing. Old, ancient feeling, labyrinthine covered market where it feels like you can get everything that’s ever existed.

In this conversation, Loki and Thor are having a nice conversation that turns sour, as they so often do.

“You know,” Thor said, the heavy-handed nonchalance in his voice sending up red flags, “that’s something New Asgard doesn’t have.”

“Children?” Loki said, playing dumb and immediately regretting it. 

Not really a reference, but this line has always reminded me of the exchange in Jurassic Park between Grant and Satler: “What are those?” “Small versions of adults, honey.”

Thanos hadn’t discriminated. He’d slaughtered Asgard’s children as easily as he had the adults. 

Womp womp. Seriously though, one of my favorite things to write with Loki is how he absolutely careens from one emotional end of the spectrum to the other. He makes this joke and he immediately jumps to the worst possible interpretation of it.

At least they’d managed to evacuate most of them, though Loki would never forgive himself for allowing a single Asgardian to die that day.

I recently had to put an exact number to how many children survived The Statesman. At this point I definitely was like, ‘eh, no idea!’

“No,” Thor said. “A school.”

“Mm.” Loki was getting increasingly worried that Mira was going to turn around and ask for the necklace. “What do they do, make repairs in the fishing nets because their fingers are smaller?”

This is one of my favorite jokes, actually. Loki is such an ass. There’s so much contempt packed into this sentence.

But more beyond that, his disdain for New Asgard is really important to his arc. We really see him lash out about it in this scene.

Thor glared at him. “No. They go to school. There just isn’t one in New Asgard.”

It couldn’t be overstated how uninterested Loki was in the education policies of New Asgard. Yes, his people lived there, but he had no personal stake or interest in the place. “Where do they go, then?”

Incidentally, I chose this scene because it seems kind of like a throwaway scene, like it’s more to express Loki’s distaste for New Asgard. And it is that...but it’s also got payoff down the line.

Uncertainty flickered over Thor’s face. “They go…I…er. I’m not exactly sure.” Loki didn’t push this issue. It was easy to imagine what had happened, anyway. The children would have been running wild in the months after the Snap. Brunnhilde, ruling New Asgard in all but name, would have gone to Thor, drunk, useless, drowning in depression and grief, and said something needed to be done, and he was the king, so what should they do? And Thor most likely would have slurred at her to figure it out. [...]

“I think they go to school in Tønsberg somewhere,” Thor finally said.

Thor kills me here. He’s pushing down every single bit of his regret and guilt. And Loki doesn’t get it at all. All he can do is snipe at Thor for screwing this up, for not taking charge, for not being the king that Loki thinks he should be. I’m actually enormously proud of “I think they go to school in Tønsberg somewhere,” because it says nothing...and also everything. Or at least, I hope it does.

Arching an eyebrow again, Loki said, “Oh. I see. So you’re raising humans.”

Loki gets none of this. All he can see is how much he doesn’t want to live on Earth, how much he doesn’t like New Asgard. He can’t fathom why the Asgardians would want to be there. It never occurs to him to stop and think about the fact that the Asgardians have been part of this community for six years. That they aren’t totally isolated from Norway or Earth. In Loki’s mind, New Asgard is like...kind of temporary? He can’t accept that it might be permanent.

“No,” Thor said, making a face as though this was the most stupid thing he’d heard in his whole life. “We’re not raising humans, I mean—not that I have a problem with humans, I love humans—”

Sometimes a little too much...but not in a creepy way, in a respectful way...

“As you’ve demonstrated,” Loki muttered, rolling his eyes. Not that he should talk.

Loki is consciously thinking of alt!Strange here, but of course...gosh he spent nine months living at the Sanctum and maybe he got close to one of its occupants...

“The point is,” Thor said, dropping all pretense of subtlety, “you’ve got some experience with it, and you should come back and—”

Thor takes a massive risk here and straight up asks Loki to come back to New Asgard. Not only that, but he’s asking Loki to come back to New Asgard and...open a school? This is the sort of thing that should thrill Loki. Thor is asking him to stick around! Thor is telling Loki that he wants him in New Asgard. And Loki...

Loki’s glare was poisonous enough that Thor took a step back. “No,” he hissed. “I will not.”

Loki doesn’t take kindly to it. Instead of seeing this moment for what it is, which is Thor reaching out to him, all Loki can see is this like, blaring red warning that he’s going to end up as something he Doesn’t Want To Be. And he doesn’t even really know what it is, right? He just hates what New Asgard symbolizes. He hates that he initiated Ragnarok, which necessitated New Asgard’s existence. He hates that New Asgard is so small, because of his own inability to protect his people from Thanos. He hates what Thor became in New Asgard. It’s really not even about New Asgard, it’s all of this other stuff.

Aaaaand chapter 7 of You Come to Me Wild and Wired!

So this was written for a @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt a couple weeks ago. The prompt was ‘broken windows.’ Their prompts are very very open ended, so I generally check them first thing on Friday morning and then let the day’s prompt rattle around in my brain until an idea occurs to me. With this one, I thought I could do something with the Oculus at the Sanctum being broken. I had also, a couple days before writing this, I had seen a reference to some sort of prompt for another ship about Stephen being angry, and I thought, you know what? It’s fun to write Stephen being angry. I should try that sometime! Broken Oculus means attack on the Sanctum, and I thought, what if Loki gets hurt in the course of that?

And to think, Loki was beginning to wonder if Strange ever got angry.

The idea of these fics is for them to be I think between 100-1000 words. This one was 1360, I believe, when I finished it? So I had to trim it down quite a bit (I eventually got it under 1100 but not quite down to 1000). The ‘And’ at the beginning of this sentence would have been an easy one to cut, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just loved it too much.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” 

I love writing sweary Stephen. I love it so much.

Strange’s hands shake as he pulls Loki’s torn sweater from the wound. One of the wounds. The sweater is ruined. Shame. Loki’s always liked it. Even without the damage, the blood stains will never come out.

I also love writing Loki being more concerned with his wardrobe than his own physical wellbeing.

Loki feels woozy. Strange’s question strikes him as funny. “I was thinking I wouldn’t get hurt.”

This is clearly not the answer Strange is looking for.

Loki finds that funny, too. “I’ll tell you what I wasn’t thinking—I wasn’t thinking I’d ruin my favorite sweater. Do you see this color? Really brings out my eyes, don’t you think?”

See when you’re bleeding out, you can say things like this.

Strange’s jaw clenches. His eyebrows draw together and his eyes narrow. He picks up a bottle and doesn’t bother blotting whatever’s inside onto a cloth—he just sloshes it over the gash on Loki’s stomach.

When Loki yelps, Strange says, “Oh, shut up. That’s not going to kill you. Which is more than I can say for the horde of demons you faced—on your own.”

Gritting his teeth against the sting of alcohol, Loki says, “Yes, but they didn’t kill me.” The wooziness is probably due to blood loss. His sweater isn’t just stained—it’s soaked with crimson. That’s all his blood. The demons’ blood was black.

I’m not actually a big fan of hurt/comfort when Loki is the one who’s hurt. When I’m going to hurt Loki—and I do—I prefer to do it with psychological and emotional torment. Physical pain? Honestly, it’s not that fun for me to write. Here’s the thing with Loki: he doesn’t care. Physical pain doesn’t frighten or even really bother him. He’s completely blasé about it. And in order for it to be dangerous to him, it has to be so bad that he’s passed out. Where’s the fun in a passed out Loki?

In general, I far prefer to put Loki in the comfort role, because it seems like it’s such an unnatural fit for him, and that’s way more fun to write about. I like to make my characters uncomfortable, haha. The two people that Loki is closest to in my verse, Thor and Stephen, are also really not the kind of people that want to show physical weakness. And Loki isn’t nurturing (well, he can be, but it’s buried deep down inside him), so like, it’s way more fun to have Thor be hurt and have Loki needing to feed him or whatever.

And I’m straying from this fic but this is the director’s cut, haha.

Strange doesn’t respond. At all. His hands can barely hold the—what is that? Oh, a bandage. He’s trying to bandage the wound, but he drops it because of his hands’ violent tremor.

Stephen’s hands shake more when he’s emotional.

“You need to go to the hospital,” Strange says as he picks up the alcohol again. He sounds like he might kill Loki himself.

“I’d rather not.”

At these words, which Loki delivers in a perfectly affable tone, 

This line just makes me laugh. Something about the word ‘affable.’ Loki’s so cheerful about his impending death.

Strange drops the bottle. It spills all over their shoes; splashes their pants. Loki’s legs sting as the alcohol soaks through his pants, so he knows he has open wounds there, too.

Trying to show, not tell.

Strange swears, a long string of profanity that penetrates Loki’s fog. He’s never heard Strange talk like this.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Odinson? Like seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Strange rakes a hand through his hair. Blood, Loki’s blood, smears his forehead. “You’re bleeding out. You’re gonna fucking die and you can’t swallow your goddamn motherfucking pride to let someone who can hold a fucking needle and thread stitch you up—”

The beauty of these little ficlets is I don’t have to come up with the whole long slowburn backstory or figure out too much about the characters’ arcs up until this point, but, I will say, I love to write a Stephen who has entirely come to terms with his disability and for him to actually be mad at Loki for not seeking treatment from someone who can actually help.

“This won’t kill me.” Loki considers. “Probably not, anyway. Though I don’t feel well.”

Strange looks like he’s going to scream.

Loki glances around. “Can you use superglue to close a wound? I’m sure I’ve heard Lang say that.”

It cracks me up to imagine Scott describing how like, one time at Baskin Robbins he cut himself on the soft serve machine or something, and he had to close it up with superglue. And that Loki feels this is an appropriate thing to say at this moment.

Strange stares, his eyes blue, then green, then this curious, almost colorless color. Colorless color. That doesn’t even make sense.

In my other fics I usually refer to this as ‘seaglass’ but I try not to be too repetitive.

Perhaps Strange is right. Perhaps Loki is in danger.

“Why would you do something so stupid?” Strange asks quietly. Loki expected more rage. Rage he can deal with. People are always angry at him. 

Lol come on I wrote this fic, you didn’t think there wouldn’t be angst in it, did you?

It’s funny, actually. Loki has always taken pleasure in getting a rise out of people. It’s easy. People are predictable.

Strange has never been predictable.

So Loki tells the truth. No snark. No sarcasm. “The Oculus was broken,” he says. “Broken windows aren’t a good sign. I thought you might be in danger.”

Sometimes, Loki fears he has become predictable. Didn’t Thor tell him so, once? But he can tell this is the last thing Strange expected to hear.

“I wanted to help you,” Loki adds for good measure. He feels light-headed. He probably wouldn’t say these things otherwise. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. Maybe it’s time he said this to Strange, to Stephen, whom he cares very much for, even if he pretends otherwise. He likes making Stephen angry by being difficult, by being intractable, by being an arse. He likes trying to get a reaction. He feels like he’s standing outside Strange’s window, throwing stones, trying to break the glass of his impenetrable, unruffle-able coolness.

As I write these ficlets, I find that I tend to start with a literal interpretation, and along the way, I find my way to these metaphors. They usually help me tie the fic together, too, so that it’s not just a collection of sentences but actually has a itty bitty plot and arc. I’m particularly proud of this one, I’ll be honest.

But Strange is immune to Loki.

It’s a bit of an act. Alright, it’s entirely an act. Loki isn’t good at seeking attention unless it’s negative.

My cat is also like this tbh.

“Did think maybe I had it under control?” Stephen runs his shaking fingers through his hair again. There’s red in the gray at his temples.

“I thought maybe you didn’t,” Loki replies.

Stephen covers his eyes with a hand. Bloody fingerprints mark where his fingertips rested when he moves it. 

I have a thing for my boys being covered in blood.

“Let me take you to the hospital.”

There’s something in Strange’s eyes. It looks like fear.

Strange’s hands shake more when he’s emotional.

Suddenly, Loki realizes Stephen has been putting on an act, too. He’s not cool and unruffled. He’s not immune to Loki.

Suddenly, Loki thinks Stephen might care more about him than he lets on.

Loki looks at his blood-soaked sweater. Considers how dizzy he feels. Ponders the fact that the shape of Stephen Strange’s lips is very attractive; the way his eyes change color with the light hypnotic.

Maybe it’s the blood loss. But he wouldn’t like to die without knowing how Stephen’s lips feel.

Aaaand there it is. So I’m a serious slow burn person, and that makes it hard for me to write these short little things. You’ll notice actually if you read them that there’s always all this unspoken backstory, like ‘they’d been working together for years...’ etc etc. But I always try to get that build even in these short little things, and if I can make myself go, AWWWWW then I’m happy.

“Alright,” Loki says. “I’ll go to the hospital.” He stands. There’s a rush in his ears. His legs feel like sodden paper. 

Stole this line from myself. I have a nearly identical simile in one of my original novels.

They buckle.

But Stephen is there, holding him, an arm tight around Loki’s waist. His hands may tremble, but he radiates safety and steadiness.

Safety is hugely important to Loki. He couldn’t ever fall in love with someone who didn’t make him feel safe, even though he probably wouldn’t admit that out loud.

A portal blooms, Metro-General Hospital on the other side. Stephen tucks a piece of hair behind Loki’s ear. “The sweater does bring out your eyes, by the way.”

Obligatory callback to the beginning of the fic. When I had Loki note that the sweater brings out his eyes, I knew that I would have Stephen agree at the end of the fic.

“Aha, you think about my eyes,” Loki says. It’s getting hard to hold his head up. Stephen guides him through the portal. “That means you think they’re pretty.”

“I think they’re gorgeous,” Stephen says. He hesitates. “I think you’re gorgeous.”

‘Gorgeous’ is my preferred word for Stephen to use to describe Loki. Loki tends more towards ‘beautiful’ to describe Stephen.

He lowers Loki to a chair. “Now sit here while I get help.”

Loki grabs Stephen’s wrist and lets his head fall against the wall. He peers at Stephen through slitted eyes, knowing he’ll survive this, because he’s survived worse. He still says, “I would kiss you, but I want something to look forward to if I don’t die.”

Emotions pass over Stephen’s face like the play of shadows on the ground as clouds scud across the sun. 

I love the word ‘scud’ but it’s definitely one of those ‘you only get to use this once in a fic’ type of words.

He swallows hard. “Yeah, well.” He squeezes Loki’s hand. “We’ll see how you feel after you’re patched up.”

Loki smiles and lets him go. He knows how he’ll feel. After all, he’s been throwing stones at the windows of Stephen’s heart.

He just never realized Stephen was throwing them back.

METAPHOR! The wonderful thing about finding the metaphor is that it’s a really easy way to end the fic. It’s the central theme, right, so you use the last line to tie into it, and done.

Thank you so so much for asking!

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

#Anonymous #froststrange #brodinsons #loki #thor #stephen strange #traotg

[keelywolfe]

FIC: A Pressing Engagement ch2 (Not baon AU)

Summary: Brotherly bonding, by way of felonies. 

Tags:  Spicyhoney, Fluff and Angst, Dating, Developing Relationship, Humor

Chapter 1

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Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

“Brother,” Blue sighed as he pulled his car up to curb two houses down from the Fell brother’s home. “I’ve known you for a long time.”

Stretch gave him a sideways look. “we’re brothers, i was literally there when you were born.”

Blue ignored that. “And I know we’ve discussed that shortcutting around is rude, but in this situation, I feel as though you could simply pop into Edge’s garage, look for the ring, and we can be back home in time for the new Napstaton special.”

“oh, that’d be too easy for my life,” Stretch grumbled as he pulled a dark knit ski mask over his skull, drawing it down over his face for maximum espionage. The last thing he needed was his white-ass noggin out there bobbing around like a second moon. “i can’t shortcut in. red rigged up some kinda anti-teleportation field around their house, ever since sans stashed all that nitrogen-frozen shaving cream in red’s room.” He tried to flash Blue a grin before he remembered the damn mask. “can’t blame him even if it was funny as hell. i doubt his room has been that clean before or since.”

“Yes, I remember that. Edge wasn’t as amused.”

“that’s ‘cause his sense of humor is atrophied from disuse, we’re working on it. so if shortcuts are out, we gotta be discreet. which is why you should’ve changed when i asked!" Stretch said accusingly. He glared at Blue's bright pink She-Ra t-shirt, showcasing Catra and Adora in a loving embrace. The sentiment was appreciated, the color, not so much, his bro was gonna stand out like an adorably affectionate beacon.

“My apologies for not owning any cat burglar gear, I missed out on auditioning for the remake of Ocean’s 11. Really, brother, we’re breaking into one garage, not a casino vault.” Blue sighed again and turned off the car. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“none of this was a good idea, but here i am.” Should’ve known it was a mistake the second he walked into the jewelry store, could’ve wasted a lot less time if he’d probed Edge for marriage opinions before he opened his wallet. But there wasn’t time (heh) for him to work out his own version of ‘Back to the Future’, so they were gonna have to stick with heist movie.

Stretch got out of the car and skulked closer, inspecting their surroundings, Blue following reluctantly behind. The sidewalks were empty, everyone else was sensibly inside watching their preferred nighttime entertainment since it was dark except for the bright streetlamps positioned evenly down the length of the block.

Stretch paused outside the ring of light by the Fell home, summoning a small, sharpened bone. At his elbow, Blue asked worriedly, “What are you doing?”

“i’m gonna break the streetlamp so no one can see us.”

Blue grabbed his hand, hissing, “You are not! I did not sign on for destruction of property! Unscrew the bulb and we can tighten it again when we leave!”

Okay, to be fair that was a much better idea, even if it took a lot more concentration and a quick mental ‘righty tighty, lefty loosey’. With a little effort, Stretch managed to coax the oversized bulb loose and the light went abruptly dark. Perfect.

The two of them crept closer to the house and if Blue was humming the ‘mission impossible’ theme song under his breath, Stretch couldn’t exactly gripe at him. He’d had it blaring nonstop in the back of his head since they’d left the apartments. They paused by the well-trimmed shrubs that ran alongside the garage while Stretch considered the plan.

Opening the main garage door was out. Even if Stretch could clip the house alarm, there was no way one of the Fell brothers wouldn’t hear that grinding its way open. Reconnaissance was supposed to happen before the damned heist, every movie Stretch ever saw taught him that, but they were working in a time crunch and wasn’t it a shame that the only room in the Fell house that he knew with any real detail was Edge’s bedroom. Also the shower, but neither of those options were real useful right now.

He looked around, squinting through the dimness, hell, they should’ve done this before he killed the streetlight. To his relief, he could see the outline of window in the shadows, up high on garage wall. He gestured to it, whispering to Blue, “give me up boost up.”

Blue gulped visibly and reached out, the faintest glow rising in his fingers. There was a soft ting as his magic enveloped Stretch’s soul, lifting him off his feet and towards the window. Or more like sending him on an increasingly wobbly flight through the air, limbs dangling as he slowly rose. Stretch bit back a squawk as the grip on his soul twisted him nearly sideways, then hastily overcompensated in the other direction to almost send him careening into the building.

“careful!” Stretch whispered furiously, biting back a curse as he shoved away from the wall. “seriously, what have you been learning with all that training you do!”

“I’m terribly sorry, Alphys never covered breaking and entering!” Blue hissed. Sweat was visibly standing out on his skull, glimmering in the moonlight. Another minute of unstable and slightly painful antigravity later and Stretch was hovering outside the window.

His black hoodie was a better choice for more than the color. Its pockets zipped securely shut, holding his tiny collection of burglary tools safe and sound. If Stretch’d been wearing this one earlier, none of this would be happening and wasn’t hindsight a nosy bitch. He dug out his tools, flicking on a penlight to inspect what the paranoid goblin had going for home security. There was an alarm, to be expected, but it looked like a simple wire job. All Stretch needed was five minutes and a pair of wire snips and he’d be inside.

“Oh!” his brother’s voice suddenly carried through the quiet, too loud and verging on a panicked cheer, “Good evening, Mrs. Gerson!”

Stretch’s head whipped around to see an elderly turtle Monster gradually walking up to Blue, cane in hand and waving with dreamy slowness. He couldn’t hear what she said to Blue, but his brother’s voice came loud and clear, “Yes, working on my stretching exercises! I do them for a few minutes every day. Trying to hurry up with it today, it’s later than I thought!”

Not exactly what he’d call discreet, yeah, but Stretch sure as hell got the message.

Frantically, Stretch got to work on the wires, clipping and twisting them into a messy sort of bypass. There was no time to be tidy, not while he was dangling here like a bargain basement Spider-man as Blue tried to keep Mrs. Doubtfire distracted over there. A muffled grunt escaped as Stretch suddenly listed to one side, hanging horizontally in the air. Another twist sent him face-first into the wall and Stretch tried to brace himself against the siding, biting off a yelp as he was dragged noisily upward.

“Whoops,” Blue called in a loud, nervous chuckle, hopefully covering the rattle of bones whacking into the side of a damn wall, “I think I still need to hold that stretch for another couple of minutes.” From this angle, Stretch had no idea what Mrs. Gerson was making of the washboard sound of him lurching up and down the siding like mysterious jug band traveling through the night, “Goodness, not sure how much longer I manage!”

Whatever calisthenics Blue was doing finally bent him in a direction that was close enough to the window for him to reach. Stretch grabbed on, hauling himself upright and holding on frantically with one hand as he clipped the last wire. He shoved up the windowpane, wincing as it screeched ominously the way windows only did in the middle of the damn night when someone was trying to sneak through it. He didn’t wait for Blue to try breaking out in song to cover it up, diving through the narrow panel and nearly tumbled straight to the concrete floor as his brother’s magic released, barely managing to catch himself and drop clumsily to his feet.

Okay, that went well.

Damn good thing he was breaking into Edge’s garage; the entire thing was pin-neat, no suspicious stack of paint cans to knock over or a pile of trash bags to fall into. Only tools on the wall, a clean workbench, and the pristine shape of his car precisely in its place, gleaming metallic cherry-red beneath the narrow beam of the penlight.

Now all Stretch had to do was get into it. A slim jim tool was out, for several reasons. One, despite watching several youtube videos on his way over, Stretch was not confident he could do it, two, it might damage Edge’s car and that was right out.

There was also the small matter that Stretch didn’t have a slim jim, so that left trying to hack into Edge’s Onstar account to wirelessly unlock it.

That he could probably manage and he spent a long, sweaty ten minutes on his phone, wrangling through firewalls and password detectors, searching and fruitlessly guessing, getting more frantic by the second as he silently cursed paranoid fucking Fells and it was only when despair was setting in that it occurred to him to try the door.

It opened easily under his tentative touch and the amount and variety of swearing that went through his mind right then would have sent Blue sprinting to the nearest grocery store for their entire stock of soap.

Okay, no more time for distractions, the finish line was in sight. Stretch crawled inside, penlight flashing as he searched frantically through the interior.

Not that there was much to see, Edge kept his car painfully clean. Even the mats were glossy black, not a speck of dust on the control panel, no stray fries or pennies caught in-between the seats. His panic was hitting all new highs when the light caught on dark velvet wedged in between the passenger seat and the door.

It must’ve fallen when he got out and Stretch picked it up, his knees watery-weak with relief as he opened it to look at the rings which, stupid, what was he afraid he got the wrong velvet box?

Time to get out of here, rescue Blue from Granny Mcgee and get the fuck out for the celebratory fist bump, and he barely had time to even think it when the overhead light came on at the same moment a much harsher blue magic than his brother’s took hold of his soul and slammed him painfully into the garage door. It knocked the breath out of him and Stretch hung there, wheezing, the box clutched tightly in his fingers as the last voice he wanted to hear echoed coldly through the garage.

“Stop struggling.”

Fearfully, Stretch lifted his head to see Edge strolling in through the doorway and it was honestly impressive how imposing he could be in a pair of silk pajamas and slippers.

“I’m afraid you’ve chosen the wrong car to steal, thief, I’m rather fond of it, I—” Edge stopped, his eye sockets narrowing and Stretch cringed as he reached out and roughly tore the ski mask off. His sockets widened in disbelief. “Stretch?”

“um. hey.” Stretch waved feebly with his empty hand.

“What the hell are you doing,” Edge sputtered out, cold anger melting into clear upset, “I could have hurt you!”

Yeah and sweat was running down his tailbone just thinking about it. Good thing it was Edge and not Red who found him, the gremlin might’ve dusted first and felt a micron of guilt later.

Stretch waggled his feet in the empty air. “um. gonna let me down?”

Edge’s gaze narrowed. “I’ll consider it. What are you doing here and if I hear the words shaving cream, I’ll—"

“no! no, nothing like that,” Stretch blurted in automatic denial and regretted it immediately. Shit, mistake, probably should’ve let Edge believe it was a prank of some sort, let him get mad and yell. He would’ve gotten over it eventually and they could’ve gotten back to their non-dates and twice weekly sexytimes with the occasional overnight thrown in for extra flavor. Except, Stretch didn’t like it when Edge was mad at him and not just mad, he would’ve been disappointed, even hurt, because any prank that involved his car was taking it up to a level of cruel. Edge’s car was his baby and Stretch wouldn’t do that to him, never never ever.

Didn’t matter, he’d sort of lost his chance to go with prank when he denied it was one, so there was nothing left but some version of the truth. Stretch took a deep breath and went with the basics, “i left something in your car, is all. didn’t want to bug you to get it, not after begging off on you. stupid, i know.”

“Very stupid,” Edge agreed, “considering that we have motion sensors in the garage.”

Of course he fucking did. “yeah, um, sorry.” Now that a portion of the truth was out there, time for a distraction. Hanging on the wall like a modern art installation probably wasn’t giving off the sexiest vibes, but Stretch gave it a shot, calling up what he hoped passed for an enticing smile, running his tongue lightly across his teeth, “’m feeling a lot better now, though, could head upstairs if you want, make up for a little lost time…?”

Edge raised a silencing hand and Stretch reluctantly obeyed, ah, fuck, he was too late, Edge was thinking about it, shit, and proved it by saying, slowly, “Let me see if I understand. You left something in my car and decided you needed to break into my home, bypass the alarm, pick the locks, and skulk through my garage to get it instead of simply asking me?" Edge crossed his arms over his chest and the intensity of his glare went up a notch, "No."

"no?" Stretch parroted, confused.

"No, that goes beyond the bounds of suspending my disbelief, so you're lying." Edge’s sockets narrowed and Stretch flinched from the true anger he could see there, "I do not like liars or thieves, so show me what you took."

His grip tightened around the velvet box. “but i don’t—”

“Show me,” Edge barked out.

Humiliating tears started welling, fuck, this wasn’t the time for it, all his earlier disappointment rising back up chokingly painful in his soul as Stretch whispered brokenly, "please don't make me."

Edge’s grip on his soul wavered, sending him sliding down an inch as that anger faded into bewilderment, "What…you broke into my garage, why are you—just show me!"

Miserably, Stretch held out the velvet box, let Edge snatch it away. From his continued confusion, he still didn't get it, not until he popped it open. The bands gleamed garishly in the overhead lights, carbon tungsten because the salesman assured him that it was extremely durable, with a twined color strip woven through the black metal of orange and red. Their colors joined together the way Stretch had hoped, stupidly, that their lives would.

Dawning realization as Edge looked from the rings to Stretch and back, again, and once more for good measure.

"Oh," Edge said blankly.

"yeah,” Stretch said, tiredly. “can you put me down now?"

Hastily, he did. "Stretch--" Edge began, all awkward gentleness now, the ring box still open in his hand like a mockery of Stretch’s hopeful daydreams and wasn’t that just typical of his life?

And Stretch just couldn’t. He couldn’t listen to the pity he could already see in Edge’s eye lights, he couldn’t, not right now with what felt like his entire soul choking in his throat. Red’s little shortcut blocker worked for going in, but not out and now that Edge didn’t have him pinned, Stretch was fucking gone. Stumbling out onto the sidewalk outside and almost went to his knees right where Blue was still chatting awkwardly with Mrs. Gerson.

“we need to go,” Stretch blurted. “right now!” And when Blue didn’t move fast enough, Stretch grabbed him around the waist and yanked him off his feet. Let someone else get dragged around for a change tonight, Stretch was sick of it, felt bruised inside and out as he dashed over to the car.

“Oof, bro-oth-er!” Blue yelped as he was all but bowled into the driver’s seat while Stretch scrambled over to the passenger side “What on earth is going on?!”

“go!” Stretch pleaded, “just go, i’ll explain at home.”

Blue probably would’ve put up more of a fight, sure as hell would with any other brotherly manhandling, but he caught sight of tears starting to boil down Stretch’s cheek bones and instead fumbled for his keys. “All right, we’re going.”

The engine started and he began to pull away…right into a massive cage of bones grinding up around the car from the ground, chunks of asphalt falling from the jagged tips. Directly in front of them was Edge, both hands flung out and his roused magic surrounding him in a fiery aura. His crimson eye lights blazed as he forcibly held them back in a glorious depiction of viciously controlled power even while he was still in those damn silk pajamas and slippers.

Really, it was damned impressive. He was fucking gorgeous and Stretch hated himself for noticing, for even thinking it.

“Turn off the car,” Edge said, loudly, and Blue did, sitting mutely as Edge let his magic fade. He walked over the passenger side and opened the door, leaning in as he said evenly, “I think we need to talk, don’t you?”

Stretch buried his face into his hands and wondered if he could get away with a ‘fuck, no.’

He dared to look out and from the expression on Edge’s face, fleeing was only gonna lead to a wild hunt through the city and Blue already said he didn’t want any property damage.

Might as well get it over with. Stretch nodded and impatiently wiped his face on his sleeves as he got out of the car. He couldn’t even be insulted when Edge firmly grabbed his elbow and held on, leading him towards the house despite the way Stretch’s sneakers dragged through the crumbled remains of the road.

Mrs. Gerson smiled and nodded as they walked past, waving as she croaked out, “Have a good night, boys!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gerson,” they said in unison, Edge crisply polite and Stretch a dismal mutter.

Edge unlocked the front door, pushing Stretch through it and he didn’t look up, not at Red who was on sofa, sitting up from his slouch with a genuinely startled, “what the fuck…?” and not at Edge, who ignored his brother to guide him up the stairs to his bedroom.

He closed the door and firmly set Stretch in the desk chair while Edge sat across from him on the bed.

“All right,” Edge said. He held out the ring box, blessedly closed, hiding the contents that Stretch was pretty sure he never wanted to see again; he’d rather toss them in the trash than try to return them at this point, “Now. Start from the beginning.”

tbc

Read Chapter 3

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus

[dicedungeons-and-dragons]

Scales

Note: As most of you know my campaign has well as truly taken over my life and I’ve been writing little (and not so little) stories based around it. And I’ve decided to post them from time to time, they’re going to be tagged ‘cotd fics’ if you want to blacklist them, I’m also sticking them under a ‘read more’ but I know they glitch a lot so sorry if it doesn’t take. Here’s a little one because I’ve been plagued by the fact that dragon bloodline sorcerers canonically have scales. 

His mother noticed when he was five. 

She found little patches of pebbled skin on his shoulders, along his elbows and knees, and running along his spine. The skin wasn’t red, or itchy, or like any rash she’d seen but she’d been worried and taken him to the local physician anyway. The older man hadn’t known what to make of the tough little bumps either and had given them a special lotion. Waylan got in the habit of putting it on the patches every night and morning, but the pebbled skin never went away. 

***

His father takes notice of it when he’s nine. 

His mother has been dead for eleven months and things are different now. There’s no more music constantly drifting through their home, his father works longer hours, and Waylan is silently expected to care for himself. The expectation is distant. His father doesn’t call him a burden, doesn’t scoff or roll his eyes when he asks for something, but he makes a point of showing Waylan how things are done in the house and where things are so that he doesn’t have to ask for them again. So Waylan learns how to make and tend fires around the house, for warmth and cooking, how to do his laundry, and eventually, where the first-aid kit is. 

He burns his hand on the fire poker, not having realized that he’d left it resting too close to the roaring flame he’d brought to life. His father heard his scream from across the house and he’d come running. The sharp red line already had two blisters bubbling up inside of it and his father had picked him up and taken him straight to the bathroom, setting him on the edge of the tub before rooting around in the small dresser that sat beside the door. He’d put a thick cream on the raw skin, wrapped it, and warned Waylan to be more careful. 

When he’d taken the bandages off a few days later the blisters were gone, but a distinct line of that pebbled skin had risen in their place. 

***

Waylan figures it out when he’s fourteen. 

After his hands catch fire, after he can suddenly hold a piece of wire and talk to someone over a hundred feet away, after he realizes he has magic. And once he realizes it he starts to research, finding scant moments to slip away from his father when they’re in Creta so that he can buy as many books as his bag can hold about the arcane. And when they’re home he reads. He learns about the different sources people have for their abilities. There are people who use words and songs to pull their magic from the strings of the universe, people who through their own means and study are able to learn the craft like a science, people who draw power from the natural world, and people who are just born with arcane magic. Though his mother had taught him to play piano when he was still little he doubts his fumblings there are the source of the fire he can feel burning under his skin. So he figures he must have just been born like this. 

And there are plenty of records of other born sorcerers. There are some who can’t contain their magic and strange, sometimes destructive, things happen around them. But he understands what Sabroth and Dojhan say when they speak draconic and he’s never been taught. And he thinks that maybe he should be more surprised to find out that there’s dragon blood somewhere in his family line. But he’s more relieved just to find some answers. He reads the chapter on mages with dragon blood four times that night. And when he goes to bed he traces his fingers lightly over the raised rough skin along his shoulders and the backs of his forearms. 

Scales. Thin and flesh colored, not the metallic (or dare he think, chromatic) color of his ancestor, but another remnant of them. Something left behind to protect him. 

He stops using the strange lotions from his childhood. 

***

Gadreel doesn’t notice them until after they start to date. 

That’s not a surprise really. The protective patches blend in with his skin, they’re pretty nondescript until they’re felt. Gad’s fingers twitch where they’re curled around his hips, his calloused fingers taking note of the unexpected tough texture. 

“Scales,” Waylan mutters against his throat. He wants to try and press himself closer into Gad’s lap, but he’s still unsure and off balance. The stump of his arm aches and it would really kill the mood if he fell over because he couldn’t catch himself. 

“Scales?” 

“Dragon blood.” He says in draconic, nipping sharply along the edge of his jaw. He taught Gadreel the tongue he’d been given by birthright. “Now fuck me.” Waylan adds in the orcish Gad had taught him. 

He doesn’t comment on the patches of scales he finds as he runs his hands along the rest of his body. 

***

Ray finds out shortly after. 

She is their resident healer, though both Lugh and Vani can make due in a pinch, and he is the resident torture victim. He’s got a lot of healing to do. Ray chatters away at him when he seeks her out to take a look at his arm. She healed a lot of the damaged, closed the bone over the marrow and stopped the bleeding when they’d found him. But the damage to the muscles and nerves required a check-up. So he lets her chatter and waits patiently as she finishes unwrapping the bandages to get a better look. 

“Oh,” he doesn’t look at her or at the rough stump of his arm. His stomach twists and sinks. That wasn’t a bad sound necessarily, but he doesn’t like the idea that she’s surprised by some new development with the injury. “Does this always happen when you’re hurt?” Teeth clenched, he finally glances down at the stump. 

The scales are thicker, thicker then he’s ever seen them anywhere on his body, almost as defined as Dojhan’s. They’re an unhappy, flushed raw color where they’re swelling around the stitches Ray’s supposed to be removing. 

“Never been hurt like this before.” He grunts in response. Ray mulls that over for a second. He wonders what inane thing she’ll come up with this time and half wants to yank away from her touch. He’s not half bad with a medical kit himself, he could probably take care of this on his own the slow way. 

But instead Ray just says, “Tell me if anything hurts.” And starts trimming away the black thread. When she checks the bandages on his chest as well they find a similar line of rough thick scales. 

***

He notices after a few more months of traveling with the party that the scales don’t go back to the way they were before. 

The ones around the stump of his left arm are still thick and rigid, a protective insulation against the potential discomfort of his mechanical prosthetic when he manages to procure one. As are the ones tracing the wound left by Gadreel’s axe. But he starts to notice the scales growing thicker in other places. Along his other arm, down the front of his chest and thighs, spider webbing out from the slash the Crimson Sign left across the hollow of his throat. The more they fight, the more his magic grows, the more scales he feels on his skin. They’re still invisible save for the pink tinged ones that line his scars, but Waylan can’t help but note the changes. 

The scales are for protection and the gods know he could use as much as he can get traveling with this lot. And when he leaves them, leaves Gadreel, only a few days after the winter solstice to travel to one of the most isolated and dangerous places in the world, he's grateful to carry that protection on his skin.

***

He tells Corzaren. 

They’re in the ruined castle, and after weeks he’s finally persuaded the undead creature to remove his armor. Seeing what two hundred years of decay has done to the knight is strange, but in a different way than he’d expected it to be. Waylan had known that Corzaren would be nightmarish. But the skeleton in front of him with red coal bright pinpricks of light burning in its eye sockets isn’t frightening really. Though he wonders if he’d feel differently if he didn’t know Corzaren as well as he does. 

“Can I?” He raises his flesh hand. 

“Of course.” Corzaren leans forward, still far taller than him even without his thick armored boots and helmet, and lets Waylan carefully cup his fingers over the bones of his face. It is strange to see the mandible part and hear the words slip out with no assistance from lips or tongue. The bones are rough under his fingers and the heavy thrum of necrotic energy that keeps the knight’s soul bound and animating his corpse makes Waylan’s hand start to go cold and numb after a few moments. 

“Can you feel this?” He asks, drops his fingers down to the creature’s neck so he can carefully touch the interlocking pieces of his spine. 

“Vaguely. I mostly note the pressure. I imagine I feel your touch as much as you can feel this.” He reaches out and runs his fingers along the metal arm. And the magic and machinery that keep the prosthetic going does transmit some of that sensation to him. Mainly a whisper of pressure, and a slight twinge that he suspects is the arm’s magic reacting to Corzaren’s necrotic energies. But no registration of texture or temperature. 

“Do you want me to stop?” 

“I am content being as close to you as I am able.” That makes his heart do a funny thing behind his ribs so Waylan just settles for tracing careful fingers along the thin bones of Corzaren’s instead. They feel brittle, like even he could break them without much effort, but when he does press a little more roughly he finds them solid as steel under his hand. Corzaren doesn’t even acknowledge the attempt, and to be honest Waylan wouldn’t have even tried if he thought for a second he’d actually do the other man harm. 

When Corzaren’s touch moves from his prosthetic to his cheek he doesn’t say anything, just leans in to the touch slightly as he continues his inspection of the knight’s skeleton. There’s no flesh left on him, and Waylan’s a little grateful for that. He thinks this would be a lot more unpleasant if Cor looked like some of the bodies mouldering away on the lawn. Instead the old bones are clean, and scarred. A deep gouge in his rib here, a nick along his vertebrae there, and notably a crack, long and thin a few centimeters from his sternum on the left side of his ribcage. When Way’s fingers hesitate there Corzaren says, 

“When Westly finished the ritual he asked me to fall on his blade. He was too far gone to sever his own soul from his body, but if I was willing then he could sever mine. Spare me the fate that was coming for everyone in the castle.” 

“And avenge him and his mother?” 

“No, Westly was a kind man, I don’t think revenge would have ever crossed his mind.” 

Waylan doesn’t say anything when Crozaren’s fingers drop to his throat. He’s not wearing his necklace, and the pale pink scar smiles along his throat. “Same person who did almost all the rest of it.” Is all he offers in explanation. He hasn’t told Corzaren about the Sign yet. He’ll get around to it eventually. He doesn’t flinch as the thin bones run over the scar, but they make a loud rough sound in the quiet room despite the soft touch. The undead creature pauses and then does it again, as if he doesn’t know quite what to make of the discordant and unfamiliar sound. “I grow scales over my deepest scars.” 

“Were you anyone else I would think that was a metaphor.” 

“Good thing I’m not then.”

***

Terran knows he has scales after the first five minutes they speak. 

Which is fair, he supposes, considering the man is a real dragon and an old one at that. He’s been around long enough to have seen other sorcerers. 

(“Do you have any kids?” He asked one day when the thought crossed his mind. 

“Absolutely not.” The other had replied with such an air of disgust Waylan couldn’t be sure it wasn’t intentionally exaggerated as a joke. “I have far more important things to do than contend with offspring or run around spreading my seed like a base animal, unlike some.”) 

Waylan doesn’t realize how nice it is not to have to explain himself until he suddenly doesn’t have to. When they start sleeping together and Terran’s hands find the patch of scales running along his sternum, Waylan's mouth automatically opens to speak. But Terran doesn’t hesitate, just scrapes the whisper of claws between the interlocking pattern before continuing on. He doesn’t even blink. And the thing is Waylan never thought he was particularly self-conscious about the patches, but having them treated as if they are no more interesting than any other piece of skin loosens a coil of tension that he hadn’t even realized was taut in him. Terran neither pays them special attention nor ignores them. And that bland acceptance is something Waylan didn’t even know he wanted. 

Over the course of the next few months that treatment has Waylan not thinking about them as if they’re anything strange or special either. It’s just his skin. Not his skin and the patches of scales. It’s all just him, and it’s no more worth acknowledgement than his eyelashes or fingernails. 

So maybe that’s why he’s so confused when Terran starts muttering, voice low and angry, one rare sunny afternoon as they’re laying tangled in a pile of furs together. He feels the dragon’s fingers on his spine, pressing and pulling at his skin, it’s not painful, but the skin is still tight. The draconic letters he’d had Terran carve into his skin finished healing a few weeks ago, but it’s still tender. 

“What’s got your tail in a twist?” He mumbles into the cradle of his flesh arm, reaching back with the metal one to push Terran’s probing fingers away. “If you wrote it wrong I’m going to kill you.” 

“Oh no pet, it’s worse than branding you incorrectly.” He hisses, smacking Waylan’s hand away in response and putting his fingers back on his skin. “You’re marked correctly, and I’m afraid I’m debating the merits of killing you.” 

A few months ago a statement like that would have actually frightened him. Now, “If you’re going to break up with me at least wait until Corzaren comes back so he can sooth my heartbreak.” 

Terran swats him on the ass. “I’m being quite serious, brat.” 

“Sure, why are you dumping me?” 

“Because your scales are coming in.” Terran half snarls. 

And that does give him pause. “My scales? You’ve already seen my scales.” 

“Not these,” to accentuate his point he grinds his thumbs along the inner curve of his shoulder blades. Waylan makes a surprised sound in the back of his throat, the scales there must have gotten more pronounced because Terran puts a fair amount of pressure when he touches them and they ache as he draws his hand back. 

“Ow.” 

“Suck it up I have bigger problems.” 

“You know what, you’re a jackass, I’m dumping you.” He makes precisely no move to extract himself from the furs and go find his scattered clothes. 

“Your wing plates are starting to grow.” Terran finally says. 

“What?” 

“They serve as a place for you to focus your magic and manifest your wings once you’re able to sustain that kind of power.” Waylan considers this for a moment. He knew that sorcerers like him could eventually learn how to create wings and fly, he didn’t know there would be a physical change to accompany the magical one. 

“Okay, so why are you mad?” 

“Because your skin is pink.” 

“Yes. Sorry I can’t be as sallow and pale as you.” 

Terran pinches the back of his neck this time and Way yelps. “You are my blood,” he hisses in draconic. “And we do not come in pink.” 

Ah. So that's it. “So you’re saying you won’t love me anymore if we clash colors?” 

“I should have known from your affinity with fire.” He laments. “But with your eyes and hair I had hoped. A metallic would be better than--” He lets out a string of curses, mostly in draconic, but Waylan thinks he hears the rough incomprehensible sounds of abyssal thrown in as well. 

“Would you rather I be green?” Like you. 

“That was never a possibility, pet,” Terran finally says, huffing out a sigh before pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. “You’re far too terrible at manipulation and subterfuge for starters.” He doesn’t bother taking it as an insult. “But really? Couldn’t you have been gold? Brass even?” 

“I can’t control my blood.” 

“Have you tried?” They’re quiet for a few minutes. And eventually Terran’s hands return to his shoulder blades and he runs his fingers over the scales again and again. 

“When do you think I’ll be able to fly?” Waylan finally asks. 

“I’m not sure, it’ll depend on how quickly you develop your gifts. But I think you’ll enjoy it.” He makes a soft sound of agreement in the back of his throat. “It will be torture to fly that slowly, but when you can perhaps I can teach you a thing or two.” 

“You’re going to still want to be seen with me if I am red?” 

“I suppose, and if I change my mind swatting you out of the sky will be a very efficient way of solving that problem.” Waylan huffs, but doesn’t say anything. After all, Terran doesn’t stop pressing soft reverent touches to the forming wing plates. 

He’s twenty-one when he learns he’s going to have true scales and the wings to match. And he’s greatly looking forward to showing them off. 

#call of the divine #cotd fics #waylan #dnd fic #dnd character #ray #corzaren #terran #oc: waylan #oc: corzaren #oc: terran #oc: gadreel #my writing

[bigskydreaming]

TFW you realize you relate more to a fave character than you ever actually consciously realized, lmao. 

So I was just having a remote therapy session, and we were focusing on just some mental pain management techniques since my stupid metabolism makes most pain meds largely useless and my head has been waging all out warfare on me for the past week and a half, lololol. And we were delving into one of my personal fave rants, which is the fact that so many people - including vaunted medical professionals - just fundamentally don’t seem to get that having a high pain tolerance does not mean you don’t like, FEEL pain unless its really a lot or intense. Its just that you’re hard-wired/trained/geared via stuff like an abusive childhood, lol, to not SHOW or DISPLAY any visible or audible pain cues unless the pain reaches a certain high threshold where its impossible to hold them back.

But particularly over the past four or five years, with my ongoing medical shit, its super obnoxious trying to get your doctors to display a sense of urgency about your condition because they’re just fundamentally not grasping the degree of chronic pain you’re dealing with every day, since, y’know....I can literally be sitting there in the doctor’s chair and conversationally talking about the fact that no, I definitely am currently feeling like, an eight or nine out of ten on the pain scale, please don’t be confused by the fact that I’m literally LOLing as I describe this to you rather than gasping and moaning in a more obvious indication of it. 

Its like, I’m not TRYING to undersell it or anything, its just, when you grow up since the time you’re like five or six years old, knowing damn well that the only appropriate response to someone asking ‘oh am I hurting you’ that won’t earn you MORE pain is a completely casual or cavalier sounding ‘nope, I’m fine, all good here, no problems.’......like, at a certain point in your development, that becomes pretty hard-wired in, like, you can’t shake it just because you consciously WANT to. (Though it is one of the things I’m trying to unlearn and ‘rewire’ in therapy now, via EMDR techniques aimed at like, literally reprogramming my nervous system and how I react to various stimuli. Its.....slow progress, lmao, but I mean there is some progress so its all good).

But point being, when you’re a physically abused kid and your physical abuser doesn’t want to believe or accept that they’re hurting you, and so they tended to just get angrier and MORE dangerous if they thought you were indicating or even just ‘implying’ that they were in fact hurting you.....you get pretty damn good at not showing even the slightest hint of pain or distress unless its literally a level you’ve never experienced before and thus have no practical experience in hiding or distracting yourself from.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t FEEL every bit of it. It doesn’t mean you’ve found a magical off-switch that means you can just mind-over-body yourself from acknowledging or being aware that you are in fact in a shit ton of pain. You just.....have learned the importance of masking it, and found ways to do that by necessity.

Except, even much later in life when you are in a safe place or more control of your situations or surroundings, there’s no easy way to just....stop putting that mask on by default, the second you’re experiencing any type of pain. And so even when dealing with medical professionals, too many of them just don’t GET that their vaunted ‘tell me how much pain you’re in from one to ten’ scale isn’t really the be-all and end-all of pain measurement, because its subjective and arbitrary as HELLLLLLLLL.....and one of the defining parameters for what that pain scale looks like and feels like for YOU, is....your personal history with pain and how you’re ‘comfortable’ displaying evidence of it. (And I know there’s a ton of people and even groups of people who can relate to this for entirely different reasons, I just can only speak to my own of course). 

But its definitely frustrating and invalidating as hell to be in more pain than many people ever experience in their lives, and TRYING to convey that as openly and honestly as you can.....and literally being able to SEE the doubt and dismissal in doctors’ eyes, because all they’re seeing is the visual cues you’re putting out there and which they equate to ‘can’t possibly be in THAT much pain, not if he’s acting this casual about it’.....

And so the frustrating irony is that you end up dismissed as like, a pain ‘lightweight’ who is complaining about an apparent degree of pain that’s barely anything in their ‘professional’ estimation. And thus they’re disinclined to take your requests for heavier or more effective pain medication seriously, or not impressed by your attempts to imbue a greater sense of urgency in their approach to your treatment plan or procedures, etc......when in reality, the only reason you’re showing those cues of not being in that much pain is because you’re MORE used to and familiar with even extremely high degrees of pain than anything a lot of them are accustomed to.

Its invalidating as hell, being treated as though you have no idea what you’re talking about when you say “I am actually in a shit ton of active, ongoing pain, hey thanks, can we maybe do something about this,” when actually, the disconnect comes from you having MORE experience with MORE pain than some of them can even fathom. You just....also have more experience with reasons not to SHOW that pain, if its at all avoidable to any degree whatsoever.

THAT’S what high pain tolerance actually means, and the sheer volume of medical professionals who just flat out don’t get this, or worse, just don’t care or are too proud to reassess their viewpoints on this matter if that carries the implication they don’t actually know as much as they think they do......god, it grates.

(Once, when I was around twenty-three or twenty-four I think, I got caught up in the periphery of a bar fight that resulted in me getting a shard of glass embedded in the back of my forearm. Still have a pretty sizable scar from it. And it absolutely hurt like fuck, but I was conscious as paramedics arrived on scene and when going to the hospital to have it removed and stitched up, and like......kinda cracking jokes about it the whole time because I was uncomfortable as hell and didn’t really know what else to do or how to react, y’know? I mean, I had a few inches of glasses jutting out from the top of my forearm, lol, what the hell are you supposed to do or say about that? There’s not really a protocol, lmao. Problem was, they took one look at me sitting there with this spear of glass sticking out of my arm and making dumb jokes about it like it was no big deal......and they decided this meant I was in shock and kept trying to treat me accordingly. And it was just like.....useless, because lol no I wasn’t in shock, I had none of the physical symptoms of being in shock and benefited from none of their assumptions that I was.....I was just a dude with a shard of glass in his arm that hurt like fuck and I really wanted it out as soon as possible, and I was in full awareness of what had happened and everything I was feeling, I just didn’t know how to convey this in a way that they would believe, because I couldn’t come up with anything to say or do other than laugh about how fucking surreal the whole situation was.)

Anyway, so circling back to the point, or as much of one as I ever have, so today I was just learning and practicing various mental pain management/coping techniques with my therapist and discussing my issues with doctors and the High Pain Tolerance Quandary. Basically like, I would really truly like to know or learn how to display the ‘expected’ physical and visual/audio cues for being a person who is experiencing a ‘4′ on the pain scale, versus a person who is experiencing a ‘7′ or a ‘10′.....so they can stop fucking treating me like I’m only at a 4 when I’m actually at an 8 or 9, just because I look and sound like a person who really is only at a 4 no matter what they actually CLAIM to be feeling.

Course, easier said than done.

But yeah, so as she was coaching me through various techniques and surveying what I was doing with my body and facial expressions and cues, etc, she pointed out something that I had literally never noticed about myself before, even though once she DID point it out I could recognize that its something I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, well back before I was ten and no doubt stemming from smack dab in the midst of the worst of my childhood abuse.

So, y’know on Teen Wolf, how Scott and Liam and various others are at times shown digging their claws into their palms and drawing blood to ground themselves with the pain? (And ironically, how I was just talking the other week about photo doubling for a similar such scene with gashes in the character’s palms, lmfao). Well, obviously I don’t have claws, and part of why I’d never really paid much attention to when I was doing it is because even my therapist wasn’t comfortable classifying it as a kind of self-harm or anywhere near punitive enough to carry that kind of weight or associations.....

But like, I’ve always kept my fingernails fairly trimmed but not completely. Like, just enough of an edge to them that at times, particularly when I’m in physical pain or distress already, I’ll just like....dig my fingernails into the pad of other fingertips, and use that little familiar spike of pain to not ground myself but rather distract myself from whatever else I was feeling. Like, she wasn’t comfortable calling it a self-punitive technique because as we got into it, it was clear I was never doing it to CAUSE myself pain....rather, its something I only do when I’m already in pain, usually far more pain than anything that brings up.....but by deliberately doing that and creating a focal awareness around it, even just a largely subconscious one......I’ve apparently long been using that to hook my attention up to a very specific, very manageable sensation/focal point of pain that lets me and my ADHD brain relegate whatever other pain I’m feeling (even if its much much worse) to the back of my mind for at least a little while, as I distract myself by focusing on this more obvious and consciously directed bit of lesser pain. 

And a big part of why I probably never noticed I was doing this, we eventually concluded, is because as a kid I probably came up with it as a kind of survival technique specifically BECAUSE it was something I could do to distract myself/manage my pain covertly, without drawing my abuser’s attention to what I was doing either. And by extension, without the fact that I was doing it at all 'betraying’ that I was in pain or trying to manage or cope with painful sensations in the first place. A lot of other pain management techniques, like even just deep, deliberate breaths, tend to be a lot more obvious and noticeable, and thus would have been counter-productive for my specific purposes. No matter how much they helped me manage whatever physical pain I was feeling, they would have at the same time inevitably drawn attention to the fact that I was trying to do that at all in the first place....and thus only invite more pain. 

Merely digging my fingernails into my fingertip pads, not enough to draw blood or make me cry out or anything like that, but rather just to distract myself and deliberately focus me on a source of pain I could deal with and more easily handle, as well as being ‘low in intensity’ enough that focusing on it didn’t bring any other obvious visual or audio pain cues to the forefront.....that I could do without anyone noticing. And thus this is likely why it came to be my go-to move whenever I was in any kind of pain at all, as just a quick and easy way to wrap my head around my physical sensations and shift focus to something more easily dealt with or managed (even if it didn’t actually dismiss or get rid of whatever other pain I’m feeling entirely). And just the low-key nature of it in general likely being a big part of why it became such an unconscious instinct for me until now, something that barely even registered in my conscious mind as I built up/hard-wired instinctive responses that incorporated it without me having to consciously direct myself to do that.

I mean, its still obviously not an ideal response, especially when I’m long past being stuck in any kind of external situations or need to fall back on that and the covert nature of it. So now its another of those things to just be aware of and work on rewiring on an instinctive level, making it a priority for me to focus on consciously using more helpful and positive methods of pain management.

But it was just interesting to me to have it pointed out as something I’ve been doing all this time, let alone being as unaware of doing it as I’ve apparently been. And its not hard to draw obvious parallels to when characters in media I consume do similar things even if for not quite the same reasons or in quite the same ways. So now I’m just kinda contemplating that and wondering how much even just some degree of unconscious awareness that I do that might have made me more alert to when characters or other people do similar things. Made me more attuned to noticing or even fixating on moments when they do things like that, that I related to even on an entirely subconscious level.

*Shrugs* Anyway, that’s all, like, literally not going anywhere with this, was just unwinding and felt like mapping my way through that all contemplatively, because oh no, inexplicable strangeness, therapy puts me in particularly contemplative headspaces, whodathunkit, lmfao. *Shrugs* Just struck me as particularly interesting, so felt like sharing for anyone else who can relate/see similar parallels themselves.

Or just chalk it up to random anecdotal wtf-ery from your friendly (err, mostly. okay sometimes. FINE ideally, let’s go with that) neighborhood over-sharer. 

#that last bit is just to head off the usual 'friendly concerned advice giving anons' I tend to get after posts like these #plz stop doing that #i know i over-share its not a secret and I do it with full knowledge and intent because I feel like it #it suits my purposes #my purposes do not have to be your purposes nor do they require your approval #if it makes you uncomfortable thats where the beauty of tumblr being a largely opt-in experience comes from #there's the door #i can understand the confusion - its not actually a big blinking EXIT sign but rather an 'unfollow' button #its really that simple lmfao stop being so concerned with what Im doing particularly in posts where Im not even interacting with anyone #and for the love of god please stop assuming that everyone on tumblr is TRYING to post from a state of being on #an emotional plateau of zen #nah - some of us literally use the medium to vent and unpack stuff we dont have a ton of room to vent about or unpack in our offline lives #and like the relative(ish) anonymous nature of it combined with the potential for at least some kind of validation via #like-minded or experiencing individuals in a pseudo-communal setting #our purpose/usage does not need to be yours and it does not require your condoning #and I would just like to suggest that maybe people who put a ton of emphasis on telling others (like survivors) to do a better job of #curating what content they experience/are exposed to online #might be well served to put a little more focus on curating what content YOU experience if you find yourself uncomfortable with particular #posting habits #there's a bajillion other people out there to follow #you dont need to be here if you dont actually want to be or arent actually comfortable being here #BUT I DIGRESS

[beerecordings]

Poison - Chapter 4

(Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3)

This is the chapter that made me think “yeah, I would have to rate this mature on ao3.” PLEASE be careful with trigger warnings for death, gun violence, blood, convulsions, vomit mention, and major abuse.

Should be a couple more chapters after this one. Hope you enjoy :)

It's been months since Marvin saw Chase.

He remembers an absent-minded goodbye, his hand drifting across Chase's shoulder as he moved towards the kitchen for an early morning cup of coffee. Chase was too eager to wait around for further farewells. He hadn't slept all last night in his excitement to see Izzy and Hunter again, and his face was flushed red with joy, his fingers gripping at the black backpack straps around his shoulders and hugging the stuffed presents he bought them to his chest.

Marvin's fairly sure he was the only one who had a chance to say goodbye to him before he was gone. It wasn't til the next day that they realized he never made it to Stacy's.

And then, without a trace, he was gone.

Until today. Until now.

“Chase?” he whispers. “Is it you?”

The body Anti wears is skeletal, worn down to bones and slate-colored skin, so thin his fingers look almost fleshless. Blue and brown eyes sit, mismatched, in a face steadily hollowing out, somewhere between snow white and smoke grey. Chase's mouth is calm and thin, his tired gaze nevertheless watchful, a gun clutched stiffly, painfully, in his hand.

He meets Marvin's eyes for just a moment, and then, with steady, ferocious, murderer's hands, Cottonmouth takes her shot at the monster coming down the stairs.

Her aim is perfect. She does not shake. She does not hesitate.

The bullet never hits.

Anti vanishes and reappears in a flicker of an eighth-second, closer to her now, and she takes a couple steps back, shocked, stunned, but not as shocked as Marvin.

He is in the break between his convulsions, but now it is the sight of him that freezes him to aching, petrified stone. It takes him a long time to open that bloodied mouth, to breathe through his swollen throat, and to choke out, like the prayer of a dying man, the only two words left in the world that matters in the slightest.

“Chase! Chase! Chase, amata!”

“What the fuck are you?” shrieks Cottonmouth, aiming the gun again. She shoots and Chase's body is gone again, vanishing in a spasm of red and green and blue and yellow light, exploding back into existence on the other side of the room, with colors falling off him like stray coding.

“I am a great many things,” says his mouth. He turns an empty gaze to Marvin.

“Chase?” whispers his aching, struggling throat. “Carissima?”

“Oh, Carissima,” repeats his savior flatly. “Look, listen, he still loves me.”

A giggle echoes around Marvin's head and he shivers, staring at the man, who does not move, does not smile, only stares, the gun held loose in his hands.

“Silly cat,” Chase continues, tilting his head at him. His face has all the emotion of a beach full of clean sand, like the water has withdrawn, and the rocks were carried away, and nothing hides beneath its surface.

“Is it really you?” chokes Marvin. Hot tears spill down his face. “Or is it Anti?”

His black baseball cap is tugged down low, mussing the exhausted yellow fringe at the end of his stiff curls. His eyes are empty – no color, no pupil, like cataracts have swallowed his irises whole. Heavy white strings dangle from the sleeves of his filthy winter coat, tight enough that his fingers are faintly blue, and struggle to clutch the gun properly.

“I'm not anyone,” he replies, in a voice like a wind dying down. “I'm not anything anymore.”

He wipes a little of Killian's blood off his over-sized camo-green jacket and moves forward, staring Cottonmouth's gun in the face.

“Who the hell are you?” she snarls. “You're nothing like fucking Blue Mask.”

“'Who the hell are you?'” repeats Chase's mouth, taunting, his voice high-pitched and erratic. Marvin whimpers, recoiling from a sound distinctly Antiseptic. “Look, a little girl with a coke addiction and no baby daddy to kiss her good night. You think cat's blood is going to make you feel any better, child?”

“Shut the fuck up!” she screams, and the blast of her gun explodes through the prison room once again, only for Anti to disappear and re-appear, the bandages wrapped around his throat beginning to soak red, a wide smile on Chase's face.

“How did you know that? How are you doing that? I'll fucking kill you!”

“Oh, Marianne! I know everything about you! You think you just get to scoop my big brother off the streets and feed him goddamn rodent killer without having to worry about me? No, no, no, little girl. Blue Mask should never have scared you. No one you've ever bought snow off of or hired as a thug or paid to hide your enemies' bodies should have ever scared you. Not compared to me.”

“Twink-ass bitch boys with power complexes don't scare me.”

Her voice is the hiss of a snake on the defense, but still she makes herself laugh, finding her smile again, her eyes wildly lit, her long hair disarrayed in sweaty curls around her face.

“Okay,” says Anti flatly. “Now that was just rude.”

She aims that gun again – futile, desperate, snarling, laughing. “I'm going to bite the meat off your fingers and cook the bones into acid.”

“All talk, child. All fucking talk.”

“Fine, then,” answers Cottonmouth, drawing from her inside coat pocket a long silver machete, fat and gleaming. Her eyes meet Anti's in the glow of a shared and entirely insane light. “No more chatting.”

She cuts forward knife swinging.

Anti shrieks with joy and vanishes, appearing beside her and yanking a blade out of thin air, meeting her blow as she turns. He brings the gun up and it is Cottonmouth's turn to disappear, leaping aside before the bullet can tear her apart and striking like a viper at his head. Anti ducks the blow and lashes out at her legs, knocking her backwards and leaping up to pounce on her, only to catch a heavy slash on his arm. He lets out a short cry, so much like Chase's voice that it makes Marvin gasp, and stumbles back a little, laughing as blood soaks through his split jacket. Cottonmouth leaps back to her feet and then –

A gunshot.

She screams, a short burst of agony from her lip-sticked mouth. Marvin stares in horror at her shattered knee, the bone destroyed by Chase's perfect aim and Anti's perfect hatred. She crumples, Anti surges forward, he has her by the hair, shoving away the machete and the gun, and then –

“Anti, don't kill her, don't kill her!”

Anti points the gun at her head.

“Little girls shouldn't play with things that belong to me.”

To her credit, the Cottonmouth never screams, never cries out, barely even trembles. Looking her death in the face, she turns her eyes up to Marvin.

Faintly, on her mouth, a smile.

Hatred in wild eyes.

Marvin's ears ring from the closeness of the gunshot and Marianne's body crumples at his feet.

For a long time, he just lies limp in his chains, eyes closed, tears slipping down his face.

And Anti waits.

Anti waits for him to look up again.

Marvin seizes once, twice. There is, by now, perhaps a minute between each convulsion. He had never known that exhaustion can hurt this badly.

“This,” he whispers finally, with a mouth that drips blood. “Is horrible.”

“Yeah,” sighs Anti, swiping blood from his cheeks and stepping forward, that white-ocean blankness burning like static hell in his eyes. “Really not your best day, old friend.”

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

“No, no,” mumbles Jackie. “This isn't right.”

His eyes roam the walls for hints to tell him he's dreaming or dead. The cold slatted wood of the apartment stares back at him without feeling. It has nothing to hide, and nothing to tell.

“This isn't right,” he repeats.

Soft, stained carpet presses up against his boots. Toothpaste mint smell and a faint fume of blood wafts through his nose. Computers buzz softly beside the wounded old mattress puffing out fatly with cotton and wire.

“This can't be where Anti's been keeping him. It's too...”

“Jackie.”

Max's hand comes to sit on his shoulder. Jackie reaches up to clutch it, not sure why he can't seem to focus all of a sudden. Not sure why there are tears in his eyes.

“It's too normal,” he croaks. “Max, your intel must be wrong. This isn't where Anti and Chase have been living.”

“My best guys tracked him back here. Saw where he was in that picture, guessed at a couple places he might have come from, called in at a couple residencies asking after him. Owner here recognized the description, gave us a room number, and then we checked the security footage. This is where Chase was this morning, Jackie, and he's the only one the apartment owner is aware of who lives here. He's been here for months. Anti's just hidden him well.”

Jackie breathes hot, hissing air through his teeth and stalks forward to begin tearing up the apartment again, drawing a low sigh from a worried Max. Yanking open blank cabinets of the cramped, empty brown kitchen area and scrabbling at the corners of shitty carpet flooring, Jackie searches for any sign of the things he expected – Chase's hair, maybe, bloodied clumps of it in the bathroom, confirming that he has been thrown around and forced through whatever torments might take Anti's interest at the time, but there is nothing but quiet beard trimmings scattered around the sink.

Or chains, maybe! Why are there no chains? No rope to bind his little brother up like a dog, trapping him in this single-room apartment, leaving him to dangle by his wrists or be shoved into the closet all day, cramped and aching? Where are the muzzles, the ropes, the torture weapons and car batteries? Why is there nothing but a couple old bracelets Jackie knows Chase was wearing the day he lost him, set gently down on the windowsill?

Or there should be – oh, Jackie doesn't know – powerful sedatives or opioids to keep Chase docile and weak, maybe, scattered around the drawers to be used when his poor little brother resisted too much or too long, but there is nothing Jackie recognizes except a box of cheap band-aids and a finished bottle of Chase's Cymbalta still sitting sadly on the counter.

Jackie picks up the bottle in his hand. It feels like a tiny little doll or something pressed between his palm like this. He got him this prescription with some forged documents and a couple pushes to see him off to a therapist, and he remembers Chase telling him he liked the symbolism of it more than anything else – putting the tiny pill on his tongue every morning like a promise: “Another day and I'm still trying. Another day and I still refuse to let this kill me. Another day and I'll keep taking my medicine, and this will never beat me.”

A promise. A promise. His little brother, a fighter.

“Why wouldn't Anti throw this away?” Jackie whispers, rotating the bottle in his hand. “Why does Anti still have so many of his things? Why is there no sign of the struggle? I know he must be struggling. I know. Max, something's wrong.”

That warm, sturdy hand returns to his shoulder. “Jackie,” he says. “Look at these, shoved beneath the mattress.”

In Max's hand, there is a tiny lime-green journal and two stained, squished, sorrowful little stuffed animals.

“Oh, oh,” cries Jackie, taking them from him and holding them in his hands. “Presents for Hunt and Izzy. He was going to see them.”

A once perfectly rotund, chunky seal plushie has been flattened into a weary little pancake. The little purple dragon is no better off, its long neck askew and its pink ribbon of a tongue flopping out of its smiling mouth.

“Maybe Anti used them to upset Chase,” suggests Max.

Jackie tears open the journal, desperate for an explanation, stepping in circles around the room as he devours snippets of page after page, flickering through as fast as he can.

“Jack's name is all over, too,” Max points out, scanning the ceiling and the walls of the room. “Just in marker, sometimes, but sometimes scratched in. I think you were right, he's been looking for him all along. But he never found him.”

Jackie can't even hear him over the rushing of his blood pumping rapid through his head.

“Max,” he chokes. “Max.”

“Yeah?”

Jackie's shaking hands can barely hold the journal.

I didn't know it would fucking hurt! Stupid fucking boy! I can't extricate myself anymore! I think this is a fucking curse, I think the Cat must have warded this body, or maybe I rushed in too fast, but I can feel myself changing and I don't know what to do! What is happening to me? What is happening? I can't hear Chase resisting anymore, I just feel repulsed by my own presence, and I can't stop thinking about the things that Chase loved.

He tears to another section.

My mind is being devoured. I was Anti yesterday and Chase before that but I can't remember who I am today. I think they used to want different things but now I can't think at all and I don't know my name. I can't tell why the body is suffering but I can see my skin getting so white. I want to eat but the last time I tried I expelled everything within the hour and the vomit burned at me and the body fainted and brought my mind down too. Being unconscious confuses me for reasons I can't understand and I do not sleep. I think that is why the body grows so heavy. So heavy. So heavy. I want to be torn apart.

Max is trying to take it from him, calling his name, but Jackie can't be pulled away.

Where are my brothers? Where's Jack? I don't know why I want them. I killed a girl today and it made the body start to cry and laugh at the same time. I started to hurt, like the brain was insisting there was a wound or a sickness, but I cleaned my flesh for hours and couldn't find an injury. I think I'm dying and I'm afraid. I woke up crying for the doctor today but nobody came and I think if he had been there I would have slit his fucking throat open stupid doctor boy stupid body let me go I can't get free anymore I don't know who I am or what's happening I think I am going to die and I am afraid –

Jackie's ringtone explodes into the air, finally yanking him from his reverie, and he drops the book, gasping.

“Jackie! Are you okay?”

Setting a hand on Max's shoulder to reassure him – despite an internal panic as wide as the Nile – Jackie yanks his phone out of his pocket and tries not to be afraid by the contact name “ZE GOOD DOCTAH” lighting up his screen.

“Schneep! What's wrong? Is Marvin still – ”

“Jackie,” croaks Henrik, and Jackie stiffens hard, digging his nails into Max's shoulder.

“Okay. Okay. Whatever's wrong, it's going to be okay.”

“Jackie – Jackie – ”

“I know, bud, I know, just tell me.”

“Come home,” Henrik demands, a gasp in his voice. “Come home now. Bring a car.”

This tone of voice does not take further questions. Jackie closes his phone and sprints from the apartment where Anti has kept his brother prisoner within his own flesh for months now, skipping the elevator and charging down the stairs.

“Follow me in the car,” he shouts to Max, and then he is racing onto the pavement and slinging his body onto Chase's old bike, pulling on his helmet and shoving the keys into the ignition.

Traffic laws and the police car following behind him be damned, he's getting home faster than anybody has ever raced down these streets.

And the only thought in his head for the whole seven minutes and forty-three second drive?

Henrik just saw Marvin die. Henrik must have just seen Marvin die. Henrik was watching. Henrik, his sentry. Henrik just saw Marvin die.

But nothing is as he expected it when he reaches home.

He lets the motorcycle tumble onto the pavement, racing into the house.

“Jackie?” calls Henrik, and Jackie is darting down the hall towards his voice, tearing open Marvin's door and coming to stand at the end of the bed, his footsteps slowing, slowing, freezing as he stares.

Star-silver light makes halos in Jameson's eyes.

“Schneep,” whispers Jackie. “What's – ?”

“He woke some sort of power up,” Henrik replies, in a hush like a twilight.

That much Jackie can see. He remembers the first night he saw his first little brother wake him up with eyes glowing like lanterns, crying about a power he didn't know how to control. Yes, he has known the blue light in Marvin's eyes a hundred times over, and felt power make stiff and heavy the air around them, just as it does now. Jackie steps closer, standing before JJ, keeping him safe in his shadow.

“He says he can see where Marvin is. Can see the path he took last night and the possibilities that are before him now. We need to go where he tells us.”

A soft and shuddering breath passes between Jameson's teeth, his eyes fluttering shut. Henrik is holding him up, his arms hugging his shoulders, his hand squeezed in JJ's so tightly it will soon be blue.

Jackie crouches down beside the bed and takes Jameson's other hand, reaching up to touch his face, coaxing the light in his eyes to turn back towards him. James looks down at him, trying to straighten up at the sight of Jackie, pressing his fingers into the strong bones of his brother's white hands.

“Doing okay, Jay?” murmurs Jackie.

Jameson nods.

“Does it hurt, buddy?”

“No,” he shakes his head, pressing on Jackie's hands as he tries to rise. Henrik helps him get up, but the hand crushing his own has begun to be as much for his own comfort as it is for JJ's.

“Jameson,” says Jackie. “Can you take me to Marv?”

Jameson finds his footing and straightens up with Jackie, tilting up his chin. His eyes glow. He's always shone like a star to Jackie anyway.

“Yes, Jackie,” he says. “I promise.”

He cuts through the overwhelming world and Jackie's tired face rises into a smile. He knocks his head against JJ's and gives a strand of his hair a teasing yank, pushing him towards the door.

“Go get your shoes on! Max will take us in the car. Schneep, let me get a look at the livestream so I know what we're dealing with and then let's get the hell out of here! We got thirty minutes and a brother to find!”

He whirls eagerly on Henrik, but his brother is unmoving, staring down at the carpet.

“Schneep?”

Henrik bobs his head in a nod.

“What's wrong? Can I... did we lose the livestream?”

“Um.” Henrik wipes at his glasses, sniffing. “It was... cut off.”

“What? Why would she do that?”

“It wasn't her.”

“What do you mean?”

Henrik continues cleaning his glasses, never looking up.

“Schneep. Henrik. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Someone found him first, Jackie.”

“What? Who?”

“Who do you fucking think?”

Suddenly Henrik is shouting and Jackie flinches, reaching forward to grab his hands before he can crush his glasses.

“Who do you fucking think? Who’s always fucking haunting us? Stalking my family from a shadow that never dies away with the sun, hunting us like foxes!“

His voice breaks. Jackie takes his glasses from him and grabs his chin, forcing him to look up.

And if Jameson's eyes shine with power, well, Henrik's bubble up with deep blue grief, a bitterness twisted on his mouth and terror shaking earthquakes into his steady doctor's hands.

“He’s wearing Chase,” Henrik sobs. “Jackie, Jackie, you have to make him stop, he’s wearing Chase. If you had seen him - if you had seen him - oh, Jackie, he is like a dead man already.”

Jackie barely hears him. He is already stepping from the room, unable to breathe, his mind fixed on his tortured, stolen, poisoned, poisoned, poisoned little brothers, waiting on him to save them.

He doesn’t intend to fail.

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

“Anti?” asks Marvin. “Are you going to kill me?”

His rescuer stares back at him. Dazed, exhausted, hurting, Marvin does his best to look back.

“Anti,” he says, again, louder now. “Are you going to kill me? What, you don’t have an answer? Anti, what have you done to yourself?”

Anti has none of his usual wild glee, none of his intensity. He stands before Marvin with his body slack and his eyes slightly glazed, those strung up fingers twitching, that grey face hollow as a lightning-struck tree.

“Anti,” repeats his rescuer distantly. “Anti?”

“Yes,” snaps Marvin, baring his teeth. “That's your fucking name, isn't it? Or what, you really are some fucked-up, puppet version of my little brother? Huh? My little heart? Tell me honest this time, you horrible little virus – Chase or Anti?”

At this, a flicker of confusion betrays his apathy, and he purses his lips, reaching up to play absent-mindedly with a string of Marvin's hair, curling it around his finger. Marvin recoils, wheezing.

“Chase or Anti?” he repeats, cocking his head at him. “Chase or Anti? I think maybe there was a difference once.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” chokes Marvin, trying to breathe through his fear. Tears are running down his face so fast he'd be blinded even if he could make his stiff eyes move. “What have you done to my little brother?”

Anti – Marvin has to think of him as Anti, he cannot believe it is Chase – hums distantly and drums his fingers along the barrel of the gun, considering. “Don't worry for us,” he says, in a voice felt-soft. “It was frightening at first, but now there's just us. Now there's just us, and you.”

Marvin spits at his feet, feeling the convulsions beginning again, and fear comes pounding through his head. “You've worn his body so long you've forgotten you're not him,” he shrieks, as his shoulders begin to tug him up, and his jaw begins to chew, and his arms, like sticks, refuse to support him. “You're just a fucking parasite, puppeting his body because you don't have your own – ”

Anti slaps him so hard he bites his tongue clean through, and then he is seizing. He chokes desperately, trying to scream, his eyes suspended motionless in his skull, his face turning blue, and Anti resumes his patient speech while Marvin writhes.

“Try not to be so rude,” he snips, shoving greasy hair which has lost all of its curl out of his mismatched eyes. “I have feelings, you know! Anyway, I was just stalking you.”

He leans down to push Cottonmouth's body away from Marvin's feet, the better to watch him spasm. “I was bored. I've been hearing about people looking for you and the other... um...”

He pauses, confused. Blood courses down Marvin's chin.

“Jackie,” he remembers, clapping his hands together, a moment of distress flickering over his face. “Lately I think so much at once it's like I can't think at all... you and Jackie, anyway, people have been looking for you. Something about revenge and murder and true crime, I guess, it was all pretty cool. Some people started watching you, I started watching them – and then, what do you know! I wake up one morning and pick up on this magnificent broadcast.”

Marvin can't breathe. Marvin is dying. He can't take any more of this.

“Ch-ay-ay-ase,” he sobs, as the relaxation finally fucking comes back. “Chase, help me, h-help me...”

Anti's eyes flicker.

He stills, watching him, his mouth slightly parted.

“Chase, Chase,” moans Marvin, well past caring what Anti thinks. “Amata, adiuva me, it hurts, it hurts! S-stella amata, little brother...”

“Marvin,” mumbles Anti – no, Chase, Marvin has to think of him as Chase, Marvin cannot think of him as Anti, not when he says his name so gently, not when his eyes are ringed so deeply in exhausted grey, and the soft pads of his bloodied fingers come up, slow, to touch Marvin's shattered cheek –

“It's going to be okay,” he soothes, and Marvin dissolves into tears, spasming in his chains, choking through his swollen throat. “Aren't you so grateful little brother saved you?”

“Let me down, let me down,” begs Marvin. “Please, I can't take any more of this, just let me down to die.”

“Now where would the fun be in that?” answers Chase, his voice suddenly cold, his eyes very dark.

“Why is this happening, what has he done to you...”

“You're really dying, aren't you? This is so strange, I feel... shaky... I thought this one was excitement, but maybe it is distress... it's so difficult for me to sort them...”

Marvin stares at him, unable to move his stiff eyes away and trying hard to keep his gaze focused on him, on something, on anything. “You're... you're crying.”

He is. He stands quiet before Marvin, his hands shoved in his hoodie pockets, his calm mouth slightly parted, one eye brown, one eye blue, both glittering with tears.

“We cry often,” he says softly. “I used to try and make us stop... then I began to cry too. It was so scary. I had never cried before. Now we cry often, because I... I can't... I... Marvin...”

His eyes drift away with his words. Tears drizzle down his face, turning red as they meet Cottonmouth's blood, sprayed across his chin and mouth.

“I think I'm losing great parts of myself,” he mumbles thickly. “I think I am killing great parts of myself. I can't remember who I was before this. I just wanted... a body? Or was it to go see my children? My babies...”

“Stop, stop,” Marvin chokes, quivering in his chains, his mouth full of hatred and bile and love all together. “Stop pretending to be him! Fuck you. Let me die, Anti!”

Anti – Chase – he closes his eyes and breathes in deep, shaking his head slightly. “I lose focus so easily. We were talking. I was here to see you die. Did she tell you three hours? Nah, you've got more than that, dude. Look, this strychnine concentration is so low I'm surprised it turns the gophers into corpses. Besides, if you were really dying, you wouldn't be chatting, now would you?”

Marvin is beginning to miss the silent and staring version of Anti.

“You're being such a baby. Depending how hard you fight, you could make it another forty, fifty minutes? I mean, probably your little organs in your tummy are pretty fucked up, but you're still a little while away from dropping absolutely dead. Right? I think I read that. I'm doing my research right now and the internet's shitty down here in the basement. But the others are on their way, so we shouldn't wait.”

“The others?” gasps Marvin.

“Well, I think,” answers his little brother, glancing around the room, his eyes settling on the green bottle of gopher poison, standing up beside Cottonmouth's drink on the table. “Don't know for certain, but knowing our brothers, yeah, dude, they'll be here soon enough.”

He reaches out for the gopher poison – and then pauses, and takes the tea instead. Marvin watches through confused, blurry eyes as his tongue darts out to taste the droplets on the opening of the lid. He gives a small chirp of satisfaction and then throws the whole cup back, his throat working eagerly to quench its thirst. Turning to the almonds and tearing open the bag with long-nailed fingers and lighted eyes, Marvin is reminded of some sort of feverish raccoon tearing through the alleyway trash at two in the morning. He shoves a couple in his mouth and hums as he licks salt off his hands, pushing the bag into his backpack and then zipping it up tight again.

“I've remembered what I came for,” he announces, clapping his hands together. “Or I think so anyway! I want – okay, firstly – an answer to the deal I offered the big red one.”

“You're losing your fucking mind,” chokes Marvin. “What deal?”

“Well, I gave it to Red, or I think it was me, anyway. I offered a deal. I said I would give him back this body in exchange for one thing – Jack's location.”

For all that his mind is scrambled, split somewhere between Anti and Chase, that name has never disappeared. That obsession has never disappeared. Jack's location. Jack's coma. Jack, Chase's friend, Jack, Anti's creator, the one that damned him from the start.

Marvin didn't know that Anti offered Jackie anything in exchange for Chase. But it doesn't for a second matter to him. He trusts Jackie. He's always trusted Jackie. With his life, with Chase's, with Jack's. And he knows, immediately, the answer that Jackie would give.

“The reason you never got a reply is because he would never dignify that sort of bullshit with a response.”

Marvin's head is spinning. If this is the last of his strength, he's proud to use it defending his friend.

“You will never find Jack. You will never use Chase as currency for anything. You are falling apart, Anti, splicing yourself into Chase's brain just for one desperate moment of feeling like a body belongs to you. You've forgotten who you are. But don't worry, little brother. Some day Jackie's going to remind you of exactly what you are – a sick, twisted, hateful little murderer who chose to live in agony a long fucking time ago.”

Anti screams and strikes Marvin again, and, oh, yes, no more games, Marvin knows that it is Anti's fury that drives a blow like that, no matter how much he looks like Chase, no matter how deeply he has seeped into his little brother's head. Marvin knows what poison feels like.

“I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you!” Anti is shrieking, tears flooding down his face, red, now, with hatred and despair, but it no longer matters to Marvin. He can barely feel the blows. Everything has dissipated into this far away agony, buzzing at the tips of his fingers, and he's afraid, but only because he's thinking of Jackie, and Henrik, and JJ, and his tortured, tortured Chase. Oh, but they'll have to grieve for him. They'll have to find him like this. They'll have to bury his body.

He never meant to leave them with this burden. He never meant to leave them at all.

Goodbye, my brothers, I hope you know I loved you, better than anything, better than I knew it was possible to love anything or anyone. I hope to see you again one day, in a place where the sun always shines and we are all of us safe... I hope I get the chance to hold you then, one more time and then a thousand more. I love you, I love you. Goodbye.

Something slams into Anti, halfway tackling him away from Marvin, a furious, airy little snarl accompanying Anti's shout of surprise. Marvin no longer has the strength to look up. His delirium is so hot now that he can't seem to put a coherent sentence together even in his head – apologies and final words and cries of pain whirl through his brain like somebody broke a washing machine and can't get it to stop spinning.

Faintly, he makes out a fight close at hand – Jameson pressing Anti to the ground, the gun kicked meters away and the machete pinned down to the cold concrete floor. Jameson hisses and shoves his long silver knife to the bandages at Anti's throat, drawing a stain of blood from his Adam's apple. His body spasms impossibly as he tries to glitch, but Jamie just whistles a shrill warning and presses the knife in tighter, making Anti choke and still. If he weren't wearing Chase, he would be dead already. Jameson's teeth are bared in a wild snarl and his eyes shine like stars.

To Marvin, all he is is a blur of silver light. He can taste his little brother's power in the air, but his brain doesn't connect it to JJ himself, and he shivers and turns his face away, afraid to be burned by the light.

“Marvin, Marvin, here I am, here I am. Oh, my brother. It's done, Marvin, it's done. I'm right here. I got you, I got you. Jackie, help me get him down.”

“I'm coming. Jay, keep him pinned,” calls a stronger voice yet. “Max, is there an ambulance coming?”

“I can't get any signal down here. I'll go radio for them upstairs.”

“Okay, okay. Here, bud, I got you, I got you.”

Arms wrap around Marvin's body, and he lets out a short, frightened cry – but then his chained hands are lifted up and oh, mercy of mercies, he is taken down from the hook that holds his straining body up.

Warm arms encircle him and carry him to the ground, cradling his head. He can almost breathe deep again! He can almost move! Maybe if he weren't so tired. All he can do is draw shallow, weary breaths through lips blood-stained and dry. He feels horribly swollen, like he is already a dead thing, and the stiffness is so painful he can no longer describe it in a meaningful way – he is wooden now, trapped within his own bones, aching to be free, motionless, it feels, for days and days and days.

And then – his cards!

A small cry of joy rises from his aching lips and someone gives a shaky, relieved little laugh as he clutches at the pack of cards pressed against his chest. Energy rushes through him – oh, almost painful, too much all at once. He sits back and tries to breathe through it, his fingers searching for the warm, healing magic of his hearts. Now that the cards have freed his magic, he hopes for a little relief before he dies after all. Maybe even some purification. He doesn't want his body to be so tortured for his brothers to find.

A cool, needle-less plastic syringe touches his lips, but he does his best to push it away with trembling fingers, trying to smile an apology at his captors. He can't drink with his throat so swollen. He's scared to choke. Don't make him. Let him go, please. He's ready for this to be over. A deep sigh falls from his aching mouth and he sinks back in the arms of the person holding him.

“Marvin, you have to take it.”

The syringe is back on his mouth. He groans, shifting wearily.

“Marvin. Marvin, hey! I need you to focus, please, you have to work with me. Jackie, pass me my – yes, thank you.”

A cold circle of metal touches Marvin's breast and he grumbles, hurting, trying to press back against the hands that hold it down to listen to his heartbeat.

“Is he going to be okay, Schneep?”

There's no answer. The cold metal moves down his chest. Someone's breathing has picked up above him.

“Schneep?”

“I – I don't know, I – ”

“What do you mean you don't know? We found him before three hours were up. That's enough! That has to be enough! Cottonmouth said he had three hours, it's only been two hours, forty-four minutes and – ”

“Give him the relaxant. Just – give him the relaxant.”

The syringe returns to his mouth. Marvin hisses, anguish mixing up with his pain. Leave him alone to die! Please! Why are they so insistent on him drinking it, anyway?

He cracks his eyes open and sees that it is not water that is being offered him. Dark and ichorous, it swirls before his mouth.

Someone shoves the syringe deep into the back of his throat and begins to push the liquid in.

“No!” he shrieks, trying to shove it out of his mouth. “No, no, no more poison!”

“It's not poison! Marv, stop!”

He is pinned to the ground by an earthquake's worth of pressure, making his spasming muscles burn with pain. Everything is bright, everything is loud, everything is painful, and he is not taking any more fucking poison. He's not fucking drinking that. They'll have to kill him before he takes any more of this shit. His hands tighten around the cards laid on his chest, something waking up inside him. Power warm as getting back into bed crashes through his stomach like a purifier, but it won't matter if his magic is trying to save him if someone is just shoving more fucking poison in his mouth! No!

He drops the Jack of Hearts and clutches at a Club. He doesn't need to look at it – he can feel the harsh burn of angrier magic. His eyes flicker open and his teeth snap around the syringe.

Henrik barely has time to register the bright blue glow in his brother's eyes before something explodes in his face.

Jackie lets out a scream in his stead as Henrik recoils from Marvin's side so hard he goes crashing to the ground, gripping at his face, unable to stop a ragged gasp falling from his mouth as hot, hot, hot iron magic burns into his cheek. Jackie is grabbing at him, trying to get a look at the burn, but Henrik can only clutch at his face, shocked tears coursing down his cheeks as the Six of Clubs burns, burns, burns deeper and deeper into his flesh.

“Max!” Jackie is shouting, looking up the stairs. “Where's the fucking ambulance? Marvin, stop!”

But Marvin is not listening.

He can feel nothing now but poison.

Throughout him. Filling up his blood. Without him. Spilled across the floor. Around him. He can feel a darkness. He can even feel somebody else's poison.

Underneath Jameson's hands, a being of pure poison.

Chase's heart beats weakly beneath his starving ribs, his face hollowed out with hunger and stress, his skin slicked in somebody else's blood and his face contorted in hatred.

“Amata,” croaks Marvin. “Chase...”

His whole body is shadowed by a heavy black poison.

And he cannot escape it alone.

How can he die knowing his little brother is in that much pain!

“P-purity,” he mumbles, pulling the King of Hearts from his deck with shaking fingers. A blue glow ignites in Marvin's eyes, to match the fervent silver of his little brother's across the room. “A spell for... a spell for purity...”

“No, no!” someone cries. “You don't have the strength! Please, no spells! You will die!”

Arms wrap around him, holding him tight despite the heat burning against his flesh, and he hears someone breathing close to him – crying close to him. Oh, Henrik's familiar hands, clutching at his shoulders, Henrik's head pressed against his own, his little brother hiding against his shoulder, whimpering for him to stop...

“Please, please.”

He's so tired. He's so tired of being scared all the time. He needs to have a happy ending for once.

The glow cools in magnificent eyes. Marvin pants, clutching at Henrik's hands, dazed. Hurting, hurting, hurting.

“Henrik,” he tries to say, but he cannot get his mouth to move. His swollen throat wheezes desperately. His heart races like a horse. “Henrik, this hurts.”

“Sh, sh, don't try to talk. I've got you, I know. I know. Let me make it better. Please, let me do it, Marvin, Marvin. Don't let me lose my big brother. Just trust me. Just put the card down.”

Marvin is sinking down against him, the energy draining out of him.

“Let me handle it, let me take care of you, it's me... the good doctor... or I'm trying to be... don't you trust me, Marvin? Don't you still believe in me?”

Ah, his Henrik. His brother.

Marvin drops his cards. One remains hovering in the air, the King of Hearts glowing with the power he summoned, but he stops trying to use it. He will let Henrik do the purifying for him – his little brother is right that he does not have the strength to be casting spells for his own healing or for Chase's. He has to trust his little scientist.

Henrik lets out a low, croaking cry of relief, holding onto Marvin's shoulders. Jackie crashes into the two of them, wrapping them both in his arms again. For a second, Marvin manages to turn his head towards them, smiling faintly, his eyes fogged over.

“Sh, sh, there you go. I’m not going to let you die, Marvin. I’m not going to let you die.”

Marvin lies still against his body as Henrik presses the syringe back into his mouth. He massages the relaxant down Marvin's aching throat, whispering assurances as Marvin sinks into silent tears against his shoulder, his face drifting as he slips towards sleep. Henrik spoons a mouthful of black medicine into his mouth. Jackie strokes his hair.

He's so filthy and so ugly and in so much pain, but they still hold onto him.

He wants to talk to them so badly. He doesn't even have the strength to move – no, no, wait! If he really focuses – if he really, really focuses – he can squeeze Jackie's hand.

He can push his head, just a little, against Henrik's.

He can look over at Chase and Jameson. See their faces again.

He was scared to die without seeing them again, but now he thinks he'd be ready to go. Yeah, he’d be ready. Doesn't know how his body would survive this much pain, anyway. Doesn’t know his heart could ever take this much hurt. He just needed to see them one more time.

“Love.” His mouth is trying so hard. His throat is fighting a war. His lips part like the waters of the Red Sea, but the word is a mangled mess on his mouth. “Love.”

And Jackie, Jackie, Jackie who has always understood him, from the day that he was born, back when he did not even understand himself – Jackie whispers, “Love you too.”

Marvin drifts beneath the warmth of unconsciousness.

#marvin the magnificent #chase brody #antisepticeye #writersofjack #jackieboyman #death tw #violence tw #blood tw #gun tw #bee writes #poison

[stoopsbookstore]

Prince!Hyunjin Kink Alphabet

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

He's so soft for you after sex, it's a swap of roles, he becomes your servant. He is drawing baths, helping you change out of clothes, he's getting you water, making up excuses if someone asks him where you are. He is an A+ plus in the aftercare department.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His chest. He's been working on it lately and loves when you two are cuddling and you lay his head on his chest.

Hyunjin loves seeing your legs. The servant outfit normally covers them, so when you two are alone together, he can admire them, scars, bruises, bumps and all.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically)

Too messy for him, he tries to keep a towel near by to clean it up because he hates the feeling of the stickiness.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He wants to fuck you on his dad's throne. He's so tired of being one of eight perfect princes, he wants to stick it to his father at least once and hoping you two don't get caught.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

He's been locked away with his brothers for years, the only social interaction he gets is from you, the other princes and the other staff.

He doesn't like to admit it, but you're the only person he's ever been with, so you'll be teaching him everything or learning along with him.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Missionary. He doesn't know much outside of the basics. But he has noticed a book in the library that's all about sex and he's trying to find a time he can swipe it.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

Due to the fact that he's inexperienced, mishaps are bound to happen and Hyunjin wants both of you to feel comfortable with each other, so if there's a fart or a cramp, he just laughs it off.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

He trims it. He actually got a chance to glance through the book and the one thing that stood out to him is "Keep it trimmed, don't let it be too messy" so one night when Jisung and Seungmin were out of the room, he just grabbed a pair of scissors from Jisung's desk and started cutting. Now it's just a force of habit to trim it every other week.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

He's more so goofy than intimate, but Hyunjin does try his best for romance. He will try to find an empty bathtub because he only knows cliches of romantic novels and bathtubs are always romantic. Add some rose petals and candles, and he is ready to g-

"Hyunjin honey... one of the candles fell."

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

Everytime he has tried to masturbate, someone has interrupted him. Chan found him in the bathroom, Seungmin caught him in the bathroom, Changbin and Jisung caught him in one of the closet, he just can't find any fucking time, it's a miracle you two find any time together.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

He doesn't have many, if he's being honest. He just knows that he likes you being on top and having you wear his shawl when you ride him.

Someone, please teach this babyboy.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

His bed, if he can get Seungmin and Jisung out of the room. But if he can't, then definitely the bathroom in the basement, no one really goes there unless it's for fucking.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Call him baby boy, let him know you want him, tell him you need him. He's a simple boy, just give him the word and he'll find a way and a place.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

His biggest turn off would have to be disturbed. That's the quickest way for him to lose his boner, is someone just barging in. He does know he doesn't like being watched since he is literally watched almost every second of his day.

One time you two were in the pantry, far enough back to not be seen and a maid named Dahyun barge in, Hyunjin had to pull himself out of your mouth and run out of the pantry while you pretended you fell and made sure to wipe your face before you were caught.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

His skill level is non-existent and you'll have to teach him, even if you're not experienced as well. He prefer giving because Hyunjin loves to learn about new things that make you feel good.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

Slow, but rough. He's still new to having sexual experiences, so his thrusts will be a bit messy at first.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

They make him feel bad because he doesn't get to spend as much time with you as he liked, but at least it's some time with you.

It's not so much a quickie as a very heavy petting session.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

No, no, no no, no, no no no. The only risky thing he wants to do is the throne room, but not until he is older and more experienced.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

Although he's inexperienced, he can still go for a while, an hour and a half at the most, 2-3 rounds before he wants to go to bed.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

None. Hyunjin can't really keep toys in a shared room with 2 other guys without it being found and you can't keep them in the servant chambers because that's like 20 people in a room.

Plus Hyunjin wants more experience with his hands before either of you introduce his hands.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He eye-fucks you every chance he gets. He reaches for your hand when he passes you in the hallway. It's not teasing per-say, but rather small signs that he is hoping you would get the message to go meet him for a "meeting."

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

He's not loud, but he is vocal. Hyunjin is the type to groan and moan, but not scream in pleasure.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

Hyunjin wants to fuck you in the dungeon. He overheard Prince Chan talking to Prince Jisung about how he took Princess Allison ;) shameless author avatar, not going to lie there and it felt so intense and good.

The one time he tried to take you down there, two guards were beating a man who had stolen some jewellery from a stall to resell them to the Queen.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

About 6 inches, maybe a little less. He's definitely a grower, not a shower.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Honestly, not that high. He'll fuck maybe once a week, but he's always so stressed due to his princely duties.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He's actually even more wired than normal. He's pumped up because the relationship is taboo, a servant and a prince? Cliche, but Hyunjin loves it.

#Hyunjin #hwang hyunjin #stray kids au #stray kids imagines #stray kids #stray kids scenarios #stray kids smut #prince!Hyunjin #full kink alphabet #my writings

[myexgirlfriendisthemoon]

It Feels Better Biting Down — Ch. 1: First Impressions are Lasting Impressions

Set in a modern bending AU, Roku High and Kyoshi High are rival schools in every sense. When financial troubles cause Sokka and Katara to go to separate schools, their bond and new friendships test the civil and social boundaries that lie behind school lines and familial ties. With new friends Aang, Toph, and Suki, will Sokka and Katara be able to hold their Gaang together, or will they let the fire nation clique's drama split them up for good?

“So are you sure you can get me to class on time? I mean, if I ran, I’m sure I could catch up to the bus.”

Sokka shook his head, clicking his tongue in a ‘tsk, tsk’ sound. “Katara, sister o’ mine,” he said, grabbing his keys from beside the front door. He held it open for his younger sister and locked it behind her. “Remember that one time you were sick and forgot your science project? And I-”

“-stopped for a milkshake on the way to school, spilled it on my lab report, and got it to me twenty minutes after it was due?” she retorted with a smirk, crossing her arms over her chest. 

Sokka waved his hand, dismissing his sister’s comeback. “Meaningless details, really. Anyways,” he said, walking over to the driveway. “Do you want a ride or not?”

“I do,” Katara said, following behind him, “but do you honestly think your car wants to get us there in one piece today?” 

Sokka gasped and put his arms over his car. The thing he called his baby was a navy hunk of metal that at some point resembled an ‘81 Honda, with scratched up rims, too many dents to count, and a few knicks in the windshield (Katara liked to play a game called “How fast can Sokka drive over speed bumps before his windshield shatters.” So far, she’s seen him take the thing a surprising 45 mph over a bump without damage. She swore it was only a matter of time though.). 

He turned his head towards his sister with a pout. “Don’t talk about Tun Tun like that, Katara; it’s rude.” Sokka looked back at his car with a strange sort of fondness that Katara knew only Sokka was capable of displaying. “Don’t listen to her Tun Tun,” he cooed. “You’re beautiful just the way you are.” The meticulously taped up side view mirror slipped from it’s rearranged spot, hanging on only by a fraying electrical wire. 

Katara couldn’t help the snicker that escaped her.

“See what you did?!” Sokka said, exasperated. “Now Tun Tun is upset, great.” He opened up the backseat and grabbed his spare roll of duct tape. “Absolutely fantastic,” he muttered, beginning to patch up his beloved jalopy. 

Katara walked around to the passenger side, and slid in, placing her bookbag down at her feet. “Can you fix Tun Tun any faster?” she called out.

“While I do appreciate you calling her by her name,” Sokka replied, “Car maintenance on a budget is a careful art that takes time and precision.”

Katara groaned and sunk deeper into the worn fabric seat. She could already feel the embarrassment of being late on her first day. This definitely wasn’t the impression she was looking to give her new teachers, especially coming in on a partial scholarship. “Sokka, I’m going to be late.”

He placed one last piece of tape and sighed. “Alright, alright. Quit your whining. I’m finished.” He hopped in the driver’s seat and threw his tape towards the backseat. Sticking the key in the ignition, he gave Tun Tun one, two, three good cranks before she finally sputtered to life. Katara let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

 Katara fiddled with the hem of her uniform, a red wrap-around blouse with ornate gold trim. Her other hand unconsciously rested on her mother’s necklace. 

Sokka glanced back and forth between the road and his younger sister. It wasn’t unusual for her to lose herself in her thoughts for a moment or two, but under normal circumstances, she would probably be bickering with him over something stupid or giving him some long-winded speech about how he needs to take better care of himself and start thinking about the future or something else dumb and hope inspired and just very Katara.

But today wasn’t very normal.

He didn’t blame Katara for being a bit on edge. Hell, he was, two years ago when he was in her shoes. After Mom had died, Gran Gran and Dad had decided it would be wise for them to hone in on the Southern Water Tribe’s future, specifically Katara and Sokka. No pressure, though.

“So,” Sokka said, clearing his throat and interrupting both of their thoughts. “Are you excited to be going to Roku High?”

Katara shrugged. “I guess.”

Sokka knew better than to let Katara slip back into her own thoughts. “C’mon, Katara. This is your chance to actually get to bend with other water benders, let alone benders in general. You can’t tell me you aren’t at least a little bit excited.”

She sighed. “I mean, I know I’ve been practicing and all. I know that I know my stuff. It’s just,” she got quiet for a moment, searching for the right words. “What if I’m not as good as Dad and Gran Gran say I am?”

“Oh, shut up!” Sokka laughed. “Katara, you know damn well you’re the best water bender in the whole Southern Water Tribe.”

“I’m also the only water bender in our tribe-”

“Besides the point. Look,” Sokka said, pulling up to the sprawling private academy’s campus. “Dad and Gran Gran wouldn’t have given up so much if they didn’t believe in you. I wouldn’t have given up so much if I didn’t believe in you.”

Katara smiled softly at her brother and trapped him in a bone-crushing hug. “You know, when you aren’t being so sarcastic, you’re actually pretty ni-”

“Okay, okay, I get it. Stop being an annoying little sister and go kick some fire bender ass,” Sokka said, prying her off of him. “Go before you’re actually late, you nerd.”

Katara laughed and opened the door, swinging her bag over her shoulder. “Love you,” she called over her shoulder, closing the door behind her.

“Yeah, yeah, love you, too,” Sokka chuckled, putting his car in gear and slowly driving away. 

Katara closed her eyes, lifting her shoulders back. She raised her chin, trying to ignore the slight sting of homesickness in her chest as little beads of sweat gathered above her brow. Opening her eyes, she touched her mother’s necklace as she walked up the white stone steps to her new school. 

“Nothing will ruin this for me,” she whispered as she entered the building. “I promise, mom.”

__________

 “You fucking scream water tribe, you know that?”

A hand slams onto the locker opposite Katara, jolting her out of her thoughts. She pulled her eyes away from her schedule and scoffed. “Excuse me?”

The black-haired teen cornering Katara rolled her eyes. Her silk hair was pulled back into a perfect bun, with two choppy side bangs framing her face. Her eyes and facial features were sharp enough to cut someone. She was a cunning viper, and her lips dripped poison.

“You know, if you’re going to go to a Fire Nation school, you should at least try to blend in, or at the very least, not be so… offensive to our traditions.”

Katara grabbed her books from her locker and shut it harder than she had intended to. “Look, I don’t care who you are and how old of a Fire Nation family you come from, but water benders and earth benders go here too, so lay off.”

“You should watch who you’re talking to,” the viper hissed. 

A brunette, petite girl behind her frowned and opened her mouth to say something, but a girl next to her with two buns, bangs, and long black hair held up a hand to stop her before she could get a word in.

“And while other benders do attend Roku,” the girl with two buns said, “Azula is right, it has always been a traditional Fire Nation school. Hence the name Roku.”

“Thank you, Mai,” the viper, apparently named Azula, said. Katara couldn’t tell if she was actually thanking Mai for her input or if Azula was staking her claim to this battle. “You’re wearing Fire Nation colors for a reason, water girl. Take our advice, it’s best if you don’t stand out.” She sized Katara up and down. “Which tribe are you from anyways?”

“Southern,” Katara answered proudly with a smirk, leaning against her locker. 

The three girls sneered at Katara. 

“How the hell does a peasant from the Southern Water Tribe like you afford to come to Roku anyways?” Azula remarked. “No offense, of course.”

“Azula,” the brunette with the braid interjected, “maybe you should-“

“Shut up, Ty Lee!” Azula snapped at her.

The brunette sunk back in defeat.

A crowd started forming around the four of them, but Katara didn’t pay them any mind. She had a battle to win.

Katara glared at Azula and took a step forward. She picked up her shoulders, staring the viper straight in her eyes. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but this ‘peasant,’” she barked, “is the daughter of Chief Hakoda and the last water bender of the Southern Water Tribe. So I suggest you watch who you talk-“

Azula let out an outraged gasp and blue sparks danced at her fingertips as she raised her hand and mentally cursing her bravery, Katara closed her eyes and said goodbye to this cruel word and-

The impact never came.

Katara opened her eyes and looked up to see a young man with his hand around Azula’s wrist.

“Enough, Azula,” he said quietly, barely above a whisper. “You know combat is forbidden outside of class.”

“I don’t care,” she hissed back, her eyes shooting daggers at him. If looks could kill, it would have been a blood bath.

“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you want a demerit and father to find out.”

Azula’s face went ghostly pale and she got quiet. When her palm stopped crackling with electricity, he released it. He locked his golden eyes with Katara’s ocean ones for a moment. While he was probably only a year or two older than Katara, maybe around Sokka’s age, the bags under his eye and the permanent looking scowl on his face aged him further. 

“Okay ZuZu,” she snapped. His emotional disarmament seemed to be only of temporary effect. “We’re done here. You can leave us to our girl talk now.” 

He rolled his eyes and sighed, turning on his heel. Briefly, he nodded to one of Azula’s friends.

“Mai,” he greeted.

“Zuko,” she nodded back, cracking what could have been, had you squint really hard and looked closely, could possibly be the hint of a smile.

Zuko walked down the hall and the four girls watched him go. As he exited, so did a majority of the crowd, save for a few curious eavesdroppers.

“Now that my brother is done flirting with my friends and playing hero,” Azula said with a sigh, turning her attention back to Katara. “What was I saying before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh, right. Look, water girl, or whatever your name-“

“Katara.”

“Katara.” Azula drew out her name, testing the way it felt on her tongue. “Listen. I don’t know the way it worked in igloo village, but here, things are different. You don’t want to listen, fine by me. But my dad is someone really important, too, so I wouldn’t start swimming in water that’s too deep if you catch my drift.” Azula flicked Katara’s necklace with her finger, smirking at her. “I think we’re done here, ladies.” 

Azula pushed herself off of the lockers and the others followed suit. 

“Welcome to Roku High, Katara,” Azula called over her shoulder. 

_______________

Sokka perked up when his sister opened the door, jumping over the couch to greet her.

“There’s my favorite bender!” He said with a huge smile, walking up to her with open arms. “How was your first day of-“

Katara slammed the door shut behind her and shot him a glare. 

“... school?” Sokka whispered. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mumbled, pushing past him and heading straight for her room, slamming that door behind her, too. 

Sokka walked over to Gran Gran in the kitchen. “Ah, teenagers. You think she liked her school?”

#atla #avatar #avatar: the last airbender #avatar the last airbender #aang #katara #sokka #toph #toph bei fong #toph beifong #zuko #prince zuko #azula #mai #ty lee avatar #tylee #iroh #kanna #atla fic #atla fanfic #atla fanfiction #avatar fanfiction #avatar: tla #sokka and katara #katara and sokka #kataang #zutarra #zukka #sukka #yue

[misc-headcanons]

Request: NSFW Alphabet (Yoruichi)

(A while back, there was an anon that requested NSFW headcanons for Soi Fon, Yoruichi, and Rukia. Since there was only one slot left at the time, I opted to just do Yoruichi and save the other two for another time!)

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Very cuddly, and she enjoys just lounging in bed with you after sex and playing with your hair, stroking you or tracing little shapes into your skin

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Yoruichi’s very confident in her body, but if she had to pick one part of herself she likes the most...probably her thighs/legs. The inside of her thighs are pretty sensitive, and thanks to centuries of training she’s got some strong-ass thighs (she can easily break open a watermelon with them). As for her partner, she likes their ass and she is not afraid to show it. Expect a lot of groping, playful spanking, and pinching.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

She’s a squirter, but only on occasion. Sometimes it happens when she cums, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s more likely to happen during oral sex, though.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

One night after drinking with Kisuke, she had a horrifying sex dream/nightmare about sleeping with a strange amalgamation of Soi Fon’s body...with Yamamoto’s head. She still has no idea where the fuck that came from.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

She’s one of the most sexually experienced characters in Bleach, with the only person more experienced probably being Shunsui and a few others. 

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

She likes any position where she can show off her flexibility. In her mind, if she’s got the talent to get into those positions then she might as well show it off! She prefers being on top, but no matter what position she’s in she’s going to either be dominant or the two of you will have equal control.

http://sexpositions.club/positions/248.html

http://sexpositions.club/positions/240.html

http://sexpositions.club/positions/311.html

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

She’s a mischevious little minx in and out of bed, and she tends to laugh/giggle during sex (especially during foreplay). If you two have been together for a long time, she’s more serious; for the most part though, she’s still more humorous.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

She keeps things fairly well-trimmed, but it’s not really high on her priority list. She’ll shave it on a whim, and sometimes she thinks about trimming it into a random shape just for fun (she once shaped it into a little lightning bolt just for the hell of it). Her hair’s the same shade as on her head.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

She’s very intimate and very intense. Rough kisses and gripping the sheets one second, and soft feather-light touches and nibbling on your ear the next. Sex is always an adventure with Yoruichi, and you never really know what to expect next.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

She does it pretty frequently, up to three times a week. Her sex drive is fairly high, so if her partner isn’t there she just takes care of it herself. She usually sticks to private places so nobody walks in, but if someone does she’s not flustered by it in the slightest.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Femdom

That thing where you’re covered in warm oil during sex (she’s fond of patchouli oil because of the scent, but she’s down for whatever her partner has)

Bondage (her or her partner) and shibari. How do you think she got so good at using that wire/string during the Blood War arc?

Threesomes/Group sex

Minor petplay. She likes wearing cat ears and a tail, but if anyone’s gonna wear a leash it’s you. She’s a wild kitty.

Seeing her partner get overstimulated (drooling, talking incoherently, doing that ahegao face~)

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

When she was captain of Squad 2, she was fond of having sex on that chair/throne in her barracks. She likes having sex in semi-public spaces; if you’re a Soul Reaper, she’s going to sleep with you in your Squad’s barracks. If you’re an officer, you can damn well bet that she’s gonna bend over that desk and ride you in your chair.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Seeing her partner get flustered

Sparring with her partner

If her partner is wearing something more revealing than usual, she can’t keep her hands off of them.

Like I said before, her thighs are very sensitive but that’s not the only place that will get her riled up if you touch her there. Her earlobes, her collarbone, and her hips are also very erogenous zones.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Watersports and scat. She wouldn’t do that to her partner, and she doesn’t want to be that submissive towards her partner in turn. 

Consensual non-con and/or dub-con. She’s not going to relinquish control like that, even if it’s just pretend.

Anything like fisting. She knows her limits, and while she’s had some...larger partners, she doesn’t want to risk hurting herself. If you want to be fisted, she’d be reluctant and she would make sure you’re lubed up as much as possible before she’d even attempt it.

Electrostimulation. It makes her hair stand up for like, weeks afterwards and it’s really annoying.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

She likes both, but she thinks that there’s no better end to a long day that getting eaten out by her partner. She also likes to ride your face, too! She’s quite skilled with her tongue, and her record for making a partner cum is forty six seconds (though to be fair, she cheated a bit by using her Shunpo abilities to flick her tongue around at the speed of light towards the end)

P = Pace (Are they fats and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

She keeps a fairly quick pace, and since she has a high amount of stamina she can keep any pace her partner wants for as long as possible. She tends to overstimulate her partners because of how fast and rough she can get, so if she can see it’s getting to be too much for you she’ll slow down a bit.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

She likes quickies quite a bit. Like I said, she has a high sex drive; so if it’s the middle of the day and you’ve got work in an hour, she enjoys having a quick session to satisfy her urge without going for too long.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

As long as it’s not one of the kinks in her N/No section, she’s open to it. Even fisting, if she’s not the one receiving, she’ll try if you’re really into it. 

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

ENDLESS STAMINA. She can go for three rounds minimum before she starts to get even a little tired, and if she knows you’re not doing anything the next day she’ll make sure to fuck you so hard that you can’t leave bed for a while. 

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

She’s got a few vibrators that she uses when she’s masturbating, and if her partner is into it she’ll use them on them as well during sex. If she’s having sex with her partner, she’s usually so good at making you cum/overstimulating you that there’s no real need for a toy.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

VERY BIG TEASE. The only time she lets up is if you’re so overstimulated after a few rounds of sex that you’re crying and begging for some rest. If you’re not at that level, you’re going to get nipped/stroked/edged/mercilessly teased and you’re gonna love every second of it.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

Gets louder and moans quite a bit when she cums, and after a few rounds she’ll start panting a bit with every thrust. She also enjoys dirty talk, whispering in your ear about how good you make her feel and moaning for what she wants you to do to her.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

She’s had a threesome with Tessai and Urahara. A few of them, in fact. They’ve got a chill thing going on, and if she got a partner she wouldn’t mind introducing them to their “get-togethers” if they were okay with it.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

Her labia and inner walls are a darker shade of brown compared to her skin, but her clitoris has a pinker undertone to it. 

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Quite high, as previously mentioned. Shunsui may have more experience, but Yoruichi has the highest sex drive of any Bleach character. Due to her catlike abilities, her sex drive gets even higher in the spring in a sort of “heat”. If she had it her way, you two would have 24-hour sex sessions in the spring. But she doesn’t want to kill you, so she uses her vibrators if she knows you can’t go another round.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

It depends on how many rounds she went through. If it was just one or two, she won’t be that tired but she’ll fall asleep if you cuddle her for a long while afterwards. If it’s four rounds or more, she falls asleep more quickly (within about ten minutes or so).

#bleach #bleach headcanon #bleach headcanons #yoruichi #yoruichi shihouin #ns.fw alphabet #ns.fw #mine #yoruichi shihoin

[celoica]

flower through disarray

characters → billy hargrove/steve harrington

rating → mature

tags → post-s3, hurt/comfort, ambiguous relationship, hopeful ending

notes → i imagine the next season will have me crying and billy probably dead. i wrote this to make myself feel better about it.

summary → in the wreckage of the mind flayer, billy is left half-alive. steve still visits every day.

They shaved his hair. He would have hated it.

It was growing back now, all dull-gold cowlicks and shorn stubble on the left. He looked ridiculous. Steve had touched it, knotted his fingers through Billy’s hair and petted it back from his forehead when it got too long. When it started curling into his eyes near the new year, Steve had pilfered a pair of scissors from the cabinet beside his bed, trimmed it back until it wasn’t a complete disaster and saved the scraps because he couldn’t bear to throw them away.

Steve couldn’t bear to throw anything away. There were boxes in his basement, labelled Billy’s in Max’s scrawl, and Billy’s leather jacket tucked away in his closet. His scent had faded from it months ago, mixed up and overpowered by Steve’s hairspray and deodorant, faded out by Steve’s laundry detergent.

Steve still wore it on cold nights, let himself wake up wrapped around something close enough to Billy.

It was pathetic. He was aware. Nancy and Johnathan had fucked off to New York; Susan had fled with Max once Neil was cold and buried in the ground. Robin had been polite, but the scars on her face hadn’t faded as fast as her offer of friendship. One kiss at a pool party didn’t make up for Billy Hargrove trying to swallow you whole.

Steve didn’t blame them for it. He couldn’t blame anyone for anything but himself.

“Maybe stop going, man,” Dustin had said to him, eyes bleary and red, a dopey half-smile on his face as he plowed through a bag of cereal. “You just mope after—and it’s Billy, you know? He won’t give a shit if you’re there or not.”

And he knew that. He knew that because even the nurses looked at him with pity when he came in. They said good morning, Steve with sad eyes and whispered to each other outside Billy’s door like he was deaf.

He knew it because Joyce and Hopper had told him as much. Jonathan had made pained faces while Nancy had patted his shoulder and said it’s not your fault, but you should let it go. Even Max had hugged him, squeezed his middle until it hurt and told him to let it go.

Go. Go, go, go—God. To be able to let it go. Steve would cut himself open if it meant letting it go.

He sat next to Billy’s bed, hands folded in his lap, jaw clenched. Some days the anger burned so brightly it reached a fever-pitch to rage, blackening the edges of everything inside of him. Blackening the edges of everything he felt. Blackening the edges of what he felt for Billy.

He’d screamed before. Yelled until his voice was hoarse. Cried until he had nothing left to give. Destroyed Billy’s room and broke his knuckles by trying to put his fist through bulletproof windows. He’d begged, on his hands and knees, for Billy to wake up and let him go.

He’d done it once, twice, so many times he’d lost count since they’d dug Billy’s broken and bloody body from the rubble, took him away until Steve had held a gun with shaking hands to someone’s head and demanded to know where he was.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he ground out, like metal on metal, like his vocal chords had ruptured. It was thick and broken and sad and angry. “I can’t do this anymore. You won’t—you won’t wake up and I’m stuck and everyone is leaving me and you won’t wake up. I just want you to wake up.”

Billy said nothing. Did nothing. He never did. His chest rose and fell with the same breaths Steve had memorized for over a year, eyes shut, mouth closed, hooked up to a hundred wires.

Steve curled his fingers into his palms, pressed his lips together until they hurt and closed his eyes. He counted back from ten, and then twenty, and then breathed through his nose and bit his tongue until he tasted rust.

“I can’t live like this,” he said, tongue sticking in his mouth like taffy. It tasted like hopelessness and blood. He wiped his mouth, looked away and said, “I don’t want to.”

“I tried an—and it’s not enough. It’s not living. You’re not even alive,” he bit out, voice twisting ugly and grave, mouth curling up into anger again. “I’m talking to a fucking corpse and expecting it to talk back.”

He stood, kicked his chair back, stepped away from Billy. A week ago he’d been on his knees, begging. Begging for sleep, for a moment’s rest, for Billy’s ghost to stop haunting him. Begging for a moment of peace.

Steve rubbed at his eyes, tear-stung and aching. “Stay out of my dreams,” he muttered. He spoke over his shoulder and felt like more the fool for it. “They feel too real. You feel real and you’re not, and it’s not fair when you’re just so—”

He laughed, hollow, and turned, pressed a knee into Billy’s flimsy mattress.

His knee slipped, pressed snug against Billy’s hip. He was warm and solid, something Steve could put his hands on. He could touch him, flesh and bone, feel his heart beat when he dipped his hand under the collar of his hospital gown. Steve could feel him, the rough stubble, the plushness of his mouth, the curve of his chin and sharp lines of his cheeks.

Crammed up against Billy’s body, he touched him, stroked his knuckles down the side of Billy’s cheek and touched his lips, touched  his throat, the spike of his Adam’s apple. Brave, he kissed it, touched his lips to Billy’s jaw, closed his eyes and breathed Billy in.

“I hate you,” Steve whispered, soft, and kissed the high point of Billy’s cheek. His skin was warm, softer than it looked.

Steve stayed like that, crammed up against Billy’s side. He kissed his cheeks and his jaw, a hairsbreadth from his mouth. He wanted to kiss him. To wake him up like Snow White, be the knight in shining armour when an army of scientists and doctors hadn’t been able to in a year and a half. To be the one to prove fairytales with happy endings could still exist.

He kissed the divot in Billy’s chin, danced his fingertip up the slope of his nose.

When he kissed Billy’s eyelids, one after the other, he felt the twitch and flutter of awakening.

#harringrove #steve x billy #my fic

[rawbiredbest]

It’s All in Your Head

Contains: Fluff, Angst, Unconventional Relationships, Telepathy, Demons Fandom: Marvel (comics) Relationships: Stephen Strange/Victor von Doom Characters: Stephen Strange, Victor von Doom, Wong, Boris Word Count: 6103

Out of the blue, Stephen Strange and Victor von Doom find themselves telepathically connected.

No squealing, remember that......

Content warning for canon typical violence, profanity, implied sexual activity, and a single usage of homophobic language by a very bad individual.

Graciously commissioned by @osheets! Wanna do the same? Check my info!

Read here or on AO3!

- - -

The breakthrough comes with rapturous spontaneity. It’s like Victor von Doom has been standing on the shore of a Latverian loch, and in the blink of an eye, the grains of sand have become an orchestra, the surf their masterful conductor, and he the sole audience. He has captured their forms in glass and steel, multiplied ten million fold in the casings of complex machinery, and the entire laboratory sings the path to a bolder, brighter future. In all of his years of experimentation, innovation, desperation, he has never heard this music before. It pours from every screw and bolt, vibrates along every copper wire, thunders out of every piston and valve. The engineers below him, controlling and monitoring the device, are Gods of melody and time. Doom himself has transcended divinity, rising high on sublime notes of praise. He is Emperor, Encapsulated Universe, and his feet do not touch the floor as he glides to the heart of his machine, his veins coursing with silver beauty. Hydrogen atoms dance into the arms of their palladium partners, and their heat is love, love for each other, love for nature, love for him, and it is a primordial force unlocked from decades of ridicule and shame, and he has set it free. Genius. Monarch. Ultimate.

And then it goes. Slowly, a receding tide. It slides from his bones, leaving them aching. He braces himself against a panel, cold sweat sticking to his brow. His heart hammers in his chest, a lone drum holding a marching beat long after the band has departed into the moonless night. The engineers gape at him, oblivious to the miracle that has deafened their ruler.

Doom touches the shielding glass of the operating CMNS reactor, and its vibrations are an idiot hum. He blinks salt from his eyes, breath condensing on the machine.

Four thousand, five hundred and six miles away, a doctor and his best friend leave Madison Square Garden, wearing concert merch, beaming like loons.

- - -

To Stephen, it’s a tsunami.

He’s watching TV. The nightly news. He could tap into the Eye and view the entire world as it turns, but he doesn’t want to. It isn’t very often he feels human, let alone vegetable, so any opportunity to vegetate he takes with gusto. Stretched across his couch, he tugs down the hem of his shirt, leans his head on his hand, and waits to absorb the country’s woes.

He gets a sharp pain on the nape of his neck instead. He swats at the spot, looks at his palm. “Ow.”

Wong looks up from the email he’s writing. “Are you okay?”

Strange frowns, settles back down. “I think there’s a mosquito in here.” They’re talking about the Amazon fires. Stephen’s heart aches for the birds who will drop from the sky, their lungs full of smoke, voices forever silenced.

And then pain rips down his back, like his spine is torn out by an iron hand from his neck to his waist.

He can’t help but yell then, clutching the cushions. A heavy ache lingers in his vertebrae. Gingerly he sits up, breathing hard, eyes clenched shut. Something a bit like petrichor, a bit medicinal, a bit hot fills his nose.

Wong runs to him, but Strange raises a hand. “I’m fine,” he says, though he already braces against the thick lump rising next to his heart. As it crests, it dissipates throughout his body. He forces his eyes open, expecting to see the black trails of tiny spiders beneath his skin. Nothing but unmarked flesh.

“Should I call Doctor Carter?” Wong asks, thumbing toward the antique phone. It’s enchanted to call anywhere, anytime, any-plane.

“No, no.” Stephen leans on his knees, rubbing his temples. The pain is moving, changing. “This isn’t exactly her--”

--forte, he wants to say, but he is cut off by trees. Huge trees. Trees that consume the sky in fractal tangles of evergreen. Primordial, pristine trees, the definition of trees. The little things that crawl beneath and flit between, some carrying light, some with rigid jaws.

It’s a psychic attack. Strange has weathered them before. This one is weird. As he waves for Wong to get the Eye, he endures the spikes of pain that impale his senses to grab a closer look. This entity is lumbering, gigantic in scope yet wet around the edges.

It’s being born, he realizes. It’s waking up.

It hurts, it hurts but he’s curious. He sees New York now, its spires and streets lined up like so much circuitry. He feels the rough brush of concrete, hears the car horn concerto, smells the burn of rubber, and all throughout are rules, parameters, reasons. The thing is learning, feasting on information, and gathering more at an exponential rate. A tidal wave of green descends on the city, picking and plucking at this imaginary world.

And as it eats, thousands and thousands of hungry mouths devouring America, it hates. It hates the excess, the cruelty, the inefficiencies. It roars, barreling down the Sanctum, thousands upon thousands of tons of incomparable loathing.

Wong presses the Eye into Stephen’s hand.

“Pardon my French, dear friend,” Strange says.

The Eye bursts open, and the Sorcerer Supreme throws every ounce of his mystic might at the slavering invader. The living room cascades with dancing whorls of light as he raises his arms, funneling a solar flare, and cries a spell that every New Yorker knows by heart.

“FUCK OFF!”

Utter obliteration. When he opens his eyes, glittering motes trickle from the ceiling. The pain is gone. The TV has gone to commercial.

The phone is ringing.

Wong answers it as Stephen sinks to the couch. He slips the Eye around his neck, and its weight comforts. He thinks he’ll sleep with it tonight.

“It’s for you.”

Strange massages his ear. Vulgarity is embarrassing, but faced with an immaterial infant in the depths of an unholy tantrum doing everything in its power to cram a fork in a magic electrical socket, seemed like a good idea at the time. He takes the phone. “Hello?”

“Doctor! The master -- Victor -- something has happened, I do not know-- I--”

“Boris?” Stephen sits up. “Boris, it’s all right. Slow down. What’s going on?”

Behind the old retainer’s words, a siren wails. “The master--” He hesitates. “His newest Doombot. He turned it on for the first time. All was well, and then it exploded! And now Victor -- he is breathing this flame, this plasma! It burned through his mask! Doctor, what do I do!?”

Strange inhales deep. Counts to three. Lets it go. “He’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? I do not mean to doubt you, but--”

“It will pass. Give him an ice pack and put him somewhere dark and quiet for a few hours.”

“I trust you, doctor, but please, when you can, come and see him. The violence of it, it scares me.”

“I know. It’s fine. Just something he ate.”

Boris thanks him and hangs up.

Stephen wishes the couch would eat him as he heaves a sigh. “Wong,” he asks, “Is it too late to rescind discovering my bisexuality at the ripe age of however old I am now?”

“I don’t know,” Wong replies, “To both parts of your question. I lost count in the five hundreds.”

Strange curses again.

- - -

“So. We have a telepathic link. Any idea how it got there?”

He may as well be speaking to a wall of granite. Doom, arms folded, sneers at him across the table.

Stephen links his fingers together. “I have nothing. It’s rather disconcerting. I don’t believe it’s malevolent, which is always a plus, but it’s unremarkable, which isn’t. So I’d appreciate any insight, Victor. Whatever you’d like to...you know. Get off your chest.”

Doom’s eyes are cold.

“Anything at all. Need to vent? I know you can get heated.”

The table weighs over three hundred pounds, yet Doom flings it at him like a feather. Strange cuts it in half with a bolt of solid light as Crimson Bands constrict around his other arm. They serpentine and splinter into smaller tendrils, their tips unhinging into fanged blooms, and a thought comes to Stephen as the king charges him: he was born in a forest. It’s nature’s fury that fills his head, a cacophony of hellish noise, the wild hunt calling for his spilled blood. Doom’s rage in concentrated, psychic form, howling down their link.

The Daggers of Denak, blades spinning, do an admirable job trimming the vines, their severed heads still snapping, and Strange summons the Winds of Watoomb to push Doom away. The gale staggers him yet he presses forward, arcane runes flashing a ice blue aegis on his gauntlet. Step by step, forcing him back towards the wall.

He lunges. Strange is ready for it. Doom’s arm comes up, Stephen’s arms fan out. Before the king grasps his throat, he calls a pair of razors into his palms. Victor’s grip is suffocating. Strange holds his head between two guillotine blades. An impasse.

Doom’s voice rasps, thin and scorched. “That. Hurt.”

Stephen sips the tiny breaths he can. Something’s pressing into his belly. Sweat beads on his brow. It’s a gun. It’s the stupid gun Doom carries in the stupid pouch on his stupid belt. Why does he even have it? For shooting idiot sorcerers, he thinks. He swallows hard, knows Doom can feel it through the metal. Not so evenly matched as he thought.

And then he notices it. Hiding deep under the screams is a layer of fire. Reaching through the link, he touches it. Color rushes to his cheeks.

“Seriously?” he ekes out, “This is turning you on?”

Doom’s grip loosens. A minuscule amount, enough for Strange to squeeze a few more words. The fire leaps into his psychic palm, eager, aggressive.

“There’s no shame in it. You’re good at what you do, Victor. Very few people can put me in check. Look at you. You’ve pinned me to a wall like a butterfly. That’s impressive. I--”

The king leans closer. Stephen smells ashes on his breath.

“Hoary hosts.”

The gun is holstered. A steel thumb strokes his cheek.

“Reap what you sow,” Doom mutters.

- - -

The aches and bruises will last for days, but the coolness of Doom’s armor against the carpet burn on his back is soothing. He rests a hand in the king’s own. Anything else feels too strenuous. “Was that your first time having telepathic sex? It’s intense, isn’t it?”

Victor takes in the state of the room. Paintings smashed, furniture so much firewood, stone walls fractured and cratered. How much destruction is his? He has no idea. One or the other had to have held back. The castle is still standing, after all.

Neither man speaks. Stephen ventures a glimpse down their link and gets only an image of black curtains. Doom’s already set up defenses. Though some of his own are raised, he lets some satisfaction flow between them. An olive branch.

A quiet, amused huff. “At times, Strange,” Doom says, and already his voice sounds better, “Your physical merits outweigh the strenuous mental exertions you put me through.”

“I never much cared for the medieval aesthetic myself, yet here we are.” He grunts as he looks over his shoulder, thighs twinging. “How drunk were we that night?”

“Doom was sober.”

“Oh no, your golden goblet saw plenty of refills. You were, at the very least, tipsy.”

“You question Doom’s memory?”

Stephen cups his chin, looks deep into dark brown eyes. “I question, my lord, why you claim to remember, with crystal clarity, a night you could have easily decreed never happened at all.”

Nothing comes. No biting remark, no caustic humiliation. Doom only holds his gaze, and under the black curtains flashes something bright, something strong. It lasts for only half a second before the king gets up, using Strange’s shoulder for support. “This link shall be insufferable. Do your part to get rid of it.”

Stephen frowns, annoyed that his legs work. He wonders if Victor left any of his clothing intact. “Right. Ground rules. Stay out of my head, and I won’t make you cough up another star. Deal?”

“Stay out of Doom’s head, and you shall not know pain unending. You have a deal.”

- - -

This lasts for two months.

- - -

On Day 51, a current of malicious satisfaction slithers through Strange’s mind. Gooseflesh rises up his back. The half-chewed wad of pastrami and egg in his mouth goes sour. He spits it out, bracing himself on the dinner table, and without thinking of thinking, he thinks: what have you done now?

The smirk on Doom’s face reminds him of the crocodiles at the Bronx Zoo. The thing Victor is smiling at reminds him of shop class. He can’t begin to make heads or tails of it. Like many of the king’s devices, it could have come off the set of a sci-fi movie. Sleek and chrome, rigged with multicolored wires, pumps, and gauges, a porthole reveals the heart of the machine, a vile purple light. Stephen’s gut tells him that color would eat him alive if it could, tear into his flesh and drip his blood from its teeth. Stephen trusts his gut.

Strange, Doom replies, smile quickly fading into a scowl, We had an agreement.

You broke first. I felt you. My spidey sense tingled.

Victor’s gauntlets ball into fists, and he sends a wave of serrated anger barreling toward the magician. A chained wolf, barking and snarling. An executioner waiting for the condemned to dig his own grave deeper.

Stephen curses. He didn’t mean to think that out loud. Look. Just tell me what it is and I’ll leave you alone.

The black curtains rustle, then lift like a wing. Swimming in the purple light are mathematical equations, coiling around metal rods. It makes perfect sense to Doom, but to Strange it’s a form of gibberish undecipherable by any eldritch tome.

Then he hears it. It’s not coming from the machine. It’s from Doom. Subvocalized lyrics. A silent song. He could recognize the tune anywhere.

He bought its album at the concert.

This is cold fusion.

Stephen snaps back to attention. Cold fusion. Should I be worried?

Victor folds his arms. That I built a safe, eternal form of energy for myself and my people? Yes, Strange, cower and quake. Your country shall never have it so long as I draw breath.

There are many dangerous rebuttals to that he could say. Names he could drop. Yet Doom promised pain unending. Fifty-one days into their connection, Strange has no leads into its inner workings. Finding out if he could make good on his word is a risk Stephen is unwilling to take.

I don’t like this, the sorcerer thinks, but I have to believe you. Don’t misbehave.

His own mental defense is a never-ending subway express train, its doors and windows a veil of golden thorns. Sighing, he sits back down. What’s left of his sandwich has the appeal of wet newspaper.

Doom was right. The link is awful.

- - -

On Day 60, despite the blazing fire in the hearth, Victor’s feet send ripples through a puddle.

He regards it from his antique armchair throne with indifferent curiosity. Through the filters in his mask, he smells the green, pungent scent of foliage rot and seawater. In the puddle itself swim millions of plankton. A frenzy of eating, fucking, dying, and birthing unfolds beneath his alloy soles.

From the corner of his eye, he watches the puddle extend an arm of water across the floor. Sliding under a wall, a line of slithering damp turns the paint a moldy gray. Moisture fans across the entire side of the room in a pattern like falling stars, like skeletal hands trailing through a river. The scent grows stronger as the puddle expands. He rises before it consumes his chair. The leather sinks until it is a speck of mahogany in the brine. Gloom washes over it and it is gone.

Doom folds his arms. A breeze teases the tail of his cloak. Murmuring a quiet word, he puts out the fire with an arc of a finger, and turns around into another world.

It is eternal night. It has no sun, and what few stars can be seen are lucky glimpses through a lush canopy of branches and black, web-like leaves many hundreds of feet above. The grass under him has a sticky grip, but gentle. If grass could want for anything, it would like to give the king safe passage on his journey. He isn’t the sustenance it’s looking for. That comes on the wind, in the form of tiny shards of detritus falling from forest layers high overhead. It shimmers as it tumbles down, the only source of light in this hadal garden.

He doesn’t need to go far. Half-concealed behind a root far taller than he, Doom watches himself and Stephen Strange on the next mound over.

The magician talks with grand gestures, sweeping an arm over trees as dark as ink. Doom remembers himself speaking little, allowing Strange to tell him the highlights of the world. No recorded examples of predation. Negligible changes in evolution for millennia. A slow world. A place of peace.

Stephen steps into the water. Waist deep, he holds out his arm. His garb drips off him, revealing pale skin. He smiles, bare and inviting.

The other Victor undoes his belt.

“And you complain when I get you out of the house.”

Doom peers at the Stephen Strange sitting in lotus position beside him. “You drag me into your affairs with no concern for my well-being or sanity.”

“Please. The times you dig your heels in are cursory, at best. And then we end up doing things like this.”

Across the mound, the other king’s armor sits in a neat pile, and the two doctors stand in each other’s arms, their lips meeting and parting only to inhale.

Victor kneels on the grass. “Even you are capable of stumbling onto a good idea.”

Stephen’s lip curls upward. “I think about this often. This place is beautiful. This memory pleasant. I took effort not to broadcast this to you. My apologies if I disturbed you.”

Doom looks away. “You did not.”

“Oh? Your Royal Highness, we had an agreement.”

“Am I not allowed to reminisce myself?”

“Ssh. Meditate with me.”

He closes his eyes. Strange’s hand creeps into his own, and he lets it stay.

Perhaps he was wrong. The link isn’t so bad.

- - -

Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!

Stephen rolls molasses slow toward awareness. The bedroom is pitch black, swimming in unholy hour of the morning disorientation.

Your wife is in trouble!

He cracks an eye open, shifting in the sheets. “Clea?”

No! Your big green wife! Get up, right now!

Those aren’t his thoughts. It’s a voice he’s never heard before, coming from inside his head. He holds very still and feels something slither over his brain.

He snaps wide awake.

I’m sorry we have to meet like this, the voice says, but we must hurry. The whole world is at stake!

In any other circumstance, Strange would interrogate the voice within an inch of its life, but its fear is genuine. Swinging out of bed, he yanks some pants on, startles the Cloak of Levitation from of its own sleep, and pulls open a portal to Latveria.

Curse me for a novice! the voice squeaks, That can’t be good!

Enormous rends in reality drape over the castle. Shimmering in the air, some bisect the stone in clean, monomolecular cuts. One vomits a steady stream of magma, causing a massive fire in the castle courtyard. Through each of them Stephen sees other dimensions. Another hole fans out from the keep itself and drops a mass of red crystals that crush an entire rampart.

Please! Hurry!

Stephen slams the portal shut, imagines his destination, and wrenches open a new one directly to Doom’s lab. The room is bathed in sunset colors and thick, acrid smoke. At its heart lies the fusion reactor, which is now anything but cold. The purple light pounds waves of energy, reverberating off its containment and magnifying a new tear in the world.

Victor stands in front of the machine. His motions are jerky, abrupt, a marionette controlled by a mob of children. He lifts a twitching hand and the tear throws itself through the castle to join the others outside.

Sister-Brother! the voice cries, Stop!

Doom’s arms drop, strings cut. The voice that comes from his mind is higher than the other.

No, I don’t think so, it says, I think I’m going to continue. You’re more than welcome to burn.

“You’re the link,” Strange says.

Just figured that out now? Sister-Brother asks, Wow, Brother-Sister. You sure drew the short straw. My host is incredible. I’ve mapped every gyri and sulci in here and it’s gorgeous. I’d stay forever if I could. It’s almost a shame he has to die.

Stephen glares, raising his hands, fingers glowing with magic. “As Sorcerer Supreme, I command you to release Doctor Doom!”

The laugh that echoes down the link is nails on a chalkboard. You have no idea what we are.

“You’re playing with fire. You’re threatening the dimensional stability of all of Doomstadt. And when I find you, you’ll have hell to pay.”

This host has already seen hell, Sister-Brother chides, What better place to grow up than in a body demon-touched? Have you considered that I’m doing him a favor? This is how it plays out. This is fate.

Doom turns around without his mask.

A bloodcurdling shriek ricochets across Strange’s mind, his hand thrusts forward with a will not his own, and a thunderbolt connects with the king’s head. Victor flies against a control panel, smashing it with the weight of his impact. Groaning and creaking, the reactor starts to power down, sprinklers in the ceiling damping the flames.

His face, Brother-Sister whispers, Gods, oh gods, what’s wrong with his face...

Stephen contains his screams until he kneels at Doom’s side, hefting his body into his arms. The scent of burning meat fills his nose. He howls for someone, anyone, to help him, royal blood seeping onto his chest.

- - -

He awakens to the beeping of the heart monitor.

Doom feels like mountainsides have taken residence on his eyelids. Slowly sliding them open, he takes inventory. The room is bright, sterile, no windows. He’s propped up in a bed. His hands are bare yet weigh like continents. He looks to his left.

“Hello,” Stephen says.

The sorcerer looks terrible. Ashen skin, reddened eyes, a frown threatening to rip his mouth off. The clothes he wears belong to any servant of the castle. The hands clasped together between his knees shake worse than Doom has ever seen.

“You’re on a morphine drip. You’ve been unconscious for the past twelve hours. You’re in the castle. We set up a makeshift triage room. For a while...” He takes a deep breath, steeling his voice. “We didn’t know if you would make it.”

Doom thinks, and his head is wonderfully quiet.

“Thank every deity you know that your skull is almost as hard as your armor. You’re going to be in a lot of pain for the next few days, but the alternative...I don’t want to think about. And I got rid of the link.” Strange picks up a jar from a nearby stand. “Meet Brother-Sister and Sister-Brother.”

Floating in cerebrospinal fluid are two worms. One is storm cloud gray bracketed by navy blue. The other is dark yellow-green with flecks of red. Flat as ribbons and only an inch long, they give each other a wide berth.

“Pineal parasites,” Stephen continues, “Stuck to the undercarriage of our minds, learning how to be through our eyes. They talked together through us. Saw magic through us. Deciphered grand machines through us. And now they’re ready to go home. That’s what yours was trying to do. They were looking for a place where nothing changes and nothing happens because all who go there are hijacked and killed. Not such a good idea after all, was it?”

Doom blinks.

Putting the worms down, Strange digs his wrists into his eyes. “Victor, I swear to you on everything I am I had no idea. I thought you’d like it. I thought you could forget being so angry, forget the Four if only for an hour, and be happy. Now you--”

He stares at the door, fist to his mouth. Swallowing his heart, he says, “I’m bringing them back. They’re not at fault. They’re just following their life cycle. Despite what they’ve done, they deserve to live.”

Birds that will choke on ashes, he thinks, Countless trees turned to dust. No more. No more death.

“The best doctors in your kingdom are here for you. I’ll be back.”

“Doom will go with you.”

Victor’s voice is quiet but steady. Stephen shakes his head. “No. You’re in no shape to get out of bed, let alone travel dimensions.”

The monarch shuts his eyes. Heavy footsteps pass through the door. A doppelganger in emerald and steel, the Doombot bows its head to its ruler.

“Doom will go with you,” Victor repeats.

Strange blows a ragged breath. By Doom’s creased brow, that wasn’t easy. “Okay. Rest now. Don’t do anything until I return.”

Victor says nothing. Stephen waits until he drifts to sleep, presses a kiss to rough lips, and departs, robot in tow.

- - -

Q-4301 is indistinguishable from the real deal, from its ramrod straight spine to its folded arms, yet there’s no look of wonder in its lenses, no human, if royally restrained, sense of adventure in its copper and silicon heart. It doesn’t care about the bits and pieces of gold falling from the alien canopy, the grass patting its boots. It stares at Strange, emotionless, and that very lack of feeling gnaws at the pit of the sorcerer’s stomach.

They’re on the same black water island mound as before. He can pick out the tree Victor pressed him against from all the rest. Had the microscopic eggs that birthed the parasite twins been attracted to their sex, or had it been sheer luck? He doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know.

In his hand is a candle made from the blood of priests. “Do you have them?” Stephen asks.

Q-4301 lifts a corner of its cloak. Sewn into the cloth is a glass vial. Brother-Sister and Sister-Brother are inside.

Strange nods. “I don’t know if Doom programmed you to feel fear. Either way, let me do the talking. If all goes well, you won’t have to do anything.”

The Doombot says nothing. Taking a deep breath, Stephen snaps a spark between his fingers and lights the candle.

The world goes silent. The wind ceases, and so does the steady fall of golden bits and bobs. The grass curls into tight nubs. The only indication that time has not stopped entirely is the gleam of flame like an undulating eel on the surface of the water. Stephen’s breath is deafening in his own ears.

The voice that speaks is low and obsidian slick. “Well, well, well. Look what the fags dragged in.”

The demon, descending from the trees, blends perfectly into the dark. Its teeth are yellowed and pitted from a diet of rot. It moves on long, soundless talons. Its eyes are cherry red, pupils like mouths.

“Doctor Strange,” the khat murmurs, “You honor me with your presence. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re a cautionary tale among khat-kind, you know. A warning about too much power in frail, mortal meat. Like stuffing a sun into a stomach, it’s only a matter of time till it bursts.”

Stephen purses his lips. “Cut the shit. I have something for you.”

The khat’s grin splits up to its ears. “A gift? Is it your heart? Your humanity? Your soul? Please tell me it’s your soul. I would so like your soul.”

“Come closer and I’ll show you.”

The demon pads on water, leaving no ripples in its path. “Is it the thing beside you?” Nostrils flaring, it sizes up the Doombot. “Not the usual breed of lost lambs you lead to slaughter. What sort of lies did you tell it to follow you? An offer of redemption, perhaps? Anything desperate enough to flaunt about in a green skirt would listen to you.”

“Desperation is for the weak,” Q-4301 snaps.

Strange swallows the ball of curses on his tongue and hopes it doesn’t show. Doombots fall for bait. Exactly like the original.

The khat stops. “Everything has weaknesses. You were once a babe in your mother’s arms, no? Look at your companion. The Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, can barely keep a friend around, let alone alive. No, no, no, there has to be a reason he wants you here.” It lies on all fours, rests its cheek on its fist. “What sort of gift was it again?”

Stephen starts to speak. Q-4301 beats him. “The only gift a demon like you deserves.”

Red eyes narrow in amusement. “Oh, it’s too much for a single khat to bear! Let me call my brothers. We shall find out together.” Rising into a crouch, it takes a deep breath.

There’s still time to salvage the plan. Strange shouts, “Do it!”

Q-4301 lunges into the water, tears the vial from its cloak, and thrusts its arm out. As predicted, the khat opens its toothy jaws and swallows the punch up to the Doombot’s shoulder. Payload delivered, they need to flee.

The portal spell is halfway done when Stephen spots Q-4301 motionless.

For a second, the khat too is still. Then, beaming around the steel in its mouth, it bites, and tears Q-4301′s arm off.

No robot could replicate the spray of blood and scream in agonized terror.

Strange doesn’t realize he’s also screaming. The khat snatches Q-4301′s shoulder and slams it beneath the surface. The water boils in the struggle. Shadows like hellish stalagmites reach for the leaf-choked sky as the sorcerer calls his magic. Black muck splatters the trees, the grass, Stephen’s legs as he gathers flame in his shaking palms.

The blast turns the water to steam as the garden sees more light than it has in billions of years. He looks for a target, finds nothing but the bare riverbed quickly flooding to fill the void.

The khat geysers up behind him, grabs his leg, and wrenches him into the water. The Cloak of Levitation has enough time to flip him face up before a heavy paw pins it down. Eyes stinging, heart hammering, Strange fends off the khat’s snapping jaws with novas in his palms. It takes all his training to anticipate where the teeth will be, vision obscured by plumes of bubbles, and not lose a limb.

Claws curl in his suit and drag him through the brine. His head connects with a tree root and all of reality goes sideways. His breath whooshes free, and sour liquid fills his throat.

The demon hauls him out, shoves him against a tree. Three blurry khats grin in Stephen’s eyes. Dozens of fangs.

“The gift is all three,” it says, “Your heart, humanity, and soul. Why were we ever warned about you? You’re nothing.”

It opens its mouth.

LEAVE HIM ALONE!

Stephen shakes water and blood from his eyes. The khat is frozen save its eyes, which widen in shock. Two voices erupt from its gullet. One, higher-pitched, screeches an incoherent string of profanity.

By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, the other cries, I demand you let him go!

If he squints, Strange can see two ribbons in the khat’s belly. One yellow-green and red, the other gray and blue.

“What have you done,” the demon barks, “What have you done to me!?”

The claws pry open. Stephen beats a hasty retreat, flying to the unfinished portal. As he works to complete it, something moves at his feet. The grass scuttles bits and pieces of shattered human along pathways only it knows. He reaches down, grabs a fragment, and rage flows through him hot enough to make his skin glow, heat radiating from him in convection circles.

The khat breaks free of the parasites’ control, smashing its head against the tree for good measure. Screaming, it leaps for him. Strange sidesteps into another world -- home -- closes the portal, and waits until his ears stop ringing.

His anger he keeps. He storms through castle halls, eager to strike while the iron is hot.

- - -

Doom must really try this relaxation thing more often. It isn’t bad. Balcony doors open, letting in sunshine and a floral breeze, he reclines in his seat, sips his tea, and listens to the vinyl spinning on the antique phonograph.

I’m coming down, coming down like a monkey, but it’s all right Like a load on your back that you can’t see, oooh but it’s all right

The song has been in his head for months. It’s nice to hear it in the open. Doom smiles. Stephen has good taste in music.

“Bastard!”

The chair spins around and Doom is confronted by a feral magician. Strange notes the king’s simple garb: no steel in sight, just a cotton shirt and pants. He aims for Victor’s face but his quaking hands botch the throw. It bounces off his chest and lands in his teacup. “You’re not white!”

Doom looks at his tea. The blue eye in the tea looks back. “About time someone noticed,” he deadpans, extracting the orb by its optic nerve and setting it on a napkin.

The chair bucks like a bronco and Victor spills out. Stephen catches him with magic, hangs him in the air. The cup breaks into a thousand pieces and the king’s disappointed frown makes Strange want to throttle him. “Who was in the Doombot?”

“A nuclear engineer working on the CMNS reactor.” Doom sounds bored. “He tweeted about the parasite-induced euphoria I experienced. Called it an episode. Implications of weakness are illegal. Justice -- and the parasites -- were served. Two birds with one stone.”

“You killed a man for a tweet.”

“Whatever creature you encountered in the garden slew him, not I.”

Stephen drops him, relishing Victor’s grunt as a shard of teacup cuts his foot. It’s a slimy pleasure, and his face contracts. “Bastard. There isn’t an ounce of goodness in you.”

The king pulls the porcelain out of his flesh and points the bloodied end of it. “I have my ways just as you have yours. Until you grasp this concept, we shall always be at odds.”

“Be at odds? I saved your life!”

Doom brushes back his hair. Black stitches stretch from one ear across his head to the other. “You scarred me.”

They’re on thin ice. Strange dials back his fury, fists clenched. Monstrous tyrant or not, Victor is recovering from brain surgery. “You had a worm in your head.”

Tossing the shard aside, Doom sinks back in the chair in a position Stephen calls the regal slouch. “The sentence for weakness implications is community service. The engineer served his community. The sentence for injury to the royal person is death.” A scowl darkens his face. “I have half a mind to not let you leave this room alive.”

The sorcerer shuts his eyes.

“However.” Doom thinks, picking his words. “The extraneous circumstances surrounding the crime cannot be ignored. A different punishment is called for. It shall be made at a later time.” He draws a holographic display before him. A tigress pants in her den, lozenges squirming at her belly. “Three cubs were born at the Latverian Zoo this morning.” He looks at Stephen. “I find myself preoccupied with some wildlife conservation of my own.”

The sigh comes from the bottom of his heart. One day Victor will come out and thank him. Today is not that day. It will have to do. Strange rubs his eyes. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Speak.”

“Exile. A break. Another two months, or two years, or two hundred years. I’m not picky. I just don’t want to see you for a while.”

Doom looks back at the panel. “Your suggestion carries weight. So be it. Begone.”

That’s that. Another story concluded. Feeling empty, feeling light, Stephen turns to go.

“Strange.”

Fuck, so close. The sorcerer looks over his shoulder. “What?”

“When next we sojourn, for Doom knows we shall--” Victor’s lip turns up, the smallest hint of a smirk. “--I shall pick our destination.”

#doomstrange #doctor doom #doctor strange #victor von doom #stephen strange #rawbi's writes #commission a small bird

[nowitsdarkfic]

chapter fifteen (visiting hours)

December 1, 1988. Syracuse, New York.

“Okay, so tell me what happened now.”

We're inside of the hospital I was in before when I first visited Brick. The whole place is still absurdly clean and I still wonder about all the lights and things that surround us on the way up to the intensive care unit. Spence stops me right in front of the elevator doors as they close and leave us under the veil of that new car smell. I guess visiting hours are just now opening up for the day: I figure we'll be here all day with Lars and Sonia if we must.

“You know, Barney and Billy took Brick home with them,” he starts, reaching into his pocket for something.

“Right.” I untie my scarf because it's nice and warm in here.

“And he was laying on the couch and he had those feathers growing out from his head and his neck—” He takes out a little zipped bag of pink and white candy. “—Good and Plenties?”

“Nah. You and those stupid things, I swear.” I stick my thumbs into my jeans pockets.

“They're so tasty, though. I've like these for years, Joe. These and Jujyfruit.”

“Oh, right?”

“Anyways—the feathers were getting bigger and longer with time and I guess it was aching him like crazy.” He slips a couple of those candies into his mouth. “Like while it made our skin itch, those of us on the outside looking in, I guess it was agonizing for him because whenever he woke up he'd shudder and shake from pain.”

“Shit. While I can't believe I wasn't there to help you guys out, I'm—kinda glad I wasn't there.”

“No, it was—it was hard to watch him. I'm glad you weren't there, either, because it would've wrecked you. He wasn't eating anything worth jack shit, either. And so at one point, Barney was like 'dude, Brick, you gotta eat something.' But he wouldn't.” He sticks a couple of white ones which stuck together into his mouth: that smell of licorice overtakes the new car smell pervading the floor.

“The light would hurt him, too,” he adds with his mouth full.

“Hurt him?”

“Yeah, like he'd—” He swallows it down. “—he'd totally wince and make these painful whimpers whenever either Barney or Bill turned the light on. They soon found out more feathers would grow all along his arms and his legs. It was like he was turning into a bird. It got so bad that they called me up the other day and told me to tell you, Lars, and Sonia that they were taking him to the hospital. You weren't home so I told the two of them. Sonia's been on Thanksgiving break but she's been working overtime at the upholstery place with Marcia and Lars had just gotten out of the hospital himself, which kinda scared me.”

“Yeah, we were—kinda in a car accident,” I fill in for him. And he gapes at me.

“What—the fuck, why didn't you say anything?”

“Haven't been able to—wait. I thought you knew about it?”

“No! No one said anything to me about that!”

“What the hell? I thought Dominique called Sonia and then she called everyone I knew after it happened. That's what Lars told me.”

He shakes his head. “Nah, man, I didn't hear a thing about that. I thought you were at your parents' house.”

“I was in the City seeing Soundgarden again. And then I went out to dinner with Lars, Nancy, and Dominique. I fell asleep at the wheel and we totaled the car in the Bronx. Fucked up my back for a few days, hit my head, and everything.”

He runs his hand through his hair and gapes at me as his face turns as white as a sheet.

“Holy—shit!”

“You're telling me no one told you what happened that night?” I demand to him, feeling my stomach turn.

“Yes,” he sputters out. I'm at as much of a loss for words as he is because I swear—I swear—Lars told me as we were laying in our hospital beds to not worry about calling everyone I know on what happened. I feel sick.

The third door on the right side of the hall opens and Sonia pokes her head out from the doorway. I point my finger at her.

“Hey!” I call out to her. “Why didn't you tell Spence Lars and I were both in a car accident and the two of us could've been killed?”

“You were in a car accident?” she asks me, bewildered.

“We were,” Lars' voice floats out from behind her.

“You mean—Dominique didn't call you?” I lower my hand.

“No…” She almost looks hurt.

I glance back at Spence, whose mouth is full of Good and Plenties again.

Okay, now I'm really confused.

“I'll bring it up to Dominique when I see her,” I assure the both of them, adjusting the lapels of my coat. “But right now—”

I stride down the hall towards her; Spence follows suit. Sonia fixes her hair as I meet up with her there at the doorway: the room has a bright white floor and bold bright white lights upon the ceiling. To the right is a plain white panel, one that resembles to a sound board in a recording studio, but it's all so clean and crisp. Too clean.

I turn my head to find a sheet of darkened glass stretched from the wall behind me to the one on the other side of the room. On the other side of the glass, laying in his hospital bed with tubes and wires sticking into parts of his arms and legs, bathed in rich indigo light, his arms laying out from his body like the arms on a rag doll, is Brick.

They had removed the feathers from his face and his shoulders, and smeared on some kind of cream as a result. His eyes are closed shut and he's got a little mask over his mouth: the mask is linked up to a plastic tube and the tube is snaking behind his bed to what I presume is a tank of some kind. I can see some of the shafts of the feathers remaining behind in the skin on his forearms.

Spence was right: this is hard to look at. The whole sight of it makes my stomach turn even more. In the reflection of the glass, I see Lars striding up next to me with something in his hand. I turn my head to find him walking with a black wooden cane. He rubs one eye after the other with his free hand.

“Yeah,” he remarks to me. “No one has any idea what's happening with him.”

“Billy told me they stuck the tube down his throat,” Sonia starts again, “and they found a bunch of fine trimmed wires and glimmers of neon on the inside of his mouth, right near his gullet. It's like the feathers were tearing him apart from the inside and eating him alive.”

“Neon?” I repeat that, scowling at my own faint reflection in the glass.

“Yeah. Like bright blue neon.”

“Like the neon lights we see in Seattle,” Lars adds, putting his free arm over the top of his head so as to stretch his back.

“And the same ones across the lake,” I mutter under my breath as Spence himself stands beside me.

“And they don't know if they stopped the feathers, either,” he continues. “You know, you can see the shafts growing out of his arms. They also have no idea how to rid of the wires and the neon inside of his mouth, either. It's like they're part of his body now.”

I look on at Brick, at the marks of the shafts over his forearms. There's something on his left wrist. Something that's a little more white than the rest of his skin, and it stands out because of the black lights in the ceiling over him. A little slit, like a scar I don't recognize.

Brick's my best friend: of all the hockey games we've played in, where I've had a tooth partially knocked out, he never managed to get a worse injury than a pelting in the head with a puck. If he ever got that bad of a cut anywhere on his body, I would've known about it. But this looks new, like it just happened.

I flash on the scar on Maya's forehead. But that's on her head: this is on his arm.

I also examine all the tubes and things flooding into his body.

Neon. Wires. Cybernetics. The robotic work in the house back in Boston.

This has got me thinking.

“What you thinking, Joe?” Spence asks me, tucking the Good and Plenties back into his coat pocket.

“I'm thinking,” I begin, choosing my words with caution, “we should play in Seattle.”

“We?”

“Yeah.” I turn my head to look at Spence, who's got one eyebrow raised up a little bit. “You, me, Barney, and Billy.”

“Why?” He's not sure where I'm going with this, but I know.

“I have an idea. It's not a plan per se, more of an excuse to get our asses back over there.”

“Where are you going with this?” Sonia asks me, folding her arms over her chest.

“Yeah, I mean, your buddy's here in the intensive care unit and literally the most you can do is suggest a round of hockey?” Lars just sounds borderline disgusted.

“You're gonna be goalie,” I tell him, wagging a finger at him.

“Me?” He recoils at the very suggestion. “Dude, I can barely walk at a normal pace right now much less stand on skates.”

“Never said you would have to stand on skates,” I point out. “What am I suggesting is a way into the heart of Seattle. Into the heart of all the neon and all the cybernetic shit. I want us to have a closer look at it.”

“You think—” Spence cuts himself off. And Lars gasps at me.

“You don't think—” He stops himself, too. “Maxwell Industries,” he says in a hushed voice.

“Walter 'Brick' Maxwell. Tell me that's not a coincidence. Also—” I shift my weight right there as I stuff my hands into my coat pockets. “—the other night Nancy—Chris' girlfriend—swung by my place the other night. I guess she's seen Maya in the heart of town. The least I can do right now, not just for Brick but for Maya, too, is to at least have a look around while putting on a little round of hockey.”

“Joey Belladonna, you are brilliant,” Spence declares, setting a hand on my back.

“The only issue of course is—do I go by Dominique's word on this especially since—as far as I know anyways—she didn't even call Sonia after the accident.”

“Well, take this from me, Joey,” Lars tells me, “sometimes you have to listen to your own judgment instead of going by the game of telephone. That's how I got my apartment in New Orleans.”

I nibble on my bottom lip at that as I gaze on at Brick one last time. I did say I would figure this whole thing with him out even if it kills me after all.

#after the watershed #who cares wins #now it's dark #chapter 15 #new chapter #fanfic #fanfiction #heavy metal fanfiction #thrash metal #anthrax fanfics #metallica fanfics #joey belladonna #lars ulrich #anthrax #metallica #noir au #cyberpunk #amwriting #text

[yespoetry]

Caitlin Scarano: There Is No Ending

I know we’re all sick of poems with deer but let me explain

 Last night: a forest of hospital beds

 I want to ask all these strangers: do you ever think every day you’re getting closer to your death or do you wake in the morning with hope crusted in the corner of your eyes, your teeth already grinning at the air?

 Grief is a very complex machine, it told me so itself, a matrix

that takes years

A.     to navigate

B.      from you like teeth

 Dear J, I have a few acres all to myself now, you should see them

 I’m sorry you had to turn so many stones

while I looked on at a careful distance

 The male human heart at age 36

Who knew, I guess

 It’s true that I didn’t mind the horses starving outside my window, as long as they

            came when called, as long as they were gentle with their teeth

            I mean, I had many apples going to rot, what else could I have done

 I read about how the water in Lake Superior is replaced every 191 years

 Remember the spot where I dove under and was rolled by a wave and for a moment I did not know what was up or down, what was past or present, you or⁠—

 That winter, the lake froze, trace lines of cracks in the ice colliding, the fractures in my body all met

 In another dream, you’re in front of me⁠—solid, tangible, with a dark beard and corduroy pants

I ask you about dying and he you say, Let’s go to this city I know

Then you disappear into a tangled forest and I follow, stumbling, ripped by thorns

 You’re always just out of reach, always just turning the next corner

 Remember those children we watched while we ate ice cream on that green bench in Sault Saint Marie? Silly

            that isn’t my favorite memory of you, not by far but it’s the one I keep

coming back to

 I took it so I should have wanted it

But the sugar made my teeth ache

 Every memory is two-sided, like that day we lay in the grass watching ships pass through the lochs

Distance is deceptive

It was sunny, the photos you took prove it

            But the wind⁠—

 Or the wind and the rain that day we met at the lighthouse, you wore a black sweater, I hadn’t seen you

            in years, you looked younger, time doing its mirror trick

 The scene draws us

We weren’t ghosts but we were

both adrift, though only one of us knew it

 When I reach the city you spoke of, it’s been abandoned for decades

 Every memory is two-sided, like the time you were driving and the Jeep hit

black ice and spun out

Like the time I was driving and my car died as we coasted down hill

 In a human dream, electric blue hydrozoan creatures blossom in the Superior’s deepest water

 Every memory is two-sided, and nothing is mine to claim

 I run these dirt trails near my house, I think of you, I touch my chest, count my breaths

One day I came upon this mother dear and two fawns, they were tiny, spotted, legs so ready to give out but they did not give out

 J, you should have seen them

  Generational, Domestic

 I drink from the cup that made me

before blood congeals across the top.

 Touch the muscles of your back

while you sleep. What does cruelty express?

 A fear so deep it creates its own

gravity, the world pours in around

 the rim. Despite how light clawed, it could not

get out⁠—not after, not from within. I live by a river

 and dream of living by another river. Throw my baby

teeth into it like coins in a well. Wish and watch

 water pass, think of how it bows and braids,

think of the circulatory system, nervous

 birds on loop. My niece appears in a dirt-stained

dress holding yellow zinnias as they blossom

 and rot, blossom and⁠—Does movement remind you

of death or escape? When you bite the inside

 of my thigh, what memory of violence 

unfurls like a seed? Generational, domestic. Your mother

 tells you she prays for us and I swallow

it whole like a duck egg. A blue mud wasp

 taps against my window, where its always

been. While we sleep, bindweed inches up

 the walls and ceiling. Coils around the lamps.

Tomorrow, we’ll eat the heads of morning.

 A Litany of Dreams You May Borrow

 The one where I pick sunlight off my skin like scales or sequins

 Or I have a boy’s torso and a jaw

that doesn’t lock when I start to laugh

 Any of the dreams with snakes or my mother trapped in a radiator vent

            because they spring from the same well

 My little sister and I are teenagers again, still speaking to each other, and she climbs a sugar maple and never comes back

 The ones where rain comes through the roof but not the ones where it is snowing in my room

 S. and I still live together but a gray horse circles the house, starving

No one names it

 My father is in a hospice bed, holding up his rot-dappled organs one by one

as offerings to me

 The cow pasture

where I’m in a wedding dress carrying a pitcher of his blood

 B. and I are back on the beach at night and she kisses me except this time ocean is made of milk and sweet

 No one invents sin so we sun ourselves on the rooftop

 Any dream of my grandfather⁠—that skull for a face, the parrot watching on, the white sheet and long fingernails

            In fact, you may keep them, convince yourself there is a lesson

 The dream where the brakes gave out

The dream where the brakes gave out

 His head is in my lap and the window is open even though it is January outside

 A war between nations of men takes place in my mother’s dining room

            My sisters and I watch from beneath a table

 Those you can leave: any dream where he says my name

aloud or his mouth is against my hair, any dream

where the dead forgive

 The first girl I loved asking Are you sure you don’t know me? until she disappears

 The whole room slants and I fall from the bed to the wall as if the house is trying to shake me from itself like a parasite

 The dream I had after S. found the knife I hid beneath the nightstand

 The one where I saw our sons using sticks as swords, their mouths yellow

and chose not to have them

 The first gentle boy from my childhood is back and we are in love

 When the church burns down and my sisters and I are blamed

 The one where what I love is not unwell, not in need at all, so I shrink to the size of a kitchen ant and crawl away

 My mother is my daughter and when she speaks, hummingbirds fill her mouth like arrows

 The one where I actually forgive him and he leans back then, rests his eyes, says

            There is no ending

  Alessandra sends me two pictures of her son eating his first strawberry

 while I’m home alone reading about central sleep apnea because this morning Calvin woke me up at 5AM by rubbing my back because (he said) I kept holding my breath and he is afraid (but doesn’t say) that I might stop breathing all together. On our jog today Cara told me that she’s going to try dating again and there isn’t much out there so she’s meeting a corporate lawyer all the way in Seattle for lunch on Thursday. Part of me is jealous—to get to meet strangers that you might have sex with or raise a puppy with is to feel very specifically alive right? The internet says I cannot suffocate in my sleep. I have this one memory of when I’m four or five and my father is sitting in the tub and I just let myself in to the bathroom and ask him how often he clipped his toenails and he laughs like kids are so fucking werid and says and said Maybe once a week? When we can’t stop worrying about each others deaths this is how I know we need each other. I can’t remember Alessandra’s baby’s name even though I met him once when we were in Portland. I don’t want children but one time on a long drive I imagined a three or four year old kid in the backseat of my Subaru asking me smart and weird kid questions and me giving honest answers and developing this whole lifelong relationship with a human like there is a way to never be lonely. I was startled by a sound but it wasn’t really a sound just a door closing in my body. I didn’t tell Calvin about it. Instead we talked about our little sisters and how we’re scared for them. The internet says my brain will panic and wake me up. I tell him I want him to confide in me but what do you say to I have a very real fear that the next time I hear about her it could be that she’s dead. I get it at least somewhat—what it means to see a boat drifting away from you. The last time I saw M she was more angry than any person I can remember it was like being beside a live wire I wasn’t sure if I could speak if I could even ask her if she was okay without making her not okay like the whole world is made of string and it can unravel if you say or even think the wrong thing. I don’t think there is a way to never be lonely. In the pictures the baby’s fingers are red and his laughing and sitting on a checkered picnic blanket and it looks like real summer in Wisconsin. I don’t really want to date strangers again. Everyone good I’ve found I still don’t know how I kept them. Some days I don’t want him to leave the house for fear of what might happen next. I remember when M and I were little she was hardly ever mad just withdrawn and we were there like two islands beside each other never really able to say what we meant or needed and now my mother calls me and she’s just painted the trim in the living room mountain air white and she starts to cry thinking about thirty years in the house where she raised us that she wants to sell and I say You haven't left yet and she says I’m already gone. Calvin just texts his sister now even though he knows he won’t get a response and I imagine those messages floating in a black void with stars because it all goes somewhere. I write back Don't you wish you could remember your first strawberry? The interest promises me I’ll take another breath.

 The mountain has no childhood to speak of

 and no child to soothe. Thought it might tell you something

of its formation, even though it does not remember.

 Or that there is no universally agreed upon definition

of a mountain. It would speak less about light

 and ascension and more about its insides. I have veins,

the mountain would say, a circulatory system of sorts

 but no organs. The mountain would predict your disappointment.

It would refuse your offer for a brain and a heart. Knowledge

 and loneliness, the mountain would explain, pass from sky

to water to stone. Mountain embodies strangeness, thus has no notion

 of strangeness. Mountain understands destination.

It has been desired. It knows you

 think it’s trapped; that it has never left and will never leave.

But, if we let it speak, it would tell you: I have touched

 every corner and crevice of this carved valley. Has seen so much

come and go⁠—loon, kingfisher, lynx. The people that

 tried to erase people. Mountain has hounded

wander. But will have nothing to say about hunger.

 If you sit with it long enough, mountain might admit, I am afraid

of dying. Of the slow wearing, the slow away. Wind and water.

 Mountain will teach you a word that means both companion

and destroyer. Though it does not sleep, mountain dreams,

 of being ripped out by the roots. Mountain wonders

if mountains bleed.

Caitlin Scarano is a poet based in northwest Washington. She holds a PhD in English (creative writing) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She was selected as a participant in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. Her debut collection of poems, Do Not Bring Him Water, was released in Fall 2017. Her work has appeared in Granta, Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, Carve, and Colorado Review. You can find her at caitlinscarano.com

#Caitlin Scarano #poetry #special feature

[dark-angel-arbalan-blog]

The Exalted Guard (FNAF X Exalted)

- Genre: General, Action

- Words: 1974

- Summary: The Solar Exalted. The Lawgivers. Created to be able to bring down the gods themselves, run entire countries single handedly, and crush continents with a flick of the wrist. In order to become a Solar, you must do something great. You must lay down your life, to do what is right. And that, is exactly what Mike Schmidt has done. But, can he handle the weight of the Great Curse?

"That's forty times now," the guard said as he struck his lighter again. A small flame was sparked in the dark shadows of the hallway. The red and black tiled floors felt cold underneath him, as he sat with his legs crossed indian style. He let the Zippo match lighter wink out.

Darkness.

He struck it.

Light was cast across the intersection, as the children's drawings on the left, right, and front walls were illuminated. The man was jerked forward a little, but not by much, as three hard bangs sounded from the door at his back.

A muffled voice shouted, "You can't do this man! Please! Just let me out!."

The man scooted back up against the door. At night, it never seemed to be locked, or even have a door handle. It was just a massive slab of metal that read 'Parts and Services'. "I'm sorry, but it's better me than you," the night watchman said as he squashed the flame again with his metal lighter top. His ragged, torn, white shirt with black tie seemed to be the only bright spot as his long, black pants, in the same condition as his shirt, perfectly merged with the darkness.

He struck the lighter.

Down the front hallway, he saw the faintest hint of movement. To some, a small brown blur would simply be considered a trick of the eyes. But, this night guard knew better, "Here they come. Yo, what's the time?"

Three more forceful raps, "Please, don't do this!" There was a hint of a sob coming from the slightly feminine voice behind the door.

The guard put the flame out, "What. Is. The. Time?"

There was a brief silence followed by a noise that sounded a bit like crying, "...5:45."

The man took a deep breath, and then let it out, "Then, I'll just have to keep em back for 20 minutes."

He struck the flame.

This time, there was no question. There was something standing in the front hallway. Something big, brown, and in need of some serious repairs. The man slowly turned his head and the flame to the left and right hallways. Down the left hallway was one long purple ear that drooped to the right side, with a long right arm that ended in wires, making it look akin to a claw. Down the right path wasn't much, just a white bib that seemed to be fused into a yellow body. It read 'Let's Eat!'

The man killed the flame, then stood up. His legs were sore from sitting in the same position, but they moved. His arms popped as he used them to push himself off the floor, but they were ready to be used when needed. His back hurt from keeping the door closed against the occupant's relentless assaults, but he would hold it shut for as long as was needed. He grabbed his trusty flashlight in his right hand, and took his left, which still held the lighter, and pulled his hat so that the flap faced the front. The cap was a symbol of his position at the restaurant. Along with the badge, it identified him as one of the night guards for the Pizzeria, under contract to protect it from any attempts at violating the law, in or around the establishment. Plus, it kept his rather unruly black, coarse, hair under control, and looked pretty sweet too.

He knew that his flashlight only had a limited amount of power left. He had been using it a lot since he got here. Having no doors to close really left him with little options in way of making sure his skin stayed out of one those suits. He figured he'd lucked out when he heard about that glitch in the machines, where light rapidly flashed at one would freeze a bot in place for a time. He quickly realized, that didn't mean that one flash was enough to stop them for any amount of time. He knew that he would probably only be able to freeze two of them before the third got him.

It was better than going out like a punk.

He lit the flame.

"Well, it's about time you three got here." Mike Schmidt, night guard for the Freddy Fazbear Pizzeria, stood facing the three animatronics that had been making his life a living hell for the past 2 months now.

The last time Mike had seen the robots(or "jerkass-bots" as he liked to call them) they didn't look all that impressive. There were wires that you could see from an entire hallway down sticking out of them, their bodies seemed to have something caked onto(and into) them(he didn't know what), and there were pizza stains here and there on their fur. But, compared to how they looked now, that was them in their Hey-Day.

Bonnie seemed to be the worst of the three. He body seemed to be constantly bending at an angle, giving the idea that he walked with a limp. His right arm was still intact, and functional Mike saw when Bonnie seemed to close his paw into a fist and then open it up again. In stark contrast, Bonnie's entire left arm was missing, which might explain why he was favoring his right side. Oh, he also didn't have a face. Yeah, no face, yet he was still moving like a fucking zombie. Mike thought it might have something to do with the glowing red eyes that constantly showed, but he doubt just those and a lower jaw could keep an entire robot body moving.

Chica was somewhere in the between normal and completely scrapped. The only real damage that could be seen was where her face and beak were. It looked as if someone had grabbed the top and bottom parts of her beak, and ripped them apart. Mike cursed a bit in his head, he had wanted to do that. Other than that, and the weird wires that run along her body making her look like a puppet, she hadn't changed a bit.

And then, there was Freddy. Mike didn't know where Foxy was, but he was pretty sure that Freddy cheated him out of some kind of deal. Where the older Bonnie, Chica, and the aforementioned fox all seemed like they just got pulled out of a dumpster, Freddy looked, at least half way decent. His body, arms, hands, feet, and even his head looked almost exactly same from the last time Mike saw him, and considering that Mike was from the future that's saying something. The only hint that he was in disrepair, was how his arms and legs seemed to be separated in certain places. It made the big bear look like he was cut to pieces by a blender, on high.

"So, which one of you will be the one to do me in, huh?" Mike looked each of the animatronics in the eyes, showing that he wasn't afraid. He didn't care if they stabbed him, ripped him apart, stuffed him in a suit, or whatever it was they did to the guards they had managed to catch. He was either gonna go down fighting, or take one of them down with him. Mike flicked his eyes between the big three, looking at them as well as trying to see behind them. He didn't know where Foxy or the Toy animatronics were, and that's what worried him. Unlike when he worked alone as a night guard, these animatronics were smart enough to go through the vents to get ya. He couldn't remember if there were any vents in the parts room, but if there were… Mike chose not to think about it.

Above all, his primary concern was the fucking Puppet. Since no one was in the office, the music box would just keep going until it wound down. Then, the box would open, and that demon would be let loose. Even when he looked at that overgrown doll during the day, it creeped him the fuck out. Mike had always had a sneaking suspicion(confirmed when he first took this god-forsaken job) about these furry-bots, but that-thing was something entirely different. He felt like it knew more than a simple AI should know, almost like it was sentient. That was a thought that really scared Mike.

He didn't see the Marionette fucker at all, but that may have been just because it was dark. Even so-

It was the sound that saved him more than anything else. The unmistakable whine of circuitry and gears working to bring something to bear. Mike had heard it every night he had spent at this hellhole. He was glad that he had committed the sound to memory, as he felt Bonnie's claw gives his left side burn a bit of a trim. His dodge was sloppy, hastily made, and left him wide open for much longer than he wanted. It wasn't a very graceful move, but it afforded him the opening he needed. Nearly falling to the floor from the effort put into the dodge, Mike pulled up the flashlight and flashed it across Bonnie's face.

That glitch in the system had saved both Mike and his co-worker from Foxy's jump attacks countless times, and it is what he used to his advantage now. The hallway was lit up for a couple of seconds as he moved the flashlight across Chica's face. He gave her two quick flashes, bringing himself upright as he did. His light cast across Freddy's frame, showing a massive brown fist coming right at the security guard.

Fist fighting had been apart of Mike's life for as long as he could remember. He had faced down school bullies, street toughs, and the occasional mugger in the dark alley way. He didn't win all of those fights, but he never let it be said he didn't give a good account of himself. For every bruise he left with, his opponents left with ten more. And, even though Mike knew his physical prowess could never match up with the unlimited power of the metal monster Freddy was, he sure as fuck was not going down without a fight.

The light on the Zippo was out, as Mike brought his left fist up in a hook to meet the big bear's right hook. Mike closed his eyes, waiting for the pain that would be his end.

The building was filled with the sound of metal being wrenched from its place. The scream of gears, circuits, and steel coming apart reminded Mike of the time he saw a Mustang crash into a thirteen wheeler. The wheeler hadn't seen the car coming, and slammed right into it's left side. The sports car was completely mangled, totaled beyond repair. Mike figured that was what his left arm looked like right about now.

What puzzled him was, he wasn't on the ground screaming in agony. In fact, he could still feel his left arm, and the cold metal of the lighter in the closed fist. Mike thought, 'Maybe the impact was so strong, I immediately, and am on the floor in a coma of sorts?' Yeah, that seemed like the most reasonable answer at the time.

Mike really wished that was the actual answer as he opened his eyes, and beheld something impossible. Not only was his left arm completely intact, and looked none the worse for ware from the attack. Not only was the place where Freddy's arm used to be reduced to a stump of broken wires, cut circuitry, and sparking electricity. Not only was he still standing, and not feeling any pain at all in any part of his body.

His left arm was glowing so bright that it was illuminating the entire hallway.

Mike could only say one thing in response, "THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?"

#fnaf #fnaf 2 #animatronic #night guard #mike schmidt #jeremy fitzgerald #exalted #solar exalted #white wolf #super powers #au #bromance #fanfic #fancfiction #crossover

[ijustwanttowritefanfic]

Yang x Blake in the Bandit/White Fang AU, number 9. “Oh damn… that’s a good look”

Another Prompt, and one I really enjoyed, although now I want to fucking write this out as a real story and THANKS ARY I NEEDED ANOTHER STORY TO WRITE

Most people choose to travel over Anima in airships, as it limits their worries to just flying Grimm and mechanical failures. Ground travel has the worries of not only flying Grimm, mechanical failures, but land based Grimm, longer travel times, and the worst creatures of all, bandits. Ground travel is still much cheaper, so transporting goods or people, even with added security, it is the most common form of travel.

The caravan of cargo trucks sped through the forest of Anima. Darkness crept over the horizon, but they had no intention of slowing down. Grimm would soon be out in force, but that was the least scary part of this forest. No, the fear driving these people to put the pedal to the metal was burned out remains of another caravan near their stopping point for the night. Driving through the night was dangerous, but bandits were deadly.

There flight, however, turned into their downfall. The lead truck missed the bomb sitting in the middle of the road, turning itself into a wall of flame. The second truck tipped over as it attempted to stop, but it just blocked the road off even more. The last truck attempted to reverse, to drive away, but another explosion flipped it onto its side. A wall of flame, and a blocked path, the drivers knew they were sitting ducks.

Out of the forest, white and silver masked forms appeared, all armed to the teeth. The robes they wore covered them from head to toe, masking gender and faces, but sticking out from the top of some stood animal ears, or out the back of others, a plethora of tails. A few ran, not on boots, but furry feet. Bandits were bad, but the sight of these current attackers drained what little hope had remained.

The White Fang took no prisoners.

The huntsmen and huntress piled out of the trucks they were in, engaging the White Fang as they attacked. A typical school trained hunter could handle wave upon wave of Grimm, and most had some training in the gladiatorial fights of their schools. These were people who had spent most of their childhood preparing to fight and earning the right to battle against the forces of Grimm with blood, sweat and tears. The White Fang wiped them from the field in a matter of moments, leaving corpses strewn around.

A few drivers took up arms as well, but they fared worse than the huntsmen and huntresses. The White Fang executed the remaining drivers before moving onto gathering the cargo they sought.

Their leader, a short figure in similar white robes, carrying a pistol blade and a sharpened sheath, surveyed the loot. Cat ears poked out the top of her hood, twitching to every sound from the forest.

“Percy, how we looking?” She called out to a mask figure in glasses.

“This is mostly foodstuffs, plus fuel for the trucks. Although we can’t open one of the trucks, it’s heavily reinforced,” Percy said, writing down an inventory as they looked at another manifest stapled to a crate. “My guess is that is the ammo truck.”

Blake, the White Fang leader, nodded. “Would it faster to cut through the side of the truck instead of bypassing the lock?”

“No, those trucks are pretty much solid steel all the way around,” a calm voice said.

All the White Fang spun at the sound, drawing weapons, and pointing them at what looked like a cloud of black smoke. Out of it stepped, to Blake, a goddess.

Her long blonde hair tumbled down her back, almost touching the back of her thigh high black leather boots. Black leather armor with red trim encircled her waist, tucked into a metal studded skirt in similar colors. Broad shoulders were covered with similar red trimmed black leather, the straps crossing over an impressive chest. Her muscular arms were bare, except for matching bracers, weapons to judge from the barrels sticking out of them, and the shells encircling her forearms. A purple bandana wrapped around one of her boots, holding the it up.

“Damn, that’s a good look,” Blake whispered to herself, eying the lady in front of her.

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” the blonde lady said. “Although I’m going to have to ask you to remove yourself from our stuff.”

“Your stuff? What makes you think we’ll just give it to you?” Blake stepped forward, looking down her nose at the bandit.

“Cause I’m willing to ask nicely?” She said with a wicked grin.

Blake snorted. “Yeah, that’s not going to work.”

The bandit shrugged and snapped her fingers. The cloud behind her dispersed, revealing a larger group of bandits. Most wore a mix of leather armor, a few with pieces of what looked like Atlesian robot plates strapped on, and a rather impressive amount of weapons, most held together with wire, duct tape, hopes and prayers. Some also held Hunter forged weapons, some obviously stolen, others fit to their owner’s in ways that suggest they had been to an academy.

The only odd ball was a brown and pink haired girl standing at the front, right behind the bandit leader. The fact that she was shorter than Blake stood out as the first thing, the second was her white, pink trimmed jacket that matched her side button boots and did not match the black and red aesthetic of all those around her. She also carried a lacy parasol, but the buttons along the handle suggested it was not all it seemed.

The pink and brown hair girl was also sweating, and trying to cover a band of this size in a blanket of darkness and silence had to be taxing.

“How about now?” the bandit leader said. “And I’m not going to ask nicely.”

Blake frowned, and stepped back, the rest of her gang coming up behind her. The bandits had numbers, that was for sure.

“Listen, we’re not here for the food, we just want the ammo.” Blake put her arms down, lowering her weapons. It was the truth, although the food would have been a help. “I’m guessing you’re the Branwen Tribe, so how about we offer the food as payment for hunting on your ground.”

“All of the food? Including the caravan you hit before this one?” The bandit crossed her arms, and leaned back. “Cause the next group to come through here is going to be better armed, and those weapons might be more helpful in making sure my people stay fed.”

Scowling, Blake nodded. She had wanted the first stash for her own gang, but fighting this out would make that pointless. The bandit leader was also being surprising reasonable, surprising Blake. The Branwens were not known for their compassion, but this did not feel like a trap. “Fine, we shall have it dropped off someplace safe for you, and you can pick it up.”

The bandit laughed. “Hah, no, but how about you have some of your people help carry this food to a staging point, and a few of us will come with you to get the rest of it.”

The trade put them both in a bind, each crew with hostages. Good will through force.

“Fine, but we still need to take care of the ammo trailer and-” Blake was cut off by the bandit leader’s hand.

“Nora?” She called over her shoulder.

“Yeah boss?” A voice spoke up from the middle of the pack.

“Open the door to that cargo trailer and you’re coming with me to get food.” A grunt of affirmation came up from the same area. “Scarlett, Vernal, you’re both with me. Everyone else, Neo is in charge, so listen to everything she says.”

The little pink and brown girl in front rolled her eyes and flipped the bandit leader off. She pointed to some of the more burly people in the bandit tribe and they sheathed their weapons, walking to the food cargo.

A light pink haired woman walked towards the ammo trailer, a giant metal hammer over her shoulder. Her gear matched the leader’s, although she had a scaled vest and fingerless gloves instead of the pauldrons and bracers. She smashed the trailer’s door in with a single blow.

“Okay, lead the way, miss White Fang,” the bandit leader said. As the rest of the tribe moved on, two others stayed, an super tall woman with long, blood red hair, clad in red trimmed black breastplate made from an Atlesian Paladin with what looked like it’s sword across her back, and a smaller, short dirt colored hair woman in button vest reinforced with strips of metal that showed off buffed arms and a bird tattoo on her shoulder.

“My name is Blake,” Blake said, gesturing for them to move in front of her. “Thanks for the help”

At a nod from their leader, the other two followed some White Fang gang members into the woods. The bandit leader moved to stand next to Blake. “Mine’s Yang,” she said, leaning in close. “And trust me, the pleasure’s been all mine.” She winked before moving into the woods.

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#RWBY #Bandit AU #YAng Xiao Long #Blake Belladonna #Bumblebee