doveotions

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“You’re gentle with me, and it’s so kind, but surely - surely you can’t be happy being so gentle, and I want… I want you to be happy. So just— don’t hold back.”

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Royal Whump?

Oh I love royal whump!!! There's so many possibilities for it!

Poison the royal! assassin attempt that drives them sick with fever. Have them laying in bed for weeks on end, twisting in their sweats with hot and cold flushes

Let them loose the war, taken as spoil by the victor. Fall from the grace of luxury to a slave. treated like precious gems one moment and then nothing more than cattle, stock, the next. the captors might not even care who they were, they're nothing now

Pressure! There's so much pressure in the royal life! Tension headaches, sickness from worry when crops fail or tensions are high between kingdoms. Let them stress and worry so much about their subjects they're sick and unable to help.

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Can we get a whumpee who's openly mad at how long it took for them to be rescued because they genuinely thought their team had given up

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If you're still doing these, how about alamort from the prompt list?

alamort (adj) : half- dead of exhaustion

CW: Blood, trauma response, memory loss/traumatic memory recovery, callous talk of murder, nonsexual nudity, pet whump references, guilt, referenced stabbing

Jake Gets Fucking Stabbed: One Two Three Four Five

The water went cold a while ago, but Antoni hasn’t moved. The chill of the porcelain along his lower back soothes the itching, aching burn scars underneath, the icy blast of the shower raining down on his locks his muscles into a constant teeth-chattering shiver, but it feels good.

It feels so good

It feels like what he deserves.

“How did you fuck up this badly?” Artyom asks, snapping the words in Russian as he cleans the wounds down his little brother’s arm. Misha won’t look at him, all gangly teenage elbows and knees. “Huh? What am I supposed to tell Mama if this happens again?”

“It won’t,” Misha mumbles, sullen, looking off to the side and not anywhere near him. “I’ll figure it out. Anyway, he’s not going to tell anyone, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Doesn’t it?” Artyom reaches up, gripping Misha’s chin, leaving a smear of red blood along the line of his jaw as he forces his brother’s eyes to meet his own. “Did you wear gloves, Misha? At least did you do that?” 

Misha doesn’t answer, but Artyom knows what the lack of answer really means, and groans, letting go and sort of throwing Misha’s head to the side at the same moment with his frustration. “Misha! We talked about this!”

“Well, it’s not like I’ve done it before,” Misha says, still in that sulky mutter. “And i was by myself, you didn’t exactly help.”

“I’m not going to help you kill people!” Artyom wraps the bandages over Misha’s arm so viciously his little brother hisses at the pain. “I am no killer, Misha. And I’m not going to be one just for you.”

“Fine. We’ll see how Mama feels when I’m in prison and you have to tell her it’s because you wouldn’t help me.”

Artyom takes a breath, lets it out. Closes his eyes. There’s already a headache throbbing in his temples. “Misha... fine. Where did you leave the body?”

Maybe they can find it before the police do.

There’s red on his palms, even as the rest of his skin is clammy and pale from the water. Red on his palms and in the burns he is covered with, beginning at his wrists and covering every inch of his torso and back. Burns he earned, burns he took to make up for the crimes he was a part of.

Right?

Antoni shudders, scrubbing at the inside of his left hand, but the red gets worse, if anything. So much blood on his hands, and it won’t come off. It just stays there, a stubborn stain a decade old or more. All of the others, those were only the avalanche, but the first body is the shout that brought down the snow.

Antoni is a collection of rotted bodies and hidden bones, he is all the things he did not stop, he is all the ways he helped hide evil from the light. 

Jake’s blood had run from him first, when the shower water was still hot, when it scalded his skin until he could barely breathe for the pain. Jake’s blood had swirled pinkish in the water, gone down the drain and disappeared. Jake’s blood had been worthwhile to carry, to wear on himself. That had been saving a life, but the bloodstains left everywhere else are from lives taken.

He stares at the scar on the inside of his left wrist, where he and Chris had their barcodes removed together. It’s pale, a shimmer of skin that isn’t quite the same as the skin that surrounds it. No burns, but he is struck with a sudden urge to find Mr. Davies and ask for one. 

Mark me this way, how you marked all my other sins.

He shudders, lets out a choked-off sob that even he can barely hear over the water.

He was a pet for a reason, he was a pet because of what he’d done, but he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known what he did to deserve it. He had suspected but he hadn’t known, he hadn’t-

He knows now.

He could fall asleep here, the unlocking of a whole life inside his mind leaves him half-dead from the exhaustion and guilt, but he can’t sleep. He can’t stop. Not until the blood is gone.

It won’t come out.

“Tyoma!” Misha catches him in a hug, and the two of them laugh. “I missed you!”

“Missed you, too, Misha.” The airport is a busy hum around them, but Artyom has eyes only for his little brother, as always. ‘Mama is waiting at home. How was everyone?”

“Good!” Misha glances side to side, and then leans in to whisper against Artyom’s ear. “I did one there, in Russia, Tyoma. Just one.”

Artyom felt a bit of ice in his heart, lodged there unmelting, a pain he can’t dig out. “Misha, you promised-”

“I couldn’t help it. What are they going to do, Tyoma, track me from thousands of miles?” Misha laughs, and pulls away, and Tyoma follows him, taller and older but endlessly lost in the circle of Misha’s life, endlessly bound to the results of his choices, endlessly putting his small, once-sickly little brother first.

Family first.

Artyom spends the next few months waiting for a call that never comes.

Antoni hears voices outside the bathroom door, muffled but shouting, and he puts his hands over his ears to block them out. Maybe this is it, the end of the life he worked so hard to build, the end of the life of caring for one family because the ghosts of the other will no longer allow him to rest.

He has to turn the water off eventually.

His hand shakes almost too badly to manage it.

Even after it stops, he sits, shivering and dripping and naked in the bathtub. He can’t remember how to stand up to go get a towel. He can’t remember where the towels are. He can’t remember where he is, only the list of deaths that linger on his back, in his mind.

He tastes bitter and salt on his tongue, and starts to cry, holding himself in the tub. Every inch of his skin is burning, every round circle a brand new flame pressed there, Mr. Davies’s voice impassive and soft against his ear.

You deserve this, love.

“I kn-know,” Antoni chokes out, his voice low and broken. “I know, I know, I know...”

You deserve to suffer for what you’ve done, and everyone you ever touch will suffer, too.

Antoni thinks of Jake, bleeding out onto the kitchen floor, screaming as Antoni packed his wound, crying out for his mother.

They always cry for their mothers, while Misha-

Antoni can’t let the thought finish.

Desperate for something that will hurt him the way he deserves to be hurt, he lets Mr. Davies back into his heart, his mind, his body, and remembers his heavy hands in Antoni’s hair, the loathing in his British lilt.

You deserve this, my pretty little ashtray, this and far, far, far worse than I could ever give you.

Antoni rubs at his hands but the red stain there won’t ever come out. He sobs over the blood on his hands and whispers, to the voice in his mind, “I know.”

-

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @raigash @moose-teeth @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @eatyourdamnpears @boxboysandotherwhump @whumptywhumpdump @whumpfigure @outofangband @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @thehopelessopus @butwhatifyouwrite @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump @newandfiguringitout @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whumpiary @endless-whump

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How to Write OCs With Trauma

Just as I had shown with the 3 love posts for this series, there are a ton of ways that trauma can be shown through character behaviors or even speech patterns. Different people react differently when it comes to trauma, and you should also keep in mind what kind of trauma the character had gone through and what they were like before it occurred before deciding how they would be like now.

In the following post, I will be giving some different responses to trauma that your characters could display.

I. The “IDGAF Anymore” Trauma Response

Perhaps one of the most used responses to trauma that you see in characters in media is the character that blocks off their emotional responses to anything thereafter. They may fall in love with someone but they’ll never admit it because they don’t wish to be hurt. They may find a new family to love them but they shut themselves off from expressing said love because they are afraid of being hurt again.

Essentially what this response boils down to is a fear of being hurt again. Most people that shut down emotionally have been abandoned or abused or betrayed by someone they once trusted in some way; sometimes the thing that makes them feel betrayed isn’t even the other person’s fault such as an older sibling moving out of the house and away from their family once they get older or the death of a loved one.

II. The “Anger Issues” Response

I have known 2 people personally really well that have had this response to trauma. This response is where a person is so emotionally shut down (much like the last response spoken about) that they won’t allow themselves to show any emotion other than anger.

I once had a therapist tell me “usually when a person is angry, there is another emotion behind the anger, whether it is fear or depression or otherwise.” So the first question you should ask yourself when making a character with the rage response is… why are they angry? What emotion is being masked by the explosion of their anger? What are they trying to hide from? What traumatic experience is making them feel this way and how do they really feel about said experience? Depending on your answers and the kind of character you’re writing about, the angry outbursts can be different.

Some people will yell, some will get violent, some will punch holes in walls and doors and furniture… some will scream into a pillow… some will storm away in the middle of a conversation or hang up the phone if someone says just the wrong thing. Really think about what your character is like, how they respond to tense situations, before you lean into their anger response because some anger responses do not fit certain personality types.

III. The “Sensitive One” Response

Some people, when dealing with tense situations, become intensely emotional. They may cry easily when someone just looks at them cross-eyed. They might go quiet when they’re anxious. They might get really defensive at the smallest things. The Sensitive One can be shown in many, many ways, as there are lots of different types of sensitivity, so really consider your character and what they’ve been through before you decide which type of sensitive person they are.

IV. The “Unmasked Hero” Response

Not all heroes wear capes… that’s the saying, right? These people are the activists. These are the people that will talk to anyone for hours and hours just to talk them down. These are the people you always hear saying “I never want people to feel the way I felt when I went through this.” These are the people that become therapists to help others going through their issues. The Unmasked Heroes live their lives to make it so that no one has to experience the pain that they felt, if they can help it.

V. The “Rebel” Response

I do what I want. That’s the theme song of the Rebel. They lash out, usually acting like the victim no matter what happens (sometimes they really are, but sometimes they aren’t). Trauma can completely rewire a person’s brain, but with the Rebel, they often felt repressed before or like they were unable to fully be themselves and when something traumatic happens, something snaps in them to trigger that “I don’t give a flying fuck” response in their brain and suddenly they’re doing anything and everything they ever wanted to do (and sometimes even didn’t want to do) just to spite the rest of the world and if you don’t like it, you can kiss their ass. This can also be shown through a runaway after something traumatic happens.

This is another very common, often used trauma response.

VI. The “Mental Breakdown” Response

As a mentally ill woman myself, I want to emphasize: not all who go through trauma get mental illnesses and not all with mental illness went through a mental break. That being said, it is very common for an extremely traumatic experience (or life, in some cases) to give someone a mental illness. Or rather, to bring it out of them. There are illnesses like Bipolar, PTSD and more that come to the surface after an extreme mental break, PTSD being the more famous for this very situation.

What is important here is that there is no one situation that will cause a mental break. Depending on the person, it can be something that would be nothing to one person but would completely break another down while a third person might be going through 5 things all at once and seem to be handling it well. There are so many different illnesses out there, and a lot of them are very similar, so what I think is most important is that you do your research before you write an illness you have not personally seen or experienced. If you know someone with an illness you want to write about, ask them if you can run some idea by them and make sure it isn’t stigmatizing the illness, as mental illness gets stigmatized left and right in media.

VII. The “Class Clown” Response

Another common thing that is shown in media - and I’ve noticed is very common in real life - is the depressed clown. There are so many people that listen to society telling them it isn’t okay to not be okay, so they laugh and clown around to make others laugh and just like a lot of people need others’ compliments to feel validated, these people often need laughter to feel validated.

Some people that become the Clown type will deflect their sadness by making dumb jokes. Maybe, if you write about your character texting or on social media, you can show them in a downward spiral and just get on their social media page to post a dumb pun to negate the negativity. Or make a joke at their own expense, which is also common. A lot of people will make others feel bad for not being able to laugh at themselves, and these people are [often] great at doing exactly that, even if they end up in tears later on when they’re by themselves.

VIII. The “Angsty Artist” Response

As I’m sure a lot of you are aware, a lot of artists have a lot of emotions they are processing and a lot of them will use their art (whether it be visual or writing or otherwise) in order to process it.

You may have a teenager writing angsty fanfiction or poetry. You may have a young adult opening their first blog where they write about their life beginning adulthood. You may have a person that is drawing dark, gory artwork. Whatever it may be, the art can either directly reflect the way they feel, such as the dark artwork, or they may do the opposite and write about their personal idea of a utopia and use art to escape. Either way, the art is a means to process and understand themselves better and/or escape from reality for however long they do it.

The only good and bad thing about using this response is that a lot of people that use art end up getting lost in it. They end up becoming obsessed and never cease to work on the art or think about the art and may become consumed by their own processing creativity.

IX. The “Addiction” Response

Addiction can come in so many forms. It can be the typical drugs, cigarettes, alcohol… or it can be addiction to getting lost in a hobby (see #8: The “Angsty Artist”)… or it can be becoming a workaholic. Honestly, anything can become an addiction if you let it consume you, so keep that in mind. It could even be something such as them becoming a hoarder because they are afraid to let their past go, so they won’t let anything go.

There are so many other responses to trauma. There are billions of people in the world, and tons of them have trauma in their lives. To say that it all boils down to these responses would be silly, but these are some common responses to trauma that would be a great starting point if you’re trying to figure out how to have a character of yours going through trauma.

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When a character has kept their painful past VERY secret, only to have it all revealed to their comrades. Examples: The character is wounded and while trying to heal them, they find a lot of scars/old wounds on their body and put the pieces together | The character isnt in their right mind - truth serum maybe? - and blurts the entire story out themselves. Bonus points for comfort which the character doesn't actually want, but finds themselves reluctantly accepting and eventually breaking down~

I like this one especially when the tragic past is revealed on purpose by the antagonist to drive a wedge between the hero and their team or out them in some way.

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Hello! I want to clarify that I know very well based on your blog that torture is not a way to get information. However it is a common misconception, and you've also said before that torture may cause memory problems. I'd like to know if it's plausible that a character after being tortured is worried that they might have revealed some important information even though they haven't? It would make for good drama/angst in my story but I want to check if it's plausible first. Thanks for your help!😊

Yes, that’s incredibly plausible and something that a lot of survivors grapple with. It’s not a universal experience but it is common.

 Things like sleep deprivation, which causes delirium and significant memory problems even outside of a torture context, feed into this a lot. So do periods of unconsciousness.

 The pattern I usually see has torturers feeding into these anxieties. They might tell a victim that they’ve already given up information for example or produce a confession that they say the victim has already signed. Torturers exploit the anxieties they expect victims to have.

 Having said that I can also think of accounts where survivors have been genuinely unsure what they said or did not say, what they did or did not do in a way that seemed completely separate from the torturers.

 I’ve also seen accounts where survivors were unsure about what happened to them at particular points because they passed out.

 Some survivors do come out incredibly sure that they did not say anything. Henri Alleg is a good example of this and his account in The Question is a pretty good one to use as a model for that kind of defiance.

 But his experience isn’t universal. A lot of torture survivors doubt themselves. A lot of them are aware that there are flaws in their memory or that they were delirious at some points. Memory problems can create a lot of anxieties.

 So yes. This is completely plausible and I think it is a good way to create drama in your story. Especially if you’re exploring this character’s mental state. Memory problems are a huge problem for survivors and while they’re relatively well studied in the scientific literature that message doesn’t seem to have filtered down to on the ground treatment.

 A lot of trauma survivors aren’t aware of how common, how normal memory problems are as a symptom. Or how they can manifest.

 And I think that creates a lot of unnecessary anxiety. They don’t know what they’re going through or how to combat it which makes life that much more difficult. The impression I get from the trauma survivors who have contacted me is that most doctors either don’t know about these memories problems or don’t communicate it to their patients.

 You might want to take a look at the masterpost on memory problems over here. You don’t have to use sleep deprivation in your story but the sort of thing you’re describing is more common in survivors who were sleep deprived. And I have a masterpost on sleep deprivation over here.

 Beyond that, this seems like a really good scenario.

 I hope that helps. :)

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Disclaimer

[doveotions]

A rather peacefully takes over a kingdom, and is touring their future castle when they're told about a highly dangerous weapon. Something capable of mass destruction, something that kept everyone in line out of pure fear of what it could do. Understandably worried, A talks about decommissioning it, not wanting to inherit a WMD. Then they find in quick succession that a) the weapon is in fact a living person, and b) said person overheard them when that person begs A for their life, promising that they'll be obedient. A finds themselves rather abruptly in the position of caring for this very scared, conditioned, super-powered living weapon. Found family ensues from there.

Good lord! That’s amazing!!

[doveotions]

A whumpee who was imprisoned in a house, tormented, and eventually killed by the whumper. And then they become a ghost and the whumper leaves, leaving them completely alone haunting a house with nowhere to go and no way to change things, grappling with the trauma they went through alone.

You should have been a writer for Supernatural. I’d watch the shit out of an ep like that.

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Hey writing tumblr - and specifically, whumpblr! Have you ever wondered about a character’s life after their tongue is cut out? Not just me, right? Anyways, I had a conversation with the lovely @reinedesombres about the logistics of swallowing with no tongue, and she was happy to provide a bunch of information! Reinedesombres is a speech pathologist and swallowing specialist (although she would like to add the caveat that she generally works with stroke patients and the like, not people who have undergone torture like many of our whumpees) and was able to provide some really neat stuff, so I figured I’d share it with the rest of you! Because she has a background in linguistics, I also asked some questions about vocal function without a tongue, and will include that part of the conversation as well.

Screenshots from our conversation are below the cut. I’ll try to come back later and transcribe the screenshots for whump writers who use screen readers.

Keep reading

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Morgause’s puppet

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Following this piece where Santiago asks for help escaping.

c.w. whumpee escaping, mentions of guns, implied future torture, mentions of death, whumpee bonded with their whumper, slight victim-blaming, emotional whump/crying, burns and scars 

——

“You have everything you need, right? You’ve got a gun?” 

Hayko didn’t know his own motives for asking. He had seen the other man cramming one into his leather jacket before they left and surely that couldn’t be the only one. He’d been careful from the start anyway, wouldn’t let something like that slip.

Santiago grunted a response. Felt down his sides where the weapon should have been and sighed when he found it taught against the pocket right where it should be

“Do…” Hayko asked, “you know how long it’ll take?” 

If Santiago left now, the trip would hardly take a day and there he would get some cover or so it was going to be. Then, he would continue down the road with whoever it would be— Hayko felt inadequate for not being told— and make off from Oklahoma. To New Mexico. It had been the goal from the start. When Santiago had told him, he had gone through the plan over and over until he could have repeated it back to him verbatim

Santiago shook his head. Cast an uncertain glance at the waiting car in front of theirs, cast another one pushing to the horizon where the sun began to dim and back to Hayko now. “How long will it take you to get back?”

Hayko scoffed low. “Does it matter?”

“I’m more worried about you than me. It’s nothing personal but—they find me? I’m gone. It’s as simple as that.” 

Keep reading

[doveotions]

[💅] multiple whumpees getting revenge on one whumper via torture or humiliation (or anything you could come up with e)

“He’s crying already,” Whumpee 2 snickered. Whumpee 3 was watching rather solemnly.

Whumpee crouched down in front of their former torturer who was firmly held in place by the manacles on his hands and ankles. Unlike them, he wouldn’t get away.

Whumper was twitching and shivering with every shock the collar around his neck sent coursing through him. Whumpee looked down at him with mockery in their eyes. “Enjoying yourself, pet?”

[doveotions]

Oh good goddess, pleaseee “what is your deal” and “don’t you think that’s a little extreme” for Jameson (and maybe Jake????!) sorry I sent the other one prematurely!

CW: Pet whump, dehumanization, blood, collars, noncon references, restraints, gagged, masochism, knife

(also used a prompt “are you hungry”!)

Timeline: Jameson’s time with Nanda, his first owner

---

Nanda looks like a fucking idiot today.

The pet watches him, half-preening in front of his mirror, in a blue-and-red checked button-up and puffy vest over the top with khakis, all of it crisp and new. His hair, usually a mussed-up mess, is carefully combed and parted on the side. His fucking pants are even ironed to get rid of the folding marks from the store. He’s playacting at the kind of man he tells people he is - genial and jovial, a good old boy just like them - but the pet knows better. 

You don’t buy a masochist if you’re just like everyone else.

The pet lays across Nanda’s bed, a rare luxury, the soft plush blue blanket over the top like laying on some kind of cloud. A little of his hair falls over his eyes, and downstairs he can hear the faint echo of Nanda’s dogs barking from the little side room he keeps them in, with the special door they can use to go outside into their big dog run. 

“This’ll do, I think,” Nanda murmurs, his soft custard words settling heavy on the pet’s thoughts, weighing him down with vanilla, sugar, and blood. He looks over his shoulder at the pet, half-smiling. “What do you think?”

The pet considers, rolling onto his stomach, hoping he’s left bloodstains from his back on the soft blanket. “You look fucking stupid,” He says, voice rough. His own voice feels like no one else’s, but its taste and texture is faded, more each day.

In a moment like this, it feels stronger.

Nanda glances back at the mirror, then over at the pet again. He sighs - and his sigh is gentle and velvet-textured, a whisper of the taste of his voice and not a flood - and slips the puffy vest off his shoulders, setting it down on a nearby side table. “That seems a little extreme, don’t you think?” 

“It’s true,” The pet counters. “You look like someone else.” He doesn’t move as Nanda comes closer to the bed, walking unhurried across the span of this enormous bedroom. His eyes follow every shift of motion, and he feels his collar buckled tight against his throat as he swallows, a subtle reassurance. Unless Nanda takes off the collar, nothing more than the usual will happen. The collar means safe.

Nanda sits down at the edge of the bed, leaning back a little in his ridiculous new shirt, resting his weight on one hand. Nanda is a man who wears mud-stained jeans most days or all-black for the real work he does at night, who pulls the pet downstairs into the specialty room where neither of them wear anything at all. He’s not this man, with his careful hair and clothes and manner.

Nanda is a man whose hair falls in his eyes as he makes the pet scream for the whip, beg for it, even as he rinses blood into the drain in the middle of the floor. Nanda is man who tells him how good he is only when he is woozy from blood loss and his cheek is pressed to the cold stone ground.

He’s putting on a show, for the people he will go see, but the pet knows the real him is the one who holds the knife. 

“You’re in a mood today,” Nanda says, almost affectionately. His free hand moves to card fingers through the pet’s hair, toying with a strand by twining it around his finger and letting go, again and again. “Do you not want me to leave? Is that it?”

“I don’t give a fuck what you do,” The pet answers, and when Nanda slaps him, his head snaps to the side, and he shivers a little at the hint of want that follows the pain, his body conditioned to know how these things start, what happens next. He turns his head back to look up, and when Nanda holds out his hand, the pet leans forward to slowly kiss his knuckles, one by one. 

“A mouth on you today,” Nanda murmurs, rubbing at his hand. He takes the pet’s chin in his hand, rubbing his thumb over a healing cut on the pet’s jaw, pressing in deeper and deeper until it reopens, bright red blood. The pet whines, hearing in his own voice the taste of a tongue in his mouth, the texture of plastic under his fingers. “Are you hungry? Is that what has you in this mood?”

Is he? The pet barely knows what hunger feels like now. He’s either fed or he isn’t. He turns his head to nip at the thumb, only to have Nanda laugh and force it into his mouth, a burst of salt-sweet copper taste as his own blood is rubbed over his tongue. 

“Feral little thing. Good thing that’s what I paid for.” Nanda pulls back, wiping saliva on the pet’s face, turning away from him again. “I’ll give you something to keep you busy while I’m gone. You know I like when you’re happy to see me.”

The pet swallows, again and again, the blood taste fading but never quite gone. He pushes himself up on his elbows, the twinges of healing cuts on his back, new and old, such a part of him he barely notices them anymore. He watches as Nanda slips the vest back on, admires himself a moment longer.

He can’t stop the words before they leave his mouth.

“What the fuck is your deal, anyway?”

Nanda turns to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Why… this?” The pet gestures to the vest, the whole ridiculous costume he’s wearing. “Who are you trying to impress?”

“Hm, my little slut is having a lot of thoughts today.” Nanda laughs, easy and carefree, and moves over to a dresser. Slut is a word like a knife in his back, the taste of metal forcing his mouth open, air cool on his teeth. He hates it. 

He was one before, they told him, and the handlers don’t lie.

But he hates the word now.

Not that it matters what he hates.

“I didn’t pay money for your thoughts,” Nanda says, bright and cheerful, and moves over to the pet, familiar objects in one hand. The pet swallows against his body’s rush at the sight of it, knowledge of how it will ache, and what the pain means will come after. “I paid for you to love what I do to you, didn’t I. Don’t worry, pet.”

He gestures, and the pet opens his mouth obediently for the intrusion of plastic, the small round ball that forces its way between his teeth, just large enough to be uncomfortable, buckling it tightly behind his head. Next comes the cuffs, his hands forced behind his back and bent at the elbows, one wrist cuffed to the other elbow, one on each side. Finally, a blindfold, tied tightly, blocking out the world.

He has the tastes and textures of the words, the softness of the blanket beneath him, the pain he knows is coming, the worse and the better things that come after that. 

“I have some people to impress for work, pet,” Nanda murmurs. “That’s why I dress like this. But don’t worry - I’ll come home to you, in a few hours, and you’ll see I haven’t changed a bit.”

I hope you fucking die.

The pet’s only warning is the soft snick of the knife opening before his back blooms in a sharp line of pain that begins over one shoulder blade and slowly, carefully, so fucking slowly, makes its way diagonally across him until it reaches the back of his other hip. 

He repeats the motion in the other direction.

“X marks my spot,” Nanda whispers, and laughs to himself, at his own joke. Nanda always laughs at his own jokes.

I fucking hate you.

The pet grunts into the gag, fights a rush of heat between his legs and in his eyes, disgust and want and hate all twisted up together in his mind and body. His body trembles under the blade but he doesn’t try to escape it. He knows better.

This is a good pain, a pain that will be pleasure later.

The bad pains are worse.

Don’t leave me alone for too long.

Finally, his ankles are cuffed, with a thick metal bar between them. He’s trapped like this until Nanda comes back.

The dogs are still barking downstairs, and he feels blood trickle in a perfect awful tickle down one side to soak into the blanket below.

Nanda presses a kiss to the top of his head, breathes him in, runs a fingertip slowly along the edge of the blindfold. He laughs, and his laughter is sparkling wine poisoned with bitter almonds. “Oh, you’re crying. That hasn’t happened in a while.”

The pet hadn’t even noticed.

---

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @raigash @moose-teeth @orchidscript @astrobly @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @endless-whump @eatyourdamnpears @boxboysandotherwhump @vickytokio @outofangband @downriver914 @justabitofwhump  @thehopelessopus

[doveotions]

dig, make, freeze - for Antoni!! 😍

CW: Nothin’. This is just Antoni and Chris fluff. Sorry so many of these ended up fluffy, I guess that’s just my mood right now!

Timeline: Chris's first year in the safehouse

Chris’s lips press together in concentration as he dig the spoon into the bowl, scraping up the mix of soft white cheese, spring onions, and dill until it’s lightly rounded on the top. He looks up, holding out the spoon. “Like, like this?”

Antoni smiles back at him, his own hands hard at work laying out the dough, four baking sheets lined with parchment already full of the rolled-out circles, waiting for the filling. “Yes, perfect, Chrisha. Now-” He gestures, stepping back. “Drop the filling into the center.” 

Chris leans over, moving so slowly and so carefully to press the filling out of the spoon until it drops down, slightly off to one side, on top of the dough. “Oh, I, I, I did it wrong.” 

He looks a little heartbroken. 

Antoni leans over quickly. “No, no, Chrisha, you are fine. Let me show you, we only change how we close it a little.” He takes Chris’s hands - long fingers, always a little cold at the ends - and shifts them, helping him to fold over the dough, creating a half-circle with pinched edges that look almost scalloped. They work together in a brief silence. “See? Just fine. It will cook just as well as any others.”

Chris nods, quickly, relieved that he hasn’t ruined it. Antoni is trusting him to help, and he is desperate to be worth trusting. 

“There. That is one. Only...” Antoni’s eyes skim over the baking trays. “Thirty four piroshki to go.”

Chris’s eyes travel over the circles of dough, and he breathes out slowly. “That’s, um, that’s... that’s a lot... of those things.”

“Piroshki are good to make for many,” Antoni says with a smile, sliding an arm around his shoulders. His skin still prickles at touch, but the new young rescue seems to need it so badly, and Antoni never has the heart to pull away. 

Chris bumps lightly against him, bouncing on his toes, before he pulls away and moves to scoop the next mound of filling from the bowl. “Where did... where, um, where... where did you learn... to, to, to... to-to make these?”

Antoni shrugs, and ignores the sense of faint unease that rises at the question. “I do not know. I just know how. Maybe it is in my blood, hm?” He smiles, but Chris isn’t looking at him this time, concentrating on the next spoonful dropping into the center of the next circle.

They fall into a rhythm - Chris adds the filling, and Antoni closes up the circles, his hands working with easy experience, memories he can’t access. Chris likes to help, to be useful, and Antoni had thought maybe giving him something his hands could do would help to quiet his always-spinning mind.

They finish, and Antoni looks at the teensy bit of filling left in the bowl with a slight smile. There was a bit of dough leftover, and he uses the filling and dough to make one half-sized piroshki, setting it to the side. “Now, we freeze them.”

“Freeze? Why, why, why aren’t we, aren’t... aren’t we, um, cooking them?”

“These are tomorrow night’s dinner.” Antoni puts a finger to his lips, leaning in close. “I will tell you a secret, Chrisha.”

Chris brightens and leans forward as well. “What?”

“Tomorrow is Nat’s birthday,” Antoni says, keeping his voice hushed. “We are not supposed to know. I will surprise her with piroshki and Jake will buy a cake.”

“What, what... what can I do?” Chris asks. His hands rub over his own stomach, at the fabric of his t-shirt, drop down to the pajama pants he’s wearing, move back up. He sways a little, side to side. He is smiling. 

“You will go with Jake, and pick her a gift. Yes?”

Chris nods quickly, and Antoni smiles as he helps to load the baking trays into the mostly-empty freezer, with the little half-circles of dough and filling lightly covered. “Do, do, do... do do I get a birthday?”

Antoni turns to look at him and blinks, moving a small saucepan onto the stove and pouring in plenty of oil, setting it to heat. “What?”

“Do we, um. Do we get, get birthdays? I don’t-... I don’t know my, my, my birthday.” Chris looks out the window over the sink, the sun shining warm outside. A bird trills a song, some kind of sparrow, in a nearby tree. 

“None of us know our birthdays,” Antoni says, gently. “But you may pick one, and we will celebrate it. Or the day you came to us.”

Chris shakes his head, quickly, pale eyebrows furrowing. “No... no, no, no. Not that day. That, that wasn’t... a, a good day. Wasn’t safe. Um. I’ll, I’ll think about-” He seems to just now notice the heating oil. “Why-... I, I thought we weren’t cooking them now?”

“I have this one.” Antoni picks up the small half-circle made of the leftover dough and cheese. “I am going to cook this one, just for you.”

He wonders how his house ever felt warm before they had Chris here to smile.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump  , @oops-its-whump  @cubeswhump ,  @whump-tr0pes  @whumpiary @downriver914 @vickytokio

[doveotions]

Oh okay well Danny tells Ryan that they’re “going to talk in the morning” at the end of the Was it good? peice and I would like to see that. Maybe Danny telling Ryan some of the things that happened to Nate and making him super uncomfortable? Idk I like Danny protecting Nate it’s interesting

CW: Referenced past torture and pet whump, referenced alcohol use, brief reference to dissoci@tion

Follows on Was It Good?, takes place the next morning

Ryan wakes up with maybe the third serious hangover he's ever had to find a glass of water and a couple Tylenol on the side table next to the bed.

His hip hurts, a strange tight ache over his old tattoo, and he feels like his mouth is full of cotton and his head has been used as a bowling ball. Fuck. He never gets hangovers - it's the family blood, Dad says, with a hint of his brogue and a slight smile. Just how the Michaelsons are.

Their liquor doesn't touch us the same, Patrick had said when Ryan asked, tipping a glass to him, eyebrow raised. That's why I import the liquor my own people once made.

It had made perfect sense at the time. Now, though... what people? The Michaelsons have all left Ireland. They're all here now.

In any case, it'd been his dad's shit he'd been drinking last night, and too much of it. The world's faint queasy spin tells him that, even if last night is still a mess of nonsense impressions slowly coalescing back together.

He takes the pills and drinks the water after, ignores the uneasy twist of his stomach, and pulls on a t-shirt, soft as second skin, and wanders out in that and his boxers.

Danny is up before dawn, every day, and today is no exception. His brother is sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, staring out the window over the kitchen sink at the fading depth of night, finally giving way to pinkish sunrise.

When Ryan enters, those wide blue eyes move immediately to him. They are not soft, or sad, or lost - they are precisely focused, and the skin under the red of his scars is pale, nearly colorless under a smattering of freckles. Both of them pretend Danny's whole body doesn't still twitch with a need to slip to his knees on the floor as soon as someone enters. "You took, um, the pills?"

His voice is soft. And still Ryan feels unsettled, something between uncertainty and guilt. "I did, yeah." He moves to pour himself a cup of coffee, the peppermint mocha creamer he'd bought changing dark brown to silky tan. Not that you need much, with Danny's coffee.

Ryan could half believe in magic, really, just from seeing how Danny didn't seem to do anything different but his coffee is still always the best.

Danny's eyes are still on his back. He can feel the weight of them, settled there. His brother, who flinches and murmurs to himself and looks at anything but whoever is talking to him... staring. Directly.

He turns slowly around, and as he does the memory of his brother's voice slips in from the night before. Strong, and even. Angry. I want to talk about this in the morning. A Danny he'd thought had died up in Canada, resurrected, reborn to defend...

Ryan's stomach drops as the whole night, fuzzy but mostly there, slots into place. "Oh, fuck," He whispers.

Fingers around Nate Vandrum's neck, closing tightly, Nate's green eyes wide and lost in terror, calling him... what?

Pl-please, Ashley, please-

Danny snorts, glancing away from him and then back again. His hands are closed around his coffee mug so hard his knuckles are white under the scars there, too. "Not too, um, blackout drunk, then," Danny says. There's a wry sarcasm there, something so familiar and so lost to Ryan that it hurts to hear now.

This is how his brother sounds, a little irritated, cynical. Not weak and soft and pliable, bending to suit whatever he thinks he has to be to stay safe. This is the brother Ryan has lost, not quite resurrected maybe, but maybe opening his eyes beside the open grave.

He's somewhere between, Ryan thinks, between the angry, dancing boy who disappeared and the broken, frightened man Ryan brought back home. He's holding himself together like this, so carefully, fighting so hard not to slip away.

Ryan sits slowly down at the other end of the table and tells himself to have the courage to meet his brother's eyes.

He manages - barely.

"No, I... I remember."

"Good." Danny slowly lifts the mug to his lips, sips, sets it down again. Like he's acting out a routine of normal, each move robotic and tightly controlled. "You can't... be cruel to him, Ryan. Like that."

"No, I know. I lost my temper a little, that's all. It's... it's not that big a deal, Dan." Ryan rubs at the back of his neck and tries on a shamefaced smile. It falters when Danny's expression hardens, like lava solidifying to rock, harmless on the surface but still hot enough to burn.

"You could have hurt him, Ryan," Danny says softly. His voice is so low, and so strong - both at once. "You, um. You did hurt him."

Ryan nods, again. He feels like a kid sitting in front of his mother after getting caught skipping curfew. He feels like Danny skipping curfew, the disappointed annoyance from their parents. Ignoring that it had almost always been Ryan's idea to sneak out.

"I... I get that. I didn't-" Ryan takes a breath and groans, leaning on his elbows, rubbing hands over his face. "Fuck. I hear all the shit that bastard did to you, and I think, Vandrum was right fucking there, Danny! Right there! And he... did nothing."

Danny sets the mug down and it clatters with the trembling of his fingers, nearly splashing out entirely. Ryan looks up and catches the sight of a bead of red on Danny's lower lip, chapped skin torn. Redder than his scars, more immediate.

"He didn't do, um, nothing," Danny whispers, barely audible. His strength is fading, pulling back inside him. Ryan's brother will just... fuck off somewhere and the stupid goddamn puppy will be there instead.

Dr. Rosa has a whole thing about this, about trauma and Danny protecting himself, something about identity and like a lot of really uncomfortable questions about their childhood Ryan has no idea how to answer...

"What did he do, then? Huh?" Ryan finds his finger jabbing in the air, watches as if from outside himself as Danny flinches back. "Tell me. What did he fucking do?"

"He, um." Danny shifts, drops his hands into his lap. His hair, shaggy and unkempt, is a riot of red waves and curls around his face. "Watched. Or... helped. He-"

"Danny, please. I'm angry enough, don't make me even more pissed at this guy-"

"He, he didn't want to, Ryan." Danny looks at him again, and Ryan watches tears glitter in his blue eyes, one run out and get caught in the crevices dug in by scars, follow its map over cheekbone and down to jaw. "He hated it. But he-... but I-..." Danny breathes, that awful fucking thing he does now to calm himself.

Breathe on, hold for a few counts, breathe out. Again and again. Ryan knows what he’s doing, inside his head, and it makes him sick.

My name is Red and I belong to Abraham Denner, and then those stupid rules - and there’s like fifty of them - over and over again until his breathing calms, until his hands settle.

Until he’s good.

The bastard, the fucking demon piece of shit that laughs at Ryan on the stand... Abraham Denner taught Danny to do that. And now, free of him, the Denner bastard about to waste away in prison for life... He still does it.

He still needs it.

Ryan's eyes drop to the scars around Danny's neck, a collar he can't take off, and he swallows. His stomach turns. He pushes the coffee mug away, the smell and taste of peppermint are making him sick now. Too cloying, too sweet, too much in the face of his broken brother's pain.

"I'm alive because of... of him," Danny says finally. "D'you see?"

"Yeah, cause four years later he found a fucking conscience-"

"No. No!" Danny's hands slap down on the table, rattling the ceramic mugs, and his breath is faster, airier. Whistling, almost. "I, I... No. Because he, he, um... He suffered, for me. With me. For four years."

"You suffered," Ryan says, voice flat. "He watched."

Danny looks at him, and there is a darkness there, a shadow around eyes and mouth, that Ryan can't always see. But he sees it now. "He, um. Was made to watch. That... That's suffering, too.”

“Bullshit.”

Danny’s jaw sets. “Don't touch him again, Ryan."

"Don't plan on it."

"Please." Danny's voice drops, almost to a whimper. "Please, Ryan. He's-... He's the only real thing."

"What?" Ryan blinks, but Danny is already pushing himself up, moving away staring out the window at the sunrise as he dumps his coffee into the sink and rinses out the mug. Automatic, thoughtless cleanliness.

Danny doesn't look back at him. He's so tall, towering over everyone, and he is still so... very small, in his fear.

"Abraham could take everything," Danny says, lips barely moving, his eyes locked on the sky slowly turning blue with the morning light. "Everything from me. He did, he, um, he could... do it again. But he never took Nate."

He turns to look at Ryan, and there's a brief flash of Danny again, really Danny, his big brother's flash and fire, before it fades under the weight of what has been done to him.

"You could take Nate away from me," Danny says, voice low. Almost weak. "Please... Please don't, Ryan. Don't touch him again. Don't b-be Abraham, in this house. Don't... Don't. I need... I need, um, this time. With Nate, while I have it. Before he... Before it's over. Before he comes back for me."

He leaves the kitchen with Ryan still staring, guilt an inferno that will burn him alive at the pleading uncertainty in Danny's face, his voice. The door to Danny's bedroom opens and shuts, almost silently.

Ryan is left alone to say, to no one, "But... He can't come back for you. He"s going to prison."

Danny acts like Abraham Denner could just fucking walk out of it.

---

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[doveotions]

GHOSTS OF ST. PETERSBURG ―

TIMELINE ― a few months into sonya’s life with pyotr

CW ― smoking, very slight dehumanisation

When Sonya can’t sleep, he likes to wander the halls, pretending he’s a ghost. Flitting from moonbeam to moonbeam, spinning tragic backstories: he’s a war-ravaged soldier, returning to find his beloved has fallen for someone else; he’s a society belle, struck down with some mysterious illness. He’s a lonely, only son, drifting unseen and unloved through the cool throat of the hall.

It helps, in a way; it’s a degree of freedom he doesn’t deserve, but his ghosts make the Laval House a little less lonely. 

That night, he’s a jilted bride; imagining the dress fluttering at his heels, he runs through the halls, the glass balcony doors looming like the pearly gates, an event horizon he’s never been brave enough to cross — the balcony has always remained out of bounds, a tantalising impossibility.

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