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natromanxoff · 4 years

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How prog were Queen?

By Dave Everley

On 9 January, 1971, Kevin Ayers and Genesis played a show together at the Ewell Technical College near Epsom in Surrey. Ayers was 18 months out of Soft Machine, and making a name for himself as a psychedelically-inclined art-folk rake. Genesis had released their second album, Trespass, a few months earlier, and were carving out a place in the vanguard of the burgeoning progressive rock movement.

There was a third band propping up the bill that night, a bunch of transplanted Londoners calling themselves Queen. In contrast to the wilfully artful approach of the headliners, their music was more straightforward: a heavy, if ornate blend of Led Zeppelin’s earthiness and the flights of fancy of Yes.

Not everyone in the small crowd watching them was impressed, but they caught the attention of one person. After the show, Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel pulled Queen’s blond-bombshell drummer Roger Taylor to one side. Gabriel’s band were about to dismiss their own drummer, John Mayhew, and were looking for a replacement. Was Taylor interested in joining Genesis? The reply was instant: thanks but no thanks. Taylor was utterly dedicated to Queen – there were gigs to play, places to go, and many musical adventures to embark on.

Had Taylor accepted the offer, the course of music – and specifically prog – would have been very different. Genesis would have flourished with Gabriel upfront, though whether they would have survived and prospered as they did without a Phil Collins to step into the breach after their talismanic singer’s departure was another matter.

The knock-on effect on Queen would have been greater. Taylor was an essential part of their carefully balanced four-way chemistry; a chemistry that would go on to throw up some of the most ambitious and game-changing music ever recorded. While Queen weren’t a capital ‘P’ prog band, they were infused with the spirit of the movement, combining its forward-looking values with its absolute disregard for the existing rules. Taking their cues from the likes of Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator and even Pink Floyd, their flamboyantly cavalier approach would go on to inspire such modern masters as Dream Theater, Queensrÿche and Muse. And, in Bohemian Rhapsody, they ensured that one of the biggest-selling singles in history was, at heart, a prog song. Forget the luxuriant moustaches and sawn-off mike-stands that would come to define them: if the prog ethos meant avoiding the expected, then Queen were definitely a prog band.

“Diversity was probably their greatest asset,” says former Dream Theater drummer and confirmed Queen devotee Mike Portnoy. “From song to song, they could be so different. You could have something that was folk followed by something that was rockabilly followed by something that was metal. And that’s one of the biggest things about prog, having that open-mindedness.”

Queen’s schooling in prog came early on. Brian May’s very first band, 1984, played a 4am slot supporting Pink Floyd at the Christmas On Earth Continued all-nighter in 1967. A year later, his next outfit, Smile – also featuring Roger Taylor – played with Floyd again, this time at London’s Imperial College. By the time of their gig opening for Kevin Ayers, Smile had changed their name to Queen and recruited Freddie Mercury. Collectively, they admired Yes, Van der Graaf Generator and especially Genesis. “Foxtrot is a prog rock classic,” Roger Taylor later wrote in the sleevenotes to Genesis box set 1970-1975. “Arrangements were highly complex in these early days, setting a benchmark for the style of the times.”

When it came to finding someone to produce their debut album, Queen’s first choice was John Anthony, who had worked with both Genesis and Van der Graaf. With Anthony and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker behind the desk, the eponymous album trod heavily in Led Zeppelin’s footsteps. But there was another, altogether more visionary band straining to spread their wings: My Fairy King was a filigreed slice of flamboyant rock’n’roll, while Liar metamorphosised through several different time changes and timings.

Those wings were fully unfurled on the follow-up, 1974’s Queen II. The title was the most prosaic thing about the record: the music inside was as fevered and baroque as rock gets, informed equally by Zeppelin, Yes and crazed Victorian artist Richard Dadd, whose 1864 painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke inspired one of the album’s most prog-leaning tracks. It may have been rooted in the heavy rock of the times, but its cavalier approach and sheer sense of scale pegged Queen as a defiantly progressive proposition.

“Queen weren’t like Yes, who had a dualistic role of guitar and keyboards, where both shared the terrain,” says Yes guitarist Steve Howe, supported by Queen at Kingston Poly in early 1971. “Brian had the terrain to himself. The remarkable thing was that he was the front and the back man. It required him to come up with more than guitar solos… He had to come up with a semi-thematic approach to play the guitar. And what he did was keep colouring.”

Queen’s prog inclinations would be deeply woven into the fabric of their early albums, from the audacious multi-part theatrics of Queen II’s March Of The Black Queen to the schizophrenic attack of the two-part Lap Of The Gods from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack. Even in their more commercial moments, they marched to the beat of their own drum. What other band would have dared serve up something so unusual as Killer Queen?

“It was their diversity,” says Mike Portnoy, who first heard Queen as an eight-year-old in the mid-70s and covered many Queen songs while in Dream Theater. “Their albums took the prototype that The Beatles laid down with the White Album, where you had four different artists bringing in very different styles. Every song was so diverse. You get to A Night At The Opera, and you had this giant multi-layered epic like Bohemian Rhapsody next to something like Seaside Rendezvous or Love Of My Life.”

A Night At The Opera was Queen’s grand artistic statement and their most unashamedly prog album. Pitched around the epic twin tentpoles of The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody, it married their far-reaching vision to a distinctly British barminess. Taken on its own, the eight-minute The Prophets Song, with its incredible ornate a cappella middle section, would be enough to grant Queen access to the Prog Hall Of Fame. But even that sits in the inescapable shadow of Bohemian Rhapsody. Time and success might have lessened its impact, but that song remains the most dazzlingly unique piece of music ever to sell five million copies.

“There are epic things that come along every so often,” says Steve Howe. “There’s Sgt Pepper, there’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. And there’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I don’t know when I first heard it, but once it was there, it was such a formidable thing. You’re thinking: ‘How many tracks did they need to do those vocals? How did they write it? Who invented it? It really was astounding.”

Bohemian Rhapsody encapsulated one of the key things that gave Queen such a distinct identity. Like The Beatles and Beach Boys before them, they used the studio as an instrument – not least when it came to their vocals. And Bohemian Rhapsody raised the bar about as high as it could go.

“They sang each of those parts and triple-stacked them,” says Mike Portnoy. “You heard all three of their voices singing in all three vocal ranges. That’s what made the depth of their music so complex. It wasn’t the instrumentation, it was the vocals. That’s unusual for prog music. When I think of my favourite prog music, it’s always the musicianship that draws me. But with Queen, it was the vocals. It was so deep.”

For all its success, A Night At The Opera would be Queen’s grand kiss-off to their prog roots. Later albums streamlined their sound into a more conventional format. Much like Genesis, the 80s found them swapping experimentalism for chart rock.

It wasn’t until the end of their career as an active band that Queen would again sound so adventurous. During 1989 and 1990, the band began work on their penultimate album, Innuendo, in London and Montreux. In the summer of 1990, Yes guitarist Steve Howe paid a flying visit to the Swiss city, where a chance encounter with a former guitar tech found him being invited to Queen’s studio to hear the album as a work-in-progress.

“Inside, there’s Freddie, Brian and Roger all sitting together. They go: ‘Let’s play you the album,’” says Howe. “Of course, I’m hearing it for the first time: I Can’t Live Without You, I’m Going Slightly Mad. And they saved Innuendo itself until last. They played it and I was fucking blown away.”

If that was surprising, then what happened next was utterly out-of-the-blue. The members of Queen asked if Howe wanted to play on the title track. The Yes man politely suggested they’d lost their minds. It took the combined weight of Mercury, May and Taylor to persuade him.

“They all chimed in: ‘We want some crazy Spanish guitar flying around over the top. Improvise!’” recalls Howe. “I started noodling around on the guitar, and it was pretty tough. After a couple of hours, I thought: ‘I’ve bitten off more than I can chew here.’ I had to learn a bit of the structure, work out the chordal roots were, where you had to fall if you did a mad run in the distance; you have to know where you’re going. But it got towards evening, and we’d doodled and I’d noodled, and it turned out to be really good fun. We have this beautiful dinner, we go back to the studio and have a listen. And they go: ‘That’s great. That’s what we wanted.”

Released as a single in January 1991, Innuendo gave Queen their third Number One single. Like Bohemian Rhapsody 25 years before it, it was as unlikely as hit singles get: a six-and-a-half minute musical jigsaw, complete with flamenco runs, classically-inclined orchestral overloads and maverick 5/4 timing. Queensrÿche covered the song on 2007’s Take Cover album, while you can hear its echo in Radiohead’s Paranoid Android and Muse’s more elaborate sci-fi epics.

“In the world of rock, Queen stands out as a good example of the clash between guitar and piano in songwriting,” Muse’s Matt Bellamy has said. “I think that’s where you stumble across those more unusual arrangements and chord structures.”

Today, Queen have left a bi-polar legacy. They’re arguably best known for their pop hits – Radio Gaga, I Want To Break Free and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody, that ultimate prog Trojan Horse. But their spirit of adventure remains unmatched by all but the boldest of their peers.

“There was no rulebook for Queen,” says Mike Portnoy. “They broke most of the rules that existed, and then they wrote a new set.”

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #freddie mercury #brian may #john deacon

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lets-steal-an-archive · 5 years

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[thread]

fuckin' this, folks. and I mean you KNOW I am here for fanfic, now and always, but that is NOT what this nomination is about! do you know how advanced an archival system ao3 is? the ways its indexing and DB structure improve discoverability for MILLIONS of readers?

I know librarians who'd kill for that kind of tech! and this is glued together from cloudsourced specs while training their OWN coders on the way. and - this is not wordpress, people, they OWN THE SERVERS. they fund and pay wages for sysadmining! there's rackspace!

no, okay, look, listen, look: this is my job. I do it for a living. it is the only way I could go to cons, could take time to write. I only, only, ONLY ever took a programming class because Ao3 existed and showed me it could be done.

think of it this way: if someone nominated twitter (...go with me) for an award, would you immediately conclude they meant the tweets? pff. no. that's content. that's the squishy stuff. tech is the skeleton it rests on. well, guess what: the Archive of Our Own is Real Tech too.

's better than Amazon is for providing new content to read. god, the filters. the freeform tagging (sure, yeah, it's not Machine Learning, it's manually wrangled - someone had to go tell the robots 'AU' == 'Alternate Universe'). sort by length!! fuckin' ratings!!!

and - those of you who haven't been to ao3, y'know, may I suggest if you're curious, go take ten minutes and look? I'll wait. A good place to start might be the fandoms front page. https://archiveofourown.org/media

Go tell me if you can figure out how that works. Heck, I almost wanna start a scavenger hunt. Find a fic over 100k. Change the font to large. Go print a fic to mobi, or epub, or pdf and load it onto your tablet or kindle. Find me some meta with more than 500 comments.

The UI design is IMPECCABLE. Search box in the top right. fonts all clean and clear. never, EVER see any javascript overlaps or partial loads or slow graphics - they know better than that. you can slap a custom skin on it. heck, there's a link to the source code in the footer!

How about a fic - here we go, Speranza's classic, Written by the Victors. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15 There's a bunch of UI you don't see if you aren't logged in - the heavensent 'Mark for Later' button, for example - but still. Everything you could click is easy to grok.

Want more like it? Super easy and intuitive to click a tag, or the fandom, or a pairing (or even just M/M if you want to load half the site) and see more fic in that category. Sort by comments or hits or kudos and you get a good idea which ones are worth opening.

These folks REALLY know their UI. But, okay, hang on, yes they do, and many are trained pros, but many also aren't! the people building this site just WORK HARD, they try things out, they listen to feedback and iterate - (how much Big Tech can say as much these days)

- but ALSO, and here's what's important to realise, this is a community project, a community space, and it was DESIGNED to TEACH. (Did you know when it was first proposed, they trialed Ruby and Python to see which was quicker for beginners? I know 'cause I voted Python 🐍🤷‍♀️😂)

Do you know how rare it is to find that in Open Source? Listen, okay, I'm a professional techie and I would NE-E-EVER venture into eg the Linux core with 'Jennifer' attached to my sig in any way whatsoever. Aside from that, much of OSS is, hmm, results-oriented.

They expect you to show up fully-functional on day one, w/ a pull request ready to patch. Remind me, what's the demographic balance in Ye Average compsci program? And of those, who's working nights / caring for relatives / otherwise unable to Do Their Time posturing on github?

But the Organization for Transformative Works isn't here for that. They know (we know) that Fan is a Tool-Using Animal. idlewords.com/talks/fan_is_a… And the Archive of Our Own is proof of that.

So maybe think on that a little, the next time Patreon has a ToS hiccup. The next time Jack removes like counts. Think of what Archive coders built, in the face of Livejournal's hypocrisy, in spite of everyone telling us it was Too Much, we'd bitten off more than we could chew.

That. That's what this nomination is about. And yeah, we built it so we could host the smutty Harry/Draco and the conspiracy theories about Sansa and alllll the Naruto time travel fixit fic you could POSSIBLY ever read. And that's pretty fuckin' great, in my book.

(...I do not have a SoundCloud, but I do have a hugo nominated podcast, @serpentcast , which is entirely made up of the three of us yelling about fanfic in the same breath as professional fiction & media. which is where it has always belonged.)

#ao3 #hugo awards #fan is a tool using animal #h/t #messier51 #long post #edited for clarification #they are a nominee

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countessofbiscuit · 4 years

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Suppressive Fire

(Sev/Scorch, E, 3.9k words)

Two bros, chillin' on a top bunk no feet apart 'cause they're vode. . . .

Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, barrack block 7 Alpha, six standard weeks after Geonosis

She’d be built like a tank. That was Requirement the First.

She’d be humanoid, or near enough. Her arms would number ... four. Yes, four arms, each of them doing something clever. Two to open my ass, two to pinch my nipples, her long tongue going to crazy town on my cock, burning off my pubes with her caustic breath—

Sergeant Draka. The near-human-tank was Sergeant Draka, sure as day.

Scorch grabbed this realization with one firm hand and tugged.

Her species was shab-if-I-know: some unhappy hybrid who’d washed up on the far edge of the Outer Rim and been scraped into one of those fringe clans that never removed their helmets. Her folks developed a reputation for ritualized kidnapping that didn’t sit right with Jango. He’d ripped Draka’s helmet off in a duel, apparently, and spending ten years training the spawn of her enemy was the price she’d agreed to pay to regain her honor. All those kids and nowhere to run: a bitter form of torture for both parties. Her trainees were an insular, silent bunch with a tendency to tactically acquire your shit when you weren’t looking, but they got the job done.

Scorch had first seen Draka at a parade for the prime minister when he was three. He’d never forgotten it: she had fangs and yellow eyes and ears that twitched at the tips like they were catching your current of fear. No wonder they’d encouraged her to keep a lid on.

Then Scorch was six and change and he’d stumbled upon her in a hallway. She’d had a cadet upside down, smoking him good for something. “What are you gawping at, Six-Two?” she’d snarled, her generous chest heaving, three spare arms tensing in his direction. “Shift it. Unless you want your balls torn off next.”

Scorch had been a little scared and a lot turned on.

Sergeant Vau didn’t have to use many words to put the fear of Fett under your skin. He was a conservative man. Sergeant Draka regarded a shebs-chewing as the highest form of oratory and her calling in life. Whenever Scorch stood downwind of her in the combat hall, he could feel his eyebrows being singed off a second time.

Sweating a little, Scorch’s core tensed as this fantasy tightened vividly in his holographic mind.

She puts two hands around my cock, one hand on my nipple, one hand clawing under my balls—

Scorch flipped her on her back.

She uses all four arms to spread her trunky legs, hairy as a man’s, wide in invitation—

“Knock it off,” barked Sev.

She was gone. In her place was the knowledge that his brother was clued in to what Scorch was doing on the bottom bunk and determined to make it stop.

But the pressure under Scorch’s balls held firm and his erection stood fast. Sev was an oaf with shit timing. There was a reason they gave Scorch the fiddly wires and det controls. He stretched his fingers and reset his grip. “Not happening, vod.”

“Do you have to be so loud about it?”

“Loud?” Had he said something? Lost control of his breathing?

“Yes. Loud. Like you’re slugging a hamm sandwich.”

Scorch frowned. “Have you ever had a hamm sandwich?”

“I don’t want one now.”

There was some improvement to technique needed there: Scorch was always open to feedback—to the challenge of reducing the marginal noise of a wank. “You embarrassed?” he found himself asking, strokes resuming. Less hamm-fistedly. His orgasm had slumped a little and he'd have to tenderly call it back up.

“I’m embarrassed for you,” Sev said.

Scorch closed his eyes, picturing something ...

Sergeant Draka was back, and now she was holding him and Sev upside down. The arrival of RC-1207 into the sim wasn’t throwing Scorch off. In fact, it was encouraging. Exciting. He even leaked a little at the idea. What was a commando without his squad? Chafed, apparently. He should’ve brought Sev into the game two nights ago, after they’d been rudely pulled from stasis in preparation for some op known only to Boss.

Scorch didn’t remember decant. But Sergeant Vau, who'd wasted no time rocking up to his watery exile when Jango had put out the word, said they’d been ugly, annoyed, and ornery. The nursery techs had given them mock, miniature Deeces to keep their fussy hands and mouths occupied.

Coming out of stasis had to be worse—they were issued Deeces again, but they weren’t left alone to soothe themselves to sleep with weapons. Now their waking moments belonged entirely to some Jedi named Zey. They’d been forced to run a gamut of proprioception and endurance tests, cleaned their spanking new Katarn and cleaned it once more for luck on Boss’s orders, and told to familiarize themselves with their upgraded HUD systems.

Scorch had and he'd found it wanting: no pre-loaded heavy-isotope bangers or high-definition tailhead reference holos. Did he have to do everything himself in this shabla army?

After submitting to all this with only mild complaint—Fixer had sworn in full sentences—the op order was still not forthcoming. Classic hurry up and fekkin' wait. Wait for instructions they didn’t even need. Coordinates, intel support, and a broad objective would have sufficed for a commando tasking: top brass still had a lot to learn. It had left Delta with more downtime than they liked and had left Scorch wanting nothing more than to take care of that perennial need in his groin. And each time, he had to get a little more creative.

“What’re you thinking ‘bout, Sev?” he teased, poking the boundaries of this sim. Longnecks hated that: it’s why they let the commandos have off-world field trips to forsaken places where they couldn’t peel back the corners without dying. “Something profane? Something a little non-regulation?”

“The shab is wrong with you.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking ... ” The opportunity for candor—without Fixer on the opposite bunk telling him to pipe down or Boss around to make it happen—was interesting. And as far as Scorch knew, this slap-dash prefab of a support base didn’t have surveillance bugs like their dorms on Kamino. The range and assault course here weren't even specced for lasers; they had to waste live rounds on discs and be honest about getting locked onto. Not likely.

With nothing left to hide, Scorch rolled away from the wall and relaxed onto his back, his cock stiff and spry. He pulled his hood up and over his wet glans and back down again, as far as he could take it, skin smarting nicely at the stretch. He went on, “I’m thinking about Sergeant Draka.”

“Stop,” Sev said.

“Her thick thighs in my face—”

“Stop.”

Scorch spat in his hand and throttled his shaft. “Biting our balls … ” Okay, maybe that was a little weird. But if Fixer’s quick work of the base pyrowall in the anxious hours before chill-down was anything to go by, weird could be good. Better than good.

“Don’t make me come down there,” Sev growled. Not unlike Sergeant Draka, actually.

Scorch couldn’t help himself. “Oh yeah, do come down here ... ” He bucked into his fist, as if to jerk out that ball of bliss from behind his sack. The mass of him tensed rigid under one fixed goal. His fumbled around for something in the sheets with his free hand. “Come down her thick legs ... ”

If anything could singe Draka’s hairs, it’d be Sev’s spunk. Scorch loved a blast, but Sev would sprinkle baradium on his Oaties every morning if he could. Sev would spill like a gutted aiwha, animalistic and uncontrolled, and Draka would hiss and gnash her teeth and—

And suddenly, Scorch was over the line. His base clenched hard, choking his groan of release. He convulsed and came thickly into one of yesterday’s socks.

“Shab,” he croaked, his vision returning, his limbs pooling with pituitary pleasure. “Blew up real good.”

Somewhere above him, Sev huffed. “Three nights in a row. You’re disgusting—you know that, right?”

“Stasis, my shebs. I’ve never had such busy balls in my short life.” Scorch twisted languidly to the edge of the mattress and sat up, squeezing his cock clean. “Cooking blanks like they might get lucky.” The knotted sock got buried in tomorrow’s laundry and Scorch borrowed some of Boss’s wet wipes for the cleanup. Sarge wouldn’t miss them.

“The rest of us are fine,” Sev countered.

Scorch glanced at Sev over his shoulder. His brother looked like a corpse who’d taken up reading in the afterlife. Base bunks weren’t much cosier than a stasis pod, but something else was keeping Sev’s spine stiff. Something that might affect squad performance if it wasn’t addressed: a bad case of self-inflicted blue balls.

Scorch pulled up his pants and ambled over. “You know ... you say that. But this says something else.” He grabbed Sev’s perky junk.

Happily for his brother, Scorch’s grip was light. So when Sev knocked Scorch backwards at the throat, he didn’t take Sev’s sack with him. A scuffle ensued, half-hearted on Scorch’s side, though Sev was obviously in one of his fuck-off moods. He always was crankiest after a nap; it’d take him days to shake off stasis. And he was still pissed about Procurement’s theft of his helmet, with its authentic Gamma blood enshrined in red paint. That di’kutla squad had been shipped to Triple Zero, and until Sev butted heads with them again, he’d be as scratchy as a flea-bitten akk.

Using the shallow bunkrail, Scorch flung himself up and collapsed onto his brother, asking the cantilevered cot to bear the weight of two commandos. He was a trusting soul. The tussle continued until Scorch allowed Sev to secure a headlock, rather than drag them both onto the floor. They’d just gotten out of one unnatural bath and he didn’t fancy a dunk in bacta.

Scorch tapped Sev’s thigh. “Alright, alright,” he said hoarsely. Sev’s hold loosened a fraction and Scorch scooted out from it. Sitting up, he grabbed the holozine that had gotten pinned against the wall: some monthly edition of erudition that called itself Lasers & Blasters. “Didn’t know you could, Oh-Seven.”

Sev snatched the ‘zine to stuff it under his pillow. “It’s above your cadet-grade.”

“I think everyone knows you’re the knuckle-dragger around here, not me.”

“I think everyone knows I’m the hero of Geonosis, Killer of Sun Fac.”

Scorch made a theatrical noise that sounded like a broken, wet bes’bev. “Woo-hoo! You hit the broad side of a bantha!”

Now Sev really tried to catapult him onto the floor. But Scorch’s close-combat situational awareness noticed that his brother’s cockstand was holding strong.

“Sev,” he said, panting a little when they’d reached another stalemate, “the only people who know Sun Fac’s name are us, some spooks, and that random forward air controller.”

“Shove off.” Sev kicked him with his boot. He wore them to bed like an animal.

Scorch shook his head. “Not until you take care of yourself.”

“You have some shabla nerve, vod.”

“Rule 45: there should be no happier union than that between a commando and his weapon. But you’ve neglected yours.” He cast a judgemental eye at Sev’s tented pants. They’d been sleeping, shooting, and shitting cheek-by-jowl for their entire lives: Scorch didn’t know why one more bodily function would be that much worse. In that moment, he had more sympathy for his brother’s dick than his brother’s karked-up dignity. Or his own.

He glanced at the chrono. Boss and Fixer still had half an hour at the range and they’d probably hit the mess on the way back. Time enough for a little more equipment maintenance; Scorch believed he was being supremely generous offering what remained of his. He flopped over into a plank above his brother, who was still lying deathly prone. “If you’re not gonna help yourself ...”

“What?” Sev sneered. “You’ll do the honors?”

“Maybe I will. I am better than you, after all,” Scorch grinned. Suddenly, he sensed a game that he wanted to win. They were all like that. Competitive. Not so much against each other, but with each other. Getting screwy Sev off would be the ultimate victory: no one would lose and everyone would leave happy.

“You can’t.” Sev’s disinterest was as threadbare as his pillowcase.

“Alright, vod. I’ll take that bet.” Scorch dug the heel of his hand into his brother’s persistent erection. Sev’s eyelids fluttered. No greater tell in the book. “I bet I can get you off before Boss and Fixer get back. Just this once.”

Sev circled his hands around Scorch’s throat, hissing through perfect teeth bared tight, “You—can’t—Sergeant—Vau—would—”

Scorch scoffed. “You see Sarge here? He’s fucked off to his castle with his kaminii retirement fund.”

Vau had never promised he’d be there on the other side, but ... did he know they’d done a good job? That they’d been singled out for the assassination of the bugs’ chief lieutenant? That they’d survived—no, that they'd excelled, when hundreds of other squads hadn’t? Did he even care? Scorch had to wonder.

He shoved those thoughts aside with conscious effort; they wouldn’t do him any good. Better that Vau wasn't here anyway: he would sniff mightily at this interpretation of no brother left behind. “Hells, he’s probably rubbing one out to a portrait of the dead missus right now,” Scorch continued.

Sev’s grip tightened for their sergeant’s honor. “He wouldn’t—”

“He would. Stars love the old chakaar, Sev, but he’s only flesh and blood.” Actually, that’s all Vau was: cragged skin and blue blood twisted ‘round a frame that seemed to boast a few more bones than average. There must have been a heart in there, too—see: Mird—but Delta had spent their entire cadethood seeking it out to little good. Especially Sev, though he’d slot you for saying so.

Oh, Sev’ika: flesh and blood, plus a lot of bile and bad humor. He stank out the backend when he’d scarfed down too many ration packs, but what would splatter out the front? Scorch was beyond curious now, as he palmed his brother’s package through his clothes.

Sev’s hands held firm, but it was half-hearted, his thumbs only tickling his brother’s trachea. His nostrils flared. He was afraid. No, even better—he was desperate.

It was all the vindication Scorch needed. “That’s right—breathe. Relax. Six-Two’s got you.” He tugged Sev’s fatigues down, hitching the elasticene band behind his balls. Sev grimaced. Yeah, it might not be comfortable yet, but just wait; a little pressure there goes a long way.

“That hurts,” growled Sev.

“Gonna hand me the game?” If Sev had lost sight of his mission objective, he really was gummed up. “Jerking off through a fly feels like doing it in formation,” Scorch said.

Sev turned his head to the wall. If he’d done it at all, that was clearly how.

Scorch took his theoretically-identical brother in hand and felt the heft and heat of a dick that was still an inch left of familiar, however many times he'd seen it. Sev was throbbing. His hands fell away, as deliberately limp as the rest of him, like he was trying to absent himself from his body.

“So ... Sergeant Draka—” Scorch began, realizing he’d just been staring at his brother’s kad for longer than was right. He mentally constructed the fantasy again, deliberately this time, while he warmed up to the idea of working someone else’s shaft. Sev’s shaft. He imagined what Sev might like to hear, because Scorch sure as shab wasn’t keen on hardening up between his brother’s legs himself. That would just be strange. “She’s got you under two hands and a squawking bug under the other, honkin' great tits ready to smother the both of you ...”

Up until he’d found his brother’s cock in his hand, Scorch had fancied himself an honest commando. He really did. Then he had to close the dissonance between his not-insignificant-interest in Sev’s pink tip and, well, Sev: that awkward grump-a-lump who couldn’t look at a sapient or sentient, droid or organic, without scaring them away.

Scorch did it by telling himself this was just his own his cock in a mirror. A learning experience, if nothing else. And his tongue loosened to remember the bet. He began rubbing with intent. “She snaps its neck. Crunch. And isn’t that just your favoritest sound, Sev, ol’ boy?”

“Not her,” Sev said hoarsely.

Manda, he really was giving this to Scorch in the bag. “Who?”

“—don’t know—I don’t shabla know.”

“Easy, vod. You got a lifetime to find out. Well, half of one.”

“Shut. Up.”

Scorch changed the program and flicked a thumbnail right under Sev’s hood. Scratched out whatever dream Sev had building behind his scrunched eyes. It was irrelevant, whatever cleaned the pipes. If his brother didn’t want to say, who was Scorch to ask? The silky give of his hard-on and his nasally gasps vouched that Sev was having an a-okay time. Scorch wouldn’t have a hand, otherwise.

Sev bubbled from his tip. Scorch felt himself flush, but he was more intrigued than anything. It really was like watching a holo of himself. Obviously, Scorch was more handsome, mostly because he wasn’t a fucking psycho ... but a cock was a cock. He lengthened his movement with the slick aid of precome, fisting all the way down to Sev’s slightly lighter curls.

Suddenly, Sev’s fingers wrapped around his. For an alarming half-second, Scorch feared his wrist was about to be snapped. Goodbye dominant hand and superhuman reaction times.

But Sev just held on, eyes pinched shut, arm as unyielding as a barrel.

The situation became more straightforward. Emboldened by the team effort, Scorch stroked faster. Harder. He read the lines in Sev’s fierce face like a manual for a weapon he’d been handed five years ago. A clone lifetime. A batcher’s intuition. He shucked Sev’s sheath down as hard as he could. Twisted his wrist at the top further than Sev’s delicate skin wanted to go. Scorch figured his brother liked the bite of pain. “You feelin’ the heat? You gonna spill all over my fingers, Sev’ika?” he teased.

Sev heaved like he might throw up, and he coughed out only two words. “Do. Not.”

Yeah, he hates that kind of chummy osik and yakking. It was almost sad how much Sev knew what he didn’t want, but couldn’t voice what he did. Even Fixer grunted in approval when something wriggled across the ‘pad’s screen; at least he had some idea what kind of parts he fancied. It was a very broad pool.

Sev just looked embarrassed to be asked.

“Someone’s gonna love your shit, Sev,” Scorch encouraged, coming at it again from a different vector. If he didn’t show his wacky brother some love, who would?

Vau hadn’t been there to bestow that curt nod. They didn’t want to be spoiled. Scorch and his brothers weren’t Skirata’s pups: they’d survived Geonosis because they weren’t. But ... Delta was here and Theta wasn’t and Vau had no karkin’ clue what a close-run thing it’d been. Didn’t know how the knife-edge of his training had probably made all the difference and how chuffed they all were about it.

Or how Sev had made that one-in-a-million shot to Sun Fac’s fighter with half his visor splattered in bug spray. Scorch would remember that for the rest of his short life: angry tendrils of smoke rising behind Sev as he turned contemptuously away from his kill, his helmet gooey with Geonosian.

There were brothers, and there were your brothers: the ones who’d made you better just by being there beside you. Sev was one of those.

Scorch didn’t have to improv osik, now. The words came as easy as his muscle memory as he pistoned his palm along Sev’s angry cock. “Fuckin’ proud of you, Sev: bane of bugs and sniper extraordinaire. Wish Vau could’ve seen it, I really do. I’ll have CLONINT’s guts for rappelling lines for wiping Boss’s cache.”

Sev’s free hand had bunched into the sheet, his knuckles whitening. He stilled suddenly, tense as the second before the opening salvo. Here it comes.

“Ooh, so that’s how Sev breaks. Result!” Scorch had imagined Sev’s orgasm would be like squeezing blood from a stone. Not at all: it came as surely and naturally as his own. Scorch watched intently. Who knew their balls became one in the moment of triumph like that? As Sev’s practically disappeared into his taut body, Scorch had to think on his feet to save his brother’s freshly-laundered fatigues—or, on his knees and elbows, as the case was.

Thunking his other arm across his face, Sev lost the bet with a violent shudder—and without a sound, probably so he couldn’t say he’d enjoyed it. He squirted fully but cleanly onto the open spread of the ‘zine, thanks to Scorch’s management and direction. A long, messy line of cloudy white right across the cross-sectioned barrel of a Magna-Caster-100. Thank fuck for flimsi.

Shaking off Sev's hand, Scorch dropped the wilting cock. It was not attractive, and he prayed the ladies wouldn't think the same, warring with himself about whether he could succumb to the mortification of going limp in someone’s mouth. Maybe it was better to pull out and stripe them? It merited further research on Fixer’s ‘pad, just in case.

“Target softened. Should make things easier for you. Hope you took notes,” Scorch said, oddly transfixed by the description of the ‘Caster’s invisible quarrels he’d spotted on the page. He was growing itchy for a time-sensitive rummage—Scorch would wager his lower left nut that Delta could now go toe-to-toe with any of Draka’s squads for acquisition. With any luck, this mysterious upcoming op would net them some exotic toys.

He shifted his weight, feeling the need to move before that idea made him stiff again and everyone got the wrong impression.

“‘m not soft, di’kut,” Sev mumbled from underneath his arm.

Scorch patted his thigh. “Sure you’re not.”

“Getting soft will get us popped.”

Scorch was halfway off the bunk, but he stopped to squeeze Sev’s fucked-up head. “Hey, ner vod. Look at me—look at me,” he demanded. Sev let his arm fall behind his curls but he kept his gaze elsewhere. “No need to quote Sarge to me. Or go grey over stupid stuff like him.”

Stuff like distraction—a dirty word in Vau’s lexicon. What did they have to get distracted by, anyhow? Grainy holovids? They had enough room in their over-engineered skulls for a few of those, and if they ever got to touch the real thing, Scorch figured they wouldn’t lose their heads. Right? Civvies were so unexceptional, after all. Probably couldn’t tell a maranium blast from a benign xenon light sculpture. Brothers, especially your fellow commandos, were the only company worth keeping—even Vau said so, and Skirata had said Vau had wined and dined New Mando aristos and had bedded a fekkin’ princess in a past life.

Eventually, Sev’s sour mug puckered in something like thought. “If you fucked up my range scores, I’m going to piss in your pack.”

Scorch laughed, dumping his feet onto the floor and wandering in the direction of Boss’s ration bars. Mess was a whole two hours away and Scorch had a month’s eating to make up for. “Sev’ika, no one could fuck up your range scores. You just pregamed with Lasers & Blasters.”

The ‘zine smacked the back of Scorch’s head, wet side flat.

Yeah, we're still good, Scorch thought, as he finally manhandled his stroppy brother onto the floor. And we always will be.

(also on Ao3)

#republic commando #delta squad #repcomm #sev #scorch #clonecest #biscuit fic

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laheyyisaac · 4 years

Text

Overdue

chapter 1 — american legion

SUMMARY: Guinevere Bailey just moved to McKinney, TX in order to figure out her life. She meets Captain Hank Syverson at the local library, and she finds out she might have bitten off more than she can chew. PAIRING: Syverson x OFC WORD COUNT: 1299 A/N: hii! first fic here! just now starting. i’m going to be making a graphic for it if i can when i get back to my computer back home. inspired and encouraged by @promptandpros, so this first chapter’s for you, babe. thanks so so much to @alyxkbrl for reading over this one! if you’d like to be added to my tags list, please IM or inbox me! TAGS: @promptandpros @alyxkbrl @completelybonkersentirelymad @mylifefallingupthestairs @kissthatlifeaway @dangerouslovefanfic PART 2

“Where’s Carly-Jean? Gwen, have you seen her?”

Guinevere Bailey glanced up from her cart of books, eyes wide as she sat down the one she was shelving. She shook her head, and her coworker nodded, zipping off to the next person. It had been a long day today, mostly filled with library patrons who were less than excited about some new feature they had rolled out.

She had worked at her little library in McKinney, Texas for two years now. Gwen had been a former resident of Dallas, TX, and the significantly smaller McKinney was well received. Moving there had been the best thing she’d done, and she was only a 30 minute drive from Dallas anyway.

Her family was more sad than upset, and she made a habit to visit the house she’d lived in for twenty some odd years every now and again. Just to get filled up on casserole and the like. She’d left, mostly, because of her family. She’d desired to actually get away from them a bit more, so she’d moved out to Dallas proper when she was 20. Five years of that, and she had moved to McKinney. She was approaching 30 now, and she still had no idea what she wanted. Not really.

She supposed she could keep working with the library, but she wanted more. She had always wanted more. Sometimes she wanted the picket fence life with a baby on her hip. Other days she wanted to be a woman in charge of a career. Something exciting. Something boring. She wasn't sure what exactly she wanted yet. She was supposed to know. Thirty wasn't so far away.

"Gwen, go set up for the Veteran's thing in the auditorium." Her supervisor, Jerry, with his monotone and furrowed white brows, looked over at her, watching her zone out and, essentially, panic.

She nodded to soothe his fears, putting her books away happily and trudging towards the keys to grab the one's for the auditorium. It was short work, setting up the microphone and laptop for the PowerPoint. They were having someone talk today. Or rather, the American Legion was. Gwen didn't know. She only knew that they probably wouldn't know how to work the computer.

"Am I in the right spot?" Someone asked, and Gwen whipped her head around with a squeak at the sound.

He was handsome, well built, and very tall. His head was buzzed, but his beard was almost unkempt, long but...looking rather soft. Gwen struggled for words. Obviously, he was in the right spot. He was dressed in a rather nice uniform. He was an army man by the looks of him. She swallowed and finally spoke up when she noticed his brow quirked.

“Yeah. You’re in the right spot. Though, you’re about a half hour early.”

He laughed and shrugged his shoulders, putting hands on his hips. “Well, my mama always told me that being on time was being late. Guess I still listen to her from time to time.”

“Smart.”

He looked at her name tag briefly and extended his hand. “Hank Syverson,” he said, introducing himself. Or at least, Gwenn assumed he was introducing himself.

“Gwen Bailey. Nice to meet you, Mr. Syverson,” she replies, shaking his large hand.

He shakes his head and waves his other hand in a sign of distaste. “No. No. Just...just Sy. If you want. Don’t go by Hank much, and Mr. Syverson is my pa.”

She grins as he keeps a hold of her hand. It’s warm, and he’s fairly warm. If not a bit scraggly. She reluctantly releases his hand and looks around. “Well, Sy, it’s lovely to meet you. Hope to see you around sometime?”

The question was open ended. She didn’t know if he lived in McKinney or if he just… was here for this....talk.

“Yeah. You need help with anythin’? My mama’s outside gettin’ books for my nieces and nephews, and I don’t really wanna go look at kiddie books for the next half hour.”

“Sure! Sure. You can help me set up these chairs. You look strong enough.”

His laughter makes Gwen feel warm inside. “Yeah, that’s what I’m good for, anyhow.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were done, and all Gwen really had to do now was wait for the American Legion folk. While they worked, she and Sy had talked about a few things. He was a captain in the US Army. He’d been stationed in a great many places, namely Baghdad, and he was on leave for the foreseeable future. He didn’t say why, and she didn’t have the heart to ask, considering he looked rather forlorn about it.

“My mama’s happy about it. She was over the moon when I told her I was comin’ back. She expected me to move back to my place in Dallas, but I missed home. Missed my family. So I’m temporarily a man child, living with my parents.” He laughed at that, his laugh so easy and sweet.

“What about you?” He asked. “You a McKinney native, or…?”

“No,” Gwen said softly. “Not really. My mom and dad live outside Dallas. One of those big Texas lady mansion houses. I lived in Dallas for a bit, but I left. Not sure why. Just got tired of it.”

Sy nodded, as though he understood. Maybe he did. Maybe he knew exactly what she meant. “I get that. It gets monotonous sometimes. We need changes of scenery.”

“You’re weirdly prolific, you know it?”

“Yeah, I’m dumb enough to say smart shit sometimes.”

“I like it.” Gwen hadn’t intended to say it like that, but he smiled nonetheless. They sat down in the chairs they set up, sitting with two chairs between them. She looked over at him, sitting in companionable silence. After a few minutes, he decided to say something, opening his mouth.

“I was wondering if —” He was interrupted by the American Legion president, smiling and calling out his name.

“Hank Jr.! How are ya, boy?” He asked, and Gwen had to stifle a laugh. Sy was anything but a boy.

Sy stands and extends his hand, shaking with the president. His name was Jackson if Gwen remembered right. She was a little peeved at him, having been curious about what he’d been about to ask. Or say. Or anything.

She was at least hopeful this wouldn’t be the last time they’d see one another. She waved goodbye to Sy and spoke with Jackson for a moment, giving him all he’d need for his presentation. She felt Sy’s eyes on her back as she left.

A few hours later, Gwen was in the back, processing books. She rather liked the process, covering the books in dust jackets or tape to protect them. It was nice. Kinda fun too. She got into a rhythm, mind absent and thinking on Sy for the rest of the evening. He was nice. Genuine. Funny. Cute. All of the above. She wondered if she’d ever hear from him again. She cursed herself for not getting his number.

“Gwen?”

Gwen looked up at one of the clerks she worked with. Lacey. She was relatively young, younger than Gwen at least by a few years. Gwen gave her a smile and looked up, pausing her work for just a moment.

“That uhhh… guy who was at the American Legion thing…”

“Jackson?”

“No, the speaker guy. The younger one.”

“Yeah?” Gwen asked, unable to hide the anticipation in her voice.

“He left his number for you. I can throw it away if you want. I get dudes hitting on me all the time.”

“No! No, I’ll take it.” And Gwen plucked the paper from her hands, looking at the messy print. Sy. And then, 10 numbers that made her grin.

#captain syverson #captain syverson fanfiction #syverson x ofc #syverson fic #syverson fanfiction #syverson #fanfiction #my writing.#mine.#!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#ok!!!! first fic!!#lmk what you think!!

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svaelfyr · 3 years

Text

Silver Lining

Perhaps he’d bitten off a little more than he could chew.

With a stack of papers thick enough that he’d lost count, Svaelfyr rounded the corner of Ul’dah’s Sapphire Avenue towards the inner streets of the circular city. Crowds streamed by, carts rattled down the stone roads, and traders yelled at the top of their voices for the chance to pawn off their wares to folk who were eager to shed some gil. The blend of sights, sounds and smells were enough to overwhelm the hrothgar, who was rather new to the city. He had a plan, though.

He’d picked up some writs - work orders to produce a few items that were well within his scope. Blade hilts, tool racks, wall shelves, planters, night stands, step stools… Nothing he couldn’t put together in a few hours each. He had gil enough to rent a small communal workshop space, and had secured delivery of plenty of lumber. He’d likely have spare at the end of the day, but whatever he had left over he might be able to hock to some other carpenter.

Thumbing through the paper requests, he looked at their ‘Request’ fields, sorting them by scope of project. He’d tackle the most complicated one, first, he thought. He’d barely made it through ordering three of them when he walked clear into the side of a sandy-haired miqo’te who seemed to be in a rush. She stumbled in her gait and fell to the side, though she was able to catch her fall with a certain amount of grace. Svaelfyr’s hold on his papers had been lost at the same time, though, and it wasn’t long before they were both showered in fluttering paper sheets. “In a rush?” The hrothgar asked, obviously slightly perturbed by her elevated pace. He looked at her for a moment, their golden eyes taking stock of one another. He was just as much to blame, though, and it wasn’t long after he spoke that he came to realize as much. It was just a matter of chance that they’d walked into one-another. “I think someone just stole my money purse,” the miqo’te muttered, standing up to look out towards a sea of people moving beyond. She took a deep breath, slumped her shoulders, then seemed to deflate somewhat. The person she’d been following was well beyond her sight by now.

Svaelfyr furrowed his brow, then turned his head towards the avenue where she was headed. Already, he was starting to barrel his way through the crowd. “What did they look like?” He asked with a call over his shoulder.

“No need; I think he’s long gone. What are these papers? Don’t you want to… Pick these back up?” The miqo’te called out to him, eyebrows knitting into a frown, accentuated by the white markings upon her face.

“Huh? No, I asked what he looked like!” Svaelfyr called back, further increasing the distance between them as he dredged his way through the crowd. C’zahra closed her eyes and tried to gather her patience. Scooping up the loose paperwork, she scrambled towards the hrothgar, calling out towards him. “No, just… Seven hells, just take the papers back and… Hey!” Were it not for his unusual gait and build, she might’ve lost track of him too. Holding onto the papers, she slipped through the crowd behind him. “Take your papers back!”

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxiv #ffxiv roleplay #c'zahra sahdi #svaelfyr

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magewraths · 5 years

Text

general ––

name : fenrir bjornolf greyback

birthday / age : born april 3, 1936 ; aged 44

residence : a run-down cabin in the woods in surrey

gender / pronouns : cisgender male, he/him

sexuality : bisexual, biromantic

blood status : half-blood ; werewolf

relationship status : single and ready to mingle

hogwarts house : did not attend hogwarts, but rather durmstrang -- and dropped out in his fourth year

loyalty : the pack the death eaters ; his loyalty is, first and foremost, to his pack. they come before all else. he allies with the death eaters out of convenience, and out of a hope for advancement for their kind. but if the pack were to find themselves in danger at the hands of the death eaters, that’d be a different story.

career : unemployed ; currently bouncing between odd jobs

mbti : ESTJ

moral alignment : neutral evil

character tropes : papa wolf, psycho for hire, black and grey morality, try to catch me fighting dirty, utopia justifies the means, the conman, i did what i had to do

aesthetics –––

old flannels and worn leather boots, running barefoot through the woods, the sound of laughter in the leaves, a hunger you just can’t satiate, swallowing abandonment like blood, seeing the moon turn red, old wounds that you can’t quite place, your own visage on a wanted poster, callouses on your feet and hands, restless and relentless, blood beneath your fingernails

biography –––

One must always wonder if monsters are born, or if they simply become. If they emerge from the cavernous void of creation with teeth bared and claws sharpened for the ripping, or perhaps if they come about like every other sad child with no mothering touch to teach them what it is to be human. No one really knows where monsters come from, and perhaps that is what makes them so terrifying. Or perhaps it is the inevitability that, no matter what we are inclined to believe about the nature of creation, all monsters were children once.

No one knows where he came from, for he will never tell them. There exists a certain mythos about the wolf, the Greyback wolf, whose reputation precedes him, that he simply appeared in the gutters of London one night, dressed in rags and wielding a thigh bone as a club, blood upon his cheeks as if he had bitten into something far too large to chew. He was a feral child who lived between shadows, inhabiting the old, dilapidated flat that had once belonged to a mother and father who had never truly loved each other, had never truly loved him. They had left him, after all; he’d never even known their names. Beggars, they had been, lowlifes who exposed their child to the worst sort of people - but, perhaps they themselves were the true monsters, packing away their things and leaving him to rot when he came home with empty pockets and a profusely bleeding bite-wound upon his shoulders. They had looked upon it with horror, for it spanned the length of his arm, half his chest, as if he’d been plucked up by the ankles and dipped gently into the jaws of the beast. He knew not what it meant - but his parents certainly did. Perhaps he would have hated them less if they had told him what he would become before leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back and the mold-touched bread on the table. Perhaps he would have been less frightened had he known, on the following full moon, why it was he lay upon the floor, captured at the base of the window by a single shaft of moonlight, tearing limb from limb and growing upward, outward.

Perhaps he would not hate them so, had they told him that he would feel more himself as the beast, and that they had left him for becoming who he had always meant to be. Perhaps so. Perhaps. Perhaps if he had torn into them with freshly grown fangs, and not the carriage driver in the park he’d have felt their debts paid.

He was a beastly wraith, inhabiting the streets of London, the gutters and sewers, stealing what he could and taking what he must. There were whispers that the old landlord had died, that the dingy one-room flat in which he’d been born was to be abandoned fully, along with the rest of the building. And so he was truly alone, a lonely and feral monster with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Even as a young boy scrounging for scraps and fumbling halfheartedly through the discovery of magic he knew that mortal flesh was not meant for him. He yearned for the change, for the animal that shared space with the scraps of a human soul deep within his chest. His was a lawless upbringing, a ruleless world which belonged to him and only him. He never questioned why he was made this way, nor who it was that made him; as far as Fenrir was concerned, it was the closest thing to a gift from a divine presence that someone so close to Hell as he would ever receive. A divine gift, but not one without its temptations, its pains, its suffering. But is that not the defining quality of all things divine?

But he possessed magic just as greatly as he possessed monstrosity; the magic was much more clumsy in his hands, secondary to the newfound animalism which drove him to hunt, to stray from the city and travel north, to become more nomad than wraith. Far from the city, Fenrir found himself in foreign territories that did not take as kindly, or as nonchalantly, to abandoned adolescents who took their meat raw and slept with one eye open. Those in smaller towns chased him into the wood with angry words and angrier spells, for they who held magic in the palms of their hands wanted not to allow a monster into the fold. It was much harder to steal from these smaller villages, to pillage from the humble houses, and so he learned to hunt - both as man and beast - to fish, to chop wood, to build. He was a man before adolescence, an ancient soul before all else.

At the age of thirteen, he found himself settled quite comfortably just outside Druskininkai; the Lithuanian people, he’d found, seemed more likely to leave him be than most, when encountered in the wood. Perhaps the folk in the city had heard the howls at night, the cries of pain and splendor with each full moon. Perhaps they knew that to leave their chickens in the cool night air and to lock their doors was a safer homage than to try and engage the monster directly. Or perhaps they knew that to offer him still-living stock to drag back to the shed he’d taken to inhabiting in the woods would be better than to allow him to continue to lecherously observe the girls who played in the wheat fields, watching them as if they were his next meal.

He was not ashamed that he had once tried to make a girl - blonde, with pigtails and freckles like full-moon stars - like him, once. But he was too young, and she too frightened. They’d found her arm first, for he’d done his best to bite her in the same pattern that scarred his shoulder; but she’d jerked from him, screaming, howling, and it had all come apart far too easily. He’d not bothered to wash his ragged trousers in the river until the next morning.

It was here, in this village where his reputation was not quite so terrible yet, that a traveling scholar with ties to the Durmstrang Institute dared approach him, dared speak to the feral boy who knew so little of humans, but so much of humanity. At first, Fenrir wished nothing to do with the man, or with the school of which he spoke. After all, Fenrir had known nothing but a self-sufficient life of nomadic survival, living off the land and off the people intelligent enough not to fight back. At first, he thought it frivolous, silly. But then the scholar had produced a wand from within his traveling cloak and had set him ablaze with curiosity.

But the scholar, this man with ties to the school, also made him bitter. You’ll never be like them, he’d said, But you can pretend to be.

He did not want to pretend, to hide, to lessen his monster for the sake of those who did not understand. The way the man spoke, Fenrir thought that perhaps they, wizards, thought him less for his condition. The man had called it an ‘affliction’; Fenrir knew enough of men, however, to disagree. He had never known anything but this life upon the outskirts, but he knew enough of the world to see the opportunity presented to him. The young boy, all rib-bones and dirty feet, knew survival to be paramount. Survival, freedom; acceptance meant nothing, but power was another story.

He lasted but a few years at Durmstrang, but what little education he received was invaluable. They’d cleaned him up, with pity on their faces and determination in their heavy hand, and had taught him - too little too late - all they could about ‘playing nice’ with the others, about becoming a part of a community which required social skills he had thus been lacking. Of course, what need had Fenrir had for the precarious intricacies of social politics? The children in his year had all come from lily-pure stock, and made no secret of looking down their noses at the raggedy boy who disappeared once a month, who was taught to eat with utensils, who ran in his sleep. They looked down upon him, but he cared little for their opinions - only for the practice they gave him. He learned to duel with words just as quickly as with wands, sliding comfortably into a human facade which would be passable at best to most who scrutinized him. He realized that he was quite good at slipping into the facade, at playing into their brutish perception of him, for his greatest power, it seemed, was being underestimated.

After a time, Fenrir felt as if he had exhausted the use of formal education, and left Durmstrang - though some might argue that he was encouraged to leave. At the age of fifteen, he struck out on his own once more, though this time with the skills, mindset, and determination to change the way in which he cut his monster’s path through the world. Where once he had been aimless, his time amongst the Pureblooded wizards - and their talk of purity, and the desire to reign supreme, and a movement in the name of all of it forming to the south - he now quite liked the idea of a superior regime. But, of course, he did not subscribe to the ideal that Pure magic was might, that it was superior, that his own blood was less than those without magic at all; no - he knew better. He almost felt sorry for them, the misinformed bigots who thought of him as an animal to be tamed, to be collared into too-tight robes and taught party tricks.

No - his kind was superior. And they deserved to be free. He deserved to be free.

And so he returned south with the intention of settling near his once-home, to grow his family (family, he called it; this was almost humanity), to mark themselves as a presence worthy of overtaking the lesser witches and wizards who underestimated the vitriol of the truest predator. Fenrir saw the undeniable benefit in doing so on the precipice of a war; it was a war fought by men in studies, haughty chess-makers who thought one spilled blood better than the other. He observed the brewing storm as he roamed about the countryside throughout England, Scotland, Wales; were he to have a stake in the rearranging of the world order, were he to put his hand into the fire that stretched even as far as Durmstrang, he would need not be alone. And besides, what better gift to bestow upon humanity than that of his secret weapon?

With enough of them, with enough numbers behind him, he could eat the men in their studies, and leave the bones with which his children could pick their teeth. It was a lovely thought; it was purpose.

It was not long before Fenrir had cut enough of a path through the community to be considered both a threat and something to be feared; he took children from their homes and brought them into his fold, where they could not be abandoned, where they could not be left to turn feral in the wilds. He thought it a service to them, knew it to be a gift that they could only repay by acting in his service. But he was determined to treat them in a way much different than his own upbringing; they would be an army as much as a community. A presence to be feared - but soon to be respected. He could not deny the thrill, the utterly bloody satisfaction he felt at growing his number, for violence had always been his bread and butter. And soon others saw it his way - and those who did not were quickly eliminated, for monsters of his breed, no matter their beliefs, belonged to him, with him.

Theirs is a lawless existence, this life of the Greyback pack. His body count has a body count of its own; the pack shares his taste for an almost pirate-like lack of regard for the laws of humanity - or of society, for that matter. Fenrir has made it quite clear that he is neither their father nor their master, but that they owe him the debt of their lives. They know all too well that it would have been all too easy to simply destroy them; many are beholden to failed turnings just as often as they are privy to successful ones. They live upon the fringes; rarely do any but Fenrir mingle with the common folk of the wizarding community. They seem to know not, or care not, Fenrir included, that they are uneducated, that they are anomalies, that they are a third horse in a race run by political players, for Fenrir has instilled it in them that they exist here, in this war, in these circles, to accompany the victors to the other side, where freedom awaits. He tells them only enough of his life, of his struggles, of what he has seen to instill in them a confidence that he can, in fact, see the freedom which lies just beyond the horizon of the war. In the service of he who calls himself the Dark Lord - at which Fenrir scoffs, and the pack laughs - they are allowed to indulge in their intrinsic tastes for blood, for violence, for chaos; they are allowed to be themselves where Fenrir was not, at their age. He ushers them into a new age where they will not have to hide, where they will not be forced to live in the hollows and cracks of a society that does not want them - for this is what the world has owed him from the very beginning.

This is not the becoming of a single monster - this is the heralding of their true and deserved age. A dynasty of monstrous creation, a lifetime of retribution. Monsters will be monsters, after all.

And there is no questioning the nature of monsters or men.

#fenrirbio #intro #there's an ACTUAL bio in here wow #but i cheated bc i had this one on deck kshkjsd

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carlesdandusen-blog · 5 years

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believerindaydreams · 5 years

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sans grace

continuing adventures of the chicken sidequest.

why do I do trauma in second person, huh. Tuco's POV. would not recommend before eating.

You've never wished so earnestly, for someone to insult you.

Because your partner's still your partner, and if this woman gave an inch- mocked your face or slightly thickened accent or your worn boots- you'd take the ell and drag Blondie out of here bodily. It'd be a pleasure to you both, saving him like that.

"Now, we don't have more'n two spoons," Aunt Huldah says. "Joseph stole his when he ran away. Good silver that was, too- what happened to it?"

Both of you remember that, or at least you do; it got pawned in Kansas City the first time you two went broke. Paid for two tickets at a church ice cream social, while you talked over options and took a chance on continuing south. Instead of turning around.

"Lost it," Blondie drawls.

His terse manner seems the only sensible way to deal with a room like this. Giving nothing away means leaving nothing vulnerable, that’s what always made him good at cards.

"Your friend will have to wait until you're done eating, then. Do your own washing up."

On a normal day- on any day before today, you'd have said that watching Blondie eat while you're sitting by hungry would be a special circle of hell all its own- and it looks like this is going to be. If not for the reasons you'd have figured.

"Soup," Aunt Huldah says.

She dips her spoon into the pot, which you've been trying not to look at (trying: utterly failing). The skeletal remains of several chicken carcasses have gone into that, froth and gelatin floating in lukewarm water. An entire uncut onion. A can of peas, some of which are scooped up into the spoon; she blows on them, pops them into her mouth and chews with slow satisfaction. If you saw that look on a hard-bitten poker player, you'd call it vindictive.

It's impossible to call up the memory, from the last time you saw this pose. Angel Eyes stirring bone broth and meditatively chewing on venison, that happened only three nights ago but it won't come to mind. Nothing about that secret, consoling gatehouse will allow itself to be conjured into this barren kitchen; it feels almost blasphemous, even to try.

"Know what, Auntie? I should say a grace."

She turns her attention back towards the pot, then. Doesn't speak.

Blondie puts his hands together and starts to chant in Latin, the familiar old ritual from the priory, and it heartens him wonderfully. His face immobile, voice even, but you'd be a poor hustler if you couldn't read every flicker of his eyes after this many years. So much self-denial coupled to his want for beauty- at least the baroque and curling phrases provide that.

Mischief, that's there too. It takes you a moment to catch on when he slides seamlessly from thanksgiving into the Salve Regina; but only a moment, and then you can't resist joining in. Every word clean and ancient and transcendental, as it would be anywhere. In places much worse than this silly perverted house. A sense of perspective, that's always helped you more than you'd ever care to tell Angel Eyes.

In hac lacrimarum valle, indeed; at least you and Blondie have shared this.

"Soup," Aunt Huldah says, when it's over; and places the bowl in front of her nephew. "Eat up."

The two of you have eaten your share of dubious meals over the years, diner gravy and bad chili and a memorably disastrous vichyssoise that'd left Blondie retching his guts out all over some folk singer's rented tux (huh, now that's a story Angel never needs to hear)- but not like this.

"You know what? He can't eat it. He can't eat anything today, he's fasting. It's very religious."

If the saints in heaven have ever looked down and pronounced blessings, to see a lie as an act of mercy rather than a sin, this time probably counts. The look of relief on Blondie's face is sincere and surprised and therefore almost unbearably provocative, so it's not like you've escaped punishment.

"Catholic, you mean. Turning up his nose at good food, that's unchristian. You want this?"

"No. I mean, I'm hungry, but that's a soup they should bring in a hazmat squad for. It stinks! It's terrible! I wouldn't go near it without a gas mask and a blowtorch, that's what, and to think of all the poor chickens that died for it-"

"You eat dinner with a blowtorch?" She sounds more dumbfounded than anything else.

There have certainly been occasions when somebody missed the point of one of your insults. There's never been one when somebody asked you to better clarify one. "It was a joke. Because setting soup on fire when it's all watery, you know, that's...it's funny."

(Is your partner that tense now because you've mortally insulted his aunt, or because he's going to die of suppressed laughter?)

"I don't think the priesthood's improved you one bit, Joseph. I do not."

(On reflection, you're betting on the latter; else he'd have spoken up then instead of maintaining strangulated silence.)

"I might have something else," Aunt Huldah says. Opens the freezer, makes small complaining noises to herself as she roots through it. "There were these plastic things, Joseph liked them. Wasteful. He picked up so many bad notions from the boys in town."

"Pretty, though," Blondie says almost wistfully; he joins her in the hunt. "Flavoured ice in tubes, they always tasted like summer."

"H'mm. There you go."

The object she slaps down on the kitchen table is a bar so thickly encrusted with ice, it's hard even to tell what it is; but some patient, cautious melting with your lighter works wonders. Cherry-red liquid, that moves as easily beneath your hands as your own blood.

"He always did like those best," Aunt Huldah says. She's smiling even. "I'd save 'em up, for when he'd done something to earn them."

"Uh-huh." God knows you've earned something from this crazy house. You tear the plastic open, place it to your lips-

"Don't do that," Blondie says; as sharply as he's ever warned you off a fight. You desist. "Six cherry ones left in here. Six, when they came in those big packs- and I know it was seven when I left because that'd be one for every day of a week, if I'd ever managed to be good that long- christ. Have you been saving these ever since?"

"Waiting for you to come back. The way I was."

If she would cry, or if he would; if they weren't so stubborn together, maybe they'd have got some kind of reconciliation then-

maybe, if you weren't here and getting the dry heaves about nearly eating a twenty-year old popsicle- because that distracts Blondie's attention immediately.

"The hell are you trying to do? I mean I'm one thing, but- forget you! Tuco. Are you okay?"

He hasn't turned on that full-watt charm since the start of Lent at least, and it's better still when shot through with that slightly panicky edge Blondie gets, when he's on the verge of losing grip of a situation (it'd be a cruel thing to say you have a taste for that, but you do and it happens and anyway he knows you can't help it). You'd like to reassure him if you could work up the breath for it.

It takes a couple minutes before you can. Calming down, going limp even (you've been through far too much today). He holds you with shy but definite fondness, the way he did when you were two runaways just discovering love; and to remember that soft uncomplicated desire again, you'll forgive him this whole evening.

"You know, I've decided to forgive you," a voice floats across your awareness. "For everything. Running off, missing your uncle's funeral, everything."

"For- being what I am?"

"That too."

And now you're just mad.

Because if dear old Aunt Huldah had just given you one more raging insult like she had in that barn, you'd both be out of here and running home to your retired assassin. Who has no sense of ethics whatsoever, but at least knows the difference between a pleasure and a sin.

Instead, your Blondie's got himself enraptured by something that lends him such apparent joy, an abrupt and utter peace- and oh, you rather wish he hadn't.

(Selfish of you, of course.)

#70s au #blonco #the good the bad and the ugly #this isn't the comfort fic one #sorry #that's the next one

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howtohero · 6 years

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A Field Guide for Communicating With Werewolves and Vampires

The world is a weird place. Gosh, how many blog posts have I started like that? Weird. Anyway, blah blah chocolate milk hurricanes. Blah blah blah talking neck warts. In your travels as a superhero you’ll get to talk to a lot of para-folk. You’ll have tea with the Troll king of Salt-Lake City and you’ll play shuffleboard with the Octomen of Madrid. Some of these para-folk will be relatively easy to communicate with, but some others might be a bit trickier. To make life easier for you, we’ve reached out to some friends of the guide to assemble this guide of handy phrases that you might need translated when talking to werewolves and vampires. It should be noted that since most werewolves and vampires were at one point human, they can understand human languages just fine, so this guide is just for you to use to understand what they’re saying back to you. So, without further ado:

Common Werewolf Phrases, Sayings, Practices and What They Mean (with input from professional werewolf: Wolfgang Amawolfus Wolfzart)

Awoooooo: “Ain’t the moon looking mighty fine tonight pardner?”

Awooo: “Gee golly wouldn’t I like to eat a chocolate chip cookie right about now.”

Awooooooooo: “Hey have you seen this here tree! This is the best tree I ever did see!”

Panting while drooling: They’re going to eat you. Play dead. They hate having to work for their meal.

Panting without drooling: They’re psyching themselves up for a werewolf dance off. Play dead. They’re going to need a pre-dance off protein snack.

Howl: “Howdy.” (More like howldy.)

Hooowl: “Do you want to buy a chair? I bought this chair, it’s a really good chair. It’s got a cushion. It’s got arm rests. And it’s only lightly chewed on to boot. See, I bought this chair for myself as a bit of a gift. I’d been having a good day, taking care of all my responsibilities. And I thought, hey, I deserve a chair today. So I bought this really nice chair. But then I got bitten by a werewolf. So I guess you can say my day took a turn. It was a bit of a hairy situation wasn’t it. Heh. So anyway, now that I’m a werewolf I rarely have any cause for sitting. Always on the hunt you know. Eating deer or whatever. But I’ve got this really really nice chair just kind of gathering dust in my house now. So anyway, are you in the market for a chair? It’s a really good one. You seem like you sit. So what d’you say friend? Do you want to buy a chair?”

Hoooooowl: “Hoooooowdy.”

Taking off their shirt: This means that they have seen you and think that you have a better shirt than they do and they want you to give it to them.

Hijacking a spacecraft: They want to go to the moon. Good luck stopping them. (To stop them please take a look at our post on fighting human/animal hybrids.)

Snarling: It’s difficult to give an exact translation but this means they’re bemoaning the current state of their home country’s political system.

Baring their teeth while growling: They want some scratches behind the ear. Or, that they want to go for a dip in the hot tub and they recommend that you vacate the area because their wet hot fur is going to be smelllllly.

Woof!: “Aw lookit me I’m just a big ol’ puppy I promise I won’t eat you.”

Ruh roh: It’s exactly what you think it is. They’re just making a cute reference.

Loud yodeling: This is a werewolf mating call. Don’t go out wearing a fur coat.

Common Vampire Phrases, Sayings, Practices and What They Mean (with input from Draculok, the first vampire)

I vant to suck your blood: This is a very friendly greeting. You have nothing to fear. They’re inviting you in for a hug.

Bleh!: Your breath smells like garlic and this upsets them.

Bleh bleh!: They wish they could look at themselves in mirrors. They just know there’s some flesh caught in their fangs but they just can’t tell where it is!

Bleh bleh bleh: “Dorris you are being just absolutely batty tonight. Ah how you slay me. You’re simply too much Dorris.” (This one probably won’t come up unless your name happens to be Dorris!)

My still-beating heart is as dark as the blackest pits of the abyss from whence man’s greatest sins are born. With my every step I carry with me the unbearable weight of my past and unfathomable pain of the actions I know I must commit. Every night I awaken to the screams that rattle inside my head and when the sun rises I embrace the cold sleep of my crypt. You can never understand me, mere mortal, and so, you can never judge me: They really need to go to the bathroom but are too embarrassed to just come out and say it.

Bleh bleh bleh bleh: They saw a really cool cloud but unfortunately do not possess the vocabulary to properly describe it. Just go outside and look for any cool clouds.

Sparkling: They’re just trying to add some dazzle to the world. I’m proud of them.

Hi we’re “Fangry and Confused” and we put the amp in the “vampire”: The sickest band in all of history is about to explode your tiny minds and shred your stupid ears.

One... two... three ah! ah! ah!: They’re counting. They really just think math is hilarious. Those vampires are so kooky.

I’ve got to Drac out of here: This is just nonsense new age vampire slang. I’ve no idea what it means. I assume they’re paying homage to me? The greatest of vampires? Or maybe they’re just saying “good bye”? Honestly I’m at just as big of a loss as you are my tasty mortal friends.

Loud bat shrieks (bat mode): “Help! I’ve no idea how to actually fly! Why can’t I see anything! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! Being a bat is so stressful!!!!!!!!”

Loud bat shrieks (vampire mode): “I’m done being social for the day everybody please just file into the walk in freezer and we shall reconvene when I awaken!”

Hissing at sunlight: These pasty nerds can’t deal with the sunlight. This isn’t a genetic thing. I, the first vampire, can walk in the sunlight no problem.

Draping their cape over their face dramatically: They’ve got bad acne and don’t want anybody to see their face.

Literally sucking the blood out of your neck: Uh... Well, take it as a compliment. You must have very nice blood. It was nice knowing you. There’s like a 50/50 chance that you’ll end up becoming a vampire too so welcome to the family. You don’t need this silly guide anymore that’s for sure. (This one’s actually a bold faced lie. You still need this silly guide! You will always need this silly guide!)

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aticklishtem · 7 years

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Something to Laugh About

((welp so~ I’m pretty new to writing this kinda thing but this Concept wouldn’t leave me alone, so I decided to give it a shot and yeah, maybe someone else will also enjoy this self indulgent trash pile, idk \o/ any kind of feedback is always welcome!!))

For a dame who made, employed, lived in and was even made out of so much candy, that Baroness Von Bon Bon could be an awful sourpuss.

In fact, Beppi wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her truly smile, and it sure wasn’t for lack of trying. Nothing filled his heart with more joy than a genuine, honest-to-goodness smile - the kids whose faces lit up with excitement when he handed them another of his balloon animal menagerie, the crowds who came by his tent to watch him willingly make a fool of himself, his fellow carnival workers and isle-dwellers, he treasured every single smirk, chuckle, giggle and reluctant grimace. Way back before he’d so much as dabbed the first lick of paint on his nose, Beppi had made it his mission to bring a smile to the faces of all of Inkwell, and he was proud to say that so far he had an almost perfect track record. Almost.

The Baroness’ place was over the other side of town, but the isle was small and even she had to venture outside to peddle her wares, so Beppi and Bon Bon had crossed paths plenty. Often enough that it seemed like he’d tried everything - his best jokes, his worst jokes, the pie gag, the seltzer, the banana peel, even his killer impressions of Djimmi and Wally and Grim and anyone else he could think of - to see her lips so much as twitch, but she still just looked at him like he was a piece of taffy stuck to her shoe.

Beppi wasn’t quite as much of a fool as he acted - he knew she fancied herself above him, above all of their colourful corner of carnival. She turned her nose up at their hot dogs and candy corn, declaring that her confectioneries were made with only the finest ingredients Inkwell had to offer, and she couldn’t imagine why anyone would opt to shovel all that greasy garbage down their throat instead. But he hadn’t gotten to where he was by giving up easy - it was that dogged determination that had coaxed chuckles out of some of Inkwell’s grumpiest inhabitants, after all. And it would’ve been too tragic just to let them all carry on their way, stomping through town so sour-faced: he couldn’t imagine anything worse than a life of stony silence. Laughter was Beppi’s lifeblood, long before it had been his living; it filled him up, made him feel big and shiny and swell like a balloon (metaphorically and sometimes literally) until he could just about burst, in the best way. He wanted - no, he needed to spread the joy all over town, all over Inkwell, every way he knew how, and remain hopeful that it’d prove just as infectious as it was irresistible, even for the sourest of pusses.

He was optimistic for another day of sunshine and smiles, during a brief break in the afternoon’s frivolities to relax under the shade of one of the colourful parasols in the square. Beppi had been in the middle of telling Djimmi all about yesterday’s unfortunate yet hilarious incident involving an overzealous balloon giraffe and a fruit hat when Bon Bon shimmied into view.

Without missing a beat, he broke off into a comical double take, and then figured he might just as well fall out of his chair in shock that the esteemed Baroness had seen fit to grace them with her presence. Djimmi just shook his head fondly, long used to his friend’s antics; Bon Bon opted to ignore Beppi entirely as she and Djimmi exchanged polite greetings, simply manoeuvre around him like a colourful puddle as she took the chair on the other side.

Typically tough crowd, but Beppi was prepared for that - and he had a good feeling about today, the fact that Bon Bon had willingly descended from her fancy castle to mingle with the common folk suggesting she might be in a good mood, or at least not quite as much of a sourball as usual. If he could pull just the right rib-tickler out of his hat, maybe she’d even -

Hot dawg - Beppi had to glance up to check if someone hadn’t lobbed a lightbulb right over his head as he scrambled back upright, because had he just been hit with a doozy of an idea.

“Hey, hey, Bonnie.” Beppi leaned in closer to her, his usual ear-to-ear grin turning just a tad more mischievous than usual as he nudged at her elbow. “Gotta question for ya.”

Bon Bon turned to him with a long-suffering sigh, her eyebrows knitting together as though it pained her even to look at him. “What do you want? And don’t call me that.”

“My sincerest of apologies, Baroness.” Beppi just managed to resist putting on his snootiest voice in response as he bowed and tipped his hat - he was happy to humour her this time, since her hoity-toity act would only make his eventual victory all the sweeter. “Aaaanyway. How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?”

“I neither know, not care to -“

“Ten-tickles!” he popped the punchline gleefully, sliding an arm around her waist and squeezing before she could get away. “One!” He felt her jump a little at the unexpected contact, but no giggles followed; undeterred, he kept it up, searching for a sweet spot with a few pokes to her ribs. “Two!” Still nothing: Bon Bon was just staring at him like he was doing something utterly ridiculous - which, in all (fun)fairness, was kinda what he was always doing. But this was getting weird, and not the fun kind - was this woman made of rock candy? “Three..?” Faltering for just a moment, he scribbled his fingers across her midsection and finally she reacted - but not how Beppi had hoped, as she seized his wrist and pushed him roughly away.

“Get off! What in the world do you think you’re…” Bon Bon’s big doe eyes widened even further, her eyebrows shooting up as realisation dawned. “Oh, I see - you were trying to tickle me, weren’t you?” Before Beppi could protest his innocence, she scoffed, tossing her chocolate curls. “Tough luck, Chuckles - you won’t get me to crack with such a cheap trick. Hmm, but I wonder…” Something almost in the vicinity of a smile slowly spread across her face, and it was more than a little unsettling, sharp as the glimmer of an idea in her eye as she glanced Beppi up and down, drumming her dainty fingers on the tabletop, and - whoops, he might’ve bitten off a tad more than he could chew after all. “Perhaps someone else around here just might?”

“Ah - heh…” A nervous chuckle escaped as Beppi edged slowly away from her, until his back bumped against Djimmi’s broad chest and he pounced on the potential distraction. “Oooh - you talking about Djimbo here? He’s plenty ticklish - just watch this…”

Before he could attack, though, two strong arms shot out and grasped his noodly ones. Beppi let out an outraged squawk of protest as Djimmi effortlessly held him captive. “Hey - what gives…?”

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Djimmi replied with a shrug and such a grand-piano grin Beppi was surprised his pants didn’t burst into flame, “but, as karma dictates, what goes around…”

“Well said.” Bon Bon nodded, her gaze positively predatory now as it lingered on Beppi’s now-compromising position; a bundle of nervous butterflies fluttered in his belly as she took a few steps closer. “I’m glad to hear someone around here has some respect - putting your greasy paws all over royalty like that? Why, I could have you executed. But…” She paused, actually licking her candy-heart lips as they twisted into a sadistic smirk, and with the slightest wiggle of her fingers Beppi knew he was done for. “I can think of something more fun.”

“N-nohohow, Bonnie, no need to be too hasteeheeheehee…!” Giggles spilled out the moment she spidered her fingers up his sides, barely touching him yet somehow unbearable all at once.

“Isn’t it funny,” Bon Bon purred, her sugary teasing sing-song only intensifying the torture, “how one who so desperately chases the laughter of others can be so easily reduced to such a giggly mess himself?” As if to prove her point, she dug right into his vulnerable underarms, and Beppi’s laughter pitched; with Djimmi holding him just a couple inches off the ground, he could do nothing but cackle helplessly. “It’s kind of cute, though. I might even prefer you like this, laughing too much to prattle on with your pitiful excuse for comedy.”

Beppi might’ve felt himself blushing even redder under his makeup at that last remark, if he could focus on anything other than her wicked fingers as they danced down across his ribs. “We may even have a new attraction!” she continued cheerfully, pausing to squeeze at his hips a few times; he could feel the tips of her nails through her silky gloves and his thin suit, digging in just enough to drive Beppi loopy as the teasing circles she was now tracing around his stomach. “Forget the dunk tank - how many coins for a go on this silly, terribly ticklish clown?”

“Bohohohon, nohoho - nohohot there!”

“Hmm? Not here? But that’s right where the target is!” Bon Bon just sped up, drawing faster and smaller circles until without any warning, she dug one of her devious digits right into his bellybutton; Beppi howled, writhing and bucking uselessly in Djimmi’s iron grip in a vain attempt to escape. “Oooh, look at that, I believe I just hit the bullseye! Where’s my prize?”

She wiggled away until Beppi was honking and wheezing like old Charlie, unable to even beg her for mercy or at least to think of his makeup, which was bound to be in ruins from the tears starting to roll down his cheeks. So this was how it ended - tickled to death by a candy lady. Well, he did always say to always leave ‘em laughing…

“Alright, now, Baroness, I think he’s learned his lesson,” Djimmi’s deep voice intoned, as he dropped Beppi back on his feet, Bon Bon finally ceased her attack - sure, she’d listen to him - and he gasped in relief, gulping in sweet lungfuls of air as he flopped back into Djimmi’s arms in a giggly heap, before remembering that he was a dirty traitor. “We don’t want the poor fella to literally laugh his head off.” He grinned, apparently unconcerned by Beppi’s best wounded glare. “It’s been known to happen.”

“That,” Beppi eventually managed to say, pointing an accusing finger at the both of them, “was cruel. And unusual.”

Bon Bon tittered, smoothing down her dress. “Oh dear, funny boy, was I too much for you? Can’t even take what you attempt to dish out? Well, I’d best be taking a powder anyway - time is candy, fellas.” She caught Beppi’s eye as she rose to her feet and shot him a sly wink, and his heart might’ve done a tiny somersault when she fluttered her fingers at them. “Let’s do this again sometime, shall we?”

She turned to saunter back off to her candy land, leaving Beppi and Djimmi to sit/float under the parasol in silence. Well, he’d better get used to it, because Beppi was definitely never speaking to him again. Not a word, not for the rest of their days, no matter how much he begged or -

“Djimbo.” Whoopsie - he’d just have to ignore him forever later, as he was already leaning over to nudge him repeatedly in the side. “D’ja-hear that? Bonnie thinks I’m cute.”

Djimmi chuckled indulgently, taking a puff of his pipe. “Perhaps you should be more careful how you address the Baroness,” he pointed out, eyes twinkling with gentle amusement, “lest you find yourself in another such ticklish predicament.”

Beppi shuddered dramatically, but his goofy grin only grew wider - because, well, Bon Bon had been smiling when she’d been tickling him to pieces. More than he’d ever seen her before, so maybe his plan hadn’t backfired quite as spectacularly as it might seem.

Maybe he wouldn’t mind letting her get the last laugh every once in a while, after all.

#tickling #tickle fic #tickle fanfic #cuphead tickling #slightly candyclown? you can interpret it however #i have No Clue how to tag this so i'll just #leave it here with the rest of the fire #tem writes #my fic

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drferox · 7 years

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20 Questions with Dr Ferox #23

Whelp, time for another blast of 20 questions and comments from the inbox. If you were brave enough to use your username I’ve tried to tag you (Thanks Tumblr) but if you were on anon, you’ll have to look yourself.

Would you folks be interested in me answering these sort of short questions in a video instead? Let me know in the replies. Now here we go!

Anonymous said: do u play mobile games on your phone, like animal crossing pocket camp? :O

No, should I? I haven't heard much about it.

@trisaratops45 said: Dr. Ferox, First off I just started following your blog and love it! I'm stuck using mobile so I can't see your faq information. I was just wondering if the clinic you work at sees any exotic or pocket pets? Of so what is your favorite to see and treat? Thank you!

Welcome! We don't see a huge amount of exotics at my clinic, we're not well set up for them, but ferrets are probably my favorites.

Anonymous said: do you follow any medblr blogs? and if you do, are you ever like 'thank goodness i don't have to deal with that' or 'man i wish it was that easy'? question tax: what is your favorite depiction of dragons from fantasy media

I actually had to go check which blogs I was following. No active medblr blogs in the list anyway. I often see real clients, in the flesh, and think 'Im glad i don't have to deal with that', especially when they describe to me their own gross medical problems as though I want to know exactly what's coming out of their orifices. All dragons are good dragons. I don't think i could pick a favorite.

@the-noble-banana said: What style of nail clippers are best for trimming a cat's claws?

Whatever you're comfortable with. I like these ones

Anonymous said: Do dogs get acne? Is that a thing? Just curious! Question tax: if you could shoot something out of your finger, what would it be?

They can get comedones with certain hormonal conditions (black heads) and can get pimple-like lesions with skin infections. I would shoot icy cold water out of my fingers. Great for hot days, and for stupid faces.

Anonymous said: Do you typically bandage and cover amputations? At the vet I worked at (I was only kennel so everything I saw was in passing) every animal who had limb amputation left after a day or two with the incision fully bandaged. My dog had her hind leg amputated and the vet (different one) had her in and out in under three hours and sent her home unbandage. Just out of curiosity is it case by case that you decide to bandage? Gave my mom a little heart attack seeing her all bloody and swollen

We might but a light dressing over them, but in an amputation of anything more than a toe there's often not much to bandage. Limb amputations are typically very high up the limb in dogs and cats and it's hard to bandage something in that position. Also, sometimes dogs eat the dressing.

@crimsonrose95 said: I'm not vet med, but I am into chemistry and physical sciences and the ask talking about chemistry being inconsistent is so weird a thought to me. Biology is way less consistent than chemistry like chemistry is mostly math with elements and compounds while biology is mostly names. It's just really interesting how most people start to think a science they don't like and have trouble in is just the science being completely inconsistent to them. Me included.

I get what you mean. Chemistry has a fairly distinct set of rules, even if they're rules you've not encountered outide of chemistry before. I was never a fan of physics, but it is consistent. Biology likes to bend rules. Life finds a way.

Anonymous said: Why does my cat yell when I try to use the bathroom alone? Question tax: what's your favorite thing about Australia?

Possibly he thinks you need moral support? Or that there's demons in there. My favorite thing about Australia is our universal healthcare system and gun control.

@foxtrottarts said: How common is dewclaw removal in dogs, and what are the benefits/downsides?

Hind dewclaw removal is relatively common at the time of deseing, if they're the sort that flop all over the place and lack a boney attachment. Front dewclaws are usually left, unless removed for a medical reason. I've written about it before here. https://drferox.tumblr.com/search/dewclaw

Anonymous said: Can a dog still have the MDR1 gene if they have never reacted to those drugs in the past (lets says a dog that has regular flea prevention of selemectin)

If the dog has only had a popular flea product containing selamectin but has never had ivermectin, yes they could still have it. MDR1 dogs typically don't react to that product, nor do they react to the annual heartworm injection.

Anonymous said: Hello, I had a question as google only takes me but so far, and the results were iffy at best since it's difficult to locate a vet or someone in a position who would know the answer. How much of a danger is animal or human saliva to pet birds? Some people say kissing the bird, or having another pet such as a dog lick/groom them is an issue, but I'm just lost on if any is true, and would love to find the answer. Thanks a ton in advance since it's all pretty confusing.

It is a potential issue. Carnivore saliva contains many bacterial species that can be devastating to birds or other mammals even through relatively small abrasions. Carnivores should not be permitted to interact with prey species and birds. Cats are especially risky because they're so pointy and because they effectively coat themselves in saliva when grooming. You can find some more information here.

Anonymous said: Hi Dr. Ferox, we recently had to put our cat down due to health issues. We're pretty sure he had FIP as the last week of his life he had every symptom but one. A website we saw said the virus can live in the environment for weeks afterwards and I was wondering if you knew any sort of approximate time. We aren't ready for another cat yet but occasionally foster a kitten and don't want to bring one into the house and have it get sick

I typically reccomnd 4 months, and replacing bedding, litter trays and food dishes. While you are probably fine with 3 months, given the incurable and devestating nature of FIP (Feline Infection Peritonitis) I prefer to err on the side of caution.

@kumoi-no-hikari said: I got a couple rats a few months ago and the lady I bought them from mentioned that most vets don't know much about rats and will probably do more harm than good unless the situation is extreme. Is that true? They haven't had any issues, but I'm worried about traumatizing them or wasting money if they ever have a problem.

Some vets will certainly be better equiped or more interested in treating rats than others, but you'll only know if you call around and ask them. If they're not keen on seeing rats, they might know somebody who is. I think saying 'most vets don't know X' is unfair when you look at the diversity of vets in the world. Call around, plan for the worst ahead of time.

Anonymous said: Do you know how taxidermy works? I plan this route for my cat when she's passes, do I have to contact them before the body stiffens or position her first?

No idea. But I would contact them well in advance incase they have waiting lists or something. But I would think very carefully about whether taxidermy of a pet is something you definitely want.

Anonymous said: Hey there! What’s your favorite brand of stethoscope?

The Littman is what I use and have been very happy with my Classic II.

Anonymous said:Our poodle mix loved grabbing a mouthful of food then running to the living room to eat it - not necessarily to be near us, he just would eat over carpet. Sometimes we'd rearrange the living room so it wasn't a direct shot from the dining room and he'd still run around the furniture to eat there. He also once pooped one piece on each stair when we were gone all day for some unfathomable reason.

There is so much that could be going on there, but since you didn't seem to ask a question I'm not sure what you'd like me to say.

Anonymous said: On the topic if dog eating things they shouldn't. A shitzu swallowed the end of a large chew bone whole and when she puked It up it was about the size of my fist.

Little dogs often seem to overestimate what they can safely eat. Westies seem to be the worst for this though, and are a common breed to see for stuff getting stuck in their oesophagus.

Anonymous said: About people thinking vets are scammers, my family was so bad with this when I was a child. I remember I had a sick kitten, I was around 8, it had some lung issues and I begged and cried to vet it and my dad said "pray really really really hard to God every hour, and maybe he'll bring a miracle!" and the cat died the next day :( I get so LIVID when people refuse taking their pets to vets for stuff that cannot wait. Makes me wanna slap those people senseless!

Your Dad sounds like a lazy asshole and a cheapskate. Even if god existed, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate being dialed up for a miracle like a pizza delivery.

Anonymous said: i just wanted to tell you that i recently adopted an older orange tabby cat (dsh) and he is large. like not just fat (which we are working on), but unusually tall and long. like. maine coon size. he has so far used his size to swipe bacon off a kitchen counter and remain an effective roadblock. he's very calm and sweet, i love my big fat baby.

Congratulations on your new addition! I'm sure your big orange boy loves you back too.

@mise-en--place said: Thought you might appreciate this. We got records on a cat today and on a previous visit they stated; "BCS 5/9. Cat appears to be about 7lbs through the gloves and towel." We got a good laugh, cat was actually quite calm for her visit.

I received a history for my old cat Dippa who had once very badly bitten this other vet that only said "Appears healthy in cage. Vaccinated in cage. Dr Ferox is welcome to come and perform a dental on her own cat any time she likes." I took that to mean "I'm not touching this hellbeast. You deal with her."

#20 questions #dr ferox #veterinarian #vetblr #animal death #death #pet death #taxidermy

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purkinje-effect · 4 years

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If You Eat Too Much of the Truth at Once, You May Die of the Truth.

Ours is the Kingdom, Chapter 5. Go to previous. TWs: Questionable chem use, abduction, cannibalism themes, weird bastardizations of religious quotations, and to put it complexly... ‘Choly being weird as usual.

____________________

It had been trying, to sneak into the Wild West themed park. All five had been built fortified by a hundred-foot-high reinforced concrete wall, with only two entry points each. Though it was likely of all five parks, August could at least confirm the Operators who had moved into the Dry Rock Gulch staunchly guarded both entry points. Normally, he’d stroll right in and immediately commence his hunting day, but now he had the Operators to contend with. One or two, he could pick off on his own. But if they managed to alert the rest, he’d surely get mowed down by their 7.62 rifles, miniguns, and only Atom knew what else.

When he couldn’t simply enter the South gate, he rounded the wall clockwise looking for a weak point or opening they might not have known to guard or seal up, but he found none despite over two centuries of weathering, a paradoxical testament to the park’s craftsmanship. At the East gate he distracted the guards by tossing a pebble in the opposite direction of where he needed to go, then slipped behind one of them and sprinted up the nearest fiberglass rock face to his right, and out of sight. The Gulch wasn’t just encircled by walls, but also around the majority of its walls by faux-sandstone mountains. He climbed comfortably along the fiberglass crags, hidden between it and the wall, past the building for the mine-cart roller coaster, past a glimpse of the Ol’ Sugartop tower.

He rounded all the way behind Doc Phosphate’s, to perch atop the ten-foot tall section of wall which ran behind it and its prop graveyard, scrutinizing the slip of ancient paper Sierra had given him. Each of the ten bottlecap characters came with its own couplet.

This Hidden Cappy is close to the ground. Look in the place where tombstones are found!

To find the next Cappy, you'll have to be bold, and search where Mad Mulligan pans for gold.

Wearing the Cappy Glasses, he skimmed the fake graveyard below him. He hopped down silently when he caught sight of his second Hidden Cappy. His catskill moccasins absorbed any impact of his nearly seven-foot body rejoining gravity which his agility did not. He crouched behind the grave marker props, a mingling of headstones and wooden crosses. The technological manufacturing process built into the lenses brought out hidden details in the otherwise subtly painted Cappy. The first, located near one of Nuka-Town USA’s bathrooms, had been a G... and now he had the letter E as well. As he penciled the new answer in its relative margin, he wondered if they must spell something.

There were two Cappys in Dry Rock Gulch. The other couplet mentioned Mad Mulligan. He exhaled hard, his lips a thin, desolate line despite the intensity of his gaze. He glanced up to the Protectron in a cowboy hat across the way.

He stood in the shadow of the tree in the fake graveyard, surveying the activity of the Gulch’s Main Street. Between his point of entry and his current position, he had encountered neither raider nor wildlife. To his left stood Doc Phosphate’s, and it was where the Operators had all flocked to. There couldn’t be more than fifty in the park, from his estimate, but he could guess easily twenty of them lounged about in the watering hole. Of course they did. What else was there to do here to entertain oneself, if they’d killed off all the fauna, and the attractions were all at least partly destroyed?

After some time, he approached the robot at a caution. It guarded a cattle pen which should not have been empty.

“Gee, pard’ner,” the Protectron chirped dully. “I could use the help of a depu’tee. Have you seen my Giddyup Buttercups?”

Noticing a few foot long pieces of robotics with peeling yellow paint, August glanced again to the pen. It wasn’t wholly empty, after all, yet this was somehow worse.

He’d broken down his Gulch communes to routine, and usually, he started with the Giddyup Kid as he did now. Before the war, three robots in the Gulch had been programmed to provide a piece of a safe combination when presented with evidence the patron had fulfilled a task for it; and even to this day, the combination changed daily, and the robots could provide their pieces of it. The Giddyup Kid asked people to ‘round up’ the various dog-sized robotic ponies it was named for, and corral them all to its pen. In years prior, August had simply left the ponies in place every time, to limit the need to repeat the chore. But now, he couldn’t just perform the task again--he outright couldn’t perform the task at all.

“From the look of it, a varmint must have got them.” He did his best to mirror their speech mannerisms, both out of humor and routine. “Giddyup Kid, you usually ask me to find them, but they’re not missing. Would I be able to ply you to just... let me have the piece of your safe combination today?”

“I suppose it would do no harm.” It printed a thin ticket from its barrel-chest and presented it for him to tear off himself. “You’re one of my finest deputies. I’d reckon it were those hooligans holed up in... Mad! Mulligan’s! Mine!... but tain’t heard a peep from ‘em for months!” When it had spoken the name of the attraction, it alternated briefly from its stuttered Protectron chirping to a recording with a punctuated, twangy fake-Southern drawl. “Don’t suppose I could convince ya not ta let this detract from your satisfaction of... Nuka-World!”

“I promise. I get the feeling I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

“Attractions galore!” it declared happily. “Get them rascals for me!”

He stepped into the Saloon, hoping that if he put on blinders and focused only on the robotic barkeep, the patrons would be too drunk to pay him any mind. He stood at the bar to await the robot’s attention. Experiencing the restoration of power to the park up close kept him ever distracted, habituated by the impulse to collect information from strange light sources.

“Howdy, depu-tee!” Doc Phosphate pivoted in place to greet him, polishing a glass with a rag and its pincers. “We’re shorthanded as ever. Think you could water down a few folks for me? I’ll give ya a piece of the safe combination as a reward.”

“Something tells me you’ve got living patrons on the order list this time,” he mumbled, at a hush.

“Oh, no! Cain’t be goin’ on rememberin’ all that now! You’re one of my finest deputies. Here, two... Nuka-Cola Dark~!... for... Leroy Doyle... and... The Mistress of Mystery. And a... Nuka-Cola Quantum... for... Melancholy.”

Great, he thought to himself, looking over his shoulder at the various raiders, as the robot produced the three bottles on a tray for him. I doubt any of these are their real names.

“Leroy... is the ginger fella by the window, ...The Mistress of Mystery... is feedin’ the jukebox, and ...Melancholy... I believe you’ll find that one upstairs.”

His head perked up from his mesmerization in the looping halogen lights of the music machine, and he looked to Doc with a stunned pleasantry.

“That was most useful.”

“Now get a’crackin’ so’s you can crack that safe!”

He didn’t bother with the tray, carrying the bottles easily with their necks between his fingers. He popped the cap off one with his thumb-claw and slipped it on the table without its recipient detecting him, then followed through to the next in kind atop the jukebox. He climbed the stairs with the Cherenkov-glowing bottle of Quantum in hand, and weighed which of the three raiders on the second story of the Saloon looked thirstiest. He lingered in the moment, trying to get a good look at the Operator with a messy black undercut ponytail, crescent shaped eyeglasses, and a chocolate gold-brocade suit. Moreso than their androgyny, their lack of armor got August’s attention. Briefly caught up in a moment of Craving at how potentially easy a mark this Operator might be, an already intoxicated Melancholy glanced dumbly up at him. They noticed the drink’s arrival and their jaw dropped at the sight of him, and they scrambled in place in an attempt to get distance.

When the table and chair clattered, August scattered to the shadows and prayed those nearby gawked at Melancholy and didn’t notice him pressed into the corner. Melancholy eventually settled back down a bit, letting out a tepid chuckle when the next table over threw a wadded up park map at them. They straightened in their seat, gripping the bottle with one fist on the table, the other with a shot glass.

“Hey...” the Operator whispered, hopeful at best that August remained nearby, “heEy come back. I don’t bite.”

Against his better judgment, he eventually relented, sitting opposite the raider, who’d already poured a shot of the pale blue beverage and knocked it back trying to drown out the stress of the encounter. Melancholy noticed he’d revealed himself, and their cataracted eyes trailed up over their eyeglasses, swooning dreadfully over August’s height even when seated.

“I do. But I suppose that’s beside the point.” August leaned on the table. “Now, I know the Operator I delivered a drink to downstairs isn’t actually named The Mistress of Mystery. Are you actually named Melancholy?”

“Melancholy’s what I go by, yes,” they uttered. August couldn’t tell if Melancholy were more impressed or horrified to be in his presence. “Who are you, anyway? And how did you get in this park? I can tell you aren’t a raider. Shouldn’t you be back in Town?”

August glanced at them expressionlessly a moment before smiling.

“I, too, have several names. And I’m here to deliver some drinks for Doc Phosphate.”

“Why were you deliv... Waiiiit........ What do you want with... Mad! Mulligan’s! Mine?” They let out a ludicrous giggle, mocking the robots’ scripted affect.

“Have you seen any Bloodworms lately?”

He eyed Melancholy’s Pip-Boy, but said nothing. Operators didn’t have those.

“The fuck’s a Bloodworm!” Melancholy processed a moment and self-modulated, pouring a second shot of Quantum. “Pardon my language. You’re a clergyman. A very... laArge clergyman. Saaay, you know a Handy like my Angel could deliver all the drinks for everybody, and you wouldn’t have to lift a finger! A... shapely... claw-tipped... finger...”

All the while, August had fidgeted with one of the caps he’d kept from his deliveries, poorly concealing a smirk, and a little sleight of hand, the more Melancholy prattled on. With them caught up in the look of him, he easily leaned forward and plunked it into their shot glass. The hope was, that Melancholy would be more interested in keeping the money than annoyed by something foreign in their drink. True to expectation, their face screwed up, but they didn’t forfeit the alcoholic drink, downing it and shaking out the cap to keep it themselves.

“Hardly necessary at this point.”

“Not every day the person who ordered the drink gets tipped,” they groused, only to soften, pocketing the cap. “You have a glass? I’ll split it with you.”

It took a moment for August to un-stick, not expecting an Operator to share, let alone with a stranger.

“I, oh. Oh, thank you, if you’d like.” He produced a souvenir shot glass and took what to Melancholy resembled a mere thimbleful, then a second. The Operator’s blood alcohol levels had to be a solid integer, with their coordination and slurring. This was a little too easy. “Would you be so kind as to escort me around town, Melancholy? Things have changed quite a bit since I was here last.”

“How can I turn down such a massive man of the cloth? Of course!” Melancholy offered August a third, and when the Child declined, the Operator polished it off straight from the bottle, forgoing the ceremoniousness of glassware after August had capped him. They left the bottle on the table as they stood, leveraging themselves upright with a chain-wrapped cane. “Just let me tell Angel where we’re going, sooo it doesn’t worry.”

“Oh, Sir! I could have helped you down the stairs,” the heavily modified Mister Handy robot insisted, approaching as they hit the last few stairs. “I do apologize for getting so swept up in, well, sweeping up the place. Your new compatriots make quite a mess.”

“It’s quite all right. You can stay around here, if you want. I made another friend, and he wants me to show him around! We’ll be back before you know it.”

“I’m only borrowing him,” August at last deduced, with a wink for the robot.

“Do be safe. And stay away from the Nuka-Mixers without my supervision, if you would! You remember what happened last time!”

“Yes, Angel.” Melancholy mumbled something offhand under his breath, but August couldn’t make sense of it.

On their way out, August retrieved the second third of the combination from the barkeep Protectron. Head askew, he watched Melancholy amble on ahead of him a few paces down Main Street. The cane wasn’t just for show, and from the faint clipping sound and unusual angle of Operator’s methodical gait, he could tell his initial assessment of a lack of armor had been false--it was simply of a type worn beneath the clothing, rather than atop it. And yet, the Pip-Boy, and the Mister Handy. It was a Pip-Boy, right, even when worn on the right arm? Melancholy had to have been very new to the outfit, not to have recognized August by now, and not to have known what a Bloodworm was. What could this middle aged milquetoast possibly be providing the Operators?

“Here, pastor guy. Next one’s on me.” Melancholy drew the keyprong from his Pip-Boy and connected it to the last Protectron August needed to see, then navigated various menus, flourishing the gloved fingers of his electronics arm all the while. “It’s easy, really. Just a little Mark-V interface markup, and...” He clicked his tongue as the ticker-tape began to print.

Oh. Maybe he was providing a lot of whatever that was. ...Drunk.

“I appreciate you sparing me the wasted bullet, but the hard part is going to be getting to the safe itself.”

“Why? Where is it?”

“The Theatre.”

Melancholy squinted at him as he put up his keyprong, and One-Eyed Ike booted back up.

“...Why’s that hard.”

“Your associates aren’t fond of me, to put it simply. I hate to trouble you, with all you’ve already done, but could you...?”

“Stay put.” He wagged a finger at August. “I promise not to get distracted. They’re just in there doing drunk improv... and they’re awful!”

August favored the shadows of One-Eyed Ike’s blacksmith barn while he waited. His stomach gurgled. Of course two blood packs wouldn’t have sated him, after fasting two days before traveling to Nuka-World. He rubbed at his wild sideburns, only to remember he hadn’t taken off the Cappy Glasses all this time. He returned them to their secure compartment in his Marine armor leg, simply to keep them safe. He wasn’t sure how many pair remained in tact throughout the park now, or how to find them if he broke or lost these.

Melancholy tried to get a jump on August, but the Child heard him at a hundred feet away with that cane, and whatever hinges hooked together the parts of his under-armor. August let him think he startled him, garnering a drunken grin from the Operator.

“Who’s ready to go on a ride that will likely never work again!”

“It doesn’t have to work to provide me what I need.”

They walked over two rows, to Mad Mulligan’s Mine-Cart Coaster. The venue once had housed a brief cue outside, and August supposed the game of it was, that once someone had obtained the key to the building, they could at their discretion let whoever they wanted to in of those waiting outside, and wreak havoc within. Melancholy insisted upon opening the door for them, and letting him in, again with the sleazy grin.

“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t invite any of your friends along.”

“They’re not my friends.” Melancholy tugged at the key, but it wouldn’t budge. “They’re business associates, nothing more. Now that the Geek’s expanded the outfits into the parks, Dry Rock Gulch is... kind of like a nonstop office party, I guess? Why won’t the--”

“--That’s normal,” August snipped finally. He sighed and smiled, trying to get him to shut the door and leave it. “That’s normal. It’s so you have to redo the tasks in order to ride the ride again. And it kept people from passing the key down the line indefinitely throughout the day. Sheriff Eagle will come by shortly to retrieve it. The safe combination resets once the key is removed.”

“Then I guess we’d better do everything in one pass, that we need to, if you’re trying to avoid the Operators from noticing you. Or whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish.”

August this time led the way, no longer interested in playing the naive patsy now that the two of them were alone. The gift shop to the left disinterested him, so he drew his new Disciples’ knife and guided Melancholy into the adventure cave tunnel which prefaced the ride itself.

“Are you sure you don’t know what a Bloodworm is?” He didn’t look back as he asked.

“No, but I sure would like to. I fancy myself something of an entomologist.”

“Really, now. Never would think I’d have something in common with a raider. Much of my work comes from studying insects.”

“I’m not a raider, I said. I’m... an opportunist. My other rackets washed out all at once a few months ago, and I’ve got history with both Geek and Hancock. When I heard they’d relocated out here to set Nuka-World straight, I didn’t even hesitate to flock out here all the way from Goodneighbor. This place has always been a massive trader hub, from what I hear.”

Various animatronics and cutouts had been set up throughout the attraction, along with buildings and artificial waterways, to simulate various aspects of Wild West life. It almost disgusted him when he came down this way, just because he knew things like a gold panning shack didn’t belong inside something that people called a mine.

“...What about the Giddyup Kid’s Buttercups? It’s purely curiosity, but you wouldn’t happen to know anything about them, would you?”

“The Buttercups--!” Melancholy sputtered, failing to contain a limp guffaw. “Overboss ate those!!”

“He what now.”

“Geek! He ate ‘em! You think that’s bad, you should’ve seen what he did to the Galactic Zone!” The Operator wiped his tears on his sleeve and sniffed, still chuckling. “I take it you haven’t actually met the Geek yet.”

August didn’t want to try to understand what Melancholy could have possibly meant.

“Can’t say I’ve had the chance yet, no. More pressing things have occupied me.”

“He’s somethin’ else. Really.”

August raised a hand to pause Melancholy behind him. Where Mad Mulligan pans for gold. He wore the Cappy Glasses again, and glanced to their left. He knew the location of this Hidden Cappy even before scanning for it, familiar with this shack. He hopped down over the stream to inspect the Cappy up close, and added an ‘H’ to his ‘G’ and ‘E.’ When Melancholy looked on expectantly, he acted like what he really sought lay inside the shack, and came out with a can of pork n’ beans that, for whatever reason, was not a prop.

At first opportunity resuming their trek, August discarded it. Melancholy knew it wasn’t what August went down there for, but disregarded it for the moment.

“And you,” Melancholy continued, hoping to break the silence. “You’re a tall slice heaven. Who... or what... are you? I have to have asked now name by your.”

“Your associates call me Father Wachusett. And just as I have many names, I am many things. I’m me. Though, if we’re discussing qualities, not just identities... I am very... very... hungry.”

“On a scale of RadRoach to Stingwing, just how edible are these things?”

“They are ambrosial. I hear this Geek of yours exterminated them all, and we’re witnessing their extinction. Mad! Mulligan’s! Mine! was once their nest. I came here to collect their meat.” He nearly groaned to entertain the affect, but could think of no better way to hide his mounting rage. “Bloodworms are one of the cornerstones of how I observe my faith. If they are gone, I have lost a major component to my observances.”

“Bloodworms don’t have anything in common with Bloodbugs, do they?”

“What do you know about Bloodbugs?”

“--I know one al-me killed most once.” Melancholy’s hand went to his heart, his face contorting in nausea at the recollection. For a moment, he grew animated, unpleasantly eager. “Wait! Are you suggesting Bloodworms are Bloodbug parasites!”

“What! No. You idiot! They’re entirely unrelated.”

They came to the room with the coaster’s loading platform. August couldn’t sit still, scaling the entire space of upturned stanchions and dirt. Eventually he began to stomp in a tantrum, desperate for any percussion to summon them from the ground.

“What are you doing?” Melancholy laughed, his face shining with cold sweat.

“They’re terrestrial! And they can’t be gone!”

Being called out on the behavior only left August storming deeper into the attraction. He followed the track into a maintenance tunnel he’d never before needed to utilize, and continued pressing onward, possessed by the fear this Geek had truly eradicated the Queen.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t believe you eat bug meat, as part of a religious thing no less.” A light flashed on behind August, and he stopped, to find Melancholy had turned on the screen of his Pip-Boy to illuminate the way. “What follow do you even-- religion, Father?”

“...My own, I’m sorry to say. I was raised an Acolyte of Eternal Light, but no faith seems to contain me.” He snorted, realizing Melancholy had lit the tunnel because he couldn’t see, and thought August needed such assistance. “Your eyesight is terrible, if you need to illuminate this tunnel.”

“I’m practically blind without Calmex or Mentats,” he admitted readily. “You’re not the only mutant here, I’ll have you know.”

“Mutant! I’m Transfigured, Operator. Know your place.”

“Transfigured? Like... like prewar Christianity?”

The words fell from August before he could process them, and he mentally rent apart over the thoughts that came alongside them.

“...That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power. ...Come with... power. With power.”

The Child’s pale, cold eyes wilded and fell on the Operator, who froze, uncertain how to react.

“Was that a Bible quote? I don’t speak Jesus.”

“Are you this drunk, or are you just like this?”

“Not... mutually exclusive characteristics?” Melancholy shrugged at him. “What are we even down here for at this point, if there aren’t any Bloodworms?”

August licked his lips ever so slightly, haven’t taken his eyes off the Operator. Before he could reasonably size up his mark, Bloodworms erupted from beneath them. Roughly the size of a loaf of bread, the oversized worms flung themselves at any exposed skin they could identify--predominantly the pair’s faces. Despite being caught off guard, August had the upper hand of experience, easily slashing them all down.

Except one.

Melancholy screamed.

One managed to latch itself squarely upon the Operator’s face. August lapped the fluids from his knife, approaching at a caution. The knife felt so right, so comfortable, in his grip. Just the right heft, just the right give and balance. Getting a better look at the worms, he could tell from their soft exoskeleton and pale, high-contrast patterning, they were only in their third instar. Softshell. If the Geek had exterminated the only Queen three months ago, these Bloodworms could not have been born yet. A new Queen had already taken.

August rushed Melancholy, grinning wildly to expose his mouthful of oversized fangs. He gripped the worm on Melancholy’s face firmly in one hand, and Melancholy’s hand--wielding a dagger he’d hidden in the shaft of the cane--to prevent him from injuring the worm. After he got Melancholy to drop the pieces of his cane, he gripped the worm in pressure points behind the head segmentation, and caused it to evert so that it could be pulled off.

Holding it again in one hand, he pinned Melancholy down against the wall of the tunnel to regard his psychological state. It writhed and gnashed its segmented mouth flaps angrily, and ‘Choly hyperventilated, having had his oxygen cut off just a bubble too long for his constitution.

August trailed off, inching into Melancholy’s face at the scent of freshly drawn blood where the fangs in the Bloodworm’s buccal flaps had latched on. He dragged the side of his nose along Melancholy’s lacerated cheek, smelling pleasurably of it, before lapping at the wound briefly. Abruptly, he clamped his jaw around the leather binding at Melancholy’s throat, and held him pinned there for some time. His eyes lolled in his head as he nuzzled his whiskered cheek against his, such that he might whisper in his ear.

“You do understand, Operator, that I brought you down here in case I needed to put a Bloodworm in you, in order to guarantee their continued survival. It delights me... to find evidence they still thrive. Perhaps the Geek... didn’t venture this far. I must learn one day how deep the mine actually goes... But for now. I think I’m the one that should be eating you.”

“You’ll... have to take off... the orthotic collar... first...”

A weak moan shivered from him, and he tried to lift his arms to the back of his neck to facilitate this, but didn’t get that far, too enervated by what August had put in his drink, smudged on the inside of the cap. August glared at him, convinced the behavior must be some side effect of the Sleight. And yet, the Operator continued, begging.

“If I’m completely fucked... you... have... to promise to... fuck me. Or else, it’s not... a complete. Fuck.”

“You should stop talking unless you want these to be your last words.”

“I want my last words to be, I’m going out banging!” He choked on arousal, and August just gripped him more firmly. “You think I’m the idiot? What kind of idiot wouldn’t think I knew getting what I was exactly into, coming with you down here...” He laughed at him, only to melt right back into his arousal. “Don’t all your snacks fancy you?”

August clamped a hand over Melancholy’s mouth, and his lower lip quivered.

“You're no appetizer. You’re the main course.”

August let go of the last Bloodworm and let it burrow away. He couldn’t tell if the Operator fainted on account of the chems or the hysteria... or a combination. For the moment, he preferred the claustrophobic quiet, to collect the Bloodworms in the cheesecloths he’d packed. His head swam. Had he been tricked?

He stared down at Melancholy’s unconscious body one last time, before stooping to pick him up. He carried him over his shoulder for a spell, harnessing his natural sense of direction this deep down in order to retain his bearings, and locate a utilidor. He had never encountered one outside the Kiddie Kingdom in the past, and he grinned wide, following it until it dead ended far to the North of Safari Adventure.

He couldn’t waste time investigating the northernmost park right then, his hands quite literally full, so he pressed onward up to the Northpoint Dam. It would suffice for now, to double back home to Retreat, and quarter the Operator there. All his equipment for it was home, after all.

“Sir! Sir!!”

The holographic voice endeavored to close the distance between them, and all his loathing coagulated between his chiropteran ears when he recognized it.

Oh no.

#fallout #fallout 4 #fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 fanfic #fo4 #nuka world #dry rock gulch #father wachusett #melancholy #angel #sole survivor #mister handy

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cscreativecentre · 7 years

Text

"Pieces of Another Life" (CS + The Forgotten Son)

Summary: Mostly a cursed Killian point of view story, spec on his character and job for season seven, with little dashes of CS, Captain Cobra, and Captain Charming thrown in.

Rating: PG-13

Officer Colin Rogers slowly drug his weary body into his empty apartment well after midnight, barely taking the energy to toss his keys into the dish on the counter by the door and set his gun and badge next to them. He was bone tired by the end of most shifts, but he had been more so lately. The constant revolution of the same crimes, jealousies, thefts, and hate in an endless loop, people hurting one another without hesitation or remorse; it wore him down.

Toeing off the shoes he wore each day on the welcome mat in the hall, he let out a sigh as he made his way to the kitchen, absently running a hand through his already haphazardly missed dark hair. Reaching the refrigerator, Colin pulled it open and found bread and enough lunch meat and cheese to make sandwich for his long overdue supper. Then he took his plate and a glass of rum into the living room where he sunk into his well-worn couch.

Off his feet at last, Colin bit into his late night meal, chewing thoughtfully as tense muscles held alert and ready all day finally relaxed against the couch cushions. He allowed his thoughts to meander back over his shift on-duty, lingering at the endearing if unusual encounter he’d had while out on patrol.

He had been coming out of a corner convenience store where he’d gone to do a follow-up report on a robbery some weeks back, and as he had stepped out onto the busy sidewalk, he’d heard several youthful shouts of alarm and seem half a dozen middle school aged boys scatter in all directions. Shaking off the resigned disappointment that even youngsters felt an engrained fear and mistrust of officers such as himself who were working to keep them safe, Colin had nearly moved on when he’d noticed one boy clearly left behind by the pack, stooping quietly to pick an item up off the sidewalk and looking suspiciously as though he might be fighting back upset tears.

Colin had walked over, trying to appear as nonchalant and unintimidating as possible, but determined to see that the child was alright. As he had come to stand in front of the kid however, he’d realized the boy was much younger than the ones who had run off. Colin would have judged him to be nine or ten at the most. He wondered briefly why one quote that young was roaming the city streets alone.

The sandy blond was clutching the article he’d retrieved from the sidewalk, which Colin could now see was a battered hardcover book, and tears were indeed swimming in solemn blue eyes, though the youth was stubbornly not allowing them to fall. The pieces slid together in Colin’s mind all too easily from there; clearly this smaller lad had become the object of taunting by the group, probably had his book taken and kept away from reach by the way his was resolutely shielding it now, for whatever arbitrary reasoning terms often used. He still remembered how nonsensical but vicious children could be from his own youth. Though that had been decades ago and overseas, some things never changed, or not as much as folks would like to think.

Determined to cheer the young man a bit, Colin had casually offered his name to which he had received a murmured, “David” when he asked for the lad’s in return. He tried to ignore the odd flare of recognition that warmed his insides at the moniker. It didn’t make sense, as he didn’t know anyone with that name. However, though he could tuck the feeling away for later, it didn’t disappear.

He led the boy to a nearby bus stop bench, took a seat, and hoping to put the youth at ease and get him to do the same, Colin inquired what he was reading with a nod to the book now tucked under David’s arm.

“It’s Peter Pan,” David informed him, looking skeptical that this grown-up might not have read what he clearly regarded as a classic. “My favorite,” he added stoutly.

“Good choice,” Colin nodded, giving the boy a conspiratorial smile. “I’ve always enjoyed that tale myself. I will admit to feeling a bit sorry for Captain Hook though myself. He’s trapped on that island, harried by pesky Lost Boys, stuck with a bumbling crew, Indians haunting his steps, and the adversary who took his hand and fed it to the croc constantly baiting him.”

Pleased to see David opening up at someone willing to listen to his thoughts on Neverland and it’s enchanted adventures, Colin had chuckled good naturedly when the youth’s eyes bugged wide at that admission.

“But Hook’s the villain!” the boy sputtered, looking genuinely aghast. “You can’t root for the bad guy!”

“Oh, even villains have a story, I wager,” Colin answered him with a wink. “True, they’ve chosen to make bad choices and will have to deal with the consequences of those decisions, but they weren’t born villainous. Evil is made by their experiences - what they go through and how it affects them.”

Colin wasn’t sure were the words had come from but they echoed in his brain after their utterance, simply seeming true to him beyond a doubt. David seemed to be chewing on that for the moment and didn’t speak. When the bus pulled up not long after, the boy stood, having clearly been waiting for it all along.

“Thanks for your help before, Officer,” David said by way of farewell.

“You are more than welcome,” Colin had assured him. Then he had seen the lad off with a wave as the bus moved away from the curb and gone back to his cruiser.

No, he thought, now in the barely lit apartment as he sipped his drink. It wasn’t the job that was the problem. Moments like that one, when he helped someone in need, whether that need was big or small, felt worthwhile, as if he were doing some good. It was more that he felt so empty between those moments. As if there had once been something else - or someone else - to live his life for. Sometimes wisps of memory teased his mind, of a house full of people, messy, chaotic, but beloved. However, when he tried to grasp those images and see them clearly, they vanished, and he was alone in this little apartment. It was the loneliness that are at him and left him missing something he knew logically he’d never had. For if this lost past he envisioned had been real, what had happened and why couldn’t he remember?

His mind then shifted to his return to the station that afternoon and the slimy Chief of Detectives , Gold, sticking his head into the bullpen to bark an order to see him in his office. Once there, he had given Colin a dressing down for wasting his time on patrol babying some sniveling child instead of dealing with “real crime”. Heaven knew how the man had even gotten wind of it, but his snide comment that he didn’t want to see any official reports of meanies taking away storybooks had almost been Colin’s breaking point. He’d bitten the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood in order to hold back an angry retort. It would get him nowhere against a superior officer.

The man had always rubbed Colin the wrong way. Something about Gold was altogether slick and conniving, as if he were maneuvering the rest of them around like pawns in a chessboard. Gold didn’t take the big risks of the job himself, sneakily keeping out of harm’s way when things grew truly dangerous and then returning in the aftermath with a cunningly reptilian glint in his eye to take credit for victories or place blame in defeats.

Colin stood up from the couch with effort, knowing he needed to find what sleep he could; tomorrow would be another long day on duty. Curling into bed, he clutched his pillow to him with the strange sense of longing which had begun to plague him; once there had been a warm and real body lying next to him - a husky, feminine laugh against his collarbone and a nose pressed into the hollow of his throat and they had snuggled close together. It was crazy, and yet the idea of it haunted him more with each passing day.

He dreamt in fragments: oversized books in brown leather with gilt lettering on the covers, the waves rolling in the open sea, a yellow Volkswagen, and the glittering threat of a crocodile smile.

~~kj~~kj~~kj~~

The following afternoon found Colin waiting in the ER to be stitched up, still trying to catch his breath from taking a bullet wound to the side. He wanted to blame lack of sleep for the haze that had descended, the way his body had gone on autopilot without awaiting confirmation from his brain. He was lucky it hadn’t been much worse, that he was still sitting there with only a minor injury.

They had taken a domestic disturbance call from a neighbor, a familiar address and a couple they had dealt with before. This time however, when their unit had burst in, things had already escalated seriously. The guy had been screaming at his girlfriend and waving a gun around, long past Amy semblance of reason. Calm negotiation had backfired, the assailant losing it completely at feeling himself patronized. Shots had been fired, Gold had hit the deck, then turned tail and fled. The guy had aimed again, not just for warning this time, but with deadly intent in his eyes as he’d zeroed in on the blonde he had been raging against. Colin hadn’t even thought. He had dived for her, sending them both to the floor in a heap and careening across slick linoleum, the shot meant for her grazing across his ribs like a tongue of fire.

She had been hysterical; screaming and struggling to get up as he slumped against her, the air knocked out of his lungs for a moment. Dazedly, he had registered that his hand was tangled in her long golden hair, having tried to protect her head from impact when they fell. Blinking dumbly, he’d had to fight down the urge to brush through those honeyed strands soothingly, managing - just barely - to resist the impulse, but sure as he lived in that instant that he had done it somewhere before. That he had gently fingered silky tresses as bright as the sun, and that he had done so to calm a person he had loved when they were troubled, though she hovered maddeningly just beyond the reach of recall.

He was still seeking blindly for the rest of the memory - a face, a name, to go with the tactile sensation - when the doctor came in to stitch him up. And when he tried to return to the image later as he left the hospital for home, it was long gone once more.

~~~kj~~kj~~kj~~~

He was home much earlier that night, heating up soup and enjoying it at the kitchen island with milk and warm, crusty, buttered French bread as he mulled over the almost surreal events of the day while gingerly favoring his wounded side. Finished, he took his rum nightcap to the living room once more, unsettled and moving carefully to protect the bandages over his ribs. Aimlessly he flipped through channels on the tv, but nothing caught his interest or allayed his troubled thoughts.

Bringing the glass to his lips, Colin was startled to see that his hand shook slightly, wavering with the uncertainty he felt inside. Why did he have these strange fleeting memories he couldn’t place? The sense of loss that dogged him defied his understanding, but it was not going away. Something or someone - maybe several someones - was missing, whether he could explain it or not, and their absence was coloring his entire life.

Just then, a knock sounded at his door. Puzzled, Colin looked over, wondering who could be seeking him out, but when they continued a second time, he stood and shuffled over to find out. He winced when his movement caught at the stitches and pressed a hand to his throbbing side.

Upon swinging the door open though, his confusion only grew. Before him stood a lean, brown-haired man, appearing to be in his mid-twenties, looking nervous, awkward, and yet blatantly hopeful, and hand on the shoulder of a little dark-eyes girl who stood at his side.

“Hello, do I know you?” Colin asked doubtfully, not wanting to appear rude but not thinking he had ever seen the man before.

The stranger offered his hand with a tiny half-smirk that oddly reminded Colin of a younger version of himself, and a spark of that same playful something repeated itself in the younger man’s eyes. Clearing his throat, the visitor shook Colin’s hand when he held it out and began to speak. “Hi, I’m Henry Mills. I know you won’t remember this… but once upon a time, I was your stepson.”

by @snowbellewells

#season seven spec #cursed!killian #cs angst #captain swan #cs ff #cs fic #snowbellewells #submission

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