#I want to bite body parts off I feel this is vital for you all to know

[fyanimaldiversity]

Piebald common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) [x]

[makeyoumine69]

Painkiller 2

— PAIRING: Patrick Bateman x Pregnant!Fem!Reader

— SUMMARY: You begged Patrick for a good fuck, and who is he to deny it to his sweet little girl?

— CONTAINS: Smut, Dom!Patrick, pet names, degradation (reader is called some names), Daddy kink, dirty talk, vaginal sex, oral sex (f receiving), pregnancy sex/kink, creampie/breeding kink, semi-public sex.

— WORDS: 1.5k

— A/N: Sorry for the long hiatus in posting, I'm still trying to restore some energy, but I hope you enjoy this little piece of text!

— LINKS: [Previous part] [MASTERLIST] [buy me a coffee]💓

"Now you be a good girl and keep those pretty lips of yours quiet." Patrick drawled, his eyes ablaze with wicked intent. He lowered his head, pressing a fierce kiss on the side of your neck.

Trembling, you gasped breathlessly as your inner walls clenched around nothing, yearning for his hot, rock hard flesh to be inside of you.

“Patrick,” you murmured, pulling him closer, your taut nipples were visible through the thin material of your hospital gown. “I… I want you.”

"You needy little slut," Bateman hissed, his eyes fixed on the tantalizing sight of your hardened little peaks, then he leaned down to capture one nipple with his teeth, biting down gently through the fabric, eliciting a muffled whimper from you. "I'm going to fill you up, babydoll," he promised in a dark whisper. "Every fucking inch of you, until you're dripping with me."

With his free hand, Patrick began to fumble with his belt, every nerve on edge with anticipation, his dick aching with desperate need, bulging against the tight confines of his Armani pants.

"Mmhm—Daddy," a muffled moan escaped your lips, your hands clinging desperately to his strong biceps. "I w-want to give you as many children as you want."

Shaking like a leaf, your body desperately longed to be claimed by him again and again, a feeling even stronger than despair — belonging to him was as vital as breathing air.

“Oh, you have no idea what you're in for… Do you, honey?" Bateman taunted, his voice low and possessive.

Patrick couldn't help but groan as the heat of your hands threatened to burn right through the fabric of his expensive shirt.

"Do you really like seeing me pregnant?" You wondered as you sensed his long, thin fingers playing with your tender flesh. "I'm so nervous about gaining so much weight, Daddy." Your voice was tinged with embarrassment as he removed your hospital gown.

"Like?" Patrick rejoined, a devilish chuckle rumbling from his chest. "Damn, dollface, I fucking love seeing you pregnant." His words were infused with raw desire, his gaze sweeping over your swollen form with predatory intensity. The sight of his seed blooming in life within you was a heady combination of possession and power, a tantalizing cocktail that sent his nerves ablaze.

Carefully, you got down on all fours on the hospital bed in front of him, your legs already trembling with sweet anticipation from what about to come. "I need you so much, but please don't hurt the baby."

"Don't worry, darling, Daddy knows just what he's doing." His words hung in the air between you two, possessive and domineering.

Then without further ado, Bateman plunged his throbbing length into your heat, his low groan echoing off the walls of the room. With skilled control, he began to move against your shivering, little form; his grip retaining a firm hold on your hips as they moved to the rhythm of your shared lust. The sensation of your soft inner walls beginning to clench around him, already coaxing gruff moans from his lips. This was where he belonged, buried deep within you, imprinting himself onto every fiber of your being.

"It's so deep… a-awww," you whimpered, and then you had to bite the pillow to suppress all the lewd sounds as you were desperately doing your best to take him in completely. "Daddy, p-please!”

"Oh, sweetness," Patrick grunted in response, pleasure clawing its way up his spine as you tightened around him. Gently, he traced a single manicured thumb in circles around the small of your back, the reminder to be careful tucked safely in the back of his mind. "You like it deep, don't you? Like feeling me fill up your slutty little pussy?"

The potential of being caught only seemed to add an extra dose of adrenaline to your veins, the thrill of it making your hearts practically thud in their cages.

"Now hush," Bateman ordered with a sharp thrust of his hips, his voice a low growl in your ear. "Don't want the good doctors to find out how much of a slut their patient is, do we?" He quipped, his fingers tightening around your hip as he continued his relentless pace; his other hand came down to rub teasing circles around your clit, his aim to drive you as crazy with need as you drove him.

Panting, you leaned on your elbows to minimize the weight on your pregnant bump. The fear of damaging the baby couldn't really let you relax and enjoy the moment of intimacy you were sharing, but you kept quiet, only the sounds of heavy panting and flesh hitting flesh filling the hospital room.

"I w-want you to make me pregnant again, Daddy…" You mewled against the pillow, gripping it as hard as you could from the overwhelming sensation of being so full.

Why was it so hot? To be claimed by his seed, even though you were already pregnant, you had a wicked desire to be bred again and again.

"God, you drive me fucking insane, honey," Patrick groaned as your pussy clamped around his cock once more, truly testing his control. "Give you another one, huh?" He snarled, the sound echoing off the stark white walls of the room. "Fine… a-argh… I’ll spill my fucking seed inside you again…" He growled, losing himself in the fierce desire to mark you in the most intimate way possible.

Nothing was as intoxicating for him as the glazed look in your beautiful eyes, the satisfaction of knowing he would paint your insides with his seed, claiming you as his again and again. Even in a twisted world such as his, this was his greatest conquest, a show of dominance and possession that only spurred his desires further.

As you felt his pounding getting rugged and sloppy, you clung to his hands on your hips, gasping quietly in delight. "Cum for me, Daddy, please, c-cum for me!" Bateman couldn’t hold back it anymore as he spiralled into a blinding crescendo of pleasure, releasing his seed deep within you and keeping you close like a predator trapping its prey. Even though you didn't reach your high yet, you felt elevated by the blissful sensation of his warm liquid filling you from the inside. With a muffled sigh, you turned to look at him, but you couldn't see his face clearly in the darkness, though you knew how smug and arrogant he might be right now, so you decided to continue playing this game, boosting his ego even more.

"Gosh, it feels so good," you purred, spreading your legs wider as your own hand began to work on your feverish, little bud. "But I need you more."

Bateman leaned back, momentarily lost in the obscene picture you painted. "Uh, do you?" He teased, his words laced with thinly veiled lust as he maneuvered himself to his knees, the movement causing ripples in the muscles of his sculpted abs. "You want me to taste you, babe?"

With a smirk, Patrick dove right in, his tongue dipping into you with a harsh swipe as he tasted you, his hands gripping your hips tightly as he feasted. The taste of his cum mixed with your own flavor was intoxicating. God, he would never get enough of you.

Whimpering obscenely, you pressed your face against the hospital bed, your insides ready to burn from pleasure as his masterful tongue knew exactly what to do, drawing invisible lines along your delicate petals, forcing you to soak so hard — you could feel your juices running down your inner thighs, but Bateman was immediately cleaning it up with his eager mouth.

"Ah, Daddy," you were so close and yet so embarrassed at the thought of someone outside hearing what the two of you were doing. "Please, please, please! I love you... I love you s-so much!" You almost wept, praying that you wouldn't get caught and that he wouldn't punish you for not being a good, obedient girl like he wanted you to be.

"You sound so pretty when you call me Daddy, sweetheart," Patrick moaned against your soft flesh, his voice a saccharine poison dripping into your ears. His tongue slid back up your slit, slower this time, the flat of it pressing against your bundle of nerves with agonizing restraint. "I'm not done with you yet." He warned, his tone foreboding as he dived back between your thighs with renewed energy, his tongue darting in and out of you in rhythmic motions.

"I'm cumming, D-Daddy, a-aww, I'm cumming," a quivering yelp escaped your half-open lips as you clutched the sheets of the hospital bed, your legs shaking in his tight grip. "Pat-Patrick!"

Paralyzed, you forgot how to breathe as your inner muscles began to spasm around his tongue, the sensation was so intense, so overwhelming — the knowledge that you belonged to this man completely and irrevocably was as astonishing as rain in the dry desert. After all, you wanted to carry as many children as he wanted, and the idea of being a tradwife for him didn't seem strange to you anymore.

P.S. Thank you for reading until the end! I don’t have a taglist. You can follow my side blog @makeyoumineagain and turn on notifications to know when I update!

[kelppsstuff]

Let’s make a deal ch.2? 🧍‍♀️cause ch.1 got me in one hell (😏) of a chokehold

Let’s make a deal.

Part One | Part Three

Masterlist

Warnings: violence, gore, cannibalism

Taglist: @fandomsbookclub @adamsfavoritesinner @leathesimp @michelleszn @sashaphantomhive @ladyninggs @sirenetheblogger

Human Alastor x demon F!Reader

—

Life went on normally for Alastor, however every time he went around Belle he felt a tug around his neck. As if a reminder on who owns him.

He hated the feeling. Even if he didn’t see you again, he still felt the leash on him. The only time he felt he could get away from his invisible collar was when he brought people the death they deserved, as if you were rewarding him.

And you were. The more souls he bring down to hell, the more souls you gained. Even if he didn’t know it, he was helping you.

You’d often find yourself watching Alastor. It was very rare you didn’t, and today was one of those rare times. You had the pleasure of helping the darling Rosie with her shop.

You rang the cannibal up and that’s when you felt it. A pull on Alastor’s life. You were quick to jump up to the mortal plane. A gift only overlords and royalty could do.

When you walked through the portal and appeared behind two men. You saw Alastor on the ground hand on his side. You saw the blood slipping through his hands and onto the floor.

Your eyes glowed (E/C) and you pushed your hand through the back of one of the men. Once you felt the organ, you ripped out his heart.

The man fell to the ground, while you took a bite of the heart. “Two against one? I excepted better form.” You have a grin, one that could rival the devil.

You let the heart drop to the body. You licked the blood off your fingers while the other man started to shake, crying.

Before he could say a word his head was blown off. The blood splattering all around you and Alastor.

“I didn’t realize you were so desperate to see me again that you would kill yourself to get to hell.” You gazed sharpens to Alastor on the floor.

(F/C) smoke surrounds the two of you, making you reappear in Alastor’s house.

“What-what are you doing here?” You started to unbutton his shirt. He couldn’t even try to resist — no matter how much he wanted too — he was too tired.

“Saving your Arse.”

“Such language.”

You felt your eye twitch. Somehow this man brought out annoyance in you that you didn’t even know existed.

“Wanna explain what the hell that was?” It was a question and a demand of an answer. “I may have underestimated my victims.” That was an understatement.

You felt your self sigh. You started to stitch up the small cut on his side. It was small, but could have been deadly. Luckily no vital organs, he would live.

“Get some rest.” You spoke up when you were done fixing him up. Alastor went to inject but found he couldn’t. The hell? Could you really demand anything from him?

In that moment he knew how powerful a soul could be. In that moment he wanted freedom.

—

Alastor went to his kitchen — looking for food — the next morning. Only to be met with the view of you on his recliner. Head titled back with snores coming from your mouth. Luckily they were quiet snores. Still funny though.

The knife on the dining table glinted in the morning sun.

He grabbed the object and made his way behind you. He pushed the sharp knife to your neck.

The snores stopped. Your eyes open quickly. Now you could easily remove yourself from the situation. And you would, if you felt threatened.

“Oh you gonna kill me now? Go ahead try.”

Your voice was stern but yet almost begging. Alastor’s eye shades over with the bloodlust that was so familiar. One swipe, and you be dead. It would be over.

The pressure tightened and he slit your throat.

Red dark crimson blood flooded down your neck. Down onto your white shirt. You could feel yourself chocking.

The the slit started to close with a faint (F/C) glow. You stood from the recliner, popping your neck. “That was anti-climactic don’t ya think? Hey you gave it a good try though.”

You spoke, as if the whole situation was an after thought. It was almost laughable. Alastor had the same shocked look you had oh so long ago.

You ignored his questioning face. “Hey? Do you know how to drive a car?” You hadn’t had the chance to learn unfortunately. You never spent much time out of your home.

“How are you alive?” His voice was in a disbelieving whisper.

“How am I alive?” You whispered in disbelief. You shook your head as you looked at the cut that was now healed through the mirror.

You looked to the angel. “Belle why am I alive?!” You sobbed. She didn’t answer. Instead she left. Left you all alone.

You sunk to the floor, begging to be saved from this hell. Begging to die. Begging for him to come back. Come back to you.

“Y/N?” Alastor’s hand waved in your face. You shook of the memory. Jaw clenching from the feeling forming in your chest.

“Quite bold, even after I saved you. I’m impressed, chills. How about we make another deal?”

The taller man glared down to you. “You really think I’m that stupid?”

You brow raised as if saying yes. “If you can kill me, I’ll give you back your soul.” Once again, Alastor’s interest was back.

“What’s the catch?” He’s learning.

“You’ve gotta get creative with it.”

Alastor smiled. This would work splendidly in his favor. “Deal.” He signed the contract just like before.

Once it had disappeared he hurried to jab the knife in your chest. You looked to the knife sticking in your chest. ‘Really?’ You thought to yourself.

“Unfortunately it’s gonna take a lot more than that to kill me.”

Alastor glared at you with a new passion. With hatred. With desperation. “Even a demon can be killed. So help me Y/N I shall find away to erase you from this universe.”

You took a step closer to him and smiled. “Good luck.” (F/C) circled around you only leaving the knife to drop to the floor in your place.

Alastor felt his side stinging. He opened his shirt and saw it was red. Most likely had dirt or something in it.

He opened his fridge — looking for food — and saw an ointment with a note. “Reapply every hour.”

—

Ik ik super short! I plan to have Part 3 out like soon soon. I have some exciting events happening right now! So that’s mostly the reason I’ve been working slow!

[zoeykallus]

Hi! I see you take requests for one shots! Could you do an echo x reader (fluff only) where the reader helps echo through a panic attack on the battlefield and echo ends up telling her about his feelings? Thanks!

Aloha! Well yes, I did, still do, and they keep coming in, so I'm a little slow to catch on, very sorry about that. But now you finally get your ask/request done 😊 Also, I'm assuming you mean TBB Echo, so that's what I'm going with. If you were thinking of pre Citadel Echo, let me know and I'll write something new.

Echo x Reader One-Shot - Always

Warnings: Angst/Hurt/Comfort/Tension/Fluff/Mention And Description Of A Panic Attack

_______________

It's nothing new, enemy fire, a tense situation, jumping from cover to cover. But something is different for Echo today. He climbs a ridge to survey the battlefield when a blaster shot hits his right prosthetic leg, right in the knee joint. He pulls himself up just in time. "Kriffin hell!" growls Echo, cursing. You hear his curse over the comm in his helmet and ask anxiously from your cover, "Echo? Are you okay?" He doesn't answer right away. Echo tries to stand up, but his prosthetic leg refuses to serve him. The leg remains stiff and cannot be bent, the joint fused together from the blaster shot. Echo tries to get up again and again, although the rational part of his mind knows that the prosthesis is simply broken. Cold sweat breaks out, his heart beats up to his throat, his breathing gets faster and faster, his muscles tense up, his body feels heavy as lead and immobile all at once. "Echo? Answer me!" Tech checks his new gadget, a small monitor built into his bracer connected to all the batchers, there he can see the vital signs of all the team members. "Sharply elevated pulse, frantic breathing, muscle tension, I think Echo is having a panic attack," he finally informs you. You bite your tongue to suppress the curse that automatically wants to come out of your mouth. "Cover me for a moment," you murmur to Tech and Wrecker, who were with you and Echo. "We've got your back, ad'ika!", Wrecker assures you and resolutely blasts two more droids. Ducked, you run to the rocky ridge and begin to climb, you must now fully rely on Tech and Wrecker to really have your back, draw their fire and make sure no one shoots you in the back. You are not disappointed, yet your heart races, and you feel adrenaline flood your system as you reach the top. At the top you see Echo lying there on his back, he moves a little, but very stiffly and by now you can hear his frantic breathing over the comm. "Echo, I'm here, everything's fine," you say as your gaze flies hastily over his body, searching for wounds.

You discover the fused joint on his prosthetic leg and guess what happened. Echo was hit, which is scary enough in itself, but when he could no longer move freely as a result, panic set in, and now he was lying here. As he tries to take off his helmet with a shaking hand, you stop him. "No, don't take off your helmet, we are still on the battlefield". You try to tell him as gently as you can and take his hand off his helmet, but you have to push through. A stray or even aimed blaster shot could be much more dangerous or even deadly without a helmet. "I can't move," Echo finally croaks tensely. "Yes you can, Echo, it's just the prosthetic that got hit, until it's replaced or repaired you'll need a support, but you have no injury," you say patiently, holding his hand. He's shaking, and you can still hear his uneasy breathing over the comm. "Echo, listen to my voice, okay? Focus on my words and look at me." He takes two deeper, slower breaths, trying to catch himself, and you see his head turn a little to look at you. Even though you can't see his face right now, his visor is pointing right at you. You would like to show him your face, but the Safety 1x1 that Hunter taught you took precedence. One of the first rules regarding armor and general protective clothing, never take off your helmet in combat, only if there is no other way at all. But he knows your helmet, he knows your voice, Echo decorated your helmet with you, so he has a familiar image in front of him. "You'll be fine, I'm sure Tech can fix it or replace it. You just got scared, it happens to all of us. But now you have to pull yourself together, the battle isn't over yet. Besides, you promised me that we would cook your famous stew together tonight". You deliberately refrained from titling it panic attack or panic in general. The word itself could have a violent effect opposite to the desired result. Some words can have a very strange power over a person.

Echo continues to breathe deeply, in and out. It takes a long moment, but finally he replies, "I haven't forgotten, I intend to keep my promise, Mesh'la." Relief floods through you. "Very good, then let's shoot the clankers down there, so we can get home".

Back on Ord Mantell: Your helmet tucked under your arm, you enter Tech's small workshop, where he is busy fitting Echo's new prosthetic leg. "Hey guys," you say cheerfully. "Hello ad'ika," Tech says kindly, though without looking up from his work on the prosthetic. Echo looks up at you from his seated position. "Hey lifesaver," he says with a wry smile. "Now, don't exaggerate," you say with a soft laugh. Tech says matter-of-factly, "I don't think Echo is exaggerating, he was in an awkward position, a panic attack in the middle of combat is a death sentence for most soldiers." Echo and you look at Tech with furrowed brows, actually you should be used to his straightforward manner by now. "How's it looking?" you ask to change the subject, "Can you handle it with the new prosthetics?" "Of course," Tech replies almost indignantly. When he finishes and Echo gets up to test the prosthesis, everything seems to work right off the bat. "Thanks Tech, I owe you one," Echo says. "Don't mention it," Tech says, "I still have to help Crosshair with his rifle, I guess it got damaged during Hunter and Crosshair's little trip together." You raise your eyebrows, "They're both okay though?" "Yeah, no injuries, Crosshair's just a little whiny about his beloved rifle" Tech noted. Tech retreats to find Crosshair, along with his toolbox, and for the moment you are alone with Echo in the small workshop. He seems strangely nervous all of a sudden. He clears his throat and finally says, "There's something I'd like to tell you." Astonished, you look at him, "Oh yeah?" "Yes. Today has made me realize that I shouldn't wait any longer to do this. The way we live, any day can be the last and I don't want to end up regretting not addressing certain things" "Oh."l Echo moves closer to you until he is standing relatively close to you.

"None of the others could have gotten me out of that stupor today as easily as you did. I know they all would have tried, but.... Well, so what I'm saying is..." Echo pauses for quite a while, licks his lips nervously, and finally says, "I've developed feelings for you. Something I never really expected. I was born a soldier, or created, depending on how you want to look at it, I've lived as a soldier, and it never occurred to me to be anything else or expect more out of life." Your heart beats faster, and you know you are staring wide-eyed at him right now, but you can't help it. Echo continues, "But then you stumbled into our lives, you stayed, and I got to know you and by now I feel there is more to life than just being a soldier. I'd like to explore with you what exactly it all is. Does that make any sense?" For a moment, you just stare at him. He laughs nervously, avoids your gaze, and scratches the back of his neck. "Oh god, I'm really bad at this, in my head it all sounded completely different". You smile at him silently, giving him time to collect himself. Finally, he says laughing softly, "Okay, simply put, I have a crush on you". He looks from one point to another, avoiding your gaze, until he suddenly feels your lips on his cheek. Echo quietly says, placing his hand on your hip, "However, I have no idea where we go from here. Are we going out together? Should I buy flowers? Shall we go out to eat? Should I learn to dance? Do I kiss you now?" Smiling, you lean your forehead against his as he leans toward you, and you say, "How about we go to my apartment, you cook the stew with me as promised, and then we'll see?" He breathes a sigh of relief as he replies, "Sounds wonderful." "Then I'll see you at my place in an hour?" "All right," Echo says with a grin. As you're about to walk out, you turn around again and say, "Oh and Echo, take your toothbrush with you, just in case" Echo blinks, his cheeks flush a little, finally he nods with a shy but mischievous smile, "Got it. Oh, and thanks for coming to my rescue"

You smile and say, “Always”

Ko-Fi (If you feel like giving me some coffee)

@rintheemolion

@andyoufollowyourheart @clone-whore-99

@brynhildrmimi @kaliel2310

@misogirl828 @tech-deck

@meshla-madalene

@chxpsi

@thebahdbitch

@nahoney22 @ladykatakuri

@darkangel4121

@ttzamara

@arctrooper69

@padawancat97

@agenteliix

@allsystemsblue

@palliateclaws

@either-madness-or-brilliance

@ortizshinkaroff

@andy-solo1

@hunterssecretrecipe

@heyitsaloy

@greaser-wolf

@extrahotpixels

@hated-by-me

@hunterxcrosshair

@malicemercy

@bebopsworld

@echos-girlfriend

@taskfork-archive

@cpnt616

@starwarsnerd111

[penny00dreadful]

Spies AU - Part 4

Part 1 Part 3 Part 5 AO3

5th July 2015

Steve hated the safehouses. He fucking hated them.

They were always stuffy and dusty and musty. Impersonal and way too quiet. 

Everything he despised in a home. Everything that reminded him of his parents home. 

He was right when he’d thought he hadn’t been given a concussion, thank god for that. He just had a hell of a headache once the adrenaline wore off. 

Though if he had gotten a concussion he could have easily slipped out of the debrief he was brought to almost immediately after the taxi dropped him off at the safehouse.

Hopper descended on him as did Robin and one of The Agency’s best medics, Angie.

Robin had refused to let go of his hand after she had thrown herself at him, squeezing his fingers so tight it was like she was trying to fuze their hands together.

Hopper was relentless. He wanted Steve to go over everything in excruciating detail while Angie inspected the back of his head where he’d been hit.

Steve knew it would probably come around to bite him in the ass but something stopped him from giving up Eddie.

He didn’t mention that he was Kas, he didn’t mention that it had been Eddie interrogating him in that underground room, he didn’t mention Eddie full stop.

But Hopper could tell he was hiding something, that he was holding back. So Steve heaved a heavy sigh while Angie snapped at him to stop moving his head, and told Hopper that he couldn’t say anything.

Hopper’s moustache twitched, his signature sign of frustration while he paced up and down on the safehouse's threadbare rug. Steve was sitting in one of the rickety dining chairs, pulled into the sitting room, while Angie poked around in his hair, trying to locate the wound amongst all of the dried up blood coating the back of his head.

Robin was on the couch right next to him, their hands entwined and resting on the arm.

“What the hell do you mean you can’t say anything, kid?” Hopper glared at him, keeping his head fixed in Steve’s direction, like an owl, even though he swivelled his body around to continue his back and forth walk. “Are you being threatened?”

Steve went to shake his head but Angie tightened her fingers to stop him moving. “No.”

“Coerced?”

“No.”

“Discovered?”

“It’s nothing like that, Hop.” He sighed.

“Then by all means, inform me, your boss may I remind you, as to why you are leaving potentially vital information out?” Hopper barked back.

“Because-” 

Well. He’d already landed himself in the shit by keeping his mouth shut. He’d better pull out the big guns and hope that Hopper wouldn’t skin him alive if it all came out.

“Because I have an informant.”

Robin snapped her head over to him, Angie’s hands paused behind him for a moment before picking back up and Hopper froze where he stood.

“You have an informant?”

“Yeah.”

“After three whole days on the job and one observation mission?”

Steve sighed again. “Yes.”

“An informant for the Creel Crime Syndicate?”

“Hopper-”

“Even though every informant we have ever had for Creel has lasted all of five minutes?”

“Which is exactly why I’m not saying anything. To anyone. Robin doesn’t even know who it is.”

Hopper turned his glare towards her. She squeezed Steve’s fingers tight but squared her shoulders nonetheless. 

“We were told to stop using the communicators for unnecessary chatter and there was no reason to chatter during observation. I had no eyes or ears in the area at the time.”

Hopper sighed, running his hand down his face.

“And I suppose if this informant works out you want to try and recruit them like you did all your other little children?”

“Hey.” Steve scowled. “They all worked out didn’t they?”

“Not without taking several years off my life.” Hopper grumbled back. “So this informant is gonna get you closer to Creel, are they?”

Steve couldn’t help but grimace.

Eddie was hardly gonna walk him to Creel’s bedroom door, but it was the only way he was keeping him safe from the prying eyes of The Agency.

So far.

Steve was just… feeling the guy out first before he let his employers know he now knew the face of one of their most wanted.

“So they can’t get you to Creel?”

“It’s not as simple as that.” Steve shook his head, trying to think of some way he could conceivably lie and get away with it. 

Well, the best lies had truth in them, didn’t they?

“When I first met him, I didn’t know he was a part of Creel’s syndicate. Then spotted him again, picking weed at the warehouse.”

“So he’s a dealer?”

“He never said that to me, but I know what I saw at the warehouse.”

Hopper dug his fingers into his eyes. 

“Alright. But just promise me one thing, Harrington.”

“Shoot.”

“Promise me you’re not thinking with your dick?”

Robin barked out a laugh and Angie had to let go of his hair to stop herself from pulling it while she giggled. 

“Hopper!” He shouted, outraged and a little amused.

“You have a history, kid.” Hopper shouted back, exasperated while Robin vibrated with giggles next to him.

“I’m calling HR.”

“Good! Do it! Maybe Joyce can slap some sense into you.”

Scene scoffed and tried to cross his arms, but Robin refused to let go so he ended up with one arm over his chest while Angie began rooting around in his hair again. 

“Okay, okay, okay.” Hopper waved his hands around trying to calm them down. “Listen I get why you’re playing this very close to the chest. Informants are delicate and to be honest I’ve been concerned about the amount of Creel informants we've lost-”

“Steve, did you stitch this up already?” Angie cut in from behind him, holding his hair apart.

“No? There’s stitches?”

“Yeah.” She sounded confused. “They’re a little choppy and a little rushed but they’re there. That must be why I had such a hard time finding the wound. It’s been closed. And you didn’t go to a hospital or anything?”

“No, I came straight here.”

“Huh.” Angie stared at the back of his head for a few moments more before nodding to herself and starting to pack up her stuff. “I guess there’s nothing left for me to do here then. Keep an eye on it for swelling or infection. Call me in about a week and I’ll take them out.”

“Who stitched you up?” Robin asked him.

“I- I don’t know.”

Bullshit. He said to himself. You know. You know exactly who did it.

“Angie, did they look professional at all?” Hopper asked.

She shook her head, blonde curls bouncing around in her ponytail. “No. Someone knew what they were doing alright, but it wasn’t practised enough to be someone who did it every day.”

She smiled and nodded at all of them, snapping the lid shut on her giant first aid kit and quickly stepped outside.

Steve couldn’t blame her. 

He was desperate to go home himself, but until his apartment was done being inspected and surveilled (standard practice, kid), he was stuck here.

Hopper and Robin volleyed back and forth with each other about who might have helped him, but he just kind of shrugged it off.

If it hadn’t been Eddie (which it was), then it was some good hearted stranger at the warehouse or the building he was held in which seemed… unlikely.

Maybe Eddie had just wanted to keep him alive for his interrogation?

But then why had he let him escape?

Because Eddie had let him escape, there were no two ways about it.

Fucking Eddie. 

If that even was his name.

God Steve was pissed.

Not because the guy flirted with him and got him fucking interested and was stupid fucking hot on top of being stupid fucking dangerous which only added to the hotness… 

No, it wasn't because of the flirting. Steve didn't feel duped or taken advantage of or hurt because the flirting had been real.

Eddie… Kas… whatever his fucking name was, was attracted to him. 

That much he knew for a fact.

The guy could hide behind his meek druggy persona, his wide eyed innocence that got Steve to lower his guard, even his cocksure and braggadocious attitude that seemed closer to the real thing than anything Steve had seen before. 

Eddie could control his facial expressions, his hand movements, how he held his body, how he reacted to things. 

Yeah, the guy could act with all of those but the one thing that was impossible for him to hide were his fucking eyes.

Those big stupid fucking eyes that Steve could see even now in his own head as he said his goodbyes to Hopper and Robin. 

He’d never seen eyes like them. 

Irresistibly dark, unfathomably deep, huge and emotive and so fucking addicting. 

But no amount of acting could hide just how wide his pupils had gotten at Steve biting back, tied to a chair and bratting out far more than was smart. 

The attraction was mutual and they both knew that. 

So, no. 

Steve wasn’t pissed because he’d been flirted with and played with. In some fucked up way that just made things more enticing because Steve was fucking crazy apparently.

No, Steve was pissed because no one had ever, ever been able to fool him so effectively before. 

When Eddie stumbled into his path in the alleyway Steve had fallen for the down-on-his-luck-pickpocket routine hook, line and sinker. 

It was like the guy had a direct line to his fucking weakness for people that needed a helping hand and he had fired on it with startling precision. 

And he’d done it so well. 

If Eddie had gone into the movies, surely he’d be an A-Lister by now because the guy was flawless in his execution. 

And as the days passed by, stuck here rather than comfy at home because he’d been fucking kidnapped or some shit and The Agency wanted to be sure his home hadn’t been compromised, he was still fucking thinking of him.

Steve pottered around the kitchen of the safehouse, a small and cramped duplex on the outskirts of the neighbouring city, dragging battered pots and pans out of the cupboards and missing his own copper ware desperately. 

It was fucking drafty, the bed was lumpy, the entertainment consisted of a deck of cards, an old battered red radio and an ancient tv with bunny ear antennas. 

And it smelled weird.

He wasn’t even allowed to have Robin chattering away in his head, on the communicator, to stave off the boredom.

Had to be official business.

Steve huffed as he slammed the pot down on the old gas cooker and hysterically had the urge to stomp his foot at the injustice of it all. 

Fuck Eddie. 

That fucking beddable prick. 

This was all his fault.

How did he have Steve figured out so easily?

There was no way he’d just happened upon him in that street. 

How long had Eddie been watching him?

Was he scoping Steve out? Figuring out how he’d react to a surprise?

Or a person in need? If he’d help some poor fucker casing him so he didn’t get his kneecaps caved in?

But why would he need to know that?

How long had Steve been followed by a master assassin and not known it?

And what was with the whole fuckery in the warehouse?

Eddie had known he was there. Had he planned to have himself pulled into that room and threatened?

He must have.

It made sense. 

The boss who’d pointed the gun at him, the gun that Steve remembered feeling unusually empty, had been shaking.

He’d been nervous.

No. More than nervous.

That boss had been scared.

Steve hadn’t seen it at the time but that big, gruff, military boss had been shit terrified.

Of Eddie.

Which, Steve supposed, was a reasonable thing to be.

If he had known the whole time that Eddie was Kas he would have been just as wary in that alleyway.

So that just left one more question.

Why was Steve still alive?

Eddie had killed people under far more difficult circumstances. He’d probably disappeared people as well, but those were all unconfirmed because they were never found again.

So why hadn’t he killed him in that alleyway?

Or after Steve knocked out that big boss?

He hadn’t even raised a hand to him while Steve was bound and restrained in what was clearly Eddie’s personal… workspace, considering how comfortable he was in there.

What the fuck was going on?

It couldn’t all be because he thought Steve was a pretty face, so what else could it be then?

Steve didn’t have the answers and he just couldn’t deal with that. He refused to be so behind if this was to be a cat and mouse chase like Eddie practically admitted it was.

Jesus Christ, he didn’t even know if that was his real name!

No. No. This ended now. 

If Eddie wanted to fucking play, Steve was more than willing to put them both on the same level.

But even then, he’d already given Eddie a bit of an advantage, one that he couldn’t even explain to himself, no matter how he tried. 

But he knew why he’d kept Eddie’s identity to himself.

If he had been honest he might have been taken off this job. And he refused to let that happen. There was no way he was going to let Eddie away with fucking around with him. 

But deep down he knew it was also something else. 

Deep down he knew that if he revealed Eddie’s identity to The Agency, he’d be putting his life in danger.

The Agency wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to have someone like him removed.

They would aim for arrest or detainment but Eddie would never go quietly. 

Steve could tell that much already.

And it would get him killed.

He didn’t exactly want Eddie dead. He just wanted to even the playing field a little.

As much as he had been desperate to get back to his own apartment, when he was given the all clear to say it was safe again, he didn’t savour it like he probably should have.

He was marching down his hallway before his front door had even closed fully behind him. 

His office was a small room, across from his bathroom. The large hardwood desk held two monitors with a state of the art computer tucked underneath that could do far more than the average PC sold at Best Buy.

Steve threw himself down into his chair and as soon as he had the computer booted up, he began to work.

By the time he glanced back down at the clock on screen to check the time, he nearly had to do a double take.

Steve whipped around to look out the window and sure enough it was dark.

He’d been trawling the internet for any trace of Eddie for five hours?

Jesus, maybe he was a little obsessed.

But was it obsession or was he just doing his job?

Maybe a bit of both.

He hadn’t really come up with much.

All he had was a common first name to go off of. Adding onto that, he couldn’t even be sure if Eddie’s first name was Edward. 

It could be Edgar, Edwin, Edmund, Edison…

And trying to research ‘Eddie’ along with the most common hard rock or metal bands was the opposite of helpful.

He’d mostly just come across articles upon articles about Iron Maiden’s mascot or deep dives into Van Halen’s albums.

And trying to search ‘Eddie’ along with ‘metal’ and ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ just led to posts from people describing their player characters that they had based off of the Eddie mascot.

Steve pushed his chair back and leaned his head on his desk, thumping it against the wood a few times.

Research was not his specialty.

It was literally what he had Robin for. 

His guy in the chair.

She was a fucking wizard at this shit.

She’d have probably found him in half a second and would know everything about him from then on.

He sighed, getting up from his chair and deciding that coffee would probably make this easier.

He should be going to bed soon, but he was determined to get this figured out.

He continued to mull over Robin and her skills while he pulled down his favourite large mug and began to fix up his coffee how he liked it.

What did she usually ask him when he asked her to find someone?

Their name, obviously but also what they looked like. Was there anything identifying on them? A brand? A hobby? A passion?

What about them could suggest their job or vocation or what they were studying?

Okay, okay. Steve could do this.

He could lay out everything he knew about Eddie so far, in the same way Robin would ask him.

Sitting back down at his desk and setting his steaming cup on the coaster he had ready, he pulled a notepad and paper out and began to write a list.

His name was Eddie. He was about Steve’s age. He didn’t seem to have any kind of accent at all which meant it had probably been unlearned, if there ever was one there. He played a string instrument, Steve was pretty sure it was a guitar or bass guitar now after getting a closer look at his hands.

He was into metal music, based off of the patches and pins on his vest when Steve first met him.

He had acting chops, he was theatrical, he was a huge fucking nerd. He was into Dungeons and Dragons, so much so he’d named his fucking assassin persona after one of the characters from the game.

He had tattoos. Most were professional, but he had one or two that Steve had seen that looked like they were done at a kitchen table or in prison. Had he been to prison in the past?

He was desperately in need of some haircare. 

He had big soft lips that Steve was desperate to get his teeth into. Giant brown eyes that he could utilise for an innocent Bambi look. A slender waist that would make it easy to push him up against any available surface, though he was strong in his own right. Skin so pale Steve had seen the blue of his veins running up his arms, under his tattoos. Tendons that stood raised against the back of his hands when he flexed-

Steve ripped out that last page, tearing it up into tiny pieces and he was tempted to eat them to get rid of the evidence. 

But he settled for just throwing them away into the bin.

Okay, he had some things he could use here.

He started with the tattoos. 

The Bloodyhanded one along with the dice were beautifully done and of the same style, so likely the same artist. It was a real piece of art, even Steve could see that and surely whoever had done it would want to advertise it.

Searching online, trawling through page after page looking for anything tangentially related to the names Eddie or Kas, looking for Dungeons and Dragons or metal music or any type of guitar was far, far more boring than it should be.

He saw some truly atrocious work and had a mental list of places he would never go to or ever let the kids go to if anyone decided to get work, but some of the art was gorgeous.

Steve was starting to get a pain in his neck and he had donned his glasses an hour ago to ease the stress on his eyes when he saw it.

It was a small, locally owned tattoo studio in the middle of nowhere. They had posted a photo five years ago of a pale tattooed arm lying over a cling wrapped rest.

The photo was only from mid-bicep to wrist, there was nothing else identifiable in the photo, no face, no hair, not even his hands for Steve to identify but he didn’t need them.

This was it.

This was his Bloodyhanded tattoo.

There was no other account tagged in the photo, just a small description.

“Tattooing the sickest shit on the most metal guy ever!”

It sounded familiar. It sounded like the artist both knew the character and knew Eddie himself. 

The studio was named Inklings and seemed to be run by some guy named Grant in a tiny town in bumfuck nowhere Indiana.

Steve couldn’t think of a reason Eddie would have travelled all that way just to get a tattoo when there must have been hundreds of studios between here and there.

So there had to be a connection.

Steve ran a search on the image but it hadn’t been posted or shared anywhere else, this was the only one.

So instead he looked into Grant to see what he could find. 

The town was called Hawkins and it was small, small. 

Maybe not the tiniest Steve had ever come across, but definitely small enough to breed small minds at an estimated five thousand people.

Steve was surprised a tattoo studio had even been opened there. 

Surely an adjacent city would have been better?

Grant Fogarty had purchased the location outright six years ago, using funds he’d inherited after his mother’s death. It looked like that was why he was in Hawkins in the first place, his mother was dying and needed care.

After getting that bit of information Steve looked a little further back, finding out Grant was born and raised in that small town but he had left for Indianapolis where he had done his apprenticeship before moving back.

Maybe he’d met Eddie in the city?

But no matter how far or how deep he trawled through Grant’s life during that time, there was no hide nor hair of Eddie.

No photos, no calls or texts, no emails, no contact at all with anyone of that name.

So Steve went further back, before Grant left Hawkins. Looking for something. Anything.

His high-school grades were nothing to look at but he had been in a D&D club for most of his time there that gave Steve just a little bit of hope that maybe Eddie would show up around here somewhere.

Steve's heart began to pick up speed when he also came across some old flyers to the metal band Grant used to play bass in along with a year-book.

And he nearly fell out of his seat when he saw the club photo.

It was him.

Eddie Munson: Hellfire Club Leader and Dungeon Master.

Holy shit. 

He was baby faced and somehow even skinnier, his hair was a little shorter and he had almost no tattoos but it was him.

Eddie had given him his real name.

What could have possibly possessed him to do that? 

Though to be fair, Steve had given Eddie his real name too, but he’d been caught off guard!

Eddie was just so… and he’d been looking at him all frightened and helpless and big eyed, what was he supposed to do?

Was that why he’d given Steve his real name? He’d been caught off guard?

But even with that knowledge, the name that kept repeating over and over in his head Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson, the guy was practically a ghost.

There was nothing online about him.

Aside from one yearbook photo with his club, test results and shitty report cards saying he just needed to ‘apply himself more’, there was nothing.

It was like he’d been scrubbed from history.

There were no hospital records , no arrest records, no graduation record, no bank accounts, no social media, nothing on employment or benefits or even a damn birth certificate.

He practically didn’t exist.

But he had to have existed at some point. 

So Steve went in a different direction and found one other person with the same last name in the town.

Wayne Munson.

Now this guy’s records looked more like the usual stuff.

Birth certificate, records of school, the rare hospital visit that got more and more common within the last five years.

Oh.

Wayne was sick.

Along with that he found an adoption record.

So it looked like Wayne was Eddie’s uncle and he’d taken him in from foster care when Eddie was thirteen.

He had also attempted to post bail for someone that hadn’t been accepted.

No words on who that was but considering that information should have been available, Steve could only assume it was Eddie.

Again, it was like everything got to do with the guy had been wiped.

The only thing even hinting that he was around was some schoolyard boogeyman rumour about a satan worshipping madman living in the woods known as the The Shadow of Hawkins.

If that was Eddie, and Steve expected it was, he wasn’t surprised by the dramatics though he couldn’t tell exactly if that was a name he gave himself or a name he was given

Deciding to change tactics, Steve began to research what he could on Kas.

Only a couple of years after Steve had guessed Eddie had graduated, the rumours of Kas started up. He wasn’t even known by that name initially, he had others before.

Along with The Shadow of Hawkins, which was obviously some kind of precursor, over the following eight years he had also gained the names of The Demon of Dresden, The Ghost and one really funny instance of Bloody Hands instead of The Bloodyhanded.

If Steve ever got the chance to see Eddie again, he’d be sure to bring it up.

Which reminded him that Eddie didn’t know that he knew who he was.

Steve finally felt like he had an upper hand. And he wasn’t going to let it go any time soon.

No, now he needed to dig deeper, find out more. He wouldn’t be able to do that from his home, browsing through government documents or social media on his phone. 

No, Steve needed surveillance.

Steve needed Jonathan.

Part 1 Part 3 Part 5 AO3

Divider by firefly-graphics

@geekymagicalpotato @estrellami-1

Big thanks as always to @hbyrde36 for the magnificent beta work and to the STWG for their motivation

[teaandransacking]

Open the blinds, let me see your face

in which I lock our favourite pair in the basement and let feelings loose.

A/N: thankyou SO MUCH for the lovely ao3 comments and the comments/messages here.

Words: 1300 ~ Content: One amazing kiss, angst, SO MANY FEELINGS

----

It’s freezing in the basement room, but Lucy consoles herself with the knowledge that at least there aren’t any ghosts trapped in here with them.

Yet. anyway.

Lockwood sits beside her, brain probably working a ten to the dozen, trying to find a way out, one hand holding the walkie talkie they’ve been using to reach George. He’s a few floors above, working on the locked door from the outside, and Lucy’s not yet found a puzzle George cannot crack, so in the mean time-

“All we have to do is not freeze to death,” she mutters.

Lockwood starts like she’s jabbed him with a cattle prod, and immediately takes off his long coat. He’s hardly without it; it’s like a kind of armour. 

She still remembers seeing him in a t-shirt for the first time and being momentarily confused. The suit and coat are an intrinsic part of him.

He finishes shrugging the coat off and offers it. 

The only light in the small space shines through the gap between the top stair and the door, casting a pale gold halo around Lockwood. Like he needs another reminder of his gorgeousness, Lucy thinks.

She reaches for the coat and hesitates.

“Take it,” he insists, in that crisp accent, the one she loves to hear her name in. “You’ll catch a cold.”

So she does, and Lockwood holds it out as she slips her arms into it, and she pulls the lapels together so it wraps her up in his scent, magazine pages and earl grey and citrus, and for a second she bows her head and breathes in. Maybe he won’t notice.

Except he does, and his hazel gaze is riveted on her.

“Thanks,” she manages. “I was cold. But what about you?”

He’s only got that thin white shirt and a tie on, above his trousers and the ever-present battered converse.

It must be below six degrees in here. Even in the coat, warm from Lockwood’s body, she still feels the the low temperature’s teeth.

Lockwood brings his knees to his chest. “I’m fine,” he bites off, but his show of bravado is as thin as the cotton of his dress shirt.

Save me from macho boys, Lucy thinks.

"For God's sake. We survive four floors of haunted horror and then you die of catching a cold? I don't think so." And she shuffles back over, and wraps herself around him, settling her head under his chin.

She feels him jerk for a moment, surprised, and then his arms curve around her, and she listens to his heart beating under her ear. Another moment passes, and he rests his cheek on the top of her head.

"Thanks, Luce."

"You're welcome."

It's not so cold now they're huddled together, knees drawn up against themselves, heads close. Lockwood is lean and solid under Lucy's  hands; her fingers skate the edges of his leather belt as she holds him to keep him warm.

It would be too easy to slide her index finger just a little lower, find out where the shirt ends and warm, smooth skin begins.

The image heats up every fibre inside her, and her face flushes. It's not an appropriate thought to have in a literal dungeon. 

For a start, there isn't a single nice soft surface to lay down on-

"Penny for them?" Lockwood asks softly. "Your thoughts, I mean."

Oh, God.

"Just, er, wondering where George is," she blurts out.

Lockwood has been idly stroking his thumb up and down against her shoulder, and at her words he abruptly stops. “I know it isn’t ideal, being trapped down here with me.”

Lucy’s eyes go wide in the semi-darkness. “That isn’t what I meant.” She swallows, mentally casting around for the right thing to say. “I’m happy being with you.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw; she feels it where his cheek is pillowed against her head. “You have no idea how much I want to let you in. It’s just hard to break the habit of a lifetime.”

Lucy’s heart clenches. Suddenly her next words feel of vital importance, so she weighs them carefully before she speaks, reluctant to embarrass herself, or worse, make Lockwood think he isn’t fast becoming her favourite person in the entire world.

“Just open the door a little further. I’ll do the rest.”

A soft little sound comes out of him, half groan and maybe half little sob, and she feels the gentle pressure of his hand cupping her cheek, his palm rapier-callused and familiar, and his touch is the home she’s been denied all her life.

Lucy straightens up, wiggling out from under him, and then his mouth is a breath from hers, and she meets his dark eyes in the gloom of their very unromantic surroundings, but it doesn’t  matter anymore. Everything except him, and the way he looks at her - as if she’d personally hung the moon - has fallen away.

The pad of his thumb skims along her bottom lip, and she’s enchanted by the way his dark gaze flicks to hers once, twice, three times, silently making sure she’s on the same page, before their mouths touch, and then Lucy’s sliding her hand into his hair, parting her lips under his, her heart pounding as weeks of yearning unfurl low in her belly. He’s here and he’s hers, and it’s a heady rush, being alone with him, even in a filthy, freezing basement, and her battered heart can’t help but hope that maybe, this is her last first kiss.

“God, Lucy,” Lockwood breathes, twisting his body so he’s as close to her as he can get, stretching out his legs and then pulling her closer, tipping her centre of gravity, and to keep from breaking the kiss, she shifts to straddle his lap, spearing both her hands into his tumble of dark hair, taking as much as she can get of his delectable mouth. His hands spread over her back, still warm under the veil of his coat hanging from her shoulders, even though she doesn’t need it anymore. 

Fire’s eating her up from the inside out. If he stays this close to her, she’ll never be cold again.

There’s a sudden creak and snap, and Lucy’s hand springs to her rapier, only to rapidly blink away a shaft of light from the door.

George stands in the aperture, backlit by a single lamp in the old manor’s servants’ hall.

“George?” Lockwood asks, and Lucy glances back at him, relieved to find his gaze as lust-drunk as her own must be.

Thank goodness there were no ghosts. She wouldn’t have noticed them if they’d conked her over the head with a brick.

Their friend snorts. “I might’ve known. There I was, in a flippin’ creepy manor hallway, alone, I might add, trying what seems like a hundred different keys, and you two are snogging!”

Lucy’s face flushes, and she’s very glad of the coat to hide their positions. “It was cold,” she says, but she can’t help smiling. “Thank you for rescuing us, George.”

“You’re the best of us,” Lockwood adds. He shifts position under Lucy, and he's hard where she's soft, and for a searing, breath-stealing moment, she wonders what might have happened had they been here a half hour longer.

George shakes his head, but there’s no anger in his tone when he says, “It’s about time. If I’d known being locked in a crumbly old basement was all it’d take, I’d have done it myself.”

[reddogf13]

beekeeper Ethan AU

i just started a little fanfiction idea, but am stuck in the -wanna get to the good parts, but the beginnings slow-. so im sharing the plot idea early here to satisfy it. :v//

so basically, Ethan's mold and the Dimitrescu sisters accidentally end up in a positive symbiotic relationship. i thought id be cool as real life insects do get positives from mold, or severe trouble.

leaf cutter ants farm mold to eat, while leaf cutter bees don't eat it, but build with it to keep nastier molds away.

while on the other hand you have deadly mold like cordyceps that kill insects to be zombie like. and i like to think that if Ethan was more aggressive like Eveline, then "his mold" may have worked like hers did. but being passive it takes a more -work together- approach.

it starts when, while fighting and not paying attention, Ethan is injured after a cliff fall and Bela gets stuck with him trying to survive the cold after being too gung-ho on chasing him out the kitchen window.

Ethan feels bad as he never wanted to kill anybody and decides to help her out. to easily stay warm and travel she basically attaches to him as the fly swarm. so now Ethan awkwardly travels with Bela as a crawling fly vest he really tries not to swat or scratch at as it crawls around.

Ethan originally was just gonna escort her back to the castle until he sees a large vanity get launched out the side of it. (Alcina assumes her daughters dead.) and so Ethan decides to take a rain check on going back there. earning him a few bug bites from Bela as shes, of course, pissed to be stuck with him in the snowy outsides. but unable to kill him as she'd die/ be stuck in the snowy village.

hes still trying to find his daughter while she tries to interfere as she still works for Miranda in a way.

but heres where rapid insect and mold evolution kicks in.

Ethan is unintentional shedding micro mold spores everywhere, but since hes not actively aware enough to influence them. they just die off pretty quickly and are extremely unnoticeable. however, since Bela is constantly attached to him, shes being dusted in the mold that manages to stay alive from close contact with ethans body. this doesint do anything really until she has to eat.

Ethan definitely doesin't want her drinking the blood off his wounds so he forces her to eat off all the dead lycans left on his path. which then really starts the positive cycle as Bela unintentionally brings back a little blood and rotten meat bits on the swarm.

the mold lives off of the human food Ethan eats, but its not the best for it. like actual mold it likes rotten or dead things. and after being lightly coated in it off the swarm it gets more of a vital boost. his healing improves and unknowingly the spores hes spreading briefly toxify the land.

the black god mold is old and aggressive, but ethan's was made to be a far more aggressive weapon. it becomes a anti black god fungal and poisoning its presence, including the amount infesting the girls/ lords. which changes their temperaments slightly the longer they linger around him.

bela's changes start by the insects growing bigger. promoting them to take off larger chunks of meat and return with more gore for the mold. their larger size also gave Ethan/ the mold better defense. when a lycan tackles him, they get attacked back by a pissed off swarm that rips chunks off them.

the swarm also begins picking up on more social, bee like, behaviors. talking is too much of a risk at times and a blizzard can be too cold for her to talk anymore. having the swarm "talk" or answer by a rolling wave or flash of movement.

which then eventually leads to her swarm growing fuzz to withstand the cold temps a bit better. overtime she is able to leave Ethan for a few minutes before needing to return. while before it was hardly for a sec or two. the swarm gets better at keeping still on him rather then constantly crawling. blending in more like a false vest unless someone gets a closer look.

i imagine chris and his squad had a heart attack when meeting Ethan again. pushing him around and then immediately receiving a hostile swarm attack. before Salvatore came crashing through.

eventually bela and ethan do figure out mirandas plans and that she really has no care for the lords. which infuriates bela into joining ethans campaign against her. they do eventually return to the castle where her family notices the extreme difference in their bugs.

having become more of a mutant vulture bee then a parasitic fly.

(vulture bees do exist and are pretty cool. :D)

bela's insects are two times bigger(and growing), have better communication across the swarm, better cold resist, stronger exoskeleton and a stronger bigger bite.

from here the girls learn to do other "bee things" like make a healing blood honey and propolis(bee glue) and begin sticking things from decorations to lycan bones as armor on ethan.

[gyarubloodbath]

all i want is you

character: kazutora hanemia/baji keisuke tw:+18, insectophilia, shibari. all edits are mine

the scolopendra hurriedly moved its sharp paws, tickling leaving an invisible trail behind it, running from one breast to another with pinpoint injections, sniffing out an exit to the ground with its antennae, getting used to the warm, living surface in a panic, forever trembling, moaning, interrupted by vulgar and gasping sounds. the insect starts the marathon again, without thinking to stop. the most ancient instinct of self-preservation, not deprived of anyone, suggests one thing: to run. but every time someone else's hands return her to her beloved body, writhing from the cold of the timid and unnecessary uneven movements of foreign ones, just like this centipede.

white fly larvae and other miasma rained down wildly on baji's early clean, innocent and virgin body, not bitten by anyone, not stained with small flagella and mouth cavities of insects. insects that are scared and in a panic are actively kicking, crawling and exploring a new soft, heat-giving surface.

the ants, in formation and marching soldiers, albeit without orders from the queen — the uterus of the anthill, the vital forces of the nest— were divided into groups in a horde and scattered to different parts of the body, biting the epidermis, roughened in places, on the hands, rustling dryly, bleeding at the base of the nails, torn cuticles, a childish nightmare and a gloomy adult fantasy — the burr is long, interfering, — somewhere unhealed from thin, feline scratches, torn off by a translucent and cloudy, soft skin sticking out, like a layer of green onions separating, somewhere dirty, — on the toes and heels of achilles, with a sweaty, cheesy aroma, not pushing away, trying exhausted feet, giving off heavy and throbbing bites, fishing out screams from the martyr, caught in a hellish circle, casually written, in practice experiencing.

goliath beetles with the noise of their wings — buzzing, loud, tormenting the very ears — fly over to the hair of keisuke, white in color leopard, giving it a certain charm and charm.

baji's crystal body, behind unbearable teenage cliches, preserves a blooming garden, twilight and the gates of the palace — a smoky charming surface, access to which is forbidden to everyone except hanemia, anemia blocking oxygen in the cells of the entire temple of blood, an organism that looks fragile, defiling with a pathetic spasm. remembering such moments, he boldly calls them icebergs in paradise.

keisuke's exhausted penis, namely the head of the penis, turned very red and swelled immediately as soon as the ants stopped biting him. the feeling is itchy, like scabies with the tip of the tongue of the palate of the mouth, and then, with an active boneless muscle, you wipe the smooth area of dirty mouths with a sour and nasty part. baji just squeezes her bound thighs, trembling with blue fire, but hot, innocently scorched; writhing as if in a frying pan, tearfully begging to calm the wild itch and excitement only growing, listening to the nasty «hmm!» of the castors, between the beats of the heart and the rustle of bed linen on the street. he is unable to help himself, so he remains to pull with his hands, wrapped in a rope, tied in a cunning sea knot, testing the patience and endurance of baji, forcing him to suffocate in his own tears, moistening his lips with dried sea waves, carrying his screams with autumn leaves.

for hanemia, this is no less torture. god, what a charm — the satin ebb behind the temple turns into dark, black, scarab-colored hair! wonderful skin, both delicate and untouched by the ultraviolet of the scorching gas giant, and this bone, trembling at a dusty ankle… the sadist (who hates the word kazutora, declaring himself to be nothing other than a saint) runs his hand over the loins of the budgie, driving away ants and other insects, cleaning this area of the sharply upturned leg, trembling, taking hold of someone else's penis with his palm, slowly twisting, pulling off the foreskin, rubbing the bridle and bite sites of small friends, unfriendly truth angry for some reason. and the boy continues to tremble and moan, biting through his lower lip with his very fangs, feeling the skin, an admixture of salt and dust, something elusive, a light trail swept by — a sour-bitter drop of blood.

the feeling of dozens of running legs only helped the young man, especially the forgotten centipede, which calmed down on budgie's very face, tickling his eyelid, shaking his eyelashes and greeting the insect. ejaculating, keisuke loudly mumbled into someone else's lips, savagely and hungrily biting into the delicate skin. a moan goes through the whole body with vibration, the insects only revived, before getting dirty in baji's sperm, which experienced the last shudder of the longest thrill ever experienced by a human or demonic being. the ring of shame was engulfed by keisuke, like a warm cream and essential oil, light, smeared with mumbling laughter and comments of awkward castors: «look what you've done!», «you drowned the poor bugs and ants!».

through the rough fabric of a boy's shirt, not fully buttoned, baji could feel the heat of his body. but there was nothing to say. keisuke watched with fear as hanemia carefully placed the homemade scolopendra in the terrarium, which, as it turned out, served as a useful guest in the experiment of the highlighted one. baji and kazutora on his arm could never get used to the constant anxiety in which the tender hearts of great sinners beat. inwardly fainting, inwardly languishing… oh, absolutely sinless!

a blessed inspiration — in the arms of one-sided, innocent lips melted under the predatory pressure of dark boyish jaws, smearing a small drop of blood and pulling back the skin of the lips. the heart is like snow, inspires a feat, beckons to determine the disastrous charm of hanemia.

the hollow of kazutora's palm was full of smooth, ivory-like skin, the feeling of keisuke's concave "girly" back, not daring to touch the lips of the wild anymore, having recently revealed their dual nature, infecting tender reverie with creepy vulgarity.

[abysmal-black]

@videcoeur

It starts with a single bundle of black hair. Sanji knows he's too young to start graying, even if their captain drags them head long into danger. It was charming, these black hairs weren't. They're easy to ignore at first, a sharp yank or brush and out of sight out of mind. It could easily just be a side effect from the stress on his body— even if he refuses to allow the thoughts to surface, knows he's prone to spiraling.

Then comes the ache in his legs and the prickle on his skin. Sanji bought the same detergent if he could help it and always used the same products to moisturize but something was under there. His skin didn't itch, didn't burn , instead it was raised in constant goosebumps, the fine hairs on his arms and legs snagging to fabrics or strangely clinging to the gloves he uses to do the dishes. It's odd enough he decides to visit Chopper just to touch base. The chief could have contracted something and at worst it could be transmuted to the crew.

Sanji watches the little reindeer prepare a tray of instruments, they had agreed on a full physical since his symptoms were innocuous.

"I'm going to take your vitals then some blood to compare to your last check up." Chopper's short snout pulls into a cheerful smile. "After that I'll have a look at your legs. Do they still hurt?" Dark eyes level him with a concerned look.

"Sounds good." Mouth parts to exhale. It's probably nothing. "I wouldn't say hurt but something doesn't feel normal." He recalls butchering a sea beast on the lawn deck and suddenly found the grass beneath his feet scorched. That has never happened before, ever. Nothing was damaged but since then the same feeling has persisted.

Chopper listens to the story eagerly, eyes on the blood pressure cuff he's secured around his friend's bicep. "So you have to actively keep your leg turned off?" Sanji was always odder than the others, not as odd as Luffy or Franky but it wasn't concerning. "Your temperature, heart rate and blood pressure are all normal."

"Something like that." He mumbles watching the reindeer remove the cuff, set it aside and grasp the blood kit with human fingers. Delicate work, he thinks. "I've been finding a lot of black hairs too…"

Chopper scribbles down a note. "And this started after we left Wano? You seemed ok after your fight with Queen."

The memory lights up his spine, muscles tensing at the ready. He'd only worn the suit three times before destroying it but still something in him had changed, he could feel it back then. "Yeah." A quiet, distant affirmative, his mind a million miles away.  Those changes were … no, no he was fine, he reverted back to the old him. He was ok, this was ok.

Eyes blink open to the frantic taping of fingers on his shoulder. Chopper has turned blue and it takes him far too long to realize it's his hand around the reindeer's throat. 

___

"Oi, Marimo." The nickname doesn't have its usual bite, his words fighting not to be a whisper. Doesn't want to alert the rest of the crew where they've gathered on the lawn deck.  Chopper is ok thankfully, even smiling where he sits with a cotton candy apology cake. 

It just happened. Sanji can't begin to explain the kneejerk violence or his lack of awareness as the perpetrator. One moment small hands were tying a band around his arm and prepping a needle and the next thing he knew Chopper was stumbling away nearly brought to tears.  I did that. Sanji swallows, feels his eyes grow a little too wet and he has to turn away from the swordsman to clear his throat. "Need to talk to you about something."  He nods towards the stern of the ship, far from prying eyes before heading that way. Each of his steps are slow, heavy with the burden of his crimes. Would he hurt Nami-swan next? Would he wake up one morning with bloody hands, frantic he killed someone?

[mumucow]

“You’re cold.” - “Am not.”

So I challenged myself to write the 50 prompts on this list

No one asked for it but I am still doing it.

So here goes the first one, you can also read it on AO3:

“You are cold.”

Eddie laid in his cold and lonely bed, it was late in the night. Probably closer to the morning than anything else. Buck had stayed behind for a few more hours when B shift asked for a replacement for one of their team, since the guy was arriving late due to his plane getting delayed and obvious Buck had offered to stay behind.

“Am not.” 

Buck’s reply came a bit grumpy. Eddie could imagine him holding his phone close and could even hear him walking away, probably from the people from B shift. They already thought that the A shift was weird.

“Buck.” Eddie couldn’t help his smile and by the way the other man huffed, it had been perceptible in his tone.

He was sure that Buck was cold, Eddie could hear it in his voice. He knew Buck long enough to know that sleepiness and cold made him grumpy, just as he was right now. 

“Eds.” The way Buck spoke the name was shaky, like a shiver had crawled up his body. Maybe it was the cold, perhaps it was the way that they had become even closer if that was possible.

Eddie moved on the bed to sit up, his back against the headboard as the sheets pooled on his lap. Buck probably would have his arms wrapped around himself if he wasn’t on the phone.

“If you are on the rooftop of the station just go back to the bunkers.”

“I’m actually on a call. Broke down the door and now they are checking the vitals. Nothing too big, just a panic attack I think.” 

“And you didn’t bring your work jacket?” Eddie knew that he probably sounded like a worried parent but the tiny chuckle that came out of Buck made it worth it.

“You weren’t there to remind me of it. Or give me yours.” The last part came out lower, like it was a secret between them. 

“Come home. After your shift. I will make you hot chocolate.” It was a promise.

It was more than that. They had been calling the Diaz’ house home for a while now and not once had Buck said anything against it, he would usually give him that shy smile while lowering his head. Like he couldn’t believe that he was part of their family.

Maybe it was time for Eddie to remind him of it.

“It will be late, I still have like two hours left, and that is if nothing happens and hold us for longer.”

“It won’t be late.” Eddie had been late so many times in his life, but right now everything felt like it was meant to happen at this pace. “Maybe it will be early.”

“I don’t want to wake up my favorite boys.” It wasn’t the first time either that Buck called them like that, but every time there was a heat surrounding Eddie’s heart, almost as if his body couldn’t contain all the feelings that were locked in his chest.

“You know you are more than welcome here.”

Eddie tried to assure his best friend. Buck was probably fighting the want to say yes right away, biting his lower lip at the corner. A place that Eddie had thought more than once to put his own lips on.

“Don’t make me wait here alone with two hot chocolates.”

It was the last thing Eddie said before hanging up. They both wanted this even if they had been fighting against it for a while.

As promised Eddie was in the kitchen when he heard his front door being unlocked by Buck’s keys. He sat on the counter next to the sink, a steaming mug curled in his hands and another one beside him.

There was a small thump as Buck took his sneakers off, closing his eyes, Eddie could see him walking through the house so easily. Like it was his home every day. He safe space.

“Hey…”

Eddie smiled and opened his eyes when he heard the soft tone of Buck’s voice as the other man came closer to him, a few more inches, and Buck would be standing in between his legs.

A “welcome home” caught in his throat never left his mouth, instead, he placed the other mug in Buck’s hands.

“Thank you.” Buck’s words were coming out drawn like the sleep was making it impossible for the other to speak.

“You know I have your back.”

As soon as Eddie’s words left his mouth, he was thrown back to their first day together and how much they had clashed and formed an alliance for the rest of their lives only after a few hours.

Maybe they were too sleepy for this, maybe it was too early to be thinking about their feelings, or for Eddie to be thinking about Buck’s place in his life.

Buck moved slowly, not looking at Eddie at all, maybe afraid of what he might see as he placed himself between Eddie’s legs. Big hands settled on Eddie’s waist before moving towards his back as Buck rested his forehead against Eddie’s shoulder.

His breathing was slower or maybe that was what it felt like to Eddie, the moment seemed to slow down before his eyes, like they had all the time in the world. Eddie set both of their mugs aside before wrapping one of his arms around Buck’s broad shoulders and his other hand massaging the dark blond’s scalp.

Buck seemed to relax under his touch. 

That had changed at some point during their relationship, they needed a touch to make sure the other was okay before relaxing. Sometimes just a brush of shoulders or even a hand to a shoulder. Other times while giving a mug and their fingers would brush.

Eddie couldn’t pinpoint when that changed, all that he knew was how it was the same for the both of them.

“I love you.” Eddie felt relief at the same time that he felt fear.

Buck had been there for all his fears.

Those strong arms become even tighter around Eddie and his fear dissipates right away. Buck pulled his face away only slightly so that he could temptingly kiss Eddie’s cheek. Almost afraid that Eddie would run away at the touch even if had just said those three words in the mostly dark kitchen. In a quiet home. Their home.

Eddie parted his lips to get some air in his lungs. His grip on the back of Buck’s head was still strong.

“Say it again.” Buck was nearly begging him, blue eyes filled with hope.

So, Eddie moved his hand to cup Buck’s face which the other man leaned into the touch while closing his eyes. Like that, it was less scary to say those words.

“I love you.” It was the only sound inside the house, it would muffle all the other usual noises.

“Again.” This time Buck rested their foreheads together, keeping his eyes wide open.

“I love you, Evan Buckley.” Eddie said a bit more confident than before.

A smile grew on Buck’s lips and then he leaned forwards closing any distance between their lips, giving Eddie the taste of something that he had only dreamed of.

They kept kissing for a while, soft and unhurried, like they had all the time in the world to get used to kissing each other, to figure out what the other liked.

For now, Eddie just enjoyed their lazy making out on the cold counter of their home. There they were safe and warm. 

“Let’s go to bed.” Eddie could feel his lips tingling as he spoke.

“I love you too, in case that wasn’t clear.” Buck looked almost scared, like he was afraid that Eddie wouldn’t know it. Like this wasn’t important to them both.

“I know.” It was true. Eddie had learned to notice it in everything that Buck ever did for him and Christopher. For them. “I know, baby.”

He placed one more kiss on Buck’s lips before getting off the counter and leading them towards the bedroom where he would make sure that Buck wouldn’t feel cold anymore.

[luthienstormblessed]

You better let somebody love you (before it's too late) Part 2

Part 1 Ao3

When they arrived at the trailer, Dustin wasn’t inside. Steve felt how the panic rose in his chest as he saw him nearby, sitting on the ground and clutching what seemed to be Eddie. But it couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be him because Eddie was always talking or singing, mumbling under his breath as if he was alone in the room. Bouncing his leg when he was sitting down and pacing the room when he was standing. Eddie was always so full of life that it looked like it was going to burst through the seams and swallow them all. Eddie for sure wasn’t that still and bloody thing Dustin was hugging. Steve refused to believe it, but the kid’s crying spoke enough for itself.

Steve felt himself slip into his crisis management persona, distancing himself from his own feelings, pain and exhaustion in order to blur every single thing around him that wasn’t vital at the moment.

He shouted at Nancy to stay by the trailer and make sure nothing would sneak up on them. And maybe it was his face, or the newfound authority on Steve’s voice, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t try to argue with him and did as he asked her.

Steve run towards Dustin without a second thought, sure that Robin was right behind him.

“Oh my God!” Robin’s voice sounded like she was trying not to pass out right on the spot when she put a hand on his shoulder. If it was for comfort or to support herself, Steve wasn’t sure.

“He left me on the other side and tried to take them out on his own”, Dustin explained between sobs.

Steve looked at Eddie and kind of wanted to pass out himself. There was so much blood that he had to double check to make sure Dustin was okay. His ankle didn’t look good, but there didn’t seem to be any blood and not even Dustin himself was paying it any mind, he must have at least twisted it trying to follow Eddie. The blood was all Eddie’s. His body was a mess of flesh and oozing wounds. The worst ones were on his torso, but even his face had been bitten. Steve tried to make Dustin look at him instead, but the kid just kept crying and clutching Eddie while he cried over and over, “Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Come back”. Steve shared a look with Robin, and she immediately went over to Dustin’s side and pulled him against her chest, whispering comforting words that only made him cry harder.

As Steve knelt beside Eddie, his pants became instantly soaked with blood that should have been red, but with the Upside-Down light it looked like a pool of darkness. Steve didn’t waste more time and, taking his shirt off, quickly started to try to stop the bleeding with it. Looking closer he discovered that most of the bites weren’t really deep enough to be life threatening on their own, but there were just so many of them. He made sure to apply pressure while Robin searched on her backpack for the bandages that she’d insisted on packing. Steve couldn’t have been more grateful for that.

He started to treat the wounds as best as he could while Robin, sitting on the floor, comforted Dustin.

“Steve, I think he’s stopped breathing” Robin said, and Steve knew her enough to know that she was just as afraid as the rest of them but was trying to hide it for Dustin’s sake. Steve was quick, searching for a pulse on the side of Eddie’s jaw that was mostly unharmed. As soon as Steve felt the faintest sign of a heartbeat, he opened Eddies jacket and started to do compressions. He had learnt it during the training to get his lifeguard’s title, but he never thought he would actually have to put his skills to use.

He didn’t know how long he had been there, but his arms where already sore when Nancy’s voice made him snap out of it.

“Guys, the gate is closing, we have to leave. Now!”. She was waving frantically at them from the trailer’s door, shotgun still hanging on her back. Robin stood up and tried to take Dustin with her, but he refused to leave.

“Dustin, you heard Nancy, we have to go”.

“I’m not leaving him here”.

“Come on Dustin, we can’t do anything for him, he’s-”. Robin couldn’t get herself to finish the sentence, but they all knew what she was going to say anyway.

Steve had to make a choice then. And he had to make it quickly. Dustin wasn’t going to listen to reasons, and they didn’t have the time to reason with him anyway. Nancy was still shouting at them to hurry up and he doubted that Dustin could walk on his ankle, let alone run. Eddie still didn’t look like he was breathing. He didn’t look like he was going to come back. He allowed himself a second to breath deep and give Eddie a silent apology before he stopped and stood up with resolution. He had failed on saving them all, but he could still make sure that as many of them as possible made it out alive.

“Robin, go. I got it” she looked unsure at him before nodding and running towards Nancy, who kept the trailer’s door open. Even from the distance, Steve could see how the gate was shrinking with every passing moment, sides pulsating red as everything seemed to do on that fucking place.

Catching Dustin on his middle, Steve threw him over his shoulder and started running towards the gate that Robin was already crossing with Nancy’s help. The rope they had used to go through the first time had been cut high, almost at ceiling height. The end lied abandoned on the trailer’s floor.

It was an awkward run; Steve’s arms were sore from the CPR and the bat bites on his sides were throbbing as if they were alive. Blood ran down his torso when they reopened again, but he blocked the pain out. He had bigger concerns.

Dustin wasn’t being any helpful. Right the contrary. He screamed and hit Steve’s back, twisting on his grip. Had his ankle not been hurting, Steve wasn’t sure the kid wouldn’t have slipped from his grasp.

“Let me down, Steve! I won’t leave him there!”.

“I’m not letting you go until you are on the other side of that fucking gate so stop moving”. They were almost there. Nancy ready to help him lift Dustin to the gate, Robin already waiting on the other side.

“I hate you! We can’t do this to him! Let me go! Steve, I fucking hate you!”.

Steve tried not to listen to the words Dustin spat at him. He knew he was just aiming his anger towards him. And it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it anyway. He had failed them. If someone had to die for them to live, it should have been him. That’s what he was there for. He was supposed to be the shield, the protector, not Eddie. Eddie wasn’t even meant to know about the Upside Down. He was far too good to be involved in this shit. And now he was dead because of them, because of him. Because Steve wasn’t fast enough, strong enough. But he couldn’t afford a mental breakdown right now. Not when he had to get Dustin out and the gate was closing, slow but surely, in front of them.

After what felt like a lifetime but must have been under a minute, they stood under the gate. Dustin had stopped screaming and was just silently crying by the time Steve shifted his hold to hold him up with Nancy’s help. Robin had placed the stained mattress on the other side and was waiting for them gnawing her bottom lip. She tried to catch Dustin when he fell, sending them both to the ground with a groan of pain on Dustin’s side.

“Come on Nancy, you’re next”.

The gate was smaller with every moment, and they had no time to discuss logistics, so Steve just lifted her by the knees as if they were back in High School and she was a cheerleader. Nancy kept her balance and managed to get the ending of the rope to push herself through the almost closed gate.

The thing is, Steve wasn’t the best at physics or math, but he had known from the moment he saw how quickly the gate was shrinking that there was no way they all had time to go through it before it closed. Not without the rope. Someone had to stay behind and help the others cross it. Nancy seemed to realise the same thing the moment she touched the mattress. When she shouted his name, she sounded angry with herself for not having realised it sooner.

Robin, who had been too busy checking that Dustin was okay, looked up at the sound, letting go of the boy who barely seemed to notice anyway. He was clearly on some kind of traumatic shock. Not that Steve could blame him.

“Steve? What’s going on?”. She asked. Her lips were trembling, and her eyes shone with tears that soon started streaming down her face. They looked at each other and had one of those silent conversations no one else seemed to understand.

“Everything will be okay Robs. I promise. I love you”. He tried to sound convincing, not letting her see him falling apart. If someone had to stay behind, he was glad it was him. He couldn’t even stand the thought of being in Robin’s position right now.

She nodded covering her mouth and trembling. Unable to talk even to say it back, but her eyes never left Steve’s. Both knew nothing would be okay, but they also knew that she needed to hear those words just as much as he needed to say them. Things had been fucked up before, but this? This was a new level of fucked up.

Nancy, practical as ever, managed to send hers and Robin’s backpacks, that contained some food, water and the remaining bandages, flying through the gate for Steve to catch.

“We’ll find El and get you out. Hold on”.

When the gate closed leaving Robin, Dustin, Nancy and the rest of the world on the other side, Steve didn’t allow himself to cry. He’d make it out. He just had to wait until the others found El and hope she could do something about this. Easy peasy.

[velociwrangler]

happy mermay

My soul and mental health is a bit sucked dry at the moment but I want to work on stuff for Yun-Jin/Ji-Woon during MerMay

as I guess a bit of a teaser, a while back I wrote this for the indomitable scripsi as a birthday gift. It’s not strict ‘canon’ for the AllKill Mermaid AU, but it should suggest some of the mood/direction I aim to take the fic in.

content is spicy, erotic horror overtones, modern mermaid/siren AU. Might not make sense if you haven’t read the AU, I have a hard time gauging. I hope you enjoy.

"You can't frighten me," she says coldly. He makes a sound that is so deeply inhuman it's shocking to hear when he’s out of water, a ribcage-rattling thrum that makes her eardrums ache.

She starts dreaming again, those dark dreams where she's a mile down in dark water, choking and sinking. She wakes up weighed down, tasting salt and copper and her own terror in her mouth. Ever since that morning, it's hard to tell herself they're just dreams.

It gets harder every time she walks into the makeshift lab to find the techs have him up already and are running checks before letting him loose for the day. Every morning after one of her dreams, he's watching the door before she comes in, and he stares at her with unblinking, predatory patience. It doesn't matter how long she takes - carefully, deliberately - circling the floor, talking briefly to security, being shown a clipboard of the morning's vitals by a baffled tech. Gleaming yellow eyes track her without batting an eyelash, never breaking line of sight, never flinching.

It takes one night, when the dark water she thrashes in is disturbed by the muscular slide of scales along her bare legs and she feels something move up around her, twining like a boa constrictor, and she screams and screams and wakes up coughing up water and spasmodically kicking herself straight off the bed.

That day she confronts him in the elevator. The latest goon with earpiece and nondescript dark suit was held back by a lab tech. She has roughly two minutes before outside security meets them. Yun-Jin turns on him and steps into his personal space. Her makeup is flawless, no sign of the shadows under her eyes showing, but he smiles at her with gleaming sharp-toothed entertainment anyway: open delight, like a little boy pulling wings off flies. He reaches up to her face and she grabs his wrist and digs her nails in.

"What game are you trying to play?" Yun-Jin whispers harshly.

His lips part, but there's nothing taken aback about his expression. Instead it leaps with hungry light the same way it does when she challenges him on a new song and sings him a sample. The same way it does when she tells him briskly that the lab security might very well shoot him if he keeps pushing his luck.

She can't tell if it's bloodthirsty, contemptuous or something else entirely. She knows that it makes her recklessly step forward. He cedes the space gracefully, pink tongue curling behind sharp white teeth in a broadening razor-edged smile, and she realizes she's all but pinned him against the side of the elevator.

"You can't frighten me," she says coldly. His head dips to her and the smile grows colder. He makes a sound that is so deeply inhuman it's shocking to hear when he’s out of water, a ribcage-rattling thrum that makes her eardrums ache. Her eyes go wide, a chink in her armor she hadn't meant to show, and when she goes to step back and drag her composure back together he grabs a fistful of her silk shirt and drags her back again. She collides with his chest and bares her teeth in a snarl worthy of his shark teeth.

"Let go of me," she hisses.

The deep note shifts, vibrates through both of their chests. She feels the tremors roll down through her legs, sees the glow of his eyes almost taking up her whole vision. The full body shiver tightens her nipples and makes her press her thighs together, and she doesn't know if she wants to shove a thumb in his eye or arch up and bite his lower lip, drawing it into the hot suction of her mouth -

The elevator dings. She rips loose, wheeling to face the lobby. No one's looking, thankfully - it's an in-between dawn hour and there's a potted plant masking part of the doorway. Nothing she has time for will make her look perfectly composed. She retrieves her sunglasses and pushes them onto her face, tugs her shirt out a little more from her skirt until it rumples at her waist like a fashion choice.

"I'm not afraid of you," she says without looking at him, flicking stray hair out of her face and putting out a hand to block the elevator doors so she can finish. "And if you try to make life difficult for me, I can leave you to the tender mercies of Mr. Bak and his crew. They can find someone else or just dissect you, I don't care."

He chirrups like a fucking orca, sickly-sweet. "Liar," he says, and then adds, his Korean still subtly clipped in the wrong places but voice smooth and deep and warm, "and it wouldn't help you. I can find you anywhere."

She has no answer to that. She just strides into the lobby and leaves him behind, the rest of the security detail glancing between them with narrowed eyes but saying nothing as they flank him and allow her to put space between his soft laughter and her pounding pulse.

That night she dreams of a tail winding around her legs and then between them - forcing them apart - she dreams that a sharp-toothed mouth kisses her belly and sinks hot little bites into her hips and thighs - she dreams that she clutches his hair and it twines around her fingers and traps them like the tendrils of a sea anemone -

Yun-Jin dreams that deep under the black water he pushes a coiling tongue longer than any human's could be inside of her - that he rubs its textured base against her clit, and that when she comes, writhing and crying out, the ocean glides in and out of her lungs as smoothly as if she was born to breathe it.

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 I WALK THE LINE

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: an easy day of studying is interrupted when your boyfriend—yes! boyfriend!—shows up at your doorstep bleeding out. you think he's an idiot. you think you're even more of an idiot for falling in love with him. shit, did you really just think that? {wordcount: 8.2k; fem!reader, sfw, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: part threeeeeeeee, starts off a bit abruptly at the start of the cannibalism arc, but i really didn't want to rehash the entire scene. HAHAH. the last scene IS my favorite scene actually, i just finished writing the uu parallel of it im so excited for you guys to read it! reblogs definitely appreciated!! i’ll reblog with the taglist as soon as it decides to show on the dash & in the tags!

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

“Your vitals weren’t hit because you still have a part to play in telling the Agency about the upcoming clash with the Mafia.”

Dazai’s fingers bite into the pavement, pain webbing through his body as the shock of the bullet wound laid into him by Dostoevsky’s sniper begins to fade away. It takes all of Dazai’s will to push himself onto his elbows, chest heaving as he gives him a moment’s pause to try to recuperate before rising to his feet. 

“You and I are similar, you said,” Dazai says, voice deceptively strong compared to the blood pooling around him. He forces himself to his knees, pressing the palm of his hand against the wound to slow the bleeding. No matter how much he may have expected Dostoevsky to pull something like this, he could never prepare for the pain that came along with it. “Certainly, we’re of the same kind, but we differ in one way—people are sinfully stupid, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Dostoevsky looks over his shoulder, a hint of surprise washing through his face. “You… Did you know that the sniper was there? And yet you purposely came here to get this information?” 

Dazai smiles pointedly, confirming Dostoevsky’s question without even answering. He ignores the blood that dribbles from the corner of his lips. “What do you want with the Book?” 

“Hm,” Dostoevsky says, that impassive expression returning to his face as he turns to leave. “I’d like to use it to make a world without the sin of ability users.”

Dazai barks out a laugh, his chest screeches in protest at the action but still, he forces out: “Please, give that a go—if you even can, that is.”

The look that Dostoevsky casts over his shoulder is lethal, Dazai’s smile sharpens, but his mind is becoming muddled the longer he allows himself to sit here in pain, he needs to get to a hospital. He can barely breathe as he forces himself to his feet. He holds his hand to the bullet wound tearing through his chest, keeping pressure on the wound to slow the blood flow—it went all the way through, which is a good thing because at least he won’t have to deal with someone digging it out of him, but the pain is excruciating. His mind feels foggy and his body is pleading for him to rest but he knows he can’t, not yet, at least, he needs to warn the Agency before the Port Mafia attacks. 

His eyes are cutting as he turns his attention back to Fyodor Dostoevsky, who evidently has had enough of him considering he’s walking down the alley away from Dazai. Dazai glares after him, mind racing as he tries to figure out how exactly he should get back to the Agency, but even as the thought crosses his head he hears:

“Dazai-san!” 

The panicked voice comes from a nearby street, a bit aways from the alley. He recognizes Atsushi and withholds a sigh of relief, realizing that he just needs to wait for the boy to sniff out the blood and track him down.

“Ah, before I forget.” Dazai barely refrains from grimacing as the Russian’s voice rings through the alleyway. Fyodor Dostoevsky looks over his shoulder, an eerily amused expression on his face as he smiles thinly down at Dazai—Dazai instantly feels his blood go cold, knowing he isn’t going to like whatever leaves the man’s lips next. “I met your lover earlier today. She was quite… enchanting. She had interesting views on the world, I was very intrigued. It’s a shame, I would’ve liked to speak to her again.”

“What?” Dazai’s voice is hollow even to his own ears as he stares after Fyodor. 

“We’ll meet again in the promised land, Dazai.”

“Dazai-san! Where are you?”

Fyodor disappears from view as he turns out of the alley and Dazai leans against the wall trying to hold himself up, eyes wide and breath heavy. He tries to force himself to move forward, ignoring the way his wound screams for him to stop jostling around. His mind is on overdrive, panic beginning to consume every cell of his body as Dostoevsky’s words echo through his head. A part of him wonders if it was just a way to throw Dazai off, but Dazai doubts it—if he knows Dostoevsky even half as well as he believes, then he knows that there’s likely at least some truth behind his words, and that means that Dostoevsky had some sort of contact with you today.

And that thought terrifies him. 

But he pushes away the panic, evening out his breathing as he focuses on getting to Atsushi and then to you, but he finds his knees buckling as another wave of pain hits him, squeezing his eyes shut as he waits for it to pass. 

But it doesn’t pass, and as much as he wants to try to grit his teeth and keep moving forward, spots start to swim in his vision and he’s forced to stop moving because he can’t afford to pass out before he warns Atsushi about the virus and tells him to bring Dazai to your apartment. He doesn’t even know if you’ll be there; he doesn’t even consider that if you’re not there, he’ll probably bleed out. He needs to know you’re okay.

He doesn’t know how this happened. He told himself over and over again that he wouldn’t let himself get attached to you, a part of him still wants to try to convince himself that he’s not attached even though the thought of denying it at this point is ludicrous. Evidently even Fyodor Dostoevsky has come to figure out how much you mean to him, which is exactly what he had come to fear the more he spent time with you because now you’re in danger just for your proximity to him.

Atsushi turns the corner and Dazai watches as his eyes widen—Kunikida is with him, luckily, and Dazai can barely hear himself speak over the sound of his heart thudding in his ears as he doesn’t even wait for them to ask what happened or if he’s okay, pushing out the words to explain what Dostoevsky had said to him and ask them to bring him to you, all the while his mind is flooded with thoughts of you. 

One kiss turned into two, two turned into three, three turned into a dozen, and a dozen turned into Dazai having an insatiable appetite for your strawberry chapstick and soft lips. Dazai has all but moved in with you, he can’t remember the last time he slept at the Agency’s dorms—weeks ago, probably. He hadn’t actually noticed how attached he’d become to you until now, fearing that Dostoevsky had targeted you as a means to get to him.

He lets out a weak breath as Kunikida wraps an arm around his waist to help him make his way to his car. The other man is still saying that there’s no way they’re not going to bring Dazai to a hospital but-

Past tense.

The realization hits him like a ton of bricks as Dostoevsky’s words echo through his head one last time. He’d been speaking in past tense about you.

You were enchanting.

You had interesting views on the world.

He would have liked to speak to you again.

Ash fills Dazai’s mouth, leaving it dry and heavy, his words crumbling as the entire world stills around him. He thinks that this is Odasaku all over again—that every person he ever comes to care about ends up dying. He thinks his touch is rotten and corroding, killing everything he touches. He needs to get to you, he needs to make sure you’re okay, because he can’t let this be like Odasaku again. 

“Bring me to her apartment or so help me, I’ll rip open the bullet wound so badly that not even getting me to the hospital will save me,” Dazai suddenly threatens, voice rough and so sharp of a command that Dazai is almost drawn back to the dark memories of his time with the Mafia, that it has both Atsushi and Kunikida staring at him with stunned expressions. Dazai hates pain, but he has every intention of following through with his threat if the two don’t do as he says.

“... I hope you know what you’re doing, Dazai,” Kunikida finally says tightly as Atsushi helps Dazai into the back seat of the car, keeping pressure on the bullet wound. “Repeat again what Dostoevsky told you while we drive.”

His eyes feel heavy and his body feels sluggish, he knows that Kunikida is only telling him to repeat himself to try to keep him from passing out but he can hardly think of Dostoevsky anymore, mind focused on you because he thinks that if Dostoevsky did something to you, Dazai might never forgive himself for ever inserting himself into your life and putting you in danger. Every time his eyes slide shut, he can picture your smile and the way you’d roll your eyes whenever he goes off on tangents about double suicide and fated lovers, he almost wants to hiss at Atsushi to leave him be whenever the boy shakes his shoulders to prevent him from falling asleep because every time he does, the image of you fades away.

His words are slurred as he explains to them what Dostoevsky had said again, and what it means for the Agency, all the while directing them to your apartment. He wants to sleep—he’s exhausted and in pain, but he knows that he can’t. Not yet. Not until he knows you’re okay. Once he knows that, he can allow himself to rest. 

Kunikida gets to your apartment complex in record time. If Dazai was any more coherent, he would make a gibe at the man for breaking the law by speeding but in his half-conscious state he can hardly even stand much less formulate an articulate thought. He isn’t even sure if either of them understand what he’s saying as he fumbles out your apartment number, but evidently they’re able to make it out as they haul him up to the second level and rap at your door loudly.

Dazai thinks that it feels like eternity waiting for the door to open. He thinks that if you don’t answer—if Dostoevsky did something to you because of him—then he deserves to bleed out here at your doorstep, because there’s no world in which he should live when you die because of him. 

The door to your apartment finally opens, his eyes meet yours, and the relief that washes through him is debilitating enough to finally make his body give into the lull of the spreading numbness throughout his body.

Your breath catches as Atsushi and Kunikida fumble to grab Dazai before he slumps over unconscious, fingers trembling as you open your door wide to let them through, motioning to the couch in the center of your room as you rush to the bathroom to grab the first-aid kit that you have stashed away beneath your sink. It’s been years since you’ve had to use it, and the familiar weight of it in your hands makes your throat clog and your heart ache from wounds that never properly healed.

“What happened?” you ask as you leave the bathroom and rush over to the three of them. They had placed Dazai on the couch, his blood seeping into your gray cushions, and your mind is drawn back to all the long nights you spent as a teenager with your brother in the same position and-

You take in a deep breath, a gulp of oxygen to clear your head before you move forward closer to the couch—you can’t afford to allow yourself any room to spiral. Atsushi is on the verge of tears—or, well, he is crying, actually. He’s sniffling as he rubs at his eyes while Kunikida kneels next to Dazai, keeping pressure on the wound. You exhale the breath you’d taken in and motion for Kunikida to move over so you can kneel in front of the wound.

“He was shot,” Kunikida says, voice tight, and you want to hit him with an obviously, but you’re more preoccupied with trying to roll Dazai over so you can figure out whether or not the bullet went all the way through. Kunikida obviously recognizes what you’re trying to do so he helps you roll him onto his side, you exhale in relief when you realize that it did, having Kunikida help you take his trench coat off before letting him rest back on the couch, wincing when you notice that he’s grimacing in pain even while unconscious.

“And you brought him here?” you ask, voice a bit louder and more hysterical than you mean for it to be but in your defense, the last thing you expected when you finally sat down to study for your upcoming finals was for your boyfriend—boyfriend, you still think giddily, as if he hadn’t formally asked you out almost three weeks ago and isn’t currently bleeding out on your couch—to show up at your door with his coworkers with a bullet wound. 

You slip on a pair of gloves and fumble for the sanitizer you’d brought with you out of the bathroom and Atsushi hands it to you when it falls on the ground. You let out a quiet thank you before dousing your hands in it—it reeks like shitty tequila and it nearly makes you gag.

Kunikida looks frustrated. “Take it up with him,” the man says sharply, eye twitching. “He threatened to open up his wound even more if we didn’t bring him here.”

You give both Kunikida and Atsushi odd looks. Kunikida is scowling and Atsushi gives you a helpless shrug, but you only shake your head as you force yourself to focus on the issue at hand. You hesitate for a moment before unbuttoning and sliding off his shirt as best as you can. The bandages covering his torso and chest are soaked with blood and frayed—you hesitate, because even though you and Dazai have been together for weeks, you’ve never seen what’s beneath his bandages. He’s always careful to keep them on, only changing them in the bathroom, and from the way Atsushi and Kunikida are both averting their eyes, they realize what you have to do and also feel uncomfortable.

It’s for the sake of saving his life, you tell yourself before taking the scissor that came with the first aid kit and cutting through the bandages. You try not to stare—you really do—but it’s hard not to when you realize that his entire chest and torso is covered with scars, big and small, jagged and clean. Instead, you again make yourself focus, reminding yourself that the longer you take, the more at risk Dazai is to bleeding out—the wound isn’t bleeding profusely, it must’ve been a clean shot, missing all of the major arteries luckily, but you don’t want to risk it.

You grab a gauze pad and douse it in the saline solution you’d bought years ago—you hope the solutions don’t expire, that would be bad. But you gently dab it onto the wound, doing your best to not cause him anymore discomfort. As you do so, your eyes trail down from his chest to his abdomen again and your mouth feels a bit dry, wondering how the hell he managed to get all of these scars. 

You turn your attention to Kunikida. “Can you clean here?” you ask quietly and Kunikida doesn’t respond, rather he just takes the gauze pad from you to mimic what you were doing, and you reach for a cloth, turning your attention to wiping the rest of the blood staining his skin so that when you’re done cleaning the wound and dressing it, you can wrap him back up. 

“You’ve done this before,” Kunikida finally says, and you can’t help but notice that he’s still not looking down at Dazai’s body, eyes trained on you as he dabs at the wound—he must have the self-control of a god because you can tell from the way his eyes are twitching that he must be curious to see what’s beneath his bandages. Atsushi, too, has his back to the couch, as if not to tempt himself to look. 

“Mhm,” you agree idly, a lump in your throat, eyes flickering up to the picture you have set up on the wall on the other side of the room. “My brother… he got involved with some underground fighting rings to make us money, he used to come home injured a lot, it was dangerous. Never had to deal with a bullet wound but I mean, I know the basics.”

Kunikida lets out a noise of acknowledgement and you motion for him to move again once you feel as though his torso and chest are clean enough to at least be able to bandage without instantly ruining them. You grab the dressing pad and apply it over the wound, layering it a few times just in case the blood starts to soak through before taping it to him.

“Help me sit him up so I can clean his back,” you say, grabbing your supplies and shifting places with Kunikida so that you can tend to his back.

You don’t say anything else as you begin to repeat the process on his back, cleaning the wound with a gauze pad before wiping away the blood staining the rest of his skin. You think that his back might be even worse than his chest and abdomen—there’s a jagged scar from the corner of his shoulder to his opposite hip, deep and painful-looking, and countless other smaller ones littered on every inch of visible skin. 

“Your brother… he got out of that life?” Atsushi finally speaks up, he’s still not facing the three of you, and the twinge of hope in his voice makes your heart plummet.

“He tried,” you tell him after a few moments of silence, taping another dressing pad to his back before reaching for the roll of bandages that came with your first aid kit, scowling when you pick up one that’s practically already empty from the number of times Dazai has reapplied his bandages after showering at your place. 

You grab another one, a new one, and then begin the arduous process of ensuring that every inch of Dazai’s torso and chest is covered in bandages again—you’ll have to get him to the hospital, you doubt your own sloppy patch-up will be good enough, but it’ll do until you get him there. 

“Oh,” Atsushi says softly.

“I’m sorry,” Kunikida murmurs, voice a bit more gentle and genuine now that Dazai’s wounds have mostly been handled. 

“He knew what he was getting into,” is all you say in response, making sure that bandages keep enough pressure over the wound to keep the bleeding slow and to a minimum. “He’s going to have to go to a hospital. This should be good enough for now but he needs actual medical attention.”

“We can’t stay,” Kunikida tells you, a twinge of regret in his voice as his eyes rake over Dazai now that you have him rebandaged. “The President is in danger, we have to go warn them before the Port Mafia acts.”

The Port Mafia, you think, a bit chilled by the thought of them, but you only nod at Kunikida. “He’ll be okay,” you say, trying to reassure yourself as much as them. “I’ll take care of him.”

Kunikida nods and then motions to your phone, which haphazardly had fallen onto the ground in your panic. “May I?” he asks quietly and you pick it up to unlock it for him, passing it over with a curious look. “I’m putting my number in, text me which hospital he’s admitted into and the room number so we can come see him as soon as things calm down.”

“Gotcha,” you whisper, resting Dazai back into a lying position. Your eyes linger on his face, bringing your hand up to wipe away the blood dribbling down his chin with your thumb, a heavy feeling settles in your chest—you think he’s too pale, his breath is too shallow, you’ve never seen him look so weak. 

You glance back up at Kunikida when he doesn’t immediately leave, questioning. He looks as if he wants to say something, face conflicted, but instead he shakes his head and turns to leave, calling for Atsushi to follow. The boy does immediately, but he hesitates in front of you before nodding his head down a bit in an awkward show of respect.

“I’m-” he begins awkwardly before clearing his throat and saying, “I’m really glad that Dazai-san has you. He’s been a lot happier the past few weeks.”

Atsushi doesn’t say anything else before rushing after Kunikida, shutting the door to your apartment behind him. You let your gaze stay on Dazai’s face for a second longer before you lean down and press your lips to his forehead in a soft, lingering kiss. You let out a sigh against his skin, eyes fluttering shut for just a moment before you finally reach for your phone and dial for an ambulance. 

Dazai wakes up in a hospital room, the pale walls and the scent of antiseptic burn his nostrils unpleasantly. His throat immediately tightens as a wave of rage sweeps through him because of course, Kunikida couldn’t do the one thing he asked of him. Some unwelcome mixture of fury and panic spreads through him instantly, it takes all of his self control to maintain the steady pace of his heart so that the monitors attached to him don’t go off and alert the nurses that he’s awake—what happened to you? Are you o-

His train of thought screeches to a halt as he sits up, disregarding the pain in his chest, intent on finding his phone to call you only to catch sight of a figure slumped over on the couch next to his hospital bed.

His lips part in a silent breath of relief, all of the heat rising through to cloud his head dissipates immediately when he sees you curled up on the couch next to his hospital bed, and he indistinctly remembers being dragged to your apartment, and the image of your alarmed expression looking down at him as he finally lets himself collapse after learning that you’re okay. Your laptop is open on the table near the couch and one of your textbooks is haphazardly dropped onto the ground near where your hand is hanging off the couch, as if it had fallen from your hands after you drifted off to sleep. 

The sun is setting outside, the kaleidoscopic red and orange and yellow colors casting a fiery glow over your resting face—you look exhausted, there are bags beneath your eyes and your brow is furrowed a bit even as you sleep. Not for the first time, Dazai is utterly enraptured by you: the way your hair looks beneath the sunset, the ethereal radiance it gives to your skin, he thinks if you were awake, your eyes would have him entirely entranced. 

He can hardly drag his eyes off of you even though he knows he needs to reach out to the Agency, figure out what’s going on and how long it's been since he was shot so that he can properly help them. It takes all of his self control to drag his eyes away from you and search for his phone—yours is laying on the couch next to you, but Dazai doesn’t think he can sit up and move to grab it. But his own phone is right on his nightside table anyway so he doesn’t need to. 

He grimaces as he reaches over to grab his phone from the nightstand, pain shooting through his chest, but just as he’s able to dial Tanizaki’s number, a voice clears their throat from the door to the room. Dazai’s gaze lifts to a stern, older nurse standing in the frame, staring at him, he withers.

“No phones after surgery, Dazai-sama. Rest quietly,” she scolds, arms crossed. 

“Ah, but it’s an emergency-” he tries to throw the woman off with a charming smile, but her frown only deepens, dark eyes sharpening.

“No exceptions,” she says tightly, and Dazai sighs as he leans back against his pillows again, realizing he’ll just have to wait until the nurse leaves to try again, or until you wake up. His head falls to the side at the thought of you, dark eyes dragging over your body again. “You have a good girl, Dazai-sama. She has been by your side since she brought you here, refused to leave. Argued with the department head for two hours when he tried to get her to.”

Dazai swallows thickly—he doesn’t respond to the nurse, but he also doesn’t look away from you. He doesn’t quite think he’s ever experienced the light feeling that spreads through his chest, and he’s not sure why he’s feeling it or what it is, he thinks it’s uncomfortable but he doesn’t think it’s uncomfortable in a bad way, but he also hates it. 

It’s been three and a half weeks since he brought you to that event where he kissed you for the first time and since then, he’s faced an increasingly more dangerous storm of new and uninvited feelings whenever he’s around you. Dazai usually has stringent control over himself—his physical self and mental self—but it’s thrown out the window when he’s with you. He finds his heart racing and his lips unconsciously twitching up when the two of you talk, and now he has this feeling, where he feels like his heart is in the clouds and his mind is fogged with fondness.  

He doesn’t even notice when the nurse leaves again, his throat clogged and his eyes half-lidded as he looks over you. He thinks his attachment to you is dangerous, and if he was a good person, he’d leave you—save you from his fucked up life because so long as you’re associated with him, you’ll be in trouble, whether it’s because of old enemies from his time as a Port Mafia executive, new enemies as a detective for the Agency, or himself, because Dazai is self-destructive and his own fucked up mind is usually his worst enemy. 

But Dazai is not a good person. He is selfish. He is greedy. He is irresponsible. And you’ve made the mistake of showing him what it’s like to be cared for, why should he refuse it? Why should he push you away when you made the choice to give it to him? It’s easier to blame it on you, convince himself that you brought this upon yourself the moment you agreed to be his date to the event, as if you had any idea what sort of sick and fucked up person Dazai really is.

“You’re awake.” 

It’s your voice that tears him out of his thoughts, drowsy and thick with sleep. Dazai hates how the sound of you quells the storm inside of him, eyes rising to meet yours as you throw him a sleepy smile. 

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he teases, even though the sun is setting.

“I think I should be the one saying that.” You let out a laugh, but then your smile falters as you look over him and ask, “Are you good?”

Dazai wonders if you’re a fucking mind reader or something because how the hell do you always know when something is up with him? It’s starting to disturb him, honestly, he prides himself on being able to masking himself from people and your existence just casually shreds that pride. 

“I got shot,” Dazai says dryly, tossing you a charming smile.

“Not what I meant,” you respond, just as dryly, but you don’t push—you never do, he’s grateful for it. “How long have you been up?”

“A few minutes,” Dazai tells you, watching as you stand up from the couch and stretch, letting out a yawn before shuffling over to take a seat the chair closest to Dazai’s bedside. 

Dazai’s heart is lodged in his throat when you reach out to intertwine your fingers with his—the action is so offhand and so thoughtless that it genuinely throws him off. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the casual intimacy that you show him, no one in his life has ever touched him in the way you do: gently, without fear or concern. He’s used to anxious looks, he’s used to discomfort, he’s used to people giving him a wide berth; even after leaving the Port Mafia, not much has changed regarding that in the Agency. Not because they fear him, or are anxious because of him, but because his ability is uncomfortable, no one likes the feeling of being stripped of the one innate defense that they have. 

“How are you feeling?” you ask, peering up at him carefully. 

“Like I got shot,” Dazai repeats, winking at you. You roll your eyes, so he continues with. “I feel fine, they must have me on plenty of pain meds right now.” 

“I’m sure they do,” you say dryly. “Since you’re feeling okay, let’s talk.”

All of the air whooshes from Dazai’s lungs.

“You know what, I think I’m feeling a bit tired again, I’m-”

“No, you’re not.”

“I really kind of am-”

“No, you are not.”

Dazai withers under your stare and he thinks that this is it—most people would run after something like this happens, so he shouldn’t be surprised that this is your final straw. A part of him wants to fight it, his fingers instinctively tighten around yours, as if to physically hold you in place, and he thinks again about the blurry line between obsession and love, and your ever-wavering place on either side of it.

His throat spasms as he swallows, trying to brace himself for the inevitable words: you breaking off the relationship, because why the hell should someone like you—with a promising future and a good heart—risk everything for someone like him? It would be on track for him, because every time Dazai finds something that he might genuinely want, it’s always lost the moment he obtains it. 

But instead of the ‘I think it would be best if we didn’t talk anymore’ or ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ you hit him with, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Dazai stares at you, he blinks once, and then says a bit hesitant, “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific, there’s a lot of things wrong with me.”

Evidently, you’re unamused, your lips flatten and your eyes twitch. Dazai is a bit alarmed. “Why on earth would you ever come to my apartment when you’re bleeding out? What if I didn’t have the right supplies to patch you up? What if I didn’t know how to patch you up? You would have died, Dazai. You would have died in my fucking apartment, on my fucking couch—which is stained with your blood, by the way, you’ll be cleaning that—and I would’ve only been able to watch. What is wrong with you? Why did you tell them to bring you to my place?”

Dazai’s lips part to respond but no words leave them, which clearly irritates you even more, so he forces out, “I thought you were hurt. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You were bleeding out, Dazai,” you stress, your voice rising in frustration—his grip tightens on your hand, thumb rubbing circles over the back of your hand in an attempt to calm you down before the nurses come back. “You could’ve died, getting yourself help should’ve been the priority.”

“It wasn’t,” Dazai tells you tightly, watching as your expression shifts into one that he cannot read and that severely unnerves him. “I was bleeding out and all I could think about was you.”

You go quiet after that—that indecipherable look is still on your face but there’s something intense swimming behind your eyes that makes him swallow thickly. 

“Why?” you finally ask him and Dazai grimaces as Dostoevsky’s words ring through his head again. “Why were you so worried about me that you-”

You cut yourself off and look away. Dazai doesn’t think that he’s ever seen someone look so visibly distressed at the thought of him dying. He isn’t sure how that makes him feel—warm, maybe, but also nervous. He’s not used to it, and he doesn’t like things he’s not used to. 

“Did you meet someone today?” And then he questions whether or not it’s even the same day as when he got shot, adding a: “yesterday?” 

“Yesterday,” you say idly. You’re frowning as you look over him—distantly, Dazai thinks that he really should try to get in contact with the Agency soon. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

There’s a wry smile on your lips as you mimic the same words that he told you just a few moments before. Dazai’s smile is half-hearted, unable to muster the energy to actually smile back—you seem to be able to sense his exhaustion and Dazai’s eyes fall to where your hands are connected as you begin to trace his fingers. The motion is comforting in a way that almost throws Dazai off, he watches as you slowly drag your finger along the length of each of his fingers, nearly forgetting to explain his question.

“His name is Fyodor Dostoevsky,” Dazai finally says, voice taking a more serious tone—recognition flashes in your eyes, Dazai hates it. 

“The Russian from the teahouse,” you note. “I played a game of chess with him. Lost. We talked for a bit… he’s dangerous?”

Dazai lets out a huff of laughter that is very much not amused, intertwining his fingers with yours again and lifting your hand to his lips, kissing your knuckles. His eyes flutter shut a bit as his lips linger there, and he thinks that he jinxed himself before by claiming that he was too tired to talk because the sleepiness is hitting him again. 

“Very,” he says softly. “I thought he killed you. I-”

I thought that it was like Odasaku all over again—that thought echoes through his head again, but he doesn’t speak it out loud. You don’t know who Odasaku is anyway, so it would be meaningless to you. His thoughts darken a bit at the reminder of his old friend. He thinks that Odasaku would’ve liked you, if given the chance to met you, and there’s a pit of longing in his stomach for a life that he would never live: being able to bring you to Odasaku, introducing you as his girlfriend, having to sit and endure hours of torment from him and Ango as the two of them regale you with embarrassing tales of his youth. 

Dazai thinks that he might throw up, so he promptly turns his thoughts elsewhere.

“Next time, take care of yourself and trust me to handle myself,” you tell him after a moment, voice quiet—Dazai wants to tell you that there’s no way in hell that will ever happen, but he doesn’t want to argue about it right now, and he still needs to get in contact with the Agency, so instead he focuses on the other part of your statement.

“Next time?”

You furrow your brows at him, as if unsure as to what he’s asking.

“You know,” Dazai says, feigning a joke to hide the insecurity still tainting his mind, “most people would run after something like this happens.”

“Please,” you say with a snort, as if the idea is entirely ridiculous. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Dazai thinks that it’s absurd how one short sentence from you can entirely shake his world. He lets out a breath, trying to hide the way that your words affect him. A few moments pass where the two of you just enjoy each other’s presence, you’re beautiful beneath the sunset and your skin is warm and comforting against his. Dazai feels at peace for the first time in his life, he thinks, and it’s so dangerously deceptive because he knows the world outside is at war and the Agency is in danger. Even knowing that, he thinks he would stay here forever, if given the chance—that thought also scares him because he’s never been one for any sort of commitment like this.

But he can’t stay here forever, the Agency needs him—and the way his phone is incessantly buzzing on the table next to the hospital bed is proof enough of that.  

He sighs and then he looks over to you as an idea sparks in his head. You’re already looking at him, your brows are furrowed and your eyes are narrowed, as if you already know he’s about to say something that you’re not going to like. A mischievous smile dances at the corner of his lips, your expression worsens.

“Wanna do me a favor, sweet bella?” he coos. 

“... What is it?” 

“Help me get out of here?”

Your eyes shoot open, you pointedly look down at Dazai’s chest and then back up at his face. 

“Are you insane?” you ask irritably, and then your face twists as if you already know the answer to the question—it nearly makes him laugh. 

“Please?” 

“... I hate you, Dazai Osamu.”

Dazai does laugh now—wild and carefree and utterly genuine in a way that he rarely allows himself to be. 

“We both know you don’t mean that, bella.”

“Up!” you say, kneeling on the bed next to Dazai as he sleeps. You know he’s going to let loose a string of complaints and pouts—he’ll use his recovering injury as an excuse, even though he claims that it’s healed whenever it’s convenient for him. “Get up, Dazai!” 

Dazai groans, throwing out a hand and lazily trying to push you away, rolling over onto his stomach to bury his face into your pillow. You are relentless, grabbing his shoulder and rolling him back over, and he gives you a look that’s nothing short of withering as he finally cracks one eye open to look at you.

“I’m wounded, let me sleep,” he grumbles at you before pulling the covers back over his head. You yank them off and he groans, flinging his arms over his face. “Why do you hate me?” 

“I don’t hate you,” you say immediately, grabbing his wrist and promptly trying to pull him out of your bed. He’s as uncooperative as possible, laying still as a log as you do your best to get him up. “If you get out of bed and come with me, I’ll tell Kunikida that you’re sick on Monday so you don’t have to go to work and won’t get yelled at for it.”

Dazai’s eyes shoot open, and you know that you’ve got him—you think that being with Dazai is a lot like having a child, with the bargaining and negotiation, but you will happily leverage the fact that his coworkers don’t trust him to not lie about being sick over him because they do trust you not to lie for him. Their mistake.

“Fine,” he agrees, rolling out of bed, albeit still tired considering how he nearly stumbles into your dresser. 

You snort out a laugh and he scowls at you, but when you reach out to grab his hand, his face immediately smooths. His fingers lace with yours instinctively, and he rubs at his eyes with his other hand before asking, “What are we doing?”

“Going outside,” you tell him, dragging him out of the bedroom and into the main room of the apartment, tossing one of your sweatshirts at him before grabbing one for yourself. 

He slides it on and then squints as he looks out the window as he pulls on a pair of slippers. “It’s still dark out,” he gapes, horrified, “What time is it? You’re evil.”

You grin at him, tugging your sweatshirt over your head before flinging open the door of your apartment. “Come on.”

Dazai lets out a sigh of utter suffering before following you, you shut the door closed behind him and immediately start making your way to the steps leading down out of the complex. It’s cool outside—the chill of the night still hangs in the crisp air, the moon only just beginning to set over the horizon. There’s still another ten minutes to sunrise, so you have plenty of time to get to the beach. 

You startle out of your thoughts as Dazai lets out a noise akin to a shriek, turning to catch sight of him nearly slipping down the steps, the heavy dew making the steps to the second level of the apartment building slippery. You barely muffle the loud laugh that pushes from your lips, hand flying to your mouth to physically stop yourself because the last thing you need is your neighbors whispering even more about the two of you.

Dazai looks at you, thoroughly betrayed and incredibly insulted, but you reach out to intertwine your fingers with his again and he looks partially mollified, swinging your arms theatrically as the two of you walk out of the complex and down the road. 

“What’re we doing outside?” he finally asks, absently lifting his arm and spinning you beneath it as you continue down the street. You look up at him with a smile as you pull him onto the path that leads to the beach—he still looks tired, but there’s a soft look in his eyes as he looks down at you. “Bringing me back to the beach to finish me off right where you found me? Oh, bella, you know the way to a man’s heart.” 

“We,” you begin—this time you lift your own arm and Dazai’s lips curve up as he ducks his head down to spin beneath your connected arms, sand flies beneath his feet as he does and distantly, you think you should’ve worn sandals even though it’s a bit chilly because you’re going to have to deal with sand in your sneakers, “are going to watch the sunrise.”

Dazai squints instantly. “You woke up at this unholy hour to watch the sunrise?” he accuses loudly, throwing his head back in annoyance but you can see from the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners that he’s only teasing. “I’ve seen hundreds of sunrises.”

“But have you really?” you press, swinging your legs around in front of him and grabbing his other hand so that you’re holding both of his and standing before him, forcing him to look back down at you.

Dazai lets out an exaggerated sigh as he turns his head back down to look at you, hands tightening around yours as he pulls you a bit closer. He bends his head down, hovering his face over yours before whispering, “I’m going to throw you in the water after we’ve watched your sunrise.”

“Dazai, I will destroy you,” you instantly threaten.

His smile sharpens, he winks at you and says, “Sexy.”

“You’re gross,” you complain and then free one of your hands from his to continue dragging him closer to the water. 

In the far distance, you can see the light of the sun beginning to peek over the horizon. 

“Come on! We have to settle before the sun breaks the horizon, it’s the best part!” you say hurriedly, getting as close to the water as possible without being hit by the push and pull of the sea and sitting yourself into the dry sand, dragging Dazai down with you. You’ll have to shower before you leave your apartment for the day, but you don’t mind—you’ll have to replace your first aid kit soon though because you’re pretty sure all of your bandage rolls have been entirely used up and Dazai is going to shower after this too and have to rewrap himself. 

Dazai plops onto the ground next to you, but instead of sitting shoulder by shoulder, he shimmies down into a laying position and drops his head into your lap, looking out toward the sea.

“Pet my hair, bella,” the sleepy brunette sighed, half-lidded eyes looking up at you pitifully. “Pleeeeease.”

“If you fall asleep, I’ll cry,” you tell him, because you can’t deny him when he’s looking at you like this. He only lets out a noncommittal hum, a pleased smile on his lips as soon as your fingers start combing through his soft hair.

You think he’s a lot like a cat, honestly, with the way he’s curled in your lap—if he was capable of purring, you’d think he’d be doing just that right now, soft sighs escaping his lips every time your nails scratch gently at his scalp. His eyes droop shut but he never allows them to close, keeping his eyes trained ahead on the horizon—one of his hands comes up to rest on your leg, thumb idly rubbing circles on your thigh, and you wish you could freeze time in this moment because you feel so at peace that you never want to return to the real world. 

Dazai’s lips part to say something—you wonder if he’s going to complain about it taking too long, but the words seem to falter on his lips as the sun finally breaches the horizon and paradise arrives. You think you should be looking at the sunrise with him, admiring the sea of fire that the sun releases onto the surface of the water, ingraining the image of the endless pink clouds and orange skies into your brain because you love sunrises—you think there’s beauty to the fact that no singular sunrise is ever the same as another, and you’ve made it your life’s goal to etch the image of as many as possible into your brain before you die. 

Instead, you find yourself watching the sunrise through Dazai’s eyes—watching the reflection of the burning sun through wonderstruck dark hues, watching the ethereal glow that the golden rays cast over his skin. His wide eyes are pools of melted honey and molten gold and you can watch in them how the colors shift and intensify as the sun rises. If there’s beauty to the individuality of every new morning’s sky, there’s an even greater beauty to Dazai in this moment—you think you’d much rather replace the image of each new sunrise with how each new sunrise reflects in his eyes, and distantly, you wonder if it’s possible to convince him to wake up at this time every day. 

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look so at peace—it’s almost childlike, the way that his eyes sparkle and shine, entranced by the way the morning sun distorts the world into a scene worthy of the heavens. His thumb has paused in the steady circles that he’d been tracing on your thigh, his entire body and mind consumed with absorbing the picture of the sunrise.

You smile to yourself as you continue carding your fingers through his hair. You speak softly so as to not disturb the moment, “I thought you’ve seen sunrises,” you tease gently.

“Not like this,” he whispers after a few moments, breath catching a bit over the words, “it’s…”

You’re still looking down at him when you say, “… beautiful.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, breathless, eyes lingering on the scene for just a moment longer before he turns his head to look up at you. Emotions you’ve never seen before race through his eyes—a million thoughts, a million questions, but he only asks one: “Why did you bring me here?”

You think he might be looking for a particular answer, but you don’t know what it is, so you answer honestly and hope for the best. 

“No two sunrises are ever the same,” you tell him quietly, “I want to see as many as I can before I die… and I’d like to see them with you.”

You think that whatever answer he was looking for, you must have given him, because his entire expression shifts and collapses at your words. As if you’d taken any semblance left of the mask he wears and shattered it against the rocks that line the far side of the beach. 

Longing, adoration, desperation, fear and hope all cross through his eyes before Dazai suddenly turns his face back toward the sunrise, the hand on your thigh reaching to the one you have resting on his chest so that he can entwine your fingers again. He keeps his palm to the back of your hand so that your own palm can stay flat against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart.

“He’s wrong” he says so softly that you think that you might not be meant to overhear it, “this is the promised land.”

You don’t know what he means, but you think that’s as close to an agreement that you might get from him, so you smile and finally turn your eyes up to watch the sunrise yourself.

You can only enjoy it for a few seconds.

“I’m still going to throw you in the water,” he suddenly claims, and then adds, just a bit more quietly, “… but let’s just sit here for a few moments longer, okay?”

You smile softly.

“Okay.”

[queen-of-the-avengers]

Iron Man: Part Six

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader (implicitly)

Word Count: ~2.1k

Warnings: canon violence and angst

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

Laying low is exactly what Tony doesn't do.

Since he's back home in his normal lab, he works on creating a better arc reactor than the one he created inside the cave. At least this one will be more sustainable at keeping him alive. Pepper is doing some paperwork on her tablet while you sit next to her and watch some show talk about Tony and his company.

"Stark Industries!" the announcer on the TV shouts. "I've got one recommendation! Ready? Abandon ship! Does the Hindenburg ring any bells?"

"Can you turn that down?" you ask with a sigh. Pepper turns it off altogether and looks at you in sympathy. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"What did that agent want to talk to you about at the press conference? Phil Coulson?"

"He wanted to brief Tony on the circumstance of his escape. I gave him my card so we could set up a time to speak."

"Can I come to that meeting?"

"Sure, I don't see why not. How did you know his name?"

"He's an old friend," you white-lie.

Old, yes. Friend, not so much.

"Y/N get down here," Tony's voice comes over the loudspeaker.

"What?"

"Get down here. I need you."

"Okay, be right there," you say and get up.

You walk down to the lab to see Tony lying on a hospital-like bed with wires hooked to his body to measure his vitals. He has his shirt off which exposes the arc reactor in his chest, and he has another one just like it.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm swapping it up for an upgraded unit and I just ran into a little speed bump."

"What does a speed bump mean?"

"It's nothing. It's just a little snag. There's an exposed wire under this device, and it's contacting the socket wall, causing a little bit of a short."

"What do you want me to do?"

Tony reaches into his chest and pulls out the existing arc reactor and hands it to you.

"Put that on the table over there. That is irrelevant." The lab door opens and Pepper walks in since curiosity got the better of her. Neither of you see her at the moment. "I want you to reach in and gently lift the wire out."

"Are you sure? Is it safe?"

"Yeah, it should be. It's like Operation. You just don't let it touch the socket wall or it goes 'beep'."

"You know I don't know what the hell that is."

"It's just a game, never mind. Gently lift the wire, okay?"

"Okay." You make sure any and all rings are off your fingers before reaching down into the small metal container. When you get down far enough, your fingers meet a slimy liquid gel thing. "What the fuck is that?"

"It's an inorganic plasmic discharge from the device."

"It fucking smells," you groan.

"Yeah, it does. Do you feel the copper wire?"

"Yeah," you say and hook your finger around the wire.

"Don't let it touch the sides when--" You pull on the wire to get it out when your hand twitches and it touches the side of the metal container. It shocks Tony and makes the monitor beep in distress. "--you're coming out!"

"Sorry," you bite your lip nervously.

"That's what I was trying to tell you before. Now make sure that when you pull it out, you don't yank the magnet out." As he is talking, you yank on the wire exposing the magnet at the end of it. "Okay, yeah, you just pulled it out. That was it."

"Shit!"

The monitor starts beeping like crazy and he begins shaking on the bed like he's having a mild seizure.

"What is happening to him?" Pepper gasps. 

"Tony, what do I do? What's wrong?" you ask, ignoring her.

"Nothing, I'm just going into cardiac arrest because you yanked it out like a trout."

"You said it was safe!" you say and set the magnet on the table.

"Take this." He hands you the new arc reactor. "You have to switch it before I die."

"Okay."

You take the end of the cable and shove it inside where you attach it to the base plate. Immediately, the monitors quiet down and Tony can breathe without feeling like he's dying.

"Was that so hard? That was fun, right?" he chuckles.

"Are you okay?" Pepper asks.

"Yeah, I feel great."

"What do you want me to do with this?" you point to the old reactor.

"That? Destroy it. Incinerate it."

"You don't want to keep it?" Pepper asks and picks it up.

"Pepper, I've been called many things. 'Nostalgic' is not one of them."

Pepper leaves with the arc reactor with a slight smile on her face. She turns to look back at Tony and sees you lean over him with a smile. You smooth his hair back and stare into his eyes.

"I don't need you dying on me, okay? You're too important to me."

"No promises," he jokes.

Pepper walks off without another word. Tony wants more support with the new direction he's taking with arc reactor technology, so the first and only person besides you is Rhodey. He went to talk to him alone in hopes he can get Rhodey on his side, but no such luck. Rhodey is really by-the-book. He believes Tony should be making weapons for the military to use but Tony is so over that.

He wants to build suits that he can be in. If his weapons can't protect people, then he is going to be the one to protect them. In order to do that, he needs a suit powered by arc reactor technology. A suit that will generate a ton of attention, so he needs all the allies he can get on his side.

So far, you're the only one.

Tony meets you back at the lab where he begins working on a secret project only you know about. He taps his workstation and starts typing on the holographic keyboard that pops up.

"Jarvis, you up?"

"For you, sir, always."

"I'd like to open a new project file index as Mark Two."

Jarvis pulls up blueprints for the suit he made inside the cave, and Tony drags the hologram over to a different table to take the suit apart and study it. Whatever he doesn't like, he tosses into the holographic trash can.

"Shall I store this on the Stark Industries Central Database?"

"Actually, I don't know who to trust right now. Until further notice, why don't we just keep everything on my private server? The only other person allowed to fully access this file is Y/N. Are we clear?"

"Crystal, sir. Working on a secret project, are we?"

"I don't want this winding up in the wrong hands. Maybe if in mine, it can actually do some good."

The materials he needs for the suit are easily accessible right here in the lab. If it's not, then he can order it to be shipped to the house. Tony does most of the hard work while you stand by and watch but you two enjoy each other's presence. If you're not sitting by watching, then you're helping him heat metal, cool it down, or remind him when he needs to eat and drink.

Dum-E, a robot he invented to help him with side projects, is helping sodder the left boot of his suit. He is holding the magnifying glass for Tony to look through but isn't doing a very good job. He keeps moving it and getting in the way which is frustrating Tony. 

"Move up," Tony says. "Not in the boot, Dum-E. Right here. Stay put."

"It's looking good if it works," you smirk.

"It'll always work."

Dum-E moves the magnifying glass again when Tony moves thinking he's being a good robot and helping but Tony sets his tools down and sighs.

"You're of no benefit at all. Move down to the toe. I got this. You are a tragedy."

"You're so mean to it," you giggle.

"It kind of deserves it."

Creating a boot that will fit his leg took a lot of time, but once he knew how to do it, the second one was ready in no time. He connects wires from the boots to controls he can use remotely so he can move around the space and test out his equipment. You stand off to the side while Jarvis records everything to track Tony's progress.

"Dum-E, look live. You're on standby for fire safety. Roll it," he says to Jarvis. "Activate hand controls. We're gonna start off nice and easy. We're gonna see if ten percent thrust capacity achieves lift. Three, two, one."

Tony squeezes the hand controls to activate his boots, but he goes flying backward into the wall behind him.

"Tony!" you gasp. Dum-E points the extinguisher and fires as if Tony is on fire. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good," he coughs and glares at Dum-E. "Why don't we move onto the arms? Give the boots a little break?"

"Yeah, sounds like a good idea."

Tony works on making the arms of his suit while you clean up the mess caused by the boots. If he is going to make a suit that will protect humans from threats, he needs some sort of weapons to do that. He likes the idea of repulsors on the palms of his hands, so as he is working on one of the arms, he designs a repulsor to go hand-in-hand with it.

It takes the rest of the day to build the arm which is only wires and a skeleton of what the arm looks like, but it's still early in the testing phase.

"You think it'll work?"

"Did you really ask me that question?"

Pepper walks down the stairs to the lab and puts in her code to gain access to it. She is holding a clipboard with a brown box on top of it, and two cups of coffee on top of that.

"I've been buzzing you. Did you hear the intercom?" she asks. "Obadiah's upstairs. He just got back from New York. What would you like me to tell him?"

"Great. I'll be right up."

Tony lifts the metal arm off the stabilizer to test it out.

"I thought you said you were done making weapons."

"He is," you say, and she sets down the brown package on the table.

"This is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless."

Tony fires the repulsor expecting nothing big to happen, but much like with his boots, he goes flying back from the impact. Pepper jumps at the noise, and you sit down with a smirk.

"He's okay," you say to her.

"I didn't expect that," Tony groans.

Since Obadiah is waiting upstairs for Tony, you two take a break from testing to chat with him. He's playing the piano when you two get upstairs. Pepper follows behind and sits on the couch to continue her work before he arrived.

"How did it go?" Tony asks. Obadiah went to talk to the board about you and Tony and the future of his company. There is a box of New York pizza on the table which makes you think it didn't go so well. "It went that bad, huh?"

"Just because I brought pizza back from New York doesn't mean it went bad."

"Sure it doesn't," you say sarcastically and sit next to Pepper.

"It would have gone better if you were there."

"You told me to lay low. That's what I've been doing. I lay low and you take care of it all."

"Hey, come on. In public. The press. This was a board of directors meeting."

"Yeah, we really wouldn't have done well in there," you scoff.

"The board is claiming you two have posttraumatic stress. They're filing an injunction. They want to lock you out."

"That's bullshit," you gasp.

"Why, because the stocks dipped forty points? We knew that was gonna happen. We own the controlling interest in the company."

"Tony, the board has rights, too. They're making the case that you and your new direction aren't in the company's best interest."

"I'm being responsible! That's a new direction for me--for the company. I mean, me on the company's behalf being responsible for the way that... This is great," he scoffs.

He grabs the pizza box and starts to walk away but Obadiah won't let him get away that easily.

"Hey, Tony. Listen, I'm trying to turn this thing around but you gotta give me something to pitch to them. Let me have the engineers analyze that," he says about the thing in Tony's chest. "You know, draw up some specs."

"No, no. Absolutely not."

"It'll give me a bone to throw the boys in New York!"

"Fat chance, Obadiah," you say.

"Forget it. It stays with me and Y/N," he says.

Obadiah grabs the pizza box from Tony.

"Alright, this stays with me, then. Do you mind if I come down there and see what you're doing?"

"Good night, Obie," Tony says.

You two walk back down to the lab to continue what Tony started. There is something about Obadiah that you've never liked, even when you first came into Tony's life. He's hiding something... something he doesn't want you and Tony to know.

x

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[sekhisadventures]

Demons

Valdrakken, Two Weeks after Shalandrae Disappeared

Malgum sat in the room Aziguni used as her quarters while working with the Dragonscale Expedition, the small bedroom barely big enough for both of them, as she washed her brother’s back.

She did it because there were several large wounds there, fresh ones.

“… and you say these came from a salamanther?” she asked, raising her eyebrow.

“Mm, yes. I fought three, but there was a fourth I missed. Snuck up behind me.” he replied with a grunt, hissing as she rubbed a cloth wet with a potion made from hochenblume leaves over the deep gashes in his back.

“Mmm… because Salamanther teeth are not long enough to leave marks like this. These are too deep. They will aim for vital areas and try to use the bacteria that live in their mouths to weaken their prey. No salamanther has fangs that can bite this far down into the muscle.” replied Aziguni in a cool tone.

Malgum shrugged, “Perhaps it was some other lizard then. I do not know, I am not familiar with the creatures of this part of Azeroth.” he replied dismissively.

“It looks like a sword wound Malgum…” she frowned, “You were attacked again, weren’t you.” she stated bluntly, wrapping fresh bandages to hide the injury now that it had been cleaned and treated so that it could heal without risking contamination.

The man’ari sighed, “It was a… misunderstanding…” he replied carefully. “I was attempting to purchase food at the market in town, some young adventurers wanted to make a name for themselves by killing a demon. I tried to explain, they did not listen. I was forced to subdue one and the other two attacked me from behind before fleeing into the crowd.”

Aziguni shook her head, “Malgum… please tell me you didn’t…” she whispered.

He snorted, “He will live. I used my fists, no weapons. If he dies from a blackened eye and two missing teeth then he would have fared far worse as an adventurer.”

Aziguni said nothing, focusing on tying off the bandages. A healer wouldn’t be an option for him unfortunately. Few would be willing to use their magic to heal a demon and some of them would do more damage. Like the Forsaken, the Light would just as likely burn Malgum’s fel-tainted body as anything, even when used to heal. While slower, bandages would have to do. The only other option would be to use the powers he had gained during his time in the Legion to restore his body, and such powers had a dire cost… usually to someone else. Demons healed by harming others.

Still, it was hardly the first. By now a few eredar had trickled into the city, and many had the same reception that he had gotten. Velen had met with the Aspects, Arzaal with him, and had pleaded the case for their fallen cousins, and after much debate and promises of goodwill from their leader, Alexstrasza had decided that the man’ari would be allowed in Valdrakken and the Isles… on probation.

After all that the Legion had done to Azeroth, it was as fair as they could hope for. Still, those few who did come found no warm welcome waiting for them. Many shops would turn them away, finding they were ‘suddenly out of stock,’ or ‘they were closing up early.’ Other braver ones would simply flat out refuse to serve those who had served the Legion. The man’ari largely had to fend for themselves, hunting and living on the outskirts of the city as best they could.

Malgum waited for her to finish, then stood and put his armor back on. A large black metal breastplate with a spiked shoulderpad. He was a melee fighter, and the spikes on his shoulder were meant to be used in a charge to shoulder-check his foes… though he had yet to use them on Azeroth. He was trying, for his sister’s sake, to refrain from violence.

Yes he had laid out an adventurer, but by Legion standards it was barely more than a rough shove.

The two exited her room into the hall as, nearby, a trio of blood elves were talking amongst themselves.

“… its just creepy… their auras feel wrong, even worse than the Illidari… I…” said one of them, a dark haired mage in long crimson robes as her fellow stopped her.

“Erimisa, shush!” he hissed, this one wearing hunting leathers with a pair of long daggers on his belt, his emerald eyes narrowing as he looked towards Malgum.

Aziguni frowned at him, “Du’thaes. That’s enough, my brother was injured and I was treating his wounds. He won’t attack anyone.” she nodded at the elf.

“Of course he won’t.” replied the elf icily, not taking his eyes off Malgum as Erimisa, the mage, all but hid behind him. The third one was wearing a silvery breastplate and had a long rapier and buckler, his hand already resting on the hilt of his sheathed weapon.

Malgum grunted, “I should leave. I do not wish to cause further trouble for you…” he nodded, heading towards the exit.

The armored elf grumbled something under his breath in Thalassian, and Du’thaes nodded grimly as Aziguni frowned at them. “… I don’t know much Thalassian, but I know what that word means Zelan.” she warned.

“Do you? Well done for you.” whispered Zelan in response, the elf turning on his heel, “Come on you two, we have work to do. Some of us keep to our duties to the expedition… instead of tending to feral monsters." he sniffed, leaving with his nose in the air as the other two followed him, the mage quicker than her dagger-wielding friend.

Aziguni gritted her teeth as they left, then turned, “Malgum… I…” she began, but the hall was empty, her brother having slipped away already.

Outside the eredar man strode through Valdrakken, getting looks of fear and disgust from those he passed. A few didn’t seem troubled as much, the ebon blade and most warlocks regarded him as much a potential foe as any other, but he still heard mutters of ‘demon’ and ‘foul monster’ and ‘Velen must be mad’ among other, even less kind things.

He reached the edge of the city and began to walk across the bridge out into Thaldraszus, “… why even bother leaving Argus…” he shook his head, walking onwards, his hooves clomping across the hard stone bridge in frustration.

As he did, high above, a pair of blue and white wings carried a dracthyr through the skies above the city.

Laurelgosa had been flying out most days, hoping for a glimpse of Shalandrae, but the druidess was proving to be a hard woman to track down. Nelen had said it was possible she’d have left the isles, but he didn’t think she would. The last time she had fled like this it was because a shamanistic ritual had gone awry, making her hear the voices of those lost when Teldrassil burned, and that she’d turned up at Darkshore near the ruined husk of the Night Elves’ former home.

This time was different however, you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere in Azeroth that hadn’t felt the threat of the Legion at one time or another. Nelen figured she just wanted to get out of the city to let her emotions run their course. Seeing a man’ari and being told what was happening had dredged up all sorts of awful memories for the druid, and she likely went to ground in one of the more wild parts of the isles where her emotional turmoil, combined with her power to change into animalistic shapes, wouldn’t put others at risk.

When Nelen was still newly returned to sanity following the Cataclysm, Shalandrae had confided in him that the maddening animalistic fury of the worgen curse wasn’t just a worgen thing. All druids risked that. Their ties to nature and their abilities to become animals also made their minds… well… more prone to instinctive actions, especially in moments of heightened stress. The worgen were just the most extreme cases.

Novice druids were taught early that emotional tranquility was vital to shapeshifting, less the instincts of their animal selves take over and send them into a blind flight or fight panic no different than a true beast.

Given what the Legion had done to her people, it was hardly a surprise that Shalandrae had been incommunicado for so long. Nelen didn’t want to use magic to intrude upon her need for privacy, but the magus couldn’t hide his worry at his friend’s situation, so he’d asked Laurelgosa to keep watch for her as only one of the dracthyr could.

They feared that something could befall Shalandrae alone on the isles, especially now with the risk of Fyrakk and the return of the Druids of the Flame.

And, of course, there was always their main problem…

The Twisting Nether

Dissonantia glared into the depths of her cauldron. She’d managed to keep up her anima supplies by ambushing traders out around Azeroth, but there was always a risk that they’d have armed guards with them. She hated this immensely, but with her human face hanging in taverns across Azeroth and the Stormwind City Guard actively searching for her she was rapidly running out of options. Seducing some poor idiot to ‘this lovely spot nearby’ and then having Az’arad or Cenoon ambush them so she could tear out their soul and leave the body for the wolves was out of the question now… and her former tactic of going for ‘approved targets’ that she did when she was with Avalon…

Her scowl deepened. She’d tried taking a Primalist’s soul, but whatever the Incarnates were doing to them affected them all the way inside and out! The soul shard had exploded in her grasp the moment she’d finished tearing it away from the poor sap’s body! She just felt lucky she hadn’t managed to get it back to the Anima Engine before it had done that or else it could have wrecked the thing!

To make matters worse, Grimo had tricked Gremori and Az’arad, giving them a worthless toy instead of his demon detecting watch… which meant that as soon as the goblin learned how to reproduce it her ambush attempts against Avalon and Savage United would be thwarted before they even began.

The smart solution would be to simply go to ground and steal souls on the sly, staying immortal and waiting them out… but that would take decades, possibly longer. She wasn’t sure how aging worked for the kal’dorei these days, and of course Samantha could live for centuries easily. Nevermind that they now had a dracthyr of all things on their side. Nobody knew what their lifespans were!

Dissonantia growled, “… maybe…” she grumbled, her claws clicking on the cauldron, “… kill th’ longer lived gits… ‘n just hide ‘n wait out th’ others…” she frowned, then gestured over the boiling felblood inside it.

The surface shimmered, showing Dareley and Nelen in conversation in the Roasted Ram. She waved her hand again and saw Samantha and Sekhi in the market together as Sam went shopping for a new top. Another wave, Laurelgosa in the skies above the isles… and then the image shifted… and she raised her eyebrow. “Hello…” she murmured.

A small cave in the Azure Span, well out of the way and well hidden, and curled up inside it was a large leonine shape… all alone, far away from any of the others.

“Well well… th’ bloody druid is all on her lonesome…” she smirked. “Hmm… dunno wot th’ fel that’s all about… but if she’s sulkin’ in a cave somefin’ musta happened.” she grinned widely, straightening up and glancing at her portal. There was an ancient demon portal hidden on the Dragon Isles, one that had existed since before the islands were even sealed away, that she’d managed to connect to her portal in her lair. Why it was there was a mystery, but she wasn’t going to question it.

“Azzy! Get yer axe boyo! We’re goin’ huntin’…” she laughed, then paused and shrugged, “ ‘n wake up that git Gremori. May as well be ready this bloody time…” she nodded firmly as she walked towards the portal. She’d have to move quick, but if Shalandrae stayed near that cave for a few days it should be enough to track her down…

Yes… to track her down…

The Azure Span, three days later

Track her down. If there was one thing that Aziguni could do, she could track an animal… or at least, something shaped like an animal.

The draenei woman jogged through the woods with her two animal companions, Muaaqi the talbuk and Eocundo the panthera. After weeks of nothing Laurelgosa had arrived in Valdrakken saying she had overheard talk at Camp Nowhere, rumors of some sort of lion-like creature made out of tree bark. A few of the Expeditionary force there had been arguing over it. Some thought it was a Primalist creation, but the others pointed out that while they would use elemental beings that they didn’t use plants.

Laurelgosa had used her gemstone to contact Nelen at once and the mage had confirmed it. A lion made of wood with a mane of leaves, that was one of Shalandrae’s favored animal forms. Nelen had been satisfied at least knowing she was somewhere in the Azure Span, well hidden, but Aziguni…

The draenei stopped and knelt down, examining a paw print in the dirt. Large and lion-like, but the shape was wrong. Too blocky and jagged, like a foot carved from wood instead of a real one. She smirked, exactly what she’d hoped to find.

She was supposed to be in the Waking Shore today, she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t bother with such things… not seriously at least… while she still had duties to the Dragonscale Expedition, but…

She cringed a bit at the memory of Shalandrae’s fury the day she’d introduced Malgum, then thought to before that… their chance meeting in the Azure Span, getting to know her whenever they had a spare moment in Valdrakken, how Eocundo and Muaaqi had trusted her as easily as they trusted Aziguni herself… talking to her, feeling pride in helping her when she needed it… and then having it all fall apart when she had hoped to help her long lost brother escape his dark past.

She had forgotten, if only for a moment, that the draenei were not the only ones to suffer under the man’ari… and unlike with her, there was no connection there. To Aziguni, Malgum was her brother who had been forced to become man’ari under pain of death. To Shalandrae, he was an Eredar and a murderous world-destroying member of the Burning Legion… nothing more.

She gripped her bow’s haft as she ducked under a low tree branch, the wood creaking a bit as her hand trembled. She had hoped that the connection she had found with the druidess would help her see Malgum’s fate as she did… instead, it may well have destroyed that connection… but she wanted to hope, she wanted to know… as afraid as she was, she wanted dearly to talk to Shalandrae at least one more time.

… and, well, if nothing else then she’d know…

She crept along the underbrush and saw a cave half-hidden by a large copse of trees, leading down under a small hillside into the earth. The thick brush ensured that it would be very difficult to see from the air, but the ground outside was soft and muddy... and it had several fresh paw prints leading to it.

“Muaaqi, Eocundo, stay. Stay.” she nodded, snapping and pointing to the ground by the cave mouth, then she slid her bow over her shoulder and crept inside.

In the cave she could hear a snarling sound, and a tearing sound as well. She smelled blood, hot and coppery… but animal blood. There was wild game in this area, and Shalandrae had been sighted in her feline form. It would appear she may have interrupted the druid’s meal.

“… um… Shalandrae?” she whispered.

The tearing sounds stopped, and she heard a clattering noise, like wood on stone. A single eye, huge, glowed in the darkness… and she heard the sound of movement in the shadows as the eye became smaller, moving higher.

After a moment, she heard a deep sigh, and then a Shalandrae’s voice, “… hello Aziguni…”

Aziguni nodded. She was talking to her, she didn’t sound angry now, just tired. Progress? “Er… I’m sorry, Nelen said you would come back when you were ready, but… I wanted to make sure you were safe because…” she trailed off. Because the Dragon Isles were dangerous right now? Because Shalandrae was in a bad state and could have hurt herself? No…

What was it Jaie had said? Just ask her?

“… because… I…” she took a breath, “I missed you, I…” she stammered.

There was a soft padding sound, the sound of bare feet on stones, and the druid walked into view where the sunlight was coming into the cave. “You missed me. That’s all?” she asked.

Aziguni nodded, “I… Shalandrae I’m so sorry… I was just… I used to be so close to my brother when I was a child and I wanted to be able to be like that with him again and I didn’t even consider…” she began, but stopped as she felt the druid’s fingertips touch her mouth.

Shalandrae looked at her for a long moment, then looked away, “When I was young, just after the Sundering, I had two friends… we’d grown up together before the empire had fallen and one night my friend went missing.” she sighed. “We managed to track him down deep in the wilderness, and found  him with a group of Satyr… I trust you know what those are?” she asked.

Aziguni felt a chill go up her spine, but nodded, “Night elves who are corrupted by fel magic…” she whispered. She had a horrible feeling she knew where Shalandrae was going with this.

“We hid in the bushes and saw him, willingly, join in their ritual and become one of them. He’d always had a bit of a dark streak when we were kids, a really bad temper and a fondness for nasty pranks… but he’d always been there for me and my other friend… and while were hiding there the satyr gathering was ambushed by a warden and a squad of sentinels. My friend fled in to the woods, newly transformed, and the other satyr were all killed.” she continued, her voice soft.

“We found him a day and a half later, hiding deep in the forest, and my friend wanted to go find the warden and tell her so they could… deal with him. We didn’t know of any way to undo the transformation, and he’d done it willingly.” she sighed, “But… I wanted my friend back. I told her that it was still him under there, that we could find a way to help him, that maybe the priestesses could do something…”

Shalandrae closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, “… and while I was talking my former friend drew a dagger, shoved me to the side, and drove it into her chest. He was screaming that he’d done it because he wanted her, but that she’d fallen in love with another. He killed her and ran into the woods… and I never saw him again.” she finished.

Aziguni grimaced, the story sounding far too familiar, and now she truly understood. It wasn’t just that Malgum was a man’ari… it was that Malgum was her brother as well. “But… Shalandrae… Malgum is different.”

The druid’s head snapped up, “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” she asked, stepping forward, “I was. I was absolutely certain that we could have saved him… right up until he killed her. Maybe before he could have been reasoned with, but the fel drove him insane. It warped him body and mind. Are you certain that your brother is different?” she asked, taking several steps towards her, bringing her within mere inches of the draenei woman.

“Are you absolutely, positively sure… that he won’t do that to you?” she whispered, her eyes locked onto Aziguni’s. One glowing like the moon at it’s zenith and the other milky white and blind, surrounded by burn-scarred skin.

Aziguni stared back at her, suddenly very aware of just how close the two of them were, “… no… but I want to believe in him, believe in the man he was before it all went so wrong for our people…” she whispered.

Shalandrae nodded, “If he hurts you… I won’t show him any mercy.” she whispered, reaching her hand towards her, not looking away from Aziguni’s eyes.

“Shalandrae… I…” she began, then there was a loud snarl from outside and both Eocundo and Muaaqi darted into the cave, turning to face the entrance. The talbuk snorted and stamped at the ground with it’s hooves, bleating angrily, as the panthera hissed, the fins on it’s head flaring outwards as it bared it’s fangs towards the entrance.

Aziguni was stunned for a moment, then shook her head as if coming out of a daze. “W-what… Muaaqi! Eocundo! Heel! What is going on…” she whispered, then Shalandrae’s hand gripped her shoulder hard and shoved the draenei behind her!

“They smell what I smell! That’s whats going on! Stay behind me!” she snapped, the druid immediately falling forwards as stones burst out along her body, landing on all fours in the form of a massive stone-carved grizzly bear as she glared at the entrance.

There was a growl outside and Aziguni heard a voice say, “So much fer th’ bleedin’ ambush… GET ‘EM!” and with a sudden roar Az’arad charged into the cave towards Shalandrae, Gremori ducking in alongside him with her hands already wreathed in felfire.

“SURPRISE!” laughed the felsworn woman as she raced towards the druid, “And you brought a draenei! BONUS! HEY DIS! TWO FOR ONE IN HERE!” she called back as Az’arad raised his axe, aiming it at Shalandrae’s head! Her skin was like carved granite now, but Az’arad was strong enough to do serious damage regardless.

Shalandrae hesitated, bracing herself. If she tried to move she’d leave Aziguni exposed! Then suddenly a sharp whistle came from her side and two clicking sounds.

A moment later Gremori yelped as Muaaqi slammed his horns into her ribs, sending her tumbling across the floor of the cave as Az’arad roared in fury as Eocundo lashed out at his ankles, slashing him hard with his claws as the panthera attempted to cripple his leg!

The Wrathguard stumbled, but his skin was thick and hard as treated leather and the claws didn’t do more than anger him… but they did take his attention away from Shalandrae. The druid didn’t hesitate this time! She roared and smashed him to the floor of the cave with a vicious body slam before pinning Az'arad one huge stone paw down on his chest and raising her other to take off the demon’s head!

As she did however she heard several loud cackling voices and looked up to see a swarm of wild imps barreling down on her. She roared and batted three into the wall with a sickening splat, but the others drew close as fel energies began to glow through their skin, the imps preparing to detonate themselves!

Then suddenly the imps were thrown backwards with a series of loud twanging sounds, arrows impaling the small demonic creatures through their heads or chests.

Shalandrae glanced behind her to see Aziguni with her bow drawn, a smirk on her face. “I am draenei, remember? This is not the first time I have fought demons either.” she said with confidence.

Shalandrae grinned, but then felt a massive hand slam into her head and shove her to the side as Az’arad managed to free himself from under her, the Wrathguard clambering to his feet as Gremori lurched back to her own, rubbing her ribs. “Owww… son of a bitch that hurt…” she growled, her hands glowing with green fire again as the sound of footsteps came from behind them.

Dissonantia walked into the cave, flexing her claws. “I didn’t bleedin’ tell yez ta chatter. KILL THEM.” she snarled, pointing to the elf and draenei. No jokes, no sarcasm… all her normal cockiness and taunting were gone. Things had gone very badly for Dissonantia, and she wanted payback against Avalon and Savage United.

Az’arad nodded as Gremori cackled and flexed her arms, a pair of massive wings sprouting from her shoulders as her horns and arms elongated, her teeth turning into needle fangs and her feet transforming into huge claws as she entered her demon form.

Shalandrae roared and tried to tackle Az’arad again, the Wrathguard slamming the haft of his axe into her jaw as he forced her back, as Gremori suddenly surged forward towards Aziguni!

The draenei raised her bow, but the felsworn was twice as fast in her demon form. Her wings flapped, causing a burst of air that slammed away both of Aziguni’s beasts as she tackled her into the cave wall, the draenei gasping in pain as the wind was knocked out of her.

She felt her quiver crack where it hit the wall, her bow falling from her numb fingers as the impact knocked her sketchbook loose from her belt, the book smashing into the floor and sending pages scattering!

“HAH! Been a while since I got to kill a draenei! Used to have a contest with another felsworn back in the Legion to see how many of you we could get on a hunt…” she grinned, then she glanced down and saw the sketchbook pages. “Hm?” she paused, reaching down and picking one of them up, then her eyes went wide. “Hey… HEY DISSONANTIA! Look at this!” she called, holding it out to the warlock.

Behind them Shalandrae roared and tried to reach Aziguni, but Az’arad held the druid at bay as Dissonantia walked forwards, “Hm? Wots this?” she asked, taking the paper from Gremori and looking at it, then her eyes went wide. “Wait… this…” she looked up at the draenei, her face a mask of rage, “SO THAT’S HOW THEY BLEEDIN’ DID IT! YOU DREW THAT!” she roared.

Dissonantia snarled and channeled a blast of felfire, the original copy that Nelen had used to make prints to send around Stormwind reduced to ashes in an instant. “You feckin’ goat-legged SHITE! All of bloody Stormwind is after me ‘cause of yer damn doodle!” she snapped, “Gremori! Hold ‘er still…” she ordered, the felsworn gripping Aziguni’s neck firmly as darkness glowed around Dissonantia’s fingertips. “I don’t feckin’ care if I get Shalandrae’s soul or not, long as she’s dead… but THIS one… oh THIS one I want to damn well SUFFER FER WHAT SHE DID TA ME!” she roared, reaching back to cast her spell and tear away Aziguni’s soul…

Then there was a sudden woosh and a massive axe sailed through the air, slamming into the wall of the cave with enough force to embed itself into it an inch away from Gremori’s head. The felsworn shrieked and stumbled backwards, dropping Aziguni as Dissonantia’s spell went wild.

“Step away from my sister, warlock. Right now.” came a voice from the cave’s mouth as glowing green eyes shone in the gloom. Malgum walked into view, his other weapon already in hand as he gripped a long chain and pulled hard. The axe came free, the chain attached to the base of it as he pulled it back, catching it by the hilt.

Dissonantia stared at him, then back at Aziguni, “… a feckin’ eredar? Did I bleedin’ miss somethin’?” she mumbled, then snarled and readied her dagger. The draenei could wait, THIS was a real threat!

Malgum raised his weapons as Az’arad, upon seeing the new foe, grinned. He slammed the butt of his axe into Shalandrae’s head, knocking the druid senseless, then roared and charged down Malgum!

The eredar’s head snapped around and he blocked Az’arad’s axe with his own, and then he brought his other axe down onto it as well as his arm began to tremble, but the Wrathguard was easily as strong as he was! After a moment however he roared and surged forward, pushing the wrathguard off him and charging!

Az'arad cackled in glee, smashing his weapon into Malgum's as the two clashed, the wrathguard overjoyed to have another new foe to tear apart, as his mistress turned back to Aziguni. “Wotever… keep ‘im busy Azzy… I’m gettin’ this one’s soul before Shalandrae wakes up…” growled the witch.

Aziguni held her bow tightly… but her quiver was wrecked and the arrows inside ruined from where Gremori slammed her into the wall. Muaaqi and Eocundo were unconscious from the wind blast sending them flying, and Shalandrae was still seeing stars! She had nothing!

As the witch raised her arm Malgum hesitated, his eyes flicking to Aziguni, and this was the opening Az'arad needed! The wrathguard swung hard with his axe and Malgum blocked a moment too late, the impact causing him to stumble back and fall to his knee! He held up his weapons to block Az'arad's, but the demon had the advantage! He couldn't stand! For a moment it seemed as if steam was rising from Malgum's skin… “No…” he hissed through his teeth, “I swore, when Sargeras fell… never again…” he whispered.

Dissonantia raised her hand, her fingers surrounded by darkness, and Malgum saw Aziguni's face... her terror as she saw the spell that would tear away her soul forming around Dissonantia's hand...

Malgum gritted his teeth, “… I swore… but… for this…” he snarled, and his eyes suddenly glowed with fel energy, “… for… my sister…” he grimaced, and the air began to grow hot, then the air around Malgum started to shimmer as if in a heat haze. As it did Az'arad's grin flickered, then turned to a grimace as Malgum began to rise...

Dissonantia’s head turned to him as he stood, and then his veins stood out against his skin, glowing a deep venomous green, as he roared out a string of words in demonic that made Aziguni cry out and clamp her hands over her ears.

The three members of Unlimited Sin recognized what he said, they could all speak demonic fluently. "HERE NOW IS THE FELFURY!" bellowed Malgum loud enough to shake the very cave itself.

Dissonantia grimaced and backpedaled as Gremori gasped, “Oh… oh shit I know him!” she shouted, pointing at the man’ari as Az’arad even looked worried.

Malgum’s body erupted in felfire as he slammed his axes into Az’arad’s form, sending the demon skittering back into the wall of the cave with enough force to crack the stone wall behind him! The man'ari turned to face Dissonantia, his teeth bared as demonic flames swirled about his body and weapons, his eyes wide as he snarled like a feral beast!

“A felfury berserker…” she whispered, then shook her head, “GREMORI! FECK ‘IM UP!” she commanded, pointing a finger at the eredar man.

Gremori grinned excitedly, “Heheh… oh FEL YES! That’s Massacre Malgum! Oh I have wanted to fight someone like him forever!” she laughed, charging the eredar as she burst into flames as well, crashing into him and shoving him out of the cave! The demon and felsworn landed in the woods of the Azure span, the ground around them smoldering as the felfire began to ignite their surroundings!

Shalandrae shook her head, then stared at the demonic conflagration outside before turning to Dissonantia and roaring, charging towards the warlock. The demon sorceress’s head snapped towards the druid and she snarled, diving out of the way, “AZZY! GET YER ARSE UP!” she shouted.

The demon struggled to his feet as Shalandrae prepared to charge again, then Dissonantia slashed another portal open and a swarm of bilescourge bats shot out of it towards Aziguni!

Shalandrae had only a moment to react, and she chose. She threw herself infront of the draenei woman and braced herself, channeling the power of nature through her form as a layer of spiked tree bark grew over her already stone-hard hide… then she screamed in pain as the bilescourge hit home, slamming into her body and eating into it in a spray of acid!

Aziguni cried out in alarm as Shalandrae took the brunt of the attack, but a louder cry came from outside. A the kind of enraged roar that one would expect from a great beast, the kind of monster that could flatten entire cities.

Gremori was sent flying backwards through a tree, her face covered in blood, as Malgum turned towards the cave, every line of his face showing nothing but a murderous thirst for carnage.

“Azzy! Wez’ leaving! Now!” she barked, snapping her fingers with one last venomous look behind her at Aziguni. “And I sure as feck ain’t forgettin’ YOU girl…” she growled, the three of them vanishing in a woosh of felfire.

Aziguni’s eyes were wide as Shalandrae staggered, her bear form shrinking in on itself as she became an elf once more, then she fell to the cave floor with a pained cry. Her right side was covered with horrible acid burns! Most of it had been absorbed by her bark and stone hide… but the rest… “A-augh…” she gasped out, her good eye watering as agony burned along her side.

“Shalandrae! NO! Shalandrae, can you hear me?! Oh by the Naaru… W-we have to get you back to Valdrakken!” she shouted, taking out her hearthstone, then stopping as she heard another roar.

Outside the cave Malgum was still glowing with felfire, caught in the throes of his madness.

The Felfury. An elite unit of the Burning Legion. They were frontline fighters who were cursed with a bloodlust that when called upon would turn them from warriors into living engines of destruction. Already the trees around Malgum were on fire, his shoulders heaving as his head twisted left and right, seeking out the foe who had fled.

Aziguni’s eyes filled with fear, remembering Shalandrae’s words about her friend-turned-satyr. The fel had driven him insane, twisted him body and soul, leaving him nothing but a monster who would kill his childhood friend out of jealousy and spurned affection.

What she was seeing now was not her brother, not anymore. Maybe he was still in there somewhere, but right now? Right now she saw a rabid beast hungry for blood.

Then Malgum’s head snapped to the side and he sniffed the air, snarling and tearing off into the woods.

Aziguni watched him go, wondering why he left, then she heard a pained groan from Shalandrae and gasped. “OH! Oh Shalandrae…” she looked around, “Muaaqi! Eocundo! To me!” she called out, whistling sharply as she did.

Her two animals slowly rose and padded over, then all but collapsed near her as she quickly gathered what she could, then held the druid close to her and hissed a bit as the acid still on her bit into her own skin. She ignored the pain though, channeling her will into the stone as her animals laid their heads on her lap… and in a burst of magic all four of them vanished back to the city.

The Roasted Ram, Early the Next Morning

Shalandrae opened her eye a crack, then winced at the sunlight coming in through the window. “Ow…” she hissed, feeling gingerly over her arm. The burns were mostly gone, but her body was still extremely tender and sensitive where the demon acid had burned her… but if she was back in Valdrakken that meant…

“Shalandrae?” gasped Aziguni, “Praise the Light, you’re awake…” she whispered, the draenei still in her travelling gear with deep bags under her eyes, sitting in a chair next to the night elf’s bed.

“Aziguni? Were you there all night?” she asked sleepily, rubbing her eye as she sat up in the bed.

“W-well, someone had to watch you incase the bilescourge acid had caused any internal damage and after all that I was a bit too wound up to sleep so…” she stammered out.

Shalandrae smirked weakly at her, “Aziguni, stop… seriously… after yesterday you don’t have to… um… it was yesterday right?” she asked.

Aziguni nodded, “You were unconscious from the pain all night long… but as soon as I returned Nelen called for help. Sekhi and Dareley worked together to heal you. You’d been burned so badly I was afraid… um…”

Shalandrae nodded, sitting up in the bed, “Yeah… sorry…” she sighed, leaning back against the headboard.

Aziguni sat down in the chair again, leaning back, “I… er… I feel as though I should be the one who is apologizing. You would not have even been in that cave if I hadn’t…” she began, but Shalandrae waved it away.

“It wouldn’t have gone well no matter what you did. I… look, I can’t promise I’ll ever see Malgum the way you do. But… like I said… I get it. I know what its like to lose someone to the Legion and how badly you want to see them come back.” she replied, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

Aziguni nodded sadly, “After yesterday I am beginning to see your point as well… I did not know about… whatever it was he did there. Now I wonder just how much of my brother truly remains…”

They both fell silent for a long moment, then…

“Look, I-…” began Shalandrae.

“Shalandrae, I know  I-…” began Aziguni.

They both fell silent again.

“You first.” they both said together.

They both fell silent again.

After another long moment Shalandrae said, “… I… after Teldrassil, I… I can’t pretend I’ll be stable all of the time. I’m getting better, but… you saw how I was. I still have bad moments. Especially when it comes to things like that. I think its… I lost so much when Darnassus burned… I’m afraid of getting something just to lose it again…” she whispered.

Aziguni nodded, “… as was I after Argus fell. Seeing the wilderness around Eredath destroyed by the Legion broke my heart for a long time…” she replied softly. “But… I still want to try…” she added, so soft it could barely be heard.

However, being an elf, Shalandrae had very good hearing.

“I want to try too… so… shall we see where this goes?” she asked.

Aziguni gave her a small hopeful smile, “… I would like that very much Shalandrae…” she replied.

Across the room, in her bed, Jaie Swiftpaw lay on her belly with her head facing the other wall. She’d woken up midway through all that and gave a satisfied smirk before she closed her eyes and let herself doze off once more.

On her bedroll, Sekhi turned in her sleep, and dreamed of a giant delicious egg.

Aziguni reached a hand out and took Shalandrae’s in her’s. Both she and the druid had lost much over their long lives, both of them had suffered from the Legion, both of them shared a deep love of the wild places and creatures of the world… perhaps they could find a future in that… perhaps not. Only time would tell.

However, one small problem remained that Aziguni hadn’t told Shalandrae about yet.

Her brother had yet to return to Valdrakken, and she did not know why…

The Azure Span, Shortly After Aziguni Used her Hearthstone

Malgum roared in blind rage as he tore away after his foe, able to sense Dissonantia and her allies thanks to the heightened senses of his felfury state. Once awakened he could only end it by killing her or burning out… but right now he didn’t care about anything really.

He stormed into a clearing and growled in fury, seeing a felfire glow coming from a nearby cave, and charged towards it... but the moment he entered… “NOW!” snarled Dissonantia.

The floor erupted in a green glow as a sigil flared to life, chains bursting out of it and snaking around the eredar man as he was forced to his knees!

Dissonantia stood near the already active portal, readied incase she needed a quick escape… but she’d be damned if she left without something to show for it, and as they were fleeing Gremori had a suggestion that had surprised even her.

She had pointed out one thing about Malgum that Dissonantia hadn’t considered at first… he was a man’ari eredar. More to the point, he was a demon… and she was a warlock.

“If this don’t bleedin’ work I can at least try ta kill yez I suppose but…” she flexed her hands as Malgum roared and tugged against the chains, then she lashed out with both hands and the eredar went rigid, his eyes bulging.

“DEMON!” she shouted, her words echoing with power, “I BIND YEZ!”

The flames began to flicker out on his body as he gritted his teeth, his eyes widening in horror as he realized the trap he’d run into. “No… NO! I WOULD SOONER DIE!” he shouted, tugging on the chains, but his arms felt like sacks of rocks, the felfury burning out of him… he howled in rage, he was so close! All he had to do was break free and get his hands around Dissonantia’s throat!

Dissonantia grinned widely, seeing his distress and the fires dying away. Felfury berserkers were powerful, but their powers were short lived, meant for explosive destruction against weaker foes.

From the moment he had invoked the felfury he had been on a time limit, and his time was up! If he had succeeded in killing Dissonantia he'd have been fine, her soul consumed to fuel his maddened state... but he'd taken too long! One way or another the fires of felfury had their cost and they'd take it it out of Malgum instead! Not only had his demonically enhanced madness ended, he had become as weak as a kitten! He couldn't fight back now!

“Oh yez will die alright… eventually…” she chuckled, “But for now…” she flexed her fingers again, her hands glowing with felfire, and Malgum threw his head back as he screamed in pain, flames shooting across his mind and soul.

“NO! NEVER!” he shouted in defiance, straining against the chains… but this was the same spell that she’d used that day in Zereth Mortis when she'd revealed her true colors for the first time. The chains were sturdy enough to bind even the strongest members of Avalon and Savage United all at once. Against this spell the enervated man'ari had no hope of victory...

“Oh yes… yez is gonna be my demon, ‘Massacre Malgum,’ ‘n yez is gonna massacre all me enemies fer me before I even think o’ lettin' yez die…” she sneered, the she roared “DEMON!  I BIND YEZ! I CONSTRAIN YEZ! BY MY POWER I DOMINATE YEZ!” she spat at him in demonic, the air reeking of hot copper and brimstone as Malgum cried out in agony.

A moment later he fell limp in his chains, collapsing to the cave floor…

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