#Metal Slitting Machine

[totheblood]

i still hear you. (prologue)

PAIRING: post tlou2!ellie williams x reader

SUMMARY: ellie stumbles upon your self-run town after her life is destroyed, except there's more to this town then what meets the eye. and it seems like there is more to you too.

WARNINGS: 18+ mentions of death, grief, related subjects; cursing, mentions of drinking/drugs, mentions of s*x

A/N: i've been working on this one for a while... i hope you enjoy! please send asks, reblog, and reply to this post <;3

WORD COUNT: 3k

"i still hear you laughing, but only for a minute"

Spring couldn’t come fast enough for Ellie. 

The cold still nipped at the exposed skin on her hands, ghosting the phantom limbs of the two fingers she was now missing. Everything was cold. The tip of her nose, her ears, and most importantly her heart. As she wandered aimlessly, unsure of where to go, she knew there was one place she couldn’t go: home. 

Jackson was no longer a place for her. Joel was gone, Tommy thought she was weak, and Dina…Well, Dina wanted nothing to do with her. Dina had a lot she could blame Ellie for before Ellie left, but she never did. She stayed. And now, on top of all of that, Ellie had left one of the few people in her life who cared enough about her to stay. Spring could come tomorrow but it would forever be winter inside her. 

She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she was going west. She couldn’t handle the harsh winters of the East Coast, and Wyoming stopped feeling like home before she left for Seattle. She thought about staying on the farm and living out whatever short life she was going to have there, but staying in that home painted with memories of ��what ifs” would drive her crazy. 

So she packed enough supplies to last her a few months if she hunted her food and headed to the West Coast. The first few days were silent, she only encountered a few infected and found shelter in abandoned buildings. She lived off of expired food she found in vending machines in old universities and occasionally sang herself to sleep. 

On her tenth day, she found a car that lasted her about 2 days. Once it broke down, she just kept walking. Over abandoned highways and thick forests, she just kept walking. On day 17, she reached California and stumbled upon an eerily similar set of walls. It looked just like the gates at Jackson, except these were concrete and better built. They were much higher, and the gates almost looked… automatic. 

Ellie was hesitant. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she definitely wasn’t looking for another hometown to destroy. She approached the large walls cautiously, with her hands up and slowly. As she walked closer she was screaming, “I come in peace,” over and over again. She was almost 50 feet near the gate when she heard a girl's voice shout, “Don’t come any closer.”

She stopped in her tracks as the automatic gates began to open. Ellie expected an army of people with guns blazing, just how it was when she first arrived at Jackson, but when the gates opened there just stood you, grounded in all your glory, and a gun aimed right at her face. She wanted to laugh, but that just seemed sexist. 

Instead, you pressed forward, unwavering, with your gun aimed right at her. She didn’t step backward, or even breathe, she just stood there until you were close enough to her to make out all the freckles on her face and the slit in her eyebrow. 

“Who are you?” you spat at her.

“Ellie,” she breathed out, her hands faltering a bit. 

With your hand firmly wrapped around the cold metal of the gun, you inched forward again, pulling back the slide, a metallic click echoing in the silence. The gun was loaded, and you were letting Ellie know that you weren’t afraid to shoot. Her hands stiffened again. 

“What are you doing here?” Your tone was tough and the look on your face was enough to send Ellie running for the hills, but it also made her want to crack a smile. Your nose scrunched up as you spoke, and your lips were somehow not chapped in this weather. But Ellie didn’t smile, she was sure if she did you would put one right between her eyes. That much she was sure of.

“I-” Ellie hadn’t thought this far. What was she doing here? “I’m just looking for a place to stay.” 

Your eyebrows creased as you gave her a once over, looking for any sign she was trouble. It was in your nature to search for danger, but she wasn’t raising any red flags. Except the fact that she made it here alone and unscathed, and was missing two fingers. 

“What happened to your hand?” you asked, tipping the gun slightly to her hand. A pained expression crossed her face, it was almost like she forgot that two of her fingers were quite literally bitten off, but that fight was somewhere shoved deep inside her mind. It wasn’t something she wanted to remember.

“Lost them in a fight,” she replied simply, there was no point in telling the full story. It’s not like you had the time. 

“You can’t stay here if you’re going to be trouble,” finally you put the gun down, resting your hands on your hips, giving her a firm look. Ellie would hand it to you, you were absolutely scary. In her mind, she knew she could take you, but she also wasn’t so sure of that.  

“I’m,” she sighed, lowering her hands slowly, “I’m done with that. I won’t be trouble,” and for the first time in Ellie’s life, she meant that. She was ready to start over. She knew the fighter in her would always be there, itching to come out but she had been fighting her whole life. It was time to give up. She had already lost everything. Or so she thought. 

Your face softened slightly before firming up again, your empathy peeking through like it always did. You looked her over again, sighing, as you signaled for someone at the gate to come. A man with short blonde hair trotted over, a leash in his hand. He looked kind as he offered a smile to Ellie.

“Old girl here is just gonna check to make sure you’re not infected,” he smiled, dropping the leash. Ellie’s heart rate picked up again as she watched the German Shepherd approach her slowly, sniffing around her as it circled her. You stood behind the blonde guy with your arms crossed across your chest. The dog found nothing and returned to the man, sitting down next to him, “Looks like you’re all clear!”

“Welcome to Mono City,” you deadpanned, rolling your eyes as you turned back towards the gate, walking in that direction. You were halfway there when you realized Ellie wasn’t moving. Turning on your heel again you stared at her, hand on your hip again. You had an attitude, Ellie thought, cute. “You coming or what?”

The small town sat on a large lake, glistening as the sun's rays bounced off the surface. Buildings were built close together, trees without leaves scattered on the walkway, and about a hundred people out on the street as she trailed behind you, earning dirty looks from half of them. Ellie scowled back. Ellie smiled when you introduced yourself to her, telling her your name and a few key details about yourself. She learned you served as some sort of mayor here, keeping everything in order, and that you were the person that people came to. She would be lying if she said that didn’t intimidate her. But all Ellie did was give you her name again and tell you that she was from Jackson, anything else she said would fall short. 

“How are you with your hands?” you asked, voice flat and simple. Ellie choked on her words, stuttering a response. 

“I’m, well,” she coughed, “I’m just okay with them now, since,” she shrugged gesturing to what she now called her ‘bad hand’, “you know.”

A wave of guilt crossed your face as you composed yourself, somehow already forgetting your previous interaction. You shook your head solemnly, cursing quietly under your breath as you stopped. 

“Shit,” you turned to her, eyes squeezed shut, “sorry, I’m so used to asking the same questions, I didn’t even think.”

“It’s fine don’t worry about it,” she gave a tight-lipped smile. Now, with the illumination of the buildings, she could see your whole face. You were pretty, that she was sure of, but it was a more down-to-earth pretty. A type of pretty that you had to take in. You had scars around your face, and a pretty big scar down the side of your neck. It almost looked like the one Ellie had on her arm. But still, scars and all, you were just nice to look at. 

“Well, just for that reason we probably won’t have you be on guard duty,” you stated, eyes flicking around her face, “do you have any other strengths?”

“Uhm,” Ellie had to think for a minute. She had never really been asked anything like this before. What were her strengths? Did she have any at all? She used to be good at guitar, but now she couldn’t play, and that probably wouldn’t be useful at all to anyone here. She was good at art still, something she couldn’t take for granted anymore. It was all she had. The scratched-out drawings of Dina, JJ, Jesse, and Joel were stuffed deep into her bag.

“I’m good at art,” she shrugged, “and writing, maybe.”

“Okay,” you smiled, showing off your teeth, making her warm a bit, “that we can work with. Maybe you can teach at the school.”

“You have a school here?” Ellie gawked. Jackson had a school but it was small and had maybe two or three teachers. 

“Yeah,” you turned to keep walking, making Ellie stumble behind you to keep up, “we have three. An elementary, middle, and high school.”

“Wow,” Ellie was in awe, “It’s not like a military school or anything?” 

“No,” you answered quickly, your voice tight, “It’s not like any of that shit. We don’t fuck with FEDRA here.”

Ellie would be lying if she said that wasn’t music to her ears.

“It’s just like a normal school except we teach a lot more practical things. Things we can use like, cooking, science, and English. Like reading or writing. Since you’re new you will probably start with the elementary school. We also have little extracurriculars and we’ve wanted to introduce art but haven’t been able to find anyone yet.”

“Oh, cool,” was all Ellie said as you both stumbled on what looked like a residential street. There were rows of houses, all that looked the same. There was a road, with cars parked on them and driveways with gates. Most of the houses looked about two stories tall, some had toys lying in the front yards and a few animals were roaming about, small cats and dogs. The porches had furniture on them, little couches and chairs, and as she walked she noticed some people outside with mugs in their hands as if they were drinking their morning coffee. The town looked like something she saw out of a movie, only something she could dream about. Her eyes were wide in awe as you rambled on about something but Ellie was honestly too entranced in everything. Here, in the middle of nowhere was a whole town of people living their lives, as if nothing had ever happened to them. 

“Ellie?” you stopped in your tracks, crossing your arms over your chest. There was your attitude again, “are you even listening?”

“Y-yeah, I am. It’s just-”

“A lot, I know,” you sighed, “but you gotta listen, there are a lot of rules here. Rules that make this place function and if you don’t follow them, you could easily be kicked out.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, genuinely meaning it, “I’m listening, promise.”

“It’s fine,” you gave her a fake smile, turning to push open a gate to a nice house, “This will be your place.”

“Uhm,” Ellie stopped, not entering the front yard, “what do you mean ‘my place’? This is far too big for me.”

“This is the only size our houses come in,” you replied matter-of-factly, “you can just say thank you.”

Ellie blinked as she looked up at the blue house, that looked like it was built yesterday. It had a wrap-around porch and two white columns right by the entrance. The door was a giant white door with a gold handle. This was nicer than any house she’s ever been in, and way too big for one girl.  

“Thank you,” Ellie replied, still awe-struck, “this is just so nice.”

“You’re welcome,” you smiled, fishing around in your bag for something. You pulled out a pair of keys, and handed them to her, “Here’s your house keys. You don’t get a car quite yet, that’s something you have to work your way up to, but there is a bike in the garage. Spring is around the corner so it will get warmer and you should have your car by next winter so don’t worry too much. My house is right across the block, but I’m usually in the City Center if you need me.”

She wrapped her right hand around the keys, tightening them in her palm. She watched as you searched through your bag again and pulled out a little device. 

“This is your walkie,” you took a deep breath, “Try to find me before using it. It’s usually only used for emergencies so just be mindful of that. I’ll be by tomorrow to take you to work, so you have time to get settled in today. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ellie smiled, her voice sounding a little bit breathless.

That night Ellie settled into her new home. Well, she tried to settle into her new home but kept shifting around in every seat and couch, like she couldn’t find something to get comfortable on. She examined every part of the house, picking the smallest room for herself and shoving her backpack in the closet. She took a bath for the first time in months, washing all the dirt and grime off of her. Left in the shower was a bar of soap that looked like it had been handmade and unused. It smelled so good she almost took a bite, but instead chose to use it how it was meant to be used.

As the sun began to set she stepped outside, watching the activity on the block and smiling to herself. Everything just seemed so normal, but with the state of this world this town was certainly abnormal. From her window she could see you in your front yard, feeding a pack of cats that slipped through your white picket fence. She smiled to herself as she watched one rub against your leg, and your gentle hand coming down to pet it. She continued to watch as kids passed your house, waving to you and running back to their homes. 

The next few days were uneventful. Ellie found herself getting used to teaching young kids, always laughing when they asked about her missing fingers. It was out of her comfort zone, but she was around JJ enough to know what kids liked. Her voice always got so high-pitched when she spoke to them, and they liked being chased around the room. On her fifth day of working, a kid ran in screaming, “Miss Ellie! Miss Ellie!” with a chicken scratch drawing of his family. He was so proud that all Ellie could say was “Good job, bud!” and ruffle his hair. He left with the biggest smile on his face.

But now, Ellie found herself at the city’s most popular bar, with the other teachers who wanted to congratulate her on her first week. Della, who invited Ellie out in the first place, made a toast to her, clinking her glass with Ellie’s and taking a long swig of her drink. Ellie took a sip of hers too and fuck, this shit was strong. 

She felt human again, laughing with people her age in a bar and old music playing. She was almost having a good time until a song came on that reminded her of Joel. It was like her whole demeanor changed and everyone could tell. She excused herself from the group finding a small corner to sit on and finish the rest of her drink, hoping maybe it would make her forget everything. But then, the bell at the front door rang making Ellie look up to see who had entered. 

There you were in all your glory, tight shirt on and hair completely loose. It almost looked as if you were wearing makeup. Ellie must’ve been staring too long because she blinked and you were standing in front of her. 

“See you got yourself a drink,” you laughed, voice making Ellie’s cheeks turn pink. She was… really drunk.

“Yeah, I could get you one too,” she slurred a bit, goofy smile spread across her face. She watched as something odd crossed your face and now she was worried she said something wrong, “I just mean, like.. you know… I mean like as a thank you.”

“Right,” you sighed.

“For my mansion, you know,” she shrugged and you giggled. You giggled and it went straight to her head. What was she doing?

“You haven’t been paid yet,” you smiled back at her, now moving to sit down, “and it’s okay, I don’t drink unless it’s a special occasion.”

“What? Meeting me is not special enough,” she teased, knocking her shoulder with yours. Her eyes scanned your face, your smile reaching your eyes as you giggled again. Her stomach sank again. She wasn’t so sure if this was just the alcohol anymore, she felt like she was 12 and crushing on Riley again. 

“No, it’s special,” you reassured, “Maybe, I’ll drink when you decide to stay.”

“Who said I’m not staying?” she questioned sitting up.

“Some people don’t,” you shrugged, smile fading. Ellie’s brain wanted to make it better, make you laugh again, or shit do anything to put the smile back on your face. 

“Well, I’m gonna,” she said gently, so only you could hear her, “I need to get my paycheck.”

You laughed and Ellie breathed a sigh of relief, laughing with you. 

“I’ll get that to you,” you smiled, “and we don’t use paychecks.”

“What’re you gonna pay me with?” she smirked, “I know some other ways you can pay me.” Then the same look from earlier crossed your face and she cursed quietly to herself, muttering an apology. 

“No, no,” you said, like you were about to let her down gently, “I just try not to get… involved with anyone since…” your voice trailed off.

“Since?” Ellie questioned, but as you opened your mouth to speak the group from earlier made their way over, noticing your arrival and screaming your name. She watched as you got up, hugged everyone and started chatting with them, leaving her with her drink and too many questions. 

There was one thing that scared her though. She knew you needed someone who could stay, and the only thing she was good at was leaving.

[toxicanonymity]

Hello my beautiful Toxy 🖤 I wrote a letter using Resistbot to oppose my state governors use of DOGE to try and filter out important educational programming in my state of Florida. Ron DeSantis is a fucking coward and utilizing DOGE in our education system here would be incredibly harmful !

I was wondering if I could get a blurb for my main man Night Walks ? 🖤🍃 (I know you just did one!!! So if not that's ok!!)

I love that you are doing this btw, a really great incentive to get people to contact their representatives !!!

SAVE act | blorbos for democracy | 5calls | resistbot

Olivia, that's amazing 🖤 well done speaking up. We should all demand accountability and also ask our elected officials to vote no on the SAVE act.

In the park

Joel miller x f!reader | night walks au

WARNINGS: 18+ predator/prey type behavior, dubcon touching in public, PIV, 630 words of this filthy creep, coming in hot. . . and it continues here.

Fireflies were beginning to to dot the treeline and you knew you shouldn't be at the park alone at this hour. But you weren't *completely* alone. It wasn't deserted - you could still hear the tink of baseball on metal bat in the distance. That's where Joel had been. He’d come to sell weed to one of the little league coaches and got caught up in conversation with an old friend... Until he noticed you. By the time Joel caught up, you had taken your sweat soaked T-shirt over your head, getting ready to stretch before leaving. A humming coke machine was the only light nearby.

As Joel approached from behind, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up, sensing a presence. Before you could run, he grabbed hold of the sports bra between your shoulder blades, and pulled you back toward him. His hand covered your mouth before you could scream, and your heart jumped out of your chest.

“Hey, princess,” he greeted you in your ear, and you felt a wave of relief at the sound of his voice “it's just me.”

He spread his fingers enough for you to say “what the hell, Joel” And you kind of tried to pull away from him, but he held you in place and wrapped his arms around you from behind until you stopped your halfhearted struggling and just breathed. He didn't have to hold your mouth.

His hand glided up your dewy stomach and under your damp bra. “Walkin’ without me?” His voice was husky. “Dangerous” He cupped your breast and palmed your hardened nipple and his dick twitched against your back side. “But god damn, ya feel even better than ya look.”

With one hand still in your bra, he shoved his other hand down your shorts. He rubbed your clit rapidly, expertly, and sucked at your ear, then under your ear. Massaging your breast with one hand and rubbing your clit with the other, he had you like putty in his hands. When you let out a soft moan, he slid his fingers down your slit and murmured, “yeah, now she's ready for me.”

He slid his hand out of your shorts and licked his fingers, then took your keys out of your shorts pocket. He slid his other hand out of your bra and put his arm around you. “Gonna walk ya to your car.” You followed his lead in silence.

When the two of you got to your car, he opened the passenger door and instructed, “take your shorts off” as he sat down in your car. He pushed the seat back to make more room. When you didn't comply right away, he looked you in the eye and said ,”drop’em. Now.”

You stepped out of your shorts, and he freed his cock from his pj pants. “C’mere, beautiful,” he nodded you over, then looked down at his cock. “Right here, baby. Take a seat, c’mon.”

With your shorts in your hand, naked from the waist down, you straddled him.

“Attagirl,” he gushes as he helped you onto him. Didn't even close the car door. “Fuck,” he whispered, running the head of his cock through your dripping folds. “Fuck, yeah. Ohh” he moaned in a crescendo as you sank down on him. “Good girl,” he breathed, and kissed you as your body welcomed him, hugging his shaft with your soft walls. He peeled your sports bra off and took your tit into his mouth, then nosed your cleavage and smothered himself in your chest. “So goddamn sexy,” he gushed, and you lifted up just slightly on his shaft, then swallowed him whole again, filling yourself with his cock.

“Hell yeah, there she is.”

-

-

SMUT CONTINUES HERE.

Ty for reading 🖤 please consider commenting or sharing if you enjoyed.

[thewistlingbadger]

Analyzing Viktor's eyes:

We've talked about how Jayce is never repulsed or afraid of the major changes to Viktor's body and accepts him instantly whenever he sees something that should not be the way it is when it comes to Viktor's body. What we have YET to talk about is just how Jayce doesn't turn away from Viktor's purple and metal body, he does not turn away from Viktor's steel and muted eyes and I think this is VERY IMPORTANT.

Because in season two Viktor's eyes are somewhat symbolic of his humanity. Viktor's eyes are naturally yellow and are one of the most distinctive elements to his design but after his transfusion with the hexcore they become this empty gray that sometimes changes color. It looks very weird and inhuman and nothing like Viktor. The only time we see Viktor's natural eyes in season two is in the astral plane, where he also maintains his season one hairstyle and features and build. However once Viktor goes full machine herald his eyes are completely gone. His face is split in half and the eyes of his mask contain no pupil or iris. It is only two glowing slits of yellow, both in the astral plane and in the actual world (although in the actual world Viktor's "eyes" actually take on a spherical shape but still it is literally just two glowing spheres of yellow). ADDITIONALLY even though is face is split we can still see it under the mask and we see his eyes are CLOSED. As if he is closed off from his humanity after fully becoming the machine herald or just refuses to look at it or the consequences of his actions.

It is JAYCE who's responsible for the return of Viktor's natural eye color once Viktor has become the machine herald. Viktor's machine herald mask in the astral plane BREAKS because Ekko throws the z drive directly at Viktor's face. We're able to see half of Viktor's real face and half of his mask when Jayce reveals that Viktor was the mage all along. The mask does not fully come off until AFTER Jayce hugs Viktor in the astral plane and Viktor pulls away from the hug. Jayce's hug is why we're now able to see both of Viktor's eyes.

This whole journey with Viktor's eyes and the relationship between him and Jayce is very fascinating to me for several reasons:

Jayce took away Viktor's humanity by fusing the hexcore to him. But Jayce is also the same person that made Viktor realize that humanity was beautiful because of its flaws. He is the one that made Viktor human again, literally. Jayce is the reason why Viktor's eyes change color in the first place AND he is also the one that is responsible for them returning to their original color.

Jayce and Viktor spend a lot of time looking at each other throughout the show but ESPECIALLY in season two. The first thing Jayce does when he's actually reunited with Viktor after their initial separation and Jayce's trip to the bad au is STARE AT VIKTOR. Viktor looks so different and is floating in the air and all Jayce could do was stare at him. The next time they meet after this, Viktor tries to hold Jayce's eye contact in the astral plane but Jayce isn't in the astral plane with him. So instead of seeing Viktor's eyes Jayce just sees the cold face of someone Viktor turned into a machine. Jayce looks Viktor in the eye almost the entirety of their finale in the astral plane. The last thing Jayce and Viktor ever do in the show is look at each other AND they spend their final moments in the show facing each other but WITH THEIR EYES CLOSED!

Eye contact is very important to humans. Eyes in general are just really important to humans. Not only for the practical reason, to see things, but also on an emotional and spiritual level. "The eyes are the window to the soul." You can tell a lot about someone by the way their eyes look and how they look when they look at things. The pupils of our eyes grow and shrink based off what we're looking at and sometimes that dilation is in accordance to how much we like something. You can see in the finale that Jayce and Viktor's pupils are practically blown out they're so big. You can communicate a lot just by using your eyes, without ever saying a single word.

Jayce is never really aghast by Viktor's body no matter how horrific it looks because Jayce cares about Viktor. When he sees him on the brink of death in the council room and sees how his leg is glowing purple, his first thought isn't "what the fuck is wrong with Viktor's leg." His first thought is "I have to save Viktor from dying." When Jayce actually got Viktor to the lab and saw the entity of Viktor's body he wasn't thinking about how inhumane and wrong it looked. He was only thinking about how the hexcore better be able to fix Viktor. When Viktor is stable but unresponsive for several days after the transfusion, Jayce isn't thinking about Viktor's notes on his self experimentation or how Viktor's body had several runes carved into it. He was thinking about whether or not Viktor was okay. Whether or not Viktor was going to ever wake up. When Viktor DOES wake up and is entirely purple and shiny and able to walk without a mobility aid and stand up straight without a brace, his first thought is "what the fuck happened to me and to my body? What have I become am I still human what am I?" And Jayce's first thought to seeing a Viktor of purple, metallic flesh is "holy shit, it worked. It worked, Viktor is alive and awake and back." Towards the end of the show when Jayce sees the machine herald for the first time, he isn't terrified by the fact that Viktor is extremely tall and other worldly looking. He isn't disgusted by Viktor's third arm or distorted voice or lack of a face or his unnaturally slim waist. He doesn't even look phased or bothered at all. Instead, one of the first things he says upon seeing the machine herald is "there must be some part of you that's still in there." After this interaction, after Viktor and him fight and it seems like Viktor is going to take his life away from Jayce, Jayce STILL is adamant on the idea that Viktor, his friend, his partner of several years, is still alive. Jayce fully believes that Viktor is still within the machine herald and he has so much faith that he risks his own life and the lives of everyone else on his belief. As Viktor actually begins to turn Jayce into a machine, Jayce spends his last words telling Viktor about how his humanity is beautiful and how he still believes in Viktor. Jayce's wholehearted care for Viktor is what ends up saving everyone! Jayce sees Viktor's body go through horrific transformations throughout the season and it doesn't impact the way he views Viktor in the slightest. He saw the way Viktor's body looked and never asked a single question about it and never asked questions about Viktor's notes on self experimentation. So of course he's not phased by Viktor's eyes being a different color. Jayce is able to see Viktor's humanity even when Viktor doesn't look or act like a human.

But arguably the reason why I find this so fascinating, why I'm so intrigued that Jayce has no concern for the fact that Viktor's eyes are no longer yellow is because Viktor's eyes are arguably Viktor's most important feature TO JAYCE. Viktor's eyes and their color and their intensity is something that Jayce canonically has taken notice of and has found importance in. In the finale montage, we see a shot of Viktor from Jayce's perspective on the night they met. The shot is the exact shot used in the beginning of the show. When you compare the two shots, the one from act 1 s1 and the one from act 3 S2, they are IDENTICAL WITH ONLY ONE MAJOR EXCEPTION. VIKTOR'S EYES. Viktor's eyes in the shot used in the finale are MORE yellow, MORE intense, and more distinct than they were in the original shot at the start of the show. This shot is from Jayce's perspective, so it's showing us how Jayce perceived and remembered Viktor to be. This detail is the reason I even wanted to write this post. Viktor's eyes are clearly an aspect that Jayce pays attention to and yet he didn't utter a single word when he saw that they were completely different.

[vincentbriggs]

Do you need a sewing machine to start making shirts and vests? Is hand sewing an option worth considering, or should I invest in a machine, in your opinion?

That's really a matter of personal preference!

Do you need a machine? Absolutely not! Every garment ever made before the 1840's was sewn by hand, and a lot of them after that too. I've sewn many garments completely by hand, including the early 18th century tiddy-out-violinist shirt, these bright orange breeches, and this green waistcoat.

Is it nice to have a machine? I think so, but again, individual opinions vary!

One of the costumers I follow sews everything 100% by hand because she finds it meditative and isn't interested in using a machine at all. Some people hate hand sewing and prefer to do everything by machine, with maybe a bit of hand finishing if they absolutely can't avoid it.

I do about a 50/50 split overall, maybe skewing a bit more towards hand sewing. I like to do pants, shirts, and nightgowns mostly by machine with some hand finishing, but for jackets and waistcoats I usually do considerably more hand sewing than machine, because I like 18th century tailoring techniques and think they give a nicer looking result. I do most of my buttonholes by hand, or I do them by machine first and then cover them in hand stitching.

Most people who sew do at least some of it by machine, but again, I don't know which way you prefer to work, so I'd suggest trying out both to see how you feel abut them.

For hand sewing, I suspect a lot of people hate it because they're using shitty needles and/or shitty thread, and perhaps haven't found good resources for hand sewing techniques.

Here's a post of hand sewing advice that I found quite helpful a decade ago. Use good needles because the eyes of the cheap ones have jagged edges and will ruin your thread! Use nice thread because the wrong kind will be twisty and tangly and will fray more!

Thimbles are good and useful, and typically they go on the middle finger of your dominant hand, and you use them to push the needle. I prefer metal thimbles and dislike using leather ones, but some people prefer the leather ones, or rubber ones.

The metal ones come in sizes, and I don't know how to find out your size aside from trying them on in person, but I know I'm a size 11.

One very important thing is that if you're hand sewing a garment, look for hand sewing specific instructions on how to do the construction techniques you're going for. A lot of the time when someone nowadays is trying to figure out how to hand sew a thing they'll just try and copy the machine sewn version, and a lot of the time that's inefficient and more difficult and the result looks worse, because machines and hands work very differently!

This is something I'm going to briefly discuss in the outro to the very long shirt video I'm working on, because it's so very common, and I've done it too! On several of my earlier hand sewn shirts I didn't know to turn the edge in on the front slit and do a little narrow hem, so I instead sewed on a facing for the front slit and cut and turned it, just like I'd seen on machine sewn shirts. This made it about 3x more time consuming, and the result was much bulkier and looked worse.

I've got so many more things to say about sewing but it's almost bedtime and I don't want to make this post too long.

For machine sewing, again there's a lot of personal choice. Some people like newer machines, some people like vintage or antique ones. I'm one of the ones who prefers solid metal vintage machines. I grew up using an old cast iron Singer, and the newer domestic machines just feel so plasticy and insubstantial to me. I'm used to ones that just do straight stitch and can also go backwards, but some people are perfectly happy with ones that can't even backstitch.

I do think that for a beginner the vintage machines are a better deal, because if you're patient and look around for a while you can snag one for really cheap at a thrift store, yard sale, facebook marketplace, etc. Also they're mostly metal and therefore harder to break.

I recently got a Pfaff (from I think the 1960's?) at an estate sale for 25 bucks. The zig zag mechanism is stuck and needs fixing, but I cleaned & oiled it up and it works just fine for regular straight stitching.

There are SO MANY online resources for how to clean, oil, and fix vintage sewing machines, especially the more popular brands, and a lot of the time cleaning & oiling is all they need. Read the manual and get an oil bottle with a nice long pointy thing so you can reach all the parts, and get some compressed air to whoosh out the fuzz. If it's old and hasn't been used in years, turn the hand wheel and observe every single place where metal rubs against metal, and Make It Greasy There.

(If you don't have the manual, you can often find those online too. I even found the service manual for my new-old Pfaff! I have the original users manual, but this one's for the people doing repairs.)

Oh this post is getting much too long! If you don't know yet if you like machine sewing, try seeing if you can use one without owning it, perhaps at a sewing class or in a makerspace. I know some libraries can loan out machines. A sewing class would probably be a good idea actually, if there are any available where you live!

Much like how you'll have a bad time hand sewing if you've got shitty supplies and no proper instructions on good techniques, you'll have a bad time machine sewing if it's not oiled well and if the tension is uneven.

There are so so very many things to learn about sewing and I hope I'm not making it sound too overwhelming, because I promise it's not if you take it one step at a time!

Also, when someone who's been sewing for a long time says "You may think you can ignore (piece of sewing advice), but actually that's bad and you will regret it", they're usually right. Oh, how I regret not learning to use a thimble years earlier than I did...

Sorry this post is so long, I hope it's helpful!

Basically, there's no one best way to sew anything, and you should try different stuff and see what works best for you, because everyone has different preferences.

[pricetagged]

The usual from me, I'm afraid. I'm back at my nonsense, typing up wife-hunter John while I take a break from tidying my apartment (: Here's part iii! (there will be more reader/john in part iv )

Masterlist l Previous

Content: More stalking, manipulation, voyeurism & marital sabotage. John's a bad man and I want him viscerally <3

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

It tears at him, rends flesh from bone with sharp little teeth. Corrugated. Rusty. It poisons his bloodstream, boils blood to madness and burns to feverish pitch.

It's a trap of his own design, and he just had to poke at it. He set it up, jaw wrenched wide and trigger taut and, god, he had to touch it. Had to feel the bruising pleasure bloom then give to something sharper. Sweeter.

In his more reflective moments he wonders if setting up the cameras was a good idea. He's a possessive old bastard and he's torn; not because of any hand-wringing morals, no. No, but rather that he's left himself licking along the knife's edge, close enough for it to cut if he presses hard. He can touch it. It's in his grasp, but he's not fully confident that he's the only one wielding it.

There are too many variables still.

And it's left him here, testing the pressure of the razor-sharp rim and wanting to dig deeper. (He fisted at himself harder than usual that night, flesh aching and engorged and throbbing as the cold metal of your wedding ring bit at the veins and ridges of his length).

The screen is his most hated ally. Pixels and light; the blue sheen. The static blur that raises the hair on his arms as he caresses your image. It's the sweetest torture, watching you boxed in by the four corners of a machine. Gazing on only the impression of you, shadowy and reflective, pacing the monitor. It's peiskos, but wrong. He has you in his home, but can only see and touch you in artificial impotence. It drives him wild, makes his throat ache and his head hot watching you, but not knowing how you taste.

That's not him, he thinks, having something that he can't fully possess. Even the bottle of 1926 Macallan locked in his cellaret has been cracked open, rolled around the palate and savoured before returned to the shelf. Locked safe behind glass, yes, but within reach.

He has to see you again. The trap is tightening, and isn't it funny that it's caught him too?

(His hand moved faster, pleasure simmering as he watched your wide eyes turn glossy and your voice grow thick. 'I don't know where it went! It must have fallen off in the garden, I swear!' Even being unable to taste it, to lick at your tears and feel you tremble-

-it had him tensing his thighs, body clenching in anger and heat as he listened to your apologies. As he listened to your pathetic, half-hearted moans. The way you gave in so sweetly, so eager to please and make good. Your husband's disgusting, breathy grunting. Weak. Unsatisfying-

-But it had his palm tightening around the tacky, swollen flesh at his tip. Slit leaking as the rage boiled his blood and sent it south in a paroxysm of rapture).

He sees Buck before he sees you. It's a necessary evil. No, that's not quite right. It's inevitable; it's reasonable. He needs to lay the bait, shuffle the leaves over it and let nature take its course.

It's a classic pub. A real boozer, where the floor is always slickly sticky and the walls are a cheery, tobacco-stained yellow. The kind of place that serves only pork scratchings and pints.

Your husband didn't expect to see him there. Fox in the henhouse, only he's too stupid to realise that he's the bird.

"System is running well, mate! Thanks. This round's on me," he claps at John's shoulder and does admirably well at hiding his nerves.

It has him smiling into the pint glass, schadenfreude as your husband subtly stretches his aching palm and paints on a wary smile.

(Foot hovering just above the spring; steel teeth ready to -)

"You here alone?" John sips at his drink, eyes scanning the dingy room until - yes, there in the corner he sees a familiar Union Jack cap. Good lad.

"No, no. My mates have just left. Like to linger, you know, for the company," he sends a wink to some pretty thing nursing a G&T by the window.

"Not enough company at home?" he tries to make it light, hoping that the gravel in his tone could be mistaken for interest. And it is, really, if prey drive could count as mere 'interest'.

Buck scoffs, rolling his eyes in a way that looks a lot like rolling belly-up. 'Tell me I'm a real man, look at me! I've got the pick of the flock'. "You know how it is. Gets boring, fishing in the same hole all the time, eh?"

"I wouldn't know," he hums, eyebrows drawn low in faux-consideration. Meets him dead in the eye, lets the mask drop for a just a second. Let's the words come out flat and dangerous. "I've never had a problem reeling in what I want."

The words linger, settling heavy and awkward in a way that has him licking his teeth. Tension so thick he can chew it, feel the fat and gristle rend under the strength of his jaw. It's heady watching the way your husband flounders, not sure how to react until the pack leader backs up and loosens the canines at his nape. Lets him breathe. It's a joke, really. Go on. Laugh. And he follows suit so easily. It's almost boring, he thinks, with eyes cold and muscles frozen under his fake smile as he watches the man chuckle.

"You've gotta stay, Price, that's a good one. One more drink, c'mon." Funny. He thinks that it's his right to give orders. He thinks that John's staying at his command.

John taps twice at the foamy rim of the glass. Catches his sergeant's eye from across the room. "Sure, why not."

It's time.

It's masterful, really, how well Gaz slips over. Greets Buck like an old friend. Drops hints and in-jokes that have the man chuckling along as his eyes flit about with confusion.

"Can't believe I've run into you, here. I thought I'd seen the last of you when you moved house, what, a year ago?" Kyle slides into the barstool on the left. Boxes him in, piggy in the middle. "Still with that finance company?"

"Yeah, yeah it's been a while," he trails off. Too proud to admit that he doesn't know Gaz. Has never met the man. John can feel the way his eyes keep flicking towards the side of his face. Needy. Histrionic.

"You lads catch up, have fun. I'm away for the night," he sets the empty glass at the bar with a soft thud. Makes a show of introducing himself to Gaz and waving the two of them off.

In the cool air of the smoking area he has a moment of fika. Cars roll by on a distant road. The muffled sound of laughter and murmuring filters through frosted pub windows. The rich, heavy smoke of his cigar swirls around and around until he's closing his eyes in the haze. It's slow, calming, and he takes a moment just to appreciate the hand that he's about to play.

He thumbs over the smudged screen of your husband's phone. Only 2 missed calls and 1 text.

>>Sorry to go on at you, but you said you were finishing work at 5 today. It's nearly 8 now. Can you at least let me know where you are? We were going to start that series tonight and I've been getting worried waiting for you :/

Poor, sweet thing. Polite, too. All love and care wasted on the pathetic, juvenile lump slumped over the bar right now. 

(It whets his appetite, seeing how well-trained you are. How you toe the line, defer to the farcical rules set out for you in your relationship. 'Stay at home. Don't blow up my phone.'

Would you come to heel for him? If a weak, useless hand could shape you so well, what could a strong one do?)

<< Sorry, baby. I goty caugtht up at the pub w some friends. HAd a few drInks. Cmome and get me? [LOCATION SHARED]

He flicks the stub of the cigar away as he pockets the phone.

Curtains up; show about to begin.

He settles into his seat, a well-worn booth. Threadbare, stained upholstery and faded coasters. It's shadowy here, tucked away in the corner but offering a perfect line of sight to the door. And right by that very door is Gaz, your husband, and the pretty thing from earlier.

The bell jingles; wind whistles in.

Gaz lets his grip slip, lets your husband slump in the seat until his head is resting against the neck of the woman he was chatting up. Fingers inching up her thighs as she laughs and flirts back.

"What..?" it's too noisy in here to hear you, but he's listened to your voice over and over. He knows just how your pitch is rising. The slight crack on the final consonant.

You stand, face screwed up as you try to make sense of the situation. But two plus two can only ever equal four, and your husband's hands up a skirt can only ever equal- 

"Hi, gorgeous. Here to meet someone?" his sergeant grins up at you. Plays the charmer so well. "Got an empty seat with us, if you fancy it."

There's a little bitterness cutting at the furl of your lips. You're holding it in so well but, god, the words must burn, coming out like bile. "What, sure that I'm not interrupting something?"

"No, no. He said he's just having a little fun. Said he wants something warm before he goes home to his bitch wife," Gaz chuckles, leaning towards you like he wants to whisper a secret. "Bit sick of hearing his complaining, if I'm honest. Makes her sound like a right harpy. But you could take my mind off it."

"Not sure about that," he sees the way your chest hitches. Sees the sob that you swallow down as you steel your expression. "I am the 'bitch wife'."

And it's magnificent. Kyle's played his part so well; stuck to the script like he's performing at The Globe. An ad-lib here, an improvisation there. He hands you a napkin, rubs at your shoulder as he looms over the treacherous tableau he fashioned for an audience of two. You, and John. Ache and Hunger; betrayal and mastery. He maneuvers you, keeps you from causing a bigger scene as he hauls your husband by the scruff of his jacket. Choreographs the steps so that John can see every last microcosm on the universe of your face.

It's his set, his design. He's the architect, director, and audience all in one.

(And that foolish, stupid player of yours tugged at the lure. Found himself swinging, tied up in the string).

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

Ik reader wasn't really present here, but had to get the ball rolling (: Also I've been stressed and not sleeping so forgive me for this being a bit...

And yes. John stood there and put all the typos in that message on purpose. Unhinged.

[diejager]

psst! hi! are you willing to do a scenario where (civilian or soldier (your pick)) reader tries to run away and hide from yan!Ghost/konig

Failed Escape

Pairing: Yan!König x reader & Yan!Ghost x reader

Cw: smut, DUB-CON/NON-CON, spanking, fingering, kidnapping, training/mind break??, isolation, tell me if I missed any. Cw: 0.9k

König

Yan!König was meticulous in the location of your home, it was well-thought out and planned months prior to your taking. It’s a secluded cottage in the Austrian alps, between two imposingly beautiful mountains covered in green flora and cute wildflowers. A few fawns and deers would skip around your grounds, grazing on the fires and hydrated grass of your garden. It’s miles away from civilization, unpaved roads marking the way to the closest highway and other cottages within a mile or two.  

Yan!König who doesn’t bother to install extreme measures to your home because you’re housebroken, trained into loving you house and fearing to run. It doesn’t matter if you’re a normal civilian or a trained specialist, his sheer size made it impossible to run or defend against. But if you did try to run, ignoring all the blaring, red flags that bellowed in your mind about stepping outside the white-fenced walls, you’d wish you could outrun him. 

Yan!König’s ruthless in his punishment. If he caught you before you crossed the fence, he’d be more lenient with you. He would strip you down to your panties and lay you on his lap, hand striking your ass. He’d coo when you cried, his warm thumb rubbing soothing circles over your red cheeks, fingers dipping into your leaky cunt, his large digits hitting your spongy wall while you squirmed, his elbow digging into your back to hold you down. 

“Look at how wet you are, Maus, you like this don’t you? You like being spanked, ja?” 

If he caught you outside, your short legs failing to outrun him, König would be meaner, cruel even with his punishment. He has you tied and blindfolded in the cold and humid basement, bringing his gloved hand down on your naked slit. His slaps left your cunt slick and swollen, and you a crying and overwhelmed while he bullied his hard cock into you, fucking the anger and frustrations away. 

“It hurts, Maus? This is your punishment, take it!” 

Yan!König will have to spend additional time training you, utilising the wide arrange of tools in his well-equipped basement to help him train you. From different types of whips to metal and padded hand-cuffs, and from various sizes of dildos that fit the pre-programmed machine to a manual of torturous knots and binds to hold a person. König has all and everything to ensure that you’d be reeducated in ways of living and manners. 

Yan!König doesn’t do this because he enjoyed it - perhaps a lie with the sadistic glint in his eyes - he does it because he needed you to understand how much he cared about you, how much your life with him was a blessing and how much you could be happy with him. If only your training stuck.

Ghost

Yan!Ghost wouldn’t let you catch a glance of the world outside the four walls of your prison. He has locks drilled into the front and back door, some could be unlocked by a key and others by numbered and lettered combinations. He had every wind bolted shut with the occasional sliding windows for fresh air if you needed it, but they were all too small to squeeze through and too high for you to reach with anything but on the tips of your toes.

Yan!Ghost didn’t buy a house in some remote area of the British Isle, he found a rustic house in a calm and safe neighbourhood in Manchester, a pretty two-story home with a basement and newly-painted white fences around the house. Most neighbours were quiet and kept to themselves, it was another thing he made sure of before turning this place into a safehouse for both of you. He kept the house’s layout, but reworked the basement, building a third bedroom with a small kitchenette, a hotel-like living room and an even smaller bathroom fitting a single person at a time. 

Yan!Ghost who stopped you before you can reach the door, his bone-breaking hold on your wrist, wrenching you away from the hallway before throwing you onto the couch. He was fuming, face red with rage and narrowed eyes, his tall, imposing figure seemingly bigger and damning as he loomed over you with clenched fists. He might’ve been cruel and demeaning, possessive in an erratic and sporadic way, but he’d never lift a hand against you. Simon wouldn’t stoop as low as his father did to control his life. Granted, he used degradation and intimidation, but never physical violence.

“What ‘ave I told you, love?”

Yan!Ghost would force you back into the basement, imposing all the rules and regulations he had when he first took you, his words became the law and his hands the chains. He might let you have a few freedoms in your prison, but he would always be watching, either from the numerous cameras he installed in in the basement and around the house to keep and eye on you at all times, or from his seat beside you, an arm around your waist and his face buried under your head. 

Yan!Ghost suffered just as much as you were in these moments, having to subjugate both of you to this torture he played in the early days. Listening to you cry and bemoan your life before meeting him made his heart chip away while he shushed your pains, cradling you as he carded his fingers through your locks. Watching you flinch and stuttered when he approached you, his trembling hands inches from your shaking figure, red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks staring back at him while he tried coaxing you back into his hands to sooth your cries. It hurts how much you tried to escape his love and care, he was the perfect lover: gentle and patient.

“Why can’t you love me? Aren’t I enough?”

Taglist: @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @tallmanlover @distracteddragoness @vxnilla-hxrddrugs

[korpuskat]

Metal in Flesh

[Ao3 Mirror] Pairing: Ramattra/Reader (GN, has a vagina) Rating: E WC: 4.4k Warnings: None, it's pure smut & fluff. A special thank you to @statuetochka for indulging my silly ideas & drawing his hands so much. ===

He tastes like his machine oil. Freshly cleaned, not a trace of dirt between his purple-painted joints. It’s hard not to flex your tongue against him, to explore the little creases in his plates that tease the side of your tongue.

But the hand on your jaw and the precarious placement of his fingers- two under your tongue, his thumb on top, keep you still. He’s exploring. Though it’s not your tongue itself that he’s examining. He drags his thumb down, making the object of his obsession spin- a particularly strange feeling that is still novel even after so long healed.

It’s only taken him a few months into your relationship to notice- or at least to ask about it.

“…Why?” Is the particularly succinct question he comes up with.

“Becath aylikith”

Ramattra’s gaze lifts ever so slightly, from your pinned tongue to your face. Reluctantly, he lets go. You push saliva over your tongue, wetting it before you try speaking again.

“I said, because I like it. I like how it looks.”

“Aesthetics?” Ramattra tips his head, looks down to your lips. You obligingly open your mouth again and present the jeweled rod again. This time, he just looks at it, rather than trapping the muscle for investigation. “I would think that should hurt rather badly just for aesthetics.”

“It did.” You confirm. “When I first got it, it hurt a lot, I couldn’t even eat the first day. But it’s all healed now. Doesn’t hurt at all.” To prove it, you catch the bead on your top lip and pull your tongue sideways, making the entire piercing rotate again. “Besides, you’re in no place to judge; I know you also changed stuff on yourself for how it looked.”

He scoffs, “That is hardly the same. Repainting my enamel coat isn’t remotely painful, nor did it impair such a basic, important function as eating.” He touches the purple plate at the back of one hand with the other. It’s more subconscious than anything, but you still watch his hands with that same fascination. “Besides, my modifications aren’t exclusively aesthetics.”

You grin widely. That kind of stubbornness, the mild disdain in his vocoder… It’s so easy to goad him. “Neither is mine! It has a very good use, actually.”

Ramattra’s head actually bobs as he modulates a disbelieving noise, “Really? Exactly what functional purpose does a metal rod in your mouth serve?”

Excitement washes over you and you don’t bother trying to hide it. “I can show you! I’ve kind of been meaning to for a while, actually, but you keep insisting I don’t have to.” This alone makes his head twitch to the side, perplexed, intrigued. You reach for his hand, and he happily allows you to take it and bring it back to your face, much too curious.

Here, you pause and stare up at the dark slits for his optics. His huge fingers caress over your cheek, cool and firm against your skin as you gently kiss the circular rubber pad of his palm. Ramattra hums softly- which breaks into a stuttered, staticked mess of a noise as you lick that rubber pad. He can feel it, you’re almost sure given the twitching of his fingers against your cheek. Those pads are sensitive, meant for traction and precision- you know he must feel the warmth, the softness of your tongue completely surrounding the hard point of the piercing’s ball. Even with your spit, the metal drags against rubber, catching on the textured ridges.

“You--” His voice cuts out, glitches sharply as though gasping. It’s a rare treat to see him worked up, indulging his own desires, so you bask in the roughened sound of his voice and the dull hum of his ventilation system ramping up. “I should have known it would be that...”

You grin again, then kiss his palm innocently, as though you don’t feel the warmth that’s now radiating from him. “I did want to use it sooner. You’re too selfless for your own good.” You pull on his arm and he allows you, lets you trail kisses up the smooth plate of his forearm. “Can try it now, though.”

His nod is sharp, firm enough to jostle the endcaps of his mane. “Yes, perhaps I would… enjoy that.”

You snicker, but don’t comment on the breathy tone his voice takes, already dysregulated from a single lick, don’t comment on how quickly he sits on the bed that he’d gotten for your sake nor the speed with which he releases the latches on his pelvic plate. Air rushes from his vents again, almost like a sigh as his cock bobs freely.

You might never get used to it, knowing that he made something so obscene just for you… The thrill of it- of all of him- rushes through you, makes your belly heat. But you set that aside for now, instead pushing the golden joints of his legs apart and lowering yourself down to your knees. Which only makes your growing desire ever worse.

Like this you’re so very, very aware of how big he is. Built for war, he dwarfs you in every way. Beside you, his thin, bird-like legs are almost up to your shoulder, just barely giving you enough room to comfortably lay your arms on his thighs. Looking up at him… He sits so stiffly, one hand curled into the previously pristine sheets, the other is curled across the lowest part of faceplate as though obscuring his mouth. Shy, maybe, you think. Would make sense- he doesn’t particularly enjoy receiving one-sided attention. So, you smile up at him, rub your hands soothingly across his canvas-covered thighs and hope that soothes him.

Finally, you let your eyes wander back down his body. Slowly, you ease your hands in from his legs until they brush the base of his cock, where the silicone meets his inner frame. Without any lubricant it’s a dry, sticking feeling, but it’s still enough for you to hear the hum of his fans pitch up in anticipation.

He’s been so patient, so nice to finally let you try this, so you only tease him a little more. You straighten up and stare up at his faceplace, hands moving firmly onto his cock as though you’re going to take him into your mouth immediately. He tenses, waits the sudden onslaught of your mouth around him-- and finds instead your soft lips laying against the smooth head, pressing a delicate kiss to the silicone. Ramattra’s legs twitch,, a little whiny noise coming from somewhere inside him-

And you lower your head down, dragging the tip of your tongue from the base of his cock all the way up. His ventilation kicks and a staticked gasp slips from his vocoder. With only the tip, not yet letting him feel the jewelry, you lick at him, you flick your tongue against the soft ridge at the head of his cock until you think you might break him.

Ramattra hisses your name, somewhere between a plea and a threat. Desire surges in your core again, but you think he's been patient enough. Slowly, deliberately letting him watch as you move- you open your mouth and ease his tip past your lips.

Immediately, Ramattra groans, both hands twisting into his sheets as he processes your warm, soft mouth on his cock. He's big enough that even just his tip makes your jaw twinge in annoyance, but you relax your muscles and urge him further in. His body bursts with heat, already struggling to keep up with the hot air that’s soaking his processors- but that's not quite the reaction you were expecting. So you press your tongue firmly against the underside of his tip- though you aren't sure if Ramattra's cock is particularly sensitive here too- and drag the piercing over the ridge.

A high-pitched noise spits from his vocoder, almost a yelp as his whole body flinches. You'd almost worry you hurt him, that the metal was too rough on the silicone, except for the rough, rolling gasp that comes after. For Ramattra it's a distinct feeling- your mouth all soft and inviting and one firm bead of resistance that pushes back against him, that emphasizes each stroke of your tongue along his cock. It's addicting, one tiny piece of metal in all of that plush flesh. His hand lifts- nearly burying itself in your hair unbidden, but he kills the impulse- tries desperately to be still for you.

You gently bob your head, working up to a slow rhythm. With each motion you keep your tongue moving, sweeping across the silicone. Each time you move down, you try to take in more of him, slowly inching his cock deeper until he's prodding at the back of your throat. The first touch makes you gag, your mouth tightening around him as spit floods your mouth- and Ramattra's hips jump, momentarily fucking you mouth- and he moans.

You clit throbs at the single rough thrust, at the absolutely musical noise from his speakers- his need completely betrayed with the strain on his synth, the first touches of static to his voice. A desperate whimper escapes you just knowing that you're the one making him feel like that and Ramattra sucks in air in turn, his fists curled so tightly you can hear his actuators whining.

Even just listening to his pleasure, knowing you’re the one causing it-- it's all too much. You take him in deep again, sucking his cock with purpose, but you slip one hand between your legs. Trying to keep your focus on him is nearly impossible when you can hardly think with how badly you need to be touched. You shove your pants down and the first touch on your clit is near ecstasy. Sucking his cock, hearing his appreciation alone has left you swollen and soaked, trembling with pleasure as you moan shamelessly around his cock. You circle your clit and shiver, the pace of your tongue on him stuttering-

And this time, Ramattra doesn’t stop the impulse. Ramattra's fingers curl into your hair. You expect him to push you down, that his self control is broken, that he'll fuck your throat and-

he pulls you up. Your scalp stings softly, but you can only mewl in confusion, in desire- how must you look to him? Your own spit covering his cock, eyes glazed over in lust, one hand working yourself with a desperation- and Ramattra catches your arm with his other hand. You whimper, a mindless plea of no, please don't stop- as he pulls again, draws you up, up off the floor-

And you think for a moment he's going to fuck you, to get you in his lap-

“Come here.” His voice is almost unintelligible, harsh with static. He doesn’t even let you comply, dragging your body onto the bed with him as he lays back. Your head spins, too clouded to understand what he wants- which is fine, because he moves you exactly how he's thinking. He pulls you on top of him, legs spread wide over his broad chest and then spins you around so you're looking at his cock again.

That's all the prompting you need. Still spit-slicked, you take him into your mouth again. The new angle is different, unusual- his cock arcs down towards your tongue, making it easier to take him deeper-- and making the press of your piercing into him all the more intense. Ramattra makes some noise behind you- and you would try to squeeze your hand beneath yourself to keep rubbing, but with your belly pressed to his, it’s too tight a fit. The metal of his chest would dig into your wrist too much. But your clit aches, too needy to be ignored. Desperate, you rut your hips against his chest, hoping to find any friction at all against his hard bands of armor-

And Ramattra's big hands land on your hips.

He pulls you back- back as far as he can without dislodging your mouth from his cock. You want to ask, can't seem to understand what he's doing- until each thumb slips between your legs. You moan softly, try to question what he’s doing, but if he hears you, he makes no response. Ramattra parts your folds, revealing your pussy. Warm air washes over your sex- another rush of his ventilation- and you whimper, twisting in his hands at the embarrassment of him looking at you so closely.

You don't expect the press of cool metal directly to your clit.

The temperature makes you jolt away from him, but his hands keep you still, keep your clit trapped right against his faceplate as Ramattra moans. All crackling and ruined, his voice is vibration right against your clit- and you finally understand. You bob your head again, determined to keep those noises coming from his synth.

You sink down on him, taking as much as you can. Ramattra purrs against your pussy, a low rumble that makes your hips twitch, rutting back against his face, your clit rubbing delightfully on the divot between his faceplate and jaw. It’s so primal, needy-- and Ramattra’s grasp on your hips shifts, pulling you towards him again, urging you to keep going. You’re so close already it’s hard to hold any rhythm, but he helps, pushing his mouth against you each time you come up on his cock- and each time your piercing catches the tip he moans, a bolt of static pleasure rumbling directly into your clit.

You can’t help it. You dig your nails into the coverings on his thighs, try desperately to focus on him, on making him cum- but the sound of him, the taste of his cock, and the incessant buzzing of his moans against your pussy are too much. Your rhythm breaks entirely as he pushes you over the edge. Your own noises are muffled, lost to the silicone in your throat. Metal hands keep your thighs spread as they twitch and try to close around him, forcing you to feel as he moans, praises you indistinctly through your orgasm- the words lost against the overwhelming feeling of the continued vibration of your clit.

You can’t think, the pleasure too sharp, too strong- you try to squirm away, to get any relief, but his grasp shifts, one arm now wrapped around your waist to keep you still. The other presses to the back of your head. His hips lift- and he as fucks your mouth desperately.

Ramattra moans, all static-garbled and needy, still rumbling against your pussy. And still you work your piercing against him, match his careful pace with hard licks of your tongue- and each panting, growing moan you can feel him getting closer, every Ah, ah, ah- buzzing harder into your clit as acute pain- a raw overstimulation that only builds into whimpering, twitching second wave that makes your whole body tremble in his hands-

And it’s your hips throat twitching around him again that makes him gasp- the rushed intake of air and firm press of his face against your pussy in a long, droning note as he overloads entirely. His hips thrust up into your mouth one more time before steam rushes from his vents, fills the room with hot air and every joint in his body goes lax.

For a long time you lay there, shivering and boneless. His arms are a pleasant, heavy weight across your back, a good counterpoint to the weak shudders your body gives from time to time. Your clit and throat ache, but it’s a monumental task to move yourself just enough to no longer be choking on his dick or have your over sensitive clit pressed to his firm metal. It takes three tries on your shaking arms before you can manage it.

You lay there, limp and much too tired to try to extricate yourself further from the heft of him. Instead, you close your eyes and enjoy the silence, letting your body relax and cool off until the soft harmony of Ramatta’s internals returns. First, the hum of his processors, then the fans of his ventilation resume, much quieter than they had been before- then his lights return. Positioned as you are, you don’t see his array’s lights, but you do watch as the indicator lights in his cock turn from a yellow- muddied by the purple tinting in the silicone- to green, to finally red.

Ramattra’s fingers twitch on your back, and you laugh slightly as he mimics clearing his throat. He gently lifts your hips and helps you roll off of him, but with a limp waving request of your hand, he then helps you to turn around and lean against his broad chest, half on top of him again.

If you had any energy left at all, you’d be embarrassed- or perhaps aroused again- at the sight of his faceplate; he’s soaked. Everything between his optics down to the tip of his chin is coated in your wetness.

And yet when he speaks, “I apologize I was… overly enthusiastic.” It’s all contrition. One hand touches the side of your neck, a silent voicing of fear of injury.

Instead, you press your face to his hand and he meets you halfway, stroking along your cheekbone with unspoken reverence. “But you liked it?” While his voice has been perfectly reset, yours is still rough, rasping from the strain on your throat.

“I…” He starts- and immediately his fans hum louder again. Your lips barely crack into a knowing smile before he admits it, “Yes. It was… enjoyable.”

“See, more than just aesthetics.” You say, melting onto his chest more, idly stroking at the long pistons mimicking collar bones.

“I suppose I have to agree. You can hardly see it to begin with.”

“Maybe you should give me a piercing you can see, then.” You say it offhanded, a little joke-

“What? I couldn’t.” Ramattra shoots back immediately, “I have no experience with that.”

And his rejection only makes the idea more appealing, more real. “No, wait, think about it! You could research how to do it and where. Your hands wouldn’t shake, you’d be able to center it better-- I bet you could even design it yourself…” You grin and look up at the dark slits for his optics, half pleading. “Come on, at least you’d be saving me money and a trip out.”

Ramattra’s hands on you stop moving, but he doesn’t pull away. So completely motionless, you know he’s processing it, mulling the idea over. “You… want me to pierce you?”

“Well. Yeah, I guess? I mean I like piercings and I think you’d do a good job… and…” You blush softly, finally averting your gaze from his as though this is somehow more intimate than sucking his cock until he overloaded and cumming on his face twice. “Maybe I kinda… like the idea of having jewelry that you made, that you put there…”

His design on your body. It’s not just intimate; it’s possessive. A silent, private mark of your relationship… If you weren’t not so thoroughly spent, it might bring another wave of heat between your legs. He must have come to the same conclusion, because something shudders in Ramattra’s chest.

“I see.” He says coolly, as though you don’t feel the streams of hot air that again slip from his vents. “Then, I will look into it.”

In all, it takes Ramattra three days. Three days before he’s guiding you into his workshop and lifting you up onto his desk. The thrill of how easily he picks you up- big hands cradling your rib cage as he sets you onto the metal surface- always makes you a little giddy. Even more so is the little purple velvet box that sits nearby. You reach for it-

And Ramattra snatches the box up with a tut, “No peeking.”

“Fine.” You sigh exaggeratedly, watching as he skims over the tools he’s acquired in the last half week. A bottle of antiseptic, forceps, a marker-- and your eyes wander to a small package of needles. Your stomach tightens a little just seeing them, so you look at him instead, distracting yourself as Ramattra finishes his preparations. “Where did you decide?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, instead gently putting one finger under your chin and turning your head away. His other hand drifts over your ear- and eventually catches the little flap in front of your ear canal between thumb and forefinger. “Here.” His hands abandon you, turning back to his tools and grabbing the marker. “It is called the tragus.”

You hum in acknowledgement, but otherwise keep still as he focuses on your ear. Carefully, methodically- Ramattra touches the tip of the marker to your skin.

He draws your chin back towards him, examining the dot he’s made from the front before retrieving and handing you a mirror. “This is… acceptable?” He prompts as you look at your reflection. You could almost laugh; the ink of the marker is perfectly centered- likely is, mathematically. You knew he’d be good at this.

“Yeah, it looks perfect.” You look at the mark a moment more, picturing jewelry in its spot. It is… a strange location. “Why’d you pick this one?”

Ramattra pauses, his turn towards his tools a little too intentional. “If you wish to remove it later, any scarring should not be too disruptive.”

Something tightens in your chest. You reach out to him, gently touch his forearm. His head only slightly turns back towards you, just enough for you to see the corner of one slit. “I’m not going anywhere.” You say it, squeeze his arm again and hope he’ll internalize it this time. His only response is a small hum, an acknowledgement of the words, if not their meaning. So, you redirect him. “Can I see the jewelry now?”

Again, Ramattra hesitates, but caves with a halting, “Yes, I suppose so.” He holds the box a second too long- so tiny in his big hands- but offering it to you.

You don’t even hide your ecstatic grin as you take it- too excited at the possibilities. His designs are always so sleek, but you don’t know what he would choose for you to wear. You crack open the box- and the first thing you recognize is the color. Purple- the exact shade as his accents, as his jaw. But it’s not just his paint- you hold the tiny box closer and squint. It’s almost an inverted teardrop shape, but not quite. There is a silver dot embedded in the lower half, the point that would be sharp is clipped, a notch taken out of the wider top… You look at it for a moment longer- and your excitement melts into something warmer, recognition.

“It���s your chest plate…” You murmur and reach for him again. Only the lower half is visible under his tan cowl, but Ramattra stands still, lets you lift the soft fabric to reveal his own inverted teardrop- the purple latch right in the center of his chest.

“There’s more…” His voice falters, rasping through a whisper, strained with the same feeling that’s twisting in your throat.

You look back to the jewelry, unsure how there could be more meaning lain into it- but you take it from the little velvet cushions that hold it in place- and understand. The back of it is green with tiny golden lines etched into it. A circuit board. You brow pinches for a moment, dragging a nail over the back- feeling the protective coating over the circuits. It’s too small, too clipped to be functional. Just decorative, symbolic?

“When I…” He starts and stops, stepping closer to you- laying one hand on the outside of your thigh. “When I installed…. that I also had to replace and redesign some chips that were in my hips for functionality. I… kept the originals.”

“This is… you?” You murmur, tracing the tiny golden threads again. An actual chip from his body… “Or, was part of you?”

Ramattra nods stiffly, watches as you examine the tiny thing. “It’s… acceptable?”

“Yeah.” You sniffle, “I love it, Rama…” then hurriedly put the jewelry back in its box and shove it back towards him. You rub at your watering eyes and force out a tight, “Hurry up and pierce me before I cry.”

Ramattra nods again, shifting easily into his practiced movements. He swaps your ear with antiseptic and dips the piercing into the bottle, laying it on a sheet to dry as he picks up his tools. You focus on his faceplate and stare up at him as he steps in front of you. He waits there a moment- soaks in your gaze before touching your chin and urging you to turn your head just as he had earlier.

You close your eyes, don’t look as he clamps the forceps down.

“Breathe.” His voice rumbles, so close to your ear. You shiver, but obey- taking in the cool air of his workspace, the scent of his oil, relax into the warm proximity of him-

And as you exhale he pierces you. Hot pain washes over the whole side of your head. You clench your teeth, try not to flinch as he moves quickly, replacing pieces with a smoothness that you should’ve expected from him.

“Good,” He praises, still low and quiet and so close to you- and finally he pushes his design into the backing.

Ramattra steps away, but you grab at him- hands landing on the silver handles at his hips. He stops, turns towards you- and the tears you’d managed to suppress before being stabbed boil over.

“Does it hurt? I-”

You’re crying before you can even wrap your arms around him.And realizing you’re crying into his cowl- your face pressed right up against the exact plate he used as a design makes you weep harder. But he steps right up against the table and shushes you, strokes your back with an affection no one else has even seen in him.

“I love you,” You manage between shoulder-racking sobs- and something inside Ramattra shudders.

So quickly he adjusts, no longer holding you to his broad chest, but near doubling over, half lifting you off the table to press his faceplate into your shoulder. He buries himself in the warmth of your body- and shudders again as your grasp scrabbles over his back, no longer cinched around his tiny waist, but sliding up under his cowl, grabbing at the long bars of armor and holding yourself up against him.

“I love you so much,” You murmur to him, half broken by sniffles- and he squeezes your ribs in turn.

[outofgloom]

SHUN THIS PLACE

The Lord of Steel stood on the threshold, at long last. Behind him, the priests lay dead, splayed across the desert, along with the bodies of his soldiers. The elemental weapons of the priesthood had been as terrible as foretold, but in the end, his power had prevailed.

He scanned the midday sky briefly, but it remained mostly clear. A good omen, although it would not last. Evening would bring stormclouds—red storms, the kind which did not water the dry earth.

In fact, he was counting on it.

He stooped and crossed the threshold, moving out of the desert air and into the cool interior of the structure. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness, and he saw that the walls were covered with carvings. No surprise there: He’d encountered versions of them before, on the obelisks of the Great Jungle and the abandoned cliff-cities of the Great Frost. Even so, these were the fullest and most detailed he’d seen so far. There were full words here, in fact, alongside the usual pictograms, written in the strange script of the machines.

He was impatient, eager to take the next step, but he had not gotten this far by ignoring good intel. As odious a task as it was to him, perhaps just this once he ought to give the inscription a full read....

HERE-PLACE IS MESSAGE

...the first line parsed out, alongside a symbol which usually meant “listen” or “take heed”. This place is a message. He read on:

MESSAGE IS BIG

...No, that should be rendered something like “great”, shouldn’t it? He was rusty. “Significant”, perhaps. This message is significant.

HERE-PLACE IS NOT...something. He was unsure. “Virtue”, maybe? That was it: No virtue is here, in this place.

He paused, eyes flicked to the right, looking out at the desert. Had that been movement? A moment passed.... Ah, a thin cloud had passed across the sun. That was all. Satisfied, he returned to the text. Where had he left off? No virtue is here.... Right, and after that, he knew the words “temple” and “shrine”, in series: 

HERE-PLACE IS NOT-VIRTUE NOT-TEMPLE, NOT-SHRINE

HERE-PLACE IS NOT-TOMB NOT-TREASUREVAULT, NOT-VALUE

HERE-PLACE IS.... What was that symbol? The inscription beneath...“danger”, “destruction”?

DANGER IS.... Is what? The glyphs were faded. He squinted at them, traced them with a finger. “Individuated”? “Discrete”, maybe? That seemed right: A discrete size and shape, in a specific location.

Immediately after that, the next line was clear:

DANGER IS WHAT LIES BENEATH

Now that was more like it—

Something struck him from behind, bit into the armor of his upper back, and there was a noise shrieking in his ears and sparks were flashing in the visor of his helmet, overwhelming his senses, sparks burning into his neck. He cried out and twisted away from the stone wall, striking out blindly. 

Contact. He felt metal crumple against his fist, followed by the sound of his assailant thudding against the opposite wall. His hand went to his shoulder, felt wetness there, and sharp, throbbing pain. He gritted his teeth and shook his head, trying to focus. There!

It was one of the machine-priests—heavily damaged, but still alive. It heaved itself up on two bent legs, and the tatter of its robes whirled around it. He and his soldiers must have missed one, somehow...or it had repaired itself. How could he not have noticed its approach?

He stepped back quickly, putting distance between himself and the enemy. The mask that covered the priest’s face was cracked, likely from the blow he’d just dealt it, but the eyes still glowed bright. He realized dimly that the mask was made in the shape of the mythological Stalker Eel—a wide, round mouth, slitted forehead. It was a stealth-mask. Of course....

There was the shrill, whining noise, and he saw that the priest’s remaining arm ended in something like a buzzsaw. That explained his ringing ears and the jagged tear that had been cut into his armor...and the sparks. Surely it had been aiming for his neck. He was fortunate that it did not carry an elemental weapon, or his situation would be more dire.

The priest crouched, weapon held forward. He readied himself, trying to focus against the pain. Searching, searching with his mind....

It lunged. The sawblade shrieked in his ears once more, and he felt the vibration of it in the base of his skull.

Thud. Clatter. The whine of the spinning blade peaked and ramped down, grinding harmlessly against the stone floor as the priest’s arms and legs spasmed where they now lay, along with its body. 

The priest’s head, mask and all, floated in the air before him. He’d found what he’d sought: the small linkages of true metal that joined the creature’s skull to its torso. At this range, he’d been able to detect them amongst the lattice of false protometal and artificial flesh that made up the bulk of the creature’s body. Then, it was only a matter of...unlinking.

The eyes were wide with shock. They remained glowing for a second, then they winked off. A rasp of air escaped the disconnected throat, and the jaw went slack. It was over. 

He set the head down on the floor, well away from the still-twitching body. Then he tended to himself: He removed the damaged armor plates and drew out a spool of metal thread. In a few minutes, he’d used his powers to stitch the wound in his shoulder. It was painful, but necessary. He’d wasted enough time.

He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the inscriptions on the wall once more. They were undamaged, it seemed, but he didn’t have much patience left. He hated reading, especially this kind. Too much ambiguity. And after all, the attack had made him lose his place. He almost left it there, turned to his true goal in the back of the structure, where the walls narrowed down...but the next series of inscriptions drew his attention back. These he had never seen before. He sighed:

DANGER IS TO.... An odd phrasing here. “To anatomy”? Or was it “to geography”? He’d never thought about it, but in the language of the machines, the words were almost the same.

DANGER IS TO THE BODY DANGER IS TO THE LAND TO KILL OR TO CHANGE

His heart beat faster. Ah, this was worthwhile. A confirmation of sorts. Surely he had found the right place. His shoulder ached, but he shrugged it off.

DANGER TAKES A CERTAIN FORM...The same word as above. A certain body?

FORM OF DANGER IS AN OBJECT

OBJECT IS.... He blinked, re-read the word. That did not conform to his research. He read back over the lines again, making sure that he had not missed anything. No, it was clear.

The danger takes a certain form.  The form of the danger is an object. The object is a Mask.

He frowned. A mask? How could that be the fabled weapon of the Ancients? The masks that the machines had worn were so fragile, so easily crushed, as he had just demonstrated. He glanced down at the disconnected head of the priest. Could a simple mask be the same as the weapon that had burned off the surface of the planet in ancient times, dissolving and remaking life into its current form? The Age of Shattering had been ended that way, it was said.... It seemed impossible, but perhaps this too was a distorted myth. There was no way to know, in the end, and it didn’t really matter. He would find out the truth soon enough.

Except...his eyes returned to the head of the priest where it sat on the floor. Yes, it could work.

Click. The cable he had scavenged from one of the other bodies outside jumped with energy from the still-functioning core of the priest’s torso, and after a moment, the eyes sparked on, began to glow, faintly at first, then stronger. 

The limbs did not move this time. He had removed them all, even the connection to the waist, little more than a torso-shaped power source now. The jaw shifted, and a hiss of air went up into the throat as the voicebox engaged. The eyes flicked back and forth, took him in where he crouched, then glanced toward the remains of the body...and quickly away.

What was that expression? Revulsion? Could the machines experience something like this? He had never asked.

“Why...?” the priest said in a raspy voice. 

“For information,” he replied.

“You are...monster. My...my body—”

“May be yours again, once I have what I need.”

The priest did not respond.

“What does this indicate, this word here?” he continued, pointing to the last part of the inscription that he had translated. “Tell me what you know.”

“Mask,” the priest said plainly after a moment.

“Does it have any other meaning?”

“Mask...no. No other.”

“Are you sure? I’ve found that the memories of your priesthood are not always reliable. The Ancients made you badly, I think.”

“No other. Just ‘mask’.”

“And what mask does it refer to? Surely you still know this.”

“I cannot.”

“I’m going down, either way. But if there was, say, some additional warning you wished to add, some further piece of knowledge that might deter me or improve the outcome.... Well, this is your last chance.”

The priest’s eyes frowned—or as close to a frown as a machine could muster. After a moment, it seemed to decide:

“The mask,” it said, “life to the world, it once gave. After an age of shattering, of disjointing.” The wording was strange, as if the priest were repeating some litany.

“Life, you say? That sounds good to me. Have you looked at the state of the world lately? There are few left since the Plague and the petty wars it engendered. Few who remain whole in mind, that is. Even the Tetrate is crumbling, and the Red Storms worsen every day.”

“Beware,” the priest continued, “for life with death comes also.”

“Ah, yes, of course. But that is the Great Cycle, isn’t it? The world has not changed so much that we’ve all forgotten.”

“Life and death.... You are recent, comprehend not.”

“Recent.... You mean young? Hah! I am the Lord of Steel, first of the elements, the true metal, which cannot corrode, spawn of the metal-star Exsidia, which issued unmade from the Void—”

“Life and death and life...” the priest intoned, ignoring him.

“Why do you babble? You’re just a broken machine, I think. Another of Their useless clockworks.”

“I am not machine,” the priest spat back.

“Then speak like it. What more can you tell me?”

“I remember in the Time Before,” the priest said, with the same odd phrasing, “For the world, we were made, to build and to maintain. Nothing more....”

“You were made for such. Not I.”

“...And when the world failed,” it continued, “sacrifice was needed. Always sacrifice. Life was given to us, so that it might be given unto the world. Cores made to burn.”

“You speak of how the Age of Shattering ended, I think.”

The priest hesitated. Its mouth trembled, then:

“Not one age...not one, but many.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“The world failed...has failed, over and over. And when the world failed, there was sacrifice. Burning to sustain, to kindle life and light. Over and again.”

“That...makes no sense. The Age of Shattering is—”

“Ended now, and never again.”

“So you say, but—”

“No more sacrifice.” The priest’s voice dropped to a whisper, and its eyes wandered back and forth. “No more, to start the world anew. That destiny is over. No more will our cores burn, to kindle the stars and to light the lamps of the universe. It is enough.”

“What is this sacrifice?”

“Life with death comes also. That is the challenge of the Mask, to remake the world. Beware.”

“So...the mask is not simply a weapon to be wielded for my ends? That’s disappointing, given the enemy that I contend with.”

“A tool may be used for many tasks: to build or to destroy. The potential is in the core of each of us.”

“I have no core. Unlike you, I am flesh, blood, and true metal. But if a sacrifice is needed...perhaps your core will be useful to me after all.”

The priest’s eyes closed behind its mask.

“Any more to say? I confess you have not convinced me of—”

A force took hold of him, wrapping invisible fingers around his throat, and he saw with a shock that the mask on the priest’s face had changed form somehow, becoming smaller, more angular. The air shivered with telekinetic energy, and he was choking, hands clawing at his throat, eyes bulging, but there was nothing there to grasp. He staggered back against the wall as the crushing force increased, and he felt something give way in his chest. Pain shivered up and down his spine. His vision was going dark.

No other choice. With the last desperate vestiges of his power, he struck out, found the linkings of true metal once more, and wrenched the priest’s head to pieces. 

The pressure on his throat and torso released, and he fell to his knees, gasping and retching. His heart pounded in his ears, and his head throbbed, but he was alive. After a few moments, he tried to sit back against the wall, but sharp agony broke out in the right side of his torso. He ground his teeth, breathing in short gasps, eyes clenched shut. He was pretty sure he’d popped a stitch in his shoulder as well. The wound burned.

He held himself still, trying to stay conscious and control his breathing, trying to endure through the surge of pain. It hurt, but after a few moments, he was able to get hold of his panic and focus. He searched within his chest cavity, feeling his power ping off the metallic bones. There: one rib was cracked, another dislocated. Nothing for it. He held the image in his mind, gulped air through his bruised throat, and did what had to be done.

The fusion of the cracked rib was white-hot iron near his heart, and the sound of the other rib popping back into place was audible in the small space. He screamed, writhed, and slumped over into unconsciousness.

Minutes passed, maybe more. He flitted from a dreamless nothing to wakefulness...and then back again. At last, in a half-aware moment, his mind managed to grasp a scrap of reality. His eyes fluttered, and images flickered in his thoughts: A flash of the low stone ceiling above. A glimpse of the lower part of the wall. The last three lines of the inscription were visible from where he lay, and even in his near-senseless state, they were familiar to him. He had seen them before:

HERE-PLACE, DO NOT REMAIN BELOW-DANGER, DO NOT APPROACH HERE-PLACE, SHUN

His mind offered the translation:

Do not inhabit this place. Do not approach the danger below. Shun this place.

He moaned, felt the hard floor on the back of his skull. The world was expanding again, finally, beyond the margins of his pain-wracked body. He was lying on his back, and his injured shoulder was spasming against the stone. He shifted to take the pressure off, and found that the pain in his side was substantially less now. That was good. He blinked, wiped moisture from his eyes, then carefully, he tested the movement of his limbs. No new pain greeted him. Also good.

His vision was clearing up, and he turned his head leftward, took in his surroundings.

The wreckage of the priest’s head was scattered across the floor around him. A fragment of the upper part lay nearby, with a single, empty eye, staring.

Shun this place.

A shame. The machine had been cunning, speaking its riddles and warnings, same as the Ancients. Had any of it been true, or had the priest simply been buying the time it needed to summon a new mask? No way to know for sure. He sighed and swallowed painfully, raising a hand to massage his sore throat. It wouldn’t deter him, and anyways, he still had the priest’s intact core, if some sacrifice was really required.

With effort, he shifted up onto one elbow, glanced over at the limbless body.

Shock. He squinted, shook his head, looked again: The same as before. How? The torso was smashed, torn open from inside. Had he...?! No...no, it must have been the priest. He cursed—the machine had tricked him even as it attacked. But why? Did that mean that it had been telling the truth after all?

No more sacrifice.... No more will our cores burn....

He sat up, breathing gingerly. The wind was rising outside the structure, and he shivered as he looked out: A line of red clouds now limned the horizon, off to the east. How long had he lain here? Too long—It was coming soon now, and he had wasted much time. No more delays. He heaved himself to a kneeling position, raised his head, and there was the inscription again, staring him in the face.

Do not inhabit.... Do not approach.... Shun this place!

He straightened shakily, dusted off his hands. The Protodermic Priesthood had done its work well, to uphold the ancient dictates, to instill fear, and to keep the vaults of deep time sealed. To the very last, it had done its work, and it had nearly been the end of him. But it had failed.

The Lord of Steel breathed in and centered himself, drawing upon his power. He slid a hand along the metal-stone hybrid of the structure around him, feeling its alien composition. It had taken him many years to acquire enough of it, secreted away on underground markets, and more years after that to study the substance, to understand it, and to modify his own power to affect it.

He advanced slowly, leaving the inscriptions behind. The tunnel stretched into cool darkness and ended in a blunt wall. But he knew better. He focused his mind, felt the stone-metal shiver downward, a solid shaft extending deep into the surface of the planet. Not entirely solid, however. He could sense the seams and joints, where the material had been fixed together. Now at his command, the shaft opened in segments, one seal releasing after another, and he shaped it into a stairway, leading down, down....

The danger is to the body, to the land. To kill or to change. 

He turned the words over in his mind for a moment. This world could use some change, that was for sure. He’d always thought so. He moved to the edge of the newly-formed staircase and smelled the dry, sterile air of a previous age.

When the world failed, sacrifice was needed. Always sacrifice. 

If it was true, then the priest had not been willing to make such a sacrifice, going so far as to take himself out of the equation...permanently.

No more will our cores burn, to kindle the stars and to light the lamps of the universe. It is enough.

Was that the reason for all of this, the burying of the past? Those who had been made by the Ancients to sustain the world...whose lives had been used to keep it going, however many times...at last, they’d gotten fed up?

I am not machine, the priest had said. If it was true, then who could blame them? 

Doubt pricked at him. Whatever was to come—sacrifice or not—he himself, the Lord of Steel, would have to face it alone. Was he prepared for that? Surely after all his planning and labors, all the sacrifices he had made since taking up the mantle of Element Lord, this could be no worse. The challenge of the Mask, to remake the world. Beware....

Maybe it was fitting. The legends said that the world began with metal: a great silver sea, hanging in the void.

Perhaps the world to come would begin the same.

He glanced one more time at the carnage that had been the body of the priest, then out at the desert, at the corpses in the sand, at the pale sky. The clouds were piling up now. Stormclouds, shimmering with red light that was not lightning. Ever since the second Dreaming Plague, it had been this way, when the Eater had reemerged—hungry, and hungrier now.

He scowled, allowing himself a moment of the old hatred, for that color and what it represented—ancient enemy of the Children of Iron. Only a moment. In the end, such anger was futile.

His dreams had already been eaten, after all.

Faint thunder reached his ears. The light outside was growing redder by the minute. It would be here soon, just as he had planned, and he would be ready for it.

Ready to risk danger to the body, to the land. Ready to kill or to change.

Ready to remake the world.

He turned back to the staircase and blinked to align the retroflective layers of metallic crystal behind his eyes, enhancing his night vision as he peered down into the dark. Down to where life was hidden....

Do not inhabit this place.

Life with death, whatever that meant.

Do not approach the danger below.

Red light approached, flickering hungrily across the dunes. Could it read the inscriptions, understand the warnings?

Shun this place.

He began the descent.

[a-killer-obsession]

Q8 🦾

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I initially misunderstood what should be done.

{ A few words about you as an author. YOU ARE FUCKING WONDERFUL. I've often thought about such a thing as a collab. The arts' collab is cool, and I've had experience with it, so it's already become kind of boring. And I came up with the idea, why not make a writers' collab =∆ The thing would obviously be in demand, but it needs an approach and many, many nuances. I don't know why I'm saying this at all, because the idea is a bit damp, but I probably want to listen to someone else's opinion on this score.}

That was on me for forgetting to put it in the instructions, I've never done a request event before so I didn't event think of it. Thanks for sending the ask in, I really wanted to write this one, it got a bit intense but I hope you enjoy it 💕

Franky's Toy Room

Prompt: Quiet

Additional Tags: afab reader, she/her pronouns, forniphilic gag, impact play, fucking machine, shibari, rope suspension, butt plug, forced orgasm, vibrator, squirting, breeding bench, pre-ts franky, blow job, deep throating, praise kink, use of sir, touch of degradation, fingering, p in v sex, creampie, aftercare

WC: 2.3k

Event Masterlist

🔞 Minors DNI 🔞

“Shhh baby, you're gonna wake the whole ship,” Franky tsk'd as you moaned around your gag, tongue fighting against the small silicone cock inside your mouth that was attached to it. Your body was held by soft royal blue ropes, your forearms bound together behind your back, your torso held up by a strong harness that suspended you from the ceiling, keeping your top half horizontal while your bottom half rested on your knees. The position you were in was essentially doggy style, but with the carefully tied harness supporting you instead of your arms, while a fucking machine Franky had made himself pounded into you from behind with a metalic groan and the wet squelch of silicone in your wet, abused hole. You'd already cum too many times to count, your ass red from the leather paddle he'd used earlier, accented by the large blue rhinestone at the end of the shiny silver plug in your asshole. The black leather padding of the bench underneath you was already soaked with a large puddle of your earlier releases, pooling underneath you and at your knees, dripping to the wooden floor below. He held a bright pink vibrator against your slit, your eyes rolling as you whined around the gag.

“Come on babe, give me another,” Franky hummed. You shook your head, eyes watering, relying entirely on the ropes to keep you upright as your legs turned to jelly, the vibrator against your oversensitive clit making you scream around the gag as you felt your coil somehow pulling taut again. You were sure this time you'd pass out. “Aw don't be like that, you're doing so super, I know you can cum again”

The speed of the fucking machine was increased, as was the intensity of the vibrator, and you went entirely silent as you came too hard to make sound, the air pulled from you as you shook uncontrollably and squirted again, barely anything coming out of you at this point from the sheer amount of fluids you'd already expelled. Franky's large hand supported you under your belly as your legs shook, not turning off the machine or removing the vibrator till your body went limp, hanging uselessly by the ropes. You barely registered the large dildo being removed from your gaping pussy, or the gag being removed from your mouth.

“Breathe, babe,” Franky cooed, loosening the ropes holding you gradually till you were a puddle of flesh resting in a puddle of cum on the leather bench. “Catch your breath sweetheart, we ain't done, you haven't even taken me yet”

You whined but didn't protest with a safeword as he easily picked you up and transferred you to a breeding bench, the padded leather supporting your weak torso on the higher section and your knees bent again on the lower sections either side, sore but thankfully no longer having to support any weight. Your arms were still bound behind you but it didn't matter, you were so dazed and fucked out that the whole Grandline could've come in and taken turns with you and you wouldn't have even noticed.

“So pretty,” Franky wiggled the plug in your ass, making you whine. He tutted in response, walking to your front and stretching your mouth open with a finger hooked in each cheek. “What did I say about making noise?” He tsk'd, “do I have to put the gag back in?”

“No sir,” you replied weakly, slightly slurred by the fingers in your mouth, doing your best to make half-lidded eye contact as you spoke, lest you be punished.

“Such a pretty mouth though,” he pressed his thumb down on your tongue, forcing your mouth wide open, the pad of his thumb swiping over the wet muscle. “Mmm, think I'll use it a little as well before I fuck your pretty pussy.” He pulled down his speedos and let them pool at his ankles, his thick cock springing from them, erect and red with need, as he stepped out of the fabric and kicked it away. He let his unbuttoned shirt fall from his shoulders as he pumped himself a few times.

“Open up doll,” he ordered, and you opened your mouth obediently for him as he stood at the front of the bench, lolling your tongue invitingly. He tapped the fat head of his dick against your tongue, smearing it with his precum that tasted artificial, a little like cola. It always made you wonder whether his cum was real or whether his testicles had needed to be rebuilt as well. You knew from the faint stitch lines down either side of his shaft that at least that his cock wasn't entirely natural. But hey, if you gotta replace your dick, may as well make it a monster. Franky was a big man anyway, his cock was proportional to the rest of him.

He grabbed your ponytail and pulled it hard, raising your head a little as he slipped his cock inside your mouth, the corners of your mouth stinging from the stretch. He wasted no time in making you gag, he knew you could take it. He loved the way your eyes watered as you looked up at him, his tip hitting the back of your throat and sliding down with every deep thrust he made, groaning as he pulled on your hair, his other hand supporting your chin so the pull wasn't too harsh.

“You're doing super, baby,” he purred, “just a little more of this, just wanna get warmed up before I fuck that tight little pussy of yours.” You whined around his cock, the vibrations making his eyes roll behind the sunglasses. “Good girl, doing such a good job babe. Fuck you're gonna make me bust down that whore throat of yours”

You knew him finishing in your mouth wouldn't save your pussy from further abuse, Franky could go as long as his cola reserves could, you usually gave out long before he did. Regardless, you wanted more of that strangely sweet, probably artificial cum, so you hollowed your throat and sucked hard, running your tongue against the underside of his cock the way you knew he liked.

“Fuck, [y/n]!” He shouted suddenly, groaning as ropes of sweet cum slid down your throat, his hips stuttering as he emptied inside your mouth, the last spurts spilling out over your tongue and face as he pulled out. “Bad girl,” he tsk'd, giving your face a playful slap, but you could tell as you licked your lips that you weren't really in trouble.

“Now who's loud?” You teased, earning a hard smack on the ass that made you yelp. Franky bent down so his face was at your eye level.

“Next sound and the gag goes back on,” he threatened, making you shiver. Your body was worn out but the way he spoke in that deep, dominant tone made your pussy throb with need, “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir,” you replied, licking a little more cum from your face as it dripped down your cheek.

“Good girl,” he gave your face a light slap, before holding your chin, thumb running over your drool coated lips, “can you take me one more time?”

“Yes sir,” you wriggled a little in your restraints, pussy clenching around nothing as you anticipated how good it'd feel to have him fill you, “please sir”

“There's my good greedy girl,” he smiled, letting you suck on his thumb for a moment before pulling it out with a pop. He moved to the back of the bench, cock still solid as a rock, pulling you by your thighs so your ass was right at the end of the bench. The bench itself was taller than average, he'd made it himself to be adjustable, usually set to this height which was the most comfortable for him to fuck in a standing position, usually for fucking you or Robin. She usually joined him in on teasing you, but she was feeling unwell tonight, so the cyborg had you to himself, deep in the hold of the Thousand Sunny, in what he called his ‘Toy Room’.

Franky stuck two impossibly thick fingers inside you, the width of them combined bigger than his cock, stretching you wide. The large dildo he'd been using earlier was close to his size, making sure you were good and stretched to take him, but he loved to stretch you wider with his fingers for a moment so he could watch your pussy gape and admire your pretty pink walls before he painted them white.

He slid inside you easily, burying himself to the hilt, and you bit down on your bottom lip to stifle your moan as your pussy stretched around him. He loved to watch where his cock was buried in you, the membrane that lined the entrance of your hole catching on his thick cock with every slow pull, like your pussy refused to let go of him. It drove him wild to watch the way his cock got shiny with your slick, a creamy ring forming at this base and catching in his curly blue pubes as you came again, less intense this time, lacking the energy to squirt anymore. He praised you anyway as your pussy fluttered around him, impressed you'd managed to cum again at all without him even needing to use his special trick yet.

“Good girl, [y/n],” he praised, making you clench around him as you muffled your moans against the bench, “I'm gonna let you make sound, but only if you can cum one more time with me when I tell you too. Can you do that baby? Cum for me one more time and let me hear you scream?”

“Y-yes ssi-r,” you stuttered, struggling to not cry out as his cock began to vibrate inside you, a fun little feature he'd added while he was augmenting it. It never failed to build you back up again, no matter how fucked out you were, so he always saved it for last. It was a bit of a Pavlov effect because of it, your orgasm building quickly under the promise that it'd be the last one and you'd be able to rest soon. One day he was going to figure out that connection and it was gonna bite you in the ass, you were sure Robin knew but she wasn't a snitch. He could tell you were close as your hands balled into tight fists behind your back and your face dug into the leather below you, breathing hard while your pussy fluttered around him.

“There's my good girl, I knew you could do it,” he groaned, fucking you mercilessly as he chased his own high, pulling slightly on the plug in your ass. “Let me hear you scream baby, and I'll give you this fat load”

Your whole body shook and you saw white as you clamped down around him, letting out a scream that would probably sound pained to anyone hearing jt without context. You would have woken the whole ship if not for the fact that Franky had secretly sound proofed this room, not that you knew that. You didn't have the capacity to worry about waking anyone right now anyway as your orgasm made you tremble, Franky bruising your hips with how hard he held you as he pounded into you one last time and roared, filling you with so much sticky cum that it overflowed and dripped onto the breeding bench, pouring out like a unclogged drain as he pulled out and you made a disappointed little whine. You practically squealed as he removed the rhinestoned plug from your ass, appreciating the way your ass gaped and throbbed around nothing.

“Good girl,” he cooed, running his hand up your back, over the ropes and to your hair, scratching your scalp pleasantly as he came to stand in front of you, his cock softening as he bent down to kiss you tenderly. He quickly set about untying the ropes that bound you, your whole body laying limb like a piece of wet laundry draped over the bench the second your arms were released.

“Good girl [y/n], you did so well,” he cooed, carefully pulling you upright by your armpits, before lifting you bridal style to sit in a comfortable armchair, a prepared towel already laid on it to catch any fluids. He sat you in a way where you were slouched slightly to put less pressure on your sore rump, and he slowly lifted your legs to rest over the arms of the chair so he could carefully wipe you clean, examining you for any injury before bringing your legs back together. He kissed you on the forehead and quickly redressed himself before getting you a glass of cool water. He held it to your mouth and tilted it for you a little at a time so you could drink, your arms aching from being bound. Once he was satisfied you'd drunk enough water, he set about examining every part of your body methodically, massaging sore areas with his large hands and rubbing muscle soothing balm into them. You were half asleep before he lifted you up and sat himself in the chair, draping you on your belly over his lap and the arms of the chair so he could check your backside. Satisfied that you were entirely taken care of, he helped you into a silk dressing down and held you carefully in his lap, cooing gentle praises and rubbing your back softly. Sex with Franky was always a marathon, but you also relished the soft moments afterwards, and you knew that once you inevitably fell asleep he would carry you carefully to his bed, tuck you in, and wrap himself around you protectively.

[ilysungho]

Can I request 59 with Sungho?🙈

a/n: my face when i saw this in my inbox -> 😀; not really sure about who is sub and dom here so imagine it as you want <3 wc: 0.8k contains: switch!sungho x switch!reader, blowjob, throat fucking, sungho implied to be an idol, established relationship (bf, gf), sungho takes pictures of you, lowercase intended, prompts italicized

hair tugging while fighting for dominance, your lips danced with your boyfriend’s in the elevator up to your apartment. sungho's one hand tugged at your hair, the other gripping your waist as if you’ll run away if he let go. your own hands messed up his beautifully styled hair as you moaned into his mouth when he bit your bottom lip. your tongues played together now as he towered over you, pushing you against the cold metal of the machine.

“you look so good like this, i need you styled like this more often.” you croaked out between kisses. releasing your grip from his hair, you reached down to palm him over his forming bulge.

ding!

the elevator opened up to your floor, kisses still being hungrily shared, and you fumbling with the keys to enter into your place. shoes were kicked off of both your feet, walking inside and slamming the door shut. your hands searched for his fly, unzipping it and moving his boxers over to touch his cock directly. he moaned under your touch, his deep voice replacing the room’s silence.

“baby—shit—i don’t think i’m gonna make it to the bed like this.”

you breathed heavily as the kiss broke off, a string of saliva connecting you both. “it's ok.” you push sungho against the wall, getting on your knees as his hand pulled your hair into a makeshift ponytail.

you kissed his red tip, earning a heavy groan from the man you loved. your tongue then licked a stripe up from his base to his tip, his lips sputtering out words of praise needily. he threw his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, feeling your mouth around his dick now. you sucked him, hard and fast like the kisses had been, rubbing his abdomen under the shirt to busy your hands.

sungho continuously moaned as you were taking his length into your mouth, slowly but surely. every suck was followed by your tongue brushing against his slit as best as you could, his precum coating the insides of your mouth. your hands wrapped around his clothed thighs for extra support, squeezing them every time he pulled at your hair.

taking in more of him, you felt the tip reach the back of your throat. choking a bit on his thick cock, you moaned against it. the vibrations made sungho let out a cry you rarely hear from him, making you feel even needier. you bobbed your head up and down his length as he softly rutted into your mouth. he couldn't control his hips, feeling completely lost in the pleasure you gave him. the room echoed back everything coming out from his throat and your mouth, the lewd noises sounding too loud to the point where passersby outside your front door could hear it all. but, neither of you cared enough to move further inside the apartment.

your mouth let go of his dick with a pop, hands now taking over to rub sungho's shaft as you kiss his thighs and balls. he bit his lips as he looked down at you and pulled out his phone to take a picture of his cock drunk girlfriend. you look up at him as he's taking the picture and smile as you wrap your lips around his cock once again. your eyes don't leave his as you hear him hiss at the contact once again.

breathing heavily as he put his phone away, sungho took a hold of your hair. "tap my thigh if it's too much."

you blinked at him to confirm you heard him, his hands tightening the grip on you as he thrust into your mouth. he groaned with every thrust as he felt the back of your throat. you closed your eyes, tears welling up and your hands gripping on his thighs tighter. the movements led sungho closer to his release, leaving you anticipating for it. he kept using your mouth, not saying anything apart from your name between moans and groans.

he quickened his pace as he got closer, looking at your face now with his mouth agape. his eyes were lustful as he hit the back of your throat one last time before shooting his load inside. sungho shook slightly as your tears came out of your eyes while he wiped them with his thumbs. letting go of his dick, you opened your mouth for him to see. he breathed heavy once again, seeing you look so pretty with his cum coating the insides of your mouth and tongue.

"fuck... so pretty for me," he pulled out his phone once again, holding your chin with his other hand as he clicked a picture.

he was definitely going to use that picture to jerk off sometime soon.

[lieutnt]

kinktober - #4

cock warming w/ bucky barnes x top!male reader kinktober masterlist

His hands rest atop his thighs, curled into fists as he waits for your permission. When your hand cups the side of his face he melts into it, tilting to meet your palm and he’s already feeling calmer, body growing lax as you lean down to kiss into his hair. Two fingers rest under his chin, and you encourage his head to move up slightly so you can kiss him on the lips - a slow, relaxed thing that has Bucky chasing after you as you pull away. You sit back, hands planted on the arms of your chair as you widen your legs. “Whenever you’re ready sweetheart.”

Bucky nods, shifting onto his knees (he’s thankful for the pillow you’d placed between your feet in preparation) to reach for your belt, undoing it and pulling it through the loops to place it at your side before reaching for the zipper. He undoes it easily, this part well practised, and reaches in, drawing out your half hard cock. He gives it a few pumps, working you up to full hardness all the while you comb your hand through his hair, muttering praises every so often, not that Bucky can really hear them anymore, not with the way he’s focusing on your cock.

Everything had gotten too much - the sleepless nights, the nightmares that followed him through to the day, the unfamiliarity of it all, how even now he still feels out of place. He had come to you, a frown deeply settled in the lines of his face, unable to communicate what exactly was wrong, just that he wanted to not think for a while. Your suggestion had him agreeing quickly, knees sinking to the ground like a magnet being pulled to metal.

He leans in, pulling his hands away to take you in his mouth, the weight on his tongue instantly comforting - how you were completely around him, stroking him like a beloved pet, letting him take what he needed from you.

Your breath deepens the first few seconds, Bucky looking up at you with doe eyes as he bobs up and down until you’re in his throat, forcing him to breathe through his nose. His heart flutters at the way you smile down at him so genuine, your murmured “Good boy,” making him double his efforts until he feels tears building at the corners of his eyes and he can hear the wet sounds his mouth is making.

When your hand stops in his hair he stops, glassy, confused eyes meeting yours as you stare down at him. “This isn’t about me Buck, don’t push yourself.” He takes a moment before nodding, focusing on slowing down, only moving when he wants, tongue occasionally lapping at your slit when precum oozes out, your taste familiar, relaxing. His eyes slowly begin to droop as your fingers card through his hair again, thoughts melting away as your nails scratch against his scalp.

He hums deeply at your pleasured sigh, the hollowing of his cheeks stopping until he’s suckling at you, head falling against your inner thigh. You keep your voice low, calm, the rich timbre flowing through his veins. “That’s it, stay there as long as you want.” 

By the time you’re reaching over him to pull your keyboard to the edge of your desk he’s barely listening, floating in a peaceful nothing. It’s a struggle to type with only one hand, but previous attempts to remove your hand have been met with a whine echoing in the back of Bucky’s throat, so you settle back, idly typing away while like a well oiled machine your hand runs through his hair.

[casstheasswrites]

NO SAINTS, NO SAVIOURS (9)

pairing: frank castle x reader (female)

summary: wrong place, wrong time. he saved her life, she patched him up. that should’ve been the end of it. some nights, you survive. others, you change.

trigger warnings: canon typical violence including blood and death. ptsd, trauma, eventual smut. at times, you get soft!frank. at others, he takes no prisoners. we love the duality of man <3

chapter length: 7.6k

authors note: PREPARE FOR ANGST AND HELLA YEARNING. in case you want more of this story faster, i've got ELEVEN chapters posted on my AO3 (linked below). just going to start double posting here on tumblr too :) i hope you enjoy and pls pls send me a message with your feedback or thoughts, if you have any! thanks a million.

archive of our own / feedback appreciated!

Frank guided you down a flight of rusted metal stairs behind a maintenance gate you never would’ve noticed on your own— half-shielded by ivy and shadows, as if the city itself had tried to forget it existed. You ducked your head as he pulled open a reinforced metal door, the hinges shrieking their protest. He then led you down a series of long, concrete hallways, until finally his footsteps slowed. The floor inclined, just slightly, like you’d moved just barely underground. He led you to an old and rusted green door, with the words MGRS OFFICE affixed to the front in worn letters. There was a keypad lock keeping the door sealed shut, and he made quick work of twisting the numbers into combination and then pushed his way inside. You followed just a step behind.

Inside was nothing but darkness, the air thick and damp like an old tomb.

The moment you crossed the threshold, the scent of old concrete and machine oil wrapped around you like a worn blanket. Cold, metallic, just sharp enough to sting your nose. You winced, unable to stop yourself. It was the kind of smell that would linger on your clothes and in your hair. That told you this was not a place for comfort— this was a place for survival. As if Frank himself hadn’t already warned you.

A soft click sounded, and overhead, a string of bare bulbs buzzed to life. The light was dim and flickering, strung up across the ceiling by stripped copper wire. They cast long, uneven shadows against the concrete of the walls, of the floor, revealing just enough of the room to let your imagination fill in the rest.

It was… small. Not cramped, but close. Like the space itself had been carved out in secret and never meant to be found again.

You turned slowly in place, taking it all in. Utility shelves were piled with supplies, dozens of canned goods and other non-perishables. Upon closer inspection, you noticed several boxes of MREs— your brow furrowed at the sight, your heart clenching within your chest. If this had been how Frank had been living, it was no wonder he’d seemed to savour every bite of the breakfast you’d made that morning.

As you looked around, you somehow managed to keep your expression guarded, neutral. You could feel the weight of Frank’s eyes on you— just for a beat, just long enough for him to step around you, immediately crossing the room. Getting to work. Not a second to waste.

Two small windows sat high on the far wall— thin slits of glass fogged by time and purpose. The panes were clouded, blurred with privacy film or something like it, designed to let light in but keep the world out. You couldn’t see through them— just barely-there hints of shifting shapes, the vague suggestion of movement. Like shadows behind a curtain. If it weren’t night, you figured that sunlight would filter in soft and dull, casting a muted gray glow that would do little to brighten the space. The bunker— that’s what you likened it to— was just a floor below ground level.

Water stains crept like spiderwebs across the ceiling. A military cot sat pushed into one wall, a single gray blanket folded at the edge. There was a sad excuse for a pillow at one end, flat enough that it likely didn’t do much. Two battered metal desks were pushed together near the center of the room, their surfaces buried beneath weapons, maps, and stray boxes of ammunition— some open, others sealed tight. The far corner of the room, across from the door, held a folding chair draped with a flannel shirt, sleeves frayed at the edges, elbows worn straight through. Near it, a mini fridge kicked on with a groan, like even it was reluctant to keep going.

There were no photos. No books. No softness.

You could feel Frank in every inch of it. This was who he was, when you weren’t around.

You stepped closer to the desks, further into the room, careful not to make too much noise. The back wall of the room was completely covered in notes, maps, blurry black-and-white photographs with red circles drawn around faces. Some had Xs through them, others didn’t. You knew what that meant.

Most of the faces in the photos were strangers. A few… weren’t. The men from the subway that first night, weeks ago, were there. Already marked as dead. And the men from the hospital, too. Red marker connected both sets of men— and in the middle— a photo of you. It was a candid shot, taken from distance, just outside your apartment building. It was from before the hospital— so he’d been watching you before that, too. Around your photo there was no red circle, no messy printing with details or crimes, just your first name scrawled beneath. The ink ran a bit around the last letter of your name; like his hand had paused there for a beat too long.

Everyone else on the board had more information affixed to the space around their photo; news articles, print-offs from the web, crimes they’d been accused of. But not you. There was no deep dive, no history searched and shared. Just your name, handwritten in that sharp, slanted scrawl you were starting to recognize. It made something stir in your chest— something you didn’t have the name for. He hadn’t needed more information. He’d already made up his mind about you.

You swallowed the knot in your throat and stepped back again, gaze flicking to the ceiling.

You could hear the city moving just overhead— traffic rumbling, pipes groaning, someone’s muffled footsteps echoing through old infrastructure. On the way over, Frank had told you this place used to be a building manager’s office— tucked in the basement of some forgotten apartment complex on the far edge of Hell’s Kitchen. While people still lived in the many floors above, the basement hadn’t been used in decades and he’d been here for months. Knew every bolt, every blind corner. Every way in… and out. He told you that tomorrow, he would run you through each of them, just in case.

Just as you turned towards him, Frank shifted in your direction, one of his hands lifting towards your back. You paused, waiting to see what he was doing, before you realized— his hand slid over your shoulder and wrapped around the strap of your backpack, giving it a gentle tug until it began to slide backwards. He removed your bag and carried it towards the cot— the one cot— before he set it down at the edge.  

Then he turned to you, expression clear in the half-light, waiting. He looked exhausted— not just from the day, but from the weight he always seemed to carry. You knew it well. Still, there was something in the way he watched you. Like he was waiting for you to flinch, or settle, or leave. But you didn’t do any of those things.

“I’ve had worse,” you said, voice a little quieter than you meant it to be.

One corner of his mouth curved, but it wasn’t quite a smile. Just that unreadable expression he always wore when he didn’t want you to see how he really felt.

You weren’t sure what you wanted to see, anyway.

The bunker was cold. That much was obvious, but you imagined it was intentional, too. Frank couldn’t afford warmth. Not in his body, not in his bones, and definitely not in the places he chose to rest his head. Comfort made you soft, slow. And he didn’t survive by being either of those things.

You were grateful for the jacket you’d grabbed before you left. Grateful for the extra layers beneath it, even though the fabric was already starting to cling in the wrong places— damp from exertion, heavy with the day. Still, the chill found its way in. It crept under the hem of your sweater, licked at the delicate skin between your knuckles. Settled at the base of your neck and stayed there. A hint of what was to come.

Without realizing it, your feet had carried you toward the desks in the middle of the room. His base of operations.

You paused a few inches away from the edge of the nearest desk, your eyes drifting across the objects arranged there. Not messy, not cluttered— just deliberate in a language you didn’t speak. Clips. Ammunition. An oversized, cracked radio with the casing half-screwed off. The thing had dial upon dial on it, and you wondered if it might have been older than you were. You’d never seen anything like it before. Next to it, there was a notepad filled with numbers, scratched out and rewritten again. Frequencies, maybe. Paths he’d tried to explore and deemed unworthy.

You didn’t touch anything. You just looked, scanning over his world without stepping into it.

Frank wasn’t far. He’d dropped into the nearby folding chair, a half-turn away from you. One of his pistols lay disassembled in front of him on the other side of the desk, pieces laid out like organs on a metal table. He moved with that same precision of motion he always did— like he was saving every ounce of energy he had for something that might need killing later.

He reached for a small black bottle with no label and uncapped it. The sharp, chemical scent of it hit the air instantly, and your nose scrunched before you could help yourself. It was acrid and bitter, something that didn’t belong in lungs. But Frank didn’t flinch. Instead, he poured a bit onto an old rag, the cloth already dark from past use, and started to press it delicately against specific spots along the exposed barrel. He moved with surgical precision; a man who’d done this a time or two before.

It was like watching a ritual. Not worship, not quite. But familiar. His shoulders stayed low, steady, the way they always did when his mind was a thousand miles away but his hands remembered the route. Autopilot.

You leaned your hip against the edge of the desk, arms crossed loosely over your chest, and watched him for a while.

He looked up once, just for a split second. His gaze met yours, weighted and familiar, but he said nothing.

He just kept going.

When the weapon was finished— clean, reassembled, gleaming beneath the low light— he cleared his throat. He didn’t look at you this time, just tilted his head slightly toward your bag at the foot of the cot.

“Hand yours over,” he said, voice low, steady. “Gotta keep a weapon like that clean. Can’t afford to let it jam.”

You hadn’t even considered it, the idea of cleaning your gun. The idea that you’d need it more than once. But of course he had— of course Frank had already thought through every variable. His back-up plans had back-up plans.

You moved back toward your bag and unzipped the front pocket, fingers closing around the familiar shape of your weapon. When you returned, you didn’t set it down in front of him. You just stood there, waiting. Waiting for him to look up.

And when he did, you held his gaze, a sharp set to your jaw.

“Show me how,” you said. Quiet, but firm. Your voice was steady, even if your insides weren’t. They trembled beneath the weight of what you were asking for— the burden you were willingly taking on. You knew that if Frank taught you, he’d expect you to keep up with it. It would be a job that would be all yours. “I need to learn, don’t I?”

Frank’s eyes held yours for a long moment. He didn’t blink. You could see something working behind those coffee-coloured irises, the amber in them flickering in and out of sight. It was like he was trying to read you, figure out what it meant that you were asking this, and what it might cost. You or him, you weren’t entirely sure.

Finally, he exhaled.

“S’not a bad idea,” he muttered, dragging his hand across his jaw. “Just surprised, is all.”

You won’t always be around, you wanted to say. But you knew if you did, the words would come out laced with hostility— like you were bitter. And that wasn’t how you meant it; not really. It was more like you had grown… resigned… to that fact. That as much as the two of you had begun to accept this new dynamic, as partners, there was an inevitable expiration date. And each day brought you closer to it.

You knew that no matter when that time came, it would be too soon. Because now that you’d begun to know him, how could you go back to being only strangers?

You swallowed the emotion clawing at the back of your throat, doing what you could to push it down, shove the thoughts away. You could wallow in it all later; for now, you needed to focus.

The bunker around you was quiet, still. The air in here didn’t seem to move much, growing stagnant around you, pinning you down with the weight of it. One of the bulbs overhead flickered, just once, and your gaze briefly darted up towards it. It didn’t flicker again; you wondered, for a beat, if your mind was playing tricks on you. If it was an external representation of the turmoil happening inside.

You set the gun down on the desk before him, next to his own. Frank looked at it for a second, then shook his head. He didn’t reach for it. Instead, he nudged it gently back toward you with one finger, eyes dipping between your face and the weapon.

“Nah,” he said. “Keep your hands on it. This is yours now.”

He reached across the desk, clearing space, shifting aside a rag and an open bottle of that same, bitter solvent. Then he leaned back, and nodded to the gun in front of you.

“Alright. Clip comes out first.”

Your fingers wrapped around the grip and you did as you were told. You heard the clip click free, felt the subtle shift in weight as the metal slipped from the grip. It startled you, for a beat, how easily handling the weapon had become. Your hands were steady, no hint of shakiness.

“Now pull back on the slide, there— yeah, like that. What do you see?”

You squinted, turning it onto its side, peering inside the open chamber. “Nothing… it’s empty.”

“Good. You gotta check that every time. Don’t skip it.”

You nodded, jaw set tight, even as your heartbeat pounded at the base of your throat.

“Now you need to pull the trigger.”

You hesitated, eyes flaring wide. You gaze jolted to Frank’s. “What?”

“There’s no round, no clip, no danger. It’ll click. You gotta hear that. Then rack it again.”

You obeyed, the sharp metallic click breaking the silence between you.

He walked you through the next steps— each motion careful, efficient. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t over-explain. Just simple, spare instructions, delivered in that gravel-worn tone of his. You were clumsy at first— your fingers slipped, fumbled, and you cursed once under your breath when the recoil spring jumped sideways.

Frank stood and leaned into your side, the warmth of his chest brushing across your back, your shoulder. His hand closed gently over yours atop the weapon— not stopping you, just redirecting. He adjusted the pressure you used on the weapon, loosening your grip with a nudge of his fingers over yours.

“Here,” he murmured, voice low enough that you felt it more than heard it. “You’re pressin’ too hard. Let it slide into place. Don’t force it.”

You didn’t dare move. Couldn’t. The heat from his palm bled into your skin, and suddenly everything else in the room blurred into background noise. The hum of the lightbulb above you. The low buzz of the fridge. All of it, gone.

All that remained was the way his fingers wrapped around yours, the steady rhythm of his breath against your temple. His scent settled around you, hints of salt and something warm, like a late-night campfire on the beach, waves rolling against the shore. For another moment he didn’t move, just stood there, hand on yours, like he wasn’t sure whether to pull away or press in closer.

When he finally pulled away, it wasn’t abrupt. More like the kind of retreat that takes effort— like the parting of hands that almost forget they don’t belong there. You watched him as he went, unable to tear your gaze away. His eyes lingered a second too long on your fingers before he reclaimed his seat, jaw tight like he’d given away more than intended.

“You’re getting it,” he said, voice rough again, but not unkind. He watched each of your movements carefully, like a teacher who knew you could do it on your own— but wanted to stay within arms reach, just in case. “Keep goin’.”

You did. You finished the disassembly, with his instructions, and lined up the pieces of the weapon in the same way he had. Next, he handed you the rag he’d used on his own weapon, and you turned your gaze to his, your eyes hesitant, questioning.

“How much do I use?” you asked, teeth digging into your bottom lip. He chuckled and nodded, unscrewing the cap from the solvent for you. Not overstepping, but helping.

“It’s not like WD-40,” he said. “It’s just for slippin’ between the parts. Keepin’ it smooth. A few drops is all you need.”

And so you did as he told you; you dabbed a few drops of the oil in the areas he pointed to with one of those long, thick fingers of his. It took you a beat too long to draw your eyes away from it. He then walked you through how to reassemble the weapon, only stepping in with instruction when you paused, eyes wandering to his, lost. You managed to work your way through a few of the steps on your own, and your eyes flickered to Frank’s when you finished— the warmth in his gaze made your heart soar within your chest.

You handed it back to him for a once-over and he didn’t hesitate. The way the weapon moved in his hands was much different to how it had in yours— to you, it was unfamiliar, a new object you weren’t sure you wanted to learn. But to Frank, it was like an extension of himself, something he knew like the back of his hand.

He checked it through once. Twice.

You waited with bated breath, nerves frayed, eyes locked on his face. And finally, his gaze lifted to yours, and his lips curved just slightly in one corner. You were startled by how much amber had leaked into his eyes— more than you’d ever seen before. The shade of his eyes nearly glowed in the dim light coming from above.

“Atta girl,” he said, the words coated in nothing but warmth. Pride. “Good work. Real good.”

The praise landed like a match to dry grass, a sudden flame that caught too fast. It travelled across your entire body, your cheeks flushing, crimson springing to your pale skin. Then it traced a trail down the center of your body, pooling at your core, burning you from the inside out. Your lips parted, breath catching on nothing, and for a moment, you couldn’t even remember how your hands worked. You were still. There was nothing within your mind, just the echo of those words— “Atta girl”— circling around and around, like a carousel you couldn’t climb off of.

You weren’t used to hearing praise like that. Not from someone like him. Not from anyone. It lodged somewhere deep, unfamiliar— dangerous, maybe, given how much you wanted to hear it again. Like there was a tank that needed to be filled, and he’d just given you the first few drops. You were an addict and he’d slipped you your first taste.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed— how long you’d allowed the room to lapse into silence. When your heart had finally stopped pounding against your ribs, your eyes refocused, and you found that he was still watching you. There was a hint of something on his face, like he was weighing his options again… trying to decide whether or go left or right. Just as your lips parted, about to ask him what he was thinking, he stood from the chair and began to nod his head. He’d made up his mind. Chosen his path.

“Now what do you say I teach you how to use this thing properly, yeah?”

You went still all over again; the gun in your grasp suddenly gaining weight. It shouldn’t have— you’d already fired it once, been prepared to use it a second time, if it hadn’t been Frank who’d appeared in your apartment the day before. But he was right. You didn’t have the first clue what you were doing when that cool metal was pressed into your palm. And if you wanted to keep going on this path, walking alongside him, you’d need to learn.

Who better to teach you than him?

Slowly, you began to nod, a nonverbal confirmation. You were buying in; whatever he wanted you to know, you’d do your best. He was the expert… and you hoped you could be a fast learner. You hoped he might give away some more of those warm words, the one that had you shift your weight again, your insides still overheated.

You wanted to believe that what you lacked in strength, you could make up for with speed and agility. Before the last few weeks, you had regularly been going to the gym, always focused on endurance training and gradually increasing your strength in the areas you needed it. But you’d been losing weight, too, and you had a feeling that a lot of what you’d lost had been muscle. It would take time to build that up again.

“Alright,” Frank said, pulling you from your thoughts. With a jerk of his head, he directed you to back up a few steps, spread further into the room where there were less obstacles. His gaze never left you, even as you moved. It was hard not to shrink beneath the weight of his eyes, because this time, he was looking for something in particular— he was critiquing. “Feet shoulder-width apart. Back foot slightly behind. Put your weight on the balls of your feet— knees soft, not locked.” He paused, waiting for you to do as he’d said.

You adjusted, shifting until you found something that felt like balance. It wasn’t comfortable, not even remotely, and didn’t feel natural. But it felt like you could move in any direction, quickly, if you needed to. That was probably the point.

He approached you, then, and began to move around you in a slow semi-circle. He was quiet, just watching. There was something about the way he moved— measured, assessing. Like he was watching not just your stance, but the way you held your fear. Like he was deciding what kind of fighter you might become.

“Now your grip,” he said and you lifted the gun in your hands, eyes following the movement as you stared at the way you held it in your grasp. “Two hands, dominant one high and tight on the backstrap. Other hand wraps the fingers— thumbs pointing forward, not crossed.” When your hands finally settled as he’d instructed, he hummed, the sound reverberating through his chest. He was somewhere behind you, peering over your shoulder.

He stepped in behind you to guide your hands, then, his palms brushing over the backs of yours. His fingers adjusted the placement of your thumbs, just slightly, his knuckle grazing the inside of your wrist. You committed the placement to memory, flexing the joints of your fingers, getting a sense for how it felt, too.

“You don’t wanna be fighting the recoil,” he murmured, close enough for the sound to settle behind your ear. His smell began to wrap around you again and you held your breath, trying to keep a hold of your composure. Your knees wobbled at his proximity and your eyes pressed shut for a beat, hoping he hadn’t noticed. “Let the gun do what it’s built to do, but keep control of it.”

“Arms out, extend,” he said. “Straight, but not rigid. Shoulders down and elbows unlocked. Your grip’s where the strength comes from, not your arms.”

You extended and he watched. Not just the posture— you. Though you still couldn’t see him, not even from your periphery, you felt the weight of his gaze on every inch of you. Trailing over every area he commented on, ensuring you had it right.

He stepped forward again, fingertips brushing your upper arm. “Relax here. You're gonna tire yourself out faster if you stay tense.”

You tried. Loosened your shoulders. Let the weight of the weapon settle in your hands instead of your muscles.

“Now look down the sights,” he said, voice a little softer now. “Front post sharp. Rear blurred. Focus here—” his finger tapped the top of the slide, just above the front sight, “—and breathe.”

You lined it up as best you could, eyes narrowing, tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth in concentration. When you’d fired at the man in the hospital, you hadn’t even looked— your eyes had been pinched shut, too afraid to watch whatever you had been about to do. You could still feel the pull of that trigger, the slam of the gun in your hand, how your shoulders immediately burned with the effort. You could still hear the echo of it, too, the ringing in your ears. That blind panic, the wet slap of blood against tile. You hadn’t aimed. You hadn’t known how. And it was only luck— Frank— that kept you breathing.

“You want the shot to break at the bottom of an exhale,” he continued, low and steady. “Squeeze. Don’t jerk. Don’t anticipate. Just... let it happen.”

Your breath came out slow. You clicked the trigger. Even with no bullet, the release of tension jolted through your wrist.

Frank gave a low hum of approval, his exhale blowing against the side of your head, jostling a few strands of your dark hair. As if he, too, had noticed it, he reached up with a hand and brushed them away, tucking them back behind your ear. You were frozen solid at his gesture— the tension you’d just managed to release returning ten-fold.

That wasn’t instruction. That wasn’t survival. It was something else entirely, something heavier, something deeper and unspoken. It was something you didn’t know what to do with. Didn’t know if he did, either.

He moved around your side, appearing in your periphery before he was in front of you, just slightly to your left. You relaxed your hold on the weapon, dropped your arms a bit.

Then, without warning, he reached for the gun. “Now let’s see what happens when someone tries to take it.”

Your stomach turned and you flinched back a step, eyes flaring wide. “Wait—”

“You need to know this,” he said, already moving towards you again. “Don’t matter if it’s loaded or not. If you hesitate, you lose.”

He grabbed the barrel, slow and deliberate, watching your reaction. Your fingers froze around the grip. You didn’t move, didn’t react. Just let him grab it.

“You don’t fight the pull,” he said, stepping in close, his hand still wrapped around the front of the weapon. “You turn with it. Pivot your body, break the angle. If you don’t, you’ll end up with this in their hand. Pointed at you.”

He showed you— gentle, controlled— how your grip could be turned against you. How easily he could grab the weapon, pull you in, disarm you. Never once did his fingers grace the trigger— they always remained pointed straight, resting along the side of the barrel. He showed you again, slower. Letting you feel where to move, how to drop your weight, how to own the fight. He gave pointers, telling you where to focus your hits, giving you ideas of how to rattle your attacker. You were fast, you needed to use it— a foot behind an ankle, a hard kick against the back of a knee.

“Try it,” he said, goading you, leaning forward on the balls of his feet.

You hesitated again, not sure how you were supposed to take it all so seriously when it was him coming towards you. The last person you’d ever want to point a weapon at.

He didn’t hesitate this time, or take it slow.

His hand came down again, faster this time, and instinct took over. You twisted your wrist inward, ducked under his arm, pulled your shoulder across the centerline the way he’d shown. You slammed your back into his chest— rougher than you meant to— and he released you just as you moved. You staggered, half from force, half from the sheer charge of it. Then you twisted out of his reach and jolted forward, giving yourself more distance, though you weren’t exactly moving on solid feet.

Once you’d regained your footing, you looked up.

Frank was watching you with something unreadable behind his eyes. Not pride. Not quite. Something with a bit more of an edge— something a bit wearier.

“Again.”

Before you could so much as nod, he came for the gun.

You pivoted but this time, he blocked. You tried again. He caught your wrist and spun you with him, showing you how easily control could slip through your fingers. Your stomach dipped at the sudden exchange of power, your pulse racing against your throat.

You fought it. Let the weapon drop to your off hand like he’d told you to. You sent your elbow back towards him, perhaps a bit more force than you’d intended, but his freehand caught your forearm mid-swing.

“Not bad,” he muttered. Impressed.

You didn’t answer— couldn’t, not with the way he moved you. He ripped the pistol from your grasp, tossed it across the room, the sudden sound of metal against concrete making you flinch.

He pivoted behind you, one arm slipping across your chest to trap your movement, the other snaking low around your waist. He kept you there for a beat, anchored tight against him.

You stilled, holding your breath. Your lungs burned in protest. 

Every inch of him pressed into you— his chest flush against your spine, his thigh braced between your legs, the heat of his breath grazing the shell of your ear. One of his hands had splayed across your sternum, palm flat, fingers curled ever so slightly where your heart beat wild beneath them. The other rested just above your hip, low and heavy, keeping you grounded or caged— you weren’t sure which.

Finally you had to breathe— a sharp, shallow gasp, your entire chest trembling against his touch with the effort.

“Here,” Frank murmured, voice low and rough, the vibration of it pulsing through your back. “You feel that?” His hand shifted against your chest, not pressing, just… present. “That’s control. You’ve got the power but only if you don’t panic. Move fast. Use their momentum. Stop second guessing yourself.”

You barely heard the words. Not with the blood rushing in your ears. Not with the way every nerve ending had started to scream beneath your skin. Your fingers were wrapped around each of his wrists, tight, beginning to go numb from the pressure. You could feel the outline of his thighs pressing against yours, the steady drumbeat of his pulse against your shoulder blade.

His chin dipped slightly, breath exhaling slow against your neck, and you swore— swore— he lingered. Until slowly, he let go.

Not all at once. Not clean. His hand dropped from your chest first, fingers dragging lightly across the fabric of your shirt as they slipped away. Then the weight at your waist vanished, leaving behind only warmth and pressure and something you couldn’t name.

When you turned to face him, his expression was a wall of stone— completely, utterly unreadable. There was only darkness in his eyes, no hint of the amber you often searched for. His chest heaved with a long, extended breath of air, and then he nodded.

You bent at the waist and retrieved your weapon, rolling out your shoulders before you resumed your stance. It felt more comfortable now, more familiar.

Then it was you who said, “Again.”

Frank didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge what you said. He just moved. Fast. No longer taking it easy on you.

He reached for the barrel with that same deliberate confidence, trying to test you again. His other hand went for your other wrist. But this time, you didn’t hesitate. You pivoted into him, not away, using the motion of his own hand to bring your body closer before swinging beneath his reach.

Your foot slid, caught behind his ankle. You twisted with the full weight of your hips, dropped your shoulder, and used the angle to pull him off balance. The gun was already halfway behind your back, safe in your other hand.

His grip faltered. Just for a second. But it was enough. You didn’t have the time to peek at his face— knew it would just push you off center. Instead, you shoved forward, into him— not brutal, just enough to unseat him— and he stumbled. Not far. Not hard. But he let it happen. That much you could tell.

And still, somehow, you ended up in his space again— chests nearly brushing, your hand against his wrist, your body angled into his like instinct had made the decision for you.

For a beat, you both just stood there.

The air between you went thick. He stared down at you, lips parted just slightly, breath caught somewhere between restraint and something else. You could feel the warmth of his skin through your sleeves, the flex of his arm beneath your palm.

“Boom,” you murmured, the word barely audible as it brushed past your lips. You wiggled the pistol in your other hand, alerting him to the fact that you had it pointed straight at his stomach. “Your dead.”

His mouth twitched. Barely. Just the ghost of a smirk.

“Good,” he said, voice low, almost gruff. He was nodding as he stepped back, his eyes on the floor beneath your feet. “Real good.”

You stepped back, too, brushing your wrist with your fingers, half expecting to feel a bruise. You didn’t. Just the ghost of his grip, like a mark no one else would see.

“You alright?” he asked.

You nodded, breath catching. “Yeah.”

He glanced at your feet. “Good. Practice makes perfect.”

Your fingers flexed around the grip of the gun; not quite steady, not quite certain. But not as afraid, either.

* * * * *

Time passed, taking you further into the night. The quiet hum of the bunker was your steady companion in the silence. You could count on the dim buzzing of the lights overhead, of the groan the mini fridge let out every few minutes. The rattle against the windows as cars drove past, ignoring speed limits, was just about your only reminder that the outside world continued to exist.

Frank had you run through the drills a few more times, testing you, building up your endurance. He commented and corrected you as he needed to, and gradually, he stopped making it so easy for you to come away victorious. By the time he finally declared you’d done enough for one night, you were nearly panting, your hair clinging to the back of your neck with sweat. Your fingers ached from the unyielding grip you’d held on the gun. And he remained unshaken, not a hair out of place. You were nothing of a formidable opponent for him.

It didn’t give you much hope for how you’d do against anyone else his size. But at least you’d do better than before.

Frank showed you to the bathroom— if you could even call it that— and you got ready for bed slowly, taking your time. You showered, though there wasn’t much in the way of hot water— hell, it hadn’t even reached warm. You were frozen to the bone as soon as you stepped out. You rushed to dress, pulling on wool socks, heavy sweatpants, and a long-sleeved shirt beneath your sweatshirt. Still, your body trembled, seeking warmth that wouldn’t come.

The mirror above the free-standing sink was cracked, the jagged edges of broken glass spreading out across your face, distorting your view of yourself. It was probably for the best, anyways. There was no room for vanity here. You made quick work of brushing your teeth and braiding your damp hair back, away from your face. Then you traced your way back to the bunker, following the hallway Frank had led you down a while earlier.

As you pushed open the door to the bunker, you pulled the sleeves of your sweater low over your hands, clinging to them with your nearly numb fingers. Frank looked up when you stepped inside, but only briefly. He was on the other end of the room, now, crouched to unroll a sleeping bag across the concrete, moving slow and quiet like he’d done this a hundred times before. He’d already told you— in no uncertain terms— that you’d be taking the cot.

Even still, as you approached it, you hesitated. “You sure you don’t want it?” you asked, voice low.

He didn’t look at you this time, just shook his head once. “Nah. It’s yours.”

You opened your mouth to argue. Closed it again. You knew better.

“Alright,” you said, softer now. “Thanks.”

He hummed in response— a vague sound of acknowledgement, maybe approval. You couldn’t tell.

You put away your bathroom items and dirty clothes, shoving them into the backpack that had come to house all of your remaining belongings. All of the things that hadn’t been left behind, locked within the walls of your apartment. A place you weren’t sure you’d be returning to anytime soon.

You climbed into the cot and lay on your side, facing the wall, your back to Frank and the rest of the bunker. The blanket was thin, scratchy. You curled beneath it anyway, tucking your hands beneath your chin. Frank moved behind you somewhere, the sounds distant but distinct: the creak of leather as he kicked off his boots, the muted thud of something set down, the low exhale of breath that carried more fatigue than he’d admit.

Then silence.

For a moment, you thought that might be it. No goodnight, no reminder that he was here.

Then his throat cleared. And into the cool air that enveloped you both, he said, “Get some rest.”

You turned your head, just slightly, until you could see the outline of him in the dark. He’d settled on the floor a few feet away, facing you with his back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. His arms were crossed over his chest.

“Yeah,” you whispered. “You too.”

Sleep came, but only in brief, sporadic bursts. The cold held you hostage, jostling you awake just when you’d thought you’d escaped it. It had seeped in past skin and muscle, lodged itself somewhere deep. The dampness in your hair didn’t help— you wouldn’t shower at night again. Not for a long time.

You shifted, subtly, trying to be quiet. You suspected Frank was the type to wake easily— especially here, especially now. You repositioned your body, curled in on yourself as tightly as you could, tugging your knees into your chest.

It didn’t help.

The shivering started in your fingers, traveled up your forearms. A low, bone-deep tremble that wouldn’t ease. You pressed your palms between your thighs, searching for any ounce of warmth you could find. You tried to breathe through it— mind over matter, right?— but even biting down on your tongue so hard you began to taste blood didn’t help.

Then came the teeth. You tried to hold your jaw still, you really did— but the chatter set in anyway, harsh and helpless and loud in the relative silence around you. Every so often you would press your palm over your mouth and hold your breath, listening for the sound of Frank’s breathing behind you— it remained slow, rhythmic. But you weren’t sure how long that would last.

A beat later, as if you’d asked for it, you heard him shift. You went still, palm still pressed over your mouth, though your teeth continued to grind against themselves involuntarily. His breathing hadn’t changed. Your mind flooded— then emptied. Had he ever been asleep at all?

His sleeping bag rustled and a soft creak sounded, his body rising from the floor. Your eyes pinched shut, your stomach twisting with shame. Your hand slowly lowered from your mouth, instead wrapping around the hem of the blanket, tugging it higher over you.

You tried to stay perfectly still, then, tried to pretend you were asleep. But it was no use.

Muffled, quiet footsteps sounded, him crossing the room towards you. You felt the weight of his gaze on your shadowed figure, but you didn’t turn towards him. Your eyes opened, stayed locked on the concrete wall in front of you.

The cot dipped behind you, the frame groaning under the sudden shift in weight. It startled you— not because you hadn’t expected it, but because you had. You’d felt it coming like a change in weather, like the static in the air before a storm. Your breath caught in your throat, sharp and immediate, your whole body stiffening with the tension of anticipation.

Frank didn’t speak. Not when he climbed in. Not when he tugged the blanket up higher, slow and careful, tucking it around you both like he’d done it before. Like this level of intimacy wasn’t brand new and terrifying for you both.

Then came his arm— slow at first, hesitant. It slid around your waist, that familiar weight settling low, the curve of his forearm bracing itself across your stomach, palm splayed wide just above your navel. As he moved, the hem of your sweatshirt rose, his fingertips brushing the exposed skin beneath. His hand was rough, calloused. Warm. You felt every ridge of it as it curved against you, fingers pressing lightly into the dip where your ribs met softness.

“Jesus,” he commented, voice low, the exhaled air warm against your neck. “You’re freezing.”

“Didn’t want to ask,” you whispered in a rush, the shame crawling up your throat. “Didn’t want to make it weird.”

Frank let out another slow, stifled breath. “Ain’t weird,” he said. “You’re cold. That’s all.”

But you didn’t believe him.

Not entirely.

His chest aligned with your back a moment later, and the contact there was overwhelming— startlingly solid. Like being braced against a wall. His body heat poured into yours at once, devastating in its relief. The contrast stole your breath. Warmth poured through you so fast it felt like pain— sharp and electric. A tremor rolled through your chest, this time from something deeper than cold. Your hips shifted, pressing back into him. Into his— was he—

Oh. He was.

Frank stilled behind you.

“Careful,” he warned, the hand against your stomach moving to your hip, pressing it forward an inch. You weren’t sure if he was trying to protect you, in the moment, or himself.

Your cheeks flamed and your eyes pinched shut. Horror washed over you like a tidal wave and you wished for a sudden, swift death.

“Sorry.”

You felt the slight lift of his chest as he inhaled, then the slow exhale that ghosted against the back of your neck again. Like he was trying to calm his own racing pulse. His hand returned to your stomach, then, fingertips flexing once against your abdomen. Not possessive. Not testing. Just a simple shift, like he was grounding you. Or maybe grounding himself.

Your own hand moved— slow, uncertain— until it hovered over his. You didn’t press down. Just let your fingers hover, shaking faintly from cold and tension and something else. A second passed. Then two.

Then you touched him.

Your fingers found the edge of his pinky first. Brushed the back of his hand. His thumb twitched in response, barely a movement, but it felt like a jolt straight to your sternum. You closed your hand over his gently, not intertwining, just holding. Just acknowledging. A silent thank you.

The cot was too small for both of you. His knees bumped the back of yours, the heat of his thighs bracketing yours completely. His other hand— where was it? Beneath the pillow? Tucked near his chest? You didn’t know. You couldn’t move enough to find out, terrified of pressing into that same, dangerous space you’d already discovered. The space between your shoulder blades and his collarbone shrank with every breath.

His nose brushed your hairline once. Not a kiss, not even intentional. Just the result of motion. But it burned like one.

You closed your eyes, willing your heart to calm down. Willed your breath to stay quiet. Willed your mind to stop cataloguing every inch of him— how warm his bicep was against your ribs, how his breath slowed against your skin, how the weight of his hand made you feel safe and exposed all at once.

You’d been freezing moments ago.

Now, you were burning alive.

But you didn’t move.

And neither did he.

[wireweaver]

in your cyberforming AU, can a successful spark conversion happen with small personal electronics like a phone or computer

Expanding on the lore in this post for those who have not read it

Sparks are about the size of a volleyball, so a spark chamber is a little bigger than that. Viable frame material needs to be not just bigger than that, but big enough to hold something of that size, and have enough material to make a frame around it. Viable alt mode material doesn't need to be a car or vehicle, just a mechanical or electronic device big enough, so a big roof air conditioner unit, a large fridge, a washing machine, or an industrial floor cleaner could all work as viable frame material in case of a cyberforming

but a cell phone, computer, or other small devices would not work. Its usally a pretty 50/50 slit if they end up metal staute parauly fused to their device or a tiny failed spark conversion creature.

In some rare cases, while an alt mode is trying to form with insufficient material, it can pull in similar devices if close enough and available. Most of the time, sparks with clustered frames spark conversion fails, but it is possible for it to work, though the final frame won't have an alt mode nor be well built compared to a frame made out of one thing.

Cybertonians like Blaster, SoundWave, Megatron, and Reflector have sparks with an outliers that allow them to compress their sparks and extra mass. Most cybertonians can't compress their mass to this extent, and even if someone who got cyberformed had the potential for this type of outlier, they still would need to have their spark stabilized in a proper-sized spark chamber before taking on a compressed form.

[noxturnalmoth]

Repentance

Summary: Repentance: n. the action of repenting, sincere regret or remorse.

Hurt, overworking and miserable, two souls find one another and fates intertwine even when they are worlds apart. How can one deal with the guilt of wanting something they cannot have? And why does going against the very principles you have imposed upon yourself feel so good?

Warnings: violence, crude language, themes of guilt, suicidal ideation, depression

Word Count: 6, 501

Masterlist: here

Chapter 2 - The House that Janna Built

Your body feels light, weightless in the dark red tinted abyss. You don't feel anything but complete utter oblivion, pure nothingness. Yet slowly, feeling comes back to you. You r skin burns, your lungs and throat as well. And from a foggy red, the world shifts to bright orange. Smoke fills your lungs, tears eat through the blood caking your face like the waves licking away at footsteps in the sand of the shores of Ionia. You taste metal, and you feel nothing but seering hot pain.

"It's okay, kiddo. I'm getting you out of here." A low voice belonging to a woman softly calls out to you as you are lifted in what seems to be their arms.

Kha nas xera.

I hate them.

Kha anas xera.

I hate it.

Kha nas-ren xera.

I hate this pain.

An-kha ana-yafeal qufa.

Make it stop.

Ni'i samahta.

Please.

Then the sounds rush in. But within the loud chaos, you cannot scream and beg for them to stop.

____

"Fuck!"

You wake up with a start, back firing up waves of pain through your body as you sit up straight, hand finding your phone to snooze the alarm.

Sunday.

Yesterday you did nothing but stay in bed, stewing some more over your friends' words. And although every fiber in your body protested, although every part of your soul hissed at you not to, you were getting up to go to church.

"If not for yourself, do it for us."

It's all that was repeated your mind on Saturday while you forced yourself to come to terms with the fact that you needed to try. You had to. For Sevika and Violet, you needed to get better.

Because no matter what they said, you feared they'd leave you before you're fully swallowed within your personal hell. Yet you couldn't bring yourself to hate them for it, it'd be deserved after they dealt with the burden of your existence within theirs for so long. The thought of disappointing them, hurting them and them leaving you for your own incompetence at saving yourself were driving forces for you, albeit waning since some time.

Kha anas xera.

I hate it.

Kha alalha xera.

I hate the gods.

Kha Jan'ahremas xera.

I hate Jan'ahrem.

"If not for yourself, do it for us."

So you do.

You push yourself from your mattress, the sheets stained in your nightly cold sweat before you take them from the bed, limping your way to the bathroom for a shower and throwing the filthy sheets in the washing machine.

The shower is hot, long in duration to relax your tense muscles and wash away the last of your nightmare before you resign yourself to leave it, unwilling to let your water bill climb higher than it already is.

You rummage in your closet for something "church-like". Unlike other cults from topside, Jan'ahremite beliefs didn't impose modesty in the same way, nor for the same reasons. Your people hail from Shurima where the deserts are so warm that wearing too much would make you die from overheating yet the nights would be as cold as the Freljord.

You remember your parents always owning shawls for when they'd pray, covering head, shoulders and parts of their chest when they talk to Janna. The Blue Bird. The Storm's fury. The Winds. Or whatever the believers would call her.

Not that it matters to you.

Your clothes are the classic Zaunite style, albeit better due to the blooming economy, of leather jackets, harnesses, simple shirts and cargo pants. Yet a skirt holds your attention, something more formal than your usual attire, yet still holding slits on both sides for ease of movement.

You groan as you pick it up, remembering the birthday Vi had gifted you the piece. Giggling when looking at your face as Caitlyn explained how it'd fit you.

"You would turn heads like this, Maestro."

"I don't want to." You had answered. "Love isn't the first, or second, or third thing on my list."

"It could do you good."

"Thanks, but I'll pass, Caitlyn. I'm grateful for the gift."

The skirt slides on with a shirt, buckles of harnesses are fastened and your corset is back around your middle, holding your back up as you adjust how it looks with the rest of what you put on. Your boots soon follow, a shawl put over your head and wrapped around your arms and shoulders before you take your phone and head outside.

Music blasts in your ears as you walk, walking towards the looming stone building. Carved in the material that so many Zaunites died for in the fissures. Figures, arches and columns filling the walls with intricate traditional designs you've grown accustomed to seeing in the books of the section you overlook at the library you work at.

Funny for someone as stuck in the past as you to hold archaeology so dear. Ironic too, for all the rituals and religions you've dived in you still hated the mere thought of believing and practicing.

Which made approaching the church all the more grueling. Not only are you about to step a food in a god's "home", but also bring your cynical atheism in a place of worship. It feels bitter, just because of your utter hatred for the one thing thos people believe in. To disturb those seeking comfort in the embrace of faith although you're doing a similar thing.

"Welcome to the Windswept Church of Jan'ahrem."

A voice calls out, a man maybe not much older than you greets and you see him step back at your stare, the ever present glare probably fueled with so much of your inner turmoil that he knew better than to remain close though his face stays gentle. His hair is long, pulled back in a ponytail, brown streaked with some blonde and his eyes a limpid blue. "We hope you find what you're searching for."

I doubt I will.

You nearly say, but hold your tongue as you step through the stone arch, passing mahogany doors to enter the large vaulted chapel.

Columns hold the ceiling, reaching towards the heavens with dark brown stone pillars. The walls are filled with grandiose stained glass sceneries depicting the history of Zaun. Beginning from the great Shuriman Empire, followed by its fall, sailors following the Blue Bird, Shuriman immigrants stepping foot on the shores of Kha'Zhun, the beginning of Osha Va'Zaun, its evolution, and the ever present goddess Janna protecting and watching over it.

You scoff.

For all its beauty, the church was still a place of belief for a god that had abandoned its own people, and it made you sick.

So you turn your head to the center of the room, pews lining both sides of the nave, creating a path towards the dark green draped dais and altar which are overlooked by the most beautiful representation of Janna you've ever seen. You step forward, the brilliant blue carpet softening each of your movements while the morning light bounces from the intricately tiled floor, stone lace shining with beautiful colors while you're pulled ahead.

The deity is represented floating in the air, her clothes and hair fluttering in the wind she summons, your people reaching out to her and grabbing her legs as they pray for mercy and salvation. The pedestal looking like grass and sand gently moving around them all, shifting with the gale.

What good is such artistry if it's made for someone who will never listen?

Once more you hold your tongue, the magnificence of the place dissolved by the bile climbing at your throat as you sit down in the far right of the pews, wanting anything but to be perceived while you take your earphones off.

Silence accompanied by the small talk of church goers, then their steps as they move to sit. Luckily no one comes close to you and some of the tension leaves your body.

"If not for yourself, do it for us."

I'm trying.

Yet all you want is to get up and leave, get back to the comfort of your own home and sleep the day away. But that would be the easy way out, no sleep would come to you anyways and way too much attention would suddenly be directed towards you in such a moment. So you stay.

Moments pass, you grow more restless at the wait as people trickle in, someone sitting on the same pew as you and making you regret the decision of getting up and not rotting in your brain. A cordial nod is extend your way and you extend the same respect, noting that the greeter is the man now sitting next to you before quickly looking back to the front, hoping that mass would start soon so you could get on with it then leave.

"I've never seen you here before, did you come to find guidance from Jan'ahrem?"

An-kha ana-yafeal qufa.

Make it stop.

"Something like that."

"Welcome to our community then, we hope you find what you seek. You'll see that we're close knit, I can even extend to you an invitation for our meetups!"

You hum, nails softly clawing at the pew as anxiety bubbles within you at the sudden attention, people from other pews looking at you now.

Kha kha-anas'yatahadatha qufa.

Stop talking to me.

"I'm Huck, by the way. Nice to meet you."

You softly offer your name to him and he smiles, pulling one of your hands in a handshake that had your skin crawling at the sincere kindness the man is showing you.

This is too much, I need to lea-

Everybody stands and your hand falls back to the wooden bench as Huck drops it, following along with his peers. You stand too, pain shooting from your back and branching to your entire body at the sudden movement. Yet you trail your eyes to the front of the nave, to what everyone was so reverent towards.

A man was walking to the altar with a cane in hand. Cassock tinted almost black, a tinge of something else mixed within the fabric, brown hair long and falling to his shoulders.

The priest.

"Greeting my friends. I hope life has treated you fairly since last Sunday."

His voice is accented in a familiar way, certain communities from from the Entresol holding a strong Va'Nox tint to their speech. And while he may have not been talking loudly, the man's voice was projected in the vaulted room, almost ethereal in quality as it commands attention.

"We all know of the darkness within our souls. The one that drags you down a spiral so profound that you lose yourself in a labyrinth of self-hatred, doubt and pain. Yet we know, we believe, deep down that this is not all that we are. We are more powerful than our demons, and Jan'ahrem, our shepherd, guides us to light with her breeze. The soft, cool of her touch on our broken selves heals us. Like wind brushing footsteps from the shifting sands. Let us begin to praise her for her love and kindness towards our people, her determination fueling us. Making us stronger with each day that passes under her protection."

Everyone sits again, your body hitting the pew with a soft thud and a sigh as you're hidden by the veiled backs of the churchgoers again.

What a load of bullshit.

You nearly scoff as everyone begins chanting, the priest's voice somehow always stronger. Never wavering once in his praise of the goddess watching over him. It's low, yet breathy, the accent rolling his R's, pushing his consonants and sighing his H's.

And it's unbearably beautiful.

For all you have against the church, you can't say that you despise this part like you do the rest. The lyrics make you feel sick, yet the man's voice is warm, welcoming, playing the part of the guide he is supposed to be even to someone as empty and destitute as you.

Next to you, Huck sings along. Face bright and filled with hope while you feel like decomposing in place. You know of myths where sinners burn in places of worship and for all it's worth, you feel like it's about to happen to you. Bubbling with rage as you glare at Janna's statue, looking to you almost mockingly when she's supposed to be kind, gentle, a guiding gale to those from Zaun. And with disgust at yourself, feeling undeserving of being next to believers while you silently hate their god, wishing nothing more than to melt in the pew and disappear.

You're even more lost in this crowd than you've been in years, you feel profoundly alone even when you're supposed to feel surrounded. They're all singing in Valorian, as opposed to your parents who used to pray in Shuriman. The lyrics to every chant escaping you and fusing your lips together like a hot knife cauterizing a wound.

You wouldn't have sung along anyway.

But a little bit of familiarity wouldn't hurt when you're like a fish out of the water, ready to be chopped at the fishmonger's stall.

The believers sit and the priest's soft voice grows lower as he speaks, the breathy quality of his voice still very present yet much more subdued as he preaches.

"May the gales guide us to a better place. We have already achieved so much, brothers, sisters. And our sails are leading us to a brighter future. It may get hard, but we're headed the right way, I can feel it and I know all of you do too. Janna has granted us her will so we could move forward even when life gets grueling, cruel and miserable. She is the way, she is the mother of our nation who brought us to this safe haven. And although we've had to fight for it tooth and nail, we're finally headed towards the vision she had of Zaun. A free, thriving and steadfast community."

Huck sometimes slides his gaze to you, a small gentle smile on his lips to coax you out of your shell. Yet all it does is make you more uncomfortable, feeling all too undeserving of the gentleness he treats you with, your skin feeling too tight on your muscles. Like old wallpaper falling off, cracking due to humidity and age.

So you spend however much time, sat even when believer stand to sing, fidgeting with your hands when they sit back down.

Then, one by one people start to get up, making a queue to the dais where the priest was now standing.

"Come, it's custom to receive the ichor. Just follow me, you'll know what to do there."

Huck extends his hand towards you and your aching back thanks him as you nod, letting him help you up and pull you to the end of the line. The wait is somewhat uncomfortable, standing while people consume the Jan'ahrem's "blood" and bless themselves with incense.

You knew of the blood and spirit from old tales your parents told you as a child, which eventually appeared before you once more with the books you read at the library. Your second job offering much downtime, to your relief, which meant many hours by yourself, reading and cataloging books on archaeology and rituals.

As the line dwindles you realize that albeit you know of the old practices, you know nothing of the new ones. Anxiety once more bubbling within the depths of your stomach.

Am I going to make a fool of myself?

No, people trickle out once this is done.

But then again..

While people trickle out after this last part of the mass, you would be left still making a fool of yourself in front of Father "what's his face". So you discreetly try to observe from behind Huck.

People kneel, which already makes you groan at the pain you'll be in after such an action. Then they bring their hands up, quite probably in the usual prayer motion.

Arms positioned horizontally, palms against one another while the middle and ring fingers are placed on the inner wrists of the other arm.

A gesture predating even the fall of the Shuriman Empire.

You can't see the rest, only able to complete the ritual in your head with the old practices. The believer would open their mouths and the priest would dip his thumb in the ichor concoction from his chalice, marking the tongue with its blood red tint, before the believer would go on to get the blessing of the spirit. A simple action of taking two sticks of incense upside down between two crossed fingers, the index and the middle, moving them around you so the smoke moves around the believer like a soft breeze. Ending the movement by placing the sticks right side up in the sensor and dipping one's thumb in the ashes filling it, blowing the remnants like the gale of the Blue Bird blew the sails of your ancestors.

Lost in your thoughts, you don't realize it's your turn, Huck already getting to the incense as you stand before the priest face to face.

From up close you can see the intricacies of his cassock much better. Cinched at the waist with a bright blue fabric belt, the same color as the rosary decorating his chest and neck,his robes catching light in what you could now notice is the color of your people. The Zaunite color representing your nation, a dark forest green that looked nearly velvety on the cloth of the man standing before you. His hair was not just brown, no, it was graying in streaks from under the soft, wavy curls adorning his head like a halo. Around his neck was a copper colored stole, embroidered with the organic shapes your people have always used, showing life even within the most unwelcoming territories. From the desert to the fissures. He looked young, near your age, face gaunt and cheekbones high, his pale skin dotted with two moles. One on his upper left lip and one on his right cheekbone, right under the outer side of his eye.

Amber.

The familiar color of many a Zaunite's eyes, the color attributed to the heat of your homeland, was also his. Looking nearly golden in the rays filtered through the stained glass, outer iris a kaleidoscope formed of their reflection.

"With the powers bestowed upon me, I shall bless thee with the ichor, the blood of our goddess which blessed our soils."

You kneel with difficulty and position your hands accordingly, yet the priest looks almost shocked when his eyebrows furrow and his lips purse softly. His thumb is dipped in the chalice, coming out dripping the red liquid symbolizing the ichor, and before he can move again you open your mouth. Eyes trained on his as saliva begins to build at the wait, his movements slow and nearly tense as he grips your chin and places his thumb on your warm tongue. Barely seconds pass yet it feels like an eternity as you feel his skin on yours, his digit in your mouth, his eyes observing you as if he is picking you apart and building you back up.

"With this blessing of life, of hope and of will, you shall build yourself back up. Like Osha Va'Zaun has many a time. May the Winds blow your way, my child."

His eyes widen and his body tenses once more, jaw setting and face twitching, while your lips wrap around his thumb. His gaze veiled with something unknown before you pull away.

"Kod'suhbi al ni-makhaka naa."

May the Blue Bird be with you.

You sigh while trying to push yourself up, groaning in pain before the priest's soft yet scarred hand appears in your vision, his face now gentle with a soft smile adorning his lips as he helps you up.

He is much stronger than he seems.

You nod your head in thanks, rushing to the incense so you can be done with it all. Huck already done yet waiting at the pews, calling out for you.

"I wanted to say goodbye, and to thank you for coming to mass today. I hope to see you next time!"

Tough chance.

You think, before sighing.

"If not for yourself, do it for us."

You have to come here at least twice before finally throwing in the towel and ridding yourself of the horrible presence of religion in your life. Your lips smack as you finally savor the ichor, the red liquid tart and sweet, made of fruit, yet thick and sticky in your mouth. Like blood.

Good marketing.

You nearly laugh but choose to reign your cynicism in.

"Yeah, see you next Sunday Huck." The man looks happy with your response and leaves.

"Goodbye Father Valášek."

Your ears tune out afterwards as you proceed to follow through with the spirit ritual, the smell of incense soothing the disgust you feel beneath Janna's gaze. Your eyes shifting to the altar from time to time as you feel the weight of a gaze on you, yet every time you look the priest only seems to be preoccupied with clearing away the last of the ritual.

The deity's gaze judges you as you walk back, setting yourself on a pew, back too pained after kneeling that you have to take a moment to relax before going back home. Yet your eyes are not "kind" like the goddess's, hers almost mocking you as you glare back.

Ni khe'inn.

You traitor.

You fucking traitor.

Was it funny? To live up above, safe and flowing with your meaningless winds while your people suffer, beg, plead and pray for you?

The thought nearly makes you want to puke and set the whole place on fire. Your breaths grow heavier as you try to calm down, feeling all too restless in this place of "peace", yet unable to leave just yet. It feels like every stained glass portrait, like the statue itself, are judging you.

What are you doing here, non-believer?

You should have died long ago.

You are undeserving of guidance and healing.

You monster.

You filthy, foolish, rotten girl.

"Glare at Jan'ahrem any longer and you'll set her on fire."

You startle, looking to your right where the priest is now sitting, chuckling yet his eyes full of curiosity.

"Can't say it's not what I'm trying to do."

"Oh really, now? In a holy place?"

"Holy or not, if I'm going down I'm taking her with me. And it's not a man in a dress using a cane that will be able to catch me after I'm done."

His laugh grows louder, from a low throaty chuckle to an open mouthed, breathy giggle and you raise an eyebrow at the man.

"If you hate her so much, I wonder what your story is for you to drag yourself to such a place."

Story.

You scoff.

It certainly isn't a fucking fairy tale.

"Please, don't put her on a pedestal. She's not special, I hate all of her kind."

"Wow, talk about god-hating."

"I fear I'm their biggest opp, Father Valášek." You spit out, yet your lips stretch into a smirk while a wheeze escapes him, his eyes sharpening towards you, nearly cutting you with their intensity.

"Aren't you a funny one?"

"I'm a hater, didn't say I'm also unfunny. I can only have so many flaws, priest."

Self-deprecating, self-hating, monstrous, empty, depressed, hopeless and broken beyond fixing are pretty good ones too.

"I don't find it a flaw within you."

"Wow, thank you oh-so-loving man of god. I am suddenly healed from all of my self doubts and pain, I could dance the prisyadka. Do you need a demonstration?"

"I'd pay to see that."

"And I'd pay to see you run a marathon."

Your eyes point to his cane and he scoffs, slumping backwards on the pew's backrest. He calls out your name and you turn to him with narrowed eyes before you remember he had been here when Huck wished you goodbye.

"What?"

"What brings you here?"

"What brings a pretty boy like yourself to become a priest when you could be doing cooler shit?"

He clicks his tongue with his eyes gazing back to Janna's statue, muttering "touché" to himself before looking at you again. Mischief fills his gaze.

"So you think, I'm pretty."

"Don't talk as if you didn't know, Father. And don't try me."

"I'll have you know that I vowed celibacy. We're not meant to be, fledgling."

Your eye twitches as you hold back a chuckle.

"I know, not like I'd want a fucking twink."

"Such language, within the house of a god! How preposterous."

"Yack yack."

"Great deflection skills, though."

"Thanks, I spent years honing them so men in dresses could praise me for them." And a pause rings between you two, the man smirking once more while your eyes gaze at him in defiance.

"You gotta admit though." He pauses, his lips curling up further as you wait for the end of his statement, his dark green cassock shifting like sands with the breeze under the stained glass' filtered light. The beads of his rosary seemingly shining and the copper of his stole almost glowing.

"I look damn good in it." And with that you crack.

Laughter bubbling in your throat and escaping your mouth as your body relaxes. The banter enough to alleviate some of the discomfort you feel while inside such a place, surrounded by imagery of things you'd rather die than worship. The priest joins you as "sure, whatever man" escapes you between giggles.

"Is your back alright?"

"Is yours?" You defend and the man sigh, you're torn between saying he looks like his priestly patience is waning or like he's holding back another bout of laughter. "Come on, you knew what you were getting into the second you started talking to me."

"Yeah, I did."

"You can only chastise yourself for it, now go and confess or whatever it is that believers do."

"Do you truly want me to go?"

"I don't know, do I?" And when he starts to leave you cackle at the groan he lets out before slumping back next to you. "Looks like you can't even if you wanted to leave my horrible presence."

"Oh yes, a woman with a sharp tongue, such a curse. Whatever shall I do?" He sarcastically bites back as his eyes roll.

"Careful there priest, wouldn't want you to see how empty that brain is."

His gaze snaps back to yours with an incredulous look, a hand over his heart in mock offense. Your arms drape over the back of the wooden bench as you lean your head back, a heavy chuckled breath escaping your lips before you close your eyes, the ambiance in the church less threatening and bile inducing to you after the friendly banter.

"You're funny for a priest."

"I'm a priest, didn't say I'm also unfunny. I can only have so many flaws, fledgling."

You show your middle finger to the man who softly slaps it away with a sigh of his own. "No, but you're very uncreative. Gotta step up your game, pretty boy. And I'd advise you against calling me a fledgling."

"Or what, fledgling? What will you do?"

"Or I'll really burn your Janna statue down."

"I'd like to see you try."

"Bite me." He chuckles once more.

Silence sets between the both of you, your own mind shockingly at ease in the man's presence even with his job description and your presence judged by the figures in the carved stone and gilded, tinted windows. The soft, colored rays dance behind your lids as you take a moment to breathe.

Men of the cloth were human, yet due to your own avoidance and aversion to all that is linked to faith you seem to have forgotten such a fact. The person besides you much less pedantic than you've expected him to be, even with his height, his role and his beauty. But wasn't that the nature of a priest? To guide, to love, to forgive?

It doesn't matter, he still is what he is and believes what he believes.

Says the ugly part of you, corroded by bitterness and hatred, hissing in your ears like a pit of vipers starved and ready to strike at anything and anyone, using you as a vessel for their torturous venom.

I should leave this place, I don't deserve this. I'm wasting his time. I shouldn't be here.

Says the other more pathetic part of you, friable and eroded by sadness and misery, crumbling at the thought of any change, of anything good being given to you, wailing like a pit to hell opened within your heart just to torment you.

Your eyes open to look at the vaulted ceiling, high above you and stretching towards the heavens, your right hand lifting to protect your face from the bright, tinted light of the stained glass lining every wall.

I'm doing this for Vi and Sev.

You tell yourself, when the rays begin to feel all too hot as if to burn you alive, like the filthy monster you know you are.

It's the last time I try.

Tears well up in your eyes but you hold strong, unwilling to show vulnerability in a place such as this, guarded and overlooked by a god that preferred mocking you rather than help.

Your face stings as it scrunches, a frown setting itself on your face. Doubts sprouting in your mind like flowers in spring. A spiral beginning once more within the deep, worn recesses of your mind.

Can I even be helped? For all I know I'm a lost case.

Can this place truly offer me what I need?

Questions that are not uncommon in your head. Vision blurry, you drop your arm over your face, trying to hold yourself together. You're already doing this, showing any more weakness could very well make you a puppet within the hands of fate, within the Father's grasp.

You're an empty, hopeless shell, beaten and bruised from a life of fighting tooth and nail for just a crumb of fulfillment that you've never felt. And probably would never feel. You're like Atlas, carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, your own weight a burden for yourself and anyone that dares come close. The willpower you take from your rage has waned years ago, yet you push yourself, you dare to hope things could get better even if they never do.

So you work.

Day and night to not feel the ever growing emptiness within yourself, aided by your isolation and misery. Nothing ever working towards making you feel any better and your guilt taking more and more space within your life with each day that passes. The exhaustion making the abyss take a stronger hold on you yet emptying your brain for just long enough that you can feel numb instead of miserable. A need for approval always quenched yet growing hungrier as days pass, comfort rarely given. Sleep seldom reaching you unless you pass out in your bed still dressed from the day and always interrupted by nightmares that now carry onto he waking world.

You feel an unbearable amount of guilt from burdening your friends, from never feeling right, from getting worse, from wasting your life feeling the way you do, for not being fixable, for never meeting your expectations that you know are beyond unfair. From pushing everyone away, whether you want to or not, to avoid any more pain. From not trying any harder to hold your brother back that day although you know very well that in every way possible you would have lost him all the same. Guilt at the feeling of not having cherished your loved ones enough in the past and present.

Everything you own, everyone you love, slips between your fingers like sand until all that is left is the void that life has created within you. Deepening, growing larger, no matter how much you patch yourself up, no matter how much you try to fill it.

You're like a pierced vessel, your contents forever pouring out uncontrollably until all that is left is nothing. Your heart like shattered glass, cutting, dangerous, dirtied and bloodied from how much you've tried to piece it back together with your scarred hands.

And then there's Piltover, opening its borders and helping Zaun yet making everything in its confines impossible for any Zaunite to afford. Raising the bar so high that most can never hope to reach it.

The gods, especially Jan'ahrem whose home you are currently invading, never helping. Never moving a finger to help those deserving when the ones who use their powers to further their despicable agendas as getting out scot free as if blessed by the lords above.

Even when you cried and begged as a child.

Even when your people prayed to them, to her, every day.

Finding your suffering and grovelling entertaining enough to help you as you try to claw your way out of hell. Your inner thoughts scarlet and burning like the scenery of the bridge you lost the last of yourself in. At least the last part holding any hope for yourself and the world you live in.

Kha h'asiras yakuna.

I am tired.

Your sleeve absorbs the tears escaping your eyes like a sudden downpour, leaving the dam of your eyelids no matter how hard you shut them. Sobs bubbling from within you swiftly locked away deep within the recesses of yourself that you've locked away to everyone, even yourself.

I need to be stronger, I need to hold out. But I can't anymore.

And you think of it more and more as time passes, your fight leaving you and only the young, scared girl that you try so hard not to be remains.

I need to be stronger.

Your nails scratch against woods, all sounds drowned within the cacophony of your mind, the hissing vipers and wailing spirits growing louder as time passes.

I'm tired of making it by the skin of my teeth.

I'm tired of pouring from an empty cup that I don't even own anymore.

I'm tired of being tired.

I'm tired of trying so hard only for nothing to work.

Something resounds within the impossible noise in your heart, yet it's hard to discern it from the rest. Probably another demon, rising from hell to torment you. Your hand grips the wood tighter as you try to keep your breathing constant in its depth and cadence.

I can't be weak.

I can't show it all.

It's ugly, it's monstrous and rotten. An all consuming darkness that taints all I touch, all those I meet. Marking them with the curse of my existence within theirs.

No one deserves to see. To hear. To feel just how pathetic I am.

Even less them.

Your teeth grit at the thought of the statue observing your distressed state with glee, at the priest next to you, at anyone that could pass by you at this instant. Your nails carving harder into the pew, pain piercing your fingertips before you ball your fist and hit the wood.

The new sound echoes once more, louder this time, yet still ignored. Your jaw setting at the inner turmoil, the searing pain flowing from your heart and through every cell in your body, hot and cold, fire and ice, the sands of Shurima and the Freljord's everlasting tundra.

I am undeserving of patience and care.

No one should have to be there for me, of all people.

You taste blood from within your mouth, the church's calm atmosphere after your banter with the priest long forgotten as your rage bubbles once more, this time pointed like war pikes towards yourself.

But from the prison of your mind, through worn and tight shackles, you feel hand touches your shoulder and your arm leaves your face, grabbing whoever touched you in a bruising grip. Your eyes glare at the man, his concerned face coming into view before a wince escapes him, your hand leaving him as if you have been burned. Your body sliding as far away from Father Valášek's as possible.

"What?"

"Are you okay? You've been like this for the past twenty or so minutes."

His eyes, always kind trail over your face before you turn it away from him. Refusing to show vulnerability as you wipe away at the remnants of tears left beneath your eyes.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Stop deflecting."

"What can I say? It's my strongest attribute, so I use it."

"I actually very much would like to know." He gently calls out from behind you, his accented voice softly pulling you away from your thoughts. "I am here to help, not to harm. Whatever you have against Janna or anyone else cannot apply to me. It's my life's work to simply open my eyes, my ears, my heart and my arms to those who need it."

Silence rings once more as you shuffle around, turning back to the priest with tired eyes, stinging from tears yet to be shed. Tears that would not escape you this time.

"I don't want any bullshit about gods, gospel or fucking whatever you do with believers."

"I can't promise anything, it is in my job description after all." He jokes, a welcoming smile stretching on his lips and you sigh, air escaping you as if getting away from you is all it could ever dream of.

"If your only advice is to tell me to turn to religion, I really will beat you with your cane."

"And I'd like to see you try, although you do have a strong grip I'll give you that." He flexes his left hand, wincing at the remnants of pain you have caused and your eyes trail to his. Gazing with restraint into the pools of celestial gold.

"Friends told me to come here because I'm lost." He hums. "This is my last resort." He nods along to your words, time passing as he takes in your words before he speaks again.

"Tell me, only if you wish, what are you seeking here? What do you want me to provide?" His brown hair catches the light in a way that makes him look as if he hailed from Mount Targon, the grey strands nearly looking like Lunarian silver. His patience and kindness nearly making your skin crawl and your throat burn with bile in self-disgust.

You claw at the pews once more, your eyes trailed on your left hand where your fingernails were broken and slightly bloodied from your previous ministrations. Then your eyes return to Father Valášek's with resignation tainting their depths, the look making the priest's eyebrows furrow in worry.

"Something worth living for. Something that can fix me. Because as it is? I'd rather die than go through another day."

And silence rings loud through the chapel.

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[in-a-trice]

dunno if this'd be useful for anyone, but i figured i'd throw it out there -- i've been trying to recreate what felwinter might have "actually" looked like for a project i'm working on/because it's been bothering me lately. so i present my notes on the subject

a disclaimer: i'm basing this off of the 4 times we see holograms of him in-game, and the very few descriptions we have of his clothes (which is just described as an "overcoat" iirc). so there's lots of wiggle room. a lot of this was done by attempting to logic out what would have made the most sense

so, lo and behold, i came up with something like this (cut into multiple pieces bc i used a massive canvas):

more rambling + design notes beneath the cut so this doesn't get too long

i think it's worth noting that while he was certainly a warlock, i think it's fair to expect him to take after titans as well (considering he mentioned learning from jolder and both of his exotics are melee-focused). i didn't incorporate this as much as i would have liked to in this design, but that's mainly due to me not wanting to stray too far from the hologram references

the colors are a guess at best. i still really enjoy the idea of having his overcoat be black, but all of the other iron banner armor only had the rust red, green, and brown so i felt bad doing that coloring *__* "but why is his armor painted black then" i think he would have attempted to make it match his helm, assuming that his helm is iron painted black. but who knows. the metal very well might have been gold, considering his shotgun was green & gold.

i was considering making one or two of the "bags" he has be holsters, but i don't remember any mention of him having a hand cannon/sidearm/any gun that would actually fit in a holster of that size because afaik it only ever mentions him having a shotgun, and then there's that machine gun named after him. so yeah they're now ammo pouches for his shotgun EDIT: thank you to the person who reminded me that he, in fact, does have a sidearm. i completely forgot about that. thus, if i were to do this over he would have a holster (likely his right side, but i don't know if he's right or left handed) and a bag on the other side. :)

from the videos i found, i couldn't tell if his coat had a slit in the back. i added that in anyways because, if he didn't have one, there would have to be a lot of extra, unneeded fabric that would get in the way in a fight (since we see the holograms with fabric still around his legs even in those wider stances)

on the topic of the coat and covering his legs in those wide stances, i think it's fair to assume that there's some sort of strap in his coat to keep it so close to his legs (like horse riding long coats). that's mainly because the material would be heavier (overcoat), and thus would definitely not rest like it does in the holograms. then again, maybe that's for modesty by the bungie devs....? i'm not really sure. it's confusing

i....think i referenced every iron banner set for warlocks. i'm not too sure, lol. there's a lot and i got lost while searching

all of the other iron banner sets always had the wolves with the tree, so it was interesting they gave him just the tree. but i might also have missed the wolves in game. who knows.

the collar and the chest piece of the robes. yeah. i had no idea what to make of it - i decided to go with the loincloth being part of the belt (like titan bonds). the collar (Even though i really, really like fur) i decided to make look like some kind of cowl…i have some regrets on that still

i mentioned it in my screenshot ramblings, but it looks like he isn't wearing a breastplate of any kind considering the fabric is so form-fitting. that was an interesting choice by bungie but, hey, i'm not one to judge lol. i kept the version i drew with the breastplate because i liked it

i did have versions of this where he had different colors (rust red instead of green/black overcoat/gold details), but the file got corrupted so i took it as a sign and didn't redraw those couple designs/recolors when i remade this. sorry

ideally, i also would have included more elements of kazakh + uzbek culture into his design since he's loosely mentioned to have lived in that general area (west of the aral seas). however, the iron lords seem to have a lot more western influence so....? kazakh and uzbek clothing also tend have a lot of details (intricate embroidery), and i'm not sure how practical that would be for an iron lord that's out in the field for a lot of the time (+ doesn't particularly care for expression)

i still feel like he should have some sort of chest design, since nearly all of the iron banner armor has that. however, it's super awkward with the design i decided to go with, considering the iron lords like circular designs and the frame the robes give is.....not a circle. awkward.

anyways, that's all i really have to say. if there's something i missed in any capacity (in lore/writing, in the game screenshots, etc), please tell me!! i'd love to hear other people's thoughts and ideas!

[ravelsquadespresso]

Chaos WIP #6: Einrich enjoys some cool religious graffiti

Reporting to @fourraccoonsinacoat @nadas-dirthalen @galahadiant: Mommy is working very hard on the chapter. Socialism, mutant oppression and monteg x fire smut are getting interlaced now. Mommy just needs a couple of days to edit things.

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The mural on the vestibule wall is weeping.

Saint Velka the Spent Flame, patron of the Sauvage Depot, looms across the bulkhead: twelve meters tall, painted in layers of soot, ochrum, and goldleaf. She stands barefoot in scorched robes, arms outstretched, clutching a broken heat-spear in one hand and a severed rebreather in the other. Her face is turned upward, lips parted in prayer, her halo wrought from polished copper coil. A moment of last words before she sealed the ruptured plasma vent with herself.

She has always been crying. But not like this.

Now her eyes exude black, oily tears. Slow, glistening trails creep down the mural and pool on the floor. The ooze sizzles as it falls, burning grooves into the ferrocrete grilles below.

Two Inferni adepts kneel at her flaming feet. Their suits are intact. Their tools are active. But they are not fighting the fire.

One is clawing at his mask, sobbing, trying to tear his face away. The other just rocks in place, arms wrapped around her knees, muttering the same phrase over and over.

A third adept stands before the mural, fire suppressant rod in hand, entranced. Eyes wide, his mask discarded. He just sways slightly as the flames creep around his boots, licking at his knees.

Nemi and Maia are already on the scene, suited up and masked, leading the shift crew.

“Ash sickness,” Nemi spits through the vox, gesturing at the entranced adept. The words come out muffled.

“Maia,” I order, “get these poor sods out of here and back to the compound. They’re ash-locked—they’ll need watching. Only Emberkin remain here. Ashbloods won’t do. Bring Fireseer Erevard if you can find him.”

I glance up at Velka’s face. Her eyes have vertical slits for pupils, and the fire burning through them is a sickly shade of violet.

A Ghostflame.

Only the chosen Emberkin—those blessed by the Lineage or the Communion—can withstand the Ghostflames and the demons they breed. Ashbloods, our younger kindlings, fall too easily to emotion. I want them spared and shielded, even if Primus Ermund disagrees.

The thought of Primus Ermund makes my teeth ring—like biting tinfoil with a cracked filling. An Ashblood himself, appointed Infernus Master by Lord Captain Theodora in defiance of the Pyre Council. Her privilege, his stamp of nobility, and a web of connections—all multiplied by ass-kissing skill.

A distasteful man. A walking disaster. He treats our kin like cartridges—use, discard, replace. He culls the sick and calls it genetic improvement.

He has no idea what genetic improvement is.

If only he’d come out for the fires himself, I think. Cindermark would get his morning sacrifice in actual Ermund, instead of yet another effigy. But the man hides in his upper-decker suite, behind gilded locks and enforcer cordons.

The Ashbloods offer no resistance to Maia’s team—softly crying into offered shoulders, letting themselves be led away. Team Ember meets them at the mouth of the depot hallway, led by Elsinora.

Elsinora strides in like the fire owes her money.

No rebreather. No mask. Her jaw is set in copper-threaded gauze, mechadendrites swaying like silver snakes behind her. Her robes are blackened and radiant with old burns, layered in soot-stamped seals and binaric prayers, now scorched illegible. She is more machine than woman—quite literally. So much metal woven into her that the Sire hesitated to deliver the Communion, worried it would not take. Her vox clicks softly as she adjusts it.

“This one's speaking ghost-riddles,” she says, giving Velka a pointed look. “True-naming the people. Bad manners.”

She gestures, and her Emberkin fall in—six of them, masked, steady, already shifting their suppressors to high-density, Emperor-blessed null fog. They move as one, like some great centipede with arms.

Communion delivers.

Elsinora tosses me a bundle—salted filament grenades, etched in her own script, glass and quicksilver fused with null alloys. The fog envelops Velka; when it clears, the violet fire has died out, and her pupils are once again round. Human.

The crew moves on toward the elevators, chasing out the warp’s horrors.

We file into the freshly cleansed, warp-sealed lift and ascend to the officers’ deck—in style.

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