#Savaged from the Internet

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

I would unironically LOVE this 🐦

[superhero--imagines]

He’s literally obsessed with you - With the Bat Boys

A/N: trying out these fucking ugly banners again because y’all seem to like them and I need the internet-good-writer validation points.

Dick Grayson

* He’s a simp bro

* Just because he’s hot doesn’t mean he isn’t hiding a whole horde of daddy and mommy issues isn’t into you

* He trails after you like a lost puppy and he would kiss the ground you walk on if it didn’t make you a little concerned

His breath brushes against your calf, a tender kiss placed on your knee.

He’s done this enough for you to know it’s not sexual.

“I can do it myself Dick,” you murmur, cheeks hot as you watch him kneel on the ground, his nimble fingers working to untie your shoes.

“I know you can.” His eyes sparkle when he looks up at you with a smile. “But I want to do this for you.” He grins when you hide your shy smile behind your hand, setting your shoes to the side and placing a soft kiss on your ankle.

Jason Todd

* He’s in between terror and bliss

* Jason doesn’t understand how you meant so much to him so fast

* It’s simultaneously thrilling and terrifying how much you occupy his thoughts and time

* But for better or worse, he can’t seem to let you go

He can’t tell what’s warmer, the heat from your body or the heat radiating off from his face.

Here he is, face bright pink with the heart of a sixteen year old boy in a man’s body, falling in love for the first time.

And you’re asleep.

You’ve turned his whole world upside down, and made a mess of his mind—and now you’re getting the best sleep of your life using his chest as your personal pillow.

And he has no room to complain since he’s enabling you, wrapping his arms around you rto keep you pressed securely against his chest.

Because the only thing scarier than holding you close, is having you somewhere he can't reach.

“I can't believe you made me fall in love like this,” he murmurs, pressing a sweet kiss to your hair.

Damian Wayne

* He really embodies “hard to the world, but soft for my girl” vibes

* This man has never done a chore in his life, but if you’re feeling out of it or overwhelmed, watch him at your doorstep with a broom and apron

“Damian I support you in anything you choose to do,” you start, “but do you know how to use a washing machine?”

“Of course I do my love, I’m not a savage.” But the fact that he’s putting dish soap in tells you otherwise.

He’s a little confused, but he’s got the spirit.

[storiesfromgaza]

A message to everyone :

Ever since I began this blog and continuously shared its content, I never asked any of you to follow me, share these posts, or use the Blaze feature to promote them. I've been entirely absorbed in writing articles and translating stories and posts from the people of Gaza without concerning myself with whether they will reach a broad audience or not. My initial goal was to reach any number of individuals, even if it was just one person, in the hope of increasing their awareness. That would have been sufficient for me.

But today, particularly after the recent news confirming the complete shutdown of the internet, electricity, and communications in Gaza, along with the isolation imposed by the Israeli occupation and the brutal and savage bombings happening now as I write these lines, I want everyone to share what's happening. Not just on Tumblr but everywhere you can. Share on WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and for those who are proficient in Russian, share on platforms like VK. If you know Korean, share in Naver cafes. Share with your family, your loved ones, and those you meet on the street. Let everyone know about the monstrous massacres the occupation is committing against Palestinian civilians, teenage girls and young women who have become widows due to the bombings, young children whose lives were forcibly taken from them while they clung to life, and the elderly who hoped for a longer life or a peaceful death beside their children and families, but the occupation robbed them of this, making the old man witness the deaths of all his family members, his children, and his grandchildren, and then he dies alone, hoping to join them.

O People, humans, whether you are Muslims, Christians, Jews, or followers of any religion, my message is for those of you who have humanity, whatever your identity may be. Your silence today means you are participating in an extermination worse than what Hitler did to the Jews, even worse than the victims of all the world wars combined. At that time, there weren't sufficient means of communication, so everyone's excuse was that they couldn't do anything except publish in newspapers. But today, in our current era, there are many available options. So, what's your excuse now?

Your silence and inaction are permission for them to continue their slaughter and the extraction of souls from their bodies. Let everyone do whatever is within their power, and all of us should know that we can do a lot. Edit: I've created a Telegram channel for us and posted all the articles and stories that have been published here, so you can easily share them with everyone. Join it through the following link: https://t.me/storiesfromgaza

Edit²: we now have an Instagram account, which we created to make it easier for everyone to share the stories and articles published here. Some of them have already been shared with beautiful designs, and we are in the process of posting the remaining articles after formatting and finalizing the designs. I had to use my personal account because when I created an account with the name "Stories From Gaza," Instagram suspended the account immediately, even before I could change the profile picture or post anything! Account username: @amrshater

Your interaction on Instagram will greatly help in spreading the stories and articles to the Instagram audience https://www.instagram.com/amrshater/

[valarhalla]

Ok tumblr friends. I’m trying to spend less time on the internet these days, and I LOVE reading non-fiction books, but trying to find recommendations for new books is a nightmare. Any time I try to look up good new non-fiction books the results are all like “would you like to read an autobiography of Paul Newman or New Reasons We’re All Doomed” and that just. Doesn’t Work for Me. So I’m asking for recs here. I’m open to books about literally any field or topic. Only caveats are that hard sciences have to be on a level I can understand as a humanities person, and medical stuff can’t be too gory (ie I loved Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene and The Song of the Cell, but can’t stomach The Mother of all Maladies). And nothing TOO miserable, but I have a fairly high tolerance for historical stuff. I’m particularly fond of micro-history and books that delve into multiple overlapping topics.

As a sampling, here are some books I’ve read and particularly enjoyed in the last two years:

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Pennock

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Victims of Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

The Last Days of the Incas by Kim McQuarrie 

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Story of the Syrians who Boarded the Titanic by Leila Salloum Elias

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Yeats by Andrew Knoll

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristine Kobes du Mez

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that made China Modern by JIng Tsu

The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth by Adam Goodheart

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home by Anya von Bremzen

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

Fire away!

[2kmps]

vampire x reader one-shot | 16.1k

story summary; you're a crime scene cleaner who happens across an advertisement for a mansion housekeeper in exchange for room and board. it's close to work, close to your university, and an easy job. the ultimate package. right away, you notice the owner's beauty as well as his eccentricities, but decide to commit to it. the spiral into depravity and debauchery begins when you're tasked with cleaning the site of a savage murder, solidifying you as a irreplaceable treasure.

story warnings; bloodplay, extreme dubcon, explicit noncon, cigarette burns, wounds inflicted on mc, implied masochism, extreme sexual sadism, hypnotism, graphic violence, gun violence, body gore, graphic details, heavy prose, unreliable narrator, religious themes, exploration of morality, obsessive + possessive behaviors, implied stalking, choking, murder, graphic depictions of crime scenes, manipulation/emotional manipulation, this entire oneshot is an allegory.

read the warnings! mdni under any circumstances! the events within this one-shot are not indicative of my personal viewpoints

thank you, @ceruleansol for the excellent proofreading.

this is a repost from my deleted blog, cardeneiv. please reblog/interact with this piece!

Another internet search bore fruit.

The image bouncing back at you from your phone had been hastily taken with a tremble in your hand, all the while launching a few too many cautious looks across your shoulder to either end of the dim, long hallway making up part of the second floor. There wasn't any particular rationale for your apprehension and busy eyes but the belief the mansion owner wouldn't be too pleased to see you taking pictures of his valuables rather than cleaning them.

That fear hadn't stopped you from reverse image searching a good couple of curiosities over the widening gap of time you had been living there.

Tonight was a Chalmette table vase displayed on a pedestal in the hall; brassy gold gilding cradled a somewhat drab white bloom that reached high and sprouted open to a hollow inside. Similar surviving articles went for thousands.

You totaled the prices of everything so far as enough to outright buy a house on the more modest side of town.

There was a daring thought that loomed in the back of your mind, an ugly little thing that told you one or two missing antiques wasn't any big deal. He wouldn't miss them, let alone even notice they were gone, because he was the strangest man you had ever met.

Four months ago, he had only ever introduced himself by the name Montague, letting an anticipatory stillness hang in the air while you waited for him to finish. He never did, handsome features lifting as his dark eyes thinned and smile inched higher. He had you in a tight handshake.

"I enjoyed reading the resume you sent in with your response to my advertisement." He had traces of an accent intact but had cleverly adapted to one more common to the area. "You're the first person I've come across wanting the room who's done that. It really stood out to me. A crime scene cleaner? Must be a difficult job."

"I know it was probably overkill, but I think this will be perfect for me." You were led to a suede armchair, his hand anchoring onto your shoulder to lower you into the seat. He sat across from you in something similar, one leg crossing. "I recently had to move out of my other place, and the university will be about an hour closer. My work won't be as far of a drive, either. I—I, uh, clean some gross stuff, so taking care of your house won't be anything."

Even after that spiel, Montague never let his smile slip. Rather, it seemed to widen as though delighted by your oversharing. He looked like a man basking in glee over a rare find, an offer he couldn't possibly turn away.

"All amenities in the house are yours." This was after he showed you to one of the rooms on the second floor: a capacious, well-dressed space behind a red door at the end of the hall. "As long as you listen to a few rules and keep things clean, we should have a very amicable... cohabitation."

You thought it was an odd choice of wording. "Okay. Well, what do I need to know?"

"No guests." It was immediate, his tone suddenly a touch edgy, razored, unyielding. "Not unless I give you explicit permission beforehand. I keep many important valuables; they're very dear to me. Also, do not invite anyone in unless I am there."

Again, odd, but it was his house.

"Sure," you said agreeably, having half the thought to write down these peculiarities of his. "What next?"

He was set on your shoulder, reaching out to pull a thin, frayed thread off of your jumper. "The downstairs—as in, the basement—is my personal space. If I need you down there, I will ask you for you to go down. You can go anywhere else in the house, on the property. None of it concerns me."

"Why the basement, though?" It felt damaging to press a question like that so early on, but you figured it was innocent enough. "This house is so big that we could be on the same floor and hardly see each other."

The muscles around his mouth twitched slightly, only once. You still noticed it. Noted: he didn't like to be questioned. "Sorry, I'm not trying to-"

"It's cold downstairs." he injected, shifting to look around the room as though taking in the newness of it as well. "I make sure it stays comfortable all year, all throughout the house, but the cold suits me best."

With how downright frosty his skin felt in that handshake earlier—on a mild day in mid-spring—you thought that explanation checked out. He must have only just come up to greet you at the front entrance.

You tried to forget the feeling. "Alright. Next?"

"Oh," he restrained an unseemly laugh, using one hand to crowd into a pocket on his dark blazer, "there is nothing else, at least nothing pertinent. It's my understanding that we're both quite busy, so this would be the current arrangement unless something changes."

What changes? You wanted to ask, thwarted to silence when he revealed some sort of silver thing pinched between his fingers with a thick handkerchief. It was a dainty-seeming contraption with chains linking several old skeleton keys at the end. The fabric he used to hold the clip concealed all of the elegant tracery that made up its shape.

"Traditionally, this is called a chatelaine. It’s something I’ve modified for you to get around the house. It’ll be easier to clean." Montague said, fast to force the mess of cold silver and chains into your palm, rubbing down his fingers with the handkerchief afterward. "The smallest key is to your room. The largest one opens the doors to go outside, so don't lose that. One of them is meant for doors in the basement—can't recall which."

He could see the wariness behind your eyes, a worrying crease forming in your brow. "This house has been around for a long time. I've just never gotten around to modernizing the locks."

Other questions came to you, but he hardly acted interested in entertaining them. You let him swivel on black soles, stopping him just as he reached the doorway.

"Why haven't other housekeepers worked out?"

Montague let his fingers rest on glazed woodwork framing the threshold, drumming out a soothing rhythm while considering an answer for all of two seconds. "In short? They couldn't follow the rules. Now, let me show you to the yard."

Afterward, the so-called cohabitation had become a seamless blend for you both. You had learned right away that Montague wasn't one for idle chatter and niceties without purpose. He had deviated from it once, on move-in day, to reassure you that the mysterious nature of your life schedule and odd hours you were called to a clean scene wouldn’t be a source of concern.

Shortly after settling your things around the house, the reason for his amenable attitude was a little more apparent. Several times a month, you would be pulled from your forensics projects to the landing at the end of the hall, piqued by fresh voices always indistinguishable at first, and folded your waist over the railing to see down.

The top of his head, hair short, impeccably styled, and ash-brown, was the first thing you noticed, followed by someone on his arm. Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man—always conventionally attractive, always utterly enraptured by him. It struck a nerve with you once or twice, finding your thoughts swimming bitterly: Of course a man who looked like him would go for types like that!

Why did he act so much differently with them than you?

He wasn't nearly as friendly and affable as he was making himself out to be.

You stopped peeking down on him after an instance where his eyes shot straight up, pinning you where you stood. He simpered at you before leading his companion away to the basement, and that was it. You never saw them leave and never bothered to ask.

Tonight was different, however, both in the way you nearly toppled the two-figure Chalmette vase off its pedestal with flighty fingers and a duster, and the echo of a scream piercing the hollow halls to you. It stayed in one spot on the first floor, luring you down the center staircase with your duster clutched to you like a sword. At that point, your heart bursting in your ears was louder than the agonized cries resonating around the corner.

You looked around, spine wrapped in dread as another scream, weak, garbled, and wet, came from the basement, and then nothing at all. It was soundless in the house. Distantly, one of the clocks mounted in the kitchen archway toned onward. You followed its beat with the shuffle of your feet.

Hello, hello? Those words clung tightly in your throat, yet you were too afraid to announce yourself like that. Still, nothing came as you slowly pulled at the basement doorknob, brass and freezing and unlocked. The stairway plunging down inside was filled with inky black, so dark you couldn't get your eyes to adjust to it.

Is everything okay down there? Hello? Hello? You ran the imaginary chatter through your mind, lips sealed but trembling during your slow descent, the path now illuminated by white glow from your phone. At the bottom, the stone stairs turned into seamless gray marble and red wetness crawling toward the soles of your slippers.

"What–" You gasped, taking a step back while flicking the flashlight higher, deeper into the basement. The vivid red puddle glistened in your light, widening around a motionless figure with pale skin—a blonde woman you didn't know. Her face pointed up at the ceiling, twisted in terror, black tracks of mascara curving along her cheeks.

She was naked on the floor, surrounded by her own blood, something you didn't have to look at twice. Your breaths grew harsh, taking in the sight of her neck, or lack thereof; there wasn't much left of it. Only a few stringy bits of sinew and muscle kept it from a full decapitation, and blood still pulsed out in spurts from mangled arteries and veins.

A motion nearby made your nape prickle. It was like feet padding across wet pavement after a fresh rain, except this smell carried the malodor of rust and something sour under your nose.

You settled a pillar of light on the source, capturing the view of Montague standing amid the bloodbath, sickly skin bare and saturated in rich crimson.

Something was wrong with him, came an instantaneous, instinctual reaction the moment his head spun toward you, catching pale eyeshine in the white light.

The bones in his jaw cracked as the length of it began to recede into the semblance of something more man to you, rows of jagged teeth retracting into the depths of his throat until only a pair of long incisors remained.

Montague skimmed the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, smiling at you affectedly, saying as though it were some trife thing, "She started screaming."

You were gone and out of the basement after that, clearing the woman's body and kicking away the slippers on your feet when they squelched with blood. Montague said something after you when shrieks ripped out of your lungs and reverberated through the house. You winced as the basement door let out a hollow rattle when he collided with it, heart matching the rhythm of the skin on your feet slapping against old marble, thoughts disarrayed, frantic the closer you got to the front door.

Almost there. Almost there. Almost there. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! You were panting in unison with the vicious chants.

The doorknob was in your hand. The door was open—and it was thrown shut with the force of your body thrust against it, fingers wrenched off of the handle and enveloped in Montague's cold fingers as he pushed himself flush into you.

You felt his palm clamp around your mouth, whittling your screams into panicked whimpers, nostrils flaring with your ragged breaths.

"Ah, no, no." He had to stoop his neck to talk into your ears. "Shh, shh, shhh. Far too loud. I don't like screaming. Shh, shh, shhhh."

Tears seared red behind your eyes, making you think you could follow the warmth down your face as they filled the crevices in his hand. "It's really, truly a pity. She was a pretty one but far too smart. I'm usually decent at picking out the ones who wouldn't suspect anything or, at least, catching them before they try to scream.

"You'll have to forgive me. I swear to you I'm not ordinarily that messy. I prefer to keep everything tidy, especially so you don't have to go down there. After all, you're already so busy. You're already doing so much. I can't recall when I last saw you relax."

The weight of his palm softened, a wordless agreement that you honored with continued silence as he used that arm to lean against the door. His voice shifted around your head to your other ear. "That's it. Just wonderful. There's no need for screaming, is there? It's only the two of us."

"Are—are..." You couldn't get it out, lips and throat suddenly sucked dry. "Don't kill me, please. Please. Please."

His chest quaked while a subdued, eerily delighted laugh hissed through his lips. "Kill you? Oh, no, no, no. Never. How could I ever kill you when you're so remarkable? My home has never looked so beautiful and lived in. I'm enjoying how it looks with you in it."

You wilted away from his lips sinking to a spot below your ear, now taking far too much notice of his erection curving up along your lower back. It felt disgustingly wrong to wonder whether the violence and blood turned him on, or it was you and your fear. The man wasn't even human; that much was clear.

"What are you?" There was no shortage of daring questions in your arsenal. Montague was beginning to find the charm in them.

"That's quite difficult for me to answer." He let his chin lay on your shoulder. "I've been called many things over the centuries. I suppose the closest anyone has ever gotten is vampire, but even that's not quite right. You're free to guess as much as you'd like, though."

He was satisfied when you didn't, freeing the weight off of his arm to slide his hand under the hem of your shirt, fingertips still slick with that woman's blood as he explored your navel. You were too aware of the roundness of his fingernails stepping across your flesh, sometimes pressing deep, and other times a light touch you needed to scratch. His throat vibrated against your shoulder.

"What are you thinking? I'd love to hear it." He wanted to devour your fear in more ways than just feeling you wince. "Well? Tell me."

"I want to go." Go? Where could you possibly go that he couldn’t find you? If he ripped out the side of a woman's neck, he could track you down.

He leaned his cheek into your ear again, relishing the warmth that spread into him. "Where would you go? Who would you tell? Humor me, where is the first place you'd go?"

"The police," you said.

Montague let out a pleased hum. "Of course. It only makes sense to report a terrible scene such as that to them. Forensics and the police play together often, don't they?"

Your nod was weak.

"I know how hard you've been studying, how much stress you're under to commit to your degree, your work—to me." His hand crept along to your stomach, fingers splaying wide across the protective layer of skin and fat. "Let's say they were to find something I left behind. Who becomes a suspect in their eyes when they learn that I have someone who tidies up after me? Who knows the dirty insides of cleaning up anything and everything?"

You were starting to panic, fitfully struggling against his body. It's like he was made of stone. "They wouldn't accuse me of murdering anyone."

"Haven't you seen the news lately? Are you so sure?" he said derisively. "No, perhaps you're right. Maybe you'd be fortunate, and they wouldn't have your head for murder, but they would certainly try to peg you with something else. As an accomplice, maybe? And that's assuming that I don't disappear and let rip you apart.

"Can you imagine it? Can you feel your heart break at the very thought of losing it all? Your degree? Your job? Safety? The world is cruel, darling. You'd never have another moment of peace or anonymity. Anywhere you'd go, you'd be found, every alias sullied with your sins. All because you decided to speak up about it."

You knew he meant to send you downstairs to do something about the mess, spend hours scrubbing and mopping until what had once been there was a secret that thickened your tongue and made it hard to swallow.

No one would ever find out, but you would carry it in every waking thought until, one morning, the cute barista on Market Street had an eerie semblance to that dead woman, and the light roast in your hand suddenly looked so red.

"Thump. Thump. Thump." Montague mocked the heavy thrum of your heart behind your ribs, his cold fingers skimming your nipples before resting over your sternum. "You can go if you'd like, but I'll find you. I'll hear your little heart until it bursts and drag you right back here. You're mine."

The push of his body gradually faded away, giving your chest the room to expand, leaving you to gulp quivering, greedy breaths that didn't stop even as the pads of his feet grew distant.

He called back to you, "Give me ten minutes or so, and then come down."

You were already partway through the front door with your car keys to pop the trunk when, floating like a spectre's moans in still night air, his voice reached out once more, "You may want to clean up yourself first. You have blood all over your face."

༺ ♰ ༻

A damp towel came before your descent back into the basement. In tow on your shoulders were three bags of absorbent, the fancy stuff hospitals liked to use to throw on puke and piss and anything else they just lazily wanted to sweep around. It worked for blood in smaller quantities, blood that was still wet, anyway.

The woman hadn't been dead long enough for her body fluids to dry, so you didn't anticipate needing anything except the basics stowed in your car trunk.

You weren't sure what you expected to see down there, noticing the lights were turned on high, fully illuminating the gray marble, the furthest reaches of the blood puddle with your slippers saturated dark red and ruined. What came as a shock was the woman's dead eyes and shredded neck being nowhere in sight.

Montague had moved her body but to where?

For some reason, you were drawn to ridiculous spots like the walls, ceiling, and tiny cramped corners that he could have feasibly stuffed her in. There was no sickly trail of blood leading any which way, droplets only reaching as far as the stairs and first landing where you had been pursued—nothing else.

Where did he take her?

Part of you was ready to turn a blind eye to all of this because you knew you would have to in order to keep everything. If you kept your head low and groveled a little bit, maybe he'd get bored and leave you alone, biding you the time you needed to finish your degree. But, that'd be two years of this.

You weren't sure you could stomach it.

As you moved granules of absorbent through blood with coarse bristles from the kitchen broomstick—shifting the puddle more than the actual absorbent—you wondered if he could hear your heart now from wherever he was.

You thought about a lot of things while letting your eyes roam the space. It was enormous, taking up the entire underside of the house, outfitted impressively with mahogany accents, sprawling bookshelves, armchairs, and loveseats pulled tight in leather and velvet. Across the room was a disheveled bed, creamy sateen sheets in a luscious heap but otherwise undisturbed.

To the adjacent end of this expanse were two doors you didn't notice at first, one a little taller than yourself in height, about as wide as any normal arm span, and looked old, so old that everything else was too new. Even from where you stood, you knew it'd take a skeleton key. The other door was more coherent with the rest of the basement, cleaner but certainly still part of the house's original construction.

By the time Montague had returned, you already had much of the ordeal pitched into a biohazard bag with some trace remnants putting you on your knees to scrub away. You hadn't realized he was even there until the tips of his shoes—brown leather loafers with a scalloped tassel near the toes—appeared in your peripheral, sending you launching back onto your hocks.

"This work is spectacular. I knew I had a good feeling giving that room to you." he said with a beguiling smile. All of the blood was gone; he was clean in a dark dressing robe with black trousers, a look you hated that you saw as alluring. "Don't forget to clean the floors upstairs. We made quite a mess there as well."

"What happened to that woman?" You were asking your pesky questions again. Montague wasn't so sure he found them as charming now, but you were still a prize.

You leaned away as he crouched in front of you, nearly risking the soles of his shoes in the blood and hydrogen peroxide. For the first time since meeting, you kept eye contact and saw that his reached a depth you didn't think could be possible for a human. He wasn't touching you, yet it felt like he had you caged, trapped in a vise that held you tight.

He did touch you then, grazing the side of your face with a thumb. Suddenly, he brought it to his lips and licked it as he rose to full height.

"You still had some blood just there on your cheek." There was an armchair a few feet away that he dropped into, withdrawing a gold compact from a chest pocket on his way down. "Don't worry. I wouldn't ask you to carry away the bodies. I'm not that Roman."

"That's not what I asked." you rejoined.

Montague tucked a cigarette between his lips, igniting it with a match he kept inside the compact. His first few puffs looked like they calmed him as he crossed a leg and settled deeper into the leather. "You shouldn’t expect answers to things you don’t need to know—or want to.”

But he humored you with a slight lean of his head towards the old door far away. "The original owner of this house was ingenious and built tunnels that were used to shuffle people in and out. Mistresses. Servants. More unsavory things—you must remember the era. At any rate, it stretches beyond the house and some ways off. I do not recommend ever going inside."

You understood now why you never saw any of the dates he brought home leave. And you believed every bit of his warning.

It inspired you to move away from the grim reality dwelling beyond that old door. You hovered over the same spot, drenching the floor with more of the disinfectant, grasping for a distraction. "I didn't know vampires could smoke. Isn't blood enough for you?”

Montague flicked his cigarette over an ashtray beside his chair. "Well, we all have our vices. Mine just happens to be five or six of these a day. Keeps enough of the edge off so you get to sleep at night."

Something about that comment made the entire stretch of the basement feel so confining—claustrophobic, even. Your back was wide open to it, to his ravening gaze and leather toe turning fluid circles as though to pace himself before lunging.

"I have class in six hours." You finished the job by tying off the bag. "I'd like to get the upstairs done and take a shower."

"Of course. Try to get some sleep, you've had quite a night." He didn't move to see you out. "Oh, and leave the bag. I'll dispose of it."

༺ ♰ ༻

Meredith Nimu died approximately twenty-three days ago after a stroke left her immobilized in her favorite armchair. Her body wasn't peeled away from the murky-green polyester until day twenty-four, following enough neighbor complaints about a bunch of rats dying in the vents.

Getting rid of the chair was half the battle in this case, something that Meredith's overzealous, recently divorced daughter spouted off as sacrilegious. She insisted that the carpet cleaner she used for her obese dogs with raw patches on their legs could do it all. Your supervisor had been inflectionless when telling her it didn't work like that.

One of your teammates, a middle-aged black man affectionately nicknamed “Hoss” had unceremoniously slammed the apartment door shut and flipped the lock so the daughter's rancorous eruptions were somewhat contained outside. The other half of the duo responsible for pitching the chair, T.J., a white man who could never tan, wheezed out a laugh as he labored a hard bristle brush through the gunk left behind from Meredith's decay.

"Boss ain't gonna be happy about that." T.J. couldn't commit to the act of a brownnoser even if he wanted to. A couple more chortles rattled through his respirator. They were infectious, ridiculous sounds that coaxed similar from Hoss when he rejoined the effort to get the job done and over with.

You could still hear the daughter on the other side of the door, never once allowing your supervisor a word in edgewise. A part of you wanted to pity her, perhaps conjure up a shred of empathy for someone so completely enmeshed in the throes of grief and anger. She was clearly spiraling, her entire life yanked out from under her—and she was free-falling with nothing to catch her, no thin wire she could snag in the bend of her fingers and watch as the velocity of that cruelly, cleanly severed white tendon and bone.

Where would she fall after that? You didn't know. You didn't care. She could regain control over her life even without fingers, but what about you? No one understood how disconcerting it was to know that your survival depended on a vampire's good mood.

An old woman was meant to expire, but you were young and had aspirations—yet that could be stolen from you just as quickly as a clot could kill the brain.

It wasn't fucking fair.

Hoss had called out to you repeatedly until the hard brushes stopped scratching the floor, and he and T.J. were settled back on their heels, staring at you. You were used to leveraging your commitments in life as a means to get them off your case, but even they could tell this was different.

"You've been real spacey lately." It was enough to gently reel you back to the moment, eyes unstuck from remnants of putrid matter hidden under a deluge of chemicals and soap. Now you were thinking that the landlord would probably have to replace this entire spot in the flooring. It would be an expensive fix.

"Everything okay at home?" Hoss tried again, emulating fatherly concern in his tone and sidelong stare. It was something he couldn't help since you were so similar in age to his adult kids. "I don't think I've seen you eat today. We oughta finish up here up and grab somethin' quick on the way back.”

"Sorry, yeah, it's just the usual things." They didn't know what that meant to you, but readily accepted with dour expressions masked by their respirators. "I think I saw a gyro truck down the street."

As many times as you had regurgitated the same thing when they pried into your well-being, you were surprised they still asked at all. That made it hard to wave after them as you pulled the lever to the trunk, waiting to be left alone once the job was done to stack half your weight in absorbent until the back bowed to it.

It was just past two in the morning when you were locking the front door of Montague's sprawling estate behind you. Every time you did, a part of you hesitated to seal it the whole way, as though if you did, your final traces of freedom would be stripped away entirely.

"Welcome home!" Montague came out from prowling somewhere in the shadows, seeming to materialize from the darkest parts your eyes couldn't adapt to. He was in a dressing robe again, this one forest green with gold embroidery and a burgundy handkerchief tucked away nicely in his breast pocket.

He already had a cigarette lit between his knuckles, fussing with the little stick as he went to an open window, sucked in, and expelled pungent gray smoke. "I apologize. There's a bit of a mess for you tonight. It's unlike me to be so untidy, but it shouldn't take you too long—oh, darling, don't make that face."

"Why can't you get blood from other sources, like a blood bank?" It's been on your mind for a while, but Montague had a habit of turning petulant if you asked him too much.

He was in good shape tonight, though, despite still puffing away antsily. "Where's the satisfaction in simply being given what I want? Blood banks are a finite supply, but out there"—he gestured through the open window—"there is an infinite supply from any walk of life that I so choose. Did you know that not all blood is equal?"

You sensed him at your back, awash with that same vulnerability as the night on your knees in the basement. He strolled along with you while you collected your things, examined his leftovers, which fortunately wasn't as sensational as before. It looked like a Rorschach inkblot almost, purple-red and pristine, obviously untouched for some time.

Just like that dead blonde woman, there was nothing left behind of the victim except what Montague was too careless to handle himself.

"The worst blood is what you find in hospitals or on the streets. It doesn't matter their type; it all tastes like shit." he continued, even while you worked. Just like before, he sat himself nearby and observed your process with gross fascination. "In a pinch, though, I do what I must. It doesn't matter if a man is homeless or a woman is looking for a night out. When I hear their hearts dance, that thump, thump, thump—oh, I have to have it. I can taste them through their skin, even before I sink my teeth in.

"The fear in their eyes. The ragged breaths I see in their chests, watching their bellies pulse. I like to think in those moments they know exactly what's going to happen, like little flies in a spider's web."

Montague let more smoke slither out from his lips in skinny, swirling wisps that dissipated once it touched the air. The haze of it remained, just traceable to your eye. "I always find it interesting that they all struggle, even as they're writhing in their own blood. Sometimes I'll count how long it takes for them to die."

These weren't confessions of a madman because that would imply he was human. He was treating you akin to the way an old man recounted the fondness of his flawed, flickering memories. There were sensations of joy and affection in the work he did, a true love and visceral desire for carnage and suffering that made it hard for you to stomach.

A few times throughout his soliloquy, you needed to bear your weight on the kitchen broom to keep yourself from toppling from nausea.

You shouldn't have been curious. "Has anyone ever survived?"

The surrounding space grew darker, not from loss of light but from the way his lower face sunk behind the hand wielding the cigarette. You saw his smile widen through sickly appendages and faint smoke.

His response pierced straight through you. "I'm looking right at it."

Suddenly, the urge to run rushed forefront in your mind, an instinctual reaction that you had trouble wrestling over with logic. The broomstick was easily pulled from your fingers and discarded onto the floor with a reverberating clatter that made your spine race with cold needles as Montague stepped into your proximity.

You shivered against the hands slowly climbing your neck to the underside of your jaw, cradling your face as he lifted it to meet his eyes. Something was so wrong with how black they were; you didn't see a pupil, nor did your reflection stare back at you in them. It's almost as though there was nothing there at all, the dark of them growing into an abysmal chasm that made your vision cross and blur, eyelids weighing like lead when you felt him kiss you.

His lips were the same kind of cold as the rest of him but full and unrelenting, never granting you the chance to mold the kiss in any other way. Surprisingly, the taste of stale smoke on his breath was just slight, a mediocre vexation you overlooked the moment his hands started groping you under your clothes.

And you didn't think much of it when your back settled into the clean linens on your bed, skin flushed with the crisp evening air and lips mapping their way south across your stomach and navel, delving lower to your core. It was too dark in your room to see down your body at the top of Montague's head, but you felt him with your fingers, coiling pieces of his ash-brown hair to your knuckles while he pushed your thighs wide open for him.

An anxious patter swelled in your chest, a vague understanding that something was horrible about this, but you were too wrapped up in a dreamy fog to think about it. More than the resounding boom of your heart, you heard your own breaths dissolve into lewd moans and slurred pleas for him to do more, more, more.

It didn't sound like you.

It didn't feel like you despite knowing that build-up in your abdomen better than most things in your body.

The hands in his hair, the back bending off of the mattress like an archway, the shaking limbs, and the cries begging for more were someone else entirely up until the very moment rapture fluttered behind your eyes in searing white, body deluged in hot release that left your scalp tingling and toes curling and spend on your sheets.

"Give me more." You tasted him again, his tongue pushing hard into your mouth where those salty notes of yourself lingered on your cheeks. His silhouette melded with the rest of the room, tangible only in the way he roamed every surface of you.

Montague had shucked the clothes from both your bodies earlier, preferring to lean into the flush of heat you radiated. Everything was only skin-deep away from him; he could feel your pulse throb on his lips when he teased himself against your carotid, your radial, trailing all the way to the powerful beat of your femoral nestled there in your groin.

His teeth came close many times to piercing you, allowing him a sliver of a taste like a parched king waiting for a drop of golden wine. But half the thrill of having you around was denying himself of you, knowing well that if he were to start, then he'd never be able to stop, and he'd fully hamper your dreams of escaping.

The air smelled like you now, heavy and like damp skin and your fluids soaking into the linens. He watched your face bunch and fall apart when he split you open with his cock, hips colliding, your skin sure to bruise as his thrusts turned savage. There wasn't much left in his heart anymore. Most of it had atrophied over the centuries, and yet the sound of yours spurred him on.

He could follow the path of your blood through your body, an extensive subject he had studied and dissected at length in his lifetime. The most vulnerable spots were gorged and worked the hardest, almost glowing red through your skin for him. When he thrust a little bit harder, a little bit faster, and felt your fingertips pushing against his chest, he heard your heart be the loudest it ever had been.

"That's it. That's it. That's it." His own breaths were ragged now. The sheer exhilaration of pushing his lips deeper, hot sweat leaving a slick layer on them, and that one big artery in your neck pounding out was doing everything for him.

Your frantic pants were a close second. He could feel you unraveling, tightening around his cock until you were soundlessly writhing on the mattress, clutching anything you could bunch together. The final few thrusts he made were purposeful; they were forceful and jolted your body, a show to make sure you wouldn't forget the feeling of him inside of you.

The clean linens were sodden with cum, some still dripping out of you while you lay there, legs splayed enough so you wouldn't feel it stick to your thighs. Whatever haze had been hanging over your eyes before lifted away, leaving you ruined and exhausted on the sheets but not alone.

"You've got class in a few hours, don't you?" Montague said from above, shoulders nestled in your headboard while one leg hung off the side of the bed. He was smoking again, acting the calmest you had witnessed him. "I don't really think you're in any shape for that. Why don't you stay home today?"

You were too spent to respond to him, somehow using the occasional breaths he blew out into the vast room to lull you into a dreamless sleep.

༺ ♰ ༻

Shin Nakamura had been a selfish man in life. Mid-fifties, thinning hair, and twice divorced from women who knew better—his tenants did not. He had built a reputation on the north side of town for hidden costs and faulty appliances that were never fixed. Once or twice in the past four years you had cleaned up scenes, they came out of Nakamura's buildings in the summertime, stuck to the floor and infested with maggots and flies in different orifices.

Everyone had asked at one point, yourself included, how he was able to get away with that level of blatant cruelty and disregard—and the answer was as simultaneously simple, complex, and terrible as poverty. The north end was an area notorious for local crime and violence, but more than that, it was forgotten in favor of gentrifying other areas of the city—pretty little boutiques that'd make a splash on social media and a couple of upscale dining spots, all of those meant to change the online scales deeming an area's walkability, and therefore, profitability.

The blind eye most city commissioners turned to the north end made it an easy life for Shin to do as he pleased without many consequences despite living in the area himself. Most of everyone found it an odd sort of justice when he was discovered in his office, unrecognizable from how badly the dozens of stab wounds had disfigured his face and body. One look was enough to know that it was personal, a tenant who had received their condemnation via a neon-pink eviction letter hastily taped to an off-white door.

Only, this time, Shin chose a person backed into a corner at their breaking point. There wasn't much left to lose, yet Shin had ultimately lost it all. Rumor had it that no one sold out the tenant who committed the crime, something even the more moralistic part of yourself could fathom.

These were the cases that painted a grim picture of your future in forensics and often speared to the front of your mind at the worst of times—could you really be part of the reason why a person shattered by the powers of society goes to jail?

Shin Nakamura was a terrible man, but were his crimes punishable by that sort of torture? What about the tenants who probably heard Shin screaming for help, crying in agony—were they any better than murderers themselves?

What did that mean for you? An accomplice who quietly scrubbed clean murders at a monster's behest, you allowed those people to be swallowed up by Montague under a guise of fear, or was it selfishness?

That discomfort lasted you your entire shift, like an incredibly nauseating pill with a bad smell that sat in your nose for hours. You couldn't wipe away the thoughts like you could dried blood on smoke-stained walls or lumps of serrated flesh and fat wedged between slabs of wood on the floor.

"Man, he coulda been cleaner about this." T.J. had his feet planted solidly on the middle step of a ladder, well at work with a long-handled brush pushed flat to the ceiling. The splatter had gone that far, earning a few awestruck coos from him and Hoss earlier. "It would've made our lives easier."

It was a normal joke.

You'd laughed at the exact same one many times before, even finessed your own commentary in there on occasion because the dead can't sue, and a murderer had no rights—but now, you thought it'd taste bad on your tongue.

The two hulking men noticed, far sharper than you gave them credit for. Or maybe you were just worse at hiding things than you thought. They didn't allude to anything until everyone was packed up in the van, dried from the sweaty protective suits and summer heat by the AC.

"Listen, it ain't my business, and I swear I've been trying my best not to ask." There was a furtive look linked between Hoss and T.J.; it was something they had talked about when you weren't around. "That guy you're living with. He isn't doing anything to you, right? You used to talk about him all the time in the beginning. Haven’t heard a peep about him in ages. God, you're not living in your car, are you?"

From the outside in, you weren't doing much to try to embellish fancy stories and reasons onto your drastic change over the months. You simply let it be and navigated every day with the hope you'd remember where you were going with your head down. It probably didn't look too good to a paternal man like Hoss, and to T.J., who had several younger siblings.

"No, it's not him—" But, of course, it really was and everything surrounding his cruelty, everything he made you do, and what you never refuted. "I'm just perpetually exhausted. I'm sure you've heard that from Sylvie and Deshaun while they've been in uni."

"All the damn time." Hoss beamed, chest perked a little higher with the mention of his children. It wasn't enough to diffuse the tension lingering in the van, however. "Just know, I'd do for you what I'd do for my babies—put the fear of God in that man. If he puts a finger on you, you let me know."

T.J. gave an agreeable hum, fingers sticking to the steering wheel as he moved them around, making a turn down some street. "We'll catch him by surprise and everything. I'll call in a couple favors, grab a few shovels and bags of cement from my dad's place. It's all good."

For some reason, their entire spiel only spiked your uneasiness, and suddenly you were far too aware of your bladder. It was enough initiative for T.J. to floor the gas and get back to headquarters, giving you the chance to break away and race the remnants of daylight all the way home.

༺ ♰ ༻

It had never happened before, but you managed to catch Montague by surprise when he walked through the front door to find you standing there in the foyer. The kitchen broom wrapped in your hands was a nasty ploy, along with the look you cast between him and a young man not any older than yourself.

Again, just like all the others, you didn't recognize him. Montague's victims were fast, fleeting fixations for him, none worthy of names or an identity in his eyes. You suspected this guy was much the same.

Montague's bewilderment was swept away by a smile and laxing posture. He had settled back into his element. "You're home early today. I didn't expect to see you until much later. Not much to the scene, I assume?"

"It was pretty bad." A certain stiffness trailed on the end of your words, letting them echo through the hall and hang in the cool evening air.

The young man was fast to perceive that tension: the tightness in your shoulders, fingers subtly wringing against the cracked wooden broom. Montague's anticipative smile climbed higher the longer he looked at you.

Would it be such a bad thing to turn around and pretend you had never seen him come home with that other man? You considered doing it, hiding upstairs and using your headphones until everything seeping through turned into an amalgamation of ambient noise that meant nothing to you, and you willed away the guilt like you'd always done.

In that moment, you thought about Meredith Nimu's apoplectic daughter, a woman so embittered by her own suffering that she was foul and relentless to anyone she crossed paths with. You thought about Shin Nakamura, a greedy, pitiless man who'd rather let coroners scrape up his tenant's remains rather than grant them mercy while they were alive and had been left in pieces because of it.

You thought of them and all their wickedness and edged your gaze towards the young man still standing in the doorway with his hand holding it ajar, clean fingernails picking at chipping paint, just steps from outside. "I think you should leave."

Run! Run! You'd better run away as fast as you can! Nothing would stop Montague from keeping his prey there, if that's what he chose to do.

He did the opposite of that, and that was, simply, nothing at all. No pretty blandishments, nor a mouthful of teeth. Rather, now, he was particularly piqued by what you were trying to do.

To the young man, he had meddled into something rather egregious, probably convinced it was extramarital. You battled a surge of pride blooming inside you, shifting your chest a little higher, anchoring your spine back into your body.

"Don't come back here." You didn't need to say anything else. He was gone after pinching out a look of disgust towards Montague, tutting at him with his upper teeth showing through a curled lip.

Nothing happened for a while, not until the front door was secured after his departure. You were left to that responsibility, triple-checking the lock, while Montague ambled deeper into the house, but not too far away as you could follow the leisurely path by his heel strike. There was a rhythm in how he moved. It was deliberate, as though mimicking something.

It took you five paces to figure out he was miming your heartbeat, and he only stopped once it quickened in your chest. He appeared from around the corner, still taking his time reaching you, toying with some trinkets displayed on shelves built into alcoves throughout the lower floor.

You couldn't explain what you were feeling at that moment. Of the thousands—maybe millions—of victims Montague had taken in the previous times, you had just deprived him of one. That man would continue living, and he would tell his friends tomorrow about the weird night he had, and he would never have to be grateful that you saved him from a hellish death.

Yes, oh yes. Even as Montague approached you, carried by his deft gait with both halves of his gold compact open in his palm, you couldn't help but be in complete awe of yourself.

A life continued outside of this mausoleum, and it was all because of you. You were entirely different from Meredith Nimu's daughter and Shin Nakamura, and, for once, your hands weren't sullied by bleach, blood, and body matter.

All that heaviness you had been carrying was suddenly so much lighter, and you felt like your chest could open up as wide as the room where you stood. The breaths you took were dry and cold in your throat, yet fresh as though you were walking outside in wintertime.

Montague must've seen something he didn't like on your face because he sucked down on his cigarette for a while, winding his wrist with it at his side once he was adequately calm.

"Did it feel good? I've only seen you this happy while I was fucking your brains out." It was jarring to hear him talk like that. He took another quick drag and let it out slowly as he rounded you. "Truthfully, darling, I didn't think you were the type to break the rules—on purpose, anyway. But I suppose we all get a little wound up every now and then, right? I've already forgiven you."

And then, you watched him drop the cigarette to the marble and snuff it underfoot until the weak ember was turned to soot. A black smear was left behind when he took his foot away. His stare into you was unwavering.

"Clean it up."

You figured this was how a frightened animal felt when it wanted something within reach of an observant predator because you were trying to think of all the ways to get close without getting too close. It was a pitiful, humorous sight to him, seeing your steps forward so light and on the verge of bolting. But he showed no intention of doing anything more.

Still with the broom in hand, your knuckles turned stark around the handle while sweeping the remains towards you. It would take more elbow grease to get up that smudge, and he knew that just as well.

He reached for the broom and snapped it to a halt, making you jump, jaw clenching. A noiseless gasp lurched in your throat, his fingers wound tight into the hair at your crown as he yanked your head back to show all the fleshiness of your neck.

"What will you do about it, darling?" His lips were already cold and flush to the artery dancing in the curvature built of skin, muscle, and tendon.

Your teeth chattered as the wetness of his tongue followed that intricate, breathtaking network inside of you as far as the neckline of your shirt would let him.

"A man has to eat. Have you ever seen it? A man near starvation and the sorts of things he'll do to survive? Why, I've heard stories of desperate, little men eating their own lovers—their children—themselves just to claw around for a little longer. It's inspiring, I think."

He dragged you away then, up the stairs and through the hallway on the second floor to your bedroom, fingers still nested your hair until the moment you were shoved down onto fresh linens. There wasn't anywhere for you to go once he joined you on the mattress, feeling it bend towards his weight.

"Don't be afraid." he said this with all the fond familiarity of a lover, blunt fingernails digging crescents into your thigh through your clothes. In the waning moonlight that filtered through the dusty window over your bed, his pale eyeshine snared you like roots bursting from somewhere within your busy sheets to keep you there—keep you tame. "That's right. Come to me. Come to me."

There was a new drowsiness behind your eyes, one you couldn't stave by blinking. Montague's face was closer now, and you were struck with just how beautiful he actually was. The longer your gaze lasted, tips of your fingers exploring every shape and edge of his exquisite features, the less you were convinced he was a threat to you—that he couldn't have possibly been all that you'd feared up until now.

"I want you." His lips inched up like he expected you to say it. He felt your hands rest on the sides of his face, guiding him down into a soft kiss that he returned, that he kept clean and let you command until he was bored with it. You chased after him, lower lip pulled between both of yours and eventually out of reach. "Don't you want me too?"

"I wish you could understand just how much I do." He rummaged his pocket for the gold compact, losing it somewhere in the sheets, and then busied himself with stripping himself and you of clothes.

Each piece discarded showed a greater expanse of your skin, a delight in his eyes because he could see that gorgeous webbing of arteries and veins throughout you, even in the darkness, through every defense your body created to protect you from every bacteria, virus, infection—from him.

He didn't need the breath, but he took one and held it anyway.

You withered against his touch, those freezing, lithe fingertips traveling down all the areas where he wished his teeth could be, clear down to your groin. His smile stretched, feeling you search eagerly for a fistful of his hair with his lips smoothing across your inner thigh and then going higher.

There was warmth between your legs, a colorless glisten that leaked out onto the thin sheets, darkening a spot on them that tempted his tongue out for a taste. He came close to entertaining the notion of giving you that glimpse of heaven, allured by your hips leaping off the mattress and against his face.

"You really do think this is all about you." Montague kept you still by pressing down into your abdomen as he rose onto his knees, erection fitting tight between your bodies in the moments before he guided himself lower and hitched up into you.

The sharp motion knocked a startled gasp out of your throat, where it quickly dissolved into a slew of filth and breathy panting. Your nails clawed into your palms, a sight he thought to make worse by digging himself deeper into you.

Montague had no issues biding his time this way, looming over the sprawl of your body beneath him, manipulating parts of you until he saw your face flinch and the first moans of discomfort shake all the way from your chest, up, and through your teeth. They matched the pace of his hard thrusts, smothered by sharp slaps of skin that carried in the inky air.

Indeed, I can wait. That thought of his unsatiated hunger melted in the back of his mind with the precedence of arranging the course of blood in your body. The drum of your heartbeat was deafening to him, but it wasn't enough.

It wasn't loud enough.

He wanted to be able to envision the arteries and veins bursting in his teeth, saturating the sheets and walls and both your bodies in hot red. He wanted it to paint his skin while he fucked you to absolution.

"It really, truly, is all about you in the end, isn't it?" He could still speak clearly, despite you being unable to utter noise beyond the air being forced out of your lungs. "You really are magnificent. How could I ever think to let you go? Not after everything you've done for me, how beautiful you look next to all of my things."

His hand shifted away from your abdomen at last, tracking across the soft span of your stomach and the muscles spasming there under his fingertips.

All he would have to do is dig through you a little bit, and he could bury himself in those twitching fibers and insides. But he continued on his path to your pert nipples that he rolled against his palm a few times, higher still to fold his fingers together against your sternum where he felt your heart thundering there against your ribs.

"Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump," came his mocking chant that cracked into raspy moans as he lingered there. It had been a long time since something had made him feel this good. He had forgotten what bliss was truly like.

He reached your neck before long, trapping the underside of your jaw against his knuckles, forcing you to see him as his weight bore down on your throat. You both heard the cartilage and muscle in your neck shift, a subtle crack that sent your limbs flailing. You were thrown out of the rhythm of his thrusts in an attempt to grab at him.

"You really are despicable, aren't you?" He let out a gleeful laugh, letting your fingers turn ashen while you wrung his wrist. You weren't able to do much with your legs except use them to plant your heels into the mattress, vaulting your hips in the air to try to wrench yourself free. His cock slipped out of you, but he was hardly bothered by that.

"Does it feel good that you chased off my guest? I could get him back, you know. You're aware of this. I know you are. But righteousness just feels so… rewarding, doesn't it? You couldn't resist. Desperation must've been eating you alive."

Strings of saliva glistened in your mouth, breaking apart the further your jaws spread. You were convinced, in that moment, that you would die like that in a silent scream. None of the words that Montague spoke truly reached you, not as your chest quivered and lungs burned as though swallowed in an inferno.

"Every misdeed in life vastly outweighs the good, you know? The scales have never been leaned in our favor—not I, and especially not for you. If that's the sort of thing you believe in. Isn't that what you're taught? Goodness for the sake of salvation at the end of a short life of inhibitions? How miserable." Montague took his hand off of you and let you breathe.

You sucked in crisp air, gasping from your side through wet coughs and the sourness of vomit spat out on the floor.

Your respite was brief, weight on the mattress shifting as the hair on your scalp was used to lever you to your knees, body suspended upright only by his fingers tangled at your roots.

"This is all I can see." Montague loosened his hand from your head, moving south along your spine to your ass. He kneaded the bruised parts of your hips for a while after, lips ghosting their way along your neck up to the ear. "All I can see is what's right in front of me. And how it tastes. All that matters is that I have my fill—and that I feel good."

He smeared slick into the heel of his palm, rolling the head of his cock in that mess as he instructed you with every bit of lewdness how he wanted you to bend against the headboard, how far apart for you to spread your legs for him.

Every bit of it was humiliating for you, while he wished he could memorialize that moment of sinking back inside of you as your breaths broke into stifled sobs, face warped by anguish.

"Does it hurt? Tell me, I have to know, what does it feel like?" He enjoyed the suspense of not receiving an answer, listening as your fingernails dug tracks into the wood headboard and the dark room filled with obscene wetness that grew louder as his thrusts turned wild.

"Mmm—" He hinged forward, bracing his weight on top of your hands with his own. You shied from the surge of coolness that came with his cheek pressing yours. "You and I aren't so different. It makes me wonder if you actually like this. Isn't there something so freeing about it?"

"Mer—mercy, please." It was a coarse whisper from your dry throat, so much of your time having been spent with your mouth agape. The idea of having you that way was as tantalizing as all the others he thought up. "Montague, please—mercy."

Oh, now you were begging.

This was more than what he deserved. He managed a few more thrusts, spilling over into you by the third with a moan that he felt no shame to leave ringing in your ear. "Every part of you, every single part—I'll burn myself into your skin and your bones. You'll feel me in your veins, your blood. I'll make for certain that I'm all you remember—forever."

The vastness of your bedroom had grown warmer, permeated with the thickness of sweat and salt that left your palms slick against the headboard. You let your body slump against it, skin sticking to the wood. It didn't offer you the relief you wanted at that moment: a glass of ice water, all the tenderness of a soft bed to lull you into a blank dream—you just wanted to rest.

Montague knew this just as well, fishing his compact out from a muddled heap of linens and clothes. He checked inside to grab one of the two cigarettes left, making a mental note he'd need to replenish again tomorrow before lighting it and savoring it. At this rate, he anticipated he'd be empty before the end of the night.

For a while, he sat there cushioned on his haunches, admiring the way the smoke coiled towards the ceiling in dainty wisps and mingled with the stench of sex.

"It's not enough." he said, barely eliciting more than a glance from you. His current cigarette was already burnt to the filter, forcing him to pull the last and light that one too. "This is my last one. Such a shame."

You smelled the smoke strongly now, just seconds passing before you were yanked across the bed onto your back, the soreness in your scalp near excruciating as you yelped. Montague made a place for himself between your thighs again, leering down the length of his nose at you.

If he wanted to, he could trace the dread etched in your features with a finger, feeling all along your hot skin, into all the cavernous lines he wished he could preserve—right there, just like that. There had never been a more gorgeous visage than the one you wore right now. Only your gleaming, glowing, pink insides were more beautiful.

He watched your lips twitch while he teased a fistful of his hard cock against your sorest spot. You were swollen and bruised, and he could only imagine what it felt like when he bottomed out in you again.

The curve of your spine arched off the mattress, fingers frantically raking the air at him, reaching for any part you could sink into to get him out. Even your body seemed determined for the same, wonderfully stimulating walls squeezing around him.

It made a shiver roll all along his spine to his tailbone, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling, with his first thrusts feeling positively divine. Especially when you jolted, an almost exaggerated response amplified by jagged cries and wet gasps you couldn't seem to swallow back down into your chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" You sputtered around the mucus piled in your throat. "Montague, I'm sorry. Please, stop."

He had burned away half of his last cigarette when he leaned over you, his body eclipsing what poor light had managed to illuminate the room for you. You could only follow the dainty mesmerizing glow that worked away from his mouth—his exhale barely masking a moan that he blew away with the smoke—and towards you.

"Keep doing it." His other hand was crawling up your neck, forcing you to suck in a hard breath. "Beg me again. Keep doing it."

All sound but the steady pulse of the headboard striking the wall had deadened, lasting well until the moment the cigarette touched your skin—and you screamed. Your throat vibrated, suddenly stopping when his palm closed around you again, silencing all your noise, his thrusts sloppy and rough while you thrashed under him.

This time, he kept you pinned by his chest, letting your feet dig for traction and slip and slide on the sheets. The bright smolder turned dark as he twisted it into your neck, taking all the remnants of restraint he had not to drill into you as far as it could go. He curled his tongue behind his jaws, keeping them tight.

Montague let go of your throat to allow you the grace of a stifled wail before that same hand sealed your lips. "Ah, ah. You know better than to scream. Shh, shhh, shhh. It's such an ugly sound."

He rubbed the cigarette into your skin until it crumpled, leaving him to lament for a moment once flicking it away to the floor. For him, it left behind a beautiful burn: raw, mad, red, and enticing. As his hand fell off of your mouth, daring you to do more than whimper and cry, his tongue was already flat against your wound.

"Oh, God," you wheezed, voice hoarse and jarring with the force of his hips knocking into you. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! Stop, stop, stop! I swear I'll never do it again! I swear. I swear!"

Montague caught the wrist you swung at his head, giving the taste of your seared flesh time to settle on his palate before turning towards the pulse in your thumb. He tried to match how he was fucking you out to how it throbbed on his lips.

"Oh, I'm well aware that you won't do it again. That much is a given." His strokes into you were suddenly languid and intentional, so achingly deep that your eyes rolled back. "I've already said that you're forgiven, haven't I?"

You could barely speak over the depth he reached. It didn't feel right. "Th-then, why?"

A smile flourished across his face, but your eyes couldn't pierce that dark veil to see it. You could feel the damp path he left on your wrist, how the muscle writhed all around the sprawl of your veins, going as far as to wind your fingertips before it receded back behind his lips.

"Because I'm enjoying myself." There was a weight of finality to those words before his mouth engulfed the side of your wrist, away from your fragile network of bluish-purplish channels. And when he bit into you, it was the incisors that sank through.

You didn't know what it was. A clamp seized you by the neck like his fist, steeling itself there and robbing you of a scream. The pain was unlike anything else—paralyzing and deep, like a pair of sharpened, narrow skewers made of molten fire piercing you with such an agonizing ache that you could do nothing but lay there.

But you still felt everything he was doing.

His thrusts had grown truly vicious, chasing a high that came as the warmth of your blood seeped from a pair of punctures he had created. The steady flow he fed from was something he lapped on at his leisure. Enough of it streaked the length of your arm and dripped onto your bedding, onto your naked, warm skin when he guided the fall over your neck and chest, south to your stomach and abdomen. He let it fill and pool the seams of his fingers while smearing it with the fluids between your bodies.

At last, breaking the trance to speak, feebly, in between intermittent pockets of pain and numbness rolling through you, you asked with some hopefulness, "Are you going to kill me?"

"You? Kill you?" Montague dropped your wrist. It felt like a limp, dead thing that didn't belong to you. He dove at your neck for those drops he teased himself with, nudging your chin high with his nose to reach it all. "Death would mean letting you go. You're all mine, darling. Whatever other existence waits beyond death will never have you."

His tongue wet a trail to your chin, collecting a watery essence of blood and spit that he pushed into your mouth. Your lips were sealed by his ravenous kiss, relenting to the thickness of his tongue swirling the taste into your cheeks and down your throat, a nauseating intermix of iron and stale smoke that lingered and made you pucker.

And then, you heard him back in your ear, craning his neck only as far as to aggravate the cigarette burn with his breath. It gave several angry throbs. The weight of his body was almost flush on you, spreading the blood around as though your skin together was a single canvas.

To his eyes, it bloomed breathtakingly, seeping into every crevice, pore, and scratch that made up your design, an impermanent stain that he could saturate you in again and again and again. The things he whispered in your ear were vile and wicked, all on unlabored breaths while his strokes turned sluggish and stayed seated deep inside you until the final hitch of his hips left you full of him.

"I don't think you should go to work today."

You were only scarcely coherent of him—or anything for that matter—eyes unmoving from the black void above and unfeeling of how he chose to manipulate your body, still, hours later. All you could think about was the flutter of your lashes weighing down heavily over your eyes and how this world only survived on suffering such as yours.

༺ ♰ ༻

A small pile of things was arranged fussily in a duffle bag Hoss had given the day you returned to work after an impromptu leave of absence. It had only lasted three days, just enough time to acclimate to the pain that seemed to synchronize to every part of your body, throbbing everywhere, all at once, and at times with sharpness so great it toppled you to the ground. You could only lay there—wherever you dropped, on whatever cold slab of marble or concrete until it dissipated, unfurling from your limbs and organs to a rapturous wave of relief that melted the tension out of you.

It had only happened once while at work on a scene amidst a balmy summer night and came out of nowhere like an electric shock surging to your fingertips and toes, a hammer landing on your bones and leveling you on the sidewalk leading back to the company van. And that was all it took to incur a ruinous sort of anger in the two hulking men.

"You're going to take this bag, pack some shit, and you're leaving. Tonight." Hoss had to shake out the dust on the old duffle bag he pulled from somewhere in his car. "You ain't gonna tell me the reason, but I know he did something to you. T.J.'s calling in a favor."

"No. Don't—don't do anything. Don't try to come to the house—" There was a bandage around your wrist that you couldn't stop fiddling with. "I don't know what'll happen if you do. Just fucking don't."

"Nah, not us." T.J. slapped his phone back into the clip on his belt loop, eyeing the motions of your fingers on your wrist uneasily. "One of my old buddies—name's Roscoe—said he wants to handle it. Apparently, he and your guy have a history of some kind. He says to be ready to go by three."

The meaning behind what he said was left nebulous and concerning to you, even after you returned home with the duffle bag and started pulling things from your closet. Some ways across your room, high up on the wall and out of your reach was a clock. Its monotonous ticking brought your eyes over to it.

It was just after one-thirty, still enough time to change your mind if you wanted to. There was something so effortlessly easy about following along to the whims of other people. It felt safe, reassuring—their confidence was infallible. Not once in four years had T.J. or Hoss given you a reason to doubt their intentions, but right now, it boiled over in your mind.

But where will I go? What am I going to do? He'll find me. He'll find me. Montague would find you, but he wouldn't stop you from leaving. You could see it with clarity—him perched on the armrest of a chair, watching you walk through the door. He'd give you a headstart, a few days, maybe a few weeks.

You weren't sure you knew what to do without him. There was nowhere else in the world you could go, no one you could confide in that wouldn't be destroyed. He would keep your heart beating all the while breaking you apart until he had his fill, reminding you that this was how it was meant to be. This was how he showed you how you belonged.

And you—silly little you with your consciousness floating on the fringes of inscrutable ecstasy and some personal purgatory built on agony in your bones and blood—would believe him.

"Going on a trip?" His voice drifted to you from the doorway, far sweeter than it usually was. "I wish you would've told me. I can't imagine what it'll be like without you here in this house. You breathe life into it."

He was lured over by your silence, fitting his fingers between your shoulder blades to push along your spine, easing away the discomfort that had settled there. It was hard not to lean into that relief, a misstep that shattered any lasting hold of willpower when he stooped his neck to sweep you into a kiss.

"Why don't you stay instead?" He knew you wouldn't be coming back, not without dragging you back himself. "Stay with me instead. Right here. In this bed."

"Montague, stop—" He pressed down harder on your lips so those words withered into guttural frustration in your throat.

The duffle bag was flung far away, opening space on your bed for him to lay you out and begin to unravel the bandages around your wrist. Once he had access, his mouth was already full against the two puncture sites.

"Stay." He wasn't playing coy now. "I'll take care of you. It wasn't enough before. I can see that now. What can I do? It'd be too easy to break your legs. What if I chained you to this bed? What if I locked you up in this room? I wouldn't mind keeping you downstairs with me, but it would be too cold for you, I think."

"I want to leave." you said, mustering your composure through tight lips while he teased the infected purple holes with his flatter teeth. "Let me go."

He smiled derisively. "I don't think you know what you want."

"I—" You balked at him, reiterating with a stumble, "I—I just want to leave. Get off."

"How will you ever survive without me?" You didn't know if you'd be able to. "You'll be all alone, all alone in a world that's just ready to tear you open and spit you back out. I've told you before: Society doesn't reward virtue over vice—only those who play along. You won't last, not after you've known and tasted me."

You couldn't bring yourself to say anything, whereas he swelled like a man who had salvaged a victory, lying himself down to kiss you again—

And then, the doorbell rang with an immense melancholic echo that you could feel vibrate up your arms and legs. Nearly a year later, you were hearing it for the first time and grasping onto the lapels of his suit vest, keeping him still when you remembered T.J.'s promise.

"Ignore it." you said.

"We have a guest—" Something in his tone made your stomach clench. "It's not polite to leave them waiting, especially at this hour."

Montague had untangled himself from you and was gone before you could stop him. Another wave of pain put you on the floor when you moved. Drool piled from your mouth. An ache so unreal pounded in the wrist he had played with. The crawl to your duffle bag was far, arduous in that every inch felt like carrying stones on your back.

I'm going to die. I might as well already be dead. You didn't have any more time to wait, so you slung the strap over your shoulder and used the wall to guide you along the quiet hallway, bumping into every pedestal and display where Montague's most treasured things had stayed undisturbed.

You were one of them, something he could keep on the second floor with the rest of his stuff, but unlike brittle porcelain and fraying embroidery—he could break you as much as he wanted, again and again and again, and fit you back whole. He could do it forever while you wasted, longing for an end he would never give you.

But as you crept along the bleak wallpaper and all of his curios, you were so gentle with them, steadying any wobbling base or piece as you went. The central staircase was close, voices at the bottom of it faint and unintelligible, drifting alongside you as though part of the house—

The air exploded.

Just once.

A single gunshot brought back all the alertness to your body, neck and shoulders at full length, pain dulled to where you could shuffle faster and look off the bannister at the landing below.

Montague was staring back up at you from the floor, entirely still and soundless. His jaw was unhinged, askew, frozen in a position that should've been impossible. A black hole gaped between his eyes, but didn't bleed.

"If you're not ready, that's going to be bad news." Another man stood nearby sheathing a gun, unfamiliar and yet with sameness in the way his gaze felt hollow and reached through you. "I'm repaying my debts. I'd like to make good on this one."

You were slow descending the stairs, even slower while you rounded Montague's body and denied yourself the chance to stop. Something invisible wanted to pull you to him, plow your knees into hard marble and weep over his chest. However, your insides bending in disgust and twinges in your bones kept you onward.

This man, Roscoe, was just as sickly-seeming and gray as the other, every slot of space on his arms and neck filled with images of religious iconography and portraits of saints—Mary being the only one you recognized with just a glance. It was tempting to touch him, something he noticed and stepped out of your reach.

"Is there another way out of here?" He made a weak motion towards the front door just ajar, but his eyes were stuck on the wrist wounded and unusable to you now. "We need to go. Now."

You were racking your brain for an answer, turning half-circles in place before pointing to the archway with a clock. "There's a backdoor, but the yard is fenced in and there's nothing but forest for three miles. There's also—"

Roscoe waited expectantly, ushering you to continue when he went for the gun in its holster. "Start moving, we'll figure it out." He unloaded another round into Montague's head, a near indecipherable twitch in the fingers made the hair on your neck shoot straight out. "Silver only keeps him down. It won't kill him. Go!"

"Th—there's, there's the basement." You smacked your lips, trying to swallow around a bulge in your throat. "There's an old door. He said there are tunnels, but I don't know where they go. I don't know if he was telling the truth. I don't—"

He threw a hand into your back, thrusting you forward at least three feet. You almost didn't catch your footing. "Then that's where we're going."

"Not a friend of yours then, I assume, darling?" Montague's voice from the floor was as much of a relief as it was terrible. The silent gaps of air all around were disturbed by sharp snaps and cracking bones as his jaw moved back into place and he sat upright over his thighs. You were transfixed by the silver bullets being sucked into his skull, holes shrinking until they closed completely. "I'm not surprised you're still fraternizing with the wrong crowds, Roscoe. You and that entire Society have always been a fucking eyesore."

Roscoe readied his aim. "Parasite."

Montague laughed all the way to his feet, tugging at the edge of his vest to make it neat again. He opened his mouth just enough to let his tongue roll out, shards of silver bullets tinkling as they hit marble underfoot. "You can't take what's mine."

He looked to you, stepping closer every time Roscoe moved you back with his arm. "Come here. Come back to me, darling. This is where you belong. This is your home. You belong here with me, here with everything that you know."

"He doesn't mean that."

Another gunshot snapped you to attention, blinking out of a stupor you hadn't realized you were in.

The bullet landed in Montague's forehead, teetering his balance in such a way that his back curved towards the floor, arms hanging like useless instruments, yet he still somehow kept his soles planted. "Time to go. Get to the basement."

Roscoe didn't fail to reach you this time, running tight on your heels through the house to the basement floor. He stopped partway to the old door to help you scour the duffle bag for a key—one attached to the chatelaine Montague had given you the day you accepted to move in.

Your breaths were ragged, heart ablaze and beating against your ribs. In that moment, as you flipped through the assortment of keys with an unsteady, slippery grip, you wondered if Montague heard your blood racing in your veins, if he could follow the suffocating drumbeat your heart made in your ears.

Just above, fast approaching the locked basement door, came a thunderous roar so inhuman and reverberating that it scared the clip of keys out of your hands into a clattering heap on the floor. Time was up.

"Move!" Roscoe shoved you aside, illuminated by the hectic flare of your phone as he fit his fingers through a gap in the door and ripped the entire thing off its hinges. He pulled you by the scruff of your shirt and heaved you inside the tunnel. "Go! Go! Go!"

The first thing to hit you was a putrid smell intimately known but always through protective equipment and a respirator. And as you went deeper into the tunnel, led by a single route and the light off your phone, the dirt packed under your feet turned soft, sinking to the tops of your shoes.

And then, you saw bodies.

Numerous—countless corpses in varying stages of decay with twisted faces reflected your terror and pain right back at you. Most were intact with missing limbs or dark red chasms in their abdomens that had been scraped hollow and dry under the white light.

A few had been fully decapitated, briefly reminding you of the dead blonde woman from that night, but most of what lay stacked against the tunnel walls were emaciated figures with skin pulled so taut to their bones you could still make out their faces.

You were doubled over your knees, sucking in fetid mouthfuls of air and retching them back out on the ground. It burned in your throat, in your nostrils, and behind your eyes, but stifled your sobs as Roscoe dragged you alongside him.

"What did he do? What did he do?" You were crying, wheezing out those words on every shallow breath you took all the way to an end just ahead.

The more you thought about it, the more you smelled the rot, tasted the bitterness of your own vomit, the more came out. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

Roscoe had to let you rest in the grass once you both surfaced. One of the exits turned out to be near the house, less than half a mile. But the tunnels kept going and so did the bodies. You suspected that there wouldn't be any reach of that underground labyrinth that didn't have some form of decay along it.

The thought brought the tears back, but now you could relish the sticky summer night humidity and touch dewy tendrils of grass under your hands.

"Can you drive?" Roscoe had a pair of keys hanging from his index finger, giving you a long moment to take them. He saw confusion in your watery stare. "I'll tell you where to go, just drive."

That's how it had been for hours at this point. You kept your hands locked around the steering wheel, one stronger than the other, gnawing the inside of your cheek while ruminating everything—tonight, the night Montague had bitten you, every other night before that, and your decision to have ever trusted him.

"How long ago did he bite you?" Roscoe had the seat reclined, arms over his eyes to shield them from oncoming headlights. "It doesn't look good."

You tested your grip on the steering wheel, but you couldn't do much without a sharp sting in your wrist. "I don't know—a couple weeks ago? I've tried everything short of going to the emergency room."

"That won't help," he said. "Modern medicine can fix a dog bite, antibiotics can kill an infection, a vaccine can protect you from a virus. Those aren't going to do any good."

Solemnly, you asked, "Am I going to die?"

Roscoe didn't sit up but had your wrist in his hands, turning it in little ways that didn't aggravate you. Besides the occasional glare from passing vehicles, there was no light in the car, and the holes in your skin were hardly distinguishable, though they had gotten darker. You weren't able to move it with any ease now.

"What you need to know right now is that he's never going to stop following you." He put your hand back on the steering wheel, careful as he enclosed your fingers around it. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, what you do, where you go—a parasite finds a host, and it latches on. And it doesn't let go."

You glanced between him and the road several times, tongue wetting the dry parts of your lips. "He's a vampire—you're a vampire. There's got to be something—"

Roscoe finally sat up in his seat, now cramped sideways with his shoulders flat to the window. The car veered a bit into the other lane. "You need to understand something. What you're saying would imply he ever had any humanity. Vampires are created." He paused for a beat, waiting for the realization to strike you. "Montague was never created."

"What—what the hell is he, then?" A horn abruptly blared by, prompting you to yank the car back onto the correct side. "He drinks blood. He has teeth. He—he hunts. He doesn't like silver. His eyes are the same as yours."

Roscoe lowered his gaze, but remained in that uncomfortable position. "There's a story I heard about him once. I don't remember the details except for one: ‘If the devil exists, they're one in the same.’"

You kept your eyes on the road, counting every car that flitted on past. They were probably going to work at this hour—green numbers on the dashboard showed it just after four—and they'd be able to have a place to return to at the end of the day. Now, you didn't belong anywhere, and twenty-four hours from now you still wouldn't.

The town where you had lived with Montague for a year was long behind you, backtracking would take hours, and you wouldn't know how to get back from the direction that Roscoe had told you to go. Dim streetlamps and cozy houses with spruced yards had morphed into an endless network of concrete, signs, and off-ramps to places you'd never heard of.

It was scary how everything could change in one night, and how it did. The only semblance of normalcy to you right now were the aches throughout your body, which had returned the moment you fully comprehended that you had escaped that house.

"Why…" Roscoe looked up at you, seeing your lips shake and eyes turn red. "Why do I want to go back to him?"

He fixed himself right in the seat, tousling a hand through his hair while looking out through the windshield. "You shouldn't do that. But you'll never be able to stop running."

You never saw Roscoe again once the car ride ended several thousands of miles later, mentioning something about how he repaid his debt to T.J. and had disappeared from a restaurant you both walked into. When that happened, you sat paralyzed at your little table for most of the day with a soul-crushing realization that you were truly alone with nobody in the world—

Just like Montague said you would be.

And, for the sake of others, you'd never be able to have anyone else in your world.

It stayed that way for close to two years. The hardest part hadn't been the homelessness or constant vigilance, not the door revolving each person to come into your life since, but the fact that you still yearned for what you once had. Everything so awful about what you experienced sometimes looked like heaven when you thought about it, like soft, cloudy nostalgia from a time where the throes of agony were all you had ever known.

You were capable of thinking soberly as well, and with that came the understanding that a part of you would always want that time back—want him back. He had left you with a permanent scar and neurological damage that could never be corrected. It was anticipated you'd lose that wrist at some point in the future, but for now, you could still hold a cup and brush your teeth with enough conscious effort.

The pain never went away either, but you refused to let it impede your work in the field. And your two roommates were a couple of engineering geniuses who'd managed to make the flat more accommodating to your needs. They'd been patient with you during every step of your transition into a new life, calling you an enigma because you had nothing to your name except a dusty duffle bag and a "strange-looking dog bite" on your wrist when you first met them.

Sometimes, especially on the weekends after clinking together enough shot glasses, they tried to probe your brain for some clue as to who you were, who you had been historically. You had decided it was better that they—that no one—knew about it or what actually existed out there in the world.

And when you returned home from the lab late that Saturday night, you were surprised to find the lights off and the flat immersed in the kind of soundlessness that made your ears feel clogged with cotton.

You were slow in lowering your backpack to the floor, keeping the front door slightly ajar so a slither of light from the residential corridor slipped inside. "Jordan? Felix?"

No answer. You didn't hear anything from their bedrooms upstairs either.

"Jordan?" The nearest light switch didn't work, neither did the one after that, or any others you hunted down with the diffused beam from your phone screen. "Jordan? Felix? Are you guys home?"

It was possible they had gone out somewhere for the night and just hadn't mentioned anything to you, as unsound as that logic actually was, considering it simply wasn't their personality. But as you wandered through different rooms checking the switches, you knew you were rationalizing to keep yourself in check.

The light from the hallway still piled inside like a narrow pillar, raising all the hairs on your neck and arms, knowing that it wasn't a building-wide outage. They had never left you in a situation like this before. Something was wrong.

"Jordan! Felix! Whe—" Your foot nearly shot out from under you when you slid through something slick on the laminate. After a moment to fix yourself, bracing the edge of the countertop with a clammy palm, you steadied the white glow of your phone at the floor.

There, glistening back at you, was the vast richness of blood in a tall puddle that spread like long winding tendrils through grout in the flooring. It looked almost black under your light at a certain angle, estimating it had been there for several hours—untouched.

You held in a breath and grit your jaws together as the more you moved, the more you saw. And when the top of a head came into view, silky hair shining like fine thread before clumping together at the base where the blood had pooled the most, it was everything you could to keep yourself from hitting the floor.

Both of them were there, perfectly out of sight of the front door and completely unrecognizable. Their bodies had been left in one piece, though where their faces had once been were cavernous holes with pale, pink ribbons of flesh and fat left behind. The roundness of their skulls let blood fill inside it like a vessel. What little pieces of brain matter remained had floated to the surface.

You staggered back from them, phone loosening from your weak hand and returning them to the maw of darkness, while groping the wall behind you as far as your arm could reach. This wasn't a result of crude knife work or even bludgeoning; no, it was a slow kill, one meant to steep someone in torment so immense that you prayed to whatever was out there that they succumbed immediately.

"Help…" Your voice was trapped in your throat, barely registering as a whisper even to yourself as you sidled along the wall. "Someone—anyone, please help."

The patter of your heartbeat was torturous. Your every step back to the entrance was leaden with fear. You couldn't get your legs to move fast enough, and the light reaching in through the gap seemed to stretch on forever—further, further, and further still.

You thought back to that day you met Montague and shook his hand, noting how unnaturally cold it had been despite it being a nice day in spring. You remembered the dead blonde woman with mascara tears, and the bodies he used to decorate the tunnels, and the young man who was able to walk away that night believing it was all some shallow quarrel—never knowing he had sealed your fate.

You regretted all of it.

The door was in your reach now, and you could get out, call for help, and go back to running. This time, you wouldn't be tricked into false satiety or let anyone too close. You would see mountains and forests and oceans a thousand times over before you stopped again.

Two years hadn't been enough time for you to accumulate many things, you thought. It wouldn't be hard to leave most of it behind, just like you had before. You would unpack that old duffle bag from the back of your closet, fill it to the brink, and that would be enough.

You had your hand over smooth metal, but that cold reached greater depths in you as the door was pushed shut from behind, light shrinking away through the slot until you were swallowed whole in the dark.

"Hello, darling. I've missed you." He sounded the same against your ear. For a split second, you felt relieved. "Don't worry about cleaning up. We're not staying long."

He clamped damp fingers over your mouth before you could scream.

a/n; I hope this scratched some awful itch for you. onto the story notes:

on montague: what he is exactly is open to interpretation. tell me your theories! his character has been around in my arsenal for a very long time, but as a human cannibal in those days. he's been resurrected into something worse imo. he exists in my vampire universe more as a side-character, and, surprisingly, is not the central antagonist. he is meant to more or less be the embodiment of depravity and the consequence of a being without internal moral compass.

on mc: represents the fallacy of man and how unreliable the narrative of morality actually is, and how we as people have tendencies to twist and turn the meaning of it for our own benefit. mc in this story is not meant to be a good person, but did they deserve condemnation to a personal purgatory?

so, while this is a monster story, I wanted to parallel the treatment mc endures + mindset to the horrors of trying to escape abuse. I wanted to explore this through the lens of a monster story, though. if you suspect you are in an abusive relationship, please reach out to people to help get you out.

what's funny is that this story was originally supposed to be a dark comedy that moved towards something a little darker, and eventually turned into this. montague was initially going to just be a nuisance to mc by inserting himself into friend hangouts because "it's my house".

divider by; @/anlian-aishang

dc divider by; @/benkei-bear

if you read and enjoyed it, please share your thoughts and reblog!!

[etherealstar-writes]

I WANNA BE YOURS | LIONESSES X READER | PT 5

pairings: lionesses x reader

summary: in which you're accidentally added to a random group chat, not knowing they're all actually famous footballers, and obliviously end up having many of them competing for your love and attention.

part: five

part one here

✦ ——— ✦ ——— ✦

THE NATIONAL DIVING TEAM

the REAL karate kid @ the imposter are you still a hundred percent sure bronze is your fav?

stairway yeah y/n do you really love this woman over all the rest of them?

this old grandma?

neev NAHH 😭 GRANDMA REALLY SEEMS TO BE HAVING TROUBLE HEARING

lotte HER FACE 😭

stairway

are you sure? her? over everyone else?

willybum LMAO  this is gold

earpsy HELP HER TOP 😭

rusty metal WHAT WHERE DID YOU FIND THAT??!

stairway you shall never know i have my sources

the imposter HELP those photos of her were top teir but you guys i've already told you she's the only one i know yet i'm still learning okay and besides, i think she's a sweet old grandma

stairway dammit

rusty metal thank you y/n even tho i don't know if i'd take sweet old grandma as a compliment or not ... but just know you're my favourite

the imposter aw i appreciate that

the REAL karate kid NAHH someone kick that rust metal out of this chat she's getting too close to my liking

willybum i agree i don't like it either

rusty metal i'm just way more slay than you all are

stairway NO WAY DID SHE JUST SAY THAT 😭

neev THE WORLD IS ENDING

rusty metal chill my dudes i've got plenty more savage swag up my sleeve

willybum NAHHH 😭

lauren 1 WHAT DID I JUST WITNESS 💀

stairway @ rusty metal do us all a favour and delete the internet from all your devices

rusty metal i'm sending you all a reaction image

elton oh god we've turned her

willybum i swear if it's a minion meme i'm jumping out the window

the imposter i'm actually scared now

lotte so am i

rusty metal

stairway LMAO NOT JAMES CHARLES 😭💀

the REAL karate kid 😭😭

the imposter HI SISTERS

rusty metal sisters?

willybum I CANT-

neev WHAT DID MY EYES JUST WITNESS-

stairway @ rusty metal do you even know who that man in the picture is?

rusty metal that is a man?

elton

stairway IM DECEASED 💀 HELP

the imposter PLS 😭 ily even more now

the REAL karate kid HUH wHaT dammit rusty grandma everyone's stealing mah girl now 😔

kie WHAT DID I JUST READ 😭

part six here

[the-daydreaming-show]

❝never a tear, baby of mine❞ — Jason Todd

dick's version

Jason was a quiet kid. So quiet and calm that he didn't was totally a child, more was like a mini adult.

NOTE:

This is like REALLY late, because I had problems with my internet and the power on me going out, so I apologize for that.

As always, thanks to our beta reader: @igotmessymind.

And wiht no further ado, I hope you find wait worth it, I apologize again and that you for reading!!

XOXO ELLA.

This story is part or the BATMOM SCARLET WITCH UNIVERSE that I have create. I hope you enjoy!!!

𝐅𝐀𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐂 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓.

WARNINGS: Mentions of child neglect; Jason (not his actual) mom death.

Contrary to popular belief, Dick was always the son who kept you and Bruce on the edge of your seats. 

People were always surprised when you told them this. Probably, because with those blue eyes and adorable dimples, your eldest son knew how to fool people so easily. But the boy had grown up in the circus and had more energy than a thunderbolt. You couldn't count the times you found him hanging from the ceiling lamps, practicing his pirouettes. He was the reason there was a strict rule at Wayne Manor about not taking your feet off the ground without adult supervision.

Jason, your baby, he was easy. People were shocked at this statement as well.

People expected him to be a little savage whenever you guys made a public appearance, whether it was at a gala or going to the market.

Yes. You had to keep him from talking to the press, because he had a habit of being verbally deadly, but other than that he was always the calmest of kids. But other than that, he never left his calm character at all times when being in public and in private as well. 

This unfounded popular belief probably had something to do with the boy being taken off the streets by you and your husband. Literally.

Your husband kidnapped a child from an alley in Gotham on a given winter night.

Mmmh, maybe Bruce was your most chaotic boy and not Dick like you thought.

You weren't in the batcave that night, so Alfred was the one supervising the computer. But when it got particularly late, just before the sun began to rise, you woke up to find that your husband still wasn't sleeping clinging to your waist like he usually did. So you decided to go downstairs to see what was going on.

You meet Alfred, waiting with a tray with three cups of freshly brewed tea.

“Are we expecting someone, Alfred?”  you asked as you approached the man preparing everything with elegance.

“That's right, Miss” the man said, looking up with amused eyes “Master Bruce has found company on tonight's patrol” he gave you the look of a father disappointed but not surprised by his son's actions. But before you could say more or ask questions, the sound of the Batmobile in the distance made you approach the platform where the car typically parked.

Bruce jumped out of the car, in his Batman suit, without any injuries that you could see, then leaned over to help a small body out of the vehicle. He was a boy, skinny to the bone, in your eyes, dressed inappropriately for the weather, and looking around with startled eyes. You looked at your husband in confusion, Bruce could practically see the question mark on your forehead. So he walked over to you, while the boy was too gawking at the cave to notice that you guys were talking to the side.

“¿Did you kidnap a child again?” you asked in a worried whisper.

“No” Bruce defended himself, pulling off the hood of his suit so that you could see all of his beautiful face in front of you. “His name is Jason” he explained to you while they both looked at the boy for a moment. Jason had stepped away from the Batmobile to look down at the edge of the platform at the void below you, his cheeks against the metal of the railings. (You were mentally grateful to have convinced Bruce to put those railings all over the cave, after that Dick started spending more time there years ago). “And I found him trying to steal the tires from the Batmobile. He was alone, and he told me that he intended to sell it to buy food” he told you, and you instinctively looked at said car.

That beastly car had almost been desecrated by the little hands of a hungry child, who didn't seem at all affected by the idea of almost robbing THE Batman. You found the situation amusing.

“Really?”, you asked your husband, smiling amused. 

All while Jason was looking fascinated at the ceiling of the cave and wondering: ¿Where did the lights hang from?. He couldn't see the roof of the place.

“Yeah. And he almost got away with it.” Bruce seemed almost proud of the boy's actions, and you couldn't feel the same way. Press your lips together in an attempt not to laugh out loud. 

“¿And how does all that explain your kidnapping him?” you asked teasingly, to which Bruce rolled his eyes in exoneration and giggled impishly at it.

“You are Bruce Wayne's wife” the boy's voice made them both look at him, but the boy was not intimidated and kept talking. “Which makes sense, because if Bruce Wayne is Batman, obviously his wife will know.” he said, more like a thought out loud than a conversation with you. “My mom used to say that she would die from one of the shoes you put up and that they showed on TV, but in the end she died from the drugs, not your shoes” he explained naturally. To which you threw your head back a bit in surprise at such a natural statement about something that must have been very sad. Looking at your husband and his eyes told you it was the first time he heard about this. “I hope you don't mind, Mrs. Wayne.” the boy apologized quickly, suddenly very aware that he was talking to two of the richest people in Gotham (and the world as well) “B told me I could spend the night here. But don't worry tomorrow, in the morning I'll leave without causing any problems” he quickly explained to you.

You looked at your husband again, and he left a memory in his mind for you to see as an explanation. He showed you how he had found the boy, how Bruce had talked him into agreeing to let him buy something to eat and then offered him a place to sleep, because the boy admitted that he was all alone. With a dead mother and a father who was in prison, the boy lived on the streets of Gotham, surviving as best he could. Jason hadn't trusted him at first, which was understandable. Who knew what he had seen living on the streets of a city like Gotham. So Bruce did the only thing he could think of to gain the boy's trust, so he could get him to safety, as he took off his mask. And Jason, faced with such a show of honesty, agreed to get on the Batmobile to return with Bruce to the cave. (Or, Bruce put the boy in the car before he could get over the shock of the news. It depends on how you look at it.)

“Oh honey. Don't worry, it doesn't bother me at all, we have plenty of space available” you assured him with a sweet smile to which the boy smiled back. It was true, since Dick had moved in with the Titans, there was too much empty space for your liking. “Come, sit down and have some tea, it will help with the cold” you said, pointing up the stairs to the main platform of the cave.

“Cool!” the boy exclaimed as they started walking. Bruce instinctively reached for your hand, not wanting you to stray too far from him, just because.

Then Jason ate a dozen of Alfred's cookies, drank all his tea, and at the end, Bruce let him touch the batcomputer, watching the boy's fascination with all the buttons. (Of course, the latter was under your and Bruce's watch. You didn't want the boy to activate some self-destruct protocol or something). He played with the satellite map for a while, showing you the places he had been and the school he used to go to before his mother died. Then he started to yawn, and you were sure the sun should have risen outside by that point.

“Well, it's time to go up” you said when you saw him yawn widely for the third time. “Come on” you stood up from your seat next to him to offer him your hand. The boy frowned at you, severely confused.

“¿Up where?” he asked, looking at your hand suspiciously, but rising to take it and follow you nonetheless. You had that effect on him. You were so pretty, and warm, and kind that he thought to himself, there was no way you were real, surely all of this must be a cruel hallucination of some kind.

“Up home, Jay” you told her as you turned to be greeted by a Bruce who had already come out of his suit and was waiting for them both on the stairs to the elevator. “We're below Wayne Manor” you explained, thinking that he was confused as to what was above your heads and why they would go there.

“Will you let me sleep in your mansion?!” the surprised boy asked. There was definitely something wrong there, there was no way two of the richest people in the city would let him sleep in his house, in one of his beds, with expensive mattresses and even more expensive sheets. Impossible.

“Of course” you said with a sweet smile, “We have many empty rooms and now one of them is yours”

“Your room is ready, young Jason.” Alfred told him, joining the walk to the elevator. “Though maybe an extra cookie or two was left in the room by accident. I hope that's not a problem for you” he said, smiling complacently, at which the boy laughed mischievously. You gave him a look that Alfred pretended not to catch, and they all went on their way while.

“I didn't think you would let me sleep at your house.” the boy admitted shyly, looking at his shoes, once again thinking aloud.

It took you a second to realize that Jason had thought she'd leave him sleeping in the cave, like a stray dog, and it broke your heart. You promised yourself to do everything you could to make that little boy feel like he deserved nothing less than the best in the world.

Jason didn't leave the mansion after that day. 

Social Services didn't put up much resistance to the adoption, for two reasons. Firstly, you and Bruce already had a pretty good record of adopting and raising Dick. And second, stirring up the issue too much would show how they hadn't looked for Jason after he had run away from his last home. From what you've seen, his file only contains basic information leading up to the fact that he was supposed to be in foster care with 10-15 other kids, but clearly they've been on the streets for quite some time. And Jason seemed to have adjusted quickly when the caseworker came to visit for the first few weeks, at least to her standards. But in your eyes, the child was far from having adapted to the idea of being part of the family.

Jason gets up early, before everyone else in the house.

You had learned from the experience with Dick that establishing a strict bedtime schedule was important in the long run. So you knew he was sleeping because you watched him before you went to sleep yourself. So the boy sleeps well and you could confirm it. He had admitted to you that it had been difficult in the early days to sleep at night because he could never really be asleep while living on the streets. Something about the heavy blankets over him made him fall asleep peacefully. His lights went out before he could even finish laying his head on the pillow. Of course, this one you had invested a lot of money in more blankets for the child, which was the only thing that Jason had allowed to be bought for his room.

He assured you that the room was fine as is, and it did not need to be changed. What you'd called bullshit all along, because there was no way a kid would like a room that was the closest thing to a blank page. But you hadn't pushed him, waited until he was more comfortable in the new  environment. 

So the boy was sleeping in a guest room he didn't want to make entirely his own. He was up before anyone else in the house, even Alfred. He would get ready and go down to breakfast alone. He got what he needed by scaling the counter and cabinets if necessary, leaving Alfred to clean up the marks on his slippers. This until Jason overheard him, after which he started taking off his sneakers before climbing up to find the cereal. He ate breakfast in silence, looking out the kitchen window at the patio, then washed everything he had used by hand, even though there is a state-of-the-art dishwasher in the kitchen. He then left the kitchen and got lost in the mansion. 

Bruce found him in the mansion's library a couple of times. Jason said that he was trying to practice his reading, since he hadn't been to school since before her mom died because he had to take care of her when her dad was arrested. Your husband offered his help, but the boy refused. And since Jay realized that his hideout had been discovered, he began to roam the mansion, picking random rooms to hide in during the day when you and Bruce began to keep him company in the library. 

The child hides and avoids both of you. You at first thought that was a repeat of Dick's first few months, that Jason was mad at the world. Consequently, you would expect anger and yelling anytime you ran into Jason around the mansion. You mentally braced yourself for the thought of all that chaos again, how he would sneak out of school when he started once the holidays were over and the whole package was over. 

This time, you were ready and prepared to help him with that rage. You won't let it consume you like Dick did for a long time because you didn't know how to handle it. This time you will do well.

But Jason's eyes would light up when you or your husband greeted him in the mornings after meeting him at the house. He clung to the hands of one or both of you every time you went out into the street. He would hug your waist when you hid him from the paparazzi in the park. (You had a no-photos rule for your kids, only official photos approved by you and your husband, so you and the paparazzi didn't have the best relationship in the world.) He let you guys hug him and look at him without problem. He never initiates affection, but he clung to it when it was given to him, both from you and from Bruce, or Alfred even.

So you were confused, to say the least.

However, you had learned your lesson with Dick. There were situations in which you had to be active and aggressive to help your children. So you talked to Bruce and you both decided it was time to talk to Jason about this peculiar pattern.

Then Alfred told you that if they both faced him at the same time, it would be too intimidating for the boy, causing him to shut down more than help.

Blessings be Alfred. He has always been the smartest in the house (don't tell that to Bruce).

Like every night, Jason had already gotten ready and tucked themselves into bed. Also, he had offered to help Alfred with the cleaning like every day, but the butler had refused as he did a lot lately. So he decided to do the whole night routine without bothering you: he brushed his teeth, put on his pajamas, got into bed and read a book, like you usually offer to do. It cost him less than before, but still some words were complicated. 

You arrived shortly after he had finished reading his fourth story of the night and had accidentally gotten hooked on reading another one. You knocked on the door softly as you opened it.

“Oh, you're already in bed,” you commented, surprised that the boy had done everything himself. Usually, he lets you help with all of this without a problem, so you're disappointed that he won't let you help him.

“Yes, and I just read one story,” he said, quickly trying to hide that he had disobeyed the one-story rule. Jason didn't want you to be angry. He knew you wouldn't hurt him, but he feared your disappointment more than your fury.

“Really?”, you asked excitedly. You knew how hard he had worked to improve his reading these past few weeks to prepare for school. “That's amazing, honey,” you told him as you closed the door softly and walked to sit next to him. Jason smiled happily at your tone of pure joy and pride in his accomplishment.

“Yes,” Jason said as he closed the book and left it on the nightstand, excited to tell you about his progress, “I still have a hard time with some words. But I will fix it before school starts.” He made it clear to you right away, so don't worry.

The truth is that Jason didn't want to bother. Not you, not Alfred, not Bruce. In his mind, that was the way to be a good son. That was what his parents had taught him.

Willis Todd hated it when Jason was in the way. He always ran into him around the house (although that was probably beer-related), and that ended badly for Jason. So Jason learned quickly to stay out of the way so as not to be in the way, not in the sight of his parents, because that was good. His mother never said anything against that arrangement, so he always assumed she agreed.

When his dad left, disappearing without any notice (Jason eventually found out on the streets that he had been arrested and sent to prison), it became difficult for his mom not to see him since she had to do everything. But she was too high to notice half the time. And the other half, when she was aware of him, she wasn't aggressive towards him, she went from hugging him lovingly to crying on her shoulder. As if Catherine were the child and Jason was the father, she was comforting. Then she didn't get up after one dose, and the police came after he called an elderly woman who lived next door to her to ask her to call an ambulance. Then they put him in a couple of foster homes. But no one paid much attention to him, and it wasn't worth putting up with the other children, especially the older ones, who enjoyed tormenting him for being smaller. So he ended up on the street, taking care of himself. It was more natural for him to depend on himself alone than to let them take care of him.

“Well,” you said, settling next to him against the headboard, “but there's no need for that. That's why you're going to school — to learn,” you explained as you ran your hand through his curls. “It's okay if you don't know everything before that.”

“But I don't want to be behind the rest of my classmates, they surely already know how to read very well,” he explained regretfully, somewhat embarrassed.

Only once had his parents been called to the school he had gone to in Park Row. The teacher meant well, for sure. But telling her father that Jason seemed to need a little more help than usual with his reading and that it would be a good idea to move him to a school with a special program for kids like him only made her father see it. And that was never something good. He didn't want you to feel upset with him for that, either. 

“It doesn't matter what other children know or don't know, Jason,” you assured him lovingly. “It matters that you learn without fear of not knowing. It's not a bad thing to not know how to do something that's hard for you to do, sometimes,” you tried to explain, and the boy nodded slowly, processing the information you had given him.

Jason thought for a moment, absorbing what you said, but he was not sure how to respond in a way that would make you happy but not be a nuisance to your daily life. But you didn't let him get to a question because you asked him one in return.

“Jason, my dear,” you called, breaking the boy from his thoughts, who looked at you with big, blue eyes. So precious your baby was. “I have a very important question for you, and I need you to answer me honestly,” you asked him seriously, to which the boy adjusted himself with a worried frown to face you more.

It reminded you of Bruce, who made the same gestures when you talked to him seriously.

Your heart tightened with pride at how your two boys, Dick and Jason, were beginning to imitate Bruce so soon after meeting him. Despite all of his doubts, he was someone the kids immediately looked to as an example. You reminded him repeatedly, despite his complaints, because he needed to be reminded that being Batman wasn't the only way he could make a difference to people. He did it every day in his home, with your children, and with you.

“Yes, Mrs. Wayne - Sorry, y/n,” he corrected himself quickly, but you thought nothing of it despite the way he cringed in place at his own mistake.

“Jay, do you like being here with me, with Bruce, and with Alfred? Are you happy being part of this family?” you asked a little fearfully, sounding as soft as possible so that it didn't feel like an interrogation.

Jason was stunned. His blue eyes looked at you in confusion: Why would you ask such a question? Of course, he was happy, Jason had everything he could need to survive and the company of you and Bruce. Why would you think he wasn't happy with you?

You saw the confusion painted on his face the moment you asked, so you decided to elaborate a little more on the situation.

“You see, Bruce and I have noticed that you don't seem to be around the house much even though you're here. You even get up to have breakfast alone. It seems like you are hiding from us, Jay. Which is why Bruce and I are worried” you began to explain in a soft tone, “Did something happen? Is there something bothering you?

“No, there's nothing that bothers me,” Jason assured quickly, so worried about the situation. “I just don't want to be in the middle,” the boy explained, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Which made your heart break, and you wondered why he would believe that.

Would there have been any comments from you or Bruce?

Or something you guys did that gave Jason that impression?

Whatever it was, it needed a solution because it couldn't be further from the truth. Personally, you had missed having a child in the house, and so had Bruce, despite his attempt to pretend that Dick's departure hadn't bothered him.

Your husband and eldest son had a very ugly fight before he went to live in the Teen Titans Tower. He had arranged for you and Alfred to serve as intermediates. But that didn't change your oldest son's decision to move out of the house. A lot of his stuff was still at Wayne Manor, but he wasn't, which made it a little depressing for you.

“Why do you think you're in the middle?” you asked sadly.

“Well, I know it bothers adults when kids are all over them needing things and asking questions. So I try not to be too intense with you because I am very grateful because now I am part of the family.” Jason shrugged as he looked at his hands, trying to remove his cuticles. A nervous habit that you had noticed.

Unsure of what to do, you played it safe and hugged Jason over the shoulder with one arm, holding him close to you, while with your other free hand, you stopped the suggestion of pinching your cuticles by taking his hand and caressing his plasma instead.

You thought for a moment about how you could handle the whole situation without the need to abruptly destroy the belief system and give it a crisis. You also didn't want all of this to sound like a reprimand for believing something that couldn't be further from the truth, because it wasn't his fault. But you weren't going to leave things like that.

“You know, Jay. Bruce and I are not like other adults," you started feeling a little like Mean Girls' mom and her 'I'm not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom', which made you want to roll your eyes, but you kept going. “We love having you around. Dick got us used to that, you know, so we’d love for you to get in the middle as much as you like Jay,” you explained, and the boy looked at you with wide eyes, a gleam of hope in them.

“Really?” he asked doubtfully.

“Really serious,” you assured him with a smile, which Jason couldn’t help but quickly spread. “Besides, you can always know without a doubt that as long as you are in the middle of your father and mine, you will never have to worry about anything. Because you will be safe and sound,” you assured him gently, moving a hair from his forehead and then kissing the area lovingly.

“I like that,” Jason whispered, as if the thought had escaped him, looking at you with stars in his eyes. He really liked that idea.

Jason ran down the stairs while you calmly entered the house with bags of clothes in hand. Alfred was behind you with more bags and resigned to the fact that you had once again bought extra clothes for the whole family. Yes, you also bought him a couple of new sweaters, the kind he liked, but he insisted they were too expensive.

You didn't finish passing through the living room towards the stairs when Jason ran up and hugged your waist without thinking twice. Now, at thirteen years old, it would probably be time for you to start asking him to take care of the force with which he threw himself into his arms whenever he saw you. But the truth is that you didn't want him to. If you two fell, so be it, but you would never ask Jason to walk away. Not after what it was like the first time your son was in the house.

“Hello, sweet boy,” you said to Jason while hugging as best you could with the bags in your arms. “I got you another one of those hoodies that you said you liked. I got it in red, I thought that color would look good on you”.

Jason didn't stop hugging your waist as the three of you went upstairs to leave the bags so he could try on what you had bought him. Nor when, after trying everything on and being satisfied with his new clothes, you went back downstairs to have tea and eat cookies in the library. Not even when the two of them left there to greet Bruce when he arrived late from the Wayne Enterprise, and he received the same hug, but with more balance than you. Dick arrived, and Jason was still clinging to your waist until all sat down to eat dinner.

“Was I like that?” Dick asked in a mocking whisper to Alfred.

“Was?” mocked back the butler “Master Dick, you are still exactly like that”

𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭: @some-lovely-day @simonsbluee @yuki-chan23 @miyakana @myst3batz @otchae @d3m0n8ch1ld @marsenbie @mynameisnotlaura @andieperrie18 @igotmessymind @amarawayne @kodzukenmaaa @mellowdiy @noah-uhhh-what @blarba-girl @dead-sane-stuff @huhuhhuhh @kimmis-stuff @undecided-shipper @poppyalice2001 @lafrone @voodoo-writer @lilvampirina @astrial @maliagurl @kazhaelfuhghi @poppyalice2001 @totallynotme420 @calsjack @igotmessymind @pato-spoiler-27 @urminebutidontwantyou @cluelessteam

[coentinim]

Crime scene

ADULT + DARK CONTENT - MDNI !

JPM is beautiful in the act of killing, how can his wife not appreciate that?

Contains: descriptions of murder (not of reader), gore, blood, sexual content (at a fresh crime scene), you are (almost) as deranged as him, you are married to him, dead dove - please feast <3

I am not responsible for what you see on the internet!

Edit: forgot to tag people T_T

@fear-is-truth @taintandviolent @feefymo @slutforgarlogan @silverzoomies @yandereunsolved @maeriavizsendingjpmdose @evanpetersbf @carniv0reev

You heard it again. Those screams, those ear piercing, mind shattering screams of some poor soul being gutted alive. Supposedly, the walls were soundproof, but you could hear well and clear the wails of another one of James' victims in the next room. Perhaps the wall connecting your rooms was the only one he didn't line with asbestos... and on purpose for sure. He wants you to hear.

A young woman - no older than 25, judging by the noise - was currently being sliced open slowly and deliberately by your husband's hand. After only being married to him for a few weeks, you could already tell apart the screams of terror before a quick death and pained, tortured wails of a slow one. And during this time, you've grown accustomed to this peculiar hobby of his, even fond of it at times. His bloodlust and cruelty were undeniably fascinating, and having the honour of being the only person he never wished to harm was something to cherish. His debauchery was just contagious, really!

Curiosity had overcome you, and you decided to check what exactly was your beloved doing as he worked. And oh, were you amazed at the sight when you entered his room.

The screaming was so much louder and clearer here, begs for mercy - even for a quicker, painless death - made for a terrifying noise, but you paid them no mind. Oh no, you focus was on your husband only. He was a true artist, the way he worked the woman's body like it was an instrument, a work of art for art's sake, a horrible perversion of what a piece should look like. A bloody image it was - James was cutting all over her skin, ignoring the wails, and carving flesh with quick, steady strokes of the knife. You couldn't help but come closer, almost beside him, and you made your presence known by walking into his line of sight. He raised his eyes from the half-dead girl to you and you noticed his expression. He did not look human, not even one bit. His eyes were widened, pupils engorged and cheeks flushed bright red. He wore the mask, the strange mask you didn't know the purpose of that made him look like a horrible monster mothers warn their children about. He did not wear the apron he usually did, though. His white shirt (one of the informal, "not as good ones", you recalled) was half unbuttoned and stained crimson with the explosions of the woman's blood. In the act, he looked like a beast. He was panting when he stopped skinning the woman to gaze at you.

"My darling, I didn't- hah, disturb you, did I?"

His voice from behind the metal and leather sounded different, too. Savage. Inhuman.

"No, Jimmy, I was just curious..."

You gazed at the wailing woman on the table. Dear god, she was a mess... her arms and thighs were a mosaic of cuts, some more refined and artistic, some deep and rough, careless. She was almost bare, her under dress riding up enough to only cover her breasts, and only a small pair of knickers on her bottom. You hummed in approval; James listened to your rules against seeing his victims naked unless necessary. But you quickly turned your attention to her stomach, because that was certainly a sight to behold! Around the navel, there were a few deep lacerations, one of them definitely deep enough to penetrate muscle and cut into the intestine. The blood flowing out in rhythm with the erratic pulses of her heart covered her pristine underwear, making her look downright pornographic. It wasn't hard to understand his savage interests in such moments - the bloody, shining gash on her stomach was a curious sight, to say the least. It truly looked nasty; that must be why she was writhing in pain so much. She seemed to beg for your help, but it was unintelligible - besides, there was no saving her now, she had lost too much blood. Not that you would have saved her otherwise - she would just run to the nearest police officer and get you and your husband arrested. Accepting James might be hard at times, but seeing him executed while people leered at his undeniably painful demise would have been much harder. He was hard to love, and hard to let go of.

You trailed your hand over her split stomach, ignoring the thrashing and protests.

"May I?", you asked.

James' eyes lightened up even more, humanity mixing with the animal in him.

"Would I ever deny my darling wife to share my pleasures?", he replied in his syrupy voice distorted by the metal mask, the terrifying sound making your head spin. He was the only one who could scare you yet make you feel so safe.

You kept looking him in the eyes, barely visible under the eye protection, while slowly putting two fingers into the woman's wound. You were terrified, but you just wanted to tease your James just a bit, just a tad... It was wonderful. The quiet, pained screech, the blood exploding under your fingertips and the pulse of her insides. It felt like touching something slimy, is that what James felt upon fingering your cunt? He absolutely adores doing it, and now you see why; the texture is nothing short of divine. Your ministrations had a great effect on your husband, as he started panting and gripped the edge of the table the woman was sprawled on. Oh, he was hungry like a wolf at that moment. You let go of the victim's body after just two seconds, slightly disgusted with yourself, observing your bloodied hand and James' face. It was hard to see anything but his nose and eyebrows through the mask, but you knew he was more aroused than ever. In fact, you feared him. He was terrifying in his murderous attire, even more so now that his body language radiated pure hunger. You held his killer gaze for a few long seconds until something made him glance away. Right. The woman.

To your surprise, she was still making noises despite the blood loss. James walked right past you, close to her face, and held her cheek almost tenderly. Her gaze was unfocused, but she tried to squirm away from his touches. In response he just gripped her chin tight and tutted at her hazy thrashes. He raised his blade and sliced her neck open, so deep the blood exploded in his face. She went quiet rather quickly after that.

You saw him kill a dozen times, yet it always stunned you just how predatory it looked. His muscles taut, the vulgar display of vitality, as if he absorbed the life force of his newest victim.

Slowly, James turned to face you. He was dead silent, and at that angle you couldn't see his eyes. Your instinct told you to back away, so, naturally, you stepped forward, your thighs slick with arousal from the fear and guilt.

The growl that came from his throat was definitely unexpected. But more surprising was his direct action - he gripped your shoulders tightly and led you into the chaise-lounge next to the table. He pushed you hard onto it, making you gasp, and he pressed your shoulders to the soft pillows as if you were to be another victim. That particular thought went straight to your pussy.

"James... maybe after you clean up after yourself?", you suggested in the most sultry voice you could. Ah, did you have to tease him so much? He was impatient, after all! The tension from the kill had to be resolved somehow.

"Nonsense, dove-" he was already pulling up your gown, "I need to take my fellow murderess... now "

You bit your lip, nervous. Were you really a murderess?... that girl was already half dead when you touched her wound! You were merely an accomplice, and...

Oh, you forgot you didn't wear any panties until you felt the cold air hit your pussy. He gripped your thighs and left blood handprints all over, making you forget your guilt. Your dress was all red now, too, as he used it as some sort of napkin to clean himself after his meal. He was savage today, but even now he remembered to at least taste you before taking you. He attempted to take off his mask and you whined.

"James... no, keep it"

He chuckled darkly. Then, he spoke with his metallic, leathery voice:

"Oh? If that is to your tastes, dearest wife..."

He wasted no more time after that. He almost ripped the silky dress off in his hurry, and slipped out of his pants with an impatient growl. Oh, you looked like a prey ready to be ravaged. He groped you all over before sinking his painfully hard cock inside you, leaving bloody handprints on your waist and breasts and neck. You looked like a masterpiece of pain. You whined, the stretch was pretty painful despite your wetness. He looked like a feral beast above you; his terrifying mask making him look like a strange monster taking you all for himself. The thought felt so erotic you could barely stand it, and you whined. Oh, his girth felt so invigorating...

He fucked the same way he killed. Impatiently, roughly, and yet meticulously, both in control and completely out of it. His moans were distorted by the mask, and it felt as if he was all around you, he was in your brain as much as in your cunt. It felt divine, to be violated by that beastly killer, by your beloved husband. Sweet, honeymoon lovemaking with him was terrific, but the desecrating pace he treated you with right now was a feeling no other man could recreate. You gripped his shoulders, staining the back of his shirt with your bloodied fingers, bringing his body closer. Each thrust was punctuated by your obscene moans; he slid himself in at a slightly upward angle, hitting your sweet spot hard each time.

You whined and whined, and he slid his bloody fingers past your parted lips, making you taste his victim’s blood. Your guilt was all-encompassing, yet it felt so good to give in, even just once. Morality was for the stupid, uneducated folk, James used to say. Regulations, rules, faith; all of it is supposed to limit freedom of thought and action. You believed every word of his, no matter how ridiculous it all sounded in the context of his serial murders.

He always knew when you were close, always knew just how and when to toy with your pussy with his red hands and when to edge himself so you two finish at the same time. He had a thing for it, it felt like unity, like your bodies were truly one.

You thought he would never kill you, but he did it quite frequently. You died a little death many times with him, unravelling beautifully under his strong body, core exploding with spasms and locking his seed deep in you. You two came as one, him filling you up, making your mixed releases drip down and combine with all the blood. In this moment, you were his victim and he was your killer, taking you from life and lifting your soul up, or maybe dragging it down to hell, for a few seconds of blissful pleasure.

You always envied his victims. Oh to see his face as the last thing before you fade away, oh to feel him inside you as you pass! The blood all over your body, his mask and the body nearby made you feel such eroticism and guilt...

He pulled out with a whine and tucked himself into his pants, pulling your dress over your dirty body soon after. The casual nature of the situation made your head spin in confusion. That was it?... he can just get up like that, like nothing happened? You were panting, staring at his body, beautiful and shiny with sweat. He took his mask off, revealing a devilish grin.

“Miss Evers! Bring me fresh linens and draw a bath for my wife, would you?”

[mauesartetc]

FREE PALESTINE MASTERPOST

Trying to keep this blog more art- and creativity-focused in general, so I'll be removing the Gaza-related reblogs that are about a month old. But I'll use this post as a permanent archive that will update periodically (some of this information will grow dated as the situation develops, but I think it's important to keep a record of just how fiercely opposed people were to Israel's actions from this moment forward). We should all continue to raise our voices about this, and refuse to support politicians who enable genocide. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around. Keep going.

October 2023

-Donation links

-Social media links

-US congress ceasefire script

-Decolonizepalestine.com (information, mythbusting)

-More donation links

-Ways to pressure politicians for a ceasefire

-HUGE resource list

-"Is there anything I can do to help Palestinians besides call my representatives and beg them to stop killing people?"

-"We are isolated now"

-Palestine and landback

-210 PAGES of dead people's names.

-Bail money for Palestine Action

-Article list

-US action items

-Boycott info

-Grand Central Station shut down by protestors

-Message to white American citizens

-UK ceasefire petition

-How YOU can help Palestine (regularly updated!)

-"Please try amidst all this fury and grief to still have faith in the common people." (+donation links)

-Reminder about protest etiquette and privacy

-Prints for Palestine

-"We have no communication with the outside world. They are using their military might to harm us. We have no power but the power of God, no one but God. Please, pray for us." (spoken over mosque speakers)

-DAILY donate button + more donation links

-"Doesn't Israel have a right to exist too?"

-Script for US Congress calls

-Queerness under apartheid

-Sudan is also at war

-Hundreds of thousands of protestors in London

-Half a million.

-Tips for folks with phone anxiety

-This comic got real

-European and Canadian ceasefire scripts

-"The people of Gaza see the protests. That is reason enough to come even if nothing else." WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU. WE ARE HERE.

November 2023

-More genocides than just Palestine

-How to buy e-sims to circumvent Gaza's internet blackout

-"Occupying territories is illegal. Resistance to occupying forces is legal."

-MASSIVE resource list

-"For decades now the media has told us Muslim men are savages, terrorists, wife beaters and everything in between. I want you to challenge this trope the next time you see it in the media. Let these photos serve as a reminder."

-"Don't stop talking about the Palestinian genocide. IT'S WORKING."

-UN resignation letter

-Israel won't allow Irish or Brazilian citizens to leave Gaza

-"Palestine must never be forgotten. Promise me that." (from the documentary "Children of Shatila")

-Gifs of pro-Palestine rallies around the world

-Support Palestine's last kufiya factory

-Protestors flood the streets in Washington DC

-Explanation of why calling representatives is a numbers game

-FREE ebooks on the history of this conflict

-Petition to screen films by Palestinian directors

-Call to boycott Gal Godot's work

-Indigenous activists block weapons shipment to Israel

-If you're attending a protest, DON'T TELL YOUR GOVERNMENT SHIT. Y'know, friendly advice.

-Links to support Palestine Action and Palestine Legal. Get in the way.

-Parallels between Israel and the surveillance tactics used by NYC mayor Eric Adams

-Don't spiral into doomerism. Persevere.

-Want a different strategy to contact your representatives? Try faxing them!

-Florida rep Michelle Salzman calls for the death of all Palestinians

-"The phone doesn't stop" :)

-Indian trade unions call on the government to scrap deals with Israel

-An overview of Israel's human rights violations, and two major political groups that have exacerbated Zionism in the US

-Israeli man explains why he's protesting

-"Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us."

-US House of Representatives votes to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel

-Canadian email campaign and petitions

-"Canada's First Nation standing with Palestine"

-"Freedom is infectious as it is just and no one is free until they ALL are."

-Israeli forces invade al-Shia hospital

-Leaked list of weapons the US has sent to Israel

-Only 32% of Americans believe the US should support Israel

-Cop City action demonstrates how to protest effectively

-Refugee grandmother "doesn't have to imagine a multicultural and integrated Palestine- she remembers it".

-Protestors block the Bay Bridge in San Francisco (plus bail fund)

-Israeli forces attack schools in northern Gaza. SCHOOLS.

-Journalist shares an update from an Indonesian hospital and pleads for others to spread it around as it "may be the last video we are able to send"

-Scottish Parliament votes overwhelmingly to demand a ceasefire

-Sobering texts from a friend providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. "They have been distributing guns to the civilian settlers and allowing them into the West Bank to terrorize people" "We have been given option to leave. None took it"

-"the absolute bare minimum in this situation is 1) a complete ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid in Gaza, 2) complete halt of all military foreign aid to the Israeli government, 3) the Israeli government being prosecuted for its war crimes in the International Criminal Court, and 4) land back and reparations for the Palestinian people. free Palestine means free Palestine, not just temporarily stop carpet bombing Palestine."

-"It's important that you keep posting and speaking about the ongoing genocide. This 5 day agreement isn't the end of things."

-Boosting the incredible, FREE daily donate button again

-Protests at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

-"REMINDER THAT ANTISEMITES AREN'T WELCOME HERE AND WON'T BE TOLERATED"

[ecstasyhighway]

You & I | E.Williams

chapter i

CW, ellie is a pervert here she watches the reader masturbate… there is smut towards the end guys (im not good at smut but i tried my best) masturbation (reader and ellie) , stalking, y/n is used

this might be straight cheese ngl…im not good at ts 😭 but enjoy ig

wc: 1.4k

read the prologue here ch 2

———————

“Hi! Hello”

A voice chimes from behind her, she turns around, and a lump forms in her throat.

it's…you.

Ellie quickly clears her throat and begins to talk, her eyes scanning your features. She is infatuated with you, you’re gorgeous, ethereal even…

“hi sorry how may I help you?”

“Yes, do you guys happen to have 21’s new album?”

you ask so sweetly, Ellie watches you speak, your oh-so-beautiful smile just making her want to fall to her knees. Ellie signals you to follow her, heading back to the rap section of the store, her eyes scan the shelves as she looks for the album, She reaches up and pulls out the ‘American Dream’ and hands it to you.

“This one?”

You smile and giggle a little, “Yes! this is exactly what I've been looking for… I couldn’t find it anywhere else I've looked all over thank you um…?” You trail off looking for a name tag, “..Ellie, thank you”

Ellie smiles, her face feeling warm, she knows she's red as fuck right now and her feeling embarrassed about it is just making her even more flustered “Y-yeah no problem, is that all? I can ring you up over here” She chuckles softly trying to cover the anxiety in her voice.

You and Ellie head towards the register, she rings you up and you hand her your card. Ellie examines your card trying to get your name, she needs to know, she knows nothing about you, just some things like you like 21 savage and Tyler. But that’s not nearly enough, she needs to know everything about you, things even you don’t know about yourself...

“y/n? That's a really pretty name” She smirks and takes a mental note of your first and last name, she will most definitely be looking you up later.

“oh thank you so much!” you say with joy in your voice, “I might come back another time, I uhh really like music and I really want to learn how to play an instrument so maybe I’ll see you again?” you ask so innocently, Ellie, on the other hand, was freaking out on the inside, she just thought you were so gorgeous and she needed to know more about you and she needed you to come back

“yeah, uhm I teach acoustic guitar, and piano so if you ever want lessons just show up, I'm here pretty much all the time, haha yeah this store is actually my life and-“ She cuts herself off realizing she's just rambling about nothing. “sorry yes you will definitely see me again” she is mentally cursing at herself for being such a nervous wreck in front of you.

“awesome, I’ll see you laters Ellie” and with that, you turn around and focus your attention on your phone, a message dings and you begin typing away. Ellie noticed this and is already feeling a certain way.. do you have a boyfriend? girlfriend? Are you single..? its okay she’ll figure all that out.

Once Ellie’s shift was over she went down to her music room. She sat there for a second and put on some jazz, she grabbed her laptop and began her long and tedious search, y/n l/n, she scrolled through the search page filled with many other y/n l/n’s. she stops. ‘bingo’ she thinks to herself, she found you ‘y/n.oncam’ on pretty much everything. Luckily all your accounts are public, unluckily she notices that you literally post your entire life on the internet, ‘do you know how many creeps are on the internet? oh once I have you to myself no one will be able to ever know anything personal about you’ she scoffs.

Here's what she knows, you’re 20, you’re single, you like to read, and you lovee music.. you live in an apartment with a big window.

Wait, she knows that complex, yeah she knows where that is, it's right across the street from the bookstore Dina works at. Shit Dina! Ellie forgot that she promised to bring Dina a limited edition 2Pac vinyl she had in storage. Ellie jumped up, grabbed her jacket, went to the storage to grab the record. She gets in her car and heads to Dina’s bookstore.

‘D are you still at work?’

‘yes’

‘I'm bringing the record rn’

*Dinabina like a message*

Ellie arrived at the bookstore, the words ‘Hidden Pages’ flickering softly as one of the letters had gone out. Ellie walks into the store and walks up to Dina, who is reading.

“D, I got the record”

“yayy thank you Ellie” Dina walks up to her smiling and gives her a hug “I’ll give it back as soon as I'm finished listening to it”

Ellie said her goodbyes and left the store.

She looks around trying to find the apartment, she found it. ‘Havenwood apartments’ She walks to the tall building and examines it and she spots the only big window, no curtains, lights on, and a woman's figure dancing around. She gets closer to the building, not too close but close enough to see into the window. Sure enough, it's you, dancing and singing, oblivious to the world around you, if you would just stop and look out of your window you would see Ellie, watching you closely, biting her lip and just enjoying the view of you.

You had gotten tired, turned off the music and began getting ready for bed. Oh, but that feeling between your legs was getting stronger, you tried to ignore it, you’ve been pent up and so busy lately, mostly because of work and shit. ‘Fuck’ you curse quietly to yourself and you head to your couch, you slip your hands down your pants and begin rubbing circles on your clit, dipping your fingers into your hole and gathering your juices to add more lubrication. Your eyes close and as you add pressure to your throbbing clit, you feel yourself bucking your hips for more friction. Fingers pumping in and out of your hole. Your other hand fondling your soft tits, adding more stimulation ‘mmph fuck’ The noises coming from your mouth are almost pornographic, your neighbors could probably hear you as the walls are thin. You feel yourself getting closer so you begin moving faster your mouth forming an ‘O’ shape “Mmpfh shit’m gonna cum fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck” You get that feeling in your stomach and let yourself go, your orgasm hitting you like a truck, you continue rubbing your clit riding out your orgasm, legs shaking from the overstimulation. Once you’re done you sit up and head to the bathroom to clean yourself up and you go to your bed to watch a show, you feel so comfortable and safe in the warmth of your bed so, you drift off into a slumber…

Oh but little did you know. You weren’t alone. Ellie saw what you were doing, she saw your most intimate moment and you didn't even notice you were being watched. Like she thought you were oblivious to the world around you, a normal person would sense another watching them, but not you…or maybe you knew she was watching and you put on a show for her and only her. Ellie’s hand reaches to unbutton her jeans, reaches her hand into her underwear, and begins rubbing her clit to the thought of you, your body, your pussy just begging to be touched by her, your soft tits and your skin needing to be marked by her…she needs you so bad.. just as she’s about to come undone. an elderly opens the door behind her, luckily Ellie had her back turned so the lady didn’t see her pleasuring herself to you. Ellie saw that the lady had many bags and offered to help her.

“Can you call a cab for me dear, they all just speed right passed me?” the woman asked kindly, and Ellie did what she asked, grabbing the cab’s attention and opening the door for her, all with a smile and her juices dripping down her thighs. The cab leaves and Ellie walks to her car.. “why were you touching yourself out in public while watching an oblivious girl masturbate..you’re so fucking weird.. fuck Ellie what the fuck, you need to be more careful, that could’ve not gone in your favor…” she whispered to herself, her cheeks red from embarrassment. She gets in her car and heads to her apartment….

——————————

idk what a tag list is but someone said “need to be in the taglist” and my gf said that means they wanna be tagged when the next part comes out so yeah

🏷️ @vqxen

[midastouch-zaza]

There’s a competition going on between Tzuyu and Shuhua. Every weekend, one girl takes you home to take the lewdest photos of the two of you to send to the other girl. And each one tries to one-up the other, such as Shuhua making you ERUPT by sticking her tongue in your ass or Tzuyu facefucking you with her strap-on.

Friendships between members of different groups is something that makes extremely happy the fans and the multistan in kpop. I remember clearly the buzz that the pic with Xiaoting, Handong, Shuhua and Tzuyu made on the internet.

However fans don't know who took that photo: you. You've always been close to the kpop C-line, so you know well how naughty they really are. In fact that same dinner is a proof of that: you where there when the maknaes of G-Idle and Twice challenged each other in this lewd photo contest, and, well, you've been basically forced to be their assistant.

The first weekend it was Shuhua turn and you were ready to share your idea, but you should know better: Shuhua already decided the concept for that day, and actually already setted all the stuff.

She made you seat on her couch, immediately pulling down your jeans, stroking your cock with so much heat and power. "Come on, Oppa, become big and hard for me", she whispered in your ear, while her fingers were moving skillfully.

You thought it was such a cool start to begin with a handjob concept, but actually Shuhua plans were other. When she felt you were close enough, she powerfully pushed you back and lifted your legs.

Then she got on her knees, the perfect position for her next move: now that your ass was wide enough, she attacked with her tongue. The result? A perfect picture of your cock erupting an insane amount of cum on her head. "You did a great job, Oppa", she praised you, looking at the picture, while caressing your arm.

The next weekend arrived and you hoped for Tzuyu to be more gentle. And she was...kinda. You surely didn't expect her to propose you to be face-fucked by her strap. You didn't want to do it, but how could you say no to her puppy face?

Sighing, you accepted and just got on your knees. Maybe just simulating was good enough for the pic. "Oppa, it's not realistic enough", she commented looking at the result. You were about to complain that actually it was such a good shot, but Tzuyu anticipated you, starting to fuck your throat.

Few minutes after you were a mess, your hair a completely disaster and your face totally red, but at least the pic now was amazing. "Thank you, Oppa, you're the best", she thanked you, kissing your cheek sweetly.

The next couple of weeks it was a war: the girls really went all in with idea and concept, always insisting for the total realism of their shots. You were glad that they let you have fun too, letting you enjoy the process.

On the third week you fucked Shuhua from behind in the shower, the pic portraying her big boobs squeezed against the glass. On the fourth week you had this naughty ass training session with Tzu, so in the end the pic showed her on her fours, while your cock was savaging her ass and your foot was keeping her head against the floor.

After going on for what seemed an eternity, they opted to declar for a draw, under the advice of Xiaoting and Handong. But it was sad to conclude the competition that way, so all four of them decided to take a last picture: you could decided the concept and they had to accept.

Honestly you went for something very simple but also very exciting: the two of them had to give you a blowjob, completely naked, and when you were about to cum they had to suck your balls.

The fun part? You agreed with Ting and Dongie about a plan: with the excuse of "forgetting of taking the pic" or "the shot is bad", you three made the two maknae suck your cock and be covered in your seed for something like two hours.

But that was not the best part yet: even after the end of the challenge, let's say the girls got...addicted. So they may have in mind numerous challenge: the best lewd video, who makes you cum the most in less time, ecc...

[childotkw]

Okay I'll raise it. Hermione/Tom? I really find this couple cringe-worthy.

Prefacing this with saying if you do ship Hermione/Tom, absolutely no shade to you, my darlings. Ship to your hearts content! Don’t let some loser on the internet (aka me) impact your enjoyment 😊

Now, onto my personal thoughts on the ship - it’s really the same as my feelings on Draco/Tom. They’re too incompatible in my eyes - emotionally, morally and mentally.

While there’s a lot of surface similarities, once you scrap off that thin layer, they’re far too different to mesh well.

Hermione is too inflexible, and holds to her morals too hard to ever condone or even attempt to understand Tom’s actions or motivations. And Tom is too disgusted by the idea of a lot of things Hermione values to ever think her opinion holds weight.

That’s why I ship tomarry over any other ship for either character.

Because at their core, and more than any other ship I can think of, there is a painful level of understanding and empathy between them. It allows them - even if they don’t agree - to see the world through the other’s eyes. They know each other. They understand the darkness in each other and don’t flinch away from it.

They are the only two who could possibly sway or influence the other in any meaningful way. Harry could make Tom better. Tom could make Harry worse. And that understanding of each other’s past (unloved orphans), emotions (that sense of being unwanted, freakish, other, more than those around them), and deepest desires (to be untouchable, to be safe for one fucking day in their lives) allows them to connect in a way that no one else can manage or come close to.

Hermione and Tom would implode as a couple spectacularly. They’d fail to find any sense of balance or respect. Again, like with what I said about Draco/Tom, unless Tom was manipulating or looking to hurt Hermione by leading her around (and thus getting some savage kind of amusement out of the whole thing), then I don’t think they’d ever go for each other.

[solarpunkani]

That screenshot from mysharona1987 saying the IDF has killed more UN staff than Hamas terrorists is disinformation.

The type of disinformation you are most likely to share is the kind that supports your personal beliefs. If you believe Israelis are violent bloodthirsty savages, you will reblog disinformation supporting that view. If you believe Zionists run the world, you will reblog disinformation supporting that conspiracy theory.

Disinformation about Israel actually harms Palestinians. Maybe you think it might help somehow for people to spread false stories about Israel. I promise you it does not help.

All of us who use the internet as a platform need to take responsibility for disinformation. It's a shared responsibility. When you don't do your share, it makes the internet that much harder to manage for the rest of us.

Read this article titled "This Psychologist Wants To Vaccinate You Against Fake News": https://archive.ph/671NK

Read this article: https://www.fastcompany.com/90983392/why-disinformation-experts-says-the-israel-hamas-conflict-is-a-nightmare-to-investigate

And play this game: https://www.getbadnews.com/en/intro

In total, reading the two articles and playing the game shouldn't take more than 45 minutes. Take the time to do this.

I will say, I did read the articles and played the game earlier today. I am answering this ask to let you know that, anon, because I genuinely appreciated the reads

With that being said. I’m not quite understanding how its misinfo? I feel I’ve seen lots of sources saying Israel has killed lots of UN staffers, not just that one.

Also to establish for the onlookers. I don’t believe Israelis are all bloodthirsty savages, and I don’t believe that Zionists run the world. If I’ve said or reblogged anything that gave that impression, my sincere apologies.

With that being said some of the stuff coming out about Israel’s government and some of the videos of some Israelis (emphasis on *some*) is fucking rancid as hell

[sonicasura]

Considering all the shenanigans that happen in every iteration where Autobot-Decepticons duke it out on Earth and they can connect to the Internet... I am legitimately surprise neither piss off a hacker.

At best, clashes between both sides result in minor property damage alongside disturbing the peace. You know that's saying something if this is the preferred option. Plus the whole planet is caught in the crossfire when you take groundbridges and airships into account.

There are people smart enough to hack government systems so whose to say a Cybertronian is safe? A spiteful technical genius could load up a virus where everybot affected feels the dreadful pain of menstruation. Why upload a kill switch when you can be petty as fuck with period cramps?

Even more savage if the hacker has a countermeasure where trying to remove the virus just upgrades it. To what? How about stimulating the pain women feel going through childbirth. There are machines that programmed to do it like in this clip from Impractical Jokers where Q gets strapped to this device for his punishment.

Offender starts at level one as there are 8 stages. Every attempt increases the intensity by a stage. Pretty sure the 2nd or 3rd stage is enough to make one submit.

Probably the most embarrassing(for Cybertronians) yet hilarious(for the hacker) way to end a war. Both sides have to play nice if they want this 'feature' disabled. It's easy to flip it back on in seconds so no psyches.

Humans are bloody space orcs. We come in many flavors with spite and pettiness being some. To do something like this is possible.

[blacksunrequiem]

Disclaimer: I wrote this post as an enthusiast for Dune: Part Two (2024) and the ‘seductively sick’ portrayal of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Any other thoughts or comments are welcomed and appreciated! TL;DR: The aesthetic choice of Feyd’s blackened teeth aligns well with the widespread custom in ancient Vietnam — a sign of beauty, maturity, and even brutality. Read more below. Original photos belong to their respective owners.

Teeth blackening in Dune: Part Two (2024) through the lens of Vietnamese culture

One thing that mesmerizes me about Feyd in the 2024 Dune movie is his blackened teeth. Not only does this provide an impressive physical appearance for Feyd, but it also reminds me of a long-lost fashionable custom in my home country.

Original inspiration. As far as I know, the film crew creatively invented this aesthetic for the movie from the inspiration of the black mamba (a type of venomous snake in sub-Saharan Africa) and images of geisha with black teeth. Similar to folklore and legends, other countries and ethnicities also dyed their teeth black with their local traditional recipes.

Vietnam-specific. Particularly in Vietnam, teeth blackening was once a popular aesthetic choice for both commoners and noblemen. As teeth blackening was a sign of elegance and decency, it was prevalent for Vietnamese women to adhere to this practice. This custom was deep-rooted as early as 400 BCE and grew so profound as an indicator of being ready for marriage or fierce on battlefields. Side note, Vietnamese people would not dye their teeth black until they came of age; it was indeed a statement of maturity.

A clash between the East and the West. It is also hilarious that until the early 20th century in Vietnam, white teeth were regarded as barbaric; only animals, savages, and evil spirits would have white teeth. During this time, one may casually make a sarcastic remark about pretty girls with white teeth such as “Oh you’ve got a pretty face but your teeth are as white as doggo.” On the contrary, in the eyes of the French colonists, the locals had impressive straight teeth but those were “as black as sewer pipes”.

Cannibalism? In some online discussions, internet users theorize that Feyd’s blackened teeth may indicate cannibalism. This fan theory is reasonable enough, because during World War I, to curb the abuse and bullying from the larger and stronger Moroccans and Senegalese mercenaries to the smaller Annamese counterparts, a French officer spread the rumor that black-toothed people were cannibals and could devour two legs in just an hour, terrifying the African mercenaries and bringing peace to the Annamese ones.

How to? So, without the privilege of wearing an Invisalign filled with black dye like Austin, how did the Vietnamese dye their teeth? In short, one must generally undergo the following stages to dye their teeth black: mouth sanitization, red dyeing, black dyeing, polishing, and maintenance, which on average took around three weeks. It was reported that the first teeth-dyeing session would rather be physically painful due to swelling mouth and lips, stinging sensation of the dyed teeth, and strict dietary restrictions (e.g., refraining from fatty and hot food, smoking).

On another side note, I don’t know exactly what the food that Feyd chewed in the early morning attacking Sietch Tabr and degrading Rabban, but to maintain the sheeny stylish black teeth, ancient and older Vietnamese often practiced betel nut chewing.

Dear Dune fan fic writers, please consider adding this long-lost social custom into your fics; multi-cultural representation would be greatly appreciated and respected.

Please let me know if you want me to delve into greater details of the teeth blackening tutorial in Vietnam. I may do a part two on this for my lovely Feyd and Vietnamese culture if you guys are intrigued!

[ronearoundblindly]

How about A Q P for Lloyd

For this dirty ask game, and oh my christ YIKES, this dude is...I don't even know the word. 😈😈😈😈 Dark AF, maybe???

MINORS DNI. I can't think of a single instance where this guy would be safe for anyone under 18. Periodt.

A - Alone Time

Absolutely this man jerks off. How is there even a question? He's meticulous, methodical, and savage. In his head is a mix of self-aggrandizement and flagellation, but he never says any of it out loud (and if he ever heard anyone say those things about him, he'd kill them).

When he's all by himself, diddling the ol' bagpipes, his inner monologue consists of calling himself names and berating every flaw he's found.

"They paid you all that money, but your pathetic ass was only a day ahead of Mossad..."

"Ten mil for a glorified errand boy, and you're such a whore for it, you said 'yes.'"

"Bent over and spread your cheeks wide for the money, didn't you?"

See, the meanness makes him angry, which makes him hotter, which makes him more aroused, and then--if one can do this, it's Lloyd--he comes violently. Everything that man does is violent. The quiet violent from him is the thing to be fucking terrified of.

Q - Quiet Please

Which brings us to noise.

Lloyd does not overdo the noise during sex (notice, I did not say 'in bed' because I'm not sure he fucks in an actual bed even 10% of the time). He makes noise, but he never plays it up. He'll let whatever he wants to groan and moan come out naturally between horrific dirty talk about your sluttiness and how fat you are and how you take his cock okay compared to other women he's fucked. I mean, this guy is fucking rude.

He will get whatever noise he wants from you, too.

Slapping, spanking, pinching, hair-pulling, and whatever else Lloyd pleases to make sounds echo across the walls; he'll get what he wants out of you.

P - Photography

Loves it, but from an ownership, blackmail, and leverage standpoint. Is it a humiliating shot of you bound, gagged, and dripping his cum? Excellent. Will your husband or father pay an obscene amount of money to keep it off the internet? Perfect. Did you willingly send him the most degrading shit he asked for? Hell yes.

So Lloyd loves photos, is a proud sender of dick picks, and doesn't care who knows/sees it. He's especially fond of gaping assholes, whether stretched by his own fingers and cock, or by your toys he told you to purchase. He does not buy them for you.

Thank you for asking!

[Main Masterlist; Dirty Asks Masterlist; Ko-Fi]