#anyways please write that fic

[wooshofficial]

hi woosh i hope i'm not too late for blorboposting. see at first i was like "woosh you already know who my blorbos are" but i still wanna talk about one of them because i don't talk about him enough. i think barry burkhard needs more love. he's just a guy and he played blaseball in an alternate dimension where he was besties with alt seb telephone. and then he watched his bestie die TWICE. all of this was before he officially joined blaseball (he was the steaks postseason birth in s17 but the lore is that he did all that stuff with alt seb telephone back in discipline.) anyway now he's in tokyo, where his other bestie (cory ross) used to play and one day i'm gonna write a fic about cory showing barry around. also he singlehandedly made the s24 steaks rotation look SO FUNNY...he was like the mike townsend of the group. just there. the sim did my guy dirty but i love him so much for it.

I MEANT TO ANSWER THIS A FUCKIN WHILE AGO AND THEN LIFE HAPPENED AUGh please imagine Wybies 40k post here

Barry Burkhard has somehow avoided plot in his entire time being in the game even though he’s lored to be smitten with the most Plot Guy Ever and I find that so funny. Barry fucking Burkhard man

[sweeteuphrasia]

been seeing a bunch of posts about people going back to their steddie roots bc of s5 but i’ve never fucking left. those fuckers invaded my mind two years ago and now they’re the freezer burn in the back of my mind. yeah all those half finished steddie fics that everyone forgot about? sitting in my bookmarks like the cobwebs on my ceiling. every so often i’ll scroll through them looking like a forlorn wife in the 1940s after my husband went away to war.

[bejeweledbaby]

obsessed with fics where steve and eddie were each other's first kiss when they were children but they don't connect the dots when they meet again as adults. Neither realize that this eddie is that eddie and this steve is that steve.

let me set the scene:

the older kids are having a small get together at steve's place and they're all sharing their first kiss stories. eddie starts regaling the group with the story of his first kiss with this beautiful boy at summer camp who had gorgeous hazel eyes and the softest hair. steve thinks the story sounds a little too similar to his first kiss. he starts connecting the dots when he realizes the chocolate button doe eyes he used to dream about years ago are the same chocolate button doe eyes he's been dreaming about in recent months. when it's steve's turn to share his first kiss story, he's like, "well, actually you've already heard it." and now eddie's connected the dots and pulls him into the bathroom to kiss about it. and there's some heartfelt love confessions and then they ride off into the sunset together.

[fandomrose]

Sunday - Love Hypnosis

Sunday hypnotises you (consensually) to relax you.

No spoilers.

No description of reader or readers troubles so project what you are personally struggling with as you see fit.

No angst just fluff. I thought this concept would be cute. I've seen many a yandere Sunday hypnotises you, and that's great but consider - consent and fluff.

(This isn't a jab, I too enjoy a yandere fic from time to time but I also want to see fluff and I haven't seen this done in a fluffy way yet.)

I don't know why I'm mildly obsessed with this man but I am. (Cough Cough, I read maximum ride as a kid and now I automatically fall in love with winged characters. Cough Cough.) I need him to hypnotise me please and thank you.

(I have a few fics in the works that I need to finish but I'm struggling.)

As usual enjoy. Love ya 💙

"Darling?" Came the light and airy tone of your beloved. Though there was a hint of worry in his voice as he took in your face down, slumped form. "Are you alright?"

He could tell very well that you were not alright. But he would coax an answer out of you one way or another. Though the only answer he received was a groan.

"Darling." He sighs but chuckles at your obviously aggravated self. "Allow me to help you." 

Your body goes limp as you let him move you from a sofa to your shared bed. "My darling. Tell me what's gotten into you."

He chuckles as you groan out a single word relating to your issues. "Life."

"Oh, my darling. You'll let me soothe you for the night won't you?" He only felt it was right after the many nights you had soothed him. 

Patient, kind, understanding. Three words that when asked by others what you think about each other, you'd both say about each other. A pure give and take without a scoreboard, that's how you operated. You were both busy or stressed for one reason or another so that's how things had to be.

The simple love you shared was enough most days but sometimes things went wrong.

Sunday had performed hypnosis on you before so he knew it worked but he'd never engage unless you agreed. You knew the question he asked meant he wanted to soothe you via hypnosis, and with the state of your mind you would happily agree. 

"Please do." 

He wouldn't offer if he didn't have the energy you knew this, a rather large argument took care of that when he'd overworked himself then passed out after hypnotising you once and a medic had to be rushed in. Needless to say, you weren't happy with his carelessness. And seeing how upset you were he agreed to be more careful with his health.

You didn't want to think anymore so as you lay there looking up at him with your tired eyes and weary mind, he smiles. He caresses your face and hair before taking a deep breath and reciting that familiar chant.

"Oh triple faced soul, allow me to take hold of this one's mind and soothe them of all worries and burdens. The word Beloved will be the catalyst for control."

With that simple incantation your mind belonged to Sunday for a short while. Your mind felt fuzzy and slow but not unpleasantly, the way it would when you achieved complete relaxation. 

Like he had done before, he would take you through your nightly routine with this hypnosis.

"Beloved, follow me to to the bathroom." He helped you up while your body automatically followed his words and stood up. 

Walking was about the most complex task you could complete, he wasn't Xipe Themself, so his power only went so far. 

"Beloved, lift your arms." 

You do as told and he aids in stripping you, ready to be cleaned. 

"Beloved, sit on this stool and close your eyes." 

You again do as told his voice muffled through the layers of hypnosis, but soothing nonetheless. "I am going to wash your face first darling." He always narrates what he does before doing it as not to startle you.

You felt a cool, wet, cloth glide over your face and you can't help but sigh with satisfaction. You feel it gently caress your cheeks and softly rub your eyes tickle behind your ears. You hear the cloth being rinsed and wrung, the muffled sounds of the water soothing you further.

"I am going to wash your upper body now darling." And, as before, you feel the damp cloth glide over your neck and upper body, letting him move you has he sees fit. Soft humming coming from him lulls you deeper into his hypnosis. The cloth glides down and caresses your chest before moving to wash your back. You'd make sounds of relaxed satisfaction if you could but your exhausted body coupled with the hypnosis has made your brain devoid of any thought or control. Just how you want it. 

He moves back to the front of you with a new cloth. "Beloved, spread your legs, I need to clean you." 

Your body complies without hesitation and that's what he does, making sure to be extra gentle around this sensitive area. He is thorough but doesn't linger long this time, not wanting to spark anything in you this evening.

Standing to switch the cloth again, "I'm going to wash your legs and feet now darling." Still being as gentle as ever his hands and the cloth slowly makes their way down your legs massaging them as they go. A light massage is given to your feet as well before he finishes and pats you dry with a towel before he deems your body clean.

"Beloved, open your mouth wide." 

He orders next, your mind too fuzzy to think of what else could be doing. You hear more water then feel a hand on your chin. "I'm going to brush your teeth darling." Then light scrubbing of your teeth and tongue can be felt, he is thorough with this area too. Not wanting to be the reason you have cavities he takes his time. Not too long later he finishes with you. You can hear things being put away and muffled sounds of him walking around you, maybe inspecting you. Before he stops in front and, 

"Beloved, open your eyes and stand up. Its time to go to bed."

You're led back into the bedroom now that he is satisfied that you are clean. "Beloved, are you ready to sleep?" 

Compelled to answer, you do. "yes"

"Beloved, do you want to sleep with me?"

"Yes"

"Good, let's get to sleep then shall we." 

The sounds of fabric and draws is all you hear for a moment before he guides you into bed with him. 

"Beloved, lay down." 

When he's satisfied you are comfortable You feel his soft skin against yours, the wings on his head lightly brushing your face in reverence before he pulls them back. It isn't often he blesses you with his naked body, the vulnerability gets to him at times. 

Once you've laid down and he's pulled you close he asked one more question.

"Beloved, are you ready to be released from hypnosis?"

"Yes"

As the words leave your lips he begins the incantation to remove his influence on your mind. 

"Oh triple faced soul, this one has completed this ones tasks and can now be freed from the shackles of my control with no burden."

Everything goes still as your senses return slowly, reacclimating you to reality. A few minutes pass of him softly stroking your head and neck while you come back to him.

"Thank you Sunday" a soft whisper conveying how grateful you are before you promptly pass out the exhaustion and relaxation hitting you full force as you melt into the bed and his arms.

"Oh my beloved, I'd do anything to see you happy and relaxed like this more often. I am grateful for all you do for me so it's only natural. I love you, so much my beloved."

He whispers to your sleeping self, pressing small kisses to your forehead, cheeks and nose. Watching the small twitches at the contact makes his evening and he feels like he too can finally relax.

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[greenglowsgold]

The List.

Based on the Cass Apocalyptic Series.

The first part of this has been rumbling around in my brain ever since that Super Sad Scene a month ago, but yesterday’s update gave me the other side of the coin, so to speak, and finally pulled it all together.

@somerandomdudelmao thanks for the fuel, friend

                              -----

                              Donatello’s days have become a series of checklists, as of late.

No, that’s not exactly true. His days have always been about lists: what he’s done, what he can delegate to someone else, what still needs doing. But these days he’s been doing less and listing more, piling tasks from the first category onto the second as fast as he can manage, hoping he has enough time to empty the queue.

The full catalog is written out in a series of files, reorganized for accessibility to the layperson and meticulously up-to-date as of yesterday. He meant to run through it again this morning, ensure all the relevant instruction manuals were attached to each item and double check his protocols, but he wasn’t… he couldn’t…

He’s going to die tonight.

It irritates him, his own miscalculation of the timing more than the stark presence of his oncoming demise. The latter has been inevitable for quite some time, long enough that he’s gotten used to the idea. But he thought he had another week or two, and he doesn’t like being proven wrong. He wonders if his brothers know.

Probably not. They know it’s bad now, obviously, because they’ve piled him with pillows and blankets and surrounded him on all sides, and Leo has finally gone quiet. But they trust him, they’ve always trusted him, even when they shouldn’t, so if he swears he’ll last a few more days, they’ll believe him. He thinks. He’s pretty sure. If they knew it was tonight, he doubts they would choose to sleep through it. Donnie thinks about waking them up, but only for a moment. He’d like to say it’s a noble act, to leave them in peace a little bit longer, but the truth is he’s just too fucking tired to move.

There’s something settled bone-deep in his chest, a heaviness that sits on him like a stone, a peine forte et dure pressing him down and down, stopping his voice and his breath and his heart. He wonders if this is what dying usually feels like, or if it’s unique to the Kraang. Raph would know.

He cranes his neck to the right, to catch Raph’s face out of the corner of his eye. Raph’s working eye is half-open, staring down at the floor. Donnie could ask him. (He won’t. Let him fall asleep.) The movement of his head is so slight it doesn’t even catch Raph’s attention. He’s too tired for anything more. He’s so goddamn tired.

His lists are out of reach at the moment, with his physical interfaces back in the lab and his ninpo locked behind a wall of oh-god-it-sounds-too-exhausting-to-even-try, but he memorized them all long ago.

Raphael: Maintenance (delegated to Casey, who has it well in hand). Plans (tucked away in a dedicated folder, long term, but someday they’ll have the materials, and Raph will have a proper body again, someday). Honey (yes, he passed that along last week).

Raph has access to the tracking programs, so he can keep an eye on everyone himself, even when Donnie can’t pull up locations or vitals for him anymore. He has his own space in the base once more, somewhere to close a door when he needs to (he insists he doesn’t, but Donnie isn’t a fool). He has more excuses to spend time with Casey, who’s taking over his upkeep. Donnie hopes it fills in some gaps for both of them.

He runs through the list, double checks each item. It’s his last chance to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything important.

He looks down, finds Mikey.

There’s a stockpile of the anti-aging serum in his safe, the formula in his database, plans for the permanent solution clearly labeled. As long as they have his lab, his systems, Mikey will be as young as his years. He’s walked him through the greenhouse, even if most of it is controlled by the computer system. Mikey misses the world being green; it’ll do him good to spend more time around the plants. He has his tea, his candles. He has Draxum, who by now should have received a — mildly — threatening message warning him not to pull any disappearing acts anytime soon. He has their ancestors, just a short call away.

Donnie’s sure Mikey will call on him soon. He doesn’t plan to stray far.

Up a bit. To the left. Leo.

The arm — Leo knows how to take care of it, as does Casey.

The passwords — reset, something even Leo will be able to remember without resorting to blackmail.

The schedule — reshuffled for the next few days, he’ll have a hard enough time sleeping as it is.

The photos — everything they have, even the embarrassing ones. He even managed a couple of prints, and one precious shot from their pre-apocalypse days, something for Leo to tuck into a pouch and carry with him, when they’re not around.

Raph, Mikey, Leo. He doesn’t think he’s missed anything. Donnie lets his head fall back, too exhausted to hold it up any longer.

Is it enough?

His mind stretches further out. He’s unraveling.

What about April? Her prescription is up to date, they just checked a month ago. She has the latest in his combat tech, which has kept her safe in the field this long, so he has no reason to think it will falter now. He’s leaving her a few extra pieces, since he won’t be able to use them anymore. Leo will find the time for a movie night once in a while, he’s certain, even if his taste in Jupiter Jim movies is horrendous. They still have coffee; he’d die before he let that particular supply run out. He will, actually.

Casey. Fuck, Donnie’s gonna miss his birthday. But he did plan for this, his protocols will kick in. The mask is finished, everything is in place. He’s reconfigured his workstations, fit them for a tiny human instead of a seven-foot turtle. Casey has a better head for mechanics than any of his brothers ever did. Kid likes to be useful, so Donnie’s left him as much use as he can. He’s taught him everything Casey can learn and left instructions for more, when he’s a little older and wiser. His family will take care of him, they’ll make sure he gets there.

The base. It has to hold, to give them somewhere safe. The infrastructure is sound, and they have people to manage repair work. Supplies are decent, the most critical items in stock, everything that can be made renewable is. Their allies — Leo handles interpersonal issues and leadership, but Donnie’s checked the list with a pragmatist’s eye, left notes and rankings for priority. Security is the largest concern, but he’s spent nearly half his time with his assistants since his self-diagnosis (he could have spent it with his family), running them through the programs and adjustments, trying to bring them up to somewhere in the realm of his own expertise (a fool’s errand, but still). They’ve been rigorously instructed, they understand that the little things like sleep are secondary concerns. It has to hold.

Is it enough? For them to be okay?

He’s done everything he can. He can’t do any more. So it has to be enough.

Donnie blinks, and for a moment isn’t certain his eyes will open again at the end of it. But they do. At least one more time, they obey him.

Raph. Mikey. Leo. April. Casey. Home. He rolls back through the list. It’s his last chance. He can’t miss anything.

Mikey’s hand tightens unconsciously around his wrist, fingers meeting easily on either side. Donnie feels only the echo of the pressure.

Raph. Mikey. Leo. April. Casey. Home.

Something bright sparks at the edges of his vision before it fades. The last gasps of a dying brain, he supposes. Synapses firing one last time before they’re snuffed out.

Raph.

Mikey.

Leo.

                                                            April.

                                                                                                                        Casey.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Home.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Light.

                                                                                                                         There’s light.

                                                            It hurts.

                                                            He thought dying would stop the pain, but it’s risen to a fever pitch instead. His brother’s arms are gone, but the disease wraps around him in their place, consumes him. It rages like a wildfire, burning through his center until pieces start to flake away like ash.

Oh, this is what it does, what it was built for. The Kraang could have killed him in a lot of different ways. He’d wondered why they chose this one.

He hasn’t planned for it. This is something he didn’t even know to fear.

It’s bright and it hurts but it’s quiet as he crumbles, folds in on himself like a black hole in the utter silence of outer space. It’s quiet enough that the voice that breaks through does so clear as a bell.

His head turns to follow the sound, instinct. He’s lost half his field of vision, but what’s left is enough. He looks, and finds Casey.

Casey looks at him, at him, not the body. Donnie opens his mouth to ask a question — What are you doing here? How? Why? — but something else sloughs out instead. Not blood. He doesn’t have that anymore.

Casey calls his name once more and starts running.

Donnie’s questions fold back into his mind. His mouth clicks shut, he swallows back the putrid rot and pushes himself up. His arms are shattered but they’ll have to hold him. They have to. Because Casey is here and he needs something, which means Donnie missed something, which means he isn’t done.

His spirit disagrees with him, doesn’t see the logic. His arms don’t hold.

Casey reaches to catch him as he falls, and the touch ruptures him instead. He scatters. Into the air and the ground and Casey. For a moment, he’s just pieces, fumbling around and latching onto anything that welcomes them, and Casey does that. They flow into him. They’re him. They’re…

He’s…

Casey, he’s…

Donatello pulls himself back together. Most of himself, anyway. The infection hasn’t followed him but the damage persists. He’s run through with cracks and crevices, shaking bits away into infinity with every movement. But there’s more of him here than not.

Unexpectedly, Donnie is not gone. He’s still dead, but that’s fine, he planned for that one.

                                                                                                                         Casey has him now. He wraps himself around Donnie in layers, helps hold him together with a kind of sheer will that makes up for any lack of mystic knowledge in spades. Casey asks him to stay, and Donnie takes up the task like Sisyphus sizing up the hill. This time, this time I’ll do it right.

Even better, Casey has taken him to another time, one where all of Donnie’s long-term plans are now completely-fucking-reasonable plans. Casey’s going to fix it, so Donnie can fix everything else. Whatever else needs it. He hasn’t really asked. And he knows he’s missed something, but he doesn’t think too hard about what, not yet.

First thing’s first: he needs a body.

It’s so simple to accomplish that it seems like the universe is mocking him. Just a quick 1-2-3, ticking off the list. It feels almost stupid, like running back through the early levels of a video game after unlocking all the ultimate weapons and burning through enemies and obstacles, laughing, shit, did I used to think this was hard?

In no time at all, his own face has formed in front of him.

In no time at all, he’s gasping.

It’s only been a few hours since he last breathed air, but he’s missed it.

Another thing he’s missed? Functional musculature. Casey slams into him and Donnie is startled to find that it doesn’t knock him over. His arms and legs look like actual limbs again, not fragile little sticks disguising themselves as such. He stands, dragging Casey along without a second thought. The weight barely registers. It’s amazing.

The power trip is heady, but it only lasts a few minutes before reality kicks it in the ass and pulls him back down to earth.

We lost, Casey says.

They’re dead, Casey says.

It wasn’t enough, Casey does not say, but Donnie hears it just as clearly.

All those plans, the preparations, the precautions and protocols, they only borrowed a year or two before they fell apart. He sees the timeline spiral out before him, tighter and tighter until it collapses in on itself, rendered all the more insignificant from his own point of perception. He was alive yesterday. His family is dead today.

Everything he did, it wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t. He was stupid to think otherwise.

(Raph. Mikey. Leo. April. Casey. Casey’s still here. It was enough for him, at least.)

It cuts at him a little, to have been so wrong. But he’s strong again, now. He can take the wound. More importantly, he has another chance to get it right.

Donnie breathes. His chest expands smoothly, easily. The air doesn’t rattle in his lungs. He’s alive, he’s a genius, he can fix anything.

He pulls up a list.

[blindmagdalena]

Don't Fret Precious (I'm Here)

Summary: 18+ 8.1k homelander x reader, f!reader, mild sublander, immoral reader, off-screen murder, blood, attempted assault (not by HL), cunnilingus, lite comeplay, penetrative sex, fingering, dirty talk, breeding kink, marking, mild pain play.

During one of his evening patrols, Homelander overhears the beginnings of an assault. By intervening, he not only becomes your personal hero, but falls into a whirlwind of infatuation and obsession with you, and the supposedly ordinary life you led before he happened across you.

thank you @mari-thesimp, whose prompt inspired this monster of a fic! 🖤 AO3 Link.

To this day, Homelander doesn’t know why you were alone in that alleyway that night: he never thought to ask, and by now, it’s an irrelevant detail. He just knows that it was in a shady side of the city, nowhere near your work or your home.

That was where he first heard you. You were screaming in this shrill, throaty way that reminded him of how women in the movies screamed. You were the perfect little Hollywood damsel, trapped down a dark side street by a man twice your size with a brutish smile and clear intentions. It was almost too perfect of a stage, and Homelander found he couldn’t resist intervening. 

Sure, there weren’t any cameras, but maybe you’d give a couple interviews and boost his ratings.

“S’aright by me, I like it when they scream,” the goon told you, pulling at you with dirty, meaty hands. Homelander could smell his rotten breath from a distance. It must have been like chopped onions in your face, stinging your pretty eyes.

“What a coincidence,” Homelander said from behind the man, voice full and confident. He placed his hands on the man’s shoulders. “So do I.”

He tightened his grip until tendons popped and bones groaned under his strength. The man screamed twice as loudly as you had, relinquishing his hold on you. Clearly not comprehending the sheer danger he was in, the man tried to retaliate, lashing out with swinging arms and legs until Homelander finally let him turn around, at which point the severity of the situation dawned clearly in the man's eyes.

“Homelander,” He realized, tongue thick in his mouth, words heavy with sudden fear. “It’s not what you think,” he said. He was taller and broader than Homelander, but it hardly mattered. He was shaking like a leaf in his hold. “We were just playin’,” he said, sweat prickling along his hairline. Homelander twisted the brute down onto his knees, and angled him to the side, focusing on you now. You, who were staring at him with wide, watery doe eyes. It’s no wonder you were hunted down by a predator. You looked… delicious.

“Is that true, miss?” He asked you in his best discerning hero voice. “Do you know this man?”

The question was followed by a tense beat of silence. He held your gaze, only for his to drop and watch your lips form the simple word, “No.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he said with a chuckle. Before the man could protest, Homelander made a fist, and struck the back of the man’s head with the bottom of it just hard enough to knock him out cold. The thug crumpled to the ground, and Homelander stepped over him to make his way towards you. He gave you a cursory check for broken or fractured bones, but aside from being disheveled, you looked unharmed, slumped back against the brick wall.

One interesting thing he took note of, however, was the small gun tucked into your purse. Why hadn’t you been reaching for it? Panic, he supposed. Perhaps, though you had thought preemptively to protect yourself, your pretty little head had emptied the moment there was any sort of tangible threat.

You were like a little rabbit. Born to be hunted.

“You alright, miss?” He asked, offering you his hand. You took it, eyes as wide as saucers, lips tilted in an awestruck little smile. It wasn’t anything he wasn’t accustomed to, but it was sweet nonetheless. You were sweet, as soft in his hands as ripe fruit. Just the same, it would take so very little to bruise such a delicate thing.

“I am now,” you answered breathlessly, taking a step closer to him, your hand lingering in his long after he’d helped you up. “That… You were incredible. More amazing than I ever imagined.”

Homelander’s brows lifted curiously. “You imagine something like this often?”

“Yes,” you admitted readily, surprising him. “I’ve had a lot of fantasies about you.”

He laughed breathlessly at that, throat clicking on a dry swallow. You were standing just a few inches from him, but your only point of contact remained your hands. One by one, you began to loosely intertwine your fingers with his, drawing his gaze down. He had met hundreds upon hundreds of fans during his career, but rarely were they brave enough to be so direct with him. “Wow, you are, ah… forward,” he said, feeling heat prickle along his collar.

“Is that a bad thing?” You asked. He felt hyper aware of the slow way you squeezed his gloved hand, the gesture strangely enticing. 

“No, no,” he said, licking his lips. “Always good to feel wanted.”

You smiled at him. “Good.” With a gentle pull, you eased him down. He felt certain you were going to kiss him at that moment, but instead, you bypassed his lips and brought yours to his ear. “Because I want you. Very, very much.”

Your words, your voice instantly pooled heat low in his gut. He found himself breathing shallowly, leaning into the faint, sweet fruit smell of you.

When you drew back, your eyes met. You smiled, still squeezing his hand as you did. Your soft little breaths were warm on his lips. After a split second hesitation, Homelander kissed you. He kissed you again, and again, and again. He would kiss you many, many more times after that.

At first you were just a pretty little thing. A secret indulgence with sweet tasting lips, soft skin, and a seemingly endless propensity for adoration. You were removed from the blood and corporate grind of his day to day life. Before him, your life was simple, mundane, and predictable. It seemed like a lonely and bleak thing to him.

Perhaps that’s what made it so easy for him to become your sun, and coax your entire world into revolving around him. He saw his own loneliness mirrored back at him in your glossy eyes. To you, he is salvation. To him, you’re convenient.

Homelander particularly enjoys the way your breath catches with palpable excitement when he drops in on you unexpectedly. It doesn’t matter the time of day, be it midday or in the earliest hours of the morning, you welcome him with open, warm arms. Stepping into your comedically ordinary apartment is like watching The Wizard of Oz in reverse, wherein Dorothy retreats from the vulgar, brightly colored Oz to the quiet sepia of her humble little farmhouse. 

Here, his only care in the world is the gentle coo of your voice in his ear. Your heart is a steady, soothing rhythm. The first night Homelander found himself in your bed, he was surprised you didn’t accept him as a trophy fuck the way so many others liked to. Instead, you had stilled his greedy hands, and settled them around your waist. You slowed him. At the time he assumed you were still shaken from your encounter in the alley, but even then, the choice had seemed calculated.

You have a way of making him wait. Making him crave. You held him through the night, fingertips tracing patterns along his scalp, hands cupping his face, touching him as if you were trying to commit every detail of him to memory.

He was enraptured. He still is.

It’s what brings him back to you night after night after night.

Tonight, you’re awake when he slips in through your sliding glass door. It’s always unlocked for him. He would scold you for it if you didn’t live several storeys off the ground. To this day, he cannot shake the image of you as a vulnerable creature, watery eyed and terrified in that dark alleyway. It feels good to hear the skip of your heartbeat at the sound of your door opening, only for your breaths and pulse to calm at the sight of him.

It soothes his frayed nerves. The rest of the world is full of vicious ingrates who love him when he serves them, but who continuously prove themselves eager to tear him apart at the slightest provocation. Not you. Never you.

“My hero,” you sigh as he sinks into your arms. You never ask him about what’s going on in the news. This place–the warmth of your embrace–is a sanctuary from the noise of it all. “I missed you,” you tell him. You always do. He nuzzles into the crook of your neck, inhaling the familiar smell of you. His hands settle on your hips, neediness spilling through in the way he grips you, twisting the fabric of your clothing in his grasp. Homelander doesn’t respond right away, choosing instead to brush his lips along the bare skin of your neck, following the line up to your ear. You tilt your head, giving him greater access. You’re always giving more and more of yourself. You’ve done nothing to dissuade him of his possessive thoughts, the ones that whisper he is owed every breath and inch of you. If anything, he could swear you stoke his fires knowingly.

“Are you okay?” You ask gently, coaxing him to look at you with your hand on his cheek. He complies, pulling back just enough to meet your stare. You cup either side of his face, stroking his skin with your thumbs. The sound of your thumb pads catching against the faint bit of stubble on his face is soothing, like scratching an itch deep in his ears. “What do you need?”

“You,” he answers at last, leaning closer.

“You have me,” you say. He can feel your smile against his lips when you kiss him. “Forever. And always,” you say, punctuating each sentiment with a kiss. “What else do you need?”

“Nothing,” he says, voice sinking beneath the weight of his building desire, the heat of it radiating through his body in slow waves. “Not a goddamn thing. I don’t… I don’t need anything or anyone but you,” he whispers, clawing more purposefully at your clothing now, resentful of the barrier they create between him and the warmth of your skin. Too many things that have kept him away from what he desires, what he deserves. Your cheap cotton blend clothes won’t be among them. “Me neither,” you breathe, guiding his hands up your sides, helping him to strip away your shirt. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. All I’ve ever needed.”

Your words drip like sweet nectar. He swears he can taste the heaven of them on your lips as he kisses you. He follows the imaginary drip of it from your lips to the corner of your mouth, your jaw, your neck. He relishes the low moan you give. You push your hands into his hair, wringing a matching note from the back of his throat with the way you grip it. More, he thinks, insatiable. Give me more.

His gloved hands slide down your sides, mapping out the curves of your body as he has a hundred times before. His thumbs hook on your pants, and he pulls those down, too. He smiles at your bare skin beneath, leaning in to press a kiss to your pelvis, just above the thatch of hair there. “No panties?” He rumbles, helping you step out of your pants.

“I was hoping you’d come,” you say through a smile, hooking your leg over his shoulder, hand braced in his hair. He nuzzles in, lips brushing against your already sensitized clit. He gives a tonal sigh, opening his mouth to inhale the musky-sweet smell of you, his tongue snaking out to glide from your velvety, slick cunt to the gently throbbing nub of your clit. He closes his lips around it, opening his eyes halfway to meet your gaze from between your legs. He’s pleased to see you already staring down at him, admiring him openly. You’re flushed with heat, pupils blown wide. He purrs for the way you smooth his hair back with your fingers, his eyes falling shut so he can focus solely on the taste of you. He cups your ass in his hands and lifts you onto his mouth, hitching your other leg up over his shoulder as well.

Homelander holds you up and drinks greedily from you, coaxing your sweet wetness with slides and thrusts of his tongue, panting into the welcoming heat of you. Drool and slick coat his mouth in equal measure, dripping down his chin, wetting him so thoroughly he can almost pretend it’s sweat. As if he could exert himself. As if he were anything less than a god putting the light of heaven into the space between your thighs.

His favorite part is the way your pussy clenches around his tongue every time he pushes it into you, knowing you’re aching for more. For him.

“Nnngh, baby,” you moan, locking your ankles behind his back, rocking your hips. He squeezes your ass, egging you on. He can almost taste your swelling climax. He moans into you, meets the sway of your hips with eager dives of his tongue. “I’m–hahh, ahh, oh, there, there, mm, baby, you feel so good, m’gonna come,” you moan, prompting him faster, deeper, riled up by every aching praise that falls from your lips.

You pull his hair sharply when you come, and his eyes roll back into his skull with it. He revels in the way you smother him, literally and figuratively. Since the beginning, your affection, your attention, has been an endless, all-consuming thing. There was a time that he believed there would be no one who could stomach the depths of his emptiness, and yet here you are. With him, you form an ouroboros. Neverending mutual consumption.

Homelander laps at you until your shivering body goes lax, and you slide down into the strength of his arms. You kiss him, heedless of the mess you’ve made of his mouth, hands clumsily working to open the top of his suit. “Take me to the bed,” you tell him. The authority in your voice sounds effortless, despite the reedy quality your orgasm has given it. “I need you inside me.”

I need you. The words echo in his ears on a loop like a broken record that he never wants mended. He stands with you secure in his arms, licking your own taste into your mouth as he walks. He sets you down gently, but he grabs your hips hard enough to bruise. He wants to see the evidence that you are as changed by him as he is by you. 

He shrugs his top off. Before it even hits the ground, you’re slipping your hands up beneath the hem of his undershirt, purposefully skating his ticklish sides with your fingertips, surprising a giggle out of him. The shirt comes off of his head with a flourish, mussing his hair into a splay of blonde locks. You smile at one another, secretive, as if this intimacy between you is something stolen.

Homelander often behaves as though it is. More times than not, this happiness feels like borrowed time. Like something he is owed, but was never supposed to have. It leaves him feverish for it, clawing at every second of it he can get his hands on.

You help divest him of his pants next, metal belt hitting the ground with a thud. He steps out of his boots, and back tight into your space, grazing his teeth tantalizingly along the line of your neck before he sucks a dark mark just beneath your earlobe.

Your sigh of pleasure is music to his ears. His own breath catches when your hand slips between his legs, grasping his aching cock. You give a couple of leisurely strokes, but the tunnel of your fist is so loose, he knows you’re teasing him. He thrusts needily against you. “Sshhh,” you hush, guiding him to the bed. “Sit.”

He does, dropping onto the edge of the bed with a bounce, lips parted, breathing his excitement in shallow huffs. Initially, you confuse him by turning your back to him, but he catches on quickly when you put your hand on his thigh, and lower yourself slowly into his lap. He takes hold of your waist reflexively, aiding your descent. His grip on you flexes at the first glorious, wet press of your cunt against the throbbing head of his cock.

“Slow,” you remind him, your own excitement turning your voice thin and airy. Homelander grits his teeth, caught somewhere between impatience and dread. He’s not sure he’ll last long, not with the taste of you so fresh on his tongue and the hot, drenched pull of your body sucking him in. He wants to slam in and flee all at once, caught paralyzed in the middle.

Luckily for him, you’re wholly in control. You grip his wrists and sink down slowly, tipping your head back with a moan as you take every inch of him, settling fully in his lap. Homelander keens, pressing his face between your shoulder blades. You’re so tight and wet, it makes his head spin. The throb of your body alone could make him come, he’s certain of it. Your heart beat is a drum in his ear, one he can feel every pulse of in the velvet walls of your cunt. 

“Please,” he moans, adjusting subtly. Even that makes his balls ache.

“I have you,” you assure him, reaching back over your shoulder. You push your hand into his hair, guiding him to rest his chin on your shoulder as you massage his scalp with your fingertips. He wraps his arms around your waist, fighting the desperate urge to slam up into you, to break you apart and spill into the deepest parts of you. There is such violence in every part of him. It would be foolish to think it would not bleed into his love.

Instead, Homelander remains perfectly still, panting into the crook of your neck while you grip his hair, grounding him. “I love you,” you sigh, to which he screws his eyes shut, exhaling a rough little noise. “It’s okay. I want you to feel good. I want you to fill me up. Give me all of you,” you murmur, reaching down between your legs. You cup his balls in your palm, gently massaging them as you begin to lift, but only barely, fucking yourself down on his cock in deep, sharp drops.

“You’ll do that for me, right, baby? Always make me feel so good. Let me feel you come,” you coax, voice too sweet for the wicked way you seduce him. His balls are tight in your grasp, heavy, his cock weeping precome that’s lost amidst the wetness of you.

Still, he holds back. He adjusts himself to take hold of your breasts, massages them until you moan. He kisses the mark he left on your neck, teases your skin with sharp teeth. He almost bites down when you squeeze his balls, making him jerk up into you with a keening moan.

“F-fuck, mm, like that, do that again, baby,” you urge, tightening your grip on his hair while you continue to fondle his balls, eager to feel them unload inside you. In the midst of it all, he’s rapidly coming undone. Your tone breathy and low in his ear, you moan, “My sweet, perfect boy.”

Homelander chokes on his own sharp inhale, baring his teeth as something primal overtakes him. He locks his arms around you and in one, two, three, four sharp thrusts, lets out a guttural moan alongside the sweltering rush of relief and pleasure that erupts throughout his body. You make all kinds of sweet noises alongside him, surprised every time by the sheer force of his release.

The two of you rest like that, your body slumped back against his, his arms encircling you, keeping you pressed tight to his chest.

You’re spent, but he isn’t finished with you. He doubts he ever will be. You and your ordinary little life are unremarkable in every possible way, yet he clings to you now as though it is your strength that keeps him upright. For a long time, Homelander had believed the crux of his divinity was his distance from humanity. Now, he’s not so sure.

Never has he felt more like a god than he does with your words of worship furling sweetly within him, your body enveloping him in the warmth of your reverence. 

Somewhere along the line, though Homelander finds himself unable to pinpoint when or where, your presence in his life shifted from something convenient to something he needed.

It would scare him if he wasn’t so convinced you need him twice as badly. It compels him to ensure you never forget it, to show you that there will never again be anyone or anything in your life that changes it, enhances it the way he has. The more he needs you, the more you must need him.

It’s what drives him to eventually lift you from his lap and lay you on the bed, to nestle between your legs and lick up the mess he’s made of you. Eating his own come out of you tastes like possession, like familiarity, like love. Your moans, even muffled by the press of your inner thighs to his ears, are divine. He slips his fingers into your dripping cunt both for your pleasure and to push the spill of his come back inside, sucking on your clit while you rock against his fingers.

He loses himself to the fantasy playing behind his eyelids, imagining that this time, the seed takes. That it makes a mother of you. His baby growing in your belly, fattening up your breasts and making you glow with the radiance of it. You would carry the child of a god with incomparable grace, heavy with the weight of his legacy. You’d be bound to him beyond pretty words and carnal embraces. A baby would be his gift to you, and you would accept it without question, he assures himself.

Your cunt spasms around his fingers, pulling him back to reality. He fell so deep into his own bliss, he nearly forgot what he was doing. His eyelids flutter open, dazed and utterly at peace between your legs. Your orgasm hits his tongue beautifully, rhythmic thrums that have you clenching your thighs tight on either side of his head, arching up into his mouth. He slows the thrust of his fingers, licking you leisurely through the aftershocks, until you eventually relax and give his hair a gentle tug, prompting him to crawl obediently up the length of your body.

You kiss him with hunger. He leans back slightly just to see if you’ll give chase. He’s pleasantly surprised when you do, following his lips and pulling him greedily back down into your arms, bringing him flush to your chest. You hitch your legs over his hips, arms sliding around him, holding him like you have the strength to keep him there.

Someday, perhaps, he’ll come to terms with the power you have over him.

“I love you,” you whisper. The sentiment unspools around him and ties loose knots around his every muscle, soothing him until his weight rests fully upon your body. He nestles in between your breasts, brushing his lips along the swell of one. “I love you, too,” he murmurs, voice soft. He feels utterly lost to this marriage of sex and intimacy, secure enough to relax, to let go of the impulse to hold you tightly in place. He knows you will not try to leave him, try to reduce sex to a transaction to be completed and disregarded. It feels good to slip his arms loosely around you, and hold you with the knowledge that he need not fight to keep you.

Instead, it is you who holds on tightly. You entangle your fingers in his hair and cross your ankles over his back, locking him in place. It adds a kind of giddiness to his smile to, for once, be the one clung to.

More and more of Homelander’s day begins to revolve around you. When he isn’t with you, he’s thinking of you. He wakes to your text messages. He gets through the flash and pomp of his day to day life for the sake of returning to your arms. He grows increasingly territorial over his time, irritable when his position in the world forces him to be gone from you longer than his typical schedule calls for.

It’s a difficult feeling to describe. He’s never had something to look forward to outside of the validation of being Homelander.

It begins to manifest in frustration. He’s twice as curt with his responsibilities and those who assign them.

“You’re getting sloppy,” Stan Edgar warns him after a particularly messy incident. “I don’t care what you do in your personal time, or who you do it with,” he says. Homelander’s gut clenches. The words are too pointed to be anything other than a threat. “But here, on my time, you will perform as expected. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” Homelander answered through his teeth, hands locked tight behind his back, beneath his cape, where the world couldn’t see the subtle way they shook.

That night, in your creaky bed, he fucks you missionary–simple, intimate, face to face–and begs to hear your approval.

“More,” he pants desperately, one hand gripping the headboard, the other in a tight fist against the bed, above your shoulder. “More, fuck. Please.”

“My hero,” you croon, cupping his face in your hands, breath hitching with every slow, deliberate thrust of his hips. “They don’t deserve you. They don’t know how good they have it. How good you are,” you say, your words a soothing balm against his scorched ego. “Mm, even now, you’re making me feel so good. I love you so much, I wish you were all mine, only mine,” you say, drawing him down into a messy kiss.

“Only yours,” Homelander echoes through a broken moan, fucking into you harder, faster. He doesn’t miss the way you flinch at the pace, but you don’t tell him to stop. Instead, he feels you clench down hard around him, lips parting on a silent gasp.

“Only mine,” you repeat like an encouragement, wrapping your arms around his neck. Your headboard is slamming loudly against the wall now, each beat of it a step closer to the climax building between you. If you give a fuck about your shitty bed or the thin dry wall behind it, you give no indication of it. Instead, your eyes are locked completely on his, oblivious to the world around you.

He wants to lose himself in that stare.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m–”

An out of place bang against the wall abruptly knocks Homelander out of his delirium. He looks up, and hears a voice on the other side of the wall holler, “Some of us are trying to fucking sleep!”

Homelander bares his teeth, and without a thought, his eyes flare crimson. Two high intensity laser beams cut straight through your wall and into the adjoining apartment. Deafening silence follows. Homelander blinks the light away, staring for a long few seconds at the two holes before he looks down at you, uncertain of what he expects to see. Shock at best, horror at worst.

While your eyes are wide, it’s neither of those he sees.

“Don’t stop,” you tell him breathlessly, thrusting up against him. You look wild with it, heart pounding with adrenaline and arousal in equal measure. Not an ounce of fear. “Don’t you dare stop.”

He obeys immediately, driving into you so sharply it knocks the wind from you. He doubts you’ll ever hear from that neighbor again.

Homelander comes harder than he ever has before. He leaves you tender to the touch from the force of his thrusts, fucked raw. He offers apologies, but you don’t accept them as they’re spoken. Instead, you guide him down to kiss the marks his passion has left on you. Even then, he recognizes that it is not reconciliation you seek. You’re showing him his work, appreciating the canvas he has made of your body.

“Never apologize for this,” you tell him. “For leaving me with so much. It keeps you with me even when you’re away from me.”

For that alone, he would fuck you a dozen more times. It makes him want to sink his teeth into you, leave you with something more permanent. It makes him ache, wishing you could do the same. He never desired the capacity to be wounded until you taught him the beauty of bleeding for love. He finds himself viciously envious of the bruises blossoming on your skin in the shape of his touch. He imagines you idly pressing on them through the day, remembering with that dull ache how thoroughly he had fucked you.

“I wish you could do this to me,” he admits feverishly, tracing the pattern of his hand bruised onto your hip.

You’re quiet for a moment. “Maybe I can,” you say, causing him to pick up curiously. He watches you cover his hand with your own, and bring it to his forearm. His brows furrow slightly. He looks to you for an explanation, but you’re focused intently on wrapping his own hand around his arm, your fingers lined up with his. “Squeeze,” you tell him.

Understanding dawns. Licking his lips, Homelander flexes his grip on his forearm. At the same time, you kiss him, squeezing your hand tight over top of his. “Harder,” you say. He obliges, squeezing until pressure builds into a more alien sensation: pain. His instinct is to stop, to shy away from it, but before he can he feels you cup your hand between his legs, grasping his barely-hard cock. He gives a startled little moan into your mouth, and his hand retightens on his arm. 

“Good boy,” you say wickedly, stroking his cock in slow, firm pulls. “Nice and tight. I want you to remember me, too.”

“I will,” he rasps, folding in against you. “I will, I will, fuck, hhahhh…” he moans, taken apart not only by your touch, but the ease and eagerness with which you fulfill his every wicked thought. Is there any part of him you will shy away from?

He makes a sound somewhere between pain and pleasure, his skin discoloring around the press of his fingers, swelling up between them. At the same time, his cock fills out steadily with your every stroke. The pressure of it is not unlike the grip on his arm, a gradually building sensation that he wants to shy away from as much as he wants to dive into head first. The contrast, the contradiction of it, is intoxicating.

“So good for me. You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you?” You ask, smiling fondly. He nods fervently, refusing to relinquish his grip while you’re still squeezing his fingers down tight. He never could have fathomed that pain might feel like love.

“Yes, yes, anything,” he grits out, the tips of his fingers beginning to tingle. He lets out a rough breath when you begin to pump him faster, firmer, before he comes hard into the narrow tunnel of your fist, hips jerking while he dutifully maintains the painful, vice-like grip on his arm. You stroke him through it, milking him so thoroughly of his orgasm that he nearly misses when you loosen your fingers over his hand, and prompt him to release his hold. 

Once the skin settles, what Homelander is left with is a throbbing ache, and the unmistakable outline of his grasp imprinted in the burst vessels of his arm. He stares down at it, dumbstruck for a long moment. He has known pain, he’s even known injury, but never like this. He’s still coming down from the euphoria of his release, unable to process what he’s looking at, when your hand slips over top of the bruise, settling nicely into the shadow of it. You press it gently, and though it doesn’t hurt per se, it is different. Strange. It makes his stomach flip unfamiliarly.

“How does it feel?” You ask, tipping his chin up to kiss him.

“Weird,” he answers, distractedly reciprocating.

“How do you feel?” You continue, helping to settle you both down into bed, pulling the covers over your naked bodies.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.

“That’s okay,” you say, voice dripping over him like honey, warm and sweet. You lift his arm and turn it, kissing each sprawling line of the bruise he inflicted on himself. The mark he has given himself in your stead. No one has ever… “Do you like it?” He asks, hating how small his own voice sounds.

“Yes,” you sigh, looking at him, your cheek pressed lightly to the palm of the bruise. “Very much.”

Slowly, he smiles. “Kinda fucked up.”

You smile, too. “Good.”

The bruise lingers for several days. For as indestructible as he is, once the damage is done, his body heals at an uncomfortably human rate. It would set his teeth on edge if not for the fact that this mark reminded him that he is yours. He finds himself touching it absently during his day to day, thumb pressing into the fabric of his suit while he zones in and out at various meetings and interviews.

Every day he has it, it reminds him of where he’d rather be.

That same territorial irritation that got him in trouble with Stan Edgar returns tenfold. Every job and press conference feels more arduous an endeavor than the last. The flash of the cameras sting his eyes more than ever, their questions like endless needles pricking his eardrums. Their mindless adoration feels so shallow, it barely registers anymore.

He just wants to be done with it all.

It’s this headspace that leads Homelander to fucking up the worst he has since he was a goddamn teenager.

The flight back to your apartment feels longer than it ever has. Most of the blood and viscera either dries down or flakes away, but every inch of his exposed skin feels tight and itchy with it. He can feel it caked in his hair, too. 

He should return to the tower. There will be press. There will be speeches. There will be a cleanup job that sees him at the center stage.

He should return to the tower he tells himself again and again.

But he wants you.

Your balcony door welcomes him, unlocked as always. He hesitates briefly, staring at his glove. The color of it would mask the blood if not for how dark it has turned. His stomach churns as he steps inside. He wishes the bruise had not faded, that he could press on it now and feel the dull, aching assurance of your love.

He has kept this animal inside him far from you. It’s time to see whether or not you’ll withstand the blood-soaked bite of it. Whether or not you meant it when you said give me all of you.

Homelander steps inside. It’s late, nearly 11:00, but he knows you’re awake. He can hear tinny music playing from your phone, reverberating off the bathroom wall. He can smell the lavender of your bubble bath even over the copper tang of blood in his nostrils.

His stride through your hallway is uncharacteristically slow, footfalls heavy. He hears the water of your bath slosh, and then the music goes silent. “Homelander?” You call, trepidation in your voice. It churns his gut to hear, even if he knows it’s the unusual cadence of his steps you’re reacting to. He knows he sounds like a stranger. Part of him feels like one. He should have showered, washed away the filth until he was your hero again, shining brightly and walking as if the weight of the world did not sit upon him. He still doesn’t know why he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

An awful, warped part of him wants you to see the bloody mess hiding underneath. His throat is tight, twisted up in sickly anticipation. He does not answer your call. He wonders if you’ll scream when you see him. Another slosh of water, followed by the slap of your bare feet against your bathroom floor. He makes his way to your bedroom, listening to the quicken of your heart.

Answer her, he tells himself. You’re scaring her.

Good, answers another thought. It’s time to know, once and for all, what she’s truly made of. To know whether or not all good things come to an end. She should be scared.

Homelander listens to you move from your bathroom to the soft carpeting of your bedroom, hears the hushed, quick way you begin to rummage about. He stands in front of your bedroom door, one blood crusted hand resting on the doorknob. He hesitates for a second, in which everything goes quiet, save for the shallow sounds of your breath, and the quick, rain-drop pattering of your heart.

He opens the door. He barely registers the gun in your hands–or the sharp, focused look in your eyes–before you fire. The sound of it rings almost painfully loud in his ears after he had been listening so intently to the race of your pulse. He blinks several times, glancing down at the bullet wedged between the carved musculature of his suit.

“Homelander,” you gasp, lowering the gun. Since the first day he met you, he knew you owned it. He just didn’t expect you to be any good with it, not after the way you failed to defend yourself with it. Had you been practicing? He can’t remember ever smelling gunpowder on your hands. He plucks the bullet from the chest of his suit, examining it. That shot would have killed a man. You didn’t hesitate long enough to even recognize who stood before you. You knew precisely what you were doing.

“You didn’t answer me,” you say. Gone is that keen killer stare. Your eyes are wide, mortified. He watches you register the state of him, taking in his expression, the blood. You haven’t moved an inch. Why haven’t you come to him yet? He drops the bullet to the ground, and extends his hand out to you.

“C’mere,” he says, voice low.

You look at his hand, but you hesitate. The surge of anger it ignites within him is white hot, making his gut churn violently. “Come here!” He snaps. Your eyes shoot back up to meet his gaze. He can’t read the expression on your face, which only adds kindling to the flames of frustration and anxiety burning him up from the inside out.

He wants to grind himself deep into the marrow of your bones, find sanctuary in the hollow of them. Your body, your mind, your soul, which you have emptied into a haven made for him alone, has become the greatest solace he has ever known. The notion that you might deny him now–might deny him ever–is more horrifying a thought than he can bear.

The handful of seconds it takes before you begin walking feel like hours. Your steps are tentative, like a deer navigating the underbrush silently so as not to disturb the wolves. You look so much like you did that very first night: like you were made to feel the sharp teeth of a predator.

You slip your lavender fresh hand into his bloody one. He closes his gloved fingers around it, gentle with you despite the thrumming tension in his body. He can feel the corners of his mouth twitching with it, his breaths shallow. For once, it’s his own heart thundering in his ears.

“Sshhh,” you hush softly, barely a breath. His brows furrow, dried blood cracking apart on his skin. You lift your free hand to his face, palm lightly ghosting along his jaw. He cups your hand in his and turns his head to push fully into it, lips pressed to your palm, eyes falling shut. He can’t stomach that unfamiliar look on your face.

“I didn’t… they weren’t supposed to be there,” he begins to explain, readying a contingency plan. An explanation you’ll believe. Something to say that will make your face recognizable to him again. However, before he can continue, the press of your thumb to his lips quiets him. 

“It’s okay,” you say, coaxing him from his downward spiral. “I don’t care.” “What?” He doesn’t like the sound of that. 

“I don’t care what you did,” you clarify, squeezing his hand in yours. Slowly, you begin to pull him down, towards you. “I don’t care whose blood this is.” Just as you had that very first night, you bring your lips to his ear. “You are all I have ever cared about.” Goosebumps erupt across every inch of his skin. He lets go of your hand and wraps his arms around you, sinking down against you in sheer relief for the way you slip your arms around his neck, fingers carding up into his hair, matted as it is with blood. He exhales roughly, squeezing you too tight. He can hear it in the strain of your breath, your chest compressed to his, but you don’t fight him. You endure him.

That alone is more than anyone else has managed.

Over your shoulder, Homelander stares at the gun resting atop your bedside table. For the first time, he wonders who truly ensnared who.

Drawing back, he takes hold of your jaw in both hands and kisses you desperately. If you mind the taste of blood, you give no indication of it, opening for his tongue and meeting him readily with yours. “I thought you would–I thought you were–” Fuck, even as his pulse steadies, he can’t get the words straight, can’t get them off of his tongue.

“I’m here, I’m here. I wasn’t,” you manage to say between the fervent presses of his lips, sounding as relieved as he feels. It’s as if you’ve heard his thoughts. “I love you. I love you.” 

A treacherous little whimper crawls up the back of his throat, but he chases it with a groan. He takes his hands from your face to your arms, itching to feel every inch of you, to remind himself that it’s all real. That you’re real. 

“Come with me,” you say. I will. Anywhere, he thinks. You step backwards, and he follows. At some point, the towel slipped from your body. Your damp skin has become a canvas of bloodied impressions ranging from his hands to the texture of his suit. Piece by piece, you begin peeling away the soiled suit from his body. He lets you work, though he cannot keep his hands from you, particularly once you remove his gloves. He pushes his hands into your wet hair while you unbuckle his pants, kisses you hungrily while he steps out of his boots. 

It is a maddening thing, to be loved when you are at your most unloveable.

The bathwater sloshes over the edges as you both sink down into it, all tangled limbs and devouring kisses. The blood stains the soapy lavender pink while your hands leave messy crimson handprints on the ceramic tub. You straddle his lap, and with wet hands, begin working his blood crusted hair wet and loose. Leaning in, Homelander settles his hands on your ribs and kisses a trail down the valley between your breasts, turning his head to lap and suck at your right nipple.

You encourage him with a low moan, nails dragging along his scalp. You cradle his head to your chest, retaliating by rocking your hips slowly down against his, pinning his stiffening cock between your bodies. “Listen to me. There is nothing you could do that would drive me away,” you tell him, punctuating your words with sinuous slides of your hips, wringing tight, needy little moans from him. Your own voice is breathy, the pitch of it gradually climbing. You reach down between your bodies, and take a firm hold of his cock, steadying it until you can sit astride it, and slowly sink back down.

With your mouth at his ear, panting noisy little breaths, you whisper, “I would kill a dozen, a hundred more men if it made you mine.”

What do you mean more?

The thought doesn’t linger long. It’s impossible to focus on anything other than the molten hot clench of your cunt seizing all around him, swallowing him up like it was made to. Homelander slides his hands to your hips and takes a tight hold, meeting the roll of your body with sharp thrusts up. “Nnngh, aah, fuck, I love you–I’m–fuck, I love you, you’re so–so fucking perfect,” he growls through his teeth, dull nails biting crescent marks into your skin while he holds you, pulling you down into every jagged, desperate snap of his hips. Each deep thrust knocks a noise from you, has you gripping his hair tight. Without leverage, all you can do is take it, your moans growing louder and louder, your pussy squeezing him tighter as he fucks you with inhuman precision. Homelander picks up his pace, dying to feel you come for him when he’s like this, messy with the worst parts of himself and wholly at your mercy, whether you know it or not.

“C’mon,” he grits out, though where he means to have authority in his voice, it comes out like a plea. “Come for me. Wanna feel you come on my cock. F-fuck, please, let me–let me feel you,” he says, trailing off into a moan before he buries his face between your breasts, flexing fresh bruises into your skin while you prettily pant and whimper in his ear from the sheer force he fucks you with.

“I will, I–I–” That’s as far as you get before you come, before you double over against him and scream his name loud enough for your entire apartment complex to hear. It tips him right over the edge with you, has him crying out as he arches his back, flooding his release deep into your tight, quivering pussy, thrusting weakly through the aftershocks.

By the time the two of you settle down against one another, your breaths calmed, the majority of the bathwater is outside of the tub. The night air is cool on your naked bodies, but you’ve never been cold in Homelander’s arms. He traces absent patterns on your skin while you recover, your thighs still shaking.

“We should shower,” you say eventually, a slight slur to your tone. It makes Homelander smile. He loves feeling, seeing, and hearing all the ways in which he has ruined you. “Let me finish washing you.”

“Can you stand?” He asks. It’s an earnest question. “Carry me there,” you say.

He stares at you warmly, the corners of his eyes crinkled with the width of his smile. “ ‘Kay.“

The shower is slow, less frenzied. You lather shampoo into his hair, washing away the remnants of what had come before this. You work body wash into his skin until he smells like coconuts instead of blood and viscera. He nuzzles into your touches, kisses you whenever the impulse strikes. There is no way to describe the unparalleled feeling of sharing space with a body that not only welcomes your touch, but also houses a heart that loves you. Once the two of you are sufficiently towel dried, the two of you settle into your familiar creaky bed. You draw the covers up over your bodies, and he draws you into his embrace, kissing the top of your head. He intertwines his fingers with yours, absently rubbing your skin with his thumb, his mind drifting.

“Say,” he begins eventually, stirring you from your near slumber. “The night we met… What were you doing on that side of town, down that alley?” His voice is low, curious.

There’s a pause. He can’t see your face like this, while you’re nestled into the crook of his neck, but he can hear your heart clear as day.

“I was looking for you,” you answer eventually, pulse as steady as a metronome.

At that, he smiles. “I love you,” he whispers, squeezing your hand.

“I love you, too,” you answer, your own smile audible in your sleepy voice. “And I always will.”

Don't fret precious I'm here Step away from the window Go back to sleep Lay your head down child I won't let the boogeyman come Counting bodies like sheep To the rhythm of the war drums Pay no mind to the rabble Pay no mind to the rabble Head down, go to sleep To the rhythm of the war drums

[chaosandwolves]

Hello lovelies

I was lucky enough to snatch a commission from @bucksketch

This is something that has been on my mind for so long and I could finally ask one of my fav artists to bring this to life

Everyone,

The Stucky Buddie AU

There is no fic (yet)

But I think they fit them so well

Buck with his trying to save everyone, trying to always do the right thing, burning down the world for his loved ones

Eddie with all the trauma that hardened him on the outside at first glance but he'll do everything for the ones he loves

Buck with the whole transformation he goes through while the core of his heart never changes

Eddie with all that grief but slowly making his way through healing

The friends to lovers

The always having each other's backs

The saving each other

Yeah I love them all

[corffee]

You guys get two espilver posts today cause you’re cool

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[m3talmunson]

Steve Harrington is incredibly smart. It's not his fault nobody believes him. Or, well, maybe it is.

Steve used to be his parents pride and joy, everyone knew that. When he was young, doing his piano lessons, his mother would show him off at their house parties.

"Look at my Steven!" She'd say, and all the other mothers around would parrot something like "What a sweet boy!" and he would just keep playing. That night his father would commend him for keeping the ladies occupied, that he'd grow up to be a real ladies' man, and how great it was that he kept the women out of the men's hair. He'd never said "I'm proud of you," or "I love you," but that was as close as he got.

And for a while, Steve LIVED for it. He'd come downstairs, see his mother in her good pearls, her party pearls, and know that he'd be good for them that day. Be needed for something.

And then it got old. So he learned cello. That kept them entertained for a while, until it didn't. Then he learned flute. That one kept them occupied a little longer, Mr. Harrington could stand the fact that it was a "girly" instrument because it kept Steve's mouth shut. He got too good at talking while he played the other instruments.

Then he tried guitar, and well all the instruments just stopped impressing them, because they stopped having house parties. Instead, they'd started going out to them. Started going out and not coming back, for weeks upon weeks at a time. Steve was determined to give them something to show off, something to praise.

He had always been quite book smart, but he started really putting the effort in. Steve gave it a year and a half of straight A+'s, until he realized that his parents would never care. So he tried a new approach, called 'skating along right above failing'. It didn't get their attention one bit.

Even when Steve came home beaten and torn, from the upside down or a fight, they weren't even there to ever notice.

And sure, people like Joyce or Hopper would notice, check in on him until the black eye went away. But after that, they had lives to live.

So no, the adults in Steve's life didn't really give him much attention at all.

Of course he didn't mind it all that much. Some small part of Steve just figured 'I deserve it,' and he rolled with the punches.

He found solace in his instruments, still. He learned more and more. Piano was his best, but once you had learned piano you could learn just about anything else with some dedication. His guitar he could whip out at a couple of his high school parties. In private, alone in his room with a girl, he could strike a few chords and they would just obsess over it. Got him the companionship he so desperately needed for a while.

Even so, he never showed Nancy. She made it clear to him that she loved watching him swim, loved his muscles. The more masculine parts of him. So he never brought it out. When she asked about the shiny grand piano in his living room, he'd just say his mom played. He stashed away his other instruments in a spare room, so she wouldn't see them.

That's not to say he didn't want to show her one day. He wanted to, but once you get called bullshit once, you're pretty much over the vulnerability.

So he continued to hide it, hide his smarts. He skated through until graduation, nursing the wounds in his body and mind all alone. Then he met Robin.

And he was just too scared to show her that part of himself. His instruments had become his little secret, and he just wasn't keen on sharing.

Not until after the events of Vecna. He had lost enough by then. He didn't lose any friends this time, but he was close. Max regained some of her eyesight, wearing thick glasses that Steve paid for. He'd never let Max's mother do it. Eddie got his new government-supplied trailer, and walked the long road to recovery. And near the end of that road, Steve threw one damn good party.

It was early August. Steve and Robin had already celebrated a year of being best friends (and being free of Russian torture), but Max was having a harder time, so they waited a little longer, until the Byers-Hopper group had settled in, but before school started. It was pretty much a "Hey Hawkins is (Relatively) Safe!" party. Everyone had mostly recovered from the events of spring break, the Byers-Hopper clan had finally put the finishing touches on their home in Hawkins, getting a nice big house that someone left behind in the "Great Escape From Hawkins of 1986". Eddie had finished high school, a little bit with the pity of teachers who were sorry that they thought he was a murderer, combined with the pity that he was nearly killed in the "earthquake", but who's counting? It was his year.

It was all of their years, finally over with this upside-down business. So Steve threw a party.

The adults had left, calling in their bedtime at 9. The kids and the older teens were sleeping over though. Steve had more than enough space, and of course, the moment Joyce Byers closed the front door with her last "Call me if you need anything!" they had to break out the good old party games.

The kids insisted on truth or dare, and they got a couple rounds in before Dustin decided to single our Steve for once.

"You haven't been called on much, it's my turn to fix that." Dustin said. Argyle was the only person who had chosen Steve so far, since he was on vacation from California for the summer, staying at the Byers place after helping them move in.

"Yeah yeah just spit it out kid," Steve retorted, taking the last swig of his first-and-only beer for the night, always playing it safe in case he had to drive one of the kids home unexpectedly.

"Truth or Dare?"

Steve contemplated for a moment. He picked dare earlier with Argyle and it had been pretty simple. A truth might make him spill some of the secrets he was content to keep in his brain. Within the kids group half of the truths so far had been about crushes. It left Will stammering earlier, and he wasn't about to let the same thing happen to himself. He could admit he had... new feelings when it came to romance that he'd rather not let out in THIS room. What's the worst that could happen if he chose dare anyways?

"Dare. Hit me with your best shot kid."

"Damnit, I had only thought of a truth! Give me a second." Dustin fumbled, turning to Lucas and trying to think of a good dare.

"All that talk..." Eddie whispered into Steve's ear.

That was a new habit the older teens had gotten into. Whispered secrets behind flexed hands, like a little kid's game of telephone. Something that made them feel like kids again. Though if we're being honest, it was mostly Steve and Eddie.

"I know, right?" Steve whispered back. Admittedly, something about the whispering made the hair on Steve's neck stand up on end. It made him feel like he and Eddie were the only people in the world.

He always had to come back to reality though.

"I dare you-" Dustin interrupted, " -to show us something you've never shown anyone before. Like a hidden talent or something."

Steve thought about it for a second. Maybe he could finally be vulnerable with the group. He had gone to hell and back with these people, multiple times. Surely he could play some piano.

So Steve got up, passing his empty bottle to Nance who eyed it with a raised brow and set it on the side table next to her. He stepped over the boys' sleeping bags, all of them sticking around in the living room that night so the girls could have the basement. Steve chose to ignore when Mike fussed, saying that he got stepped on.

He sat down at the piano bench and cracked his knuckles, looking down at the keys before snapping his head up and asking, "Any requests?"

"Wait Steve you can-" Nancy started, before Robin blurted out a song.

"Take Me Home Tonight!" Robin shouted. It had become their collective favorite song recently, both of them singing it every day on the drive home from work.

"Yeah, I can do that one. Be my backup Robs?"

"You don't have to ask twice!" She swung up from her place next to Nance, stepping over the sleeping bags the same way Steve had.

When she made herself a comfy spot on top of the piano, swinging her legs back and forth, Steve started the intro.

Steve thought it sounded a little dinky on classical piano with no synth. He winced to himself as he played the intro, looking up to Robin for comfort. He just saw her jaw drop, and her mischievous smile go wider. He didn't have to look at anyone else, Robin's nod for him to start singing was all he needed to look back down at the keys.

Steve had never been a confident singer, always putting on a bit of a show, carrying a tune -but never doing his best- so if someone said it was bad, he could say he wasn't trying. This time though, he gave it his all.

By the first chorus he was throwing his head back and closing his eyes, putting on a show for a different reason, smiling as wide as he could whilst singing.

He took some liberties: embellishing a little on piano, changing "Ronnie" to "Robbie" because, honestly, who wouldn't have. He got to her solo and, playing the supporting chords with his left hand, held out his right hand and his fake microphone to Robin, who took his arm in her hands and let out her most dramatic "Be my little baby," straight from the heart.

Playing the intro to the next part, Steve remembered that there were people in the room besides him and Robin. He looked around at the faces of his friends. Lucas and Max were bopping along on the floor, Will, El, and Erica had been dancing haphazardly in the corner the whole time, El dragging her brother up by the arm. Erica followed; she had recently taken an admiring to the bitchin' girl with superpowers, plus both El and Max enjoyed having another girl at sleepovers. Dustin's jaw was still on the floor, although Nancy was more subtle about her shock, her mouth hanging in a little "o" . Jonathan and Argyle were nodding their heads along to the bass chords, having just the time of their lives. It was Eddie's face that made Steve's heart jump. He was marveling at Steve, and anyone could tell. It was enough to make Steve sing the next verse directly to him. It became all too real all of a sudden, and he wouldn't change it for the world.

Soon after, the game was ditched, all the kids rattling off songs for Steve to play for them, so they could sing along. After some Loverboy, Blondie, Grease, and their more-than-fair share of ABBA, the kids tired themselves out. Will and El made a point to thank Steve for his playing, Lucas, Max, and Erica whooped and hollered after every song, and the rest of them showed their thanks in other ways, in hugs goodnight or simple looks, eye contacts worth a million words. Then all the older teens headed upstairs. Jonathan and Argyle headed to their room early, but Robin and Nancy stuck around in the Steve's bedroom, where he was sharing with Eddie.

"When were you going to tell us you were a musical GENIUS?" Eddie asked.

"I'm no genius, I just- My mom wanted something to show off at parties when I was younger, I started learning when I was seven so I could be their free entertainment."

"Thirteen years, Steve?" Nancy felt pretty awful not knowing about something so personal to him.

"Yeah, this is my first time showing someone who wasn't at those parties though. Well, on the piano at least."

"What do you mean 'on the piano?' Do you play other instruments dingus?"

"Well, a couple others! Cello, flute, guitar, french horn, and drums a little. I can carry a tune on harmonica, but I mainly picked it up to learn Piano Man. Thought it'd be kinda funny."

"You are magical Stevie, did you know that?"

Those words, Eddie's words, bounced around in Steve's head for the rest of the night. Magical. Him? Magical.

"Seeing as we know a girl with superpowers, I doubt that I'm the magical one." Steve brushed it off.

The girls took their leave a while later, leaving Steve and Eddie to stew in their awkward nature around eachother.

"I guess I can give up on being the only cool guitar player in the group." Eddie said, faking a heartbroken look.

"You can still be the only cool guitar player, I'm just a guitar player."

"Oh c'mon Stevie! You know these kids think you're the coolest person on the planet."

"I think you've got that one covered, I'm just their ever-so-giving host and chauffeur." Steve tried to make a joke out of it, gave his best self-pitying chuckle and everything. Eddie saw right through it. Saw the tears cloud the edge of Steve's vision before he blinked them away.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey," Eddie stopped Steve, "You're so much more than a ride home and a place to stay to them, okay? I mean it, they think you're the coolest person on the planet. And they're not the only ones who think it."

"Ha, like you think it."

"I do, Steve. I do think it."

"I mean, come on Eds! There's really no redeeming factor," Steve let the tears fall freely, moving off of his bed where Eddie sat, and gesturing to himself,"I have a nice car, a big house, and a shit personality. I'm not good in conversation, I don't know any of their nerd games. I'm no good at keeping them safe from anything that isn't an interdimensional monster. I'm just kind of here. I'm not smart, or nice, or even funny, or magical like you said. I'm just here."

"Steve," Eddie started, this look in his eyes, trying it's hardest to tell Steve everything he means to them, means to Eddie. But Steve just closed his eyes, bowed his head, like Eddie had some power over him.

Steve just stood there, head bowed, flexing and unflexing his fists.

"Come here." Eddie commanded, patting the bed next to him. And, just like the little kid who learned piano to entertain his mom, Steve listened.

Steve sat down and Eddie immediately scooted him closer, putting Steve's chin in both of his hands. Making Steve look him in the eye.

"You are so much more to those kids. And even if I'm wrong, you're so much more to me. You are smart, you are kind, you are generous, and loving, and you care for each and every one of us more than anything or anyone in the world could reasonably ask you to." Eddie wiped Steve's tears as they fell, but he never broke eye contact. "You've saved their LIVES Steve. Many of them wouldn't be here without you. I wouldn't be here without you. You carried me out of that hell hole, and you've been here for me since. If there's anyone in this world qualified to tell you how much you mean to them, I think it's me."

"You really believe all of that?"

"Every syllable of every word."

See, Steve Harrington is incredibly smart. It's not his fault nobody believes him.

Not even himself.

But maybe, for the first time, he was about to make a smart decision.

So he learned forward, into Eddie. Pressed his lips into Eddie's and didn't doubt that Eddie would kiss back. And when Eddie did, Steve's heart soared. He put all of his gratitude, all of his feelings into kissing Eddie.

After he finally pulled away, Eddie just had to bring some light into the situation. He wiped away one of Steve's tears, and said:

"I hope I don't have to see those pretty eyes cry for that to happen again."

"You don't-" Steve leaned in again.

And if Robin found them suspiciously close in the morning, it was nobody's business but her own.

[lovesickeros]

☆ you sow; & thus you shall reap what you are owed

{☆} characters tsaritsa {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings blood, violence {☆} word count 0.8k

You are dying.

Gold melts into the dirt, bleeds into the very earth that you'd molded by your own hands – a familiarity you do not understand the source of – you know it to be true, yet you do not remember it as Teyvat does. It weeps, in turn, for the way you bleed upon it, the way your lungs strain for breath.

It is fury and sorrow and fear and hatred so raw that your mind buckles.

You will die.

"A dying godling and its judge, it's jury – it's executioners," The voice is hollow and cold, sweeps across your broken body like the first chill of winter, "Archons who saw themselves Gods, now brought to heel by their own hubris."

A cold hand upon your cheek, the brush of a thumb across your lip, the gentle caress of cold across your skin. You know her – you don't remember, you shouldn't recognize her but you do – and she knows you. The cold beckons and you follow, let her kindness settle in the hollow space of your chest. You want to speak, to cry and scream and rage, let the world burn around you in a fit of flames so hot even she cannot contain it – but she silences you, quiets the anger seeping into your blood, quiets Teyvat itself.

"Do not speak, little godling. Guide my hand," She is cold; her hands are not gentle, yet it is bliss compared to the callous, cruel hands that have shattered you. She is cruel and cold and brutal but she is love in the way she kisses the crown of your head. She is love in the way she is the bulwark between you and the world that has scorned you – she is fury in the way she brings them to their knees. "And I shall enact judgement most divine."

They will pray for forgiveness, and they shall find themselves wanting.

"It wasn't our fault!" They cry, but you cannot recognize the voice – it breaks and cracks like glass. "They were too human. How were we meant to know? We– we thought they were.."

Silence.

You watch your judge – the executioner, the blade that shall carve their sins into the very marrow of Teyvat, stand above you like death. As cold as winter and just as brutal. Your temple has been painted in the gold of your divine blood, and she shall complete the masterpiece with their own. The Archons shall become the grandest art in the world – this temple the canvas, their blood the paint and their bodies the palette. The cold that cuts sinew cradles you – it sings to you, whispers sweetly in your ear and carves bone from body in the same breath. The cold presses it's lips to your wrist and it cradles a heart within it's palm – judges them and finds them guilty.

It is her spear that rests between their ribs, her sword that dissects and her dagger that carves – the cold devours.

In the breadth of this divine sanctuary, the Archons dwindle. They become the pieces of a divine work of art, they bleed and bend and break upon her hands. She shakes the heavens and carves mortality into the bones of the divine – your word is Law, and you weave their deaths into the roots of Teyvat itself.

They shall know of their grand folly in every moment henceforth and longer still and they shall weep.

And as the curtain falls, as the world crumbles beneath fist and blade, she cradles your face between hands too cold – as gentle as a shard of ice between your ribs, as brutal as the kiss of gentle snowfall. The world buckles at the loss of six, but she alone does not allow it to break – you will have to mend the wounds of the world when you are well, but today you weep and Teyvat weeps with you.

And alone, the cold remains.

Stone has eroded, the wind has ceased, the flames have been extinguished, the storm has been silenced, the forests have gone quiet and the seas go still.

But the cold remains, bathed in gold.

It wraps you in thick furs, cradles you against the winter storm that brews beneath a veneer of composure. It brings you home – lets the world settle into a stillness and silence that inspires only dread and still she presses a kiss to your brow.

It is cold, but there has never been something so warm.

Where hands have broken you, she drapes you in furs, wipes away the thick gold that clings to your skin. She pieces you back together where you have been shattered, reshapes you where you have been bent – makes of you something new. Not a god and not a mortal but something wedged between them.

But you are yourself.

And you are where you belong.

They shall put you back together and you shall know only the worship worthy of the divine. They shall carve this world into your image, tear out and burn away the rot that festers.

All you need to do is say the word and they shall be your tools to make this world your own.

One word and those who wronged you shall burn, too.

Just one word. That's all it takes, and they shall take away your pain.

[glitterghost]

Kind of want to run into an overgrown forest (ao3) and never be seen again (drown happily in my feelings).

[essektheylyss]

Open, non-exhaustive list of content I would read/watch in a heartbeat about the political situation in Rexxentrum post-Solstice:

One-shot or mini-arc of the Nein going full National Treasure level heist on the Cerberus Assembly records management department before a Ludinus simulacrum can reach the burn boxes

Faux Trump aide exposé-style novel of Athesias Uludan compiling and publishing The Dirt in the aftermath as part of his apology/comeback tour

Colville-run Dirty Dozen one-shot or EXU of Oliver Schreiber dragging some particularly unruly ex-Scourgers out of semi-retirement (read: house arrest) to take Ludinus out once and for all in exchange for full indemnity

Found documents a la Midst appendices of the Cobalt Soul documentation and evidence compiled about the incident

The Archmage: An Autobiography by Martinet Ludinus Da'leth (discovered and published posthumously) [1500 pages and riddled with exaggeration and inaccuracies, the last 20% has clearly been written by AI a simulacrum]

Lorekeeper rundown Youtube video from Dani Carr

Yet another novel: Wildemount's most (in)famous and (un)reliable documentarian smelled a story (Taryon's version)

Literally just a main campaign episode of the Nein infodumping to Allura at a war council meeting with the Hells present. I need this information so badly. I am fucking begging.

This sounds like it runs the gamut in level in terms of seriousness but I would like it stated for the record that I would unhinge my jaw to consume any item on this list.

[luthordamnvers]

'The next time Lena sees Kara, the blonde is 25, and she's in Thorul as a diplomat, to again try to convince Lex to stop the war, to see if they could come up with a solution.

The moment she sees Kara again, it's like everyone and everything else has come to a standstill, and maybe Lena has always been more than a little in love with Kara. She looks incredibly handsome, with a dark coat with gold thread sewn into it with beautiful designs and her family crest.'

As you wish

[theminecraftbee]

I am genuinely sitting here, clenching my fists, going “okay I am not into qsmp I know I can’t get into it because I don’t really watch that many streams anymore, which means I should not try to write a fic that would BY NECESSITY require me dig into the psyche of a qsmp character, who, may I add, the sum total of my knowledge of comes from occasional liveblogs from my mutuals and the notes of One Post”.

but listen I have a WHOLE VIRAL POST about my thing with stories about grief and. god. fic about iskall coming into sunny’s life Too Late and the two of them trying to figure out how to bond in the wake of terrible tragedy…. I picture it in my mind’s eye………