#fanfiction vignette

[nattravn-art]

Here are part 1 of the vignettes I did for @thecrimsonvalley-creates's fics this past month!

All are for Rusty Lake/Cube escape.

The first one is for "No such thing as Paradise" (angst & feels, David, Dale present at the end).

The second one is for "Bake with love" (family fluff, Vanderboom cousins).

And the last one is for "Through a fog fuelled by forgetfulness" (hurt and light comfort, David & Elizabeth).

Part 2 (suggestive warning).

[visceravalentines]

fever dream

Bo Sinclair x AFAB!Reader

7.6k words. dubcon ofc. reader is absolutely mentally bankrupt. stockholm is where we live, it's where we are, it's where we'll die. sporadic smut, pnv, fingering, and oral (fem!rec). blood and sweat everywhere. Bo calls reader a bitch a couple times but like, it's out of love or some shit. somno. alcohol use. nightmares. ghosts. swamp things. the ever-looming threat of death and depersonalization.

welcome back to my youtube channel. I have been. working on this fic. since May of last year. and it's finally done(?) it is long and weird and maybe bad and meant for you to get lost in. a journey with no destination. a haunted house only you are the haunted and the haunt and the house. tbqh I'm rewatching HoW today for the first time in months and months and I had to get this out of my drafts so I can check back into the sanitarium with minimal baggage, y'know?? I hope it makes you feel some type of way.

The summer heat is in your blood and the swamp is in your lungs and he is under your skin. 

You’ve never known an August like this, like a blister. You go to bed sticky and wake up drenched in sweat. The ceiling fan is a hurricane agent that offers no respite, just blows the humidity in vicious cycles. There’s no air conditioning in the house; it’s too old. Instead you wrap ice cubes in dish towels and press them to the back of your neck. 

A storm’s been hanging on the horizon for days. Thunder rolls out of a wall of iron gray, an idle threat. The air is soupy and super-charged. No rain comes. 

The nights are delirium. You go to bed on opposite sides of the mattress, oil and water. He sleeps naked, sprawled out like a water skeeter. The quilt sits scrunched at the foot of the bed for the season and he kicks the sheets off around midnight like something forcing its way out of a soft-shelled egg. 

You lie awake, listening to the cicadas and waiting. Just when you’ve started to cool down and drift off he reaches over and fumbles at your leg, grabs your arm. He pulls you on top of him, hands on your body beneath his old t-shirt. You ride him with your eyes closed and your breath hot on your lips. It’s a fever, the sweating, the shaking. 

You wake every morning suffocating under his arm in the center of the mattress with honey between your thighs. 

.

He drinks his coffee hot even though the steam can barely rise above the rim of the mug in the humidity. You pour yours over ice and savor the feeling as it seeps down your throat and into your stomach. You curl your toes on the linoleum and almost smile at him across the table. He’s golden from all his time in the sun. You can trace the lines of his wifebeater over his shoulders, across his chest. You stare at him across the table and think about the taste of his skin. You want to run your tongue along that tan line. 

He catches you staring. “What?” he says flatly. 

You redirect your gaze to your hands. Shake your head. Wait for him to move on so you can resume your perusal of his body.

When he looks away, out the window, the sun catches those eyes and turns them to sea glass. He needs a haircut; walnut curls crest over his ears like kudzu. When you get up to clear the table your skin peels from the vinyl seat cushion with a sting that makes you wrinkle your nose. 

“Be good,” he tells you before he leaves. You wonder what he means, what he thinks you might get up to in this house full of dust and guns and ghosts. You know better than to ask, and you nod and kiss him goodbye and feel his lips on your lips for hours afterwards. 

The day languishes. They all do. You kill a thousand flies. You mop the floor and track your own footprints across it before it dries. You hang his shirts on the clothesline in the side yard and feel like an insect trapped in the sap of time. You shave your legs in a cold bath and examine your skin:  sunburn, bug bites, bite marks. 

When he pulls into the driveway you’re on the front step eating a popsicle and counting the minutes. He saunters across the gravel like John Wayne, shoulders exposed, hair plastered to his neck. You meet his eyes and wrap your lips around the cherry-flavored mess dripping onto your fingers. He spits into the weeds and eyes you through his lashes. 

“What’s for supper?” 

You suck on your sticky thumb. There’s a full spread on the dining room table, ready and waiting. “Whatever you want.” 

He licks his lips. 

Supper gets cold. 

.

He brings home a bag of saltwater taffy, all raspberry. 

“Thought of you,” he says when he hands it to you. To your recollection, you have never mentioned taffy or raspberries or anything of the sort. You wonder who he thinks you are, whether he has you confused with someone else. 

You sit on the porch steps and amass a pile of wax paper wrappers beside you. It’s soft and melty, peels out of the wrapper with a sticky crackling sound. It’s salty and sour and tastes like cheap sugar. Like a memory of summer that may be real, or maybe not. Could be yours, or could be someone else’s.

You eat more than you want, until your teeth hurt and you can feel the hot spot on your tongue where a canker sore will form. You rake that spot back and forth across your incisors. You can’t help it. Sometimes it feels like things have to have a hurt to them. 

“You ever been to the fair?” you ask him over your shoulder.

He grunts from the porch swing. “Used to go when Vince ‘n me were little. Took Les a couple times when he was old enough.”

“You ever take a girl?”

“Nah.” His boot thumps on the porch, an offhand punctuation mark. “Couldn’t find one to go with me.”

You doubt that; you’ve seen his yearbook photos. But then again, maybe he was off-putting as a teenager. Spooky. Hadn’t quite learned how to camouflage yet. Came on too strong, wore too much cologne, used too many teeth.

You survey the vast swath of woods that surrounds Ambrose and try to imagine a ferris wheel, red and blue and blinking, rising from the green like the hump of a whale.  “I’d go with you.”

He snorts. “Yeah?”

You look down at the piece of taffy in your fingers. You don’t really want it. You unwrap it anyway. “Yeah.” You gnaw on the candy like a dog savoring a scrap. “Be like a date,” you say thickly.

“What, you wanna skip down the midway holdin’ hands? Makin’ out in the Tunnel of Love?”

You can picture it, sunset and a sundress. He’s laughing. You’re laughing. The crowd is made of wax. “You could win me a stuffed animal.”

He scoffs again, but then he asks you, “What kinda stuffed animal you want?”

You think for a second, unstick the taffy from your molars and push it around your mouth with your tongue. “A Louisiana crocodile.” A souvenir from your time in the South. Maybe it’ll be wearing a little trucker hat and a smile that doesn’t reach its eyes.

“Ain’t got crocodiles here, sugar. ‘S all alligators.”

“Fine, an alligator then.”

You run your hands over your shins, sticky with the humidity. The chains of the porch swing creak rhythmically behind you. The sea of trees is dark and still and endless.

“Fair don’t come ‘round here anymore,” he says finally.

You force the taffy down your throat, swallow hard, and reach for another one.

“Figures.”

.

You’re buzzed and reckless, sucked down a pair of beers too fast just because they were frosty. The shears snick like some needy, nipping thing. You found them upstairs under the bathroom sink once upon a time and you always put them back when you’re done. They’ve been there longer than you’ve been alive. You comb your fingers across his scalp and loose locks drift onto your clean floor. 

“Don’t take it too short,” he admonishes into the mouth of his beer bottle. “You butcher me, I butcher you.” 

You roll your eyes behind his back. “Have I ever?” 

He grunts in acquiescence. That’s as close to a win as you’ll get. 

The windows are open; the thunder presses against the frayed screens. A gigantic moth flings its feathery body repeatedly at the ceiling light. You run your hand through his hair slow just to feel it between your fingers, thick and soft. Your thumb glances off the scar on the left side of his skull and comes back for another pass. 

He jerks his head, puts a stop to that. “You done?” 

“Almost.” 

You’re particularly fond of the curls at the nape of his neck, always save them for last. You coil one around your finger. You want to ask him if you can keep it, but you’re afraid he’ll say no or worse, that he’ll say yes. He’ll ask for something in return. You’ll give it to him, no matter what it is. You give him anything he wants, everything he wants. It’s the least you can do, the most you can do. 

You snip them one by one, bittersweet. 

“Done.” 

He leans over in the chair to examine his reflection in the window. “Good enough.” 

He stands up and drains the dregs of his beer. His hand finds your waist and he pulls you in and you bend like a reed, peering up at him, inspecting your work. He smells like sweat and sun. You grip his shirt in your fists and move with him as he sways lazily side-to-side. 

He gives you the gift of a smile, half-cocked and handsome. “You wanna dance, mama?”

Your fingers spider-creep up the shield of his chest and lock behind his neck. His skin is hot and sticky against your wrists, clipped hairs poking and itching. Your hips bump against his like a car on a back road, lost, no cell service. You wish there was music playing. 

He tilts his head towards you and you get caught in the trap of his mouth. The thunder moans. You can feel the sweat beading on your upper lip, in the pit of your elbows. His hands are heavy on your bones. 

His jaw scrapes along your temple like a razor blade and a fever chill rolls over your skin, hot-cold. “G’on upstairs, get those clothes off.” 

Have you always been such a good listener? 

.

He comes home drunk and fucks you on the table, in the midst of supper left cold and waiting for him. You knew he’d be hungry. You are right about some things and wrong about others.

You wince every time a dish topples off the table and shatters on the faded linoleum. He doesn't look at you, not once.

Afterwards, he disappears for a while and leaves you to clean up the kitchen. You are dazed, legs unsteady, leaning on the counter like an old friend. It’s been a bad day. Dinner has soaked through the back of your shirt and so you take it off, hang it over the back of a chair for later, and set to work on the mess.

You cannot puzzle out how he managed to get blood on every dish you are trying to wash until finally you realize it is yours, seeping quietly from a slice on your palm. When he comes up behind you your spine stiffens, arching like a snake making a final stand. He puts his hands on your bare waist and his lips against the back of your head like a sweetheart, like a husband, like a different person.

“Leave it, darlin’. Come sit on the porch with me.”

You bite your lip, lift your palm so he can see it, watch the world blur with saline. “I cut myself,” you say, and only then does the sting set in, so sharp you can feel it in your teeth.

He makes a sympathetic noise and cups your hand in his. “Now why’d y’go and do that?”

You open your mouth to answer but only a moan comes out as he lifts your arm and seals his lips over the cut. He sucks, gently at first and then harder, hard enough you feel the seam of skin separate and your fingers jerk like puppets to the pain. He lets you go and you cradle your hand to your chest as he laps your blood off his lip.

“You’ll be fine,” he says, takes your arm, tugs you from the sink. “C’mon. I need a smoke.”

You follow him onto the porch, curl up in his lap with a dishrag pressed to your palm and watch smoke and moths float around the light.

Your blood dries on the dishes with the gravy.

.

The clouds boom a reminder that they are still hanging above the house, but you are already awake in the split second beforehand. You are cocooned in the sheets and panic for a moment, arms pinned to your chest, bedroom black as a coffin. When you claw free, gasping, the air is like moss draped spongey and damp across your face. 

You worm out of the bed, out of the room, stagger into the hallway and down the stairs in the dark. You are mere steps ahead of some emaciated beast, its breath muggy on your cheeks and the back of your neck. You twist your shirt off and throw it on the floor of the den before it can strangle you, wrench the front door open and slam through the screen with both hands. 

The night is wet in your nose. One hundred million insects scream to God. In the back of your mind you think about joining them. Your toes scuff to a stop on the precipice of the porch and you peer into the darkness with round eyes, bare chest heaving for more air than you can hold. You are drowning here, surrounded by trees, surrounded by more green than you ever knew existed in the world. 

Somewhere out there, someone is mourning you. You can feel it tonight, crackling in the ozone like the storm that won’t break. 

You wrap your arms around yourself and sink to the ground, sit perched on the top stair in your panties and sweat-drenched skin. The nail of your index finger rips apart the cuticle of your thumb. Mosquitos float open-armed to your legs like swamp angels. It’s too hot to cry. 

The yellow porchlight struggles to life. The screen door bangs flatly behind you. He can’t ever pick up his feet, scuffing through the dust you haven’t swept. 

His fingers brush the bone of your shoulder. You don’t flinch nowadays, usually. “Y’alright?”

You don’t have to answer that. Let him wrap his hand around your throat and fishhook his fingers into your mouth to pull your jaw open, you don’t have to answer that. You grit your teeth and dig crescent moons into your thighs with all ten fingernails.

Your silence doesn’t bother him. He leans on the railing to your left, curling his toes on the concrete, looking out into the night. Sleep has mussed his hair to one side and left imprints of the sheet fanning across his chest. There’s a hickey in the shape of your mouth in the curve of his neck. Lightning flutters shy among the clouds and the thunder reprimands it. There’s something stuck in your throat, something you can’t swallow down no matter how hard you try. Moths flock to the porchlight. If anyone was alive in the town to look up the hill, they’d see you haloed, and him too. 

“‘S late. Come back to bed.”

You can’t remember your home address. You can picture the house, the sidewalk in front of it, cracks in the driveway. The rest is like a dream. The house behind you doesn’t have an address. No number, no mailbox. You can feel it sucking at the base of your spine like a leech, coaxing you in, tipping you backwards all wrong like a gravity hill. You feel eyes on you, all the time, no matter what room you’re in. 

“You listenin’ to me? Let’s go.”

You can’t go back inside. You can’t go back inside. Something in you doesn’t line up right. Someone is holding a pillow over your face.

“No,” you think you say out loud. The word flutters off into the night. You watch a mosquito drift beyond the reach of the porchlight and disappear. The stars bow gracefully into the arms of the clouds. 

After a beat, he shuffles out of your periphery. The screen door slams. Maybe this time. When you least expect it. Maybe he's sick of you at last. You pick at a scab on your knee until it comes loose and flakes off, and then you pinch the skin around the wound and squeeze until a bead of blood, scarlet-black, mounds and breaks and gets all over your fingers. You raise them to your mouth and suck them clean and it tastes familiar. Safe. 

He doesn’t come back with a knife, or a gun. He comes back with the quilt and sheet from the bed, a pillow stuffed under his arm. He unfurls the quilt on the porch. The pillow flops to the ground like something hunted to extinction. He follows suit. 

“C’mere.” He wrestles with the sheet, props himself up on an elbow and punches the pillow into place. “C’mon.” 

You breathe, just for a minute, watching him. You want to hate him so bad it hurts. You want him to hit you so you’d have a reason to hit back. You want to fight for your life because you can feel it slipping away, waning, evaporating in the heat. Already you’ve found shreds of yourself under the couch, covered in dust. You are drowning. You are thirsty. He is water, cold and brackish. 

You rise from the stairs and come to him because you need him, because he is all you have. 

“Get the light,” he says. 

You go and come back and his hand finds your calf in the dark, slides up the back of your knee, guides you to the ground. The quilt is a mockery of softness, the porch unyielding beneath. You curl up with him at your back and he folds his arm around you, thumb worrying aimlessly at your nipple. His breath is hot on the nape of your neck. 

The air roils in your lungs. The night surges in. You are alone, so alone, aching with loneliness, now and always. You close your fingers around his wrist and guide his hand between your legs. He rubs the cotton of your panties with something like pity and you let a moan seep from your throat. 

Your face lolls into the pillow and it smells like fever dreams and cold-sweat nightmares. The fabric of your underwear catches on your clit and you gasp, arching against his chest.

“Easy,” he murmurs as his fingers drag back and forth. He hooks his foot around your ankle, forces your legs open. You asked for this. You’ll take it and thank him. 

Lightning silhouettes the world beyond the porch in black and purple. When you close your eyes, you see the rooftops of the town in the colors of heaven. You rock against his hand and pretend you’re someone else somewhere else. You feel the thunder in your teeth and wish with all your heart the rain would fall. 

He puts an abrupt end to the friction and cups you in his palm, wide and warm. You make a plaintive sound and wiggle your hips, push your ass against him. You need to feel something. You need him to help you. Otherwise, you might disappear beneath the horrible blanket of the night. 

“Please,” you moan. 

He presses his lips to the back of your neck, whispers into the shell of your ear like a lover. “You love me?” 

You squeeze your eyes shut. “Yes.” 

His teeth graze your skin as he slips his fingers past the waistband of your panties. 

“Good.” 

You wonder if he knows he keeps saving your life. 

.

The house is a midden of family misery. There’s barely space for you between heaps of clothing and glassware and mass market paperbacks. You live sideways amid the boxes and bottles and beer cans. He refuses to let you throw anything away. No matter how much you sweep and dust and tidy, the clutter seems to crawl right back across the carpet like morning glory. 

Late morning finds you in the master bedroom. It’s sweltering up here. The air sticks to your face like tattered gauze. The junk in here is of a particular breed, more meaningful—photo albums, baby clothes. Much of it has been stacked high just inside the door like a battlement. A fortification between this room and the rest of the house. You’re not allowed in here. 

Neither is he. 

Beyond the wall, everything sits untouched. A layer of dust rests primly on the bedside tables, the vanity, the yellow quilt still neatly made up on the bed. The art on the wall is sun-bleached in evenly spaced lines from the half-open blinds. The silence crowds your ears. It feels like standing in a tomb, the family crypt. 

With courage paper-thin, you've decided you'd like to confront the heart of the horror. Like shoving your fingers down the throat of the beast trying to bite you. Like making a home in its mouth, a bed in its bed. You want to eat me so bad, you’ll have to savor every scrap. 

It’s eerie in here. This room is brighter than the rest of the house by far. You can feel that parasitic presence all around you, cajoling you with hands that are soft and dry. There is a faint, floating smell of faded flowers. You breathe slowly to keep yourself from sprinting back downstairs.

You gaze at yourself in the vanity mirror. The dust almost erases you from sight, almost. You reach a finger out and draw a single streak across the silvery surface. You’re in there, somewhere. Sometimes you forget. 

The front of the vanity holds a trio of slim drawers with tiny gold handles. You catch one with the tips of your fingers and tug, just slightly. It creeps open without resistance. The inside is lined with green velvet. You pull it open all the way and search through the contents with your eyes. Blush, lipstick. Eyeshadow in seven shades of blue. You slide the drawer closed and move on to the next one, the widest one in the middle. 

This one holds a treasure trove of golden baubles:  a jumble of earrings, half a dozen hairpins, a long, thin cigarette holder. A string of pearls that look too chipped and dull to be real. And a locket, oval-shaped and decorated with a halo of tiny vines. You pick it up and the chain slips over your fingers like a thin, shining snake. 

You dig your nail into the seam and pop it open. To your muted disappointment, it is empty. No husband. No children. 

It’s yours, you decide suddenly. You want it. You've earned it. A prize, a consolation for the hell you’ve been through. For the fact that you have survived him, and she has not. You wonder if he’ll recognize it. Part of you hopes that he does. You imagine the look on his face and his hands on you afterwards. Your mouth is wet. 

This might be her house, will always be her house. But you do not belong to her. You have been spoken for again and again, and perhaps you should thank him for that. 

In the daylight you remember that you aren’t scared of ghosts, and that you have nothing left to give. Plenty of dead women have laid claim to you already. This one cannot have you, and for that matter, she can’t have him either. 

You hear the rumble of his truck out front and the thrill of fear that shoots down your spine is so cold it’s almost welcome in the stuffy room. You shove the locket into the pocket of your shorts and fling the drawer shut. It closes with a soft, complicit thunk. 

You pick your way back through the boxes and slip through the door like a reptile into water; smooth, silent. You make sure it latches behind you before you hurry to the top of the stairs. 

Out of the corner of your eye, just before you dip out of sight below the banister, you see something bend the light that reaches through the crack beneath the door. You freeze, turn your head only slightly. You see nothing. Only sunlight. Certainly no feet, dainty and bare, padding across the carpet with red-lacquered toenails. 

Panic, delayed, breaks loose. You gallop down the stairs so quickly you forget to skip the ones that creak. 

By the time he comes inside, slamming the door fit to shake the frame of the house, you are hunched over the dishes in the sink like you’ve been there all morning. If you are unduly quiet, he doesn’t seem to notice, and if he notices, he doesn’t seem to care. 

.

“I think I love you.”

You say it half-casual, half-pronouncement, the way you might tell your mom you’re dropping out of college. Tell your boyfriend you’re over him. Tell your boss you’re moving to Louisiana. “I mean it this time.”

Bo snorts, lifts his beer to his lips. “That so?”

You shoo a bee from the rim of your glass and suck down the last of your drink. You just might be drunk. “Yup.”

“Think that’s the bourbon talkin’.”

You roll your eyes, shimmy a little in an effort to make the busted lawn chair more comfortable. You thought he’d be more excited. “Why don’t you ever believe me?”

He smacks his lips like he’s considering his answer. The sunlight shifts through the trees and you close your eyes, blissful. “Lemme ask you this. You ever set a snare, baby?”

You can feel it in your blood:  the sun, the breeze, the brook bubbling over your toes. It’s not so bad, you think. Sometimes. It’s not so bad.

“Hey.” He leans over in his chair and snaps his fingers, splintering your peace. “I asked you a question.”

“Nah. Never set a snare. Some of us were normal kids.”

He ignores this and you feel like you’ve gotten away with something. “Well, sometimes you catch a critter, but it don’t strangle to death like it’s s’posed to.” 

You frown. 

“So you gotta do somethin’ about it, right? But you gotta be real careful. Can’t get caught up by the sufferin’. Gotta keep your head about you, y’know?” He’s not looking at you, but you can picture his lips, twisted in something like a smile. “‘Cause it don’t matter what it is…raccoon, possum, bunny rabbit…that sucker’ll take your hand off if y’let it.”

Your throat is sensitive all of the sudden, feels closed off. Maybe you swallowed a bee. “What are you even talking about?”

His head lolls lazy to the left and he stares at you for a second in a way that makes your hair stand on end. Then he chuckles, winks at you, turns away and leans back in his chair. 

“Nothin’, sugar. You’re awful cute.”

.

The heat wreaks havoc on the lifeless inhabitants of the town. You trail behind him like a listless kite as he makes the rounds, checking for damage, hauling the worst afflicted home to Vincent. It baffles you how much he seems to care about them. How much investment he has in keeping the rot contained beneath a pristine cosmetic veneer. For what? For who?

You don’t tell him it’s all rot, all of it, the people, the buildings. The trees. The air. Him. You. 

Some days, most days, you can’t quite look them in their faces. It’s guilt, you suppose. Guilt and acknowledgement of a fear so pervasive you no longer notice the way it clings like a second skin. You’ve convinced yourself if you meet their eyes you’ll find them glaring at you, envious and accusatory. Or worse–you’ll see the future, suspended in the flat, glass pupils of a dead game animal.

Occasionally you punish yourself by looking too closely. You note the receding hairlines, where the skin beneath the wax has dried and pulled taut and shifted the scalp along with it. You observe the way the light shines through plump round fingertips that are only hollow shells of wax, all that soft flesh desiccated and shriveled to a skeletal wedge underneath. You wonder, sometimes, whether Vincent smoothed over any flaws–scars, moles, asymmetrical lips. You touch your face subconsciously and think about the things he might fix for you.

It makes you feel like you are tiptoeing on the precipice of sanity, arms wide, just waiting to topple.

You take a particular interest in their clothing, wonder whether it belonged to them or to someone from the town. You never ask Bo, although you know he could tell you. You ignore the obvious parallels like a badly stitched seam. None of the clothes you wear belong to you either.

There are more residents than you ever imagined, half the houses not as empty as you assumed. Ten years, three brothers, three hundred and forty-nine holes to fill. You were decent at math in a past life, but nowadays, you try your hardest not to solve problems, no matter how they howl and scratch at the door. You’ve become adept at avoidance of the obvious in favor of learning how to assimilate into the cobwebs and shadows. No one can kill you if you’re already dead. You believe that so hard sometimes you can’t see your own reflection.

You believe it so hard that when you find it, on a girl in a house on a street you’ve only been down once or twice, you can’t make sense of it for several long seconds, staring dumbstruck and stupid while the static subsumes your brain.

“Let’s go,” he barks from the sitting room. The couches are pink and floral and faded.

You cannot move. You are made of wax.

“You deaf? Come on.”

She’s wearing cutoff jeans and the t-shirt you bought on a trip two years ago, or maybe three. There’s blood, brown and faded from half-hearted washing, streaking the collar and left sleeve.

Her hair is lighter than yours, and shorter. Her feet are smaller. Her nose is bigger. But the shirt is yours, and so is the blood, and for a second, you know you are a ghost.

“Hey.” He grabs your arm and turns you around. You think maybe she’ll move, now that you’re not looking. “You got a problem?”

You cannot answer him, because you do not have a voice. Because your lips have been glued together and painted the perfect pink. His gaze flicks from you to the girl and back and you wonder if he kissed her the way he kisses you. You hope he can see it, the way you are withering under the wax. You hope he will pick you up, cradle you in his arms, take you home and take care of you, make you whole, make you human.

Isn’t that all you’ve ever asked for?

He snaps his fingers in front of your face and you flinch, because you are real after all.

“Let’s go.”

You let him push you towards the door, hear him close it behind you, feel the floorboards shiver as he follows you down the hall. He puts his hand on the small of your back and ushers you out of the house, down the sidewalk cracked and stuffed with weeds keeling over in the heat. You can feel your feet melting to the concrete, skin crawling, sagging. You try not to stumble. You don’t want him to leave you behind.

“She ain’t you,” he mutters at the end of the street, so low you barely hear him over the buzz of the cicadas.

You aren’t sure if he’s lying, now or ever. You don’t ask him where her clothes are and he doesn’t offer. She might not be you, but you might be her. And you both might be someone else.

Either way, the shape of her is burned into your vision in blue and green, and she shakes her head at you when you close your eyes.

.

You wake to the sound of rain on the roof and it pulls you immediately from bed, stumbling sightless over your feet to get to the window. You yank on the mangled cord to raise the blinds and sure enough, the dust of summer is melting down the window in waves.

“Bo,” you say hoarsely. “Bo, look.”

It is then that the silence of the room seeps into your brain, the conspicuous lack of snoring. Your heart sinks into your wringing stomach. 

In a perfect world, he’d be taking a leak. He’d stumble back to bed and wrap you in his arms, press a kiss to your temple, and you’d drift back to sleep in the bliss of air conditioning. 

Your world is a few dirt road miles south of perfect.

You have to go find him. Find him and haul him out of whatever dark place he’s waded into, before he comes back worse than he went in.

The hall is a throat you have to fight against to get to the stairs, black and humid with walls that breathe. You feel cobwebs on your face and slap them away only to realize it’s your own hair caught on your lashes. The glow of the TV laps at the bottom step like floodwater, makes the carpet undulate like something just sank below the surface. You hesitate, for just a second, before you step down and feel solid ground beneath your feet.

He sits slouched on the couch in front of a screen full of static, deadeyed, jaw clenched. He doesn’t seem to notice you, quiet, creeping thing that you are. The static sounds like rushing water. Mangroves rise from the shadows in the corner of your eye. Lilypads part around your feet. If you turn your head just right, his eyes flash red in the light.

You stop halfway between the stairs and the couch, unsure what kind of animal you’re approaching. Your hands float up like a shield, like a bridge. “Bo,” you say softly, and it echoes in the night. “Are you okay?” 

He blinks, like a person. You notice a bite mark, a purple half moon in the meat of his forearm. Your skin is well acquainted with the shape of his teeth. 

“Bo,” you whisper. You don’t want to get closer. “Come back to bed.”

You hear a splash in the kitchen. The carpet squishes between your toes. Something brushes your ankle and wriggles away. You need to get out of here. You can’t leave without him. 

“Baby…please.” You step towards him and freeze as he lurches forward, sits up straight. His hands dangle between his knees, his gaze still locked on the fuzz of the television. 

“I killed my mama, y’know.” 

His voice is pitched, low and dull. A sheen of sweat glistens on his upper lip and cheekbones. The color is gone from his face and here, in this place, he looks almost green.

You fight to form breath into words. “I…I know.”

He’s speaking again as though he didn’t hear you. You can see in his eyes he is far, far away. “I watched her die. Took a real long time. But I stayed…waited. Had to make sure.”

The water is rising, cold and slick, over your ankles and up your calves. Panic rises with it, packs into your throat like silt. “You were real brave, baby. You did it. You made sure.” Your voice is thin as a reed. 

A terrible, empty grin cracks his face and then vanishes without a ripple, and now he looks at you for the first time and his eyes are hollow and blue as marbles and he whispers, “Then why ain’t she dead?”

The water surges to your knees like it’s been displaced by something large, something prowling. You teeter forward, heart hammering, splashing as you regain your balance. Too loud, too loud. Do alligators eat each other?

“She’s dead, Bo. She is.”

“Don’t lie to me, bitch!” He rises to his feet so fast you lose your balance again, flinching back from him. “She ain’t and you know it. You’ve seen her, she’s here! In this fuckin’ house!”

You shake your head quickly and in your periphery something ducks beneath the surface of the water. “No. She’s not.” Convince him, convince yourself, make it true.

His chest is heaving, his gaze darting around the room, searching. You can picture a shadow in shadow, curled up and waiting in the corner of the ceiling like a fat black spider, fingers splayed wide and tipped sharp and red. 

Bo grips the back of his head and moans and it echoes off the trees, too loud, too loud. “Fuckin’...everywhere.”

Faded flowers. Blush, lipstick. A trick of the light. A locket wrapped in vines. Something hunting, just below the surface. If you let it rip him apart, would it come for you next?

“She’s everywhere…in my goddamn head….” He sways on his feet like he might fall and if he does, if the swamp swallows him, you’ll die here in this place.

“Hey.” You close the distance, push through the muck, brush his elbow. “Hey!”

He smacks you away, snaps his jaws closed. “Don’t touch me!”

You cringe and the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Something groans in the dark. Something moves near the ceiling. 

His eyes on you are predatory, cold and empty, and his brow furrows. “Who are you?” he demands.

Wide-eyed, you open your mouth to answer him, but there is nothing on your tongue but moss. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

He leans toward you. “Who the fuck are you?”

You hold your hands up in front of you, backing away, mud between your toes. Your fingers are skeletal. Your nails are painted red. “I don’t know!”

A terribly low, vibrating sound is rising from the water, sending ripples in all directions, freezing your heart in your chest. He moves towards you and the swamp parts around him, allows him to pass like he is a part of it.

“You ain’t leavin’, baby.”

His teeth are sharp.

He lunges.

You scream.

The sound gets caught in your throat like a wad of feathers and bones and you choke, twisting, coming to in your bed. In his bed. Disoriented, you gasp for breath and release the death grip you have on the sheet. Your brow is so sweat-soaked your eyes are beginning to sting. The air is dry on your skin; the blanket is gone. The lower half of your body is tingling.

His head lifts from between your thighs and he looks at you with eyebrows raised. “Easy, sugar. Ain’t done with you yet.”

“Wh…what?” You rub at your eyes, trying to shake the sensation of water closing over your face. Somewhere, some version of you is bleeding in the silt.

His tongue makes another pass and you whimper, arms shaking with the effort of holding yourself up, of treading water, of fighting the maw of a monster. “Relax, baby. Go back to sleep.”

It’s all so insurmountable, the weight of it on your chest, and you sink back into the mattress without a ripple. His mouth is wet and warm. His dark hair is disheveled and you wonder absently if he misses it, that lock you stole. The room is silent save for the sound of your drowning.

“Is it raining?” you whisper, and hate yourself for the hope behind it.

He pauses, meets your gaze over the watery surface of your body. All you can see are his eyes and you could swear, for a second, they reflect neon red. “No.”

You let your head drop back onto the pillow, let him devour you, feel a tear slip over the brim of your lashes and disappear into your hair.

.

The storm breaks on a Wednesday. 

At first, you don’t register the rain on the roof. You don’t even take note of the thunder anymore, after weeks of torment. It’s become a fixture like the dust, like the pervasive smell of decay.

It starts slow, cautious, rolling into town like a tourist with a busted GPS. You mistake the patter for the familiar buzz of TV static even though that makes no sense, even though you’re the only one in the house, even though the TV is off in the next room. All you can hear is the rough swish of the scrub brush on the hardwood floor, coaxing flecks of blood from the gaps between the boards. It’s already beginning to reek in the heat.

You wanted to clean it up last night when it was fresh but he wouldn’t let you, strongarmed you up the stairs and pinned you to the mattress. You’d never admit it to him, to God, or to yourself—and really, is there a difference in Ambrose—but he fucks so good when he’s riled up like that, when it feels like he can’t get enough of the killing so he’s going to take it out on you, take everything you have to offer him plus a little bit more.

The cut on your palm is half-healed and hurts when you put your weight on it. There’s something about that—familiar, comfortable, not grounding, not really, but like static. Stable. Buoyant. Like the bruises on your knees. A constant that cradles you and takes you up and out of here, not too high, just above the trees.

A stair creaks behind you and you freeze like a hare in the shadow of a hawk. It could be Vincent, but he’s busy with last night’s batch. It’s not Bo.

You ease yourself up onto your knees, rock back, stand up, and creep to the foot of the stairs. They are empty. You are alone with the sense that someone has just disappeared out of sight, retreating up into the aching cranium of the house, skirt swishing.

You are never alone, not really.

It’s only then that the sound of the rain seeps into your brain, soothes the hair standing up on the back of your neck. A weight you have been holding on your shoulders since the end of July dissolves like sugar and your spine lengthens by inches. You drop the brush, forget the ghost, walk barefoot through the bloodstain on your way to fling open the front door.

It rains.

It rains even though the clouds are thin, the sun forcing its way through in places like it just can’t bear to admit defeat. It rains and pools in the potholes of the driveway that have been waiting open-mouthed to be filled. It rains and the grass and weeds release a sigh of bliss, stop begging for mercy.

You step down from the porch in a trance, palms up and open, trailing pink-tinged footprints that melt across the concrete like raspberry taffy. You walk across the lawn, scuff your feet in the grass, wonder if maybe you’re dreaming and decide you don’t care.

You sink to the ground, sprawl on your back, feel the damp soak into your clothes and your skin and it makes you whole, makes you new, makes its apologies for taking so long. You are floating, only eyes above the water, surrounded by salvinia and duckweed.

You hear his footsteps just before he calls to you. “The fuck you doin’, girl?” he shouts, but when you open your eyes, he’s losing a fight with a grin, picking his way up the slippery hill.

You sit up halfway. “It’s raining.”

“Y’don’t say.” He drops to his knees beside you, slumped with relief.

His wifebeater is splattered with blood and water but you grab it with both fists and pull him to you, catch his mouth and coax him to the ground.

“Crazy bitch,” he mutters, but he guides your hands to his belt and grips your ass with both hands as you fuss with the buckle, even rolls onto his back to ease your way and lifts his hips so you can tug down his jeans. “Right here, huh?”

“Yes.”

“In the front goddamn yard.”

“Yes!”

“It’s fuckin’ rainin’!”

“I know!”

He laughs and the heavens giftwrap it with a roll of thunder. You're giddy, beaming at him, and he traces your smile with the pad of his finger and something akin to admiration.

You're brand-new, him too, and both of you together. Like it's the first time, a better first, another universe. His hands are on your thighs and his shirt rides up above his stomach. Water drips off your nose and onto his lips and he licks it off like it might save him and maybe it just might. Maybe it’ll save you both.

Exhausted, exalted, you wash the sweat and grime off each other with filthy hands and thirsty mouths. You wrap your fingers around his bare shoulders and ride him with your eyes open and your breath hot on your lips. It’s a fever breaking, the panting, the shaking.

The locket taps against your chest, the lock of his hair tucked inside it. He cups your face, slips his thumb in your mouth, and there’s blood beneath his fingernail. You suck it clean with greed and obedience, savor it, turn your face to the sky and let the crocodile tears run down your cheeks.

“That’s my girl,” he growls, and you bask in the rare and wondrous glow of his approval.

You come apart in splashes like raindrops, small, staccato swells in your core while he kisses the rain off your skin. His hands find the bruises they’ve left on your hips and squeeze and it’s all you could ever ask for, to be held. To be hurt. To be his.

Maybe it’s not so bad, you think. Sometimes. It’s not so bad.

“Y'know, girl, maybe you're right,” he says. "Just this once."

You’re confused until you realize you’ve spoken out loud. You look down at him, cold skin, wet curls, a smudge on his jaw that could be mud or blood, his or yours or someone else’s. He looks back like he sees you.

“You love me?” you ask him before you can think better of it. Before the rain stops.

The corner of his mouth twitches. His gaze slides past you, goes somewhere else, above the sea of trees. The sky is in his eyes. “Sometimes.”

You don’t smile, don’t sigh, just push the hair off his brow and sink slow and gentle beneath the surface and into the green, not a ripple made in your wake.

“Good.”

[chernabogs]

The Moon

Inc: Malleus, briefly Prefect Warnings: Some spoilers for the platinum jacket bday vignette. The laundry... LMAO WC: 2.5k Summary: 4 firsts that Malleus had under the watchful gaze of his oldest friend. First moments, first shop, first wash, first friend.

1—First Moments.

There is an envy of the moon that rots through his heart as a plague does the flesh. 

The moon was his friend for the longest time in his youth; people would pass like a breeze—tutors, courtiers, servants, —leaving him stagnant, alone. But the moon would always return. She’d look down at where he leaned out the window, his small hands grasping the stones to steady himself, and her silver light would bath over him like the gentle touch of a mother—at least, how he imagined that touch to be. He’d whittle away hours admiring her mottled surface, and she’d whittle away hours gazing back, until she would eventually vanish with the night as the inky black sky faded to a twilight blue. 

The envy existed because she always had the opportunity to come and go. Malleus was confined to a box for much of his life. Never once did he need to lift a finger, even if he desired to;

your highness is not meant to do that. Your highness is not meant to toil, and labour, and break the earth as we must. Hot sun should not kiss your fragile skin, sweat should not touch your brow. You must always remain above and away. Let us harvest for your needs; let us serve. 

No one ever worked for the moon. She controlled the tides, made the Valley livable, and in return was worshipped for her trials among those denizens. One does not tell the moon you are not meant to do that. You are not meant to toil, and labour, and wrestle the tides for our needs. That was preposterous to think. So, should he not, too, work alongside the rest to make the Valley a better place? Would that not make the most sense? 

For a while he resented it. He would turn to his side to face away from the window as night came, grasping his sheets with his hands and glaring into the darkness as though the moon would feel sad in his absence. That’s a silly thought. A floating rock in space cannot fathom the emotions burdened by fae and man alike. But in his childish mind—packed with tales of birds that talk and trees that walk—it was perfectly reasonable. Sometimes, it still is. 

The resentment only lasted a few weeks before guilt began to eat him. That’s a silly thought, too. To feel guilty over ignoring a rock. Yet the next night he did find himself leaning on that window ledge once more, looking up at her with wide eyes as her silver light brushed across his cheeks. I’m sorry, he had whispered, knowing she could not hear but imagining she did.

The sun may not see his skin, but the moon certainly did, and she kissed it goodnight every evening before he went to rest. Lilia once told him his mother was a star, but Malleus wagered she’s far more than that. A star cannot contain the love and power he learned her to have. 

No, looking up to the silver light above, he knew precisely what she had joined in those celestial skies. 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2—First Shop.

The opportunity for growth first came when he was invited to NRC. There is a first time for everything, and Malleus was quick to experience many in those early weeks of his initial year.

The first time shopping alone. Most experience this when they become adults, or they get a taste in their teenage years when their parent allows them to embark to a mall, or a place with companions. Malleus faced a trial by fire when he needed to purchase snacks for himself in his off time—he did have an appetite. 

The cart broke, and that’s precisely when he knew this had been a dire mistake. Actually, he knew that when Lilia told him he was unable to go into town with Malleus. The discount store was the best place to get food for cheap and so Lilia had guided him here, and now the wheel was bent in a strange way and when he pushed it, it squeaked, or it didn’t move at all, and god this was awful, this was not how he planned—

Until an employee came. A single glance and a kick to the wheel fixed all his errors and so the crown prince of Briar Valley, with a charming flush of embarrassment to his cheeks, shoved the cart through the automatic doors after a mumbled word of gratitude. He’d get better at thanking people later. Gifts, for example, would be granted quite freely. 

The second trial of shopping came in acquiring the items. Malleus was intelligent. Incredibly so, in fact. Many of his tutors had not been able to keep up with his leaps and strides in the academic field (if one ignores how he threw tantrums and caused a majority to quit in the first place). However, ill-equipped was he for the trials of price vs quality comparison, and so he found himself in a stand still at many points with two boxes in his hand, trying to rationalize which one had the better ingredients and was it really worth the additional 5 madol? 

The experience took a grand total of two hours. Lilia called once—only to make sure Malleus did not become lost between the store and the school. A quick call became a long ordeal when Malleus barraged the man with questions regarding if it’s worth investing in carbonated water or not. He settled for whatever was in the taps at NRC, and he paid cash for it all. Because Lilia did, at least, inform him that paying with jewels was probably not an acceptable currency in the discount grocery outlet. 

At the end of it all, when he was digging through the box of granola bars on his desk at a late hour, and the moons silver light was greeting him for the first time in an entirely new land, a sense of confidence in his ability to handle any trial ahead caused a smirk to curl on Malleus’ lips. 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

3— First Wash. 

That is until he met the machine. 

He was a night owl. What he didn’t realize was that most teenage boys are night owls as well. He had not the faintest idea where the laundry room even was and deemed that 2 am in the kitchen was the best time to compensate for this. So enraptured in his scrubbing was he that he failed to hear the student until he heard an awkwardly spoken, “Um?” over his shoulder.

What a sight he must have been. Wide, green eyes glowing in the dark as he was hunched over the sink, a sock in one hand and a brush in the other. Perhaps his hair was disarrayed from the furious scrubbing to remove any dirt, perhaps his fangs were shown in his frustration of soap suds getting everywhere. Either way, the poor boy who had wandered into the kitchen for a midnight snack and encountered this was quite shocked. Malleus had straightened up, and a lingering silence had ensued until the boy had spoken once more in a frail, cracking voice.

“Housewarden? Why are you washing your clothes in the kitchen sink?” 

Why, indeed? Malleus had the choice to take the prideful route and say that he wanted to, and so he did. Spare himself the embarrassment. Or he could own up to reality and admit a slight bit of vulnerability to the student. He wanted to form camaraderie and friendship—so perhaps vulnerability was the right way to go. 

“I could not find the laundry room.” He had replied, a bit blunt in his words. The student stared at him for a moment longer before slowly blinking as the prince’s words registered to him. His mouth opened slightly, and he half turned to look out the kitchen door. 

“Oh, I just use magic.” The student had then pointed to the stairs where the dorms were. “But you can probably just have someone take your load next time.” 

Malleus knew his expression soured at the comment because the student’s face had dropped to worry. Let us harvest for your needs; let us serve.; this echoed in his mind as his hand had tightened around the sock. “No, I can do it myself.” 

The words were cold to the point of cutting. Silence, once more, before the student had cleared his throat again. “... I am overdue for a load myself. Do you want me to show you the room?” 

A simple question had been enough to ease any tension. Malleus’ expression had softened, and within twenty minutes, two boys were embarking in the dark with soapy laundry and baskets to scour the laundry room on their expansive campus. Malleus had looked to the moon as they passed and imagined her laughing at his plight. 

Many tales regale of brave knights who encounter ferocious beasts in their endeavours, with voices that sound of a thousand cries and mouths that spew a volley of ash upon their polished armor. The knights inevitably slay the beast and parade its head proudly for all the adoring villagers to see. 

Malleus’ beast had a body of stainless steel, and a mouth that chewed and swished clothing around with great fury. The first time he saw it, he had set his basket down and looked at the boy with an expression of; are you kidding me? Technology and the prince were not friends. Two phones burned within the first 48 hours of getting them had demonstrated that so far. But the boy exhibited a patience unseen as he had loaded his wash and walked the prince through the process of putting the laundry pod in, hitting the timer, and then hitting ‘start.’ 

The rumble of the wash had signified success. When Malleus repeated the steps with his own load and a second rumble had filled the wide, otherwise empty room, he felt quite akin to those knights slaying the beast. 

The two of them had sat in the benches of that laundry room together until the load was done and the boy could show him the dryer. They had never really spoken again after that encounter, but the memory of the boy's compassion (a rarity for NRC students) in aiding the prince was not lost on him. When the boy was suddenly hit with a streak of uncanny luck, and he had asked himself why, perhaps he had a lingering idea of why this was—but he would say nothing, nor would the prince.

Only the moon knew the answer to that question. 

—---------------------------------------------------------------------

4—First Friend. 

They had seemed utterly, completely, unequivocally normal when he first met them. Oh, he had heard about them—after all, one doesn’t just burst out of a coffin without the entire school knowing within the hour—but he had not met them, and when he finally did, he found himself to be quite underwhelmed. They were shorter than him, but just as quiet, and he had yet to know that those lingering awkward moments outside of Ramshackle would uproot his life in the most wondrous of ways. 

The moon knew. But she couldn’t say anything; she just kept smiling down with her silvery grin from the skies above.

He hadn’t meant to return to them, but in time he did, until eventually the student from Ramshackle ingrained themself in his routine in a way that baffled him completely. Sometimes he would look down at them on their walks and wonder to himself now, where did you appear from?, as though the night would whisper the answer in his ear and he’d go, ah yes, that makes perfect sense. 

The night is where they convalesce the most. In the beginning the student did not sleep often and Malleus, still ever the night owl, took advantage of this. He would abscond with them in the night (oh, he could imagine his Senate wailing how scandalous! in their flickering forms) and they would walk a familiar loop around campus until returning to the steps of Ramshackle once more.

Sometimes they talked the entire way. Other times they would simply move in silence, an unspoken understanding between them of two people in a routine they were both quite comfortable with. When an overblot had happened, the student would tell Malleus about the event, and he would nod in grave understanding—not knowing what they felt, since he never experienced it himself, but empathizing with them all the same.

It would also allow him to make a mental note to reach out to the affected party later. Just to check in. 

Winter break had been a time of upset for him because it had disrupted the routine he was used to. Back in the box, back in his room, with servants attending every need. The freedom he had become accustomed to being robbed from him made him feel like a mad dog in a cage and the absence of those now familiar night walks had him glaring at the sky. The moon was still there—so one member of their party was present—but the student was back at NRC, and it created a sort of them shaped void in his chest that made him restless. 

They didn’t reply to his holiday card. Maybe he had overstepped, or maybe they were like him and lost track of time on occasion. He liked to imagine it was the latter. He liked to try and find more things similar between them both beyond a love for the night and the moon. 

When he had returned and they had given him the VDC tickets, another sense of joy had sparked in his chest as he had held those tickets tight. A warmth flooding throughout his body, something he hadn’t quite felt before beyond when he looked at his family, and he wondered in that moment if this is what it felt like to be a part of something. He had always imagined having those experiences—being invited to parties, creating mischief in the night, sharing secrets and laughter under the stars. The student was granting these to him, despite both parties not knowing so yet.

The moon knew, though. She kept smiling down at them as they would whisper on their walks, hands close enough to brush but not touching each other because that felt too far just yet. She would observe the way Malleus would watch the student until they re-entered Ramshackle to ensure that they made it inside safe, and the faint smile on his lips as he walked away.

She knew, even when they did not. 

For now, however, Malleus was comfortable calling the student friend. They were someone who did not walk before him in guidance, or behind him in subservience. They walked comfortably by his side as an equal, and for that, they held more significance than he cared to admit. 

NRC had brought many firsts to Malleus’ life, and as each moment passed, he felt that envy of the moon fade away. For in the end, to be envious of his oldest friend was a pointless thing.

[natalievoncatte]

Lena was in the dark in more ways than one.

The lights in her penthouse were all dark save one, a night light in her en suite to ensure that she didn’t take a fall if she got up. Swirling the edge of a migraine, she’s grown tired of an again-delayed product launch and the hoary halls of power and their patriarchs. Few things frustrated her more than the spiteful condescension of old men clinging to a world with all the success of a man trying to gather all the sand in a desert through chapped fingers.

Few things annoyed her more.

One of those things, she could give no name. Since Lena had realized Kara’s identity, things had been tense between them. Mostly in a pleasant way; they had been feeling out this new normal, Kara tentatively broaching this or that topic to add to brunch chats and lunchtime gossip.

“Oh,” she’d say, “that last alien hit pretty hard,” as if being knocked clean through a fertilizer plant by a blow to the head were part of her commute.

To Lena it was all new, but there was something else with it. Something neither of them dared to name, some friable, delicate new shape that they could only feel by its edges. It began with Kara bombarding Lena with friendship. Fresh breakfasts hand-delivered at hypersonic speeds. Daily lunches. For the last month, Kara had spent every weekend at Lena’s, or vice versa.

Lena’s penthouse had a guest bedroom. Kara’s place had a bed and a sofa. Comfy, but it was no bed. That was how the dance began. The first steps were hesitant, the dancers circling each other without breaking the barrier. A token argument about who gets the bed, only for them both to share it. And once they’d shared it at Kara’s place, it made no sense for Lena to confine a living space heater to the guest room.

They didn’t discuss, or analyze, or talk it out. No boundaries were ever set, and so the dance continued. What started as two people curled up in a big king bed on opposite sides became the pair of them entangling during the night, then skipping the pretext and curling up with each other before the lights went out.

It was driving Lena insane. Kara never pushed, not really, and yet it just seemed to happen. It was as if her best friend was daring her to take the initiative. The morning when Lena awoke to find Kara’s arm protectively curled about her waist, her thumb hooked on the waistband of Lena’s lounge pants, she’d almost turned over and said something.

The excuse she made was that Kara needed her sleep after the pummeling she’d taken that afternoon. That Lena enjoyed how Kara grazed the pad of her thumb over Lena’s hip bone was incidental.

Lying in the dark, Lena knew that Kara had arrived by the sound of the balcony door opening and didn’t bother to call out to her. Still dressed in her suit, Kara peeked into the bedroom, her movements tentative, somehow almost birdlike.

She came back a moment later with a cool, damp cloth for Lena’s forehead and a few murmured questions, before excusing herself.

“Darling, you can stay,” Lena sighed. “I want you to.”

“Okay,” Kara whispered back, lightly seeping stray curls from Lena’s eyes. “I need to change. No peeking.”

And why would you be worried I’ll peek? Lena thought. A platonic Best Friend isn’t going to peek. Best friends don’t do that, just like they don’t nuzzle into each other on the couch. If Lena were Kara’s best friend, then Lena wouldn’t be looking so much, so openly. Admiring Kara’s smile and her biceps and the way her abdominal muscles strained those button-downs.

She wouldn’t be thinking so much about the touches, the way she’d sat in Kara’s lap for hours at a time or how Kara had carried her to bed or how Supergirl had lingered to cradle her post-rescue, well past the point of safety.

Lena wasn’t aware she was peeking until she’s already started. Kara’s suit had taken care of itself; it was her work clothes she needed to discard. When Lena turned over, there was the broad expanse of Kara’s beautifully muscled back, flexing deliciously as she pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms.

Because Kara kept multiple sets of PJs at Lena’s place.

In Lena’s bedroom.

Because this wasn’t the first time this had happened.

Lena turned back, knowing with certainty that Kara knew. She must have heard the creaking of the mattress and the soft whisper of skin on silk sheets and the rapidity if Lena’s traitorous heart.

When Kara climbed in with Lena, the world shrank around the pair of them. Kara swept immediately to the boundary tonight, gathering Lena in her arms, hands finding spots just on this side of chaste, and their bodies molded together.

Lena was finally able to get some sleep.

When she awoke, later, Kara stirred with her.

“Zhao,” Kara muttered.

Lena froze, blinking in the dark. That wasn’t a nonsense word; it was Kryptonian.

“Come back. Zhao,” Kara muttered, as Lena stirred. She didn’t seem to be properly waking.

A nickname?

Lena couldn’t remember when she’d started calling Kara Darling, though she increasingly wished she had.

Dear diary, it was on this day at this date that I admitted my feelings to myself before wrapping them in cardboard and then in concrete and then in steel before shoving them somewhere deep down.

Kara, for her part, had tried a few pet names but most were one offs, never quite fitting. She’d even called Lena “buddy” once before Lena had cut that shit off with an arched brow.

Lena stilled. She could deny Kara nothing, and so drifted off to sleep.

By some quirk of fate, they woke almost at the same time. Lena was still groggy and bleary-eyed when Kara’s sky-blues flitted open, bringing more light than the sun itself. She shifted in the bed without letting Lena go and began to murmur something in Kryptonian, cutting herself off as that last sharp, buzzing word tumbled from her lips.

The only world froze. Kara stared at Lena with wide eyes, and the sudden tension between them made both women go rigid, neither willing to move, to break it.

“You called me that in your sleep,” Lena finally whispered. “Zhao. What does it mean?”

Kara was unusually pale.

“Oh, it’s sort of a term of endearment in Kryptonian. It means, um, ah…”

Lena sighed, cracking a soft smile. “Kara, I’m not fluent by any measure, but I know enough Kryptonian to know what Zhao means.”

“Oh,” Kara whispered, barely more than a short and sharp exhale.

“Even if I didn’t,” Lena whispered, locking eyes with her. “Your hand is literally on my ass right now.”

“Oh. Um. Golly. I’m sorry, I…”

Kara started to pull back. Lena gently took hold of Kara’s wrist and held her hand there. Her heart fluttered not only at the strength in Kara’s forearm but how those steel cable muscles went slack beneath her touch.

Lena swiveled her hips.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Kara whispered.

“Oh, trust me, I’ve got that covered,” said Lena.

Kara shivered. “No, I mean… I don’t know what to…” She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing.

Lena pressed in closer, until the space between them was more a theoretical concept than an actuality.

“Just say what you want to say.”

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

Lena snorted a laugh, briefly ashamed at her inner dork, and afraid that Kara would take offense.

“Kara, you’ve been sleeping over every weekend with your hand in my pants for months. Yes, I will be your girlfriend.”

Kara grinned, starting to sit up.

“Come on, zhao,” said Kara.

Giving their partner a nickname/having their partner give them a nickname.

[deeranger]

Cosmic Entity

So, I made another drawing and a vignette fic for the SPN Eldritch Bingo 2024 - this time for the square "Cosmic entity"…. 🙃

Title: "A Cornfield Anomaly" Word count: 2,120 Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester Warnings: Heavy angst, open/ambiguous ending, it's aliens, folks

Read it on my Ao3!

[adhd-merlin]

Arthur’s skin is still warm from the bath, the tips of his hair still damp, and he smells faintly of lavender.

“Is Queen Mithian still as beautiful as they say?” Gwen asks Arthur.

She’s lying with her head pillowed on Arthur’s shoulder while his fingertips brush against her temple and her hair — more an absent-minded motion than an actual caress.

Arthur’s fingers stop. He kisses the top of her head. “Never as beautiful as my queen.”

Gwen pokes him lightly in the chest with her finger. “That's not an answer.”

“Are you jealous?”

“No,” she says, truthfully.

There was a time when Arthur could’ve chosen Mithian instead of Gwen, had he wanted — and he didn’t. (Didn’t choose her, and didn't want her, although he might have wanted to want her, and came close to convincing himself that he did). She’s only curious to hear how Arthur felt about meeting the woman he almost married again, after so long.

“I suppose she is. Beautiful,” Arthur answers after a pause. “If everyone’s comments are any indication. I can no longer tell. You’ve ruined me for any other woman.”

Gwen smiles. “You flatterer.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s true,” Arthur says. “Your beauty outshines anyone else’s. And it’s not even near the top of the list of your qualities.”

He says things like that, sometimes — he even means them. Monumental things, uttered with complete casualness, not because he thinks them insignificant but as if he were just stating facts. Something he would be stupid to deny or to resist.

In the early days of their courtship, Gwen used to find it terrifying. She’s since grown used to it. Mostly.

“But I wasn’t there to outshine anyone,” she teases him.

She’s being playful, perhaps a bit giddy from the wine. She expects Arthur to reply in the same vein — to heap more compliments on her until they reach the height of ridiculousness, or to make a silly joke — but his tone shifts.

He takes Gwen’s hand and places it over his chest, covering it with his. “You are always with me,” he says, solemnly.

And their hands aren’t quite in the right place, because Gwen’s head is in the way, but she understands his meaning all the same — my heart. The term of endearment he sometimes uses for her, when feeling especially sentimental.

[narcissuslecter]

hey babes, it’s ur fave will graham smokes truther, internet menace, and writer who never publishes anything!

so angsty barisi fic aside, my brain really just. plots fics constantly.

kinda vibing with a GONE GONE/THANK YOU by tyler the creator vignette style fic?? 6 chapters w each based off a line from the end of the song??

they would be short, kinda freeform, no beta we die like men vignettes.

idk, lmk if y’all would eat that up, my ask box is always open!

be gay and see u next time <3

[remyfire]

Hey can someone find the Leo Bardonaro switch in my head and flip it back to the Off position? It got pushed into On a couple of hours ago and now I can't do anything to shut it off again. Help. He is living inside of me. Worst possible situation

[7nessasaryevils]

New fic alert after a long ass time!!!

God I missed writing! I hope you all enjoy!

[dawnrider]

OTP Prompt Challenge request:

9. Morning Routine: InuKag

(I’d love to read some fluffy, domestic married Inukag morning routine bliss, but please write if/ as you feel so inspired ❤️)

Hello @xanthippe-writes ! Thanks for the prompt from this list.

This felt like it fit into my Bushel and a Peck universe so have some domestic morning routine. While not blissful, per se, it's fluffy and happy. And hopefully a bit real...

Fancy Cheese and Size Threes

“Don’t forget to grab diapers,” Kagome called from Sara’s room, the sounds of an angry baby not wanting their diaper changed following her words.

Inuyasha rolled his eyes in the mirror as his toothbrush hung out of the side of his mouth. He was trying to simultaneously wrangle curls into pigtails – Izzy’s current style of choice – and brush his own teeth while not dribbling on his shirt. “There,” he declared with a sigh, tugging on each one to pull them tight. “Go get your bag and your sweater.” Grasping the handle of his toothbrush, he got back to brushing.

“But I’m not cooooold,” Izayoi whined. Inuyasha paused in his brushing and gave his daughter a sharp look in the reflection of the mirror. She pouted, then turned on her heel to do as asked. He heard his wife cooing to Sara in order to distract her while trying to dress her. She’d hit the stage where she hated being changed in any capacity and tried to escape the changing table while you fought leggings onto her chunky little legs. “Daddy! I can’t find my sweater!”

“Nice try, pup. It’s on the chair,” he called back, spitting out the last of his toothpaste.

“Oh.”

“Uh huh.” He stepped out of the bathroom just in time to be handed an armful of squirming baby. “Well good morning to you too,” he muttered, dropping a kiss on top of her head. She squealed angrily at being restrained, little arms flailing.

“Here,” Kagome murmured. Her fingers swiped something from his face, then grabbed a towel just inside the door. “Toothpaste,” she clarified with a grin when he gave her a confused look. He sighed dramatically, then chuckled when she went up on her toes to place a kiss on his cheek. “Diapers.”

“I heard you the first time.” Inuyasha adjusted Sara in his hold to keep her from climbing over his shoulder. “She still in a size three?” Kagome nodded as she pulled socks from the top drawer and tried to balance on one foot to put each of them on before giving up and plopping onto the floor. “Anything else we need? The C word?” he whispered the last, glancing toward the doorway. Izayoi was in her room, presumably struggling her way into her sweater based on the sounds she was making.

Kagome grinned wryly. “Probably not a bad idea. Just don’t get the soft kind. She doesn’t like those anymore.” He nodded. No string cheese, only the sticks. Got it. “Can you grab a bottle of wine too?” He knew if he asked her what kind she would say anything was fine, but he would end up grabbing two and hope one of them was serviceable.

“I’ll even get us some of the fancy stuff and the you-know-whats you like.”

Kagome’s eyes glowed. “Can we watch that movie I’ve had saved for later?” Inuyasha pretended to hate the idea, but nodded anyway, a sly smile lifting his lips. Fancy cheese and cracker night was a long-standing tradition. Especially now with both girls, they rarely got the chance to get out for an actual date night, so an old romance adventure movie on the couch with “fancy” grocery store cheese and crackers was about as much of a date night as they could reasonably expect.

“Am I gonna be late, Daddy?” Izayoi called from her room. She had only minimal understanding of the clock, but knew that time was a factor in their day. Inuyasha glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. “That’s a bad word!” Izayoi scolded, sounding scandalized.

“Yea, yea. Just don’t repeat it. Bye. I love you,” he murmured, kissing Sara’s squishy cheek and handing her to Kagome. “You too.”

Kagome grinned as he pressed a kiss to her lips, snatching his collar for a moment to keep him there. “Love you. Fancy date night.”

“And diapers. I know.” He grinned, kissing her one last time, then went to scoop up the four year old. Despite her protests, she’d put on her sweater and had her little backpack strapped on her back, the clip done in front. “You’re gonna have to take that off in the car, you know.”

“I know. I don’t wanna lose it!”

“Kid, that would be some kinda skill to lose your bag between here and the car,” he said with a chuckle. Despite his teasing, he wouldn’t put it past her to set it down somewhere and get distracted. He asked her about what she planned to do at preschool today and she told him elaborately the picture she planned to color and the tower she wanted to build in the block corner because Joey – another hanyou child she seemed to have a love-rivalry relationship with – had knocked over her last one before it was finished.

As he was backing down the driveway, he looked up and spotted Kagome holding Sara, chubby baby hands banging on the window glass and a face that told him she was squealing with laughter.

“Wave bye to your sister.”

“Bye Baby! Bye Mama,” Izayoi called as she waved back. Inuyasha grinned and gave a little wave too, making Sara screech and smack the glass again. Kagome was barely holding in laughter and she wiggled her fingers to say goodbye as well. “Daddy?”

“Yea, pup.”

“When I’m bigger, can I eat fancy cheese too?”

Inuyasha nearly choked, then smothered a laugh so he could look at her seriously in the rearview. “Sure, pup. You can eat fancy cheese when you get older.”

“Good. I wanna know what’s so great about it. You and Mama never share.”

“Trust me, Iz. When you get older, you’ll understand.”

“You alllllways say that.”

“Yup. And it’s pretty much always true.” He shook his head and smiled, seeing the slight pout on her face. “Guess what.” Her ears perked up, her pigtails quivering behind them. “We have to stop at the store on the way home from school later. You want to pick out a treat for you and Sara?”

Her eyes got huge and her mouth dropped open. “Really?!” He nodded. She squealed in excitement, then stopped almost immediately as both their ears flattened at the noise. “Sorry, Daddy.” Inuyasha only reached back behind his seat and patted her leg. She still had a lot to learn about being hanyou, but she was learning, and he couldn’t be more proud.

[nattravn-art]

Part 2 of the vignettes I did for @thecrimsonvalley-creates's fics this past month!

All are for Rusty Lake/Cube escape.

The first one is for "Room 302" (introspection and smut, Dale/David)

The second one is for "The strings of the soul wound so tight" (Pining and smut, David)

And the last one is for "Heat of the fingertips piercing the soul" (Fluff and smut, Dale/David)

Part 1

[otaku-girl-ao3]

Otaku_Girl's Fanfic Masterlist

Here is a quick overview of my complete Wonka (2023) fanfic back catalogue (and a few other Mathew Baynton related fandoms). I thought it'd be simpler to have everything in one place to find them more quickly 😊 The easiest way to follow my work and get the latest updates on all of my fics is via Archive Of Our Own - subscribing via my main Otaku_girl or my Wonka specific pseud AHatfulOfDreams.

Personal favourite

➼ Willy Wonka x Felix Fickelgruber

Sugar Daddy? Call Me (Sir)

Used to being in control during his working life, Willy wants (needs) someone to take control of his life outside of the inventing room. But trying to juggle his wants and desires without risking his dream may prove to be more tricky than he had anticipated.

Felix likes to be in control. A man of power, he’s not used to hearing no. Everybody has a price. Everyone. There’s no way some upstart chocolate maker would dare do anything but roll over for Fickelgruber, is there?

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53223310

long fic (150k+) ~ sugar daddy ~ bdsm ~ smut

➼ Dark!Wonka x Felix Fickelgruber

His (Darkness)

“Arthur. You cannot be serious.”

“As you can see, he is mainly housebroken. But he still needs to be put in his place on a regular basis. He needs to be taught a firm lesson, as it were. You can take Felix if you want him. Consider him my little welcoming gift to you. He’s not as pretty or as young as he once was, but at least he’ll keep thin for you. And he’s very obedient when remembers to mind his manners.”

“No, Arthur, please.”

“Do you think that you can handle him, Wonka? He is clearly in need of some remedial lessons.”

“I think I shouldn’t have a problem, Arthur. I thank you for the gift. I shall make sure to use it thoroughly before your return. Perhaps he could do with a reminder of precisely who he deserves to be owned by. Property doesn’t get to choose its master.”

Dark!Wonka. Post-canon. Please read the tags as they are updated. We're in for another long one, folks.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54770731

Dove ~ dark ~ eventual happy ending ~ smut

x Reader fics

➼ Willy Wonka x Reader

(Pure) Imagination

You wouldn't go as far as to say you love your job, but you do love the freedom it gives you. One frozen night, you encounter a customer unlike any other, who seems determined to show you a world beyond your imagination. Wonka hires your services for the night. You end up with more than you bargained for. Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52955674

light-hearted ~ sex work ~ smut

Bitter Choices & Unsweetened Dreams

“I thought she was your sister?” “What’s it to you?”  “It’s a great deal to me.” Mister Top Hat says, voice even and calm. “Family is family. But property…” His eyes flick down the length of you once more, as though weighing up his words, before saying, “Well, property can change hands.”

When trying to escape capture, you ask for Mister Wonka's help. Sometimes, it's best to be careful what you wish for.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53109055

Dark!Wonka ~ angst with a happy ending ~ nonsexual

The Most Fearsome Foe Known to Man

Willy accidentally angers the most fearsome of potential foes known to mankind: a librarian. Despite Noodle’s warnings, he doesn’t understand the importance of returning library books both in the state in which they were borrowed and, most importantly, on time.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53069821

light-hearted ~ crack treated seriously ~ nonsexual

➼ Felix Fickelgruber x Reader

Make Me (Break Me)

“I can assure you that it is all there.” He sounds insulted that you would even consider checking that the amount in full is there before things get started. “Just like the first envelope this evening had the exact amount agreed upon.”

You send him a small placating smile. “It is nothing personal, Mister Fickelgruber. It is just business. Now. Strip."

Felix Fickelgruber has a very specific fantasy in mind — one that is perhaps best left in the hands of a professional.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54227971

pro-domme reader ~ SSCK ~ smut

➼Multiple pairings

Forget Me (K)Not

“Please? Please. I need…”

“The boy is clearly a beta, Felix. Use your nose. No self-respecting omega would go around smelling like that. And have you not seen his clothes? The callouses on his hands? I know you have a weakness for pretty little things, Felix, but wake up. This is no more than another pathetic attempt by a money-grubbing, greedy child to get a leg up. So no. Absolutely not. I will not even entertain the thought.”

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54321145

A/B/O ~ first heat ~ omegaverse ~ smut

For a moment like this

“Arthur.”

There’s no space for words between them. The name falling from his lips — an admonishment, a prayer, a breathy, needy plea — is more than enough.

Thick fingers — strong enough to break him, if Arthur so wishes — tug at delicate tweed. The unmistakable sound of fabric tearing, of buttons skittering across wooden floorboards, of bare flesh meeting bare flesh intertwines with their harsh breaths.

Gerald, Arthur and Felix share moments together. [Now] a collection of poly chocolate cartel vignettes.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56211682

Polyamory ~ vignettes ~ ficlet collection ~ poly chocolate cartel

Party favour

“Remember this is what you asked for. You wanted this.”

Hands clenching and unclenching, he wished not for the first time, that he had been more careful. He had relied on the kindness of strangers for so long — too long. It would seem that he had grown used to their help, their honesty and support. He didn’t think to look for deception in their every move, to seek out the potential dangers in their every action.

He should have learned his lesson from his contract with Mrs Scrubbit and Mister Bleacher.

He should have done a lot of things.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to stay right here. I’ll make sure anyone who comes even remotely our way will enjoy the view to the fullest.”

Willy receives an invite to a gala that doesn’t go exactly as he had planned. Poly chocolate cartel gangbang fic~ with added Chief of Police!

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56432554

Trans Wonka ~ shameless smut ~ polyamory ~ poly chocolate cartel

Until it happens to you (you won't know)

Willy! I thought you had everything sorted with the Chief? What happened with your little chat?”

“I… everything is fine, Noodle. It’s fine. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“There you are, candyman. I knew I’d find you around here somewhere. You know, the funniest thing happened. I came lookin’ for ya, and I couldn’t find you anywhere. Even that nice Mister Bleacher couldn’t find you. It’s almost as if you were hiding from me. Me! You wouldn't be stupid enough to hide from the police, would you, Wonka?”

The Chief of Police decides to reinforce his little message with more than just a bonk on the head.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56123263

Dark fic ~ threesome ~ waterboarding ~ Felix x Willy x Chief

The Most (Un)Romantic Day of the Year

Arthur did not consider himself to be a romantic man. Yet even he felt it was not too unresonable to expect to spend their anniversary together.

The poly chocolate cartel engagement fic that one person kind-of asked for. Pure fluff.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54916120

Romance ~ established relationship ~ marriage proposal

Dark Deeds and Bitter Choices

What if Mrs Scrubbit decided that they could make more money using Willy's talents elsewhere, outside of the washhouse?

The Arthur/Felix/Willy fic that nobody asked for.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53986543

Dark!Arthur ~ dove ~ non-ssck ~ smut

➼ Willy Wonka x Arthur Slugworth

(A World Of) My Own

Wonka’s store stood, a hollowed-out husk, the remains burned to cinders. When the cartel came, what if Arthur felt a twinge of something he hadn’t felt in years? The pre-slash/ get-together fic that precisely one person asked for.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54184039

Guilt ~ fix-it ~ accidental dating

➼ Willy Wonka x The Chief of Police

Three strikes

Willy thought back to their last meeting, to the freezing cold water, to the sharp whack to the back of his head. It was not a situation he hoped to repeat anytime soon."Officer, I—”

"That's the problem with all of you young upstarts. You never do think.”

While waiting to meet Felix for their date, Willy manages to draw the ire of the Chief of Police.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54115921

misunderstandings ~ dove ~ hurt no comfort

➼ Felix Fickelgruber x Arthur Slugworth

Strength (In Silence)

Arthur is a man who knows his strength all too well. He thought that he was concealing his fears from Felix; yet the other man would never cease to amaze him in the most unexpected of ways.

A soft colleagues-to-lovers bdsm fic with gentle!Dom Felix and Submissive!Arthur, where Arthur is afraid of his own strength (and Felix is determined that isn’t a good enough reason for them not to fuck like bunnies).

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54916276

Kink negotiation ~ submissive Arthur ~ gentle dominant Felix

Empty

There’s no colour in the sky when Felix wakes up. There’s no warmth in his chest, or excitement in his gut. There is nothing but the unwavering certainty: he is not enough.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54447592

depression ~ anxiety ~ hurt no comfort

For a Moment

“I have a spare room. It’s nothin fancy, but it beats any of the shelters I’m meant to recommend in these cases.”

“These cases?”

The chief looked down, before steeling himself and meeting Felix’s gaze once more. “I think we both know what I mean, Mister Fickelgruber, Sir.”

“I do not think that we do. You shall have to spell it out for me.”

It takes an average of seven attempts for a person to leave a domestic violent situation for good.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54618847

domestic abuse ~ hurt no comfort ~ hopeful ending

Pet

“It really is quite simple, Arthur. I have certain…predilections when it comes to my partners. I enjoy a certain, shall we say, power dynamic within the bedroom.”

“You wish to be held down and told what to do? I can do that."

“You misunderstand, darling. I prefer to be the one doing the ‘holding down’ and ‘telling what to do’, as it were."

Arthur Slugworth was not a man who took orders. And yet, for Felix...he could learn to be.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54652468

submissive Arthur ~ dominant Felix ~ BDSM

Things (Best) Left Unsaid

“You’re married, aren’t you?” “Er, yes? Yes I am Mister Fickelgruber.” “Do you ever regret it?”

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54726334

reflection ~ marriage ~ doubt

➼ Felix Fickelgruber x The Chief of Police

Just Give Me A Reason (Just A Little Bit's Enough)

“What brings you to my doorstep this evening, Chief? I do hope that I shall have the opportunity to counter whatever offer Arthur has made you before you proceed.”

The Chief looked at him blankly. He could see the tenseness around Felix’s mouth, the tightness around his eyes. Was that his hands shaking, just visible above his desk? Surely not. Felix didn’t get nervous. Not like that. Unless…His stomach dropped. “Before I—Jesus Christ Felix, I’m not here because Arthur sent me.”

When Felix misses a cartel meeting, The Chief of Police can't help but worry. Shameless smut ensues. Can be read as a stand-alone or a follow-on from Things (Best) Left Unsaid.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55171597

submissive Chief ~ dominant Felix ~ smut

His Jewel

Francis hates the feeling of not being plugged. It had been one of Felix’s first requirements, when they first began their little arrangement. He had thought the other man was joking at first. Until he had seen the look of disappointment in Felix’s eyes when he had slipped a hand beneath his uniform trousers to check, and found his hole clenched tightly shut, not a single sign of use since the last time Felix had deemed him worthy of his time and attention.

Felix gets The Chief a special little something to help him think about him whenever they aren't together.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54257518

butt plugs ~ bdsm ~ smut

➼ Felix Fickelgruber x Gerald Prodnose

Falling In Love (With My Best Friend)

“What happened this time, Felix?”

“I made an utter fool of myself. Again. I thought…” he trailed off. Settling the delicate china down, he allowed his hands to rest in his lap. He turned them over slowly, eyes running over the delicate bones shifting just beneath the surface, the faint calluses that could truly only be felt rather than seen unless you knew to look for them. Nobody ever looked at Felix and thought to look for them.

“Felix?”

“He called me a slut.”

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55776700

friends to lovers ~ smut ~ praise kink

x Crossover fics

➼ Wonka (2023) x You, Me and the Apocalypse

Darling boy

Felix Fickelgruber x Ariel Conroy

"You took something that belongs to me, Mister Conroy. And I shall have you repay that debt. One way or another."

Ariel thought that he was just hacking funds from another wealthy nobody. Too bad that Felix doesn’t take kindly to having his money stolen. Luckily for Ariel, there are other methods of repayment that he is willing to accept.

The Wonka x You, Me and The Apocalypse (crossover) that nobody asked for and like maybe two people will ever read 😂 (Please note: This is primarily set in the Wonka-verse, so you can read Ariel as an OC if you are unfamiliar with YMATA).

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54566395

Kidnapping ~ dove ~ happy ending ~ smut ~ bdsm ~ crossover

You can find me on the Wonka Discord, AO3, or here on Tumblr

I do my best to respond to every comment on AO3. Regular updates on WIPs guaranteed 💯

Other Fandoms

Ghosts (2019)

Take a chance on me

Pat Butcher x Reader

“Now c'mon then love, let’s see you. Only if you’re sure. I could fetch one of the others if you’d like? Julian’s got a ton of experience if even half of his stories are to be believed. And Thomas…well, if you like that sort of thing. I suppose he’s a good enough looking chap if you can get past his poetry. And all the love confessions about other women. And the moping. And the…general Thomas-ness.”

“I think I’d rather just keep this between the two of us if that’s ok with you, Pat? At least for now? Anything else sounds a little bit advanced for…”

“For your first time as a ghost?” Pat finishes your sentence for you, sending you a reassuring smile, “We’ve all been there."

“Haha. Yes. It will be my first time as a ghost. And also…maybe… my first time…”

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55039954

Gentle dom ~ reader insert ~ pure smut ~ virgin reader

Can't take it back (once it's been set in motion)

Thomas Thorne x Reader; Pat Butcher x Reader; Thomas Thorne x Julian Fawcett

“Patrick tells me that you are inexperienced in the ways of the flesh.”

“Pat said what?”

“Patrick was telling me all about your little…conversation," Thomas said delicately, a small, sly smile curling at the corners of his lips. "And I was wondering if perhaps I might be of some assistance?”

Thomas offers to help you lose your virginity. It would be a far more appealing prospect, if you weren't half convinced you were developing feelings for Pat.

-

This can be read as a stand-alone, or a sequel to my Pat/Reader fic ‘Take a chance on me’. Shameless smut which developed a little bit of plot.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55376755

Misunderstandings ~ cunnilingus ~ smut ~ virgin reader

Bullet Train (2022)

A Certain satisfaction (in a Little Bit of Pain)

Tangerine x Lemon

Lemon pressed his knee lower against the swell of Tangerine’s arse, waiting patiently for his struggles to die down once more.

“Is this actually helping, Tan? Because I can keep this up all night. So why don’t you stop being a little bitch, and run through your safewords for me like a good fuckin' boy so we can get started.”

-

After a job goes bad, Lemon knows what Tangerine needs. If only he can get Tangerine out of his own head long enough to give it to him.

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55881517

bdsm ~ everyone lives nobody dies ~ smut ~ my first try at the fruits

I just wanna see you (be brave)

Ladybug x Tangerine, Ladybug x Tangerine x Lemon, Tangerine x Lemon

“What the hell am I supposed to do with him?”

“It’s really not that bloody hard, mate. Just keep him locked in his room. This job shouldn’t last more than another day. Three at most.”

“Three? He’s fucking gone into rut, Lemon. How am I supposed to keep him calm and—”

“Oh, there’s no chance of that. Yeah. He’s just gotta work it out of his system. Leave him to it; I’ll help him when I get back. Oh, and Ladybird?”

“It’s LadyBUG actually—”

“It’s heat, not rut.”

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57032443

Non-traditional a/b/o dynamics ~ shameless smut ~ 60k

[ghostlyshoes]

FFXIV WRITE - #1 Steer

(Context: I am using a random ffxiv character generator I made myself to decide the race/species and class of each character in this challenge (it's literally just a list with a set of numbers) this should provide me with a lot of worldbuilding to cover which is what I decided to focus on!)

Steer

[122nd Order Reaper Ra Ga - Kobold Reaper]

Kobolds had been disallowed on the open ocean. Yes. Yes they had. For several, dozens, too many years. Far far too many years. Not that there was some inherent fear that the underground species had against water. For many many many generations they had been washed with explorations at sea and such as acts had only been forbidden by hazy figures; law and authority from good titan and, behind the curtains, the law and authority of the martial city state of Limsa Lominsa. Once former sworn enemies, invaders, monsters, turned friends.

Ra Ga might have been one of the first few Kobolds ever allowed upon such a vessel. Grand, mighty, awesome ship of the red-lathered Maelstrom. The imagery of the grand ship invoking nothing but painful, bloody, onslaught, danger once was now what could be companionship? Even among Kobolds, Ra Ga could have been one of the loneliest. Yes, yes, the loneliest indeed. Lonely enough for them to forge a contract with a voidsent she summoned herself, placed inside a golem of her own fashion. The hulking thing of wondrous, horrendous, dazzling metallurgy followed her everywhere. Whether the entity felt a similar sense of companionship to her was a mystery, such a grand mystery, yes yes. Although the air around her hung a deep astral, the voice of a voidsent was still a foreign concept to Ra Ga.

The Kobold Reaper was picked for the expedition for such a connection she had. Apparently, voidsent were far more frowned upon by the overdwellers than by the digs and much, lots, oodles of knowledge was something Ra Ga had in buckets, yes, yes she did. A lost city off the coast of her home of O'ghomoro and adjacent to a place known as ‘Mor Dhona’. It was further, much further than Ra Ga had ever been before, and much further than almost any of her peers. It was a new found freedom, yes, yes, a place where one may overcome an overdwellers sense of entitlement and a devotion to a god whose love only came to hurt all. As one of the special, granted, powerful selected Ra Ga felt a large burden on her fluffy shoulders, that she should steer this relationship towards something much better. That the overdwellers could come to O'ghomoro and love it. That they would share their grubs and metallic creations in the graciousness of hospitality. That she would one day walk upon the white-stoned sun-touched streets of Limsa, boarding ships to far-off and undreamable worlds.

That her own creation, from some undreamable world, wouldn’t be her only friend anymore.

[deeranger]

Lost in the Woods

So, I made this drawing and a little imagine for the SPN Eldritch Bingo 2024 for the square "Lost in the woods".... 🙃

Word count: 1,277

Characters: Sam Winchester

Warnings: Open/ambiguous ending, implied possible mcd, creepy forest entity

The cold yellow light from the moon somewhere above is quick to bleed into almost pitch-black darkness as soon as it hits the naked canopy. The many crooked branches simply filter it out, like skinny fingers grabbing and choking out the light. Sam can barely see his own hand in front of his face, let alone where he's putting down his feet. Great. That's just great. He should've never gone on this hunt alone.

Only faint remnants of moonlight manage to weakly illuminate the ground in random spots scattered on the forest floor and on tree trunks and shrubbery. It creates an eerie sort of glow that seems to contrast the black, and Sam would probably find it fascinating if it wasn't for the fact that this place is oozing pure evil. It's like the forest is watching him, like there's something breathing right down the back of his neck. It feels... Ancient. So much so that even the oldest oak tree in this godforsaken place is no match at all for the age of whatever lives here. One thing is for sure, it is never going to let go should it get its claws into him. And a scary feeling is brewing in Sam's mind that that is exactly what's going to happen if he doesn't find his way out of here. And soon. God, he should've stayed on the trail.

A twig loudly snaps under his boot, and the young Winchester swallows down a gasp. With his pulse skyrocketing, he freezes to the spot like a statue, all senses on high alert. The forest seems to hold its breath along with him, waiting... And watching. The feeling of being observed is intense, and Sam suddenly feels like a newborn gazelle circled by a hungry pack of lions, all alone and vulnerable in the middle of the goddamn savanna. He's a friggin' sitting duck and he knows it. And whatever is out there knows it too... And it's getting closer. He can feel it. Shit.

The hunter's fingers that clutch the Taurus have turned slick with sweat now even though the forest is chilly. And suddenly, he's seriously doubting if the silver bullets in the gun's chamber will help him at all. Probably not. Same goes for the flask of holy water in his pocket. And for some reason he's pretty sure that spewing out an exorcism won't work either.... Not out here, not on this thing. No, this time he's in way over his head and every weapon he brought is pretty much as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Cursing himself internally, Sam strains to pick up on whatever is lurking in the shadows... But all he gets is darkness, silent as the grave. It's like he's being watched from all sides, like danger is somehow everywhere around him now, pitch-black and one with the shadows clinging to every surface. It's omnipresent, a looming threat ready to pounce at him from any angle. He needs to turn back, needs to get the hell out of here now if he's going to stand a chance at getting out alive. But how? It's all around him and he lost his bearings a long time ago. He isn't even sure which direction to move in and by now he's not sure if it matters either. He's surrounded.

"What are you?" he hears himself ask into the chilly forest air. It comes out shakier than he'd like, and a gray mist hangs in the air from his breath until it evaporates and disappears, fleeting like a ghost. But the forest doesn't answer. Instead it offers more silence, heavy and ominous, and the darkness seems to somehow grow blacker yet, choking out the last bit of moonlight.

"What do you want??" Sam tries, automatically backing up when the night expands and creeps closer, black and tar-like and threatening. It's everywhere. The metallic taste of adrenaline spreads in his mouth, and his heart hammers against his breast bone with such frantic speed that he's uncertain if he might be passing out. He can't see anything. The blackness has reached him now, thick and evil and almost pulsing with something too ancient to even name. It's clinging to him, like a terrifying second skin, alien and predatory and freezing.

"No—"

It feels like he's breathing icewater all of a sudden, like his lungs are freezing over, blooming ice crystals gnawing at his insides and lodging themselves in every tiny blood vessel. It's like he's literally getting smothered from the inside, chest too heavy to even heave properly despite his efforts. God, he's never felt a cold like this before. This is… This is it, isn't it? Instinctively, he knows he doesn't have long, maybe just a minute or two before it's too late. Before he's absorbed into whatever it is that's pouring into him, devouring him. Killing him.

"D-Don't—" he chokes, and panicked he tries to force his eyes to see anything but blackness, to identify what it is that is now lifting him off the ground. He expects to see the crooked branches overhead, like bony fingers of an old crone reaching for him on a backdrop of pale moonlight, but he sees nothing. Nothing except a sea of black, a void, endless and hungry and absolutely diabolical.

As he feels life draining from him, his mind frantically spins and races in one big jumbled-up mess. His life flashes before his eyes, pictures of his childhood, of countless dingy motel rooms, faces of monsters that are no more and of those that got away, of everything that matters and doesn't, of all the things he still wants to do, what he needs to do... And like a red thread in all of it is his big brother's face. Dean. He can't leave Dean. Not like this, and... And not yet. He's not ready, the world isn't ready. But most importantly.... Dean is not ready. It's way too soon, his big brother will not be able to cope with losing him like this so soon after what happened at Cold Oak, after Sam left him the first time. No, he'll spiral in no time, Sam is certain of it. Or he might make an even nastier deal of some sort in his efforts to bring him back… And Sam can't let him do that, can't let him lose himself like that again. But what can he do to prevent it, really? Hell, not even Castiel can heal the kind of hurt Dean is going to feel no matter how hard he tries. Oh… Wait. He forgot. That could be his last chance, the very last straw to grasp at. He's not sure if he can even get his vocal cords to move, but he has to try, has to focus despite the solid cold that has settled deep in every bone. But he's listened before.... Maybe he will listen again? Just once? He has to. He has to.

With the last bit of air left in his lungs, Sam prays to the night sky he knows is somewhere up above him, obscured by ragged branches and blackness. It takes all of his might, and in the chilly forest air he calls out for the angel, voice thin and cracking. He feels the darkness around him angrily pulse in response and it constricts, wraps around his body like a snake, coiling and deadly silent. There's no room to breathe anymore. There's no room at all, and Sam falls as silent as the forest around him, blind and paralyzed... And waiting. Waiting for the flutter of wings or footsteps to approach. Just waiting. Hoping.

[entre-isaac]

A Cafe, in parts. One.

There was music on the air that night. Blissful tunes that wafted through the open window, supplying the oxygen with a sweet taste that settled gently upon the tongue. Music that cared little for the inappropriateness of its presence: it delivered its sonnets carelessly over streets that reeked of death. They never knew where the music came from. Perhaps a lone musician who, in witnessing the grief that oozed across the ground, attempted to remedy the blight in the only way he knew how. Perhaps an ignorant aristocrat, boasting her status and signifying her disdain for the unfortunate, commanding her entertainers to perform despite reality’s aching presence. No matter, the music played. And it was heard.

Huddled in a small room above a cafe, twenty-four ears listened. Twelve mouths whispered delicately to one another. One hundred and twenty fingers intertwined, some loose and fleeting, others clasped firmly, desperately. Amassed in a pile of shivering bodies upon uneven floorboards, it was impossible to discern where one being began, and another ended. They were not twelve– they were one. 

A bottle was passed among the group. Slim rations were shared. Encouraging murmurs were exchanged. But always quietly, respectfully– they would not disrupt the music. 

“Do you recognize the tune?” One asked another.

“Yes,” came a fond reply, a voice that revered music in all its beauty, “The Bloom Is On the Rye.”

“A romance?”

“Of sorrow.”

“How can you be certain?”

“The violin bleeds.”

“What do they sorrow for?”

“Time.”

The eyes of these dear friends seemed to meet one another by instinct. A traveling gaze was spread throughout the room. A building silence, broken only by a stifled sob from one soul in the center. He covered his eyes. His hands were removed by another’s. “What do you sorrow for, Courfeyrac?”

“Time,” came his somber reply. It was met with unease. The friends shifted, limbs untangling, necks straightening– to better look upon one another. 

“You sorrow needlessly,” one spoke up, an inspired light in his eye. “Time has no chains upon our wrists. We are above it.”

“No-one is above time, Enjolras.”

“You are wrong. Many things outlast time. They triumph it. Blood grows beyond it. Love lingers past it. And freedom shall survive longest of all. We are freedom. Time will not touch us.”

“Blood stains. Blood weeps.” 

“Jesus wept,” Enjolras laughed. “And still his name is uttered upon the lips of every man, in every moment.” 

“I do not utter it.”

The music drifted over their heads as the words faded into silence. Again, they shared glances between one another. They shared shoulders, pressed against each other as though to fight off the cold, though it was summer, and the heat of the day still lingered on their sweaty brows. They offered comfort unspoken. Each understood wordlessly what their neighbor required of them. A squeeze to the hand. A brush of the forehead. A kiss to the cheek. An embrace. A kind word. 

But silence can only prevail so long without disruption. This disruption had a name: Grantaire. He had a goal: to incite a reaction. It was his barking laugh that assaulted the tranquility as he stumbled free of the group, raising a bottle above his head. “Such dreary company you all are! I want no part in it. You snivel as if it will make a difference. You hide as if that will prevent the inevitable, which is that come morning, we will all certainly die. Waste not your precious few breaths with sobs, and instead make merry with me!” He brought the bottle to his lips and drank, spilling down his neck. 

His interruption was received with varying responses. There were laughs. There were sighs. There were scowls. There were sad smiles. More than used to the drunkard’s antics, they knew better than to take his words to heart. But between his words, the music played. 

“Come and sit down, Grantaire,” Joly addressed him first, pressing the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “There is no space for your stumbling here. You will fall.”

“Rejoin us,” Jehan, the lover of music, whispered. “If we cannot escape time, we will await her blow together.” 

“Do not entertain him,” Enjolras bit, scowling. “If he wishes to spend his night in a stupor, he may do so somewhere else,” he shot a glare in Grantaire’s direction, speaking to him now. “Have you no respect?” 

“None,” Grantaire laughed. He tripped and braced himself against Bahorel’s back, disturbing the settled group with a ripple of sways and readjustments. Grantaire remained there, leaning, grinning. “There is music! We should dance. We dance with death!”

“Can he be quieted?” Combeferre said with a sigh. 

“There is only one way to quiet a fool,” Courfeyrac returned with a smile. 

“And what is that?”

“The element of surprise.” 

Amidst puzzled glances, Courfeyrac stood and approached Grantaire, who looked upon him with an eagerness, expecting his friend to join in his merriment. But instead, Courfeyrac took hold of Grantaire’s sleeves, and in a flush kissed him.

[aprylx]

I Bet On Losing Dogs

LawLight vignette ~ 753 Words

Lawliet had already accepted that his life was in the hands of Kira long before he met the man. 

A hard pill to swallow, perhaps, but it was some kind of karma he supposed; after all, how many times had a criminal's life been in his hands? 

But why did it have to be Light? - No, that was a stupid question. It had always been Light, Lawliet knew it from the start.

Light was Kira, Light will always be Kira. 

And Kira as a concept is wrong. No human - because regardless of what Light believed, that's all he was, human - should dictate who lives and dies. Justice had never been that simple. 

Lawliet knew this. He’d spent countless nights staring at Light as he slept, praying that the curtain of purposeful ignorance would rise and he could see the man for who he truly was. 

Begging whatever real god there was to cure him; to take this diabolical human and force Lawliet to see him as anything less than an equal. 

But then Light would wake up- glowing amber eyes would snap open and bore into his, and Lawliet seemed to forget that he was handcuffed to Kira. 

He wished he knew how Light had managed to escape from himself- how he’d managed to forget the thousands of lives he’d taken, and Lawliet hated himself for being grateful for it; because if the culprit had no memory of the crime, had it even happened in the first place?

Well… yes. But he could pretend. 

He could pretend that Light was Detective Yagami’s son, a student at To-Oh and the only person who’d ever matched his wits… It wasn’t like he had to pretend the last part was true though.

He could pretend that, when he stared back, he didn’t see a glimpse of red. 

Lawliet mourned his own death when the handcuffs were removed, and he mourned the death of Light Yagami. At least Light’s death had been quick, only a touch of the death note.

His own would have to wait, after all. 

He’d already made preparations with Watari, or, more accurately, he’d said his goodbyes; because L Lawliet was the greatest detective in the world and he knew what was coming. 

And once more as he stood on the roof, bells ringing in his ears, the rain sinking into his skin, he knew what was coming.

Because it was Kira’s eyes that looked back at him as they stood in the rain; he understood that now. 

Was he even pretending anymore? Lawliet couldn’t tell. Maybe for the rest of the task force, but not for him. 

He was grateful for that. 

In front of the task force, Lawliet could pretend that his suspicions for Light were only that- suspicions- and not painful truth. 

When Light pressed a towel to his wet hair, he could pretend that there was even an ounce of affection behind the action. 

When he felt Light’s eyes on him as he explained his plan to test out the thirteen days rule, he could pretend that it was because the case was so damn close to being solved that he could taste it. 

Even as Watari died on the other side of the screen, as all the data was erased from almost a year of non-stop work, a tiny part of Lawliet pretended that it was an accident. That he’d get another year to build back everything they’d lost, that he’d get another year with Light. 

And then his heart stopped. 

Even though Lawliet had long accepted that his inevitable death would be by Kira’s hands, it didn’t make the pain in his heart any less - whether that was from the heart attack he was suffering or not. 

When Lawliet felt an arm around his neck and a cotton shirt in his fist, he could almost pretend that his last moments wouldn’t be staring up at his murderer but rather the only person he’d ever felt close to loving. 

A brief thought crossed his eyes as he looked at Kira’s smile. 

Light Yagami and Lawliet were made for eachother. 

L and Kira were not. 

As bells rang in his head - the same bells that would be rung at his funeral in a few days - Lawliet could almost pretend that there was regret in Kira’s eyes. 

He hated that his life didn’t flash before him, like it was meant to. He could only see his eyes, whether they were amber or red. 

You better not forget me, Light Yagami.

Also on Ao3 ~

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57380617