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therenlover · 1 year

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Always For A Second (Usually At The Start) - A Helmut Zemo x Reader fic

"And when I imagine life when it's mine / I can try to picture faceless folk to love a thousand times / But always for a second, and usually at the start / You're in the image posing with a cradled beating heart" - Katie Gregson MacLeod, i'm worried it will always be you

Synopsis: Leaving Helmut for good had been the biggest, most final choice you'd ever had to make. Two years later, he's in your living room again. This time, though, things are different.

Tags: Explicit Smut (+18), Exes, Getting Back Together, Enemies to Lovers to Exes to Lovers, Enthusiastic Consent, Switch!Zemo, Oral (Fem Receiving), Service Top!Zemo, Aftercare, Bucky is Mentioned Too Much

Rating: E (+18) Minors DNI

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 8,600~

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“I didn’t expect you to come crawling back so soon, schatz,”

The restaurant was crowded enough that nobody heard Helmut’s words, curt and cloying and so fucking familiar. Still, my face heated. It always would for him, no matter how much my common sense protested by body’s reactions. How dare he be so damn effective at getting under my skin?

Some over-expensive brown liquor sloshed against the rim of the glass in my hand as I lifted it less than gracefully from the table, dribbling down the edge of my mouth as I guided it to my lips and drank deeply. “For one, two years isn’t soon,” I started, swallowing. “Two, you’re the asshole who showed up in my apartment like a robber, which makes you the one who came crawling back. I was just nice enough to let you take me for a free meal to get you the hell out. Three,” I set the glass down sharply, “don’t call me that. We’re not friends. We’re not anything. I still haven’t forgiven you,”

“Apologies,”

He didn’t mean it.

“Still, it’s too soon to expect any sort of kindness from you,” he continued, “If I recall correctly, you said you’d rather die than suffer through another night with me for the rest of eternity. I believe an eternity has yet to pass… and yet, here we are,”

His matter of fact tone left little up for debate, unless I wanted to reach for my fork and maim his smug face. Instead, I bit my tongue and swallowed another mouthful of whatever I was drinking.

For once I was glad to be surrounded by the kind of noisy, faceless jumble of humanity that usually made my skin crawl. F. Scott Fitzgerald was on to something with his theories on large crowds and intimacy; there was no better place for two war criminals to meet than the corner booth of a hazy restaurant, lounging and drinking, covered by the blanket of sweet anonymity. Anyone who glanced our way would see two normal human beings sharing a meal in peaceable silence, sharing sparse conversation between bites of this and that.

They would see lovers.

The thought left a lump in my throat.

Maybe I looked uncomfortable enough that they would presume, correctly, that we were ex-lovers. I wasn’t hopeful about it, though.

Helmut noticed, of course, but I knew he would. He had always had an almost supernatural sense for these things, like he could tune into my emotional radio on a frequency I didn’t even fully know myself. Enemy or ally or… otherwise, it was a constant to be seen through and picked apart like carrion. An appetizer for the fights to come. Thankfully, though, he chose to have mercy on me this time in a rare show of respect. Instead of wrapping his lips around another snide comment- even though I could tell it was burning a bitter hole into the tip of his tongue behind his clenched teeth- he chose to pick up a ring of calamari from the plate between us. He held it up to examine the crust in the dim lamplight before placing it delicately against his lips, pulling it from the fork in one bite. Still, he couldn’t be too gracious. Helmut held eye contact as he went.

I could only managed a disgusted sigh but found myself mirrored as his teeth sunk into the squid and his brow furrowed.

“Bad?” I asked.

He chewed for a good while before managing to swallow the offending clump down, gagging all the way. “Despite my recent diet, that might be the worst thing I’ve eaten in a long while,”

A laugh escaped me before I even knew it was there. “You managed to pick a restaurant where our appetizer is worse than prison food? Serves you right for ordering seafood in the midwest,”

“I suppose it does.” He nudged the plate towards me with a growing smirk, “See for yourself. I’d hate to see it wasted, and as you said, it is ours. I can’t be expected to finish it alone,”

As if under the spell of his charisma all over again, I followed his instructions without a second thought. It was just as bad as I anticipated.

Things were off to a bad start from the moment the tines of my fork hit the batter. The breading seemed to squelch under the pressure, sagging and giving way into meat that was somehow both rubbery and gelatinous, if that was even possible, and if the texture seemed bad outside of my mouth it was even worse inside. Somewhere between its fishy tang and the overly salted batter, there was a bitter, almost sour note that seemed to permeate further with every chew. I spit the macerated glob into my napkin before even attempting to swallow down the remaining spit.

Across the table, Zemo grinned at my misfortune. “Let’s hope our entrees are less offensive to our palettes,”

“Fuck off,” I muttered, lips turning up at the edges.

“You can curse all you want at my poor choice of venue, but I can tell you’re glad you’re the one who ordered the pasta instead of the steak,”

I went for my glass again, letting the liquor with a name I couldn’t pronounce burn all the way down my throat and into my chest. “I hate that you’re always right, Helmut. Can’t you be wrong, just once? Leave some correctness for the rest of us,”

Maybe it was the lighting, soft and amber against the dark wood of the table to mask the bloody steaks that would sit below, or maybe it was the music, something old and swinging that I couldn’t quite put my finger on but knew from the radio in my grandmother’s car as a child, or maybe, just maybe, it was the crows feet that popped up around Helmut’s eyes when he smiled that hadn’t been quite so prominent the last time I’d seen him, but no matter the cause, the solid iron wall I had put up around my heart when I walked out of the Baron’s life those two year sago seemed to soften. Weakened, somehow. It was like someone took a blowtorch right to the center of my defenses. Something in me screamed that they had never been all that strong to begin with.

I only noticed I’d been staring when he looked away, clearing his throat and wiping his thin mouth with the napkin from his lap.

There went my hand. Helmut, 1. Me, 0… Well, 1, if leaving him those years ago counted for anything, and I refused to believe that it hadn’t. That the blow to his ego hadn’t given me at least a slight upper hand compared to the naive girl I had been in comparison when I first met him. There had been so much good in the world then.

The silence dragged on as if the structural flaws of my guarded heart could patch themselves up with the defenses created from just a few silent moments between us. That’s all it would take for me to remember all the reasons this would never work: all the pain, the sleepless nights, the snide comments that turned into biting replies that grew into massive, earth-shattering fights that exploded into days or weeks or months living alone in a house with him. One by one, the memories flooded back, reminding me exactly why it had taken me almost two years to find enough peace within myself that I wouldn’t decide to shoot the man in front of me on sight. My heart hardened by the second.

“I saw your concert,”

I was simultaneously thawed and frozen all over again. “How did you-“

“James mentioned it,”

“You still talk to Bucky?”

“Here and there,”

The conversation lapsed into silence.

He had… been there? I didn’t even bother to think about the talk I’d have to have with Bucky about my privacy, too focused on the more important matter at hand.

The venue was grungy, a basement bar with a small stage serving the communities aspiring comedians and desperate punk-rock garage dwellers just waiting for their big break. I had barely had the guts to pay the booking fee, though. It was just me, a piano, and my guitar for an hour and a half set of mostly cover songs that had gone better than I’d expected, but hadn’t been anything crazy. The crowd was appreciative and respectful. Several people had left tips, even more giving me a congratulatory clap on the back as I left the building that night, promising to “stream my EP” whenever I released it, despite the fact that I had no plans to do any such thing. Still, I couldn’t imagine that I hadn’t seen his face in the crowd. I couldn’t name what I was feeling as I imagined it; visualized his face on the other side of the smoky room, leaned against the bar with his dark eyes catching hold of mine…

“You came and you didn’t say anything? Not even a hello?”

Helmut laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “And risk my life over a free concert? No.” He paused, “Despite my tendency to sometimes be… less than kind, I knew it would rattle you to see me. I didn’t want to throw you off before your performance.”

I didn’t have much of anything to say in response. Instead, I picked at the paper straw wrapper in my lap and tried to look anywhere but in his direction, shoving down whatever was welling up in my chest. He wouldn’t let things go, though. He never could. That was half of why we’d never work. Every time I tried to drop an uncomfortable subject he’d be there to pick it up with a snide comment or two. It was an easy rhythm. Too easy. I had never wanted to fall back into it and yet, here I was, almost excited to snipe his next words down.

“Cain misses you,” He continued.

I folded the straw wrapper in my hands, pulling at the crease as I thought about the doberman puppy I had left behind. He would be so big now, as big as the one I’d taken with me was now. My heart ached at the thought.

“I doubt he remembers me after all this time,”

“Of course he does,” Helmut’s voice was low. It was almost hypnotic, the way he carried himself. He could fool anyone. I realized, with a sinking feeling in my stomach that couldn’t have been the calamari, he could still fool me. “He’s quite the troublemaker. More times than I can count he’s evaded me in the house, only to be found asleep in your old closet. I think he remembers your scent,”

“Thats…” I sat quiet for a moment, pursing through choices of words in my mind, mulling over the sharp accented way he pronounced the t in scent, “Sad. Really sad. Makes me wish I could’ve taken them both,”

“And what of Brutus?”

“He’s good,” A smile crossed my face. “Big, as you saw tonight. I remember when we got them, they told us they’d be 60 pounds at most, but I swear Brutus must’ve snuck in with the rest of those puppies, because he’s massive. Headbutts me every time I walk through the door wondering where I was. He’s a good boy, though. Keeps watch while I sleep, just in case.”

“Just in case I decided to let myself in through the window one night?”

I let myself laugh without judgement this time, reaching for my water. “Looks like it was all for nothing, then. Who knew he’d just let intruders come waltzing in off of the fire escape?”

“Am I truly considered an intruder in your home?” He asked it as if the answer wasn’t obvious. As if there were any other answer I could possibly give. As if I could’ve wanted him there. His earnestness almost hurt as much as his taunting did, maybe more, because even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself, there was a soft ring of truth to his words.

I took the cowards way out. “I don’t know, what do you think?”

It was a vulnerability to not give a straight answer, the kind of weak spot that Helmut would catch wind of in an instant before using it to unravel someone piece by piece. Not a no, but certainly not a yes, and the fact that it hadn’t been a resounding yes was enough to glean that maybe, deep down, I wasn’t hating this dinner. He would see through me. Rip me to shreds for the subtle admittance that I hadn’t hated seeing him waiting for me on the couch when I walked through my door, even if I hadn’t expected or wanted him there in the first place.

I found it was better to lie by omission than to fully lie and let him see through me to the more important truth; For as much as I despised everything about him, I had missed Helmut Zemo. I had missed his stupid expensive taste and the tilt of his stupid head and his stupid shiny white smile. I had missed seeing his coat hung up beside the door and knowing what waited for me inside. It was sick how I had loved him. How I had loved every minute of him picking me apart by the seams and putting me back together. Who could possibly crave their own destruction? Who could live knowing that to be loved was to be deconstructed down to the bone and laid bare as something lesser, something so small compared to the great destroyer I devoted myself to.

How could he let me live like that if he truly saw through me?

And that was why I had to leave.

Loving Helmut Zemo was no way to live. I knew that. I had known that the day I picked up my dog and walked out of our home with nothing but my wallet, car keys, phone, and a polaroid picture of his silhouette. Somehow, I knew that he knew that too. Why else would I move on so suddenly, so sharply, removing every piece of the life we’d built to start myself fresh? A new me, I had said. A new chapter. Yet here I was across from him, shredded bits of paper littering my lap as he puppeteered my heart right back into his arms.

No. I couldn’t let it happen.

Not again.

“Listen, baron,” I didn’t let him answer my rhetorical question. It wouldn’t be wise to let him gain the upper hand again. It wouldn’t be smart to let myself stay weak. “I appreciate dinner. It’s been surprisingly lovely to catch up with you. I’m glad to know you’re not dead, and its great to know Cain is doing well, but I know you weren’t here to tell me that over a plate of mediocre pasta,”

Helmut smiled, his head in its signature tilt, and swished his own glass a bit. The ice was all but melted giving the liquor an almost clear quality as it diluted. Not a sip had been taken. “Ask the question, schatz,”

“Why are you here? Why did you stalk me here and break into my apartment when I made it clear that you weren’t welcome in my life?” My words came out so matter of fact even I almost recoiled at them. Not unemotional but detached.

“Um, who had the chicken alfredo?”

I could feel the blood drain from my face as I looked up at the poor waiter, hot plates in hand, as he took in our table at just the wrong time. Five minutes earlier he would have walked in on polite conversation about the dogs or the shitty appetizers. Now, though, he stood between a man who was known to kill for the things he wanted and me, the one thing he could never have again.

Surprisingly, though, Helmut waved a hand towards me as I froze. There were none of the usual dramatics, just polite chatter with the waiter as he set my plate in front of me and left Helmut with his, taking the offending calamari plate away with him as he scurried away, surely to tell his coworkers about the crazy exes at the corner table. Helmut didn't even carry on with his answer. He just started tucking in to his steak and potatoes, not sparing me a single glance. If I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t memorized the way his eyes looked in the low light of a restaurant across from me, I would think he’d been replaced by a skrull.

Where was the tearing? The shredding? The utter evisceration of my waiting throat as he drank deeply of my darkest, most shameful thoughts only to spit them out for the world to see. Where was that shame? In the before times, in the times that the two of us had been a we, he never would have paused to mind a waiter. The world would have revolved around him as he laid me bare, no matter who watched or waited in the wings. What changed?

How had I not noticed his docility until now?

The pasta was decent. It was better than anything I would’ve made at home, at least. I barely thought about it, though, letting my body go through the motions of eating mechanically while my mind went over a million things I could say. What could I say? There was nothing left to. We had gone over every possibility before I had left, at least I thought we had. Whatever we were was dead. That was certain. But what we could be…

I swallowed hard before I could choke on a relatively large piece of broccoli I neglected to chew in my trance.

Helmut seemed to be in a painfully similar situation. One look at his plate showed a steak cut into tiny pieces. Almost none of it looked eaten, just diced into a pile and shuffled around a bit on the plate to mix with the potatoes, smashed down from their neat ice cream scoop globe and spread with the back of a fork.

With a sigh, I set down my fork, pasta already forgotten.

“Lost your appetite?”

He paused his fiddling with his fork and knife, mirroring me and letting the utensils rest on the table beside his plate. It was odd to see him rattled. Strange to watch his eyes roll up to the ceiling and pause there, as if he was searching for the right words to say. He always knew just what to say to cut the deepest. Maybe it was foreign for him to not want to cut; To find a soft word, instead of a sharpened one. His mouth opened one… two…three times. Open and shut, open and shut. I couldn’t help but hurt for him. The man of many words was finally struck dumb.

Finally, it came.

“I’m sorry,”

I had anticipated a selfish reply, a demand for me to come back and put the past two years behind us, but time had changed him. It had changed us both. He was no longer the man he had been when he was first freed from behind bars, vengeful and biting and so deeply afraid of being alone again, but I was no longer the lost girl I had been either. I did not need to be destroyed to breathe. I could feel tears pricking up in my eyes as he reached a hand across the table to search for my own. It was such a familiar sight in a time of uncertainty. I kept my hands firmly in my lap, though. I would not give him the satisfaction.

More, I would not give him hope.

“Come home, schatz,”

There it was.

I couldn’t hold in the bitter, wet laugh that bubbled up through me, more at my own foolishness than at anything else. He had changed, yes, but some things never would.

“Helmut,” The word hurt to say. It was altogether both familiar and unfamiliar, covered in a thick layer of dust from time, but nothing could erase the fact that it had once been used over and over, like a prayer, as easy as breathing or saying my own name. “You know I can’t,”

He let his hand slink back to his side. “I had to try, you know,”

“I know,” The words were a whisper.

So this was closure?

The table was quiet. There was no desperation from Helmut’s side, no attempts to sway me or sudden outbursts of resentment. It was almost peaceful. His voice was sad but there was no manipulation in it. We laid our cards of the table as the game we’d played for years finally came to an end.

“You were right about us, when you left,” he laughed, “I was, as you so aptly put it, a massive ass. I was still so deeply disillusioned about this world and the horrors of it. It was as if everyone around me was just another cog in it all, even you. I thought if I could puppet it all, make things go my way, everything could just be quiet. The horrors would finally stop. The memories would finally stop. I took it too far, though. I took it out on you. For that, I will never be sorry enough,”

I put up a hand. “Helmut, you don’t have to do this-“

“I want to,”

His voice was delicate but didn’t waver. For the first time I wondered if this was more about what he needed to say than about what I needed to hear. I nodded him on. Without me even thinking about what I was doing, my hand caught his across the table.

“I wanted to run after you the same day you left. I nearly did, too, before I thought better of it. Then I really thought of what you said. What I did. It was then that I decided I had to change for the better, not for you but for myself. Only then would I allow myself to try again. So I did. I spent my time deconstructing the things I had seen and done and finally facing my own demons. I’m not perfect- believe me -but there are many things I have… worked on, for lack of a better word. James was surprisingly helpful throughout it all,”

“Is that why you’ve been talking?” My thumb stroked over his knuckles, pausing on a scar.

“More or less. I needed advice on how to overcome my atrocities, and I owed him an apology either way. He told me about your concert because he thought I would be ready to make amends, and yet I found myself unable to speak to you because I knew that if I did, I would have to beg you for forgiveness, and that is not something I will allow myself to do from anyone. Not now, nor ever,”

I let myself pull away. This was not a movie. There was no happy ending for the two of us at the end of this conversation. It was a chance to clear the air and let go of our grievances before going our separate ways. Treating it any other way would only hurt us both. “Why break in, then, and drag this all out over dinner? Why not just knock on my door, apologize, and leave?”

“I couldn’t have you slamming the door in my face and leaving me to apologize to the wall, now could I?”

We shared a sad smile, a knowing one. “I guess that’s true.”

“I needed to know you would hear what I had to say until the end,” he paused, “And one last confession. I must admit, I could not walk away without sharing dinner with you one last time. It’s selfish, as I am selfish, but I could not see you again without truly seeing you, more than just as you shouted at me and threw me to the curb,”

“You think so little of me?” I asked. There was no bite in it.

“No, I think so little of myself,” he finally took a sip from his glass, “Any anger on your part is warranted,”

We did not speak again for a long while. Helmut methodically went through the bite-sized pieces of steak on his plate as I finished the alfredo, which had grown cold in the time it took to sort things out. There was no quiet conversation, no jokes or shared stories in the glow of the lamps overhead. Instead we sat in peaceable silence and breathed in the finality of it all. I was almost grateful for it. I never would have imagined sharing a meal like this with him in all of the years I had known him and loved him. If it was to be the last, and it was, we would savor every moment of each others company. Every moment not spent on my meal was devoted to memorizing the line of his jaw and the shape of his eyes as he did the same for me.

By the time the waiter came to ask about dessert, I could have written sonnets about his face alone, and by the time he returned with the check, paid discreetly with a 40% tip for his troubles on Helmut’s card, I had committed the sound of his breathing to my mind. I could only hope the memory would last this time.

Realistically, I knew it wouldn’t.

I wondered if he was thinking the same thing as we approached the front of the restaurant together, pausing awkwardly outside the door as we exited out onto the street.

“So, this is it,” My hands found the pockets of my coat as I rocked onto the balls of my feet.

Helmut smiled softly in the lamplight. “Let me walk you home,”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,”

“Says who? I have to follow you either way, my car is parked down the block,” He offered me his arm.

I took it far quicker than I should have, relishing in the scent of his cologne. Even after all these years he had never switched to another brand, and I refused to admit to anyone else but myself that I was grateful for it. Instead I leaned into his warmth. “Well, it’s only a few blocks anyways. I guess it couldn’t hurt,” and with that, we were off.

The night was cool. Summer had given in to the pull of a lush fall, the temperatures dropping to a comfortable but windy chill when the sun fell below the horizon. The leaves were not yet falling but they’d begun their slow transformation from green into a mosaic of reds and yellows and greens, forming a rustling canopy above the sidewalk that allowed a flash of stars and moon through the foliage every few steps.

We were not the only pair walking through the streets that night, but if you had asked me about it later I would have said we were the only two people in the whole city, matching each other step for step under the flickering streetlights. Helmut’s crows feet were in full force as he laughed at my terrible jokes, and I couldn’t help but feel warmth rush through my neck and cheeks as he recounted the moment we first met.

It had been fall then, too. A brief, chance encounter in the streets of Paris was all it was, a night spend with a stranger, until I had seen him again in Sibera, and again in Germany, and again on the Raft, and again, and again, and again, and again…

He had been younger then, much younger, and still raw with grief, but I had loved him even then.

I was so lost in my own memories that I almost missed the stairs up to my apartment, but Helmut paused there, keeping me rooted with him even though the look in his eyes told me he almost kept walking past, hoping to gain one more turn around the block before he had to let me go. He didn't, though. This was the end of the line.

My arm slipped easily from its place against his own, hand catching briefly on the crook of his elbow. “Walk me to my door?”

His laugh felt almost nervous, a paid mockery of my own earlier reticence. “I don’t think that’s wise,”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a gentleman, baron?”

“I have never claimed that,” For a moment, when he paused, I thought that would be that. I would turn my back, ascend the stairs, and turn around to find he’d shifted back into the shadows from whence he came, but then the moonlight caught on his soft, wet eyes. “But for you, schatz, I try to be,”

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the words I wanted to say as we walked up the front steps and into the building.

It had been so angry last time. I had vomited up every hateful, raging, repressed thought that I had shoved down into my chest over the course of our turbulent time together all at once and left without a second glance. This time, though, it felt wrong to end things without giving him credit for all of the other things, the things I had forgotten in the midst of all the chaos that surrounded us. How could I thank him? How could I tell him every wonderful thing about himself only to close the door in his face a moment later? I spent the whole trip up to my apartment trying to find a way to express even an ounce of what I felt, and then it was far too late.

We stood there on my novelty doormat, boots settled over the dirty cartoon chickens, hands in our pockets, and breathed in the stale hallway air.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said. If I shut off my heart and my mind and every other little betraying ache in my bones it was like it had been all those years ago. We were just meeting. This was the end of our very first date. There was a future instead of a past in the time that lay beyond us.

Helmut averted his eyes from mine. I could tell he was pretending too. “Of course,”

“I’ll see you again,” I lied, “I mean, it’s inevitable. We’ll end up at Bucky’s place at the same time,”

“Or run into each other at a busy cafe,” he offered.

“Exactly! Or our cells will end up next to each other in maximum security prison,” I laughed, but it caught, pathetic, in the back of my throat.

He took a step back, boots leaving my doorstep. “I look forward to it, whenever it may be,”

My shaking hands found my keys, an autopilot motion I had done a million times, and the door to my apartment swung open. I could hear Brutus in his kennel, beginning to whine the moment he heard me come home, but I paused there for a moment, one foot in and one foot out.

“Goodbye, Helmut,”

“Sleep well, schatz,”

I stepped inside and locked the door without turning around for a last look.

My tears came quicker than expected as I took in the room around me. It was the antithesis of my home with Helmut, all whites and beiges and grays from the sparse walls to the lonely couch against the wall. There was one great shock of black, though; a solid footprint on the windowsill. One last souvenir to remember him by.

I had done the right thing.

I had to have done the right thing.

Life with Helmut was hell. It was exciting and lush and romantic and alluring but it was destructive and painful too. It would mean being seen and unseen for the rest of my life, living with the ghosts of those lost in Novi Grad. He would never stop being the man his grief had created. He was just too broken… wasn’t he?

All at once I knew I had to see him again. This wasn’t going to be the end. There were still so many chances to make it right.

Before I knew my own feelings, I was undoing the latch and throwing my door open, only to find him there, feet planted solidly on that stupid welcome mat and fist raised to lift the knocker. Our eyes locked.

We didn’t need words then.

No, all I needed was his lips on mine and my hands in his hair. It was a need easily rectified.

He didn’t pull away as I grabbed the edges of his ridiculous fur coat and dragged him in for a kiss, letting the remains of that day’s lipstick smear against his chapped lips as the parted and made way for me. It was like a piece of my puzzle fell back into place, like the thing that had been lying dormant in my empty chest for the past two years had jumped to life and jumped into my throat. The tears weren’t coming anymore, though Helmut’s cheeks felt wet when I guided one of my hands to rest against it, dragging him closer. I needed him urgently. I needed all of it. Every moment I had missed.

At least one time in my entire tiny, useless life I needed to know him as he had always known me. I had to see him through eyes that would know every atom of him by heart.

It could have lasted second or hours. I was lost in it; lost in every heartbeat and the messy clack of teeth on teeth as we remembered exactly how our mouths locked into each other. There was no need to breathe. I would happily drown in him if he would let me. Through the passion I distinctly remembered this fervor, the endless need for him. It wasn’t frightening anymore, though. I knew how to walk away. We both did.

This time I didn’t want to.

Helmut was the first to pull away. His mouth was wet and red as he panted there, just a breath away from diving in for more, but he pulled away when I advanced again, instead choosing to speak between placing kisses on my cheeks and down my jaw. “I couldn’t let you walk away from me. Not again,” his voice shook as he kissed me, “Does that make me a bad man? Does that mean you can’t love me?”

I could only breathe a laugh as I pressed my chest to him. No measure of closeness was enough. I needed him to cover every inch of me. “I don’t think I could stop loving you if I tried, and I’ve tried,”

“Please, stop trying,”

With that, he caught me in another kiss.

“We should probably go inside,” I panted, gesturing towards the apartment with my head and Helmut nodded, maneuvering us over the threshold and into the barren entryway of the home I’d made without him. It didn’t matter, though. That wasn’t what I was focused on. Instead, my hands were more focused on pulling his coat from his shoulders and discarding it loosely in the direction of the coat rack between fevered kisses.

The old Helmut would’ve pulled away and make some snarky remark about keeping the place clean. This Helmut, though- my Helmut, as I had selfishly started to refer to him mentally in the past few moments -just dragged me in closer after his arms were freed, letting his hand drift to the small of my back but not even an inch lower.

Suddenly, though, things seemed to cool. The kisses grew shorter, softer. His arms still held me but seemed to loosen their grip.

“Tell me you want this,” He whispered softly against the shell of my ear, “That you want me,”

Ah. So that’s what this is.

“Helmut, of course I do-“

“That’s not enough,” his voice was laced with a rare seriousness as he pulled away to look at me properly. His brown eyes glowed a million honeyed colors under the shitty, flickering overhead lighting I should have replaced months ago. They flitted from my swollen mouth to my cheeks to my watery eyes as his hand came up to cup my cheeks again. “Tell me this isn’t a mistake or a bad decision you’ll regret the second we finish,”

The rest went unsaid.

(Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me this means something to you, even if it doesn’t mean as much as it does to me. Tell me I won’t wake up alone tomorrow morning. Tell me anything and everything except the cruel reality that neither of us really knows what the future looks like once this is over)

I simply nodded my head, coming in for one closed mouth kiss. “I want this. I want you. Whatever I choose to do next, you’ll be a part of the decision. No more running away,”

Like a shot, we were off to the races again.

It was hard to detach our bodies long enough to give Brutus a treat to quiet him down, harder still to lead him to the bedroom and drop his hand long enough to turn on a nearby lamp, but somehow I managed. For all of the small things I’d forgotten about Helmut in the two years we’d spent apart, his bitten nails and the silhouette of his nose and the sound of his labored breathing as he took in my body with something akin to animalistic hunger, it was easy to fall back into the rhythm we’d always found ourselves in intimately.

His shirt came off first, exposing the soft curve of his stomach. I kissed down from his neck to his chest, letting myself pause on each and every pinkish scar that graced his flesh. I made a mental note to ask him about a few new ones, including a wicked one across his collarbone that still puckered into an inch long divot in his flesh. My fingers followed my mouth, mapping every inch of his flesh. They caught on every soft yielding place he offered, a worship on the altar of his body, dragging his flesh ever so slightly but never enough to leave a scratch or bruise.

I would not mark him any more than the world already had. It was not my purpose to remold him into my image. Instead I would venerate what he was, what he had become.

Helmut had put so much effort into changing himself, rebreaking the things that had never healed correctly and setting them right again. I refused to let him break down to splinters again. Not on my watch.

He shuddered at my attentions.

“Let me see you?” It was a question, not a demand, and how could I deny him when he asked so nicely?

I stood up again, relishing in the feeling of his fingers against the hem of my t-shirt, the gentle scratch of nails on skin as he lifted it over my head. When he looked at me, it was like he was looking at the most precious thing in the world. Usually he was so hungry for it that there was never a pause once my shirt was discarded. My bra would be thrown off with it, then my pants, then my underwear, all in such quick succession that I barely distinguished one article from the next in the order of things. This time, though, he paused, hands just inches from my bare flesh.

“My sweet girl,” he whispered to me like a prayer, a confession, “I don’t think I can hold back much longer,”

Slowly, deliberately, I stepped forward and pressed my body into his awaiting hands. He squeezed my hips once, gentle, and twice. Then they were roaming up to the clasp on my bra with that usual hunger again, freeing my breasts for his attentions. I don’t exactly recall how he manhandled me on to the bed, I was too busy feeling the hard press of his bulge through his crisp dress slacks. The first thing I was fully cognizant of was his hot breath on my sternum as he hovered over me, still standing but bent at the waist, boxing me in with his knees.

“So fucking sweet,” he whispered before taking one of my nipples between his lips and laving his tongue over the hardening tip.

I felt like a live wire. Heat was building everywhere. Dazzling electricity shot through my head and fingers and toes and cunt and gods especially my breasts. They were always my weak spot, and how he knew it, how he knew me. I wanted to thrash against him, to buck and gain his attention where I really needed it, but his body above mine held me fast, keeping me right where he wanted me, vulnerable to him and his specific brand of torture. With a particularly sharp pinch and a well timed suck he had me keening against him, curling into his every move.

How had I lived without him? It was hard to imagine a night not spend here with Helmut, wherever here was, not that that mattered. I was embarrassingly wet. The slickness had gathered enough that I could feel it on my thighs despite my jeans. When I tried to relieve myself, though, the baron caught my hand, tutting softly.

I expected to have to ask permission. Soft begs escaped my mouth. I needed him. I had no patience for games. Instead, though, he lifted up off of my chest and smiled, pulling my hand to his lips. “Let me help you, love,”

There are no words in the human language that could adequately represent the sound that escaped my mouth. I could not even begin to try. It continued even as I lifted my hips to shimmy free from my jeans and underwear in one fluid motion, only ceasing when Helmut was on his knees with his face buried in my cunt. I was making different noises then. Loud. Guttural. If I had any mind left at all I would worry what my neighbors thought, to see me out on my doorstep desperately pawing at a man only to hear the noises we were making in tandem now. Thankfully, any sensible thought I had left seemed to fly out the window with Helmut’s first lick to my cunt.

It was clear that he hadn’t forgotten me, and if he had, the muscle memory was coming back quick. His tongue was deft as it worked its way over my aching nub in a pseudo-figure eight; circling once, twice, and three times before dipping back through my folds. I held him in place this time, though, rocking into his mouth. At some point my hands found their way into his hair. It was so soft between my fingers, so pliable as I pulled against him, desperate for more of him, anything he would good.

Every time he relented to me. Each sharp jolt was rewarded with a kiss against my thigh or a muttered curse in Sokovian, hot breath teasing my glistening mound.

He was so giving, so attentive to my every need. He had always been a generous lover, never leaving me wanting for anything, but this felt… different. The way he sucked bruises into my thighs, relenting to each and every sobbing please that escaped my soft lips, was a new and devastating experience. There were no power games left to play, no lording his sexual prowess over me as he brought me slowly closer and closer to the ever distant goalpost, just his mouth on me over and over and over again as he wrung the first orgasm of the night out of me, then the second in short measure, barely ceasing from one to the next.

By the time he decided I’d had my fill, my legs were a trembling mess against his shoulders and my cunt was a sopping mess.

He grinned a crooked grin at his masterpiece.

“How was that, my love,”

I could barely catch my breath enough to speak. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, thrumming a frantic drumbeat even as the room quieted. “So good- really really good, Helmut,”

Slowly, he rose up from his knees, undoing his belt. “Please say my name again, schatz,”

“Helmut,” My voice was hushed. Reverent.

He undid the button at his fly, pulling at the band of his boxers. “Again,”

It fell from my lips like a prayer. “Helmut,”

His cock bounced free, bobbing as he took a sharp, steadying breath. He placed his hand at the base and squeezed slightly.

“Again,”

“Helmut,”

“Fuck, that’s good,” The trance broke momentarily as I gazed up at him, watching the sweat roll down his forehead in shining rivulets despite the chill in the air. He wiped at them with the back of his free hand and smiled sheepishly. “Scoot back and get comfortable, please. I don’t think I’ll last long,”

I did as he asked, settling against my pillows on the still-made sheets. “Neither will I,”

“Where are your condoms?”

“Bedside drawer, way in the back. I’m on the pill too, so no worries,”

He moved quickly, grabbing a foil package from the small pile I’d accrued, just in case.

It felt odd to have him be the one using them.

There had been a few other men who had been invited here, fewer still that made it to the point that Helmut and I were at now. Every time, though, I hadn’t been able to go through with it, because every time they had finally settled themselves above me, I would close my eyes and, just for a moment, see Helmut in their place. It was unsettling the first time, enough so that I sent the guy home right away. The next time, though, it was more thought provoking than anything. I chalked it up to him being my longest lasting sexual partner and left it at that, but now, watching him roll the condom onto his length and crawl into his position over me, I knew.

I would never get over him, even if I tried for years. My heart had a space carved out in the shape of his own. No matter how long I stayed away, I would never find something quite like what we had. He was it. This was what people dreamed about. And to think, I had almost let it slip away…

He slid one hand into mine, lacing our fingers together in the gentle lamplight. “Are you ready for me?”

“More than ready,” My thighs spread as I canted my hips up.

Physically and mentally and every other possible way I needed him. I was prepared.

So Helmut pumped himself once with his free hand before guiding himself into my wet heat.

It was impossible to last long once we were finally complete.

Feeling him inside me was like knowing the truth of the universe. It was comfortable, and thrilling, and so deliciously enough. He filled me well, finding his rhythm as he swore and released my hand to prop himself up more comfortably. We were linked together like the final pieces of a puzzle. I closed my eyes at let myself relish in it.

There was nothing left to worry over while Helmut was inside of me. All thoughts that weren’t of him were banished. It was something to be cherished, every thrust paired with a whispered confession of love from one of us, a fleeting kiss, a curse, a plea… We laid ourselves bare. I let my legs wrap around his warm, soft hips as he rutted into me, bringing a hand between us to circle my clit once more. Even after everything he refused to leave me behind while he chased his own pleasure. It didn’t take much to send me tumbling over the edge into oblivion.

As always, Helmut followed me down.

His thrusts quickened, then stilled as he came to rest upon me, panting and heaving and begging for breath. I didn’t care much. He smelled of cologne and sweat as I buried my face in his shoulder and closed my eyes. I could feel him soften inside of me but I was far too spent to urge him to move.

We only shifted apart when he slipped free of me.

Helmut quickly kissed my forehead and gathered himself up, shuffling to the trash can to discard the used condom and grab a tissue to wipe himself up. I didn’t let myself move an inch. If I moved, would the bliss run away? Would I realize what I’d done? I let myself lay instead, eyes closed, panting in the autumn chill as my lover approached and wiped up our beautiful mess as gently as he could manage. With one last kiss to my thigh, he discarded the rag, opened the window, and crawled back into bed with me.

The process was indelicate, a lot of awkward shuffling of sticky limbs, but we were settled beneath the blankets soon enough. Helmut stroked his fingers down my arm languidly while kissing the back of my neck.

I broke the peace between us.

“I don’t… I don’t know what this means for us,”

He sighed gently. His breath was soothing and familiar against my shoulder. “That’s not something we have to decide at this very moment,”

“But I just don’t want you to think this means something… or at least something more than it does? If that makes sense? I don’t know,”

“Schatz, please,”

“I want to keep my own place, at least for now. I don’t know what that means for when I’ll see you or if we’ll keep doing this,” I gestured vaguely to my nude body beneath the sheets, “or if we’re even a thing anymore, bu-“

Helmut reached his arm around us, placing a quieting finger over my lips and another soft kiss against my shoulder.

“I swear, your mind sounds even louder than mine,”

“Sorry,”

“No reason to be,” His hand left my lips, running down to my stomach and pulling me back towards the softness of his chest. “As for your questions, I shall respect your wishes about distance and housing and labels, whatever they may be. That being said, as long as you’re still up for… this, as you put it, I will never deny you, no matter the distance. I would cross oceans for you,”

A cum-drunk, half-asleep giggle escaped me as he nuzzled in, kissing my ear.

“Thank you,”

“No, thank you,” he matched my laughter with his own, “I believe this is what James would call post nut clarity,”

“Now you ruined it!” I huffed. The faux anger only lasted a moment, though, before I was rolling to face him, cheek pressed to the soft, downy hair of his chest. “I love you, Helmut.”

“I love you too, sweet girl. Now sleep. I’ll get up and deal with the dog once you’re resting,”

For the first time in two years, I breathed in the scent of Helmut’s cologne before lapsing into a peaceful sleep.

---------

A/N: Thank you for reading! This is my first foray into smut in literal years, and it was literally all written within a 12 hour period, so I hope any mistakes weren't enough to take away from your enjoyment. Comments are always appreciated, but never expected. See you on the next authors note!

#zemo #helmut zemo #baron zemo #zemo x reader #daniel brühl #fanfic #marvel fanfiction #x reader #helmut zemo x reader #baron helmut zemo x reader #daniel bruhl x reader #zemo smut #marvel smut

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pianokantzart · 26 days

Note

I am very hyped for BrotherShip, and you seem like someone who is also hyped. Please vent about everything we know so far, so I can live vicariously through your rant.

Uuuh jeeze where do I begin.

Love how hard they're going with the "brotherly bonds" angle. I don't think I've seen a game synopsis that focused this hard on the bond they have. Then there's fact that their physical touch seems to literally generate some sort of interdimensional power!?

How? Why? What's going on? I want to know. I want to know so bad. The world they get teleported to is called "Concordia," which means harmony/agreement. There's also the fact that the aesthetic theme of the game is centered around electricity, so maybe all powers revolve around flow/connection, which would be in line with introducing a mystical power generated by the brothers' emotional bond.

Speaking of electricity! I've seen these goons for five seconds and I am intrigued:

It looks like they're going to be reoccurring foes. And while the allies are plug/socket themed, these three enemies are wire/plug themed. The purple guy at the front has a stereo plug for his hair piece and a jack for his hand, and their hands are designed based off of fork spade wire connector.

So I'm going with a theory that the friendly residents are generators/guardians of a strong source of magical energy, while the Extension Corps and their affiliates are out to harness/steal that energy.

Then there's who I'm presuming to be the big bad in this game:

He was in the trailer for half a second, so I assume Nintendo is trying to keep him mysterious for now, but from the little I saw of his design two things stuck out to me: He's equipped with what looks to be a stylized pair of electrician pliers, and his hat has a green and red wire sticking out of the top.

So THAT doesn't bode well

Bowser's going to be there too, but I'm not yet sure if he's going to be a hesitant ally, a small-scale villain, or a final boss who takes advantage of the new villain's failures like in Mario & Luigi Dream Team. At this point it could be anything.

I DO like that Princess Peach is having more of an active role! In the past few Mario & Luigi games she's either been captured to move the plot forward (as is tradition), or has been quietly pulling strings from the sidelines to help out, but it'll be fun seeing her running around and exploring with her own group of misfits.

Also!!! The Luigi "L!"!

My main theory is that, every so often, Luigi is going to come up with a new mechanic depending on what we've encountered over the course of the story, and these new mechanics will be used to overcome obstacles and get into secret areas.

Then there's the central hub world!!! Of all the Mario RPGs I've played (two of them) that's usually my favorite aspect: having a main area where you can hoard all the random nonsense you've stumbled across and get a few extra perks. Looks like we're going to have that same thing here, and they aren't going slouch on the "exploration" angle of this game

I'll stop now, but I've got one last quick theory I'm gonna scream about: Apparently "electrical bonding" is the process of connecting multiple conductive components that are not intended to carry a current to a grounding system, so that if something goes wrong (like an electrical surge or a lightning strike) there's a lower risk of someone getting electrocuted.

So maybe Mario and Luigi are NOT meant to be conduits of this sort of bond-power, but they're unwittingly connected to it in order to prevent tragedy and create stability? (I may be looking into it too closely. I am not an electrician, but that's my theory until I see evidence suggesting otherwise.)

#inhumanbeing #askbox #this has been in my drafts for a hot second #but seeing as there's a new Nintendo Direct tomorrow I figured now was the time to jump the gun and see if I get proven wrong anywhere #mario and luigi brothership #long post

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chefkids · 1 year

Text

Spoon Theory

This is arguably the single most important The Bear meta post I will ever make so please bear with me.

The first spoon we see in the entire series is when Carmy takes Sydney's spoon to try her stew. This is right after he cut his hand from not being able to find his sharp knife, and before he has to meet with Natalie to get Mikey's jacket, which was stressing him out. She "gave him a spoon" and a bit of positivity when he needed to calm down and get some energy by knowing at the very least Sydney can cook well.

Needing a spoon is needing help. When he hands over the brigade to Sydney he is waving around spoons the entire episode, when she really needed his help and his "spoons". Later on Sydney is not afraid to just ask him for his help.

With the risotto she gave him a "spoon" that would help the restaurant, that brought in a good review and customers, but he didn't have enough of his own "spoons" to deal with it as he was stressing out over the window that just got shot through and the IRS needing the missing tax returns. Right before trying the risotto Carmy had told Richie he is afraid of something good happening. He is afraid of Sydney and him doing well, because the better it gets the more it will hurt him when something goes wrong. That is why he keeps self sabotaging the restaurant and doubting Sydney.

After Sydney quit, she is still using her spoons for mental energy to make sure Marcus is okay and to try and figure out her next steps career wise. Carmy grabbed a spoon to open the tomato can lid, which he really didn't need because he could've just used the can opener, and then found the money. When he finds the money they both know they would be fine on their own, she could find another job, he could fix up The Beef. But they still need each others emotional spoons to achieve their passions, so he reaches out and she comes back.

In Season 2 she did need his "spoons" to help create the menu and decide on the details for the restaurant, but he barely gave her any because he was still so caught up in his past trauma and the literal and metaphorical forks in his life.

Fixing the table really didn't physically need more than one "spoon"/person. But he needed her there to work through his mental block. With the inspiration food tour, she did it on her own and she didn't physically need him for it, she needed his emotional spoons.

When they are not communicating well with each other and Carmy is trying to reach back and be involved again, he gets as close as he can to her spoon without actually using it.

And now the dark side of spoons.

The originator of spoon theory has lupus and first came up with this theory at a restaurant to explain what it was like living with the condition to a friend. They could've easily said Sydney's mom died of cancer or an accident or anything else. But this is all so intentional, out of all the things it is Lupus. I don't want Sydney to be sick as much as the next person, but Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that has higher likelihood of developing when you have a family member with it, and can be triggered by environmental factors such as stress. It is an invisible illness and Christine's own handle is butyoudontlooksick, which could really explain Sydney and what she has going on behind her walls that people can't see. She has been a rock to so many people and over exerting herself, but there might come a time soon when Sydney will genuinely need other peoples "spoons", especially Carmy's, because she's all out.

Now that Carmy said he is choosing to give Syd his focus aka his "spoons", will he actually be able to follow through?

Read The Fork Theory next

Read The Knife Theory

#spoon theory #the bear meta #the bear #sydcarmy #sydney adamu #carmen berzatto #chefs kiss #syd x carmy #platonic and messy #charged and sexy #carmy x sydney #christopher storer #joanna calo

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cherubispunk · 9 months

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CHERUB (PART III) - Dealer!Joel Miller x AFAB!Reader

summary: the devil has a funny habit of making you want your own suffering.

a note from Lucy: Well, this is it folks. The third and final instalment of the unholy trinity that is cherub. The fic that i had no idea would get this amount of traction. The fic that gave me my username, blog theme, the majority of my mutuals and the freedom to explore more taboo areas of writing that I never felt comfortable with doing before. I just wanted to thank you all for all the kind words you’ve shared with me. Comments, reblogs, messages, they all mean the utter world. But i also want to specifically thank @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin who was such a huge help for motivation when wrting each of these. She's been there since the first day of cherub and always let me obsess over dealer!joel with her. Ange, i love you baby. Out of all my fandom experiences, this has definitely been one of the best. I know this sounds a lot like a goodbye completely, but it's not i swear! I just never really knew where this was going, but I think this is a pretty good way to end the series and I hope you agree too. Part of me isn't ready to let go after such a short run, but I honestly have no idea where to go from here so I think I did it as much justice as I could. Regardless, Cherub and Dealer!Joel will forever have a place in my heart all thanks to you lovely lot! Your love means the world to me and you are all so easy to share this with, you've given me an environment to flourish creatively and I'm eternally grateful for that. I wish you all the love, hugs, kisses, and angel wishes in the world!

playlist

wc: 5548 Warnings: 18+ MDNI! DARK CONTENT! Unedited for now, no outbreak, no use of y/n but joel calls the reader ‘Cherub’, plot? what plot? we all know we're here for the porn anyway, bombastic age gap (reader is in her early 20’s and Joel is in his late 50s), gore imagry, religious imagry, Smut, very dubcon in theory but both want it bad, grafic smut, P in V sex (unprotected — pleaseee don’t do tis irl i beg of you), teasing, sort of edging? (idk what to call it but he doesnt fuck you until you beg for it lol). nipple play, biting biting biting!!!!!, references to domestic violence, use of pet names, manipulative! joel, stupid stupid cherub, stockholm syndrome, oral (f receiving), cum eating, pussy slapping, Joel being foul mouthed, cursing, dirty talk, overstimulation. Again, some of the most animalistic, disgustingly wretched and vile vile vile porn I have written thus far…with so little plot that this earned me my place in hell, i have my own circle now. Big Dick Joel Miller comes as his own warning.

series m.list | m.list

The danger didn't lie in his hands. It didn't sit in his closed first to be suffocated. Choked out until the life of it was compressed. Until its face was blue, then purple and its eyes were bloodshot and streaked with red. The danger lay in your heart. And it thrived off the beating.

What is ‘it’, you ask? Mania.

The Greeks had it nailed down when they split love seven different ways. To the crucifix through its punctured and bleeding palms. All equal, but different. They understood that one love is different to the other. That love can be either obsession, or lingering in the quiet parts of a person's mind. You cannot hold up a mirror to one and deceive into believing it is another. No matter how sweet the lie seeps into the ear. They don't work that way. You were not Lucifer, you had no forked tongue. And your mania wasn't Eve. There was no apple to devour. Only the strong arm of Joel Miller to cling to like a noose.

Some love passionately. Find it in the scathing friction of flesh upon flesh. The heat two bodies make only in sex. You were no body anymore. Merely a corpse for him to dig up and breathe life into whenever he needed relief. So it was not Eros. Some love playfully. In the back and forth of a conversation that makes the mind and heart float in the clouds among the soul. Entwine them together until you are too sedated to know the difference between the three pillars of personal holy trinity. There was nothing lighthearted about Joel Miller. So there was no Ludus. Affection. The subtle, it-is-there-even-when-it-is-not weight of lovers hand in lovers hand. Joel clutched your throat with his heavy hand. He didn't lace your fingers in his like tapestry threads. And he was anything but friendly. So it could never be Philia. He was not unconditional. Familial. Constant. Committed. Long lasting. Selfless. He crept in through the backdoor and took. Then slipped back out. So the thick blood red line was drawn through Storge. Agape. Pragma. The love you had was not for yourself. Without him you hated yourself. Hated how you didn’t feel needed. Or wanted. So Philautia was buried six feet under hot earth, the final nail in the coffin that was lowered into the rotting, thick-with-decaying-mulch, stenching ground. By none other than Mania.

This was something you came to realise as you stumbled from his truck back to your room. His come dribbling down your leg. Luke asleep on the sofa. Months passed of the same thing. He’d take you home from work, only letting you go once he'd had his fill. Played out the sick fantasy from mind to matter, let it bleed through his fingers into fruition. You let it happen for mania. It was the thing inside you that kept you going. Before you thought mania fed off your heartbeat. But now you realised mania fed your heartbeat. The kick it got every second fired the next muted pulse. That's what kept it alive. Energy for energy. You were never one to bite the hand that feeds. That’s a sinner's duty.

—

The usual sight of Luke slumped in his lazy boy, guzzling beer was what you expected. The liquor once again swigged past his lips and dribbling down his stubbled chin. Wiry greying hair greasy on his head, balding. Thinning. Residue from a line on the coffee table. You were never tempted by it before. And you were determined never be a Angel dust statistic like him.

Instead, you opened the flimsy door of your trailer to see him hunched over a small collapsible table. His hand running over his sunken eyes, dragging purple eye bags down with his fingertips in shame. Cards in his other. It had your breath catching in your throat like a hare in a wire snare trap. This time around the small collapsible round table. Cards in his hand. And two other men shared a knowing glance and a grim smile of satisfaction. Him.

Joel Miller.

The tension was thicker than molasses in the room. You only wished it was as sweet. You swallowed it down thickly. It stretched your throat. You watched in morbid fascination when he lay his hand on the table in a fan for all to horror at, a sly smirk slithering over his lips and curling the one corner of it up like a scorpion's tail.

“Full house.”

“Fuck!” And Luke’s hand slapped the tabletop as he folded.

The door clicked. All three looked up to see you. Luke, Joel, and the man who held a familiar resemblance to your own personal devil. With eyes on you, you felt more like that hare in the snare than ever. Clapping eyes on the hungry wolf as mutton dripped bloody from his sneer. Cruel and hungry. You imagined him as that wolf, hyde thick and bristled under your soft fingers as he led you to some deep, dark, thorny place. A place only lit by the eyes of owls who observed while he had his way with you. Ripped your stockings to get to sweet fruit.

“Great, the cunt is home.” Luke spat to the room but you, looking over the table again as he bit his thumb nervously to the edge of the hangnail. “Get me a beer.” Your nostrils flared in defiance at his demand, knuckles pale as fingers furled into a fist. An army of goosebumps had stood to attention all along your arms and the back of your neck. A shiver shattering down your spine. Your heart had enough of its prison of your ribcage in your anger, ramming into it over and over in a frantic hammering. And when that wasn't enough, you felt it in your throat. Among the tightening of your airways. “You hear me girl?” He asked, looking at you. He stood, chair scraping against the floor and you staggered back to the point your shoulderblades hit the door. While he was a thin, wiry man, he had a vicious backhand that stung. Like a vengeful aftertaste. “Y’need me to beat some sense inta ya girl, huh?!” You dared to spare a glance at Joel who was too busy collecting his winnings. You soon to be among them.

“Sorry.” You mumbled, looking to the floor and cowering off to the kitchen to get him his beer.

“Y’short, Luke.” You heard from the doorway, straining to hear the tail end of the conversation. Something about your uncle having it by monday. And then Joel telling him he shouldn’t raise a bet he doesn't have the dough to cover.

It took a second to catch your breath. Tears strung in your eyes and your chest threatened to split in two. Your sternum felt like it was cracking down the middle into clean halves under the weight of your chest. A hand clasped over your quivering lips to bite back a horrible sob and muffle it. Only your palm could know you were crying miserably. So you took a beer from the fridge, heard the hiss as the lid gave way and popped off. It clattered to the linoleum and you bared your teeth at the grating sound, picking it up and tossing it in the bin.

“Here.” You mumbled, placing it unceremoniously on the table in front of Luke.

“Y’got any spare cash on you, girl?” Luke asked, beady eyes staring you down as he raised the bottle to his lips and took a drink. You grimaced inwardly at the sight of his yellow teeth when he made a satisfied sigh.

“No.”

Joel’s brow raised. You should know by now not to lie to a man who can read you like a book. That's the thing about narcissists. They have a way of being able to understand you like a one word sentence on paper. A quick glance and you’re unravelling with concealed meaning and connotation.

“C’mon, Cherub…gotta have something from workin’ this late in that diner of yours…” You dared to challenge Joel with a look. A look that retreated soon after the advance of the glare of his eye. The same glare of the hungry wolf. Of the cheated man. It was unkind, and unyielding, and did not hold mercy upon the souls of the enthralled, the damned, or the harrowed. You might try to cross through the sentence, or turn the page. Or shut the book entirely. But the truth is still the truth even when you chose not to look. This was the man that knew your mind. Knew your body. And coaxed his will out of you each time. His word was all it took to cave, so you took the folded bills from your apron, flicking through them with a bitten back scowl,

“How much does he owe you?” Joel smiled with amusement, counting through his winnings to see what was short.

“Ninety-eight.”

‘What?” you asked, eyes wide, hurt. Disheartened. Fingers stilling halfway through the small stack. And Joel smirked.

“You heard me, Cherub.”

“Give Joel his money.” Luke warned.

“But it’s not his money! And it’s not yours to give!” You tried, and saw the warning tick of your uncle's narrow jaw. It was always set on edge before he threw a hand. Cast a palm across your cheek in a brandishing. It had you cowering. Relenting. Tossing the money in front of him. If it fell to the floor in its flurry he could pick it up and grovel about it. But Joel never grovelled. Only relished. Then reminded Luke of the money he still owed for the drugs.

And you walked back to the kitchen, biting into your lip again. With the devil and your demon in the next room over, you were sure this could be hell. A buzz filled your ears. Like the constant thrum of flies over roadkill. In festering flesh wounds where broken white of bone poked through gaping, bleeding holes. Blood matted in the hyde of the animal helpless and scattered across the road. A leg here, smashed teeth there. You were the roadkill. Joel was at the wheel of that which mowed you down. Luke was howling in the passenger side.

His boots thumped clumsily over the linoleum and he let out a huff through his nose while he adjusted his low slung jeans in the doorway.

“Cherub?” He asked, clearing his throat huskily — a consequence of the smokes he used religiously. You stood with your back to him, palms flat to the countertop and head hung low to fight the sting of tears simmering from within.

“He threatened to hit me.” You whispered, not turning to face him. If you mattered his ears would strain to meet you halfway. “And you did nothing.”

“Come on, Cherub…don't be like that.” he sighed, and you imagined him pinching the bridge of his hooked nose.

“He took my money. You took my money. How am I gonna get out of here without it?” You croaked, your tired eyes seeing faces of gaping mouths and slate black eyes in the speckled linoleum of the counter.

No reply came from the door. And when you turned it was empty. He had left. The other man had left. The tv was on again with the scream of a woman murdered. And Luke fell asleep in his lazy boy.

—

Another day, another shift. And more horror ensued. At first, what set the nerves thrumming was there was no sign of Luke. His truck was gone from its spot. No drunk slumped on the worn leather settee. No scream or grotesque image on the TV. Merely an empty bottle on the coffee table.

You swallowed, shutting the door cautiously with a muffled click of the latch. You didn't dare call his name. Just pushed it down into your stomach for it to churn the thought up in acid. But the horror jumped back up your throat into a lurid scream at the sight of your mattress tossed to the side. The moth bitten pillowcase on the floor, void of money. Your money. Gone. Someone had rifled through your belongings. Turned your only space into a mess. Strewn clothes, bed sheets, pillows in their haste. All your work. All the nights of living off bitter coffee from the pot at work, scrounging together tips. It made you seethe. The heat was an inferno at your fingertips, nails embedding crescents into your palms. You searched all over for it. But to no avail.

When Uncle Luke came home, he smelled of hard liquor. It was a miracle – or curse – he hadn't wrapped his car around a tree. He gloated, and sneered, and shoved it down your throat in his intoxication that he’d found it under the mattress. Joel had called him, told him you planned on leaving. And he connected the dots. Ransacked your room. Oh, how the man would hate his loose lips when you gave him hellfire.

You expected Luke’s reaction. You knew if he were to ever find out he’d snatch it up in his greedy, grimy hands and take it for himself. He spent all of it. Paid his debt to Joel, gambled some on bad luck bets, drank with the rest. Slugged liquor down his throat and got drunk off your labour. And then left you on your floor with tear stained cheeks and a heart of heavy lead.

You wanted your money. But would you take from the man who gave you your everything? Your sense of being. A religion and faith. You believed in nothing more than the way he held your name between his teeth. You forgot what your real name felt like in the same place. And it occurred to you that he had never said it. Did he know it? You weren't them anymore. You were Cherub.

The sweet and mourning lamb in you wanted to go over just to be his again, and not carry out the plan of taking back what was yours. That which he would see as sin. You felt guilt claw up your throat at the thought alone. It seemed blasphemous to conspire against him. Why do you insist on protecting yourself. You who was the sacrificial lamb?

If you did go – and you let him have you again – you were whole. But at what cost? Could you stand another night of temporary hell under the guise of heaven. Of touch so cold, like ivory or black ice. To have him thumb your skin with blunt endearments and the croon of ‘cherub’ past his chapped lips. Definite like black and white. No escape. What he’d do and how. Whispering them in the stone deaf shells of your ears like they were a sculpture. Pygmalion’s Bride. He’d made you all you were today. Took chisel to marble and carved out his masterpiece. Cherub.

You were soft, and pliable. Wax heated by his flame. You kissed back. You moaned for him. Begged him for his release and not your own. Bruised with his handprint. The warmth of life under flesh. But without him…you returned to marble. Another pretty thing to be gawked at. He tempted you with it because he knew more than anyone, more than god himself who watches these exchanges, that you can't live without him. It was like telling a child not to slip off to the woods in the dead of night. That was a pointless warning. You knew what lay there anyway, what threat it would be. That wolf in his thick bristled hyde. Curled up in his den. You would see it as innocence and vulnerability if you weren't so scared. But you knew when he woke up the teeth would shine again. And they’d tear flesh. Let blood. Gnash bone. Dripping from the glaring white once he finished with your carcass. Your matter between them and your crimson lacing his gums. Who knew being eaten alive could be so pleasurable.

But then again, how could bering alone really be hell if the devil wasn't there?

There is mania in your body. But you can't get it out. It rattles in your head and lungs and glues to the backs of your gnashers. No matter how much you wish to spit it out. It infects your tongue. It welds itself to the matter of your bones. Melts into the cracks between your teeth. Claggy against your tongue. All to show the sweetest of words have the bitterest of tastes. You can feel it swell underneath your skin. In the gap between muscles where it festers and heats you up. Like fever it burns, like the fire that consumes and the pillars that hold the temple up crack, the ground shakes, and the beast rears its ugly head at you. You’re losing your body to him. It's a fight you try to win. You dare to. You give your all, tooth and nail each time in the gaps between. In the silence and hollow that nestles in the middle of the meetings. In the quiet, where no one is around but the cracked plaster of your room. You stopped caring who fired the gun first. You were always the one who got shot down in the end. Right in the stomach. Blood gurgling up your throat in a grotesque plea for help.

All these weeks you had shrunk yourself to the size of a bird in his hands, sang a sweet sweet song of his name, until the squeeze of his first closest off your throat. And the sound stopped altogether. Laid there after the warning. Patient while you had your wings clipped and your freedom taken. And he took more. Took the beating of your heart with his teeth. Took the will to want. The will to love. The will to need anything else, as well as the need to have better. Below you were the foundations. Only now you saw them for what they were, a decaying mess of fragments, the stench of wood rot hot in your nose. A musk like no other. His musk. So in your anger you took an axe to a willow to see how it would weep. You slipped past the sleeping drunk you call Uncle Luke. Out the door, over gravel, past the truck he coaxed you to without the need of a sweet treat. You’d yank the axe from the bark of the weeping willow, its sob echoing in the wind that rustled its drapery of lush green leaves. Leaves that will wilt as sap bleeds from its severed trunk. Take the axe to the wolf. Cut him. Scrotum to throat.

Take back what was yours. And leave those woods skipping.

—

Your knocks descend upon his door in quick raps until he opened it with a grumble. Then a smirk. “Evenin’, Cherub.”

No salvation. No going back. No space among the clouds. Just the fall. You pushed past him into his front room. “Where is it?’ You hissed, tossing the cushions of the couch up. Nothing there. So you left them on the floor and did the same for the airchair. Nothing there either.

“Woah, calm down, girl!’ Joel huffed, reaching for your arm, which you tugged back from him in a new found strength surging you forward, out of his arms. “Where’s what?”

“My damn money, Miller!” You bit back with venom laced spit. A hunger for revenge making you salivate like a bad dog.

“The fuck you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about, dickhead!” And he recoiled at your bared teeth, your verbal assault and battery, but went in for his own.

“Watch your damn foul language, girl!” He warned, reaching the end of his already short tether.

“You know how much he stole from me? Three hundred dollars of my hard earned chash. Forget my fucking ticket out of this shithole, I ain’t even paying rent now! And for what? Your god awful drugs!” His nostrils flared, and you watched the vein in his neck bulge under the sweltering heat of his own anger. Coiling inside him. Wounded bitch about to bite back.

“You didn’t have much of a probelm with my drugs after I fucked that pretty little hole of yours. All dumb and needy f’me, Cherub.” You grimaced at the sneer. But the feeling made your knees buckle. The name again. Cherub. You were Cherub. His cherub. “You want ya money back, huh? You can have it.”

That made you stutter. Thoughts skidding to halt at the sight of a brick wall. Crumpled matter as it smashed into it anyway. “What?”

“I ain't giving it to you for free though.”

“You're sick! It’s my fucking money!”

“Not in the eyes of the law its not.” And he folded his great oaks of arms over his chest in satisfaction. Once again one upping you.

“The eyes of the law? Says the fucking drug dealer. I bet you got way worse than coke in duffel over there. Wonder what the law would say about that?” It was said dismissively over your shoulder as you turned to leave. Alas, once again his large hand encompassed your wrist and squeezed. Pulled you back flush to his broad chest. His breath was hot on your neck as he whispered sweetly into your ear.

“Come on now, Cherub. You wouldn't do me in like that would ya? Not when I love ya…”

The way he said it…it didn't seem real. It was false. Comforting but not real. You knew it was a lie. This wasn't love. He didnt love. If he loved you he'd ask for your number then call you. Take you out. Let you cry on his shoulder and drive you home after. Kiss you in the dark for only the walls to see. Let you stay a night or two, or a whole damn week. Give you your damn money back. Stand up to Luke with a closed fist to the face. Leave swelling and a deep bruise on his cheekbone as a first and final warning.

“You love me?” You asked, voice small and hollow in your chest.

“Yeah, Cherub. I love you too.” He cooed, as if he knew you loved him already. All this and nose running over the curve of the side of your neck, tongue trailing hot in pursuit, it had you keeling over in confession at his feet. “You’re so cute when you're angry. Come on now, lemme make those tears go away…and you can have your money back, and we can forget this ever happened.” That tone…it was patronising. It made the sense in you rattle the cage of your ribs. Claw at the bars of bone and run into them like a caged animal. Because that’s what it was. A caged animal. But your heart was holding its hand over its mouth in a trance as it let his words ebb deeper. Somewhere between desperate and divine. But what was his motive?

God, Jesus, all above that is holy, you didn't care! After all this time, it was still no secret, or hushed uttering that Joel Miller was now everywhere in you. Scraping the backs of your teeth, festering like a virus in your bloodstream. Melding to the marrow of your bones. The walls of your cunt.

He still had a devastating habit of seeping through the cracks of your closed lids. Still ready to pillage and plunder his way through your head in its numbed state of sleep. When you could have finally— finally stopped and not felt. But he ebbs deeper. Always would. Always will.

It's what got you here. It would end you if it could. Snuff out your heartbeat and the fire inside of you. All he need do was lick his fingers and press them to the wick. And leave the smoke to string out and curl. You thought you were hungry for love before. But now you realised you were just hungry for the sight of your blood on his lips. The gnashing of you between his teeth. The curl you made of his brow. If it wasn’t devastating, reaping its agony in your silly little fractured chest— you didn’t dare need, nor crave it. You came for the pleasure but you stayed for the pain. And he took again, and again.

So you let him ‘make it up to you’. Let him claw at your clothes until they were scraps on the floor. Tore your stockings. Showed you those gleaming teeth. The wolf. And you, his sacrificial lamb. His Cherub.

“Feel that?’ He asked, with the slow drag back and forth of him inside you, parting you. This wasn’t fast, or rough. This was slow. And it made you need more. Need it faster. Need him hurtling you towards the edge of harrowing oblivion. He knew that. It’s why he took his time with it this time around. “Yeah. You do.” Joel answered for you. You never had to answer. But often he made you say it from your own quivering lips. Just to have the taste of the words from your tongue bleed into his. The neverending praise. “Why would you wanna leave that Cherub?” You couldn't answer, only let out a soft sob. “Huh? Answer me, Cherub. Why’d you wanna fuckin’ leave that?” And he punctuated it with pulling out to the bulbous head of his clock, then slamming back in with one sharp thrust. And then he was still.

You whined a shallow gasp into his mouth. But he didn’t kiss you. Joel never kissed you. His teeth sinking into your bottom lip shut you right up before his tongue delved deeper into it. The thumb of the hand that slithered between your legs rolled over your clit, making you mewl over the buzz of electricity causing you to clamp down on his thick, full cock. You were so eager for more. Anything more than what he was giving you. He smirked into your mouth when he felt your hips buck forward, trying your damn hardest to push his cock deeper into you. Silly little cherub. You should know better than to defy God. “See? Felt good didn’t it?” You nodded as much as you could in your current piston.

“Mhm.”

“See what you can have if you stay. Why fight it cherub?”

“Yes, Joel.”

“You gonna listen then, Cherub?”

“Yes. Yes! I’ll listen, just-” You shuddered at the thought of it, tears brimming at the the threshold of your eye. ”Please.”

“Say it.” He waited, wanting you to beg for it in the pretty way he knew you could. The choir voice. The songbirds hymn. The whole time his eyes did nothing but stare you down hungry at the sight of you falling apart from nothing but a hand to your throat and a single his throbbing dick buried in your aching cunt. It all pooled down into your centre, creating a rush your head had trouble keeping up with. “Tell me why you wanted to leave.”

“I dunno-” You stuttered, once again rolling your hips up. His hand at your throat pressed into your skin again, harder. It choked you. It had you drawing in a sharp, meagre breath. And he pulled out, running the underside of himself through the hot, drooling seam of your cunt. You shivered when the tip brushed up to your clit momentarily. The bead of precome at his slit smearing into your sex, mixing with your slick. “I dunno, Joel. I- I just wanted my money. I just wanted out. I hate it.” You babbled through closed eyes, chest heaving with sobs, and hot tears ran thick down your flushed cheeks.

“You hate it, huh?” He mocked and crooned, still catching your clit with the tip of his cock, hips waxing and waning in a slow roll. “You hate me too?” He knew the answer. But again, it was the satisfaction of knowing you were wrapped around his finger. Ready to bend over backwards for him. Him seeping into you through the cracks of your ribs, the gaps between your teeth. The opening of yourself to the twisting knot of denial within you. Your back arched like the lofty roof of a chapel, legs parting like its heavy doors. He followed you with hunger. You opened your mouth to speak but he squeezed momentarily on your throat again, oxygen starvation and the smell of him dizzying you. He relished in the whimper that he garnered from you. That and how he left you breathless just from his cruel touch.

“No.” You garbled as his thumb unhinged your jaw. Saliva in your mouth pooling while his thumb pressed your tongue down, bitter with a smokers telltale tobacco staining. It slipped past your lips, dribbled down his digits making a sticky mess at the curve of his thick wrist. He drew up a glob of saliva in his throat, watching as it drooled thickly, gluttonously, past his lips into your waiting mouth. He watched as you gagged on it, and then he let your jaw go so you could close your mouth. You swallowed eagerly, savouring the taste on your tongue. For what did it matter anymore? One day, you’ll be nothing but dust. Bronchioles in lungs will mimic roots. Navels will copy trunks. Organs will feed worms. Ribs will fossilise and lips that are kissed will mould back to Mother Nature. It's all you have ever been. Quick. Convenient. Easy to please, eager to help. Waiting lips, wanting cunt. Warm, never warm enough. But he kept you like a butterfly in a glass jar. He let you see freedom but never experience it. Why need it when you had the stretch of him inside you. The feeling of him, heat to heat with your sex.

“You want this, cherub? Wanna be stuffed full of me again?”

“Always wanted it, Joel.” You mumbled into his mouth, sniffing back the last this spurt of tears, hypnotised. His hand wrapped around his cock, the large splay of his palm did nothing to dwarf its size with he jacked himself once, twice, three times to the sight of you. He squeezed the base with hiss, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth after cursing under his bated breath. He was thick, flushed, the tip swollen and leaking, drooling greedily with a rivulet of precum down the underside of his length. He trod a path with his hands down to your breasts, kneading each one between his palms with a pinch before guiding himself back into the mouth of your heat, your cunt swallowing him down to the base. The needy roll of your hips into his showed just how desperate you were. He groaned at the start of the friction between you, and slowly dragged back out of you, moving just as slowly back inside. He repeated this twice, and then he let loose. The motion turned into a needy clash of his hips to yours. Again. Again. Again. Somewhere along the sting of passion and heat, his hand wrapped around your throat, feeling the flex of it as you swallowed under his palm. He bit down into your neck, reaching out from you as his hips slammed erratically. His heavy balls slapping against your ass with each rut forward of his unrelenting. The way he fucked you, was like holding a knife to your throat. It grounded you in the most harrowing way to each of his breaths. His panting in your ear. It swallowed you whole. Mad your legs wrap around his waist and your hips keen up into him.

Your cunt drooled down his shaft, down to the base, down the sensitive skin of his cock. He growled and hissed in your ear, teeth closing around your earlobe, his hand dragging back up and grip tightening around your neck. Getting off on the feeling of your pulse under his thumb.

You felt the knot tighten. And tighten. Right in the pit of your stomach, deep in your sopping wet cunt where the mouth of your cervix met his fucking. The walls of your cunt sucking him back in as the angle of his hips snapped up into the spot that had you seeing entire constellations. They darted to and fro across your vision. It blurred the edge, spots of dark matter, deep black, the colour of oblivion slinging over the back of your eyes that now burned with tears of pleasure. His fingers dug deeper into malleable flesh, gripped tightly at your hip with his free hand, thumb brushing over your hip bone down your mound to toy with your clit after a slap to it. And it was the action that sent you spiralling, babbling his name nonsensically among a string of curse words. So pretty and fucked out beneath him. Joel couldn’t help but stare smugly as your eyes rolled back into your head when your orgasm hit like a freight train. He came undone soon after, his climax hitting a crescendo with a growl bitten into your shoulder, bruising and brandishing you with his mark again.

He pulled back, leaving you to the mercy of the cold. Watching was his hips moved again to fuck his release back into you. Your hole quivered in protest, and you squirmed under him. “Don’t be fucking ungreatful now, Cherub.” You relented, going still and boneless on the mattress. Limbs unfurling from their tension. “That's it. Take it. Take it all.” He groaned smoothly. Just like the roll of his hips. He fucked it slowly back into you. And you took his release inside you to keep. “Good girl, Cherub.” He whispered, kissing your lips in a tender dichotomy. Not letting you rest until he was satisfied you took every drop of him. Afterall, it was all you’d have left of him until he next chose to pick you up. All the while, he trailed his tongue back down to your breasts, pressing the flat of it to your nipple, drawing it with a sharp suck into his mouth. Pressing the blunt of his teeth into your flesh. Letting the taste melt on his tongue. Salty with your sweat. He did the same to the others. When he went soft inside of you, and his hips stilled. He slipped out of you with hitched breath, the pad of his fingertips tracing your abused, used sex. Your legs twitching when he rolled your clit under two fingers. “I said stop squirming.” He grunted, landing another slap to your pussy. It made an obscene wet sound. His come dribbling out slowly.

“Open your mouth.” Joel commanded, and you did. Waiting for whatever he had planned. He licked a hot strip from your asshole to your cunt, pressing his tongue in to drag out some of his release. And he climbed back up to spit it into your mouth. A hand clamping down on your jaw. “Don’t swallow. Close your mouth.” And you did with the side of his thumb clamping it shut for you. “Taste that?” You nodded in response. It was hot, heavy and thick and salty to taste. Divine. “Show me.” You opened again, his creamy spend diluted amongst your saliva and he smirked. Clamping your jaw shut again. “Swallow.”

Joel watched in open mouthed amusement as the delicate column of your throat rippled under muscle contract. “Good girl, Cherub. Remember that taste next time y’feel like leaving again.” He warned in a growl. And you nodded, swallowing your pride. Your fear. Your mania aiding in shoving it down your throat to dissolve in acid. Once again you were in those deep dark woods. The one where the wolf lay. Remnants of you in his teeth. The willow is still weeping, slashed in half. The axe free of his bloodshed by the entrance of his den. The owls' eyes still lit the scene of sin where overhead the starlight was snuffed out by the tangle of branches thick in their black greenery.

You never got your money back. Maybe one day you'd get out of this town. But the devil has a funny habit of making you want your own suffering. Even angels can’t resist a slice of that heaven. Fallen angel. Wounded bitch. Cherub.

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thoughtfulchaos773 · 4 months

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Season 3 and corresponding episodes

I made a post about corresponding episode moments and how they have these small scenes that play into the previous season. So this should give hints to season 3. Recap: SPOILER

1x02 and 2x02- a moment in Carmy's apartment

Sydney and Carmy will probably walk through Carmy's apartment again. The 2nd episode similarities is it told us about Carmys experience in New York and Carmy walking through his apartment doors alone, and in the second season, Sydney walks through the door with him. Season 3 we'll learn more about Carmys time in EMP, and he and Sydney will work on their partnership at his place, or he may be alone.

1x03 and 2x03 (Sydney and Carmy stand off)

this will probably happen the 3rd episode of season 3 after all they'll be doing a month long service with the new standards.

1X04, 2X04,- 3X04 Marcus finds inspiration

Sydney plays a role in this inspiration, like the moments in the 4th episode of season 1, Marcus elevates this source of inspiration when he goes to Copenhagen season 2. LUCA MAY COME BACK this episode season 3.

Another theory- Violet has something to do with Marcus or Sydney's mom. This will inspire a new dessert.

The 6th episodes (1×06, 2x06x 3x06) MIKEY MAKES AN APPEARANCE

Season 1 is when he catches the first flashback of Mikey. 2x06 we get fishes and 3x06 will be the same thing (remember Tina said they ran out of napkins- shoutout to @devsrina and Jon Bernthal is in the trailer)

For the 7th episodes. 1x07, 2x07, 3x07 Ever Head chef makes an appearance like in Forks season 2?

The 8th episode will be a shout out to Let It Rip.

We see this note in 1x08 when Carmy gets Mikey note and 2x08 when he gives the note to Sydney to put on her expo station.

Syd and Carmy moments will probably happen episodes 2, 8 and 9! I hope we get a moment like the table scene episode 9. We'll probably have more syd and carmy moments we missed season 3.

#sydcarmy #smart details storer senior and calo #the bear fx #the bear season 3

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gojos-thot-patrol · 1 year

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hiiii i learned your name Aiden!!! How are you? Hallow i’m the sugu angst anon, sadly not asking for angst because poor sugu need a break and i love him so much so he deserves the whole world, i wanna thank you for writing my requests 🫶

and if you wanna consider 👀 perhaps an au where sugu didn’t spiral into the whole monkeys thing and so he is a teacher just like satoru? and he’s dating reader whose also a teacher, and they’re in a secret relationship that got revealed and gojo feels betrayed LMAO, anddd that’s all, hope you’re doing great! 🫶

Angsty Anon, how are you!? I love your requests, it's always a pleasure to write for you 💙💙 and yeah, I'm Aiden! I'm only now realizing I've never properly introduced myself on here, so, I guess this is my official introduction lol. And of course, I would love to consider Sugu as a teacher, that's so cute!

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Starring Suguru Geto, in a slightly softer world.

Have you ever heard of the multiverse theory? It gets switched around and misinterpreted a lot, but the basic premise of it is that for every possible outcome, there is a universe that follows it. So, for example, if you're on a walk one morning, and come across a fork in the road, you may choose the left path. When you do this, another universe is created in which you choose the right path, and yet another still where you didn't go on any walk at all.

As such, this implies that there are some fundamental truths across all universes. Every universe you encounter will have stars in the sky, and a force of gravity will keep everyone down. You won't find a universe where atoms aren't the building blocks of life. You won't find a universe that doesn't have a sun in its center. And you won't find a universe where Suguru Geto is a morning person.

He all but yells into his pillow as his alarm sounds off at 5:45 AM. He considers violence, a possible war crime against his phone for committing the egregious sin of waking him up before the sun is even up. He considers aggressively turning the alarm off and going back to sleep, letting the world continue on without him as he becomes one with his comforter.

And in the end he does none of it. He turns his alarm off like a normal person, and forces himself out of bed at the truly ungodly hour of 5:45 AM. Why you ask? Because class starts at 7 AM, and the kids he teaches are relying on him to show up and be a model jujutsu sorcerer, just like they are for all of the other teachers at Jujutsu High. And just as it is a fundamental truth that Suguru Geto is not a morning person, it's a fundamental truth that he would do absolutely anything for those he loves. And Suguru loves all of those kids, even if they can get a little annoying at times.

He’s falling asleep while brushing his teeth when he gets his first text of the day from you. A short and sweet “Good morning sweetie 💜” to give him the motivation to push through his morning routine.

He sends “Good morning to you too Darling 🖤” to you while smiling, finishing up brushing his teeth before mentally preparing himself for the arctic plunge of a shower he’s about to take to finish waking himself up.

Once he’s dressed and as awake as he’s going to be at 6:00 AM, he goes to check on Nanako and Mimiko out of habit. Of course, he finds their shared room empty, considering they moved into the dorms a week ago when school started.

“Right.” He grumbled to himself, shaking his head. At this point, it feels like he’ll never get used to them not being around. He wondered how Satoru adapted so quickly when Megumi moved into the dorms. Then again, Satoru seemed to be made for adaptation, meanwhile, Suguru had always struggled more with change.

Before he could get too lost in his thoughts, A car horn blared through the quiet suburb. “What is he-?!” Suguru snapped at the air before rushing outside and into his friends car.

“What the hell are you doing Satoru?!” He asked, suddenly very awake.

“Letting you know I’m here.” Gojo smiled as he pulled out of Sugurus drive way and onto the road.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but could you not have just texted me?” Suguru grumbled, “You’re going to wake up the entire neighborhood!”

“My phones dead.” Satoru shrugged. He had a habit of passing out while scrolling tik tok and forgetting to put his phone on the charger.

“And I suppose knocking on my door was out of the question?” Suguru asked. Gojo clearly did not see the issue with violating air pollution laws, and it was starting to irk him.

“In the rain? No way dude!” He laughed. It was at this point Geto looked out the window. Well shit, it was raining. He was so focused on just getting to the car he managed to miss it.

“It’s like, barely raining.” He argued with his friend. The white haired main beside him just shrugged.

“Hey man, you’re lucky I give you a ride at all,” Gojo reminded him, “I could just teleport to school.” Suguru would have tried to argue with that, but he knew better than to enter an argument on the losing side. He just sighed and shook his head.

“Whatever man….thanks for the ride.” He added at the end.

“You’re welcome!” Gojo smiled. Suguru sighed as he got comfortable in the seat, leaning against the window. The main reason he got rides from Gojo was so he could take a nap on the way to the school. It was a long drive, and the thirty minutes he spent passed out in Gojos car went a long way to making him not an asshole to his class in the morning. It felt like his eyes had been closed for all of two seconds before Satrou was waking him up, letting him know they had made it to their destination.

“Good morning Geto, good morning Gojo!” You greeted the men as they joined you in the teachers lounge. Suguru smiled warmly when he saw your face, familiar and bright, even at 6:30 in the morning.

“Good morning L/n.” Geto yawned as he rushed to the coffee pot in the room, still half full.

“Morning L/n!” Satoru beamed as he sat next to you. Normally, the three of you were on a first name basis, but a professional setting calls for professional dialect. “So, you two do anything fun on your weekend?” Gojo asked. Geto looked at you from the corner of his eyes, seeing how you handled this situation. You would have stolen a glance at him, but Gojo would have definitely noticed that.

“Eh, not much really,” You shrugged, “I went and visited my parents, and mostly just tried to catch up on reading.” That was definitely, 100% not what you were doing this weekend. In actuality, you had spent the entire weekend with Suguru. The two of you had seen a movie, checked out his favorite soba shop, and spent the vast majority of the time cuddled in his bed watching horror movies to get ready for ‘spooky season’ despite the fact in was, indeed, April.

But you couldn’t say any of that to Gojo. You and Suguru were co-workers, your romantic relationship wasn’t just discouraged and taboo- the employee handbook strictly forbid it. As much as the two of you wanted to tell your shared best friend about the beautiful relationship you’d found, you couldn’t. Mostly cause Satoru couldn’t keep a secret to save his ass.

“Cool! What about you Suguru?” Gojo smiled as he looked to his best friend, deciding for now that professional language was for the birds.

“Eh, I mostly stayed in. I re-watched the scream movies.” He shrugged as he drank his black coffee.

“Isn’t it kinda early to be watching horror movies? Or, I guess late?” Gojo asked.

“It is never too early for spooky movies.” You said, jumping to Getos defense maayybe just a little too quickly. Gojo raised his eyebrows at you.

“So I see were feeling a little defensive.” He pointed out.

“Not defensive, I’m just saying. It’s always horror movie time if you’re not a coward.”

“Hey, I-”

“Uhh, Sensei?” Itadori asked as he popped his head into the door. Immediately all attention went to him, and silently, you thanked the pink haired boy for saving your ass.

“Hey Itadori! What’s up?” Gojo asked, all smiles for his student.

“I could really use your help with the algebra assignment from last night,” Itadori explained, “I don’t think I really grasp…well numbers.” He explained. Gojo chuckled and shook his head, but didn’t argue cause he, like Geto, knew better than to argue with the truth.

“Yeah Kid, no problem. Let’s go to the classroom.” Satoru said, getting up and letting Itadori lead the way. There was a heavy silence that filled the room after, both of you listing to Satoru’s footsteps until they vanished. Once they were gone, you both let out a deep breath.

“Well that could have gone worse.” Suguru chuckled softly.

“Yeah, that was my bad,” You sighed, “I swear, he looks into the littlest of things.”

“That’s Satoru.” Suguru confirmed with a nod, “Always suspicious of something. Somethings never change.” He shrugged. You looked around, making sure the coast we clear before standing up to give Suguru a quick hug.

“Ain’t that the truth.” You chuckled. Suguru smiled as he held you close, his mind wondering off to the other things that never seemed to change. The school, sorcerer society as a whole, the way he felt for you- even all the way back in high school. He had a crush on you even before you saved him, and it only intensified after.

Of course, as far as you’re concerned you didn’t save anyone that day in the graveyard. You just talked some sense into an old friend. You would never know just how close to the edge Suguru was that day. How could you? All you knew was that his faith was shaken, and he needed some reassurance.

He could still go back to that afternoon in his mind like replaying a movie. He could still see the gray skies of fall, heavy with dark clouds. He could still smell the rain water and grave dirt hanging in the air. And could still sense the confusion he felt when you brought him to your best friends grave. He had never met the girl, she had died to a curse long before you enrolled in Jujutsu High. So why were you bringing him here now?

“This is where my friend lies,” You explained to him what he already knew. “It’s been a few years now, but I still think of her every day.”

“I’m sorry for your loss Y/n.” He said the only think he knew to say.

“Suguru, why are you a Jujutsu Sorcerer?” You asked, suddenly looking at him with overly intense eyes that made him feel so small. Why did he was he a Jujutsu Sorcerer? He didn’t fucking know! Especially not anymore. He used to know. But, he lost that direction. After Riko died. After Haibara died. He didn’t know what the point to any of this was anymore.

“Why are you a Jujutsu Sorcerer?” He asked back, not so smoothly dodging the question. You just pointed at the grave.

“For her. And for you, and for Riko and Haibara. For everyone I have loved and will love, I do it to protect them.” You explained it as if it was just that easy. And maybe it was. For you.

“How are we protecting them exactly?” He asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion, “Please, tell me just how exactly we protected Riko and Haibara?” He questioned.

“We protect them in death.” You shrugged, “Honor what they would have wanted. Do you really think Riko would want you to waste the life she so desperately wanted because of her death? Do you think Haibara would have wanted you to throw away all of your potential because some higher ups fucked him over? Or do you think they would want you to live your life to the fullest, and work hard to see that potential fulfilled?”

“I think they would want us to fight for a fundamental change in the system. For a world without curses.”

“Suguru, you and I both know that’s not possible.”

“But it is,” He argued, saying things out loud he had only thought up until now, “Humans are the only ones to produce curses, you know.”

“So what? You’re just going to kill all humans?” You scoffed at the absurdity of the idea, and he genuinely felt a little embarrassed. “What would that fix?”

“Well, there would be no curses, for one.” He pointed out.

“And what would that achieve?”

“We wouldn’t have to watch our friends and family die at the hands of disgusting curses!” He argued, frustrated that you couldn’t see his vision.

“No, we would just have to watch them die at the hands of other sorcerers, right?” You pointed out. “A world without curses doesn’t fix the cruelty that created them. Curses aren’t what killed Riko, and removing them won’t bring back Haibara.”

“No, Humans killed Riko.” He could still hear that god forsaken cult, clapping away as if a little girl hadn’t just been slaughtered. No, worse. Clapping away because a little girl had just been slaughtered. It was all he could hear late at night. You sighed and nodded.

“That's true. She was killed by a human, who was raised by sorcerers.”

“So are you trying to argue that actually sorcerers are the root of all evil?”

“No Suguru, I’m trying to argue that there is no “Root of all evil.” That it’s all just beings that exist. There are bad humans, of course. Just like how there are bad sorcerers. Everything that exists exists with some good and some bad. You can’t just fix the world with one final, fucked up solution.”

“I just don’t see the point in trying to save people who historically treat us like were fucking disposable!” Suguru snapped, hating that it was starting to seem really hopeless. Were you right? Was there really nothing he could do?

“Sugu, I think you’re getting caught in the details. You’re not seeing the forest for the trees.” You sighed. “ Yes, the Star Cult was full of the most fowl people. And yeah, a lot of humans do treat us like shit. But there are just as many humans who are kind to us. Humans who see their children's cursed techniques as blessings, not curses. Humans willing to die if it means being there for the sorcerers they love and standing by them. Humans like your parents, and my best friend. Humans that are worth protecting.”

“So we have to protect them all just because a few are good?”

“Would you protect a bad person to save me?” You asked. He hadn’t really thought of it like that. It was a moral question he wasn’t ready for, and struggled to find an answer to.

“I mean, I guess I would.” He finally said.

“Exactly. That’s kinda the point of Jujutsu Sorcery for me. It’s not to protect the world- that’s too monumental of a task even for Satoru Gojo. It’s to protect the ones I love and care for.”

“And what about when we can’t protect them?” He could feel the tears prickle as his eyes now, a stinging that demanded attention. He rubbed his eyes in a futile attempt to make it go away.

“Then I live to honor them, in a way I think would make them proud. I understand where you’re coming from. Heartache is a hell of a thing to battle, and witnessing a young death changes a person. But, continuing to perpetuate that hurt, won’t make it go away. Especially when it comes to such grandiose ideas like “kill all humans!” it doesn’t fix anything. It just hurts the people around you, both with us and departed. I mean, is slaughtering a billion strangers really worth ruining the people closest to you? The ones who love you? Please, don’t let your hate kill you Suguru.”

He didn’t know what to say. But that line rang in his ears. Please, don’t let your hate kill you Suguru. It drowned out the clapping in his mind. Please, don’t let your hate kill you Suguru. It played louder than Yuki telling him that humans were the only ones to create curses, and that he knew what he believed. Please, don’t let your hate kill you Suguru. And it was what was playing in his ears as he stared at two kids in a cage. Scared, alone, neglected. He felt it then, his hate rise up like bile in his throat, threatening to slaughter him. Please, don’t let your hate kill you Suguru. Please, don’t let your hate kill you Suguru.

He took a minuet to breathe. Was killing this village really going to do anything? It would feel good, yeah- righteous even. But there were a million more like it. And he couldn’t single handedly slaughter them all. Not without hurting You, Gojo, Shoko, Riko, Haibara, and his own mother all in the process. Were a billion strangers worth the people he loved?

“You know, if you don’t want these girls in the village, there’s a better way to handle it.” That night he adopted Nanako and Mimiko. Sure, he may not be able to save every Jujutsu Sorcerer in the world. But at least he could save these two. A few weeks later, that village burned to the dirt in a forest fire, so maybe karma was real.

The bell ringing broke his train of thought, and snapped him back to the real world. You smiled as you gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “See you at lunch!” You winked to him as you grabbed your bag and made your way to your classroom. He smiled softly as he watched you go.

“Yeah, see you then.” He said, making his way to his own classroom.

Suguru swore up and down his class wasn’t hard. It was classical literature, if ya just read the book, and did the assignments, he was pretty generous with the A’s. It was why conversations like this were always at least mildly amusing to him.

“I just don’t understand why you’re being to difficult about this” Nobara argued, “It’s just a few points!”

“Nobara, rounding from a C to an A is not a few points. It’s an entire letter grade.” He gently reminded her.

“Yeah, and what’s an entire letter grade if not just a few points?” She argued back. He sighed and rubbed his temples. Nobara had always been a forced to be reckoned with, and was always determined to get what she wanted.

“Look, Nobara, I’ll compromise with you. You know the big report we have coming up on Fires on the Plain?”

“I do.” She confirmed.

“If you do really well on it, And I mean really well, I need you to make at least an A on it- I’ll bump your grade to a B+” That was where her grade would be at anyway if she made an A on the report, “Sound good?” Nobora grinned like she got away with something.

“Oh yeah, I could do that in my sleep!” She declared, and Suguru had to hold back a laugh, “You’re on Sensei!” She grinned, muttering a soft ‘sucker’ under her breath as she left the room. Once she was gone, Suguru let his chuckle out. It was always fun tricking his students into accidentally taking their studies serious.

“Whats got you giggling?” You asked from his doorway, a small smile creeping onto your lips from the sound of his light laughter.

“Oh, nothing,” He said with a wave of his hand, “Just my students thinking they’re gaming the system by-” He pretended to check his notes- “Doing the work.”

“Let me guess, Nobara?”

“It was Nobara.” He confirmed, and you both let out a small giggle. You walked into his classroom and leaned against his desk facing him.

“Very on brand for her. So, have you thought about dinner tonight?” You asked. He smiled and nodded, getting out of his chair to come and wrap his arms around your waist. Was it risky? Kind of, everyone was out to lunch, sure, but that didn’t mean that you two weren’t out in the open. He couldn’t help it though. Whenever you were around, he had to have his arms around you. He didn’t spend almost 6 years chasing your affections to not hold you whenever he could.

“I have actually,” He smiled, “I thought we could cook something together tonight? I found a new pork belly recipe that seemed right up your ally.”

“Oooo, another night in! How exciting!” You giggled. And you meant it too. While to most people, a night in was a boring everyday thing, Jujutsu Sorcerers weren’t blessed with the luxury of having a night at home promised to them. They weren’t even guaranteed the simple pleasure of coming home at night. So, a night in to the two of you was fun, exciting, and unquantifiably valuable.

“I thought you’d be excited,” He smiled lovingly at you. You look so precious in his arms. He couldn’t believe something as beautiful and pristine as you found any value in him. That you had found him worthy of the time it took to save him. Suguru wasn’t a religious man, but he thought maybe he could believe in angels if they were half as perfect as you were. He had no idea what he did to earn the right to have you as his angel, but he was so fucking happy he did it.

His swelling emotions got the better of him, and he leaned down to kiss you. A warm current flowed between the two of you, the familiar taste of cinnamon coffee filling your senses as you melted into him. He was comforting and safe, and in his embrace you were almost convinced nothing bad could ever happen.

“OH, I KNEW IT!” Of course something bad had to happen. The two of you scrambled away from each other, looking at Gojo like two teenagers that had been caught making out in your parents car. It was actually embarrassing. “I KNEW YOU TWO HAD A THING!”

“Satoru, It’s not what it looks like!” You panicked.

“Yeah, It’s not like that, Y/n just…had something on her face! I was wiping it off.”

“With your mouth!?” Gojo scoffed.

“...Yes?” Someone, take away Suguru’s lying privileges. Your face hit your plam at the lame lie, and Gojo rolled his eyes.

“I’d asked if you guys thought I was dumb, but clearly you do! Why would you keep this from me?” He all but whined as he fully entered the classroom.

“Well Satoru, it’s…well..” You tried to think of something to save his feelings.

“There are celebrity tabloids better at keeping secrets than you Satoru.” Nevermind Suguru, go back to lying.

“Hey, that’s not true!” Satoru said on his own defense, “When Shoko started smoking again I kept that secret!”

“Shoko started smoking again?” You gasped.

“...fuck.” Satoru whispered.

“See Satoru! That’s what we mean.” Suguru sighed, seeing his job flash before his eyes.

“It’s still not cool!” Gojo pouted, “My two closest friends in the entire world fall in love and they won’t even tell me! No wonder you guys haven’t wanted to hang out on the weekends. You’ve been together, haven’t you!?” You and Suguru looked down in shame. Maybe it wasn’t exactly fair to keep him completely out of the loop.

“Do you guys hate me?” Gojo asked, the betrayal he felt seeping into his voice.

“No, Satoru, we love you!” You assured him.

“You’re our best friend, of course we love you!” Suguru confirmed, “We just also like being able to pay rent!”

“Paying rent is so important!” You nodded.

“I wouldn’t tell anyone!” Satoru insisted, “I would never do anything to put your livelihoods at risk! I thought you guys would have known that.” He pouted.

“We do know that,” You sighed.

“Do we?” Suguru whispered, just for you to swiftly pat him to remind him to behave.

“We were just being cautious. I’m sorry we hurt your feelings Satoru.” You apologized as you went to your wounded friend, patting his back for comfort. Suguru joined you on his other side.

“Yeah man, I’m sorry. We’ll try and keep you in the loop about more things, okay?” Suguru promised. Satoru sniffled and nodded.

“Okay…I forgive you guys.” He said, looking up and smiling at the two of you. “So when do I get to come to date night?”

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #satoru gojo #suguru geto #suguru x reader #suguru geto x reader #geto x reader fluff #geto x reader #suguru geto fluff #jjk fluff #jujutsu kaisen fluff #Angsty Anon #🥐

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mae-gi-writes · 5 months

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Finders Keepers | Gally [TMR] - Part 4

In which Gally gets soft for one of the boys in the Glade, only…is it a boy? alternatively; In which Mai disguises herself into a boy to fit in the Glade, only to be suspected by the keen eyes of the Builder's Keeper.

taglist: @edynmeyer1 @ss28 @kurowvie @vaugarkel

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-----

Don't look at him.

Gally stares straight ahead, not realizing that he's glowering at the wall where Frypan's apron is currently hanging. It's been three days and he's still not over his crazy theories because somehow his brain doesn't want to shut up.

He's tired, he lacks sleep and he merely wants to take a fat nap despite the risk of missing dinner tonight.

His fork, currently stabbed into a piece of meat from his curry bowl, is left unattended as he keeps on scowling at the apron like it's done something to him, and would've probably continued doing so if not for Alby's hand falling onto his shoulder.

"Gally."

That's when the said young man looks up at his leader, blinking and replying a gruff, "yeah?"

"You alright shank? You've been glaring at this wall for ages," the Leader motions towards Frypan's apron, "Fry did something to piss you off?"

"No," Gally resumes eating with a little too much vigor as Alby takes a seat across from him, "I was going to tell you that we're doing Bonfire night tonight."

"Why?" Gally says through a mouthful of food.

"Because we missed Mai's Bonfire night and I think everyone needs a break."

"Count me out then," Gally finishes up his bowl before he pushes it away, and when his leader's gaze turns stern, adds, "what?"

Alby leans forward just enough for the Builder to catch his eye,"You're a Keeper. How's it gonna look like to your Builders if you don't turn up?"

Gally's own blue eyes narrow, "I'm tired Alby. Just do it without me."

"We can't. We need you, and plus," a smile flickers across Alby's face, "who's gonna beat Mai up?"

Gally snorts at that, "the Greenie'll probably wet himself before he even gets to the circle."

"Is that a yes then?" Alby bumps his shoulder, "c'mon shank. Let's have some fun."

And that's how Gally finds himself mixing up his booze for Bonfire night, grumbling under his breath as everyone around him bustles with excitement. Stacks of wood are piled up high and Frypan's going all out in the kitchen, cooking up a feast for the occasion. Others are chattering his ears off and Gally wishes he can dump everything down the drain and find his hammock.

It is then that a particular blonde, second-in-command, sidles up to him, "ey Gal, you alright?"

"Fine as a ray of sunshine," Gally grumbles out, still not out of his hole of impending doom as he realizes what a mistake this is.

"Come and sit with us when you're done," Newt motions towards the table at the far back where Minho is knocking back a few drinks with some other Runners, "you look like you need a drink."

Gally has to agree with that.

He does need a drink.

As Alby lights up the bonfire and the flames bursts out like a million fireflies, the chatter of Gladers increase tenfold, the night slowly giving way to a much lighter atmosphere filled with hope and fun, an escape from the doom that usually fills their days. It's a different image from their routine and it's like a breath of fresh air, something that they need just so that they can hold on a little longer.

Finally done and ready to hit the sack, Gally decides to stride over to where Newt and Minho are currently discussing matters in hushed voices. He storms up to them, drops his body onto a nearby chair and takes a swig of his drink, relishing in the familiar burn down his throat.

The rest of the Builders are sitting at another table, laughter and boisterous chatter reaching his ears and making him want to walk away. It's in moments like these that Gally wishes he could be alone.

He hates noise, hates it so much more when it's useless.

And that's when the Greenie decides to plop in the seat right opposite him with a beam, "hey Gally!" the slur is evident in Mai's voice, causing the latter's eyebrow to rise up in curiosity.

He tilts his head towards Newt, eyes narrowed in suspicion when he glances over to Minho, "that shank's been drinking?"

"Mai wanted to know what your secret recipe was," Newt shrugs in response, seemingly undisturbed by the fact that this Greenie is literally swaying in front of Gally's face, "I think he likes it."

"That's an understatement," the Builder mutters. He spots Mai trying to swig another mouthful from his cup and quickly snatches it out of his hand before anymore damage is done, "that's enough for you," he snaps more sternly than intended.

Mai pouts, "but it's Bonfire night. Alby said anything can happen on Bonfire night."

"Yeah and if you keep drinking that clunk, terrible things will happen to you, slinthead. So slim it," Gally proceeds to toss the rest of it into his own cup, much to Mai's displeasure.

He makes a noise of protest from the back of his throat, "you're so rude, Gally. I was just trying to have fun!" his hands wave in the air in a dramatic manner, causing Newt and Minho to chuckle at the scene.

"Yeah I think you're right," Newt says, "the Greenie's a goner."

"He's a shucking lightweight, that's what he is," adds Minho.

Nevertheless, Mai is still challenged to a fight in the ring circle, and when Gally adamantly refused to fight a drunkard, is replaced by none other than another one of the Builders who seems all too keen to beat the newbie. A cut lip and a couple of bruises later find Mai sprawled out just outside of the circle, prompting hollers and exclamations of success, some sniggering as they leave Mai on the floor for Newt and Minho to pick up.

Gally's about to turn in for the night -- god knows he really does need that sleep and his hammock is looking tempting right at this particular moment -- when Newt dumps the Greenie beside him, cut lip and all.

"Gal, keep an eye on him for a minute will ya?" Newt says, and before Gally can say anything else, disappears into the crowd.

"Great," Gally mutters as another sigh falls from his lips. He doesn't have a choice but to gaze at Mai, whose face seems to be blossoming with new blue and purple decorative bruises every minute. "you look like shit."

"Gee thanks Gally, that's very kind of you," comes Mai's shaky inhale. Gally watches as the young Glader winces when he touches his face, "everything hurts," he whimpers like a kicked puppy and the Builder can't help but roll his eyes. Pathetic.

Finding a spare napkin that someone had left on the table, Gally holds it out to the Greenie, "here," he says gruffly, and when Mai doesn't respond, proceeds to press it into his palm.

"Thank you," Mai hiccups as he starts to wipe the blood of his face, "thank you very much...Gally."

The glader merely grunts in response. He's not quite sure how to respond to the rush of gratefulness in Mai's voice. He's not used to it, to people saying thank you and looking at him with anything other than disgust or fear.

Mai is different and he senses it. He's just not sure in what sense of the word.

Maybe because he's not what he seems--

Oh stop it, he says to himself. He should not be worrying about someone else's affairs when he has enough on his mind as it is.

So despite his reluctance to leave the Greenie alone with Minho and the rest of the Runners, Gally takes it upon himself to walk away to find the comfort of his hut, telling himself that the Greenie doesn't need him and in any case it's not his problem if ever something happens. He's not his babysitter after all, is he?

He tries not to think too hard about that.

----

The morning has started off on a wrong foot.

First off, Mai had woken up only to find a dark spot along the side of her inner thigh, a sign that her monthly duties are up. She'd scrambled around in a panicked heap as she tugged fresh clothes from her small rucksack hanging from her hammock before making a dash for the shower stalls, thanking god that it was still early morning and the sun hadn't risen yet.

She thought that would be the end of it -- setting a white protective cloth over her underwear and changing out of her dirty clothes -- but what she hadn't been expecting was the pain. It seared through her abdomen, squeezing her lower stomach as she made her way back to Homestead and Mai had no choice but to curl over, breathing loudly through her mouth as pain seized her body.

Great, and with those monthly duties came the consequences. As if she had time to deal with those in a camp full of boys that were not even aware of what she was exactly.

She was mentally kicking herself for not having divulged the truth in the first place when she's suddenly met with a familiar-looking asian.

"Hey Mai," Minho leans down to frown at her contorted face, "are you okay? You look like shit."

Despite herself, Mai forces a shaky smile onto her lips, "yeah, I'm fine. Just hungover."

"Ah, that would be Gally's doing," Minho grins as he falls into step beside her, "you can tell him off at Breakfast."

"Do I look like have a death wish, Minho?"

The latter lets out a bark of laughter, "yeah you're right. Not a wise idea."

Still, Mai has no choice but to feign that she's not that bad, trying her best not to curl over her stomach whenever a cramp would suddenly pulse through her abdomen. Her pelvis was aching and her spine felt so sensitive that every turn and motion had her wince in pain. Frypan took notice around mid-morning before asking her if she was alright, to which Mai reassured him that she was. But not wanting to have her in the kitchen and engulfed by flames for a second longer, the Cook then decides to send her out to the Builders to give them food instead.

"Are you sure Frypa--" he shoos her away with a wave of his hand, "I'll be fine, just go give them their lunch, would ya? These shanks are probably starving."

So Mai does as she's told even if every step makes her want to scream.

She'll need to change at some point in the day, but she's not quite sure how to do that without raising suspicion.

Reaching the Builder's area is like stepping through a different dimension. They're all big and huge and look like they could pack a punch, and Mai swears she feels all eyes on her the moment she steps around the half-built pieces of furniture. Quickening her pace, she finds the table where all plans and drawings are laid out before placing down the sandwich bag onto its surface.

Her brow is filled with sweat and she swears she might collapse, but then spots Gally and a few other Builders making their way towards her, and straightens up, "hey Gally," she says meekly, trying not to think of the embarrassment she'd made of herself last night because of his concoction.

"Greenie," he nods at her, eyes moving to the bag in question.

"Ah, Frypan told me to come give you guys lunch because you have a busy day today," she explains as she unwraps the bag. Handing out the sandwiches to each Builder that give her muttered thank you's, she leans down to get the last sandwich, her figure trembling with effort.

That doesn't go unnoticed by Gally, whose frown deepens tenfold, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," she's quick to dispel his doubts as he takes the sandwich from her hands, quickly grabbing the empty basket and turning around to get away as soon as possible.

Her vision darkens and for a moment she sees stars.

Mai sways, stumbling against the side of a tree and causing all Gladers to react.

"Hey!" Gally's first to grab her, yanking her up and against him, "shuck. I'm bringing him to the Med-Jacks," she hears him say to the other Builders before she's suddenly scooped up into a pair of strong arms and brought to a chest so warm that she almost nuzzles into it. Gally's scent wraps around her like a blanket as he brings her to the Med-Jacks hut. He smells of pine and something like grass after it has rained, an earthy smell mixed in with the scent of boy that he carries around with him and if she closes her eyes, she's sure she can fall asleep to it, burrowed in its comfort.

She's not quite certain of her whereabouts until she hears Gally speak again, his voice rumbling through his chest and resonating through her, "Greenie collapsed a few minutes ago," he seems to be explaining her situation and a second later, Mai is deposited onto one of the beds before a hand is laid across her forehead.

"He's got a fever," another voice says, "we gotta strip him."

But when a sudden pair of hands clasp onto the edge of her shirt, Mai's eyes fly open in realization. She squeaks out a loud, "no!" causing all Gladers to fall back in surprise.

"Y--You can't--" Mai grips her shirt so tightly that her knuckles turn white, "no, no, please--"

Gally's the one that speaks up first, "You're burning up Greenie, we gotta take it off and let you cool down."

Still, she fights off any hands that come close to her, clasping both arms around her middle and curling up her legs in defense, "no," she gasps out, "you can't."

She spots the two Med-Jacks exchanging glances, but Gally is getting impatient, for he snaps out, "stop being a crybaby and let them do their job. We haven't got all day--"

"Please," her eyes land on his own and he curses at the way they're begging him, pleading. Mai's voice drops to a whisper, "please don't."

"Alright Greenie, no need to get antsy. We won't do anything," one of the Med-Jacks speaks gently, pressing a reassuring hand onto her shoulder so that she has no choice but to lie back down, "but we're gonna keep you in this room for a little while, 'cause we gotta monitor your condition. Sound good?"

Mai only nods in relief, and the Med-Jack responds with a smile, "good that, Greenie."

"Stupid, stubborn shank," Gally mutters under his breath. Mai's about to open her mouth to thank him, but he's already whirling around and walking out before she can even try to formulate a sentence. She sighs out in exasperation and closes her eyes. Gally is so complicated in all senses of the word, she just doesn't understand where his temperament comes from sometimes. What she's pretty certain of though, is that for one reason or another, he's mad at her. It's clear from the way he's stormed off and in any other situation Mai would've just brushed it aside without caring. But somehow, she can't.

Maybe it's the fact that despite all this aggressive exterior he's been the extra helping hand she needed throughout those few days, which makes Mai guilty of the fact that she hadn't been able to even thank him for being there when he's got loads of other stuff to do around the Glade. She makes a mental note to find him later.

In the end, Jeff and Clint -- the two Med-Jacks-- allow her to have a bit of a shut-eye until she feels better, attributing her symptoms to that of a common cold. By sundown, Mai has gathered enough energy to stumble out and towards the Homestead, just in time to bump into a sweaty Minho along the way.

"You still look like death," he comments, causing Mai to scowl. He extends a hand towards her, "need some help?"

"I'm--" Mai's brain stutters. No, actually. She's not fine, and so quickly replies with, "actually, yeah. Please."

And so this is how she finds herself being supported by the Runner as they make it back to the Homestead just in time for the Dinner bell. After forcing her down onto one of the seats so that she can at least regain some of her strength with Frypan's food, they are soon joined by Newt and the Track-Hoe Keeper Zart, who quickly usher her off to her hammock while stating that they'll take care of her utensils, all while brushing away her thanks.

Mai's heart can't help but swell with gratitude at how eager they all seem to be in helping her, and struggles back to her Hammock where she all but collapses into it. Her breathing is shaky and unsteady and she places a hand over her heart, feeling it vibrating right through her chest.

Maybe she just needs to sleep a little bit more. She knows she's gotta shower -- with her period, it's even more complicated -- but that'll have to wait. She resigns herself to sleep, rolling to the side before closing her eyes.

"Hey Greenie."

Her eyes fly open. She almost jumps up, spotting a disgruntled Gally standing beside her hammock, a towel slung around his neck and -- did she ever notice how handsome he is with just that mere towel?

She clears her throat, swallows thickly, "hey Gally."

He shuffles a bit in place, looking uncomfortable. Silence prevails and Mai blinks at him. It's not in his nature to be so quiet, "is there anything I can help you with?" she asks instead.

Finally, he grovels out, "I'm gonna shower."

"Oh," she blinks once more, "uh--okay."

"You need to shower."

"I--" flames of heat burst through her face, "yes, I do."

He sighs and frowns at her, "Are you coming or are you gonna ask one of these other shanks to stand guard for you like a shuckin' idiot?"

"Oh, right." Realization dawns on her, "you're right, uhm--" but the young man's already storming off at this point. Mai scrambles for her set of fresh clothes and a new cloth pad before dashing to him, almost tripping over her own feet as she does so, "wait, I'm coming!"

He didn't have to, but he did ask. And that's enough to make Mai grin at his broad back. Gally can act all tough and intimidating, but there's no way there's only just that. No, he's hiding behind this cold and menacing exterior for other reasons. But it's good enough to know that deep inside somewhere in the crevices of his heart, he cares in his own way.

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libraincarnate · 2 years

Text

astrology notes: 4 🤠

quick note: i'm absolutely not an astrologer. these are just a collection of some observations, thoughts, theories, and personal experiences. with that being said, i'm still learning along the way & i may come back to edit this post to make corrections. above all this is just for fun. lastly, keep in mind that i’m not reading your birth chart and i know nothing about you. these are just some possibilities that may or may not apply to you. enjoy!

✦ having a lot of difficult aspects to uranus/aquarius: you may be bad with technology. might not use electronic devices much or might not know how to really use them. if you do use electronic devices it’s a struggle to use, hard to figure out, or frequent technical issues. probably don’t care for social media much either.

✦ pisces moon/mercury: music is important to these natives. it can be therapeutic or healing. music can make them feel understood, especially since they often feel misunderstood. this is probably because while most people wouldn’t bare their soul, emotions, and honest truth to just anyone they may feel more comfortable doing so through music, so these natives can relate to the artist/musician.

with that being said, they may like emotional music and lyrics matter to them, they pay attention to the words, the meaning. but also the overall feel of the song. the sounds. may like listening to music while bathing/showering as a form of self-care/love, to cope with their emotions, as an emotional outlet, or to simply relax. music & water feels like medicine or food for the soul. could use or benefit from using singing bowls, tuning forks, harps, or other musical tools and they may be an important apart of their spirituality or way of life. it also brings them pleasure, not just healing.

could like reading fantasy, fiction, romance, mythology books which can be just as healing/comforting/pleasing for them.

✦ speaking of pisces, pisces venus/7th house: you guys probably day dream about love a lot. you love love. you know how some kids have imaginary friends? well these natives probably have an imaginary lover but they only exist in their heads .. hopefully lol. they day dream of them, thinking of different romantic scenarios, and he/she is their dream guy/girl. could apply to pisces mercury in the 7th house too.

✦ 4th house ruler in the 8th house: you might have a curse in your family, there’s a good chance it's on your mom’s side. you may feel the effects of the curse strongly if it’s a generational curse. lots of deaths in the family pertaining to the women. could’ve experienced eerie, paranormal, supernatural events as a child growing up. could come from a family involved in esoteric practices like witchcraft, fraternities like freemasonry, etc. you might've been initiated as well.

✦ taurus in the 12th house: you may be a quiet person. probably sleep good. can be over indulgent in the pleasures of life because there can be wealth and abundance. but be careful, you may think you have more than you actually do. a spiritually grounded individual. signs of having talent that’s hidden/unrecognized by themselves and/or others. or if others do see these gifts/talents in you, you don’t or you deny it.

✦ neptune-uranus aspects: not having a stable sleeping pattern.

✦ while having prominent capricorn/saturn/10th house placements might indicate having issues with your father, if you are sun dominant he might have a big and positive influence in your life. he can be someone you look up to and respect. you could actually have a close relationship with him, especially if your sun is more dominant than your saturn. if you're a girl, you may be a daddy’s girl.

those with positive sun-saturn aspects might even be able to relate. synastry matters too. if you have 5th or 11th house synastry with your dad, you guys are probably besties and spend a lot of time together.

the house the sun is located in can show you the themes of your relationship with him and the kind of influence he’ll have on you/your life.

in the 9th house: he could be a very wise and intelligent man. someone you have learned a lot from. he may be a lawyer, a teacher, or a pastor. might be someone you look to for advice or guidance. pushes you towards higher education. going on vacations/traveling with him. introducing you to a variety of things. he might not be a strict dad, lets you be/express yourself, doesn’t try to change you or control your personality. no curfew? or you were allowed to come home later than most. in the same breath, dads who are religious or who have a job that has to do with the law/legal justice system are stereotypically strict so you might not relate to this sense of freedom.

in the 5th house: a natural leader. he is probably talented in someway. you may also inherit these musical/artistic/creative gifts. could have a playful/fun relationship. may play games, music, or sports together, watching tv/movies together, sharing your hobbies with one another. someone you look up to, an inspiration. he brings a lot of joy and happiness to your life but you're also his pride and joy. just an overall indicator of him having a positive influence in your life.

in the 4th house: he might be your favorite family member, could have made your life at home easier. you may be very grateful for him. he might be a family man, someone who works hard and takes care of their family which sets a good example for you. probably hang out with him at home a lot. could be closer to your dad’s side of the family. i feel like sun in the 4th is especially a daddy’s girl placement. he’s proud of you and tends to brag about you. if you have children he’s probably close to them.

✦ speaking of sun in the 4th house, it sounds like a good placement for a positive relationship with your mom but check your moon sign too. for example, having a sun in the 4th house but a scorpio/capricorn moon can indicate relationship issues with your mom because moon is in fall in scorpio & moon is in detriment in capricorn so both signs and the moon are weakened and uncomfortable here. moon in the 12th/8th is another example. but again, check your synastry with her too.

✦ libras & leos: may be known for being vain & attention-seeking, but they also like hyping people up, complimenting them, and making them feel good about themselves.

✦ saturn-uranus aspects: can indicate a career in technology, science, engineering, architecture, politics, or math.

✦ moon square/opposite chiron: difficulty expressing/validating your feelings. it can be hard to comfort yourself emotionally because heavy emotions make you feel uncomfortable or you don't know how to deal with them. on the flip side, you are quick to validate the feelings of others and feel bad for them. still you are empathetic, maybe too much. it can be overwhelming taking on people’s emotions and burdens for yourself. more willing/easier to comfort others instead of yourself and to heal their emotional pain, but if you show yourself that same love, maybe a little extra, you can heal yourself too.

if you read this until the end i hope you enjoyed it & thank you so much for reading. ♥︎♥︎♥︎, those hearts are for you.

#astrology #astro observations #astrology observations #astrology notes #astro notes #libraincarnate

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leclsrc · 2 years

Note

Hi! I just found your blog and am in LOVE! Congrats on 2000 followers by the way! You deserve them all and more, I'm a new follower so you're over 2000 now hehe~ Could I please request the 'hugs from behind' prompt with Charles Leclerc? It sounds so cute! I hope you're doing okay. Congratulations again! 😘❤️❤️

olive you – cl16

genre: fluff, 2k celebration, olive theory drabble

auds here... finishing out my drafts from the 2k celebration... i have like 65 more i have to filter thru lol... love u guys

Waves crash softly against the pebbly shore, salt filling your nose as you twirl pasta onto your fork. There is something so enchanting about Italy, something so romantic and unbridled, that keeps you alive and happy whenever you visit. Perhaps it’s the food, the locals, the souvenir shops, the signs reading alla spiaggia right by the summery coast.

You chew on your fettuccine, and watch as a fork slowly deposits olive segments onto your plate. Perhaps, then, it’s none of those things. Perhaps it’s him. “Mmm. Grazie,” you hum gratefully, mixing the olives into your pasta.

Like many routines, this came to fruition with years of habit. On your first date, at an Italian place in Monte Carlo, you’d gushed about how much you liked to eat olives. Charles had done the complete opposite—he couldn’t stand them, he droned. Not in pasta, not in martinis, not anywhere. So it came to be that he would buy you jars of olives or give you the little bits he found on his plate.

It wasn’t a big deal to either of you at first, but your friends thought it was just about the cutest idea in the world, the pinnacle of the opposites attract concept, the perfect balance. And every time you get together they ask Charles if he likes olives, and each time, he kisses your hair and murmurs never.

He loves to kiss your hair, your legs. Nobody has ever come that close, you tell him every time. Only the air, only the water, only my spritzes of perfume. Nobody.

—

“Martini?” Carlos asks.

“Oh, I—” Charles smiles dopily, shaking his head. “Olives, I don’t like them.”

“Took a shot with the order. Sorry, mate.” They shake hands, wait for the meeting to start, make small talk about work and the off season. Being back at Fiorano always gives Charles a daunting kind of feeling, one that typically quells once he catches sight of you. Carlos pauses, takes a sip from his cold drink, then, “Are you sure you don’t like olives?”

Being a relatively new close friend means Carlos hasn’t yet been privy to the olive theory that’s spanned years and continents. Charles nods, opening his mouth to explain why, and why this fact matters so much, then—

“When we got a 1-2 in Bahrain last year,” his teammate starts, “and we all got drunk, Isa didn’t let me have alcohol because she didn’t want to drive me home.” He laughs. “Anyway, I saw you eating olives. You had a little toothpick thing, picking out olives from the aperitivo.”

Charles’ heart pounds. “Huh? Well… I guess I wouldn’t… mind them.”

“Eugh.” Carlos grimaces. “Olives are shit. Isa thinks so, too.”

—

You’re busy at the stove cooking a half-assed meal when he wrestles himself through the flat entrance, following the smell of garlic and approaching you instantly from behind. His hug is intense, his lips latched onto your neck. He inhales your scent, comforted by the traces of your perfume, his own scent lingering on his polo that hugs your body.

“Don’t be mad,” he says thinly, half-muffled.

“I told you don’t get a tattoo of my face across your arm.”

“It’s not that,” he says, resigned. He pouts, and you turn to comfort him, fluffing his hair up. A rogue strand falls in front of his face and when you lean closer to brush it away, he takes the chance to kiss you.

You smile while you kiss. Whaaat? You ask into his lips, amused by his silence and shyness. He still is quiet, lips just resting on yours. You pull away, a bit more worried now.

“Charles.” Your hands find purchase on his arms, shoulders, then his face in your grip. He holds your hands there.

“I…” He pauses. “I think I—I like olives.”

You relax, and the smile that arrives at your lips is purely involuntary. You can’t help it. “So we both like them,” you say simply, with a smile. “We’ll have to work out a system where you don’t steal all my jars from me.”

What your goof boyfriend fails to realize, you think as he bends over the stove and helps you finish off the pasta (extra olives, this time) is the olive theory has never mattered to you. It was never about the olives. It was never about the jars.

If love was about anything—it’d always, always be Charles.

#f1 #charles leclerc #leclsrc2000 #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagines #charles leclerc drabble #charles leclerc smut #f1 x reader

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rottenpumpkin13 · 1 year

Text

Out of Context Shit Heard on the SOLDIER floor #4

A portion of these were sent in/inspired by an ask sent by @strawberrysnortshake

Zack: Ironically this isn't the first time I've accidentally eaten chalk.

Angeal: Attention everyone we're now taking votes. Raise your hand if you would sleep with Sephi—I DIDN'T FINISH SAYING HIS NAME PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN.

Kunsel: We're all out of duct tape. Angeal used the last of it to tape Genesis to the ceiling.

Sephiroth: Are you satisfied with your fish sticks, Zackary?

Genesis: Why does it smell like mommy issues in here—oh hi, Sephiroth.

Zack: I'm officially 23% goat milk.

Genesis: Well well well if it isn't my old nemesis, Heterosexuality.

Zack: Aww! 🥰 You're the antichrist!

Cloud: Yeah you're a SOLDIER alright, a sold your ass.

Zack: Where are we supposed to put this giant clown statue?

Lazard: WHY do you have a giant clown statue?

Sephiroth walking towards Genesis's office with a flamethrower: The goddess has had it good for far too long.

Essai: If we all chip in, we can finally buy Kunsel a face.

Genesis: I guess this means that the box labeled used illegal knick-knacks is off limits?

Roche: let's all dance maniacally and pretend we're gay!

Lazard: ANGEAL THAT ELEVATOR IS COMING OUT OF YOUR PAYCHECK!

Sephiroth: Are you, as the kids say, flexing on 'em?

Zack: Does anyone know what happened to my Sephiroth scented candle?

Sephiroth: I'll add murder supplies and can of whipped cream to the shopping list.

Luxiere: Let me guess, nobody cared about your light up sneakers?

Zack: 🎶 We take the pain out of paint 🎶

Roche: Have a slutty, slutty evening, director.

Angeal: Gen, can you let me have a cup of coffee before you start divulging your theories on why Cloud Strife is a time traveler?

Zack: I am going to default dance my way through hell!

Cloud: Cool trick! I'm a wizard now.

Genesis: I will start rumors about your sex life.

Lazard: Sephiroth I can't fire you, but I can mysteriously make sure you go bald.

Kunsel: This is a cave. Nothing really matters.

Sephiroth: how does one acquire a leprechaun? Can you order one online?

Roche: Commander Rhapsodos is so pretty. He reminds me of a prostitute.

Sephiroth: Genesis got me a journal for my birthday. I think I'm supposed to write down my feelings but I don't have enough pages for that.

Kunsel: when will we be free from the chains of foot pictures?

Genesis: If I find drugs in this office I'm confiscating it for my own personal use.

Lazard: Would anyone care to explain why there was a condom filled with grape jelly in the break room?

Zack(drunk): Good evening, my esteemed bastards.

Angeal: Bullying is only allowed on the SOLDIER floor if it makes Genesis cry.

Sephiroth: Mental healthn't.

Kunsel: is anyone here familiar with the concept of witchcraft? we're hexing Commander Rhapsodos at dawn.

Luxiere: Here kitty kitt—Oh that is a huuuge cat—OH IT'S GENERAL SEPHIROTH.

Angeal: Why did you spell salmonella as Sal Minella???? Who's Sal???

Sephiroth, while walking towards his office with an entire pie and a fork: Do not presume to question my actions.

Lazard: If we suffer any more budget cuts we're going to use Zack's hair as a broom.

Sephiroth: Which one of you locked Director Lazard in the Janitor's closet?

Cloud, watching Genesis recite LOVELESS: The evil gay red man is at it again.

#ffvii #ff7 #final fantasy 7 #genesis rhapsodos #sephiroth #ffvii crisis core #ff7r #angeal hewley #final fantasy #zack fair #cloud strife #ff #final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii crisis core #ffviir #ffvii remake #ff7 remake

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g0blintears · 4 months

Text

[Yandere! Dead By Daylight x Reader]

Summary: You are a mystery to both the survivors and killers within the fog. A servant of darkness, a creature created by the entity itself, you are the shadow behind the scenes that provides the survivors with the necessities they need to survive, while also assisting killers with the weapons they need to sacrifice. You are a servant void of humanity, but not one that seeks out despair. An empty slate that perhaps just needs to be taught a little bit of hope and empathy to help the survivors escape once and for all.

Seven. Dark Sense

Time worked differently in the realm. Sunlight didn’t exist, and the sky was always painted a dark, inky black. Nothing was ever overgrown, and the survivors never knew when they were going to be summoned into a trial until they found themselves alone with only three other people in the middle of an abandoned campfire. If it wasn’t for the entity’s servant, who would often have a routine schedule for meal time, they wouldn’t have ever known when it was the appropriate time to eat and sleep.

Now having woken up from his rest, Felix, along with all the other survivors, found themselves sitting at various tables with their trays of plain bread and baked potatoes placed in front of them.

Currently, Felix sat in front of his childhood best friend, Élodie Rakoto. Wearing a loose fitted, long sleeve crop top that complimented the pendant wrapped around her neck, and dark black jeans that fitted for comfort, said woman with coily black hair and dark brown eyes was someone who usually carried herself with a smile of confidence and a face that always looked like she was coming up with mischief. However, as he whispered to her the current theories some of the other survivors had previously talked about, the woman couldn’t help but look at her blond friend in worry.

“You guys are planning to, what?” She asked in a whisper shout. Her eyes darted both left and right as she made sure to keep her voice low from wandering ears. “Are you guys actually doing this?”

“Well, the plan isn’t really in motion. We still want to gather more details and see if this is even worth working out. But, if they do show any signs of being capable to evolve, we will plan this out more thoroughly.”

Élodie looked at Felix, dumbfounded before scoffing. With her fork, she dug into her potatoes. "You guys are crazy. So crazy." She muttered, her thick French accent seeping with each syllable. Stuffing her mouth with the unseasoned potatoes, she continued, "But if this plan of yours works, make sure the servant of darkness learns how to season. This shit tastes awful."

Felix sighed, “We’re being serious.”

“And so am I!” She exclaimed, pointing at Felix with her potato still attached to her fork. “Look at this! It’s not even cooked all the way! Last week Ace’s potato wasn’t even cooked! He and David ended up playing hackysack with it.”

Ignoring her words, Felix frowned. “I actually thought you’d be more optimistic about this.”

Ever since he met Élodie on Dyer Island, Felix knew that she was someone who was stubborn and assertive. Élodie was always down for an adventure, someone who was willing to take risks. A troublemaker if you will. So imagine his surprise when his usually devious friend looked at him the way he usually looked at her whenever she had something crazy planned.

Rolling her eyes, Élodie placed down her fork and sighed. “Look, we all want to escape, but trying to escape through the entity’s servant? That’s crazy! What if it backfires? We don’t know what happens to people that step out of line. It hasn’t been recorded. Hell, we don’t even know what happened to the people that were in this realm before us. All we have is that journal.” She then motioned to the book under Felix’s arm.

At her words, the man subconsciously gripped the leather binder.

“And it hasn’t really been as helpful as we had hoped.”

Felix pursed his lips, “I know. But it’s a start, don’t you think?” The male’s grey eyes clashed with his friend’s dark brown eyes, his stare bored into her with desperation. “How long are we going to be here? How many more deaths are we all going to be forced to endure? If there is another way to escape this hell, why not take it? What exactly do we have to lose?”

“We don’t know-” She began to answer, but was cut off by the blond.

“Exactly! We don’t know. Élodie, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been one to never shy away from the unknown. Back in Dyer Island, you were the one to encourage us to step out of our comfort zone. You were the one to tell us to accept ourselves, but to also be open minded to chance. You lead us to grand adventures, and that in itself should show how incredibly clever and brave you are. So why not take one more risk?” Although desperate, Felix’s words held his truth as he reminded his friend of their days back in their youth.

As he looked at his friend expectantly, Élodie chose to ignore his last question and instead crossed her arms over her chest and rose an eyebrow at the male. “Trying to use your flattery skills on me to get on my good side now, huh? Very sneaky of you, Ritcher.”

For a moment, the male didn’t know how to respond. But as soon as he caught a glimpse of her smile, the male shook his head and let out an airy chuckle, “But it’s working, right?”

Élodie hummed, “Very tempting, but I still think it’s a bad idea.” She then looked at Felix with a grimace on her face. “Plus, I don’t know how I can be of any help. You should know better than anyone that my memories and yours aren’t all there.”

Felix’s brows furrowed, the once laid back attitude he had with his friend diminished as he mulled over her words.

“I know, but I still think you could help me explain some things to the others better. Unlike everyone else here, we at least grew up knowing of the entity’s existence before arriving here- especially you. You have at least some knowledge of creatures similar to the entity and its servant. That’s why we wanted to let you know what was going on. You can give us some more insight from your own experiences.”

Élodie looked around once more. Speaking of you and the entity made her skin crawl, almost as if you were listening to the two of them speak at that very moment.

“I don’t know…” She trailed off. Although she was unsure, Felix was right. They couldn’t go on like this. The pain of dying was agonizing, especially in the most brutal ways. At this point, she wanted to die and just stay dead. But of course, that wasn’t an option. So if they had to resort to wild theories, maybe it could possibly lead to somewhere better than here.

But there’s still a chance that this could end badly, very badly. She couldn’t think of what could possibly happen. Afterall, they’ve endured it all. What if there’s more though? Something worse? What could be worse than death in a form of recycled torture?

She didn’t know.

She wanted to take the risk, but at the same time, she felt hesitant. The last time she went into something without a plan, she had led her and her friends' parents to vanish. Her memories were foggy. She couldn’t remember much of that day, but she did remember that she was the reason the entity took them. She remembered the distraught and regret she felt once she exited that lab, but not with her parents. She remembered the spiral of obsession she went through trying to find them, all of it leading to where she is now.

Into the unknown.

This plan, if gone through, could end badly. And she wasn’t sure if she could endure another incident like that again. Her once obsessed mind was now beginning to heal after all those years of guilt. Could she really go through it all again? Squeezing the fork in her hand, the woman shook her head. She couldn’t.

As though reading her thoughts, Felix reached out his arm from across the table, and squeezed his friend’s hand. Instantly, Élodie was brought out of her thoughts and gazed over at Felix with wide eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I promise we will be careful. You don’t have to help if you don’t want to, but I know your strengths and I know you could help us plan this out.” Giving the top of her hand one last squeeze, the male sent her a wink and a small smile. “Afterall, The Pariahs are smart and fearless, remember?”

Reminding her of their childhood friend group name, the woman instantly regained her confidence. She chuckled and shook her head, “Alright. Alright. I get it.” Pushing his hand away, Élodie went back to eating her now cold food. “Fine, I’m in.”

Brushing back his blond hair, the male grinned at his friend. “Good.”

Looking around for a bit, Felix watched as most of the survivors dispersed after their meals. One after the other, they all walked their separate ways until finally Dwight, Feng Min, Yun-Jin, Zarina, and Adam joined Felix and Élodie at their table.

Once the group was together, Felix spoke to the group.

“Élodie says she’s in.”

“That’s great! The more the merrier.” Zarina exclaimed, then clasped her hands together before gazing upon the group. “So, how’s this going to work?”

“Well, we should figure out if this plan has the possibility of even working.” Adam interjected, “We don’t want to be too hopeful. We could be unintentionally screwing ourselves over by feeding the entity if we do so.”

“Mm, good point.” Min hummed, “Does that mean we shouldn’t tell the others?”

“Probably not.” Dwight muttered, and pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “We don’t want to give false hope to the others and as Adam said, feed the entity. So let’s try keeping this to ourselves.”

“Okay, so don’t tell the others and don’t be too hopeful. What else?” Min quirked an eyebrow, looking at the group that turned to Dwight and Felix.

Dwight cleared his throat, “Well, since Élodie‘s agreed to help us, we can review what we do and don’t know.” His gaze then went over to Yun-Jin who was sitting at the far end of the table. “Especially since we have a newcomer in the realm.”

All eyes went to Yun-Jin, who brushed back her hair to hide her discomfort.

Élodie nodded, “Right. Sorry, I never introduced myself.” She then sent Yun-Jin a brief smile and a curt wave of her hand, “Élodie Rakoto, occult investigator.”

“Oh!” Yun-Jin’s eyes widened at this new piece of information. That explains why the others were so adamant on scheduling another group meeting but with Élodie involved. “So you’re familiar with all this stuff?”

“Yes. Both Felix and I have a bit of knowledge on the realm since we both grew up together, me a little more since I decided to make a career out of it.”

“Wait, you two knew each other outside the realm?”

Élodie snickered, “Yes, our parents were part of the same group called Imperiatti.” She then rubbed her temple in thought. Her eyes screwed shut as she tried to recall any of her memories, but as always, came back with nothing but static.

“Honestly I wish I could tell you guys what they did, but as most of you guys know, neither Felix or I have any memories of our lives that involve the entity or its servant. We just know that our parents were part of some sketchy ancient council that had something to do with the entity.”

“It wasn’t like worship, right?” Yun-Jin cut in, eyes wide as she stared at Élodie. She didn’t mean to sound judgmental, but from her perspective, if the two grew up worshiping the entity, she knew she could not trust them. “You guys weren’t part of a cult, were you?”

Élodie turned to her with a frown, “No. Well, we weren’t at least. I can’t speak for our parents, but I highly doubt it. When our parents were taken, I remember how scared they were for us. They fought off the entity. I just don’t remember what they did, but they ward it away long enough for us to escape.”

Min groaned, “So we don’t know anything other than the basics from the journal. Great.”

“Journal?” Yun-Jin repeated, just as Felix raised up the book for her view. A dark leather bound book with yellow tinted pages was in full display as he placed the book in the middle of the table.

“It’s a journal written by a past survivor named Benedict Baker.”

Yun-Jin’s breath hitched in her throat, “Wait, what do you mean past survivor? There were others before us?” She then focused her eyes on Dwight, “People were here before you? I thought you, Meg, and the others showed up here alone?”

“We were alone.” Dwight confirmed, “When the four of us— me, Claudette, Meg, and Jake, when we arrived here, we were here alone. No other survivors. Just us at the campfire with the servant to greet us.”

Yun-Jin brought her hands to cover her mouth, “Oh my god. So there is a way to escape? Right? If there were others here before, where did they go?”

The group looked amongst themselves.

“We don’t know.” Zarina interjected, her voice soft as she gazed down at the journal. “The journal just stops after ten entries. He claimed that it was becoming too much. His sanity was slipping and his hope shattered, so he left the journal behind. He apparently wrote more, but pages have been torn out.”

Fuck.

Yun-Jin ran her fingers through her hair. Just as soon as she felt the sense of justified hope, it all came crashing down. “So we don’t know what happened to them?” She whispered.

More silence ensued.

“Well, from what Benedict wrote, with each "death" we become weaker. Little pieces of our souls get consumed by the entity. By that alone, we can only assume that— well...” Adam struggled to find his words. His leg bounced from under the table as his mind jumbled as to what happened to those past survivors.

Fortunately, Adam didn’t have to finish his sentence as Feng mumbled under her breath what they were all thinking.

“They were devoured.”

Yun-Jin wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and throw a tantrum. She thought that there was no possible way to escape, but apparently there was, but it wasn’t as good as their own predicament.

“…what happens if you’re devoured?” She asked, her voice hushed as she glanced at the group with red teary eyes.

Élodie sighed, “We don’t know…we could be met with peace— no longer feeling pain or joy since we would seize to exist, or we could be sentient and still feel every single pain of every life force the entity has consumed. But from my own studies on dark magic, I would place my money on the latter.”

“Oh god, what if we get devoured by going through this plan?!” Yun-Jin shouted, her eyes glanced at the group in alarm.

“Keep your voice down!” Min hissed, “We don’t want you-know-who to hear.”

“How do we know they’re not listening right now?” Yun-Jin scoffed.

“I’ve already checked with them and they’re preparing for the next trial with the killers.” Dwight answered, “So we have nothing to worry about.”

Yun-Jin frowned, “How do you know? I thought they were like— I don’t know, otherworldly? How are you sure they aren’t eavesdropping right now?”

“They may be a cosmic being, but they are far weaker than the entity, so they do have their limits.” Élodie reassured, “We’ve since learned that their omnipotent abilities aren’t as vast as we had once thought. My guess is that they can hear and see all, but they don’t truly hear and see everything. Like when looking at a picture for a moment, do you truly see all of the details in the work? Every paint stroke and sponge mark? Or when you are in a crowd in a city, you can hear bits of every sound, but not every conversation to its fullest extent. Since being in this realm, that is at least the conclusion me and a few others have come up with for their abilities.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Yun-Jin frowned, “Well, okay then, what if we get devoured, huh?” Yun-Jin snapped in frustration. “I thought you guys said that there was nothing to lose.”

“There is nothing to lose,” Min commented, sitting up straight and crossing her arms over her chest. “We get devoured if we go through with another escape plan or not. Might as well take the risk.”

“And we don’t know if those past survivors were devoured or not. For all we know, they may have escaped.” Zarina pointed out, easing the tension of the others.

Yun-Jin slowly nodded. Although she was still overwhelmed with all this new information, she at least could feel her worries ease as she was reminded that her survival was probable, she just needed the others to help.

“Fine then. What now?”

All eyes turned to Dwight.

Said leader felt his face flush in embarrassment, but he covered it up by coughing into his fist. “Right. Well, now that we got most of the basics covered we should see if there is even a slim chance of the servant caving into an emotional connection.” His eyes then ventured to Élodie. “Is there a chance for them to rebel against the entity? Or at the very least, help us out?”

Élodie pursed her lips in thought, “Honestly? Yes, but a very slim chance. Back when I was collecting artifacts for my employer, he let me read up on ancient manuscripts, some of which described ancient gods called The Elder Ones. They were different forms of gods, some of which created the very concept of life and death. World eaters and realm creators. These gods would often create various sub species to play different roles.”

”One example of this being this really grotesque monster race that were built to be mountains of sorts, kinda like a living castle but with multiple mouths on its body. It was tanky, and at the very center of its core was where some of The Elder Ones would reserve their life force. They were usually seen as lower beings, and, well, they eventually gained consciousness and rebelled against The Elder Ones because of their lack of respect. Now it’s said that they peacefully reside as illusions of mountains and feed upon anything that stumbles across their backs.”

Élodie nodded to herself. Having read many manuscripts of different religions and tales, she often thought that maybe some of them were simply made up. However, being placed in the realm of the entity, having spoken to other survivors that come from vastly different times and worlds, she could undoubtedly say that it’s a possibility that some of those manuscripts told real lore of otherworldly places.

She just wasn’t sure how they could have possibly traveled from one realm to another.

“That’s just one example of the servant defying its role. There are many of these stories of creatures that would turn on their creators because they’ve either found a new purpose or were tired of the mistreatment.” Élodie bit her lower lip, “However, these creatures were always shown to be more…expressive than what we’re currently dealing with, so that’s why I think this theory can work to a certain degree.”

She then gazed up at the group, her eyes meeting Felix’s warm grey eyes.

“So you’re saying there is a chance?” He asked, eyeing his friend with a growing smile.

Élodie looked upon the group, all of them staring at her to give the final judgment.

“Well, if there’s nothing to lose, I say let’s see if we can get a little expression on them.” She then grinned, the thought of this theory working actually sounded more and more real the further she thought on it. “If we can sway them enough, see if they have the capability to feel or even think to themselves, I think we have a pretty good shot.”

Looking at one another, the group found themselves feeling a wave of an emotion they haven’t truly felt in such a long time. It was a surreal feeling, and one that they all knew to be dangerous, yet they latched onto the feeling with an iron hold, refusing to let the emotion slip away into the entity’s grasp.

They were going to get close to you. They had to.

The next trial was approaching, and so far, you hadn’t seen or heard from the killer who was supposed to be next to hunt.

Standing by the empty campfire, your dull [eye color] eyes watched as the flames of the fire pit flicker and dance. The crackling noise of the campfire burned as time went on, but it never once lost its flame. It continued to burn. Emitting a heat that you knew was nice for the mortals, but for yourself?

You took a step forward, your hand barely reached out to touch the flames.

It burned at your skin, but you couldn’t feel that. Instead, you watched as the fire engulfed your hand, not burning it and not causing it pain. Your fingers merely touched the flames, as though it was touching open air.

You couldn’t feel it.

Suddenly, you put your hand down. Barely audible, you could hear breathing. Soft and scarcely present, but you could still make it out. It approached from the darkness of the forest. Despite knowing the intentions of the killer, you didn’t bother to move. Instead, you kept your eyes focused on the flames, awaiting the killer’s next move.

As quick as a shuddered breath, you could feel a presence loom behind you. One arm wrapped around your torso, and another holding out a knife in hand over your face.

The presence didn’t speak, but you didn’t need to see who they were to know who was behind you.

Your eyes glanced at the shining silver blade. A mirror image of yourself was present, along with the masked killer with a ghoulish appearance.

It was Ghostface.

#yandere dead by daylight #yandere dead by daylight x reader #dead by daylight x reader #yandere dbd x reader #dbd x reader #zarina kassir #felix richter #dwight fairfield #Élodie Rakoto #Yun-Jin Lee #Feng Min #Adam Francis #ghostface

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briar-rolfes-research-oubliette · 6 months

Text

ON MONDAY, I (FINALLY) MADE IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE NEWEST ERAGON BOOK!

MURTAGH

“A Book I Read”

It took three very patient friends of mine to encourage me to finish reading this. I took notes the whole way through, and I am now sharing those in hope of finding loving community with my fellow haters.

Important context:

I loved Eragon, which came out when I was roughly eleven

Christopher Paolini was the first author to ever disappoint me

I used to love epic fantasy, until feminism, coming out, and learning about literary criticism made me just too mean to enjoy it

Since 2015, whenever I’ve had writer’s block, I’ve found inspiration by looking at this screenshot:

Christopher has managed to create a life where his mum has never stopped doing his laundry or his editing for him. He has never worked a job in his life. He has infinite time to work on his craft, and yet, with all of those advantages, he writes the way he does. I don’t hate him, but I do want to destroy him in single combat.

LET US BEGIN.

17 November 2023

I forgot how obsessed this man is with proving he knows rare words. Picking up my phone to google the word “trenchant”.

He really just didn’t want to say the dragon had a sharp sense of humour huh? Oh, no, it’s TRENCHANT. It wasn’t even for dialogue I identified as comedy but Murtagh thought it was TRENCHANT. He and Thorn have been alone in the wilderness for too long

NOT NASUADA BEING DESCRIBED AS HAVING ALMOND EYES

Of course the protagonist has grown a beard. He’s A Man Now.

I have a theory that this book is about coming to terms with marriage. Murtagh is like “our bond… our bond that lasts until death… the oldest magic… only the two of us understand each other. But, we’re also trapped with each other,” and I’m like hm. Fascinating. Say more

Instantly Murt befriends a child, to prove he is good really.

It’s so weird to read a book by a grown man with kids who is like “how did we all start out so innocent and pure…” like have you MET five year olds

This whole fork fight scene makes me feel second hand embarrassment deep in my soul. It’s SO This Guy Is The Best And Coolest

“Fencing with effortless ease” I do not care how well trained he is: you cannot kill four men with long swords by stabbing them with a little fork in “four hard impacts.” It’s just not happening.

I’m really dwelling on the idea of magic as “imposing your will” on something. It’s very.., something. Murtagh cleans his shirt by “imposing his will on the garment” like. Okay, I suppose in a way that is how all laundry is done, but it’s. Hm.

How come he’ll clean a shirt with magic but not shave with magic? Why are these books SO obsessed with beards and shaving and how to do shave and using magic for shaving etc etc, Eragon was also majorly preoccupied with this

Paolini’s got so many complexes on the page. All the “we’re half brothers and your dad killed my dad” stuff is A LOT

The naming stuff… SMH what would Ursula Le Guin say about all this

I’m obsessed with how even as (gasp) an OUTCAST!! Murtagh can’t not be the coolest guy ever for any time at all. It’s like a disease

Giving the child the enchanted killing fork was the worst decision ever made. Murtagh gives her a murder weapon and is then moping like “what’s it like… to live without killing…” literally pages later.

I’m really startled that Murt is delighted to see a tiny flying magical grass boat come down from the sky and circle him instead of being like “wtf, I’m being Watched,” which would be the true act of a man we are told is paranoid

I just got to the bit where Murtagh offhandedly says that magic users who “are the heaviest” always have the most spell reserves.

Like……… what???? Magic eats your fat?? It burns glucose??

You could be a better mage if you just, ate a bunch of raspberry frogs before each fight??????

It’s food powered??? You really want to go there, Paolini????? Wizards in the candy shop, eating sweeties like Mistborns?

GOD, if only Galbatorix had chugged a bottle of red cordial before his last big fight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I return after losing my mind about this to my partner for forty minutes)

If it was “if you’re hungry you can’t FOCUS” I’d get it. But I always assumed it was like, you know how other fantasy does it? Some kind of pool of ADDITIONAL energy that you are accessing and that can be used up (until you go too far and start using life force or whatever). Like, it’s CHANNELLING it that makes you tired, not that it’s literal food energy.

Murtagh is always running or doing his sword forms or whatever and now I’m like “DUDE, NO!!!?!? DON’T BURN YOUR WIZARD CALORIES!!?!?”

I like when magic can’t do EVERYTHING, when it’s consistent or limited in some way, but I do hate the idea that it’s this predictable. Food energy becomes raw magical power. I GUESS.

(A little later)

Screaming at the suggestion Thorn can tell when Murtagh is horny.

I don’t like the euphemisms. It makes it worse

The fact he can’t talk to his dragon whenever they’re “too far apart” (distance never specified) is making me insane. Why did I pick up the dragon riding book if it’s mostly about leaving your dragon locked up at the bike rack

I know Thorn is basically a rescue dog with anxiety, but it bothers me how much he’s left on his own. The narrative just has no idea what to use him for other than speedy transport for the first um… 200 pages, it seems? He’s meant to be his own creature with his own intelligence. He doesn’t go anywhere without Murtagh though. So what is he doing all the time

I think Paolini WANTS his world to be big and mysterious (his introduction literally just keeps saying things in the world of the story are mysterious) but he HAS to keep explaining everything

24 November 2023

I’ve figured out something that annoys me about the world of this book, in terms of just how the worldbuilding is not actually that magical. It has the D&D problem!!! Which is to say that every regular person on earth is Level One and every important character is like, level 12. And part of what makes that even worse is that all women in this world are level zero.

I’ve been watching my friend Chris play the first Alan Wake game and we realised that all the faceless enemies that are possessed by Evil in the game are… working class men. The protagonist is this literate wealthy New York writer who is constantly killing faceless workers—farmers, loggers, coal miners, builders. And that’s not an INTENTIONAL commentary by the game, but it’s very revealing. And This book is the same in that: there is no such thing as a complicated poor person. They’re all either Dirty Evil or Dirty Good. Murtagh is going around, writing poetry in his head and inventing magical computer code, and then every child is an urchin who is like Oi Guvnah, and every dad is gruff, and every woman is worried.

The language used to describe everyone who isn’t a Fighting Man is so demeaning. And even then, we only need to respect the leaders of those men. The leaders are the only ones with depth who might need to be taken seriously.

It’s like Murtagh has a tally in his head where he is going “finally, a guy who is level 6”!

Most people in this world exist to deliver information to the protagonist.

Paolini either thinks his readers are too dumb to understand that his characters exist between scenes, or he doesn’t understand himself that we don’t need to see every time Murtagh enters a city under a new name and how he does it. Or know what he ate for dinner and how he prepared it and where he slept and what he dreamed and, and, and—

It’s weird because Paolini is being self indulgent as fuck but it is NOT fun to read. This dude really just needs to go write a survival story or something… A guy in the woods depending on nothing but his wits and his axe and his beard and his libertarian values

I don’t understand the stakes at play. All the magic scenes with Mind Penetration are so sudden and hard to actually understand as action. And the way it works is about brute force, so the dragon is not going to be at risk of being taken over except by another, even bigger dragon

It would be fun to read the Murtagh city sleuth segments if Thorn was backseat driving a little. I think that their bond should not get thinner over distance. The fact that it does just defeats the point of a magical bond.

Why does the dragon have to stay so far away? Like… it’s established that there’s a spell to conceal a dragon from sight. Dude. You could just go fucking invisible

There’s so many decisions that just are so bonkers to have made. The whole fetch quest for information pissed me off so bad. “You have to join the guard” (40 pages of emotions about uniforms ensue). This guy learned about plots from video games

Paolini had kids apparently, but you can tell he doesn’t really understand kids. “How do they all start out so innocent and pure,” says a man who has never heard a seven year old describe someone being killed by farts before.

The description of Murtagh carrying a cat that doesn’t want to be carried is very funny. I don’t know if Paolini has ever carried a cat before. If you’re carrying a cat that doesn’t want to be carried close to your chest, and you tighten your grip when it squirms… say goodbye to your nipples, my man

It’s strange how much Paolini doesn’t explore the things that seem to be the point. FOR EXAMPLE, the fantasy soul bond trope loves to say “even during sex!??! 👀” because it’s about INTIMACY, and some alien presence always being there. The dragon rider trope is popular because dragons are powerful and wise but also Beasts. Magic is fun to read about because it can do things that can’t be explained.

Paolini’s world is big, but nothing in it has any real substance. Nothing in it has any real consequence, and it makes it impossible to really invest in anything that happens. None of these poor city folks have a life once they leave the scene of delivering Murtagh information… or if they are a woman, delivering him a hot meal. There’s no sense of a world that exists outside Murtagh’s point of view!

25 November 2023

The towns so far don’t feel at all distinctive to me! I was interested in the one with the massive lake, but then it having this massive fish in it was the only point of interest. It would be fun to have been like “oh the fish has ruined our summer festival! It’s ruined the nobility pleasure cruises! It’s also eating fishermen!” Or “Why do all these fishing boats have huge spikes on the prow? Well,”

Again, these guys are all level one in peasant dirt town. They have no capacity for individual thought and no ability to adapt.

It’s like Paolini doesn’t know what makes people and places in fantasy feel distinct, or have culture. It’s so evident in how much he HASN’T thought about. For example, the bonkers amount of restrictive gender norms that he doesn’t seem AT ALL CONSCIOUS OF? Everyone who died in the war was A Man. No women died in the war. But that hasn’t resulted in any social changes. There aren’t more women doing work, for example, like being fishermen

I remember being thirteen or so and reading the bit in the second book where Arya explains to Eragon that she’s better and stronger than a human woman, because she is an elf, so Eragon doesn’t have to worry about her in battle. I was this kid there like “man, that sucks. I assume he’s coming back to that assumption later,” and… he never did. He still hasn’t. And that sucks

The dragon riders were not THAT long ago, in the world of these books. It makes me wonder—were none of them human women? I always assumed that some were human women, but… did dragons only choose elf men, elf women, and human men? If they chose human women, then even being accepted into a paramilitary dragon force didn’t change gender expectations in the rest of the world. What the fuck. He’s really never thought about this.

Women keep showing up as cunning-mysterious, as humble dirtmothers, or as innocent children. Oh my god I’m just describing maiden mother crone. That’s all he’s capable of.

I just got up to where he rescues the werecat baby (innocent girl child) and settles in to hear the stories of elder werecat (cunning-mysterious)

I noticed the Arya Problem with how Nasuada is described in this book, too. Every woman has to be the best, most capable, most powerful woman ever, to be worth the attention of The Boys. Otherwise they can’t respect her. Only two literal queens can be considered worthy of just two average guys who got pet lizards. Even then, they’re not actual equals.

“She still empathised for me.” Yes, don’t worry, Murtagh, I remember that’s what women are for.

I should note that the reason Nasuada is considered so powerful and so much worthy of his love and is her strength as a person. This is proven in the Eragon books because “she still empathised” with Murtagh whilst he was medieval torturing her. He was medieval torturing her for like… most of a book and that’s how they fell in love. Because she could see in his eyes that this guy torturing her… was Complicated. He didn’t really WANT to be medieval torturing her so she actually felt worse for him than he felt about how he was (and I can’t stress this enough) medieval torturing her

I just can’t imagine that THE QUEEN OF A WHOLE CONTINENT would still prefer the guy who sadly tortured her. He’s her top preference. Out of EVERY OTHER MAN IN THE WORLD

I put the book down until the day before I was meant to have finished the book for book club:

10 March 2024: from page 274 onwards

The evil witch is called BACHEL?????!!?!??!? Fucking BACHEL. Pronounced “buh-SHELL”, the guide at the back says. You changed one letter in Rachel, don’t lie to me Paolini

I got so mad being reminded the evil king Galbatorix was defeated by “Eragon forcing empathy upon him” so that he magically exploded himself out of guilt that I had to put the book down and complain to Charlie for five straight minutes

I guess that’s why Galbatorix made Murtagh torture Nasuada for him. He knew that if he’d done it himself she would have empathised with him too hard and he would’ve exploded himself

Murtagh has never met a single person he has respected. Murtagh is the specialest boy in all the land. Eragon had to leave the country because they were both too special to share a continent

Murtagh decided on where to go and he was immediately surrounded by armed guards who took him to where the plot was

Paolini uses the fucking word “admixed” while discussing EATING A PIE. The flavours admixed in his mouth. Just because you know a word… doesn’t mean it’s a word to deploy about eating a pie

I HATE how the only people strong enough to do the strongest magic are Elves Or Human Riders. It’s fucking magic my guy! Why is it checking your goddamn DNA! Also, hey! Wasn’t it supposed to come down to the strongest wizards being the guys who ate the most for lunch?

In a world of Magic how come every wizard battle ultimately comes down to who is a better Professor X?? I came here for fireballs, not Mind Battles. I don’t care about your Mental Wards

Hahaha Murtagh!!! Get trapdoored, bitch!!!!

Dragon panic attacks: conceptually cool but a bit ?? Like ah… the plot literally comes to scoop him up and carry him away. Yet again something outside of Murtagh makes a decision for him about what to do next

Murtagh’s poetry is going to make me explode myself like Galbatorix in book 4

If there’s something I like about this book so far it’s just the bits where he and Thorn are camping. Not flying, because then Murtagh is using the time to think and that’s horrible. The bits where they make campfires or whatever feel like something is actually happening. A guy and his dragon hanging out

Man. The way this novel is plotted really reminds me that it’s not actually that hard to write a book.

Murtagh goes to the evil village (oh yeah there’s an evil village. It is where Bachel lives. She is evil because she does magic without using the magic language). The village is called:

NAL GORGOTH

But I couldn’t remember this so I kept referring to it in my head by another, more familiar, name

Murtagh is so freaked out by finding a village with architecture that he doesn’t recognise. He’s like “My god!!! Nasuada has to be warned!!!” Ok but about what??? New ways of building pillars???? The art deco movement threatens the land??

Kinda fascinated by how much this village represents a threat to CULTURE. The architecture, the people… Everything about it so far is designed to be A Foreign Threat. The inhabitants are Of All Races (except elves they are too cool too pure etc). The humans have A VARIETY OF SKIN COLOURS, which memorably never happens in Alagaesia, a continent once explicitly described in the Eragon books as only having two (2) black people on it at all (then one died) (the other is Nasuada) (the one who died was her dad)

This guy with a goatee isn’t quite human. He is maybe part urgal and he is so uncomfortable to look at! Mainly he has arms that are a bit too long!! Bachel isn’t a human and also isn’t an elf, and that’s also deeply unsettling.

Bachel also fundamentally represents a threat to THE STRUCTURING POWER OF LANGUAGE, huh??

Bachel is so far the most interesting character in the book!

Bachel has: ALMOND EYES and AMBER SKIN

Murtagh is so upset and confused when Bachel calls him “my son” like… I’m cryign. “But she’s not my mother! I know my mother!!” he thinks, in a panic.

If this was a fantasy novel written twenty to thirty years ago, then the sexual tension between Murtagh and Bachel would be absolutely insane. Alas, this is a world of abstinence, and sexuality is only ever meaningful looks between a queen and the guy who tortured her (it is weird how he keeps caressing Nasuada’s face on the gold coins)

It’s very funny that Bachel has specifically fourteen warriors. The prose keeps telling us that there’s fourteen of them. So you get Murtagh stepping forwards and then sentences like “the fourteen warriors attending Bachel shifted”

She seems like a perfectly normal cult leader to me? Why is she automatically a threat to Nasuada! How come the two of them can’t arrange a toxic political marriage that becomes… something more 😉😉😉

Nothing annoys me more in this book than Murtagh being able to identify specific vintages of wine. It keeps happening and it pisses me off

Bachel is a half elf!!! “It had never occurred to him that such a thing might be possible.” This is truly and absolutely unbelievable to me. Nobody in this world ever has sex

How did it take so long to get to such an objectively cool village!!! Like this is just a cool place!!! Sorry that Nar Nar Goon is evil but like FINALLY something has style

Three thoughts at once:

I’m so bored that Paolini’s mind can’t get more interesting than temple virgins, let alone wearing white to represent ritualistic purity. Like… nobody in this world fucks anyway, why does it matter!

Murtagh should also wear white all the time

Lesbianism doesn’t count as a violation of being temple chosen. Alín is wearing lesbianism

Paolini has never once written a woman who is Normal. He just can’t conceive of it. You can feel how he starts sweating.

Murtagh finally realised it was a cult. What sets it apart as a cult is that the followers appear to be “half-wits” to him

I’m going to detransition to break his fucking neck

Paolini has learned nothing since he had a woman deliver the exact same line in like 2008. The fact that another editor just thumbsed this up. The fact that this is in a book published in 2023. Well, now I’m REALLY embarking on an antagonistic reading: that’s right, I am reading women as capable.

Obsessed with Bachel. She is a girlboss and I’m a feminist xxx

Book is constantly weird about how much she is capable of eating and drinking at her feasts and how it makes her appear swollen and bloated etc etc. Murtagh is so weirded out by this because he feels it is unfeminine… as though she is not a witch and we weren’t told earlier that how much magic you have is directly equal to how much you eat. (Meanwhile he is only picking at his food and eating just enough of it ‘to be polite’ as though this is not making a decision to have less magic than her)

She has so much charisma compared to anyone else in the book. If my choices are her or Murtagh then sign me up boys!!!

Okay but much like how this would’ve been a VERY charged relationship 30 years ago, I’m weirdly disappointed Bachel she isn’t not described as megahot? Like the book keeps telling me about this virginal templemaiden or whatever, because Murtagh is only attracted to women he can rescue. But I’m actually just like… I think this woman is hot. Tell me more about her. It’s wild that this book is written by a guy like Paolini, who told me all about Oromis’ pubic hair in 2008, and who barely thinks women are people. Yet he doesn’t want to discuss her tiddies?

This book could, and should! have started when Murtagh landed his dragon in the evil village of Nar Nar Goon. That’s the point that stuff got actually interesting. Everything before this was literally video game fetch quest logic plotting that earned him the right to fly to Nar Nar Goon.

Boar hunt. More like BORED hunt. And then suddenly there are so many pigs, a comical number of them flying everywhere

This motherfucker using the phrase “the boar was lying athwart him” in a sentence in an action scene????

Murtagh is nearly dead and the boar is lying athwart him?

I’m going back in time and bullying the author at school

RIP Murtagh, trambled to death by 30-50 wild hogs

Oh god every time someone knocks Murtagh out he has a vision or a bad dream or a flashback or whatever and it’s so tiring

“EXISTENCE WAS A TOMB WHEREIN THE SINS OF THE PAST LAID INTERRED???” Do you ever read a sentence that sounds so much like the author is jerking it? “All had been lost, and there before him lay the instrument of their destruction” he is furiously jerking it oh my god. “Destroyer of hope, eater of light” oh, god, he’s still going

…This book is. Weird about mothers

Murtagh flies into a rage because Bachel mercy killed a guy who was dying bc of boar trampling because “I COULD HAVE HEALED HIM!!!!!” And the mercy killing is proof it is a cult. Because doing it Bachel’s way meant the guy was too relaxed and at peace when he died

Paolini’s family were in a cult, as I understand. So it’s kind of weird how much he doesn’t really understand how being in a cult works

I don’t really remember how religion works in this world, but I do remember tuning out of a long boring passage in book 2 or 3 where Eragon learned about all the gods and decided he was an atheist. It’s especially weird to be like “holy shit, an EVIL religion??!” In a book where religion has absolutely never come up before now

Oh my god, Alìn was whipped for being ‘too familiar’ with Murtagh!!! That’s because she’s so pure and a helpless victim girl in all white :’((

In my mind Bachel and Alìn COULD be in a fucked up lesbian relationship with bad BDSM etiquette. Of course Paolini can’t imagine a world where women have enough personality or agency to fall in toxic love with each other. Also even though he has people tied up and strapped down and whipped and being tortured etc in every book don’t think he knows that BDSM like. Exists. Boooooo

Murtagh: killing one guy who is dying of a punctured lung is the ultimate evil!

Also Murtagh: I know an invisibility spell, but to sneak out of my room I am going to suffocate seven men to death

Genuinely upsetting to read those men dying. He made it impossible for air to enter or exit their lungs with a word. Veins popping clawing at faces etc. God, what a way to go. So unnecessarily cruel. Yep, there goes the good guy

The main way the village is evil is that there are unsettling carvings everywhere. Paolini read some Lovecraft, but he did not understand what was up with it. Or maybe he did, because this book did get a lot more weird about Racial Purity once Murtagh arrived in Lovecraft Village

11 March 2024

There’s a bloodstain that “filled Murtagh with the apprehension of evil” and it confused me because these books are so gory. Earlier he killed four men with a fork. But like oh yeah I guess it’s because when Murtagh murders people now it’s bloodless. I guess. His murders are good you see

This chapter is called The Bad Sleep-Well you can tell Paolini thought he was a real genius for this one

Okay but why are there bats… roosting… in a cave… at night. And why is Murtagh worried that red light will risk waking them? Animals cannot see red light?? SOME FARM BOY YOU ARE, PAOLINI

Okay I have to stop nitpicking. I have to restrain myself until my Vyvanse kicks in

“Murtagh felt a sense of not just age but antiquity. Whoever had built the stairs had done so long before Alagaesia had been a settled place. What was it Bachel had said? That the cultists had lived in Nal Gorgoth since before elves were elves... He was starting to think she had told the truth.”

Sorry uhhhh, Alagaesia was settled?? When they talk about The Grey Ones, are they talking about a race PRIOR TO COLONISATION?????????

“He continued forward. Deeper into the womb of the earth. Deeper into the black unknown, seeking, seeking, always seeking a farther shore, every sense razor-sharp and razor-scraped, skin all goosefleshed, cold sweat dripping down the back of his neck and gathering around his belted waist.”

God it’s so overwrought...

He found the well!!

Oh my god. The well is a natural magic hotspot and that means it “wasn’t the sort of thing that the Draumar ought to have dominion over.” It’s a natural resource???

“Not that he would want Du Vrangr Gata to assume control over such an important location either. This was exactly what the Riders had been created for: to oversee and mediate that which could destabilize the land.”

Murtagh is going to bring democracy to the Middle East

He’s too scared to mentally contact his dragon with Bachel around. If he was a proper horse girl he would find a way

Oh Galbatorix BECAME evil because he met Bachel and she manipulated him. Haha oh dear. No, you can’t just come to the conclusion the dragon rider paramilitary force who controls the resources are bad on your own. Not just because they sent you into the mountains when they knew it was dangerous and wanted to find out if you’d be killed up there! No, a manipulation had to have happened

It’s funny to me that the evil ancient witch queen who lives in seclusion in the mountains uses the new name for the city of Uru’baen. Oh no, she knows it as Ilirea. She’s hundreds and hundreds of years old. You know what that is? Evidence of Find And Replace, to me.

Bachel’s eyes are “glowing with fevered ecstasy.” I could make her feel that way. Also. Because, I know about sex

Always with the fucking passing out at the end of the chapter for Christopher James Paolini

NOW Bachel is being described appropriately as a hottie. FINALLY. GOD! It only took Murtagh being mind controlled in his brain but I. I!!! I could see the glorious light of truth!!

“He followed, dumb and wildered.” Well, not as much as that sentence. (You can be bewildered. But can you ever just be wildered????)

The dedication to making Murtagh the most pitiful little meow meow in existence in the Galbatorix flashbacks I’m… what happened to the joys of a guy who is evil because he was convinced or was tricked, not because he was fully brain abused???

The Urgals are racially… uncomfortable. Yellow eyes and Murtagh just straight up saying “how do you speak English”

The evil guys have masks and they put them on and like channel the animals the masks are of and on one hand it’s an idea I THINK is cool but also combined with the everything it really has this “tribal stuff is threatening” vibe all over it

“What do you want, witch?”

“I want you.”

Obsessed with how he’s shackled to a table and there’s still an incredible lack of sexual energy to this scene. This is like a day at the office for both of them.

… oh, but she is wearing claws and claws DOES equal a threat of penetration. Maybe a little sexual? As a treat??

Him being tortured reminds him of torturing Nasuada. Wow, it was their first date!

It’s just like. It’s fucked up imo. She should never kiss you Murtagh!!!

Is anything more boring than a torture scene.

Also, was he not drugged right before this scene? How is he able to mentally evade her and power his wards etc?

I’m mad that when he’s brought fancy foods by Alìn he doesn’t share his food with Ubek the Urgal

Oh my god Ubek tells him a story where the moral is just him outright saying at the end, “it’s important to stay close to the people we care for, even if we don’t always fit in so easily” lmao. Subtlety of a mallet

Is anything more boring than a torture scene? How about a torture chapter!!!1!1!1!

This chapter is interminable. Oh my god.

Oh, so we did all that and he gives in I guess. I can’t believe how little agency this man has had throughout this book????

Haha oh my god, Bachel is studying his nude and compliant body in front of her court. Telling him to turn around so she can inspect his back (no mention of his ass even though it is out, tragic). Fucking love it. Now that’s bdsm. Pledging my allegiance to her instantly.

I am BORED. I liked when he was at least doing things of his own volition!

He flies his dragon off on Bachel’s orders and we get the line “Never had air smelled so… so… delicious.” Cryign

GASP he’s killed… CHILDREN!!!!!!! I hate how it only becomes horrifying for him to have done these murders once he realises they’re HUMAN children. Urgal children? The implication is that would’ve been a bit tacky but ultimately fine

Prison brothers blood pact. I feel so little about this. Ubek is 5000x more interesting than Murtagh but he’s been slotted into what is unfortunately a sort of magical indigenous person trope but where instead of being a human being, he is an orc. Which makes the whole trope much worse

Murtagh touched Alìn’s face… gasp! She’s been corrupted by the Touch Of A Man!!!!! (I do not care about this.)

(I care a little. For example she didn’t touch HIM. He just reached out and she didn’t pull away. This is the biggest decision about this character’s life, and she isn’t even allowed to be the one who makes it. He decides on her behalf, and she must be okay with it. Because she doesn’t pull away or fight him off.)

(Also Paolini doesn’t seem to be aware that ‘a woman who has been pledged not to be touched by a man’ would um. USUALLY be understood by a reader as euphemistic. Not that her purity could be forever ruined by a man literally just touching her face)

The way Paolini fills Murtagh’s brainwashed dialogue with oops all ellipses makes me want to tear the book apart with my teeth

Worst: how Grieve the guy who is part urgal is perpetually referred to as “heavy-browed.” “the heavy-browed Grieve” I’m sorry but I missed phrenology school, is that bad??

Also if he’s maybe part Urgal but Murtagh is now given a chance to making it clear that some of his best friends are urgals... Why is Grieve so distastefully described? What’s wrong with being half urgal? My suspicion: it’s the bloodlines intermingling

I suspect I can just skip every fucking dream sequence and flashback. Nothing of any value in these

This one guy, Lyreth, who trapdoored Murtagh for 2.5 seconds ages ago in the book, is TWICE referenced as holding/ touching the waists of “village” or “cultist” women in his dialogue tags. That’s the full extent of it. It’s not that there’s a giggling tavern girl sprawled in his lap while he’s speaking. These faceless women are exclusively sketched into existence by how a named male character’s hand is on their waist. We don’t know anything about how they are responding to his touch, which is extra in-your-face considering that Murtagh just obliterated a woman’s ritual purity by touching her face without asking. And it’s only ever these women’s waist. It’s not their hips or thighs or boobs. He’s not kissing their necks. I’m sure in Paolini’s mind this guy touching women’s waists is meant to read as sexual, which is supposed to reinforce that he’s a scumbag… but it doesn’t work because it’s so impersonal. These women are just… unmoving waists that he is just touching. It serves as a good illustration of how women—and sex and sexuality and bodies—are handled in these books. Men are never ruled by their strong and muscular bodies. Men have minds, and magic, and telepathy battles. Even when Murtagh is on a torture table or when he’s naked in front of a powerful woman who is actively inspecting his body, he doesn’t feel vulnerable. He doesn’t have an ass or a dick. The wind doesn’t make him shiver. He’s just a Mind. But women, well. They only have bodies when men touch them. The course of Alin’s life is defined by Murtagh’s touch, and even Nasuada, a fucking queen, only gets physical description via the coins Murtagh has in his possession and his memory of the cuts and bruises he left on her body. And women also have no minds—unless they’re werecats or elves or half elves, the only kind of woman who are remotely threatening, the only kind of women who are “as good as” the baseline of human men. Nasuada is proven as Murtagh’s equal because she was able to overcome the torture of her body. If he hadn’t tortured her, or if she had broken down, she wouldn’t have proven herself worthy of being his romantic partner.

Eragon’s romantic interest also started out being tortured. Not by him, but “girl who is tortured but is too strong to give up her secrets” was her entire characterisation for a book and a half, until he rescued her. That’s uh. That’s how you find girlfriends who are good enough for your protagonists.

THESE FUCKING BOOKS.

Bachel has put Thorn in a special wrought iron muzzle. Yet again, this is just objectively cool

We learn about who the cult worships: evil dragon underground. He makes fumes come out of the earth and they brainwash people and give them visions. He will come out of the ground and eat the sun unless every living thing worships him.

Really Bachel is not leading a cult she is leading an environmental rescue mission. Quick we gotta get everyone to worship this evil dragon STAT, or he’s going to wipe out all life on earth.

Why does an evil dragon living under the earth with the power to eat the sun (?!??!) actually want or need to be worshipped by “every living thing”. What is his motivation?? And why would that stop him eating the sun?

“The sculptures would have horrified most any artist in Alagaesia, no matter their race.” Mark this down as one of the worst sentences he has written yet!!

I realise now I’ve been misremembering multiple main characters’ names

I like Bachel telling Thorn to stay, like he’s a dog. That’s good to me

Murtagh is learning about the power of friendship to heal himself last minute, I guess

Why is Murtagh pausing to duel fucking Lyreth, the most boring man in the world. Is it because of the waists he touched??? I have never felt this man was worth any time at all

NOT Paolini specifically pointing out that Lyreth “smelled of a cloying peach scented perfume” and that he’s physically weaker than Murtagh as Murtagh overcomes him. Lyreth was too feminine to be strong, in the end

This book is obsessed with the word “youngling.” Murtagh says to Thorn “don’t kill any younglings.” He’s fighting Lyreth but he’s not worried because he himself is “no longer a youngling”. Fucking fuck off! just say youth. Child. Kid. Teenager even!! Come on!!

Murtagh going “this is taking too long” in the duel: me at the whole book thus far

“Is wrong-think to worship Bachel or Azlagur,” says Ubek. This is real dialogue in a book published in real 2023. Oh yeah btw everything he says is written like this

Oh, the urgal’s size and brute strength makes him Murtagh’s equal. I see

Grieve is legitimately yelling “kill the non-believers!!” and calling them desecrators??? Cartoon hours

To start winning the fight, all Murtagh had to do was find his magic sword! It stores all his potency and he inherited it from his father. Freud?? Don’t worry about it

The cultists are bleeding green blood???? Does this mean they’re not human or is it the lighting or what.

Groups of dragons are always being described as a Thunder Of. They’re only ever being described in visions but it’s always being described as “a thunder of dragons”, because Paolini is very proud of inventing his very own collective noun for dragons I guess

Buncha little pasty freaks showing up.

Murtagh’s ultimate challenge: he has to fight one hundred gollums

Paolini inventing new guys for his dungeon at unprecedented rates

Murtagh is legitimately busy trying to think of new names for his sword NOW?? He is just going to stop in the middle of this urgent fight to go find where the bad woman (Bachel) took the good woman (Alìn) to go “my sword has a bad name. It could have a good name.” Did he not have time while he was mouldering in the dungeon to think about this

He’s checking his compendium, like in video games.

Books have never been worse. If Murtagh/Paolini calls this sword Scar I will legitimately never know peace

Oh the sword is called Freedom now. Get it? Like America? It’s the most important value??

“Seeing the armor, Murtagh realized that the leather garb the cultists had donned for the festival of black smoke had been made to resemble Bachel's fantastic suit.”

what a sentence

This is the worst

I hate how her spear has a name and a dramatic history. Like come on

Fucking mind battles again

Alin is just… I’m sorry to her, but she’s not a real person. She’s a cardboard cutout in distress

The final boss fight should not be taking place in the magical world of the mind

Now she’s calling him “infidel?” Okay

The ultimate battle: the structuring power of masculine language versus the primeval chaos of raw women’s emotion!!! Who will win!! Hint: Christopher Paolini wrote this!

“She seemed merely a woman again.”

‘Merely’ is how Paolini always describes women (when he thinks they’re worth describing of course)

Wait… is the only reason Bachel has been intimidating REALLY just because she’s been channelling a tough evil boy dragon? Once the mask is gone and he’s not empowering her… she’s merely…

I’m going to kick Christopher Paolini’s fucking ass

Murtagh feels so emotionally close to Bachel. As he splits her skull. Normal book

For real why were ALL the Riders so afraid of Bachel??? The gas fumes? Face masks not invented?? This seems pretty easy to solve like if they’d just. Sent more than one guy?

He passes out and the chapter ends of course. Then he wakes up in the city

Ah, Alin is blonde and blue eyed. She was a pale skinned virgin who needed rescuing from an evil and also foreign almond eyed amber skinned woman who was whipping her. You know how it goes

I hate how Alìn always calls Murtagh “my lord.” She’s like one of those medieval fighting game banners of a sexy woman. She’s a cartoon.

Isn’t it a shame that when Murtagh hastily gets out of bed to bow to Nasuada he is wearing pants. So much funnier if he wasn’t

I’m so over this book holy shit

Oh, for being the apparently only sole survivor of Murtagh’s obliteration of her cult and everything she’s ever known, Alìn is being promoted to… Nasuada’s maid. That’s not what she asked for. That’s just what she’s being told she’s going to do from now on. Fucking hell.

Nasuada is Jealous of this blonde woman and I was afraid for her because Nasuada is also famously the only black woman on the continent. But of course she has nothing to fear because only the most powerful woman in the land could ever be remotely Murtagh’s equal, which she proved by being stronger at being tortured than him

She asks him to stay and she touches his hand just lightly

The END??

They don’t even kiss?!!!?!! I had to read it twice to be sure. SEXLESS BOOK.

#how do I tag this. probs not in the official tag right #Murtagh: Don’t Read It!!!#DONT READ IT #I can’t believe how much money Christopher Paolini is worth… I also can’t believe he managed to father two children #man doesn’t know what women children OR sex are. how did he manage to solve that equation twice over

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bramble-mouse · 2 months

Text

The Faery Doctor

Chapter 2

Tags: G/t, gentle giant, timid tiny, fantasy setting, adventure Content warnings will be tagged appropriately for subsequent chapters. These may include death, gore and vore. They will include no sexual themes. CW: Vore (non-fatal), gore, vomit, implied death (Trish is fine!) Minors, please do not interact!

A marriage of peace and fear saturated every inch of Trish’s body the moment she stepped foot in the northern woods. Places as old as these carried stories, the voices born of nature itself that whispered to any with an open ear. While kind things could dwell in wise old trees, hungry monsters lurked, cunning and smarter than any ordinary beast. In truth, Trish was unsurprised that poor tanner’s son had vanished here. She could taste the old magic in the air, the countless memories of blood.

If there’d been a road through these parts at some point, it hadn’t been maintained in a very long time. The only evidence it ever saw foot travel was an area where weeds didn’t grow between the remains of cobblestone. Trish had heard once from her mother that a great empire walked the world a long time ago, gifting roads, aqueducts and all manner of marvels to the common folk before departing to parts unknown. Some said these strange folk died out while others told of spying cities in the sky for a split second, only for them to vanish behind the dense cloud cover.

What would it have been like to know this mysterious folk, Trish wondered? Were they elves? Old fey that predated even the sidhe? Were they beyond mortal knowing? Perhaps there would never be a true answer to the question, but Trish satisfied herself with coming up with theories whilst she picked her way along the road.

The fork came quicker than expected- or perhaps Trish’s head had been so deep in the clouds she’d barely noticed time passing. She chewed on her lower lip. Perhaps being distracted was a poor choice.

At the centre of the fork was a ruined statue, only the legs and the bottom of a robe remaining, captured in cracked plaster. Trish lingered, reaching out to trace the weathered surface with curious fingertips. A twig snapped to her left.

Trish’s head whipped towards the source of the noise and found a wolf staring at her, stalk still and muzzle coated in gore. It’s eyes were intense, alien and focused entirely on Trish. Trish lowered her hand slowly, never once taking her eyes off the canine.

The wolf bolted and left its meal behind. She tiptoed forward out of morbid curiosity and peered over the small gathering of sparse brush.

Half a man’s torso, bare of clothing, with most of the ribcage exposed lay in a pile of gore and ichor on the permafrost. Trish covered her mouth and gasped, stumbling backwards away from the gruesome find. Was that from the tanner’s boy? No, frost giants generally ate their prey whole. The thought of the lad kicking as screaming as he was shoved into a maw of sharp teeth overwhelmed Trish with nausea.

The faery doctor found her feet and sprinted up the right path at the fork. There was nothing chasing her, yet she felt like a child rushing back upstairs when all the light went out for the night to escape the danger of shadows.

Trish knew what could be in these woods, and meeting man eating giants in their element would be a death sentence. She pushed on up the incline, remembering her duty as a doctor. She had a patient in need at the end of this path, and come what may, her journey would be worth it if she could treat what ailed him.

Blessedly, it was spring and the majority of the snow had cleared off from the mountainside. Occasionally Trish came across piles of dirt flecked ice that stubbornly refused to yield to the sun. The trees grew taller, scragglier here with little successful underbrush beneath their high boughs, and soon enough, there was no longer a road to follow. Trish kept her eyes forward nervously. Would she get lost?

The lake Filip mentioned came into view, sweet relief in the form of an open space peppered with wild flowers, grass still recovering from the weight of heavy winter snow now since mostly melted and the bullrushes that flanked a corner of the water. Ducks floated atop the still waters of the lake, disturbed only by their movements and the jumping of trout. The fish were large, no doubt lovely if baked with lemon and herbs and a good dollop of butter.

Trish felt sweat stick to her skin beneath her many layers. Despite the sunshine, she still felt the sting of the cold on her nose, a welcome relief after the most laborious leg of her trek. She longed to pause for a nap but there was a job to be done. Rest could come afterwards.

The faery doctor skirted around the lake and came to where the mouth of the cave should have been. Instead, there was a solid wall, seamless, jagged and unlikely to admit her any time soon. And yet the Sight bestowed upon her family generations ago by the faery yielded a flaw in the wall, a shimmering in a huge arch up the side of the cliff. Trish pulled out the stone Filip had given her and sure enough, the runes glowed, humming with a soft, electric power. The faery doctor drew in a few deep, grounding breaths before she touched the stone to the wall and watched her hand go through. The rest of her followed on nervous feet.

Inside of the cave was surprisingly bright, a tall corridor from the mouth illuminated by magical fire blue as sapphires. Every inch of this place thrummed with arcane power, both the wilder sort and the cultivated. The hairs on the back of Trish’s neck stood on end. She swore she smelled blood and ichor in the air still, shivering from both the chill of the higher elevation and the fresh memory of a discarded human torso.

There was a certain majesty to this place, carved into the very mountain as ancient dwarves had done. Though the handiwork was nowhere near as neat as a dwarf’s, the alcoves fit for the lights had been carved out by hand, high above on the walls. Trish still wasn’t sure she would get over just how high the ceiling was in this place. Would the end of this tunnel be just as massive?

Her answer arrived soon as she found a great opening nearly a hundred feet high, blocked off by a heavy patterned curtain embroidered with golden birds. The entire thing was beautifully sewn in a way only loving hands could craft.

Trish froze when she heard a pained groan from beyond the curtain. The voice was…big. Larger than any she’d ever known, like a clap of distant thunder.

‘I heard you treat anyone.’

The hooded woman had said.

Something dawned on Trish that turned her blood bitter cold.

Trish sidled around the heavy fabric and into a space that managed to be cozy despite being a cave. A kitchen counter had been carved from the stone, shaped and smoothed meticulously. She could not hope to spy what was on the countertops but she smelled something like stew and baked bread. There was a variety of rugs on the ground, handwoven, woolen and fur pelt alike. They served to make the hard ground more friendly to bare feet. There was a cold hearth straight ahead with an enormous iron stew pot over it, a well used kettle kept on the unlit augur in front of it. A plush cushion rested before the carved stone hearth, beside which was a ball of yarn and a half-knitted woolen shirt. Curiously, the shirt was a tiny thing, something made for someone her size rather than a giant.

A quick glance at the ceiling as Trish crept mouselike across the floor yielded a sight that made her gasp in quiet awe. Thousands of glowing crystals sprouted, like stars overhead. It was as if she were looking up at the nightsky, the soft myriad pinpricks of light chasing awake the lonely darkness in the cavern.

Another groan caught Trish’s attention and she snapped frightened eyes towards a large figure laid out on what appeared to be a bedroll. The figure appeared almost human- save for the sheer size, clad in simple grey breeches and a loose cotton shirt. The fellow must have been a good eighty feet tall, give or take. She was little more than a mouthful in comparison, and the consideration made Trish’s skin crawl.

But she was a faery doctor, Trish reminded herself, trying to bolster courage into limbs locked by terror.

She was a faery doctor and this creature was in pain. Trish had healed injured, grouchy dragons before, helped ogres with fevers and wargs with mange.

Would a giant be so different?

Trish decided not to dwell on that rhetorical question, lest what little bravery flee and send her running back the way she came.

“U…Um…Mister…Fr…Frio Frostfang?”

Trish’s small voice croaked out as she started forward towards the giant.

“E…Excuse me…Um..I…I’m s-s-sorry f…f..for b…barging in, I…”

Her throat closed up as the humongous figure sat up with some difficulty. The giant’s eyes reminded her of the wolf’s she’d seen in the woods- pale, with slit pupils and fixed upon her with the intensity that could only belong to a predatory sizing up if she was a worthy meal. And yet the rest of his face sat at odds with such an assumption, a soft mouth, smooth angles, and an expression that while sick, showed concern.

“...You…”

The giant spoke breathlessly, his voice low and resonant in the closed space.

“Forgive me, I…”

“A woman sent me to heal you.”

Trish blurted out with the same intensity as one vomiting. She froze, wide eyed and shocked and her entire face went beet red.

The frost giant regarded her carefully, and Trish did the same to him in return. She noted soft, white waves of hair that fell in his eyes and down his neck. He sported short horns, like a young buck’s. Trish wondered idly if they were soft and velvety like deer horn too. She also noted, much to her own chagrin, that this giant was unfairly beautiful, utterly unlike any depiction of the burly, bearded and terrifying frost giants she’d heard about.

The giant’s lips perked up at the corners into a smile that softened his gaze, but the welcoming expression was fleeting. He winced and doubled over, clutching his middle.

“M…my apologies. I am not usually so terrible…”

He grit his teeth, hissed

“...A host.”

Trish swallowed thickly.

“...N..No, no, you’re… you’re unwell and…you weren’t expecting me, s…so…”

She trailed off, playing with the end of one of her braids. The ribbon fastening the end had loosened.

“I…I should like to give you an exam…if…if you’re comfortable with it.”

Frio hummed in assent.

“Gladly. Though I would like to know the name of my healer, I might thank her properly afterwards.”

Trish found she couldn’t meet his eye. Was he..was he charming? Yes, this giant was charming and polite- a gentleman, of all things. Not at all what she would expect from a frost giant. And yet here Frio was, well spoken and minding his manners even when he felt under the weather. She chewed on her lower lip. She continued to play with her hair ribbon, feeling the smoothness of the mossy green silk.

“T…Trish Mctavish, sir. I…I’m Doctor Trish Mctavish.”

She stammered.

“Sir?”

Frio chuckled softly.

“Please, my dear. Frio suits me well enough.”

Trish’s heart pounded. His laugh was gentle, too.

Trish made to approach the towering figure and the closer she drew, the more her fear returned. Her blood surged through her veins, a deafening pounding in her ear. She fought to keep her breathing even.

“I would never hurt my benefactor, doctor. Be as at ease as you are able.”

Frio said, his voice low as if he could read her thoughts. She tilted her head up and caught sight of his nose twitching in a manner more beast than man. Had Frio smelled her discomfort? He smiled down at her.

“Ah, but…I should lay down. I doubt you would like to try and…”

He paused, his jaw clenching as another wave of pain from his middle surged through.

“Y-Yes please.”

Trish cut in.

Frio nodded and laid down gingerly, pressing into his belly with one hand. His fingers were tipped with dark talons. They looked sharp.

She stared at the side of his head, noticing that he wore a blue tear drop earring.

“W…Would you turn to… to face me please?”

Frio hummed in response and tilted his head to the side. His lashes were long and pale, a veil over his monstrous, yet kind eyes. She reached up to touch his forehead, painfully mindful of those immense gaze pinned to her form.

“You are quite pretty.”

He hummed, the statement decidedly too casual for the situation. Trish squeaked in response, her hand darting away. The giant laughed.

“My apologies. I am distracting you.”

Trish felt like she might explode from such velvety words- especially when they were close enough to rattle her very bones.

Trish went through a mental checklist as she scanned over his body. A mild temperature (at least for an ice aspected being), sharp pain in his belly, and persistent nausea.

“Would you...o…open…your…”

Trish trailed off.

A giant’s mouth. Trish felt her courage falter and dug her nails into her palms to push on.

“Mouth. I …I need to…see inside your…”

Frio frowned. He appeared as if he wished to say something, to offer some word of comfort. Instead, the frost giant parted plush lips and revealed long fangs, a bluish tongue and the cavernous darkness in the back of his throat. The sight set off alarms within Trish- her instincts begging her to run, to flee, to hide, that she was in danger.

Frio’s breath gusted past her frame, tousling her tartan dress, coat and hair. It smelled of elderberries, and felt like a welcome, sunny breeze in early spring.

Trish could do this. She was a faery doctor and Frio was her patient.

The little woman set down her pack, shed her coat atop the mound of her belongings on the ground and poked her head inside the giant’s mouth despite the protests screaming loudly in her head. She sought any sign of poor health- discolouration of the tongue, a sore in the cheek, any inflammation in the throat.

Trish backed up, shaking from the ordeal and the moment she was far enough away, Frio snapped his jaws shut, causing her to squeak.

“Ah…My apologies.”

He said. Trish noted his features were flush and he seemed hesitant to meet her eye.

“Perhaps I should give a warning next time? If there is one. I would not presume…”

Trish chewed on her lower lip and fiddled with her skirts.

“N..No, I…It’s alright.”

A moment of awkward silence passed between them both before Frio cleared his throat and turned onto his side fully.

“Do you know what ails me, Doctor Mctavish?”

Trish rubbed her upper arm. There were several potential diagnoses but none that make sense for the sharp pains Frio described. A dull ache or a sour feeling would have made more sense- food poisoning, or a giant’s strain of stomach flu. And yet…

“Frio, what did you have to eat when you first noticed these pains?”

She inquired.

The frost giant’s face fell. He pressed his lips into a thin line. His brow creased and it was not anger that crossed his features but shame.

“...A giant hunter.”

He admitted, and his own voice wavered.

Trish knew logically what most frost giants ate. By rights, she could be on Frio’s menu once he was well again. Perhaps it would be the best choice to leave him here in pain and run before he could scarf her down too.

But that look in Frio’s eye- Why would a frost giant feel shame for admitting he’d eaten what was natural to him?

“You don’t like to eat humans.”

Trish mused aloud, words that had been meant to stay in her head tumbling free.

Frio laughed humorlessly.

“My nature would have me kill thinking, feeling beings for no reason other than greed and hunger. It is…disgusting to me, every time I falter.”

Trish frowned.

“And…and you said he was…was a giant hunter, didn’t you?”

Frio’s eyes flew back towards her, lidded and tormented.

“I could excuse myself for murdering him because he wanted to kill me first. Yet that would taste like a lie. I chose to consume him like a common beast. A man who most assuredly had a family. Who will now be a hole left in a child's life, a widow’s heartache.”

Fear was a strange thing in Trish’s line of work. It could manifest so easily when dealing with a stranger. She felt it even when she treated ordinary human men. It ebbed and flowed as easily as a tide while Trish treated every manner of creature both friendly to humankind and enemy to it.

So when every last mote of fear fled from Trish’s body, replaced by the adrenaline of compassion, Trish decided to follow that flow- that ever wobbling march of fear and bravery every faery doctor required.

“I have met very many different souls in my profession,”

Trish spoke.

“And…When a man regrets his actions this way, I…I find that such mental pain can make his illness all the worse.”

She glanced towards the giant’s midsection, so far away from where she stood. She’d noted the telltale sounds of indigestion when she’d made her observations there.

Trish lamented when she realized just how far she was about to go for a patient.

“What I…I mean to say is…is that I trust a man who desires to cause no harm, even if he falters. Because someone who makes a mistake so terrible is that much more steadfast in his conviction not to do so again.”

Frio’s eyes shimmered, reflecting the glowing crystals on the ceiling. He reached for her gently, slowly and when Trish flinched at first, he paused, extending the back of his index finger claw to her. It was an invitation. Trish hesitated once before reaching for the fingertip, placing her hand atop the pad.

“You think whatever I consumed with the hunter must be responsible for my pain, I take it.”

He said in a near whisper.

“Just as well.”

Trish fluttered her lips.

“Did you…”

How should she word this…

“Did you…eat him whole? With…with all of his affects?”

Frio cleared his throat.

“I…Yes.”

Trish nodded slowly, her hand still rested atop his finger. The cogs turned in her head. Resignation had her shoulders sagging, her hands reaching for the hem of her dress to pull it up and over her head. She kicked her boots off.

“What are you…”

Frio inquired and stopped.

“I…I need to perform an…extraction. And…”

Trish swallowed nervously, her voice cracking

“An internal examination.”

Frio appeared as if he’d been slapped. His eyes went wide.

“Absolutely not!”

He balked.

“I am sure the pain will pass with time. I will not subject someone I hardly know to…this!”

Frio gestured towards his middle with a claw.

“So you would swallow a friend, then?”

Trish mumbled before she could catch herself.

Frio’s mouth hung open a little. He sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose.

“No, no I would not.”

Trish, dressed in stays, bloomers and woolen stockings that only served to accentuate just how boney her tiny form was, padded closer to his mouth. Her hands shook. The cold and the fear crept ever nearer and Trish had to begin before she could back out.

“I-It’s the doctor’s orders, i…if you please!”

She countered.

“I…I will be alright. I…I…”

Trish knew the words the sought their place on her tongue. They calmed her. Somehow, some part of her, faery gift or her own innate instinct on people kicked in.

“...I trust you, Frio.”

The frost giant was clearly at a loss for words. He looked utterly horrified at the thought of consuming this frail little woman, terrified she would break at his slightest touch.

Gods, was she brave. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

“You have known me for mere moments and you would trust me.”

Frio said.

“You are either a kind or foolish doctor.”

He opened his eyes again, fixing them upon the little human in front of his face.

“Are you certain you are willing to do this?”

Trish chewed her lower lip and went to his mouth, placing a hand on his lip. He tensed at the touch, felt something inside of him twist wonderfully. The doctor had no idea the effect she had.

“Yes. I cannot leave a patient to suffer. No matter who he is.”

Trish felt the careful weight of the giant's fingers on her upper arm. She felt the gentle stroke, a reassurance.

“You have my word that I will keep you safe.”

He spoke with conviction that gave Trish no doubt he meant what he said.

The faery doctor nodded, grabbed a few things from her pack and returned to his mouth.

“C…Could you…?” She said.

“Of course.”

Frio replied and turned over, mouth open wide and chin on the ground. The giant’s posture brought to mind a prostrated man praying to his god for salvation in one of the great temples.

Trish steeled herself for what would come next- for the horror she would find within this (thus far) gentle being’s belly. She lifted her foot onto his lip and hoisted herself inside. Her first step sank into his tongue. Trish felt his shuddering breaths rush past her.

Drool pooled quickly beneath the giant’s tongue. Was Trish making Frio salivate? The thought was unsettling yet…not fully unpleasant, to be delicious. Something to unpack when she wasn’t about to journey to the literal belly of the beast shortly. Trish lowered herself down, keeping a tight hold on a little satchel of supplies that thrummed with magic. She could hear the squelching of his throat, the way it seemed all too eager for her arrival.

“...You can..”

Trish whimpered

“S…Swallow me..”

Frio’s tongue slid her towards the back of his throat and she gasped in surprise. The giant stopped instantly.

“K-Keep going!”

Trish insisted.

Frio sighed passed her little body and pushed her past the point of no return with a deep, meaty gulp.

Trish had never been swallowed before and frankly, the entire experience was terrifying. She shook and stifled sobs as the darkness of Frio’s squeezing throat forced her downwards. Claustrophobia, the imminent destination below her- the faery doctor’s eyes prickled with tears as her whole body shuddered in fear. A powerful heart hammered behind Trish. Was Frio afraid too? The erratic pulse nearly deafened her as she felt the final squeeze before a free fall into an active stomach. She let out a cry, muffled by walls of thick flesh as she dropped into a pile of liquid that made her skin tingle. Trish gasped and scrambled backwards in the dark until she felt a solid wall at her back. A loud gurgle vibrated the fleshy chamber.

The inside of Frio’s belly was pitch black, humid but blissfully not sweltering; Trish had his frost giant nature to thank for that small blessing. The stomach grumbled again, the distinct sound of imminent digestion. Regardless of Frio’s wishes, the giant’s stomach viewed Trish as food. She would need to work quickly.

As Trish dug about in her bag of holding, she heard a muffled, yet booming voice cut through the squishing, wet sounds of bodily organs working around her.

“...Are you alright?”

Frio. He was checking on her.

“Y..Yes! I’m..I’m just getting to work.”

She shouted back. Would the giant even hear her? Evidently so, because his heart rate calmed some at the evidence of her well-being.

“I will give you five minutes, doctor, before I bring you back up.”

Frio stated firmly.

The time limit was a bit of a comfort, but it also meant she had a tighter deadline to find the hunter’s remains and figure out how to deal with his armour. Trish groped about her bag of holding until she found her quarry- a little piece of expensive parchment. It glowed faintly, then brighter when Trish read its incantation aloud. A trio of glowing lights, yellow like sunflowers illuminated the rippling space.

Immediately, Trish noted that she was wading ankle deep in masticated stew- and floating human bones. She yelped at the gruesome sight and started to hyperventilate, the sour air making her nearly sick as it stung her eyes and throat. Trish reigned herself back in, thinking of her mother’s calm voice, lessons that ingrained deep in her psyche.

‘Deep breath. Assess the patient, find the ailment and the cause, determine the treatment.’

Trish’s lip quivered, her whole body trembling, but she cast her gaze around the inside of Frio’s stomach. Wrinkled pale blue flesh pressed in against her, writhing and alive. There was a mark along the lining and instantly, Trish knew it was the culprit of Frio’s pain. It weeped dark blue blood and appeared raw and angry, unable to heal when constantly irritated by the chaos of a working stomach.

“An open wound…”

Trish mused quietly to herself as she dug about in her bag for a solution. The holding enchantment afforded the doctor the ability to bring all manner of potions along to unique locations- and the perfect one for the job sat in her hands now, a soft lavender coloured liquid that resembled a milky sweet tea. Normally, Trish would have had a patient simply drink it but she doubted it would do little other than get lost in the rest of his stomach contents.

Trish felt her ankles begin to itch as stomach juices soaked through her stockings. She quickly but carefully poured the potion over the wound- and thankfully got enough on it before Frio let out a grunt of pain and the entire fleshy chamber shifted. Trish screamed as she was thrown backward against the opposite wall, the wind blown out of her. A splash of stomach liquid on her front made her panic. It burned.

“Gods, I am so sorry.”

The giant fretted.

Trish shoved a stomach wall, a silent reassurance that she was still alive and well, and heard the way Frio’s lungs filled and emptied like a relieved hurricane.

“Forgive me.”

She felt something press in against her. His hand, perhaps.

Trish found her balance again and toddered back over towards the site of the injury. It steamed and already, it was closing. Good. That would be enough.

And now, the disgusting bit.

Trish turned around with a grimace and stared down at the pile of bones surrounded by horrifically blood red, murky liquid. While even the bones had begun to slowly erode, the chain mail and the leather armour the hunter had worn over it remained nearly untouched. If the faint shimmer of magic rising off the articles was any indication, they were enchanted to be incredibly durable.

Frio’s stomach let out a bubbling groan around Trish, the wrinkled walls closing in on her. She wobbled but mercifully stayed upright; Trish never would have recovered from falling on the hunter’s corpse.

“Whatever you have done is working wonders.”

The giant’s voice spoke again with a deep sigh.

Trish chewed her lower lip. His relief would mean nothing if the armour made another wound. With that, the faery doctor let out a whine, picked up a vomit covered chain shirt and stuffed it into her bag of holding.

“Oh…Good heavens above…”

She gagged, the bits of tougher leather going in next. The bones Trish would leave. A frost giant could digest that when given enough time. The bag of holding would be the best method of transporting the indigestible bits out without potentially tearing up Frio’s throat even if Trish feared she’d never get the smell out.

Trish cinched the bag shut and found her voice again.

“I’m…I’m done!”

She called up.

Trish’s expulsion occurred faster than expected. Frio’s stomach lurched around the live human and propelled her and a load of chyme rapidly upwards. Trish’s shriek cut off in his throat.

Frio remained doubled over and coughed the little doctor up in a pile of half digested lunch. He caught his breath, then rolled over onto his side, his collapse like an earthquake.

The faery doctor stared up at the ceiling, panting, gulping in lungfuls of clean air.

Trish had just been in a stomach. In a stomach. In a giant’s bloody stomach.

And she was still alive to hopefully never tell the tale to a living soul.

She shivered in the open air, her whole body soaked and slimy. Trish felt dizzy, overwhelmed.

Shock prevented her from registering when a pair of massive, gentle hands slid beneath her body and lifted her up. Trish’s last view before passing out consisted of two frantic, pale eyes fixed upon her, and a soft, rumbling voice apologizing repeatedly and thanking her in a jumbled mess of words Trish felt too exhausted to make out.

#bramble stories #g/t #g/t writing #giant/tiny #safe v0re #v0re #cw: vore #cw: vomit #cw: gore #cw: death #g/t community #clean vore #mdni #clean v0re

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