#frequency: hellfire | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blindmagdalena · 2 years ago

Text

All That Glitters

18+ 15.7k words. Dragon!Homelander x F!Reader fantasy au, messy world building, referenced cannibalism, handfeeding, super dubious consent, sexual coercion, monster anatomy, size difference, cunnilingus, breeding kink, dirty talk, marathon sex, mating bond/bite, knotting, tongue baths, virgins, scent kink, overstimulation, body betrayal, fairy tale schmoop. AO3 Link!

Summary: In a world where the only currencies that matter are gold and blood, the gods are lavished with both. Your regions god is a fearsome beast said to reign hellfire from the skies should his appetite not be satiated. When the demand for human sacrifices increases, you make the choice to volunteer yourself, determined to bring an end to the bloodshed, and ascend into the jaws that await you in the old stone tower deep in the woods.

illustration by the ever incredible @anon-nee, who was instrumental to the writing of this fic. see the full piece here! originally written for Monsterlander Mania, but obviously spiraled wildly out of control.

For as long as you can remember, there have always been sacrifices.

Such a thing is not unique to your village. Gods–and the creatures worshiped as such–throughout the world demand all manner of recompense for protecting the lands of those who idolize them. If the slaughter of a single lamb ensures green pastures in which the herd may thrive, few ever think twice before they lift the blade.

Not all townships worship for benevolence, however. Yours has always worshiped for mercy.

For generations, stories of hellfire raining from the sky have been passed by your people. A great, terrible beast with wings as wide as ten men were tall once patrolled the skies above you, wielding power so devastating that not even ballistae firing bolts the size of tree trunks could fell it.

It had a hundred names, each more terrible than the last. Scourge of the Skies, the Red Death, Flame’s Maw, and perhaps most unfortunately, the Devourer. Named as such for the countless lives it began to claim when treasures were deemed an insufficient tribute. Sacrifices were initially sparse, required only every dozen or so seasons. As time went on, the Devourer grew greedier and greedier, with the timespan between sacrifices shortening.

By the time you offer yourself to the council, there has been a sacrifice every month for over a year.

The wagon hardly jostles on this well-trodden road. You imagine it used to be a rougher ride, but with the increase in frequency of travel, it has smoothed. The thought worsens the feeling of icy weight in your stomach. One might think the exquisite fabrics you’re dressed in would bring some measure of comfort–softer than anything you’ve worn before–but the extravagance of them only serves to further alienate you from yourself.

You have become a thing. A finely adorned offering, and the fabric makes your skin crawl for it.

The tree cover breaks, revealing a monolithic stone tower that stands so tall, it splits the sky in two.

The Tower of the Seven. It’s been generations since anyone knew exactly what it was named for, but legend speaks of mythic creatures that were once held in such reverence, this tower was built in their honor. It served as both a temple and home to these venerated beings.

The years have not been kind to it. The stone pillars have become wild with overgrowth, and the air about this place reeks of stale, old death.

It stands now as a graveyard.

Even the horses refuse to venture much further than the threshold of the treeline, forcing you and your attendants out of the wagon to tread the remainder of the trek on foot. The men who walk with you carry short swords, but they serve no practical purpose, their edges having long since dulled. They are not here to protect you, they are as much a part of the ceremony as your fine clothes.

You shield your eyes as you look up at the staggering height of the tower, but swiftly drop your gaze. Best not to think of what awaits you.

On paper, sacrifice seems a simple thing. Slitting one’s throat upon an altar, floating a burning pyre across the river, or feeding the tribute a concoction of sleeping death and burying them into eternal slumber. Murder can be a righteous thing in the hands of a believer, or so they say.

For you, and those who have come before you, martyrdom is not as effortless as lying down and dying for the cause. The tower presents a trial to you. You must willingly climb the hundreds upon hundreds of large stone steps in order to prove yourself a worthy tribute.

Why you must prove your flesh worthy of consumption is beyond you. You’ve never heard of a farmer who sends his cattle to run laps before the slaughter. It seems a petty thing to demand. Perhaps the Devourer has grown indolent and slovenly in its feasting.

It’s easy to dream up nightmarish images of such an awful creature. A legless winged wyrm with a ribbed body, fat and slimy like an oversized earthworm. It would have an enormous maw with hundreds upon hundreds of jagged teeth, its breath reeking of charred flesh and sulfur. Such a wicked beast would stink like the layers of hell.

Somehow, tormenting yourself like this is an oddly calming distraction. The more nightmarish it becomes in your mind, the less real all of this feels. It’s just a bad dream.

No one speaks as you reach the base of the tower. There’s nothing left to say. You’re one of a dozen in the last year alone these men have ferried to their death. It almost seems cruel to expect eye contact, let alone sympathy. For that reason, it catches you off guard when one of the older of the three, a man named Hector with a thick set of troubled brows furrowed above kind but bloodshot, watery eyes puts his hand on your shoulder, offering a light squeeze.

The last sacrifice had been his own daughter.

In his gaze you find grief and gratitude in equal measure. Neither brings comfort. You return a small nod and move your eyes back to the ordeal that awaits you.

The tower is like an optical illusion: the proportions make it seem a reasonable size at a distance, but the closer you walk to it, the more mythical a thing it becomes. The archways curve high above your head, sized for creatures of legend, and the head of the building disappears completely into the sky.

In the center of it, a spiraling stone staircase beckons you. The masonry is exquisitely smooth despite the age of it, carved in an era when magic was a hundred times more prolific than it is now. It’s wide and open, the steps so large that you’ll be taking them one at a time. Worse than that, however, is the complete absence of any kind of protective railing.

If you sway, you very well may fall to your death.

At the center of the spiral stands a pile of debris. As you approach, a rustling catches your attention and you freeze, eying the pile warily. The head of a creature suddenly pops up, startling your heart into a thunder, but after a beat you recognize it for what it is: a small fox, its muzzle dirty. The two of you stare at one another for a long moment before one of the men behind you calls out, “Shoo, shoo now.”

Everyone keeps hushed, as if terrified of disturbing what is yet unseen.

Moving closer, you anticipate you might see a dead rabbit, or perhaps a chicken. Anything would have been a more welcome sight than the gnarled half-eaten body of a woman dressed just like you piled amongst the debris. You gasp, both hands flying over your mouth as you stumble a few steps backwards.

For a horrifying moment, you swear you see your own face in the rotten remnants staring back at you with black, empty eye sockets. It’s the hair that gives away the delusion, however, and with a chill down your spine you recognize the sacrifice who came before you; Hector’s daughter.

“Nadja,” the man groans morosely, the weight of grief in his voice palpable. You move away, towards the stairs, and watch with a morbid sort of fascination as the man weeps over the corpse of his daughter, touching her hair and her clothes, the only parts of her not twisted and rotted with death, the body left for maggots and scavengers. It’s sick, nothing like the beautiful and noble gesture sacrifice is always said to be. You look up at the dizzying height of the spiral staircase, following the line of it until the stone disappears into darkness. Did she fall, or was she cast away, having somehow proven herself unworthy?

In a strange sense, watching the men wrap her body in cloth to be carried home feels very much like playing the part of voyeur to your own demise. You stand at a distance, hand braced upon the stone, unable to shake the dread that you’re witnessing a vision of the future. Your future.

No. You will not be left for the insects and carrion-feeders. You turn your back to the sound of Hector’s weeping and, without another world, determinedly begin your ascent one large stone step at a time. Although you feel the men’s eyes heavily upon you, they remain silent, as if already grieving you.

Do not, you think brazenly, skin flushed with unexpected fires that bring your blood to a boil. Do not dare mourn what isn’t dead.

Those flames burn hot enough to carry you easily up the first several floors, indignantly stomping your way. You’ve heard stories of this tower all your life, but nothing could have prepared you for the true scale of it. Most of it is in a terrible state of decay, full of overgrowth and rot that, centuries ago, may have been wood and cloth.

You stop for a breath beneath the remains of what looks to have once been a vibrant mural. You can see trace evidence of beautiful paints, but whatever it depicts has been brutally clawed from the stonework. You lift a hand up high to trace one of the deep gouges in the stone; the marks are spread too far apart for your fingers to reach, but you can make out five distinct patterns nonetheless, like drag marks from a hand three or four times the size of your own.

Beyond the ruined mural, there are statues, too. You pass a grand monument of a woman who stands over seven heads tall wielding a sword of equal might, the statue adorned with steel bracers. You think she might have been beautiful in the same way a frightening storm is, but the head of the statue is long since gone.

On the next floor, you see upon the ground the ruins of a statue of a mermaid–at least, you thought it was. Upon further inspection, however, you see that the statue depicts a man. He has the lower body of a fish and strange indentations along his ribs, just beneath his bare carved chest. He, too, is headless, torso split horizontally, stone strewn across the floor.

This temple must have belonged to these lost figures, their monuments as desecrated as the rest of the tower. Whoever the Seven was, the world has since forgotten.

You wonder if the Devourer did this, defiled this temple to erase whatever history of heroes came before its tyranny.

Ultimately, you only find six statues. None of them have managed to keep their heads, and some are in worse shape than others. You imagine the seventh might have been destroyed entirely. It’s easier to imagine how or why these things might be than it is to focus on how badly your body aches, how you started this venture with the morning sun barely upon you, and yet you barely feel any closer to your destination as the darkness of night encroaches.

Every limb screams for rest. You stop occasionally, but you feel you must not sleep. Was poor Nadja pitched to her death for sleeping through her trial? You’d rather not find out. You’re not even sure if you would wake with the same angry conviction that drives you forward now, climbing step after unforgiving step. It’s gotten colder the higher you’ve gone, too. There’s a chance if you slept amidst the stone, you would turn to it yourself.

“Grant me strength,” you whisper to whomever may be listening. Be they fae or devil, benevolent or malevolent, it would be a boon to know there was some manner of being on your side.

You lean on the wall far from the edge as you ascend the spiral, too nervous of a fall to look over the edge and gauge your progress. A brisk wind chill has begun howling through the tower, whipping your clothing about and biting at your skin. You hug one arm tightly across your chest, bracing against the cold. At this rate, you’ll make for a crunchy meal not just for your bones, but for the frost you arrive covered in.

Your foot slides on something on the step that shifts and clatters. You nearly fall, heart hammering in your chest as you manage to catch yourself. Looking down, you’re shocked to see a pile of shining gold coins spilling down the steps amongst the debris. There is enough wealth discarded on these steps to see a dozen families fed for years and years to come.

You must be getting close. Carefully, despite the tremble running through your body, you shuffle your way through the mess, kicking it aside when you need to clear more of a path. The sound of rubble and gold and the like falling off the edge of the steps makes you flinch, the prolonged clattering of it serving as a reminder of just how agonizingly high you’ve managed to climb.

The familiar flicker of fire light draws a gasp of relief from you, tears gathered in your eyes from the sheer pain of moving your body forward. You can see shadows dancing across the walls, beckoning you from the cold with the barest hint of a warm draft. You’re practically crawling up the steps now, every part of you aching horribly. The tremble in your body is so severe, you worry you would fall to your death if you continued trying to walk through the hoard of treasures that have spilled down the steps.

You practically sob with relief when you reach the final step, limbs quaking beneath you as you haul yourself up onto the top floor and away from the awful railless edge of the spiraling stairs. You bury your face in the fold of your arms. The mixture of relief and exhaustion is so intense, the rest of the world falls away briefly, and the only thing that matters is catching your breath while you all but dry heave on the floor.

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you were going to make it,” purrs a resonant, honied voice, snapping you immediately back to reality. You shoot into an upright position so suddenly your head spins, blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear your blurry vision.

Before you rests an enormous circular hall lit with dozens upon dozens of torches. The walls are lined with beautiful arched windows, and the interior is piled nearly to the vaulted ceiling with obscene amounts of coin, weapons, artifacts and similar treasure. Your gaze drifts towards the center of it all, where the source of the voice awaits you.

As it turns out, The Devourer is no oversized earthworm.

Reclined upon a magnificently carved marble throne, you behold a creature made of equal parts man and beast. Even sitting, his stature easily brings him heads taller than you. He is adorned exquisitely in gold embellishments–jewelry and piercings alike–and rich navy slacks, serving as a fine centerpiece to the lavish, untidy wealth that surrounds him. He wears a crown fit for a king, the jewel of it a radiant blue that matches his sharp predatory gaze. His lips spread into a wolfish grin. You’re utterly bewitched by the flash of his fangs.

“Rise,” he orders you, gesturing with a clawed hand that’s easily the size of your head. His rings shine beautifully in the firelight. “And speak.”

Shakily, you fight to climb to your feet. Worm or not, this man–this creature has been preying upon your people for generations. You remind yourself of the countless lives lost, of the mourning families, of Nadja’s desecrated corpse and the sound of her father weeping over the rotten remains of her. You steel yourself.

“You who the people know as Scourge of the Skies, Red Death,” you begin, blinking rapidly. Your head began swimming the second you stood. You’ve never been so worn out in your life, and though there are flames here that offer a slight degree of warmth, the cold has sunk deep into your bones. As you speak, your vision gradually begins to tunnel. “Flame’s… Maw… and the Devourer,” you address, fighting desperately to stay focused even as he fades in and out of clarity. “I’ve come to pay my village tribute, and to… to…”

The darkness at the edges of your vision thickens. Your words feel heavy and slurred on your tongue. You sway, feeling your own head slosh like a bucket of water, and before you know it, you’re pitching forward, and the world goes black.

That was anticlimactic.

There was a time he would have been met with awe. Reverence. He didn’t expect you to simply black out.

Scourge, Red Death, Flame’s Maw… Maw. He’s always despised that word in particular, and the ugly imagery it evokes. Just a handful out of hundreds of names he’s been called over the years–if you can call them that. Many border on insults, if not are so outright. The most tolerable name he can remember is Homelander.

They called him that in celebration, he recalls. Those were the last of the days he had any care left for them.

He blows a smoky little raspberry as he stands, hands clasping behind his back beneath his wings. His tail sways idly as he approaches, tentatively intrigued by your splayed form. It’s rare that a sacrifice makes it all the way to the top at all, let alone in a single day. The last one only made it halfway before she decided falling to her death was a kinder fate than him.

Truth be told, he should have reigned hell upon their little village for her insolence. Fortunately for them, her display filled him with far more apathy than it did fury. He crouches down near enough to touch, though he hesitates, hand ghosting just over your body. He tilts his head to the side. Your breaths are shallow in your sleep, a slight wheeze to each one. Your body is clearly overexerted.

Delicately, he slips his hand under your cheek to turn your face to him, examining your features. You’re prettier like this, the tension drained from your expression and replaced with peace. Certainly not the worst tribute he’s been offered. You were at least determined to reach him.

The corner of his mouth twitches.

He won’t kill you. Not yet.

Homelander lifts you up into his arms, supporting your comparatively slight form with ease. You feel as frail as any mortal might, but the weight of you in his arms strikes him with a peculiar sense of melancholy. He takes pause, more closely observing the shape of you cradled in his arms, head lolled against his chest. You fit there nicely, small as you are. He can almost pretend you’ve simply fallen asleep in the crook of his arm; somewhere you’ve always belonged.

It’s an intriguing little fantasy. He hasn’t felt the need to indulge in one of those in a long while. He keeps his eyes on you as he walks you to the collection of pelts gathered on the far side of the room, where he lays you down atop them.

What had you been intending to say before you passed out? Your departing words spin round and round in his mind while he looks you over, lowering himself until he’s on his hands and knees above you. Tributes used to come richly adorned in jewelry and glittering things, but such pageantry has long since vanished. He’s surrounded by enough of it that the absence doesn’t bother him anymore.

The glitter of gold hardly catches his eye these days. He doesn’t call for sacrifices to add to his wealth. He only seeks to quell his boredom. Perhaps you will prove useful for this, at least for a time.

Pressing his clawed thumb lightly to your chin, he tilts your head away and leans in, nosing up the line of your throat, lips barely ghosting your soft flesh. He inhales the salt-sweet smell of you, a mixture of sweat, the dusty stone steps you’ve scaled, and the sweet herbal oil bath your kind always receives before you’re sent to him. The blend is strangely intoxicating on you.

It makes him wonder if you taste as good as you smell. Parting his lips, his split tongue spills past them and drags a slow serpentine pattern from your neck to your jaw. Mmm, fuck. You taste better than you smell, the rich oil you were bathed in still clinging to your skin beneath the salty tang of your sweat.

It would be too easy to devour you. He groans quietly at the thought, nuzzling into the crook of your neck. He’s known few things more intimate than sinking his sharp teeth into warm, pliant flesh. The feel of a pulse slowing against his tongue. The metallic rush of blood down the back of his throat. He hasn’t craved human flesh the way he does right now in years, yet something in the scent of you has ignited that primal aspect of him. Salivating already, he swallows it away and draws back.

Not yet. He still wants to hear what you were going to say.

It makes him smile to see the goosebumps that have erupted on every inch of your exposed skin. He cocks his head to the side and trails his index claw down the center of your chest, dragging down the pretty white fabric of your sacrificial dress, stopping just shy of the swell of your breasts. More goosebumps there, too.

None of it compares to the sound that you make. In your sleep, your brows furrow, and you exhale a noise somewhere between pain and sheer exhaustion, your small hand brushing his as you adjust against the pile of plush fur pelts. His gaze drops sharply, hand lifting tentatively. After a beat, he sets it down lightly atop yours. Captivated, he watches your whole body respond to his touch, turning and curling in towards him like a flora bending to the light of the sun.

Fascinated by your innate reactivity to him, Homelander lowers himself onto his side next to you. After a beat of hesitation, he encircles your wrist with his thumb and index finger and brings your palm flat to the warmth of his bare chest. A tantalizing shiver rolls through your unconscious form. Just as he had anticipated–hoped?–you follow the feel of him, moving completely onto your side and into him, breathing out a shuddering little exhale while the fire that runs through his veins warms you.

It isn’t enough to stop you shivering, though. Shifting, he spreads out his wing and curls that over you, blocking the draft that spills in from the surrounding windows. Only then does the tension in your body begin to ease, warmth chasing out the chill from your bones.

Homelander smirks, feeling inexplicably accomplished over this mundane little feat. He’s never particularly cared for the comfort of his tributes before; they’ve never served as anything more than playthings and meals. You should be no different. He knows you would be a delectable thing on his tongue, warm and wet down his throat, yet the thought of you in pieces–cold and unmoving–instantly vanishes his appetite.

He wants you in a new way entirely. Against him, with him. He wants to taste more of you, drag his tongue along the plains of your body and see how else you’ll react to him. He wants to find the places that quicken your breath. Would you sing your pleasure for him? He’s barely heard your voice, but already he can imagine it vividly.

You would. You will.

He’s begun to pant at the thought alone, smoke wafting from his mouth, his eyes softly aglow with crimson light. The smell of you has filled his senses so thoroughly he feels intoxicated by it, and between his thighs, his cock has begun to throb. He leans closer and nestles into your hair, inhaling deeply, a rumble leaving him on a warm exhale.

His entire body has taken on the heavy pulse of his heart, alight with the most visceral feeling he’s had in centuries. This is more than hunger, more than carnality–you mean something. Never before has he felt compelled to find pleasure in the frail body of a human, yet his blood sings it voicelessly in the back of his mind, his every instinct screaming one word again and again and again.

Mate.

Homelander had given up on the concept of a mate a long time ago, given that he’s… abnormal. Sterile. As an unnatural creature, there could not be a natural match for him. Someone who would call to his very blood and set it aflame. Yet here you are, seeking him as desperately as he once sought you. Is that why you were able to accomplish what so few before you had, pushing your body so clearly beyond your limits?

A low, possessive rumble leaves him. Reckless.

He pets your hair, testing the texture with his fingers awhile before letting his hand roam down the back of your neck, between your shoulders, up over your hip, down your leg. You’re no longer cool to the touch or shivering. He flattens his palm to your back and closes his eyes briefly. He’s never heard of a dragon bonding to a human before. He wonders if you’ll feel it too, recognize it for what it is, or if your mortality will make you oblivious to the depths of it.

It takes every ounce of his restraint not to shake you awake to find out.

Instead, he patiently learns the cadence of your heart. He commits your scent to memory, weeding out the natural musk of your skin beneath the herbs and oils you’ve been lathered in. Soon enough he’ll be able to pick you out of a crowd by the thump of your pulse alone, track you down from miles away with nothing but the barest whiff of you.

Not that he’d ever let you get so far from him now that he has you.

All you’re missing now is his scent. Leaning down, he licks a line adjacent to the one he had prior, and then another, mindful of his horns. The sweet taste of you makes him moan. He spends hours with you tucked in against him, idling away the time by learning your body as well as teaching you his. He nuzzles his cheek lightly against yours just so that he can turn and taste that same spot, something deep and primal in him appeased by tasting himself on your skin.

“My mate,” he half sighs, half growls.

He can’t wait to meet you.

Consciousness comes back to you in a gradual slew of sensation. Your fingers twitch, flexing in what feels like a lush, thick pelt of fur beneath you. Your whole body is pleasantly warm, as if you’ve fallen asleep in front of a crackling hearth, the cold of those awful stone stairs a distant memory.

The stairs…

Your eyes snap wide open, your spine going stiff. You’re laying on your back. Something wet and hot is dragging along the exposed skin of your shoulder–your dress pulled askew–in repetitive swipes. Looking down, all you can see is a mess of flaxen colored hair and one long, angular horn, the tip of it adorned in gold. The press of what you can only imagine to be a tongue is unnaturally smooth, as hot as settled coal against your skin. The beast gives a growl, and sharp teeth graze your skin. Your throat feels tight, the scream that bubbles up locked behind the tension of your jaw.

Oh gods, you think, beginning to shake. He’s eating me!

“Good morning,” purrs a familiar voice, the words vibrating against your skin. He lifts his head from your shoulder, though he doesn’t go far. You half expect to see his maw bloodied with your entrails from all the horror stories you’ve been told, but his grin is as clean as it was the first moment you beheld him. Up close, he’s even larger than you had initially realized. His face is well defined, with strong cheekbones decorated with smooth red scales that ascend into his hairline, where a golden crown sits neatly behind his horns. “Mmm, someone got their beauty sleep,” he says, the words a low, pleased rumble. You’re speechless, watching in bewilderment as he cups your face, hand so large it covers most of your neck, too. “You were out for hours.”

Your eyes dart to your shoulder, where your dress has been tugged down, but your skin appears unmarred. Around you, one of his enormous wings is curved over, shielding you both from the light and the cold beyond. You can’t move your legs, and with a glance, you understand why: his enormous tail is draped across both of them, pinning you in place. You look back at him, eyes wide in fear and confusion. You wonder if he’s been with you like this through the entire night. “You’re… You’re not eating me?”

The broad smile he flashes makes your heart skip a beat. His eyes, though sharp and a shade of blue you’ve only ever seen in the sky, are disarmingly human. Beautiful, even. They crinkle at the corners with what almost looks like fondness.

“No.”

“Why not?” You ask instantly, adrenaline making your voice sharp. “Not that I wish for you to eat me,” you say just as quickly. “But do you not–were you not–” He cuts you off with a noise that you belatedly realize is a laugh, the resonance in his chest so unearthly it gives every sound he makes an inhuman quality. “No, I was not eating you,” he says, sounding far too amused for your liking. “Tasting you, yes. And you do taste divine,” he says, leaning in again. You push your head back into the furs as much as you can, but he moves to the side, bringing his lips to your ear. “I knew my mate would.” Mate?!

Your hands fly up to his chest–gods, he’s as warm as hearth stones–as if to push him back, but you may as well attempt to push an oak tree aside. “What?”

He draws back, glancing down at your hands pressed to the bare skin of his chest before his gaze returns to yours, eyes narrowed in distinct pleasure. “Mate,” he says again, deliberately drawing the word out. “Dragons bond only once in a lifetime. Usually to another dragon. Clearly exceptions can be made, and you, precious little thing that you are… appear to be mine.”

His eyes fall shut, he leans in, and with a lurch of your stomach you realize he means to kiss you, his lips pursed and rapidly approaching. Your own lips part and a noise wholly outside of your control escapes you; a scream so shrill and sudden that it knocks even him back in surprise.

Blinking several times, he gives you a quick once over, visibly expecting to see you wounded and bloody somewhere. He looks back to your face when he finds nothing amiss. “What?”

“I can’t–I don’t know you,” you blurt out, equal parts flustered and alarmed. You can feel yourself burning up, and it isn’t just from the heat of him against you.

“So?” He dismisses, smiling with an array of sharp pearly teeth. “I’m your mate.”

“Humans don’t have those,” you counter, squirming under the weight of his tail. It’s like he’s draped several sacks of grain across your legs. “My lord Devourer, I–”

He scoffs, tail lifting as he shifts, bringing himself up onto his hands and knees over you, his wing unfurling and allowing the sun to spill in, washing you both in its light. “Homelander. If you must use one of those silly names, use Homelander. I’d prefer beloved, though,” he says with a sly lilt to his mouth.

A shiver rolls down your spine. Along with light, brisk morning air has slipped in between your bodies.

“Homelander,” you repeat, a name you’ve never heard before. It’s a great deal less menacing than the others, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has been eating your townsman for as long as anyone can remember. “I–”

He takes hold of your jaw with just his index finger and thumb, the rest of his fingers curling lightly over your throat. “You talk too much,” he tells you, eyes hooded and hungry. “Are you going to scream every time I try to kiss you?”

“Maybe,” you choke out, fists clenched tightly in the furs beneath you. He leans closer, tilting his head, his nose barely brushing the tip of yours. “I’ve never been kissed by a dragon before. Like I said, we don’t have m-mmm!”

It happens so swiftly you don’t have time to gather the air to scream. He presses his lips firmly to yours, making a noise so close to a moan that, despite the relative chasteness of the kiss itself, you flush with the indecency of it. It feels… hot. The heat of him is nearly too much to handle, like touching your lips to a hot mug of tea, but there is something intoxicating about it. He uses that heat to mold you to him, pulling you closer, his body sinking down against yours.

You’re too dumbstruck by the whole of the situation to struggle–not that it would accomplish much–which leaves you to simply experience it. His lips are tentative against yours, not harsh or demanding. He coaxes yours with his as if to dance, luring you into something that almost feels good.

Your heart hammers in your chest, his warmth pooling in your belly and spreading slowly through the rest of your body like boiled water poured into a lukewarm tub. He’s immovable, inescapable, and to your dismay, not entirely awful.

“I want to claim you,” he all but growls against your lips, his other hand clawing slowly down your side, tugging at your dress.

Your heart leaps painfully against your ribs. “Homelander,” you say, though he’s hardly paying you any mind, kissing your cheek now, your jaw, carving a wicked trail with his lips while his hand dips lower and lower, seeking the bottom hem of your dress. Heart racing, you breathlessly cry, “Beloved!”

That gives him pause. He rears back to look down at you, head slightly cocked, eyes bright and attentive. Your breaths are shallow, pulse pounding in your throat. You swallow dryly. “I’m thirsty,” you tell him, which is no lie. Your throat is so dry it almost hurts to speak. “Horribly. And hungry, I’ve not eaten since yesterday’s breakfast. You mean for me to survive, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he says, expression twisting like he finds offense in your words. “You’ll want for nothing.”

“Then please. Water?” You push, praying that he is more man than beast.

He regards you quietly, eyes subtly darting back and forth. There’s a petulant kind of impatience to his gaze that catches you off-guard, like a boy who’s been told he has to wait before he gets to play with his new favorite toy. “Water,” he echoes eventually. You nod. He startles you when he exhales a little plume of smoke from his nose, reluctantly lifting himself off of you. The chill of his absence is immediate. “Don’t move,” he says, suddenly looking displaced. You’ve caught him by surprise. Perhaps you’ll survive this yet.

You watch him rise to his full height, standing easily eight feet tall. You sit up, pulling the furs over your legs to combat the cold seeping in. The muscles of his back give a mesmerizing flex as he stretches his wings out, the span of them just as jaw-dropping as his height. He wears furs over his shoulders held in place with thick leather straps that cross over his back and chest, emphasizing his musculature as well as the crimson plating that covers his body. Spines run down the length of his back, transitioning down into a tail that’s even longer than he is tall. It moves along the ground in zigzags, almost like a serpent. You don’t realize how intensely you’re staring until you look back up and realize he’s looking at you over his shoulder, those piercing blue eyes keenly set on yours.

The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smirk. Something about his expression makes you feel like you’ve been caught doing something naughty. You drop your gaze. “Back in a jiffy,” he says. You look up just in time to see him step off the ledge, those brilliant red wings fanning out behind him. He disappears so suddenly that you can’t help but gasp, sitting up on your knees. You hear the beat of wings against the air, and then a second later see him lift back up into the skyline, twisting in the air before gliding back down out of sight.

You sit in stunned silence, listening to the fading thrum of his wings. It doesn’t feel real. You don’t know if this is some kind of twisted game he pulls with every sacrifice, or if you’re truly somehow different. You weren’t entirely expecting him to listen to you, but he did. He’s gone, presumably to fetch you food and water. You don’t know how, but you just commanded the Devourer to not only let you go, but bring you a meal.

In hindsight, you’re a little concerned that it was never specified what kind of meal. As far as you’re aware, he primarily eats people.

Adjusting your gown, you haul yourself up to your feet, crossing your arms in a vain attempt to protect the heat of his body lingering on your skin. When that doesn’t work, you pick up one of the several fur pelts strewn on the floor and drape it over your shoulders, sighing in relief. The pelt still holds some residual warmth; a boon over the lovely but ineffective fabric of your ceremonial gown.

In the light of day, you can make out a great deal more detail throughout the lair. The floor to ceiling archways deter you from venturing too far beyond the center, but still there is plenty to investigate. For example, the throne catches your eye immediately. The size of it makes you feel like a child again, navigating a world not built for you. The masonry of it is exceptionally smooth beneath your fingers, save for a handful of deep, jagged gouges that marr the arm rest. Tilting your head, you realize that you recognize these marks: they match those that you’d seen on the ruined murals.

You trace them with your fingers, connecting them now to the draconic claws that, just moments ago, had so delicately followed the curve of your body. He could so easily tear you apart, and yet in that moment you had never known a gentler touch. You pull your hand back beneath the pelt, feeling a shiver roll through you that has little to do with the morning chill.

Mate. That word sticks in your brain like a wad of gummy tree sap.

Circling the throne, you carefully step around the glimmering mess of gold, silver and jewels that litter the stone floor. There’s so much of it that it doesn’t even look real, stacked over itself like forgotten hay bales left to rot. There is more wealth here than you’ve seen in your life. A single satchel of it would keep you comfortable for the rest of your life, and yet here it serves as little more than clutter. As far as you can tell, it means nothing here.

The Devourer stopped seeking material treasure generations ago.

As you explore, part of you expects to find the corpses of all those who have come before you. Dozens upon dozens of bodies stacked up in varying states of consumption or decay, or maybe a monument built of their bones. You find no such construct, though. In fact, nothing about this place seems put together. You can’t imagine the madness that living like this for a week would induce in you, let alone decades.

To the east, movement catches your attention, startling your heart into your throat. It looks like a silhouetted figure at first, but your brain catches up quickly, and you approach the gently billowing fabric. It’s draped over a statue, giving it the illusion of a person, and your curiosity gets the best of you as you tug the drape down off of it.

You suck in a sharp breath. Once again, you find yourself faced with a legend given form– a painstakingly and intricately carved statue in the Devourer’s perfect likeness. It comes as no surprise that this is the only in-tact statue you’ve seen, but what you don’t understand is why it’s even here. If the Devourer was a usurper, some vicious interloper, why would there be a monument to him in the same vein as all the others?

The plaque beneath it reads: Homelander. Son of the Skies, Protector of the Earth.

Devourer, Scourge, Flame’s Maw–these names are all you have ever known, and yet this is the name carved in stone. He was once worshiped not out of fear, but reverence that you can see in every gentle curve of stone.

What happened?

Shuffling closer to the statue, the discarded fabric gathers at your feet. It’s not quite to scale, but it’s a handsome likeness nonetheless. It’s certainly been cared for more than anything else in this place. You wonder if it’s just vanity or if it’s something less obvious. You trace the smooth stonework, letting yourself get a better look at this version of him that’s less likely to eat you.

Objectively speaking, it’s a handsome visage. The resemblance is uncanny, clearly the work of an intensely skilled mason. His jaw is strong, eyes set forward in unerring determination. Tentatively, you touch the lips of the statue. He’d been so certain that he wanted to kiss you. Just the thought of his closeness and heat makes your stomach erupt in a flutter of butterflies.

Mate.

“I thought I told you not to move.”

You barely hear the full sentence, your own scream ringing loudly in your ears. You move to spin around, but your foot catches on the pile of fabric you had dropped to the ground and suddenly your whole body is pitching backwards, the back of your skull destined for the smooth, unyielding stone behind you. Fortunately for your brain matter, your descent is halted just shy of contact, one familiar clawed hand cupping the back of your neck while the other lands at your back, steadying you.

Homelander stands over you, a curious quirk to his brow. With his hand at the small of your back, his claws press lightly through the fabric, effortlessly upholding your weight. He holds you as if you’ve been caught mid dip in a dance.

“Gods, you scared me,” you say, eyes wide. “I didn’t hear you.” You had been so certain you would hear his return based on the sound of his wings when he’d left, but his approach had been terrifyingly silent.

“Yes, I know. It makes me a very effective hunter,” he says, dipping down to nuzzle at your neck, taking advantage of how the pelt has slipped off of your shoulder. He inhales the smell of you, prickling goosebumps all over your body. “I missed you.”

“You’ve barely been gone,” you reply impulsively, awkwardly trying to adjust yourself out of this arch he has you in. No use. His size makes him impossible to maneuver around, and your foot is still tangled up in the fabric that he’s currently standing on.

He gives another one of those rumbling sighs, drawing back to look at you. “You’re supposed to say that you missed me, too,” he chastises you, and though his tone seems light, you’re sure you see a flicker of impatience or irritation in his gaze. Maybe both. Despite how fearsome the sum total of his features make him, you’re once again caught off guard by his eyes. Though the color of them is icy, there’s a distinctly human warmth to them that grounds you in his gaze.

Still, the last thing you want to do is make him angry.

“Oh,” you croak quietly, realizing he’s actually waiting for you to say it, staring down expectantly while he holds you. “I… missed you, too,” you return stiltedly, unsure your hesitant delivery will be satisfactory. Shockingly, his expression lightens, lips curving into a smile. He lifts you off of your feet, untangling you from the mess beneath you and turning around to set you back down on relatively clear flooring.

“Good,” he purrs, stroking his hand down the back of your head like he’s petting an animal. He seems determined to touch you, but entirely unaware of how to. He cups the base of your skull and tightens the gap between your bodies, enticing you with his warmth as much as he terrifies you with the hunger in his eyes.

You put your hands to his chest, soaking up the heat of him as you vainly try to maintain an ounce of personal space. “Ah, the–the statue, it’s beautiful. Why do you cover it up?” You ask, the words leaving you in a flustered tumble.

He pauses, glancing over his shoulder, looking at the statue like he’s only just remembered it exists. “Oh, that. Mmm. Don’t always like what he has to say,” he replies, fitting his hand over top of yours, pressing it to his chest. You blink. What in the world does that mean? “You humans chill so quickly. I’ll have to light the hearth next time I leave you,” he says, earning a yelp from you as he abruptly lifts you up into his arms, tail slithering audibly along the floor as he carries you back to what you suppose for all intents and purposes is his nest. His touch instantly warms you to your core, making the fur you wrapped yourself in seem like a thin sheet in comparison. Despite your apprehension, you can’t help the way the tension in your body naturally eases with his warmth. Upon returning to the collection of pelts, you see the fruits of his labor.

Literal fruits, in fact.

Homelander has returned with a small bounty consisting of apples, two melons, and even a handful of peaches, all of it held in a beautiful–albeit aged–woven basket. You don’t get the chance to eat those often; the trees they fall from grow high on the surrounding mountains, and the farmers in your village are content enough with the established agriculture that no one bothers to grow them.

In addition, a tall golden pitcher stands filled to the brim with water. You’re once again hyper aware of just how incredibly thirsty you are, lips dry, throat parched. It’s the only thing you care about, clambering towards it the second Homelander sets you back on your feet.

The pitcher is heavy. It appears made of solid gold and it’s three times the size of any you’ve ever seen before. You don’t lift it so much as you just tip it back slightly, sighing loudly as you drink back the crisp, clear water. You sputter as the flow abruptly increases, water spilling from the corners of your mouth. Homelander has lifted the pitcher to help you drink, holding it one handed as if it’s no more than a drinking cup, his other hand settled upon your waist. He looks thoroughly pleased with himself, eyes half-lidded, lips gently curved upwards. Once you’ve drunk your fill, you push against his hold and he relents quickly, unnerving you with just how attentive he really is. He sets the pitcher back down and watches you wipe your chin dry.

“Thank the gods,” you sigh habitually, finally not feeling as though there’s grit in your throat with every word.

“I’d prefer you thanked me,” he says coyly, his gaze drifting down to where the water has wet your gown. The fabric clings to your skin, sheer where liquid has touched it.

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Thank you, Homelander,” you correct. It’s taking every ounce of your fortitude to speak in full sentences with the way he’s staring at you, let alone the idle way his thumb is stroking your hip. No one has ever touched you with this mixture of ease and clear intent, the weight of his hand practically thrumming against you. The magnitude of him is a difficult thing to parse both in terms of his sheer size and the legend he represents. You don’t know how to reconcile him with the monster you grew up dreading.

No one warned you that monsters could be warm and handle you gently.

“Time to eat,” he says, setting the pitcher back down. He takes hold of both of your hips and pulls you down with him as he sits cross-legged on the pelts, the circle of his legs large enough that you fit perfectly inside it, your own legs hanging out over his crossed calves. His tail loops around as well, encircling him and draping over your legs. The underside of his tail is not unlike the belly of a snake, with large overlapping scales that layer down the length of it. It’s just as warm as the rest of him, and feels like an unnaturally soft stone that’s been baking in the sun.

Reaching over, Homelander plucks one of the peaches from the assortment. It looked perfectly average in the basket, but between his fingers it looks almost comically small. With a deftness that you wouldn’t expect from a creature of his size, he begins to slice through the peach with his blackened claws, delicately cutting out a wedge that he does not hand you, but he instead brings it directly to your lips.

You stare for a moment, struck by the rich red center of the fruit, how the juice of it drips onto his hand in sweet smelling rivulets. You turn to look at him over your shoulder, and he quirks a brow, nodding towards the slice of fruit. You decide that of all the potential battles you have in front of you, this one in particular isn’t worth fighting, and you part your lips, watching him as you do.

His own lips mimic yours, falling apart in quiet entrancement. He slides the wedge between your teeth and watches with rapt fascination as you bite down on it, holding his gaze in an exchange that feels so unexpectedly raw and intimate, your pulse ticks up a notch. You swear he notices it by the way his head tilts ever so slightly, almost as if he’s listening.

“Good?” He asks, voice little more than a rumble.

Gods above and below, it is good. Despite the preternatural heat of his hand, the succulent flesh of the peach retains the morning chill, sweet and cool on your tongue. It’s perfectly ripe, yielding easily to the cut of your teeth and flooding richly across your tongue as you chew. He feeds it to you until it disappears, pressing the last of it in with his thumb, which then follows the line of your bottom lip, smearing the sweet juice on it. You nod and lick your lips, tongue narrowly missing his thumb, and what that does to his expression makes your stomach flip.

He’s quick to cut another slice to offer you. You repeat this process in silence, the air thick with tension that feels so palpable you’re sure you could swim through it. The sounds of the world have narrowed entirely to the sound of his claw cutting through the delicate flesh of the fruit and the tip lightly scraping the pit inside it. His hands have a sticky shine to them by the time he’s tossing the pit back into the basket, stripped as clean as a bone.

You chew your final bite, jaw slowing as you watch him take his fingers into his own mouth. He’s unabashed in the way he slurps the nectar off his digits, tongue slipping between them. That’s when you realize that his tongue splits down the middle, dexterously sliding over his fingers to lap up every drop of juice. Not only that, but you spot a flash of gold; the same kind of piercing he has on his ears. Watching him stirs something hot in you, a radiating heat that lights a flickering pulse between your thighs. You audibly gulp the last of your bite, tensing subtly when Homelander looks at you.

Slowly, his lips curl into a devious smile. “See something you like?”

You flush, fighting the urge to look away. Don’t play into it. Change the subject. “What happened to your last mate?”

His expression shifts to something slightly more incredulous. “There wasn’t one. You’re my first, my last, my only. Dragons only bond once,” he says, that split tongue rolling along his sharp teeth, that gold tongue piercing clicking against them. You wonder where else he’s decorated himself with gold.

Wait, what did he say? Your gaze snaps back up from his mouth to his eyes, which are once more set into that self-satisfied slant. He’s closer to you now, and nearing by the second.

My first, my last, my only.

“But I am no dragon,” you say, leaning away subtly, though there isn’t far to go. He’s got you trapped nicely in place, like a butterfly beneath pins. “How could such a bond form?”

“I’m as mystified as you are,” he says, his hand sliding up the small of your back. “I didn’t think a bond was even possible for me. Apparently there’s something different about you,” he says, and you notice a brief twitch of his lip, a flicker that looks just a touch like disdain. It disappears as quickly as it had appeared. “Something special,” he murmurs, close enough that you can feel the heat of his breath on your cheek.

Your heart races, your capacity for thought slowly disappearing the closer to you he gets. New subject, new subject! You think, frazzled by the warm spiced smell of him. His hand flexes on your hip, claws prickling your skin through your dress. “Aren’t you hungry?” You ask, eyes darting to the basket full of fruit just to his side.

“Yeah,” he rasps, voice so low you feel it reverberate. His nose brushes your cheek, trailing down from your jaw to your neck. You shiver, and the pulse between your thighs grows into a steady throb. He inhales deeply. “I’m famished.”

The world around you spins and the next thing you know, you’re on your back staring up at the aged banners draped along the stone ceiling, the fur pelts warm and plush beneath you. Homelander pins your arms down at your sides, once more poised on his hands and knees over you. His tongue draws a wet molten line from the collar of your dress to your throat, and you let out a soft, nervous cry as his teeth graze your skin.

Perhaps he’s going to devour you after all.

Oh gods! Gods, gods, gods, please no!

“Wait, wait! Don’t–please don’t eat me,” you plead in a panic, pushing up against his hands with all of your might. He doesn’t yield at all. You may as well be pushing against the stone walls of the tower itself.

He does laugh, however. It’s that same rumble of amusement that travels through your skin and into the core of you. “For the last time, I’m not eating you. I can smell your arousal, though. Practically taste it in the fucking air,” he says, trailing lower down your chest with every word, brazenly nuzzling the space between your breasts before continuing down. A wave of humiliation rolls through you at his words, and you look away. He releases your arms in favor of sliding his hands up your bare legs, pushing your dress up with them. “I’m just going to have a little lick.”

Frantically, you try to grab at him as soon as your hands are free. “Hold on, stop–”

“Enough!” He snarls suddenly, startling you quiet. You swear for just a moment that his eyes flash crimson. You clutch your hands to your chest. “You’ll not be harmed. Understand? Just… let me,” he says tersely, gaze hard before gradually softening as you silence yourself, watching him with wide, uncertain eyes. Satisfied, he lowers back down.

His sharp claws kiss harmless welts all the way up your legs, up to your hips, where he catches the band of your undergarments. He hooks his fingers over the waistband and drags them down, seeming to enjoy the way you pant and writhe under him, your heart racing.

“Have mercy,” you slip in quietly, squirming beneath the hot press of his hands, though you’re no longer struggling against him. “I’ve never–no one’s ever–I’m inexperienced,” you desperately explain, your mind running wild with what his size will mean for you if he decides he wants more than to taste you–to claim you, as he’d said before.

“Good,” he replies simply, pushing your knees up into a bend on either side of his head. “As you should be. As am I,” he says, turning his head to drag his split tongue in swirling patterns on your inner thigh, moaning at the taste of you.

You grip the pelts beneath you, brows furrowing. You stare down at the top of his head in confusion. “You are?”

“I told you. I’ve never had a mate. I’ve never felt the need to put my cock into what I intended to eat,” he says against your skin, erupting goosebumps all over your thighs. That should horrify you, but you’re instantly distracted by the sheer burning heat of his breath wafting over your wet cunt, a gasp slipping from your lips when he eagerly presses his tongue to it.

His tongue feels as smooth as glass, like liquid in the way it contours to your every curve. The split of it rubs on either side of your clit, massaging it between the two sides in a way that makes your knees shake. “Ffffuck,” he groans, immediately pushing his tongue into you, licking up the wetness of you twice as eagerly as he had that ripe peach.

You buck against him, a moan escaping you. The sound only encourages him to plunge his tongue deeper, that golden stud on his tongue brushing hotly against your inner walls. He drags it up and pushes it flush, half inside you and half grinding against your clit before pushing back in deep. It feels unlike anything you’ve ever known, so much better than your own curious, clumsy fingers. He laves attention on you like he’s starved for it, drinking just as thirstily as you had from the pitcher.

There’s no rhythm to the way he moves, no sense of consistency. He slips his hands under your ass and tugs you forward with ease, lifting you to push his thick split tongue even further inside you, plunging it in and out, growing greedier with every dive. He growls low in the back of his throat, tail thudding repeatedly against the floor. Instead of the little lick he claimed he was after, he’s working himself into an obvious frenzy feasting on you.

“H-Homelander, please,” you keen, his relentlessness rapidly building an unfamiliar pressure within you. He’s as sloppy as he is voracious, the wet sound of him obscene and loud in the enormous lair. His claws bite into your ass where he holds it firmly to his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to hear you. If he does, he’s taking it only as encouragement.

His tongue touches something inside you that makes your whole body jolt. You grab hold of both of his horns, your back arching as you desperately cling to them. You’re certain you meant to shove him back, to struggle. Instead, your body is ablaze as you yank hard on his horns, hitching your leg over his shoulder and riding his tongue with a shaking gasp.

The pressure bursts, and the wave of euphoria that crashes down on you is unlike anything you’ve ever known. You convulse against his mouth, walls tightening around the intrusion. You don’t recognize your own voice in the sounds you make as he continues to ruthlessly fuck you soaked and open with his tongue, his breaths so hot they nearly burn. The waves of your climax feel like they’ll never end, spurred on by every deep, wet thrust.

“Homelander! It’s too much, Homelander, too much, please, please–beloved, please, I can’t, I can’t,” you beg, desperate to get his attention. You’re on the verge of sobs when he finally withdraws his long molten tongue from you. You suck in a shuddering breath, releasing his horns and collapsing back against the pelts, sweat prickling along your hairline.

However, your shallow breaths are nothing compared to the sound of Homelander’s ragged panting. He looks entirely wild, smoke billowing from his mouth and nose, his cheeks flushed a dark red, the lower half of his face shiny with a mixture of your slick and his own drool. He takes his hands from under you and yanks the sash around his waist loose, dropping it to the side. Reaching behind him, he unfastens his pants.

Your mind is still a haze, but even through the delirium, you’re shocked by what you see when that rich navy fabric falls from his waist: his cock is as large as the rest of him, thick and dripping. The underside of it is strangely ribbed, a feature you’re certain is to be attributed to his draconic nature. Not only that, but he’s adorned in gold here, too, with a ring pierced into the head of his cock and studs between each ridge. Your eyes widen.

It’ll never fit.

Nevertheless, he looks entirely undeterred. Homelander adjusts himself between your legs, eyes thoroughly glazed over with lust, and presses his nearly scalding palms to your inner thighs, pushing them into a wide spread and down to the ground. Arousal and fear lance through you like a twin bolt of lightning.

“H-hold on,” you stutter, lifting a trembling hand. “I–” Bending over you, he silences you with a firm kiss. You press your hands to his chest and feel it thrumming beneath your palms, the heat of him more intense than ever. You can’t help but moan softly into it, overtaken by the smell of sex and something akin to burning incense. His tongue slips as deftly into your mouth as it did your cunt. Even after having felt it inside you, it’s thicker in your mouth than you’re prepared for, sliding in deeper, like he means to fuck you with it here, too.

It wholly distracts you until you feel a heavy, blunt press to your wet cunt. You make a half-hearted noise of protest, but his only answer is a low rumbling growl, claws biting into the meat of your thighs as he holds you still, effectively gagging you on his tongue.

His cock is as hot as the rest of him, but a great deal more solid than his malleable tongue. The thickness of it slowly spreads you wide, an aching pressure. You’re not sure if the burn of it is from the stretch or the heat, but either way it’s driving you insane. It’s hot and painful and good, frictionless with how thoroughly he soaked you, and despite your nerves, your cunt is loose with orgasm. It’s as if your body, independent of your mind, is eager to welcome him in.

You make a keening noise, the sound of it muffled in this devouring kiss. You grab hold of the leather straps across his chest and yank on them, twisting at them, but nothing takes your mind from how intense it feels to be split apart on the fat head of his cock.

The sounds Homelander makes in response are downright bestial, low and rumbling from his chest. Your only relief is when the widest swell of his cockhead finally breaches you, just the tip of it settling perfectly inside you. You cry out when he gives an exploratory backwards pull, and then shivers as he begins to rock gently, breathing heavily from his nose as he fucks you with nothing more than the head of his cock.

You’re starting to feel lightheaded, pitchy little noises leaving you with every exhale. Homelander sharpens his pace, breaking the kiss with a loud, carnal moan as he tips his head back. He’s barely even inside you and yet the girth of him is overwhelming, the ridges of his cock stimulating you in ways you didn’t know possible, the fat curved head rubbing against that same spot inside you that his tongue had previously made you see stars with.

Thoroughly overwhelmed by the incomprehensible assault of sensations, tears gather in your eyes. That pressure is building back up in you once more, starting at the base of your spine and slowly crawling up it. Desperate to tether yourself, to feel connected, you move your hand from the strap at his chest and touch his face. To your surprise, that instantly snaps his attention down to you, his beautiful blue eyes lost in a crimson glow.

Homelander meets your gaze, some level of cognizance returning to him, and whimpers, something hidden and vulnerable escaping in that exchange. He bends down, his nose brushing yours, and rests his forehead against yours while his thrusts grow more and more erratic, but never deeper. He fucks you in shallow, jagged snaps until finally that mounting pressure overwhelms you and you come again, simultaneously squeezing him into his own sudden release.

The flood of him inside you is burning hot, spilling into your core even from here, and he practically roars with it, burying that loud primal cry into the crook of your neck while his body stills, releasing pulse after pulse of thick, hot seed into you.

His breath billows hotly across your neck, the burning scent of him thick in the air. Your mind is so addled by your own euphoria that it takes you time to realize he’s speaking, fervent murmurings against your skin. “M’sorry, still, be still, I’m–don’t move,” he rasps, fractured little noises leaving him in between his words. You choke on your own breath when he sinks in, working you open slowly, shivers pitching up and down your spine. Gods above, he isn’t done.

Surely he doesn’t mean for you to take all of it… Does he?

You moan weakly, pushing your hand up into his hair and grabbing hold, which elicits a rumbling sigh from him in return. It’s silkier than you expected it to be. “Too big, it’s too much, it’s not–it’s not going to fit,” you pant out, screwing your eyes shut tight. While his release had initially softened him some, you can already feel his cock filling back out. Every bit he slips in further, you feel the mess of his release being forced out of you, come dripping down your thighs, slicking the way for the rest of him.

“It will,” he says at your ear, kissing the spot just below your earlobe, then your neck, his tongue slipping out to taste the sweat there before he kisses that same spot. He’s set upon you like an animal, lost to the drive of instinct, determined to fulfill his promise to claim what is his. “It will because it must. Because it’s yours. Because you’re mine.”

Homelander releases a breathy whine, sounding just as overstimulated as you are, nuzzling at your throat while he slowly works his way deeper, practically vibrating with restraint. He sounds as overwhelmed as you feel, but he refuses to stop, to lose. He holds you in place, growling whenever you squirm or struggle against him. The feel of it is dizzying, unbelievably hot and heavy, like fire given form, filling you in ways you didn’t know were possible. You’re feeling it again, the slow rise of that carnal pleasure building to an inevitable climax, and your whole body trembles with it.

You make a desperate keening noise, and Homelander hushes you, kissing your shoulder. “Sshhh, good, you’re doing so well for me. Don’t move yet, it’s almost over. You were made for this, for me. You feel it, don’t you? How easily your cunt opens to me. Nnngh, hah… Fuck, you fit me. You fit me. You do, and you always will,” he pants, voice hitching.

He slides his hands from your thighs to your waist, the press of his claws just shy of painful. With one final move, he lets out a quaking moan as he pulls you down onto the last of it, finally burying himself completely in your snug, come-soaked cunt.

The fullness of it breaks you–snapping the last tether that was holding you in place–and you come again, your velvety walls seizing up around him impossibly tight before spasming your pleasure around every vein, ridge and piercing he has. You can feel the shape of him so viscerally that you’re sure your body will remember it, carved out in the shape of his cock forevermore.

He cries out with your release, a reverberating sound that you feel all the way down to the marrow of your bones. You don’t know if he’s more in pleasure or pain, but he makes no move to retreat. Instead, he brings you that tiny bit closer, pressing every inch of your body to his. He rides out your pleasure, panting a wet spot into the crook of your neck.

Tears roll from your eyes to your temple, disappearing into your hairline as you breathe roughly. You’re overwhelmingly hot, oversensitized and raw, but as the aftershocks of your orgasm fade, your body steadily loses that quiver. You feel as if you’re melting down into the furs, struggling to even keep your eyes open as a gentle ecstasy sweeps over you.

Once he recovers enough, he lifts himself up onto his hands, and then sits back onto his legs, his hands on your hips to lift you partially into his lap to keep himself buried deep, hitching your legs around his waist. His eyes are completely glazed over, lips parted around heavy, hungry breaths. He doesn’t look at all sated. If anything, the look of his desire has only intensified, despite his obvious sensitivity. Sliding his hands up your body, he pushes your pretty white dress all the way up over your head, tossing it to the side so that he may finally see all of you.

“Look at you,” he breathes, voice utterly frayed. He stares at you as though you’re a vision sent from the gods, a nymph plucked from the heavens and nestled snugly upon his cock. His hand sweeps down your stomach, settling low on it, where he lightly presses down. You both moan with the pressure, with how keenly you both feel it. “Told you it would fit,” he says, but his voice is not smug. There’s a breathless wonder to it, like he’s awestruck by the look of your body against his.

His tongue rolls out to sweep along his lips. He opens his mouth, and you can see threads of saliva snapping between his sharp teeth, his mouth wet with hunger. He continues to reverently stroke your stomach, his large splayed hand easily covering the expanse of it. “You’ll make a beautiful mother,” he says, a concept you don’t even know how to begin to unravel, but the way he says it makes you feel worshiped. “Perfect. So fucking perfect for me,” he says, a shudder in his voice. His crimson wings spread and curve in on either side of you, the hooked tips of them bracing on the stone floor.

“Mother?” You slur belatedly. You feel dizzy, your body as warm as burning coals and tingling all over. He lifts your legs one at a time, bringing each one up parallel to his chest. They hook over his shoulders as he leans forward, wasting no before time kissing you. His wings support his weight while he grips your thighs, squeezing possessively.

“Mother,” he confirms between kisses, bending you practically in half as he begins to rut against you. He’s not thrusting so much as he’s grinding into you, wringing a low moan from you. “You want that, don’t you? I’ll keep you safe. Feed you. Fuck you. I’ll take care of you, be yours, and you’ll be mine, won’t you? Sweet little thing, fucked happy and heavy with my children. Tell me. Tell me you want that.”

“Yes,” you moan, kneading the furs on either side of you. He paints a beautiful picture in your mind of fresh fruit, crisp water, and this dreamlike pleasure for the rest of your days. Beneath him, any thoughts of the world outside this moment melt away. There’s only the two of you, resplendently warm and living amongst the clouds. “I want it. I want–I want you,” you say, touching either side of his face. He leans heavily into your touch, his eyes falling shut. A soft noise that sounds like relief escapes him as you kiss him, coaxing that long, clever tongue out to meet yours.

The eagerness with which he reciprocates nearly chokes you, his tongue slipping over yours and halfway down your throat before pulling back, practically devouring you in this kiss. In your fever, this consuming passion feels so much like love it makes your head spin, makes you forget where, when and who you are. He breaks the kiss to moan unabashedly, shifting to put his lips to your throat, mouthing at your skin like he’s trying desperately not to sink his teeth in. The thought thrills you. You almost want him to.

“Again,” he pants, grip tightening on your thighs. “Say it again, please.”

“I want you,” you say again, more certain now. The desperation in him is disarming, and despite the animalism of him, you can clearly see the man in him now, hear it in the way he pleads for you to indulge him. That and the euphoric spill of pleasure electrifying your every nerve imbues you with some kind of sense of power, and however misplaced it may be, you immediately feel drunk on it. You can feel your body beginning to build back towards that ultimate swell of euphoria again. “I want to be yours. I want you to be mine.”

He groans, dipping lower to suck a mark at the junction between your neck and shoulder. This time, when you feel the brush of his teeth, you don’t shy away. You cup the back of his head and drag your nails down his scalp. Homelander thrusts his hips jaggedly, wringing a throaty gasp out of you. “Keep talking,” he demands, but you hear the plea for what it is.

“You feel good. Y-you fit,” you say, echoing his own words, though it’s getting harder to speak with the way he’s starting to fuck you in earnest, just barely withdrawing before he drives back in, as if he can’t bare to be more than an inch outside of you. You moan for him, chasing the bliss swelling rapidly between your legs.

Wait… Something really is swelling.

“What is that?” You ask, voice reedy. You whimper. Somehow, it feels as though he’s getting bigger. “What’s h-nnngh, what’s happening?” Your words are starting to slur together again, your mind split down the middle between your mounting orgasm, and the surreal feeling of the base of his cock growing inside you.

“Knot,” he explains between swipes of his tongue. “Keeps every drop of me inside you,” he says, giving a shuddering moan as that swell catches on the rim of your cunt when he tries to draw back. Just when you thought you had adjusted, that swell makes you ache, has you whimpering and squirming under him.

He could have told you it would get bigger!

“Oh gods, it–mmm, I’m–it feels–” You stop and start again and again, writhing, but he keeps you firmly in place, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh loud in your ears as he fucks you harder and faster, spurred on by the quiver of your cunt as your own climax nears.

“Come for me again. Show me that you want it. I want to feel your pretty little cunt squeeze my cock for my come,” he urges, voice reduced to a rough growl in your ear. He sounds like he’s barely holding himself together, every word more strained than the last. “Give it to me. Give yourself to me.”

The tug of his swollen knot bouncing off of your rim and the feel of his thick ridged cock massaging your walls completely overwhelms you. “Y-yes, okay, I’m–oh gods, gods, I’m–I’m coming, Homelander, Homelander!” You call, lips falling open on a silent scream as your throat locks up, a third orgasm crashing down on you with a force that knocks the air out of your lungs.

Homelander muffles his own cry into the crook of your neck, stilling halfway through your orgasm with one final slam. This time, the rush of his release is pressed tightly against your cervix, pooling inside you with nowhere to go, his knot doing precisely what he said it would. The heat of it fills you in hot, rushing spurts, his cock jerking against your spasming walls with every load he empties into you.

A sudden stinging pain makes you gasp, confusion seeping into the euphoria that has thoroughly addled your brain. Fuck, you realize he’s biting you. His teeth sink in as smoothly as a knife through fresh butter, the sting giving way to the sheer heat of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue, and the inexplicable way it intensifies your orgasm.

The room falls deafeningly quiet save for the pound of your own heart in your ears and the heavy way you’re each catching your respective breath. Your arms fall bonelessly to your sides as you pant, your vision slightly blurry. Homelander begins lapping at your shoulder, soothing the spot he’d bitten. Your whole body feels heavy, stuffed fuller than you ever could have conceived possible. All you can do is whine as he adjusts you, gingerly bringing your legs down to settle on either side of him.

You’re not sure how you’ll ever get off of his cock now that you’re on it. His knot feels like a permanent part of you, fitted so snugly that, just as promised, you don’t feel a single drop spill.

Homelander doesn’t stop at your neck. He drags his tongue down to the dip of your clavicle, where it splits apart slightly anywhere it moves over bone. It feels surreal, but somehow different from the first time you woke to him licking you. For starters, you’re not terrified he’s going to eat you. That has an entirely new connotation now.

He moves down further, slinking down into the valley between your breasts, sighing as he pushes them together to lave his tongue between. He’s languid, practically purring with each breath as he savors the feel and the taste of you. You don’t have it in you to feel much more than exhausted, your limbs as heavy as stone, but it does feel good. Your breath catches when he opens his lips around one of your nipples, sucking almost half of your breast into his preternaturally hot mouth. His pierced tongue swirls over your nipple while his teeth flex precariously against the tender flesh. You lurch, letting out a breathy noise.

“Careful, please,,” you exhale, earning a glance up from him. His eyes are completely glazed over, soft and dark in a way that takes your breath away. He hums quietly in some weak acknowledgement before his eyes flutter closed, his throat bobbing with every swallow as he sucks your breast with unexpected gentility.

Watching him stirs a wash of strange feelings in you. With what little strength you have, you bring your hand up to touch his horn, contemplating the texture of it beneath your fingers. You follow the line of it down to his skull, tracing his hairline just beneath the crown that adorns his head, slipping behind his sharply pointed ear. He’s truly incredible to behold up close like this, beautiful without the lens of terror you had been viewing him through.

On some level, you know you should still be afraid, but it’s a difficult feeling to muster when he’s warm and lax on your chest with his cock buried inside you, suckling on your breast as you’re still riding the high of three consecutive climaxes.

You push your fingers into his flaxen hair. You’ve never seen hair this color before except in very young children. In your experience, age always darkens it away to a sandy color, but his is as bright and warm as sunshine. There doesn’t seem to be any part of him that isn’t golden. He exhales a deep sigh as you run your nails along his scalp, nuzzling sweetly against you. You smile despite yourself.

Who would have thought that a dragon might be so very much like an overgrown house cat?

When Homelander lifts his head, his tongue is the last to leave, returning to his mouth with a wet slide across his lips. He’s left your skin shiny with saliva, but he isn’t finished. He immediately lowers himself to your other breast, taking it into his mouth in precisely the same way. You bring your other hand up into his hair and continue to massage his scalp, earning yourself an appreciative little moan from low in his throat, his tail sliding audibly back and forth on the stone floor.

The two of you lay like that for an indeterminate amount of time. You drift in and out of consciousness, worn thin and soothed by the heat of his body seeping into your muscles, fairly certain you’ll never be able to sit up on your own again. Homelander eventually releases your breast with a soft pop and settles his head on your sternum, narrowly avoiding taking one of your eyes out with his horn. You continue to stroke through his hair as your strength gradually returns.

The swell of his knot, too, lessens, but even soft his cock fits snugly inside you. It isn’t until Homelander gingerly lifts himself off of you that it slides out, coming free with a significant gush that soaks your thighs and puddles beneath you. You flush, making a strained little noise. You feel carved out and left hollow by the sheer size of him. His wings withdraw and tuck in behind him while he sits back on his legs to admire the splay of you beneath him.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, smoothing his hands up and down your thighs. You’ve never felt as exposed as you do in this moment, laid bare under his gaze. Even now, visibly drunk on pleasure and thoroughly satiated, there is an undeniable lingering famine in his stare. He sinks down and slowly spreads your legs apart, leaning in to run his tongue up the crease of your inner thigh. He laps languidly at your skin, earning hitched little breaths and sounds from you as his tongue deftly cleans the mess he’s made of you. He’s much more tame now than he had been, focusing not on overstimulating you, but simply washing you. It’s a strange and animalistic thing to do, but it’s intimate, too. Sweet, even.

Gods, he’s really done a number on your psyche.

Once he’s satisfied with the state of you, he climbs back up and settles on his side, looking at you with his hand poised over you, hovering like he isn’t sure what to do with it. His expression starts to shift, concern seeping into it. “You’re quiet. Did I hurt you?”

You huff a little breath. You’re quiet because you’ve just been fucked within an inch of your life by a dragon’s cock, but aside from that, of course he had. “You bit me, for starters.”

He turns somewhat sheepish at that. “Instinct. I wanted to mark you.”

“You succeeded,” you say, touching your shoulder tentatively.The skin is still raw, but it isn’t bleeding. It doesn’t even feel like it’s going to scab.

You must wear your confusion plainly, because Homelander is quick to explain: “I sealed the wound. It should be fully healed by sundown.”

“How did you seal it?” You ask, bolder now with how you touch it. It feels like simple indentations, a perfect mold of his teeth.

“My saliva has particular properties. There was a method to my debauchery,” he says, pointedly licking his lips.

You suppose that’s far from the most miraculous thing about him. “That’s convenient,” you say, to which he smiles. It’s bizarre how easily this comes now. You’ve heard of breaking the tension before, but this is certainly the most intense way you’ve ever broken through that initial barrier to more casual conversation.

Seeing that his hand is still hovering over you, you make a choice and take it, pulling it down to settle on your hip. Relief and excitement flash in his eyes in equal measure, and he takes that as permission to tuck you the rest of the way against him, settling on his side. He rests his head in his palm, propped up on his elbow. You curiously explore the plains of his chest with your fingertips, testing where flesh meets scales. They feel almost like bone, crimson colored protrusions that catch the light as prettily as rubies. They’re smattered along his body in the same way a human might have moles or birthmarks, incidental and seemingly without rhyme or reason.

His ribs are guarded by stiff plates that aren’t as solid as the scales, but look to serve as hardy protection. You let your fingers swoop down the ridges of them, comparing the textures along different parts of his body. It’s fascinating.

“I’ve never seen anything like–” you begin to pull your hand away as you speak, but Homelander takes hold of your wrist, bringing it back to his chest.

“Don’t stop.” You look up at him. His expression catches you off guard. He looks wounded, those fiercely blue and ever human eyes of his intensely focused on you. Swallowing, you nod. He lets go, and you begin to traipse your fingers along his chest again, following the line of the leather straps that cross over it. He lets out a heavy breath. “No one’s ever touched me like this,” he tells you after a long few beats of silence. “Not that I can remember.”

You glance up at him, but he’s staring down at your small hand tracing patterns on his chest. “What happened to this place?” You ask, because that seems politer than asking what happened to him.

“Guess it’s been too long for anyone else to remember. They’re all dead,” he says, the mood of his words difficult to discern. He inhales a contemplative breath, clicking his tongue at the end of it. “Time happened. I used to be something else to my people. I was… war. I brought fire down on their enemies, and they loved me for it. I won them their home. Homelander. There were others like me, but I was the best of them,” he says with conviction, though you sense bitterness in his voice, too. “When all the wars were won, they built this tower. They built monuments to their gods, and they placed us here with them as though we ourselves were relics.”

The end of his tail has begun to slap lightly against the ground. You can feel a slight uptick in the heat of him beneath your palm.

“They placated me with gold. Adorned me in it. At times they would summon me to festivals. Use my strength to build their stone cities, but they didn’t celebrate me. They had forgotten their love. They treated me as you would any other tool. Something to be taken off the shelf for work and put away when the task is done.”

The seething resentment is more clear in his voice than ever. While you didn’t ask it, it seems he understood what you really wanted to know. You’ve never heard this story before; The Devourer had only ever been a tyrant upon the people. No one ever spoke of a Homelander. No one ever spoke of a hero.

“When treasure failed to keep me impotent and obedient, they tried meat instead. They sent me livestock, as if the simple act of killing a cow would satiate me,” he snarls through his teeth, smoke wafting between them. He sucks it back, tipping his head up slightly in a bit to regain his composure. “They thought they could control me indefinitely. Out of sight, out of mind. It worked for too long, but only because I allowed it. Because I thought things would change. They never did. So I took their gold and their cattle and their crops and demanded more still. I demanded until they couldn’t ignore me any longer. When they failed to provide, I reigned fire down on them as I did their enemies two hundred years ago, and I gave them no choice but to look at the monster they made.”

His tail cracks like a whip against the stone floor. His anger is so visceral it makes your heart race, but there is more in his gaze than just fury. You feel as though you’re watching him rip apart the stitching over a wound that has been festering for far too long. “After that, they sent people. Simpering peasants who had no fucking idea who or what I really am. They bathed them in oils like slaughtered lambs basted for roast,” he growls, the blue of his eyes fading into an eerie crimson glow. “So I did. I devoured them, and I spat their own blood in their faces. If they wouldn’t have me as a man, they would have a beast instead.”

The Devourer.

You sit in stunned silence, watching as the glow of his eyes gradually fades, though his temperature remains the same. He looks at you, his expression braced, as if he anticipates a specific reaction. Rejection, you suppose. It seems to be the only thing he’s known for centuries. Within his gaze, you recognize a profound need to connect, to feel you, to hear that there might be a single soul in this gods damned world that wants him.

What does one say to such a story? The anger in his voice strikes such a wounded chord, you can practically smell the blood. The rawness of it alone makes your eyes prickle with tears, a lump gathering in your throat. How warped he has become not for the absence of love, but the deprivation of it. It’s clear in the way he speaks of them how desperately he wanted them to still love him.

“I’m sorry,” you say so quietly it’s a wonder he hears you. His expression flips completely, morphing into bewildered surprise.

“What?” His voice sounds small.

“I’m sorry that they abandoned you.”

If his own words are a knife in the wound, yours twist it deeper. He flinches like he’s been struck, staring at you with such bruised incomprehension. He opens his mouth to speak, but it’s as though he doesn’t even believe what you’re saying enough to formulate a response. He kisses you instead, holding your jaw in his claws. “I was good once,” he says against your lips, voice hushed as if he’s confessing a far graver sin. “I’ll be good for you. Let me be good for you.”

The desperation in his voice sets loose your tears. You nod, kissing him just as fervently. Centuries of bloodshed on the back of willful neglect is difficult to stomach, but you believe him. You believe the love that went into this tower–this beautiful prison–that they made for him, and you believe the love that you saw in his face carved in stone. You have no doubt that the wonder of him once inspired all those who beheld them, and that they were fickle enough to grow weary of him. Desensitized and disinterested.

When he rejected their apathy, they rejected his humanity.

Homelander lifts you up into his arms, sitting up, kissing you properly with a hand cupping the back of your head, his arm around your middle. His wings curve in around you, and he kisses you until your lips turn sore and you have to protest, your words melting into muffled laughter. He draws back with a brilliant grin. It’s different from the others you’ve seen; it’s the kind of smile that brings deep warmth to his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. He lingers close to you, stroking your cheek with his thumb.

“I stopped believing a long time ago that you could be real,” he murmurs, unable to stop himself from stealing another quick kiss, his nose purposefully brushing yours. He’s thoroughly starved for every little touch.

“I am. So are you. Not the Devourer, the Scourge, nor the Red Death,” you say, tucking back the stray locks of hair that have fallen over his crown. This, too, had been carved for him. He had been loved once, and as he said, he had been good. There is love in you enough to help him find that goodness again. There’s no reason you cannot live for the being you intended to die for. “Just you. Just Homelander.”

He kisses you, and suddenly you feel as if you’re free falling. From this point on, your life is something new. Something inexplicable and unpredictable. It’s yours, but it’s also his.

All that glitters is not gold, and sometimes the monster in the dark is just your reflection.

phew. thank you SO much for reading. this fic took me almost a full month to write, and it often felt like it was never going to end. that said, i'm already kind of chomping at the bit to write more in this universe. i feel like these two have a ton of potential, and there's just so much more that i want to do with them now that we have the groundwork done. once again, a huge shoutout to the amazing artist @anon-nee, who not only illustrated our dragon boy himself, but these awesome environment sketches as well. please be sure to go give them some love! The Tower of the Seven

The Dragon's Lair

#homelander x you #homelander x reader #monster romance #terato #monster x human #dragon x reader #monster x reader #homelander fanfiction #i'm gonna need so much aftercare from y'all on this one i've been writing it for the last 23 days lmao #and i'm posting it all at once because I LOVE U #my writing #monsterlander mania

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thepinkpanther83 · 2 months ago

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Masterlist

See those three beautiful men above? Those are my blorbos and they own my soul, and rule my life! 😍

First of all, I'd like to start by apologizing to those who followed me initially for my initial TMNT obsession hyperfixation, because I've since become a multi-fandom mess. 😅

I draw fanart and write fanfiction. I've been posting sporadically for years, but I would like to eventually get it all organized together here in my masterlist. I will separate fandoms for convenience. All my blorbo banners and graphics are made by me in Photoshop.

Requests

I take story requests for one-shots in my Asks, but ask nicely, I'm only one person and am pretty busy like 100% of the time. I do this for fun and stress relief in my limited spare time. If I choose to take your request, (I most likely will) I'll fulfill it as I have the time, whether that's in a day or 14, is at my discretion, so don't rush me. 😅 If you do have a story request, give me something to work with, a decent prompt goes a long way in inspiring my writing, more than just a few words. I write both SFW and NSFW stories, depending on your request. (If you want NSFW, you must specify you want it). Note: Since I've opened up my requests, I've since been flooded with them, so please bear with me. 😅 I also take requests for story continuations and follow-ups on my pre-existing stories, but you need to put in a request in my Asks, and give me a decent prompt idea of what it is you want to see. 🫶🏻

Find me on AO3 here.

Stranger Things Eddie Munson FanFictions

Requests Truth or Dare or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (Fluff) Sleepy Confessions or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (Fluff) The Cherry on Top or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (Fluff) The Girl Next Door or read on AO3 (*Complete*) (NSFW) Steal My Heart, Steal My Name or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (Fluff) Mean Streak or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (NSFW) Firelight Confessions or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (NSFW) All The Things That Break Me or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (Fluff) Student Body: "Winter Break" or read on AO3 (*One Shot*) (NSFW)

Short Stories

The Stray (*Complete*) (Short Story) (Fluff) Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Read on AO3

The Girl Next Door (*Complete*) (Short Story) (NSFW) All 5 Chapters In One Read on AO3

Longer Reads

Student Body (*Complete*) (NSFW) Chapter One: “Army Crawling” Chapter Two: “Pushing Boundaries” Chapter Three: “Extra Credit” Chapter Four: “Post-Nut Clarity” Chapter Five: “Seal the Deal” Chapter Six: “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” Chapter Seven: “Unlawful Detention and Other Rewards” Chapter Eight: “Pillow Talk” Chapter Nine: “Exit Ticket” Chapter Ten: “Class of ‘86, Baby!” (Part One) Chapter Ten: “Class of ‘86, Baby!” (Part Two) Read on AO3

And They Were Roommates (*Ongoing*) (NSFW) Chapter One: “Moving In” Chapter Two: “Our First Day” Chapter Three: “Awful Documentaries” Chapter Four: “Band Practice” Chapter Five: “Blindsided” Chapter Six: “The Entreaty” Chapter Seven: “The Blind Date” Chapter Eight: “A Man On A Mission” Chapter Nine: “Late Night Chicken & Other Cruel Tortures” Chapter Ten: “Side B Confessions” Chapter Eleven: “Airing Out Dirty Laundry” Chapter Twelve: “Redemption, Bras, and Burnt Toast” Chapter Thirteen: “Walk of Triumph (And Slight Shame)” Chapter Fourteen: “All Tangled Up” Chapter Fifteen: “Costumes and Catastrophes” Chapter Sixteen: “Sanctuary in the Storm” Chapter Seventeen: “The Hellfire Club™” Chapter Eighteen: “Man Flu” Chapter Nineteen: “Soup, Sickness, Stardom” Chapter Twenty: “A Feast for the Dysfunctional” Chapter Twenty One: “For Keeps” *Currently Being Written* Read on AO3

TMNT FanFictions

Resonance Series The Harmonic Equation (*Complete*) (NSFW) / (Donatello) * Chapter One: "Frequency Unknown" * Chapter Two: "Harmonic Anomaly" * Chapter Three: "A Song For Two" * Read on AO3 The Feral Harmony (*Complete*) (NSFW) / (Raphael) * Chapter One: "Discordant Duet" * Chapter Two: "Reverb of Fate and Fire" * Chapter Three: "Dissonance and Desire" * Chapter Four: "The Savage Interval" * Read on AO3 The Silent Duet (*Being Edited*) (NSFW) / (Leonardo) (Release Date scheduled for June 17th 2025) * Coming Soon

The Golden Melody (*Coming Soon*) (NSFW) / (Michelangelo) * Coming Soon

#Donatello bayverse #Vegeta #Eddie Munson #Masterlist #eddie munson fanfic

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lanafofana · 8 months ago

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Temptation

Pairing: Raphael x Tav(f)

Word count: 3.6k

Summary: She won't sign another contract but she’s not opposed to a different kind of deal

Rating: Explicit [🔞MINORS DNI]

Warning: Porn! Filthy depraved devil porn! A little bit of hate sex (PnV with a little PVP), ( she throws hands twice)(but he's into it). Cunnilingus, because it wouldn't be a Lana fic if a tongue wasn't getting shoved in someone's [redacted]. A little bit of toxic relationship dynamics at play (devil gonna devil). SMUT SMUT SMUT

No beta, we die like pumpkin pie (listen, it's been a long night)

💖✨Kudos to @dr-demi-bee for the prompt✨💖

AO3 Link here for all who celebrate the time honored tradition of validating authors via kudos etc etc etc

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Raphael doesn't look surprised to see her anymore. Merely gives her a look when she finds him on the balcony of his Archive and snaps his fingers to conjure her a drink that appears in her hand before returning his attention back to the fiend giving him some kind of report in the guttural language of the infernal.

She slips away, perusing his collection of tomes from some kingdom long dead and sipping at her wine. It's too sweet, cherry rich and decadent but the alcohol burns pleasantly warm in her belly. Later, sprawled across a lavish settee, an open book in her lap, Tav is trying to untangle a web of mental snares that have put her in a melancholy mood of late when Raphael finds her.

He doesn't say anything for a long time but she can feel his gaze taking her in with more precision now that he can afford his full attention to the task. The predator, sizing up the prey. Her skin prickles.

She's returned to his house with more frequency of late and though he’s never brought it up she’s struck with the sudden anxiety that she is overstaying her welcome. Draining her glass of wine she swishes the liquid around her mouth while watching the crystal goblet refill in a blink. He's never asked why she’s decided to help herself to his company or tries to dissuade her attention when she comes calling. There's a mystery there she’s too afraid to pursue. She sighs and takes another drink.

Footsteps, steady and deliberately slow, approach. The predator, stalking their prey. Turning a page in the book she isn't reading Tav pretends his proximity doesn't send a bolt of heat and fear fizzling along her spine. In her peripheral he stops, a looming metaphor for the direction her choices are driving her to. A finger, warm and familiar, presses against the soft vulnerable space just past the jut of her chin and tilts her face to meet his.

“Have you come to bargain?” His dark eyes drink in her face, giving nothing away.

He already knows the answer to that question but she answers it anyway, deriving a weird sort of comfort from the repetitive nature of this exchange they've replayed so many times they might as well have memorized a script.

“No.”

His eyes narrow and she doesn't hear the snap but her wine glass and book both vanish. Standing involves significantly more motor skills than she presently possesses so, with a smirk, the devil offers her a courteous hand and hauls her up. Her breasts graze against the broad expanse of his chest before she gains her bearings and straightens. He doesn't let go of her hand.

“What then do you seek from the House of Hope?” His voice is mocking but his eyes are hungry. Tav knows the steps to this dance by heart but she’s hungry too. Famished.

Grasping the collar of his opulent coat she tugs him into her orbit, sliding a hand into his hair and pressing her lips to his. He tastes like hellfire and forbidden fruit.

The edges of her vision white out for a moment when he displaces them to his quarters, his infernal magic buzzes against her tongue pleasantly. Pressing close with nothing but fabric between them she shifts, a calculated movement to stoke the fire of his desire.

“Crawling and secret she constructs her own web, a trap for her prey, fallen into instead.” Raphael wedges his knees between her legs and, hands tight on her hips, bows her back to wrest control from her. Dizzy with drink and anxiety and lust Tav grinds against his thigh, seeking the friction that will at last unwind her mind.

“Needs work,” she critiques unnecessarily, breathless and smirking. He nips her bottom lip, pulling the plump flesh taunt in chastisement but it makes her lashes flutter, her clit throbbing against his thigh.

Huffing a laugh at his petulance she pulls away. Pulling her clothes loose and discarding them under his dark gaze while backing towards the bed. The backs of her knees hitting the edge of the mattress, she beckons and –after a moment– he follows, unbuttoning his doublet slowly.

“Go on then,” she teases, heedless of the black warning in his face, “Seduce me with your limerick.”

“A mouthwatering fruit, this human heart.” He sheds his jacket, the shirt too, preening under her appreciative stare. “Devastating, damned, and doomed from the start.”

She swallows, mouth dry as he approaches and comes to a stop close enough to feel the heat off his skin.

“Dazzling, delicious but,” he looks at her critically for a moment, “Not very rare, this cracking soul is fetid with,” Raphael leans in, to take in her scent deeply. Closing his eyes he murmurs lasciviously, breath hot against her ear, “Despair.”

She throbs with need.

Wrapping a hand around her throat he pauses only long enough to take her pulse, sneering at the staccato beat, before sliding his hand down her chest, to her breast. With both hands he gropes her roughly, squeezing and tugging at her nipples till they pucker, rosy and stiff. The expression on his face hasn't changed much, cold and disdainful but his eyes. She shivers under the blistering heat of them.

“Take what you came here for, creature.”

The words are hardly out of his mouth before her hands are on him pulling him close with a rough hand in his hair, yanking his head to the side, putting her teeth to his throat.

She bites him savagely, electric at the needy whine he tries to stifle unsuccessfully. She laves her tongue against the red teeth marks soothingly, hands on his shoulders. His hands have migrated too, palming the swell of her ass. When she runs the edge of her teeth down the column of his throat and licks the dip of his collar bone he smacks an asscheek, the crack sharp and loud in the otherwise quiet room.

In retaliation she sinks her teeth into his shoulder so hard he repeats the action on her other asscheek. She cries out, her inner walls slamming down on nothing.

“Tell me, my dear,” his voice, rough and deep, is commanding. Tav clenches her thighs together in response.

Nothing and no one comes for free in the House of Hope. Each visit to his bed, a transaction between her hunger for his body and his hunger for her pain. Their unspoken devil’s pact. She knows exactly what he wants and her stomach flips in trepidation.

Hands full of her ass he is not gentle when he pulls her against him, grinding her against the hard length of him through his trousers. She whimpers, drawing her nails across his shoulders and scoring livid marks into his skin. “Tell me,” he repeats, a furious snarl, as he shoves her to the bed.

“Then ask, you fucking monster,” she hisses, hitting the mattress with a soft ‘oof’ as the wind is briefly knocked from her lungs.

He follows her descent, aiming to cage her body with his but a spike of adrenaline has her scrambling out from under him. Awkwardly she heaves her way to the head of the bed but he’s faster – stronger– and he snatches her ankle in a fierce grip, dragging her back within range.

Wrapping himself around her, thick cock against her ass, bruising fingers holding her captive against his chest he chuckles. The sound chills her in the same way it sends another trickle of wet desire between her legs.

Close to her ear he breathes his full query at last. “What is the root of your despair?” Her stomach sinks down to her toes, the red flush of her desire doused cold.

What was your last wickedly depraved thought, he's asked her before. When did the thrill of bloodlust last blind you completely to sense; do you hate anyone more than you've hated yourself? She may have never signed another contract with him but somehow he’s found a way to drain her soul, piecemeal, all the same.

“Tell me,” he murmurs against her skin, parting her thighs to drag a finger along her slick wet slit.

The reason for the wine becomes clear to her in that moment. She’s never had inhibitions where sex is concerned. Has never considered it a trial to use her body and let it be used for its skill with a blade, on either side of the sheets.

But put enough wine down her throat and inevitably the secret hurts that haunt her begin to spill out from between her lips.

The devil growls at her hesitation, flipping her over and pinching a nipple between his teeth slightly too hard. Demanding her attention and supplication in all things.

“I–,” she gasps and leaves half moon indentations on his skin when he sticks his tongue in her belly button, swirling his tongue there lazily. “I’m sad, all the time,” she confesses in a rush like it will hurt less to say it fast. Her heart pounds. “I hide from my friends, from everyone, and suffer alone. I’ve always been alone, I’m pretty sure I'll always be alone because it’s–” her breath hitches on a strangled sob when he just barely presses his thumb to her clit and leaves it there, teasing. Torturing. She doesn't want him to ever stop. “I’m too much to be around. Too much unhappiness in one person to inflict on anyone else.”

“Self pity,” Raphael groans with relish and she bristles because of course he's right. “Never looked so lovely than on the utterly pathetic,” the words burn, as they're intended to. “Look at you, mourning yourself to the point of self destruction.”

Blood rushes to the surface of her skin, blooming red and hot across her throat and cheeks. Within her bosom she aches. Raphael hums with pleasure, as drunk on her internal agony as he is on her body.

Feeling flayed open she wails, hands scrabbling for purchase on his skin and in the rumpled bedding, when he sinks a finger fast –and hard–and deep in her dripping, aching cunt. She bites her lip and breathes through the discomfort of letting him see her. The despair and self pity on full display for his perusal. He feasts on her pain like a man deprived of fresh air, reveling in the cocktail of humiliation, fear, and miserably pathetic sorrow.

“Entrust me with your soul and you'll never be alone again, for as long as your pitiful soul flickers,” he vows, working a second digit in with the first. She’s so wet her lips squelch lewdly around his scissoring fingers to punctuate his words.

He means it too. It's far from the first –or the last– time he has promised an eternity to her. Her soul nestled within his grasp forever, damnation tempered with endless companionship. A demon’s version of love. Eternal ownership. The ache in her chest sharpens to a knife’s edge. Thrusting her hips against his hand, her breathing changes, getting deeper and faster as her orgasm inches tantalizingly closer.

Her legs are open but her heart's been closed so long the hinges squeak and grind in complaint at being disturbed. Maybe that's why his canny words rend instead of pierce, like they're claws mauling instead of hands gently stroking. Devils don't know kindness but there's a world of gentleness in the way he peels open her ribcage to curl up in her chest cavity with his insidious intent.

“Kiss me,” she begs. Begs, hoping it will be enough to stem the tide of his incendiary words. Words spoken with the intent to hurt, to disturb, to split the cobbled pieces of her being back into shattered fragments he can hold in his hands. To mold her, shaping her to his will. Without ceremony he crushes her with his mouth, his body, and his desire.

Raphael moves against her, heavy and too big, a threat and a promise that tastes like cherry wine and feels like coming home. The kiss, a miscalculation on her part, steals his voice but replaces wounding words with bruising force. Shoving his tongue into her mouth he seeks only to consume and she moans around the wet intrusion, curling a hand tightly into the hair at the nape of his neck until he hisses against her teeth.

She lets him continue only for so long before the hand she has locked in his hair tugs viscously and she gets a glimpse of his pupils blown wide before his eyes flutter closed. The Archduke Supreme would never admit to his proclivities in bed but he’s not the only one studying his prey during their encounters.

She maneuvers until he's beneath her, breath stuttering in his chest as his ardor intensifies with her forceful take over. The meticulous Archduke Supreme, Lord of the Nine Entire, Devil of False Hope, Cania’s Conquerer might have eaten her whole for the audacity of asking for control in the bedroom but when she takes it…

He groans, squirming and wanton, when she peels herself away from his lips to sink the fingers of one hand around his throat while the fingers of her other hand tug on the laces of his breeches.

“Tav,” he growls, the reverberation of his vocal chords against her hand shooting directly to the heat that burns in her core.

She pulls her hand from around his throat to pull back and strike him across the face. His hips surge up against her desperately. “Silence,” she warns, nimble fingers slipping his throbbing cock from its confines.

The fat head is wet, a glistening mess of his own precum. The smell makes her mouth water. Wrapping her hand around the shaft she pulls at him experimentally, running the calloused pad of her thumb across the leaking slit on top and along the thick vein beneath his glans until he whimpers. The sound makes her smile, the power of her unique position sending a rush of wet slick through the lips of her vulva, dripping down the inside of her thighs.

Moving the hand she just had wrapped around his erection to her own throbbing need she drinks in his expression while he watches her fuck herself on two fingers. She leans back to give him a better view while she circles her own clit, biting her lip and shifting her hips in time with the movements until she’s close, almost too close.

The devil never looks more beautiful than when he’s languishing untouched, desperate and needy and simmering with helpless fury.

“Open that pretty maw, creature,” she sneers, an echo of his earlier epithet.

Obediently his lips part and she leans forward, shoving her fingers into his mouth, pressing against the molten heat of his tongue.

“Suck.”

Tav's eyes flutter, nearly rolling to the back of her skull as the Duke follows her instruction, locking his lips around her slick coated fingers and sucking hard enough to tear her soul through her fingertips. She moans, positioning herself above his pelvis and undulating her hips to rub his delicious head through her slippery folds.

Inside his mouth his tongue swirls across the pads of her fingers and he echoed her moans; pleasing, pretty, broken little sounds that have her sinking onto his cock halfway in her excitement. He bucks, too sharp teeth grazing erotically against her fingers and she withdraws them to backhand him; whip fast and snapping his lust drunk face to the side. He gasps and she revels in the feeling of him jumping against the walls of her sex.

Pulling herself upright she arches her back, giving him a pretty view as she plays with her own breasts, running the tips of her fingers along the goose pimpled flesh of her abdomen.

“Like what you see, devil?” She taunts, sinking a little more around his girth. “Tell me, Archduke,” she smiles cruelly. “Tell me how much you want to fuck this sweet mortal cunt.” She twists her nipples and sinks a little lower on his cock, watching the expressions flit across his face faster than he probably even registers them. She smiles, all teeth. “Beg.”

“Please!” He doesn't even hesitate, voice gone tight. “Please, let me feel you sink that perfect tight cunt onto my cock.” He releases the most delicious open mouthed whine when she does, enveloping him completely. “Please!” He blurts, hands fisting in the bedding, muscles quivering with the restraint to keep from fucking into her.

The stretch is nothing short of divine. Her hips yearn to move, to rock against him, grinding his hips into the bed but she pauses, balancing on the precipice.

“Please, what?” She demands, relishing in the widening of his eyes, the way his mouth hangs open.

“Please,” his eyes close briefly and he swallows thickly, “Archduchess Supreme, My Lady Eternal.”

“Good boy,” she murmurs, warmth suffusing her entirely when he keens at the praise.

Planting her hands on his chest she wastes no more time, fucking herself on his thick cock; fast and hard and rough. Between her fingers she pinches his nipples, leaning forward to swallow his cries as she rides him to the brink. Between her thighs he cants his hips, mindlessly matching her thrust for thrust as his orgasm barrels within reach.

She slips a hand between their bodies, pinching her swollen clit and cries out his name and a litany of swearing as she crests her final peak. Her mind whites out, the walls of her cunt bearing down on his cock so tightly he spills into her with an inarticulate groan.

Their bliss reached, their movements stutter clumsily to a stop, chests heaving and breathless pants peppering the air with the soft sounds of post coital exhaustion.

Tav disengages from Raphael's body slowly, flushing at the rush of slippery fluid that leaks out of her. The devil looks at the mess between her legs, unabashed, a pleased smirk hovering in the corners of his mouth.

Running a finger through their combined spend, shivering on the cusp of overstimulation, she holds his gaze as she reaches up to paint his lips with it.

He doesn't even blink, licking the shine of his own seed from his lips and making a pleased noise, deep in his chest, that echoes in the throb of her empty cunt. Leaning into him, chest to chest, Tav chases the taste of them on his tongue with a redolent kiss, slow and tender. His hands drift along her sweat slick skin, raising goose bumps with each delicate graze of his nails.

Wrapping his arms around her Raphael flips them, startling a sound from her that he chases with teeth and an amused chuckle. Before she registers what he's doing the devil is wedged between her legs, pushing one of her legs wide, fingers sunk tightly into the plush thickness of her thigh while the fingers of his other hand part the puffy lips of her sex.

He stares, transfixed, for only a moment before he bends his head, slotting his lips against her wet, sticky heat. The predator devours the prey. The gluttonous wet sounds of him licking and suckling at her sex sends her brain rocketing away on a tidal wave of sensation. She grasps the back of his head in shock and a haze of overwhelming arousal.

“Raphael!” She cries out when he locks his lips around her clit and sucks. “Nnnggg– ahhh!!”

“Say my name again,” he growls, immediately spearing her with his tongue and twisting to lap at every drop of her slick heat. “Say it!”

“Ra– Raphael! Oh– nnngggahhh!!” If she is his Archduchess then he is her god and she cries out to him, exultantly. “Raphael! Yes! Yes! RAPH–”

He hums his pleasure and the vibration has her sinking both hands into his hair, pressing him closer– harder–

She flexes her hips, rocking against the sensation of his mouth taking her apart, heart slamming against her ribs as her mind spirals faster and faster and–

“RAPHAEL!” Tav’s mind flies apart as she screams her release, back bowed, thighs clenched tight around the Archduke’s ears.

She comes back into her body to the feeling of her fingers being disentangled from their iron grip on his hair. She releases him immediately, flexing her digits and collapsing against the bed as a wave of exhaustion slides over her.

“You,” she pants breathlessly, boneless and still buzzing for the high of her orgasm. “That was–

“Delicious,” he finishes for her with a sinful smile that does nothing to soothe the thunderous beating of her heart.

This time it is the devil who stretches himself over her body, skin against sweaty skin, and presses the taste of her arousal and his spend between their lips in a filthy kiss. When he pulls away Tav’s dazed expression pulls another smile to his face, this one different from the one he usually shows her. Her stomach clenches but in the next moment her face is split in a jaw cracking yawn and when she looks again he looks the same as he always does.

“Sleep, my dear,” he says in a tone that conveys he neither cares if she does or does not. With a snap of his finger he is dressed and polished once more. He drags his eyes down the length of her naked body with an appreciative leer. Another snap and he's gone in a flash of hellfire.

Tav forces her body to move though her limbs feel made of jelly. She crawls between the sheets, the luxurious material cold against her heated skin. Sweat on her scalp and elsewhere on her body sends a shiver down her spine. Cocooned, safe, and spent, she sleeps.

That's All Folks!

#kinktober #raphael x tav #female tav #raphael smut #bg3 fanfic #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 smut #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 fanfiction

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ashwantsafreepalestine · 9 months ago

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Israel killed HUNDREDS of their own people on October 7.

IDF fired on vehicles returning to Gaza, knowing they were likely carrying hostages.

"This was a mass Hannibal. It was tons and tons of openings in the fence, and thousands of people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without," Colonel Erez said.

Air force pilots described to Yedioth Ahronot newspaper the firing of "tremendous" amounts of ammunition on October 7 at people attempting to cross the border between Gaza and Israel.

"Twenty-eight fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm. We are talking about hundreds of 30-millimetre cannon mortars and Hellfire missiles," reporter Yoav Zeitoun said.

"The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets."

#free palestine #gaza genocide #palestine genocide #free gaza #palestine #gaza strip #israel #gaza #am yisrael chai

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vintagerpg · 11 months ago

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Leave it to World Champ Game Co. to find the edge of a pretty established sub-genre and push past it into something weird and new. This is Cybermetal (2022), an unholy fusion of cyberpunk, heavy metal and black magic. In an alternate timeline, a heavy metal band sacrifices Ronald Reagan on stage to resurrect their dead guitarist and eventually, the gates of Hell open and demons conquer America. In the wake of their victory, they turn a Midwestern city into Pentagram City, a place isolated from the rest of the world by walls of hellfire.

Being cut off meant a greater reliance on analog tech, like radio and walkie talkies and a LAN called the Pentaweb, but citizens of Pentagram City also have access the cybernetics developed during the Hell War to combat the demons. The neuronexus makes skill learning easy (think the Matrix) and combat slow and personal (the tech basically makes the user flicker on a different frequency of reality, so fast weapons just pass right through). In addition to humans, you can play as mutants, demons and husks, which are sort of cyberzombies created in the wake of the Y2K bug.

The software system provides lots of cool skills (turn your headbanging into a deadly weapon!). There’s crafting, there’s cyber surgery, rules for gang creation and management and long-term gang projects. There is a bunch of source material on Pentagram City and so, so many passing references to heavy metal. It’s sort of shocking that A. Adam fit all this text in and had room for so much gnarly art, B. That the art in question is as aggressive and unrelenting as CyBORG’s, but also of a totally distinct temperament and C. That the game is so smoothly playable — it uses a percentile skill system and does everything you’d expect from a tightly designed modern light rules set.

#roleplaying game #dungeons & dragons #tabletop rpg #rpg #d&d #ttrpg #CyberMetal #World Champ Game Co

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ladykailitha · 8 months ago

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Hellfire Part 8

This story is almost done and will have 13 chapters. Which I thought was very fitting, honestly. It has been one hell of a ride and thank you for sticking it out with me.

In this we have a new villain or two, the attacks against Steve simmer down, but up frequency, and Wayne is pissed.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Steve had to be more careful and stayed clear of the edge of the stage. But little things kept happening. His make up would go missing, his hair spray would suddenly be empty, just little things.

Wayne was furious. The fact that whoever was doing this was doing it under his nose. He couldn’t believe that any of the people he hired would stoop so low as to terrorize another dancer into quitting.

He resolved to get to the bottom of this, come hell or high water.

“You don’t have to do this,” Eddie murmured. “You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

Wayne glared at him. “I came down here to make things easier on you in running this place. So I’mma focus on this and you focus on shaking your ass up there.”

Eddie ducked his head and nodded. “I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t just say something to me.”

“Maybe you did and you rightfully told them to go to hell,” Wayne reasoned. “Some folks just don’t like change. Will do everything in their power to buck against it. Nothing you can do about that.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie said with a heavy sigh. “Just keep it on the down low. I don’t want them spooking and doing real harm to Steve.”

“You’ve got it.”

It would be a couple of days later before Wayne got anywhere with his little investigation. He called Jeff and Eddie into the office.

“Have a seat boys,” Wayne said with a chuckle. “You aren’t in trouble, there was just something I noticed while digging into the schedules to see if I could find a pattern in the attacks against Steve.”

Jeff and Eddie shared a glance.

“What did you dig up, you old fossil?” Jeff teased.

Wayne turned around a piece of paper and laid it on the desk. It was their weekly schedule.

Eddie read it and then scooted it back to Wayne. “Okay, I’ve seen this, I’m the one that makes it. What about it?”

“Did you know that you and Jeff don’t have any nights off?” Wayne said, lacing his fingers together and leaning on his elbows. “Eddie I get, he’s a workaholic and wants to be there every night to make sure everything goes well and doesn’t have any issues that crop up. But you, Jeffrey? I expected better work/life balance out of you.”

Jeff blushed. “I originally asked for more days because I went through a messy break up and just never changed it back.” He rubbed his hair sheepishly.

“You’re both experiencing burnout,” Wayne groused. “And I’m not gonna let that happen on my watch. So here’s what is gonna happen. On Monday nights, Jeff will have it off. Not Sunday, though I considered it. Don’t want folks thinking you’ve got a problem with Steve, considering he has your night off.”

Jeff nodded. “Works for me.”

Eddie just shrugged. It didn’t matter when Jeff had off. All the days were covered for the dancers, it was just the waiters he had trouble with juggling to give Robin and Steve the same days off.

“And you will have Tuesdays off,” Wayne growled. “And on that day, Jeff will be manager. Lean on him a little and I’ll bet you both will be feeling like new men in a matter of weeks.”

Eddie and Jeff shared another glance.

“Yeah, okay,” Jeff said. “It’ll my nice to have an evening to myself for a change.”

Eddie on the other narrowed his eyes at his uncle. “Giving me the same day off at Steve, and you’ll want me to believe that’s coincidental.”

Wayne smiled back. “Oh it absolutely isn’t. It is a very deliberate attempt to get you laid.”

Jeff laughed as Eddie slumped in his seat, arms crossed over his chest in a pout. “Fuck you, too, old man,” Eddie huffed.

Wayne’s expression turned serious and immediately Eddie sat up straight and Jeff gripped the arms of the chair. “I think I have it narrowed down to about three people it could be and it could be all of them, one of them, or any combination of two.”

“Let me guess, Stella, Danny, and Levi?” Eddie said darkly.

Wayne blinked at him for a moment and then tilted his head. “How did you get two out of the three right? I knew Stella still had problems with Steve, but I thought Danny and Levi had gotten over all their doubts about him.”

“He made them look stupid,” Jeff said shaking his head. “Hell, I’m pretty sure I’d hold a grudge against anyone who did that to me.”

“So who are the three?” Eddie asked, leaning forward on his elbows and cupping his hands under his chin.

“Levi, Danny, and Scott,” Wayne said, sitting back in the chair.

“It’s not Scott,” Eddie and Jeff said together.

Wayne eyebrows shot up. “You two sound very sure of that. Why?”

“They’ve become friends,” Jeff said, “they even go out for lunch and coffee and stuff. Scott would never.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “Scott was the one that jumped in and helped Steve when he was having trouble with a move Steve’s first day at practice. Dude would literally have to be possessed before he hurt Steve.”

Wayne blinked at them for a moment. “Not Scott then.” He made a note and quietly rearranged things. “All right, it’s really looking like there is a third person but I can’t figure out who it is.”

“I don’t want to say Stella,” Jeff huffed, “but it’s totally Stella.”

Wayne opened his mouth to refute that when Scott came barreling into the room.

“Eddie you’ve got to come quick!” he huffed. “There is something happening out front and we need you!”

All three men were on their feet in an instant and followed Scott out to the front of the club. Eddie wasn’t sure what he was going to see but whatever it was, it wasn’t this.

Steve stood in front of Chrissy with his arms crossed in front of him, glaring at two newcomers. Well, one was a newcomer. The woman was new to Eddie, but the man most certainly was not. Jason Carver, asshole extraordinaire stood next to short woman with dark curly hair and piercingly cold eyes. She also had her arms crossed over her chest, her full weight on her back foot.

“I don’t care what you think of me, Nancy Wheeler,” Steve spat, “you or the sanctimonious ass over here, but you leave Chrissy alone.”

Instantly Eddie’s already raised hackles went into overdrive. “Hey, what’s going on here?” he asked moving between the intruders and his dancers.

The woman, Nancy raised an unimpressed eyebrow as she looked him up and down. “And you are?”

“I’m the owner, Eddie Munson,” he replied coldly. “And you already fucking knew that. Or at least you should if you’re any kind of reporter. But then again most journalists don’t care about the truth anymore just about getting that good ‘ol revenue dollar.” He rubbed his fingers and thumb to indicate money.

Nancy’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She didn’t think that she would be recognized. “So you’ve heard of little me?” She ducked her head and batted eyelashes coquettishly.

“I’ve course I’ve heard of Nancy Wheeler,” Eddie growled. “You’re the reporter that got that lab in Hawkins shut down for dumping chemicals into the local lakes. I thought you were about taking out the trash, not swimming with it.”

Jason raised his fists to go after Eddie, but Nancy stalled him by putting her hand on his chest. “You and I have very different definitions of trash if you think I’m not taking it out, by writing an an exposé on this place to get it closed down. Hopefully for good.”

Eddie laughed. He just doubled over, clutching his sides. When he finally stood up, he wiped a tear from his eye. “Honey, if you’re talking about the Mayor’s daughter, I was barely involved and fired the one that was heavily so. All my licenses are current and my building was inspected two months ago and was told it was better than in code.”

Nancy narrowed her eyes and turned to face him completely. “And what about men and women getting dressed together in one big room? There is no privacy.”

“Honey,” Eddie said disdainfully, “I don’t know if you’ve been to many of these types of clubs, but like with modeling shows you have to do costume changes really fast and sometimes you see a bit of a dick or the flash of a nipple. Besides, they literally take their clothes off for a living, I really don’t think they’re seeing anything they haven’t a million times before.”

“It’s about the decency!” Jason roared. “Men and women shouldn’t be getting changed together! And they certainly shouldn’t be taking their clothes off together! It goes against the sanctity of marriage!”

“Jason,” Chrissy said, sliding off the stage on to the restaurant floor, “if this is about us breaking up, it’s been five years, get over it. I broke up with you because you are controlling and an ass.” She cocked her head to the side. “But especially because I’m a lesbian!”

Jason pulled out an actual fucking cross and thrust it in her face. She rolled her eyes and walked around it, straight up to Nancy. She looked her up and down. “I know your type. You’re as much as hypocritical, sanctimonious ass as he is. Only virtuous when it suits. You’re the type that would picketing outside of a Planned Parenthood, slip in for a little flush on the weekend and then pop! Back out on the picket line by Monday. You don’t get to judge me, princess. I’m the Queen of Hell.”

Steve let out a whistle. “She’s got you pegged, Nance. You’re just pissed no one else would put up with your diva behavior once I was forced to drop out of the ballet company. Well, it’s not my fault your understudy didn’t know the correct way to jump. But then again, she shouldn’t have had to know it, but you refused to come out your dressing room because the flowers in the bouquet were red and not white.”

“The flowers are supposed to symbolize the purity of the love between Odette and Siegfried and red means passion,” Nancy huffed stomping her foot. “But look at you, Steve. You’re stripping for strangers, using your God given talents for titillation and seduction.”

Steve laughed. “You say that like it’s not as much work and effort to strip as it is to do ballet. And let me tell you, having done both? Stripping is way more fun. I get to smile for a start.”

Nancy decided to change tacks. “Steve, I know when you got hurt, you felt like you had no where to go and I know you were fired from your last job, but is this really the life you want to live? I could put in a good word for you, anywhere you want to go. It would give you your dignity back.”

Steve put his hands on his hips and licked his lower lip. “Oh yeah? You going to put in a good word for everyone? What about Eddie? Huh, Nancy? You’re willing to take away his livelihood just because his morals don’t align with yours?”

Eddie felt a surge of fondness for his new dancer. Steve hadn’t been with the troupe long and had people actively try and hurt him. And yet, here he was standing up for all of them, but especially him.

“He doesn’t have morals!” Jason spat. “Him and his uncle has bred this den of iniquity for years corrupting the good people of this fair city to the depths of hell! The number of souls lost to this pit of destruction are countless and grotesque!”

“Dude,” Scott huffed. “Chill out. Being a stripper didn’t make Billy Hargrove an ass, being Billy Hargrove made him an ass. And Heather Holloway never set foot inside this club, not ever. So how did the club corrupt her? Billy? Pass me on that bullshit!” He licked his lips and cocked his head back and forth sassily. “Besides my mother is Catholic and she loves what I do. Just as much as she loves my younger brother doing drag on the weekends. So what’s your excuse?”

“You blaspheme!” Jason cried. “You’re all going to Hell! You will all burn in the fiery pits of damnation if you do not turn from your current path! Repent! Repent all ye sinners!”

“Fuck off,” Stella said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “We don’t need your puny god. He has no power here. Shoo!”

Eddie turned to them. “You heard the lady, get out before I call the cops on you two trespassing in my club.”

Nancy turned to Jason, “Come on, let’s get out of here. I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

Jason clenched his fist like he was still looking for a fight. He looked around gauging the people around him. With a sneer and a snarl, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the club. Nancy followed him, but she stopped at the door.

“This is your last chance, Steve,” she murmured. “You can still come with us. Leave this behind. I’m sure I could you place teaching ballet. You’d have to leave this place off your resumé of course. But just think, you could be raising the next group of dancers.”

Steve scoffed. “There are fifteen dancers, six bartenders, ten wait staff, and two large cleaning crews that depend on this club for their livelihood. Not to mention the two men who put their heart and soul into the running of this club, and if you think I’m going just walk away like that, then you never knew me at all.”

Nancy just shook her head and walked out the door. It was silent in the hall for a beat, maybe two before the whole club erupted into a dull roar. Everyone talking and gesturing wildly all at the same time.

Wayne let out a loud whistle. “Shut up!” Once everyone had sputtered to a stop and turned to stare at him, he said, “Nothing is going to happen to the club. There have been a total six of these so called exposés in its history and it has never come close to shutting down.”

“That said,” Eddie told them, “we keep everything on the up and up for next little bit. I’m not sure how long. But we’ve got this. We follow all the laws, we keep our mouths shut and our heads down.”

He looked at everyone and they all nodded back. He clapped. “Now let’s have a round of drinks on me. I think we all deserved one. Maybe three.”

Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14

Tag List: CLOSED

1-@mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog

2- @gregre369 @a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @messrs-weasley @cryptid-system

3- @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog

4- @justforthedead89 @irregular-child @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @forgottenkanji

5- @anne-bennett-cosplayer @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten @genderless-spoon

6- @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual @disrespectedgoatman

7- @counting-dollars-counting-stars @tinyplanet95 @ravenfrog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lingeringmirth

8- @gutterflower77 @a-lovely-craziness @just-a-tiny-void @w1ll0wtr33 @beelze-the-bubkiss

9- @dreamercec @sadisticaltarts @too-much-tma-stuff @dolphincliffs @chameleonhair

10- @themoonagainstmers @gloomysoup @novelnovella @micheledawn1975 @garden-of-gay

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #dance club au

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weirdly-specific-but-ok · 1 year ago

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WebMD Page for Aziraphale

As promised to you all, inspired by that video of Aziraphale as an antidepressant. The WebMD drug format, from your clearly deranged mascot, Asmi. This took way too much effort. For legal purposes, even though this blog is a lawless hellscape, this is a spoof. If you did like it, reblog it, maggoty loves of mine, because likes don't help visibility on tumblr, and I want everyone to be traumatised with my own specific brand of unhinged. No pressure though, be rebels muaha. That being said:

MENU > DRUGS & MEDICATIONS > AZIRAPHALE

COMMON BRAND(S): Guardian of the East Gate, Angel GENERIC NAME(S): Aziraphale

USES This medication is used to treat mood-related disorders ranging from depression to chronic loneliness and anxiety. It has also been proven effective in treatment of Compulsive Demonic Behavioural Disorder (CDBD) and Post Fall Stress Disorder (PFSD). The medication results in an overall improvement in mood (see Side Effects), morals, and lifestyle choices. This medication is sometimes described as a 'miracle-worker'. It is advisable to ensure that the correct dosage is taken at regular intervals. The doctor/God/Forces That Be may prescribe a lower dose at the start, gradually increasing frequency and amount over the course of millennia.

SIDE EFFECTS Documented side-effects include pining behaviour, severe withdrawal symptoms in case of suddenly stopping the medication, heart palpitations, stuttering or stammering, mood swings including irrational lashing out or defensive behaviour when faced with highly emotional situations, break-ups, misunderstands, obliviousness, amongst others. Despite the studies being limited to a single subject (see Crowley et. al. updated 2023) these effects are typically harmless in the long term. Life-altering effects may also be noted, including irretrievably falling in love, marriage, a positive character arc, tendencies to put oneself at risk to ensure continuation of medication, lifelong friendship, fate-defying romance and severe allergy to the idea of discontinuation of medication.

WARNINGS Casual or reckless consumption can be too fast for the medication, which will lessen its effects, leading to withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal symptoms range from repeated indulging in CDBD and PFSD induced behaviours to alcoholism, depressive episodes, recklessness, listlessness, and prolonged car rides with no purpose. While the medication should not be consumed too fast, regularity is also advised. This is a long-term medication and not a short-term fix. Rare, short-term exposures will only worsen the side effects, withdrawal symptoms and may even reverse the drug effects.

PRECAUTIONS Ensure immortality so that the medication may be able to work its effect through the full course. Pre-existing trauma and heart conditions may require regular consultations with a therapist.

INTERACTIONS Drug interactions may change how the medication works or increase severity of side effects. This document does not include a comprehensive list of all drug interactions, please do adequate research and check instructions on the medication before proceeding with additional drugs. Aziraphale is known to have highly negative interactions with the toxin hellfire as well as the drugs Gabriel (only when sold as Supreme Archangel), Satan and Metatron (known toxin). Negative interference may occur due to most drugs from the class Heaven and Hell. Vague interference may occur with the drug class Homo sapiens.

OVERDOSE While less dangerous than withdrawal symptoms, overdose may lead to lack of personal space, miscommunication, and decrease in mood stability. Increased irritability is also common. Use with caution.

IMAGE

REVIEWS (1) Effectiveness: 5 stars Ease of use: 4 stars Satisfaction: 100000000000000000000e stars

It must be noted that in the country where I live (India), advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs are legally prohibited on television and other media. Which is why I was very bewildered at the initial video. But WebMD is a universal phenomenon so this shall by my contribution to the fandom. Thank you @neil-gaiman, Good Omens has given me a lot of opportunities to exercise my brain in all the weirdest ways.

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memecucker · 9 months ago

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In July, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed commanders in the IDF gave the order to fire on troops who had been captured by Hamas at three separate locations, explicitly referencing the Hannibal Directive.

One former Israeli officer, Air Force Colonel Nof Erez, told a Haaretz podcast the directive was not specifically ordered but was "apparently applied" by responding aircrews.

Panicked, operating without their normal command structure and unable to coordinate with ground forces, they fired on vehicles returning to Gaza, knowing they were likely carrying hostages.

"This was a mass Hannibal. It was tons and tons of openings in the fence, and thousands of people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without," Colonel Erez said.

Air force pilots described to Yedioth Ahronot newspaper the firing of "tremendous" amounts of ammunition on October 7 at people attempting to cross the border between Gaza and Israel.

"The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets."

Tank officers have also confirmed they applied their own interpretation of the directive when firing on vehicles returning to Gaza, potentially with Israelis on board.

"My gut feeling told me that they [soldiers from another tank] could be on them," tank captain Bar Zonshein told Israel's Channel 13.

Captain Zonshein is asked: "So you might be killing them with that action? They are your soldiers."

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the-most-humble-blog · 1 month ago

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🛡️ "YOU SHALL NOT F*CKING PASS!" — How Gandalf’s Stand Is the Blueprint for Protecting Your Creative Voice

A Blacksite Literature™ Entry — May 2025

---

A Blacksite Literature™ Entry May 2025

They told you to calm down. To "edit more gently." To “remove that part, just in case.” To keep your metaphors PG-13 and your rage in lowercase.

They weren’t trying to help you.

They were trying to disarm you.

I. The Balrog Is Not Just a Monster. It's a Mirror.

“Then something came into the chamber... I felt it through the door, and the Orcs themselves were afraid and fell silent. It laid hold of the iron ring, and then it perceived me and my spell.”

This isn’t just high fantasy. This is what it feels like when your insecurity wakes up. When it smells what you’re writing. When it says:

“Who the f*ck do you think you are, posting that?” “What if your ex reads it?” “What if the algorithm buries it?” “What if the mentors mock it?”

And you feel it. The same way Gandalf felt that ancient shadow wrap around the chamber door.

This isn’t imposter syndrome. This is legacy terror.

II. Most People Run. Most People Die.

They don’t die with swords. They die with polite drafts. With safe edits. With writing that says:

“I don’t want to offend.” “I hope this sounds smart.” “I’m just grateful to be published.”

That’s how you die as an artist. You don't fall in battle. You vanish in a paragraph that doesn't remember your name.

---

III. The Balrog Carries a Whip — And So Do Your Critics

The Balrog is 30 feet of molten horror. Clad in flame and shadow. With a whip made of hellfire.

So are your critics. So are the broken writers who gave up on their own originality.

They lash you with “feedback.” They choke you with “tone suggestions.” They swing their MFA whips and industry-standard swords — Until you bleed out confidence and submit to mediocrity.

---

IV. But Then There’s You — Staff in Hand. Spine Straight.

And something in you stops retreating. Like Gandalf.

You don’t scream. You don’t run.

You turn around, Step forward, Plant your staff on the algorithmic stone bridge, And say:

“YOU SHALL NOT F*CKING PASS.”

You say it to the inner voice that censors your brilliance. You say it to the imaginary reader who “won’t understand.” You say it to the conformity goblins, the industry cowards, the blue-check editors with powdered bones and TikTok-safe “literary aesthetic.”

You are the line in the code. You are the goddamn firewall.

V. Creativity Is Not Diplomacy — It’s Exorcism

When you create from soul? From trauma? From myth? From unfiltered instinct?

You’re not making a product.

You’re standing on a bridge over a void and refusing to move.

You are the version that didn’t negotiate. Didn’t “compromise.” Didn’t “accept help” from the broken minds who conformed so long ago they forgot the scent of originality.

VI. The Orcs Flee First — Because Even They Respect Power

When the Balrog appears, even the orcs scatter.

That’s what happens when your work finally reaches its purest frequency.

The clout-chasers disappear. The jealous simps vanish. The try-hard bloggers? Ghosted.

Because what you’re channeling now isn’t a “vibe.” It’s a creative kill switch.

The cowardly don’t hate you. They can’t f*cking survive your signal.

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VII. Your Audience Is Not Everyone. It's Who Survives You.

This isn’t for passive readers. This is for the ones who look at your post and feel their bones realign.

Your creative voice is not public art. It’s sacred detonation.

And sacred things don’t ask permission. They destroy bridges so others can't follow you back to safety.

VIII. Let Them Fall With the Demon. You Are Ascending.

When Gandalf shouted his line — He didn’t say it for glory. He didn’t say it for clout.

He said it because there was no other choice.

You don’t write for audience approval. You write like this because if you don’t, something holy dies in you.

And when you face that inner demon — Let it burn.

---

IX. The Bridge Scene Was Never About the Balrog. It Was Always About the Writer.

“I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”

Replace "Gandalf" with yourself at 2AM writing something nobody would approve of. Replace "flame of Anor" with the voice you found through fire and betrayal.

"I am a servant of the Secret Flame — my voice. You — fear, trend, mediocrity, approval addiction — YOU SHALL NOT PASS."

---

X. Final Message: This Is Your Bridge. This Is Your War Cry.

Don’t let that voice pass. Not the algorithm-whispers. Not the helpful editors. Not the ones who said “be careful.” Not the boss who said “watch your tone.”

You are Gandalf. This is your bridge. And this world does not need another clever blogger.

It needs a myth-making bastard with flame in his chest and thunder in his syntax.

So next time you doubt yourself?

Picture the fire crawling up the tunnel. Picture the whip cracking. Picture the horns screaming. And then say the words loud — to your fear, to the platform, to your broken internal editor:

💣 Reblog if this lit something in you. 🛐 Comment if you've stood on your own bridge. 📜 Follow @the-most-humble-blog for more Blacksite Literature™ drops. 💥 Support the ghost that possessed your algorithm — Ko-fi

#blacksite literature™#you shall not pass #gandalf is your shadow work #bridge of khazad dum #writing with holy fire #mythic defiance #emotional dominance #literary bloodright #poets who fight #writing as ritual #lotr #lotr memes #gandalf #lord of the rings #the lord of the rings #the fellowship of the ring #lotro #aragorn

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pluppsauthor · 11 months ago

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Tag Game: OC/WIP Q&A

Thanks for the tags from: @tildeathiwillwrite, @diabolical-blue, @honeybewrites, @somethingclevermahogony, @willtheweaver

and @leahnardo-da-veggie. ❤ Much love to all of you.

Rules: open the floor for questions about your WIPs/OCs/creative process/inspiration/etc

I wanted to post this yesterday, but I had a medical problem that has thankfully cleared now. Anyway, my ask box has always been open (no anon tho). BUT, I want to hear anyone and everyone's questions.

I'm going to tag all of my writing mutuals that I didn't already above, both to pass the game along, but also to get some questions. No pressure to either :)

I'll lay out a list of my WIP's and stuff in them. I'll answer any question, but I will preface if it's a spoiler in case you want to avoid it at all (i'll also tag it as such)

Frequency:

Wounded Reflection:

Characters: Lukas Tiro (MC), Axel Reath, Oak, Vesa, Bene Grey, Cary Loaras, Kai & Skyla Starill, Karve Treath. (I only included the main trio and the other Hunters). Things in it of note: Fortissimo Organisation (special division), Hunters, ghasts/ghouls, Frequencies.

Kindred Spirits:

Characters: Rain (MC), Kasi, Yun Tiro. Things in it of note: Fortissimo Organisation (regular division), Frequencies, Romance :).

Hellfire:

Characters: Akita Day (MC), David Pol, Kai Everden, Vis, Hazzin. Things in it of note: Demons, Arch Demons, Ghasts, Un'thil'ar (Home of Demons), Frequencies.

Shattered Gods:

Characters: Luna (MC), the other characters are REDACTED, but, feel free to ask about them :) Thing in it of note: Gods, Daemons, LORE, Yismor (Home of Gods), Frequencies.

Forsaken:

Characters: Dusk/Ralillith Trio (MC), Zenith Freydra, Kyr, Dawn, Ino, Reven. Things in it of note: Frequencies, Runes, Everden Family, Families, New Season, Old world/New world, Daemon Tears, Trials, Daemons, Romance :).