#he was a regular blood donor for every year after he was old enough To donate blood

[detectiveconnor]

having several small but very specific health-related headcanons for human connor vs not really having anywhere to put them

[deathonyourtongue]

Sanguine Nocturnus | 4

Summary: Even after 2000 years, the world can still surprise you. Pairing: AU!Henry Cavill x OFC Word Count: 2.7K Warnings: It’s a vampire fic. Death. Blood. Gore. Sex. Horror. Not for the kiddies or the squeamish. I mean it. A/N : Sorry this took so long. Hope y’all enjoy it!!

The invitation came just as Lucrezia said it would, the handcrafted card a modern iteration of the same gaudy pomp and circumstance that Henry had come to expect over the years. For a moment, he considered not going, but given everything Lucy had made him privy to, he knew better than to play coy; it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for the coven’s security task force to show up at his door like a far more sinister Secret Service.

Given the occasion, Henry knew better than to show up in his usual fare, and instead pulled a bespoke number out of the closet. The three-piece suit combined black satin and vermillion brocade, the pattern emblazoned on the waistcoat and the piping of the lapels. With a matching pocket square and two elegant brooches for his tie, he slipped on a pair of black Oxfords and made his way through the ancient streets that were so different, yet still held the same familiarity they had when he was human. 

With the moon hanging over the temple of Venus as though the structure itself was holding up the orb, Rome looked primed for a ceremonial changing of the guard, and as he came upon the coven’s high wrought-iron gates, Henry could almost feel the change on the wind. 

ID to enter the coven was simple enough; a smile would do the trick, so long as one’s canines were on full display. Like the rest of his ilk, Henry was able to retract his fangs when they weren’t needed, and when they were--whether it was to feed, or simply put the fear of the unknown into a human--his blue eyes would flash as though catching a stray bolt of lightning; it was a trick rarely seen, one only elder vampires seemed to have. Fledglings’ could only make their natural color more vibrant when necessary. While it was equally impressive to humans, it did little to frighten their own kind. 

It had long been rumored that the Villa Nocturnus had been designed by Michelangelo, but having been around far longer than many of his cohorts who presently resided in the coven, Henry knew this to be a simple fallacy. The truth was that the Medicis had used the coven’s villa as inspiration for their own, and that their architect had asked for intercession from the renowned artist. It had been another scandalous choice by the powerful family, only because anyone who’d lived in Rome at that time knew the Villa Nocturnus as a place of darkness and ill-repute, a legacy which still lived on, especially among Rome’s older population. 

Built primarily out of limestone and concrete, the villa had been redesigned and restored innumerous times throughout history, with facets of contemporary style added or removed as was fashionable. While the exterior underwent regular facelifts, it paled in comparison with how often the interior was reworked. Originally just a place to gather, feed, and sleep in relative privacy and safety, the elders had always sought to improve the villa both in functionality and aesthetic. As technology improved, so too did the comfort of the lowly Roman vampire, and now, with everyone carrying the world in their pocket, Henry could only imagine what changes were in store for him. 

Though mostly unchanged from the last time he’d visited, Henry immediately noticed the addition of automation to the property. Doors now opened and closed with sensors, and in the parlor, roving donors had been replaced by a touch screen dispenser filled with every blood type, the machine able to fix a glass to whatever specifications the drinker might desire. The biggest change however, had been to the sleeping quarters. No longer relegated to coffins, those who chose to reside within the coven’s walls full time were able to enjoy the luxury of a regular bed, thanks to a specialized tint on every window and security shutters for extra protection. From what Henry had been told, the place turned into something of a Fort Knox while the coven slept, a peace of mind his kind had not known before. 

Henry’s thoughts were pulled away from all the technological changes in the villa by the sound of chanting. Though vampires prided themselves on being far superior to humans, much like their living counterparts, they could never truly shake the traditions of old, and so the changing of the guard went on in the same fashion it had since the inauguration of the coven. The chants accompanied the procession of the departing Elder, the ominous notes setting the tone for the ceremony that would see one vampire set into the earth for at least a century, while another took his place, ruling over the coven with only the former elder’s powers and notes to guide him; it was no wonder they always demanded a tutor.

“Charissimi immortuos, nos congregentur hic hodie ut videre ad transitum de saeculum.”

The fact that the ceremony began similarly to a Catholic mass had never been lost on Henry; just one more remnant of the Vatican’s stranglehold on all. The thought crossed Henry’s mind, fleetingly,  that perhaps having a young ruling elder might not be so bad after all; he would shortly possess the power to make changes as he saw fit, with very little input from the rest of the coven. In fact, the only person he truly had to listen to was Henry himself--if he wanted to learn the proper ways of existing. 

“We now come to the Veneration. Cassius will open his vein for our new Elder, imparting all of his knowledge and wisdom, his strength and power, to our new ruler. Afterwards, you will all have a moment to bid our beloved Cassius a peaceful rest. The Veneration will now begin.”

Henry could see the starvation in Gregory’s eyes, knowing the fledgling had been fasting for two days prior to the ceremony; while it was par for the course, Henry couldn’t help but wonder if it was in coven’s best interests to starve so young a vampire prior to giving him some of the most powerful blood in the country. 

He watched, unblinking, as the titanium blade was swept elegantly down Cassius’ forearm, the cut made just deep enough to allow a free flow of the elixir Gregory so desperately needed, and to prevent the younger vampire from doing any harm to their departing elder. Henry could tell when the first drop of blood touched the fledgling’s tongue, Gregory’s eyes widening as the world was revealed to him. The natural inclination was to close one’s eyes as the swoon came, the warmth and richness of the liquid relaxing the body and the mind without fail. 

Almost too quickly however, Gregory’s eyes were open again, and Henry found himself staring at eyes that seemed electrically charged. He wasn’t sure what color the young vampire’s eyes were naturally, but the ice blue that flashed through them was unlike anything Henry had ever seen...In any fledgling...Ever. Blinking, his eyes flashed to the tall windows, looking for any sign of lightning that may have reflected off young Gregory’s pupils. Though he was met solely with a black sky and a smattering of stars, there was no way to be certain that it wasn’t just some trick of the light.

Henry shook off the uneasy feeling as he watched Gregory be pried off Cassius’ arm, the fledgling trembling with need and power. There was no doubt he would have to be fed often and that weaning him down to one meal every few days would have to wait. With age, the hunger, the crazed need for blood, dissipated and vampires as old as Henry and Cassius could comfortably go a few months without feeding, although neither him nor the former Elder were ever in much need to do so. Feeding was now a luxury to be enjoyed, like dining at a five-star restaurant every night simply because one could. 

Grabbing a glass of O_--one of the easiest bloodlines to drink--Henry made quick work of finding Lucrezia and Vinicius, his eyes never leaving Gregory. Unlike Cassius, who was ushered into the vaults to begin the process of going to ground, Gregory remained out in public, still trembling as he inhaled glass after glass of A+ to try and take the edge off.

“Well, that was far less tumultuous than last time,” Vinicius commented as he sipped his own glass, eyebrows wiggling in good humor as everyone began to form a line to dispatch Cassius with words of praise; a line Henry and a few others had no intention of joining. 

“Last time was a forced coup in case you forgot,” Henry deadpanned, watching as Gregory finally began to calm enough to set his glass down, the fledgling immediately fixing his long, strawberry blond hair, tying it back into a low knot before righting his clothes. 

“Yes, well, poor Quintas was never the same after he bit that flu-ridden girl. You know they’re still testing his blood?” Vinicius replied, shaking his head as he remembered the last great pandemic, one which had thankfully left many of them untouched, albeit desperate for clean blood. While disease rarely affected vampires, drinking from those who had been poisoned, had raging infections, or were close to death could all have profound and lasting effects on the immortal body, no matter how powerful. 

Henry’s eyes stayed on Gregory, watching as the fledgling made eye contact with Fares. Once a prisoner of war under the Parthian Empire, Fares had leapt at the chance for immortality as a means of freedom from bondage. No longer seen for his worth in labor, but rather his quiet, gentle nature (even when feeding), Fares had lived out his days in the coven’s safety, venturing out only when he had to, and only with those whom he trusted most. Having been only 22 when he was changed, time had not withered away his innocence, or the tender affection he felt for humanity and his fellow kind. It was glaringly obvious as he watched Fares smile shyly at Gregory, the fledgling immediately taken with the older vampire. It didn’t take long before the rest of the room seemed to disappear for the two of them, both men entranced by one another. 

“Who do you think will make the first move?” Henry smirked, jerking his chin in the direction of Gregory and Fares, the two barely keeping an inch between them as they flirted and made small talk. 

“Why don’t we go find out? I heard the baths were being reserved for our new Elder and a few chosen guests.” Lucrezia answered as she slipped her arms through Henry and Vinicius’, dragging both men behind her as she made a beeline for their new leader.

It didn’t take long for Lucrezia to work her charms on the new Elder, Gregory as taken with her as Henry had been the first time they’d met. The offer to share his reserved bath came quickly after, and before he knew it, Henry was following the small group down the hallways and into the depths of the villa, the floor sloping gently beneath his feet as they approached the massive pool of crystalline water.

 Steam rose from the liquid, swirling and mixing with the clouds of incense and oil that burned throughout the room. True to the old Roman style, the baths were lit with hanging lanterns, the flame burning Jasmine-scented oil as it provided just enough light to guide their paths towards the entrance. Sixteen white stone pillars flanked the large pool, the lamps hanging from the very tops of the columns; Henry wondered for a moment how many servants of the house it took to clean the smoke stains from the ceiling. Guided towards the end of the room by two servants, three additional staff bowed lowly, all at the ready to help the group undress. 

Henry was the first to wade in, the heat of the water doing wonders for the oft-ignored cold of his skin. Gregory and Fares followed, both still too entwined in each other’s attention to pay much mind to their guests. Their eyes only gazed outwards once Vinicius and Lucrezia had entered the water and Henry had cleared his throat quietly. 

“So, prof. How long’ve you been around?” Gregory asked, tipping his chin up towards his new teacher in curiosity. 

“Long enough to have served under Caesar,” Henry answered without hesitation, his gaze locking on Gregory’s to enforce the fact. 

“Long enough to have served alongside him,” Vinicius confirmed, adding his age to the list. 

“Long enough to be painted on papyrus,” Lucrezia winked, her own gaze moving to Fares with an encouraging grin. 

“Long enough to have witnessed the Parthian empire first hand,” Fares admitted, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. 

Gregory took a moment, looking around at each face as though he were seeing them for the first time. His mouth opened and closed, one finger lifted into the air as though the question he had in mind had simply vanished. 

“And what powers do you have?” He finally murmured, Henry able to tell by sight alone that whatever inquiry he’d meant to make had been put on the backburner for another night.

"You read too many pulp novels, but...I possess the usual gifts. Sight, smell, sound, telepathy, flight..." As though to prove his point, Henry floated high above the pool of water with effortless grace, his arms extended in a pose similar to that of Christ on the cross.

"Impressive." Gregory smiled, although as Henry read his thoughts he could tell the word held more than one meaning for the elder.

Sinking back into the water, it was Henry’s turn to smile as he picked up on Vinicius and Lucrezia’s thoughts, the pair beckoning him over with an offer that would be difficult to refuse under the best of circumstances. His eyes took on a more vibrant shade of blue as he waded over, keeping his pupil in his sights even as he did so. 

“What can you teach me that I haven’t just got from Cassius?” Gregory asked, feeling the shift in the room and stretching out his lithe form in reaction to it. 

“One can always learn new lessons,” Henry smirked, licking his lips before pressing them to Lucrezia’s neck, his fangs grazing over the tender skin just below where her jaw met her ear. Hands gliding over her body, Henry kept pace with Vinicius, watching out of the corner of his eye as Fares finally made his move, capturing Gregory’s lips in a deep, hungry kiss. 

The servants, used to the debauchery of the coven, maintained discretion, providing the only accoutrement necessary for carnal pleasure. Henry continued to busy his mouth on Lucrezia’s body, blindly dipping four fingers into the bowl at the edge of the pool, the ancient and familiar scent of Rose Otto filling his nostrils briefly before his hand sank under the water. 

It was Gregory who cried out first. Lucrezia’s sigh of ecstasy followed shortly after as Henry and Vinicius took her in unison, her nails cutting into Henry’s neck as she leaned back against the solid wall of his chest. Mouths melded together like honey left out in the sun, fingers traipsed and danced, and before long, soft moans turned into outright apostasy as all five undead creatures grew closer to release. Lucrezia, accustomed, but never ungrateful for such passions, forced herself down on the two swords she sheathed inside her, neck arching like a swan’s as she offered herself to her lovers. Gregory, making a discovery with every plunge of Fares’ body into his own, drew his elixir as much for comfort as for desire, having never experienced anything even remotely as intense as he felt with the man who held him close. The exchange of crimson never failed to be a catalyst for those who were on the edge, and as they drank from one of Rome’s famed beauties, Henry and Vinicius filled Lucrezia’s vessels in equal measure.

In the corners of the room, the servants readied the sherry glasses, warming them over an open flame before filling them with the coven’s finest and freshest.

[prurientpuddlejumper]

A Lipless Face That I Want to Marry, Ch. 7

<- Chapter 6 | Chapter 8 ->

Summary: I gave myself a stomach ache writing this one 🙃

2,961 words

Thirty-two days. Nine surgeries. Twenty blood transfusions.

Sometimes it seemed like just yesterday when everything was going right—you and Frederick were so happy together, his books were selling, your career was flourishing, and he had just asked you to marry him. Sometimes, it felt like a lifetime ago. A state of being so foreign, you wondered if it had even been real, or if you were remembering someone else’s life.

Seasons turned. Cherry blossoms were starting to bloom in the parks around Maryland, and each gust of cool wind carried with it their sweet pink fragrance. The spring air vibrated and sang with life renewed. But where you were headed, the air was stagnant, beige, and sterile.

As the automatic sliding glass doors drew you into the hospital, away from the sun, a piece of your heart withered like a flower. It sank deeper when you considered how the unhappy hours you whiled away in those sterile halls were nothing compared to what Frederick had to endure. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to leave.

Physically, he was beginning to show signs of real improvement. The pneumonia had completely cleared up, and he was starting to receive permanent transplants from the cutting-edge, lab-grown skin created from his own cells. Most of his body was still wrapped up in gauze, but a few places had only received second-degree burns, and those patches were almost back to normal. For the first time since the attack, his odds of not dying were higher than his odds of dying.

Mentally was a different story. His moods grew progressively more sour. With none of his true nemeses at hand to take out his bitterness on, that burden fell upon his nurses, doctors, and upon you—and it was beginning to weigh heavily. At first you didn’t want to see the rift that was forming, even as he cut your visiting hours short in an angry huff, and had fewer and fewer kind words for you. You shoved every fear and frustration into a box at the back of your mind so you could keep smiling. He was just in pain, you kept telling yourself. He just needed time.

You held onto the hope that as he got better, your relationship would return to what it had been before. But he was getting better, and the rift grew wider.

“We’ll still want to wait at least six months to do the procedure, until your infection risk has dropped to baseline levels for a healthy adult, but we’re putting you on the transplant waiting list now,” the doctor explained. She was one of his regular surgeons who had been with him since day one. She wore a white lab coat over blue scrubs, and hid behind a clipboard as she spoke. You liked the that she needed to use the file as a shield—it made her relatable. Always friendly, and clearly a skilled surgeon, but uncomfortable with the heavy emotional talking to patients, especially to Dr. Frederick Chilton, who was always in a bad mood, and always ready with a scathing remark.

But today he had nothing to say. No critique on the hospital’s competence. No casual observations with hidden barbs. Just a silent nod of acknowledgment before turning his head to gaze out the window at the fresh spring flowers, framed by the sea of fake ones you had bought.

Francis Dolarhyde, the Red Dragon, had bitten Frederick’s mouth with such extreme ferocity there was not enough connective muscle left to reconstruct new lips from Frederick’s own tissue. The only option for him to look normal again would be a face transplant—donated facial muscle, skin, and hair from a cadaver—although the doctor explained that the procedure was risky. After taking the transplant, Frederick would be put on immunosurpressant drugs for the rest of his life to prevent rejection, which meant every flu season, or even a coworker with a cold, could turn deadly without careful precaution. But to Frederick, it was worth the risk. He couldn’t bear spending his life being stared at. He couldn’t even stand you looking at the black hole that was his face.

Yet what the doctor explained about the procedure added weight after weight to Frederick’s chest until he felt crushed by despair.

The donated tissue had to be a very close match, or his antibodies would reject the new lips. Unlike receiving a heart or a kidney, his new skin had to be an aesthetic match as well. It could not be from too old a donor, or the skin would lack the proper elasticity. And, unfortunately, most organ donors were not comfortable donating external organs—it ruins the open-casket wake.

So, he could be waiting on a match for a very long time.

You thanked the clipboard-wielding doctor when Frederick remained sulking, not bothering to look up as she left. He adjusted himself slightly to follow a flash of movement—a bird—out the window, and winced as it tugged his unyielding scar tissue. Something tore under his armpit, but he didn’t yelp in pain—he was used to this level of it by now—but his eyes watered.

“At least you can sit up a little bit now. That’s great, isn’t it?” you said in an attempt to cheer him up.

He scoffed, and made no immediate reply.

Years, was all he kept thinking. It could take up to three years to find a match, possibly longer, the doctor said.

“Up to three years or longer,” he growled sarcastically. “She does realize that means nothing? It means any time, or never.”

“I know...”

“But thank god at least I can sit,” he spat bitterly. “A little.”

You were taken aback by his sharp rebuke and fell silent, a cavernous gulf between you though you sat right beside his bed. As you recovered from the sting, however, his words made you smile. He had always been churlish, but recently all of the spirit had been eroded away from his petty attitudes, leaving him defeated and mean. It was nice to hear his churlishness take on a spark of sarcastic sass.

“Don’t lose hope, darling,” you said in an overly-sweet patronizing cadence. “One day you’ll have enough movement back to flip her off.”

He paused, eyes flicking over to you curiously. You had been downtrodden for weeks, too, and he hadn’t expected a joke. He chuckled appreciatively. You wished the good moments lasted longer these days.

It wasn’t as though his life had ended, even if his full cosmetic recovery would take a little longer than he hoped, and even if he was bedridden for several more months. It was that sharp mind and wit that made you fall in love with him, and he still had that. He could keep you entertained for hours discussing some arcane piece of trivia or sharing lurid gossip. Since he was cut off from his normal sources of scuttlebutt, you kept him updated on all the latest rumors you’d learned over dinner with Jack Crawford—about the shitstorm he’d brought down on himself at the FBI when Will Graham went rogue, how Alana and her wife fled the country (but you heard they might be in Cuba), Freddie Lounds being sued again. He always enjoyed hearing about other people’s misfortunes, but today it just made him jealous that you’d been spending time with Jack.

“You have both recently lost a spouse. What comfort you must take in each other,” he insinuated.

“I haven’t lost you, Frederick.”

You went into that sentence thinking you were convincing him that you loved him, but as it closed, you realized you were desperate to convince yourself he wasn’t gone. The more you tried to hold him close, the more you felt him pulling away, and felt a creeping dread that even if he got better, you would lose him. Everything you tried to say to reassure him only made him feel worse, and you wondered if it was your fault. Someone more capable, more empathetic, would know the right things to say. You were a failure. He deserved more.

His professional life, too, hadn’t ended. His injury would barely be a bump in the road to his writing career if he wasn’t so stubborn and prideful. The publisher offered to send a ghostwriter to finish The Dragon Slayer, for which they greedily anticipated a significant boost in sales, considering the author’s headline-making personal involvement in the Red Dragon’s end. Frederick, however, refused to be interviewed by “some insipid amateur.” He claimed they would not understand the nuances of psychology required, and stood firm on the grounds of “artistic integrity,” but the truth was, he did not want anybody else to see him.

His face had not made it into the papers, despite several attempts by Freddie Lounds to sneak into the hospital with a hidden camera, and he did not want any more of the world than absolutely necessary to know the extent of what the Dragon had done to him. He did not want to see the shock in the writer’s eyes at seeing his disgusting lipless teeth. He did not want a stranger to see him inevitably start drooling the longer he spoke—and he hated repeating himself to people who could not understand his impaired diction.

No. Publishing The Dragon Slayer would have to wait, though the possibility of another author beating him to the punch bothered him nearly as much as his missing lips. After an entire month recuperating, he thought he would at least be able to type again, but he could barely move his gauze-mittened fingers.

The world had not forgotten him, evidenced by the occasional fan-mail the publisher forwarded to him. You would bring them in and read them—a lot of get-well-soons, and entreaties to hear his side of the Francis Dolarhyde story. A lot of them were from professionals and students in the psychiatric field, pointing out errors or suggesting contradictory theories. Those were the most fun to read, because Frederick would come alive with indignation, debating with the letter as if its sender could hear him, sometimes making you send a response, seething with superiority as he dictated.

In those brief moments, it was like having the old Frederick back. Then a nurse would come in and need to run a test, or feed him, or something else that embarrassed him back into his shell of anger. Or he would grow too animated and rip one of his grafts, and his zeal for argument would end precipitously with a scream, and a surgeon.

As you shuffled a handful of addressed envelopes and started reading through the latest batch of strangers wishing him a healthy recovery, you were struck by a thought.

“Why haven’t I met your family?”

The wind caught in his throat. His scabbed-over nostrils flared before he answered, “I doubt that is what the letter reads.”

“They never visit, even when… even when you could have died. My parents even flew in that first week, when they heard. They helped me with the flowers. Why do your fans send more condolences than your family?”

Gritting ones teeth does not come easily when ones teeth are constantly bared by default, but Frederick grit his teeth. “My mother is old. She can hardly be expected to travel.”

A plausible answer, but not the full story. His discomfort with the subject only spurred your curiosity. All the time you’d been together, you had simply accepted Frederick as an individual, with no need for a childhood backstory or a group of others sharing his features and last name to complete him. You’d gathered, in snippets, that their relationship was not the best, and were satisfied to leave it alone. But he nearly died. The nurse who asked you about his next of kin looked so confused when you had no one you could contact, and it made you feel foolish for never having asked.

“It’s just, we’re going to be married.”

“So?” he said, a hard, mocking edge to his voice.

“So, if I’m going to be part of your family, isn’t it weird that I’ve never met them?”

Instead of answering directly, he snarled, “Look somewhere else.”

“I wasn’t staring!”

“Look. Somewhere. Else.”

You huffed, and sat back in your uncomfortable plastic chair whose unpadded seat bruised your butt after countless hours, crossing your arms. The box full of anger was overstuffed. You shoved its contents down like clothing in a suitcase to squeeze one more sting of hurt inside, but it began to overflow. “I swear I don’t stare at your face any more than I used to,” you muttered aloud what was supposed to remain a thought, “but now every interaction needs to be a carefully calculated balance between not looking at you enough to feel gawked at, and not not-looking enough to make you feel like I’m averting my eyes from your horrible face.” At the word “horrible,” you wiggled your fingers and wavered your voice the way the vampire running a children’s haunted house would say the word “spooky.”

“I am sorry my suffering is so inconvenient for you,” he said in clipped, cold syllables, and you knew you’d pushed him too far.

“I’m just saying, you know I don’t care about your face. You’re acting the same way as when you got shot, and you got over that. You know I still think you’re beautiful. Can’t you give me some credit and just stop freaking out?”

Being stuck in a hospital bed with limited range of motion, he had few resources with which to express anger, but his chest rose and fell and his breath hissed like steam through his nose. “You...” he seethed. “You never care about the pain I suffer, do you? You, in your fantasy world where you accept my injuries and make it all better—you have no idea what it is like to be violated. To have your body ripped apart! It is not a thing one ‘gets over.’ Beautiful? That is rich coming from one who would not know how to tuck in a shirt without my guidance. It must be lovely in whatever quaint children’s storybook your mind inhabits, but in the real world, appearance matters. It matters to me. Your fetish does not stop every sane individual from seeing ugliness. You believe I should be delighted to have a partner who calls ugliness beauty and trivializes my grief? I should have had you analyzed years ago—my judgment was compromised by my relationship with you. I could not see. Your attachment increases with my physical deterioration. You prefer me broken.”

“That… that isn’t true! How dare—”

“You could barely tolerate me before Abel Gideon took my kidney. I was shot in the face and suddenly you professed your love. What shall it be this time? Ah, yes—marriage. You must be elated.” He rolled the words over his tongue in that distinctively upper-class way that was almost musical, yet bone-cuttingly brutal.

“Stop. This had nothing to do with it—you proposed to me!”

His eyes had been flashing with energy behind the bandages as you argued, but all the anger in them vanished like a message written in steam on a bathroom mirror. They took on a dull, blank glaze.

“Then I take it back,” he said. You wished you believed he meant the accusation. His head shifted toward you, but his dull stare seemed to look right through you to the door. “The engagement is over.”

Your throat dried up. “You don’t mean that,” you said, voice barely above a whisper.

“I will not be with one who gains pleasure from my mutilation. Get out of my room. There are some amputees over in the rehabilitation ward; go explore your fetishes elsewhere.”

He couldn’t be serious, and yet there was no hint of sarcasm or hyperbole in his flat tone. He meant it. You were surprised to find that you weren’t sad. Your hands began trembling uncontrollably, the tiny convulsions working their way from your extremities to your shoulders, tightly clenching in your gut, but it wasn’t sadness. The overfilled box tore open at the seams, exploding its pressurized contents, and weeks of frustration shattered against the walls and cascaded out over the floor.

“Fine!” you stood up from the hated plastic chair so sharply it scraped across the laminate floor and tipped over backward. “I can’t put up with a second more of this, anyway! I can’t keep walking on eggshells waiting for you to snap—if this is the way it’s going to be from now on, then marrying you would be a nightmare.”

If you had seen him flinch as if your words had physically wounded him, then you might have stopped shouting. A surge of pity might have overwhelmed you, and you might have broken down sobbing. He might not have been able to go through with it, then. Seeing you blubbering with heavy, hot tears rolling down your face, he might have said he was sorry, like he wished he could have said if only he were not so much like his father.

But you were too angry to look at him, and you didn’t see him flinch.

So a moment later when your back was in the doorway, instead of I’m sorry, he said, “Keep the ring. Sell it, and get a new apartment. Do not come back.”

“Fuck you!”

[buckyscrystalqueen]

Too Smart for Your Own Good: Part 2

Pairings: Machine Gun Kelly x Reader, (Past and Future) Henry Cavill x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, one night stand, unprotected sex

Word Count: 2,129

A/N: Doesn’t have a completed end yet, but just giving you more content to try to get myself out of a writing funk.

Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” Your father, Negan, chuckled as you got off the golf cart in front of the trailer you’d be celebrating Christmas in again, like you had for three of the past ten years, at the Los Angeles County State Prison.

“Hi, daddy.” You breathed in relief, grateful to spend any amount of time with the only family member that you could completely trust. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry fucking Christmas to you, too, Princess. Fuck you, give ‘em.” He barked as he pulled the bags of food and your clothes off the back of the cart before you could even think to reach for them. You simply rolled your eyes and grabbed your guitar case before thanking the officer and heading inside the family visit trailer. “So what kinda trouble did you get into this week?”

“Well…” You sighed as you sat down at the small table in the kitchen. “… I went to Cleveland on Saturday and flew back yesterday morning. Pretty sure I got pregnant, too.”

“You fucking what?!” Your dad roared as he slammed a box of Mac and Cheese down on the counter. “Fucking Henry?”

“Henry is not coming back!” You shouted back, defensively. “And does it fucking matter? I made a choice, two choices actually, to sleep with some douche bag and not take Plan B after. It is what it fucking is.”

“So what, you're just gunna throw away your fucking life…” He started as he went back to throwing groceries in the cabinets, angrily. 

“No, I made the choice to not be fucking alone any more!” You interrupted as you looked over at him. You couldn't hide the hurt in your eyes when he turned around to stare at you, shocked that you were actually talking about your emotions.

“Sweetheart…” He breathed as he abandoned his task and came over to sit down in front of you. “You are not fucking alone…”

“I am alone, daddy.” You nearly whispered as you put your feet up on your chair and wrapped your arms around your legs. “Mom’s dead, and you're in here for who knows how much longer. And Henry…” You scoffed and shook your head. “Henry isn't coming back. He loves being some hit shot doc the Army more than he ever loved me. So other than my research, which I've all but abandoned anyways out of sheer boredom, I have nothing. I have no one, daddy. Just the occasional visit from Ashleigh and some of the harlots from the club. Maybe a once a month lunch date with some of the people from UCLA. But that's it. So I made a choice not to get the morning after pill after I stared at the box for over an hour and weighed out the pros and cons. And I would much rather raise a sperm donor baby than be alone in that house anymore.”

“OK.” Negan whispered with a nod as he rested his hand on your bent knee. “OK. I don't fucking like it, but I will get on that train all the fucking same.” Tears welled in your eyes as you rested your cheek on the back of his hand, and you closed your eyes to hide them. “So I'm gunna be a grandpa?”

“Maybe.” You choked the slightest bit as you opened your eyes to look at him again. “It just happened but I know I'm ovulating…”

“Eww fucking gross.” He fake gagged to get you to smile as he pulled his hand free and got up to finish putting groceries away. “I don't wanna hear that shit.”

“That's what you get for raising a daughter with no filter.” You pointed out as you propped your chin between your still bent knees.

“Fucking gross.” He repeated with a laugh. “So the fuck was in Cleveland? This fuckin guy?”

“Ashleigh’s client. He’s a rock rapper that needed someone that could learn music fast and played the guitar well. So Ash landed on me. But dude is a total self absorbed prick. B minus in… well in the broom closet.”

“I'll have Simon kill him.” He said almost 100% seriously.

“You are not going to kill this idiot for being bad at sex.”

“No, I'm gunna fucking kill him for laying a Goddamn hand on my daughter.” He responded with a smile as he balled up the last empty grocery bag and put it in the recycling bin.

“You're an idiot.” You laughed as you grabbed your guitar and got up to sit outside for a while.

“Hey, be nice to your old man.” He huffed as he grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a pack of matches off the table and followed you out front to enjoy the California sun. “And go easy on me today.”

“Yea fucking right.” You laughed as you sat down on one of the plastic lawn chairs and pulled out your guitar, which took you almost a year of bribery to be able to get it into the jail it now lived in in the first place. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Pain in my Goddamn ass.” He grumbled around his cigarette as he moved his chair out off the shade and pulled off his blue prison issue shirt for as long as he could get away with it. “Alright… rock music from the 70’s.” You nodded at the category and tuned your guitar before picking an easy AC/DC song to start with. Which is pretty much how you always spent your days when you visited your father in prison.

——

Your office hadn’t looked so chaotic since you were working on a regular basis, but as of that morning, every available surface was covered in every single medical textbook, (with a focus on pregnancy and pediatrics) and motherhood book you could get your hands on. The dry erase board that usually had your equations to see if your Milky Way black hole theory was a possibility, had been wiped clean and replaced with columns upon columns of notes, to separate the ridiculous from the actual facts you would need to go through a pregnancy and raise a child.

You were blazing through the ‘Essential Neonatal Textbook’, when your house phone rang, startling you the slightest bit and forcing you to pull your attention away from a long list of the benefits of cord blood. You sighed and snatched up your headset as you set the book down to work through all of the information and pick out the more important bits and pieces to make the best informed decision.

“Ms. (Y/L/N)? I have a Colson Baker here to see you.” Your fingers froze with the cap of the marker in one hand and the marker itself in the other.

“You can let him in.” You sighed as you took a step forward and started a new list under the newborn column in the middle of the board. You heard the line click in your ear and you wrote quickly, trying to get some of the information down so you knew where to pick up when you came back inside. You got a short start and reluctantly forced yourself away from your research  to let your guest in. You started to work out your ideas vocally as you opened up the two gates and watched his purple Lamborghini pull into your driveway. You waited just long enough for him to make it half way to you, before you turned and headed inside to add more to your cord blood list with him following behind you.

“Umm… what the fuck is this?” Kels asked as he looked at the board over your shoulder in shock.

“Did you vaccinate Casie?” You asked as you continued to write.

“You’re fucking pregnant?!” He shouted over you as you capped your marker and set it back down on the easel.

“I am pregnant.” You said evenly as you walked over to find the ‘The Umbilical Cord Blood Controversies in Medical Law’ book to cross reference the former textbook. “Did you vaccinate Casie?”

“Were you gunna fucking tell me?” He shouted as you flipped through the pages, easily reading 20,000 words a minutes despite the distraction of your visitor.

“I was neither planning on telling you, nor keeping it from you.” You said simply. “I want nothing from you, Mr. Baker. I don’t need money, and I don’t need you to step up to be a father. You were a one night stand that I chose to not take Plan B after. My choice, my child, my body, my life.” He looked at you completely lost for words as you set your finished book down and headed back to the white board to add and change notes. “I would like your family medical history, though. I could easily do a diagnostics test and an MSS while I’m pregnant but…”

“Oh, I’m gunna be fucking sick.” He groaned behind you as you finished your idea and turned to move on to the next section. You grabbed the trash can and handed it to him on the way past as you tried to keep your thoughts as straight as possible, relatively unsuccessfully.

“I don’t wanna be alone.” You sighed as you looked over at him for a moment. “And after the way you treated me that night, the way you just used me and threw me away like I didn’t mean a Goddamn thing…” You exhaled through your nose and shook your head as you looked away from him and out the back door to the ocean. 

“I don’t care that you’re not happy here, Mr. Baker. I don’t care if you want to be in this child’s life or not. I don’t care if you see me or this child as a mistake, or what you see us as at all. I just don’t care. What I care about is having a calm, healthy pregnancy, and becoming a mother. And I will not tolerate having someone come into our lives to walk in and out of it because he never wanted us in the first place. Nor will I tolerate someone treating me like I’m worthless trash in front of my child.” Kels didn’t say a single word as you shook your head and turned back around to go back to work. “Stay as long as you want. I have work to do.” 

As Colson sat and thought, you went over to find a book about banking cord blood so you could round out that column. The next column was pros and cons of breastfeeding verses formula, which was a lot more extensive than you originally expected due to the varying opinions on length and benefits, but after reading through seven different books, and writing and erasing conflicting notes, he finally spoke up.

“Breastfeed for a year.” He almost whispered as he watched you work. “That’s what we did with Casie. And yea, we vaccinated her.” You nodded your head as you erased the idea you were writing and stood up to make a note in the vaccines column. “I don’t turn my back on my kids.”

“OK.”

“I’m sorry.” He continued as you capped your marker “It’s no excuse but I was high as fuck and running on adrenaline. I used you and that was shitty as fuck.”

“Yes it was.” You agreed with a nod as you leaned against the front of your desk and crossed your arms over your chest.

“Well I’m fucking sorry.” He said a little harshly. “And I’m sorry for knocking you up.”

“Pregnancy happens, Colson.” You breathed with a shrug of your shoulders. “I’m obviously a little more prepared since I actually made the decision…”

“Yea, that’s a fucking understatement.”

“OK, you can fucking leave and I can file a restraining order.” You snapped. “What’s done is done. I’m pregnant, you’re the father, your kid and my kid have a new sibling. You’re not going to have to pay child support, I’m taking primary custody with open visitations. And no, I am not going to date you. Not now, not ever. You left a sour taste in my mouth and I want nothing to do with you or your crazy lifestyle.”

“You’re just making this super fucking easy, aren’t you?” He asked as he pushed himself out of his chair. “I’m outta here. I’ll get your number from Ash and I’ll be in touch.” You rolled your eyes and gestured toward the door behind him.

“You can see yourself out.”

“Such a fucking bitch.” He muttered as he stormed out the doors and through the atrium to leave. You let out a huff and shook your head as you went back to your research.

“Idiot fucking sperm donor.”

Part 3

[13dead-ends]

Blood Bound

Henry Cavill x Named OC

Summary: In a world where vampires are a part of everyday life, Nina uses her blood to her advantage.

Word Count: 1910 (future chapters will be longer)

Warnings: 18+ in future chapters, but only swearing, and mentions of blood for this chapter. Nothing gory though.

A/N: This is my first original post. Go easy on me! Anyways, if you have any questions about this crazy universe I barely established, message me anytime! It was roughly edited, so sorry if there are mistakes. Please enjoy! :)

I sat with all the girls, and a few guys, we were all here for the same thing. An interview, the same interview. To become a blood donor for one of the most prestigious companies in the blood business. Positive, the leading company in providing human blood to vampires, located in Los Angeles. They did it from labs, taking bags from donors, to providing humans to clients. I was one of those humans. This company had a tedious process of selecting people for the job. They only wanted the best and most reliable. It’s probably why they are doing so well. They make their clients happy.

Vampires ‘came out’ to society in the 80s. They felt it was safe to make humans aware of their existence after inventing an artificial blood. As people grew more accepting of them, companies like Positive were born in the early 2000s. Someone had the idea of safely giving blood and began to regulate. Women were the main donors and men were the main clientele, though it was open everyone. While there are companies who don’t do well, the good ones are held to a high standard and new laws are being put into place every day to help regulate it. They good ones still get their far share of protesters still, but they’re becoming less frequent.

I had been at one of those not so good companies, I just didn’t know it until a month ago. I had one regular client. It was a very basic arrangement, not like those “sugar daddy” type arrangements, that a lot of women donors had. We met up, he fed, and there was money in my bank account by the end of the day. He was a businessman, Wall Street type. Never had a problem until he went too far one session. I woke up in the hospital with an email from my company already ‘letting me go.’ I got fucked over when I tried to sue too. I was terminated before the incident could be reported or some bullshit. Another way men have taken advantage of a mainly women-based system. Now I was scrambling to find a new job. I didn’t think Positive would even interview me, let alone give me a second one.

“Nina Locke?” I jumped at my name and stood. The woman who called my name was in a crisp pencil skirt and held the large door open for me.

“So, we’ll ask you some questions in here.” She led me down the hallway to a small office, with an almost empty desk. Another woman professionally dressed sat on one side. She stood and held out her hand.

“Hi, I’m Sarah Jenkins, head of the donor program here at Positive.” I shook her hand. “This is my assistant Kari” The first women, Kari, sat down and we followed suit. “So, this isn’t your first company?” I shook my head.

“Yes, I was with one for about a year and a half.”

“You put on your application that you choose to leave, but we called, and they said you were let go.” I chewed on my lip before answering.

“There was an incident with my last client. He went to the company first. They let me go before I had the chance to report anything.” I took a breath.

“One thing that I want you to know is that at this company we do things a little differently.” She slid over the thick folder on the desk to me. She opened it to a page titled Donor’s Resources and Benefits. “We want our clients to have the best donors, and to do that donors have to be treated as the highest priority. Happy donors, happy clients.” I blinked at her. I never thought I’d hear a company like this say that. It was always all about the clients. “You’re all human beings and will be treated like it. No matter the client.” One thing about this company, many celebrities used their services. It upped the stakes if something were to go wrong. “We want to be sure you’re being well-treated at all times.”

“Wow, this isn’t like any company I’ve worked for.” Was all I could say. After these last few weeks of therapy and lawyers hearing this almost made me choke up.

“I promise, as long as I’m in charge. I’ll take care of you and every donor here.”

“It almost feels like you’re just trying to convince me to stay.” I blurted. My eyes went wide, but Sarah laughed.

“You’re one of our favorite applicants, and you have experience. We are ready to hire you,” My jaw dropped.

“Really? That’s really good to hear.” Sarah smiled, shutting the folder.

“We would like to have lawyers present to discuss and sign your contract. I suggest looking over all of these papers with your lawyer beforehand, as well.” I nodded, taking the heavy stack in my hands. “Call us to schedule a meeting, myself, as well as Kari will be there. If you would like to bring your own witness, you may do that.” I felt myself grinning.

“Okay, thank you so much.”

 I had just got back from the meeting with Positive. I was officially under contract. My best friend Irene came with to be a witness, but she was just curious to see inside of the company. We were roommates, so she was right behind me when I stepped inside. The setting sun shone brightly through our windows. While I went to my room, I heard Irene popping open a bottle of wine to celebrate.

           “What shall we order for takeout, Nina?” She yelled. “It’s your day, you get to pick.” I threw my bag, still stuffed with papers, on my bed.

           “How about Sushi?”

           “Yes, ma’am! Look at the menu!” I plopped on my bed, thankful to be out of the Cali heat. Only another month until fall, and Halloween. I pulled up our favorite sushi place and picked some rolls.

           “Come on, let’s have a toast.” I rolled my eyes as I struggled to pick up a large roll with my chopsticks.

           “Stop being cheesy, I just got a new job, that’s all.”

           A better paying, better clientele, job. Plus, they give a shit about their employees!” I huffed but lifted my wine. “To Nina, who is moving up in the world! A bizarre world, but she’s killing it anyway.” After getting too full and too wine drunk, we went to bed. I went to sleep, feeling better than I had in weeks.

           In the morning, I woke up with a small headache, but I could sleep in, so it didn’t matter. I rolled over, planning to do just that. Then my phone screen lit up. I grabbed it from my bedside table. It was an email from Kari.

           Nina, I hope you are having a wonderful day so far,

I looked at my phone, it was already 11:30.

           I wanted to let you know that there are already donors requesting you!

I almost forgot I had let Kari put my profile out after everything was signed and notarized. She offered to wait too, but I was excited to get started again.

           Their files are at the office. Come by any time before five today and I can take you on a tour and show you the files. Have a wonderful day!

           Kari

I stared at my phone, surprised someone had already seen my file, let alone requested me. I chewed on my lip as I thought of the possible clients I could get. While yes, celebrities did use this company a lot, that doesn’t mean I’ll be donating to one. Lots of rich one percenters used it too. I cringed as the image of an old white guy popped unto my brain. I shook my head. I should go check out the files, the curiosity outweighed the nerves.

           “Nina, where are you going?” I had gotten dressed and stepped out, Irene was rubbing her head, hair messy, and her eyes were blood shot.

           “Some clients have already requested me. I’m going to look over their files.” Her jaw dropped, and she followed me out to the kitchen. I put the kettle on and started coffee for Irene. I started emailing Kari back, telling her when I’d be there.

           “Damn, you’re so popular.” I shrugged.

           “It’s my type.” After the interview I had asked Kari and Sarah why they wanted me so bad and they told me a lot of vampires enjoyed my blood type. I was AB-negative, a rare and apparently popular type. “At least that’s what Sarah was saying.”

           “Who knew, vampires have preferences.” Irene sat at the table, slumping, and rubbing her temples. I shrugged, sending the email. “Hey aren’t you hungover?” I laughed and went to the bathroom.

           “My head hurts, yeah.” I called out. I looked in the mirror and I had baggy eyes. I sighed. It was just a tour and some paperwork.

           “God, how much did I drink?” I heard Irene mutter.  I smiled and cleaned myself up a bit and went back out to make my tea. It wasn’t long before I was stepping into my new place of employment, Kari meeting me at the front desk.

           “Hello! How are you?” She just began walking toward the elevator as she spoke.

           “Great. How about you?”

           “I’m wonderful thank you for asking.” She pressed the up button. “We’ll start right away with the tour. Then I’ll show you your office, the files are on your desk there.”

           “An office?” The doors opened and we stepped in. There were lots of buttons, I forgot how many floors this place is, but it was a lot.

           “Yeah, every donor gets one. It’s a nice place to keep paperwork and an easy meet up spot for you and your clients.” I she hit a button. “I’ll take you to the labs first, you are allowed to donate blood this way anytime you like, as long as the medical staff clear you, it’s just like donating blood to the Red Cross. We…” She continued with her spiel and took me to all the different floors and told where to go for certain things. It was a lot, but I felt comfortable enough to ask her question, which she almost always had an answer too. We ended on the donor floor, with private offices, a cafeteria, and a gym. I really had it made.

           She opened up an office, it was empty except for a nice desk and a computer, plus a few files. “This is your place, you can set up a code for the lock,” She jiggled the handle. “that phone has all the extensions on it” I nodded. “Just call or email me if you choose anyone today, but please take your time. I’ll set up a meeting with them as soon as possible.”

           “Thank you so much Kari. I’ll let you know.” She nodded with a smile and started to step out. “Kari, um,” She stopped. “I was wondering what they know about my last job.”

           “Oh, we left all that information out of the file. It’s at your discretion.” I nodded and she left. I sat down and took the first file in my hands, pushing the other ones away. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them until the file was open. I almost had a heart attack. Henry Cavill was at the top of the page.

Shout out to one of my bestest friends and my first tag on the tag list! Love you girl :) @hellcaster901​

[gilbirda]

Eternal. Chapter 1

Elizabeth was a very old vampire, used to changes and tragedies, used to adapt to the evolving world. When one night she searches for a distraction she finds someone as lost as she is, a human man that sparks an interest in her. But will that be enough? Would she risk involving him in her ageless world?

<< Prologue || Next chapter >> Chapter 1: Midnight Blood

She didn’t know for sure why she chose this place. Maybe the irony was too good to let it pass, maybe she was feeling funny tonight, maybe she needed something new after Suzie. Yeah, it has been a few years and they were speaking from time to time, but the look on her ex-lover face that last day was still haunting her.

“Midnight Blood,” Elizabeth whispered reading the neon lights on top of the sketchy door of the club she was going into, looking for something to eat. “Huh, quite fitting.”

She resisted the urge to put her hands on her ears and showed her fake ID to the big man at the door, smiling for a very different reason that the many youngsters around her. If this man tried to push her away he was in for a few broken fingers. But nothing seemed out of place in her, she made sure that she looked just like a woman of her apparent age would wear to a themed night club in a big city, a vampire themed nightclub; including spikes, blood red corset and “fake” fangs. She had to give credit to these new generations, they are almost on point with the whole set up, but still humans have so much to learn.

Inside was no surprise; loud electronic music and jumping (dancing?) young people and not so young people, enjoying a night out where they were safe and not judged by their hobbies. Lately, vampires were mixed with the gothic subculture and almost everyone into one thing was on the other, so along with Nosferatu classic attire she could see the whole chains-and-bats and big mohawks with white makeup and creepy body modifications. That was something she could not understand. Why would humans wish to be something they are not? Every vampire she had met was comfortable with they body; some more religious were worried about their damned souls and all that jazz, but never with their bodies.

Thinking about that, Elizabeth approached the barwoman serving drinks to the vampire-wannabes in the bar, and checked that no other from her species was out hunting here, mixed with the humans, so there was no need to fight tonight. She was the only undead there, so she proceed to find a suitable, delicious human to feed from the crowd.

And that’s where she found him, alone, with a half finished cold beer in his hand, a retro vampire costume on with the cape and everything, a content smile on his face as he watched the people, just like she was doing. He might be used to do that, she thought, because he didn’t look nervous or at unease at all. Maybe that’s why he noticed her looking at him, a weird glint in his eyes, like he knew that Elizabeth wasn’t a regular at that place. The boy smiled a encouraging smile and gave her a friendly wave before getting back to his warming beer. He sipped and looked at the crowd again. Was he avoiding her piercing red eyes? She knew they gave quite the scare to humans, but here Elizabeth saw so many fake red eyes that she discarded the thought immediately.

The vampire raised a brow to this. Who was this human and why was he so weird? Just when she was considering going to him and ask if he knew something, he looked at her with that content smile that got wider when he discovered that she was staring at him. Encouraged, he walked away from the wall decorated with bats and various posters of vampire films and framed costumes, original costumes, of classic characters portraying the vampire race. This place must have cost a fortune, Elizabeth thought barely registering the giant chandelier hanging from the tall ceiling, the flashing lights reflecting in every direction, reminding her of the disco balls back from the 80s. Damn, weren’t those the times.

Focus, she told herself when the boy was almost in front of her. If she was human, he may need to get nearer to hear anything he wanted to say, but because she wasn’t such a thing, Elizabeth could perfectly hear him tell himself to “get a grip” and “breathe, she isn’t going to bite”. Well, that may depend on what he was going to say, she thought.

“Hi”, he finally said, his voice barely wavering and full of a confidence that his pulse told her otherwise. She smiled. First impressions were important, and if she was so lucky to find a suitable “donor” so soon, she needed him to trust her enough to bring her to his house.

“Hello,” she said loud enough so he could hear her above the music, “sorry I was being creepy a moment ago. Your costume is just amazing. I’m Elizabeth by the way.” She held her hand, which he shook with a bit too much enthusiasm.

“William.” he smiled. “And thank you. Yours is pretty good too.”

The vampire smiled widely, for a moment forgetting to hide her fangs. But he noticed and his eyes lighted up with wonder. Those were the most realistic fangs he had ever seen.

***

“... Then I told him, ‘Dude, The Vampire Chronicles from Anne Rice, not that teenager drama’!” he laughed and sipped from the second or third beer of that night, he couldn’t remember very well. “The look on his face was priceless.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.” Elizabeth smiled, but from a different reason than the funny story the boy was telling her. He was perfect. Living alone, went out frequently, no friends here… The only thing was that he wasn’t trying to get into her pants, yet; or at least not so rushed like many other men she had fed from. That was something she wasn’t proud of, but men were more easily manipulated into hooking up in their house. Usually they didn’t get to their second drink of the night.

“Am I boring you?” he said bringing her back from her musings. “Sorry, I tend to ramble about these things a lot. My friends tell me that all the time.”

This is so cute, she thought. A fang poked from her red lips when she gave him her legendary half smile, seductively placing down her untouched drink on the counter and repositioning her legs in a sensual way. His nervous look down didn’t go unnoticed. The blood rushed underneath his skin on the neck, painting his face a healthy rose color as he realized that she was flirting with him. Maybe he was a boy after all, he looked really young, and for a moment Elizabeth felt guilty. She promised herself to never feed on children so long ago that she couldn’t remember how much time has passed since that day.

“Are you… Are you interested in me?” he asked in a low voice, as if he was afraid that someone was listening to their conversation. A funny thought indeed, because the club was so loud despite the late hour, but he seemed really shocked by the thought.

“Maybe, maybe not. It depends.” He gulped loudly.

“On what?”

“On if you are willing to get out from this place or not. I think I’m going to spontaneously combust from the human heat,” she changed the topic. She needed to get out soon or someone would die, literally. She hadn’t eaten anything in weeks and the hunger was unbearable, and she had been around humans for too long inside a poorly aired building. It was driving her crazy. William gulped again, her eyes following the inviting movement of the veins on his throat.

Elizabeth closed her eyes for a second.

“Are you claustrophobic or something?” he asked while standing up. Jackpot, the vampire thought. “I know this place can get on your nerves sometimes. The people are kinda weird and the drinks aren’t worth what you pay for them.”

“Then why do you come here?”

“I guess I enjoy watching other people have fun. I don’t usually come alone, but tonight I needed some changes in my.. eh, routine.” William scratched the back of his head, probably uncomfortable with the topic.

“I can relate,” she laughed thinking about the irony of the situation. That’s exactly what she had thought when she came here. Maybe this boy was what she needed right now to forget Suzie. Something different, something fresh.

It was a shame that he wouldn’t remember her tomorrow.

[thebeautyofdisorder]

The Undone & The Divine (BBC Dracula) - Chapter 5

A/N: Okay...this took far longer than I expected it to, but to be fair for five minutes I was almost convinced to take a break and leave it at four. Five minutes is giving it too much credit, I think. But, either way - here it is. I hope you enjoy it. I labored over the last bits of this for far too long wondering if I was getting too ahead of myself, but... what the hell, right? Please reassure me with comments.

Rating: still T, for blood, language, and a bit of dubious consent/alluding to adult concepts 

Pairing: Dracula & Zoe/Agatha Van Helsing

Chapters 1 & 2 Here - Chapter 3 Here - Chapter 4 Here

Can be found on AO3 - Right HERE -

Chapter 5

It was another two weeks before Zoe saw sunlight again. Not out of any kind of vampiric repulsion, but purely due to the epic workload she had set up for herself. She knew as much as she hated to admit it that Dracula was right. She had a limited amount of time to make good on her intentions and an expanse of scientific ground to break, more than she had ever envisioned for herself. 

Worse, there was a level of occult knowledge that she needed to reacquaint herself with since she’d tossed it in the bin twenty years prior, but Agatha was at least useful in that respect. Granted 1897 was not the most ideal cut off, but it gave her a decent groundwork. What wasn’t useful was the obvious glee that overcame her in the presence of the monster Zoe had been taught from an early age was basically the devil incarnate. And it’s not as though the nun even disagreed with the assessment, save her belief in the literal devil causing a bit of a contextual conflict. 

Zoe had always took pride in her stoicism, but Agatha was quite the opposite. She’d always found some sort of wicked, curious amusement in everything, even in the face of death – and vampires, apparently. Not that she didn’t have a very personal reason to be interested now. No, ignoring Dracula was no longer an option. Understanding him was the only way to fully understand herself, and whoever else the Count was no doubt soon to add to the ranks of the undead. 

As much as she detested to admit it, she could feel herself changing – slowly, but surely evolving past the limits of what it had always meant to be human. Everything was different – the way things smelled, looked, tasted, felt… there wasn’t a sense unaffected. And with it had grown subtle, gnawing hunger that she was determined to repress – or, currently, find a safe way to sate. And she was close. So close. But without a few more key bits of information from the beast himself, there was no way to be sure.

She had let him be for now, since she knew they at least had time in that regard. Dracula was many things, but a total idiot was not one of them, and no doubt he’d taken notice of the pattern just as easily as she did. The longer he spent with each victim, the more ideal the transformation after death. Instant kills were a 50/50 shot at best. If he was on the lookout for another ‘bride’ – even if he’d found one, there was no way he’d waste his newly renewed hope by getting overzealous. Zoe alone seemed to be the outlier of that unspoken rule, but ingesting so much of his blood (and also being on death’s doorstep already) seemed to have been the push.

It wasn’t like she didn’t know where he was. In fact, she found that if she let herself focus on him too long she couldn’t seem to avoid getting a sort of passing ‘update’ of his current actions – whether she wanted it or not. Just the person she wanted to be mentally connected to. Though whatever the connection was, it seemed to be a two-way street as opposed to the sort of controlling thrall that he had over certain others. At least she hadn’t caught herself doodling ‘Dracula is God’ in the corner of any of her notepads, thank fuck for that.

After a couple of weeks, however, the peaks at his consciousness were becoming more involuntary – either that, or he’d found out a way to push them at her deliberately, which wouldn’t surprise her in the least. An array of miscellaneous throats, mostly – with the occasional face to go with them even, but a strangely short order of corpses. Not too surprising given his renewed intent to procreate, but she expected the body count would be still reasonably…abundant. 

Despite knowing she should be relieved, Zoe felt a creeping sense of dread. How many people did he intend to turn? To keep up with his usual appetite he’d have to be keeping a menagerie of donors. Willing donors. For a brief, mindless moment she wondered to herself how the hell he was managing that. Her own voice (more or less) answered in a clipped mocking laugh, echoing out loud in the silence of her office. 

Tall, dark, handsome, well dressed, charming – in a snakey sort of way with no particular sexual preference, in a city full of jaded, power starved people longing to escape from their problems, with a cynical attitude toward life and death?  Christ’s sake, they were in the age of the opioid epidemic and the man was walking heroin. Literally. The world was doomed. 

Ready or not, it was about time she stopped making things so easy for him, Zoe decided, packing up her latest round of experiments and locking them away. Just because she couldn’t kill Dracula (yet) didn’t mean that she couldn’t distract him - a thought that she was well aware originated more with Agatha than herself, but the scientist in her was still fully willing to embrace. 

The methodology was...negotiable, they'd settled on vaguely as Zoe found her way quickly home to her flat. 

Once she decided to figure out his location, it didn't surprise her that the count was 'on the prowl', but she did have to roll her eyes at his choice of venue. Apparently he was going to make following him inconvenient. It definitely wasn't a club she could just waltz into dressed like a science professor and blend in. 

But this is good, he won't be expecting your intrusion. 

...Or he's expecting me to show up in a lab coat and give myself away Zoe countered internally, becoming arguably far too comfortable with disagreeing with her own inner voice as she yanked out a little black dress from the back of her wardrobe and tossed it on her bed, along with her far more lived in leather jacket.

Fine. This was fine. If she could keep randy 20-year-olds focused on studying science instead of each other on a regular basis, she could certainly handle putting a wrench in a 500 year old man-child’s seduction techniques. 

------

Of the numerous intrigues and conundrums the 21st century had wrought upon the Count, the notion of the vampire being not only a cultural topic of admiration but practically a fetish was one he had never seen coming. He was actually embarrassed it had taken him this long to fully comprehend and, in turn, utilize this phenomenon. It was true none of his earlier victims had really been surprised when his teeth sank into their necks, but the full scope of it had never really ‘dawned’ on him until baring his fangs had inspired one too many bouts of earnest excitement. It was frankly hilarious, not to mention convenient, though truth be told he was beginning to miss the charms of inspiring unholy terror. 

Not that the initial euphoria didn’t quickly evolve into proper panic once the reality of exsanguination occurred to them – if he allowed it to. He sometimes did, particularly since he was losing patience with being told it wasn’t Halloween just before ripping into their throats. He opted not to keep those idiots around, more often than not. The undead didn’t need any more denial in its ranks - Zoe was already proving to be so far immune to his influence in every way, he did not need any more deviance. 

It luckily hadn’t taken Dracula long to finally hit the smorgasbord: an entire dark room, filled almost entirely with dozens of willing, believing victims. So many nocturnal souls, full of wickedness and naïve delight at the mere thought of a creature such as him walking amongst them. Many of them even liked to already call themselves vampires, some in jest and others in actual earnest - artificial fangs and all! It was downright adorable. Now why should he, of all people, ruin their fun? 

It never took very long to capture someone’s attention, and that particular night was no different save for the fact that his potential prey had suddenly turned their attention away from him and was having some unknown words whispered in their ear by a woman he vaguely recognized as the bartender. 

“I…um, I need to go. Emergency,” The young woman stated in the broken persistence easily identified as that of an unpracticed liar, and she dissolved hurriedly back into the darkness from whence she came. 

Dracula’s head tilted briefly in confusion, but then in realization he sighed as his eyes scanned and locked in a glare on the slender figure at the far end of the bar who was smirking at him. 

Striding over with exaggerated reluctance, he leant against the surface at her side.

“What did you tell her?” 

Zoe shrugged, still clearly pleased with herself. “Just enough to make you sound revolting. Not exactly hard to do.”

“No one likes a cock block, Dr. Helsing,” he accused with a raise of his brows, looking down at her.

Zoe chuckled aloud. “I think we both know your cock isn’t something to worry about,” she replied, eyes rolling at his apparent need to show off his modern vocabulary. 

“Ouch,” he rumbled, amusement still glinting in the black pools of his eyes despite his attempt at a pout. “Should I be offended?” 

“Is there even anything to be offended about?” She found herself asking, and briefly cursed Agatha’s ever-greedy curiosity.

The Count’s brows shot upwards, in either genuine surprise or a good ploy of it as he turned his body to face hers. “Are you asking if I’m, as you say, ‘fully functional and anatomically correct’? Oh dear, now I am offended.” It didn’t falter his smile.

“I just assumed you saw everyone as little more than happy meals with legs,” she said in, granted, unnecessary explanation for the question. Never in anything she’d seen or heard of his attempts to seduce or charm did he seem to be in pursuit of anything but dinner.

“I’m a man of many appetites, some just supersede others,” he replied simply, at first, though quickly amended. “And certain aspects of being a vampire does make it difficult to find a partner who will remain conscious or even survive the experience through to its conclusion.”

“Sounds like a self-control problem to me, though...I wouldn’t have thought the killing part to be an issue for you,” she uttered in return, more of Agatha’s intrigue popping out without her consent. 

His eyes narrowed knowingly, as they always seemed to do when he sensed Zoe’s words were not always her own, though it didn’t stop him from responding.

“I may be undead, but I am no necrophile. I told you I like the lively ones, and I meant that. Even if the vast majority are ‘happy meals with legs’ that’s no reason to ignore what’s between them. Where do you think all that blood flows to when you’re aroused?”

“Sorry I asked,” Zoe clipped, eyes rolling again in sheer avoidance of his probing gaze.

“Maybe I ought to try some restraints,” he mused thoughtfully, ignoring her comment entirely and refocusing on his current ‘conundrum’ she’d been so kind as to bring to the forefront of his thoughts. “I fed from an interesting little dominatrix the other night…”

“For them or for you?” Zoe found herself snarking back, beginning to wonder if it was a better or worse choice to let a nun have this conversation in her place.

“Oh, them. It would keep them conscious a bit at least. When your saliva is a sedative, over-eagerness just breeds trouble. I don’t even know if they make anything strong enough to restrain me. Silver…if you believe the stories, though I’ve never tried it.” His brow quirked upward lasciviously at her, an obvious lure. “Perhaps you would do the honors?” 

“Perhaps I should try to stake you, just to be sure. You never know, I could get lucky.”

“Now, now. We both know you’re not going to do that. Come on Agatha – don’t think I don’t know when it’s you, you always were a curious cat - if things went your way I’d still be locked in a box to prod at for the rest of eternity, all for the sake of extending your morbid curiosity. I was extending a courtesy with that offer. It could be the closest you’d get to satisfaction in that regard. Or any regard," he drawled, punctuating his already not-so-subtle meaning by moving in closer still, deliberately intrusive. He lived to infuriate. 

Agatha’s first instinct was to aim a slap at his absurdly smug face just for the audacity, regardless of Zoe’s opposing instinct to ignore him entirely. Apparently the nun won out, though the speed in which her hands zoomed forward was an impossible thing, and as Zoe feared, a grave mistake. The older vampire caught her hand in his massive fist before it came within an inch of his flesh, with a look of pure satisfaction. In the same gesture, his other hand shot to grasp her throat and by the force of the movement alone urged her back from the bar and into the shadows just beyond it. The music was melancholic, but loud and just chaotic enough to drown out the faint growl erupting from his throat. 

“Ooh. Look at you go. I think my blood really did do the trick, didn’t it? None of my brides, before or after their full transformation, could even come close to my speed. And you’re already halfway there. Not to mention completely immune to my power of suggestion yet still able to locate me, it seems – very, very irritating, but impressive. Any fangs yet?” 

Struggling briefly in his grasp, she bared her teeth at him spitefully, showing off her teeth’s lack of points. 

“Aw. What a pity,” he sighed, letting go of her hand, but kept her neck in his grip – not squeezing, but present and unmoving, nonetheless lest she try to attack him again.

 “Still trying to fight it, aren’t you? Zoe’s just a stubborn thing, she wants to prove me wrong. But you…you are trying to protect her. From me…herself, I don’t know, but it’s only going to end up driving her mad.” 

“It’s completely feasible to resist the blood lust,” Agatha persisted, meeting his steely gaze with her own. “She’s figured out how it works, what the vampiric body needs to function.” 

“And I suppose you’d be the expert at resisting lusts, wouldn’t you?” His fingers tightened minutely around the long column of her throat, and his words were a harsh whisper that’s effect on her body mocked the very virtue it was pretending to praise. 

“For once, Dracula, stop flattering yourself,” she spat, turning her head as much to look away from him – at anything but him - as his hold would allow.

“I never flatter myself. You stop elevating yourself. You’re not a nun anymore, you’re just another wayward soul. You’ve died twice trying to rid the world of me and we’re both still here. Take a hint.” 

“Perhaps I’m still here to stop you,” she suggested, finally turning back to face him with a challenging lift of her brow.

The Count met her challenge with a look of utter acceptance , his face leaning down to hers in what to anyone else would be a clear threat - and to anyone else, it was exactly that. To a normal, non corrupt human his kiss meant instant submission, the predator incapacitating his prey. 

“Then, by all means, stop me.” 

She stood stiff in the face of his intimate approach, for a moment able to ignore any further context and simply prod at him. 

"Your delusions won't work on me anymore," Agatha reminded him blandly, pushing breath out with each word just because she could. 

This gave him pause for all of a moment, but it was seemingly only to observe her stubborn face with faint amusement. 

"Good," he uttered against her lips with mocking simplicity, but before she could take another breath he was kissing her hard and to his utter relief, didn't get limp, clouded acceptance in response. 

She let out a frustrated growl of her own in protest, more human than beast, though her attempt at clamping her lips closed in protest came a moment too late. He'd captured her lower lip between his own and she felt the sharp scrape of his canines as he pulled, still prominent without the animalistic haze of hunger. 

Her initial will to resist buckled to make way instead for an aggressive refusal to be dominated - whether those forces had names or were shared equally between the Van Helsing women, he couldn't say, but instead of allowing him to ravage her mouth unopposed, or even to attempt to fight or flee as the Count half expected, she'd responded with equal fervor - out of lust or spite or both. Her blunt teeth bit down hard where his had only nipped and her previously limp hand found its way to the back of his head and anchored itself in his locks to counter the tightening of his grip on her neck. 

The snarl that reverberated from his throat and into her mouth was every bit as bestial as hers was human, and his grip tightened dangerously just before forcing her backwards and away from him like he was embracing an open flame. She barely caught herself before crashing into a wall, but still looked on with unadulterated satisfaction as Dracula looked twice as shaken as she did in the face of his first kiss in 500 years that didn't end in immediate surrender. Men - alive or dead - were all the same. 

After a moment, he caught himself, letting out a wicked chuckle in the face of her smirk. "We'll make a monster of you yet, Van Helsing," he assured her raggedly, bluster gradually returning to his stance and the set of his jaw as he watched her.

Zoe - and fully Zoe at that moment righted herself from where she leaned against the wall, adjusting her jacket, the satisfied look still in her eyes. 

"Happy hunting, Count Dracula. Just don't expect me to make it easy for you."

And without looking at him again, she walked passed where he stood and headed in a leisurely stroll towards the exit, forcing her heart rate back to its normal deathly calm. 

----

I’m not even sure what to say to this other than either I’m sorry or your welcome. I’m just going to tag everyone who’s nerding has inspired me to continue, regardless if you’ve showed any interest in reading or not. If you want to be tagged, let me know

Tag List: @charlesdances @bellamortislife @carydorse @break-free-killer-queen @imagineandimagine @my-fanfic-library @punk-courtesan @ohveda @wannabebloodsucker @hoefordarkness @mymagicsuitcase @crazytxgradstudent @itendedbadly @theplumsoldier @gatissed @allfandoms-writings @littlemessyjessi @vampiregirl1797 @desperatefrenchwriter @iloveclaesbang @ss9slb @dreamerkim @mephdcosplay @violetmarkey @alhoyin @thozaarmitage @girlonfireice@cipherwheeldecoder @crowley-needs-a-hug @mr-kisskiss-bangbang @iloveclaesbang

[sweetcatmintea]

He’s Only Hurting Himself

Hello hello ^u^ Back again for Flash Fiction Friday!  (I know I’ve missed some and have messages to reply to and I promise I’ll get to them soon! I’ve been running around chasing my own tail lately @A@;;) 

This is @bookenders flash fiction prize for the giveaway I did. Thanks so much for your patience and I hope you like it!

Feedback is very appreciated!

Prompt: I'd love for you to write in a style that you've always wanted to try but haven't yet, for whatever reason, on any subject! 😊

I decided to try a meaningful, future tense story

TW: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Dementia, Death, Brief mentions of illness, Sad

Words: 1351

____

A long day, a deep sigh, sinking slowly into the battered and overstuffed couch cushions, an icy beer safely in hand. The children were asleep, the day was close to over. He leaned back, letting the tiredness seep from his pores. The tv flashed one program or another, whichever was required to complete the Thursday ritual. Weekday programs never really caught his interest. His wife, lovely, his rock, was invested in the prime-time dramas, so he sat while she watched. He toyed with the bottle, briefly rolling it in his palm, absently drawing out the anticipation. The first crack was always the sweetest. Bitter bubbles scratched the building itch in his throat. A sip, then a mouthful, then a new bottle, then he woke up. Friday repeat.

He could say he loved the malty flavour in the evening, that he was a man of taste, sampling the local beverages. He could say a lot of things. He was beginning to think the longing was a problem, but he would never say that. It was his body after all. His choices weren’t hurting anyone but himself. There were issues beneath the surface – aren’t there always? Maybe it was the stress, maybe a simple need to placate the thirst, maybe his childhood came into play. He didn’t need help. He told his wife so many times. His pride wouldn’t allow it. So what if he went a little over sometimes? Everyone has their vices. At least he was a happy drunk.

So he sank into his favourite chair, air warm and beer cold. The children were asleep, and his wife was watching the weekday program. He knew he wouldn’t remember the rest of the night but that doesn’t stop him from raising the bottle. He took a sip.

What he doesn’t know is that there will always be enough money for alcohol, even when the pantry is slim. That his wife, lovely, his rock, is left alone when he comes home, her words falling into nothing so often she stops talking.

He couldn’t imagine that, a few weeks from now, his son will be preparing for an important recital. He will be so excited. Months of practice all leading up to the big performance. The struggles, the triumphs. His son can’t wait to show his parents how hard he worked. And then he will slip. Ankle broken and heart shattered, he will wait in the emergency room with his mother. His father will be too drunk to come to him. He will never be able to look at the man the same way. He will forgive him, but the stain of abandonment will never come out. Bottles collect to dampen the failure. He hates the noise.

A few years later, the man’s daughter will come to him. She’ll be laughing, burnt red from the sports festival and waving a blue ribbon in triumph. She’ll be so proud, telling him that she’s going to be the best in the world at the javelin throw. He will agree, as any parent would. As long as she’s happy, that will be the future he wants for her. When she starts feeling unwell on the drive home, it’s chalked up to heat exhaustion. An ice block, water, and an early night to fox her tiredness. He and his wife discuss their worries over drinks while their kids are in bed. Heat stroke is a genuine concern but it was a stable of growing up here. She should be fine in a few days.

His daughter’s skin tans golden while she stays tired and dizzy. The vomiting sends them to a GP. He makes sure he is present this time. He will wish he wasn’t. The diagnosis is troubling, but unlikely. They’ll have to run some tests just to rule it out. The tests are positive. They determine acute liver failure four days before her fifteenth birthday.

Donors will be scarce. She’s on the waitlist but her blood type is a complication. She’s always been the spitting image of her mother, sharing only two traits with her father – his oak brown eyes and his O- blood. He will offer his liver. He will offer over and over and over. Take it, take the while thing if you can salvage one piece, please, take my liver. The check box glares back

🔲 No active substance abuse

In the twist of a cap, she’s gone.

He will never recover. Night after night, he will drink his sorrows, drowning his wife in the process. The final straw, an ultimatum. Sober up or be alone. He can’t lose anyone else. The pain is too much. It will be hard, one of the hardest things he will ever do, but he will sink into that old couch, son in college, and the tv playing the weekday program. He will share a tea with his wife. The house feels empty.

It’s sad when the damage is invisible, the result inevitable. Wrinkles will set in a little earlier than expected. Grey overtaking blond. Sometimes he forgets his appointments. Old age, they laugh. His wife will age much more gracefully. There’s a tiredness in her eyes, one that she hasn’t been able to shake for years now. But she’s still beautiful. The crow’s feet set in beside them, deepening with every smile. It’s one of his favourite features. Sometimes, he gets irritable. He will yell without meaning to. He was never really one to yell. She smiles less.

When he panics in the shopping centre, she will know something is wrong. He was lost, scared, frail. She will see the diagnosis before the doctor says it, his face a written apology. Dementia. She will hold herself together well, all things considered. He will not. The road paved for him was one that terrified him. With each detail the doctor will paint, he wishes he could look anywhere else. Ten years to lose himself. Ten years to die. His son will come home immediately. They will get through this. One day at a time, they’ll be ok. The promise was made in the late evening, the family holding each other on the old comfortable couch, tv playing the weekday program in the background.

Confusion will come more and more. Week and disoriented, he will struggle as the days blur on. One morning in the early spring, he approaches his wife in tears. He can’t remember the feel of her hand on his cheek. She will hold him tight and cry.

Time becomes fuzzy. He will shift between selves. On good days, he will be him. On bad days, he is angry. He yells and storms, drinks and swears. He hates the old woman who pleads with him to stop. On terrible days he begs the strange man to let him see his boy. He’s so proud of his son. He hasn’t seen him in so long. He doesn’t want to miss his recital. He’s so, so happy when his wife visits him. She’s older now. He doesn’t know when that happened. But she will still be so beautiful. He loves the crinkles around her eyes. Sometimes, he will remember he needs to pick up his daughter from the sports festival. She always tries so hard, you know. The old woman and the strange man cry when he tells them.

He will die. Quietly, in his sleep. The disease finally corroding his brain stem, stopping his heart. The guilty relief tears his wife apart. She stands at his grave, praying he finds peace. She will spend her entire life waiting for him to get better.

His son is hollow. He will have been for a long time. In the quiet evening when work is done, he will pour another glass of wine. He doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.

There is no way the man could predict all of this as he takes another sip of his beer. His wife, lovely, his rock, gives him a worried look. He smiles and kisses her cheek. A few beers weren’t hurting anyone. Besides, he was a happy drunk.

-----

To be real for a second, Australia has a really prevalent drinking culture. It makes me worry about both the people getting drunk on the regular and the people around them. This story is in no way intended to shame people who drink, it’s supposed to highlight the false belief ‘it’s fine if I harm myself because it doesn’t hurt others’. 

----- 

Tag list

@snobbysnekboi, @inkovert, @kainablue, @i-rove-rock-n-roll, and @goblin-writer

[permets-tu-not-permettez-vous]

Awake My Soul

Chapter 1: Midnight

Enjolras was lucky he had a backbone of steel or he would never have made it as a concert pianist. Or rather, it was more likely that this backbone of steel is precisely the reason he was one of the foremost concert pianists in the world. That and his stubbornness, which was almost as well-known as his deft and light touch on the keys, especially among conductors. The days were long, the hours grueling, and often the last thing that Enjolras wanted to do was sit on that cushioned stool that knew him so well and make music once more. And today, standing in his crisp freshly dry-cleaned suit, he dreaded the performance that was to start. He could hear the crowd buzzing outside, and as he peeked out from behind the curtain, he saw a large mass of people mingling through the red cushioned seats, talking and laughing. Probably trying to impress each other with how many composers they could critique without ever having touched an instrument, Enjolras thought cynically. It wasn’t that he was nervous. Enjolras was never nervous, and certainly not about playing the piano. It was that the thought of having to socialize with people after the performance, people who were all scraping to impress him by speaking abstract music theory, making him want to tear his hair out. It hadn’t always been this way. When he was young and had first discovered that he had a talent for producing emotion out of so many gleaming keys, he had been overjoyed. He spent hours in front of them, losing himself in music. He hadn’t ever looked at practicing as a chore; he had always loved those hours he had to himself, stroking those smooth ivory keys. He hadn’t really considered becoming a professional pianist until his eighth grade piano teacher Mabeuf had encouraged him to think about it, to go on tour and do various performances, to work with his local symphony. It had been hard, but it hadn’t been a struggle. Anyone who heard Enjolras play could tell he had a natural talent, and there was no question of them wanting to continue his path. His difficulties did not stem from piano playing; they stemmed from the culture surrounding the piano. From his youth, to his inexperience, to his penchant for picking eccentric composers to perform, the music world was shaken up by Enjolras’ refusal to stick to convention. This event was one that had been unavoidably cliché. He was doing a short Christmas tour performing Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, accompanied by symphonies dotted throughout the country, and even the world. Tonight he was in Paris. Enjolras would complain more, but he had to admit that though The Nutcracker was too commodified for the time of Christmas, he truly and sincerely loved Tchaikovsky’s genius. Now there was a man who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the “rules” of classical music and composed primarily from his human experience in order to make some of the most incredibly moving and evocative music ever played. So though Enjolras loved Tchaikovsky, he just hated that every Christmas the classical world trotted out the tired Nutcracker and then put it back in its box to gather dust until the next winter. Tchaikovsky had written such transformative music, and he was remembered for a toy that came to life to visit a Sugar Plum Fairy. He was such a brilliant three dimensional person, and the consumerism of art had made him two dimensional, flat, and worn-out. He shook himself. He needed to get out of this headspace before the concert. He always didn’t play as well when he was in his head. He checked his watch. Soon he’d be stepping out on the stage, and seating himself before an expensive piano as the entire room filled with costly clothes and extravagant jewelry held their breath in anticipation. He headed back to the dressing room. On nights like this, he wished Joly hadn’t made him quit smoking.

                                                             *  *  *

The afterparty was about as dull as Enjolras had expected. For a blessed two hours he had practically forgotten the audience was there and immersed himself in Tchaikovsky’s bold chords and tender melodies, only resurfacing at the thunderous and yet politely refined applause that followed his final piece. Then it had been back to the reality of old white people who were bowing and scraping and using large words to impress him. That wasn’t even the worst. Enjolras detested those who knew nothing about music giving overly loud commentary on music that they had clearly read from the Le Monde or some other critique because it was incongruent with what they thought or said. This party had all of his least favorite things, people who wanted him to meet old friends, who asked him about his inspiration, who probed his opinion on the “death of appreciation of the fine arts that is currently occurring.” When Enjolras saw Combeferre from across the room, he almost melted in relief at a familiar face. He excused himself politely from his insipid conversation and made a beeline towards Combeferre, who was speaking with one of the cellists in Paris’s orchestra. Seeing Enjolras coming his way, he also disentangled himself from his conversation and met him halfway, champagne flute clutched elegantly between his fingers. “Thank God you’re here,” Enjolras breathed, feeling the anxiety in his chest loosen at just the sight of his face - calm brown eyes framed by neat horn-rimmed glasses, smile lines beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. 

“That bad tonight?” Combeferre inquired coolly, taking a neat swig from his champagne flute in a way that looked elegant but conveyed to Enjolras that he too was tired of the elitism and racism that he had faced that night. “I’ve had several people look away and clear their throats or straight up leave every time I even allude to the fact that Tchaikovsky was gay.” “I see. Pretty bad, then.” “I need to get out of here,” Enjolras said, more to himself than Combeferre. “Want to go catch a drink at some hole in the wall bar where no one knows shit about classical music?” Combeferre quirked his brow. Enjolras calculated quickly - he had definitely spent enough time at this party to argue that he hadn’t skived it off. “Give me ten minutes to change and get my shit. Meet me in your car by the green room.” “It sounds like this is a high-stake diamond robbery.” Combeferre set his now empty champagne glass on a nearby table, nonchalantly, as if he planned on spending the entire evening here. Sometimes Enjolras truly and deeply loved Combeferre. “You haven’t met Javert,” Enjolras said soberly.

                                                            *  *  *

Combeferre drove them through the rain-washed streets of Paris after the hasty getaway that had included creeping through the parking lot without their lights on, despite the fact that Combeferre had adamantly wanted to obey the law. Combeferre was himself a classical musician and a fellow Frenchman. He played the viola, and though Enjolras knew relatively little about the viola, he loved the way that Combeferre played it. He was currently at the Lyons Symphony, but had come to Paris just to see Enjolras. They had played together in the Berlin Symphony for several years, and had bonded over their position as outsiders, fed up with the snobbery and elitism that pervaded the entire institution. One night they had openly admitted to each other how often they had almost left the music world behind because of the exhausting pace that it set for everyone, but more importantly because of the micro aggressions they saw daily. They had vowed together on that night to tough it out together - to stay to welcome the other “outsiders” that would come. And they had been fast friends ever since.

They found a little bar at a safe distance from the symphony hall, and ordered some drinks. They settled in, shedding their various layers. Enjolras was relieved and also impressed to see that Combeferre had managed to change out of his well-tailored suit and into a sweater and jeans. It made them more inconspicuous. “So - how are you finding Lyons?” Enjolras asked without preamble. He was curious. Combeferre had been there about three months, and Enjolras was itching to hear about it. Combeferre toyed with his drink, poking the straw at the ice that was sticking to the sides. “It’s alright. It’s always a little hard in the beginning. It’s nice to be in France again, quite honestly.” “I can believe it. France has its problems, but I would take it over Berlin most days.” And it was true. Enjolras like Berlin, but something about France made the fire reignite in his blood. Combeferre grinned. “I almost forgot how much you love France.” “Impossible. I’m told I’m very memorable.” “And modest too.” Combeferre shot back, before closing his mouth around his straw for a pull. “My enviable qualities aside, how is it besides being in France?” “Better than Berlin I think. Don’t get me wrong - the social circles like the donors and the regulars - they are more snobbish. But the people in the actual symphony and the conductor are much better than they were in Berlin.” “There’s always a trade-off,” Enjolras commented, rolling his eyes slightly. Combeferre shrugged. “I’d rather get shit from people I only have to see once a month than every day.” “Yes, but since they are the ones with the money, we let them think they’re right and let them act however they want even though they don’t know shit! It just means the institution of classical music never changes because none of us ever get the courage to tell a few rich people off now and again!” Combeferre shot him a look, and Enjolras deflated. “Yeah, I know. Not tonight.” “Tell me about how it’s going on your end,” Combeferre said, switching the subject. Enjolras exhaled loudly. “I feel so exhausted and worn out. I think my music has lost some of its edge because I’ve let all these toxic experiences associated with my playing seep into it.” “What do you mean to do about it?” Combeferre met Enjolras’ gaze steadily across the table, both an acknowledgment of the difficulty it had taken for Enjolras to utter those words and a steady encouragement. “I don’t know. Why do you think I will do something about it?” Enjolras asked, surprised. “Because you’re a man of action. You see a problem - you do something.” “It’s just such a big problem,” Enjolras said, trailing off. “Maybe I just need a different scene.” Combeferre sat up straighter. “Wait! I know just the thing!” His face was alight with possibility, and Enjolras felt himself being drawn in. Enjolras shot him a confused look. “What do you mean?” “When does your tour finish?” “Next week. And don’t get me wrong - I am counting the days.” And he was. Just six more days and then he was blissfully free of the Nutcracker. Javert already had a lot of plans for things to do next, but nothing had yet been finalized. “Well….” Combeferre lowered his gaze, stirring his drink with a straw, collecting his words carefully. Enjolras could tell he wasn’t sure how he would take this suggestion. “Well, what?” Enjolras said, slightly curious, but also impatient. “Out with it.” “One of my friends, Courfeyrac. I think I have mentioned him to you.” Combeferre met Enjolras’ eyes as he racked his brain. Then it came to him. “Kind of short? Curly hair? Everything he says is a rainbow?” Enjolras asked. “You could say that, I suppose,” Combeferre laughed. “He’d love that description.” “What about him?” Enjolras asked, his curiosity only heightening. “He’s a ballet dancer at the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris.” Enjolras whistled. “Good for him. That takes hard work. Isn’t it the oldest ballet company in France?” Combeferre nodded, his smile fading from his face. “And he puts the hard work in - he’s amazing. But anyways, I was talking to him earlier and he said that they are looking for a pianist for their upcoming performance. They want a live pianist. It’s a performance of Giselle, but they wanted to try something a little different. They haven’t found anyone yet, so Courfeyrac said to keep my ear out for any dissatisfied concert pianists who wanted to try something new.” Enjolras considered it. It was an interesting thought, and he always wanted to fly in the face of convention. But also, he wasn’t sure how much of the ballet world he could take either. That industry wasn’t exactly welcoming – it went through dancers more quickly than pointe shoes. “I don’t know.” Enjolras said simply. Combeferre nodded. “Just think about it. I mean, it can hardly hurt your career. You’re one of the best pianists in the world.” Enjolras blushed slightly. He wasn’t modest, but it made him uncomfortable when people made those kinds of comments to him. They moved on to different and lighter topics, but he kept the thought in the back of his mind even after he and Combeferre parted ways and he went back to his empty and muffled hotel room, feeling almost separate from the world that continued to move around him. The next day as he disembarked from his plane on to the soil of Copenhagen, he gave Combeferre a call. It looked like Enjolras was about to enter the world and tradition of ballet. He didn’t let himself think about it too much. He just wanted a change of pace, to be able to stay in one place for an extended period of time, avoiding the public eye for a couple of months. Or so he told himself. At the pit of his stomach he felt a clench of nerves that he hadn’t felt in years. He could only hope it was a good sign.

AO3 Link

[pellicano-sanguino]

Wasted potential in fiction is worse than a story that’s just bad overall.

If someone had asked me couple years ago what vampire books I liked the most, one I would have definitely brought up was Vampire Winter by Lois Tilton. 

It’s a post-nuclear story, where a vampire is at first joyful that the fallout clouds cover the sun both day and night so he is free to hunt whenever he wants but things get worse rather soon. Turns out humans who have been exposed to the radiation have turned undrinkable, poisonous for even vampires. Also, the amount of survivors is small and getting lesser by the day as desperate people leave their shelters to find food and supplies and run from looters, risking radiation poisoning. The vampire who used to kill his victims without mercy is at a situation where he can’t afford to lose a single healthy human to avoid starvation. So he strikes a symbiotic deal with a bunch of humans: since he is unaffected by radiation, he will wander out and bring them food, medicine, even books to pass their time, in exchange for blood donations. This is what I remembered from the book, and thought it good, because I’m a sucker for interesting relationship dynamics between a vampire and their donors.

However, I re-read the book recently and was surprised. It wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered it. The interesting symbiotic relationship between the vampire and his donors only lasts a short period of the book and then they go their separate ways and the vampire for some weird reason just goes back to killing his victims again. Also, there was a lot of completely unnecessary violence towards women. The book tries to have a message of “in hard times it’s better to spare lives and co-operate than divide into groups all against each other” and that “every life is precious” but then goes and has the donors leave behind a mentally handicapped girl for the vampire to kill because she would just be “a burden” for the survivors. Also, there’s a fucking gang rape scene. I’m...   confused...   how did I ever convince myself this was a good book?!

The problem was that my memories were too focused on the one part of the book I found super fascinating. The vampire-donor symbiosis plot was such a great story idea that I actually forgot the rest of the book is shit. I was too intrigued by the story’s potential I failed to notice it doesn’t properly utilize the great idea it had and just turns into a gross masculine violence fantasy.

It’s a shame, because with little changes, this could have been an awesome book. But it completely wasted its potential and left me much more disappointed than would have been the case if it were just a regular old shitty vampire novel with nothing new and interesting added.

I just finished a new book that has the same problem and it infuriates me. It’s a book that has some really great parts but then goes and ruins everything. This book is called Pure Mua (”Bite Me”) by Terhi Tarkiainen. I know, writing about a Finnish book in Tumblr might be useless, since what are the chances Finnish vampire enthusiasts will find my posts, but I want to vent my frustration about it somewhere. So here goes.

Finnish vampire fiction is a rare species. There are some short stories but the only novel I can think of is Jarkko Laine’s Vampyyri, which is a very...   specific Finnish literature category; a “tuskapaskakirja” (literally, pain-shit-book) where everyone is miserable and things just get more and more depressing until the whole garbage reaches a lame anticlimax like a bowl of ice cream I accidentally put in the refrigerator instead of in the freezer. Not my kind of book. So, when I heard the rare species had spawned a new book, Pure Mua, I got curious.

My expectations about the book were mixed. I generally don’t like modern Finnish literature. The few books of it that I had to read back in high school or by getting them as gifts were at best incredibly boring and at worst insufferable pretentious artsy junk. However, this book looked like it aimed to be entertaining, not fake deep and for intellectuals only. It whispered a promise of genuinely embracing its own cheesiness. And, well, I do like cheese.

So I read the book. And my opinions remain conflicting with one another. I can’t really say if I liked it or not because for every part that was done well there was something that seriously rubbed me the wrong way.

The story itself is really well written. The text flows naturally and is pleasant to read, the narration is occasionally very witty and humorous. The plot twists are unpredictable which is unfortunately rare in this genre. Vampire fiction is so full of reused story ideas that they often turn out rather predictable. But this book surprised me several times. Of course, unpredictability shouldn’t be valued by itself. Writers who intentionally lead the reader in one direction only to pull a carpet under their feet or who make their characters behave in unreasonable and inconsistent manner just to get a juicy plot twist, usually don’t produce good quality stories. These plot twists however feel natural and well planned, not there just for the shock value. The plot also escalates constantly, forcing you to read chapter after chapter because you don’t want to leave it at an intense cliffhanger.

Since the vampire fiction is full of reused story ideas, it’s rare that I come across a book that has something I haven’t seen before. The basic premise of this book is that since vampires aren’t classified as humans, human rights don’t apply to them and there’s a ring of illegal slave trade where a “kennel” produces “specimens” for the rich assholes who want to turn their fantasies of dating a hot vampire into reality. Human trafficking basicly, only with vampires. I have not bumped into this story idea before. Usually the power dynamics are reversed, the vampires being the cruel monsters who do horrible things to humans. I know the whole “humans are the real monsters”-trope is old and overused, but surprisingly rarely does it happen in vampire fiction. I guess it’s because to a lot of friends of this genre vampires are a power fantasy and they wouldn’t enjoy seeing them tamed and subjected to something as horrifying as human trafficking.

So, the book turns the traditional vampire/human power dynamics upside down. However, the protagonist actually doesn’t want the pet vampire her nutty parents bought her as a birthday present. She tries to find a way to safely release him back “into the wild” but has trouble coming up with a solution on how to do it and ensure he won’t be recaptured by the trafficking ring again (since he is chipped). 

Next I’m going to spoil the last plot twist of the book. Turns out the trafficking ring is led not by humans but by a loony communist vampire who has a diabolical plan. He intentionally made vampire pets a trend among the filthy rich and then once every elite household in Finland has one, he intends to shut down the safety chips that give the vampires electric shocks if they attack their masters and let the hungry, abused, vengeful vampire slaves drink all the greedy capitalist pigs.

And this is...   supposed to be the main villain of the book. I’m supposed to be appalled and horrified by this impending slaughter of innocent humans. Well. Does it make me a monster if I say I think this is a great plan? Everyone who buys a personal sex toy from a human trafficking ring deserves to be devoured by ravenous vampires. The fact that the victims of slavery aren’t technically human here changes nothing since their intelligence is identical to ours. And creeps who would buy a vampire would definitely buy a woman or a little girl too. 

Everyone who thinks slavery is a fun hobby that the elite should be allowed to do again deserves to be killed by their slave.

The slavery theme is one of the reasons I have such conflicting opinions about this book. It’s such a horrifying scenario and you really, really want to see the main vampire freed from it, you want to see him and the main character succeed in their attempt to destroy the vampire slave trade. But then the book decides to focus less on the horrors of slavery and...    actually romanticize prostitution. The vampires in this book’s universe are all nymphomaniacs and addicted to sex. Umm...   ok, your world, you do what you want. But I really can’t stand the stereotype of seductive, nymphomaniac prostitutes, who do it because they enjoy their “work”, considering how the harsh reality of prostitution is something completely different. “She likes it anyway” is a lie slimy old men tell one another to feel less guilty when they go to Thailand to “play minigolf.” Hurk. Hork. Barf. I know this is fiction and the vampires aren’t human (and we don’t see female vampires) but I really wish people would stop writing this character type. Also, I hate stories where a noble person saves a prostitute and is “rewarded” by their love (in other words, gets to fuck the prostitute anyway, feeding into the idea that “nice guys” who protect women from creeps deserve sex as a reward.)

I give the book one point for the scene where the protagonist starts to caress her slave when she’s super drunk but then is startled and horrified at what she did, thinking that she has become a monster.

If there’s one thing I hate even more than romanticizing prostitution, it’s sexual violence. Thank goodness this story doesn’t have that but it’s bad enough that one male vampire constantly threatens the protagonist with rape. And I’m supposed to care about this guy and worry about what will happen to him. There’s something so disgustingly...   male...   in the thought process that when you want to hurt someone, your first thought is rape. When a woman sees a person they love being abused by someone, she might beat the abuser into a fine pulp but no, women do not rape, women do not use sex as a torture devise. If a guy gets hard from anger and wants to fuck someone he hates there is something seriously wrong with him and he needs to seek help. Men are scum!

This book isn’t a particularly pleasant read for a feminist anyway. With the exception of the protagonist, all female characters are lazily written, unconvincing, misogynistic cardboard cutouts. Male characters on the other hand are, with the exception of the main villain, painted as flawed but sympathetic. The protagonist has a stalker ex who doesn’t understand the concept of “no.” I was convinced this creep would turn out to be a villain in the end, trying to kill the protagonist because “if I can’t have you, no one else can!” Because everything he said and did kept raising the red flags. But no, I’m supposed to find him charming and loveable and his stupid bratboy jokes soooo hilarious. The book wants me to think of all the women except protagonist as either mean-spirited bitches or dumb blondes (your “I’m not like other girls”-complex is showing...) and feel sympathy towards a creepy stalker and a guy who threatens women with rape. Right. Is this some het culture bullshit or just what exactly am I not getting? Also, if your only way to make the heroine likeable is to turn all the other women into cartoonishly evil or ridiculously immature and stupid so that she'll look better in comparison, the reader will become suspicious of her character (because exaggerating the faults in others while claiming you yourself are perfectly innocent is a strategy used by narcisstic, manipulative jerkfaces).

I’m also rather disappointed that the book relies on stereotyping Fenno-Swedes. Fenno-Swedes are the Swedish speaking minority, descendants from rich Swedes that were given land here back when Finland was part of Sweden. Because many of them are still in the upper class, having inherited their ancestors land and wealth, the middle and lower class Finnish speaking Finns tend to be racist towards them, considering them smug elitists and disgustingly rich capitalists who never had to work for their wealth. Making the main character a Fenno-Swede and then giving her behavior that strengthens the prejudice against “bättre folk” is just really lazy writing, it’s like having a romani character and having her do shoplifting. Sure, the protagonist wants to be different than her gross parents who would buy a sex slave as a gift, but her attitude towards money is the same indifference. Oh, I smashed my phone to pieces because the phone call made me angry. Oh well. Pappa betalar. 

There’s a scene where the protagonist and the stalker ex witness a protest that consists simultaneously of racists who want to close the borders and unemployed who blame the government for their poverty (right. You really want to draw “equals as” sign between crazy nationalist bigots and unfortunate people trapped in unemployment hell? Fuck you, fuck you so much.). The protagonist asks where all this hatred comes from and the stalker ex explains that when a person is in a bad situation in life they seek scapegoats to blame for their troubles, whether that be foreigners or politicians. But since we’ve already gone the route of giving the protagonist stereotypical Fenno-Swede behaviour, why not let her voice the opinion of “If the lower class is angry at the upper class it’s because they project unfair blame onto the rich, surely their suffering has nothing to do with the elite’s greed and misuse of power.” Now, opinions like this wouldn’t matter to me normally, because characters are allowed to be flawed, but when those flaws rely on harmful stereotypes, it’s disappointing.

I want to like this book. It’s so genuine and entertaining and well written. But I threw up in my mouth so frequently while reading it that I don’t think I care to read it another time. If it was written a little differently, I would probably love this book. But there’s no use crying after wasted potential. I can’t help but praise the book for the parts that are really good, but I can’t recommend it either. I would have preferred it to be either all good or all shit, not this mixture of gold and rust.

[toranoya]

ABOUT: HISAGI, Shuuhei (BL)

"He who fears not the blade he wields has no right to wield that blade."

Shuuhei Hisagi is the Acting Captain AND Lieutenant of the 9th Division of the Gotei 13, formerly under the traitorous Captain Kaname Tōsen.

Race: Shingami Birthday: August 14 Age: Several hundred years old. Appears 35 *headcannon* Gender: Male Height: 181 cm (5'11") Weight : 67 kg (148 lbs) Eyes: Grey Hair: Black Blood Type: O- (universal donor) *headcannon*

Personal Status Marital status: Single Orientation: Undecided, too busy! Education: Shinigami Academy (Shin’o)

Zanpakuto Shikai: Kazeshini Bankai: Unknown

Appearance

Shūhei Hisagi is a tall and lean-built man with dark grey eyes, short black hair and three scars straight over his right eye that lead down his cheek (gained during a past Hollow attack). Additionally, he has the number "69" tattooed on his left cheek (inspired by Kensei Muguruma, who saved him from a Hollow when he was young), as well as a blue-striped tattoo running across his left cheek and over the bridge of his nose. He wears a choker around his throat and matching armbands on both upper arms. These have explosive properties which he exploited in his fight with Findorr Calius.  Hisagi wears a sleeveless shihakushō, and has his lieutenant insignia tied to his left arm. Back when he asked Tōsen to remove him as a seated officer, he wore a Shinigami robe with sleeves and did not have the blue-striped tattoo. During his academy days, Hisagi's hair was much longer, hanging down to his neck in the back and approaching his chin in the front.

Personality

Hisagi is an extremely mature and calm individual, a state that is slightly at odds with his somewhat punk-like appearance. He usually takes responsibility and tends to avoid violence when possible. He seems to be virtuous, much like his captain's image; their views often coincide until it is revealed that Kaname Tōsen is a subordinate of Sōsuke Aizen. After Tōsen betrays the Soul Society with Aizen and Ichimaru, Hisagi forms a friendship with Tōsen's former friend, Captain Sajin Komamura, with both of them resolving to open Tōsen's eyes to the truth. He is often in the company of the 3rd Division lieutenant, Izuru Kira, and frequently hangs out with 6th Division Lieutenant Renji Abarai as well. He comes from the lower class, but when he is pressed for cash, he is ready to rely on any free food source available, including one provided by someone as obtuse and snotty as 2nd Division lieutenant, Marechiyo Ōmaeda.

Hisagi has stated that he does not like the shape of his Zanpakutō's Shikai release, as it looks like something meant to "reap life itself". He also fears his sword's power, because to him, it is something of a sign of respect to battle for justice as well as a testament to the true strength of one's character. This philosophy is taught to him by his former captain, given the latter's "follow the path with the least bloodshed" creed, indicating a reasonable closeness between the two. It also seems that while battling, he becomes a darker person and seeks to instill fear in his enemies while in battle.

In the absence of Tōsen, not only does the leadership of his division weigh on him, but also the chief editorial position of Seireitei Communication. In what little free time he has, he likes to practice on a guitar that he found on one of his missions to the Human World and brought back to Soul Society. As members of his division find his practice annoying, he tends to do it in the mountains of Rukongai.

Equipment

Explosive Bands: The bands on Hisagi's neck and arms possess explosive properties. By removing them, he can use them to produce blinding explosions that expel a large amount of smoke.

Powers & Abilities

Expert Swordsman: Reluctant to use his Zanpakutō's Shikai form, Hisagi has trained to become especially skilled at swordsmanship so he wouldn't have to rely on it. He is very crafty with his Zanpakutō as his skills are great enough to regularly fight opponents who released their Zanpakutō while his remains sealed, only relying on his own Zanpakutō's released form as a last resort.

Kusarigamajutsu Master: While afraid of his Zanpakutō's Shikai, Hisagi is highly proficient in its use, using his mastery of a variation of Kusarigamajutsu (which features fighting at a distance with substantial usage of the chains to ensnare opponents, as well as using his Zanpakutō as a long-ranged, throwing weapon). This allows Hisagi to fight using a large variety of attack angles and styles.

Kidō Expert: Hisagi is well-versed enough in Kidō to have an understanding of at least fairly high-level Kidō spells without incantation, most noticeably Binding No. 62.[80] He is able to use them in conjunction with his released Zanpakutō to deliver more damage to his opponents.

Shunpo Expert: Hisagi is proficient enough in Shunpo to keep up with lieutenant-level Shinigami. His skill allows him to move fast enough to dodge a vast majority of multiple Bala blasts that are fired at him.

Hakuda Expert: Hisagi is a highly proficient fighter even when unarmed. During the Bount Invasion, Hisagi demonstrated great skill by incapacitating several possessed Shinigami. In battle, he is tremendously agile and is able to attack from various angles with great dexterity.

High Spiritual Power: Being a lieutenant of the Gotei 13, Hisagi also boasts a high spiritual energy. His Reiatsu is green.

Enhanced Endurance: Hisagi possesses a high level of resilience and stamina, evidenced by his ability to take heavy damage from Ayon, and be able to fight and ultimately defeat his former captain, despite receiving further grievous injuries.

Enhanced Strength: Hisagi possesses a considerable amount of strength. He easily lifted and slammed the giant Ayon into the ground with his Shikai. He also sent Kazeshini crashing through a nearby wall with a single elbow strike.

Zanpakutō

Kazeshini: In its sealed form, Hisagi's sword looks like a regular katana with an octangular tsuba. Hisagi typically carries his Zanpakutō at his waist, but has on occasion carried it on his back.

Shikai: Kazeshini's Shikai command is "Reap". When released, it takes the form of two Kusarigama-like weapons, each with two scythe blades, with one inverted, giving it the resemblance of a pinwheel. The blades are connected to a spiked rod tethered together by a long chain. While in Shikai form, Kazeshini can be swung by its chains in large circles, allowing the bladed portion to spin like a fan. The chains are extendible, giving Hisagi great ranged ability. Kazeshini can also be used for entangling an opponent's sword, or other weapons; It can even immobilize opponents. Although he dislikes the shape of his weapon, he is extremely proficient in wielding them; he uses them as projectiles and controls them at range by moving its chains, making Kazeshini's paths unpredictable.

Kubikake (首挂, Neck-Hanging): A physical technique that Hisagi can use by throwing the chain of Kazeshini around the neck of his opponent, from here he can pull the chain hanging the opponent strangling or ensnare them knocking them off balance and bringing them toward him.

Bankai: Not Revealed. In the ten years following Yhwach's defeat, Hisagi claims to have mastered his Bankai, though his peers and captain claim not to have seen it, as Hisagi states that he has not had a chance to unleash it recently.

HEADCANNON

-Hisagi cooks well and his favorite food is Vienna sausage, while he dislikes sea urchins.

-Work work work, these define Hisagi’s life and he uses it as a coping mechanism to not think much about the gaping wound that was his former Captain’s defection.

-Hisagi will take on as much work as he can and fall asleep exhausted at his desk if you’ll let him.

-He’s also prone to drinking heavily when he can, in a vain attempt to make the pain stop. Sometimes he’s wasted at night, but is always on time and alert for duty the next day. DUTY FIRST!

-In terms of sexuality, Hisagi hasn’t decided which way he’d like to go, though he does tend to lean towards males, as he’s always had strong admiration for male role models and understands them better than his female companions which he gets easily flustered around.

-Hisagi tries to be the best Acting Captain and Lieutenant he can be, seeing it as his duty to make up for what the 9th lost with their former Captain. Ie. He strives to be the ideal that he thought Captain Tosen was.

-While he enjoys the work being Acting Captain and Lieutenant provides him, always the good soldier, he’d eagerly step aside when someone else is appointed to the position.

-While open to dating, they tend to be one-nighters as he is afraid to let anyone close to him again, lest they also cut his heart open like Tosen’s treachery did.

-Is self-conscious about the scar on his face, thinking he might never find true love when his “imperfection” is a reminder every day and can’t really be hidden.

-In battle, Hisagi enjoys freedom of movement, which is he reason he cut off the sleeves of his uniform. He also practices in the nude, seeing it as a way to be at one with one’s surroundings.

-He definitely enjoys when people touch or comment on his arms and face tattoos as he tries to use them as a distraction to divert attention from the scar on his face.

-When being intimate, Hisagi enjoys being bound first, but doesn’t mind binding his partner instead. While being the top, he is caring and sensitive to his partner, but when being the bottom, he likes it rough, thinking it a suitable punishment for the times he failed.

-He comes from a “poor” Rukon district, so sometimes feels uncomfortable around those with higher standing, such as Rukia and Byakuya Kuchiki.

ALT VERSE: -Hisagi gets convinced by Tosen to join him and serve Aizen. He may be a spy still working in the Seireitei or leave all together like Gin and the others.

[honestgrins]

A Most Impressive Donor

Klaroline AU Week Day 6: Canon-ish

Three million dollars. Three million dollars?!

Gingerly stepping through the detritus of human limbs and broken glasses, Caroline didn't bother to hide her disgust at the seedy bar or the lone hybrid she found lurking in it. "Seriously?" she cried as she slid in congealed blood. "Ugh, these are new shoes."

"Put it on my tab, love." Klaus raised his scotch in drunken acknowledgement. "Rebekah complained about giving away her shoe budget to you, it's almost poetic for you to get a pair from the deal."

Caroline scoffed as she cleared his table, plopping down a thick portfolio instead. "About that, if you insist on making ludicrous donations to make up for not visiting your daughter at school, then you better believe I will track you down for investor meetings," she said in clipped tones.

He snorted derisively, only for her to snatch the drink right from his hand. "Careful," he warned, gold glinting in his eyes.

"Oh, bite me." Twice he had bitten her, and yet she survived long enough to run his child's school; her sass was practically bulletproof. Sitting, Caroline opened her portfolio, topped with a recent photo of Hope holding a handmade poster. "Her history project was on the birth of New Orleans, go figure. She misses you, but Hope is a strong kid, if a little stubborn."

Klaus's lips pulled at that, though she could tell he was trying to hide his reaction. "I thought this was supposed to be about my investment."

Rolling her eyes, Caroline decided it would be better just to move things along. Rebekah mentioned the world tour tantrum he was on, but apparently she had underestimated how self-pity manifested after a thousand years. "Before I get into why three million dollars is an excessive donation that in no way buys you special favors or weird requests down the line," she clearly pointed out, softening only at his surprisingly attentive expression, "but thank you. We've had three new students contact us, with more coming every week."

"I know," Klaus smirked, leaning back into his chair. Perfectly at ease among the destruction of his bender, somehow he managed to act superior in his super annoying way.

Caroline frowned disapprovingly. "What did you do?"

He picked through the papers she had in the folder, office invoices and teacher profiles. "One needs a hobby when forcibly removed from home and family," he answered, his voice lacking in real sentiment.

Throwing her hand out in a wide gesture, Caroline pinned him with a glare. "Rampant murder is not a hobby."

"Agree to disagree, love," he shrugged, "but I don't take kindly to threats against my brother." He didn't bother to elaborate, and Caroline didn't really want the details. "Regardless, I meant that in my travels, I occasionally come across a gifted student in need of guidance."

"You're sending them to me?"

His eyebrows raised in mock surprise. "You did open a school for gifted children."

She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, unsure how to respond. On one hand, their accounts were pretty flush to handle the sudden influx of students; on the other… "Stop interfering!" Caroline finally burst out, leaving Klaus to a stony silence.

"Look, this is what I wanted to talk to you about," she sighed.

"What's that?"

Though he seemed genuinely curious underneath a hard edge, Klaus's mood swings could strike like whiplash. Caroline needed to tread carefully. "I want you to be involved with the school, with Hope and her education," she prefaced. "But there has to be a line, Klaus. I can't keep accepting large amounts of money if it also means you going behind my back with schemes that affect the school."

It had been on mind ever since she first got his letter; Mikaelson gifts came with strings. She knew that well as a veteran of throwing diamond bracelets at his feet. "I am grateful for your donation. I just need to make sure we have the proper boundaries in place."

Klaus tilted his head, his eyes roving her form. "Rules are meant to be broken, sweetheart."

"Don't be a jerk." Caroline would likely have a headache from rolling her eyes so much. Extenuating circumstances aside, she had no intention of fraternizing with a parent. "You can have a seat on the board and regular investor meetings, but I will make you regret trying to tell me how to run daily operations."

Shrugging, Klaus lifted a hidden bottle of scotch to his lips. "Agreed. Hayley can have my vote while she resides in Mystic Falls," he capitulated. "As for these meetings, I suppose I can make sure they're in better venues."

Caroline's voice fell to a deadpan, "You think?"

He smirked, looking more content. "Three months seems like a reasonable interval."

"Six."

"Four, final offer."

"Done," she sighed. Seeing him three times a year wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, not if it meant keeping him in touch with Hope's progress.

Nodding, Klaus offered her the bottle, which she happily accepted. "Rome is lovely in April," he said idly.

Rome. Paris. Tokyo.

She shrugged off the old memory, taking a large gulp of scotch instead. Her eyes darted around the room and the carnage that was starting to smell. "You're okay, right?" she asked, a deep worry finally finding its words. "This massacre was about your brother, you haven't lost your mind in a constantly drunken rage."

"Moderation has never been my strong suit."

Snorting, Caroline handed back the bottle. "Rebekah says you get like this every once in a while, figured it would be worse being separated from Hope."

He sighed, looking down. "It's better than I expected," he admitted, "though I suspect that's in large part to you. It helps knowing she's in good hands."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she joked, bumping her shoulder against his. "Hope really is doing great, Klaus. Just, keep in touch. Don't go off the deep end without calling first. Deal?"

"I think that depends on your definition of the deep end." The hand in his lap had wandered to her knee, the warmth of the contact settling them both. "One thing I can promise, though, is that I would never put Hope or the school in danger."

Scoffing again, Caroline elbowed him. "I know that. Not only would I nag you within an inch of your life, but even bajillion-year-old hybrids have standards. But do keep your mitts off my administrative decisions."

Klaus chuckled, "Yes, sweetheart."

Links: FFnet and AO3

[avalindin]

Second Chance

Future Tom fic

Chapter 7: Numb

______

Previous Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

______

Evelyn looked down to her eggs. They were beautiful and fluffy. She was sure the minute they hit her stomach, she would get sick and it would anger Dom. She used her shaky hand to grab the fork to shovel the food down her throat. She flinched as Dom appeared with more food and kissed her on the side of the brow.

“Why do you always jump,” he laughed.

Evelyn glared at him, disgusted at him as she swallowed.

Please let me throw up again…

It was a whole day or so she thought since she was brought to her room, to where Dom was keeping her. There were too many things running through her head to focus on Dom taking her hand into his as he rubbed his thumb to her knuckle.

“Perhaps we can walk about later.”

“You said I would die if I went outside this room.”

“The rest of this floor is clear. I had some help from the druggies to fix up this space. It’s not much but they’ll do anything for another hit. I know it’s too soon but I want to choose a color for the rooms that’ll belong to the kids.”

“I’m not giving you shit.”

Evelyn got up from the table and sat by herself on the single seated couch near the wall as Dom ignored her.

“You need to get over that muck and look forward to a bright future. There is always time to grieve later.”

“I think you need to get over my foot in your ass.”

“I was thinking how back before everything happened how boys were color coated as blue and the girls were pink. I think it will be a marvelous idea, there is so much space here and they can have their own playroom…”

Evelyn moaned as the pain in her hip was nearly tolerable.

“Justine?”

“Use my name.”

“How’s your hip?”

“Are you really asking me that right now,” she snapped.

If she had the strength, she would have gotten to her feet and broken on the flower filled vases over his head and sliced his throat with the leftover pieces. Dom grabbed his medical supplies and hurried to Evelyn as her head started to spin. She didn’t fight him as she suddenly slumped over the side of the couch.

Dom was quick to pull the side of her pants down as he lifted the bandage and curse to himself. Evelyn was weak, looking to her heavily bruised hip as a dark liquid that wasn’t blood flow from the cut.

“Justine?”

Her vision started to blur as she saw her mother rush to her side and lift her from the couch. Over the years in the three hospitals she worked, her mother was the best out of all the nurses, a regular Nurse Jackie without the addiction.

“Stay with me, Justine!”

Her skin had grown clammy in a matter of minutes as she lurched over in his arms in pain. Dom ran from the room to find a same doctor in the mix of the colony. Bribing was the best way to find what he was looking for. He armed himself with a weapon, a simple necessity as he pulled on a jacket and headed to one of the lower floors of the buildings of the cluster colony that was now his and his Justine’s new home. He had stolen a great amount of medicine for himself and more for a lone floor all to himself from the habitants of the colony in a matter of hours but he figured the Ovan wouldn’t need it now that she was dead.

The doors to the elevator opened as he stepped inside and prayed that he didn’t cause anything internal to happen to her.

-

Thomas woke looking around the room as the curtain shielded him from the voices.

“Evel…”

He couched, trying to find air as he sat up and moaned. His head pounded as he pushed off the blanket to the bed. Emma flung back the curtains and rushed to his side.

“Stop it, Thomas. You need to lay back down.”

“No!”

“Yes,” said Marren as she appeared donning a pair of gloves.

She looked so different from what she normally looked like. Her jacket was off and her sleeves were rolled up her arms. Her long hair was twisted up into a bun and her steady hands injected Tom with a sedative to ease him as he fell back to the bed.

“Ple…”

He groaned as he did everything he could to fight the sedative.

“I’m sorry, Tom…”

Her strong voice hummed and echoed in the back of his mind. He took a breath in and tried not to see his mother into her place as she smoothed back his sweating blonde curls.

“Just rest for now,” she turned up as her blonde hair darkened completely with a smile but look of worry to her eye, “He’s going into cardiac arrest. Get the next available chemist!”

“Not him, not him…”

“You’ll get off your ass if you want another hit. NOW MOVE!”

Dom grabbed the collar of one of the runaway doctors that fled to the Echo colony when he tried to traffic drugs for extra units. When he was caught, he took everything he could and fled to the untouchable patch of land a day’s ride from any of the colonies. Now Dom was like him but he knew he’d never be strung out on drugs. He would never do that to Justine.

If she would live through the night, she would need a few days to heal properly and then… Then she would be his. He wouldn’t think of it as forcing her if she had nothing else to lose. He tapped his foot impatiently as the elevator went higher up into the buildings. He swiped his card and punched in the code only he knew for his floor.

The cab shifted sideways as it sped faster to its destination.

“Come on. Come on.”

“Look, mate. You may as well tell me what you did now.”

“Too late, we’re here.”

Dom rushed from the hall and into the furnished foyer to Justine’s room. He scanned his card again to Justine’s room as he was jerked to a stop. The door had only opened part of the way as a bit of brown hair with blonde streaks showed.

“Shit…”

He heaved the door in, sending Justine’s unconscious body down to the floor hard. There was blood mixing in with the dark matter drenching the side of her white pant leg. The doctor rushed inside with his jaw to the floor as he dropped his things and punched Dom in the jaw.

“What the hell did you do to her?!”

“I took out the implant.”

“How long since she had it?”

“Just a few days.”

“You fucking idiot.”

The doctor scooped up Evelyn and laid her out on the dinner table. Dom dropped the stolen supplies he procured and stepped back before he got hit again. He was not a doctor and didn’t want to do anything to further the jeopardy of Evelyn’s health. The doctor injected her with an IV of his own blood. He was careful not to step over the lines between him and the lines keeping Evelyn alive.

“You stupid fucking moron. She’s one of the ones that woke, isn’t she?”

“Why?”

“You are obviously your own brother and you chose a fighter. I heard she walked outside without a mask. I don’t know why she is still alive.”

“Well. This one is 100%,” he boasted.

“Maybe not now.”

“What?”

“You taking out the implant may have fucked up her genetic coding. Good job on waiting, you fucking gearhead.”

“But you can fix this, right?”

The Doctor looked up with his twitching eyes obviously strung out from all the drugs in his system.

“There is a wonderful possibility, a Russian roulette of a chance that she’ll be able to have a child now that you were too stupid to get a doctor.”

“No…”

“Act like a bitch, get slapped like a bitch!”

There were so many needles sterilized, filled and poked into Evelyn’s skin as she moaned in pain. There was so much pain.

“Tom…”

None of this could be happening. If she was asleep in his arms, she would wake up to find him there. If she was back at the apartment, she would welcome little Henry with open arms and let Tom know how she felt the minute he returned. Even if she was still under, waiting to wake up still naked and hooked up to feeding tubes, she would be there to seeing him again for the first time.

Evelyn…

She turned to the sound of Tom’s voice as he sank to his knees gasping for air. She ran to him, doing everything in her power to reach him before she woke. Tom could feel his head spinning as he looked up to Evelyn running for her life.

Thomas!

He tried to stand to his feet, unable from the pain in his chest as he felt a prick in the side of his chest. There was a trickle of blood running down his side as it glistened. He looked up as her shape began to disappear but not before he saw the side of her hip dripping with blood.

Clear!

Tom’s whole body thumped against the bed as he was brought back to life. He flailed, coughing and calling out for Evelyn as Marren held him down to the bed.

“Breathe, Hiddleston, breathe! You’re no good to me dead.”

He steadied his breathing as he looked down to the blood draining from the straw that was placed in his chest.

“He should be fine now.”

Tom turned to the old man at the side of his bed as he was injected with a mild sedative to make the pain in him go away.

“Father?”

The man was silent as he checked the machine that Tom was hooked up to.

“He’ll be fine after some rest,” the man stated, ignoring Tom, “Tubes can be taken out tomorrow.”

He looked down with sadness in his eyes as he smoothed his son’s hair back.

“What happens now?”

“Nothing, Edward. Echo colony is way out of my jurisdiction. Evelyn is gone and she’s not coming back. We’re limited as it is and more abductions happen every day. Perhaps we should have screened your wife’s workers. No one ever comes back from Echo.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be insulting her in her memory. It was your dog that killed her in the first place.”

“If you leave, if any of you leave this colony, I will make your lives hell as you rot on the outskirts!”

Marren snapped off her gloves and tossed them into the nearest bin. The man sat next to Tom’s bed as Tom tried to speak.

“Look, boy. I know it’s been 15 years but you need someone with you right now. Your sister’s are handling matters of your mum. She can’t be a donor as she wanted. Her organs were too damaged.”

“H-How?”

His voice wasn’t close to understandable but it was enough.

“There was a wound on the back of her head. He must have knocked her out and reset the windows manually. There was a fair amount of clotting in her brain. She wouldn’t have woken up even if she could. I’m sorry.”

Tom kept his eyes to the ceiling as his father smoothed back the hair on his grown son’s hair. He could feel something tucked under his pillow as he met his father’s eyes.

“Come find me tomorrow when you are better, boy.”

Tom rolled his eyes, not ready to make nice with his father after all this time. His father lowered himself to his ear to make sure that he was heard.

“You man up and find me tomorrow, Thomas. You are going to fight like hell for Evelyn, understand me?”

He kept his sinking eyes to the wall as his father walked from the room and left him to his silence.

-

“One foot in front of the other.”

Tom attempted to sleep but was woken at the chime of his mother’s screen. It was strange for her to not be alive anymore. No more. He turned his head into his pillow, moaning as he willed his lungs to strengthen. He curled up into a ball, trying to come up with a plan to try and save Evelyn from Dom and how he was going to kill him. Bringing him back alive was no longer an option to Tom.

Eye for an eye but it would never justify for the death of his mother…

Tom ran his hand under his pillow, feeling a temporary security badge. He sat up, looking to the plastic, knowing his side of the colony didn’t use the badges. Tom’s brow frowned in confusion as he carefully got to his feet and found his lab coat with his own badge missing.

“This is a bloody mistake,” he whispered to himself.

He dressed as quickly as he could and left the trashed lab behind him before the first set of nurses arrived for him. If he hadn’t left, Marren would have him under 24 hour lock down with no chance to find Evelyn. He hurried down the back corridors of the science buildings, keeping his face down to the floor so that no one and no cameras could identify him.

Tom stopped at the set of doors he promised never to enter since the day his father left his mother. He took a deep breath and clutched the temp badge in his hand, pressing it to the panel and giving him access inside. A hand shot out from the shadowed corridors, startling Tom as he nearly stumbled over his feet.

“Calm down, boy, follow me.”

Tom was confused, hurrying behind his father as he was led through the dimly lit labs and testing areas.

“Where are we going?”

His father grabbed him by the front of his shirt and yanked him along as his anger filled his every vein. Tom swatted at his father, failing to stop him as he was pulled along to hidden doors of one of the dock out of commission for simple matters. Tom stopped as he looked to the group of men loading a few duffle bags worth of supplies and guns loaded with ammunition. The strong hand at his shoulder made him turn to his father as tears fell down his wrinkled face.

“I have always been one for protocol all of my life. Evelyn is the reason I met your mother. She was as strong as I’d ever imagined and I wager that she is too.”

“I-I don’t understand. What have you done?”

“I have known that Dom wasn’t right in the head for the longest. Him and his brother are monsters and need to be stopped. He is not here anymore. He’s smuggled himself and Evelyn to the Echo colony.”

Tom’s blood ran completely cold as the words of the lone, wretched colony met his ears. If Evelyn was there, she wouldn’t be able to survive there long.

“I have to get her!”

“I know, my boy. Your mother was the one to talk to me after all this time and tell me of her. At first, I didn’t believe her but I saw Evelyn myself. I know you love her as I once loved your mother. She is a miracle. You get her back. There is much that we have lost in these dark times and now we must fight like hell.”

The old man reached up and cupped his aged hands around his youngest kid’s face as tears spilled through his fingers.

“You get her back. I will deal with Marren and keep her off your trail for as long as I can. You fight like hell and bring Evelyn home!”

“I-I will.”

A loud bang made everyone in earshot jump as Edward pushed his son toward the two transporters that were rushed to being loaded with what could be brought. Tom watched his father pulled a switch from his pocket as he backed towards the doors. His instinct made him reach for the edge of the closing transport doors as the men around him pulled him back. Edward pulled a mask over his face as light flooded the dock.

Tom banged both of his hands on the transport doors, yelling for his father as he saw the charging explosives plastered around the walls. He opened his mouth and roared, letting the severity of the situation ahead of him as the lights on the explosives beeped faster. The last thing he remembered was his father taking shelter and closing his eyes as his thumb pressed on his trigger. The doors to the lab areas opened a fraction as the transporter sped clear of the blast.

Tom was numbed as his eyes followed the flow of dark smoke as it rose to the sky. He could feel the small prick of the sedative one of the men injected him with.

Good thing, he thought to himself.

If he hadn’t been put down, he would have turned back for his father and ruined his chance to save the woman he loved, if she was still alive. His eyes sank shut as he forced himself to see her smiling face and listen to the strong note of the violin as they danced.

-

Dom sat by himself, feeling his longing for Evelyn hurt him. She was out for a greater part of the night and now he was to blame if he could not have a child with her. He was there spying on all of Evelyn’s charts. She was healthy and fully able to reproduce. That was top prize in the world that he knew and far more than valuable to the world below his feet.

He ignored the shrieks and the smashing pots in the bedroom behind him as he ran his fingers through his hair. He was disappointed to not taking the approach that he wanted with Evelyn. He gave up calling her Justine but she would still be treated as such, though it was time that she learned her place. Dom pushed through the pain in his cock as he clothed himself and attached his weapon to his belt and turned for the bedroom.

Evelyn turned with fury in her eyes as the door opened. Dom smiled and pressed his watch as her polished silver wrists shot behind her back. Her surprise let him overtake her as he tied a chain around her neck. Evelyn fought and kicked with all her might, feeling a sharp but dull pain shoot through her body as she stopped flailing for a moment. She crashed against Dom’s chest as his strong arm drug her to the doors.

“You know, Evelyn, you need to understand this a little better.”

Her head hung as he picked her up before the voltage in her wrists lessened. As she found her footing, he laced his fingers into her streaked hair and pushed her out of the apartment altogether and into the narrow hall leading straight to an elevator. She looked down to the pad that required his fingerprint to access. The sliding doors opened as he pushed them both into the cramped elevator as Evelyn crashed her hip into the metal railing. She cried out in pain as her entire pelvis pulsed in pain.

Dom only smiled as he pushed a button and crossed his arms.

“What am I not understanding?”

“I am trying. I am really trying but you are not making this any easier. So I’m showing you why I’m doing what I do.”

“Go straight to hell,” she hissed through her teeth.

The ding above her head haunted her ears as a smile crossed Dom’s face.

“Wish granted.”

He wrapped his chain around his hand and guided Evelyn forward to the stench of the top ground floor as voices filled her ears.

“I’ll let you think about it but if you do not wish to stay with me then we’ll find someone else to take care of you.”

Dom brought his boot up and kicked open a set of doors as they were greeted with the smell of natural flesh and moans. Evelyn was paralyzed as her eyes surfed over the naked and clothed bodies that writhed and spanned out as far as she could see. Her feet stumbled underneath her as she tried not to get sick on herself. Men and women were everywhere, clawing at one another as Dom pulled her along.

There were a few that turned and looked her in the eye as they smiled toothlessly and licked their lips to her. Dom showed his weapon making them turn for the nearest woman bent over a flat surface. She screamed at the feel of a woman’s hand on her waist, wanting to pull her down to the pit of others they passed. Dom kicked his foot across her face as the rest of the pit laughed and groped at the woman moaning in pain.

Evelyn was lifted from her feet and pulled up into a set of seats easily unreachable by anyone else underneath her. A new set of laughter and moans made her turn to men sitting in leather seats as they pawed their women. Her dark eyes looked to each of the women, obviously drugged and in a stupor as they turned back and grinded themselves harder. Dom pulled her chains back as she choked and crashed to his lap.

His hand yanked her hair back as his other forced its way down the front of her pants. He pinched her healing side as the pain got worse.

“Which one do you want inside of you,” he mockingly whispered into her ear, “I’m sure they’ll try and be gentle with you but they may change when I tell them all who you are.”

He smiled as she tried to fight him through the pain. Both turned to the cheers and the sudden movement of the crowd below.

“Look,” shouted one of the men next to them, “That one’s made it.”

Evelyn felt tears falling from the sides of her face as she saw a heavily pregnant woman being led away by a group of aged women as her clothes and a clear puddle was left behind. The warehouse around them filled with cheers as Dom pulled her higher on his lap. Everything, her hip, her neck, her wrists hurt worse than she could imagine as she fought less. There was no more waking up, this was now an unrealistic nightmare made real.

“Just think. That could be you.”

Evelyn shook her head, unable to speak from the pain as Dom pulled her head back harder.

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. That will be you.”

“Fuck you!”

Her hair slipped from his fingers as she headbutted his face with the back of her head. Dom howled in pain as Evelyn launched herself into the sea of people below her. She was lucky and only lucky when she was pulled to her feet. Hands grabbed at her, pulling her in every direction. She could only ram into the nearest person and pray that they were distracted with one another which did work until a shot was fired into the crowd.

She looked over her shoulder to Dom jumping into the crowd behind her and gave chase. Evelyn ran as fast as her feet would allow her as she ventured deeper and deeper into the warehouse. She found cover the farther she went. A hand wrapped around her chain as she was yanked to the floor and surrounded by the cleanest looking men apart from everyone else.

“Lookie, boys! We got us a fresh fish. Let’s put her with the others.”

She was pulled along as she turned her head up to the rows of women, all whom she knew didn’t belong as they hung naked from the ceiling with various men between their legs as they fought the best they could, begging for them to stop and to be let free. Her feet stomped into the concrete floor to try and stop herself from being pulled forward and hung like a piece of fresh meat. Something popped beside her ear made her head spin as she felt blood on the side of her face.

Dom shot the men that touched her with stray bullets killing a few of the women and pulled Evelyn over his shoulders. The aching pain of her body blurred her vision as Dom fought his way back to the elevators. He fired more, killing his way back with none of the others caring as they continued with one another. Sweat poured from his head as the doors closed behind him. His fingers dug into Evelyn’s leg as he braced himself on the back wall.

His thumb flew for the pad and sent them upward to the safety of their floor. Dom carried her back to the apartment, locking each of the deadbolts behind him. His heart pumped from his chest as he hurled Evelyn into the nearest table as it creaked underneath her. He crashed over her, burying his face into her neck with the images of the warehouse fueling his veins with lust and possession. They had touched her, the men that subdued the women that were brought in daily all with hopes of making babies. That’s all they wanted.

Evelyn failed at trying to turn away as Dom tore the side of her pants and shoved his hand down the front. She was unable to close her legs in time as Dom pressed his fingers to her clit. Everything hurt worse. His teeth dug into her neck and his fingers pushed their way into her as she sobbed.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to touch you like that. I never would have let that happen.”

He slowed his hand for her, trying to make her calm as he dragged his tongue up her neck. Evelyn could only drown him out and pray for Tom.

“I was wrong about what I said,” he panted, “That will be you. No matter what you choose. You are 100% and will earn your keep. I think I’ll keep you though. You won’t be like them. You’ll be taken care of. No drugs. No reps. No one else but me and the doctors to make sure you carry properly. You’ll carry clean and not like that.”

He slowed his hand, feeling his fingers wet as he looked down to her. Her face was dotted red from the tears she’d shed and he’d let her continue as she stopped kicking. Her whole body was trembling and it was all because of him, giving him some confidence that she wouldn’t try to run.

“All I want is a boy,” he admitted as he began to pull his hand back, “but have all the ti…”

He spotted at the sight and smell of her blood on his fingertips. His eyes saw the obvious stain of her menstruation as she tried to catch her breath. His demeanor changed as he gathered Evelyn in his arms and headed for the bathroom. He turned at the old knobs to let the rusted water run clean. She felt her restraints let go as her arms fell weak to her side. She had no more strength to fight as Dom pulled off her clothes and held her under the water as the blood fell down the drain. He was generous to wrap and rough towel around her for her decency as he rocked her back and forth through her pain.

“Hush now, Justine. Just let me take care of you.”

She ignored his words as she felt the sting of whatever sedative he used to make her unconscious. The only thing she could count as luck was that her bleeding would give her a few days to try and find a way to escape or kill Dom before she would be used like any of the women floors below her, willing or not.

It wasn’t what she and Tom had. It wasn’t what they felt for one another. He would never be Dom. She could feel in her bones that Tom was alive and out looking for her in the apocalyptic shit storm. He was coming for her and she would be waiting.

-

Tom opened his eyes, feeling stiff but restful as the group of men around him were kept busy. His head hurt as one of the men helped him up.

“Morning, drama queen.”

The rather large man held out a bit of rations for Tom. His teeth dug into the dull bar and eat until he licked at the wrapper. Water was set into his lap as he emptied it in seconds, fighting to not get sick in the same moment.

“Hey, hey. Take it slow, son.”

“What happened?”

“Your daddy is fine. The charges were his idea. He’s safe. He only wanted to make sure that Marren wasn’t after us.”

“W-Who are all of you?”

“We were on the same squad on Dom. We’re helping you get Evelyn home.”

“Why?”

“You don’t understand, lad. Evelyn is like that Guadalupe. She’s a beacon for us, special that one is.”

“She is to me, more than you know.”

“We know, son. That’s why we’re here. That and to clear our status from that horseshit. Your daddy brought us up to speed. When the time comes,” he said placing a loaded gun into Tom’s hand, “we won’t stand in your way.”

Tom calmly handed the weapon, checking the magazine like he was taught when he was younger.

“Good.”

“We’re a few days out. The blast damaged one of the thrusters so we got to stay on the ground for the time being. When we get close, we’ll have to make it quick. Don’t touch any supplies marked. We gotta trade ‘em for parts but we’ll be as quick as we can.”

“Is that as far of the plan that you got?”

“For now, but is I said, we have a day or two.”

Tom felt the timid doctor he was raised to be disappear as the transport drove nearer to their destination. The blast would have put the colony for at least two days to make sure everything was sealed off for efficiency sake. His mother was gone, his family mourning and his father stepping up for the first time in his life. His heavy eyes looked up to the willing men at his disposal. He was going to get Evelyn back and put Dom down like the dog that he was.

“Good,” he said with the cock of his gun, “what have you got so far?”

-

Tagged: @808-anon, @angelus80, @angryschnauzer, @antyc67, @atinyfangirl, @audasia25, @cerys1212, @clairelovexo, @damageditem, @echantedbytwh, @eve1978, @hallotom, @inkededucatednnerdy, @itsjustelen, @jennphoenix, @justahopeless-dreamer, @lizandbooks, @lokilockedcougar, @lostsoul1011, @lovehiddles4everme, @marvelousmissfit, @mazda098, @megaflowerfangirl, @missdibley, @mrshiddelston, @mypreciousmind1, @nicole-stewart-loves-cookies, @osb1anon, @ourladybinxthings, @peskipixi, @prplprincez, @ririsutty, @roamingbadger, @sarabeth72, @servent-alearika, @sevanya, @shamvictoria11, @siyoteodiara, @sketchbookthingz, @starrynight35, @startingtoenjoylife, @the-lady-mischief, @tinaferraldo, @tomkurbikston, @vdcster, @wolfsmom1

[kansascityhappenings]

In world first, HIV-positive woman donates kidney to HIV-positive recipient

An Atlanta woman became the first living HIV-positive kidney donor in the world on Monday when surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore transferred her organ to a recipient who is also HIV-positive, according to a statement from the medical center.

Both the donor and the recipient, who wishes to remain anonymous, are doing well.

Nina Martinez, a 36-year-old public health consultant, acquired HIV as a 6-week-old in 1983, when she received a blood transfusion in the years before blood banks began routine testing for the virus. HIV damages the immune system and interferes with the body’s ability to fight the organisms that cause disease.

Despite her illness, Martinez’s enduring spirit is audible.

“I really want people to reconsider what living with HIV means,” she said from her hospital bed two days after her operation. “If anyone is proof that you can live a lifetime with HIV, that is myself. I’ve been living with HIV for 35 years — pretty much the length of the epidemic in the United States.”

An Atlanta woman became the first living HIV-positive kidney donor in the world when surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore transferred her organ to a recipient who is also HIV-positive.

Dr. Dorry Segev, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the surgeon who performed Martinez’s operation, praised her bravery and said that the historic surgery is “really a celebration of HIV [medical] care and its evolution.”

Giving ‘HOPE’ to people living with HIV

Until 2013, the United States did not permit HIV-positive organ donations, Segev said: “I was watching people with HIV die on our transplant list, and I was watching us have to decline every single potential donor, whether deceased or living, just because they had HIV.”

No one considered HIV donor transplants feasible based on two concerns: The virus itself can injure the kidney, and antiretrovirals — the drugs that control HIV — are toxic to the kidney. “We had to show that certain people with HIV could be healthy enough to be a kidney donor and to live with only one kidney,” Segev said.

As people live longer with HIV, they are experiencing more kidney failure related to high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Martinez explained. “Because people living with HIV are disproportionately impacted by the length of the donor wait list, if you are living with HIV, you are nearly twice as likely to pass away while waiting for a kidney,” she said.

The passage of the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act in November 2013 allowed researchers to conduct studies of organ transplants from HIV-positive donors to HIV-positive recipients. The act does not give priority status to HIV-positive patients but provides a donor pool specifically for people living with HIV. Individual states that had passed laws restricting donations from people with HIV are working quickly to match federal legislation, said Segev, who help draft the HOPE Act.

Martinez was nonplussed when the HOPE Act became law because she understood that it would mainly be used to allow deceased HIV-positive patients to become organ donors. This was the case when, in 2016, Johns Hopkins performed the world’s first HIV-to-HIV transplant.

Until her own surgery Monday, there had been about 100 HIV-to-HIV transplants in the United States, but all of them involved deceased donors.

An episode of the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy” in which there was a fictional HIV-to-HIV live donor transplant stoked Martinez’s imagination.

“It wasn’t until my friend broadcast his need for a kidney that I seriously thought about this in earnest,” she said. An Internet search took her to Johns Hopkins.

“Unfortunately, my friend passed away,” she said, and so her donation has gone to a person unknown to her, a good match selected from Johns Hopkins’ kidney wait list.

To accomplish her dream, Martinez had to be carefully screened.

A second strain of HIV

“Nina met the standard donor criteria: She was otherwise healthy without hypertension, without diabetes, so her only additional risk factor for kidney disease was HIV. And we had determined from our research that that was an acceptable and small additional risk,” said Dr. Christine Durand, associate professor of medicine and oncology and member of the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and the HIV team specialist for Martinez’s surgery.

Martinez said access to health care has been “a huge contributor” to her health and longevity. She hasn’t had a car in 14 years so she walks a lot. She also runs marathons with the nonprofit Grassroots Project, in which student athletes teach young people the tenets of HIV prevention. “I thought the juxtaposition of a longtime HIV patient with NCAA Division I athletes was quite comical,” she said.

Martinez’s HIV is also under “excellent control,” as measured by T-cell counts and an undetectable level of virus in her blood, Durand said.

Segev said that “the beauty of it is that the operation itself was like the hundreds of other living donor operations that I’ve done; it was just a regular live donor operation.”

The day of the operation, Martinez was walking the halls, “already doing great,” he added. The recipient is also “doing great. The kidney is working wonderfully.”

Durand said that “the medically novel part of this is that the recipient will likely acquire a second strain of HIV from the donor — something that we call HIV superinfection,” which is the case in all HIV-to-HIV transplants.

Donor and recipient have to be compatible in terms of HIV drug resistance, she explained, so when the recipient acquires the new HIV strain, their drug regimen will still work for them. “We can, if we need to, change a recipient’s medication around, but we have to have a plan for that going into it,” Durand said, noting that there are “more than 20 available HIV medications.”

She also said that combining HIV medication with immunosuppressant drugs, which lower the body’s ability to reject a transplanted organ, should not cause difficulties for the recipient.

Initiative to reduce new HIV infections

During his State of the Union address in February, President Donald Trump called for the elimination of HIV transmissions in the United States by 2030. Last week, the US Department of Health and Human Services detailed an initiative to reduce new HIV infections in the United States by at least 90% over 10 years.

There are more than 1 million people living with HIV in the United States. For them, Martinez’s historic operation means “that ‘here’s one less stigma associated with this disease,’ ” Segev said.

He added that he expects other medical centers in the United States and around the world to follow suit and begin to screen organ donors who are living with HIV.

From the moment she made her decision to surgery’s end, the organ donor process took about nine months, Martinez said: “I have a really strong sense of faith in myself, like I am my own rock. And so whenever I’ve made kind of unusual decisions or decisions where I don’t know the outcome, I just hunker down and believe in myself, and usually, that will get me through. Some people might call that stubborn.”

Martinez hopes her gift will inspire other people — whether they are HIV-negative or -positive — to consider becoming living organ donors.

“We have a very serious organ shortage in this nation,” she said. “It’s a real concrete way to make a difference.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/03/28/in-world-first-hiv-positive-woman-donates-kidney-to-hiv-positive-recipient/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/03/28/in-world-first-hiv-positive-woman-donates-kidney-to-hiv-positive-recipient/

[newstfionline]

For six decades, ‘the man with the golden arm’ donated blood—and saved 2.4 million babies

By Amy B Wang, Washington Post, May 12, 2018

In 1951, a 14-year-old Australian boy named James Harrison awoke from a major chest operation. Doctors had removed one of his lungs in a procedure that had taken several hours--and would keep him hospitalized for three months.

But Harrison was alive, thanks in large part to a vast quantity of transfused blood he had received, his father explained.

“He said that I had 13 units of blood and my life had been saved by unknown people,” Harrison told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta decades later.

At the time, Australia’s laws required blood donors to be at least 18 years old. It would be four years before Harrison was eligible, but he vowed then that he too would become a blood donor when he was old enough.

After turning 18, Harrison made good on his word, donating whole blood regularly with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. He disliked needles, so he averted his eyes and tried to ignore the pain whenever one was inserted into his arm.

Meanwhile, doctors in Australia were struggling to figure out why thousands of births in the country were resulting in miscarriages, stillbirths or brain defects for the babies.

“In Australia, up until about 1967, there were literally thousands of babies dying each year, doctors didn’t know why, and it was awful,” Jemma Falkenmire, of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, told Gupta. “Women were having numerous miscarriages, and babies were being born with brain damage.”

The babies, it turned out, were suffering from Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn, or HDN. The condition most often arises when a woman with an Rh negative blood type becomes pregnant with a baby who has Rh positive blood, and the incompatibility causes the mother’s body to reject the fetus’s red blood cells.

Doctors realized, however, that it might be possible to prevent HDN by injecting the pregnant woman with a treatment made from donated plasma with a rare antibody.

Researchers scoured blood banks to see whose blood might contain this antibody--and found a donor in New South Wales by the name of James Harrison.

By then, Harrison had been donating whole blood regularly for more than a decade. He has said he didn’t think twice when scientists reached out to him to ask if he would participate in what would become known as the Anti-D program.

“They asked me to be a guinea pig, and I’ve been donating ever since,” Harrison told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Before long, researchers had developed an injection called Anti-D using plasma from Harrison’s donated blood. The first dose was given to a pregnant woman at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1967, according to Robyn Barlow, the Rh program coordinator who found Harrison.

Harrison continued donating for more than 60 years and his plasma has been used to make millions of Anti-D injections, according to the Red Cross. Because about 17 percent of pregnant women in Australia require the anti-D injections, the blood service estimates Harrison has helped 2.4 million babies in the country.

“Every ampul of Anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it,” Barlow told the Sydney Morning Herald. “He has saved millions of babies. I cry just thinking about it.”

Scientists still aren’t sure why Harrison’s body naturally produces the rare antibody but believe it is related to the blood transfusions he received as a teenager. And through the decades, Harrison has brushed off excessive praise regarding his regular trips to the blood donation center from his home in Umina Beach, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

He had “never” considered stopping, he told the Daily Mail in 2010.

“Probably my only talent is that I can be a blood donor,” Harrison remarked wryly to CNN’s Gupta in 2015, when the network followed him as he made his 1,101st donation that year.

Countless others think Harrison is remarkable, though. Somewhere along the way, he picked up the nickname “The Man With the Golden Arm,” along with accolades large and small, from the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1999 to the cover of his local yellow pages in 2013.

In 2003, he landed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

But in interviews, Harrison has said by far the most fulfilling part of his unwavering commitment to donate plasma has been the babies he has helped save--including his own grandchildren.

“To say I am proud of James (my dad) is an understatement,” Harrison’s daughter, Tracey Mellowship, wrote on Facebook last month, noting she had needed an Anti-D injection in 1992, after the birth of her first son. “Thanks to dad I then gave birth to another healthy boy in 1995. ... Thank you dad for giving me the chance to have two healthy children--your grandchildren. XXX”

On Friday, Harrison made his final trip to the blood donation center. At age 81, he had already passed the age limit allowed for donors, and the blood service had decided Harrison should stop donating to protect his health, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

As Harrison sat in the donation chair, four silver mylar balloons--1 1 7 3--bobbled above him, representing his 1,173 total blood donations in his lifetime. Several parents had shown up at the hospital to mark the occasion--holding some of the babies his donations had helped save.

Barlow, the Rh program coordinator who had found Harrison decades ago, gave him a long, emotional hug.

“We’ll never see his kind again,” Barlow told the Sydney Morning Herald. “That he has been well and fit and his veins strong enough to continue to donate for so long is very, very rare.”

Harrison told the Red Cross that he is eager for his legacy of 1,173 donations to be surpassed.

“I hope it’s a record that somebody breaks, because it will mean they are dedicated to the cause,” Harrison said.

[adi9267]

AHA: 'No Excuses' for 3 Heart Disease Survivors Walking to Stay Fit

WEDNESDAY, April 4, 2018 (American Heart Association) -- Jerry McCann, Ray Rivera and Taunya Stewart are living proof that there's no good excuse to avoid physical activity, especially during Move More Month in April.

For each of them, becoming more active was a matter of life or death. McCann had a heart transplant. Rivera was diagnosed with a series of heart problems. Stewart went to the hospital with hypertension.

The trio has since taken all the right steps to improve their conditions and live happier, healthier lives.

Jerry McCann of Madison, Wisc., was put on a waiting list for a new heart nearly 20 years after quadruple bypass surgery at age 39. A heart attack nine years later, along with high blood pressure, ultimately led to heart failure. A surgically implanted left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, helped his heart pump blood through the body while he waited for a new heart.

Finally, McCann received a call in 2014 that would change his life: A donor heart was available. He successfully underwent a 10-hour heart transplant procedure at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.

McCann's wife, Margaret, said his cardiac rehabilitation was key to helping her husband get back on his feet. McCann, now 65, walks 30 minutes most days of the week and is eating healthier.

The couple participated in American Heart Association Heart Walks with their grown daughters in Orlando, Fla., and Seattle just a year after the transplant. That inspired a new goal: participating in Heart Walks in all 50 states.

They've made it to 16 states so far, and McCann walks in tribute to his anonymous donor. His message to others is to "enjoy every day. I'm just extremely grateful to have a second chance on life," he said.

Ray Rivera, 63, was already an avid walker when he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat. A few months after the diagnosis, doctors discovered a leaky heart valve. Rivera had surgery in 2016 to replace his heart valve, ablation to correct the AFib, and bypass surgery to relieve two clogged arteries.

Six months after his heart procedure, the Pasadena, Calif., resident embarked on a 200-mile walk along a trail in France, followed by a second 200-mile walk six months later. His last 200-mile walk was in Spain in 2017, and this April he will return to the country for a 300-mile walk. At home, Rivera stays in shape between walks by walking or going to the gym five to six times a week.

"My doctors think I did well through surgery and in recovery because I was in good shape physically," said Rivera, who added that he cut back on alcohol and now eats more fruits and vegetables. "While I never want to think I am totally out of the woods, I do anything I want physically without any problems."

Taunya Stewart's journey to better health began when she awoke one day in 2015 wondering if she was having a heart attack. Emergency room doctors measured her blood pressure at 226 over 154 -- a "hypertensive crisis" that could lead to a stroke or heart attack.

Stewart was prescribed blood pressure medicine that she was told she would need to take for the rest of her life.

Today, the 43-year-old New Orleans resident walks 3 to 5 miles five days a week and checks her blood pressure daily. Her blood pressure is significantly lower, she's taking less medication, and her doctor has been pleased with her progress, Stewart said. Her goal is to be off blood pressure medicine by next year.

"Being cognizant of what the risk factors are help to keep me motivated," Stewart said. "When you are unfit, that is when you need to exercise. When you are tired, you need to exercise. When you don't know what to do, you need to exercise."

Stewart also is eating better, drinking more water and has lost weight. She has become more active as an organizer and fitness nutrition specialist at GirlTrek, a national movement to encourage black women to walk together as a first step to increase physical activity that helped her get more fit.

These success stories underscore the many benefits of regular physical activity, including lower risk of heart failure, lower blood pressure and better brain health.

Walking can help reduce or even reverse the risk of heart failure, even for people who have been sedentary but otherwise healthy, according to a recent study published in the journal Circulation. Men and women in their 50s who stuck to a regular aerobic workout for two years saw positive changes, according to researchers.

Moving more doesn't require hours-long gym workouts to get to the recommended 150 minutes a week. Another study published last month in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggested that the risk of death can drop even when moderate or vigorous activity comes in short, five-minute bursts (like walking up several flights of stairs or walking briskly from a remote parking spot).

Stewart said her newfound focus on taking care of herself has been life-changing.

"We spend time doing everything for everybody else, and we have to make time for ourselves," she said. "It's not being selfish, it's being smart enough to know that an empty vessel cannot continue to pour out."

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