#i don't know how else to tag this -

[stickynotelovers-art]

Had a silly thought about @somerandomdudelmao himbo and had to draw it quickly to get it out of my system, lol. I am very interested in seeing whether or not he actually gets eaten or somehow succeeds at scoring an alien sweetheart.

[saidar]

Maybe it's just me since I haven't been in a fandom since 2013 because all the ones I was in were cesspits

But I'm old enough (mid 30s) to remember x reader fanfiction being a fringe thing and people getting bullied for it (at least in the circles I was in)

Imagine my delight when I scroll through the Liandrin tag and there's a bunch of Liandrin x reader fanfiction. Nature is healing

Please enjoy this meme I made

[saythatuwill]

now playing : housofpsychoticwomn // ethel cain

warnings: body horror, repeated mentions of suicide, detailed descriptions of uncomfortable sounds and scents, emetophobia/vomiting, major character "death", knives, hallucinations, unhealthy/toxic behavior caused by outside/otherworldly forces, implications of cannibalism(?), possession (IF I HAVE MISSED ANYTHING, PLEASE INFORM ME)

pairing: noah sebastian x nick folio

characters: noah sebastian, nick folio, reader, nicholas ruffilo (mentioned), jolly karlsson (mentioned), vessel (mentioned)

word count: 5.6k

please know that this fic is my darkest to date, the warnings are there for a reason. this piece is part of a universe i've been working on since 2018. it is meant to be a psychological horror video game set in an apocalypse-type world. you will see the video game elements in this piece. this is a reader insert, but not in the conventional way- here, you are a silent protagonist in a world you do not fully understand, trying to save those who have been lost to what's ravaged the world.

while there are extremely dark things in this fic, please know that it is in fact fiction. i do not condone things written here, nor do i think that any of the people in this work would actually behave this way. with this universe specifically, the characters are pretty much entirely separate from who they actually are irl. i have merely used their faces and names, maybe a few details, and then everything else is original.

there are things in this fic that won't make sense to you, and that is intended. you will be in the shoes of two characters who do not fully understand what is happening. this piece is designed to be uncomfortable, confusing, but hopefully still captivating.

i cannot guarantee there will be additional chapters/parts to this, but i am always happy to talk about this universe and explain things.

YOUR MENTAL HEALTH COMES BEFORE ANY FANFICTION. this could be too much for some readers, and if that is the case, DO NOT force yourself to read this. if this is not for you, i hope to see you in the next one.

tags: @concretejunglefm, @fadingangelwisp, @chey-h, @xmads-omensx, @astronoids, @bloody-spades (if you would like to be added/removed from this list, dm me!)

The house is uncomfortably still. If you didn’t know better, you’d think people still lived in it. A flatscreen TV hangs on the wall, and an entertainment center is below it. There’s CDs messily stacked atop, and a wide array of video game cases in the shelves. The walls are decorated with photos of a couple. One is tattooed from the neck down, he’s tall and he’s smiling wide. His arm is wrapped around a shorter man, not as tattooed, but smiling just as wide, his head tucked underneath his lover’s chin. Another shows the shorter one sitting behind a drum set while his boyfriend playfully pretends to bite one of the cymbals. The walls are white, the floors wooden. There’s a few pairs of shoes by the door.

It’s the living room of a modern couple. Almost a picture perfect capture in time, of a life before it all fell apart. You can almost see the people who lived here, yelling the lyrics of a song playing through the speakers, banging their heads and laughing. But all it takes is a closer inspection down the hall, and the room’s temperature drops. The cozy untouched living room feels like the outskirts of a murder scene.

There’s black ink smeared and spattered on the floors like something was dragging itself across it. It’s in pools at some points, the trail can’t seem to stay in a straight line. It veers to the left against a wall, and the ink has soaked itself into the walls, pooled down and onto the wooden tiles, seeping through every crack. Black handprints drag themselves along. Despite the knowledge that it’s been years since whatever happened here occurred, the ink is still fresh. It is still dripping. It is still wet.

The ink whispers and beckons to you as you walk past it. Your peripheral vision blurs, but you can see the way it attempts to reach out to you, to grab you and pull you closer. The insistent persuasion that they chant, that no one will ever love you or understand you like they do. That there’s nothing left for you here. Don’t you feel the walls caving in? It’s over. Fighting is only delaying the inevitable, so why make the attempt at all? Why search for a way to free these souls, when they’re just fine as they are? Join them. Join them.

Stop listening to them. Keep going. You know what happened to those people, and what will happen to you. You have to keep moving. It’s not over.

You move swiftly to the bedroom in hopes of a more pleasant scene. It is the exact opposite. The walls creak and moan as if something is still begging for help. The ink has seeped into the comforter of the bed, upon closer inspection there seems to be blood as well. On the floor by the bed is a large kitchen knife, yet there is no blood nor ink on it. It shines as if freshly cleaned, or never used at all.

This has to be the place the [ infected man ] told you to go. It was rare for those taken by the ink to have a piece of themselves intact. Though the growls and the urge to kill, he had begged you to find his home. To find what he lost. You know well that if you can find it, there is a chance to save the man from being consumed all over again. There’s still hope in the form of something, it just has to be here. 

On the bed in the midst of the mess, you find something. There’s dried blood and black ink spattered on the surface, and a page is sticking out. It’s a journal, the faded letters of the name [ NICK ] are on it. It’s a surprise that this hasn’t been lost.

There is nothing else here. You stopped having a choice a long time ago. You have to keep going.

You have obtained [ Nick’s journal ]. Only the last page is readable, the rest appear to be lost. 

Something is wrong with Noah.

There was an emergency alert three days ago. It interrupted us during recording, it flashed on our computer screens, our phones, anywhere it could reach. It said something about ink. Black ink. We had to stay away from it, but they didn’t tell us why. We didn’t know what to do after that, so we went home. We locked the doors and closed the windows as the sirens blared.

Nicholas called us that night, he was scared. At first we understood and attempted to empathize thinking it was the uncertainty of the situation, but he just wouldn’t calm down. Noah and I were trying to talk him down but it wasn’t getting through to him. He said there were whispers in his house, but we didn’t hear anything through the receiver.

It was just him, and the longer the call went on, the panic and fear began to turn into… nothing. The way the emotion drained from his voice, the way we watched through that iPhone screen as he stared off into space. At some point, he wouldn’t respond to a word I said. He just kept talking to Noah. He would only talk to Noah.

Still, it felt optimistic, and I didn’t take any offense. I’d seen Noah get emotionally drained like that before after an episode. They’re best friends, so I figured I’d step out for a minute to let them talk in private. I returned two minutes later when I heard Noah yelling his name. The call had ended, and Noah seemed shaken by something. He was just holding the phone, so hard his hands were shaking.

He wouldn’t tell me what it was. I wish he had. Whatever he saw… maybe that’s what caused this.

Last night, he was so distant. That wasn’t weird, sometimes he had his moments. But it wasn’t like he was taking space, he would be in the room with me. But he’d always be looking somewhere else. I tried to ask him what he was looking at. He looked at me, and he smiled. It was so… defeated?

“I’m fine, Nick. I’ll get over it.” He said. I still don’t know what he was trying to get over. 

We went to bed together, and he held me like always. But his touch was cold, he was shivering. The blankets weren’t helping, my body wasn’t helping. His eyes stared at the corner of the room until they finally closed. 

It’s 10AM. I just woke up. Noah is not in bed next to me. But I think I can hear him breathing. It sounds like groaning. I’m going to get to the bottom of this. This has to stop.

Your reality shifts as the words of the journal come to life. They envelop you like a blanket at first, and then tighten like vines of thorns. It gets tighter, and tighter, until you swear your eyes may bulge and fall out of your skull. Maybe that would be an easier fate than this. You can only watch. Just as you always do.

Nick sighed as he tossed the journal haphazardly onto the bed, using his hands to stand up from the mattress. Ever since the emergency alert, it had been getting harder to wake up. Normally he didn’t feel so weighed down and unmotivated. It was steadily getting worse the more unnerving the conditions around him had become. 

After the ending of that call with Nicholas three days ago, he had been unreachable. Noah had attempted to call him, but the phone wouldn’t ring. It would go automatically to voicemail, but he insisted that his best friend’s voicemail didn’t sound ‘right’ anymore. Nick took his word for it but didn’t quite understand what he was talking about. He’d even listened to it himself; it was the same as always, announcing that neither him nor his cats could answer the phone.

Then there was the general outdoors. He’d taken a walk to clear his head; watching Noah stare blankly at the corner of the room for several hours didn’t make his own paranoia better. Yet neither did their usual neighborhood. Dark clouds and thick fog permeated the air. There was no sign of the sun, and he found himself lucky he knew the layout of the neighborhood well or he would have gotten lost. But outside it was so… quiet. There were no cars driving by, no distant sounds of children laughing or dogs barking like he was used to hearing across the street, it was an uncomfortable nothing. 

Even he found it remarkable how levelheaded he was trying to be about all of this. Nicholas had vanished, Jolly had said he was going to go check on him but had never called or texted back with any updates. Noah was looking worse by the hour in a way that Nick couldn’t even begin to understand. Everything felt like it was crumbling, but it had to pass eventually, right?

The only thing that mattered in the moment was Noah. That was who he was searching for. And the further he moved down the hall of their single story home, the louder his boyfriend’s breathing got. It led him in front of the bathroom door, which was closed, yet there was no visible light underneath the door.

Upon closer inspection, Noah’s breathing sounded off, almost like he was desperately trying to get air into his lungs. Not like a panic attack; like something was grabbing his throat and squeezing. 

“Noah?” Nick knocked on the door with his knuckle. “You okay in there? Can I come in?”

The breathing stopped, and it all went silent. Nick couldn’t hear any breaths besides his own.

“I’m fine, Nick. I’ll get over it.” Noah speaks from the other side of the door. Normally this would be a ‘okay, if he insists’ kind of response, but this was uncomfortable. Nick remembered that his boyfriend had said exactly this, word for word, in the same cadence last night. As if someone was playing a tape recorder of his words, pressing play whenever convenient. 

“Babe, can you just let me come in please?” He spoke again after a few beats, a mix of irritation and concern in his tone. When he got silence in response, he began to move his hand toward the doorknob to let himself in. But before his hand even touched the knob, Noah spoke up again.

“You don’t need to do that.” The sentence made Nick jump, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked between his hand not even on the doorknob and the door itself. Noah was in that bathroom with the door shut and the lights off. How did he know he was about to try to open it? Better yet, why had Noah spoken to him like that? 

His voice was like gravel underneath one’s feet, or like the sound of the garbage barrel being dragged up the parking lot into the garage after trash day. Hoarse as if he’d really been choking on something, or had been screaming for hours. It was almost guttural, teetering the knife’s edge of familiar and foreign, like the powerful vocals Noah would usually save for the stage. Yet there was just something off about it - something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He felt uncomfortable, yet drawn in like a moth to a flame. Was that the genuine concern for his lover, or was there a force unbeknownst to him brushing against his skin, mere inches away from grabbing him and pulling him in?

“Look,” Nick started, his mouth dry and his voice thick. “If I did something wrong, let’s talk it out, okay? You’ve been acting weird since this ink thing started. We need each other now more than ever, so if you’re upset-”

“Upset?” Noah’s chuckle could only be described as delirious. Nick wasn’t sure why that made him feel so nauseous. “I feel great.”

As the chuckle descended into more suffocating gasps and gagging coughs, the drummer had his mind made up. Something was wrong, and he needed to get to the bottom of it. He sighed in frustration, his hand grabbing the knob of the door. The metal was ice cold, enough to make him pull his hand back in surprise. 

The door opened anyway.

It creaked open slowly, the familiar tattooed fingers of Noah’s hand wrapping around the wooden door as he peeked out. Nick’s blood ran cold when he looked up and saw a pair of glowing white eyes staring at him. They flitted about, each movement leaving a distant trail of light in its wake. There was no emotion within them, but a newfound nagging voice in his head was telling him that whatever he was looking at needed to feed.

The voice in Nick’s mind repeated it over and over as every little sound in the house amplified into his ears. The buzz of the heating system droned on like unpleasant white noise, fading in and out while the walls groaned at him. If he listened intently enough, it sounded like humans trapped within the insulation, rotting away like corpses never discovered. The ticking of the clock in the living room sounded more like someone hitting a nail with a hammer, louder and louder with each tick. Tick. Tick.

The wheezing of whatever was in that bathroom as it struggled to breathe was all he needed for the adrenaline to enter his veins. He moved back step by step, unable to pull his gaze away from the white slits staring back at him. The only time he looked away was when he broke out into a run, his body clumsily hitting the wall of the hallway as he moved. He didn’t dare look back to see if it was following him.

Nick’s hands gripped the kitchen counter so hard his knuckles were turning white. His ears were ringing yet the sound was just like the blaring sirens on day one. He couldn’t seem to focus on any individual sound.

Besides the whispers in his ears, that is. That voice in his head wouldn’t seem to go away, and it had brought friends. What started as a warning of the hungry creature with Noah’s voice had turned into phrases that sounded so sweet. Maybe the whispers in his ears, the tiny gusts of air tickling his skin were a sign.

“He only wants to feed. Is that so wrong? You’d be cruel to deprive him. Is this who you truly are? And you question what he has become.”

“I know a place where you won’t have to worry about him anymore. If you just let me in.”

“You never had anything, and you still have nothing. But if you trust me, you can have it all.”

“I can smell it. It smells so nice. And we are growing stronger thanks to you.”

“Fighting isn’t necessary. If you feed him, you’ll never have to fight again.”

“Being enough for him was never an option. Follow me, and you’ll become everything.”

Nick brought a hand to his head, rubbing his face as he shook the thoughts off. What had gotten into him? These voices weren’t sweet at all, these whispers were only making him more anxious. Where had they come from? He’d never heard something like this before.

Then it dawned on him, and his hand dropped back to the countertop. Was this what Nicholas was talking about? Those whispers neither he or Noah had been able to hear. Were they here all along?

He wasted no time rushing to the knife rack, grabbing the biggest one he could find. Whatever was in these four walls with him would not take him so easily. Not without a fight. It had taken Noah, and he had a feeling it had taken Nicholas too. 

Then came the sound. Footsteps, between stumbling and prolonged dragging against the floors. The kind of scraping noise that would come from pushing a chair in, except more… wet. It’s a nauseating sound, squelching that was getting louder and louder by the second. Nick brought a hand to his stomach, taking a few shaking breaths so he wouldn’t vomit from the noise alone.

The smell wasn’t helping either. It smelled like something had died and begun to decay, mixed with the familiar smell of fire and chemicals. Nick swallowed hard, white knuckling the knife in his hand and making the first steps away from the source of the sound. He didn’t get very far.

The moment his back turned, the air felt colder. The staggered breaths of Noah had returned, only a few feet away. The squelching was nearby, too close for comfort. The whispering in Nick’s ears had begun to sound like his boyfriend’s voice, repeating like a broken record. Turn around, Nick. Don’t be ungrateful. Don’t you love me? 

Unable to resist the incessant whispers, the drummer turned around. His face paled at what was staring back at him.

Despite the reassurance to himself that whatever had been in that bathroom was not Noah, there was no room for doubt now. What he was looking at was Noah. A fucked up, amalgamated Noah.

What had once been beautiful brown eyes he could’ve gotten lost in forever were glazed over with a milky sheen, and those haunting white pupils were still staring him down, flickering back and forth with instability. His entire left arm was coated in black liquid, dripping from his fingers- no, claws, onto the floorboards. Drip. Drip. Drip. Like a leaky ceiling. 

One side of Noah’s face had fallen victim to the ink already. Black veins traveled up his cheek, past his eye, and branched out like a blossoming tree. They decorated his already tattooed neck, like it had been submerged in black paint, spreading like a virus along his skin in jagged patterns. Harsher marks from the corner of his lips to his ear had spouted sharp teeth, which moved in time with each open mouthed breath he took. 

The black ink had claimed his torso almost in entirety, as if he were an unfinished piece of art. Like the parts of his body were hollow shadows that had never been there in the first place. Those same branch-like parts grew out of his chest and tangled around him like vines. Ink ran down his legs and Nick could only watch as it continued to spread.

“Noah…” Nick breathed out his name, “what the fuck. What the fuck!” There was no keeping calm now, holding the knife out in front of him defensively. No recognition flashed in those eyes in response, but if there had been any, it wasn’t like he was looking. If he stared into those white dots too long, he was certain he’d throw up. The stench had only gotten worse and didn’t help the sick feeling.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry, hit something, beg for Noah to pull it together. This couldn’t be the man he fell in love with, and this had to be a sick fucking nightmare. A horrific dream that he needed to wake up from. 

There was no waking up. This was real life. Noah was turning into something beyond humanity. The warnings of the ink, Nicholas’ strange behavior, Noah’s withdrawn nature… It all led up to this. Whatever this was.

So he ran. He didn’t have many places to go, dashing in and out of different rooms in the house, the squelching following him at every turn. The stumbling footsteps of whatever remained of Noah, combined with the low groans and growls that tumbled from his dripping lips. 

Nick nearly slipped from the ink as he ran into the master bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind him. His chest was burning, breaths heavy and uneven, back against the door as he attempted to form a plan. His eyes fell on his own reflection in the mirror, hoping that a familiar presence, even if it was his own, would help him regain his composure.

“You’re feeding us so nicely, Nick.” The whispers tickled his ears again, making him stiffen. ”You were made for this life. All that’s left is to give in.”

“Get it together, Nick. Come on.” He attempted to ignore it, leaning in closer to the mirror to give himself a pep talk. “Whatever’s happening, have to keep it together. You’re the man. You’re so much braver than this, get it the fuck together.” 

”Look at yourself. You don’t even believe in your own words. You don’t even believe in yourself anymore.” The whispers in his ears droned on, the words sharp enough to make Nick growl and run a hand through his brown hair. ”Giving up is so easy. Noah did.”

“Fucker!” He snarled, shaking his head. “What the fuck did you do to him? What did you do?”

”He chose this. He’s so much happier now. It’s not so bad. We gave him something you couldn’t.”

“What-”

”Escape. You can find the escape, too. You will never have to go without him again.”

Nick stared back into his own eyes as a black clawed hand slowly wrapped around his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, shaking his head. When they reopened, it was gone, like it had never existed in the first place. 

For now, it was quiet. As quiet as it could be, given the squelch he could still hear far off into the house and the groan of the walls. His chest felt like it was being stepped on, like any more weight would crush his ribs and decimate his heart. He needed to get out of here and find help for Noah.

He tore his gaze away from the glass, wasting no time getting changed into something warmer. The red beanie the two of them shared back and forth sat atop Noah’s dresser. He grabbed it without question and pulled it onto his head. Usually the feeling of it on his head would put him at ease, but it did little to soothe the anxiety this time. He could hear himself breathing, panting like an animal, and it was like he couldn’t even control it anymore. Every attempt at a deep breath failed. 

Everything was falling apart. He couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t figure out how to save Noah from whatever the fuck had sunk its teeth into him. He had no one to call for help but he couldn’t stay here. That thing was hungry, and it wanted him next. The thought of the razor sharp teeth crawling across Noah’s face biting into his flesh and eating him alive made him dry heave.

He pulled his hoodie over his head, picking the knife back up from where he’d set it down on the dresser. Just in case he’d have to use it, though he didn’t want to, not on Noah. God, never on Noah. His tired gaze fell back on his own reflection.

Noah was standing behind him. Their eyes locked in the reflection, and Nick stood paralyzed in horror. That didn’t make sense. The door had been locked. The last time he’d heard the sound of Noah’s movements, it had been in a completely different room. How did he get in here? 

Better yet, was that door still locked? Was he trapped in here?

“Why are you running from me, Nick?” Noah asked, tilting his head so far to one side that his neck should’ve snapped. His voice was distorted, echoing off the walls, a sense of sickening laughter in his tone. “Don’t you love me? I’ve been doing so well, haven’t I? Yet here you are, pushing me away.”

“Noah, you’re not yourself. Stop.” Nick’s voice trembled, “something is wrong and I’m going to get help.” Even with such certainty in his words, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

“You can never let me be happy, can you? Don’t you see? I’ve never felt more alive! Nicholas had said I’d be free, and I am. I’m so free.” Noah lifted his deformed hand to rest on Nick’s shoulder, the claws pricking his skin but not quite piercing the flesh. A silent threat, perhaps.

“Freedom? You call that shit freedom? Nicholas is gone, Jolly’s nowhere to be found, I will not fucking lose you to this.” He lifted his shoulder to shrug his grasp off, but it remained, unfazed by the action. The ink was warm, it was seeping through the fabric of his clothes, it made him feel filthy.

“You really don’t want me to be happy then. You disgust me. So much for the plans we made, the promises! I was right to do this. I was right to join them. It was just as they said.” Noah laughed, the sound a delirious cackle, the talons finally stabbing into his lover’s skin.

“FUCK! Noah, stop! Stop fucking listening to them!” Nick acted on reflex, using the elbow of his other arm to knock Noah off and away from him. It had been enough to get him free, the amalgamation of his boyfriend stumbling backwards. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, the warmth of blood likely mixed with that disgusting slime trickling down his arm, he spun around, once again holding the knife defensively.

Yet when he looked behind him, Noah wasn’t there. His vision was beginning to blur and spin out of control, his body swaying as the ringing in his ears kicked up again. Was he hallucinating all of this? He couldn’t be, he could feel the claw marks in his arm, he could still hear Noah’s voice in his head, the whispers encouraging him to succumb to the same fate he had.

He was too disoriented to have registered the presence behind him before a hand was in his hair, gripping so hard he could feel strands being pulled out of his scalp. The other was around his throat, gravelly words growled into his ear.

“Don’t you hear it, Nick? They’re in your head too, right? Listen to them.”

“Noah, let go-”

”Fucking listen to them, Nick.” The sharpness was like a verbal slap to the face. Nick grimaced in response.

He wasn’t sure why he was actually listening to Noah, but here he was. The whispers seemed to be getting louder, and what had started as innocuous beckoning to give in had turned into cruel demands, haunting screams and venomous taunts. Again, and again, feed. Feed. He needs to feed. Feed. Feed. Life would be better if he gave in. Gave in. Gave in. There was nothing, he had nothing, he was nothing. But if he succumbed, he could have everything.

Anything. Everything. Always. Forever. Feed. Feed. Feed. Give in.

Nick struggled against the death grips Noah had him in, tears burning in the corners of his eyes, teeth gritted together. The hand around his neck, squeezing, tighter and tighter until the corners of his vision were starting to blur. Only then did he find himself dropped onto the floor beside the bed, the knife falling from his hand and sliding away from his reach. On his hands and knees, he coughed and gasped for air, holding his ink-soaked neck in hopes it would help him get oxygen into his lungs faster.

Then the scent entered his nose again, that rotting smell, and he couldn’t hold back the sickness anymore. He was retching onto the floor, coughing and hacking. It was only after he had emptied his stomach that he noticed that something was off about what exactly had just left his body.

He brought a hand to his lips, staring down at what was spilling from them in a stream. Looking down at his fingers, he opened and closed them as the liquid dripped between them and onto the floor.

It’s all black. Metallic tasting black ink, the same disgusting liquid that was pouring from Noah’s body, that had stained the floors, that had seeped into his clothing. 

”Afraid, just as you should be. It’s our favorite. Don’t you want to feed us, Nick? Feed him. You pathetic wretch, look into the eyes of the one that consumes you. Mind, body, soul.”

The familiar touch of Noah’s hand caressed his cheek, his head lifting to look up at him. The smile being offered to him felt like a warm blanket on his despair, if only for a moment. He didn’t bother resisting the urge to lean into his touch, even if it wasn’t the same. 

“Come on, Nick.” Noah whispered, stroking his lover’s cheek with a faux fondness.

“Noah… please…” In a last ditch effort, he still begged to be spared, to be let go. If he just had a little time, surely he could find help. He could get up and fight the fog and the eerie silence and come back with something that could fix this. Fix him.

Oh, who was he kidding? He’d already failed. Noah had been consumed before his eyes, and now he would be too. There was no hope now, maybe there never had been at all. Help didn’t exist, and he had become a disgusting creature, too blind to have seen the truth. Noah looked so happy.

“...Where are we going, Noah?” After a minute, Nick had abandoned the previous plea, his gaze softening against his better judgement. He didn’t flinch or recoil as Noah leaned closer, as that smile grew wider. Wider. Wider. Razorblade teeth exposed, no joy in those haunting white circles staring back at him. 

“Paradise.”

The last thing Nick remembered was the way Noah pulled him in for a kiss with aggression and hunger, before his mind shut off in entirety.

What would he need his mind for anyway? He was going to paradise. Him and Noah, never needing to fight or worry about losing everything again.

Blinded by hunger and fueled by fear. 

Noah nowhere to be found.

You crumble to the floor, gasping and coughing violently as you are finally released. By this point, you’d seen so many stories, so many vivid recollections of how hundreds of thousands of people had been seemingly lost to the possessions. Yet this one felt different, there was something in this particular tale that hadn’t existed in all the other Phobius cases you’d seen.

The humanity of it all. In more recent cases, Phobi hardly said a word. It was a tactic, to silence their victims so they wouldn’t tell a soul of their affliction. Or the pressure to hide it altogether, do whatever it takes even if it meant killing someone to keep the secret safe. Yet here, it was so… out in the open. There’d been no effort to hide a thing, which meant that the speculation from Vessel had been true. 

These men had to be among the first. Maybe not the first ever, but this journal held the only documentation or record of when the outbreak had begun. The [ infected man ] wasn’t just any poor possessed soul; that was Nick. The first victim of possession by another host; as far as anyone had known prior to this it had mostly been ingestion or contact with the ink itself. This was proof that some of the Phobi now… they could be saved.

When Nick had begged you to find “home”, you’d assumed he meant this house. But seeing that, there was a lack of attachment to the place itself. Home wasn’t a place, he wasn’t looking for his house.

Home is a person. Home is Noah, who he had been separated from immediately upon possession. The key to potentially rescuing Nick was in the very man who had infected him. You didn’t have to go anywhere else to find that home, too.

You’d felt eyes on you since you got here. And when you set down the journal, a figure rises from the ink, growling and snarling at you. Tiny white eyes that don’t stay in one place, teeth sticking out of its face, but unlike what you’d just seen, there was no humanity, no signs of a person’s face or defining features. A slimy silhouette staring through you, teeth bared, ready to lunge at you.

Noah had been trapped in this home for at least six years. Stuck roaming the halls, the very place he and his lover once lived. The last place he’d seen Nick before he’d feasted on his fear and turned him into the very beast he’d become. Noah was still here, haunted by his own actions, hungry and alone.

This is the same song and dance, but you find yourself nervous anyhow. Noah watches you like a predator stalking its next meal as you step further and further away from him. You dig into your bag and take out the red beanie that had been entrusted to you. This is your one chance to put Vessel’s theory to the test. One chance to truly free Nick without having to use violence to eradicate him.

Maybe you’d even be able to save Noah. Whoever Noah was, whatever caused him the infection to spread at such an abnormally rapid rate, there still had to be a sliver of hope. Hope that you could be holding in your hands.

You hold it up so he can see it, gripping it firmly in your hands. The fabric is soft, it’s a miracle that it was able to be recovered and cleaned. There’s this feeling that you are holding onto a physical manifestation of years of history between a pair of lovers. The amalgamation’s gaze leaves you for once and locks onto the beanie, looking at it without emotion. Not anything you could see, anyway.

And you brace for impact as Noah charges towards you at full speed.

[trekscribbles]

Talking to my brother about our podcast and he goes "hey why don't you get that writer guy to be a guest? that guy you like? the writer?"

And after several minutes of confusion, I realized he was talking about Dean Devlin. Of whom I have apparently talked so much that my brother thinks I know him personally and we are friends. So.

Dean, if you see this, let me know. We'd have a good time.

[asirensrage]

Get in the Water

Title: Get in the Water

Fandom: Tokyo Revengers

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Sanzu Haruchiyo x afab!Reader

Word count: 2858

Warnings: Dark!fic. Non-Con/Dub-Con. Monsterfucking. Drowning. Death. Forced being changed/forced metamorphosis. **Warnings are not exhaustive.**

Summary: He found you. Now there's no escape.

*HEED THE WARNINGS*

Notes: This was based on the idea of a mer!snake!Sanzu and the song Get in the Water from Epic the musical. I wrote it for mermay 2025 but I didn't finish it on time. I'm not sure how I feel about it (I already rewrote it once) but this is the result. I hope you like it.

“There you are. Coward.”

A sudden shift, the world coming back into awareness as the voice cuts through the dream and forcing you awake. Ocean spray stings as it hits you when the waves break against the rocks that cradle the cement dock you find yourself standing on. The concrete is cold and wet beneath your bare feet. But it all seems minuscule when compared to that voice.

That voice which has haunted your memories, twisting in your dreams and lingering with an ache in your chest that you’ve been trying to ignore.

You try to run, to get as far away as possible. You can’t be here. You can’t--

The way is blocked as the end of his tail slams down in front of you, hard enough to crack the concrete and splintering it from the shoreline. You stare in shock. The spines of his tail flex, a warning as clear as the bright pink colouring on them. They stand out even more in the dark of the storm that rages against the tides.

You never should have come here. You should have never let your friends manipulate you into facing this fear. They never understood. They didn’t know of the monster in the deep, didn’t see him the way you did. They never faced the threat of drowning, of death from a being that was determined to claim you as sure as the ocean did with every storm.

“I’m not a coward,” you say, voice nearly swallowed by the wind. He hears it regardless.

“No?” He glides forward in the water, lifting himself high enough that his eyes meet yours. Despite the monstrosity of his being, no one else seems to notice. No one comes forward, questioning the broken dock, the sound of his voice that echoes like a storm. No one comes looking for you. “You’ve fled and avoided your fate.”

“It’s not mine!”

He stares, eyes as bright and welcoming as the tropical oceans darken in response. “It is.”

You step back automatically, wanting to run but there’s no escape. “No,” you shake your head, throat tightening. “I didn’t ask for it. Choose someone else!”

“This is no one else!” He hisses, lifting himself higher. Lightning flashes across the ocean, a storm on the horizon, beckoning you to flee. Or demanding you remain.

He threatened to steal you before, a moment that was only broken by the arrival of another that gave you the chance to escape after a speech that made it clear what he wanted from you. Regardless of your own wishes. You stayed away from bodies of water after that.

Until now.

“We returned.”

“I was forced.”

“Yes. Unlike you, your friends were easy to puppet. It took less than a dream to lure them into bringing you back to me.”

You stare at him in horror. You knew there was something off about how persistent your friends were about going on vacation, about the way every place they offered was by a body of water connected to the ocean. They were so insistent, practically kidnapping you with a non-refundable deposit and a promise that you wouldn’t be near water. A lie. All of it a lie. Just to get you here. “You...you manipulated them....”

“You refused to return. Now come.”

You shake your head, looking around. There’s nowhere to go. The only exit not barred by his body, by the florescent scales that warn of his venom, is into the water. “No.”

“My patience is not endless,” he says, scars at the edges of his mouth tightening as he snarls. “One way or another you will come to me. By force or by choice.”

“P-please...” you swallow tightly. Fear chokes you, clogging your throat, your lungs, like tar. “Please, I can’t. I don’t swim. I don’t...I don’t want to die.” That’s the crux of it. This god, this monster, demands a sacrifice and you don’t want it to be you. You want to live. There is so much in this life that you haven’t experienced and you want to.

“If it was death I offered, your corpse would already feed the creatures in the deep.”

Despite his words, you aren’t encouraged. You still try to look for an escape, to figure out a way to draw the interest of this creature far from you. “I...I could help you? Bring others to the water. You can take one of them.” You hate yourself for saying it, but you have to try to bargain. You have to try anything.

His eyes narrow. There’s the sound of scales scraping against the concrete and you turn just in time to feel the weight of his tail slam into you. It forces you into the air, breath crashing from your lungs as you sail before being scooped from the air as easily as a leaf is caught in a breeze. The only thing guiding your descent outside of gravity is him.

His arms feel like stone as they hold you. Your head spins from the pain and confusion of your sudden flight. You barely have time to think before he submerges you both.

You scramble to be released, to fight your way out. Try. You have to try. You have to--

You scream as his fangs bury themselves into your neck. The loss of oxygen, the way it burns despite the cold of the water...your vision darkens. Your limbs slow in their movements until they hang useless. The light of the sun slowly disappears from your vision as he pulls you deeper. You exhale one last time before you succumb to your death. You hope your friends regret it.

🐟

You choke.

You roll, body rocking as you cough before your stomach heaves and you throw up more than what you thought you ever ate. It burns of stomach acid and salt water.

You finally stop, lungs burning with the breath you can finally manage to take. You collapse back on hard stone. The only light is the slight bioluminescent algae that somehow glows on the sides of the rock. You’re weighed by the weight of your clothing, soaked from the ocean you’ve been dragged through. It’s a miracle you’re alive.

There’s the sound of scales on stone.

He doesn’t say anything, his silhouette barely visible in the dark as he slides closer. You try to scramble back but your muscles won’t work properly and you can’t make out where the ledge your own ends. If you hit the water, he’ll have even more of an advantage.

Clawed, webbed fingers wrap around your ankle before dragging you back against the stone. His grip tightens the moment you try to escape. Wet clothes bunch up with the movement, making it more difficult to move but his strength is enough that he barely notices. He doesn’t slow in any way that matters.

Your legs are pried open and the clothing that hides you from him is torn apart with a swipe of his claws.

“Stop. Stop!”

“No.” He shifts, pressing himself closer. His torso leans against yours, bare skin on skin and scales at the weight of him between your legs. He leans in, lips brushing your cheek in a parody of a kiss. It makes you wonder how much he has seen, how much he’s trying to imitate.

You try to push him back, but you can’t. The end of his tail slides under your back, shifting you closer against him. It continues moving, the limb thickening as it slides across until your back is arched and your head hangs over it. The end of his tail curls across your leg.

He’s strangely careful with his claws as he touches you. It starts light, careful movements with soft caresses that contrast the violence of your theft. That doesn’t stop the panic that eats at you or the way your eyes burn and blur with tears. You drowned when he stole you and now you’re left in the darkness to be used. You’d rather be eaten.

His tongue flickers out, tasting the salt on your skin.

“Stop! Please! Don’t--!” Your breath hitches as his claws scratch gently against your nipple. “Pl—”

His tongue flickers out, hands gripping your thighs and prying them further open as he explores the secrets of humanity buried in you.

You’re forced to take it, unable to move with the way he holds you open and in place. His tongue buries itself into your cunt. The sounds he makes, the strange rumbling that feels like it vibrates through you, heightens the sensations. You let out a choked cry, legs trembling against his hold.

“Mmm...you taste of home.”

There’s no chance to speak, to make more than another breathless sound before it feels as if he dives in further, determined to pull every drop from you. The cave fills with the scent of blood, of your release, mixing with the salt of the water.

You can’t think, can barely breathe. Your lungs strain for air, burnt as they are from your drowning, but all you can focus on is what he’s doing to you. What he’s taking from you. You collapse back on his tail, the scales cool against the heat of your skin.

Your head spins and you’re barely aware of the way his tail moves under you, pushing you closer as he raises himself to meet your eyes.

He doesn’t say anything. His gaze bores into yours and while you try to look back, you feel dizzy. The lack of oxygen and exertion of your survival taking it’s toll. Something is wrong. More than just the way you’ve been stolen.

“Wha—”

His tongue flickers out against your cheek. He shifts higher and you feel for the first time something rub up between your legs. His tail coils around you further, encasing you until you’re left restricted and reeling as he pushes it into you. It’s hard and slick and burns as you’re stretched to take it.

“Sto—” your voice is buried into his mouth as he presses it against yours. It’s a strange feeling to have his forked tongue move against yours and it distracts you enough that you almost miss it.

A low groan, a hiss and you break fast as he starts moving in you. The thing he has in you, the thing you don’t want to admit what it is, is ridged and hits spots you were unaware you even had. And then...something else presses against your ass. It’s not the end of his tail which still curls around your leg and hold you open so that he can take you. It keeps you in place, restraining you so that you’re left crying out as he stretches you out further. You’re not meant to take this. You’re human. You’re—

You vision blacks. You feel the moment he cums, feel it fill you and send you reeling as he pulls back from his attempt to leave marks on your skin. There’s a flash of long fangs and sharp pain. You hit his shoulder as something enters your bloodstream, like medicine that moves slowly. It burns.

It burns.

You scream. In fear, in anger, in release. He has yet to let you go, has yet to ease and pull himself from you. His tail tightens around you and you think this is the moment you’re embraced by death. You wish you drowned instead.

🐟

Heavy.

You are heavy with pain and a hunger that claws at you.

There’s a low sound that vibrates through your body, attempting to calm you. You don’t know why you know that, but you do. You feel held, curled up on something warm that surrounds you. Something nudges your neck. You don’t want to move, don’t feel like you can. It hurts.

“Wake, little serpent.”

The order sits under your skin. You yawn and nuzzle closer to the warmth you’re surrounded by. The vibrations increase and the thing that nudges you neck tries to bury itself closer. It almost sounds like purring.

“Wake,” the voice insists again.

It takes more effort than you expect to open your eyes. They feel strange, encrusted with sleep, needing to be peeled open. You blink multiple times before closing them again, head hurting too much. You move to stretch, arms moving slow. They feel heavy, and you try to move your legs and freeze. They feel longer. They real—

You jolt up.

“There you are,” the voice repeats, familiar and haunting. Especially the pleasure you hear in the low tone.

You turn, trying to hold yourself up on your arms as you force your eyes open again. He’s there. His torso pressed up against you as he holds you close. The thing against your neck is his face, nudging you awake. The warmth you’re curled on is his body, long and curled up to cradle you.

His smile stuns you. It reminds you of your dreams, the ones he invaded in demand of your return, your supplication to him. The scars on the edges of his lips don’t seem to fade but highlight the beauty of him. Moments like this, you understand the worship he must have faced.

You open your mouth to speak but your tongue doesn’t work the way it should, it feels strange in your mouth. The most noise you can make is a whine.

He laughs at that, nose nudging yours. “It will take time,” he tells you. “To adjust.”

You frown in confusion.

“Look.” He moves you, shifting until you’re pulled back into this chest to show you. Unable to hold your own weight, you lean back against him. “Look, my viper.”

You clench your eyes shut, shaking your head. You don’t want to see it. You don’t want to acknowledge the truth of what surrounds you.

“Look.”

Your eyes snap open with the demand that sinks into your skin. You can’t stop yourself. You’re curled up on his massive tail, the one that cradles you carefully, but the thing he wants you to admit is the change you feel more than you see.

Your legs are gone.

You try to scream, but you can’t. The foreign tongue doesn’t work. You can’t do more than attempt to thrash but that just drives the point home. Your legs are gone. He has scraped out your humanity. You have been turned, changed into something as monstrous as he is.

His tail moves, pining you against him. The weight of it doesn’t crush you like it should. The cave is pitch black, you know it is, and yet you can see more clearly than ever. You can see the current streams across the entrance of the cave, acting as protection for the home. Not that anything would dare defile the creature’s resting place, as far down in the deep as it is.

You should not be alive.

What has it done to you?

You try to shimmy, to move in the warm water you’re surrounded by, but all you manage to do is somehow wind yourself closer to him. His arms circle your waist. Your arms are still heavy, head swimming. You don’t have the strength to push him away. His faze nuzzles against yours, claws raking across your bare chest. Your own nails dig into his shoulders, drawing blood in the water, but he doesn’t pull back.

It’s strange in the water, submerged and drowning. And yet not. You’re no longer human. You twist, but he moves with you. You entwine together. You cannot speak with your mouth but he doesn’t ask you too. He kisses you, forked tongue against your own. Water fills your mouth and yet you breathe.

Too caught up, too focused on your metamorphosis, you don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Twisting in his grasp, winding yourself around him, leads to being filled by his cocks. The sensation is different than before when you were human, stretched far beyond what you should be capable of taking. Every writhe against him sparks electricity under your skin, your scales, and draws you tighter against him as you move. They both press in, filling you with heat and warmth and ridged enough that despite how you both move and turn, he doesn’t slip out. Fangs bury themselves in your neck, an extension of how he’s already claimed and pinned you, but the venom doesn’t burn. Unfamiliar instinct leads you to bite back.

You feel the moment he fills you, the flooding of his release that you can scent in the water. You fall back, stomach stretching as you arch to lie back against one of the coils of his tail. The water is comforting against your bare skin. It doesn’t last. He follows your movement, chest pressing against your own.

“Such a good mate, my viper is,” he nuzzles against your cheek. He’s not speaking your language. You don’t know how you understand him, but you do. You try to speak, a low hiss that sends your tongue flickering out at him. Your body moves in ways you don’t understand, without your permission.

He grins, fangs flashing. “I knew you would be.”

🐟

tag list: @raith-way @zeleniafic @veetlegeuse @chickensarentcheap @residentdormouse

@themaradwrites @kingsmakers @thatmagickjuju @awksrambles @hayatoseyepatch

tr tag: @blackfire2013 @bleach-your-panties @reiners-milkbiddies @tenjikusstuff4 @scythegal

@aikuwuus

including fanart by me:

[thestarryfalls]

This is going to be the face I present as now! Also, (bottom left corner) cool thing to sign art with!

This is a fantasy version of me, design is by @yourcurrentany (thank you so much though, it's so cool)

I'm also just really proud of this, it turned out really well

[justheretobreakthings]

All right, Genshin Impact people, I get it. I understand why there's a fandom. I've gotten more into the story, I've gotten to know the characters, and I've gotten rather addicted. The world's very fun to explore, and from what I can tell so far, every single character in this universe is mega neurodivergent.

But now I make a plea for help. A few weeks back, I started the Trails of Tianqiu quest, naive the horror I was about to enter and unaware that this quest locked you out of co-op until its completion. Thus, my game has been soft-locked ever since, especially since I can no longer ascend characters since I can't beat bosses solo.

The last time I was stuck on a quest I drove a few hours round-trip so my brother could beat it for me. Unfortunately that's not an option anymore as he is in rehab now, so I've gone to the internet. And so far the GI players of Discord, Reddit, and the official player forums have made it very clear that they do not like giving advice to anyone who has not very carefully studied the characters' stats to meticulously optimize their build from the very beginning.

So, I'm hoping Tumblr people will be nicer. I still have absolutely no clue how I'm ever going to finish the climbing challenge (hell, I still haven't even managed to beat that time trial near the Stormbearer Mountains where you just have to climb the spiral staircase outside of that little building - that's how bad I am at orientating myself in video games - so I may just have to wait until my brother's out of rehab for that one), but I can at least see if I can get some advice for the third floor battle with the cryo mage and slimes.

These are the characters that I currently have:

Traveler, level 60

Kaeya, level 58

Yanfei, level 57

Amber, level 56

Noelle, level 50

Ningguang, level 50

Chongyun, level 50

Lisa, level 50

Barbara, level 50

Xiao, level 40

Lynette, level 40

Diona, level 40

Yaoyao, level 40

Gaming, level 40

Xiangling, level 34

Sayu, level 20

Dori, level 20

Kuki Shinobu, level 20

Kujou Sara, level 20

I'm world level 3, currently AR 35 (don't want to ascend until I get this quest out of the way since increasing the world level will only make it that much harder), and play on mobile (my laptop is a piece of junk when it comes to gaming).

Anyone have any advice on some sort of strategy I can use?

[fae-sodapop]

Can I just have the most ridiculous pet peeve and share it with the rest of tumblr? Cuz I'm just going to do that.

I really hate when adult family members especially direct caregivers are like "what do you mean you've never seen [piece of older media]? I loved it growing up." And I'm just like "you have never showed me this piece of thing in my entire life, what do you want from me."

[saltwaterandstars]

A bit of emotional personal processing.

We have two enormous floor to ceiling cupboards in our dining room and they've been crammed full of paperwork and assorted personal stuff for many years. When my mum died (a long time ago) I dumped a lot of stuff from her house in these cupboards because I just couldn't deal with it all at the time while also trying to function at work and in my life generally. Anyway, over the last few months I've finally begun to sort through the contents and there's no getting around the fact that it's really grim, upsetting work. Occasionally I find something surprising or lovely, like a bag of jewellery that belonged to my nan:

But mostly it is not fun. I don't enjoy spending hours at a time transported back to my distant past, especially when I don't know what I'm going to unearth next. On Friday I came across a box of my old school work, I think from the start of my A levels - when I was sixteen. The things I knew then! I feel so tenderly and fiercely protective towards my young self who in many ways was having a very hard time but who was still grappling with maths and chemistry and physics. Who was that girl?! I feel tearful just typing this, in part because I know how difficult life was for her at that age. But also because I see a pattern already in place - the outward appearance of competence/functioning/success while inside being hollowed out and on fire and taking a bleak, shame-driven pride in no one having a clue about any of it. It's a pattern that's been repeated many times through my life, and I'd say a big part of my life's work thus far has been to close the gap between who and how I am on the inside, and what I show/how I appear on the outside. I've made a fair amount of progress over the years, and I definitely hold myself and my struggles with much more kindness than I ever did, but I don't think any of us gets to have a complete personality change so I think there'll always be echoes of this stuff around. So yeah, fun times going through the cupboards.

I was thinking about what to do with the thirty or so school books I found. I definitely don't want to keep them but I also don't want to just unceremoniously dump them in the rubbish bin. So I've decided to ceremoniously bin them. My plan is to put them all in a big paper sack I've got, decorate the sack in a way my sixteen year old self would have liked, acknowledge the work and struggles and triumphs the books represent, wrap them up carefully, and then gently place them in the recycling bin. It feels really important to let them go but not to throw them away in a disrespectful way, so I think this is a good way forward.

[cockroachi83]

The Angel's Wings Have Been Cut Off

New TP art woohoo!! Who cheered

[griffinkid]

I need another nature walk soon 🦢

[asterthought]

One thing to know about me is that I really REALLY like anime. I was here in tumblr in the trenches while the free! rinharu vs makoharu shipwars were happening in 2013 and I'm still a 100% lawlight shipper as you can tell by my art.

What you CAN'T see though are my KNY, BNHA, FREE!, OHSHC (and others) fanart, my merch + manga collection, fics and the characters and ships that make me giggle like the happiest person alive.

Now I just started to watch JJK.

And I'm afraid I'm gonna start going into full freak mode because DAMN!

[dreamerinsilico]

Christianity, and inclusivity

Having some kind of feelings about realizing I've wound up in Filial Piety Mode re: doing an organized religious activity.

I was raised United Methodist Christian. Despite being very involved in my family's church growing up, I rejected this entirely around age 19. Full-on obnoxious internet atheist period ensued for several years, tempered by me growing a sense of nuance after a bit.

Now I'm well into my 30s, and last year my mom very hesitantly asked if my brother and I would be willing to maybe attend their (newish) church's Christmas Eve service with them, so their friends they'd been telling about for months/years could meet us.

And we did, and it was great, honestly. I was happy to volunteer to go again this year. It's still not where I place whatever faith I have, honestly, but it meant a lot to me a few years ago when the United Methodist Church became, uh, less united, over queer people, and my parents left the specific church they'd been members of for 30 years because of it. The local conference said, "lol, we'd like to keep being bigots" and they said, "alright, we're out."

Their current PCUSA church is very welcoming, and I'm still not going to be a Christian again, but I do know the rituals and I don't mind making my mom happy by attending. (Also, their friends are awesome.)

[wanderingmind867]

With all of Trump's threats towards foreign countries (like Canada, for example), there is one thing I do sort of hope the world learns: I hope we all learn that the world doesn't revolve around, nor does it need, the United States. Canada has plenty of good bands and tv shows that never make it big stateside, even though the shows are truly amazing. I'm sure the same can be said of Mexico, or of many countries in Europe. So much importance is levelled onto the US (largely by US politicians themselves), but they don't realize: one country can't control a world full of of other countries. Not if enough other countries oppose them.

[knifemartin]

barnes, you say???? what a good choice, what a good choice

and just before we get started, um.

[regalautumn]

was making tea and decided it would be fun to snap a photo or two (I did not want to turn on the kitchen light so my lamp had to do)

late night tea making or something, I don't fucking know (it is only just past 8 pm for me, it is in fact, not late at night)