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zoethespiritwolf · 3 years

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Chapter 1 - Within the Shadows

Crossroads - Jack Frost x autumn spirit! reader

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The first thing I remember is waking up in a clearing in the woods, surrounded by shadows. Above me, a brilliant full moon shined above the tall pine trees.

Back then those same trees seemed so tall and unreachable, and the moon - comforting even with its soothingly cool gaze upon my laying form.

I still remember how I first gazed wide-eyed at the moon. Then tentatively slid my arms near my sides and folded them, allowing my trembling limbs to drag my heavy body so that I was sitting so that I could look a bit closer to it.

But never once did my gaze stray from the brilliant full moon.

Only when I curled my shaking hand around the cool and wet blades of grass and felt like life was draining from them did my wide eyes snap downwards to the place where my palm once was.

Unlike the rest of the greenery around me, it looked shriveled, yellowed, and dead. How scared I was back then of my powers that I've come to accept over time.

And then, after I had bolted up on my trembling legs like a fawn first learning to walk, did my eyes notice the shadows. They curled around like wines between the trees, obscuring my vision and not revealing the dangers that lay within them. The more I looked, the more they seemed to curl around the trees, the bushes, between every blade of grass.

But then I heard a voice.

He told me, to not be afraid of them. That they wouldn't harm me.

And I believed him. I believed the Man in the Moon when he told me so.

But he didn't warn me about the man who could control them. The spirit who lived within the shadows. The same one that would drag me into them by making sweet promises about gaining power and recognition.

Nor did the Man in the Moon ever speak to me again after that night.

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The day I met Pitch Black was a memorable one. A few months after coming into existence and being left to my own devices I went to a small Medieval town down the hills. That day I didn't know that anything spectacular would happen.

I had just come to do my job as the new autumn spirit that MiM assigned me to be - to use my powers of chlorosis and make a successful passage from summer to winter for the nature around me. Dusk was approaching rapidly and I wanted to finish before the air got colder for the night.

Small puffs of condensed air glided up from my mouth as I placed my lightly gloved hand on the wines hanging from the thatched roof. Under my fingertips, I left the life of the plants fading and like tiny webs of lightning entering my bloodstream as the leaves turned reddish and fell to the ground.

And then I felt a presence near me. Not quite human but familiar in a way that I couldn't describe. So I looked to the side where I felt it and was black mist at the corner of the house a few paces down from me.

My feet slowly made their way towards it, carrying my body along with it with careful and calculated steps. I slid one of my palms into the opening in my wool jacket, pulling out a throwing knife that was about the size of my palm. My fingers twitched around the carved wooden handle of the weapon. But the closer I got, the tighter I gripped onto the handle, effectively stopping my hands from shaking.

And then I saw him. Just as I was about to round the corner, I saw the man's tall, slim and ghastly form. My eyebrows rose as I ducked behind the wall where he couldn't see me.

For a while, I thought the man hadn't noticed me. Until he called out:

"I know you're there, my dear."

His voice was low, dark yet inviting. Like the shadows that seemed to follow him.

"You don't have to be afraid. I have nothing to gain from hurting you," he told me.

The rough texture of the wall dug through my clothes into my back and hand as I pressed into it more, clutching the blade in the other. I tilted my head towards where the wall changed directions.

And so I inched closer and peered over the side to see the man who was patiently and calmly smiling. When he didn't do anything, I stepped out onto the street, facing him and twisting my wrist so that my arm would hide the knife gripped by my white-knuckled hands.

"Who are you?" I asked it.

The dark man sharply breathed through his nose, something akin to a very short chuckle, and stepped towards me. I stepped a step back, my hand starting to hurt from gripping my weapon so hard.

"I go by many names," he replied, "Like...the Shadow man, Boogeyman, a Nightmare..."

"But you can call me," the spirit calmly stated as he stepped closer to my frozen body and reached out his hand, twisting his wrist upwards in a greeting gesture, "Pitch. Pitch Black."

I stared at his long, outstretched hand. If I accepted the greeting, I would have to put away the throwing knife, rendering me helpless if I decided to attack him.

"But what other choice do I have?" I thought, "He could still overpower me with it."

And so, I drew my hand back and slid the knife into my pocket, before placing my gloved palm in his. His long and slender fingers wrapped around it like snakes coiling around their prey, and he tugged himself closer to me while pulling my wrist upwards and kissing my clothed knuckles.

My eyebrows rose and eyes widened at the gesture. No one had done this before. But, to be honest, at that time, I hadn't met many beings who could interact with me like living beings could.

"Why are you here?" Pitch asked, his wolf-like golden eyes never leaving mine.

"I can here to fulfill my duties," I replied. At that moment, I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole at my poor choice of wording.

My cheeks blazed with heat from the sheer embarrassment of making a fool of myself to the first person I met. Yet the dark spirit didn't seem to mind. He continued to smile kindly and gently held my hand.

"Well then, it seems that both of us have been destined to meet due to our jobs, Y/n," the spirit chuckled as he stepped away while lightly pulling on my arm, making me resistlessly follow the man towards a window of the house we were standing next to.

"How do you know my name?" I inquired as I came to stop next to him.

"I know many things, my dear," Pitch replied, "That is a part of my job."

"What is your job exactly?" I questioned, fear starting to pit in my stomach.

"To generate fear into people, to create nightmares," he calmly replied as he gestured with his free hand inside the barely candle-lit room.

There I noticed a child lying in bed, a wool blanket bunched up near their face as they rested. Since the child laid so close to the window, it didn't take much effort for Pitch to raise his hand above the child's head and summon black sand from his fingertips.

I saw how the sand swirled and eventually manifested into a miniature, almost skeletal-like black horse. It neighed as it trotted above the child's forehead, their face twisting into a grimace.

And that's when I felt it. That dark cloud starting to grow within my chest. I gasped and wrenched my hand out of the man's to hold to my chest.

But it wasn't pain like I first thought it was. Whatever Pitch did gave me... strength.

"Fascinating," Pitch practically beamed at the revelation, "Another spirit who feeds on fear."

"Fear?" I mumbled as I looked at him, then back at my curled fist, "That was fear?"

"Yes fear," he sighed wistfully, before coming closer to me.

"How long have you been here? On this earth?" the man asked me.

"A few months," I stammered out my response.

Pitch then stood there silently, his brows furrowing slightly and head lowered. But after some time he raised it proudly and spoke.

"In that case, I have a proposition for you," he addressed me clearly, his golden irises becoming sharp.

"I know what it's like, to feel small, abandoned, and powerless. Because I too have recently come to this world and been abandoned by the Man in the Moon. Just like you," he continued, briefly gesturing to the full moon above us in the slightly clouded sky, "But I want to prove to him, that we are more than just powerless little spirits that are meant to stay forgotten and lonely."

"So I ask of you," he grasped both of my gloved hands in his as he faced me, his deep golden eyes pulling me in, "Join me. Join me and we can both become more powerful than we ever imagined. With both of us feeding on fear, it means that you have the potential to manifest powers like my own. Perhaps, even stronger than that."

"What do you say, Y/n?" Pitch whispered to me.

I stood there silently.

He offered to share his power with me, to learn with him, to help me uncover skills I possibly haven't discovered. After so long of thinking, that I was the only one like this - an abandoned spirit left to fend for themselves in an unknown world.

And then, as ironic as it was, a shadow man had offered to become the guiding light that our creator was not.

And so, I gripped his hands back and whispered that I accepted.

Pitch once again lightly tugged on my arms like before and I resistlessly followed him within the shadows of the night, sealing my destiny from then on.

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Next chapter ->

A/n:

Alright! Chapter 1 of the "Crossroads" series is finished! I hope you all liked it so far. Be sure to let me know what you think about this chapter and the future ones and give any suggestions as to how I can improve my writing.

Until next time, I hope you all have a wonderful day!

#jack frost #jack frost x reader #rotg #sandy rotg #pitch black rotg #rotg jack frost #rise of the guardians #x reader #fanfics #fanfiction #fanfic

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roselightfairy · 3 years

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For @carlandrea, who prompted Thranduil + Gimli. I don’t know exactly what I was intending with this, and I have no idea if it makes narrative or emotional sense, but... it’s all for the Atmosphere, baby. Just go with it.

...

Legolas was not often called away for duties when they visited Eryn Lasgalen – not since he had removed to Ithilien and taken the better part of his unit of archers with him. Though he remained yet a prince of Eryn Lasgalen in name, he was lord of Ithilien in deed and in duty, and was treated as such when he returned home.

By his father, at least. His sister had no such reservations, either in the enthusiasm of her greeting or her requests for him upon arrival. She had asked him to accompany her on a brief scouting mission, and – whether out of guilt for having robbed Lasgalen of its most skilled archers, or desire for her company, Gimli knew not – he had agreed. The journey was meant to take them only perhaps a day and a night, and in the meantime Gimli wandered the halls alone.

He had accustomed himself quickly to the caverns where the elves lived: he could find his way under stone well enough, no matter who else might inhabit it. Still, they felt strange to him – instead of the thrumming of warmth that dwarven homes always awoke in his chest – the long-awaited welcome of Erebor; the glorious thrill of Aglarond – these halls rang with an empty loneliness, an ache in his chest as of a missing piece, some long-held sadness. The closest he could come to comparing it was the dimmed ancient glory of Khazad-dûm, but even that was not quite right – there was a diminishing in these halls, an echo of emptiness not of a grandeur now lost, but of a hope never fulfilled. It echoed in his chest, in the sound of his footsteps, flickered in the shadows of ivy on the walls, illuminated by torchlight; it swept across his face in the breeze from the wide windows and skylights.

The halls of Eryn Lasgalen were quiet at night. Elves slept little, so Gimli would have expected bustling, but any reveling that occurred took place out under the stars, and he supposed even elves needed to rest at times. His footsteps were loud on the stone floors, the solid step of a dwarf accustomed to walking where he would, though it felt strangely illicit here, where so few dwarves had been welcome. Gimli was given the freedom to roam where he would in his husband’s home, where his father had been locked away merely for setting foot in the forest, and he felt almost guilty for it, as though he dishonored his father’s trials with every step.

His wandering footsteps took him around a corner, up a set of spiraling steps, and he found himself in a shaded alcove hung with ivy and berries he dared not touch, against a window cut into the stone that looked out over the forest. Gimli folded his arms on the sill and gazed out, noting the rustle of leaves in the darkness, of lights in the distance where elves must be dancing and drinking. He wondered where Legolas was, out there in the forest, beneath the shaded boughs – or among them.

“May I join you?”

The voice came from behind him, practically in his ear; Gimli whirled, nearly choking on his spiking heartbeat. Legolas’s father stood behind him, not as close as he had sounded but still far nearer than he ought to be, for how silently he had approached. He had forgone the crown of leaves tonight; his golden hair streamed loose down his back, and he wore a simple green tunic and a faintly amused smile.

“Of course you may,” said Gimli, his voice rasping as he recovered his breath. “I would not turn you away anywhere in your own halls.”

Thranduil tilted his head as if in acknowledgement of that point and came to join Gimli in gazing out the windows. He left a respectable few inches of space between them, but still Gimli rarely stood so near to Legolas’s father; his nerves hummed in acute awareness of their proximity.

It was silent for a time, and then Thranduil spoke again. “I am sorry to startle you.”

There was just enough upward lilt in his voice, something lighter beneath the dry deadpan, that Gimli risked a flicker of his eyes to the side, a slight incline of his head. “Forgive me, your majesty,” he said, “but I do not think you are.”

Thranduil laughed openly at that, and Gimli restrained a startle at the sound. “Perhaps not,” he allowed. “Sometimes, the temptation to ensure that one has not lost one’s touch is simply . . . irresistible.”

“Perhaps particularly when one is approaching one’s son-in-law?” Gimli suggested, equally dry, and was rewarded with another laugh.

Thranduil’s laughter was more restrained than Legolas’s or even Laerwen’s, as though he were waiting for another punchline, but still the rare mirth felt like a gift – like a sign of favor. “Perhaps,” he said, his smile fading as he turned again out the window. His long fingers came to rest on the sill as though it were an organ and he meant to launch into a piece of music. Like spider legs, Gimli would have once thought them – such was the phrase often used to describe Thranduil in Erebor – in exaggerated tales told after a few drinks only, for Dáin would not condone it. But still it was whispered: the lord of the spiders at the center of a web of greed and deceit.

It was an epithet Gimli would never use again – not after seeing the hatred in Legolas’s eyes when he spoke of the spiders and what all they had taken from his people and his family.

Silence fell between them, but it was not a silence Gimli could read like he could Legolas’s – he knew not whether to speak and break it, or to let it stretch. In absence of intuition, stretch it did, long and taut until something felt about to snap, and finally he could bear it no longer.

“Your halls are beautiful,” he offered, cringing even as the words left his lips. But he had begun, and so he must continue. “The design is like nothing I have seen before.”

“That means much, coming from a dwarf of Erebor,” said Thranduil. His lips pursed, then relaxed. “But even we of the woods make do, when we must.” He gazed out the window again, and Gimli too turned to look out over the woods, the patches of trees light with revelers. He wondered what Thranduil could hear.

Thranduil’s face remained as unreadable as ever, but something in his stance, in the tilt of his head, reminded Gimli abruptly of how Legolas stood when he looked at Ithilien, at the homes elves had built in trees, reveling in their newfound safety. “I know something of making do,” he said slowly. “But I do not think the creation of something beautiful is wholly a loss, even if it comes from sorrow.” He clamped his mouth shut before he could speak further, unsure whose painful memories he might rouse with these words – Thranduil’s, or his own.

Thranduil turned to look sharply at Gimli, his eyes keen as though measuring him. It was not the penetrating stare of the Lady Galadriel, but still Gimli felt somehow tested in his gaze, those cool grey eyes like steel raking over his body. When Thranduil looked away at last, he could not say if he had been found wanting.

“You are more right than even you know, maybe,” Thranduil said at last. “But I will hope for your sake and for Legolas’s that you need never resign yourself to it.” He sighed, and for just a moment his hands tightened their grip on the windowsill, his knuckles flashing white beneath his skin – and then, as though Gimli had imagined it, they were loose again, resting against the stone like on organ keys.

As Gimli floundered for a response, Thranduil straightened beside him, a wave passing through his spine to draw him up even taller than before. “Are you faring well in these halls?” he said. “No one has given you trouble?”

Gimli blinked, shaken by the abrupt change in mood. “Yes,” he said, “yes, everyone is perfectly cordial.” Not perfectly – not with the murmurs in dark corners in the Sindarin that Gimli could understand well enough; not when he sometimes felt a prickle on the back of his neck and heard laughter behind him, though he could not see who followed him. He felt safe enough here, particularly when Legolas was by his side, and that was enough.

“Good.” Thranduil nodded. “Do tell me if at any time our hospitality is less than might be hoped. I would not have my son-in-law treated poorly within my realm.”

“I” – How should he promise to do something he had no intention of doing? “You are kind,” was what he managed at last, a non-answer.

Thranduil’s eyes narrowed shrewdly, and Gimli knew he caught it, but what could he say to such an answer? “I am hardly kind,” was his response. “As you have no doubt been reminded. But I do not make commitments lightly.”

“Nor does your son,” Gimli said, before he could think better of it – thinking of the earnestness of every one of Legolas’s promises, how sincerely he held his word. His heart ached at even this brief separation, at this strange conversation with Legolas’s father while his husband was away, and yet he wondered if Legolas’s sincerity was some gift from his father, undiluted by the years of trial and suspicion that shielded Thranduil’s eyes.

“No,” Thranduil said – soft, a rush of air, almost a sigh. “No, he does not.”

The melancholy that rose between them was entirely different now: not an acknowledgement of past suffering but an unspoken shared knowledge of future regrets that neither of them could help – a shared love for one who had set himself firmly on the path to grief, heedless of what either could wish for him. Gimli had known moments like this before – more often with Thranduil’s daughter than with the king himself – of that sudden kinship, that shared silent sorrow. For a moment, it was all he could feel.

And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the moment was ended and Thranduil had let his hands fall from the sill, stepped back from Gimli’s side. “I will leave you to your thoughts, then,” he said. “Have a pleasant evening, Gimli.”

“And you,” Gimli managed after him, half-stunned in his wake, but Thranduil gave no indication he had heard him but a half-raised hand, as much a dismissal as a farewell, and then he was striding off down the hallway and disappearing into the dark.

He departed as soundlessly as he had arrived.

#my fic #gimli #thranduil #gimli & thranduil #legolas x gimli #it's implied

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plush-rabbit · 4 years

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Don’t Tell Shigaraki

TW: Menstrual Cycle, Blood, Cramps

A/N: Cramps suck and this is a lot of shameful cuddling and whatnot because I want a hug when I’m dying.

The dreaded time of the month is here and you’re currently dying. The cramps are painful and almost make you feel sick, but the thought of having to get up and find a toilet is tiresome so you beg your body to just relax for a second. The heating pad that you bought is cranked to the max and it still isn’t doing anything to help numb the pain. You really have no idea what else to do and the small stash of chocolate you have hidden is tempting but again, the thought of movement is much too painful. So you lay in bed and press the heating pad into your stomach hoping that something good will come out of it while you grind your teeth.

You could call Tomura but he isn’t exactly the most comforting person around and you doubt he knows how to even make you feel a bit better. You don’t even know how to feel better. You tried going to sleep but the pain is too unbearable to even focus on anything else. You could try to do yoga but then that would involve moving and right you’ve found a sweet spot where the pain is at least an eight out of ten.

No. You’re fine. You’ve had cramps before and you’ve survived them, all you have to do is go find pain killers and hope you don’t faint. You let out a breath, “Okay, on the count of three I get up,” you whisper to yourself, fisting the blanket in your hands. “One,” you flex your feet, “two,” you take a deep breath, “and three.” You’re still lying in bed. “Okay, so that was a failed attempt. One more time.” You count down and on three you rise from the bed and clutch your lower belly. “Okay, good job,” you say in a pained whisper.

The trek to the kitchen is a long and painful road where you have to lean against the wall and stop for a few seconds so you can just breathe. You don’t pass anyone on the way there, you hand cradling your lower belly makes you feel all too vulnerable. But that’s the thing, you are vulnerable right now. You’re in too much pain and you want to be sick and if you stand for any longer, you’re sure to see black spots in the corner of your vision. You don’t know why it’s so painful right now. Why everything feels too sore, like you’ve just ran a marathon and now your joints and muscles are begging for rest even if that’s just all you’ve been doing the past hours.

You slump into a kitchen chair, letting out a whine at the harsh surface of the chair. The pills are here somewhere, in a cabinet perhaps, maybe it was the bathroom. You groan and bury your face into your arms. You can’t get up again. Everything hurts too much and you can’t force yourself to get up again. You don’t know how long you’re slumped over for. Could be a minute, could be ten, and you didn’t bring your phone to help distract you. This was supposed to be a simple mission and here you are close to tears because your cramps haven’t dulled even a fraction.

“You look pathetic,” a voice drones out.

You look up, your eyes the only thing in view as you’re met with the icy gaze of Dabi who holds an unlit cigarette in his mouth. You roll your eyes and fit back another wave of nausea. “Don’t smoke in here. Go outside or something.”

He holds you gaze and hooks his foot around the leg of a chair, pulling it out and resting on the edge of it, the cigarette still hanging limply from his lips. “What’s wrong?”

You raise a brow. “You care?”

He shrugs, his expression bored but eyes never leaving yours. “If your little boyfriend finds out your sad, he’ll blow a fuse. And I’m not really in the mood to hear him scream,” he sighs, “so what’s up?”

You glower at him in suspicion and ultimately shrug and lean on the back of the chair, your hand coming back to cradle your lower belly. “Cramps.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Sucks to be you.” When you shoot him a look he chuckles and raises his hands in defense. Long, thin fingers wrap around the cigarette and he places it on the table. “You take any pain killers?”

You shake your head in response. Your tongue coming out to wet your lips, you speak, “Sat down before I could look.” Dabi throws his had forward and rises slowly, pulling on the handle of the cabinet harshly and shuffling around the items inside. “Don’t make a mess,” you tell him halfheartedly.

“Shut up,” he mutters. “Let me find the damn pills and then you can whine.”

Dabi isn’t all that bad. He’s rough around the edges but he really does care even if he acts like he doesn’t. He’ll help out in a pinch and god he’s insufferable but he’s still a friend. “Hey Dabi,” you drum your fingers on the table and he hums in response. “You’re hot... Right?”

He straightens his neck and turns to you, a hint of mischief in his wide eyes a roguish smirk takes over. “Gotta be more specific than that doll.”

“Like body temperature.” You shift your gaze from him and turn to the table.

“Yeah, why?” The cabinet closes.

“Okay, so this is super embarrassing and if you utter a word about this to anyone, I’ll like totally end you.” You swallow your pride and look at him with a raised chin. “Do you mind if I borrow your hand? Please? When I feel better, I’ll make you you’re favorite dish. I promise!”

“Pain’s that bad?” You nod and he sighs. “Ugh. Fine. But we’re going to my room. And you’re making it tomorrow. Got it?” He holds out his hand and you grasp it, giving him a firm handshake. You rise from the chair, fingers knotting into your shirt.

“You know if he finds you in his room, he’s going to blow a fuse right,” Himiko giggles, stepping into the kitchen with a sway.

You startle. “How long have you been here?” You crane your neck to see if anyone else is behind her but you’re pulled back by Dabi.

“That’s why you’re not telling,” Dabi says, shoulders rising as an eye twitches. “Listen, you don’t tell him and I don’t know,” he waves his hand in the air, “little Cramps over here will get you something.”

“Please don’t make “Cramps” my nickname,” you mumble.

“Can I come? I can massage your hands! There’s a pressure point to take away the pain somewhere there! Come on please?” Himiko bounces in her place, with hands pressed together in a pleading motion. “Please!”

Dabi looks at you.

“You know she’ll tell him if she doesn’t come along. And it’ll be your ass on the line, not mine,” you point out.

He throws his head back. “Ugh, fine. But only you two. And don’t touch my things,” he warns, pointing a finger at the both of you.

“Whose room are we going to?” Jin asks, peeking his head into the kitchen.

“No! No one else,” Dabi snarls, hands extended in front of him.

“We’ll tell Shigaraki,” Jin says in a deeper voice.

You’re in Dabi’s bed that smells heavily of cologne with a light scent of burnt wood. The fan above blows cool air and Jin is busying himself by having his legs thrown on top of yours as he reads a book, clicking his tongue in certain parts before flipping over the page. Himiko is busy massaging the webbed part of your hand while she compliments your hands, telling you how pretty you’d look with red nail polish. And Dabi is grumbling while he lays in an awkward position with a hand over the small of your belly.

“Listen, what happens here, stays here,” Dabi says, with a hand holding up his phone while he watches a show about office workers.

You peer over and place your hand above his. “You know, I didn’t take you for a fan of Agg—”

“Shut it or I kick you out.”

“Oh! After this I think we should watch a movie!” Himiko says cheerfully, giving you a toothy grin.

“I wouldn’t mind. There’s been a couple things I’ve been meaning to watch. Jin, Dabi, you guys in?”

“I’d love to!” Jin salutes. “We could order in and eat all sorts of things!” A hand is placed on your knee and fingers absentmindedly begin to tap on you.

“Dabi?” You ask.

“I hate all of you,” he murmurs, clicking out of the application and moving onto another one. “Look, just don’t mention any of this shit to the others.”

The three of you look at each other and give a matching grin. You pinch your fingers together and put them to corner of your lip, and with a quick movement, you swipe your fingers across your lips and mimic tossing something over your shoulder. The other two do the same and Dabi merely rolls his eyes accompanied by a scoff.

“We can watch something on the weekend or whatever,” Dabi rumbles, bringing a pillow to bury his chin into.

“You know,” you start off, throwing an arm over your eyes, “this is actually helping a lot. The pain isn’t as bad as it was before… Thanks. A lot.” You roll your lips and the hand that is held by Himiko jerks its fingers. You feel your hand be given a reassuring squeeze in return.

There’s a mixture of words all intertwined and muddles together as they each begin to respond to you. The door is opens slowly with a creak and all of you freeze, Dabi immediately pulling his hand back and shoving it under the pillow. You raise your arm and look at the door.

“Hey, have you seen—”

All of you freeze and crimson eyes scan over the room and land on you where your hand is placed over your belly.

“Tomura, hey,” you smile at him and rise onto your elbows.

His eyes are wide for a second before they narrow. “Whatever.” The door is slammed shut and you wince. A few seconds later, you hear another door slam shut.

“He’s not happy,” you groan.

“No shit,” Jin says quietly, hand squeezing your knee.

You sigh and pull your hand away from Himiko and bend your legs, causing Jin to stand up from the bed. “I’m gonna go check on him.”

“You’re all good now?” Dabi asks, turning his head to lay flat on the pillow.

The bed creaks from under your weight as you get off. You raise your arms above your head and flex your fingers towards the ceiling of the room. You turn to look at Dabi who stares at your through half lidded eyes. “Yeah, I’m all good. Thanks again Dabi.” You ruffle his hair and smile when he pushes your hand off of him. “Thanks again Himiko and Jin. If you guys need something later, just call.” You give them finger guns and walk out of the room closing it with a soft click.

The walk back to the room is slow and heavy, you can already feeling the brooding energy that emits from the shared room. You give a gentle knock on the door, announcing that you’re coming in and you thank the heavens that the door isn’t looked.

Tomura is on the bed, with his back facing you and blankets shoved off onto the floor of the room. You click your tongue. “Tomura, I told you not to let the blankets spill onto the floor,” you bend them and toss them back on the bed, “They’ll get dirty.” The bed squeaks as you sit down and he jerks when you touch his back. “Tomura, look at me please,” you coo, letting your hand run over his back.

“Why don’t you just go back to them,” he says in a nasally voice, the volume from his phone is raised to its peak.

“Because I want to be here with you.” You prop pillows against the bed frame and lean against them, your hand moving to grasp his shoulder. “There’s no need to get jealous.”

“Not jealous,” he growls.

“Then can I have a kiss,” you offer, shifting closer to him.

“Screw you.”

“Do you want to know why I was with them?” You pause for an answer and sigh when you don’t receive one. “Well I’m going to tell you anyway. I was with them because well… I’m on my period and the cramps were super bad. And coming to you just felt embarrassing—”

“And going to them wasn’t?” He pouts, and turns to face you, still on his side.

You shrug and a noise of confusion. “It’s different. I was in a lot of pain and I don’t know. Look I’m super sorry.” You bring your knees closer to your chest before you decide to let them fall once again. “Would you have known what to do?”

He’s silent and his face scrunches. “I could have figured it out,” he mutters.

You let out a breath. “I know you could have.” You push his hair out of his face. “I’m still in a bit of pain and I think cuddles might help.” You speak gently, twirling a strand of his hair around your finger. “Do you want to do the honors?” You ask with arms opened wide.

“Only because you owe me,” he says with a hoarse voice, arms immediately wrapping around you as he nuzzles his nose into your side, hands immediately going underneath your shirt and digging his fingers into your soft skin, the metal brace cold against your skin making you flinch to which he apologizes with a kiss.

“Seems like I owe everyone these days,” you whisper, running your fingers through his hair and bringing one of his hands to cup your lower belly, mewling at the heat he gives off.

His arms are tight around you, his hand that cusps your belly, moves his fingers softly, petting the soft part of you, while his other hands moves and shifts until he’s deemed comfortable. He coos into your side, words muffled and quiet, never reaching your ears but hum in response, feeling your eyes begin to droop. You lower yourself on the bed, ignoring his whine of protest as he looks at you through half closed eyes. When you open your arm back up, he places himself back to his spot, hand returning to your plush stomach, and drags his lips lazily against you in a kiss.

#shigaraki tomura #bnha shigaraki tomura #shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki imagines #shigaraki imagine #bnha imagines #anyone see that new season of aggrestuko #damn heavy #but the cheetah? was hot #i didn't like the ending #:(#they got some good furry designs in that show #didnt like haida until he was signing #damn #my furry jumped out these past two season #okay bye

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dinogoofy · 3 years

Note

Maybe continuation of the Kung Lao fic? 🐇Or I'd love to see a fic where Kung Lao gets hurt and reader has to take care of him 💓 (or the other way around, I don't really care, haha)

Kung Lao x F! Reader- part 2.

We're allies, not Friends.-2

I hope you like this!

⚠️TW for near death. ⚠️

~~~~

"You're an idiot. You know that right?!" Arrows whizzed passed your head as you threw Kung Lao's arm over your shoulder, counting on your luck not to run out as each one missed. Raiden had sent you and Lao on a mission to outworld to check up on a few groups that were still resisting Kitana Kahn's rule, and obviously, it had taken a turn for the worse.

Lao grunted in response as you dragged him to cover, hiding behind a rock while desperately ripping off a strip of your jacket to press to the gaping wound in his side. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping you from panicking in the face of all of this. Of course you'd be the one to get ambushed.

Kung Lao wasn't supposed to be here in the first place. The two of you were supposed to split up, but you ended up being grateful that he stayed with you. You felt guilty for getting him hurt, but knew that if you were by yourself this fight would've ended much quicker.

Kung Lao grunted in pain as you continued to put pressure on his wound, uncharacteristically quiet. Peaking over the rock just a bit, you were thankful that the archers that remained were keeping their distance. A grumble of your name brought your attention back to your friend.

His eyes were unfocused, breathing labored. He almost looked... sick.

"Oh no." You removed the cloth, peeking over your cover once more to make sure no one was sneaking up on the two of you, and unsheathed your dagger to rip a larger hole in his shirt.

Black veins stretched from the wound, slowly spider-webbing their way across his side. Poison. This day was starting to get worse and worse. The creeping horror started to show through your facade. You knew Kung Lao could tell that you were panicking at this point, and yet you still pressed the cloth back to the wound. You weren't sure if you should've done that or not, but the only thing you could think to do was stop the bleeding. Gods, you had to stop him from bleeding out before you get the chance to stop the poison.

As if the previous events weren't enough, the battlefield suddenly went dead silent. You were so preoccupied that you almost didn't notice, focusing only on Kung Lao before you heard the sound of pounding footsteps.

One of your assailants suddenly went sprinting past the two of you. Not even turning to look back. One person turned to two, and soon enough all of them went flying past.

"What the hell?" You couldn't help but whisper out loud. People were coming out of the woodworks, many more stampeding by then you had first counted. A vial fell out of someone's pocket and rolled to your feet. Instantly recognizing the language, you immediately calmed a bit. An antidote.

Lady Luck strikes again, you thought. Quickly you grabbed the vial, and suddenly had an urge to duck down. That was strange. You hardly had time to process that these people had to be running from something before Kung Lao grabbed the back of your jacket with all the strength he had left, and yanked you down to his side.

You stared in shock as the largest panther you had ever seen in your life leaped over the rock. It had to have been at least ten feet tall sitting down, sharp claws widely displayed as its underbelly passed over you.

It continued to chase the archers far, far away from you and Kung Lao.

Night had fallen, and the dim fire you had started was providing just enough light for you to dress Kung Lao's wound. Raiden wouldn't be back to get you until morning. Guess he also never expected things to go this wrong.

Kung Lao had passed out just after he dragged you down to avoid the monster-sized cat. He had developed a fever as well. Not a very good sign, but you were glad that his immune system was working hard against the poison.

He would grumble and his eyes would flutter every once in a while, but the longer he slept the more worried you became. He hissed in his coma as you cleaned around his wound, wiping up all of the poison that the antidote had pushed out of his bloodstream so far. Setting the cloth to the side, you took a separate one off of his forehead and soaked it with what was left in your canteen, replacing it once you were done.

He looked miserable, but you tried your best not to expect the worst. You couldn't lose him, you couldn't. After your initial fight, you two had become quite close, almost inseparable. But the more Kung Lao and Liu Kang continued to help you with training, the more you started to become painfully aware of the Shaolin's vows. You couldn't be with him, so why was it that you loved him so much? You were almost spiteful at how your affection for him had grown so much since that day, but at least you could remain close to him in a platonic way, right?

"I love you. But there is no way I'm telling you that when you are awake." You wispered, gently cradling his head in your hands and wiping away his sweat. You just sat there with him for a moment, memorizing the features of his face. Almost scared that he would suddenly get worse as soon as you turned your back. But, eventually, the dying fire had to be delt with.

With a sigh you directed your attention to attending the fire. You tried to rekindle the flames a bit, but it was a lost cause without more firewood. You wouldn't leave to find more however, there's no telling what would sneak up on Lao while you were gone.

When you finally turned your back on the fire, still contemplating what to do about wood, you were greeted by Kung Lao, wide awake and struggling to sit up.

"Lao, what the hell are you doing?!" You rushed over to him, pushing him back down to the ground almost harshly. He looked up at you, almost dazed, and swallowed before he tried to speak. You could tell he was trying to form words, but nothing was coming out clearly. With a sigh you flip the cloth on his head over to the cool side, gently clearing his face of sweat once again. He called your name, now speaking clearly, but very slow.

"That hurt." You laughed, checking up on his side.

"I'm sorry, but you need to save your energy. Sitting up is just going to wear you out." He huffed, that trademark smirk lightly appearing on his face.

"I wasn't talking about that, Lucky." Your brows furrowed, confused. Leaning over him to get a more clear look at his face. His smirk grew wider, and the realization hit you like a truck. Shit. He heard you didn't he.

"F- God- I'm so sorry I-" He weakly lifts a hand to your face, thumb tracing your cheekbones.

"Sorry for what? There's nothing for you to apologize for." You almost started to tear up, panic and confusion written all over you face. What was he talking about? Lao Called your name once more.

"If I could choose anyone in all relms to be with, I would always choose you."

"But your vows-"

"Are a worry for another day." You let out a curt laugh. Sight blurry from tears you were trying so hard to not let slip, holding his hand to your face.

"You are one arrogant ass, Kung Lao." His smile was infectious.

"You love it." You leaned in closer to his face, only answering by gently kissing him. Both of you relaxed, thankful to finally have gotten your feelings across. Scooting closer to Lao, your knee accidentally hit his side, causing him to grunt in pain. You separated immediately.

"I'm so sorry!" Kung Lao chuckled at you, threading his fingers through the hair at the base of your scalp and bringing you in for another, loving kiss.

#mk11 ultimate #mk imagine #mkx mortal kombat x #mk11 #mk kung lao #kung lao x reader #kung lao #kung lao is a little shit #x reader #reader insert #mk x reader

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hypnoticwinter · 3 years

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 28

A scratchy little voice is crooning in my ear. Major Fracture Detected. Joint Dislocation Detected. Pneumothorax Detected. Blood Loss Detected. Mild Nerve Damage Detected. T. Jacksonii Spore Residue Detected. Diagnosing…acute deceleration injury. Poisoning. Spore inhalation. Begin treatment?

There’s a little friendly dinging tone. Someone near me shifts, and then I feel a warm hand slip into mine momentarily and squeeze. For a second I’m willing to let myself believe it might be Elena, but then I run my thumb lightly over the knuckles pressing against my fingers and give that up right away. This hand is much too soft to be Elena’s.

I try to crack my eyes open but it’s far too bright for that right now. I’m having a little bit of trouble thinking straight. And a little bit of trouble breathing but for whatever reason it feels as though wherever I am right now is very far away and separated from the rest of my body. I can feel a stab of pain on the right side of my chest whenever I take a breath but at the same time it’s as though I’m observing it from such a far distance that it barely is of significance. Maybe it’s happening to someone other than myself.

Begin treatment? the voice repeats and next to me the person holding my hand sighs and says my name. I recognize their voice but not who they are.

“Are you awake?” they ask, and I try to say something but my tongue is very thick and heavy. I swallow hard; my throat hurts.

“Roan,” they say again, “I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m going to have to start the treatment procedure soon, okay? You really did a number on yourself falling off that cliff, and then the spores you’d been breathing in for about three days weren’t helping any.”

I try a little harder to say something but I know it doesn’t come out right.

“This might feel a little weird,” the voice says. Now I do recognize it; it’s Makado.

Begin treatment? The tiny scratchy voice says again and this time Makado shifts next to me and hits the button. There is a hiss and a whine of moving machinery and then a sharp prick in the skin above my hand. I make a little noise, try to move my hand away, but something hard has grabbed onto it and isn’t letting me go.

Sedative administered, the voice says, and then everything fades very quickly. I have just enough consciousness left, circling the drain as it is, to feel Makado’s hand slip from mine, and then I am moving, or rather I am being drawn into something, and then something comes down over my head and cradles my neck. It’s very dark and I feel as though I ought to be afraid, but before I can open my mouth to voice my fears, to scream perhaps, I flutter out entirely.

* * *

I can hear talking. I’m laying in a bed curled over onto my side and in the other room I can hear talking.

My head is remarkably clear. I breathe in deeply and let it gust out slowly through my nose. There is a mild ache in my ribs, nothing more.

“Yes,” Makado says, “I’ve got her. No, she didn’t give me any trouble. She’s pretty beat-up, a kitten could have knocked her out and carried her up to the surface.”

A pause. I open my eyes with an anticipatory wince but the light is cool and grey and clinical, filtering down through a sheet or curtain drawn around the bed; there is a wide-paneled fluorescent set into the ceiling but it’s switched off.

“No,” Makado says, after a pause, then repeats. “No, that won’t be necessary. Just be ready to receive us, that’s all.”

There’s an IV in my hand and the jaw of a heartrate monitor clamped around my finger. I think about it for a moment and then reach down and take it off. The machine the IV feeds into gives an interrogative chirp.

“Yes, I have the handcu - hang on, she’s awake.”

I hear the screech of a chair sliding back along a hard floor and then a door opens and someone comes in.

“Hey,” Makado says softly, and I almost feel like crying. “You okay in here? You awake?”

“Makado,” I breathe, and she pushes back the curtains and sweeps her eyes over me, then blows her breath out.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m – I’m good,” I say, taking a moment to think about it. I sit up a little more fully and yawn. My jaw cracks like a gunshot. “How long was I out for? And what are you –“

Makado laughs. She motions at my legs and I scoot over a little, let her sit down at the foot of the bed. “So, um. You were out for about a day and a half. That’s how long it’s been since you fell off the cliff.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. I brought you down here,” she gestures, “put you into the autodoctor unit that they had, let it do its thing. It isn’t ideal but it uses a ton of ballast, so I figure you probably feel pretty decent, at least. When we get out of here we’ll get you to an actual doctor for a checkup.”

“Autodoctor?”

“It’s an old Anodyne thing,” she says. “DUSA has the last functioning one, they get a little use out of it. Runs off an old AD biocomputer. It was supposed to be for a military contract, put a bunch of them overseas, hard to reach places. Can do surgeries and treatments and diagnose like that,” she says, snapping her fingers. “Not a lot of flexibility, though. But plans fell through of course and the few that were left are museum pieces now. The one they’ve got here is the last working one.”

I chew on that for a moment. “DUSA?” I ask finally.

“Oh, right. This place,” she says, gesturing. “Dura Urgens Staging Area. DUSA. Some people call it Medusa. As like, a pun.”

“That doesn’t really help me understand what it is.”

Makado nods. She reaches up and runs a hand through her hair; I’m busy watching her eyes. Something about this place is important, I think; something here means something to her.

“Below us,” she says finally, “about eighty or a hundred meters down, is the largest known nerve bulbule in the Pit. There might be others someplace else, someplace deeper, someplace we haven’t explored yet, but this is the biggest one we know of. The Pit doesn’t have a brain the way you or I do. Whatever common ancestor it shared with humans, if it ever had one, was so far back that it was before the development of the central nervous system. The Pit uses a distributed nervous system instead; it has nerve bulbs all over the place and they handle reflexive and autonomous reactions for the general area that they’re in. Then, you move deeper by another five hundred meters and you find another bulb. It’s like a web, or a road network, and all of these bulbs are the cities.”

“But this one below us is the biggest.”

“Yes. That doesn’t mean it’s the main one, just that it’s…bigger. Handles more things. And DUSA – well, there’s a reason that they put it right over the big one.”

I blink at her. “Wait, is this where the - ?”

“The Contingency Plan?” she says, clearly saying the words with big important Capital Letters. “Yeah. That’s here. This is the facility for it.”

Something about the way she grins at me makes me shudder. I think back to the story Peter had told me – god, poor Peter – and his horrible descriptions of the way that the contingency had fucked their brains. I look at the woman before me, at the mottled flesh beneath her eyepatch and the hearing aids poking their heads out of her ears, at the acid burns and digestion marks lining her arms like vitiligo, and I can’t reconcile her tiny excited smile with the picture I had of her when Peter was telling me about her.

I blow out a big sigh and flop back in the hospital bed. There’s a warning twinge in my ribs and I wince; Makado picks up on it instantly. “You alright? Do you need anything?”

“No, I just – how was that thing able to fix me so fast?”

She shrugs. “Lots of ballast. The tank was still nearly full when we got here, it used a few gallons on you it looked like.”

Again I shudder. I’m trying not to think back to the horrible, terrifying crawl through the tight, sucking, fleshy tube to the ballast bulb, about the abject terror I had felt when Crookshank had crawled in there with me.

Crookshank…he’d be dead now, almost certainly. I realize that I don’t remember seeing him die, I don’t remember what happened to him. My memory of the attack down in the barrows is just streaks of gunfire sliding by my faceplate, the rhythmic, chest-squeezing thundering of the slug rifles, and the shrieks of the copepods. I wonder for a moment whether I’m going to have PTSD, whether I’ll ever be able to eat lobster again. I shake my head.

“Mak, this is fucked.”

“What is?”

“This whole – this whole thing. This is –“

“Relax,” she says, putting a hand on mine. I can feel the cool, clammy skin on the inside of her palm where the acid had burned her. It feels like something that’s been microwaved about twice as long as it needed to be and then let to cool down and I have to stop my lip from curling. “It’s not active. Not yet, anyway. Once we get that crystal back we can go about getting it carved down and –“

“I don’t think that crystal’s going to be an option any more.”

I tell her, briefly, about what happened after Erica and Marcus had ambushed us, how they had shot the Sergeant, how they had shot Elena and gotten us separated. “Do you know where she is?” I ask, realizing with a faint feeling of guilt that I hadn’t asked already.

Makado stares at me. “Who?”

I blink. “Elena. I don’t know where she is, did she – did she make it out?” The thought of Elena laying there hurting somewhere in some throbbing corridor of this place is almost too much for me to bear. Or worse, laying there dead –

I break the thought off like a plank of rotten wood. She is not dead. She can’t be.

I almost missed the calculating look that had flashed across Makado’s eye, and I realize I’ve grabbed onto her arm rather tightly. I let go but even so I can’t stop myself from biting my lip out of sheer worry. “She’s fine,” Makado says finally.

“She is?”

“Yeah. She came stumbling into Control a few days ago, they got her up to the surface, far as I know she’s still in the infirmary. That’s how I knew to come down and get you, she told us what was going on.”

“Oh thank god,” I blurt. I hug my knees to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut. She’s okay, I tell myself. I can feel the tears coming but at least this time they’re out of relief. After a moment I hear Makado sigh again and then she shifts closer to me and puts her arm around me.

“You must really like her,” Makado ventures after a moment. I laugh but it comes out as more of a sniff.

“Yeah,” I say after a moment. “Yeah, I think I – I do, yeah.”

For a short while it feels as though Makado doesn’t know what to say. Then finally she shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she tells me.

“For what?”

“For dragging you into this,” she says. “I never thought that all of this would happen, it was going to be just routine,” she says, massaging her temples. “The copepods, they never would have done anything if it wasn’t for the damn Leechman, they never would have attacked, nobody would have had to die…”

“It isn’t something you could have predicted,” I say gently. Makado continues on as though I hadn’t spoken.

“And then Erica, goddam Erica, Christ…”

“She was doing what she thought was the right thing,” I say. “I don’t think she meant for things to go the way they did.”

“That doesn’t really make it any better,” she groans. I think about Peter again and wish fervently that he were here. I lean back and navigate my arm around so that now I’m the one holding Makado.

“I’m sorry about Peter,” I tell her.

Makado is utterly silent. She’s looking away from me, over into the other room. I can see the muscles at the base of her jaw working as she grinds her teeth. For a moment, just a moment, I get a feeling of foreboding. She seems horribly angular and purposeful and mean all of a sudden, sitting there at the foot of the bed like an axe about to fall on me. I start to say something else but she looks over at me and nods. Her eyes are very hard.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too. It sounded like a rotten way to die.” I look over at Makado, look at her carefully. She glances over at me after a moment. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say finally. I swing off of the bed, get up and stretch. “I feel good,” I observe.

“Yeah,” Makado says, rising to her feet as well. “With that much ballast in your system you’ll probably be riding pretty high for a couple of days at least. Now, be careful though, because –“

“What are we going to do about the FBI?” I ask her. I undo the hospital gown and let it fall, gaze down at myself. There’s a ragged weal of a scar along my ribs on the right side but it already looks long-healed. I put my weight down on my other foot and nearly stumble. Makado gets up and rushes to me but I caught myself on the railing around the cot.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, my leg, it –“

“I was going to tell you,” she says. “The autodoc wasn’t able to set it properly. You’d fallen on a calcium deposit and your tibia and fibula broke. It cleaned out the fragments of bone but there wasn’t enough left to just set it and let it heal, so it put in a synthetic replacement, used ballast to meld your skin and muscle around it, but that leg is going to be weak for a long time.”

I sit back on the bed, reach down and feel the leg. It doesn’t feel much different but whatever caused the weakness is still lurking inside there, maybe a muscle not connected properly, maybe something else. I can feel a dull, bone-deep throb of pain, steady and regular and hard-edged, just waiting to boil up to the surface the second I put a foot wrong. I shake my head.

“I’m going to need like, a boot or something. If we have to climb out of here –“

“We’ll figure it out, it’s okay. I just wanted to tell you before you, you know, figured that you were totally fine.”

“What about this?” I ask, turning to her, pointing to the scar across my ribcage. “I know that wasn’t there.”

“Just repair work on a rib, I think. I read the summary it spat out after it was done but I’m pretty sure it didn’t reinflate your lung by going through your rib cage.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmur, craning my neck and squinting down at it.

“Are you breathing alright?”

With only a little trepidation I take a deep breath and hold it, then let it blow out long and slow. There’s a little pain when I hold it, in the right lung only, and then as I’m nearing the tail end of the breath it rattles somewhere deep down, but I shake my head. “A little rough but it’s okay.”

“You need to know that you’re still a little, you know, doped up. Ballast would have kept most of the pain down and kept your head pretty clear but that’s going to come back with a vengeance if you overdo it.”

I nod. “Alright, I get it. Take it easy for probably the next year or so.”

“There’s an extra jumpsuit over on that chair.”

And so I get dressed, and eat a nutrient bar and Makado shows me around DUSA. I have to hang on to her every now and then when my leg threatens to buckle beneath me but she bears it without complaint and lets me hobble around with my arm around her shoulder like we’re old friends.

DUSA looks just like all of the other ranger stations I’ve been in so far, if maybe a little cleaner. She shows me the door to the room that has the big scary capital-letter Contingency Plan inside of it, but even though I ask she won’t let me in to see it.

Outside the inch-thick windows the Pit’s flesh is squeezed tight against the walls. A few small stents hold it back here and there to let a metal gantry and corridor file through and out into a vent but otherwise it’s like this place was just cut open and the small lozenge shape of DUSA was slipped in and then the Pit grew back around it. Unlike some of the other ranger stations this one is tall rather than wide, maybe four or five floors of various facilities. There’s a dormitory, a kitchen and eating area, the small infirmary with the autodoctor, now revealed as a squat, many-legged machine a little like an MRI machine and a metal octopus had a baby, and on the fourth floor room after room of workstations with dark screens and dusty keyboards. Servers lie dark and dormant, tucked against the walls and tied down with cloth straps.

We end up sitting on the roof of the place, after Makado opens the hatch and lets a ladder telescope down from the recessed sheath it was hiding in. She helps me up it methodically and then we’re there, the fleshy wall of the ceiling barely a dozen feet above our heads. It gives me a sense of disorientation somehow, like I’ve just crawled upside down from the bottom of DUSA and am now standing with my feet glued to the ceiling, staring down at the floor. I blink hard and it passes.

Makado leans out over the railing and groans. “Everything’s fucked,” she growls. “This whole place ought to be full of people, getting things ready for when that crystal gets here. Instead it’s just me and – and you.” She’d gotten more and more pessimistic the further into our little tour we’d gone. I reach over and put my arm around her. She stiffens when I touch her and then seems to relax. I feel rather comradely, I feel like laughing. I guess I had convinced myself that I was going to die and now that I’ve received an unexpected reprieve I can’t hardly believe it.

“It’ll be okay,” I tell her. “What’s going on with the FBI?”

“Admin’s stalling them, but they’ll come back with a writ or a warrant or something and when they get their hands on our files there’ll be some shit. Right now they’re fighting with the DoI guys over jurisdiction, I think.”

“DoI?”

“Department of the Interior,” she says, waving her hand. “Normally that’d be who would handle this type of thing, they’re in charge of National Parks, but the FBI want in because this isn’t a park any more, I think technically it’s a preserve or something and that’s different…somehow. Not sure on that one.”

I nod. I start to say something else but Makado heaves a huge sigh, glances sidelong at me. “There might be some trouble but I think we’ll be able to get you out of it,” she tells me, and I laugh.

“I’m more worried about you. Klaus said they were gunning for you, that you were going to go down hard.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’ll have to see,” she says. “Especially if he’s dead, it might be a little more difficult for that to happen.”

I get a little wrench in my stomach as she says it but I swallow hard and let it pass. I did what I had to and if I hadn’t I would be dead.

I wonder for how long after this I’m going to be seeing that grin and that knife in my dreams.

“So he was a mole, then?” I ask. “That’s basically what he was saying.”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “He’s been here for a long time, Klaus has. I don’t think he ever was, you know, an undercover FBI agent or anything, I think he was just their guy on the inside. An informant. I read his personnel file, he’s an ex-con. It makes sense that there was someone giving them information but…” she trails off. “It’s hard to say,” she finishes. “It’s too bad, though. Too bad we didn’t get that crystal. We could have done a lot of good with it. If they just hadn’t shattered the first one…”

We sit there on the roof of DUSA for a long while, until Makado finally groans and gets to her feet. I glance up at her and then take the offered hand, let her pull me up. “What happens now?” I ask.

“Now?” she laughs. “Now we get out of here.”

* * *

Getting out is easier than getting in. Makado gets me into a ranger suit and we march off into the wet, tumescent depths of the Pit. Except, as Makado explains to me, we aren’t nearly as deep as I think. DUSA is far higher depth-wise than the dense fungal hell I thought I was going to die in. When I asked her how I had gotten here, then, she explained, as though it were simple, that she had just taken an IAV.

Peter had mentioned them briefly, the acronym standing for something like ‘Internal Anatomy Vehicle’ or similar. I’d even seen some, parked down below in the meager garage at the control center, what feels like ages ago, lurking like snub-nosed, aerodynamic lozenges, there in the dark. But here is one of them, its big chunky wheels soaked in gore, its prow stained red from apparent hours pushing panicked through venterial folds, rushing to DUSA with me in the passenger seat, strapped in as tightly as Makado had dared.

“It was tight,” she tells me. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it. I went as fast as I possibly could but it was still a near thing.”

“It was those fucking lizards down there,” I mutter. “I touched one, they’re covered in some kind of – poisonous goop, I don’t know what –“

“Yeah. The autodoc scrubbed your system and breathing clean air for long enough got the spores out as well, but you’re just riding on the ballast right now,” she reminds me, pressing a combination on a keypad near the low-slung waist of the vehicle and then stepping back to let the hatch open. It smells like oil and disinfectant but I clamber in eagerly. The interior is space-age, or at least it would have been in the 90s or so. The interior lights are all in red for some reason; when I ask Makado about it she explains it’s to help maintain low-light vision while still letting you see. When she grins at me her teeth reflect back cherry-stained and I have to shake my head to keep from thinking of it as blood. She looks carnivorous, hungry, frightening.

The ride is bumpy but uneventful. Once Makado flattens something that looks like an overgrown louse the size of a small pig. It shrieks as the wheels crunch over it. I glance over at her and she shrugs. “We’re in a hurry,” she explains.

After that we lapse into a comfortable silence that grows slowly more frosty the closer we get to the Control Center. I can see it approaching on the three-dimensional map readout on the dashboard, a blinking line of waypoints leading us back to the garage. Makado’s answers become shorter and shorter and eventually I just stop trying to make conversation at all. She’s just tired, I tell myself.

After we park Makado helps me out of the IAV and guides me up a set of stairs and into the Center. My leg twinges a little whenever I really put weight on it but if I limp it isn’t nearly as bad. The stairs are rough though, and I have to cling on to her and take them one step at a time just to get up them.

Over the last hour of driving or so I developed a little bit of a headache but when I mentioned it to Makado she nodded and explained it was probably just the ballast starting to wear off. It’d keep me going for a while longer but I’d need to rest and let my body heal. I had grinned. “Fine with me,” I told her, and she offered me a faint smile and then turned her attention back to the wet, bloody folds ahead of us, nudging the nose of the IAV through one muscular ribbed sphincter at a time.

The stairs take us to sort of a tool room or machine shop, and then we pass out into a hallway and then up some stairs that I recognize. Beyond the next inch-thick submarine-style door is the control room, still as messy as a few days ago, with two or three of the geeks present before still in residence. They look up when Makado enters but make no comment other than a perfunctory greeting or two; clearly we’re expected. Then I step into the room and catch nothing but eyeballs.

One of the nerds frowns. “Wait,” he asks Makado, staring at me, “is that…?”

I start to answer but Makado nods, shuffling me along with her hand in the small of my back. “Yes, it is,” she assures him, but the look he gives me after she does so is more than a little confusing. I glance at Makado but before I can say anything there is a burst of pain in my leg that forces a groan from my lips and makes me stumble. Makado catches me before I fall and then I’m good again. My leg feels like it’s made of glass, or rather that it’s two glass blocks stacked on top of each other, and if I’m not extremely careful about how and where I put my weight they slide apart and the most excruciating -

“You okay?” she asks, and I nod.

“Yeah,” I grunt. “Once I’m out of here I will be.”

“They already called the elevator down,” she tells me. “I radioed ahead for us. Twenty minutes and you’re through.”

“And I can see Elena?” I ask. I feel a little like a baby saying it but it just tumbled out when I opened my mouth to say something a little less pathetic like ‘thank goodness’ or similar. Makado stiffens next to me fractionally, and I frown. “Are you –“

“Yes, you can see Elena.”

We hobble out of the control room and down the corridor to the gondolas. I don’t even know how to feel; I don’t even know what time it is, whether or not it’ll be light out. Something about the way Makado took too long to answer has me worried, though, and I glance over at the woman as we make our halting way towards the waiting gondola car.

Her jaw is clenched tight and though I can’t see her one good eye from the side I’m on, I can see her brow is downcast and furrowed. I lick my lips and try to quell the sudden stab of fear that’s gone through me. “Mak, is Elena…is she okay?”

Makado opens the door to the gondola and helps me inside. “She’s fine,” she tells me. “Just try to rest. Sit down on the floor if you need to.”

As soon as she says it, as if on cue, a wave of exhaustion passes through me and it’s all I can do to keep myself standing. Makado shuts the door and fiddles with the controls for a moment and then with a sickening lurch we’re moving upwards, and with the motion it’s as though all the tension exits my body. Even the twinging in my calf doesn’t seem quite as bad now that we’re moving. I look at Makado and she offers me a tight smile. “See?” she says. “We’ll get you out of here soon.”

“And Elena’s alright?”

Makado doesn’t meet my eyes. “She’s fine,” she tells me again, but the way she says it just makes me worry more.

“Do you promise?” I ask her. She looks up from her wrist computer.

“Hmm?”

“Do you promise,” I say slowly, “that Elena’s alright?”

Makado stares at me and I see something dark and unnameable shifting behind her one remaining eye. After what feels like entirely too long she nods. “Say it,” I prompt her. “Please.” I know it’s irrational and stupid but the way she’s acting is like she’s hiding something from me, it’s like she’s –

“Roan, calm down,” she says. Her voice is smooth and serene. “Elena’s fine.”

“Promise me she is,” I whisper.

Makado takes what feels like a moment longer to respond than she should. “Okay,” she says finally. “I promise.”

“Okay,” I say. I try to will myself back to the relaxed, relieved state I’d been in as soon as the gondola had started moving, but I can’t find it. Makado’s put enough worry into me that I feel like a spiky ball of it, hard-edged and serrated. I eventually do take her advice and sit on the floor and rest a while.

I try to make conversation with her but the answers she gives me are flat and eventually we both let it peter out. I assume she’s nervous about the FBI and the investigation I’m sure she’ll go through. I already told her on the way up that I didn’t mind hanging around and giving a statement or whatever else they need exactly, but it barely seemed to make an impact on her. Maybe it’s Peter, and if it is, I don’t know what to say to her that could possibly make it better.

But I go ahead and stick my foot in my mouth anyway. “Mak,” I say, breaking the – well, not silence exactly, for the grinding and swaying of the gondola is far from quiet, but my words still seem overly loud inside the car, “are you okay?”

She blows a breath out and looks at me. She starts to say something, then stops. “I’m sorry,” she ends up telling me, and I frown.

“What for?” I ask. “I know it didn’t – it didn’t go how it was supposed to but none of it was your fault, you couldn’t have predicted –“

“No,” she says. Her voice has a catch to it as though she might start crying. “It isn’t that. It’s – look, can I show you something?”

“Sure.” I’ve got no clue where she’s going with this. Outside the window I can see the first hint of real sunlight that I’ve glimpsed in probably about four or five days, pouring down into the Pit like an orange cascade. It’s far-off and dim but it’s real. Looks to be somewhere around the middle of the day or so. Makado reaches down for me and with her help I manage to clamber to my feet. I’m still a little unsteady on the right leg but I think it’s getting better. I think I just needed to rest it for a while. “What is it?”

“I’ll show you,” she says. “Turn around real quick.”

“What are you –“

“Just do it,” she nods. Her eyes flick over to the window then back to me. “You’ll miss it.”

So of course I turn, not thinking anything of it. I hear her shift and then come and stand just behind me. There’s a clink of metal, a small subtle sound. I don’t see anything out the window.

I start to glance back at her and then she grabs my wrist and tugs it backwards and snaps half of a pair of handcuffs around it. “What!” I blurt, jerking away from her before she can grab my other hand. Her face is tight and calculating.

“Give me your fucking hand,” she snarls.

“Makado, what the fuck –“

She punches me. I see it coming but I don’t react in time. Her fist slams into my gut and the breath whooshes out of me in one go, folds me over like a pressed shirt. I reach for her and try to slap her back but she grabs my hand and then she’s got me by the wrist – her grip is like iron. I bring my leg up and knee her in the hip and she grunts, but then she draws her leg back and kicks me in my newly repaired calf and the explosion of pain is so intense that I scream. I draw my leg back and falter and then fall to the floor, landing heavily on my elbow, and then Makado grabs me and heaves me over onto my stomach, jarring my leg again and forcing another scream from between my teeth as she cuffs the other wrist.

“What the fuck!” I yell, as soon as I’ve caught my breath.

“I’m sorry,” she says, breathing heavily, smoothing off the front of her suit. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“You fucking bitch!” I shriek. “You fucking bitch, get me out of these fucking cuffs!”

“It wasn’t anything personal,” she says, sounding more like she’s trying to convince herself than she is trying to convince me.

“You bitch!” I say again. I apparently become rather uninventive when I get stabbed in the back. Makado growls, a low wordless snarl, and then rolls me over onto my back. The cuffs cut into my wrists, sandwiched between myself and the floor, and I cry out.

“Shut the fuck up,” she tells me. Her voice is icy calm and that scares me more than anything else she could have said. “I have to give someone to the FBI. I have to let someone take the fall.”

I open my mouth to say something and she puts her booted foot over my throat and presses down gently. I can feel the blunt cleats on the bottom dig into my neck. I try to wriggle away but she just puts a little more of her weight onto it and then I can’t breathe and so I stop, staring at her desperately, hoping she has the sense not to choke me.

“There is too much at stake right now,” she says, “for me to go down for something as fucking stupid as human trafficking. Especially when my contribution was just looking the other way. So you’re going to go down for me. That’s all. There’s still a chance I can get that crystal back but I won’t be able to if I’m rotting in a federal prison somewhere.”

She takes her foot off my throat and I heave the air in while I still can. “Tell me,” I wheeze. Makado looks down at me. “Tell me you weren’t lying about Elena. Tell me she’s okay.”

Makado is silent for a long while. “I lied,” she says finally, in a small voice. “I knew you wouldn’t come with me if you thought she was still in the Pit. I don’t know where she is or if she’s alive. The tracker in her suit is dead and nobody’s heard from her in three days.”

The gondola grinds to a halt and the doors hiss open, and sunlight and fresh air pour in. I hardly notice. Makado steps over me and walks out while I lay there, my hands cuffed behind my back, bawling my eyes out, and then three men with badges and pistols come in and pick me up and carry me off somewhere. I don’t notice where, I don’t see it. All I can see, my eyes squeezed shut in a vain attempt to keep the tears from leaking out, is Elena, poor Elena, trapped somewhere at the bottom of the Pit and calling out my name, not knowing I’ll never come.

Continue with Part 29

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#mystery flesh pit #writing #writeblr #alt lit #spilled ink #mystery #thriller #original writing #caving #disaster #Michael Crichton

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starkeristheendgame · 4 years

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middle of it the avengers alarm goes off. The argument spills over during the battle (and of course everyone can hear them and is trying to ignore it) and it ends with one of them saying they should just break up. Then something happens and they make up lmao

So there seems to be a part missing to your ask, but I pretty much got the gist! I hope this is okay, and that you enjoy! Ages are ambiguous so let your imagination run free. Its mostly angst but at the end there’s hopefulness for a brighter future. Tony is kind of portrayed as a bit of an ass in this, but we all know he just struggles with relationships and emotions so I hope you won’t judge him too harshly.

TW: Angst | Fighting | Temporary break up | Very brief note of minor injury.

Tony’s words still ring like Church bells through his head, even hours after they’d been spoken. That harsh spitfire tone, the broken fury in his eyes as he spat the words in the midst of battle, launching that anger against their enemies. Tony’s eyes, normally rich brandy that made him think of warm nights in front of a fire, had been been inferno and rage all day.

“We’re better off without each other”.

He flinched at the echo memory, staring dully off into space as he held the pack of cooling gel against his bruised side, the taste of copper drying on his tongue. His bruised sides were his own fault; his blind rage and anguish at their fighting had transgressed into the battle. His hits had been sloppy, unkempt, and it had fallen to the rest of the team to try and hold together their splintered edges.

Even now, the rest of the team are as sullen and awkwardly tense as the seething, newly un-coupled pair. Even Steve, normally so brazen and uncowed, sits grim in the pilot seat, jaw set and gaze on the miles of clouds before them. Clint, nursing a leg and his checked pride, is a comforting but ever silent presence at his side. No warm jokes, no lopsided smiles.

Tony is the worst. Cold and impassive at the rear of the jet, working on his Gauntlet with silent fury. Peter wondered what would happen when they got back; he’d more or less moved into the penthouse with Tony by this point, their lives entangled. Peter had no idea about post-breakup protocol. Tony had been his first real relationship, the first one to have any true weight and meaning.

The aching tiredness of war had settled in. His body felt leaden and tender, and on any other day he would have curled up against Tony’s side and napped the journey home away. Now, he leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes, focusing on keeping his breathing measured and even. The battle he’d just fought seemed nothing in comparison to the fight that had began this morning and had broken like a storm on the battlefield.

“You’re unseasoned! You’re a child. Our worlds have been nothing alike and neither are we!”

“You’re half a lifetime behind me, Peter. Sometimes, I think that’s how it should be. Apart.”

“If you hadn’t been bitten by that spider, me and you? We wouldn’t ever be in the same circle”.

When he opened his eyes again they were wet and they stung, and they were home.

No. Not home. Not for him, anymore. Peter accepted the hand that Steve offered him, and followed the rest out in stony silence. He wondered if this would be the end of it; the legacy of his time as an Avenger. His entire relationship put on blast over the comms, his friends and childhood heroes unable to look him in the eye.

Medical cleared him with two cracked ribs and his own teeth imprints on his tongue. Two painkillers and a glass of water later, and he itched to be out of the suit, to be clean and to curl up in a soft bed. His only clothes were in the penthouse, however, and he reluctantly shuffled to the elevator, head low and arms wrapped around himself for comfort more than to relieve the pain.

He crept cautiously into the open space, ears perked and eyes alert. He couldn’t see Tony anywhere, though, and by the time he reached the small staircase that led up to the balcony-style second floor, he was relaxed.

A fool’s act. No sooner had he rounded the corner, light-footed on the plush carpet, he stopped. Perched on the edge of the bed, with one smartly dressed Pepper Potts between his splayed thighs, was Tony. He had his head tucked down against her stomach, arms loose around her waist, and though he could see only her back, he could tell she was running her fingers through his hair.

Heart clenching, Peter turned away and fled before they could notice him, taking the elevator down to the foyer. It was easy enough to ask for a car to drive him home, the wide eyed receptionist sympathetic and astounded by his presence. The driver who pulled up was not Happy, but he was soft and cheerful, and roused Peter gently from where he’d fallen asleep against the window on the ride home.

His bed was cold and empty, a sore trade-off from where he would normally be. But the shower was warm and a balm to his aching muscles where the painkillers had stemmed the pain but not cut it off completely. When he was dressed and beneath the sheets he turned his cheek to his pillow, and let his mind wander.

“I’m - Not - Helpless!” He snarled, kicking furiously at the robotic figure that tried to swing for his jaw. He obliterated it, pieces flying in all directions as he waded through the outburst and onto the next, his partner’s bitter tone a soundtrack to the splintering of metal before him. He lashed out again, ducked, used a web to throw the sentient steel away from him.

“You’re untrained! You’re green! You’re a fucking colt amongst stallions and I won't stand by and watch you get hurt!” Tony’s eyes were wildfire like his voice, and any other moment his appetite for war would have made Peter’s thighs squeeze together and his teeth catch his tongue. Then, it terrified him, enraged him, and saddened him. They spat fire at each other and used it to fuel their defence, and they both steadfastly ignored the pleading protests of their colleagues over the comms, tuned in to their every word. The shame had only made Peter angrier.

He awoke with it burning inside him, smothered quickly by the sight of the bare pillow before him. No sleep-warm brown eyes looking back at him, just the residual stiffness from his injuries and the bitter taste of loneliness. Peter shifted and pushed himself to his feet, forcing his morning routine. He dreaded the text that would ask him to pick up his things, or the call that would tell him Happy was on his way with his stuff.

It never came. But neither did any other call. His phone was silent from any Avenger, none of the usual post-mission calls to fill in paperwork or check-ins from the others. No Steve asking if he wanted to jog together on Wednesday, no Tony asking him to come to the lab with sexual emojis.

Only Ned, MJ, Aunt May, even Flash. Though the latter was just another request for Tony's attention. No matter how many times Peter secretly prayed each time he picked up his phone, it was never the name he wanted. By the 6th day, he'd well and truly come to realise that was it.

It was over.

They were over.

He sniffled into his ice cream. The past six days had melted into scrolling through his old messages, bawling, and watching Elle Woods get her happily ever after. He'd taken her example in the first film and had stomped silently to the grocery market to buy several litre tubs of ice cream in varying flavours. He'd put the Spidersuit under his bed and hadn't looked at it since.

Except by the next Saturday he'd run out of emotions to cycle through and messages to cry over and the itch to be out in the nightlife, sailing between the stars took over.

Putting on the suit felt like a punch to the gut and a glass of cold water at the end of a desert.

He stood on the roof of the apartment complex, swept his gaze slowly over the cityscape, then stepped off the ledge. The drop made his heart skip a beat and the adrenaline crash through his veins, and flicking his wrist with a web at the next building felt like salvation. He dropped, swung, pulled and sailed until he was panting behind the mask, arms quivering as he roamed steadily from the lower city level to the skyscrapers and business buildings, towering above the rest like sentinels and watchmen.

He ignored the nagging memories of doing this with Tony. The two of them laughing through the comms, of clinging to each other above the clouds where nobody could see them. He focused on the ache of his muscles as he climbed higher, higher. The Stark Tower was the tallest building in New York, but the Reach Building was a close second, and empty at this hour.

He threw a web and let the momentum take him, swinging a steep arc and letting go so that it tossed him high into the empty darkness, the cool breeze buffering him as he raced in the sky, baring his stomach to the stars above, arms spread and head tipped back on a delighted, breathless sigh.

One moment, he was gazing at stars, twinkling and careless above him. The next he was rolling backwards, over, and what should have been cityscape became two slats of neon blue, surrounded by peony red and rich gold. He startled, jerked, and they fell in graceful tandem. Peter's heart thumped behind the bars of his chest, and he was left breathless as he stared, the fall ignored for the jarring reality that Tony was here.

The cityscape rushed up towards them and solid arms slid around his waist, driving the breath from his lungs. The firm press of metal was something Peter had resigned himself to feel only in his memories and dreams, and he couldn't remember how to breathe in at the feel of plated fingertips digging into his hips.

They free-fell down, plummeting fast. A shift of Tony's leg and they tipped, rolling gracefully until they were upright and then Peter's entire body tingled as he heard the thrusters of the suit engage. Falling became flying upwards, held safely against warm, solid metal, though he didn't dare to lay his cheek against Tony's chest as he might've before.

He did turn his head away and close his eyes though, relishing in the feel of their bodies together last he suddenly wake up and realise, not for the first time, that it had all been a dream. It was only a cluster of seconds, but it felt like an eternity before he was being set down as gently as if he were glass, held tight by an arm around his waist as Tony's reached up, tugging off the mask as his own faceplate flipped up.

"I can't ". Tony's voice broke over the word, breathless and agonised as he clung to Peter, holding him tight. Shock rendered him speechless and he simply stood lax in Tony's grip, on his tip-toes and leaning back into the solid arm around him. Tony's eyes were dark and red, glossy like he'd been crying mere moments before they landed. He looked sleepless, exhausted.

"I can't do it" he repeated, slower, weaker. "I can't be without you. I hate myself for it, because you deserve better. Because being with you automatically means risking losing you. But I can't lose you like that". He slumped at the end of it, defeated, and Peter finally managed to swallow the knife that had lodged itself in his throat, robbing him of his words and leaving tight pain in its wake.

“You don’t get to dictate what I am and aren’t capable of doing anymore. You don’t get to keep comparing me as weak or useless against the rest of you” he breathed, tears stinging at his eyes and turning Tony into a large, red blob. A red blob that hesitated, before nodding. “And you don’t get to break up with me because you’re being a selfish ass” he added after a pause wherein both of them were too afraid to say or do anything else.

“I can’t promise I’ll be perfect. I’m undoubtedly gonna fuck up again at some point. But... Fuck, I want us to be able to fight about it, and stay together. I want you to tell me I’m wrong and I want to fall asleep next to you in the same night, because I haven’t slept since you left. And-”

Peter sucked in a breath on a sound between a laugh and a sob, wiping heavily at his eyes before he reached up and pressed his palm over Tony’s mouth, muffling whatever tangent he was about to spiel off into. The prickle of Tony’s signature stubble against his palm was a sensation he wouldn’t trade for the world in that moment.

Tony stopped, breathed in a puff of warm air, and watched him with docile hope as he leaned forwards, slowly and carefully, ducking his head out of the way of the faceplate. Tony’s eyes shone with broken adoration as he removed his palm and tipped his head, pressing a brief, weak kiss against Tony’s mouth. His legs felt weak for it and he moved his hands to Tony’s shoulders, clinging to the burnished metal.

“Come home” Tony whispered against his mouth, fingers flexing into Peter’s sides, and he nodded immediately, ducked his head down to Tony’s chest as the faceplate snicked shut and they soared towards the stars.

It wouldn’t be perfect. But that was okay, because they’d work through it and keep loving each other anyway.

#fanfic #starker #starker fanfiction #starker cu #starker cc #ironspider #ironspider fanfiction #ironspider fanfic #starker fanfic #starker angst #ironspider angst #tony stark/peter parker #peter parker/tony stark #sie fics

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nightmaretyrantvantas · 4 years

Text

When tensions break too often- a dark side au story

So I got my ideas back for some angst and some tension in this au, and I just couldnt resist writing it. Plus its a good way to warm me back up into doing things for this au.

This is also a bit of a deeper dive into the dynamics of darkside! Virgil and the other dark sides and how they all bounce and thrive off each other, as well a some backstory and peeks at the full effects of Deceit leaving( jealousy is with the dark sides but is only mentioned, he currently doesnt make much of an appearance in this one in particular, he gets his own angst later)

This was fun to write, not gonna lie. Its been awhile an this is gonna be long so buckle up with me

I also got alot of inspiration to finally write this out(and revise parts of it) due in part to @aimasup ‘s recent comics and writings about their kid sides(which I love, like alot alot and I hope they dont mind me getting super inspired by it!)

ships: Past prinxiety, past anxciet, implied intruxiety, implied intrulogical, implied intruloxiety, implied one sided remus x wrath, implied past demus, implied current roceit

Im putting a trigger warning here for cussing, fighting(verbal and physical), descriptions of panic attacks and emotional breakdowns, violence, gross and inappropriate language, some body horror descriptions, as well as implied unsympathetic sides(all sides are morally grey but the perspective is biased towards the dark sides as its seen from Wrath’s view- keep that in mind)

Things are about to get angsty my friends but i promise it ends happy(for once in this au)

I hope you guys enjoy

~~~~~~~~~~

Wrath Sanders had a lot more patience then almost everyone gave him credit for. Most considered him the biggest hothead there was, going off at the first irritation. But, the truth was he was eerily patient...Sure he may simmer and seethe and hold onto things in unhealthy grudges, but he never lost his cool as often as some would want you to believe.

Wrath Sanders kept his cool during many things, even if that was the last thing he wanted to do.

He had sat back through many things, biting his tongue to hold back the venom and yelling and grinding his teeth together in anger and forced himself to sit through many many things that happened around him out of respect- out of a deep fucking respect- for Virgil’s Fear’s Anxiety’s authority. Instead, he watched shit go down over and over again and held himself back from reacting towards the problem, focusing his energy on the recovery.

But, the most recent event was his last fucking straw.

It had happened seemingly out of nowhere, Wrath had been slumped down on their shitty lumpy couch boredly watching some dumb movie. It was getting later in the night, around 10 maybe 11 and he had one of Remus’s crappy beers partially drank in his hand. He was just getting up to change the movie or turn it off all together when the whole house seemed to shift violently, the walls seeming to tremble. There was a moment of confusion before he heard it.

“ Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

His whole body jolted to its feet unsteadily as the sound of Anxiety’s pain wreaked scream filled the house to an almost deafening volume as it distorted and deepened. His body moved before his mind, lurching over the couch and running for the source of the scream as another one wailed out even louder than the first, the sound muffling the breaking bottle and violently shaking the walls with their reverb. He heard other sounds too underneath, glass shattering heavy objects banging and wood splintering, wallpaper shredding. A third screech rang out, cutting itself in half with echoing high pitched sobs.

He hadnt been the first to make it to his room.

Wrath watched as he turned the corner in time to see Remus destroy Anxiety’s door with his morning star, a wild and desperately freaked out look to his glowing eyes as wood splintered and gave out under the weapon, some sending cuts into his cheeks. The creative side was then out of sight in a flash, forcing his way into the room yelling as to be heard over the screams.

Remembering the pain, the fear the absolute panic in Remus’s normally confident voice sent a deeper chill down his spine than the screams had.

“ Virgy??!! Fuck fuck fuck fUCK!! Virgy no no! Its me dammit!! Fuck FUCK FUCK!! No no NO! Virgy virgy virgy storm cloud creepy cryptid no no nnonononono look at me no no look at me cmon honey look at me not those at me. me me me me..” His voice continued, shaky and softening as the screams faded into heart wrenching sobs and high pitched hyperventilating gasps. Remus continued to speak, morning star thudding against carpet and a softer thud sounding.

“ Hey hey hey hey hey hey...hey hey hey I got you I got you I’m here im still here....i’m always here for ya honey...I got you now I got you see? Yeah yeah thats me....just focus on me....cmon cmon stormy cant pass out on me now...follow my breathing lets breathe together...in...out...in out...now....tell me five things you can see....cmon honey you got this just look up im here right here...”

The sight through the broken door haunted him, made his chest throb hard and bile burn his throat.

The bedroom before him was completely trashed. It was as if something feral and destructive had ripped it from its very foundation. Every piece of furniture, big or small, was broken and smashed apart, the anxious side’s bed and couch ripped into multiple pieces. Every shelf or flat surface had faced an even worse fate, thrown around and shattered into various pieces that had been strewn around the room along with glass fragments from anything unfortunate enough to have been made of glass. Papers and books were severed and torn apart viciously, and the wallpaper was slashed in huge wide cute, some of the slashes cutting deep into the wall underneath. And in the middle of the disaster was Remus and Anxiety. Long, protruding limb like dark shapes sprouted from the purple side’s back, twitching and trembling with adrenaline along with his heaving, hunched over shaking form. Remus was there in front of him, knelt down to the balled up figure and slowly but surely coaxing him up enough to pull him into his arms and rock him back and forth as he kept speaking to him. It took Wrath a few seconds of his vision adjusting to the room’s darkness to realize Remus had more cuts on him, and why.

Strings.

Millions of purple tinted, tautly pulled strings, like a tightly woven and intricate sickening spider web filled the room from top to bottom as if trying to shield the two in its depths. He could see parts of them hanging limp, likely from Remus forcing his way through to the other. He watched in a horrified shock as Anxiety’s body lurched and jerked with his piercing sobs, hand harshly digging into his scalp through his hood and shadowy claws threatening to rip said hood open. He could see many of the strings connected directly to various parts of his body and to the eight extra things on his back and it made him shudder. The room radiated a sort of fear and panic that was infectious, suffocating even. But he refused to leave the doorway and abandon the two there, in that too dense darkness.

He watched Remus manage to gather up the shorter side into his chest and rock him more, practically curling into a ball over him. He was still talking, his voice softening to the point he couldnt make it out anymore from the door. But he could see his expression. God his expression mightve been what pushed him past his bullshit accepting limit.

Remus’s face was grim, any traces of his grins and normal attitude gone. His eyes were glowing in a dark, dangerously violent fury but the way they stayed trained on Anxiety kept them, for the time being at least, soft and remorseful. There was so much pain there in that focused gaze, pain regret sorrow a disturbing amount of fear and understanding. His mouth moved with words not meant for Wrath to hear, soft gentle coos and reassurances too intimate to be heard by anyone else but the one trembling harshly in his strong arms. Brows furrowed and it made Wrath feel even colder to realize his hands, hands that were holding the other up and petting his hair through that black hood and rubbing between the spidery appendages, were trembling.

Remus was trembling.

After awhile the strings seem to fade away into nothing, those shadowy limbs following them scarily slow. Once that happened and the worst of the darkeness seemed to dissipate was when Wrath dared to take a few stiff steps into the room, debris crunching too loudly under his boots. He saw Remus stiffen and his eyes flicker up like a cornered, ready to attack animal before relaxing, glow never leaving.

“ W...wh..r...R-remus...”

“ Des...Dessy brat...h-hey spitfire do me a solid and go open my door ok? Dont worry itll lead to my bedroom...just...go open it for me...will you...?” Wrath’s voice failed him after that and he nodded, backing out of that suffocation and away into the brighter lit hall rushing from the room to push open the dark stained door further down. He turned around to go back, to try to help somehow...anyway he could, when he watched Remus instead picking his way out of the mess and into the hall, their leader cradled in his arms limply like a small sleeping child. Not a sound came from either of them as he stalked through the hall and into his room, a single nod dismissing Wrath before the door swung shut in front of him...

That was where he was drawing a line. Enough had been enough.

Wrath had sat back through many things, too many fucking things than he should have. He held back his doubts when Virgil and Roman had first started seeing each other when they were younger and dumber, had held himself and barely held Remus back from mauling the so called “good” creativity when things had gone awry and he had broken Virgil’s heart and left him in bitter, resentful pieces for them to pick up and help mend back together. He held back every time Thomas had, intentionally or unintentionally, slighted and undermined their jobs as a part of him, of their importance, of Virgil’s and Remus’s importance to him. He had sat back through the aftermath of ever fight with the “light” sides and with thomas, through every dismissal and banishment and arguement and accusation. He had helped and been there through countless sleepless nights and previous breakdowns and panic attacks between all four three of them, and he had been here, had been forced not to retaliate as per Virgil’s simple request.

“ Dont Des....dont go after them...Im forbidding it got it? Dont do it. it isnt going to be worth it...please...”

It had always been the please, soft and defeated that made him obey. Not the angry snaps and lashing out, not the cruel words and push and shove they all did for so long, but the plea in that word...the vulnerability it revealed.

He had sat through Deceit’s slow distancing from the rest of them...and his eventually leaving them for the light sides and the ensuing pain and breakdown that his leaving left behind.

It had splintered them, had struck both Virgil and Remus harder and more painfully than either side would verbally admit. Wrath had been forced to do nothing but helplessly watch it break them and break himself too, and try to clean up the aftermath best he could.

But this breakdown, seeing the side that had always stubbornly refused to buckle or back down reduced to a screaming sobbing wreck on the floor, seeing the other side he had always seen be nothing but strong and indifferent to everything thrown with a grin shaking in fear and softly pleading was too much.

He had stayed down, seething, resentment festering for years. too many years without an outlet.

He remembered the hand that had been held out to him all those years ago. Remembered coming along a little bit before Deceit ever did...and looking up from where he was angrily crying on the floor to see two figures before him. One was shorter, with two sets of brightly glowing purple and green eyes and a big black hoodie that was too big for him and messy hair that fell into his face. Behind him was someone much taller, with wild hair and a single streak of white in it, eyes feral and gleeful i a way that made him tense and made him mad through his tears. He was dressed extravagantly, like a prince or even a king grinning unnaturally wide. But his focus narrowed on the purple one, whose dark claw tipped hand stretched out in front of him in an offering. When Anger had put his head back in his knees to cry more he felt an arm drape over him. His head snapped up and he saw the princely one next to him with a softer expression, hand rubbing his back a little.

“ Hey....hey its ok Anger. Whatcha crying for? You did your job! Pretty damn well too! You were amazing the way you had Thomas screaming at that bully!” A clawed hand smacked him making him yelp and he looked in front of him to see Fear knelt in front of him with a look of understanding, a bitter smile on his face.

“ He’s right you know? You were only doing your job...you didnt realize how out of hand things would spiral and thats ok. How they reacted isnt your fault...”

They offered him a place to go, a place to thrive. Screw the others that refused to understand and stay with them. And Fear led them both deeper down the halls by the hand, making sure he didnt get lost

He was done standing down.

Someone needed to pay.

~ ~ ~

If he was honest, Wrath wasnt sure how long he sat outside the intrusive side’s shut door, sitting slumped against the opposing wall in a thick, deafening silence. It mustve been long enough for him to drift into an uneasy, restless sleep. His dreams filled up with memories of younger years, of pranks and scuffles and violent roughhousing the three of them got up to being on their own, of Remus making meals and running around frantic to keep both Anger and Fear from accidentally killing themselves or each other on something. Of Deceit hazily joining their trio, hesitant and quiet but able to snap back just as viciously and able to rough house back just as good as the rest of them after awhile. Of days filled with shrieks, squeals, bickering and shrilly laughter, of restless nights where they all broke into Remus’s room and dog piled on his bed to sleep. Of slowly growing up and watching Virgil come out of his quiet observance and transition from Fear to Anxiety and taking charge as a leader among them, of Remus stepping back and letting him with full confidence as his right hand and partner in crime in most cases. Of seeing Deceit come out of his terrified shell and blossom into a belovedly bitchy and...supposedly self assured side...of Virgil’s echoing screams that seem to reverberate through his very core...

He jolted awake at the sound of a door creaking, and sluggishly lifted his head to see a pair of familiar scuffled riding boots, laces fraying if you looked close enough. He lifted his gaze higher and soon locked onto tired green eyes that were dark and dull from exhaustion. Lifeless was a term he could describe those eyes with and that fact made him briefly queasy and cold. He looked tired, so very tired, and older. He was older than them both....but right now he looked much older than he was...There was a silence between them for a few moments that allowed Wrath to rouse himself up a little more.

“ Dessy....for all thats unholy...what’re you still doin out here dumbass? Did you stay there all night?”

‘Dessy’...‘ Des’ the nickname eased some of his shot nerves. Ever since they were kids they had joked that his name shouldve been “ Despair” instead of “ Daniel Williams” because of his very present pessimism and negative outlook. And soon it became so much more fitting that his nickname became “ Des” short for despair...or in Remus’s case “ Dessy” as he oh so enjoyed calling him. The annoying nickname was familiar though, and it helped him relax enough to speak. His voice was rough and awkwardly quiet in the small hallway, as if he’d been the one screaming.

“ I....wanted to make sure he’d be ok...” He trailed off, voice faltering with a clear shake. It sounded pathetic and weak to him.

But maybe, just this once pathetic and weak wasnt a bad thing. Because at the sound of his voice, and his dumb reason, Wrath saw some life flicker back into the older side’s eyes, some of their glow returning. Remus let out a tired, exasperated sigh and gave him a small sad smile, his expression softened into something sorrowful yet fond. That fondness, that softness sent warm tingling butterflies fluttering through his chest like it always did despite the grim circumstances. Remus let out a strained chuckle and shook his head, pulling his door shut with a quiet click.

“ He’s asleep now ya little Tasmanian devil...let him rest and we’ll check on him in a bit...now cmon, lets go make some breakfast and watch some movies or something....lets go up up.” With a grunt Des allowed himself to be heaved up by the armpits to his feet and didnt protest Remus wrapping an arm around him and guiding him down to the living room. He didnt want to see that pained exhaustion on his face...he needed to do something

and had a problem he was finally going to get rid of.

“ No Des you cant.”

There was that feeling as familiar to him as breathing bubbling in his chest, that hot smoldering feeling of anger or irritation igniting. It flushed out the cold he had been feeling in an unpleasant way but he ignored that part, pressing his palms flat on the table with a bit of force as he narrowed his orange eyes at the one across from him. He felt something like acid stinging his mouth and begging to be spilled free but he did as he usually did and grit his teeth to hold the worst of it at bay. Pushing it down. Holding back again.

“ Not again Remus. I refuse to just fucking sit back and do nothing again. They need to be taught a lesson! This is all their fault- all his fault--”

“ Even if it is so fucking what?! You blindly lashing out at them is only going to make things worse I can promise you that--”

“ Like hell it will!! They act like they can just walk all over us and treat us like fucking trash and cause things like last night and you think im lashing out blindly when--”

“ --When youre temper is as violent as a fucking feral mongoose--” “ Dont call me a fucking mongoose beetlejuice reject!!” “ Oh shut up and sit back down you twerp!!”

They went back and forth across the table, both their tempers and volumes raising as they fought. That bubbling feeling was twisting into a boiling, growing burning that began filling his chest and core. Why was Remus not agreeing with him for fucks sake--

His vision started tinging red.

“ Look brat you think I fucking like this?! You think im not pissed the fuck off?! Because I am! I’m beyond pissed off about this!! About the fact I know exact who and what caused Virgy’s breakdown and about the fact it happened at all!! I fucking get it!! But even I know you shouldnt just storm in there to take off trying to take off their fucking heads when youre too upset! Youre not thinking clearly enough for that kind of confrontation dammit im trying to protect you in this too!!” Remus’s words were loud, ruthless, and hard hitting. There were angry and forceful and made sense.

Plenty of sense.

And somehow that made him even angrier.

“ Oh? Ooooh! I get it, I fucking get it! Now that youve been sweetening up fucking logic youre suddenly the first to fucking defend them hurting our fucking best friend--”

“--oh for fucks sake bitch Logan has nothing to fucking do with this!! Im not fucking defending them either!! I swear to god im just trying to--” “ --to what huh?! Keep on his good side so you can get in his fucking pants?! Or so you can fucking push it aside and laugh about it later like one of them?!--” “ Goddammit you fucking stubborn brat you dont know what youre even talking about--” “ I dont know what im talking about?! I DONT KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT?!?!” His voice rose much louder, his own trembling distortion coming out and getting spat at the side who had helped fucking raise him like venom.

“ I dont know what im talking about?!! You mean like how I NEVER seem to know what the fuck im talking about?! Like how Virgil never knows what hes talking about or how you never seem to know what youre fucking talking about when your talking to them?! God now youre even starting to sound like those pretentious bastards!! Dont know what im talking about?! What part do I not know what im talking about Intrusive Thoughts?! huh??!!” His breath was coming out in ragged, squeaking pants as his eyes began to burn “Which fucking part do I not fucking know?! The part where ive had to sit back and bottle up my rage at being pushed aside and degraded and judged and dismissed or having to sit back for fucking years and watch you and virgil get hurt and hurt and ignored and dismissed and talked down and insulted and broken and having to swallow my protests of it?! Or of knowing last night fucking happened because Deceit decided to fully live up to his fucking name and abandoned us for those bastards and left us alone without a second thought and got away with it?! Or the fucking fact youre too busy trying to bone down logic to even fucking care--!!”

Smack!

It came so fast he hadnt had time to prepare for it before his head was snapped to the side and pain exploding in his face, on the cheek near the jaw in particular as he staggered to the ground a good foot and his eyes eerily slow dragged themselves from looking at the kitchen cabinets to Remus, who still had his fist outstretched near where it had collided with his face, his chest heaving almost like his own was, eyes wild and just as angry before a flash of realization went through them.

“ ....Des....fuck...i...you...” Nothing too coherent came babbling out Remus’s mouth, he was still way too hoped up on anger fueled adrenaline. His fist was starting to tremble and Wrath watched his pupils dilate a few times in his attempt to calm down.

And then there was something like an explosion as that burning feeling warped into a raging fire and Wrath let out a infuriated, inhuman shriek and lunged for Remus with a full intent to rip out his stupid fucking throat as his rage consumed him.

The two fighting sides went crashing into the living room loudly nearly knocking over the couch in their wake, both of them screaming and Wrath inhumanly screeching in an almost reptilian manner as he clawed and punched wherever he could reach. Remus wasnt just lying down and taking it either, yelling in loud angry spats of soon unraveling nonsense as he fought back mercilessly, throwing the other into walls, into furniture, throwing punches and kicks of his own. But nothing seemed to slow the orange side down and he struck back with slowly growing claws and fangs and something sharp growing out of his hair, angry tears burning his eyes and his voice too warbled and distorted to even be understood anymore, both their forms twitching and subtly shifting and glowing as they tried to rip each other to shreds, things fluid dripping and twisting lashing out from Remus’s back. Remus was stronger, he always had been, but Wrath had a seemingly endless stream of fury and adrenaline that kept him getting back up and charging in for more, the room being wrecked between them. Maybe things would have gone too far if it hadnt been brought to a hard, screeching halt.

By the time they could both blink they were ripped away from each other, both now uselessly struggling as they were entangled in roughly restraining strings that glowed a eye straining, furious purple color and seemed to tighten and wrap around them more the more they fought and struggled for freedom. Their indecipherable words and incoherent screams where just as ruthlessly cut short as strings wrapped warningly around their throats, not tight enough to actually choke or hurt them, but firm enough to be very present and felt, their voices being quite literally silenced the moment it touched looped once and touched the spot over their vocal cords. There was a horrifically tense silence as their mouths moved in spat insults and screams that never made a sound.

“......that....that is enough out of both of you.”

Virgil’s voice cut through the room like a cleaver, the tone dead, cold, and just as pissed off as they were. At first they couldnt see him, manic eyes darting around until Wrath saw the Duke’s eyes trained on top of the stairs near the hallway, pupils down to small pinpricks. When he glared over in that direction he fully understood and felt all that anger draining and quickly turning into a queasy, cold dread that made him want to cower.

That radiation of fury, or bone chilling fear and a kind of suffocating anxiety that made it hard to breathe and a panic that made them both feel like they were perpetually falling and simultaneously drowning swept over the living room like a flood, the corners and ceilings slowly developing intricate pulsing webs or strings that seem to absorb the rooms light as Virgil stepped, no, half crawled down the stairs and into view. Both sets of eyes were visibly, the whites dyed a void like inky black where his brightly burning purple and green irises cut into them coldly. Something sharp and gleaming poked from his scowl and revealed themselves as fangs as his snarl curled his lips. His hood was up hiding most of his pale skin but couldnt hide the flecks and scatterings of void like, inky and purple spots dusting parts of his slowly purple tinging skin. His hands, snapping out from his sleeves to grip the stair railing were fully blotched in that void, fingers curling into razor sharp claws that strings hung stickily too. The eight dark appendages, opaque and gangly half carried him down faster than usual, the ends digging into the carpet as if for stability. A shrill hiss whistled through Anxiety’s teeth and the panic inducing feeling of being stared at at being excruciatingly examined came from every corner, growing worse and worse as he stalked closer with silent movements.

“ What....the actual fuck are you two doing.” The words with sharp edged and cold, tone flat and tired. They both just stared helplessly, unable to move or speak and both beginning to mindlessly panic. Virgil blinked and a gust of air like an exhale swepted through the room and....left no traces of those fearful horrified feelings in its wake. Both of their feet thudded mutedly against the carpeted floor as the strings released them and retreated back into nothing, disappearing from all around them as if they had never been there to begin with...the room never dimmer than it had started in the morning light and the three of them stood there in silence. Any hints of inhumanity were gone from Anxiety’s form, leaving his two still glowing eyes losing their luster and leaving dull annoyance behind, no fangs, no extra limbs, no claws, no void dotting his skin. When he spoke he took a slow breath, as if unable to breathe just like them.

“....I...I mean it you two...what. the actual fuck did you two wake me up with.” Even his voice had returned to normal, if not for a bit shaky and hoarse from last nights screaming. Wrath saw his eyes were bloodshot, and his face was tinged with blotchy pink and was puffy from crying and something clenched in his chest, thudding hard. He looked at Remus, who was panting from lack of breath, eyes dull and exhausted and pain filled again, injuries from their fight blaring from the blood decorating his body and clothes.

He had done that....he’d lost control again...

“ Im dont want to repeat myself a third fucking time. What the fuck did you--”

“ I...This is my fault I started it...” Both of them looked at him, gazes drilling into him. But he let his head drop as shame took over, choking him a little. This was his family and they were already hurting and look what he’d done-

“Oh piss off Dessperato. It aint only your fault I fucked up too. Look virgy we were both tired and coming off that dumb worry adrenaline shit and we started arguing...and we got waaaaaay too heated and decided to beat the living shit out of each other...sorry we woke you you were suppose to sleep later.” Virgil let out a sigh and rubbed his temples, pulling off his hood and shaking out his messy bedhead.

“ Is that all that happened? Im not deaf and the doors arent sound blockers...” “ Then why are you asking.” Virgil and Remus as a bit of a stare off before finally, for the first time that morning all the life slowly returned to his eyes and he gave a toothy, blood streaked grin and started to laugh. The other two looked at him like he had fully lost it. Then Virgil’s lips twitched up and Des rolled his eyes and failed to stop the grin spreading across his face or the chuckles that he managed to choke out. Within a few minutes all three of them were laughing on the messy living room floor half sprawled over each other and Jealously bemusedly deciding they werent capable of making breakfast and making it for them all instead. Des watched half delerious from his exhaustion as Remus cackled and kicked his leg, just to laugh more when he kicked back.

“ I swear to god no more violence out of you two or I swear I’ll...” Remus let out a snort and gripped the other’s chin between his fingers sensually tugging their faces closer with a smug grin

“ You’ll what Hot Topic? Lock me in the closet again? Or send me reeling with nightmares and hallucinations~ Oh please virgy baby I dare you too~” His tone was light and suggestive, quirking his eyebrows up teasingly for added effect. Virgil snorted and and grinned back leaning close as well.

“ Oh dont start teeempting me with those sweet talkins about hallucinations dr. Hideous~ I might just take you up on that...” Then he flicked his nose and shove him away, both of them laughing. Des was about to try to give them the time to themselves when Remus yanked him between them waggling his finger disapprovingly, making him whack the other’s shoulder with a affectionate “ fuck RIGHT off” and for awhile, in that growing morning light, things felt ok.

It had taken alot of talking, and another arguement almost breaking out between himself and virgil to convince him to back down from confronting the light sides violently. Virgil brought a surprising amount of identical points to remus, while also reminding him that reacting to violently will only make them ignore and dismiss him further. Des was very reluctant, and stubborn, but ultimately he trusted Virgil’s and Remus’s judgement. He trusted Virgil’s reasoning and that he was looking out for him- protecting him. So when he asked him, softly, to refrain from trying to handle it on my own and let him deal with it Des had agreed, obeying his request.

And then a real tipping point pushed him back over the edge.

It was a few weeks later. He remembered distinctly because the mindscape was abuzz with excitement, even the dark sides were effected by Thomas’s unbridled joy. But Virgil had said he was getting a bad feeling...and headed off to the main part of the mindscape that morning. Things were quiet after, calm even. At some point him and Remus had started playing cards, though Remus was blatantly cheating and they were bickering.

Things were fine...things were calm...

Then Virgil crashing into the living room breathing harshly and in the midst of a bad panic attack.

They both jumped up and Remus caught the other in his arms, trying to calm him down and figure out what happened. It took a long time and for awhile they only got bits and pieces out

Thomas

A callback, a big important one he and Roman were thrilled for

Patton, something with both Patton and Deceit

Neither of them agreeing but both of them fighting Virgil

some kind of important friend event on the same day

they had argued, they had fought, there had been yelling by the climax of it

Him and Roman went at each others throat despite the fact he had been trying to help roman’s cause

Deceit fought him alot too, trying to cut him off at every chance in a form of fear response, out of defense

Him and patton argued and fought badly for the first time since Thomas’s last breakup

He thought logan would try to see his side and be a neutral party

Logan was getting tug of warred into agreeing to arguments to push him out

They kept trying to shut him down and dismiss him, they stopped listening fairly

Virgil had to pull out a form shift in front of thomas

He had to use his influences and fear to get them to stop talking over him and twisting his words

it only made things worse, and arguments harsher

They rejected him and his attempts to help more

He started having a panic attack mid argument

He thought logan and patton tried to help but they were getting drowned out by Roman and Dee

There was so much yelling, things that should never be said got thrown

They told Virgil he never does anything but make Thomas worse

Thomas finally nearly screamed for them all to stop and half asked half pleaded for Virgil to just leave until everyone calmed down

He lashed out and hit someone, he wasnt even sure who before he fled, not hearing them yell after him. It mightve been patton, or thomas, or maybe logan

And then his panic attack got worse and neither of them could get another understandable word from him.

In the end Remus eventually got him called down, after a good couple hours of trying, and it took everything in Wrath not to scream and destroy the room.

All Virgil did was try to help, and look what their....their bullshit left him. He was beyond seething at this point, he was fuming he was downright practically breathing fire and shaking from the effort to keep himself still. Remus gave him a cautious warning look, as if he was sizing up one of his many monsters in the imagination and debating if it would kill him or not and Virgil lifted his head to choke out for him to stand down, and to not do anything. Wrath had nodded silently and waited, watching Remus help him upstairs to his room to grab his headphones, and hopefully calm down more. Once they were out of sight he made a decision. He knew the consequences of it, knew theyd both be furious and Virgil would make hell for him for it. But none of that mattered to him

For the first time in many many years...he disobeyed Anxiety’s direct request.

It took a few days to find an opening, but once he saw one he took it, rising up in the big main living room, unknowingly in the middle of a video brainstorm.

Wrath always seemed to appear near the couch, between Roman and Thomas. Just seeing them made his blood boil more than it had been.

It was easy to say he scared the shit out of most of them by just appearing, his entire presence sucking the air from the room and making it hot and tense, a cracked dam waiting to break. Itd been months since he’d seen them face to face, and for a moment his senses got overwhelmed by everything.

But he let that fuel his anger further and he growled for them to fess up. Which one had said it. Roman had of course jumped to the defensive of his friends and that was all Wrath needed.

He lost it, pointing and yelling and accusing Roman. Blaming him for it. Roman didnt back down and fought back, and the fight only seemed to worsen. The others tried to interject, and maybe if Wrath’s vision hadnt been blood red from his fury he wouldve seen they were trying to diffuse the situation and calm things down, talk things out. But he ignored that, whipping around and lashing out at them too

“ Wrath you need to step back and take a deep breath! Youre getting irrational!”

“ Wrath kiddo please we dont have to yell and scream about this Logan’s right lets all take a deep breath ok?”

“ Like hell! Im not going to just let him force his way in here and yell and scream and pretend its ok and we can talk!”

“ Roman please!” “ro stop getting angry back is just making all of it worse the others are right we need to be calm or we’ll never get through to him.”

That voice. Silken and soaked with caution. He whirled around on Deceit and snarled pinning him to the wall without thinking.

“ This is all your fucking fault! Youre the reason they keeping hurting and virgil has breakdowns that put him out of commission for days!! Youre part of the reason Remus locks himself away beating himself up. they trusted you!! We all trusted you and you decided to fuck us over and throw us out like trash!! Was it worth it?!?! Was being here worth breaking the people you grew up with you and loved you?! Well?!” There was yelling around them, and he thought briefly he heard Remus’s and Virgil’s voices behind him as well. But now all that anger, that pushed down bitterness and resentment finally had a target and he couldnt focus on anything else. He didnt even heard Deceits struggling answer as he tried to claw him off, his different eyes wide and his mouth moving in words that werent registering.

“ -youre right ok?! Fuck youre not right at all--fuck fuck I get it youre angry and I fucked up with this, this isnt my fault and I havent been trying to figure out ways to fix it! I totally havent been beating myself up for what happened a few days ago with virgil and I dont regret it ok--” THe words blended together in his head, there were hands on his shoulders ripping him away the the freaked out snake and shoving him into the couch. He snarled but froze when he realized He was staring at the very formal business end of Remus’s morning star, inched from his nose and Remus standing over him with a dark look over his face...dark and upset The red faded from his vision and he blinked rapidly, eyes burning again and jaw aching from how hard he’d been clenching it or from yelling he honestly couldnt even tell anymore. From behind Remus stood both Logan and Virgil, side by side speaking in rapid low voices he couldnt decipher. Behind them he caught of glimpse of Roman and Patton both kneeling on the floor, fretting over a still freaked out Deceit as Jealously offered to help him up. Wrath was struggling to breathe, his body twitching and shaky from the quickly fading adrenaline. Soon he was left feeling cold and sick of himself, staring at Remus with just as wide and wild eyes.

“ Easy....easy spitfire....youre...just breathe for me ok?” He couldnt even nod, he couldnt move. He vageuely noticed Virgil and Logan both looking at him before the morning star was gone and Logan was in front of him, hands palm up in a non-threatening manner.

“ Wrath can you hear me? Good...just listen to my voice...I need you to name me five things you can see.” He blinked rapidly and barely heard Remus’s and Virgil’s murmurs of reassurance. Or maybe Virgil’s was more quiet talking, as he was standing at Patton’ side like the normally bubbly side’s shadow.

“u...uuh....y..youre tie...r-remus’s outfit....the stairs...the others...and the Roman’s s-sword...” Logan gave a nod, slowly kneeling in front of him with a calm, leveled expression that helped him focus more.

“ Good, now four things you can touch. Take your time Wrath.” He flexed his fingers, more of a twitch really as his breathing began to even out slowly. “ Um...My jacket...the couch...my jeans...uh...t..the carpet?” He nodded again through his faltered stammering as the deepness faded.

“ Three things you can hear?” He blinked again and listened for a moment.

“ .....your voice...Remus’s voice...the others...” “ Two things you can smell, remember take your time.” “ Bacon...from breakfast...and someones cologne..” A small smile came to his face as he adjusted his glasses in slow noticeable motions.

“ Just just 1 thing you can taste.” He managed to smack his lips once and his face screwed up at the taste lingering in his mouth.

“ ....acidic bile...” Both their brows furrowed a little but when Logan looked over his shoulder Remus shrugged at the silent question.

“Probably needs to puke Dr. Maywhoo.” Logan sighed at the nickname and turned back to him, holding up his hands a little.

“ Now, Wrath Id life for you to unclench your jaw, roll and relax your shoulders, loosen your posture if you can, uncurl your fingers and exhale please.” He blinked and slowly did as instructed, not realizing until then that he was wound up like a jack in the box. His jaw ached as he unclenched it and his shoulders slumped heavily as he relaxed, fingers sore from apparently being curled into firsts for so long, small red lines in his palms from his nails. He felt calmer, drained and upset, but calm.

“ Logan, Remus.” He looked past them to see virgil standing up tall, if not awkwardly, besides Roman and watching them with a hard to read look.

“ I...think sitting down and calmly talking...is now long overdue.”

~~~~~

Hours later Wrath Des found himself on the mindscapes main couch tiredly nestled besides a dozed off Jealousy Jacob and a cheerfully talking Patton. They had spent hours haphazardly strewn around the very room, just...talking and discussing and airing years worth of grievences. It wasnt easy, and things were no where near fixed or completely repaired. But, there were many small positive steps taken in that direction...and things were lighter and better as they stood at a better understanding of each other. Things werent perfect, and in the back of his mind he could list everything that could fuck up and send them back spiraling. Yet he didnt want to ruin what...whatever it was happening as dinner was cooked. Logan, Remus, and Virgil all sat together on the other side of the couch chatting among themselves and with Patton as they tried to decide on a movie and played candyland. In the kitchen he could hear Roman and Deceit cooking and giggling with each other, trying to outdo each other with some dumb food based pick up lines. But they sounded happy, so many it wasnt that dumb...Des watched them play candyland, staying relatively quiet aside from answering questions and jabs sent his way. It was comfortable and relaxed, and Des couldnt help but yawn. Without noticing , he ended up resting his head on Patton’s clearly unoccupied and underutilized shoulder as his eyes drooped shut. He felt Patton jump a little before slowly relaxing, and he didnt even need to open his eyes to flip Remus off as he let out an overly exaggerated coo at the motion letting himself relax. Patton smelled good he decided. Like fabric softener and baked goods and some kind of spice...Des also decided that the blurry sight of the trio next to them, with Remus’s legs draped across Logan and Virgil’s laps and one hand playing with Virgils messy hair as he sat on Logan’s right and Virgil contently and fully relaxed into Logan’s left side, head resting in the crook of his neck and his hand laced with the logical side’s unused hand as they played was also good. The sound of Jacobs soft snores was soothing and the joyful flirty voices in the kitchen blended into it well when combined with Pattons soft humming. If this was how things would be more often....he’d learn to add a little more patience to his supply of the stuff....

And maybe for once he didnt have to be negative, with no more tension for now to be broken.

The end.

Ok holy shit its finally finished!! This was over 7k goddamn words of emotion and holy shit was it a rollercoaster to write

THis is what happened when I wake up before 5 in the morning after not being able to sleep much...I apparently bust out 15 whole pages worth of words

Now....to go do my chores real quick and go pass the fuck out for an hour or two of sleep

I hope you guys liked it!!!

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forasecondtherewedwon · 4 years

Text

The Stripping Point

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: E (explicit sexual content) Word count: 6387

Happy Birthday, @spiderman-homecomeme!

Summary: Peter's ready to turn his new hobby into a profitable sideline. Unfortunately, he writes down his very first client's address incorrectly and shows up at the wrong house.

MJ opens the door to find some guy dressed as Spider-Man and decides the best way to mess with him is to let him stay. Almost immediately, she loses the upper hand.

Quarantine puts people out of work. A lotta people at first, then less, but never Peter. He keeps shooting for the Bugle, lugging his camera all over the city (instead of squeezing onto buses and subway cars that never really get that much less crowded) while he breathes heavily through his mask. He only takes pictures at outdoor spaces to try to avoid both crowds and loners who hassle him for taking preventative measures during the pandemic. They’re stressed, he gets that, but Peter doesn’t wanna be anywhere near conflict. Spider-Man, on the other hand… Well, when he puts on that mask, it’s pretty much business as usual. He appreciates his face covering more than ever and, hey, it’s cool to do a job with social distancing built in.

His gratitude for the web-slinging side-gig only increases as the weeks of pandemic life stretch into months and Jameson starts ordering him back into situations that are just plain stupid from a health perspective. Never mind that he got kinda accidentally stabbed the other week. It’s a totally different set of dangers. Peter resists the new assignments and because Jameson’ll be in deep shit if his number one Spider-Man photographer makes a fuss about working conditions (and because people are getting so desperate for employment that he can pay a new hire even less than Peter’s paltry freelancing rate), the Bugle shells out for another photographer to cover the work Peter won’t do. Good for Peter’s health, bad for Peter’s bank account―which is already whimpering with hunger pangs from sitting near-empty after paying rent. This gets him thinking. It might be time to turn his early-quarantine hobby into his mid-to-late-quarantine money-maker.

Yeah, pandemic hobbies! By April, it seemed to him like everybody was picking something up. Bread-making, yoga, sewing masks for healthcare workers left criminally under-equipped. The hobby Peter picked up, well… it’s a little different. He began practicing it indoors (obviously), by himself, and with skills gained from reading and watching material on the internet. In those ways, it’s a lot like other people’s hobbies. In some other ways, it’s very, very different. Like, instead of putting on specialized clothing like an apron or yoga pants, Peter’s hobby requires taking clothes off. It’s stripping. Peter’s hobby is stripping.

A few things led to him picking that over sourdough or Sun Salutations. Peter loves not only old movies but also old music. Old movies with iconic dance scenes? That’s, like, the perfect combo. He spends a lot of his downtime playing music in his apartment and, when he’s not wiped or injured, dancing along. He figures it’s good for his mood as well as his fitness. Seriously, he can only do so many chin-ups on the metal bar braced in his bathroom doorframe (which is starting to crack). Patrick Swayze’s solo routine from the end of Dirty Dancing is way more fun, even if Peter did tear the knees on a couple pairs of sweatpants because of it. The more music he listened to, the more he started freestyling his own moves in between those of leading men. It was that―trying to create something good of his own―that helped him understand the routines he watched. He figured out the balance between precision and sex appeal and somewhere in there, he realized he was performing for an audience in his head. And what this imaginary audience wanted wasn’t always the goofiness of acting out Risky Business and sliding across the short strip of bare floor between his kitchen and living room in socks, underwear, and a white shirt. Sometimes, the audience wanted him to lose the shirt.

At that point, Peter was once again wandering out of what he knew. He was comfortable with movie dances, had a little of his own repertoire, but he lacked this extra element of storytelling; it was the one that took him from fully dressed down to boxers and socks without tripping and struggling and falling into his meager possessions. That was when he turned to the internet and confronted the fact that he wanted to learn how to strip. If he happened to stumble into related tutorials on how to give a lap dance, who would know? Who was there to judge Peter as he performed for an empty kitchen chair, dragging his hand along the back and body-rolling to buck his hips towards where someone’s face would be? Yeah, it was kinda embarrassing while he was learning, but he had the endurance to try a move over and over until he nailed it, the strength to draw out isolated movements like twitching his hips to keep his butt drawing circles on the lap of his invisible patron, and the overall coordination of, well, Spider-Man. Which ends up being the most important piece of all because, when Peter decides to take his show on the road (or at least out of his tiny apartment), his ‘stage’ name requires about a second of thought. Spider-Man. He’ll go by Spider-Man. He laughs his ass off when he thinks of it. It’s fucking genius! Spider-Man stripping as himself is the last thing anyone would ever suspect!

Naturally, Peter can’t use any of his actual Spidey suits. Those would probably give him away. Also, he’d feel weird about having Karen’s voice in his ear while he flexed his abs next to somebody’s head. Fortunately, after a little digging―which turns into a lot of digging and leaves his room a mess of comingled clean and dirty clothes―he finds his original suit. The zip-up hoodie plus sweatpants one. Yeah, its technological capabilities are basically zero, it’s a little grimy, and too tight, but he doesn’t need it to do anything besides come off. The wear-and-tear will lend genuine-fake authenticity to his character and the snugness around his more developed muscles (it’s been a decade since he wore it last) will make it… sexier? He guesses? The most important thing is the mask, which is the only part of his costume he won’t strip off. Apart from his underwear, obviously. He’s not that wild.

He gets to work cutting a vertical line up each leg of his sweatpants, then sews in snaps. Boom, tearaways. They look kinda shitty, but if he’s any good at all, whoever he dances for shouldn’t be staring at loose threads.

So Peter has his moves, his costume, a few songs in mind, and no engagements. Oh, he thinks he can figure out how to get jobs, it’s just that he somehow keeps coming home, sitting down to compose his ad, and then doing something completely different instead. He’s truly scared witless. Nobody’ll see your face, he chants in his mind to psych himself up every time he’s heading home to his apartment. Still, he freezes at his laptop. There’s nothing about his body that he’s ashamed of―he uses it every single day to help people as Spider-Man. Maybe it’s that, this time, he’d be using it to help himself. Is he a monster for making a buck off his superhero persona? Peter holds onto that question for about a week until the date to pay rent is approaching and his bank account shudders in horror. Ok, money’s tight and he hasn’t been hit by a car lately, so he won’t freak anybody out with road rash or bruising or more of his hand-sewing to close gashes. With a little self-pedicure here and hair-removal there, Peter looks at himself in his bathroom mirror and decides this is as good a time as any.

He advertises online and his hands are still trembling when he gets a call from an unfamiliar number ten minutes after his ad goes live. The ringing phone actually makes him jump. It’s probably a telemarketer, or a wrong number. Nobody would call him with a job this fast. He was counting on having at least a day to sit with the choice he made. Peter fumbles for the phone and answers. For the next minute and a half, he struggles to hear the woman’s voice over the blood rushing in his ears. She thinks he’s the Spider-Man Stripper. He is the Spider-Man Stripper. This is hilarious and terrifying and oddly similar to the brief moment of freefall between slinging one web and the next as he darts around Midtown. Her friend’s birthday party, she tells him, two days from now. Something else she planned (Peter’s adjusting his sweaty, slipping grip on his phone and misses the details) fell through and if he can be the entertainment for a half-hour or so it would save both the party and her friendship. Not to add extra pressure, she jokes, laughing. The sound Peter makes is a weak echo. So can he be there? Is there space in his schedule? He pretends to check that ‘schedule’ so she doesn’t think he’s a total amateur. Yep, yep, he has an opening for her. She has an opening for him, she flirts back, making his eyes go wide as he clutches the phone. God, why couldn’t his first gig have been for some 22-year-old’s bachelorette instead of this middle-aged-sounding woman who possibly wants to eat him alive? By the time she’s telling him her address, Peter’s hands are shaking worse than ever, he can’t immediately find a pen, and she reels it off to him way too quickly. He’s scrawling the address on his arm and right as he opens his mouth to ask her to repeat it, she hangs up. He peers at his arm doubtfully. Should he call her back for confirmation? No, he doesn’t have the guts. Anyway, he can figure this out. The street name was Woodman, right? Or was it Woodlawn? And the number was 712. Or 271. There was definitely a 7 in there somewhere. And his client’s name was… Lisa? Lana. Maybe Linda?

Peter cradles his face in his hands and groans. When his phone starts ringing again―different number―he frantically declines the call, then deletes his ad. One job at a time. Even that, he now thinks, seems ambitious.

―

MJ’s glad she’s not the one throwing this party together. As Liz’s best friend, it’s Betty who took the reins, organizing and then scrapping everything more than once as New York moved from phase to phase during this pandemic. The end result is still less than what MJ knows Betty wants; ideally, there would be more than a handful of guests and things like shiny helium balloons and fancy desserts would be hand-delivered to Liz’s front door on the day of the party. Instead, MJ sits on the arm of Liz’s couch as she inflates yet another latex balloon the good old-fashioned way: blowing it up by mouth until she’s dizzy.

Cindy stomps over and plops down next to her, snatching a balloon from the party pack of 50 (and Betty insists they need them all). She’s been banished from cupcake decorating. MJ would offer a word or two of sympathy, but balloon duty has the prior claim on how she spends her breaths. All she can do is toss Cindy a plastic tiara (Betty bought one―just one!―reading ‘Mom-to-Be’ for Liz, but the online shop screwed up her order and sent two dozen ‘Birthday Girl’ tiaras in its place) after tying off her finished balloon. MJ’s already wearing one. Meanwhile, the tiara-less Mom-to-Be is being driven around the block a million times by her cousin because they’re having the party at Liz’s place and Betty wants the decorations to be a surprise. Liz’s husband, more simply, was banished for the entire day. MJ originally thought they could’ve put him to work, since it’s pretty hectic, but she’s too oxygen-deprived to worry anymore.

Finally, Betty declares from the kitchen that she’s frosted her final cupcake. MJ begs for a reprieve from balloon-inflating and Betty, feeling accomplished and generous, agrees they probably have enough balloons now. Cindy casts her half-inflated one away in disgust before going to help Betty clean up baking ingredients and do dishes. MJ does her best to shoo the balloons to one side of the living room, then carries spare chairs in because their couch won’t fit everyone. Fortunately, they’ve all been recently tested for illness and been vigilant hand-washers and mask-wearers since then, so at least she doesn’t have to find a way to keep every seat six feet apart. She’s just positioning a final chair, still a little out of breath from the balloons, when the doorbell rings. In the kitchen, Betty screams.

“IT’S STILL A MESS IN HERE! STALL HER!”

“’K!” MJ agrees.

She kicks a couple stray balloons out of her path and goes to get the door. They weren’t supposed to come back to the house until Betty texted, but maybe they got tired of driving around, or Liz started feeling carsick. MJ knows she’s been pretty delicate her entire pregnancy with twins floating around in her uterus like a pair of nausea-inducing astronauts.

As she opens the door wide, she sucks in a deep breath to call out a sarcastic ‘Surprise!’ But it’s not Liz and her cousin. It’s… a guy? In a red and blue costume. She thinks it’s a guy. She can’t even see the person’s face, but when MJ reaches up to self-consciously adjust her ‘Birthday Girl’ tiara, they tilt their head and seem to follow her movement.

“Oh! I’m here for you! You’re… not what I was expecting.” It’s a masculine laugh. Young. Nervous.

She crosses her arms suspiciously.

“You’re not what I was expecting either,” she accuses.

“Shit,” he mumbles. “I guess it was supposed to be a surprise.”

What? Betty might have planned a few surprises for today, but MJ does not recall a dude in a mismatched sweatsuit being one of them.

“Guess so,” she says slowly.

“Sorry, I’m, uh, Spider-Man.” He gestures to the costume. Well, she can kinda see the very distant resemblance to what the real Spider-Man wears; there is a crudely-drawn spider on the chest.

“Uh huh.”

MJ’s suspicion is shifting into amusement―this guy really seems to think he has an invitation―when Cindy comes up behind her. MJ darts a look at her friend and is glad Cindy’s no longer sporting her own tiara. No need to confuse this poor… Spider-Man impersonator.

“What’s up?” Cindy asks, poking her chin over MJ’s shoulder, happier now that she’s fled the tasks Betty continually assigns.

“Hey,” says ‘Spider-Man’. “I, uh, I was hired to, uh, dance for the, um…” He gestures at MJ’s tiara. “…birthday girl.”

At ‘dance,’ MJ’s eyebrows shoot up. She looks quickly at Cindy and realizes she’s going to say something. Cindy will handle this how she handles any inconvenience or anomaly: with forthrightness and concision. She’ll have this faux-venger hitting the road before MJ can blink. With a short, friendly laugh towards Spider-Man, MJ angles herself to block Cindy from view and locks eyes with her friend. Cindy’s face says, What are you doing? We don’t know this guy. MJ’s counters with, Let’s see how this plays out. Cindy rolls her eyes, but nods, so MJ steps away from her again.

“As long as you haven’t traveled outside the country in the last fourteen days or experienced symptoms of fever, etcetera etcetera, come on in,” Cindy invites, gesturing Spider-Man through the doorway. “I’m so sorry, but we were running a little behind with the food, so I have to disappear back to the kitchen. But why don’t you get started for her?”

“Cindy,” MJ hisses as she closes the door. “You have to stay.”

“I believe the man said he was here for the birthday girl.”

Cindy smirks and they both glance over to see that Spider-Man has found the speaker and connected his phone. Something catches MJ’s eye and her gaze skims down his leg. What’s up with the side of his pants?

“I’m not the birthday girl,” she reminds Cindy in a panicked whisper. “There is no birthday girl.”

“Well, in her absence, it looks like you’re the one getting her presents. Careful with that one.”

“Because it seems fragile?”

“Because I feel like it’s the kind that comes with a big package.”

Cindy pokes MJ hard in the side and flees when she squirms away. MJ glares after her. Yes, she’s curious about what the hell this impersonator’s doing here in that crappy costume, but it’s so much easier to be curious when she can observe something unfolding without actively having to participate. What she was thinking was that he’d come in and the three of them―Betty, Cindy, and herself―would see how far this went before something either gave them away as not being the people who ‘hired’ him (so he claims), or the guy crumbled under the quavering weight of his own anxiety. Nothing about his look or his manner announces experience. Now, MJ’s on her own as she takes a seat in one of the chairs she brought in. She crosses her legs, bobs her foot, and hopes to hell that Spider-Man’s a breakdancer.

“Listen…” she begins to say, leaning forward to address him, but as she speaks, he turns up the volume and her uncertain voice is drowned out by chimes tinkling above throbbing bass. Oh no.

It’s the tempo that scares MJ. She thinks she could deal with a rabbiting drum intro or the bright squeal of quick fingers on an electric guitar. This song is tauntingly slow and it’s obvious, by how Spider-Man turns in her direction and walks to her with measured steps, that what she’s about to experience will look nothing like handstands or the worm, nothing youthfully, recklessly acrobatic. It’s also clear that she’s in this alone now because the guy putting his back to her and swirling his hips with agonizing slowness as the gravelly vocals come in is in some kind of zone she can’t follow him into.

When I look in your eyes… the song goes. …I can feel the fire.

Nope, MJ’s outside of this, in the real world, where she hears him lower the zipper on his sweatshirt. When he rotates to face her, taking his time, she finds her hands are gripping the seat on either side of her thighs.

A see-through disguise can’t conceal desire.

Spider-Man’s disguise is hardly see-through―seriously, he must’ve been sweltering in those sweats on his way here―but it’s open now, from his clavicle down to where the band of his pants grips his taut abdomen. He probably can’t hear the groan that pushes out of her mouth when she’s just trying to exhale. God, please let the music cover it, MJ thinks. His hood’s still up as he steps even closer to her chair, subtly twitching his hips in her direction, and the ends of his sweatshirt dangle, flashing glimpses of more chest, more abs. MJ swallows and reminds herself that this is all kind of a joke. That she’s the one indulging him and they’ll laugh when this is over. She’ll apologize for the mix-up and he’ll shrug it off as he accepts monetary compensation for his time.

I’ve been readin’ your lips… the singer announces in a louder growl. Spider-Man abruptly strips the blue sleeves from his costume, leaving his torso bare beneath what’s now just a hooded red vest. He’s a fake superhero, but those arms are the real deal. Wow. …they don’t need no translation.

He widens his stance, drawing her eye down to his solid-looking thigh, then slides his hand across her shoulder to grip the back of her chair. His hips roll forward and she instinctively uncrosses her legs. With the extra room, Spider-Man briefly presses his thigh to hers. It scrunches the hem of her dress up before dragging it back down as he retreats. It’s reasonably innocent, likely not even intentional, but heat flares up MJ’s face like one of the candles she might blow out if this were actually her birthday. Honestly, she keeps forgetting it’s not.

They want more than a kiss, I come to make my donation.

Ok, she feels more than just thigh when he glides higher on her lap. MJ automatically flicks her gaze lower, because he’s a stranger and right in her space, and it lands on his groin. Spider-Man bucks suggestively and MJ immediately raises her eyes from the bump in the front of his close-fitting sweatpants. Jesus, is it warm in here? Somebody should do something about that before Liz gets home, fiddle with the thermostat or, or something…

So turn out the lights! the singer’s voice rockets up and goosebumps ripple up MJ’s arms as Spider-Man’s hands smooth down them in his fingerless gloves. He bounces low into a crouch and can’t be more than an inch away from the fabric of her dress as he rolls up her body, face in her lap for, I’m goin’ down slowly. Her pounding heart and rapid breathing almost push her boobs into his forehead when he reaches her chest.

Don’t tell me what’s right, just tell me you want me.

When their heads are level, Spider-Man surprises her by sitting lightly on her lap, nearly chest-to-chest. He takes her hands in his―MJ’s sufficiently stunned to allow him to break her grip on the seat―and guides them to his head, making her push his hood off. It’s strange to feel the mask under her palms. Wondering what his hair looks like really shouldn’t be a main concern right now.

Oh, tell me you want me. Just tell me you want me, want me, want me!

The more insistent the song becomes, the more persuasively Spider-Man gyrates in her lap. Sliding a hand over his head shouldn’t be this seductive without visible hair to push his fingers through, but the way his arm bulges with the motion makes up for it, in her opinion. MJ doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They hover in the air between their bodies.

Let’s make it, baby! the song explodes as he thrusts forward powerfully, throwing his head back.

Well, let’s make it, baby!

His hands go to his shoulders.

Well, let’s make it, baby!

He works his vest off, revealing the rest of his chest.

Let’s make it, baby!

He flings the vest toward the sofa. MJ doesn’t know whether or not it lands there. She doesn’t turn to look. This is… more muscle than she’s ever seen in person on a single human body. Once more, he takes hold of the back of her chair, but it’s with both hands now and his forearms squeeze her in, compelling her to lean forward as he grinds across her lap, forward and back, to, Come, come, come a little bit closer. His face angles into her neck; she feels his nose brush her skin through the mask. She can hear him breathing and it electrifies her. The only reason she clamps her thighs together like she does is to give him more room to straddle her. Really, it’s for his comfort, as a professional. Because this is all just… very professional.

She hasn’t determined where to lay her hands, which is fine because he has another use for them.

I wanna play doctor, the singer drawls while Spider-Man brings her hands to his pecs. Is his heart beating as hard under there as hers is right now or is she imagining it? He effortlessly takes gentle hold of her wrists and encourages her hands down his body. She doesn’t even notice when he lets her go to peel the gloves from his hands and push his sneakers off, leaving MJ to trace the thick, defined ridges of his abdomen.

It keeps gettin’ harder, harder, harder to keep it away!

With the end of the line, Spider-Man rips the sweatpants off―a series of metallic popping sounds too close together to count. Not that counting’s on her mind. Eyeing the cherry-red boxer-briefs that are even tighter than the sweats, she swallows. She can’t remember how to exist on the outside of this. She can’t find the door. Believing that this guy―who’s not really Spider-Man, just like she’s not really a birthday girl―understands, that they’re sharing the scorching intimacy she suddenly feels, is naïve. MJ is not naïve. She just can’t exactly explain why what should be an obvious (skillful, but obvious) pantomime of sex is working on her like real foreplay.

I wanna taste the sweat…

She swears he’s breathing harder than the dancing alone can explain when he palms her knees and pries them apart. Her legs are slack and willing. She is sweating.

…that’s runnin’ over your body.

Tucking his fingers into the backs of her knees, Spider-Man jerks her forward on her seat. It raises her hem to mid-thigh and her pulse to low orbit. He hikes her legs around his hips and she crosses her wrists behind his neck without guidance as he stays in what has to be a strenuous squat to body-roll. Everything comes forward in a delicious wave, from his shoulders to his crotch. From lots of angles, it probably looks like he’s fucking her into Liz’s kitchen chair.

In actuality, there’s no contact between them―not anyplace interesting―until…

Get the sheets all wet!

MJ doesn’t know if his hips nudge between her legs accidentally or intentionally on an overzealous roll. She’s never been given a lap dance before! Is this right? Is this permitted? He seems ready to run with it, repeating the action with greater certainty.

Yeah, I wanna make ya feel nau-nau-nau-nau-nau-nau-nau-naughty!

When the singer quits stuttering out the word, Spider-Man lifts MJ right off the chair into his arms. She inhales hard, desperate for air as the song returns to, Let’s make it, baby! And let’s make it, baby! Well, let’s make it, baby! And let’s make it, baby, baby! He has one hand grasping the underside of her thigh, the other clutching the middle of her back. He thrusts toward her through the chorus, shy of nudging the way he did before. The motion sways MJ fairly gently, thanks to his sure grip and ability to carry her weight with ease, but she might as well be tumbling around inside a washing machine for all she currently knows of up and down.

The animal urgency of the chorus drops down to the slow lull of instrumentals and Spider-Man sets MJ on her feet. She just about rolls her ankle and plans to never admit this made her weak in the knees. As irregular drumbeats keep her on edge, he sneaks around behind her and takes her wrists, raising her arms over her head as she fights the instinct to turn and stare at this guy’s mostly-naked body. She hasn’t dated anyone since before the pandemic, but it’s more than that. While she holds her arms up there, Spider-Man rocks against her from behind, the inside of his thigh rubbing the outside of hers, messing up her skirt, confusing her heartbeat. His hands clamp down on her hips and work them in a circular motion with her ass pressed directly against him.

Wait.

―

Peter’s hard. Of all the things that have definitely gone wrong (having to make up a routine from scratch after blanking in the face of a woman 20 years younger and 500 times more beautiful than who he expected to find) and probably gone wrong (he hasn’t shaken the exhilarating feeling that he’s almost certainly at the wrong house), this is the most serious. He’s in so, so far over his head and sinking deeper, metaphorically, as the woman he’s wrapped around cautiously returns the pressure, pressing his erection.

He was so nervous after meeting her that he went straight to setting up his music and forgot to ask for her name. It’s not like he can casually ask now. It feels like things have gone too far for that. Wasn’t he supposed to feel some layer of detachment, doing this? Stripping’s supposed to be a part-time job, like taking pictures for the Bugle. Maybe he’s too used to caring about people to set himself apart from this. Maybe it’s the shock of her youth and the feeling of touching a real-live person after practicing with an empty chair over months of physical distancing.

Maybe he’s just horny.

The instrumental section goes on and on and Peter yearns. This is a job, he thinks, running his hands up to her waist and back to her hips. As the musical intermission’s finally drawing to a close, he improvises again, scooping the woman up into his arms in a bridal carry just to eliminate the sweet friction against his dick. Where does he go from here? He knows what the tutorials told him, what really gets the target of a lap dance/strip show going. Could go with the couch and push his red vest aside, but the soft rug underfoot beckons.

Now turn out the lights! Bon Jovi rasps as Peter moves gradually to his knees and nuzzles his masked face into the woman’s chest because, at this point, why the hell not? She smells so good. He hears her gasp, then her fingers dig fleetingly into the back of his neck like she wants to hold him there. But she lets go and he lays her on her back in the valley created by leisurely-migrating silver balloons. The light refracted on the woman’s face is crisp and ethereal.

Don’t tell me you love, love me, no… Just, just tell me you want me.

Peter springs on top of her, arms braced and locked, and performs an exaggerated horizontal roll, his hips close above hers. This is the million-dollar (or, like, twenty-dollar) move. The one that unambiguously mimics sex. Though it’s so overstated, so dramatic, the tutorials claimed that, by this stage, the person being performed for would be so wound up, so aroused, that they’d just about believe it was the real thing. He watches the woman’s shaky breathing and flushed cheeks, feels her hands caress his abs, and thinks he’s doing pretty damn good. Too bad he can’t count this as a performance. The desire he feels when he lowers himself closer to her is not an act.

Don’t tell me you love me.

The skin-tight front of his underwear skims her dress. And, though she should really keep her legs out straight to do her part in preserving the distance between them (because he’s fucking failing), she slides her foot along the floor, raising her knee. Peter snatches hold of that knee with the feeling that they just signed some kind of contract and grinds himself against the fold of skirt between her legs. The woman’s chest heaves as she pants. His balls ache for him to stop playing.

Oh, tell me you want me, want me, want me, want me, want me, want me, want me! Bon Jovi and Peter’s sex drive demand, from a rumble up to a scream. Let’s make it, baby!

The woman beneath him tosses her head and bats away a balloon that clings to her hair. Her birthday crown’s askew.

Well, let’s make it, baby!

Peter’s hand is on her ribcage, too near her breast.

Well, let’s make it, baby!

He huffs, loud inside his mask, as he thrusts against her like she’s not some accident, like she asked him to meet her here. For this.

And let’s make it, baby!

Distinct lyrics burst into a high, expressive shriek of noise that sounds enough like a woman being pleasured to send a tingle up Peter’s spine. He grinds down hard, gripping the woman’s hip. By the second shriek, her back’s bowing, her hands commandingly squeezing his arms. By the third, she’s moaning as she rocks against him, tearing an appreciative grunt from him in response. The fourth shriek finishes her right before the song. Peter’s breathing hard on top of her, on the jaw-clenching edge of climax himself, feeling her writhe as the music fades out. It just leaves the two of them here, damningly entangled.

After a long silence, his playlist moves on. Peter stares down at her another few seconds as she strokes her fingers across her mouth, then her eyes snap to where she can’t see his through the goggles.

“Oh shit,” he mutters.

The woman laughs awkwardly like those two words are an understatement for the degree to which this has not gone as planned. She didn’t even know the plan, but anyone would know this was not the intended conclusion―a stripper dressed up in a novelty Spider-Man costume should excite, entertain, inspire lust. But he should stop short of dry-humping his client to completion. Yeah, that has to be an unwritten rule someplace. Peter really shouldn’t have needed to read it to know better though. This has just gotten incredibly out of hand and he has no idea what to say or do.

“LIZ IS ON HER WAY!” a female voice yells from the back of the house, maybe the kitchen that the other woman vanished into earlier.

Peter jerks to his feet, still rigid in the front of his underwear. He thinks the woman he just, uh, danced for is requesting help up, but she’s actually pointing. He looks and sees the bathroom just off the stairs.

“I’m good,” she says. “Go before Cindy sees you.”

Snagging his pants from the floor and the vest portion of his sweatshirt from the couch, Peter bolts for the bathroom as the woman sits up from the rug. Inside, his hands quake with adrenaline as he zips his sweatshirt and refastens all the snaps on his pants. He does his best to adjust things so his waning erection’s not too obvious. For a minute, he yanks the mask from his head and stares at himself in the mirror as he breathes. This is not the side-hustle for him. This was his first and last gig as the Spider-Man Stripper.

Mask back on, he returns to the front room to find the woman he was grinding all over standing with her arms crossed protectively as her friend appears to grill her under her breath. They both look at him as he stuffs his feet back into his shoes and grabs his gloves and the blue sleeves of his sweatshirt. He’ll just carry them. If he stood here and began redoing them, he’d probably die from mortification before he got the last snap snapped. He collects his phone, stopping the music mid-song. He doesn’t know what’s playing. Could be his favourite song in the world and he wouldn’t be able to hear it right now over the volume of the look his ‘birthday girl’ is giving him.

“I’ll just, um, show you out,” she offers, shepherding him away from the woman he takes to be Cindy. She doesn’t volunteer anything about the other person, Liz, who they seem to be expecting.

“Great.”

He’s thankful that Cindy gives them a little space and doesn’t follow. They pause in the entranceway. The woman presses two fifties into his hand, avoiding eye contact. Peter clears his dry throat and nods, closing his fingers over the money because he’s more uncomfortable about the idea of prolonging this with a back-and-forth over him saying it’s too much while she insists than he is about the idea that she’s kinda paying him for sex, even if thinks she doesn’t mean to.

She pulls the door open and Peter jumps aside for two women, one very pregnant. There’s a flurry of voices all of a sudden and when he slips outside onto the step before someone can ask who he is and what he’s doing here, he doesn’t expect the birthday girl to come after him.

“MJ,” she blurts out.

He grins under the mask.

“Peter.”

He never gets to tell people that when he’s in disguise, but she doesn’t know he really is Spider-Man. The honesty feels good.

“So, that was…”

“This wasn’t supposed to be… Um,” he starts again, swinging his arms slightly. “That was my first time. Doing this. I’ve never done a routine for anybody before, so I want you to know I haven’t, like, done that with a bunch of people. I’ve never done this. And I think, uh, based on what happened in there, that I probably shouldn’t.” Peter’s laugh is strained. “I really don’t―”

“Do you want my number?”

He chokes.

“What?”

“I… thought I might as well ask,” she says, clearly self-conscious, looking prepared for rejection.

“No, of course I do,” Peter tells her quickly, holding out his phone. “Please.”

“Ok.” MJ gives him a quick smile, then looks at his screen as she adds herself as a contact. He’s grateful she’s the one putting the numbers in. He really can’t be trusted with that. Peter’s not nervous now, just excited as he thinks about using the money she gave him to buy her dinner.

Though he’s pretty sure he knows the answer, he says, “This isn’t the right house, is it?” as she hands his phone back. She laughs.

“No.”

“Yeah, I… kinda had a feeling.”

“Hey, whoever she was, her loss was my gain,” MJ says bluntly, then blushes hard. Peter chuckles to himself, looking down.

“Ummm…”

“Well, I should get in there. Baby shower.”

“Right, yeah, sure, you gotta.”

“But call me.”

“I will. I definitely will.”

“Maybe you can even show me what you look like without the mask,” she says.

Peter nods, body nothing but a cage for a butterfly swarm, then turns. Behind him, he hears Cindy’s voice as MJ steps back inside.

“Did you just give him a hundred bucks?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what you owe me for going in on the stroller!”

“I’ll go to the bank and take out another hundred right after the party if you want,” MJ offers, sounding unconcerned.

“But a hundred bucks? MJ, he was here for ten minutes!”

“Trust me, Peter earned it.”

“Peter?! That’s Spider-Man’s name?”

“Cindy, come on, he’s not actually Spider-Man.”

The door shuts. Of course he’s not. Peter could no more be Spider-Man than he could fall half in love with a woman simply because of the way she smelled and the fact that she wouldn’t let him off the hook for a lap dance. He starts down the sidewalk with a skip, smiling wide beneath his mask.

#my writing #spideychelle #spideychelle fic #spideychelle fanfiction #peter parker #peter x mj #peter x michelle #peter parker x michelle jones #michelle jones

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owillofthewisps · 4 years

Text

portraits hung in empty halls - part one

notes: fun fact i am about ten times more nervous about writing jaskier than i am about geralt, idk why! also daylights saving time is a farce and a personal attack on me, a humble woman trying to not have a destroyed sleep schedule.

rating: still teen, somehow!

pairing: geralt of rivia/female reader

word count: 3.5k

prologue

there is an odd little portrait tucked away in an alcove. at night, the canvas lies empty. most never notice it.

the Witcher does.

The sun sets, and you rise.

The silk sheet that shrouds you slips to the floor. In the dim glow of the candlelight, it glimmers like snow in the moonlight, the creamy white of it cooled to prismatic ice. You leave it puddled on the stained wood floor. You pad barefoot to the washbasin, adjusting to the lively hum of the inn, to the jolt of noise after so long without. It is never an easy transition.

The cool water trickles down your neck as you splash your face, the droplets rolling over your bare skin like an early spring rain, collecting in the dip of your navel before spilling onward. You turn to the tiny nook that shelves your clothing, your stiff joints moaning as they stretch and pop.

Rose, you think, spotting the verdant sprig of fresh mint placed carefully on the small stool. The bundle you’d pulled a leaf from yesterday had been wilting at the edges, the leaves curling in under themselves, like shy children covering their faces. You’ll have to make her something. Embroider her favorite gown, maybe, weave delicate little morning glories around the bells of her sleeves so they sway with her, as if she’s the dawn wind.

The mint tears under your teeth. It burns cold, searing away the heavy, oily coating that lays rotting on your tongue. You chew slowly, rolling the leaf through your mouth as you unfold your chemise and drape it across the stool.

Unwinding the thin golden chain looped messily around your neck and shoulders takes time. You tease at it, slip your fingers beneath the delicate, tangled thread of it. It is the daintiest tether you have ever seen, a golden, gossamer little thing, a strand of a spider’s web lit by the sun. You dump it onto the thin wood stand the washbin rests on.

Your earrings clink as you set them down next to the chain. It’s a relief to have them off, to let your lobes rest from the sharp pull of their hefty weight.

The homespun wool of your skirts rustles against the floorboards as you dress. You sweep the discarded jewelry into your palm; you dump it onto the silk sheet, watch as the gold sinks into the folds of the fabric.

You leave it all on the floor.

A few travelers tip their heads to you as you sweep down the inn’s halls. You sail past the small alcove that had so entranced Geralt last night, stepping carefully away from the shadowed niche.

Johan is waiting for you at the archway to the tavern. You’ve never thought of him as large, with his wiry frame, thin but strong, like a bowstring pulled tight, but he fills the archway. There’s still a faint hint of rot to him, something acidic tinting his strong, handsome features. You slow your pace, come to a halt before him, just shy of nose to nose, your skirts frothing over his feet like a wave breaking on the sand. The scowl knitting his brow deepens.

“If your intent is anything other than apology, save your breath.”

The flush flares into life. It spills crimson across his skin like wine, spreading wide. “Apologize?” Johan snarls. “When you’re the one who defended that mutant?”

“Did I not just say to save your breath?”

His hand flexes. You watch as his fingers curl into a fist, the knuckles gone bone white, and wait. There’s fear cut sharp into his visage, barely blanketed by the veil of anger on the surface.

“If you’ve nothing to say,” you tell him, “please move.”

That fist of his tightens again, his knuckles a ridge of mountains. The tendons in his jaw cord. “The Witcher cannot stay.”

“He paid his coin, just like the rest.”

Johan’s jaw works. “Stubborn bitch.”

“Careful,” you say, and there is crackling frost in your tone, winter come early. “I won’t tell you to save your breath again.”

He considers you, those green eyes burning incandescent, all sparking St. Elmo’s fire. Johan has often reminded you of a dog with a bone, setting his teeth into the marrow of his irritant and worrying it until he breaks it.

“Move,” you say, pleasantly enough, but with that ice still threaded through your voice. “Malinka’s expecting me.”

Johan lingers in the door frame for a moment more, a shadow of a threat, but he steps aside. You brush by him without a care; if you clip him with an elbow, well, he should have moved further. He’ll just add it to the list of wrongs you’ve done him, you think, and gods know that’s the least of your concerns.

The sounds of the tavern sweep over you. The clank of tankards, that thick hollow thud of wood against wood; the spitting crackle of the fire; chatter punctuated by uproarious laughter, rising to fill the rafters. It is a balm against you. Noise has long been something to steady yourself on.

You scan the room as you enter, and do not glimpse the Witcher’s broad shoulders. Nor do you see a hint of the bard. Your shoulders loosen, the tension melting out of them like winter yielding to spring. Malinka is behind the bar, her ebony curls flowing like a wild river to her shoulders, gleaming in the candlelight. She presses a quick kiss to your cheek as you join her. Worried, you think. She is not alone in that.

“Ale!” Wren calls from the end of the bar.

“Coin!” you retort, sashaying over to him and leaning against the pitted wood counter. You pull a tankard from nearby, wincing as you flex your stiff fingers. They always take the longest to grow limber once more.

“Fair enough,” he laughs.

“Truly, Wren,” Annika says as she slides past with a tray of empty tankards. “Your mother would faint to hear your lack of manners. Tell me, how do the village girls stand your voice?”

“Yes, Wren, you’re lucky you’re charming when your mouth is closed,” you add.

“Beautiful and cruel, the both of you!”

You reach across the bar and pat his cheek. “Just a little,” you say with a laugh.

Annika snorts, passing you a tray. You nestle it into the crook of your hip and get to work.

The tavern only grows more lively, the gleam of light spilling from the doors cracking the darkness outside open. You whirl about, dipping around tipsy patrons, carrying plates of food high to drop them at tables.

It’s one of the busier nights, considering tomorrow is traditionally a day of rest, and you revel in the tumult, in the show of overflowing life. It keeps you light on your feet, moving until there’s sweat gleaming at the hollow of your throat. You dodge Elias’s hands with a laugh as you make your way back to the bar.

“So,” Annika says. “A Witcher, then?” Her slim hands move like water, smooth and flowing, pouring tankard after tankard between slicing off fat hunks of brown bread, still wisping steam even in the heated air of the tavern.

You sigh and duck beneath the bar to pull a few sausages from the small larder. “Yes,” you say. “Don’t you start.”

“There’s little for me to say.”

“And yet you so often say things anyway.”

She laughs. “True,” she says. “I’ve no quarrel with the Witcher, so long as he keeps his sword sheathed."

If Rose were here, that would not leave untouched - ‘which one,’ she’d say, her grin impish, her voice dropping into something sultry - but she is not, and you think you should try to keep thoughts like that from your head. At least until Geralt is gone, when there’s no danger to considering the thickness of his thighs and the knife of his golden gaze.

“I doubt he’s the one you should worry about,” you say, thinking of the way many men’s eyes had followed Geralt last night, malicious and hungry.

“Probably not.”

Someone calls to Annika from down the bar; she shoves the knife into your hand and gestures towards a loaf. You drop the sausages onto a nearby plate and start to slice the bread.

“I looked for you earlier. I didn’t think it would be so hard to locate such a pretty woman in the crowd.”

You glance up. The bard is smiling at you, his blue, blue eyes catching the light. You cast your gaze to the side, but Geralt is nowhere to be seen. Your grip on the knife’s handle loosens.

“I work nights,” you tell him, and if your smile is a little brittle, he doesn’t seem to notice. “Makes it hard to find me early. What can I get you?”

“Your name?”

“It’s a bit out of your price range, I think.”

He gasps, one hand flying to his chest. “Will you not take pity on a poor bard? How am I meant to write a song praising this inn and its lovely innkeeper?”

You arch a brow. “Why would you need my name for that, bard?”

He blinks. “Jaskier,” he tells you, and it takes you a moment to realize that he’s given you his name. “And because you are the innkeeper?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you certain?”

You stifle a laugh. “Quite,” you say, but then you take pity on him and give him your name. “Why did you think I was the innkeeper?”

“Ah,” Jaskier says. “You were...forceful, last night, not that Geralt was particularly forthcoming about it. Also the serving girl said you were.”

Betony, you think, following Jaskier’s long, nimble fingers as he gestures towards the far side of the tavern. Betony glances up just then, and from the cheeky grin she flashes, she’s unrepentant. It’s harmless enough, nothing worth even getting irritated over, so you blow her a kiss.

“I’m not,” you repeat. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“I’m not sure you could disappoint, love,” Jaskier says.

You fumble with your knife, the tip of it sinking into the wooden board beneath the sausage with a hollow thunk.

My love, Dymitr murmurs, his lips brushing against the curving shell of your ear.

“Isn’t that what you called me this morning?” Rose chirps. She swings over the bar in a flurry of crimson skirts and wraps an arm around your waist. She still carries the chill of the night air on her skin. She presses herself against you, lets you use her as an anchor against the wave pulling you under. “Aren’t bards meant to be inventive?”

Jaskier gapes.

“Be nice, Rose,” you say.

“Rose?” Jaskier says, “Funny, I took her for a bramble.”

Rose snorts. “Be careful not to be caught on thorns, bard,” she says. She tugs at her shawl, lets it flow from her shoulders to the crook of her elbows like a waterfall. It catches against you. “You were looking for the innkeeper? What is it you want from me?”

You sink your elbow into her side. Her curse is blistering; down the counter, Wren cackles at her creativity.

“She’s not the innkeeper,” you tell Jaskier, who is looking somewhere between distraught and combative. “Rose, will you please get more bread?”

She laughs, the sound like woodfire smoke, billowing out in slow, low tones. “I suppose,” she says. Rose dips away from you, giving your waist one last squeeze, and heads towards Wren.

“Gods, do all women here worship a trickster god?” Jaskier asks. “If not, you should consider it. I imagine most would excel.”

“Probably.”

“Is there a test I have to pass to get the innkeeper’s name? If it’s a physical one, can I have a champion? Geralt would do nicely at that.”

You pull the knife free of the board and set it to the side. Someone calls for ale; you sigh and pour a tankard of it. “You can play,” you tell Jaskier. “We’ll give you coin at the end of the night in addition to any earnings you may get from the crowd. That’s why you were looking for the innkeeper, yes?”

Jaskier sets his hands on his hips, his long fingers drumming against the fine material of his clothes. “Do you just use some title other than innkeeper to confuse people?”

“Malinka’s the innkeeper,” you say, nodding towards her. She’s laughing at a nearby table, men drawn in a knot around her, an unknowing queen speaking to her court.

“Right,” Jaskier says. “You just make all the decisions.”

“She listens to me, yes, when she chooses to do so,” you tell him. I raised her, taught her as much as I could as best I could, and she tends to honor that, you don’t say, trapping the words behind the gate of your teeth. It would only bring questions.

He chews at his bottom lip, bites the flesh pinker still.

“You’ll be paid,” you say. “No tricks, not about that. For last night, too.”

You wonder if other inns see the value in Jaskier, not just in his talent, but in his ability to reassure. There’s little doubt in your mind that his music has soothed many a ruffled feather that Geralt’s presence has caused. From the tongue on him, though, you think he’s also caused his fair share of trouble, too.

“You are a treasure despite your company of treacherous women.”

“Go play, bard, before I change my mind.”

Rose reappears as Jaskier heads towards where the fiddlers usually sit, his lute cradled against his stomach. He’s already plucking at it, discordant notes being corralled into something musical, something pretty.

“Do you think they’ll stay long?” you ask.

She lifts a shoulder in a lazily elegant shrug. “Hard to say,” she says. “I’ve had rocks speak to me more than the Witcher did.”

“Rose.”

“I know,” she tells you, cupping your cheek. Her palm is warm and callused against your skin. “It will be fine. No sense in worrying unless it’s needed.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It’s not,” she says sharply, all thorn instead of her usual soft petals. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that I do not have fear.”

Jaskier starts to play. The music blooms to life, unfolds delicate and sweet. It seems an odd choice for the rowdy tavern, but the melody is a haunting one, one that slips beneath your skin and hooks deep.

Rose pats your cheek. “Don’t fret,” she says, an echo of last night. “Go help Betony, she’s such a distracted little thing.”

You snort, but there’s more than a measure of truth to it, so you wipe your hands free of breadcrumbs and pick up a nearby tray. Betony is half on Delythe’s lap. She’s plucking at Delythe’s thick braid, coiling it around her wrist and giggling. For her part, Del seems tolerant, the grin on her lips fondly indulgent.

“Betony,” you say.

“You’re no fun,” she says, but she gets to her feet, tugging on Delythe’s braid and pressing a kiss against her cheek. Her lip paint leaves a mark the color of a bruise, deep plum. The two of you gather empty tankards and plates, stacking them high on the tray. With Jaskier playing, everyone seems to fall into a rhythm. You duck between patrons with delicate precision. Each step is practically a dance, Betony matching you as the two of you dash around.

You can feel the night lengthening, can sense the moon tracing a path across the velvet sky. The moon always seems brighter as winter creeps forward. As if the coming snow reflects the light the moon sheds, makes it a disc of shining ice.

Elias catches you in a dance or two between servings; Wren pulls you along for a quick jig when you duck into the back room for supplies. Malinka sweeps you off your feet as well, laughing as she leads you before she twirls you into Betony’s arms. Jaskier’s music rises and falls, a piper’s call to the crowd’s mood. You let it envelop you.

Geralt appears as it grows late enough to perhaps be called early. Patrons are starting to stagger home, though there are a few gatherings tightly knit around tables, still nursing their tankards. Even with fewer present, there are still murmurs that follow the Witcher, little whispers that haunt his steps like an angry wraith. It makes your chest tighten. How quickly people turn on what they don’t understand. On what they don’t even try to understand.

He seems unbothered by it. You think again of stone, of the jutting mountain peaks, for Geralt’s face could be that of a statue’s. He has the jawline for it. Mostly, though, he has the smoothed expression of a marble bust, one just shy of human, as if the artist couldn’t quite settle on mood, caught between emotion and emptiness. It feels a false face. A shield, a barricade for humanity’s siege against his very presence to break upon.

You should leave, let one of the others serve him. You know that. Betony retired home earlier, but Malinka is just in the store room. Rose is not far, either. You should call for them. You know that. But Geralt finds you behind the bar, his amber eyes like firelight, and you stay.

The tankard clanks against the wood as you set it down in front of him. “Would you like something to eat?”

“If there’s something available.”

“I wouldn’t offer something I am unable to give.”

He pauses, the tankard halfway to his mouth, and you cannot look away from his parted lips. Your hands twist in the wool of your skirts, draw the fabric tight against your fingers. “Yes, then,” he says. His eyes flicker, and you think that is not what he wanted to say, that he has swallowed something down.

The plate is a simple one. Geralt seems a man who consumes only to continue, who does not yearn for flavor on his tongue. You keep it to a thick slice of brown bread and some salted meat. You wipe down some tankards as he eats, caught between the compulsion to stay and the whispering nerves that beg you to flee.

“What brings you here?”

Geralt pauses again, those golden eyes lifting to you. You feel heat rise in your cheeks. “I’m sorry,” you say. “It’s habit to chat with patrons.”

He grunts.

You bite at your lip and scrub harder at the tankard, twisting the old cleaning cloth around your fingers until it is cutting into your flesh, until it almost hurts.

“There’s a village to the north,” Geralt says. “It has rumors of a beast, and they have coin. This inn is the closest. The village is small.”

“And by that,” Jaskier says, sliding onto the stool next to his friend and gesturing wildly, “he means it is a hovel of a town, more a collection of houses than a village.”

“I see.”

“Luckily,” Jaskier says, leaning forward until you think he will overbalance, “that means we have found ourselves here. It is a charming inn, innkeeper-who-is-not.”

“It’s just an inn.”

“An inn with good ale and food, and most importantly, appreciative crowds.”

“It’s just an inn,” you repeat, but from the way Jaskier’s smile lights up, he can hear the laughter hiding just beneath your tongue.

Jaskier starts weaving a tale for you, his hands fluttering about as he speaks, his voice falling into a cantering cadence that lulls you into the story. Geralt eats in silence, grunting here and there as Jaskier tries to reel him into the story. The bard elbows him once, lightly, and the withering look Geralt gives him could rust a sword.

It is not long after Geralt finishes eating that the two men rise. It is truly late now, the time when nocturnal creatures begin to slink back to their burrows, the time when the starlight goes cold and strange.

“Good night,” you tell them.

Jaskier chirps something back to you, but his words are washed away by the weight of Geralt’s gaze on you. It peels at the layers of you, cuts through to the bone, until all of you is laid bare before him. Your fingers tremble.

They tremble still when you trace their path to the hallway, pulled after them like a pebble caught spinning in the tide. You catch yourself before you follow them further. From your place just beyond the door, you hear Jaskier heave a sigh.

“Geralt,” the bard says, and you’ve never heard a tone that sounds like someone putting their hands on their hips in reprimand before, “will you hurry up? The painting will be there when it’s not a time when even the gods are asleep.”

The bite of your fingernails startles you. They cut into your flesh, tiny sickle moons against the map of your palm, constellations amid the lined sky of your hand. There are footsteps, then, receding down the hall. They ring in your ears long after the men are gone.

Rose finds you sitting near the hearth, your knees tucked up against your chest.

“I’m frightened,” you tell her.

She kneels at your side, a priestess at your altar, her face turned up to you like a flower to the sun.

“I know,” she says.

She waits for sunrise with you, lets you gaze into the fire’s light in silence.

You feel it when daybreak approaches. You close your eyes and surrender to the dark, to the velvet night that lives behind your eyelids. It feels easier like this. Gods, you miss the sun.

The sun rises, and you set.

taglist: @fairytale07 @stretchkingblog97 @nonamejustshame @1950schick @sageandberries-png @peachy-aisha @msgeorgiarae @alwayshave-faith @bumblingandblooming

#geralt x reader #geralt of rivia x reader #the witcher x reader #geralt imagine #the witcher imagine #the witcher fic #story: portraits hung in empty halls

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bythehook · 3 years

Text

Part One: The Witch

There were plenty of birds on Neverland, but only four native breeds. There was the Talvey bird, named by a narcissist from Liverpool that had come and died on the island long ago; the Dung bird who gladly cleaned up foul droppings; the Duster birds found in the cacti in the scorching Neverland desert lands; and finally the rare Neverbird, whose bright plumage was as unmistakable as it was uncommon. Easy to spot, but devilishly hard to find these days.

As James ran the dull side of his hook along the ornate, gold cage, the Neverbird trembled. It was, in fact, a very young Neverbird. The fully grown fowl were a massive and mightier prey, building nests as wide as a room. Aside from the sorely needed bath in Tulip’s Bathhouse, this was what Hook had come to pick up from the port. Jukes had always been a collector of rare objects, and his plunder had grown tenfold with his brood of adopted brats. They found all sorts, and while most of their findings weren’t worth spit, they sometimes pulled treasures from the island.

Hook had heard tell that the children had discovered an abandoned Neverbird nest and had brought the baby bird home with them. Neverbirds only laid one egg every five years, and so it was a rare occurrence indeed. It was the type of find, Hook hoped, would buy him a cure, or at least an answer to the gory visions he’d been suffering.

His cabin had been scrubbed clean since his last visit to the shore, and incense had been buillowing fragrant smoke about the room all afternoon. James had taken supper in his room, appetite back with a vengeance. Cookson had prepared him a whole roasted hen, cooked apples, seeded bread and butter, rosemary carrots, and a hot johnny cake.

After consuming nearly half of everything, Hook washed his face and abled, comfortably full, to his bedchamber. He lit a lamp and moved forward into the dark, before a voice called out.

“That was quite an exuberant show,” a sickly-sweet voice crooned from his bed. Before Hook could take a defensive stance, a cool snap of the fingers caused all of the candles in the chamber to light.

Helena lay on Hook’s red duvet.

She wore a tattered black lace dress, long necklaces cascading down her breast, and her dozen bangles clacked as she raised her arm in greeting. Her blackened fingers seemed to extend into points, but this was only her black painted nails, and they wriggled like beetles when she waved.

“Hello, Hooky,” she murmured, a wicked smile playing about her lips. “Heard you were looking for me,” she told him, and spread her arms out. “Well, here I am.”

“Yes, I have been.”

“Tsk, liar. You’ve been nowhere near my woods. Afraid of the big, bad wolf, are we? Sending your men out for you?” Shame,” she sighed, leaning back into the down pillows. “I once thought you brave.”

James clenched his jaw together painfully, not wanting to say anything to anger this unpredictable force of a woman.

“Oh dear, I seem to have a struck a tender chord. Well, time is money, as they say. What do you want from me?” There was a look in her eye that hinted that she already knew.

“I believe you might be able to help me. I have been having visions.” James figured to get right to the point.

“What sort of visions?” Helena feigned interest, a cruel lilt in her voice.

It was in this moment that he realized that she, like Queenie appeared spotless. After a moment, a sharp laugh broke through her lips.

“Are they happy visions? Glimpses into the future perhaps?” She asked, a trickle of dark red blood dripping down her nose. “Or tales of the past?” A spider web crack of blue veins spread up her neck, and black liquid pooled around her lips. “Come on Jamie, spit it out!” She cried, almost gleefully. James looked away, repulsed.

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you though?”

Hook chanced a look to her, and started slightly as she was right in front of him now.

“Do you have these visions of everyone?” She asked, although like all of her questions, she seemed to know the answer.

Helena lifted his hook up, fondling it with care, and brought it to her cheek. Her other hand reached up his chest, running her fingers along the patterned vest.

James swallowed, looking away again.

“You do know. And you know how to get rid of them. Say it. Say the question you’ve been dying to ask.” She grinned, fingers tracing down the buttons of his vest to the top of his trousers. Here he grabbed her wrist to stop her from going any further.

“How many? How many do I have to kill to make them go away?” He asked through gritted teeth.

“Oooh!” Helena wrenched her arm away and clapped wildly. “So, you are clever! I had hoped you would work that out.” She grinned again; her face spotless once more.

The wild-haired witch stepped away, running her hands along the bureau, fingers dipping in and out of the lamps dancing flames.

“Only one,” she told him, face flickering with shadows in the candlelight.

James frowned; hadn’t he killed already. Noting the confusion on his face, Helena smirked.

“Oh, not just any one. Someone dear-to-you,” she singsonged the last three words.

Hook’s heart sank.

Queenie.

“Who?” he feigned ignorance, which drew another cold, sharp laugh from the woman.

“Oh, you sly man. You want to play games with Helena. That’s alright.” She hummed, watching him like a cat stalking a mouse. “Tresses of gold and eyes of blue before unseen; face so noble and regal she could be a... Queen?”

“No.” James said sharply, and shook himself. “She is not dear to me.”

“You can lie to all but me, for I know who lies in your heart and her name is Queenie.” Helena cackled her cruel poems, flopping back onto the bed. “I see all. All that was. All to come. I know what you will do.”

“I will not kill an innocent.”

“When has that ever stopped you from getting what you want, James Hook?” Helena snapped coldly. “Shall I list them for you? Odette Phillips, skipping down bonny old London Town; Adriana Stone, the bird you sent to heaven; Rufio the--”

“Stop. I know.”

“William Potter, Callum O’Brady, Therese Clare, Puddles and Mudsy, Skylights--”

“Please, stop.” His voice cracked at the names of the long dead and desperately forgotten.

“All innocent. All dead after meeting you. Oh, admit it. Admit what you are. Only a creature like you could kill as you have. What are you, Hook? What are you?”

“I’m a monster, okay? I know that! I know I’ll be damned to the deepest circle of hell when I take my last breath. I know that no savior would atone for my sins.” James was shaking now, unable to meet her golden eyes.

“So why not take one more life? To save your mind for however long you have left on this earth?”

“I won’t.”

“Perhaps you know what I already know,” she beamed, kicking her feet up. “That there is a hope starting in that shriveled, black, little heart of yours.”

“What else can stop them?” He spoke as one condemned, voice hoarse. If that was the only way out of these hellish visions, he’d just as soon take a pistol to his own head. If that was the only way, this whole meeting was pointless.

“Well, I could lift them, of course.” Helena stated casually, sitting at the end of the bed now.

James turned slowly to look at her, an anger bubbling up inside of him that he had not felt in some time. Here she was tearing him down, kicking any hopes at sanity away, only to say she’d been able to fix it all this time. He swallowed the rage and walked to her, bending down on one knee, humbling himself before her.

“What’s your price?” There’s always a price.

The witch grinned.

“What do you have for me?”

James sighed out in relief and stood, stepping into his study to retrieve the Neverbird. He took the cage off of its stand and turned, only to have Helena standing before him again. The start she caused him made the cage shake slightly, and the somber bird cooed in fright.

“The rare Neverbird. I can offer you this.”

Helena reached up and touched the soft feathers through the bars. Her approving smile gave James hope, but then she looked at him in amusement.

“This will pay for my visit,” she told him, reaching up to take the cage from his hook. “And if this is all you have to offer--”

“Anything. I’ll give you anything.”

Helena jumped up and down on the balls of her bare feet.

“Oh, I do love it when they say that,” she said in a giddy voice. “Okay, let’s see,” Helena mused, setting the bird down and began looking around the room. She was toying with him now, deliberating on different items, holding up books to smell, running her fingers across his desk chair. “Oh, I know,” she said suddenly, a glint in her eye.

“Name it.”

Helena’s eyes dragged down Hook’s cadaverous figure slowly, tongue pressed against her teeth.

“I want your baby.”

To be continued...

#okay hi #y'all ready?#closed #part one: the witch

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lornashore · 3 years

Text

Happy Halloween Carnival

Summary: An Arthur Fleck reader insert. You bring him over to your house for some halloween fun!

A/N: Halloween is most definitely my favorite holiday so this was incredibly fun to write! As we all know, Arthur deserves the best so I’m giving him a wonderful Halloween. Happy Halloween everyone!

Arthur watched out the window at the trees as the car sped down the empty street, observing all the gold and wine colors of the leaves. He had never seen such vibrant colors before, being used to the dull, drizzly days surrounded by the grey buildings of Gotham.

As you brought the car to a stop at a red light, you turned toward him for a moment, gently squeezing his knee. He looked at you, smiling brightly, clear excitement showing on his wrinkled features.

“Is this where you live?” He asked, motioning to the small neighborhood that was across from the long line of trees.

“I do. In fact you can see my house from here.” You said, pointing to a yard that was lit up by an orange and purple glow. Arthur's feet began to bounce up and down, unable to keep his nerves contained any longer. You giggled at him when he leaned forward in his seat to see the yard as you drove closer to it, pulling into the driveway and shutting off the engine. His features brightened even more when he was finally able to see your house in full view before him, exiting the care as swiftly as his feet would allow. He had always wanted to be able to decorate for holidays like this, but between his job and mother, he never found the time or reason to.

“Do you like it?” You asked him, wrapping your arm around his thin, boney waist.

“Yes of course! I think this little guy here is my favorite.” He said, pointing to a short, pudgy zombie jester sitting on one of your steps. Leaning forward, he reached out, grazing his hands over the blood soaked hair on his head when suddenly, the figure spun towards him. It’s pupils lit up red and a high pitched laugh sounded from the internal speaker, making Arthur startle, standing up straight.

“Happy Halloween!” The animatronic cackled, and Arthur laughed along with it, no longer frightened by the sudden movement.

“He’s motion censored, so anyone who walks past will get a frightful greeting! He’s one of my favorites too.” You said, leading Arthur up to your front door with your two grocery bags in hand and Arthur's overnight pack slung over your shoulder. He ducked beneath the fake webbing you strung all across the front deck, smiling when he noticed sparkly black bats and ghosts hanging from the roof.

Once you entered your home, you switched on the lights, revealing more of your spooky decor. A large cardboard coffin leaned against the wall in the entry room, lid ajar with two skeleton hands clung to it. You noticed him observing it and smirked as you plugged in the fog machine that was hidden within. He took a few steps back when he noticed the artificial mist collect around his feet.

“We’ll be leaving this on once the trick or treating starts. For now, come help me with these. I still have to fill up the candy bowl.” You said, taking Arthur by the hand and into your kitchen where you had a large plastic bowl decorated by white skulls setting on the counter.

“Here, can you fill that up for me?” You asked, handing him two large sacks of candy. He

did as you asked, stealing a couple pieces for himself when your back was turned.

“For now we can keep this on the little table next to the front door. Otherwise, let’s go get into our costumes!” You said, watching as he placed the bowl where you instructed and followed you to your bedroom.

You reached into the bag, taking your costume from it. Looking at the picture on the front of the package, you smiled at the soft rainbow colored clown costume Arthur had chosen for you. It wasn’t your first choice, but meeting those large blue orbs and puffed bottom lip, you couldn’t say no. He wanted to be a clown couple, so that’s what you intended to do. You changed quickly, seeing him deeply focused in your vanity mirror, his makeup and brushes strewn out in front of him,

You approached him, observing how the brush glided across his skin with an experienced hand. He paused for a moment to look at you, in your colorful polka-dotted dress and matching bow.

“I was right. You do look really cute in that.” He spoke softly. A light blush coated your face at his compliment, knowing he was doing the same despite the white paint that fully covered his cheeks. Leaning forward, you wrapped your arms around his neck, resting your head against the side of his. He grasped onto your arms and kissed you softly there, still watching you.

“All you need now is a bit of paint.” He said, turning towards you.

“Oh..no I think It’ll be ok. You can finish yours.” You told him, not knowing where to begin as far as makeup went. You didn’t know the first thing about coming up with a look like that.

“Mines all done though. Please? I really want to do yours. I have plenty here.” He said. And again, you didn’t have the heart to tell him no.

You took a seat beside him on the two seater bench, closing your eyes so he could do whatever he wanted with the greasepaint. The gentle strokes of the brush relaxed you more than you thought it would, and you tried your best to imagine in your mind what he was drawing. When he was finished, he turned you towards the mirror.

You opened your eyes and studied your now painted face. The heart shaped pastel pink lips, matching cheeks, painted freckles, and an impressively detailed sun painted over your left eye tied it all together. You blushed again beneath the makeup, seeing your reflections side by side made you realize again how much he truly loved you, and loved spending moments like these together. The thought made your heart race, wishing the moment could last forever.

“One last thing.” He reached into his pocket for the spare red nose that never came with the costumes. He wanted you to feel like a real, professional clown like him, even if it were just for a night. With one hand, he turned your head towards him so you couldn’t see yourself anymore. You closed your eyes as well, remembering what he told you before about how one should never see the nose be put on. He did the same, and then pressed the puffy red ball to your nose, tying the string around the back of your head to secure it. Once again, he directed you towards your reflection. You opened your eyes and immediately they went wide, a shy grin slightly crinkling your painted skin seeing the costume completely done and ready.

“I think we should call you...Loonetta.” He said after a moment of pause. You giggled, covering your mouth with one hand.

“Look at you, you’re so cute! There’s no need to be shy.” His voice was high pitched as he spoke, now fully into his character. With both hands, he took your hands in his and began to dance. You moved along with him, humming an unknown tune out of key as you stepped in time with him. He spun you a few times, holding you close to his rigid frame and kissed the back of your neck. Even with the paint you thought his lips felt warm, leaving tingles on the cool flesh. You relaxed into him, still swaying back and forth in your bedroom, not wanting the moment to end.

The doorbell jingle brought you back to the present. You quickly dashed off smiling wide at the clown that was close on your heels.

“Who could be here at this time?” Carnival asked you. You paused at the door before opening it to turn to him.

“Just wait, I know you’ve never seen this before.” He cocked his head at your words, wondering what it was that he missed in your yard. You opened the door when you heard the bell ring again, stepping aside so he could see.

“Trick or Treat!” The small group of kids said in unison, holding their buckets and pillow cases out in front of them. Unsure of what to do next, he glanced over at you, then back at the expectant children.

“It’s ok, give them each a piece of candy from the bowl!” You instructed. And he did, happily, waving as he watched them walk back down the drive and onto the next house.

“Where did all these kids come from?” He asked, looking out at the many bodies crowding the street. You giggled at how silly he seemed, standing so close to the door that his nose almost pressed against the glass.

“It’s always this busy on Halloween! This year is actually more so then last. I hope I bought enough to last the whole night.” You said, eyeing the bowl that was once almost overfull now slowly losing its contents. You stepped out onto your front porch, propping the door open just as another group of kids approached.

“Trick or Treat!” They shouted from halfway up the yard. Immediately Carnival stepped beside you with the bowl in his hands. He dropped a piece in every bag that was held out to him with a different sound effect each time. One little girl in particular dressed as snow white found him to be very entertaining. She didn’t leave with the others and clapped her hands together when he produced a long string of handkerchiefs from his jacket sleeve. He beamed at this, clearly having the time of his life on that very night.

“What’s your name?” She asked, pointing at him with a tiny finger.

“Why, my name is Carnival! And this here is my companion, Loonetta!” He said, wrapping his arm around your shoulder.

Suddenly, the little girl approached him, arms outstretched and her candy sack left on the wood stair. She tightly wrapped her arms around one of his knees, resting her head there for a moment.

“I love you Carnival.” She said, tightening her grip. I looked at his face just in time to see a tear slip past his lashes, clearly surprised and touched by this child's kindness.

“Lucy! Geez, I’m so sorry. She doesn’t understand boundaries yet.” A curvy blond lady said, rushing towards the little girl that was still latched to Arthur's limb.

“It’s quite alright. She’s very sweet!” He leaned down then to pat the top of her head. “And you know what? I think I know what you would like.” He straightened his posture, placing his heels together before pulling a bouquet of pink flowers from his suit. She perked up immediately, stubby fingers reaching for the fake flowers he held out to her.

“Thank you!” She said before following her mother down to the street.

It was quiet after that, only a few older kids stopped by every so often.

Once everything calmed down, and the once crowded road was now quiet and empty, The after excitement fatigue creeped upon your tired, slumped frame. You shivered, feeling a cold breeze cut through you as you gazed out into the night.

“That’s everyone. Let’s head back in now.” You said, turning to your door. Once you were inside, Carnival closed and locked the door behind you. He grasped onto your wrist, pulling you to him as close as he could before you could walk off, resting his hands on the small of your back.

“Thank you for inviting me, I never knew Halloween could be this much fun.” He said, his voice husky and tired.

“I’m just glad you agreed to come over. I knew you would enjoy it.” You said, placing a kiss to his soft red painted lips. He brushed his rough fingers through your hair, stopping at the back of your head to massage gentle circles there. You wrapped your arms around his neck and rested your forehead against his gazing at each other. Neither of you wanted to let go of the other, yet both began to feel a tingle of sleep fast approaching.

“Happy Halloween Loonetta.” He whispered after a long moment of comfortable silence passed.

“Happy Halloween Carnival.” You replied, kissing his forehead. You then led him down the hall so the two of you could ready yourselves for a long, much needed sleep.

#arthur #fleck #arthur fleck #arthur fleck x reader #arthur fleck reader insert #arthur fleck imagine #arthur imagine #arthur x reader #joker #joker x reader #JOKER2019 #2019 #joker movie

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blues-fandom-bullshit · 4 years

Text

'Normal' Meetings

Mono (Classic/Tale)- Will most likely happen when he's checking in on you during the night, or curious as to who he now has to protect in a state different then saving your ass from an animalistic werewolf.

You turned to look out the window, surprised for two reasons.

The first being it was already dark out. Had time really passed that much since you had put all your furniture in and had finally finsihed fully furnishing everything in your new house?

The second being the male peering through with wide, shocked sockets staring back at you, upside down, hanging off the side if the porch.

Then.. He fell..

After the momentary shock of what happened, you rushed outside to see if he was okay, and why he was peering into your house.

Mono now sat in the porch, rubbing his skull from the impact, before he jumped up.

"Are you okay? Are you alri-"

"Don't freak out human! I'm-"

You both cut each other off.

"Y-you go fi-" "No- you-" You both stammered to each other.

You gestured to him after a moment, to which he sighed.

"Human, I am a gargoyle. My name is Mono and I guard this house, its land, and now you." 'Mono' stated in a deep, raspy tone, before kneeling. Depsite his calm exterior, he was freaking out internally.

Humans weren't supposed to know he was alive, especially not on the first night.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, New Master." Mono said, his sudden sweet and polite tone sounding forced and too much effort put in.

The sudden title had you taken aback.

"You don't need to address me! I'm Name. Please, call me such." You responded, trying to ease the tense air as the slight shift in the gargoyle before you.

He raised his head, his sockets narrowed some as if he was studying your features for deciet. He was so uses to human supremacy. This was new..

"Please, just.. Is your head okay?" You asked, offering a smile. "And, thanks for saving me the other night.."

Maybe.. Maybe Mono could trust this human.

Talie (Puff/Tale)- Will more than likely be during a visit to the lake to unclog the water system behind the house and in the woods.

As you walked calmly through the trees, you couldn't help but feel eyes on you. It was.. Probably an animal! Yeah..

Upon reaching the lake, you sighed some, admiring the clear water with the small fish swimming around. Now just to figure how you could get to the water pump without much hassle.

Soon, you were waist deep in the water, wading towards the pipe cover in the muddy grounding when you suddenly noticed the water getting darker from more than just dirt.. Or rather a shadow looming over you in the now dark water.

A yell left your mouth as something wrapped around your waist and yanked you back.

"Human! Human! It's Okay!" A voice called, a pair of hands being placed in your shoulders as you were turned around to take in the sight of whoever now held you.

Your eyes widened as the large creature processed in your mind.

A large skeleton with a soft, sweet face with sharp canines.

Glancing down, you found orange tentacles wrapped around your waist.

Your mouth fell open as the skeleton was quick to start talking about before you screamed.

"Human! It's Okay! I Am Just Trying To Help!" He said quickly, swiftly pulling anither tentacle out of the water to reveal a snapping turtle in his grasp.

"You Were Only A Few Feet From Them And I Didn't Want You Losing A Toe!" He stated quickly, watching your expression go from shocked horror to scared realization.

He quickly put the turtle back into the water for them to swim baxk down stream.

Then, the skeleton released you.

"Human! I Can Finally See You! I'm Talie! The Great Talie!" He introduced, sticking out a hand eagerly for you to shake, as if kraken skeletons were an everyday occurrence to be caught by.

"N-Name.." You said back after a moment, regaining yourself as you shook his hand nervously.

"Well, Name, Do You Need Help?" Talie asked with a bright grin.

Envei (Berry/Swap)- After meeting two skeletons in such a close time, you decides to cool off in another pond, stripping from your outer clothing to a swimming suit.

As you got into the water, you relaxes around, wading and walking through the water for a while as you sughed happily.. Only for something to brush your legs as you jumped back.

A.. Another skeleton slowly emerged from the water, peeking his nasal up from the water as he stared at you with bright blue eyes.

You could see, on the sides of his head, were fins. Oh no.. Another one.. A.. Merman?

Before you could say anything, you found the skeleton sunk down into the pond, before suddenly appearing in front of you with an incredulous expression.

Before you could even breathe, the monster had let out a loud laugh as he placed his webbed hand onto your shoulders and waist, suddenly lifting you with and spinning you around like childhood friends.

You let out a yell which caught his attention, him setting you down with a bright smile.

"S-Sorry Human! I Can't Control Myself! You're The First I've Seen Of Your Species In A While And Now I Can Talk To You In Person! Gosh, You're Much More Attractive Up Close." He stated, getting closer to you, smirking to reveal his sharp teeth.

"Oh! My Manners!" He suddenly whispered to himself, backing up as his smirk turned to a grin.

"I'm Envei!" He introduced, quirking a brow encouragingly to your hesitance.

"...Are.. Are you a mermaid?" You couldn't help yourself. He was.. Intriguing?

"No. If I Was, I'd Be A Merman. I'm A Siren." He corrected, his tail swishing under the water eagerly. At your more concerned face, he quickly switched to reassurance. "But Don't Worry, I Don't Like Human! I Prefer Animals And Plants!" His voice was upbeat, but a but nervous as he fiddled some with his scarf.

"Name." You finally said after a moment, watching as he perked up some curiously. "That's my name, Envei."

This was the start of a long matches of water games and scares.

Taif (Stretch/Swap)- Will mostly occur when you're needing to go into the woods, wanting to gather some berries or something for a snack. However, that note was stuck in your head.

"A....Al?" You called, watching for a long moment, feeling stupid as you peered into the trees ahead as if something would happen.

Sighing some, you let the thought slip from your mind and prepared to take a step.

"Human! No!" A voice called, reaching for you and pulling you back before you could go into the vegetation.

Turning around, you saw another skeleton. This.. Wasn't as much as a shock since you'd figured out probably all of who you met that first night a week ago were skeletons.

"Never go that way! That's to Domni and Vipers caves." The skeleton stated, sockets wide and voice a bit frantic. Then, he processed your shocked expression as he realized he was still holding your shoulders tightly and quickly recoiled back.

"S-sorry.." He apologized, cradling his hands to his chest as he looked away, as if in shame.

After a moment, you regained yourself enough to talk. "Are you.. Al?" You ask softly, the skeleton glancing at you as he lifted his head some, and nodded. Offering him a small smile, you extended your hand.

"Name. It's a pleasure to meet you, Al."

'Al' was hesitant, before shaking your hand as he visibly relaxed.

"So, what're we looking for?" He asked, turning towards a different part of the forest.

Something felt off about him.. Like he wasn't telling the truth, but he held no malicious aura to him..

Domni (Red/Fell)- Oh boy.. There is no subtlety. He openly goes to your house to just straight up talk to you like you've been friends for a lifetime.

You were just chilling at you place, when you heard knocking on the door. That's.. Odd.. No one lives around here, and you hadn't ordered anything..

Maybe it was Mono, or Al? But, why would either of them need you?

Approaching the door, you hesitated a moment, before grabbing a hold of the doorknob. As soon as you started twisting, the door was pushed open and someone pushed into your house.

"Ah, so yer da human that pissed off my brother? Hah! Good one! Haven't seen 'im so mad since Undyne tried to take the guard position again!"

Okay, who was this jackass?

He pushed his way into your house to just start talking as if he hadn't just shoved his giant ass into someone else's house.

As you were about to say something, you froze at seeing his large wings and tail.

How the hell did you get into this situation? You asked yourself, the reality of the situation hitting you. Monsters aren't supposed to be real.. They're supposed to be myths.. Stories.. Tales..

Now you're surrounded by, as far as you could tell, about ten? All of which hadn't seemed to want to you around.. Except Talie and Envei, but even they seemed dangerous at some points.

Maybe it'd be better if you started packing now.. You honestly just wanted to get away from the city and stress, but got thrown into a fantasy world of hiding monster men.

"..an...-Hum... Human!" A voice boomed, you suddenly breaking from your thoughts to see the dragon character in your face, eyes narrowed and mouth pursed. "You alive in that head of yours?"

You blinked a bit, before jumping back as he snorted some from your momentary surprise.

"Yer a weird one." He commented, before chugging a.. Bottle of mustard?

"Hypocrite.." You muttered, to which he stopped drinking the condiment and eyed you as if in offense.

"What ya say?" He asked, words a bit incoherent some from yellow substance in his mouth.

"H-...Hypocrite." You repeated, getting a spurt of courage. "Hypocrite."

He scoffed in mock offense. "An' tell me how?"

Ugh, his voice was so annoying! Even if it was deep, with a rough edge and a brooklyn accent.. No! He was a major dick! "Firstly, you come into my house without permission, then take my stuff, and proceed to insult me. All within five minutes."

This actually seemed to get to him, him opening his mouth slightly as his sockets opened some as he seemed to visibly process his words.

His lips then curled up into a grin as he started laughing as if you'd said the worlds funniest joke. "I like ya human! Names Domni." He stated, grinning wider to shoe off his sharp teeth and golden tooth.

You crossed your arms at him, unimpressed with him as he looked around a bit. "What?" He asked, completely oblivious to your annoyance.

After a moment, you sighed and shook your head. "Name.."

Viper (Edge/Fell)- He.. He was forced to apologize to you genuinely by Domni after his brother had hung around you for while two weeks.

"I DON'T WANT TO! GET YOUR FLITHY HANDS OFF OF ME! SANS YOU ABSOLITE LIZARD!" A loud voice screeched out front from your house.

You were currently behind your house, talking with Talie and Envei at the lake at the back of your house. The boys sighed, parting goodbye with you as you left the water, them seeming to recognize the voice.

You'd been swimming to relax in the hot weather. The perk about living far off in the woods in near solitude? You could walk around in just a swimsuit without a Karen yelling at you or having the fear anyone would be watching.

As you rounded the house, wrapping a towel around your shoulders, you caught sight of Domni flying off. Quirking a brow some, your gaze landed on the half skeleton throwing a hissy fit as he waved his arms up and down angrily.

"YOU GODDAMNED, ABSOLUTE SWINE! I'LL KI..LL...YOu.. sans.." His, rather loud, voice fell to a whisper as his own gaze landed on your form.

His face flushed a nice shade of crimson as his pinprick trailed down your body, watching water slide down your skin.

During this, you took in the sight of his large snake lower half. Ruby red with black scales speckled here and there. Was that.. A pink underbelly?

Unlike him, you hand the decency not to state for too long. After a moment, you rose your hand to cough awkwardly into it as he finally shook himself from his trance.

"HUMAN! I AM THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE VIPER! MY BROTHER HAS BROUGHT ME HERE TO APOLOGIZE FOR TRYING TO ATTACK YOU. HOWEVER, I REFUSE AND HE CANNOT MAKE ME!" He declared, crossing his arms and looking away as his blush started to die down.

Watching him a moment, you outstretched your hand. "Name." You said simply, which made him gaknced at you and then do a double take.

"EXCUSE ME?" He asked, trying, and failing, to mask his tone of confusion.

"Name," You restated. "That's my name, Viper." You shook your hand some, as if to bring his attention back to it as he slowly pulled his own from his pouting and shook yours.

With that, you moved passed him and towards your door.

"HUMAN! WAIT!" He called as you opened the door. "TOMORROW. MIDDAY. JOIN ME FOR SOME TEA." He.. Offered? Ordered? Either way, he was too intimidating to say no.

Centri (Black/SwapFell R)- You ended up meeting him after your tea meeting with Viper, actually.

Walking back from Vipers cave den at the base of the cliffside when something straight up duve bombed you to the ground.

"GOD DAMMIT! IT'S YOU AGAIN! ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED?!" A loud voice yelled at you, making you wince some from the vokume as the weight got off you.

Sitting forward, you were greeted by Feathers, the guy who pushed that very weird skeleton off of you that first night.

"WELL?" He squawked, eyeing you like an upset parent, including crossing his arms as his wings folded behind him.

"I-I.. U-uh-um.." You stammered, looking down. He sighed, pulling you to your feet.

"ARE YOU CURIOUS, COURAGOUS, OR JUST PLAIN STUPUD?" He asked, before continuing without waiting. "NO HUMAN IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CONSCIOUSLY AND WILLINGLY STAY IN THIS FOREST! I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED HUMANS TO HAVE SOME SENSE, BUT AP-" "Thank you." "-LY YOU- .....WHAT?"

"Thank you." You repeated.

He stared at you a moment, slow to processing this.

"For saving me that night," You elaborated. "I might of died if it weren't for you."

This made a deep blush rise to the surface of his face as his sockets widened and he stammered. Did his wings just puff up?

After he regained himself seeing you laugh a bit, smiling some, he crosses his arms and looked to the side with his sockets closed. "O-OF COURSE! I COULDN'T LET AN I-IDIOT HUMAN LIKE YOURSELF DIE! YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WRONG SO FAR."

Was that a compliment? An insult? Was everyone here confusing?

Monsters were supposed to be evil and bloodthirsty.. Well, Viper did try to kill you..

"IT WAS YOUR FAULT." His voice echoed in your head.

He then dropped his stubbornness in his stroked ego and stuck out a hand. "CENTRI. THE GREAT HARPY CENTRI."

Harpy? Weren't harpies all female? And were their wings attatched to their arms? Why were you questioning? Everything was weird and confusing here.

"Name." You responded.

Centri scoffed. "What?" You asked.

"NO TITLE? *SIGH* YOU HUMANS AREN'T ANY FUN. THE MARVELOUS NAME? THE AMUSING NAME? NOTHING?"

You gave him an odd look. "Those make me sound like a kids show magician." You commented, which made him laugh some.

"THE AMUSING NAME IT IS."

"W-what?"

Relib (Mutt/SwapFell R)- Most likely the only -partially normal- one of the group when it comes to meeting him.

You really needed a chill day..

Talie and Envei were constantly trying to get you to explore the far ends of the forest with them. Taif and Mono.. Were pretty chill. But those reptile brothers were constantly on your ass about doing something, agreeing with one and not the other, deciding who's right and who's wrong, who woukd hang at with you at one day and the other.

They were exhausting, and it was hard for you to say no to them, especially being new neighbors.

So, when you heard a knock on the door, you groaned some, sinking into your chair before the sound of the knock and outside processed. Quiet. Both of them. The knock was shaky, quiet, and the sound from your porch was.. Silent.

Standing, you approached the door and slowly opened it, revealing a.. Tall skeleton monster.

Gee, really narrows that down. But, this one had.. Two tails? And.. Ears? Was that a gypsy outfit?

The monster, upon realizing the door wss open, squeaked some as he straightened his posture. His fave was also flushed a rusty color..

"Hello?" You said after a moment, which made him jolt some before thrusting a thermos your way.

"H-here! Coffee!"

Taking the thermos, since there was seemingly no other option. "Thanks..?" What a strange fellow..

After you two stood there a moment, he finally seemes to break his awkward and tense shell. "I'm Relib!" He stated, pushing his hand to you to shake, which you did.

"Name," You replied, watching as he visibly relaxed.

"S-sorry.. I-its just.. I haven't seen anyone new around here in.. A while.." He managed out through a quiet voice as he fiddled with his hands, looking down at them. Aw.. His ears even folded down..

"It's fine, Relib. Why not come in?" You offered, to which he seemed surprised, before shaking nodding and giving a small smile.

Inten (Crooks/Horror)- Probably the most energetic out of all of them. And the most sudden heart attack you've ever had from shock.

You had just been walking in the forest, exploring, when suddenly you were in the arms of someone with wind rushing passed you.

Disoriented, you ended up looking down.. Only to see forest hundreds of yards below..

Squeaking, you clung onto whiever had you tightly as you finally processed them laughing and cheering.

"I've Caught A Human! Yes! Human!" The male voice cheered down to you, making you look up from clinging to him as he processed your scared look and his excited expression left to concern then sympathy as he.. Dive bombed down towards the ground before opening his large, black wings and flying through the trees.

"Better Human?" He asked, to which you nodded some, body tense from the stranger that just picked you up and took you so far high you felt like death and swooped down and carried you away.

It was then he came to his senses. "Oh! My Apologies, Human! I Could Have Thought Ren Had Killed You The Other Night.. Oh Well, Must Have Been Someone Else." His words.. Did not appease your spinning mind.

"Oh! I'm Inten! The Great Inten!" He introduced, landing on the forest floor as he switched to holding you bridal style instead of by the waust to his body. "So, Human. What Shall We Call You?"

"N-Name.." You manage, still dizzy from the suddeness of what's happened.

"Name.. Hm.. I Like It! Now. Would You Like Some Cookies?"

Ren (Axe/Horror)- It's.. Unconventional..

You honestly just wanted a calm night.. A relaxing weekend.. But every night a large creature was peering through the windows, scratching at doors or even trying to scale walls.

It was terrifying to say the least. And Mono just told you to stay inside and ignore it. It wasn't anything that could break in.

It always seemed like he was lying.. He said before he was to protect the land and the grounds owner, but he seemed to just tell you moments too late or just half hearted advice of safety, like he couldn't care if you died or not.

Then again you were a grown person and that was just anorher unnecessary chore added to his.

Well, after a few night you decides to hang out in the oorch and just admire the stars above from the porch. You never saw them in the city, and it was mesmerizing. Maybe that's why you nearly screamed at the creeping figure slowly climbing over the side of your porches banister and closing in on you.

Instinctively, you bolted for the door, but that snapped the large, large creature from their trance and pouncing on you as a scream tore from your throat.

This was it.. You were a deadman.. A goner..

Well.. Not exactly.

As you bid the world farewell, you felt a face pressed into your neck, giving in because there was no way this amount of strength could be broken from.

Well.. Death wasn't exactly in the near future.

Yes, a face was buried in between your neck and shoulder and a massive weight was on you, but.. No teeth sunk in, or claws drew lines down your body.

Instead, you heard a deep inhale and the weight of whoever was on you lessened as they relaxed.

Your fave flushed as your mouth released a squeak as a tongue licmed at your skin and a fluffy mass swept over your legs, which made a deep.. Purr? Growl? Chuckle..? Escape the beings throat as boney hands grabbed your shoulders as whoever this was sat up and held your -in comparison- tiny figure to their chest.

Looking up, you saw it was the same skeleton that attacked you up on the cliff side the first night, skull opening and all.

At seeing you look up to his face, a small grin broke across his face and his large eyelight softened as he nuzzled his nasal into your head.

Only seconds later did you see Mono, Al, Viper, Domni, and Inten appearing in the clearing with varying looks of concern on their faces that quickly melted to shock at your state.

A small human wrapped in the bulky arms of one of- scratch that! The most dangerous and unstable monster in these forests that seemed to just melt from that normally snarling and absolutely feral werewolf.

When you reached towards your friend group as a silent plea for help, Al stepping forward with immediately made the skeleton holding you snap his hesd up as his single eae folded back and he bared his sharp teeth while tightening his already strong grip around you, threatening anyone that got closer.

Al got the message and tool two steps back, which made the wolf holding you turn away some.

"Brother!" Inten suddenly gasped, as if processing finally what's happened. "What Are You Doing?" He asked, partially exasperated as he approaches the living prison holding your frame without a hostile wanting this time.

When Inten tries to reach for you, his brother only tugged you away and wrapped his large around around you more while hunching over, before lifting his shirt and pushing you into his ribcage and even zipping up the puffy jacket he wore to ensure your stuck.

"Brother! You Can't Just Keep That Human!" Inten scolded lightly, his vocie muffled by the barriers.

It was pretty warm in here.. And oddly comfortable.. But.. A red light illuminated the area. Looking up, a floating heart was above, cracked. Something told you not to touch the heart at all.

"HUMAN! WE'LL GET YOU OUT SOON!" Vipers loud vocie called from afar.

"We'll Have To Wait All Night Now.." Inten huffed.

"Dammit Ren.." Mono's voice came, a harsh, barely mutter.

Well.. Lets say when you woke up, a whining and desperate werewolf was searching for you while Mono secured windows and doors.

#swf #ancif #undertale #undertaleau #anciftale #ancifswap #anciffell #ancifswapfell #horrorancif #sans #papyrus #Mono #Talie #Envei #Taif #Domni #Viper #Centri #Relib #Ren #Inten

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stillebesat · 5 years

Text

In These Tangled Webs (6/11)

Sanders Sides: Patton, Logan, Roman, Virgil Blurb: It should be easy admitting to your roommates that you’re not entirely human. Only in Logan’s case it’s not. Not when he discovers that Patton is afraid of Spiders. Fic Type: Hurt/Comfort Overall Warnings: Spiders, Arachnophobia, Death Talk, Minor Character Deaths, Slightly Detailed Descriptions of Deaths, Murders, Injuries, Swords, Imprisonment, Biting, Fangs, Venom, Extra Body Parts, Blood, Manipulation, Negative Self Talk

To Catch Up: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

It was like staring into the depths of his darkest nightmare.

Red. Blood. “You won’t need your momma for much longer, dear one.”

Patton shakily inhaled, glancing to his phone and Logan’s dot blinking back at him, before again peering inside.

Okay. It was like staring into the depths of his second darkest nightmare. Spider webs. Their thick, glossy, white threads dripping with rain, crisscrossed through the old abandoned shed covering every inch of the place from the rusty clippers to the broken ladders to the crushed riding lawnmower that had been the most recent casualty of Spirit Week.

It was a very visible and very sticky trap that just screamed to Patton to turn around and run before Aragog himself burst from its black depths with glimmering fangs dripping with bloo--

Fangs that had sunk into Mr. Wrachet’s neck, before her hands had twisted his head in a complete circle.

Patton gritted his teeth, clutching at his pendant. Stop. “It’s-it’s just Logan in there.” He whispered.

A very scared, terrified, and possibly hurt Logan. All alone in the dark, damp, half collapsed shed surrounded by...by the webs and--He shuddered, glancing at the necklace to confirm its light blue glow.

It doesn’t glow for Logan.

But it did glow for regular old spiders.

Patton whimpered.

“Keep you safe. Pwomise.”

Why here, Lo? Why did you have to pick here?

It was the last place he would have thought their nerd would take cover in.

He’s more scared of you than you are of him.

Patton swallowed, wishing he’d put on shoes before chasing after Logan. Who knew how many other spi--spiders lurked within the shed waiting to nibble on his toes.

Lo needs you. He’s scared. He needs to know he’s safe.

“Safe.”

Gripping his pendant tightly in one trembling hand, Patton edged his way forward, his necklace casting a soft blue glow on the webs as he paused just inside.

Come on. Come on. Show him you’re not afraid!

Breathing fast and shallow, Patton braced himself and stepped into the first shimmering web, tearing its sticky ickiness out of his way, aiming for the back of the shed where he was sure he saw something move.

GIANT SPI--Logan. It’s LOGAN. SHUSH.

But how could he be sure? What if it wasn’t him?

Blood stained lips smiled as six pitch black eyes blinked down at him. “It’s alright. You’ll be safe with me.”

“Pwotect you. Pwomise.”

Another soft whimper escaped him as more blue tinged webs fell on his arms like a glowing gossamer sweater. His reaching fingers and shuffling feet disturbed old rusted tools scattered on the floor, the noise echoing in his ears as Patton felt his way forward, one cautious step at a time.

Please. For the love of Crofters. Please. No other spiders. No. Spiders. GO AWAY other Spiders.

“I--I know you’r-you’re sc-scaAAAAHH!” He yelped, wiping frantically at his face, nearly losing his glasses as a web unexpectedly fell on him, its sticky threads cool and damp from the rain.

Webs that shimmered throughout the playground as the blood stained woman stalked through swings, searching for him. “You can’t hide from me forever child. Come out. Come out to plaaaay~~”

He couldn’t get the things off of him fast enough.

Had there been a spider on that? Oh, Crofters. Oh CROFTERS.

Patton shuddered, his skin prickling as he again held out his necklace in defense, using his other hand to shine his phonelight around. He couldn’t see them. But that didn’t mean the spiders weren’t there.

He huddled deeper in the bushes, the ring clutched tightly in his hand as he fought to keep quiet, holding as still as the sticks on the ground around him.

“I am the shadows, child! You can’t hide within my domain. Come out to me.” A crimson smile flashed across her face as four arms spread out and up to the sky. “And I’ll make your death quick.”

BLOOD.

NO. Don’t. Think. About. It!

“I’m fine!” Patton quickly called out to reassure himself and his roommate.

I’m not afraid. I’m NOT afraid.

“Safe.”

Was Logan even in here? The app had said so but--

Little Logan edged out of the shadows. “Momma?” He asked, eyes dark with hunger as he drew closer. “Where Bweakfast?”

NO NO NO. Logan wouldn’t eat him! Hurt him. He wouldn’t!

“It’s...I’m not scared of y-you, Lo!” He managed to choke out as he tore through more of the thick shimmering threads. No, he was just terrified of the freaking spiderwebs that threatened to ensnare him for all the other little spiders that had to be lurking in here.

Trapped. TRAPPED. Unable to move.

“You-you’re my fri-friend.” HE WAS! Logan wouldn’t hurt him. He’d saved him.

Keep you safe. Tell all spihers go way!

“No--nothing will change that. And I-i won’t..I won’t hurt you ever again! Promise.” Patton gulped, his legs shaking so much that he was barely staying upright as he moved deeper inside the nightmare shed, squeezing his way along the narrow web covered passageway.

Cover. Take Cover. Hide. HIDE before she FINDS YOU and TRAPS YOU and YOU DIE!

He shuddered as he tore through the thicker threads, his eyes darting every which way for Logan and tiny creepy crawly death dealers as the webs steadily covered his body.

Wrapping you up. Look. Fast food delivered right to your doorstep.

OH Crofters! Why did he even think of that?

Patton froze as something shifted in front of him, drawing away. “Logan?” He whispered, angling his phone light so he could finally get a good glimpse of his fri--

A giant black and gold spider as large as his face hung an inch from his nose.

Patton shrieked, stumbling backwards away from the orb weaver, dropping his phone and losing his grip on the pendant as he tripped over a pole. He screamed again, grabbing at web covered tools and wood in a useless effort to save himself as he fell backwards, hitting the ground with a thud.

His phone landed face down, its light shining upwards revealing a writhing mass of shadows overhead. A mass that appeared to be getting larger, closer. Patton froze, heart climbing in his throat as a shower of disturbed spiders left their webs, falling straight at him.

Spi-spi--spi-SPIDERS!!!!

“I pwotect you.”

“...How?” Patton shook his head, curiously holding up the thread wrapped ring. “How will this protect me?” It was so tiny.

“Cus it glows. Tells all spihers. Go way! They no like and--” He frowned up at the ring as it flashed light blue. “Not s’posed to glow no--” He paled, pitch black eyes going wide. “RUN!” He yelled, frantically shoving Patton outside and slamming the door in his face. “RUN FAS--Hi Momma.”

Patton froze, staring wide eyed at the wood. She’d come back.

“WHERE IS THE CHILD, LOGAN?”

Patton backed away from the door, breath hitching at the cold fury in her voice. OH no. Oh no! Blood. Death. He whirled and broke into a run. Crying out as a high pitched scream echoed in his ears.

Logan.

“RUN! HOOMAN RUN! “RUAAAAAAAHH---” The scream cut off abruptly, followed by a sickening thud against the door.

Patton sobbed, running as fast as he could, holding the ring tightly in his fist.

Dead. The boy had to be dead now. He’d died to save--save--

“LO!” Patton shrieked as a dozen of the demonic creatures landed on him. He shoved backwards, frantically swiping at his chest, accidentally kicking his phone away in his desperate attempt to get away. “SAVE ME!” He yelled, the shed falling back into near darkness as his phone slid underneath a shelf.

Spiders. On me. Attacking me. Going to eat me. Don’t EAT ME--I DONNWANNADIE!!

“Pwomise. You safe.”

Patton screamed again, yanking frantically at his arm as something warm suddenly grabbed him by the wrist, easily pulling him deeper into the darkness of the shed despite how he fought, sending more spider covered items tumbling down on top of him.

Laughter echoed in his ears. “No one ever lives when I decide they die! And once I find you child. You. Are. DEAD! You hear me?

“Tells all other Spiher’s GO WAY!”

Patton screamed even louder, thrashing against the shadow’s iron grip on his wrist.

She found me she found me she found me! I’m dead dead dead dead dead dead dead DEAD!! The spiders were on him. Attacking him. The woman was going to KILL HIM!

Oh Crofters! He was GOING TO DI--

The iron grip released him as quickly as it had grabbed him, leaving Patton violently trembling on the floor as a shadow crouched nearby.

“I know you’re here, child.” She said, heading closer to his hiding spot in the bushes, six eyes focused on the tunnels of the Big Toy nearby. “Come, come to me.”

“It’s just me.” A familiar voice whispered hoarsely.

Patton froze, struggling to breathe, the webs shimmering a brighter blue around them as tiny black shadows skittered along their threads and away.

Just….just….him?

Just...Logan?

“Keep you safe.”

“I-I won’t hurt you, Pat. Trus--” Logan abruptly cut off, the large shadowy form shrinking away. Leaving him.

“Pwomise.”

They’re more scared of you than you are of them.

“LO! SAVE ME!”

Logan was here. He’d saved him. He was safe. Safe. Logan was---

I’m not afraid of you, Lo.

Patton surged forward, slamming into the shadowy figure who smelt strongly of lemonade and mint.

Logan.

Patton sobbed, burying his head against his friend’s chest, hugging Lo for all he was worth as hesitantly, carefully, warm arms wrapped around him in a protective hold.

Safe.

To Be Continued Chapter 7

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