#she deserves better than all this black metal shit

[kingdomvel]

Steddie | 2.2k | first meetings | ao3

“What did you say the name of the band is again?” Steve asks. He has to raise his voice above the sound of the music playing before the concert and the hundreds of conversations around him.

“Corroded Coffin” Dustin says, probably for the hundredth time, or that’s what his tone suggests.

“It’s written on the drums.” Mike adds with his constant bitchy petulant tone.

Steve turns around and fair enough, the name is written there in the drums. They are also right there as they had queued for hours to be at the front (they are not in the centre but there’s no one standing in front of them), and apparently the band and place are small enough that there is no security line in front of the stage. Steve has been leaning against it with a drink in his hand while they wait for the concert to start. And that’s his excuse. He was leaning against the stage, so the drums were to his back, he couldn’t have read them.

“C’mon Steve, even I learned the name of the band in the eternity we have been here” Robin says which, rude, but she had agreed to come keep him company at a metal concert without asking for anything in return, so he will let it pass.

The kids (not quite kids anymore, but close enough) had needed an adult to get into the 18+ venue the concert was held at, and of course that adult had to be Steve because “we are not going to bring one of our parents into a metal concert Steve” and “Nancy and Jonathan are not even in the state and you said you were fun, didn’t you?” and he is fun, so he had to agree. And drag Robin with him, of course.

“Well I would remember the name if it wasn’t a stupid name” he says, a bit too loud if the looks he receives from some of the people around them are anything to go by.

“If you are so annoyed why don’t you go hang out at the bar and leave us alone?” Dustin asks.

“If I’m at a concert I’m getting the full experience, I’ve not queued for hours to stay at the bar. And I have to make sure you don’t get squished to death or accept drinks from strangers.”

“We are sixteen, you already drank when you were sixteen.”

“But I didn’t have a wristband telling everyone I was a minor.” He emphasizes this by hooking his forefinger on said wristband around Dustin’s wrist. The boy takes his hand away with a huff, but whatever he was going to say gets interrupted by a loud cheer as the lights of the venue dim. All eyes turn to the stage, and Steve forgets everything about the little shits around him.

They play the first two songs without interruption, back to back, and they are much better than Steve had expected them to be when the kids had pitched the idea of going to a concert of ‘a super cool band’ they had found on tiktok of all places. Steve is very quick to understand their raising popularity on social media the moment his eyes land on the frontman. He is not even wearing anything scandalous, just black jeans, some graphic tee and a leather jacket, but fuck if he isn’t attractive. His big eyes, teasing smile and wild hair are very much deserving of the screams they awake in the audience.

When the second song finishes, they don’t start a new one, the frontman takes the microphone from the stand.

“Are you ready for the best night of your life?” he shouts, and the audience answers with shouts of their own. Steve finds himself whooping, and answers with a smile and a shrug to Robin’s amused silent question as both of them clap. “We are Corroded Coffin,” more yelling, and the frontman stars walking around with a smile on his lips while he looks at the ground, clearly enjoying the attention. “And these aaaaaare…” he prolongs the last word, building a dramatic effect. “Gareth!” he shouts, pointing to the back dramatically. There are yells, the boy at the drums doing a short solo before he stands up to wave at the audience. “Jeff!” more yells, a guitar solo. “Our favourite Freak!” laughs from band and audience alike, more yells, and the boy with the bass trying to hit the frontman with said bass. “And I’m Eddie.”

‘Eddie’ Steve mouths the name.

There are yells as the frontman finishes, a small bashful smile on his lips back on his face after the laughing as he plays with the microphone stand with the hand that is not currently holding the microphone. He looks up at the audience when the yells don’t stop, gives a small dramatic bow and smirks when the yells grow louder once again.

“EDDIE MARRY ME” a voice yells from somewhere in the audience.

“Oh? Without going on a date first?” Eddie asks, he has his gaze set somewhere on the audience, and Steve is a bit impressed at how easily he has spot the person in the sea of bodies.

“I’M FREE WHENEVER.” The same voice yells again, it makes Eddie laugh.

“I’m honoured, my fair lady, but I’ll have to decline. I’m looking for my knight in shining armour myself.” There are ooohs from the audience but Steve’s gut makes a traitorous interested twist. “And speaking of knights,” he says, putting his hands back on his guitar, “I think you may know this one.” One note, and the audience is going crazy. Dustin is jumping up and down while he holds onto Steve’s arm, and Steve can’t help but laugh at him.

It's when that third song is finishing that it happens. The guitarist is starting a solo, and Eddie looks down to the base of the microphone stand, pulls a confused face, and then looks around. He must not see whatever he was looking for because he has a confused furrow in his brow when he does a second sweep around the stage and beyond, and he catches Steve's eyes. He maintains the eye contact for a second, two, five, and then looks down to Steve’s hands and back up again. There is a smirk in his face Steve is not entirely sure he likes the implications of as he walks towards him while he keeps playing.

Steve can hear Dustin screaming “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” right next to his ear as Eddie comes closer until he is standing right in front of them.

The musician is still looking at Steve as he leans forward and asks “give me a sip?” as he looks down at Steve’s hands for a second. (Or at least that’s what Steve guesses he says, the noise too loud for him to really hear him without his mic.)

Steve lifts his drink, and the frontman leans forward and down with a smile. He opens his mouth and Steve pours his drink in it. When he finishes, he winks at Steve before he walks away in time to start singing again. The kids around him are screaming, Robin is surely going to make him partially deaf and is shaking him so hard he almost drops the rest of his drink. It takes until the next song starts for the bunch to calm down a bit and focus on the show again.

The thing is, that is not the last time it happens. Eddie comes back to steal sips from his drink every few verses, and when Steve’s drink is finished and he goes to get a beer, he is miraculously let back to the front by the audience. Eddie, of course, also wants to have his share of the beer. So they share it.

It is, if Steve is honest, the weirdest experience he has ever had in a concert. But he is having too much fun and would not change it for anything. A hot singer and guitarist coming to him every few minutes and bending down so Steve can pour drink into his mouth? The best thing that has happened to him all month. It only gets better when Eddie ditches his leather jacket – Steve was starting to wonder when that was going to happen because it’s much too hot in the venue for it and he is sure that a big reason Eddie needs to drink so much is because he is sweating it all and dehydrating – and reveals that the tee he was wearing underneath has the sleeves cut off very freely. Steve can see most of the man’s torso and that is a SIGHT. There are tattoos on his arms and ribcage that Steve immediately wants to see complete, and his waist is slim where the shirt is tucked into the jeans. It makes Steve bite his lip in want.

He is about to pour the last of their third beer in Eddie’s mouth when a small hand stops him. He looks to the side with confusion, sure that none of the kids or Robin would stop him at this point and is met with the smile of a small blonde girl.

“Give him this please” she says, handing him a bottle of an electrolyte drink. Steve looks back at Eddie just in time to see him groaning. “No more beer.” She adds, pointing to Eddie as if he was a misbehaving dog, he is surely giving the look, with his big brown eyes and sad look. She turns back to Steve, “and sorry about that, any new drinks you get are on us.”

She is gone with that. Steve looks at Eddie, at the new drink in his hand. Eddie shrugs, defeated, and leans forward. Steve quickly empties the rest of the beer in his mouth before he opens the new bottle and starts pouring from it. Eddie doesn’t drink much, too busy trying not to choke on the beer and his laughter.

Eddie ditches his guitar towards the end of the concert for a ‘calmer’ song. He walks around the stage as he sings to a boy involved in him that tries to deny the depth of their relationship and tries to date girls, and how in the future he is going to regret not staying with him. He has great stage presence, he has been flirting with the audience between songs, dramatic and charismatic, a bit over the top. Maybe the fastest crush Steve has ever developed, happy to enjoy his part in the show, even when he knows it’s not going to lead anywhere.

Steve feels his heart accelerating as Eddie walks towards him, which is ridiculous, they have been doing this all night. But this time Eddie shakes his head when Steve gets the drink ready, and he can only look as he kneels on the edge of he stage right in front of him as he sings the bridge. They are holding eye contact now, and it’s the closest they have been. Eddie’s eyes are captivating, Steve can only stop looking at them to glance down at his lips. It seems he was caught, because the next second Eddie is speaking.

“Are we about to kiss right now?” he asks, and Steve looks back up to his eyes. He lifts his eyebrows, trying to convey ‘bring it on’ as best as he can as he licks his lips, Eddie’s eyes glancing at them. It must work, because the next second Eddie is leaning forward, and now Steve’s hand is on his nape, and their lips are pressing against each other.

It’s probably the filthiest kiss Steve has participated on. At least with an audience. It’s not long, Eddie has to keep singing after all, but they make up for it in tongue action. The audience goes crazy around them, but Steve doesn’t pay attention to them at all, only focused on Eddie. He at least must be paying some attention to their surroundings because he pulls off in time to keep singing and stands up to move around the stage.

There are a couple of songs more, and then Eddie is introducing the band again before he starts listing all the members of the staff that have made the concert possible.

“We also wouldn’t have made it here without our precious manager Chrissy,” he adds, “even when she worries too much sometimes. Three beers are not enough to get me drunk, especially not shared ones. And that reminds me! I can’t forget to thank my knight in shining armour, my perfect drink partner…” he trails off.

“STEVE!” Robin shouts next to him.

“Steve” Eddie repeats with a smile. “Thank you for the drinks. Don’t go running off now too fast now, alright? Stay for a bit after the concert, I owe you a couple of beers.” He finishes with a wink.

The kids and Robin are screaming again, and Steve is sure he is going to have bruises tomorrow from their grabbing, but he doesn’t stray his gaze from Eddie. At least not until the last song finishes, the lights from the stage turn off, and the rest of the lights of the venue turn on. Then, and only then, Steve turns towards the others.

“How did you say you were going to get back home again?”

Part two

[minhosimthings]

You Belong To Me

Symphony Smut Series Day 4: Cat Peirce's You Belong to Me

Lyric: Do what you please to me, I won't resist

Pairings: Idol!Jake × idol!fem!reader

Warnings: SMUT MINORS DNI, oral (m, recieving), dom!Jake, sub!reader, maid costume eyy, handcuffs, p in v sex, protected sex, cum eating, throat fucking, overstimulation, Jake calls reader 'doll', free usage

A/N: Day 4 bishes!! Can I just say this one is my fav one so far. I just need to be used my Jake atleast once in my life IT'S A FANTASY OF MINE.

THE SYMPHONY SMUT SERIES MASTERLIST

Jake was tired. And frustrated. And horny. And what better way to let his frustration out than to go home to his beautiful girlfriend and fuck the shit out of her?

You had received the text from Jake probably an hour ago, which very clearly stated to "doll up" for him. While you couldn't become an actual doll, you had been saving a particular maid outfit in the drawers for a long time, wanting to surprise Jake with it, if he ever needed to take a break from idol life.

Taking out the outfit from your drawers and putting it on, you marveled at yourself in the mirror, the dress barely hiding your ass, and hugging your chest perfectly, illuminating the place where Jake liked to mark you most.

Carefully placing all of Jake's favourite candles right where they need to be, your eyes fell upon your bedside drawer. Opening it, you smirked to yourself at what was inside it.

You were going to be Jake's doll and more tonight.

"Doll?" Jake's voice bounced off of the house's walls, as his eyes desperately searched for yours.

"Where the fuck is she?" He grumbled to himself, abandoning his bag and quickly running up the stairs of the house.

"Y/N, wher-"

Jake's words caught in his throat as he saw what was waiting for him inside his bedroom.

"Evenin, babe." You said, leaning on the bed and reading a book without a care in the world.

"Woah." Jake chuckled, inching closer to you, "Is this all for me, doll?"

"Yep." You pecked your lips against his, "Lay down, I got a surprise for you."

Jake's eyes darkened, as he slowly got onto the bed, unsure of what was happening. His eyes never left your ass in that perfect costume, as you bent over the drawer, to reach for something.

"Found it!"

Jake's mouth almost dropped.

The handcuffs.

Of course, how could he have forgotten about all those times he ate you out with the metal restraining you? Brats gotta be taimed ain't it?

"Baby~" he cooed, as you reached over to his hands, tightly cuffing them to the bed frame, "God I don't deserve you."

"We'll see about that." You giggled, pressing your mouth to the button of his shirt, slowly ripping each one off, until his abs were fully on display to you. Your perfume intoxicated Jake, pulling him into a limbo he didn't want to get out of.

"Ah fuck, doll." He moaned, feeling your hands play with his belt, as you undid his pants.

You finally got it free, and you pushed it aside to reveal his black briefs, the one you had helped him pick when you went shopping last week.

You could still feel how tight his body was strung up, and you let your eyes lift up to meet his, and you straightened.

"Christ, you drive me insane, baby."

You barely understood what he was mumbling in between his soft moans, but you didn't need to.The look in his eyes were enough words.

You slipped yours hands into his boxers, tugging it down as his hips lifted off the couch. He was already obscenely hard, and you could have sworn your mouth watered.

"If you are going to keep staring at me like that, I am not responsible for my actions." He muttered, his tone careful as if he was afraid to set you off.

"You are beautiful." You whispered and lifted your eyes in time to see him blush, visible even through the dim light.

You took that opportunity to ease him into your mouth, and Jake swore, both hands dying to drop to grip your hair, if they were not restrained.

You groaned, and you felt them retract, but before you could complain he started talking.

"You have no idea how amazing your mouth feels right now, doll." He groaned as you ease him more into your throat, breathing slowly through your nose.

Jake made a weird noise in the back of his throat, and you bit back a grin, moving backwards before swirling your tongue over and around the smooth head.

You couldn't help yourself as you looked up at him, and he had his hands over his face, and you could tell he was holding himself back, so you jerked forward until you gagged and he let out a string of curses.

“Just like that, baby.”

Using the grip his legs had around your neck, he pulled your head toward his hips, feeding his cock even deeper into your mouth.

It made your jaw ache, considering how big he was and how little you had taken in before, but you didn't feel nervous. Even though you had no control over how much he tried to shove in.

He waited for your nod before he did it again, and this time you leaned into it and tried to take him deeper. You knew when he breached the back of your throat, sliding in and you forced yourself to relax, breathing in through your nose.

It made you think you were a little sick to enjoy the way he was using your mouth, but you couldn't form a single thought as he thrust gently between your lips.

“Oh fuck. Yeah. Yeah, just like that. You are doing so good for me, baby.” His praise caused a fire to ignite in your belly, and he curled his fingers into your hair, effectively ruining your hair further.

You felt him shoot down your throat and his grip around your head slacked as you lifted your eyes to see him rest his head against the bedframe.

"Fuck you look so pretty." Jake chuckled, as you leant up to his level, the maid costume barely hiding your nipples, "So fucking pretty for me."

"And darling?"

"Yeah?"

"You didn't cuff me properly."

You barely had time to look up at the cuffs, as Jake's hands pressed against your cheeks, pulling you in for a deep kiss.

Jake could taste his own cum, smeared around your mouth, and it felt delicious.

His hands moved down to your tits, squeezing them tight, and kneading the hardened buds, while he kissed you with his tongue almost choking you.

"Oh fucking hell doll." He pulled away, to see your lipstick all smeared around your mouth, "You're so fucking perfect."

You had no time to think, as Jake flipped you over the matress, his figure now on top of you.

"Ahh Jake." You moaned, feeling his tip caress your cunt so gently.

"Already?" Jake chuckled, "Haven't even put it in yet, doll."

"Jake don't tease." You pouted, feeling his tip hug your pussy again, sending jets of pleasure through you.

"Nuh uh wait." Jake reached over you, to the bedside table, to get a condom, "Protection first."

"Why? You don't want to fuck a baby into me?" You teased him, slightly disappointed that he wasn't fucking you raw.

"You have no idea how much I'd love to do that." Jake whispered, "But I don't want you to be on hiatus for nine months, so maybe not now."

He sinks his cock slowly and gently. His hands trembling as he holds your hips in place, his other hand thumbing with your clit like you asked. His breath was shaking, he felt like he was going to shoot his cum inside you once he bottoms out.

His eyes dropping to your tits, his cheeks get pink. He slides his cock out of your pussy, watching it clench around nothing before thrusting back in, whining as he feels the warmth of your walls. You cunt hugging all the veins and curve of dick.

His eyes fall open as he lets out a grunt of surprise and pleasure, “Fuck.” His eyes glare at you, “Don't.” Your pussy only clenched further in reply and his hold gets harder, pressing your hand into the mattress as he sank in completely without a warning. “Ah!” You let out in surprise, the stretch painfully perfect.

“Take it,” he whispered to you, his lip biting your earlobe before he dragged his mouth to the pulse of your neck to mark you up properly as his property. His hips now beginning to move, calculated and controlled just like every other action of Jake. Every thrust hits your g-spot relentlessly, making you gasp and moan, back arching in pleasure.

The heat was already forming in your stomach, waiting to be released and spread all over your body. The final push hadn't come long after. As you and Jake shared a filthy open-mouthed kiss, he had thrust so hard and deep, a small bulge had formed, your cervix being kissed with his cockhead.

You cry his name and your pussy comes on his cock, milking his length with repeated squeezes. “That's it, doll” he praises as he continues to abuse your cunt with his dick. Your nerves are oversensitive making you whimper and teary-eyed. He found his release with a whimper, his hot cum almost filling your womb. He pulled out with a small gasp and you wanted him again.

"Fucking hell doll." Jake gasps, collapsing on your side, as you pant, you chest rising up and down. The costume had now been completely ripped apart, revealing your naked form, which Jake deemed his 'piece of art'.

"Don't worry I'll buy you a new one." He chuckled, pulling you into his arms.

"Wanna take a shower?"

"Another round? Sure."

Taglist: @ramenoil + taglist is open my babies!

[1800naveen]

Spoilers?? (Mentions of major character deaths)

Greenies can joke about Rhaenyra's death all they want but it's one of the coolest ways someone can die in a song of ice and fire and as a Targaryen.

If you aren't aware of how Rhaenyra dies, she is cut at her breast which alerts Sunfyre and he (she?) doses Rhaenyra in dragon fire before devouring her.

That is metal as fuck.

That's a dragon rider's death. That's a Targaryen death right there.

"Rhaenyra Targaryen had time to raise her head toward the sky and shriek out one last curse upon her half-brother before Sunfyre’s jaws closed round her, tearing off her arm and shoulder."

SHE WAS BEING BURNED ALIVE BUT SHE CURSED OUT AEGON ONE LAST TIME! SHE DIED NOT A COWARD BUT A QUEEN WITH HER HEAD HELD HIGH. I wonder what she said to him.

And you want to know how Aegon died?

He got poisoned.

"A cold wind was blowing. As the litter set off, the king closed the curtains against the chill. Inside, as always, was a flagon of sweet Arbor red, Aegon’s favorite wine. The king availed himself of a small cup as the litter crossed the yard."

"Ser Gyles and the litter bearers had no notion aught was amiss until they reached the sept, and the curtains did not open. “We are here, Your Grace,” the knight said. No answer came, but only silence. When a second query and a third produced the same, Ser Gyles Belgrave threw back the curtains, and found the king dead upon his cushions."

“There was blood upon his lips,” the knight said. “Elsewise he might have been sleeping.”

Poison is considered to be a woman's weapon. Aegon who usurped his sister's throne because she was a woman, died by a woman's weapon. Gotta love the irony. There are theories that Corlys or Larys poisoned him, what do you think? I think Corlys did it.

"Aegon was a good king!"

"Septon Eustace tells us that a “strange euphoria” took hold of King’s Landing; Mushroom simply says that “half the city was drunk.” The corpse of King Aegon II was consigned to the flames, in the hopes that all the ills and hatreds of his reign might be burned away with his remains. Thousands climbed Aegon’s High Hill to hear Prince Aegon proclaim that peace was at hand."

Mfs was getting turnt the fuck up when they found out that he died. They could finally be at peace after his reign. Yeah, don't say Aegon is a good king when this quote exists.

And Aegon and Sunfyre don't have the most powerful bond. A good example would be Daemon and Caraxes, Dany and her children too.

That answer was no answer, plainly. “Not Silverwing,” His Grace declared. “I will have a new Sunfyre, prouder and fiercer than the last.”

Sunfyre in the afterlife hearing that:

Your dragon died due to the shit you put them through and you want to get a new one? Damn, at least mourn or something. The dragons deserve so much better.

Everyone on team black died cool or interesting ass deaths. Rhaenys taking on two dragons and not even fleeing when she realized that she wouldn't win the battle, Jace and Luke dying alongside their dragons like a Targaryen and being buried in the sea like a Velaryon, Daemon leaping off Caraxes and driving Dark Sister into Aemond's eye; the eye that Luke took out.

Team green?

Otto got beheaded, Aemond looking up at terror when Daemon made him Dark Sister's place holder, Criston Cole getting arrows in him by the winter wolves who declared that no one will sing songs of him and his head was put on a spear, Daeron Tentsbane dying in a tent fire, and Alicent was driven mad after the dance, regretting her choices and hating the color green. Dark sister and Vhagar's skull were retrieved but they left Aemond's skeleton down there. They buried what was left of Rhaenyra but didn't do shit from him.

Helaena will not be mentioned because she didn't deserve any of this, the same for Jaehaerys, Maelor, and Jaehaera.

"Sunfyre ate!" Yes, Sunfyre did eat Rhaenyra. You want a cookie for reminding us?

"Sunfyre, it is said, did not seem at first to take any interest in the offering, until Broome pricked the queen’s breast with his dagger. The smell of blood roused the dragon, who sniffed at Her Grace, then bathed her in a blast of flame."

Sunfyre was nearing death, animals will stop eating when they near death (does it count for a dragon?).

Anyways, remember that Rhaenyra and Daemon's bloodline prevailed and gave us Daenerys, the current Baratheons, the current Martells, Brienne (through Duncan), Jon Snow (not yet to be confirmed in the books). And Aegon's line was brought to an end.

WHEN YOU USURP, YOUR LINE SHALL END! Maegor and Aegon: usurping the throne and having their line ended because of it.

"The choice is his, but he shall have no children. My sister’s line must end.”

Should've specified which sister.

Now enjoy some art of the rightful queen and her king (consort):

🎨: Jotasaraiva! So good, power couple.

🎨: Daewithmon! (Tried to make out the credits below but it's down there)

🎨: Chillyravenart!

@paparinka, give them a follow if you like the art!

DON'T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY, I LIKE TO YAP🙏🏾

[losing-it-lately]

doing Steve's makeup

wc: 1k

steve harrington x reader fluff

Steve Harrington feels like he’s died and gone to heaven. He didn’t even think he deserved heaven after everything he did in high school and all the girls’ hearts he strung along and all the people he hurt. But now, with his head in your hands and his heart in your palms, he thinks that maybe he did really turn his life around; his mind is mostly empty, just one last question bouncing around the crevices of his brain: “how is he even here?”

If you ask anyone but Steve, the answer would be simple. Ask Eddie, and he would just explain that it’s common knowledge that metal music is a progressive scene, one where man and makeup collide. That, and that Steve melts like butter in the palm of your hand, choosing to do anything to get close to you, even rejecting his “boy-next-door” look for some black eyeliner. Ask Nancy, and she would tell you she’s been waiting for someone kind to come back to Steve and that Steve has been waiting for you to come to him. Ask Robin, and she will wind up about a messy and descriptive but warm anecdote that all starts with you bringing them to Corroded Coffin’s new gig.

The Hideout is never packed, unless it’s a Friday. The combination of loud music, non-functioning lights and Hawkin’s lack of bars and clubs resulted in an absolute haven for youth, and on top of that, Corroded Coffin had been moved from their regular Tuesday shift to the late Friday night one. Usually, the odd scent of the bar mixed with the unnecessary amount of people was enough to turn you away from Friday nights at the Hideout, but Eddie was playing; what kind of hype man would you be if you didn’t drag Robin and Steve with you?

Despite the overfilled bar, someone had still managed to catch Robin’s eye in the corner of the bar.

“Oh my god. She’s here! She’s here and I look like shit!” In classic Buckley fashion, Robin began what should have been a calm night by noticing Nancy Wheeler in the corner of the Hideout with her classic notepad and her permed bangs; a journalist in the making writing for an article in the making, a little column piece on Eddie’s “up and coming band”.

“Rob, you never look like shit,” you reassure as you begin to reach for your purse. Robin’s a smart girl, but she forgets how other people see her and can spiral. Sometimes she just needs something to ground her- “I can do your makeup if it makes you feel better?”

Robin’s lips begin to turn back up, her eyes preen with appreciation and she rasps out a kind “yes please!”

She lowers herself on a barstool. The bar was mostly dark, excusing some random working lamps above varying booths, but it was still enough for Steve to gaze at you, whilst you finished working your magic. Cleaning and then using a soft eyeliner to blend her eyes and then a mascara to draw attention to them, Robin laughs as your collection of tools softly tickles her face.

Steve’s wide eyes repeatedly glance over your face, concentration forcing you to forget about his presence. He has never wanted anything more than how he wants to wear that makeup.

Using the dark brown liner and the random mauve-y, chocolatey shade of old lipstick in your purse, you finished up adorning Robin’s face. The perfect time for Steve to interject. “i want makeup too,” he squeaks out.

Both yours and Robin's eyes zero in on him, a knowing smirk gracing Robin's face before she leaps from her chair and practically runs to Nancy.

“For the concert, I want to look metal,” he adds as a small blush begins to grow from his ears.

“Ok,” you respond with a smile. He starts shifting in his chair, trying to figure out an angle where he can be comfortably near you and you can easily start fixing up his face. As you stand in front of him and manoeuvre your hands to hold him, a gentle feeling starts to spread in his torso. You’re so close, and from this angle, you are so beautiful. His eyes gaze up at you and his hands circle around your legs, firmly grasping the backs of your thighs. His hands are soft and strong, and his touch is light and warm.

You hold his jaw with the palm of your hand; if you press enough, you can feel his heartbeat quicken under your fingers. You had never thought that Steve Harrington would be interested in makeup or metal music, and you were right; he wasn’t interested in makeup or metal music- he was interested in you.

Taking the spare black eyeliner from your bag, you begin to draw on his eyes, occasionally angling his head in a new direction. Steve feels like every time you come near him, his life goes in a new direction. You colour and smudge the eyeliner, ignoring his big brown eyes and the way that they monitor your every move. You feel like you could live in his gaze, and truth be told, he would let you.

Your fingers begin to inch up from his neck and chin to his lips, ghosting over them as both of your breathing dwindles. You can feel the air he breathes out on your finger tips, in fact, without noticing, you begin to feel it on your face as he brings you closer. His hands push you into him as his lined eyes drop down to your lips.

Steve’s eyes begin to close and he can feel your lips getting even closer, and then he hears you gasp loudly in shock. His eyes startle open and his hands are suddenly cold and wet. Somebody's beer is washed down your back, your hair and blouse drenched from behind.

Steve lips frown in a soft pout as it hits him that the moment is gone. Everything turns into white noise as he understands that you nearly kissed him: the apologies from the drunk girl who spilled it, Eddie’s music, the bartender's offer of napkins. It all fades until he watches you slip off to the bathroom, trying to fix your problem.

[snackugaki]

...visdev really is my enrichment activity for i am just a bored tiger in my enclosure, looking to figure out how to get this steak out of this metal ball.

________

my tmnt au (where everyone made it past their 20s, splinter’s alive just old, venus is here, and they deserve some goddamn respite and shenanigans)

tmnt au part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

tmnt au omake 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

lny visit 1 | 2

also uhhh... i guess still idw, next mutation, and like 1 mirage spoiler? mostly for the kids who haven’t but were planning to read/watch

you’re about to perceive so much

p r e p a r e

so close to getting this AU looking as crunchy as i want it, almosttttt tttthhhhhere...!

just somewhere tasty between Mignola’s use of deep black shadow, what MTV Liquid Television woulda greenlit re: The Maxx, a dash of 2007, 1 part Next Mutation, 2 parts funny proportions

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh str ugglingggg

Leo’s shortest because haha (family baby gang, get rekt)

this is so much thought for something I’m just doing to give these turtle ninjas some softness and the genx/millenial pop culture references gag comics

Splinter is full of ghosts

(specifically the onryo borne from the murdered Yoshi Hamato and Tang Shen [because oroku saki a bitch])

[ redacted ] and Tang Shen’s ghost gained control and guided Splinter to raise the boys in love and not [ redacted ] to [ redacted ] in [ redacted ]

Splinter was just a regular little rat... who on his 1000th birthday witnessed the death of his friend/unwitting master and his wife, and thus transformed into a wrathful kyūso (minus the kitten eating) and chased Shredder until losing his trail in New York

Shredder’s fuck around and Splinter’s rampaging as the find out caused the tengu to repo some of the mysticism from ninjutsu

now all the (remaining) ninja clans debuffed and mad about it

The tengu bestowed the ninja the ability to summon shit (kuchiyose), enact mystical effects upon people and objects (kuji kiri), going invisible, minor flight (actually just qinggong/light body technique), and manipulation of the 5 elements, and creating doubles (bunshin)

but again, Shredder fucked up so now ninja can like barely control anything bigger than a lit torch or a 16 oz bottle of liquid and that’s if you got in enough hours to do even that

I mentioned elsewhere but for me in any AU I make, Venus is a cultivator and the more I think about it the more I will die on this hill, not only does it fit better than her being a “shaman” or “shinobi” it’s sick as fuck

Jennika’s origin was pretty fkkn metal, she still falls in with the Foot, gets shanked, Leo gives blood-- bam, turtle time

Jennika goes to hang with Venus in China and get a better understanding of her new turtle body

Keno’s here, still tried to infiltrate the Foot (with Jennika) but bugged out when she couldn’t stay without being made (Jennika refused to leave womp)

teaches Leo some arnis techniques for Leo’s dual wielding; Donnie also just in case his bo is shattered... again. :)

Irma has made all the boys blush at least twice

Irma is also soap opera buddies with Splinter

they meet up at least twice a month to gab, gush, and groan over what’s currently going on in their stories, when Venus visits she also joins in, Irma also has a conversational grasp on Japanese and Venus’ regional dialect because of these visits

April has a full out shoujo manga romance with Chu Hsi

and he’s a hot dragon prince uhuhuhuhuhu

Irma is privy to all the steamy details

keeping Leo and Karai as character foils

both received scars from one another

both released each other from sealing wards from [ redacted ]

now they just meet every so often to eat the greasiest fast food and unclench of an hour

Raph still gets his ass worked by Ninjara, folded like an omelette sat on a lawn chair

Vam Mi is also here, she’s fought first (because honestly she should’ve been either brought in earlier in the season or had a few more episodes because that shit coulda resolved better)

Venus is brought to NYC for this antagonist instead of Dragonlord escaping (and murdering her father figure forcing her to seek out his friend Splinter for aid)

Donnie doesn’t take the news of real vampires or real magic well

Donnie and Venus have a knock down drag out fight over it (because they’re 17 at this point and being li’l shits to each other about their respective fields of expertise)

“The nerds are fightingggggg!” cries Mikey, Leo and Raph don’t believe it so imagine their surprise when they get a demo in real time on how scary competent staff fighters are

Leo gets Splinter when one of Donnie’s missed strikes cracks the concrete

Splinter breaks them up like talking a walk in the park and it’d be comical if they both weren’t bleeding from the mouth and peppered with swelling contusions

Venus begins accepting Donnie when his tech prevents her from becoming a thrall of Vam-Mi

Donnie begins accepting Venus when she uses a massive amount of chi to manipulate gravity just before he becomes street pizza when Vam-Mi throws him off a bridge

they also combine skill sets to save Mikey so there’s that

Venus goes from calling Donnie, “Horatio (derogatory)” to “Horatio (affectionate)”

they now have a dumbass long-as-fuck handshake that’s unforgivably nerdy 

April is still a magic drawing-brought-to-life baby, Venus puts her in a painted scroll when she starts phasing in and out of existence (she and Chu Hsi have a great time in the scroll... while everyone is shitting bricks until Venus and her sect stabilize her and get her made real, Pinocchio style)

April’s grandmothers gifted Venus 2 pieces of jade jewelry, and her family’s recipe for sweet potato pudding respectively for saving April

the boss fight against Dragonlord is dope as fuckkkkk, Chu Hsi is being cool as fuck, fiddled with some concepts* that has Leo and Karai being a champion of Genbu, Raph for Byakko, Mikey for Suzaku, Chu Hsi’s retainer (a good dragon, wink wonk) steps in for Seiryu because Donnie and Venus are siphoning and redirecting an enormous amount and variety of mystical power

*i’m just pulling from fushigi yugi honestly

splinter, the boys, and venus (and others) mutating from mutagen laced toxic waste was a pure accident

Splinter was investigating a lead on Shredder’s movements concerning the Foot the same night an animal liberation sleeper cell ‘freed’ some animals from the back of a pet store (that was a front for black market domestic and exotic animal trafficking) that is also the same night a stolen truck driven by some corporate spies filled with a competitor’s chemical waste, which then collides with said liberation sleeper cell’s truck and... ooze happens

Leatherhead, the Mutanimals, Mondo, Mona Lisa, Slash also get mutated from the events of that night, either leading up to or following the aftermath

plus some others etc etc

Venus still washes down the gutter, gets rube goldberg pinballed onto a crate of plums where Chung I finds her and still gets named Mei and taken to live in China and eventually learns to cultivate

Tokka and Rahzar get made, and unmade ala TMNT II; the mutagen made them a little silly tho, April adopts Rahzar and passes him off as a low content wolfdog, Leatherhead takes in Tokka

April went through a couple of major changes so now she’s a journalist with a computer programming background who now does a podcast as an informal neighborhood news reporter with a segment for chatting with people from around the street

Mikey’s the most frequent guest and co-hosts sometimes; Donnie troubleshoots free of charge

Venus brings her province’s regional delicacies when she comes to visit, Splinter and Leo both get pu er tea cakes (she managed to get one the same age as him; Splinter is too old so she got the oldest she could find, Leo has so many tea pets and a nice yixing collection); Raph, Keno, and Casey fight over the pickles, meat jerkies, and chili oil; Mikey has an artillery of cool shirts and a lifetime supply of haw flakes, Donnie has a mountain of doodads with increasingly specific uses, April gets neat accessories and the occasional care package sent with Venus from her grandparents, uncles, and aunties; Irma gets neat frames and coats that never fail to get a “Where did you get that??”

Raph rides a Kawasaki Ninja because it’s funny

A lot of bodegas give Mikey free snacks because the bodega cats love him, and he’s also saved some from being run over or ripped apart by stray dogs or the few large angry raccoons

Donnie’s the only one of his brothers to wear both a top and bottom with shoes because once he figured out how to integrate a motherboard and miscellany wiring onto clothing... he’s been a walking computing menace ever since

Splinter does his best to enjoy his time with his sons (because as a kyūso, he knows the chances of outliving his precious sons is very high (ᴗ‿ᴗ✿)  ...give or take one of the many opponents and obstacles his sons take on takes him out first ( ◕ᴗ◕✿ ) )

god whathefuck, I was just going to make silly comics for them. how did it come to this.

[insuke69]

/|MILES 42 HEADCANNONS P3 |\

My god, uh- part three but this is before y'all get together

DIFFERENT POVS AHSHDJ Warnings; Miles doin a little prowler stuff, Just description of someone who was beaten.

(So, there's gonna be if he asks you out/crushes on you first, we both know damn well you wouldn't do shit if you liked him and he were real.)

implied female reader :[

================================================

When Miles was crushing..:

-He'd draw you, like- during lunch if you're done eating and just laughing with friends he draws you sitting and with your smile

If you don't hang out with anyone during lunch then he'd draw you as you sat by yourself with a calm neutral expression while you did your own thing.

-Bold mf yet shy. He'd ask what you're doing and act all smug and confident but as soon as y'all stop interacting he'd over think his every line

did she actually like that joke? she looked upset, wait- was she? why didn't I ask what was wrong?

etc.

-He was always himself around you, yet toned it down when he didn't know exactly how you'd react to him.

-when y'all had your first date, this man is a gentlemen and picked you up in his motorcycle, (yes I declare he has a motorcycle.) He called you gorgeous in every way possible along with more flirty or bold lines

"Damn, If I knew you were this fine than I would've dressed up more myself."

"jealous of your belt, my hands would feel better on your hips."

he was always hella smooth with it too.

-he first asked for your number and he texted so politely for a good first impression. "Hey, so I wanted to ask if you wanted to go out to dinner with me sometime?"

"Alright, perfect. see you then 😗"

but a lil after y'all actually date he just ..is.

"When did yo say the daye was"

"?"

"Date*"

"You*"

he's a fast typer.

-Hated seeing you talk to other guys when he was just crushing on you, mostly pissed at himself for not growing a pair and asking you out though.

okay this is just a scenario I cannot stop thinking about once I said that:

you were freshly broken up with your cheating boyfriend- well, you were never labeled but he made you seriously think it was exclusive and that'd piss you off beyond belief, Miles was the perfect shoulder to cry on. Never once did he make a move on you during that time. "That prick said he didn't care for labels but got a public girlfriend after 4 months of being with me!" You mumble out with small tears of frustration pooling in your eyes, your vision was blurred a bit so you couldn't see Miles reaction. He was seething.

how could a guy just use and fuck with you like that? He doesn't deserve to even be treated as a man, much less a person.. But Miles simply comforted you in that moment and reminded you how it was to be cared for platonically, or at least that's how he showed it. The next day? your 'ex' was nowhere to be found, the day after that: he went to school battered and bruised, broken nose, black eye, limping and bandaged everywhere. He told everyone that he was just chilling out in an alleyway by his house and some rando with a purple dark mask and metal gauntlet kind-of-thing just attacked him. weird. Vague coincidence that Miles' knuckles are bruised and he visibly bites back a grin as he hears your ex talk about it. what helped most was that when you told his girlfriend about what your ex did to you, she dumped him and told everyone exactly why, which made him lose any pity he could have gotten.

-Was terrified to tell you he was prowler, never knew how you'd actually react. THATS IT OMFG IDK- DO I MAKE A P4?!

[tragedycoded]

this is a shout-out post

Specifically @ those folks who--at some point in the last three months--have left thoughtful, encouraging, or completely unhinged comments on Doom Metal Love Story, only to be met with crickets from the ADHD introvert who wrote the damned thing. I do read every single comment, I just apparently need a secretary.

This also serves as an "I highly recommend these blogs/writers" post. If you're following me and not following these folks, you're doing yourself a disservice. Most of them are writing queer horror or horror-adjacent fiction that affects my brain chemistry.

I'm more sick than I was when I was answering inappropriate questions the other day, so I apologize for the... uh... shit, what's the word. This post sucks. I'm sorry. You all deserve a big hug and thousands of hits on your own fics.

@aintgonnatakethis does military sci-fi with queer relationships like a g. Would highly recommend checking out his fics.

@astramachina my beloved. His FNAF fics are engrossing (I'm hooked on Driving Through Tunnels (With No Light at the End)) and I'm excited to see more analog horror from him.

What is there to say about @cowboybrunch that everyone following me doesn't already know? Thank you for your love here and your comments over on AO3. You were Hofer's first fan, and in my heart you're his #1. I know I keep saying this but if you aren't reading Dust to Dust, fix that. Judas Wept is also ace (not ace as in asexual. The throuple definitely bang. #GemmaDidNothingWrong)

Is @davycoquette still around or is she one of those cool bloggers who shows up with mind-blowing posts for six months and then disappears?

@gioiaalbanoart my love. There is no way I could respond to all of your comments. I do intend to print them out and wallpaper my office with them, which imo is better than responding. I can't wait to read TSA.

@jev-urisk your deep reads of the main characters, your fanart, and your moodboards have made me feel things I didn't think it was possible to feel. The intro post for 7 Circles slays, and I can't wait for it to be out in the world.

@noblebs gets a threat: if you don't finish EWT I'm going to beat your ass with something soft. Your comments always spark joy, and your characters are a delight.

@sableglass has given me feedback that's going to make draft 6/the IF novel better. Thank you, buddy. She's also got this laser-guided way of writing that goes straight for the gut. I'm really glad I met you, man.

@sh0ckrot your love and support of this damned novel was so uplifting. Thank you for cheering when I was first getting it off the ground. (Also, hi, this is my new blog, sorry I vanished.)

@solivagantingrebel I know I've been quiet on Bleeding Oath but it's SO GOOD. Vampire!Ghost and Werewolf!Soap have my heart, and I am rooting for them. And also looking forward to the day I have my beta read backlog cleared so I can go back through and give this one the line-highlighter treatment.

Everybody already knows @the-golden-comet but he helped me so much emotionally when I was publishing the back third of this damned thing. If you don't know how much I appreciate you, Goldie... 🧼🧼🧼

@wyked-ao3 IDK where you came from, but you are an absolute gem. Thank you for helping me learn to love my tritagonist (Royston) whom I almost killed in the fourth draft, and for sharing your Pinterest finds with me.

I can't shout out readers without highlighting @words-after-midnight who beta read the thing and is the only reason the Bad Ending chapter makes any damned sense. I'm excited for Life in Black and White to finally make it out into the world. Nico inspires me every day.

OK no more dayquilposting. Carry on.

[fuckyeah-dragrace]

WIP Wednesday!

been a while since i've done this but i think it'll be good! i think im nearly finished with this work im getting done and i'd love to give you all a sneak peek!

Maybe it was dumb for Jasmine to still have a sore spot for that tall punk, she could see that. But no matter how many times she told herself she was rising above and over it all, nothing took away the sting and bite from hearing her name.

She laid in her bed, one she slept many a sleepover at the Colby’s back in childhood and stared up at the ceiling, letting the memories wash over her. She wasn’t going to sleep anyways.

Daya was the cool girl, the tough girl dressed in black platforms and dyed her hair every damn color of the rainbow three times over. The one that was late to class and didn’t give shit or would just skip it all together.

Jasmine couldn’t tell you how she got her attention but she did, maybe it was pure lust and teenage hormones, maybe it was a bet from her other friends or something else entirely. It was senior year and Jasmine wanted to have fun so she let Daya take her on a wild ride.

God was it something special, she had to smile thinking back to every day they spent together. Sneaking out and riding around in her beat up truck, staying out way later than either of them were supposed to and having the time of their lives. All of it made her heart flutter as she sighed, thumbing the covers.

Graduation and summer came and went, filled with amazing memories on beaches and bikinis, their only worries being getting a good tan and having the time of their lives and who knows what else she’s forgetting with the passage of time.

Then Jasmine left for school in New York, Daya was the one who actually pushed her to apply, and Daya stayed back, taking up a seamstress apprenticeship. They promised to make it work, with one last night in that beat up truck they linked their pinkies together, promising under the stars they’d last.

Jasmine’s hand went to her neck, finding the cheap metal chain still on her neck from that night and thumbing over the little green crystal that definitely wasn’t real jasmine but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was from Daya and she'd never take it off, not in a million years.

They heard all of the lectures of long distance from anyone who stuck their nose in, it’d never work, you’re both so young, why tie yourself down? And at first she fought against them every time, saying it was different and they’d work out in the end. But then the phone calls grew less frequent, the ‘good morning’ texts just turned to ‘hey’ and before Jasmine could stop and hold down all the pieces they had to keep from breaking, Daya posted a picture with a blonde girl. Kissing that blonde girl and looking happier than ever.

Blair was her name but everyone called her Bosco, some childhood nickname or something, Jasmine didn't care to remember. She was cool and tall with dark eyeliner and leather clothes, someone that could get along with Daya better than she ever could. They got along so well that they had to kiss and have it shared out to the world for everyone to see.

She remembered sitting in her door room, staring down at her girlfriends instagram and seeing that picture and the world stopping. A blur of running to the bathroom and throwing up, too lost in the shock of it all to even bother to call her and scream or shout and chew Daya out through the phone because she looked so happy, that’s all she wanted.

Daya deserved that punk rock girl that could stud out their jackets together and blast whatever band of people screaming over the radio as she sped down those long stretches of road without a care in the world. She deserved that. But it didn’t mean that the memories still didn’t hurt every time a picture popped up on her Instagram or when Kerri mentioned her name briefly, knowing that she could never be that girl for Daya, no matter how much she wanted to.

[addicted-to-dc]

Scorned - König x Assassin!Reader

(A/N) Always a sucker for spitfire assassin readers. 'Tis my weak spot. Anyways, this will contain gun use and descriptions, bullet wounds, violence, body horror, and amongst other things. Nothing too heavy for the first part. Slow burn, slight enemies to lovers. We shall see what the future holds, muahahaha. (2367 word count)

Of course, it had to be fucking Russia the 141 sent you to. Trust was something they’d never give you, not with your track record of running the second you saw a viable chance. Not this time. A severe winter storm obliterated every option you had. You hate being on their leash. If there’s two things you loved about your life before this, it was being rich and free. At least your rage is keeping you warm.

Teeth chattering, you lift your scope and finally spot your target. A warehouse in the middle of nowhere, apparently one of KorTac’s many weapons caches. The mission? Fucking sneak in and place cameras throughout the facility. That’s all they’re using you for, recon for something they’ll just blow up at the end of the day. A waste of your talents.

You itch for the hunt again, researching and observing everything about your target before finally taking them out. It’s not like you popped the heads of good people. All of them deserved it in the end.

“Got eyes on the warehouse. Going in…”

You wait a few seconds, unable to resist snarking back at the men who’re probably enjoying the heat of the base.

“…and go fuck yourselves. I better have a warm bath waiting for me after this.”

Silencing your comms, you pocket the scope and trudge up the snow. The snow boots they forced you to wear are clunky, something that would make sneaking around more difficult than it should be. It’s like they’re trying to kill you, which they most likely are.

Getting past the guards was too easy, quickly memorizing their patterns until you noticed an opening. Slipping through, the clunky boots are left behind and buried in the snow long before you enter. At least you were able to sneak in backups, much more lightweight and silent. Just the way you like it.

Your snake cam quickly slides underneath the door, confirming that it’s safe to enter. The door is unlocked… that’s the first strike. Your instincts tell you to get out of there, that the mission is already fucked, but you continue. Slipping in, you waste no time climbing to the rafters and place cameras. The unlocked door plagues your mind, something so small that KorTac would never allow to happen.

There are several exits you could use if your gut is right. A window, no, two windows and even a skylight, but even if you did manage to get out you would be stranded. The thought chills you to the bone. Was this a suicide mission? Would the ‘good guys’ really do that to you? Shaking the thought out of your head, you decide to save the last camera placement near the door. At least you’d be able to leave quickly.

Just as you place the second to last camera, the door opens. The cold air sends a chill down your spine, but the man you see walk in makes you freeze. He must be 7 feet tall. Fear finally settles in your bones. Hiding behind one of the metal beams, you shift out of his eyeline and regulate your breathing. You can’t lose your shit, not now. You sneak another peak at him and holy shit, he’s wearing a mask. It’s not cheesy like Ghost, the emo skull caricature ruining any intimidation tactics the man tried on you. No, it’s terrifying. The eye holes, a void of black in the lighting, feel like they’re staring right into your soul.

He moves to turn a corner and BAM!

You slam onto the ground before you know it, slamming on your side and  cracking your head on a crate. Your vision blurs, a possible concussion sealing your fate. God, you should be in the Caribbean right now getting your back blown out. This is such bullshit.

“Looks like a little birdy is nesting where she shouldn’t be.”

His voice is accented, possibly German. No, Austrian? It’s taunting, making your blood boil. Despite seeing three of him, you lift your pistol and aim at one of him, but he’s faster than he looks. The giant plucks the weapon from your hand and grabs you by the throat. As if you weigh nothing, he slams you into another crate, shattering the wood beneath you. Black spots dominate your vision, his eyes burning into yours.

Even while you’re clawing at his hand, he rips your mask off with ease. You try to suck in another breath, but it’s in vain. This is it. You’re dying. The dream of retiring and dying of old age is dead, just like you…

Air. You have air? Greedily filling up your lungs, you wheeze and gasp as you’re flung over a shoulder. Something painfully digs into your stomach, nearly making you lose your breath again, but the cold is enough to kickstart your body. You begin to struggle, but a harsh squeeze to your shoulder wound makes you freeze. Fuck, this giant really did a number on you.

Mr. Tall, dark, and horrifying shoves you into a vehicle, shouting something at the driver. The car lurches forward immediately. Your head nearly slams into the window from the force, but you’re pulled close to a warm body. A knife appears in your vision, your unfocused eyes unable to track it as your clothing is cut away. You move to push him away, but the knife moves to your throat.

The overhead light in the car finally lets you see his eyes, deep blue orbs paralyzing you instantly. Satisfied with your reaction, he finishes cutting through your clothes and applies pressure to your wound. Hissing, your eyes flutter shut, but you’re not even allowed the sweet peace of unconsciousness.

“Eyes open.”

A bump in the road sends pain straight down your spine, waking you enough to keep your eyes open. The giant, who is hunching in the vehicle, starts dressing your wound. The sight nearly makes you laugh. Maybe it does. His eyes move from your wound back to you. It makes you want to shrink away, but the fucked-up part of your brain is enjoying this. You missed working with mercs, at least they knew how to have a good time. A good time sounds good right now.

Everything’s a blur, you barely register leaving the vehicle, let alone the gurney trip through a hallway of blinding lights. Multiple figures pull you forward, slamming through door after door until you reach your destination. They stop so fast you nearly vomit, the whiplash too overwhelming. Too many pairs of hands tear at you, stripping your equipment and cutting through any cloth in the way.

“Sir, the resources we’re using for her-”

Heavy footsteps interrupt the doctor’s words, the room growing dead silent. “She’s worth more alive, unbroken. Do not make me repeat myself again.”

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Your mouth is dry, why the hell is it dry? Shifting in the bed, the blanket scratches at your exposed skin. The new angle shines a bright ass light in your face. It forces you to shift again, a sigh escaping your lips. That’s when you hear it: a beep. Frowning, your eyes refuse to open until you blink quickly. Flashes of a bright, barren room fill your senses. A hospital?

That’s when it hits you. Oh. Shit. There’s a creak next to you, and that’s when you see him. The giant that subdued you quicker than the 141 did, and that was the whole lot of them. You both stare at each other for a ridiculous amount of time, until he shifts, and your heart rate jumps at the movement. His eyes remain on you, barely blinking.

“You’ve been out for a while,” he remarks, standing up.

He grasps a cup of water, comically small in his hand, and offers it to you. You take it, eyes flicking down to inspect the water before finally taking a sip. God, it feels like heaven. Before you know it, the entire cup is empty. How long were you out?

“Why didn’t you kill me?” you ask, cringing at your own voice. Damn, you sound like you smoked one too many cigs.

“I did not spend months of planning just to kill you, Schatz,” he responds, folding his arms. “After the 141 intercepted our contact, it was my priority to get you back.”

“So, you rescued me?” No one has ever done that for you before. Being used is all you’ve ever known, paid or unpaid. It was you who had to prioritize yourself. “Why?”

“You are not an instrument of death; you use death as an art form.” Who knew he was such a poet? “Apologies for the wounds, I had to convince them we’d kill you.”

“How long was I out for?” Rotating your shoulder, you feel no pain from your bullet wound.

“A month… and there’s something else. The men who had you, the 141, yes?”

You nod, waiting for him to elaborate.

“We found a tag in your arm.”

That makes you sick to your stomach. A tracker? They tagged you like a fucking dog. You played their stupid game, did everything they asked so you could earn their freedom. Your nails dig into the sheets, tearing the fabric from the force of it.

Your eyes flick up to his. “You said something about a contract. What is it?”

Something flashes in his eyes, his head tilting upwards. Is he smiling? “You haven’t lost your fire yet.”

Grumbling, you start stretching your limbs. Like hell you’re going to stay in this bed any longer. Your limbs pop more than you want them to, but at least your body is not as run down as you expected it to be. The routine goes by quickly, and you finally, cautiously, stand up. You wobble slightly, but you’re able to recover.

Your eyes shoot at the mirror in the bathroom, sadness overwhelming you. Shit is what you look like. Your colored hair is long faded, replaced by a dull, washed-out color of blah. Gritting your teeth, you turn to the man who kidnapped you. Technically freed you, but you still have no idea what this giant wants.

“You still haven’t answered my question, big guy,” you huff, immediately snagging the spare clothes next to you. You run through the previous conversation through your head again, trying to get any information out of this gargantuan man.

You slide on the pants, thankfully it’s easier with the shitty hospital gown. Unfolding the shirt, you nearly cry when you see a sports bra fall out of it. God, it’s even your size.

“We will need you for future missions.”

You finish sliding on the bra, freezing. “Missions?”

“Ja. We will discuss a contract, something beneficial to both of us. You and I will be equals in this.”

Tearing off the gown, you pull your shirt over your head. You turn around, sliding your arms through the sleeves with a frown. “And I have a choice?”

“Of course.”

It’s so damn hard to read him with his entire face obscured. At least with Ghost you could cheat a little bit. Masks suck the fun out of everything. “What about living arrangements?”

“Since you are AWOL, soon KIA, I would prefer it if you remained here. There’s a room prepared for you.”

That’s nice of them, but how long until you go crazy in a new cage. You highly doubt they’ll just let you walk out the door, but there must be more to this. He’s got to sweeten the deal.

“The pay?”

“You will find it more generous than your usual prices,” he responds, taking a few steps towards the door. Damn he’s got some legs. Your eyes drift towards his backside. Nice ass, too.

You really need to be spayed. Forcing your eyes upwards, you follow him through the building. Your socked feet are silent compared to his heavy boot steps, but the noise grounds you enough. It allows your mind to wander, this whole situation forcing you to think about how you got here.

You aren’t military, special forces, not even a cop. No, you were a nobody who was willing to do anything to stand up for the little guys. Getting the weapons wasn’t that hard, but training yourself? Being self-taught is what made your skills sought out, always unexpected and untraceable. You made your own rules, picking up a few things whilst you traveled. It’s funny, a life of death and crime let you shed your shell. How things have changed.

You’re in the room before you realize it, your mind wandering too close to memory lane. It’s sparsely decorated, screaming military and barf beige, but it’s all you have. The guns mounted on the walls catch your attention immediately. A gasp leaves your lips before you can help it, gently removing your sniper from its mount.

“Where did you find this? Never thought I’d see this again,” you whisper, immediately falling into your routine of checking it for damages.

“We were too late to prevent your capture,” he replies, watching you, “but we recovered everything they didn’t bother taking.”

Your jaw clenches at the thought of them taking you. Wordlessly, you place it back on its mount. Your hand lingers on it for a few moments, your fingers sliding down in now resistance. “I didn’t wipe my slate clean just to be immediately kidnapped. There was a rat, and not just the one they squeezed my information out of.”

Rage enflames your entire being. Revenge would be a good hobby for you, something to get your strength back. You’re itching for something up close and personal. Almost as if the giant could read your thoughts, he places a file onto the desk. Where was he keeping that? Goddamn you really need to start paying attention.

“We’ve identified a previous client… your first…”

You sift through the information. What information is available on you is enough to fuck you over. She gave them your legal name, history… everything. Your throat tightens at the photo of her, someone you considered a friend. Past tense. She’s on your hit list, bumped up to priority number one. The 141 will have to wait.

[braveclementine]

October 21: Knife Play (Bucky Barnes)💙

Warnings: 18+ readers only, Knife play, knives, Sergeant kink, more knives, pet name, some more knives, possession kink, KNIVES! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THERE WILL BE KNIVES!!!! 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

Copyright: I do not own Bucky Barnes (Please own me Sergeant) or any other Marvel/MCU characters. I also do not condone any copying of this.

"I want to know your dangerous side." You begged Bucky.

"God doll. . ." Bucky groaned.

The two of you were in the bedroom late at night. He'd just gotten back from a mission a few hours ago, falling asleep almost immediately. But now he was up, and he'd been cuddling you and kissing you, wanting to make love.

Nat always told you about the things that she and Bruce did in bed and some things. . . well they were probably better off not knowing. Who knew the sweet scientist could be so freaking kinky? Or maybe he was just going along with Nat's kinks.

Either way, you and Bucky always had a good sex life. He was extremely rough and dominating, but he never fully let himself go either, always afraid that he had to be careful or he'd hurt you. But now, you were begging him to let go and use his kinks in bed. He on the other hand, was afraid he'd hurt you.

"C'mon Bucky, you won't hurt me! It's been years since you were the Winter Soldier and you have control over everything now! Besides, I like it when you're rough with me. I want you to let go, please?"

"Shit why do you have to beg me like that." Bucky groaned, hands tightening on your arms where he was holding you. "You know I always give in when you ask like that."

"That's why I ask like that." You teased. "But seriously Bucky, we have safe words for a reason. If I get uncomfortable, I'll use them. Promise."

He gazed at you and you held your breath, waiting. "What if I have a very, very unusual kink?"

"Then I get to explore a new way of having sex." You said quickly.

He narrowed his eyes at you, "Did you already have a conversation without yourself to combat any questions or remarks I might throw at you?"

"Yes."

A grin broke out over his face and he shook his head in amusement, "Fine doll. But I want you to use the safe words immediately, understand?"

"Yes Sergeant."

His eyes glinted as he rolled out of bed, crossing the room to rummage in the drawer, "Take off that shirt and skirt if you like them doll."

You didn't, because you didn't really like them. It had been old clothes that you had dug out and you had only worn the skirt because it was hot out and you'd stupidly washed all of your shorts in the laundry and they were dry yet.

He had a medium sized knife in his hand when he came back. It had a rather thin blade, good enough to do damage, but could also easily be used as a letter opener if someone wanted. The handle on the other hand was thick and long, with ridges carved in it.

It was actually a beautiful knife, well polished. The handle was black and grey with red tints.

Bucky's hands were steady as he climbed over you, straddling your body, but his breathing was uneven, erotic, and aroused.

"Arms above your head doll." He demanded.

You could already feel wetness pooling in your knickers from his dominance. No matter what, it never failed to turn you on.

You were curious about the knife. You'd heard of knife kinks, but you had always thought those were about pain and you knew that no matter what, Bucky would never cut you with a knife. So he must have something else planned with the knife- but what?

He grasped the collar of your shirt firmly in his metal hand, before slicing the knife down to let the material fall open easily. He made quick work of the shirt before it was nothing more than tatters, falling to the floor, the back of it still under you. He sliced open the bra as well, before moving onto the skirt and then the knickers.

You were just as equally aroused as he was in this moment. Despite the ruining of your clothes- which you deserved as you hadn't listened to him- there was something about his demeanor that was so, so hot.

"How are you feeling doll?" He asked softly. You could feel the blade dragging across your collarbone, but it wasn't cutting skin. It was just a cold edge, making goosebumps rise up on your skin.

"Good." You whispered.

His movements were slow and calculated, watching your every facial expression to make sure you weren't uncomfortable or scared of him.

He switched the knife to his metal hand, turning the knife so that the blade was in his hand, dragging the handle of the knife down to your folds. "Doll?"

"Yes Sergeant?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Like you're still holding back." You teased with a soft smile.

He smiled a little, running the handle of the knife back and forth between your folds. "Well, you are soaking this beautiful knife handle. I guess that does mean something at least."

"Well I love it when you're dominant." Your voice said in a seductive tone.

He full our smirked, pushing the handle lightly against your opening and pulling back. It was nowhere near as big as his cock, of course, but it was still bigger than two or three of his fingers, so there was still a bit of a stretch.

"Relax for me doll." Bucky murmured.

You relaxed as much as possible in the bed, craning your neck slightly so that you could watch as he pushed the knife handle in half-way. A stuttering breath fell from your lips and it seemed to relieve Bucky some.

His pace didn't speed up any, but he wasn't being as hesitant, slowly moving the handle in and out of you until he finally pushed the entire thing in.

Chills erupted out onto your entire body and you shuddered and sighed. "Sergeant."

He looked like he was trying to regain himself now, breathing in and out, his hand not moving the handle. "Oh Fuck Doll, you don't know what you're doing to me right now."

"Sergeant please move." You begged, rolling your hips against the handle. The ridges of the design scraped nicely across your walls, making sure that the sweet spots were hit at just the right angle. And there was a wonderful fullness to it, though it would never beat his prick.

He started to move faster and you did your best to relax, though you weren't entirely sure how it would be now that it was moving faster. But it actually felt really good, and you made sure that Bucky knew it by all the moans and whimpers that spilled from your lips.

"Oh fuck Doll, you don't know what you do to me. The idea of watching you get off by one of my most dangerous and prized weapons just fucking arouses me. Fuck Doll just cum whenever you want. Make sure you scream for me. Scream for your Sergeant." He groaned.

You finally let your head drop back on the pillow, neck sore from having it cinched the entire time. You could feel your stomach muscles clenching and contracting as your approaching orgasm was coming, and your walls continued to squeeze the blade handle inside of you.

"Fuck! SERGEANT!" You screamed as you released all over the handle. He continued to work you through your orgasm, adding his flesh fingers to your clit and making you cum again.

After he made you cum another three times by his fingers and handle alone, he finally pulled the blade out of you. It was absolutely filthy, the way that your juices had collected in streams in between the ridges of the handle.

Bucky chuckled, "Open up doll."

You opened your mouth obediently and he stuck the blade handle just a few inches into your mouth. He watched you suck your own juices off of the handle, your innocent eyes always on his. He groaned, leaning forward as his hard-on pulsed in his jeans.

He pulled the handle away from your lips, licking the rest of your delicious juices from the handle.

"One more thing before I obliterate this pussy." He whispered, running his fingers through your folds. "But I need to know that you're up for it. It's. . . It's not. . ."

"Buck, it's okay, just tell me." You said softly, reaching up to cradle his face.

"You can say no, of course." He said quickly, moving the blade to your inner thigh, resting it on a point there. "But I just. . . the idea of carving my name right here, so you always know who you belong to, it just entices me."

Your breath hitched in your throat. You'd always loved possessive Bucky.

He mistook the hitching of your breath though and said quickly, "It's fine! I know it would be a little painful and I would never hurt you and I know that maybe in the future you won't want it, or maybe you'd move on of course and you wouldn't want that there or-"

"Bucky." You said firmly, attempting to calm him down. "I would love for you to take possession of me."

Now his breath hitched in his throat and you waited. "Positive?" he asked quietly.

"Positive." You whispered with a smile.

He hesitated, watching your face. You just waited patiently until he picked the knife back up again, hovering it above your right inner thigh. He finally pressed down, breaking skin, and carved his name out. It wasn't deep and though it stung, it was doable.

He was very gentle, wiping away blood smears, his hands slightly trembling, but he couldn't keep the shit-eating grin off his face and it made you happy to see him like this.

He set the knife aside gently, placing a bandage over your new marking, and then kissed it gently. "Thank you doll. You mean the world to me."

"I love you Bucky. You're my Sergeant. I'll follow you to the end of the world." You whispered.

The two of you passionately kissed.

And then he followed through on his promise and obliterated you.

And then you got a wedding ring and seven kids out of it.

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Header by @trout-scout​

Chapter 22: A Dream of Sunlight

"Hey, Donna."

She stood in the candlelight. The candles were different; there were no flowers, no barren branches, no graves, but she stood the same way she always had, still and spectral, the black silk of her veil rustling with the almost imperceptible tilt of her head.

Heisenberg braced the head of his hammer on the ground, watching Donna Beneviento's back and shoulders.

"You're looking..." He gave her a slow once-over. "...not dead. Rose's work, I assume? Or did she get that meathead Redfield at the BSAA to dig your ass from the dirt?"

She said nothing.

Heisenberg lifted his eyebrows. "You listening to me?" he said, snapping his fingers. "Or you off in La-La-Land?"

"She doesn't want to talk to you," Angie hissed.

Heisenberg grimaced. "You always were a creepy little fucker, you know that?"

"She's a part of me, Karl," Donna said, her voice that familiar low, bittersweet rasp Heisenberg knew so well, knew like a bad dream, like the aching pain of a fresh bruise. It had been so long since he'd heard her speak, so many years of believing she was dead, dead with the rest, dead and gone. "You should know that by now."

"Yeah. Still creepy as shit. You're a dollmaker, right? Why not fix her up, give her a cuter face or something?"

"My father made her," Donna said, simply. "The last gift he gave me before he...was gone. I'm not changing her."

She looked round. Heisenberg glimpsed the glint of her single eye beneath her veil. "You understand, I think. Better than you pretend to."

Heisenberg let out a sigh, leaning on the handle of the hammer like it was a cane. "Listen," he said, hooking his finger toward Dimitrescu, Moreau, and Mia on the far side of the cave church. "I'm leaving. Wanted to say take care of the kid or else."

"Or else?" A rare glint of humor lit her voice. It had been years since she'd sounded that way, years since- everything. That had been rare, too. Her happiness. Her contentment. Her peace. Days in the garden, in the kind summer sunlight. Him, and Donna, and Claudia, the three of them fighting their quiet rebellion. His surety that nothing could break them apart.

Nothing but Miranda, of course, inevitably. Nothing but death.

Death, and the grief that came after, and Heisenberg had never been able to look Donna in the eye again, never able to face her after Claudia had died.

Selfish, cowardly. Drowning it under the weight of his work, his vengeance. More machine than man day by day. The more metal he welded to himself, the less of his human flesh would show.

Now his factory was gone. Now, the engines were silent. And now, as ever, he wanted more and more and more. Now, as ever, he yearned for the impossible. Not armies to lay waste to Miranda's years of murder and manipulation. Not bloodshed and vengeance. Not even power- his own, Rose's, whatever. Now, all he wanted was rest. Peace.

For all of them.

Even Alcina deserved that.

"Or else-" Heisenberg began. "Or else I'll bash your fuckin' skull in."

Donna laughed, the sound soft and silvery. "I understand. You care for her."

"Heh. The kid's not too bad."

"You have taken care of her for many years. Is that right?"

"Yeah."

A slight nod. "Good."

"Sure, sure, give me a halo and call me a saint. Donna- uh." He shifted, back and forth. "Sorry," he said. "About- fuck, about all of it. Your sister. What I did to you, to her..."

"That was Miranda, not you. I see that now."

"Can't blame everything on Miranda." He paused. "Well, yeah, I can, but- uh, you know what I mean..."

"I miss her," Donna said. She cradled Angie to her chest, her knuckles sharp through the delicate skin of her hands. "I miss her so much."

She meant Claudia. Of course. He ground his teeth together, half-turning away. He couldn't deal with this shit right now, not with everything, not with Rose the way she was. "Yeah. Me fuckin' too, Donna. Listen, good chat, but-"

"Karl."

He stopped.

A beat-

Then he turned.

She'd faced him. She'd removed her veil. Her fine-boned face was lit softly by the candlelight, her black hair mussed from being beneath her headgear, her single dark eye steady, set on him. He'd forgotten how beautiful she was under the veil.

"For a long time, I..." she began. "I think I was dead. Before...before Winters, I mean. I think I was dead but my body did not know it yet. A ghost trapped within a doll. And my true death, when Winters gave it to me, was a kind of relief. Locked in the Black God's dreams, I finally found rest. I felt nothing there. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Heisenberg said, softly.

"And now...maybe. There is...life again. Or the beginnings of life. And I cannot help but be glad. And I am...I think..."

A faint smile touched her lips. "...Happy."

"Heh. It's a good look for you." He tilted his head, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. "Always knew you were tougher than most gave you credit for."

Donna nodded, her momentary smile fading.

"Claudia would be...proud of you," she said, halting, a little uncertain. "Of who you are. What you've done. And happy, too. That you remember her. That you're here now."

"That we both are, Donna," Heisenberg told his sister, as gently as he could bear.

And this time, Donna Beneviento's true smile- unseen for so long, missed and craved for so long- trembled on her face. Soft as the candlelight, rare and sweet as a mountain flower opening in the sun.

***

He hated goodbyes. So when he left to join Moreau and Dimitrescu, he didn't give one to Rose or Donna. He looked back at them both, standing together in the candlelit church, and gave them a nod.

"Don't fuck this up," he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Good luck to you, too," Rose called. He grinned at her, taking her in.

If this was-

Nah. Don't think that way. Only make you mushy. He turned, and away he strode, and didn't look back at them again.

"We good?" Mia asked him quietly as he grabbed her arm at the doorway leading from the church.

"Yeah. Ready to go and slice you open in the fish-man's hovel. Your lucky day, sweetheart."

She let out a shaky laugh. "Believe it or not," she said, "I've had worse."

"Wait," Rose called, from behind them. "...Mom."

Mia stopped with a slight wince. She caught Heisenberg's eye, then looked back, Heisenberg keeping his grip on her arm. Rose looked pale, but she faced Mia down, not looking away.

"Good luck to both of you," she said. "I...I mean that."

Mia gave her a small smile, a nod.

Then they moved on, and the church doors shuddered shut behind them, and Rose was gone at last.

Moreau waited down the passageway, at the shoreline of a flooded subterranean chamber, black water lapping inches from his slimy, pallid toes. Dimitrescu looked faintly nauseated, one hand propped on her prodigious hip, but Heisenberg pushed past her and toward their brother.

"What's good, freak?" he said.

"I..." Moreau pointed. "I have to go through...there."

"There? The fuckin' lake?"

"No! The passageway." One eye faced him, looking at him with a kind of baleful reproach. "The tunnels, Karl," he added, as if speaking to a particularly slow child.

"What tunnels? You finally cracked?"

"The underwater tunnels! There are hundreds and hundreds of them. You didn't know?"

"I- uh. No, guess not."

Dimitrescu let out a derisive snort. "That's the first time I've heard you admit your inadequacies, Heisenberg. Miraculous. Perhaps you've finally grown a sense of decorum after all."

"The day you grow a humble bone in your oversized body is gonna be the one for miracles," Heisenberg snorted. "Come on, then, Moreau, show us what you got."

Moreau dithered. "It's...um..."

Heisenberg leaned closer, tightening his grip on his hammer. His pulse threaded through his palm; the memory of helicopter blades churning the air filled his head. "What is it? Get a fuckin' move on. We don't have time to dick around."

"I...I'm h-h-having a hard time-"

"-Mutating?" Heisenberg let out a bark of laughter. "Don't we all fuckin' know that, fishstick."

"Oh, please," Dimitrescu muttered, rolling her eyes. "What a nightmare."

"Shut up, bloodbag," Heisenberg snapped. "Unless you got something useful to say, keep those fangs hidden-"

"Useful! As if you could know anything about usefulness!"

"Stop," Moreau moaned, clutching his head as he swung back and forth and back and forth in anxiety. Mia was staring at Heisenberg with a kind of appalled look. "Please...stop...I don't...I don't want to fight anymore..."

"Hey," Mia whispered. Heisenberg cut off his next retort as she knelt by Moreau's side, her hand on his shoulder. She began to stroke his arm, slow and soothing, her sweater sleeve pulled up over her hand to protect it from his acidic discharge. "Hey...Moreau, it's gonna be all right. You need to calm down. Okay? Listen to my voice."

"I-I-I-I'm gonna disappoint everyone, like always, I want Moppet, she can help me, where's Moppet!"

"She's, uh, not here right now. But I'm here. Breathe for me. Can you breathe? It looks like..." She glanced up at his hunchback, pulsating so wildly it looked like basketballs in a waterbed. "It seems like your Cadou is connected to you in such a way that any emotional strain puts extreme stress on it, threatens to overload its mycelial connections to you. That's probably why you have such a hard time with it."

Heisenberg settled back, eyebrows lifted. Even Dimitrescu had dispensed with her permanent resting bitch face to watch what Mia was doing.

"You...you know what's wrong?" Moreau stammered. The pulsating began to slow.

Mia nodded. "I know, it's got to hurt. Just keep doing what you're doing. You can control this, Mr. Moreau."

"Can I?" Moreau whispered wetly.

"You can."

"I can," Moreau echoed, his voice thick with wonderment. "I can!"

Mia stepped back as Moreau tottered forward, as he lifted his arms, as he tipped off the lip of the subterranean lake and hit the black water with a great plash.

He sank in a plume of bubbles.

"Shit," Heisenberg said, peering down after him. "Either you just worked some kind of miracle, or we lost him forever."

"Yes, well, the arguing was going great, so." Mia glanced up at Heisenberg. "...When I worked for the Connections, part of my job was, um..."

He tipped down his glasses. "Yeah?"

She drew a short breath. "I would imprint on the BOWs. Part of that involved establishing an emotional connection I could exploit to control them, if they began to rebel against their genetic programming. It didn't work with Eveline in the end, but I guess old training dies slow."

"Guess it does-"

The lake vibrated.

Heisenberg looked up, cutting off his next words. So did Mia. Even Dimitrescu stood straighter, the glistening razor tips of her claws sliding from her fingertips. Another vibration hummed from the lake, so strong he felt it in his boot soles through the rock at his feet. The black water slopped at the lake shore. Waves broke out across its surface, choppy as the sea in storm.

Something huge was heaving down there, something pale, something rising.

The water glassed into a vast swell; Mia stumbled back, but Heisenberg stayed where he was, watching it grow and grow-

The swell burst, and a roar filled the cavern, echoing off its distant ceiling. A wave of icy water drenched Heisenberg to the skin; he lifted his dripping hair from his eyes as great jaws snapped at the air, gnashing, tooth-lined, sweeping back and back into a body covered with a pelt of rolling, tumorous eyes.

"-And thank fuck for that!" Heisenberg said, with a laugh at the shocked look on Mia's face.

Heisenberg had only seen Moreau's mutant form a few times- he didn't make it a habit to go down to his reservoir except the time or two Miranda had forced him to go fix the sluice gate's operating mechanism, and, once, during a period of almost unendurable boredom, when he'd gone to borrow some of Moreau's movies. Now, as it reared before him, a mutant lungfish from hell, he couldn't help but stifle a dickish grin.

"Moreau, Moreau," he said, with appreciation. "You sexy beast. I know it's hardly the time and place, but I gotta say, you never looked better."

"Play nice," Mia whispered, giving him a little slap on the arm.

"Come on!" The jaws split wide; within, nestled like the stamen inside a particularly fucked-up flower, was a pallid, twisted humanoid torso with Moreau's familiar snaggleteeth. It flapped its hands in an excited gesture. "There's room for everyone! Get in! Get in!"

"You can't be serious," Dimitrescu said.

"Alcina, you bathe in blood," Heisenberg said.

"Blood," she told him, "is delicious."

"Whatever," Heisenberg said. "Sick of this stupid conversation anyway."

His hammer was off his shoulders in a heartbeat. Before she could protest, react, stop him, he'd smacked it full-force into her lower back; she stumbled forward with a scream, straight into Moreau's jaws.

"Better hustle," he told Mia, holding out his arm. She grabbed his hand, and as they hurried after Dimitrescu, Moreau's jaws closed over them in a snap, trapping them in warm, wet, stinking darkness.

During the long, lightless, airless journey, she never once let go.

***

Moreau spat them onto the reservoir shore in a truly astoundingly-vile spray of filthy water, saliva, acid, and bile.

Heisenberg sailed through the air and crashed to the shore, soaked trench coat slapping against his body. Seconds later his hammer thudded to the damp ground, inches from his head. He rolled over, blinking away the worst of Moreau's slime. Mia was sprawled a few feet away, looking like a Barbie who'd been dunked in a septic tank by some psychopathic toddler.

"You alive, Winters?" Heisenberg said.

"I...I think so-" She climbed to her hands and knees, then grimaced as she shook a dead fish from her hair. "Ugh- this is gonna take like twenty showers to scrub off, isn't it-"

Enraged shouts filled the air; he looked up to see Dimitrescu stalking toward him, her long black hair now matted with Moreau-vomit.

"You-" she cried, voice shaking so hard she could scarcely get whole words out. "You- vile, you- traitorous, wretched-"

"Alci, Alci, can't we just be friends?"

Her hand snapped out; her claws slid free. "I would rather die again."

Fuck this. Fuck her. They could pull this without the world's biggest bitch interfering. "That can be arranged-"

"Stop it!"

The wail cut between them, a howl of such unprecedented force Alcina actually did stop, and Heisenberg too, the both of them turning in shock to the sight of Moreau, quivering, crawling from the water in his humanoid form once more, clad only in a pair of ragged trousers. Mia crouched by his side, helping haul him onto the icy shore.

"Stop it," he said again. "You...ruin everything, both of you! You made Mother mad. You made us all so uncomfortable. You need to stop now. And if you don't..."

His voice dropped, deep as a well and nearly as sinister. "I'm...I'm gonna transform, and when I eat you this time...I'm not gonna spit you out."

Heisenberg began to laugh. Dimitrescu gave him a flat look, but he didn't stop, bracing his hands on his knees, doubled over as the laughs turned to ugly hacking coughs, spewing excess water over the shore.

"Fuck," he managed, between coughs. "Heh...little Sal's grown himself some roe."

"We need to go." Moreau shambled toward him, pushing him aside with a sassy little shoulder-clock. "Hurry, hurry."

Heisenberg watched him and Mia go, then glanced up at Alcina, removed his hat, and shook his head like a soaked lycan, making sure to get as much slime-water on her as possible.

They hiked up the snowy hillside. Below stretched the reservoir, its great sluice-gate standing like a triumphal arch through the blizzard. Spotlights speared the snow, illuminating dizzying flurries of white; Heisenberg sent out his awareness as the helicopter roared past, lights grazing the snow, the powerful beam barely missing their group, but the machine was too far off; his power brushed it, and then it was gone.

"Hunting us down," Heisenberg muttered. He glanced at Dimitrescu. "Makes for a change, don't it?"

"It's right up here." Moreau pointed as he scrambled up a narrow path cut into the hillside. "Right-"

His words crumpled into a gasp as one bare foot crunched down on crystal. Heisenberg joined him, silent as he surveyed the hillside before them. Mist rolled away, exposing not a clean expanse of snow and rock, but a killing field.

Lycans. Dozens of them. Each and every one of them: dead. By now, they were little more than crumbling heaps of crystal, ribs gaping open to the sky, the remnants of great fanged skulls pocked with crater-like bullet holes.

Heisenberg bent to pluck a tooth from the snow, a single curved cuspid the length of a dagger. He bounced it in his palm. A varcolac tooth. There had to be three or four skeletons big enough to be varcolac out here. Ouroboros had mowed them down, had used their fancy anti-mutant rounds on them. Had blasted them into nothingness, ancient beasts bristling with boyars' spears. Consigned them to the dirt.

Ouroboros must have cleared this hillside in their initial sweep of the place, and the lycans, being lycans, had neither the brains nor a hive leader to command them to fall back. So they'd died, every last one of them.

He flicked the tooth to the snow. Stupid things.

"Humanity," Dimitrescu murmured, her voice dripping with scorn, and something else. Sorrow, Heisenberg thought. Strange. Every time she'd been forced to interact with lycans before, she'd dismissed them as brutish beasts beneath her notice. "A plague. All-consuming. What else do they do but destroy, to assure themselves they are not monstrous, to conquer their own fears of the dark."

Mia lowered her head, her gaze hard.

"They aren't all daughter-killers, Dimitrescu," Heisenberg said. "Don't you remember being human?"

She curled her lip. "I remember my weakness, my mortal frailty. I remember my own blood poisoning me, even as I clung so desperately to life and all its...infinite pleasures. Miranda's gift was salvation. And despite..."

She paused, then gave an elegant little toss of her head. "Mm. No matter. The mortals are beneath me. Prey. Nothing more."

"Miranda would have killed you, Alci, you and your daughters. That was her plan, y'know. Bump us all off to awaken the megamycete. She didn't want any failed experiments hanging on her apron strings to deal with once she got little Eva back. It was gonna be just her and her kid. No room in that picture-perfect life for you."

"Miranda gave me everything," Dimitrescu snapped.

"Oh, c'mon, you can't believe that. I saw the inside of your twisted little mind, remember. Miranda would have taken everything, too. Was your castle worth that?"

Her eyes were bright, gold flaring to fire, but she said nothing. She didn't hit him, either, which Heisenberg took as a victory.

He stepped over the next lycan corpse as Moreau shambled on. Before he got too far, Dimitrescu's voice, softer than he'd ever heard it save when she'd addressed her daughters, stopped him in his tracks.

"'We shall be monsters, cut off from the world,'" she said. He turned to look back at her in the dancing snow. "'But on that account we shall be more attached to one another.'"

Heisenberg nodded. "'Oh, my creator,'" he muttered, bitter as old blood. "'Make me happy.'"

Alcina's eyes found his.

"It was worth it, Heisenberg," she told him. "To me."

"Hm." He shifted his stance, propping his hammer on the opposite shoulder. "Is it still?"

She gave a sniff. "I'm merely surprised you can read."

He grinned. "The movie was better," he said, just to see the exquisite look of disgust on her face.

Moreau headed up a hillside, covered in a dense forest of pine and scrub. Below stretched the dry part of the lake, the reservoir drained of its water, exposing the decomposed remnants of an old flank of the village, a fishing town long-since drowned to make Miranda's power station. The old windmills, once used for wind power, stood still and slumping into ruin, sails reduced to bare scaffolding.

The place had been a shithole before, but now it was just sad, no longer given even the barest efforts of maintenance. Heisenberg couldn't really blame Moreau for moving into the castle; given his old digs, almost anything was an improvement.

"It's here! It's here!" Moreau raked aside a wall of overgrown briars and tree branches to reveal a small clearing atop the hill.

A collection of shacks stood in the clearing. Moreau's 'clinic'. Heisenberg hadn't bothered coming here more than was necessary. The experiments Moreau conducted here were pathetic. He could make lycans, sure, and the varcolac had been inspired, but watching ghouls pop like rotten fruit more often than not just wasn't his style. Waste of a perfectly good corpse.

Still, the whole operation had worked great for Miranda. There was never any shortage of dead bodies in her town, and cutting losses had been worth it, given the amount of shock troops Moreau's clinic churned out for her. Glory to Mother Miranda, and all that shit. Almost romantic; why give a dame a rose when you could give her an army of putrefying wolf-men instead?

Now, though, he couldn't help but feel a certain poetic bemusement. To think. This shitty hovel, this sad little workshop, was about to save their collective asses. Who knew.

"I hope it's still here," Moreau was mumbling. He didn't head for the shacks themselves, but began nosing about in the snow. "Ohhh...I hope the lycans didn't dig it up..."

"You lose a penny or something?" Heisenberg called.

"No, no...oh!" Moreau straightened, an inspired look in his eyes. "Karl, would you...would you please...look? With your special powers?"

"Yeah, Karl," Mia said, a hand over her mouth like that might stifle her snort of laughter. "Look with your special powers."

"I'm gonna break your neck after all," Heisenberg muttered. "Fine, fishstick."

He let out his breath and reached out with his abilities. A ripple thrummed across the snow, a faint blue haze appearing around his body. Almost instantly, he found it: a rectangular shape bound in strips of metal. With a flick of his finger, it burst from the snow, showering clods of dark earth. The large wooden seaman's chest dropped to the snow with a rattle of rusted hinges.

Moreau pawed around in his clothes for an equally rusted key.

"My medicines!" He pulled open the chest. Inside glinted glass bottles, cakes of dried herbs bound in paper and twine, medical supplies of a distinctly more-modern bent, even a mummified Cadou in a stoppered jar. "Good. We can do it with this."

"Yes, we can." Heisenberg examined a bottle of chemicals. "You bury all this by yourself, fishstick?"

"Yes." Moreau's eyes darted back and forth, as if Heisenberg was about to make some kind of crack at his expense.

Tempting, but Heisenberg really needed all this stuff. "Nice going." He looked at Mia, standing in the snow.

"Now," he said, "it's time for Operation Kill That Bitch, attempt two."

***

Inside the dank, decaying, freezing confines of Moreau's Clinic, the only light came from the faint filter of moonlight through the gaps in the roof, and the high beam of Heisenberg's flashlight. He kept it floating around the level of his shoulder, aimed down on Mia as she lay back on the table.

They'd cleaned it as best they could, had lain down an old tarp Moreau had produced from somewhere, but even so, Mia shivered where she lay, stripped down once more to her underclothes, her skin exposed to the cold.

An IV tube bled chemicals into her arm; once again Heisenberg, his coat slung over a nearby chair, his sleeves rolled to his biceps, watched her closely as the painkillers hit her bloodstream, as she began that slow, gradual slump into numbness.

Moreau limped around the shack, muttering, arranging the tarp, while Dimitrescu sat in a corner, her eyes glowing like a cat's in the semidarkness. Heisenberg was silent, Mia silent, though she watched him all the while.

He caught her eye. "Here we go again, Winters."

"Better luck this time?"

"Heh. Don't jinx it." He leaned on the table, over her. "You got any dark depths of the soul to reveal this time? Any revelations? Or shall we get to it?"

"Just one thing, Heisenberg."

"Yeah? Make sure it's not too mushy. The smell of this place is making me sick enough already."

"There wasn't ever any necrotoxin," she told him. "That stuff I injected you with? Just a sedative."

"No shit."

"I..." She frowned. "Wait. Did you...did you know?"

"After the first couple days and I didn't feel any worse? Yeah, Mia, doesn't take a fuckin' genius to figure out you slipped me the sugar pills."

"Damn," Mia said. "Waste of good sedative, then."

Heisenberg burst into laughter. "Mia, Mia," he said. "You crack me up. But I gotta say, you had me there for a minute, y'know?"

She gave him a dry smile. "I know."

"Hey, you can make it up to me. If you survive this-"

"Not helping, Heisenberg."

"-I was, uh, pretty intrigued by those reports of you from Dulvey...chainsaw, was it? Not bad, not bad. Wanna show me sometime?"

"In your dreams."

He winked. "Already there, sweetheart. You ready?"

Her fingers twitched, brushing his hand on the table. He felt the heat of her skin, even through his gloves.

"I'm ready, Karl," she told him. "Do it."

So he did.

She opened up like a purse. Moreau's scalpels were decent enough once he'd honed them sharp with his power, and as he began his examination he slipped once more into his old routine- examine, assess, maintain, repair. Mia's blood soon coated his gloves and scarred forearms, matting his arm hair to a gory tangle, the smell of mold and blood filling the shack like a warm, metallic exhale. Just like old times.

Dimitrescu's pupils narrowed to pinpoints. Heisenberg could tell how starved she was: the hollows in her cheeks, the faint cracks appearing on her skin, exposed now that she wasn't slathering herself in a thick layer of lead-based makeup, gave her away.

Still, she held herself back, and simply watched, her stare somewhere between hunger and yearning.

"You look good on the inside," Heisenberg said, with a chuckle. "Nice healthy muscle tone. Heh heh."

Mia didn't answer. She'd gone paper-white, her bruised eyelids squeezed shut, her lips fluttering. Even with the suppressants, her healing factor made this difficult; veins and tendons kept worming around his hands, trying to reconnect and pull her open chest cavity back together.

"Have you found it?" Moreau pressed his hands to the tabletop, leaning over to peer into the mess.

"No. Shut up and back off."

"Hurry," Mia whispered.

"Huh?"

"Something's...I think...something's wrong..."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"I...I hear her..." Her lips fluttered; her hands curled on the table, spackled with blood and mutagen; it pooled around her, dripping in rivulets to the filthy floor. "She's...she's..."

"Fight it, Mia. Hold it the fuck together."

Her eyes snapped open, bright with tears. "She's happy," Mia whispered. "This is exactly what she wanted."

Heisenberg's hands met something foreign. Not an organ, not bone or cartilage. He spun the scalpel into his hand and sliced in; the thing came free with a slick crackle, trailing long, whipping tendrils that grasped and thrashed at his hand and wrist.

A Cadou. But a sickly one; its pinkish surface was spotted with dark blots, its bulbous head dented and deflated.

No, not sickly, exactly. Half-grown.

She reached inside, Mia had said. Pulled out her heart.

This was a chunk of Miranda's Cadou. Like he'd once given a chunk of his own to Teodora, had inflicted the Black God's gift on her to save her life. The thing squealed and writhed in his hand as Mia lay beneath him, gasping for breath, her wound already beginning to heal up.

If it's not Miranda here-

Understanding came like a lash of lightning through him, so strong his own Cadou gave an unsettled twist. No. No.

"You were the experiment," he heard himself rasp. "It was never you harboring Miranda's consciousness at all."

Compatibility, Miranda had told Mia, but Mia was the mother, wasn't she, the mother of the body, the vessel, the genetics unassailable.

He'd gotten it wrong.

The ceremony was not over yet.

Even now, even now, Miranda had the upper hand, the final word. Even now she had lashed out and got him in the heart.

"It was never you," Heisenberg said again. "It was always her. Always Rose."

With a hum of his power, a crackle of blue-white sparks, the misshapen Cadou burst in a shower of gore. The scalpel streaked away and impaled itself in a wall.

Another slash of his power, hard enough to shake the entire building. The shack door burst open and he strode out into the snow, surrounded by a whirring storm of metal objects, nails yanked  from the shack, medical detritus, all of it pulled along in his wake.

The cold lashed at him. He didn't feel it. He went to the hillside, looking out toward the mountain, the great waterfall thundering down from some hidden source at its peak.

He couldn't see House Beneviento at this distance, but Rose and Donna had to be nearly there by now.

And when they were-

And when Rose looked too deep-

All he could do, for all his power, was watch her die.

[i-was-bored-so-this-happened]

Greensleeves Chapter Fourteen: From Hell To Here

Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3 Wordcount: 4.2k Warnings: Description of injury, mentions of blood

The party encounters the wardevil Karlach. Xaph and Wyll have a heart to heart. Astarion makes a move.

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Xaph had seen this woman through Wyll’s eyes when their worms had introduced them. She’s tall, taller than any of the rest of them, and well-built. She’s also hot. Literally. Flames lick around her arms, drip like liquid between her fingers, and the ground she stands on is black with soot. Hellfire. She holds no weapon and, more than that, she looks scared. Her eyes are pale orange and frightened wide despite the black kohl lining them. She wears scraps of leather rather than proper clothes, and the expanses of skin that are visible are covered in burns and tattoos and scars and more burns. Metal rivets are embedded in her skin at odd intervals. 

“This is Karlach?” Shadowheart’s voice inquires.

“Bloody right,” the wardevil replies, “An honour to be chased down by the Blade of Frontiers, but-” Wyll had moved. Just a little closer. Close enough for the tadpole in his head to lurch towards his eye socket in recognition of another. A parasite squirms in Karlach’s head too. Pain spears through Xaph’s eye as red-hot memories fill her vision. Avernus. The Blood War. Demon after demon after imp after imp rain down onto the rocks of the battlefield. This woman was on the frontlines. Burning, bloodied greataxe. When Xaph comes back to herself, Wyll’s rapier is drawn. “Wait. Let me explain-” her words wobbly between audio and visual as her memories blister and pop. Infernals bearing Zariel’s brand fall by her blade, her fist, her fury. Her fear. Fear, above all, burns white-hot. Looking for escape. Desperation. 

“She’s trying to trick us!” Wyll shouts as though his words can erase the visions, “Don’t believe her lies!”

“You saw the truth!” Karlach is holding up her empty hands not in defense but in a plea, “I never wanted to serve Zariel. I was enlisted in her army against her will. Forced to fight, and fight I did. When I saw an opportunity to get away, I took it. I’m finally home,” her voice shakes here, her longing for home tangible, “Or near it, anyway.”

“You served her. That’s enough to damn you.” Wyll has not lowered his blade or his voice. His rage is as real as Karlach’s fear. Sweat beads on the back of Xaph’s neck and rolls down her collar. Gale’s fingers dig into her elbow. She wants to step away. More than anything, she wants to step away. You served her. That’s enough to damn you. What’s to say that one day he decides her deal with Raphael is reason enough to kill her, makes her enough of a devil to deserve damning? This woman doesn’t deserve that. Xaph knows the points of her ears, the triangular end of her scarred tail. She even knows her eyes, though the rings are orange instead of green. This is a tiefling. Just another tiefling, dragged into the hells for a war they didn’t sign up for.

“Wyll, don’t.” Xaph doesn’t chance reaching out to him, but it seems out her words are enough because he turns his head to look at her. His lips are set in a firm line and she sees that it’s not anger that lines his face. It’s dread. 

“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re asking me to trust a devil.” His eye tracks the curl of Xaph’s horns, and then finds her eyes. His friend’s eyes. Frightened.

“Karlach’s not a devil and you know it.” Xaph tells him. 

“You know monsters, right?” Karlach’s hands have lowered, but not to secure themselves on a weapon, “Better than anyone. Look into my eyes. Can’t you see that I’m not what you think?” Her eyes meet Wyll’s and Xaph chews at the corner where her lips meet while he processes. No one else says a single word, not even Lae’zel. 

 “Shit.” Wyll lowers his rapier, and more than one relieved breath is heaved. “You really are no devil, are you? I…I’ve been deceived.” He says this as though the idea of a lie or a mistake is inconcievable. Karlach sighs, and another wave of warmth rolls over the party.

“Thank the gods. Thought I was going to have to take your head.”

 “You would’ve died in the attempt,” Wyll assures her, “But there have been enough threats today.”

 “Truce then, hey?”

“Aye. Truce.”

 “I’m Karlach,” her shoulders have relaxed, and now her hands move conversationally, “But you already knew that…and you are?” she’s looking at Xaph, who had spoken up for her. A fellow tiefling.

“Xaph.”

“Gale.”

“This is Astarion, and Shadowheart-”

“-Lae’zel-”

 “-and Scratch. The dog.”

“Well met, soldiers,” it’s the same greeting Wyll uses, Xaph notes, “Nice to meet some friendlies round here - it’s been tough going so far. I may not be a devil, but I can put the Blade’s reputation to work. How would you feel about helping me to kill some evil bastards?” The party side-eyes Wyll, who shifts into a defensive stance with arms crossed. This is his call. “A little background, if your moral compass needs something to point at,” Karlach adds, “You already know I fought in the Blood War. I was good, really good. Turns out I’ve got a knack for killing demons. That made me a valuable asset. Zariel - the archdevil herself - made me her personal attack dog. I played along until I could get the fuck out of there, but devils don’t like to lose their assets,” now that is something Xaph is familiar with, “Zariel liked it so little, she’s sent a bunch of goons, so-called paladins of Tyr, to take me back. Problem is, I’m not going.” Heads turn to Wyll again. His expression has changed, the shame of the murder he’d been dead-set on committing softening his features. He’s going to want to make up for it, and this is as good an opportunity as any.

 “Want some help sending them back where they came from?” Wyll asks, lifting his chin. 

“Fuck yes,” relief boils in Karlach’s eyes, “They cornered me outside the tollhouse, just up the hill. Doubt they’ve gone far after the scorching I gave them. Then we can work on evicting this parasite and take Faerun by the short hairs! Sound good?”

“Well, she’s a bit rough around the edges, but I suppose I can be smooth enough for two.” Gale mumbles, close to Xaph’s ear.

“You want to just team up with some blood-stained killer?” Astarion demands to know, his flair for the dramatic winning out over his irritation, “Because I’m fine with that.”

 “Join us if you will, but we won’t be facing these paladins today,” Shadowheart says, “We need rest.”

“You should park your arses here,” Karlach tells her, “The Road’s crawling with gnolls, this is the safest place I’ve found.”

“Right then,” Xaph announces, gripping Gale’s arm to make sure she doesn’t topple as she lowers herself onto a rock, “I am going to sit right here until someone feeds me.”

“What’s your poison?” Karlach asks, taking Xaph’s relaxation as a sign of safety and plopping onto the ground with her arms looped over her knees to pull them close to her chest.

“Good brick of Elturian Grey.”

“Ohh, that sounds nice. I’ll take a double.”

“We have Beregost Blue.” Gale tells them. Xaph throws up her hands in exasperation,

“Can’t believe the service around here.”

***

There are seven in their group now, seven tents arranged haphazardly. One purple, two black, one red, two green, one blue. Xaph hasn’t travelled with a group for a while, and she’s decided she likes these people. Some of them more than others, that’s true, but generally they’re alright. Karlach is a welcome addition, it has to be said. She’s full of boundless energy and once she’s sure that no one’s going to try and kill her, she trades stories with the others. Xaph shares her experience in Avernus, and the tiefling’s tails begin to swing in sync while they talk. Flames no longer stretch from Karlach’s fingers, but she’s careful not to touch anyone. She’s been hells-touched, quite literally, infernal machinery encased in her ribs and burning her from the inside out. Xaph’s hair is drying from being between Karlach and the campfire. She’d washed in the tributary of the Chionthar they’d found themselves camping by, and her clothes still cling to her in places. She stretches her injured leg out to the side to expose the wound to the air. The party will have to make do with potions and salves until Shadowheart has rested to get some magical healing. The half-elf sits against a tree, Astarion and Lae’zel close by. If the others didn’t know any better they’d say the conversation seems companionable. Wyll is on the other side of the fire. He’s not saying much, but the others don’t take offence. His primary mission had led him astray. He needs time, and it’s better for him to take that time in company than alone. Karlach has paused in her story to shovel food into her mouth, burning it in her enthusiasm. Good food has to be hard to come by in the wilds of the Hells. Every few minutes Xaph tosses her a grape and she lurches after it to try and catch it before the dog.

“Right. Which of these can you eat?” Xaph holds her hands out to Gale, holding a berry in each. She’s trying to teach him more about what’s edible and what isn’t after he’d almost put her belladonna into a soup. If he’s going to be camp cook he needs to know these things, and luckily for her he likes learning. She studies the crease between his eyebrows while he concentrates.

“This one” He decides, pointing at her right hand.

“No.” Xaph says simply, and is it wrong to take a little delight in his confusion? She lifts her hands into the space between them to make the differences between the two berries more obvious. “See this one is longer, not quite a sphere? It’s called conina,” Gale mouths the word in an echo, “And it’s fine all by itself, but a handful’ll take you down by sunset.” Xaph explains. Gale leans closer, squinting at her hand. Then he pushes Xaph’s wrist to bring her hands closer together. The body heat of the other tiefling rolls over them as she leans in too.

“That one’s darker. Does that mean anything?” Karlach asks.

 “Yes! Good job,” Xaph replies. She holds the conina by her knee to show them how close a match it is for her own skin, “If it matches here, not a good idea to eat unless you’re totally sure,” the other berry she holds to her bicep, a few shades lighter than her knee, “This is good to go. Generally speaking, fruits with darker skins tend to be more risky but don’t take that as a hard and fast rule. Plums good, wonderful. Belladonna, bad. The other relatives in the solanaceae family are fine.” With that, she flings the conina into the nearby water.

“Solanaceae,” Gale says, “Potatoes and tomatoes, yes?”

“Brilliant, Gale. You know more than you think.”

“The lesson is easy with such a competent teacher.” Gale smiles at her as he says it, and something in her chest stutters. On impulse, she posts the juniper berry into his mouth with her thumb. Mostly to shut him up. Mostly that, but the way his eyebrows jump in surprise is fun too.

“Lesson’s over. Go and feed the others before they riot,” Xaph’s eyes find empty plates around the fire. Hers, Gale’s, Karlach’s. Wyll is still holding his, half-full. “Karlach, give him a hand?” Xaph asks, and the other tiefling is thrilled to be included. She follows Gale, tail wagging as she asks questions. Xaph shuffles around the fire to Wyll. Scratch is curled up next to him, head pressed to the warlock’s knee, but Wyll doesn’t seem to know he’s there. “Wyll?” his name gets his attention, “You need to eat.” He pokes at the bread on his plate half-heartedly. She copies his sitting position as best she can, crossing her legs and letting her knee touch his. “I’m going to make an assumption now,” she warns him, and when his shoulders tense she knows that she’s right before she even says it, “Your patron’s infernal. More than that, they work for Zariel, which is why they wanted you to find Karlach.”

“You’re right.” Wyll’s words are so heavy he can hardly lift his head to look at Xaph. She takes his free hand in hers and pushes her fingers between his. The same way he’d held her hand when she’d told the party about Raphael. She hopes the gesture means as much to him as it did to her.

“You can’t tell me who it is, can you?” she asks quietly, and he shakes his head, 

“But truth will out. One night soon the veil will be lifted, and I’ll pay my penance.” Penance. Punishment. 

“Did they take your eye?” another shake of the head, no, “How long have you been under contract?”

“Seven years.” Wyll answers, and his words are a hook in Xaph’s floating heart that brings it back down between her ribs. Wyll is young for a human, she’s not sure exactly how young, but she knows he’s one of the younger members of the party. Seven years is a long time.

“Hey,” Xaph takes the plate off his knee and moves it out of range of Scratch’s nose, then reaches for Wyll’s shoulder and pulls him in to her, “Hey,” he lets her, and he lets his head fall when she angles her horns away to give him space. Xaph sighs as she squeezes his hand, “Join the Deal with the Devil club, bug.” Xaph rubs the space between his shoulder blades and lets him put his weight on her for however long he needs. Gale quite skillfully diverts Karlach away from the fire when he sees them and Xaph reminds herself to thank him later. Wyll pulls back when he has fully deflated, but he keeps his hold on her hand.

“I think…If I could tell you, you might actually be able to understand," he says, and when he sighs the weight of the worlds on his shoulders is a little lighter than before, “I’m not sure whether to feel pitied or comforted.”

“Comforted,” Xaph answers, “You’re doing better than I did,” her eyes slide to Karlach, who’s arranging her belongings in the mouth of her tent. She has a teddy bear, the kind with hard shiny eyes, and she props him up against a tent pole so he can look up at the stars, “You listened when someone spoke up for her. You spared her,” the line between their experiences is blurring and memories are bubbling at the back of Xaph’s mind that she can’t let bleed into his. She releases his hand and moves to stand, but before she does she pauses, “You’re a good person, Wyll. Don’t let the devil take that. It’s very difficult to get back.”

 ***

 The party splits in two for several days. Wyll wants to find Waukeen’s Rest, Karlach wants to deal with the false paladins, and Lae’zel wants to search for signs of a githyanki patrol. Shadowheart wants to make sure that there’s someone level-headed among them should they have any stupid ideas that would get them killed. Her words. This leaves Xaph, Gale and Astarion at the established camp near the stream. Xaph’s leg wound is threatening infection and the injuries inflicted by Priestess Gut need time to heal. Gale’s illness is worsening, even though he presses metal and leather and wood to his skin and the Weave burrows into his chest. The magic isn’t having the effect it should have. It’s not like the last time you saw it, Xaph, it’s not a rainstorm that quells a forest fire. It merely drizzles. The embers still sizzle. The fire remains undefeated. Astarion stays behind because who is he to pass up the opportunity to sit about and do nothing but wait for a few days?

Peace is brokered between the rogue and the wizard, through the ranger’s mediation. Gale tells Astarion about his condition. Xaph tells them about some of the jobs she’s done for Raphael, the tame ones. Astarion tells of his aversion to sudden contact. It’s not that he’s opposed to touch, just that he likes to be the initiator. He slinks an arm over Xaph’s shoulders when he talks to her, nudges Gale with his foot when he wants attention. He always stays in their orbit. He stretches out in the sun like a cat. Gale has concluded that the parasite must be offering him some protection from the daylight. Xaph can’t understand how he isn’t getting the regular grilling from the sun most humanoids get. He tells them the name of his master one day, after he’s drunk his lunch from Xaph’s wrist. Cazador Szarr. Gale knows the name. Xaph doesn’t. She lets him retain his grip on her wrist and walk his fingers up her arm so he has something to occupy himself with while he shares, but he grimaces when they try to say anything to him so they stop.

 They sit there in the sticky silence for so long that a quivering ball of feathers crawls into the camp. It moves slowly, very carefully, but still stumbles. Scratch lifts his head and sniffs the air, but doesn’t bark. It’s the owlbear cub. Even more scraggly than he had been at the goblin camp. Several of his feathers are turned in the wrong direction, and he’s limping.

“What a delectable little treat.” Astarion coos, coming back to himself.

“You just ate.” Gale tells him, keeping a hand on Scratch’s back, and Xaph shushes them before they devolve into bickering again. She pulls her arm out of Astarion’s loose grip and moves slowly towards the owlbear. Not quite crawling, her leg won’t manage that, but gentle shuffling. She tries to stay small and low to the ground. 

“Food. Hungry.” He’s not growling, he’s trying very hard to not be threatening. Xaph responds in kind,

“I have food.”

“Want! Bite!”

“What is she saying?”

“You think I know?”

“You’re a wizard, isn’t that a fancy word for know-it-all?”

“I’m not omniscient.”

“You could fool me-” he ends his sentence with an Elvish word neither of the other two can understand beyond it being an insult. Xaph shushes them again, more harshly, but she doesn’t look away from the owlbear cub. Slowly, she sits back on her heels so she can reach the nearest plate. There’s still most of a rabbit on it. She tears a little bit of meat off and puts it in her own mouth to signify that it’s safe, then tears some more and throws it towards him so he doesn’t have to move. She asks Scratch to stay where he is, and he whines assent.

“Food! Eat! More!” the owlbear says.

“Go on,” Xaph tells him, “Eat.” She nudges the plate forward into the space between them and stays stone-still to let the cub approach. As he creeps forward, Xaph lets her mind relax. She tries to direct her tadpole. The connections with her friends are unreliable, and none of them but Lae’zel have figured out how to properly communicate with them, but she tries. The worm pushes at the base of one of her horns and Gale’s thoughts echo, The hand that feeds is the hand that’s loved. It’ll never leave your side now.

Gods, not another pet, Astarion has a better grasp on this than the other two, his voice is stronger, haven’t we got enough mouths to feed?

His mother’s dead, Xaph has discovered it’s easier for her to push images through the worm connection than words, and she conjures a picture of the owlbear’s mother fighting a horde of goblins, he’s too young to be on his own.

 Would the grove take him? Gale asks. A memory of holding Halsin by the chin comes to the forefront of Xaph’s mind. She thinks she would trust him. Maybe. She chews at the corner of her lips again. The cub is a fast eater. He’s sat down, his hind legs splayed either side of him as he gnaws on rabbit bones. He’s keeping his injured front leg suspended, not putting any weight on it. Xaph stretches out her own leg and indicates the cut there and calls to the cub,

“Are you hurt? Can I help?”

“Blood. Hurts,” he squeaks between mouthfuls, “Cut…look?” he offers his injured leg and Xaph shuffles further forward until she can hold it. Before she touches him she lets the cub smell her, lick her hand, so that when she takes hold of his leg and rests his paw on her knee he doesn’t try to wriggle away. Smoothing the feathers on his side she twists and speaks in Common,

“Gale, can you get-”

“No!” the cub squawks and retracts his leg, starting to scuttle away but stumbling, “No! You!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Just me. I understand,” she says it twice, once in Common so her companions stay put and once in pigeon coos that the owlbear will understand, “Stay there. I’ll help.” Xaph moves slowly, and is careful never to turn her back on the cub as she collects water and rags and the honeycomb she’d bartered with bees for yesterday. She sits by the owlbear again, coaxes him into giving her his paw back, and talks him through her process. The sharp metal she pulls from his leg is a broken shard of a goblin blade, no doubt about it, and when he squeals in pain Xaph hears Scratch whining comforts in response. She worries further at her lip while she cleans the wound, picks loose feathers and blades of grass from it, and slathers it in honey. She has to hold the owlbear’s head high and away from his leg while she does this or he’ll lick it straight off, and then she wraps his leg in clean material with a carefully but firmly tightened knot. Blood leaks into her mouth, her pointed teeth breaking the skin of her lip, when the cub pushes his head into her hand and trills happily.

***

“If you’re not going to let me kiss it better, at least stop making yourself bleed.”

“Oh, piss off.” Xaph’s voice is thick from a blocked nose. She’s been crying. Shit. Astarion hadn’t accounted for that. He’d just followed the smell of blood. She’s been chewing the inside of her cheeks all evening. The owlbear cub is in her lap, fast asleep. Her fingers are buried in the joint where his front leg meets his body. Astarion folds himself into position next to her, almost but not quite leaning on her.

“I don’t think you want that.”

“No, I don’t.” Xaph admits. Good. He’s been working on this for the last few days, pushing closer and closer, and she’s let him. Granted he’d had to share more than he expected, but if it gets him protection he can deal with that. Now to make her stop crying…

“Darling, those eyes of yours are far too pretty to be so sad. What are you worrying your sweet little head about?”

“I…I did bad things for Raphael. Terrible things, and I just,” she takes in a shuddering breath and removes one hand from the owlbear’s side to push at her chin with, “I’m trying to make it right.”

“Bleeding heart.” Astarion says, and she does that little exhale through her nose that he knows to be a small laugh. “If you want my two pennies, it doesn’t matter whether you’re good or bad,” when cold fingers touch her ear, trace down to the bite marks left from several nights before, Xaph turns into the touch to look at him. She is attractive, but she hasn’t got that innocent air about her Cazador always craved. No, Xaph knows who she is and what she’s doing. It makes the game a little harder, but more satisfying when he wins, “What matters is whether you have power and what you do with it, and you,” oh he can practically taste her blood, “Have more power than you know. You’ve got these people wrapped around your little finger.” He’s drifting closer, closer, their noses touch and gods she’s warm, warmer than humans. When blood beads at the corner of her mouth he lifts his hand and swipes at her lip before licking his thumb clean. Xaph rears back as he leans forward. She pushes a hand into his chest to propel him away from her and without hesitation she scoops the owlbear up into her arms and stands.

“What are you doing?” she’s not disgusted, she’s hurt and that’s worse, “Hells, Astarion. Forgive me for thinking I could-" her voice catches before she finishes her sentence and as she marches away a string of Infernal curses float through the air. Scratch, happy to see someone moving, hops up to his feet and prances towards her. Gale, asleep by the fire, responds unconsciously to her voice as he rolls over, but she takes no notice and ducks into her tent with the cub still in her arms and the dog trotting in after her.

[ramblesbiab]

Do Us Part

This is a little writing piece I did! I'm very proud of it. <3

TW for lots of blood, character death, suicide

“You deserve so much better than a bullet. Of all the things to take you,” Carmine scoffs. Her ears still ring, and from outside the alley comes the sounds of anguish and flames, the stench of spilled blood wafting through the air with thick black smoke in tow. Yet the sight of her love, the deep crimson splotch under her disgusting old jacket, staining that damn white tank top that would normally cause her to grow feral. “Fucking cowards. That’s what they are, cowards waving around those wretched things like they own the world.”

“They do, don’t they?” Nyai asks. “Or have you forgotten why this fight’s taking place?” Her bangs stick to the sweat on her forehead as she groans and rests on her elbows, her skin wincing against the gravel which takes any chance to dig in. The paths of tears stain her confident cheeks. “I must admit, this has seemed inevitable for quite a while. I chose this fight.”

“You chose to be better than any other. You tamed those savages into warriors, you achieved more than any one of those pitiful resistances in our history, the ones we squashed like the bugs they were, you - you stayed. You were always persistent, you fought with a will stronger than titanium.” Carmine runs two fingers over the wound, as though to cover it will make it fade. “It’s cheap. It’s - it’s worthless. 

“Now I. I deserve it,” she continues, grabbing her love’s wrist and planting Nyai’s palm against the bloodied fabric of her dress. Fresh tears sting the corners of her eyes. “My father built the factories that pumped out guns and I took part in signing the orders to expand them. I stood behind bulletproof windows for all those years, overlooking it all, smirking at the slaughter. No better fate suits me then all but my own hand.”

“Where’s your father now? Or his dozen yes-men?” Nyai reaches up to the edge of Carmine’s jaw. “They’re behind that same glass, perhaps two layers now. If I had the funds or time I might bet they’re on a boat, fleeing to some other place instead of facing the mess they made, but Carmine, you’re here. You took a bullet for a cause you despised for decades.”

“The one you built for decades. And we both know I could not give less of a shit about the lives of your people, even if I had centuries to change my mind,” Carmine bites, not to her love but to the flaming expanse she can barely see behind the corner. She shakes her head. “None of them matter to me. No one matters any longer, whether they side with one of us or not.” Her body throbs. Something, somewhere. “You. It’s only you that I care for, Nyai.”

“And that’s why you believe I deserve better?”

“Among many reasons, but yes.” 

Nyai gives half a smirk, blood on her yellowed teeth and the cracks of her dry lips. “Come onto my lap, then.” Her voice raspy and breaking. 

“Even now you try to fluster me? Here of all places?” It pains Carmine to laugh. To find any source of joy in this moment, as she throws a leg over the splayed out, dying body of her lover. “There. You have me.” 

“As I prefer it.” Her hand drifts down to her hip, and she slips a dagger from her belt, the only clean one left. “You, too, are all I truly care for, Carmine,” she whispers. She runs her thumb against the metal. “And you say I deserve better. So I won’t die by a bullet.” Their eyes meet, Nyai’s sparkling from the everflashing lights from every direction. 

“What do you propose?” The throbbing continues, echoing through Carmine’s entire body. How she wishes the pain were silent, that she could sink into this moment, yet she isn’t a fool. She sees the way Nyai’s hand moves and feels the weight of the dagger’s handle tucking between her fingers, the soft grip slotting against her skin. 

“If I deserve better, then give it to me.” How she wants to throw the knife aside. “You’ll take it.” How she wants to stop the directing of her arm, to not see the sharp tip licking at her love’s chest. “You’ll kiss me.” How her beauty shines even now is a mystery, one that plays a symphony on the strings of Carmine’s heart. “And you’ll drive into me, right here.” 

She taps the blade down twice, parting the fabric below it into threads without effort. “Every breath, my love, I breathe for you. So my last belongs nowhere else but between your lips.” She kisses the back of Carmine’s hand, leaving what could almost be a lipstick stain, what could have been if only they lived in a different world. “I’d die by your hand a thousand times to taste your lips once. So truthfully, I’m beating the odds.”

A shiver jolts through Carmine’s body, peppering her with goosebumps and ripping the tears from her eyelids, sending them crashing down her neck. “I’m to kill you, then?” She thinks of each and every moment in her past where she told herself this was the dream above all others. How often she thought about the woman below her without ever knowing the extent of the emotions keeping her up at night, filling her mind with cruel, horrific fantasies.

Here they are now. Here a palm finds her face, and another kiss falls to the raise of her knuckles, and all noises fade but for the heave of her lover’s chest. 

“If I’m to do this, then - then you will promise me.” She nuzzles her face against Nyai’s hand. Burying her teeth in her cheek to stop the tears which keep thickening her throat. “You will promise me that death will not do us part. And it will never do so,” Carmine begs, gripping the dagger so her hand tingles and threatens numbness. “Promise to me now and forever that in every life from here on you will find me. No matter where you may be, you will - you will find me.”

“I will find you,” Nyai repeats. 

“No, promise. Do you promise?” 

“I do,” Nyai whispers. “You are the key to my soul. No other could ever fill the space you’ve created, and there’s not a single other way I’d have it. As long as you are mine I’m yours.”

“I’m yours,” Carmine repeats. She tastes blood in her mouth and loosens herself. She looks past the dagger and only to Nyai. “And while I have no control over the matter, our next life will be simple. We will be farmers in a distant land with acres all to ourselves, with a barn bigger than our home and a comfortable area on the second level where we can make love and look at the stars.”

“Can we have horses as well?”

“All the horses you could ever want. We will ride laps around our fields and rest under a tree until sunset.” She moves her hand down, nearly cringing at the greasy wetness of her lover’s hair. “We would shower together often so I could keep this clean.”

“That’s the reason why?”

“It’s one of them,” Carmine snickers and her body burns her for it. A shivering fuzz lines her vision. “I don’t wish to be away from you for so long.”

“May our love grow in time apart.” Nyai brings the dagger back into position, the heave more noticeable. “I will know you when I see you. No matter how you may look, my love, I will know.”

“And I will know as well.” She brings another hand to the knife. “I will know then and the next life, forevermore.” Carmine leans down, licking the space between Nyai’s lips. She tastes like copper and salt and perfection. “I love you,” Carmine whimpers. “I love you. I love you.”

“I love you,” Nyai repeats. “Forevermore.” 

They kiss recklessly. They’d do so until their skin grew raw and broken if time weren’t so cruel. Carmine lifts her hand, the end of the handle pressed into her dress. A dictionary runs through her mind until she realizes no word could ever fit now. No sentence, no noise. All which is left between them now is actions. So she kisses. And she kisses.

And she dives. 

“My love,” she cries. She can feel the smile on Nyai and can’t move away from it until all beneath her rests still as a stone. She sits up. Withdrawing the knife, now coated with her lover’s blood. Shining and metallic. 

Carmine can feel the adrenaline in her veins as it slowly slips away. With what energy is left, summoned from deep in her core, she screams into the sky, and her vocal cords threaten to shred. She can’t tell what lights are real anymore. 

She raises the knife. Focusing on the red. Nyai’s blood. 

She thinks of everything that brought her here. Every mistake she made, every lie she took at face value. None of it matters now. But she won’t die by a gun she sold, even if she may deserve it. 

She’ll die with her lover’s blood in her heart. 

She brings her arms in and screams again and sobs as her body quivers. Her stomach pulses. As everything fades her body falls, her head against Nyai’s chest. She swears she can hear the ghost of her heartbeat. 

Her vision grows coated in ink. With a dying whisper, the world hears her one last time.

“I love you, Nyai.” 

She dies with a smile. 

[waitingforwinterwinds]

A Clash of Kings - 65 SANSA VIII (pages 817-826)

Tywin and the Tyrells get some upgrades, Joffrey publicly breaks up with Sansa, and Sansa gets a hairnet.

-

-Sansa reached the front of the gallery just as a blast of trumpets announced the entry of Lord Tywin Lannister. He rode his warhorse down the length of the hall and dismounted before the Iron Throne. Sansa had never seen such armor; all burnished red steel, inlaid with golden scrollwork and ornamentation. His rondels were sunbursts-

Thank you brain, for autofilling 'rondels' as 'Ronald (McDonalds.)' Anyway, Tywin Lannister is just Very Extra.

The Lord of Casterly Rock made such an impressive figure that it was a shock when his destrier dropped a load of dung right at the base of the throne.

This horse knows what's up.

Like a pack of trained dogs, the lords and ladies in the hall began to shout their pleasure. "Margaery," they called, "Give us Margaery!" And, "No traitor queens! Tyrell! Tyrell!"

How quickly the ladies forget who was with them as they waited their inevitable doom. No, I get it, even if any of them appreciated Sansa keeping them calm and being there at that moment, the king is still an unstable little shit, and backing Sansa offers them no political or social value. Never mind that it was one instance in the time she's been there, most of which has been spent watching her get abused and ostracized.

(Also, Sansa doesn't want to marry Joffrey anymore so this is a boon for her... if we ignore the layers of protection it removes along with her title of future queen.)

-their chief accomplishment had been surviving the battle on the river, a feat that few enough could boast.

Yeah, no, that does deserve an award to be honest, that shit was intense.

Oh, Lancel and Tyrion update: both alive but not physically well off. That's better than either probably expected though, so take the win.

Sansa had not heard of Littlefinger doing anything especially heroic during the battle, but it seemed he was to be rewarded all the same.

Peter Baelish would do numbers on twitter. Wow, I am mean tonight. (joking)

Joffrey lurched to his feet. "I'm king! Kill him! Kill him now! I command it." He chopped down with his hand, a furious, angry gesture... and screeched in pain when his arm brushed against one of the sharp metal fangs that surrounded him. The bright crimson samite of his sleeve turned a darker shade of red as his blood soaked through it.

Looks like the throne disagrees with you on that, Joffrey. Pfff, and Cersei was worried Sansa would humiliate Joffrey, look, he's doing it all on his own.

... Ohhhh, Sansa's so happy to be free, but Dontos knows what's up *casually smacks him with the steel chair for slobbery kisses in Sansa's ear*

"What stones are these?" "Black amethysts from Asshai. the rarest kind, a deep true purple by daylight." "It's very lovely," Sansa said, thinking, It's a ship I need, not a net for my hair. "Lovlier than you know, sweet child. It's magic, you see. It's justice you hold. It's vengeance for your father." Dontos leaned close and kissed her again. "It's home."

It's poison. Ah, hindsight, you make things so blatantly obvious.

"It's a ship I need, not a net for my hair." Dany knows that feels.

Now: stop kissing the underage child or I'mma smack you with the chair again! or worse, I'll Spontaneous AU you to death!

Ahh, poor Sansa, she thinks she's so close to freedom, to going home.

By the way, if anyone is wondering: black amethysts are a real thing, the dark colour is from hematite and iron in the matrix. The real question is: does it noticeably change the magnetics of the amethyst, even if only from nah to not really?

It's the real question though, right, because hematite is magnetic, but amethyst, the regular ones iirc, have like a repulsing magnetic field, instead of a pulling, like when you put two south ends of magnets together, but nowhere near as noticeable. Hmmmm, google research spiral activate!

[twopoppies]

Oh yeah, the Grammy committee can basically do whatever it wants with submissions, and most artists allow it because they’d rather be acknowledged in a different category than not acknowledged at all. Like most things in the US, often these choices have racial undertones— Lizzo, the poppiest pop girl i can think of, is often placed in R&B or “Urban Contemporary” (whatever that means) categories, while Billie Eilish puts out heavily rhythm driven music and is placed in pop. (For the record, I’m not sure where Lizzo and Billie submitted their music, but undoubtedly they had better chances of being accepted in those categories.)

For what it’s worth, this is why Justin Bieber opened his mouth to question why his R&B song and album were categorized as pop. He’s a funny example, because many didn’t think Yummy or his album deserved a nod at all, but the point still stands. I don’t see why Adele isn’t an R&B artist— the Grammys would undoubtedly consider her one if she was black.

Overall, the case with Super Freaky Girl is interesting. You often see black artists being moved to “Black Categories” to compete against each other, not other white artists. But in this case, Nicki probably has a lower chance of winning in Pop (she’ll almost definitely be up against AIW and other big tunes of the year). But until the Grammys changes the committee-based format, this is how it works.

Yeah that makes so much sense. I remember years ago when Jethro Tull won for Hard Rock/Metal over actual metal bands. The Grammys are a shit show. LOL!

[cosmo-lexies]

Midnight rituals - 4. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Rosemary:

Lucas and I entered the vision room from there we could see the X room. Atticus got into the room where Fenix was sitting. Although his domination cannot force Fenix to say the truth, doing that he lost control of his body would be enough to scare him.

"Well, we want information about the incident," Atticus rolled up his sweater in a sexy way, or at least for me it was a sexy way.

"I want to ..." then Fenix interrupted him.

" ♪ ♪ ♪ It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious ♪ ♪ ♪" he sang at full volume.

"I want to ..." Atticus tried again.

"♪ ♪ ♪ Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I ♪ ♪ ♪"

"get up and jump."

He tried one and another, even Lucas was looking confused because the situation was bizarre. Atticus's skills weren't the best, but this was another thing.

"What happens?" Lucas asked.

"I don't know," I answered.

After some try Atti was frustrated and he showed pushing the metal table.

"Why are you so frustrating?" he asked, Atti was calmy most of the time but even he have limits.

"I have the same question, we could speak like normal people," Fenix answered.

Atticus looked at us through the black window and showed his hand as a sign of surrender.

"C'mon Lucas, now go us," I said.

"Good cop bad cop," he said signing first him and then me.

I went to the door "I have a better idea, bad cop and man-eating monster."

Lucas:

I didn't wait to end my Friday night in this way. My plan was video games and maybe some alcohol that my father had hidden in the garage. I didn't want to scare poor Fenix.

"Rose, maybe we could stop." She turned back, crossed his arms, and looked at me with an intense glance. I gulped. How she is so intimidating measuring a head less than me is a thing that I'd never understand, "I said be-be-because, okay, he's a weirdo but he doesn't de-deserve that we tor-r-tortured him." I stuttering.

She turned forward and said "We'll erase his memories. You don't fill your pretty head with nonsense."

I signed. It had happened to me again. I am not nervous usually, I'm a super-hot nice werebear who came out of the closet at nine years old. Shit, I'm self-confident, but the stuttering thing always happens to me in this kind of moment. Verbal confrontation is not my thing.

We entered the room when Atticus came out, he had a swollen forehead vein. I thought of making a joke but he wasn't in the mood. Rose put her hand on his shoulder, and both of them looked at each other. Wow, that was more than a crush, they were really in love. I have seen romcoms whose characters have less chemistry than them.

I looked at Fenix. I hadn't spoken with him for one year at least, he was more tanned than the last time. He smiled at me and I looked away. Rose sat down in the unique seat. She was so sweet as ever.

"Well, Fenix, why do you make things so complicated?" She asked.

"I dunno what you mean, you're who is making this complicated," he smiled showing all his teeth.

I think he wanted to be funny but playing with Rose is a very bad idea. Even though she hadn't all her powers at this moment.

She made a villainous smile and said "If you wanna play, we play. Lucas," I looked at Fenix with sorrow and started the turning. Today I wore orange loose track pants and a white striped tank top, fortunately, because other clothes don't resist my changes so well.

I approached my mouth turned almost into jaws to him. He didn't look scary.

"I don't want to be impolite, but your breath smells awful," he said.

I stayed frozen, I dunno how to react. Then the door opened with a strong bang. My dad looked at us, he was trying to figure out the situation. He wore his police uniform which was wrinkled, he may have been in the gym when the mayor called.

"Hi, Mr. Garcia," Fenix said raising his hand a little.

Dad looked at me again and said "What is happening here? and where are your shoes?" I turned into my normal self meanwhile the sensation of I would be punished for a long time ran through my body. He took me by the arm and led me out of the room.

Fenix:

It had been a very strange day. I had repaired a witch ritual; I had been dominated, sounds better than really is, now that I think about it; my crush had interrogated me. A good day if you ask. However, I was playing a very dangerous poker game.

Rose looked at Lucas and his father while they left the room. Then she concentrated on me again.

"I'm starting to be angry, and you don't wanna me angry," she said with an intense look.

She was with little magic, I mean, her hair and makeup spells almost didn't work. She had changed from a super-model to a pretty high school girl, she looked like a real person in this way. However, I couldn't trust she wouldn't curse me in a few hours when she'd recover. I had to be intelligent.

"What do you want to know?" I asked.

"I want to know like an average boy modified a powerful witch's spell, how you resisted the domination, and who you are in general."

"First, ouch, I consider that I'm above average. I only repaid the error in the spell with a few small irons bars."

"I don't make mistakes," she got up.

"The orientation was wrong, the obsidian was toward the magnetic north, not the real north," I corrected her.

Se sit again and looked at me with interest. "The book doesn't say anything about this."

"Well, the book which you read is wrong,"

"I'm hearing," I had gotten her attention.

"I will tell you everything, but it has a price," she remained impassive, "I want a fairy magical contract in which the foundation promises not to erase my memories and not retaliate against my family or me. I have important information that is of your interest."

She didn't say anything and left the room. I was screwded.