Tumgik
#the meat just need to know the lore
lestatisprince · 2 years
Text
youtube
Since I've seen so many people today genuinely surprised Lestat was ever a rock star I decided to post evidence!
Here are the first several minutes of the film version of Queen of the Damned.
I can't really recommend you watch beyond. The movie never mentions Louis or Claudia, and completely changes his entire backstory while straight washing him at the same time.
9 notes · View notes
thedeadthree · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
also i would like to introduce ✨him✨ the heir of the aldmeri dominion who she totally didn’t stab in the eye when she intended to take him out……. and she was ambushed by his guard hidden in invisibility spells and far enough away that detect life didn’t work…….. bc the morag tong sent her on a mission they knew! KNEW she wouldnt walk back from alive as she ruffled too many feathers and they wanted her gone osjzjxjx……… now she has a thorn at her side (affectionate) DEAD on her heels until they cross paths for realsies in markarth sljzjxjx.
the royal pain of vinny himself, caranthir nemfarion aldmeri 🤍
#‘i am the heir to the dominion dear 🤍’ YOURE A ROYAL PAIN IS WHAT YOU ARE CARA ✨😤#an EPIPHANY i tell ya ✨🤧#guess who is playing sk*yrim…….. for the 39382828316 time ✨🥴 yours truly of course! <3#i just finished the companions for her……. and her first transformation she almost takes him out soxjxjxj#Bc like it was a random encounter but the timing was IMMACULATE when a group of the thalmor were fighting i think? it was wolves?#and from a lore perspective they set up raw meat along the road as a trap to attract the wolves..#and euphemia and lirinwen were traveling with her right….. euphie is a very altruistic dearie!#and they knew she would wish to stop to help who was in need…… and then Vinny and liri would stop at her request u know?#so it was a trap! the justicars with him figured it was to kill her right for taking his eye? at the border of skyrim?#well it was actually to question her.. learn who hired her…… and see if they can help each other out :)#bc at one point his family was the ruling power in the dominion right? he wished to restore his birthright#BUT ANYWAY so he follows her solo to whiterun right?#UNFORTUNATELY by the time he arrived it just so happened that Vinny underwent her first transformation right….. so he almost met the end at#her claws slskjxjx…….#he was tutored by liri when he was young! and they both knew of something to calm her down before she could hurt anyone?#she does get cured of her lycanthropy soon after the questline ends bc……. it was NOT for her akzjjxhx#she prefers vampirism 🤍😌 she saw lirinwen and how she can become invisible at will create undead AND enthrall her enemies#and was like…….. yea that skzjxjxj an effective advantage to have when ur an assassin akzjxj#but him helping her she was SO confused sksjjxj and quite frankly miffed aksjxjjx#isn’t it true romance when they vex u so? i think so! enemies to something more etc etc#oc: vindamea verenim#oc: caranthir nemfarion aldmeri#leg.ocs#leg.txt#if u read all that u are a dear ✨😖
9 notes · View notes
hauntingblue · 2 months
Text
Weird that helaena didn't foresee this btw she has predicted nearly every tragedy that happens to the greens
#the people thinking this is bad bad and criston like umm... didnt they know we won.... NO DUMBASS#they got a bunch of not targaryens in charge and they dont know the lore.... dragons are power my guy#alicent noticing aemond having aegons knife.... girl open your eyes#a silent sister there in the side of the frame just in case akdhaksjsksjs#jace first man to experience mysoginy.... westeros is so progressive#daemon to be the one to end centuries of beef between two houses i cannot believe my eyes#or make it worse.... nevermind#rhaenyra needed a yapping partner mysaria is so needed actually akfhsksk#elisenda (if i remember right) getting sent for war akdjaksn#and who tf is she????#OH!!!!#asking your wife for money for your latest repair project akdhakskskdk#LARYS MOTHERFUCKER!!!!#alicent having to fight for her claim as REGENT against her own fuckass son CHRIST!!!!!#FUCKASS CRISTON!!!!!!#ALICENT THAT MAN IS ONLY EATING BREAD AND WATER FROM NOW ON#THE FUCKASS BALL!!!!!!!!#ALICENT KILL THEM ALL!!!!!!!#aemond is the next in line new criston phrase#i did not give you lease(?) to speak my name#BARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GAGGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#they want meat!!! hugh said the dragons are meat!!! are they going to eat vhagar???? lmaooooo#sick dungeon meshi reference#SLAY JACEEEE#alys queen.... humble daemon a bit more we nearly got him#HE SAID IT!!! RHAENYRA END THIS MANS RETREAT NOW!!! BAELA READ HIM!!!! YEAAAAHHH BAELAAAAAAA YEAAHHHHHHH AND RHAENA GETS DRIFTMARK#HELAENAAAA YEAAAH SHE KNOWS!!!! AGEON NOTICED HIS MOTHER OHHHHHHH YEAAAAH VERMITHOOOOR SILVER WING!!!! jace and rhaenyra scene god.... yes#talking tag#watching hotd#the jace and rhaenyra scene and that baela and corlys scene which btw gave me chills.... damn thats was so good
1 note · View note
waywardsalt · 8 months
Text
mmm
#bellum x linebeck tag ramblings im not making this an actual post i just wanna throw some ideas around bc its still abstract n all that#cuz its not like. just romantic? like im not gonna sit down and treat it like some conventional relationship tho sometimes it is#like i sit down and not a single au/bit of post ph are they actually just. dating. they generally just have Something going on#like in ph. off the bat. i think when linebeck learns about bellum he starts to research him- checks libraries and personal collections#and hounding oshus and the spirits and trying to scrape together every little bit lf information he can find#at first its to quell his fear and maybe find tips he can pass on to link but once he digs deeper he just starts doing it out of curiosity#so theres just a mutual. they really want to know more about each other- linebeck doesnt just stop at researching bellum as an enemy#and bellum doesnt just stop at ‘researching’ linebeck as an enemy and someone to take advantage of#before they meet they have already gone a little farther than necessary into finding info on each other so they. have that mutual interest#and neither of them are too familiar with that i mean linebeck gets link but hes just used to limiting what people know about him#and bellum is used to just being a demonic enemy in need of eradicating (justified tho) whose other traits have been lost to time#like i imagine that long long ago bellum was worshipped as a like. god of war deity of survival against the odds that sort of thing#but the more positive aspects were left to languish when he decided to take the easy and simple way out and towards power and survival#but thats Bellum Lore that i need to add to That Post bc i don think its on there lmao#ok but. specifically in the crimson king au. theres this whole thing bellum eats people he has linebeck bring back limbs and stuff for him#but like some nights they make dinner i (linebeck is. not going to eat human meat. probably)#and while bellum prepares whatever dead guy linebeck brings him linebeck usually brings over a fresh squid#i feel like there’s something there. in other aus bellum ends up being intensely protective of linebeck due to them being reliant on each#other and bellum has known linebeck for a while. in some hes just like. his boss? the space au one is fun thats a fun dynamic#space au is probably the current au where theres the least romantic w/e between them but its still weird#anyways. but like in post ph its that sort of curiosity about each other that drives them to be kind to each other and. civil#theres some recognition they kind of see themselves in each other they understand how they think to a certain degree#bellum is possessive (heh. heheh) of linebeck very quickly partially to be able to keep. well. studying him and eventually bc of liking him#like on a level bellum is kind of just this violent animal that linebeck studies and finds ways to sustain and take care of but bellum#also knows linebeck incredibly intimately so while empathy is generally not there he can talk about very personal stuff to bellum and.#and vice versa a bit! its weird. like bellum has done heinous shit but linebeck kinda just. cares about the present and the future#it kinda ties into my idea that linebeck would rather not touch the past much like he keeps it in mind but moves forward no matter what#so he keeps his eyes forward with bellum and while initially distrustful and keeping him on a short leash just like. gives him some grace#this might be tag limit but like. yknow? im getting there but i might stick to just being loose with it bc it works#salty talks
1 note · View note
yeyinde · 5 months
Text
the soft blue of a pale moon | Yautja x f!Reader
Tumblr media
He keeps his claws fixed against the scruff of your neck. Forcing you down, bowed on your knees with your face tucked tight against his massive thigh, breathing in the stale scent of him. Even through the foreignness of it—the sharp burn of oxidising iron, rusted metal, and old, rotting blood—he smells good. Intoxicating. It makes you dizzy. Makes you greedy. For something. Survival, maybe. That instinctual drive, self-preservation, needling in your hindbrain to keep you alive.  Despite your reticence, you angle your chin up, glaring at this creature, this beast. This Cimmerian god of old. Stygian king in his throne of bones, his pretty pet, his plaything, supplicant by his side. You won't ever submit. Ever. 
warnings: noncon/dubcon. captive reader. predator/prey. forced submission. noncon D/s dynamics. forced mating. rough sex/violent sex. broken bones. belly bulge. biting. size difference. mentions of violence. scent kink (slight). marking/scarring (territorially, possessively). alien biology. alien genitalia. female presenting reader (female anatomy).
Tumblr media
Yautja terms:Kainde Amedha — hard meat (refers primarily to xenomorphs)
Ooman — human
this is basically a Dark (from the 2010 avp video game lmao) x Reader fic. Yautja is not an OC. but you don't need to know anything at all from the game to read this.
lore:
comics, novels. divine wisdom.
Tumblr media
The bed of furs is soft beneath you.
It's an odd juxtaposition compared to the uncanny harshness of the room you've been left in (held captive for days, weeks, months—) with its severe lines and its stark, unfamiliar geometry. The walls stained a strange, unearthly colour of brownish-gold, towering high into a domed ceiling etched with symbols and runes you've yet to decode. Ones you know you never will.
This whole place is otherworldly. Seemingly beyond the scope of science fiction, or what your meagre imagination can dream up. Reality. Fantasy. The two blend together to form this archaic, rustic interior that's somehow far too futuristic for your mind to understand, and yet shaded in use, in age. Space dust. Caught between old and new—new: unknown, unknowable—and utterly mesmerising despite the garishness of what lies outside beyond the edge of the pelts you rest on. 
Adorning the walls are an uncountable number of skulls and bleached white bones. Weaving spines strung up. Spindly, alien vertebrae. Fantastical creatures. Mythological beasts. It's something only the most inspired minds can conjure—
And yet, it all sits within reach. 
(The human skull on the wall, still attached to its spine, is perched over your head like an omen—)
You tear your gaze away from it, sliding over the trophies immortalised in a shrine dedicated to the prowess of the being who took you. An alien. Yautja, you’ve come to learn. Predatory hunters who roam the galaxies in search of the best prey. A race made of warriors with a strict honour code. 
Though—
You don’t know how honourable keeping captives are to their society, but none of the other massive beings had tried to intervene when he had taken you on the ship, hauled over his shoulder like a conquest, beating furious fists into his broad back. They stood back, chittering to themselves in what you know is laughter. Mocking clicks. Low trills. They thought it all so funny, outlandishly so, to see him stalk through the thick haze of fog that blanketed the ground with a yowling ooman clawing futilely at his back. 
(As if your weak, feeble fists could ever hope to maim, to hurt—)
You don't know why he decided to take you. Even now, aeons later as you pass by an unfathomable number of solar systems, all glimmering like crushed gems just beyond the domed window above your bed, you have no idea what brought this on. What made him look at you, and think—
Pet (mine). 
And it's not for a lack of trying, either. But trying to prise anything out of him is near impossible. Chiselling for gold with a plastic spoon. 
It leaves you with only one other villain in this story, and you very readily blame Weyland-Yutani for this mess—dig deeper, explore faster, mine harder—but yourself, more so, for signing your name on the dotted line in the first place. You knew it was a terrible idea from the beginning. Not too many planets are truly desolate these days. Not with those things, xenomorphs, roaming the solar system unhindered. 
Nothing good ever comes from meeting them. Death, inevitably, follows. 
Though, comparatively, you'd rather be sprawled out—naked, collared—on a bed of strange, soft fur than being used as a breeding sow for a race of parasitic monsters hellbent on devouring the galaxy. 
Panic is white hot, electric. The thought alone makes you lash out, a paroxysm of pure adrenaline, fear. Your hand flies to your chest instantly. Fingers knotting between your heaving breasts, feeling around for any movement under your skin. A beat. Several. All erratic. Thumping harshly against your ribcage. And—
Nothing. Just the erratic flutter of your heart, bragging senselessly in your chest. 
(stupid thing—)
Of course. Of course. 
Out of everyone on the ill-fated expedition, somehow only you survived. Holed up in the armoury, listening to those serpentine creatures tear into the flimsy metal of your ship. Taking out the ones who managed to sneak in with a well-placed shot to their domed heads. Hiding in a corner waiting for them to find you, wondering if the last few bullets should be used on them or yourself. 
It was days of that. Of piling these awful monsters high, and hoping the corrosive blood didn't ruin the hull to make an opening wide enough for them all to pour in, overwhelming you with your dwindling ammo. 
Breathing in ragged breaths, all the while listening to the hisses skirting across metal, grazing talons down your skull. They liked to taunt you, a fact that nearly drove you to the brink when all the meandering words uttered around about their hive-like simplicity, their insectoid stupidity, fell apart. These creatures are deadly, cunning. 
And smart.
They adapted easily to your patterns, overcoming your bullets and your patchwork ingenuity with ease. The only thing that kept them at bay was the metal being too thick to penetrate with their claws. 
(And you watched, helplessly, as they realised this after the second week, and sacrificed the smaller drones to splash their corrosive blood across the thickened alloy, melting it slowly down to nothing—)
They would have gotten you soon enough. 
Had to, really. Because the Queen was waiting. You heard her hisses in your head. Felt her in the air, disturbed and agitated, around you. Pulsing like a heartbeat. Hammering against your resolve with each nightmare she pressed into the folds of your subconsciousness. Luring you to her. Showing you the wonders of giving in, granting her access. 
Coming home—
You don’t know how anyone could withstand her influence. The siren’s call from down the hall, showing you image after image of her children curling protectively over you. Nestled in a tight embrace. Safe and sound from the howling winds and the scorching sun, from the awful hisses outside, and the horrific sound of metal giving way, melting into a puddle on the floor. 
It was madness. One you wanted nothing more than to give into—
And then they came. 
Appearing out of thin air just as your bullet pierced her jaw when she finally came for you, her child—
She fell, taking out several of the others with her—ones not on your list of alien species to look out for—and left behind nothing but a passel of intimidating creatures and you. 
He, their leader, was the first to find you. Grabbing you by the scruff of your neck like a misbehaving kitten, and pulling you close. Taking stock, you think, of the bodies behind you and the holes in the Queen made from your gun. 
An uneasy, stifling silence fell, broken by a series of drawn-out, low clicks. 
You realised then, right as he bent down and tore the claw off of a dead xenomorph, what these beings were. Hunters. Predators. It was rare to see them on earth, but you’d heard of several run-ins with these creatures whenever humans decided to mettle with their preferred prey. 
It was even rarer that any human survived the encounter. 
He cocked his head to the side before pressing the bloody tip to your cheek, branding you with the mark of the blooded. One that matched his own. Purposefully done, of course. 
His crest on your skin, unique as a thumbprint, is the loudest proclamation of his claim. Anyone from any number of clans that roam the heavens in search of prey, of hard meat, know, immediately, that you belong to him. That you bear his mark, branded with the scar of his respect. 
(Respect—such a weighty thing to carry across your shoulders, too. Something you'd been eager to obtain, hungering for it all your life. And now—
The blunt, almost suffocating heft of it feels permanent in a way you can't even begin to unravel.)
He'd taken you, then. Despite thinking of humans as soft meat, cattle, he'd thrown you over his shoulder and marched you to his quarters where he stripped the xenomorphs of their skin, and hung their bones on the wall—your trophies. Sat next to his own. A bold display. A show of respect, however rare—and unwanted. 
And then he'd stared at you through the black slits in his horned mask. Just watching. Studying. It took a great deal of composure not to weep. To beg for—
For something. 
Leniency, maybe. For whatever crimes you inadvertently perpetrated against them. For being here, of all places, because of the insatiable greed of Weyland-Yutani. 
For believing in them in the first place, maybe. Following, desperately, in the footsteps of your fallen idol. 
It never mattered much in the end, though. After a careful, blank scrutinisation, he'd simply reached down, talons digging painfully into your skin, and tossed you into the softest bed of furs—of pure, hedonistic luxury you'd ever felt—and followed you down with an inhuman growl that rattled through your bones. That seemed to echo throughout the ship, shaking the walls, and trembling through the floors.
The kicking and screaming never happened. Futility paints a desperate picture, doesn't it? And in those moments, now lost to time, you knew, somehow, that it was useless. Is useless. 
He wanted you. Him, the captain of this ship you've been left to rot inside of. The one who knows your language, but refuses to speak it. Preferring, instead, to let the guttural clicks and the chirring of his foreign, unspeakable mother tongue take precedence. 
The one who hunts, viciously, and wears his trophies around his neck. Strung up for all to see as they dangle across his broad, mottled chest. Black. Endlessly so. His colouring is shades darker than your own galactic canvas where midnight itself spills across satin, but the comparison itches in your chest, rotting along with your sickening heartbeat. 
And you think he knows this. Because despite his fury as he slashes his way through the oddest assortment of extraterrestrial creatures you've ever laid eyes upon, he's cunning. Smart. Adaptable. 
It's this, the strange, almost preternatural patience he exudes which keeps you where you lay now. The innate knowledge that he's a primal hunter, one who uses both instinct and a keen, calculative sense of awareness to ensnare his victims wholly, unquestionably. One who'd undoubtedly hunt you down to the very edges of the star system you escape into until you're bent down on both knees, supplicant to his prowess.
His little pet. 
And oh, how he luxuriates in it. This little moniker given to you by his clanmates seems to make him preen each time you hear the familiar, rasping click of their scornful mockery. 
Soft ooman. His ugly little trophy. 
He snaps his mandibles at them in response, but keeps his claws fixed against the scruff of your neck. Forcing you down, bowed on your knees with your face tucked tight against his massive thigh, breathing in the stale scent of him—ozone, leather, spice, and a potent musk of mildew and loam, humus; the stagnant waters of a swamp teeming with algae blooms. Even through the foreignness of it—the sharp burn of oxidising iron, rusted metal, and old, rotting blood—he smells good. Intoxicating. It makes you dizzy. Makes you greedy. For something. Survival, maybe. That instinctual drive, self-preservation, needling in your hindbrain to keep you alive. 
Despite your reticence, you angle your chin up, glaring at the creature, the beast. This Cimmerian god of old. Stygian king in his throne of bones. 
You won't ever submit. Ever.
But you can play the part—if only until he eases his grip, allowing you to slip away again. 
With a glower, you lay open kisses along the hard, leathery ridges of his black scute, chasing the oily tang of his musk on your tongue. 
The feel of your soft mouth makes his thighs tense—all firm, corded muscle; raw, primal power sheathed in a thick, aggregate pelt of marbled colours. It feels like warm stone under your fingers. Oiled leather. Crocodilian. 
His maw opens, and the sound that tumbles out is full of fractured syllables and inhuman chirrs, gutteral crepitate. It's not something your human tongue could ever expect to replicate, and your lips tug downward in a sharp frown, your displeasure at this game of his growing by the minute. His staunch refusal to speak your language despite clearly knowing it—and knowing it well—is aggrevating, if only for the sole reason that he kidnapped you. That you being here, listening to him, is not of your own free will. 
The scorn is thick on your tongue, the vitriolic rebuttal taking shape already, but he silences you when his thumb grazes your jaw. The air in your lungs tumbles out in a shudder when you feel the unnaturally soft, yet firm, skin of his palm slide around the back of your nape. 
The fight in you is numbed by the realisation that his hand alone spans the entire length of your shoulders, now curled possessively around your neck. Fingers overlapping, folding over each other easily into a perfect collar. 
His hand closing over your throat draws your eye to the ringed gorget he wears around his neck. 
The comparison makes you sick. 
The talons on his fingers are warm, powder-soft like the beak of a bird, when they tap against your throat as you swallow, thumb still stroking along the ridge of your jaw. It's shockingly intimate, and the humanness of it settles in your stomach like a sinking stone. Granite needling against soft tissue. Mercury bleeding into your guts. You hate it. 
Hate how much you don't hate it. 
The juxtaposition fills you with a fit of vicious anger. You don't want to seek comfort from this beast. 
Your gaze drops, resting churlishly on the thick skin of his belly. Despite the raw, indomitable strength that coils through his muscles, malleable obsidian, when he sits, the softness of his belly pudges out, jutting over the brass-coloured belt of his loincloth. 
It's—
Another marker of his uncanny likeness to the human form. 
But where you might have expected to see coarse hair, his lower belly is sparsely covered by a dense, thick cropping of quills trailing along his abdomen. They feel like softened polymer under your fingertips, but catch on your skin if you're not careful, the sharpened edge digging in. It's not as painful as the press of his nails, but itches like a thorn. Needles of a cactus. 
They stretch upward. Arching along in a perfect mockery of a happy trail that stretches to form a heavy bushel on his chest, small whiskers on his chin, his brow, dotted along the crest of his crown where his tresses fall. 
Dragging your gaze up this path leads you back to piercing amber set deep inside the bracket of his skull. They seem to glow, an unnatural light spilling out of their sockets, highlighting the rigid lines of his bones. 
He's watching you. Always. 
(You blame the rapid thud of your heart on fear.)
Knowing he has your attention now, he makes the noise again. Lower this time. A snarling rasp breaking apart between his flexing mandibles. The sound akin to the rumble of an avalanche; the roaring screams of a forest on fire. 
You have no hope of ever mimicking it—not without drinking down acid to corrode your vocal cords first. The anger that lashes through you is a whipcord cutting its tip against your resolve. 
“What are you saying? I don’t understand—”
His massive crown dips, mandibles clicking. His thumb presses into your skin. Intentional. Pointed. 
It's then you piece together that what he's saying isn't a command or a taunt, but rather his name. One you have no hope of ever repeating unless you want to turn your vocal cords into tatters, strips of unusable tissue. Wasting your words on his name is not something you think you would ever want to do. 
And so, you don't. 
Maybe it's to spite him. Or to put some semblance of distance between yourself and the alien holding you hostage, touching the skin of your neck with a soft sort of reverence you hadn't known he was capable of. Whatever the reason, you twist the ugliness inside of your chest, the rage and sorrow, into a brutal knife, wedging it into the scant space between your bodies, prying them apart in a shallow victory. 
He's a hideous thing, isn't he? This brute. 
Raw power. Untameable malice. All hidden under this pantomime of honour. How laughable, really, to think these beings know anything of the sort. Or maybe it's just him in particular. The outlier of the lot. One with a confounding obsession with ooman pets. 
Ugly, you think, staring up at him. With his sunken eyes, and his mane-like crown. His tusks clicking together in quiet pleasure, smug in his throne of metal and bone. 
Ugly, like the mossy green surface of a still swamp. Stagnant waters. A black lake. Shrouded by a dense, impenetrable cropping of weeping willows and mangroves. Shading the water so much that the algae blooms turn black like tar. 
Dark, like him. 
And so, you whisper it. Not his name, but this vindictive moniker you pieced together thinking of the lingering swamplands covered in moss and peat.
“Dark.”
In response, his nails rake over the back of your neck in both a warning, a reprimand; the same harsh touch used on an unruly cub by its mother. The comparison makes you bristle, hissing out a series of cruel jeers at him, but he barely pays it any mind, too busy chittering to himself now, humoured instead of insulted by this tangentially human name you've bestowed upon him. 
The juxtaposition, the humanness of it all, is almost too much. 
How can a creature that ripped a xenomorph’s jaw apart with his bare hands have these soft rolls along his midsection. Feel humour the same way your friends back home might have at your taunting barbs? 
The contrast is nearly comical. Sour. 
You don't like it when he's too human. When he scratches his warm talons along your nape absently. Thoughtless. A little twitch of his hand offering threadbare comfort in an unconscious whim. When he's tactile with you. Tensile. Gentle. Touching your skin with an exploratory sense of curiosity, of fondness. Laying you down on the furs with a tenderness that is at complete odds to the rough, demanding way he'll inevitably mate with you. 
Mate. Because your coupling is always animalistic. Brutal. There's no tenderness to be found when he presses you into the furs, rutting into you like a beast. Growling, snarling. Making you take, and take, and take until he's satiated—
But you think you like it that way. 
Especially when he's fresh off of a hunt. 
When he fucks you into the mattress with nothing but harrowing, inhuman roars spilling from deep within his heaving, blood-drenched chest. Guttural snarls. Harsh, demanding. Moulding your body to his liking. Grasping you in a crushing clutch, and drawing your aching hips back to swallow down the intense thickness of his cock as it buries deep—impossibly so—inside of you. 
You like him angry. Like him rough. It rents the moments when he's docile with you; bifurcating the peculiar sheen in his beady eyes when he lifts his mask off, placing it on the metal mantle with all the others, content to just stare at you. Looking, watching. Assessing. 
It's the unnatural stillness of his gaze that sets you on edge. The heavy, unerring way he takes you apart with nothing but deep amber drilling through your skin. 
Through because you've pieced enough together to know he can't see you the same way you can see him. That all the sharp angles of your features are hidden. The infinitesimal detailing lost to some wavelength your human eyes can't begin to take apart. 
He hides this weakness by touching you endlessly. Long, sharp talons dragging over the bridge of your nose. The dip in your chin, the angles of your jaw. The plumpness of your cheeks. 
He buries himself inside of you, and plays an exploratory game of committing your topography to memory with the soft, thick palms of his hands. Lets his long, rubbery tresses brush across your face as he sets a maddening pace that promises to one day snap your pelvis in half again, eyes glued to the centre of you where you burn the hottest. 
Between these moments is where you linger the longest. Oscillating between a pet or a mockery of a queen; supplicant to its owner, it's King. Head resting on a terribly massive thigh as he commandeers a ship that makes all the technological advancements of your home world seem rudimentary and crude. A child's rendition of a spaceship brought to life with broken crayons. Left there to bask in his prowess, his glory. Surrounded by artefacts and trophies of all his kills—but considerably lesser than the vastness of his quarters where he keeps his most prized possessions. 
Yourself included. Polished diamond perched on a satin pillow. 
One he keeps dressed up in armour, in plating; decorated in the traditional fabrics of his own kind—mesh netting that keeps you perfectly comfortable, acclimated to the unbearable swelter of their ship, the temperature almost too much for your fragile skin to handle; breastplates over your chest; a bronze loincloth with intricate webbing and a heavy belt to keep it in place. 
Adorned with pretty gems and metal bands around your neck, your arms. His mark on your skin. 
Belly bare, and offered no shoes. But this fact is not a pointed statement about your imprisonment or your status amongst them—it's just for the simple fact that he doesn't wear them, and so: neither should you. The axiom is so irrefutable, that the bare, gnomic revelation is almost obvious in hindsight. 
Obvious. In the same way a lightning strike is. Being torn to pieces for getting between a mother bear and her cubs. Falling off a cliff after dancing too close to the edge. Trying to swim in aerated water. 
Obvious. It's all so obvious, isn't it? 
You spend most of your days in this liminal labyrinth. Lost in your own mind as space flickers past the large window in front of you. Pinpricks of light in the distance of an endless, unfathomable black nothingness. Perched on the precipice of complacency and dread. Never knowing when he'll grow bored of this game, and turn you from a living emblem to a skull on his mantle like all the rest. 
If, of course, you're even worthy enough of a place there.
You just don't know. And that's the crux of it all. Not knowing. Kept on the brink. Shrouded in uncertainty. 
You'd think it intentional if you hadn't seen the way he preens under your stare sometimes. Flexing in his metal throne, showing off his array of scars; the trinkets he picked up on worlds unknown. The open, wanting way he regards you—this little human, barely a scrap of thing compared to him, to the sheer vastitude of his bulk. Hungry. Possessive. Always snapping his mandibles at the other Yautja who get too close, claws raking down flesh, spilling luminescent green blood across the floor. Injuring his own kind for attempting to touch you—
The King’s conquest. 
But his ire doesn't abate for you, either. You've learned the hard way what it means to try and flee from his grasp, and while it wasn't nearly as bloodied, as brutal, as it was for his kin, it was terrifying. 
You thought you were toeing the line before when you'd dig your human deep into his thickened hide as he kept you tucked to his side, on your knees for him; or when you tug so harshly at his tresses that green blood leaks from his skull and he howls in pain, but you realised then that you were wrong. That those little moments of mutiny were akin to foreplay to him. Small, inconsequential. Spilling his blood earned you marginal amounts of his respect, and he showed it by dumping you on his bed, and burying himself inside of you until you'd passed out into the furs. Overwhelmed. Punished. But it wasn't. You weren't being taught obedience by his hand, but rather getting a playful slap for your antics. 
He'd snatched you by your throat in an instant. His warm, soft palm enclosing over the fragile length of your neck with too much to spare for you to ever be comfortable. Long fingers overlapped across your nape, and he'd heaved you forward, slamming you into the hard plains of his body with a growl. Talons prickling into your skin, spilling blood down your back. He'd snarled so loud that the ship seemed to quiver, quaking under the sheer weight of his anger. 
Amber eyes drilled into you, widened with the fever of his fury, burying deep into your being. Your head wrenched side to side in a slow, agonising jolt as he assessed you. Taking stock of the silly pest that tried to run from him. That had the gall to slink off like an insect scurrying over his feet. Dishonourable.
This, though. 
Running from him—
Well.
In that moment, the air wrought with the metallic tang of his indomitable rage, you had thought: this was it. He was going to kill you. Flay your skin from muscle, and hang you in the rafters for the rest to gawk at. Easy prey. A fickle kill. 
And with everything you'd gleaned about this strange tribe and their odd customs, it would have been a mercy. 
But he didn't. 
Doesn't. 
His mandibles flare open, stretching out wide across his boxy jaw. The pinpricks of his teeth gleam in the hazy, saturated light of the ship; white, jagged peaks against fluttering, angry red. It shudders as he growls. The decibels pitched low, unfathomably so. You catch the spear of it rattling through his body, the rasping snark bellowing from the depths of his chest, and shaking the air around you. You can feel it reverberate from his flesh, the tight grip he has on you a conduit funnelling his anger straight into the middle of your throat. 
It reminds you of a territorial crocodile bellowing in the shallow water, making it vibrate and splash around him as the shattering frequency ripples outward. 
It's terrifying. Electric.
You feel it rattle through your bones. Feel the ripples trembling through your flesh. 
It's primal, this fear. Animal. 
But in the end, he doesn't kill you. 
You're simply tossed over his shoulder like a rowdy, misbehaving pest, and taken back to his room, much to the amusement of his gathering tribemates peeking out of their room to see their leader tend to his wilful, misbehaving pet. He strips you of your armour with a careless, almost cruel disregard before pushing you back on the bed. There's a rigid line to his shoulders you'd never seen before; a damning flex to his jaws that make you shake, quivering in fear. 
You know better than to speak, to beg. All it gets you in the end is a mocking series of clicks that you know enough to recognise as laughter. Instead, you take your punishment with your chin in the air, unwilling to submit the way he so clearly wants you to. 
Your supercilious scorn has his mandibles widening in anger once again, and he exercises his control by shoving you face-first into the bed, and burying his tusks into the meat of your shoulder, keeping you still under him. 
It's a clear warning. Move, it says, and his tusks will catch on your spine and rip it clean from your back. You still. Quiet. A prey animal lying prone, unmoving, at the feet of a chuffing predator as he mounts you from behind, rutting into you with a savagery that renders you into nothing more than a ruined heap under his bulk. 
For your attempted escape, you end up with more of his scars on your body, indents in the shape of his flared mandibles on your shoulders, and a fractured pelvis. It could be worse. You could've died. 
Should have, maybe. 
(is that a plea? an orison? 
and if so, why is it drenched in misery?)
And there is something vicious about the way he tends to your broken bones after, plunging the needle into your skin despite your howling, or the way you thrash. It's pure agony. The sensation how you imagine it must feel to be burned alive from the inside out. 
That, you think, is why he has no qualms about leaving you alone now. Wandering off, chasing trophies and honour on a planet just outside of the domed window above your bed. A vicious, red world tidally locked around a small dwarf. One half shrouded endlessly in black while the other burns, charred from the intensity of its star. In the middle, you know, is a small strip. A habitable zone, if only just. 
It's a place where a large, lumbering predator roams. One with towering antlers akin to the moose on earth, and jagged, spiked teeth protruding from its maw. The length is too much like a Sabre-toothed tiger for you to ever want to meet it face-to-face in the dark. 
Proper prey. A worthy trophy, they consider it. 
And, from the chittering you picked up, it seems that xenomorphs—kainde amedha—have found this place as well. 
The thought of them down there—spreading, growing, infecting—fills you with a potent sense of dread, one that gnaws on your insides with serrated teeth. Vicious and ugly, it lingers in crevasses where it pokes and prods at your fear, and your worries, until they split open, leaking putrid rot all over. 
It’s not that you’re worried about him. Not at all. 
(despite the nagging in your chest that whispers you’re a liar when you press your face into his side of the lavish bed of furs, greedily inhaling as much of his lingering musk as you can—)
He's gone off on hunts many times since you've been taken, and most of them end up on worlds already broken apart, infested, by those parasites. 
The notable difference is that brushes with them in the past never incurred much worry from you. If anything, you think you rather preferred it. Enjoyed the respite that came when he was gone, giving you a meagre ounce of freedom to think about all the (futile) ways you could escape. 
And mostly waiting. Waiting for someone at Weyland-Yutani to notice the glaring absence of one of their engineers. 
How laughable, really. Its echo is a false prophet whispering poison into your head, telling you that things will be over soon, that the higher-ups care less about profit margins than a whole fleet that went missing under garish circumstances on a planet you're soon beginning to think you never should have been sent to at all. 
Saves money on wages, you suppose. And the expense of sending a rescue fleet in to investigate costs more than your yearly salary. 
The bold, unignorable truth in that is a cruel, twisting knife to your agency. To the lingering remnants of your humanity, and worst of all, your hope. 
No one is coming. You've known this for a while now. The toxic hisses are part of the reason why you decided to try your luck on a massive, earth-like planet the first (and only) time you've tried to run. Because without that, without this fraudulent hope, what else are you left with if not him?
And now—
It's been an uncountable number of days. Weeks. 
Time in interstellar orbit is inconsequential. The beings themselves—yautja, you remember him hissing; garbled words mangled in his throat, and feel the burn in yours when you try to echo it in his tongue—have no reason to keep time, it seems. And even if they did, it's doubtful you would be able to interpret its abstract meaning. 
But even without traditional clocks or human measures and scales of time, you know that he's been gone much longer than before. Agitation seems to simmer in the air. The yautja—unblooded younglings; juveniles in their comparably archaic youth—that come to deliver your food seem—
Restless. 
Their maskless faces whisked in agitation. Shoulders set in a tense line. Eyes skewed toward the vast windows of the mothership, fraught with an eager sort of intensity. 
You know, first-hand, how brutal their hierarchy tends to be, and have seen Dark use a brute, savage dominance over the younger, disrespectful, ones who ignored his warning in the past. The amalgamation, then, of their excitement and their uncertainty screams one thing: 
he should have been back by now. 
And it—
It does something to you. 
Changes things, maybe. Skews your perspective. 
Because the reality is this: 
As much as you hate your circumstances, you're under no compunction that Dark isn't the sole reason you've been left, untouched, for so long. Why you're allowed to stay alive; to linger in his shadow, trailing after him like a lost dog. And you're barely certain that Dark won't turn around and kill you when the whim strikes him, much less his compatriots. His clanmates. 
It leaves two brutal truisms for you to contend with: that you need him; and that without him, you're dead. 
In that, you find there's almost too much to think about. 
So—
You lean back, staring up at the pale blue moons outside of your prison, and think of nothing because if you can't see the pendulum, if you don't stare down into the maw of the pit, then you can pretend neither are really there at all. 
Tumblr media
You wake from a restless slumber to the door opening with a mechanised whirr, the rasp of heavy metals sliding against each other filling the air. A plume of thick fog billows up in response, shrouding the entrance in dense white. 
The cloud conceals their identity, but it doesn't matter much. No one has access to these chambers. No one but him. 
The long, sharpened talons on his toes clink against the floor as he approaches. Each footfall makes your heart jump, scattering in a strange, off-kilter rhythm. 
Through the fog, he appears. Battleworn, and filthy. Splotches of dulled green blood cover his body from head (where you note a few tresses have been ripped off, some at the crown where a pock gapes open, deep forest green, and others at the ends) to toe. The majority of it is covered in the low, angry light of the glowing metal, the colour of molten rock. It's shielded from your prying eyes as he moves forward, strides purposeful as he lugs his wares over the threshold. 
He comes to a stop at the foot of the bed, broad chest heaving with each breath he takes through the mask still on his face. You take stock of him as he stills, cataloguing each change to his appearance now—a new scar down the length of his chest, blistered and scabbed over from the healing salve they carry on their hunts. Part of it is hidden under a thick patch of burnt skin. The splatter whipping over his lower belly, and raising the toughened skin up half an inch. 
The infliction of both are immediately recognizable in their unmistakable pattern. 
The slash of a xenomorph’s claw ripping through skin, shredding through it like paper; and the jagged, rough burn of their blood as it rained down, unhinged, on bare flesh. 
He fought quite the battle, you note, and pretend the rapidness of your breath doesn't reek of relief. 
His hard-earned victory sits in his hands. 
The skull of a queen. 
The sickly white already polished and primed, ready for its place on his mantle. It should be there already. Should have been his first stop. Per tradition. 
But he breaks it by standing before you now, covered in grime and dried blood. Reeking of stale sweat. Of rot. And holding his wares in his hand for you to see. To take note of. He waits even though you know it costs him a great deal of effort to stand here, beaten, bruised, scarred, burnt as he is. Half of it is the same, undeniable stubbornness that they all seem to inherit; a weaponised sense of pride. The other—
Well.
The significance of this moment, of this break in a sacred routine, isn't lost on you, despite your best efforts to pretend otherwise. As much as you want to ignore it, it itches behind your ribs, pulsing like an infectious wound. 
It's only when he sways slightly in exhaustion, the movement almost indiscernible if you hadn't been watching him so intently, do you release him from this strange moment. Bowing your head down in quiet, muted submission; a reverent surrender to his indomitable prowess. 
This gentle, almost desultory yielding doesn't seem to click at first. He tilts his head down slightly, gazing at you through the black slits in his mask, seemingly uncomprehending as he takes in the sight of you—this errant little human who caused him nothing but trouble, offered nothing but mocking respect—bowing down to him after an indefinite time fighting to free yourself from under his thumb. 
Until—
It does. 
The massive, bleached skull of the queen is shoved in the air in a sudden chirr, pitched to the ceiling as he stomps his feet on the ground in an effort to widen his stance. Knees bent, he throws his head back, and lets out a ravenous, blood-curdling roar of victory. 
It bludgeons into you. The force of it winding when it hits, bruising along your skin in a throbbing ache. 
This doesn't so much as feel like toppling over the precipice, but already being caught in an unstoppable freefall. 
(one you're not sure will be an indefinite fall to the stagnation, stasis; or will send you crashing down to the jagged rock at the bottom of this vertiginous drop. 
the one thing you are certain of is this:
it's much too late to go back when you've already lept off the edge.)
Tumblr media
—and so, the pit it is.
Tumblr media
His thumbs pitch under the board curve of his mask, grazing the soft underside of his boxed chin. Carefully, he lays down a single finger at a time, resting it against the smooth surface before slowly lifting it off his face. 
When the humid air hits his flesh, his mandibles flare out. Flexing. An unconscious response, you now know, after being folded against his mouth to fit inside the helmet for so long. Joints aching. Muscles hinged with disuse. 
It's with this motion that you notice the absence of his left, lower mandible. The stump a mangled mess of cauterised flesh. It's ugly. Atrocious, even. The scars crisscrossing against moulted skin of pale amber and black are a harrowing emerald smear, an awful amalgamation of dried blood and gnarled tissue. 
The shock of it is dulled under the weight of his success, and it's then that you know you're too far gone to ever go back. Where there should be pity, and—shamefully—disgust, all you feel is an overwhelming sense of borrowed pride. Chiselled from the staunch set of his shoulders, the flex of his muscles, as he openly preens under your stare. Angling his chin downward, giving you a better glimpse of his battle scars. A hard-earned victory. 
A queen is no easy feat, after all. 
His eyes find yours in blood-red gloom. Burning amber, chiselled into the canyons of his unique, unmistakable topography, seems to drill, intensely, into you. They stray, travelling down the length of your nude body, barely covered by the pelts of his conquests. 
You spare a thought to the idea that seeing you this way, wearing nothing at all but his kills, is what makes his broad chest expand suddenly, shoulders pulling back as he preens. Puffing his plumage in a heady pride, a deep satisfaction that runs bone deep. 
Waiting for him, you think. Dressed only in the hide he skinned with his bare hands. 
He rumbles suddenly. Bellowing out a low, steady growl between his sharpened teeth. This noise is unlike anything you'd ever heard before—deep, unfathomably so; but hollow. It echoes, reverberating from his chest in a timorous pitch. 
You could almost mistake it for a leonine pur. 
He stalks towards you, and each step ignites a war within you. The urge to flee from this predator is fierce. Instinctual. It burns through you with a vicious force, but in that rippling intensity, kindling burns in the scorch marks left behind. 
Just as potent as the urge to run is, the want, the desire, to roll over and submit to this massive, powerful creature rages, blistering through you. 
But you force yourself to stay still. To wait as he moves, seamlessly, to you. Lighter now that he's stripped himself of the wrist gauntlets, the cannon mounted to his shoulder, his trophies, his kills—the dangling skulls from around his neck, and waist. The belt and loincloth were the first to go, freeing himself to display his immodesty, completely at ease in his own nudity. The thermal netting peeled off next, and dropped into a pile by his mantle. The chill—if a near-constant swelter could ever be considered such a thing—made his jaws flare out in the only sign of discomfort he would ever give, flexing under the slow acclimation to this balmy heat that clings to air. 
The heat, though—
Such a relentless thing. 
You feel the humidity burn through you as he walks, unashamedly bare, to you. An incredible length of skin unveiled for your prying eyes, glinting a devastating obsidian in the pale luminescence of the locked moons just outside the window. 
In this sparse light that trickles in, you let yourself grow bold, greedy, for the fill of him, and let your gaze trail down the pockets of quills dropping down his chest, his belly, until you meet the thick thatch on his groin. It's here where your breath catches. Hitching loudly in your throat as he comes to a standstill within your reach. 
As human as he sometimes appears—usually in the most inopportune times—you can't deny the obviousness in his extraterrestrial anatomy compared to yours, to human morphology. Birdbeak warm claws, tusk tips on mandibles, leathery skin connected through a series of irregular polygonal shapes in mossy black and blazing amber, baleen teeth sharpened to needlepoints—you would be remiss to think him human in anything other than silhouette. 
But arguably, the biggest shock (outside of his maw) is, of course, his cock. 
Softened, it's kept tucked away inside of a slightly bulging cloaca shaded in the same dark green hue as his outer arms, back, and legs. A dense cluster of quills sit in a thatch around it, protruding near his black, pebbled scute. It's firmer than you'd expected it to be, but softens near the opening where his cock emerges, intimidatingly long, thick. The fattened length of him, too, is foreign. 
The end tapers into a fleshy point. Along his shaft are barbs, small ridges that resemble the scute covering his body, if only softer. The reminder of them makes you tremble, skin heating. Feverish. It's indescribable, really. The way they drag along your sensitive flesh on the outstroke, the sensation dizzying. 
Covering his flesh is an oily, slick substance, and it's really only this natural lubricant that even allows taking the full length of him inside of you possible. The sheen of it glints in the light when he flexes his muscles, and steps closer to the bed, smearing slick against his thighs. Your mouth waters, flooding with the veracity of your insatiable want.  
(You hate him. Hate him. Want so him so badly that it feels like you're burning from the inside out—)
The push-pull of your submission, still at war with your innate sense of self, dims, quieting when he reaches the edge of the bed, cock in full view. The jut of it, now fully extended from his sheath, hangs, heavy and thick, between his legs, bobbing with his movements, twitching in his growing excitement. Prespend, slightly more watery in texture compared to a human man, gathers at the opening, dripping down to the floor beneath his feet. A long, pearlescent strand clings from his weeping slit, dropping to land on the flesh near his knee. 
The sight of it shouldn't be as sinful as it is—you’ve yet to find god amongst the stars and you doubt, very much, you ever will—but seeing the thick glob of his desire spill, leaking steadily from his twitching cock, fills you with a heady sense of want. Desire. 
He hasn't touched himself at all. Content, almost, to stare at you, head cocking to the side as his beady amber eyes drill into your lower belly, fixed on the spot where you burn the hottest. The heat signature you give off, blistering; red-hot, is probably the biggest appeal to a creature like him who sees in shades of yellows and reds. The mismatch of your complexion, the nude state of your body, is inconsequential to him when at your core, you're molten. And all for him. 
He knows this, too. Knows your body well enough to see the unmistakable burn of your desire. Your desperation. The slick growing between your parted thighs turns into a heavy, hot flood; pulsing full of electricity. The depth of your need grows increasingly uncomfortable the longer he waits, watching. You want him. Want this massive beast who stole you away, who held you down and made you take him, made you submit. 
And he wants you back. This Stygian king cut from ashlar, limned in shadows, wants you just as much—if not more. Went out of his way to burrow past your pitiful defences to bury himself as deeply as he could, rearranging your humanity into a likeness of his image; branding you with his mark, dressing you in clothes tailor-made to fit. Giving you the gift of his prowess—bones, skulls: trophies from the most fearsome predators in the galaxy left at your altar—in this mating dance, this outré ritual. 
His desire for you is overwhelming. Dangerous. Your hips twinge at the reminder of when he exercised his punishment, exiguous as it was compared to his sheer strength, smarting with the phantom burn of fractured bones as he gave in, infinitesimally, to this voracious yearning that smoulders, a constant ember, in the sunken depths of his eyes. 
Something surges through you at the thought of him holding back as much as he has, at the way he thickens just at the sight of your blood red need. It's a strange amalgamating of animalism (pure, unquantifiable primalism, bestial in its savagery; feral), and a heightened degree of pride—the sort that leaves you feeling godlike, peerless: transcendent, in the very essence of the word. 
He wants you. You. 
And in that, the vestiges of your control cessate. 
Submission, you find, feels too much like finding sanctuary amidst a raging wildfire.
In response, he trills. The thundering bellow vibrates through the air. An unmistakable pur of a beast successfully conquering its mate. 
Tumblr media
He moves—soundless and surprisingly agile for such a mountainous creature; prodigious down to his every atom—and makes a slow, aching crawl to meet you on the bed. His knees, the size of your skull, press down first, making the basin of fur dip under the enormity of his heft. Encompassed in his shadow even with him kneeling before you, it makes the absurdity in your sizes more pronounced. Thighs thicker than the trunks of fir trees. Arms the width of your legs. His chest is the span of your own, just duplicated thrice. 
Dark is a beastly thing up close. 
There's a thrum in your throat; a heady pulse, throbbing with adrenaline cut by dormant fear. As if sensing death so close by, an atavistic caterwaul begins in your hindbrain, screaming at you to run, roll over, submit, play dead—the flickering of these prey responses an instinctual deluge that you quell, half-heartedly, with the knowledge that there's nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. 
He'll find you. Even if he has to hear the star system apart to do it. 
As if omnipotent to these weeping tendrils of animal fear, his broad chest trembles as he lets out a shallow pur. A softened bellow. The growl of a prowling cat on the Savannah. 
You shiver, fisting the fur in your slick palms until it bulges up between whitening knuckles. 
“Please,” is all you say, and you don't even know if this particular word registers to him at all. He never responded in the past to it (or stop, don't, no) outside of the rare occasion when he kept his helmet on, and mocked you with the garbled mimicry as he buried himself as deep inside of you as he could go. 
This time, though, his mandibles twitch. His maw gapes open, displaying an egregious set of terrifying teeth, and the flutter of his throat grows, undulating in jerking pulses of flesh, sliding over each other until—
Puh–le’e–suh—
It's butchered beyond recognition. Maimed in the flex of his corded, baleen throat. But the intention is there, and the implication more so. 
He spoke. 
And it's a broken, devastating mockery of your mother tongue, but the force of it all is a blow, a bludgeon unlike anything you'd ever felt. 
A whirlwind of emotions rage through you, all congealing into a muddled, indiscernible mess. It slips through your fingers, featherlight, but he doesn’t give you a moment to gather them together between your fists. 
His tresses fall over his broad shoulders as he prowls forward, tiring of this epoch already. The long, tubular strands frame you in a serried curtain of black as he looms—gargantuan, mythical—above you, head dipped down. The massive crown lists to the side when you lean back, instinctively, spine meeting the furs in tandem with his slow advance. 
The absence of his lower mandible when he flexes the others is novice in the liminal light that spills through the bulk of his body. You're not used to seeing him hurt like this. Ragged scars. Scorch marks tearing across his flesh. 
Reflexively, you reach up. The tips of your fingers are feather-soft against the dry tresses just behind the missing cluster. The ends of them are cauterised—a thick, metallic clump glued to the bottoms to keep him from bleeding. Another anatomical anomaly. 
Filled with veins and nerve endings, his tresses are far more sensitive to touch than the coarse hair of primates—the integument is different, too; rubbery to the touch, reminding you of polymer pipes or rubber bands, almost. 
At your gentle touch, he makes a noise, a shallow churr in the back of his throat; mandibles soon folding over his mouth after. Reactive, you find, and endlessly endearing for such a monstrous creature. Cute. 
A smile blooms at the notion of his sudden shyness. Such an outlandish thing for someone whose entire existence is narrowed down to honour and death. The pinch of his tusks elapsing over his maw fills you with a misplaced affection, a foreign growth metastasizing between your ribs. 
You're not sure what it is—survival instinct, maybe. The urge, the drive, to keep living despite yourself; a blot against the harsh reality of your predicament. It feels like the most likely one considering the other is genuine adoration. Unthinkable even now in spite of your willing submission. 
But thinking about this is a jagged dagger cutting through your insides. You shove it aside, hide it away. 
The soft touch—a mere whisper of your fingertips gliding along the surface of his tresses—takes on a more intentional drag, purposeful. You curl your index finger around a corded forelock, giving a small, impish tug just to make him jutter above you. 
His jaws flex, mandibles spreading slowly apart with a quiet, humid hiss. The heat brimming up once more as he curves his long mane over you, chin dipping down to encompass the entirety of your body under his. 
You can't help wondering if this is what it feels like to be devoured. 
And when he reaches the apex, eclipsing everything in your sight with the full, dark heft of him, hands fixed against the soft furs above your head, you think of a sanctum instead of a cage. 
(a swinging pendulum—)
The heat is unbearable with him over you like this. Made worse, somehow, when his hand lifts, falls to your waist. The width of it covers you entirely. Swallowed whole by palm. You tremble, and he eats your anticipation with a distinctive, preening click, turning you on your belly with an ease that knocks the air from your lungs. Barely a featherweight to him. The notion is scorching. 
The name he's given you is full rasping, mangled syllables your fleshy tongue could never begin to wrap around. In the absence of knowing how to speak it, you've begun to call him by your own human version of his namesake. It's this, the shortened, paltry whisper that rolls off your tongue when he presses the tapered tip of his cock against you. 
“Please, Dark—”
At the soft utterance of it, he snaps his hips harshly in retaliation, burrowing his cock inside of you in a quick, jarring thrust. 
It rents you in two, splits you down the middle. Your breaking point is surpassed in an instant; mettle fracturing, shattering on impact. It takes every ounce of willpower to cling to cognisance when he snarls through the last few inches of impaling you entirely. 
In the static tatters of your consciousness, the realisation—a startling polyphony of fear, trepidation, and awe—that this is him holding back lingers on the periphery. That, in itself, is the rekindling of your appetite; hunger gnaws on shallow need, unsatiated by the threadbare scraps it's been given to chew on. 
You say his name again. The whisper of it raw, wounded; scraping against your lacerated vocal cords, torn by the vicious howl, the shriek, that ripped through your chest when he seated himself deep inside of you. 
He responds by snapping his hips into yours, the barbed ridges on his cock licking across your nerve endings in the almost perfect zenith of pleasure and pain. It's nirvana, you think. With hell nipping sharply at its heels. 
The stretch—unlike anything you've ever felt before; incomparable outside of too much—burns furiously. The only thing keeping it from being impossible is the thick oil coating the length of him. The makeup of it must have analgesic properties, or some paralytic agent mixed in, because with each stroke, it soothes your raw flesh, erasing the pain of him inside of you, and leaving nothing but pure, unfettered sensation behind. It's just the thick, unrelenting press of him. The heaviness. The girth. 
It's good. Too good. Overwhelmingly so. 
A series of low clicks spilling out from his broad chest, the chirr of a rattlesnake. He must see it, the way your body floods with endorphins, with heat. The room, kept at an uncomfortable swelter, glues to your skin. Balmy, and achingly hot. The blister of it burrows deep, massing together into a molten core at the very apex of where he's buried inside of you. 
Drawn there, moth to a flame, your hand slides between the damp fur, now drenched in your sweat, and comes to rest on the prominent bulge shifting through your abdomen. His cock. 
Behind you, Dark lets out a susurrus hiss, and pauses the ruinous cants of his hips just long enough to let you feel for yourself how perfectly he changes your shape to fit himself inside. It's unmistakable, of course; but everything outside of raw feeling is liquified. Rendered numb. You know, somewhere, distantly, that this—feeling him through your muscle, your skin so distinctly that you can touch each ridge on his cock—is something that ought to break you, shatter you into pieces. The anatomical anomaly of having him stretch you like this, to this extent, is unfathomable. 
And yet—
He drags his cock out, and you whimper, mindless, stupid, at the sudden loss of him. 
You don't feel complete unless he's buried within you. 
And despite yourself, the somnolence lapping at you, a part of you wonders if this is a symptom of that paralytic agent—musk, pheromones, miasma, poison—blotting out all logic, and inducing a soporific desperation, a vacuous need for him and him alone. One that makes wholeness out of the heavy press of his cock. 
If it is, it doesn't matter much anymore. 
You're too far gone, lost to the throes of it, to care about anything else. 
A good thing, perhaps, because with Dark, it's always a selfish coupling. He pays no real heed to your pleasure, fully under the belief that his cock splitting you apart is enough. 
And damn you—damn your treacherous body—it is. 
Each brutal cant of his powerful hips slamming into you sends waves of pleasure roaring down your spine. To be pried apart, stuffed full of the overwhelming surplus of his girth notches against something inside of you that makes your bones liquid, your marrow running molten. Burning you up from the inside out. 
You clench around him desperately, fingers knotting into the furs below, squeezing it tight in a vice. Trying, futilely, to cling to some sense of cognisance despite the vicious way he takes you apart. Atom by atom. Synapses bloating, crackling under the strain. 
He fucks you like beast. All vicious snarls, guttural rasps; blood is drawn when his claws catch your skin, tearing it open like tissue paper. The sting is buried under the layers of sensation tunnelling through your body. 
Pleasure, pain: equilibrium met on the cusp. Aided, in large part, by the frenzied way he ruts you; fractured, careless. Bullying himself into you until the tapered tip of his cock bruises your cervix—more battering ram than flesh; eager to wrench you open, spill himself inside of your womb. 
You can't imagine what this must be like when he isn't holding back. Horrific, maybe. Blood, bruises. Torn skin. No wonder their hide is so thick. 
But even this—tamed, as it might be—feels like a battle. A war. He spears you open, chirring the whole time as he curls over you, protective and awful, the motion forcing the last few inches of him into you. Bruised, aching, you whimper at the feeling of his sheath, white-hot and soaked with your slick, cupping your drenched cunt. He holds himself there, as deep as he can possibly go—tip a bludgeon against your cervix, stretched wide around the thick of him—and lets out another long, low pur that rumbles through you. Teeth chatter from the vibrations, delirious and bordering on the equinox of absolute damnation, your pussy clenches around his cock, each ridge and divot more pronounced than before. 
Overwrought with bliss, with a nauseating pain, you keen in response to his deep bellow, feeling more animal than ever before. 
Driven purely by instinct, you push back into him, thighs slapping against his own. The power in his muscles, the contrast between your supple, soft body and his, iron wrapped in thick, crocodilian skin, is flint striking steel. 
A mere tinderbox, your body erupts in a devastating heat. 
The burst of molten red makes him reel back, barbs catching on your sensitive skin. It's too much, too much—
He thrusts back into your spasming cunt with a shuddering roar, the sound alone—the lewd, drenched squelch of him splitting you apart—tugs the knot inside of you past its breaking point. As his claws rip through the pretty fawn fur, shredding them to pieces as he grips tight in an effort to piston his cock as fast as he can into your aching pussy, you find yourself tipping over the precipice in a stumbling fall. The force of it, the suddenness, is agonising, edging immediately into overstimulation when the deep, heavy jut of his cock head burrowing into your fluttering walls doesn't cease. It's—
White noise. Static. Your head is galvanised into slush, slurried into liquid pleasure that thrashes and writhes in your core, nerve endings set aflame in a wet, hot inferno under his bulk. 
You puddle under him, burning with the aftershocks. Body melting, useless and spent, into the sheets as he drives into you with the single-minded purpose of reaching his own cataclysmic end. Numbed now, all you feel is an intense, dizzying pressure pulsing molten inside of you. 
Dark braces himself over you, content to just rut deep into you, barely pulling the full, heavy length of himself out of your aching sex. With anyone else, it might be considered sloppy—a messy, desperate coupling, but even this much with him is devastating. Ruinous. 
It's a maelstrom. A bleak, calamitous fall to the bottom of a blackened pit. 
And with a savage, brutal plunge, he buries himself inside of you again, prising the soft plug of your womb open with a brutish roar—deep, broken; bellowed at the heavens—and you feel the steady pulse of him inside of you, filling you. It's too much—his fat, heavy girth, and the copious amounts of his spent stretch you past your limit, teeth raking across your mettle, and the bulge in your lower abdomen grows taut as he floods you with his release. 
The end of the pit looms, and from the chasm, a jagged maw gapes open, gnashing its teeth at you in rapacious anticipation as you careen toward its empty gullet. Falling, falling, falling—
And in the midst of it all, you think this might be what dying feels like.
Tumblr media
Your cognisance is drawn together in pieces, inchmeal. 
A slow, gradual crawl out of slumber, the tugging threads of hypnagogia clinging to your rheum-heavy eyes. 
Furs stick to your damp body, some pulling loose when you shift away from the uncomfortable, sweat-soaked puddle of heat beneath you. 
Nausea roils through your belly, pulsing with dreadful synchronicity to the throbbing ache in your pelvis. In an effort to quell the feeling of your insides folding over themselves in a damning knot, you gingerly press the tips of your fingers to the spot that aches the most, feeling the raised indent of a contusion under your pads. 
It makes you blink up at the domed ceiling, head lifting to catch a glimpse of soft flesh near your hip. 
Through the midnight spill of your skin, you can see the tumid ridge bubbling up slightly higher than the rest of your flesh. In the middle is a small dot. An injection sight. 
You realise, with a huff, that he must have broken your pelvis again. Unintentionally, this time. Caught up in your feverish coupling. 
It makes sense. Your bones feel shattered beyond repair, but you know that they're knitted back together, suffused with the medicinal magic their healing injections have. 
The thought should scare you. Be it the ease in which he can break your bones, snapping them into pieces; or whatever it is he's pumping into your body to heal it, but it slips, diaphanous and ephemeral, from your tangled thoughts. Untouchable now, slowly fading into the background. 
The marbled quiet of your mind is broken when you feel him move beside you. His massive paw falls on your crown, covering the entirety of your head with an ease that you can't imagine ever not leaving you a little breathless at the scale, the vastness in your differing sizes. It rests there for a moment, leaching the warmth from your cap like a satiated, languorous reptile. A sluggish snake still digesting its oversized meat. 
A series of clicks spill when you lull your head over to meet the burning yellow of his gaze, everything awash under the heavy scent of sex and loam. Stale sweat, iron. You breathe it in, blinking in the soft blue light of the pale moons spilling in from the window of the ship. 
He lounges like a satiated cat. His legs spread akimbo; his other hand resting on his chest. The narrowing of his eyes, too, reminds you of a well-fed feline, squinting into a dewy oblivion. 
With a deftness you can't keep up with, his hands shift, reaching out to take hold of you when the sleep drips from your eyes. It takes no real effort at all for him to drag you to rest between his spread thighs, head pillowed on the tuffs of quills covering his lower belly. 
There's a twinge in your hips, but it's numbed by the palliative magic of the injection, pulsing like the soft beat of a headache through your bones. It'll hurt something awful later on when it begins to wear off, leaving you feeling more like a massive contusion than a person. But that's later. Much later. And as he rests his palm, warmed by your heat, against your nape, you find you don't mind the tenderness much at all, content to bask in the evidence of your coupling simmering, electric, between you, distinct in the air. An ozoneous tang. Heady. A sour, earthy miasma. 
You breathe it in. Breathe him in. 
And in the slow, soporific spool of your weaving thoughts, you can't help but wonder what he thinks of this, of you, as he reclines in the fur. Nothing at all, perhaps. 
Or maybe something. Something you can't even begin to unravel. An archaic, primordial sort of want—animalistic, alien. The kind that would make him scar his own kind for gnashing their claws at you in anger, indignant over your mere presence in their leader's nest. Who would take a creature not of the same species, and parade them around as they bared his mark for all to see. A mate. A conquest. A queen. A pet. The fickleness of it is not lost on you, but there's something about the knowledge that this is as taboo, as unprecedented for him, for his kind, as it is for you. 
And yet. 
He still picked you. Of all the humans in the galaxy, crawling around like lost, queenless ants, he decided to shun the staples of his culture and take you with him. 
That alone, you think, is enough. 
And so—
You relax. Melting into the wrought iron strength of his frame, liquifying under the raze of his nails grazing your skin, pulling you deeper into this sense of complacency. Where else do you belong, after all? 
You turn your head, nuzzling your nose into his quills. Into his skin. The potency of his smell is stronger here, so close to his groin, and you groan a little at the twinge in your cunt at the heady, briny weight of it settling on the back of your tongue when you breathe in deep. 
He chuffs a bit, quietly pleased by your obvious scenting. The way you bury your nose into the crease where his inner thighs bend, drawing in the pungence of his unwashed flesh. It drags your attention away from his heavy musk, head lifting to catch his blistering, intent gaze. It darkens slightly at the sheen smearing across your chin and nose, covered in the natural oils of his pelt. 
It's unlike yourself, but you find the depth of his intrigue deeply arousing, and slowly lick your stained lips, chasing the taste of him with your tongue. 
A rumble reverberates from his broad chest, shaking the bed with his quiet growl. It's the only warning you get, the only one he'll give, before the other hand folds over your lower back, pushing your belly into his sheath where he swells, hot and thick, between you. 
His eyes glow in the absence of light. Pale amber flickers when you arch into his chest, needy for him, and it unveils a catacomb desire much too primordial for you to ever dream of mapping. The deep pool of it unspools you, and you fall, weightless, to the bottom. 
Ensnared. 
1K notes · View notes
snowballseal · 1 month
Text
Nightmares and Memories
Tumblr media
Sylus X Reader
Summary: Based on some theories I've seen on the Sylus flashbacks - After remembering what happened in the past with Sylus, you end up having a nightmare about the events of that night. You wake up calling his name, and he helps bring you back from the edge. Angst with a fluff ending.
Word Count: 1670
Warning: repeated mention of blood - it's Sylus lore y'all, soooo yah, prepare accordingly. It's purposefully pretty vague in terms of lore cause obviously we don't know what happened, but the ANGST!!!
---
There’s…so much blood….
It seems to come from nowhere, seeping between your fingers endlessly, dripping down your arms to pool on the ground around your knees. It’s sticky and warm, like thick mud, clinging to your skin, staining your palms. The smell of iron and smoke fills your nose, coats your tongue, so heavy you choke on it.
You want to scream. You need to scream. But your voice is locked in your chest. You can’t breathe. Cinders dance around you, like little fireflies, only to sizzle out as they hit the blood. Even when you look around, the smoke is so thick, all you can see are piles of rubble, not even the sky.
Where are you? Where is-
The world spins. You feel yourself tilting, your stomach lurching up to your throat. When you reach out, desperate to steady yourself, to stop the spinning, to stop all of this, your hand wraps around something hot to the touch, metal. Encrusted jewels dig into the skin of your palm.
The hilt of a sword.
You choke out a sob, blurry eyes flashing up to the figure lying in front of you. His chest heaves, dark tendrils spreading across his skin from where the sword pierces his flesh.
Blood. So much blood. You have to stop the bleeding. You can’t be the cause-
“You must press on.”
No no no
You try to let go of the sword, desperate to do something, anything. But a large, clawed hand wraps around yours, keeping you locked there. Locked to this fate. This fate you don’t want. Another choked sob escapes you as you fight to free yourself, to help him, but he holds you steady. Always so steady, even after you-
“If you don’t…there’s no going back.”
You want to scream. You want to beg him not to make you go. Not to make you leave him, not like this. You don’t want to, you can’t. Not him. Not-
“Sylus!”
You lurch up in bed.
Panic chokes you. It numbs your mind, clings to you as a fine layer of sweat on your skin, just like the blood in your dream. You scrub at your face, desperate to get rid of the feeling. Get rid of the red still creeping at the edges of your vision. It’s all you can think about.
You don’t feel the cool, silk sheets pooling around your waist. You don’t notice the crow peering at you worriedly from the corner. You don’t even hear the sound of your broken sobs, body shaking with the impossible burden of getting air to your lungs.
All you can hear is the voice ringing in your head.
You left him. You left him. You killed him.
No, that wasn’t-
You forgot.
You didn’t mean to!
Your fingers dig into the meat of your arms, nails pressing deep into your skin. Everything blurs out of focus, your head spinning too much. You need something to hold on to, but you can’t bring yourself to reach out. As if doing so will put you right back there. There in the smoke, the blood, with that cursed blade in your hands. You can’t. You just-
“-ten? (Y/n)!”
A hand clasps your shoulder, gentle but firm.
You gasp and rip yourself away, eyes darting up to meet a pair of red eyes. The ones you had just been so desperately staring into. It takes a while for your mind to even process that this is real.
“Sylus?”
Sylus leans back slowly, hands held up in a placating gesture. As if you’re a frightened, little doe. Which you more than resemble to him right now. Eyes wide and glassy. Your entire body shaking like a leaf. Brow furrowing, concern flickers deep in his chest.
Finding you in such a state has him feeling…off-kilter. And the way you recoiled, as if his touch had burned you, leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He feels useless in the face of your pain and confusion, and there’s nothing Sylus hates more than being complacent, especially with you.
“You had a nightmare,” Sylus explains, keeping his voice low and calm, like soft thunder in the distance. Anything to not scare you further. “Do you remember where you are?”
You take a deep, trembling breath, nodding, “Yah, yah, um, this is- we’re home.”
“That’s right. We’re home.” Carefully, Sylus lowers himself onto the bed. He tries to ignore the way you shuffle back, his fingers curling into fists on top of his knees.
You don’t miss the flicker of pain in his eyes. Guilt stabs at your chest, but you can’t bring yourself to reach out and comfort him. Not when you can still feel the phantom blood covering your fingers. His blood. It was your fault. All your fault. You were the one who put that sword in his chest.
“Hey, eyes on me, kitten. I don’t want to see you wandering off right now.” The deep timber of Sylus’ voice draws you back. You take another deep breath, not realizing that you had started to hyperventilate again. Sylus hums approvingly,  “That’s my girl. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened, hm?”
Your eyes fixate on one of the buttons of his shirt. Second from the top. It helps, if only a little, so that when you answer, voice strained from how raw your throat is, you don’t get swept away again, “It was- It was that night all over again.”
That’s all it takes for Sylus to understand. 
Breathing out a low sigh, an unspeakable sadness softens Sylus’ features. Of course that’s what would bring you to this. The distance you give him makes sense now, as does the doubt burning behind your gaze. And why your eyes have barely left his chest since you realized it was him.
Like you’re scared of what you’ll see there.
“...Do you need to see with your own eyes that it was just a dream?”
You force your gaze up to his, hesitating. But Sylus is already stripping off his shirt, movements calculated and slow. He tosses the fabric somewhere across the room. You freeze, eyes staying locked with his. Too scared to look down. Too scared to see what your panic soaked mind still expects.
“Look.”
Unbidden, your eyes trace back down, over his jaw, along his neck, all the way past his collarbone to the smooth expanse of his chest. No dark veins. No blood. Just a shallow divot over his heart, a shadow. You watch the way his chest rises and falls, noticing each time his breath wavers, your own heart jumping each time, as if he’ll suddenly stop breathing. But he doesn’t.
Still, the anxiety plagues you. Your fingers twitch against your arms, desperate to feel him, to find his heartbeat and burn it into your memory in place of this horrid dream.
You look back up at him, the question written on your face. Sylus bites back a smile, giving you a nod instead.
He doesn’t reach out just yet as you shuffle out from under the sheets, crawling across the bed to perch next to him. Though it takes everything in him to stay still as your fingers hover over his chest. You can’t help but hesitate, looking up again.
“Go ahead,” he hums, “Feel for yourself.”
His skin is warm. So warm. You let out a trembling sigh, palm pressing flat against his chest. Seeing it was one thing, but feeling it - the steady rise of his breathing, the rhythmic beat of his heart under your fingertips, the proof that he’s alive and safe - is enough to bring the tears flooding back. 
He’s okay.
All the tension, all your strength, leaves you in a small, broken sound. You crumble into Sylus’ arms. He catches you with ease, finally drawing you into his lap, where he had wanted to hold you from the beginning. 
You clutch onto him, unable to stop the flow of apologies that spring to your lips, “I’m sorry- I’m so sorry, Sylus. I didn’t- I didn’t-!”
“I know,” he hums, hand rubbing soothing circles into your back. “What’s done is done, there’s no need to hold on to it. All that matters is that you’re here now.”
“But I-”
“You have my forgiveness. So just…” His pulse stutters under your fingers. “-keep coming back from now on. No matter what.”
His words are the weakness of your heart. You hold onto Sylus tighter, feeling his grip tighten just as desperately around you. Time passes like that for what feels like hours, until you’ve cried all your tears, and exhaustion weighs down your eyelids. He notices, a relieved smile curling his lips.
“Come, let’s get you back to bed,” he murmurs, “you need a few more hours of sleep if you want to fight Wanderers in the morning.”
You jolt a little at the thought of going back to sleep, eyes flickering open again, but Sylus calms you with a soft hum and a kiss pressed to your forehead. 
“Don’t worry,” he whispers, lips brushing your skin, “I’ll stay and scare away any nightmares that come. You’ll never have to go through that again.”
His words carry a double meaning. An unbearable fondness washes over you as you look into those ruby eyes, gleaming with a hard determination that is so completely Sylus. Your Sylus. Of course he’ll always protect you. And you’ll protect him from now on.
The two of you settle back into the comfort of the bed. Sylus never lets you go, making sure you’re curled against him, ear pressed to his chest so that you can listen to his steady heartbeat as you drift off.
As you do, you whisper one last thing, wishing you could imprint your words into his heart, “I’ll always come back to you, Sylus. Promise.”
He lets out a soft rumble into your hair, watching as your eyes flutter shut, “And I’ll always be here waiting for you.”
In every life.
---
Sorry not sorry. I'm obsessed with what we've seen of this man's lore and I just know its going to hurt SO much.
652 notes · View notes
incorrectbatfam · 7 months
Note
I need unhinged gen alpha Damian with the fam
Dick: *spills his cereal*
Damian: Womp womp.
———————
Jason: *lights a cigarette*
Damian: You smell like you're being cremated.
Jason:
Jason: *puts it out*
———————
Damian: I'm done with my part of our mission report.
Tim: That was fast. Let me see.
Tim: *reads it*
Tim: Did you write it with an AI? Damian, I know you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself.
Damian: But Jon's Twitch stream is about to start.
Tim: I don't care, I'm telling Bruce.
Damian: Not if I do it first. FATHER, DRAKE WROTE HIS MISSION REPORT WITH AI!
———————
Duke: Remember Subway Surfers?
Damian: Remember when your bones were silent?
———————
Steph: *eating a burger*
Damian: All mammals are related to a common ancestor on the evolutionary tree so eating meat is basically cannibalism.
Steph: *takes out a paper bag*
Steph: *puts it over Damian's head*
Steph: *continues eating*
———————
Cass: I need cash.
Damian: Imagine using paper currency in 2024, couldn't be me.
———————
Barbara: I'm undergoing routine security checks. Can I get your computer?
Damian: *hands her his iPad*
Barbara: ...You don't have a PC?
Damian: What do I need that for?
———————
Kate: *enters*
Damian: Is it just me or did it suddenly get geriatric in here?
———————
Alfred: Master Damian, could you kindly enlighten me on what this "Skibidi Toilet" the children are talking about is?
Damian: *pulls up a slideshow with the full lore*
Damian: You may want to sit down.
———————
Selina: *doing her makeup*
Damian: What's your skincare routine? My friend Maya wants it.
Selina: Come back in eight years and I'll tell you.
———————
Gala guests: *milling around*
Damian: You must be my father's NPCs.
Bruce: I apologize about my son.
Bruce: *drags Damian away*
1K notes · View notes
nicsnort · 4 days
Text
Hello Neighbor
NSFW 18+ male werewolf x female reader Contains: vaginal sex, knotting, mentions of breeding, going into heat, desperate sex
Word count: 3,401 Lore/World Building Prompt
You're part of a study using an experimental skin cream. The effects have been interesting, but suddenly take a turn for the horny. Luckily, your werewolf neighbor is willing to help you out.
“Thank you,” the researcher said as she finished rubbing the experimental cream into your skin. “As always, contact us immediately if there are any sudden changes in your mental state or physical concerns. Please return for your next application next week.”
“Of course,” you replied with a smile. It had been four months since you started the trials, and you know the drill now. Honestly, this had been one of the best choices in your life. When you first saw the ad on social media looking for volunteers for a body-enhancing topical cream based on monster science, you thought it was a scam, especially when you saw that they were paying a hundred a week with a bonus of two thousand for those who completed the full six-month trial. But you took the risk, and damn was it paying off. All you had to do was be slathered in a topical cream every week, do a finger prick blood test daily at home, and submit a five-minute check-in about anything strange you noticed about your body or mind at the end of the day.
You weren’t sure what they were exposing you to; they couldn’t tell you as it could interfere with their results or something. Initially, you had experienced some mood swings and increased aggression. Still, it had settled down, and now the only noticeable effects were your sense of smell and hearing becoming more sensitive. It was sometimes annoying, given that you lived in an apartment complex, but it was not a huge hassle. 
Before heading home, you swung by the grocery store to pick up some milk and meat. That was something else; you had been craving meat a lot since this started. While walking around the grocery store, you noticed a minotaur and a naga looking at you with interest. A blush came to your cheeks. Could they smell the cream on you? Usually, you went right home after an appointment, so you had never been out in public - and certainly not around monsters. They have been increasingly common in the area since the segregation laws were overturned, allowing humans and sentient monsters to mix freely. The older folks who remembered the Great Incursion hated it, but you didn’t mind too much. Most monsters are just like humans, merely with different physicality and cultures…and magical powers half the time.
With groceries gathered, you quickly headed home. Walking towards your building, you saw your next-door neighbor—a werewolf. He moved in six months ago for work and spent most of his time in hybrid form. Apparently, he was from the other side of the Rift, so he never had to use his humanoid form. Honestly, you never understood how people said they found monsters that didn’t look human attractive until you met him with his thick mahogany fur, piercing golden eyes, full tail, and broad chest that was barely contained by his human-style clothes…you could have sworn he was flirting with you the first couple of months after he moved in. Yet, his interest fell off a few months ago. He stayed friendly, though.
“Good day, neighbor,” he greeted with a smile. “Need help with those?”
“Thanks, Darrick. That’d be great.” Maybe it was because he wanted to prove he wasn’t a threat, but Darrick was extremely friendly. According to the DMA guides, werewolves were very social monsters due to their pack instinct, so maybe it was just that.
He took the heavy meat-filled shopping bag from your arms while you carried the milk. As he did, you noticed his large, wet nose flare and his pointed ear turn forward with interest. Another blush came to your cheeks. He could smell that cream on you, couldn’t he? Though you had to admit, his scent today was marvelous. A deep, musky scent caused your blush to travel across your body, transforming into an aroused flush.
Entering the building, you were deeply aware of his presence behind you as you climbed the steps to the second floor. Even more so, with each sway of your hips, you were aware of how deeply aroused you had suddenly become. Your swollen lips rubbed against the cloth of your panties with each stair. You had been feeling sensitive the past few days, but why did your arousal spike now?!
You stopped outside your door. As you fumbled for your keys, you heard Darrick sniff rapidly, his hot body leaning over you, caging you against the door. Glancing back, you saw his long tongue flick out from behind his sharp teeth as though tasting the air. Your mind instantly flashed to what that tongue would feel like between your legs.
“I got it from here, thanks,” you told him, desperate to get away before you did something you regretted as the scent of his musk filled your nostrils.
Your voice seemed to jolt something in him. “Right, of course,” he bent down and put the bag down on the ground. But that was a mistake. His muzzle was right at your crotch now. The scent of your arousal certainly reached his wolven nose.
On instinct, Darrick pressed his nose against your crotch. You could feel his damp, heated breath through your jeans. His chest rumbled with a low growl, the vibrations reaching down his snout to your aching mound. A pleasured, wanting moan escaped your throat. You leaned against the door, your hips tilting up, legs spreading slightly, humping his muzzle lightly. His pointed canine teeth, barred together, provided a teasing friction against your clit.
CRACK!
You jumped at the sudden sound. Darrick had driven his claws into the wall, breaking the drywall. He wrenched his snout away from you with a pitiful whine, standing quickly and moving back. “I am so sorry! I wasn’t trying to stake a claim.”
“What,” you asked hazily, trying to shake your head of the lust. “A claim…”
“It has just been months since I have been around a woman in heat, and I lost control,” Darrick continued, not hearing your response at first. Then he paused while backing up a bit more. 
“Darrick, what do you mean by ‘a woman in heat’?” Even as you spoke, your eyes were drawn across him. There was a massive bulge straining his pants. Your inner walls clenched with desire.
“Sorry,” you apologize, tearing your eyes away and fumbling once more for the door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think it’s the cream. I need to report this to the researchers…”
Finally, you managed to open the door. Stumbling inside, you barely made it to the fridge to put away the milk. Shit, the meat. Heading back to the hall, half bent over in a vain attempt to avoid aggravating your burning crotch. Darrick was standing in the doorway, a look of concern fighting lust on his face. Not that you saw that for long as your half-bent over position put you right at his bulging groin. Your mouth parted in desire at the sight. The scent wafted to your nose. If it weren’t for Darrick catching your shoulder and holding you back, you would have desperately rubbed your face against the bludge.
“Control yourself, Darrick,” he growled to himself, pushing you back inside the apartment while bringing your groceries in and shutting the door. “You’re not a pup anymore.”
“Noooo,” you whined as he forced you to sit on the couch and stepped away to put the meat on the counter. As you watched him, your hand grabbed your breast through your shirt, massaging it. “You have to leave. If you stay, I’ll end up begging you to fuck me.”
As desperately horny as you had become, the admission did not embarrass you one bit. Darrick breathed out slowly, trying to control himself. “Where is your phone? I will call your mate. He shouldn’t be leaving you alone during your heat.”
“Mate,” you questioned. That word alone resonated with you. Yes, you wanted to mate. Fucked raw like an animal.
“Or husband, whatever term humans use. Whoever is the irresponsible wolf that has marked you with his scent so thoroughly and left you alone to deal with your heat.”
“I don’t know any other werewolves, Darrick,” you told him. The term heat was finally jogging your memory. “You’re the only one I’ve ever met. And humans don’t have a heat. I think whatever is happening has to do with the study I’m participating in. Some cream to enhance my body or something. They said arousal could be a side effect, but I didn’t think like this…”
Your hand wandered down to your pants. It slipped inside as you stroked yourself, trying to cool the ache there. Darrick stood stock still, completely focused on you, as your fingers stroked wildly. “You smell so good, Darrick. Please, you gotta leave before I jump you. Or else fuck me. I’ve dreamt about you bending me over my bed so many--”
Like a dam breaking, Darrick rushed over. His tall, fur-covered body bent over the couch, trapping you on it. “One last time,” he growled, barely able to restrain himself. “For clarity. The scent on you is this cream? Another werewolf has not mated you? And you want me to mate with you?”
You answered each question as he asked him. “Yes…No…Please, yes, fuck me, please!”
Without a spoken response, Darrick scooped you up in his arms. He carried you into your bedroom and dumped you on the bed. His chest heaved as took in deep, steadying breaths as though he was trying not to pounce on you immediately. Even as he did, his hands roamed over your shirt as he roughly tugged it off you. “I’m sorry, I’ll try to be gentle.”
“I don’t want gentle right now,” you told him, kicking off your shoes and hurriedly undoing your jeans. “I want you to fuck me with your fat cock until I’m satisfied.”
A primal growl of want escaped his throat. In two short movements, he removed your bra, his claws slicing it off, and tossed it away. Your skin was flushed with desire, nipples already hard with want. Darrick’s large paws covered your breasts, massaging them as he pushed you down against the bed. His long, hot tongue met your neck as he licked you ravenously. Every so often, you felt his pointed teeth scrape across your skin.
You moaned his name. Thrusting your hips upwards, you both tried to finish removing your jeans and gain friction on your needy hole. You managed the first one, but as your hands went to your dripping core, you found a better target. Darrick’s bulge strained against his pants. With deft fingers, you undid his pants and were just about to slip your hand inside his underwear to free him completely when he grabbed your hands. Pulling them above your head, he pinned you down, causing you to whine with displeasure.
“I need to mask that other scent first,” he growled. “Don’t want to smell another wolf. I need to cover you with my scent before I claim you.”
As desperate as you were to be fucked, his words touched a primal part of you, and now nothing sounded better than being marked by him. Inside and outside. Completely and utterly claimed. You wanted any creature who met you to know who you were mated to. That you were his.
Darrick’s muzzle slid down your neck to your chest. With one hand still pining your hands down, the other pressed between your legs. His rough fingers began to stroke, giving you both relief and teasing you as he avoided where you wanted him - his cock - the most. Sharp teeth delicately held your breast as he drew it into his mouth, his tongue lapping across your sensitive nipple. The thick pad of his thumb rubbed against your clit, the claws of his hand pressing into the flesh of your butt. 
A needy whimper escaped your throat. With the little space he left you between the bed and his hand, you lifted your hips invitingly.  “Please.”
“By Seluna, I need you,” he swore, pulling back. His nose twitched, the scent of your lust overriding any further complaints he might have had about the scent of the cream. You tried to follow him, pull him back down but his burning golden eyes pinned you in place.
Eyes hazy with lust, you watched him pull off his shirt. In his rush, his dangerous claws and sheer strength tore it off. Grabbing his already undone pants, he finally stood completely nude. Your eyes honed in on the long, red, throbbing cock between his legs. The tapered head glistened with precum in the sunlight peeking through your shades. Your core clenched with want.
“On your hands and knees,” he commanded, his words barely recognizable through the thick growl of want in his voice. Without hesitation, you turned around. Settling in the center of the bed, you were on your hands and knees, the aching desire between your legs presented to him.
A long moment passed where all you heard was the huff and puff of his breathing behind you. Then, a cold, wet nose pressed itself against your lower lips. You moaned. Darrick’s broad tongue lapped at the swollen flesh. Panting moans left you as the pleasure built. You were so close. Suddenly, his tongue slipped inside of you.
With a cry of pleasure, you came on his tongue. It wiggled inside of you as your body clenched around it. Finally, he withdrew, his muzzle covered in your juices. “Good mate,” he praised. “So, fertile and willing.”
He shook his head, barely returning to his senses enough to add, “You should take some night tea after, 'cause I’m gonna breed you now.”
“Yes,” you panted with joy. The orgasm took the edge off, but you needed more. Being bred sounded like the best thing in the world. Filled with his thick creamy cum.
Your bed dipped with his weight as he climbed on, positioning himself behind you. You felt the heat radiating off his turgid cock even before its heavy weight rested upon your hips. 
“Inside,” you pleaded, rocking your hips. His hands gripped your hips, claws digging in ever so slightly. 
“Spread,” he told you, and even in your current state, you could tell from his tone he was barely restraining himself. Eagerly, you obeyed, spreading your knees further apart. Darrick kept a firm grip on your hips as you did, forcing you to lower yourself onto your forearms. Now, you were fully presenting your dripping hole to him.
You felt the magnetic heat of his cock as he lined it up. As his thick length pressed inside, you whined with pleasure. “Yeesssss.”
The prick of his claws was barely enough to keep you from orgasming with just the tip of his cock inside of you. Inch by inch, he slid inside. You tried to press yourself back on him to take in more, but his strong grasp on your hips stopped you. “You’re gonna make me...” 
“Please, Darrick, breed me!”
With that plea, he snapped. Pulling back until just the tip was left, he slammed his hips forward. You screamed in pleasure. Unleashed, Darrick pounded into you wildly. Spurred on by the hormones of your heat, he rutted into you with only one thing on his mind: breeding his mate.
With each wild thrust, you could feel your body accepting more of him. His cock filled you up each time your inner walls stretched to take in more. You were moaning and panting with ecstasy. You weren’t even sure if you were orgasming, but the pleasure was overwhelming your mind. You could think of little else but his cock inside of you.
Releasing your hips, Darrick bent over your back. His large hands resting on either side of your head, holding your hands in place. The weight of him pinning you beneath him with no hope of escape - not that you wanted to. His hot breath caressed the sensitive skin of your neck and ear. The growl of his voice reverberated across your whole body. “I’m gonna knot you. Ruin you for human men. You want that, don’t you?”
You gave a whine of pleasure-drunk consent, unable to form words.
With a powerful thrust, you felt him hilt within you. His pointed cock pressed against your womb. Then you felt it. As the glands of his cock expanded, he stretched you. Thicker than anything that had been inside of you before. Yet, the pain of the stretching only added to your pleasure. Your nails dug into your sheets. It was too much. You were so close to breaking. You were…you were…
Your body exploded with ecstasy, juices gushing over his cock. Low, long moans, almost like howls, issued from your throat as you threw your head back. Your inner walls clenched powerfully around his knot, locking it within you.
Then it came. What your body was craving. Darrick threw his head back in a true howl as his thick hot cum filled your womb, searing its claim inside of you. His cum spurred your orgasm to even greater heights. Your eyes rolled back in your head, tongue lolling out, inner walls still clenching around him, drawing in every last ounce of cream. There was so much cum, you thought it would never end. You never wanted it to end. Yet, eventually, your bodies were spent.
Darrick’s knot still firmly resting inside of you, he rolled you both on your sides. His arms were around you, cradling you as you came down from the ecstatic high. His long, wet tongue tiredly but comfortingly lapped at your shoulder and neck.
While you still felt aroused, being filled with his cum and having a knot in you satisfied your primal urge to breed for now. After a few minutes, your mind started to return. What the fuck did you just do? What the fuck happened to you?
“Are you alright,” Darrick asked before you could voice your own concerns.
“Yes…I’m just confused…that’s never happened before. What is that cream doing to me?”
Darrick’s grip tightened around in comfort. “I think I know…there is this story the Elders tell. The first werewolves were created before the Division when our worlds were one. They were humans; warriors granted power by the spirits of nature to temporarily wield the spirit of the wolf to defend their homes. After the Division, the wolf's spirit was permanently bound to us. But we needed mates; most werewolves then were men, and the few that were women could not keep our populations going. So, the moon goddess Seluna took pity on us and let us transform others through sharing our essence…at first, all it required was for us to bite a human, but the sudden merging of wolf and human spirits drove many insane. Therefore, Seluna’s wife, Noctune, goddess of the night, took inspiration from her wife’s slow transformations each night. Sharing our essence would slowly introduce people - our mates or others we deemed worthy - to the wolf spirit so their humanity could adjust before it was made permanent. This also gave humans a chance to change their minds.”
“That’s a lovely story. So, you’re saying this cream is introducing me to werewolf essence? Wait, what is werewolf essence?”
Darrick chuckled a bit nervously. “Blood, saliva, and…” He gently thrust his hips, indicating his cum.
“Wait, so they’ve been covering me in werewolf - I hope - saliva? And that’s been changing my body?” You reeled at this new information. “Wait, so this is actually a heat?”
“Yeah. Usually, the exposure would be done by your mate, and you’d know what was going to happen, and they would help you through it.”
You were silent for a moment. “So, does this make us mates?”
Darrick chuckled nervously again. “We have mated, sure, and you’re going to need help getting through your heat. So, we can do it again. But, I mean, after, we don’t need to be…I mean, I think you’re pretty great. I was really disappointed when I thought you’d been claimed and--”
“I wouldn’t mind trying to date after you finish helping me through this,” you told him, cutting off his adorable ramble. “If you want.”
There were several loud thumps behind him as his tail wagged happily, hitting the bed. “I would like that.”
581 notes · View notes
kimikitti · 1 month
Note
Hi! Sorry if there’s a lore doc or something I missed but I saw your new Obi design and the overblot doodles and would love to know the lore! From my understanding, Obi can consume magic? Did he use that to tame overblots? I’m completely enamored by the idea that all these big scary monsters are just hanging out in Ramshackle. Are the house wardens comfortable visiting with them around?
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Co-parenting with the manifestation of your childhood trauma is always better with a smoothie.
(LOL there is no lore doc. It's just me cryptically posting about Obi and the phantoms and then bouncing. Thank you for the wonderful opportunity for me to rant about the lore I have bouncing around my brain. Also, I probably should make a tag to make all this lore stay in one place. Rant below the cut (May contain slight spoilers))
Tumblr media
Obi and the phantoms:
To answer your first question: Yes, Obi can consume magic. In fact, he needs to consume it to survive. When he consumes magic, they taste like words and information. If he eats a spell, Obi gains an understanding of the spell's nature and effects. Repeated consumption of the same spell can lead to greater revelations. Obi is not totally conscious of this ability, as the information he gains seems to have always existed to him.
Did he use that to tame overblots?
No, the phantoms are not really beings that can be tamed. Obi devoured them during the overblot. And wakes up with a book in his clutches. Said books are how he summons the phantoms once again.
Each phantom takes on a personality and ability separate but similar to their original creator. Some phantoms are more willing than others to be cooperative.
Obi doesn't really mind much. Unwanted creations should stick together. It's better than being alone.
Are the house wardens comfortable visiting with them around?
Some of them are, for some it takes more time to warm up to the idea of the phantoms. After all, its hard to be totally ok with a being born of their worse moments. I can run through some general attitudes.
Riddle: Absolutely terrified at first. But seems dedicated to "educating" his phantom. He comes around a lot. (The phantom loves this)
Leona: Comes by frequently but he does not seem to show a strong interest in his own phantom, brings meat. (The phantom also appears uninterested in its creator, but has been seen curling around leona while he's taking a nap)
Azul: Does not come by at all. (The phantom hates this, but understands)
Jamil: The phantom often seeks Jamil out frequently, seems to have a strong desire to bring gifts to its creator. It is unclear how Jamil feels about this. (Jamil is unsure about this, Kalim loves this)
Vil: The phantom hides from Vil. It is ashamed. (Vil dislikes this, but is trying to coax it out)
Idia: Ortho... sleeps most of the time. He wishes to be near his brother but is often not strong enough to be the dominant desire among them. Idia and Ortho visit frequently they love to play video games together. (Ortho loves this)
Malleus:
(I honestly love coming up with the phantoms and their respective lore so if you're interested to learn more please let me know! Thank you for the questions)
515 notes · View notes
Text
Would they help with your period?
Written by someone with severe endometriosis!
(Technically I don't think sinners have them anymore since they can't reproduce but who knows. Maybe having a period for eternity is part of being punished.)
Lucifer
Absolutely. If we go off of Biblical Lore, it's kinda his fault anyway, and he feels so guilty.
He probably radiates heat so he would absolutely rub your back, your stomach, your thighs, resting a hand between your legs (me personally having endometriosis my groin itself tends to hurt from cramping so I put the heat pad between my legs).
Don't bother getting out of bed if you're hurting. He'll bring hou whatever you want and does his best to stock up on your favorites for this time of the month. If you're someone who can't eat cuz your period hurts so bad, he'll try his best to find soft, easy on the tummy foods. Makes you broth if nothing else.
If you sleep a lot because you're weak from blood loss, he makes sure you're not disturbed and checks on you often. Isn't offended if you don't want cuddles or if you demand them. Whatever makes you feel better.
If sex helps he'll do it but is gonna be so fucking worried he's hurting you more. Probably doesn't want to actually fuck you cuz he thinks it's too rough. Will finger you or offer oral.
Alastor
Has a soft spot for women cuz of his mama. If you're someone who has regular cycles he doesn't do much beyond making sure you're eating well and staying hydrated. May bring you medicine if you're especially sore. Makes sure you always have supplies.
If you're someone with severely debilitating periods, he has nothing but respect for you. Especially knowing you'd still work through the pain and have before. Though the gentelman in him is disgusted by how your pain is brushed aside.
Once he gets an idea of how bad they are, you're not leaving his room. He cooks a lot of iron rich food (thankfully Rosie gets him high quality meat, just don't ask where it came from). If your cramps are so bad you throw up, he cleans you up, makes bone broth, and rubs your stomach.
Blood literally doesn't even make him blink so if tanpons or a cup are too uncomfortable while you're cramping and pads chafe you and you don't wanna get period underwear or ruin an old pair of underwear just...don't bother? He can get new sheets. And he doesn't sleep anyway.
I personally think while Alastor is asexual he doesn't mind his partner being sexual, he understands. So if you masturbating helps with cramps, go ahead. He may or may not be willing to help you out (he will lick your blood off his fingers, though).
Sits with you while you rest. Speaks French to you. Sometimes indulges you by using his Cajun accent. If it helps keep your mind off your pain.
Overall he's supportive and admires you but isn't as over the top as Lucifer.
Vox
Vox is pretty good about not letting the time period he came from affect his views much. He's a modern man, after all. Be gay, do crime, live laugh, arson, all that jazz. So while he doesn't necessarily downplay your period it is kind of a knowledge gap for him.
It takes him a while to catch on to how much pain you're in. Actually it takes you doubling over, falling to your knees, white as a sheet, and dizzy for him to go "oh shit".
He feels bad for not realizing how serious it was but man would rather lose a fight to Alastor than admit he was wrong, so the best you're gonna get is "why didn't you tell me, doll?"
Takes you to bed immediately and straight up asks what you need. You get headaches, boom blackout curtains. You can't eat, ok he's ordering soup, crackers, granola bars, jello, anything soft and easy to digest. All the water and juice you could want to put in a mini fridge by your bed so you stay hydrated and get calories.
Heating pads, extra blankets, pads, tampons, period underwear, a new cup, whatever the hell you want. (Absolutely you have to send him a picture of the exact kind of pad or tampon otherwise he's going to be confused cuz there's literally dozens of them and he doesn't know what any of it means. Is a hey babe what size pussy you wear guy).
He checks on you throughout the day with his cameras.
Appreciates that you still try and work from your laptop or phone. Won't tell you not to even if you're miserable. He expects you to know your limits (even though you nearly fainted earlier).
He runs warm and is kinda heavy since he's robotic so if the only thing that makes your ovaries stop throbbing is pressure and heat and he's not busy he'll lay across you to do his work.
Also not icked out by blood so he'll fuck you, finger you, or eat out when you're on your period. But he's a little more hesitant to wat you out cuz he doesn't want the mess on his screen.
Valentino
Honestly his first response is to ask if sex will help. Just wants to get this over with.
If he likes you or you're his favorite, he'll bring you your favorite treats.
Already has pads, tampons, sponges, and underwear on set.
If you didn't know, adult actors have special sponges that go up there for the time of the month for filming, and they can get stuck. So he would help you get it out. At least there's that.
If you actually do pass out even if he's in a really bad mood, he'd feel a little bad. He kinda thought you were being a little dramatic. He gets they hurt and make you tired or bitchy, didn't realize it could actually get that bad. He lets you take the week off after that and checks in on you a bit more.
Don't expect too much coddling though.
Angel Dust
A gay bestie. Makes jokes about how he's glad he doesn't have one and won't ever be near one, but really, he's worried af.
Does his best to make sure you get plenty of rest and food. Keeps you hydrated. Buys you whatever you need.
Has Cherri stay with you when he can't.
Lots of cuddles from him and fat nuggets. And back rubs.
You need to cum to help the cramps, he can get you any kind of vibrator or pump you want discreetly.
(Or you know, he can call Cherri).
Husk
Man doesn't even question it when you say it's bad. He knows you aren't the type to exaggerate.
I head canon he was in the military (drafted) so he's pretty methodical about getting suppplies. Has a fucking checklist. Keeps some on him at all times too just in case.
Another who will lay on top of you for warmth and weight. Added benefit is he purrs. The cat tendencies also means he makes biscuits, so he's good for a massage.
Doesn't really like blood on his fur. He fights yeah, but tries to avoid getting bloody (may have some ptsd about it. Especially if it's all over his hands). But if it helps then yeah he'll fuck you. No oral and no fingering though.
Because of his military background he knows not eating isn't good for you, especially if you're bleeding, so he'd be forcing liquids and the BRAT diet into you. (Banana, rice, applesauce, toast).
Adam
Good luck, honey. Man never bothered to learn biology. Dick goes in hole, woman make baby. That's his knowledge. Eve used to bitch about it a lot but he was bitter about getting kicked out so kinda figured it's her own fault.
Eve also never literally passed out, spent three days sleeping, and threw up everything she ate.
Kinda worries you're somehow dying. Like damn babe, your pussy can't be that broken. When he sees how much blood you're losing is when he actually starts to panic.
You or Lute have to walk him through it but even then it's gonna boil down to him buying you chocolate, a heating pad, pain pills, and offering to snuggle.
DO NOT ASK HIM TO BUY YOU PADS OR TAMPONS.
He's kinda chubby and warm so good for snuggles but will bitch if you get blood on him.
Also, as much as he's horny and usually into everything once, he's kinda grossed out so he's not touching you while you're bleeding. Maybe eventually and with a couple layers of condom he'd fuck you? But uh...yeah, not happening anytime soon.
691 notes · View notes
uh-oh-its-bird · 5 months
Text
There are so many naruto time travel fics out there but what I need SPECIFICALLY is an ANBU era team of Kakashi, Tenzo, Itachi, and Shisui getting flung into the founders era.
Like. Ok just looking from the political side of it that's;
A) 2 very young and VERY powerful Uchiha's (one of which is the future clan head!! Politics!!)
B) A very fucked up baby mokuton user who's still in the middle of being deprogrammed and can totally pass for Senju
C) The free wild card that is Hatake clan lore on top of having a stolen sharingan. On top of *that* him being the team leader of a team of kids who, in the time period context, should both be at eachothers throats and probably not be expected to obey the commands of someone not only from another clan but a way smaller one
Theres SO much potential there!! So many political implications in virtually ALL of the directions!!!!
Yk what as I'm typing this out I'm having ✨️ideas✨️ so let's make some story points to sort those out:
• I think itd be neat to have this happen like. A year? Ish? Before the massacre? So age wise, and full disclaimer I'm referencing Google and Wikipedia rn so I could totally be wrong, I think that's :
Kakashi (18)
Tenzo (17)
Itachi (12)
Shisui (15)
Could be wrong about the ages but honestly it's my world you're just living in it, so.
Then me going totally purely off of my own headcannons, were going to say they came in a about a year before Izuna died and place the founders ages as:
Madara (23)
Hashirama (23)
Izuna (19)
Tobirama (18)
Big fan of Tobirama being the youngest between the 4 but projecting the aura of someone as old as like. Idk, however old Madara is. Very funny to me, 10/10
• I'm personally a big fan of dogteeth kakashi so we're running with that all the way home. Also a huge fan of the "Hatake's are a distant, more feral cousin of Inuzuka clan" hc along with some sprinklings of "back in the day they had a bit of a Reputation(tm) for being a 'lill wild, and everyone generally tries to avoid them. Which isn't too much of a problem because theyre a very small out of the way clan from Iron, they just have a big reputation in contrast to their size.
In more modern times tho, along with (obviously) having dwindled down to a single depressed teenager, they've become a lot tamer over the years due to village life. Kakashi is a Hatake, 100%, but he is NOT up to the standards of this time. Which becomes a bit funny when people see him, go "oh FUCK it's a Hatake" and then start edging slowly towards the door like he's about to rip their throat out with his teeth. Meanwhile he's standing there like 🧍‍♂️"am I that ugly."
Give me a scene where, finally used to this reaction to him from the general shinobi population, the team starts to use it to their advantage.
"Give us the scroll or we'll let the Hatake off the leash to have his fun with you. He's been awfully hungry latley you know, hasn't had fresh meat in days"
Kakashi, feeling kind of stupid, gave his best growl.
It caused an almost immediate, embaressed flush to rise to his face, but he didn't let up. It sounded more like an almost pathetic puppy growl than anything to his ears, but apparently it was enough to convince the trembling enemy nin because he slowly lifted the scroll up in offering.
Wow. Now he couldn't tell if he was embaressed for himself or for this guy.
Probably both to be honest.
• So like. Itachi is the clan heir. That's big. That's important. Let's do something with that.
First off, I had a great time reading this one fic (tho I don't even remember what the fic itself was about now, oops) where a plot point of it was how Sasuke is just a walking stereotype of main house Uchiha. Like people look at him and they don't just go "oh that's an Uchiha." They go "oh fuck that's an UCHIHA Uchiha." He's so fucking painfully, obviously related to the very tippy top of the clan that anyone not blind can tell. It's in the way he looks, it's in the way he talks and treats those around him, it's in the way he fucking holds himself. You look at him and every other stereotype about the Uchiha clan is there in big, bold letters. (On top of that he's also a dead wringer for Izuna, which I'm such a sucker for and desperatley wish people would do more with)
So like let's give that to Itachi here because it's so fun for several reasons.
First off; Sasuke in this is like. Straight up a doppelganger of Izuna, just a few generations apart. They could be twins. Itachi, as I'm sure you are aware, is Sasuke's big brother. So let's take some liberties and say that Itachi could absoloutley pass as a blood sibling to Izuna and Madara.
He is however 12, so we're also going to say that the only people who get to make this connection is anyone who's seen the siblings when they were also at a similar age.
On top of that however he has the 'walking amalgamation of all the stereotypes of the main Uchiha house' so anyone who isn't blind will look at him and assume he's somewhere in the sphere of 'important main house person' tho who really knows how distant the relation may be exactly. No one !! That's who !!!
Second; He's the fucking clan heir!! What the fuck!! This bit would have the most impact after all the messy time travel reveals when things have settled down a bit, so it'll sit in the back pocket for a bit. Save it for some fun shaking up later down the line so we don't run out of all the fun reveals too fast and bore the readers, yk?
When it is brought up tho it'd be fun to maybe have some fucky Itachi and Madara mutual understandings of the way things work.
• So. Madara is like a bit of a scary bed time story to Uchiha children, right? Like. "Ooo make sure you don't get too obsessive or fall too deep into your grief and always stay loyal to the village or you'll end up just like Madara!!"
Something something Uchiha-Village relationships are tense as hell, something something Madara fucking over a lot of the clan with his whole. Everything., Something something scapegoat and old stories, something something 'people have probably been talking a lot more about how "god dammit this all started with Madara" in recent years.'
Now with that in mind let's take a look of what our time travelers think of Madara:
Itachi is a good Konoha soldier. Itachi (as has been very much fucking proven) would rather beat a possible problem before it even exists with a hammer till it dies an ugly bloody death than even RISK it blossoming into a proper problem. Itachi does not like Madara. Itachi personally, quietly thinks they should maybe wait till the village is formed then carefully arrange a little accident for him before he goes off the rails. He, even more quietly, maybe even thinks it would be a kindness. Allow him to be remembered well by the village instead of scorned.
Shisui I think is cautiously optimistic about him. He's the kind of guy who gives the benefit of the doubt, who weighs the options, risk and reward, but includes things like hope and compassion in his calculations. Yes, Madara was a uhh. Thing. That happened. But in every story his big blow up always come from one specific event; Izuna's death. So if they stop that from happening, wouldn't it secure both a better future for them and Madara? The history books never went into detail about Izuna, he doesn't know what he's like, but maybe his involvement in the future, on Konoha's side, could lead to even more profits for them long term. At the end of the day he's not against killing Madara (though to be clear, they are at first operating on trying to avoid all interactions with historical events and return home without touching things) but it'd be nice, to manage to get a happy ending for everyone. Unrealistic maybe, but nice.
Mmmm hear me out actually, maybe Shisui, after interacting with him a bit, finds that Madara reminds him of Itachi too. They definatley both have that "I would do unspeakable things to even dream of my loved just one more time" energy, if you know what I mean
Anyways; Kakashi and Tenzo are both neutral on Madara. Yes, they learned about how he betrayed the village when young just like everyone else, but they weren't getting the bed time stories and "do this and you'll end up just like him" warnings like the Uchiha's. They're possibly leaning into negative but are detached from the situation enough to just go "well he hasn't done it yet and his brother is still alive so he won't any time soon" and be done with it
• Now, on the the total opposite side of the spectrum you have Hashirama and Tobirama. People are brought up in Konoha to fucking IDOLIZE these guys. You can not tell me our team of time travelers wouldn't be at least a little awed to speak with them.
I think Tenzo would be the most wide eyed about Hashirama, both for the baseline "holy shit that's the Shodai Hokage" and also that fun juicy mokuton user imposter syndrome he has going on for him. That guys DNA is inside his body!!! Holy shit wait does that mean if someone did a blood relation test with them he might read as being related to him?? Fuck were gonna pocket that for now but like. Mmmmm potential.
I'd say Itachi is the most hesitant about Tobirama but again, village loyalist, so.
You know what tho maybe Shisui is the most hesitant about him (though still largely positive) he both def grew up looking up to him but can also see the anti-Uchiha policies people inact now with the implications that Tobirama would have approved of it. He doesn't know if he would, but like, he has to wonder.
Kakashi is probably the most normal about them (and also has experience in being close to a hokage (Minato) to know that at the end of the day they are painfully human) Don't get me wrong, he's still in some sort of awe! He might get a little lightheaded at the thought of seeing the God of Shinobi in proper battle, or the possibility to see the famed genius of Tobirama with all the different jutsu's he's invented. You can't tell me Kakashi didn't spend a little extra time reading about him when he was trying to make Chidori. Honestly I'm gonna roll with that and say he had a bit of a phase as a kid where he was a total fan boy. Maybe sprinkle in the good old HalfHatake!Tobirama hc to add some faint daydreams a lonley babykashi had after his father's death, about getting to meet him as family. Like cmon, little genius idolizing and projecting on some big history figure only to find out they're actually related? Can you say potential?
Anyways he did eventually grow out of the phase, probably got unattached to it all and lost interest after the whole "losing everything he loved" bit of his life. And at the end of the day, he doesn't have any real complex personal hang ups on the founders like the others do. Thus, most normal.
• And then my favorite most special boy, Izuna !! He's for sure the one they're all most neutral about. He's not actually taught about in the academy? There's probably some throw away line about him in some history books somewhere, but he died young and was quickly buried by the looming shadow of Konoha. The only real knowledge had about him in modern times is just a vague "Yeah he got killed by Tobirama which lead to peace being made but also lead to Madara losing his shit"
Poor Izuna he's the linchpin for it all but was left an unremarkable footnote of history. My boy deserves so much better
Tenzo doesn't actually even know who he is, that boy got bare minimum education under Danzo and Izuna was NOT included.
Itachi and Shisui mmmaybe have some small little fun fact here or there buried in stories from the older members of the clans but like. It's gonna amount to just "yeah he had a great katon" and thats about it.
I WILL SAY HOWEVER. Itachi sees him and instantly is that one PTSD dog meme. Sasuke is a BABY but holy shit Izuna looks exactly like he'd expect him to grow up as and it's making him FEEL THINGS. Also he's so bratty little brother coded !! He's an entire 7 years older than Itachi but Ifachi keeps fucking up and trying to big brother him it's embaressing.
And ofc Itachi didn't go into the first meeting thinking he'd see some weird older mirror version of his beloved baby brother who he misses and worries about very very much. So like. There's for sure going to be some conflict there. If their first meeting is a scuffle (which it probably will be) I think Itachi would keep hesitating to attack. On full run away mode. Which is probably for the best bc he shouldn't try to fight Izuna anyways honey he's like double your bodyweight and you're strong but you aren't THAT strong.
• Pointing back at both the 'Itachi does not like Madara and has quiet thoughts about how it'd possibly be in everyone's interest to just kill him' and the 'Itachi and Madara quietly bond over being clain head/heir during stressful times (w pressure from the elders especially)
I can see 2 outcomes of a potential bonding conversation with them:
1) They come to understand eachother better.
Madara wants to be on good terms, he looks at this kid and sees one of his brothers eyes and the others quiet determination. He can tell Itachi doesn't like him for some reason, and it's frustrating because he doesn't know why. He wants him to like him. He wants to be able to offer his hand and have it taken. It hurts, to be looked at with such suspicion from a face that has traces of Izuna's.
Meanwhile Itachi . . . Itachi looks at Madara and he sees someone who gets it. Gets it like no one ever has. It scares him. He looks up at this man, this horror story he's been told to fear becoming, and he sees himself. And this realization shakes him. It makes him think, makes him wonder. He's so, so sure of his loyalty to Konoha. More sure than he is of anything else in the world. But . . . But if something happened to Sasuke, if he had to choose—
And maybe it softens something in him too, along with the (honestly healthy) dose of fear. It forms a little crack in his shell, just enough to maybe, maybe let Madara through. Just a hair.
Or 2) we pull one of those "The conversation ends with them agreeing verbally but mentally they're on 2 VERY different notes."
Madara, nodding and looking at Itachi meaningfully: "Yeah it can be hard, but all we can really do is try to make the world a safer place for the ones we love. (To create Konoha, to keep my clan safe. Izuna safe. And now to keep you safe too.)
Itachi, nodding slowly: "Yeah. No matter how hard it is (even though I think I understand you more than anyone else Ive ever met) we have to try to make the world a safer place (by killing you in your sleep once Konoha is formed) for the ones we love (My clan. My village. Sasuke.)"
• Also pointing back at the 'Hatake warring clan era reputation,' the 'Tobirama is half Hatake' and also now pointing at Tobirama's title as the White Demon. Small thing but it'd be neat if there was some small throw away line that the nickname lowkey started in part because of the absoloutley terrifying reputation of the Hatake combined with Tobirama's own Everything(tm) like it just had some influence on how some view him. Give me Uchiha's making dog jokes ab him it'll be funny
• Ok but now the actual plot thoughts. Yeah I know I kept you waiting sorry about that.
So time travel! Probably due to a mission gone wrong. Some ruins or some ancient crumbling scroll that wasn't even supposed to do fucking time travel but was so old and corroded that it somehow managed to transform into a whole other seal by pure bad luck. Or good luck I guess, considering it could have just turned into a nuke.
Our favorite team of disasters are very very alarmed !!! What the fuck !!! Obviously they don't default to thinking time travel, but they immediatley know something is wrong. The landscape has changed, though the big landmarks are still there. The mission was complete anyways with no injuries so they just retreat to Konoha. Only oops !! It's not fucking there!!!
Queue alarm.
Shisui is the first one to suggest time travel because he's quirky like that. And there's a very easy way to confirm this theory.
(Also we're going to say that Konoha's location is a valley a few miles out from the Naka River that borders the Senju / Uchiha territories.)
This is convenient because that verification method involves checking in on where Itachi and Shisui know the old Uchiha compound should rest.
They do it in full stealth mode, the second they saw Konoha was missing Kakashi as team leader decided they'd treat the land as enemy territory. They all agreed ofc, for all they knew this WAS enemy territory now.
And, ofc, yeah!! There's the old Uchiha compound!! Being active!!! There are people there!!!
"What are the odds Fugaku-sama decided to have the clan return to their homeland for ahh, cultural enrichment?" Kakashi asked weakly.
"Time travel." Was the only reply he got from Shisui, whispered reverently as the boy vibrated with excitement on the branch.
Itachi just gave him a look, radiating a level of dissaproving disbelief that no normal 12 year old should be able to make. Kakashi would know, he was that not-normal 12 year old once.
From there they decide a no interference policy. Hands off guys!! They probably debate it tho, like, a good amount. They all have ✨️opinions✨️ except maybe Tenzo who's lowkey still in the middle of trying to learn how to be a person and is following Kakashi's lead 99% of the time. Especially since they're still in mission mode and this is like a super serious discussion and he really does know the least ab the founders overall.
They probably debate the merits of going to Uzushiogakure bc seal help but it's really far and they don't actually have like, just any leverage with them. They already decided not to fuck with the future so it isn't like they can trade secrets and warnings. At least if shit happens here they have some plausible deniability, being, yk, 2 uchiha's and a senju-passing guy with Mokuton. Kakashi's kinda fucked tho in that regard but he isn't going to be doing the party ANY favors with his clan heritage.
Which means it's time to potentially get desperate enough to interact with Tobirama !!! Which will inevitably lead to them bumping into a Uchiha patrol or something!!! I don't know honestly
• Anyways want Hashirama and Tenzo to interact. He has so many issues like holy shit. Let Hashirama give him the hug he deserves. I want him to violently adopt him. New brother acquired!!!
I said before but Tenzo is still reprogramming from ROOT. Let Hashirama impact that! Let him help! They can make flower crowns and photosynthesize together idk
Hashirama would be so happy to have another mokuton user, I think they should be able to sense eachother extra strong and like 'ping' off of eachothers chakra, it'll be fun
▪︎ I'm not thinking toooo hard about power scaling and this is fanfiction so a) don't quote me on this and b) for the love of all that is holy don't take my words as gospel
But for this fic specifically I'm ranking the founders and Team Ro, weakest to strongest (in a clean, fair fight head on w no time to prepare) :
Itachi (he's fucking 12 guys. But also he is like. FRACTIONS under Tenzo and Shisui. If he were 13 I'd let him be above or at the same level but like. He's 12. Cmon.)
Tenzo - Shisui (they're like JUST under the next 2 tho like seconds behind)
Izuna - Tobirama
Kakashi ( by the skin of his fucking teeth and the advantage that is his stupid amount of jutsu's and lack of self preservation)
Madara - Hashirama
And again that's not counting like. The specific situations, time given to prepare, potential dirty tricks they could play (I think the Konoha tricks would play a fraction dirtier than the others, who are slightly more used to big open battles vs the ANBU squad who does all sorts of shit in all sorts of places) plus like. Mental state and team ups.
Tenzo or Shisui couldn't take down Izuna or Tobirama but if they teamed up I'd allow it. Kakashi would get his ass kicked by Hashirama or Madara but he could survive a minutes longer than the others would
Itachi is doing his best
But like
He's 12 guys
I love him and he is terrifyingly competent but he won't win 1 on 1 with anyone unless he has some sort of advantage. Minus Shisui and Tenzo who he does have the advantage of regularly fighting, so.
• I think they do get to go back home in the end. It takes a ton of work tho and they probably do need to get Mito's help with it, Kakashi can show them the seal they got brought here with but it's an ACTUAL one in a trillion miracle it didn't fucking atomize them. So it needs a lot of touch ups
Anyways !!!
I have a little more rattling around in my brain but I'm really tired and also starting to think about other things now so I'm gonna stop here. Might come back and add to it later so stay tuned if you're into that
Full disclaimer I'm not gonna write this. I don't have the proper energy and it'd probably end up being too ambitious of a project if I tried. I'd love to see it happen tho, so like !! Big open invitation to absoloutley anyone who might want to take even a fraction of the ideas I've listed.
@ me if you do tho I wanna see the final product
502 notes · View notes
pagodazz · 7 months
Text
Emh fans when they're asked to stop sexualizing Evan Jennings and his characters because it makes him and his wife uncomfortable:
Tumblr media
hope y'all are so happy with yourself for going against his wishes and being fucking freaks to him. You're all why he's barely online anymore. you cannot behave and you cannot be normal and you all have ruined what could be a very fun fandom.
Everyone in this fandom sees Evan as a piece of meat basically, you all only care about his character because Evan is a good looking guy. I mean!! let's be real here!!! let me quiz you on the lore!!! let me see just how fucking much you know about ALL the characters. let me see how much you ACTUALLY give a shit. Because all any of you do is post about how attractive you find Evan/habit and it's honestly so annoying.
I'm not saying you can't compliment him??? or appreciate his looks?? but drawing him in sexually compromising positions, writing in great detail about what you want him to do to you (PUBLICLY. no one gives a SHIT what you fucking do in private.) Or you're fucking mixing up habit and Evan, and just acting like you know his story when CLEARLY the most of you have watched habit compilations on YouTube and NOTHING else.
You cannot even convince me otherwise because I deal with people coming in my comments all the time asking about BASIC INFORMATION. like IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE PRINCETON TAPES ????? WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK????? YOU NEED THAT FOR THE SERIES. YOU CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND HALF THE THINGS WITHOUT IT???????
This isn't saying you can't write fanfiction or shit like that this is JUST SAYING BE RESPECTFUL?????? these slenderverse actors ARE NOT A LIST CELEBRITIES. they're not like fucking Oscar Isaac or whoever people are obsessed with right now. THEY'RE NOT FAMOUS. THIS IS NICHE. THIS IS NOT POPULAR MEDIA 😭😭😭😭
Emh literally made NO money from their series, they didn't create it to gain anything like that. they created something fun and NOW YOU ALL ARE THE REASON THEY HAVE NO PART IN THIS FANDOM ANYMORE.
you robbed them of being able to love their creation and I hope you're all happy about that honestly because it seems like this fandom is only gonna get worse in this area. and I'm deeply disappointed.
edit: I would like to add one thing, Vincent caffarello had to deal with situations of extreme sexualization as well, and his got to the point to where he had to leave. Vinnie used to be very involved with the fandom, he even used to read fanfic which he had to stop doing because people would be writing characters to SEXUALLY ASSAULT HIM or others and he just couldn't continue to read things like that. He delt with minors sending him explicit photos and messages and that's literally all kinds of FUCKED UP. He did NOT want to be involved with that stuff.
It's like when Evan had someone impersonate him to try to get with minors. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT OBJECTS FOR YOU TO SEEK OUT PLEASURE WITH. THEY ARE PEOPLE.
they are HUMAN.
if they were women?? would you be doing this as much??? or would you realize how messed up it really is.
631 notes · View notes
Text
That time I got reincarnated as an Aeon
(Series)
Chapter five: Discovery Channel (In which you find out you have fans)
Warnings: Idk sort of Hi3 lore spoilers? Void Archives is his own warning
Tumblr media
Why the hell did you even bother to think you could fix the absolute red flag that’s the divine key sitting on the chair next to your bed?
The more the Kirschtaria look alike spoke, the more you were convinced he should have been booted off the train. Too bad you couldn’t let your intrusive thoughts win in the meantime— Welt doesn’t know just how worse this guy could get, shared goal be damned.
“Okay so uhh, you were with Welt to fight a bunch of people in the sky right?” You said, trying to go along with whatever the fuck he was saying— it wasn’t like you didn’t know what they were doing beforehand, but it was easier to pretend you didn’t know shit.
“Yes, and we were in luck because Himeko had saved us.” He said, smiling. For a moment you would have been utterly bamboozled but you knew better.
You thanked your new brain that functioned as fast as a supercomputer, because you knew everyone in this train would be dead meat if you were slow.
“I see… that’s good to know she managed to get to you in the nick of time then.” You told him with a light hearted laugh, you swore that the more he looked at you, the more suspicious he became. If you were going to kick this man off the train it would have to be a vote of majority, but since he wasn’t acting up just yet you were going to postpone that meeting.
He was still on your watchlist, though.
Void Archives opened a bottle of expensive looking whiskey and poured it on a cup, and then another, and handed one to you.
“A toast.” He said, but you heard “An offering of friendship”. It was at least good to know he knew he shouldn’t fuck around with you.
You accepted the glass, drank it and grimaced.
“Not a fan I see.” He shook his head as if to mourn your lack of taste in the finer things in life. But what would he know? He’s a cube.
“I don’t like it, but I can drink it.” The taste of the whiskey burned in your throat. “Tastes a little funny though.” You murmured, Void Archives didn’t react much to your statement and continued to drink til he emptied the bottle.
It took him an hour, but at least the empty bottle signified he overstayed his welcome in your room.
“Let us meet again tomorrow morning, I want to speak with you soon.” He told you before he left.
Good grief, what a creep.
———————————
You never did end up speaking to him, instead heading towards Welt Yang, who you want to vaguely warn.
“I know you knew Void longer than you know me,” you began, but you already know Welt was more likely to believe you than the cube. “But keep an eye on him, he gives me a bad feeling.” Plant the seed of doubt, slowly but surely, so that the damage to the express can be minimized.
“I’ll.. keep that in mind.” Welt inhaled, stiffly nodding at your words as you patted him on the back.
“Great! Also, if things come down to it, you have my say in kicking him off this train.” You grinned, waving before disintegrating into particles as you returned to your original body.
Famous last words to be spoken.
Because five years later, on a Christmas Eve of all occasions, shit happened. And Void Archives was booted off the train like the red Amogus on a community vote.
Was it chaotic? Yes. Was it like a court hearing than an actual community vote? Also yes.
You had plenty of evidence presented, including the first instance you invited him to your room— because what do you know, the whiskey he gave you was drugged.
He did plenty of horrible shit, and even Himeko, poor patient Himeko, had enough.
You felt a little bad for Welt though having to deal with the aftermath, needless to say, everyone, except you, needed therapy on that train.
On the upside, someone better did replace the blonde and that was Dan Heng who joined you a few weeks before Void Archives was booted off the express.
“Well,” you blinked. “That was something.” You said out loud as Dan Heng shook his head. “Sorry you had to meet that guy.”
Dan Heng brushed it off, instead focusing on staring at the Christmas dinner that Pompom prepared for everyone and poked the turkey on his plate with a fork, before properly digging in.
It wasn’t exactly an ideal way to start your holidays and welcoming someone in the crew properly in a celebration, but you supposed it’d have to do.
It was at least one less toxic bitch off the train.
——————
You didn’t expect you’d deal with your own information being displayed in the databank though. Dan Heng wasn’t creepy about it at least, not that he knew you were an Aeon— specifically, the Aeon that ate Akivili (you still feel bad about that).
“Libertas, huh.” You let out a snort as you read your own little book. In there, it was written on how you were discovered, and what you stood for, along with a group that eventually became your followers.
You hummed, thinking it was rather endearing to see the Avgin there as some of your believers. It was interesting on how you got a following, no matter how small, in the few decades you existed in this world.
It wasn’t just the Avgin, there were others who you did not know too who believed in you, and others who you did see when you had peered into planets to see what people were up to.
It was sweet in a way, for them to cling to you for belief as they sought true happiness in the way of freeing themselves and others.
You wanted to keep it that way.
You read into the pages more, finding out what kind of worship people dedicated to your path; there was a statue of you in one city in some planet hundreds of light years away, in another planet there was you in a tapestry, in another you had a statue and a painting inside of a massive church akin to the ones you saw in photos of Rome.
It was a little overwhelming, and you felt a little shy at the recent discovery of all of this.
You closed the book and put it back on its shelf, exiting Dan Heng’s room to ask Pompom for tea after helping them with their chores.
—————————
Unbeknownst to you, Dan Heng knew you were an Aeon— and an Aeon he believed in in some way when he had heard of you in the whispers of the guards in the recent years he’s stayed in the Shackling Prison. It wasn’t exactly difficult to piece things together with the context clues around the place, not to mention, Himeko did end up telling him.
You wouldn’t be angry about it, she said to him. You were apparently rather human-like, and kind.
Himeko wasn’t wrong, and Dan Heng was going to trust that judgement. Is he wary? Yes, you’re an Aeon after all, you were plenty big of a deal.
But Pompom didn’t seem to be scared of you, and Welt spoke to you with a sense of respect. You regarded everyone in this train with a certain familiarity— Dan Heng did feel like you were a bit strange due to the feeling of “uncanny valley” you gave him, but you were kind to him and you were welcoming.
He was welcome in this place, he had a place to stay, and a purpose, as meager as it was.
Dan Heng thinks things would be alright from now on.
————————
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI (HERE), Part VII, Part VIII
Yeeeee this took a bit!!! Thanks for the wait yall, I know it’s calm rn, but it’ll get rowdy again at some point I promise.
232 notes · View notes
tinycozycomfort · 10 months
Text
some quiet evenings
pairing: mike schmidt x f!reader
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
summary: If he wasn’t so far away all the time, working and worrying and wracked with undeserving guilt, you’d disassemble him completely—down to the fucking marrow.
warnings/tags: no use of y/n, sub!mike, the tone? they're in love, underwear play, c*ck grinding, finger sucking, pet names (baby, honey, etc), the socks stay on, criminally gratuitous descriptions of how good-looking this man is
word count: 2k
rating: explicit! 18+ only, mdni
a/n: huge thank you to @cupofjoel for these amazing fics that were a direct contributor to me watching the movie (and then subsequently falling into a lore hole) and to @pascalisbaby for listening to me fumble my way through this!!
main masterlist
Mike is always tired when he gets home. 
Tired like the weight of his body is too much to bear, eyes wet and just-open like a seam that’s freshly split. He hangs at the end of his own rope, slumped on the line of his spine, damp across his brow as he sits and undresses at the corner of the bed. 
You don’t question him when he says it’s nothing, when he mumbles something about work being a lot of pressure and just needing to make it through the end of the week. For something so mundane—watching unwanted property—it seems off; still you kneel at his back to help him shrug off the lip of his vest and hoodie and creased t-shirt with nothing more than a sigh.
“Didn’t mean to put this on you. I know you work as much as I do—more, even,” his head lolls down towards his lap, fingers sweeping his face as he shrinks with guilt, “I just need to figure out some money for another babysitter so I can actually sleep and you can actually see me and—” 
“It’s okay. Don’t know how many times I’ll have to tell you before you believe me.” 
He works at the clasp of his pants before you can—another thing he feels the need to take responsibility for, right now—bending at the waist enough to pool them at his ankles, socked feet tapping the ground inside their halos. Nervous, like always, high-strung and erratic for reasons you can’t begin to pull out of him. 
“And everything with Abby, she just… I worry about her.” 
“She’s asleep down the hall. Got her to eat and everything. You need to worry about yourself, too, y’know.” You widen your thighs, straddling the base of his hips, left hand curling to cradle the strip of skin between his shoulder and neck. He’s warm there, too, tacky and tense when you tuck your pointer up against his jaw. “Look at me, Mike.” 
He refuses at first, pushing back against your guidance, reserve strong in the face of shame.
In return, you press harder into him, doubling down, dimpling the underside of his chin in an effort to halt his retreat.
“No,” he whispers, insistent. 
Something hot swirls in the core of your spine at his defiance, as small as it is loud, the corner of your lip tugging up in response. He can’t see you, hiding like this, but it’s like he can feel it, knocking a shoulder up to shield himself even more. 
He likes this game, you’ve realized—where you let him have his fit just to reel him back in, to prove to him he’s wrong. That special kind of attention to detail—the laborious care of taking the time to peel back his doubts to get to the tender meat of his heart, just to string up your favorite pieces of him as you go. Declarations is maybe the most correct way to put it; he likes to earn the kind of love he can hang on the fridge.
You lean in behind him, cheek brushing the hair at his temple, and his guise falters, body unfurling on instinct. What a sweet man he is, naked save for the rings of fabric on and at his feet, the thin veil of his boxers—the latter failing to hide his own interest. Opening for you like he needs to.
You drag your nose across his lobe, the flesh there raising in little welts, “You do know how much I worry about you, right? How much I want you to relax? Don’t you want that, too?” 
He swallows hard, wrist twisting in his lap—restraint, you think, or warning; Mike, ever-courteous, letting you know he’s reached his threshold, fizzing over the top. 
“What do you think I could do to make you feel better, honey?” You run the bend of your free hand along his inner thigh, chest flush to his back so you can reach the fold of his knee. 
Mike shudders, short puffs of air jutting out of his open mouth. The grip you have on his neck tilts, wrapping your thumb over the knob of his jaw, longer fingers spreading out so you can curve one between his lips. He licks at it, tongue soft where he sucks you in, skipping the gentle work-up to get to his favorite part—more tired than you thought, then.
“I don’t want to have to choose for you, but I will.” You rub the inside of his cheek like you can coax the words out, “C’mon.” 
“You could—I want, fuck. I want to be inside you.” 
The papery t-shirt clinging to your back stretches, looped material around your hips tacked down by the trickle of slick that seeps out at his words. You were ready for bed when he arrived,  more thankful than ever to have nothing else between you and his body, now that he’s ready for something else.
You drag your wandering hand across where he’s straining, hot and heavy, his only reaction a gentle tug of teeth on your knuckle, a too-deep inhale that inflates his chest. Mike’s hands sit limp where they’re glued to his thighs, waiting patiently for your next instruction, seeing if you’ve decided to grant him his request. 
It’s not until you wedge your hand free to toy at the waistband of his boxers that he sets into motion, raising off the sheets and letting you strip him of his last shred of modesty, just the slouched cuffs of his socks left clinging to him.
His cock is hard—angry—coming down on his stomach with a dull thud, a sticky pull of precome following in its wake. The muscle under his torso jumps at the impact like he forgot it was even there, too focused on what’s coming next, sold on the prospect of something better. 
You guide a leg down the slope of the bed, planting yourself on the floor by his side. He takes the hint, pushing himself higher up on the sheets and resting his weight on the flat of his elbows behind him, quick to obey.
You take your time climbing along him, bracketing him from the front this time so you can take in the full image of his want. He’s flushed across his cheeks, his neck—even the little reliefs in the skin under his eyes are touched by pink. Lips shining, hair clumped with wet at the root—he’s the kind of beautiful he doesn’t even know he’s capable of, sleepy and misty and shaky when you run your fingers against his jaw—still damp from his own mouth—marveling at the rounded edges that find their way in his angular face. 
If he wasn’t so far away all the time, working and worrying and wracked with undeserving guilt, you’d disassemble him completely—down to the fucking marrow. Clip him off at every joint just to piece him back together. 
“Pretty,” you mumble, mostly to yourself, but you know he hears it when he preens, eyes fluttering and chest squeezing tight in a long exhale.
You loop a thumb through the center of your underwear, swinging it out to fit his cock in with you, settling into his lap more firmly so that the split of your cunt presses against him. He’s trapped there, between your heat and his belly, the whine that slips out of him involuntary but solid. 
When you start to move, working up a rhythm, he spits out something like fuck, fuck yes and you nod to feign understanding.
“Oh, is this what you meant? You wanted to be inside here?” You rock into his hips with purpose, the thick shape of him rubbing at your clit like it’s all he was made for, like being inside you wouldn’t even be an idea if he couldn’t take care of you in every other way first. 
“No.” 
“First yes, now no? You have to make your mind up, baby. You’re not giving me enough to work with, here.”
“Yes. This is–yes.” 
He starts to meet you halfway without thinking, grinding up into the cradle of your body in search of a better way to communicate than words. 
“So you don’t want to fuck me?” 
Mike whines at that, the breakout of red reaching the very edges of his face, bleeding down into his collarbones. He regains some sense of his own body, then, hands fumbling up until they slot above the crease of your thigh, rubbing firmly at your hip bones. Pleading.
You tuck your knees into his side to help him along, ribs stinging where your efforts begin to hurt, happy anyway to push him closer to the edge. A thick lick of heat rises in your chest, the seat of your pelvis, flaring white when you watch him fight for something to say.
“I do—I did, I just. This is perfect. You’re perfect.” He’s panting in between each word, pressing himself to you to punctuate his point, “I’m going to come just like this, if you’ll let me.” 
It’s not so spelled out, but he is asking for permission—as he always does—and it sounds like an apology more than anything else. For being selfish, you know he’ll say; for taking his pleasure exactly like you’d asked him to.
You swipe at the curls that are starting to twist at the base of his neck, both for leverage so you can match his pace and to point out another facet of him that falls perfectly into your liking, the glide easier with how much you’ve coated him in that same favor. 
The hand you’d hooked into him earlier finds his lips again, slipping in with no resistance, passing harshly against his molars and tongue. 
Mike is eager to glean as much fondness as he can off the skin, closing his mouth and sucking fervently. 
“Go ahead, then. Said you needed to relax, didn’t I? We’ve got all morning.”
Something flashes in his eyes that reads horribly like but what about work?, as if now would be the time to worry over your schedule—as if anything could be more important than the way his cock swells in anticipation despite the thought. 
You redirect the anxiety, not wanting his orgasm to fall flat after all the convincing it took to lead him here, “You have all morning to make it up to me.”
His grip around your middle tightens, suffocatingly so, brows drawing tight, tilting his head so he can take in more of your fingers to slide his tongue against the underside of your palm as he comes in warm threads of slip. 
He makes a mess of your chests and the already soaked-through film of your underwear, legs shaking under you as he breathes his way down. 
You release yourself from him with a pop, squeezing lightly at his cheek as he cracks a meek smile. 
“Thank you,” he murmurs, freshly shy like he hadn’t been aware of what just occurred, so inside his mind he’d left his body, “I didn’t mean to not be able to, um—” 
“Fuck me?” 
He’s fully glowing by now, this time because of the weight of your accusation, loosening a little only when he sees you grinning back at him. You lean in, pecking at the corner of his mouth to not interrupt his irregular breaths, allowing him just a moment of error before appealing to the side of him that rids him of his nerves, “Get to it, then, if you’re so worried about it.”
529 notes · View notes
Text
When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 2: Choose Love Or Sympathy]
Tumblr media
Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra's wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook's Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother's life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting...
Chapter warnings: Language, warfare, extreme babygirl energy, violence, serious injury, Larys Strong, alcoholism/addiction, references to sexual content (18+), Crab Family lore.
Series title is a lyric from: "7 Minutes in Heaven" by Fall Out Boy.
Chapter title is a lyric from: "XO" by Fall Out Boy.
Word count: 5.5k.
Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.
Let me know if you'd like to be tagged! 🥰💜
A moment of clarity, something he’s having more of lately: eyes glassy but open, voice husky, words slow. His vast bedchamber in the Red Keep always smells like honey and rose oil and the brackish golden air that blows in off the ocean. Sounds float weightlessly through the open windows like feathers on waves, music and shouts and creaking wagon wheels, gull cries and sails cracking in the wind. Late-morning daylight is an aisle across the stone floor, a river, a channel. Aegon’s bed has been moved away from the windows; when his wounds are uncovered, direct sunlight can ravage him in minutes, fresh blisters, thickening scars.
Aegon winces as you sit behind him and knead warm rose oil into his back and shoulders. His flesh is a grisly mosaic: pink and crimson and white, knots of burgeoning scar tissue, spots that are still raw and weeping. “It itches like hell, does that mean it’s infected?”
“That means it’s healing. Do you want more?” You mean the goblet of pearlescent milk of the poppy on his bedside table. It’s always there, and refilled frequently.
Aegon shakes his head, groggy, slumped, white-blond hair loose and disheveled. “I should probably be sentient on occasion. You haven’t been helping me piss into chamber pots or anything, have you?”
You smile. “No. You’ve got servants for that.” Although they report their findings to you; Maester Arthur of Claw Isle once taught you that organ failure is a common cause of death for burn victims, even if they survive the risks of shock and festering. All appears well enough on the outside, and then they start pissing blood or their skin goes yellow as their innards lose their secretive divine cadence, that vital rhythm, and then the poor soul is gone within days.
“Thank the gods,” Aegon says. “A speck of dignity remains. It’s tragic enough that I now closely resemble an overcooked meat pie.”
You chuckle as you massage rose oil into his wounds, keeping the scars moist and supple so they do not split open when he moves, so his joints are not locked in place. He will need them when he is out of bed again. He will need them if he truly is the king. “I don’t think you look that bad.”
“Because you’re used to sifting through guts and corpses all day. I’m an improvement. I’m only half dead.” And just weeks ago, he was pleading to be all the way dead. He glances back at you, brow knitted into thoughtful furrows; you can see it between the messy locks of hair that shag over his face. “What made you want to study something like this? It’s gruesome. It’s miserable, thankless work.”
“I was never good at anything,” you tell him. “My sisters were, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t dance, couldn’t sing, couldn’t embroider patterns unless they were humiliatingly simple, and even then I loathed it. My father grew so desperate he encouraged me to try archery with my brothers. I accidentally put an arrow in the foot of a squire and that was the end of my bowwoman career.”
Aegon laughs, then groans at the pain it causes him. He turns around so he can look at you, clumsily repositioning himself on the feather mattress, propping himself up on his palms. He squints down at his left hand where his ring should be: gold wings, jade eyes. You will have to remind Aemond to give it back to him. “I was never good at anything either.”
You can’t imagine that to be true, and yet it’s what you’ve always been told, that he was gifted at drinking and whoring and nothing else. You cannot reconcile those stories with the man in front of you. You keep trying, keep failing. You slather your palms in rose oil again the then begin massaging it into his chest. Aegon watches you with muzzy, drugged interest, eyes like cold ocean currents. “Then, five years ago, my brother…” You hesitate. A real name, an imagined one? You decide there is no harm in this small truth. Aegon will not remember the name of a younger son of a Crownlands house; he barely recalls the men of his own Kingsguard, who now spend their days trotting around the castle after Aemond. “My brother Everett was burned very badly, just like you were, although his wounds were mostly to his legs. And we all thought he would die. People advised us to show mercy by giving him enough milk of the poppy to kill him. They said it would be a sin to let him suffer so terribly. Yet our maester believed he could save him. My father and eldest brother had other responsibilities to attend to, and my mother and sisters could not bear the sight of Everett’s injuries. But I watched the way the maester worked on him, and I just…I thought it was the most captivating, beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The way a body can be taken apart or put back together like stones in a wall. Place one here, remove one there, and then like magic you’ve changed the course of someone’s life. Our maester taught me how to clean burns and change bandages, and when Everett was well again, he taught me about broken bones, fevers, childbirth, wolf bites, dry drowning. I read every book on the subject of healing in my father’s library. He kept having to order me more from the Citadel. I think I would have liked to be a maester myself, but…”
Aegon grins. “You have to go marry your mystery nobleman.”
“And women can’t be maesters.”
“They made me king of the Seven Kingdoms but you can’t be a maester? Fucking ridiculous.” He studies you as your fingers—tenderly, carefully—press rose oil into the red scar that creeps up over his right cheek. “Why won’t you tell me who he is?”
He means your betrothed. Aegon keeps asking about him in his moments of lucidity. You quip: “I don’t want you to have him murdered.”
“That would solve your problem.”
“I preserve life, I don’t take it.”
“I’ve noticed,” Aegon says with a soft, tired smile. Very slowly, he reaches up with one hand to pat at his silvery hair. “Can you give me my braid back? It seems to have been washed out again.”
“Of course.”
“Why did you start doing that?”
What is the truth? Something you can’t tell Aegon. No matter how often I touch him, I want more. “It’s a war braid. You’re a warrior. You’ve earned it.”
“So I am good at something after all,” he murmurs. You rebandage Aegon’s wounds and help him lie back down again. You give him a sip of milk of the poppy, which by now is badly needed; Aegon’s face is sweated and pale and agonized. Then you clean the rose oil from your hands and begin weaving a small braid into his hair. He gazes vacantly towards the open window, bright warm light he cannot walk into. “I assume Aemond is…handling things.”
“Yes, he’s…” How will Aegon take this? Is it a relief, or a slight? There was a great ceremony. You did not attend; you were here tending to the Greens’ broken king. It’s where you spend most of your time. “He’s been made Prince Regent and Protector of the Realm.”
Aegon nods, his expression unreadable. “How’s Sunfyre?”
“Still at Rook’s Rest and gaining strength. He was climbing the cliffs as of a few days ago. But I’ll ask Aemond when I see him today.”
Now Aegon smiles again. “Sunfyre is fierce. He is extraordinary.”
“You both are,” you say as you fashion his silver braid; and Aegon stares as if he couldn’t have heard you correctly.
Her steps are so light that at first you aren’t aware she’s entered the room. You see her out of the corner of your eye and immediately stand, moving away from the bed, from Aegon. You feel strange touching him this way—unnecessarily, self-indulgently, greedily—in her presence. She is his wife, after all.
“Your Grace,” you greet Helaena, bowing. She does not look at you. She looks vaguely in Aegon’s direction instead. She is wearing a turquoise blue dress and her long hair pulled back from her face. The servants have dressed her, or Alicent; she cannot do it herself anymore. In her hands she holds a large glass jar of sticks and leaves.
“Hello, Helaena,” Aegon says, more like a sigh than a welcome.
She scurries towards him and sets the jar down on his bedside table with a clunk, right next to the goblet of milk of the poppy and a number of other drinks, things you ply Aegon with to keep him hydrated. Then Helaena speaks, her eyes on the contents of the jar. There is something else in there, you see now: a fat wriggling green creature, a caterpillar inching along the length of an upright stick. "For you."
“It’s very nice,” Aegon tells her, in a tone like a parent losing patience with their child.
“It takes nourishment and then rests,” Helaena says. “It is wrapped in a cocoon and stays there for a long while. But when it emerges, it is not just well again. It is greater than it was before. And it can fly.”
“Oh, I understand now.” Aegon makes no attempt to touch her—not even her hand, not even for a moment—but his words are kinder. “I am the worm. Thank you, Helaena. This comforts me.”
She is satisfied. She turns to leave.
“Your Grace,” you begin, and hold out your hands to her. She does not take them. She does not meet your eyes; she stares instead into the golden luminescence of the open window behind you. You can hear crashing waves and the screeches of swooping gulls. “I wanted to express…I cannot even begin to tell you…I am so, so sorry for your suffering—”
She spins away from you and sweeps out of the bedchamber. You are left looking at the empty place where she stood, heartsick and sorry. What did I do wrong? What should I have said?
Aegon offers you an apologetic smirk, but his eyes are sad. “It’s not personal. She doesn’t really like touching anybody.” This is an irony, and one that must read on your face. A king and queen—by definition, by necessity—do an inordinate amount of touching. He invades, she endures, they knit heirs together out of threads of blood and sweat. “What we have between us, it’s not…romantic. It never was.”
This is not something he should be telling you. It is not a jest but a spilling of deep, sacred truths. “I didn’t ask.”
“No. But you were wondering.”
You were. You return to the bed and sit down beside Aegon, finishing his braid. You choose your words precisely before you speak. “I don’t believe I have a right to know certain things, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what you’re thinking.”
“Then let me unburden myself so there is no confusion,” Aegon insists, drowsy but fighting sleep. “There was no joy in it for me or Helaena. I tried to make it as quick and painless as I could, but still, her disdain for the task was obvious. It happened just often enough to conceive the children. And we haven’t even tried in months, not since…” He doesn’t need to say it. Everyone knows, Greens and Blacks alike. A son for a son. The murder of Jaehaerys, six years old and utterly powerless, in exchange for Aemond slaying Luke.
Do you think such a thing was just? No, of course not, how could anyone? Very few things that happen in this world are just. They come with passionate defenses but no mercy, no vision for a less violent future. The wheel goes around and around, and everyone takes their turn being crushed. “Aegon, I’m so sorry,” you tell him softly.
He shakes his head. He will not discuss it. Aegon’s remaining children, Jaehaera and Maelor, do not ask about him; on the rare occasion that Alicent brings them to his bedchamber, they do not seem to know who he is. In fairness, Aegon does not seem to know them either; he regards them with a dull sort of bewilderment, like one might peer down at a page written in a foreign language. In the hallways of the Red Keep, the children clutch at Alicent and Otto, and sometimes Aemond will take a few minutes to play with them, stacking wooden blocks or arranging cloth dolls in a miniature castle. But if ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are words the children know, you’ve never heard them spoken aloud. “Can I have some wine, please?”
“Did you finish your goat milk?”
“Resentfully.”
“Then yes. I’ll get it for you.” You pour Aegon a cup of red wine and then tilt it against his lips. He slurps the cup dry before his eyes dip closed. You set the empty cup on the bedside table, feel his forehead for fever—longer than you need to—and then rise to leave him. You are almost to the door when you hear him say: “Thank you for changing my mind.”
You turn back to Aegon, puzzled. “About what?”
“About wanting to be dead.” He grins and waves, a weak miniscule motion of his left hand. “Come back soon, angel.”
“I will,” you promise.
And only then does he surrender to blessedly numb unconsciousness, the only place in the world that doesn’t hurt.
~~~~~~~~~~
You find Aemond in his own rooms. He is sitting in front of the large circular mirror on his vanity. His hair is long and straight and painstakingly neat, his tunic made of black leather. He is wearing the crown of Aegon the Conqueror. Rubies fracture the sunlight and scatter it against the walls; Valyrian steel glints.
Aemond marvels, knowing that you’re here: “It looks better on me than it ever did on him.”
“I need more rose oil.”
In the mirror’s reflection, his lone blue eye darts to you. “You always ask so politely.”
“I didn’t want to waste your valuable time. I can be more loquacious, if you prefer.”
“That won’t be necessary.” He stands, taking off the crown and placing it—gingerly, with both hands—on his vanity. “I’ll see that you have everything you require.”
“I am eternally appreciative.”
Then he does something that he thinks is amusing, a little joke you share. He grabs for your arm and you yank it away just before his fingers can close around your wrist. This makes him smile; it’s one of the only things that does. “Now follow me,” he orders, striding past you and through the doorway.
You hurry after Aemond, dashing through corridors and archways. You know where he is going; this has happened before. As you ascend a staircase, Alicent is leading Jaehaera and Maelor down to the gardens. She has one tiny hand gripped in each of hers; the hem of her emerald green dress drags on the stone steps. She keeps losing weight. You stop to scoop Maelor up and hug him—he giggles, squeezing at your cheeks as you smack kisses onto his face—and then turn your attention to Jaehaera. She has just learned the rules of curtsying and loves to practice. You bow to her, and then she does the same to you, and while her head is bent low you ruffle her silvery hair until it is in hopeless disarray and Jaehaera is laughing hysterically. Then you kneel down so she can sabotage your hair however she sees fit. She pulls strands out of your sensible low bun until you give up and shake it all loose. Alicent—large dark eyes, demurely veiled auburn hair, somber and suffering—gives you a grave, grateful smile. Aemond has waited at the apex of the stairs for you. When you rejoin him he continues onward to the council chamber.
Inside men are taking their seats and already beginning to quarrel: Criston Cole, Otto Hightower, Grand Maester Orwyle, Tyland Lannister, Jasper Wylde, Larys Strong, the knights of the Kingsguard. Sir Rickard Thorne pays no attention to you. Aemond once mentioned off-handedly: ‘Sir Rickard, I believe our healer is a distant relation of yours.’ The knight had glanced at you and produced some noncommittal reply, oh, indeed, sure, is that so. You had met before, you realized when you saw his face, years ago, at some event that brought together the houses of the Crownlands, a wedding or a funeral or a feast. He has a hazy recollection of you, but he cannot pin it down; he spent the evening with boisterous young men like your eldest brother Clement, while you had spent it with other noblewomen. Sir Rickard’s mother or sisters could probably identify you as a Celtigar. To Rickard himself, you can masquerade as some unimportant cousin he is ashamed to have forgotten. You assume your usual place in the council chamber: standing in a corner, trying not to be noticed, only there in case specific questions involving Aegon’s medical treatment arise.
“Is he dying?” Otto asks Aemond. “He must be. He has no interest in whores.”
Aemond raises his eyebrow at you. “Actually, I’ve been informed he is improving.”
Maester Orwyle beams at you. Upon your arrival in King’s Landing, he had confirmed to Aemond and Criston what you already knew: that while the Citadel’s guidance several decades ago was indeed pork lard or cow dung to treat burns, now there is a growing consensus that vinegar, honey, and oil for scar tissue are the best available remedies. You nod back. You are natural allies; the Greens’ king is under your joint care. You both have much to lose if he dies.
Now Otto Hightower addresses you. He is a stern, weathered, shrewd man. He reminds you of your father, though far more humorless. “When will he be able to fight again?”
“Fight?” you echo, stunned. “In battle? Months at least, my lord. Perhaps a year.”
“A year!” Otto bellows, then turns his wrath on Criston and Aemond. “I told you, I told you! I urged him to exercise caution, over and over again I warned him of the danger, and while I was penning letters to every possible ally you were pouring poison into his ears, convincing him that I wasn’t doing enough. Now look at him! Look at this goddamn fucking mess!”
“How fares the dragon?” Tyland Lannister says.
“I received a raven from Rook’s Rest today,” Aemond replies. “Sunfyre is eating well and ambulatory.”
“Useless,” Otto hisses. “Can’t fly. Can’t be moved. A waste of the livestock he’s being fed.”
“We may yet find a purpose for him,” Aemond says.
“Two dragons!” Otto explodes. “Can you count them?! We have two dragons capable of combat, and one of them is ridden by a fifteen-year-old. The Blacks still have Syrax, Caraxes, Vermax, Tyraxes, and Moondancer. And gods help us if they find someone to ride any of the other unclaimed beasts on Dragonstone. Seasmoke, Vermithor, Silverwing, Grey Ghost, the Cannibal…”
“I hope they try to tame the Cannibal,” Criston mutters. “If we’re lucky, he’ll eat them all.”
“My lord,” Larys Strong says to Otto, clutching his cane; he has a habit of lacing his fingers overtop the handle and resting his chin on them. Larys is a watchful, quiet man who speaks rarely yet with great consequence. He is the Master of Whisperers, he is the Lord of Harrenhal, and aside from that he is an enigma to you. “I hate to be the bearer of unfortunate tidings, however I must speak plainly. I have just obtained reports that the Blacks are pursuing precisely the course of action that you fear. Jacaerys Velaryon is offering land and knighthood to any man who can mount a dragon and join their cause. The realm is littered with Targaryen bastards, I’m certain it is only a matter of time until they find at least a few candidates suited to the task.”
Otto slams his fist down on the table. You startle at the noise; Aemond glances over at you. “No king. No Sunfyre. Dreamfyre in the Dragonpit, who Helaena cannot fly into battle. A fucking disaster.”
“We have Vhagar,” Aemond says confidently.
“She is worth two full-grown dragons,” Otto pitches back. “Not four or five.”
“Daemon is the real threat. If I can eliminate him, the war is over.”
“Daeron should be prepared for combat,” Jasper Wylde says. “He is travelling with Lord Ormund Hightower’s army in the Reach, but he can easily be called back to King’s Landing. He could assist Prince Aemond in his pursuit of Daemon and Caraxes.”
“I don’t need his help,” Aemond replies darkly.
“Then perhaps he could safeguard the city once you’ve gone.”
“We cannot sacrifice military strategy on the altar of personal vendettas,” Criston says. “Dragons are best used on the battlefield against soldiers and castles, not on meandering quests to find one lone enemy, that’s a needle in a haystack, it’s a misallocation of precious resources.”
Aemond counters: “But if I can kill Daemon, nothing else matters—”
“It does matter, Aemond!” Criston roars. “I matter, the armies matter, winning the confidence of the houses you hope to rule matters!”
“How is Corlys Velaryon handling all of this?” Otto asks Larys. “The defeat at Rook’s Rest, the death of his wife?”
Larys answers: “He blames Rhaenyra for the losses. He has taken it badly. It is my understanding that he intended to withdraw his support from the Blacks, and was brought back only by Jacaerys giving him the title of Hand of the Queen. I am under the impression that Corlys may be willing to reconsider his allegiance if the circumstances were right—”
There is a knock at the council chamber door, not a knock but a pounding, not a pounding but a frantic drumming like the marching of soldiers’ boots. Sir Criston Cole unlocks and opens the door. Alicent stands there with her face flushed and shiny with tears. Instantly, Criston is at her side asking what is wrong, one hand resting protectively her shoulder, the other on the hilt of the sword he wears everywhere he goes.
“Come quickly,” Alicent begs you, only you. “Please. It’s Aegon.”
You race with her to Aegon’s bedchamber, hearing the screams long before you reach him. This doesn’t make sense; he shouldn’t be in pain this severe, not yet, not for hours. You are aware that there are footsteps thundering behind you, Aemond and Criston rushing to see if the king really is dying this time. In his bed, Aegon thrashes and moans. He needs to stop moving so violently; he will split his scar tissue like burst seams. Already you can see blooms of crimson appearing on his bandages where the wounds beneath have reopened: his neck, his waist, his ribcage. He is out of his mind. He is destroying himself.
He is shouting for Sunfyre, for Aemond, for Criston. He is back at Rook’s Rest being roasted alive in his own armor. Not dying, then; just having a nightmare. You kneel at his bedside and smooth his hair back, his braid threading through your fingers, and whisper to him that it’s alright, that he’s safe, that he needs to wake up now. Alicent is weeping, both hands covering her mouth. Aemond and Criston are watching you, mesmerized, transfixed.
Aegon’s oceanic eyes fly open, wide and panicked. “Where am I?”
And you smile down at him, your palm cradling his unburned left cheek. “The end of the world.”
He blinks. He remembers. His lips stretch into a grin. “There you are,” he tells you, voice gravelly and low. “I dreamed everyone was gone and you were too.”
“I’m here.”
“You aren’t in a hurry to abandon me for your burly betrothed?”
Cregan Stark must think I’m dead. “No, Aegon.”
“You can’t leave without telling me.”
Everett, Clement, my father, my mother, Piper, Petra, Penelope, they must all think I was burned to ash on the battlefield or murdered and tossed into the sea. “I know. I won’t.”
“You can’t leave,” he says again, a half-awake whimper as he sinks back into unconsciousness. You give him more milk of the poppy, enough to make his sleep deep and black and dreamless.
You reclean and rebandage Aegon’s wounds. It takes hours. Aemond fetches Maester Orwyle to assist you. Criston comforts Alicent, wanting to do and say far more than he can. When it is done, only Alicent remains in the bedchamber with you. She visits Aegon frequently, but she does not know how to speak to him; she always stands there clasping her own hands together, praying and stalling, desperate to show him love and yet incapable of it.
“Thank you for what you’ve done for him,” Alicent says, tears glistening in her umber eyes. “Not just the hours, not just the medicine. For everything that you’ve done.” And she embraces you, and when she does you hold her like she wishes her own daughter could.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the night you see it repeating like a chorus of a song in the shadows that crawl across the ceiling: one year ago, stray snowflakes in your hair, stars in a black sky and air like metal.
The Celtigar fortune is older than the Targaryens’ conquering of Westeros, older than the Doom of Valyria. Where did the money come from? Friends of the Celtigars would say distinctively cunning maritime trade; their enemies would say piracy. Perhaps the two are not always so different. Is there any mechanism of accumulating great wealth that does not involve stealing in one form or another, of wringing out some other soul like a wet cloth until every drop of them disappears down your throat? Your ancestors did not tame dragons, but they had a different sort of gift: for every coin, they could find a way to make two or six or ten. Repeat that process for centuries and there are vaults filled to the ceiling with gold coins like pieces of the midday sun.
When Daenys the Dreamer had a vision of the Doom over a decade before it left Valyria a smoldering, fragmented wasteland haunted by demons and plague, only three Valyrian houses heeded the warning. Her own family, the Targaryens, relocated to Dragonstone. The Velaryons, having already long occupied Driftmark, resolved to stay there. And the Celtigars—merchants to some, pirates to others—crossed the Narrow Sea to settled on Claw Isle.
Crispian Celtigar served as Master of Coin to Aegon the Conqueror. Alton Celtigar was his Hand of the King. Edwell Celtigar was chosen to be Hand of the King to Maegor I, and later Master of Coin to Jaehaerys I during his minority. The Celtigars have never been far from the Iron Throne…though perhaps none were ever as close as you are now.
One year ago, your father embarked upon a trade mission to White Harbor. Never a man to squander an opportunity for new business, he added stops in Oldcastle, Cerwyn, and Winterfell, and brought along his four maiden daughters to stoke the desires of Northerner lords. Piper fancied a son of Lord Manderly, Petra caught the attention of a Cerwyn boy. But no offer was advantageous enough for Bartimos Celtigar’s liking; no deal could be struck.
In Winterfell, Lord Cregan Stark was already married. His wife, a childhood friend before she was a bedmate, trudged around the castle heavily pregnant and dragging layer upon layer of furs to guard her against the cold, often biting even in summer. Lord Cregan took little notice of your giggling, gossiping sisters, and even less of you…until he broke his sparring partner's arm in the castle courtyard. As the other women fled with nauseated faces back to their needlework, you asked Winterfell’s maester if you could watch how he set the fracture and managed the man’s pain. The maester was delighted—Northerners, as a rule, lack intellectual curiosity—and even allowed you to help bandage the wound once the split bone had been popped back into place. And it was only then, as you knelt there with your forehead creased with determination and blood coating your hands to the knuckles, that Lord Cregan Stark began to see you.
You have a fear of marriage, not a general aversion but a specific and powerful dread. When you were fourteen, you asked your mother if she enjoyed lying with her husband, and you had known as soon as she spoke with a careful sort of reticence—‘I enjoy feeling close to him, I suppose’—that the answer was no. When you were sixteen and your cousin Theodora married into House Bar Emmon, you went with the other noblewomen to inspect her bedsheets the next morning, and were horrified by how they chuckled at the large rust-like stain and recalled their own initiations into sex, this unavoidable rite of passage, this ultimate surrender. At breakfast, the men toasted wine and hooted and sang, while Theodora stared down with glazed eyes at her untouched bacon and duck eggs and said when Piper asked how the night went: ‘He wanted me three times. Is there anything I can do to make him stop?’ And you had thought: Aren’t unions like this supposed to be holy? What the hell do the gods have to do with it? Are they in the sweat, in the bleak resignation, in the linen of the sheets? Do they fill the man with blind lust like an animal’s, do they help hold the woman down?
Your eyes close as you lie in bed in the Red Keep, your room adjoining Aegon’s, and suddenly you are back in Winterfell again. You are making notes as the maester shows you the herbs growing in the Glass Gardens when Cregan finds you. He is tall and broad, made more so by the furs that engulf him like mist drapes the stony cliffs of Claw Isle. His voice is booming, thunderous, cataclysmically formidable. He is used to being listened to. He has never been expected to sit quietly as other men charted out his life like the route of a trade ship: here you will go, here you will be emptied of every scrap of value. He says he will give you a tour of the Library Tower. It is not an invitation; an invitation can be declined.
You walk together through the Godswood—dark water, blackberry bushes, crows squawking, gods you do not believe in—and Cregan tells you fond memories of his childhood. He likes hunting and archery. He spars in the courtyard for hours each day. He never stays still, he never goes quiet. He wants to know where you learned to marvel at the ghastly art of piecing broken bodies back together again. He wants to know why you are so different from other women. And he inquires with great fascination about the legendary treasures of your house, not just gold but rubies, jeweled cups, Myrish carpets and Volantene glass, a horn said to summon krakens from the sea, an axe made of Valyrian steel.
Winterfell’s library is sparse and dusty, cobwebs in shadowy alcoves. Cregan Stark thinks you will not notice. As he slips books about anatomy and herbology off the shelves to show you, you cannot help studying his hands, large and calloused and always stained with black patches of ink or soil or soot. They make yours look tiny and defenseless, skin of silk and bones like glass. You picture him claiming you, owning you, climbing into the marital bed knowing that you cannot refuse anything he asks for. You envision him forcing your thighs apart with those huge filthy hands, leaving smudges like ash. You imagine him tearing his way into a part of you that feels so small, so vulnerable; you imagine the suffocating burden of his interminable weight.
A moment of clarity, in the library beathing dust and Cregan’s scent, a woodsmoke musk, a wolflike wildness: I don’t know this man. I don’t trust this man. I’m glad he’s not free to marry me.
This was before the war began, before Cregan’s wife Arra Norrey died birthing their son Rickon, before Jace Velaryon arrived in Winterfell to forge the Pact of Ice and Fire. And when Cregan agreed to support Rhaenyra’s claim to the Iron Throne, and Jace pledged to marry his firstborn daughter to Rickon, the Warden of the North decided there was one last thing he wanted inked into the covenant. He wanted an ally in the South, bottomless wealth, his future children to have Valyrian ancestry. He wanted a woman with vigilant, unflinching eyes and blood on her hands.
He wanted you.
493 notes · View notes
faithisyours · 6 months
Text
Just a Dream
Azriel x Fem!reader
Summary: after a long day you come home to the house of wind to find Azriel having a nightmare.
Warnings: fluff, comfort, talk of nightmares, mentions of family and friend death, not too detailed, though, not proof read
Word count: 2.1k
a/n: Hello, God? It’s me again. I’m here on both knees to offer you some bbg Azriel content. This man is tormented, just the way I like them. First Azriel fic, and first ACOTAR fic in general, so please don’t kill me if I get any of the lore wrong (I read these books a while ago and barely remember the plot😅). This came to me in a dream. I’m just kidding. I’m gonna quit my yapping and go now. Minors please go away. Enjoy :)
It had been a long day. Your mission had taken longer than you had expected. Rhys, your High Lord, had sent you to do a routine check on the southern border, but of course, since it was your turn to do this check, a fight had broken out, one that you had to break up, and smooth over, and make sure wouldn’t happen again, and file a report for. By the time you were done, it was already dark out.
You double checked you had completed everything you needed to do, as well as make sure you had filled out that report correctly. Gods forbid you forgot to fill in one pesky section. Rhys would be on your ass about it for weeks. Finally, when you had double checked everything and grown too tired to care if you had forgotten something, you winnowed back to the house of wind, your home.
It was quiet, not even the noise of the house settling could be heard. You tip-toed your way to the kitchen for a little something to eat, your long and busy day allowing no time for dinner. You made yourself a plate, stacking crackers, cheese, meats, and fruits atop one another. The house provided a glass of cold water for you, and you took it, thanking the house silently.
You made your way up to your room. You didn’t want to stay in the kitchen for fear you would make too much noise. So you padded up the steps and down the hallway, but before you could make it to your room, you heard muffled noises coming from inside the Shadowsinger’s chambers. At first you thought it was the noises of a well spent night, but as you grew closer, something you had no choice in doing since to get to your room you had to pass Azriel’s door, the muffled noises were that of distress.
“No, no please! Don’t!” you heard the Shadowsinger call out. He must be having a nightmare, you thought. You did not know what possessed you to open his door and walk right in, but you did. You saw the Illarian sprawled out on his massive bed, blankets tangled around his legs and damp from sweat. His bare chest heaved and glistened with a sheen of cold perspiration.
You put your plate of food and glass of water down on the dresser, then slowly closed the door behind you. You did not want anyone to find you in here, but you also did not want Azriel's nightmare to wake the whole house. You were all aware he had them, everyone in this house had them, and occasionally one would be bad enough to wake the whole floor. The fact that everyone had them made the embarrassment more manageable, but it was embarrassing nonetheless. And you did not want Azriel to be embarrassed.
You took a moment to consider how best to wake him. He was thrashing slightly, his movements becoming more rapid, and he was crying out louder now. You needed to pull him from this dream, and soon. You chose to call his name quietly, in hopes that would pull him out of his torment, but your efforts were futile. You decided you were going to have to touch him.
You made your way to the side of his bed and sat. You turned to face him, so that your right leg was on the bed, bent at the knee, body facing the headboard. You gently took his hand in yours, then slowly began tracing circles on the top of it. This seemed to stir him just a little, but not enough. He was still squirming, eyelids twitching, still calling out in distress.
“Please, don’t! Take me instead. I deserve…” he trailed off. You began calling his name, starting quiet but getting louder. You were sliding your free hand up and down his arm soothingly, the other held tight in Azriel’s scarred hand. But your efforts were still not working.
You shifted your body fully onto the bed now, kneeling next to him, making sure you weren’t pinning his wings. “Azriel, it’s just a dream. Wake up. You’re safe,” you cooed. With your free hand, you cupped his cheek, trying to stop his shaking. “Az, wake up! Please!” Your pleading was getting louder, and you were scared you were going to be the one to wake the whole floor. “It’s just a dream. You are safe. It’s just a dream.”
In an instant Azriel sat up and frantically grabbed onto you. He was disoriented, upset, and panicky, but your words calmed him. “Azriel, you were dreaming. You’re alright. It was just a dream,” you told him. You smoothed away the hair that was stuck to his forehead with sweat. Cupping his cheek, you forced his eyes to meet yours. You searched those hazel depths, trying to gauge his understanding of the situation. “It was just a dream, Az,” you repeated, and did not break eye contact until he nodded that he understood. When he started to calm down you removed your hand from his cheek, dropping it down to the hand clasped in your other one. “Just a dream,” he murmured, nodding slightly.
You suddenly became very aware that you were in a half-dressed Illarian male’s bed. Azriel was one of your dearest friends, but that didn’t make the situation any less awkward. It’s not like you’ve never been in his room, or seen him without a shirt, it was just never both at the same time. Trying not to dwell on it, you asked, “Do you want to talk about it,” for which he promptly shook his head. “Would you like some food?” you offered, remembering the plate of food that still sat on his dresser. He looked up at you questioningly, so you slid off the bed, walked over and grabbed the plate of food, then walked back, presenting it to him with a half-grin on your face.
“Why?” he simply asked, growing increasingly confused.
“I just got back from my mission and didn’t get the chance to eat dinner, so I was gonna take this to my room so that I wouldn't wake anyone up but I heard you, so…” you trailed off. He nodded in understanding.
“So this is your dinner?” he asked, trying not to dwell on the last part of your sentence, the fact that he was talking and you heard him. It was your turn to nod.
“Ya, but I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach. You can have some,” you reassured, grabbing a grape and popping it into your mouth. You lowered the plate onto the bed next to him, then sat. Az took a cube of cheese and a cracker, then slid them into his mouth in one fell swoop. He chewed slowly, then swallowed. He was sitting up now, his sheets still tangled in his legs, but he seemed to be calming down a great deal.
“There was a fight that broke out at the border today,” you offered, trying to distract him further from what remained of his dream. “Right when I was almost done, too! I had to stay an extra two hours to smooth everything over. Ridiculous!” you exclaimed. Az breathed out a huff of amusement, a small smile making its way onto his lips. “Oh, you think it's funny?” you teased with an incredulous tone. His smile was starting to part his lips, and you couldn’t resist yourself, you smiled back.
“Thank you,” he said, picking up a strawberry and raising it to you in thanks.
“No problem,” you replied. You were about to stand up and leave, but he stopped you with a hand over yours.
“What did… what was I saying?” he asked you shyly.
“Oh um…” you were startled by his question slightly. You didn’t want to bring up a sore subject, but he was the one asking, so you guessed it was alright. “Ya know just the usual “no, please don’t”’s and the “take me instead”’s. Very chivalrous of you, might I add.” You wanted to lighten the mood a bit, but it didn’t seem to be working. There was a line between the Shadowsinger’s eyebrows, and his eyes were downcast. “You also said you deserved to go instead, but that part was a little unclear.” You didn’t mean to pry, but you were curious. And if Azriel thought he deserved to die instead of someone else because he deserved it, well you were going to have to fix that opinion real quick.
Az simply nodded. It did not seem like he wanted to elaborate on that last part, so you offered up one of your most common nightmares in hopes it would comfort him. “I often dream about my family being killed in front of me. That I am restrained or incapacitated in some way that prevents me from helping. And I always seem to offer myself in exchange for their lives. It never works, though.” His eyes were on you now, sorrow-filled hazel that glittered in the moonlight streaming through the windows. His fingers had taken up tracing lines on the hand of yours that was clasped in his.
“That's not your fault,” he whispered. You both sat there for a long minute. “I was…” he started, but seemed to think better of it. You placed your free hand over his, encouraging him to continue. He took a deep breath. “In my dream, Cassian was in trouble. He’s my brother, my closest friend, I couldn’t just do nothing. I offered myself as an alternative. Cass is so good, so much better than me. I guess I just thought… he deserves to live,” he paused, “more than I do.” he finished, and it took everything in you not to break down right in front of him.
“Azriel,” your tone was firm. “You are good. So good. You are amazing, and so so loved. And I know it was just a dream… but our thoughts influence them, and they influence us. Please believe me when I say you do not deserve to die in the place of someone else because it would be better, or because you are not good enough. You are.” Tears were threatening to pool in your eyes. Azriel was one of your closest friends, and your life would be incomplete without him in it. You lifted your hand to caress his cheek, pouring comfort and reassurance through your touch.
He nodded. “Thank you,” he said again. “For waking me up, and for your words. And for the food,” he added after a small pause. You gave him a small smile, and he returned it. You got up to leave, wanting to take a hot bath and change, but he stopped you. “Can you…can you stay, maybe?” he asked. You grinned, how could you not? You loved his awkwardness.
“Yes. But under conditions.” He waited for you to continue. “I stink, so I’m going to take a bath. And then I’ll come back in, okay? Give me thirty minutes.” he nodded once again.
You made your way to your room, plate of food and glass of water in hand. You quickly bathed, and ate, then changed into your sleeping clothes. You weren't going to lie to yourself, either. You were glad Az asked you to stay in his room. Both of you calmed each other down in a way no one else could. This was not the first time you had slept in each other's beds, either. Your relationship was strictly platonic, but Azriel’s cuddles were unmatched, and you always seemed to sleep better in his presence, the same going for him.
Once you were done bathing and changing, you made your way back to the Shadowsinger’s room. He had changed the sheets of his bed, and was now wearing a shirt. He sat propped against his headboard reading a book. You made sure to close the door behind you, then made your way over to his bed. You pulled the blankets back and crawled in, snuggling right into the side of him. He dog-eared his page in the book (an act that almost made you get back up and leave) and set it on his night stand. He sank down into his bed and wrapped his arms around you. And there you both slept, peacefully, dreaming of absolutely nothing.
209 notes · View notes