#the pressure on my skull is pleasant

[tawnyevergreen]

why does lying on the floor feel so good when you’re sick

[dilftaroooo]

Request: True form Sukuna claiming his offering in front of her village.

im gonna write this as a drabble :3

★tags/tw: uhh implied cannibalism + cervix fucking + sukuna is pretty misogynistic + fem!reader + discrimination against humans(?) idfk + true form!sukuna + loss of virginity

You delicately sit in the middle of the stage, introducing yourself to the slew of men and women scattered about like spilled salt on a kitchen table. Your legs are spread to present to them your blooming flower--still pink and untouched. It twitches under the many watchful eyes of diverse emotions--horror, confusion, lust, envy. They all poured down on you amid a lethal storm, droplets pounding your skin and soaking you thoroughly. You turn your head to avoid the plethora of wicked gazes. The feeling is overwhelming.

Behind you lies a demon. A great being, an entity that holds more power than anyone close or far. His teeth are sharp, his eyes are beady, and his stomach is hungry for the innocence of a fresh maiden. The people of your village brought you here. They made sure your scent was pleasant and that you were garbed in the cleanest of silk--your uchikake was adorned in floral patterns reminiscent of the trees that bloomed near your home.

They knew you'd be deemed a perfect offering for Sukuna-sama, the King of Curses--you're a sweet girl with a pure body, your breasts are full and your thighs are plump. They were sure if their King ever grew bored of you, he could easily dispose of your youthful frame by savoring your flesh and keeping your skull as a precious souvenir. Innocents always taste sweeter than most.

Though your legs were spread, they weren't spread enough for Sukuna as he already gripped your thighs with a strict pressure you weren't unfamiliar with. The squelch that leaves your pussy parts as he further widens your limbs was a sound everyone managed to capture. You're wet and slimy and maybe somewhat aroused. Your King is an attractive beast with a chiseled chin and a beguiling grin. Intricate, onyx lines surface the apex of his taut muscles and the sight makes you clench around thin air. You ponder on what he'd look like if he were a mere human such as yourself.

"All of you!" He starts, his voice booms through the premises and you're surprised by how powerful the echo is despite not being in an enclosed space. As expected, everyone gears their eyes toward the four-armed monster in preparation for his next words. "I want you mortal freaks to watch me fuck this girl you were so kind to offer me. If it hadn't been for this young duckling I would've already slaughtered this putrid village and watched my militia of curses swallow you whole."

He's quick for his size as he brings you onto his hefty lap, and from there you already feel one of his cocks coat itself against your wet slit. He's huge and lingering at the back of your mind, you wonder if you would die at first thrust. His tip is an angry red, livid from the languid teasing performed by its heaving owner from rubbing it across the length of your weeping cunt. It isn't long before his playful ministrations are seduced into slamming inside you.

You weren't even spared a moment of reconsideration for your hymen was already snapped into two, disintegrating upon impact. It would have been a shame to experience your deflowering with a prominent tummy bulge if it wasn't for how much your mind and soul revere the beast overlapping your weak presence.

You were his and he was his own as he violently hammered himself down to the hilt. You bathed him in the blood of a former virgin while he hits that bruised cervix within you. Your back is against that sculpted chest you worship dearly and his sweat rubs off on you is strong with his pheromones.

"Sukuna-sama," You mewl because he's so deep in your pussy that you can't fight back the urge to call out his name. He responds with a finger to your clit and a hand on your breast, making it his duty to circle a thick finger around your nipple.

"I don't remember granting you permission to speak now, did I?" His tone is dark enough to make you believe you've done something utterly wrong but your apology comes out in a series of wanton moans. He chuckles at how the pathetic always act so miserably.

"But since you're clasping around me so tightly," Burgundy red orbs glare at the side of your left cheek, previously moistened with tears of pain and gratitude. "I'll let your sheer idiocracy go. I don't think any of the past wenches you humans throw at me grip my dick this hard. I assume they were used up til they were nothing but a gaping hole." Then he frowns.

"They must think poorly of me."

Sukuna cherishes the screams rushing out of your throat as you take him inch by overbearing inch, stretching you out to accommodate his length and girth. You're nothing but his plaything.

You practically forget the crowd casted in front of you once you hear subdued chattering coming from multiple voices, all laced with different tones with different perceptions. You feel like a common whore.

Throughout, Sukuna never kissed you. He believes he should not taste the lips of a revolting human for it'll taint his palate. He just fucks into you as you bounce like some ragdoll abandoned by a little girl. But if life has fated you with the opportunity to become Sukuna's, your King's, toy, then may you not change the inevitable.

[undiscovered-horizon]

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[Just a sunny afternoon with bear Halsin. What more can a heart desire?]

Halsin claims that sleeping in his bear form provides better rest. Whether that is true or not, you have no way to know. But no matter what the truth is, the druid comes out the winner anyway: he's lightly napping, drifting in and out of slumber, while you're leaning against him.

For the past week, it's been raining on and off. Cold wind nipped at your skin, even sneaking its way into your tent and making sure you shuddered uncomfortably for an hour or two before finally falling asleep. Nighttime storms left you carrying drenched clothes for long hours.

But today, the weather is exceptionally nice. Warm sunlight is peeking through the crowns of the tall trees. Wind, much gentler than for the past few days, is only strong enough to make long blades of grass sway from side to side. Even birds seem to enjoy the change - their melodic songs are carried by the forest's echo.

Halsin and you have decided to spend your day off from travelling in a small gathering. Although your companions-turned-friends are a delightful bunch, the rather crowded camp doesn't allow much liberty in terms of intimacy. Not to mention the sheer noise of so many people going about their day, cramped in one place...

The woods are as silent as nature can be - filled with rustling, birdsong, chirping and chirring. It's the whispering of nature, Silvanus himself enjoying the chatter of his creations. On days as pleasant as today, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that he's wandering among the trees, checking in on things, so to speak.

Your back is leaning against Halsin's massive bear frame. With each of his sleepy, shallow breaths, your entire body is moving along them. Every now and then, he lets out a snore and you can't help the loving smile curling your lips. When was the last time he was allowed so much peace?

Dry paper rustles as you turn over the page. Your voice resounds in this part of the woods as you continue reading aloud the book you found just a few days ago. It's a typical, run-of-the-mill court drama but written well enough to have you thinking about something other than the rather unwelcome guest squirming inside your skull.

But the tale of prudish ladies and cunning servants is suddenly brought to a halt as you yawn and stretch your arms. It's been at least an hour or two since Halsin and you have sat down.

The bear underneath you opens one of his eyes curiously. His careful gaze studies your visibly tired face.

"Lay with me, my heart," he says in a groggy voice. There is nothing pressuring about his tone but you feel so enticed to fulfil his words that you don't have the mind to argue against.

Soon you find yourself lying on the ground, cuddled into the side of a bear. Which, by itself, sounds quite funny. And you do chuckle quietly but not because you find the situation humours - no, it's the all-consuming cosiness that makes you uncharacteristically giddy. His fur is thick and soft, as though a moment of distraction could cause you to fall into him.

Halsin, consciously or not, shift his bear body to engulf you a little more. Although a frame of that size is awkward to manoeuvre, he tries to fit his body around your curled-up physique. If it wasn't for the absolutely crushing weight of his wildshape form, Halsin would probably lay himself on top of you to satiate his desire to take care of you.

For the first time in long weeks, snuggled up to a snoring bear, you feel content and safe.

___

I have thought about having a nap with bear Halsin like two weeks ago and that thought has not left ever since. Actually, I think it's already built a house in my head.

[bucknastysbabe]

Rating: Explicit

Tags: Exhibitionism, infidelity, Aegon’s a dick in this one but it’s bc he’s Insecure, voyeur-ish, oral f!receiving, Criston Lives To Serve Women, one-sided feelings, doggy-style, pnv!sex, multiple orgasms, it Appears Mr. Cole is being Used but nah she wants to crawl inside his armor, BI AEGON RIGHTS!!!!

A/N: This was alternately labeled ‘Mr. Criston dicks down’

Criston dragged Aegon’s limp form into the bed, carelessly throwing the stinking wretch into the fine bedding. Once again picked up from a night out, the knight had received a tip from a gold cloak that your idiot husband was getting fucked with the curtains opened, the blonde’s loud moans and pink prick on display for all to see on the Street of Silk.

Aegon mumbled and rolled on his side, covering his face with a pillow, snoring within seconds. You could still see the slick stains on the seat of his ass and frowned. He’d take cocks before he drank enough to take you. You held your arms around your robed waist and murmured, “Thank you Ser.” You couldn’t bear laying back down beside him. Misery wafted off you in waves.

Criston remained silent, presence looming, warm leather sliding along the bared crook of your neck. The brunette thumbed at the rigid muscles at the base of your skull— always drawn tight. You feebly moaned, falling back into his intimate embrace. His other hand possessively splayed across your waist to your stomach, fingertips tightening just-so.

The knight murmured, “He’s so much easier like this. I can feel you relaxing already.”

Your shoulders were unbearably tense. Criston moved his other hand to clamp down on your tender muscles. It was a pleasant feeling, warm pressure aided by softened leather. His familiar scent engulfed you, the man nosing at your hair and inhaling.

Lulled from your lover’s warm hands and presence you whispered, “He dishonors me. My entire family.” Criston dug the heels of his palms into your muscles, earning another helpless moan. The knight growled, “I know sweetling. I know”, his grip tightened, “I thought about leaving the sot and taking you in this bed all night. He’s like a poison vine, crawling atop everything, leaving it’s mark.”

You turned up to look at Criston’s thinned lips, thick brows furrowed and dark eyes boring into Aegon. You reached up to caress a stubbled cheek, soften his raging frustrations. He let out a deep breath, the leather vice on your body loosening.

Cautiously you turned further, now facing your dear knight. He looked upset still, swearing, “He has no shame. No cares. Fucking fool, as much as I cared and loved for the boy.” Now your smaller hands held his tanned face, catching those dark orbs, immediately softening upon your gaze.

“Do not fret Criston, you’ve eased the burn, burdened what you did not have to. I’m blessed to have you in my arms.

The brunette swallowed thickly, emotions welling. He croaked, “I’d never not stand against who dishonors the future queen. All of those limping lordlings can attest to that. I’m blessed further to have you, Princess. I’ll take your burdens until I leave this world.”

He leant down to take your lips, gentle and kind. Your palms snuck up into his pretty curls, lightly tugging and scratching his scalp. Criston sighed against your breath, tongues dancing in an experienced form. His big hands made slow circles from your waist, hips, to ass. The white knight kneaded at the softer flesh, groaning your name.

Only the sound of Aegon’s drunken snoring intertwined with your heightening breath and soft sighs of pleasure. You asked against his moist lips, eyes fervent, “Take me, I need you love.” Dark brown sought your own, Criston’s eyes moving to and fro. He eyed the defiled Aegon and nodded briskly.

“If he awakes, this could go very wrong my princess,” he murmured with a worried gaze.

“If he awakes I hope he feels dishonored as I have been. He’d probably think it was a dream.”

The blonde actually had no clue. He was too self-absorbed, laughed off the japes about the white knight over his wife, under the bed. Aegon would laugh, “I think the sot still burns over my cunt sister, how tragic. The bastards might’ve been his.” He’d eye you, lips pouting, body stiff, “Afraid you and the ‘Realms Delight’ have little in common. I think he likes a little fire.”

Criston physically flipped you out of the horrid memory. Your upper body was pinned to the bed, eyes gazing up at those bite-swollen lips and messy white hair. You wanted him to hurt, just as you and your lover had. Turning your head to face the Dornishman you undid the robe and lay bare to his gaze now, always undone by the look of reverence.

“Gods, you’re so beautiful, let me have a taste first? Please princess?,” he begged, eyes shiny and wide, desperation pitching his voice. You nodded assent, mouth falling open as his perfect lips kissed your rapidly swelling cunt. He moaned into you, gloves carelessly tossed by now, calloused fingers brushing your soft skin.

He gripped at your thighs while lapping up to that precious bundle, stubble scraping against delicate skin. You writhed backwards, crying out softly and grabbing a handful of thick curls. “C-Criston, oh, ha!”

He’d slipped two big fingers inside a now-weeping cunt, wet mouth suckling at your button. The man had to hold a hip to keep you down, shaking apart at the seams. You were whimpering and yanking at his hair, cunny shivering and twitching around Criston’s crooked fingers— lazily beckoning your orgasm to make its way down.

He shoved a third finger in and flicked the hood of your bud, once, twice, then in rapid succession with an expert tongue. Now you didn’t even hold back the wail, finishing messily on your lover’s face. He groaned and lapped, purring little praises, big hands still kneading trembling flesh. You wanted more, now, let your dear Criston consume you.

He huffed a laugh when you slowly hiked a leg up, then another, exposing your puffy core to him. Criston breathed against your skin, a lilt to his tone, “Are you needy sweetling? Need my cock while your fool husband is sleeping in the same bed?” He snickered while getting up to loosen his breeches and some outer armor.

“I wonder if he’s even moved? I had a better view than you, my princess.”

You sneered over your shoulder, “Lucky you, hm?”

Criston grinned as he eased one knee onto the bed, hand guiding his heavy cock forward. You whined again, the blunt tip practically a tease. Reaching backwards with a grunt you pulled his hips flush to your ass. There was a dull slap, your cry of ecstasy, Criston’s winded ‘fuck!’

He smacked your ass and growled, “Not needy, ravenous,” he pressed his warm body to your back, “absolutely ravenous.” You nodded in jerks, skin erupting into a sweat, goosebumps up and down your bared skin. Criston’s sculpted lips kissed and mouthed against your nape, winding your hair around his left hand.

You stuttered weakly, “C-come on my l-love, s’full.”

He grinned against your skin, shoving his lean hips forward. The knight murmured in a teasing lilt, “Mhm dove? Feel how much I desire you? How you drive me insane? I’ll ruin you for any other— including that one.”

He punctuated the end of the sentence with a pointed thrust, jerking your head upwards to stare at Aegon’s puffy face. He was still out, twitching a bit. You mewled, “You already have, take me- take me!” Keeping tanned skin plastered to your own, he fucked you rough and quick.

You had no time to adjust— grunts and cries forced out by his ever-moving cock. The brunette’s right hand held your waist, crooking your back for a better angle. He still had your head facing Aegon, gloating in the debauchery in front of your husband’s face.

You bucked back onto the familiar girth, whining your white knight’s name. He didn’t let up, abusing your already sensitive cunt. Although still were a bit tender from earlier, the burn was exquisite. Your hands wrenched in the bedspread were ordered by your lover to grope at your tits, play around with an overused clit.

He panted into your ear, “Such a good sweetling, s-sucking me in, keep it up.”

You turned to meet his lips, sloppily mashing your mouth against his. Criston whined deep in in his chest, opening up to drag his tongue across yours. It was a messy affair, the pair of you too busy chanting litanies of sweet names between swears. His hips began to drag into disjointed little grinds, Criston’s pretty eyes scrunching tight.

He begged against your drooling lips, “C’mon- haaah- c’mon.” He helplessly gasped and jerked into your tightening cunt. You nodded, eyes lidded and hazy, promising, “I’m right there, oh my love, my sweetheart.” Reaching up to caress his stubbled cheek you looked forward. Criston was whining softly against your face with his eyes closed and mouth agape, so lovely, the picture of erotic pleasure.

Aegon’s violet eyes were a different story. They were open in shock, staring dead on. His plush lips opened, closed, opened— gaping like a fish. At that moment Criston struck gold and you seized with a high cry, wailing your lover’s name. The orgasm that hit you was extra sweet layered with self-satisfaction.

Criston stuttered, “O-oh gods, gods, fuckyesyesyes, I’m coming for you, yes!” He shoved his face into the crook of your neck, pretty nose mashed into your skin as he moaned long and whorish. You gasped, grinning, cooing, “That’s it my love, fill me up, yes, good boy.”

Aegon’s plush lips wobbled, his face blotchy with something. Did he really expect you to cry and wait for his attention all this time? The knight beside and inside you came to, lashes fluttering. He laughed, “You’re dreaming princeling, go back to sleep.”

The blonde croaked, “But she’s mine.” He was dumbfounded, still drunk out of his mind. Tears gathered in those Valyrian eyes. You couldn’t help but giggle at Criston’s ploy. Purring with satisfaction you added, “Roll over fool, you’ll wake up with a pounding head and a wife that doesn’t fuck your Kingsguard. Although she dreams of it.”

Aegon looked lost and sad but did so, rolling over and away from you two. Criston laid a possessive peck on your cheekbone, snickering, “Didn’t think he’d get all weepy about it.” You shrugged and replied, “Good. If he wasn’t such a brat I wouldn’t play this off. Need you too much.”

The brunette grinned easily, nosing against you. He rasped, “True. C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up dove.” He slid out with a hiss and the pair of you got quickly dressed— lest Aegon awaken again. You sent off the sweet knight with one more kiss, him escorting you to your separate chambers for the night. You wouldn’t sleep next to the drunk sot.

“Would you fuck Cole if you had the chance?,” Aegon asked abruptly during breakfast. It was just the two of you, the prince requesting a private audience. You raised a brow while nibbling on cheese, humming, “Why would you ask that? I’m sworn to you.”

He frowned, sagging into his chair, eyes rimmed and red. He muttered, “Had a strange dream, you were fucking Cole in our bed last night.” You laughed, a sudden burst. The prince hissed, “It wasn’t a joke, nor very pleasant. He’s a dumb dog, loyal to whoever throws a bone.”

You replied, “He’s merely chivalrous. Pretty face. Shame he’s common-born.” Aegon scoffed, biting into his meal.

“You’ll have no one but me,” he stated.

“Of course, husband dearest. You do love to remind me of that,” you said absently.

Aegon leveled you with a look, an attempt to intimidate. All you saw was fear. The prince’s crippling fear of being alone. Oh. It felt so good. You hoped next time he doesn’t fully wake up.

[1800titz]

11K of pain and suffering. Enjoy (◕‿↼)

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PREVIOUS PARTS

Isla thinks she’s going to fall and crack her head open.

So she tells him, brutally candid, “I’m going to fall and crack my head open,” in an impressively even voice — it’s beyond ludicrously impressive, honestly, given the way the cord vibrations are sending her nervous system through an earthquake. She should earn an award just for that.

The dominant’s amusement suffuses through the form of a head tilt, a soft curl to his mouth, a scoff. His counterclaim offers no comfort, “No you won’t. You’ll just get rope burn.”

Condescension glazes, syrupy over the syllables, as if her concerns are silly, like she hasn’t got a rope wedged between her labia.

“Sir!” Peitho protests on wobbly tiptoes, unamused by the joke, and the corners of Harry’s mouth jolt. He tugs on the clamps, teasingly, and clears his throat.

“Well,” his mouth purses as he pretends to ruminate, “I suppose if you’d like to keep your balance,” the male nudges with his chin towards the way her torso bends in acclimation of the pain, the way she’s forced into a rickety step forward with a gasp, “you’ll have to walk. Won’t you?”

“I — I can’t, Sir,” the young woman protests, even as she takes another step ahead in contradiction, her thighs trembling in the same way the rope trembles between her legs under the pressure of the battery-operated wand.

His eyebrows raise, and he asserts, in a tone that’d be deemed encouraging, “Yes, you can — look—“ The tension over her nipples increases, slowly, and Isla gasps as she’s forced into another unsteady step. His eyes flit to her feet — they flex and quiver — he tugs harder. A soft sound escapes from the back of her throat through a parted mouth with another jagged step.

“There you go! You’re already a pro, darling.”

“Eros!” Isla protests indignantly at his sarcasm, screwing her eyes shut behind the fabric of her mask. Layers of pleasure cascade through her, growing in level the more she contemplates her circumstances, but her deliberation is short-lived, because, then, the vibrations just …stop. The buzzing silences, and the young woman blinks through the framework of lace.

“Pardon?”

His cadence doesn’t have bite, but Isla’s well aware of her infraction, and she’s more than well aware that he’s not keen on letting it slide. The young woman sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, heart thundering.

Harry digs his tongue against his cheek, eyes narrowing as irises rove over her face, musing, and the pump of her heart just clambers up the staircase of pace in the lull. Finally, he tuts. Decadent anticipation coats her with the response, because tutting is not a sign of goodness and hugs and kisses and sweet touches — it’s an omen of, of …mischief, of calculation. Of unforgiving, cruel prospect.

“Y’know,” his gaze casts to his trousers then, and Isla swallows as she sees something surface over his mouth — something that would otherwise be regarded as a seemingly innocuous smile. She knows, though, that given the situation, there’s nothing innocent in the cogs that turn behind his skull. Her hands fist in their bindings. “I think,” one palm digs into his pocket, as the other gestures toward her with the wand, cadence slow and contrastingly mellow, “I’ve had quite enough of your lip, little miss.”

Isla shifts, and the dominant withdraws something. She’s unable to decipher the object, because he keeps his palm closed over it.

“And, frankly, I’m tired of hearing you whine,” he shakes his head at her, and shoves the wand stem-first into another pocket, (she can only hope and pray for the time being, and not for the duration of her pleasant stay at Casa Del Possible Rope Burn).

“So,” Eros cocks his head, cushiony mouth twitching on his soft grin — soft, ironically so soft, “I won’t be hearing it, anymore.”

Isla watches him unearth a clothespin as he swaps it into the opposite hand — when did he put that there? Was maniacally clamping a clothes wooden peg onto her premeditated? Eros tells her, voice firm, “Stick out your tongue.”

For a smidge of a moment, Isla considers defying him. She considers making him pry her tongue out himself, she considers him opting to yank the clamps off unceremoniously in order for her jaw to unhinge in a helpless cry to succumb to his request. She considers him wrenching her over the rope in staggering steps with a clasp on her arm as a punishment. She weighs all of it, and the chain of the clamps connected to her tits, in the moment untouched, brushes against her sternum as she sways.

And Isla decides to comply.

Her mouth parts, her tongue slinks out, lax. But he cups her face and demands, “More.” As the muscle presents further, glove clad digits dig against her cheekbones over lace and she feels the clench of the clothespin down the center of her tongue. Helplessly, the submissive lets out a keen, garbled by her inability to close her mouth.

“There we go,” Eros tells her, his tone drenched in everything sweet and patronizing, and he pats her cheek, “No more whining.”

Isla does whine, but it’s just a pathetic little sound rather than a quip, so she supposes he’s accomplished what he wanted to, afterall. Then, Eros presses his palm to one of her forearms, bound behind her back, and his inflection is uncharacteristically gentle given the circumstances.

“This is really important, baby, can you look at me?”

Despite the fact that he can’t make out the direction of her gaze, nor decipher the focus of her attention through the shroud of the lace, Isla blinks and her head pivots to face him as indication. She finds his eyes, which capture her sight, through shadows of thin slits among rubber and shoddy lighting overhead. They glimmer softly.

“Since you can’t safe with your words,” he pauses, no humor to his tone despite the amusing nature of manually taming her taunting tongue, “M’gonna need you to try something different. Something new.”

The outstretched muscle, enclosed by the pin, quivers. There’s already drool pooling over her bottom lip, and Harry knows it won’t be long before rivulets drip and escape, painting her torso in slobbery wetness.

“If you need to safe, you’re gonna go mm-mm-mm, for me,” The male emphasizes the sounds with a side-to-side gesture of his head, “Yeah?”

All Isla can manage, in her condition, is a pitiful little sound that rolls out from the back of her throat. Finally, the man seems to let the amusing nature of the circumstances cave his no-nonsense demeanor, and the corners of his mouth twitch to curl pillowy lips. He bites into his lip and shoots her an expectant look through his lashes.

“So,” he nudges with his chin at her, and asks, “What’s your safe word?”

“Uhn-uhn-uhn,” the submissive responds, after a second, shaking her head in the same manner he had, but not quite able to mimic his speech with the inability to press her lips together.

“Right. Good girl.”

His praise sends a warmth spiraling through her, and she’s so concerned about basking in the sensation that she doesn’t even notice when he reintroduces the wand with a generous hand, when he presses it to the rope. Not until it turns on, and vibrations run along her core. Another helpless sound, then, this one tinged with surprise.

“Like that, don’t you?” Harry cocks his head as she manages to simultaneously stiffen and melt under the attention of the toy, “See? S’fun, isn’t it?” His tone is maniacally enthusiastic, sadistically chipper — which. Of course, he’s on the opposite end of the predicament.

Isla’s soft breathing morphs into a squeak of surprise, and then a groan, as the pressure of her nipples tightens in a pull. It tightens, tightens, tightens. Calves straining, she takes another step over the cord. But to her dismay, unlike the trial run, this time, the tension over her breasts doesn’t relinquish. She’s compelled into another step ahead by the guide of his fingers, hooked down over the chain. And then another, and another after that. Her tongue flexes in the pinch of the clothespin, and she feels seep-y wetness slink from her mouth, landing in drips in the vale between her tits. The young woman doesn’t have time to ponder on the wave of humiliation that peaks within her at the fact that she’s openly drooling down her own torso, because she’s much too focused on balancing on her toes, on taking steps, on the pain that radiates from her strained muscles, from her nipples. From the pleasure at her core.

Of course, Eros, helpful as ever, doesn’t miss the opportunity to remind her.

She picks up on the man’s tut, her eyes aimed ahead, and then hears him say, with mocking humor enameling the words, “Oh, pet. You’ve made a mess of yourself.” The latter part of his statement is considerably lower in decibel, laden with arousal as he inspects, “Dirty girl.”

If one of Harry’s hands wasn’t preoccupied with the incessant tugging at the chain, and the opposite wasn’t honing the head of the vibrating wand onto the dark cord, he’d swipe a finger along her sternum. Smear the slobber over her skin for emphasis — for a tangible touch on the cause of the fire radiating and slinking beyond the trench of his tummy. His cock throbs in its constraint with as much warmth as her own arousal must burn, and for a moment, just for pleasing him with the scenic view, he pastes the toy directly onto her core. It’s a great decision on his part, the man decides, because not only is he compensated in a pretty string of moans and hums, but the submissive also drools over herself more in the process. Lustfully, irises roam over flesh and spit and rope.

He’s tempted not to look away at all.

When he lets go of the chain, leans in to her, and his pillowy mouth brushes over her earlobe, his voice is low and heady with want, “F’you could just see what a slut you look right now.”

The keen that slips from her mouth, as she wobbles over the wire, hips canting in a subtle back and forth, is loud. His mouth crooks lopsidedly and he steals a glance at her rocking hips, at the sheen of saliva rolling down her stomach, at the source of the waterfall; her tongue, obedient and stuck-out for him.

“Look at you. Just a needy, little whore. That’s what you are, for me, aren’t you? My needy, little whore?”

The cry that spills, shrill and garbled in agreement, has him absolutely pulsing in his slacks — the way she tries to make out a litany of yeses. Because it’s desperate, because she’s desperate — desperate to be his needy, little whore. Desperate to verbally concur. He groans, palming over himself in near equivalent desperation, and then he takes a step back as he harvests control over his composure.

As the vibrator’s torn from her, Isla blinks her eyes open with a frenzied glaze. The submissive melts in on herself, and nearly lets her toes drop to slump, but the cord between her legs reminds her of her inability to relax so leisurely. Pleading sounds escape her in increments of whines, and, in response, Eros plucks at the rope with a cruel finger. It wavers between her thighs. Her spine straightens as his touch slinks back to the chain and coaxes her into another step.

“Go on. Walk. Show me how desperate you are to be my little whore. How much you want to make me happy.”

“Because,” she takes another step, her tongue aching, and her calves straining, and her whole body riding the edge between balance and falter, his words goading her, “You want that, don’t you? Want me to be happy? Wanna make me proud of you?”

So she does. Isla walks, and pleasure tides and ripples as he keeps the head of the wand on the rope, sliding it across the cord to heighten and reduce the sensations based on proximity. And when she’s greeted by the first knot, its presence catches the young woman off guard. Because she’d put two and two together, because she’d figured it’d cause a different sensation, that the swollen node of rope would stimulate her clit. But she doesn’t see it coming, because her eyes aren’t downcast — they loll and roll and struggle not to dip behind her eyelids. And as it wedges between her lips, the bulge of it pressing and grazing against her bud of nerve endings, she groans.

“Yeah,” his vision flickers from her hips to her face, from the tensing of her stomach to the roll of her chest, and a smirk crests softly, “You get it now, baby?”

“Uhn— uh— uh-huh,” her chin tips in what she tries her best to look somewhat like a nod, and her lashes flutter as the knotted rope digs into her in the best way.

And the thing with the knots is that they’re spaced out but there’s so many of them. He’d taken his time — for good reason, and each one is a blip of typical discomfort that is rope between her legs in a sea of tantalizing pleasure. They rub over her, teasingly, one by one, gone as soon as she’s brushed over it. Her nipples ache in the best way, and his gaze is heady and intense on her, and it’s all just a lot. By the fifth knot, Isla’s just a desperate mess, and that’s when he tears one of the clamps off, pressing the vibrator to her core just as she passes over a tightened loop of rope.

All that comes out of her is a loud cry and subsequent, softer whine, and the submissive falters in her gait over the cord, her body stiff and strained like she’s been strung up by wiry puppet-strings. Harry’s mouth curls deviously, and he leads her by the one still attached to her skin, the wand still rumbling steadily against her, and how is she already three quarters of the way there?

Her drool decorates her abdomen like sultry glaze on a sweet, and as she staggers on her toes, her whole body taut, she looks good enough to eat. Harry yearns to drag his tongue over every square inch of her nudity, and he will, just as soon as his Peitho gets over the threshold of the final knot. The initial agenda had entailed coaxing her in a walk backwards to go hand-in-hand with the first go-round, but he doesn’t think he even has the patience to endure the sight any longer. He drops his hold on the chain as Peitho encounters another deftly wrapped knot, presses a hand to the small of her back — coated in a sheen of sweat, no doubt, and nuzzles to bathe her in his velvety croon.

“You’re going to get to end of the rope,” the man asserts, his cadence low and full of filthy promise, “and then I’m going to fold you over the bed and fuck you until the only words that you can make with that pretty mouth are ‘Sir’ and ‘please.’”

How can she respond to that? What is a sane, composed reaction (that she’s capable of)? There isn’t one, Isla finds. Because all that she is capable of is an instant, wordless hitch to her breath. As her pleasure spikes in feedback of his obscene dialogue, because his vulgar pledge ignites something within her, rattling her bones and coating them with want, and because he still keeps that vibrator spurring her impending orgasm, Isla instantly finds that the hitch is followed by involuntary, majorly wordless begging.

“Aah — Thur, thur—“ the warning is spoken through shallow breaths, her voice high with desperation, attempts to alert him to stop, because she’s going to cum, garbled by the clothespin. And Eros does, instantly — pulls the wand back, and everything, and Isla honestly can’t decide if his reaction floods her with relief or dismay.

As she gleans the shattered fragments of her sanity, the male’s own voice is far more controlled — as if he’s unaffected entirely, which is a sopping lie, he’s soaked in tensed want beneath the facade of sadistic calm.

“Oh you liked that idea, did you?”

His vision skids to her tits, where the lone clamp dangles. He swipes it off nonchalantly, culling a squeal. And up until then, he’d been so casual, so lax, so controlled. He wraps a palm over her arm, folded behind her back and bound in ropes, just as Isla had contemplated he’d do as a consequence for her insubordination, and coaxes her along the rope, apparently, suddenly keen on cutting out the middleman. Yeah. Isla knew he wasn’t just observing with his feet kicked back and his arms behind his head.

He guides her over another knot, siphoning a stuttery cry from her, before he encourages, “Go on. Only so much to go, now.”

He takes his hand away to make three lengthy, casual steps backward to the end — the parallel pole, and flicks the vibrator on, pressing it to the finish line of the cord. It sends the rope buzzing, and Isla decides she might not make it at all. She might just shut down and situate herself just where she’s at, ride the wave of rippling rapture. But then she sees the way his shoulders are squared. The way his tongue peeks out to glide out from the muted berry of his mouth, the way his sight flickers from her cunt to her face, and she knows that he wants her to get to him.

Want me to be happy?

Wanna make me proud of you?

She does. So much. She yearns for nothing more, then, in that moment, than to satiate his sadistic fixations and desires, despite the temptations at her core, despite the hankering to satiate her own. Because she decides that his wants outweigh her own in craving.

Isla takes another wobbly step towards him. And then another, and a third. A fourth. The closer she draws to him, to the wand, the more intense the vibrations of the rope become, and as she surpasses the final knot, stumbling to the edge of the line, Eros retracts the vibrator, still buzzing, absolutely pleased.

Instead of instantly working deft fingers over bindings on hooks, however, or knots in the harness, he steps up to her, raises a hand to tuck strands behind her ear, and speaks low to against it.

“You want me to fuck you? Hm?”

Isla nearly shatters. Casually, out of her sight, he switches the stem of the toy into his left palm — the one he’d used to tuck back her hair, and takes the clothespin from her tongue with the right. She makes a soft sound with the sensation of her tongue being newly freed.

The dominant tells her, “Beg.”

Her pupils skid to the side, to his face, to his eyes, where jade’s become clouded and blown out by darkness — like lewd nightfall. Her pulse stutters.

“Beg me to fuck you.”

Isla does.

She begs, her tongue achy, and sluggish, and (at first) unaccustomed to the string of pleas. She begs even as he undoes the harness binding her arms. As he winds about her to undo the grip of the rope on the hook over the column. Even as he manually walks her to the bed, the words, breathy and hushed, like a mantra of splintered sanity, fall from her mouth. They fall in increments as he encourages her to lay on her back, as he tucks himself into a condom, as he hitches her knees up and hovers over her, a string of spit sliding from his mouth onto her puffy sex. They melt into soft ‘pleases’ and sharpen into unintelligible cries as he folds her in half, his shoulders ledges for her legs to rest upon, and sinks into her, burying himself to the hilt. They only die off when the dominant slides out for the first time, his typically sturdy arms trembling in restrained support on either side of her head, and rocks his hips down into her. Those pleas morph into soft oh’s then, and her whole body buzzes, frozen as he nudges at spots within her that he’s only able to reach with this depth.

And when the dominant asks, “S’too much? Overwhelmed?” grunting through his dialogue with his own inklings of rive, only to respond to her helpless, parted mouth and jerky nudges of a chin with, “S’too bad. You can take it like a good girl.”

Well. Those pleas stifle and settle in her bones. By then, the string is just an echo behind her skull.

Perhaps converse with sharpie-d smiley remnants were a bit too casual of a selection for casual Friday. She stares down at her sneakers as she opens her car door and lets them rest on the lip just beyond the step out. They’re blue, and she’s had them since sophomore year of college, and Junie Lowell had taken all of a Miscarriages of Justice block drawing the smileys in as the professor had droned. And the thing is, when Isla had shuffled them onto her feet in the morning, she hadn’t even realized the smudges were residues of drawings — she’d thought they were, like, scuffed.

Which would be deemed far more appropriate in the office on casual Friday.

After last week’s grate debacle, Isla had opted for flats and wedges and semi-formal sandals for the duration of work. The beat-up chucks were the first pair of sneakers she’d dug out of the closet before making a clumsy dash for the door, toastered-waffle in hand. Suze had stared down at them from a table in the break room and had told her, after a moment of blatant judgment, “Cute.”

In all honesty, Isla was still sort of learning the ropes when it came to dissecting the casualness of casual Fridays. Because blazers were too formal, but shrugs were too casual. Cardigans were a healthy in-between, but only with a turtleneck beneath — never a tank or a tee. Skinny jeans were out, but denim was generally in — and denim skirts to the knee were alright, but shorts of the same length were a no-go. Most Fridays Isla opted for slacks and heels just to avoid infringing upon unspoken Casual Friday code of conduct.

She’s still got Karen O & Danger Mouse’s Leopard’s Tongue blasting, and the young woman stifles the music as she leans over to push the engine off with a click. The music dies. She climbs out of her vehicle. In some ways, she’s glad she’s scheduled the tour in on a casual Friday — at least she’s not forced to clamber through a house tour in a pencil skirt and a turtle neck.

And she looks spiffy — nice, crisp white top with bell sleeves, denim cinched in the waist with a jet belt …aaaaaaand sneakers with 75% degraded smiley faces drawn over the noses.

On the opposite of the mailbox, she sees Harry Styles. Quickly, she slams her car door shut, absentmindedly toggling her car to lock with the FOB, and shovels her keys into her purse. She glances to her side as she feels a yank. The sleeve of her shirt’s been clipped in the door of her vehicle. Wonderful.

“Hi!” the man says brightly, the grass crinkling softly beneath the press of his dress shoes as he wanders over the lawn in her direction, “Isla Cleery!”

Hopelessly, she tugs at her inane bell-sleeve, why did she opt for bell-sleeves today? It was supposed to be graceful and dainty and classy, and getting it caught in her car door upon introductions is just …oafish. He’s squinting under the bright, orange-y, yellow beam of the approaching sunset, and, futilely, Isla’s own gaze narrows to curb the fervor of the rays. She leans against the car door casually to shroud the embarrassing display as she raises a palm to shield her sight. It’s too late to discreetly rummage for her keys.

“Mr. Styles! Thank you so much for meeting with me!”

“Mr. Styles,” he practically snorts — Isla pastes a sugary smile as, behind her back, she wrenches with her arm. She grows more hopeless the shorter their proximity becomes.

“Please — Harry. Figure we’re past formalities. And it’s no trouble at all. Believe me, if I wasn’t here, I’d probably be watching Masterchef reruns. S’much more satisfying to be useful — are you alright, love?”

Isla’s mouth narrows into a line as she takes step a back from her vehicle — as much as she can, given that her sleeve is trapped, and swaps the strap of her purse from her shoulder into her restrained palm. She utilizes her freed one to sift through the purse, attempting to maintain composure despite the waves of chagrin that roll through her.

“D’you need—“

She unearths her keys, unlocks the stupid door with the FOB with a singular click, hauls the door open, and frees herself, tone steely, “No — nope, I’m all good. Thank you.”

Isla clears her throat.

Harry Styles bites into his cheek in an obvious effort of masking mirth. It’s a shit job.

“I’d shake your hand,” the young woman motions with her own and opts to gloss over the mishap entirely, her smile bordering sheepish, “But we’ve already met.”

There’s obvious notes of uncomfortableness to her character. She’s still trying to shake off the unfortunateness of trapping her sleeve in her car door.

His grin is pleasant, dimples forming divots in his cheeks, “Yes. Cal-mart. Cherry discount. Really good grapes.”

She laughs, then. There’s a trace of familiarity to his cadence, but it’s …unfamiliar to recognize the root. Like an old childhood memory locked in a box in the depths of her mind, maybe. Something akin to deja vu, but not quite.

“Shall I,” he motions with his hand, thumb sticking out to point towards the house to their sides, and Isla eyes over his broad assortment of rings, “show you the house?”

Her sight flickers to the property. She blinks, It’s charming and quaint — not a show-stopping advertisement of a house giveaway on HGTV, smooth drone-shots showcasing an extravagant mansion in panels of wood with a picturesque, primped lawn. But it’s something much more palpable and normative. There’s a little driveway to a garage, and the little lawn definitely needs to be mowed, but, from the outside, the house is just as the images online had indicated. Her fingers are locked over the strap of her purse as she tells him, “Yes. Yeah. Please.”

He leads the way, and her pupils hone on his broad back in contemplation as they make their way over the driveway. What a nice dress shirt. Surely they hadn’t attended the same classes, years prior.

The curly-headed brunette jams his replica of the house key into the lock and jiggles with the door knob, huffing, “Front door’s a bit muggy, but s’nothing a new lock can’t fix. And the property is certainly worth it,” her eyes rove over his features as he twists back to cast her a smile, “just wait until you see these gorgeous ceilings.”

No. It was …something else.

As the front door creaks open, the realtor steps past the threshold, first. Isla follows behind, stepping aside as he pushes the door to close.

“The front entrance,” Harry speaks as the barrier clicks shut, “is not much. But—“ as he leads through the archway, Isla’s sight wallops from wall to wall, “It’s a beautiful home. Very open concept, m’sure you can tell from these ceilings,” he cranes his neck, raising his arms, and Isla follows his gaze. Just as he’d hinted, the ceilings are broad, vaulted, shaped like the innermost shell of a roof. There’s no furnishing to combat the open space, and his voice is especially echoey given the broad scope.

“Three bed, two bath. One story. 1,743 square feet of space — which is an absolute gem for the price. But I think the real gem of the property is the backyard. I’ll save the best for last,” the male sells with his words, winding around her into the fairly open-concept kitchen, only closed off from the lounge area with a wall of milky white brick — cabinets rest on the opposite side, Isla discovers.

And the kitchen is… well. It's not like this pristine kitchen of her dreams, but she’s all microwaved Jimmy Dean breakfast bowls and chinese takeout leftovers, anyhow. But it is a cute kitchen. Small. Stark white cabinetry that contrasts the gray paneling of the wooden floorboards, shiny, big fridge, fancy electric stove — her pupils pore. Ah, yes. A nice, little microwave, tucked beside the fridge, hanging amidst the cabinets. Perfect for her levels of chef expertise.

“The kitchen is all remodeled,” the man motions with his hands, “I’m sure you can tell.”

“Yeah,” Isla’s tongue sticks out past her lips to graze over them, “It’s beautiful. Even prettier in person, honestly.”

The blurry icons online had indicated that the property had a ritzy, sleek charm to the innards, despite the apparent, seemingly too-good-to-be-true price tag and the evidence of a lack in lawn maintenance. But seeing it in person only confirms that someone had put a lot of effort into modernizing what Isla assumes had been wood-paneled walls and motel-grade, waxy carpeting.

“I’m glad you agree,” Harry grins, and then mills about to a little door beside the edge of the counter, “You’ve got your standard pantry just on the side, here,” a ring-clad hand frames over the knob to tug it open, showcasing a wide expanse of shelving, evidently unable to restrain himself from inserting a friendly jab, “Perfect for cherries …and/or cherry flavored things.”

“You know,” she raises a hand, “I prefer to keep mine in the fridge, actually,” she laughs softly as his own mouth twitches, “but. To each his own.”

“Well,” he tells her, features animated as he reaches for the opposite wall, hands set to gesture at the stainless steel in a comical, ceremonious display, “actually, there’s one of those, too. Comes with the property.”

Isla’s unable to bridle the jolt of her mouth, “How grand.”

“Truly,” the brunette clears his throat and scratches at the tip of his own with the swipe of a thumb. He turns, toggling at the door handle of a mysterious white door at the edge of the kitchen, and yanks it open to reveal a tiled little laundry room tucked away.

“Laundry. For any …cherry memorabilia …I’ll stop. I’ve wrung the joke out,” he chances a glance at her. Instead of finding an eye roll, she’s all cherubic excitement and beams.

Gleefully, she peers around his frame.

“No mold!”

“No mold,” the male nods, and teases, after a moment, with his brows pinched, “That wasn’t …you weren’t happening to look for that quality, were you?”

Isla raises her arms in feigned exasperation, and her hands slap at the sides of her thighs when she lets them fall, “I guess I can settle without it. But, you know, yeah. That’s a big box to tick on my list.”

“Laundry room mold?”

She blows a quiet raspberry in a ‘pfft’ as she winds about him, smiling earnestly. “You wouldn’t believe it. It’s, like, every place I looked at online — every single one. Mold. In the laundry room. Right,” her draws a line over a baseboard with the toe of her sneaker, “Here. Usually.”

The realtor eyes the faded sketches over the rubber — smiley faces.

“I feel like if I lived in a place like that, I’d have to wear a mask. And shoes. In every room.”

He watches, amused, as a shudder crawls over her back.

“If it’s any consolation,” his eyebrows jump and he steps back into the kitchen, turning towards her with a friendly, soft beam and holding the door as indication that she’s to follow, “I like your shoes.”

Isla Cleery’s gaze bounces to her feet, as if she’d forgotten the pair she sports, and she treks behind him, settling back against the counter as he turns.

In turn, she ogles his own. They’re quite posh — onyx leather. Loafers to be precise, with sleek buckle detailing. What catches her eye, though, are the two snakes on either shoe, pasted beneath the buckle. Red with stripes of black and yellow — coral snakes, she thinks. Their serpentine tails cascade in swirls, and their tongues fork out. Sharp shoes.

She feels a bit strange, having received a compliment on her old chucks when he dons fancy serpent loafers.

“Thanks. I’ve taken a perpetual leave-of-absence from heels.”

“Have you?”

Isla Cleery is a pretty girl. A very pretty girl, in fact. A girl-next-door, deep sort of sense of demure, sense of physical character. She’s no Megan Fox — her features are much too normative. But the normativity is her appeal. It’s a Dakota Johnson sort of charm. Brown doe eyes that she’s lined the top lids of with some charcoal pencil liner. Slight divot to her chin, rounded nose, wispy bangs that fall to curtain her temples. Pencil skirts and heels and cherries and smiley sneakers and batwing tops that jam in doors.

Gold glimpses hugging a joint catch in his pupils as Isla Cleery nods in response and reaches her hand up to tuck loose strands of hair behind her ear. That’s a pretty bracelet, Harry thinks, and a smile stays shaped by a pillowy, pink mouth as irises rove over gold, over heart charms. The smile threatens to break apart the further the eyes drink, the further he gets to the metaphorical bottom of the glass. They hone, but not enough of a span for her to notice.

Only enough for him to recognize that that’s definitely his fucking bracelet.

The one he has the key to, in his pocket.

It burns a hole through his slacks while his eyes resist following the bangle as Isla Cleery lowers her arm, laughs, and tells him, “Yeah, I snapped my heel in a grate last week, if you’d believe it. So, I’ve decided to take a break from those for a little bit.”

A beat of silence in which his heart stutters and nearly seizes altogether. There’s gears turning, grinding over mental images of the hearts, recollections of the story he’d heard of the heels, the familiarity of her voice, the way he’s heard that voice cry out for him. Eyes search over her face in little increments, casually, and flit in fragments. Brown eyes, her nose, her lips, her teeth — he knows her teeth. He knows that there’s a smidge more length to the front two. He’s seen them gnaw into her bottom lip, he’s felt the gentle bite of them against his thumb — gentle over the glove—

“You’d think that stuff only happens in, like, cheesy movies, but. Nearly spraining an ankle is not as rom-com-y as it seems in rom-coms.”

She turns away from him, and his heart thunders behind his ribcage helplessly as Harry finally allows his beam to slip a bit. Isla Cleery. His hips had hammered against Isla Cleery last Friday night. His cock had been stuffed down Isla Cleery’s throat. He’d signed a contract with Isla Cleery. His bracelet was manacled onto Isla Cleery’s wrist. Isla Cleery, Isla Cleery, Isla Cleery.

Isla Cleery turns back to face him, her hand pressed onto the granite countertop nonchalantly. Harry clears his throat, and if his caprice even had the beginnings of being evident, he plays it off entirely with the feigned grimace that forms over his mouth as she blinks at him.

“Ouch — but you’re all good, then?” his inflection is deep and smooth and outrageously even given there’s something somersaulting over the walls of his stomach — fuck the butterflies, his innards have been deemed a parkour zone. He hopes she doesn’t register the breathiness of his dialogue as what it truly denotes. Harry clears his throat, flashes his gaze to her feet, blinks back up to her, and tells her, with a pasted, soft smile (that looks otherwise easygoing and lax) as he jokes, “No crutches?”

“No,” Isla shakes her head, mirth surfacing in the form of her eyes crinkling, and she kicks out with one of her feet weakly, “No crutches—“ her fingers cross quickly, and she lifts the same arm with the fucking!! wristlet!! He’s going to go insane if she keeps flashing it at him, “Let’s knock on wood.”

She chortles softly as the corners of his mouth jolt, and he reaches a hand out to rap against a cabinet softly. And, she looks so goofy is the thing. She’s sophisticated, and womanly, and she’s Peitho — Harry knows her inside and out. But she’s wearing converse with smileys markered over the heads and she wobbles on one foot, and her fingers are crossed. Her sleeve had gotten caught in her car door and she’d rectified the situation in the least smooth manner he’s ever seen—

Fuck. He’s so fucked. He’s so beyond fucked.

His submissive — Isla Cleery — lets her foot drop as her soft peal of laughter dies off, and his mouth twitches. As she glances about herself, pupils roaming over the crown-molding, Harry just watches her. And then she blinks at him and says, “Is this …the whole tour, then?”

He wants to roll his eyes because she’s characteristically impatient and it doesn’t surprise him, and she’s inquisitive, and she’s mouthy, and—

“No,” Harry tells her, leant against the jamb of the pantry, a smile playing over the plush of his mouth, “There’s, I think, just a smidge more to the house than the entryway and the kitchen. And the moldless laundry room.”

“Just a smidge,” Isla makes a motion with her fingers, compressing space between her forefinger and thumb, and Harry pushes off the frame to give her a tour. Because that’s what he’s doing, because this is work, and he will keep it professional, and under no circumstance can he tell her that he knows she’s Peitho on Fridays and that she likes to wear lace over those doe-eyes and get whipped by him because he’s Eros.

Cogs turn before lips part and a tongue flaunts — because it’s sensible, and saying something would be insensible, Harry thinks. It’s a nuclear bomb to drop in a professional showing of a house of all things — on a Friday, when he knows, now, that post this showing he’ll drive over to Indulge and meet her kneeling. Their Friday. It’s a nuclear bomb to drop because it scrawls boundaries out. It’s — well. It’s a lot to consider. For himself, in the first place. Because he’s unsure if it's a boundary he’s willing to scrawl over. Their anonymity was their sanctity. It had no strings beyond the club. Which was scary and exciting on one hand, but on the back of the same palm, it was safe. Nulling anonymity meant it was real. Real names. Real people. And that was, what? Kinky friends with benefits? Dating?

Hey, love. Missing you. Come over, he imagines texting the (currently) nameless number in his phone (that their professional, work-related chat had stemmed from), wanna tie you up and flog you. Bring an overnight bag.

God. He hasn’t done that in so long. And he doesn’t know that he wants that.

Of course, beyond his own hesitations, there are hers. He could imply that he’d coaxed her over a rope with a rumbling wand and a perpetual tug over chained nipple clamps, last week, and send her running for the hills in the process. It all sort of goes back to that sanctity in the anonymity thing. And. Well.

What if he wasn’t even her type?

Harry shakes the thought off as he leads them through the bare living area and opens the first door on the wall that isn’t in a hallway on the opposite side of the house. He says nothing.

He says something.

“Master bedroom,” he clears his throat.

Isla roams behind him, head tilting and pivoting as if to drink in every detail. The room follows the same trend of gray flooring — it travels into the majority of the home. There are simple white walls with simple white floor boards and simple white crown molding. Harry imagines an X-cross would suit the furthest corner of the room well. In red. Pop of color, if you will. He bites into his lip as the young woman trails through the space.

“This is really nice. Is this—“ her palm rests over a doorknob that sticks from a mysterious door, “Closet, or?”

She pushes it open before Harry can respond, and her pupils wend over what is the ensuite. An ensuite. A fancy ensuite. There’s a shower that looks as if it could fit a party of four. Her apartment, back home, cries in barren.

“Ensuite,” the male supplies, slipping in behind her as Isla trails her hand over the cream white laminate of the jack and jill sink.

It looks to be freshly renovated, just as the kitchen had been, the smooth gray of the cabinetry fresh and sleek and unchipped.

“God. That’s a shower.”

Harry attempts to restrain himself from imagining her lewd dishabille as she slinks off spiffy workwear slowly — it had to be spiffy, whatever she did. His first impression had been a pencil skirt and heels in a Cal-mart self checkout. He attempts to restrain his imagination from venturing to images of her nude form behind the glass of the shower; a body he knew too well from personal, intimate experience. Tries not to think about her curves through the fogged obstruction. Tries not to think about slipping in beside her. Isla Cleery. His Peitho.

“This one is the closet,” Harry twists a knob on the opposite side of the ensuite to showcase a walk-in with shelving units that bear similarity to the pantry.

“Oh! Lovely,” she peers in, and tells him, inflection sturdy with sarcasm, “How quaint,” and then twists her face to him and mouths, “Are you fucking kidding?”

His mouth twitches. His heart is still sort of racing. Fuck. Bu-dum. Fuck. Bu-dum. Fuck. Bu-dum. Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“This is the size of the bedroom in my apartment. Are you sure this is in my price range?”

“Mm.”

“There has to be something wrong with the property.”

“Well,” the realtor gives a long sigh after a moment of pondering lull, feigning a solemn demeanor, and Isla twists to face him, brows pinched. “Since we are in California, I am lawfully obligated to disclose any deaths on the property within the last three years.”

“Sorry — deaths?”

“Mm,” his eyes blank woefully, as if deep in thought, blinking to her nonchalantly, albeit regretfully, “Murder, unfortunately.”

Isla Cleery’s doe eyes widen incredulously. Harry’s mouth quirks.

He says, after a second of indulging in her curious mortification, “M’just fucking with you.”

The young woman balks. She blinks. And then her eyes roll at his apparent lack of professionalism. Once she gathers her composure, though, she notes how …weirdly attractive it was to hear him swear. It’s, perhaps, the first time, and feels oddly vulgar to fly off the teeth of such a …seemingly wholesome person.

“Is this — that’s how you get me to buy a house?” the young woman laughs in nervous disbelief.

“No. S’how I get a laugh,” the realtor’s dimples awaken, “But, no. No murders,” his cadence carries traces of humor as he leads out of the ensuite, Isla tagging behind, “No mold. No plumbing issues. Inspection came through clean. Sellers are just in a pinch to relocate, and they need to sell fast.”

The submissive hums in understanding, trailing behind as Harry directs them back into the living area.

And the thing with playing the nonchalant quiet game, with hesitation in venturing to unveil secrets and throw caution of sanctity to the wind, was that despite all of it, Harry was still dying to know everything about Isla Cleery. It itched at him horribly. She was his submissive, and he knew her, inside and out, physically. He knew all there was to know in a sexual realm — the tells of her body of the precipice of a crest, the subtle signs of her slip into unadulterated submission, her fetishes, her un-fetishes, her limits, the line to toe at just before reaching them. He knew Peitho. And the thing was, that now, with Peitho trailing behind him as he toggles light switches into bathrooms and spare bedrooms, denuded of her Peitho garb and lines, he wanted to know the actress exposed.

The window of interrogation unfolds itself, entirely unmanipulated and unintended. Open-ended. Small talk, typical lines he uses to market to all clients. Lines like ‘perfect for kids.’ That’s a good one, and that’s where it starts.

And it starts in a spare bedroom, just beside the other bathroom he’s prior revealed. The man nudges at a door to present a bedroom, smaller than the first had been, and Isla inquires, though formed as more of a statement yearning confirmation, “Three bedrooms, you said.”

“Three bedrooms. S’really spacey. Great for family,” he wanders into the bare space, and adds, spiel absentminded, “Nice neighborhood, too, I hear. Good for kids.”

“Oh,” Isla says in response to that, a little shake to her head, “None of those. God, no. I mean, someday, hopefully. But. Just me, for now.”

Just me, for now.

No kids. No boyfriend he’s unwittingly served as a masked side piece for. This is all very interesting information. Harry carries the same trend into the opposite room beside the first. The third bedroom. This one has clearly been used as an office — there’s built in cabinetry, and as Isla Cleery ogles over the paneling and expresses, “This one would be perfect for an office,” Harry discovers another subtle in.

“I think so. Built in cabinetry — f’course, you could always reno and knock it down if it’s not your taste,” Harry cocks his head, the question masked entirely by innocuous small talk, “What do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh, I’m a paralegal,” she smiles.

Paralegal. Work that leaks into weekends. His memory traipses into reminiscence of details from their first conversation, so many weeks prior. The shift from Saturdays to Fridays.

“I presume you work from home a lot, then.”

“It’s …yeah,” she answers, after a moment. “A lot, as of late, actually.”

“Well,” the curly-haired brunette tells her, of course, never missing the opportunity to insert a cheesy quip of advertisement, “In that case, this office will be well suited.”

Isla Cleery. Paralegal. No kids. Allergic to pineapple. Cherries. Harry takes mental notes of details, sewing pieces together like a makeshift, mental quilt as he leads her to the deemed gem of the property. They’re in the living room, and the pads of his fingers nudge into the crevice of the sliding glass door handle, tugging to expose the backyard.

It’s gardened haphazardly with shrubbery beside the brick of the building, and there’s weeds that cluster in cowlicks over the panel of concrete that’d serve well for a patio table and a grill. But besides a few tussocks on grass that need mowing and a general need for maintenance, it’s a yard with potential. Spacey, broad, fenced — if it were up to Harry, he’d put a garden in behind the bend of the brick, just beyond the view of a master bedroom window. Maybe build a pool. Pot some Calibrachoas, sow some Lantana, pretty benches with some pretty throw pillows — call it a day. String lights can illuminate any garden space (literally), and there’s even a tree for said lights, that stands at the edge of the property, just in the boundary of the fencing. It’s probably been around longer than he himself has.

“Oh, wow. What a yard,” Isla blinks beside him, and though her tone carries no sarcasm, despite the obvious work the lawn could use, the man’s marketing spiel is automatic — second nature.

“It definitely needs a proper mowing, but — I mean, just look at all that space. There’s a lot of potential. I see a gem,” there’s that word again — the soles of his dress shoes crease tufts of grass as he ambles, emphasizing with his hands, and Isla follows beside him, gaze entranced, “You could entertain, you could garden,” he shoots her a grin, “D’you garden?”

“Oh, I’d love to,” Isla tells him, waving with her arm after a moment, her smile crinkly, “but there’s only so much of that to do on a balcony. This is,” she motions out with her arms, “A lot of space. Definitely.”

He stops short, pivoting in her direction slowly, and asks, mouth twitchy, “What’s your favorite flower?”

“Hydrangeas,” she tells him after a moment, biting into her lip.

Hydrangeas.

Another square of color.

Hydrangeas. Cherries. Paralegal. No kids. An allergy to pineapple.

“Hydrangeas,” he motions with an open palm, “You could definitely plant hydrangeas here. But, if I were you,” he tells her after a moment, as his palms fall back to his side and he digs his hands into the pockets of his slacks, teasing, “I’d just plant a cherry tree.”

Her mouth crooks.

“And this is,” he starts, talking, again, with his hands close in motion, “not an HOA neighborhood, which has its own downfalls, but it also means you don’t need permits to do anything. Cherry tree, shed, garden, pool. No permits.”

“I hate HOA, anyways,” Isla tells him, smiling on the latter, “So that’s a perk in my book.”

For a moment, her gaze trails out to the edge of the property, and she catches sight of the enormous tree that stands in the corner of the yard. It’s tall — it reminds her of the type of tree she’d climb as a little kid. Her mother would find her in the front yard, straddling a branch in a sundress, the skirt muddled with dirt from the bark Isla had scraped over in her ascension — and the sheer volume of her shrill yelling could be heard on the other side of the neighborhood. Isla Jane, you get down from there right this second! That is absolutely unladylike!

Isla squints, warm from the pleasant reminiscence.

“Is that — there’s a rope swing?”

The sudden excitement that suffuses her tone has Harry’s mouth quirking, and Isla’s steps increase in pace. What had previously been leadership morphs into a charmed follow. She practically marches in a beeline for the tree, strands of hair billowing softly in the breath of the wind, and Harry cocks his head as they come to a stop ahead of it, amused.

“Any little nieces or nephews?”

His eyebrows twitch as Isla veers toward him, blinking, “Oh, are you kidding? I’ll be using the rope swing.”

He blinks as he watches her run a hand over the rope, abrasive from the weather and the aging it's endured. Secured to the end is a tire, much like the ones he himself had grown up with. He expects her to take her hand away, to continue the tour, but then she casually plants the sole of her shoe into the opening of the tire like she means to clamber up onto it, and Harry can’t bridle his incredulous mirth. Quickly, he takes a subtle step forward, protectively, but he keeps his arms at his sides, and the young woman’s so entranced by the activity of climbing that she wouldn’t notice the intentions behind the motion, anyhow.

She does note that he’s there, and her head turns over her shoulder to cast him a glance as she warns, “If this breaks and I fall, you can’t laugh.”

The whole situation is so bizarre that, if Isla wasn’t Isla, Harry would contain his laughter for the sake of polite professionalism. But because it’s Isla — there’s just no way he’d be able to.

Despite this, he clears his throat and feigns that same sense of professionalism, regardless of the clear amusement that leaves his cushiony mouth pursing.

“I would never,” he assures, refraining from placing his hand onto her thigh, well beyond professional realms, to give her a boost as she wraps her palms over the rope, “If it breaks, I will personally climb this tree and tie this swing back up, because it clearly means so much to you.”

“That’s very,” she grunts, “chivalrous of you,” she shoots him an open-mouthed grin as she plants the opposite foot into the tire, just as she had prior, locking her legs in a stance. Her smile slips a bit, and eyes widen as the tire, just as Harry had expected, rocks forward.

“Oh!”

“Okay — okay,” he gives. One of his palms latches onto the back of her thigh, just above the bend of her knee, and the opposite harbors stability by the other end of the tire.

Isla stiffens at the touch, but the same grip helps in that it makes her own sturdier as an involuntary reflex. Her cadence comes out nervous, “I’m fine, I’m fine. You can’t hold onto it, I have to do it myself. How can I know that I can, if I buy this house,” she grunts, removing a hand to paste a grip above the other hand in an effort to climb, “if I have someone holding it right now.”

His touch has softened considerably over the back of her leg as he’s able to stabilize the tire, and now, instead, it simply hovers. Despite this, he keeps his clutch on the swing.

“As the one giving the tour,” Harry tells her, an incredulous note leaking into his tone, “I’m not keen on letting my client fall off a rope swing, on my watch, and break a leg.”

“I’m not going to break my leg.”

Of course. She’s stubborn. He knows that, so he supposes her sudden conviction is to be expected, but—

“Listen, we knocked on wood, love,” Harry stares up at her, traces of genuine nervousness interlacing his otherwise joking inflection, “but I’d really prefer you didn’t walk out of here on crutches when you narrowly avoided them last week.”

“It wasn’t narrow,” Isla scoffs at the half-jest, her brows pinched in determination as she pulls herself up with her arms and throws a leg over the top of the tire.

“Well,” his mouth purses as the hovering hand opts to hesitate over the leg that she hasn’t clambered over the rubber, “I’m not letting go of the tire until you’ve at least got the other leg over, because it’s going to flip over if I let go.”

Isla throws the other leg over once she’s situated the first. In an impressive feat of athleticism and grace — the latter a quality that’d been severely lacking when her sleeve had become wedged in her car door — she pulls herself up and wriggles into a comfortable sit over the top of the swing. The rope wedges in her palms, stemming from between her thighs. She blows out a breath. Harry lets go of the tire, genuinely impressed.

“I think I have a dilemma,” the young woman tells him, after a moment.

The male’s mouth crooks. “A dilemma?”

“I can’t,” she chews into her bottom lip, “make the swing move.”

This is, possibly …no — probably, the most bizarre interaction he’s ever endured in a showing of a house.

Harry doesn’t mind it one bit.

“Isn’t that unfortunate,” he tuts.

“It is, it really is, because, you know, I’ve come all this way,” the man hums as Isla expresses, her speech becoming enmeshed with laughter, “I climbed it. And now I can’t move.”

He blinks up at her, feigning pity, “What an unfortunate series of events.”

“It’s a tragedy!” she calls down to him.

“A crying shame,” the man tells her in agreement, even as he winds his palms over one side of the tire and tugs, hiding the buckling at the corners of his mouth with a downcast gaze.

He lets go. The swing sways. Isla Cleery chortles softly. It’s a bit of a melody.

“Thank you,” she tells him, “So much. You know. I’m really starting to see the appeal of the property, actually.”

“Are you?”

As the swing slows from the singular tug, Isla holds onto the rope like a lifeline and wriggles back to begin her slip off into the ledge of the opening in the center of the tire. Again, the realtor takes a step forward, but this time, she tells him, “No, really, I have it. Thank you.”

If Isla had a shred of shame left, she’d probably feel a bit embarrassed by the circumstances. She’s just climbed onto a rope swing upon a whim, with little grace, might she add, during a showing of a house. Totally unusual occurrence. And if Harry were any other realtor, he’d probably balk at the entire display, appalled. But there’s just this thing, Isla decides — she can’t pinpoint it. It’s, like, she just feels …little inhibition to bridle herself, in the moment. Isla Cleery is quiet. She’s reserved. She’s refined. She works at a desk and looks through documents and reads books for fun and never strikes up conversations with strangers. But deep down, she’s just silly, little Isla Cleery. And she’s brazen, and quippy, and jesting — all of the qualities she unhinges at Indulge that’d prior been capsulated. And she feels little want to follow protocols and mull over normalcy in the presence of the realtor — regardless of their little knowledge of one another. He’d ogled her basket in the grocery store and struck up a goofy conversation in the middle of a Cal-mart, after all.

The man had little shame.

But beyond that, it’s… there’s just something oddly familiar, still, that she’s been unable to define. It’s going to drive her fucking nuts. She knows it will.

Despite her headstrong assertion, Harry decides Isla Cleery does not have it. Because as she hops off into the grass, she subsequently slips a white-knuckled grip onto the edge of the tire, shoots a pained glance to her ankle, and procures a mantra of “ow, ow, ow.”

A crease works over his brow bone and alarm flashes over his features as he curbs gripping onto her reflexively, “Are you alright?”

“Ow — I think I — my ankle.”

“Your — Oh, Christ.”

He shouldn’t have let her climb the stupid rope swing.

Does he have particular jurisdiction in the context? No, probably, he doesn’t, Harry decides. But. Still.

And then Isla Cleery blinks up at him through her eyelashes, still knelt in what he’d initially interpreted as a tensed, genuinely pained bend, glints of mischief glimmery in the gaze. Her grip loosens and becomes a lot less white-knuckled, and her mouth crooks in a way that’s a lot more mirthy. She stands straight, the corners of her mouth twitchy, and asserts, “And that’s my laugh.”

Harry blinks, and glances at her ankle. She shakes it out, rolling it in what’s obviously meant to simultaneously serve as a mockery and a showcase that she’s fine, after all.

“Your—“

“Laugh. You got me with the murders, I got you with the,” the young woman sticks her foot out in his direction, “ankle.”

Harry is going to string her up by her ankles tonight, he decides. He swallows. That wasn’t a laugh at all. Regardless, his mouth jolts wryly.

“Quid pro quo,” the young woman tells him.

Isla rolls her ankle around. Her pupils wend over his features. And then something just …clicks. Because the familiarity beneath the shift in the jade gaze, the cool calculation, is irrefutable. Because it sends shivers slinking down the knobs of her spine.

Something clicks, and she wards it off.

The thing with last minute appointments was that it entailed last minute planning. Last minute train of thought — the kind that’d gloss over minute details a well-prepared cognizance wouldn’t otherwise gloss over.

Because the thing is, when Isla had planned to drive from work to the cafe for a bite to eat, she’d expected that she wouldn’t have a window of time to eat between the showing of the house and her Friday night Indulge festivities. She had expected, however, that post the house showing, she’d at least have enough of a span to comfortably stop by her apartment to pluck up her mask. And then that fell through. So.

Isla is late to Indulge.

It’s not intentional. Her house showing ran a smidge later than expected, and then the traffic back to hers was abhorrent, and then the traffic to Indulge was untimely, because whoever was in the blue-plated antique Cadillac on the one lane road fragment of the drive really enjoyed taking their sweet, blue-plated time, and, well.

She’s fifteen minutes late. On the dot. She knows it, and part of her hopes that Eros doesn’t mind a fifteen minute lapse of judgment in their typical schedule. There never really was a set time to begin with, she reasons with herself. He just so happened to show up in the allotted room of the night in a certain time frame, and she just so happened to always be there, kneeling in waiting.

It’s fifteen minutes past that time frame, now.

Perhaps what most had thrown her off of the carefully outlined rhythm of her agenda for the night is the bemusement and restraint to bridle gawking that she’d faced at the house showing. Because Harry Styles — there was this thing …about him. And at first, she had been unable to pinpoint it. It was like the thing at Cal-mart, the first time. The familiarity. Back then, she’d chalked it up to the plaster of his face over benches. Because it was a familiar face. The benches — those were an easy explanation.

But then upon introductions on the curb, it was something else. Something …itchier. Something on the tip of her tongue, like a word she couldn’t place despite the knowledge of the first letter. Something about his voice.

But then she’d seen his eyes. And the thing is, she knew they were green. But there was a plethora of green irises in a sea of eyeballs. It wasn’t the vibrant jade in and of itself — it was the way they’d narrowed in evident exasperation in response to her caper. Because before then, that forest gaze had been all friendly twinkles and glints of jest. And then they’d hardened in calculation, the way they did on Eros every Friday night when she pointed her toe out of line, and—

It was ridiculous, Isla told herself. Harry Styles was not her mysterious Eros. There was simply no way; there was no way that she’d bumped into her Eros outside of Indulge by total coincidence, and that their interactions in a real world setting went beyond a single conversation between two (seemingly) strangers.

It would be, like. Some bullshit divine doing, at that point. There was just no way.

She’s still trying to shake off the jitters of the mortifying prospect as she, doing her best to be delicate, slides in through the door of the White Room. The young woman shuts it with a quiet click, a careful motion. In her peripherals, she sees Eros, sat on his verdant throne, but she doesn’t look at more than said peripherals will allow her to decipher before she wordlessly slips into a kneel and ducks her head.

For a moment, the dominant doesn’t say anything.

“You’re late,” are the first words that fall from his mouth.

He’s upset. She can tell from traces in his tone.

The young woman starts, fervently, “Yes, I’m—“

“Did I tell you,” his cadence cuts off her own — mellow and apathetic in its temperament, “that you could talk?”

Isla swallows. Her pupils focus on the tile until it's nothing but a milky, shiny blur. “No, Sir.”

“So why,” she doesn’t see him lean forward, perse, but she does hear the chair as he does so, “are you still talking?”

To that, Isla doesn’t answer. The dominant sighs.

“D’you know how late you are?”

There’s a tense silence that encapsulates the air of the room, and Isla bites her tongue.

“I asked you a question. You can answer me.”

“Fifteen minutes, Sir.”

Eros corrects, “Sixteen minutes. It was sixteen minutes before you came into the room. Perhaps today we will learn about time management.”

Isla swallows the lump in her throat, a chill working down her skin at the steely tone of his voice.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I had a …prior appointment, and I — I had to stop by my place after, and I didn’t have time, and it was …poor judgment on my part.”

“I didn’t ask for an excuse, Peitho,” the man rejects her disdained apologies with a nonchalant coolness to his cadence, and then he sighs again. The young woman hears the chair creaking as he seemingly sits back against it.

Peitho. He never calls her Peitho. Never just Peitho.

Always pet, or sweetheart, or darling, or no moniker alluded to in his sentence, at all. But never Peitho. She’d upset him with her tardiness. Genuinely. She hadn’t expected punctuality to be such a …sore subject.

“Look at me.”

Isla does, obediently. She tips her chin up and casts her gaze to him, through the lace. He dons the latex hood, as always, and his gloves, an intimidating shade of jet, like the terror of nightfall, mysteriously coat his hands in typical fashion. Those lay laxly over the back of the chair. Perhaps most terrifying of all, however, are nuances of his character that wouldn’t typically pluck her attention.

Because it’s the same white button-down, although slightly unbuttoned by the collar, now. The same slacks. Isla stares at the dress shoes in mortified recognition. She ogles blood red serpentine ribbons of color. It’s the same pair Harry Styles had worn when showing her the house earlier that evening.

And Harry Styles tells her, then, leaning forward to brace his arms over his thighs, “You’re sixteen minutes late. What do you think we should do about that?” 

TDIAG MASTERLIST

[arkturusz]

@cult-of-the-eye here it is, hope you like it :3

MAG[REDACTED] - Blood in the Machine

Anonymous statement, regarding the statement maker's purchase and use of a strange desktop computer. Original statement given 4th of February 2024, recording by Arcturus Walker, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, Budapest. Put to tape on the 21st of March 2024. Statement begins:

I don't want to go into details as to why I came to make this decision. It was an offer too good to be true, just what a struggling university student needed: a cheap PC with great specs and with only 2 years of usage. I know how some sellers put enticing prices on Facebook Marketplace just to drop the real deal in later messages, but that wasn't the case. The owner got his hands on "something better" and saw no use in keeping this one around so he asked for the bare minimum that would still be a deal to him.

I went to pick up the desktop, it was a city away so I drove there. It was a bit weird how creeping closer to the destination all we had were dirt roads. I live in the suburbs, I know not all city councils pay it enough attention, but these weren't those dusty solid roads. These were muddy, the tracks barely visible and overgrown with grass. No, not grass, something more- vibrant.

The roads branched off a few hundred meters from my destination, only one going in its general direction so I followed it. I reached a house, no buildings in its neighborhood, crop fields on one side, a small forest on the other, the kind that always seems way more moist than the weather would allow it and always has that smell of thick mud and insects. I could only *enjoy* that for a moment before I got hit with something else, something fleshier. It was a stench that burnt into my nostrils. I try not to judge a house by the smell, my parents were chainsmokers and I've always been more ashamed to bring friends home than it seemed they were bothered by the odor. Assuming I just met a butcher, or really just someone that keeps their own livestock I headed inside.

It felt like a hallucination, it really did. I stepped into a corridor, my lungs full of the dull yet powerful stench that covered everything. My brain felt foggy and with a headache that felt like pressure on my skull I continued inside. I was hoping to pick up the computer and get going right away, and I did my best to accomplish just that. I lifted the PC which was rather heavy and hurried back the way I came when something caught my attention. As I was putting my shoes on my brain alerted me of movement. From all around. The walls seemed to have this rhythmic pulse to them. If I wasn't at the doorstep I would've fainted, that's for sure, but I made it out to my car, telling myself it's the headache getting to me.

The drive back was nothing out of the ordinary, but that foul smell just wouldn't leave my nose. I parked, opened my boot and to no surprise the aroma oozed out of the case like a thick invisible fog, bringing back that numbing pressure that I felt earlier. I grabbed all the cleaning chemicals and similar that I could find lying around, giving it a thorough rub on the outside. I pride myself on my expertise in software, but the hardware always confused me and I never bothered to learn it. Thus I did not want to open it up, which proved to be a grave mistake.

For 6 months straight there seemed to have been no problem with the PC. It worked as intended, was just as fast as I expected and the smell was only noticeable if you got up close to sniff the case. Which I didn't. But two days ago I didn't need to either. I woke up to a strange smell. It wasn't as strong or numbing as the one I felt at the house but it certainly wasn't pleasant. We had maintenance that night, we were notified that from 10pm we should be expecting a blackout. I didn't mind, but it seemed that whatever was in my computer did not like it. I decided to give it another round of cleaning once I was done with my cup of coffee. I dressed up and went to pull out the cables on the back, but they were a lot harder to unplug than I remembered. I ripped out the one which was most limiting length-wise and I pulled the rest of the case out from under my desk. As I saw the back of the PC I had to stop myself from throwing up.

Now I'm not afraid of gore, I grew up in a generation (and the subcultures) that made it such a commonplace it's usually unamusing. On screen, at least. But I didn't expect to come face to face with a chunk of skin stretching across where my plugs should have been. The cable I ripped out laid on the floor, a dark red liquid dripping from it, staining my carpet. Same thing could be found on the back of the case. Turns out the cable wasn't just stuck, it was *integrated* into the fleshy mess that shouldn't have been there.

That's when I got a screwdriver and ripped the case open. It seemed like the only logical way to deal with whatever infested my computer and I didn't know what else I could do. The case came away like a sticker, the inside melted to a wall of human-like skin, peeling away it left a residue of perspiration on the plastic.

The flesh monster's skin seemed to have formed a block, covering its insides from all angles, pressing against the vents and pushing out through the outlets. The cord I ripped had left a nasty hole that started to scar up, but I wanted to see what I was up against and I *didn't let it*. I scraped away the scar tissue with the screwdriver and pushed it through the wound, detaching the vein that supplied my cable from the wall of skin. The case still hugging it from the outside cast a shadow that made it hard for me to see in, so I turned on my flashlight, stretching at the hole with my tool, trying to take a peek.

I saw veins running across the surface, the inside was humid and *warm*, at least warmer than room temperature but it wasn't the heat of a working human body. It was starting to cool. In the middle of the case I saw something heavy, a huge knot in the middle of the circulatory system which kept beating in a steady rhythm. It was slow, the pulse was invisible from the outside, yet it kept pushing blood through the opening, trying to close it up, but the scarring slowed down significantly from when I first ripped that cable out. It ran on electricity, it had to have been the case, the inside had a greenish tone from what I could make out, meaning that during the blackout it started rotting. The system that somehow ran like a normal computer for months started to decay, which reminded me of the smell my brain ignored from my initial shock that once again sat heavy in my lungs.

I did not reconnect it but I didn't know what to do with it either. Who would have I called? I scoured the internet to find your institute, and I left my PC to you. Past making this statement I wish not to associate myself with this case any longer.

Statement ends. First thing after reading this statement I went down to artifact storage to ask about this curio. Turns out whoever left it to us delivered it too late, the "heart" was not beating and the thing once stretched against the walls of it's case now sat collapsed and rotten in the organic section, making any other follow-up almost impossible. Looking for the flesh house also yielded no results, meaning I will put this case to rest as-is. What does keep me wondering are the intentions of the seller. Why would an avatar of the Flesh sell a piece of itself to an unsuspecting individual? There was no mention of the *flesh block* attempting to leave its case meaning there was no intention of spreading the system either. Maybe they didn't intend the buyer to possess it for so long, maybe they tried to alert us of their vicinity. But they failed. They left us with a cold trail. *sigh* Recording ends

This is episode one of my series I call MAGREDACTED, here are all the episodes out now:

The Vast The Stranger The Dark

New episodes will be posted over on @archivus !

[dianneking]

Can I request for Marilyn/Laurel taking care of sick s/o reader?

Hi, sorry it took so long, the new year brought very little free time to dedicate to writing, sadly. It is a mini-shot, just a scene, but I didn't want to push plot in it because it felt right in its simplicity, as if we were looking in on reader/marilyn's morning together.

Tags: Fluff, established relationship, reader has a cold/fever, mini-shot.

In Sickness - Marilyn x sick!Reader

The alarm clock rang, its loud beeping driving what felt like nails into your skull. You kept your eyes closed, trying to ignore it and hopefully make it stop with your willpower alone.

Luckily a body shuffled besides you, rolled on top of you and grasped for the offending phone on your bedside table, plunging the room back into blissful silence. Your pounding headache diminished but didn't go away; you kept your eyes determinedly closed.

"Good morning, sleepyhead" came a giggle from above you, and soft lips pressed against yours, before the lovely pressure on you rolled away from you, and immediately you acutely felt the lack of warmth. You snaked a hand towards her, grasping her wrist before she could leave the bed.

“M’rlyn…don’t go…’m cold,” you muttered, sleep still slurring your words.

“Well, I cannot very well just lie in bed with you all day, as pleasant as that may sound. Weems would have our heads!” she gently pried your fingers from her wrist, and you could hear her heading into the bathroom. Duty was calling you as well, but you let yourself lounge some more under the duvet. Just five more minutes…

“Darling, you really should be getting up now.” She was back, and planted a kiss on your forehead, before gasping “Oh my goodness, you’re burning up! Let me get the thermometer, I’d bet my castor bean saplings that you are running a fever.”

“No… way. ’m not sick, ‘m just tired.”

“Honey, you still haven’t opened your eyes.” You squinted, then groaned as the light painfully hit your eyes. You quickly closed them again.

“Yeah, no. There’s no way you’re getting out of that bed today.” You heard the beeping on the thermometer and Marilyn going back and forth, but you couldn’t make sense of what she was doing with your eyes closed. The pounding in your head was too strong. You felt like your skin was on fire, and at the same time the cold was seeping in your bones.

A wet cloth on your forehead brought you some sort of respite. “There you go sweetheart. Can you manage to drink a little bit for mama?” You tried your best to comply, cracking your eyes open in a room that was thankfully less lit than before – she had drawn the curtains and turned off all the lights, and was now holding a glass of water and what you recognized as a Tylenol pill. “There you go, open up,” you let her feed her the pill and wash it down with the cool water. Even that little bit of effort left you exhausted and you let yourself sink back into the pillows, the cold cloth still on your forehead. Marilyn lovingly stroked your cheek, then pressed the lightest of kisses to your chapped lips, and murmured:

“You stay here and try to sleep it off, I’ll tell Weems that you’re on sick leave today and I’ll be right back to check on you as soon as I have a break.”

You drifted back into sleep, lulled by her loving voice. She would take care of you, as she always did.

----

Liked it? Here's the link to my fanfiction masterlist where you can find more stuff written by me.

[frracturedjaw]

hi! I'm super excited to see a new slasher writing blog! :D do you think you could write just something fluff/comfort with Vincent taking his mask off in front of his s/o for the first time? thank you!! ♥♥

baby steps (vincent sinclair + reader)

🔉so my darling (acoustic) - rachel chinouriri

summary: vincent is learning to be comfortable in his own skin with reader's help.

warning(s): none

an: house of wax anons coming out of the woodwork... ily, thank u for the request :)

as much as Vincent wants this, the idea still makes him nervous. he knows you'd never pressure him to take the mask off, you have more grace than that. and patience. god, you are so patient with him. it only makes him feel all the more guilty that he's taking his time with this. he can only try to reassure himself that you understand, maybe not entirely, but enough.

you keep your eyes shut -- just like you promised -- when he opens the bedroom door. light from the hallway illuminates the familiar shape of your body, one he'd lovingly memorized. now he would allow you the same privilege.

you feel the bed dip and creak as he crawls in beside you. his eyes adjust to the darkness quickly, your silhouette turning to face him. your legs curl around his as they usually do when he settles into bed. then, your hand splays over his chest. it's bare now. having shed his thick sweater, he permits your hands on his body.

Vincent finds himself suffocatingly aware of how utterly exposed he feels. even in the privacy of his own home, his own room, under the blanket of his own bed, he feels a thousand eyes on him. even when the only ones watching are his own.

"you okay, Vinny? you heart's beating a mile a minute." you whisper. he hums affirmatively, just a little too quickly to be convincing. "we can stop if you want. I don't wanna push--" his fingertips press against your lips, and he murmurs a 'no'. "alright, then." you acquiesce, pressing a kiss against his open hand, which curls to cup your jaw.

your hands continue across his collarbones, the delicate pads of your fingers flat against his skin. the darkness is thick and all-encompassing, and you can't tell much difference if your eyes are open or shut. Vincent knows you can't see him, but his heart thrums insistently nonetheless.

"you've got freckles?" it's more a statement than a question. Vincent hums again, unsure of how to respond. your fingertips rub gently across his shoulders, as if there was something written there. "you're so goddamn beautiful, Vince. I'm falling in love with you all over again." he feels heat rising in his skin, taking an intentional deep breath. he reminds himself that this is only a small step. he can stop whenever he wants. you'd understand. you'd understand. "you talk about yourself like you're a tragedy. I'll never understand you in that sense, I guess."

"sorry." if you weren't so close, you wouldn't have heard him. his voice is a hushed rasp, and his breath tickles your face. he can just barely see your lips pull back in a reassuring smile.

"aw, Vincent. I don't mean it like that. it makes sense, why you think the way you do. I just don't think I could ever see you as anything but pretty."

"...pretty?"

"yeah, pretty. gorgeous. divine, even. you remind me of an angel, Vince."

"Mmh." he mulls the words over in his head, allowing your hands to slide up his neck. he's never felt anything as pleasant as the way your fingers glide over the base of his skull, carding through his unkempt hair and raising goosebumps in their wake.

Momma never called him ugly. he'd been called names in the schoolyard, but nobody that mattered to him had told him there was anything wrong with the way he looked.

it was always implied, though.

"this is your face, now, Vincent. we're gonna take good care of our face, right?" she'd told him, pressing the edge of the mask down against his hairline. he never saw Momma scared (until the end), but he recognized the shrill note of horror in her voice whenever she caught him without it. the way their father would bring him into the office to gaze intently at the whorled flesh under lamplight, a persistent frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. he'd always say something under his breath before sending Vincent away. he learned that what laid beneath the mask was not his face. it was a mistake. like how broken arms and facedown paintings are mistakes. they can get fixed, but are never quite the same as how they should be. a tragedy, he thought.

your nails scratch gently at his scalp, occasionally drifting down the length of his hair. his breathing deepens, and his eyes fall shut. the rise and fall of cicada song is pleasantly loud, the sound filling his mind and leaving no more room for memories.

"can I touch you, Vincent?" your lips brush against his skin when you speak again. every inch of you -- as much as possible, anyways -- is already pressed against him. he can feel your pulse in his fingertips, the flow of his breathing matches yours. you may as well be tangled into one person. but his face was different. like it was separate from the rest of himself. in the bed was you, Vincent, and his face. you notice his apprehension. "I'll wait as long as you need."

you're about to tuck your head beneath his chin just as you always do before sleep when he leans into your hand. your fingers graze smooth ridges of scar tissue. you gaze up at him in the dark, blindly searching for some reaction, some reassurance that this is what he wants. he doesn't move to stop you when your hand moves lower. two fingers trace between his eyebrows, along the bridge of his nose. you find the dip of his cupid's bow, fingers passing over soft lips before settling against his cheek. your other hand rises to cup his face.

"hi." he mumbles and you feel a small smile spread over his features. a giggle slips out of you, and he catches it. the bed wobbles with shared laughter.

"hey," you reply, thumbs smoothing over his cheeks. your hands explore his entire face, his hands resting loosely at your forearms. he can feel every ridge of your fingerprints on the sensitive half of his face. it tingles strangely. he himself never really touches it. "thank you for letting me... y'know."

he doesn't respond, only nuzzling into your hands further. his eyelashes tickle against your skin as he lays butterfly kisses across your palms. for once, he finds himself lavishing in the attention instead of shrinking from it.

"I love you," he rasps.

"I'm glad I get to love you back."

[dashboardjuliet]

flesh and bone | chp 2: August 9

previous chapter: here

Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader oc

After a messy divorce, you move into a rural house determined to continue on with your life. Until you discover your new home is less empty than you believed it to be

Warnings: none atm, but this will be a nsfw story so please, no under 18 readers

When you come to, the world is bright.

You squint, groaning uncontrollably as you roll onto your side and scrub at your eyes.

It takes you a full minute to realize you aren’t alone on the floor. Opening your eyes fully, boots come into your view. Tilting your gaze upward, you come face to face with the skeletal one from the night before. They’re squating next to you, sitting on their heels with their elbows resting on their knees, skull face tilted as they look at you.

“Are you going to kill me?” Surprisingly, you’re calm in the face of death. Or numb. Numb might be the better word.

“Negative. Couldn’t even if I wanted to.”  

You’re taken back by the voice that comes from the skull. It’s deep, gravel-y, a heavy British accent that makes your eyes widen. If it wasn’t a murderer in your house, you would probably find it attractive. Although he did just say he wouldn’t kill you, so maybe you can allow yourself to feel the bubble of attraction to him. It also dawns on you, as you take a moment to process, that the jaw didn’t move as he spoke.

“How are you talking?”

“How do you talk?” You scowl at his response.

“Alright smart guy. This has been fun, but I am going to need you to leave my house. Now. Please.” You try to ask nicely, better to not anger the man currently invading your house. At least you’ve retained some sense of self preservation.

“If I could, I would. ‘M stuck here Sweetheart.”

“What the hell does that mean?” You push yourself up off the floor into a sitting position, and it allows you to take him in better. He’s still huge, but at this height with him squatting, you can see him more clearly. It dawns on you that what you’d first believed was his skull is actually… not. Looking close, you can see the faint lines of blond eyelashes, the silhouette of a nose poking through the nose hole of the skull. “Are you wearing a mask?”

“I can’t leave, that’s what that means. Been stuck here for a while. And yes, it is.”

“Just walk out the door, it’s pretty easy. Also can you please take it off, it’s kind of creepy.”

“Same answer as before, I can’t. Been wearing the bloody thing for years straight now, I’d take it off if I could.”

“Okay. I’m done with this.” You’ve reached your pleasant limit. Standing up, you ignore the creaking in your joints from laying on the floor all night, and move toward your front door. Opening it, you motion for him to move. “Get out before I call the cops.”

“I cannot leave. What’s not sticking in your head?” You can feel your blood pressure rising as he speaks. He’s stood now too, and once again you’re reminded how huge he is. You swallow any trepidation and resolve yourself to be pissed off.

“Nope, no more talking.” You leave the door open and move behind him. His head follows your movement, and you can tell his body tenses as you come up behind him and put your hands out to push. Your hands come up to plant themselves on his back, but you stumble forward, hands phasing through him and your eyes widen. You keep them there, staring at your fingers inside his form, wiggling them experimentally. Despite his form still being seemingly solid, you can see them move in him.  He turns, and now your hands are in his chest, and you crane your face up to look at him, your eyes wide.

Everything from the night before returns to your mind in an instant. Perhaps you weren’t as good at suppressing everything like your ex spouse thought you were. You blink, slowly, digesting the evidence presented in front of you.

“You gettin’ the picture now?” He asks as you remove your hands, pulling them into your chest, almost mirroring the position they were in in his. You swallow, and nod.

“I need coffee.”

---

Ten minutes later finds you sitting on the floor, back leaning against your kitchen cabinets, a large mug of coffee tucked between your slightly shaking hands. The mug had been a gift from your mother, shaped like a cow udder and patterned black and white. It feels ridiculous and silly in this slightly serious moment. Your… guest stands with his hip cocked, ‘resting’ on the kitchen island with his arms crossed over his large chest. Is he a guest? What do you call a person that can’t leave your house? Unwanted roommate? These questions flitter through your brain in silence as you stare at the pale tan liquid in your cup and the waves that your slight tremor makes.

“You broke?”

“Hardly,” You scoff, and then pause. “Maybe. You have to admit it’s a lot to take in.”

“Never said it wasn’t. You’re doing better than the others.”

“Others?”

“You think you’re the only one that’s moved in here while my big ass has been stuck? Most of the poor sods run the minute they see the mask.”

“Yeah I don’t fucking blame them. Have you seen yourself? Terrifying.” He doesn’t respond to you, so you assume that vein of your budding conversation is dead. Dead. You cringe.

“So you’re… dead.” You stumble over the word but it makes it out eventually. Looking up at him, you can now make out eyes looking at you. Now that it’s properly daylight, it’s easier to see what his hood had hidden from you. You couldn’t make out a color, but knowing they were there made you feel marginally better, made him feel more…human. Watching him, he doesn’t move.

“Don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I was never quite… human.” That seems to be all he’s willing to admit to you, and you nod, unbelieving.

This is out of your realm. You’re a school teacher. Not… someone capable of handling a… whatever he is. But briefly, the image of your old Italian grandmother flitters through your brain, back hunched from age and arms constantly curled from the combination of arthritis and cooking for decades, cornicello oversized and golden, hanging from her neck. Somewhere in a box is an evil eye she’d gotten from relatives in Greece and then gently given to you as a child. Maybe if it had been hanging in your doorway, this wouldn’t be happening.

“I wish my Nonna was here. She’d know what to do in this situation.” You speak more to yourself than to him, but your words must make him confused because when you raise your gaze back up, the skull mask is tilted in confusion like a dog. A rottweiler in human shape. The corner of your mouth ticks up at the thought.

“Your what?”

“Sorry, Grandma, it’s Italian. She was… oh, witch isn’t the right word but there’s not a good equivalent in english. Um, she would know what to do, with… this.” You make a swirl motion with your hand, trying to encapsulate all of what is currently in your kitchen. Even the thought of her makes the whole situation feel marginally easier to tackle. But she’s not here, long dead, and any wisdom she had she took with her to the grave. Maybe. There’s a possibility your father still has some of her books, but that’s not your top priority in the moment.

“That’s bollocks.” Now it’s your turn to be confused.

“What?”

“It’s bullshit. You tellin’ me your nan was a witch?”

“Okay, one, that’s rude. Two, you just said you’re not human and you’re telling me it’s not possible for her to be a witch?”

You stare at one another, watching as his eyes widen slightly, only to return to their heavily guarded state almost immediately, half lidded and hiding whatever color his irises are. Quietly, you make it your mission to figure that out.

“... ‘Right. I’ll give you that one.”

“Thanks. I think.”

After that, you both fall silent. You go back to staring at your coffee, questions cycling through your head while his looming figure stands in your periphery.

“We probably should lay out some ground rules.” The topic that you settle on is one that will need to be addressed. You hadn’t been planning on a roommate, especially one that could phase through walls and appear on command. Or so you suppose. You’re not entirely sure what being whatever he is encompasses. He’s not been exactly forthcoming with information on himself, and it makes putting together a plan in your head somewhat difficult. And that gives you more anxiety than you can handle. You need a plan.

You look up at him, eyes coming into direct contact with his, and you can feel your cheeks burn just slightly from the heavy attention of his gaze. He says nothing, you take it as a sign to continue your speech. Not that you’ve thought any deeper than the original that you had blurted out.

“Since we’ll be living… together,” You wince at your default word choice as soon as it leaves your mouth, but it can’t be helped. If it’s possible, his form freezes and becomes more stiff than it already was. “Um, my bedroom and bathroom are gonna be off limits.”

“You gonna confine me to two rooms like a fuckin’ dog?” His voice is steady and flat, but you can sense the heat, the simmering anger under the words. Above you both, the kitchen light flickers. Both of your heads crane up to look at it, and then back at one another as it settles back to just being on. His eyes are wide, as if he’s never been angry like that before.

“Okay… let’s rework that. How about just when the door is closed? And it’ll just be closed when I’m sleeping or have someone over, but I doubt that will happen. How does that feel?” You grip your coffee tighter, hoping you gave enough to the bartering table.

“‘S fine. And I’ll… try not to intrude. It’ll be hard, though. Might be a bit of a learning curve. Been alone for a while.” There’s a certain softness to his words that you haven’t heard yet in your short interactions. You nod slowly at him, a nod you would give one of your kids, gentle and understanding. The feeling is one you can relate to.

“It’s okay. It’s been a while since I’ve had a roommate that wasn’t my parents. We’ll make this work.” You weren’t entirely sure of what you were saying at the beginning, but now that the full thought has left your mouth, you feel more certain in your words. You will make this work. It’ll be hard and awkward and an adjustment from what you’ve grown used to, but you know you’ll be able to do it. Him, though, he’s a wildcard. And you don’t even know his name. Your eyes widen at that.

“Who are you?” You blurt out, and then purse your lips. “I mean, what's your name?”

He takes a moment, you can almost see the cogs in his brain turning as he thinks, and then says “Ghost.”

You blink once, and then twice. And then laugh.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

“What?”

“Your name is Ghost? And you’re like a ghost? That’s fake.”

“You got a problem with my name?”

“No, not a problem! You just have to admit it’s kind of ironic… and funny.” You shrug, the lilting laughter finally leaving your voice with a gentle reminder of its joy in your tone. You stare at each other again (something, you have a feeling, you both will end up doing often) before quietly, he huffs. His shoulders move slightly with the noise and your eyes widen with glee as you quickly realize that’s as much of a laugh that you’ll get out of him. Your smile widens into a grin, teeth showing.

“Guess it’s never crossed my mind.”

“You’ve never thought about it since you…got stuck?” You avoid the word dead since he seems to think otherwise.

“Had a lot to think about, just not that.” He shrugs, and you can give him this. You admit to yourself that an ironic name wouldn’t be your first thought if you were stuck somewhere. Dead, the voice in your head whispers. But he won’t admit that, so you say nothing. You stretch your arm, reaching to put your coffee up on the counter before pushing yourself up off the ground to stand. The clock on the over blinks out that it’s noon, and the world suddenly comes back to you. You need to unpack, badly, and school starts in less than a month and you’ve barely done anything to get ready. And now you have an inhuman roommate.

“What do I call you?” His voice distracts you from your thoughts, and your eyes drift upward toward the holes in the skull mask where you know they hide. He’s so tall, you remember slowly, the creeping memories of last night serving as a reminder. You rest your back on the counter as you look up at him, trying to guess the height difference. A foot? Foot and a half? “Did you hear me?”

“Huh? Oh! My name!” You blink, and then scowl. You hate your name. Instead, you supply your nickname. “Jack. You can call me Jack.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah, like Jackrabbit? When I was a toddler I had a habit of running from my parents as fast as I could. My dad started calling me Jackrabbit, but Jack stuck.” You shrug. You’ve always liked it more than your actual name, always felt more at home with the short syllables. He seems to ponder it for a moment, then nods.

“Jack. I’ll make sure to remember.” He speaks slowly, words rolling with his accent. It makes you shiver and then swallow, mouth suddenly dry. This, you decide, is not going to be an easy living situation. Especially if you keep reacting to his voice, and his height and just…him, the way that you have been. Hesitantly you add ‘Get Laid’ to the bottom of your mental list, hoping that might solve whatever you’ve got going on in your body.

“Well… I need to take care of… all of this.” You motion to the boxes everywhere, and he nods. “Um, if you need anything… just shout.”

He nods again, seemingly understanding that you’re trying to end your conversation. Slowly, still watching you, he goes back to stand at the sliding glass door, a perfect replica of how you found him last night. And then he just stands, and watches. You, the outside, you’re not quite sure, but you don’t have much more energy that you can give to him if you want to get your life sorted. So you nod, mostly to yourself, and get to work.

Unpacking takes the rest of the day, and even then, you still aren’t fully finished. You’re still waiting for a delivery from Ikea that your father had been kind enough to go pick up, shelves for books and a table for your living area, and you know it won’t feel fully complete until everything is in its place. But it’s getting close. You’ve hung all your art and concert posters in the living room, the hallway leading to your bedroom decorated with family wall hangings and photos, your family nazar hanging outside your bedroom, just in case.

And all throughout the day, as you moved from room to room, carrying misplaced items to where they belonged, Ghost watched from the sliding door. Gaze, you think, alternating betweening watching the empty cornstalks sway in the August heat, and you. You think you could feel it sometimes, the heaviness of his eyes following your movements. It made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, goosebumps traversing up and down your arms every time that you realized it.

As you lay in bed that night, you add two new tasks to the top of your mental list: Help your Ghost move on, and try not to get attached to him.

TAGLIST: @irnbru32

[reve-writes]

—courtyard kisses. | hades game zagreus x reader.

he's trying to escape. again. you need to stop him. again.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR ZAGREUS, you wouldn't have to be posted at the House of Hades for most of the day—or night, you could never really tell in the Underworld. As much as you loved his company, Zagreus was always too stubborn for his own good. Now, his hard skull was fixated on escaping to the surface and many were already assigned by Lord Hades to do everything in their power to stop him.

“Ah, ___,” He greeted you as he dashed quickly into his bedroom, seeming slightly disheveled. You rolled your eyes, following him inside as he rinsed his face with the basin by his bedside.

“Pleasant trip?” You asked.

“As pleasant as the last twenty,” he replied, dabbing the water on his face dry with a towel. “I might go for the twenty-second trip.”

You collapsed on the quilted sofa in his room. “Seriously, Zag? Take the day off. I can't be bothered to fight you for the fifth time today.”

“This will be easier if you simply let me pass, my dear ___.” Zagreus leaned against the doorway to his courtyard, shooting a pleading look towards you.

“Stop looking at me like that. While you have no concerns with upsetting your father, some of us actually don't want to be on the receiving end of his wrath.”

“Well, in that case.”

He immediately dashed out of his room and you peeled yourself off of the chair, running after him. When you reached the courtyard, he was still standing there by the railing with an amused look on his face.

You groaned in frustration, pushing him by the chest until his lower back was pressed against the balustrade. “Get back inside, Zag.”

Zagreus chuckled, combing his dark hair back with his fingers. You thought your heart skipped a beat. “And if I don't?”

You unsheathed one of your blades—one half of your double-ended sword and held it in front of you. “We've done this dance before. You know I don't want to hurt you.”

The two of you treated it as a normal sparring session, although usually Achilles would be there overseeing Zagreus' training. Usually, neither of you would actually be dead, as well. However, Zag's escape attempts had all turned regularity into chaos.

“Me neither.” Zag raised both of his hands up in surrender. You lowered your weapon, thinking that at least, for today, Zagreus would just stop running amok in the Underworld, but you underestimated how stubborn he was.

With a swift motion, he had knocked the short blade out of your hand and twisted his body around you, so now you were the one pressed against the balustrade. Your hands were clutching the top of the railing. His calloused hands covered yours, applying slight pressure to keep you in place. Your thighs were slotted in-between his. The lack of space was both suffocating and exhilarating at the same time.

“What are you doing?” You asked, trying to wriggle free. You couldn't move an inch without brushing against him.

He leaned forward and you felt his breath on your face. Instinctively, you leaned backwards, away from him. He smiled smugly. “What do you want me to be doing?”

A flush crept up your neck as his mismatched eyes bore into yours. It would be so easy to lean forward and kiss him. Blast. He was the Prince of the Underworld, dammit! You were not going to kiss him. You had known each other for most of your lives, anyway. It would be weird if—

“Let's make a deal, ___. I'll make sure Father doesn't know you're slacking on your guard duty.” He raised an eyebrow invitingly.

“You can't make sure of that,” you retorted, trying to push him off of you, but he didn't budge.

“He will be too busy being furious at me to care, ___. Moreover, do you really enjoy fighting me to death every time?” He emphasized his question with a frown.

You sighed, letting your head fall onto his shoulder. “You know I don't, Zag.”

He hummed. Zagreus tilted your chin up with one hand, forcing you to look at him. He's beautiful, you thought. The ambient dark lighting of the underworld framed him perfectly, showing off his sculpted jaw and brushing against his dark hair.

Like this, he only needed to say the word and you would be willing to do whatever he required of you.

“If I have to fight you one more blasted time, I may actually lose my mind,” he whispered. His free hand slid up your arm, to the back of your neck, tangling in your hair. While your heart was thumping so fast it could beat Hermes in a race, you held his gaze for one long moment, and then two.

“Okay, Zag,” you finally replied.

His eyes were unfocused, sliding down to stare at your lips. “Huh?”

“Let's make a deal,” you said. “I am frankly tired of fighting against you multiple times a day— Zag? Are you listening?”

“Can I kiss you?” He said that as if he was in a dream-like trance.

Did you mishear? Your eyes widened as his question registered and you subconsciously licked your lips.

“Stop kidding around, Zagreus.”

His different-coloured eyes shifted to stare into yours. He repeated the question once more, with the same stubborn look he would give you whenever you advised him against doing something.

“Can I kiss you, ___?”

The corners of your lips twitched upwards and you leaned forward, closing the gap between your lips. Your hands made their way up his chest to circle around his neck while he cradles your face, pressing his body against yours so impossibly close until all your senses were overpowered by him. You felt him everywhere on your skin. His taste lingered in your mouth. All you could hear was your own heartbeat and his gasps for breath.

His teeth caught your lower lip gently as he pulled away to trail kisses down your jaw to your neck. Your hands tangled in his hair as he pressed your body towards him.

“Zagreus,” you sighed out when he gave the juncture of your neck a tentative bite.

It felt like forever until the two of you broke apart with racing breaths. His thumb swiped at your lips as he reluctantly pulled away from you, while still keeping an arm around your waist. You smiled at him, brushing your hand through his hair to comb out the messiness.

“We should have done that sooner,” Zagreus said, chuckling.

“This is one of the rare occasions when I think you're absolutely right.”

Zagreus smoothed out your outfit as he finally let go of you. You tugged at his chiton to fix it as you stole another peck from him.

“Go show them, Zag. I'll be here when you return.”

[ ].

[mamuzzy-creates-stuff]

Alright, giving you Ordomaze with 💙

Because I think having them tipsy would be funny? I can't imagine drunken Ordo lmao

Hey @hexerein, thank you so much for the request! ♡ (￣З￣)

YES, drunk Ordo is really something challenging, but also I'm obsessed with the thought that Ordo is also a menace in his own way. I usually depict him as someone who never goes overboard with drinking since he likes to be in control, or doesn't drink at all when he doesn't want to - he is pretty much immune to social pressure coming from larger groups. Now I did a little exception for the sake of the scene, but I think competitive-drinking is something he won't say no to either way. Especially against an alpha or his own brothers.

As for the fic, I have to admit... I overdid a little. xD Wordcount-wise, I only wanted to do a little snippet and ended up having 1600 word long shenanigan with these dorks.

Are they drunk? Pretty much. Are they kissing? Oh yes. Funny? You decide :) I hope you like it!

Every mispelled word in the dialogues are deliberate. Outside of it, sorry for that.

After so many hungover survived together, Ordo and Maze always reached to that conclusion that the real winners of the drinking contests are the bar owners themselves. But they would never learn. Ordo may appeared a sore loser tonight, but his premature retreat from the challenge’s end before both of them end up throwing up in one of the alleys of Coruscant was deliberate and very much calculated - on one hand, HE didn’t want to throw up in one of the alleys of Coruscant. Second, he didn’t want Maze throw up in one of the alleys of Coruscant either. Also, drinking eventually led to horniness which overrode every instinct of competitiveness in him and fucking Maze in the middle of the bar suddenly looked a tempting idea, but Ordo also remembered that indulging in a fantasy of fucking someone on the barcounter while everyone else’s watching might be a good way to show that the alpha’s ass belonged to him, but overall, it was not socially acceptable to do it in the CSF officer’s club. Neither was throwing up in one of the alleys of Coruscant.

The null and the alpha captain were a stumbling mess of a pair, clinging to each other’s necks, trying to navigate their way in the Arca-barracks. Their usual banter lead to the same disaster if less rage-filled carnage this time.

“M’room” grumbled Ordo.

“Mroom” meowed back Maze, because was sure that’s how you maintain a conversation in tooka, and was certain Ordo tried to imitate one.

“No, mine!”

“’kay” Maze flashed a broad smile as he leaned in to bore his head into Ordo’s, only he didn’t exactly assess well the intensity of his display of affection and bumped their skulls so hard, they both saw stars for a minute.

“Oww! The kriff??? Whazzatfor?” Ordo bent his elbow around Maze’s neck to get into a chokehold.

“I ssssaid ‘I love you’ in tooka!”

“Ah… okay. That’s fine” Ordo was pleased with the answer, so didn’t actually choke his boyfriend. He released him to cling onto his arm more instead. That limb belonged to the null now. “’Love you too.”

“You are so sweet right now, my love” cooed Maze back. “Sweet, sweet kitten.”

Ordo blushed as he felt a pleasant heat going into his cheeks. He pretty much wanted to be Maze’s kitten right now. The only and favorite. But also he was sure his words didn’t reach the drunk Alpha’s brain.

“But my room. My room. We go there. Take me tom’room.”

“Ayy-aye, whersyouroom again?”

“I don’t care, don’t - Just… just… take me there.”

“My room then.”

“Noooo!” whined Ordo in protesting and bumped into Maze, “your blanket smells like you fa-woaahhh!!!” he couldn’t elaborate on how exactly Maze’s blanket smelled like, because the alpha lost his balance and both started to lean in one direction like an over-packed sack of potatoes.

Maze had to grab the nearest fire extinguisher on the wall to keep themselves on foot - and he tore it down. They both look at it with child-like astonishment before started laugh uncontrollably but this time they had the wall to hold onto. Maze wanted to put it back to its place but his hands trembled from the tremors of shared laugh, it kept falling down, making loud clashing noises, probably waking up the whole barrack by now.

Several doors suddenly whooshed open, an adrenaline-heated sergeant dashed out, about to yell who’s causing this ruckus and tell them to keep it down, only to be stopped by the sight of Ordo hunching forward, shaking with inaudible laughter as Maze tried to give his sincere ‘appolojeews’ to the fire extinguisher, now war-weary and bent, lying on the floor.

The sergeant considered his options in this situation. If he wanted to make a smart comment about the very fact that Captain Ordo had been so wasted like it was obligatory, he quickly reminded himself that the null captain not just outranked him but was completely able to maim him to death with his bear hands even in this drunk state. Now while Captain Maze also outranked him, wouldn’t maim him to death with his bear hands (he could), but given that the alphas were all prideful and self-conscious bastards, Maze would find a way to make the sergeant’s rather short life miserable, worse than death, given they shared space under the same roof. The sergeant silently retreated back to his room without saying a word.

The pair eventually reached Maze’s room. One last opponent to be defeated: a door with access code needed to open. They stood before that door and Ordo took his time to enjoy this moment of peaceful silence. It was cozy, they were alone in the half-lit empty corridor of the alpha-wing, and it made Ordo snuggle closer to Maze. Their armors collided with small clank, but Maze’s skin peeping out of his blacks was to his liking and gently started nosing the carotid. He liked the feeling of the pumping blood pulsing through his lover’s vein. Almost could hear his heartbeat. He counted them for at least two minutes, when Ordo realized that Maze didn’t just not reciprocated the small gesture of affection to his dismay, but nothing was happened at all.

“What ar’you waitin’ for” He looked at Maze in confusion and nodded to terminal.

“Uhhh…” Maze scratched his head. “I forgot.”

“What.”

“The code. Forgot my code.”

“Sevn-sevn-three-six-nain-sevn-five-eigth-ate…” mumbled Ordo as gently started to sucking on his skin, leaving a lovemark.

“Wha-wha-wai-wai-wai-wai-waitholdon, you’re notartikyulting! Not that - Ordo.”

“Honey-sweet” Ordo now whispered in his ears, teeth gently nibbling on it.

Maze shuddered, hearing the petname Ordo gave him long time ago. He was sure about he messed up the numbers along the way because the terminal blared “access denied” into his face.

“I have to consentrait, you know” his voice started to rasp and tried to tap the numbers again into the screen with much more urgency.

“Multitask then.”

Ordo reached his lover’s mouth, sucking on his lower-lip like his life depended on it. Maze huffed into the kiss with amusement. He messed up the numbers again. Access denied.

“What the…”

“Stupid alpha, you can’t even do this right…” Ordo growled, became irritated how his alpha boyfriend couldn’t even get into his room without his help. But that meant he could take the opportunity to shine. He turned Maze around and pushed him to the wall, pressing his lips to Maze’s, one hand keeping him in place, while he tapped the screen without even looking. He didn’t need to look, only needed to stare into those brown eyes, slowly filled with the lust for him.

“Howdoye- how do…” Maze tried to form his question which bugged his last remaining intelligent part of his brain, but Ordo sent that solitary braincell completely AWOL too.

“I would be an osik’la boyfriend if I didn’t know all your codes to reach you.”

“Fuckin' creep” Maze grinned into his lips. Ordo took the initiative to push his tongue inside Maze’s mouth, exchanging a wet, sloppy kiss, loud with Maze’s moans. The alpha embraced him with his arms, combing through his hair with his fingers.

Access denied.

Now Ordo furrowed his forehead in dissatisfaction, but also, unbelieving. Unless Maze changed the code, no way his memory failed him now. He broke the kiss to lick that sweet spot under Maze’s jaw with an ulterior motive to make the alpha a mewling, needy mess, but also to have half an eye on the screen. He tried to tap the numbers again.

He couldn’t finish. The door swooshed open, revealing a very annoyed alpha glaring at the smooching couple with such intensity, they started to believe the jaig eyes on his forehead only served the sole purpose to lend him another pair of eyes to judge them.

Ordo broke the kiss and sneered back malevolently while maintaining eye-contact with Fordo’s real eyes - in the wildlife another set of eyes were meant for the predators to distract and scaring off bigger adversaries than themselves and Ordo wasn’t stupid. Just drunk. And jealous. Why was Alpha-77 in his boyfriend’s room and why was another naked ass mooning him from Maze’s bed?!

Maze didn’t exactly connect the dots just yet but he already felt Ordo tensing up in his embrace. He instinctively held him tighter to comfort him, the null would usually rather die than suffer from shame. Now the thing is, Ordo rarely felt shame unless it got him into trouble and Maze knew that very well so there was a slight chance that his boyfriend plotted a homicide instead. Double, if he was fortunate enough. Unlike Ordo, he felt ashamed in front of his alpha brother right now.

Good thing, Fordo never wasted words to tell off his younger brothers. Just kept on glaring, with his hand signed to direction of room next to them.

Maze followed the gesture. “Oh” he said, staring into the air as light understanding suddenly shined through the haze of inebriation. “Right. Thanks” waved a little goodbye with a sheepish smile.

Fordo flipped him off and returned to his room, shutting them out, hopefully once and for all.

Ordo teared himself away from Maze to run at the next door, his boots screeched at the floor as he stopped and excitedly started to type the code into the door terminal. Maze could only blink and Ordo was already in his room.

Maze was about to drown in self-pity, left alone in the corridor, still leaning against the wall when Ordo sticked his head out, searching for him and yelled.

“ALPHA, I DESIRE AFFECTION!” And disappeared again.

Maze almost burst out in a loud laugh, Ordo’s unique approach of seduction caught him off guard and made the unfortunate encounter with one of his brothers a minor inconvenience. He followed after his lover, giggling under his nose, and closed the door behind them.

Tags for those who asked: @ithillia, @insertmeaningfulusername

[lovingwanda]

⌗ ︙・I love you. I love you. I love you.・

𝖲𝖠𝖥𝖤 𝖥𝖮𝖱 𝖶𝖮𝖱𝖪 ︙ ᴍɪɴᴏʀꜱ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛ.

↳ taglist — @godamnityess @simpforlizzie @catswag22 @the-lakes89 @inlovewithalcinadimitrescu @dumbasslesbi @lizzieslizard @fm-strangerthings @bavarianlizzielover

↳ word count — 771 words

↳ fandom inspirations — wandavision, jujutsu kaisen, stan lee presents: mosaic

↳ content — death mention, canon divergent, hurt / comfort, violence, blood, polyamory, etc.

↳ summary — Maggie and Satoru reminisce about their lives after their experiences with Thanos. Satoru gets some closure about his feelings for Wanda.

↳ author's note — ( based off of this post and this video ) this is my first time writing fanfic and so I apologize in advance for jarring scene transitions.

I do not consent to my work being reposted, stolen or translated anywhere else.

PART I: MAGIC WORDS

"Did you love her?"

It's a question -- no, a buried truth -- that made his body heavy with regret and all the things he should've said and did back then.

"I did." Satoru whispers, sunken eyes never leaving the floor as his elbows rested against his legs. He can't bring himself to look at anything but the floor. His body as heavy and pale as a bloated corpse.

"I think," Satoru closes his eyes, softly exhaling. "I think I even admired the love she gave to others. The love she had for Vision. I didn't want to take that from her just because I had feelings for her."

He valued their friendship too much to say anything that could've ruined it. He valued Vision enough because he saw his poetically tortured soul as much as he saw Wanda's and yet saw the love Satoru gave to his sisters despite his criminal record.

"For what it's worth, I tried to refuse. I tried to give him hope that he didn't need to die just to stop Thanos. That we could find another way." His body feels heavier thinking about it. The pain like a fresh wound in his chest. "He knew and he still trusted me to look after her when it was all over."

The little map of westview with a red heart circled on a house was still in his pocket. He kept it for Vision. For Wanda.

For the life they could've had together.

***

PART II: RAINBOW FOR EACH

"Miori-san, you said something earlier about confronting Thanos," Satoru raised his head, his attention gravitating to her with a hopeful but cautious curiosity, "How...How did it end?"

They wouldn't be here, talking right now if she had won. Neither of them were supposed to be in the limbo of premature death, phasing in and out of that hazy consciousness that kept them between this world and the next.

Miori Nishikawa was simply the japanese equivalent to the western name Margaret (Maggie) Nelson. A name she frequently used during her profession as a highly trained federal interpol agent.

Smart. It drew in less suspicion despite the underlying xenophobia in Japan.

"I turned myself into a black hole after The Mad Titan sliced me in half." Miori holds a hand under her chin, still managing a calm and collected smile despite the less than pleasant details.

"I just needed him distracted long enough for me to catch him off guard." The memory is fresh in her mind, a slightly cracked skull and leaving half of her body behind as her nails dug into the dirt. "Even then, condensing it to the battlefield wasn't easy. I had to make sure that no one got dragged in as the pressure crushed us both to death."

"I'm sorry." Satoru winces at the scar across her navel. It's pinkish jagged color barely blending into her skin. His fingers trace his forehead, recalling the stinging pain of being bludgeoned by large fists swinging down on him. "I can't imagine the pain you must've felt."

"At the cost of saving millions, I would've done it again." Miori pats him on the shoulder, holding up a reassuring smile that didn't need any apology for a choice she made. "Someone important taught me that you can put your life on the line to save others but that doesn't necessarily mean you're just throwing it away."

"Yeah," There's a sadness in her eyes that he can't quite reach but her words do sink into him like water submerging a piece of paper. "Yeah, I get what you mean."

"So, where are you right now? If you're not here talking to me."

"Oh, that." Miori chuckles softly. "I think my body is somewhere out there. A dying star imploding up to a supernova scale tends to shake everything and leave a little of themselves behind for a new star to be born."

There's a slight pause before she turns to look at him with a optimistic smile, holding out her pinkie finger to him. "I don't know if I'll be the same when or if I come back but let's all try not curse each other in the end, yeah?"

Miori had a radiance about her that was a light in the dark. Something hopeful and not too far out of his reach.

Pleasant images of Wanda flash through his mind for only a moment.

Satoru chuckles dryly at her childlike behavior before connecting his pinkie with hers. "No promises." He gives her one last glance. "But if we do see each other again, I'm treating the three of us to spa day."

"I'll hold you to it!"

***

[jencsi]

A broody D.B Russell is a mood-

Straightened hair, it's been this way for months, even before we got here, I wondered why you did it, is it for him? Were you bored of the curls? You look better with them. 

The doctors keep telling me it's not wise to have two people wasting away here. I disagree. 

We messed up Jules, I messed up. 

I don’t think you hate me, I know you hate me.

Julie Finlay, born March 20th, 1968, in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. “In west Philadelphia born and raised...” Okay I’m sorry, I know you hate that song.

Blue eyes, blonde hair, 5’3, a mirror image of Catherine Willows no less. 

Thirty-five bruises, twenty two percent blood loss, a dozen staples, fifteen stitches, two transfusions, one scar across your forehead, the chunk of skull they fixed won’t show, so they say, drains, tubes, breathing on your own is a good thing, they can shock hearts, why not brains back to life?

Monthly charge- $2500. Interest- $800. Paid in full- March 15th 2015. Invoice complete. Receipt sent to Diebenkorn Russell. Card ending in 4879. 

I met Jules in May of 1994, Charlie wasn’t even born yet, can you believe that kiddo? 

Your eyes responded to light today, I could have swore your arm moved when they did it but the nurse didn’t see it. She must think I’m crazy. 

Power of attorney file, client confidentiality, password protect, BloodGirl528, crap, no, it’s Agnes, there we go, please advise, December 2014, in the event of a life-threatening injury, please refer all medical decisions to one Diebenkorn Russell and his wife Barbara, Las Vegas Nevada. You knew before I did Jules. 

“Baby if I could, change the world” You are the sunlight in my universe” damn this Clapton guy. 

Las Vegas reached a near record high of 95 today. That high pressure system will remain in place for the rest of the week. Folks, be sure to stay hydrated out there. 

Grandpa, when is Aunt Julie coming back from her trip? I need to tell her a secret.

Invoice complete. Payment received April 15th 2015. Card ending in 4879. 

A fever, you spiked a fever today, low grade, 100.1. April 20th 2015. Could be nothing, could be something. 

They had a funeral for Dan up in Seattle. I felt bad because none of us could be there for him but Kerri’s still healing, you’re here, I’m here…

One of the nurses had a birthday, they got pizza for her, I figured if you could smell it from down the hall, maybe you would wake up. 

She wouldn’t want to stay like this forever. How do you know what she wants? Me? What about you? What makes you so sure? Do you think you know her better than you know me? 

We are gathered here today, no that sounds like a wedding speech, damn, none of us want to gather for this….

Stop. 

D.B, you have a phone call, it's Ely State, they want to talk to you about the court date for Winthrop’s trial. “I’m not taking the stand Conrad, and we’re not presenting a single shred of our evidence unless Jules is with us, make the bastard wait in state pen a little while longer.”

“Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones” Proverbs 16:24. 

“I guess I can put two and two together. "Sometimes the answer's four," I said, "and sometimes it's twenty-two...” 

Stan’s Floral’s. Sunset Blvd. 702-...... 

The judge isn’t going to extend the waiting period any longer, he says I need to be ready to present my findings by May twentieth with or without a blood spatter expert. 

“I’ll be ready,” she rasps to him jokingly, eyes bright, smile meek but present "four days, that’s plenty of time.”

“Coma notwithstanding,” he bites back, soul on fire, fingers on her wrist, feeling her pulse, needing to be sure she was palpable, alive. 

Boy did he miss this. 

[f-ck-the-what]

You deserve good things: A roommate! Bucky x gender neutral reader fic

Genre: Fluff

Summary: You’re sick, but luckily Bucky is there when it counts. 

Content warnings: Mild sickness; Reader is maybe not used to people being so nice to them.

You deserve good things

You were wheezing and sniffly. You texted Alice that you weren’t going to work today, and then you went back to sleep. 

Hunger pangs woke you up a while later, but you didn’t have the strength to move. You were lying staring at the ceiling when there was a soft knock on your door. 

“Y/n?” called Bucky. He was used to rising earlier than you, but generally you were up by this point. He opened the door a crack. 

“I’m sick or something,” you mumbled hoarsely. 

“Ah baby!” He moved into the room, sat on your bed and pressed his fingers to your forehead. “Do you need anything?”

“Coffee would be great,” you sighed, comforted by his gentle touch. 

“How about food?”

“I’ll come and make something in a minute.”

He frowned. “Or I could just get you something.”

Everything felt difficult, including a sensible response, so you made a “whrrrrr” noise and rolled your head over on the pillow. 

He chuckled. “Stay there.” 

You shut your eyes and smiled. This was nice. 

When he came back he brought coffee, toasted crumpets with jam, and an orange. He’d even sliced it up. 

“Oh wow thanks!” 

He bent to kiss your cheek, then propped you up on pillows like a Victorian invalid. The bits of your brain that were operating at a normal speed were enjoying being tended to. 

“Are you going to spoon-feed me, too?” 

He glowered. “If I have to.”

You took the hint and picked up a slice of orange. 

~

He was back at lunchtime with miso soup, a toasted sandwich and more coffee. 

You had gone straight back to sleep after breakfast, huddled under blankets, and had only recently woken up. 

“Thank you,” you croaked, too sick to care that you probably looked terrifying, trying to smile at least. 

He nodded. “I’ll be back for the dishes, then do you maybe wanna watch a movie together?”

“Don’t you have other things you should be doing?”

His face fell a little. 

“Oh not that I don’t want to,” you hastily backtracked. “I just don’t want you to waste a day hanging out with me, just because my immune system fucked out.”

He shook his head, genuinely mystified. “How could you ever say that being with you is wasting time?”

You didn’t have a smart comeback for that. Not for the first time today, you felt very wobbly. 

After lunch you curled up together and put on an anime. You leaned against him, smelling his skin with its faint hint of soap, and rested your hand on his chest.

During the film he noticed you rubbing your temples. “Let me,” he said softly, and wound his fingers into your hair to apply a gentle pressure to different points across your aching skull. You gasped with a relief you didn’t know you needed. 

~

He gently bullied you into taking a shower. “You’ll feel so much better sweetheart,” he kept saying. 

He was right. It took an effort to get to the bathroom, but the rhythm of the hot water beating on your skin and the pleasant smells soothed you, and the steam cleared your head a little. 

But Bucky wasn’t finished. When you got back to your room you found he’d put fresh sheets on the bed and flowers in a vase on the bedside table. Next to the flowers, a stack of graphic novels from the library that he’d picked up during your morning sleep, and on the top sat a large packet of crisps. 

You were rendered speechless. You stared at him, asking wordlessly if this was really all for you. 

He gave you a tiny smile, seeking approval, then moved forward to hug you when he saw your eyes welling. 

“I’ll take care a you, ok?” He muttered into your hair. 

“I don’t know if I deserve this,” you whispered into his chest. 

“Hey. Hey! Now you’re gonna make me angry. You deserve good things, y’know?”

You exhaled slowly. A tear rolled down your cheek, and was absorbed into his shirt. 

“So do you,” you replied quietly, and he hugged you a little tighter. 

[lakesbian]

Sorry, I’m the one who asked the awakening question. You posted some thoughts about the start of 1.7 a couple of days ago, so figured you had finished the chapter by this point. Again, sorry about that, I’ll be more careful in the future.

ohh fair assumption. yeah i didn't think he was gonna do it that soon i thought he was going to get into some more silly shenanigans with the gang (rose) first. and also i am the slowest reader on the planet at times due to comical amounts of executive dysfunction and propensity for distraction. it's no prablem. anyway here's my thoughts about their different metaphorical assignments 2 the items as per requast:

the dagger: "war" is an obvious and common concept 2 ascribe to weaponry, nothing much interesting to note about this one. if i really wanted to read into it i could suggest that they went for "war" instead of "murder" or whatever because war/mass-scale conflict is already on the mind due to they sort of just got dropped into the middle of of a magical battlefield + have nukes to cold war w/ on hand.

hourglass: to quote blake, "Something we didn’t have enough of, something dangerous, foremost in our thoughts, with its association to Laird."

dreamcatcher: blake picks like. the most basic-level interpretation possible (dream), whereas rose's "fate" read indicates that fate has already been smth on her mind. i'm not great at reading into rose yet but there is the whole thing where blake actually has a life outside of The Horrors, despite still being fated to experience 'em, but rose exists pretty solely because of The Horrors. i think she's feeling the pressure of fate much more than blake is + is more concerned w/ the future overall than him and subsequently brings it up here

skull: "doom" from blake and "death" from rose are largely synonymous but i Can get something out of this. i've mentioned before that i don't think blake has fully processed the consequences for a misstep--he's aware of them, but he hasn't genuinely processed them imo. he's very "one step at a time" about everything and very prone to making hasty decisions when he feels trapped, immobile, or like he's not doing anything, and he explicitly counts "sitting down and researching" as "not doing anything." every time he wants to make a rapid decision--or just goes ahead w/ one w/o rose's consent--she's the one to express outright fear of death*, whereas he's more concerned with reducing his immediate psychological stressors (i.e feeling immobile). i think this indicates that he's thinking in significantly vaguer terms (i.e "doom") whereas she's extremely concerned about concrete possible outcomes (like Literally Dying if blake runs off and gets himself killed).

*i think death will probably seem like one of the more pleasant things that could've happened to them later on but i digress

coin: this one is p straightforward. while they obviously both have the same shitty family, blake is a man who subsequently didn't actively fight for the inheritance as a child, so he already doesn't have the same negative association w money rose does. in addition to that, he already absconded from his family when he was 17, and after time spent being homeless + being in very poor financial shape even after he gets an apartment, he associates the idea of money significantly more with positive emotions and good luck than with the inheritance. rose, however, never left home like blake did + was a girl who was expected to fight for it. she witnessed firsthand everything the promise of the money did to the family. hence: blake associates money w/ fortune, rose associates it with ruin.

rose: this one is. exceedingly straightforward, to blake a rose means his grandmother + rose (family), to rose a rose means herself. adding this one to my brain soup alongside padraic's rose metaphor and stirring but i'll need more data points to write anything coherent. I Am Remembering though.

also someone wanted to know my thoughts on maggie so far. i don't really know anything abt her i only saw her for 2 seconds but i think it's so fucking funny that wildbow made Her the part of pact that gets referenced in worm and not blake. like blake is so sopping pathetic that despite being the protagonist he doesn't even get a feature when his own damn book is being easter-egged somewhere else. sorry blake you're just not personable enough. maggie is all plucky and charming and says things like "drat." all you do is stumble around cursing and bleeding. you don't have being a YA protagonist in you.

[blackacre13]

The actress au is so good! please write more parts

Part seven is here; here's part eight!

“Good girl,” Lou whispered, her voice dropping as Debbie’s eyes fluttered wide, gasping as Lou kissed her again, her fingers coming up against her neck, leaving slight pressure this time as Debbie did her damndest not to moan into her touch, disappointed when the blonde pulled away, swinging the door open into the sunlight as she looked back at a shocked and still Debbie, left blinking as the sun peeked through the stage door. “Coming?”

“Oh, Ms. Miller!” A page spoke rushing over to the blonde before Debbie had time to properly collect herself enough for a response, Lou greeting the other woman with a pleasant smile, nodding along as she took a water bottle from her and a stack of post-it notes. Debbie only able to hear a mumble of, “I told him I wasn’t doing that bloody project. If he thinks I’m gonna read the script anyway….well,” she sighed. “I guess he’s right. Fuck. Thanks for this.”

Debbie stepped out awkwardly, trying to peek at the script in Lou’s hands to distract from the fact that the two stars were coming out of an empty sound stage away from where they were shooting together, but the page didn’t seem to notice or care, her own duties getting in the way of any sort of curiosity or gossip.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Ocean, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I have a Mr. Becker on the phone for you?”

Debbie’s face went pale as she managed a small nod, feeling Lou’s deep eyes on her, practically boring into her skull with something Debbie couldn’t quite interpret. Hurt? Pain? Confusion?

There were too many things to explain. Too many rumors to squash. And she wanted Lou to know them all, but she certainly couldn’t do any of that here and now.

“Ms. Ocean?” The page prompted again, holding out a smartphone as Debbie muted the screen, tossing her what she hoped was a gentle and professional smile.

“I’ll call him back from my trailer,” Debbie muttered. “Could you just maybe give the two of us a second. I just—“

“I’m sorry, I actually need you in hair and Ms. Miller in makeup. Ms. Miller, if you’ll just come with me.”

“Lou,” Debbie pled, turning to the blonde as Lou’s eyes flashed with hurt.

“I’ll see you on set,” she spoke blankly, nodding towards the page before following her off, Debbie’s stomach flipping wildly as she watched Lou’s fingers crumple the water bottle in her hand into a ball as she stalked off.

Debbie’s eyes were blazing as she stomped back towards the trailer, flinging the door open as she scrambled for her phone, angrily and blindly dialing before she held the phone up to her ear with a hiss.

“Bee?”

“You know I hate that name.”

“That’s why it’s funny.”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want, Bee.”

“I did this movie to get away from you, Claude,” Debbie growled.

“And what is it, they say? Distance makes the love go longer?”

“Heart grow fonder,” Debbie sighed, sinking down on the couch, burying her head between her knees as she moved the phone to speaker. Here it went. Claude Becker. Fucking up her life once again. Ruining anything good that ever came into her path.

“Aw, I knew you’d agree, Bee,” he chuckled. “So, how’s it been babe? That Miller chick is hot. Heard you two get to french a little.”

“I can’t believe I ever pretended to date you,” the brunette huffed, banging her head against her thigh. “Are you just calling to tell me the same thing again, Claude? Because it’s getting a little old repeating the same speech. What we had was good. It worked. It did its job. But it wasn’t real.”

“It was real to me, baby,” Claude whispered, and Debbie grimaced, practically feeling the stubble of his beard against her cheek through the phone.

“Claude,” Debbie exhaled, unable to believe she was having this conversation yet again. “This was never real. And it never will be. And you’re Fucking things up more than you even know, okay? We used to be co-stars. We used to be each other’s date on the red carpet. But, hey, our managers arranged it. None of it is real. None of it is—“ her mind drifted off, thinking of the hurt in Lou’s eyes as she walked away. She had desperately wanted to run after her and explain. Tell her there was nothing to worry about. But if their roles had been reversed, Debbie knew her mind would be racing and she was too stubborn and focused to make room to listen to anyone. She would’ve been spiraling.

And now she had to deal with Claude Becker of all things and make it back to set and see how she could 1) act like her career depended on it because it did, and 2) make sure Lou was okay and that there was still a chance to figure out who this Lou and Debbie was without anyone else being the wiser. Fuck.