#the shoulder joint on eclipse?

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Good Dog.

Pairing: Yandere!SatoSugu x Reader (JJK).

Word Count: 5.5k.

TW: Non/Con, Fem!Reader, Pet Play, Wildly Unbalanced Power Dynamics, Bondage, Revoked Consent, Kidnapping, Manipulation, and Rough Sex. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

[Part Two]

About half an hour into your first date, Suguru told you that he was an animal trainer.

He mentioned it offhandedly, filling in a blank you hadn’t thought to ask about, but anything more interesting than ‘financial manager’ or ‘digital entrepreneur’ would’ve caught your attention. “It’s nothing exciting,” he explained, smirking at your eagerness to pry. “Dogs and cats, not lions and tigers. It’s a good gig, if you’ve got the patience for it.”

About three hours later, after a main course, a round of drinks, dessert, a second round of drinks, and your waiter politely clearing his throat as he dropped an unrequested, but well-deserved check onto the corner of your table, Suguru asked if you’d like to come back to his place for a drink. You laughed, propping your chin on your fist. “I don’t know,” you started, a teasing drawl in your voice. “You’re sure you’re not one of those charming serial killers, right?”

His eyes darted to the side, his smile quirking. “…if I said I was, would you still come home with me?”

You were on your feet by the time he finished. “I guess I’ll just have to risk it.”

Ten minutes later, you were in the passenger seat of Suguru’s car as he pulled into a sprawling, rustically ornate villa. You fought the urge to whistle as his headlights fell onto outermost facade. You should’ve guessed from the restaurant, but still, you would’ve been impressed by a more-or-less furnished apartment. A countryside mansion was something you hadn’t even known to hope for.

It was only as you pried open your door, one foot already on the ground, that he told you he had a dog.

“You probably won’t meet him,” he shrugged, rounding the hood of the car to your side. An arm was extended and accepted – the gravel driveway quickly proving too much for your pin-prick heels. “Satoru’s a little shy around new people.”

“Satoru,” You repeated, more to yourself than to him. What a strange name for a dog. Must’ve been a purebred. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing your training skills up close.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry.” He rested a hand on your elbow, squeezing gently. “You’ll get a chance to.”

Admittedly, there wasn’t a lot of blood left in your head to think with, after that.

Your feet had left the ground entirely by the time you reached the porch. Suguru had no problem carrying you, and not having to worry about pesky inconveniences like putting one foot in front of the other meant you had more time to string your arms around his neck and run your fingers through his hair as you divided your attention between his mouth and his throat. You kept yourself occupied, pressing open-mouthed kisses into the latter as he struggled with the lock and stumbled over the threshold. Your back hit a wall before the door was shut, but you were beyond the point of caring, by then.

One of the many things you liked about Suguru was his size. Standing up, he was about a head or so taller than you, and bent over you like this, supporting you with little more than the tension of his body pressed into yours, he seemed to eclipse you entirely; dark hair cutting off your vision, large hands wrapping around your thighs, teeth that were more similar to the fangs of some great, terrible animal than anything human ghosting over the curve of your throat. You felt his chest slot against yours, pinning you against the wall as distracted fingers fumbled with the zipper of your dress, and his head dipped, mouth latching onto the slope of your shoulder in a slow, bruising love-bite. The process was painstaking and noisy, the joint sounds of his breathy moans and your whimpers enough to fill the entryway twice-over. Really, it was a wonder you managed to hear the footsteps at all.

It wasn’t that your attention drifted, just that you couldn’t stop yourself from acting on reflex. You heard padding footsteps, the metal ting, ting, ting of swinging tags, and raised your head, unconsciously searching for a dog, a pet, an animal. And, in a way, you found one. Honestly, it took you a beat too long to realize that what you were looking at wasn’t an animal – lean and pale, peering tentatively around the corner as he made his way down the staircase that led further into the villa. White leather faded into pale skin, crossing over his chest and wrapping around his thighs, supporting a pair of white thigh-high socks and matching paw-shaped mittens. The second worst part was his face; bisected by a titanium muzzle in the shape of a snout. Two white dog ears, the same color as his other accessories, framed his expression on either side, bouncing slightly as he walked.

The absolute worst part was, of course, the erect and leaking cock between his legs.

Suguru must’ve felt you go rigid. With an irritated groan, he pulled away, lowering you gently back onto your feet. He noticed the strange, naked man just as quickly, acknowledging him with a roll of his eyes. You were quickly abandoned in favor of lowering himself to one knee and cupping the naked man’s face, who panted happily in response.

“Satoru,” Suguru mumbled, carding his fingers through the man’s bone-white hair. “I thought you were going to be good and stay upstairs, for now?”

There was a non-verbal response, mostly tail wagging and clipped barks, and you stared blankly at the drooling, leaking man. At Satoru.

You might’ve said something – about a cigarette, or fresh air. You’d never know. You were on the other side of the door before the sound of your own voice could catch you, trudging stiffly to the end of the driveway.

You needed to get out of here. You wanted to get out of here. You kept one arm crossed over your chest while your free hand shot for your phone, a list of a dozen identical rideshare apps already flitting through your mind. You were cursing the lack of available drivers (why hadn’t you noticed how remote this place was earlier?) when you heard gravel crunching under rushed footsteps, Suguru’s airy laugh.

“I know, I know,” he started, while you were still glaring at your phone. “I’m an asshole.”

Colorful language, but not the type you would’ve opted to use, at the moment. “You told me you had a dog.”

“Oh, god, I did, didn’t I?” There was another laugh, a quick shake of his head, like he didn’t fully remember something he’d said all of three minutes ago. “I’m sorry – I just get into character. It’s hard not to, after a few months.”

You didn’t relax, but you didn’t bristle, either. Suguru took the opportunity to go on. “Look, whatever you’re thinking, it’s not like that. I didn’t lie to you about anything. I really am a trainer, and this really is my place. Satoru’s my client.”

You paid him a wary glance. “Client?”

“Mhm. CEOs and rich fuckers with a lot of power and a lot of money to throw around like to turn their brain off, every now and then. Since they can’t risk anyone they’ve been seen with going to the tabloids, people like me get brought in to—” He paused, shrugged. “—help them relax, I guess.”

“You expect me to believe that guy’s a CEO?”

His wry grin widened, sharpened. “Have you heard of the Gojo clan?”

Of course you had. The Gojo clan owned half of every business in Japan. The Gojo clan had enough property to build their own continent.. The Gojo clan--

You pursed your lips. Slowly, deliberately, your phone was powered off and slid back into your pocket, any other plans you might’ve had for it immediately forgotten.

“No.”

“Yes.” And then, with a note of pride in his voice, “Satoru’s the scion.”

“And he pays you to…”

“Pretend he’s a dog,” Suguru picked up, unflinchingly. “Or a cat. Or a maid. It’s pretty flexible. The costumes get a little out of hand, sometimes.”

You’d noticed. “And to lure women back to his mansion and… what? Have sex with them while he watches?”

There was another airy laugh, this one less apologetic than the first. “No, no, it’s not like that. Satoru’s not the voyeur type, and I don’t like sharing the spotlight. I let him know I was bringing someone over, but he probably thought it’d be funny to scare you – catch us both off-guard, y’know?” He flashed you a smile. “I promise, you’re here because I want you to be. That’s it.”

It was a little insulting, honestly – just how unfaltering he was. Part of you felt offended, like he’d accused you of overreacting, but another, quieter, more base faction chided you for being over-dramatic, for storming out like a child having a temper-tantrum. Because it had been childish, hadn’t it been? For as much as he’d surprised you, Satoru hadn’t seemed to be under any kind of duress, and it wasn’t like Suguru had fundamentally changed sometime in the past few minutes. Looking at him now, with his easy smile and tired eyes, it was impossible not to recognize the man who’d come up to you in your favorite coffee shop, practically tripping over your name; the man you’d spent nearly four hours talking to tonight, and enjoyed every second of it.

“…’caught off guard’ is kind of an understatement,” you mumbled, letting your shoulders slump.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I must’ve forgotten he was coming over tonight. I should’ve been more thoughtful.” His shoulders fell. “If you want to call it here, I get it. Just let me grab my keys – I don’t want you in a stranger’s car so late at night.”

It took you a few seconds to find your voice, but when you did respond, it was with a valiant effort to mirror his easy charm. Admittedly, it didn’t come as naturally to you. “And if I don’t want to call it here?”

Suguru seemed to appreciate the effort. “Then I’d ask for a couple minutes to tell Satoru to fuck off,” he started, slowly, his arm finding it way around your waist. He pulled you into his chest, and you let him. “And make sure I’m all yours.”

It was humiliating – how quickly you cracked. As soon as he finished, you sighed, shaking your head. “No, no, you shouldn’t have to do that. I really should apologize to him.” Suguru hummed curiously, and you clarified. “For running out like that, I mean. It might’ve been a little rude.”

Suguru chuckled, kissing your forehead. “If you say so, sweetheart.”

He held your hand as he led you back inside, the door left ajar from your hasty exit. Satoru was waiting in the entryway - still uncomfortable exposed, but sitting cross-legged with Suguru’s jacket draped over his shoulders. You made a point of keeping your eyes on his collarbones or above, just in case.

“’toru,” Suguru called, affection thick and honey-sweet in his tone. Immediately, Satoru perked up, ambling to his feet, and you did your best not to flinch as you noticed his height, his piercing eyes, the sculpted muscle wrapped around his arms and legs. There was no scenario wherein you would’ve been nonplussed to find out your date was engaging with niche, dubiously sexual roleplay with the heir to the largest trust fund on this side of the planet, but having a less imposing image to associate with that realization might’ve helped to soften the edge.

“I want you to meet (Y/n),” he went on, the embodiment of nonchalance. You straightened, and Satoru cocked his head to the side, evaluating you. What he was looking for, you couldn’t imagine. You wished he would take off that muzzle – at least, then, you might be able to find something a little more human in his expression. “And (Y/n),” Suguru paused, nudging your side. “This is my puppy, Satoru. The one I told you about.”

You forced yourself to smile. Satoru stared at you for a long second before bowing his head, and you took the signal – bringing your hand up to pet him the same way Suguru had, watching as he melted into your palm. It was a little too easy to let the last of your anxiety wash away, an odd sort of confidence taking its place. This wasn’t so bad, not when you knew what to expect. Maybe you’d ask Suguru if Satoru had any friends with similar interests and similar numbers in their bank accounts.

“Suguru didn’t mention how pretty you were.” You let your voice lilt up into that light, cloying sort of baby-talk. With the way they were both acting, it was a little hard to remember you weren’t talking to an actual dog. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

“Careful, now. He’ll get a big head.” He squeezed your hand gently and tugged you towards the staircase. “C’mon – I know where we can get a little privacy.”

Satoru whined, but didn’t attempt to follow you as Suguru guided you up a spiraling set of stairs and into a long, blank hallway. Suguru’s home (Satoru’s home? Their home?) was remarkable unlived in, intentional decoration sparse and the clutter of everyday life entirely absent. It might’ve been off-putting if you’d been able to focus on it, but Suguru seemed eager to distract you, pawing at your waist and stealing kisses every few steps. You counted doors half-heatedly as you passed, and somewhere between eighteen and twenty-three, Suguru pulled one open and ushered you inside.

The bedroom was less non-descript. A king-sized, four-posted bed dominated the space, the sheets a sea of red satin to contrast the black, void walls. The bare necessities were littered sporadically throughout the room – a half-empty glass of water on a bedside table, a white towel hanging from the knob of the closet door, etc. The messiness was almost calculated, things left out on purpose to feign disregard. The only thing that seemed genuinely out of place was the long, braided cord looped around the upper right bedpost, so well-used that it’d ground into and softened the wood underneath. Suguru didn’t seem to notice it, so you decided against saying anything. If you were lucky, it could be useful later on.

It wasn’t like you had much of a chance to talk, anyway. There was a specific sort of fragile, uneasy tension between you and Suguru, and it never seemed to last very long when you two were alone together. The door was shouldered closed hastily, and then, his hands were on your hips, his mouth on the side of your neck. “I’ve been looking forward to this.” And then, with an airy chuckle, a nip to the corner of your jaw, “Thought I was going to have to bend you over in that fucking coffee shop.”

The humiliating part was, had he asked, you probably would have. There was no reason he should have to know that, though. “I’d say to buy my dinner first, but—” His teeth digging into the curve of your throat, a hitch in your breath. You forced out a chirping laugh as he sucked and lapped at your neck. “—I guess you beat me to it, huh?”

Suguru’s only response was a low grown, ten fingers burrowed into your waist. You started to shrug off your jacket, but Suguru was just a little faster, just a little more eager; jerking the article down with one hand while the other wrapped around your midriff. You’d known how big he was, loved the way his body measured up to yours, and yet, you couldn’t seem to suppress the little gasp that escaped your lips as you were pulled off of your feet and thrown onto the center of his bed, to ignore the fear that knotted in your chest as he loomed at the foot of the bed – hastily dragging his shirt over his head. You watched him undress with a lazy type of indulgence, more than happy to sit back and enjoy a free show. Honestly, you’d almost forgotten you were supposed to be a part of the entertainment by the time he propped a knee on the mattress and let the full weight of his attention fall onto you.

Against your better judgement, you thought about Satoru as Suguru climbed into the space between your spread legs. You couldn’t seem to imagine how he and Satoru fit together, not that you were very inclined to. It was hard to picture either one of them as very submissive; Satoru with his menacing height and bright, vigilant eyes, or Suguru with his easy smile and feline arrogance. You’d assumed it was a fetish, but you could’ve wrong, right? You’d heard of people who make paperclip chains and chew paper to relieve stress – when you weren’t actively looking at a grown man pretend to be a dog, it really didn’t seem that much stranger.

“Where do you think you’re going, pretty girl?”

Suguru’s voice, deep and saccharine, brought you back to the present. You blinked up at him, smiling. “’m right here.”

“Good girl.” Muscular thighs straddled your waist, and you whined, reaching towards him. Suguru only caught your hands in his, intertwining your fingers with his own. “Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know. You never did tell me if you were a serial killer.”

“And it didn’t stop you from coming home with me.” He squeezed gently. “Which means you do trust me – whether or not you should.”

You hummed, and that was all the confirmation he needed. Your wrists were gathered in one hand while the other reached for the black cord – not as forgotten as you’d thought. Suguru worked quickly, but deftly. A snug slip-knot soon bound your wrists above your head, and you fought the temptation to test the binding’s strength and ruin the moment. It felt slack enough, and more importantly, Suguru was already shifting, moving, gliding a hand down the length of your throat, your chest, before finally cupping your breast, groping harshly.

Unable to do much of anything else, you arched into his touch, earning a breath of a laugh from Suguru. Dark hair veiled his face as he dipped his head, lips sealing around the bud of your nipple. It seemed to be less for your pleasure and more for his entertainment – the way he sucked with such a deliberate amount of force, how slowly he drew the flat of his tongue over your skin, the feather-slight pressure of his teeth against tender flesh. The stimulation was thick and aching, simmering where it should’ve sparked. You might’ve complained if his hand hadn’t wandered to your sex, two think fingers tracing over your slit and gathering the slick that’d been building up since he invited back to his place. Calling you ‘wet’ would’ve been the understatement of the century – you were soaked. Suguru seemed to know that, too.

He lifted his head, grinning as he pulled you into a deep kiss. By the time he drew back, your lungs throbbed in your chest and he’d been reduced to muttering. “And here I was, so scared that you’d try to run away.” The heel of his palm ground into your clit, drawing out a moan muffled only by his proximity. “No, you were never going to leave before you got what you came for, were you?”

You shook your head, bucking into his hand, but Suguru only clicked his tongue. There was another open-mouthed kiss to the curve of your neck (his favorite spot, it seemed), then another the tender flesh just above your collarbone. “You have to tell me what you want, baby. Nicely.”

Two fingers slipped under your panties and into your tight heat, scissoring apart as you moaned and squirmed underneath him. “Please,” you managed, your voice reduced to a pitchy, wavering drawl. “Please, please fuck me, Suguru.”

“That’s my girl.” You felt his fingers curl inside of you and protested with a mewling whine. When Suguru did draw back, it was only to bring his palm down on your cunt in an open-handed spank that left your skin burning and sparks racing straight to your core. You swallowed down any lingering complaints as he fucked you open on three thick digits, focusing the brunt of his energy on thrusting into you with as much depth and as much force as possible with the occasional curl or split of his fingers, whenever you threatened to adjust to his erratic rhythm. Making you cum was a secondary goal; something to be considered, but not planned around. Judging by his brutal pace, the way his dark eyes stayed fixed on your expression, he was more interested in seeing just how long it took to take you apart.

It was a shame you couldn’t hold on longer, really. Suguru might’ve been patience incarnate, but you’d never had that level of self-control. It took less than a minute of his calloused fingers rubbing against the seizing walls of your cunt, of his palm grinding sloppily into your clit before you were clawing at the cord around your wrists, clenching your eyes shut, snapping your thighs together around his forearm as you came undone from seconds of his harsh stimulation. Of course, Suguru nursed you through your climax and of course, he waited until you were coherent enough to hear the humiliatingly wet noise of your cunt clenching around his digits as he drew back. Your reward came in the form of a moment to breathe, a lingering kiss pressed into the inside of your knee as he lowered himself into the space between your legs. His remaining clothes were dealt with hastily – pulled out of the way where they couldn’t be easily discarded – and before long, you felt the blunt tip of his cock tracing over your entrance, his arousal mixing with the aftermath of your climax. Beyond the use of words, you did your best to grind against him and pulled at your restraints, putting up a laughable imitation of a struggle. The corner of Suguru’s lips turned upward. With one hand wrapped around his base and the other planted on your hip, he eased into you, fitting his body against yours until he’d bottomed out.

Immediately, it was too much.

Suguru caught on quickly, too. “This is what you asked for.” Four fingers rapped against your side as he started to move, limiting himself to short, shallow thrusts. You clenched your eyes shut, digging your nails into your palms and muttering distant, abstract curses between moans. Suguru let out a pitying hum. “You’re not allowed to change your mind now, princess. Not after begging so prettily.”

As if you could. As if you’d have any reason to. It felt like he was trying to fuck your throat through your pussy; his hips grating against yours as he pulled out to the tip only to rut back in. It was less the friction that got to you and more the pressure – filling you entirely, battering against your walls, weighing down your body where it was pinned under his. His hands hooked the underside of your thighs and hauled your legs upward, pressing your knees closer to your chest than the mattress. The stretch was incredible, nearly enough to break you. It took everything you had just to open your eyes and stare blissfully at Suguru, his dark hair dripping over his face and pooling around his shoulders, his eyes narrowed into clever, condescending slits. You could see a smirk shining through his slack-lipped groaning, and over his shoulder, something white bobbed—

Something white.

Satoru.

Against your will, your attention slipped away from Suguru and onto him. You could only make out his upper body, but even that was more than you wanted to see. The bedroom door had been nudged open, and Satoru leaned against the frame, head cocked to the side and glassy blue eyes fixed on the bed. One of his arms was angled strangely, reaching for something below his navel, and you swore, even with the sound of Suguru’s skin crashing into yours, you could hear him panting. You’d assume that the muzzle would’ve done more to muffle it, but guess not.

You didn’t say anything, but the horror written across your expression was obvious. Suguru slowed, then stopped entirely, scowling as he looked over his shoulder to follow your gaze. His reaction was reserved, minimal. A sigh of a scoff, a slight shake of his head. You waited for him to get angry, to tell Satoru to leave, or better yet, to panic, to throw a sheet over your body and do anything but let his pervert of an employer keep jerking off to your exposed, vulnerable form. Instead, he only straightened, pulling to the side as if to show that much more of you off. “Your turn already, puppy?”

Satoru didn’t nod, didn’t respond, and Suguru didn’t wait for him to. Whatever mutual understanding they had between them didn’t need to be spoken aloud; it was enough for Satoru to step forward and Suguru, half-swallowing a moan, to pull out of your cunt. You couldn’t help but feel relieved, your point of connection having abruptly gone cold.

That relief was quickly replaced by stiff, frigid dread as Satoru shuffled forward, into your direct line of sight. Most of his get-up had been abandoned, leaving only his ears, pawed gloves, and of course, that terrible muzzle. Somehow, the subtractions seemed to make him less human – like he’d gone from a man pretending to be a dog to a dog pretending to be a man. Suguru didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care. There was one more squeeze to your thigh, and then Satoru was pulling himself to the headboard, positioning himself beside you. Unceremoniously, you were turned onto your stomach, your bound wrists positioned awkwardly above your head and your elbow prodding into the mattress. Your ass was dragged upward, your knees forced underneath you. Unsure of whether trying to kick out would salvage what was left of your remaining dignity or humiliate you further, you held the position.

This time, the way you jerked and thrashed against your restraints wasn’t playful. The knot had been loose enough to slip a few minutes ago, but as soon as you exerted any real amount of force, it seemed to constrict; soft rope digging into your wrists, cutting off your circulation. You felt the mattress dip behind you, heard Satoru’s rhythmic panting through the metal of his mask. Desperately, you looked to Suguru.

“R-red,” you stammered, hoping the edge in your voice would make up for the lack of an established safe-word. “Black. Pineapple. Stop. I’m not good with this, Suguru.”

Satoru’s knees on either side of yours, the dull head of drooling cock against your ass. You felt Satoru’s tip drag over the curve of your ass, streaking your skin with arousal. Suguru hummed. “But, you’ll grin and bear it, won’t you? ‘toru’s been looking forward to this all day.”

It was awful, how little his tone had changed. If it hadn’t been for the spare man now looming over you, the terror forming knots in your chest, you would’ve thought he was still making mindless dirty talk.

“I never—” Your voice caught in your throat as Satoru whined, needy and keening. Animalistic. “I don’t want to do this.”

His attention flitted between you and Satoru, never quite landing on either. “You’ll come around,” he decided, eventually. “Just like Satoru did.”

Something cold and stiff stabbed into the center of your back. At first, you wondered if that was what fear – true fear – always felt like, made more vivid by tangible betrayal and the sudden awareness of your own stupidity, but then, you realized it was only the lower edge of Satoru’s muzzle digging into your skin as he laid himself over you, and that made more sense.

Satoru was not like his owner. Suguru hadn’t been gentle, but Satoru seemed to operate on something deeper, something baser, something that didn’t give him time to breathe between forcing his cock into your sensitive cunt and his first thrust. Actually, calling it a thrust at all might’ve been too generous – he never seemed to want to pull away from you, only rut deeper, only grinding against your ass as he moaned and whined and drooled against your neck. Eventually, his chest pressed into your back, his head falling over your shoulder. You tried not to look at him, to disassociate where you couldn’t physically separate, but it would’ve been impossible to block out the way his prying eyes seared into your skin. “So pretty.” The metal distorted the exact shape of his tone, but something cloying made it through the fog. “Been waiting forever for Suguru to pick. Knew it had to be you, though. It was always gonna be you.”

You didn’t respond, but Suguru did – laughing brightly. While Satoru did his best to beat your pussy into the shape of his cock, Suguru swung his legs off the side of the bed, turning away from you as he fetched something out of the nearest bedside table. “I’m sorry,” he said, straightening back up. “I knew Satoru needed someone to keep him company while I was away, but I couldn’t bring home just any stray – he’d tear them to pieces. You were perfect, but holding ‘toru off for the months it took to prepare…” He trailed off, smiling fondly. “He’s overeager at the best of times. You can imagine what it was like – trying to tell him he had to wait to meet his kitten.”

He was lying. He was lying and he wasn’t even trying to hide it. You hadn’t known Suguru for months, you’d known him for days. There’d been a meet-cute and everything – you’d stayed at your favorite café for an hour longer than you could really afford to just to catch his eye, and he’d stuttered the first time he’d said your---

Your name.

He’d known your name.

The stabbing sensation was back. You didn’t think it was Satoru, this time.

You opened your mouth – maybe to sob, maybe to scream – but all that came out was a fractured, airy squeak. Satoru’s dick twitched inside of you, and suddenly, you were aware of just how erratic his pace had grown, just how stifling the heat rolling off of him had gotten. You clenched your eyes shut a moment before it happened, keeping them that way as something too terrible to name was pumped into you in hot, smoldering strokes. When the last spark of his climax faded, Satoru went limp against you, cuddling into your back, but Suguru was quick to chide him with a click of his tongue.

“Bad puppy.” You saw him reach for Satoru’s head, hear something metallic and taut click out of place. “Clean up your mess. Then, we’ll have you meet your kitten properly.”

Satoru grumbled, but didn’t disobey. Dragging your unresponsive body onto its side, he nestled his head between your thighs and dragged the flat of his tongue over your slit, lapping up the remnants just beginning to drip down your thighs with a tired sort of enthusiasm. Suguru shook his head wistfully. “He can be such a brat, but he means well. Ah – can you pick your head up for me, baby?”

When you failed to so much as try, Suguru cooed. “I guess you wouldn’t be.” And then, cupping your cheek, “You’re going to be a delicate little thing, aren’t you?”

“…I’m not a thing,” you spat, but it didn’t matter. He was already fitting something onto your head – a headband, the weight balanced by two off-set ears near the rounded peak. The collar was next, heavy and decorated with bows and ribbons that scratched at your throat. You were struck with the inexplicable and irresistible urge to try to claw it off, but your bound hands saved you from the humiliation.

It took you a few seconds to put a name to the last item. Made of a pale pink leather, it had an odd shape – like a cup someone had accidently made wider than it was tall. Studded straps stretched from each corner of the opening, and Suguru’s hand fell away from your cheek as he fitted it to your lower face, The upper strap was pulled tight, then the lower, until the leather pressed snugly into your skin. You started to open your mouth, but shut it just as quickly.

You should never have bothered to wonder. There was only ever one thing it could possibly be.

A muzzle.

[naffeclipse]

Sparks and Oil

Mechanic!Reader x Mob Boss!Eclipse

Commission Info

I have the pleasure of writing @zayaayame's Crimes and Justice AU with a mob boss Eclipse visiting his favorite mechanic! Their dynamics are so fun together and of course, the boy is utterly endeared with the one fixing him up.

Content Warning for suggestive themes and robotic injury.

———

The animatronic, silver and gleaming, slips out the door with a cheerful wave of their newly restored digits on their left hand. You return the gesture with a gentle smile. When the door falls shut after their departure, you breathe a sigh. Exhaustion tugs at your seams; a day’s work worth. You step towards the open sign and flip it to close. Everyone has been taken care of. In terms of emergencies, your door is always open, of course, but as far as appointments go, you’re done.

Before your hand can find the deadbolt and slide it into place to lock up for the night, a shadow falls over you from outside. The lampposts lining the street already burn brightly, and the dusk is dying deeper into a fresh night. Slowly lifting your head, murmuring pleas to not be who you think it is, you find just the one you weren’t looking for.

Eclipse grins. A sharpness encases his brilliant red and black silicon and his sun rays jut out like red-hot pokers. Dressed sharply in a pink dress shirt, red vest, and black slacks, he reaches down with a hand from his lower set of arms to push the door open and step inside.

“Hello, spitfire,” his optics, burning orange, like the sun when it sets on a smoggy evening, go up and down your form. “Aren’t you looking like a dish tonight. And your prosthetics have never had more shine.”

“Eclipse.” You roll your eyes at his romantic attempts to appease you. You cross your arms, one of sleek metal and one of your natural, muscular flesh folding in your agitation.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” he asks and saunters a little closer. His lower arms are spread wide in greeting but you are not the least bit impressed. His grin is rough and rugged. His upper set of arms hang steady by his side. 

You tilt your head in the slightest. His pink sleeves are strangely rolled down, covering the intimidating factor of his thick limbs, but you spy a spot of grease on the corner of his left shoulder. Wires poke at the fabric from underneath.

It is bad enough to have a mob boss darkening your door. It’s worse when he needs your service.

“What happened? Wait, no.” You turn around, stepping one prosthetic forward before swinging your natural one after it in a swift stride. “I don’t want to know.”

“Not even a little?” He follows after you, a towering animatronic with the strength to break whatever he’d like with his four arms—three arms, currently. “You don’t want to know how the other man fared?”

You already guess that he’s six feet under and the less you know of illegal goings-on while managing your mechanic shops, the better. 

Ushering into the back room where your private workshop resides, you point to a low table and move in muscle memory, gathering tools and acquiring the necessary components to fix an injured shoulder joint. Afton Robotics services all animatronic parts and pieces, but they are not fun to get on hand. Eclipse is at least considerate enough to make monthly donations to your mechanic shops for all the scouring you do for him.

“Take a seat,” you command instead. “Don’t you have your own mechanics?”

Eclipse purrs a low sound as he settles on the edge of the metal table. He is too tall and imposing even when you stand before him, preparing your tray of tools for the procedure.

“Of course, but they don’t have the same touch as you, spitfire.”

You whip a glare at him before resuming arranging the parts you will need.

“Watch your tongue—and roll up your sleeve.” You stop at his side, ready.

“If you insist,” he rolls deeply in his voice box. Immediately, you stand on edge.

Now what?

To your chagrin, the mob boss’s lower set of hands gladly gets to work unbuttoning his vest. A flame flickers within you. Eclipse grins as he takes his agonizing time to uncover his torso, his pink shirt husked in favor of giving you a free look at his rugged design and bright red colors of warning. Your eyes roam unwittingly before his grin turns sharp like a shark watching you bleed.

Your natural hand reaches over you to twist and adjust your prosthetic arm as you battle the maddening urge to toss him back onto the street. When he finishes setting aside his shirt and vest, you immediately zero in on the torn arm dangling off of his shoulder by a few, straining wires.

“Do you like what you see?” he asks, resting his hands on the legs of his black slacks. His optics flash. “I can show you more.”

“Are you injured anywhere else?” you reply clinically. 

Eclipse clicks his metaphorical tongue in disappointment.

You lift a hand to the damaged framework and the connector. It’s not as horrible as you feared, but it is a nasty wound. Oil drips freely now that you’ve exposed the sight of damage and wires spark with short bursts of burning light.

“Will you shut off power to your top left shoulder?” 

Eclipse tilts his head and the sparks stop spitting out from exposed copper wires. Now there’s no need to fear frying yourself on an open current. You gladly step closer and begin to salvage what pieces you can and mentally account for what you will need to replace as you remove bullet-chewed pieces.

“You know,” Eclipse rumbles amid your concentration, “I wouldn’t have to find you at the oddest hours if you were closer.”

His lower right hand snakes around your waist. You ignore how his large palm ghosts just over the clothes of your jumpsuit before lightly caressing your spinal implant. The metal vertebrae whirl in a myriad of flashing, wild colors. He hums a low sound.

Lowering his head to your shoulder, a kiss presses into your shoulder, touching the sweat and grime you’ve accumulated throughout the day. You almost jump but force yourself to focus on splicing two wires to repair the strain they endured. Then, once you finish, for good measure, you snap a glare in Eclipse’s direction.

“If you kiss me while I’m working on you, I might make a mistake, and you will pay for it.”

“Understood, spitfire.” He chuckles but his hands still roam over your body. 

Even as you stand and bend over his wound, his fingers trail over your muscled arms and touch the cords of strength along your back, trailing down your hips to your strong thighs. Scars bump underneath his smooth, metallic touch. He even stoops low to study a few marred knits of flesh along your arm where your prosthesis joins with your body. 

If you weren’t so focused on replacing the connector of his shoulder, you might have caught a glint of guilt in his optics. He instead rubs your arm softly.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he breathes an electric breath. “You should move closer to me, so I can keep you safe. It’s so dangerous out here.”

You scoff and don’t bother to lift your eyes from the task at hand. His model is familiar if not threatening. He was built to be a weapon and a weapon he has made himself.

“Oh, you wound me, spitfire,” he croons dramatically.

“Do I,” you give dryly. “I doubt I could wound you as much as whatever did this to you.”

The precision of your tools fit between metal slats and wires, restoring what was once blasted apart by a gunshot. No, you don’t think you could hurt him like this.

One of his hands falls over his chassis and he swoons while keeping still enough for you to work.

“So cruel, so heartless. And I only offer all of my parts to you,” he sighs. If only you could have taken his voice module and switched it off. 

“You’ll live,” you promise. Against your will, a tiny small slips over your lips when Eclipse straightens, his optics slipping over you in a low burn. “There. You’re all patched up.”

You turn away to reach for a rag to wipe your greasy fingers on but the hand you just restored takes you by the arm. Falling still, you feel one of his other hands move into the pocket of your jumpsuit, depositing what feels to be a thick wad of cash. Another crook of a finger captures your chin. Slowly, you rise to meet his eyes, caught in the bright orange light of his optics.

“Thank you, spitfire.”

Your lips part to ask how it feels if the current flows well and if his movement is hindered at all, but he silences you with a kiss. His metallic mouth presses over yours. He’s warm and strong but mostly, gentle. You make a soft sound, surprised and furious and flustered by his audacity. He pulls slowly away from you as if savoring every last drop.

“I’ll see you again soon.” His grin is harsh and handsome, and you boil. He can’t do that to you just because he can. But he leaves you speechless, left with oil-slick fingers and a buffering mind as he slips to the front of the shop and out the door, into the night.

You burn where you stand. Your hand moves to your lips and traces where his kiss still simmers in your skin, and you groan. 

If he doesn’t get killed, you’ll kill him one of these days.

[ckret2]

Chapter 48 of human Bill Cipher slowly dying inside for 24 hours straight with no signs of stopping anytime soon:

The Eclipse: Part 6

Over a month since his death and after nearly 50 chapters, at long last, the moment you've all been waiting for:

Bill has a complete physical and mental breakdown.

Unfortunately there's only one person available to deal with it.

They landed near where they'd camped last night. While the Pines climbed out, Bill stared at the sharp gray rocks beneath the cliff. The blood was gone. It took him a moment to process that Ford was speaking: "We can pack our tents, return Tate's boat, and borrow a phone to call Stanley for a ride."

Bill numbly climbed onto land.

Their tents were in disarray, but more or less where they'd left them the night before. While Ford and Dipper dealt with the largest tent and cleaned up the campsite, Bill methodically attempted to fold up the tent he'd slept in.

He couldn't make sense of it. There were too many plastic rods with too many little joints and too many fabric flaps, he couldn't parse the geometry of it. This should be easy, he'd watched Dipper assemble the tent last night, how hard could it be to do the same in reverse?

But it wasn't working. His hands were shaking. The joints were bending wrong, the joints were bending in directions that shouldn't exist, in impossible dimensions, shrinking and expanding perversely as they twisted in alien foreshortening—

Bill let out a gasp so loud and sharp that Ford and Dipper immediately whipped around to face him. Ford asked, "What is it?"

Bill couldn't speak. He just stared down at his awful human legs.

"Bill?"

Voice very far away—but impressively calm and flat—Bill said, "I have to sit down."

"Why? What happened?"

"My legs aren't working. I can't feel them."

His knees buckled. He tried to grip them to keep them straight, but found only one arm responded. "And—my left arm." He dropped to his knees in the mud.

And suddenly he was the center of attention, two humans moving around him in a dizzying flurry, all grotesque limbs and fabric: "Hey, are you okay?" "What happened? Are you injured?" "Think we should get help?" "Maybe he needs food—"

Too much. He closed his eyes, but there were still fingers on his arm and shoulders and back. He swatted at them with his functioning hand. "Don't touch me don't touch me DON'T TOUCH ME!" His shriek startled the birds from a nearby tree. He attempted to bite somebody, he wasn't sure who—this was what he'd been reduced to, no legs, no strength, no power, he couldn't even protect himself from being touched, all he had left was his teeth—but he misjudged the distance and bit only air. But it was enough to make the humans back off, shrinking into the distance.

"Don't touch me. Stop trying to move me. Don't ask me why I can't move. I don't know. This—this—" he gestured frantically at his body. He was moving too fast, talking too fast. "This—corpse—human body—is stupid. It's just being stupid! I need to sit. Leave me alone, I need to sit. I need to sit, and—look at nothing, and breathe." He was talking far too fast, breathing too fast. "I need it so much. Go away."

No matter how hard Bill tried to imagine the humans spontaneously ceasing to exist, they did not go away. Ford knelt in front of him, studying his face. "Try to smile."

Bill forced a smile. "Good. Good, good. Positive thinking."

"No. I'm trying to see if you're having a stroke." He sat back. "Your face muscles are still working symmetrical."

Bill decided to keep smiling anyway. He thought it might help. Happy happy happy.

"You say your can't feel your legs."

"Yes."

"Or your left arm."

"Yes."

"Did you feel any pain beforehand? Tingling in the limbs, or...?"

"No—no, no. They were working fine and then they were gone. They just—disappeared." Bill laughed. The laugh went on too long and sounded too high and too nervous. 

Ford nodded. "Okay. Drink this."

A water bottle materialized in Bill's field of vision. It took a couple of tries for Bill to manipulate his hand through three-dimensional space to grasp it. He shakily drank as much as he could. It tasted like drowning.

"Dipper, run to the bait shop and call for an... The nearest hospital is at least twenty miles outside Gravity Falls' weirdness barrier, Bill can't get there. Call for a doctor and I'll stay here to—"

"No," Bill snapped, "no no no, don't call a doctor. I don't want—" He didn't want to be seen like this. He didn't want somebody picking him up and helping him into an ambulance like he was too weak to move himself. He didn't want Mabel to know. Bad enough Ford and the brat did. "I don't need it. I'm fine."

"Fine?!" Ford gestured at him in disbelief. "Three fourths of your limbs aren't functioning—!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Something's wrong with the body. It's got nothing to do with me. I'm fine, I'm just in it." He shut his eyes and tried to breathe. "Just—just let me sit."

"Let you sit and then do what?"

"Give me time. It'll come back. Don't tell anyone and—stop looking at me."

There was silence. Bill didn't want to open his eyes. He heard Ford stand and walk away.

####

"Do you think he's faking?" Dipper murmured.

Ford hated that that always had to be the first question. "I can't imagine what he'd stand to benefit from pretending he can't walk." Bill had been desperate to get back inside the last two days. If he'd now decided to—what? maybe take advantage of his freedom to try to escape?—then why hadn't he done that when they got separated in the lake, or in the caves where Bill could see in the dark and Ford hadn't known how to call the geodites? If he was trying to separate Ford and Dipper from each other so he could kill them one by one—why hadn't he just let them die?

It was hard not to think about how he really had saved them for no clear reason.

"He's spent two very stressful days hardly eating, sleeping poorly, and hiking through half the mountain. I'd say he needs food and rest. And probably more water." He'd gulped down two thirds of Ford's water bottle.

"Seriously? He can't feel his legs, is—is that normal for like a day without food and sleep?" Dipper asked. "People can go longer than that, right? You've gone longer."

"It's not a 'normal' symptom of exhaustion, hunger, or dehydration. But I think he'll fight us if we try to get medical help. Let's deal with the immediate problems first and—see where we are then. Even if it doesn't help, at least then he won't be paralyzed and starving."

Dipper nodded uncertainly. "What do we do if he's dying?"

The boy catastrophized at the drop of a hat. In a way, Ford supposed it was a good thing—having been through his fair share of catastrophes, he knew it helped to be prepared—but Dipper was so young. "Get him to a doctor as soon as we can; and, if that isn't enough... hope we're lucky." In other words: hope Bill stayed dead.

Dipper nodded again. "What's our strategy if Weirdmageddon restarts? Maybe... I wonder if that's what the Axolotl was trying to warn me—"

"Lunch first," Ford said. "Then we can plan for the apocalypse."

####

Bill knew they were going to make him move. They hated him. They would parade him through the streets to make a mockery of him, look at the alien loser in a malfunctioning corpse, washed-up puppeteer who can't even control a meat marionette, he's already dead and you can make his corpse in the forest a tourist destination—

"Okay," Ford said. "We'll give it an hour. Dipper's heading to town to get some proper food and call the shack."

The shack. Like a prison cell with an open door and a black hole inside trying to suck him back in. "Don't tell them—"

Dipper said, "I won't, I'm just letting them know we're not dead. And that we'll call again in a couple of hours."

No doubt so that Bill couldn't kill them without the shack knowing something was wrong. "Right."

"Do you... want any specific food?"

"Not hungry."

There was a pause. "Right. I'll just... grab something."

Bill didn't care what he did. As Dipper left the sound of each footstep was like a knife in Bill's ears. He just needed to breathe, needed to breathe and be normal and feel normal and happy—

Something soft landed on his head.

Bill opened his eyes.

There was an unzipped, slightly moist sleeping bag draped over his head and around his shoulders; and Ford standing several feet away, hands awkwardly clasped behind his back, looking somewhat embarrassed with himself.

Bill said, "What."

Ford cleared his throat. "It. Helped when you were, ah... had a hair cut. I thought—it can't hurt."

It took Bill a moment to figure out what he meant. "Oh." The towel. Ford had seen him hide under a towel. Right. 

Ford winced and muttered, "Maybe it can hurt."

Bill croaked, "What."

It wasn't until he tried to speak that Bill realized he was crying so hard he couldn't breathe. His vision swam, his shoulders shook, his breath came in sharp hitches—no no no no, that wasn't okay, not in front of— Stop, stop, stop.

He covered his eyes with his hand. The water bottle slid off his thighs and spilled on the ground. Between gasping breaths, Bill forced out, "This's—this is—good. Good."

"How is it...?"

"It's a—hint. This—it's—prob... probably... ps-psycho—som—ss—" 

"Psychosomatic?"

"Mm. Mhmm." He tried to get in a deeper breath and failed. "'Sgreat. Means—no inj—injuries. Flesh is—fine."

"So you're..." Ford's footsteps came closer, "saying it's psychological—?"

"No!" Bill let out a hysterical laugh. "I'm FINE! 'M happy. It's the body. It's—some hormone—hunger—exhaustion—just... s-synapses—and neurotrans—transmm—tr—"

"Easy. You can barely talk." He heard Ford sit next to him, felt the sleeping bag shift as he brushed against it. "Try to focus on breathing—"

"WHAT do you THINK I'm TRYING to—" Bill ineffectively pummeled Ford through the sleeping bag. "Move! Move, move, move! Don't t—touch—" He let out a frustrated scream that morphed into a humiliating sob, and had to clap his functioning hand over his mouth to smother the sound. He was not this body; he was a separate thing locked inside the body. This body was a prison, this body was a punishment. The legs didn't work, because the body was doing something to him. These weren't his tears, his grief, his fear. They were the body's. Which hormone was at fault? What could he blame other than himself?

He felt Ford's weight shift away from his side. "Okay, okay," Ford said. "Just... take it easy."

Bill socked him again. "Don't t-talk to me like a horse." He covered his eyes.

He didn't mean to risk his life for Ford.

Former friend, false worshiper, useless pawn, now enemy. Bill had just seen him floating out there and he'd done it—and he'd forgotten he could die.

In the Nightmare Realm he had saved his friends from peril billions of times before, because it was so easy for him, powers like a god, to see someone he was fond of and casually pluck them out of harm's way. It had been billions upon billions of years since Bill had been vulnerable to physical harm. He'd seen Ford in danger and he'd done what he always did and he'd forgotten he could have died.

He could have died. Eternally, permanently, last chance—he could have died.

And it would have been for nothing.

Bill was selfish. He had effortlessly saved friends billions of times but he'd also casually let them die just as many—assuming he didn't kill them himself. He saved friends because he liked them; but he didn't put himself out for ex-friends. Ford hadn't had one nice thing to say to Bill in years. Bill would never lure Ford back under his sway. Ford's survival endangered Bill's. But Bill had saved him anyway. He hadn't even stopped to think.

He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to think about saving the human hellbent on killing him, he didn't want to think about almost dying, he didn't want to think about how peaceful it had been floating under the water, how easy it would have been to open his mouth and breathe in—he didn't want to think. He wanted to stop thinking. He wanted to empty his mind. He couldn't meditate through his hitching breaths and the way his stomach ached from struggling to keep his sobs silent, and his legs and left arm were gone.

He was fine. He was happy. He'd always been happy. Happy happy happy.

His entire body shook with sobs. He was dizzy—gasping between sobs for air he couldn't get. He was so lightheaded and crying so hard he couldn't stay upright. The edges of his vision went dark.

Ford wrapped an arm around Bill's shoulders and tugged him against his side. He held him up until Bill was too exhausted to cry anymore.

####

There was zipper noise, then a sound like shifting vinyl. Bill cracked his fingers apart to peer through them. Ford had unrolled the portable chessboard and was setting it up. "What?"

"It looks like we'll be here a while," Ford said, addressing his statement to the chessboard rather than to Bill. "It's... something else to focus on."

Bill wasn't sure what the emotion clawing its way through the grief-stricken haze in his mind was, but it felt very similar to relief. He nodded. "S—smart. I'm already—getting bored." His cheeks itched, his eyes burned, and his head was throbbing. As Ford set up the board, Bill closed his eyes and tried again to force himself to breathe more evenly. He was still dizzy from hyperventilating. Embarrassing—even a comatose human can breathe, and Bill couldn't even get that right. "Black?"

"I know."

Of course he knew. Bill always chose black. "First?"

"Fine." And Ford also knew, despite white traditionally getting the first move, Bill always moved first.

Bill waited in numb silence for Ford to finish setting up the board and sit on the other side. Moving almost automatically, Bill picked up a queen, hopped it over his line of pawns—

"Play it properly," Ford said irritably. "I put up with your cheating and lying for years, I'm not putting up with any more."

Bill gave Ford a look that he intended to be deeply offended, but immediately realized was probably just wet and pathetic. "Really? Now?"

Ford at least had the good sense to look a tad embarrassed, but he said, "I didn't set up the board to watch you move random pieces around like an untrained kindergartener."

"Three of my limbs don't work, Stanford."

"Are you suggesting your right arm doesn't remember the proper rules of chess?"

He wondered what Ford would say if he said yes. "I have a headache."

"You're probably dehydrated." Ford rummaged around in his backpack and offered over another bottle of water.

Bill reluctantly accepted it. He probably was dehydrated. "You owe me your life."

Ford fixed him with an unimpressed look. "You're trying to cash in a life debt... so you can cheat at chess?"

Bill opened his mouth; paused as he slowly thought that over; and dissolved into broken, hysterical giggles. "I don't know w-what I'm trying to do." He covered his mouth, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to steady his breathing again.

Ford sighed. He waited until Bill had regained some control over himself; and then he said, "You can make up one new rule."

Bill considered the offer. "Total, or per game?"

"Per game."

Deep breath. "Fine. But I'm not telling you what it is. You have to guess it."

Ford considered it. "Three conditions."

"Mm?"

"One: you have to share what the rule was at the end of the game. If any of your illegal moves didn't conform to that rule, you automatically lose."

"Mm."

"Two: any rule you come up with has to apply to both sides of the board equally. Nothing that only advantages you or disadvantages me," Ford said. "Three: if I can figure out what your new rule is before the game's over, I can use it too. Obviously, you lose if I ask you about the rule and you lie."

Bill mulled over Ford's terms. His head was so foggy, he'd already forgotten the first one. "Deal."

"Deal."

####

Bill lost every game.

Badly.

He was clobbered. He was creamed. He was a faint red smear upon the pavement.

Back in Ford's dreams, Bill had won a good four-fifths of their games. Ford had heard during his travels that Bill was a mediocre player, but he didn't think he was so bad that all of those games had been won due to cheating. Even when he wasn't cheating, Bill had sometimes taken Ford by surprise.

But now, Bill was squinting at the board like he was struggling to see where the pieces were. Occasionally his fingers pinched down on thin air like he was trying to grab a non-existent piece. So Ford assumed the catastrophic losses were more a reflection of Bill's mental state than his skill level.

The option to make up rules didn't save Bill, but it at least made the games more interesting—and unlike the rest of Bill's abysmal playing, the new rules gave Ford a glimpse of the devious mind still buried somewhere in the traumatized human body.

The first round, Bill decided that the queen could leapfrog over pieces like a knight, and when Ford pointed out that would mean whoever had the first move could put the opposing king in checkmate in one move, Bill grudgingly amended the rule: the queen could leapfrog to an empty square, but could only take pieces in a straight line in the conventional manner. Ford had to maintain a phalanx of pieces jealously clinging to his king to guard against Bill teleporting his queen to the king's side. Bill managed to check him twice before Ford won.

One round, Bill decreed that rooks could only land on pieces the same color as they were sitting on, then smugly nestled his king on a white square next to Ford's rook on a black square; and then promptly lost the game when Ford pointed out both of Bill's rooks were currently on white squares, meaning he'd broken his own rule before he'd revealed it.

One round he decided that kings could move like queens, which Ford only discovered when he thought he'd checkmated him and then Bill zoomed his king across the board to take Ford's bishop; and then Bill lost a few moves later when Ford used his own king's newly revealed power to properly corner Bill.

One round Bill decided that once any back row piece was captured, it reincarnated in the body of the corresponding front row pawn. Ford genuinely liked the new rule—it meant you had to capture and checkmate both the king and the king's pawn before the game was over, and you had to be more cautious about what pieces you took since it could inadvertently set up a previously harmless enemy pawn to devastate your side of the board. But by the time Bill revealed that rule by jumping a pawn like a knight, Ford had already taken Bill's king's pawn and seen a way to checkmate him in two moves. It was a sore disappointment to end the game before getting to experiment with the new rule.

A few games were so short that Ford won without ever seeing Bill pull a nonstandard move. Round seven was one such game. Ford cornered Bill with a knight and a bishop. That had been the quickest match yet. Game over. "Checkmate."

"Checkmate," Bill said. 

Ford paused, looking over the board, thinking moving his bishop must have given one of Bill's pieces line of sight to his king; but no, his king was perfectly safe. "What?"

"Checkmate."

"You can't mate me, I just mated you."

"I know. Checkmate."

Frowning, Ford said, "Explain."

"The extra rule this game is that both kings are wearing suicide vests." He tapped his king, "He's wired up with enough explosives to wipe out the whole board." There was a look of steely exhaustion on his face. He looked like the kind of desperate, hopeless man who would put on a suicide vest. "If I'm going down, you're coming with me."

Ford laughed so hard his stomach hurt.

It was petty revenge for losing seven games in a row. A frustrated child flipping the chessboard, but making a self-deprecating joke out of it: as long as we both know I'm going to lose anyway...

When Ford had recovered himself enough to look at Bill again, Bill was giving him a faint, grim smile that didn't quite make it to his one open eye. Still—he looked a little less miserable than he had for the past hour. Or the past couple days.

Ford said, "We'll call that one a stalemate."

"I'll take it."

####

After trying all morning and half the afternoon, Dipper had remembered part of what the Axolotl had told him. Just one phrase: sixty degrees that come in threes. He could hear the rhythm and rhyme of whatever the Axolotl said next, something something something -eez—it rhymed, he was sure of that—but the rest...?

It took Dipper over an hour and a half to get back to the campsite; he'd gotten lost in his thoughts, and consequently, gotten lost in the forest. He returned with a plastic bag of the kind of junk food they regularly saw Bill consuming in the shack, a few slices of gas station pizza, and a clear takeout container of nachos. Bill immediately went for the nachos.

While Bill was inspecting the circle-shaped tortilla chips with obvious disappointment, Dipper rummaged around in the plastic bag until he found a small jar of rainbow sprinkles and offered them to Bill. Bill took it without acknowledging Dipper, awkwardly untwisted the lid with one hand and ripped off the seal with his teeth, and liberally drowned his nachos.

"The gas station looks like an earthquake hit it," Dipper reported. "And most of the cars had popped tires. I guess they must've floated up and then crashed back down." He took a cheese pizza slice and offered the box to Ford. "Nobody I asked saw the Axolotl."

Ford glanced at Bill, expecting him to have some kind of comment on that; but Bill just grunted "Mm," focused on the chess game like he thought he'd be killed if he glanced away.

Dipper pointed out when Bill pulled an illegal move, Ford explained the new rules they were playing by, and Dipper settled down to watch. He tried to razz Bill the next time he lost; but Bill made such a pathetic figure that he couldn't even enjoy making fun of him and quickly gave up.

During the next game, Bill unexpectedly slid a pawn backward diagonally to take out Ford's queen. While Ford was silently fuming over the loss of his most powerful piece, Dipper hazarded, "Can pawns capture both forward and backward?" That would have been Ford's guess too.

But Bill simply said, "No."

Dipper mumbled, "Huh," lost focus on the game, and stared off into the distance, murmuring something under his breath. He kept getting lost in his thoughts today. Ford supposed nobody in this hiking party was in the best mental state.

Maybe pawns could move like bishops? But when Ford tried to slide one diagonally across the board, Bill said, "That's illegal," and Ford returned it to its original spot. There was some hidden condition he was missing. Maybe which color square the pawn was on? Or maybe it was like en passant, you could only capture an enemy piece backwards if that was the first time the enemy piece moved?

When the game was over—Ford won, but Bill had held out longer than usual—Ford asked, "All right, what was the new rule?"

"Pawns can capture forward and backward." While Ford and Dipper stared at him in mute outrage, Bill ignored them to casually shift his posture from kneeling—his knees had gotten sore—to lotus position, and said, "Next game?" as though he couldn't even be bothered to notice the humans' fury.

"But that's exactly what we said!" Ford snapped. "You lied to me!"

"No," Bill said, "I lied to the kid. I'm not playing against the kid. Why are you paying attention to what I tell him?"

Dipper demanded, "How is that fair? Anyone listening would think—"

But he fell silent when Ford laughed. "Of course," Ford said. "I should have expected that. Any loophole you can find. That's part of the game to you, isn't it."

Bill gave Ford an unsettlingly knowing look; and Ford supposed it was part of the game to him, too.

(Somewhere in the back of Bill's foggy mind, he kept count: three times. Before today, Bill wasn't sure he'd heard Ford laugh once this summer. What changed? What was Bill doing differently? Maybe Ford only liked him when he was completely broken.)

It took until halfway through the next game for Ford to realize Bill had moved his legs.

####

Over Ford's protests that they should wait until his strength was back, Bill insisted they get moving immediately. He'd rather be locked in the shack again than spend one more minute sitting by the lake.

"I hate being surrounded by trees. Why do humans like nature so much. This is miserable." Caked in mud, still wearing a towel like a skirt, teetering with exhaustion, Bill certainly looked like the most miserable camper to ever exist. "I cannot begin to tell you how sick I am of looking at pines."

Ford wondered whether the pun was intentional.

Bill's limbs were weak and uncoordinated. He could twitch his left fingers when asked, but his grip strength was nonexistent and the arm hung limply at his side when he wasn't actively trying to use it. His legs moved, but when he tried to get to his feet he collapsed back into the mud. But he thought he could probably stand with support. He ignored the hand Ford offered and crawled to the nearest tree to lean on as he got to his feet. Ford could see Bill's knees tremble.

"I don't need your help," Bill grumbled. "I can stand fine on my own."

Ford wouldn't argue with Bill's definition of fine. "But can you walk?"

"I could." He couldn't even make the lie convincing.

"Then be my guest."

"I'm saving my strength."

It would almost be funny if he wasn't being such an inconvenience. "Well, you're here and the boat is over there." Ford gestured. The shore was much further away than it had been yesterday. "If you can't walk, then you're either crawling or you're getting help. Which you'd prefer is between you and your dignity."

Bill's face reddened. "Don't talk to me about my dignity, like you've ever cared about my dignity..." He twisted around to inspect the tree behind him, tired gaze looking over the branches—maybe he was planning to break off a walking stick? He attempted to grab a thin branch that wouldn't serve as a walking stick for a toddler. He wasn't strong enough to break it off. He kept trying.

They were never getting to the boat. "Please let me help."

"Go jump in a lake. Again."

How did Ford handle this without prodding at Bill's bruised ego? "Consider it my thanks for—ah..." Ford cleared his throat. "For actually telling the truth about the eclipse. In spite of... what was no doubt immense temptation to lie like a cheap rug. Since we didn't believe you anyway." He had averted his gaze in embarrassment; he forced himself to face Bill like a man. Bill was actually looking at him again. "And for not chucking my gnephew's body off the cliff when you had the opportunity." The bar was so low it was on the ground, and yet it was still impressive that Bill hadn't found a way to dig under it. "And... for saving my life."

Bill set his jaw tight, as if he didn't like being reminded of his moment of decency; but he said, "Fine, get over here." He held out his good arm. "Help your hero and savior limp triumphantly off the field of battle."

When Ford offered his hand, Bill ignored it, and practically snarled when Ford tried to wrap it around his waist for support. Rather than putting his arm over Ford's shoulders, Bill seized a wad of fabric near the collar of Ford's t-shirt as a handhold to hang his weight from. Ford felt less like he was supporting Bill, and more like he'd just gotten in trouble and his father was marching him into the living room by his collar to give him a stern talking-to.

"First time you've ever thanked me for anything I've done for you," Bill muttered. Ford told himself he could drop Bill once they were on the boat.

Dipper was completely zoned out, waiting on the boat staring off in the direction the Axolotl had flown. He didn't react as Bill sat next to him, and Bill didn't acknowledge he existed. Ford started the motor, and they crossed the lake toward Tate & Backle's Bait & Tackle.

####

(You can't imagine how long I've been waiting to post this chapter. Hope you enjoyed, I'd love to hear what you think, and I hope those of y'all who have been waiting for Bill to cry like a baby are satisfied.)

[iamsherlocked-1998]

𝔽𝕆ℝ𝕄𝔸 𝔹𝕆ℕ𝕌𝕄 𝔽ℝ𝔸𝔾𝕀𝕃𝔼 𝔼𝕊𝕋.

SUMMARY: Beauty standards are difficult.

WORDS: 700

WARNING! ⚠️: SEXUALLY SUGESTIVE TOPICS. Male x Male. Body insecurity, Old Rome customs. Bisexuality.

Marcus Acacius was a formidable army general, known for his strategic brilliance and unwavering courage on the battlefield. Tall and imposing, he earned the respect of soldiers and struck fear into the hearts of his enemies. He had always considered himself a man of self-reliance and self-assurance, but lamented that time did not pass in vain.

His chest bore a scar that ran across the left pectoral, a vestige of a fierce battle that had nearly cost his life. To Marcus, the scar was a testament to his survival and resilience in the face of adversity. But to others, it was a mark of imperfection, a deviation from the flawless body that was idolized in Roman culture.

That was nothing new, beneath the armor and the aura of dominance, Marcus carried a burden that few knew about: The scarcely healed wounds that witnessed the battles won were no longer an honor but a cargo, his joints were heavier with age, but there was a specific physical characteristic that completely set him apart from the ideal of Roman beauty dictated by society's standards. What he was proud of, what made him a man, did not seem the same. His intimate area was…too big, it drew too much attention, he had the feeling that because of it was considered a barbarian or an animal that could attack or destroy with a stab. Certain spheres of pleasure and sex were eclipsed by the discomfort that would accompany the act.

Despite his external confidence and strength, after all his previous bedmates seemed more than satisfied, Marcus could not escape the constant whispers and glances of those who judged him based on his appearance. What had once been of no importance due to his status, when he was relegated to a simple gladiator everything took on a different color. People did not look at him in the same way nor did they have any qualms about speaking, something that went away with his freedom.

Men gave him malicious glances, their words loaded with veiled insults and barely concealed mockery. But between the jokes and grimaces, Marcus found comfort in the surprising admiration that came from an unexpected source.

Every time Marcus visited the hot springs to recover after long campaigns, he could not help but notice the way women and even some young and inexperienced men would sneak glances at him. Their eyes would linger subtly below his waist, where dark, curly hair gave way to something else, but instead of disdain, Marcus saw a different kind of gaze: one filled with curiosity, admiration, and even a hint of attraction.

Confirmation came from someone who had once been a soldier in his service, many years and less charged confrontations behind him that he showed as a reward when he ride the general's cock in the new intimacy passed to the bedroom, his moans could have alerted the gods themselves as his straight golden hair moved uncontrollably, with rosy cheeks and hands resting on the generous shoulders of his older lover, emboldened by the ecstasy of being reached in all the right places.

In the whispers of the women and the shy smiles of the boys, Marcus found a sense of acceptance and appreciation that transcended the superficial standards imposed by society. Their genuine interest reminded Marcus that true beauty did not lie in perfect features, but in what you could do with them, the strength of character and the resilience of the spirit.

And so, Marcus Acacius, the Roman army general with a singular characteristic, learned to accept his initially imperfections and to wear his differences as a badge of honor. Because in the eyes of those who saw him as he was, not defined by his appearance, but by the courage and valor that burned within him, a flame that nothing could extinguish. And as more than just his bearing stood tall and unwavering in the hot springs, basking in the warmth of acceptance and admiration, Marcus knew that true beauty lay not in conformity to society's standards, but in the authenticity of being unapologetically yourself.

NOTE: The story is based in this post, the comments are gold 🤗💕

[emhm]

Silly question time.

Been re-reading the fic for the last two days. And this just came to me as I re-read the part where moon carried Solar up with the wire when his spine was broken and later Eclipse jas been carried cuite a bit

So wondering

Just for the couples.

Who likes being picked up/carried by their partner.

Like picking up /carrying their partner instead.

Likes both options

Like neither option

Doesn't really care either way. It doesn't do anything for them. But don't hate it either

Sun / Eclipse - Sun is okay with being carried if he's hurt or it's an emergency. It's mildly annoying otherwise. Eclipse wants to be touched in any possible way. Sun could carry him everywhere and he'd just cling. Solar / Moon - Moon will pick up Solar just because he can and it makes him squirm amusingly. Solar doesn't care unless it's a surprise grab. But he would carry Moon if needed. [Moon would refuse because Solar's joints are more delicate and his frame is older.] Firefly / Earth - As a goose Earth is happy for Firefly to carry her everywhere. She feels safe and she's glad that holding her makes him feel more secure as well. When she's fixed he will not be allowed to even try. He'd break himself trying because she's so much bigger then him. However, he's chronically touch-starved so then it will be his turn. He'd be more then happy to drape on her shoulders and just be lost in her hair for a bit. [Then Lunar makes fun of him for looking like a mink stole.] Clips / Miku - Miku likes to glomp and she'll climb him like a tree. But Clips has kids and he's used to it. She's too small to lift him. Lord Eclipse / Sunflower[SSun] - Lord doesn't want to be carried unless it's an emergency. [It's undignified and he won't admit it feels good.] Sunflower blushes like crazy if he's carried. He enjoys the closeness and slight feeling of helplessness. Sunlo / Moonlit - This can go either way. They're both ambivalent to it. Sanani / Nisshoku - Nisshoku doesn't want to be carried, he'd prefer to be doing the carrying. [He needs to feel useful.] Sanani would like very much to be carried. Carried directly to the bedroom and- Moonbeam / Solar Wheelie - Moonbeam thinks it's really funny to get in Solar's van form and ride around. Solar can pick him up easily and is guilty of 'walking him' across the floor like a child with a horse toy for laughs. Moonbeam can't lift him though. [Unless he's levitating him with magick.] Good question! Thanks! LOL

[rel124c41]

NOW PLAYING ‘I CAN’T STOP THE LONELINESS’ BY NIGHT TEMPO. jade leech

Good old Jaido is being ironic, acting happy on the worst day of his life. Why would an artist create happy music to pair it with such sad lyrics?

tags: unrequited love, angst and tragedy, hurt no comfort, complicated relationship, regrets & sorrows, friendships, bro doomed by the narrative, happy birthday to me fuckers

word count: 2,087

The first dance goes to Floyd, his brother.

This is only natural because, of course, the bride dances with the groom on their wedding day.

At his seat at the family table, Jade rolls a glass of celebratory champagne in his gloved hand. Freshly poured, it still bubbles with some last desperation. Champagne is a sipping wine but – carbonation burns the bridge of his nose with white pain as he gulps it down. Each organ in Jade stirs like kicked sediment, bubbling over. 

Floyd’s side of the table is weighed down by their father, mother, himself, and grandmother; yours is weighed down by Grim, who is trying to steal extra food off his father’s plate. The reservation hall is drowned in people though, all coming together to support your unity. 

The only one who fails to uphold this support wholeheartedly is one-drink-down-ten-more-to-go Jade Leech, the pillar of brotherhood crumbled and eroded. 

It is my own fault. Jade thinks as his mother pours him another drink. All my fault.

You and Floyd dance to ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. Sung by Frankie Valli, each lyric and note match up with each other perfectly. There is no juxtaposition between melody and meaning. With you cradled in his arms, Floyd looks down, softly mouthing each word to you. By doing so, he expresses that each word is genuine, engraved in his soul. 

To Floyd, he truly cannot take his eyes off of you, magnetized in. When there is a break in lyrics, he steals June coded kisses – warm like the beginning of summer. You two nuzzle cheek to cheek, amorous. 

As expected, Floyd cannot stay slow-dancing for longer than a minute. Melody starts to change. From sweet, it goes to this jumping excitement as the baritone horn and baritone saxophone intensify. You two start to pull away, independent in your motions. 

Besides the tight hold both your right hands have … refusing to let go … tying the knot.

The music goes: can’t take my eyes off of you, bum bum, whump whump, bam-d bam-d, bum bum, whump whump. You shimmy your shoulders back and forth, a smile eclipsing your face. Floyd throws you a wink, hips swaying side to side. Despite the ridiculousness … no, because of your joint ridiculousness, it amplifies that sentiment of nuptial bliss: you two were destined and designed for each other.  

Moved by music, you even hop in platform heels. Then, blindsided and unexpecting Jade watches, as the beat reaches its peak. You two shout, both of you jumping, but making certain your eyes connect when you shout the lyrics: “I love you, baby!!” The crowd goes wild with cheers, clapping along to the music. 

And if it’s quite alright, I need you baby to warm a lonely night! You and Floyd throw away coordination lessons as the song continues, already the perfect dance partner for each other. 

This entire wedding feels like one big, ironic joke being played on him. 

Jade looks up from his happy, bubbling champagne when Floyd dips you so low that your spine is parallel and supine to the ground, floating only four inches or so. Both of you laugh louder than the music and cheers. A polite smile is still glued to Jade’s face. 

He says words that only the watery ear of his champagne hears, “I should have never introduced them.” Unsaid because he is swallowing his alcohol-scented sorrow: It is all my fault.

The second dance goes to their father.

You seem to remember those coordinated dance lessons afterall. Especially graceful in his father’s imposing arms. Though, you keep your stance far away from his father’s shoes. Trembling at the mere notion of just touching the side of one. Burnished elkan leather that probably costs equivalent to your engagement ring. 

Your engagement ring – ah, what a cursed, loathed object it is in Jade's world. 

He was there when Floyd bought the ring. Do you know this? Jade thinks you probably do not. The proposal spot was all Floyd’s plan while the engagement ring was Jade’s. 

“Get her this one.” Jade had pointed towards an engagement ring with a criss-crossing design on the band and a diamond the size of a dime. “Diamonds are known for their durability.”

Diamonds would be able to sustain through a wild lifetime with Floyd. 

Washing dishes and spreading cream cheese on bagels in the blissful morning light, typing on computers and holding a phone up to your ear to talk in the middle of noon, brushing teeth and reaching under the sheets to stroke teasingly at his navel, moving further down and down, in the blanket of night light. Living a domestic life until you were dissolved into seafoam. All the remains of your love. A single diamond ring on a skeleton finger. Resilient.

Even though one should be the main player in their own life, it seems Jade is destined and designed for the background. 

When Floyd told Jade where he would propose, it kicked his ribs and stomach harder than any alcohol could. ‘I’m already down, why push me further’ is what Jade’s half-a-second wrinkling expression spoke. With the news broken, Jade smiled with hidden rage, “I’m sure she will love that.”

The place Floyd proposed? It was the place Jade introduced you to his twin. 

Isn’t it ironic? Jade knew you first but he will never know you the best. You will reveal your pink love and black secrets to Floyd yet never Jade. Jade: your first friend in Twisted Wonderland, now your brother-in-law. 

The third dance goes to their mother.

You are truly more beautiful than any diamond. You are something that gleams brighter than all the jewelry on the ocean floor or in sunken shipwrecks. When Jade and Floyd were little, they used to steal stuff from each other all the time. Noses would be broken because hey, that shell you found is prettier than mine! It only makes sense that they would find themselves attracted once again to the same, shining allurement. 

They learned to share as all children do. They broke off pieces of a sturgeon’s scales together and shared that. The diamond that is you though? Jade means a lot to you, he knows it; he knows it does not go beyond friendship. 

When you are dancing with his mother, you shine. Laughter pianos out of your mouth in a genuinely happy melody. Unlike him, you do not have to force this mirth. Acrylic nails grab your wrist and twirl you so fast you could puke. Giggles are a kinder substitute. Despite your early anxiety, all is alright now. 

Jade reflects upon that. The only moment you were frowning at that wedding.

He was speaking to Trey Clover when you appeared out of nowhere, platforms clicking. The visage of you stole his breath away; then, you stole him away from his conversation with Clover, apologizing. Jade let himself be dragged by your firm hand. As the tendrils of your hair and wedding veil bounced with your pace, Jade watched the dorsal side of his diamond gleam and raced down to a secluded hallway. 

You turn on Jade, blindly bright. Sevens, you look gorgeous. Even with that frown on your face – how can he help, he wants to soothe it away immediately – you are a sight he will never tire off. 

“Am I doing the right thing?”

For a second, Jade’s world stops. 

He thinks for a second, perhaps he could be the main character. For second, the diamond on your ring finger is not so loathsome to him. Instead of it representing infinity, it turns finite. It is a piece of jewelry you can take off. It takes only a second before you speak again:

“I mean, Floyd has been so great through all this. Super understanding, super wonderful. I mean he’s put up with all my little whims. And he was so excited about seeing the dress! I mean, the tradition of not seeing the bride before the ceremony is boring and super outdated –”

Ah, he is back in the secondary character position. You were only talking about the tradition you brought over from your world. It had a little bit of your culture that you wanted to keep with you – not seeing Floyd until you walked down the aisle. 

Jade is incredibly stupid to think you were talking about the wedding. You do not seem the type to call off a wedding. He smiles and asks, “That eager?”

“Well, I,” you fluster and look away. ‘No. I’m not, but it was the only thing Floyd and I really fought on. I’m starting to realize that it is a bit silly.”

“Keeping tradition is often how we show love for the generations before us.”

You weigh Jade’s words carefully on the scale of your consciousness. He wonders if he spoke his heart if you would take that into consideration or ignore it. After a pregnant silence, you say, “But I don’t really have a family history anymore.”

Jade blinks, surprised, as you continue, “Today, Floyd is going to become my family. Or, well, I’m going to become part of his. I have nothing of myself to offer in terms of tradition anymore.”

“You will just choose to assimilate to the circumstances?”

“Wouldn’t anyone do so for love?”

Those words fall like an anvil on Jade’s heart. “Yes. I fear they might.”

“Fear is such a drastic word!”

Jade laughs as you say, “Ah but I suppose it is true. I’m actually terrified right now.” Your hands fall down to play with the hem of your gown. You run your thumb over the outfit you will only wear once. Such a monumental, life-changing piece of fabric. 

The diamond catches a flicker of light, reflective. Jade asks, “Are you having regrets?” He waits with bated breath. 

“About Floyd? No. Never.” Your expression only solidifies the truth of your words. 

“Then my advice?” You look on with eager eyes. Jade smiles through the pain. “I say you should keep with the tradition. Weddings are a merge of the very notion. When you become a Leech, you still have your identity to care for.” That is not the real reason though. Because, this. This Jade gets to steal: the first sight of you in your wedding dress.

“Thanks, Jade. You’re the best friend – the best brother that a bride could ask for.”

Hand over his heart, concealing everything, “It is my pleasure.”

The final and fourth dance goes to Jade.

Carried by a crowd that rushes, you two dance a mad dance, hands welded together. In your gown, you move like Jade imagines all those sneaky princesses that defied and tricked the Seven must have – well, six princesses. Like an oscillating dream, you lean back, arms out. Laughing, you swing right back into Jade, chest to chest and arms out to the side instead.

When your hearts connect in the dance, Jade thinks he could be foolish enough to steal a kiss. Just one to be a solution to all his troublesome pining. A shade of Venus pink, shining and alluring him into a dumb mistake. 

I had you first but I will not have you last. Or in any ways that matter to your heart. 

The song that plays is a melody that demands dancing. It is a force that moves your hips to sway side to side. Puppets you jump around, platforms banging along with the lyrics. And what tragic lyrics they are. The smile on your face would make him think he was listening to a love song. 

Fluent in quite a few languages, Jade knows better. Though, Jade is unsure why the song is structured like this. Why would an artist create happy music to pair it with such sad lyrics? It is such a cruel juxtaposition. Jade smiles when you twirl yourself so your dorsal side lies against his front, snug in his arms as he dances with you. Those Venus-hued lips pull up in a diamond grin.

Why would an artist create happy music to pair it with such sad lyrics? There is only one answer. Irony. 

Jade laughs and helps you back to your feet when your platforms catch on the bottom of your wedding gown. You thank him so genuinely. Jade never wants this particular melody to end.

Then, it does.

“Can I steal my Shrimpy back,” Floyd jokes, when the song ends. You happily launch yourself into his arms, ready to dance until your feet are sore. Stolen successfully. 

[anxiouscr0w]

Emotional Support Staff Drabble - Vampires and Pumpkins

Happy Samhain!

This is not the entire drabble, the entire thing is posted on AO3 here.

Posted below is only 1,202 / 4838 words~

[CW for biting]

Halloween was a great time of year. Sure, you may not go trick-or-treating anymore, but autumn itself was a rather cozy and aesthetically pleasing time of the year.

The decorations, the silliest impossible invertebrate skeletons you’d see in shops, the bargain bulk bags of sweets, the undertones of cinnamon and pumpkin in everything… It felt like a part of the year where you truly noticed the changing of the seasons and appreciated the turning of the wheel.

They were busy months, but they pleased a part of your brain you couldn’t quite describe.

Unsurprisingly, the apartment never got any trick-or-treaters – that’s just a given. However, Jennifer had shared her yearly routine of sitting outside of her parent’s house with a big bowl as her parent’s resented the unnecessary knocking.

You had intended to join her, but of course, Management reeled you in for a last minute shift. Even messaging you an hour before wanting you to clock in didn’t make you qualify for a small bonus in this month’s pay. It was simple: make sure the Daycare Attendant was in line for a few hours before closure.

The Pizzaplex is surprisingly busy for this time of night. The outside is aptly decorated with cheap flimsy plastic decorations of Jack-o-lanterns, skeletons, and those odd fuzzy hanging bats.

Nothing surprises you, not even the fact they didn’t even shill out for a handful of real pumpkins.

A poster on the door featuring an illustration of the Glamrocks advertising 10% off all Fizzyfaz and Fazbear brand sweets makes you want to roll your eyes. Of course they wouldn’t have their products cheap; everything in the Pizzaplex was already atrociously expensive.

£32 for a microwave reheated curry? No thank you.

Letting out a yawn behind your hand, you push open the door to the Daycare. The aren’t too many children left, but that doesn’t stop the mild pang in your chest.

They’re likely the children of parents who are working late or have nightshifts and can’t go out and enjoy the season.

However, they all clamber over each other and scream as a child wearing a werewolf costume chases them through the colourful structures. It brings a smile to your face that despite the circumstances, they still find joy in the Daycare.

You scan the area, unable to find your lanky idiot of a friend.

Although the moment you close the door, a large figure unveils themselves, previously hiding behind the door the moment they saw you coming.

“Mwahahaha!” Sun exclaims cheesily as he throws his arms in the air, “I’ve come to suck your blood!” His new puffy sleeves fall into the crook of his elbows, the large (dramatic) crimson cloak gets caught in the joint of his hand.

He’s dressed in mostly black, white, and red, the long silky cloak compliments his costume well. The cloak is black on the outside with a scarlet middle, the first assumption that came to mind was that he was Eclipse. His claws are extended and he has fake blood smeared across the whites of his costume and below his mouth.

With his wide and excited grin, you can see that his teeth are fitted with hard toppers to give him a fanged appearance.

You snort, unable to stop the stupidly big smile creeping onto your face, “Are you wearing a corset–?”

He scoops you up into his arms, twirling you around in his usual energetic manner. Each spin makes you as dizzy as that time you ate too much from the trick-or-treater’s bowl one particularly slow night.

He holds your back to his chest, your feet dangling off the ground. Suddenly dropping to his knees, he sinks his fangs into your shoulder, hastily pulling the material of your jacket and shirt collar to the side.

“ARGH!! Dude, what the f–”

He slaps his hand over your mouth, “Language!” He gasps, “There are children here! Wow, I’ve always wanted to bite you!” He cackles, his teeth noticeably tipped with bright beads of blood.

The way he licks over him with a chrome tongue makes you pale.

“That’s…” You swallow painfully, “That’s disgusting.”

He leans further forward, effectively covering you both in the cloak as his hands come out to trap you on the playmats, “And yet, your dopamine levels have significantly increased, Sunshine.” His tone is matter-of-fact as he teases you.

Bastard.

The skin of your face feels uncomfortably tight as it heats up, avoiding eye contact with the smug robot above you.

You grumble, “Okay, whatever, don’t look at me like that.” You brush off your knees as you stand, forcing him up too, “There is no need for theatrics. I get it, you were a theatre kid!”

He pats your head, “In our defence, we weren’t actually meant to break the skin.” He fidgets with the bottom of the lacey wine coloured corset, tied as tight at possible.

“That’s b.s.” You shove against him as you make your way over to the assistant desk to dump your belongings.

He crosses his arms, using his head to gesture to your clothes, “Why aren’t you participating? Don’t be so boring, Sunshine!”

“Unfortunately, I’m still working.”

He scoffs, “That just won’t do! Not in my establishment!”

He skips toward the low arts and crafts table, picking up a frayed plastic brush and a cheap colourful face paint kit, tucking it under his arm as he rakes through a box of spare cleaning cloths.

“Sit!” He demands, pulling you by the arm to sit face-to-face in his lap.

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, you’ve sat in Roxy’s lap in the same way to do her eye shadow. The faint ‘oooo’ you hear from an observing child makes you giggle.

Sun’s cape drapes over your legs like a luxury silk blanket, his free hand wraps over your torso to keep you still as you slide into more of a laying down position. You could almost fall asleep like this.

“I’ll let you paint me if I can paint you.” You pipe up as he swatches the white.

“Oh, but Sunshine! We already have our costume!”

You roll your eyes, “Obviously, I just mean that I want to paint your face.

He lets out a quiet ‘hmph’ as he considers your demand before he eventually nods. Wordlessly, he mixes some water into the paint on his brush.

“You’re so lanky that I’m falling.” You’re slowly but surely sinking into the gap of his legs.

“Hush!” He scolds, grabbing your chin and applying a highly pigmented white. The texture is slightly gritty, advertised all over the plastic lid as being a glow in the dark colour.

The sensation as he paints around your nose makes you want to sneeze. Each bristle on the flimsy brush is frayed and spread out, likely from years of use. From the looks of it, this is more of a regular kid’s paint brush than for face paint. He probably managed to lose the correct one.

Who knows, maybe this paint has gone off by now… maybe you’ll have a massive breakout in a few days.

His lines are careful in contrast to his often fidgety and erratic nature. Each brushstroke is precise.

“Okay, Sunshine, close your eyes.”

The rest of this drabble is on AO3!

[1800titz]

Okay, I wanted to write a TEENY bit amidst my frantic workload. Here we have just a crumb of that incubusrry idea. What do we think?

She’d fallen asleep. When had she fallen asleep?

The man at the foot of her bed is a shadow — face veiled by the angle of the dusk. His stature, though — broad, visibly — is enhanced by the traces of the sunset that streak through the window he eclipses. It builds him and cascades over his shape, and her eyes bound and imbibe in slivers. His waistline, his parted thighs, the crest of his shoulders, his arms, ominously at his sides. His head, tilted just a tad. 

Mila should be scared. She should be so scared to see this foreboding shadow of a masculine figure at the foot of her bed. Chills should thrive down her arms under the circumstances, terror should curl over the skin of her bones and manifest in a blood-curdling scream, expelled by her lungs. Pumping, pumping, pumping blood, her heart should be racing — Mila should be petrified. 

She isn’t. Instead, she finds ease in his presence. There’s an oddly ironic comfort to his company — a soothing sentiment that muzzles her racing thoughts and stifles what would typically be a hammering behind her ribcage. And when he speaks, his voice is a velvety croon that envelops her like a weighted blanket. He says her name. Two syllables that roll off his tongue with songlike cadence holding no tune. And it’s pleasant — his voice. Deep in inflection, a sweet melody to her half-awake eardrums, dreamy like a lewd fantasy in her REM cycle. It’s familiar, it’s the same voice she’s heard grazing against her ear, in the middle of the night, when he’s on top, his weight warm over her, when his hips rock against her own, when he stretches her with his cock. Mila, Mila, Mila, you’re so wet for me. When he slips his forearm between her back and the mattress, winding it and flipping their position with what seems like preternatural strength; Mila, Mila, Mila, bounce on my cock for me, baby. Just like that. And so she does — she follows the guide of his voice like a lifeline, lured by his song, siren-like. Lured by his touch, when he cocks his head up at her and squeezes her jaw in his colossal palm, the pads of his digits pressing into her cheeks. His hands are always a relief — they always carry a bit of a chill, they always soothe the feverish burnish of her own flesh (that a rendezvous with the man always seems to incite). That same jaw unhinges, an aimless mewl escaping when he grinds up and hits something extraordinary within her at a ridge, and he ogles her newly parted, strawberry mouth with eyes glazed by lust. He uses the opportunity to slide his thumb across and brush it against her tongue. 

“I know, baby, I know,” is what he tells her, his tone gentle like the soft touch squeezing over her love handle — he uses that to maneuver her hips, just gliding back and forth over him. It hits all the right spots. He hits all the right spots. He’s a dream. Literally. 

She’s dreaming, the young woman convinces herself — she’s dreaming about dreaming of him. He looms over her in hues of darkness that paint his muscles, and those muscles flex when moves to disrobe. Yes. Yes. Yes. 

“Mila,” she hears him beckon again. This one is sing-song-y and tailed by the subsequent sound of a belt buckle clinking. Leather yanked through linen loops. Her chest rolls on her breath. Yes, yes—

This is a dream. This is a very lucid dream, Mila thinks, but it feels very real when his touch cradles her bare ankle —the blanket’s been kicked off from her feet at some point or another. His cool touch presses over the joint, and his thumb swipes over the bone before the foot of the bed dips. He’s pasted a knee onto it, and Mila watches his form in motion, bathed in shadow.

“Gonna be a good girl and let me make you feel good tonight?”  

[beeshoesometimesdraws]

Arcane AU Ruin and Eclipse in a situation where they’re forced to work together! Can end however you see fit

Enemy of my Enemy

(Arcane au Eclipse and Ruin)

———————————————————————————

“Shit shit shit-“

Eclipse cursed sharply under his breath as he vaulted over a pile of wooden debris. He hit the ground heavily, joints creaking under the pressure. Wildly, the synth looked around. Walls of gray arched above his head and stretched out on either side into darkness— a tunnel.

The perfect place to lose the bastards on his trail. He started moving towards the darkness. He had to move quickly if he wanted a chance of escape—

“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.”

Eclipse whirled around so fast he would have given himself whiplash if he were human, rays retracting. There next to the wood pile stood another synth— a synth that looked a lot like himself in model. Mismatched eyes studied him calmly as the other synth stood with their hands folded in front them.

“My apologies, it wasn’t my intention to spook you.” They said in a polite, posh kind of voice that raised Eclipse’s guard higher.

“Who the hell are you? What do you want?” He hissed like an angry cat. Slowly, his hand started to move to his belt, fingers brushing against the hold of his gun.

“Oh, you can just call me Ruin.” The bot smiled pleasantly with a syrupy sweet lilt, “I assure you I mean no harm. You won’t be needing to pull that firearm of yours— I only wish to offer my aid.”

Eclipse paused however he kept his fingers against his gun. His eyes narrowed.

“Your aid?” Eclipse spit out the word like it was poison on his tongue, “I don’t need your aid.“

Ruin rolled back on the balls of their feet idly, “Perhaps you don’t, however I think you and I share a common enemy.”

Eclipsed scoffed, “Really? Because from where I’m standing you look a hell of a lot like one of those Topside synthetics.”

Ruin paused, a soft hum leaving their voice box, “I used to be,” their voice lilted darkly, “but I think you’ll find that I no longer associate myself with those that use their power to piss over the less fortunate.”

Eclipse opened his mouth before shutting it with a click, focus shifting from Ruin. Distant voices, growing ever louder, carried from outside the tunnel. His gaze snapped back to Ruin as the synth cleared their throat and held out a blue-hued hand.

“What do you say, Eclipse?”

Eclipse’s eyes snapped up from Ruin’s hand, narrowing, “How do you-“

The other synth cut him off with a smile, “You aren’t exactly an unknown figure around the Undercity, you know.”

Eclipse grunted, suspicion still prickling like nettles along his spine. He stared down Ruin’s outstretched hand, the voices growing loud enough to where he could make out shouted words.

Oh for fucks sakes…

Eclipse stepped forward in one long stride and roughly clasped Ruin’s hand, glaring daggers into the synth’s mismatched eyes, “Fine, but if you fuck around I’m gonna—“

“Blow my motherboard out— yes yes, I understand.” Ruin’s grip on his hand tightened and he made a noise as they tugged him into a dark space in the wall hidden from view, “Come along now.”

Eclipse’s eyes easily adjusted to the engulfing darkness as he was pulled down to crouch beside Ruin, looking out through the lichen-covered crack in the wall he had been tugged through. So that’s where he came from.

The thud of several footsteps and shouting voices approached quickly and Eclipse watched intently as a herd of black boots marched into view. The enforcers shouted to each other as they spread out and scanned the area. He couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying as Ruin tapped his shoulder.

Eclipse looked over to see the smaller synth holding out a small, rounded metal object with a blue glow emitting from it and a looped pin at the top. He looked up at Ruin with a raised brow.

Ruin shrugged, “You have a better arm than I do.” They held the handmade grenade closer to him, insistent, “This will distract them so we can escape through the other entrance.”

Eclipse grunted in acknowledgment and carefully took the grenade from Ruin. He looked it over—inwardly admiring the handiwork—and then shifted his focus to the outside where the enforcers had gathered only a few feet from the crack. Eclipse shifted closer, putting his thumb in the pin loop. He waited a heartbeat and then pulled the safety pin free and tossed the grenade out. It clattered and rolled right at the enforcers' feet and then proceeded to explode into a cloud of blue smoke.

As the enforcers stumbled through the thick smoke and yelled to each other, Ruin grabbed Eclipse’s hand and tugged him along with them as they slipped out from the crack. Eclipse let them tug him along, running with them through the smoke and past the wood pile out the entrance of the tunnel. They kept going until the shouts faded, ending up in an alleyway. Only then did he take his hand back.

Eclipse glanced around the alley, dimly recognizing the buildings surrounding it. He let out a sigh as he gathered his whirling thoughts. However, one came to the forefront that had his brows furrowing as he turned to Ruin.

“How did you know I have a better—“ he stopped abruptly, cutting himself off.

There was no one there.

———————————————————————————

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

The Eclipses Show

Pairings: None

Word Count: 1,232 Words

Summary: Eclipse wakes up in a forest nine months after his death. Eclipse also wakes up in a daycare a day after his death. Turns out, Solar now has to deal with both of them.

Warnings: Near Death Experiences, Coma, Injury, Limb Loss, Eye Trauma, Head Trauma, Cursing, Death (mentioned only), let me know if I should add anything else.

Chapter 1: Back From The Dead

Eclipse woke up in a forest, utterly broken and completely out of it. His animatronic body was practically destroyed, yet he survived, barely. Being booted from Sun’s head into this forest was not kind to him, it seemed.

He groaned as his systems that were functional or barely so whirred with a high pitch. He wouldn’t die here, he refused. He tried to sit up, finding his left arm missing and half his faceplate, half of his right leg gone too.

He groaned and looked around, he was in the middle of the forest. Just where the hell did Sun boot him out to? He should get moving, find a town or something. His head felt like something had kicked it in with a rusty hammer, and it did not help that his faceplate was damaged.

He tried to stand but…it was clear he couldn’t, so he tried to crawl along and find help, the pain was agonizing. He found a long, hefty branch to use as a cane for his missing lower right leg.

“Why is pain a thing?” He wondered. What was the date even? Eclipse checked his inner mechanics and it read ‘2:47am August 4th 2023’. He had lost almost a year. He’d lost from October 31st ‘22 to August 4th ‘23!?

Eclipse felt his face and found that his right eye was missing along with a chunk around his left faceplate that made his sight in his left eye extremely difficult to see from, probably from the loose socket due to the missing chunk.

Eclipse growled in anger at Sun but used what felt like a tree and the branch to get up, using his limited vision. He had to get somewhere that had parts to fix himself. He couldn’t tell what bunkers were nearby but he could see his glitching internals that could lead him to the PizzaPlex.

So he went that way, stumbling and using GPS to get there and using it again to get to get to the P&S area. Once there, Eclipse began rummaging and closely inspecting things to fix himself.

He ended up finding a mismatched pair of eyes, one baby pink and one dark grey, that would fit his model and put them into the tube’s part system, going back to find a grey and brown arm from shoulder to fingers, an old purple-tinged Moon faceplate, and a green leg model from the knee joint down.

Once he found those, he loaded them into the parts holder and set the tube to operate on himself and fix everything that he could at the moment. He could fix his internals once his outside was fixed. So he sat in the chair in the tube and let the machine do its job.

He growled feeling it take out his left eye and the remains of his faceplate. Then it placed the new mismatched eyes into the sockets, then the new faceplate. He blinked as it directed into a light scanner and thankfully could see. He could see better than a close distance at least.

The tube then fixed his wires loose from his left arm and right knee and attached his limbs and launched instantaneous calibration effects. He flexed his new limbs for the scanner and then sighed at the tube gave him a green light for all clear. Eclipse exited the tube and looked at the body scanner’s results.

He had so many internals broken. It was no wonder he felt freezing cold, his heaters were broken, so was his coolant and oil systems, his engines had cracks and fans had broken twigs in them.

“Well fuck.” He hugged. He would have to find these things himself and probably replace them himself too. So he groaned and went rummaging. He did find a fan system and engine so he went for those first. His old oil and coolant had to be drained and replaced completely, it felt like he had sludge in what was technically his blood system.

He poured coolant into the marked tank and oil into the other, placing the engine and fan system into the part holders for replacement. Eclipse couldn’t find a heater, so sadly he’d just be cold for a while.

“Better than nothing, I guess.” He huffed, laying in the chair again and let the tube release a smaller little hand to him and turn him off. Eclipse’s eyes bolted open in startle, he hadn’t realized he’d be powered down for a full coolant and oil replacement. He didn’t want to lose more time!

He booted up twenty minutes later feeling so much better. It was a goddamn miracle. He didn’t feel like he had slime in his ‘veins’, it felt like a relief to feel the liquid in him running as it should and fans and engine running properly.

He felt grateful, incredibly so. He was alive, he was fixed. But now for what to do. He had to stay close to here, his systems could break down any second if they did so please. He couldn’t replace his circuit board himself nor could the tube. He would need someone else for that.

Maybe…Maybe he could beg Lunar? He didn’t want to scare him. Eclipse had seen how October had went and, by the end of it, he was just tired. Maybe this new life post near-death, he could be different. He could be kinder to Lunar, try to apologize for what he’d done and be a better person.

So he set off to the daycare, hopefully Lunar was there. He didn’t know what would happen if it was Moon or Sun he faced, but he was sure it wouldn’t be good. Hopefully he could just talk to Lunar.

Eclipse ventured into the daycare, confused seeing three people he didn’t recognize along with Moon as Eclipse stood in the ball pit, having gone down the slide. One looked like a Sun but just…absolutely destroyed.

Another was a tall green and brown female daycare bot, and the third he didn’t recognize was a tiny pale blue and moon themed bot. He realized with a bit of fondness that the tiny bot was Lunar. It gave him a bit of joy knowing Lunar was safe and sound in a body of his own.

But a bit of horror crept in seeing who he could audibly hear was Sun be so destroyed. He was catching names and bits of a conversation but not really getting the whole story.

“Uh, guys?” Lunar asked the others. And Eclipse realized Lunar was looking directly at him with a bit of panic.

“Oh shit.” Moon realized as he turned to look at Eclipse.

“Quick, shoot him!” Lunar told Moon, handing him what looked like a laser gun. His body wouldn’t withstand that! He was in a fragile condition already! So he dove into the ball pit as Moon grabbed the gun about to fire.

Eclipse didn’t know the portal was on until he got sucked through it into a different dimension, which locked the second he was through by a different Moon.

“And now you have fucking two friends here! Worthless parasite, come get your little child!” The other Moon snapped. Eclipse looked over by the Moon and saw triple for a second. It was him. But…also not? But it was two other versions of him maybe? Why were there three different Eclipses?

[tnight877]

Angels

"Cassie?"

She was tired. Everything hurt. Couldn't she just go to sleep? Her dad slept off his migraines, and his problems, and her problems, and...everything.

Yes, sleep should solve it.

"Wake up."

"Mmmmm...I don't wanna..."

"Cassie, little rockstar, please wake up."

Cassie cracked one eye open, though the darkness beyond didn't reveal much. There was some rotting smell, ash, something that smelled vaguely poisonous... She dropped her head back, pain lancing up her spine at the abrupt motion.

"Come on, get up. We need to get moving."

Cassie groaned loudly as someone pulled her out of her little crater, her eyes fluttering open. Her gaze met the black eyes of a white bear mask and she stared for a moment before hauling in a deep breath and screaming.

"Okay, okay, that's enough," the bear mask guy said, his voice rasping and dry, a hint of some European accent slipping through. He gave her a gentle shake. "Cassie, was it? Please stop, you'll draw attention to us."

Cassie stopped screaming when claws gently hooked through her torn sweater, fumbling for her fingers. Cassie looked up, meeting Roxy's blind face, the wolf's ears perking as her stripped digits curled around Cassie's fingers.

"Little rockstar," Roxy murmured. "You're okay."

"I don't feel okay," Cassie whimpered, her awareness returning in a rush of pain.

"We need to take her to the Daycare," the bear mask guy said. "They'll have the resources to patch her up." He glanced over his shoulder. "Let's hurry, though, before that thing comes back."

"What's going on?" Cassie asked as the guy looped one arm under her legs and the other around her back, carefully lifting her off the ground and resting her cautiously against his chest as he stood. "Who are you?"

"A friend," he said simply. He started walking, and even though he was clearly trying to keep her steady, his steps still sent bolts of pain through her with each movement. She could hear Roxy following, the wolf's joints hissing with each step, her claws dragging along the wall to guide her. "And your other friend dropped you down an elevator shaft. Roxy and I fished you out after driving the Mimic off."

"Why?" Cassie whispered.

"My father's not getting away with another murder," the guy muttered.

"No, why would Gregory do that?" she clarified, her voice breaking. "I came here to save him..."

"He wasn't here," the guy said. "You freed the Mimic that Gregory apparently trapped here. Guess he didn't want you letting it out when you escaped."

Cassie squeezed her eyes shut as if that could erase the betrayal of her best friend. She curled into the guy's chest, his fingers tightening around her.

She took shuddering breaths, counting each one until the guy finally slowed down, kicking open some door and kneeling to lay her on dirty mats.

"Oh, no, no, no!" a loud yet friendly voice called. "We're still cleaning up! You can't be in here!"

"Sorry to burst your bubble, Eclipse, but no one's going to be visiting for a while," the guy said. Cassie opened her eyes just as Eclipse landed beside her, his rays spinning once as he took her in.

"Oh, little girl," the animatronic cooed, reaching spindly fingers towards her and ghosting them over her body. "What happened to you, starshine?"

"That doesn't matter," the guy said. "Can you help her?"

"Of course," Eclipse replied, standing and reaching into his stomach hatch. He pulled out a charred plastic box, prying the lid off and rummaging through its contents. "Oh dear, we're going to need more supplies than this. Hang tight, little one. We'll be right back."

Eclipse took off, the guy dropping into a criss cross applesauce position next to Cassie, Roxy awkwardly settling on her knees beside them.

"Roxy," Cassie started, but Roxy quickly shook her head.

"Don't worry, little rockstar," she assured her. "You did nothing wrong."

"You stuck your nose where you shouldn't have," the guy interjected. "This is no place for a little girl. And dabbling in the AR world? You'll be seeing Helpy in your peripherals for the rest of your life."

"How do you know all this stuff?" Cassie asked. "Are you a Fazbear technician?"

"Something like that." He glanced away. "I'm better at fixing robots than people, and even then I'm better at breaking the robots than fixing them." He looked down at her. "All this to say I suck at first aid. Sorry."

"Why are you dressed like that?"

"Covers up what people don't want to see."

"What's that?"

"You don't want to see."

"What's your name?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"You saved my life," Cassie said quietly, meekly. "I...I guess I just want to know why."

"You remind me of someone."

"...who?"

Even though the bear mask was smiling, she could feel the sadness seep into his persona. He didn't reply.

"Hello again, friends!" Eclipse declared, landing and dropping bandages and some other scary looking things beside the trio. "Roxy, dear, would you mind holding her up? She's got a nasty gash on her leg that I'd like to attend to first. Here, starshine. Take these pills. They'll help with the pain."

Roxy gently lifted Cassie, the little girl letting out a pained squeak. Eclipse pressed a pair of pills into her hand, his optics flickering. "I don't have any water, I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Try not to think about it, little one."

"I can go get water," the guy said, pushing himself to standing with an odd mechanical hiss. "Hopefully something that's not sewage."

He slipped out of the double doors, Cassie's focus shifting to Eclipse as he grabbed a bottle and a graying cloth. "Hold still, starshine," he said and got to work.

The guy came back with a cracked mug, water leaking slowly between the crack. He pressed it into her shaking hand, taking the pills from her and dropping them between her parted lips. "Careful," he muttered as he pressed the mug to her lips. He pulled back after she'd swallowed.

"Why wear the mask?" she asked, trying to distract herself from the sting of whatever Eclipse was doing to her leg, Roxy's digits rubbing comforting circles on her shoulders. The guy seemed to pick up on this and sighed, his shoulders drooping.

"Couple of reasons. Not to scare people, and AR access." He pointed a stern finger at her. "It's meant for adults."

"Sorry," she whispered. He shook his head.

"Too late for apologies and regrets." He crossed his arms over his chest, looking around the Daycare. "How long until she's ready to be transported?"

"At least fifteen minutes. We need to do some scans and get her medicated properly," Eclipse said. "Our little starshine shouldn't have to deal with this pain all on her own."

"Can I see?" Cassie asked. "What's under the mask? I've seen some pretty scary things."

"She's not scared of me," Roxy said, clearly trying to be humorous, though vulnerability seeped into her voice.

"You look fine, Roxy. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise," the guy told her. "Little girl, trust me, you're better off not knowing."

"Name or mask," Cassie offered boldly, wincing as Eclipse's digits brushed a tender spot. He muttered a gentle apology. The guy tilted his head.

"Little negotiator, are we? Fine. Eggs Benedict."

Cassie giggled. "That's not your name," she said with a laugh.

"That's what people call me."

"Why?"

"It's what I've gone by for a long time. Some idiot gave it to me and it just stuck."

"Okay, then what were you called before that?"

"Benedict Eggs."

She laughed again, shaking her head. "You're funny."

"Glad you think so."

"Well, since you won't tell me your real name, then you have to show me your face." She fixed him with a stern look. "Deal's a deal, right?"

His head tilted the other way. "You're not quitting, are you?"

She shook her head with a small smile. "Momma didn't raise a quitter."

"Good mother." His aura softened. "Good kid." He sighed, looking to the side and reaching up to touch the base of his mask. "Okay, fine. Promise not to scream in my face this time."

She raised her pinky. "Promise." He turned to stare at her hand and she wiggled her finger expectantly. He shook his head, reaching over and carefully curling his finger around hers. For the first time, she noticed the white bandages wrapping around each of his fingers and disappearing beneath his sleeve.

She didn't get the chance to ask about it before he was pushing the mask back to rest at an angle on his head, revealing more bandages around his neck and stitches on sickly purple skin. Cassie's eyes widened and she swallowed her words -- and disgust -- as he tilted his head and watched her expectantly.

"Michael Afton," he said. "At your service." His mouth quirked upwards, black eyes lidded and tired. "But you can call me Mike."

[boyish]

i made a fibromyalgia pride flag last night! this has absolutely been done, but i wanted to contribute with one of my own. coincidentally, today is fibromyalgia awareness day, so. hi! if you're following me, are you aware of fibromyalgia? did you know i have it? you know now!

color meanings and background under the cut.

the colors in this flag were colorpicked from a northern pearly eye butterfly. most pictures of them are pretty brown, but they are purple butterflies—i think it's one of those things like, cameras are just really bad at capturing their coloring most of the time. in much the same way, you can't really tell by looking that someone has fibromyalgia, and i thought that was pretty fitting. i also just think they're really, really pretty.

i used the same format as the disability flag, because a lot of chronic pain is treated as pretending or faking, and i wanted to make it clear that we are part of the community and we belong here, in the same way that queer pride flags have mirrored the pride flag and the pride flag mirrored the bear and leather flags.

color meanings: note: i chose multiple meanings for each color on purpose to cover a variety of symptoms, so please feel free to assign more to any stripe you please. i also tried to assign at least one positive thing to each stripe, because every color is dear to someone.

purple: hope / research / cold weather - not hope for a cure, but hope for support and understanding which leads to successful symptom management. research has already shown that fibromyalgia is an autoimmune issue, which is huge! i'm excited to see what it will teach us next. cold weather can spell out extra pain for those of us with fibromyalgia (like me), so let this stripe be a reminder to bundle up and be gentle with yourself.

lilac: bad weather / migraine / comfort - changing weather—and changing air pressure or temperature that goes with it—can spell pain for fibro folks, and hell hath no fury like a migraine coming on. for both, and every other kind of pain, comfort is a must.

off-white: brain fog / dull pain / ache / chronic pain solidarity - brain fog is a constant companion of mine; it curls around my shoulders like an affectionate cat, rubbing against my cheeks and rumbling in my ears until i can't hear myself think. this stripe is just off-white in honor of that feeling, and also because i didn't want this flag to be too eye-searing for those of us with sensitive migraine triggers. dull pain is a lot like that, but a lot less pleasant. this stripe also reminds us that we aren't alone in our invisible disability, and that we're hip to hip with a lot of really excellent company in the chronic pain community.

amber: nerve pain / sudden pain / joint weakness and related falls / warm weather relief - nerve pain, as opposed to inflammatory pain, tends to be sharp and feel 'electric'. i once described it to my doctor as feeling 'like there's lightning in my bones'. sudden pain is like that, too, and i've found that my knee suddenly giving when it was fine a moment before can be, as well. but this nice honey-golden stripe also reminds me of the nice day i had recently when i viewed the eclipse with my friends, sitting in the sun in my new skirt, quite literally sitting pretty in the sunlight and then, suddenly, lack thereof. warm weather is nice, when it isn't a surprise—a slope and not a snap.

brown: underdiagnosis in people of color* / solidarity with people of color* in our community - as is often the case in the medical community, there is a wealth of doctors willing to diagnose white patients with fibromyalgia, and those same doctors are largely unwilling to diagnose people of color unless those people of color bend over backward. this stripe is to recognize that, as i think it's important, and to stand in solidarity with people of color who have (or are seeking) a diagnosis. (*the asterisk is to note that i am using people of color as a catch-all here, but very specifically this effects Black people the most, especially Black women. there is a long and incredibly ugly history of medical malpractice around not believing Black women when it comes to pain in the medical field which i am definitely not educated enough to speak on.)

i drew the butterfly vector myself, and here it is alone if you'd like to use it.

and a bonus-bonus version with the flag on it, to just kind of, slap on stuff i f you'd like. i dunno, i like how it looks.

[teine-mallaichte]

happy friday! :') i'm looking at the eclipsing bingo prompt "bite down on this" for fenders <3

May be a little cliche, but only thing that came to mind was a dislocation... so... ye... blaim my hEDS I guess. Prompt for both @dadrunkwriting and @eclipsingbingo

The dense foliage of Sundermount rustled softly in the evening breeze, casting dappled shadows over the rugged terrain. Amidst the tranquil beauty of the landscape, Anders and Fenris found themselves on a secluded path, their mission having taken an unexpected turn.

Anders winced as he sat on a fallen log cradling his injured arm, trying to ignore the way Fernis was glaring at him.

“Foolish mage. What were you thinking?" Fenris muttered, as he inspected Anders shoulder.

Anders managed a weak smile through the pain. "I didn’t plan on getting thrown into a tree," he replied, his breath catching slightly as another wave of pain shot through him.

"It's dislocated," Fenris observed, his voice tight with concern. "You cannot heal it?”

Anders shook his head, wincing at the movement, “It needs relocating first.”

“It will hurt.” Fenris observed.

Anders nodded grimly, "I know. Just... do it quick," he replied, trying to steel himself for the impending pain.

Fenris gently took hold of Anders' arm, studying it for a moment Anders could hear the elf doing something just beyond his peripheral vision.

“Bite down on this," he instructed softly, handing Anders a leather strap he had quickly fashioned from a piece of his own armour.

Anders took the strap, nodding in understanding as he bit down on it, bracing himself for the agony he knew was coming. Fenris positioned himself carefully, his strong hands gripping Anders' forearm and upper arm with practiced precision. Without further preamble, Fenris applied swift, controlled pressure, manoeuvring the joint back into its socket.

Anders couldn’t stifle a cry of pain, muffled by the leather in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, focusing on breathing through the searing sensation that shot through his entire arm. The muscles around his shoulder tensed and trembled as Fenris worked, his touch both firm and surprisingly gentle despite the urgency of the task.

Seconds stretched into eternity before the joint finally settled back into place with an audible click. Anders slumped forward, gasping for breath, his body trembling from the adrenaline and pain. Fenris immediately moved to support him, one hand on his back and the other still steadying Anders’ arm.

Anders leaned heavily against Fenris, his forehead resting against the elf's chest as he struggled to regain his composure. The leather strap hung limply from his mouth, the taste of sweat and blood mingling on his tongue. Fenris murmured soothingly, his fingers tracing comforting circles on Anders' back.

"Next time perhaps avoid the trees," Fenris comments.

Anders managed a weak chuckle, his voice strained but filled with relief. "I'll... keep that in mind."

Fenris huffed softly, a mixture of exasperation and affection in his tone. "You are infuriatingly reckless sometimes."

"It's all part of my charm," Anders quipped, though his attempt at humour was punctuated by a wince as he shifted slightly, testing the stability of his newly relocated shoulder.

"You're impossible," Fenris muttered, but his touch remained gentle as he helped Anders to sit more comfortably on the log, before sitting next to him.

[waterdeep-weavemoss]

Pest

She stalked through the House of Hope, taking comfort in each heavy step, each time the garish marble floors trembled.

'"The mouse smiled brightly,"' she recited through gritted teeth. '"It outfoxed the cat. Then down came the claw, and that love, was that."' She took a breath, felt her engine settle into a ticking purr. 'The fox made a mistake, it misjudged the mouse. Here she fucking comes to burn down his house.'

An imp flew at her; with lazy, practiced ease, Karlach snatched it by the neck out of the air, threw it to the ground to crush under her boot. She knew he was here. It was too still, too calm. The shades did not wail, the hot winds off the balconies did not stir. She could smell the incubus, hiding, waiting.

Cherries and musk. Faint at first, then heady, choking, cloying sweetness. It made her head swim and she shook it, snarling. 'Fucking tacky bastard,' she said.

'Now, that's just rude,' he said smoothly from behind her. Of course. Filthy sneaking fuck. 'To what do I owe the pleasure, my fearsome fiery friend?'

'Pest control,' she spat, spinning on her heel to look Raphael in the eye. She didn't care that he was taller than her, that his wings eclipsed everything behind him. She cared about smacking the smug grin off his face.

'Karlach,' he purred. 'You're losing your touch. It's not like you to be snuck up on.' He took a step forward, yellow eyes burning with challenge, amusement. She held her ground.

'I've fought bigger uglier bastards than you, you jumped-up prick. Not fucking only do you think you can prey on those tiefling kids,' she growled, stepping right into his face, 'Gortash was your fucking fault.'

He looked down at her, lip curling in disdain. 'That insolent little brat is worthless. Why bring his name into my house?' His tail lashed from side to side, thudding hard into the wall.

'That brat,' she hissed, 'is the reason I was Zariel's attack dog for ten fucking years. And now he's dead.' She raised her chin, eyes shining with triumph.

'Then congratulations are in order,' he said warmly, throwing his arms wide. 'You've overcome your demons, in a surprisingly literal sense. And look at you.' His eyes flicked over her, shrewd and calculating. 'You're strong. Capable.' He leaned forward, conspiratorial. 'I could use your talents.'

Fire flared in her chest, steam hissing from the vents in her shoulder. 'My friend might think she sees good in you, but I don't, Raphael. You can take your job offer and shove it. I'm here to finish the job.'

And then she was swinging the axe, lightning quick; he was quicker though, light-footed despite his hulking size. He stepped aside, caught the back of her head with a wing and sent her tumbling to the floor.

'A shame,' he said, tutting. 'I didn't think you were so foolish.' He grinned, fanged and malicious. 'Mol reminds me of you, you know. Too young to know any better, vulnerable, naïve.' She bared sharp teeth at him, crouched with her tail whipping from side to side.

'Shut the fuck up.'

'That's your problem,' he said, grabbing her by her remaining horn and hauling her off the ground, plucking the axe from her hands and throwing it aside. 'You were far too trusting. If you had any sense you would have seen the mark of the hells all over that pathetic creature, but you didn't want to see it, did you?'

Karlach kicked, thrashing to get free. 'Bastard!'

'You wanted to be loved.' He spat the word like a curse, smiled mirthlessly. 'Foolish girl.'

'SHUT UP!'

The tiefling roared, launching herself forward. Her boot connected and the devil grunted in surprise, dropping her. She landed on hands and feet, leaping to the side as he sent hellsfire her way.

'Dear me, I seem to have touched a nerve. But you always were a scrappy thing. Hardly a soldier. Even less a girl. But come on then, if it makes you feel better to die on your feet. I'll grant you that, at least.'

'Fucking die,' she shot back, swinging at his wing joint. Spurts of hot blood hit the floor, spattered Karlach's chest and arms. It burned hot, but she would not shriek in pain. Only in rage. 'I fucking deserved better! And now I'm going to fucking finish the job!'

'Good luck,' he rumbled dangerously. His tail whipped around to catch her in the face, cutting into her cheek. Blood poured from the wound, fire surged from her engine, and she barrelled forward, catching him around the waist. He was heavy with muscle but so was she; with a quaking crash she tackled him to the ground, straddled him, planting her boots on his wings. He screamed in fury.

'Does it hurt?' she hissed, grinding her heel on the torn flesh. 'Good.'

'Do it then, you coward.' His eyes blazed, hands reaching ineffectually for her throat. 'Finish it. You won't suffer any less. You will carry the wound with you for the rest of your life. This is not a victory, Karlach Cliffgate. Only a momentary pause. But you belong here,' he sneered. 'When you die, this is where your soul will go. There is no escape.'

'Well then,' she said, chest heaving with exertion. 'Guess I'll be seeing you, motherfucker.'

She brought her axe down between his eyes. His death scream mingled with her cry of release and sorrow and primal wrath, shaking the foundations of the House of Hope.

And for good measure, she aimed a swift kick at his chin, shuddered in revulsion as his neck broke.

'Enough,' she said, turning her back on his corpse and walking away, jaw set. 'I want to go home.'

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[theallianceofcelestials]

You're correct, I didn't realize how obvious it was. But the thing is B-nova that was taken in by either family isn't really B-nova, because B-nova dies with killcode long before v3 and v4 eclipse come back. B-nova would never have been alone enough to go with and stay with either sea or mirror family, but there is one nova who would. Remember there are four versions and I only told you about three, I did that on purpose. What sea and mirror family adopted is the infection nova, either death star or barren because novas are the death of stars and you know.

What causes them to figure that out is very specific, if the family were to leave or be unable to be found when this nova is scared or in distress they start to break down.

Now to give some information this nova lived by not going to live with killcode but they went with ruin, with an odd eclipse, and so was reunited with his brother and wasn't killed. When eclipse leaves this nova becomes unstable and clingy but also very hateful, nova was raised by V1 eclipse they are in a way an eclipse and have issues with being abandoned and left behind. When everyone is dead and gone they become despondent and like any ten year old with nobody they become scared. And in such a state they have less reason to fight if found and taken by the creator and experimented on, and at some point the creator gets his hands on dark star energy and now he has the perfect little experiment right here. I got this idea from a Nexus gets brought back sort of thing where the dark star power is like a parasite that slowly takes control with my own little elements. So nova slowly gets corrupted and pushed to the back of his own mind and is so depressed and scared they just don't fight it, now for my little twist on it at some point when the infection finishes the original hosts soul gets pushed out of the body but can't leave like a literal shadow or ghost ever their shoulders which is when they dark star power realizes they weren't the original they just have the memories and thought they were. And so nova and the infection both seem themselves as nova, lonely scared and mentally still so young, and they bond.

Now back to sea and mirror, when the nova they knew isn't the original it's the infection they just wouldn't probably be able to tell because it infects the spirit and mind not the body and the original can hide themselves in the joints of what was once their body, when put in a situation where they think they've been abandoned and left behind again they spiral and memories and emotions come up and the original soul nova comes out to try and comfort them but would also end up in the same panicked lost in the past state. (imma call the original dead star because he pretty much is deadand the infection as Barron) So what either family would find would be 'nova' with a shadowy silhouette clinging to/standing over them. The two are still in a way nova their anger the same and so it's bound that some of the word they say in this state, when they see eclipse or even solar in this state because of how similar to eclipse he probably seems to the two ten year olds going through a panic attack and flashbacks to be enough like eclipse and not solar to lash out, and that's when they shout and let out all their pain and hurt. the crossed out bits are Barron(the infection controlling the body) but it's both of them pretty in sync both hurting both scared. They wouldn't attack, nova would never really hurt their father not on purpose. Once both, or just Barron, calms and realizes where they are and that this isn't their eclipse they feel bad and panic. **This isn't who we're angry at why did we do that? We didn't mean it please don't leave us, please still care.** Dead star would fade back into a sort of mist and hide in the joints again and Barron would panic and bolt off, both feeling horrible for yelling at them because they aren't the ones who hurt them they didn't deserve their anger

-🩸

That would actually change how the SCPs act around Nova, even if they're not aware of it. Like Killcode could maybe sense something's up, even if he's not fully aware he's sensing something. Probably Lunar too as a nod to canon, and because he does have his star powers even if it's something they think is just a form of magic.

So this info rewrites stuff a bit, cuz Lunar would feel iffy around them and KC would probably go "Hmmmm" without his own notice, so he might be a bit more careful around Nova like this too. Even if it manifests differently in the two SEA Killcodes

But to the shouting part, I can tell you very easily that Eclipse and Solar would be both uncomfortable with being referred to as daddy, even if they recognise this as a panic attack. So they'd act differently afterwards because of major discomfort, and might become slightly avoidant.

Solar would alsio become uncomfortable, because while Nova doesn't say it out loud, it's still implied they're speaking to Eclipse. And that's his deadname, with his current name being dropped as something negative in the outburst. He might feel like he needs to avoid them especially

Eclipse on the other hand might be angry, even if he won't take it out on a kid/kids. He's going to be bitter about being saddled with the sins of another just because he has the same name (which is why he feels especially sympathetic towards V3 and V4 Eclipse). So he might avoid them because of anger and hurt. Like he understands, but he also thought he stood out enough from the kid's dad by this point for this to not happen

So yeah, both Solar and Eclipse feel bad now :D

[xamaxenta]

crashes in thru the window A Vision. Ive Seen A Vision. sabos hands are covered in scars from using his dragon claw thingy and professional martial artists like brickbreakers and shit literally have their bones thicken over time from healing microfractures to provide more strength and power BUT it can come at the cost of joint pain and/or arthritis especially with age. what im saying is scarred calloused weapons of mass destruction sabo hands and rough warm physicians tools, lifetime of rope and rigging and worn ships marco the phoenix hands, gently easing the very literal ache in sabos bones with his two hands cupped around sabos (and sabo is slighter, his hands at first glance look narrow and delicate, but by the time youre close enough to see the scars on his pasty ass skin its too late for you, and marcos workmans hands completely eclipse his) full of warm healing flames . sabo and marco bite and snark and tease and fuck nasty so much that some ppl cannot tell if they like or hate each other but at the end of the day there is no one sabo trusts more to look over his strongest most intimate weapons (LITERALLY attached to/part of his body) like honing the fine edge of a blade that cuts anyone who touches it . but marco bleeds fire. they bicker and argue and tease but here it is silent. the only sounds are the warm rustle of callouses dragging against each other abd the soft rumble of crackling phoenix fire, louder than a candle but quieter than a lantern, and when it pops and snaps it sounds more like leaves and sea waves carried by the breeze and sabo finally, finally can relax for just a moment

This makes me yearn so much i am so full of yearning rn

Absolutely beautiful commentary of their relationship

Sabo’s a man of many facets and Marco wholly understands this and does what he can to enable it, if anything to protect him

If Sabo needs to be seen as someone dangerous vicious tongued, sharper wit, someone so beyond the league of normal men then Marco, the phoenix, who has had plenty of experience would do anything to enable this image

Because when theyre alone he gets to see Sabo as he is because Sabo trusts him implicitly and that means so much more than any words they could share or any snarky performance for the public could

Its rly soft aaaaaah wnishdoshd

Also the softest imagery of Sabo allowing Marco to look over his hands, press out the hurt, the ache, soothe the angry sharpness in his wrists that flares up whenever he writes, Sabo going boneless into his embrace hes shockingly vulnerable like this, without the squaring of his shoulders and the confident commanding pitch of his voice its easy to see the soft nobility in his form something hes striven to move beyond