#the thin executioner

[uovoc]

pulls back the curtains just in time to see a grown rat run across my lawn and up into a shrub

[dinlukewarrior]

the transition to darth vader literally made me sob

[kaiba-cave]

I need to re-read the Demonata series by Darren Shan now as an adult because I think they’re technically books for like, kids? But I remember them being SO GORY and gross. Unless they were meant more for teenagers. Or it’s possible they’re not as bad as I remember but I swear they were gross books lmao. I have to see if I can find a box set or something that’s not too expensive.

[st4rg8te]

The Villainess' Redemption (P. 1?)

Various! Yanderes X Ex-Villainess! Reader

✦✧✦✧

Synopsis: You were once the villainess from some poorly-written romance novel, and somehow, you’ve ended up taking the place of a girl who shared your name—a girl who died while reading your story.

This world is different. Here, you’re no longer tied to a script or doomed to a villainess’s fate. Can you rewrite your ending, and find a place for yourself in this new reality? 

(aka cliche villainess reader gets transported into the modern times and suffers a lot)

✦✧✦✧

✦✧✦✧

The last thing you remember is the swing of the executioner’s blade against your neck—a fitting end for all the terrible crimes you’ve committed. 

Or so you thought.

When you wake up, it’s not the fiery pits of hell that greet you, but a room unlike any you’ve ever seen before.

Through blurred vision, you make out walls impossibly smooth and white, gleaming like polished marble. The light above burns unnaturally bright. The air is sharp and clean, carrying a faint, acrid tang that prickles at your nose.

Was this the afterlife?

Thin tubes are attached to your skin, running from your veins into strange machines you can’t begin to understand. A spike of panic grips you, your breath quickening as your mind scrambles for an explanation.

What if you weren't dead? What if they kept you alive to make you suffer more?

Your trembling hands brush over your body, and your face burns when you realize they’ve stripped you of your former clothes. You’re left in plain, white garments—clean, but thin and exposing.

The indignity is almost as much as the confusion, but you swallow it down, determined to unravel the mystery of this waking nightmare.

On the table beside you lies a book, its presence almost unnoticeable in the room. Yet something about it draws your attention, an unspoken pull that makes your hand reach out despite the unease in your gut.

The front is adorned with a vivid illustration: a man and a woman locked in a tender embrace, their faces soft with affection. There’s something hauntingly familiar about their faces, though you can’t immediately place why.

The title, etched in bold, flowing letters, reads: Enchanted by Fate.

You flip the book open, its pristine pages cool and crisp beneath your trembling fingers.

At first, it seems harmless—a typical romance, the kind that young noble ladies often liked to read. But as your eyes skim the text, a dreadful recognition dawns.

The names leap off the page like venomous snakes: his name—your old lover—and her.

Your heart pounds as anger flares, spreading through your chest. You can almost see her face again, the one who orchestrated your downfall, the one who plunged the blade into your back long before the executioner ever did.

Then your fingers freeze.

Your name.

Paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing your life, your crimes, and your eventual execution. The words blur as the memories resurface—the blade, the crowd, the jeers. Your breath hitches, and the sterile air suddenly feels suffocating.

You slam the book shut, the sound echoing unnaturally in the room, and throw it across the floor. It lands with a dull thud, pages spilling open like a gutted beast, taunting you from where it lies.

That book knew everything. It was impossible. Yet it was real.

With your mind still reeling from what you've just read, you fail to notice the woman entering the room.

Then, the sound of her voice cuts through the fog.

“She’s awake!”

You must have been right. This is your own personal hell.

✦✧✦✧

Human beings are resilient.

So, despite the mental blows you've suffered in a single day, you slowly begin to adjust to your strange new existence in the hospital over the following weeks.

There's so much about this world that you don’t understand, and begrudgingly, you admit that it still frightens you. You can’t shake the feeling that this is all some form of witchcraft.

The nurses, though kind, remind you of your old maids, their faces polite but distant as they introduce you to odd contraptions you can't begin to comprehend.

They call it technology, and they show you things like a 'television,' a box that displays moving images as though alive, and a 'toilet' that can swallow waste with a single flush—something that still seems impossible to you.

They find your lack of knowledge a little concerning, but none of them have the courage to say anything about it, chalking it up to a side effect of your memory loss.

It’s humiliating beyond words to be treated like a clueless child. The condescending tones, the endless explanations of things that feel like they should be second nature—it grates on you until the frustration threatens to spill over as tears.

In your past life, you were always the one in control. You were the influential daughter of a noble family—admired and feared by many. Now, all of that feels like a distant memory, a cruel joke played by fate.

You feel lost.

But the worst part—the part you can never quite confront—is the stranger in the mirror. The face staring back is not your own. You're told she shares your name, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

You can't help but avert your eyes every time you see reflections of yourself.

“[Y/N], are you doing okay today?”

The deep, gentle voice pulls you out of your spiraling thoughts. When you look up, a handsome man comes into focus.

It’s Your Doctor ♡.

Initially, he took an interest in you purely out of professional obligation. Your case was unlike anything he’d encountered before. He had treated patients with amnesia in the past, but never one as severe as yours. Especially considering the circumstances of why you were admitted in the first place. You reminded him of a wild animal—eyes darting with mistrust and fear, shrinking away from your surroundings. And yet, against his better judgment, he found himself drawn to you, compelled by the need to unravel the mystery of your mind. While you lacked even the most basic understanding of modern conveniences, certain skills and knowledge seemed to come to you effortlessly. You could converse fluently in multiple languages. You knew the names and precise uses of every piece of cutlery, from fish forks to soup spoons, and could recount their placement in a formal table setting. It was truly strange. He began to set aside his busy work, stealing moments during breaks to visit your room. It became a routine—teaching you; how to use a water dispenser, explaining the functions of a phone, or describing the significance of certain holidays and traditions.. He relished the way your face would light up in awe at the simplest things. The wonder in your eyes made him feel like he was witnessing the world anew, through your gaze. He still chuckles quietly to himself when he remembers your reaction to the television. The way you gasped, wide-eyed and almost frozen, as moving images flickered across the screen—it was unforgettable. “Pft.” The sound escaped him, soft but audible. A nurse passing by stopped in her tracks, stunned. She had worked with the doctor for years and had never seen him laugh—let alone blush. Yet here he was, smirking to himself like a schoolboy with a crush. After that, whispers began to circulate through the halls: that the hospital’s famous bachelor had fallen for someone.

"I'm feeling fine. Thank you for asking, doctor."

"I'm glad to hear that," he replied, his tone warm. "And you don't have to be so formal with me."

He sits down by your bedside, eyes curved upwards in a gentle smile as he begins to speak again.

"You're being discharged this afternoon. You'll be able to go home soon."

"Home?"

Would that mean that you would have to meet the body owner's family?

Throughout your entire stay at the hospital, not once had anyone visited you except the doctor and the nurse who attended to you daily.

A knot of nervousness forms in your stomach at the thought of finally meeting those people. What if they found your behavior too strange? What if they saw through you?

They didn’t know the truth—that their daughter was gone. Replaced by a stranger.

The doctor seems to notice the shift in your demeanor. Without hesitation, he reaches over, his hand warm and steady as it rests over yours. The gentle squeeze pulls you back to reality.

"Don’t worry," he says softly. "If you feel any pain or discomfort, please don’t hesitate to let me know. And I can give you my contact information—you can call or text me if you need help with anything."

"I... I’ve troubled you enough already," your eyes are fixed firmly on the bedspread, unable to meet his intense gaze.

Maybe it is normal in this world for women and men to touch eachother so casually like this.

"Nonsense," He replies with a chuckle. "Helping you is my job, after all ♡."

In the end, you are sent off with a small bag containing all your belongings and a crisp white slip of paper in hand, the string of digits scribbled neatly on it.

He watches you walk away, his gaze never wavering. A part of him wishes you had stayed longer.

He exhales a long, quiet sigh, his lips curving ever so slightly into a smile. You’ll call him soon.

And when you do, he’ll be there, ready to help.

✦✧✦✧

To your surprise, a nurse leads you to what they call a “car” parked in front of the hospital entrance—a carriage without horses. You feel a small flicker of pride in yourself for remembering the term.

It moves faster than any carriage you’ve ever known. And as the scenery blurs by, you can’t help but press your face to the window, eyes wide with wonder. Towering buildings scrape the sky, their glass and steel glinting in the sunlight. The bustling streets are filled with all kinds of people from all walks of life.

The driver eventually steers the car away from the bustling scene, guiding it into a quieter neighborhood. The streets narrow, and the towering skyscrapers give way to smaller, more subdued structures. Finally, the car comes to a halt in front of a large, old building.

"Have a nice day, miss."

"Ah… thank you," you say softly as you step out, your voice tinged with uncertainty.

The car drives off, and then you're finally left alone.

You turn to face the building, its weathered facade staring back at you. Compared to the grand mansion where you spent your entire life, this place feels cramped and shabby, its age evident in the peeling paint and creaking steps. Rows of numbered doors line each floor, stretching upward in a vertical maze.

Navigating the unfamiliar hallways proves to be a challenge, every turn leaving you more disoriented. When you finally find the staircase, you hesitate. The nurse had mentioned “elevators,” those strange boxes that carried people between floors. But the thought of stepping inside one fills you with unease.

Shaking off the idea, you take the stairs instead, the journey upward feeling longer than it should. Your legs ache with every step, and by the time you reach the supposed floor you live on, you’re out of breath.

At last, you find your door. Apartment 303. The brass plaque gleams faintly in the dim hallway light.

"Hello?"

You knock on the door, but only silence greets you. Anxiety begins to coil in your chest, tightening with each passing second. You glance around the empty hallway, hoping for a sign, a clue—anything. But nothing comes.

Your gaze shifts to the pad mounted beside the door. The arrangement of numbers stares back at you. It should be easy, you tell yourself. Just enter the code.

You press the first digit, then the second. It feels right—like you’re doing what you’re supposed to—but when you hit the final key, the pad lights up red and emits a harsh beep.

Locked.

Your heart sinks. You try again. But the result is the same: a flash of red and that sharp, cold beep.

Again.

Each failure making your frustration rise. Tears prick the corners of your eyes as the sudden overwhelming pressure of everything catches up to you.

The tears spill over, warm streaks running down your cheeks as quiet sobs escape your lips. You feel pathetic.

You miss your family.

You hadn’t allowed yourself to think about them until now—not fully. But their faces stay clear in your mind.

You miss your father’s embrace, your mother’s soothing voice, the way your brothers would tease and protect you in equal measure.

But they are gone. All of them, condemned to death because of your stupid actions.

And now, here you are—trapped in this foreign land, surrounded by incomprehensible machines and alien customs. The people here don’t know you, and you’re certain they never could. You’re an imposter in a world that feels as if it’s actively rejecting you.

And for the first time since you woke up in this strange world, you let yourself finally admit the truth.

You don’t belong here.

✦✧✦✧

"Holy shit lady, are you okay?"

The last thing Your Neighbor ♡ had expected after coming home was to find you sitting on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably by your apartment door.

The two of you have exchanged pleasantries a handful of times, maybe a nod or a muttered “hello” in passing. But it had still worried him a little when he hadn’t seen you in months. Hell, he even figured you’d finally had enough of this place and moved out for good.

"Do you… need help?" he asks, stepping closer cautiously.

Your face burns with embarrassment. You quickly wipe at your tear-streaked face with the sleeve of your shirt, sniffling as you try to compose yourself.

"I just… I can’t get the door to open.."

His eyes flickers to the lock and then back to you. "What, the code’s not working?"

You nod, avoiding his gaze. "I… I’ve tried it so many times, but it keeps locking me out," you say, your voice wavering. "Do you know how to open it?"

"Yeah, I can take a look. Just give me the code."

As he steps closer to the keypad, you wipe at your eyes again, trying to salvage what is left of your dignity.

What is wrong with you? Your mother would have been disappointed at you acting like this.

"Hey," he say after a moment, glancing at you over his shoulder. "Don’t sweat it. This lock’s a piece of crap. Happens to me all the time."

"Um... do you know if anyone else lives in this place with me?"

The man tilts his head, a flicker of confusion crossing his face. "I don’t think so."

A part of you feels relieved. The idea of facing her family—the family you now supposedly belong to—had been gnawing at you since you left the hospital. At least you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not.

But at the same time, the thought of living alone makes your stomach twist. You’ve never been on your own before. In your old life, you were always surrounded by people—your parents, the servants, ready to spoil you rotten. You never once thought about what it would be like to have to manage on your own.

This is your punishment.

The irony isn’t lost on you. The gods must have seen how you mocked her—your father’s bastard. You used to laugh at her and make fun of her upbringing. Now you can't help but think that she would have done much better if she was in your situation.

"Thanks." you mutter finally, your voice barely audible.

She wouldn't have cried over some stupid door like this and humiliate herself in front of a random man!

"Anyway, that's how you do it. If you need help with anything else, just knock on my door-"

BAM!

Before he could finish his sentence, you were already gone.

✦✧✦✧

Your Neighbor ♡ thought that would be the last time you two would really talk to eachother.

Every time he saw you in the hallway or from across the parking lot, you’d scurry away like a startled rabbit, avoiding eye contact. He figured you were just shy—or maybe embarrassed about how you’d met. Either way, he didn’t expect to hear from you again.

So, he was surprised when, a week later, there was a knock on his door.

When he opened it, there you stood, cheeks flushed an indignant pink, holding a neatly folded napkin in your hands.

"What’s this?" he asked.

"I made it for you," you said, thrusting it toward him. "It’s a gift for helping me that day."

He unfolded the napkin and blinked in surprise. His name was carefully stitched onto the fabric, surrounded by flower motifs.

"Holy shit. You made this?"

It was the sweetest gift he had ever received.

I-I noticed you seem to… sweat a lot. Whenever I see you. I thought it might help," you added, the words tumbling out in a rush.

It took him a second to register what you’d said, and when he did, he couldn’t help but laugh. "Oh, that’s because I go to the gym a lot. Not because I’m just… sweating everywhere."

Your eyes widened, mortified. "Oh! I didn’t mean—"

He grinned, cutting you off. "Relax, it’s thoughtful. Thanks."

There was an awkward pause before he gestured behind him. "You want to come in?"

That moment marked the beginning of something—he wasn’t quite sure what to call it. Friendship? Maybe. But that night, over tea, you finally opened up and told him about your memory loss.

A protective instinct had sparked in him the day he found you crying outside your apartment, and it only grew stronger as the two of you started spending more time together.

Before long, it became a routine—going back and forth between apartments, sharing meals, and finding small ways to help each other.

You didn’t know how to cook, so he often brought over dinner and started teaching you how to make simple meals. At first, you were hesitant, your pride making you stubborn, but he patiently guided you through every step.

Grocery shopping became another shared activity, with him pointing out what to buy and explaining things you didn’t recognize. Though he did like to tease you whenever you added far too many sweets to the cart.

One day, he had casually mentioned his interest in learning an instrument, and before he could blink, you’d practically leapt at the opportunity to teach him. Your enthusiasm embarrassed him at first, but he couldn’t say no to you.

When you discovered the dusty electronic keyboard he’d tucked away in a storage box, your eyes had lit up like it was treasure. From that moment on, you became his self-appointed music tutor, insisting it was your way of repaying him for everything.

“Why do I feel like you’re only spending time with me for the keyboard?” he jokingly asked after yet another lesson.

You huffed, crossing your arms. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m doing this because I want to help you.”

He couldn’t hold back his grin.

The more time he spent with you, the harder he fell. You were blunt and prideful, but also sweet and endearing in a way that caught him off guard. When he told you about his job as a club bodyguard, you had compared him to a knight, which made him burst out laughing.

On his way to the gym, a nosy neighbor had stopped him. “So, are you two dating yet? I remember her asking around about your name once.”

He blinked in surprise before the memory clicked. It must have been when you made that embroidered napkin for him. The image of you nervously going door to door asking around, too shy to talk to him directly, made his chest tighten.

Without thinking, his hand drifted to his pocket, where he still kept the cloth. He was on cloud nine the entire day.

Ah, he’d ask you to be his girlfriend soon. That much he was sure of. If only you weren’t so wary of relationships—and that other man who kept hanging around you. How irritating.

The man claimed to be your doctor, but what kind of doctor visited his patients so often? He wasn’t naive, and he could see the way the guy looked at you, the way he lingered too long in your presence. He knew those signs well enough.

Well, no matter. He’d just have to keep a closer eye on you.

After all, you were his to protect.

✦✧✦✧

EXTRA:

After slamming the door in the man’s face, you sighed in relief.

Finally, some peace.

Turning to the apartment, you fumbled around for the light switch. When the bright light flickered on, it hit you—and so did the sight in front of you.

"What the hell?!"

The walls were plastered with posters—of him. Your old betrothed. His smug face stared back at you from every direction, alongside her, the woman who ruined your life.

You froze, taking it all in. It wasn’t just posters. There were figurines, framed photos, and even a pillow with his face on it.

It didn’t take long to figure out the awful truth. The girl whose body you’d taken wasn’t just any stranger—she was a die-hard fan of the book you came from.

✦✧✦✧

A/N: I hope you guys enjoy this wacky gift for New Years. I plan to introduce 2 more love interests if I ever get to writing the second part. They're like color coded. Anyway, this was like massive compared to my other works.

I'm still writing Twisted Affections Pt. 3, but some pieces of smut are probably going to come out before that. Thank you for patience!

✦✧✦✧

[beloveds-embrace]

Until the Last Loop: the Execution

(How many times must you repeat the same song and dance before the curtain falls?

poly mercenaries 141 x princess reader, time loop

The crowd screamed for your blood.

Their voices rolled over the courtyard like thunder- sharp, frenzied, and hungry, sharks smelling blood in the waters. You didn’t flinch. You had stopped flinching a long time ago. Instead, you stood on the scaffold with your wrists bound in rusted iron and your knees aching from where you’d been forced to kneel, a once-proud back bent into prostration.

The cold bites through the thin silk of your dress. You feel the rough wood splintering beneath your knees, the way the wind stings your skin, the weight of the executioner’s shadow looming above you.

You were not allowed the dignity of a white dress, or a veil or a blindfold. You never were.

The wood creaked beneath you as the executioner shifted, sharpening his blade against a whetstone. Sparks flew, bright and vengeful. You didn’t look at him. You didn’t look at the crowd either, for they were all familiar scenes- so much so you were sure that if you were to be given a canvas and paint, you would be able to redraw it all simply from memory.

Instead, your gaze wandered.

You let your eyes drift across the sea of faces twisted in hatred, searching for the one thing that hadn’t changed in all these lifetimes-

And there he was.

You spotted him near the back, the man in the crowd. As always, standing just close enough to see the platform clearly but far enough to remain unnoticed by the mob. Hooded, broad-shouldered, and still. He didn’t yell. He didn’t jeer.

He just watched. He always did. The same stance, the same gaze.

Your stomach twisted, but you forced yourself to look away. He had been there in every loop, always standing in that exact spot, and you had stopped trying to understand why. Whatever answer you might have once craved had been buried under exhaustion and bitter acceptance, and the defeating knowledge of not knowing where to even start searching for him.

The executioner finished sharpening his blade and stepped closer, his boots heavy against the wood. The crowd’s roar swelled as the official stepped forward and began to read the charges- words you had heard so many times they no longer felt real. Were they here, you wondered, listening to your crimes?

“Treason against the Crown.”

Your nails dug into your palms.

“Conspiracy to overthrow His Majesty.”

You exhaled slowly.

“Attempted regicide.”

The crowd erupted at that, like oil meeting water, and you wondered- not for the first time- if they even cared whether the charges were true. It didn’t matter. They just wanted someone to blame.

And you had always been an easy target.

The executioner raised the blade. The sun caught its edge, and for a brief moment, you saw your reflection- tired eyes, hollow cheeks, and lips pressed into something that could no longer be called a smile.

The crowd roared louder. The executioner took his stance.

You closed your eyes.

And the blade fell.

You wake with a gasp.

The silk sheets cling to your skin, damp with sweat. Your heart hammers against your ribs, a wild animal escaping the clutches of its predator, and for one wild moment, you’re sure you can still feel the blade at your neck, the bite of steel against soft, tender flesh-

But there’s no blood. No pain.

Just sunlight streaming through the tall windows, warm and golden, painting the room in the soft golds and reds of the afternoon.

You stare at the ceiling, swallowing against the bile rising in your throat. The air smells like jasmine and lavender. It always does.

You force yourself to sit up even when your muscles ache, and your wrists burn with phantom pain from where the shackles had been. There are no marks, but the memory lingers, haunting every little move you make.

How many times now?

You stopped counting after twenty. It didn’t matter. It never changed.

The knock at the door comes exactly when you expect it, after you had forced yourself to clean away the sweat rolling down your skin and sat at your settee, begging your heart to calm down.

“Your Highness?”

Your maid’s voice.

You already know what she’ll say, what expression she’ll wear when she steps inside. But you don’t move.

The door opens, and she enters with a bow, her hands folded neatly in front of her, expression detached and polite. And behind her, four men follow.

You don’t need to look to know who they are. They’ve been with you every life, always the same tune and dance.

He stands at the front, broad-shouldered and commanding, streaks of gray in his beard and sharp eyes that feel like knives. You meet his gaze, by now fully used to him and his presence. Price- John, he’d said you can call him either in your last few lives, when your spoilt attitude had been stripped off you with each death.

“You ain’t so bad, princess. Not a hoity-toity piece of work.”

Slowly, the others trickle in after him.

The mask hides most of his face, but you don’t need to see it to know what’s underneath is Ghost. He watches you the way a predator watches its prey- calm, patient, and ready to strike, but you know that later, he will ever so slightly warm up to you.

“I don’t know what to do… I haven’t done anything! You have to believe me!”

“I know. But you’ll catch a cold if you stay out any longer, princess.”

Soap smiles when he steps inside, easy and disarming, but you see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand rests near the dagger at his hip. That same dagger has saved you before, but not always. In some lives, he is not there with you when you get ambushed- you were such a hard thing to get along with before- and yet in other lives…

“Wee lass, tell me where ye’re goin’, and I’ll protect ye always, aye?”

Quiet, steady, and sharp, like a hawk out for hunting. Gaz’s eyes sweep the room, cataloging every detail before they land on you and he nods towards you. Polite, always polite, even when you’d been like a hissy, feral cat towards him in times. Gentle when you’d been a quiet, reserved version of yourself.

“…will you stay with me? Just tonight? Please, Gaz… I feel lonely.”

“Course, princess. You don’t have to ask.”

You exhale slowly.

They’re different from the crowd, from the nobles and commoners of the kingdom. Always have been, always will be. They don’t look at you with hatred, even if they have their own misconceptions of you. But they’re still here, still close, in this life and before and next and that makes them special to you.

And this time, you… don’t have the energy to keep yourself away from them.

Price steps forward first, always the leader.

“Princess,” he says, and there’s something heavy in the way he says it. Like it means more than just a title. Or maybe less; mercenaries care little for royalty beyond what they can offer them. “We’re here to protect you.”

You almost laugh. Hired by king for no knight wanted to work for you, the shameful stain no one wanted to acknowledge or favor too much.

Instead, you turn your head and stare out the window, heart still pounding against your ribs.

“You’re wasting your time.”

You expect them to leave, even if you shouldn’t. Most people do when you push them away. Though you told yourself you won’t keep yourself away from them, you also truly want to just exist quietly, unperceived, until the inevitable hour arrives and you return back to this point.

But Price doesn’t listen to you, unsurprisingly. You can see your maid scoff about his nonchalant manner out of the corner of your eye.

“We’ll see about that, Your Highness.” He says, unbothered by your attitude.

And when you finally look at him again, his eyes are lingering on you- steady and sharp.

And thus, the loop starts anew.

Part Two

Masterlist

[justaz]

a spell is cast on camelot that thins the veil enough for ghosts to appear. the catch? the ghosts that appear are spirits of people that were killed by the person they’re haunting. the knights have a good amount of bandits/raiders/whatever that they took down in battle, maybe a few shady knights have genuinely innocent people that they murdered and got away with. the executioner’s killings are transferred to the king since he was simply acting out the king’s commands. arthur has quite a few. uther has hundreds of sorcerers in various states of gore and horror. those who were hanged have perpetually bent necks, those who were beheaded have either no head or just a head floating a bit above their body, and those who were burnt are more charred remains (the most grisly of them all). merlin has more than anyone expected (which was zero) and all of them keep calling out for arthur/uther’s death and camelot’s downfall while also turning to merlin and calling him a traitor.

[wonderlandwalker]

Developments pt. II: Exposure | Steve Harrington x reader

𝐩𝐭. 𝐈 / 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 / 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 / 𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱

summary: what happens when everything and nothing changes, when your world is at the edge of annihilation, and Steve is studying the phenomenon.

word count: 5.6k

tags / content warnings: more cockblocking I can't help myself, hurt/comfort if you squint, mdni, smut, my limited vocabulary trying its hardest to not sound repetitive, Dutch expressions that probably don't actually exist in English but do now

a/n: my life may be falling apart but at least there's still fictional men and reblog reactions that make me smile, hopefully this lives up to its precursor I fear I might be losing braincells

The past few days have been... strange. Not in any dramatic, earth-shattering way, but in the quiet, unsettling manner of a clock suddenly ticking out of rhythm—the kind of change you feel in your bones before your mind can articulate it.

Not bad.

Not heart-breaking.

Not even awkward, really—no stilted conversations filled with painful pauses, no forced laughter ringing hollow between you.

No, this was something quieter.

Something more unnerving in its subtlety.

Diffidence.

Which was ridiculous. Infuriating. A cosmic joke of the cruellest variety.

Because just seventy-two hours earlier, Steve Harrington had pressed you into his mattress with the reverence of a worshipper at an altar, his confessions spilling against your throat like secrets too sacred for this world. And you’d kissed him back with equal desperation, nails scraping down his spine as he moved over you, his name leaving your lips over and over and over like a mockingbird discovering its new favourite melody. The morning after, he’d made you pancakes—slightly charred, just the way you liked them—and watched you eat with this soft, dazed expression, like he couldn’t quite believe you were real.

It had been effortless. Natural. Like you'd been doing this for years instead of hours. And then—

Nothing.

No lingering touches in the hall—no casual brush of fingers that lingered just a heartbeat too long. No warm palm settling against the small of your back to guide you through doorways. No stolen kisses behind the Family Video counter, breathless moments between the VHS racks where he'd crowd you against the shelves, his lips finding yours in the shadows between customers.

Just... Steve.

The same Steve who still drove you home without being asked, even when it was twenty minutes out of his way. Steve, who still passed you the last slice of pizza without hesitation, who still remembered to grab your favourite candy bar when he stopped for gas. Steve, who still looked at you like you'd hung the goddamn stars—only now there was something newly cautious in his gaze, something fragile and measured, like he was afraid of being crushed beneath their celestial weight.

The Waterloo of it existed in the way you understood. Able to read the fractures in his composure like Braille beneath your fingertips—how his confidence splinters under pressure like thin ice trying to bear an ever-growing weight. His smirk just a fraction too tight when he was worried and his jokes landing a beat too quick when he deflects. Because for all his effortless charm, all that golden-boy popularity that came so naturally to him, Steve Harrington approached love like a penitent approaching communion, all-consuming, self-immolating, giving until he was hollowed out—like it was something to be earned through blood and sacrifice, something he had to deserve. 

And now? Now he looked at you like you were both the salvation and the executioner. Like loving you was a game of Russian roulette where he'd already spun the chamber five times and survived, and this last shot awaits. You could see the calculation in his eyes—the gambler's dilemma. Go all in; sign his soul over without reservation? Or fold now, walking away while he can still pretend his heart is intact? You knew it from the way his hands hovered near yours but never quite touched, fingers twitching with the ghost of a caress he wouldn’t allow himself. You saw it in the careful distance he maintained, the space between you measured like a man navigating a minefield—every step a potential detonation. He’d chosen to love you; that much was undeniable. But you also knew the gambit had already been made, that he didn’t know how to let himself be loved in return. Not when every instinct in him screamed that good things were borrowed, not kept, and that happiness was just the prelude to loss.

So he waited.

And you waited.

The two of you balanced on the knife’s edge between the leap of faith and the fall.

This wasn’t rejection.

This wasn’t regret.

This was Beckettian limbo. Waiting for Godot in a mall parking lot, watching shadows lengthen as hope curdled into something bittersweet. The agony wasn't in the absence of answers but in the infinite possibilities each unanswered question contained—was he giving you space or creating distance? Was this patience or retreat?

Was he waiting for you to run?

Was he waiting for some invisible string to be pulled?

Was he already running himself?

You were this close to convincing yourself it had all been in your head—that the tension between you was just another ghost you’d conjured out of want and wishful thinking. You’d almost swallowed the lie whole.

Until Eddie Munson—bedlam incarnate, meddler of divine proportions—reached between you like a thief in the night and yanked the pin from your stalemate grenade.

It happened like this:

Robin, in her infinite wisdom (or more accurately, in her current state of sugar-deprived hysteria that has her vibrating in place like a hummingbird on espresso), practically launches Eddie toward the back room of Family Video with a desperate whine that borders on ultrasonic. Her fingers twitching toward the empty candy wrapper on the counter like a junkie eyeing their last hit. "I know he stashed candy bars back there. Find it, Munson, or so help me God—” The threat loses impact when she punctuates it by nearly face-planting into the counter. And Eddie, ever the chaotic neutral force in your lives, obliges, sweeping toward the employee area with all the gravitas of a man marching to the gallows.

The locker is... depressingly empty, because Steve Harrington has the organisational skills of a concussed squirrel. The interior looks like a tornado swept through a TJ Maxx clearance aisle—a single spare vest (slightly wrinkled, probably from that time he used it as a pillow during his lunch break—"It’s ergonomic!" he’d insisted, as if that made any sense at all), a half-empty bottle of cologne he no longer wore (”I needed to test drive it!” He’d argued when confronted, as if his "signature scent" was a goddamn Camaro he could take for a spin around the block), and—aha— the coveted candy bar. A king-sized Snickers slightly melted from being forgotten in the summer heat, wedged behind a mint condition (clearly unread) copy of "Employee Conduct Guidelines". Eddie’s about to declare victory and return to Robin’s good graces (or at least avoid another plastic fork ambush—seriously, that shit stings) when a small, glossy rectangle flutters to the ground. It drifts down with all the grace of a falling feather, spinning lazily like it’s got nowhere urgent to be (which would be poetic, if it wasn’t about to detonate his life like a stray missile in a china shop)

His stupid monkey brain—always curious, never helpful—screams at him to pick it up. Logic, self-preservation, and approximately three seconds of common sense lose the battle to sheer, self-destructive instinct.

So he does.

And—

Oh.

Eddie’s higher brain functions short-circuit, neurones firing and fizzling out behind his eyes like a busted string of Christmas lights.

Shit.

It’s one of those Polaroids.

The kind you’d been strategically hiding for Steve, who, for all his alleged detective skills, somehow hadn’t managed to uncover this particular landmine.

And there it is, staring up at him in damning, saturated colour: a snapshot of bare skin bathed in low light, the smooth curve of your waist disappearing under rumpled sheets that Eddie suddenly, violently, wishes he could shred with his teeth. And your eyes—Christ, that look—something so utterly foreign to him that his pulse stutters like a misfiring engine. It’s the kind of look that makes him think, for one delirious second, about dropping to his knees and taking up religion—because surely this is divine retribution.

Maybe he’d been a war criminal in a past life.

Maybe this was karma for swiping that pack of gum when he was eight.

Or maybe God was just an arsehole with a particularly fucked-up sense of humour, sitting up there on his cloud and cackling as Eddie’s soul left his body in slow motion.

He should burn it.

He should eat it.

He should—

But then—because this mystery deity apparently finds his suffering hilarious—the break room door groans open with a creak so nerve-shreddingly ominous it sounds like nails dragged across a chalkboard. You and Steve walk in mid-conversation, shoulders brushing, laughing about something undoubtedly stupid—completely unaware that Eddie's world has just tilted on its goddamn axis like a bored kid shaking a snow globe. The kind of violent, nauseating tilt that sends all his internal organs sloshing against his ribs. He should shove the photo back in the locker. He should pretend he never saw it. He should let Steve find it himself later—preferably when Eddie is at minimum three state lines away, maybe starting a new life as a goat farmer in Vermont.

But he doesn't. Because while Eddie's charisma stat might be maxed out, his wisdom score has always hovered somewhere between "questionable" and "actively self-destructive". So he stands there, frozen like a bug in amber, a bee drowning in golden honey—Polaroid welded to his stupid, traitorous fingers—as you finally register his presence. Steve follows your line of sight a beat later, and oh fuck, this is bad.

In all the time you've known each other, Eddie's been rudimentarily brash, crude, and gloriously callow. Now? Every single shred of his DNA seems to have been rewritten overnight. Someone's taken the Eddie Munson operating manual and hit select all → delete.

"Uh," he says, brilliantly eloquent. His eyes perform a frantic tennis match between the incriminating photo in his hand, the dangerous twitch of curiosity at the corner of your mouth, the frankly unfair amount of exposed skin your summer clothes display (making his fingers spasm like wanting to reach for the forbidden fruit of Eden itself), and Steve's expression, which has gone so arctic that Eddie can actually feel the frost forming on his own eyelashes from across the room.

Here's the thing: Steve genuinely couldn't give less of a shit about Eddie rifling through his locker. Hell, he uses the thing so sporadically he'd be shocked if there was anything in there worth stealing. But the way Eddie's looking at that photo? The way his breathing's gone all jagged, like he's been sucker-punched by lust and forgot to be ashamed about it? Like he'd been struck by lightning and sent the storm a thank-you note?

Yeah.

That gets his attention.

Because Steve knows that feeling. Knows it in the way his own pulse jumps when you look at him. Knows—with sudden, violent clarity—that the Polaroid currently burning a hole in Eddie's hand is one of yours. One of the ones you'd tucked away. One of the ones he hadn't found.

The air in the room curdles. Three heartbeats stretch into eternity. Somewhere, the universe is taking notes for its next comedy special. Steve’s posture locks—the calm before the storm, every muscle coiled tight beneath his skin. The carbonated fizz of the soda in his hand is the only sound in the crushing silence, bubbles popping like distant gunfire. Then the storm breaks: his jaw clenches, and his eyes sweep through Eddie’s foundation like a wrecking ball.

Something raw crawls across Steve’s face. Not anger. Not alarm. Assertion. A silent, seething mine that blows through the room. You’ve seen Steve in many moods—smug, pissed, reckless—but this? This is something new. An undiscovered decimal that changes the entire equation. Something hot and primal, that same flicker of virtue twisted into vice that made him spend hours between your thighs, savouring your undoing like Judas betraying Christ with a kiss.

Eddie’s expression snitches on him instantly, darkening as his gaze drifts back to you. It lingers—too obvious, too long—on the hitch of your breath, the teeth digging into your bottom lip, like he’s already imagining things he has no right to. “Munson—” Steve’s voice drops into a register that would send most sane men sprinting for the hills, the kind of tone that prophesies bloodshed. “Eyes are up here.” 

Eddie’s hands fly up in surrender, the Polaroid fluttering to the floor like the first leaf of autumn—ominous, inevitable. But there’s a new cadence in his voice, something reckless and intrigued, the curiosity of a starving animal in a trap debating whether to chew its own leg off. “Hey man, no hard feelings. Just—uh—didn’t exactly expect that to be lying around like some kind of—” Steve takes a step forward. Eddie takes two steps back, knocking into the table hard enough to send a mug catapulting to the ground. “—highly classified erotic artefact,” Eddie finishes, voice pitched higher than usual, flashing a grin that’s all nerves and zero bravado.

You can feel it in the air—the shift from a fleeting southbound breeze teasing through the open window to the suffocating vacuum of withheld dares and arsonist heat. The change is tectonic, the kind that splits the earth between before and after. It should frighten you, this dissolution of restraint, reluctance disintegrating like cotton candy in the rain, leaving behind only the sickly-sweet residue of possibility. It would frighten you—if you didn’t know it. If you hadn’t heard that same voice murmuring filth against your stomach, dripping with devotional ruin. If it didn’t send an electric current racing from your membrane straight to your marrow.

Across the room, Eddie’s smirk falters. He’d looked the gift horse of Steve’s restraint square in the mouth—and now finds himself staring down the barrel of a loaded gun as the reality of his miscalculation hits. Then—

The dam bursts.

Eddie scrambles backwards so fast he nearly trips over his own shadow in his haste to escape the flood. The tension solidifies into something palpable as Steve turns to face you. For a moment, he simply stares—an apex predator amused by the detritivore that dared trespass in his territory, calculating whether to devour you whole or savour you slowly. It’s the same razor-edged focus he’d worn that night when he pinned you to his sweat-damp sheets, when he’d growled "again" against your throat and insisted, asserted, stipulated that he needed to feel you clenching around him even as his own spend leaked down your thighs between thrusts. That look that said mine and more and never enough, the one that turned your blood to gasoline and your nerves to lit fuses.

Your fingers twist in the fabric of your top—contemplating tearing it off yourself to feel his skin against yours faster—but the thought disintegrates when his knee nudges your thighs apart, pressing his body flush against yours. Jealousy rolls off him in waves, thick enough to choke on, and God help you, you revel in it. The phantom of his touch lingers in every hot breath that skates over your skin, in the way his hips slot against yours like a key turning in a lock. His mouth crashes into yours, hands bruising into your waist as he lifts you onto the break room table with the practised ease of a man who’s been praying for this. The wood creaks beneath you, a feeble protest swallowed by the groan that tears from his throat. And you—Christ—you realise with dizzying clarity that you’re already addicted to this side of him. To the way his control shatters when it comes to you. The way he needs to brand the truth into your skin: you’re his. He’s yours. His hands dig into you, urgent as a sinner’s grip on salvation. His lips brush your temple, soft as a benediction. You melt into him like a sacrifice on an altar, pliant and willing when his palms glide over your chest; it’s with a reverence that borders on fear—hesitant, hungry, as if touching you might unravel him instead.

This isn’t fealty.

It’s revelation.

Steve kisses like he’s composing his last confession—every sigh you give him a psalm he’ll spend eternity trying to recite to perfection. His mouth drifts lower, a crusade down your body, pausing to worship at the inside of your thigh. His nose nudges the sensitive skin there, lips parted against your pulse as if tasting divinity. Not demanding. Surrendering. A disciple on his knees, ready to die for the privilege of dedication. "Steve—"  Your voice shatters, cracking not from desperation but from something far more forceful—love, molten and thick. He answers with a low hum, the vibration travelling straight to your core.

Warm.

Approving. 

Devouring.

But still, he doesn't rush, doesn’t take.

Moving over you with the precision of a scholar deciphering sacred texts, each touch a deliberate translation of supplication. When his knuckle tilts your chin up, the eye contact is nearly unbearable—his gaze burns with the intensity of staring at the sun without blinking. "Tell me this is real," he murmurs, the pad of his thumb tracing your swollen lips. His voice cracks on the plea: I can't lose you. Tell me what to do, how to keep you—every word is another wingbeat higher, another reckless ascent toward combustion. You can almost see the wax dripping from his shoulders as he flies ever closer to it—the heat between your bodies threatening to melt both your hearts.

His mouth finds yours before you can answer, stealing the breath you'd gathered to reassure him. It's a claiming, last-ditch effort to brand himself into your memory should the Gods tear you apart tomorrow. His hands map your body, fingers pressing into your flesh hard enough to leave tomorrow's bruises. The irony isn't lost on you—this man who fought against every chain now begging to be bound, this once-carefree Icarus who sees the wax melting from his wings and chooses to keep flying, because his tragedy lies not in the fall but in the willing surrender to the innate burn, to this delicious damnation.

He’s almost come full circle—so close to acceptance, yet still hovering at the precipice, one flutter away. His skin scorches where you touch him, eyes burning with the effort of maintaining control when every atom in his body screams to dissolve the last fragile boundary between yours and mine until there’s no distinction left. The last of the shreds of doubt melting beneath your fingers as they tighten in his hair. The heat of you is irresistible, a gravitational pull dragging him deeper into orbit. His hand slides under your skirt, calloused palm skating up your thigh to discover the truth he already knows: you’re falling apart just as fast as he is.

A broken sound escapes you as you arch into his touch, your body ablaze against him. Your own hands map his skin with starving intent, drifting lower, lower, tracing the hard planes of his abdomen before dipping beneath the waistband. His fingers brush higher, hot and slick with your arousal, drawing a ragged groan from his throat that you swallow like communion. The sound vibrates against your lips—pure animal triumph—as his thumb circles with devastating precision. Fuck, how does he always know? That sweet spot that makes your thighs tremble, that perfect pressure as two fingers sink deep, curling just right, and a silent scream tears through you. "Fuck, baby," Steve pants against your mouth, his voice wrecked. "You’re so fucking perfect." The praise liquefies your spine, but you still manage to slide your hand under his jeans, grasping him through the strained fabric. The second your fingertips graze that velvet heat, he jerks forward with a gasp, teeth scraping your earlobe in retaliation—

The door flies open like a gunshot. "Jesus Christ!" Robin’s voice slices through the haze. Steve’s body slams over yours in a protective arch, his forearm braced against the table as he glares over his shoulder with venom. "Buckley," he snarls, voice dripping with murderous intent. She covers her eyes with a sigh so dramatic it would make Shakespeare weep. "In my defence—" she yelps, "your shift started ten minutes ago, and there’s this very persistent customer asking about the horror section you organised like a psychopath!" Steve doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. You can feel the furious pound of his heartbeat where his chest presses against yours, a wild counter-rhythm to your own.

"Robin", you drawl, sweet as poisoned honey, "if you don’t turn around and walk out right now, I will tell Vickie about the time you—" "GOING!" she shrieks, already backpedalling. The door slams hard enough to rattle the framed employee-of-the-month certificates.

The silence that follows is worse.

The momentum’s gone, but the wreckage remains. His forehead drops to your shoulder with a thud, his breath coming in ragged bursts against your collarbone. You can feel the restraint vibrating through him—every muscle coiled tight enough to snap.

You can’t help it—you laugh, the sound shaky with adrenaline and lingering lust. His head snaps up so fast you hear his neck crack, eyes blazing with unfiltered heat. "Oh, you think this is funny?" he growls, nipping at your jaw with sharp teeth before soothing the sting with a swipe of his tongue. His hands slide back under your thighs, hauling you flush against him in one motion. The hard line of him pressed insistently between your legs wipes the smirk right off your face—along with every coherent thought in your head.

"Keep laughing, sweetheart," he murmurs against your throat, lips dragging a searing path down to your pulse point. "See what happens when my shift ends."

The hour that follows—after Steve had hesitantly detached himself from you with a plea in his eyes and your lipstick smeared across his jaw like war paint—stretches into eternity.

It’s longer than the time you got drenched by a speeding car ploughing through a frozen puddle on your way to school, icy water seeping into your socks until you squelched with every step. Longer than Aunt Margie’s infamous "Bridge Club Confidential" lecture, where she’d waxed poetic about the "sensual strategy" of trump cards while you stared into your punch glass praying for spontaneous combustion. Longer even than Eddie’s dare at Rick’s party, when you’d sat statue-still for sixty minutes while Dustin balanced a Dorito on your nose and Steve—unhelpful bastard—kept making you laugh just to watch you fail.

Because Steve Harrington doesn’t make idle threats.

He feasts on them.

Every excruciating minute carves a new circle of hell into your sanity. Steve moves through the store like a man possessed, his brain reduced to binary code: 1. You’re the one. 0. Everything else is noise. His pacing is a slow-burn torture—languid and deliberate, letting the heat of his chest sear into your back as he reaches for a misplaced copy of The Terminator, his biceps flexing just enough to make your throat go dry. He makes sure his lips graze your jaw when he slots returned tapes onto the shelf exactly where you’re standing, his exhale hot against your ear. Then he’s gone again in a heartbeat, leaving only the phantom imprint of his promise throbbing under your skin.

And you’re no martyr. Not when every stolen glance from Steve—heavy-lidded and determined—pours fuel on the fire in your gut. Not when the brush of his fingers against yours as he "accidentally" hands you the wrong receipt makes your pulse stutter like a bad VHS tape.

Until Robin, bless her deadpan soul, reaches her limit.

"That’s it." She slams a stack of returns onto the counter hard enough to make the Jawbreakers jump in their display, rattling like tiny, panicked witnesses. "Eddie’s covering Steve’s shift."

Eddie opens his mouth— "No." Robin jabs a finger between his eyebrows. "I don’t care that he doesn’t work here; it’s not that hard to say ��Be kind, rewind’ and take people’s money. What is hard is watching you two orbit each other like horny vultures waiting to dive in." She shoves Steve’s keys into his chest. "Do humanity a favour and go home. Fuck it out. Write each other sonnets. Carve your initials into a tree. I don’t care. Just end this before I drown us all in holy water."

And well.

You don’t need to be told twice.

The store’s entrance barely shuts before Steve's crowding you against the scorching hood of his car, his body pinning yours to metal that burns through your skin. You gasp at the dual sensation—the sear of the sun-baked steel beneath your thighs and the far more dangerous heat of Steve's palm cradling the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair, hips grinding against yours in a way that makes your vision blur. The parking lot's empty, but you'd barely care if it wasn't—not when he kisses like he's trying to carve his name between your ribs.

But then—the cruel, calculated tease that he is—he steps back. Lets you sway there for one dizzy second before guiding you into the passenger seat with a hand low on your back.

The silence during the drive isn't uncomfortable—it's charged, vibrating with everything left unsaid and undone. You can practically hear the filthy refrain looping in Steve's head, matching the pulse pounding between your thighs: not yet. Not here.

Your fingers creep toward his thigh like a separate entity, drawn by magnetic need. The muscle tenses beneath your touch before you even make contact. When your nails scrape up the inseam of his jeans, his grip on the steering wheel turns white. "Don't," he warns, voice gone dark. But his dick twitches traitorously beneath your wandering palm, the thick line of him already straining against denim. The hypocrisy would be laughable if you weren't so busy revelling in the power thrumming through your veins.

His hand closes over yours — not to stop you, but to press your palm harder against his erection. The groan it wrenches from him vibrates through your entire body, your own breath catching in time with the stutter of the speedometer as his foot slips on the gas. "Keep doing that," he grits out between clenched teeth, "and you're going to regret that."

As the car takes another turn, you realise you've miscalculated.

Badly.

The math had been simple—fifteen minutes to his place, ten if he sped—but you hadn't accounted for the way his jaw would clench every time you shifted in your seat. The engine had roared like a living thing as he took corners too fast, and now the tires screech their protest as he slams into his parking spot.

The ignition cuts.

One heartbeat of silence.

Then he's on you, pressing you into the window with enough force to fog the glass, his mouth hot and demanding against yours. There's nothing gentle in it—just hunger, raw and unchecked. His teeth catch your lower lip as his hand slides up. When his mouth closes over your nipple through your shirt, tongue circling just hard enough to make you arch, you're half-ready to drag him into the backseat and fuck him right there. But before you can so much as gasp his name, he's gone—door flung open, his footsteps sharp on the pavement.

Your door swings open next, his hand extended.

It might look chivalrous to anyone watching, but you know better. That grip on yours as he tugs you out is a demand, not an offer. The walk to his front door is a blur, his arm locked around your waist like he thinks you'll bolt. The lock clicks shut behind you, and then—

Déjà vu hits like a sucker punch. This is exactly what you haven't been able to stop thinking about. And yet—

Completely different.

Last time, he'd been a man on a mission, determined to show you every filthy fantasy you'd ever pulled from him. Methodical. Precise. A slow unravelling that left you begging. Now?

Now he doesn't wait for begging.

Now he hauls you onto the kitchen island with a roughness that sends a bowl clattering to the floor, his hands already pushing your thighs apart. There's no patience in him—just certainty and something darker, something that curls low when his gaze drags over you like he's already deciding where to start. His palm splays across your stomach, pressing you against the cold granite as he leans in, and the revelation hits you — he doesn't just want to worship at your altar. He wants to be the architect of your canonisation, the hand that lifts you to sainthood even as he drags you through the exquisite torture of your own destruction.

If you had one wish in this crumbling world—it wouldn't be fame, wouldn't be fortune, not even the hollow promise of world peace—you would ask for this. The devastating press of his body, the sinful cadence of his voice whispering filth and vows. You'd take it until your lungs forgot how to expand, until your heartbeat stuttered into arrhythmia, until the last frayed thread of your consciousness could only comprehend the grip of his arms and the sweet poison of his words. Even then, especially then, you’d ask for more of this.

You're already ruined beyond salvation—a ship dashed against the rocks, hull splintering on unforgiving shores, yet somehow grateful for the carnage that means you've found land at last. His name spills from your lips in a ceaseless litany, your thighs clamping around his hips in wordless supplication, speaking in the sacred tongue of want, your body offering its final surrender at the temple of his undoing. The light at the end of this tunnel isn't absolution—it's hellfire, and you're so consumed by its gravitational pull that reality has dissolved at the edges. The world narrows to the sweat-slick press of his skin against yours, to the animalistic sounds tearing from his throat, to the obscene stretch as he sheaths himself inside you in one devastating thrust, a broken sob caught between your teeth—until his mouth crashes over yours, swallowing the sound as he buries himself to the hilt. You feel him tremble—not from restraint, but from the way your body takes him in frantic, greedy pulses, as if trying to draw him deeper still.

The fat of your ass shifts under his punishing grip as you grind down, chasing that perfect angle until he swears he can feel your heartbeat through the slick walls clenching around him. Your shared sweat makes a mess of everything—the slide of his abdomen against your clit, the way your thighs stick to his hips, the obscene squelch as he moves through your dripping cunt like he was carved from the same divine stone that shaped you. Every convulsive ripple of your inner muscles seems designed to ruin him, to reduce this beautiful, dangerous man to nothing but base instinct and desperate thrusts. Then—just when you think he's wrung every possible reaction from your body—he does something that steals what little breath you have left. With agonising slowness, he withdraws until only the flushed, leaking head of his cock remains seated inside you, that unbearable stretch reduced to the barest teasing pressure. Your hips jerk uselessly, chasing that delicious fullness, but he pins you in place with one broad hand splayed across your ass while the other yanks open the nearby drawer in search of something. You open your mouth—to tease, to protest, to beg with words so filthy they'd make a sinner blush—but he gives you no chance. In one brutal snap of his hips, he's buried inside you again, the force of it driving you up the surface until his forearm bands around your waist to keep you still. The punched-out moan that escapes you sounds broken even to your own ears.

The rhythm he sets is punishing, each thrust calculated to make your vision whiten at the edges. Your tits bounce obscenely against his hungry mouth, nipples pebbled and oversensitive from his teeth scraping urgently against them. Tears bead at the corners of your scrunched-shut eyes as you bite your lip—until his command slices through the haze: "Open your eyes.”

When you obey—when your bleary vision finally focuses through the haze of pleasure to see the obscene glisten between your thighs, your own arousal painting his cock in irrefutable evidence of your desperation—a shutter clicks, echoeing as the bullet going through the church, the camera flash immortilizing everything as your body arches in perfect, ruined ecstasy.

He's not just fucking you. He's curating it—assembling irrefutable proof of your complete surrender to his arbitration. Cataloguing how beautifully you come apart beneath him. Documenting how even when reduced to a shuddering, tear-streaked wreck, all your broken pleas still ask for the same thing: him. Only him. He captures it all—the flutter of your lashes when his thumb swipes through the streaks on your cheek, the way your throat works around silent screams when he angles deeper. His next words are the final nail in the coffin of your consecration, divulged against the column of your throat: "Let me show you how pretty you look when you cum on my cock."

[bradleysass]

judge - @into-the-jeggyverse - wc: 365

It’s cold in the clearing. Cold in the way that gets beneath your skin, no matter the layers of fabric or wards thrown up in desperation.

James stares at Regulus like he’s never seen him before. Maybe he hasn’t.

“Move,” Regulus says quietly, his wand still trained on the man collapsed at his feet. “James, I’m not going to ask again.”

James doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink. There’s blood spattered across his cheek, red and angry against his freckled skin. “You’re not—” he chokes on the words. “You’re not going to kill him.”

Regulus’s lips twist into something like a smile, bitter and thin. “Aren’t I?”

“You can’t.” James steps forward, hands raised, wand forgotten at his side. “You can’t be judge and executioner, Reg. That’s not who you are.”

“You don’t know who I am.” Regulus’s wand doesn’t waver, but his voice does. “You never did.”

“I know you better than anyone,” James whispers, and suddenly he’s closer, close enough that Regulus can feel the heat of him, the raw desperation burning off his skin. “You don’t want this. You’re not him.” His gaze flicks down to the Death Eater gasping on the ground. “You’re not them.”

Regulus swallows. His fingers tighten around his wand. “He killed Evan.”

“I know.” James’s voice cracks. “And I hate him for it. But this—” He gestures at the scene, at the blood and the body and the endless cycle. “This won’t bring him back.”

The wand lowers. Just an inch. Just enough.

“I promised him,” Regulus murmurs, almost to himself. “I promised I’d make them pay.”

“You have.” James’s hand finds his. “You’ve already done more than anyone expected you to. But this?” He closes Regulus’s fingers over the wand, guiding it down. “You don’t have to carry this too.”

For a long moment, Regulus stares at the man wheezing in the dirt, at the insignia on his robes, at the hollow triumph waiting in the act.

Then he lets out a shaky breath and drops the wand entirely.

James catches him as he sinks to the ground, arms wrapping tight around him like an anchor.

“You’re not them,” James says again, soft against his ear.

[13tinysocks]

My Dead Girlfriend

The desert is starting to get to you. Omni Mark is forced to reconcile with who you are. [Invincible Variants x reader]

[Part one]  [Ao3] [6] [8]

7 * Killah [7.2k]

"You look just like a sheep,

For someone with such sharp teeth,

After all this time,

Your cover's finally blown."

No Offense - Slutever

        You don't know when it happened, just that it did. 

        You didn't think he'd do it. You'd never tried something like this, you'd said the command half-heartedly, half expecting him to shoot you instead. Now his brains were on the Italian tile and Machine Head was laughing. "Man, am I glad I bailed you out! That was amazing! Hey, meathead, bring in the other one." 

        You were here again. Fresh out of prison, playing executioner while looking over the New York skyline. Blood dripping down your chin. You felt like you were going to puke, you had just killed that man. You hadn't imagined your first day out of prison like this.

        Machine Head leaned back in his chair, legs crossed, feet on his polished desk like he'd never left. 

        "Make this one do something different," he waves his hand in a circle, looking for something obscene, "you know what? Surprise me."

        The guards bring him in. Converse dragging behind him, black hair stuck to his sweaty brow. You know it can't be Mark, Mark wouldn't work with Machine Head. Wouldn't be indebted enough to die. Machine Head would use him, not throw him away. 

        You don't remember what the man's face really looked like. Just that Mark's face was always superimposed atop it. Pleading with you not to do it.  

        Machine Head says, "Get on with it already, I want three more before lunch."

         Your head jerked up.

        "No!" 

        You're not eighteen in New York. Not angry enough yet at Mark to want him to die. Instead, you're baking in GDA issue armor, soaked in sweat underneath, ass gone numb from sleeping while sitting. 

        "Good morning." Your neck aches as you force it up. Lensless stands over you, shins at your back. Smiling at you despite the fact that you shot his eye out. The wound had started to scab. Remnants of the actual eye either fell or were picked away. His eyelid sagged around nothing but a pale pink background.

        He looked terrible, but you don't feel bad. Instead, you wished you were dreaming again so you could kill him in Machine Head's office. 

        You rolled up, scanning the scene. Still trapped in the desert. The fire from last night had long since went to ash and most of the Marks seemed to be gone. Just you and Boner Boy.

        No skin off your back, but still you asked, "Where are they?"

        Lensless shrugged, "Probably looking for a way out. I called bids on babysitting duty."

        A shadow passed overhead. You watch the Viltrumite (man, you needed a better name than that) pass overhead, holding thin rolls of material.  He lands by a structure that hadn't been yesterday, half of a shoddy tent frame that was meant to keep you all out of the heat. 

        "Dude says he's helped build homes on other planets or something." Lensless says behind you. "Which is sooo lame. Why be a Viltrum enforcer if you're not always killing people- like me. 'S the best part'a the gig!"

        You chose not to acknowledge that. Started walking toward the new structure as the Viltrumite took off for more material. Lensless keeps pace, "He said to tell you to like, not mess with it until he finished the supports. Something about sand being annoying."

        You don't nod or acknowledge him, but you change course. Headed for a heap that looked like it could fit one. You just needed to be a little cooler. Just a little bit of shade so you could think beyond the heat cooking you inside the armor. 

        Lensless walks backwards in front of you. Smiling dopeily despite his lost eye. "Sooo, are you gonna use your powers on me again?"

        You swallow. Feeling no power ready to go. Whatever Angstrom was, it took everything to control him for those few seconds. You don't reply, propping a knee inside the hollowed out mess of rebar and wire. 

        "Are you ignoring me?"

        It takes some wriggling but you get inside with enough room to turn around and face him. Not out of respect for the conversation but because this kid scared the shit out of you. You were about two degrees cooler but it's not enough. The sun is still rising, a red boil over the dunes. Your throat is stuck closed, lips chapped. You can't take much more of this place and it's only been a day. You thought about taking the helmet off but he shoves himself into the opening to pout at you and you decide not to. 

        "Can you not hear me or something?" He waves a hand in front of your face. "Helllooooo."

        You want him to shut up, so you say, "I'm tired."

        "Then go back to sleep, I can keep watch but-" he holds up a finger, dopey grin returning to his face, "only after you use your powers on me!" Maybe if you didn't move he'd think you'd gone back to sleep and- "Your breathing isn't that fast when you're sleeping. I know you're still awake, you can't ignore me." He's smiling but the good-naturedness had seeped from his tone.

        "And if I do?" You try, voice forced even.

        His eye sparkles with the challenge. "Oh! I see how it is! I'm gonna have to make you use them on me! I prefer it this way actually." 

        He grabs you by the ankle and rips you out of your metal cave. Your armor screeches as sharp edges scratch its back; he would have shredded your flesh if you had taken the armor off. You landed in the warming sand, belly up with Lensless already atop you. Sitting on your hips, not acknowledging the fists you threw to his hard chest or the thrashing dance you were doing under him. You couldn't get up. His thighs were squeezing you in place like a vice and you were on the verge of hyperventilating.

        He leans forward, one hand landing beside your head, sinking into the sand and bringing him closer, the other reeling back. Dark hair falling over his face. "Okay, you better use 'em now, cuz if you don't-" the fist comes forward a quick inch but you flinch- which makes him laugh. "You'll have to stop the next one!"

        You can't. He doesn't know you can't. You had to give up the most vulnerable secret you had to survive. "I-"

        The fist comes down before you can finish. Caught in a snap by a white-sleeved arm. "What do you think you're doing?"

        "Isn't it obvious?" He seemed to really believe it, what else could he possibly be doing?  

        No smile is cracked at the attempted joke. Lensless is yanked off of you and thrown into the atmosphere. 

        He holds a hand out to you, gray loincloth or whatever it was flapping in the breeze and whoop there it is- your name is Gray now, baby.         You don't take it, standing and letting sand slink off the armor.

        "I don't need your help." You say, though you clearly did and he knew it.

        Lensless lands a few feet away, kicking up dust. "That was rude, dude." Gray only looks to you, does a shallow nod and takes off to work on the tent. Lensless watched him, frowning, "He'll definitely kill me if I try that again."

        "Good." You start looking for more shade, preferably not covered in metal.  

        "I kinda wanna try that again." Of course. 

        ***

        You don't know how, but you convinced Lensless to not attempt assaulting you for funsies. Said you'd fight him eventually, on your terms to give you the best shot. You had zero intention of actually doing that, but he loved the idea of you trying your hardest on him- he shelved trying to punch your lights out to force your hand. You stood with your back pressed flat to a sheet of concrete, standing in the minuscule shade while he puttered around. 

        The other Marks returned in a slow trickle. Angry and dejected. Tracksuit was first, swearing he searched the planet top to bottom only to find jackshit. He shoved himself in the same hole you did and rested- you think anyways, you couldn't see his face. Emperor was next, complaining so loud it made your migraine from yesterday return. He usually had slaves to do meandering tasks like that for him and he made it very known.

       Baldie appeared. Landing near you and Lensless, dropping off a heap of planks, "For tonight's fire." You don't thank or acknowledge him but he lingers. "I'm going to help build that thing," he jerked his head toward the tent frame. Gray had sat himself beside it, tying loose fiber and wire together to make fabric, "want to lend a hand?"

        "I'm good at destroying stuff, not making it." Lensless says.

        "I wasn't talking to you."

        The whole day you'd passed being still as possible so none of them would talk to you. Here one was, talking, offering up your help. 

        You wanted to refuse but thought better of it. Sure, you didn't have super strength, but pitching in what little you could would look good. Made you seem complacent, likable, less likely to be thrown under the bus.

        You pushed off the wall. "Sure."

        Lensless scrambles to his feet, "Me too!"

        Baldie fixes him with a look. "Don't even think about coming near the shelter until it's done."

        "But-"

        Baldie holds up a scar-thick hand, "You've done your job for the day. Rest." Lensless settles, unhappily. You follow Baldie, taking note of the higher emotional intellect than the rest, maybe he wouldn't try to kill you at the flip of a hat. 

        Sitting beside the frame were organized piles of material Gray had gathered. Wood, scraps of wire mesh, dirty fabric slips, thin pipes. The frame fluttered in the breeze but holds. The sand was too fine to stake down but Gray had removed his kilt, dug a hole, piled it with sand, and used it as a weight to keep the anchor point in place. He'd done the same using larger fabric scraps along the line of the structure.

        All there was left to do was painstakingly weave tiny materials together to make walls. At least it was better than getting murdered by Lensless.

        You got to work, which was slow going even with Gray and Baldie's guidance. Super speed didn't help in cases of arm knitting dried out trash together. Gray doesn't speak, sat there on a corrugated metal sheet as not to ruin his white suit. Baldie does, giving pointers on how to keep your fabric from falling apart for the millionth time. He'd learned it after observing Gray do it a few times. "Arm under arm, like this, then pull through."

        "Like this?" You do as he did, your trash fabric loose and full of holes.

        "...Close enough."

        You work in silence until you can't take it anymore. You see Gray stealing glances because he couldn't tell when you weren't looking with the visor. You can't see Baldies eyes but you feel them on you. "How long is this thing even going to hold? I mean, this sand, it's almost like water." You ask because you can not deal with real questions right now like if you're all going to die out here if no one finds any food or water. 

        Baldie tightly shrugs, "I just know he should know what he's doing. Don'cha- solider?"  The word, benign, comes out like a slur.

        Gray knots an end. His fabric almost blanket sized while yours and Baldies were like dishtowels. "The way the tent is held down, should allow it to move with the dunes." Gray's voice is affirmed. He's done this before. "For now, we only need one side complete to keep the sun off you during the day." Yet he didn't stop you both from working on the other walls.

        "Off me?" Surprise is obvious, because of his phrasing and the fact that this was the most you'd ever heard him talk. So different from the Mark you knew. Inflection so flatly robotic. 

        "I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say we can hold our breath in lava." Baldie says, "If your body gets two degrees over average, you'll start dying." 

        You don't reply, true but unfair. 

        Others return. Scars who is just as bitchy as Emperor. Threatening literally anybody who looked at him. Which Lensless gladly did with his one eye. Omni arrived just in time to stop them from murdering each other. He'd have liked to help build, but was so caught up in keeping the peace, he couldn't. 

        As the sky dulled gray Mohawk made an entrance. "Well, that was just a big fat waste of fuckin' time." 

        "I'm sure the last of us will come bearing good news," Omni says. 

        You listen, picking up as many planks as you could carry to bring them to the half-tent. Shoddily woven fabric leaned over where the sun would be tomorrow morning. Gray had the foresight to lay metal sheets down where the fire would go so it wouldn't shift in the sand and potentially cause your new home to go up in a cloud of smoke.

        "Bearing good news?" Mohawk spits, picking up the rest of the wood and following you, "What are you forty?" 

        "We are all the same age I believe."

        Mohawk rolled his eyes. "Can you fuckin' believe this guy, babe?"

        You climb up the dune the tent sat atop. Sliding back a little with every step, refusing Mohawk or Omni's help because you hated how they talked about you.

       Mohawk puts his planks down beside yours. Gray moves forward to optimize their positioning for maximum heat. "Aww, come on babe, don't ice me out." 

        "Trouble in paradise?" Tracksuit snickers, leaning back on the unused pile of scrap. His jacket halfway zipped down like the temperature wasn't about to dip into the negatives. A wifebeater covered most his skin, leaving the tops of his collarbones exposed. 

        You sit close to Baldie and Gray because you couldn't be warm and stay away from all of them. You had to choose so you did, the most normal of the bunch. Wasn't saying much.

         Mohawk settles as close to you as he can get with Baldie's brick wall of a body blocking him, "You could say that." 

        There is maybe a minute of peace and quiet. 

        "Are we all thinkin' what I'm thinking?" Mohawk asks.

        "That you need to shut up?" Emperor says.

        "That we're down two and they're not coming back."

        The realization settles in. Phantom and Maskless never returned. You are not upset in the slightest. Less work for you.

        Tracksuit fidgets with his jacket zipper, "Think they're lost?" 

        "Could be." Omni breaks off a plank piece to throw in the fire. "They also may have found something."

        "If they found something, they shouldn't keep us waiting." Emperor says.

        "Maybe they want to keep it to themselves." Scars gives you a significant look. You were glad for the visor hiding your emotions. Forgetting he can hear your breath catch. They all can.

        You weigh the options of possible comebacks. What would get you killed, what would get you verbally dressed down. Nothing seemed good when you had no way to defend yourself.        

        Omni takes the choice away, changing the subject, "We should consolidate everything we have."

        "Wha'dya mean?" Tracksuit says.

        "We should treat individual belongings as collective belongings," Omni says, "one of us may have something that can help us along."

        Nobody goes for their pockets, wherever they'd be on their stupid supersuits. 

        "I'll go first." Omni's fingers disappear into an invisible pocket alongside his upper thigh. Pulling out a laminated square of shiny paper. He looks at it before letting it drop on the ground for all to see. "It's all I brought along." 

        You lean forward, mouth going dryer than it already was after a day in the desert. You're looking at a photo of you, not really you, but it's the same face, same hair, same body. Grinning in white, holding a bouquet. Your wedding day. Mark beside you, looking fine in his tailored suit. 

        You look from him in the photo to the man standing by the fire. His hair had started to streak through with gray. You hadn't noticed till now, shining almost red in the firelight, hadn't the time to pay attention to his hair. How long had it been since that picture was taken? How long had you been dead for him?

        Looking back at yourself, you found an unexpected hot tear slipping down your cheek. Thankfully hidden in the visor. You looked so happy and in love- with Mark Grayson of all people. You got the life you wanted, then died only to be replaced by a worse version of yourself. Jesus, wasn't this all so fucked up? 

        Your existentialism was cut short by something being tossed atop the photo. A carton of alien cigarettes, nine spilling out the top, wrapped in blue paper.

        "I'm jus' showin' cuz he did, but none of you touch the things, got it?" Tracksuit leaned forward, ready to lunge for the cigarettes if need be. "They're mine." His passive growl rivaled that of Scars when it came to your personage. "Oh and," another thing was thrown out, a small pack of-

       "Are those fucking baby wipes?" Mohawk cracked a laugh.         

        "I don't got gloves like you, dipshit. Sometimes blood gets all sticky and gross and I just don't like the feeling, alright?" Tracksuit tensed, "Like yeah, love to murder people n' all but have you seen some of the shit that's out in the universe? You never ripped a Quinobian in half with nothing to wash it off? Fuckin' nasty."

        Laughs pitter round, but nobody else adds to the pile. Distrust too taught.

        "Broke outta prison to get here," Baldie fills the quiet, "I got nothing."

        "I've goooooot-" One thing then another comes out of assorted hidden pockets on Lensless's suit. Collectables like finger bones and half-rotted ears. 

        "Dude, that's disgusting." Tracksuit comments, but he keeps on going.

        A swath of cloth maybe a meter long from something old, a delicate necklace originally silver but gone brown with blood, human teeth, pocket lint. 

        Lensless tiptoes to the growing pile, holding up the necklace. Jewel glinting in the light. He holds it out to you, "Was gonna give this to you when I first saw you again, but you started shouting and I got too excited and everything happened so fast. So, here. I chopped off a really pretty lady's head to get it for you."

        He's smiling puppy dog-ishly. Murder wasn't something you were morally opposed to, but Jesus. Was it really necessary for her to die over a necklace? Something twists in your gut. The face of Mark Grayson, seemingly innocent with something wicked beneath, genuinely interested in you and your affection. It made you want to scream and puke. 

        Omni caught your discomfort like a scent. "Give it to her when we make it out of this desert. For now, it could be useful to hold something together."

        Lensless looked at him suspiciously. "Hold what together? You're not plannin' on stealing a gift I got for her, are you?"

        "I'd never," you believed him on that. "Let's just keep going. Save sentimentality for a different time."

        Lensless frowned. Dejected you didn't immediately, and graciously with sloppy kisses, accept. He rolled back on his heels, dropping the necklace in the pile and finding his seat with a frown. 

        The electronic cuff clicked as Gray took it off his wrist, adding it gently to the pile. "It automatically maps surroundings." He says. Off the side of his hip came a disk that when he pressed at its center became an oxygen mask. 

        "Good." Omni says, "We'll be able to search out further. What else?"

        Out of a mini hip satchel came vials. Thin and shining and filled with unlabeled substances. The other Marks seemed unimpressed, but you had no clue what they were and leaned forward to look.

        "For extreme wound care," he says to you and only you. Leaving the rest of the details for you to figure out.

        "Tch. Look at you walkin' around with medicine like some-" Mohawk couldn't find a good insult, so he just said, "dickhead. Check it." Out his pocket came a box of mints and a spray pen of some kind. He threw them in the pile before looking up at you, "Gotta taste good and smell fresh for my girl."

        His sleazy grin. The flipping in your gut. You can't help saying, "Ew."

        He chuckles, casually tossing out a single wrapped condom. "Just putting it out there by the way."

        "Ew," you repeat.

        Then comes out a ring, a plain metal band with a sun embossed on its outside. He looks at you but can't bring himself to explain. It was catching up to him now, drunkenly slow, weird this all was. He throws it on the pile without comment.

        Next came a fancy-looking pen from Emperor. "I was expecting to be making political moves." He says when Mohawk makes fun of him. 

        Last and definitely least, Scars. He pulls out a black metal ring, clicks its side to open it fully, revealing cuffs. Thick and strong. "I had plans for you, my dear." His words are like spiders crawling on your skin. "I like the fight but you never understood when it was time to stop." The last words held a bitter weight. Like he trying to hide his anger at you for killing yourself, despite the fact that you were very much alive. 

        Eyes fall to you. They expect a response. A retort. You have nothing to say and have to fight the urge to curl into a tighter ball.

       "Still have that shit you chugged?" Mohawk prods and you realize they're not looking for you to fight with Scars. Though Scars desperately wants you to fight him. They want you to empty your pockets.

        Your fingers feel thick and uncoordinated in your pockets. First came your apartment keys, still with the room number card tied on. Then there was a phone charger, bitten down to the wire in multiple places by Caligula. The first bottle of codeine, then the second. Your phone, at nearly full battery, thank God. When it was set down the lockscreen flashed and you swore all the Marks leaned forward a fraction to get a look. Caligula looked back at them all, sun on his blue eyes, belly exposed to the air. 

        "Hey, it's that cat you killed!" Lensless grins at Mohawk who scowled.

        "I didn't kill it."

        "Sure you didn't."

        "He didn't." You say watching your phone screen go dim then black. "Michelle found him. He-" Your eyes were burning, fuck, why were you about to cry? "He's with Cecil now." Your throat was starting to close. Panic sinking in. What if he died? Oh God, you were such an asshole to your cat and you left him with Cecil fucking Stedman.

        "Oh, he's totally gonna do batshit experiments on your cat!" Lensless twitches with excitement, tongue darting out of his mouth, like he was trying to taste your sorrow in the air like spun sugar.

        "Stop that." Omni's voice is hard but when he speaks to you, it goes soft, "Anything else?"

        You bite your lip to make the feelings stop. Unbuckling the belt, you set it down gently. "Buch'a GDA shit. No idea how good it all is." Then finally, your wallet. You toss it with no regard, letting it bounce once, twice, then its contents spill out over the sand. Sliding different affects to different feet.

        Mohawk is first to grab something. "Whoa, babe, is this your license?" Mohawk flips the card over in his fingers. Chin knocking back like he'd been suckerpunched. "Whoa-ho-ho! Who's Cheryl Swanson?" 

        "Not important. We may be able to melt the plastic down and use as glue or something." You say, regretting your disregard of your wallet.

        Tracksuit grabs a card, because as annoying as the drama surrounding you was- it was still entertaining. Best TV this side of the desert. "Gerald Polastri. That yer boyfriend?" Man, did he love stirring the pot.

        Mohawk snatches the drivers license out of his hand. "No way! He's fuckin' ancient! You don't like guys that old do ya, babe?!"

        Ignore them. Ignore them and they'll shut up eventually.

        "Who the hell is Danny Olsen?" The license bends and breaks in Scars grip. 

        "I've got a," Lensless holds the card to the light. Squinting his one and only good eye. "Kennith Green." He flipped the card over and over between his fingers. Making it a blur. An advanced version of that old pencil flipping trick he did back in school before dad pulled him out.

        Emperor gave into the childish temptation, swiping a card. The person looked unimportant and unfuckable. The idea of you with them made him sick. "Got a lot of notches on your belt, hm?"

        Baldie withheld comment and didn't reach for a card. Your life, your body- it didn't affect him, even if the idea of you with someone else hurt him as much as that Klaxus plant venom injected into his blood.

        Omni's pulse did not rise, nor his fist clench. He was perfectly level and even. Plastic had no effect on his mindset whatsoever.

        Gray felt no sorrow or angst. He immediately knew what the cards were, because he'd done the same sort of collecting over the years. Back in his Viltrum suite were pieces of armor, mounted skulls, and broken blades displayed on his walls. It was against Viltrum customs- taboo but not illegal. He and his father both had a soft spot for trophies.

        You didn't know of the solidarity you and Gray held. You felt your cheeks heat as you tried to find the words. Forced to remember all of those people dying. You telling them to die, them doing it without a second thought. Shame wasn't something you had the room to feel after so many years in the field. Still, death could sometimes be... unpleasant. Sometimes the people you killed stuck with you. 

        Much as you didn't want to talk, you'd rather they not speculate about your sex life. The truth was better for once.

        "Cheryl was a mole." You say. "Gerald didn't pay what he owed. Danny tried to leave. Kennith..."

        He looks straight ahead. Eyes glazed. Cheeks shining with tears he no longer shed. You don't remember why he had to die. Just that he was first in line. Dragged into Machine Head's office sobbing. Asking you, "Please don't do it. Please, please. My wife is dying. Please, I just need more time. I can pay. Please."        

        Machine Head waved his hand. "What is with people and the dying wife thing? Like, I get it, you're sad! Boo hoo. I don't fucking care and I checked your accounts, you've been squirreling my money away to run off with that dying wife of yours. Nice plan, jackass. (Y/n), if you'd get on to doing your job?"

        "Wait, what's the deal with the Kennith guy?" Lensless rocks back and forth. Excited by all the death and his imaginings of you murdering people. "Did you fuck him then kill him?"

        "No. I just killed him, nothing special about it." He was your first. The kind you remember.

        You nod toward Emperor, seeing the back of the license. "Jenna sold in our territory." To Baldie, "Roshanna killed one of us." To Gray, "Seth was a fucking freak." To Omni, who wasn't holding a card but looking disgustedly at the one that fell by his boots, "Alex, I dunno, I was sent to kill him so I did." Your eyes go over them one after another. Their anger fading, replacing with something else. "Satisfied?"

        You realize. Most of them didn't know you were a killer. A gang member. 

        Your hand goes to the visor, it'd press to your eyes if not for the covering. "Shit."

        Through the days of carnage, thinking you were dead a second time, you killing your ex in self-defense, then the fight with Angstrom- he hadn't fully grasped the situation. He hadn't looked back and thought about why Angstrom bit off half his tongue. In the heat of the moment, he brushed it off, thinking it some swipe of luck to be taken advantage of and forgotten.

        He hadn't seen something physically come out of you. So he hadn't thought powers. He wouldn't let himself. Because you couldn't have powers. You couldn't be a murderer. You couldn't. 

        He looked down and saw the photo of you on your wedding day. The same woman that took hours picking out a cake flavor, holding a fork to his lips with a smile. The same woman that begged him to relax, be with her more. The same woman that forced him to act on the worst day of his life. After all, you'd said, "I'd rather die than be with someone like you," when you'd found out the truth. 

        He wanted an identical re-do. But the license at his feet...

        "I was wondering why you were listening to that skinny robot guy." Mohawk interrupted his thoughts. Brought him back to the present. "So you're like an assassin or something? That's hot."

        You bristle but try to respond evenly, "I do what I have to." 

        The words are like an arrow to his heart. You are a killer and you sound like you don't even care. 

        "Do'ya like it?" Lensless is practically kicking his feet. A few more gory details and he'd be rocking a hard on. 

        "Dude, of course she does, she kept trophies in her wallet!" Mohawk flipped the card in his hand. "Got any pictures?"

        "Digital evidence gets people caught. If I were caught, I'd be more in debt than I already was."

        "Debt?"

        You'd said too much. Change the subject, now. You point to the codeine, not wanting to share but knowing you can't stop anyone from taking it. "If we don't find water soon, we can ration that out. It's not water but-"

        "Not water?" Tracksuit snorts, "That's straight up lean, dude. Do you seriously drink that shit no candy, no soda just fuckin' raw? Gross, man."

        Omni knew little of drug trade. Didn't bother with crimes he deemed petty, but now he wished he had. He wanted to bother very much. "That's a lot of... substance. Where did you get it?"

        "Wouldn't you like to know?" You say.

        "Yes, I would." 

        Lensless zips forward, trading a license for a bottle. "Since when's your name been Toby Rogers?" 

        "You stole it." Omni realizes aloud. Truth starting to sink in. Ache squeezing his heart. Were you dependent on the substance? Were you high right now? No, no he'd be able to tell if he listened to your heart and breathing hard enough. You were stone-cold sober. He hoped.

        "Yeah, so she could power the fuck up and murder Seventeen." Mohawk looks at you with pride as a ripple goes through the group. Those who weren't there were processing. "Ridiculously hot, by the way, babe."

        "Stop calling me babe."

        "Rather, I call you Dregs?" He waggled his brows like the name could mean something dirty, "What's that mean by the way? Like, how'd you get it?"

        "Don't call me that." You snap, hard, too hard because the shitheads of the group smelled blood in the water. A poker to prod at your pride with. An insult they didn't understand and didn't care about as long as it agitated you.

        Mohawk went to pry some more but Scars spoke over him, "You killed Seventeen?"

        Omni was just going to ask. That and the million other questions floated around his head; You did drugs? You killed? Why? How?

        "Made him snap 'is own neck." Lensless mimed the motion, ending up half lying down with his tongue lolling out his mouth, "Never seen anythin' like it!"

        Scars didn't quite believe it. To him, you were a coward who couldn't face the people after becoming his fuck pet. "How?"

        You were under no obligation to spill your guts to these assholes. However, making Scars believe you could and would kill him just might make him and the others back the fuck off. Even a little. 

        "Swimcap too."

        "Swimcap? Oh, number Twelve!" Lensless snapped, straightening. They didn't have nicknames for each other like you did but numbers. Suppose it's more efficient. 

        "I think you're forgetting I killed Twelve." Scars gestured to his chest. Yellow stripe gone brown with the dried blood from the same man. 

        "Why did he attack you?" You shoot back. He has no response, because he doesn't know. 

        Lensless tilted his head, "But we would've heard you talking?" 

        Anger sparks in Omni's chest. How did Seven, that childish and half-eyeless version of him, know more than he did about you?

        "Not telling." You say.

        Emperor snorts, "I saw you make that guy shoot himself. You just pointed Twelve to Sixteen, didn't you?" And there goes that hidden trick of the trade.

        Scars, Sixteen apparently, grins. Scar stretching, exposing more of his gums and teeth. "You really tried to kill me?"

        "That was the idea." 

        "Then what?" Emperor speaks over Scars before he can say something prison-worthy. "Were you just gonna lure us out one by one to kill us? As if that'd work. You're stupider than I imagined."

        Mohawk kicked at his heel, "Hey."

        Emperor kicked back, "Hey, yourself."

        While they went back and forth Scars zeroed in. "So Dregs, you do work the GDA in this timeline." Memories swirl round his head, going to his dick. "Interesting."

        "I had no idea who Cecil Stedman or what the GDA was until yesterday." 

        "Then why were you working with him, hm?" He's eerily still, watching you, and you find yourself preparing for a blow. 

        "Because my apartment was gone, boss was dead, and these guys," you look from Mohawk to Lensless to Emperor, "fucking murdered all my plan B's." 

        Scar's fingers twitch. You could sense he was going to be an asshole. Thankfully, Baldie cuts in, "Why were you-" he holds up the license, "doing this?"

        "Was your dimension's version of me not killing people and facilitating drug trade?" You spit out like the idea is ridiculous. As if the idea didn't make you insanely, bitterly jealous. 

        "No?" 

        You catch the twinge of hurt in his voice and hone in. Needing to unleash this anger on somebody you guessed wouldn't kill you over it. "What? Am I not what you were expecting? Did (Y/n) not pass off oxy to her prison guards for an extra pudding cup?" You'd never admit it but you sort of missed the jailhouse pudding. Nothing like it. 

        He perks at the mention of incarceration. "You went to prison?"

        Your laugh is a single, mean note. "Went to prison? Mark put me there, asshole."

        At the use of his name, their name, from your mouth used on this lesser version of themselves, their eyes collectively narrow. Lips collectively thin. Baldie's hands are out like he's pleading with you, "I didn't-"

        You laugh at the response, high and involuntary, "Of course, because that what your guy's fucking logic is, right? Cuz clearly you're the same guy who ruined my fucking life, I don't see a difference." Besides the obvious baldness and alien prison jumper. 

        Baldie frowned, folding in on himself at the insult. "I came to save you. Not to force you into anything. I just wanted to keep you safe."

        "From what? From yourself? Didn't you kill me in your own world?" 

        "This isn't a good time, you're upset-"

        "I'm upset because Mark isn't fucking dead and I'm here with you people!" Your hands are trembling fists. Usual coolheadedness evaporated off your sweat sticky skin. You've said too much, again. Stupid. God damn it, so stupid. But you were just so thirsty, so hungry. So cold even by the fire. So done with all of their prodding, followed by the soft gestures. 

        "What'd he do to you?" Omni asks what they're all thinking.

        "I don't care what he did to you. I'll fuckin' kill 'im." Mohawk snarls.

        It's stupid and funny. Mark saying he'll kill Mark. Too much to process. 

        "What'd he do? You all destroyed my planet and got me stuck on this empty desert planet!" You try to calm down, taking a shuddering breath to keep the contempt for any and all versions of Mark out of your voice. "What he did to me was mutual, I fucked him over and he got payback. That's all."

        It's a lie. Gray can sense it immediately. He's unsure if the others can.

        "Bullshit." Tracksuit points at you like you're some TV show character. To him you are. "Calling it now, you're so in love with him!"

        "I only love Caligula."

        "Is that the cat?" Baldie smiles a little, intrigued. You'd loved animals. Had so many rescues that you hid from your landlord.

        His innocent smile softens you the slightest amount. Curbing your anger. "Look, I'm not your dead girlfriend or wife or whatever, please stop treating me like I am." You say, quieter, more subdued, forcing your cool. All eyes on you. A mix of surprise, interest, and deep sorrow. 

        The fire snaps with finality. This conversation is over. You can finally rest. Reel at all you've revealed. Recoup yourself. Think of what it'd feel like when your powers come back and you could kill them all.

        "Well," Lensless breaks the quiet tension like it isn't there, "I don't care if you're not the original (Y/n), cuz you're still my (Y/n)."

        Your head lifts from where you'd hung it. "I told you to stop."        

        His brow lifts with a smile. "Why don't you make me? I know you can."

        Omni, Scars, Tracksuit, and Baldie seem to grow closer. Interested in seeing your acts of spoken violence firsthand.

        You make a point of looking at Gray, your earlier savior from Lensless. Who'd been watching the whole exchange silently. Making mental notes. 

        "No." You say.

        "Is it because you can't?" His words are a dare. "You used 'em pretty liberally before. Why not now?" He's got you figured out, little fucker was smarter than he acted. And he just exposed your weakness to the rest of them.

        "Because it's not productive right now." You dodge and weave through his jabs. Hoping you didn't look scared and defensive but knowing you do.

        Under his lenses, Tracksuit rolls his eyes. "Jesus, just use 'em so he shuts up."

        "I still don't believe you made Twelve attack me. Show us." Scars goads.

        "I think you should kill the guy," Mohawk says, gesturing to Scars with a grin.

        Emperor had rolled to lay on his side. "Everybody shut up. I want to sleep." Nobody listened. He lay, one eye and ear open for all the drama.

        Omni doesn't join in the jabs but he watches intensely. Needing to know if what he heard was real. 

        "Stop." You don't expect Baldie to say it, but he does. "(Y/n)'s right. This is stupid, we know what she can do, stop goading each other. Is there any other contraband?"

        Many of them had more they weren't showing. Little keepsakes of you they refused to give up.

        Nobody came forward. He went on, "Listen, one of us should take the oxygen mask and head out now. Sooner we find help, the sooner we don't have to deal with each other anymore."

        Attention slides off you and a debate begins on who to go. You are deeply grateful. Almost feeling a little bad for snapping at Baldie. Almost.

        Cases are made. Speed and stamina are boasted with winks shot your way. In the end, Omni is the one who takes the mask. He didn't verbally spar for it. Just took it and set it on his mouth. He could hold his breath in space for two weeks, they all could. But that was without getting hit or over exhaustion. He had no idea what he would be getting into. If there were hidden threats. Best to stay on the safe side.

        The others jab at him but don't jump at the bit. Nobody wanted space duty, to be away from (Y/n) that long. He needed time to process. To think. About his darling wife turned cold killer, drug trafficker, and souped-up criminal. Just looking at you in that bloody GDA armor hurt his soul.

        He started, hovering feet off the ground, "If any of you touch my wife while I'm gone, I'll-"

       "Hey."

        He looked down at you. Felt your burning gaze through the mask. "I'm not your wife."

        Your shared vows about love reaching across spacetime said otherwise. 

       "Seriously, I'm not." You almost sound humored, "And if I ever met a version of me stupid enough to marry you? I'd murder that numb cunt bitch with my bare hands." You're being inflammatory on purpose. You're hungry and dehydrated. He knows it, but still bristles at the insult. He was hoping to leave on a good note.

        "Language," he says it with a frown before shooting off into the icy depths of space, blasting powdered sand at all of you.

        Two thousand miles away, Phantom emerges from the sand. Pulling Maskless out, heaving and coughing up the stuff. "Please don't tell me the tunnel collapsed again." They flew feet above. Watching the silky sand sink down, filling the chasm for the fifth time. "Fuck's sake."

[saint-arya]

his reluctant bride — tywin lannister

★⺌◞. tywin lannister x f! noble reader

plot. tywin has to marry you—a poor noble—all because of his father's promises in youth

cw. canon typical. tywin being a jerk. eventual fluff. eventual domestic bliss. hate to love. arranged marriage.

a/n. first time writing tywin hehe :3

masterlist //

you arrive at casterly rock with your father’s promise hanging over you like a noose. the great fortress looms above, carved into the mountainside, golden in the light of the dying sun. the journey had been long, the road unkind, your hands still aching from gripping the reins too tightly. but it is nothing compared to the weight of the name you now bear.

lannister.

you are meant to be a lion’s bride, though you feel more like a lamb being led into its den.

at the top of the grand stairwell, he stands—tywin lannister, lord of casterly rock, shield of lannisport, warden of the west. your husband. your executioner.

he does not smile. he does not blink.

you’ve heard the whispers of what he did as a boy—how he crushed the rebellious reynes underfoot, how he reforged his house with nothing but sheer will and iron-fisted ruthlessness. now, those cold, gold eyes drink you in, assessing, dissecting.

"you are late."

not a greeting. a condemnation.

your hands tighten in your skirts, knuckles white. “the road was long, my lord.”

no flicker of sympathy. no inquiry as to whether you were well. his face is carved from stone, his mouth a hard, thin line. "you will follow me."

he does not offer his arm.

the halls of casterly rock are drenched in gold—not just the metal but the color of candlelight glancing off marble, the rich hues of lion-embroidered tapestries, the glint of wealth in every polished surface. it is too grand, too much, a world you do not belong to. you feel like a child playing dress-up in a dead woman’s gown.

your wedding is efficient. a necessary formality.

there is a feast. roasted meats, fine wine, the music of a hundred strings filling the hall. tywin lannister sits beside you, but he does not look at you. his mind is elsewhere—on his duties, on his ambitions, on anything but you, his unwanted bride.

still, when he reaches for his goblet, his fingers brush yours. a brief contact, fleeting as a summer breeze. and yet, it lingers.

the marriage bed is cold. he does not speak when he enters the room. does not touch you.

for nights, it is the same. a practiced distance. a kingdom of silence between you.

and yet—there are moments. small ones. fragments.

he sees you reading in the solar, a book forgotten on your lap as the afternoon light dances over your face. he lingers at the doorway for a second longer than necessary before turning away.

he watches you at dinner when he thinks you aren’t looking—taking in the way you hold your cup, the curve of your fingers around the stem.

you do not ask for jewels or dresses, as other noblewomen might. you do not whine or make demands. you are silent. observant. patient.

one evening, as the fire crackles in the hearth and the castle is draped in slumber, he speaks.

"you do not complain."

you glance up, startled. “should i?”

a flicker of something—not quite amusement, but close. “most would.”

you tilt your head, considering. “would it change anything?”

he exhales sharply, almost a scoff. and then, the smallest of cracks.

after that, something shifts.

the next morning, you wake to find a book placed on your bedside table—one you’d mentioned offhandedly weeks ago, thinking he had not been listening.

at supper, he pours your wine before his own.

one afternoon, passing by the training yard, you pause to watch the young squires sparring. tywin sees you, follows your gaze. that night, he asks, “did your father teach you to wield a blade?”

you shake your head. “no.”

he studies you. a long, unreadable look. then, to your utter surprise, he says, "i will have a dagger sent to your chambers."

not a jest. not an insult. a gift.

a lion does not offer its claws to a lamb. perhaps, he is beginning to see you as something else.

perhaps, he is beginning to see you.

and gods help him—perhaps he does not mind it.

ᝬ ˙.໑ ╱ © saint-arya 2025 — all rights reserved. property of ethel

[doctorsilverhead]

Hello. May I ask you write Optimus Prime AOE x f!reader?

Thank you!

Under His Control (Optimus Prime AOE X f!reader) Oneshot!

Summary: Captured by the Autobots after being suspected of working with KSI, you're interrogated by none other than Optimus himself. Cold. Intimidating. But when you refuse to break, he takes a darker route—not torture, but psychological dominance. He knows your weaknesses, especially the one you don’t want to admit: how you want to be near him, even now. The line between captor and protector gets dangerously thin.

The metallic walls of the Autobot base felt like they were pressing in around you as you sat bound to the cold chair. The air was thick with silence, the hum of distant machinery barely cutting through the tension that hung between you and the towering figure before you. Optimus Prime, once your ally, now stood as a judge, jury, and executioner in the same breath.

His gaze was unyielding, his optics glowing a piercing blue as they fixed on you. You could feel the weight of his stare, each glance sharp, as though it were slicing through you. The room was suffocating, the temperature rising by the second, but you couldn’t tell if it was from the tension or the sheer heat of his presence.

You had been accused. Working with KSI. A traitor. A lie.

"I didn’t—" you started, trying to find your voice, but Optimus held up a hand, silencing you instantly. His fingers, sharp and intimidating, almost glowed in the dim light.

"Don’t," he said, his voice deep and gravelly. "I know what you did." He took a step closer, his massive form overwhelming you. "You think I don’t know what you’re capable of?"

Your breath caught as his presence filled the room, his towering frame nearly dwarfing everything in sight. But it wasn’t just his size that rattled you—it was the intensity. The sheer force of his being that seemed to envelope the entire space.

He didn’t give you time to speak. Without a word, his large hand reached down and gripped your chin, tilting your face up to meet his gaze. The touch was rough, possessive. His fingers dug into your skin enough to make your heart pound in your chest.

"I’ve never trusted you," he murmured, voice low and thick with something darker than anger. Something primal. "But now… now I need to make sure you understand just how far you’ve crossed the line."

He wasn’t asking for your compliance. It wasn’t a request.

It was an order.

Your chest heaved in anticipation, the heat building between you both. The tension was unbearable. You didn’t know if you should fight him or fall to your knees in surrender. Your body trembled, caught in a web of fear, desire, and something far more dangerous. And then, Optimus leaned in close, his breath warm against your ear.

"Do you understand?" His voice was a whisper that vibrated in the space between you. "You belong to me now. I will break you, piece by piece, until you see what you’ve done."

The words sent a shiver down your spine. You tried to ignore it tried to push the thought of what you knew he was capable of but it didn’t work. He was right there, his presence overwhelming, suffocating. He was the storm, and you were caught in its center.

Optimus’s grip on your chin tightened, forcing you to meet his unrelenting gaze. His lips brushed against your skin, just a breath away from your ear.

"You will be punished for your betrayal," he said, his voice like a dark promise, his words laced with an emotion you couldn’t fully understand. "But first, I want you to feel what happens when you defy me."

Before you could react, his lips crashed down on yours, not gentle, not even tender, but with an almost brutal urgency. The kiss was hungry, desperate, claiming. His hands found your waist, pulling you roughly toward him until your body collided with the cold, unyielding frame of his. You gasped into the kiss, and he didn’t waste a moment, his tongue invading your mouth with a dominance that made your head spin.

There was no hesitation. No room for any ounce of doubt.

His large frame loomed over you, caging you in. The scent of him—metal, oil, something primal—filled your senses. You could feel his heat radiating against you, his body pressed against yours with such force that you could barely breathe.

Your heart hammered in your chest as you fought the need to surrender. But with each touch, each breathless kiss, it became harder to resist. The fire that sparked between you both burned hotter than anything you had ever experienced. His hands roamed down your sides, possessive, claiming, leaving trails of warmth in their wake.

The kiss deepened, each movement deliberate, pushing you further into the haze of desire that clouded your mind. You couldn’t think, couldn’t fight it anymore. Every touch, every brush of his body against yours sent waves of heat crashing through you. "You will learn your place," he growled against your lips, his voice dripping with authority. "And once you do, you’ll beg me to never stop."

His words sent a shock through your body, the combination of fear and desire threatening to overwhelm you. Your body responded to him, despite every logical part of your mind screaming for you to fight, to push him away. But there was something inside you that wanted this. Something you couldn’t escape.

Optimus’s hand slid beneath the fabric of your shirt, his touch searing against your skin. He was rough, his fingertips pressing hard against your ribs, his grip like steel. The power he held over you was suffocating, and yet, you couldn’t help but lean into it, your body betraying you with every movement.

"Do you feel that?" he asked, his voice hushed, almost a growl. "That’s the difference between you and everyone else. You think you can escape the consequences. But I am the consequence. I will own you."

You swallowed, fighting to steady your breath as he pulled away just enough to look into your eyes. His expression was unreadable, but the flicker in his optics betrayed the storm inside of him.

"You’re mine now," he said again, his voice a dark promise. His lips hovered over yours, his body practically vibrating with tension. "And I will never let you forget it."

With that, his mouth claimed yours once more, deeper this time.

[hiraethwa]

how to kill a god

two from <the collection — how to kill a god>

pairing. gojo satoru x reader

cw. special grade sorcerer!reader, non-canon lore!, coma, ANGST, post hidden inventory arc

wc. 3.3k

come home. come back to me.

gojo satoru thought he knew loneliness. isolation. 

a dry laugh escapes his lips at his predicament—the aftermath of one fushiguro toji. 

his best friend, razed down an entire village, took his own parents' lives, on the run. him, appointed executioner by the jujutsu higher up’s because there was no one else who could kill geto suguru.

no one else out of the four—now three remaining special grade sorcerers available, anyway. yuki tsukumo never heeded any of their demands, so that left gojo and you. 

you still laying unmoving on the sick bed before him. a coma, shoko had told him, for reasons unknown even to the gifted healer. 

a year. it has been more than a year since their failure to protect the star plasma ves—amanai. 

he wonders which would have been worse—this, or if you had been on the mission with him and suguru. wonders if things would have been different, ended differently.

gojo glances at your pale lips, your serene expression that is frozen in time, as if you had welcomed death with open arms. he supposes you always had a foot in the after realm after his clan took you in. 

no, you would have taken that blade, cursed or not, in his place. it’s by a miracle, or a mistake, that the killing blow was with a normal blade, not a cursed one. if it had been cursed… not even him, the strongest sorcerer of modern history could have made it back.

he hates that—you accepting that your life is dispensable compared to his. you had always been stubborn, needlessly infuriating, even when you came back as a transfer student after being sent away for two whole years because of that incident, a whole different person.

gojo had no idea what they did to you to extinguish the fire smoldering in your eyes, and you had refused to talk about it. everytime he tried to broach the subject, you would shut down completely. even the embers that suguru coaxed out of you would stutter and die out.

but the way you still managed to get under his skin, crack his mask with your jabs and meanness after all you have been through—he hates that too. 

“i am sorry i didn’t visit you until now.” 

he is a coward. 

for not visiting you sooner, leaving only suguru and shoko to stay by your bedside, checking on your condition. each time he dredged up his courage to stop by the sickbay, he stood frozen in the doorway, his feet resisting from taking any further steps towards you, lifeless and calm as though you laid in a coffin.

his six eyes told him all he needed to know about your condition, your cursed energy levels barely registering on his senses. he did not deserve to see you after everything that had happened.

it was his fault. his fault for being arrogant, for overestimating himself, for not being strong enough to defeat fushiguro when they first fought.

the fear stayed with him—the fear that struck deep in his soul when your soul wrenching scream echoed down your twisted bond as fushiguro dragged that blade up through his torso and stabbed him through the head. 

he had been unafraid, even as death stared him in the face. except, he did not expect you to be there—you were supposed to be on your own mission. 

but the thought of you dying, it made his blood run cold. suspended in the space between life and death as he used reverse cursed technique to heal himself, his consciousness had felt the bond stretch so thin that he realized what was feeling for the first time—fear. 

faster, he urged his healing that was slowly knitting the mess of his brain matter back in place. faster. 

he found you in a pool of your own blood, not that far from the crater he laid dead on, unresponsive with shallow breaths, and ran, with you in his arms to shoko, as his newly mended injuries stretched and groaned in soreness. as his non-life-threatening wounds continued to knit itself closed. 

gojo ran, as though his life depended on it. 

had all but dropped you into shoko’s arms, not even hearing her worried calls after him to assess the extent of his injuries, knowing that if anyone could save you, it was shoko, before he descended into bloodlust. 

gojo had emerged from that fight as the winner, but the damage was done—fushiguro toji had taught gojo satoru to fear. suguru, too. 

they had coped with the fallout in their own ways, but suguru—

suguru never really recovered from it, and gojo’s own fixation on becoming stronger, his resolve for history to not repeat itself, had blinded him to his best friend’s struggle.

he should have known. he should have known that the ever-deepening bags under suguru’s eyes, the gauntness of his cheeks and his figure, symptoms that suguru had attributed to the summer heat were signs of ptsd. 

you would have known. if not for him, you would not be in this state. if not for him, you would have helped suguru heal from their traumatic mission. if not for him, suguru would have had his girlfriend’s support and care, and not committed the atrocities that he did. 

if he had taken some time to actually check on suguru—

his heart stutters as your finger twitches. was that real? 

“can you hear me?” his breath hitches, lodges itself in his throat as he waits for another movement. anything.

he itches to touch you just to make sure you are real, reaching out to check that you are here with him, but stops short just as he remembers the distaste you had for skin-to-skin contact. 

so gojo drops his hand, sitting next to you silently while hoping for another sign that you are still in there, occupying the seat that used to be suguru’s on the third day since the village massacre. 

nothing. he exhales shakily. it was his imagination fooling him after all.

gojo satoru had lost his heart. he couldn’t lose his soul too. 

gojo visited you more regularly after suguru defected, or at least he tried to. 

between missions and classes and other things that needed his attention, he would be lucky if he had thirty quiet minutes with you before he was being called away again.

each time he stops by, he talks to you about how his recent mission went, how absurd the class yaga is making him take is, how he misses you and suguru, half hoping he could wake you up by annoying you with all the talking he is doing for two. 

each time he has to go, he makes sure the blanket is covering your still body properly, careful that he doesn’t accidentally touch your skin lest your eyes fly open in disgust to yell at him. actually, that would be preferable over you laying so peacefully as if you had not a care left in this world—as if you were ready to go. 

he would not accept that. no, he would rip apart the endless fabric of the universe with purple to get you back. 

his shadow, who had suffered too much, too young, all in his name. 

you deserved to live, and to be happy. for a while, you were. 

suguru made you happy. suguru, with his savior tendencies, had taken you in and nursed you back to crackling embers despite your complaints.

the unspoken thing between him and suguru had been forgotten and left untouched when you showed up, a curve ball in their lives. 

it had been sometime halfway through their first year when you were dropped off at jujutsu high’s doorstep with nothing but the clothes on your back. 

your hair, once a bob like shoko’s, had been chopped off to his length. your demeanor and appearance so vastly different from the last time he had laid his eyes on you that he had almost mistaken you for someone else entirely if not for his six eyes.

he had stared at you in disbelief as you walked into class, taking a seat next to shoko without so much as a glance at him. everything that was taught in class that day flew right over his head with you occupying his mind, glances thrown your way so every often as he pretended to listen to whatever yaga was saying. 

as if his six eyes could see through shoko to you.

gojo had waited, though impatiently, for classes to end before catching up to your quick exit from the classroom the moment class was dismissed. his hand grabbing your wrist before his brain could catch up to him. 

your eyes, once living flames themselves, was reduced to nothing more than glowing coals. his shadow, who had always been more fire than girl—what had they done to you because of his thoughtless actions?

gojo’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, grasping at straws of things he should say to you. i’m sorry takes the first place of all the possible things he could—should open the first conversation with you in over two years with. 

“let me go.” your golden eyes stared at him in disdain. 

“i’m—” 

you cut him off irritatedly, “i don’t care, satoru. don’t fucking touch me.”

he retracted his hand immediately. you hate him. he deserved it after everything you had been through—but it shocked him more than hurt him that you said that with so much spite. 

spite that had never been directed towards him, never present in your endless mockery and taunts throughout the years. 

and then you were gone. geto sauntered over to him, amused at the sight of gojo being put in his place by their new classmate, even more so that you knew him. 

“satoru, huh? you know her or something?”

gojo merely scrunched his nose at his friend in faux annoyance. “just someone i knew before high school. someone i owe.” 

geto waited for some sort of explanation, but gojo did not seem inclined to talk about it, walking ahead to the gym. he knew satoru well enough by now to know that it wasn’t nothing. that it was a matter that weighed heavy on his soul. 

that underneath all his cheerfulness and wildness lives a boy who cared far too much. 

he softened, looking at the white-haired boy who he had a weak spot for, “do you want me to talk to her for you?” 

gojo shrugged, looking back at his friend, “do whatever you want to. she doesn’t care for fake kindness or concern.” he half expected him to leave it at that.

not whatever that you two had become. 

he should have known that suguru always gravitated towards the broken ones—being one of them himself, he should have known. his moral compass and savior complex compelling him to do something; to save you, even if it’s from yourself.

geto had pushed and prodded you relentlessly until you let him in. the embers sparked to life in your golden eyes, a living proof of his warmth and kindness.

gojo saw that, the changes in you that are painfully obvious in his—geto’s presence, so he let his heart go without so much a protest.

he made an unspoken promise to you then—geto suguru was yours if you wanted. you deserved to be happy, even at the cost of his heart. even if geto suguru was his before you.  

gojo satoru had not regretted it then. he does not regret it now, as he gazes at you fondly. his personal spitfire. 

it is time to say his goodbyes again, having stopped by after he returned from his mission. he has to leave early tomorrow for another one again since geto’s share of missions fell upon his shoulders. 

“you were such a wretched girl, burning anyone who is careless in getting too close to you, and yet suguru thought otherwise.” he chuckles at his memory, pulling the blanket over you the way you like it. geto had smiled so warmly while telling gojo how you loved to pull the blankets all the way up to your chin.

he pushes a stray piece of hair out of your face absentmindedly, his hand brushing against your cheek on accident. 

cold, your skin feels so cold to his touch. he realizes that a second too late—that he was touching you. 

gojo stills as his six eyes register a fluctuation from you. his cursed energy flows from where his fingers rest on your cheekbone, disappearing into your skin. 

you are absorbing his cursed energy. 

he thinks he sees pink bloom in your skin, your sickly pallor improving almost instantaneously, imperceptibly in his eyes. he stares in disbelief as your body greedily drinks his cursed energy. 

revelation hits him like a freight train.

oh gods, were they all idiots? your cursed energy never replenished after the incident, almost nonexistent on his radar. could it be that you were unable to regenerate your own cursed energy, needing a jumpstart like a car battery? 

“shoko!” gojo shouts for his friend, careful not to break the skin contact between you just in case it doesn’t work again. “shoko, get your ass over here!”

“slow your roll, gojo,” she calls from her computer, still typing away at the stupid keyboard.

“shoko,” he warns, “it’s important, get over here!”

she sighs, reluctantly walking over to your bed, not wanting to get her hopes up just to have them dashed again. “what’s so urgent that i can’t—”

your eyes fly open, unfocused. it startles gojo so hard that he almost jumped away from you. only his sense of self preservation kept him rooted to the ground—and his skin rooted to yours.

“i fucking told you,” he hisses quietly, as though you could hear them. 

shoko gets to work immediately, fishing out her pen light and reaching for your eyes. “well, what are you doing? get off her.”

“i can’t, can’t you just do it with me in the way?” shoko thinks this is one of the few times she could use the term helpless to describe gojo satoru, sighing again at his odd behavior and doing as he asks anyway.

“there’s no reaction, gojo. she’s not waking up, as much as both of us wish it.” 

stubborn to a fault, gojo insists, “but she opened her eyes.” 

“it could be nothing more than a random muscle reflex.” it’s a hard pill to swallow. as a doctor, she knows the facts and the chances, although she cannot help but hope for it to be a sign of you leaving the deep coma you are in. 

she still doesn’t want to get gojo’s hopes up in case it isn’t. 

“her color looks better too, does it not?” 

“satoru—” she calls his name softly, hoping to let him down gently. 

“she’s taking my cursed energy, ieiri. tell me honestly, does she look more healthy than before?”

gojo waits, fingers still touching your skin for shoko’s verdict. “she does, but—”

“why is she in a coma?” 

“i don’t know, gojo. you have asked me that question so many times i lost track of the count. don’t you think i want my friend to wake up too?”

“then hear me out. did you ever notice anything wrong with her cursed energy?”

“you know i can’t measure that.” she throws her hands out in frustration. 

“she’s as close to zero as fushiguro toji was. or she was. it’s growing by the minute as she absorbs more from me.”

“don’t be absurd. if she was absorbing cursed energy through skin contact, we would have known. geto used to hold her hand for hours, he would have felt it.”

“what if it’s just me?” 

gojo does not know if you ever told geto about your innate ability to absorb cursed energy from humans through skin contact. shoko has no knowledge of it at the very least. 

he had helped you keep it a secret from the world—your ability that would have earned you an immediate death sentence the moment the higher ups learnt of it. and somehow, in the wake of everything that had happened, it slipped his mind.

he is an idiot, the world’s biggest one.

“she’s my shadow, so what if it’s just me?” he knows you could absorb cursed energy from anyone, but you had learnt to switch your innate ability off at will years ago. as far as he is concerned, you had not absorbed cursed energy from anyone in years. 

he wonders if you’re unconsciously willing it so, or if you only felt safe enough to take from him even in your deep sleep like trance. or if you are so weakened that his cursed energy was the easiest for you to consume. 

—if all the legends were true.

gojo always had his doubts but… it would help explain why you only absorbed his cursed energy, if you were truly born as a pair. it would make sense why his cursed energy is the most compatible for your weak body to absorb. 

it would also mean that you are meant to sacrifice your life for his. 

he still rejects that, refuses to accept it—but if it meant he could save you, if you would wake up, then—

then he would cross that bridge when it comes to it, forbid you from saving him or something. his word has to count for something, right?

“alright, suppose she’s absorbing your cursed energy. what are you suggesting? that she needs cursed energy to wake up?”

“yeah, simple as that. occam’s razor, right?”

“i don’t know if that’s how occam—” shoko stops herself at the hope surfacing in his eyes. “fine, what do we have to lose? i guess you could stay there for another hour and see if it works.”

gojo grins back at her, a genuine smile stretching from ear to ear, hopeful at the possibility of you waking up soon, settling into the uncomfortable plastic chair by the bed—the same one that she used to find geto asleep in, body folded into a position that cannot be comfortable. 

“don’t stay too long. you need to get some sleep too. don’t you have another mission tomorrow?” she reminds him as she takes leave for the night, her words falling on deaf ears. 

shoko knows that shared stubbornness well, it’s a language all of you are well versed in; knows gojo well enough to know that it is more likely than not for her to find him in the same position tomorrow. ah, well, whatever suits him.

and sure enough, he was still there in the morning when she got to the infirmary. 

his head of snow white hair almost blends in with the white of the bedsheets, having fallen asleep on his arms against you with his hand in yours. even in his sleep, he is holding onto your hand securely, as if he is afraid of you slipping away through his fingers again.

“gojo, wake up. yaga is looking for you.” she nudges his shoulder gently so as to not startle him. she would much rather not deal with a hollow purple today.

he shifts in his sleep, a frown etched onto his features, a soft whine escaping his partly open lips. “gojooo,” she pokes him.

gojo tightens his hold on you as he blinks his eyes open, rubbing the sleep from them. and just ever so slightly, he feels a twitch on his hand. 

“s–shoko? did you–” he stumbles through his words, disbelief holding him hostage. and hope, hope that he hasn’t dared to firmly hold onto soars through him. 

your fingers twitch again, flexing as if to test out muscles that haven’t been in use for a year. flexes and clutches onto his hand softly with all the strength in your frail body. 

i’m here, satoru. 

shoko’s lab coat swishes with a flurry of movements, her actions gone unnoticed by him, as his vision becomes blurry. tears flood his eyes, tears he doesn’t remember shedding in a very long time. 

and finally, shoko speaks up, wonder and incredulity thick in her voice, “i think she’s waking up.”

a/n. nyahhhhh, mixed feelings about this one, but i can't wait to write her waking up :3

awaiting updates? browse the library while waiting

if you liked this, please consider leaving a like, comment, rb or ask <3 (perhaps i enjoy breaking hearts a little too much)

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(closed)

[yukinohiko]

The first anxiety attack you experience over the upcoming performance occurs mid-February. It’s a rose-hued concoction of sentiments. The early morning winter sky unfolds in shades of pearl and violet, cirrus swirling over the curve of the rising sun. You press your temples against the wall-sized window in the otherwise empty studio.

Cold.

There is a stitch in your side; your feet planted firmly on their soles, feeling incapable of lifting you an inch further.

It’s the state Sae finds you in. You hadn’t anticipated his arrival until 9 a.m. When you turn at the sound of footsteps, it’s away rather than toward him, burying your wet face in your wrist, wiping your eyes.

“Let me see,” he says from somewhere behind you, clinically detached in tone. It blisters something greater than your heel.

You presume he means your step work. The instruction conflicting with the fact that you feel obvious with your break down. Transparent. But taking the illusion for granted, you draw your face away from your wrist, thinking you’d been reprieved, thinking you’d been covert, only to catch yourself hardly a breath away from his face.

Cool eyes evaluate you. You can see yourself viscerally in their aventurine reflection, nacre lost under the quartz. Tender and soft, bruised. Unequivocally a failure of a principal dancer, in the eyes of your executioner.

But he does not strip you of your title and status. Close. So close.

The soft mint of his breath brushes over your lips as he observes you, and you become sharply aware of the thin space separating his mouth from yours.

You can only stare, stricken mute, as cold hands cup the sides of your face, firm thumbs wiping damp remnants of tears off your cheeks. Pressing into their apples, coercing dimples into the tender flesh. You nearly wince; you might’ve if you weren’t paralyzed staring.

“It’s fine,” he says calmly, and there’s a thousand things you think he could be referring to. “You’re fine.”

You don’t ask which applies here. You only nod, an uncertain, emotive sound strangling in your throat. He hums, something alike interest, warmer in the pale morning light, enveloping the moment.

[joeloverture]

comeuppance | qz!j.m. x f!reader

masterlist | notifs blog

pairing: qz!joel miller x f!reader summary: [post outbreak] when your recklessness causes an arms deal to go south, joel makes sure you regret it. warnings: (18+ mdni) qz!joel, age gap (late 20s/early 50s), written with hbo!joel in mind but with game!joel lore, guns, mentioned executions, misogynistic names outside (and in!) a sexual context, canon-typical violence as in murder (joel kills a soldier 'on-screen'), reader is a little shit but joel is worse, darkish & dubcon, spanking as a punishment, gunplay, attempted boot humping, degradation, humiliation, one kick to the cunt, mean!joel, orgasm denial [no use of y/n] word count: 2.7k a/n: this is my (admittedly late) submission for @iamasaddie's writing challenge 2.0! my prompt was 'you can't hide forever'. the genre was technically dark but joel himself isn't scarily dark here. thank you so much to aly for, once again, bringing this fandom together with her challenges. it's a steep task but she does a great job every time! and even more thanks to @joelsdagger and @lovesickonmybed for helping me brainstorm! (i have half of a brain without my wonderfully creative friends).

It only takes one deal gone south to fuck everything up.

You know the compass is already ticking that way the moment you and Joel, your longtime smuggling partner, enter the abandoned warehouse. Much like everything else in the Boston QZ, it’s falling apart. The corrugated metal walls are pitted with rust, and old blood is caked all over the floors. In another life, it might’ve been a slaughterhouse, but there’s no real way of knowing. It’s been long enough that any signage has deteriorated. The building’s state of decay, however, isn’t what messes things up.

It’s the singular man that walks in from the opposite side of the atrium.

FEDRA’s favorite executioner. Slitted eyes far apart, thinned out lips, and graying black hair. Rarely seen away from the gallows, only recognizable to you from all of the nightmares you’ve had of his face being the last you see.

If it were drugs, you’d think nothing of it. FEDRA soldiers buy quietly from you all of the time – but they have no need for guns that they don’t already have.

Joel steps forward, merchandise in the duffel bag over his shoulder, none the wiser. A knot ties itself in the base of your throat. You’re too busy trying to figure out what to do, what to do, what to do that you barely even realize that the soldier has a gun aimed right between your eyes until you’re looking right down the barrel.

Your hand jerks to your holster, drawing your pistol in one swipe.

“Drop your fucking gun!” he barks in your direction. It clatters out of your hands. “Don’t you dare fucking move.” Your hands fly up as you take a step back, nearly stumbling into a nearby crate. “Joel Miller and his bitch,” the man sneers. “What a lucky find. You two have quite the bounty on your heads.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Joel says, face completely blank.

“Easy for you to say,” the guard says with a nagging smirk. “Your little cunt here already did. Pretty fucking dumb not to check who you’re selling your merchandise to, huh?”

Joel tenses, ultimately huffing through his nose. “Can we get this over with?”

“I’ll make it easy, Miller. Come with me alive so I get paid, or come with me dead so I still get paid.”

Joel’s fingers twitch behind his back, and after almost three years of working with him, it’s impossible not to pick up on the subtext. Keep him busy. His hand is already reaching for the revolver in his back pocket.

“Turn the other way. I can make this worth your time,” you say. “But you’re lucky if those sons of bitches you work for even offer you half the reward they’ve posted for us. Dragging the bodies from Area 5 to the closest checkpoint… you’d have your work cut out for you.”

“Yeah fucking right,” he spits. “You two have been running around free for too damn long. Causing too much trouble. Not anymo–”

The man’s mouth freezes around the words by the time the bullet soars throat the canvas fabric of Joel’s duffel bag and through the man’s jugular. The soldier’s hands claw for his throat while he gargles on the blood as he begins the descent to the ground. New blood, still pumping directionless from the split artery, joins the old.

Much like him, where he’s slumping against the ground, chest moving until the very end, your hands clutch at your own throat. “We need to go,” you say, knowing the rest of FEDRA will come looking for the firefight at any second now. Joel doesn’t move. “Joel!” You reach out to tug his sleeve, but he doesn’t react. “Jesus– move!”

Joel turns to face you, gun still hanging from his hand. His fingers flex around the grip. “What the hell were you thinkin’, little girl?” You can hear his breathing, amplified from how close he is to you. His once inexpressive face is now red, lips curled, skin tight like a crushed soda can. 

“I– what?”

“Not vettin’ your buyers. First fuckin’ thing I told you all them years ago, wasn’t it? Gotta check so you don’t sell shit to the wrong guy, yeah?” He stalks closer to you – you stumble back.

Not vetting the now dead executioner, whose blood is currently creeping up to the soles of your boots. Your mistake, yes, a potentially catastrophic one that you’ll definitely never make again after this, but he’d been on your ass about finding buyers and after an entire day of burning bodies, the last thing you wanted to do was go asking around about the ‘John’ in search of guns that you’d talked to over the radio tower.

“We’re alive, aren’t we?”

Joel finally jerks his sleeve away from your grip. Your hand falls slack by your side, burning from his fire stoker touch. “And you oughta count your fuckin’ blessings for that. Dumbfuck of a girl, gonna get me killed,” he spits. Spittle flies across your neck. 

You flinch – and not because you’re scared. You’ve never seen him like this before. You hear noise in the distance, the moving of FEDRA trucks, no doubt. “Joel! We can do this later – we need to fucking go–”

“Then you better start running,” he says gruffly.

You don’t need to be told twice.

You sprint out of the atrium, cursing as your bloodied soles carve tracks behind you. A stack of crates blocks the door, which you vault over and shimmy your way through the broken glass panel. The hallway ahead of you is dark, and you have no idea where the fuck you’re going, only that you can’t stop. Each impact of your foot on the ground is like being struck by lightning, carbonating the racing blood pumping through your body. More glass crunches behind you, and a shock of terror pierces you when you hear Joel’s snarls filling the corridor.

There’s a metal cart in your way, which you send whirling in Joel’s direction. He grunts, presumably hitting him in the stomach before it goes clattering on the ground. You make the most of the diversion, hurtling forward and lurching through a cracked door.

Dead fucking end.

An office, by the looks of it. Desks all over the place, leftover tasks still pinned on cork boards from outbreak day, chairs on their sides. You hear Joel huffing and puffing behind you, and fear forks through you. You fall to your hands and knees, crawling underneath the labyrinth of desks and tucking yourself against a wall, carpet-burned hand to your mouth to muffle your breathing. Your chest avalanches with every single breath.

“You ain’t off the hook,” Joel says, voice getting closer with every word. You can hear the thump of his boots against the carpet. See the spread of his shadow roaming across the wall. You squint through the seam of two desks. He's looking over his shoulder when you haul yourself across the room to the next closest desk.

You look around for anything that might get you out of this long enough to slip back out of the door. If you can make it back to the apartment, maybe he can cool off on his own walk back. You reach up for a stapler and take a brief second to peek over a filing cabinet before flinging it against the wall. It snaps open, spilling decades old staples all over the floor.

“Only a clicker’s fallin’ for that,” he tuts at you. His boots land on the floor again, one, two, three steps closer to you. You wince, balling your hands into fists. 

All you can hear is the thrashing of your own heart. You scooch away from the desk – maybe if you throw something small at him, like a pack of sticky notes, it’ll be enough to abduct his attention long enough for you to slip by–

“You can’t hide forever,” Joel goddamn coos at you. You see him bending at the waist, scoping out the undersides of desks, seeking you out–

You crawl out from under the desk and book it to the door.

Stupid. Fucking. Idea.

Joel hauls you back by the belt loop, laughing as you cry out. You try squirming away, kicking at him, but his other arm wraps around your torso. It hits you then that you have no idea what he might do to you. You’ve trusted him with your life before, but what would he do when you risked his? You’d always been too scared to find out. He spins you, slamming you over the desk. You cry out as your chest meets the wood. His hand drags your wrists together, pinning them at the small of your back.

“Let me – the fuck– go!” you yell at him, trying to bend your elbow at the right angle to nail him in the chest.

He tightens his grip so much that you can barely move an inch. “Made your fuckin’ bed, gotta lie in it, sweetheart,” he tuts, shaking his head at you. His hand grazes over your ass, and you stiffen as he looms over you. He is just a man. Your mind spins to the worst-case scenario. No, no, no, no–

“How about an… old-fashioned corporal punishment to set ya straight?” Within the next second, he’s yanking your jeans down your thighs.

Oh. Oh fuck.

“Joel–” you exhale, breath shuddery. “Knock it off–”

“No panties? I was gonna be nice and spank ya over them…” Joel frowns at you. “Poor baby. ‘S gonna sting real bad.”

You snap at him, “What, you want me to go to the local QZ Victoria’s Secret?”

Joel swats, hard, across your asscheek.

You’ve seen how intense Joel’s brute strength can be. You’ve just never been on the receiving end of it. A cry pushes out of your throat, and you hunch over the desk as you struggle helplessly against Joel. Tears spring at your eyes.

Mercifully, Joel runs his calloused palm over the smarting skin. “Shh, shh, shh, shh. ‘S okay, Jus’ gotta teach ya a lesson. Make sure it sticks.” He strokes the nape of your neck as you whimper into the desk.

You tense up in preparation for the second hit, but, if anything, it just makes the impact worse. It prickles your other cheek, leaving your knees shaky. And God help you, your clit twitches. Twitches. Your thighs are already heating up, and you can’t help but squirm in a good way underneath Joel. A single tear slips over your waterline, and you have to tilt your head into the shoulder of your shirt to wipe it off. You don’t want him to see you weak – not that weak.

The next spank makes him grunt from how hard he swings his palm into your backside. “Joel!” you shout, pain nearly splitting you in two. Your feet raise off of the ground as you prop yourself up on the desk, kicking uselessly at his shins. All he does is chuckle at you.

Horror sinks like a cinderblock in your stomach when you realize that your hole, leaking slick, is practically fucking winking at him. You thank the darkness. It’s about the only good thing about this place.

“You don’t like that?” he mock-pouts at you. It’s enough to make you throb. The opposite, you’d say if you could.

A series of spanks follows, but at least these are lighter, and in rapid succession. Still, you jerk with each impact, squirming so that your fingers dance in his grip. “Stupid little girl. Thought you could sell our shit to a FEDRA bitch and get off scot-free? Really thought you could get away from me, huh?”

You try clamming up, desperately attempting to close your legs together. You squeeze your thighs together, relieved at the pressure – and then you hear a resounding click behind you.

You still.

Joel’s gun, still fucking hot from the bullet it’d fired right into the executioner’s throat, traces up the small of your back… all the way to your throat. “Could put one right here,” Joel whispers, more to himself than you. “Show ya what happens to girls that don’t follow orders.” He jams it into your skin, and you hiss at the pain, at the bruise it’s sure to leave. And in spite of it all, you fucking gush. God, you’re fucked up.

He wouldn’t kill you – he needs you more than you need him. But common sense isn’t enough to prevent the thrill, the arousal smiting your body from head to toe.

“I’ll reconsider if ya give it a kiss.” He nudges the barrel carefully against your lips and you stop breathing for a second, maybe two. “Go on. Give it some lovin’. Suck it like a cock. I know you’re good at it. Hear all the guys you bring over.”

You whimper at the thought of Joel listening to you getting your hook ups off – at the thought of him fisting his own cock while he listens. Obediently, you part your lips, slowly, ever so slowly, taking the gun down your throat. It fills your mouth up in such a strange way – all hard edges. It’d be freezing cold if not for the fact that it’s a weapon of death, a scythe in its own way. One press of the trigger, and you’d be just like the guard. You suck even harder at it, eyes rolling back in your skull. Your thighs twitch, stripes of slick running down your thighs. 

Joel reaches between your legs, grabbing at the meat of your inner thigh to spread you open. Instead, he gets a handful of the arousal that’s been pooling between your legs since he first bent you over the desk.

You freeze, pausing your ministrations on the pistol. He himself freezes before he drags his hips over your folds. His finger pads hover over your swollen clit before he properly rubs you once, and then twice. Your hips cant into the closest thing – his hand.

Joel makes a disgusted noise and swats your leaking pussy before shoving you forward and stepping back. You’re panting, properly fucked out even though he’d barely touched you. Cross-eyed, tongue hanging out, face hot. He looks you up and down, brows furrowing with revulsion. “Horny fuckin’ bitch. Creamin’ all over me. That long since you got action that a spankin’ and a gun in your mouth is all it takes to get you riled up? Pathetic.” He shoves the gun back in his pocket, still shining with your saliva.

He wipes your wetness all over your leg, grabs the back of your collar, and drags you to the floor in one foul swoop. You fall on your hands and knees again, ass still stinging from his treatment, lightheaded from how needy you are. Even his brutal treatment makes you whimper. 

You reach for his calf, pulling yourself up to brace your dripping cunt against his boot. You rut against it, not even fully cognizant of your movements as you roll your hips, praying that he lets you have this if nothing else. Your orgasm, wetting his boot thoroughly. Your scent, clinging to him on the walk back to the apartment. You buck into the boot, moaning as the toe bumps against your clit. It might be enough, if you could just do it one more time–

Joel tears his shoe out from underneath you, face pinched with aversion. “No!” you cry, still grabbing for his calf. You fall onto your back, legs spread and panting. Your ass needles from his spanking. The ceiling tiles spin above you. 

The same toe you’d been humping kicks into your cunt, and you yelp, curling in on yourself. Another tear slides down your burning cheek as you reach down to cup your sore pussy. Even that pressure feels like touching a live wire. 

Joel looks down at his shining boot and makes a disgusted noise. “Does humiliatin’ yourself always get ya dicked down?” 

He turns around, already walking away from you without a care in the world. The gun grip pokes out of his pocket, taunting you.

“Pull your goddamn pants up and get a move on. Curfew’s soon.”

[sylestine-redacted]

Absolute filth (and only 3k of the current 8k written..lets see how it does). READ TAGS PLS. A bunch of mean black templars.

Part 2 here

f!reader x Black Templars

A/N: *covers face in shame but peeks through hands* don't judge meeeee

Cw: NSFW. noncon, bondage, voyeur/group watching, nipple clamps, humiliation, yandere chaplain

The Verdict

The chapel of penitent flesh was colder than it had any right to be.

Not by temperature—no, the ship's internal systems kept things stabilized—but by atmosphere. The air felt starved of warmth, pressed thin under the weight of judgment. Iron arches climbed the ceiling like the ribs of some titanic beast, and on every wall, purity seals fluttered in silence, blood-inked parchment whispering scripture to no one.

You knelt on bare ceramite flooring, naked but for the chains and the rune-branded collar digging into the soft hollow of your throat. Arms behind you, wrists locked. Knees wide apart, not by choice, but because the binding rod that ran between them forced it—meant to expose, display. Not comfort.

Before you stood the Chaplain. Behind him, twelve battle-brothers of the Black Templars, helmed and silent, standing like statues carved from hate. You felt their eyes, even through the black lenses. The way they looked at you—like a thing, a subject. An animal ready for slaughter. Or worse: ready for salvation.

The Chaplain raised his crozius and struck the floor once. The crack boomed like a thunderclap.

“You stand before the judgment of Dorn’s wrath,” he said, his voice a sermon made flesh. Gravel-dry. Stern as the grave. “You, who consorted with the profane. You, who bore flesh not in service of the God-Emperor, but in shame. You, who craved. Lust. Power. Touch.”

The word curled off his tongue like an accusation. Touch. You flinched.

He stepped forward. The floor trembled when he moved.

He came forward with the deliberation of a beast who’d already chosen his prey—no need to rush, no need to threaten. You were already caught. What came next wasn’t punishment. It was ritual. Litany. A practiced thing.

When he crouched in front of you, it was like the hull of the ship shifted to accommodate him.

The Chaplain’s armor creaked with old weight, servo-motors hissing low, quiet like breath from a dying throat. His cloak spilled forward across the stone, smelling of incense, gunmetal, and the faint stink of him. Old blood. Sanctified oils. You could feel the radiation of his power armor, its proximity, its sheer unnatural mass—like a mountain choosing to lean in.

His skull-helm stared directly into your face, close enough that your breath fogged against the smooth bone cheek of it.

Up close, it was worse.

The surface was worn—not pristine, not ceremonial. There were hairline fractures in the faux-bone. Bits of dried blood along the mouth. Teeth marks. You weren’t sure if they were decoration… or leftovers. Thin purity seals trailed from the back like ribbons, their script all but unreadable from here, but you could see the words “EXULTATION IN PENANCE” etched in high Gothic across the brow.

He didn’t speak right away.

Instead, he watched. Helmet tilted slightly. Studying. Not as a man might study a prisoner—but the way a priest might study a relic before he shattered it to sanctify the crowd.

And then, gauntlet rising, he reached out. Not with violence. But with a slow, terrifying calm. Two fingers under your chin—metal touching bare skin—and he lifted your face up to his.

Like a lover. Like an executioner.

The vox crackled softly before his voice poured out, low and close and static-slick.

“I know what you dream of when you think no one listens.”

“Speak. Confess.”

His voice had weight. Not like a man, but like scripture. Like something forced into your head. You could feel the audience shift behind him, other Astartes leaning in slightly, hungering. Waiting for your words. For your fear.

The skull-helm regarded you with mechanical silence, a death’s head fitted with purity seals and etched with sigils older than the current crusade. You couldn’t see his eyes—but you felt them. Hungry. Patient.

“Speak,” he repeated, vox cracking with the command. “Confess.”

You didn’t. Not immediately.

The chains rattled as you lifted your chin without his hand, shoulders back despite their ache. The collar bit your skin as you met that hollow gaze, and the breath you took was sharp, deliberate—defiant.

“I didn’t do anything,” you said, voice rough from dehydration. “Your ‘evidence’ is a fucking joke.”

There it was. The crackle. The ripple of movement behind him—one of the Astartes shifting his weight, another tightening fingers around the grip of his boltgun. But the Chaplain remained still.

“Lie not before the Throne,” he said at last. “You were witnessed. Your room was soaked in sigils. Warp-scent clung to your flesh. And your thoughts…” His voice deepened, modulator dipping to a near-growl. “Your thoughts were read.”

You hissed. “Then read them again. All of them.”

Another step. His armored boots struck sparks on the stone as he loomed closer, crozius held like a branding rod. He stood over you now, his cloak heavy with incense and ash, draping around your shoulders like smoke. The skull helm leaned in.

“I have,” he said.

You froze.

The silence turned thick—every breath from the crowd behind him became unbearable. The implications in his words—it wasn’t just this moment. He had touched your mind before. Sought out dreams. Or fantasies. Maybe you’d felt it and chalked it up to ship madness, the strange tension of living in the shadow of gods.

But he’d been there.

He knelt again. This time, slower. A performance. The crozius came down across your thigh, not to strike—but to rest, cold and heavy. His other hand moved to your face—not lifting now, but gripping. Hard. Thumb against your cheekbone. Fingers splayed. Not hurting you—yet—but the threat sat there, loaded.

“The tongue lies,” he said, low. “But the body cannot. Flesh betrays.”

He pressed his thumb just under your lip, smearing it down to your chin. The soft, obscene trail it left there… you hated that you felt it.

“Later,” he murmured, barely audible. “You will thank me for this purification.”

He rose again. Straightened. Turned to the crowd.

“The heretic will be corrected.”

There was no cheering. No applause. Just the hum of approval in the comms, the mechanical growl of Astartes accepting the order.

Two of them moved. You felt your bindings pulled tighter. Your legs dragged wider. A sigil was activated beneath you—burning-hot chains snapping into place across your ankles and upper thighs, pulling you down onto some kind of sanctified mount. Positioning you.

The Chaplain turned back, crozius in hand, voice a benediction dipped in filth.

“We begin with the mouth. The seat of lies. The font of defiance.”

You said nothing. That was your choice. That was your weapon.

He leaned in slowly, with the patience of a man who knew he'd already won. Not yet in deed—but in trajectory. As if the outcome wasn’t in question, just the time it would take to wear you down into the shape he wanted.

“Prepare the orifice,” he said aloud, as if reading from a checklist.

You heard motion behind you. More steps. Another brother brought a basin forward—filled with a viscous, transparent fluid that shimmered with faint sigils beneath the surface. It smelled sterile and electric, like burning ozone. A ritual lubricant. Or something worse.

You thrashed—instinctively, stupidly. The chains yanked tight. Your body arched against the restraint rod between your legs, iron biting into the backs of your knees. Laughter echoed softly from one of the Astartes behind their helm.

Not kind laughter. Something low. Interested.

The Chaplain didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge your struggle.

Instead, he reached for your jaw again—this time, less gently. His gloved thumb crushed your cheek inward while his fingers pressed into the hinge of your jaw, prying it open.

You snapped your teeth.

You aimed to bite.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull back. Your teeth met armor, clacked uselessly against the ridged plating of his fingers.

He only held you there, squeezing tighter. Enough to make your gums ache, your lips burn at the corners. And then—he pushed in.

Two fingers. Thick. Coated with oil. They slid between your lips, slow and steady, filling your mouth without pause or question. You gagged as they brushed the back of your throat, your neck jerking involuntarily.

He didn't pull away.

“Still the tongue,” he said, voice deep and thunder-sure. “Let the flesh receive correction.”

You made a sound—muffled and furious. You tried to speak around the intrusion, to spit, curse, something. But all you managed was a wet, humiliated choke.

One of the Astartes shifted in response. You heard the click of armor plates, the scrape of boots against the sanctified stone. They were watching you drool. Watching your jaw stretch. Watching the Chaplain work his fingers into your mouth like he was measuring the shape of your shame.

He twisted his hand—gently, cruelly—so the tips of his fingers hooked behind your cheek, pulling.

The corners of your mouth tore open wider. Pain prickled at the seams of your lips. Your teeth bared in a grotesque, involuntary smile.

And then, with mock solemnity, the Chaplain whispered, “Recite.”

---

Your jaw ached. Your lips trembled around the stretch. His fingers hooked cruelly, not moving, just holding—making you wear the expression he wanted. A parody of penance. A smile that wasn’t yours.

Saliva pooled beneath your tongue. Your throat worked around the intrusion. He waited.

“Recite.”

You stared into the hollow sockets of his skull-helm, gagging once—sharp, ungraceful—and managed to rasp out:

“Fuck you.”

The words hit the air like blood in holy water—blasphemy spat directly into the face of faith.

Behind him, a few of the watching Astartes stiffened. One stepped forward—but the Chaplain raised a single hand. Not yet.

His fingers didn’t leave your mouth.

But they did press in deeper.

You gasped around them, choking again, and he leaned in low—closer now, as if the vox alone couldn’t carry the weight of what he needed you to feel.

“You will not speak again,” he said, almost soft. “Not until it is time to beg.”

Then, slowly, he withdrew—a string of spit trailing from your bottom lip to his gauntlet as he pulled free, the wet sound echoing indecently through the high chamber.

You sagged in the chains, furious, humiliated, heart hammering. The rod between your legs dug harder. Your face burned.

But you said nothing.

And that silence—your new weapon, your only defense—he noticed it.

The skull tilted as if amused. And he stepped back without another word.

The other Astartes began to move around you. Preparing. Adjusting restraints. Bringing tools. The ritual would continue.

But the Chaplain remained still, staring.

He was enjoying this.

You could feel it.

---

You couldn't track how many of them moved. They made no sound but the clink of armored boots and the low thrum of liturgical cant. Your limbs were held wide, body suspended by chains and sanctified iron, knees pinned open, back arched to expose the full map of your front—your chest, your belly, the dampening crease between your legs. Spread like a heretical offering. Like meat.

The Chaplain remained still behind his helm. A black altar watching its own sermon.

One Astartes approached with a basin of oil, blessed in rites you didn’t recognize. It smelled of incense, blood, and scorched metal. He dipped his fingers into it—gloved, massive—and stepped behind you.

You braced.

The first touch was just at your throat. A warm slick line of pressure, drawn from collarbone to sternum like a priest anointing the dead. He didn’t speak. None of them did. Only the low drone of whispered prayer filled the air—thirteen voices, speaking in synch, not for you, but over you.

Another hand followed.

It smeared the oil beneath your breasts. Across your ribcage. Palms so broad they nearly spanned your waist. They moved with methodical slowness, pausing deliberately near every sensitive edge—but never touching them directly. Your nipples stiffened from the cold air and the scent of the oil, and they noticed. One gloved knuckle brushed—just enough to tease, to not satisfy—and kept moving.

You jerked against the chains.

Laughter. Quiet, predatory. The kind that made your gut coil.

Another line of oil was dragged along the inside of your thigh—just under the point of aching heat. You trembled. Still untouched. Still waiting. And that waiting hurt. Your body tried to follow the trail, hips twitching against the restraints, instinct clawing at reason. You hated it. Hated how your breath hitched. Hated the pulse beginning to throb deep between your legs.

“Note the reaction,” one voice said, flat and clinical.

“Affirmative,” another replied. “Response consistent with corruption.”

You bared your teeth. Silent. You wouldn’t give them the sound. Not yet.

The Chaplain moved.

One step.

Two.

He came to your side and lowered himself again, slow and sure, vox still live with his breath. The skull-mask turned toward you, close enough that the lenses reflected your own stretched, humiliated expression.

He reached out—not to your sex. Not even your breasts.

His gauntlet came to your cheek, fingers dragging along the spit-wet corner of your mouth. He pressed against your lips. Not forcing inside—yet—but suggesting.

“Your body thirsts for the profane,” he said. “But the Emperor sees truth through the skin.”

His thumb smeared down to your chin.

And then, with sickening gentleness, he said, “Let us peel it back.”

Another motion behind you. Cold clamps—ritual instruments—were locked onto your nipples. The pain flared immediate and sharp, dancing the line between agony and arousal. They didn’t adjust. Didn’t check for comfort. The chain connecting them dangled down your chest, swaying with every breath.

You made a noise then. A stifled gasp, caught in your throat.

The Chaplain heard it.

So did the others.

“She weakens,” one Astartes said. “The flesh speaks.”

“No,” the Chaplain corrected. His voice dropped low—reverent. “The flesh prays.”

Your pulse thundered.

And below your navel—heat.

You knew it. They knew it.

One of them leaned in, the breath from his rebreather against your inner thigh, gauntlet spreading your lips without entering. Not yet. Just the exposure. The feel of air on wet skin. The humiliating stickiness of arousal made plain.

“She is ready,” the Chaplain said.

But he didn’t give the order to proceed.

He just stood there, watching you burn in your own skin. Letting every drop of slick betray you while nothing filled it.

You trembled, useless and on display, the chains creaking as your hips flinched toward a touch that never came. Heat flushed under your skin like fever, dripping oil and sweat across your chest and inner thighs. Your nipples throbbed in their clamps. Your mouth burned with the ghost of his fingers. Your cunt—traitorous—ached with shameful pulse.

And they saw everything.

“She’s dripping again,” one voice reported, cold and amused. “Marking the floor like a feral bitch.”

Another stepped closer. You heard the click of something metallic. The hiss of a scanner.

“Confirmed. Viscous discharge. Muscular contractions in the pelvic floor. She is rutting the air.”

A third voice, older, vox rasping like a sermon broadcast through rust: “The corruption of the womb runs deep.”

They weren’t speaking to you.

They were documenting you.

Your body was no longer yours. It belonged to the litany now—catalogued and analyzed, judged with clinical precision.

“She’s trying to press down. Look—there. The cunt lips are parting. Desperate to be filled.”

The shame landed like slaps. Each word drove heat up your throat. You bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from making a sound, jaw tight, tears stinging the corners of your eyes.

And that silence?

They noticed.

The Chaplain stepped closer. He loomed—death in the shape of zeal. The skull-mask was inches from your face now, his breath filtered through the vox in rhythmic, mechanical pulls. He crouched, gauntlet reaching, and again his fingers dragged along your lips—wet now with drool and breath and his mark.

“She endures. Still trying to keep her dignity.” He pressed harder, prying your lips open with his thumb. “Tell me, little heretic: is silence your last prayer? Or your final weapon?”

He pushed two fingers back into your mouth.

Harder this time.

You choked immediately. Saliva welled up fast, spilling down your chin. He twisted his wrist cruelly, dragging the corners of your mouth wider, hooking in deep—baring your teeth in that grotesque, forced grin.

“Smile for them,” he whispered. “Show them what disobedience looks like.”

You couldn’t stop the moan. It slipped past your gagged throat, low and shaking, coated in shame. Your thighs trembled again—and that’s when they noticed the newest betrayal:

Another drip. Slick. Wet. Audible.

“She just soaked the chain.”

Another chuckled, low and mocking: “Imagine the stench. Like a breeding pen. You think she’s done this before?”

“Please,” one said flatly. “She’s trained herself for it.”

They laughed.

It wasn’t cruel laughter—not in the way men laugh. It was the laughter of gods looking down at a creature writhing in its own filth. Detached. Disappointed.

The Chaplain withdrew his fingers with a slow, wet pop. Spit clung in strings from your lips, catching the light. He smeared it across your cheek, down your jawline, marking you like a child’s painting—crude and unmistakable.

Then he leaned close, his voice soft and vicious.

“You are not to be cleansed yet. You are to be witnessed.”

The chains above you groaned again as another line was drawn taut, your back stretched just a little farther, the arch in your spine exaggerated. Your nipples—already purpled in the clamps—jutted forward, trembling, vulnerable. The chain that linked them dragged downward, swaying with every involuntary breath, every twitch of want you tried to crush.

And the Chaplain watched. Hands behind his back. The skull-mask still and merciless.

“She shows signs of receptivity,” he said. “Test the severity of the affliction.”

Two Astartes stepped forward.

You didn’t see what they brought until the cold bit down.

A sanctified rod—coated in the same blessed oil—was pressed lengthwise between your breasts. Not hard. Just enough to smear the oil lower, down to your navel, and then back up. Teasing, agonizing, skirting the clamps.

Then—

One of them reached between your thighs.

Not to penetrate.

But to take hold of the clamp chain.

He tugged.

A sudden, sharp jolt lanced through your chest. Your breath seized. You cried out—finally, the sound escaping—and your hips jerked, instinctive and uncoordinated. The pain was blinding, but beneath it—worse—was the flare of something else. Something deeper. Hotter.

“Ah. There it is,” the Chaplain said.

The Astartes tugged again, rhythmically now. Just enough to make you whimper, to make your back twist, to make your mouth open involuntarily with every pull. Saliva slipped from your lips, drooling down your chest, mixing with the oil on your skin.

“She responds positively to the pain stimulus,” one of them noted, voice low, fascinated.

“Disgusting,” another said. “And predictable.”

They kept pulling.

You moaned—choked, raw, helpless. You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to give them the sound, but it broke from you, strangled and high, drawn from your lungs like a confession.

More laughter. This time sharper.

“Listen to her,” someone muttered. “She wants this. Filthy little sermon slut.”

“She’s weeping,” another said.

And you were. Face streaked with drool and salt. Eyes glassy. Not broken. Not yet. But something was shifting. You felt it. The ragged edge of need crawling up through your shame.

The Chaplain knelt again.

He reached up—and with one gloved finger, traced a line of tears from your cheek to your jaw.

“This is the sound of blasphemy made flesh,” he said. “Wring it from her. Make the flesh speak its verse.”

----------------blasphemously continues----------

Ough yeah ... it gets worse... wanna see?

(・ε・)

Tagged: @justfreakynothingelse (heheh my first take on black templar humiliation - if this isn't your cup of tea I will tag you in the next [slightly less ridiculous] interpretation)

[howtofightwrite]

How do you think can a character be described as using a golf club as a weapon? Not in the executioner style like in Last of Us 2 or Bioshock, but like, as a stupid weapon art. Like a serious weapon.

Inelegantly and briefly. The golf club isn't particularly well suited for use as a weapon. Most attacks have large, telegraphed swings, that are easy for a trained foe to counter or evade.

Ironically, one of the more “realistic” depictions I've seen was from the film Suicide Kings (1997) where it's used to ambush someone seated at a booth. Because the victim is pinned, his options to defend himself are extremely limited, the attacker can just flail away on him. The attacker also breaks his club during the attack. (And, it wouldn't surprise me if Dennis Leary broke the actual prop shooting the scene.)

Which is a bit of a theme, given the use in Bioshock also results in a destroyed club. Fragility is a problem with a lot of improvised weapons, and the golf club is no exception. Just because it's designed to hit a 1.6oz (46g) ball, that doesn't mean it's well designed to kill another human being. That thin shaft is not meant to sustain combat damage, nor is the head designed to remain attached when you start slamming the club into large sack of watery meat with the distressing habit of leaking and screaming.

So, what you're left with is a disposable, improvised weapon that a character can probably use briefly, but in the process it will be ruined and discarded. That cuts hard against it being used as a serious weapon.

Ironically, the use in Bioshock does nicely illustrate one potential application. Because the club will start to fail quickly, it makes the ensuing murder feel much more brutal, than if Jack used the wrench.

Dogma (1999) is another. In that case, the absurdity of killing a literal demon with a golf club is more used for comedic effect (because it's a ridiculous weapon), with the punchline, “[he's] the kind of asshole who'd bless his own clubs.”

It's also, probably, pretty telling that both of the film examples that come to mind (at least for me) are comedies.

I can't think of anyone trying to do this seriously beyond a couple swings. I can think of a few cases where someone gets their hands on one and uses it in a single scene before discarding it, but in spite of the name, it's really not a weapon, and can't be converted into a weapon the way a baseball bat can.

They do pop up in video games a little more often. Though, those tend to be games that bend a little more towards the absurd (Dead Rising, Fallout: New Vegas, and I'm pretty sure they've showed up as options in the Hitman games and Dead Island.)

Ultimately, the golf club really isn't well suited for life as a serious weapon.

-Starke

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