#they want to strangle him with his entrails

[kayforpay]

the most basic description of visper and cipher I can give is, imagine you work at a coffee shop and the two hottest people you've ever seen in your life come in, order off-menu, and then when they taste it (they WILL taste their drinks in front of you) they say the drinks are bad and instead of wanting a refund debate the merits of killing you for sport, all while never actually speaking to you directly and instead speaking to each other

[tethered-heartstrings]

all the gay and trans people watching hannibal nbc and being very normal about it

[ivydbomb]

Get ready for a long Slay the Princess rant because I just had an idea. This may contain spoilers.

What if the voices could get more intense like the princess could? With each chapter they evolve and their key characteristics enhance tenfold. Becoming flanderizations of themselves as the story progresses. For example:

Voice of the Paranoid becomes Voice of the Psychotic. I think Psychosis is a step up from paranoia because often with bad mental breakdowns it starts with paranoia and ends in a psychotic break. The voice of the Psychotic would be distrusting of even the player. Going from ‘the only one you can trust is yourself’ to ‘Can’t trust anybody. Ever. They’re out to get you. You’re out to get me.’ He’d spend the route as a ranting mess trying to rationalize anything. He’d be stand offish to both The Narrator and the other voices. Not listening to anybody and calling them out for perceived instances of trying to ‘sabotage’ him.

I’ll do a few more of these. If you guys like them I’ll do all the voices.

Voice of the Stubborn becomes Voice of the Bloodthirsty. All he wants to do is make himself and the princess hurt. Not a sparring match where they bleed and break but ultimately get back up. Just a bloody brutal battle that never ends. Not even for a moment. He wants an endless sea of pain and for the princess to be drowning in it. Hell he’ll even try to fight The Narrator (he can’t but he’ll try). Every second you aren’t being bludgeoned or bludgeoning he’ll yell and scream at you to go to her. To attack without mercy or reprise. No clever fighting moves, only attack with animalistic fury. He wants you to use your own entrails to strangle her, he wants you to bleed so much you’re able to drown her in it, he wants nothing but violence. It’s no longer out of a powerful love, but out of a powerful thirst for blood.

Voice of the Smitten becomes Voice of the Lovesick. Every waking millisecond you are not at the princesses side he will spend wailing in heartbroken agony. When you finally do grace yourself with her presence he will be utterly speechless (shutting up for once). Unable to come up with words (even shakespearean ones) to describe her amazingness. If you ever even entertain the concept of harming her he will become furious and try killing you immediately. His fiery passion making you stab yourself without hesitation.

Voice of the Cold becomes Voice of the Unfeeling. He barely talks but when he does it’s in a completely emotionless tone and usually some sort of insult to the player. He urges the player and the voices to shut up, stop moving, or straight up kill themselves. He says everything too boring and nothing matters. They need to stop playing The Narrators game and just give up completely. He is practically the embodiment of depression at this point. He doesn’t care about you, The Narrator, the other voices, the Princess, or even himself. He just wants to slip into permanent silence.

I have ideas for others! Let me know if this is an interesting enough concept to flesh out fully!

[miller-lookforthe-lite]

steps: part two

joel miller x f!reader

rating: M

words: 7k

tags/warnings: unplanned/(unwanted?) pregnancy, thoughts and discussion of abortion, UNSOUND MEDICAL PRACTICE/ADVICE, description of injury, canon-typical violence, hurt/comfort, not proofread i'm literally so sorry - please heed the warnings, as these may be triggering to some! MDNI

part one | read on ao3

There are no doctors in Kansas City. There’s nothing left of the QZ, in fact, besides a group of raging militants who have taken over and are hunting for the very two boys you happen upon. Henry and Sam don’t have much, but they have a relentless ambition, and Joel must see that as reason enough to go with them.

As you journey through the tunnels underneath the city, you get sicker. It’s clear to you now that this is not some nightmare you can wish away, not like one of your silent demons. This is real, and here, and now, and if you’re not pregnant, you’re dying. You’re not sure which would be worse.

Ellie finds out while she’s kicking a soccer ball with Sam, because Joel lowers his head to inquire to Henry about a pregnancy test and is a lot less fucking quiet than he ought to be.

Her head snaps towards them and you scowl at Joel, burning his entrails with your eyes, picturing his slow demise, then feeling even more sick at the prospect, taking it back, praying the Deity didn’t hear you think it so it won’t come true.

“What the fuck?” Ellie exclaims, her head whipping to you. “You —” Her head swings back to Joel almost cartoonishly. “And you? I thought — ew, gross, but holy shit — I thought Tess —”

“Ellie,” you warn quickly, trying to jump ahead of Joel’s ire, because that definitely also happened and you know he’ll never tell you why or why you happened after.

“Enough,” Joel snaps, and the room hangs still. Even Sam, though no one has bothered to bring him up to speed, can tell that the tension simmers low, and he abandons the soccer ball in favor of curling up by the far wall.

Joel turns back to Henry. “You know where I could find one or not?”

Henry shrugs. “All kinds of shit stashed in here, man. Take a look.”

Ellie’s gaze is burning into your skin, but when you turn to look at her, you only see a quiet understanding in her eyes, a Knowing too old to live in a body so young. She plops down in the seat next to you while Joel and Henry are off rummaging through the bins on the far side of the bunker, and her huff troubles a strand of her hair. You reach forward to tuck it out of her face. Her mouth is set into a grim line.

“Is that why you’ve been sick?” She murmurs, her voice betraying her fear.

Your heart clenches. You didn’t want her to have to feel the way that you were feeling. She shouldn’t have to shoulder it, shoulder you, but you don’t know how else to be with her but truthful. Her face so open, so honest, begs nothing less in return.

“Yeah,” you say, and she reaches out to grab your hand. You blink back sudden tears that choke your throat and crowd your lashes.

“It’ll get better then,” Ellie says, knee bouncing. “The sickness. I heard that it gets better after a while. And you won’t have to yack every time we think about cooking beans. So that’s a plus.”

You can’t help but smile, still feeling hot and slippery with shame, but hope shines through, minuscule and persistent. “I hope so,” you whisper.

—

When you leave the motel, Ellie’s the one to lead the charge. You follow her, leaving Joel gazing down at the graves he just dug. Henry and Sam are under those piles of dirt, and you can’t help but think that it’s some kind of curse that surrounds you, the same deadly spirit that befell Tess.

Ellie thinks it’s her fault, a strangled confession pulled out of her that she knew Sam had been bitten but tried to save him. You know that feeling, know the despair it leaves behind, but you’re not quite sure how to reach the place she’s gone to.

A plastic-wrapped stick sits in your pocket, has for days, but you’re too scared to do more than make sure it’s there, palming reassurance. Henry had slipped it to you before he died, not saying a word, but there was kindness in his gaze. There was a care you didn’t know people still had for other strangers. Your heart aches.

Along the road, it’s been hard to find food. Joel had shoved what he could from the bunker into his bag, but there wasn’t much in the way of nonperishables - the Kansas City militants had already taken care of that. He let you have the last of the crackers, but you can’t help the pangs of hunger that wrack through you late at night, curled up in a ball on the ground, your back to some tree or to him or to Ellie, one of them always wrapped around you, always watching. You can’t help the dread that follows either, that you swallow like the air that feeds you these days.

Joel feels it too. You know he does, but he’s better at hiding it. He’s acting strange lately — delicate — not something you’ve ever known him to be. He guards you when you’re sleeping, but can hardly look at you in the daylight. Where he’s started to let his eyes wrinkle at Ellie’s teasing jibes or stupid puns, he slams his lid shut when you deign to speak your piece. He offers you a hand to help you over a ridge, and always, always throws an arm in front of you when he thinks something sinister lies ahead, but then swiftly pulls away like the boil of your blood burns him too.

After six days have passed, you go behind a tree and pee on the stick. It’s not hard. All you fucking do is piss these days. What is hard is remembering the hands that touched the test before you - a dead man’s fingers before they pulled a trigger twice, him and another child. Is that the price you pay? One child’s life for another? What kind of sign is that — what kind of life is this? What kind of world to bring a baby into?

Two lines glare back at you. You muffle your sob into the heel of your hand.

—

Your teeth are clattering against each other, your violent shivering overtaking any autonomy you once had over your limbs.

You’ve set up camp underneath a rock overhang, and your breath comes out in puffs. Ellie’s pressed as close to you as she can get between the layers of your coats, the extra flannel that Joel had wrapped around her hanging loosely off her puffy-coated shoulders.

You’re in Nebraska, as far as you can tell, wide open plains stretching as far as you can see, the foothills offering little respite from the biting prairie wind, but you take what you can get under the boulder’s meager shelter.

Joel hasn’t stopped moving since you decided to set up here; he’s tearing up jerky pieces, distributing them to you and Ellie and only pushing one between his lips when you glare, he’s coiling some rope, he’s pushing a tarp under some stones to provide some cover from the ceaseless wind. You wish you could bring yourself to get up and help, but you don’t know how much help you’d be, not with the illness still permeating your veins, your trembling uncontrollable.

When Ellie figures out that she can’t fix it no matter how she lends her heat to you, she speaks up where you couldn’t.

“We need a fire,” she wheezes to Joel, eyes flicking to you even though she tries to hide it.

He sniffs, doesn’t look up from his tarp-maneuvering. “It’d blow out,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.

Your desperation pushes you to chime in. “We could at least try. Under the tarp, or maybe the rock would shield it enough —”

“It won’t,” Joel snaps, and he still won’t look at you. He clearly intended to stymie your words, but now that you’ve started, you can’t stop.

You get up from your spot next to Ellie and wrap her firmly in the blanket from your pack. You stumble on shaky legs over to where Joel continues to fiddle, continues to fuss. “Let me just fucking try, Joel, we’re freezing, we can’t—”

You reach for the flint that you know is in the bag he holds. Your gloved hand brushes his, layers of cloth and unspoken and Too Spoken between you, and still he pulls away like he’s been burned. You freeze, watching him quickly shift to a different task, turning his collar further up against the wind.

“Fine,” he mutters.

You don’t know why it hurts so much to curl up next to the fire that night.

—

When you stop to make camp a few nights later, you decide you’ve had enough of this, this awkwardness and separation that your revelation had caused you. After Ellie’s been asleep for an hour, her soft breaths quiet in the dark, you push Joel behind a tree before he can protest, grab his face with your hands and pull his mouth to yours before he can remember that you haven’t spoken, haven’t talked about it, have only worried in silence. He grunts, the sound vibrating pleasantly against you, before pulling back, only a little, the slightest breath of distance. His eyes are locked on yours, so close that you can’t see straight, can only see brown brown brown, can only drown in it.

“I don’t…” he says softly, one hand on your wrist and the grabbing for your waist, turning you, pushing your back into the rough bark, but so gently, so gently it prickles and scrapes and wounds.

“Why not?” You say like you haven’t noticed how he’s been treating you differently, like he doesn’t know what to say to you, like you aren’t the same person you’ve always been before all of this. Like you aren’t praying praying praying that he won’t make you beg.

(He doesn’t.)

—

It’s dusk when you stumble upon a still-smoking pile of ash, the crisp wind spiraling it up to the conifer fronds above, dancing its warning like a specter. It makes Joel stop in his tracks. His shoulders, ever broad and imposing, are tense.

He spins on his heel and almost knocks right into Ellie, who trails mindlessly behind him.

“Dude!” She protests.

“We’re goin’,” he hisses under his breath, grabbing onto the handle of her backpack to drag her along with him.

You have to pick up your pace to keep stride with him, bounding through the trees. “Joel—”

“Don’t,” he snaps, releasing Ellie’s bag. She remains next to him without issue or question. “We gotta circle back to the road. Ain’t safe if there’s more people out here.”

“The road?” Your skin is warm, your breath coming short, but you keep your voice quiet as his, startled to stir the crunching leaves beneath your tired boots. “Joel, we got off the road ‘cause there were people —”

“I know why we got off the road.” His countenance is fierce, his resolve steely, but he still won’t look at you.

“It’s safer with the cover,” you insist behind him, a furious ire bubbling in the back of your throat. “Here we can — we can —” You’re gasping for air now, and Ellie notices, her steps faltering. She tugs on Joel’s jacket, wordlessly. You have to stop and brace your palm on the rough bark of the oak that shelters you, your vision narrowing to a tunnel of blurred, black edges and brown sodden ground.

You don’t know how he got there, but he appears in front of you, one hand gripping your bicep and the other pulling your own hand to his heart.

“Breathe,” he commands softly, and you try, you really do, but you know he sees the truth of it.

You’re fading, ability dulling quicker than an overused knife, and you can feel the panic crest in your mind, the sting of liability pricking at your consciousness.

“Sorry,” you struggle to say. He just takes an enormous breath, the cavern of his lungs expanding and exhaling underneath your hand. You follow the mountain of it, the in and the out and up and down, and it makes it a little easier to see again.

You drag your eyes up to meet his, shame and exhaustion omnipresent parents in your expression. He looks blown wide open, sad, maybe worried, but mostly so, so certain.

His grip on you tightens. “Let’s stay in the woods,” he whispers his acquiescence. You feel no kind of victory. You want him to argue with you, not the dark circles printed onto the skin under your eyes. That can’t be all you are now.

Joel tenses suddenly, eyes flicking from you up to the edge of the tree line. You think he’s about to grab you and Ellie and run when you hear a muffled shriek from behind him, his broad form blocking your sight. He whips around to reveal two women, one with golden-red hair and one with a knife to Ellie’s throat. Ellie struggles and swears and writhes. You freeze.

The golden-red-haired woman has a revolver pointed at the two of you. You can’t see Joel’s face, but you know that he’s furious. You almost hope it’s with you, hope it’s because you caused him to turn his back, to lose his focus. You want him to feel the way you feel.

“Quit it,” hisses the taller woman that has a hold on Ellie, like she’s speaking to an incessant fly rather than a young girl at her mercy.

“Let her go,” Joel says lowly, calmly. There’s no questioning a tone like that. “Then you and I can talk like adults.”

“We don’t want trouble,” the golden-red-haired woman responds smoothly, her fist around the revolver begging argument. “Just hungry. Just lookin’ for food.”

You don’t even think about whether you should, whether Joel has a plan. You keep your eyes on Ellie as she continues to squirm. She’s afraid, but maybe not as much as she should be. Her confidence in you crushes you. You dart forward to Joel’s bag, unzip it from where it rests on his back. You pull out the measly offerings - two more pieces of jerky wrapped in flaking paper. An old health bar. Some roasted acorns you had made that taste like bitter ash. You throw the food at their feet. Joel doesn’t stop you.

The woman holding Ellie narrows her eyes. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” you plead. “You can check.”

You shoulder off your own, lighter pack and toss it to them. Joel glares at you, his fingers clearly itching towards his own gun tucked in the back of his pants, but you glare right back. Not with Ellie’s throat under a blade, you try to tell him with your fear.

The golden-red-haired woman bends down slowly to rummage through your bag, revolver still pointed your way. Joel shifts his weight while the woman looks down and she cocks the gun without even looking up, clicking her tongue in admonishment. Once she deems your supplies as paltry as you had claimed, she stands up, kicking the bag over, and slipping your meager offerings into her pockets. “Fine. Elaine, let her go.”

Elaine’s eyes flash like she’s considering an argument, and you try to calculate the distance from your hand to Joel’s gun, from the bullet to the spot between Elaine’s eyes, and the speed her lithe wrist would need to flick the knife across Ellie’s life.

Your action is decided for you when Elaine relents, shoving Ellie out of her grasp and forward to the forest floor. You’re there to catch her in your arms, her gangly limbs knocking painfully against yours, her furious demeanor tempered by your trembling.

You pull her back with you towards Joel, scrambling on the ground, and look up to see he’s drawn his gun. “Get movin’, then.” He bares his teeth at them.

Elaine moves to back away, but the other woman hesitates. Elaine nudges her shoulder with her own and hisses. “Madison.”

Madison looks between you and Joel as he helps you and Ellie up like she’s trying to decide something. Ellie seethes with derision and you have to clutch her to keep her from springing back towards her captors, this time on the attack. She only settles when she realizes she can’t lash out without hurting you, her fury still spitting but her face turning into your collarbone, probably more for your sake than her own. You rest your palm on her head. Joel’s got his free arm wrapped around you, too, sandwiching you and Ellie tight to his side.

Madison seems to decide and opens her mouth. “You know the way to Jackson?”

Elaine halts her retreat, brows furrowed and eyes clenched.

Joel holds his gun steady. “Get out of here.”

Madison continues to speak like she didn’t hear him. “Settlement out in Wyoming. My brother was headed there with an old army buddy. Heard they take people —”

She cuts off at the click of Joel’s safety. His finger rests on the trigger. He doesn’t say another word, just bores into her with eyes of molten lead.

Madison nods, and before you can blink, she and Elaine are gone. You’d almost believed you’d dreamed them up if your stomach didn’t turn at the thought of your reserves, now depleted.

Joel doesn’t let either of you move for a good ten minutes, his gun still raised and his arm still around you both. Ellie’s breathing has evened out and she turns her head up to look at you. You run a hand through her ponytail. “Okay?” You whisper. She nods, lips in a hard line.

You let her burrow herself back into you and look up at Joel. His thoughts race too fast to hide from his expression, and when he finally lowers the gun, he steps forward to grab your pack and swing it over his own shoulder.

His jaw grinds itself to dust as he stares at the ground, and it occurs to you what he might be agonizing over.

“Army buddy in Wyoming? Joel—” Your breath catches before you can really ask him. He looks up at you with hardened eyes and nods.

You let out a shuddering exhale, still rocking, rocking Ellie in your hold. The word rolls acidic off your tongue. “Jackson.”

—

It’s Jackson you’re headed for when the first shots ring out. You’re following the faded lines of a dusty map, hoping for the best. It’s brought you to a small town, several wooden buildings lining what must have once been a comfortable main road.

It’s not even that your guard is down, either — Joel had been antsier than ever after the run in with the women, especially since Ellie’s life had been on the line. She grumbles against his insistence, but you think she’s secretly appreciative of this mangled care, this devotion that no one before has extended to her.

They still get the jump on you, though, because they’re trying to get the jump on someone else. You glean somewhere during the shootout that it’s two opposing groups, both vying for the others’ resources. One had been holed up in the last building in town, the last one Joel had to clear before giving the signal. The other had been over the hill, peering down, waiting for their moment to ambush. They had thought Joel, ransacking and searching, was their target. It probably hadn’t mattered that he wasn’t.

You hear the shots before you know any of this, before you see anything that happens, so you follow protocol and grab Ellie and duck down behind a crumbling outpost, pushing her head under your cover. You peek over to see a torrent of people flooding out of that last building, the one Joel had been headed towards. Their guns are pointed away from you, up towards the peek where the last shot echoed from. Their shouts are incoherent, and your eyes search frantically for Joel. There’s no sign of him by the building, but there is a blooming red scar on the ground where he had been standing.

You feel a hand on your shoulder and spin around, knife raised high. It’s Ellie who stops you, grabbing around your middle, and swearing under her breath when she sees who’s startled you.

Joel’s managed to sneak around the back of the houses towards you, clutching his arm to his chest. Blood pours from between his fingers. His jaw is set as solidly as stone, and he jerks his head back towards the foothill you came from. He wants you to sneak back unseen, you’re sure, but you can’t focus on anything but the red viscous that flows from him, the life force, the cellular beat, and you feel it in you, too, you have that same blood growing in you, in your body, in your stomach, eating you alive to keep itself growing —

You reach your hand towards him, and he jerks back. All you can see is your hand, frozen in the air. He and Ellie must exchange words, something, but you don’t hear, the pounding of your eardrums too raucous, the rushing of your own tremulous blood overwhelming. He turns and crouches in on himself, hunched in pain or stealth, you don’t know. He runs on sure and quiet feet back towards the trees. Ellie only goes when you start behind him, like she’s not sure you can be trusted to follow.

—

You make it about half a mile up the side of the mountain before Joel’s using the trees to keep himself upright, the heft of him only supported by the roots at your feet. It’s Ellie who ends up stopping him and sitting him down, back against a bristled trunk. You waste no time falling to your knees beside him, whipping off your pack. Your hands shake as you riffle through it for the tweezers, for bandages, for anything that might help him. If only he still carried around oxy.

You pull out a small glass bottle of amber, stomach-churning liquid. Joel finds it in himself to shoot a judgmental glance your way, before his eyes are rolling back in pain. He keeps his arm clutched to his side.

“What?” You hiss. “It’s not like I can drink it anymore, of course I still have some.”

You flip the cap off as quickly as you can and pry his good arm away from the wound. It’s still bleeding profusely, an ugly, obscured fissure in the perfect planet of his skin. He makes a high sound in the back of his throat when you pour the moonshine over the wound, but his lips stay pressed tight together. When you’ve got it as clean as you can manage, you grab the tweezers. You can see the metal still buried in his flesh plain as day. You’ll have to get it out.

“Can I help?” Ellie flutters anxiously at your side, her hands lifting and retracting with directionless adrenaline.

You nod towards your bag. “Grab the bandages, then cut them into three strips for me.”

She doesn’t waste any time, and you turn back to Joel.

His skin is sallow, and sweat crusts his brow. You reach up to wipe some away with your thumb and his eyes flutter. “I’m gonna take it out.”

He nods, breathing heavily, expression unreadable. “I know.”

You search his eyes for any kind of direction, anything that would help him that he’s too reticent to admit. When you find nothing but grim determination, you grab the strap of your pack and offer it up to his mouth. He understands, and takes it gingerly between his teeth.

Your hands won’t stop shaking as you level the tweezers with the hole in his arm, so you balance your forearm across his chest. His great, heaving breaths push you up and down. You place the two tapered points of the tweezers as best you can on either side of the bullet, having to dig through some flesh. Joel keens under you. “I’m sorry,” you mutter, over and over, a mantra that pulls you forward into the next several minutes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

It takes several attempts, and probably a whole lot more damaged surface area than appropriate knowledge would have allowed, but you’re able to finally wiggle the bullet out of its warm home. The silver pelts to the ground and bits of Joel’s muscle, along with a whole torrent of blood, flow from the pulsing circle. Ellie’s there with the bandages and you throw your whole body weight into pressing them against his arm. His eyes roll into the back of his head, you think he might be shrieking through the fabric at his teeth. “Just have to stop the bleeding,” you tell Ellie, or Joel, or maybe the wind. “It’s okay. It’ll stop. I’m sorry.”

Eventually, it does, or at least it slows. You remove the soiled, rust-colored fabric from Joel’s arm and wrap it up with the remaining bandages, but not before pouring more of the alcohol on it. He sobs, eyes squeezed shut, and Ellie clutches on to his uninjured shoulder, her eyes wild with fear.

“No sepsis, Ellie, that’s why,” you pant, breaking off another portion of the bandages with your teeth to secure it. His breathing calms when he seems to notice Ellie pressed up against him, her trembling fingers pulling the fabric from his mouth and pressing her face to his chest. His good hand holds her to him, clinging with a strength you’re relieved to see remains.

You go to wipe your filthy hands on the grass when you notice a spare bit of Joel’s gore on your thumb. You crawl as far away from Joel and Ellie as you can manage before spilling everything in you onto the bushes. You dry heave long after your stomach is empty.

—

You lie awake several nights later. Your back throbs against the unforgiving forest floor, your blanket wrapped around the top of you instead of padding the ground. Ellie snores softly on your right side, the tender puff of her breath singing through the frosty air. You wish you didn’t begrudge her the rest, a better person wouldn’t, but no matter how tired you get you can never seem to quiet the racing of your mind when the sun goes down.

You turn onto your side to see Joel lying next to you, flat on his back, eyes wide open towards the night sky above. He looks almost comical, bundled up to his throat and arm crossed across himself in an awkward approximation of healing. He spares you a brief glance, raising an eyebrow but saying nothing before he turns his gaze back to the branches that bow above you. He’s keeping watch best he can, but his injured arm is still in a sling, which means he can’t wield the rifle properly. He’s to wake you or Ellie if anything happens. You all know you’ll probably wake in the morning curled together like a three-pod cocoon, the greater threat to your person the chill of the wilderness.

You see your breath crystalize in front of you, even in the dull silver light of the moon, but you can’t see most of his face. He turns it from you, shrouded in shadow, like he does the rest of himself. You never know what he feels, never know where you stand. He had said he didn’t blame you, but it’s hard to believe him when he clearly harbors some kind of sorrow.

You don’t know if its the faux anonymity of the dark that gives you the courage or the delirium that your baby secretes into your bloodstream, but you almost feel inspired to ask him. Instead, you open your mouth and stick your whole entire foot into its waiting orifice.

“What did you think about abortions? Before the outbreak?”

The harsh of your whispering disturbs the tranquil blanket of night. He doesn’t move, doesn’t answer. His eyes don’t even shift to indicate he’s thinking about it.

“Because,” you rush to cover your clumsy footsteps, “you were from Texas. Everyone always said — I mean, I’m sure there were people everywhere that—”

“I don’t know.” He saves you from yourself, his cool, clean baritone soothing your spiked and frayed nerves. The baby pounds its fists against your insides braying like it had heard the word you uttered. You feel sick.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No,” Joel continues, turning his head to look at you. “I mean, I don’t know because I don’t think I paid enough attention to that kind of thing. Sarah’s mom never even — considered — so I didn’t — ” His voice catches in his throat and he looks away.

You knew about Sarah, but not from him. Tess had whispered to you one putrid Boston night about his past, about Texas, about a daughter that hadn’t made it, which she only knew about from Tommy, but you’d never heard him say her name. You feel the scorching lick of shame about your heart, not having even considered what your current state would mean to him. One child, stripped away so cruelly from him, and here you were implying you’d thought about doing the same to another, but then again — maybe that’s what he’d want. To nip it in the bud, to end the pain before it could start.

You take a shuddering, bracing breath, but your voice still comes out meeker than you wish it would. “My sister told me about it. She said there was a place you could go in the QZ, some woman in the Fireflies. I don’t know how,” you admit, “but I kind of wish I did.”

“No,” he snaps, and you shrivel. “It never works out, especially not now. It would just kill you.”

You acquiesce. It makes sense. It seems too good to be true, a relic of medicinally sound days-gone-by.

“Sorry,” you say again, at a loss for anything more.

“Will you quit?” He huffs, and he surprises you, reaching out his good hand to latch onto yours. “Enough apologizin’.”

You can’t stop yourself from pulling his gloved palm even closer to you, into your chest, curling around it like you’re supposed to want to curl around this thing inside you, this parasite that eats away at you, this child you’ll evict from its warm, safe home, whether you want to or not.

He notices your reticence, turns on his side to face you, to coax your bile out of you.

“I feel sorry, though,” you whisper, blinking furiously, finding it hard to look right at him. “I don’t want it. I think I hate it, and I ought to feel sorry for that, right? That’s so awful, Joel. I’m so awful. But I’m so — I can’t —”

You shudder, and it’s like turning off. The tears you felt like crying halt their rise to the surface, and your breath slows. The blade of the hurt dulls, pricking instead of slicing, fading. It’s hard to hear him when he responds, hard to feel the gruff hand he lifts to cradle the back of your head. It only comes back into focus when he insists.

“Hey, listen to me.” He shakes you a bit, and with Herculean effort, you lift your heavy eyes to meet his. His expression is intense, pinched, and so, so beautiful.

“You’re not wrong, you’re not bad. I know this is hard. I know,” he shakes you again when your eyes start to glaze.

“Joel,” you breathe.

“Listen,” he says, fingertips pushing into the firm of your scalp, and you notice faintly that he’s abandoned his sling, that he’s pushed his pain aside to reach for you. “You’re doing better than you think you are. I see it, I see you fightin’. You’re not failing, darlin’. Not on my watch.”

You feel yourself nodding, not knowing where the internal command came from. “I know, Joel.” How do you tell him? How can he not understand that you trust him, just not yourself and your rotten, black heart?

He exhales harshly, searching your eyes for doubt, for something other than this flatness you feel settling over you. He gives in when he can’t find it, but his hand keeps rubbing your head, and you lean into it, relishing in the prick of his calluses. “Okay,” he says, then closes his mouth, opens it, shuts it again. His indecision pulls you back to the forest, back into the body you now share with another.

“What?” You venture, and his eyes alight, enthused to have found you in there.

“You ever been to Texas?” He says quickly, and he doesn’t blurt things, but maybe he did just then.

A startled laugh escapes your lips. The world shifts into focus, and the world is just his eyes, boring into yours. “Probably not. I don’t think we travelled much before the outbreak. Boston’s all I remember, besides a few summers in Maine.”

He lets out a low whistle, eyes flicking over to Ellie to make sure his sound hasn’t bothered her. She remains still, burrowed in the confines of her dreams. “Pretty different from Texas, then,” he says, and you laugh again, realer this time, easier.

“Colder,” you agree, “Even in the summer. We always had to bundle up next to the coast, even in July.”

“Nice though?” He prods into your memory with an iron poke, trying to keep you awake, keep you alive. Guide you ashore. The granite slopes wade into your mind, crashing waves and evergreen needles, a creaking Cape and damp, mossy mornings.

“Yeah,” you agree. “Really nice. Pretty quiet. Not many people, mostly just the deer and the gulls.”

His eyes flash, some emotion you can’t name, but it feels like it fits in the still blanket of space between you. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad place for a baby.”

You think of a child, toddling through the sand, tossing rocks into the water at your ankles. You think of a quiet life in a cove town, small but big enough for the three of you. You think of scribbled drawings on an antique fridge, of fatherly pride and big hands sweeping up a little girl, throwing her over his shoulder. Her lovely laugh peeling through the dunes.

You can’t help but smile. “Maybe you could have built us a cabin or something.”

He grins then, a real, full smile lighting up the planes of his face. You want to reach out and stamp it into your skin, hold this moment, suspend it in simplicity. “Big order for that. Think the invoice would be pretty intense. You plannin’ on compensating the vendors properly?”

You snort, curling his still-captured hand under your chin. “What, the baby’s not enough? Plus, your memory’s shot. Rural real estate isn’t anywhere near expensive as those city slickers liked to run you for.”

“I guess a nine month gestation is payment enough,” he says, and you feign to smack him, beaming.

“Three beds, three baths,” you continue. “One for us, one for the baby, one for visitors.”

He sucks in through his teeth. “Steeper and steeper, these costs. And it’s oceanfront, too?”

“Balsam fir,” you babble, the picture forming so seamlessly in your mind. “So it always smells clean. High ceilings — and a skylight! So we can still see the stars.”

Joel’s nodding, eyes shining. “Okay, okay, you’re right. Whatever you want. I owe ‘ya that much.”

Your heart skips a beat. You feel a giant spark smolder in your chest, so you tuck yourself into Joel’s side to share it with him. He carefully folds you into himself, stretching around the subtle curve of your abdomen that’s recently manifested.

Something unnamable pulses through you, through the bump, over to him. Before you drift off, you convince yourself you might have seen it in his eyes, too.

—

One stormy night in Boston, you’re helping Tess pack a couple of bags. The thunder cracks and you shiver, mind wandering to Katie, to where she might be sleeping that night, if she’s wet, if she’s cold. Tess hasn’t said much to you, her mind on her next move, her next haul; she’s particularly preoccupied with Joel’s absence, you think, but you don’t say anything. When her grim determination sets the precedent, there’s no getting around it. You wouldn’t want to pry, anyways.

She’s the one to finally break the silence. “He say anything to you before he left?”

You had been here at their place earlier in the day, while Joel was packing up to leave. He hadn’t said a word, had just brushed by you on his way out, your shoulder buzzing from the brief contact.

You shake your head. “No, I don’t even know where he was going.”

Tess hums, eyes flitting from the door to the radio against the wall. “Well, whatever. We can’t wait around all night. You hungry?”

Your stomach gurgles in response, carving deeper into the hollow pit of your abdomen. “Yeah,” you say, like there was ever any other answer.

Tess heats up the green beans with ham you had brought that day from your shift at the pantry. The corner of the can is dented, which is why no one cared that it had gone missing, but Katie had started rejecting the dented ones recently, saying botulism was a silent killer the Fireflies couldn’t afford to barter with. Your palms sweat. You’ve eaten so many like that, it’s probably fine. But what if this was the time it wasn’t? What if Tess ingests your poison and you’re the thing that kills her, after all she’s been through?

She doesn’t seem to care, dumping portions into two bowls and leaving the rest in the beat up tin pot on the stove. You both slurp in silence, letting the wash of sodium rush over your gums. You should have thought to add pepper, but getting up again feels too much like an inconvenience, and maybe a slight on Tess’s preparation.

You’re both jolted from complacency when Joel bangs through the front door, throwing it shut behind him and shouldering into the nearby bathroom before either of you can stand up.

“Joel?” Tess calls warily.

A moment of silence, then he responds. “Just a minute.” His voice is strained, slightly raspier than usual.

Tess immediately knows something is wrong, and you know because of the look on her face. “Fuck,” she mutters, and pitches towards the cabinets underneath the sink. She tosses you a couple of rags. “Will you go hand these to him, or get him to sit the fuck down? Where’s the disinfectant?” She starts muttering under her breath while she rummages around and you stand there uselessly, rags flowing limp between your fingers.

“Will you relax?” huffs Joel, emerging from the bathroom and moving stiffly to the kitchen table. You can’t help but gape at his complexion marred with bruising, the ugly discoloration above his eyebrow and around his jaw swelling to a reddened burst. Blood drips down his nose, around the contour of his rugged angel lips, then down onto the rotten floorboards underfoot. He sits, unable to hide a wince and a grunt, or maybe not trying. You’re still frozen.

Tess whirls by you, slipping the rags from your hands and settling next to Joel with a bottle in her hand. She wets one of the rags, then starts to dab at his face. He halfheartedly bats her hand away for a second, until she glares, then relents and lets her clean his face.

“You wanna explain yourself?” She murmurs lowly after a minute. Her voice spurs you into action. You want to help, want to stitch him together with your own sinew, dull his pain with a drug from your veins, but you don’t think he’ll take kindly to it. Tess has clearly done this before; even if she hadn’t, she’s comfortable, certain of where she stands with him. You can’t step into the space she takes up.

“Not really,” he mutters, a childish impatience squirming through him. You feel his own restlessness in your own feet; useless, you can’t just stand here. You turn to the stove, grabbing another bowl from the cabinet and doling him a portion of the sad green beans and ham. You grab the pepper, flaking a kick into his food that you’re sure he’s said he prefers, and turn to quickly set it down in front of him. Tess is done, grabs the rags to toss in the sink.

Joel seems confused. “We’re outta green beans.”

You grin at him, the flesh on your face feeling tight and out of place. “Good thing you’ve got a supplier.” You don’t say that you had stashed him a can extra even above your smuggling quota. You don’t mention it because you know he likes them better than any of the other shitty cans because they remind him of home, because they’re made down south, somewhere, because he can’t know that you know that about him, that you study him like he’s something worth knowing about. You can’t wear your love so openly like that, but you think he might see it leaking out of your porous heart anyways, because there’s a stern gratitude in his nod, in the bite he lifts to his mouth. Tess knows too, and squeezes your shoulder as she walks you out later.

“Thank you,” she says, “for doing that for him. He’ll never say it, but he’s grateful. I’m grateful. You’re a good kid.” Your heart beats faster. You can’t remember the last time someone said something like this, told you you were good, saw the care you hemorrhaged, and gave it back to you. You nod and head back to your own empty place, counting down the hours until you can see him again, until you feel like there might be a reason you’re here.

[radioiaci]

▹@electriccapitalist continued from here.

It is the only intimacy he knows.

Every word, every utterance of his intent is truthful - so often does he enjoy toying with Vox's emotions and yet in this moment, he has never been more bare in his own desire to seek to understand. Both for his own self-serving need to discover; the barest form of exploration in which he can pick apart the life-giving mechanisms of someone he's spent far too much time thinking about in the depths of his solitary years apart. Too many years left wondering, left waiting - fervent in memories of that warm blue glow that leaves him awash with a near lustful mental glimpses of the wires and tubing behind that glass.

Said imaginations never once leaving him be, even when he returns to see all has changed. Even now that Vox looks at him with such contempt, the desire still remains. To lay him bare and remind him of the strangling, stifling need to nestle so deeply into his entrails that they no longer feel the divide between them and seemingly never had.

He is stony when his coat is grasped, red gaze staring down in deadened apathy when he is begged.

But he is stirred. In his own tilted and festering heart, he knows that there is opportunity here that he has been yearning for and it is growing more and more difficult to ignore with the other pleading on his knees in a way that looks so poisonously beautiful. He always has been, Vox. Churning hatred in those eyes or otherwise. Even as he crumbles and sobs and warbles in that self-pitying tone, Alastor's gaze is unwavering. Until his staff is extended, pressing the tip of it to the underside of Vox's head to tilt it back upright to look at the radio demon proper.

"My knives are sharper than you think."

It's a reassurance in words that only spell out how definitively confident Alastor is that he can embolden the other with the splitting of flesh and worship of what lays within. They are both, in ways, horrific in nature - twisted and corrupted by too much of their own prideful machinations. Alastor's marred body that remains so tightly confined beneath layers of fabric has never been much different. A sordid reality.

His voice seeps through interference and waves of radio signal that practically permeate the air, the deep bass puncturing heavily through them to ensure that Vox hears him. Not just audibly.

He wants Vox to feel every word.

"Allow me to make you feel w h o l e again."

[voxofthevoid]

Welcome to Schrödinger's Noncon Wednesday #1 ✨

Shibuya swap is temporarily suspended while I finish the itagofushi fic that should have been condensed into a oneshot for the anniversary project but wasn't—because I'm, y'know, an insane clown. The fic is current three chapters and 15.5k words. I don't think it'll become obscenely long, but it sure as hell doesn't seem short.

It's a pornfest. It's also broken free of my outline. The intent was to start with dubcon and move to consensual sex, but the way it's coming out, we've got straight-up noncon, followed by extremely dubious consent and then milder dubcon, culminating in consensual sex—all involving different combinations of the three guys involved. Hence the name Schrödinger's noncon—full credit to @nearalways, whose brain I keep trying to make out with.

This week's scene is mostly consensual itafushi, with referenced gofushi noncon.

Megumi scowls at Gojou and pries his eyes away, running headfirst into Itadori’s blazing brown eyes a moment before teeth sink into the soft underside of his belly.

“Itadori!” Megumi forces his spine back flat, clenching and unclenching his fists in Gojou’s honest-to-god silk sheets in a desperate bid for control. “That’s not even a kiss.”

Itadori licks at the spot he bit, but if it’s meant to be apology, it’s not a very good one, not when his heavy-lidded eyes are dripping satisfaction.

“Just wanted your attention,” Itadori murmurs, lips moving against Megumi’s skin. “Don’t look away, Fushiguro.”

Megumi swallows an unholy noise, but some of it spills out, trembling in the air.

From beside him, there’s soft laughter.

It’s a smile that Itadori presses to Megumi’s skin this time; it’s a quiet, gentle thing, but it still cuts so deep, leaving Megumi gasping around the wet spill of his entrails. Itadori kisses him all over his stomach like he can’t see or taste the mess, and then that mouth is being dragged to Megumi’s chest, tracing the shape of his pec before closing wetly over a nipple.

Itadori sucks, and it’s getting struck by lightning.

There’s no strangling his reaction, his body arching up violently enough to dislodge Itadori’s mouth from his chest and his throat burning around a violently high noise that bounces off the wall.

Itadori smiles, wide-eyed with what looks like wonder. “You like that?”

Megumi just pants for breath, and then Itadori’s touching that nipple, a calloused thumb sliding over the wet bud, and something sharp and electric bolts down Megumi’s spine, making him shudder and arch into the touch—then away, the pleasure too sharp, except Itadori follows it with his hand and then his mouth. Megumi’s braced for it this time, only twitching when Itadori mouths on those overly sensitive nerves, but the pleasure is a simmering flood in his veins, heating him all over.

Then teeth scrape the nipple, and Megumi’s whole body sings some howling song.

He fists a hand in Itadori’s hair and yanks him up to his mouth.

There’s no resistance. Itadori falls on him like a wolf, his mouth eager and open, and it’s only the shock of the impact that makes Megumi part his lips, gasping wetly against Itadori’s lips, but there’s nothing accidental about the tongue that plunges into his mouth, Itadori licking deep like he owns everything he’s tasting, and Megumi lets him the way he’s been dreaming and aching to since he started wanting this boy, and the taste and the heat spread down his whole body.

Itadori’s hand cups his face, calluses branding Megumi’s skin, and tilts it a little, and then their mouths are at a different, better angle, and the groan Itadori buries in his mouth is followed by a fury that threatens to bruise, his mouth a hot seal against Megumi’s while his tongue sweeps deep, sliding over Megumi’s tongue and prodding at the roof of his mouth and digging into every soft space.

It’s hunger like nothing Megumi’s ever felt, ever tasted. And it is a taste, the tongue in his mouth flooding his palate with a warm, wet flavor that’s just skin and spit but feels like more, like Itadori’s essence distilled into something Megumi can swallow.

He swallows, and Itadori kisses him harder, deeper, wetter.

Megumi has to tear free of the kiss with a gasp, panting for air, and Itadori just makes a sound that’s too much like a whine, dragging wet lips along Megumi’s cheek before dipping his head, mouthing at his jaw and throat, a play of lips and teeth and tongue that’s as hungry as it’s clever—

It’s clever.

It’s several minutes delayed, the realization that Itadori knows what’s doing. That first chaste kiss proved nothing, but maybe the way Itadori stepped between Megumi’s open legs and touched him should have. Megumi definitely should have realized when Itadori kissed his way up his body at his own damn leisure—eager and hungry, yes, but also slow and tender.

Megumi allows the pressure that turns his face back toward Itadori, but he slaps a hand over that descending mouth.

“You’ve done this before,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out like an accusation, but it does, every sharp note of it slicing through the air.

There’s more soft laughter from beside him.

Itadori blinks, raising one hand to pry Megumi’s fingers off his mouth. “Yes? I mean—wait, you haven’t?”

Megumi just grits his teeth, trying and failing to swallow a sense of…not betrayal, not really. But it’s something acrid and ugly. It’s not like he was expecting Itadori to be a virgin or even inexperienced. It’s just that he didn’t think he wouldn’t be. Itadori doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or anyone like that. He doesn’t even keep in touch with people from his old life, and he goes out a lot, sure, but he likes company for it—Megumi, Kugisaki, their upperclassmen, Gojou, and even Nanami. And he’s not the kind of guy who’d keep these things a secret.

Except he has.

“Gojou-sensei,” Itadori says, yanking Megumi out of the new hell he’s stewing in, “you didn’t even kiss him?”

Megumi gags a bit. Itadori looks at him in concern.

“I wouldn’t be so cruel,” Gojou says, and even without looking at him, Megumi can see the maddening curve of his mouth. “After all, Megumi’s been saving himself for you.”

Itadori looks taken aback, and then he drags his eyes from Gojou to Megumi, expression shifting from incredulity to awe.

It makes Megumi want to crawl into a hole and die. All he can feel is the sore heat inside him, lining the path Gojou carved into him. That ache deep in his gut, like a bruise where nothing’s ever touched. His rim is still wet, and no matter how tightly Megumi clenches up, it feels so open.

“Fushiguro—”

“Don’t,” Megumi bites out, closing his eyes. “Shut up.”

“He’s shy,” Gojou says conspiratorially to Itadori. “I don’t want to kiss Megumi, but if you’re offering, I’d like to finish what I started.”

“Why’re you asking me?” Itadori says, sounding genuinely confused. “Oh, I guess I did interrupt. Still, it’s up to Fushiguro, isn’t it?”

“So it is,” Gojou murmurs. Fingers find Megumi’s elbow, gliding sickeningly gently up his arm and along his shoulder, nudging the edge of his jaw. “What do you say, Megumi?”

Die, is what Megumi would like to say, but it’s not like Gojou magically dropped dead the last few times he tried.

He doesn’t want to. Of course he doesn’t want to. He still hurts with what Gojou took, and worse than the pain is the lingering sense of violation. Itadori’s touch chased it away briefly; at least, it distracted Megumi enough that he felt nothing but Itadori’s mouth, his heat. But that brimming wonder in Itadori’s eyes brought it right back, and now it’s in him like a stain, oil mixing with blood.

A kinder hand cups his face, Itadori’s calloused thumb sliding sweetly over his cheek. “You good, Fushiguro?”

No. No, he’s not good at all.

“Whatever,” Megumi says, opening his eyes to the ceiling. “Do what you want.”

[libraryofneith]

Old Dog, New Tricks - Chapter Four (Sandor Clegane x Female Reader)

@ladysandorclegane1968 @broadsdrinkwhisky @northwindsdaughter

Series Masterlist

Summary: Sandor's fragile peace is broken

Tags/Warnings: death, depictions of violence, typical GoT stuff

"The night is dark and full of terrors."

Fuck them. Fuck them all. He was going to fucking kill them.

He’d been so close; he’d actually met someone who thought he was capable of change. And he’d almost believed him.

“It’s not too late. It’s never too late.” Septon Ray’s last sermon kept ringing round and round in his head. But now it was too late, for both of them.

He knew something was wrong as soon as he saw those riders, something about them just didn’t sit right. And then he found out why when he’d heard their final words as they rode off, and his blood went cold.

“The night is dark and full of terrors.”

He’d tried to warn them. When Ray came to find him later, he’d tried to convince him that they’d be back, that they should stand and fight, but he’d adamantly refused. And now he was walking among their bodies.

Sandor had heard their screams in the distance and had ran to them as fast as his lame leg would let him, hoping that maybe he’d be in time to save some of them, maybe Ray, or that girl Kya who’d nursed him back to health. But he’d failed them. The brotherhood left none alive. Everywhere he looked there were people lying with blood still pouring out of their throats or entrails spilling out of their stomachs. That was the only movement he could see, and then he heard a crack.

It sounded like a twig or something snapping underfoot. He looked in the direction it was coming from and saw an overturned table, front facing him, large enough for a person to hide behind. A survivor perhaps, or one of the Brotherhood waiting to ambush him. He approached cautiously, trying not to make any indication of his nearing whoever it was. Then, moving quickly than he had in a long time, he flipped the table over. He heard a small cry and saw the person scrambling to get away but he shot an arm out, grabbed their elbow, and whisked them round to face him. She was fighting and kicking, but he recognised her immediately.

“Kya!” She wouldn’t stop fighting. She scrambled in his arms, desperate to get away. “Kya, it’s me, it's Sandor. Look at me!” When he said his name she froze and brought her eyes up to his. There was just a second of lasting panic in them, followed quickly by relief and then she flung herself at him, clutching desperately at his neck. Sandor just stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. No one had ever seemed that relieved to see him before, except perhaps for the little bird on the day of the bread riots. But eventually the shock and pain of the day and the relief at finding even one of the villagers – especially this one – alive wore him down and he found himself wrapping his arms around her and clutching her to him. He heard a strangled sob and felt her shaking. He looked up and saw that her eyes were fixed to the half-built Sept, a look of complete and utter horror fixed on one point. He followed her stare and nearly threw up when he saw what she saw: the body of Septon Ray, strung up on one of the beams, and swaying limply in the gentle breeze. Sandor broke his hold on Kya and slowly walked to the Sept, never breaking eye contact with what was left of his friend.

“Violence is a disease and I won’t spread it to others.” One of the last things he’d said to him. Probably the only foolish thing to come out of his mouth. He thought he could change the way things were but Sandor knew how this world worked. Violence and death would come to you sooner or later, whether you wanted it or not.

What now? What should he do? What could he do? Before these people found him he’d had no reason to live, except perhaps the wolf girl, but even she’d abandoned him. Now they were gone too, what did he have left? Then he spotted an axe resting in a nearby tree trunk and he knew. At the end of it all he did have one thing left. One thing that had always kept him going.

Sandor yanked the axe out of the tree trunk. There were tracks on the ground that he could follow till he found them. Bloody bastards hadn’t bothered covering their tracks once they’d raised this place to the ground. But before he could go, he saw the girl crumpled on the ground, her body wracked with silent, uncontrollable sobs. He looked at her, and knew he couldn’t leave her.

“Kya.” She raised her tear stained face to look at him. “I’m going to find the fuckers who did this, and I’m going to kill them all. You could come with me, I’d keep you safe. You want to come with me?”

Her body stopped shaking. She was no longer crying. Her face hardened, the horror and the anguish replaced with pure hatred. Hatred he knew he was mirroring. She said nothing, just nodded her head.

[fnaftalexreader]

I'm assuming you meant my baby boi Satan, which is going to be VERY interesting... @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan

Uriel Ventris getting tortured by Satan (headcanons)

Angel, demon, or God Satan would definitely have their own ways of torturing him-

Before the Fall

Hoooooooo boooooooi

Satan as an angel was very... dense. And very VERY childish.

Time in Hell

While the torture would be unintentional, he still would look like a grown man acting like a little kid.

Look at this man, he's HUGE-

He doesn't look like it, but he's a toddler. A 15-foot toddler. And he would torture him in the same way a normal toddler would.

"Can I touch your armor?! Can I have your weapon?! Do you have any battle stories?! DO YOU WANNA FIGHT ME?!" *literally vibrating with excitement*

He is basically a more violent "do you have games on your phone" kid, and will. Not. Shut. Up.

A bolter to the face won't even intimidate him, because he's never seen a gun before. He's like... 7. And VERY sheltered.

He'll latch onto Uriel's tiny leg (in comparison to him, it's tiny), and just ask millions of questions, till he sees the next poor space marine to harasss.

He has no social boundaries, as angels don't have boundaries with each other. So, the moment Uriel gets fed up with Satan's behavior, it will result in this poor angel crying. He's a sensitive guy, despite his love for all things war.

He's also very much danger prone, and I could see Satan getting Uriel in trouble a LOT by accidentally making him abandon his troops.

"Look at this weird puppy! Can I keep him?!"

"...you heretical magnet of an angel, that's a flesh hound- put it down, it's dangerous!"

He's also surprisingly quiet when he wants to be, and will give the poor man a heart attack every now and again-

Thankfully, he struggles with reading. Why is this a good thing? Uriel could lie to Satan, saying if he reads the codex front to back, he too can become a space marine (or at least an honorary one, if he doesn't want to crush the poor guys hopes and dreams with false promises.)

This might work for a few days, but after a while it will get too frustrating, and he might try to rip up the poor thing out of frustration.

But before he can, Belphegor, Lucifer, Andras, Metatron, Gabriel, or someone else that likes to read will start reading the codex like a bedtime story for him.

Till their father tries to burn it, seeing it as "evil" since its knowledge outside of his own. He doesn't like his kids learning anything.

But this is pretty much how baby Satan would torture him. He'd push Uriel's flexibility to its limits with his childish nature, huge stature, and inability to understand ANY social cues, human or space marine.

After Ascension

Ah shit, here we go again.

He doesn't really change much in personality, but he is partially blind, occasionally hears voices challenging him or calling him weak, and at this point, he makes daemons of khorne seem more patient.

VERY irritable, and constantly scared, he's more like a frightened animal than a malicious demon.

But he still looks like demonic scum... if you squint, he looks like a bloodthirster. So he's chaos enough.

Satan wouldn't really attack him unprompted, let alone actually torture him.

But if he hurt other demons first? Mercy is not Satan's first thought-

"You fired at a LAMBTTEN?! I WILL RIP OUT YOUR ENTRAILS AND STRANGLE YOU WITH THEM!"

He's very overprotective of the denizens of gehenna, and-

Huh...

Now that I think about it, and what I've researched...

Satan is just demon Uriel.

They're both warriors, they both think outside the box, they're protective of the innocent...

Satan is just Uriel with anger issues, crippling cptsd, and anxiety.

I could see Satan torturing him over a misunderstanding, like Uriel attacking demonic children, thinking they're chaos scum.

Or him attacking Satan, thinking he's hurting civilians, when he's trying to protect them too. Leading to another fight that doesn't go in Uriel's favor.

At this point in his life, Satan is not strong. Not by a long shot. But he is CRAZY. He's willing to do everything and anything to protect the innocent, even it means hurting himself or others in the process.

Though he'd eventually find out what a good person Uriel is for the most part, and feel REALLY guilty for hurting him. He can respect a warrior protecting their own, he just forgets that not all who hurt children are villains.

He'd let his siblings heal him up, while he himself lays on the ground with guts between his fangs, whimpering like a bad dog who got caught ripping up the couch.

I could see them coming to an agreement in secret, like with the demon engine. Though it would be more mutually beneficial. Demons help protect the empire from chaos, and they get food for the Lambttens in return.

This would DEFINITELY get him checked for heresy again, but thankfully working with demons from gehenna doesn't corrupt your mind. You only get weird, if you already are weird. You won't have urges to fuck your mom, or murder puppies any time soon. The demons of gehenna don't want you to do that either-

But Uriel might get a little too close to being executed for heresy as again, Satan is blind. Out of all the demons, he's one of the few that would get caught a LOT due to his disability. He can "see" mainly through hearing, so the marching of an army sounds like he's already surrounded, unless he's more focused.

They might have to give him and his chapter refuge at that point, and that would slowly lead things to end up kinda like how the angelic interaction would go.

"...so can I have your bolter? I won't do anything with it, I just want to feel it-"

Uriel will not know a day without this demon fanboying over the emperor's children, if he dares to answer any of the demon's questions-

At this point in Satan's life, he has finally matured.

He's basically like Khorne, if Khorne had a zen garden.

He is a god of wrath, but also patience. A god of war and peace. A god of violence and mercy.

His domain reflects this weird balance between blood and serenity. Part of his temple is dedicated to training in all forms of combat. While another part is dedicated to meditation. There are decorative infinity pools full of blood, with an enchantment to keep the blood from rotting and stinking up the place. The air has a mix of iron, smoke, and incense filling it with their unique and oddly pleasant smell. Satan's own room has bubbling rivers of blood, zen gardens, actual gardens, and a small training area where he keeps his favorite weapons in a display near his meditation spot.

All in all, he's fucking weird.

At this point, he's a god, but he's able to take a healthier version of his demonic form. With black fur and white wool.

He's a lot more patient, as already stated, and THAT would be what tortures Uriel...

...and possibly getting accused of heresy, AGAIN-

Satan would take Uriel in, given the chance, to give him tests and challenges in an attempt to think even more outside the Codex Astartes, and whatever boxes he has in his mind in general.

He wouldn't be any real danger. Buuuuut, it would be like waking up in a saw trap, unaware that it's a normal escape room.

Satan, at this point, would torture him purely on accident. Sure, he'd wish to scare him and give him pressure, but he doesn’t want to drive the poor man mad-

If the puzzles get to be too much, Satan would give him a break, which could get mistaken for a trick of chaos.

Satan wouldn't want him to convert away from the emperor, he's just made it his life goal to help any and all warriors to be their best, most honorable selves.

I could see him and the emperor having a fight in the warp. Not a full on battle, more so an argument over Satan kidnapping warriors to train and send back out with better strategy skills-

At this point, getting tortured by Satan would just be bizarre...

But if you want headcanons on ACTUAL intentional torture, it's the same as when he was a demon. Hurt the innocent, and you get mauled.

He wouldn't care for the "kill all xenos on sight" rule, even if humanity has a good reason for it. A child is a child and must be sheltered from war, even if they are your enemies' blood.

Thankfully, Uriel's sense of honor might save him here, as the only time I've read about him threaten the innocent was when he was threatening to kamikaze a planet so the tau would back off.

But if he hurts a Lambtten, out of reflex from fighting daemon scum-

He is in for a WORLD of hurt-

Because, unlike Khorne, Satan is extremely patient at this point... sure, he could have his followers maul him as a sacrifice. But he could also make a small slit in his skin, and have him bleed to death, one milligram of blood at a time...

Is it inefficient? Yes. Will it probably take months or years for it to kill him? Probably. But Satan can wait for Uriel to beg for death, either to end his boredom or to get his agonizingly slow execution over with.

It will also give him time to think about his actions and apologize.

But surprisingly, dying from a tiny cut in your foot or hand would be Satan showing mercy in a backwards way.

If Uriel REALLY pissed him off at this age? Dude would just eat him.

Just depends on whether or not the Lambtten is just wounded or dead. If the Lambtten dies to Uriel's hand, he's getting eaten. If they're just hurt, he gets the ridiculously slow execution and plenty of time to apologize to the god and possibly the child he hurt.

I had to go to the wiki a few times and watch a whole video on him, so this might not be perfect. But I did my best with what I got :3

[msfbgraves]

“Oh, God, they'll hear,” Daniel says as his mate is stripping away his suit under loud whistling outside.

...

So...did anyone hear them lol? I bet Daniel couldn't look anyone in the eye the next day poor fella. Or maybe Terry and Daniel tried to keep quiet (doubtful, and Terry would want everyone to hear that he can keep his mate...satisfied).

A heat is a great blessing on a wedding, Nonnie. Very auspicious. Considering the doubts some may have had marrying this beautiful omega girl to a foreign beta man, they were put to rest. The music was simply a little louder for the rest of the night.

Daniel was past caring the next day, Nonnie, sadly. All his defenses were stripped bare and given what a shit time he'd had, the fact that he was pregnant again, far from home, really emotional and desperate for his children... let them talk. He spent the day either clinging to Terry or his sister Nessa, everyone else could bite him.

Terry would have been proud but he was very worried. Daniel had been so cool and fierce for the most part that he was shocked to notice how hurt his mate really was. He'd been so focused on getting Daniel back that it had escaped him how Daniel was doing, not in the least because Daniel was shutting him out. He'd had some idea because he'd seen him the next morning when his mate left with the baby and he understood that it was serious because Amanda was beyond furious with him after talking to Daniel, but he hadn't pondered that because he'd been caught up arranging the trip back to attend Michael LaRusso's wedding, of all people. Only now, with his mate finally willing to open up to him again, does he really consider the state of him.

If anyone else had done a tenth of that, he'd strangled them with their own entrails. Now, though...

[lampmanliveblogs]

Where we last left off, Hunter was doing his best to ruin a good thing. Let’s see the Emerald Entrails’ reaction to this revelation.

Pictured: The Golden Guard, the Emperor’s right-hand man. Remember when he was first introduced back in episode one of this season? Remember that cool entrance with the water hand? Good times. It's nice to see they got him a new mask at least. Still working on the cape.

Man, Little Rascal is just going with it, huh? He’s really not gonna tell Hunter that maybe this was a bad idea? I thought the thing he bonded with Hunter over was some innate  desire for freedom or something like that but nope, turns out it was their mutual inability to make good decisions.

On the bright side, Willow’s first instinct on finding out Caleb was the Golden Guard wasn’t to immediately strangle him with plant vines, so all hope’s not lost yet. How much exactly did Luz tell them about Hunter? How much did Amity?

THIS IS NOT HELPING YOUR CASE, HUNTER!

Okay, so he did not call on the scouts, Darius sent them, but Hunter is still not doing much of anything to help his case. Was the ”take you away from your friends and family” part really necessary, Hunter? You wouldn’t want to be taken away from your family, right?

…

oh wait-

Hey, it’s Steve! My sister mentioned him! He’s her favorite character.

She also keeps asking me if I’ve gotten to that episode with the revelation at the end. I thought she meant last episode, but apparently not… so I’m a bit nervous now.

Almost as nervous as Willow, Gus, Viney & Skara have got to be, being in jail. At such a young age too… tragic. What has society come to?

I just want to quickly bring up something Hunter says here.

Gus says that real friends don’t stab each other in the back, to which Hunter replies that the Head Witches do it all the time. There is of course Raine, but they’re one person who betrayed the others one  time and was subsequently put under mind control. No, he’s saying that the Head Witches betray each other regularly. Obviously not in a ”I’m actually leading a group of rebels to overthrow the Emperor!” sorta way, but in a more personal way. 

The reason this is notable to me is because Belos likes to talk about the Day of Unity, about how they’re perfecting the Coven system and all that garbage. He wants to paint a picture of unity under his rul-oh. sorry, the Titan’s rule. Yet those closest to him, the very elite are squabbling and can’t get along with each other. So much for ”unity.”

[malderonadventures]

🙇🏻

Send 🙇🏻 to lay on my muse’s stomach ! Send a + for the reverse. If you can’t see the emoji, send ‘stomach’!

Deja woke with a start. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep on a couch in one of the school common rooms. Seems it was late enough where everyone had gone to bed. Almost everyone, at least. It was quiet and dark. The only problem was... She couldn't breathe.

In the dark she couldn't make out much of what was slowly killing her. Wait, that hair was awfully light in color. Her hands pressed the chest of the large male up so she could take a breath in. She knew this shape more than any other. If it had been any other man, she would have strangled them with their own entrails, but.... this was Freeze. Why?

Her mind raced with possible reasons. Was it his flirty self acting up? Unlikely, this time. If it was that, he would have woken her much sooner and been the first to lay his cheesy lines down. Freeze seemed silently distraught over something. With a frown, Deja remained quiet and shifted slightly to be able to breathe while pulling her dear friend back down to her.

Something must have happened. If she was able to give any comfort, she always would for him. She stroked his soft hair, holding his head close to her heart. Deja didn't know what to say. Freeze wasn't the type to want her words anyway. What he needed was something she would openly give. Even if they had been apart for years, this was not a fact that had changed. Deja would always be there when Freeze needed her.

[silvcrignis]

@poisonpunkking liked this post to summon a grimy infernal politician

"Oh what the FUCK do you WANT? I don't CARE if you're Keira's little boy-toy I DON'T do casual HOUSE calls. We're not friends, I don't find any VALUE in having those so whatever you CALLED me for better be really fucking GOOD," Lucifer growled. His poor attitude was HARDLY a surprise, Satan was INFAMOUSLY cantankerous, him NOT being immediately antagonistic would have been a cause for CONCERN.

An impatient SNIFF sounded, his arms crossing as his blue eyes narrowed.

"If it ISN'T just let me know NOW so I don't WASTE my time STRANGLING you with your own entrails for interrupting my DAY."

[julietvstheworld]

slenderman yandere headcanons 👀?

( yandere hcs ) slenderman

sfw - gender neutral reader x slenderman headcanons

╰┈➤ stalking, catcalling/verbal harassment, gore

Wandering into the 'haunted' forest was not one of your best ideas. Getting fired from your job already put you on edge, so getting chased by a catcaller threw you off entirely. You were just minding your own business, walking around the streets drunk at 2am looking for a taxi until you heard a sudden whistle coming from an alley. "C'mon baby! Show me a smile on that pretty face!" At this point, your mascara-filled tears have already dried on your face so of course, you didn't even want to bother. You kept walking as you flipped him off without looking back, not wanting to give him the time of day. "Well excuse me, your highness, too good for me huh? I can make you see stars! Give me a chance." You rolled your eyes, glancing behind you for a second. It was a man, about 6ft and extremely muscular. He was wearing a wife-beater tank and grey sweatpants, but his face was obscured by shady sunglasses only showing a toothy grin. The worst part? He was following you. He was walking about a few meters away before you started to speed up. "Playing hard to get? I love the chase, sweetheart." You heard his pace pick up, that's when you started sprinting. Your breathing became extensively heavy as you took in the cold Autumn air, God knows what this dude was gonna do when he caught you. Refusing to look back as he continued to yell at you to stop running and hang out with him, your heart pounded swiftly and vigorously in your chest. You felt your legs begging you to give up as you turned at every street, trying to find someone to help you. It seemed like he wasn't gonna give up, but neither were you. That's when you saw the forest, the forest that you remember being scared deathly of growing up. Suddenly, your adrenaline-filled mind saw a maze of towering trees that you might be able to lose the persistent creep in.

You made a beeline for the woodlands, hearing the man's heavy and quick steps still persistently pursuing you. The second you stepped foot on the gloomy land, you felt your hair stand straight up on the back of your neck as your entire bloodstream suddenly felt cold. The air was muggy and thick, suffocating almost. Running further from civilization, you noticed papers stapled to the bark of the trees warning you of a strange, crudely drawn faceless man. You would be unnerved if you weren't quite literally running from death. You picked up your pace as fast as you could, hiding behind a tree once you decided you were far enough. You slumped to the floor, curling yourself in a ball in an attempt to make yourself less visible. You heard him stop running, instead of walking slowly but loudly. His stomps gave you goosebumps as you heard him get closer. "Come out, little bunny! Don't make me get angrier than I already am." He yelled through gritted teeth. Right when you saw his shoes in your peripheral vision, you saw your life flash before your eyes. "I found yo-" He suddenly stopped talking, instead his voice was replaced by quiet, gargled yelps. You looked up to see his neck being strangled tightly by a dark, scaly tentacle. Before the life left his eyes, another tentacle shot itself deeply into his stomach before grabbing ahold of his organs and started pulling them out slowly. You watched as his entrails left a crimson mess on the leaf-covered ground until the tentacle decided it was bored of letting him suffer and instead of snapping the guts out of the body as the one around his neck retracted to where it came. You felt his warm blood splatter all over your face as his bulky corpse fell forward with a great thud. You slowly stood back up to face your pursuer's killer.

You faced him, head up, shoulders back trying to catch your breath. The man, if you can call him that, was much taller than you. He was maybe even eight feet tall. He was adorned in a simple, yet elegant tuxedo which covered his slender body. Instead of a face, there was nothing but white skin. His flesh looked smooth and perfect, almost giving the illusion of him being made of marble. Behind him seemed to be eight slithering tentacles, you noticed one of them had been covered almost entirely of blood making it the obvious murder weapon. "You're not scared." You heard a voice, presumably the faceless man ringing in your ears. His voice was commanding yet calming, it sounded like it was coming from all directions and in your head at the same time. You were so distracted by steading your breathing, you didn't even realize that you weren't scared anymore. Even though the entity in front of you may execute you at any second, you felt comfortable. You felt at ease. "Should I be?" You asked between labored wheezes, wiping the blood off your face. "Yes. I have murdered thousands of people as easily as it takes for you to blink.", you heard him chuckle as you quietly giggled along. "Do you want to die?" you shook your head no as you stood your ground and finally started breathing normally. "Interesting. I'll see you soon then." Your vision started to blackout as you passed out as if on cue.

You woke up in your bed in a cold sweat. A dream? Maybe, but it was definitely extremely vivid. Trying to ignore the events, you went about your life as you did. You spent your days job searching, browsing the internet, hanging out with friends, etc. Although, you always felt as if you were being watched from afar and you kept hearing the faceless man's voice in your head, pointing you in the right direction to get the most positive results in most given situations. Despite this, you never felt unnerved or even wanting to question it. It almost felt like you had your own personal guardian angel was looking after you. The only drawback was you felt like you needed to throw up every time you heard his voice, even getting a nosebleed at one point. You spent half a year like this until you noticed people who wronged you suddenly dying gruesomely and suddenly. Even people who just made the smallest insult at you would be found skewered on a telephone pole the next day. Once there was a fifth body under your name, you finally felt like you had to get to the bottom of these strange happenings. Traveling back to the forest one night with nothing but a flashlight in hand, you were in for a ride. Luckily, you would be welcomed with open tentacles.

Slenderman is a strange case when it comes to the yanderes. He feels less of a romantic connection and more of an unconditional need to protect you.

You feeling like you're always being watched and the nausea is a heavily toned-down version of Slender Sickness He can't fully stop the symptoms, but he can block most of it from your mind.

He saw your bravery towards him as a sign that you could make a great pasta, or even proxy one day.

He once thought about asking Masky to watch over you, but he decided against it.

Despite him not feeling any romantic feelings, he's the most protective over you when it comes to relationships. He doesn't want his future perfect killer to be heartbroken! He is guilty of killing possible suitors for you.

[serino137]

Hello there, I am back to request more because your writing is a little bit too good. Now, I would like to request m hero x m villain in which they’ve both been kidnapped and tied together chest to chest… PLEASE GO OFF WITH THIS ONE TAKE IT WHEREVER!!! (Don’t have to do it if you don’t want :D)

Prompt #190

"Great" villain scoffed, trying to pull back against the ropes that bound him to hero. "I just had to be tied up with you."

Hero bat his eyelashes, his lips curling into a slow smirk as he felt villain's heartbeat skyrocket. The two of them were captured, tied chest to chest and forced to stand up. Villain tried to push back his hips, desperate to not let his hips brush against hero.

"Keep trying to escape, maybe it'll work the 100th time" hero teased, not at all even a bit flustered by the fact that there was no space between them.

Villain rolled his eyes, casting another glance to the locked door 20 feet away from them. "You know what? When I get out of this, I'm going to make a tie using super villain's entrails and put it around his own neck and hang him with it."

Hero's eyebrows pulled together, the smirk still carved onto his face. "I'm pretty sure taking out someone's entrails would already kill them. No reason to tie it around his neck and strangle him when he's already dead. "

Villain stole another glance at hero, his full lips, dark eyebrows, deep grey eyes that were inhumanly beautiful, and those short, gelled back curls that villain wanted to muse with his hands.

God, they were captured and yet villain wanted nothing more than to lean in and kiss hero till they were both out of breath. Villain wanted to tug hero even closer, till there was nothing between them, and make hero cry out in pleasure.

Villain turned, hoping hero wouldn't notice the blush that burned villain's cheeks.

But of course, hero noticed, like always.

He leaned in, making villain flinch backwards, though the rope bound him from moving further.

"Hm, you're looking a little red, villain." Hero taunted, leaning in closer.

Villain swore he felt hero's fingers ghost over his thigh, his touch light and teasing.

"And. . ." hero leaned in, his warm breath fanning over villain's parted lip, causing tingles to break out over his skin. "Your heart is beating quite fast too" hero whispered, his stormy eyes becoming half lidded, darkening with bottled lust. "Are you nervous, dear villain?" hero toyed.

Villain couldn't stop himself, couldn't stop himself from leaning in, his lips nearing hero's, his hips brushing swiftly against hero's.

"Do I make you nervous, my sweet villain?" hero whispered, his lips a lone breath away from villain's sweet, parted lips.

Villain sucked in a sharp breath, gasping when he felt hero's hips lightly thrust against his own. He could feel hero, thick and hard, pressing against him. Villain didn't protest, his voice too lose in the lust that was bolting through him to say anything as hero leaned in slowly as if asking for permission. Villain's chin dipped once, nodding, allowing hero. A low growl came from the back of hero's throat as he leaned in, his lips eating up villain's whimper as their lips crashed roughly–

"Finally" a voice sighed in relief.

Hero and villain pulled apart, villain's cheek reddened while hero's sloppy grin stayed.

"So, you both understand you like each other, right?" Super villain asked from the exit, a scowl sitting on his face. "Right? Right. So stop pining over each other and go on a date or something. I can't do my evil shit because every time I try to destroy the world you two are too busy shooting lovey-dovey eyes at each other instead of fighting me. Now go on a date or something, you pining idiots."

[lady-nightmares-blog]

Little cato (au)

Like Ash, this Cato has similar powers, although he is more aggressive.

Unlike ash, cato already had his powers activated since he was 7 years old, since he usually got very angry.

Avocato knew very well, but he preferred to keep it hidden since he was still working with the commander, this would be dangerous if he found out, wouldn't it?

Cato, unlike the other, this one is temperamental and usually has the same outbursts of anger that Ash has.

Cato and Ash have the same powers and the two treat each other as "brothers".

Although, cato is much stronger than ash, for the simple fact that he already had time controlling his powers.

He was a student, but due to an accident with a boy he stopped going to class...

(He broke the boy's nose) when he was 10 years old.

He is bad by nature, although he is not capable of bothering someone by himself, but yes, he has to have a reason to be mean to you for life.

His motives for being mean to you don't have a pattern, his motives can be very strange, so with Sertesa he doesn't know why he can bother you.

He is not a big fan of sweets, although he likes spicy and sour ones, they are his favorite.

It is not common for him to fall in love, although if he does you will be harassed, chased and have a strange amount of paper hearts on your doorstep, like a crazy self-proclaimed boyfriend.

And he won't take no for an answer.

He hates lies.

He has a laugh... oh no... his laugh is like a nightmare in a child's voice,

Trust me when I say it's scary.

He has huge dark circles under his eyes.

He is good at lying.

He has tried to strangle Fox twice, just because he makes him laugh with the look on his face.

It is not so necessary for him to be upset to use his power.

Although preferably, he is almost always upset.

Those 60 years have done him shit.

he is possessive and cadese of some manners.

he is an arsonist which is why he and avocato have had to move many times as this ventrexian from hell has burned and set many fires.

Avocado has patience with him, in his words (my son is like a surprise gift, you have no idea what awaits you, but you know you will want it).

Avocato hates being too hard on him and when the occasion calls for it he has given him a couple of leashes.

Gary loves him very much, but he does not deny that he is a little afraid of him.

In Galaxy 1, Cato took out his anger on the ship's robots (he strangled them).

he always gets what he wants, one way or another.

his methods are, very questionable.

he has a collection of organs (eyes and a couple of brains and other weird stuff)

That's why his room has a strange smell.

Avocato knows about his collection but he doesn't know or want to know how he gets that shit.

He only listens to or obeys Avocato, Gary and the voice in his head.

As if his laugh wasn't enough, he tends to stare at people, his gaze and his unblinking expression scares him and he knows it.

he loves the food of serpentis.

he loves it, because he likes to see how he vomits up his entrails.

his fantasy is to kill a titan.

he has anisocoria, that's why his look is so weird.

he drools a lot, and it is normal for him to have a rag to wipe his mouth.

if he annoys you, rest assured that he will totally suck at you.

I think he is crazy.

He loves to tease Fox and often follows him around to tease him.

if you look closely, you can see some small marks on his wrists, do they look like bites?

he is a cursed.

believe me, the ventrexian baby that everyone wants, he is innocent, but this bastard is the opposite, he is not innocent, no sir.

well he still has a long way to go, but I think it's a good start, can you give me ideas or scenarios, headcanon etc, I hope to answer the messages very happy 💗💗 uwu

[disastermages]

so, @agendratum has a mad scientist au that I love (here and here)

“Okay, listen up,” Wen Qing starts with a frown on her face and both of her hands on the table, trying to make herself bigger than she is. The rest of them, Jin Guangyao, Wei Wuxian, and Xue Yang are already seated, making them look smaller and much more ready to be led around the nose like she needed them to be.

“Who died and made you chief of this department?” Xue Yang cuts in before Wen Qing can go any further, smirking and leaning back in his chair. His lab coat is already stained with something and Wen Qing fixes him with a glare for it.

“My uncle, both Doctor Wei and Doctor Jin can attest to his untimely demise.” It’s nothing to bring up how her uncle had died, there’d been two witnesses, and neither Jin Guangyao nor Wei Wuxian were willing to offer up information that conflicted with each other. “If you’re finished with interrupting, Doctor Xue-”

“I had more, but continue.”

Wen Qing understands why her uncle spoke so often of wanting to strangle Xue Yang, but unlike her uncle, she would shove down the notion to actually do it. “As I was saying, you all know that our department is up for a funding review yet again, and I’d like to mention now that thus far, all the grants I’ve applied for have been rejected. This will be our last shot, so I want no cadavers on tables, no entrails in jars, and absolutely no unauthorized visits by spouses.”

Any other time, Wen Qing couldn’t have cared if Lan Wangji or Lan Xichen wanted to be in the lab so they could make doe eyes at their husbands, but biohazards are a constant, and Wen Qing won’t risk funding just so Lan Wangji can listen to Wei Wuxian explain the nervous system yet again.

“Wen Qing! Lan Zhan is a doctor too!” Wei Wuxian leans forward and stands halfway, but Wen Qing doesn’t budge.

“I am aware of Doctor Lan’s credentials, but seeing as he is a doctor of music theory, he has no reason to be in a lab like this.” Wen Qing had practiced this, but she still feels the kink in her neck building up and getting tighter. She would have to crack it loud enough to make Jin Guangyao flinch before they were done here.

Wei Wuxian could be mad at her if he wanted to, he would either get over it or forget that he was angry with her in the first place. For now, all he does is sit back in his chair and sulk, his arms crossed over his chest. She almost wants to reach over and pet his hair, the same way she does for her brother.

She can’t show favoritism, though, not now.

Jin Guangyao had sat perfectly straight and still through the whole meeting, but now he sits up straighter and opens his mouth to speak, but Wen Qing chooses then to roll her neck around her shoulders. Their lab is large, and they’re just four people. She can’t help but feel self-satisfied when the popping of her neck echoes around the room and Jin Guangyao turns pale. He would have tried, and possibly succeeded, to find a way to politely undermine her. She couldn’t let that happen.

“We have two days to make this lab look presentable and worthy of investing in,” She was only worried about the perpetually precarious mess that was Xue Yang’s corner of the lab. Wei Wuxian’s corner was a mess, but he kept it contained and ordered in a way that made sense to him. Jin Guangyao’s area was kept immaculate and organized to everyone who looked at it, Wen Qing would show his corner off first, she’d known that long ago.

She allowed personal effects to stray into her own piece of the lab, a picture of her and A-Ning, a picture from undergrad with Wei Wuxian and his siblings, both of them pinned to a shelf while a framed photo of her grandmother and her younger cousin sat on her desk, just behind a constant coffee mug or two. She would show her own last.

“We’ll work together to clean the walk-in freezer, but individual desks must be cleaned by the end of today. Does everyone understand me?” Nepotism had gotten her this job, but Wen Qing wouldn’t let that be all she was known for. She doesn’t expect Wei Wuxian to be the first to nod, she’d almost expected him to keep up his pouting, but Wen Qing won’t deny the way it makes her relax, Xue Yang would follow after Wei Wuxian, and then Jin Guangyao would follow out of common courtesy.

“I want a new centrifuge if your plan works, Director Wen.” Jin Guangyao says carefully, crossing his legs underneath the table. Wen Qing wishes he would have hit his knee on the edge of it.

“We have two centrifuges, Doctor Jin.” Neither of them were particularly new, but they still worked.

“One of them works,” Jin Guangyao clarifies, “the other is still run by a hand crank and is located upstairs in a biology lab shared with students.”

Wen Qing fixes Jin Guangyao with a glare, but it’s not enough to make him give, he only stares back at her until Wen Qing gives up in exasperation. She opens her mouth to speak again, but a small explosion rings out from Wei Wuxian’s corner of the lab, a plume of white smoke going up, but not quite reaching the sprinklers.

Those hadn’t worked properly since Xue Yang took a wrench and a pair of pliers to them in the name of some experiment he’d been working on months ago. Wen Qing had learned by then not to ask questions or to bat an eye. There were emergency fire extinguishers at every desk, and if, by chance, some old papers got burned to ash in a possible blaze, it would be one more thing off of Wen Qing’s plate.

Wei Wuxian runs to deal with whatever he’s made, and without a word, Wen Qing marches over and flings the exterior door open.

All four of them were confined to the basement lab, but theirs was the only lab with an exterior door. Wen Qing was the only one with a university sanctioned key, but Xue Yang had made copies, and Wen Qing pretends she doesn’t know.

Smoke billows past her, and Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao argue while Xue Yang cackles.

They’d all been confined to the basement lab, but Wen Qing would make it work.

There was no other option.