#what is web scraping | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

syluses · 19 days ago

Text

father figure

sylus x female reader

he takes you in, he feeds you, he gives you a home when the world around you can no longer make sense of the word- and yet you’re just as much of a grounding force in his life. when the frenzy hits, though, he can’t make heads or tails of anything; all he knows is that you’re a pretty, fleshy thing and he aches to sample it.

content smut/nsfw, daddy kink, dilf/guardian! sylus, so by a stretch it can be pseudocest, noncon, soft! sylus but turns into frenzied! sylus, yandere themes, piv, rough handling, loss of virginity, some angst because of guilt/disillusion, codependency, age gap (but both parties are 18+), biting, dark content, almost 10k words

sidenote i could only resist the catch-22 sylus agenda for so long. it’s not fully canon compliant but its heavily based around it. so yes sylus has his iconic mullet and he’s a lil baby crashout in this. also no this isnt even the sylus bday fic i had in mind but if i dont get that one out in time then this will be the substitute 😣 anways, i hope u enjoy my friends <3

You don’t remember much, growing up. Beyond him, at least.

The world goes to shit with the predators and your parents fade out of the equation- and you’re left alone for much of your youth until an ominous man comes along and takes you under his wing— but only reluctantly.

For a while afterward, you think he still grudges you for the day you, in one way or another, managed to fall under his custody, becoming a knot in his neat web of plans and purposes. Deep down, you got the feeling that he didn’t need you as much as you did him; despite his choosing to keep you around, it was likely more out of guilt than any genuine affection- but you’d decided that was okay.

He saved your life, pulled you from the fire before you could really feel its burn, and you’d be the last to make complaint for your circumstances.

There’d be no circumstances if not for him.

But he tenderizes. It turns to be an open thing, his fondness.

He takes you in when you’re fifteen. Since then- throughout the course of around six years, he’s become softer. Less ambiguous to you. There’s things he keeps under wraps and always will despite the harmless pestering on your end (like questions regarding his work, the silhouettes that trail you both constantly— and the curious glances thrown to the blood on his collar after he returns late in the night). But he’s not longer as obscure to you, his person.

Trust blooms in the parts of you where an impoverished lifestyle of scraping by carved out gaps. And you’re used to hiding- that’s not much different now- but instead of diving for shady alleyways, you find refuge in him.

He’s dangerous. That was established early on; since the first moment you met him, really, knelt before him in fear after grabbing his pant leg for help (an action he mistook for a foolish attempt at pickpocketing), that was obvious.

He’s threatening.

Never to you. Not now.

Sylus is a man of impressive decorum and somehow all the blood coating his hands doesn’t take away from his class— he extends those hands to you, callouses and all, and gives you a patient look as if he’s expecting you to take them.

At sixteen you start calling him dad (more of an accident than anything else- it’s not a conscious thing that compels you to view him as something paternal).

He doesn’t object to it.

Things fall into place in weird ways.

When all the pieces settle, you find yourself looking at a semblance of a home— a safe place that the self-proclaimed beast curated with his own paws through painstaking efforts. (Whether you were fully cognizant of them or not didn’t matter: he tried his damnedest to be what you needed, and could only hope it was enough.)

The two of you are always on the move. He barges into your room panting at night and tells you to hurry and pack a bag, or just outright scoops you up in his arms and tucks you into the car’s backseat seconds before you hear the tires revving off. Your surroundings are perpetually changing around you and yet he remains the same; a citadel, a rock in your life.

Sylus provides an air of safety. Despite it all, the abrupt ‘field trips’ (at least, that’s what he called them when you were a bit younger) taken to ward enemies off your location, the bullets that fling by your periphery on furtive nights out and the red threads that coil behind him like talons- destroying anything before it can so much as harm a hair on your pretty head- you feel safe with him.

Predator or not- he’s good to you, a lighthouse fixed firmly amidst rolling smog and cyclones.

You can’t count a time he’s lost control or been unprepared for a frenzy, and he’s taken the proper precautions to keep you from him whenever he suspects one is coming on. The broken activator just solidifies his vigilance. And he’s instructed you plenty on what to do if he does lose it, God forbid, albeit your agreement to it was utterly uneasy.

He figures he’ll spare you the little horror show, he’d joked just to smooth out the worried crinkle in your brow.

Yet- Figures he’ll spare you your life, is what he doesn’t say, despite it being a shared thought between you both.

He teaches you how to wield a gun early on.

You’d told him you didn’t wanna use it, but something as trivial as guilt had no place in Linkon as it collapsed into decadence and carnal ruin. And something like sympathy, he’d also added, was stupid. An invitation to get yourself killed.

(Silly, that. Silly and hypocritical of the man who takes pity on runts.)

Conversation is kept at a minimum at first, and clipped, but he sprinkles in tips and tricks at self preservation— life hacks in the most literal sense— and he keeps an eye on you. Watching always. He makes sure you’re holding up well and even lets you hold down the fort while he’s gone doing God knows what. It feels like a privilege when he entrusts things to you, no matter how seemingly small.

Sylus is special to you. You love him as a teacher, a protector, a warm chest to snuggle up to on the sofa when you’re restless and can’t sleep but you know he’s downstairs with a cushion waiting—

You love him as a father, too.

Not everything about him is clear to you, though... You learn many things but one you have more difficulty understanding is the way he perceives you.

You don’t know if he loves you as a daughter, or a welcome nuisance, or a stray (because he has a penchant to root for the underdog). At first, you questioned if he even loved you at all.

But you’re older now,… and you see it, the heart he wears on his sleeve to bleed for you. He cares for you. And he’s there for you.

And when he asks you to leave with him- less of a hurried demand now and more of a gentle, imploring breath amidst chittering sounds of crickets and night bugs as he stands as a single shadow against your bed frame—

You take his hand.

✦

Boxes piled in every other corner, the building feels less like a home and more like a warehouse- a very tiny, cozy warehouse, with each of your scents intertwining in the unassuming spaces where you meet.

It’s no feat of architecture- just a small apartment nestled in the innards of the southern district, and it certainly isn’t a product of exorbitant spending (the place is deceptively… humble, for what Sylus can afford), but for what it is, you like it.

You’ve dwelled at several different addresses before, and you expect this arrangement will be more of the same. You stopped mourning over the loss of houses that could’ve been homes some time ago; you bounce between streets and domains like rabbits. However, there’s a strange comfort that builds in your chest as weeks pass and, for this reason or that, your guardian shows no signs of jilting the flat.

One day, he calls you to the living room after you’ve showered, and he sits you down.

You lie in a makeshift cage between his long legs as they hang over the couch, one hand smoothing over your damp hair while the other brushes it through.

He’s never in much of a hurry to speak, so when you reach for the TV remote to fill the silence, and he stops you- you concede to the quiet, knowing whatever he’ll say to break it will be worth some thought.

Still, he seems more contemplative than usual. It warrants pause on your end.

Internally, you consider your belongings- the deliberate choice you made to keep most of them boxed- and find relief in the fact that you’ll have less to pack if Sylus were to inform you right now of another move.

It’s a little sad, but it’s just the way things are. You won’t cry over the hand that you were dealt. If nothing else, you’re just thankful, what with the squeeze this city of sin has on its people, that somewhere along the way, Sylus came to loosen you from it.

You owe him. But he never names his price.

Long, rough fingertips meticulously weaving through your hair, gentle despite the callouses as he twists it into braids, you fall into the belief that he won’t.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but you can’t find much in you to debunk it save for the tiny, deep-rooted fear that one day you’d wake up, and- just like your parents on the day of outbreak- he’d be gone. There was plenty of doubts in your head, but most if not all were born from an old trauma, and Sylus seemed… content, weirdly enough, at your side.

It becomes an easier and easier thing to believe that’s where he’ll remain.

“Sweetie,” he eventually says, “I wanted to… discuss something, with you.”

You perk under his hands, spine straightening. You give him a sidelong glance over your shoulder and find his eyes, a sharp red, surprisingly mellow as they flit across the bridge of your nose, reading your expression carefully.

“What’s wrong?”

That (the instinctive response to believe something’s gone amiss) almost brings a wry smile to his lips, but he wets them a moment later and opens them to speak. “Nothing. Not this time,” he explains smoothly. “You… You’re used to moving around, the both of us are. I’m sure it’s been… tiring, at the best of times.”

“Well,” you start as a reply, but find your speech cropped short because you’ve no real way to deny that: it was exhausting. Of course it was. But wherever he went, you’d follow. That’s just how it’s always been.

Besides, if not fixed firmly at his side- you’d be choosing the hell that is overrun, lawless Linkon; to be tossed back into its maw for the predators or, if you’re more fortunate, a not as brutal death by starvation.

Noting your silence- your agreement- Sylus continues.

He ties off the end of the tuft with a colorful band and moves to work on the other, surprisingly deft. He’s only done your hair a million times- but still, his odd expertise in it was as surprising as it was endearing. The fact that you’re twenty-one now doesn’t change this common arrangement- or the mutual fondness the two of you have for it. You like when Sylus dries or does your hair, and evidently, he does too, for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s just therapeutic for him to feel something soft in his hands. He’s better acquainted with the opposite.

“So what if we were to stay?”

The words take a moment to click.

Because you don’t stay anywhere. You don’t stay, you just run and drive and hide. Live life perpetually on the down low. On the run.

Sylus does not settle.

Still, his voice, thoughtful and velvety, rumbles behind you in a continuous, comforting sound and forces you to take what he’s saying seriously.

“This place- you don’t dislike it, do you? It’s nice. Nothing gaudy or impressive. But it’s… homey,” he muses aloud. “Off the books. You’re safe here. Safer than what the other addresses had to offer, at least.”

You ponder it for all of five seconds before answering. And to be fair it’s not actually hard to; an inner part of you assumed you’d be on the move for all your life, but you’re weirdly pleased at the idea of… not being on the move for all your life.

Some anchorage sounds nice.

You tuck your head to your chest. “I… I think I would like that.”

He perks a bit. You feel it in his hands when they pause, done with their task, and one shifts to rest on your crown.

His knees, flanking either side of you, close in. Without thinking, you latch onto one’s calf and lean into it as you grab the remote. This time he lets you.

“Yeah?” He goes, a little breathless. “Are you sure? You realize it’d be a little more… permanent.”

“Okay.”

Sylus looses a sigh somewhere behind you.

“What I’m getting at is that you’re no longer a little squirt in desperate need of me,” he clarifies in a more pointed tone, and you resist arguing that- you have no time to, really, “so if you want to leave, you can feel free to. Don’t think you’re being shackled here by me.”

For as genuine as his words sound, you quickly cotton onto the expectancy that undercoats them- the mite of something that almost makes you believe he’s waiting for affirmation on your end. A rare thing. Usually it’s the other way around.

It pulls a huff from you, though. Peels of laughter rattle from the screen in front of you (he managed to unpack your TV, but as it stands, most of the house is still pretty bare) but you ignore your favorite show for the moment to turn and frown at him.

You grab his knee while you do, saying, “Of course I don’t think that. If anything, I feel like I’m holding you back.”

Scarlet eyes blink and widen, but just slightly. White hair falls over his brow (his locks loosening from gel after a long day) when he gives his head a tilt. After a beat, he laughs at you, a deep, rumbling sound- and pats your head directly after to fix the flustered knot in your brow.

“Well, I guess we’re both wrong then, hm?

He stoops forward to kiss your cheekbone- a chaste, quick thing- and then he gets up with a grunt to head for the hall.

You watch him with a strange flutter in your chest (one that you label affection; not a wrong guess but it also fails to fully encompass just what he means to you) and stare at the wall even as he disappears behind it.

But he calls over his broad shoulder to you, “Don’t sit too close to the screen, by the way. Someone tends to get headaches when watching cartoons.”

Crossing your arms with a pout, you lean your back into the seat of the couch and splay your legs out on the fluffy rug. You’re glad for that being unpacked, but quickly find yourself planning for the following days and all you’ll have to take out and assemble- which admittedly wasn’t much, but it was still enough to trigger your lazy streak.

Sometimes you just want to lounge around all day and do nothing: a fantasy that feels more possible after your guardian’s suggestion.

You holler back, “Oh, just go to sleep, old man.” Distantly, a door opens, but it doesn’t close.

He’ll be out later.

✦

He doesn’t come out later, contrary to your belief, but his open door does make a little more sense to you when it’s deep into the night and you emerge from your own room, scared, and traipse down the hall.

The remnants of a nightmare that felt too-real grip you. Five fingers on, they don’t let go.

But Sylus- the quasi foreboding man who took you in- knows how to pull you from a pinch.

You seek his warmth as the swath of wooden tiles cooling the balls of your feet blends into carpet- that of his bedroom- navigating in total darkness as you enter.

“Sylus-?” You can’t even get the word out before he startles upright and you hear the clink of something steely and dangerous—

“I-It’s me, daddy!” You assuage quickly, voice a frail, shaken sound that’s made even smaller by the dregs of a bad dream that still hangs fresh over your mind.

Even as the images peter out— claws wrapping around your throat, a dumpster rattling as you and other ragamuffins brawl over veritable trash as food, the roar of a predator as it holds you down, saliva dribbling into your ear— the emotions are harder to shake.

You feel dizzy and a little out of place as he lets out a deep sigh of relief, flicking on the lamplight, and blinks heavily at you.

The fingers that have dipped beneath the mattress retract and return to his lap. You observe it with a relaxing of your shoulders.

Some of the tension fades from him too, but not all of it.

He asks, concern entangled with gravely bits of exhaustion, “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

You say nothing, your own voice failing you as you mentally struggle to not only find your thoughts but string them together in a coherent way.

Everything around you was blurry. Felt unstable. A cold, clammy sweat licks up your palms and forehead. The ground beneath you grows a mouth and threatens to swallow you whole- the shadows in the corner ominous and great, watching.

Of course, it was only a nightmare, an unpleasant dream that you’d laugh about and forget easily enough come morning. But right now, it’s not. It’s vivid and horrifying and amalgamating into the atoms of reality to create a special kind of paranoia. It won’t let you sleep tonight.

…Not unless something’s there to hold you, at least.

Sylus’s own voice is groggy, a bit confused. Almost unthinkingly, though, he extends a hand to welcome you.

“C’mere,” he lifts the blanket and you’re instantly drawn to the empty space beside him.

You assume it with eagerness and all but barrel into his chest, punching out a grunt from him before he chuckles faintly, reaching over to pull on the thin, beaded chain. Darkness paints across your surroundings but a small highlight swims in cherry-red eyes as they soften at you.

Strong, lean arms wrap around you, helping you burrow into him without objection.

“Was it a nightmare?” He murmurs just above a whisper, voice warm but rough as the fluffy comforters, the same ones he tucks you both under, hug him back in. “Haven’t had one of those in a while, hm?”

He feels you jerkily nod under the dip of his chin and makes a sighing response. Callous finger pads close around your back and rub little circles there meant to soothe. “S’okay, kitten. It’s over now,” he breathes, languidly pecking your temple with open lips, smearing away the part of your fringe that’s been pasted there by a cold sweat.

He has this weird habit of taking you under his wing despite his serrated edges and the natural intensity of his stone face; right now, you curl up closer to his breast, finding a tenderness he perhaps only reserves for you, and he exhales overhead.

Fears are fast to flee, wrapped up by him. As moments pass, and your erratic heart rate resumes a more normal pace, you sound your gratitude in a low murmur. Vaguely, you wonder if you’d also stirred Sylus from a nightmare of his own upon stumbling into his room, because his own pulse- typically extremely slow- undulates in his sternum.

It thumps against your ear, creating a cadence almost considered fast. A touch uneven and a lot loud.

“…Thank you, daddy,” you mouth against him, nuzzling into his pajamas- a thin, linen shirt that oozes a domesticity you’re hard-pressed to come by.

Beneath your ear— a skip.

“For… for always being there for me.”

It sounds a little sappy, but in the moment, none of that phases you. Evidently- with a low, contented hum emanating from deep within his chest- it doesn’t phase Sylus, either.

You wonder if it’s your imagination or a real, bonafide smile that curves against your head.

“Well, that’s where I belong, isn’t it? At your side,” he murmurs, and after a beat you feel his lips press a kiss to your crown, mild but lingering. “And you belong at mine, if you want it. I’ll always be here for you, sweetie,” he promises, “no matter what.”

Finally, you let your eyes flutter shut.

✦

Weeks pass. They do so pleasantly; slowly, but not in a bad way.

The quiet- mainly the lack of wandering from point A to B all for the sake of anonymity- is a welcome reprieve. Some doubts linger surrounding the agreement you and Sylus came to, but it becomes a more solid idea in your head as days pass without interuption:

This can be home.

So you start acting like it.

When noon hits, you don’t go with Wolfe, Sylus’s most trusted contact, for the usual training session when he swings by- bidding him farewell with a small wave- but instead stay back to work on the house.

Noon comes and goes. The sky turns dusky and your belly howls for food but you pay none of it any mind, too engrossed to care.

Because this is exciting.

You decorate all throughout the day, unwrap furniture from cardboard and feel anticipation swell inside you. You sing and twirl.

Before Sylus returns, you buzz with excitement while picturing his face upon walking in- not to a barren space but to a cozy one- and the rare show of his surprise. It’ll probably be nothing beyond a flare of his eyes or a soft sound of acknowledgement, but you pine for it all the same.

You’d like to make him happy. To make him feel more comfortable, at home. Especially after a long day spent weaseling throughout the blind spots of the city. He’s only allowed so much time to kick off his shoes and relax, and you want to highlight those moments for him.

It’s the least you can do, you think with a small smile, stepping down from a stool to appraise a photo you just hung (one with his hand around your waist, pulling you to his side— a would-be perfect photo if not for the crow that blurs in the corner of the lens).

Focused, you stick your tongue out and square your fingers, closing one eye because that’ll definitely help you make a better judgement on whether or not the frame is straight enough—

It slants sharply when the front door opens and slams.

You jolt, ripped from your small trance as you spin your head towards the entryway, only an iota prepared to run for the hallway and bird dive into the closet- that’s if you even make it in time. Bullets will always be faster than your little legs and if you’re correct in your belief that it’s those shady men who hate Sylus, come to retaliate against him, then there’s no way they’ll deliberate and give you a chance to escape—

Sock-clad feet halt on the floor. The stop in momentum hurls your head inches beyond your axis of balance, but the figure that freezes in the threshold, familiar, tall but hunched over, somehow seems more surprised.

Not at the new touch-ups on the walls and the neat, embellished rooms- no, but at you.

Trudging into the apartment, he looks worse for wear and you take the sight of him in with a different, growing kind of alarm.

Your shoulders ease up, just slightly. It’s not an intruder, a pack of big, unscrupulous men barging in to avenge some grievance related to the assassin who took you in- which is relieving, but the concern is tight in your brow all the same.

When he speaks, his voice is ragged. Half man half animal.

“Sweetie- what are you-?” He cuts himself short to make a sound of displeasure that comes from deep within his throat. Raw, brutal.

“You shouldn’t be here-!” You give a little flinch in response to the ferocity in his tone, phlegm catching in his trachea before he looks down, shakes his head with a hard blink, and stomps into the bulwarks of the apartment.

“Dad, you-?”

Ignoring your startle (perhaps blind to it; you think his mind is on other, more inward matters as something wild glints in his eye- paired with a conflict that worsens with each heaving breath), Sylus grabs your wrist, and he does it tightly.

“There’s no time- I need you to hurry. Help me with my suppressants- now!”

Something clicks in you, then, a distant memory lighting itself from a foggy space of remembrance.

“And kitten, listen to me. If I ever… lose control,” he starts, words a gentle, almost resigned mumble against a backdrop of city sirens and a snarling engine as the car veers into a more secluded road. You stare at his profile with a flicker of unease. But he remains composed, saying as if it’s a topic as simple as the weather, “I need you to handle me,” he glances at you, gaze steady, a brilliant, solid red, even as your mouth opens to bluster out a denial of that possibility.

“But- your suppressants- We can use them—“

“Maybe,” he turns to look out the windshield, at the road ahead. Dust and debris scrape in the wind. Even for the southern district, the place was ratty, but this is where the deal was to be had, and Sylus needed those vials before morning. “But things don’t always go as planned, you know that, sweetie. So… If something ever fails, or I become immune to the dosages— I taught you how to shoot.”

“I- I wouldn’t shoot—!“

He snaps his head over and barks, fingers whiting around the wheel. “You would! You would and you will.”

Startled, your vision blurring despite the hand you close firmly over your breast- as if balling your emotions in your palm, holding them at bay- you swallow. Scarlet eyes ripple, irises dancing around a black orb as it shrinks and becomes frantic. Unease flutters in your chest as his cold instructions turn over in your mind- but for all his hammering of them into you- you don’t bite the hand that feeds. It’s just not in your nature.

You don’t even bite the hand if it asks you to.

Begs.

Noting your shock, the stunned expression that barely masks a confused kind of hurt, your guardian blinks. Sighs and looks away.

Exhaust blows out from the back of the vehicle; you catch it in dark tails from the rear view mirror, in whiffs as the air around you becomes sour and noxious.

“I taught you to shoot,” he says again after a beat. Softer, this time. “When it gets to the point where it really matters,… don’t let your daddy down, okay? Please, sweetie. Just… agree on this one thing.”

For once in a handful of years, not considered easy by any means- but enjoyable at his side- you stare at the man who took you in and find him cruel.

You dip your chin, more out of hurt than anything else, highly uncertain as dread contricts your lungs, and nod.

It does what it was meant for: It placates him. You think it even convinces him.

He’s putting all his faith in it, in that wordless assent you’d given him years ago, for the sake of the present.

Though, Sylus still thinks it’s manageable. That there’s still a shot that this frenzy- triggered by an enhancer after a gloved hand squeezed glass to the point of bleeding, vindictive and bent on getting the last laugh- can be resolved. So you hurry to lay him on the couch as his breathing picks up, scuttling towards his room before coming back with arms full of a briefcase.

You crash to the rug and prop the case on the coffee table, fishing out a syringe before sidling up to him and taking his arm.

With some resistance- and a grunt that sounds more wolfish than man- he lets you, and you line up the needle with his arm. You say a curse under your breath when tears smear across your lids and make fuzzy the room around you.

“Hurry,” he rasps.

Shakily, you dig at the crook of his arm with your thumb to plump up the vein before- with little coordination- you feed the needle in with a sharp breath.

It mingles with Sylus’s as he makes an uncomfortable noise, the glittery fluid disemboguing into his bloodstream.

Split seconds feels like eons.

Time moves slow as molasses and you chew on your lip until something like metal sours your tongue.

Between fingers that tremble wildly just to keep it inside him, steadily injecting him with the suppressant, and a heart that pounds with uncertainty in your ears— given no assurance whatsoever that you’re not too late to pacify him— you don’t realize all the gawking on his part.

The ardency in his gaze, fleetingly tender, as it remains fixed to you. Some unspoken battle happening behind it.

…The darker thing, with a name you can’t assign, is winning out.

He feels it, too; conscious thought lending itself to his baser person— instincts, ugly and primal and overwhelming— all against his will.

“You were supposed to be with Wolfe,” He forces out with great difficulty, sweat beading his temple. He’s hot to the touch, skin like a kiln, baking your fingertips as they hover over him.

Light as feathers, you still feel the burn.

“I would’ve never came.”

Thickly, you swallow, rubbing his forearm soothingly even as the veins there bulge and glow, putting a fright in you that you do well to ignore.

He needs you right now. He needs you and you won’t fail him.

“Shh, shh,” you hush, folding your upper half over the sofa to plant your head against his shoulder.

One hand, between your bodies, gradually plies him with the suppressant; the other slips to the nape of his neck and intwines with his mullet, tugging softly.

He lets out a soft sound at that, temporarily appeased.

“It’s okay, daddy. It’s okay.”

You need it to be true.

For what it’s worth, he does seem just a touch comforted by that.

It’s not lasting.

He’s dangerous, and he knows. He’s losing out to the predator instinct, and he knows and he’s terrified but he remains rigid. Has to.

“I want you to inject all of it into my veins,” a sonorous voice rings at your ear, dry, open lips moving against your head as he smushes a kiss there. You think it’s more subconscious a move than anything as the cognizant trace in him fades out, albeit you still appreciate it.

A large hand, hanging off the couch- shaking not because it’s weak but because it’s trying its best to be- shifts to rest over your back.

He continues, “And then I want you to leave me. If we’re lucky, I’ll pass out and ride it through that way…”

Clenching your jaw, you nod against his neck, under his chin, and bite down on a whimper.

“You’ll be okay, daddy. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be all better. The suppressants w-will make you sleepy, and—“

Something surges in him, then, a growl cutting through your eardrums as you flinch back and he- before the second little vial even reaches the halfway tick- knocks it from your hands.

It collides with the coffee table and shatters.

The rug- the fluffy one you’d happily picked out with him some months back- darkens with a splotch you can’t easily scrub out.

Like an animal in a cage he’s revolted. You’re not naive enough to not see the movement for what it is; no matter how watered down, it’s still a version of it: a beast lunging.

Whatever’s left of his conscience is just barely barring that monster off, but as you fall back on your ass and gape at him, you realize with horror he will not turn out as the victor.

Fear brews in your belly. Butterflies swarm the pit of it, leaving nausea in the wake of their wings as they make quick work of your bravery- or the pretense you held of it.

A drop of blood pricks from the crook of his arm, the syringe made useless as it lay broken on the carpet: you watch it with shock, numbness almost, before looking up to him.

He forces himself to go recumbent, five fingers splayed over his face. The gaps in them, though, reveal grimacing, pearly teeth.

Canines bared no different than a hungry predator, defensive and bold.

Unlike you, very real in their display.

For a number of seconds, you do not breathe. Eyes wide and scared.

“Go,” he croaks out after a moment.

It takes longer than it should to register.

When it does, you gasp as if stirred from a bad dream. It’s precious- the sign he gives that he’s still in control- and you don’t take it for granted. You rise to wobbling knees, frenetically glancing between the dazzling shards and his heaving chest.

You extend a cautionary, worried hand, something in you utterly wrecked at the sight of him- your savior, your shield, your father figure- crumpled in on himself.

“Daddy—“

“Go!”

Silence strobes across the living room, but just for a second. It bites into you where it settles.

Unthinkingly, you turn. His words and their grating tone cut better than any knife ever could. Tears clinging to your lashes, you steel your legs (because they’re gelatinous beneath you), whip around, and start for the front door.

You don’t know where you’ll go apart from Sylus tonight, but that’s all to be figured out later after you calm your nerves down a bit and convince yourself it’ll all be fine—

The couch groans atop its wooden frame.

Suddenly, a hand snatches around your wrist, scorching hot, and when you swirl around, his head is bowed.

A whit of hope strings you along—

“D-Dad?” You breathe, “Are you okay now?”

Scarlet eyes peer up from a silvery curtain of hair, aflame, near glowing, and you let out a gasp.

—And drops you.

“I thought you wanted to help little old me? So…” he muses darkly, “where are you going?”

The reality of your situation takes a second to catch up to you.

Something that can accurately be called fear clamps in your chest— not for what he could be but for what he is now. Some change has happened in him, some sickness taken root, and until it passes, you’ll be victim to the beast that wears your savior’s face.

Stunned, you listen. “Has your father ever left you hanging? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same?”

“Sylus-“

He tuts, a belittling sound. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. C’mere, kitten, sit.” Long fingers entwine around your wrist and you’re reminded of wolf paws trampling over twigs in forests. It’s not unbearably tight a grip, not yet, at least, but he’s certainly applying more pressure than what he generally does.

You wet your dry lip, dread wringing you from the inside out. You feel oddly parched.

“But Sylus- you’re not-“

“Sit,” he suddenly growls, something undeniably dark glittering in his eye.

You’re without opportunity to argue or even try to reason with him, because he yanks you into his lap and loops his arms around your middle.

You liken yourself to a bird in a cage. His limbs your bars and your soft sounds of fear like twittering.

Using the last of your rational thought- your brain losing ground to fight or flight instinct- you try to think back to his instructions (funereal as they were), but find yourself creating other options. Even if you did want to shoot Sylus like he’d made you promise all those years ago, it’s not like you’ve got a gun lying around for it… No, the one he gave you (the one you keep as a token of him, like a locket) is sandwiched between your mattress and its framework.

A-And that’s where it’ll stay. No matter what.

Because you don’t bite the hand that feeds. You don’t bite the hand that feeds even after it pleads to be.

You decide, right then, that it’s better to play dead.

Sat perfectly still in his lap, your plan succeeds for all of half a minute before a hitch appears. To begin with, it was one born out of desperation, with low expectancy- but damn it all you still flinch when you become aware of his teeth and your proximity to them.

Fangs brush against your throat, uncomfortably sharp. It raises alarm in you, but it’s quickly lost in the other warning bells clanging in your skull.

You shiver. To your horror, Sylus chuckles.

“Are you scared I’ll hurt you?” He murmurs, breath searing your neck where it fans against it. It’s labored and fast; the depravity amplified against your earlobe.

Somewhere in you, you find the courage to answer. “A- A little,” you feebly admit. “I couldn’t get all the suppresants in.”

Sylus hums, low and satisfied, but you don’t quite miss the undercurrent of decadence in it- as much as you might want to.

“Good,” he quips. “Frenzies feel so much better without the pushback. You shouldn’t have injected any in me in the first place.”

“But you said-“

“It’s in my DNA to want to bite. It’s a little cruel to keep me from that… don’t you think?”

A debate happens within you, short-lived but tumultuous. You deliberate on answering because really, how can you? What is there to say that can temper him when he’s like this? A predator in the flesh.

And the thing about predators is that, somewhere in the equation, there must be prey—

But no. No- you refuse to believe he’ll succumb to that animalism, not when he’s more or less like blood to you. Your trust for him runs as thick as it, anyway. Blood is thicker than water, and poison, too- so the toxic lilt in his voice means nothing. Nothing at all.

You swallow, unable to offer any real reply. “I- I-“

“No,” he snips, a palm drifting lower. Positively impatient. Ever the obliging, albeit sometimes brusque man, the Sylus you know is nowhere to be found.

“Tell daddy what you really think of him. Think he’s a monster, don’t you?”

Finally, he nips at your neck, cutting himself loose from the self restraint he stubbornly moored himself to, groaning at the softness. Seamlessly, he suckles a hickey into your throat and you mewl.

The single thread of whatever the hell it is that’s keeping him at bay- his buried conscience, perhaps- snaps.

He makes a hot, ferocious sound, pawing at your breast now, drawing a startled yelp from you that his gums throb at. “Should he act accordingly? Hm? Use your words, kitten.”

Words? No. No, you think actions would suit you better- he’s not in his right mind right now and you need to leave like he’d ordered before your image of him, the one you’d put on a precious pedestal, collapses.

Daringly, you get up to try and bolt out again, mind single as your eyes dart to the front door.

If you can just leave the apartment, maybe you can lose him in the weaving, shady paths that are labyrinthine Linkon. Surely, he’ll find someone else, someone deserving (culpable men are not hard to come by here), and make them his glorified plaything instead.

By the time the sun rises, he’ll have woken from this awful, twisted trance—

He lets out a roar, angrily snatching you back onto the couch.

This time, though, there’s no semblance of freedom as he pins you under him, hovering close enough to bump his long nose against yours as he grips your hips tight enough to bruise.

“Nawh, you wound me, sweetie… And here I thought…” he rasps, ruby eyes glossing as the lid droops, blatantly ogling your jostling breast, “You had daddy’s better interest in mind.”

That’s unclear. But yours? Your better interest?

There it is again- blitzing across your frazzled conscience, stark against the dreadful haze: Play dead.

You do.

The blow will come, that’s definite. But if you play your cards right, maybe, a small hope in the back of your head says, you can lessen it.

You go limp beneath him and his hands. Even as they grope your tits through your shirt before he quickly foregoes that charade in favor of ripping open the collar, you remain still. You clamp your eyes shut and bite down on a pathetic sound.

Each and every one of your intentions evade riling him up, and yet your mere presence, pliant but shivering beneath him, does a good enough job at that on its own.

Still, as his energy builds into a devastating force, you’re quietly thankful for the amount you did manage to get in with the syringe. Likely, you realize with a heavy swoop of your heart, the determining factor in your life.

H-How much was it again-? Two vials? Or a vial and a half-?

Briefly, you glance over to the table where the case lay, open but half empty, and contemplate something stupid before the man- beast- above you laughs. Asserts himself in your face.

He’s all you see when he says, “I guess you don’t have your better interest in mind, either. Hm, kitten?”

And you’re all he smells, feels, knows, as he ruts his clothed cock against your thigh and you feel the swollen bulge. You shiver again. He’s really, really hard and is he actually planning to fuck you with that-?

You?

The pleasured, but not close to satisfied, grunt he makes says yes. Yes, absolutely he’s going to fuck you.

Rip off your panties after uncivilly pulling off your shorts and stuff his flushed length inside with a—

—“Fuck, kitty!”

He’s met with resistance.

And you forget your plan completely, terror taking over entirely as you begin to wriggle and plead for him to hold off, to reconsider— you’re a virgin and he’s mean and given your relationship, you two were never supposed to end up parallel to one another on the couch, desire brewing between your naked bodies. Well, you’re naked- or growingly; but Sylus isn’t.

Scraps of leather cling to sturdy, lean muscle, but he’s broiling in them still, skin licked with sweat. Evidently, heat has fried his neurons- his memory of himself- too.

“Please, daddy, I- I’ll—“

Oh, break. You’ll one hundred percent break but you keep from saying it aloud because you suspect it’ll warm his blood all the more. A correct guess, but it’s a little late for taking back what you did say. Sylus cottons onto it and groans.

“Don’t do this, Sylus,” you try to remind him of who he really is, even if your voice is small and untrustworthy. “Y-You don’t have to. J-Just remember who you are- who I am!”

His precious girl.

Once, he’d even said, his treasure.

Your heart stings.

Taking out the engorged, weeping head of him and rubbing it at your mostly-dry entrance (in hopes to prime it after failing to push his way inside), he’s hardly lucid as you babble.

Cute… But unimportant, he decides.

…Yet, he does somehow find it in him to look up, and you do find a trace of… something in him, human-like and guilty, when he does. It’s quicksilver. Gone when you blink.

Your pussy lips try to spit him out but it just works him up further.

The darkness in his gaze returns in tenfold.

He manages a scoff. “Oh, c’mon. Of course I remember~ You’re daddy’s little girl, aren’t you?” He hums meanly, suddenly immune to the wide, kicked look you send him. It’s always done wonders on him before, but you’re met with failure.

“So how come you can’t take his cock? I know you could, if you just tried a little harder. Relaaax. Ease up. From now on, someone’s gonna have to be the calm one between us when I get into my frenzies. You can be that, right?” That sentence instills dismay in you for many reasons, but you have no time to think on them.

He husks, “Now, go on. Help guide me in.”

You don’t reach a hand down between you two like perhaps he wanted, but you do hear a faint squelch right then as he cants his hips forward an inch, and it does make you gasp. Despite yourself, you slick up for him- for God knows what reason, maybe just as self preservation or some deeper, pitiful attempt to please him- and it becomes obvious.

Sylus notes it with a shaky breath that blends with his other labored, ragged ones, and a grin that’d better suit a bastard.

He delves inside, by a small miracle, but you can’t stop from crying when he reaches halfway in and blood rings around the thick base of him. Inwardly, you try to separate the sin from the face, telling yourself between strained breaths that he’s not in control, that this frightening, terribly unfamiliar side isn’t the real him.

You whimper more when you realize you’ll be squinting at him for months to come, losing sleep over the question of, was he helpless to the beast, or hiding it in him all along? Was he a mere victim to the predator instinct forced onto him? or willfully steering it—?

No. No. Because he’s like blood to you. And blood is thicker than water, and poison, and the niggling doubts you feed on until gluttony.

“I-It hurts,” you try when he bottoms out with a resounding groan. Shameless and frenetic. He stoops over you after pressing your legs all the way back to the couch, rough as he purrs in your ear.

“You say it hurts, but your pussy just squeezes tighter around me… So you’d understand why I’d be getting mixed reactions, don’t you?”

He whispers. For the second documented time, you find Sylus cruel. Very, painfully, cruel.

It’s hard to argue with him, even when you know he’s wrong. You think if he was more awake right now, more him, then he’d side with you as well. And yet he’s completely untrustworthy right now, morally black and mean. So, so mean.

That devilish smirk on his blissed-out face might bring on an even sharper sting than his cock as it spears inside you and starts a brutal pace.

Well.

Not quite.

Your eyes flare. So do his, want and pure, unadulterated need zipping between your bodies as his perspiration dribbles onto your collar. He hangs his head into your shoulder and you feel droplets slip between the valley of your breast.

It doesn’t take long for the heat to feel sweltering; sweat running like the Nile between you both.

“Silly little bird. You just- hah, fuck- have no clue, do you? How tempting you are?”

You ignore it all because it’s better to. Maybe ignorance won’t shield you from his hands as they clench around the fat of your hips, but it’ll certainly help you later on down the line when you want to forget and are thankful for the kickstart.

You try to focus on the ceiling, but even that blurs behind him when he leans back some just to stare, moaning at what he sees.

Even beasts can appreciate beauty, he distantly observes.

Those eyes on you, not gentle per usual (albeit sometimes tinged with a harmless tease) but ravenous and sharp- are even harder to ignore. You can’t stop your hands from lifting to push at his face to try to block him out.

All for naught, of course.

With a choked moan, he chuckles. “Ugh- look at you. These little hands keep swatting at me, even though your face is full of pleasure. Fuck,” he curses, his face handsome but a bit unnerving as it dons a more perverted look, eyes half closed, “You feel…. good. I always knew you would.”

No. No. Shut up, shut up—

“You wanna be good for your daddy?”

Yes.

Not like this.

He gathers your unruly hands and cuffs them above your head. “Then lie down and take it. If it hurts as much as you pretend, I’m sure it’ll… feel better that way, if you give in.”

There’s a very small window in between Sylus hovering over you and then Sylus dipping down to bite the fleshy bit between your neck and shoulder: in it, there’s no time to prepare.

Ice tingles in your veins, shock stealing your breath.

It’s the pain, first dull and uncomfortable as his teeth sink in, but then quickly all-consuming, that helps you find the scream.

The scream— a small, broken cry.

It doesn’t make much noise, not enough for any possible neighbors to hear- in Linkon, none would even bat an eye to it, anyway- but he covers your mouth regardless. He eats up the pathetic sounds with rough lips and hungry groans.

You don’t know how much blood he’s drawn, but there’s a little on his teeth that he makes you taste.

“Ngh, you’re delicious,” he heaves after a break. Saliva connects you both in a fleeting strand. “I’m sure your pussy tastes even better- but kitten, I really don’t have the time right now to try it. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” He chuckles in your ear. You know he does not care for the answer. It’s deep and mean-spirited.

This side of Sylus- this rotten caricature of the man who took you in— All the hurt for it turns to loathing.

“For later,” he decides after a beat, resolved as he ignores your sneer.

You’re used to ambition on his end, but not greed: right now, his goals gravitate more towards selfishness than anything else.

All of it nears its end and quickly.

As he ruts into you, though, frenzied thrusts reaching their mark with loud grunts, it feels more gradual for you… Painfully slow. Seconds might as well be minutes, or hours, even.

It’s feral, the glint in his eye as he reshapes your walls to fit the outline of his massive cock, your virgin pussy spasming around him. Responsively, he gives a twitch, and you swear you feel his balls jump when he pauses- just for a moment- and they rest above your ass.

Sylus looks down at you, breathless and wild, and you shake at the lack of familiarity in his gaze. Ruby red eyes survey you almost frantically, with one intent only- to fuck you within an inch of your life, undoubtedly. Full of need. It’s a bottomless gaze. You think right then that you can’t give him what he wants because he’ll always be left wanting for more.

You’re not an ocean— if he reaches his hand in, he’ll inevitably reach the bottom but that clearly doesn’t stop him from trying to pull everything from out of you anyway.

It scares you. You feel small, mouse-like, but when he snatches your jaw into a sultry kiss, all canines and spit, you realize that even amidst the tumult of his predator state, you still mean something to him.

You’re all he sees. Feels. Understands to want for.

He burns inside you, the juncture of your thighs becoming sticky, gross. He ploughs inside without care for it, chasing his end and choking out moans along the way.

He coaxes some out of you, too.

Maybe it’s out of fear but you suckle on his tongue experimentally and he shakes, damp skin shivering under your finger pads as you dig them into his forearm.

Maybe you can’t play dead, but if all else fails, you can still play nice.

That’s in your best interest.

“F-uck, sweet thing, you’re gonna make me-“ a primal noise rips through his chest and rings in your ears. He lowers himself to your neck again and suckles at the orbs of blood that prick at the surface, lapping away at the small mess he made.

You wonder if after all this is over, you’ll be able to pretend it was just a love-bite, a hickey or something minor. Healable. Something able to be forgiven. Even if that would also be hard to reconcile with, considering you’d never thought he do something like this to you, the precious girl he’d flip Linkon upside down for—

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He’s classy, but not now. Cursing up a storm at your clavicle and pounding into you without thought, blunt nails embedding into your hips. Aching to brand himself wherever he can.

There’s no ceremony to it all (though there is a build-up, his pelvis quickening but stuttering against the underside of your bent thighs) when he comes.

He shouts and you scream, holding onto him for dear life as a torrent of something hot and thick floods you. Your legs shake, poor cunt desperately trying to push its intruder out but it flutters when he throbs inside you and quivers. A wisp of pleasure paralyzes you- it’s so good.

Warmth trickles between you; all along the seam of you when he withdraws until only the tip remains, his cheeks flushed, eyes unfocused.

You let your head bounce against the cushion when he slides it all out with a wet ‘pop’, squeezing your eyes shut in shame. But relief joins it, too, your jaw (that had went slack only to howl with delight) closing as you catch your breath.

It’s done. It’s over. You went through the hard part and now you just have to wait the aftershocks of it out until morning, when you’ll finally be given the chance to recuperate and forget the monster your daddy was acting the night before—

Something thick, straightening back to life, nudges at your sopping hole again as it clenches around nothing. Your eyes snap open.

A large, callous palm holds you down, bracing you by the collarbone. He tuts, leaning over you with a dazed but wholly vicious grin.

Far from satiated.

“Ah-ah, kitten. It’s a little early to tap out, isn’t it? I’m far from done with you.”

He drives himself back home, slamming into you with a moan you brokenly mirror.

✦

Morning birds tweet outside the window. Bickering back and forth to one another.

The sheer curtains glow with sunlight as the onset of dawn makes its way in. Rays of it slur together in blocks on the floor.

Sylus’s room, you realize groggily. Not the living room with its new sofa stained with sweat and sex or the rug with its shattered, neon vials.

A strong arm holds lazily to your waist. Warm breath at your ear tickles you into slight wakefulness. The body slotted behind yours isn’t scorching hot like your nerve endings remember, though, almost flinching in response, and his sounds aren’t ragged. No, it’s…

Peaceful.

The events of the evening before come back to you in increments.

Your mind, with the natural want to protect you, chalks it all up to a bad dream.

The ache between your sticky legs and the fat cockhead that sits limply above the cleft of your ass- appeased- says otherwise.

You let out a soft gasp. The man behind you grumbles out a low, noncommittal sound before his lashes flutter over the blade of your shoulder.

“…Baby? What’s wrong?”

He untucks himself from there and is given great pause when his nakedness- and yours- clicks. His limbs harden around you— horrified and confused as every fresh memory from last night comes barreling into him as well.

Stunned, he lifts his head from its perch at your shoulder, but his hand remains above your hip, feather light and hesitant.

Wearily, you turn to meet him when his other hand gently steers your chin to look his way.

He looks tired. Fucking exhausted, the fine wrinkles in his face emphasized under the weight of the night prior. He looks—

Devastated.

“You-…” A sharp, shallow breath beats from his chest. His eyes, wide and unsteady, flit between yours, searching desperately for something he can’t quite find or recognize as you wet your lip to speak.

“Yesterday, I… Started decorating the house. I was excited to show you,” you say without really knowing why. Sylus’s shoulders sag ever so slightly at your apparent calmness, but the fear in his eye remains as he surveys the bruises- all the discoloration in your otherwise supple skin- and blinks.

You inhale shakily, looking down to his chest and all its striations, put on full display in the afterglow of what transpired however many hours before.

It feels wrong to call it a night of love-making, or even a term more raw, unfeeling, as sex. No, it was…

He fucked you within an inch of your life and that was all you really knew. He fucked you until you passed out and then sometime afterwards, apparently snapped out of his trance just enough to carry you back to his bed and sleep the remnant of his frenzy through.

But it wasn’t his fault. Couldn’t have been.

(Whose, then?)

You murmur, “I should’ve went with Wolfe.”

“No,” and there it is again, that fucking snarl, searing you through to the core but before panic can settle, he’s cradling your cheeks and pressing his forehead to yours.

His eyes are intense, but not scary. No, they’re tender and beaten and lovely as his chest shudders and he shakes his head. “No, sweetie. What happened…” he starts, just as unsure of how to label it, “had nothing to do with you. Don’t ever blame it on yourself. Do you understand?”

Blearily, you nod.

You see him in double when he sighs and carefully thumbs away a tear you didn’t realize had formed and fell.

…But Sylus appears a mite uncertain with himself when his eyes fall to your breast before quickly averting, self aware to the point of near pain and definite discomfort. “I’ll clean us up,” he ventures, glancing at you again.

For permission, you realize. To scoop your jelly limbs up and carry you to the shower, bridal-style, where he’ll wash the both of you naked, intimate and-

And should-be alarming.

But it’s not. Not now when you’re still dazed and bruised and his dried cum is caked to your thighs in white rivulets- and he’s just as wounded, but ready to fix. Ready to repaint over the peeling bits of you both in the aftermath of it all. Hang a picture over the hole in the wall of your heart.

“…Okay.”

He wastes no time in picking you up, but he’s gentler than ever when he takes you with him to the bathroom adjoined to his room. It’s awkward: you note that even in the bone-deep fatigue. You can tell he’s trying not to look at all the places instinct tells him he should, and you do well to blot out the sight (and memory) of his softened cock as it dangles between his legs.

The shower starts. Sylus keeps you upright so you don’t fall because your joints will literally fail you otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” he laments as the water pours overhead, holding you against him. He means it in more ways than one. And yet, before you can voice your acknowledgement, and an unsure forgiveness, a small hope stirring in your gut that says this can be moved on from—

His lips press to yours. Chaste but searing; somehow even more world-shattering than last night.

It’s different. He’s… awake.

Jaw slack, you blink at him, water clumping your lashes both. He’s as handsome as a wolf is hungry but- for the moment- domesticated. Even his crow’s feet seem to soften.

“I’ll help you unpack the rest today,” is all he says as he reaches behind you for the soap, gaze unwavering even as you latch onto him and your perfect tits jiggle, his hand dipping below to carefully lather at your marks.

“This house can still be a home. I’ll show you.”

𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔, 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔, + 𝒓𝒆𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 ♡

#sylus x reader smut #love and deepspace #love and deepspace sylus #sylus smut #lads #sylus #love and deepspace smut #lads x reader #love and deepspace x reader #lads smut #sylus x you #sylus qin #sylus x reader #calebrity #algorithm dont hoe me #ill post this to ao3 for anyone who wants it there right after i hit the gym #this one def wont be for everyone but i hope yall like it anyway 🥲💞

2K notes · View notes

foone · 1 year ago

Text

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant

#this is not in any way pro-ai #but I don't know how to tag this

14K notes · View notes

whambambatfam · 2 months ago

Text

Webs of a Wing

Chapter 3

It's scrunkly time.

I hope you guys like it, I wasn't so sure about this one. T∆T

Reader ages 12 - 15

───── ⋆⋅ 🕸 ⋅⋆ ─────

Not long after Grayson's departure from the manor... He came along, Jason Todd.

Coming in, rough around the edges, and bringing joy to the hollow halls. Ones you've roamed like a ghost on your own for years. He's got more adolescent defiance than your whole clique put together. The type of energy that shook up the old bones of this old house and awakened hope in your heart once again.

This was the kid's first time having a solid roof over his head, warm bed to sleep in, decent food to eat and people to worry about him, a real home. Unlike Bruce, who couldn't come to terms with your relations or Dick, who felt threatened by it. Jason was loud and clear in his intentions, he wanted to make the most of his new family. Including you.

A boy with black hair, blue eyes, and a stocky build for a twelve year old stands besides Alfred. “Master Jason will be living with us in the manor. He'll be a brother of sorts to you, just as Master Dick.” but you didn't want this to be like your and Dick's unstable relationship.

Alfred smiled at the determination set on your face as you gave him your name, “It's nice to meet you.” your hand quickly outstretched to the boy, “Uh, I hope.. we can be.. friends?”

Jason's face lights up your offer, taking your hand in his, “Yeah, friends. ‘Never had a sibling before.” Tugging you closer, his hand in yours pulls you along, “Come on, show me around.”

From then on, your days spent with only Alfred for company had a new, refreshing addition.

Alfred has allowed the two of you to start cooking your own breakfast unsupervised. Given that you don't burn the kitchen down. “How many times have you done this?” Jason huffs as he picks egg shells from the bowl he's whisking. They slip through the tongs of the fork as he scrapes them along the side.

Pouring your egg mixture into the frying pan, you smile teasingly at him. “Only a few.” You take the bowl from his frustrated hands, “Try this, it might be more your speed.”

He accepts the wrapped loaf of bread with a scowl. Pulling out the toaster with a grumble, “I'm not an idiot, I know how to fend for myself.”

“I never said you were. I've seen you do all kinds of stuff.” You move to the sink, wetting your fingers to pluck the last bits from the bowl. “

Jason turns away, stuffing four slices into the double toaster. “So it's just cooking that i suck at?” He drops his head on the counter, arms crossing as he grumbles.

Returning to the stove, you move your own cooking egg to the side. “No! You're the best at, like, everything you do.” Tipping the contents into the pan it sizzles to life again. “A few shells won't change that.”

There's pink clinging to his ears at your praise, “I'm not good at everything..”

“Oh my- obviously!”

“What!?” Sputtering, he whips his head around.

“It's bruning!” Yanking the plug from the toaster, the blackened squares pop up together. Three out of the four of them come out half charred.

“Tha-that doesn't count.” The heat creeping up his neck flushes his face. “You distracted me!”

“Uhuh, yeah.” You slide the omelet onto a plate for Jason as he replaces the burnt bread. “Your eggs are done.”

Jason is quick to deflect the old butler's inquiries on the smell of burnt bread. You'd hate to have your kitchen privileges revoked. When you offer to teach him how to crack eggs and use the toaster, he tells you to shut up with an obscured smile.

You were happy. Even when the newest boy wonder was busy training his nights away with the Bat. Talking about Bruce, spending time with him, connecting with him like you never could. Even when Dick started to hang around again. Coming to the manor, eventually joining the occasional patrol. Now Nightwing, protector of Blüd Haven. Brand new spandex, stupid big collar, and everything.

It didn't hurt to see him appear to come around slowly to his successor. Eventually accepting his replacement with relative ease. When you would always just be a thorn in his side, locked in a one-sided fight for first.

"You know how to fight, right?" The two of you were sitting outside. It was as muggy as Gotham usually is but it felt nice to be out.

He snorts, tossing a stone hard across the water. "Of course. Can't get by on the streets without." The small rock hops only twice before sinking.

Swiping a smooth stone from the shoreline, you run your finger along it, inspecting each divet and groove. "Can you.. teach me?"

Sure, you were trained in martial arts but, being on the mat differs from being on the street. While your work in Gymnastics has helped you slip through and run when need be. You knew you might have to fight back one day. Maybe you wanted to.

There's a huff of exasperation behind you "Yeah, no, not happening."

Dick Grayson's approach was silent until he wanted you to know he was there. Arms crossed and face already set in an unimpressed look.

“What?!" Jason jumps to his feet, making his way swiftly over, "I could totally do it!"

"Then what?" With a raise of his brow, he scoffs, "Get grounded forever?"

"It's not like I'm gonna take them-" Dick cuts him off with a raised hand.

"Stop, Jay. You're only going to get the both of you in trouble." The older siblings' hands make their way to his hips.

Tossing your rock across a water's surface, it skips along three times before sinking. “I'm not exactly new to it.”

You're almost surprised when Dick actually responds. "I'm sorry, kid. Bruce isn't going to be happy about it either.”

As if he would even notice. "You wouldn't have to be so.. worried if I could be taught to defend myself.” Sighing in irritation, you turn your gaze back to the water.

“You don't need to, we can protect you just fine." Dick steps up behind you, patting your head. The contact catches your breath painfully and you have to fight the urge to swat it away. "And if you really don't want anyone to worry. Stay home. Stay safe." Stay out of the way.

When he finally leaves, you feel like you can breathe again. Jason's abrupt grasp pulls your attention back to him, "Dickie and the old man can blow smoke." His grin was brighter than the sun, his hand clasping yours as he pulled you to your feet, "Let's go."

You can't fight the pull at your own lips, feet stumbling to catch up to his sudden pace. "Right behind you."

No, it didn't hurt. Because you won't let it, because, despite it all, he always came back to you.

After packing your schedule with martial arts training Mondays and Wednesday before stitch work and knitting circle with Alfred. Gwen decides to join your gymnastics, her studies leaving her sitting at a desk too long. Tuesdays you drag both girls to self defense classes, you've seen enough shit go down with the birds. Also, it's Gotham, they should be better equipped to handle themselves. Your photos with Mj for the paper is due Thursday morning in time for the paper to come out on Friday. That leaves the weekend up for grabs. This one in particular was claimed by both your friends and brother.

“Whatcha readin’?”

Jason jolts in his seat, slapping his hand over his mouth to subjugate any embarrassing noises. With a bark of your name he whips around to find you snickering over his shoulder.

Cerulean eyes narrow as he grumbles at you. “How do you do that.. it's unnatural.”

It was unnatural to he who trains under the Bat. You used to hate being unintentionally sneaking. Mj and Gwen can pick you out of a crowd of clones, there's no way you could sneak up on either of them. But, other people? Shrieking when they finally realized you were in the same room as them. That only made you feel even more invisible, and not in the ways you wanted.

You scoff, “That's dramatic.” Now, with Jason, you can finally get a laugh from it. Settling down on the couch beside him, you recognize the book in his hand, “Hey, that's one of mine!”

Swiping it away before you have the chance to snatch it, “Ha! Shouldn't have left it out.” he lifts the novella over his head, tongue stuck out at you.

“It was in my room, on my bed.” You huff, jumping for it as he stands, holding it over your head.

“Yeah, it was, wasn't it?” Jason smirks, waving the book just out of reach, “Y'know, you actually have taste. Sometimes.”

“Give it back!" Grabbing his forearm you try pulling it down but do better at lifting yourself off the ground.

"I'm almost done." He chuckles into his fist at your frantic cat like swiping.

"Wow. So, this is the totally cool brother you've been talking about?” At the sound of a new voice, he snaps his attention to Mj. Arms crossed as she leaned against the archway to the living room.

“Dunno.. Sounds like a bully to me.” Gwen chimes in coming up besides her. She mirrors Mjs stance, doubling the judgemental

The book falls from Jason's hands and you catch it. Tucking it away safely under your arm.“Wha- uh, no! I am totally cool, ask them!” Jason whips around to hiss at you, face flushed with mortification, “Why didn't you tell me you were bringing your friends over?”

You roll your eyes, “I did. That's, like, the one thing we talked about before school this morning.” You can just barely hear the strained ‘Oooooh, right.’ as he mumbled something about a long night under his breath. Of course, he tries to make a ‘smooth’ recovery only to be blasted by your friends. You do, eventually, come to his defense.

It's nice to bring these two sides of yourself together like this. Jason may make an ass of himself but at least he knows how to not lose face completely. It makes you proud when, at the end of their stay, they sing his praises. Insisting on involving him again in their next visit to the manor.

He came home, he sought you out, he wanted that connection you craved. The one thing you wanted, for one of them to look away from the stage of their busy lives and find you there. Waiting at home, creating that solace from a bustling world beyond these solid walls.

Creeping your door shut, you slide the lock closed. Having someone walk in on you was never a worry before. Now, whether it be doing homework together, exchanging books, deciding anything, general complaining and gossip, avoiding chores, especially hiding from Bruce and occasionally just to annoy you. Your brother struts in whenever the whim strikes him. The prick.. Shuffling to the bed, you land on it heavily alongside your bookbag. Books, pencils, and such escape their confines, your camera ferried out on top of the pile.

With a stretch and sigh, you get ready to nip pick. Three folders, each with a plethora of candids, articles, and notes. One in particular is becoming just a smidge overcrowded. Threatening to spill its contents every time it's jostled a bit too much.

What can you say? Your brother serves more than just justice in that cute lil Robin suit, and his action shots are the best. The guy is out there having fun and it shows. Your friends even agree when you can't help gushing over your late night photography sessions.

Well, after calling you crazy for going out at night in this city. Especially, with how close to the fighting you had obviously gotten. It may have taken a while to convince them that you weren't going to get yourself caught up in the middle of a Riddler maze or Two-face shoot out.

Deciding which should go in and which should come out is always a tedious process. The one with better exposure or with neater composition? You've already got a shot of him perched on that same gargoyle but, this one's a year old now. Maybe you could keep both, like a comparison, but you couldn't possibly.. maybe.. Then you'd go over your count and need to tosse another and you'd have to pick which and-Your cell rings.

Lost in thought, the noise makes you jump like a cat at the loud sound. Swiping the noisy thing off the sheets, you answer with a huff.

“Heyyyy.. Sorry, I can't make it tonight..” Jason's voice came through the phone with tight regret, “I've got, uh... something came up. Tomorrow, I promise.”

It was a phrase you've heard before, more times to count. They'd use such weak excuses, only for tomorrow to never come. There was no later.

“Yeah, it's okay Jay.” The response was automatic, coming without a thought. How could you deny their call to action? There were always going to be things more important. “I get it. Just.. be safe, okay?”

“Of course, not like I'm doing anything crazy. I'll be with Bruce, we're fine.”

So, it didn't hurt that he tried keeping you in the dark like they did. You knew his concern was real, his care genuine. At least you want to know that he meant it, that he wasn't trying to push you aside. You'd just have to trust him.

“Up there! It's Batman!” A young boy yelps and tugs at his mother's arm, finger raised to the sky.

Eyes cast upwards, you watch as they jump from one building to the next. Capes billowing in the wind behind them. Following close, you run along sidewalks and duck through alleyways to keep up.

Pulling your camera up, you snap shots of Robin as he leaps off a rooftop. Capturing him mid-air, bright yellow fluttering behind him. The domino hardly masking his face of sheer joy paired with intense focus. His were always your favorite, filling his folder was easy. You wish you could show him some of the pictures you have of him. Maybe someday the two of you could go through it together. Would he find it creepy? Hopefully not...

You would never dare voice it but, you were envious of them. When they took to the soggy Gotham skies, gliding with ease above it all. Mouth hung agape, you watched the wind blowing through Jason's hair, and Dick with his flips and twirls. Even Bruce, using his cape to glide alongside them.

Well, maybe you told- “Alfred!” Your ride’s here and your mad dash through the city has been cut short.

“Crime alley is no place for an upstanding teen.” He tuts with a smile as you reach the car. Always a pinch of sugar with his scolding, “Come along, let's get home.”

Hopping in beside him, you can't keep your eyes off the stars. “I want to fly like them one day...” With a hum, He drives you two back to the manor.

Life is feeling better by the day. It's as if everythings clicked into place. The years you get with him are the most whole you feel. The only real sense of normalcy throughout your youth.

That night, he was home late despite not being on patrol. You overheard, well eavesdropped, that Jason was put off duty. Still he was out on his own, positively pissed, and came home after dark. Heading straight to his room, he brushes off Alfred, insisting on being left alone.

You can't help finding yourself standing anxiously at his door anyway. It didn't feel right, letting him fester in his anger alone. Knocking yields no results but, calling out his name softly earns you the same in return.

Opening the door slowly you peek in to see him, sitting on his bed with a box. His face is grim but he waves you in, motioning for you to sit with him. You do, placing yourself at the foot of his bed. Across from him with a box of papers and photos between you. Jason fiddles with an old looking photo, scanning it over and over.

"I know you don't like talking about it, but," He swallows thickly before his eyes can meet yours pensively. "You, um, got a mom, right?"

It feels like the wind’s been knocked out of you. Yeah, you didn't like to talk about it, let alone think about it. "I guess, technically." You shrug it off the best you can, "I mean, ya know, everyone's gotta come from somewhere."

He rolls his eyes, dropping the picture back into the cardboard. "Yeah, no shit, that's not what I'm saying."

Really? You came to check in on him. Now you’re being snipped at over something he knows you're sensitive about. "Well, then, I don't want to know if your just-" Before you can fully lift yourself off the bed, he's gripping your wrist.

"Wait! I'm sorry, don't go!" His fingers tremble around his hold on you. He tries not to squeeze you too tightly while still keeping you close. "I-I just.." His other hand grips the box enough to crumple the cardboard under it.

"Jay..." You sigh, this unusual distress from your brother making giving in easier "I don't know. Maybe before but, I don't remember back then." Just nightmares of things you couldn't grip the memory of fully. Thinking of your mother and what she may have gone through with you? Only if it could help with whatever's eating at him, "I can't remember anything before being here. Blurry faces, locations I can't place. I didn't even know what her name was. Can't remember her face.."

When you sit back down he finally releases you. A hand runs through black curled, "I shouldn't have asked. Sorry if it's..."

"No, it's whatever. Who cares? Just..." You shrug, looking over the darkening Gotham sky, "Must not have been anything good." Fingers twist into the sheet below you in unease.

It did hurt though, every question slipping through your finger never to be answered. Flitting past your mind painfully when you linger too long on the past.

Your eyes are drawn back to Jason as he pulls a paper from the box. "I got some stuff earlier and..." He shows you old documents and photos that he was given by an old neighbor. You recognized the little Jason with, from what you're told, his father and stepmother.

His explanation paused as you cooed at his baby face, which he does not appreciate. So, the woman who raised him, who passed, wasn't the same as his birth mother, who's alive. "I think I can find her but I don't know how long it'll take. I"

"That's," Blinking a few times at plie of evidence towards his childhood, you look back at him. "alot, but I'm sure if anyone could do it, that's you."

"You're not gonna.. try to talk me out of it?"

"Would you listen?" You raise a brow at him, his shoulders shoot up in turn, guilt evident. "Exactly." With a smirk you help him pack away everything. His face still knit pensively even after he sets the box aside, you scan the partly packed suitcase. It starts to feel too real but you know there's no helping it. So, you offer him all you can, taking his hand in yours, "Look, I don't know where you're going or what you're doing exactly but,” You squeeze his fingers and he returns it, “I trust you and I'll always be here for you."

Jason pulls your connected hand, rigging you into a tight embrace. "Thanks." His chuckle waivers against your shoulder, arms constricting around your midsection.

You repay his embrace in kind, forgiving the crushing weight of his hug as you blink away tears. "Just, please, stay safe. Okay?"

"Of course, look at who you're talking to, I'm the definition of cautious." He pulls away enough to give you a winning grin and you return it with your hardest 'You're joking, right?' face. "Alright, fine. I'll be careful. I'll be safe. Promise.”

“So, how are you getting there?" You sit crossed legs on his beds as he packs his bag. Chin resting on your palms you tilt your head as his rifles around his pocket.

“These!” He presents her a literal handful of credit cards. "I'll be flying, first class, duh” he notices your dropped jaw. "Please don't tell Alfred..."

Teeth snapping shut, hands dropping to your lap, you blink at his little card haul, “Jason," you sighed, exasperated, “Where are you going?"

“The.. middle east?” Chuckling nervously as he stuffs them away, he watches the concern grow on your face at just how far he would be going.

“Your- Please, if you listen to anything I say. Jason.” You grab his shoulders, setting him with your sternest look “Do not die.”

“Oh my- Seriously?!" Rolling his eyes he shrugs your hands off, “I'm not gonna die!"

───── ⋆⋅ 🕸 ⋅⋆ ─────

Tag list?!

@butratherbutrather @dorkatron-2000 @mys0cksrwet @nervousalpacalady @notsamaira @facelessisnthere @danir2006 @ryuushou @sirenetheblogger @l3v1us @jsprien213 @crazycaoticsimp @shadowytravelerlover @whatamoodhoney @alittlelostmoonchild @tiarea @tsxukikami @levi-09 @stardustnightfall @antov828 @awawage @kaitense1 @1abi @d3nnji @yhin-gg @ithoughtthinks @cherrydaisymanic @bat1212 @shycreatorreview @mikusamsan @strwberryglass

440 notes · View notes

a-hermit-pining · 23 days ago

Text

LaDS in Hogwarts AU

AN: Hi anon, thank you for requesting. This was an awesome one to write. Some of these could be multi chaptered but alas I am a woman of few words and even meagre attention span.

Request: a request!! harry potter au :D love and deepspace and harry potter are my two favourites ^^ thank you!!!

Pairing: LaDS boys x gn reader

Ingredients: 100% Fluff (damn, this is rare)

My Fav: Sylus and Caleb...this is a trend (tell me which ones you like pls)

Xavier:

He is the legacy Slytherin. Pureblood prince of a faraway kingdom, the kind with a family vault older than the castle and buildings named after them.

He sleeps through class but still scores the highest. Doesn’t take notes, but his potions always come out textbook perfect, somehow even better than the textbook.

Even Snape, ever the grump, seems to favor him.

He was your enemy. At least, he was supposed to be.

The nepo baby. The one who walked into Hogwarts with an heirloom wand and a last name that made professors stand up straighter.

You, who ran away from home for magic, scraping together acceptance letters and scholarships, walking into the castle with nerves and nothing else. You, who earned your place.

You hated him. Hated how the system seemed built for boys like him. How Slytherin’s points climbed every time he so much as blinked. How he didn’t fight for the respect he got. He just had it.

And worst of all? He was nice.

Quietly. Gently. Infuriatingly nice.

He held doors open without thinking. Helped carry books for first-years. Always paired with the struggling students in class because, “Well, they need a win, don’t they?”

He never rubbed it in. Never gloated. Never treated you like you were less, which made it worse, somehow. Because you wanted to hate him. Needed to.

But then he looked at you, really looked at you, and smiled like you were someone worth smiling at.

And that… was the beginning of the end.

Rafayel:

You sighed when yet another chair was dragged next to yours at the Hogwarts staff table. At this rate, they might just push you off the end completely.

But alas, such is the fate of a muggle-subjects professor in a school where “Calculus” might as well be a curse word. You’re used to the disinterest, the disapproval. The dark arts will always win over derivatives.

You’re halfway through mentally drafting your resignation letter when the new professor takes his seat, by replacing his legs with an enormous siren tail and dramatically splashing half your legroom away.

"Hello," he says, smiling with too many teeth. "Rafayel. Art professor. Lovely to meet you."

You stare. Shake his webbed hand. Stammer your name.

And then it hits you.

Arts. No magic.

Another outsider. Well—not quite the same. But close enough.

To your complete dismay, Rafayel’s subject is met with none of the disdain yours is. Students flock to his class like he’s handing out enchanted paintbrushes dipped in prophecy. Somehow, he’s the cool muggle professor.

You want to be mad.

But he keeps bringing you snacks during staff meetings. And drawing you in charcoal between grading.

So maybe you forgive him. A little.

Zayne:

“Classroom windows need to be elevated above the two-foot mark,” the man drones, leading you through Hogwarts like he built it himself.

The Ministry has to be trolling you. There’s no other explanation for sending him again.

Zayne. The most regulation-obsessed official alive. The man who’s turned passive-aggression into an Olympic sport.

“Yes, of course, Zayne,” you smile with false sweetness. “Filch and I will get right on it.” (Translation: I will do it while Filch glares and mutters about unions.)

He ignores you. Of course he does. Groundskeepers aren’t worth Ministry time.

Then he stops, turns, and hands you a thick folder. “Every storage hinge in the castle needs to be updated to a new spell protocol. Instructions inside.”

You want to hurl it at his head.

Instead, you smile. “Got it.”

What you don’t know: Zayne spent weeks compiling that list. Researching every obscure policy he could dig up.

All just to have an excuse to come talk to you.

He even bribed Filch to stay out of the way.

So that later, when you’re elbow-deep in cursed cabinet screws, he can show up with dinner.

Professionally, of course.

He’s not an amateur.

Sylus:

The newest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was… a piece of work.

Many a student, mostly girls, a few brave boys, and one very dramatic portrait on the third floor, called him a work of art.

You agreed.

Which was fair, considering you hired him.

Sylus. Your oldest friend. Keeper of far too many of your secrets. Former war general, occasional assassin, and man bound by an ancient oath not to die. Because of course he is.

Was it an HR nightmare? Absolutely.

Did it matter? Not even a little.

You’re the principal with the most peaceful term Hogwarts has seen in decades. No cursed classrooms. No dark lords. No goblin incidents in the West Tower.

They can’t afford to question your hiring decisions, not when it’s working. Even if “working” currently includes the students placing bets on whether the two of you are dating, dueling, or doomed.

There are whispers. Screams, really. Squeals in the hallways every time Sylus leans a little too close during staff meetings. Every time he calls you, by your name, letting go of the official address, with that knowing smile that turns half the seventh-years into puddles.

You pretend not to notice. You also pretend not to see the doodles left behind in your healing arts studies classroom, little hearts drawn in ink, a chemical formula twisted cleverly into your ship name.

"Ten points to Ravenclaw," you murmur with a smirk, holding up the notebook for him to see.

Caleb:

They called it the sweetest story in Diagon Alley.

The Quidditch coach who kept showing up at the same little pub after every match, “for the butterbeer,” he claimed.

(He absolutely couldn’t handle it. Turned red after two sips. Giggled after three. Once tried to do a victory dance and knocked over an entire broom display.)

And the innkeeper, you, who always kept a room open. “Just in case,” you said, as if he wasn’t the reason you looked out the window every Friday night.

Together, you became the unofficial mom and dad to every half-injured, half-homesick player who passed through. Post-win snacks. Pep talks before tryouts. Holiday dinners for those who didn’t go home.

You weren’t just a couple. Your relationship was a blessing.

So of course, when Caleb finally proposed, it had to be with the team. After a big win. Pub packed, cheers echoing off the enchanted ceiling.

He slipped the ring into your butterbeer. A cute idea, in theory.

But you’d just taken a deep sip when he got down on one knee.

Cue: choking, gasping, sputtering.

Half the league panicked. Someone shouted, “She’s dying!” And Caleb, red-faced and frantic, performed the Heimlich in front of two full tables of junior league athletes and at least one reporter.

The ring did come out. Eventually.

You said yes, coughing.

He cried anyway. Ugly, happy, overjoyed tears.

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace sylus #love and deepspace caleb #love and deepspace headcannon #love and deepspace x reader #sylus x reader #xavier x reader #rafayel x reader #zayne x reader #zayne love and deepspace #caleb x reader #love and deepspace reaction #love and deepspace xavier #love and deepspace zayne #love and deepspace rafayel #fluff #gn reader #hogwarts au #harry potter au

355 notes · View notes

houseofanticipation · 2 years ago

Text

After six months of leaving your window unlocked, someone finally took the bait.

You frequent some dark corners of the internet. When tumblr wasn't enough to get you wet anymore you turned to reddit, and when that stopped working you moved to 4chan. These days the sites you cum to don't even have names, their URLs are just strings of random letters and numbers. It was in one of these places that you saw the symbol.

The only identifying feature of the original poster was an off-putting avatar image of Sonic the Hedgehog's gaping asshole. The post was a single photo of the symbol, written in thick marker on a scrap of looseleaf paper. Below it, the text read: place this symbol in your window to let passersby know it's unlocked, and you're ready to be taken advantage of.

You came when you saw that symbol. (You had been touching yourself for hours at that point, but still, the symbol is what pushed you over the edge.) You saved a screenshot of the symbol, and in the nights that followed you touched yourself to it again and again, daring yourself to do it, imagining the things strangers could do to you in your sleep. When your better judgement finally caved to that insatiable need, you touched yourself again. You sat there for an hour, edging and watching that symbol in the window, until your mind felt slow and stupid with fantasies.

You did that a few more times in the following nights. But the after a week the fantasies alone weren't doing it for you anymore, and you were increasingly realizing something that probably should have been obvious from the beginning: most people aren't into the same disgusting shit you're into. The people in those ugly little corners of the web lived all over the world. What were the odds one of them would just walk past your first-floor apartment one day?

So you forgot about it. Mostly. You left it there, of course, but the more time went by the less you believed anything would ever come of it. You turned to other places to make you cum. Lately you've been getting off on posting pictures of yourself, letting strangers describe the ways they'd like to use and abuse you.

And then this morning you found three polaroid pictures placed neatly on your kitchen table.

All three pictures are of you, naked and asleep in bed. You started sleeping naked ages ago, at the advice of a tumblr post detailing how to be more of a slut. You're glad you did now, because the feeling you get looking at these pictures is like nothing you've ever felt before. It's electric, a vibration in your brain and the pit of your stomach that makes your legs wobble and your knees press together. The first picture is of your body, undisturbed, sleeping on your stomach with your ass in the air. The second is a view from the foot of your bed, your pussy pressed against the sheets and your legs open. The third is of your face, an unfamiliar hand brushing back your hair and an unfamiliar cock resting on your cheek.

Before you can even think you're falling to your knees, masturbating desperately and furiously to those pictures. When you cum it's labored, almost painful, your breath catching in your chest, your moans short and agonized. You manage to stand long enough to take the pictures to your bed, where you're able to scrape together the self-control to edge for about five minutes before you cum for a second time.

The one you can't tear yourself away from his that cock on your face. The knowledge that someone was that close to you without your knowing. Touching you. Pleasuring himself to you. When you cum for the third time, it's to the thought that he didn't rape you, as far as you can tell. That means he intends to come back.

That night you feel like a kid waiting for Santa Clause to come. You toss and turn, too excited to sleep, but terrified that he won't follow through with it if he can tell you're awake. You close your eyes and stay as still as possible. If you can't be asleep, the best you can do is appear asleep.

You wake to sunlight streaming through your window, a little surprised to realize you fell asleep at all. You can feel immediately that something is different; you've been violated, you can feel it in your clit and in your cunt. You hurry to the kitchen and find three new polaroids. The first is a close up of your pussy, already swollen and wet. The second is taken from the same angle, but this time there's a hand in frame, three fingers pushed inside you, stretching you out. The third sends a thrill up your spine. In this picture, a man with a Halloween mask pulled up to his forehead has his head buried between your legs. His face isn't visible from this angle, but it's clear he's eating you out. What really excites you, though, is the out-of-focus smudge in the corner of the shot: you're certain it's the edge of someone's finger. There was a second person in the room with you last night, holding the camera. You wonder if he was there the night before too. You wonder if anyone else has been in your room without you knowing.

When you've cum twice, you're able to think clearly enough to wonder how you managed to sleep through all this. This isn't a cock brushing your face; this is penetration, stretching, clitoral stimulation. That isn't the kind of stuff you sleep through, is it? You get off for a while imagining you really are just that much of a whore, that you can have three fingers inside you and barely notice a thing, but then you spot the cylinder in the corner of the third picture. It's a metal canister, like an oxygen tank, connected at the top to the kind of plastic mask designed to cover your mouth and nose. They drugged you. That's why you didn't wake up. They put you into a deeper sleep so they could do what they wanted with you. Your clit is getting sore at this point, but when you come to this realization you can't help but cum one more time.

In your dreams that night someone is holding you down, kissing you, shoving his tongue down your throat. You're afraid and excited and wet, and you want to scream for help but you can't remember how to speak. Someone is saying something, but the words don't mean anything to you, and the relentless sucking on your clit is making it hard to focus on anything else. You want to moan, to arch your back, to press your legs shut, but your body isn't your own. Maybe you cum. Maybe you don't. It's hard to tell.

You come to slowly, blearily. You become aware of your surroundings one thing at a time, and out of order; first you notice the wetness, then the soreness, then the sunlight behind your closed eyelids. You stretch and rub the sleep out of your eyes, but your hands come away with more than the usual eye grit on them. With a jolt you realize your face is painted with cum, and looking down you can tell that it isn't just your face. There's cum on your tits, on your stomach, even your thighs and feet, and a hand between your legs confirms its inside you too. Hands shaking, you scoop it off your thighs and stomach, trying to get as much as you can into your pussy, fingering it deeper and deeper. You must have really taken a pounding last night, because your pussy is sore and your groin feels bruised, but the feeling of that cum inside you is worth every ounce of pain. You put a few pillows under your ass, trying to keep your hips elevated, keep it from spilling out for as long as possible. You imagine it taking root in your womb, changing your body, making your breasts and belly swell with motherhood. You imagine men you've never seen coming into you home while you're asleep and hungrily drinking your milk, squeezing and sucking so you wake up with your nipples sore. You wish one of them was here to fuck the cum deeper inside you, but you make do with your fingers. This time when you cum it's different. It isn't like the first orgasm of the day. It feels like maybe the fifth time you've cum in the last few hours; barely pleasure at all, just spine-tingling, mind-numbing sensation. Is it possible to cum in your sleep? It feels like it shouldn't be allowed, but you're having trouble thinking straight...

You need to stop touching yourself. You're sore and trembly and weirdly exhausted for someone who just woke up, but you can't stop thinking about those strangers in your bedroom, the cocks that must have been in your cunt and your asshole and your mouth. Your clit throbs, begging your fingers for just one more release. You make a compromise with yourself. You put on some panties to keep too much cum from leaking out, and you go to the kitchen to look at the pictures. But there are no polaroids on the kitchen table. Just a cheap plastic USB drive with your name in permanent marker on the side.

It shouldn't be a surprise that they know your name. They've been in your house, they can obviously find your name on your mail or your computer or your driver's license. But seeing it there in unfamiliar handwriting, one more tiny violation of privacy, makes your clit throb again, as if to remind you of its presence.

The voice of your elementary school librarian echoes in your head as you retrieve your laptop and return to bed. It is profoundly stupid, she reminds you, to plug an unfamiliar drive into your computer. There's no telling what kind of malware it could contain, and that kind of access could allow hackers to take complete control of your computer. But you've already done the most profoundly stupid thing. You've done it repeatedly, in fact, and you're in deep enough now that there may not be any going back. The drive contains a single folder, also with your name on it. The folder is full of pictures and videos, hundreds of them, from different cameras and different perspectives, every angle you could possibly want from the events of last night. Men in rubber masks, too many to count, taking turns raping your lifeless body. Stuffing their cocks down your throat and laughing as you choke reflexively. Squeezing your tits, pinching and biting your nipples. Playing with your pussy, intermittently fucking it and trying to shove ever-larger objects inside it. There's a closeup video of your face as one of the men ejaculates onto it. Another of your pussy as a cock pulls out, allowing a fat glob of cum to collect just at the entrance of your unresponsive hole. The last file in the folder is a .txt file, containing a single line of text: a string of numbers and letters that you recognize.

Right there on the first page of your favorite site is a picture of you, asleep and drenched in cum. Below it is your home address, and a short note:

Found this tasty slut by accident at the above address, just noticed the rapeme in her window and figured I'd come back that night. Good pussy, and she must like what we did to her because she hasn't taken it down yet. Stop by if you're in town; we like a limp body, but I bet she'd put up a nice fight if you'd rather forgo sedatives. Just make sure to gag her lol. don't want the neighbors complaining and ruining our fun. and remember to leave her a souvenir! She especially likes polaroids ; )

By the time you've finished reading you're in a daze. Your eyes can't seem to focus on anything. Your mind can't form a coherent thought. Your clit is no longer asking for your attention; it now demands it. As you begin to pull the panties back down, you notice something: the light next to your laptop camera is on.

You place the laptop on the bed between your legs, and begin stuffing the panties into your cunt.

#cnc drugging #cnc free use #cnc cumdump #rapekink #r@pe fantasy #r@pe kink #cnc somno #Library 🜞

6K notes · View notes

anantaru · 1 year ago

Text

synopsis. you got alhaitham to tutor you, although he uses a method you weren't quite expecting, ⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ cw, fingering, soft dom alhaitham, petnames used: good girl, fem! reader ᰔ

"repeat that paragraph, that one, read it to me," shuddered and twisted, you weakly nod back at alhaitham's words, the veil of lust drawing across his face.

you admire his honed jaw and poised tone, the perfect shade of red on his cheeks, no trace of imperfections except a lustre ignite of fire shaped inside the yearning in his eyes.

for now, you were only capable to re-read half of the paragraph as he digs the finger deeper inside before curling it, curling it hard, nudging your puffy cunt as you close your eyes at the impact, alternating between squeezing his hand with your thighs and parting your legs in obvious invitation.

alhaitham continues to lightly stroke over your searing walls, tracing his way further until you squirm at the mind-altering press on your cunt, your hole clenching around the digit, holding the finger in for him to never leave you, "yeah, good girl— ugh, but what else? that's not all," he grins as you sneakily ride his hand, his cock hardening inside his pants.

you rest your head on his shoulder, your focus forced on holding onto the book as good as you could.

you attempt to continue, founding it to be futile when he fucks you with a precision that quickened your blood.

"what else do you got for me?" he repeats.

"c-can we just forget about studying already?" you attempt to reason, stuttering over your words, "you know i can't— i want more," as you cough out and squirm, your hips shifting forward so your clit could grind against the heel of his hand ever so often, "i can't focus like this,"

you were correct, in fact, you were certain no one in all of sumeru could ever focus on a single task when a man such as alhaitham himself, no matter how aggravating at times, would look at someone with such hunger in his eyes, a gaze filled to perpetual sharpness.

you do not want him to stop, you want him to do more.

"you seem to enjoy it," the confidence in his tone could not be any clearer, "very much."

he tilts his head to look at you, the brush of his lips against your cheek making you whimper, the following scrape of his teeth hovering against your jawline tempting out a shiver after such tenderness.

a sensual thrust of his hand repeatedly curls and digs into you, knocking the air from your lungs as you clench as strongly as you could around a single digit, his finger rubbing just so against the furthest, most delicious spots of your walls that it increased the force and pressure on your tight belly from the inside.

how long until you break?

his finger wiggles inside, the touch exquisitely precise, awfully confident, and you found yourself in an inescapable position, impossible to hold yourself back from sinking into the sensation of feeling him. just having him touch you.

"you want me to put another finger?" he kisses your cheek tenderly.

your skin holds against sweat and desperation, tickling the hairs on your skin as a satisfactory pleasure could be felt ebbing and flowing through the entirety of your body.

"yes, please another," you breathe, greeting the scribe with a little more than soft excitement in your voice— but you sounded so angelic to him, your voice silk alike, drowning in a river of solace.

shameless in his doings, alhaitham smirks against you, his lips a hairbreadth away from your ear, "really? you think you got that?"

you nod in certain ecstasy, keeping one hand wrapped around his wrist as he pleasures you, stretching and burning into your hole.

the scribe remains confident in wanting to embed his touch, all of it, on you— not only that but his scent too, he needs your body to pick it up until his aura webs all over your most delicate spots naturally, nothing comparing to the feeling of fullness he gives you.

#genshin x reader #genshin smut #genshin impact smut #genshin impact x reader #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham smut #al haitham smut #al haitham x reader #genshin x you #genshin impact x you #alhaitham x you #al haitham x you #genshin impact drabbles #genshin drabbles

2K notes · View notes

jamingbenn · 4 months ago

Text

year in review - hockey rpf on ao3

hello!! the annual ao3 year in review had some friends and i thinking - wouldn't it be cool if we had a hockey rpf specific version of that. so i went ahead and collated the data below!!

i start with a broad overview, then dive deeper into the 3 most popular ships this year (with one bonus!)

if any images appear blurry, click on them to expand and they should become clear!

₊˚⊹♡ . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅. ݁

before we jump in, some key things to highlight: - CREDIT TO: the webscraping part of my code heavily utilized the ao3 wrapped google colab code, as lovingly created by @kyucultures on twitter, as the main skeleton. i tweaked a couple of things but having it as a reference saved me a LOT of time and effort as a first time web scraper!!! thank you stranger <3 - please do NOT, under ANY circumstances, share any part of this collation on any other website. please do not screenshot or repost to twitter, tiktok, or any other public social platform. thank u!!! T_T - but do feel free to send requests to my inbox! if you want more info on a specific ship, tag, or you have a cool idea or wanna see a correlation between two variables, reach out and i should be able to take a look. if you want to take a deeper dive into a specific trope not mentioned here/chapter count/word counts/fic tags/ship tags/ratings/etc, shoot me an ask!

˚　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　　˚　　　　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔

with that all said and done... let's dive into hockey_rpf_2024_wrapped_insanity.ipynb

BIG PICTURE OVERVIEW

i scraped a total of 4266 fanfics that dated themselves as published or finished in the year 2024. of these 4000 odd fanfics, the most popular ships were:

Note: "Minor or Background Relationship(s)" clocked in at #9 with 91 fics, but I removed it as it was always a secondary tag and added no information to the chart. I did not discern between primary ship and secondary ship(s) either!

breaking down the 5 most popular ships over the course of the year, we see:

super interesting to see that HUGE jump for mattdrai in june/july for the stanley cup final. the general lull in the offseason is cool to see as well.

as for the most popular tags in all 2024 hockey rpf fic...

weee like our fluff. and our established relationships. and a little H/C never hurt no one.

i got curious here about which AUs were the most popular, so i filtered down for that. note that i only regex'd for tags that specifically start with "Alternate Universe - ", so A/B/O and some other stuff won't appear here!

idk it was cool to me.

also, here's a quick breakdown of the ratings % for works this year:

and as for the word counts, i pulled up a box plot of the top 20 most popular ships to see how the fic length distribution differed amongst ships:

mattdrai-ers you have some DEDICATION omg. respect

now for the ship by ship break down!!

₊ . ݁ ݁ . ⊹ ࣪ ˖͙͘͡★ ⊹ .

#1 MATTDRAI

most popular ship this year. peaked in june/july with the scf. so what do u people like to write about?

fun fun fun. i love that the scf is tagged there like yes actually she is also a main character

₊ . ݁ ݁ . ⊹ ࣪ ˖͙͘͡★ ⊹ .

#2 SIDGENO

(my babies) top tags for this ship are:

folks, we are a/b/o fiends and we cannot lie. thank you to all the selfless authors for feeding us good a/b/o fic this year. i hope to join your ranks soon.

(also: MPREG. omega sidney crosby. alpha geno. listen, the people have spoken, and like, i am listening.)

₊ . ݁ ݁ . ⊹ ࣪ ˖͙͘͡★ ⊹ .

#3 NICOJACK

top tags!!

it seems nice and cozy over there... room for one more?

₊ . ݁ ݁ . ⊹ ࣪ ˖͙͘͡★ ⊹ .

BONUS: JDTZ.

i wasnt gonna plot this but @marcandreyuri asked me if i could take a look and the results are so compelling i must include it. are yall ok. do u need a hug

top tags being h/c, angst, angst, TRADES, pining, open endings... T_T katie said its a "torture vortex" and i must concurr

₊ . ݁ ݁ . ⊹ ࣪ ˖͙͘͡★ ⊹ .

BONUS BONUS: ALPHA/BETA/OMEGA

as an a/b/o enthusiast myself i got curious as to what the most popular ships were within that tag. if you want me to take a look about this for any other tag lmk, but for a/b/o, as expected, SID GENO ON TOP BABY!:

thats all for now!!! if you have anything else you are interested in seeing the data for, send me an ask and i'll see if i can get it to ya!

447 notes · View notes

sepdet · 4 months ago

Text

Pity the fool who wasted money scraping all of Tumblr.

Discovered: December 26, 4PM MST.

I reported this to Tumblr help, but I dunno how long it'll take @staff to see it they don't have the staff to play whack-a-mole. so it's up to us.

Update Dec 27:

WHOiS turned up CloudFlare as their webhost, but that's just a domain name registar. (It's more complicated than that, but nevermind.) Today, I received a reply from Cloudflare giving me Tumgik's real host & contact info ([email protected]).

Update Dec 28:

Some folks in replies are finding their blogs on tumbex.com instead. I found their host is ovh.com, no cloudflare to hide behind this time. Here's their abuse report form.

Here's What To Do:

Put your blog url into Google search and see if a non-tumblr.com version comes up.

If it doesn't, go back to what you were doing. Otherwise:

If it's Tumbjk, File a DMCA notice with [email protected].

If it's Tumbex, File a DMCA notice with ovhost.

If it's a different URL, plug it into WhoIsLookup at myip.ms to identify the Web Host, then go to that host's URL and look for a "Report Abuse" "File DMCA" or "Support" link, usually in the footer.

If the Web Host shows as Cloudflare, docontact them, but check your emall after a day. They'll usually tell you the real webhost if your abuse report looks legit.

Report the scraped site to Google. If Google removes it from search results, that kills most of its traffic

Share this post.

When reporting abuse, (a) list the URLs of the copycat (b) list the corresponding URLs to your real blog(s). If there's a box asking for more explanation, try something like "they scraped pages from tumblr'" and/or "these are my personal blogs hosted on the tumblr platform which I started in (year xxxx)].

It doesn't have to be much. The webhost just needs to verify one site is copying the other, which came first, and who is the probable owner— which the thieves admit they aren't, since their "About" page admits they're reposting stuff from Tumblr.

Fly, my pretties, fly!

#copyright theft #scraping #another day another bot #internet whack-a-mole]

570 notes · View notes

howtofightwrite · 7 months ago

Note

So. There is no safe place (in the body) to be shot. There are places that are slightly safer than others to be stabbed (i.e. being stabbed in the meat of your calf is less likely to be lethal than your torso). For the purposes of an arrow wound, which feels like a combination of shot+stab for a swords n sorcery world, is there a “less lethal” place to take an arrow? My character is traveling with companions and gets into a fun little goblin skirmish. I need her to catch an arrow somewhere that will be concerning, but not immediately fatal. Magic Bullshit™️ will keep the wound from healing properly for a few days, but I’ve accounted for field wound care (cleaning and bandaging and such) as she’s being taken on horseback to get proper treatment.

Not deeply.

So, the problem with all of these is tissue disruption. If the injury gets deep enough, the chances that it will hit something vital (especially on the torso) increase dramatically. So, getting stabbed and having the blade catch bone, instead of getting in deeper is “relatively” safe. Similarly, getting stabbed (or shot) in the hand or foot is unlikely to kill you (though, those injuries are likely to result in permanent damage impairing the use of injured appendage.)

Arrows are a little different, in a couple of ways. First, if you get shot, you do not want to pull that off (nor break it off and push it through.) That will increase the risk of bleeding out. Arrows make fairly large holes in people, but if the arrow sticks in the wound (which, it should) it will actually limit the amount of bleeding. Effectively the wound has a partial plug in it. Pulling out the arrow means that plug is no longer there, and they can happily bleed to death on the spot.

The second thing about arrows is that they actually pin muscle together. Think of it a bit like holding two pieces of meat together with a toothpick. If the toothpick isn't there, the pieces can slide across each other without issue, but that's not possible when there's a wooden shaft running through them. Your muscles are a complex web of meat, that slide over each other as you move. Pinning those together means that part of your body will actually lock up. For example, if you're shot in the shoulder, you won't be able to adjust the position of your arm. It's been toothpicked, and it's not going anywhere.

Arrowheads can get wedged in bone. If it's a broad head, or hunting tip, that will be obnoxious to get out.

At the risk of reading too much into your setting, goblins often means poisons, or other nastiness. Though, really, even just getting a tetanus infection (it used to be called “lock jaw”) from their blades is a pretty horrific potential fate. Even if the wounds themselves were relatively minor (cuts and scrapes, maybe a graze or two), a couple days might still result in some pretty horrific harm after the fact.

Also, remember, it's unlikely that bacteria will be understood by the medical science of your setting. So, first aid would still run a real risk of secondary infections.

Depending on their skill in first aid, anything outside of a severed artery or catastrophic organ damage should be (technically) survivable, though the wounds could easily result in permanent impairments, depending on exactly what was hit. A punctured lung might not kill her, but it could result in permanent respiratory issues, such as a cough, and chronic pain while breathing heavily from then on. It could also result in pneumonia and death, which is also, usually, pretty permanent.

Some of this depends more on where you want to land on a spectrum between dark fantasy and swords & sorcery. The genres are similar (and potentially overlapping), but can scatter out into dramatically different works. But, you do have some options on how you want to proceed.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #starke answers #how to fight write #starke is not a real doctor

559 notes · View notes

buttercandy16 · 4 months ago

Text

Asylum

Chapter Three: Tangled Webs

PAIRING(s): Psychiatrist!Agatha Harkness x Patient!Reader x Inmate!Rio Vidal

SUMMARY: Wrongfully imprisoned, Reader becomes the obsession of Agatha, a cunning psychiatrist, and Rio, a fiery inmate. Together, they’ll ensure she’s theirs—forever.

WARNING(s): Obsession, Manipulation, Violence, Confinement, Madness, Dubcon, and Betrayal.

A/N: Getting impatient so I've written the chapters a little bit longer this time, lol. 💜💚

The asylum corridors stretched endlessly, the hum of fluorescent lights casting an eerie glow against the pale walls. You walked with purpose—or as much as you could muster with the guards escorting you back from another monotonous group therapy session. The others had shuffled out, their faces blank or twitching with nervous energy, but you had lingered, reluctant to return to the silence of your cell.

Still, something about this day felt heavier, as though the walls themselves were closing in.

You let your eyes wander to the narrow windows set high in the walls. They offered no view of the outside world, just streaks of faint sunlight blotted by grime. You hadn’t breathed fresh air since the courtyard incident two days ago—the day both Agatha and Rio had laid their first unmistakable claims on you.

Since then, things had only gotten worse.

Agatha was growing more possessive, though she cloaked it under the guise of "help." Her nightly visits were no longer requests—they were commands.

"How are you feeling today?" she would begin, pulling her chair closer to the foot of your bed, her body radiating professional detachment. But her eyes betrayed her, glinting with something far darker.

The questions always began the same. Innocuous. Gentle. But as her visits stretched longer, her inquiries became probing, almost intimate.

"Tell me about your dreams," she asked one night, her voice a low hum that wrapped around you like a coil.

"Why does it matter?" you countered, trying to erect barriers against her quiet, predatory intensity.

"Dreams are where the mind reveals itself, darling," she replied, the endearment slipping from her lips with a slow, deliberate precision.

She leaned closer, her face framed by the cold fluorescent glow. Her eyes, sharp and bottomless, felt as though they could see everything you wanted to keep hidden.

“Is someone here making you... uncomfortable?” Agatha pressed, her tone soft but edged with deadly purpose. “Rio, perhaps?”

Your stomach twisted. Agatha had developed a habit of bringing up Rio unprompted, usually just before slipping in warnings: She’s dangerous. You mustn’t trust her. Tell me if she bothers you.

And then there were Rio’s games.

Unlike Agatha’s cold calculation, Rio’s attention burned. Her obsession wasn’t hidden behind masks of professionalism—it was raw, wild, and impossible to ignore.

She found you in the common areas, corners of hallways, even the cafeteria line. Wherever you tried to blend into the background, she pulled you out, commanding your attention like it belonged solely to her.

“Eat with me,” she demanded one afternoon, her tray thudding down beside yours without hesitation.

You opened your mouth to argue, but Rio was already pulling your chair closer to hers with one long arm, the metal scraping loudly. The eyes of the other patients turned briefly toward you both before averting just as quickly—no one dared cross Rio Vidal.

“Look at you, sitting all stiff like someone’s about to shank you,” she said, biting into an apple, her teeth slicing through the flesh with a sharp crack. “Relax. I don’t bite.”

The sharpness in her grin told you that was a lie.

You focused on your food, ignoring the prickling heat of her gaze as it roamed over you.

“Bet it drives Agatha crazy,” Rio mused suddenly, her voice dropping low. She shifted closer, her breath brushing the side of your face. “The way I keep talking to you. She watches, you know. She always watches.”

“I—what?” you stammered, glancing toward her.

Rio chuckled, leaning back and tossing her apple core carelessly onto her tray. “Sweetheart, don’t play dumb. She’s obsessed with you.” Her eyes glinted with amusement, but her smile quickly turned predatory. “Not that I blame her. You're special. Different from all the broken toys here.”

Your throat tightened as you tried to process her words. Rio was lying—or was she?

“She wants to own you,” Rio continued, her voice dropping lower, dangerously intimate. “Just like I do.”

Her words were like a slap, and your hand trembled as you set down your fork.

“I don’t belong here,” you whispered, your voice cracking.

Rio’s expression shifted for a split second, something unreadable flickering behind her confidence. Then, she reached across the table, brushing a stray strand of hair from your face.

“That’s where you’re wrong, mi amor.” Her grin turned wicked. “You’re exactly where you need to be.”

When Agatha appeared in your doorway that night, you weren’t surprised. The light in the hallway framed her figure, tall and commanding as ever, though there was something different in her expression—a tightness in her jaw, an edge to her gaze.

"May I come in?" she asked, though you knew it wasn’t a question.

You nodded reluctantly, retreating to the far corner of the room as she stepped inside.

Agatha closed the door with deliberate care before turning her full attention to you. She didn’t sit this time, instead choosing to hover close, her presence suffocating in the small space.

"Rio speaks to you often," she said abruptly, skipping all pretense.

You froze, panic fluttering in your chest. How much did she know?

"She's dangerous," Agatha continued, her tone as cold as the steel walls surrounding you. "Impulsive. Unstable. You must be careful."

“She’s...” You paused, uncertain whether to defend Rio or stay silent. “She hasn’t hurt me.”

Agatha tilted her head, her dark hair catching the faint glow of the overhead light. For a moment, you saw something flicker in her expression—a mix of disappointment and... jealousy?

“Not yet,” she said finally. Her voice softened as she took a step closer. “But she will, darling. That’s what she does. She destroys everything she touches.”

Her hand reached out, brushing against your arm. You tried not to flinch, but your discomfort must have shown because Agatha’s lips curved into a smile, one that was meant to soothe but only made your skin crawl.

“You’re fragile,” she said softly, almost to herself. “You need someone to protect you.”

She didn’t need to finish the thought for you to know who she meant.

Hours later, when sleep evaded you, the sounds of the asylum echoed eerily in the darkness: the distant murmur of a night guard’s radio, the soft cries of another patient two rooms down, the clanging of a metal tray.

And beneath it all, a faint whisper—one growing louder.

When your door creaked open, panic shot through your veins. Your breath caught in your throat as Rio’s familiar silhouette slid into the room, her movements fluid and silent as a cat’s.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you hissed, heart hammering against your ribs.

Rio smirked, leaning back against the wall as she crossed her arms. “Relax, sweetheart. Just thought you might want some company.”

She stepped closer, the dim light from the hallway casting shadows across her face. “She’s got her hooks in you, doesn’t she?” Rio asked, her voice soft yet charged. “Agatha. She’ll convince you that she’s the hero in this little story, but let me tell you something.”

Her hand tilted your chin up, forcing you to meet her burning gaze.

“Heroes don’t exist in here,” Rio whispered. “Only survivors.”

Her lips curved into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes before she turned and slipped back into the shadows.

But her parting words stayed with you, an ominous echo of the tangled web ensnaring you.

The days in the asylum passed in a haze of monotony and growing dread, the line between reality and nightmare fraying at the edges. Every corner of the facility seemed to hum with a tension that you couldn’t shake, leaving your skin perpetually prickling as though you were being watched. And in truth, you always were.

Rio’s smoldering presence and Agatha’s calculated grip formed a prison within the asylum itself—a labyrinth with no way out.

But something new had begun to take root within you. Fear, yes, but also something more potent. A gnawing awareness of how deeply entangled you were in their obsession, like prey ensnared in a web woven by two hunters.

You weren’t sure how much longer you could stay sane.

The nightmares began subtly—flashes of Rio’s gaze boring into you, Agatha’s hand brushing yours with possessive care, rooms filled with distorted laughter or walls closing in. But they grew sharper over time.

One night, you startled awake, heart pounding, after dreaming of Agatha standing over you, her hands ghosting down your arms like you were a fragile doll she was piecing back together. Her whisper echoed in your ears even as you sat in the dark, wide awake.

“You’ll always belong to me.”

Even hours after waking, the weight of her imagined touch lingered, sending chills down your spine.

Waking hours weren’t much better. The asylum was never loud, but recently, every sound seemed sharper—every scrape of shoes on the tile, every hushed conversation. Were they talking about you? Watching you?

Rio and Agatha’s presence had grown suffocatingly frequent.

Rio slipped notes beneath your tray at breakfast, always crude but strangely charged: You looked lonely last night, or You don’t want her; you want me.

Then there was Agatha. She circled your mind like a vulture, appearing during therapy sessions, during nighttime "check-ins," and sometimes in your peripheral vision when you least expected her.

"Are you feeling better today?" she asked one morning as she approached your table, her voice dripping with concern but her gaze cool, calculating.

You stammered a reply, but her next words cut through your panic like a scalpel.

"I saw Rio talking to you again," Agatha said, her tone conversational but her meaning clear.

"She’s not dangerous," you found yourself saying before you realized it, almost defensively.

Agatha tilted her head, and something flashed in her expression—a flicker of annoyance, quickly replaced by calm control. She crouched beside you, her long fingers curling lightly around your wrist.

"I understand why you might think that," she murmured, her voice almost hypnotic. "But people like her... they thrive on breaking things. On breaking people."

Your pulse thudded beneath her touch, not from fear this time, but from a growing sense of suffocation.

“I don’t want you speaking with her anymore,” Agatha said, her tone leaving no room for argument.

But that wasn’t something you could promise. Rio wasn’t someone you could simply avoid. She found you wherever you went—pulling you into corners, whispering dangerous secrets in your ear.

One afternoon, she cornered you in the hallway leading to your cell, her smile sharp as she twirled a thread from her sleeve.

“You’re looking... jittery,” she teased, her tone half-amused but tinged with something darker. “Let me guess—Agatha’s been filling your head with her usual crap about me?”

You glared at her but didn’t answer, pushing past her, only for her hand to shoot out and snag your wrist.

“Hey, chica, I’m trying to help you,” she said, her tone dropping as she tugged you back, her eyes boring into yours. “Agatha’s got a nice little fantasy running in her head, and trust me—you don’t want to star in it.”

“What do you want, Rio?” you snapped, the weight of your fear and anger finally pushing words past your lips.

Her expression shifted then, her confidence faltering just slightly. “I don’t want her to own you,” Rio said softly. “I’m not lying when I say you’re special. Too special to let her twist you into something you’re not.”

Her hand loosened, and she stepped back, giving you space to move. But you hesitated, the words she left hanging in the air sinking deeper into your mind.

"Think about it, mi amor. You're not crazy. But staying here? It’ll make you crazy. Trust me—I know."

The cracks in your psyche widened that night, your head spinning as you tried to unpack everything that had been said to you. Agatha’s reassurances, Rio’s cryptic warnings—both felt like chains dragging you deeper into the asylum’s abyss.

But their words weren’t the worst of it.

What terrified you most was the growing sense that they were both right—and both wrong—at the same time.

You pressed yourself against the cold wall of your cell, desperate to reclaim the person you used to be before this nightmare. Your fingers traced the faint scratch marks etched into the walls, left by previous tenants whose desperation had taken different forms.

Would that be you someday?

When a sharp knock broke through the thick silence, you flinched violently.

Agatha entered a second later, her presence commanding as she shut the door behind her.

"You look tired," she said softly, her piercing eyes taking you in as though cataloging every crack in your facade. "Are the nightmares worse?"

You hesitated, and she took your silence as a confession.

“We’ll get through this, darling,” she murmured, sitting beside you on the narrow cot. The bed dipped under her weight, her closeness sending ripples of unease through you.

“You and I?” Agatha continued, her voice quiet but resolute. “We’re going to fix what they broke in you.”

You froze, realizing she didn’t see you as the person you were—but as something she wanted to mold, something broken that she could claim.

When morning came, you expected Agatha’s grip on you to relent, but instead, you found Rio waiting by your cell door, her wild grin sharper than usual.

“Morning, beautiful,” she said, tipping an imaginary hat. “Let’s skip breakfast, yeah?”

You shook your head. “I can’t—”

But before you could protest further, she grabbed your arm and pulled you down the hallway, her pace quick and assured.

“Rio, where are we going?” you hissed, panicking as you glanced around for guards.

She stopped abruptly, spinning to face you and gripping your shoulders with alarming intensity.

“Out.”

The way her eyes burned sent your head spinning.

“I’m getting you out of here.”

Her words, combined with Agatha’s controlling presence, twisted into a knot deep inside your chest. Was escape even possible? Was it what you wanted?

One thing was clear as Rio and Agatha loomed larger in your mind:

You were losing yourself.

_-_-_

Please don't forget to vote, reblog, and comment. Also, send in some request. 😉

#agathario #agatha x rio #dark fanfiction #agatha all along #agatha harkness x reader #rio vidal #agatha harkness #agatha harkness fanfic #kathryn hahn #marvel #aubrey plaza #rio vidal x reader #wlw

281 notes · View notes

charliemwrites · 1 month ago

Text

Carrion (extended edition)

Content: Discussion of torture, suicide pact, identity issues, unhealthy coping mechanisms, gore and death, bad firearm handling

“When I am finished with you, all that will be left is carrion for the birds.”

Mr. Z made good on his promise. Your body had been dissected, vivisected, flayed and eviscerated and mutilated over and over again. Haphazardly reassembled over and over again, until the stitches began to intersect, webbing into a demented railroad of agony.

Each time, you scraped together the shards of your mind, cutting yourself on the edges. You don’t remember when you started losing pieces, or when you started substituting them with others.

All that was left at the end were bloody, sticky shreds - a mangled fraction of a person. Something that was once human, and never could be again. Slim pickings for the detritivores.

There were others, or there had been. Fragments of sentience with blood and guts and a bit of sinew still congealed together. When all those bits of viscera and bone were cobbled together, something that was almost whole reformed.

“Promise,” you (he?) wheezed, “promise if we ever cross again, we will end our suffering.”

“We promise,” you (he?) rasped in return.

It sounded like salvation you’d stopped hoping for since the first time your heart restarted.

You were captured. For a long time.

That’s all Laswell is able to tell them before the team is in the air and then boots down, running. A mission too important to delay poking for classified information and questioning you about.

If you notice they’re sideways glances and disquieted shifting, it doesn’t show.

You sit in your (new) customary spot at the back of the plane - first out and last in, no matter how Price reprimands - with your arms crossed and eyes closed. Seemingly resting, except for how your foot occasionally twitches like a hypnic jerk.

But Simon suspects you’ve already stopped falling.

The inverted cross finger-painted onto your helmet burns into Simon’s eyes. Your handgun rests on the same side, the Cyrillic engraving prowling at edges of his mind. Promise, it says, Promise.

“Carrion, you take the north. Keep that route clear for exit. If you need backup, give us a shout.”

You smile indulgently at Price. “We will be fine, Captain.”

And you are. When Simon and Johnny sprint down the hall, charges in hand to blow the whole operation into the stratosphere, the walls are painted in crimson. Bodies litter the edges, laying at unnatural slants and hasty angles, pulled and pushed out of the path they’re running. Swept aside like so much garbage.

But Simon doesn’t have time to stop. He doesn’t catch more than flashes of only-just-fatal gunshots and bone splintering out of limbs, sockets devoid of eyes. There are hostiles hot on their heels, bullets flying, and you’re leaning by the fire door at the end, casual as you please.

“Cover us!” Johnny shouts.

“Already on it,” you reply, sounding focused in their ear pieces. But Simon can see you shrug leisurely off the wall, raise your gun and barely aim before the barrel flashes.

Johnny yelps as the shot whistles past his ear, but he’s none the worse for wear and a body drops somewhere behind them. And then a couple more, tripping over their fallen comrade.

“Like bowling pins,” you muse. “Hurry up, you two.”

You fire in a steady stream, just purposeful enough to be justified as conserving ammo. Simon lets himself believe that’s what it is as he shoves Johnny through the door and yanks you through just after.

(Are you reluctant to go? No, no he’s just paranoid from Laswell’s revelation.)

On the ride back to base you sigh and stretch out. Your gun is still in your hand, still live. You use the barrel to scratch at your jaw.

“Oi!” Price barks.

“Aye, Captain?” you reply, blinking innocently. “I will send you back to basic handling so fast, soldier,” he swears. Your head twitches. Blink and you miss it, just the tiniest bit. Cocking in confusion. “Ah, shite. Sorry, Cap. Won’t happen again,” you apologize. You sound sincere, but you don’t blink once as you holster your weapon. (It happens again. You sit through the remedial looking for all the world like you’re going to eat the instructor.)

“What do you mean they were captured?” Price demands. His voice is taut, stretched too thin, on the verge of snapping.

His office is too small, too full. It’s 141, minus you, and Laswell. It’s not the bodies that crowd the little space, but tension. Confusion, guilts, desperation for answers - but mostly fear. It’s bitter on the back of Simon’s tongue and knows the others taste it too.

“Carrion’s team was captured in Russia while trying to extract a deep cover asset,” she explains. “They were held by Zakhaev for an extended period of time.”

She pauses as Price curses, walks away to the far wall, then pivots right back around to rejoin the conversation. Simon recognizes the name - recognizes the work. The scars beneath his clothes, his mask, flare and itch. He crosses his arms tight against the feeling.

“How long?” Price growls.

“John…” A long time, she’d said before. Long enough, Simon surmises. (Too long, his mind whispers.)

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Price asks.

Laswell is trustworthy, has proved that over and over again - but she’s still CIA. She knows how to trim and prune information down to the bare essentials so that she never actually has to lie.

“Carrion isn’t compromised, we made sure of that,” she says.

The ringing in the back of Simon’s head gets louder. He smells dirt and decay.

“Dammit, Kate, you know that’s not why I’m asking,” Price hisses.

She sighs, shoulders sloping down. “Because I don’t have much to tell you, John. There’s so much we don’t know about what happened. Carrion won’t tell us anything, and the psychologists have advised that we don’t press.”

“So you kept us in the dark so we wouldn’t press either.”

“I’m saying that even if I told you, it would have done more harm than good. I don’t have any triggers to warn you away from, or PTSD symptoms for you to watch out for. The best course of action was to treat Carrion like nothing happened. Are you telling me you could have done that, knowing Carrion was captured and tortured by Zakhaev?”

Price’s jaw twitches. Johnny picking the skin around his thumb bloody and Gaz keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. They know the answer, but it still smarts. Rings too close to Simon’s own truth for comfort. He talks himself into taking a deep, slow, purposeful breath. The lingering scent of cigar smoke helps clear his head.

“We know now,” Price says.

Laswell nods, gaze steady, unrepentant. “And now you need to act like you don’t.”

“Carrion isn’t right,” Gaz pipes up. “We’ve all noticed.”

The corners of Laswell’s mouth tug down. “What have you done about it?”

“Nothin’,” Johnny assures quickly. “Jus’ noticed ‘s all.”

“Then keep doing that,” she says, meeting each of their eyes, ending on Price again. “Notice and do nothing.”

The days after feel like a horrific kind of fever dream.

Johnny calls your name across the cafeteria in the morning. It takes you a moment too long to turn. (You don’t have so much as a bite of food despite arriving after them.)

When Price shouts “Carrion” on the training grounds later, you alert like a hound. Like that was always your name.

Simon knocks on your door in the afternoon. You swing the door only just wide enough to fit most of your torso in the opening. Beyond you, the room is pitch black despite the sun shining on that side of the building. Your pupils are blown and ebb slowly in the light of the hallway, slithering away from your irises.

You’re still dressed head-to-toe, as always.

“Need your AAR,” he says.

“Oh, right,” you say, “just a tic.”

You step away, the door drifting closed almost as if by accident. In the brief moment and space you’ve vacated, Simon notices a glittery sliver of mirror on the floor. He could almost swear a shadow slides across it. But then you’re back, the report in your hand. Your pupils are pinpricks now, almost completely gone. There’s a smudge on the bottom corner of one page and your signature is yours but not in your handwriting.

“Anything else, LT?” you ask cheerfully.

"I’m sorry,” he says, “about the things I said before.”

“It’s alright, I know I should have been ready to cover you,” you laugh.

“Not the mission. I mean the things I said before you left. I should have at least shook your hand when I saw you off.”

Something slides behind your eyes, your expression frozen.

“Oh,” you say, blissfully blank. “I really appreciate that, but it’s all in the past. I just appreciated you showing up at the time.”

You smile and for the first time, he notices all your teeth don't look quite like he remembers.

"It meant a lot to say goodbye - you never know what could happen on those long missions, yeah?"

"Yeah."

Previous | Masterlist

#cod #my writing #dark fic #reader fic #reader came back wrong #simon ghost riley #kate laswell

267 notes · View notes

luveline · 2 years ago

Text

𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 | 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚

miguel can’t control himself when you get hurt in the field —a ficlet featuring an irritated (lovesick) miguel and a flirty, distracted spider-girl. pre across the spider-verse but contains spoilers. requested he re, fem!reader, 2.5k

tw. fighting, injury, blood

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Miguel watches the screen in front of him unhappily.

"Spider-Girl," he says. Two people answer him. He sighs. "Y/N," he amends, "you're being reckless."

The little droid camera that follows you around circles your head as you swing from one place to another. "I'm being good," you deny.

Miguel would never tell you this, but he loves how you speak. Sure, almost every word you say annoys him, but the cadence of your voice is melodic and addictive at once. And Miguel knows you're nice to everyone, but it's him alone that has you speaking so softly.

You do it to torture him, he's sure.

"You're doing well, but you'd be better if you didn't free fall for so long. Mechanical failure can happen at any minute," Miguel says.

"Then one of the others will catch me."

"And if there's no team member close by? I'm supposed to come and scrape you off of the sidewalk?"

"Miguel," you say gently. He can tell what mood you're in today. "They have people for that."

"Could you just do as I asked you to?"

"Ah, but you haven't asked me anything."

"Please," he says, "focus on the task at hand, and use your webs cautiously."

You make a chirping sound that feels more laughter than affirmation, but you do as he requests, reducing the length of time between each web shot. You're in New York, Earth-1844, attempting to send home an unhappy Doc Ock variant whose mechanical arms are immensely technologically advanced, even when compared to Nueva York's futurism.

Miguel had sent you along with a rather large team, one. because a big team was necessary for the task, two. because you'd asked and he has trouble saying no to you, and three. because if you'd spent another hour in his office today he actually might have given into temptation, which wouldn't be good for anybody.

Miguel is used to doing what needs to be done rather than what he'd like, these days. So while he wants to indulge you and your fanciful suggestions —I'm not heavy, handsome, please, you won't even notice I'm in your lap, your thighs are so wide— he can't. He has things to do. Things that cannot endure distraction.

"Woo!" you cheer through laughter, letting your shoes skim the floor in an especially dangerous manoeuvre. The adrenaline turns you giddy. "Holy crap."

Oh, right, that's why he resists temptation —he hates you. (He doesn't hate you.) He hates you and your disregard for your own safety, he hates your rejection of his authority, and he hates the stupid sweet sound you make when you're excited.

"Do you listen to me and then forget what I've said, or do you not understand the English language?" he asks.

You land on a rooftop overlooking the centre of Future Doc Ock's destruction. "Well, I've been learning Spanish. We could always try that," you suggest.

"Why have you been learning Spanish?" he asks.

"Coquetear contigo," you say, your pronunciation all over the place. To flirt with you.

"Qué maravilla," he mutters.

"I don't know that one, handsome, so I'm going to assume it was a love confession or something similar." You sound so overly fond he has to tense his jaw. "Gwen, where are you?"

"I'm over here?"

Gwen is wrapped up tightly in a metal tentacle. It shakes her around fanatically. Miguel swears and zooms in on her location, watching in apprehension as she attempts to free herself while the arm creaks, tightening, tightening.

"Woah," you say, taking a running jump off of the rooftop. "Can you believe it? I'm not the first one who needs rescuing."

Hobie Brown reaches Gwen before you can, and he makes an impressive rescue. You divert your path, shooting a web at the glass dome covering Future Doc Ock's head. Miguel crosses his arms across his chest. Wannabe Mysterio loser, he thinks, and then, when you've smashed a hole into the dome with a generously momentous kick, Nice.

He doesn't suppose Doc Ock was expecting a kick to the jaw today.

You hiss as you propel yourself away from him, another web shot at a nearby lamppost. It does something funny to his chest when he hears you whine in pain, but he's too distracted to ask what's wrong —he scours your droid's view for an answer, finds it red and saturating the fabric of your suit.

"Why are you bleeding, Spider-Girl?" he asks, gaze drawn to the main screen where Dock Ock shouts belligerent threats at an approaching Spider-Man.

"No biggie," you say, hissing again, "I think I cut my leg on the glass. I need a better suit."

"Can you walk?"

"I'm fine," you say with a sniffle. From the amount of blood, the cut is deep. "Is it me, or is it dusty in here?"

It definitely hurts if it's making you cry, though maybe you're unprepared. This was a bad idea, you aren't as seasoned as the others, and he knows you don't know what you're doing yet. You need more time, more practice. You've hurt yourself in the field on your very first mission, and you don't have the pain threshold or the super-healing necessary to cope.

It's his fault for letting you go.

"Prepare for extraction," he says.

"No! No way, are you kidding? I'm fine, I– I can do this."

"Y/N," he warns.

You fling yourself from the lamppost with impressive grace considering your injury and join the fight once again. Miguel can't keep an eye on you like he wants to, as the alarm that indicates an anomaly begins to sound. He's forced to rush together a second team while the elite strike force are preoccupied, yanking members of Spider-Society from their goings abouts, Lyla in his ear recommending effective combinations and fighting styles. From that point on, he has to supervise two different missions, his head pounding with effort.

His hands itch. He should be out there. Miguel is the cream of the crop and he isn't shy to admit that. He's a good fighter, but he can't be everywhere at once, and most of the anomalies they face require multiple sets of hands to fix. So he forces himself to stay put and guide the teams through each fight, sick to his stomach with every bloody footprint you leave behind.

He's following Hobie Brown and offering rejected instruction when he sees you go down. He toggles your voice channel and catches the end of a high-pitched, "Oof," the air-knocked from your lungs forcibly as you hit the ground. The tentacle that propelled you veers up for a finishing blow, and three different webs catch it and pull it backward.

It's a blur. One minute Miguel's in the control room at Spider-Society headquarters, the next he's breathing in the smoggy air of New York, Earth-1844, concrete and asphalt torn up under his hands. Lyla speaks in his ear and he's deaf to her, his focus pointed with only one thing in mind.

The restraint it takes not to wipe Doc Ock from the face of the dimension is incalculable. Miguel can't quite believe his own moderation as he orchestrates the return of the anomaly, your body on the ground in the corner of his eye.

The second the situation is under control, he runs to you. His gloves hit the ground with a thud by your hip, as do his knees. Spider-Man, a Peter Parker from Earth-751263, has already set nanobots over your prone figure, tiny spider-like creatures that leave webbing bandages in their wake, closing the sluggish wound on your calf. But nanotech won't fix a broken spine, not in the field. Miguel needs a stretcher. He needs to get you home.

"Miguel," you say, drawing his gaze from your slow-rising chest, "I can't breathe.

He slides his thumb as gently as he can into the seam of your mask and eases it off. "You're winded."

You cough. The sound is disturbingly wet, but your lips remain unsullied. Miguel can't look at you in this much pain, and he won't: he stands, and he takes control.

—

You're not in nearly as much pain as you should be, because Doctor Spider-Man gave you the good stuff. "Your healing isn't nearly as expedited as most of us," he'd said.

"Is this medical discrimination?" you'd asked, faking a serious concern. "Do I need to talk to Spider-Lawyer?"

You found it funny. He maybe didn't, but he gave you an extra dose and told you to rest up before leaving. Resting at the Society medbay isn't easy because Spider People are constantly filtering in and out of the ward for check-ups, medication, and corrections.

It's also not easy because most Spider People are incredibly lonely in their home dimensions, and incredibly friendly here. When Miguel finally comes to visit you, you have a Spider-Girl from a few dimensions over who has the same biological mother as you but a different father sitting to your left —she's trippy and adorable, if you do say so yourself— two Peter Parkers to your right, and a melting pot of currency lost in the white linen sheets over your legs.

They get one good look at Miguel and put down their playing cards.

The Peter Parkers slink off together promising to come and see you again sometime, and your variant stops just shy of Miguel's position to look him up and down affectionately.

"Go away," he says.

She beams at him. "Okay."

"You can't help it, can you?" he asks after she's gone, picking a rogue playing card up from the end of your bed. He twiddles it between his index and middle finger, the card shushing with each turn.

You sit up in bed and try to straighten out the sheets, hoping to entice him. You don't bother answering his question. It barely sounded like one.

"I'm hurt, you know?" you ask.

"I know. I told you to retreat."

"No, I'm hurt it took you so long to visit me," you say. You're putting on airs. Truthfully, you genuinely are a little hurt, but your voice is soft and dreamy as always. "I thought we were friends."

"Ah, because you need more of those."

You sink down into your pillows, your knees hiked. "I really can't help it if people like me. And you'd know."

Miguel surprises you by sitting down. He faces away from you, his thigh just shy of your feet below the sheets, and it's only then you realise he's tense. He's in civvies for a change, a t-shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders and chest and regular black sweatpants. He's wearing converse.

You look at him through a squint. "Did you hit your head, too?"

"I'm off-duty."

"I just never pictured you in sneakers."

"How do you picture me?" he asks, neck craned to look at you, his chin touching his shoulder. He has dark circles under his eyes and his brows are ruffled on one side.

You let your knees fall to one side and pull your legs to your chest, hoping to entice him closer. "You're not sleeping well?"

Miguel doesn't answer your inquiry. In fact, he falls silent. His eyes are on your hands where they're bunched at your chest, his dark flush of lashes twitching as his gaze tracks along the column of your throat, your jaw, and finally, your face.

"If you were anyone else," he says eventually, "you'd be benched."

"I'm not benched?" you ask.

"You disobeyed a direct order," he says, "and your actions affected the people around you. Someone else could've been hurt protecting you. You have to listen to what I'm telling you to do, or this is never going to work."

You look at the hospital bed railing rather than face his disappointment.

"But it's my fault."

"What?" you ask, startled.

"It's my fault you got hurt. I knew you couldn't handle it, and I let you go anyway. I'm… I'm weak."

"What are you talking about?" you ask. "Weak? You're the strongest person here, with or without Rapture."

He flinches at the drug's name.

You lay there, paralysed by your own mistake, your big mouth ruining everything for the thousandth time. If there's one thing you know about Miguel, it's that you never mention his weaknesses. His drug. His last attempt at a full life. You might be light-hearted, a free spirit, but you're far from stupid usually. Your emotional intelligence must've got lost somewhere on Earth-1844.

"Sorry," you murmur, looking at him from under your lashes. "I didn't mean…"

Slowly, so slowly, he puts his hand on your leg. It doesn't hurt, you've been medicated and stitched and his touch is far from cruel, but you're so startled that your breath gets caught in your throat. Miguel doesn't touch you unless he's giving you a vague reprimand, moving your hand from a button you shouldn't touch or a door you're not allowed to open.

"I let you go on that mission, knowing you weren't ready, because you asked me to let you. I put selfish motivations over your safety. It won't happen again."

You're not as brave as you think you are. You try to hold his hand but it looks so big, and you've never had him this close to you of his own accord. You're a moment away from nervous goosebumps.

He looks up at your touch, your pinky finger wrapped over his, smaller and shorter but with the same pattern of calluses, skin abraded by tight gloves and rough surfaces.

"Selfish motivations," you repeat in a murmur.

"I don't– like saying no. To you." He couldn't sound more unhappy to admit it.

"You say no to me all the time," you say. You don't mean to, but suddenly you're folding your fingers over his, forcing him to hold your hand. He doesn't stop you. He doesn't let go. "Like, ten times a day."

"It's difficult." Your complaint is a blessing for him —the atmosphere around you shifts to something less vulnerable, and his permanently chagrined personality rears its head once again. He raises his eyebrows. "You make my life extremely difficult," he says flatly.

"You make my life difficult, too," you say.

You can't help but give him your fondest smile, your lashes kissing in the corners of your eyes.

He visibly softens. His thumb rubs the back of your hand, just once.

"Fantastic," he says, looking firmly away from you. "Great."

"Isn't it?" you ask happily.

He squeezes your fingers gently. It's almost imperceptible. "Yeah, it is," he says.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! also, im sorry if you already speak spanish i realised after that that detail was subjective to the reader, sorry!

4K notes · View notes