ERLKÖNIG
Inc: Malleus (/Reader later on), Reader/Prefect, Lilia, Silver, Sebek, Ace, Deuce, Grim, and a lot of fae who should not be in this dimension yet somehow are.
Wc: Roughly 9k (Currently sitting at chapter 2/23).
Warnings: Violence, reference to war, kidnapping, rituals that fae allegedly did in mythology (wild), psychological horror, body horror (not until much later), and the boys are fighting... a lot. Relies heavily on ancient Celtic and Welsh lore (Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and Oisin I owe u my life)
Summary: Your first encounter with the fae was not in Twisted Wonderland, but rather on the coast of a village your grandmother once lived in—where stones bit into your bare feet and the water poured into your lungs as you were pulled to a world so different from your own.
It was by cunning alone that you managed to escape, having since pushed those memories aside. But the fae do not forget—not even when you cross dimensions once more—and as Beltane looms, the time for collecting is near.
Chapter 1 (Prologue) below the cut. Check out the work up to chapter 2 here!
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
- La Belle Dame sans Merci, Keats
19??, Dunhill, Ireland. October.
There is an unsettling truth behind the superstitions we hold. After all, why else do we face horseshoes upright, or close our blinds when the sun begins to set? We did not learn to play mute when we hear our names get called at night for no reason, nor did we discover on a whim that blackbirds circling are harbingers of ill outcomes.
Your grandmother was a woman of superstition. Because she lived in Dunhill, Ireland, you very rarely had the opportunity to see her growing up. This didn’t mean that you weren’t occasionally shipped out to arrive at her doorstep for a few weeks at a time over the summer months.
Your memories of her appearance are mostly flashes of the few moments you saw her. Knotted joints on her body, silver hair hidden behind a headscarf she always wore, and the way her shoulders would stoop with each shuffling step she took. What you remember more vividly was the way she acted when the two of you went out. Her trembling hands—Parkinson’s, you think your parent may have mentioned—would always press an iron nail into yours to put in your pocket before you departed.
“They like to wait on the coastlines,” she had murmured when you asked why she gave this to you. “And they’ll like you the most.”
She would not offer any further information, nor would she let you out until the nail was securely tucked away. Despite how slowly she would move on your many walks along Benvoy Beach, you never once failed to miss the way her sharp gaze would always be fixated on the unruly seas beyond.
She dies when you’re ten years old. Her funeral is a vivid affair. Your grandmother’s humble home has been transformed into a centre of traffic within a matter of hours since her passing, barely giving your family a moment to breathe despite catching the red-eye flight earlier that day. People you have never seen before shaking your small hand and offering their condolences. The strong fragrance of unknown flowers and cheap perfume fills each room, suffocating out any last semblance of your grandmother that may have still lingered. It feels more like they’re spitting on her memory than honouring it. You know your grandmother—she is, was, a quiet woman, and not one for all this pomp and circumstance.
Perhaps this is why no one notices when you sneak out and down the rocky hills.
You slip on several rocks and scrape up your hands really good by the time your feet hit the familiar sandy beach below. With the way the sun is beginning to set, the waters seem to be a wine-red color, swirling in their chaotic fervour to reach the earth you stand on. You pause to take several breaths before kicking your shoes off and stepping forward into that hungry sea.
Your parent will be furious at you for dirtying up your formal garb, but this isn’t at the forefront of your mind right now as your eyes slide shut and you stretch your arms wide. You feel the wind rush along your body and the fragrance of salt overtake you as you spill your grief into the vast waters, letting it mix and swirl into that abyss for a moment of catharsis.
It’s when the wind carries the scent of something pungent that your eyes snap open again. The foulness is brief, and for a moment you write it off as simply a byproduct of the ocean, until it returns again stronger than before. It smothers the brine and has your head turning to look around for the source. You look over your left shoulder at the empty beach around you. The sun continues to set, and your gaze tracks the path of a gull flying overhead before you look over your shoulder once more.
This time, someone is waiting.
There is an unsettling truth behind the superstitions we hold. The reason why we are scared of things that try to look like us, why we try so hard to ward them off, is because we know that anything that wants to be like a human certainly has no good intent in their heart. This is the case for the figure you see standing on the beach.
They’re wearing the same dark funeral garb you had seen the others in your grandmother’s home wearing. A wide-brimmed hat sits upon their head to conceal most of their features, although you can see scarlet hairs peeking out, and their hands appear to be clasped behind their back as they stand stoically ahead. Despite the winds that bite at your cheeks, not a single scrap of fabric on the figure’s body moves. It’s as though they’re cut from a painting and placed in real life.
You both observe each other in silence. You can feel your body locking up as your mind chants to you wrong, wrong, wrong, over and over again like a mantra. Your right hand drifts down to your pant pocket—you did not take a nail with you before you left the home.
They like to wait on the coastlines, and they’ll like you the most.
Your breath catches in your throat.
The figure smiles—black, sharp, and not quite human.
Something in your gut tells you to run and you, even as a rebellious child, do as you’re told. Your body twists around to scramble towards the rocks as your feet slip in the wet sand. You completely discard grabbing your shoes in your haste to get away, fully accepting the agony that the stones ripping into your soles will bring as consequence.
You don’t get very far. Whatever is on the beach with you is far quicker than you will ever be. Within moments of you turning, its cold fingers dig into your shoulders. You scream—cry—as the figure leans down and the pungent aroma of rotting fish emanates with each breath it exhales. You thrash and twist in its grip until you face each other, and you lock eyes with her.
She looks exactly as she did the last time you saw each other. Same knotted limbs, same silvery hairs, same stoop of her shoulders.
She stares down at you. The wind whips the loose strands of her hair around her face, and her eyes are the cloudy blue of the dead as something begins to claw in your mind. You watch as her thin and cracking lips form the syllables to your name—but it’s lost to the roar of an ever-cacophonous sea. The ground surges up around you, wrapping thorns—thorns? —around your legs. They bite into your skin, draw ruby gems from beneath your frigid flesh, and when you lift your head again, your grandmother merely continues to wear her blackened smile at the sight.
You cry out once more, but just like your name, your pleas are stolen away by the winds.
Everything lasts all but a few moments before the sea finally reaches what it has been clawing for.
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pretty please
established relationship, rough sex, power bottom shin ryujin, service top hwang yeji, "i want that twink obliterated" the fic | word count: 11.8k (2 chapters) 🔞
Ryujin honestly doesn’t have any complaints. She and Yeji have been dating for a couple of semesters now, and it’s been really fucking great. Sure, they’d butted heads in her early days with the JYPU Dragons, but it turns out that like 90% of that had just been sexual tension. Go figure. Once they finally got their shit together (with a little bit of help from their long-suffering teammates), they realized they just click. Yeji really is the perfect girlfriend: sweet, smart, fun, caring, and hot as hell.
Sometimes Ryujin thinks her favorite thing about Yeji is how gentle she is. How kind. It makes Ryujin want to protect her even though the girl is perfectly capable of protecting herself. Yeji likes it though, likes the way Ryujin looks out for her, makes sure she’s taking care of herself.
Other times, she thinks her favorite thing about Yeji is how grounded she is. No matter what’s going on around her, she always keeps her head on straight. She’s rational, calm, and relaxed in a way that almost hides how observant and vigilant she is. It’s part of what makes her such a good captain and such a good partner.
Scratch that. Her favorite thing about Yeji is the sex. Yeah, that’s it.
Ryujin is no stranger to Yeji’s physicality, focus, and attention to detail on the court, and it absolutely translates to the bedroom. She’s never had a more dedicated, attentive, or athletic lover. Power forward in the streets, power forward in the sheets. Or something.
Lately, though, Ryujin has found herself wanting more.
Keep reading
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taking - abbott elementary
Barbara Howard + Work Wives | Ch. 1
The thief on the cross looks down at her, his tortured expression a mirror image of her own. We’re not so different, you and I, he says.
He’s right, Barbara supposes. She’s penitent, too, even if the punishment has not yet scarred her hands.
Emphasis, she thinks, on yet.
→ Read it on AO3!
Preview:
Barbara measures the problem based on frequency: too often and less often. On occasion, there have been instances of hardly ever and almost always. But not once, as long as she can remember, has she been able to categorize her compulsion as never at all.
As a child, it was little things: pencils, chalkboard erasers, hard candies from little glass dishes. Young adulthood gave way to half-full lotion bottles, library books, unopened packages of vitamins. By the time she got married, her collection had grown to unmanageable proportions—boxes of artifacts were relegated to the backs of closets and hidden beneath beds. Gerald, none-the-wiser, had adoringly called her a pack rat.
From then on, she made sure to distribute her findings back into the ether, never holding onto them for too long. Boxes and closets gave way to dumpsters and church sale drop-offs, and while disposing of the evidence took the edge off, it never erased the original desire. The inescapable, indescribable urge followed her wherever she went.
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