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lilac-5ky · 7 months

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Holed Up (Husband!Toji x Fem!Reader)

mini kinktober tribute: stuck in a wall/hole

plot: you should've known that asking Toji to help you out of a hole would lead him inside another—or that time you got stuck in the dog house and he bailed on you for KFC.

tags: MDNI, stuck in a wall/hole, pet play (kinda), breeding, doggy style, fingering, oral sex (f. receiving), spanking, pet names (bitch, baby), established relationship, crack plot, unsolicited kfc orders, i promise toji loves reader, he's just joking guys.

wc: 2.2k

Masterlist | Kinktober Masterlist | AO3

“Whatcha doing?”

Sarcasm rolls from your husband’s tongue as he stares down at you. Back arched, knees bent, and head encased by wooden planks. Not the most flattering position to be found in, especially with how the light autumn breeze blows at your dress and parts its layers, opening a window to the pink panties of your choice.

His question feels excessive. He knows exactly what you are doing. It was only this morning that you asked him to dig poor ol’ Mister Stinky’s remains from the dog house and he claimed he’d rather buy his son a replacement. No arguing there, but should Megumi see what became of his favored stuffed animal—fuzzy entrails gutted out of the frog’s shredded belly in a path initiating from his bedroom—he’ll be having nightmares for weeks to come.

Besides, you doubt synthetic is the kind of fiber your vet prescribed for your puppy's diet.

“What you should’ve done instead.” You finally spit out, contempt over what Toji’s long fingers could’ve accomplished without him needing to stick half his body into a hole like your, admittedly, dumbass self did.

“For thirty minutes straight? Damn, seems I overestimated ya.”

Even though your view of him is limited to a pair of overworn black slippers, you can vividly picture his scarred lips pulling over his teeth in another of his complacent smirks that scream I told you so.

“Don’t have anything better to do than time me?”

“Nah,” Toji drawls. “Grew tired of waiting on ya, so I thought I’d come see how it’s going.”

“It’s going great!” You lie through your teeth. Anyone with a functioning pair of eyes could see how non-great this is going. “Anything else you need?”

“Well it is noon.” He points out.

“And?”

“And my darling wife’s out ‘ere, rolling in the mud when she should be having lunch with me.”

A snort flares in your nostrils. He is unbelievable.

“What a cute way of letting me know you’re hungry, Toji. You know, if you’d actually helped, I would’ve had the time to set the table and give Mister Stinky a proper burial, but I can’t do both at the same time, can I?”

“Mhm, so how ‘bout we help each other?” He suggests, undeterred. “I get your ass out, and you cook us somethin’ tasty real quick.”

“Wh-who said I was stuck? I can get out whenever I want.”

“Really, huh? What keeps ya from getting out this instant, then?”

“I don’t want to.” You answer wryly. “I like it here. It’s quiet, and I could use some time for myself.”

“In the dog house.” His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth. He’s not buying an ounce of what you’re selling. “C’mon, don’t be stubborn. You’ll end up reeking of dung if ya stay here a minute longer. Lemme give ya a hand.”

You know that accepting his help comes at the exorbitant price of utter humiliation, but he’s got a point. Last night’s downpour emanates strongly from the saturated wood, a dizzying smell that turns overwhelming when combined with the strong odor of what you sincerely hope is not piss. Your knees are on the verge of collapsing, and there’s more dirt in your nails than if you dug a grave barehanded. Right now, a day in the bathtub seems like a panacea for your every issue.

Almost.

Kissing your teeth, you resign with a long-drawn sigh that’s barely audible over the rumble in your stomach. You shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.

A moment passes before you hear the crunch of leaves as they rustle beneath his feet; see a second pair of knees take place between your own. Then it’s two hands gripping at your hips, and eventually, a face—your husband’s handsome face that beams with a smug smile and eyes of mischief.

“Lookin’ good, sweetheart.” He greets, though you doubt he sees your face with all the hair that’s curtaining over your eyes while you hang upside down.

“What are you doing, Toji?” You recycle his question in an aggravated tone that fizzles out the second you feel his thumb press against your panties and tug the fabric to the side.

“Nothin’. Just curbing my hunger.” His finger teasingly glides across your nether lips and lands at your clit, while a palm large enough to envelope both your ass and cunt kneads at the tender flesh he’s offered. “Fridge’s empty, so.”

“This isn’t funny!”

“‘m not laughing, but c’mon. You hafta admit it’s pretty damn funny.” Warm air wafts from Toji’s mouth as he inches closer to your thighs. “Y’always whine when I fuck you from behind, but now? Look at you. Bent on all four like a real bitch.”

“T-Toji!”

Your breath hitches in your throat as he slides two fingers in your hole, languidly scissoring them in and out until there’s enough slick to lather your clit with. He circles around the nub while his fingers prod deeper inside, the icy touch of his wedding band clashing with the heat that sparks through your body when he bottoms out. A smothered moan gains echo as it bounces off the walls and into his ears.

“Such a well-trained pup,” Toji praises, retrieving his palm to lick his fingers. “Might win yourself a collar at this rate.”

You bite back your tongue before it can react to his backhanded comment, reminding yourself that you’re still outside, right where your neighbors can peek over the white picket fence for a quick hello and catch you slutting yourself out on your husband’s fingers.

“Can’t we continue this inside? Mrs. Honda is right next door, and M-Megumi—” You stutter when his palm returns to your body, its twin joining in spreading your cheeks further apart.

“Kid’s at school for another hour,” Toji mumbles, his hot tongue parting your folds with a long stroke that has your knees buckling. “So fuckin’ good,” he groans, his nose buried between your two holes while he lazily laps at your juices. “That sweet cunt is the reason why I married ya.”

You keen to his touch, hips bucking into his mouth, and walls clenching for more. “Only reason?”

“Nah. Consider that tight little ass as the second.”

His fingers burrow into the supple skin to squeeze at it, only lifting to deliver playful smacks that cause your ass to jiggle against his face. He growls into your pussy, mouthing all sorts of filth that gets drowned by your moans. It feels so good when he eats you out—it always does—but the probability of being caught in such a compromising position adds to the excitement.

The hand that’s trapped with you inside your pet’s house scratches at the wood, while the other rakes at the soil for grounding. Your orgasm creeps up on you, turning your vision blurry and tinting the darkness of space with colored specks. You are so close; all he needs to do is keep swirling at your clit, swallowing the entire bundle of nerves in his mouth, and sucking hard until—

“Ah, right.” He stops, words slurring from the threads of saliva that link his mouth with your cunt. “You said ya wanted time with yourself.”

Anger washes over you in place of the orgasm you were robbed of, the pleasurable fireworks traded for the obnoxious red alarm that goes off in your brain. “Toji, I swear to God, if you don’t fuck me right fucking now, the only lunch you’ll be seeing is KFC buckets for the rest of your life!”

A low chuckle falls flat from his lips. “Three. I love that snappy mouth ‘f yours.”

In an attempt to meet his eyes, you duck between your legs. Your hair mops the floor as you watch him pull down his pants and boxers, the last thing you see before blood shoots up in your head being the hard cock that dangles out of reach. The heat in your stomach stirs at the sight, anticipation building rapidly when you feel him run the reddened tip between your puffy folds.

“Sure you don’t want it here?” Toji taps his cock against your ass hole and your entire body jolts in response, a loud Toji amusing rather than deterring him. “A’right, a’right! Gotcha the first time.”

His profound dream of burying himself nine inches deep into your ass crumbles as he aligns his cock with the entrance of your pussy. You brace yourself, patiently awaiting that initial sting that never goes away; no matter how many times he fucks you or how diligently he preps you, the thickness of his girth always threatens to split you in half.

But now he’s stalling, a complacent smile sitting on his lips while he contemplates your silence. “Bet you’re red as a beet in there, aren’t ya?”

He plunges himself inside before you are given the chance to either prove or disprove him, a silent scream punched from your throat as his cock rams straight into your g-spot. He huffs a deep breath, barely keeping a groan bottled, when he feels your walls tighten around him. It’s suffocating. Wet, and tight—a little similar to what being stuck in that small space feels like for you, but infinitely more pleasurable for him.

"Mm, such a sloppy little cunt. Got yourself stuck in there for this, didn't ya?"

His fingers latch onto your hips, bruising you as his nails dig meanly into your skin. He drags his cock halfway out of your cunt only to snap his hips back in, picking up a pace that ramps up over time. His quick thrusts fuck you further into that hole, your tits bouncing and slapping against the hard wooden planks while your dress rides higher to expose your back.

Toji bends your body into an arch, a heavy palm situated on your stomach until you’re able to hold the position on your own.

“Like it when your husband fucks ya like a bitch?” He grunts, catching the hand that’s squirming on the grass beside him and twisting it behind your back. “Pounded in broad daylight f'everyone to see how dumb you get over my dick, huh?"

Your whimpers don’t go unnoticed by him. He laughs at the high pitch your voice has assumed, babbling his name an incomprehensible amount of times that exceeds the frequency with which his swollen cock head kisses your pulsing core. You can't think enough to reply, and you can't bring yourself to ask him to stop.

He smacks your ass loud enough for you to whine, alerting every last neighbor in the block to what is happening in their quaint suburban neighborhood. “Answer me.”

“Yes, Toji—fuck, love how big it feels.” Your thoughts stem from your pussy without being filtered by your brain. All your body knows is how badly it needs to be pushed over the edge, disregarding the scornful looks you’ll definitely be receiving at the next neighborhood watch assembly.

“That’s not what I asked.” Toji smacks your ass again, softer this time—or so it feels because of your numbing skin. “I asked, Who owns this pussy, mm?”

“That’s not what you asked at all!” Your talking back earns you a third spank. You realize you’ve got no agency of your own.

“Won’t ask again. Who. Owns. This. Pussy?” He punctuates each word with a thrust sharper than the one before, his cock twitching when he hears you screaming your answer at the top of your lungs.

“You do, T-Toji. My pussy is yours—ngh!”

“And who’s bitch are you, baby?”

“Your bitch!” You answer willingly, your mind clouded, and your logic dulled. “Fuck, Toji, you know I’m all yours.”

“Damn right, y’are.” He hums in response, hunching over your body to rub tight circles around your clit, jerking the nub up and down, round and round.

You’re almost there, and when he asks you whether you wanna be bred like one, the tension in your gut finally snaps, eyes involuntary crossing as white waves of pleasure overtake you.

He fucks you through your high at an animalistic pace, the thought of filling your belly with a baby that’s half his and half yours flooding his brain before your answer registers, his cum spilling deep within your pussy with a few sloppy pumps that squelch to the sound of your mixed fluids.

His moans mingle with yours, the rough sound of his voice raising goosebumps from where he kisses your back to the resounding ringing in your ears. He wraps his arms around you almost tenderly, peppering your back with kisses that almost convince you he’ll finally pull you out of that miserable hell hole but that’s not his intention. It never was.

A final smack meets with your ass right before he rolls his pants back up and walks toward the house, undisturbed by the screams that follow close on his trail.

“You said you’d get me out of here!” Your fist hits the ground, finges clenching around a tuft of grass blades that you violently root out.

“And you said you can get out whenever ya want. That you needed time for yourself, ‘member?”

“I didn’t mean that!” You object, your tone too squeaky to be taken seriously. “Toji, you’d better help me or else—”

“Or else what? KFC until I die?” He snorts. “Relax, I’ll come back before Megumi gets ‘ere.” You hear his phone buzzing as he—presumably—punches something in his search bar. Hot wings don’t sound too bad; he whispers for himself to hear, speaking up only when he asks you if you want him to order you a twister wrap or something before he closes his order.

a/n: the episode excited me too much, apologies. i was gonna post this later asdfghjkl but toji is back and we cum.

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twistedbloodstain · 1 year

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marquis de gramont x reader: with you, i serve. with you, i fall down. | a seal of fate

plot: the one where the marquis takes you for himself.

warnings: hella down bad marquis, some flulff, break in, violation of privacy, slightly dubious content

masterlist

he can hear the shower running through the floor and the occasional humming from a tune coming from the bathroom.

the living room is dark, save for a vintage lamp illuminated beside the couch. it looked too rusty and drab to basically function but it brought a rustic and classy feel to the room. although, the light withered occasionally.

someone is staring at him. more like something, something feline. it’s been tracing his movements the moment he entered the humble abode. vertical pupils squinting from the unidentified person that has entered his castle, a ball of fur that was mounted beside the lamp on the side table.

it’s body was sprawled on the table but it wasn’t relaxed. it was tense, as if playing camouflage to its prey. staying still as the prey walks past him and when it does he pounces on them for the kill.

he is no prey. more like the owner, it depends on how sentimental this ball of fur is to you. he hears the shower turn off, it catches his attention and waits to hear a door close and another to open along your soft footsteps trudging through the apartment. you call out for your feline pet, the cat makes no sound to meow back to you. focused on him, if he made any sudden movement to attack him. you sigh then ignore the absence of communication and he guesses that you make a beeline for your bedroom.

he waits a few minutes before getting on his feet. several minutes pass and he stands up and walks towards the cat beside the lamp. the cat tenses along with its back legs fidgety for an attack he slowly halts and reaches for it with his hand.

the cat hisses bravely and swiftly raises its paw to attack the hand attempting to touch him with his sharp claws. it makes vincent hiss in pain and retract his hand, he checks his palm for blood. he realizes no blood was drawn and that relieves him. he’s definitely getting this little shit replaced when you move in with him. he’ll get you a sweeter one, a ragdoll or persian just not this demonspawn from hell.

he makes his way towards the bedroom door, as he passes by he can see some trinkets lying on the kitchen and tabletops. a few cooking books and old history textbooks stacked on the floor. this reminds him that he needs to buy you a few books to keep you entertained in the manor.

as he faces the front door he stealthily turns the knob of the door and enters, it was time.

you brushed the tedious knots in your hair with a comb in difficulty, you forgot to brush your hair before showering again. you searched for your hair brush on your vanity but to no avail. you turn towards your bed and gasp in surprise.

he was here, the marquis was here. in your bedroom.

his face remains the same, still and calm as the sea. but you knew better, this was only the calm before the storm. deep inside him, a storm was brewing but he kept his composure to seal away what he truly felt and right now you, the sailor needs to run away from the storm.

you slowly eyed him from top to bottom, as usual his hand stayed in his pockets. a string of gold strewn across his pocket. the chain shines from the luminescence it received from your bedside lamp. he was dressed impeccably, something you often admired. he’d often used his wardrobe as a form of intimidation to his enemies when speaking to them and it often worked. you pray that it doesn’t falter you, that he doesn’t falter you. maybe he’ll leave when you show a strong front to him.

he gazes upon your face like he was taking in a treasure presenting itself to the sight of his eyes. you were still frozen on your spot after you gasped in surprise from seeing him.

“good evening, cherie.” he breaks the silence with the sweet endearment.

you hesitantly greet out a reply to him, you fail to build a strong front and your voice visibly wavers from fear, “evening,boss.”

he begins to walk, it takes all the power in you not to back away from him. you try to appear composed and resilient. a farce attempt to show that you aren’t scared of him, but you know you are and so does he.

thankfully, he doesn’t make his way towards you. he saunters towards the edge of your bed and sits down. his eyes wander around your room, taking in the personal touches you made to the room. gradually turning his head to face you once again.

“how are you?” he politely asks.

“i’m fine. nothing bad happened to me.” you answer.

this again. what’s his game? it was never just simple conversation with your boss, there was always a point he wanted to come across. a lesson to be learned. right now, it wasn’t looking good for you. you need to take control of this conversation.

“that’s good. the doctor commented a few days ag-“ he speaks to you again but got interrupted.

“sir, with all respect. what do you want? why are you here?” you whisper to him. any attempt to gain the upper hand with him is futile, he always gets his licks back. silence follows the conversation before he speaks up again.

“you know what i want.” he sternly retorts.

“i don’t know what you’re here for. much less what you want.” you fire back, strength is solidifying itself inside you.

“is that so? surely you do.” he says mockingly, still playing a game.

“i don’t.” you say firmly this time.

“fine.” he scoffs to your face before reaching into his pocket, you flinch afraid he might’ve brought a weapon of some sort, he notices this and his hand remains inside. his eyes all on your frame and yours on his hand inside of his pocket.

you should really hope you’re not fucked.

“perhaps this will jog your memory.” he continues, “three days ago, you sent me this message. subject: resignation letter. to the marquis de gramont, i'm writing to let you know that, as of the seventeenth day in august of this year, i'm leaving from my employment as the marquis de gramont's personal assistant. due to schedule issues and unanticipated consequences encountered while working, i am leaving my position. i appreciate the chance to work with you over the past two years. sincerely-.” he recites the entire letter of resignation to you with a false professional tone to patronize you..

“i precisely know what i wrote there.” you look away from him annoyed as you cut him off once again.

“then you precisely know why i’m here.” he argues back. “i’m glad we’re finally getting on the same page, mon coeur.”

no we aren’t, i don’t want you here. i want you out of my house and i don’t want to see you ever again. how come you never ask what i want? you want to scream at him but your silence continues.

“look at me.” he pressed.

you stay quiet and keep your gaze away from him.

“you will not leave.” he finally claims. finally this makes your head snap back at him and makes you scoff loudly, the marquis frowns from your reaction although you did give him what he wanted.

“you can’t do this.” you respond weakly, your breath hitching in your throat.

“i can. i actually can.” he states certainly.

“why’s that? because you said so?” you challenge him. defying him is never a good idea, you know this. you know better and you should do better, but you’re too petty and exhausted. you want him out as soon as possible even if that means being blunt to him.

“tell me the truth. why do you want to leave?” he changes the subject and presses once again.

“i already told you. it’s in the goddamn letter.” you were getting tired of repeating the same words.

“i don’t believe you.” he discloses firmly.

“don’t act so foolish and dense-“ you retort in exasperation.

“are you calling me a fool?” he immediately questions. oof i think you hit his pride in that one.

“i’m asking you not to be one. boss, i literally got shot, i almost died. this may be something you can brush off easily but i can’t. you don’t have to worry about me spreading your secrets because i literally signed an nda and i have no intention of getting back in that kind of work! i’m gonna ask you once again, please leave.” you beg him, hoping he hadn’t missed the point of what you were trying to say.

you already knew that this job was already insane. not only do you cater the whims of an insanely rich man whose money seems to have no end but the danger and fear it came along with had to be taken into measure. not to mention, you didn’t exactly feel like living when you worked for him. how many opportunities for happiness had you turned away because that meant disregarding the marquis’ orders and facing his wrath if you chose to have that? god, you hadn’t even been home in a long time. you deserve this, he should at least have the courtesy to understand that.

“you don’t have to be scared anymore, cherie. i’m here.” he interrupts your thoughts as he softly affirms to you.

you don’t want that. you want nothing to do with him, sooner or later you’ll get killed and it’s likely going to be because of him. you know that he’s regretful and shameful of what happened to you but keeping you by his side isn’t going to change that, people die, more fact than speculation and by mere calculation you could tell it’ll happen sooner than later. after all, the marquis was still human. deep down, he’s still vincent and if you were to stay with him for protection that choice should be coming from you, not from him.

his determination to keep you locked away in his manor did nothing but frighten you to death. it had been so unexpected, not to mention you haven’t processed that fully along the fact you almost died.

you sigh loudly from resignation, the marquis keeps you in his line of sight, probably wondering what was going inside your head.

‘i can’t,” you finally utter out, “what can’t you understand? i’m scared…so fucking scared and you keep waltzing into my life like your entitled to it which just scares me more. i needed time to think, to process..all of this.” you gesture around you, the marquis stays silent listening to your words with no visible reaction on his face.

“i finally thought all of this through, i want to stay alive. staying alive means quitting, i-i have so much to live for, my family needs me and i need them. i don’t need you to look out for me, i don’t need you for this. i can help myself.” you refrain to him, letting the words sink to him.

“i’ve done so much for you. i’ve kept and guarded your secrets, everything i’ve ever heard while i worked never escaped my mouth and never entered ears that weren’t meant to hear them. i’ve protected your power, i upheld every system and order you gave me, so for god’s sake. haven’t i done enough for you? what else haven’t i gave to you?” you spill out to him, he deserves to know this, how you carried his burden with you everywhere without him knowing. the burdens you carried that he couldn’t be bothered to touch, every order of assassination, every fearful attempt of getting killed and his mercurial violence.

he needs to know that you can’t take it anymore. there is so much that you could take, let him find another. another that might be more tolerable of how he runs his system, more understanding of his work. someone who doesn’t flinch at the mention of drawing the blood of his enemies. someone that’ll encourage his determination for the never ending pain and ruthlessness.

you can’t be that someone, not anymore.

working for you is pure torture, you want to say but as usual you hold it back from him.

the marquis stays quiet. you don’t see his face twist in displeasure or anger..which is good but a quiet marquis wasn’t any better. he suddenly jolts onto his feet, scoffing from what you just said as he paced on your bedroom with his head infrequently looking at you. he was getting heated from what you said.

he shakes his head with his hands on his hips before finally speaking, stopping in his tracks, “that’s it?”

you try to speak before he cuts you off.

“that’s it, you’re simply leaving me because you’re scared?” he angrily questions you.

“please, you have to understand.” you try to plead once more.

“cherie, i can protect you. i saved you the same way you saved me. i am owed something.” he reassures you, pieces of his anger slightly heard from his tone.

“i was in the way! i didn’t-“ you try to clear it with him.

“clearly, your memory isn’t serving you well, more reason to keep you safe with me which is for the best.” he firmly asserts.

“i’m not going back there!” you yell at him, “just because i took a bullet for you doesn’t mean you get to dictate how i live my life, at the end of the day, you don’t get to control me, i don’t exist for you and most importantly just because i almost died because of you doesn’t mean i owe anything to you.” you lament at him, exhaustion and animosity getting the best of you as the marquis marches towards you, as you finish, slightly out of breath from your rant. he stands still before you. you hope that your words might put some sense in him.

he stares at you and you look back at him, returning his gaze. you gulp, alarmed that maybe you’d gone too far and perhaps…perhaps you should’ve done this more softly or professionally. you should’ve conjured a foolproof plan when confronting him about this, you should’ve expected he wouldn’t let go without a fight however, it’s not like you had a choice with him breaking into your apartment.

he slowly strides towards you, step by step. you take a deep breath in despair as he leisurely closes on you while you feel your back hit the wall.

“you are going back there. it is where you belong, you care for me. don’t even try denying it, cherie. i saw, i saw the way you looked at me that night, you’re afraid that’s all. you’re right,” he takes a deep breath, inhaling your scent then continues, ”i don’t control you but you do that to me, you control me, you control every ounce of thought that occupies my mind. most of the time, it’s all my head does. you might not exist for me but i exist for you, you make living in this cruel world brighter and sweeter than before but this is where you’re wrong. you do owe me something, you owe me your life and i can make it lovelier if you just let me.” he speaks in a hushed tone as he looks through your eyes. you can feel something grabbing your arms, you glance and see that he’s taken hold of your limbs. rubbing circles around them, attempting to soothe you.

the pattern of his strokes reminds you of that night at the plaza.

he only deters you even more.

“i owe you nothing.” you whisper, your voice growing weaker by every second.

“you owe me something.” he repeats once again.

“i don’t.” you mutter looking into his eyes.

“that’s where you are wrong, you do.” he emphasizes to you.

“then we’re even. i-i saved you too and you saved me.” you quietly mumble to him.

he raises a brow in your response and lowers himself to your ear. the hairs in your body rise and you can feel goosebumps crowd your skin.

“i don’t want even…i want you.” he confesses.

you frantically sigh in distress, attempting to wrench yourself out of his grip, something you should’ve done earlier, but it’s too late. he abandons the hold he has on your right arm and clasps it to your neck to bring you closer to him and he kisses you.

you squealed in shock but it’s devoured when he takes your lips to his. you can feel your back press to the wall even harder trying to evade his touch, his kiss, but the marquis presses himself to you. his hands had abandoned your neck and arm, opting to snake around your waist as he pulled you closer to his warmth.

the marquis is kissing you.

he kissed you like a devoured man. as if he’d been deprived of something sweet for years and he finally received what he’d always wanted. he wouldn’t let his grip on you soften, afraid that you might abandon him once again, which you did before. he softly moans into the kiss, content and happy with what was happening.

“don’t leave.” he pulls away to whisper into you. “don’t leave me.”

you whimper as you feel his hands exploring your body, one of his palms tugging at the buttons of your satin white pajama shirt, wanting to feel more and more of the warmth beneath the clothes.

“i want you to promise me.” he mumbles to you, your foreheads pressing together, as he brushes his thumb over your bottom lip. you make no sound of promises and affirmation to him. he stays quiet expecting your words as he stares into the depths of your eyes and speaks up once again.

“no matter, you’ll be begging for me soon enough.” he sighs from your lack of communication then delves back into the warm haven he has found earlier.

seldomly, he’d pull himself back to bite your bottom lip. you’d wince from the ache coming for your mouth, slightly parting and he’d take that opportunity to slip inside your mouth. his hands continued to explore through your body, randomly squeezing a part of you to force a moan from you, then return to making out with you. you can feel him smile against you whenever he did. you felt bitter because this was looking victorious for him.

“please…stop.” you sigh in pleasure when he starts kissing and biting your neck.

“do you, cherie? i don’t think you do, not when you’re making all these pretty sounds for me.” he whispers against your neck then continues his attack on your skin.

“s-sir, stop..stop that.” you plead once again.

“vincent.” he stops to correct you.

“what?” you ask confused.

“none of that courtesies from now on. you’ll call me vincent. do you understand?” he softly reminds you, he’d halted his movements of affection, his forehead was pressed against yours again as his eyes looked at you with the utmost devotion known to man.

you stay silent as he smiles at you, that stuns you even more. you’ve never seen him smile from something pleasant. his eyes shimmered with love and desire like the stars when you got shot. your lips were wet and plump from the sudden assault the marquis had given them and your pajama shirt had several buttons undone but the marquis by comparison almost looked the same except for the disheveled clothes.

finally, he presses a chaste kiss to your lips, the seal to your fate awaiting his words.

“as much as i want to continue this right now, we must usher home. we wouldn’t want to be late for dinner, do we mon amour? cold food never tastes as good when it is warm.”

you stay quiet, slightly mind blown from the make out session your ex-boss just gave you. your head feels fuzzy and unclear, christ your legs feel like giving out if the marquis hadn’t been holding you up against the wall.

he leans back down into your collarbone and begins to leave a trail of kisses throughout the skin, you whimper as he bites into some areas of the skin, eliciting a groan from him. you begin to feel his head go lower and lower, entering the region of skin where your unbuttoned shirt had failed to cover, you look down at him hesitantly and you see him looking up at you with affection.

suddenly, he grabs at your hips then raises himself up along with you. hoisting you on him, you hastily grip his shoulders as he lifts you, afraid to fall onto the floor of your bedroom.

“i changed my mind, perhaps it can wait. what do you think mon amour?” he whispers into you in the dark of the night.

you are now his love.

his to have and his to keep.

just as he is yours.

with you, he serves. with you, he falls.

you’re staying with him. not as his assistant but as his partner.

he will be your love. your heart. he will be yours.

you will be his love. his heart. his wife.

and god forbid anyone who takes you from him.

author’s note: sooo that’s part five and the last part of the marquis series! i really enjoyed writing this as it helped me explore my writing capabilities (especially in part two) even in my fever induced state. (it had me giggling in a cafe while i had a fever) thank you so much for the kind words and sweet comments yall have about the series (it has me kicking my feet pls continue). although im tempted to write a drabble of the aftermath of part five + that keith toshko fic and two requests ;)) please like and reblog and feel free to comment!

taglist: @dcgoddess @1mawh0re @davvydobrik @ilunapb @hesvoid3434

part one part two part three part four

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tragedynoir · 6 months

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— introducing 011: COTTAGE TALES + [ link ]

a nanowrimo / novel planning google doc template with a cute, doodle-like aesthetic that is warm and inviting to cheer you on during your writing journey! this template contains a lot of functional elements, and is also made to accommodate any long and large amounts of writing and planning. all illustrations in this document and the sticker pack were hand drawn by me! the template and a full page-by-page preview can be found in the link above or in the source code.

features:

10 unique 7.25" x 10.5" pages with 9 unique illustrations hand-drawn especially for this template

a dashboard page with story overview and general milestones

a calendar page with word count milestones as well as a daily to-do-list to help you manage your story planning all in one document

plot points, locations, research and brain dump sections that can easily accommodate any amount of texts, including long prose that may be necessary for all your planning!

individual character sheets that can be easily duplicated and copied for more

a hand-drawn sticker pack featuring 30 PNGs that you can use to replace the placeholder images with to personalize the template — see last image for all stickers inside

you may edit to your heart’s desire. Change the colours, replace, add or remove elements and images etc.

you may remix pages with pages from my other templates.

you may not remove the credit from the templates.

you may not copy, sell or redistribute my templates whether wholesale, in part (i.e. taking out certain pages) or remixed (i.e. modified).

you will also receive an additional guide with images on how to use and edit google doc templates! if you have any problems or issues, feel free to leave an ask or join our discord server, where you can additionally find server-exclusive google doc templates that you may also find useful for your writing!

I hope you enjoy this template and have fun writing with it, and likes + reblogs are always appreciated. if you ever want to talk about you wips, please reach out to me; I'd love to listen! ♡

#google docs template #google doc template #writing template #nanowrimo #writing resource #m #m pr

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floatingcatacombs · 4 months

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Go Nagai was insane for this one

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 8

I like to always have manga of dubious quality on tap for when I’m having trouble sleeping. Ideally, reading a few chapters will distract me, but I won’t want to stay up late shotgunning volumes. Devilman Lady was the ideal manga for this, and this is maybe the last time anyone will ever describe Devilman Lady as "ideal".

An extremely brief introduction is in order. If Osamu Tezuka is the godfather of manga, then Go Nagai is manga’s weird horny uncle. He’s arguably just as influential, the two of them just moved in different circles, each reifying entire genres. Nagai is more or less responsible for magical girls, super robot, and ecchi, and also spent a lot of time in the sphere of supernatural and post-apocalyptic manga. These are fundamentally genres of extremity and ridiculousness, and Nagai dials every one of his works up to 11 by the end, one way or another. Devilman is probably his most famous work over here, and it’s a stone-cold classic for a reason. Nagai has kept revisiting it over the years, with side stories, alternate universes, manga cameos, and even entirely new series that function as stealth sequels such as Violence Jack. But his most notable attempt is Devilman Lady, which is far more than a simple gender-swap of the original.

Devilman Lady is about swimming deep in filth. It’s easily the most disgust-provoking manga I’ve read, with pretty much every content warning under the sun applicable. This is a truly rotten and conspiratorial world that Nagai is depicting. Societal decay manifests in countless forms, including rape, child abuse, homophobia, militarism, and hatred towards immigrants. Anything that could be potentially understood as fanservice is placed right next to or directly within the atrocities at hand, and it's genuinely unclear how much Nagai intended that as commentary. His intentions throughout this whole manga are a bit of an enigma, but what's clear that he is firing on all cylinders.

This is an extremely zeitgeisty 90’s work, with intelligent design debates, the mapping of the human genome, new age paranoia, religious zealotry, and anxiety over pollution all playing out on the pages. Where it breaks from many of its contemporaries is a decisive rejection of the end of history. This is the kind of thing you write when you’re still reeling from the subway sarin gas attacks and your country's role in the Gulf War and subsequent militarization. It’s the perfect manga for capturing a time period when ten to twenty percent of Japan’s population were estimated to have belonged to a new religious movement.

The punchline to all of this is that he doesn’t know how to draw women.

By the back half of Devilman Lady, Nagai’s depictions of hellscapes and grotesque monsters reach near-Berserk levels of detail and technical competency. And yet his female protagonists are still drawn in a drastically simpler 70's style, only now with giant spheres grafted to their chests. Either humans and the infernal are two completely different skillsets, or this was a deliberate artistic decision, and both are difficult to swallow. Either way, we just have to accept the juxtapositions.

one of my favorite pages to show people devoid of context

The finale is just nuts. Go Nagai makes textual the homoeroticism and gender deviance of the original Devilman manga, as the world burns in both nuclear warfare and demonic hellfire. The story starts accelerating at an unfathomable pace, the most inscrutable double mobius reacharound yaoiyuri occurs, and the universe resets once or twice. It makes the endings of Jojo Part 6 and 7 look tame by comparison. There is no way to parse this like a normal manga with a plot and narrative. It is raw id.

This has been a year where I’ve tried to deliberately broaden my comfort zone by engaging with more potentially upsetting works if I think they'll have something interesting to say. This was like jumping into the deep end. Devilman Lady may very well be Go Nagai’s magnum opus. It’s not nearly as tight as the original manga, but it’s a glorious mess, just as radical to its own time as Devilman must have been in the 70s. It made for spectacular insomnia reading. And there’s no way in hell I can ever recommend it.

At age 19, Nagai went through a bout of diarrhea so bad that he convinced himself it was colon cancer, and that he was at death's door. He vowed to leave something behind for the world to remember him by, and began laboring away on manga. And for the last 60 years of his career, he’s written and drawn with the fervor of a man who’s about to shit himself to death. Maybe that’s the real secret.

#12 days of anime #devilman #devilman lady

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blackautmedia · 6 months

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Tears of the Kingdom and the Orientalism of the Mummy - Dehydrated Ganon

Plenty have talked about the portrayal of Ganon and the problems with both him and the Gerudo as a whole. I haven't seen as much talk about dehydrated Ganon specifically and wanted to share some of what I'm aware of.

TotK in many ways can be read with the number of plot points it lifts from classic mummy films, which in turn means it also picked up all the racial history and tropes that come with that.

Dehydrated Ganon and Phantom Ganon are mummies. He's explicitly referred to as such several times in the game and the game's opening relies on a number of classic mummy movie tropes in its presentation as introducing a corpse-like Ganon.

Here's an excerpt from the The Mummy On Screen: Orientalism and Monstrosity in Horror Cinema.

Male archaeologists, heroic adventurers and female heroines are all drawn to enigmatic corpses and/or racial ‘Others’, being variously hypnotized, transformed, romanced, coerced and/or transported away from their humdrum lives, sometimes through time to re-experience an ancient past in which they once lived, sometimes through space to Egypt where the monster stalks or seduces them.

Helen in The Mummy (1932) is a woman who succumbs not only to the influence of the Mummy but also to the lure of Egypt itself and its ancient ways that still hold sway.

If one accepts Wood’s thesis, one can see the Mummy film as having a formidable formula, with the Orient serving as an effective site and its chief monster functioning as a potent medium for the release of the suppressed.

The game is built on Zelda being zipped to the past and her experiences in an ancient, mystical world and seeing the founding of Hyrule while Link is integrated into the resources left behind.

After Link and Zelda were drawn in by the Mummy's call to investigate beneath Hyrule following the rise in illnesses from the gloom.

Zelda is whisked away to ancient Hyrule where she spends time with her very heavily Native coded (which would need an entirely separate post on the tropes associated with that and the way the game uses Anti-Native tropes) Zonai pals.

She's in a rush to return home, but this new space also ends up being a big learning environment for her. She's exposed to this ancient and alluring culture that fascinates her and provides many of the wants and needs she expressed in BoTW.

She's given the supportive parents she's needed--a supportive father figure who explicitly supports her utilizing study to achieve her goals and a loving mother to teach her how to use her powers. She even gets a cool engineering/history auntie who shares a lot in common with her.

All of these things are stolen from Zelda because of the evil mummy.

The game makes great effort to play into the exoticized idea associated with the Zonai, right down to infusing Link and Zelda in their culture with Zelda given a new outfit, home, and lifestyle, and Link gifted with Rauru's power.

The Zonai in TotK are characterized less by their beliefs or the perspective of Mineru or Rauru and more framed in relation to the resources they provide others--the secret stones, the Zonai devices, the exotic, mysterious, ancient powers and knowledge, the zonaite you mine, Rauru's arm, etc.

That leads into another issue with how Tears reinforces the idea of Native extinction in how the Zonai are more characterized for the resources everyone is extracting from them rather than their actual peoples' thoughts and feelings and how that form of erasure harms real Native people outside of the fiction.

There's also the aspect of how the land and resources of these Native people are almost destined to fall into the hands of largely white, "civilized" Hyrule leaders with every other group serving under Hyrule's order geographically and narratively while the Zonai are people we only interact with in memories or as spirits.

The Orient until the second half of the nineteenth century had largely proven a fruitful terrain for colonial conquest and achievement for the British, but from the Indian Mutiny of 1857 towards the end of the century various military setbacks began to point worryingly to a decline in British power…In the aftermath of such events, rather than being perceived as ‘passive’, with ‘no capacity for violence’ (Mercer and Julien 1988: 108), the inhabitants of the Orient became more forbidding, a change in perspective reflected in the literature of the period that simultaneously portrayed anxiety concerning Britain’s own newfound sense of vulnerability.

Richard Marsh’s The Beetle...depicted Egypt as every bit as capable as Transylvania of bringing a primitive threat to the civilized West.

As Marsh’s novel exemplifies, the legacy of the ancient Egyptians had transformed over the course of the nineteenth century from one that bestowed valuable knowledge into one that offered secrets best left unearthed, being increasingly tainted as the years unfolded through its association ‘with the mysterious and supernatural, the questionable and disreputable’.

Mummy films rely very heavily on presenting the "other" as an exotic and almost tempting place for the civilized white protagonists to find and change themselves.

They also acted as a way to depict non-white people to bypass several censorship restrictions in earlier decades, so you often see them framed as romance films with an emphasis on a commentary about that dangerous, tempting allure of the mummy being used as a commentary on interracial relationships and intermingling of the civilized and uncivilized with a white gaze in mind.

Many mummy films also would utilize racial coding to characterize the mummy as hostile, dangerous, tempting or seductive in relation to the white, civilized character, something done with several other movie monsters like Dracula, King Kong, etc.

No matter the Zelda game, the structure ends up being largely the same with Ganon in that Hyrule or wherever is shown to be peaceful until the "evil man of the desert" invaded and defiled their space with his wickedness and disrupting the order of the gods and the status quo.

Dehydrated Ganon specifically is another extension in linking Ganon and his wickedness and evil to his heritage and status as a SWANA-coded character, in a lot of using tropes associated with Black people, etc.

He's not just evil because he's a selfish overlord, he's an evil "other" Middle Easterner invading the pure and peaceful environment the game made the effort to set up, and his constant presence looms in the game in how his corpse-like mummy servant is busy carrying out his will.

The Mummy and Nubian were a particularly suitable pairing considering contemporaneous racial stereotyping...Elizabeth Young years later highlighted others, identifying the black ‘brute’ as a stereotype that ‘carried particular force’ in 1930s cinema as ‘a monstrous beast.

Cultural attitudes towards African Americans manifestly became intertwined with contemporary ones concerning those of North African Egyptian Mummies in this version of the play.

In addition to Zelda being taken to the ancient past, we have the element of Ganon stalking and scheming to his rise to power in how he defiles the sanctity of ancient Hyrule continuing in the pattern of referring to him as the "man of the desert," another means of codifying Ganon as inherently evil by way of his heritage. There's almost constant reference to his home, the desert and anything else associated with othering him.

Ganon has previously used religious iconography in how the Gerudo crest used to very closely resemble the symbol of Islam.

He also uses racial coding associated with antisemitism in how he's a green-skinned, hook nosed magic-wielder.

There's Anti-Black imagery in his muscularity and chains and how he devolves into a mindless, savage brute.

There's all the decades of sentiments toward SWANA people wrapped up in him and the mummy is a continuation of that in how dehydrated Ganon is presented as a stalking, corrupting presence who defiles the sanctity and draws the civilized white protagonists in with his tempting allure. Phantom Ganon is a looming threat who can arise out of nowhere.

I know dehydrated Ganon is the same dude as regular Ganon, but I do think there's an extra element to discuss in how Tears uses decades of old mummy horror and the racial coding that comes with that to further the idea that Ganon is an evil SWANA man who needs to be feared and eradicated.

#tears of the kingdom #legend of zelda #totk critical #mummy film #orientalism #phantom ganon #islamophobia #dehydrated ganon #zelda #link #ganon #ganondorf #twilight princess #totk spoilers

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philtstone · 1 month

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Eowyn, 1

1 - in lonely beds ive finally scraped together a functional first scene for my accidentally-a-psych 3 hunters detective agency au. if you guys like this mess i'll turn it into a real fic. with chapters and a plot and everything!!!!! the prompt is ... interpreted but loneliness and my girl eowyn are well acquainted

It is four o'clock on a Tuesday and Eowyn Eomundsdottir has three significant problems.

Arrest, rapid-onset dementia, and laundry.

Each of her issues is easily explainable if considered separately. Eowyn is the first to admit that her brother Eomer’s always had a bit of a temper, and if she puts aside the necessary development of maturity and commitment to familial responsibilities that happened after their parents died, it was always a matter of time before some poor idiot pressed his buttons in just the wrong-enough way in front of another just the wrong-enough idiot to get him jailed overnight for knocking in an unwitting nose.

Plenty of people’s uncles develop rapid-onset dementia, she is freely ready to acknowledge.

And – if Eowyn may be so self-aware – she has certainly fallen behind on her laundry many times before.

But no matter how short her brother’s temper, he wouldn’t be arrested for trying to embezzle family funds. Rapid-onset dementia is far less likely when there is next to nil history of it in your family tree, and even less so when the Uncle in question is a scant fifty-three and doing perfectly fine not two months ago. And, most importantly: Eowyn has fallen behind on laundry before, but never because of the above-mentioned two issues, and never such that the only thing she’s got left to wear is a thin white sundress from when she was fourteen that is too short at the knees and not at all suited for the early spring cold spell they are currently experiencing, nor the creepy wandering eyes of Uncle Theoden’s new business manager, who routinely looks like he’s been doused in oil.

It’s fucking miserable, is what it is. Her knees have goosepimpled, she’s so cold. And to make matters worse, her cousin Theodred, whom she would usually text for help in a crisis, seems to have blocked her phone number.

That, Eowyn simply can’t believe.

It’s because of all these things that she finds herself standing at the dingy brick building by the docks, eyeing the circling seagulls warily, and clutching her backpack in one hand and her bike helmet — which has left her long blonde hair looking like a birds nest — in the other. It’s a small place, with a glass window in place of a front wall that’s got the blinds drawn on the inside. There’s no official sign, but someone has taped a small piece of cardstock to the back of the windowpane, facing out. It reads, in surprisingly elegant black Sharpie penmanship:

Telcontar, Gloinson & Thranduilion Private Investigators for Hire

Beneath this, there is an additionally taped series of brightly coloured post-it notes, which are scrawled over with the following in various hands:

Got a phone! +1591-334-9920 (If no one answers the door, call the number! We DO NOT have a website.) That’s because Gimli thinks the government is spying on us. SO DO YOU! All inquiries welcome :-)

Eowyn takes a moment to read through it all. Then she pauses, listening. There is the distinct sound of voices from within, muffled. So someone must be home, then – better just to open the door, rather than knock, in case no one hears her. She takes a deep, steadying breath, tugs at the too-short hem of her dress, and twists the doorknob.

Inside there is what can only be described as carefully organized chaos.

Within the small office space there is a cluttered desk housing a laptop and overlarge monitor. Boxes cover everything, as though someone has only just moved in, and a lopsided whiteboard rests against the far wall, covered in a far less elegant version than the hand that wrote the outside sign. Everything smells a little bit like camphor, and also cookies, and a very faint touch of gym socks. A man sits on a rolly chair in the corner; he is on his cellphone. Eowyn wouldn’t have even seen him if he wasn’t talking, so well does he somehow blend into the taupe walls and cluttered box decor, but as she does: he is tall (too tall for the chair), dark haired, and wearing an old grey hoodie, running shoes, and an abominably ratty pair of jeans. He’s talking on the phone in a low gentle voice that is nonetheless a touch put-upon, but nowhere near snippy or even frustrated. Eowyn (in a fit of fancy) doesn’t think a voice like that could be capable of snippiness, and then promptly feels very embarrassed by her own foolishness. At his feet, by the bottom of the whiteboard, a pile of dirty blankets rests. From within them sounds a plaintive meowing. Opera music plays from a speaker system Eowyn can’t see; a hammer (maybe?) is banging somewhere in the distant back room, the door to which hangs open on squeaky hinges; and two other voices can be heard arguing loudly from the same general direction.

Also, there is a young man, around Eowyn’s own age, standing very awkwardly with his green jumper and moppish brown hair to the immediate left of the door and looking as if he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing with himself. At Eowyn’s bewildered look, he offers her a pained smile and a weird little wave hullo. Eowyn waves weirdly back.

“Yeah – yeah, just a second. We’ve got a client –” The man in the rolly chair looks up at Eowyn and smiles. It is such a very nice, genuinely kind smile that Eowyn cannot help but smile back immediately and then feel her whole face go red; she’d be thoroughly soothed if she wasn’t also feeling so completely out of her depth. Bang bang bang, comes the hammer from the back room, along with a swelling of the arguing voices. “Someone will be with you in a second,” whisper-mouths the man. Then he reaches down, takes off one of his running shoes, and flings it very expertly through the open door. There is a small noise, like a crash, and the other two voices stop. He returns to his phone call.

“... what I was saying. No. No, I don’t want you to be halfway across the world. That’s not the point, the point is your dad stopped practicing ten years ago and now owns a bed and breakfast. He’s not the one who’d be navigating a corrupt healthcare system. Do you know how much lobby money lines the pockets of mega corporations? Remember the whole Nestle baby formula thing? The media definitely doesn’t …”

“Good afternoon!” declares a second, much louder voice, minutes before its owner materializes behind the cluttered desk. He is more beard than man, wears a very formal and very 1990s plum coloured suit and one single gold earring, and comes up to about Eowyn’s shoulder. He claps his hands together. “Now, which of you was here first? No – don’t tell me, I will guess!”

But his imminent guessing is interrupted by the third voice, floating in:

“I still can’t find it!”

Desk man deflates by a margin. Without turning his head, he calls,

“I told you to look in the third box!”

“I looked there. It’s not there, Gimli. I’ll try going through the books.”

“Why would a thing like that fit in a book?”

“Try the kitchen,” mouths the man on the rolly chair. A muffled woman’s voice comes through his mobile. He has one hand covering his face now, and his head tipped back to face the ceiling. “Well, yes – I do know that. You’re really telling me you don’t want to go to Paris for a year.” While Eowyn watches the meowing blanket pile moves and from within it a truly horrible looking little cat emerges. It shoots one paw out as if intending specifically to scratch its phone-occupied companion; the speed at which he moves his foot to pin the blankets hem and thwart the little paw is bordering on superhuman. Cat hisses pathetically from under its blanket prison. On the speakers, the opera singer has reached a uniquely high pitch in her stanza. “No, obviously I don’t want to do long-distance, I just think — uh huh. Yes. I’d tell anyone to go to Paris. I’d tell Gimli to go, if Gimli’s university was offering to send him to Paris.”

“He’s already tried the kitchen,” says the man at the desk – presumably Gimli. Still, he yells out, “Try the kitchen, would you?”

“I’ve already tried the kitchen!” calls the disembodied voice. “I can’t find it!”

“You can’t find it because of your terrible organizational system.”

“It is not my terrible organizational system, which you know, and besides which I have never had problems with it before.”

“No,” from the rolling chair, “Legolas is maligning my organizational skills. I know you think they’re fine, so you can tell your cousin that on Sunday …”

“Try the kitchen.”

“I’ve tried the kitchen twice.”

Bang bang bang, continues the sound from the back room. Eowyn wonders if there isn’t an ongoing construction project. The young guy on her left, with the moppish hair and jumper, gives her a look as if to say, Filing cabinet, maybe?

“As you can see, gentle lady,” explains Gimli the desk man, very politely to Eowyn, while the second voice declares somewhat redundantly that he is, in fact, going to check the kitchen, “we are a tad busy this afternoon. Someone will be with you momentarily.” He turns, presumably in the kitchen’s direction, and calls out, “if you ask my opinion on the subject again, I’ll wallop you with Aragorn’s dratted guitar!”

Eowyn looks. There indeed is a battered old guitar, perched merrily on a pile of papers behind the front desk, ready to be used for walloping.

“I could come back later,” says Eowyn. She looks over at jumper guy, who’s staring at the still-hissing pile of blankets with some concern. “Can’t really speak for him, though.”

Jumper guy looks aggrieved. “Er – no, I’d rather not come back later. Gandalf said you’d be free to help.”

“And help –” begins Gimli, while there is another crash from the back room (they all wince, though Gimli does it with serenity) “-- we shall! If you give my colleague Legolas a moment to get his head on straight –” (the disembodied voice says something very rude in response to this pointed inflection), “-- then the two of us will be at your disposal.”

“Three of us,” interjects the first, almost forgotten voice.

Eowyn and her jumper-clad companion turn startled to look: cellphone put away, rolly chair man has stood up to his quite considerable height and is looking at them consideringly. Despite his mildness of expression Eowyn experiences the uncomfortable feeling of being looked at by someone who could in a more fantastical setting have, like, laser vision or something – how is he doing it? And she is sure he isn’t really seeing right through her but she does get the sense he is understanding a lot more than she’d like to let on. Almost defiantly she tugs at her dress and clutches her bike helmet closer to herself. Jumper guy clears his throat. Then from the back room comes – presumably – Legolas, who is fair, thin, and for reasons unexplained wearing sunglasses indoors. He is also covered in what Eowyn hopes are pillow feathers and holding, in one hand, a very large glittering silver sword, and in the other a dingy looking VHS tape. It has cartoon vegetables in cloaks on the front.

“Did anyone know we still had this?” he asks pleasantly, and it is not clear to which find he is referring, “Arwen and I used to stare at it for hours as kids.” He spots Eowyn and her jumper-clad counterpart. “Oh – hello!”

Eowyn gapes. The three of them make a fascinating picture, standing there alongside each other.

“Now then,” says the man called Gimli. “Faramir, we know of already –” he nods at the boy beside Eowyn, who looks a bit bewildered by this, “as Gandalf sent him here! But this young lady we do not. How can we help?”

Perhaps it is the blinding reflection of the hopefully-a-prop sword, but Eowyn is suddenly overtaken by an awful affliction of watery eyes, which has nothing at all to do with her general feelings of overwhelm — until now expertly repressed — she is sure. She feels at once full of despair and yet shaking with eagerness, and everything she’d been desperate to explain to a listening ear gets stuck in her throat in the face of three, admittedly sort of weird (somewhat stern, verging on intense, dipping into outright comical), thoroughly kind faces looking right at her. It suddenly occurs to her how horribly, horribly alone she’s felt for the past six weeks.

She remains rooted to the spot and tragically mute while Faramir, from beside her, begins all at once,

“I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t want it getting back to dad, so Gandalf seemed like the best option — and he said you were very trustworthy, and I do trust Gandalf of course – but it's my brother, you see, he’s disappeared,” vaguely Eowyn is aware of a grim look of surprise rippling through the collective at this reveal, “and it’ll sound crazy but I had this awful dream two weeks ago …”

While Eowyn attempts to wrangle her misbehaving emotions like one would a wobbly-legged yet stubbornly misbehaving colt, an impromptu consultation begins.

“Gone missing?”

“I bet he went hiking or something and lost his phone. It’s happened before.”

“Boromir hates hiking, though. Remember when Aragorn tried to bring him camping with us?”

“No wonder Gandalf sent you here.”

“I have odd dreams too sometimes; they are usually because of indigestion. I’m sure old Boromir’s just fine.”

“No,” insists Faramir, who seems – in Eowyn’s half-attentive estimation – to be doing an admirable job at hiding his surprise at this existing knowledge of his brother. “He’s not answering my texts – it’s like he’s blocked my number, which doesn’t make any sense!”

Eowyn’s head jerks around to stare at him.

Could it be a coincidence? That is exactly the thought she herself had, not an hour ago, about her own cousin. Is it possible that she isn’t crazy, and her awful yearning for Eomer to be here and not in overnight jail, so someone who is not Eowyn could deal with things, is not childish? She opens her mouth, but her words are stuck again. All she can do is inhale like a small bird puffing up its chest and make a very very faint squeaking noise, which she is mostly sure no one can hear.

“Legolas,” interjects rolly chair man. His sharp grey eyes, which had flitted around briefly and shrewdly throughout the hubbub, are now fixed again on Eowyn, and thoughtful. The commotion dies down. In a mild voice he says, “Maybe you could fetch a clean pair of gym shorts and a blanket to lend our new friend, so she’ll be a bit more comfortable.”

Eowyn, swaying a bit on the spot, hadn't even realized she was tugging at her dress again.

“Oh,” she manages.

“Aye, I’d say you’re about the same size,” agrees Gimli, to Legolas, after a beat. “Aragorn has a good eye for these things,” he adds, as if needing their prospective clients in crisis to know this.

“I’ll bring her a comb, too,” says Legolas, not at all meanly, and goes to fetch these things.

“And I’ll put on some tea,” says Aragorn, so named, and for a second time his face softens with that warm, open smile. “I’m Aragorn,” he continues. “Let’s all sit down, and you can both start from the beginning; everything will be alright.”

In the moment after this offer Eowyn locks eyes with Faramir. He is standing next to her. His jumper looks particularly sad now that she is paying attention. He isn’t looking at Aragorn or the sword or the pillow feathers Legolas left behind, but at her. Right at her. There’s a solidarity there. It would be a touching exchange, Eowyn thinks, if not for the fact that the feral cat in its blanket pile has started talking to itself in oddly pitched meows.

A large crash sounds from the back room, accompanied by the sound of a child swearing.

“Yeah, okay,” Eowyn says.

For the rest of today, at least, she has decided that she refuses to feel alone.

#my writing #taylor swift prompt memes #lord of the rings #eowyn #faramir #eowyn x faramir #aragorn #gimli #legolas #legolas x gimli #aragorn x arwen #for those wondering yes the veggie tales vhs is lord of the beans #and the cat IS gollum

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prince-kallisto · 3 months

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Happy birthday Malleus!! I started this fic a long time ago, but I realized yesterday that it would be perfect time to finish it for his birthday. This fic is from Crowley’s point of view, and Malleus doesn’t actually appear in the story. However, he is an integral part of the overall plot. Haha, I’m not used to posting my fics directly in tumblr…my Ao3 fic might be easier to read? Whichever format you’re more used to ^_^ I’d appreciate any comments! 💖🐦‍⬛

4.4k words (Angst, Grief/Mourning, Dissociation, starts off as Slice of Life, Crowley is an unreliable narrator)

*****

But I Loved Her More

Every other week, the Ramshackle janitor- er, prefect, arrived at Crowley’s office with a stack of photos taken with the Ghost Camera. With a mere click, all shenanigans occuring in the school’s campus were documented and viewed at his discretion. Convenient, yes? Far more preferable over those dastardly reports. Although Mr. Rosehearts was one of Heartslabyul’s finest Housewarden’s, Crowley had to confess (to himself only, for Great Seven knows what a whipping Trein would give him otherwise) to disposing of the reports without giving them a second glance. Honestly, the paragraphs droned on and on over absolute rubbish- frankly, he did not care if ten students didn’t wear pink on Wednesdays or whatever rule 249 was. And imagine being forced to read such drivel twice a month! Ahh, what burdensome work~

Sorting through the photos revealed a pattern of a certain trio of first-year troublemakers appearing more often than others. Spade accidentally broke a beaker in the Alchemy classroom, Trappola snubbed yet another pile of homework, and Grim stirred up yet another rivalry between him and a Savanaclaw student. Crowley bit back a laugh at how the sequence of photos revealed Grim’s unfortunate fate with the Savanaclaw boy. What did Grim expect when picking a fight with a grown beastman nearly triple his size? Well, he was sure Grim put up a noble fight until the very end.

Entertainment for himself aside, this trio’s penchant for mischief vexed him. These boys were a set of promising young mages with…decent grades, but Crowley has had to redo the school’s monthly budget several times due to the destruction of property! Perhaps it meant a few thaumarks here and there were pinched from Ramshackle’s share, but the prefect was a sturdy individual. Skipping a meal or two never hurt anybody, and the lack of a functioning heater builds character! Really, he was doing them a kindness by giving them this opportunity for growth. Besides, if there were any protests, the prefect had no one but themselves to blame for the friends they associated with.

Although no major incidents occured this week, Crowley gasped in utter horror at the next set of photos. Sweet merciful Seven! Making immature gestures towards a rival dorm’s mirror did not befit Night Raven College’s prestigious name! It did not break any school rules, per se, but etiquette was certainly wanting. Did these children learn nothing about cooperating hand-in-hand with their fellow classmates in Vargas Camp?

He slumped into his office throne with a drawn-out sigh. He shan’t get so worked up over a schoolboy’s(schoolcat’s?) typical immaturity. Whether he liked it or not, times have changed since his early days of being a Headmage. Such insolence wouldn’t have even occurred in those boys’ minds back then! Why, they used to bow and unfurl a carpet of praises whenever he graced them with his presence. Now, the boys hardly paid him a second glance when he greeted them! It didn’t bother him, of course. He was an adult, which meant he had thick skin and wasn’t troubled by typical teenage snark. Still, perhaps he should talk with Trein or Crewel about teaching these boys some proper etiquette, such as responding to their Headmage’s greetings with zeal!

He jotted the future meeting down on a scroll. This behavior had to be remedied straight away. Tapping the quill against his lips, he observed his calendar for the upcoming weeks. Hm…he could reschedule the meeting with the Department of Education to next month. If it was important enough, they’d send him another message. Rescheduling his massage appointment was out of the question- getting an appointment with his preferred masseuse was akin to being a gladiator fighting against the odds in an arena. He simply couldn’t risk losing out on a much needed session.

Vargas did not treat his shoulders and neck kindly the last time Crowley complained of an ache. Why, his muscles got thoroughly tenderized from the “treatment” he received. No matter the brand of silk pillows and adjustable mattresses he used, the ache in his bones that never lessened. Crewel claimed Crowley’s age was finally getting the best of him, but he was still quite youthful, mind you! (At heart, at least.) Even now, he felt a tightening ache in his chest and a twinge in his neck. His jaw clicked as he tried to loosen up its tension. There were far too many things to do and so little time. So very little time.

Wanting to rub at his eyes, Crowley scratched the beak of his mask as a compromise. He rose from his seat to further stretch his legs and peered out his office windows. Built from floor to ceiling, the grandiose windows provided him a view of the entire campus- perfect to monitor the comings and goings of all. The leaves of the courtyard apple trees shimmered from the light of the full moon. Night Raven College had not a soul wandering about due to student curfew; it looks like no one tried to sneak out tonight. Even his raven companions found refuge in their nests weaved from twigs and cloth. The poor dears had a tendency to collect trash for the lining of their beds, due to some uncouth students who apparently lacked the self-respect to use a trash can. Crowley often flew into the crevices of campus, cleaning up any nest and provided more suitable materials like fur or wool.

Only the ghosts remained on campus, who were in the process of retiring after a long day of work. Fascinating creatures, they were. Why, if he was granted an afterlife, he surely wouldn’t be spending it as a cook or a groundskeeper. But perhaps he wasn’t the best fae to judge. After studying human nature for many decades now, Crowley drew to the conclusion that the ghosts could only relax for so long, before the remnants of their living restlessness stirred up inside. The idea of a peaceful afterlife simply didn’t exist for humankind. It was in their nature to yearn for more and more.

Sinking back into the velvet cushions of his throne, Crowley swiftly flipped through the photos, paying no mind to the rest of the shenanigans in them. Any troublemakers should consider themselves lucky he wanted to call it a night instead of wasting his time on another pile of reports. The Ghost Camera photos were occasionally hijacked by Diamond, who took photos of himself or artfully arranged drinks- all with the most optimal lighting and flattering of angles. Crowley slid the photos to the side to give them back to the prefect tomorrow- he had no use for these. Besides, he’d have to inquire about the drinks. Perhaps the trendy cafe Diamond frequented would grant him a teacher’s discount!

Crowley paused at the last photo in the bunch. It seems to have been taken in secrecy, due to the low angle, bushes framing the photo, and the unfocused gaze of the subject. Crowley should speak to the Ramshackle janitor to have more respect for other’s privacy, but for once, he didn’t mind. The photograph wasn’t artfully taken, but the subject himself made up for it in spades. This was exactly what Crowley was looking forward to.

As he gently brushed his fingers over the filmy surface, a glow emitted from the photograph. Light filtered through the darkness of his office as a halo of green fireflies burst from the frame, drifting in the air like dandelions. Crowley’s breath caught in his chest. Despite being mere projections, the fireflies tickled at his cheek and danced around his shoulders. He yearned to pluck at a few and keep them safe in a glass bottle to watch them float forever. And yet his hands slipped through the light, transient and untouchable. An inky substance pricked at his eyes, and he dabbed at the eyeholes of his mask with his silk handkerchief. Oh dear, he truly was getting up there in age if this was all it took to lose his composure.

You see, the deceptive nature of the Ghost Camera was its reenactment of the scene of the photo. When the bond between the photographer and the subject grew deeper, a representation of their intertwining souls came in the form of the projections. It seems the Ramshackle prefect managed to worm their way into the heart of the young fae, whose eyes shone brighter than any treasure.

Malleus Draconia.

A name befitting the Draconia family heir, a name honoring the Thorn Fairy herself. How lucky Crowley was to have such a fine student under his tutelage. For a long while he has wondered if he’d be granted such a privilege in his lifetime. The saying is true, that paths do eventually cross in the most unexpected ways.

Setting the photo down, Crowley admired the ghostly image of Malleus, whose miniature recreation roamed around his desk. In the projection, Malleus inspected the bent and rusty gates that caged Ramshackle Dorm, before flitting over to the statues that looked as if they would crumble at a mere touch. Moss and grime lined every crevice of the limestone, making their features much more unsightly. Crowley grimaced at the thought of these creatures coming to life. Gnarled fangs that could puncture the sturdiest of hides, those bulging eyes and wicked claws stirring up a primal fear in a warrior’s heart. Thankfully, those monsters only reside in fairytales. To be fair, so does he. He couldn’t discard the possibility of these creatures indeed existing in the flesh. Miracles of magic could conjure up any beast, as they could be imagined.

Crowley poked at the projection with a golden claw, wanting to peer into the fae’s mind. What was so beautiful about moldy shingles and decaying statues? What was so beautiful indeed, about something ruined beyond repair? Not even the spiders graced the ruins with their prescence, torn lace of old cobwebs blowing in the wind.

As his claw brushed over the projection, the image rippled like water, distoring the fae’s features. Crowley jerked away so quickly, too quickly, that the muscles in his neck twinged in protest. The projection slipped back into its frame, equally spooked from the sudden touch. Crowley cleared his throat as he attempted to regain his composure. Thank goodness the hour was so late. There was no chance that someone bore witness to that embarassing scene. My, my, did the ache in his neck ever smart…

He reminded himself that he would store the photos and call it a day. Store the photos and call it a day. Nothing more, nothing less. Crowley lifted one of the golden keys from his belt, unlocking a drawer in his desk. He shook the knob of the drawer impatiently, the sharp thuds of wood echoing in his office. He would need to have a repairman take a look at his desk- the drawers were ever so cumbersome to open these days. With one final and insistent tug, the drawer flung open.

The pile of photos were carelessly flung into the drawer, scattering as they joined the heap of previous ‘reports’. Despite the mess, a corner of a book peeked out from underneath. Crowley swallowed. Store the photos and call it a day. The mantra looped in head as he made no move to grab the journal nor to close the drawer. It was as if he was frozen in time, the pages coaxing him to take a closer look. Just one peek wouldn’t hurt, right? It was his office- he could do whatever he wanted. The only rules here were his mental ones, and his resolve could easily be shattered.

As he grabbed the book, he shook the Ghost Camera photos off it as if they were disruptive insects. Through his gloved hands, the weaved texture of the cover bumped over his skin. The edges of the book’s pages were speckled yellow and the corners seeped with brown. There were many ways to safely archive such books, of course, but even the bodies in coffins would decay to time. Nothing could last forever, not even this journal he cherished so much. The spine cracked as Crowley pried open the heavy tome, the parchment crinkling underneath his touch. Each page contained excerpts of writing or sketches beside the guarded photos. The archival black ink used decades ago was still etched onto the paper. Did this ink manufactuer still exist? He must have wrote the brand name of the bottle somewhere…he must leave some generous praises online later.

Crowley smoothed out the wrinkles in the page as he deciphered the scribbles. In one of his many past travels, Crowley unearthed this journal in a withered castle long ago. Its contents depicted the knights and princesses of days yore, reduced to nothing more than a mere fairytale. This book has been his little pet project for quite some time. Perhaps five decades by now? Or was it ten? A hundred years sounds about right, but so does three hundred…In any case, He’s been considering using some of these pages for assignments for third-years to decipher. The script was written in a rather archaic fae language, one that he had no problem with reading, but one he had to take his time with. He ought to brush up on his skills a bit more- this book was the only practice he got with his language in quite some time. Crowley has yet to share this book with Trein or any others. Trein was an old fellow he trusted dearly, and his expertise on human history and magic was one of the finest in the land. But even then, Trein could not yet be privy to this book. Crowley wanted- no, needed- just a bit more time with it.

The photo quality in the journal improved the more he flipped. Technology has improved more swiftly than a blink of an eye. The photos became sharper, losing the grain and burned spotting. Color livened up the monochromatic photos, making its subjects look more alive than ever. As he reached the most recent page, Crowley slid the Ghost Camera photo into the journal, snug in its enclosure of vinyl. The Ghost Camera projections could no longer burst out, the floating lights in his room dissipating into nothingness.

Crowley squinted in the dark of his office, trying to make out the album but to no avail. Oh, how silly of him to forget to light his candles tonight. A brief tap of the candelabra’s wax cast a harsh purple flame in the room. He admittedly preferred the docile fireflies, but this would do for now. He would retire to his bedchambers in just a minute anyway.

Crowley flipped back and forth between the book pages. He’s noticed it quite long ago, but there was a woman depicted in this journal that resembled Malleus all too greatly. Photographs weren’t all too reliable in those days, so there were countless of her in the thin pages, likely mimicking royal paintings. Whoever drew her must have had quite the fancy for her, as there were miniature pieces made from paint, charcoal, and oils. Due to the withering of the journal, the paint has long since lost its saturation, and the charcoal sketches of her figure were smudged. Some of her features were indecipherable, but the curves and ridges of her horns were undoubtably the same as the fae student.

He detested those statues Malleus admired, but those same monstrous features of horns and talons were quite enchanting on this woman. He could not blame the artist’s fancy. With swift gestures made of various mediums, the artist captured not only all her silver regality, but also moments of intimate repose as she slept. Lucky devil, the artist was, to have such a closeness to this lady. Judging from the name he managed to decipher, Meleanor Draconia must be a distant relative of Malleus. Well, distant as she could be, with Malleus’ features being a replica of hers.

Despite being a princess of the Draconia family, Meleanor hardly appeared in the historical texts Crowley could get his hands on, even in the castle he found this journal in. Any scrolls and painting were no doubt raided. Her castle showed signs of being taken over by a rivaling kingdom, with thrones being crudely painted over and banners poorly replaced, and until it too fell. Traces of her beauty were lost to time and conquest, burned beyond repair.

What an embarrassment, to mourn over a woman as if he knew her. But thinking of the liveliness fading from her eyes, her waterfall of hair flowing no longer…it made him want to rest alongside her grave all over again. Crowley could no longer blame the eldest Shroud for his obsession over those characters of his. Perhaps in his own way, Shroud felt a connection to fiction, to the lives unlike his own: stories of grandeur and freedom, of love and triumph. Or perhaps it was a case of usual teenage ennui, and Shroud really ought to get more friends in real life. Speaking of, his parents would not stop pestering Crowley with emails of how Shroud was doing. How’s he getting along at school? Has he made new friends? Has he been practiced healthier eating habits?

How was he supposed to know?! Wouldn’t the younger Shroud have a more accurate report on this?!

But like any respectable and humble Headmage, Crowley responded to each parental concern with complete sincerity. Not because these were the heads of Styx or anything. Perhaps he fudged the truth a bit, but if it made them happier, the better it was for his well-being.

As he shifted in his chair, his spine cracked in the most unpleasant of ways. Oh dear, he truly has been sitting here for far too long. Where was he again? Right, the journal. The journal. His journal. The woman. Meleanor.

The later pages depicted drawings of her with a child- or rather, an egg speckled with stars. Her eyes glowed brighter than any treasure as she cradled her pride and joy. His throat tightened. How unfortunate indeed, that such a life was cut short. Meleanor undoubtedly perished before the hatching of her child, as the journal no longer depicted her beauty. After the last drawing of her curled up and napping with the egg, there were pages upon pages marred with furious stabs of ink.

Her death brought many questions to Crowley. There were infinite possibilities of how her life could have played out if she lived. But in regards to her egg- which, who knew if survived or not- would she have been the doting mother that Shroud’s family was?

Based on the depictions of her alone, Crowley could imagine how she’d coo over the egg as she decided on a name.

“If it’s a girl,” Her spouse began, before Meleanor swiftly cut him off.

“A boy,” She said firmly. “He will be a prince, I’m sure of it.”

Her spouse’s eyes twinkled in amusement, a wry grin on his face. “Is that so? How can you be so sure?”

“A mother’s intuition!”

Levan pressed an ear to the egg. He could feel the soft thumping of a heartbeat inside, his and Meleanor’s blood circulating inside. Nothing really told him whether or not their child was a boy. But Meleanor was likely right, anyhow. “And a father’s intuition tells me that you’re right! So what manner of a name shall we crown our little prince? Mmmm…Maximilius? Melly?” Those were silly names and he knew it, but he enjoyed the way Meleanor giggled. She laughed the same way she did as a child, rather scandulously but filled with mirth.

“Dearest, don’t be so daft! I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Malleus’. Don’t you think it sounds like both of our names?”

It sounded nothing like his name, to be honest. But he’d humor Meleanor and her antics. “Well…I suppose if you sound it out very generously, it does sound a bit like me. Or perhaps more like Lilia? In any case, Malleus has quite the ring to it. I quite like it, my dear.”

Gently lifting the egg from Meleanor’s arms to cradle it himself, he caressed the egg, the bumps and ridges of it reminding him of the feel of Meleanor’s horns. A malevolent star, this child would be. One that would break Crowley’s heart into pieces, yet the shards of himself would still manage to love and love and love, even when little of who he was remained. Malleus. Dear Malleus. Please, do forgive me.

Oh, how times have changed, and how much his little star grew. His star burned bright to the point when Crowley tore his eyes away, the silhouette was burned into his eyes, floating in his vision no matter where he looked, taunting him even as he closed his eyes to rest.

The flow of her hair, the cutting edge of her jaw, and the hundreds of needles serving as her eyelashes. From the way his eyes fit in his skull, to the degree of his cheekbones, Malleus’ features stitched together in a mockery of her beauty. So close, but not quite as Crowley remembered it to be.

His breath shuddering and throat tight, Crowley flipped back the most recent pages, with the new Ghost Camera photograph still safely inside. He slipped the photo out of the vinyl to write in the margins. Uncapping a bottle of ink, Crowley scribbled down today’s date with his quill underneath the photograph to keep track of time. The nib of the quill scratched against the pages as he did. Suddenly, Crowley paused in his writing. He craned his head to look at his desk calender, tapping on his phone to confirm it.

January 18th?

No, surely it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Yet the spread of information confirmed it, his eyes refusing to be deceived. Crowley grimaced. Yet another set of birthday celebrations would be held for the prince of Briar Valley. Crowley had ordered the decorations long in advance, stretching out the school’s budget just a tad for the extravagance of it all. As the Headmage, it was suitable that he showed up at any birthday of his students. He’d had to remind the Ramshackle prefect to take plently of photos of this celebration. He doubted the prefect would forget, but a reminder wouldn’t hurt. He’d like the capture Malleus’ toothy smile, and his uproarious laughter as he got along with his peers. His little star grew so much. Growing ever more distant, growing ever so bright. Perhaps Meleanor would like to see the photographs of Malleus’ birthday celebration when she came home. Tomorrow he’ll meet her again, with today all being a nightmare, hours stretching into days and months and years and centuries and-

With a startled jerk of his hand, Crowley realized a pool of ink built into the photograph due to him not moving the quill, staining several of the journal pages underneath. His thumb and fingers squeezes around the useless feather. The fireflies in the photograph were obscured with blots of ink. Malleus’ face had ink running up it, and Crowley desperately tried to save at least the view of his emerald eyes. His hand ended up smudging the ink further, his little star’s face hidden for good. The quill in Crowley’s hands snapped from the pressure, ink splattering over his suit and hands. A black substance soaked up into the paper, spreading among the delicate fibers.

As if broken out of a trance, Crowley stumbled out of his chair to see the damage done on his clothes. More damage seemed to be inflicted on his neck and back, as he winced from the sharp aches in his body.

He hasn’t been feeling like himself for a long time. He hasn’t been well for quite a long time.

With deep, shuddering breathes, Crowley felt the ink stains on his previously pristine white sleeves soaked into his skin through the fabric. How unsightly. He would have to go to a dry-cleaners posthaste when it opened up in the morning.

Crowley picked up the Ghost Camera photo, ink dripping from the ruined film. No longer did the fireflies burst from its frame, as the ink covered its main subject. Crowley’s hands trembled as the photo crinkled in his grip. His entire hands, covered with ink he couldn’t remove. His entire face, covered with ink he couldn’t remove. Felt it circulating through his body, his blood no longer his own alongside his heart. His little star was no longer his, as any part of who he originally was broke a long time ago.

A warm glow filtered into his office through the laced windows. Daytime.

Surely it hasn’t been all night? He only settled in at his desk just a few minutes ago, surely. There were already hushed and bleary voices coming from down below, as the students were rising for breakfast. Oh dear, there wouldn’t even be time for him to take a nap! At least the dry cleaners would be open soon. He could clean up this mess and forget any of it ever happened.

Crowley took one last lingering stare at the crumpled and stained photograph of Malleus, before summoning a flickering fire at his fingertip, light glinting off his golden claws. Within seconds, the stranger in the photo began to burn, edges crinkling into themselves. How amusing it was, for how easily his life’s work could be turned to ash in one simple moment. The ashes intermingled with the puddles of ink on his desk, creating a horrible concoction of his own foolishness.

Crowley locked up his journal into his desk drawer again, keeping it safe from further harm. Readjusting his coat and composure, he stepped out his office and locked the door without a single glance back. Meleanor only existed in his drawings and scatterings of his memory- but he’d have the real thing someday soon. The gestures of her figure would come to life, and everything would be the way it was again. He couldn’t quite recall those times, but surely those days were better. Anything over today. Anything over Malleus. He couldn’t stand the mockery of Meleanor’s features no longer- and yet today was a celebration of her son’s life. If only she didn’t sacrifice herself. If only she had left their precious unhatched pride and joy behind. Anything over Malleus. Anything for Meleanor.

Somewhere deep, deep inside, a quiet guilt cried out.

But he loved her more.

______________________

Haha, I apologize if parts of this story felt disorienting! I feel like in my vision of Crowley, his own inner thoughts are rather conflicting, as if he himself cant get the story right. Whether he quite literally can’t get the details right, or just refuses to comprehend his own tragedy- his thoughts spiral quite easily. I hope in the end, it made sense regardless of how strange some sections were. I have a lot of fun with the Crowley-is-Levan theory. I imagine many different interpretations with him, but this one, I took the approach of him being both sadly confused and in denial of his own memories. His own inner dialogue is confused whether he is Levan or that Levan is a desperate entity- and I think Crowley’s guilt has made it that he can hardly recognize himself anymore. He holds a great love for Malleus, but Crowley isn’t always in the healthiest state of mind. I hoped you enjoyed reading, thank you for taking the time to do so! ^o^

#twisted wonderland #twst #dire crowley #twst dire Crowley #twst Crowley #twst malleus #twst malleus draconia #twst papa draconia #Twst meleanor #Twst levan #twst revan #twst meleanor draconia #twst fanfic #fanfic #my fanfic #kallistopost #crowley is levan theory

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gooeykit · 26 days

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My concepts for a major plot in my ReBoot continuation story. The sketches are over a year old and ATP a lot has changed, so I want to redo the progression timeline among other things. I call him Corruptrix. If you play 'spot the inconsistency' on this, I'm well aware. Design explanations and older drawings below cut

Plot-wise, Matrix begins getting fed up with Bob's radical pacifism putting himself and others in danger. While in battle, his PID is damaged by a creature they don't yet know to be a shard of Hex and it begins to corrupt him. Mentally, he's fine, but as his body begins degrading, it starts pulling from pieces of code from other things what have interacted with his code directly in order to stabilize his body. Megabyte's interaction with his PID is the only one that didn't happen in the show. The corruption is an illness first and foremost, but Matrix understands that it gives him some powerplay and decides to weaponize it in order to make Bob either leave MainFrame or reevaluate and change his stances as a radical pacifist. Essentially, he becomes a revolutionary leader and terrorist for this.

The characters being pulled from here are Bob, Andraia, Daemon, Hex and Megabyte. I'll start from the head and go down.

His hair and beard is grown out just because of time. The ears are longer because of Andraia and his earing has become more of a cord attaching into his body. His eyes have lost their pupil and the sclera are a dark purple to represent MB's eyes. His chin spikes are just cool. The red on his neck is from Hex and is to pad out his very damaged vocal cords. Around the base of his neck and into his collar bones are little pieces of fabric like material, like Hex's elytra pieces, and like her he can manipulate his own. The orange of his shoulder pad becomes a bandoleer, which I'll elaborate on later. The pauldron becomes a large chitinous structure, the height drawing from Hex's and the shape drawing from Andi's sails. The Right arm's band has wrapped around the upper arm similarly to MB's and the elbows move on a hinge like viruses. The forearm has another chitinous structure, pulling from Bob's forearm braces and again Andi's sails. The structure around the wrist pulls from MB and Hex, but the hand is mostly drawn from MB. In the hand are green cords, those are his tendons. There's knuckle pads on it which were adapted for quadrupedal locomotion as his body gets too heavy to carry and his fingers are segmented like a virus. The fingernails are able to extend like MB's and have venom like Andi's. His other arm has become a canon essentially, since it eventually fuses to Gun. The bandoleer from his shoulder attaches into it through the elbow, each blast comes from his body and is just metabolized energy. On the canon arm, his skin is discolored as it's sick and extremely malformed to contour around it and function. The belts strapped around his forearm have a function, but I don't know enough about guns to be able to explain it with words. His thumb nail now serves as a reticle. Both arms are longer for quadrupedal locomotion. Around his chest is a cresting structure like Hex's and grows erratically. His pelvis is just plain deforming, but coming from the right is a cord that functions the hydraulics in his leg. The upper right thigh is a mix of his own and MB's anatomy, with the ridges coming from the side of Bob's uniform, and his knee has a locking mechanism. Foreleg is pulled from a lot of them, the sails from Andi being most notable. Around the ankle is another locking mechanism, which functions as a hasp with the ridges along the shin. This is what the hydraulic is for. The foot is cloven and the heel is from MB. Matrix's whole right leg can lock into place and be very stable, he's essentially a sentry. His left leg is thinner and lighter than the right, having gone through less changes. The holster has changed into a means of keeping his upper leg together, as it's began to split from strain of supporting his body. Knee and foreleg are drawn from Bob and Hex. It's mostly just gone through deformation though, but is cleated and has vents along the shin. Miscellaneously, the veins from Daemon are merely cosmetic, if he were to be able to use her powers, I don't think he'd know how to, let alone know he had it to begin with. Matrix's corruption is an illness where his body is degrading, so he's losing bodily functions, his voice strains when he speaks and comes out as a low rasp, he's got respiratory issues, struggles to metabolize what he eats while all of his body is greatly consuming what energy he does have in order to rebuild itself. All his previous scars are also reopening, which makes him lose his prosthetic eye, though it moreso melds into him. All that remains of it is a yellow glowing cavity. The one non-physical ability he gains is being able to sap power from others, which is the one ability he gets from Gigabyte since both Hex and MB are present in him. He uses this to supplement but will only do it with consent or out of pure necessity. Lastly, he's immune to Andi's venom and vice versa, not that they'd fight. Once he's healed, he's permanently disabled.

He's not this much larger and never was btw, I drew him this size from lack of care. The only gained size isn't from his own body.

#reboot 1994 #digital art #fire alpaca #reboot cartoon #mainframe entertainment #enzo matrix #idk what else to tag im tired

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zoobus · 3 months

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I'm not normally a victim of FOMO tactics, nor do I usually let being late to the party stop me from chatting about a piece of media but I'm genuinely sad I didn't get into Obey Me/Nightbringer earlier. It makes me want to write a million essays but the disposable and decentralized nature of gacha kind of makes it feel like you missed your chance to talk about it. I keep coming across years old, unrepliable comments that I want to jump on sooo bad but I can't because the moment is gone and most of these people have likely moved on to less overtly money-hungry games.

Which sucks! because one essay I want to write in particular is how this game is extremely skilled in arousing your desire to create, to actively engage with the characters and worldbuilding, to do fandom shit, and I find this enormously fascinating in itself. The story isn't good but to a certain extent, it's not supposed to be; it functions as an elaborate set of writing/art/rp prompts for its audience to expand on and tailor to their needs.

And I think Obey Me does this well! Amazingly well. I find discussion of narrative structure fascinating, the study of how we define writing as effective, good, or as failures, so I'm drawn to this story full of contradicting lore, one-note characters, and half-finished plots. The story isn't good but that hardly matters because it's not here to be a good story; it's here to throw you into imagination boot camp. It compels you to speculate what it could be, what this character could be, what a slightly different tone would look like, what other people think about it. It feels distinct from the average popular show fandoms where, to an extent, creators congregate simply because that's where the people are. Creating for your own sake is nice and all but validation is usually a stronger force. Usually.

I keep coming across old high effort researched posts about abrahamic religions and occultism from fans setting themselves up for inevitable disappointment. I keep coming across creators leaving notes on their work like "I haven't written a thing in ten years, but,". I keep losing it over heartfelt posts defending x and y canon story decisions with their whole chest, oblivious to the fact that they're misremembering their personal tweaks/headcanons as what happened in the game, like it's seriously so cute when they're so passionate and completely wrong.

I have no idea if fandom actually plays a role in the lucrativeness of a franchise (though as a personal anecdote, I 100% started Obey Me after a single piece of horny Mammon fanart crossed my dash), but it makes more sense to me now, less a projection of wishful/haterful thinking from those with strong opinions about Fandom. Maybe it really does matter.

---

Other essays I missed the boat on:

A Casino Right in Your Home: goddamn is the pre/sequel's gacha obscene

Satan: how to put a mid character into S-tier with one simple trick (make him insane)

Sorry Belphie defenders but you're imagining a better psycho than you were given

Solmare added a shiny new rhythm game but didn't fix the now four year old coloring error on Levi's hands lmfaooo the disrespect is crazy

Remember when you saw the Nightbringer trailer of them glaring in bdsm gear with freshly blackened wings, and you thought "ah, so this takes place right after they fought god and lost. After they went to war to protect their sister only for her to die anyway. After one brother in particular saves someone, but not her, the focal point of the war. They will finally take these to their logical, guilt despair rage pain and grudge filled ends." And you were correct until that very last sentence? lol

Remember when the Ruri-chan event gave you the option to tell Levi you're not cheating on him and then the rest of the event was just making out with his brothers? Then it ends with you kissing him in front of them? Bring that energy back!!!

#obey me #obey me nightbringer #niche effortposts #eh kinda. i spent time on it #anyway it's a game that makes you wanna write and draw things and all things considered I think that's pretty cool =)

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gamesception · 7 months

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Sception Reads Cass Cain #21

Ghost / Batgirl #1-4 Words: Mike Kennedy Pictures: Ryan Benjamin Additional Work: Randy Emberlin, Howard Shun

One impression I used to have that going back to look at ~all~ of Cass's early appearances has forced me to reconsider is the idea that she didn't appear outside of her own books very much. While later on that is more the case, early on she does have a fair few guest appearances and cross overs, including in this bit of non-canon dual publisher cross promotion with Elisa Cameron, aka Ghost, a Dark Horse character with a solo that had been running since 1995.

The miniseries pits long time Batman villain Harvey Dent against brand new Ghost antagonist Malcolm Greymater - a (fictional) confederate general turned zombie libertarian corpse reanimator - in a conflict over Greymater poaching some of Dent's employees (ie reanimating goons that Dent killed). Babs, Cass, and Elisa get caught in the middle and are forced to work together after following separate threads of a bombing by Two Face and bodies stolen by Greymater only to be sold off into unsavory employment after failed reanimation experiments.

I don't want to go through the whole thing with a plot summary - it's four issues of non-canon stuff after all. But as a stand alone story it works fairly well, worth a read if you're a fan of early Cass. In particular there's solid characterization of Harvey Dent and what it's like to work for him - pretty bad actually. You can see why he'd get upset at someone trying to poach his guys, working conditions for goons in Gotham are terrible, if word got around of better conditions in Arcadia (Ghost's hometown) or wherever else then Batman's villains could easily find themselves suffering a labor shortage. The mere idea of that is funny enough to me that I can't help but like this little mini series, and it's an idea I'd love to see brought back. Goons On Strike - now there's a solid idea for an ongoing Gotham event crossover.

Anyway, Ghost/Batgirl is definitely a higher fantasy story than we usually see from Cass, at least back in the early days, but there's a focus on the individual lives and humanity of the underlings working for the villains that's very grounded and down to earth. That fits in really well next to the "street level" focus of Cass's early solo title. As for the book's cross-promotional function, it does make me curious about Ghost, though probably not enough so to go back and look at her solo title. I like her villain here, but Malcolm Greymater and his crew seem to be more or less exclusive to this crossover? Comicvine is telling me he maybe appears in a single issue outside of this, so that's kind of disappointing.

So setting aside the story, how's our girl in this? Well, first of all, she's being drawn by new hands. In costume she's mostly fine.

Sleek and spooky, glossy black. The details of her form are sometimes lost in the darkness, which loses some specificity in the action panels, but in a way that mostly works aesthetically. My only real complaint here is that her facial expression doesn't really show through the mask. You don't get a sense of what she's thinking or feeling in costume, she's just this dark angry spooky form, not so much a person or a character. As I've said in the past, though, that's as much or more a criticism of her costume design as it is of how any particular artist draws her in it.

It's also worth noting that, as with Cass's early pairing with Azrael, her costume contrasts very nicely with Ghost's. White with round hood and billowing cape vs. Cass all black and pointy. Aesthetically it's a great fit.

Out of costume, though...

I don't know. Just doesn't quite look like Cass to me? I know, I know, comic character facial features don't have the same specific canon as their costumes do, different artists have different styles so characters will look different, and there's definitely a stylistic element here that isn't gelling with me. The overall shape of the head is too thin, maybe, making her look a bit older than she should, where I'm used to Scott's more rounded face, stronger jaw, bushier eyebrows, shorter, poofier hair.

Scott's style, at least at the time, also just packs in more emotional expression, which is absolutely critical for a silent protagonist.

By contrast Benjamin's Cass, when she's not in costume, is often just standing a bit behind Babs with a sort of blank, neutral expression while Babs interacts with other characters or the audience for her.

...

Which also kind of brings us to the writing for Cass here. Ghost / Batgirl is probably the best example yet that silent Cass was a mistake, because yeah, the creators of this book just do not know how to convey her character to the reader without words. The first image starts with Cass looking out over the wreckage of a bombing, and of course there's pseudo noir internal monologue all over it, because how else do you start a bat-book, only Cass can't narrate so Babs provides the narration even though she isn't even in that scene.

Babs goes along on the adventure mostly so the writers have someone who can talk for Cass, or even in some panels quite literally talk over Cass.

Cass is an intimidating physical presence in costume, but in this book she functions more as an extension of Babs than as a person in her own right.

...

It's not all bad, though. In particular there's this one bit introducing an additional ability for Cass that makes perfect sense with her backstory and yet sadly I don't think is ever mentioned again in a canon Batgirl story:

Cass gets poisoned, but she survives, and recovers remarkably quickly, because she has a natural resistance to many poisons and venoms built up from repeat exposure to tiny amounts when she was a child, because of course that's something David would do. You could just imagine little Cass and David having drinking contests to see who could take the most poison before passing out, or even sneakily poisoning each other as a little game of escalating pranks.

...

So yeah, overall a nice little stand alone series with maybe not the best depiction of Cass, but one that is illustrative of why the major change to have her start speaking, while I still don't like how it was done, was probably for the best.

#cassandra cain #batgirl #elisa cameron #ghost #sception reads cassandra cain

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love-kurdt · 5 months

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How to Write a Good Fanfiction: A 5 Step Manual

Hello! My name is @love_kurdt, also known as Eva, and I’m a Wattpad Veteran of the early 2010s, where the genres of Slash Fics, Y/N, and Imagines ran rampant. I spent years of my life as a kid scrolling through my iPod touch, weeding through Wattpad’s plethora of profiles, on a quest to find quality fanfictions. I found a handful, which I added to a specific reading list to come back to when I needed a break from screaming into my pillow because of the sheer audacity of thought-criminals who called themselves writers.

When I’d reached the point of reading the same five works over and over in a never ending cycle, I decided to make the life-altering decision to start publishing my fanfictions online. Granted, I was only thirteen at this point, so my writing wasn’t spectacular by any means, but I came to discover that over time, the mere acts of reading and writing can light a spark of inspiration that can carry you to creative success.

I’ve been writing my own works for over ten years now, and can confidently say that I have cracked the code to writing a good fanfiction that will have your readers captivated instead of cringing. Please don’t get me wrong– if you want to just write fanfic on the internet for fun, and not to write a novel, that’s great, too! That’s what the internet is for; exercising your free will. But this manual is tailored towards those who want to hone in on their craft and gain a substantial following as strictly fanfiction authors. So without further ado, let’s jump into it. Godspeed!

Step 1: Choose Your Fandom

What show, movie, or book has drawn you in and left you feeling like there should be more to the story? When one of those media comes to mind, you’ve chosen your fandom!

Step 2: Do Your Research

When writing fanfiction, it’s kind of an unspoken rule that you need to know the canon of the fandom you’re writing about. The canon is also known as the source material. For example, if someone were to write a Draco Malfoy x OC fanfiction (*cough* a 200+ page Draco Malfoy self insert fic written at 11 years old in a series of notebooks bound together with multiple layers of Gorilla tape *cough*), the canon would be the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. It’s, in essence, what “really” happened. It’s totally fine if you want to write a non-canon compliant fic, too! In fact, they’re extremely popular, specifically within the “fix-it” genre, which usually involves characters that died in the canon but the author kept alive in their fanfiction. Either way, you should have a general idea of how the canon functions within the context of the fandom, so you can make creative choices that diverge from or stick to the canon.

With the canon comes the fanon, which is basically a compilation of fan theories and headcanons that are often common themes in both canon and non-canon compliant fanfics. A pretty niche example of this is the Byler fandom (the ship between Stranger Things characters Will Byers and Mike Wheeler), where there’s an official list of theories on Tumblr that are used in many, if not most Byler fanfictions. There’s FlickerGate, where the flickering of the garage light in Season 1 is actually Will and Mike in the Upside Down in Season 5. There’s BirthdayGate, where the antagonist, Vecna, manipulates the minds of everyone in Hawkins to forget Will’s birthday, which is a central plot point in a lot of Byler fics since no one seems to remember it, not even his best friend. There’s also LetterGate, where Will confronts Mike in the canon about not sending any letters after he’d moved away, but the theory reveals that Mike wrote plenty of letters– he just never sent them because they ended up turning into love letters, which in turn resulted in internalized homophobia. You get the picture. Most theories reach far into the land of delusion, but it doesn’t stop writers from creating incredible work that could easily be mistaken for a script.

But Eva, what if I just think the characters are hot and I don’t give a shit about the cannonball? I can’t tell you what to do, my friend, but I highly suggest you at least consider the canon so you can avoid all the petty, obnoxious gatekeepers in some fandoms who can be unhinged enough to send death threats if you leave out a significant canonical detail. But you do you!

Step 3: Choose Your Platform

There are three popular platforms to choose from: Archive of Our Own (ao3), Tumblr, and Wattpad. There are also a few other lesser known or dead pages such as fanfiction.net, but I honestly wouldn’t bother with those, since they’re more infiltrated with anons and bots nowadays.

This is where you want to think about 1) where most of the members in the fandom you chose reside, and 2) the demographic of readers you want to reach. For example, I observed a higher number of Nirvana fans on Wattpad than the other two platforms, which is why I chose to post my full length Kurt Cobain fanfiction, “You Know You’re Right,” on there. It also helped that my favorite author of another Kurt Cobain fanfiction on Wattpad, @/ugh-nirvana, had hits in the hundreds of thousands, so I was confident that my book would do well on that specific platform. On the other hand, the Stranger Things fandom is in full swing on Tumblr and ao3, so I chose to post those fanfictions on there rather than on Wattpad. It all just depends on who’s where.

You also have to consider how active you want to be on your platform(s). Tumblr is more of a blog situation, while ao3 and Wattpad are solely for publishing the work. If you want to have a life beyond the realms of the world wide web, choose Wattpad or ao3, as inconsistent updates are a bit more accepted than on Tumblr. But if you want to throw yourself headfirst into a fandom and put your whole author-ussy into your fanfic, then Tumblr is the platform for you.

You should be aware, however, that Tumblr involves a lot of upkeep, as well as constant, strategic, and active participation within your fandom. Visual aesthetic is vital to any functional Tumblr blog. Most profiles have directories, with color coded links to each work’s homepage, which is linked to each individual chapter, which are then distinguished by a unique GIF to capture a prospective reader’s attention while they’re scrolling through copious amounts of content. And there are always new ideas and theories in development in certain fandoms, so it’s crucial to keep up with recent updates in order to stay relevant.

After all is said and done, you don’t have to get married to one platform for the rest of your life. You can choose to be exclusive to one or two platforms, or publish everything on all of them! The decision is ultimately yours!

Step 4: Obey the Writer’s Trifecta of Consistency

Yes, I came up with this term, and yes, it should be a real thing. Because in every piece of writing, whether it be fanfiction, a short story, an actual book, a screenplay, what have you, it is critical to be consistent in your People, your POV, and your Plot. Let me explain.

People

Your people, or your ensemble of characters, consists of three hierarchical levels: your protagonist/antagonist, your side characters, and other background characters. I should emphasize the importance of building character profiles for everyone, including your pre-existing characters from the fandom, but specifically for your original character(s) if you have them. That way, you know who serves as a major plot device, who serves as someone who just helps time move faster, and those who are mentioned by name but have very little significance to the events of the story. I’m going to reference Harry Potter again, since most of the world is familiar with the characters. Harry and Voldemort are the protagonist and antagonist; Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Professor Dumbledore, Hagrid and company are side characters; and Peeves, Seamus Finnigan, and Blaise Zabini are background characters. Keep this hierarchy in check; don’t let your main characters fade away, and don’t let your background characters shift to the forefront for no reason. If you do plan to move a character up or down the ladder, make sure to have clear motive as to why you’re bringing this character into or out of play.

2. POV

Your POV is the point of view in which you’re writing from. Assuming you’ve been in a typical middle school English class, you’ve heard of the first, second, and third person points of view. I cannot tell you how many times I have read fanfictions that jump from one POV to another, sometimes within the same sentence. I open the door and see Kurt Cobain standing in the corner of the room. She walked across the floor to meet him there. See what I did there? I jumped from first person present tense to third person past tense. Do not attempt this at home.

The least common of the three points of view is the second person, or what I like to call the Y/N point of view. In fanfiction, second person POV is often used in self-insert fics, where instead of a character’s name, it’s replaced with “you.” That’s why a lot of romantic character x reader fics are so popular. You should feel free to use this one, especially if that’s the kind of vibe you’re going for, but I’m going to elaborate a little bit more on first and third person, as they’re a bit more “literary.”

The first person POV confines the narration to the mind of one character. It can also be done with multiple characters, but be sure to do it so it’s painstakingly obvious to the reader whose POV you’re writing from. Also note that if you plan to write multiple first person POVs, try to keep that number on the lower side, as a large number of POVs can get really complicated really quickly. Third person narration can be done from two angles: limited or omniscient. Limited is more similar to first person, in which you’re confined to one person’s viewpoint, but they aren’t the narrator; you’re just seeing the story through their eyes. Omniscient is my favorite, because you can narrate from a bird’s eye view with the freedom to travel from mind to mind and read their thoughts.

Building character profiles can be really helpful when developing both first or third person POV; if you connect with a particular character more strongly than the rest, that should tell you whose POV you should write in. If you choose to switch POVs, be sure to do it either on an alternating/rotating basis, or if you repeat, it should be apparent as to why that particular character is the “voice” of that scene.

3. Plot

Dare I say that Plot is the most important step of them all, so do not skip this one, whatever you do! The biggest mistake most fanfiction writers make is having a concept but lacking a plot. It’s like biting into an apple just to discover it’s a lemon. Many writers are capable of starting off strong, but once their initial story begins to meander, traveling into uncharted territory, their brainchild can become a monstrosity.

In order to write a solid plot, it’s pretty common knowledge that you need to have a beginning, middle, and end in place. It doesn’t need to be overly specific or down to the last detail, you just need to figure out how your characters make it from point A to point Z (the larger scale), and how points B through Y factor into the plot (the smaller scale). There are a few routes that you can take in order to do this: you can write the entire thing ahead of time without any input, you can write the entire thing with the feedback of a beta reader or proofreader to help you work out any kinks or mistakes before you publish it for the entire platform to see, or you can publish it gradually and take feedback from your readers as you go. Should you go with the last option, though, you should be made aware that if you aren’t already an established author, it may feel like you’re talking to a wall, and you will likely feel discouraged from writing the story altogether.

I find it helpful to outline the whole thing. I have a closet door in my house dedicated to a Dave Grohl true crime fanfiction I’m working on. I’ve written the entire story from beginning to end on index cards, split into four different parts with each card representing a chapter. What’s good about outlining is that I can edit my story as I go along. If I decide to change something, I can add or remove an index card, then replace or rearrange the other index cards to work around the change I made, and that way, I don’t have to start over from scratch. It’s helpful to see everything laid out in front of me, so I’m not left at the end of a completely improvised plot with a slew of loose ends that I’ll need to go back and edit. It’s also better than publishing each part individually then having to redo everything after your readers have already seen it. And I don’t know about you, but I enjoy it when I’m able to save some time, energy, and lengthy explanations to random people online. That is, unless you enjoy constant feedback from readers, in which case you can change the plot on a chapter by chapter basis based on their feedback.

Consistency in all of these respects is key. I cannot emphasize this enough. Keeping all of these elements in check will help you create a sort of cohesiveness that will neatly wrap the story up with a little bow on top.

Step 5: Use Relevant Tags and Content Warnings

Repeat after me: tags matter! Again: tags matter! When you’re about to publish your fanfiction, you’re going to be given the option to add tags to your work. For my first few years spent on Wattpad, I had no idea what tags were, so I didn’t use them. Thankfully, the platform was still pretty small, so people still found my work pretty easily. Nowadays, though, it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for without searching excessively specific tags and using a million filters. It’s unfortunate, but look at it this way: there are so many people contributing to so many fandoms that the content is seemingly endless!

What you’re going to want to do is add as many tags as you can but keep it as simple as possible. I know that sounds kind of oxymoronic, but I mean it in a way that all of your tags relate directly to your story, and not just to the fandom itself. A lot of readers feel misled when they’re scrolling through their filtered search page for, let’s just say, a Byler fanfic, and end up neck deep in a Mileven fanfic in disguise. That’s not a fun experience.

Lastly, please remember that you are publishing your work on the internet, and you don’t know who may encounter your work! Listen, we live in a world where everything needs to be overexplained, everything needs trigger warnings, and everything needs to be neutral or else someone is going to hate you. I get it. I’ve been writing fanfiction for a long time. It might be annoying to add content warnings, especially if one of those warnings spoils a major plotline, but if I’m being honest, I’d rather be safe and add the damn warning than not add the warning and be responsible for someone’s worsened emotional or mental state. Bottom line, it’s just fanfiction! Let’s do our due diligence to create a community full of love and understanding for everyone!

After that, you should be all set to publish! Let’s review one more time for the road:

Choose Your Fandom

Do Your Research

Choose Your Platform

Obey the Writer’s Trifecta of Consistency

Use Relevant Tags and Content Warnings

If you’ve stuck around for this long, thank you so much!

I hope this manual helps you along your fanfiction writing journey, wherever it takes you <3

#fanfic #ao3 fanfic #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #female writers #fanfiction #wattpad #ao3 #stranger things fic #byler fic #creative writing #ao3 writer

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daisychainsandbowties · 28 days

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4, 7, 21, 22, 33, and 40 from the writing asks? 🥰

4. do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

i have a lot of OCs actually because i have three novels i’m bouncing between. one is around 110k (almost done) and another is just 40k (almost at the second act) and then the third is like 10k and i’m still feeling out my guys in that one. but all my OCs have pretty solid backstories and i do actually plot out my novels because it’s a different arena than writing fic (no existing characterisation to fall back on, world i have to make myself, expectations about structure are largely different).

the novel i’m working on now is about a space racing polycule that’s like enemies-to-lovers in one direction, friends-to-lovers in another and jealous-to-oh i can be in love with you too l, asshole. in another direction. the OCs in that are pretty fleshed out at this point. one is this ship mechanic who talks as though she only vagely understands how to and also could get a phd in aeronautics if she wanted but she’s like. sorry i’m too busy being in love with my best friend 🥰🫶

i want to talk about my boy levitas again but we’d be here forever

7. your favourite ao3 tag?

i looked through my bookmarks and apparently it’s some variation on characters recovering from Bad Things that Happened. makes sense for me i suppose. i am very drawn to how we can come back from dark places. this is why i write about the mechanics of light so often i think. but yes. it’s cathartic to me in a very special way to see characters survive and get fat and go grey and fall in love again despite despite despite

21. Can you accurately predict how long your fics are going to be? If you can, what is your secret?

only with oneshots. so, for oranges are the only fruit and orbital mechanics and this red rock and pokemon au i knew almost exactly how long they would be. maybe it’s a function of short stories and the technical landscape of them. i’m not certain. i tend to simply feel a sense of inevitability about those ones.

for longer fics absolutely not. demonstrably not as we all probably know i tend to let those get out of my hands. i don’t treat them like novels so they become almost serialised narratives to me. they’re done when they say so and it’s never clear when that will be.

22. What is it about watching the same two idiots fall in love over and over?

oh, um, i think what is appealing to me about this is the certainty of it. i like knowing that they will fall in love, i like knowing that things will be okay. also it’s loving the characters individually and being interested in how and why they fall for each other. how much can i change them until they don’t fall in love anymore? how far can i push them before they are not the same character?

i read fanfiction when i’m unsteady. when i can’t sleep or when i’m sad or when i’m hopeless lonely sore tired trying to do something other than cry. and it’s like. here are dozens of stories to the tune of “well, of course they fall in love. of course they will be happy.” it’s a way to come close to being loved yourself. i have a handful of fics that literally saved my life and i like to examine why. what did i need from them? was it the comfort of something melodiously repetitive? was it hope, the actualising touch of the other who is not other because they love you? i don’t really know why it is so life-reacuing - these stories about love over and over, again and again, but i’m very glad they exist. 💕

33. Give your writing a compliment

😭bdsm torture scene where you force me to internalise a compliment 🥺🥰🫠💕

i suppose i like how i can put a theme inside of a certain um… distance of prose and sort of weave a theme around that and come back to it again and again. like an epiphany in language. i like that. it’s very difficult.

luckily 😌 Amber would NEVER ask me to write a 9-word fic because she knows i would find that terrible. nigh impossible. a biteable offense. unless 🧐😳 that was your plan all along?

#ask meme #ty Amber ily 🥹💕❤️💕

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vaguely-yandere · 2 years

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i want a yandere to cut up fruit for me bc i lauv fruit!!

makes me think of a wifey yan!! (i use wifey as a general adjective for like. a doting, housekeeper-ish person!! not meant to be gendered, kinda like girly yan!)

a yan who takes care of you, who prepares your lunches for school together, is at your house more often than not, cleaning and cooking and doting on you!! maybe they’re also a childhood friend who’s very comfortable with taking care of you and being around you at all times!! i know you would probably get sick of this typa yan chami, bc ik you mentioned you’re very independent!! (waaaa so cool :000) but imagine you voice this independence in some way; maybe you tell them straight up that they’re being too overbearing, or you begin coming home later (knowing that they’re already there waiting for you, with dinner and a warm bath drawn and ready), or maybe tensions snap when they greet you at home on a cold day, with what seems to be…someone else’s scarf wrapped around your neck. someone who maybe also cares about you as much as they do. you’re nuzzling into it a bit, and your cheeks are a little flushed.

they don’t like that.

-sunny :3

aaaa a housewife yandere.... theyre so violent by nature! not with their darling of course but with anyone who dares mess up their perfect little life!

they cook, they clean, they make sure everything is perfect for you and to make the plot more interesting, they arent even your partner! theyre just a friend! they have a delusion they are and when youre off working, they love going into your room and imagining they share it with you <3 make your bed like its gonna have two people sleeping it in, sometimes 'misplace' their clothes and hang them up in your closet, put their toothbrush right next to yours, anything that makes it look like you two are married!

they even attend work events with you! attached to your side, holding your arm or hand, well... anyone would mistake you two for a couple! housewife yandere just laughs while you awkwardly laugh along and kindly correct the stranger but housewife is screaming on the inside. sometimes, when theyre running errands, theyll even put a big flashy ring on their hand and 'casually' bring you up in conversation, saying your their partner <3 working so hard for them! they just want a happy, married life!

better hope you dont want kids cause they absolutely will kidnap one or more for you but dont worry, they only take kids who are up for adoption!

i bet they have a little yandere club too, that they call their 'book club' so they get all of their tips and tricks from there! a very morbid version of a housewife monthly type of thing. and if you start dating... well, the book club wont even bat an eye when your yandere asks how to get blood out of their grout.

youve known housewife your entire life! theyre your best friend! you two are so close and you even joke about being soulmates! so when you start gushing about someone from work while they take your coat off and lead you to the bath... well, they plan on bringing you your lunch tomorrow just so they can size up their competition and i just know theyve got connections. a local butcher who is more than willing to rent them space in their freezer, another housewife from down the street who has a partner that enjoys collecting weapons, so many friends who will keep an eye out for any 'suspicious' activity, even some housewife friends who are more than willing to say theyve been seeing your crush hanging around their childrens schools!

i also imagine housewife yandere to be very.. functional! unlike sensitive yandere, they dont mind other people and even have a pretty good social life! they even have a few farmer friends who wont even bat an eye if they show up with a body bag full of 'pig food'. but if someone threatens their fantasy... well, no one suspects the poor little housewife! while you mourn over the loss of a date or friend, housewife yan is right there holding you close and whispering reassurances. hell, theyll even show up to the funeral and offer to bring over a few meals to the deceased's family! no one even notices theyre hateful looks towards the casket!

#yandere scenarios #yandere #yandere imagines #yandere x you #asks #housewife yandere #sunny darling #yandere prompts

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quinloki · 2 months

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I leave the actual character(s) to you but may I request these flavors please:

cotton candy: post the last picture of your F/O that you saved!

pistachio: when was the last time that you or your F/O cried during a movie?

coconut mango: what mementos do you and your F/O treasure?

And one I'm making up because seriously, this flavor should be on the list:

dill pickle: what's the pettiest thing your F/O has ever done to you (maybe because of a fight) or to someone else?

Alright, I'll put this under a cut, cause I'm going to be be concise, but greedy, so it's gonna get long.

Cotton Candy: Since all the best art is stuff I haven't drawn and I don't want to link a dozen images, we'll do a little theater of the mind for this.

Marco - we're in yukata at a festival, sugar candy and candied pineapple on sticks, with Marco leaned down behind me so both our faces are in the frame for the passerby that offered to take a picture when we were struggling to do a selfie <3

Kid - covered in oil soot both of us, and there's a heart smeared on Kid's cheek while I'm near to tears with laughter. Heat or Wire probably took the picture and you can tell Kid is already plotting some manner of revenge.

Sabo - It's a newspaper photo, and we're making rude gestures at the camera person while laughing. Whether canon or AU I just feel like there'd be some level of infamy with Sabo's public image.

Pistachio: Last time you or your F/O cried during a movie?

I am a water fountain, let's just assume if something is too cute I'm bawling incomprehensibly. (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Marco - Family loss in movies hits Marco pretty hard. He can usually keep it in, but I feel like something like Saving Private Ryan would have him, Thatch and Izou in tears despite their efforts.

Kid - He'll leave the room so no one sees him getting misty eyed, but he's almost in the same category as me, he's just not willing to admit to it. Frustration, anger and sadness will get him to tear up, and the first two he'll let people see, but that third one is kind of a unicorn.

Sabo - He doesn't. Love him dearly, but he's far too practiced at compartmentalization. He'll hand over a box of tissues without a word, pet my hair when a scene is ramping up and just let me bawl, but he doesn't really get sucked into movies enough to get effected that way. (It's also why he drives after action movies, cause me and Ace get too wound up over them XD )

coconut mango: what mementos do you and your F/O treasure?

Marco - I've dove into it before, but Marco and his damned bar coasters. They grow on you, they do. I have a few small items from other people I cherish, but those coasters are pretty much ours at this point, and not just his.

Kid - The perk of Kid as your F/O are all the little knick knacks, but a metal and wood polished set of arm bands, are my favorite gift from him. Kid's most cherished item is... weird, but - okay, so look, I wanted to learn how to fight, I get the forms and functions, right? But I'm not... feisty enough. >.> Anyway, sparring with the crew saw improvements, and one time Kid and I were going at it and I managed to really ring his bell. He reacted instinctively and now he has my tooth on a chain.

Sabo - I... may have to come back to this. Things with Sabo are still new, and I haven't given it enough thought it seems.

And one I'm making up because seriously, this flavor should be on the list:

dill pickle: what's the pettiest thing your F/O has ever done to you (maybe because of a fight) or to someone else?

Marco - I've never tested Marco enough to know this, and I don't WANT to test Marco enough to know this. Knowing one's limits are important and there's some lines you just kind of instinctively know better >.>

Kid - Stole all my underclothes. T-T Look, I'm just not good at buying necessities for myself, and I will wear clothes to threads. Even the stuff I shouldn't like bras and such. And bad bras can leave marks and bruises and little miss Tulip head got all pissy about it. Bad underclothes are better than no under clothes, so a shopping we had gone.

Sabo - Made me wear mittens for a day so he could get doors and chairs and such for me. Was enough of a good sport to take them off when I had to go to the bathroom, was enough of a bastard to leave them on when it was time for bed.

#ask game #quin answers #thecrimsonacademic #self ship

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the-eyes-of-andyserkis · 1 year

Text

Bringin' Home the Rain - Chapter 3: "Demons"

Masterlist

Fandom: MCU - Age of Ultron, Black Panther Pairing: Ulysses Klaue x F!Reader Word count: 5.9K Chapters: 3/5 Rating: Explicit

Chapter Summary: You can't stop thinking about Klaue, and after an encounter where you find out he feels the same all you can think about is how you can get him to touch you again.

Warnings: Explicit Rating, Alcohol, Blood and Injury, Minor Injuries, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Age Difference, Masturbation, Smut, PWP, But a bit of Plot if you squint, Dirty Talk, Praise, Teasing, Oral (M! Receiving)

A/N: Well, there's a reason I separated the set up and turned this into five chapters! It was taking longer than expected, but then I remembered that it was more than twice as long as the first two and cut myself some slack. The smut is incoming, so thank you for your patience and your feedback so far, it's been lovely to read!

Title is from the song "Bringin' Home the Rain" by The Builders and the Butchers.

AO3 Link

You're dancin' with your demons baby You forgot your former lie It was hard swimming once And now you're daily diving in

You do end up asking Klaue for something.

Most of the space at the compound is in use, but while wandering around one night when you can’t sleep you find a set of doors leading to an unused tech wing: drafting rooms, large metal and wood shops, and most interestingly to you several smaller rooms each with TIG welding machines - something you haven’t been using very much in your current work - as well a welding table, a tungsten grinder, and built in fume extraction hood. Perfect.

TIG welding would give you a chance to practice your finer detail skills. It’s a technique that requires focus and steady hands, but at the same time you can be creative and “draw” with it, anything from an octopus to random patterns that might resemble a Rorschach test image. This was the other side of the coin of metallurgy, the one that allowed you to focus on the creation and the connection rather than worrying about pure functionality and the end result.

When you tell your shift lead Tom, a short but very broad Irishman, that you want to get in touch with Klaue he looks surprised and then mildly concerned.

“Everything’s fine!” you assure him. “He just said to let him know if there was anything that I needed and, well, there’s something that I need.”

“Ok, sure, I’ll let him know,” he says, relieved but still uncertain, his expression indicating that he might think that you’re crazy for actively looking to draw Klaue’s attention, and you certainly can’t blame him for that.

Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to think of very much other than Klaue in the two weeks since your last encounter. You thought that maybe after a few days of giving in to the persistent thoughts of him that the feelings would temper, but as it turns out they only intensified. Most nights now, and sometimes mornings (and showers), your mind is drawn to him and your hand finds its way between your legs, though you keep his name clenched firmly behind your teeth.

The skull tattoo visible beneath an unbuttoned collar, muscle and tendon flexing beneath the ink as strong arms pick you up and press you against the wall.

You try to reason with yourself: You know that he’s not the kind of man you should be thinking this way about to begin with, not to mention that he barely touched you, and you have no idea if he even thinks about you at all, so why are you torturing yourself?

It’s not like you’ve never been interested in sex before, you’ve had plenty of good, even great sex. However you’d admit that your experiences tended to be mediocre more often than not, and generally speaking it wasn’t something that was typically front of mind for you. If you weren’t in a relationship sometimes weeks could go by and you’d find yourself barely thinking about it, and when it did happen it felt like it was more about scratching an itch than satisfying any particular need.

You’ve never ached for it before. Not like this.

Fingers curled in your hair, tongue moving relentlessly against yours and you’re unable to hold back the sounds he's drawing from you.

Two days after your request you’re surprised when you sleepily check your morning messages and see one from Klaue.

You quickly sit up in bed and start typing a reply explaining what you found and what you want to do, and he responds back that that was fine and you could use the tools, but you would have to buy any extra materials and maintain the equipment yourself. Not a problem, you assure him, typing the last message with one hand and wondering how he would react if you sent him a photo so could see what your other hand was doing right now.

Kneeling between your thighs, hovering there for agonizing seconds, waiting for you to beg him.

You clear out several garbage bags worth of debris and old materials from the room, wipe down all the surfaces, and test everything to make sure it actually turns on. Finally you drag a ragged but solid (and very heavy) two seater couch that you found in the metal shop down the hall to complete the space.

The following week all of your new supplies have arrived and you’re spending some time after your shift taking inventory. Your gear is laid out, tungsten welding rods along with nickel, magnesium, and copper filler rods are all sorted, and the base material - your stainless steel canvas - has been cleaned and polished and is ready for you to finally get started during your free day tomorrow.

You’re trying to decide what kind of design you want to start with when the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with awareness and when you whip your head around you see Klaue leaning against the doorway and watching you with a look that makes your breath catch.

“Oh, Klaue. Hi, uh, I didn’t know you were back."

He pushes his shoulder off of the doorframe and saunters into the room.

“Got back this morning, just here for a couple of days. I wanted to see what all this was about,” he says, gesturing to the table as he comes to stand beside you.

“Ok, sure,” you say, relieved to have something to talk about and to keep your focus off of him. “Well, like I said before I want to work on my detail skills with the TIG welder so that I don’t get too rusty. Plus it’ll give me something to do inside now that it’s getting colder, and I always find it benefits my work all around.”

Klaue looks at the gear and papers that are spread across the table. “And how are you planning to do that?”

You’re surprised that he actually seems...interested? And it’s been so long since you talked to someone about the craft that you eagerly start explaining.

“Ok, so TIG welding,” you look at him but then immediately look away when you’re see how blue his eyes are, even under the harsh fluorescent lights. “It makes a finer weld seam, and I can use that to create these intricate designs.”

“And the different alloys make different colors?” He indicates the rows of filler rods you have lined up on the table.

“Yes, exactly. Also some are shiny and some have more of a matte finish. Before you got here I was just debating if I wanted to start with a specific design or go with something more abstract and just kinda wing it,” you shrug. “That would probably be better since it’s going to be a mess to start with anyway, at least until I get the rhythm of it again.”

Klaue moves behind you, reaching around your body for the stack of designs and rifling through them. He stays close to you though, close enough that in the cool air of the room you can feel the warmth of him and your body is reacting swiftly, heat building with a throb between your thighs and you have to concentrate to keep the tremor out of your breath.

He picks out a swirling design that emulates the plumes of waves crashing together. Or maybe flames.

“Like this?” Klaue’s voice is rough and low and it goes straight to your center. You're so keyed up that the sound of it combined with his proximity causes something in your brain to short circuit, and it’s involuntary when the muscles of your cunt clench and then your back is arching with a reflexive roll of your hips.

It’s then that you find out how close he actually is when your ass makes contact with the front of his pants. You mindlessly revel in the sensation for a split second before realizing what you’ve done, and then you gasp and pull away in shock.

“Oh god, I’m sorry- '' you start to fumble out an apology but suddenly Klaue’s hands are on your hips, pulling you back against him, and you can feel it when he groans. Pushing you forward he traps you between the table and his body and when you feel the stiffening length of him pressing into your ass it’s your turn to moan as you lean back into him, unable to stop your hips from rolling again in response.

Your back is flush with Klaue’s broad chest and he presses his face into your neck, nosing into your hair. Hot puffs of breath torture your skin while his hands keep a bruising grip on you, fingers digging into the flesh of your hips.

“You’re going to drive me fucking insane.” he growls.

“I am??” you gasp. “You’re the one- !” You try to turn around to face him but he pushes you roughly back against the table with a rattle of metal and holds you in place, your own hands flying up to brace yourself against the weight of him.

“Yes”, he hisses against your ear. “Since the night you walked right up to me in that bar. You know I saw you as soon as I walked in? All alone,” he tsked. “Saw you staring at that other table, as if any of those men - those boys,” he spits out the word with disdain, “could give you what you need.”

His hands leave your hips to brush up your sides, gathering up the hem of your shirt so that his fingers can find your skin beneath it. The metal of his rings is cool but his fingers seem to scald you and you’re sure they must be leaving behind blackened streaks of ash in their wake; he’s barely touched you and you’re burning.

“Oh?” you say, your voice coy even as you’re becoming breathless, panting at his words. “And you think you know what I need?” And, god, it's impossible to imagine at this moment that there's anyone in the world who is less capable of backing down than you.

Klaue growls again and the vibration drives your senses to the edge of reason. He’s rutting slowly and shamelessly against you, the now very hard curve of his erection digging into the swell of your ass. He still has you pinned which is preventing you from finding some relief, some friction of your own, and all you can do is squeeze your thighs together to try to ease some of the desperate ache that’s building deep in your belly.

“Yes, I think I fucking do, darling- “

Before he can say anything else you hear voices coming from down the hallway. Klaue suddenly pulls away from you and you find that you’re almost frantic at the loss while still trying to process that “darling”.

“Boss?” says David, standing in the doorway and looking between the two of you. He must be able to see how flustered you are, flushed and wide eyed, but mercifully he makes no outward indication that he notices. “The Minister is almost ready. Line three in your office.”

You finally dare to look at Klaue, dark eyed and disheveled and hanging onto his control by a thread. You desperately want him to stay, want to grab onto him for dear life and beg him to fuck you until you can’t breathe.

But he doesn’t and you don’t and he finally turns away without saying anything else and follows David out of the room.

You keep taking deep breaths until you start to calm down, the vibration in your body eventually dispersing to a faint prickle in your extremities. As you breathe you circle back around to something he had said, and at first you're furious because how dare he when he was the one driving you insane. But those feelings are quickly forgotten when your mind finally catches up to what the fuck just happened, followed swiftly by the realization that yes, Klaue has in fact been thinking about you.

If you hadn’t been interrupted how far would it have gone? Would he have bent you over, pushed your pants down around your thighs and bruised your hips against the table as he fucked your from behind? He had been so close, thin layers of fabric the only barrier separating you from a shift of his hips and the relief of his cock sinking into you.

That night is the first time his name slips off your tongue on a shaky moan when you come. It’s also the first time that it leaves you wanting, your own touch not enough now that you know the feeling of his hands on your skin, now that you know the way his cock feels grinding against you, thick and so fucking hard

You’ve tipped over the edge, you had a while ago in fact, and like waking from a half dream with a start you finally accept how long you’ve been falling. All you can think of is Ulysses Klaue and you’re no longer interested in pretending that you don’t, you just know that you really need to find a way to get him to touch you again.

You don’t see Klaue at all the next morning and after lunch you’re back in your workroom and finally ready to get started on the first design, hoping that it will double as a distraction. All of your gear is prepped and you’re checking the pressure on the argon tank when you see a familiar shape in your peripheral. Your heart rate spikes and you immediately straighten up in anticipation before realizing with a sting of disappointment that he’s not alone, there are two other men waiting outside in the hall.

Preoccupied by something on his phone Klaue doesn’t look at you when he speaks.

“I need you to make a run to Bucharest."

You pause in confusion because that was not what you were expecting him to say at all, and it takes you a moment to parse his words.

“It’s a small exchange. My usual people are already occupied with other jobs and this is time sensitive."

You finally clue in to what he’s talking about: this is one of those non-skill related things you were told might be expected of you when you started, and evidently your number has finally come up.

Now, you’ve always convinced yourself that you don’t actually have a death wish, that you just enjoy a good adrenaline rush is all, however you start to seriously question this after what you say next.

“Uh, no.” you reply simply.

Maybe it's the frustration spilling over from yesterday, or the fact that he’s seemingly so unbothered as if he hadn’t had his cock pressed against you in this exact space less than twenty-four hours ago. Either way you’re so irritated by this interruption that your sense of self-preservation has evidently decided to zip off to another reality.

"This is my time,” you continue. “I earned it, and I’m not particularly interested in being a ‘gopher’ right now.”

Well, he’s definitely looking at you now, but other than his eyes searing into yours you receive no other reaction from him, and apparently deciding to ignore your refusal Klaue continues on.

“It should be a four hour round trip, and if you leave now you’ll be back before sundown.” The tone of his voice might sound even but his posture is tense and coiled, and even though you know that you should really take the chance he’s offering you, you just can’t make yourself do it.

“Listen, I work my ass off, I pull my weight around here and then some. I finally have everything ready to go here and I just want to relax for five fucking minutes.”

A muscle in Klaue’s jaw twitches and he levels his gaze at you, dark salt and pepper curls falling across his forehead. His next words are quiet but no one could miss the simmering threat in them.

“You knew what you signed up for with this job,” his voice is so low that you nearly have to strain to hear him. “Everyone’s all the way in on this and sometimes that means doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. No questions asked.”

“But-”

He holds up a hand to silence you, his eyes dark and hinting at the danger that awaits if you continue pushing.

You’re only a few inches different in height but as Klaue squares his shoulders and steps toward you his anger fills all corners of the room, making it feel as though he’s towering over you. As he crosses the boundary into your personal space you force yourself to hold your ground and your nose fills with the scent of sweat and oil and something earthy, like juniper.

“So even if you weren’t the best person available right now,” Klaue tilts his head down until he’s just inches away from your face. “When I tell you to do something, you fucking do it.”

Your eyelids flutter and you barely manage to suppress a moan as your sex throbs at his words. Staring up at him you’re overwhelmed by the thought that if you rose up on your toes you could easily close the gap between your mouths, however a single sane thought manages to cut through the haze of lust to remind you that he’s waiting for a response. While it doesn’t make you any less pissed off you know that he’s right.

“Fine,” you say curtly. “Whatever you need.”

He hesitates briefly, eyes flicking quickly down to your mouth.

“Good,” he finally says, stepping away. “You’ll need to leave immediately, I’ll send you the location and instructions.”

“Great.” you reply, a false sweetness in your voice.

Almost out the door he stops and turns back to look at you one more time.

“You should be careful, darling.” Klaue says, a dangerous smile playing across his face. “That mouth is going to get you into trouble.” And then once again he’s gone.

“Goddamnit”, you mutter and let out a shaky breath, then gather your things and run back to your quarters to change.

* * * * * * * * * *

You actually enjoy the drive, as much as you hate to admit it. It’s late September and the leaves are already well painted with their fall colours at the higher elevations, but it’s still comfortable enough that you’re able to keep the window down most of the way there, although even the roar of the wind isn’t doing much to muffle your thoughts.

Your entire body feels like a live wire, like he’s still touching you, and god it felt so good when he was touching you. It felt so good to come undone under his hands as he coaxed out something familiar, drawing to the surface the part of you that craves the rush, finding it there in the rock of your hips and then giving you permission to stop trying to tamp it down.

You shake your head to clear it as you arrive at the pickup location, grateful for the distraction. There is some brief tension when they don't immediately recognize you as one of the usual operatives, but once the ringleader confirms who you are things kick into gear, and you’re surprised by how smoothly everything goes. You hand them the sealed manila envelope that you were given, after which several unmarked containers are loaded in the back of the truck.

Once the exchange is complete you text Klaue confirmation as he’d instructed - moments later the other men all look at their phones, and evidently seeing what they want they lose interest and wave you along.

As you’re about to drive away your phone pings with another message and you stop to read it:

“Good girl.”

You make a sound that’s a cross between a laugh and a moan and then rest your head between your hands on the steering wheel. Something you’ve learned about Klaue is that there is nothing unintentional about what he says or does, so you know he did that on purpose. Because he guessed what it might do to you.

“Yes, I think I fucking do, darling.“

And once again he's right because the thought of his voice speaking those words in a rough whisper against your ear has you burning, no longer shocked by how quickly you’re nearly writhing with arousal.

You don’t have time to wallow, though, the sun is setting and you’d rather not be driving through the mountains in the dark, so taking a breath you throw the truck into gear and turn back onto the road, once again driving with the windows down. The air is getting colder now with the sun close to setting yet it does even less now to distract you than before as his words repeat over and over again in your head.

You really just want to go straight back to your quarters but you still need to clean up the mess you left behind after leaving in a rush.

Back in your workroom you hastily go to drop your bag and jacket on the couch but instead you get scared out of your wits, gasping comically as you grab your chest when you register the unexpected shape that’s already sitting there.

And of course it’s Klaue, chuckling infuriatingly at your startled reaction.

“What the hell!" you exclaim when you finally catch your breath. "What are you doing here??"

He doesn’t say anything, and after a few moments you gesture a wordless “Well?”

It’s then you notice that his eyes are focused on your body rather than anything you might be saying. With a flush it occurs to you that other than accidentally getting partially undressed when you were hurt, Klaue hasn’t seen you wearing anything other than your work clothes since you got here, only ever the heavy and shapeless garments meant to protect you when you’re welding. Seeing you now in just the black leggings and fitted Henley you’d changed into before leaving for Bucharest seems to have caught him off guard.

After brazenly dragging his gaze over you for what feels like an eon Klaue finally leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees, eyes focusing directly on you now.

“You seem to be forgetting that I own this building. And you're only here", with raised eyebrows Klaue looks around the room to make his point, "because I allowed it."

You squeeze your eyes shut and take a breath, all of the earlier frustration is rushing back in and you don’t have the patience to argue with his non-answer.

“You know what?” you say with a resigned sigh. “You're right. That's fine. Just don’t move my stuff around when you're in here. Please.” He leans back against the couch with a smirk and seems to turn his attention back to whatever he was working on when you walked in.

With a sigh you start to clear off of the table and put away your tools, all the while silently seething at him and painfully aware of his existence in your space. So maybe when you stretch your arms over your head to ease the stiffness from the long drive you arch your lower back a little. And maybe you bend over a bit further than strictly necessary to put something away on a low shelf, tilting your hips so that your ass is on display. With satisfaction you hear a sharp intake of breath behind you but when you look back Klaue still seems to be focused on his phone.

His posture seems relaxed with one arm stretched out along the back of the faded cushions and knees casually spread wide. As you watch, though, he shifts his hips and smooths a hand down his thigh, and when your eyes wander to his lap you lick your lips when clearly see the outline of his erection through the fabric.

At first you wonder what he’s waiting for but then you find that you don’t really care, and a calm settles over you as you realize that you’re done waiting.

Oh, I drive you crazy? Fucking watch me.

You gather your things and then make as if you’re going to leave, but instead of walking out you close the door and let your bag drop to the floor with a thud.

The sound brings his attention back to you and confused but intrigued his eyes slide over your body as you stride over to stand in front of him.

“Undo your pants,” you say, looking down at him.

Klaue’s eyes fly up to meet yours, his lips parting slightly.

“Pardon?” he rumbles, after a beat. His voice is steady but you don't miss another shift of his hips.

You tip your chin toward his belt and say again, “Undo your pants”.

A smile slowly crooks the corner of his mouth but it doesn't do a thing to mask the storm behind his eyes.

“If I have to ask again I’m just going to leave”, you said straightforwardly and begin to turn away.

That seems to break the spell and blindly tossing his phone aside Klaue’s hands move quickly to the buckle of his belt as you step the rest of the way forward to drop to your knees in front of him and he grins when he registers what you’re doing.

“You been thinkin’ about this for a while, darling?” he asks with a Cheshire glint in his eyes as he draws down the zipper.

You run your hands up his thighs and when you slide a hand over where he’s straining against his underwear you can feel that he’s already almost fully hard, twitching under your fingers.

“Seems like you have been,” you reply with a squeeze to illustrate your point, his groan cutting off any retort while you teasingly stroke along his length.

You don’t last long doing this though, you need more of him, so you reach your hands up to tug at his waistband. Taking the hint Klaue braces his booted feet on the floor to lift his hips, steadily working both layers down until they’re finally low enough to free his erection which drops heavy between his thighs. He’s deliciously thick, curving smoothly up to where the head is already dark and leaking precum, and you’re unable to suppress a low whine when he wraps a hand around himself to languidly stroke his length.

“Is this what you want, hm?” Klaue’s voice is a rough and he smirks at your hungry expression as you watch his fist sliding over his cock.

“Not quite,” you reply and lick your lips as your own hand joins his to wrap around the thickness of him, finally feeling him. He draws a hissed breath through his teeth and removes his hand so you can work him properly.

You use your thumb to spread the bead of precum around the head, drawing your hand down to the brush of hair at the base of him and then back up, your eyes following the trail up his belly to where you can see it meet the edge of tattoo that looks like the tail of a crocodile. You wish briefly that you could get his shirt off of him but your focus is drawn back to his cock and how fucking good it feels in your hand, hot and silky under your fingers.

“Do you think about this when you touch yourself?” Klaue hums and you look up so that you can watch his face as your hand strokes him, the focused expression in his eyes belying the heat behind them.

“I think about a lot of things,” you say, confirming his implication with a teasing smile. “Like you bending me over that table and fucking me, hard, leaving the door open so anyone could see how much I want it.” You tighten your grip on him as you speak, deeply satisfied when his eyes go dark and hooded and he moans, and you definitely need him to do more of that, so you finally do what you’ve been wanting since you caught that shift of his hips and lean down to close your lips around him.

It’s your turn to moan as the head of his cock pushes into your mouth and it’s answered by an intoxicating rumble as your lips and tongue slide down and around his now achingly hard length, starting off slow, savoring the tang of him as you explore every ridge and curve. You run the flat of your tongue from the base to the tip of his thick shaft, then swirl it around the head and along the sensitive underside before releasing him with a wet pop and starting over again.

You can feel how wet you’re getting just from this and when you look up the sight of his dark and greedy expression has you nearly coming undone. An aching throb rolls through your slick sex and you don’t mean to whimper a needy sound around him but you do, and Klaue grins when he hears it.

“You might’ve been playing coy, but I knew how much you’d love having my cock in your mouth,” he rumbles.

Well, you can’t exactly argue with that so instead you suck - hard - hollowing out your cheeks and allowing the pressure to drag him further into your mouth. Klaue’s eyes squeeze shut and with a startled inhale he’s groaning long and deep and you’d swear before god that you can feel it against your tongue.

As you continue to suck him in and out of your mouth like this you feel his fingers slide into your hair and tighten into a fist. He’s not pushing down, right now just following the steady bobbing movement of your head, but you can feel the edge of want in his grip and your scalp stings under his touch, your entire body aching in response.

As good as it feels and as much as you would love to give in and let him take control, you instead pull your mouth off of him before he can push any harder.

"None of that”, you say, gratified when he rolls his hips upward in protest, mindlessly seeking for the lost heat and sensation. "You can fuck my mouth later", you purr as your hand continues a teasing rhythm along his length that’s now slick from your mouth. "But right now I'm going to suck your cock."

You barely recognize your own voice, desperate and demanding and full of aching need as you sit back between his Klaue’s thighs while he stares down at you, chest heaving and eyes hooded with a combination of frustration and lust.

“You want me to keep sucking your cock, don’t you?” Then, keeping your eyes on his you lower your mouth and flick your tongue through the slit at the tip of him to gather more of the precum that’s leaking there now.

Klaue growls at that and you can see the thoughts warring behind his eyes. You don’t know if this man who is so used to taking what he wants will allow you to take instead, but you don’t want to let him think too long on which he wants more so you squeeze his cock hard enough to elicit a startled hiss, returning his focus to you with a surge of heat.

“Yes,” he grits out, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.

If he was going to say anything else he doesn’t have the chance, the word is barely out when your lips are around him again and you throb at the sound of relief he makes when as your mouth returns to its ministrations. You’re surprising yourself with how much you really fucking want this, how much you love how hard he is under your tongue, and how delirious you feel as he nearly begs you, cursing and mumbling thickly, “Fuck, just like that.”

You take him further into your mouth, your lips stretching wide around him as the head of his cock hits the back of your throat, not taking him in all the way but enough to make your eyes start to water and to tease him with the tightening sensation.

“Fucking perfect mouth, Christ” he pants. “Looks so good with my cock in it.” Klaue’s words send another frisson of heat to your already soaked center and you can’t help rolling your hips in time with the movements of your mouth, and you know that he can see it.

“Wish it was inside your tight cunt instead?” he says, teasing, and you moan around him because of course you fucking do and all of your focus is required to keep up your rhythm as think about where else he could stretch you open.

He’s starting to pant as he watches where he’s almost disappearing into your mouth while your hand continues a twisting stroke at the base of him.

“Fuck, gonna come soon, darling,” Klaue groans a warning, his voice straining against the fraying edges of his control.

You desperately want to make him come like this, want to feel him pulsing on your tongue and coating your mouth. However, the part of you that makes you want to jump off a cliff into the waiting ocean below, the chaotic part that you love and that’s felt so uncertain since you met Klaue is finally back in control and, well, it wants something else. It wants to fall.

Pulling back and shallowing your movements again you quicken your pace, and even though he’s still trying to temper his thrusts he can’t help flexing his hips so that his cock slides up through your spit-slicked fist. His tone shifts from pleasure to a more urgent need with every wet suck of your mouth until the only sound he’s making is a panting grunt that matches your rhythm as you feel him nearing his edge.

Then without warning you quickly pull your mouth and hands off of him and sit back, Klaue’s expression one of confused desperation, dark and unfocused.

“Finish yourself,” you demand.

Klaue’s eyes lock onto yours as a hand moves quickly to grip his cock and then you watch him jerk himself fast and rough and harder than you ever could have. He tenses suddenly, his expression momentarily frozen somewhere between agony and bliss and then his body bows forward and he’s coming with a strangled groan while you watch mesmerized as ropes of come spill thickly over his fist and on to his stomach.

As Klaue strokes himself through the last spasms of his climax you stand up, wiping your mouth with the back of your arm and eyeing him appraisingly. Then, feeling absolutely high as a kite, you grab your things from where you had dropped them earlier and before he has a chance to recover you open the door and walk out the room.

Maybe if you’d looked back at him one more time you would have walked a little more quickly as you made your way back to your quarters.

Because if you had looked back you would have seen a single thing burning in his eyes as they followed you out:

Run.

Thank you for reading! I hope the wait was worth it (and we're not done yet.)

Also, here's an example of the TIG welding art that's mentioned, it's actually really cool!

#bringin' home the rain fic #ulysses klaue #ulysses klaue x f reader #ulysses klaue x reader #ulysses klaue x you #mcu #mcu fanfiction #fanfiction

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