#he has too many teeth for his skull-less head
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He reminds me of a piece of cheese. Smells uaaagh 😕
#pizza tower#the noise#pizza tower fanart#pizza tower the noise#he has too many teeth for his skull-less head
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Just Like You
pairing: SImon "Ghost" Riley x single mom reader
word count: 1.6k
summary: Ghost can't get used to the fact that he's your son's favorite person in the world, but damn- he's trying. ("You- You're me for Halloween??")
a/n: this fic references the comics, so for those who didn't know: Joseph was Simon's nephew. Super angsty and fluffy. Simon bonding with your kid.
beta read by @margowritesthings
masterlist
Leo loves Halloween. It’s your son’s favorite time of year. The five year old boy, with your help, worked incredibly hard on his costume, and he’s sure it's going to be the best costume on the block. You may be a little biased, but really, it’s very good. Leo has put extra effort into perfecting every detail of his costume, because this year is special.
It’s the first year that Simon will be accompanying Leo with trick or treat. Leo loves Simon to pieces– but Simon can’t figure out why. The soldier elicits fear from nearly everyone that he encounters, his mask makes children scream and run in the other direction. Hell, his mask makes adults piss themselves in the field. Many enemy soldiers have surrendered at the sight of Ghost running towards them. So Simon can’t wrap his head around the fact that his girlfriend’s little boy looks up at him like he’s the greatest person in the world.
Simon is less than stellar with children. He tries, but he’s not entirely sure how to talk to them. He’s always a little awkward, generally avoiding children when he can, but this one seeks him out. Simon loves you more than anything, and he wants to form a relationship with Leo, he’s just not exactly sure how. He’s trying, for you and the boy. Leo’s biological dad is a piece of shit, which Simon has lived through, and he tries to shield the poor kid from that pain as much as possible. Maybe it’s because Leo reminds him so much of Tommy and Joseph, but your kid is special.
–
“You ready, bud?” You ask, pulling a hoodie over your frame. It’s Simon’s and it’s oversized, stopping just above your knees. But it's comfortable, and late-October in Manchester is not. Immediately, you find yourself encompassed in its warmth and the smell of Simon’s cologne.
“Almost, mummy!” Leo yells from the bathroom. “Simon is gonna love this!”
You chuckle, “I know he will, baby.” You grab the fresh mug of tea from your nightstand and head down the carpeted stairs. Simon was to be here an hour before trick or treat. You check your watch. 18:00. As if on cue, the doorbell rings, sounding out loudly through your little home. Always punctual. Leo squeals out of excitement at the sound.
“Coming!” You holler, padding across the chilly living room towards the door. You jog lightly, causing a few drops of tea to spill over from the lip of your mug, dripping down to the floor and splashing against the hardwood floor. Ignoring the little mess, you pull the frosted glass door open. Simon is wearing his less civilian mask with the hard plastic skull face. You’d specifically requested that he wear it, though he wasn’t sure why.
“You can just come in, you know. You don’t have to ring the doorbell.” You chuckle, nodding for him to come in. He steps inside the door, hands softly gripping onto your waist as he kicks the door shut.
“I told you to keep your door locked.” Simon raises an eyebrow, squeezing your waist.
“Oh, right…” You hum, squinting your eyes as you recall that conversation, “I forgot.”
“Course you did, love.” Simon smirks, “Happy Halloween.” he says, and you chuckle, gripping his skull mask by the teeth and pushing it up over his face. His scarred lips are sporting a smile, and you kiss it away. It’s over all too quick as he pulls away, nodding towards the cup of tea in your hand.
“The kettle’s still on, yeah?” He asks, pulling the mask back down over his face.
“Yes, I’ll get you a cuppa.” You roll your eyes playfully. He’s cutting your kisses short for tea, something he’ll make up for later, you’re sure. Simon glances around the living room, noting the few abandoned truck toys that lie around the living room.
“Where’s Leo?” Simon asks, looking around the living room as you walk towards the kitchen.
“He’s just finishing getting ready upstairs. Why don’t you go up? I'll bring your tea up.” You hum, grabbing a tea bag and Simon’s favorite mug. You hear heavy footsteps going up the stairs, and take that as his response.
You shake your head, amused as you slowly pour the steaming water over the tea bag, watching it turn a rich brown. Once it’s properly mashed, you add his preferred amount of milk and sugar, and then carefully start up the stairs. Your footsteps are naturally much quieter than Simon’s, and with the added fact that you’re trying not to spill his tea, he doesn’t hear you coming up the steps. You reach the top, and stop dead in your tracks at the sight around the corner. Simon is walking towards Leo’s bedroom, but from the angle you’re at, you can see Leo hiding around the corner as if he's about to scare Simon. Leo is fully dressed in his Halloween costume, a little replica of the exact outfit Simon is currently wearing, skull mask and all.
“Boo!” Leo screams, rounding the corner that Simon was just about to go around.
Simon clutches his chest, jumping back a comical amount. Simon literally screams, attempting to sound terrified. Obviously Simon isn’t scared in the least, but Leo doesn’t know that. Simon lets the boy proudly think that his costume is scary enough to frighten the unshakeable. Leo’s smile is as bright as ever under his mask, and you grip the cup of tea a little tighter as a smile pulls at your own lips. Simon’s eyes are comically wide as he fakes terror for the young boy. Entirely satisfied with Simon’s reaction, Leo pulls his mask off, giggling madly.
“It’s okay, Simon! It’s just me, don't be scared!” Leo giggles, jogging up towards Simon who is bent over at the waist, pretending to gasp for breath and holding his chest.
“Bloody hell, mate. You nearly gave me a heart attack!” Simon chuckles, scooping Leo up into his arms. Once settled on Simon’s hip, Leo holds the plastic mask up to Simon’s face. It’s an exact replica of the mask he’s currently wearing, just much smaller.
“Look! I'm just like you for Halloween!” Leo smiles, showing Simon all the little details that he’d put into perfecting his mask.
“You–” Simon’s brow furrows, “You’re me for Halloween?” He asks, piecing it all together. Leo holds the mask out to Simon, who takes it and looks over the smaller version of Ghost’s infamous skull mask.
“Yep! Do you like it…?” Leo asks, sounding a bit worried. His little eyebrows pull together, and Simon is quick to reassure him.
“I love it, mate. It’s perfect, looks just like mine.” Simon whispers. There is emotion in his voice, unusual for him, you note. Tears prick your eyes as Leo puts the mask back on, looking up at Simon.
“I wanna be like you when I grow up.” Leo says, wrapping his little arms around Simon’s neck.
“You’re gonna be better than me, Leo. Much better, yeah?” Simon whispers, looking the boy in the eyes. Leo nods, curling up against Simon’s chest. He rubs his hand up and down Leo’s back, comforting him.
“You know, Leo, you remind me of a boy I used to know.” Simon mumbles in a rare show of emotional vulnerability, his eyes glazed over as he pats the boy’s back.
“Who?” Leo asks, propping his chin on Simon’s chest to look up at him better.
“Uh–” Simon hesitates. “His name was Joseph… He was my nephew.” Simon whispers, and your heart wrenches in your chest.
“Maybe I could meet him someday and we could play.” Leo whispers, hopefully looking up.
“Yeah. Maybe someday.” Is all Simon says, nodding lightly as old, ugly memories pull at his brain, ones he’d shoved out and burned long ago.
“I love you, Simon.” Leo whispers, hugging his little arms as tightly around the man as he can manage. He pulls Simon out of every dark thought he was having, those three little words pulling at his heart strings. Simon hesitates, voice stuttering for a moment.
“Yeah– I love you too, little mate.” Simon whispers, voice heavy with emotion.
“This is gonna be so much fun– Mummy even helped me with my costume!” Leo adds, unintentionally changing the subject. He creates a perfect time for you to announce your presence.
You hastily wipe your eyes and walk up the last step, rounding the corner you were just hiding behind. You catch Simon off guard, and he turns to you, slowly placing the young boy back on the ground.
“I didn’t hear you come up.” Simon whispers, taking the mug from your outstretched hands. He’s far away, lost in thought. Leo runs down the hall to grab his treat bag as Simon wraps his arm around your waist.
“Didn’t want to spill your cuppa.” You explain, resting your head on his chest for a moment. Leo comes back around the corner with his bag, excitedly waiting for trick or treat to begin.
You smile up at Simon, noticing a few little tear tracks running down through his eye black.
ghost taglist: @moths569
#simon ghost riley x you#simon ghost riley x female reader#simon riley x reader#simon ghost riley x reader#simon ghost riley#ghost simon riley#ghost cod#call of duty mw2#cod mw2#call of duty modern warfare 2
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synopsis. there’s just something about watching gojo put that blindfold on.
wc. 570
"it's bumpy at the back. "
"still? but i thought i fixed it?"
"well you clearly didn't. i think it messed up on the first wrap around, you might have to start again."
"can you take a picture or something to show me where it is? i can't feel it."
"no."
satoru turns to you and you don't need to be able to see his eyes to know he's got them raised suspiciously at you, if the smirk on his lips is anything to go by. "no?" he taunts, crossing his legs as you both sit on your bed facing each other. "why not? i've made the same mistake three times now. "
you shrug dismissively, "you're a big boy, don't give up now. i'm helping you." you cover your mouth and look to the side as if though that would stop satoru from hearing the small laughs.
maybe it's because it's so early, or maybe it is just that attractive, but there was just something about watching your boyfriend cover his eyes with bandages that just makes all the stars align.
he always holds one end of the bandages between his teeth, using both of his hands to gather up his undercut before he begins smoothly wrapping it around his head. he never makes a mistake. like everything else he's ever done, the outcome is flawless.
it doesn't matter how many times you've watched him do it, the butterflies that spiral in your stomach never cease.
however, admitting such attraction to such a mundane thing (that he has to do to y'know not deal with the skull-splitting migraines) is embarrassing. especially when you know satoru and the fact he will never ever let it slide.
the hope that maybe he'll be more disgusted by the fact you called him 'big boy' to press you further on the matter is quickly extinguished. "i think i already have," he counters in a sing song voice, "someone likes watching me!"
you almost choke on your spit, coughing as you check the watch on your wrist that's not there, "would you look at the time? you have class!" trying to slip off the bed is futile because satoru's reflexes are three times as quick as yours and he doesn't hesitate to grab your arm.
"class can wait," satoru lifts the bandages above his right eye, giving you a glimpse of his raw power as he eyes you playfully. leaning in dangerously close to you, his breath tickles you as he speaks, "c'mon baby, just admit it."
there it is. baby. the pet name is enough to shatter any self-control you still somehow manage to have left and you lift your head to try and kiss him. keyword: try.
"uh uh, say it," he teases, his tongue poking out to swipe across his pretty lips as he holds you back by less than an inch. if you wanted to swipe your tongue across his lips too, you could.
your cheeks heat up and you cross your arms with a huff, "i like watching you put your blindfold on. happy?" satoru thinks he's going to implode because he doesn't think there's enough space left in his body to cope with the sheer adoration he has for you. he settles for a
"ecstatic." satoru kisses you again, this time with more eagerly as he drags your body towards his lap just to have you closer to him.
#i saw a tiktok#i had to write SOMETHING about that blindfold#ALSO TY MY LOVES FOR 200 FOLLOWERS#LOVE YOU ALL#— toru!!#gojo drabbles#gojou satoru#satoru#gojou satoru x you#gojo fluff#gojo x reader#satoru x reader#satoru drabbles
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There and Gone Again
“That presence,” Time murmured, eyes searching the old, gnarled branches above their heads. Realization came to him with a smile. “The Skull Kid. He’s here?”
Moonlight doused the Sacred Grove in glittering beams of silver, and a familiar song trickled through the boughs and tall grasses. “I’ve only ever seen one,” Twilight answered. “I doubt it’s the same skull kid from your era, though, right? That would make him…” He paused, trying to add the years, but Time shook his head.
“It’s him. I recognize his magic.”
“I didn’t realize they lived so long,” Twilight said, glancing around curiously. He half-expected to find orange eyes watching him.
“I suspect he may be an exception. His brand of trouble… Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it affected his lifespan.” Time’s frown did little to mask the fondness in his voice. “Maybe his spirit is tied to this place now.”
Twilight shrugged. “Maybe. He sure was a…”
“Brat?”
“I was gonna say asshole,” Twilight admittedly with a quiet laugh. “But he did help me, in the end.”
Time nodded like that was no surprise. “Tell me about him. How was he?”
Twilight leaned back on his hands as he considered the question. “He seemed well enough, I s’pose. He laughed a lot.” Usually at Twilight’s expense, but he didn’t need to say as much.
“That's good. What mask is he sporting these days?”
“Mask?”
“He always preferred to wear a mask. It… became a bit of an issue, actually.”
Twilight blinked. “There was no mask. I reckon he might’ve been a little less creepy if he’d had one.”
“Creepy?” Time gave him an odd look.
“Y’know, the whole—” Twilight gestured to his own face, “—glowing orange eyes, and that cavernous grin. There were too many teeth.”
Time didn’t say anything for a long moment. The silence was broken only occasionally by the low, mournful trill of a flute from within the woods. “I see,” he said at last. “I guess the magic affected more than just his lifespan.”
“What do you mean?”
Time shook his head. “Nothing. What about Tat’l and Tael?”
“Who?”
“His fairy friends.”
“I never saw any fairies around him.”
"Oh." Time looked disappointed. "But you didn’t see any other skull kids either?”
“No, just him.”
“He was completely alone?”
Unease weighed on Twilight’s shoulders. “He had his puppets.” At Time’s stare, he added, “He used magic to control these large, wooden puppets. They looked, well…” He didn’t want to say creepy again. “They had spindly limbs and low heads, and they wore cloaks up high on their backs.”
The silence, this time, was absolute while it lasted. Time finally let out a quiet breath. “The moon as his mask, the giants as his puppets, and… alone. Completely alone.” He turned suddenly, staring where the shadows nestled thickest. “Is this a joke or a memorial? Has your grief trapped you?”
Twilight shifted uncomfortably. The little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “Time?” he whispered.
Something stirred within the shadows, there and gone again. The music trickled back to life, endless once more.
#anyway does anyone else ever think about how the tp puppets resemble the mm giant guardians?#skull kid making his own guardians#or maybe i'm reaching idk#this has been a grief-filled summer and i woke up horribly melancholic#gintrinsic writing#lu fic#linked universe#lu time#lu twilight
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Exposed Bone
Pairing: Brook x Jimbei One Piece, Fishbones
Content: General Audience, old man crushing
Word Count: 944
Note: God I never write fic, so this is barely anything, but Brook and Jimbei seem to have made enough noise in my brain that I had to change that. I blame @badly-drawn-doflamingo for making me think about fishbones. Maybe I will write more of this at some point.
~~~~~~~
Brook is a conundrum, a soul with no body, a body with no flesh, a mind inside an empty skull, and no heart in his chest. Yet he lives, somehow he lives, he has no choice.
He also feels. His emotions weave through him, with no skin to shiver through and no muscles to clench they can overtake him like a wave. Where else does his music come from but his emotions? How else does he know he is truly alive without them? He has no belly to laugh from but he laughs all the same. He has no chest to ache with sadness but he aches all the same. No tear ducts to weep with yet it is impossible to prevent the flow.
He feels purely through his soul, and sometimes if he does not think too hard he can almost feel his flesh sing with these emotions too, like a phantom limb all over him.
He avoids thinking about the absence of the warmth of touch on his skin at all times.
He spent 50 years alone, his bones picked clean and smooth, he cannot change what has happened. He is simply grateful he is no longer alone.
“That’s beautiful”
If Brook had eyelids he would have opened them but instead his gaze simply refocuses on the big blue shape that has moved in close to him here on the top deck of the Sunny.
“Yohoho” Brook chuckles as he pulls his violin out from under his chin.
“Thank you Jimbei” he smiles (he can do nothing but smile in these bones)
“Is that a new . . ah, piece ? that you’ve been working on?” Jimbei asks, his deep baritone voice rumbles and not for the first time does Brook find himself wondering if Jimbei would ever consider putting those big lungs to use in song.
“I suppose it is” Brook inspects the instrument, plucks at a string with a bone pick of a finger.
“I was simply going with the flow, I suppose” he says thoughtfully
“Ah” Jimbei nods “I know all about traveling the flow . . “
Brook cocks his head curiously towards Jimbei, sensing he is missing something from the way the fishman spoke.
“Helmsman joke” Jimbei smiles, an obvious reference to one of Brooks recurring bits, and then laughs.
That glorious big belly laugh, his face turned up, eyes scrunched up, rows of sharp teeth on display. It’s one of the most intoxicating laughs Brook has ever heard and he never tires of it.
“Jimbei you kill me” Brook teases as he laughs.
Their laughter peels off as Brook turns to lounge against the railing Jimbei is leaning forward on. He picks the violin back up to tuck it under his jawbone and pluck it for tuning.
“Oh, but wait, I already died,” Brook chuckles.
This time Jimbei only smiles, a soft look. Brook redirects his gaze from the fishmans face before he can identify the moment that soft look turns to pity. He’s not sure if it will but he would rather not take the chance. He hears Jimbei take a breath as if to speak and braces himself for the concerned lecture, wise and careful, the way he has heard Jimbei advise Luffy and many others before.
“Play me another”
Brook turns to look at him again, unsure if the surprise is readable on his blank emotionless skull of a face. Jimbei is still smiling, open and gentle and bright, like a calm ocean at sunset. Brook busies himself with the G string immediately, trying to recover from being set so suddenly and unexpectedly adrift by the expression.
“Of course my good sir!” Brook slips into an exaggerated character of himself, hamming it up as the merry musician of the Thousand Sunny. It’s safer there, when he is less himself and more of a performance of himself instead. Why would he explore his feelings when he can just let the Soul King express them for him. He strings out a merry tune for Jimbei, an old song about a drunken fisherman catching a mermaid for a wife, neither of them sure which one drinks more like a fish. It only occurs to him halfway through the song that this is a rather old one from before he died and could possibly be considered uncouth in Fishmen society today.
However when he glances over at Jimbei he sees the man smiling with genuine amusement and laughing at the funniest moments. This is both a relief and also a curse as the sight of that smile sends goosebumps across his phantom skin. He takes a deep breath to steady his phantom lungs between verses and finishes off the song by pushing off the railing and dancing with aplomb.
“Oh I enjoyed that very much” Jimbei chuckles and applauds with gusto. Brook does a few deep bows, in a very becoming and gentlemanly manner. He tries to remain composed but the sight of Jimbei so joyful has him almost twitching from the overstimulation. All these emotions with no body to express them. It almost feels like he wants to jump out of his skin . . oh but it seems he already has.
Instead he decides to put his violin back into its case, taking care to tuck it into the shaped depression, laying the bow by its side. He finds himself considering how bonelike it is for this instrument to be compressed safely inside a perfectly shaped casing. He must have paused noticeably because he hears Jimbei ask,
“Everything alright?”
“Why yes of course! I simply grow tired of playing for the moment, perhaps instead we could have some tea?”
“I would like that”
#One Piece#one piece fanfiction#jimbei#soul king brook#fishbones#jinbrook#I want to write more but I also want to post before my ADHD brain forgets so here we are#enjoy
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[Baldur's Gate III] Wire in the Blood
Title: Wire in the Blood
Summary: Mephistopheles sneered. "You have nothing of worth to offer me. You are nothing."
"Your ichor must be unimpressive indeed," Raphael bit, "for some mortal blood to make it so worthless."
It was a mistake, of course, and one that would cost him dearly.
[It's not often that Haarlep regrets indulging Raphael. This is one of those times.]
Characters: Raphael, Haarlep, 'Mephistopheles'. Raphael/Haarlep, Raphael/'Mephistopheles'
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Consensual non-con, daddy issues off the charts.
Status: Complete
Also on Ao3
***
Read the warnings. Read them again. This isn't incest on a sheer technicality but it's still plenty fucked up. The dove is dead and in full rigor mortis.
***
Hell, as Raphael was fond of saying, had its rules. Many of them written, quite literally in blood, and others unwritten but no less important. Of these, most were easily understood by anybody with two brain cells left to rub together. No need to ask how they came to be, either.
‘If Mephistopheles looks angry, run’ was one such rule.
The vast majority of the servants and souls at the House of Hope had never gazed upon the visage of the Lord of the Eighth, who truth be told was prone to change said visage when the whim took him. Still, when a blast rang out in the room of the Outer Portals and a towering devil with thick curved horns clad in red robes strode out of the portal to Mephistar, all of them knew there was no stopping him, and recognized the only reasonable course of action.
Run.
Mephistopheles deigned none of them of even a passing glance as they scrambled out of the way and went to cower as far as they could get, all the way into the foyer. He stepped past, leaving a scorched-black line on the carpet. He was there to seek one being, and one being only.
And it didn’t take long to find him.
***
“What in the blazes was--”
That, Raphael had meant to say, but words turned to ash in his mouth the second he turned and saw the Lord of Hellfire striding towards him, fury looming behind his eyes like thunderclouds. He tried to step back and stumbled against the doorway, trying to think, to remember what specific scheme of his may have angered him and what he could say for himself. Quickly. Before utter annihilation or, at the very least, a very painful dismemberment.
“My Lord,” he heard himself saying, and didn’t get to utter anything more. The next moment Mephistopheles had grabbed him by the throat and pushed him back inside the boudoir, slamming him against one of the columns around the Restoration Pool. The back of Raphael’s head hit the marble, and something cracked. Panic rising, Raphael had no time to wonder whether that had come from the column or from his own skull.
“You,” Lord Mephistopheles snarled, baring his teeth, a flash of white in the trimmed black beard. His eyes were pearls of malice, something like mist swirling in them, ever swirling, and looking at them made Raphael feel colder than the howling winds of Cania ever could. His voice was a low, guttural sound. “Of all the rotten fruit my seed has borne, you fester worse than most. I have allowed you to fester for far too long. But no more.”
“My liege, I don’t understand--”
“There is much you don’t understand, halfbreed, even when your arrogance tells you otherwise.” The Archmage of the Hells sneered, the malevolence seeping off him almost tangible enough for Raphael to choke on it. “Did you truly think I would not notice you asking questions, circling my vault like the scavenger you are?”
Raphael swallowed, throat bobbing against the steel-trap grasp of the hand threatening to crush his neck. The thought of trying to fight was there one moment, and gone from his mind the next. The Lord of the Eighth could destroy him, body and soul, with little more than the lifting of a finger. “Lord Mephistopheles, my intentions--”
“Don’t you deny it, or I’ll make a meal out of your soul here and now,” Mephistopheles cut him off. “Meager as that meal would be, it would be preferable by far to the chore that it is to listen to your excuses.” A pause, those cold eyes turning to the rest of the boudoir, the portraits on the walls. He sneered. “You still like to pretend you’re a proper devil, I see. It was amusing enough, I suppose, when you were but a child. Now it’s only pathetic. Do you think I do not know what your incubus does to you? What you beg them to do to you?”
“I…” Raphael tried to speak, but his tongue felt heavy as lead, all his eloquence gone.
A hand ripped open his collar and there they were, the marks Haarlep had left on him the previous night, plain for the Cold Lord to see. They could have been made to disappear with a dip in the Restoration Pool, but Haarlep had told him to keep them - like a collar, they’d said, and such a pretty collar it makes - and he had. He’d kept that reminder on his skin because… because…
“You fancy yourself worthy of the highest seat of all,” his sire sneered, “and yet you debase yourself to an incubus, because you know that’s where you belong.”
Shame rose like bile up his throat, dwarfing even the fear. He swallowed again and lowered his gaze, struggling not to crumble.
“A waste of a perfectly good incubus, sending them to you. I should have kept them in Mephistar, to keep pit fiends amused. Or perhaps I should have given that task to you, delivered you to the pit fiends as a gift and let them have their way with you. I may yet do so. Your looks are passable enough you may entertain them for a time.”
The hand let go of his throat to grasp his chin, forcing him to look up at the Archmage of the Hells, towering over him. Raphael couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. His limbs were cold as ice and just as heavy.
“Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t destroy you, or make you a whore for pit fiends and their appetites.”
“I-- my Lord, I have served you--”
“You have served me little, and poorly.”
“I can serve you well. It is all I wish to do.”
“Hmph. Is it the human blood in you that makes you such a poor liar?” A sharp claw cut across his throat, shallowly, and it was enough to draw blood. It ran down his neck, turning the torn collar of his doublet red, and he shuddered, biting back a cry.
“My liege,” Raphael finally managed, voice shakier than he’d have heard it. Any notion of pride, any thought of trying to protest or even fight, fled his body along with that blood. “I have your blood, too. You know I can serve you well.”
“I have legions at my beck and call, each of them many times the fighters that you are. I have counselors, far wiser and more insightful than yourself. A High Cantor to sing my praises, far more skilled in words and music than you may ever hope to be for all your mediocre efforts. I have spies more shrewd than yourself, and other halfbreeds who show twice the promise you once did.” Mephistopheles sneered. “You have nothing of worth to offer me. You are nothing.”
Snapping back at the Lord of Hellfire, Raphael knew, was an indescribably foolish idea. Yet he could not hold back: through the terror, through the shame, pride reared its head for a moment - and, with it, anger.
I’m more than your spawn, more than you know. How dare you, how dare you, how dare you.
“Your ichor must be unimpressive indeed,” he bit, “for some mortal blood to make it so worthless.”
It was a mistake, of course, and one that would cost him dearly. The hand squeezed his neck again, almost hard enough to crush Raphael’s windpipe, and the heat of it made him still, terror winning over any other thought again. He looked up, eyes wide, struggling to force out an apology he couldn’t speak. Above him, Mephistopheles glowered.
“Stoking my fury,” he growled, “is no desirable skill either, nor a wise course of action. I have no need for a rash child in my court--”
“P-please--”
The hand against Raphael’s skin grew warmer, hot, and he knew that if Mephistopheles chose to unleash hellfire upon him now, he may not survive even the first onslaught. “Quiet,” Mephistopheles snapped, and Raphael fell silent, trembling in his grasp. Those white, cold eyes narrowed. “If you cannot appreciate my blood, you have no claim on this body. Go on, be a worthless human like your mother. Do you think I don’t know how you favor that form?”
“I-- I don’t, it’s for mortals to--”
“Change, or I’ll separate your head from your neck to mount it on my wall!”
A shaky breath, then Raphael closed his eyes and did as he was told. His human form had always served him well, but now it felt so frail, and so small, standing next to the Archdevil of Cania. Mephistopheles had to lean down to speak against his ear.
“Worthless wretch,” he muttered. “I should never have taken you to my court, much less recognized you as my own. You have always been troublesome. You’re not worth the seed wasted on your conception, or even the meaningless mortal life extinguished to give you your first breath.”
Raphael’s vision blurred, his eyes burned, and he squeezed them shut. A shuddering breath left his chest before he made himself speak. “I can be worthy,” he managed, hating how faint his own voice sounded, how childish the words. He heard Mephistopheles let out a hum, felt the hand holding onto his chin let go to cup the side of his face.
“... I suppose it cannot be helped,” he finally said. “Your infernal heritage means you crave that which cannot be yours. Your mortal one means you crave that which cannot be found in Baator. It is the fatal flaw of every halfbreed.”
Raphael squeezed his eyelids tighter. He focused on the palm against his face, on the sound of water running from faucets - anything to ignore the knot in his throat, the burning wetness beneath his eyelids.
“Don’t call me that,” he ground out.
“It’s what you are. What else would I call you? What is it you hope to hear?”
Son. This once, only once, can’t you call me your son?
His lips parted, but he couldn’t force out the words; they remained stuck painfully in his chest, shards of ice that burned cold as Cania’s glaciers. There was no point in uttering them. There was no hope to hear that wish granted. “I hate you,” he choked out instead.
Mephistopheles, Lord of the Eighth, laughed.
“You think yourself the first to say as much? Many do. Enemies are the mark of greatness. Many of my enemies are dead and many more will die. But I have given you everything, ungrateful brat - anything you own, you owe me. What do you have to hate me for?”
“For making me,” Raphael whispered, and was only met with silence. Something wet slid past his eyelids, down his cheeks, and he knew that whatever battle he was still trying to fight was already lost. Mephistopheles pulled his hand away with a noise of disgust as though the tears had burned him.
“Pathetic,” he bit out. “If you wish me to unmake you, you only have to say so.”
Raphael said nothing, but it made no difference. He was grabbed by the throat, dragged across the room, towards the bed. His hands grasped his sire’s, but he made no real attempt at releasing its grip, mind reeling and stomach churning. Mephistopheles paused, gaze falling on the single goblet of wine on the footstool by the bed. He took the goblet, sniffed at it, and scoffed.
“Incubus spittle. Of course,” he muttered, and held it to Raphael’s mouth. “Drink.”
One last, weak attempt at pushing away. “My Lord--”
“That is an order, whelp, lest you truly wish me to tear you to pieces, body and soul.”
Lord of No Mercy, many called him, and not without reason; Raphael knew that was no empty threat, not coming from him, and he found he did not wish to die after all. He parted his lips, and nearly choked on the wine that was poured in his mouth. The effects hit him almost as soon as he swallowed, the shudder up his spine and the heat in his loins, in his face.
A low chuckle. “Empty words, I see, like everything that leaves your mouth. If you don’t wish to be unmade, so be it. I can be merciful. But you will learn your place.”
A gesture of the Cold Lord, and Raphael’s clothes burned off him, leaving him bare; throwing him face down on the bed took little more than a flick of his wrist. Raphael groaned against the pillow, skin breaking into goosebumps and already hard against the mattress. He tried to curl up, but that hand was on the back of his neck, burning hot and cold at the same time, pinning him down. Over his own thumping heart he heard another snap of fingers, the whooshing sound of red silken robes disappearing in flames.
“My Lord--” he choked out, only for words to die in his mouth when he felt the mattress dip. He tried to push himself up, but the grip on his neck kept him in place.
Oh, only that? Something whispered in the back of his mind. A small, mirthful, sneering voice, almost child-like in its glee. You could put up more of a fight than this. You don’t want to get up. You never do. You were made to be ground in the dirt.
“You will serve me,” the Lord of the Eighth was saying above him, and Raphael tried to tell himself the shudder that ran through him was one of disgust. Claws raked across his back and he keened in need, heedless to the blood it was drawing. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pillow, knowing full well that above him Mephistopheles was a towering presence, dwarfing that measly human form of his.
Then the clawed touch went lower, and Mephistopheles laughed. It was cutting as ice, reverberating through the room, out of the terrace until it seemed to fill the skies of Avernus, too. It seemed to Raphael that all would hear it, all would know, all would come to see him disgraced. The shudder that passed through him at the thought was more difficult to label as disgust now, with his cock hard and leaking against silk sheets.
“Oiled and ready - were you waiting for someone, or are you always ready to be somebody’s plaything?” A click of the tongue, and he let go of his neck to grab his hips, lift them until he was on his knees, legs spread, face buried in the sheets. Raphael trembled, choking back a sob, and made no attempt to rebel to pull away. “Perhaps giving you to pit fiends in Cania would be a gift to you, after all.”
“Please,” Raphael keened, not quite knowing what he was pleading for - for it all to end, for it all to continue, for oblivion, to be released, to be made a whore, to be embraced as a son - but knowing full well the plea would go unheeded either way.
The only answer was that cold laugh, the unyielding grip on his hips and the press of something against his oiled hole, blunt and broad, cold and hot at the same time like everything else about the Archdevil of Contradictions. Raphael cried out, hands gripping sheets, ripping the silk. Something ripped in him too, the pain blinding even with the effects of the incubus spittle to blunt it, and the cry turned into a wail at the breaching, the stretch, the burn of it. Somewhere above, Mephistopheles chuckled.
“Bleeding already,” he murmured, and gripped his hips harder. He didn’t push in as much as he pulled Raphael flush against him, forcing him to take it inch by inch, ridge by ridge. By the time he bottomed out Raphael was a shivering mass of pain, limp in Mephistopheles’ grasp, blood running down his thighs and cock still hard, still leaking onto the bed. “Yet you wanted my attention. You have it now, halfbreed.” He snapped his hips forward. “Are you satisfied?”
Raphael tried to work his jaw, cheek pressed on the sheets, but all that left him was a strangled sound. His vision was blurred, his face wet; he knew it was tears as much as sweat. Whether it was sweat or blood coating his back and thighs, he did not know or care. Slowly, the pain faded, the power of incubus spittle taking the edge off even that.
“Are you?” Mephistopheles growled with another sharp thrust that tore a moan from Raphael's throat. “Or is it not yet enough to sate you?”
A whimper, shamefully weak, and Raphael licked his lips. “No,” he rasped through ragged breaths, trembling, helpless in his grasp and in the face of his own desires. Shame burned in his stomach, want burned in his loins, and in his mind and heart he knew that if Mephistopheles left him empty now, he'd break. All that kept the jagged pieces of him together was the grasp on his hips, the cock within him, the contempt he could feel with every breath. “More,” he managed to choke out in the end. He felt so very small.
“That sounds much like a demand. You're in no position--”
“Please. ”
The words left him in a broken sob, and for several long moments his sire fell quiet. Then a hand came to rest on the back of his head, large enough to cup all of it. The cold of it was gone, leaving only warmth.
“You plead well. Perhaps we have found your true talent at last,” Mephistopheles said, a note of something in his voice that sounded almost like kindness. Raphael clung to that, to the uncharacteristic gentleness of the touch before the Lord of the Eighth began to move again, smoother, a steady rock of his hips. “Let me hear you plead some more.”
And plead Raphael did, through gasping sobs and shuddering moans. Pleading for more, faster, deeper - and all he asked he got, a hand still holding up his hips and the other pressing down on his head while the Lord of Cania made use of his limp body. Only when he knew he was close, cock painfully hard, did he try to move.
Part of him knew he may break if he gazed up at his sire’s face now. He did not care, or perhaps he wanted to break. Let it all come undone and leave behind nothing, no one. So he tried to lift himself on shaky arms, to turn back.
“Please,” he breathed, unable to add more, but Mephistopheles understood, somehow, as though reading his mind. He pulled out, causing Raphael to almost wail at the emptiness, and turned him on his back as easily as one may turn one of Haarlep’s mindless, soulless dolls. If he chose that fate for him now, Raphael wouldn't have it in him to protest.
But he did not choose such a fate, or any fate yet. He only gripped Raphael's hips and pulled him on his cock again, almost bent over him, large enough to blot out all light. The archdevil’s long, black hair fell around him like a curtain, hiding all but his face from sight.
“Look at me, boy.”
For a moment, despite being the one who’d wanted to turn, Raphael couldn’t bring himself to look. He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bite back a moan, hands gripping the sheets and a nameless fear gripping his throat just as firmly as he waited for the punishment that was sure to follow, for defying an order.
“... Raphael.”
It was a rare thing for Mephistopheles to call him by name. It made Raphael open his eyes at last, a shuddering breath in his chest, and look up. Amidst the blackness of his hair, Mephistopheles’ pearly white eyes seemed to glow of a light of their own, and one that didn’t seem so cold anymore. His breathing was faster, too, sweat on his brow, glistening on red skin the same shade as Raphael’s own. Amidst the trimmed black beard, his teeth showed again in a smile.
Raphael shuddered, a jolt of pleasure straight to his groin. He tried to tilt his hips, to meet the thrusts, but Mephistopheles’ grip was unyielding so that he alone could control the pace. He was close, so very close, and yet release evaded him.
Raphael groaned and clenched around him instead, the heat in his groin almost unbearable. It got a hiss out of the Lord of Hellfire and then, at last, a low throaty laugh. “Good,” he rasped, thrusting in sharply, sinking his claws into Raphael’s hips, breaking skin - and that, love, was that.
Raphael came across his own stomach with a low, keening sound, mind blank of all thought. His back arched and his mouth fell open as he almost seized in his sire’s grasp. In the throes of release he heard a low grunt, felt a harsher thrust, and the warmth of come spilling inside him. It turned his last moan into a whimper, the whimper into a word.
“Father,” Raphael breathed, without thinking, and it was the last of his strength. His head fell back onto the mattress and he shut his eyes, trembling, drawing in ragged breaths. There were a few more thrusts before the grip on his hips relented, the cock was pulled out, and suddenly Raphael was alone in the middle of the bed, leaking blood and come and tears.
He swallowed, trying to regain the bearings of his surroundings. He let go of the sheets to press an arm against his eyes, biting the traitorous tongue that had spoken the one word he’d sworn would never leave his lips. He felt someone sit up on the side of the bed, and suddenly the weight on it wasn’t so great anymore, the mattress no longer dipping quite as much.
The weight on his chest however was only growing greater, shame and something much like grief gripping his throat. Raphael pulled the arm from his face and blinked up at the ceiling, not daring a look to the side, drawing in another shaky breath. His eyes burned, tears already spilling down his temples. “Haarlep,” he called out, voice hoarse. “Is it you?”
A chuckle, familiar as his own. “Who else would it be, lordling?” Haarlep asked, a lilt to their voice. “So, how did I do?”
Raphael didn’t reply, didn’t move: he just closed his eyes, and burst into sobs.
***
This wasn’t good.
It wasn’t that Haarlep had not been good. They always were, despite a painful lack of practice using any form other than Raphael’s own over the past… ah, best not to think of how long it had been. Either way, their impression of Mephistopheles - how they got that form was a tale best left for another time - had been nothing short of perfect.
And maybe that was exactly the problem.
When Raphael had made the request, Haarlep had been too delighted by the notion of a change in routine to really question whether bedding him while wearing Mephistopheles’ likeness was a good idea. It was not their role to question Raphael’s wishes, as their master made sure to tell them often, so they hadn’t. They played their part, did it well, and got some pleasure out of it. So far, so good.
Even when Raphael began to sob, they hadn’t worried too much at first; it was far from the first time having his wants fulfilled reduced him to tears. But this, they quickly realized, was different. Most times they could taste the relief coming off him in waves along with the tears, something within him finally sated through Haarlep’s services. Now there was no such thing: only those choked-back wails, those sobs tearing all air from his lungs while he curled up on the bed, hands covering his face.
Whatever he’d wanted to sate this time, it hadn’t worked. He’d only ripped open something that would take a long, long time to scab over again. The little change in routine didn’t seem all that funny anymore. Actually, it wasn’t funny at all. The wound it opened would bleed something ugly for a while, Haarlep could tell.
… Perhaps they should start doing something for the wounds that were literally, actively bleeding. Haarlep sighed, once again wearing Raphael’s likeness, and went to help him up.
They were not nearly as strong as the form they wore suggested - their true form was, truth be told, a fair deal smaller than the cambion’s - but they could still lift Raphael’s human body with relative ease. “Come, my pet,” Haarlep said, not unkindly. “You need a bath.”
Raphael’s sobs did not subside, but he did hold onto the incubus, letting them help him up on shaky legs and guide him to the Restoration Pool. The pool could only heal physical ailments, but the warm water did help soothe deeper wounds. Sitting in the water and breathing in the perfumes while Haarlep silently washed his back, Raphael finally stopped weeping, and fell quiet. He said nothing as Haarlep tilted back his head and rinsed his hair one more time before breaking the silence.
“Better?”
There was no reply. A little unnerved by the silence and by the uncharacteristic slump of Raphael’s back, Haarlep moved to crouch before him in the water. His eyes were still shut, but he was clearly not asleep. They reached to cup his face. “Master,” they called out, not allowing the barest hint of the usual irony into the word. “Look at me.”
Raphael didn’t open his eyes, but he did swallow. “I can’t,” he whispered, voice like old paper.
Of course. Can’t even stand to look at his own face now. Too much of Mephistopheles in it.
That would pass, eventually, but until then there was an easy solution. Haarlep held back a sigh, and allowed themself to change. Raphael’s form shimmered and faded, leaving behind a smaller, slender devil with simple dagger-like horns and hair black as coal that fell past their shoulders. “It’s me. You may look now,” Haarlep said with their own voice, and Raphael finally opened his eyes.
It was hard to tell if he was looking at them. His eyes were empty, as though he wasn’t truly looking at anything. “... You may go,” he rasped. “I have no further need of you tonight.”
“I will go if you wish. But first, I must make one thing plain,” Haarlep replied. Their hands dipped under the water to take Raphael’s own, thumbs brushing over his palms, and they looked him in the eye. They knew Raphael better than they’d ever gotten to know anyone; they knew all his wants, all his needs. While they may tease him, make him beg more often than not, they never denied him anything, in the end. Now that would have to change. Because he would ask for this again and, for the first time, Haarlep would have to refuse.
Raphael blinked, taken aback, and finally met their gaze. He seemed a little more aware, more present. “What is it?”
Haarlep set their jaw. “I’ll never take that form again. Even if you ask, if you order, if you rage. Even if you beg, Raphael . It happened today, and it shall never happen again.”
For a moment, there was no response. Raphael stared, still as a statue, and Haarlep was starting to question whether he’d heard their words when he worked his jaw and spoke, his voice strained. He sounded incredulous. “You would deny me? Refuse to obey?”
“Yes.”
A flash of something close to anger on Raphael’s face. “I could have you flayed for it.”
“You could.”
“And you’d still refuse?”
“Steadfastly.”
“Is my ire no concern for you!” Raphael snapped, as though insulted, as though they didn’t both know he could never truly punish Haarlep for any refusal, for any insolence. Even as he scowled, his hands held onto the incubus’. Haarlep squeezed them before speaking again.
“Your ire is a fearsome thing,” they said. “I’ll bear the brunt of it before I do this to you again.”
The words were barely out of their mouth, and all of Raphael’s anger melted away like wax to a flame. His lips trembled, and his eyes filled with tears. When a gut-wrenching wail bubbled up from his chest, Haarlep was there to catch him, letting him hold onto them. They let him press his face against the crook of their neck, rubbed his back until the sobs subsided and he went limp, still weeping softly. This time they could taste it again, coming off him along with the tears - relief. And maybe, just maybe, it was met with some relief of their own.
Haarlep sighed, brushing back his hair, and leaned with him against the side of the pool. “Come now, little brat,” they murmured against his temple. “Get some sleep.”
Raphael got no sleep that night, but he did hold onto them.
He held onto them for a very, very long time.
#baldurs gate 3#bg3#bg3 raphael#raphael bg3#raphael the cambion#haarlep#bg3 haarlep#haarlep bg3#mephistopheles bg3
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Alveolar Bone
Rain needs to have his wisdom teeth extracted — an uncommon predicament for a ghoul. Dewdrop is there for him in the days that follow, showing a similarly uncommon side of himself.
Relationship: Raindrop
Characters: Dewdrop, Rain, Swiss
Tags: Surgery, Caretaking, Hurt/Comfort
Words: 4384
Read below or on AO3
Six months or so after he’s summoned, Rain attends his first dentist appointment. It’s horrible.
Dewdrop told him they were going to scrape his teeth with a metal spike, which did not make him feel better in the slightest, but that’s really all it was, and it was fine — a mildly unpleasant sensation. He marveled at how clean his teeth felt after. Overall, that part was acceptable. No, the real issue was what the dentist told him, which is that he has too many teeth. Apparently some people have more teeth than others, and each person only has enough room in their mouth for a certain number of teeth. Lucky him, he has extra.
He didn’t even know they existed, all the way in the back, tucked up inside his skull and his jaw bone, hidden away but causing trouble. The dentist knew, though, and had asked him sneaky little questions about them, like if he ever had pain in the side of his face. He asked it while pressing his gloved fingers against a surprisingly tender area in front of his ear.
Yes, of course he did. Everyone gets headaches, right?
Apparently not, or not like that. He had given a dangerously wrong answer to this question and revealed that his secret teeth were dysfunctional, and thus needed to be removed. The dentist tells him it’s a procedure much more common for humans. Humans are born without any teeth, and grow them in one at a time, so things can go wrong or something like that. Ghouls get all their teeth at once, during summoning, and generally only make as many as they have room for. His body must have miscalculated.
So Rain is an outlier among ghouls in this way, and now has a very human problem. It’s seen as something of a rite of passage, growing those teeth and having them removed, for young humans. It’s not something he could have ever anticipated dealing with as a young ghoul.
Back in the common room, he tells Dew of his plight. Dew doesn’t have any extra teeth. He never had those ones in the first place.
“Hey,” Dew projects across the room at Swiss, “how many molars do you have?”
“Molars?”
“Yeah, two or three? On each side.”
“Uh, I think three?” Swiss’ jaw drops slightly as his tongue explores the back of his mouth. “There’s three.”
“See,” Dew elbows Rain, “he’s like you.”
“He’s not though, because his aren’t stuck. They’re in his mouth.”
Dew hums. “Guess you’re extra special, then.”
—
Less than a week later, Rain is back in the strange and sterile dentist’s chair again.
There’s a lot more stuff in the room this time, spread out over the counter and on the little tray table. He spots something that looks suspiciously like pliers and then he stops looking.
The dentist’s assistant dotes over him, attaching the same funny paper bib from last time plus all sorts of other equipment. She clips something on his finger that makes a machine nearby beep in time with his heartbeat. He briefly wonders if it’s really that serious — why do they need to know about his heartbeat? But somehow it feels too late to be worried. He’s already here.
The dentist comes in and explains the procedure. He will be given some medicine “to relax,” and then something to make his mouth numb, and then the dentist will remove his teeth. With pliers, probably. Fine, it’s a plan.
The prerequisite for relaxation is apparently to put a big needle into his arm. He turns his head the other way. He sees the pliers again. He looks up at the ceiling. Whatever liquid begins to trickle into his vein makes a chill seep up towards his shoulder.
The dentist starts talking to him about the procedure again, reiterating the steps. At least that’s what he thinks is happening. It’s hard to tell because right in the middle of a sentence the world suddenly becomes hazy, distant, underwater. His body feels warm, and so, so heavy, or maybe it’s actually merged with the chair he’s sitting in. When he moves his eyes they glide over his surroundings like sliding on ice. The whole situation feels surreal, and it strikes him as amusing, just inherently funny to be in this room, experiencing this, waiting for someone to remove his teeth.
The dentist asks him how he’s feeling. He opens his mouth to explain that it’s like he’s had one drink too many, and a giggle comes out instead. He tries again, but words are too slippery. He gives up.
The chair tilts back. He blinks. He’s opening his mouth, because he was asked to — he doesn’t even have to think about it. He watches as the dentist approaches with an enormous, horror-movie syringe. Oddly, he doesn’t really mind. He closes his eyes.
The world becomes a blur of fingers and instruments in his mouth. There’s pressure, vibration, more and more sound. They’re doing road work inside his head, jackhammering asphalt and shoveling gravel. He can clearly picture the people in hard hats and high-visibility vests, tiny, inside his mouth, working away.
At some point the pressure becomes intense, close to unbearable. Bulldozers roll in, and big, heavy steamrollers. He reaches up to bat them away. A hand places his arm back on the chair.
The pressure eases. He opens his eyes a tiny sliver and watches an off-white chunk of something covered in red leave his mouth. His eyes slide closed again. The assistant says he’s doing a good job. He wonders what he’s doing. He’s doing nothing. The pressure returns.
Sensations swirl around him. Time feels wrong — dense, but also infinite. How long has it been? Minutes, hours? Days? It’s impossible for him to know, and he’s not sure he could even guess. When the dentist tells him they’re done, he feels surprised, or some attenuated version of it, mildly puzzled. He closes his eyes and lets himself drift, the construction crew having finally gone home.
When he wakes up — he was asleep? — the world is solid again. He’s alone in the room. The entire lower half of his face is numb. The comfortable, sleepy distance from before is replaced with a different kind of tiredness. He’s not heavy anymore but simply exhausted, like his body is registering the fierce battle — a catastrophic defeat, really — that just occurred in his mouth despite being completely unable to feel it, a sort of painless hit-by-a-truck feeling.
The assistant comes back in and coaxes him to slobber a huge wad of blood-soaked gauze into a bowl. She whisks it away, off to some other place. He’s alone in the room again. He closes his eyes.
The next time the assistant comes back, she stands him up on wobbly legs and walks him towards the entrance. He bumps awkwardly against the doorframe when they exit the room.
Dew is waiting by the entrance for him. Rain lets himself be handed off, passed into Dew’s guardianship. Dew hooks an arm around Rain’s waist and guides him down the hall.
“They took my teeth out,” he explains to Dew, but also to himself.
“They did,” Dew affirms.
The dentist’s office is in the infirmary, which now feels miles and miles away from the ghoul dorm. When they finally arrive in Rain’s room, Dew directs him to sit on the edge of the bed.
Dew says he’ll be right back. “Stay right there,” he instructs.
Rain complies. He lets his eyes fall closed. He doesn’t realize Dew is back until he hears him placing something on the bedside table with a quiet clunk.
“Here.” Dew holds out a plastic cup of applesauce and a spoon in one hand.
Rain eyes it, apprehensive. He’s pretty sure his mouth doesn’t work right now.
“You need to eat something before you can take this.” Dew holds up a silver blister pack of pills and flicks it gently with one finger, making its contents rattle. There’s only three little perforated squares.
“What is that.”
“Painkillers. You’re supposed to take one before the numbing wears off.”
Right, of course. He had been so relieved that the procedure itself was over that this part, everything else, slipped his mind. He groans.
“Do you want to eat something different?”
He considers it. The entire concept of food seems unappealing right now, so no, not really, nothing in particular. He’s sort of hungry, though, he suddenly realizes. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. He shakes his head.
Dew peels the foil top off the applesauce and hands it to him. Rain takes the applesauce. Dew hands him the spoon. Rain takes the spoon.
Rain lifts a spoonful of applesauce to his mouth and it runs into something. He feels around with his other hand to figure out what it is. It’s his lower lip. His mouth is barely open. He recalibrates. He feels sloppy, childish. Dew could tease him, but he doesn’t.
It’s slow going but eventually he hands Dew a mostly empty cup and Dew hands him a glass of water, and then a white tablet.
This is a new challenge. Putting the pill in his mouth is simple enough but when he tries to drink from the glass a small waterfall rushes over his chin and onto his chest. He ends up tilting his head back and aiming carefully, which gets the job done. Dew brings him a dry shirt.
Dew sets the two of them up on the bed in front of his laptop and turns on some docuseries about the ocean. Rain is content to zone out in front of the pleasant colors and shapes of coral reef biota, of rippling anemones and waving grasses and drifting jellyfish.
Half an hour or so into the episode, Dew interrupts the narrator, who is explaining something about snails. “Hey,” he prompts.
“Hey,” Rain echoes.
“Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you be okay by yourself for a little bit? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let me know if you need something?” Dew holds up his phone. The screen lights up right at that moment, awoken by a notification appearing.
“I will.”
Dew climbs out of the bed and heads into the hallway. He turns and takes one last look at Rain, checking on him one more time, before he disappears out of sight.
Rain can’t imagine what Dew thinks might happen to him, alone in the middle of his bed. He feels babysat, maybe, just a little bit. He continues to observe the coral reef.
A school of fish undulates across the screen and the entire world moves with it.
He splays his fingers against the bed, bracing himself. He turns his head away from the suddenly overwhelming visuals on the screen. Every motion of his head ricochets off the edge of his field of vision and makes everything else go the opposite way. Being upright feels precarious, like standing at the edge of a cliff. He slides down the headboard, scared that if he breaks contact with it he might float away completely.
He curls up into a ball on top of the sheets. The bed rocks like a ship in a storm.
He oozes off the bed and onto the floor, willing it to be firmer, more stable. The motion feels like doing somersaults. He closes his eyes and spreads out over the floor like a starfish. The solidity of the hardwood does make him feel a little better, at least.
Actually, everything is almost okay as long as he stays completely still. He imagines calm, stable things. A sturdy rock formation. The glassy, perfectly smooth surface of a quiet pond.
He’s not sure how much time passes before he hears footsteps in the hallway, then coming through the door, then rushing over to him.
“Whoa, what happened?” Dew paws at his shoulders like he’s trying to peel him off the floor. The world tilts. The rock formation topples and a standing wave forms in the pond.
“No, wait— Stop—” He doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening.
“Sorry, sorry, what’s wrong?” Dew brushes hair out of his face that he hadn’t realized was there.
“Everything is moving.” He doesn’t dare open his eyes right now but he can feel Dew looking at him, the weight of his concern pressing into his skin.
“Okay, um—”
For a second, Rain can’t figure out what’s happening, but then Dew is lying down on the ground next to him. Dew’s fingers brush over the back of his palm. Rain takes a leap of faith and flips his hand over, giving up one of his points of contact with the solid ground in favor of something else, contact of a different kind. Dew intertwines their fingers and squeezes their palms against each other. He slides closer, pressing their sides together. His body is solid, a rock in the stormy sea.
They lie together like that until Swiss walks by the open door. He stops in his tracks when he sees the scene inside. Rain squints at him, scared to open his eyes all the way.
“What’s happening here?” He tilts his head to the side to align his gaze with the two of them, horizontal on the floor.
“He’s too high,” Dew explains. Rain hadn’t thought about it that way, but it’s exactly what’s happening.
“Wouldn’t it be nicer to be on the bed?” Swiss walks through the door and stands over them, hands in his pockets.
“The bed is moving.”
Swiss glances up at it. “I don’t know, looks alright to me.”
Rain frowns.
“Come on, you can’t be comfortable there.”
Rain is feeling blessedly little pain at the moment, actually. He could be lying on hot coals and he wouldn’t care, as long as it didn’t make him dizzy. He wonders if he’s going to feel sore later after lying on the hard ground, muscles tensed up, holding himself together, or if he’s just going to be perpetually drugged up enough to not feel it. He wonders how Dew is feeling right now. “Okay,” he concedes.
“Okay? Can we get you up on the bed?”
Rain nods, forgetting that it will make the world wobble. He presses his eyes closed.
Swiss and Dew guide him first into a sitting position, and then pull him up until he’s standing. Rain keeps his eyes shut as tight as possible. He holds onto Dew’s hand for dear life. Dew sits down on the edge of the bed with him. From the other side of the bed, Swiss helps him turn and lie back into the same position he started in, lounging against the headboard. Dew scoots up next to him. Swiss sits against his other side.
The spinning settles. Rain opens his eyes. Dew is kneading the back of his neck with one hand. The show is still playing on the laptop, the narrator’s calm voice describing the vital ecological role of algae to whoever will listen.
Wedged between the two of them like this, the bed isn’t so bad. He places his head on Swiss’ chest, rising and falling with his inhale and exhale. The world rocks in a steady, comforting way.
Once he’s a bit more settled, Dew gets up and brings him ice cream. It’s plain vanilla — a perfectly acceptable flavor in its own right, but a disappointment knowing that his options are limited, that he’s not allowed to have one with anything exciting in it. It feels like eating cookie dough ice cream after someone else already systematically ate all the cookie dough pieces out of it.
He can feel his face now, though — well, sort of, as much as he can feel any of his body, a tenuous claim — which is a small win for his dignity. He is able to skillfully operate a spoon.
It’s hard work. Every action seems to have twice as many steps as normal. The ice cream melts into a growing puddle at the bottom of the bowl. He imagines his body might be doing the same.
At some point he falls asleep, but not completely. He has strange, vivid dreams about watching a nature documentary on his bed. On the screen, Dew swims through a school of fish and catches one in his teeth. Swiss paddles by in scuba gear, clad in a wetsuit, with big flippers on his feet, and gives a thumbs-up. The camera rushes to the surface and he jolts awake.
In the real world, Swiss isn’t there anymore. Dew is still pressed against his side, tucked slightly underneath him, his chin hooked over Rain’s shoulder. The ice cream bowl is on the bedside table now, its contents fully liquid. There are no more coral reefs or schools of fish on the laptop screen — it’s showing whales now, a group of them swimming together, breaching the surface and blowing big clouds into the air. A calf nestles against its mother.
The next episode is about turtles. Babies hatch from eggs and scoot their way over the sand, dragging themselves with tiny flippers, down the beach into the breaking waves.
Dew brings him dinner — soup, another exciting, no-chew food option. They run out of episodes of the ocean show and switch to a documentary about the African savanna, with elephants and zebras and lions.
Halfway through, Dew pauses it and gets up to grab something.
“You’re supposed to take more of this.” He holds up the blister pack from earlier. One of the wells is broken open and empty now.
“Do I have to?” He knows he should. His face is already starting to ache more and more.
“No, I can get you something else, hold on.” He heads into the bathroom but returns quickly, holding a small bottle. He opens it and shakes something into his hand.
Dew hands him two pills, little clear blue ovals — ibuprofen. It’s what he took for his headaches, and the same dose. To take the same thing after having the source of said headaches violently excised from his face? There’s no way it would be enough.
“I want more than that.”
“I don’t think you can have more, you’ll hurt your organs or something.” Dew lifts the bottle and squints at the text on it. “You should take the prescription one if it’s bad.”
“No,” he whines, drawn out. He’s almost embarrassed to hear the sound coming out of his mouth. “I’ll fly away, seriously.”
“I’ll be right here with you, I won’t let you fly away.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Okay, well, you can take these for now and if it’s bad you can take the other one?” Dew offers the ibuprofen again.
Rain nods. He holds out his hand and Dew places the pills on his palm. Maybe it’s enough; ibuprofen hasn’t ever failed him before. How bad can it be?
—
It’s bad.
The pain itself is bearable but it’s loud somehow, persistent and intense. He’s sweating.
“I should have made you take this one, I’m sorry,” Dew frets. He hands Rain a familiar white tablet and a glass of water.
Rain moans in response. He’s as sober as he’s been in a while now, but he still feels addled, in a brand new way this time, like he can’t hear his own thoughts.
It sort of crept up on him, starting out mild. Dew brought him ice packs, two clear plastic pillows full of something blue and slushy, to press against either side of his face. It helped, at first, but it just kept getting worse and worse. Dew was the one who noticed something was wrong, that he was becoming increasingly fidgety, bordering on agitated.
Well, it wasn’t that Rain didn’t notice, more that he didn’t know where to draw the line. He was trying to ignore the problem. He was prepared to endure it. Dew wasn’t willing to watch him do that.
Somehow it took Dew pointing it out, the worry in his face like a mirror for Rain’s own distress, for it to sink in — the pain, and the acceptance.
“Maybe if you go to bed now you’ll sleep through the side effects?”
Rain nods. He places the pill carefully between slightly parted lips. The water feels scalding hot in the back of his mouth, like it might sizzle into steam there.
He shuffles to the bathroom and, after asking Dew — who seems to have memorized the care instructions he was sent home with — if he’s allowed to, he brushes his teeth very, very carefully.
He returns to his bed and crawls under the covers, too overwhelmed to do anything else. He feels the mattress dip under Dew’s weight.
—
He’s roused by someone shaking his shoulder. He opens his eyes, just slightly, and the room is dim. The light through the curtains is yellow, like it’s early in the morning. He blinks.
The hand is on his shoulder again. They’re being gentle, like he’s fragile. He wonders how long they’ve been standing here, trying to wake him from a painkiller-enhanced slumber with light little touches. He rolls over and Dew is there, in sweatpants and one of the oversized t-shirts he likes to sleep in.
“Good morning.” Dew’s voice is soft, gentle like the hand on his shoulder. He reaches his other hand out, and he’s holding something — four pills, four little blue ibuprofen pills like beautiful, shining gemstones. “I asked the dentist and he says you can have four,” he says.
Rain’s heart swoops. “You did that for me?” For a moment he feels like he’s going to cry, so overwhelmed by this gesture. He holds out his hand to accept them.
“Of course.” Dew hands him a glass of water.
He sits up. The world threatens to spin, but ultimately remains correctly oriented. He can still barely open his jaw, so he has to direct the pills individually past his front teeth. The inside of his mouth tastes absolutely horrendous. He drinks all the water.
“You can go back to sleep,” Dew says as he takes the empty glass from him.
There are so many things he wants to say — there’s thank you, of course, but also how are you so thoughtful, and what did I do to deserve this, and, most of all, I love you so much, but he can’t figure out how to say any of it right now.
Instead he reaches out and grasps Dew’s hand — more like his wrist, because he overshoots a bit — in his sleepy, floppy grip and tugs it closer. Dew understands, and crawls into the bed next to him. Rain dozes off again with Dew’s head tucked against his shoulder.
When he wakes up again, Dew is sitting up, looking at his phone, which he holds in one hand, and absentmindedly stroking the other up and down Rain’s arm. He looks up from his phone when Rain stirs.
He frowns, his eyebrows raising and pulling together, and reaches out and brushes his fingertips over Rain’s cheek. “Are you hurting?”
Rain shakes his head.
“I’ll be right back.”
Dew has been saying that a lot recently. The thought makes Rain’s chest tighten. Dew is a rather independent person, not really one to announce his intentions like that. But recently he’s been so careful, so considerate. Rain feels like he’s seeing a secret part of him, a hidden side, something precious.
When Dew comes back, he hands him the two ice packs from yesterday, refreshed by an overnight stint in the freezer. “For the swelling.”
Rain presses them to his cheeks. It feels like they’re easing some kind of pressure inside his head.
“Are you hungry?”
He nods between the ice packs. He’s been subsisting on slop since yesterday.
“What do you want to eat?”
It’s been barely twenty-four hours of soft foods only and he desperately wants something crunchy. “Cereal,” he requests. It’s a truthful answer to the question but he knows what Dew is going to say.
“...No.”
“Potato chips.”
“Also no.”
He tries to think softer. “Strawberries.”
“Probably not a good idea.”
He whines wordlessly.
“Is it okay if I just bring you something?”
Rain resigns himself to a mushy world devoid of substance. He nods.
“I’ll be right back,” Dew says, and he slips out the door.
Rain rolls over onto his side. He makes a sandwich of his head between the two ice packs. The one on top slides off his face when he removes his hand from it, flopping onto the bed with a sad, wet sound. Instead of replacing it, he presses his fingers against his cheek, probing, curious. His skin is cold, but so are his fingers. There’s a huge lump underneath, solid and radiating heat, like a golf ball embedded in his jaw.
He rolls off the bed, leaving the ice packs on the pillow, and pads to the bathroom, where he stands in front of the sink. His reflection in the mirror above it has puffy, round cheeks, like a chipmunk. He leans forward and brings his hands to his face in an inadvertent imitation of a shocked expression.
He returns to the bed and flops back onto it, face down, maybe a little harder than advisable, his abused head bouncing against the pillow. He feels blindly for the ice packs and replaces them on his cheeks, holding them there with quickly cooling hands.
He lies there, motionless, until he hears Dew’s footsteps again. He rolls over laboriously, still holding the ice packs to his face, to see Dew standing over him.
“Here.” Dew hands him mashed potatoes. When Rain takes the bowl from him, eschewing one ice pack, he immediately turns back around and goes right back out the door without another word.
Rain marvels at how thoughtful this menu selection is. When he puts some in his mouth he nibbles with his front teeth, completely unnecessarily, pretending he’s eating chips. It’s not very convincing, but it makes him feel better.
Dew returns a few minutes later, holding a glass of something pink. A smoothie. Rain feels like he could cry, which is quickly becoming a theme.
“Strawberries?” Rain asks.
“Strawberries,” Dew confirms, casual, matter of fact, like there was no other possibility, like he never considered bringing him anything else.
#ghost band fanfic#dewdrop ghoul#rain ghoul#what tags do people use?#and which of those are socially acceptable#ibuprofen lovers join me#fic i wrote
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_Shooting Star
Lara is still frozen in front of her ajar apartment door, mouth slightly agape. The passing night breeze slits through her nightwear since she didn’t bother to change into something presentable. No one was expected tonight and the gang isn't used to seeing her in short tank tops and hot pants, so as long as it isn't the gang, it’s alright. The cold winds seem to caress her naked skin, but for some reason, none of that chill seeps in.
No, her eyes are locked in certain burnt umber ones. She was too concentrated when the bell rang, still calculating equations when she climbed down her just inherited new apartment, trying to find a path through the mess. Many things were bought, hanged and taken care of, but the place was still chaotic, especially because she was also transforming her old Pa’s apartment into a study for astronomy and physics. Well, as much as she could without having government funding and just enough that was still cozy to live in.
The scientist, though, was not expecting a visitor. A Mal visitor. And he does not look happy.
He still wears his diner apron, the red fabric billowing with the wind, but he’s sporting his biker pants and sleeveless gray shirt. It is a weird combination and the fact that he’s holding a delivery bag while looking at her like that makes all those times she felt weird so much more meaningful. His brunette hair is disheveled, probably from taking off his helmet in a hurry. And he had this look… Jaw set in a way that Lara could bet that, in the correct lightning, that prominent scar would show. There was no customer veneer to him today, nor the charisma he would usually sport when talking to her.
There was only an… intensity. His brows were furrowed and mouth set in a dangerous grin. She couldn’t read exactly anger, but maybe frustration? Oh, frustration! The taunt lines of his body exuded that. It wasn’t dangerous, just… very intense.
Did she do something?
Think, Lara, think!
Oh… Well, she did… avoid?... The diner… for two days.
Hey! Lara needed to think, ok? A lot of things were happening and Fernweh was loading a whole set of problems onto her. Especially these… feelings. HOW DOES ONE DEAL WITH IT? The doctor has to think. Sit with these thoughts and really think about them.
But that couldn’t make Mal this mad, could it? It was only two days.
I have no intention of letting you go.
Hm, maybe it could.
Welp, at least they could talk!... She hopes?
“Mal…”, her voice is very soft with wonder, unintentionally cutting him when he’s about to speak. The bag crinkles at his closed first, blood seeping from his fingers as the skin turns pale. Lara can almost hear his teeth grinding against his skull. Ops. “... Sorry. I didn’t ask for any deliv- I mean! I’m happy to see you, I’m just confused? Can we talk… privately? I think I left my card upstairs. ”, her face flushes, her pulse spikes so much that she worries if a heart attack is on the way. He must find something in her expression that makes him soften. She’s trying to give him an excuse to get upstairs to a private conversation. There’s no hesitation when the waiter steps forward. He’s done waiting. No excuses tonight.
“The delivery was already paid on your behalf, Charmer. Looks like your sweetest friend was worried that you vanished from the world of the living.”, he shadows her steps and, as Lara looks over her shoulder, shivers welcome her. “But I can take these up for you. After all, you’re not very good at holding onto things.”
Lara cocks her head his way, raising her brows. He’s repeating what he told her at the lake, that fateful night. Her waiter loves to recall his own sentences, doesn’t he?
She chuckles slightly at that. It was a good one, after all. Lara can feel her marked left hand warm up even without his touch. She wonders what kind of magic he suffused in it, connecting them.
The door behind them is closed with a click of finality, but her mind couldn’t be giving less fucks about that.
“Don’t mind the mess, I’m still decorating and making it usable for work.”, she exhales. It has been a tiring process, especially with her mind being the mess it has been these last few days. Her heart was beating so fast. The butterflies in her stomach were enraged. MalinmyapartmentMalinmyapartment.
It takes her back to these last days. Is it what it means to care for someone romantically? Lara can say she likes likes him, but can she believe she loves him? That’s not something she can answer, but it’s undeniable how the doctor craves time with the waiter, how she loves hearing his voice or seeing him working on his bike. True, she still knows very little about him, but it makes her happy that Mal can smile, really meaning it, when they talk. When they hang out together… WHY DOES THAT MAKES HER HEART BEAT SO FAST? She’s already aware of it, alright? No need for this!
And the shivers? How does his voice seem to caress her neck whenever he speaks with her? It’s not something she can keep giving excuses for. No, it’s not the cold weather. It’s not the electromagnetic fields.
She can’t keep staring at his hands or lips anymore, it’s humiliating.
The climbing is silent, broken only by their steps and Lara’s own uncontrollable heartbeat. She feels like a rabbit, but doesn't dwell on it. Talking with him about the thoughts of these last few days is way more important now, and Lara knows it. There’s one doubt in her mind, though, that she has to voice. “Is this place safe to talk?”
Her voice sounds delicate as Mal crosses the threshold of her apartment, absorbing every detail as if he needed to burn it in his memory. The walls further from the windows sport midnight blue wallpapers filled with charting in silver and gold. The kitchen aisle was reformed and thousands of extra-small tiles that seemed to form a blue and green nebula were lightened by soft orange lamps.
The old windows were removed and now wall-sized ones showed the verdant horizon of Fernweh. Heavy gray curtains could be used if Lara needed more privacy. Her trusty telescope was set in one of the windows overlooking the more wild side of the town.
Adjacent to it, there was a whole set of modern lab equipment that Lara was still unpacking, a seemingly futuristic laboratory of calculators, monitors and sensors. Fairy lights that looked like twinkling stars were hung in perfect cuts and sizes.
The whole place seemed like either a sci-fi lab or an old astronomer’s tower.
“I took care of it, you don’t need to worry tonight, Charmer.”, his voice resonates against the walls in a way that makes her tremble. Why? Was it the husky tone? Was the fact that Lara might feel a feathering touch at her arm?
For some reason, the pressure of tonight seems way out of scale from their normal encounters. It was charged, almost short circuiting. Not insulated as it would usually be. Lara turns to her visitor. Her waiter. Her…
Well.
Mal threw his unfastened apron over his shoulder. Their eyes meet and all words leave her. His eyes were almost crimson against the light. Cocking his head, Mal still has that coiled bearing, but his face transmits a very different message as she feels his electrifying focus pressed against her from head to toe. Deliberate. Slow.
Oh gods, did she have any medicine for blood pressure?
“Not tonight, huh? Did you tape the supernatural bugs in here? Well, no matter. This is good, I want to talk…”, she ever so softly takes his diner bag from his hands, trying to break eye contact. Key word trying. Focus, Lara!, “Sit, please? I’ll brew something for us. Hopefully I won’t mess up, I have no idea what’s inside these.”, Lara shut up. She brings the bag to the aisle, smelling the perfectly made parfait. She can’t wait to dig in the ripe strawberries, but this is more important.
“There’s a certain type of drink that I want to taste, Lara. I’m sure that one, you have in here.”, his flirting catches Lara a bit off guard, but she breathes in, heart skipping once more. Her vision is almost blurry from her nerves and she knows she must be a glowing red alert, but she chuckles.
“I wouldn’t put so much trust in it if I were you.”, at that, Lara brings her visitor a cup of hot chamomile tea with milk and honey. As the waiter reaches for his cup, his left hand snakes and grabs the scientist’s left one, warmth suffusing against her palm. She jolts, balancing her tea without spilling it.
“Looks like you’re learning to hold things better, Lara.”, he pulls her closer, eyes dead set on hers. Their knees bump into each other softly. “Why don’t you sit, Charmer? You’re home.”, Mal says, in a very honeyed and hushed voice.
She can’t focus like that, but she sits beside him, focusing on the half finished planetarium close to her telescope. Lara sips her tea, tilting her head towards him once he starts to test the give of her fingers. It’s weird to have this… Intimate moments with someone, but not a bad weird. She softly smiles at that. Something that always makes him stop staring so intently.
“I’m trying to make it homey, although I miss the lab… But this is not why I wanted to talk.”
“I… hm, first, I’m sorry for not showing up at the diner. Before you said something enigmatic about it, I go there mostly for you, and we both know that.”, she says, looking inside her teacup. Mal will wait for her to speak, she knows that, but still, it is hard to maintain eye contact. And those words need to be said. Lara can’t afford to be hypnotized now. “So, sorry, I needed to think. I never had to deal with this before… And second, well…”, the astrophysicist trails off, eyes automatically burrowing into Mal’s crimson ones. She shudders a breath, but holds eye contact. It is most important. “What I was thinking about was… you.”
That soft expression she spotted other times was back. A fragile hope. Eye contact is broken, but not by her, this time. He seems to tense even more, if that’s possible. With deceptive strength, he pulls her even closer. The scientist reeds the unanswered question, their sides merging with proximity as if Mal couldn’t fathom not being this close with her.
Then, his head snaps into attention until he’s hovering over her, hands still locked in that firm grip and teacup forgotten in the coffee table. Somehow, even her cup is not in her hands anymore.
Her eyes scrutinize him, stopping at his lips, and she swallows. He’s biting the bottom one, on the brink of losing control over his calm. His face exudes something consuming, devouring.
Lara takes a deep breath and searches the monitors on the walls for some reading that can distract her, so the rest can be said.
“Wait, don’t speak. Sorry, it’s just that… I need to put these into words, and I’m terrible at that. But I think I might… Well…”, he seems to approach their faces, a ground out intent in his eyes. Their noses are almost touching, which makes it impossible for Lara to try to distract herself. Not when he’s this close, warm breath touching her lips. “I don’t ‘think’, I know that I do like you. I don’t know about love, but whatever we have now? It’s nice…”, the admission leaves a little too fast, as if she was desperate to breathe. “Fernweh hasn’t been the best place to be since I came back, but I am glad to have come and met you.”, the doctor manages to push out her remaining words, unable to look anywhere else but him.
He smells like cinnamon, sweet and warm. So warm… Her eyes trail down, locking on his indulgent smile.
“And what do we have, Lara? What is this?”, he says, amused, right hand starts a tentative trail on the right side of her rib cage. Lara doesn’t remember how her hand ended up on his chest, feeling the expanse of muscle beneath his shirt, softly tracing his rib cage, counting bones unintentionally.
Such a thin layer separating them. Such a thin layer of air doing the same.
Her voice is breathless, but she manages to squeeze out some words. “I don’t know… But I want to find out.”
The final distance is cut mostly by Mal, but also by a soft pull from her right hand and the eagerness of her eyes when she looks at him like that.
As if he was one of the stars she’s so passionate about.
There’s almost no control over the ferocity of his kiss, sending shivers all over her skin, but that is barely registered as Lara is drunk on the moment. He is still holding her left hand in an unrelenting grip, while his other hand tries to settle her in place so she doesn’t climb on his lap as she wished to do subconsciously. That kiss will leave a mark. She swallows the sweetness of his mouth with abandon, mind feeble. All thoughts are drowned in a fog. A haze of heat she doesn’t understand, but doesn’t shy away either.
When Lara separates to breathe in, she can feel his smile at her soft gasps for air. A husky chuckle leaves him.
She was never kissed like that. Her face is flush, but her eyes are still set on the prize. Mal’s eyes are a deep crimson and there’s nothing in this world that could make Lara move from that place right now.
Is this the feeling of being hit by a supernova?
The woman lets the intrusive thoughts win and oh-ever-so-softly nips at his lower lip. That small action changes something in his fragile veneer of control. An almost death grip on the nape of her neck makes their lips join again with violence, pulling out a decadent moan from her throat. How can two bodies be even closer than they are now?
He maneuvers her, setting a trail of kisses, sucks and nips down said throat, drinking her sensitiveness as more soft moans leave his scientist’s lips.
Lara feels a bite at the junction of her neck and shoulder and that wakes her from her haze. The sensation that climbs down her lower belly makes her set her thighs together. Wide eyed and heavily flushed, the doctor stares at Mal’s almost too smug smile. “It looks like you learned your lesson well, Charmer.”
She can’t speak. Her heart is beating too fast. There’s too much blood rushing through her head. The doctor stands up suddenly, breathing in with desperation. Mal watches her, amused, even if he’s still holding her left hand in that dead-lock grip.
Ever so slightly, she eases their hold until he lets go. The smugness is exchanged by a dark expression as Lara grabs the teacups and takes them to the kitchen aisle.
I can't think. I can't think! Lara you can't just attack a guy like that!
The scientist almost flees, but the waiter doesn’t wait for her to return. He gets up and remains just some steps behind her, merging their personal spaces. He doesn’t want any more distance between them. There was already enough of that for a lifetime. She's still trying to recover her breathing when he locks her between him and the aisle, intentionally so close that she doesn't have room to move. Tea cups again already out of her hands.
“Lara, look at me.”, he commands, impatient for the first time since they started this. Her eyes are unerringly drawn to his, locking in again. As it was always meant to be.
“Mal, I’m… I’m sorry! I should’ve asked first, not just…”
He has to bite down his bottom lip to avoid laughing. Of course that’s what she’s actually worried about. He’s unable to hide his smile when again, she’s hypnotized by his lips. “We can repeat that as many times as you want…”, he murmurs ever so softly. Approaching his lips to her ear, he gives her a hushed breath. “... Even more. I want all of you, Lara.”
At that, Lara bites down her bottom lip and, in a practiced movement, she sits on the aisle, but it’s Mal that grabs her face and takes her breath away, making her hold onto him as if he was the only thing in this world that could set her free.
oc from @lacunafiction
#lara de armas#mal ro#the waiter#the fernweh saga#lacunafiction#one day I'll not be so obsessed#I swear#but today is not the day#slightly spicy?#Lara finally learns she likes him#Anything can be a slow burn if you're blind enough#And she is disgustingly clueless#so oblivious that hurts me#I fear for the other ROs#Imagine Lara and James?#it's like watching a terrible accident in slow motion#but I love the dynamics so much#I love writing about Lara#she's really fun
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Other small questions about zombie Evan....
What's his favorite show?
You mentioned before that moving hurts him, How much does it hurt. is it enough hurting that he just never moves?
Does he ever go outside like ever?
His favorite show... hmmm... well, he wouldn't like comedies or cartoons. He's an emotional, traumatized wreck and doesn't have it in him to laugh anymore. Humor is lost on him, drowned in numbness and fear and pain. Even if he could laugh, the movement would hurt.
He doesn't want to watch sad things. He's sad enough already. Sometimes a certain type of sad thing will resonate with him, make him feel understood and less lonely, but mostly, they just make him feel worse.
Adventure genres are out for the most part, too. They're filled with so much violence and horror. Evan's had quite enough of that.
Family dramas make him feel sad and lonely.
I think the thing he feels safest while watching would be something informative, like a documentary. If any exist in the 90s (when SL takes place), he would probably watch a show detailing all of NASA's latest discoveries and explaining space. Evan might be too young to understand most of it, but at least he likes the pretty pictures of space. He'd watch nature documentaries, too, if not for the scary scenes of animals hurting and killing each other.
For your other questions. Every movement Evan makes hurts. He can feel every bone grinding together with each movement, with no muscle there to facilitate it. Moving his hands is the worst; there's so many small bones there, grinding together, so many clicking out of place and into a wrong, uncomfortable, painful position each time he twitches his hand even the slightest.
Then again, the pain is mostly in his head. Like phantom limb pains. There's been many times when Evan’s skin has ripped and his limbs popped off entirely, and Evan never even noticed. He would look down and there his arm is, unattached, dangling in place only by his sleeve. Evan goes to take another step, except he doesn't realize the aching in his leg is a phantom limb pain, that his leg is gone; he "places" a foot that doesn't exist anymore on the ground and faceplants on the floor. The impact chips his fragile teeth, unhinges his barely re-attached lower jaw and sends it skittering all the way across the room; new cracks form in Evan’s skull. Maybe he has a couple of tear-like cracks running down from his eye sockets from this incident.
So, Evan doesn't move. It hurts too much, and he's so fragile. Both he and Mike are scared that Ev will hurt himself. Evan doesn't do much more than sit on the couch, which is ironic, really. Because Evan had a collapsed trachaea as a kid, and it meant that Ev couldn't breathe very easily; he would start wheezing and gasping at the slightest strain, and so spent more time watching tv and sitting stationary playing with his plushies and reading, rather than running around outside like other kids. In that way, Evan’s afterlife isn't so very different from his life-- or rather is a more twisted mirror of what his life once was.
He doesn't go outside. Mike feels so guilty for the state Evan is in, but then again, he doesn't fight Ev too much on the never going outside thing. How can either of them ever go outside again when living like this?
#Did i name this au?#Can't remember#Either way this au really needs a name...#tw body horror#evan afton support center
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Now that I got every design done for the main cast, time to get back to work on the SSSSSuper AU! This'll just be a list of their super powers because I don't feel like drawing today but still wanted to do something under the cut :3
Cuddles
His super powers consist of two main things: Super speed and super hops! Extremely helpful for him to get to his friends faster and confuse the bad guys! He's one of the weaker heroes, but Splendid sees major potential in him!
Giggles
Her super powers are similar to a fantasy princess! She can hover temporarily with the flow of her dress! Her kisses can also be deadly and can temporarily hypnotize the baddies into doing whatever she wants!
Toothy
He isn't much, but what he does have can shake up the battlefield! Literally! His tail is the strongest on the super island! When he slams his tail (and butt) on the ground, he can cause a small earthquake and cause the ground below to crack! His teeth are also just as strong, as they can munch right through material as strong as steel! His singing voice is also powerful enough to break minds if he puts his heart into it, but he hasn't realized it yet!
Petunia
Much more of a pacifist than a fighter, she has a form of chlorokinesis made for healing and cleansing others! She is incapable of self defense, but always carries around pepper spray and can use her plants as a getaway ride should danger arise!
Flaky
Her powers only active whenever they are anxious! Her spines become much more sharp, able to shoot out of his skin, regenerate, pierce hard surfaces, and are extremely hard to break! When he's not anxious though, he has night vision!
Nutty
His powers can only activate if he's eaten a piece of candy, which is why he constantly carries them around (and because he's addicted to sugar too)! He has super speed and an extremely strong stomach and teeth that can digest anything! His claws are also ridiculously sharp, cutting through and climbing up any surface! His weakness is black coffee.
Sniffles
This one should be obvious! An extremely high IQ! An IQ of around 5,000 to be exact! He uses his smarts to improve island life and build weapons to enhance the arsenal of his own and others (for a price)!
Handy
No, he still doesn't have arms sadly. HOWEVER, he has telekinesis! That's how he was able to work for so long despite the lack of hands. Also his skull is made of metal so his headbutts are absolutely going to break anything. The perfect battering ram!
Flippy
His powers are fairly simple. Super speed and super strength! He's the weaker of the two inhabiting his body, but he's fine with this reality!
Fliqpy
Now this is where shit gets real in the body he resides in. Not only are his powers enhanced when he's fronting, but he also gains smarts as well! He also can drink blood to heal up too. He loses all of his charisma in exchange, but no one wants to be close to this mad man... right?
Splendid
Honestly, what powers doesn't he have??? Super speed, laser vision, flight, frost breath, super hearing, and more! He's everything that the other heroes aren't and more! He's seen as THE hero of the island! Which explains why he's the head of it as well. Still weak to kryptonut tho.
Spendont
His powers are extremely similar to Splendid's! Some people even entertain the thought of them being siblings, which entertains the blue squirrel more than the red one. He's way less known than Splendid however due to his very few appearances around the place, but when he is seen in public, it's either going to be hectic or hellish.
Mime
His mimes become real! Like an invisible box around someone, a set of stairs leading to who knows where, or imaginary instruments! He can also clone himself as many times as he wants, BUT his powers get weaker the more it spreads to his clones. He wants to become a town hero one day, but in order to do that, he must learn to master his craft!
Disco Bear
His powers are very situational. He has the power to mind control people! However only whenever they listen to his music, which makes his parties absolutely the best! You just need to sign the waiver first before you enter his night club on the evenings he's performing... Does not having a heart attack after eating fried butter count as a super power btw?
Pop
Cub
In exchange for smarts, he can create forcefields for the folk he cares about most. Unfortunately he can't create any for himself and they can break after enough damage. Other than that, he has a little bit of pyrokinesis in his blood, but it's not strong enough to cause heavy damage.
His powers haven't fully formed yet, so it's a chaotic mess of what he can do at the moment! So far he's been recorded to shapeshift, spit acid, attract bad luck occasionally, breathe underwater, and/or have a very, very accurate aim!
Lammy
She can speak to inanimate objects/animals and they can talk back to her! She can also tell how you're feeling from just a glance, even if your face remains monotone! She's incapable of self defense, but she can lead her animal army against you, so just hope she only summons tiny creatures that don't have viruses and sharp teeth/talons!
Russell
He is a simple man trying to live a simple pirate life. Whenever he goes underwater, he turns into a merman and can breathe underwater! He's much better at combat whenever he's under the sea since he can actually move swiftly!
Mole
Lumpy
Ever since his acting gig that exposed him as a hero, he's leaned heavily into his agent role, finally using his powers extensively. Invisibility and disguises on the fly alongside super hearing and super reflexes to dodge enemy gunfire! However, even invisible/in disguise, he's our favorite blind and mute critter.
He is literally a walking talking metronome (as in the Pokemon move). Whenever he tries to activate his powers, it's always something random that will probably at least hurt everyone around him. Sometimes he gets the bad guys and sometimes he puts his friends in the hospital. However that doesn't set him back, he still believes he's a superhero!
Shifty
He has the midas touch AND super strength! Anything he touches with his bare hands turns into gold, making him suspiciously rich! He wears gloves so that he doesn't accidentally make his black coffee turn into liquid gold (does not taste good). He also can lock pick anything if that's a super power.
Lifty
He... He actually has none!!! Isn't that shocking in an AU made where EVERYONE is supposed to have powers? Well unfortunately not Lifty. He and his bro were both transported to the island because the agents there couldn't tell the difference between the two so they said fuck it and sent them both. What is powerful about this second hand man however is his jealousy.
Truffles
Teleportation. Yeah that's pretty much it. He doesn't use it to fight, but uses it to get away from conflict and observe people from afar as if they're living in his world.
Cro-Marmmot
Everywhere this block of ice goes leaves behind an ice trail! He can also speak via telepathy to anyone he wishes to. Otherwise it's good ol Cro-Marmmot from back in the day.
#small artist#small art account#happy tree friends#htf#writing#HTF SSSSSuper AU#AU#superhero au#htf cuddles#htf giggles#htf toothy#htf petunia#htf flaky#htf nutty#htf sniffles#htf handy#htf flippy#htf fliqpy#htf splendid#htf splendont#htf mime#htf disco bear#htf pop#htf cub#htf lammy#htf russell#htf mole#htf lumpy#htf lifty#htf shifty
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Hamstur - a Malevolent crack-fic
There are many timelines in Malevolent. Kayne has his fingers in all of them, trying continually to recreate the circumstances that gave us John, trying continually to see what happens if he tweaks the settings a little more.
Today, those tweaks produced a hamster.
Oops.
Technically part of the Surrogate series. In reality, PURE CRACK-FIC. @sparklyandheroic came up with the pun and... here we are.
AO3
------------------
[Text taken and slightly edited from Part 30, The Tenant. Also alternate timelines are a thing, SO.]
“Anyway. King in Yellow.”
Yes.
“I don’t get the impression that he’s interested in seeking us out anymore.”
Why is that?
“Well, he had you back! I believe you were true to your word, even if you don’t remember it, that you would make things difficult for him. I think you are your own, now, John. I don’t think the King wants that back.”
What do you think Kayne did to him?
“Anything Kayne would do without motivational reason is extremely concerning.”
You made no deal.
“I made no deal.”
Hmm.
“Yes, anyway. That’s a great point, because if Kayne put Yellow back in his… more-or-less corporeal form as the King in Yellow, then everything I just said is moot. I think he would be gunning for us, more than ever.”
#
Hastur, the King in Yellow, the Feaster from Afar, the Lord of Interstellar Spaces, woke with the worst headache he’d ever known in eons of being.
No, wait. It wasn’t a headache. It was because he had a skull.
What was this? Since when had this happened? He didn’t have bones. That was mortal nonsense. Yet the fact remained, in spite of ill-wishing, that his skull persisted in containing his magnificence. He tried to reach up and touch it.
So that… was a surprise.
Tiny hands. Adorable four-fingered paws with claws on the ends like grains of rice. He stared at them, struggling with this whole three-dimensions thing, because that just made it all worse, then reached up to touch himself again.
His mask: intact. His tentacles… limited. He had a few around his face, but the rest of him seemed to be… to be…
A tremendous shuddering rocked him as if the boat he’d been on suddenly hit ground, and overhead, above, all around, light blazed. For all the world, it felt like a cloth had been pulled away, revealing him to entropy, and he squeaked in terror (squeaked?) and covered his masked face.
“See? I told you he was cute,” said an Outer God’s voice, and Hastur could barely stand it, barely handle the raw sound, the volume, the power that altered the very molecules of air it passed through.
“Awww!” said another Outer God (how the many were there here?), and Hastur abruptly found himself held in her hands.
Her hands were soft. And far bigger than he was. And he panicked.
“Haha! He pooped!” cried the first Outer God, but Hastur could consider no such indignity, scrabbling and biting to no effect at all. He could not weep in this body, but he could make panicked sounds, and did: little high-pitched screams like twisting bits of rubber.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay,” said the other Outer God (he vaguely recalled—Archivist? No, that wasn’t it… Keeper?). She was unbothered by his (surely) mighty teeth, and she added more hands, rubbing the back of his head, under his mask, around his flailing tentacles. “You sure he’ll be okay?”
“Yeaaah,” said the chaos god, the Bloody Tongue, one he vaguely knew as the Faceless God, and Hastur was terrified. Except the Bloody Tongue sounded almost… guilty? “Took a pinch too much to make that little guy in this particular timeline. It’ll all work out. I’ll put him back once he regrows enough not to, you know, spfoof.”
“No spfoofing,” confirmed the Keeper. “You poor thing. You’re going to be all right. You won’t even remember this afterward.”
“Could do it to yours, too,” offered the Howler of Darkness. “You could keep him here for a while. Get all that crazy out of his system.”
“He’s got enough going on,” snapped the one holding him. “You promised.”
Her petting was very nice. He had to admit it. His nerves betrayed him, tiny heart beating less rapidly, though he did continue screaming because of course he did.
“Sure, sure,” said the Crawling Chaos. “Anyway. Thought you’d like to look after him until I can put him back.”
“I will happily keep his enclosure here until he’s ready.” The Keeper tickled under his chin, reassuring, weirdly safe, and Hastur’s screaming lessened just a little. “How long, do you think?”
“Oh… maybe a week? Won’t be too long. This version of Yellow is simmering in Larson right now. Little big bigger. Should be interesting to see what happens.”
The Keeper shuddered. “Unpleasant.”
“You promised,” said the God of a Thousand Forms. “No touching my spinoff.”
“I won’t interfere,” she murmured. “Oh, who’s a cute little godling? You are! Yes, you are!”
Hastur was not cute!
Although… fine. Maybe it was nice to be… cute. Cute was admiration. Cute things were safe things. He preened a little, cleaning his face-tentacles, but couldn’t completely stop his panicked squeaks.
“Go on,” said the Keeper. “I’ve got it from here. Tabby is going to scream.”
“Have fun,” said the Stalker Among the Stars, and (thankfully) finally left.
“You’re going to be all right,” promised the gentle Outer God, the one whose handling and scent somehow told Hastur he was safe (and he refused to accept that it was his hamster-brain generating this response to whatever she was doing). “You’re going to have a lovely time before you go back to tormenting them.” And she gave him a raspberry.
It was huge. Big as his head. He took it greedily and held it with his tentacles, gnawing at his leisure.
Yes. Yes. Arthur Lester and his stolen piece. Yes.This would be fine. All was well. Safe and fed. Yes.
“Oh my gods,” said a human woman who didn’t matter and smelled of hair dye.
Hastur was fine. He would finish this, survive it, overcome as he always did, and then resume the plan. Arthur Lester would never know what hit him.
And meanwhile…
“Can I hold him?” said Tabby.
“He’ll defecate,” warned the Keeper.
“It’s a hamster. I expected as much. Oh! Ha! Keeps, get ready… Hamstur.”
The Keeper laughed, light and sweet.
Tabby laughed, just a little mean.
Hastur ate his raspberry and waited for the glorious time when he could resume his vengeance.
---
Notes:
This is all the fault of @vmprsm and @sepiabandensis, for they created the art that led to this travesty.
@vmprsm:
@sepiabandensis:
#malevolent#malevolent crack-fic#crack fic#this is nonsense#the king in yellow is a hamstur I don't know what to tell you#kayne malevolent#kiy malevolent#surrogate series#SORT OF
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The Grocery Store
The grocery store is… noisy even though it’s empty. The chattering of the managers two aisles over, the sound of Seth racing like an eight year old up and down the aisles. Seth practically blurs past him and when he’s back he’s dumping a six pack of Bang Energy into his basket, crushing the bread.
Seth, the fucking speedster, is just about to race off again, but Jacob is faster, yanking him from his hoodie.
“Put this back.” Jacob says sharply, pulling out the six pack.
“C’mon!” Seth’s voice has a whining edge to it, “I was planning on playing Fortnite with my friends tonight! It’s a Friday!”
Jacob sighs, usually he wouldn’t acquiesce, but the overhead light is buzzing and the sound is drilling into his skull like it was the United States and his brain was oil.
“Seth. Work with me here, it’s a no.”
“I even have money!”
Jacob blinks, furrows his brow, “What money?”
“It’s the, uh, 20 dollars you said you owed me when you forgot it was my birthday!”
He did not forget. He very much did not forget.
Seth must have taken Jacob’s dazed silence as a resolute no.
“Okay then well uh– Dad owes me money!”
Jacob sighs through his nose, when he inhales the air is cloying and sticky–too much. He pinches his brow. He hates that Seth can see his technique working.
“Will it get you to shut up?” Jacob grumbles.
Seth is giving him the biggest sparkling puppy-dog eyes, like he didn’t just crush Jacob’s bread.
There’s a beat of silence, “Fine. But go get a cart first.”
Seth hisses his cheer like Jacob didn’t hear him– and usually Jacob wouldn’t, but he seems to hear everything. He replaces the crushed bread with a better looking loaf, scans the rest of the aisle for jam and peanut butter.
Jacob feels someone practically glide next to him, glide close, cold like they stepped out of a cryo chamber. They smell familiar– they smell nice, they’re too close. Jacob backs up, every sense in him honing on the figure.
“Here, you wanted jam.” His voice cuts through the dissonant symphony of his senses, and Jacob is blinking blankly at him.
“Huh?”
“Jam.” It’s a young man. He looks shockingly familiar, “Peanut butter too, right?”
“Right…” Jacob says, “was I… was I speaking aloud?”
His eyes are golden, last time Jacob checked his eyes were jet black.
“Hm…” The young man says thoughtfully, “Not currently, no.”
Right, because this one could read minds. His voice hooks on a memory, far far off in his mind.
“Edward Cullen.” Jacob says aloud, and Edward nods his head like he’s doing a curtsy, his mouth making a little smirk.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jacob says, recoiling, he’s tempted to slap the jar out of Edward’s hand.
“Grocery shopping, like you.”
“Bloodsuckers don’t eat.” Jacob says. Edward’s sudden presence ticked the switch of ire in him. Last time Jacob saw him, Edward was covered in blood, wiping his mouth, licking his lips.
Edward makes a face, rolls his eyes, “Common misconception. We don’t need to. Doesn’t make eating less pleasurable.”
Bull-shit!
“I assure you, Mr. Black– it is not.”
“Don’t fucking do that.” Jacob says. When Jacob gets a proper look at Edward, he’s taller, all marble cut with those familiar golden eyes and the copper quiff of hair. He looks the same as when Jacob saw him last, but different– worldly. Or at least better dressed.
He smells nice. He looks nice. Fuck. That can’t be normal.
“I can assure you.” Edward says, voice languid, almost teasing, “That it is. It’s called attraction.”
“Fuck off.” Jacob says. It would be a bad idea to start a fight here, especially since he can’t take on Vampires alone and Seth is with him–
“Relax.” Edward smells like vanilla perfume and musk, it rolls off him in waves. “You and your brother are safe.”
“How many?” Jacob demands through grit teeth.
“None– well, one.” Edward says, and he has the audacity to act sheepish, “Me.”
“Stop. Stop doing that.” Jacob says again, he shakes his head, swallowing, “You reek.”
“No good to lie to anybody.” Edward says, “Least of all to yourself.”
“Oh.” Jacob scoffs, “Like how you convince this whole town that you’re human?”
“Now Mr. Black. There’s that statement about stones… and glass houses…”
“Oh fuck. Off!” Jacob takes a step back, Edward takes a step forward. Fuck no, safe his ass!
“You’re too keyed up Mr. Black.” Edward says, “I already said you and your brother are safe.”
Jacob takes a deep breath, his head is spinning and the store is too fucking loud and Edward smells so good; a maw of feral hunger opens in his stomach.
Edward is taking two more steps forward, tilting his head to look at Jacob more intensely. He’s close, way too close and he’s cool enough for the temperature change to release the pressure gauge in his head. Jacob realizes that he’s breathing shallowly, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from leaping at Edward– to fight? Nope. The feeling is too incongruent.
“It’s inconvenient.” Edward’s so close and his voice is low and soft, “I assure you, it’s inconvenient for me too.”
What? He can smell that? Is it like catnip for girls? Catnip for gays?
“Hm.” Edward says shortly, he steps back turning his head, when Jacob looks in the same direction, he sees Seth, two Bang Energy six packs, a family sized bag of Doritos Cool Ranch, and– much to Jake’s unexplained relief–two ribeye steaks. Seth’s eyes go huge and round at the sight of them when he takes a deep breath.
Say nothing, Seth, he begs internally, please say nothing. Luckily, it’s as if Seth follows his directions because Seth nods when their eyes meet.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Edward says and he nods at Seth, who looks like he’s trying not to rear back and growl like a dog. Edward places the jar he was holding into the shopping cart and soon he’s out of sight.
Seth stares at Jacob, turns to look back in the direction Edward went, looks back at his brother.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“Huh?!” Jacob’s eyes go wide, then his face grows hot, “What–? No!”
Seth looks unconvinced, “Are you sure?”
“Seth!” Jacob hisses, “How would I not be sure if I had a boyfriend?!”
Seth gives him a level look, with a glint in his eye that makes Jacob apprehensive.
“You didn’t kill him on the spot.” Seth says, suspiciously, “And he’s a bloodsucker, like you said. You know him.”
“We’re in a grocery store!”
“Practically empty!” Seth counters, “no one would really see, are you going after him?”
Not a bad idea!
“No…” Jacob says.
“Then I’m telling.” Seth says. Jacob tries to give him a hard stare, but Seth makes a face like he’s already won.
“How much?” Jacob asks, and he’s reaching into his pocket.
“Fifty.” Seth says smugly.
“No.”
“Make that 100.”
“That’s not how this works!” Jacob protests.
“100 and a PS4.” Seth says.
“PS4.” Jacob says without thinking, and his head snaps up to take it back but Seth is already interrupting him before he can speak.
“And you buy me Bang Energy!” Seth says gleefully. Jacob gives him a withering glare.
“You take one bang energy and that’s fuc-dging it.” Jacob yanks the second six pack out of the cart and places it haphazardly in the aisle where it didn’t belong.
This is a section of a bigger slow burn Twilight Jakeward fanfic where me and my body double collaborator who's roommate write a Gay Twilight Fanfic as a joke. Double Sike! It turned semi-serious and now is an actual work in progress fanfic with nearly 30,000 words and three months of time sunk.
Read it here! https://archiveofourown.org/works/55266253/chapters/140190751
#proof of concept#The Jakeward Files#Away With The Woods#awtw fic#Jacob Black#Edward Cullen#Gay Jacob Black#Gay Edward Cullen#Jakeward#This project was supposed to be a joke!#Guess we're the joke now!#fanfic#oneshot#slow burn#slowish burn#lgbtqia#lgbtq community#lgbtqiia+#ships#Twilight#Twilight fanfic#twilight fanfiction#technically Crack treated seriously#but I think we're both emotionally invested in the characters that we made in the hollowed out husks of Jacob and Edward#m/m romance#m/m fiction#romance
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I have so many fic ideas.
Like, all the fic ideas.
Like, just to give you an idea:
Johnlock office AU where Sherlock is bored out of his skull and starts setting people up and it blows up in his face spectacularely (especially when John starts dating the woman Molly set him up with following Sherlock's example and Sherlock's head explodes).
Post S3 canon divergence getting together case fic with a locked room murder and a Sherlock who's struggling to get his feet back under him after two years away and a John who's trying his best to help him but has a hard time because he hasn't fully dealt with his own trauma as well
Reichenbach, but John knows Sherlock is alive and stays in London to help Lestrade take down Moriarty's British network, with loads of long-distance pining and worry and secret messages and clandestine meetings and BAMF!John
Glee AU where Sherlock and John belong to rival glee clubs and John moves in next door to Sherlock and they solve a crime and fall in love but still have to compete against each other, and the glee clubs hate each other with the passion of a thousand suns, so Sherlock and John have to keep their relationship a secret.
Bakers timestamp with Sholto where Sherlock is a jealous bitch and John is Unamused about it.
Bakers timestamp where Sherlock bakes John's favourite childhood treat and it turns out way too good every time, and John going all like, "It's good, but can you make it... less good? I'm sure they didn't use real chocolate when they made this. Or real strawberries. Or, you know, real eggs." And Sherlock grates his teeth and uses powdered eggs and the worst strawberry jam he can find because he loves John and he's going to get this right if it kills him, damnit.
Sherlock and John's wedding in the Take Two 'verse, and Sherlock's parents being bitches, Mary bawling and telling everybody the story about the one and only time she and John almost hooked up and everybody being super grossed out.
Sandman AU where Sherlock is Dream and John is a Constantine tasked with freeing him.
Meanwhile, my brain is mush and I can't write a single coherent sentence on my actually in progress WIP which already has 30k. Fantastic.
#bbc sherlock#writing#plot bunnies#why can't I concentrate on actually writing anything gah#stupid teeth#stupid covid#stupid work and heat and everything#ugh
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Echoes [Shane]
Stardew Valley Fanfiction.
Shane / [You, Gender-Neutral] Farmer.
Angst, Hurt/Comfort.
Warning: depression, alcoholism.
Life is a constant mess and is a bitch. It turns, it swirls, and it will always lead him back to the bottom of the chasm where there is only darkness and numbness. That is how it has always been for Shane. So, what could possibly change when a new farmer moves in?
PROLOGUE.
The first thing apart from the ringing alarm sound that Shane woke up to was pain.
There was a dull throb that felt like it could swell his skull and made his vision swim when he moved his head. His muscles felt sore as though he had been hit by a truck, and for all of these Shane wished he could continue his slumber. The ringing alarm, though, had other ideas.
Persistent screeching forced Shane to rise up from the floor. What the fuck-- was his first thought when he registered just where he'd been laying all night. No wonder his body was aching the way it was. He must have missed the bed again.
Slowly he stood up and trudged through piles of dirty clothes and empty beer cans to reach the desk where his alarm was. Without a much needed self-control, he slammed it off. At once the ringing died. Did it die for good? Maybe. He couldn't bring himself to care when the throbbing in his head just escalated. What was more one dead alarm clock, anyway...?
Well, the broken device's last message for him read '7:03 AM,' so there was that.
Huffing a breath, Shane massaged one shoulder to ease the knots there. Sleeping on the floor was becoming something of an unhealthy habit that he was in no control of. Several cans of beer, some slices of chili-oil-drenched pizza, and he thought he had ended his night by plopping down on his bed or Marnie's couch in the living room.
Just his luck.
Shane dragged his feet to the bathroom. A quick wash-up helped him to regain his bearing, and the cold water tampered down his migraine somewhat. Automatically, as though rehearsing a well-memorized script, he went through a simple morning ritual that consisted of him haphazardly trimming his stubble, brushing his teeth, and combing his hair until it became less of a disheveled mess.
Scents of fried bacon and eggs greeted him the moment he came into the kitchen. Marnie was already done eating her meal and was busying herself near the counter. At the furtive glance she cast his way, Shane had to bite back a scowl.
He knew the unspoken question: "Are you alright?"
Shane was no psychic, but anyone would surely be able to decipher such an honest expression, more so if they saw it directed at them every morning.
All of his aching muscles and foggy head would scream a loud 'No,' but Shane shrugged to wave away Marnie's concern. When he saw that it didn't convince her enough, he said, "I'm fine." His voice came out a bit coarser than he'd thought, so he gulped down a glass of warm milk before repeating, "I'm fine, really. Just a bit dizzy is all. Has Jas gone to school 'lready?"
Marnie cast a doubtful glance, but then nodded. "Yes. School started earlier. Penny said they were going on a field trip today," she said as she gently pushed a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon towards Shane.
Field trip, huh? Shane could vaguely remember Jas saying something along those lines some nights ago. No wonder she had been a bit more chipper lately. She had gone about her room to pack too many things--crayons, coloring pencils, sketch books, and dolls, mainly--into her backpack. All in all, good for her. There were not many things that could make Jas excited like that, and Shane was glad for it.
It took no child therapist's professional assessment to conclude that Shane, on his part, had not played much role into bringing more cheer and joy to Jas' life.
You are a misrable godfather and you know it, a little voice inside his head jeered.
Yeah, well, that wasn't news, not at all. He'd take this year's most neglectful godfather trophy if the universe had one. He knew that for a fact.
So, what? You don't mind it? Which one do you prefer, then: seeing her grow up resenting you, or becoming like you?
Before his thoughts could swirl deeper into a dark pool of self-condemnation, Shane forced a mouthful of bacon down his throat. He almost gurgled, but was quick to wash the meat down with more milk and water.
"There's still more if you're hungry," Marnie called out from across the kitchen. "You can chew your food properly. I have a slow morning today, so you can leave the dishes to me."
A grumble was the only thing he could afford for Marnie's kindness. He knew, against better judgment, that he'd quip something sarcastic where he to open his mouth. Not to Marnie. Not Marnie's fault, either. It was just all him. Him and the little voice inside his head. A pestering, preposterous little thing that refused to shut up.
No school or work experience could have taught Shane that one's inner voice could become a bigger, scarier monster than a string of rich bullies siting at the top of Zuzu City's largest corporations.
He focused on chomping down his food until his plate was empty. "I'm done," Shane declared. His migraine had not stopped pounding, and he was afraid that if he stayed cooped up in the kitchen with Marnie's sympathizing look for one minute longer, he'd simply blow up. Grabbing his bag, Shane quickly dashed out of the barnhouse.
Crisp air and smells of fresh hay and animals greeted him outside. It was only the beginning of Spring, but the air had warmed up considerably that Shane did not bother to scarf up. A little cold air would be nice. It could refresh his body and mind before he had to face rows and rows of shelves and produce. But, of course, it couldn't balance out the effects of an ungodly amount of beer he had consumed last night.
Pelican Town had been getting busier these last few days, and Shane could certainly see that today as he neared the town center and saw some local women crowding around the public garden. Maybe because winter was officially over. From a distance, he could see Granny Evelyn shepherding other women in planting seeds and arranging flower pots. Planting season for flowers had already begun, huh?
Shane never understood why people would bother planting flowers in a season where practically wild ones would bloom sporadically all over the place. He still remembered how awful it had been last Spring: every week batches of wild flowers and weeds would grow in and around the ranch, and every week he had to bend his back to help Marnie eradicating them, only to see them regrow again after a few days.
"Oh, aren't you an efficient one, darling?" Shane could hear one of the women cooed. It was Jodi, if he was not mistaken, a mother with two kids that Shane had deemed to gossipy to ever interact with. "You're finished with the tulip seeds already!"
A sheepish laugh. "I guess I'm getting used to it."
Hm? That was a voice Shane had never heard before. Almost instinctively, Shane peeled his gaze away from the road to notice a foreign figure among the local folks.
A young person, clad in a simple blue overall and subdued gray flannel shirt, was crouched in front of a row of flower pots to the far right side of the community garden. The figure stood up and dusted their knees.
Your smile was polite, yet under the morning sun, it looked almost radiant for Shane. "Do you have any more chores I can help with?" you asked. "I still have time before I should return to the farm."
Farm...? What farm?
Did they mean--? Oh. Right. That farm. That desolate plot of land sitting at the backside of Marnie's ranch.
Shane dimly remembered the Mayor talking about this sometime before--when exactly, he had forgotten--of a young farmer who was coming to the Valley to inherit the land from their deceased Grandpa. The news had spurred some talk at the bar, with many speculating about whether or not the farmer was going to simply sell their inheritance to Joja, to how much time and effort that would be necessary were they to honestly work the land from the ground-up.
As for himself, Shane had merely chortled at the idea of a young city-bred upstart trying their hands at farming. In his alcohol-muddled mind, he had made a bet with himself: two months. Let's see if they could last two months living in those ruins.
Shane may not have been sober when he'd made that little joke to himself, but now, assessing the young upstart with his own eyes, he couldn't help to think that he had over-estimated the mystery farmer.
Lean physique, olive skin, large hazel eyes, and a level of cheer that could be likened to an unsuspecting intern's on their first day at their dream job. Yep, you'd be lucky if you could survive two months with your mind intact.
Sure, being young and fit, you seem strong enough to do manual labour, but energy and enthusiasm alone weren't gonna carry you far in basically turning a dead farmland into a functioning one. One month. That would be a more logical bet.
Almost as if sensing his thoughts assessing their person, you turn your head to Shane's direction and smiled. "Oh, hi! It's nice to meet you," you called out.
Shit.
It was already too late for him to resume walking as if he'd seen and heard nothing, so he spared you a glance. "...What?"
You stared for one good second, seemingly taken aback at the guttural sound of his voice. You were quick to smile again, though. "Oh, I was just greeting you. I believe we haven't met. I just moved into the farm, the one to the west of the bus stop."
Before Shane could dismiss you, Caroline, the grocery shop owner's wife, perked up and piped in, "You two are practically neighbors, you know! Shane here lives next door to your farm."
At the recognition lighting up in the farmer's eyes, Shane knew any hopes of quickly retracting himself from the conversation had been dashed. "You live nearby?" you asked, looking mortified. "I'm so sorry I haven't greeted you earlier! I thought I had met everyone around the perimeter already..."
Then you simply must have come knocking on Marnie's door when Shane had been away, probably either drinking himself out at the bar or down at the pier. Shane managed a shrug.
"Honestly, this Valley is bigger than I thought. To think that I have met everyone and memorized every nook and cranny... Very presumptuous of me," you said with a chuckle.
By now Shane was ready to march out of the conversation before he could be dragged further into oblivion. His head was already a throbbing mess as it was, he did not need idle chatter to stack up the misery.
"You must be the guy Marnie mentioned, then, the one who--"
Shane had decided not to stay to listen to more rambling. He had ambled his feet towards Joja Mart and resumed walking. Some hushed chatter echoed behind him, likely the older women remarking about his rudeness and apparent hangover, but Shane couldn't care. All he knew that he was dangerously close to be behind his schedule and that the accursed migraine had not gone away.
Life was constant. Constantly boring, constantly a bitch. Go to work, go to the bar, get some drinks, turn and toss on the bed or the floor, and repeat. With or without the addition of new citizens coming in and out of this little town, life would just be like that...
"--ait!"
He didn't register it at first, his thoughts too busy trying to placate the building irritation and migraine, until he could feel the hem of his jacket being tugged from behind.
"Wait," the farmer huffed.
Shane turned to see you behind him. Up close, your hazel eyes looked like they had been glazed by honey to him, with specks of amber dotting the orbs. "I didn't mean to offend you, I'm sorry," you said after taking a breath.
Shane was about to turn back on his way, but the farmer had been quick to anticipate that. You thrust a small jar of red liquid to him.
"Cherry jelly," you stated. There was a hint of pride in your smile. "I have a few jars with me today to take to Pierre's. It's just a little sample from my very first batch. I was not able to make much, but I'm content with how it turned out. I thought the tart sweetness may help you with..." you trailed off and gestured vaguely at your own head.
A hangover remedy... Was that what this was?
"Add a little bit of lemon if you want it to help you with the foggy head faster. It helps to lessen the sweet taste, too." With one last smile, the farmer darted off, back to the garden where the women had begun to work again.
Shane observed the jar or jelly in his hand. Cherries...? This was more like something Jas would like for a gift...
Despite his thoughts, soon Shane found himself opening the jar and tasting the gooey content the moment he got into the mart's locker room. The jelly tasted sweet, a little bit bitter and tangy, but sweet all the same. It had a different kind of sweetness from the numbing punch of fruit wine and the fizzy kick of Joja Cola. It was...
...not bad.
For a first-time gift from a stranger, the jelly wasn't so bad.
But any thought of the jelly or the new farmer could wait. For now, he had a morning shift to go through, and a whole day awaiting him.
#fanfic#fanfiction#stardew valley#stardew fanfic#stardew shane#stardew valley shane#shane#sdv farmer#sdv shane#sdv#shane x farmer#stardew valley fanfic#stardew valley fanfiction#shane x reader
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' y'know, that's the problem with you guys. ' so his arm's currently lodged in the maw of a walker, its teeth gnashing at decadent flesh as if it has the right to so much as shamble in his direction. paimon observes it silently, his wide, sharp-toothed smile fixed eagerly in place. ' you're all so SQUISHY! like look at this! what is this— '
so his free hand's reached up, talons extending wide in an unnatural way, allowing him to grip the corpse by both of its temples with the use of only his sharpened forefinger and thumb. he gives its rotting head a little shake, like a dog might a toy. more of his skin peels as he does this, naturally, but he doesn't seem perturbed in the slightest; instead, he's pushing further, until the skull steadily begins to cave in.
' you have the equivalent of a two dollar BIKE HELMET to protect the most vital organ in your silly little body, yet you walk this earth like you're invincible! it's FASCINATING! '
so he's squeezing harder still, until his digits have sunk in deep enough to puncture the creature's rot-infused brain with barely any effort. he continues until his hand has closed into a fist, a very gooey pulp now squashed in his palm as the walker finally stops moving, its jaw now slack against his gnawed arm.
without reservation, paimon removes his hand from its now-void skull— and through the use of its FACE no less. as the body falls to the floor with a wet shlap, the entity observes the grey matter lathering his hand; bringing it to the light of the sun as if observing the quality of a gem. then he turns and eyes his company.
' i kiiinda wanna put it in my mouth. should i put it in my mouth? it looks DISGUSTING— but i've definitely had worse. whaddya think, triple-a? '
so what? you gonna cry about it, dixie-chicks?
daryl doesn't know how they got here.
one moment, peter was helping him clear out a few of the dead from their path; the next, it's not peter anymore.
the voice is the first indication. it's not just one voice, it's many, all layered on top of each other in one messed up menagerie of sound that grates against daryl's ears the way nothing ever has before. it's both ear-piercing and deeply rumbling. terrible. unmistakeable. it startles him so much that he turns around with his bow aimed and ready, but it's much too late for anything his measly little bolts could do.
daryl has to watch as a walker bites hungrily into peter's flesh, pulling his skin right open while paimon's sharpened teeth grin with excitement. blood squirts from the wound as meat is torn right from his bones. the scene pulls a horrified sound from daryl's throat, an immediate and overwhelming sense of dread taking over his body. his bow clatters to the ground from his hands and he feels like he could just pass out if not for the absolute terror-fueled adrenaline coursing through his veins.
it's not peter, but it still is. it's his body, as strange and unnatural as it looks in this moment. maybe somewhere in there is his mind, too. either way, daryl doesn't know how this could have happened— how paimon could have snuck through their wards and their sigils. haven't they all been enough to keep the cult off their heels lately? did they do something wrong? did they fail, and now peter is gone, an eternity of hell upon them? even if paimon did somehow leave, where would that put peter? would daryl have to take off his arm to prevent him from turning? will he turn anyway?
before his thoughts can continue to panic-spiral, peter's body is further mutilated by the demon currently infesting him. talons stretch freakishly from his fingers as paimon toys with the walker, and it brings another pained little cry from daryl as the creature continues to gnaw and consume peter's muscle. this simply can't be happening. it must be an awful dream— one that he'll wake up from disturbed and in need of a long cigarette.
but daryl knows it's not a dream. not even his own mind, as damaged as it may be, can produce this kind of visceral, abject terror.
by the time the walker's body thuds to the ground, daryl comes back to reality enough to notice that he's on the ground, too. at some point he must have lost his balance and tumbled backwards in his shock. the notion of paimon putting any of the walker's dead flesh and brain matter into peter's mouth leaves daryl fighting with the taste of bile, but as waves of horror and alarm wash over him over and over again, he can only sit there and breathe heavy, dry, quiet sobs.
with whatever he has left in him, trembling hands pull his knives from their holsters. it's the only thing he's got now. even if it's stupid, even if he looks pathetic sitting there on the ground. even if his voice croaks.
‘ — give 'im back. ’
give him back, even if it means daryl has to cut off his arm so he doesn't turn. give him back, even if he's dead and daryl has to destroy his body. give him back. just give him back.
#killjoy. how could you do this to me.#my crops are dying. my skin has never been worse. my brain is melting out of my ears as we speak#over and out. ( answered )#painmon#gore //#possession //#if we ever get far apart; i'll still feel the pull of you. ( painmon )
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Hanma trails Kisaki just as he is always prone to do, sometimes to the right, sometimes left, ahead, but always near by. One, he's rather sure Kisaki would be upset. Two, he has little interest in any others around them anyways. His attention is mainly on kisaki; but he's always aware of their surroundings despite his carefree attitude. It's also why he's quick to turn his head when noticing two pretty faces slinking up to him while Kisaki's busy chatting with some person Hanma couldn't care less about. It does leave him bored though. He lifts a brow but allows for a smirk when they try to flaunt their charm for the reaper. He allows for a wolfish grin, sharp and focused then thtey seem to thrive under his acknowledgement despite the fact he's not said a word yet. It's not uncommon, they're just one of many tonight. He's rather curious if Kisaki's even been aware or too busy to see the people vying for attention. Ah well!
he was not ignorant of the reaper’s tether, mesmeric & transfixing, prey stagnant in the blinding swell of flood - lights, it was that he knew it belonged to him. a mercurial gun whose chamber fit or did not fit bullets in accordance with his mood, yet an extension of himself & a reliable asset in the intricacies of his schemes.
kisaki feigns disregard as if the conversation at hand was captivating, as if the carve of hanma’s mouth & the flash of his teeth was not tantamount to it. he hates it. kisaki tetta’s ire was an oppressive inferno, searing as it surged through his veins & compelled him to intervene. he raises a hand, eliciting silence where it was not his to command, his consociate imposingly larger & allegedly meaner than this inexperienced youth. his jaw clenches, teeth grinding in chagrin as kisaki dismisses him. he doesn’t have time to allocate to the brittle egos of inconsequential subordinates; he is aware of this arrogance & doesn’t balk from its ramifications. he would not have ascended this far, using & deserting as he saw fit, if he was timorous. he knew how to hold a gun & delighted in the grotesque caving of skulls as he pulled that trigger.
the girl’s recoil from him, attractive features affronted by the way he steps between them, as if directing hanma away from their paltry attempts at beguiling. the longer he looked at them the uglier they became. long, accentuated lashes thick with mascara, plump mouths overlined & lacquered in gaudy pink lipstick. they were somewhere between pouting & cursing him out but his lacerating glare was solely for hanma & his penchant for idling in kisaki’s wake. “ do i need to collar you.” he says it lowly, furiously; annoyance in the furrow of his brows.
#* 🔪 . ⊹ 𝐾𝐼𝑆𝐴𝐾𝐼 𝑇𝐸𝑇𝑇𝐴. › 𝐢𝐜.#kisaki really looked out at hanma from the corner of his eyes and went im going to fucking kill you.
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