#it’s very unsanitary but it all kind of works out in the end | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bluehourbucky · 1 year

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not a want but a need

pairing: Baker!Bucky x f!reader

summary: you have a healthy obsession with buckys arms and hands / plan to tease bucky backfires <3

a/n: just really thought about how huge baker buckys arms must be 😩😤

-gonna go to horny jail 😩

warnings: sexual content/ fingering /choking /tiny bit of period sex mentioned/ mirror fun/ edging / orgasm denial /

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

18+ only !!!!!!!!

please be kind I've never written smut before 🫠

/ masterlist / bucky /

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it's not often that you come see bucky at work mostly because the bakery is extremely busy and because you don't want to do something unsanitary.

when you first met bucky the first thing you noticed his huge arms, like you knew they were strong especially because he works with dough.

you've been caught staring at them multiple times which made you blush that was before you and bucky started officially dating. you were embarrassed how much you wanted to touch his bicep. not only that but the dirty thoughts have consumed you any time you stared at his arms or hands for longer than a second.

it really wasn't your fault bucky wore extra small shirts which made his arms look incredible.

oh and when he pulls up his sleeves you're a goner. even now after a year of dating you can not help yourself and thirst over his very very strong and beefy arms.

you love to hug his arm when you're sitting on the couch with his hand nestled between your thighs it's your second favorite place for his hand - the first one is well deep inside you.

bucky didn't understand it at first and was mostly just calling you out on it but now he's a menace and teases you any chance he gets.

he especially enjoys looking at you while he's making pasta from scratch when he's rolling the dough. you don't want to give in every time but you do.

bucky has been impossible for the past few days, you're on your period and he's been the worst tease ever and your hormones are not helping. today's the last day of your period and you're no longer feeling bloated or bleeding much.

so you came to his work to give him a taste of his own medicine - or at least that was the plan.....

"hi, steve! is bucky here?"

"yeah he's in the back want me to get him for you or?"

"nope i'll just go there."

and you do. and damn was it a good sight for sore eyes.

bucky is rolling the dough you don't know what he's making but there's this big lump of dough that he's massaging pushing around and the sweat is dripping down his temple. the way he just pushes the dough around makes you want to moan out loud.

his hair is put in a bun and his apron is full of flour but he's looking more delicious than any other thing in the bakery.

"oh hey cupcake. didn't see you there, when did you arrive?"

he looks at you and wipes the sweat off of his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform.

"hey uh just now." you're trying so hard to be chill but all the heat rushes over you when he looks at you like you're the only thing in the world that matters.

"you alright? did something happen?"

of course he asks that, you don't usually come here so of course he'd think something was wrong.

"oh I'm okay just wanted to see you."

it's not a lie. You did want to see him and make him suffer like he's been making you suffer. the whole idea was to come for a bit in his favorite dress do a twirl few light touches and leave.

but the whole plan went out of the window as soon as you saw him.

the only thing you want right now is his fingers inside you and a hand wrapped around your throat.

bucky checks out your outfit and smirks when he sees you clenching your thighs together.

"lemme' finish this to let it rest and i'll be with you in a minute."

you only have the strength to nod and watch as your boyfriend manages to tease you with a lump of dough.

and when bucky slaps the dough one last time for good measure, you think how you'd like to be on the receiving end.

"okay come with me." he doesn't touch you because there's flour all over him so you just follow like a lost puppy.

"open this please." he points at the door of the locker room and you do it he walks in first and tells you to close the door behind you but not to lock them.

the room is long and narrow on one side there's a long bench and on the other a row lockers and between some of them a mirror and a sink on the same side where the bench is.

bucky takes off his apron, then washes his hands, and you just stand there at a loss of words. your plan really backfired huh.

"tell me what you doin' here doll."

he comes and stands in front of you lifting your chin for you to look at him.

"not that I'm not happy to see you but this dress is a bit too much for a bakery visit? is it not?"

oh fuck.

you're in trouble.

he picks up the hem of the dress not enough to show your ass but still high enough.

"uh its nice outside and I just wanted to take a walk and this is a nice summer dress."

bucky laughs at your attempt to make this not what it is.

"sure is a nice dress."

he finally kisses you, the kiss is gentle and short much to your dismay. and when he pulls away you whine.

bucky lifts a brow at you.

"you sure you just came to see me in this dress for no reason at all?"

"yes i'm sure."

"come here." it takes you approximately a second to obey him. he's sitting on the bench right across the mirror.

he sits you down on his lap so you're both facing the mirror, he also spreads your legs as much as he can. buckys head is on your shoulder his hands still on your bare thighs.

"just came to see me huh?"

he's mocking you but you couldn't care less you just want him to do something.

"please bucky."

he chuckles and you feel the vibrations from his laugh not only that but you can feel his buldge digging into your ass.

you gasp as his cold hands find their way to your breasts. his fingers playing and squeezing your nipple and then he stops.

"don't move be good." you go still and he continues you'd rather have him touch you somewhere else but you need to be patient.

"baby is it okay if I touch you? how is your period? today's your last day if i counted well?"

ever the gentleman, he knows you're not big on period sex it's mostly because you don't like the mess, it's not like you never had it it really depends on the period.

"i'm good. its mostly gone. please touch me."

bucky wanted to rip the panties off but you told him not to do it anymore because apparently he ripped half of your collection.

you stand up and let bucky take them off before sitting down on his lap again.

"just a walk you say... why are your panties soaked darling. did you see something on that walk of yours that you liked." you whine and moan at bucky who is inspecting your very much soaked panties.

"what am I gonna do with you."

buckys hands find their way between your thighs and he's purposely avoiding the place you want him to touch the most.

he lifts the skirt of your dress and looks into your eyes through the mirror.

"you look so pretty like this gonna have to get one for our bedroom, have them mirrors everywhere." you nodd and just want him to fuck you.

finally he slides one finger in and it fills you more than three of your fingers together. he quickly adds another one and you're feeling both like in hell and you're being tortured but also in heaven.

he sits there and his fingers are not moving.

"pleasepleaseplease" you cry out you're so sensitive and needy and you can't belive he's doing this to you.

bucky finally has mercy and starts to move his fingers, the only sound that can be heard are your breaths and his fingers coming in and out of you.

the pace is torture it's slow and deep and he's right next to your g spot and he just won't touch it.

"sound so pretty princess. and look at you just the prettiest doll I've ever seen."

bucky finally adds the third finger, and you're a goner he picks up the movement and touches your spot every single stroak, his other hand, is on your throat, squeezing it.

oh, how you love when he does this.

"bucky bucky I'm close. I'm so close please!"

you manage to choke out when buckys hand squeezes you a bit harder than before.

buckys thumb starts to make circles on your clit and he feels you squeezing his fingers he knows you're close.

"I'm gonna- AHHH! bucky what the fuck."

he completely stops everything, his fingers are out of your pussy his hand no longer around your throat.

you're speechless.

"Doll it's really cute you wanted to take revenge on me but I gotta teach you to be a good girl. can't have you getting ideas."

"but you! I- I didn't do anything!"

"I'll go to see him at work in his favorite dress so he can't resist me and then ill just leave him hanging all day. see how he likes that."

your mouth makes an O and you blush.

"baby you sent that message to me. I'm sure it was meant for natasha but guess you have to check who you be sending these kind of messages to?"

bucky knew you were coming, you had accidentally texted him the message that was meant for nat.

you get up and search for your phone and unlock it and quickly getting to your chat with nat.

you: gonna get him so good nat!!

nat: who ???? what happened??? do I need to kill someone???

shit that's the last message you sent before coming in here you don't even know how you didn't notice the previous message never got to her.

"why didn't you tell me."

"wasn't this more fun?"

"no." you stomp your foot.

you stand in shock when he licks his fingers clean.

"taste so good might have to put you on the menu."

"you're such an-"

"amazing boyfriend whom you love very much?"

bucky finishes your sentence and comes up to you to kiss you, you can still taste yourself and try to deepen the kiss but bucky pulls away.

"don't give me that look doll. I have to go back to work."

you're looking at him giving him your best puppy eyes, at this point you're close to falling on your knees to beg him to just fuck you.

"I'll keep these by the way will give them back tonight."

"bucky no." you look at the panties he stuffed in his back pocket.

"bucky yes."

before he goes back to work, he grabs you from behind and wrapps his hand around your throat and whispers

"don't touch yourself before I get home or you won't get to cum for a week."

then he slaps your ass twice.

"you had some flour there can't have you walking with a dirty dress."

and he walks out.

your phone starts ringing.

nat <3 is calling

"hey are you okay? who are you gonna get? did something happen."

"im okay ill tell you but i'm okay."

"don't scare me like that!."

you apologise and hang up.

how are you supposed to walk home you don't know, your legs are still shaking.

"you okay? need some sugar?" steve offers a doughnut and you just nod.

doing the walk of of shame you shakely leave the bakery maybe this wasn't such a good idea but you're excited for tonight.

[the end]

extra:

"buck is your girl okay? she looked a bit pale and unwell as she was leaving?"

"she's okay just missing some vitamin D luckly it's sunny out so she can catch that before the night comes."

"okay...."

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I'm sorry about the pun udhdhdhd 😭🤡 sue me but I think it's funny

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky imagine #bucky smut #beefy!bucky #baker!bucky #bucky masterlist #sebastian stan characters #marvel fic #james buchanan barnes #bucky fic #bucky fluff #dom!bucky

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tsukasalvr · 6 months

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@tsukasayugisoneandonly

nezuko!s/o

Anime/fandom: Tbhk

Characters: Tsukasa Yugi, Teru Minamoto, Kou Minamoto, Nene Yashiro, Aoi Akane

Warnings: I don’t proofread

A/n: hihi!!! And thank u so much!!! That’s very sweet and I hope u like these and sorry for the wait I was on a break<3

Tbhk masterlist | Main masterlist

Tsukasa Yugi

Tsukasa is in love with you and how adorable you are. Loves to cling on you like a koala and smother you with love and loves how you happily accept it

Loves to carry you when you shrink and show you off and say how cute you are. Also thinks that the bamboo in your mouth is the cutest thing ever and will sometimes pull it off just to see your sharp fangs

He knows you’re a demon so often offers to get you meat but is stopped by Sakura who has to tell him it really isn’t necessary since you only need to sleep, which he will happily cuddle you through

Loves it when you show off your powerful kicks and strength, and also likes it when you protect him. Can’t help but giggle when he sees how quickly you regenerate and says how freaky and cool it is

Teru Minamoto

He didn’t like you at all at first, he wanted to get rid of you even if it meant bringing you to the sun to burn. You’re a demon which means you’re nothing but evil who eats humans

But when sensed no dark aura from you and only sensed kindness and innocence from you, he instead watched you from afar at first and when he confirmed that you were in fact different, he instead got close to you and you both eventually ended up in a relationship with you

Thinks the bamboo in your mouth makes you very adorable and will offer you a mask instead to make it less suspicious. Will have a comfortable sofa in the student council room just for you to sleep in and Akane loves to make fun of Teru for being so cheesy which never ends well for him

It’s when he let you meet Kou and Tiara when he found out about how protective you are when it comes to family and loves to watch how you interact with his siblings

Although he wouldn’t want you to, he lets you if you really wanted to help him exorcise ghosts and knows that you can defend yourself well with your strength alone

Kou Minamoto

Wanted to get rid of you to prove that he can be strong enough to get rid of something, even a powerful demon

Kou sees the good in a lot of people so it didn’t take long to see that you had no ill intentions and you were just an innocent demon that wanted to protect instead

He wonders if the bamboo always in your mouth gets gross or unsanitary so he offers you new mouth pieces or more small bamboo sticks if you really wanted to stick with your bamboo look

He can’t exactly offer you meat but he will offer you raw animal meat instead which is still weird but he hopes it works the same. But when he sees sleeping works just as well, he offers you to use his lap as a pillow even if he gets flustered the whole time

He admires your strength and hopes to be as strong as you and will ask if you can help him train to be as physically as strong as you

Nene Yashiro

She was skeptical of you from the way you always had your mouth covered and mostly spoke with sounds instead of talking but any skepticism is immediately gone when she saw how adorable and kind you actually were

Yashiro thought that you were adorable and although she was scared when she found out you were a demon, she didn’t care. She knew you didn’t want to eat anyone, you were different and wanted to protect you at all costs even if she wasn’t as physically strong as you, which still amazes her

Although she knows you can’t eat human food, she still offers you cooked meat in disguise when you’re both in public and hopes it gives you some energy.

Offers you her shoulder or lap to sleep on and looks at you in awe when you sleep and thinks you’re so adorable. Sometimes she ends up sleeping with you with her head leaning on top of yours which I was leaning on her shoulder

Loves to carry you when you’re small and sometimes has you stuffed in a backpack just so she can carry you around when the suns out

Aoi Akane

She knew something was off when she met you but didn’t really have any thoughts about it and even when she found out, she didn’t really care

Aoi knew how she felt towards you and had no problem with you being a demon. Plus you being so cute takes part in her not minding at all, loves it when you shrink and pampers you with cute accessories and clothes as if you’re a doll

An immediate power couple when it comes to looks; speaking of clothes, the way you have your mouth covered is a very creative and cute way in her eyes. Decorated your bamboo stick or mouth mask with stickers even if it’ll most likely fall off or get ruined

She’ll gladly let you sleep on her or have you shrink to fit in her bag to let you sleep and will even cover the inside with a blanket and plushies so you can sleep more comfortably

#tbhk x y/n #tbhk x reader #jshk x y/n #jshk x reader #yugi tsukasa x reader #tsukasa x reader #minamoto teru x reader #teru x y/n #teru x reader #minamoto kou x reader #kou x reader #nene yashiro x reader #yashiro x reader #akane aoi x reader #aoi x reader #aoi akane x reader

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papaver-decervicatus · 9 months

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Cat/Mouse/Den: Pt. 1, Cat

Alone on wilderness patrol, König’s radio intercepts an enemy transmission meant for a SpecGru sniper. Within a beautiful and capable woman’s crosshair, something electric and treacherous takes root in his heart, and he decides to tempt his doom. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and it’s been far too long since he has had anything worth hunting.

CW: Obsession, stalking, canon typical violence, intrusive thoughts, unsanitary wound care

Authors Note: Huge shout-outs to @kneelingshadowsalome and @sprout-fics for writing some really great fics that inspired me to write this and for being such kind beta readers!

This work is inteded to pass as x reader or x OC in third person POV, German is from google translate, feel free to correct me if you can!

This project started out very small and has definitely spiraled out of control. To all readers, please enjoy and let me know what you think!~ Caedis

Pt. 1, Cat | 1.3k words | König POV | NEXT

“They call you… Maus?” König says into his radio.

It’s a mistake. That he’s heard the transmission. That he found her position. He’s sure that she sees him, he knows he’s good as dead.

He’d seen her file in a briefing. Some SpecGru sniper, relatively new to the force. Accolades nothing short of damn impressive but with a general disposition against war. She’s a good rule follower unless she hates the rule and then she tends to do her own thing. Overall, mixed bag, but too useful to refuse. She wouldn’t be on the force if she weren’t some sort of useful.

Most of what he’d thought was, “Wow, really? That many targets? Seems temperamental. Wish I could’ve been a sniper. Seems much more peaceful.” And then a much quieter, general, passing: “She’s pretty.”

And that was it, really. When he got moved to solo wilderness patrol, it was Klaus’s idea to give him intel on who he thought would be most likely to be on patrols alone. As the resident wilderness expedition expert, he thought it most reasonable to give König and a few others on similar patrols the basics on her and a few of her comrades. Quite mundane for his line of work, all things considered.

The irony isn’t lost on him, that him doing the very thing her file warns his upper command about, “doing his own thing,” is what will kill him. He’s out about five miles from where he should be, dangerously far. But, he always had a weakness for the mountains. When he realized his route to do shipment surveillance was close to a ravine, there was no question in his mind that he was going to check it out.

And it’s got him in a good-looking lady’s sniper scope, right as the sun sets behind her. She’s got a perfect shot.

What's that silly English phrase? Curiosity killed the cat?

He smiles about it, though. He’s happy it’s a sniper. Happy it’s a pretty one.

“You’re not my target.” Is her response. She shouldn’t be able to radio back to him.

Strange.

“Not an answer. And who is then?” He quips back into the static, still not quite sure he believes she’s there. Even at every possible disadvantage, this is still his territory, he’s still the king of his little domain, of this minuscule set of battle strip. It’s pathetic, the only place he feels any sort of peace is at war.

“Negative to both.”

“Playing hard to get. That’s fine with me.”

He hears her chuckle before she shuts off her end.

This is… most exhilarating.

He finds her in the tree line, and he smiles. She’s across the 80-yard-long ravine. There’s a creek at the bottom, and interesting flora marks the cliffs all the way down. He wonders what wildlife drinks from the stream down there and if there are any decent caves he could find an opening to. If any could fit him, that would be. She’s found a good post, in the branches of an inconspicuous tree. That’s right, she specialized in tree climbing and tracking if he remembers her file well enough. It’s a pretty perch, no wonder she chose it.

A younger part of him is jealous. The older part smothers that part down as he takes in the view.

The sun is setting behind her. She’s very far away, but his skin prickles to life knowing that he’s being watched. The exposed rock of the ravine flames to life with amazing browns and reds, and the stone sparkles like rubies and tiger’s eye stones as the sun's rays catch it.

It’s a beautiful place, really. It’s not such a bad place to die, he thinks. She’s a good shot. She’ll do it quickly. Nothing to fret about, really. It’s his own fault, anyways.

He knows if he runs to or from her, he’s dead. So he stands still.

Waiting.

For what?

He doesn’t know. A fairy tale? An Angel? A sign from God? His own comms? The common sense to radio his own and tell them about the fucking sniper in the tree?

He doesn’t know.

So he waits for her to make the first move.

“If you turn tail,” She warns, his radio crackling to life, “I won’t shoot.”

He’s going to die, might as well have some fun at it.

“I will- if you tell me why they call you Maus.” His accent lingers on the word, just about the same in Deutsch as it is in English. Maybe that’s where the Brits got the word from in the first place? Some Germanic mountain peoples from long, long, long ago?

He can’t see her in detail, she’s much too far. But with his hazy memory of her file, he imagines her face contorted in with the effort of deciding what to do. He thinks of her blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. He thinks about her flexing her fingers around, but not squeezing, the trigger.

She seems to chew her lip on this one. He already knows her code name, it’ll do very little good or bad for him to know just why.

“I’ll bite, soldier.” She says, hurriedly, like someone might walk in on their little game. Like the teacher is about to find the two kissing in a supply closet at the school. Like she knows this is bordering dangerously close to bloody.

“Quid pro quo?” She asks.

It’s not a no.

He smiles. His cheeks get red as they flick upwards in a grin of pure giddiness. What a fun way to die. Playing a silly little game like this? Fantastic!

“I think you know.”

“König?”

“Ja.” To his delight, her accent scraping its way around his call sign, the only name he cares about at this point, isn’t half bad. Being so seen on the battlefield should make his chest tighten, but not quite like this. It’s wrong, but then again he actually enjoys war so maybe he’s never quite been right, either.

“Why?”

It’s his turn to laugh and rush out a response. He sits down on the ground and opens his legs as wide as they’ll comfortably go and rests his cheek in his hand propped on his thigh. If he’s going to die, he’s going to give her a pretty show. He’s going to die comfortably lazing around like a cat on a windowsill, taunting the stray tabby outside who so desperately wants to claw him to death.

“You first, Schatz,” he downright purrs into his mic. He’s no fool, if he could see her up close, he would not be flirting with disaster like he is currently.

He can’t see her, she’s much too far away, but he imagines her chest constricting beautifully and her biting her lip. He imagines her lips pressed into a thin line while she claws into her upper arm, trying to regain control. Like it’s all a silly game. And, maybe it is.

Cat and mouse.

He likes the sound of that.

Her voice returns to him, low and slow like she’s dragging her tongue over every syllable like she’s trying honest-to-goodness to taste him.

“Maybe next time, König.”

He can hear the smile in her voice. Maybe she’s enjoying the game, too?

A shot rings out, and his blood whistles and boils. It hits the tree 6 feet to his left at exact head height. His ears start to ring, but he’s entirely unharmed as birch bark splinters around him.

“Position compromised, moving.” Is what she radios to her command.

“Rog, Mouse.” Command calls back.

He sees movement from her position, but he knows she’s much too far for him to get to her in time. He laughs bright and loud and gets himself up off the ground.

“Nächests mal, kleine Mäuschen.” Next time, little mouse. He says, to no one in particular. It’s been a long while since König has had so much fun like this on the battlefield. At a genuine disadvantage, put into a position that size and strength alone won’t remedy. And he’s sure as hell not ruining it by telling anyone, no matter how dangerous that is.

A game of cat and mouse?

Good.

It’s been far too long since he had something worth hunting.

#Navigation -> Cat/Mouse/Den #König #König x reader #König x OC #König MWii #König COD #Char: Mouse

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spaceiix3 · 1 year

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In Pain, Please Help? (Lucifer x Reader)

Notes:

This fic is about the reader going through a non-specific episode of pain! (Not-so) fun fact: I wrote this during an episode with nothing to help alleviate it... bathroom floor time at 1 am is not fun. :,) Then I finished and edited it later, so if there's a shift in tone toward the end, that's why.

A romantic relationship between the Luci and the MC is implied because I like writing that better, but it can be read as a very close platonic relationship as well!

Reader is referred to as they/them, and ___ is used in place of a name.

Content warnings: mentions of nausea, mentions of painkillers, MC is in pain!!

Word count: 2.1K

Jolts of pain stabbed at me as I laid on the floor of my bathroom, clutching my stomach while trying not to throw up. My body shook involuntarily and I grabbed a piece of the bathroom mat in an attempt to calm my shaking. It didn’t work. I took a few deep breaths as I stared at the dust in the cracks of the dark tiles. This was not ideal.

I whined involuntarily and pressed my cheek against the cool floor, seeking any sort of sensation that was not pain blooming through my body. At that moment, it felt like it was all I'd ever known. That cold, unsanitary floor was at that moment just as comforting to me as a hug from someone I love would be at any normal time.

'Wait...' I said to myself, trying to ignore the constant haze of pain over me. 'Someone... maybe someone could help..!' My eyes widened slightly at this realization. At my place in the human world, I had to suffer through these bouts of pain on my own. The painkillers I kept with me at all times were my only saviors. But although I didn't have those here, I did have the brothers whom I lived with..!

I grabbed my DDD, fumbling with the lock screen and opening the text feature. Just scrolling through anything on my phone made me feel just as nauseous as if I were in a car driving in high-speed circles. I looked at the toilet beside me hesitantly for a long moment, then shook my head, taking long, deep breaths before facing my phone screen once more. I had to make this quick.

I clicked on a chat purely on instinct and typed out a straight-to-the-point message.

"in pain please help". Sent. Then, a few seconds later:

"i amin my bthroom"

I quickly set my phone down after sending the second message, feeling a wave of nausea overwhelm me as I shuddered again from the pain. Surely those messages made enough sense? I wasn't going to bother explaining more in my current state. I didn't want to worry anyone too much, but at the same time, I did not have the capacity to care as much as I usually do. So, I simply waited.

...

Lucifer's DDD buzzed, making the desk vibrate slightly and startling him out of his trance. He sighed. Who had gotten in trouble this time? He had enough work to do without someone causing a ruckus.

Opening his device, he noticed two messages from their human exchange student. They didn't typically message him when they knew he was working, so this came as a surprise to him.

His mind paused for a moment as he stared at the texts, deciphering them. They... had some sort of pain? That they presumably needed help alleviating? A large part of him wondered if this was a prank of some sort, but his pride wouldn't allow him to ignore the messages after the exchange student specifically messaged *him* for help.

Lucifer sighed as he got up from his chair swiftly, taking long strides down the hallway and to the exchange student's room. What kind of pain was it? How did it come about? Were there some demons he should take care of for them? He would have to question them thoroughly about this later.

Lucifer knocked on the door to their bedroom, but did not wait longer than two seconds to come in anyway. Homework lay scattered on their table and their school bag laid on the floor by the chairs, but the human was nowhere tk be found in the main room. He nodded to himself, then went over to their closed bathroom door where they said they were previously.

"_____, I am here. You said you needed help?" Lucifer asked, trying not to let care seep into his tone too much in case this was a prank, though that did seem more unlikely the more he thought about the situation.

"Luci..! I'm just... having a bout of pain... could you alleviate it in any way..? I don't have my painkillers like usual..." their voice warbled as they responded in a quiet tone, words spaced out awkwardly. Lucifer paused for a moment and grew red at the use of a nickname, but decided to not mention it.

"Of course I can. May I come in?" He asked politely, already resting a hand on the door handle anyway.

"Yes please..." they replied, at which he opened the door immediately. Lucifer expected to see a human in pain, expected them to at least be sitting up. Instead, the human lay curled on their side in the corner of the room by the bathtub, clutching part of the bathroom rug with one hand and their stomach with the other. He noticed they did not have any visible injuries, which was curious. They gave him a weak smile and sat upright for a moment before their face blanched, causing them to quickly lay their head back down. Sweat glistened on their forehead. They weren’t crying, but their eyebrows were furrowed and their eyes glistened with a pain too strong for tears.

"Sorry I'm like this... I don't want to bother you, I just..." they trailed off for a moment, closing their eyes as they shuddered again. "Could you just make it stop? You can get back to work after, I'm sorry..." they sighed, sounding extremely apologetic. Lucifer stared at them for a moment, at a loss for words. All of the human's typical wit and calm demeanor was nowhere to be seen, instead replaced with fear and pain. His eyes softened.

"Come here, darling." He said, kneeling beside them and shifting their head to his lap slowly. They groaned as nausea hit them again, jolting slightly from pain all the while. Lucifer frowned at this, furrowing his brows before he took a deep breath and began to chant a spell. Tendrils of magic flowed from his fingers into various parts of their body as he stroked their head gently, magic sparkling in the dim light of the bathroom. Lucifer felt the human begin to loosen up and sink into his lap as he continued whispering words in Infernal.

After a few minutes of chanting, Lucifer finally stopped as he noticed the tendrils of magic began to resist going into the human, signifying that no more physical pain of theirs could be alleviated at the time. Lucifer sighed once again, though not out of exasperation, but rather out of pity for the human. Considering how long he had to chant to alleviate all of their pain, he could not imagine what it felt like from their end. No wonder they couldn't get up from their bathroom floor to get help in the first place or to greet him when he arrived. What a poor human, having to endure that... they were truly much stronger than they seemed.

Lucifer slowly shifted his position so that he could loop one of his arms below the human's knees and one supporting their back, bringing them into a princess carry as he strode out of the bathroom. The human kept their eyes closed tightly, still taking deep breaths as they calmed down from the primal fear that still seized them even after the physical pain had gone away. They subconsciously leaned into Lucifer's touch, snuggling against his shoulder as he strode back to his room. Lucifer then laid the human on his bed, whispering something under his breath that caused the door to lock behind him so that no one could disturb them anymore.

Upon feeling themselves make contact with the soft bed, the human opened their eyes, observing their surroundings. Their eyes widened a bit upon noticing that they were not in their room as they expected to be, looking up at Lucifer for an explanation.

"I do not want you to be disturbed after... all of that," Lucifer spoke sternly, as always, yet his voice also had a softer edge to it now. "So I will rest with you and look after you now and make sure you tell me about this... this condition later." His tone left no room for argument. The human pursed their lips together slightly for a moment, then nodded.

"Yeah, okay... thank you..." they mumbled, then scrunched up their eyes as they covered up a small yawn with one of their hands. Lucifer chuckled softly at this.

"It is very late, so we will get you to bed soon. But before that, surely washing in my bathroom would be a nice course of action, no?" Lucifer asked, resting a hand onto their back gently, and they nodded in response. After spending an hour or more writhing on their unsanitary bathroom floor, becoming overly sweaty in the process, washing up sounded ideal. Yes, they thought, this was ideal. They smiled at Lucifer.

"Thank you, I'd really like that..." they said quietly, voice still a bit weak. Lucifer stroked their back slightly before withdrawing his hand, allowing them to get up.

"I will get things prepared here and bring your pajamas over. You go on ahead." Lucifer said calmly. "I'll be here." He added. The human smiled involuntarily at that, and set off to take a much-needed shower.

---

The human was now fresh and clean, blinking tiredly as they finished putting on their pajamas. Lucifer appeared from the bathroom then, clad in his own pristine black pajama set. He walked over to the human, resting a hand on their upper back and guiding them over to his bed as they stumbled slightly from mental and physical exhaustion.

Lucifer took his hand away and watched the human as they laid down and curled up on his ginormous bed, snuggling into the pillow like a cat. Lucifer smiled gently, grabbing the edge of the duvet and pulling it over the human, catching their curious gaze in the process. He said nothing, continuing on to tuck the edges of the blanket slightly under the human to lessen the amount of cold air that could get under the duvet. He then went to the other side of the bed himself, feeling the human follow him with their gaze as he laid down and pulled the duvet over himself as well.

Lucifer turned out the lights with a wave of his hand, plunging the room into near-pitch-black darkness. He smiled widely now that no one could see him do so, his lingering concern for the human overwritten by his happiness that they had chosen to rely on him and were spending time with him at this very moment. He stared at the human, suddenly noticing them fidgeting with their hands slightly and looking at him still in the darkness.

"Was there something you wanted before we go to sleep, my dear?" Lucifer whispered to the human,his smile audible in the gentle teasing tone it gave to his words. The human was silent for a moment, startled, before they responded.

"Could you... ah, if it's convenient, could you hold me...?" They stumbled over their words, flustered. "You don't have to for long, I just... want to know I'm not alone." Their voice grew quieter at the end.

"Of course." Lucifer said simply, smoothly pulling the human to his chest and wrapping his arm around them, encouraging them to snuggle into him. He petted their head as he continued. "I would like very much to hold you forever, if I could. Though I will settle just for holding you through the night" They sighed in bliss as they sank further into his hold.

"Thank you so much again, Luci... ahh, Lucifer." They said, words slurring together due to their exhaustion. He hummed in acknowledgement, moving on to rubbing slow circles onto their back.

"We will discuss what happened today when you are more awake, darling. Just know that I am always here for you, you just need to call for me." Lucifer said solemnly, closing his eyes as he felt the human's warmth against him. "And as a side note, I don't mind if you call me any nicknames, my dear. Only if it's you." He proclaimed, feeling them smile against his shirt at this statement.

"Well that's good... then, goodnight, Luci. Sleep well..." The human trailed off and closed their eyes, pressing a feather-light kiss to Lucifer's clothed shoulder before relaxing completely in his strong hold.

"Good night, my dear." Lucifer kissed the human's forehead slowly, pulling away after a long moment and closing his eyes. He kept a protective, yet gentle hold on the human as he listened to the human's breathing slow, their anxiety ebbing away. Lucifer felt himself beginning to lose consciousness as well, and surrendered himself to the pull of sleep.

The both of them drifted off together, feeling infinitely warm as they snuggled up to one another. And in that moment, they both felt more safe and secure than either had ever felt for a very, very long time.

#lucifer x reader #obey me x reader #lucifer obey me x reader #obey me lucifer x reader #lucifer obey me #chronic pain reader #spaceii's writing

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weeb-polls-with-pip · 3 months

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Autistic Anime Boys Side A Round 2 Match 7

Propaganda:

Near -

"He's my favorite traumatized autistic character of all time!! I'm autistic and he's just like me frfr!!! Not ONLY does he have the most autistic swag (almost constant on-screen stimming, special interest in toys, menace to society, does not Know Or Care For social rules, my semi-verbal son) but he ALSO has trans swag (if you don't believe me look up his design in the 2020 one-shot or in the 2015 TV Drama) AND he's incredibly controversial amongst Allistic fans so I consider that an autistic win. Anyways, vote for Near or else you hate autistic trans ppl /j (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡"

Mash -

"Mash has an extreme flat affect, his tone of voice barely changes no matter what happens and his facial expression never changes. That's not to say he doesn't feel emotions, he's just hard to read, but he does very much feel emotions. When he breaks a door because he doesn't know whether it's push or pull, he feels bad about it and offers to fix it. When he messes up, he plays cool until he realizes the consequences, and then panics. When he needs to fight someone, it's go time, and when he's fighting for a friend, he gets mad. He's dumb, but has a good heart, and his core motivation is to live in peace and happiness with his adoptive grandpa. Mash is a himbo: dumb, kind, and buff.

Mash has two Special Interests, and he's equally obsessed and knowledgeable about both: working out and cream puffs. He's so obsessed with working out that he sticks to a strict schedule of specific exercises throughout the day, even exercising in the middle of a conversation. He also drinks regular protein shakes and gave his individual muscles names, and he talks to his muscles and pretends they talk back to give himself a pep talk when he's feeling down.

As for cream puffs, they are his all-time favorite food and he is excellent at baking them (though terrible at making anything else). He always carries a cream puff around in his pocket (unsanitary!), and is constantly eating them, even in tense scenes. His cream puff being damaged is one of the few ways he'll express shock on his otherwise deadpan face. He loves cream puffs so much that taking one from him triggers an unconscious nerve reaction to take it back.

The following bits of propaganda are minor spoilers for Mashle:

It's later revealed that Mash's true dream in life is to become a patissier and run a pastry shop that sells cream puffs.

There's one scene near the end of the manga where he smiles, and it gave me intense feels in exactly the same way that Mob laughing at the end of Mob Psycho 100 does."

#tumblr polls #autistic anime boys poll #original poll #near #death note #death note near #near death note #nate river #mash burnedead #mashle #mashle: magic and muscles #dn #near dn #dn near

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quietbluejay · 6 days

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Ahriman: Exile Reread 1

So, I decided not to include my thoughts on the samples I read in between Buried Dagger and this the TLDR: Betrayer: I'm definitely intrigued but it felt like it was being unfair to Magnus :/ Angel Exterminatus: McNeill has really upped his game! The Path of Heaven: slaps roof of warhammer this franchise can fit so much chronic pain into it The Crimson King: this is what got me interested in Lucius originally

And now, the main event: Ahriman: Exile was the second ever WH40k book I ever read (first being Know No Fear), and it was basically the make or break between me staying and me leaving.

story begins with a space wolf pov and man i gotta read a space wolf book at some point, i found out there's a book where a space wolf and a thousand son end up sharing a body and then apparently they become besties so like this is a book written just for me future bluejay note: i read the sample at a later point and the book is on the list now

this guy however in the ahriman novels was as i recall my introduction to warhammer cannibalism And at this point I feel like I should maybe put a content warning. Cannibalism mentions ahead, if you've read the book it's fine, I'm not screenshotting those bits and I'm being even less descriptive

haakon (the pov guy) undergoes an experience that sounds a LOT like he has the butchers nails haakon dude r u ok

you know if i had a nickel every time in this book a dude got stripped and hung from a wall in chains and scribbled on with ink pens by one specific sorcerer i'd have two nickels which is not a lot but man, amon, you need better hobbies note from future bluejay: I misremembered oh i also forgot this bit

im sixteen pages in and we are on our SECOND cannibalism this is really gross i shouldn't have read this right after eating i was going to describe a bit and thought better of it even behind spoiler rip haakon you were alive only for the prologue chapter though wait i feel like he showed up again in a later book??? maybe it was a different gross space wolf

carmenta my beloved blorbo no, self, you have enough cosplays planned her child, for context, is the spaceship she's a rogue techpriest and she's connected to the ship

and here he is the specialest boy the sad wet beast of an evil sorcerer, the platonic ideal of a poor little meow meow

ahriman is uh, not doing very well how the mighty have fallen literally kneeling for an unsanitary blood covered dude who collects evil sorcerers like jewels

viva la vida plays in the background this is, to be honest, an uncomfortable scene, but it really works for setting the mood of the book

meanwhile ahriman is just sitting there like "his main sorcerer is going to betray him i could probably do something but what is the point of doing anything i don't know if all my powers still even work" "it was as if a portion of his soul had shrunken to a wasted shell" and meanwhile gzrel is calling him "a whipped dog among wolves" rip wolf reference ahriman doesn't actually react to that at all khayon would but ahriman basically attempts to repress all his trauma and Does Not Think about it he does that about a lot of things so yay ahriman got chosen to lead the attack on the Titan Child, he's being set up to die ahriman: ok and now over to astraeos who is also blorbo there's a lot of great characters in these books

ok so he's part of the remains of a renegade space marine chapter imperium turned on them without saying why we don't find out about this til a lot later and we find out why waaaay later and it's normally a plot i hate but it was kind of okay here because it fits the story thematically somehow he became the leader of what remains but he has no clue what to say also they're guarding carmenta

Gee I wonder why your powers don’t work any more Do I really need to know about the bloody mucus, French?

the overwhelming message im getting from this is "chaos space marines are gross and unsanitary"

ok i don't remember this either something possessed the dude next to ahriman and now there's frost everywhere it's speaking to ahriman and also everyone else is frosen in time "i am your fate come round at last" spooky note from future bluejay: arc words! arc words!

carmenta: ah my death is here i will be free at last but oops astraeos rescued her ahhh okay so she found him and his brothers floating lost in space and she rescued them and thats why they swore to protect her

ahriman 🤝 carmenta hearing ominous voices behind their thoughts ahriman 🤝 carmenta "you know what just let me die here"

oops ahriman's repression failed traumatic flashbacks to his brother's death time oh yikes rip astraeos he's a prisoner and they took one of his eyes and he's being hung from the ceiling with HOOKS IN HIS SKIN euerrrrgh rusty hooks man french is really going out of his way to emphasize the whats the right term the physical elements and the horrible reality of what it would be like, it's very visceral but also lmao trying to earn the mature rating for the book as if it didn't with the cannibalism

i don't think it's overshooting the horror im just trying to make a joke to lighten my mood because this book gets dark i actually had to take breaks when i was reading it originally because I was in a pretty bad mental place at the time oh yeah ding we have a third character held prisoner naked and hanging from the ceiling though tbh astraeos' situation is worse than haakon's or than future ahrimans will be note from future bluejay: you misremembered, there are 3 times characters are imprisoned and vulnerable and hanging from the ceiling but in only two cases were they naked and cannibalized, no one ate ahriman and he got to keep his tunic. To be fair to past bluejay, it is a weird thing to pop up multiple times in the first place

both of them they were both betrayed by the imperium that created them and outcast by it

astraeos is unsettling ahriman oh this is why he adopts astraeos isn't it

it's because he reminds him of himself and then he shapes astraeos into himself including his own mistakes…. third cannibalism at least it happened offscreen ahriman feel supernatural fear French does a good job at conveying the creeping feeling of something wrong at your back ;-; ahriman kept all the physical things he could from his time in the TS

forget bad mental health day ahriman is having a bad mental health millenium

I can't help but hear this as a riff on the "we should improve society somewhat" meme

so i am STILL not sure if it's the voice of something else in his head or not maybe this time when i finish the trilogy i will have clarity the end got really confusing

oh hey time for him to meet carmenta

and then he warns her to be careful oh gross not the human tallow candles again this was I think my first encounter with them, but sadly not my last of course they didn't do a good job rendering you think these guys know how to properly render anything it explicitly smells like meat

the visitors are thousand sons ahriman basically has a panic attack

oh ahriman is happy :D visitor is someone he knows and actually liked him

ahriman: i'm not alone :D :D :D meanwhile he keeps having visions oops "the vision slipped into his mind like a razor" i love french's similes tolbek threatens gzrel a bit and then ahriman and him talk via telepathy tolbek: you must come with me ahriman: sorry no tolbek surprise attacks it's super effective

annnnd ahriman awakens his power again

after centuries of depression, local man finally feels something and it's joy that he's going to kill someone he knew rip and then ahriman turns into a killing machine rip everyone in the room you're all dead also things get trippy with visions

oh, honey sometimes, having hope is bad because this is wh40k

but this is where it starts he's at his lowest point but he's going to start to climb oh welp he didn't kill one dude just broke his mind

ahriman: i almost feel bad for him then he remembers that this is the guy that ate astraeos' eye and tortured him ahriman: nvm and then for some reason (vision he had) he doesn't kill Maroth seriously at this point i have to think it was something making him not do it the first thing ahriman does is go to free astraeos

the thing he does not want to do is he frees astraeos anyways so now astraeos feels obligated because his honour and obligation are all he has left time for carmenta to be a badass

elmo emoji

anyways the prose is definitely holding up the weird stuff feels weirder, somehow

thinking about how fast ahriman gets attached to carmenta and astraeos but doesn't really admit it to himself which is a repeating pattern in his life thought I had last night: he has the wisdom and critical thinking skills that God gave a slug

let me amend it, that's mean to slugs ahriman does not have the wisdom and sense that God gave a slug i had some thoughts about ahriman and astraeos and some of the themes of this book but they aren't entirely coherent but basically about ahriman being at his kindest when he's at his lowest point mentally and physically and also tbh at his wisest and as he gets in better shape he loses that to his all consuming focus

ahriman is basically the manifestation of that diane di prima poem all he has is a collection of means

#bluejay reads warhammer #warhammer 40k #the real question is who between ahriman and mortarion has the lower WIS stat

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letsbenditlikebennett · 6 months

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TIMING: Current PARTIES: @ironcladrhett @magmahearts & @letsbenditlikebennett SUMMARY: Rhett can sense there's a fae nearby and ends up following Cass towards the Magmacave where she's meeting Alex for date night. Having met Rhett before, Cass is friendly... Rhett? Not so much. CONTENT: Eye trauma, unsanitary (blood)

Date night was something Cass took pretty seriously now that she had a designated date night partner. There were so many things Alex hadn’t experienced throughout her life — an unfortunate side effect of her upbringing and her parents, the oread knew. It made her angry to think about, sometimes, made her upset to know that her girlfriend had suffered so much under the ‘care’ of people who made an active effort not to understand her… but it also meant she got to be the one to help rectify that. And that wasn’t all bad. She could show Alex the best movies, introduce her to the coolest comics. She got to be there to see the way the other girl’s face lit up when she experienced all of that for the first time, and that was a good thing.

It also meant that Cass was bound and determined to make everything as special as she could. She knew what Alex liked now, and she always made an effort to make sure she had as much of it as possible. Everything in the Magmacave was ready for a new kind of movie night. A projector she’d ‘acquired’ from Walmart that worked with her phone, a bunch of snacks she’d stored away just for this moment, blankets and pillows of every shape and size… It was bound to be one for the history books, she thought. She was just finishing up her very last snack run before Alex’s arrival, grocery bags slung over her arms as she made her way back to the cave with the less ‘nonperishable’ of movie night snacks. It was perfect. It was going to be perfect.

She walked towards the cave with a spring in her step, pausing momentarily at the sound of something rustling behind her. If this was a monster that was going to ruin movie night — or worse, try to steal her carefully acquired snacks — she was going to be mad. Cass turned around, putting a hand to her hip as she prepared to scare off whatever animal was there, only to come face to face with a man instead. He looked familiar, though it took her a moment to place him. “Hey, I know you. You were at Alan’s that one time, right? With the pool!” She offered him a bright smile. “You probably shouldn’t be out here at night time. There’s animals and stuff in the woods, you know? You don’t wanna get eaten!”

—

It had been happenstance, really, that he saw the fae girl at the store. He’d not even been inside, but walking past outside when he felt that familiar, horrible feeling that accompanied the presence of fae. Diverting his path and forgoing whatever plans he’d had in mind, Rhett followed the sensation until the girl was in his sights, then tailed her at a respectable distance. She seemed distracted, which was good, or she might’ve noticed sooner that she had a shadow that was following her out of town and towards the Flat. He dropped back even further as their location became more and more remote, careful to just use his senses to keep track of her, even when he couldn’t see her. Not like his eyes were much fucking good, anyway.

She stopped, he stopped. Must have reached her destination, then. Or—oh. No. She’d spotted him. But she wasn’t scared, she was smiling. She recognized him.

He managed to mirror the emotion, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Aye, with the pool,” he confirmed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “That so? Well, don’t worry, I think I can handle any ol’ animal what wants to tango with me,” the warden chuckled. He glanced past her at the cave, brow raised. “You live in there?” he asked. “No judgment… live out the van, myself. Cool cave.”

—

What was he doing out here, she wondered? Had he seen her and grown concerned? It wasn’t entirely unheard of for people to worry when they saw someone Cass’s age walking alone into the woods at night, and he had met her at Alan’s, so maybe he felt some… silly sense of responsibility. It might have been exciting if she didn’t know it would likely be a temporary thing. Most adults only cared about a kid until it stopped being convenient for them to do so, and she doubted Alan’s boyfriend was any different in that regard.

She glanced back to the cave with a shrug, opting not to answer the question verbally. He said he wouldn’t judge, but… Wait. He lived in a van? Cass squinted at him. Hadn’t Aria said the man who’d put her in his van had long gray hair, too? Uneasiness crept down the oread’s spine, but she was quick to shove it away. Alan trusted this guy, and Alex trusted Alan. It was probably just a coincidence, wasn’t it? “What are you doing out here, anyway? Just walking around? It’s kind of late for a hike, moke.” She let her tone take on a teasing lilt in spite of her uneasiness. It wasn’t fair to be suspicious of him, not really. Driving a van and having long hair wasn’t a crime or anything.

—

“Oh, night time walks are pretty much the only thing keepin' me sane these days,” Rhett laughed, though the gesture of friendliness didn't quite meet his eyes. It never seemed to, these days. He thought about how he needed to get in closer without spooking her off, and decided to lean into the misinterpretation she and Alex had had regarding his relationship with Alan. Or lack thereof, if you were the type that cared about semantics. Rhett was not one of those people.

“Anyway, Alan says it's good fer me, so here I am. Walkin' out all the ol' troubles.” He was doing a pretty good job of being convincing, or so he thought. “Spotted you not far back... sorry I didn't call out sooner. Didn't wanna scare you. Guess followin' you ain't a much better choice, eh? Whoops.” He shrugged. “Say, Alex ain't around, is she? Been meanin' to ask her for a wee favor in regards to the grumpy ol' man back home, but ah... if she's here, could just get it outta the way now. You know how it is, I ain't great with the technology.” Now he was just lying, but it didn't really matter if this fae was going to die in the next ten minutes, did it? Besides, he felt this was a pretty decent way of making sure she was alone before moving in for the kill. Or... kidnapping. Again? Couldn't rightly kill her here, what if someone else did show up? What then? No, there'd have to be a secondary location. Didn't matter much where, just not here.

—

Old people did like night time walks, actually. Cass was pretty sure she’d seen commercials featuring old people walking at night while a disembodied voice read off a list of potential side effects, so it made sense that Rhett would rely on them. They probably kept him feeling young, or whatever.

The oread softened a little at the mention of Alan, too, thinking of the two of them at Alex’s mentor’s house the night with the pink pool. Most of it was a little hazy — in retrospect, she so should have recognized the whole ‘high on mushrooms’ thing way before she had — but she remembered thinking they seemed good together. Balanced each other out, in a way, with Alan’s seriousness and Rhett’s willingness to join in on her and Alex’s little game.

“Yeeeaaah,” she said with a small laugh, “following a girl alone in the woods at night isn’t the best way to avoid scaring her, dude. But that’s okay.” At the mention of her girlfriend, she perked up a little. “Oh, she’s not here right now, but we’re meeting up later. I could pass along the message for you? No offense, but I don’t really want you crashing date night with my girl.” She wrinkled her nose at him, a teasing glint in her eye.

—

“Ah! Of course, totally get that, no problem. Here, ah…” He patted his pockets for a second before fishing out a scrap of paper and a pen. “I’ll write it down just in case, howzat?” Not giving her much time to respond, the warden scribbled… well, nothing. It was just scribbles. Clicking the pen shut, he pocketed it again before folding the paper and closing the distance to hand it to Cass. “‘Preciate it, kid.”

As he held out his hand, waiting for her to accept the paper, his heartbeat quickened. And when she mirrored the motion to take it, he struck out like a viper. The paper was dropped as that hand came to circle her wrist instead, the other jumping to her throat. He wasted no time with words, simply twisting them both around until he stood behind her, pinning her arms to her own torso while the other jumped to cover her mouth and stop her screaming. Alex was coming, and there was no telling when she’d arrive. Couldn’t stay here. Rhett began to back away from the cave entrance, dragging the nymph into the brush with some difficulty but not too much, thanks to his superior strength.

—

“Oh, that’s a really good idea!” If he wrote it down, they wouldn’t have to play the telephone game and whatever it was he needed to say wouldn’t have to go through Cass before getting to Alex. She’d probably have a hard time remembering it; when Alex was around, most of Cass’s thoughts were reduced to the gay kind. Rhett writing his thing down was a relief, and she waited patiently as he scribbled. It looked like it was probably going to be messy — she hoped Alex would be able to read it.

When he held out the page, she flashed him a quick grin and reached for it. But before her fingers could close against the paper, he grabbed her. His hand around her wrist was like a vice grip, too tight and bruising. The way he twisted her arm behind her hurt, too; she felt something snap under the pressure, but the resulting scream was muffled by the sudden presence of a second hand covering her mouth. The pain was momentarily blinding, and she checked out for half a second. When she was back to herself, she was already moving. Already being moved. He was dragging her away from the cave, and that was bad. She needed to be in the cave. She didn’t understand what he was doing or why, but she knew she didn’t want it, so she fought back. She kicked at his knees as best she could, tried to bite the hand over her mouth. Her glamour dropped, and she kept screaming throughout even though it was muffled. What was this? Why was he doing this? She didn’t understand.

—

Nearly the whole trek to the magmacave, Alex found herself wishing that she could convince Cass to stay at the cabin with her. She wasn't under some illusion that anywhere in Wicked's Rest was safe, but she at least knew there was no goo at the cabin for the time being. Every time she saw one of the faces around town, entrapped in the sludge that hardened around them, Alex couldn't help but see Cass. The pure black of the sludge was different from the obsidian and magma that made up her girlfriend. Light didn't catch the abnormality or the sludge in quite the same way. It was like there was only darkness there and it scared the hell out of her. She supposed that was part of the problem now. Her heart was too full. There were too many who's single misstep into the goo could break her. She didn't want to keep being a broken thing, not when she was only starting to piece together what she looked like as whole.

Still, Alex wasn't going to let her own worries ruin date night. She was dating a superhero, a little bit of danger came with the territory. If she stopped Cass from protecting her cave, she'd be asking for her to give up some fundamental to who she was. It was part of her. That bravery and dedication to protecting her little piece of nature was something Alex loved about Cass. She found her cheeks grew flush at the thought and she held the little pouch of rocks she'd collected close to her chest.

Her feet followed the familiar path to the cave and Alex smiled at the way she knew the way like the back of her own hand now. It was a pretty thought that was rudely interrupted as she heard what sounded like a whisper of a scream, as if it had been stamped or drowned out, and she felt something shift in her. All of her senses went into overdrive and she followed the sound of footsteps and dragging ahead past the cave.

Part of her wanted to call out, but Alex didn't dare alert anyone to her presence. She could hear sounds and while there was no scream that followed, something heavy was dragging against the forest floor along with the footsteps and she had to follow it. She could smell Cass and something else vaguely familiar.

She ran past the cave with careful steps. Alex moved as quickly as she could, avoiding patches of dead leaves that would crumble under her steps and alert someone to her presence. It had been a good move because when she rounded a tree, she was taken aback by what she saw. Cass's glamour was off and she could see a charred mark around her wrist.

Then there was Rhett, holding her by the throat with hand over her mouth and Alex felt sick. What was this? She knew. Part of her knew right away, but it couldn't be right. Cass wasn't a monster to be hunted. It didn't compute in her mind despite what her eyes were showing her. Her eyes had to be betraying her.

“Cass,” she called, “Rhett.” She looked between the two, begging for the picture to adjust and show her anything else, but it never did. Her fists clenched at her side and her features hardened as she found herself glaring at the warden. “Let go of her,” she demanded coldly, “Now.“

—

Rhett paid the screams no mind, determined to get Cass away from the cave mouth before someone came along. Someone like Alex. But, as was typical of late, the universe had other ideas, and those ideas consisted of throwing as massive a wrench in his plans as possible.

Goddamnit.

“Doin’ you a favor, kid.” There was no surprise in Alex’s voice to see the nymph looking the way it did now, glamour dropped. That didn’t make things easier. She was a fae sympathizer. Fuck. Well, there was no point in trying to haul it off somewhere else before killing it, now. The thought that it might traumatize Alex to see her friend be killed crossed his mind but he didn’t care—just like he didn’t care about the fact that this would certainly… complicate things. He’d be alienating himself again. From Alex, which was no great loss, but then also probably from Alan, who he had a feeling she’d tattle on him to. That one hurt a little, but there was nothing to be done about it. The fae had to go. He’d wanted to see if it knew of anyone in the area named Ophelia, but that wasn’t gonna happen now. No, all he could do was draw his iron dagger and press it to Cass’ temple, his battle-hardened gaze fixed on Alex.

“Go on, nymph. Tell yer girl here how you’ve definitely never ever hurt someone. Definitely never killed anyone with yer promise binds.” It was literally a shot in the dark, but honestly, Rhett had met more fae that had killed with their words than he’d met ones that hadn’t. Not that it mattered, not that it’d stop him from burying that blade in the creature’s skull. But maybe, just maybe, it’d give Alex some clarity on the situation.

—

She was afraid, and she hated that. She hated the way her heart was pounding, the fact that she couldn’t think straight. She was a superhero. She was supposed to be a superhero. And what good was a superhero if she was trembling? What was a terrified hero worth?

(About as much as a dead one, she thought, and if the hand around her throat was any indication, she’d be that soon, too.)

She kicked and struggled and screamed against the hand still pressed over her mouth, but Rhett was strong. It was like he didn’t notice her struggles at all, like she was a fly pounding against a glass someone had trapped her in. Her arm hurt where he’d twisted it; she thought she could feel bones grinding together in a way they really shouldn’t have been, like maybe something had broken. And the only thought her half-hysterical mind could come up with was that she’d never had an x-ray before. She’d only ever seen them on TV.

There was a quiet vibration of approaching footsteps, muted by her panic. She screamed against Rhett’s hand again, as loud as she could, and it was shameful. She wasn’t someone who needed saving. She was supposed to be the one who did the saving, supposed to be brave and fearless and invincible. But she saw a flash of red hair cutting through the brush, and all she could feel was a crushing relief because Alex was here. Alex was here, and Cass would be safe because Alex wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

The hand covering her mouth vanished, but Cass had only a moment to bask in the relief of it before something cold pressed against her temple. Even without the sharpness actually being driven in, the mere presence of the metal against her skin hurt. She didn’t understand it for a moment. Not until she remembered what Alex and Teagan had told her about fae and iron, about how there were metals made to kill her. Cass froze all at once, terrified that any continued struggle might make that blade find its home in her skull.

Rhett spoke; she felt the vibration of his voice rise up from his chest, like a dragon growling into the darkness. Her heart stuttered, because how had he known about that? How did he know about Kuma? Her eyes darted to Alex, fear suffocating her just as much as the hand gripping her throat. If Alex knew, would she leave Cass here? Would she walk away the same way everyone always had?

“How many people have you killed?” She ground out, her voice distorted by the lack of glamour and strained by the hand around her throat. “You want to — want to talk about hurting people? You’re the one with the knife.”

Avoidance. It was a good way to lie without lying. Cass had always been so good at that.

—

There was a breath of a second where Alex found herself unable to move. She didn't trust herself to move. Every muscle in her body was already tensed as she watched the pained, contorted expression on Cass's face and the way Rhett seemed almost amused by it. Her arrival seemed to be more an annoyance than anything else and she wasn't sure she had ever felt so much anger coursing through her. It took everything in her to not snarl and pounce the moment she saw him, but maybe he didn't know.

How could Rhett know that Cass was a superhero? How could he know that she spent her nights looking for people to help? She was good, maybe if he knew that, it'd make a difference. She wanted so badly for it to make a difference.

It was naive. Alex knew as much. Without the beard, there was no hiding the determined look on his face. There was a stubbornness in the tightness of his jaw that she recognized too well and even his touch was hurting Cass. “You're not doing anyone any favors here,” she spat, “Cass is good. She saves people and picks up litter... Doesn't look like you bothered to ask that though.”

Because Alex knew that when he happened upon her, Cass hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary. She was at the cave, probably about to get it all set up for their date night. She wasn't hurting anybody and here he was, holding her tightly in his grip like she was a thing that needed to be put down. He wouldn't even say her name. Her fists curled into balls at her side. “I don't need a man to tell me anything about my girl,” she barked out, “I know everything I need to know about Cass and she's good.”

'Unlike you,' she thought bitterly.

But then the iron blade was pressing into Cass's temple and Alex knew this was useless. That look in Rhett's eyes reminded her too much of her father's. There was no reasoning with that look and suddenly all the anger she had finally allowed herself to feel towards her parents had a convenient outlet.

Alex let the green backpack slide off her shoulder and into the mess of fallen leaves on the ground. She thought of warning the warden this was his last chance to get away unscathed, but a warning was more kindness than Rhett deserved. Even with her true face, stony as it was, Alex could see the fear in her glowing eyes and her voice was so strained. He did that.

She didn't let her eyes leave Rhett as she focused on the shift. Alex had been practicing and even had some success when it came to tracking down Gael with Ren, but she always closed her eyes when she pictured her own shift. She found she couldn't do that now and her glare remained trained on Rhett as she focused on the feelings in her body. She felt the ground beneath her boots and concentrated on how it felt when it was the forest floor beneath her paws. She imagined Rhett as the moose, muscles and sinew pulling apart beneath her claws and teeth. She remembered that feeling of connection that came with being part of a pack and how she felt more connected to Cass than any of the werewolves she knew.

Alex tuned into how the werewolf in her felt when it was protecting Alan and she felt the claws emerging from her fingers. It stung lightly in the way they ripped from her skin, but it felt almost natural now, like slipping out of her sports bra at the end of a long day. Her bones creaked under her and red tufts of fur emerged from her skin, but icy blue eyes stayed trained on the warden, as if she could pounce mid shift if he so much as moved another inch to hurt Cass.

She stood taller once her bones all shifted into place and drool was already hanging from angry jowls as she snarled at the warden. One last chance, the wolf thought. If her mark moved a muscle, she would tear out his gut and leave him there on the forest floor.

—

“I don’t kill people, I kill abominations. I kill killers. S’what I was made for.” Rhett’s expression was callous, his heart unsympathetic to the claims that the nymph in his grasp had done good things in its life. That didn’t matter, that didn’t make up for the bad. Hell, it didn’t even make up for the potential bad, as far as he was concerned. That was what he’d been taught. They’d all do bad, given enough time. It wasn't their fault, not entirely. It was just in their nature. But that didn’t mean he had to sit by and let it happen. And he wouldn’t, not if he could help it. Not ever.

There was something about Alex’s body language that felt threatening, and soon enough, the warden was made to see why. Ah. Well… that was… a surprise. His eyes narrowed, his grip on the fae tightening. He didn’t have a lot of experience fighting werewolves, or at least… not shifted ones. He knew a bite from one would be his undoing, if it didn’t kill him. Which it seemed like Alex kind of wanted to do. Couldn’t blame her. Didn’t change anything, except that he’d have to try and kill her as well.

Hey, at least then maybe the news wouldn’t make it back to Alan. Silver linings.

The werewolf was staring him down like he’d be an easy meal, and he couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what he looked like to the supernatural things he killed. Hm. Wasn’t really food for thought. To the matter at hand—Rhett wrenched his arm up beneath the oread’s chin to hold its head in place so he could drive the blade into its temple, but he’d barely pierced the soft, thin space between rocky plates when the werewolf adjacent to him leaped forward, claws reaching out and slashing across his face, massive digits hooking around his head and ripping him away from the nymph. His blade did find purchase, but it was in the top of the fae’s shoulder, digging deep before his grip on it yanked it back out as he was thrown to the forest floor. He screamed, not out of fear but out of anger, feeling the adrenaline dump in his system as he wrestled with the beast atop him, trying to avoid a bite from those slobbering jaws.

—

Abominations. Killers. The words were hurled out in a way that was so matter of fact, not even spoken to Cass. Like she wasn’t worth speaking to at all, like she was nothing. She thought of the nymphs back on the island who’d never seen her as anything more than an inconvenience, of the kids she’d met throughout her ‘adventures’ as a homeless teen who were lost and traumatized just like she was and didn’t know how to get away from that without using someone else as a stepping stone. She thought of Kuma, of the look on her face when she’d finally seen Cass in her true form, of the fear in her eyes when she spat out the word monster instead of her name and told her never to come back.

So many people, throughout her life, had treated her like she was nothing at all. She’d been a problem in the making in Hawai’i, a ticking timebomb whose eruption no one had wanted to be in the blast zone of. After, when she’d found herself alone on the mainland, she’d been largely ignored. Homeless kids were hard to look at, after all. They made people feel ways they didn’t like feeling, and it was so much easier for someone to avert their gaze than it was to do anything to help. Kuma hadn’t been a bad person, either, not really. She’d been afraid, but not malicious. Cass had just been a little too much for her, the same way she was a little too much for everyone.

But she wasn’t too much for Alex.

Alex didn’t look at her like she was nothing, didn’t avert her eyes. In fact, Alex looked at her like she was everything. She looked angry right now, but not at Cass. Never at Cass. Instead, she was angry for Cass. She was furious on the oread’s behalf, and how many people had ever been that? How many people would have stood up for her against a man with a knife and a terrible certainty that what he was doing was right?

It didn’t remove the blade from where it rested against her skull. It didn’t ease the grip holding her in place. But if that knife found its home in her head, if she died on the forest floor just feet away from the cave where she would have been safe, at least she’d die seen. She’d never thought she’d have that before.

“I’m sorry,” she squeaked out. Not to Rhett. She wasn’t sorry to him at all. But to Alex. That she was here, that she had to see this even if Cass was grateful for it. There was more she wanted to say, too, but it seemed cruel, almost. To say the only other thing in her head and die right after would be terrible. Alex would never be the same.

But… hope sprung up in her chest as Alex’s skin began to ripple. Cass knew she’d been working with Alan, training to shift without the moon, but she hadn’t known how far she’d come with it. She never would have blamed Alex if the shift hadn’t come, of course, never would have held it against her. But her bones were cracking and her body was changing and maybe things would be all right after all.

Or maybe they wouldn’t.

One hand moved under her chin, holding her in place. Cass struggled anyway, letting out a scream as she kicked and swung her elbows and did anything she could to make the target harder to hit. She felt the knife pierce her head, and she closed her eyes and waited for it to go the rest of the way through, but it didn’t. Alex was there.

There was only a heartbeat of relief before the pain hit. For a moment, she hadn’t even realized that the knife landed someplace else. She was so happy to be alive that it took her a moment to process the knife in her shoulder, buried to the hilt. The moment her mind caught up, the pain hit. With the hands holding her in place gone, there was nothing holding her upright, either, and Cass staggered forward, falling down to her knees.

The knife had been yanked messily from her shoulder when Rhett fell backwards, leaving nothing to staunch the bleeding. The blood had followed the knife like a fountain when it was removed, and was gushing pretty heavily now. Cass moved to put a hand on top of it, because wasn’t that what they always did in the movies? But her arm hurt from where it had been wrenched, and any pressure applied made it so much worse. The blood seeped through her rocky fingers, staining stone.

She felt cold. And that was funny, wasn’t it? She didn’t think she’d ever been cold before. How could she? There was magma running through her veins, lava pumping through her. Volcanoes didn’t get cold, and neither did Cass. So why was she shivering now?

“Alex,” she gasped out, looking for the wolf. There was blood on the ground. Not all of it was hers. Fear gripped her by the throat. “Alex. I — Alex, are you hurt?”

—

The furious gaze of icy blue eyes never left the warden. They couldn't—- not while Cass was so firmly in his grip. Alex felt a low growl rumble through her. He regarded Cass like she was nothing and it all clicked into place. Nothing was ever black and white and men like Rhett, like her father, were too stubborn to see anything else. It was its own form of evil and she knew he wouldn't let Cass go. As the warden's arm began to move, the werewolf sprung forward claws first toward him.

Alex dug her claws firmly into the side of his head and dragged down his face, clinging onto him as her momentum sent them tumbling to the ground. Too much of the blood she smelled in the air wasn't his and it sent a guttural snarl through the wolf as jowls hung over the warden's face. Some part of her wanted to let go of control and tear into his throat. It'd be so easy even as Rhett wrestled beneath her. Both the wolf and person in her understood one thing, this man threatened the pack— her family.

The warden wrestled beneath her and Alex rustled atop of him keeping sharp claws at the ready. Several blows were delivered to her sides before the warden managed a shove that sent her stumbling back with her claws dragging as he pushed her away from his head, leaving shallow claw marks down his chest. It ignited more of a fighting instinct in her, more feral than anything trained, and the pulsing in his throat was something of a temptation. The coppery scent of his blood already coated the air and he was beginning to look like more of a meal. And some instinct in her knew that he deserved it.

But then the sound of her name came out as a gasp and Alex was pulled back to what was important. Cass. The werewolf bellowed and put all her strength into a swipe at the warden's upper leg. More blood splattered onto the werewolf's coat and she knew the warden wouldn't be moving for a while. Some bitter part of her hoped he bled out there.

The werewolf dashed towards Cass and stood in front of her protectively. Alex grabbed the fallen iron knife with her still clawed hand and waited a beat, panting heavily as she watched the warden to make sure they were safe to run.

As her breathing slowed, Alex relaxed back into feeling like herself. She needed to help Cass now, she was bleeding and it was pooling all around her. The sight made her sick but her bones shifted back into place and her form turned back into something more human. The air was chilly against her skin, but she still felt like she was on fire.

“Cass,” she murmured, “I'm fine— I'm...“ Alex looked over Cass and there was so much blood. Fuck. She needed to get help. “He hurt you,” she said solemnly, grabbing for the bag that had fallen to the ground and throwing on an oversized t-shirt. They needed to get far away from Rhett.

She knelt down beside Cass eyes still watching the fallen warden. Alex extended her arm and braced herself to take on Cass's weight. ”Come on,“ she said, “We have to get out of here— I'll take care of you, ok? You're going to be ok.“ She had to be ok.

—

For the briefest of moments, there was a flash of fear in the warden’s eyes. For a moment, terror gripped him, plunging him into an proverbial ice bath and delivering a shock to his system that woke parts of him that’d been dormant for decades. He didn’t beg, though, no—he only grit his teeth, set his jaw, and closed those useless eyes as he hiked his legs up to his chest and delivered a two-footed kick that knocked the werewolf away from him. The claws that raked across his chest and stomach pulled a groan from him, but he quickly tensed again as he waited for the beast to return. He couldn’t muster the strength to rise from the forest floor, and just as quickly as that instinctual drive to stay alive had descended upon him, it fled and left him empty once more. He coughed, blood staining the backs of his teeth, and then he felt the thing tearing into his leg. It ripped through denim, muscle, and bone with ease, and the pain was blinding. Truly blinding. What little sight remained in his right eye flashed with white and all he could do was inhale sharply, feeling that he might die. Was this it? At the mercy of a werewolf? Motherfucker.

But then the monster was gone, retreating to aid the fae he’d stabbed, and Rhett let out a low, miserable moan. He tried to pick himself up, but his leg was ripped apart and the wounds on his face were bleeding into his eyes and everything hurt. All he could do was lay there, listening to them speak, promising to take care of one another. It made him sick to his stomach, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He was down, and unless someone came to get him like the werewolf was there to aid the fae, he’d probably bleed out.

He waited until their uneven footsteps retreated before he dared move again, lifting his ass off the dirt with a pained grunt and digging his phone out of his back pocket. Holding the device between his teeth, the warden summoned the last of his strength to drag himself over to the nearest tree and prop his back against it, spitting out the phone and retching from the pain along the way. Once he was as settled as he was going to get, he reached for the phone and unlocked it, staring at the screen with exceptionally blurry, reddened vision. His thoughts were disjointed and growing more so by the minute—the clock was ticking, he knew. He thought about contacting Emilio, but… no.

His thumb found Parker’s name instead, and he pressed the call button. There was only a brief wait before the other warden picked up, and Rhett wasted no time with pleasantries.

“Werewolf got me. Probably got ‘bout twenty minutes afore I bleed out. Bring supplies. It’s safe now. Send you the coordinates in a sec. Somewhere near the edge of the Flat.” He didn’t even wait for the other man to respond before hanging up, looking up his longitude and latitude and sending the number his friend’s way. If he made it out of this alive, he was definitely going to have to spring for that eyepatch. He was pretty sure lefty was toast based on feeling alone, but didn’t have the stomach to reach up and touch it. The phone slipped from his hand then, head leaning back against the trunk of the skinny tree, eyes closing again as he focused on keeping his heart rate down.

Hellfire, that hadn’t gone to plan.

—

Black spots danced around the edge of her vision, and wasn’t it strange how everything hurt when she’d only been stabbed in one place? There was just that — bleeding more than she’d thought it would — and the broken arm, but wasn’t it silly for those two things to knock her down this hard? She thought of the comics she’d read, the movies she’d seen. In media, this kind of thing would have never been enough to keep someone down. People on TV got stabbed and finished the fight before they realized it had happened at all. People in comics lost limbs and stayed on their feet. It was misleading, she thought; none of it ever told you how much things hurt.

Alex’s face was blurry in front of her, those black spots trying as hard as they could to blot it out entirely. Cass squinted around them, letting out a small sigh when she came into focus. Alex didn’t look hurt. There was blood on her, but Cass couldn’t trace it back to any injuries. More likely, the blood wasn’t hers. She wondered how much of it was Rhett and how much of it had come from her. If she weren’t so out of it, she might have asked, might have said something about how it was almost romantic to see so much of her on her girlfriend’s skin. “You’re so beautiful,” she said instead, the words a quiet breath of air.

“I’m okay,” she murmured softly, reaching up to twist a strand of Alex’s hair around her finger absently. It hurt, but it was worth it, anyway. Alex’s hair was always so pretty, and Cass hadn’t touched it enough. She should have always had it twisted around her finger like this, should have kept it there. “I’m just kind of tired.” She knew you weren’t really supposed to sleep at a time like this, because that was always a dramatic point in every show, too. Someone was bleeding, someone closed their eyes. The episode faded to black, the words to be continued flashed across the screen. The audience waited weeks or months to find out if those eyes would open again, or the show was canceled and they never found out at all. Either way, it was simpler to experience it from your sofa than it was to live it. When this screen faded to black, Cass thought, she might never even see the words.

Alex reached down and helped her up, and it hurt, but Alex wanted her to walk so she walked. Or… maybe walked was a generous term. She was dragged, she was half-carried, she was draped over Alex and guilty for making her girlfriend do the majority of the work here when she’d done so much already. She stared at her feet, tried to get them to move. One foot in front of the other. One foot. The other. God, had her feet always been so heavy? Had it always been so cold here?

She faltered, tripped, would have fallen long ago if not for Alex holding her up. The black spots were bigger now, the world felt darker than it ought to. One foot stopped in front of the other, and she couldn’t lift it again. Her knees buckled.

The screen faded to black, and she was right — she couldn’t read the words there.

#eye trauma tw #unsanitary tw #wr cass #wr rhett #threads; with cass #threads; with rhett #threads; with cass; fade to black #threads; with rhett; fade to black #(the moonlight is blinding) ;; season 1 writing #(never been a natural all i do is try try try) ;; writing

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killemwithkawaii · 2 years

Note

HC that Sal would 100% be into pet play.

Between the constant slurs and his fear of dogs, it just ends up arousing him to no end.

He will also 100% kneel at your feet if you ask him to UWU

This got so much longer than I intended sdlkfald Enjoy UwU 👍💕

Puppy Play with Sal-

[CW: NS/FW (grapefruit), degradation, dumbification, unsanitary]

>See this is what happens when the trauma to kink pipeline is actually a drop slide into a very deep pool lolol

>I love this hc because on one hand, Sal is a self-conscious sweetheart who absolutely deserves the love and praise that a prized housepet would receive, despite him often believing otherwise. Participating in petplay scenes would offer him comfortable surroundings free of judgement, unconditional affection from a trusted source, reassurance that he's wanted and valued for just being himself, and an unwavering sense of safety he doesn't have to work to maintain. Plus, he'd get all of his favorite treats and toys to play with (as long as he acts like the good boy that he is!) 🤗💕

>On the other hand, Sal is intelligent and impressively quick-witted. He has so much on his mind, is always looking out for the next threat, and his go-to defense mechanisms are coming up with complicated schemes, thinking up convincing fibs, or turning the snark up to 11. Constantly having his gears turning like that takes a lot of effort- I say the guy needs a break! Petplay scenes would give Sal some time to turn his brain off, let someone else do the thinking for him, and allow him to just exist in the moment without worrying about what's to come. I can't think of a better way to do that than to turn him into a dumb, drooly puppy whos only responsibility is to follow simple commands and otherwise relax at his S/O/owners feet! (Plus, how fun would it be to see the typically smart-mouthed Sally so deep in subspace that he can't even string a sentence together? It would be adorable and we all know it UwU)

>He has to ease into petplay very gradually and needs a lot of positive reinforcement along the way. It was hard to convince him to try it in the first place, so don't expect him to crawl and bark on the first, or even the fifth go. Baby steps!!

>Slow to start acting the part, but tries his best every time and is a VERY good boy 🥺🏆

>Lapdog4lyfe- he loves laying his head in his owners lap and watching TV with them (though he tends to fall asleep pretty quickly if they start petting him). This would be an excellent starting point for getting him into pet play and/or lulling him into puppy space ✅

>Sal has a very difficult time eating out of a bowl. Hand-feeding is a better option, unless you don't mind half of his meal ending up on the floor and on his face. 🦴

>Likes bath time a lot more than he expected (just be extra careful not to get soap in his eyes or mouth!) 🧼

>His pigtails make PERFECT puppy ears and look SO CUTE swaying side-to-side when he's crawling around on all fours 😭👏💖💖💖

>Drool. Just… so much drool like goddamn someone grab a mop lol

>His gearboy is his favorite toy in or out of puppy mode, so he's not a fan of paw mitts. Only use them if needs a short reminder not to use his hands for 'people things'.

>However, he would not need much convincing to wear a puppy hood and collar, and he might end up adding them into rotation with his other everyday masks if it's comfortable enough. (He already had a gimp hood he wore ironically, so a puppy hood probably wouldn't raise any eyebrows.) 🤷‍♂️

>Sprinkles in a little mild bratting once he's gotten really comfortable with this kind of play (playing keep-away with toys, making a show of doing the opposite of commands, putting one paw on the couch when he's been told he's not allowed on the furniture, etc.). He's just having some fun, but that behavior can be quickly corrected with a good stern look if you're not in the mood to deal with a 'naughty' pup atm. 😠

Obligatory links:

Drawing of Pup!Sal during a rough scene [CW: VERY NS/FW (grapefruit), sadomasochism, injury, blood, unsanitary, degradation, bondage, nudity]

Sal with an S/O who consensually bullies him [CW: NS/FW (grapefruit), sadomasochism, unsanitary, degradation]

#k.e.w.k. writes #danu chan #sal fisher #sal fisher x y/n #sal fisher x reader #sorry steve #grapefruit #tw unsanitary #tw degradation #tw sadomasochism #tw dumbification #I like how i post almost nothing for a week and then i leave this kind of shit on your dashs out of nowhere dljsakdfj #'HI GUYS LONG TIME NO SEE HOPE UR READY TO GET NASTYYY UWU'

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wickedsrest-rp · 10 months

Text

Name: Wilhelmina "Mina" Harper Species: Hunter (Ranger) Occupation: Unemployed Age: 33 Years Old Played By: Sionnach Face Claim: Phoebe Tonkin

"You seem familiar, have I threatened you before?"

TW: Sibling death, unsanitary, self harm, torture

The very beginning of the Harper family history, began in Wicked’s Rest. Generations stood in front of the family estate, glaring from behind glass or smirking in oil paints, their eyes following you as you trod up the stairs. Sometimes Wilhelmina swore she felt her family’s eyes on her, even away from the portraits. Her childhood was a normal one for a hunter. A distant father with secrets buried so far deep they wouldn’t have seeped out in death, and a mother who always seemed like she had been too soft for the life she lived. But Wilhelmina was under no illusion that she had the worst childhood, not the one most hunters could claim. A hard and strict upbringing was the way of life for her kind. It was to harden you, remind you of all the dangers of the world, and your civic duty to keep the light on for those who could not protect themselves. Mina even kind of loved it, when her muscles ached and her bruises throbbed, it meant she was still living. The deaths of uncles, aunts, cousins, and family friends kept a stark reminder of why most hunters liked to be alone, why the families liked to keep affection to a dull roar… you would lose everyone eventually.

Despite the lifestyle of a hunter, the loss of her mother meant the same to Mina as the loss of any mother would. It was the end of secret looks when her father got too loud, or intricate braids while the crickets chirped, her mothers deft hands making it quick work without all the tangles Wilhelmina seemed to find in her hair. It was the end of being called Billie, or someone else placing a band-aid on her torn skin. Watching the fire destroy her mother’s history, and her father's new girlfriend wrapping her fingers around his wrist meant the end of softness. If she thought her tenth birthday was the end of being a child she had not been properly prepared for the death of the woman who had nurtured her.

It felt different when Debbie had been born. It didn’t feel like the return of being cared for, but rather as if it was Mina’s job to give all that love and softness to the screaming red faced child. There were countless baby photos, special toys and secret giggles as Mina found a kernel of warmth in her chest she thought had gone missing all those months ago. Debbie was going to be her best friend. Even if the woman Debbie would call mom and the man they would call father had taken Mina’s mother out of this world. Sisterhood would come before all of the pain that parents passed down like old dirty change. It brought Mina hope in the middle of the night, as she murdered and tortured. They were going to change the meaning of the name Harper, they were going to paint that ugly room when it was their turn to live in the family estate. The future was within reach… that is until her step-mother ran off in the middle of the night, taking two year old Debbie with her and any chance of happiness that Mina could have grasped onto. The night her baby sister was gone, so was Mina. Her jeep held her most important possessions: a go bag, her bow, the teddy bear that Mina had bought the day Debbie was born and the kitten that they had picked out together.

The years passed like water through a sieve. Mina thought she could hang up her hunter life, change her destiny and she did for a time. His name was Julian and they loved each other for eight months, four days , 3 hours and one two thousand dollar diamond ring …until he found her hunter trunk that she had kept hidden under a floorboard. Until he looked at her like she was the monster. It’s not that he didn’t believe in what she tried so desperately to explain to him, it’s that he thought it was wrong. Her brain could simply not wrap around a human telling her that dispatching with creatures that would murder for fun, would suck him dry just for the hell of it, scratch, scare, haunt. Mina didn’t see her father in her, not until she was throwing glass cups at the walls and screaming, watching Julian's eyes go wide and his body shake with uncontrolled rage. He had told her she was heartless, without morals. The cops came shortly after, ‘a noise complaint’, she stared numbly as she watched him pack his bags and walk out forever.

It was Debbie who had found her, Mina had always wanted to respect her new life. They were moving back to Maine now that their father had been off on some mission in South America for several years at this point. They had caught up, spent all their free time together and Mina had begun teaching Debbie everything she knew. Wilhelmina saw that future she had seen as a teenager once again when she looked into her sister's eyes, they were going to do it together, they were going to make it. Mina was going to shadow Debbie when she had mentioned she was going on her first solo mission, but wanted to put faith in her sister. It was the biggest regret of her life, it always would be.

A trail of death follows her. It was worse right after, any supernatural being quickly became a part of her body count as her hunt for her sister’s murderers ramped up. Mina has slowed down now, her methods becoming a lot more streamlined and not manic driven fury. Still the emptiness behind her eyes is haunting, and no one is safe.

Character Facts:

Personality: Bold, independent, charismatic, creative, loyal, domineering, possessive, stubborn, vengeful, brooding

Wilhelmina is named after the character in Dracula, her late mother was rather enamored with Vampire books and Wilhelmina was her favorite heroine. Of course when the naming time came she blamed it on the meaning ‘Resolute Protection.’

Mina took custody of Debbie’s kitten ‘Meow’ after Debbie’s disappearance. They still live together to this day.

Mina hasn’t been back to her childhood home since she was 16, instead she resides in a spacious apartment in the downtown area.

She’s the last surviving Harper direct descendent.

Wilhelmina favors a recurve bow over other ranged weapons, but she has a special fondness for her twin daggers she wears in thigh holsters. She only uses a gun when she’s undercover.

There’s two things that Mina is actually addicted to. Coffee & cigarettes. While the Harper family has no shortage of money, Mina has taken to making both of them into a meditative skill. She rolls her own cigarettes, and bought a top of the line espresso machine, flat out refusing to buy ‘to go’ coffee. She’s convinced she makes a better cup than the rest of the world.

Mina uses two modes of transportation her jeep and her motorcycle, She doesn’t follow a single speed law in either.

Her favorite book genre is romance and she highlights or bookmarks the dirty parts.

She chopped her hair off when Julian left her, and while now it’s growing back its extremely uneven and choppy.

#sibling death tw #unsanitary tw #self harm tw #torture tw #human #retired

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familyabolisher · 1 year

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[image description: nine tumblr users asking me to talk about triangle of sadness. /end]

SO glad you all asked, completely unprompted. anyway, triangle of sadness is about, in short, a luxury cruise ship sinking and leaving a handful of guests and staff stranded on an island. its principle driving force is this mostly-untapped, vague little handwave towards an ‘eat the rich’-type affect; a lot of its humour relies on moderately exaggerating and satirising (or, god, attempting to satirise) the behaviours of rich people—absurdity, hollowness, vacuity, whatever. you have a guest who insists on all the staff members going for a swim, and one who repeatedly complains that the sails are dirty (despite, as we later learn, the ship not having any sails). this sort of thing is very mid-tier satire. it’s not especially imaginative or cutting, and it doesn’t say very much besides, like, the idea that money makes you alienated and entitled. which … is not enough to carry a film on, lol.

the problem is that the film draws these incredibly broad, clumsy strokes around class politics, and never really puts in the effort to actually take them in a direction that says anything. the greatest heights it ever achieves are ones where it manages to say that some socialists are hypocrites and wealthy people are ridiculous. again—so what? there’s a scene where a russian millionaire and the wealthy marxist ship’s captain (“a russian capitalist and an american communist,” as the joke goes) try to talk about politics but just google quotes from their respective political heroes and repeat them back to one another, which says very little beyond the idea that wealth makes political ideology shallow and performative. this is worthless to me; this is not creative or original commentary. (this is, like … this was the ethos of knives out? cmon.) or like, there’s a wealthy british couple who inform us that they made their wealth ‘bringing democracy,’ which they then clarify to mean that they worked in weapons manufacturing—which was, honestly, insultingly heavyhanded. it’s not an especially clever joke; it’s patronising. (there were a lot of attempts at wit in this film. none of them landed.) in a similar vein, there’s a bit where the marxist captain talks over the intercom about the US’ invasion and installation of puppet dictators in latin american countries. this + the ‘we brought democracy [to the global south] through weapons development, har har har’ part didn’t at all feel like the kind of sharp commentary that the film wanted it to be; it just felt insulting to cast the spectre of imperialist violence in a film that had absolutely nothing to say about it. to use imperialist violence in the global south as a cheap conduit for irritating jokes or very poor efforts at ‘commentary’ on, idk, isn’t this wealthy captain a bad socialist (and isn’t this such a salient thing to say about communism) is just … gross. and betrays the film’s major failing: that it can’t take its own political imaginary seriously enough to give itself any meat at all.

(the weapons manufacturers later get blown up by one of their own weapons, btw. which, lol. it’s not bad but it would’ve been more satisfying if the film hadn’t been so transparently smug about how Great its politics were.)

[content warning for emetophobia, also just unsanitary in general] about halfway through, there’s a sequence that’s literally about twenty minutes long which just consists of the guests getting food poisoning and graphically vomiting and shitting themselves on-screen. this sequence includes, for example, footage of god knows how much diarrhoea spewing out of a septic tank, close-ups on guests vomiting, shots of people on the toilet, and so on, with the apparent aim of this scene being … you know, humiliate rich people by making them shit and vomit everywhere, i guess? it’s toilet humour. it invites the audience to laugh at the rich people, at least in part due to the way the film wants you to imagine them to have brought it on themselves—by fine dining, by the implication that the food poisoning was caused by food being left to spoil when the crew were made to go for a swim, whatever—but it’s, again, devoid of really mobilising anything. after spending twenty minutes watching rich people get ill (which is a cheap shot for humiliation anyway, btw—i do think jokes about incontinence are ableist, besides just being humour for seven year olds) and being expected to laugh at it, the film hasn’t so much as made a dent in unspooling some commentary on their wealth in the first place. it’s not intelligent or thoughtful satire. ‘what if rich people shat themselves onscreen’ is not an interesting thought. [end content warning]

the only truly compelling character the film has to offer is abigail, a cleaner whose survival skills after the shipwreck allow her to take command of the other survivors and demand that she be referred to as ‘captain.’ at the end, once they’ve found potential rescuers, one of the former guests (yaya, an ‘influencer,’ because influencers are lowball for Mocking Rich People—ohhh they’re so vapid and self-absorbed and obsessed with their phones etc etc. this is frankly about as salient and thoughtful as this film’s political commentary manages to get. lol) offers her a job as her assistant, and abigail is implied to kill her with a rock—in response to that request but also seemingly to prevent a return to the old order by which she was underclassed. unfortunately, abigail barely gets any fucking time to develop on the screen, largely due to the aforementioned twenty minute sequence. the pacing of the film is horrible, and the third act feels so rushed that anything actually compelling that could’ve been eked out of abigail’s character gets glossed over and collapsed.

the film even had threads it could’ve picked up to say something of substance about capitalism, imperialism, whatever—abigail was filipina and a subordinate to paula, her white superior, but the racial element of her underclassing is never addressed and you don’t exactly get the sense that the film thinks about it. one of the other survivors is Black; again, no effort to think about how racialisation affects his relationship with the wealthy white clientele save for a stupid joke about him thinking that people are being racist towards him. one of the wealthy survivors is disabled—the film is very happy to align her with the other Rich People™ rather than taking the opportunity to interrogate how disability disadvantages her in maintaining her class position. it’s a film that wants to be interested in class, capitalism, maybe at a stretch even imperialism, but has no sense of how to say anything thoughtful and worthwhile about it, so has to fall back on boring fucking narratives of power as corruptive and (literal) toilet humour. it’s shallow. i felt patronised the whole way through.

i really just kept thinking—who is this for? what do we actually get out of making a spectacle of rich people for a bit? what’s been said? at the end of the day, what has this actually tried to push me to think about? and it’s: nothing! completely pneumatic spineless worthless film. <3

#.txt #emetophobia #unsanitary

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alan-duarte · 1 year

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TIMING: Friday, 7th of April, 5pm LOCATION: Whitlock Wares PARTIES: Ariadne @ariadnewhitlock & Alan @alan-duarte SUMMARY: Creating models takes time, money and quite a few materials. What better place than Whitlock Wares for all your crafty needs? CONTENT WARNINGS: Unsanitary tw

Good afternoon White Crest. It’s 5 o’clock and you’re listening to WWMJ. This is your hos-

Alan reached out for his phone, the sound drowning out as he scrolled through his emails. Though he had a secretary who dealt with responses, he liked to keep an eye on the messages they sent to the office. Just in case. He got out of his car, making his way toward the hardware store, this time with his eyes focused on his surroundings.

He was aware of the importance of timing, caution and knowing how to get your point across when it came to the essential matter that was problem solving. So far, there had been no problem Alan couldn’t find a solution to although his creativity had been challenged quite a few times already by the locals. In the end, what mattered was that his business was thriving, and so was he.

Although he had been very busy with work, Alan also knew how to take time to recharge his batteries, and this was a far cry from massage parlors, pilates classes or the kind of bullshit where people seemed to waste time, energy and certainly a lot of money. He wasn't stingy, but he didn't like throwing his money away either. That was not how he had been brought up.

“How are you doing Simon?” Simon Whitlock was about 5 years younger than Alan, which meant that they hadn’t really grown up together and yet were familiar with one another for a long while. Back when Alan was a teenager, Simon used to sit on the counter, by the register. That had changed, but there was always a Whitlock kid not too far away, working at the store. Speaking of… “Ariadne, Alan’s here !”

Her family’s store had always been a second home - in more ways than one. Her father claimed that it had been where she’d taken her first steps, and though video footage technically proved otherwise, the rest of Ariadne’s family went along with it. It added another layer of wholesomeness to the store - not that it was something the store was in need of, but it certainly added to the familial feel of it.

Today she didn’t have classes in the afternoon, and so she’d stopped by the store, electing to organize some new boxes of nails and tape measures. Something about the sheer sameness of it, the fact that she could restock the shelves with her eyes closed, served to at least somewhat help the constant nerves that crept all throughout her body. Nerves that she couldn’t get to go away no matter how many hours of mediation she attempted to listen to on any of the applications she’d downloaded onto her phone. Nerves that felt wholly and entirely constricting, that left her with little ability to focus on much else.

Her dance professor had noticed, multiple times. Even pulled her over at the end of class, to check in, to make sure that there wasn’t anything she could do to help. No, Ariadne had said, I’m just not sleeping well, just trying to do too much, probably! and even she knew that the grin she’d flashed had to have seemed completely and entirely faked.

Her dad’s voice startled her for a moment, and she looked up and over to the counter. Ariadne set her work down, and made her way over to the counter where her father stood. “Mr. Duarte,” she bowed her head, briefly, because there was something about the man that commanded an extra layer of respect, even beyond what she would normally have offered to any adult. “How can we - I - we - help you today? My dad was just about to run out and get us some smoothies, so I’d be happy to help you, if that’s quite alright with you?”

We - I - we. Wasn’t she the poster girl for confidence ? Then he couldn’t say many people her age qualified for the position either. He was certainly glad to be out of his twenties. What a dreaded time that was, sitting with your ass on two different chairs, one for teenagehood, one for adulthood. Being in the army, and being the eldest of four forced him to grow up faster, yet he still recalled not liking it all that much. His thirties were a lot more comfortable, but he found that this new decade of his life was his favorite one yet. Nostalgia who? Alan smiled at her, his fondness forming wrinkles at the corner of his nose and eyes. “How are you doing Ariadne?” Crossing his arms over his chest, Alan picked at a piece of lint on his sleeve.

“I’m in good hands then,” Alan pointed out with a polite nod to her father.

He liked a challenge, but the store was such a landmark of the town that Alan never dared trying to purchase it from the Whitlocks. Alan would not have many qualms about investing in a commercial zone should the chance arise, but until then, he wouldn’t lay a finger on that family or their business. Too much trouble for too little profit. The thought left his mind as swiftly as it had arrived. “I’m gonna need plastic for the 3D printer,” he fished a piece of paper out of his wallet, a list he’d scribbled on the back of a receipt while waiting for a client to return with a complimentary coffee cup. “It’s probably best if I just hand you the list,” he smiled politely, and turned his eyes toward the shelves. Paper, wood, glue, paint, led lights and batteries, they had everything. He could have gotten it all from Amazon, but his networking would have suffered from it and it was a good look, politically, to avoid purchasing from the internet giant.

Her face brightened at his smile. “Pretty well - school’s wildly busy, but that’s okay! Better than being bored, I figure.” She fiddled with her necklace for a moment. “Which is pretty much super obvious, but figure it’s worth being said, still.” Ariadne nodded. “How are you doing? The real estate market still good?” Even if she certainly didn’t know all too much (or much at all) about real estate, she knew a bit here and there, and she knew that it was Alan’s business, and therefore something he’d enjoy being asked about.

“I mean, I do know my way around this store pretty well. When I was about seven, I even helped to reorganize the housewares section…” Ariadne let her voice trail off. “So I promise I’m not going to lead you astray or misguide you or anything at all like that!”

She tapped her fingertips against her thigh. If nothing else, helping out at the store gave her reason to focus on something besides the very thing she was so avidly avoiding - and she liked it here, it was familiar, and Ariadne had gotten a new blush to add some extra color to her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if she looked as pale as she imagined she did, but a light bit of extra color wasn’t going to do anyone any harm, right? “Oh, yes, of course.” Another nod. “You can give me the list, and we’ll grab you a basket and we can go about the store and make sure we’ve got everything you need. Does that sound good? I’ll hold the basket if it’s easier for you, too, even.”

“School?” His eyebrows furrowed while he tried to remember what the girl was studying. Alan didn’t actively try to keep tabs on everyone (though he did do that for people he needed to keep dirt on), but the Whitlocks were folks he saw at least once or twice a week, every week for the past ten years, and that tended to help with remembering details. “School’s alright, it’s the exams I used to dread,” because that meant learning every little detail about a lesson, just in case the teacher would ask about that. It wasn’t practical, and he’d never been one for pure theory.

“I know,” well, he certainly wasn’t aware of those details. His parents weren’t running a business, which meant that he was never exploited that way. This being said, they expected him to keep the house in good shape on the weekends, especially when they were working, and he did more than a fair share of dishes and cooking from the age of 12 until the age of 18. He assumed first that the second oldest sibling would help out in turn, but his parents bought a dishwasher the very year he left home to be in the Air Force. Ouch.

A smile graced his lips as she took charge and Alan happily handed the list over to her, following her around the store while she went to get a basket.

“Yeah, that thing where you get a degree so the wilder world accepts you as like, legit or whatever?” Ariadne shrugged. “I like college better than I liked high school, so that’s something, at least?” An emphatic nod followed his comment about exams. “Oh, absolutely. Exams are the worst. If I could learn without worrying about grades, I’d be all set.” She made a face, “grades are not fun.” She shook her head. “Am I talking too much?”

Ariadne glanced down at her feet. “Right, okay, sorry.” She wasn’t even sure why she was saying sorry. Just that somehow, it felt right - she hadn’t talked this much about herself to anyone in what felt like forever, and the last thing she wanted to do was overburden someone - a patron, no less - with random facts about her childhood.

Grabbing the list, she quickly scurried over to get a basket. “Do you have a preferred brand for any of these things, or would you like me to just give you the best we’ve got? Also, any restrictions on cost? Just ‘cause I don’t want to suggest something that’s out of an allotted budget, if there is an allotted budget for this.” Ariadne grabbed a couple packs of batteries. “These good?”

“And for a great price too,” Alan chuckled. Things weren’t so bad in his youth, and doing the army was his way of being debt free all while getting proper education, though he would never blame anyone for not being willing to do the same sacrifice. “College is supposed to be about learning about something you’re passionate about, I sure hope you prefer it to high school,” otherwise it would just mean she picked the wrong major. As if he had decided that this was enough chit-chat for now, Alan fell silent then, and picked up a can of paint from a shelf, to have a look at the color on the lid, and then at the one next to it, repeating the same course of actions over and over until he set his hand on the right shade of white he needed. Eggshell white. “What? Talking too much?” Yes. “No, it’s the contrast. Contrast is beautiful,” he offered a kind smile and put the small can of paint in the basket.

“Reasonable quality, I’d say. Not the cheap stuff, but I don’t need a top brand either,” what mattered was that he could tend to his hobby in peace, just him, his paintbrush and a tiny world growing beneath his fingertips.

“AAA batteries. That sounds right,” with an encouraging smile, Alan turned his attention to the front of the shop, glancing toward the front door as he heard it chime on her father’s way out. He could have asked her if she planned to take over after them. The store was in their family for two centuries after all. He remained silent instead. Chit chat wasn’t his thing and he’d already done his fair share of it already, yet when his eyes settled on something that looked straight out of an infomercial, he had to open his mouth. “That thing actually works?”

“I don’t hate school, but I like learning more than I like actual school, if that makes sense?” Ariadne shrugged. “I don’t actually normally talk a lot, but maybe it’s the whole ‘I want to be good with customer service’ that’s turned this on.” Anyhow… she shook her head, taking in a steadying breath. There was no reason to be worried right now.

“Okay, that makes sense. I’ll make sure you get stuff that won’t go bad or whatever on you, but also isn’t like the super high-end fancy stuff.” Luckily, her father saw it fit to stock a wide variety of items, and Ariadne at least liked to believe that he charged as reasonable a price as was possible - though of course, she knew full well that she had a certain level of bias at play with everything.

“Good, good.” Ariadne offered a tentative smile back to him. “Sorry?” Her head whipped toward him. “What thing? Batteries work well, yeah -” she followed his gaze. “That? No, I - that isn’t anything we’ve ordered, I don’t think, at least. Unless you want it! In which case, we can grab one and see about it.”

“If that’s the case, I hope you picked a job where you’re going to be learning every day,” if Alan honed his skills each day that passed, he didn’t feel like you could really learn to be good at it. It was a matter of temperament. Some jobs just required the right attitude, or a good amount of charisma, some others, diplomas, diplomas and truckloads of experience. “Less is more sometimes,” he pondered. “But for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing well,”

With a polite smile, he nodded along as she told him his purchase wouldn’t go bad or whatever on him. What a completely positive and non worrying thought that was. Maybe not doing so well after all. Alan figured she was just clumsy with words, like most kids were, and instead turned his attention toward a dog brush - glove fusion that seemed a whole lot too good to be true.

As seen on tv, the product read. Not on my tv, Alan thought as he reached out to get a look at the cardboard box. “Removes hairs from clothes, dogs, cats, and all living things,” he read out loud. If the first bit was enticing, the last part provoked in him an urge to put that thing away. Yet, instead, Alan started to turn the thin box around to find a way to open it. “Do you mind if we have a look?”

“I might be a professor, maybe.” She wasn’t sure, but that seemed like a good enough answer to keep away any further questions about her future. Ariadne had used to have elaborate dreams about what her future held, but those had all been brought to a halt, doubly so, now. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

“We can look.” Her face scrunched up, puzzled once again. “But I don’t remember my dad ordering this, but I mean, I’m not like, in charge of keeping track of what we have in stock, or what we order. Maybe they were a freebie or something?” Ariadne shook her head. “Regardless, feel free to open it, I think we probably should look to make sure it’s not something dangerous or otherwise questionable.” She adjusted the basket on her arm.

“That’s one way to do that,” it sounded exhausting, and he heard it didn’t pay well. All those years in school to be broke? No thanks. Alan gave a courteous nod to the young girl, and finally found the tab to open the damn box. “Well that was easy.” With a raise of his eyebrows, the wolf pulled on it and folded aside the top of the cardboard.

The object within seemed to resemble the one on the package, except for one highly disturbing detail. Glancing at Ariadne Whitlock, Alan gave a grimace, holding his fist to his mouth while he tried not to feel too sick over the gruesome sight. If this was a marketing strategy, he certainly wasn’t buying it.

The glove looked exactly as the one on the box, yes, but by the look of it, it had been used. Covered in hairs, wet hairs, the object, inanimate as it might be, had a threatening aura the wolf was quick to get as far from him as he could, even if that meant throwing it away back on the shelf. “What.” Pause. “The fuck is that?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged. Of course, she probably wouldn’t end up doing that, but having some sort of stock answer at least helped a little bit with Ariadne’s nerves. Alan not giving her too many followup questions was also something of a relief. She could help with finding things in the store; that was easy enough to fake being normal about.

A small scream escaped from her lips. “I - what?” She glanced around, “I don’t know.” Whatever it was, it absolutely wasn’t supposed to be like that. “Maybe - maybe someone used it and brought it back, and didn’t want to try to return it?” Except that didn’t make sense because, again, until Alan had pointed the box out, Ariadne couldn’t remember seeing it at all.

“Do - I - I can look at it, if you want?” She did her best to contain the look of disgust on her face. If he said yes, she’d just have to imagine it was like looking for roly polies under rocks as a kid. Curious, a bit strange, but not bad. At least the glove couldn’t kill anyone. Ariadne bit down on her tongue. “I’ll have to tell my dad about this.”

“Why is it wet?” Saying it outloud was enough to make him feel like gagging, and Alan put his wrist to his mouth, shaking his head in disapproval. “You’re gonna want to look at the security cameras,” did they have any? They didn’t look like the type. They looked like the type to trust everyone blindly, which was beautiful, he supposed.

“Look at it? Do you expect it to suddenly not be disgusting?” That made absolutely no sense, and he was protective enough of innocent folks that he had to raise his hands on that. “Absolutely not. You want to burn this thing to the ground,” his eyes went toward the other boxes on the shelf, who weren’t supposed to be there either. “Do you think the rest of the boxes are like that ?”

“I don’t know.” This time, the look of disgust was clear all across her face. “I - we don’t have those. Or I don’t think we do. Maybe one by the cash register, because of the money and stuff but…” Ariadne’s voice trailed off. “I - I’m confused.” Which didn’t even begin to cover it, but still.

“I don’t know, I just - well,” she bit her lip. “I don’t think we should light things on fire in the store. Which - I doubt is what you meant, but I - shouldn’t we show my dad? In case it’s someone playing a rude prank on us?” Ariadne sighed. “I think it’s probably worth checking out, at the very least? Maybe this one’s just faulty, or something.”

Alan raised both his hands, as if to say : your shop, not mine. He didn't have to make decisions for them although he did hope that they'd decide to get rid of that thing in the most brutal way.

"A prank which consists of putting your shower drain," or something that looked like it, but also not like it, as if the hairs were human, but not quite. "On a glove. In a closed box." With a deadpan stare, Alan took a step back, turning his heels on her. "What if there's something else in each box? A surprise per box?" As horrifying as it was, he preferred to fear the worst than be surprised.

"It's not faulty," she knew that, right?

“Please. Let’s not further visualize it.” Ariadne made a face. “It’s gross and really quite mean, if it’s some sort of prank. Like, why would you do that?” Except she was with a customer, and that meant you had to be as professional as possible.

“That’s a very good point. Would you like me to open the next one?” Tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth to steady herself as much as was possible. Which wasn’t a whole lot, but Ariadne figured anything counted, at this point.

“Defective, then?”

“Quite mean?” It was none of his business, really, but had it been, Alan would have tried to track the scent on that box back to whoever had brought it here. Depending on who it was, his reaction would have ranged from casually leaving that glove in their mailbox to breaking in and putting it on their pillow, like a fucked up redo of the Godfather. “Why would you do that? I don’t know. Maybe people are disgusting, maybe your dad has beef with someone. I don’t know kiddo.”

Opening another might not have been such a great idea, but he was too curious not to nod along, all while standing further from it.

“How can this leave the factory looking like this? Those must get made by the thousands, it’s not that,” how could someone be so naive? Alan bit on the inside of his cheek and glared over at the box in her hands instead, as if to urge her to get to it.

“I don’t think anybody’s ever been mad with my dad, ever.” Ariadne shrugged. “Though I guess I am biased, so I don’t know.” There was a lot she didn’t know, she was discovering. Which wasn’t a comfortable feeling to sit with, but one that she was realizing more and more than she didn’t really have any sort of choice about.

“I don’t know, there should be some quality control, right? I don’t know what to call it, if not defective or just confusing. I - well, gross, I guess. That just seems rude though? The glove didn’t ask for this. Not that it could - I -” Ariadne opened the next box and, with a small squeak, dropped it on the floor. “Okay. Safe to say they might all be like that.”

"That's not possible. Your dad sees too many folks every day for this to be true," it didn't have to be something bad either. Sometimes saying no sufficed to make a certain brand of people offended. He learned the kids like to call them Karens and Kyles but Alan, from what he gathered, understood that these people were usually all about words and not about actions. Pathetic shits.

"The glove didn't ask for this?" Rather than to ask ok, and, Alan gave Ariadne what looked like a sympathetic smile. Who the fuck cared about the glove's feelings ? His answer to that question promised not to be pleasant, which was why he preferred to remain quiet. "Alright, well while you settle this troubling case of folks being unjust to gloves," with a raise of his eyebrows, Alan turned his attention toward the list he gave her, in the basket, with the batteries and the paint. Being alone with his thoughts at home didn't seem so enticing anymore. "I'll go get myself a drink," or more. He'd probably find a former client to chat with, and hopefully forget about that damn horror. Alan didn't suspect it already, but anytime he'd come to Whitlock’s Wares ever again, the mental image of the hairy moist glove would come and haunt him.

“I guess, but this just feels extreme. Like, he doesn’t even really have bad reviews on Google or Yelp or whatever.” Ariadne made another face. “I guess I’d expect something like that before whatever this is.”

She paused, offering him a somewhat awkward smile, “I mean, I know it’s not sentient, that’s not possible, but I - it’s not fair to try to do harm to anything, really. Even non-sentient gloves or whatever.” At his next comment, Ariadne swallowed. “Oh - okay. I’ll just save everything for you to come by and pick up whenever’s good for you?”

“So, whoever did this is too old for Google Reviews. You should be wary of the elders,” ominous as the warning may have sounded, Alan shrugged it off. “Harm gloves? Wait...Do you not eat vegetables? Fruits? Cause I have some bad news here.” His eyes narrowed in faux suspicion, and it was about then Alan picked up just how silent the store was in this instant, how silent she was. With the sound of their footsteps, of clatter and chatter, he hadn’t really paid attention to the fact that she lacked a heartbeat. Right. Alright, perhaps was this his cue to get the hell out. “I’ll be back in the morning, I suppose.” There was another full moon tonight but he could probably get a drink or two in his system before it started. Maybe it would dull some of the pain, and maybe he’d forget about the lack of a ticking inside of her. “And there’s your dad back with smoothies. I’ll let you tell him about the non sentient gloves,” his nose wrinkled as he scoffed. “Good evening you two. See you next morning.”

#wickedswriting #ariadne threads #ariadnewhitlock #under blue moon threads

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isthehorsevideocute · 2 years

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Hot Take of the Day: Animal Rights Activists Don't Actually Like or Care About Animals

The more actions and "justifications" i see out of folks who say they stand up for "animal rights" the more convinced I am of this.

First off let's talk about the false pretense of "animal rights" and why actual animal behavioralists tend to oppose the ideas pushed by it.

Let's make it clear right now, advocating for animal rights is not the same as advocatong for animal welfare.

Advocating for animal welfare is advocating for the proper treatment of animals. It's advocating for animals to be in environments that satisfy their biological and physiological needs in a way that gives them a life of minimal suffering.

The idea of "animal rights" inherently anthropomorphiezes animals by presenting animals as having the same needs and desires as humans. A lot of how animal rights advocates try to present their issues has little to no basis in how animals express themselves and what their actual needs and desires are. Some examples:

-"Animals inside of a barn with mud or manure on their bodies and say they are neglected and forced to live in unsanitary conditions"

-The reality is animals don't mind being dirty like we do and for many species being caked in mud or feces is actually beneficial for helping keep them cool/protect themselves from insects or the sun

-"Animals' young being taken away from them is just as traumatic to them as it is to humans"

-The reality: no species of domestic animal has anything remotely similar to the relationship that humans have with their children. Some are very quick to abandon their babies shortly after birth, some will attack or eat their young, and others will kick their kids out of the family the moment they don't need to nurse anymore. Animals do not hold familial relationships like we do and their success as a species often relies on them getting rid of their young asap before they reach sexual maturity or else the end result would be inbreeding.

-"Animals in any kind of service work or labor are being exploited and it's basically the same thing as slavery"

-First of all that take is completely tone deaf and shows how little you know about actual slavery. Second animals do not have a concept of exploitation. That's literally not a thing they have the necessary parts of the brain to understand that idea. Second domestic animals are purpose bred, so much so it is in their genetic makeup to perform the tasks they were bred to do. In other words they will serve those functions whether you want them to or not. That’s why dog breeds like boarder collies will try to herd your kids when they've never headed anything and have always been a housepet. It's ingrained in their biology. For these animals they need some kind of outlet for these instincts to live a happy and engaging life.

-"AI is rape"

-Again tone deaf. AI is not traumatic to animals and is the safest way to breed in most cases. The only way the animals' caregivers even know when to administer AI is when the animal is showing willingness to be bred. Animals are not "forced to be pregnant over and over" they will only be impregnated when it is deemed necessary and unlike how it would be in nature, we won't impregnate animals every breeding season. Even if breeding is the only task they are expected to perform, they given periods of rest to prevent over stressing their bodies with pregnancy after pregnancy.

-"Animals on trailers or in holding pens are afraid and stressed because they know they're about to be slaughtered"

-Travel and new environments are inherently stressful to animals of all types under all sorts of circumstances. It doesn't mean they are in any actual danger or are aware of why they are in a new place.

Animal behavioralists work closely with the people who actually work with animals, especially people who raise livestock because it benefits BOTH the people and the animals. Animals don't provide well when they aren't well taken care of.

And of course they LOVE taking things out of context to try to push their ideas that anyone who has animals for any reason is a sadistic animal abuser. More examples

-Posing a farmer using machinery to help a downed cow get back on her feet as them "taking an exhausted and sick cow to force them into the kill chute"

-owners of carriage horses in cities are required by law to provide evidence that their horses got rested in paddocks outside of the city for at least four months but people pushing the idea that horses are kept in stalls in city buildings 24/7

-posing pigs in birthing/nursing chutes as "having to spend their whole lives in cramped cages" when they are designed for the sows to be able to move in and out of freely

All that being said let's talk about what I've seen advocates of animal rights do and the ideas they've pushed to bring it all home.

-Touching and spraying trailered animals with water (obviously stressing them but claiming to be trying to "help" and "comfort" them)

-Holding up trailers with animals prolonging the stress of travel and preventing them from getting their needs met at their destination

-Stealing animals and killing them

-Throwing rocks at and pepper spraying animals and their handlers

-Literally saying outright that all domestic animals should be killed off

The whole "animal rights" movement is not a legitimate movement for the betterment of the quality of life of domestic animals. It never was and never will be. It's more akin to religious extremism than anything. It's not about helping animals, it's about control. It's about parading around with an ignorant "holier than thou" attitude so you can call everyone around you evil and feel like a hero in your little echo chamber. It's easy to sell to people because the idea of "being a lover of animals" is basically ingrained into the human brain but there's so much ignorance that comes with how animals actually work. All species have their own unique ways of expressing themselves and when that expression is foreign to us it's easy to misread or use it as a way to mislead. And well I guess that's why blogs like mine exist where people like me who understand how our species of interest behaves and can say if what is assumed is a correct assessment or not. So I guess the best I can do is to keep doing me and keep people educated.

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greywoodrpg · 9 months

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𝕕𝕦𝕟𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕖. 𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕕

he appears as though he was born forty years ago but is actually four hundred and sixty, he is a vampire who lives in mystic grove as an out of the attic antique shop owner. he looks an awful lot like henry cavill.

"the present life of man, O king, seems to me, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter.”

tw: plague, infancy death, death, attack, murder, gambling

It was 1563 and a tumultuous era of protestant reformation and the worst episode of the London plague during the sixteenth century, leading up to the transition from the Tudor to the Stuart period. This was when Duncan was born, to a well-off family where he was a single child of a mother that was at that time considered well past her prime, a miracle after too many miscarriages and infancy deaths. Perhaps this was exactly what had saved the Creed’s family name and fortune from falling into the hands of many distant cousins and removed relatives standing in line to benefit from a sonless death of its influential patriarch. Moving out of the crowded, unsanitary London of the time and into the rural area seemed to have done Lady Creed good, the fresh air, nature and being away from poorly maintained and unclean streets resulted in good news everyone stopped praying for a long time ago. This saved the family, the marriage between Duncan’s parents and their family inheritance, though not for long.

The first time fate showed signs of being as capricious as the sea was when Duncan’s father passed away. Needing to travel often into the city for work, the household feared for Mr. Creed’s safety and well-being yet, quite surprisingly so, this wasn’t what had ended the man’s life. It was a vice that had ultimately been the cause of his demise. Stabbed multiple times and left to bleed out on the grimy cobblestone over a gambling debt squabble, Mr. Creed’s body had joined the numerous corpses waiting to be disposed of properly so as to not encourage the terrible epidemic plaguing the city. Retrieval for a proper funeral had been quite an ordeal for the young Duncan, who’d just barely turned sixteen yet was not only already considered a man but also had to take over what was then a lucrative trade business.

While Duncan was still dealing with his first tragedy, he had many difficult choices to make. As much as they loved each other, Duncan and his father were too different for Duncan to keep a pristine loving memory of him intact. Unlike Creed Sr, Duncan had been a born businessman, investing his following years into restoring what his father had gambled away, realizing just how close his parent was to completely ruining them. He married early and unlike his mother, he’d been blessed with seven healthy children who’d all but one reached old age. He not only managed to not let everything fall completely apart, but he had the family business thrive and the Creeds kept their old money replenished by new income and their social status.

But remember how fate can be capricious? Duncan’s second tragedy should have been his last because it was his own death. Out late and away from home but not for vice like his father had been years ago, he was intercepted by a strange assailant who’d drained him dry of his lifeblood after having dragged him into one of the many closed theatres, abandoned as a measure against the plague. It was 1603, Queen Elizabeth the First had died and Duncan was forty years old and now, as the conductor of his demise had told him before he walked into the sun the very next morning, a vampire, inheriting the strange creature’s legacy and bloodline as was custom for his kind once they were sick of knowing they could live their cursed lives forever if they chose so.

Duncan received only as many instructions and lessons that would help him navigate his new life as a single night of conversation and listening could give him. This one bizarre night painted in a blur of pain, shock and confusion would be his only guidance through the following months of navigating the intricacies of the life of a nocturnal blood drinker, made abundant and plentiful by the many dying of the terrible bubonic plague. More would be found out later when Duncan would discover everything the creature had left as an inheritance to his progeny. Though Duncan would use these benefits, estates, riches and ways of keeping, maintaining and passing them down to himself one human lifetime after another in the future, he would not exactly follow his sire’s every single ideology and tradition, although he’d found volumes upon volumes of written word on various topics relating to the existence of vampires observed, noted down and studied in detail by the one who’d made him.

Instead, the first years Duncan had spent in hiding, repulsed by the way he was now, hiding in that same closed and barred away theatre whose extended shadows provided refuge between audience seats, balcony booths and backstage rooms. He might’ve wasted away years there if concern for his family who likely had no news of him for all this time had not drawn him out, making him undertake the journey back to their countryside manor where he found his widow had never remarried and was struggling with sons away, daughters unmarried and cousins looking to scavenge their wealth like vultures again. It started as leaving little clues to his wife - finding proof of others’ treachery and scheming and leaving it on her bedside table before sneaking away into the night again, rearranging the items in their home to point things out that would give her bright new ideas on what to do, supplying books she didn’t even know they owned that could educate her and give her clever mind more information on how to run the family business, whom to contact for help, how to fend for herself. Until she’d caught him doing it, which was unsurprising and only a matter of time.

And what was even more surprising was that she accepted his story and everything that he was now. Yet the final conclusion was that it would not be wise for him to reemerge as he was now after years of absence. So, Duncan remained in the shadows but by his wife’s side, saving the family’s status yet again with co-joined forces until yet another tragedy which was an expected yet nevertheless a painful one struck - he’d outlived his wife, and eventually his children too, of which only two perhaps doubted that their mother had a benefactor much too kind to them to be a mere stranger. Yet Duncan’s ties to his family would not end there and he would continue to watch over his line as it spread out into many roots and branches, whether they stayed where they originated from or moved elsewhere, making his presence known to only rare few.

When things with the family were calm and steady, Duncan would travel, the advancements of humankind and technology making this more possible and easier with each passing century. He knew Europe like the back of his hand, been to the New World and the far East. If there was a descendant that needed to be followed up on in whichever remote part of the world for whatever reasons they’d ended up there, Duncan would follow, checking in periodically over the span of years, depending how settled and happy they seemed. The happier they were, the less likely was Duncan to hover near. However those who had been down on their luck would perhaps experience an unexpected turn of events not possible to be explained except by maybe having a guardian angel watching over them. Or a devil bringing bad luck.

Duncan had been a resident of Greywood before but had, at one point, moved away to one of his many travels, leaving for what was now over forty years - a blink of an eye for an immortal with centuries behind him. Now it was time to return to it, reclaim the piece of property he’d left unattended where he took in lost or discarded things faded by time, use or neglect. He polishes and restores them to their former glory as much as possible and occasionally finds a brilliant, priceless gem underneath. Most he donates, if their worth is of any cultural value. Others, less legendary, he keeps in his small antique shop he was in the process of reopening upon his arrival, once again filling it with beautiful, intricate things with stories to tell and history to unravel. If you ever pass by ‘Out of the Attic’ antique store in Greywood, go right in. The ‘closed’ sign is always on just because the owner forgets to flip it.

“what power did he attain when settling in greywood?”

Duncan’s Greywood-acquired power is that his ability of not going into frenzied bloodlust even if he goes without drinking blood for long gets enhanced to a point where he does not feel hunger for blood or anything at all really but he still must drink it in order not to slip into the so-called ‘stone sleep’. Can be inconvenient as he has to actively remind himself to feed. Aside from other usual consequences of starving, the longer he remains unfed, the paler his hair and eyes become until they turn almost completely white

penned by... sandra

#supernatural rp #town rp #oc rp #horror rp #mature rp #literate rp #henry cavill fc #vampire #taken #miscarriage tw #plague tw #infancy death tw #death tw #attack tw #murder tw #gambling tw

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or-ng-c-ss-dy · 1 year

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i woke up at 5 am this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so i told myself a story to try and get myself to sleep. but then it ended up being too interesting lol, so i had to stop thinking about it.

it’s pretty rom-com-y but that can be good sometimes.

anyway, dustin and greg open a dog cafe, and jim ends up being dustin’s favorite little customer, under the cut

anyway, dustin is going through the worst break-up of his whole entire life. like this woman he was seeing was supposed to be ~the one~ but she wasn’t and she dumped him and moved out of his apartment, leaving him all low self and alone. he’s out drinking with greg (who conveniently lives in philly for this, don’t ask questions) to try and get over her, maybe meet some women to try and have rebound sex. and they get pretty wasted together and dustin’s too dour to actually talk to women, and greg’s loyal to his gf so he’s not looking at any women either.

anyway, then greg’s like “look at this” and pulls up a youtube video of animal cafes because cute animals always cheer dustin up. it doesn’t really work that well, but he’s watching the videos and then greg’s blurting out “we could do something like this” and drunk low self dustin would normally be like “that’s dumb, neither one of us know how to do anything like this” but greg is really Trying and he looks so very earnest, so dustin throws him a bone and is like “maybe we could” and they end up talking about it.

and he thinks nothing of it until he’s very hungover in his empty apartment the next morning, powering down as much gatorade as he can and hugging the toilet, and he gets a call from greg telling him about a couple of places for rent, and how his gf is on board. like greg’s actually thought it over while sober and...it’s not actually the worst idea in the world. like they could make it work...

the change could be good for him. plus, he does like dogs...

and so, the best friends dog cafe is born, the first of its kind in philadelphia. greg is very serious about bringing in shelter dogs that are able to be adopted, so they partner with a local shelter who is very happy about the whole thing. and greg’s gf makes the place look nice, things that can be easily washed, baskets of toys to play with, high tables to keep any of the food away from the dogs. and being around the dogs is helping dustin too, he’s taking care of these creatures who need the help, and serving customers who could potentially be the forever homes of these dogs in need...it’s nice...greg has good ideas sometimes, he’s like a stopped clock and all.

anyway, he’s holding the sweetest little shepherd mix puppy in his arms when the door jingles open, and greg is going through the greeting. and dustin turns and---

meanwhile, jim’s career is going very well. he’s moving up the ranks fast, putting so much of himself into his work that there’s not much left for him to just be...jim. he’s been going at a pace that’s so unsustainable that he crashes and he crashes Hard. suddenly, he’s missing deadlines, taking more time off of work to just lay in bed and stare up at the ceiling. he hasn’t had a boyfriend, a date, or even a meaningless hook-up in years...he hasn’t even been out with friends in even longer.

it’s a crushing sort of loneliness that just hits him all at once. his boss likes him, he’s been working at the same firm since graduating college so, instead of firing him for missing work, his boss just gives him time off and pretty much tells him to go get therapy or something, come back when he’s in a better spot.

so he goes to therapy, and his therapist tells him to start living life for real, get some hobbies, make connections. live a life outside of work because it will help with the burnout to have something else in life.

to start with, she tells him about this new cafe that’s opened up in town where you can go, get a coffee, and pet some dogs. which sounds pretty unsanitary to jim, but it’s gotta be fine, the place is allowed to operate...

so...

he goes. he walks into the door and he’s standing behind the gate, this burly dude with close cropped hair and what jim can only describe as a strange, intense demeanor is standing behind the counter, going through this whole spiel and explaining the rules while checking him in...

and then...this other guy comes walking in. he’s tall, taller than the other tall guy, and he’s got shaggy dark hair that’s falling into his face and jade green eyes, and he’s holding a cute puppy in his big hands, making the puppy look even smaller. he can feel his face starting to heat up as he looks at the man, and the man is approaching him too, pink dusting over his face as well.

meanwhile, dustin’s never been so struck by a man before, but this little blond guy with his cool guy haircut and cool guy sunglasses, and very very pink features? it’s hard to keep his eyes off of him...

not to mention his black clothes, which will be covered in fur by the time he’s out of there.

anyway, at this point, i realized that i was actively staying awake to tell myself this story and i needed to go to bed, but they’d pet some dogs but mostly spend the entirety of jim’s time talking to each other, jim would keep coming back because he “”””enjoyed the experience””””, and then they’d eventually fuck about it and then fall in love.

#otp: dustjim

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izzy-b-hands · 1 year

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11V

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles! Except just the last one actually, and eventually another sort of vehicle! but that isn't nearly as catchy unfortunately.

More travel, a new plan, questionable food, booze spiked blood, and a disappearing act that ends up a reappearing act.

TW for alcohol, in blood specifically, mentions of a very old and bad sandwich, and unsanitary truck stop restroom conditions.

---

Izzy wakes to cool water on his aching, burning temple.

"You're alright," Ed murmurs. "Bullet scraped up the side of your forehead. Might scar some, but it'll look fucking cool, so that's something."

Izzy smiles weakly. "You almost had to learn what to do without me."

Ed stares at him. "I almost did."

"You and Stede would be okay."

"No, we wouldn't," Stede's voice joins them as he crawls to sit beside them in the middle row of seats. "I'm not okay right now as it is. I'm so sorry-"

"Is the fucker dead?"

Stede blinks, then nods. "We took care of him."

"To shreds," Ed says dreamily. "He won't be coming back from that."

Izzy sighs. "Good. Ed, where are we-"

"Jack has a contact at the coast," Ed interrupts. "They need someone to crew a replica ship for night and 'ghost tour' type tourist excursions. I used to sail, and Olu and Jim say they did too. The three of us will train everyone else and..."

He hesitates. "I know how it sounds. But we can lay low there for as long as we need, and make some extra money for the hell of it. If someone does come after us again for everything that happened, we'll just sail the fuck away!"

"Everyone is on board with this?" Izzy asks, wincing as Ed daps the damp cool cloth on his injury again.

Stede nods. "My crew is going to be a real crew! In a more original sense of the word...what do you say, Iz? Can't be any worse than driving from place to place."

He considers it. It certainly isn't worse, and he's never had the chance to work on a ship of any kind.

Ed had told him once that being turned was like gaining another life. It gave him time to explore and learn and see things he might not have otherwise.

"We should get going before the sun comes up," Izzy sighs. "We've a ways to go, for the coast. Sure they'd like us there sooner rather than later."

Each set of miles is a mutually held breath. Each truck stop at night an exhale.

In between, they feed, sitting on the ground or at concrete tables outside each truckstop entrance.

"Okay," Jim sighs. "Slim pickings, but we have chips and drinks and a sandwich but-"

"That's not a sandwich anymore," Izzy winces.

The plastic wrapped item is sandwich-shaped, but that's about all that signals it as one.

"Well," Jim starts defensively, then sighs. "It might be edible in bits though."

"Babe, it's got mold on it," Olu frowns.

"So?"

"On the outside of the wrapping," Olu continues. "I don't know if it can come back from that."

Jim nods. "Save it as bait for our meal?"

"Seems mean, but yeah, we could," Olu says. "Speaking of-"

"I got us covered," Jack grins and holds out four small silver flasks. "I forgot I had extra on the inside pockets of my coat!"

"Hang on," Ed catches Olu's hand as he reaches for one. "Are they...plain?"

"Nah, they got booze in 'em."

"I'm fine with that," Jim says.

Olu nods. "Better than plain, even."

Stede perks up. "If I put it in blood, I can still drink?"

Izzy laughs, though it hurts the slow healing wound on his head. "Yeah, you can. Jack almost exclusively eats that way."

"I do sponsorship shit for a couple brands of booze," Jack protests. "And I happen to really like their products! I'm a dedicated working man, Izzy."

"You're already tipsy," Izzy giggles. "Fuck, hand one over. After the last few days, I need it."

"Now," Ed shushes him. "It hasn't been that bad, and no one needs it exactly-"

"Yeah, but sometimes it can make things feel a hell of a lot better," Jack interrupts.

Ed nods. "That's true. And it has been shit, hasn't it?"

"We've murdered a good few people now, so it's not ideal," Olu notes, passing one of the flasks to Jim first.

"Is this anyone else's first murder?" The Swede, previously part of the security team for his ability to yell frighteningly in Swedish, asks. "Because it's my second, but this one feels so different."

"No, I know what you mean," Ed says. "Maybe it's because so many people saw? Usually people don't see me, with that. Izzy brings them home and..."

A brief silence falls, broken by Stede clearing his throat.

"You've murdered someone before, Swede?"

"I mean, we've all done it," Wee John nods.

Frenchie shakes his head as he digs into a small bag of chips. "Only pyramid schemes for me, and you know it. Nearly did kill one guy in Reno-"

"Is that why you keep telling people you can't go there to elope?" Olu asks.

Frenchie nods.

"Congrats!" Ed smiles. "Did we leave your fiancé back in town?"

"We're saving up," John replies. "He can't do Reno, and I can't do Miami."

"Any destinations in mind you guys don't have warrants in?" Jack asks. "Not trying to be rude, because that would be a short list for me personally, just curious."

Frenchie blushes. "New Orleans would be nice."

"It's expensive," John notes.

"Yeah, but there's an aquarium," Frenchie says. "We could get married in the aquarium!"

John smiles. "We could maybe keep it on the list then."

Jack passes another flask to Ed, while his other hand rifles through one of his interior jacket pockets.

"Here," Jack tosses John a wad of rolled cash. "It's all real, I promise. I can't make a daylight wedding, but I will bring a present to a night reception on Bourbon Street."

"Seriously?" Frenchie asks, peering over to examine the bills. "We can pay you b-"

"Nope," Jack cuts him off. "Consider it a wedding shower gift from me and the other vamps here, since I'm the only one with a current steady cash flow."

"Hey!" Stede cries, then frowns. "Oh. Oh right. Never mind."

"You'll get back to it," Buttons says, tearing into a stick of beef jerky.

"Where did he get that?" Stede asks, with a curious look to Izzy.

All he can do is shrug. At least Buttons has food.

Buttons swallows. "In another town, near the coast. Work the ship for a few years, then buy up something cheap and The Revenge will live again!"

Jack laughs and hollers. "I like this guy! Where did you get that though, fella?"

"We wanted to share."

Izzy turns, and takes a long sip as he stares up at the two men looking down at them.

He turns back as the mold covered sandwich nearly lands on top of him. There sits Jim, ready to bounce up and run.

"Fuck. That was supposed to hit them," they hiss, then in a shout:

"Scatter!"

"So," Izzy whispers. "We could have all probably just run for the van."

"Yeah," Jim replies. "That's what I meant. I thought it would be implied, but-"

"It's okay," Izzy says. "We all panicked."

"Wish we had panicked into different hiding spots," Ed grumbles. "Can they see the light from outside? I want to know what I'm touching here; why is it sticky?!"

"I think they can, and shut it!" Jack hisses. "They saw us all run in the same fucking bathroom anyway!"

"I actually do have to use the bathroom," Black Pete, the other member of The Revenge's security team, mumbles. "Whose shoe am I near right now?"

"Mine, and don't you dare," Olu whispers.

"I'm not gonna piss on your fucking shoe, man! I'm gonna aim around it near the toilet instead-"

"Lucius!" Jim whispers fiercely. "Help him!"

Lucius, Black Pete's boyfriend and self described 'bar float that floats to whichever person is drowning at the time', scoffs.

"How am I supposed to help him piss?! Just look outside and see if they're gone!"

Izzy grimaces as he leans his face and ear against the sticky, peeling metal door. "Let me listen-"

"We can hear fucking everything!"

He backs awkwardly onto Stede, out of room in the entirely too small one room, unisex bathroom.

"Come out and let that one guy use the fucking bathroom!"

Izzy looks back and shrugs as he flips the light switch. "Not like we can escape. We'll be out of your way in a minute, Pete."

They trail out, except for Pete, and face the two men again.

"Can I say my piece now?" the first says. "Or are you gonna throw another fucking gross sandwich at me?"

Not a word, and Izzy feels that's probably for their overall best.

"Okay then," the man continues. "I'm Ivan. This is my partner, Fang. Say hi, Fang."

Fang smiles sweetly, then hisses at them loud enough to make them jump.

"We were given an assignment," Ivan continues. "The Badminton family wants all of you dead. Police found Nigel's body-"

"What was left," Fang snickers.

"Right," Ivan nods. "And the family felt the police were taking their sweet time finding you all. We're a resource they occasionally use in times like this."

"Good, steady work," Ed smiles. "Admirable, and a very particular niche too!"

"Would you like to know what we do?" Ivan asks, pushing past Izzy and Stede to lean in to Ed's face.

"Enlighten me," Ed replies evenly, but his voice is ice cold. Izzy knows that particular tone, and tries to recall how many potential witnesses might be inside the showers of the stop.

"We make people disappear," Ivan replies, just as icily.

The bathroom door creaks open, and Pete steps out slowly.

"Ah. It's not going well."

Ivan and Fang join them in Wee John's van, directing him down seemingly random roads until their headlights are the only light pollution to be seen.

Fang directs them out of the van and into a field, trudging through sharp long grass.

"You know, you don't have to kill us," Lucius says. "Seems like a lot more work."

"Keen point," Jack adds. "I don't know about you two, but I love having less work."

"Who doesn't?!" Lucius cries. "So, we can all agree then-"

"Holy fuck, both of you shut u-"

Ivan pauses mid-step. As do they all, to take in each peculiarity of the scene.

Stede, his fangs stuck into the back of Ivan's neck, but not in far enough to feed.

Ivan, struggling to stay upright with the awkward weight of Stede hanging off of him.

"Sneak attack?" Izzy leans in and asks Stede.

"Yeagh," Stede manages.

"Okay," Izzy pats his back. "Maybe we can do some compromising now."

"Why would we do that?" Ivan asks.

"If you don't, my boyfriend will drain you," Izzy replies. "He could now, if he wanted."

"I can tell he can't," Ivan protests bluntly.

"You're in shock already," Izzy talks over him. "Shhh, it'll be over soon."

Izzy can feel Fang's eyes on him as he tries to push Ivan down so Stede can properly bite in.

He doesn't move though. Not even when Izzy finds himself trying to kick out Ivan's knees.

"You know," Fang muses. "Technically we don't have to kill them. The Badminton's paid us upfront, so as long as we come back with like...a chunk of someone's hair or some blood on a shirt as 'proof'..."

"Will you get your boyfriend out of my neck if I agree with that?" Ivan asks Izzy. "We let you live, and you get him out of my fucking neck, seriously, every time he wiggles I can feel his teeth moving in my neck, and-"

Izzy nods, and Lucius and Jack gently help Stede pry himself out of Ivan's neck.

Ivan shivers violently after, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Don't do that again, or I will kill you."

"In my defense, I tripped," Stede says.

"You fucking did not," Ivan scoffs. "Whatever, this isn't even fun anymore. Fang's right; they always pay upfront so as long as you swear to never go back-"

"Consider it done," Izzy interrupts. "Can we please go back to our van now?"

They trundle back to the van, oddly comfortably. Fang and Ivan make casual conversation, and things could be worse.

"Oh fuck no," Izzy murmurs as they near it. A figure near the back of the van steps out, and he has the worst feeling-

"I thought I killed him?" Stede asks. "Izzy, you saw him. Chauncey was dead!"

"We should have mentioned that," Fang winces. "Nigel turned Chauncey after you guys bolted, but I don't think he expected it to take with how far gone Chauncey was. I guess it worked."

"Looks like," Izzy sighs. He wants to rest somewhere that isn't the back of a van. He wants a shower, and to cuddle with Ed and Stede.

For now, he'll settle for killing Chauncey. Certainly better than nothing.

#text post #ofmd fic #steddyhands #stizzy #vampire au

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