#It was originally only going to be a sketch but then it JUST KEPT GOING. ENJOY. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

autumnalwalker · 6 months

Text

Empty Names - 18 - Mom Energy

Author's Note: Of the main cast Eris is the only one with a real social life. Let's take a look at that. Honestly though, this one kind of got away from me and is almost like three different chapters smashed together. "Eris has a social life," followed by "Eris recounts the most recent monster-of-the-week mission," and then wrapping up with "Eris has an existential crisis due to healing magic going weird." Had some fun with one though, bringing in Sarah from the side story "There Are No Dogs At The Dog Park" and then adapting A Dream About Waking And Sleeping into this episode's monster-of-the-week plot. See the tags for more spoiler-y commentary. Word Count: 15,071 Content Warnings: Memory loss, fears of being a bad friend, lewd jokes made in poor taste, brief mention of past aphobia, scars, blood, fantasy violence, child endangerment, implications of potential accidental personality alteration via magic. Not sure if the community label filter is really necessary on this post, but I figure better safe than sorry.

<-Previous Chapter Masterpost Next Chapter->

“So then,” Eris says, sliding aside the remains of her quiche, “Road turns to me and tells me to throw him. Swear to God, his armor grew handles when he said it. But this is Road we’re talking about and adrenaline was running high so I yeet him across the crypt chamber at the flying vamp mage, no questions asked. Stake goes in the heart on impact, the two of them crash to the ground, portal closes, and everyone goes home happy.”

As blood-themed as the story she just finished was, for once Eris isn’t wearing red. The gradual consumption of her wardrobe by that portion of the spectrum had always been a matter of practicality rather than taste. Easier to hide the stains that don’t wash out that way. Eventually it got to the point where grabbing a random article of clothing from her closet was more likely to be sanguine than not, and it just wasn’t worth the effort to consciously pick out something else for casual wear, even when she wasn’t expecting a mess.

But today’s the morning after a full moon, and for the past couple of years now that’s meant putting all that aside for a day. On this particular morning it’s white slacks and a teal button up shirt. Never mind the North American Lycanthrope Sanctuary Association volunteer staff t-shirt hidden underneath. At least it’s not the same sweaty one she wore all last night.

Sarah, one of the regulars at the Sanctuary, is seated across from her, human again until the next full moon and dressed in jeans and a green sleeveless blouse. Contrary to popular belief, lycanthropy itself rarely has any noticeable physical effect on those affected by it outside of the night of a full moon, only whatever autogenesis picks up on as having been internalized as part of their identity. If Sarah’s canines are more pronounced than average, it’s a subtle thing unlikely to be noticed unless one is looking for it, and if the modest muscle gains she’s made since first meeting Eris are easier to maintain than for most people, she’d still had to work enough to get them in the first place to be proud of the effort. The increased preference for meat over time had been a conscious choice to get more in touch with the newfound side of herself rather than a dietary compulsion.

Eris had been the one to give Sarah the tour of the NALSA facility when she showed up for her first full moon a few years back. They’d hit it off well enough that the next time they met they exchanged contact info to keep in touch online between moons. From there it quickly turned into a monthly event to look forward to. Sarah would spend the night running wild with the other werewolves while Eris would spend the night working with the rest of the sanctuary’s human staff to make sure everyone stayed safe until the sun came up, and then they’d both catch a couple hours of sleep, grab a caffeinated beverage, and then go get brunch in what was left of the next morning.

Sarah swallows the last strip of bacon from her plate as Eris finishes her story. “Well, that’s definitely some kind of coordination going on there,” Sarah says with a southern twang that’s recovering after years of being buried. “Sounds like being on a team’s been treating you well.”

“They’re good people,” Eris replies, leaning back in her chair. “Okay, Sullivan goes out of his way to be an ass, but he’s barely around and everyone else is cool. Road’s Road, you know Lacuna and I are tight, and Ashan’s growing on me more than I expected for a mage. Hope you don’t mind that I invited him out here next time. God knows that kid needs socialization.”

“I always wanted to meet a wizard.”

“I’ll tell him you said that. Maybe it’ll get him to actually accept the invitation. I would’ve brought him with me last night, but he’s currently deep into learning how to use the laptop I bought him a couple days ago and I wasn’t about to step in between him and Lacuna’s attempts to teach.”

“Ah, I was wondering what she was up to when you mentioned she wouldn’t be making today. But I gotta ask, why did you buy the wizard a laptop?”

“I was going to get him a phone, but it wound up being complicated to get him anything other than a prepaid burner, what with him being legally dead and all.”

“You left out the part about him being undead.” A look of realization dawns on Sarah’s face. “God, it is so weird that I can say that with a straight face these days.”

“Says the woman who was playing fetch with a tractor tire last night.”

Sarah’s face goes red at the memory that Eris knows is more clear than it would have been a year ago. “Look, you try having your brain rewired to compulsively chase prey and then try talking to me about resisting when a big, round, biteable thing rolls by.” Her tone is indignant, but she’s smiling as she says it. It’s nice to see she’s gotten comfortable enough with her situation to joke around about it. “And it’s not playing fetch. If I had hands when it was like that to throw it again myself I would. I’m not bringing it back to you, I’m telling you to serve me by making it chasable again.”

She got the hang of staying mostly lucid in a half-way form for minutes at a time three months ago. She could absolutely throw things herself if she wanted to and she and Eris both know it.

Eris laughs. “Are you sure it’s a wolf you’re turning into and not a cat? But in all seriousness, Ashan’s not undead, he just had some screwed up stuff happen to him as a kid that I think he’s just recently realized how bad it was. Not my place to say, so let’s just leave it at ‘wizard bullshit.’ I got him the laptop because I thought it might help him adjust to being back on Earth seeing as he’s been in a quasi-medieval fantasy world since he was literally a child. We’ve got a lot of downtime between jobs so I figured he could spend some of that browsing the digitized sum of human knowledge to catch up on what he’s missed out on. Browse some wikis, read some books that aren’t spellbooks, watch some movies, learn what memes are, maybe find a podcast he likes, that sort of thing.”

“You wanted to help him reintegrate into normal Earth culture so you got him on the Internet,” Sarah says incredulously, “instead of taking him out to see things and interact with people firsthand.”

Eris gives that a moment to sink in before blurting out “Damn, Lacuna’s rubbing off on me. Look, I’m working up to it. He’s taken this long just to open up to us and I’m still not sure if he even has any interests or hobbies that aren’t directly tied to being a wizard. I learned my lesson early on with Lacuna about throwing a shut-in into the deep end too soon, so I’m taking it slow this time. And besides, it’s giving him and Lacuna the chance to do the most talking they’ve done so far that wasn’t somehow work-related, so that’s some socializing right there that they’re both getting in.” Eris does a quick mental calculation. “I should probably give them a call later to check in.”

“Worried they’ll blow something up? You said Lacuna has a ‘mad science lab’ now” Sarah says with finger quotes. “A mad scientist and a wizard left together unsupervised like that, who knows what could happen.”

“I hadn’t been until you said that. Before I was just concerned about them getting so caught up in what they’re doing that they forget to eat again.”

“Not mutually exclusive,” Sarah starts to say when she sees Eris’s hand drift toward her phone. “Relax, I’m kidding. They’re mostly responsible adults, they’ll be fine. Jeez, it’s like you’re a mom who just adopted a second kid or something.”

“I am not,” Eris says, balking at the idea.

“Right, because fussing over how much they eat, trying to keep them out of trouble, and encouraging them to get out more and make friends isn’t totally the mom friend thing to do.”

“You’re reading too much into it.”

“Am I? I’m not criticizing, but you’ve literally admitted to buying a box of protein bars for the express purpose of handing them to Lacuna when she gets hungry. If that’s not mom energy I don’t know what is.”

“First off, until recently, I hadn’t had to do that for over a year, and secondly, if Lacuna’s any kind of pseudo family member to me, she’s more like a sister.” Like a younger sister despite being older, she refuses to concede aloud.

Sarah shrugs. “I’m just sayin’, one instance of picking up the first nerdy introvert who comes along and latches onto you then getting super protective of them is a quirk of circumstance, but twice is a pattern. Not a bad thing necessarily, so long as you don’t go overboard with it. Honestly, I find it endearing at times.”

Eris knows that Sarah’s found it annoying at other times though. But for now, she’s more preoccupied with thinking back to all the times she’s tried to approach and handle Ashan the same way she’s done previously with Lacuna. Should she have? Just because Lacuna responds well to it, that doesn't mean Ashan will or has been. Is Lacuna okay with their dynamic? She did go all that time without telling Eris about the risks she took with the data theft. Sure there was the NDA geass, but Lacuna hadn’t been under that yet when she ventured into the more dangerous part of Crosssherd seeking out a loan shark. Is the fact that Eris is more concerned about that than she wants to admit a sign that she’s been smothering her best friend?

She shakes off the thought and counters, “And what about you? I’ve hardly given you that same treatment.”

Sarah scoffs. “I had my shit together when we first met. I might have been new to the whole werewolves and magic bus stops thing, but I was hardly looking for someone to come sweep in and take care of me. Between you and me, I was the one who…” she hesitates, suddenly realizing that she’s strayed into waters supposedly under a bridge. “Well, you know.”

“No, I guess you weren’t,” Eris says, trying not to tense up.

Sarah had asked Eris out some time back, and Eris had turned her down. That sort of conversation is always uncomfortable and it had been made doubly so by Eris’s explanation that she expected her monster hunting hobby to kill her young and thought it would be selfish to get romantically involved with someone when it would just end with them being left painfully alone. It was bad enough already that she’d let Lacuna get as close to her as she had. Eris counted herself fortunate that she and Sarah had been able to salvage their friendship, but had been low-key dreading the topic might come back up again today. Between it being as close to an anniversary of that unfortunate conversation as you can get with lunar cycles and the fact that being on a team now theoretically upped her odds of survival (despite in practice having nearly gotten her killed twice already), if there were ever a time for Sarah to ask again it would be now.

The moment hangs.

Eris drags out finishing off the remains of her coffee.

Sarah pokes at a crumb of meat on her plate with a fork.

“Aaanyway,” Sarah starts. Eris snaps back to eye contact at the sound. “Like I said, it sounds like being on a team’s been treating you well, so maybe now you can share that load of worrying about everyone.” Sarah hesitates. “And maybe you can let someone worry about you for once.”

“Sarah, I -”

“I mean you’ve got friends who care about you too, and not just with having people to watch your back out there. As good as that is to have. For instance, I’ve been meaning to ask since we both got in yesterday: How’s your leg doing?”

“My leg?” Eris asks. The question blindsides her enough to displace worries about wherever else Sarah might have been hinting at.

“Yeah, it got torn up pretty bad last month. You were back on it in the morning of course - I’m still jealous of that regen you’ve got going on by the way - but later you sent me a photo saying you thought it might scar. You sounded weirdly excited by the prospect.”

That doesn’t sound right.

“Huh, must have slipped my mind after it healed up,” Eris says with feigned nonchalance. “No new scars here, I’m afraid to say. You know how it is with me.”

No new scars besides the burns from Logos that Lacuna healed away, at any rate. Of her hunts since their last meeting that she’d regaled Sarah with today and yesterday, the story of having half the front of her body and face burnt off was one that she’d conspicuously omitted. It takes a Hell of a lot to make Eris black out, but she’s choosing to count the jarring jump in memory from grabbing the miniature sun to waking up on an infirmary bed as a blessing.

“But that’s enough of me,” Eris says, “I’ve hardly heard a thing about how you’ve been doing.”

Sarah shrugs. “What can I say? Same old same old. But work gives me moon days off so I shouldn’t complain too much.”

Eris gives her a conspiratorial look. “But you’re going to.”

Sarah grins wide enough that Eris knows she’s trying to show off her fangs, such as they are. “I’m a werewolf now, but I’m still working customer service, only now the customers include witches and fairies. You bet your ass I’m going to.”

Eris flags a waiter down, orders another coffee and settles in to listen to Sarah recount a particularly weird encounter with a sphinx and some kind of spider lady. Sometimes she wonders which of them actually has the more dangerous job.

*******

That evening, after having said goodbye to Sarah for the month, changing back into her usual red tracksuit, and calling to check in on Lacuna and Ashan, Eris is sitting on a barstool at 121813.

“Twelve eighteen thirteen” is the generally agreed upon pronunciation of the bar’s name, although what the name means is less agreed upon. The three most popular theories are that it’s either a date (usually speculated as December of 1813), a scriptural reference (which scripture is a whole other debate), or a leftover address from before one of Crossherd’s major layout shifts. Lacuna had suggested it might be a tarot thing when Eris told her about it. The Hanged Man, the Moon, and Death. An ominous spread, according to Lacuna, but Eris figures it makes as much sense as anything else.

In any case, Fitzgerald Wilhelm von Harkenstein IV, the establishment’s clockwork owner, proprietor, and bartender always seemed to get too much of a kick out of the speculation to give a solid answer. Make what jokes you like about a bartender with no taste buds, but Fitzy had drink mixing down to an art. Then again, he claims to be at least as old as the city of Crossherd itself, so Eris figures he had plenty of time to practice if nothing else.

For over a century now, 121813 has served as the closest thing to a centralized organization for American monster hunters. Other parts of the world had holy orders, secret societies, and grand lodges stretching back generations, but in these parts everyone figured that a couple dozen thrill-seeking assholes who all frequent the same bar was good enough to get the job done. Most hunters usually work solo, but the bar is a good place to brag about kills, show off trophies, swap rumors on potential quarries, and put a band together if you get word on something really nasty.

It’s not peak hours yet and regulars are still trickling in, but there were already a few familiar faces there to greet her when she walked in twenty minutes ago.

Golden-eyed Gretchen who had taught Eris German and how to wield a spear.

Bai of the braided beard who had taken over Eris’s old garbage collecting route when she signed up with Road’s new venture and ever since has been alternating between thanking her for the job referral and complaining that he couldn’t take his axes with him on shift.

Wyatt, whose eyepatch is actually an AR visor to aim assist his crossbow and adjust for weight and aerodynamic differences on specialized bolts.

The green-haired enby twins, Loreghaste and Lornegna, who favor halberds and hammers respectively but both carry swords as backup sidearms.

Chuck in his ill-fitting trenchcoat, a relative newcomer to the game who’s already earning a reputation for going off on insufferable rants about the superiority of katanas.

The grim-faced Preacher, who never shares his name for fear of theft, never touches a drink that isn’t water, and never hides his disdain for everyone else’s choice of archaic weaponry for the sake of sport when guns are so much more efficient at completing the important work of slaying beasts.

Old Vic, the elven immigrant from off world who’s always down to party like the college kid his face looks the age of.

Plus a handful of others that Eris either isn’t all that close to or doesn’t recognize at a glance. High turnover rates have always been an unspoken truth amongst the monster hunter community. It’s been said that there are five fates that await hunters.

One: You die early from a stupid mistake, biting off more than you can chew, or just plain bad luck.

Two: You finally catch up with that one monster that was your reason for taking up the hunt to begin with and if you survive you walk away, vendetta done.

Three: You have your first near-death experience, confront your mortality, and make the wise decision to get out.

Four: You have your first near-death experience, confront your mortality, and realize you’re hooked on the hunt that will surely kill you one day more than you are on living a long life.

Five: The hunt gradually becomes your whole life and personality until one day you hit a tipping point that causes autogenesis to kick into overdrive, transforming you into a monster yourself in need of putting down by your former comrades.

Everyone at the bar tonight - except maybe Chuck and the other newbies like him who still think they’re invincible - has long since made their peace with the idea that they’ll probably be dead by forty. Fifty tops. Other than Old Vic, of course, who’s at least twice that age, but rumors that he’s already secretly met the fifth fate have been flying around since before Eris ever found Crossherd and 121813. Having been on a funerary hunt with him herself and seen what a hunter consumed looks like, Eris doesn’t put any stock in that speculation.

She hasn’t been in here since joining up with Road, and for the moment she’s content to nurse her drink and take in the old familiar ambiance rather than partake in the ever-present banter just yet. Or she would be if the glass didn’t feel oddly cold in her hand and the polished bartop didn’t somehow feel rougher than it should be when she traces her finger along it. Normally she’d chock it up to having been away for awhile, but after what Sarah said about her scar she can’t shake the feeling that something is off. Now that she’s thinking about it, it’s not the first time she’s noticed things feeling subtly different than some subconscious part of her brain is expecting when she touches them. Almost like her sense of touch has been dialed up slightly ever since the incident with Logos. More disturbingly, she has a blister on the edge of her palm from her last workout and weapon practice session and she can’t place why it disturbs her. On the one hand, that sounds like a reasonable and normal thing to happen, but on the other hand it doesn’t make sense to still be there a couple days later with how fast she heals. And she knows she’s still healing freakishly fast given how she shows no sign of the beating she took on the most recent mission. But beside that there’s the nagging feeling that it’s something else that is on the tip of her tongue and refusing to solidify into anything articulable.

Eris decides to talk to Lacuna later about it. She had warned Eris to watch out for unexpected side effects from that custom healing ritual. If anyone can narrow it down, it’s Lacuna. Funny to think that, but she really has come into her own lately and Eris is proud of her for it.

The thought gets Eris stuck on the other uncomfortable truth Sarah had touched on earlier. Has she been infantilizing her best friend? And now Ashan too for that matter. That might not have been what Sarah meant, but the idea won’t quite go away now, no matter how much she tells herself she doesn’t believe it.

As much as she’s found herself wanting to help Ashan and thinks he deserves a better hand than he’s been dealt, at the end of the she knows that he’s tough enough to deal with all the shit he’s been through and come out the other side just fine, with or without her help. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still good to try to be kind and be there for him if he wants it even if he doesn’t need it.

As for Lacuna… Eris tells herself that what she’s been feeling lately is worry over a specific issue and not a general statement of either of their characters. On the surface, ever since she got her lab Lacuna’s been the happiest and healthiest Eris has seen her in a long time. But over time little things have started to add up that have her increasingly concerned. Canceling therapy. Backsliding into forgetting meals when she’d worked so hard over the past year to stop doing that. Gradually spending more and more of her nights in the bed and breakfast above the office instead of going home. Break room trash cans filled with energy drink cans and bags of green tea and chai after having been so proud of kicking the habit entirely. The stark contrast between her fears and uncertainties in the early days of the new job and the uncharacteristic matter-of-fact-ness Eris was greeted with upon waking up covered in disfiguring burns. A few days ago Eris could have sworn Lacuna actually flinched when she got close to her.

There’s something big eating at her best friend, but the couple of times Eris has tried talking to her about it, Lacuna's either casually brushed it off as being nothing or been outright evasive. And while Eris knows Lacuna is a grown-ass woman capable of making her own decisions and dealing with the consequences, that doesn’t make the worries go away. And friends should worry over each other when something is so obviously wrong. Shouldn’t they? She supposes the best she can do at this point is be there to catch Lacuna if she falls.

Eris sighs and turns to the monster hunter seated on the barstool to her left. “Be straight with me Vic. Do I have mom energy?”

“Eris!” the elf gasps in a show of mock scandalization. “You can’t just tell people to be straight. And even if you could, you should know that I could never.”

“Whatever happened to ‘your terms for sexuality are nothing more than a modern human social construct’?” Bai pipes up from the other side of Old Vic.

“When on Earth, do as the humans do, my dear,” Old Vic replies. “Especially when doing the humans.”

“Ha hah, you’re a real comedian,” Eris says dryly, “but really, serious question.”

Old Vic throws his head back and laughs. “Eris, my dear, don’t tell me that that’s what you’ve been brooding about since you walked in here.”

“I do not brood.”

“And that’s exactly what made it so intriguing to watch. But if it makes you feel better, I would say that you only have ‘mom energy’ in the sense that you give off - as the kids put it these days - dommy mommy vibes.”

The ensuing snickers from everyone in immediate earshot - including the bartender- has Eris wondering what possessed her to ask that of Old Vic of all people. She’d blame the drink, but she knows from experience that with her constitution it’s painfully expensive for her to get even slightly buzzed and she hasn’t dipped that far into her budget yet tonight.

Out of the corner of her eye she catches Wyatt smirking and struggling to hold in the next burst of laughter.

“Got something to add?” Eris asks against her better judgment, knowing full well that she’s about to hear something even dumber than Old Vic’s original joke.

“Step on me mommy,” Wyatt barely gets out through fits of giggling.

“God, it’s like I’m friends with a bunch of middle schoolers.” Eris turns around and locks eyes on the nearest table that she knows is close enough to have been eavesdropping. “Gretchen, help me out here,” she calls out to the one other woman in the bar in hopes of some solidarity.

The moment Gretchen turns around from her conversation with the Lor twins wearing a wicked grin that brings back too many memories, Eris knows she made a mistake.

“No Vic,” Gretchen says with agonizing slowness and delight, “I wouldn’t say that Eris gives off those vibes at all.”

Eris suppresses a groan. Some people... You allow them to tie you up one time and they never let you hear the end of it.

Eris had met Gretchen shortly after finding her way into Crossherd for the first time and she’d been the one to introduce Eris to 121813. Not long after that, Gretchen became the first woman Eris had ever dated and her only attempt at dating that didn’t crash and burn after just a couple of weeks. The eventual breakup had been - as far as Eris could ever tell - mutual and amicable, even if Gretchen’s disposition towards her since unpredictably alternated between friendship and melodramatic rivalry. The latter always struck Eris more as Gretchen doing a bit than a genuine competition of egos. At least it kept things interesting, even if it occasionally meant moments like this one.

And still a better outcome than her other miserable attempts at dating within the monster hunting scene. Hookups following cooperative hunts weren’t uncommon but Eris had quickly realized that wasn’t for her and more than one fragile ego - and face - had wound up getting bruised after failures to comprehend that physical attraction just plain wasn’t a thing she felt for anyone without a certain threshold of emotional intimacy being met first. (A threshold she’s been very careful not to cross with Sarah.) And as much as learning there was a term for that (demisexual) helped her understand, no one else ever seemed to get it. The reputation that she started to get back then was half the reason she almost exclusively kept to working solo up until now.

Eris tries not to look put off as she glances around to see if anyone remembers that she and Gretchen used to be together back in the day. She catches a gleam in Bai’s eye as he makes the connection and puts together the implication of Gretchen’s words. She glares at him, daring him to say something. It’s enough to make one of the newbies unfortunate enough to wander into her line of sight to reconsider coming up for another drink order and retreat back to his table.

“Ah, we’re all just ruffling your feathers for being gone too long, my dear,” Old Vic cuts in. “If you must have a serious answer, then no; nobody here thinks you’ve gone soft for getting yourself a support crew and we all know you could kick any of our well-toned asses. Yours truly excluded, of course.”

That’s not what Eris had meant with her question at all, but at this point she’s just glad to have a topic change when Wyatt speaks up.

“So what is it like working with Road full time?” he asks. Eris recalls that Wyatt is one of a number of monster hunters who survived his first encounter with the supernatural due to Road’s timely intervention.

“A lot less time chasing down rumors and false leads, but a lot more sticking around to deal with the cleanup afterwards. And a lot more dealing with people. Road’s as good in a fight as everyone says - they’ve beaten me and our wizard two-on-one twice now - but that’s where they really shine. You remember what it was like when Road saved you on your first day Backstage?”

“I do,” Wyatt replies. The hesitation in his affirmation speaks volumes of the fear and confusion from that life-changing event that most every hunter is too proud to admit. Feelings that Eris has seen Road help people through time and again now.

“Well, they’re like that with everyone. And any time we need to get somewhere without a direct bridge from Crosssherd they’ve got a ride lined up from someone they’ve helped before, eager to repay the favor. Between handling most of the prep and followup themself, I don’t know where they find the time to sleep. It leaves our wizard and I with a lot of downtime where we’re basically getting paid to workout, train, research, spar, and rest, but we’re also on-call to drop what we’re doing and head out at a moment’s notice.”

With how often Road is in and out of the office, Eris honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they’re handling the more minor jobs they get leads on alone without telling her and the others. It feels wrong to say that aloud though. Too much like an accusation.

“You’re telling me you’re sparring with a combat-capable wizard on the reg?” Bai interjects. “I call bullshit. Normal people don’t fight mages. Not if the mage has any skill.”

Eris spreads her arms. “What can I say, I’m built different.”

Further debate on the fightability of mages is interrupted by the arrival of a decent-sized group of hunters, at least one of which seems to be celebrating coming off a successful kill. Eris joins everyone else in listening to the victorious youth - a newcomer to the bar that she doesn’t recognize - brag about his hunt and the fight at the end of it. When the kid (God, did she look that young when she got started?) starts showing off the tooth he took as a trophy Eris and Bai share a knowing look. Definitely a Crossherd sewer gator and not a muck dragon, but best to let the kid have his moment and then pull him aside later to break it to him gently in private.

And then one of the newbie’s buddies spins him around and lifts up his shirt to reveal the claw marks on his back.

“Scar check!” someone shouts.

“Scar check!” someone else echoes.

“Scar check!” Gretchen adds to the growing chorus.

It’s a tradition almost as old as the bar. One person shows off a new scar or injury that they expect to scar and then everyone else starts joining in and shouting out where they got their own wound. Scars were viewed as the truest sort of trophies around here. Indisputable signs that you’d really been out there, danced with death, and come back alive. Everyone had a few and it was generally considered poor form to show the same one off too much, even if it was your most impressive one. Only the newbies didn’t have at least a handful of small but permanent scratches.

Only the newbies, Old Vic, and Eris.

Everyone was willing to concede that Old Vic really was just that good (or had some manner of secret elven healing magic), but Eris had actually had to get someone to stab her in front of the whole bar to convince everyone that it really was just that hard for something to leave a mark on her in the long term. “Built different” she likes to boast, but she’ll never admit that she usually feels left out during these spontaneous exercises in camaraderie. As far as she’s been able to figure out, it’s pretty much just curses and magic poisons that leave behind anything visible, and that’s all they do.

So Eris just has the two scars to her name. A bite mark on her ankle from when she accidentally found out she’s immune to lycanthropy, and a puckered circle on her side from an ectoplasmic musket ball shot at her by a hateful civil war ghost.

Built different. Different enough to sit out of the scar check most of the time.

It’s fine though. She can still watch and congratulate everyone else.

“Clawed by splintercat!” elicits appreciation for the clean parallel cuts.

“Gored by a hodag!” draws out excited whoops.

“Kicked by a nightmare!” is met by good-natured ribbing about the resemblance to a clothes iron burn.

“Carried off by a snallygaster!” drops into offers to buy drinks.

“Duelled a crossroads demon!” earns dual high-fives from the Lor twins.

“Top surgery!” is greeted with joyous laughter and congratulatory applause.

“Bitten by a joint snake!” is commiserated with over how annoying those critters are.

“Wrestled a Jersey devil onto a church fence spike!” gets a rare word of approval from Preacher.

“Escaped the hunter of hunters.” chills the room and sets the crowd whispering.

“Zapped by a rogue paratech drone!” is followed by jokes about robot uprisings.

“Burned by a salamander!” sparks an argument about whether it looks hot or cool.

And around it goes until Eris realizes that all eyes are on her, expectant.

“Well E,” Gretchen addresses her with the nickname only one other person has the right to, “got anything for us this time?”

“Well since you ask,” Eris draws out, returning her smirk, “I’ve got a little something I picked up on my last job with Road.” The name drop gets everyone’s attention. Hunters band together when they get word on something really nasty, but when something truly weird or intelligent gets involved, they call Road. “I don’t know if it’ll stick around or not yet, but it’s fresh enough that you lot tonight are lucky enough to catch a glimpse before it’s gone.”

Everyone starts crowding in to get a closer look as Eris slowly begins rolling up her left sleeve.

“Vamp bite!” she proclaims as she suddenly yanks her sleeve back the last couple inches to reveal her newest memento writ in flesh.

Stunned silence across the bar.

“Eris, my dear,” Old Vic speaks up, “we all love our resident goddess of mayhem, but did you get in a fight with a toddler?”

“Yeah, yeah, get it out of your system, ya chuckleheads,” Eris says, waving her hand in a rolling motion at the ones dumb enough to laugh at Old Vic’s comment. She knows an invitation to show up the losers who don’t know the top dogs around here well enough when she sees Old Vic set one up for her. “It doesn’t look like much, but the story behind it makes up for that.”

“And are you going to tell us, or leave us to our imaginations?” Gretchen asks, already knowing the answer.

“I dunno,” Eris drawls, “you gonna buy me a drink? It’s a long one.”

*******

“Alright,” Eris begins, drink in hand and straddling the chair she’s spun around to sit in backwards, “may as well start at the beginning and get the boring stuff out of the way to begin with for those of you who lack context. A couple months back, Road asked me to join up with a new venture they were starting. And if any of you are too new here to know who Road is, just ask anyone else. Everyone knows Road. Anyway, the whole point of this venture is to help people affected by things Backstage that no one else will bother with because it’s not technically a masquerade breach, and nine times out of ten, that means there’s either a monster or a mage causing problems and needing put down. Hence yours truly.

“At the moment we’ve just got a small field team of Road, myself, and a wizard who goes by Ashan Glassheart. Some of you might have heard of him, given that he’s been handling the convention circuit for the past few years. I know calling him the nicest mage I’ve ever met is a pretty low bar -” every hunter that’s worked with a mage in the past laughs - “but he’s off-world trained so he knows his stuff and goes out of his way not to blow up his own teammates. Meanwhile, we’ve got my buddy Lacuna handling remote tech support, overwatch, and lead finding for us.

“Anyway, I’m out getting groceries at the corner market - on Sixth and Triskelion, Bai, you know the one; run by the lizardman, Mr. Arzochi - when I get a call saying we’ve got a job lined up that could be time sensitive so I should head straight there instead of heading back to the office for a briefing. Mr. Arzochi offers to hold my order for me until I get back - great customer service, that guy - and I start booking it to the address provided for the best bridge out of Crossherd.

“See, we’ve got a website now so people can come to us asking for help instead of us needing to find them and we just got our first intentional client through that. Apparently some single mom living in a quiet suburb up north found out her house was built on top of a buried vampire lair and now she had bloodsuckers and animated skeletons crawling out of her basement. Or so the frantically worded help request made it sound like.

“Fortunately, there’s a direct link out of Crossherd to the town in question so it wasn’t half an hour later when I’m standing outside the door of an unassuming cookie-cutter house with Road handing me stakes and going over strategies for getting victims and living thralls out safely while Ashan’s drawing glowing shapes in the air and confirming that the whole place is just absolutely saturated with necromantic magics. Some wizard jargon about unhallowed ground, leylines, and liminal tearing.

“Judging by the blacked out windows, we assume that the vampire’s already in control of the house itself and take room clearing positions as I try the doorknob. It’s locked, but just as I'm about to force it the door swings inward to reveal this little girl, eight, maybe nine years old. No, not the one who bit me, I’ll get to that. So her eyes go wide and I’m standing there blocking out the sun trying not to scare her when Road steps in and gets down on one knee to look the kid in the eye. He - Road was in guy mode that day - tells her that we’re the people her mom called to help with the basement. The girl catches on and calms down, asks us to wait a minute, closes the door and comes back with her mom who’s about my age and looks pale and haggard enough to have been fed on regularly, but doesn’t have that absent, far away look and voice that thralls get.

“Still, the mom looks relieved to see us and recognizes Road’s voice from the phone so she invites us in, locks the door behind us and introduces us to the vampires. And no, it wasn’t a trap.

“Okay, another quick round of names to help keep things straight going forward. Not real names though for the sake of client privacy. So for now let’s call the mom Brynn and her daughter Clair. The two vampires waiting in the darkened living room looked to be about the same ages, and were dressed modern enough - probably sharing clothes with Brynn and Clair - but of course were way older. Like, Vikings getting lost on the way to Vinland old as it turned out, but we’ll get to that. We’ll call the older looking one Sigrid and the younger looking one Hild. There were also seven animated skeletons wandering the house doing chores, but I couldn’t tell them apart and I don’t think they were sapient so I’m not going to bother naming them.

“Introductions are made, Ashan asks to check to verify there’s no mind control or compulsion going on, Sigrid says she didn’t even know that was a thing she might be able to do, the tests come out clean, Brynn sends the kids upstairs, the skeletons follow, and then we finally get an explanation to clear up the misunderstanding that’s had us all on edge this whole time.

“Starting way back at the beginning, the gist of it all is that sometime circa one thousand AD, someone over in Europe heard tell of a place discovered north across the sea, all the way west of Greenland, and got the bright idea to ship off and lock up creatures that wouldn’t die properly as far away from anyone else as possible. Far from everyone else except, you know, the people who already lived there but, hey, tale as old as colonialism, am I right? So they sent over a boatload of undead and a couple of mages to keep them bound, built a crypt, interred the undead, sealed it up, and then built a church on top. And then support for the project from back home dropped off, the Vikings stopped trying to keep up an outpost for the church-crypt-prison keepers to get supplies from, and the locals got fed up with invaders burying necromantically-infused corpses on their land.

“Something went down at that point, but it’s not clear what, only that one winter night Sigrid woke up, climbed out of a stone coffin with no memory and found herself in the ruins of an abandoned church. Hild woke up not long after that and the skeletons along with her. As far as Sigrid knows, Hild’s mute. Never heard a word out of the kid - and I use the word ‘kid’ loosely here - despite having basically adopted her. Sigrid found some writing detailing what the place was and a ritual to keep the undead in that place dormant and sealed. She did the ritual, spent the winter alone with her and Hild surviving on animal blood from the surrounding woods, and then found herself tired enough to return to her sarcophagus at the end of the winter. That waking up for the winter kept repeating, but with an exponentially longer gap each time, until one day she went to sleep and woke up centuries later with a house on top of her and the woods replaced by a town.

“Sigrid was able to cobble together some limited translation magic and explain all this to Brynn, Hild and Clair made friends, and Brynn agreed to help them through the winter. None of them knew jack about anything Backstage, nothing modern anyhow, but it turns out you can just buy blood off the internet and have it delivered.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to the exciting part, cool it. Do you want ‘We went down to the basement and punched some skeletons the end’ or do you want a proper story? You’ve gotta have some context for these things. Have some buildup. Gradually raise the tension. Sprinkle in some mys- yes Chuck, we all know vampires don’t work on seasonal hibernation cycles like that. It was our first big hint something was weird. Now are you lot gonna keep interrupting or can I keep going?

“Yes Vic, you’re a real comedian.

“Now for those of you paying attention, you probably picked up on the obvious detail that it ain’t winter outside right now. That’s the real reason Brynn finally started looking for outside help. Keeping a pair of vamps fed for the winter is one thing, but indefinitely is a whole other beast. Worse than that, Sigrid suspected that the usual re-sealing ritual wasn’t working anymore and that whatever else was downstairs was starting to wake up. She said she could feel things moving beneath her when she tried to sleep for the day and Hild had been acting even weirder than normal lately, breaking off with her games with Clair and the skeletons and staring off into space for minutes at a time.

“You got it. That’s what we were there for.

“Oh, and I should probably mention, Brynn and Sigrid were trying to hide it, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes they had it hard for each other. Grade-A sapphic pining in the face of knowing fate will never let them have it coupled with still getting their heads around the idea that it was okay for them to like women. It’ll be relevant later.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.

“Moving on to the fun parts now, Sigrid takes us down to the basement while the others stay up top, shows us the ragged hole in the floor with stairs down to her crypt, and leads us down to where she normally does her sealing ritual. You see, there were actually two levels to the crypt, the upper level where Sigrid, Hild, the skeletons, and five other vampires she never let wake up were kept, and a lower level past a stone door she’d never opened where the really dangerous prisoners were imprisoned. There’s some brief debate on whether to reattempt the sealing ritual with a proper wizard on hand, but Sigrid was all out of the blood to use as components for it and Lacuna - she’d been listening in the whole time via comms - said that creating a custom replacement without the need for blood would take longer than Ashan was estimating the weakened seal would hold for. So we decide to set up a temporary ward to prevent passage out of the crypt and then fully break the seal so we can go down and permanently deal with whatever was down there.

“Road goes up to to the basement and unpacks his dufflebag to give me my spear - I’ve got an enchanted ice spear now, I’ll bring it with me next time - pull out a glyph–inscribed metal card, and set out a miniature drone that Lacuna remotely connects to and sends downstairs with us. It’s a pretty cool little gizmo, like a toaster-sized robo crab with a projector mounted on top. Anyway, Road puts the card on top of the stairs where it starts to play a recording of Lacuna’s voice chanting an incantation to project a selective pass through barrier so we can still get out if we need to. Afterwards, Ashan does some wizard shit to the door that makes a big flash of red light and sets the whole place rumbling for a few seconds.”

Eris takes a dramatic pause to lean forward and grow a slow grin. “And then four of the five occupied sarcophagi open up. Out crawl four blood-starved vampires, too feral from hunger to reason with. The first one leaps at me and I impale it midair. The spear’s enchantment freezes the poor bastard solid by the time gravity catches up and brings it to the ground. Vamp number two makes the mistake of going for Road who just dances around its attempts to claw him and paralyzes it one limb at a time with that fancy beam sword of his. Once it falls he stakes it for good measure and leaves it there to deal with later. Meanwhile, the third vamp is trying to get Ashan while he’s still reeling from the backlash of breaking the seal. It lunges for him and then jerks to a halt with its fangs an inch away from his neck when Ashan recovers and conjures up a bunch of chains around it, making it easy pickings for me to stake. Unlucky vamp number four catches the scent of easier prey upstairs and tries to beat a retreat while we’re all busy only to run headlong into Lacuna’s ward and fall tumbling backwards. Road catches it before it breaks its neck and it repays that kindness with biting his neck. Turns out Road’s jacket can shift forms faster than a starving vampire can move, so it just scrapes its teeth on hard plating while a freshly-armored Road pulls it into an embrace as part of pressing a stake into its heart. Opening up the the fifth sarcophagus to check, we found another vampire with a stake already in its chest whose wood hadn’t quite rotted away with age yet. We left it be.

“So, yeah, it was a nice warmup before the main event downstairs. Of course, Road being Road, he was insistent that we leave the vampires ‘alive’ but neutralized rather than dragging them out into the sun, burning, or beheading them to finish the job. I’m pretty sure he’s with them at a rehabilitation center right now, working on getting them fed enough to be lucid for a chance at integrating with modern society, Backstage resources and all.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Warmup done, I roll aside the inscribed stone slab that was still physically blocking off the lower crypt after Ashan had broken the magic seal on it and we descend. And for those of you struggling to keep track, ‘we’ in this case includes Sigrid and Lacuna’s drone who were there for ritual support but weren’t really combatants. Sure, Sigrid had the strength, speed, and reflexes of a well-fed vampire, but she was no trained fighter and wasn’t super big on doing violence. Even hunting down deer and rabbits in the woods to feed herself and Hild back in the old days never sat quite right with her.”

Eris leaves out the detail that what disturbed Sigrid about the bloody hunt was how good it felt in the moment. She suspects she’s not the only one here at the bar that feeling is a little too relatable for.

“The second staircase goes down deep, well into the bedrock,” Eris continues, “with enough clean, precise angles that it was obviously carved out by magic and unworn enough that you could tell no one had taken the trip up and down since its construction. We find another inscribed stone door at the bottom but Ashan verifies that whatever enchantment was on it broke when he broke the seal from upstairs. On the other side we find another crypt, way bigger than the first. At least a hundred sarcophagi laid out in neat rows with a ceiling high enough that whatever mage carved it was obviously showing off. Close to half of it was filled floor-to-ceiling with rubble. At first we figure it was an old cave-in but then we notice the ragged hole on the far side of the chamber and realize we’re looking at the debris from an excavation. An excavation most likely carried out by whatever used to be in the sarcophagi.

“That’s right, they were all open. Most of them, though, were still occupied. If you can call being filled with mounds of pulsating flesh that are barely recognisable as having once been human as ‘occupied’, anyway. All of those had these fleshy tendrils coming off them - so dark red they were almost black - trailing away like roots or cables down that tunnel that obviously hadn't been part of the crypt’s original construction, so you know there had to be something effed up going on back there.

“The tunnel turns into a maze on us pretty quick, but there’s a definite directionality to the pattern of the meat roots covering every surface and following those seemed to lead to some kind of center. A couple minutes in of taking it slow and keeping our eyes and ears peeled we hear this super gross squelching sound coming from around the corner. This eight foot tall amalgamation of smushed-together corpses rounds the corner and immediately goes aggro on us. Probably knew we were coming from all the meat roots we couldn’t avoid stepping on. It definitely had enough of those coming out of its back as a tempting weak point to go for. ‘Course, that was easier said than done with it taking up almost the full width of the tunnel and swinging around eight arms to grab and pummel you with if you tried to squeeze around it.

“On top of that, it had some sort of weird damage transfer thing going on so that anything we did to hurt it would instantly heal and then replicate the wound on the flesh covering the tunnel. I’d stab it and frost would appear on the wall instead. Road would slice it and meat roots on the ceiling would go limp and droop down. I’d straight up punch a hole in its chest and when I pulled my hand out the hole would seal shut and vessels on the floor would burst and spray ichor up at us. Adding insult to repeated blunt force trauma injury, it turns out that Lacuna’s drone is basically useless without a flat surface to project onto and the meat roots all over the place weren’t real conducive to that.

“Seeing that just beating the crap out of this thing until it falls over isn’t working, Ashan tosses up a barrier blocking off the whole tunnel to give us all a second to breathe and shift tactics. Up until that point he’d been rapidly conjuring up small shields that would disappear after blocking a hit or two so that Road and I wouldn’t get punched in the head too much. I tell him I can handle it and that he should focus on going on the offense, so he folds his barrier around the corpse golem that’s already started slamming itself into it and then drags the magic-wrapped monster burrito to one side so Road and I can get to the exposed tendrils coming off its back.

“It’s the sort of maneuver that we really should have opened with, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. It had its flaw though in the form of the hole he left open for the tendrils. I’m sure there’s some BS magic mechanics explanation for why he couldn’t just snap it all the way shut and sever them himself, but that meant there was space for the monster to escape when its flesh started to goddam liquify and start oozing out of the hole to reform. Seeing we’re about to have a problem again, I fling myself on top of the reforming flesh pile and leave Road to cut the tendrils. My reward for that is four sets of jaws emerging from the congealed slurry to bite me and bone fragments assembling themselves into limbs to try to hold me down while the rest of its mass flows out to engulf me.

“Quick show of hands, who all here’s been dunked in sewage before? Okay, and who’s fought zombies or hung around long enough after a hunt for the quarry to start putrefying? Right. Now imagine combining those two smells, filling the sewage with bones, and having it actively try to crush and suffocate you. Rank does not begin to do the stench justice.

“Fortunately, Road cuts the amalgam’s connection to the tunnel walls quickly, causing the mass around me to shudder. That doesn’t deanimate it - it was already dead and more of a puppet or golem than a proper undead, so ‘kill’ isn’t the right word - but it stops regenerating. I start tearing it apart from the inside and less than a minute later I’m standing in the middle of the tunnel picking viscera out of my hair while scattered bits of gore uselessly pulse and twitch. Thank God for overly-fastidious wizards with cleaning spells or I’d still be in the shower trying to get that smell out.”

While her audience laughs at the half-joke, Eris’s mind lingers on what she must have looked like for Lacuna, watching from multiple angles through the comms and drones as she burst out of that mess, clothes stained with dark blood and ichor dripping down her face. From the time she got her mouth free enough to breathe without inhaling undead meat and fluids to the time she made eye contact with the crab drone’s camera she’d had the same feral grin she knew she always had after a kill. Ever since she’s been waiting for Lacuna to say something. Dreading it, really. If she hadn’t just imagined Lacuna involuntarily flinching away from her the day before this last job, what must her friend think of her now that she’s had an unfiltered view of her in all her gorey glory?

She can talk to her about that later. Right now she’s still got a story to tell.

“Moving on down the tunnel system, we don’t encounter anything else until we reach the central chamber, a big roughly hemispherical cavern with other tunnel openings all around. In the center, all the meat roots had converged and woven themselves into a cocoon. A cocoon that looked to have been freshly split open by the time we got there.

“Hovering in the air above it and faintly glowing red we see this vampire mage who’s gone all in on the demonic bat look. Big wings that he doesn’t even seem to need to fly, pointy ears, long clawed hands, black sclera, red irises, weirdly echoing voice, the works. He sees us and he must have been a wizard, because he immediately starts monologuing at us. And it’s all in some old proto-Norse dialect with off-world loan words so I don’t understand a lick of it.

“That said, I don’t need to parse the words to know an evil gloating asshole stroking his own ego when I hear one, so I cut him off mid-sentence by hurling my spear at him. I nail him right through the chest, but he’s got the same damage transfer hacks going on as his creation we killed earlier, without even needing the physical connection, so he just pulls the spear out and casually drops it like the smug bastard he is and calls for the rest of his creations to start streaming in from the other tunnels.

“I’ll save you the blow-by-blow of the ensuing melee or else we’d be here all night, but I’ll paint you the broad strokes of it. Me, Road, and Sigrid - surrounded like this, she didn’t have much choice but to join in - back to back to back against over a dozen constructs of fused-together undead in various shapes and configurations. Vampires, ghouls, revenants, you name a variety of walking dead originating out of Europe and chances were a specimen had been blended up and thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, Ashan’s running interference to block and lock down any magic the vamp mage tries to throw at us. That includes the vamp mage trying to open up portals, both to escape and to let in minor demons that he’d contracted out from some hell-type dimension or another.

“Now, most of you here are lucky enough to have seen me and/or Road in action before, and a few of you are unlucky enough to have seen two mages go at it, so I’ll let you extrapolate out what the next several minutes looked like based on how fighting against just one went. At least in that chamber we had proper room to maneuver, so getting around behind the amalgams to cut their puppet strings was easier. Up until the vamp mage would slip a spell past Ashan and plug one of his creations back in to start regenerating again. While there was technically a limit to how much damage the vamp mage and his minions could offload until there were no more meat roots in reserve to take it, it was a pretty high limit and we were looking at a battle of attrition. I’m pretty good at those, but I was starting to have my doubts that Ashan could hold up. He’s got this thing with drawing on ambient heat as a power source and everyone down there capable of breathing was puffing out fog clouds.

“Oh, and did I mention that the vamp mage kept up his villain monologuing during the fight? At the time I figured he was just running on a magic system heavy on verbal spell components, but later the others filled me in that was only about half of his blabbering. If anyone’s curious, the gist was that he’d been awake off and on for centuries, had fed on all the other undead in the crypt to grow his power, used the husks of his fellow prisoners as labor to carve out tunnels in the shape of a ritual circle, and stuck himself in the middle of it to hibernate until his transformation was complete and the seal on the crypt finally faded in full. Now our breaking of the seal on the crypt had woken him up again and accelerated his plans for escaping and taking vengeance. I’m not sure he quite grasped the idea that everyone who banished him and locked him up down there is long dead.

“So yeah, uber vamp, sworn vengeance, corpse golems, grand melee, wizard duel, portals threatening to open, battle of attrition, yadda yada. That finally breaks when Lacuna finally finds a good, flat, tendril free, spot on the wall to steer her little robo crab that everyone forgot about over to. She starts projecting a ritual circle on the wall, plays the pre-recorded incantation, and before anyone realizes what’s happening the whole room floods with conjured sunlight. You’d need to ask a mage what makes it so special compared to the lights Ashan had made for us to see by, but it was as good as the real thing for making vamps burn and the amalgams and meat roots all over the walls, floor, and ceiling, were at least seventy percent vampire in composition. Watching all that light up in a wave of smokeless fire was maaaagnificent.”

Eris smiles at the memory of the spectacle. That moment was the second proudest she’d ever been of Lacuna.

“That should have been the end of it,” Eris goes on, “but of course it wasn’t. Same as Road was pulling Sigrid back into a side tunnel and Ashan was conjuring up a mostly opaque barrier to keep her from burning the vamp mage had sequestered himself in his own little ominous floating sphere of darkness hovering ten feet off the ground. So I’m left standing there alone considering how best to reach the vamp mage and pull him into the light before Road gets the chance to remind me to take him in ‘alive’ when the light suddenly goes out and I hear Lacuna scream into my ear through the comms earbud.

“I’ll be honest, when she didn’t respond right away after I asked what happened I kinda snapped. I gave throwing my spear at the vamp mage another go and this time it stuck. I followed up with a running jump to grab the portion of the haft that was sticking out of the black sphere and dragged the bastard out of his safety bubble. I slammed him into the cave floor like a hammer head onto an anvil, climbed on top of him, and started going to town on his face.”

Flashes of fear and rage resurface with the memory, causing Eris to stumble in her narration. The way she had figured at the time, either he’d hurt Lacuna and needed to pay or something else had happened and she needed to finish things up here and get back to the office as quickly as possible. The next few minutes (or was it just seconds?) trying to finish him off were fuzzy, but she had some vague memory of Road trying to pull her off before she could kill him. What Road didn’t realize is that was her being nonlethal with a powered-up vampire. If she’d wanted him dead she would have gone straight for ripping his head off. Too bad she hadn’t been thinking clearly enough at the time to just stake him. Would have saved them all a lot of trouble.

“When he realized he couldn’t throw me off him he tried necromancy. I could feel him trying to grow spikes from my bones. Heating up my blood in hopes of boiling it. Skip beats on my heart in an attempt to stop it. Willing me to rot from the inside out.” Eris laughs, more showy bravado than genuine pride. “But you know me, I’m built different and autogenesis is a helluva drug when it comes to magic resistance. The only reason I stopped beating the everliving tar out of him when I did was I heard the kid scream next.

“Turns out that the vamp mage had some kind of connection to Hild and with the seal gone he’d been able to use that connection to mind control her from all the way down in the crypt. He’d used her skeletons to take Clair hostage, coerce Brynn into physically disrupting Lacuna’s ward up in the basement, and bring Clair down to where we were to use as a human shield. A dirty ploy, but an effective one at getting us to stand down. Breaking an actively-maintained ward had hurt both Brynn and Lacuna but not killed either of them, so Brynn catches up and wanders in just in time to see the vamp mage opening up the hell portal Ashan had been keeping closed so a new round of minions could file in to keep us busy.

“Now obviously, letting a vampire go free with a hostage just means that hostage is getting eaten later rather than sooner but that doesn’t make getting that hostage to safety any less tricky. Fortunately, hearing Lacuna’s voice come back online to confirm that she was okay, just pretty out of it, calms me down enough to notice Road whisper something to Sigrid and then give me enough of a look that I catch onto the gist of his plan. I then get Ashan’s attention and have him start translating trash talk for me to get the vamp mage focused on us. Not exactly my proudest moment, but I’m pretty sure I taught Ashan and the kids some new swear words.

“Distraction in place, Sigrid breaks off from where we’ve all been lined up to go give Hild a tearful full-body hug and whisper something in her ear. That’s enough to break Hild out of the near-trance she’d been in this whole time to have her skeletons let go of Clair and start attacking the demons. Road moves in to intercept the vamp mage before he can grab Clair himself while Brynn scoops her up to get her to safety. New problem is we’ve now got exits blocked by demons, multiple non-combatants to keep safe, more minions filing in, and a very angry vampire mage who’s already started to recover from the beating I gave him. I don’t even wanna know what kind of price he paid to contract those kind of numbers for summoning.

“Somehow though, he looks at all of this, does the tactical calculus, and concludes that Hild is the biggest threat - or maybe he was just mad at her breaking free - so he points a hand at her and his fingers extend, shooting across the room. Road realizes what’s happening in time to parry it enough to keep it from taking off her head, but the vamp mage still manages to rip a gash in Hild from jugular to heart.

“Here’s the thing about vampires that makes them so annoying to kill: Short of beheading or burning, they can recover from basically anything so long as they have the blood. So pro-tip, if you find yourself fighting a vampire without a stake and you don’t think you can get a killing blow on them, hit them someplace that they’ll bleed a lot. And it has to be external bleeding. A decent size cut’s harder for them to recover from than broken bones or ruptured organs. Get them in the heart or jugular and they’ll bleed out nearly as fast as a human if they don’t get the chance to feed in the next minute or so.

“On the flip side, if you’re ever trying to save a vampire, the number one most important thing is to give them something to drink; the fresher and stronger the better.”

Eris holds up the child-sized bite mark on her wrist for everyone to get a good look at again. Damn, but does it feel good to watch the realization dawn on her audience’s faces. Especially the ones who’d laughed at it earlier.

“Now I’ll be real with you,” Eris says after everyone’s had a moment to ogle, “for most of the rest of this I was a bit loopy from blood loss, but I promise I’m not exaggerating when I say Hild started making whole skeletons out of the ash of the corpse golems that had burned earlier and ripping new boney minions of her own out of any demon that fell. The things drinking your fill in fresh human blood for the first time in a millennium will do for you I guess.

“Still, it turns out that closing a fully open summoning portal that things are actively passing through is harder than keeping a partially formed one from opening and Ashan was already near his limit back before Lacuna dropped her sunshine bomb on the room. With splitting his attention between that struggle, trying to keep the vamp mage from opening an escape, and maintaining bubble shields around himself, Sigrid, Brynn, Clair, me, and Hild, that was leaving just Road and the skeletons to fight both the mage and his minions. Not good numbers and we were back to a battle of attrition. Road’s good - the best even - but even he can only be in so many places at once and Hild’s ability to keep reforming her frankly fragile skeletons was only going to last as long as I could keep serving as a blood battery.

“And then the whole place starts shaking. We’d only burnt away the meat roots in that central chamber and now the rest were writhing and contracting in an attempt to collapse the surrounding tunnels. The classic ‘if I can’t escape then no one can’ gambit.

“The thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that the whole time this round two of fighting is going on, Lacuna’s been frantically searching a digitized library of spells and rituals and calling out descriptions over the comms to ask if it’s something any of us think can help. She’s not trained on how to properly recover from the backlash of an interrupted ritual, much less two at once, so she wasn’t in any condition to cast anything else herself, but she could still provide words and glyphs for others to do so. To be honest, I’m pretty sure we were all basically tuning her out by the time the walls started shaking, but just as Road is starting to give the order for everyone to retreat back up to the surface she cuts in claiming to have found a - and I quote - ‘spell to conquer evil’.

“But then she reads the description and sees that it requires - and again I quote - ‘a threefold declaration of love hitherto unspoken,’ and apologizes for getting our hopes up. And that’s when I realize I’m apparently the only one with working eyes because I have to point out to everyone that we’ve got the capacity for that right in front of us. Sigrid and Brynn for each other, Brynn and Sigrid for Hild and Clair respectively, and Clair and Hild for one another. The love of partners, mothers, and sisters. Eros, Storge, and Philia for those of you who read your classics. Threefold love, and let’s throw in some Agape loving God for making people more willing to make declarations of repressed love when they think they’re about to die.

“Lacuna projects the words to read up for the spell on the wall, Ashan provides the magical oomph, to make the spell go, vows are made, and we get a whole new, somehow even brighter wave of light bursts out, this time from the four of them, banishing the demons, sweeping away the meat roots even in the outer tunnels, and stunning the vampire. He’s still floating like twenty feet in the air though and already starting to twitch again.

“So then,” Eris says, standing up to pantomime the final act of the tale, “Road turns to me and tells me to throw him. Swear to God, his armor grew handles when he said it. But this is Road we’re talking about and adrenaline was running high so I yeet him across the crypt chamber at the flying vamp mage, no questions asked. Stake goes in the heart on impact, the two of them crash to the ground, portal closes, and everyone goes home happy.”

*******

“Good story earlier, E” Gretchen says to Eris some hours later on her way to join the gradual exodus of hunters from the bar, “didn’t get the chance to say that earlier with everyone else lining up to fawn over the savior of children and spotter of true love.”

“Thanks,” Eris replies skeptically. Is this sarcasm or flirting? God, she hopes it’s sarcasm. She has enough ambiguous advances to turn down on her plate with Sarah already.

“The manticore stinger scar’s still my favorite though,” Gretchen continues in a tone that makes flirting the uncomfortably more likely possibility. “You should consider showing it off again sometime.”

“Sure, I’ll th-” the non-answer catches in Eris’s throat.

She doesn’t have a scar from a manticore stinger. She doesn’t even remember having had a potential scar like that. And it’s not something she would forget; manticore venom hurts like having your veins replaced by rose vines with vibrating thorns. Wait. Why does she know what it feels like when everything she’s heard about it calls it instantly fatal? Why does the thought of it make her jaw clench and fingers curl? It’s just curses and magic poisons that leave lasting scars on her. But both of her scars (potentially all three now) are from curses. So how does she know poison will do it? But there’s no way she could forget something like that happening to her.

Right?

Why does everything feel like her hands are too soft?

“I’ll catch you later,” Eris finishes her sentence as calmly as she can.

She tries not to run out of the bar.

*******

Among the subfolders in the photo app on Eris’s phone there are two labeled “Scars: Potential” and “Scars: Real”. The second most recent photo in “Scars: Potential” is from a month ago. It’s a set of ragged claw marks running down her left thigh with what might possibly be a partially-obscured bite mark mixed in. Her text message history confirms that she sent the photo to Sarah two days after the previous full moon.

She doesn’t remember getting injured, taking the photo, or the conversation.

Now she’s standing undressed in her apartment’s bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink and breathing hard as she rapidly looks back and forth between her mirror, her body, and one of the four photos in the “Scars: Real” folder. The photo shows a ring of puckered flesh just below her right breast with finger-length tendrils radiating out from it tracing along the paths of veins. Squint at it with the right mindset and it looks almost like a flower surrounded by vines. The scar’s an unnatural shade of dark purple standing out against brown skin. It’s matches in the “Scars: Potential” folder taken over the course of the weeks prior to the final version show the scar as being practically vibrant in its hue and surrounded by heavily inflamed skin.

Most importantly, it’s not there anymore.

“What the Hell?” Eris gasps yet again as she continues to run fingers over smooth skin while staring down the spot in the mirror where she should be seeing a scar.

She tightens her grip on the edge of the sink and accidentally cracks the ceramic. The buckling of the countertop topples her phone into the bowl. The sound snaps Eris out of her obsessive staring and prodding enough to look down at what she just did and swear. She lets go of the broken edge of the sink and picks up her phone. Too late she realizes she’s bleeding from the soft skin on her palm. Now she’s smeared it on her phone case. It’s not the first time it’s gotten blood on it but she swears again anyway.

Then she freezes.

Why are her hands soft?

That makes no sense.

She should have calluses.

She must have had calluses.

Where the Hell are her calluses?

Why did it take her this long to realize what was wrong?

Her grip on her phone shifts subtly and she nearly drops it in surprise. Running her fingers along the rubberized texture of its case feels different now somehow. She looks at the open palm of her other hand and something about the way it catches the light has changed slightly. The blister that’s been there for the past couple of days is suddenly gone. She traces the pad of her thumb back and forth across the tips of her fingers and finds that while it doesn't feel right, it’s the closest to right that it’s felt in weeks.

“What the Hell?”

She touches where the scar should be and memories that make no sense to have been forgotten come rushing back.

Sun hot enough to cook eggs on the dashboard. An Arizona truck stop. Rumors of a big cat prowling the desert and attacking truckers and tourists who stop there too late at night. Killing time waiting for nightfall by practicing along with a language learning CD snagged from a clearance bin. An empty parking lot beneath a moonless night sky. Climbing out of the cab and watching the desert. Feeling the temperature drop. The feeling of being the only person on Earth. Lingering in a space only ever meant to be passed through. The howl of an almost-human voice that almost sounds like a song. The weight of a tire iron in her hand. Stepping out beyond the edge of the pavement. Stopping just at the edge of the furthest lamplight. The twilight border between known and unknown. A whistled tune to announce her presence. Eyes in the dark. A growl that almost sounds like words. Circling. Blurring the line between predator and prey. Claws and teeth. The crack of a tire iron against a skull that almost looks human. A whipcord whistling sound through the air. A step too slow. Blooming pain. The feeling of veins replaced by rose vines with vibrating thorns. An inhuman growl from a human throat. Hands preventing a tail from ripping a stinger free. A slow extraction from a chest. A quick insertion into a neck. The loss of a tire iron. Seven minutes slumped against a door, trying to work up the strength to open it. Three days in the bed in the back of a truck cabin. Angry voicemails threatening unemployment. Coughing up blood. Engine noise going quiet. AC cutting out. Sips of hot water. Knocking on the door from a concerned stranger. A declined offer of a ride to the hospital. A request to siphon gas. The passing of years. An impossible city. A new job. A kindred spirit. A wonderfully wicked smile beneath golden eyes. The feeling of another’s hands tracing a familiar shape. The comparison to a flower.

This time Eris does drop her phone. This time she grips the edge of the sink with both hands. This time it’s a different curse she mutters between ragged breaths.

She starts to look up, catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, bolts upright, and looks down at herself. It’s fainter than in the photo, but there’s now the barest outline of what might look like a flower if you squint at it in the right mindset.

“Sis,” Eris whispers to a friend that isn’t there to hear it, “what did you do to me?”

*******

In the past fifteen minutes since Eris knocked on Lacuna’s door hard enough to chip the paint and wake the neighbors, she’s watched her best friend’s face change from terrified to concerned to embarrassed to anxious to worried to confused and now to utterly horrified.

“Oh goddess, I am so sorry. I swear I didn’t think that would happen. I knew there might be complications but I didn’t think that even could happen. I’m sorry. I should have seen this coming. I should have run more simulations. I shouldn’t have needed to. It’s so -”

“Sis -”

“- obvious in hindsight. Not even hindsight, it's just obvious. How could I be so stupid? I’m sorry. I promise this was an accident. Maybe if I - No that would be worse. I swear I -”

“Hey -”

“- can make this right. Or maybe it’s already showing signs of abating. This is what I get for not taking a baseline model first. Please don’t be mad. I’m so, so, sorry. I just -”

“Lacuna!”

Lacuna flinches at the not-quite-a-shout and goes quiet, shrinking back into the round papasan chair seated in her apartment’s living room.

“I’m not mad at you,” Eris lies. Maybe if she keeps still enough and keeps being slow and deliberate enough with her words and breathing it will become true. “I believe you that whatever this is was an accident and I’m not going to hold it against you.” That part is probably true. “Now please slow down for a minute and tell me what you think you did to me and what we need to do to fix it.”

Lacuna wraps her arms around herself and takes a series of trembling, drawn-out breaths. Her wide eyes show little sign of the sleep Eris woke her from. When she starts speaking again it’s slow and halting, and her fingers continue to drum on her upper arms in a rolling motion.

“Right. Sorry. So… Two things. Probably two things. But they’re kind of related. So maybe one thing.”

Eris resists the urge to tell her to get on with it. The patience that she’s learned since befriending Lacuna is wearing thin tonight.

“This is mostly an educated guess, but back when we healed your burns after the Logos mission. Remember how I said we were sort of hacking autogenesis to work for us?”

Eris nods. “Making my belief that I could walk away from the blast unharmed stronger than my and Logos’s combined belief that it should have killed me.”

“Yeah. That. Close to it anyway. Because the core theory of the Autogenesis Principle is that it makes your perception of yourself override baseline reality. Like we’ve talked about, that’s probably why you heal so fast normally. So I set up the ritual to temporarily sharpen and amplify that perception. Remove any doubts or distractions and absolutely focus on your idea of who you truly are. But since I never took an initial scan of when you were uninjured, we were pretty much going based on memory”

“And so, what, I lost focus and parts got left out?”

“Maybe? More likely that I did. It was configured to mostly be based on you, but since I was the one casting the ritual, some of my perception of your body slipped in too. And. Well. I didn’t know that you had those scars that you said were missing. Or maybe I was because on some level I was thinking of that all as being freshly grown flesh that we were replacing the old with? I don’t know. But when we found you your… Those were the parts of you that took the brunt of it. You were…”

“I was what?”

“I-” Lacuna bites her lip and puts a hand to her mouth. “Probably best I don’t say. Perception and everything. But trust me. It was… bad. If you were anyone else I don’t think you would have survived.”

Just built different.

“Fine.” Eris says even though it isn’t. “So the scars you didn’t know I had didn’t get put back when we healed me. That tracks, but why did it make me forget about them?”

“I’m not entirely sure, and that’s the scary part. It might have been a flaw in the ritual itself that caused some leakage between us or maybe left some of what was supposed to be a temporary perception adjustment linger around longer than expected. Or it might be because no one fully understands how autogenesis works and causing a shift in perception cascaded into forcing other variables into place to align with that. I’m not sure which one’s worse.”

“Okay so, those are both bad,” horrifying, if Eris is being honest with herself, “but what do we do about it?”

“For now? Maybe nothing? You said that when you realized something was off your memory came back and then the scar started to reappear. And that remembering the calluses caused you to remember the scar? There’s precedent for removal of memory alterations to cause a cascading effect. That’s something I read when I was researching how to help with Ashan’s tattoo. Not a tattoo, but you know what I mean. If we give it a little bit of time it should all work itself out and go back to normal. Probably. And if it doesn’t, we go find someone who knows more about this than me.”

“If it’s going to wear off, doesn’t that mean the burns are going to come back too?”

“No. That’s a little bit different. It’s a technical thing that I could explain better after sleeping properly, but I’m ninety-seven percent sure that we’ve got that part pretty well solved. Even before the ritual, you didn't remember the blast itself since you blacked out, and you weren’t even conscious for seventy-two hours between waking up in the autodoc bed and getting the additional healing. In the grand scheme of things, the time that you spent in that particular condition didn’t have much time to imprint on you or get internalized. Not unless you were taking that all a lot harder than you were letting on. It was part of the reason I proposed the ritual almost as soon as you were awake.”

“Fine,” Eris says. It still isn’t. “Fine,” she says again to convince herself. “I’ll assume and act like it will work out how we want, try not to think too hard about it, and it will happen, the same as any other autogenesis bullshit. But what about my calluses?”

“What about them? Same as the rest I guess.”

“No, I mean it’s not like we’ve never shaken hands before and I’ve literally dragged you into doing things in the past. You might not have seen all of my scars, but you should have an idea what my hands feel like.”

“Oh! That might be the whole ‘new flesh’ thing I mentioned earlier.”

“Or?” Eris drags out the word. “I sense an ‘or’ coming.”

Lacuna looks at her lap, trying and failing to hide the red creeping into her face.

“You’re always gentle about it though,” Lacuna practically whispers. “Compared to what I know you can do anyway. Holding hands. Arm around my shoulder. Pats on the back. Hugs. Even when there’s force behind it, it’s… comforting.” She laughs, embarrassed; a short puff of breath that’s almost more of a gasp. “I guess I think of your touch as… soft? I’m sorry. That’s weird of me to say. And also really messed up of me to have forced onto you, even if it was on accident.”

“Sis…”

“No, I mean it. It’s bad enough when normal people try to make others into the versions of them they have in their heads instead of who they really are. We’re lucky that ritual was only meant for long term physical changes and that I’m not enough of a real mage to even be able to make lasting mental changes. You're my best friend, E. I don’t want some weird idealized caricature my subconscious made up. I want you.”

Lacuna sniffs and Eris puts a hand on her shoulder before another torrent of “I’m sorries” starts pouring out. She’s not sure she can deal with more of that tonight, especially if they turn into tears.

“Hey. It’s gonna be alright. You fucked up - no sugarcoating that - but it happens to everyone sooner or later. Important part is you’re owning up to it, you’re trying to make it better, and you know how not to in the future. You’re my best friend too, and whatever happens, we’re still cool. I know who I am and no mad science lab accident is going to change that.”

Does she though? Was she always this forgiving? This protective? This quick to swallow her anger?

Eris tells herself that’s just part of caring about someone.

But if Lacuna ever did accidentally change something about her mind, would either of them even be able to tell?

Eris tells herself that being able to ask that question means she’s still her.

<-Previous Chapter Masterpost Next Chapter->

#writing #original fiction #urban fantasy #web novel #WIP #Writeblr #Empty Names #writers on tumblr #my writing #emptynameswriting #To clarify: Eris is both demisexual and biromantic. It just happens that she's only really had even marginal success with women so far.#I've said before that I don't really intend to go into any sort of romantic subplots with this story and that's still the case.#But as I was writing this one the fact that Eris is *actively avoiding* romance seemed like an interesting aspect of her to touch on a bit.#That one time Eris let Gretchen tie her up didn't last long because she kept accidentally breaking whatever binding material was used.#Absolutely ruined the mood. But it makes for a funny comedy sketch to imagine gradually escalating from rope to industrial steel cable.#Not why they broke up though. That was due to an argument over whether the Fourth or Fifth Fate of Hunters is the better way to go.#Gretchen thought that one of them turning into a monster and being put down by her lover would be tragically romantic.#Or even better: They both turn at once. Eris was horrified and still half-suspects she'll have to lead Gretchen's funerary hunt one day #The accidental memory and scar erasure was the only part of this chapter in my original notes for it.#That and having a drone project a ritual glyph while out on a monster-of-the-week mission.#I actually got a little bit uncomfortable while writing and thinking through in the implications of the incident on Eris and Lacuna's trust #Canonically Eris's personality HAS NOT been modified by Lacuna at this point. NOR has there been *intentional* memory modification.#But the fact that it's even a question would be a strain on any relationship.#Meanwhile Lacuna is absolutely dancing around the fact that Eris did briefly go “Fifth Fate” at the end of Chapter 15 but doesn't remember.#Fitzy the clockwork bartender is very loosely based on and named after the D&D character of an old friend of mine.#Loreghaste and Lornegna are based on/named after my Bloodborne and Monster Hunter: World characters respectively.#Keeping track of tenses got a bit wonky this chapter. Especially with Eris's regaling of her last mission with Road and company.#Things to go in an editing pass that I'll probably never do.#I worry a bit that I made a mistake with the jokes from Old Vic and Wyatt but then I figure any ickiness there is sort of the point.#Eris is uncomfortable with it too.

0 notes

doctorbeth · 10 months

Text

Scooby Doo circa 1979

This poor pup, at the age of 44, was nearly decapitated sometime in those four plus decades.

His person didn't remember if it was a fight with another dog or something else, but she found him stored like this among her mother's things, and wanted to see about making him feel better. In addition to the neck wound, he was missing a spot on the back, needed some eye touchup... and we were planning a spa for him.

Here he is in his bubble bath:

I don't know about you, but I can see his Scooby grin (which is actually missing) forming under the bubbles in that photo. I think it's one of my favorite spa pics. Anyway, here's his heart being made and installed.

Next his internal wire supports were straightened and reinstalled, and his neck injury was treated. That's when I figured out he once had a collar, because a stub of it was clinging to the inside of his neck. So I spoke with his person and we planned a new collar. These were the felt options, based on illustrations of Scooby from that era (the stub of collar was so faded, it was hard to tell the original color).

The plan was just to do a collar, maybe with a blank diamond hanging from it as I couldn't exactly replicate a machine embroidered tag (or the images of Scooby's tags online). But it was the weekend, and we let Scooby rest and while he was resting and I was busy doing other things, I had an idea of how to make his tag! So I made a tag with the collar, attached it, and sent photos. I told his person if she didn't like it, it was easy to go back to a plain gold diamond:

But she loved it! So we kept the SD tag and next was his new felt spot on his back to replace the missing one, and a new smile. Based on the stitches on his fur, it was hard to tell what his original smile looked like, so I sent a sketch with some example options:

His person chose the center one, but said thick yarn maybe? I knew it couldn't have been thick yarn originally. There would have been larger holes. But based on all his felt parts, thought maybe it was felt, so that's what we agreed to do. Soon, Scooby was smiling again and ready to fly home:

His person wrote "he looks brand new, wow I cannot thank you enough! Thank you so much!! He looks amazing!"

and when he got home, she added:

"He is home!!! He smells like my mom, I know you bathed him and cleaned him I don’t know how he does but that is the only thing I have now that smells like her. Thank you so so much!!!"

(that's the heart of original stuffing holding the scent. :-))

#stuffed animal repair #stuffed animal hospital #stuffed animals #scooby doo #scooby #scooby plush #scooby doo plush #scooby doo stuffed animal #dog #toy dog #stuffed dog #stuffed animal cleaning

3K notes · View notes

moralesmilesanhour · 10 months

Text

teamwork (makes the dream work...?)

genre: enemies to lovers I guess? I'm bad at these 😭

summary: one week, your usual work partner is absent, so instead you are seated next to a genius with attitude problems. it happens.

wc: ~500

A/N: if i can manage to be consistent for once, this will probably be a series because I haven't done one in a while. pls feel free to leave your reactions in the tags or comments! happy reading 🫶🏾

next see all parts in my masterlist!

Sunlight filtered through the large classroom window. Usually, you'd be seated right by it, letting the rays warm your face in the air-conditioned room.

Not today. Your usual partner was out sick, so you were moved to the back of the classroom. Blocking out the sunshine was the silhouette of a boy you had only seen in the hallways once or twice.

He had deep brown skin, with two neat cornrows cascading down either side of his neck and brushing his shoulders. You also made out an undercut, faded cleanly beneath the braids. There was a case meant for holding glasses sitting at the front of his desk, but no spectacles sitting on his prominent nose.

The boy was bent over his worksheet already, arm covering the page.

"Hey," you said with a pleasant upturn in your voice. A full thirty seconds passed. He didn't answer, so you try again.

"Um, excuse me-"

"I heard you."

The boy kept his eyes on his desk, brows knitted together with focus. He was making broad, sharp strokes with his pencil. His elbow moved for a moment, revealing not a sheet of math problems, but a piece of printer paper filled with intricate geometric designs. Precise lines come together to create the form of a caped figure. It has large, mechanical claws and a mask with sharp, wide eyes.

"That's a cool drawing," you commented. The boy's shoulders jumped to his ears as if he'd been caught before dropping back down. He finally looked up from the page and paused. Wide, brown eyes flickered across your face, trying to determine what to make of you.

"Thanks," was all that the boy said before returning to his sketching. It wasn't long before you interrupted him again.

"You not gonna finish your work?"

"I'm already done, that's why Ms. Jones put me back here and let me rock."

Your eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Well, excuse the fuck outta me," you muttered to yourself.

You messed with the sleeve of your royal blue uniform blazer in silence, weighing your options. Ms. Jones wasn't going to let you turn in another incomplete assignment, and this kid couldn't even be assed to say 'hello'. A deep sigh escapes your lips.

"Can I get your name, at least?"

The boy set his pen down with a slam, and looked up at you as if he'd just been asked what color the sky was.

"Morales," he deadpanned, with a slight roll on the 'r'.

"Which Morales?"

"Miles."

You hummed in slight recognition, having heard the name somewhere before, murmured next to you in passing.

"You Dominican?"

"Puerto Rican."

"Oh, cool."

"M-hm."

He picked up his pen again and began to twirl it between his pointer and middle finger, but held your gaze. You looked like you were finally about to get to the actual question.

"Well, Morales," you began with a smile.

Here it comes.

"Since you're done, can you help me with-"

"No."

You scoffed, "What's the point of being partners, then?"

Miles had already returned to his original position, scribbling away. He didn't look at you, this time.

"We not partners, ma."

...And so began the longest school week of your life.

#miles morales #spiderman across the spiderverse #across the spider verse spoilers #earth 42 miles morales #earth 42 miles morales x reader #moralesanhour

1K notes · View notes

bellamybellamyblake · 3 months

Text

Violet Eyes, Red

Pairing:

rhysand x reader (pretty sure it's gender neutral - there might be a "she" i missed while referring to you from the original draft bc second person pov is not how i write)

Summary:

you and your mate reunite after feyre defeats amarantha and this is the fallout of what the bitch did to him.

Warnings:

aftermath of SA - i can't really tell if it's graphic which tells me it is, loose description of a panic attack, PTSD, please let me know if I missed anything. guys, please, if these topics are triggering for you, don't read this fic. i am not responsible for your media consumption, but i also don't want to throw you headfirst into your trauma.

Word Count:

2,140

A/N:

literally broke my own damn heart with this one. rhys' trauma is so ignored and that needed to be rectified. rhys might be my second favorite bat boy, but he's still a lil baby who needs to be protected

The human girl had beaten her - the woman of his nightmares - once and for all. At the first moment he could, Rhysand winnowed. After fifty years, he knew there was only one place he could go. After all, it was the last Sunday of the month, and that Sunday was the day he and his mate reserved just for themselves. The High Lord and Lady would not conduct any business on that day.

You'd spend most of your day on the balcony. You'd serenade him with the piano. You'd fly around Velaris - creating patterns in the air. You'd cradle each other in your arms. He'd sketch out a new drawing - trying and failing, in his opinion, to encapsulate your true beauty.

One day, he broke that promise, that vow you had made, and went to what he thought was a simple trade meeting. That morning was the last day he saw you, and he still couldn't live with himself.

Those memories alone kept him breathing at times. When Amarantha stole his bed, his body, his hope.

Then the human girl showed up, and he tried to help her. Wanted to give her what she needed to beat the beast he didn't think he'd ever escape. But he had lost the will to pray for it. To the cauldron, to the Mother Above. Despite his pessimism, she persevered. The girl had won. And then he was free.

He was on the balcony before he could even think about it. After a quick glance around, he realized it was empty. At first, he felt a pulse of disappointment, but with the realization of how long it'd been, he breathed deeply. How could he expect you to keep up the tradition? Fifty years of solitude on those Sundays would have made him mad if your roles were reversed.

At the thought, he allowed himself to feel the mating bond. It had gone cold the moment he winnowed away all those years ago, but now it was as beautiful as he remembered. The pull of another person at the end of a tether, forever binding them in the purest forms of fate.

But he heard your thoughts, and he almost broke down in sobs at the sound of your voice in his head. Please come home, my love. I don't know how to do this anymore. Please. The last word, you were begging. Your inner voice, the one he had to get used to living without, was broken. Pleading for him to return - despite everything you'd probably heard.

And with that, he took action, winnowing to every room in the house so he would find you as soon as possible. He knew you were close; your scent wasn't stale. It was fresh, clinging to every piece of furniture you owned together.

It was the last room he checked, his office, where he found you. You sat in his desk chair; the leather more worn than he remembered. But the sight of you stopped him from rushing to you. Nursing a bottle of wine, you slouched on your elbows, hands in your hair, as more thoughts streamed through the bond.

I'm losing myself, Rhys. I don't know how much more of this I can take. I can't let myself believe you won't come back because that- that will ruin me. What she's doing to you, what she's making you do. I don't even know a fraction of it, but I can't stop it. I- I can't protect you. And I hate myself for it.

He was watching you as you sent the words down the bond, the bond that had been desolate for half a century. You run your hands down your face, not looking up from your wine, the third of many you planned to drown in.

Just get through it. Please just- just survive. Do what you have to do to come home. I'll be here. I love you. My mate.

You'd only allowed yourself to talk to him once a month. Initially, you would try to send him something every day. Thoughts, images, songs you'd learned, prayers for him. You never heard anything back, and it slowly started eating away at you. It shattered your hope every time you didn't get a response.

You'd heard the rumors, Amarantha's whore, he'd been called. Every time you heard it, it ate away at you more and more. As if he would choose that - choose to warm the bed of another when you were waiting for him at home. You knew him better than that, and you winced at the thought. He wouldn't choose it, but would she force him? Was she that much of a monster?

You had to shake that thought away for the thousandth time that night, downing the rest of the glass. As you reach for the bottle, nearly empty at that point, a hand wraps around your wrist. The touch is gentle but firm - stopping you from drinking more, but not rough enough to hurt. Instead of startling at it, the wine slows your instincts. You can only stare. The tattoos on the dorsal side interweave into vines under the sleeve. Vines you know, vines that you've held, vines that have and will continue to have free rein of your body.

Faster than you thought you were capable of, your eyes flew to its owner's eyes. Violet. The most ravishing violet. Violet you'd feared you were forgetting.

With a new urgency, you pulled yourself to your feet, your hands flying up to his face without thinking. One on his cheek, the other on his neck, pushing, pulling, grabbing, unsure if it was your mind playing tricks on you.

In your desperate touch, you missed the way he flinched.

His hands. Mother Above, his beautiful hands were on your neck too, placed at the sides. When your mind would play you for a fool, it would never let you touch him, let alone allow him to reach you. But there he was, and you could feel him. You tugged at the bond, finally noticing it was warm and delicate and sweet and serene and everything you wished you knew how to describe.

He breathed your name, barely a whisper. "I'm home, my darling. I'm home."

"You're here." The words barely escaped you, and you couldn't stop the tears. He didn't hesitate a moment, pulling you in for a frustratingly rare and fierce embrace. You clung to each other for dear life, tighter and tighter and tighter, like he'd disappear if you let him go. Frankly, you weren't convinced he wouldn't. "You're really here."

You stood like that for a while, holding each other, when he ultimately pulled away first. "Rh-Rhys, don't go-"

"I'm not," he promised, his voice raw, kissing your forehead. He took in every inch of your face. "I just wanted to look at you. My mate."

Since Rhys had been freed by the human girl, nothing had been normal. Not that you expected it to be, but you didn't anticipate just how awful a recovery for him would be. He couldn't share your bed, and you didn't mean that in a sexual manner. He couldn't sleep with anyone else in his room - if he had even been sleeping at all. He could barely stand to be touched. You knew he wanted to be able to let you, but every time you seemed to blink, he would flinch.

You had suspicions about what went on under the mountain, but you had no idea it would be so evil.

He stood before a cabinet, staring blankly into it, lost in a memory - a memory he'd been refusing to share. You understood why, but something in you told you that you needed to see. Not just for curiosity's sake but to know how to help him. Even if it was past your pay grade.

"Rhys," You called quietly for the second time. You didn't want to touch him, shock him back to reality. The fear of that setting him off more held you back. With a harsh and sudden breath, he fearfully glanced at you and around the room, forgetting where he was for a moment. "You're at home, Rhys. You came home."

"I'm sorry," He rasped, ignoring your words. His hands pulled at his hair, and you were nervous he'd start ripping it out. He backed away from you, so far away he was caught by the wall. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Your own formed at the sight of his tears, but you couldn't conjure up what he'd have to apologize for. "It's okay, honey, you're safe. It's okay."

"I didn't- I didn't want it. I swear on my life, I didn't want to."

You shook your head, not understanding. But you knew asking what he was apologizing for was the wrong thing to do. You could see it, the shame, the regret, the blame. "I know you didn't."

He squeezed his eyes shut, buried his face in his hands, and sank to the floor. He kept murmuring apologies, pleading for your forgiveness. "I betrayed you, you have to- you have to leave me."

His words shocked you, and now you were the one that flinched. "Rhysand, look at me." He visibly shrunk at the command, pulling his hands away from his face. "As far as I'm concerned, anything that happened...there...is the furthest thing from your fault. I know there are things you can't tell me, and that's okay. I'll be here when you're ready-"

"I can't!" He bellowed. "You'll never forgive-"

"Show me the memory." You demanded, your voice quiet but assertive. But you wouldn't push too hard if he was adamant about keeping you out. You knew. You knew. Based on the way he had been acting, what had happened. But you also knew he needed to show you. So someone, fucking someone, would tell him it was out of his control. He couldn't govern everything, even if he was the High Lord of the Night Court. The words hurt as they left your lips. "Because I can promise you that I will."

You weren't a daemati, but you could see him battling with himself. Debating, if showing you what really happened, would bury him deeper under the surface or pull him back up for air.

Eventually, he released a rare sob and a barely audible "Okay."

He showed you the first time, how he just laid there like a statue as her hands took everything for herself. Then, the fifth time, when she started demanding he respond, pretend he wanted it. Then, the eleventh time, when his body started reacting. Then, by the next time, he had stopped keeping count.

He showed you, whether he meant to or not, how he prayed for it to end, prayed for someone to rescue him.

How he had been praying for you.

With the confirmation of your theory, you squeezed your eyes shut, trying and failing to hold back the tears. The angry tears, wishing you could've been the one to rip her throat out. Tears that enraged you because that was not Tamlin's kill. Furious tears because that wasn't even your kill. Devastating tears because your mate not only had to play a character for so long, but he had to endure being called her whore. Like he had any fucking say.

Overwhelming tears because your mate was in pain and there was shit all you could do about it.

"Can I touch you?" The question shocks him, but he nods without thinking, confused at the request. You slowly lift your hands to his cheeks, brushing away his tears with your thumbs. "There is nothing for me to forgive you for. I know you didn't want to do any of it."

"But I-"

"Bodies respond to stimulation whether it's wanted or not. It's how we work." You explained slowly and carefully, keeping direct eye contact. "You forget, sweetheart. I can hear your thoughts when you show me a memory."

"I've-" His voice caught, putting his hands on your wrists, rubbing them up and down your arms until they got hot. "I've been so scared. That it's still happening. That all of this is going to go away, that she's not really gone, that I'm not really here, and this is just another tactic-"

You shake your head, finally pulling yourself together to say what you've wanted to say for weeks. "I swear on my life that I will never let anyone hurt you like that again. I will spend eternity protecting you from her and anyone like her. And if you forget that this is real, just ask me. I'll tell you."

His eyes darted between yours, furiously blinking. Violet eyes, red. Pleading craving begging praying.

"Is it?"

221 notes · View notes

beatcroc · 2 months

Text

a year!!! as of today i have now been drawing these funny little pizza freaks, to the exclusion of almost everything else, for!!! an entire year!!! i wanted to do a nice group shot/lineup of everybody to compare to when i first started trying to draw them because oh boy were they bad. i never even posted most of them anywhere because they were so bad. but im posting them here, now, to see how everything's changed/evolved.

this is probably the hardest time i've ever had trying to figure out how to work with a style, but we got there eventually; i'm pretty happy with the handle i've got on everybody now...dont let ur memes be dreams. lots of unimportant journaling and idle thoughts abt it below.

older pics

the first one is the VERY first time i drew them, before i thought i was going to actually have any interest in drawing them [lmao]; it was just the one isolated image, for my friendserver, to illustrate the funney message, so there was no attempt to make it Good or actually understand anything going on w/ the designs or style.

second is the original run of practices sketches to start trying to figure them out for real; done after i started having ideas for the comics and such and realized oh god maybe i am actually gonna draw fanart for this. [again, lol, and lmao.]

third one is the first pt art thing i posted on here. there were a couple weeks of sprite studies between this one and the previous image. the one on the top right wasn't part of that post i just threw it on as space filler; i'd intended to shift to doing Sprite Redraws But Stylized to explore tings more, but that was the only one i did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

individual characters

peppino: by far the hardest dear god. bro what ARE your shapes how DOES your face work. jesus christ. everything i have trouble with this style for, peppino has it in excess. i draw in polygons! i need consistency! and that is the last thing this kind of style is concerned with. they are made of squarshy clay and i do not understand how to mold them. i was really hoping trying to learn this game's style would GIVE me that kind of flexibility for fun exaggerated facial expression but i don't think much came of it in the end 😔. anyway on the bright side all this means once i got peppino figured out a little bit everybody else clicked way easier.

fake peppino: honestly i never did anything with him on purpose except for how his eyes work + the perma-smile thing. i figured ok hes supposed to look weird and off model so whatever happens with him happens. and it did. and it kept happening. it is still, in fact, happening.

noise/ette: somehow, for every bit that peppino was the least natural thing i've ever tried, these two worked pretty much right off the bat. i still don't understand it, seeing as pretty much all the things at play for peppino are also at work for them. i think the new sketches are actually a little worse than older ones but not enough that i care.

gustavo: really funny bc i drew him on model twice and just went 'okay, cool nice, easy, um. he doesn't have any fucking legs?' fortunately he was the only one i had a strong idea for how to stylize him [square] and it worked exactly as i was hoping so wahoo.

brick: is an animal and therefore 5000x easier and more natural for me to draw/stylize than anything else in the cast. that is Just a rat bro. i can draw a rat.

gerome: i think the funniest one here. the most drastic and least necessary change imo. i was gonna have him be really small at first, like smaller than the noises, but then i just... didn't. he's just peppino-sized now. also i gave him like. actual human facial structure, which is funny bc in most cases i'd do anything to avoid, but it works well for his being A Rock to give him some angles and definition like that+ to differentiate his vibe from the rest of the cast who are all very squishy. also since he is essentially Just A Head it's good to emphasize that too ig.

john: i only drew john a couple times but he gets to be here because i like him. and because most of the stuff i applied to gerome was readily applicable to john, though i did try to keep him a little more uncanny because he is a Huge And Lanky Freak. i hate that he is barefoot btw but idk how to make his color balance look right with shoes.

pizzahead: i did not want to put him on here honestly but i Have drawn him a handful of times and more importantly i didn't know what i was gonna do with john's pose if i didn't have him there to be glared at. the only thing that's different with him is giving him wider-bottomed pants, which i got from when i tried to draw these guys in clone high style [i never posted that one either][i will eventually]

snick: he gets to be here because 1. he's like 6 lines 2. i like him and 3. ive scribbled him a few times offhand and it went pretty well

misc

there are some guys missing because those are guys i didn't draw enough [or at all] to have gotten comfortable with them. sorry

i would have Liked to shade these but for the time being i have accepted that my grasp of light/shadow has decayed to the point im not going to be happy with anything i try there, so For Now i am working on my presentation with flats i guess. gerome has a shadow only because he's shaded like that ingame and looks naked without it

anyway if you are still reading [hi?] i get to shamelessly plug now. i'm over the hill of my pizza run now, and while i still have plenty of things i want to make here, most of the bigger more in-depth ones have passed. pizza tower was the first thing in THREE YEARS to get me out of my oc groove to doing fanart, and once i am done with my ideas here i will be going right back to it. if you like my art or how i write characters/interactions you should check out my oc/webcomic blog @jamverse . i can't promise people who like pizza stuff will be terribly into my designs, but i can guarantee i treat my guys with the exact same sort of tone i handle the pt guys with. and hell, i've mentioned it a few times before, but like 70% of my characterization for fake pep is just copied off one of my characters, so if u are going to miss him... he will still be there in spirit >;p

and if you dont care about any of that and are still reading thank you anyway. actually making these comics + seeing how shockingly well-received they've been has done a lot for my confidence, and for seeing that my kind of stuff IS something people enjoy :')

#pizza tower #peppino spaghetti #fake peppino #gustavo and brick #the noise #noisette #pizzahead #arting #pizzaposting

174 notes · View notes

epione-xx · 1 year

Text

MODERN ART

Inspired by @ssak-i and one of their prompts <3

His pencil sketched the lines slowly, drawing every curve of her body out from memory. Only looking up when he saw her shift and smiles at him- as if trying to purposely catch his attention.

another rough line aid charcoals hit the paper and then Damian looked up at her again, watching as she stretched a bit and asked another question.

“So how is it going?” That was the third time she had asked in the past thirty minutes, but the young man couldn’t help but chuckle at her “it’s going fine beloved, just stay still for me” he says.

Her pout ensured after the same old answer and she held her pose before moving to fix the strap of her white bralette “yknow, I thought you would have preferred me naked.”

Her brows wiggle suggestively and Damian flushed a soft pink before looking back at his paper “would you have posed for me naked?”

“Maybe if you gave me some compensation~” was her coy reply.

He let out a fake scoff and rolled his eyes, knowing that she wasn’t even talking about money but instead wanting to be paid out on kissed and cuddled (and most likely sex)

She smiles in reply at Damian’s scoff and fixed her pose, trying to make herself have less rolls.

Damian caught on, eyes flickering from his paper and to her body with a serious look “why did you do that?”

“Do what?” She hummed as she pushed her hair back and then looked at him.

“Try and hide your body” he got up, placing the sketch book on the small table as he strolled over to the bed where she sat, standing tall and looking Dow at her with a raised brow.

She felt herself flush in embarrassment and awkwardly shuffled “it’s not pre-“

“Bullshit” he glared “don’t you dare give me that shit of “it’s not pretty.” Do you know how gorgeous you are beloved?” The nickname was softer then his original tone as he got on his knees in front of her, hands setting on the sides of her waist as he looks up at her.

She felt herself flush and look down at him “I- aren’t they a turn off?”

He frowned even more “knowing that my beloved is healthy and has a normal body type?” He asks “knowing that you’re in much better condition the you were before, that your eating three meals a day? Never. That’s a turn on beloved” his hands moved further down, now palming at the lace that hung in her hips.

He smirked but nods, fingers grasping the lace and pulled it down her legs before he buried himself in her pussy and began to lick up and down- eating like a man starved.

She flushed and gasp, weaving her hands through his hair and meaning loudly “shit, Damian” she whines “thank you so so much”

He smirked and kept going, sucking at her clit a bit and as soon as she was about to cum he pulled away “no beloved, thank you for my dinner” he cooed.

She flushed more and stared at him, tonight would be a great fuck.

#damian wayne #damian wayne x reader #damian wayne fanfiction #batboys #batfam #x reader #batfam x reader #damily #damian wayne smut

714 notes · View notes

eddies-ashtray · 2 years

Text

i think eddie has drawings he’s done hung on his bedroom walls and i can’t stop thinking about bestfriend eddie doodling things for you. just absentmindedly during class or at restaurants or when you’re spending a lazy day at his trailer.

for years, you keep them in a little box under your bed. you cherish them like they’re wonderful gifts (and they are to you). secretly, you were harbouring a great crush on him and the drawings and sketches made your heart ache with affection whenever he’d slip them to you in class.

maybe he slips them through the slats in your locker between classes as well and when they float down to the ground when you open your locker they make you smile instantly; eager to add it to your collection at home.

eddie started out drawing whatever came to his mind. and then when he realized how much you loved them (noting how your face lit up whenever he slipped you one in class), he started drawing things he knew you’d love; your favourite flowers, or sketches of characters you like, your favourite animals, maybe he sketches your face (eddie thinks it’s his prettiest drawing yet) or your hands, his rings because he knows you like those too. he does them on scraps of paper and napkins and textbook pages, envelopes; anything that’s near him when an idea comes to him.

later on, after graduation and love confessions, you still have every drawing and sketch he’s done for you over the years. if you had to guess, there were over 100 little scraps of paper in the box. eddie didn’t know you still had them.

one day, you dig through all of them, fishing around for the perfect one—you’ve decided you want to get one tattooed. you finally find your favourite; probably one of the first ones he’d ever done.

for weeks, you hid it from him, carefully covering your wrist with long sleeved shirts and hoodies, planning to reveal it to him only once it’s healed more and looks nicer.

when you finally show him, he’s puzzled for a moment; the tattoo looks familiar to him, but he can’t quite place where he’s seen it before. then, you pull the box out from under your bed and show him the little slip of paper with his original drawing. he clues in then, realizing what you’ve done. his big brown eyes go wide (somehow becoming more large and owlish than they already were), snapping his gaze quickly to you.

“jesus christ! that’s my drawing?” eddie marvels, breathless as he pulls your wrist closer to him to inspect the ink closer. he thumbs over the tattoo softly. “it looks great.”

then, seemingly realizing something else, eddie’s eyes are drawn to the box full of drawings beside you. he picks it up, thumbs through the ones at the top.

“you kept them?” he whispers, dark eyes full of emotion.

“of course,” you say, “i only had like a massive crush on you for four freaking years!”

he laughs bashfully at that, and then, “yeah. and you know i felt the same way. kinda why i drew you about a thousand of these things,” eddie says, raising the box of drawings in his hand.

you kiss him on the cheek then and eddie kisses you on the mouth appreciatively, lovingly.

you spend the next little while combing through every drawing, reminiscing about each one; when he’d drawn them for you, why, which are your favourites.

and now, every time he has an excuse, eddie places a tender kiss to the tattoo on your wrist.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x gn reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson headcanons

2K notes · View notes

ggomos-maribat · 7 months

Text

NMWYCAM [bonus deleted chapter]

This is a scene i wrote out but couldn't fit into the current chapters :)

Originally Damian was going to find out that Marinette knows their secret in another way...lol he was gonna get badly injured as Robin and Marinette saves him but reveals she knows his identity

***

2:51 a.m. Marinette was still awake, despite the kwamis telling her off. She found herself having excess energy that night, so she decided on sketching under the yellow desk lamp with some music on. All was calm and peaceful until her phone buzzed.

Damian: Hello

Damian: Are you awake? Can I call you right now?

Her keyboard popped up for the reply, but more messages came in.

Damian: You're probably sleeping

Damian: ...

Damian: sorry

Damian: I shouldn't have bothered

Damian: sweet dreams, Marinette

Smiling, she went ahead and pressed the call button. When it took him several rings to answer, she pictured a panicked Damian fumbling to answer his phone.

"What's up?" She asked.

"Did I wake you?" His warm voice filled her ears. "Sorry . . ."

"No, no, I was awake. Couldn't sleep." Marinette propped her legs up on her chair, tucking them to her chest. She saw a groggy Tikki peek out of her small blanket but she waved the kwami off to go back to sleep. "Is something the matter?"

"No, I . . . I was just lying in bed and got the sudden urge to talk to you," Damian recounted. "Is that strange?"

Marinette brought the back of her hand to her reddened cheek. This boy. "I think that means you miss me, Damian," she laughed. "How was patrol?"

"It went smoothly. We disrupted a smuggling operation and put Riddler back in Arkham. You? What were you doing?"

"Ah just drawing out some ideas. Nothing too important." Snuggled in her blanket under the calm night and talking to Damian was like a tight embrace, Marinette realized. "I hope you didn't push yourself too hard."

A scoff sounded out from Damian. "Father threatened to bench me when I chased after the Riddler. The others kept watching me like I'll disappear into thin air."

"They're just worried about you, you know. As they should be."

"I only need you to worry about me." A long pause. Then a long sigh. "Sorry, I . . . I don't know why I said that."

Marinette hummed, feeling more heat crawl under her skin. "It's alright. They say your inhibitions are looser at night, especially when you're tired. But it's okay to be vulnerable; it's just me."

"What do you mean by that? 'It's just you'?"

"I mean I understand that you're being honest about whatever you say to me right now. I won't judge you for it. I won't even bring it up tomorrow if that's what you want." She pressed her phone closer to her ear. "I don't want you to feel that you need to keep something to yourself just because it's me hearing your words."

". . . How come you always say the right thing?"

"I guess it's my forte?"

"What if I can't say the right things?"

"Just talking to you like this is enough for me," Marinette said. "I can be the one good with words, and you can be the one good with actions. You always are."

"That's not fair at all. You are also good with actions."

That elicited another laugh from her. "But you are very good at taking care of people through your gestures. Not a lot can do that."

"You're the only one who has ever said that."

"'Cause I'm the only one who notices."

Soon, whilst they talk, Marinette noticed that he was mumbling the ends of his words. Later on when she finished her amusing story about a deal with a client, she didn't hear a reply, but instead, light snoring at the other end of the line.

He sounds so relaxed. Now she had the urge to look at his sleeping face.

"Good night, Damian," she whispered. "I miss you too."

#maribat fic #maribat fanfic #dc x mlb #mlb x dc #maribat #dc x miraculous #NMWYCAM #PA!Marinette

214 notes · View notes

angelofthepage · 2 months

Text

Thoughts on the "Updated" Bendy Employee Handbook

Before we go any further, let's make it very clear what kind of post this is: we're not here to hate on the book, and none of anything I'm about to say is said with ill intent. I am here for analysis, constructive criticism, and discussion. This post is a little more critical than what I would usually share, so viewer discretion is advised.

Today we're talking about the newly updated Bendy Employee Handbook, which just recently released as of this month at the time of this post. And I have a lot of questions about this entry, and really, game guides as a whole in our modern gaming world. This book appeared to advertise itself as a rerelease of the original handbook with additional content for Bendy and the Dark Revival, but upon comparing the two, I've noticed there's actually a number of changes they've made, some good, some bad, and some that I'm not sure what to make of. So come and join me under the cut, and if you have some thoughts of your own, feel free to comment or reblog and add to the discussion. Without further ado, here we go!

Part 1: The Baffling Amount of Cut Content

Our story begins where most stories do, the table of contents. So right off the bat, when comparing this book to the original, you'll notice something off.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, an entire section of the original book was cut, on top of making other sections shorter. And the weirdest part? Some of these things were exclusive to that original book, they didn't appear anywhere else in the Bendy franchise. So already we're off to a weird start. Some of these missing pages aren't so bad though. In some cases, they're just format changes to make the book flow a little better/take up less room. Sometimes they succeed in that, sometimes they end up feeling more cramped, it's pretty subjective whether or not this improved the book. But it certainly does cut down on pages. Case in point, the beginning of each chapter of BATIM.

Don't worry, Joey's letter hasn't been cut, but it has been moved to earlier in the book, so it's no longer in Chapter 1. This was a very odd change. Other things that are missing are character monologues, but it's inconsistent. Alice Angel's speech about the screaming well of voices and Joey's monologue right before the final boss were kept, but Sammy's "sheep sheep sheep" speech and Bertrum's audiolog right before his boss fight were inexplicably cut.

Here are a few cuts I found pretty significant.

These pages are all missing from the update. In the case of this newspaper article, what does that mean in regards to whether or not this is "canon" or "retconned"? Joey Drew, did you or did you not have plans to expand into a Bendy themed toothpaste? The people need to know! X''D But seriously, while some of this is inconsequential, some of it matters. The mascot costume in particular, that's the only sketch we get (that I'm assuming came from Bertrum or Joey regarding that part of the parks, no one is specifically credited for making it). It doesn't show up anywhere else in the series (to my knowledge). It's strange that it's just, gone now. The Bendyland spread is such an unfortunate loss, that's some of the closest we've ever gotten to seeing the map of the park. Yes you can see it in BATIM, but being able to get up close and personal with it without having to control Henry was really nice. It makes me wonder if they're trying to erase the past details so they can do more with Bendyland in the future, something that's different from the original vision. I don't think that's it, but it could be, though they'd also have to go back on The Illusion of Living too, given it’s discussed there with some really fun details.

Speaking of which, that's the weirdest piece of cut content: the missing section that ends the old book (that was reiterated in The Illusion of Living). It's Joey Drew's tips for making a cartoon. It's formatted differently and has no images in TIOL, but the basic information is still the same. What's not the same though, is the loss of the tutorial pages for drawing the toons. These are another thing that don’t show up anywhere else in the series, making them a much more permanent loss. And even though this section is cut, it’s still referenced on the back cover of the new book, which is a bit odd.

These were really cute and showed so much personality for not just the toons, but for Joey as he described them. Cutting this was genuinely disappointing for me. Same with the paperwork in Joey's apartment. Those were some of the highest quality images we had of what was on his desk and bulletin board, and I liked being able to see them clearer. The biggest loss of the cut content isn’t just the pages themselves, but the personality they gave to this book, and the Bendy world as a whole.

This was the very first Bendy book to be released, and therefore our first look into this world in this format. And while I don’t think it’s the greatest thing in the world in terms of being a game guide, I didn’t pick up the original for a game guide. I picked it up because I wanted to see if it provided more context for the world. And when it does that, it does a good job. The memos from characters we know, Joey’s financial records, the images from the desks of people like Joey and Bertrum, they give us insight into how things were going at the studio. Some of my favorite details from the original are Joey’s memo about how Susie was replaced by Allison, and the receipt for Joe’s Fine Dining. The fact that that memo was distributed to everyone but Susie enhanced what we already knew from BATIM, and it paints him as a much crueler character than we knew him to be. Not to mention the repeated use of “I have to say, I’m an instant fan”. Having Joey say those words makes the concept of him creating the cycle so much more interesting. Like did he script out every little action these characters take? Or is this something Susie picked up and recycled from him after potentially finding this memo in real life? Oh there are so many delicious possibilities. And the lunch date, oh my gosh. One, it started my quest to build the Joey Drew menu using all the things he eats in the books, because damn does he have good taste. And two, it was so cool to have a look into an interaction Susie told us about in that one tape. Like that was REALLY GOOD. Give me more like that! When you have other parts of the series back up things we’ve heard only one character say, it gives more credence to the idea that they actually happened that way, or gives us a clue that we need to check for character biases when they tell us their side of the story. And in a series where MOST characters are unreliable narrators, that is REALLY IMPORTANT for establishing timelines and figuring out what’s real versus what’s fabricated. That was my biggest hope for the update, for more flavortext and world building that expands on things we already know.

But um…the dark revival part of the book doesn’t do that.

Part 2: The Dark Revival’s Minimal Offerings

After an abrupt jump from Bendyland to BATDR, we get into the new stuff. The Bendy and the Dark Revival section of this book is alarmingly short and has very little substance. There is no new expansion of the worldbuilding or insight into these characters. I mean, the book describes Heidi as being a female lost one? So if you wanted a confirmation on her gender, there you go I guess? I guess that detail was never like, stated explicitly, but this is me stretching to find something new that it gives us. Actually, wait, it does give us one new thing, but I’m gonna be honest, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

The book refers to Allison having a “pet wolf” when we get her introduction in Chapter 1. It then later describes that Tom “likes being pet” when we get his introduction in Chapter 5. Which by the way, is the only image of Tom in this entire book, since his original render from the old version was cut. Now, I’ll be honest, I used to like that second detail, I thought it was cute that he doesn’t just tolerate Audrey, he actually LIKES being pet. Those are two different things, having some insights into Tom’s feelings and characterization would have been a breath of fresh air. But no, when I reread the book and saw that first detail, that made that really weird and uncomfortable actually. It would be one thing if in-universe, Tom called himself a pet, or Allison called him that with consent. Heck, if there was another character in-universe who wanted to purposely insult Allison and Tom by saying that, that would be fine too, then it’d be reiterating the narrative. But on its own? I take issue with taking Tom of all characters and calling him her pet. The Safehouse Boris never got treated that badly, hell, Buddy in the books never got dehumanized this badly when he became a Boris. But Tom, Tom gets to be the one that’s dehumanized? There is something that really rubs me the wrong way about that. Especially if he turns out to be Thomas Connor or has some connection to him. I can’t assume if he is or isn’t anymore given all the stuff BATDR pulled with Allison and Henry. But on the chance he IS Thomas Connor, do you have any idea how bad that looks, to have a character that, because of details written in Dreams Come to Life, many fans speculate to be a person of color, referring to him as Allison’s “pet”? And even if he ends up not being a person of color (I say as I groan about the inevitable discourse for the DCTL graphic novel that’s coming out), it’s still kind of awful to say that about anyone. Tom is a character that has repeatedly gotten the short end of the stick in this series. He’s relevant to BATDR for all of a couple of minutes, and he’s incredibly underutilized and lacking details or depth for most of the series. Thomas Connor, he gets a bit of depth as of The Lost Ones, that novel does great things for him. But Tom Wolf? Short end of the stick. And I’m sad to see that continue here.

The one positive thing I have to say about this section is that it’s really nice to have so many of the audiolog character transcripts here. Most of the notes and logs from BATDR are here with all their words typed out. The ones that in-game had a chiller styled font are transcribed a bit strangely, as now they’re written like the messages written on the walls in-game. But it’s not the worst. If anything, all of this gives me a great resource as a theorist. Having a record of all of these and what chapters they appear in makes my goal of constructing a timeline and cross checking information much easier.

Though from a graphic design standpoint, these pages frustrate me a little bit. They’re so cramped, and there’s several spots where the text isn’t centered properly within its text block. I get the sense on some parts, it’s because it’s placed so close to the spine of the book, so they don’t want any information getting cut off, but it still looks funky. And there are several spots where that explanation doesn’t really apply. There’s also some weird placement of fun facts. While I love that this book lets us in on some secrets, they’re not always placed in an area that makes sense? Like, there’s a note about how to get the Inkjets Concert, but the steps for how to get it are placed way after a point in the narrative where you’d be able to get it, and I’m kind of scratching my head as to why it was done that way. Is it to encourage a second playthrough? Or is it to not spoil the story? Why not split the information up? Or have a dedicated secrets page like they do with the achievements and theMeatly’s cutouts?

Though speaking of not spoiling things, this book is really odd about what it chooses to focus on. So, Henry’s model is in this book, right next to a passage about a “mysterious man” you can meet in the Cyclebreakers area. They showed his model but didn’t name him as Henry? I don’t quite get that choice. Also, despite the cyclebreakers being very important to this story, they aren’t really mentioned before this very brief section. However, Porter? The character shown for all of a few seconds? He’s got at least three images throughout this book. The balance feels off with what this book chooses to put emphasis on.

Also, this one really annoyed me: Allison. So for everyone who’s actually played BATIM, you would know that Allison Angel is never referred to as Allison within BATIM. We only know she’s called that because people dove into the game’s files and revealed her and Tom’s names upon the release of Chapter 4. And the book follows suit with this, it does not call her Allison in the original handbook whatsoever. HOWEVER, the BATDR section messes this up. When it introduces her, even though in-game she introduces herself as Alice, the book introduces her as Allison. But when we get to Chapter 5, the part where she’s actually named Allison by Audrey, it suddenly switches to calling her Nice Alice? It’s a weird choice and I don’t understand why this happened.

It leaves me wondering just how much the new author of this section and their editors know about the Bendy series before going into this project. What context were they given to write this thing? It makes the book feel unpolished to have so many mistakes in its formatting and information. I don’t know what the quality control team for this release looked like, but a part of me wonders how many editors this went through before making it to the final release. I don’t work in publishing to know what that looks like, but I’d genuinely love to learn more on this subject, it’s fascinating.

There’s also a very strong dissonance in the imagery. While I’m glad to see the renders from BATDR’s advertising so clearly and up close, the difference in their coloring looks strange when put next to the rest of Bendy’s usual color palette. It leaves me wondering what assets the book team was given for use in this release. There’s a lot I could say here about the importance of press kits and brand guidelines, especially in this day and age when so many fans are making just as high quality of content as the official releases of media. And that leads me to the most disappointing part of this book.

Part 3: Stolen Content

If you’re active in the Bendy fandom and know its many creative members, then you may already know what I’m about to dive into. MLSpence3D is an artist that enjoys 3D modeling, rigging, animating, and rendering. He can often be found engaging in all sorts of corners in the indie mascot horror community, such as playing a notable role in the production of SuperHorrorBro’s upcoming title, Glitched Out, as well as providing the renders used on the Bendy Wiki of the in-game characters. Spence has had his work mistaken for official renders before, and unfortunately, it’s not just fans making that mistake. The render of the Piper used in the BATIM portion of the original handbook is Spence’s, and it unfortunately hasn’t been removed in this update, nor has he been credited or asked for permission to have it used here. I’ll admit, his stuff looks so official that I’ve mistaken it as such too, and it speaks to a much needed conversation on assets, metadata, and protection for artists of all mediums.

Our fandom is not the only place where this happens. Back when FNAF: Help Wanted was in production, the cover art mistakenly used fan renders as a part of its photomanipulation. Developer Scott Cawthon was quick to apologize and make things right, removing the renders and replacing them with officially made FNAF models. Heck, we had something similar happen right here with Bendy back when the voice cast of BATDR started working with Streamily. The initial post that advertised their Streamily debut used renders from Spence and a few other artists that had to be tracked down, and they didn’t have the rights to use them, nor were they credited. It makes a lot of sense that this happens, when you don’t have sufficient resources and aren’t an active member of the fandom, if you’re a graphic designer trying to make a piece to advertise something, you’re going to need assets to make that. And if you’re not given sufficient assets by the people you’re designing for, you turn to other sources to get the job done. They may not know what on Google is official vs fan content. The fans are so skilled and passionate about what they do, and with the number of series that have fans steadily joining the official teams, it’s incredible what can result from being passionate. But it also makes for a much needed reminder to add metadata to your files so that they can be traced back as belonging to you. Watermark your stuff, clearly mark your work as fan content in the tags, captions, and descriptions, in an effort to protect yourself. Don’t use images you find online unless you have a very clear idea of where they came from, so you can direct people back to the source when they ask about it (or better yet, link the source in your description from the start). Give people another reason to pause and double check their work in the chain of command (they should be pausing to double check anyway, but let's be real, we don't live in a perfect world). In a world where credit and sources are more important than ever, remembering to give credit where it’s due from the start will save you all kinds of headaches in the future. Video game developers, especially those of you in the indie scene: please develop press kits to give to people your teams collaborate with. By giving them assets they can reliably use to advertise for you, you will save everyone a lot of hassle in the long run. And if this is still happening even with a press kit, it merits having some conversations to evaluate why and solve the problem. If there is no other takeaway anyone gets from this post, this is the big one I want to see some positive change on in the future.

Part 4: The Functionality as a Game Guide

This book works for your first time through BATDR, but not for any kind of sequential playthroughs. The way it directs you through the game uses the audiologs and notes as waypoints. Once you pick them up, they are removed from the environment, and so if you’re picking up the game after a long time away from it, you’re not gonna remember where those were, so it’s likely not going to be useful for navigating. It reminds me a lot of the way my parents talked about one of our old hometowns. We lived in Vermont for a little while, and there were two things about our area that we laughed about. One, never leave your car unlocked unless you want it filled with zucchini. Two, if you ask for directions, you’re not gonna have a clue unless you’re a local, because they word everything in a similar fashion to “you’re gonna drive past where the old barn used to be”. At least give me a landmark that still exists, or a map! The BATIM chapters aren’t much better, they sort of give you a layout map, but it’s not helpful. Especially in Chapter 3, the place where you arguably need a map the most, there is no kind of instruction for how to get through Alice’s fetch quests if you get lost.

In my mind, a game guide is something you turn to when you need help getting through a game. Now, mind you, I am not the target audience for a game guide. I don’t own game guides. There are a few in my household that my siblings own, for stuff like Super Mario Sunshine, and I guess technically my Pokedex for Pokemon Black and White 2 DOES double as a game guide. But like, we now live in the age of the internet. If you want to know how to get through something, there are a million articles and Let’s Plays that detail how to complete the base story, find secrets, and even suggest strategies for tackling difficult challenges. Some of these are designed to be informative, and some are more reactionary and built for entertainment, there’s lots of flavors to choose from!

And it makes me wonder, what does that mean for the medium of game guides as a whole? I think they still have their place. For one thing, different people benefit from different learning styles. Being able to read a guide may work better for someone than a video depending on their brain wiring. And for people who don’t have reliable or frankly any internet, or rely on a library for that, it’s nice to have a book so that you don’t have to wait to keep playing. I’ve never seen anyone get a game guide from a library, but I absolutely think it’s something a library could have. It’s also just really convenient to have all of that information available in one book, as opposed to having to search through multiple forums and sources and risk getting spoiled. And when they’re done well, sometimes they can have secrets not even the existing player base knew. Like I knew that there was this secret about a ghost train that appears if you set your system’s clock to 4:14, but I didn’t know if AM or PM mattered. Thanks to this book, now I know that it doesn’t matter, both work, which is really handy to know! But uh…most of the secrets that were revealed in this book were things I knew within the first month that BATDR came out. None of them were new to me as someone who’s plugged into the world of Bendy. There have been multiple videos detailing how to get these secrets, and how to play this game, by many different indie horror enthusiasts. It almost makes it feel like this book came out a bit too late, and it’s only released about a year or so after this game came out.

Which really begs the question, who was the target audience for this book? Was it for new fans who were struggling with these games? Was it for longtime fans who wanted a memento of the occasion and a record of all the stuff in these games? Was it for lore hunters hungry for new secrets and world building? Having read both versions of the employee handbook, I still can’t definitively say who the target audience is. That kind of frustrates me, that’s the first thing they taught us about back when I went to school for graphic design. It’s important to keep your audience in mind when designing something, that way it caters to their needs, appeals to them, and gets your message across effectively.

Part 5: Final Thoughts

I still can’t say for sure what I was supposed to get out of this.The parts of it that I found charming and appealing were not continued or built upon in this update. There is no new world building or lore. It doesn’t do an effective job as a game guide given its reliance on non-permanent elements of gameplay. It doesn’t give us tools to cross reference what we know from previous entries, nor does it expand upon details that lacked clarity within BATDR or BATIM. It removed some of its more charming content, and it still has stolen artwork from its previous iteration. By the time I got done reading this book, I was left feeling disappointed and kind of exhausted. No joke, I grabbed a friend, and we went through it all to compare it page by page to see what changed. It was something you could make a drinking game out of, not that I would recommend that.

I would struggle to recommend this book to any Bendy fan, unless you’re a completionist like me who wants to own every book as a physical copy. The original employee handbook was a far better read, and if you can find a copy secondhand or at your local library, you’re in for a small but tasty treat (quite literally if you decide to make the bacon soup recipe, which fun fact, originated in this book and was developed by the wife of Bookpast, one of the writers on this series!). The Dark Revival section feels tacked on and not as well thought out as the original book was. There is a very odd disconnect between the two. I’m genuinely confused as to why it was put in a rerelease of this book rather than making an entirely new book for Dark Revival. Dark Revival is a much longer and detailed game than Bendy and the Ink Machine. I would expect a book that describes how to play it and its world building to take up a lot more pages and go in depth on different details than this one did. So why was it done this way? Does this have to do with some sort of contract with Scholastic that we don’t know about? Was there a time constraint, or a page count that had to be met that they couldn’t meet with just BATDR? Did the people working on Bendy have too much on their plates to dedicate the time to a new book? What happened here? I wasn’t expecting to leave this book with more questions than answers, but here we are.

Overall, I don’t think it was worth what I paid for it, but it’s going to live on my shelf with the rest of my books. This will be handy for when I need to reference the audiologs and don’t want to look up a YouTube video to remember what was said. It’ll also be nice if I’m traveling. See, whenever I visit my grandparents, their wifi is pretty limited, so if I want to draw anything while I’m up there, I have to print out references or download images on my phone before I go so I can do that. Having some of the new renders in this book will be useful if I decide I want to draw Bendy stuff or theorize while on the road.

Now it's your turn. Tell me your thoughts on the Updated Edition of the Bendy Employee Handbook! Is this something you want to read? If you have read it, did you enjoy it? Were you left wanting more? If we ever get another book like this, what sort of things would you like to see? Let's talk about it. And remember, if you did enjoy it, that's not a bad thing, absolutely no judgement there. Just because it wasn't for me doesn't mean it's not going to be enjoyable for someone else. Every work of fiction has its audience. <3 Here's wishing you a wonderful rest of the day, and happy reading!

#bendy employee handbook spoilers #bendy employee handbook #bendy spoilers #batdr #bendy and the dark revival #batim #bendy and the ink machine #bendy books #bendy book spoilers

75 notes · View notes

luv4fandoms · 1 year

Text

The Rut (David x Fem! Reader)

It is finally here! The last installment of The Rut series! I am so happy that everyone enjoyed this series, it was definitely fun to write the boys in just complete feral mode lol. I'll definitely be writing for stuff for the boys in the future!

(Also since I've been asked, this isn't really a poly relationship series, this is a "only (insert boy) likes reader" kinda thing).

I really wanna thank everyone who has commented on, reblogged, or just liked this series. Y'all really kept me going when I had writers block, and I couldn't have finished it without y'all. And a big shout out to @auntvamp who came up with the original headcannons about the boys in rut, because without them, this series wouldn't be a thing lol. I'd highly suggest reading that first.

Lastly I'd like to thank @santacarlatourism for their headcanons of each boy's scent on my post

I also got inspired by these headcanons

For this I know a lot of people write David as a rough dom but I wanted to explore something else, I don't think David would always be rough with his mate, I see him having a soft side too, so this is that, and also him slowly losing control lol.

Paul, Marko, Dwayne,

Word Count: 5,376 (of course this cocky mofo ended up with the longest chapter 🤣)

Pairing: David x Fem! Reader

Warnings: DETAILED SMUT! THAT IS ALL THIS STORY IS!! MINORS DNI!!

⚠️ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐈 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐬, 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬, 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞.⚠️

Ko-Fi

"Don't invite him in"

That's what Dwayne had told you when he informed you to stay away from the cave for the next couple of days. You were confused when Dwayne had met you at the entrance the night before, usually David was the first one out and ready to leave, typically smoking while the others got ready. You were fully prepared to spend the night at the boardwalk with the boys and your favorite vampire, but Dwayne had quickly shot down those plans.

"Wait…A rut? Like how animals have ru-"

"Yes just like that" he told you as he walked you back to your car.

"When we go into these we are very dangerous to you, since you're a human and not a vampire like us you're far more…"

"Fragile" you finished, the boys had all told you that before, taking it upon themselves to protect you all the time because you were "like a China doll" in Dwayne's words.

"So that's why you need to stay away for a couple of days," he explained, to which you could only simply nod as you climbed in your car. Your thoughts suddenly taking a turn as you thought of him…they were all extremely attractive…him especially…and you were sure him taking a partner for a quick time was something he had done before…would that happen again? After all, if he was gonna kill them anyways why not? It didn't matter if they were fragile right? But why did that thought make you wanna cry even more in this situation?

"It isn't like that" Dwayne's voice broke you out of your thoughts and you were unsure if he had read your thoughts or could just read your emotions.

"Go home y/n, don't overthink ok, you can come back soon" he told you with a small smile as he shut your car door, watching as you started the car and rolled down the window when he knocked

"And one more thing" he told you while leaning in.

"Don't invite him in"

So here you were, sitting in your room, listening to music and drawing, wishing you could just go hang out with the boys, you hadn't really realized just how much of a staple in your life they had become until now. Night's seemed boring without them…without him. Sighing you sat your sketchbook down on your nightstand after you realized that in your zoned out state you had successfully sketched what was probably the twentieth picture of him that resided in the book. Stretching, you got up and changed the music, putting on your newest Billy Idol album. You had joked to David before that he reminded you of the singer, a comment that although he didn't reply to, he seemed complimented by. You had actually come across David listening to a Billy Idol cassette tape one day in the cave and it only solidified that thought even more for you lol. You began dancing around as White Wedding started to play, losing yourself in the music for a moment, before you heard a gentle knock on your window. Your body froze instantly, shifting your gaze to the closed curtains. You slightly wondered if it had been the wind, but only slightly, you knew that was definitely a knock.

"I know you're in there Sweetheart, no use hiding" You immediately felt a shiver run down your spine at the voice, a deeper tone with a slight growl mixed with it told you he was currently vamped out.

'Don't invite him in' Dwayne's words rang in your head, earning another low growl from outside.

"You don't take orders from him, understand?" Oh shit, he was reading your thoughts. You had made him promise when you first learned what they were that he wouldn't do that anymore. A promise he seemed like he had no problem breaking tonight.

"But.. David…Dwayne said it would be dangerous to-"

"Funny" you heard him let out a dry chuckle.

"I thought I just said you don't take orders from him" You gulped at his tone, a sarcastic David was a dangerous David at times, and you had a feeling this was one of those times.

"Let me in Doll, I'll explain it all better than he could" You hesitated still, true, Dwayne hadn't explained very much, and you were still curious. And if you were being honest, when vamped out David probably had the most control over himself out of all of them, besides maybe Dwayne…Maybe it would be safe if you let him in. Slowly making your way over towards the window you heard what seemed like a pleased…purr? You pulled back the curtains, meeting the golden gaze of the vampire on the outside of your window. His figure looming on your small balcony. You unlocked and opened your window, leaning out to speak to him. When suddenly your lips were captured in a searing kiss, his gloved hands holding your face, softly yet firm as he pulled you closer, fangs brushing your lips as he opened your mouth with his, tongue dominating the kiss. You weren't sure what was making you dizzier, the kiss that was quite literally stealing your breath away, or his scent. David always smelled like a mixture of cigarettes, the cologne he always stole that had a very earthy smell to it, and a scent that you could only describe as simply him. But tonight his scent seemed to be cranked up to a hundred, clouding your brain of anything but him. When he finally seemed to remember you needed to breathe he pulled away, forehead resting against yours as he watched you try to catch your breath, pupils blown and heart racing as you met his gaze.

"David," you spoke quietly.

"You're gonna be a good girl and let me come inside, right?" He asked, watching the shiver that went down your spine at the nickname, a mental note he tucked away for later.

"Right?" He asked again, watching as you slowly nodded.

"Words Sweetheart" he gave you that little smile as he ran his thumb over your lip.

"You can come inside" you spoke once you found your voice.

"That's a good girl" he spoke, before the next thing you knew you were back inside your bedroom and being thrown onto your bed.

"Clothes off Sweetheart, I'm going to fuck you first, then I'll explain everything" he commanded, staring you down as he slowly took his coat off and laid it over your desk.

"W-What?" You stuttered, looking at him with wide eyes, did he actually just say that so casually? He raised an eyebrow as he looked at you, waiting.

"I thought you were going to be a good girl tonight y/n" he spoke while slowly pulling your chair out and sitting down.

"I-I.." you weren't sure what to say at the moment, voice gone as you got lost in that golden gaze.

"I don't mind punishing you" he warned, and the look in his eye told you that part of him wanted to, wanted you to misbehave so he could. Deciding to play it safe, for now, you quickly took off your top and bottoms, leaving you in your simple lace panties, bra having been discarded earlier in the night. You watched his gaze darken as he took you in, golden eyes turning a bit orange.

"Come here" he spoke simply, but his tone told you that there was no arguing. Slowly you stood from your bed, taking careful steps over to him, stopping once you stood directly in front, your legs lightly grazing his knees. You slowly met his gaze again, those hard features and burning eyes, you knew anyone in your situation would have ran, but you knew David, and maybe some deep twisted part of you wanted this more than you even recognized. Wanted to be completely dominated by this man, this creature. Maybe you should have also not thought those things so loudly, if the absolutely predatory grin was anything to go by.

"Completely dominated huh?" He asked while leaning back in the chair, he watched as you gulped, listened as your heart picked up speed, smelled as a fresh wave of arousal hit you. It wouldn't take much to have you exactly where he wanted you, completely willing, completely his.

"On your knees Sweetheart" he told you with a low growl, and he watched as you instantly fell onto your floor, hands hovering just above his knees before lowering themselves to the ground. Good girl, you already knew to wait for his orders. He watched you watch him, watched as you tried not to show how much you were trying to gain some form of friction against where you needed it most. He could feel himself stir even more at the sight, could feel the inner beast trying to claw its way out, yelling at him to simply take you, stop these foolish games and claim what was his. He hated that feeling, hated losing control. Deciding to relieve both himself and you he tapped his belt buckle, eyes still never leaving you as you looked up to meet his gaze before setting to work undoing his belt and then pants, looking up to silently ask if you should stop or keep going.

"Well? You've been a good girl so far, are you afraid to unwrap your treat?" He smirked, watching the blush crawl up your neck and cheeks as your eyes went back to his pants. He lifted himself slowly so you could take them and his underwear off, pulling the material down to his ankles, stopping only because his boots got in the way. You went to remove them but he stopped you with a hand on your head.

"Those can wait" he told you, sliding his hand from your hair to cup your cheek, running his thumb over your lip before slowly parting them, watching as you wrapped your lips around his thumb, eyes sliding closed as you sucked the digit. David watched you intensely, feeling himself jump at the sight, and knowing that he wanted, no, needed your lips around him, now. Gently pulling his thumb away with the thinning self control he had left he opened your mouth, watching as your eyes met his.

"I have something better for you to use that pretty mouth on" he told you, watching as your eyes moved to finally take him in. He was average length, but pretty thick, a size that had you both clenching around nothing and also afraid of him not fitting. Again, reading your mind, you heard David chuckle.

"That's why we have to get both of us nice and wet, I think you know how to do that, don't you?" He asked, letting go of your mouth and leaning back in the chair, legs opening just a bit more.

"Yes sir" you nodded, sitting up a bit, hands finally touching his thighs, you could hear the low rumble leave him as he stared at you, you had taken a chance by calling him sir, but you had a very strong feeling he had that sort of kink, after all, David always loved being in charge.

"Look at that, I don't even have to teach you manners, you are already trained for me" he smirked, gathering your hair in his gloved hand as you slowly wrapped a hand around his length, feeling it twitch, before lowering your lips to close around the head.

"Already my good girl" he sighed, watching as you ran your tongue along the slit before lowering your head, hollowing your cheeks, and taking more of him in while running your tongue along the vein on the underside. What your mouth couldn't take, you hand took care of as you began bobbing your head, twisting your fist as you stroked in time with your bobs. You hadn't expected David to be a moaner or a talker, so when you only received grunts and huffs you knew not to be disappointed. You let those guide you, noting when he would tighten his grip on your hair, or when he would ever so slightly lift his hips, when he would hold his breath, or when his grunts sounded a bit more strained.

"Teeth" he grunted out at one point, tightening his grip on your hair again. You weren't sure what he meant, so you went off of what you guessed and prayed that it was right, you were doing good so far, you didn't want to fuck up now. Letting your teeth graze against his length you felt him stiffen, and instantly you feared you messed up, but that was when you heard it, the first moan, even if it was extremely quiet. With more confidence you let a little more of your teeth scrape along him as you worked, hearing his breath quicken once more. You chanced a glance upwards and noticed a sight you didn't expect, David with his eyes closed, head slightly tilted backwards, and mouth slightly open. Feeling brave after your achievement you decided to try something else. Sneaking your other hand up, you gently wrapped your hand around his balls, just as you took as much of him as you could and swallowed. Feeling him stiffen instantly, and hearing a clearly strained.

"Fuck" before his eyes met yours, orange gaze blazing before you were suddenly tossed on the bed, watching as he tore the rest of his clothes off.

"Did I say you could do that?" He asked, caging your body with his. You slowly shook your head but David caught your jaw in his now gloveless hand.

"Did I?"

"N-No sir" you replied, honestly a little scared, as well as turned on. David looked almost unhinged at the moment, like he was a breath away from just bending you over, and maybe that's what you wanted.

"So why did you think it was ok?"

"I-I just"

"Just what? You had been doing so well"

"I just wanted to make you feel good" you told him, and watched as he stopped, and blinked down at you. Honestly he hadn't expected that reply. He figured you were tired of playing the good girl role and wanted to disobey, wanted him to put you in your place, wanted him to just take you already…He hadn't expected you to tell him you were just trying to make him feel good.

"Just trying to please your master?" He asked with a smirk, watching as you nodded, eyes wide with an innocence that he knew was false, but God did you know how to play on that. He knew how dirty your mind was, he had read it so many times, times where you would come to the cave, wet and smelling like pure heaven. He wanted, no, needed to know what had gotten you that way, so he'd delve into your mind, needing to know if he'd have an easy kill that night or would it be something else, and what he'd find would cause his own stirrings. Things that you had read about in your little erotic novels, but played out by the two of you. You riding him, which he'd have to be convinced about. Him bending you over his motorcycle, that he could and would definitely arrange. Then there were the ones that filled your mind after you learned that he was originally a gunslinger before he became a vampire. It seemed your naughty little mind lived on the saying "save a horse, ride a cowboy". That heavenly smell surrounded him once again as you looked up at him, muttering such words that had his thin self control on the verge of snapping.

"Always wanna please you sir" you whimpered, slightly wiggling under him, no doubt seeking friction for the overwhelming heat that was bothering you. He decided to take pity on you, at least that's what he'd tell you, when really the beast in him was clawing at his mind for a taste of you.

"Such a Sweetheart" he smiled, leaning down to kiss your neck, chuckling as you leaned your head to the side, already willing to give him access to your blood, but that wasn't the taste he sought, at least not at the moment. Pressing gentle kisses down your collarbone, stopping to give your breasts attention, he swirled his tongue around your nipple before closing his lips around it, fangs grazing your skin as his hand came up to pinch and play with your other one, before his mouth and hand switched. Only when he felt like he had made you a breathless mess did he continue his journey down, hands sliding along your sides as he kissed down your stomach, pressing kisses to your hip bones before hooking his claws into your lace panties. His eyes met yours, a sinister smirk on his lips as you watched him tear your panties in half, the sound of tearing fabric meeting your ears while your eyes never left his. You watched him toss the pieces to the sides of the bed before he pressed kisses to your thighs, so close to where you wanted his mouth but never giving you what you needed.

"Beg" he told you, watching as your eyes met his again, having closed them for a moment.

"Please David" you whimpered, yelping slightly when his hand landed a smack on your thigh.

"Care to try that again?"

"Please sir, please I've been good" you begged.

"Have you? I don't think you have"

"I-I was just trying to make you feel good" you explained again, watching as he stared at you.

"Please sir, I promise I'll be good" you told him, gripping at the sheets, trying to will him to do something, anything to calm the fire that was slowly burning through you. Meanwhile David was fighting with himself, he wanted to tease you, have you a real begging mess, but the other part was clawing at him to just give in and take. This time he decided to give into that beast within and in an instant his mouth was on you, tongue swiping along your slit and watching as you threw your head back, a loud moan of his name tearing from your lips. He decided this time he wouldn't reprime you for it, mainly because he was becoming too lost in your taste, his own grunts muffled as he buried his face deeper, nose brushing your clit while his tongue dipped inside. He felt your legs close around his head, his hands still resting on your thighs, and again he decided to let it slide, instead grabbing your hips and letting himself explore you, commiting to memory every swipe of his tongue that had you moaning his name, every suck that had you gasping, every twist and turn that had your heart beat picking up and the beast in him clawing at the fraying seams of his control. He wanted to slam his fingers in you, listen as you moan at the fact that something was finally filling you, but he knew that his claws and that sensitive of an area shouldn't mix, so he settled on completely devouring you, being careful of his fangs as he brought you closer to your edge. Your legs tightening around him, hips lifting to try and get closer, hands grabbing at his hair while your head was thrown back, eyes shut and mouth open, begging him to not stop, telling him how good he felt and how close you were. He could push you off the edge in just a matter of seconds…could…but wasn't going to. Easily unwrapping your legs from him, he lifted himself away from you, watching as you whined and looked up at him with pleading eyes. Chest rising and falling rapidly as you slowly came down from the high he had built you up to.

"Why?" You whimpered, and David simply smirked as he wiped your essence from his face.

"You still had to be punished Sweetheart" he told you, watching as you pouted, head turned to the side while you tried to catch your breath. He chuckled at your pouting, knew how frustrated you were, because honestly he was at that point as well. He knew that playtime was up. Grabbing your thighs again he pulled you down the bed, wrapping your legs around his hips. He watched you gasp at being manhandled but he knew you liked it, he could smell that you liked it.

"Now, are you gonna be my good girl again? Or do I have to punish you again?"

"I'll be good I promise" you panted, wanting that high again that only he could bring you to, he'd make sure you knew that, that only he could make you feel this way.

"Good girl" he growled, reaching down to drag himself through your wetness, watching as your hips lifted slightly, trying to coax him in.

"Such a greedy girl" he smirked, before slowly entering you, watching as you threw your head back at the feeling of finally having him inside you. It took him a bit with how tight you were, but once he was fully seated he had to take a moment. Because right then, for the first time he felt overwhelmed. Sure he had partners in the past, but nothing felt like this, as if he needed more proof that you were his mate. And he knew that you probably wanted him to be gentle, but he knew that wouldn't be something he could offer, not this night at least.

"I'm not gonna be gentle Sweetheart" he felt he should warn you, felt you deserved to know before he just took you.

"I didn't expect you to be" you smiled, and he knew you knew enough of what was going on with him to know he was losing the control he loved so much, so he never broke the gaze you two held as he gripped your hips and pulled back, only to slam forward, watching as you threw your head back. He listened to your cries for him, your heartbeat singing as it sped up again. He watched as your eyes rolled back, mouth opened as you didn't even try to hide the gasps, and moans. He found his own eyes closing as he sped up, thrusts now slamming into you as the bed shook, his grunts were drowned out by your cries and that was ok, he didn't need to be loud, it was your job to tell everyone who was making you feel this good. Sir had long been forgotten and he couldn't find it in himself to care, wanting you to cry out his name until your throat went raw.

"Fuck" he panted out through gritted teeth, the feeling was picking up, the knot tightening in his stomach as he felt you grow tighter around him. Shit you were gonna make it hard on him to even fuckin last, especially when you were begging for him, begging for him not to stop, begging for him to make you cum, even begging for him to make you his, as if you weren't already. Your orgasm hit you both by surprise, you suddenly became like a vice around him and he immediately stopped, watched as you shook, you entire body trembling as you flew over the edge, he slowed his thrusts, gently rocking you through it, and also keeping his own orgasm at bay

He watched you blink before your eyes met his, looking up to see if he would say something about you cumming without permission, which, any other time he may, but right now he just knew he needed you to cum again, because you were absolutely beautiful when lost in pleasure. You watched as he unhooked your legs from him, instead lifting them as he pulled out and crawled over you, pressing his forehead to yours as he wrapped your legs around him again, his one hand coming up to hold yours, while his other game up to hold your jaw.

"You got another one for me Sweetheart?" He asked, not breaking eye contact as the hand on your jaw left for only a moment as you felt him enter you again, making you gasp.

"Yes" you whimpered, already lifting your hips to meet his.

"My little mate, always so willing" he smiled, fangs grazing your lips before he captured them again, he soon started thrusting again, and you moaned in the kiss, allowing his tongue to enter and dominate before he pulled back, fangs lightly grazing your lip and drawing blood, to which he quickly licked it up. His hips thrusting forward harshly as he tasted it, the flavor exploding on his tongue and heightening his sense to focus on the precious liquid that flowed just below the skin. He knew it would be dangerous to feed on you while you two were in the middle of this, he could lose any control he had left if he did, and he wouldn't know what to do if he killed his mate. So instead he focused on the other liquid you were producing, the liquid that was currently coating his thighs as he thrusted into you. Your moans were echoing against the walls and in his brain as he allowed himself to slip away, focusing on the feeling of your body sucking him in, gripping him tight in your soaking heat, God you were so hot against him. He knew his temperature was running hotter than normal due to the rut but yours was like fire. He was also losing himself in your scent, not just the scent of your arousal, but the scent that was simply you, a scent that he would never admit, but one that he loved smelling around the cave or against his pillow when you would take a nap in his spare room. He lost himself in how soft your skin was under his hands, how you completely gave yourself to him, willingly submitted yourself to a beast like him even though you had been told it was dangerous. How you were crying out for him, begging him, praising him, God your praises.

"Yeah? Only I can make you feel this good?" He panted against your lips, eyes still closed as he continued to lose himself.

"Fuuuuck, only you David" you told him

"Only I know your body like this" he growled, picking up speed.

"Only you" you panted.

"You're mine" another growl

"Shit..Only yours"

"Completely mine" he grunted

"Fucking…Always"

"My mate" he groaned, and you allowed your eyes to open slightly, expecting to meet gold but instead noticed that his eyes were closed, eyebrows furrowed as his mouth opened slightly, hot breaths fanning your face.

"Say it" he panted, eyes not opening as he picked up his speed again, angling himself until he was hitting that spot inside you that made you see stars

"Your mate" you moaned, eyes closing again as your head fell back as far as his hand would let it, his grip leaving your jaw to grab the back of your head, forehead never leaving yours.

"My mate" he panted, breaking off into a groan.

"Fuck" he moaned against your lips, his control a hair's breath away from being gone, the faster your heartbeat raced, the less he had.

"Cum for me" he groaned, knowing he wasn't going to last much longer. The hand that had been holding yours quickly found your clit, rubbing circles that had to shooting towards your peak.

"Fuck! David!"

"That's it baby, let go" he surged forward, panting against your mouth as moans began to leave him, the sign that he was about to finish as well you realized. Your hands shot into his hair, pulling the locks until his face left yours and buried into your neck. It was something you knew you both wanted, something you had fantasized about, and something you know the rut would most likely want him to do.

"Make me yours" you panted, officially snapping the thin string of self control he had. Instantly his fangs sunk into your skin, drawing a high pitched moan from you as your legs locked around him, your body squeezing him as your second orgasm washed over you, and he was right behind. As soon as your blood entered his mouth he was gone, he knew you smelled like heaven, but you tasted like it as well, and that paired with your even stronger orgasm had him slamming forward, hips stuttering before stilling as he filled you, a deep growl leaving him and vibrating your chest as he pour himself into you, claiming you, marking you, just like his fangs did. He gave a few slow thrusts before he stilled and pulled his mouth away, his fangs leaving your skin as he licked up the blood that trailed out and sealed the wound, the only evidence being two small marks. You both stayed like that for a moment, his face still buried in your neck while your hand was tangled in his hair, the other running along the scratch marks on his back that you didn't even know you had made, he knew though, he quite enjoyed the tiny bit of pain.

"That was really dangerous" he spoke after a moment, drawing your attention to his gaze, now far less orange and far more gold, the red hue having disappeared.

"I think the danger started when I invited you in" you laughed, watching as a smile graced his lips.

"You were told not to, and here I thought you knew how to follow orders" he tisked, causing you to roll your eyes.

"Kinda hard to know which rules to follow when my master says the opposite of others" you smirked, earning a growl that vibrated your chest.

"Always my orders"

"That's what I thought" you smiled, leaning up to capture his lips in a kiss that he happily returned.

"You really like being called that" you joked, causing him to roll his eyes.

"Just means you know your role" he stated.

"Oh? So I'm nothing more than your pet?" You asked with a pout.

"You know you're not, you're my mate" he stated as if it were the simplest thing, which to him it may have been, but to you.

"What does that mean exactly?" You asked, watching as he just blinked at you.

"No like…is that what vampires call girlfriends or.." you trailed off when he started lightly running his finger over the bite marks he made.

"Why do you think I came here even though it was dangerous?" He asked.

"Honestly, I'm not actually sure" you told him truthfully.

"I actually figured you would just go pick up some random at the boardwalk" added while staring at the skin of his arm that you were currently drawing patterns on with your finger. You tried to hide the sad tone but you knew he could easily pick up on it, knew because he was soon turning your face towards him again.

"This doesn't work that way." He started, brushing your hair out of your face.

"None of us have ever been through this before, I'm the first. We just know about it from Max telling us" he explained.

"This rut, it's triggered by us finding our mate. In human terms I guess the closest thing would be a soulmate"

"So I'm…Your soulmate?" You asked, your smile growing.

"Far more than a pet now huh?" He smirked, leaning down to kiss you again. Chuckling when you pulled him closer to deepen the kiss.

"Would this be the right time to tell you that I've kinda had a crush on you for a while?" You laughed, watching as his smirk grew.

"Oh I already knew"

"Wait what?!"

"You think very loudly Sweetheart"

"Wait…How long have you been reading my thoughts?! I told you not to!"

"Long enough" he stated, while lowering his mouth to your ear.

"Now, let's see if you can last for longer than eight seconds Darlin'" he purred, a deep southern drawl ringing in your ears and you knew you were fucked…in more ways than one.

Of course I had to throw in some tidbits about my headcanon that David was originally a gunslinger from Texas lol.

Taglist

@its-monster-mash, @arenpath , @xxx-wounded-angel-xxx , @katpursley94-blog , @theamericanjewitch , @shewhomustnotbenamedsworld , @thelostone91 , @blazeflays , @ilikechocolatemilkh , @babyloutattoo89 , @bigcreatorwombatdreamer , @non-binary-disastrous-mess , @2525sc , @kitteebree , @besas-stuff , @justaspeachy , @faefairi3 , @its-freaking-bats, @santa-carla-boardwalk-1987, @urmothersmistress , @nickangel13 , @lostboysmate1987 , @simpin-for-slashers,

919 notes · View notes