#it strips them of some immunity in a way

[fangswbenefits]

The Arrangement (3) - Inconvenience

Chapter summary: It is poetic irony that sharing a prison cell with Astarion is what eventually gets the two of you attempting to have a much needed conversation...

Pairing: Astarion x female!Tav

Warnings: 18+. Poison sucking. Blood. Angst.

Word count: 3.5k

Previous chapter . Series Masterlist . Ao3

"You're bleeding."

"I know."

"It's distracting."

"Then look away."

He scoffed. "I can smell it."

It really wasn't a desirable occurrence to end up in one of Baldur's Gate's prisons. The last time you had the displeasure of descending into one was to liberate Gortash's victims from the Iron Throne Prison.

You had rarely been on the side that needed rescuing.

But fate worked in strange ways and had you thrown into a cold and rusty cell, trying to figure out how you ended up in this situation to begin with.

The torches scattered along the pillars of stone outside the cell provided little to no sufficient light, and it only added to the looming sense of dread.

Ripping a scrap of cloth from your clothing, you wrapped it firmly around the bleeding slash across your wrist.

Astarion sat across from you, eyeing your every move with a faint smile on his lips.

"You could have just run away, you know," you began, bringing your knees up to your chin with a sigh. "You are immune to Sleep spells."

He scoffed again with an eye-roll. "Please. I allowed myself to get caught. Gods know you could use the help."

The throb in your head intensified and you winced as discomfort tore through your body, as his words hit you.

"What help? We're both trapped inside," you ground out in annoyance.

He lifted a finger. "That, my dear, is merely an inconvenience. I am quite sure I'd be able to lockpick our way out of this."

The damp-scented mattress underneath you squeaked as you leaned against the ragged wall. "Using what? Your fangs?"

Astarion clicked his tongue. "Creative, but no. I just need to find anything to help me get through that lock." He rose to his feet and moved to inspect the sturdy door with attentive eyes.

As promising as it sounded, you knew deep down that it wouldn't be an easy feat. The guards had stripped both of you down to only your shirts and trousers, and removed anything deemed too creative.

Besides, this whole ordeal had to be a misunderstanding of sorts. It would be wise to, at least, get some enlightenment.

"Maybe we should just wait for Wyll."

He turned to you, a touch of disbelief crossing his face. "His guards put us here, in case you need a reminder."

"We did nothing wrong," you said, clutching on to reason. "We are not criminals. It's all a misunderstanding, I'm sure."

Whether it was a case of you trying to believe your own words, or because there was truth to them, remained to be seen.

As a sorcerer, it would be rather easy to blast through the cell door and be done with it, but you would only entertain that option as a last resort.

"Well, I suppose it could be worse," he said in resignation, curious fingers still prodding the lock. "At least, they didn't shove us in a cell with windows."

The lack of any opening to the outside had made it hard for you to keep track of time, but given the silence and snores from the inhabitants in the adjacent cells, you reckoned the sun had yet to rise.

Astarion would be safe from its scorching rays, for the time being.

You felt something trickling down your wrist, and upon closer inspection, you realised the cloth around it was soaked with your blood.

Odd.

Astarion was still very much entertained with the hinges and structure of the cell door to take notice of your finding.

You quickly brought another rag torn from your cloak and wrapped even tighter over the existing one, applying as much pressure as you could withstand through the pain.

Very odd.

He was now squatting down, taking a closer look at the lock, fingers tugging and rattling the device.

A true rogue at heart.

"Or, I could be sharing this cell with someone far less entertaining – like Gale," he continued. "I'd just beg the guards for a stake to rid myself of my misery."

He finished off with a dramatic laugh, but you found yourself scowling deeply.

"Can you give Gale some credit where it's due? He's helping you out."

His narrowed crimson eyes met yours. "By 'helping' you mean what, exactly? Cooking abhorrent meals and reading books that would put a screeching babe to sleep? Hardly helpful, darling."

You decided to fully ignore his taunt as patience slipped from your tired mind.

"He's going to Waterdeep in a fortnight to speak with someone willing to help out with the Wish spell," you informed as calmly as possible. "I was on my way to tell you that a couple of hours ago before… well, this happened."

His features eased and he rose to his full height, his undivided attention on you.

"Truly? That sounds promising, I suppose," he said, folding his arms. "And here I thought you were simply longing for my company. My apologies, darling."

He wasn't entirely wrong, but you would never let him know.

Suddenly, the sound of metal shrieking echoed throughout the room, and a jab of pain drummed steadily in your head.

"Wake up, you loiter-sacks!" One of the guards yelled.

Pandemonium ensued.

A wave of groggy protests were heard all around. The insults and taunts came immediately after, and your eyes widened at the vulgarity of all of it, while Astarion held the most amused smile you had ever seen on him in a long while.

He truly thrived in all things chaotic.

Another voice was heard. "Shut it, will ya?! Or no food!"

It effectively subsided most of the protests, though an occasional whispered 'fucker!' slipped through the mouths of some prisoners.

Squeaking wheels of a cart came to a halt just outside your cell, and you bolted out of the mattresses, gripping the vertical metal bars.

"Can you please call for Wyll. We need to talk to him."

The grumpy man frowned. "Am just delivering food, sweetheart. Now, have yours and get back."

He shoved a bowl of what looked like powdered wood shavings. The smell was positively nauseating , and your stomach twist and turn in revulsion.

You placed your meal on the floor, not daring to take a single bite.

A laugh burst from him before he attempted doing the same to Astarion, who visibly shuddered as he dodged the man's hand.

"Ugh. I'll pass."

He snorted, grinning maliciously. "Food strikes ain't going to get you out o' here, pretty boy."

Astarion's face twisted into an outraged look, but before he could voice out a snarky remark, the same man as before was heard.

"That one's the vampire spawn."

The guard came into view, and the atmosphere in the prison cell shifted considerably. Silence took over, only broken by some vague whispers.

"Give him pig's blood."

A few gasps erupted. 

"I prefer fresh blood, thank you very much," Astarion scoffed, visibly offended. "I am not feeding on scraps."

"Astarion…" you warned him lowly, not wanting things to spiral out of control.

The delivery man shrugged to the guard and pushed the food cart out of the way so he could attend to the other prisoners.

Another guard joined in, removing his helmet to take a closer look.

"Then you'll have nothing. You are in no position to make demands, spawn."

Astarion tensed by your side but merely pressed his lips as a reply. 

"Thought so," the guard chuckled.

You gripped the bars tighter, earning their attention. "Tell us what we are charged with, then."

They both exchanged looks and the first one bared his teeth. "Playing dumb, are we?"

"We didn't do anything that would warrant an arrest!" You nearly yelled in frustration. "Call for Wyll, please!"

The older man leaned in with a snarl. "The Grand Duke is absent. He might return later today."

Your heart dropped.

"Might?"

He nodded in indifference. "His duties don't bend to the will of his friends."

"We didn't do anything wrong," you said in a shaky retort, pressing your forehead against the bars. "We didn't…"

"Look, not to sound ungrateful given our luxurious abode," Astarion interjected light-heartedly, gripping your shoulders to have you take a few steps away from them. "But you do know who we are, don't you?"

"We do, and you are not above the law."

"And which law did we break, if you don't mind clarifying, of course."

The older guard was clearly running out of patience. "Killing a civilian."

Your eyes shot up immediately, and your mouth dropped in shock.

Astarion spoke before you could, his voice bearing confusion. "What? We didn't kill anyone." 

"We found the body in the alleyway."

You gripped the bars again. "No! I used a Sleep spell – and he wasn't a civilian! He attacked me!"

He was now dangerously close to your face. "Listen here, princess. You are both in a sticky situation, and I advise you to watch your words."

Astarion pushed you back with his arm once again. "Lay a finger on her, and you might just turn into a vampire meal."

Tension increased tenfold all of a sudden, and you could only glare at Astarion who remained unmoved and determined to hold his menacing gaze.

"Maybe you'd prefer an overground cell, hm?" The guard spat in amusement. "Having the sun to keep you company. I'm certain we'd be sweeping your ashes from the floor before midday."

An intense wave of anger burst through you, and you reached through the bars, nearly gripping one of them. "Fuck you!"

They both laughed hysterically at your failed attempt.

One of them reached for a pouch and threw a vial at you. "A healing potion. Drink it, princess. You're bleeding out."

"Unless you are to be his vampire meal."

The other guard cleared his throat. "Oh, and be on your best behaviour, and don't even think of escaping. This place is riddled with traps."

"And we have our own mages," the other glared at you.

They laughed obnoxiously loud again before turning on their feet and walking out.

You glanced at the vial in your hand, its crimson content undulating faintly.

Blood kept on seeping through the makeshift bandages around your wrist. The blood flow hadn't decreased, and a couple of droplets were dripping on the floor.

"Drink it," Astarion urged you, pulling his eyes away from the sanguine mess.

You could tell he was extremely tense all of a sudden, slowly pacing away from where you stood.

The compulsion to drink blood could be blinding at times, and you couldn't blame him for wanting to keep a distance given the current circumstances.

You quickly popped the lid off the container and downed the sweetened liquid, immediately feeling a rush of warmth coursing through your body with each pump of your heart.

Unwrapping the soaked pieces of cloth, you noticed the slash had barely healed at all, and that the blood kept pouring out.

Astarion had definitely noticed your confusion, gripping your forearm.

"Poison," he finally said upon inspecting the wound.

You stared at him wide-eyed, as the realisation hit you hard.

They had poisoned you?

"No wonder the flow didn't decrease with the potion."

Panic spread quickly. "Why would they poison me?"

"It was most likely unintentional," he concluded, smearing his thumb across the layer of blood near your wound. "They must have coated their weapons with it and slashed you by mistake."

"We need to call them for an antidote."

He shook his head. "I doubt they have one at hand – one that actually works. These idiots aren't well-versed in poisons to begin with."

Unlike him.

"What now?"

His eyes met yours. "Do you trust me?"

You stiffened, alarm bells going off in your head. He would never ask this unless… "You're about to do something questionable, aren't you?"

"Questionable, but potentially life-saving. How do you fancy your odds?"

You swallowed the lump in your throat. "What do you have in mind?"

"I will suck the poison out."

Instinctively, you tried to yank your arm from his grip. "No."

He simply glared at you. "This is your best option, darling."

You eased slightly, knowing fully well he was far more experienced in poisons than you were, and between 'bleeding out to death' and 'trusting your vampire friend who also happens to know a lot about this subject', you were far more inclined to pick the latter.

But then…

"What about you? It can be dangerous."

He chuckled in amusement. "I'm undead. Besides, I won't swallow this blood. I am vehemently against wasting yours, but exceptions must be made."

"Just… be careful."

He nodded, and you watched in awe as he brought your wrist to his lips, enclosing them around the wound. As he started off with gentle suckles, you saw the first droplets of blood dribble down from the corner of his mouth.

His touch was cold as ice, and you felt his fangs lightly press against your skin, but not hard enough to break the barrier. After all, your open wound – even if not that deep or wide – was enough to draw blood.

Somewhere along the line, his eyes fluttered shut as he held you in place, and your heart skipped a few beats.

Oddly intimate.

He parted from you not long after, all bloodied, and spitting the remainder of the warm liquid on the floor. 

"What a terrible way to taint your blood," he said with a wince. "It tasted… rotten."

He then grabbed a hold of your cloak – or what was left of it – and wiped his lips and chin clean.

"Just horrid."

Under different circumstances, you would have reprimanded him for it, but it was a fair exchange.

The flow of blood had already begun to waver, and you heaved a sigh of relief.

"Are you well?"

He nodded dismissively with a shudder. "The things I do for you, honestly."

Surprisingly, that did bring a faint smile to your lips.

Even if only for a fleeting moment, you were reminded of the many perils you had faced alongside each other.

He had your back, and you had his. 

No matter what.

However, It still felt grim that it took an erroneous arrest and being shoved into a prison cell to catch a glimpse of the trusting bond you once shared.

One that wasn't built on a mere transaction.

He silently eyed you for a moment, with an expression that was hard to decipher.

Then, he cleared his throat and walked over to his own mattress, placing his cloak along the length of it as a way to keep the damp at bay, before taking a seat.

Classic Astarion.

"Do you reckon I can now blame Gale for us ending up in this situation?"

You arched an eyebrow, wrapping yet another piece of cloth over your closing wound. "If anything, I should be blaming you, no? We're all doing this for you."

He shrugged with a side-smile. "Fair enough."

"I didn't kill that man… I don't get it…"

"I know you didn't, but it's not me you need to convince."

You sat down in defeat, rubbing your temple. "None of this makes sense…"

"No point in dwelling on it now," he said with a click of his tongue, inspecting his nails. "Get some rest."

You blinked. "I cannot rest in a place like this."

His eyes lifted briefly. "Darling, we've had worse."

"... and better." You mumbled.

"I'll give you the 'better' once we get out of here, then. Happy now?"

You winced at his words.

"Why do you do this?" You asked, unable to contain yourself.

He dropped his hand to the side, brows furrowed. "Do what?"

"This! This constant push and pull," you said, feeling the impulsiveness take control. "I try to have a proper conversation with you, and you just… push me away."

Astarion scoffed dramatically. "This is hardly the time or the place to be having this conversation."

"I tried to have you come stay with us… even when you're feeling more… vulnerable… you never let me in," you said in exasperation, words stinging in your throat. "You just…"

The words died in your mouth at the look he gave you.

It wasn't a look of anger or annoyance or outrage.

Just… nothing.

Like he wasn't even listening to you.

"Astarion?"

As if you had just snapped him out of his thoughts, he shook his head briefly, but didn't look in your direction.

"Go get some rest."

Had you pushed too far? He didn't sound upset, but then again, he was a master in deception whenever the situation called for it.

"Astarion…"

He was gazing out of the cell door, as if something far more interesting was worthy of his attention.

"I wasn't the one who pushed you away."

You sat up straighter, heart hammering fast against your ribcag. "Then who?"

"You did."

"What?"

He turned his head to you this time. "Don't pin this on me. You had all of me, and you chose to walk away."

A growing feeling of discomfort began to rise within you, competing with the confusion that had taken root.

And then…

Moonrise Towers.

That night.

"You didn't need a lover."

He sneered. "What about what I wanted?"

"Astarion, you–"

He immediately cut you off. "Don't. I wanted to be with you. I yearned for you like I never did for anyone else, and you chose the easy way out."

You were at a loss for words.

The conversation with Gale the day before immediately came to mind.

"Easy way out? You actually think I didn't have feelings for you back then?"

"Gods, then you should have fought for me – with me!"

He was being unreasonable. The pain of rejection had certainly seeped deeply into him, and it was now resurfacing brutally.

"And I did that! By giving you time and space. Besides, we had more pressing matters back then that required our undivided attention."

He looked back at you coolly. "How many nights did we spend thinking it would be our last?"

That caught you off guard.

"How many nights did you cry yourself to sleep, not knowing if we'd live to see another day?"

You fell silent, unsure of what to say.

"Yet you preferred having that emptiness and despair for company instead of being with me," he went on, his words were as knives that cut through you ruthlessly. "So do not lecture me about pushing others away, when you so clearly excel at that."

It took you a moment to find your voice again amidst the concoction of emotions that swirled in your head.

His accusations were unfounded. You knew this. But realising that that was how he really felt about the entire situation made you feel sadness beyond comparison.

That he mistook your altruism for selfishness. 

"I did what was best for you… and for us."

You wouldn't cry. 

You couldn't cry.

"And was that what you wanted?"

"What you needed mattered more than what I wanted. That's how much I cared for you," you said, voice wavering. "And I still do. Even through all your deception and lies and manipulation… you still came first."

That seemed to have taken him by surprise, and his face softened.

"You constantly mistake what you want with what you need, not even caring about the possible consequences," you went on with newfound vigour.

He scowled yet again. "I constantly cast aside what I want in favour of others."

You scoffed in disbelief. "You're not the epitome of selflessness you think you are, Astarion."

"What I want still matters!"

"If you'd done what you wanted, you would have sacrificed the souls of seven thousand spawn!" You exploded in a fit of rage. 

You were met with silence.

Deafening silence.

"You would have become the Vampire Ascendant and lost yourself in the process."

After glaring at you for a while, he then had the nerve to laugh. "Maybe that would have been the better option."

A sudden wave of nausea settled in the pit of your stomach. "You don't mean that."

"Stop speaking for me," he said through gritted teeth, words dripping with poison. "I had enough of it for two hundred years under his command – stop it!"

Your mouth had dropped open, and you were left speechless.

"Oi! Lovebirds, quit the chit-chat." One of the nearby guards rattled on the metal bars with a mace. "I'm afraid marriage counselling is postponed until further notice."

The other prisoners laughed and whistled teasingly as he walked away. 

Decided you were done with this conversation, you leaned back and rolled down to your side, facing the wall and fighting back the tears that had begun to roll down your cheeks.

You just couldn't stand looking at him.

Or even being near him.

You could only hope that Wyll would come back sooner rather than later, so you could finally get away from Astarion.

For good.

Disclaimer: sucking the poison from one's wound (in case of a snake bite, for example) has been discredited many decades ago. It's not really effective, and can do more harm than good, especially to the person doing the sucking. But for the purposes of this story, it works because fiction and magic and all that! Let's suspend our disbelief for a moment 😌

I don't keep taglists, so please consider adding this story to your alerts on Ao3 🩷

Next chapter: Solution

Series Masterlist . Masterlist

#astarion x female tav #astarion smut #astarion x female reader #astarion x tav #astarion x you #astarion x reader #astarion angst #astarion bg3 #astarion #astarion fanfic #astarion x mc

[achaotichuman]

Acotar Rant

Whenever I see shit like ‘Tamlin is depressed and wants to die because Feyre left him’ ‘He’s so desperate for Feyre and that’s whats driven him to this point.’ All I can think is, do we just collectively think Tamlin is immune to trauma??

To even grasp this situation you have to go way back before the book even starts. Tamlin was preyed on by the pedophile that helped ruin his childhood who then cursed him because he told her no.

He then had to watch all his close friends die in vain for him while he desperately searched for decades for another solution. He brought in refugees fleeing from other Courts. He. Carried. His. Dead. Citizens. And. Hand. Buried. Them. And he had to do it all without ever being able to fall apart.

The Feyre came along, and he learned to care for her. He didnt want her to just be used to break the curse because he didnt want to just be using her. He fell in love with a person that saw past the mask (both figuratively and literally) and allowed him a safe space. One that had long ago been stripped from him.

Then she was sexually assaulted, tortured and killed in front of him. He watched the love of his life die for him and he was completely unable to do anything about it.

Then he was given another chance to protect her and he took it. Granted this is not to excuse his actions, but there has to be some nuance given to the fact that he watched her literally die and was by the grace of God given another chance.

Then this same girl that he loved and desperately wanted to protect from the same thing happening again, was kidnapped. This same woman then tricked him into believing she had once again been raped by the same monster who assaulted her under the mountain and killed his family.

The very same woman then mind raped his sentries, his friends, and then proceeded to destroy his Court which he had spent decades trying everything in his power to protect, from the inside out. Then allowed Hybern to rampage through, destroying a neighbouring Court in the process.

He had to watch his people die all over again, when Feyre lied to him, he saw her dying under the mountain all over again. And he still went to war! He was spying on Hybern and gave over vital information about them to the High lords!

Then he dragged Beron out by his neck to fight for Prythian.

And when all was said and done he helped bring back the monster that had destroyed him mentally all for the sake of the girl that had killed his people.

Then he left them all alone in the end. Spring was abandoned and him along with it. This man, who very clearly has abandonment issues from the fact he was rejected by his family and beat within an inch of his life to the point he ran from home to the War Camps, was left completely by himself.

Lucien does come to see him once every now and again, but I also don’t blame Tamlin for not wanting him too. Considering even though Lucien had extremely valid reasons for leaving when he did, he still left Spring for dead without an explanation.

In the end, it is not ‘Tamlin needs to get over himself and his ex’ its Tamlin needs an extreme amount of mental help. He is a survivor as much as the rest of them.

Not even Feyre was able to recover from her mental health without a ton of fucking help. No one was, everyone got their support groups in the end

Tamlin went through it all without ever taking himself into consideration and still made it. He deserves to be able to fall apart.

#fight me on this #i dare you #acotar rant #acotar #tamlin #pro tamlin #anti feysand #anti rhysand #feyre critical #acotar headcanons

[vidavalor]

Great Balls of Fire

Ok, I've got a Final 15 theory on the kiss and the elevator and... pie?

This is for-- and in thanks to-- @indigovigilance, @ineffablelunatics and @somehow-a-human, as their metas reminded me of the idea of something in Aziraphale's mouth after the kiss and their talk of ball bearings and The Bullet Catch has eaten my brain alive and so here we are. Thanks also to @kayleefansposts for drawing my attention to 2/3rds of the metas. 🤗

What, exactly, happened in The Final 15? Maybe this...

As observed by many of us and discussed in the metas of the people I mentioned above, Aziraphale visibly has something in his mouth when he pulls back from the kiss. We also see him move the object around in his mouth-- or, we do, if his expression doesn't distract us first.

Because it's on his tongue, this isn't just light being weird or showing a filling or something. This is, clearly, a piece of metallic-colored something in Aziraphale's mouth. @indigovigilance pointed out how aspects of this parallel aspects of The Bullet Catch and I would agree with that. @ineffablelunatics, off of @somehow-a-human's post on the object, said it looked like a ball bearing and that's actually when I realized that I think the show might have subtly told us over the first two seasons what it is. And if it is what I think it is? The object is the reason for Aziraphale's reaction after the kiss-- not the kiss itself.

So, what is it?

To explain that, we have to start with two scenes, one from each season: 1601 and Crowley in Heaven with Muriel in 2.06.

In the 1601 scene, we learned that Crowley & Aziraphale experimented with their powers after they got tired of canceling each other out and that they discovered Heaven's dirty little secret in the process. That secret is that basically the only differences between them are the colors of their feathers and the lack of immunity to hellfire/holy water. Heaven has been telling everyone that some magic was "demonic" and that angels couldn't do it and they also had told everyone that demons no longer possessed angelic powers. Crowley & Aziraphale realized that this was bullshit-- Aziraphale could do temptations and Crowley could still do blessings. It's this discovery that allowed them to start fulfilling each other's assignments. They didn't tell a soul because of the danger of admitting they knew, especially because admitting it would be acknowledging that they had worked together to figure it out. This means that, with the exception of holy water being dangerous to him since he fell, Crowley is effectively still an angel in terms of the power he possesses.

This would mean he can magically make just about anything he could make when he was an angel. It's relevant because Crowley, as we'll see, made the object he slipped into Aziraphale's mouth during the kiss.

When Crowley is in Heaven with Muriel in 2.06, he opens the file on Gabriel's trial, which we are told can only be accessed by "a throne, or a dominion, or above"-- further showing that the truth is that Heaven actually can't strip angels of their power to do miracles. They're just simply telling them that they have done so as a form of social control and casting some to Hell to use them as way to discourage rebellion. This scene also reminds us of Crowley's awareness of this and shows him using his "angelic" powers to get information to help Gabriel.

The same scene with Muriel and Crowley that showed us that Crowley still retains his angelic powers reminds us again of the rank of throne/dominion in Heaven. (I say "throne/dominion" because Muriel's verbal commas and the way the sentence is structured-- along with the scene in S1 when Crowley goes from his throne to dominate his plants lol-- suggests that it is possible to be both ranks of angel at once, which is another topic so we won't go too far into that right now.) Crowley was undoubtedly a throne/dominion-- and it's not even just the fact that he had that hilariously tacky throne in S1. It's relevant here because of ties of throne-related things to what it is that Crowley made and slipped into Aziraphale's mouth.

Thrones are apparently God's chariots. They are concerned with justice and reside in the areas of space "where matter originates"-- which feels very Before the Beginning, right? They are symbolized by big wheels that rotate and by eyes that change color.

Yes, by wheels and eyes that change color... seems very Crowley, no?

The eyes repeat on the symbolic wheels and are in the position of what we on Earth would call ball bearings, apparently looking kind of like this:

...and remember the interconnected, turning wheels in the scroll that Crowley had Aziraphale hold in the moment they met, at the start of 2.01?...

It could be said that Crowley... a throne, a polymath, a scientist, an inventor... a being whose signature thing is the sexiest old car on four wheels... could make ball bearings from his body when he was an angel and, since we know that he still has basically everything but the ability to make holy water from his angel days, it means that he still can make those ball bearings...

...but we also know what else he can make from his body since he's also a demon-- and not just from his hands but from his mouth...

...hellfire.

Yes, I'm saying that it really was a ball bearing in Aziraphale's mouth-- but it was not hollow or empty. Not by a long shot. It was full of hellfire. It wasn't for Aziraphale's memories as Crowley didn't think that Aziraphale had time or opportunity left to extract them.

It was a suicide pill.

The story was calling back to The Original Ineffable Divorce in 1862...

Think about what Crowley saw when he was up in Heaven in S2...

Crowley is the one who put together what happened to Gabriel. He watched the video of Gabriel's sham "trial" and he saw The Metatron basically order Gabriel killed and cast down through the ranks and he knows that Gabriel only evaded Hell because of how it would have diminished the power of the institution of Heaven to send him there. Crowley knows that Aziraphale does not have this same amount of political power. He knows that The Metatron is a shifty motherfucker and that Michael cannot be counted on. He knows how much danger Aziraphale is in.

So, he takes a page from Lord Beezlebub after seeing that they protected Gabriel with the fly... only it's not exactly the same thing.

Beez's fly was given to Gabriel to help save him. It was a place to store his memories to help protect him long enough to keep him safe until they could make sure he was safe and intact. It worked because Beez and Gabriel had time to make a plan together. By the time Crowley is in Heaven watching the video of what happened to Gabriel and then getting back to the bookshop to sort it all out, there's no time for he and Aziraphale to make a plan. They are not alone again until after "The Metatron" has already shown up and, by then, Aziraphale is already on his way to being lost.

Beez is actually the first character we ever see make their signature thing on-screen and when they do? I mean...

Evocative of a kiss, with that big closeup on Beez's mouth. We watch them push the fly gently out of their mouth with their tongue. It foreshadows Crowley making something in his mouth and ties delivery of it to the kiss. We know that Crowley knows that he can make a single object that is of aspects of both Heaven and Hell combined-- like a ball of hellfire tempered, unless consumed, by a ball bearing.

Plus, earlier in the season, there's Gabriel tying The Fly-- which came about as a result of Beez trying to help him manage his depression by helping him to feel safer-- to metaphorical suicide when he spends the scene where the angels show up chasing it around the bookshop, trying to kill it with one of Aziraphale's Bibles, symbolizing just what Heaven is doing to everyone's mental health here...

But this is just where this possibility starts, really... because why else do I think it's a hellfire-full ball bearing suicide capsule that Crowley gave Aziraphale?

Well, for starters, there is all the holy water that is all over this plot at the end of S2... At the end, Crowley stands in Whickber Street outside The Bentley right across from The Dirty Donkey in a nod to-- among other scenes-- the 1967 scene, when Aziraphale brought Crowley the holy water.

Aziraphale knew that Crowley also secretly wanted holy water as a last resort and Aziraphale initially couldn't handle the idea of losing Crowley and reacted badly before eventually coming around to the idea that maybe Crowley needed to have some supernatural cyanide at his disposal in order to feel safer and that he should have that option. Based on the holy water story, Crowley, then, would be the first person to think that Aziraphale needed a suicide pill as an option if he found himself in trouble he couldn't get out of.

In 2.06, Crowley knows how likely it is that Aziraphale could be harmed by the angels and/or sent to Hell-- which is the domain of Crowley's assailant, who is literally Satan, and who hates both of them for, among other things, turning Adam against him. Crowley knows Aziraphale is a good person who wants to believe the best is possible but he also knows how unlikely it is that this is going to go well for Aziraphale. Crowley can't stand the thought of Aziraphale suffering so he gives him a way out as an act of love because Crowley would sooner lose Aziraphale for eternity than see him suffer.

When it becomes clear that Aziraphale is going with "The Metatron" and Crowley is out of ways to convince him not to, he sees Aziraphale look away and start to cry. Crowley goes back and kisses him as a last resort but Aziraphale is initially resistant-- not because this is their first kiss and not even just because they're upset (though that's part of it) but because to kiss Crowley then would be to let him in... (after all of those symbolic doors and "let me in"s happening in the story)... when Aziraphale making the mistake of trying to shut him out.

Aziraphale eventually, though, can't help but let Crowley in a little...

...because, ya know, it's Crowley...

...and, when he does, he opens up a little, and Crowley slips a suicide pill into Aziraphale's mouth.

It's also definitely worth noting that one of the reasons-- the primary reason, even-- why Crowley kisses Aziraphale is because he needs a cover to both make and give the fireball to Aziraphale without being noticed-- and to do so in such a way that Aziraphale would be assured of the ability to have it on his person when he got to Heaven-- even if he lost his clothes in the process, as like what happened to Gabriel when he was cast out. It has to go in Aziraphale's mouth for easy consumption for it to work and kissing him is the only way to do that. What's really worth noting, though?

Crowley's plan hinged on Aziraphale eventually giving in and kissing him back. He couldn't tongue the fireball into Aziraphale's mouth without Aziraphale parting his lips and Crowley knew he would... because he always does. Not that they're regularly trying to kiss while being super miserable lol but mah point is that Crowley knows that Aziraphale can't ever not kiss him. That's not indicative of this being a first kiss-- that's indicative of the complete opposite of that.

Anyway...

Aziraphale knows what Crowley can make and what it is that he just gave him and that's why this is his reaction after the kiss:

The devastation isn't over the kiss itself. It's because Aziraphale trusts Crowley's interpretations of things more than his own sometimes and, by secretly slipping Aziraphale a suicide capsule out of fear and love and delivered in a kiss, it really hits home for Aziraphale that Crowley thinks they are now in a situation where there probably isn't going to be another way out. It's not because it's a first kiss-- it's because it's likely a last one-- and things are so dire that it came with supernatural cyanide.

It's the realization that Crowley really thinks Aziraphale has been fooled and Aziraphale can't bear it because he knows, deep down, that Crowley is probably right and he's embarrassed. 'Pride goeth before a fall' and all that... Aziraphale is lovely-- an absolute poppet-- but he's imperfect, just like us all. One of his worst traits is that he doubles down when he's been embarrassed as a way of trying to save face and retain pride. It's maybe his worse flaw and it gets very dangerous for him here. Crowley is no stranger to trying to stop situations where it could happen, like this paralleling time in 1941:

Some other reasons why it's a fireball suicide pill before we get to what then happened in the elevator...

There's the fact that the show had a scene set in S2 in The Dirty Donkey-- where the elevator is. (As the start of the scene, Crowley & Aziraphale even walk through the door where the elevator will materialize at the end of S2.) Part of their conversation is very possibly Crowley recounting their first kiss-- at minimum, it's about kissing-- and then Aziraphale makes it also about balls, combining the two to, among other things, foreshadow The Final 15:

The wordplay here is already threefold in this scene off of Crowley's joke that follows Aziraphale remembering Jane Austen's balls: balls (testicles), the phrase that x person "has balls" (is badass), and balls (of the cotillion/dancing variety). This continues into the meeting that Aziraphale hosts-- the disaster of a ball that goes straight into the end game of the season. Here's Aziraphale making yet another ball-related wordplay joke-- this one, during The Meeting Ball:

"We're having a ball" as in they're literally having a ball-- a party-- but also the idiom "we're having a ball" meaning "we're having a great time." We are now up to four different meanings of the word 'ball' in S2, stretched across different scenes, emphasizing the importance of it. One of the missing ones still needed here to complete this idea is a literal ball-- and the ball bearing would not only meet this idea but would then make all of the ball-related wordplay have had the purpose of building towards it. We think it's building towards The Meeting Ball-- and it is-- but all of it, including The Meeting Ball, would actually then be building towards the hellfire ball, which is the actual ending of S2.

Then, there's what this all has to do with the eccles cakes...

Yes, eccles cakes lol... Eccles cakes, as a lot of us already know, are popularly referred to as "fly cakes", off of how the currents sometimes look in them, but the significant thing here is that, despite their name, eccles cakes are not actually cakes at all-- they are really pies.

Ball bearings are also used in Good Omens' favorite metaphor of food to weigh down dough when baking pie crust. Pie weights and ball bearings are basically the same things, just put to different use. It means you literally cannot make eccles cakes from scratch without a jar of pie weights... which are just, structurally, the same thing as ball bearings... and Crowley can make them. You also make pie dough by first rolling it into a ball.

Which is likely why this hilarious moment exists:

Please hold The Cake-Pies of Symbolism, my pie (and Pi)-loving dear...

Crowley's face at having to stand there holding some little pies 😂...

The eccles cakes-that-are-really-pies go along with this theory as well because look how the show presented the forthcoming apocalypse to us back in 2.01:

The horse is Crowley, the rider is Aziraphale, and they're headed for Armageddon-like mental health disaster-- all ushered in by the four eccles cakes, representing Gabriel, Beez, Nina (who suggested & gave them the eccles cakes) and Maggie.

Presumably, The Lords of the Flies are the two eccles cakes that are already canoodling on the back of the plate while Maggie and Nina are the two in the foreground who are aligned but not yet together. Crowley's S2 plot is largely working at the behest of these wonderfully rebellious pies. He looks after Gabriel, finds out what happened to him and connects it all to Beez... and this is after he spent the season on his vavoomy Operation Lovebirds to get Maggie and Nina together. He's responsible for the pie crust-- the containers of the eccles cakes-- in a show obsessed with containers. Crowley is, symbolically, a jar of pie weights in being form by way of his actions-- which is suggestive of the fact that he can probably physically make them. (There's also: "Just a few million years to bake," which Crowley said of his stars-- which he made-- in the opening scene of the season.)

"Nina, what do you sell that calms people down?"

Calm is from the Greek kauma, which means the heat of the day. Heat, as in slang for a weapon. Heat, as in hellfire. Heat, as in what's needed to bake. Heat, as in passion. Heat, as in "bringing the heat." The heat of the day-- the sunny daylight of The Final 15. Eccles cakes-- really: pies-- calm people down... they bring them heat, in every possible way, and it sets them on a path down-- to Hell.

Then, there's Agnes Nutter...

When The Witchfinder Army came to kill Agnes, she hid gunpowder (a weapon) and roofing nails (the construction-related metal that enabled it) in her dress. Agnes blew up-- she became a literal. fireball. Crowley wasn't necessarily suggesting that Aziraphale turn himself into an Agnes-like bomb in Heaven when he gave him the capsule but he was giving him a weapon involving fire with which he could kill himself if he had no other way out.

Then, there's the theme of suicide in examples from earlier in the season:

Crowley saving Elspeth (on the night Crowley was dragged to Hell)... The bit when Aziraphale then calls Crowley from Edinburgh in the present and tells him that he's read that Dalrymple left in disgrace and killed himself... "The Bananafish" being a short story about trauma by J.D. Salinger which ends with a traumatized man suddenly killing himself... Crowley setting Gabriel up to jump from the window and then stopping him from doing it...

There's also the fact that the end of S1 was Heaven and Hell forcing Crowley and Aziraphale into forms of suicide (getting into hellfire/holy water) and the "Aziraphale" in the Heaven part of it was Crowley spitting hellfire-- at Gabriel, no less, whose story is what jumpstarts S2.

Then, there's that the song that is The Clue to everything in S2 is "Everyday", the significance of which is that it's a foundational song of American rock 'n roll. Rock 'n roll is a blend of musical styles that actually wouldn't exist without first the big band/swing that Aziraphale loves that came before it-- symbolizing how Crowley & Aziraphale paved the way for Gabriel & Beez. There's another song, though, that, like "Everyday", is from the pivotal rock year of 1957 that is equally influential and is enormously Good Omens-y, in the sense that it cleverly uses wordplay to the effect of barely disguising sexual euphemisms and often through amusingly church-y language:

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain/Too much love drives a man insane/You broke my will/But what a thrill...

Goodness gracious... great balls of fire...

[Also: less part of the theory and more just a possible nod but... "The Metatron" brought Aziraphale a coffee, there's a threat of non-existence, and Aziraphale might have gotten a 'kiss of death' from a being who is, essentially, a cherry pie lol... so, those of you who know that other greatest television show to ever television show might see a bit of a nod to Twin Peaks in here as well.]

Speaking of kisses of death... the film that popularized the word "vavoom"-- and which GO S2 is homaging all over the place-- is called 'Kiss Me Deadly.'..

So, after the kiss, Aziraphale gets the capsule and keeps it tucked into his mouth and he's gone too far with the conversation and doesn't want to admit that maybe he's wrong and Crowley is right. Crowley goes out, "The Metatron" comes back in, and Aziraphale keeps looking at Crowley staying by the car out the window and he's a bit more nervous now ("what about, um, my bookshop?"). Even if he still wants to be right, he's beginning to doubt even more that he is.

He almost tells "The Metatron" to go. He almost goes to Crowley. We see him start to say that he thinks he made a mistake but he doesn't go through with it. He's too embarrassed. Fraulein Maria can't face The Captain and is trying to run back to The Abbey over here.

Aziraphale goes out with "The Metatron" and the significant moment is this revelation: "We call it 'The Second Coming'."

This is the moment that Aziraphale realizes for sure that he's been tricked and there is no Supreme Archangel job for him. The Metatron doesn't want to change Heaven or save anybody-- he wants to destroy the world, same as he always has-- and there's no way that he'd ever trust Aziraphale to carry that out when Aziraphale is who stopped the first round. Heaven will never admit they did wrong by Crowley-- to do so would be to collapse the system because then every demon would want to appeal their own status and demand justice and the Heaven/Hell regime would fall, in the sense that their little supernatural empire would crumble. The Metatron would never allow that and Aziraphale realizes in this moment for sure that he has been played for a sucker.

It's still possible that, at this moment, Aziraphale might still believe that this being who has tempted him with the possibility of the justice he wants for Crowley more than Crowley actually wants for himself-- and with false reassurances that he and Crowley could be together forever-- actually is The Metatron. Or, Aziraphale might be starting to get the sense of what's actually happening but, either way, he now knows that he's been fooled. He knows now that while he and Crowley both got some things wrong (suggesting they run off and proposing suddenly were not great moves on Crowley's part)... about this bit anyway? About being in danger if he believes the being who came to the door? Crowley was right.

So, Aziraphale has a choice: does he go to Crowley or does he get in the elevator, knowing now that to do so is to go to a form of death?

He can't face Crowley. He knows Crowley would forgive him and just wants him to be safe but, in the moment, Aziraphale is too ashamed and too embarrassed to admit that he was fooled and to deal with how awfully he just behaved. He's also exhausted from being hounded by the weight of his halo and Heaven for thousands of years. Negative thought cycles in overdrive-- he's never truly believed that he deserves Crowley and he has convinced himself that maybe Crowley might be better off without him. Maybe they just don't get a happy ending and maybe Aziraphale is so tired and can't run and hide anymore and just wants it to end.

Imagine spending thousands of years in service of an organization that also doubles as family and who abused you and abandoned you and who now wants to kill you... and you so hoped that change was possible that you clung to the idea beyond a point of reason-- to the point of hurting the one you love, with whom you have the only real love you've ever known. And you know he'd forgive you in a heartbeat because he loves you and he just wants you to be safe but you can't face him because you can't yet face yourself... that's Aziraphale deciding between Crowley and the elevator.

Aziraphale can barely glance over at Crowley and when, he does, it's also The Bentley he's looking at because he's telling the car to play Crowley their song. Crowley said "no nightingales" but Aziraphale says, in response: "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." His last moment on Earth and he uses it to basically leave a suicide note for Crowley that says nothing but I'm sorry. I love you.

Their song plays when Crowley starts the engine of The Bentley, which calls back to the first time they met in the Before the Beginning scene that began the season and showed how they started the engine of the universe together.

Aziraphale might be trying to warn Crowley about Armageddon by sending an "engine trouble"-type of message or he might be calling back to when they first met or, as I suspect, he might be doing both but the show, at least, is referencing Before the Beginning here with this, whether or not Aziraphale intentionally is.

So, Aziraphale? He makes his choice. He gets into the elevator...

...and he swallows the fireball. Which we can see him do here:

Or, as this was foreshadowed in S1 by the being whose own fall and subsequent arrival at the bookshop door set all the events in this season into motion:

(The eerieness of the fake grin on Gabriel after seeing how it foreshadows S2 ending with Aziraphale's mad grin...)

Because, when all is said and done, this poor bastard really would have a death-by-swallowing-something story over here, wouldn't he? Can they just hurry up and destroy the Heaven/Hell system so Aziraphale can have food and sex in peace already, please? 😄

Aziraphale knew he'd been played and he didn't want to go through whatever came next. He didn't want to reach the top floor of Heaven because he knows that only forms of death await him there. They'll take his memories. They'll cast him to Hell. Being a demon is no picnic and Aziraphale has seen that in being with Crowley for so long. Satan is not exactly the biggest fan of Aziraphale and Aziraphale, better than most, knows what Satan is capable of. He doesn't want any part of that. He ingested a suicide pill to avoid being captured by the enemy.

Crowley gave him the pill because angels are not immune to hellfire. That's what made it a suicide capsule, right? It was supposed to kill him within seconds. It was supposed to be quick and relatively painless-- a way to escape the horrors that might await him. Even when Aziraphale is at his worst-- as Aziraphale was in their last scene in bookshop-- he is still a pure-of-heart, lovely being to Crowley because Crowley loves Aziraphale as he is-- imperfect. Just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing. It never occurred to Crowley that the capsule might fail. Why? Because Aziraphale is, always and forever, his angel.

Both Crowley and Aziraphale thought the fireball should have protected Aziraphale from pain and suffering by killing him almost instantly once he ingested it.

By that measure, Aziraphale should have burst into flames in the elevator, seconds after he swallowed the pill just after stepping inside.

But he did not.

We watch as the seconds start to tick by... and we see the realization play out on Aziraphale's face as each second that passes is another one where he's still here...

...the look gets more and more unhinged as the elevator keeps climbing until we get the slightly mad dark grin as the last shot of him before a fade to a deathly black... with Aziraphale having spent the final splitscreen since he got into the elevator on the other side of Crowley, symbolizing what's happened.

In the elevator scene, we are watching the dawning realization play out on Aziraphale's face as the fireball doesn't work and there's only one reason why it wouldn't-- because he's no longer an angel.

Aziraphale has been sauntering vaguely downward for the season and maybe for awhile before then. He's been letting the darkness in, more and more, throughout all of S2. We have been watching his fall happen. The 'falling from a great height into a pit of boiling sulphur' part of falling? Ceremonial. An aftermath of sorts-- an additional punishment. It awaits Aziraphale when he gets off the elevator in Heaven but it's something we likely don't really need to see and never have seen in the show yet because that's not actually the main point of a fall. By the time you're literally falling from a great height, you've actually already fallen.

Aziraphale's determined-- but also just really half-mad-- final grim smile in the elevator over his understanding of what's happened is both the pain of thousands of years of religious trauma and abuse-related misery and a bit of completely unhinged I'm gonna burn this place to the fucking ground fury.

Aziraphale swallowing the capsule also parallels Gabriel having to "consume" The Fly to open it. The Fly went through Gabriel's eye and allowed him to "see"-- it give him realization and understanding by returning his memories to him. For Aziraphale, he swallows the fireball and it also gives him a kind of sight-- realization and understanding of what's happened and what's to come... all of this also in the moments before his memories (and, so, his sense of self/his life) will likely be taken from him.

(For a time-- he'll be fine eventually. *mantras* South Downs Cottage, South Downs Cottage...)

"And from his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of fire leap out." The Job quote on the matchbox. The matchbox contained the fly-- it's the equivalent to the ball bearing containing hellfire. Works now on several different levels but one of them then is: And from his mouth (Crowley's mouth/the kiss/the fireball/Aziraphale swallowing the fireball)...

...go burning lamps (the light that goes out in the bookshop when Aziraphale is in the elevator)...

...and sparks of fire leap out. Several meanings:

Literal sparks-- in that Aziraphale can now spit hellfire, like how Crowley did in his body in Heaven in S1.

Sparks of fire leaping out, in the sense that Aziraphale has made the leap-- he is a demon now.

Lastly, though... sparks of fire leap out... as in, Hell (and Heaven) hath no fury like this very, very, very pissed off Angel of the Eastern Gate whose whole thing is freeing those imprisoned by corrupt systems...

Visually paralleling the elevator with a grey wall behind him and light/darkness alternately striping Aziraphale is the 'Aziraphale and God' scene in 1.03, setting up its sister elevator scene in 2.06, where Aziraphale realizes that he has been tempted by Satan and has fallen. (Ironically, a realization about having fallen that happens while going Up in an elevator.)

God: "Aziraphale. (dryly) Angel of the Eastern Gate. Where is the flaming sword I gave you, Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale, unintentionally foreshadowing the fuck out of the plot:

"...must have put it down here somewhere."

Yeah. 😉 Give 'em hell, Aziraphale.

Bonuses:

The awning of a new age/Dawning of a New Age joke. An understanding/a daybreak that begins a new era...

"Oh, listen, I think it's about to happen-- the 'awning' of a new age." Yes, indeed, Crowley. A dawning of a new age was imminent...

...and, finally, if you substitute 'Aziraphale' for his parallel of 'Job' in these sentences, Bildaddy summarized the season endgame quite nicely in 2.02:

#ineffable husbands #good omens #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #good omens 2 #good omens theory #aziracrow #good omens speculation #good omens clues #good omens analysis #good omens parallels #long post but worth it #tw suicide #tw depression

[grimesgirll]

somewhat obsessed with the idea of wearing rick’s boxers.

it’s like second nature to you. it has to be.

after every time you slid into bed, every time rick and daryl strip you of your own undergarments, every time they fuck you dumb, everytime rick maneuvers you into your position bundled against his chest, you’re wearing a pair of his boxers.

the two had been surprised at first when they found you face down on the bed after a long day in nothing but a tiny tank top and rick’s blue and white striped boxers.

it took everything in them not to pounce on you right then and there. but when you woke up, you were more than happy to fess up to stealing rick’s boxers to wear as shorts.

rick could barely contain himself one afternoon in alexandria. you were taking judith on a wholesome stroll but you were wearing a pair of pale blue boxer shorts with a soft, white long sleeve and one of rick’s white button ups thrown on. later, he had to explain to you that he wasn’t snubbing you when you caught sight of him and tried to wave him over, just trying to keep his zipper from busting.

you had just laughed and quipped that they were the perfect bottoms.

from then on, rick found his boxer shorts going missing; on runs, he’d found you in the men’s underwear section, stripping down to try on a pair of striped ralph lauren boxers. that’s how the two of you ended up sweating and shamelessly blushed out on the cramped car ride home.

the rose painting your countenance couldn’t cease because you knew you smelled like sex. rick too. from the creamy ring you’d left around his cock as he lifted you off of him and onto the mahogany sales table, you knew you two had overdone it. with the wide block of time you had today to secure supplies, rick felt free to fuck your pussy twice, filling you up enough to have you seen stars on the sales floor.

all because you’d styled his underwear as shorts.

daryl teases his friend about it.

“can’t even wake up without seein’ her in ‘em and gettin’ hard.”

daryl’s a hypocrite however.

even the woodsman isn’t immune to your figure in those boyish bottoms.

it’s twenty-five minutes into your small game hunt when daryl’s hands are in your boxers. you had actually wanted to catch a rabbit or some quail, but once your boyfriend’s fingers are between your folds, you can’t find the will to complain.

the two of you start with him holding you against a hemlock, arms wrapping around you while he fingers you nice and slow, boxers down around your ankles. as he massages your plush walls, daryl counts how casual you are about going commando as one of his blessings.

then it turns. then suddenly there’s a pine needle in your mouth. you spit the green thing out and try to brace yourself against the forest floor. it had happened so fast; his tongue tag teaming you with his fingers to crack you open like a safe in record time. then you were face down with nothing but a denim jacket quickly strewn beneath you.

you love when he or rick spring this kinda thing on you - it’s spontaneous, wild, a little risky in all the right ways. yes, most nights you’d prefer to be rolled up into a blanket burrito with your boys and a glass of wine but the adventures like this really do something for you.

pupils expanded, your chest is heavy when daryl’s the first to come out of your post-romp fog and collect your boxers. your legs are still shaking when the fabric touches your skin.

“daryl!”

you’d protested when the man began to pull up your boxer briefs. full of his cum, you want to clean up before you soil your bottoms but daryl disregards the swats to his hands. slightly annoyed, you hurried ahead of him through the tract of woods back towards alexandria. it’s fine. he just enjoyed the view of your ass.

complaints crawl out of your mouth as soon as you’re in the door and you’re haphazardly hanging your rifle on the wall. daryl brings in the rear behind you while you’re stomping up the stairs to rick.

your chocolate curled lover is taking off his watch, ready to drop it into the ceramic dish on the dresser when you appear next him, shimmying down your bottoms in a huff.

“hey, darlin’,” he greets, expecting more than a scowl from you.

“hey,” you reply curtly, face still in a pout.

“-make sure you don’t take off those boxers, baby-,” daryl stops dead in his tracks at the sight of your bared pussy in the bedroom lamplight. rick’s also taking it in, eyes trailing from your waist to the trimmed bush, and the puffy pink pussy peeking out, now leaking with daryl’s sticky cum.

you bend over to pick up the soiled shorts. “you’re not the only one who likes these,” you point out.

blue eyes narrow. but before he can give you any lip, you’re giving him not one, but both of yours. smashed against your mouth, rick’s tongue delves between those pillowy lips while walking you towards the bed where daryl’s waiting to situate you on his lap once more. daryl’s antics weren’t enough to turn off the blazing furnace between your legs. no, your temper can handle a few more rounds. it’s not hard when your mind paces back to the eye rolling, all consuming inferno that had cyclones through your core.

they trap you in a kiss. sandwiched between both of their hard ons, you’re shifting and grinding in each direction.

“thought you were pissed off with me,” daryl breathes into your ear, fingertips skimming your waist.

you snort, leaning back into him to grant full access to your bared neck. without hesitation, he’s licking a wicked pattern up the column of your neck. “dare’,” you sigh. gasp after gasp, you melt into his touch.

daryl’s hands are beneath the fat of your rear already and all of the sudden, one of rick’s fingers has snaked its way down to your clit. the fervid flicking against your ardor flush tissue culls any anger you could have towards the two men. you can’t even think about holding a grudge once rick gets a finger into you. at two fingers, daryl’s kissing you with the ferocity of a wildfire. three fingers inside of you and you’re babbling;

“rick, faster, please.”

“what was that?”

“please - faster, can you please?”

the grin on his face is as wide as the pacific. his lips turn upwards into a sly smile. “you want somethin’ a little faster, darlin’?” you shake your head as if it’s obvious. he hmmphs. “you oughta’ sit on daryl’s cock.”

you can’t imagine a world where that’s an unpopular idea.

back onto daryl you go.

those hands at your hips come in handy; daryl raises you a few inches once rick’s removed his fingers. eyes focused on rick and the way his mouth closes around one pruning finger. sucking it clean while daryl’s tip brushes your slick entrance. any yearning radiating off of you can’t be hidden. that kind of heat and wetness down between your thighs is no lie.

so a hiss is to be expected when the muscled man wiggles his way into you. rick is saving a mental image of you - adjusting to the familiar stretch of daryl. your blush doesn’t ease once daryl works another half inch inside.

one moment you’re trying to process daryl’s cock as it’s suddenly seated in you to the hilt. the next rick catches your gaze again. this time he’s doing more than teasing you, taking advantage of your parted lips to invade with his tongue.

“rick,” you mumble against his lips.

“you gettin’ close, angel?”

“should feel ‘er,” daryl rasps. with each thrust of his you’re clinging to rick. “so fuckin’ tight like you didn’t get this perfect pussy fucked in the woods.”

“that’s where you guys went?”

your mischevious grin is hidden in the crook of rick’s necks. the telltale tightening around daryl’s length is all consuming. your grin turns into an open “o” shape when daryl drags across your cervix. sensations from your convulsing core are consuming him too.

that same lust from the woods washes over daryl like the tide and you’re the moon, pulling him in and leading him to crash into you. usually this is rick’s wheelhouse, but one glance into daryl’s darkened pupils and you’re ripped from rick. on top of daryl’s lap, you’re wrapped in his arms, bouncing up and down on the rock hard cock beneath you. he sets the pace while you can only claw at his chest. he returns the favor and reaches forward to palm your tit, relishing in your sweet moans when he rolls a hardened bud between two fingers.

riding him on the bed is such a break for your knees compared to the forest floor. gyrating your hips activates not only the core that keeps you fit but the molten hot bundle of nerves at your core. daryl ruts against you deliciously to deliver just the perfect level of pressure.

rick can’t help but be bewitched at everything unfolding on the surface of the mattress. daryl’s length disappears inside out of you, reappearing with each erratic movement of your hips. there’s no reason to be jealous but if looks could kill, daryl’d be dead simply for the privilege of burying himself inside those heavenly walls.

meanwhile, heat bursts down below like a mini neutron star collision within you. forehead cast with sweat, the energy is fading from your movements as you messily move your pelvis to brush against daryl.

a “fuck, baby,” escapes from his lips and you’re done for. and so is he.

shooting into the sheets and collapsing by your side. you’re prepared to slide into daryl’s embrace when there’s suddenly a familiar feeling breaching your bared pussy.

nails dig into your hips and daryl’s back at it again - lapping his tongue up and down your slit. you were thinking that you two would at least catch your breaths but daryl’s taking no breaks. rick isn’t either.

in true rick fashion, he’s tapping your lips with his impressive cock. how can you say no to that?

you open your mouth and moan around his cock once you feel those devious fingers in your hair. it’s like that sense of overwhelm’s been replicated again. tongue against your clit and yours on the underside of rick, you never imagined your afternoon going this way. all this thanks to your little fashion trend.

“princess, your mouth feels amazing.”

you bob your head in appreciation. just like daryl’s taking care of you, you’re taking your time swallowing around the man in your mouth, treating him to the tight embrace of your throat.

“you like gettin’ a cock down your throat while daryl licks you stupid?”

“mhmmm!” you nod forward onto rick.

as soon as your moans reach daryl’s ears, his tongue’s kicking into hyperdrive. goaded by your delightful little whimpers, daryl begins swabbing a vicious pattern across your folds. the redneck alternates between racing over your sopping tissue to flattening that tongue and saddle you with a finger.

“ooommph,” is the only sound that comes out with rick’s steel hard cock down your throat.

spit slick, rick throbs in your mouth. that painful hardness he’s enduring is granted some sweet relief by your hollowed cheeks. you don’t stop there. driven by the lust addled, cock crazy part of your brain, you’re fully sending rick down your airway. breaths come briefly when he lets you up for air or to howl or cry, “dare’!”

right on time, your core is heating up again. the kiln inside of you scorches. neutralizing you, the ecstasy of another orgasm has you nearly folding into your leader. the blue eyed sheriff even leans back, tugging you up by the hair to keep you from actually choking on his cock. daryl’s diligent puckering around all of your important parts is overwhelming you against, a strategic hand on your clit as well.

as if you were all in sync, rick comes in your mouth first, fingers weaving through your gossamer locks while your thighs quake. you gag at first, before swirling your tongue under the twitching cock and swallowing it all. like a good girl.

once rick’s coming undone, daryl continues swirling his tongue around you. your pussy weeps for him. it contracts around his tongue until even rick’s raising his eyebrows at the vulgar slurping sounds filling the room.

“dare’,” you whine.

“gonna’ be a good girl and come all over dare’s tongue?” rick teases.

“yes, please!” you beg, banging a fist against the sheets.

“you gonna’ let daryl taste all of that perfect pussy?”

tears well in your eyes from the overstimulation but you nod as enthusiastically as possible. “pleeaase!”

you don’t have to ask again because you’re too busy arching into your third orgasm of the day. clenching and unclenching, your insides flutter. “ah!”

“so pretty when you come, baby.”

you’re dissolving into rick’s touch as your climax rings through your cunt. starry eyed and panting the pleasure out through your lungs.

you could fall asleep right there. and you do.

it ends as it always does.

following the flush and the lips leaving the surface of your skin, you feel a familiar fabric traveling up your thighs and double kisses mandating that nap that had been on your mind. the bed and the cozy comfort of sleep swallows you whole. rick too. he can never get close enough, not when you’re wearing his boxers.

#the walking dead #rick grimes #daryl dixon #twd smut #rick grimes smut #daryl dixon smut #twd #twd imagine #twd rick #twd daryl #rick grimes x reader #daryl dixon x reader #rick x reader #rick grimes imagine #daryl dixon imagine #rickyl #rickyl x reader #rickyl smut #not beta read #f/m/m #risky s!x #p in v sex #getting it on in the great outdoors #aftercare #norman reedus #andrew lincoln #are neutron star collisions hot? I took astronomy but I don’t remember - astronomers chime in down below #established relationship #sorry the sequencing literally gives me whiplash #grimesgirll

[heaven4lostgirls]

hope (S.R)

pairing: steve rogers x reader

warning: angst, a little bit of comfort.

summary: the aftermath of reader leaving steve gives him clarity and has them both realizing that he needs to work harder to gain his girl back.

word count: 1.6k

a/n: I am so sorry this took so long to come out, I’ve been swamped with uni work but I’m so happy you guys liked part 1, I will probably post a part 3 to this, which other characters do you ship reader with??? Steve is looking at some competition soon!

part 1 , part 2, part 3

tags: @nouk1998, @spngingerbread21, @blackhawkfanatic, @immyowndefender (if I wasn't able to tag you that means your tags don't work!)

Steve,

If you’re reading this, then you have realised I’m not staying in the tower anymore. Tony helped set me up in safe house for the next few weeks, I can’t stay here. You chose Sharon over me Steve and you must know that I can’t stay with someone who would choose another woman over me.

I need you to know that although it’s been hard for me to accept it, I understand. It’s not okay that you chose to leave without talking to me, but I understand if she is who you want okay? I am so grateful to have spent the last 3 years by your side, but I can no longer watch on from the sidelines as you look at her like how you used to look at me.

When I come back, hopefully I’ll be ready to talk, but I am asking you that if you ever held any form of love and respect for me, to give me this time to heal.

Thank you, Steve, for everything,

y/n.

Steve crumples your handwritten letter in his hand, the paper squashed in the palm of his hands as he throws back the bourbon in his glass. His eyes are red rimmed and his face unshaven. He has been a mess since you left a week ago, unable to move from his room, and spending his time rereading your letter hoping that he could find some small sign that you still loved him, still wanted him.

He was unaccustomed to this feeling of pain, when he got out of the ice, he assumed the pain of knowing that he had missed his time with Peggy was truly the worst form of torture but the agony of once having your love and affection and having it so brutally stripped from him, may just be at the top of his list.

He sighs as he uncrumples the paper to place it on his desk as he moves to lay back in his bed, he had been part of a repetitive cycle for the last week, working purely on survival mode before he’s interrupted by a soft knock on his door.

He knows better than to feel excited at the small hope of it being you however he knows that it’s Bucky and Sam checking up on him and bringing him food before they annoy him into getting into the shower. He can’t stand the look of pity in their eyes as they hand him his food, so he slams the door shut as soon as he gets it, placing it on his desk, he moves to the bathroom.

He turns the shower head all the way to cold, hoping it will bring some shock into his system, however because of his super soldier abilities, his immune system is fried and numb to the coldness of the water.

His eyes burn as tears roll down his face, sobs wrack his body as he pounds his fist into the wall in front of me which breaks at the force of his strength. He hears the door quietly open before he feels Bucky’s metal arm tugging him from under the water into a towel.

This has happened nearly everyday for the last 3 days, sometime on the first day, Steve had stopped acting like you abrupt leaving hadn’t affected him and broke down during his training session, to which Bucky had been helping him through his depressed state however all he ever really wanted was you.

“I want her back” Steve sobs into Bucky’s clothed shoulder as he feels his friend cooing and soothing him like a baby before he is gently placed on his bed. His body shakes with his painful sobbing as he feels Bucky rubbing his back. “I know Stevie, I know” Bucky sighs as he tucks Steve in after he exhausts himself from crying.

Meanwhile you haven’t been doing any better, your mental health slowly deteriorating at the acceptance of the end of your relationship with Steve. You had known somewhere deep down that throughout the past month whenever you had caught Steve looking at Sharon that this was the beginning of the end.

However now it was time for you to face the reality of the situation, you may have spent the last week crying your eyes out at sad romance films with ice-cream and chocolate  but you knew that enough was enough, you needed to talk with Steve and hear what he had wanted to say the day you left.

Running from your problems was not the best solution however you knew realistically you did not have the mental capacity to hear whatever Steve had to say and that it would only end up doing more harm than good considering how high strung you both were about the whole situation.

Now, as you step off the quinjet, you are greeted with Bucky’s genuine yet sorrowful smile. “Hi Buck” you greeted softly as you stood awkwardly, worrying if you could still hug him even though you knew he probably spent the last week comforting your ex-boyfriend. Not than you could blame him, they had been friends for far longer than the both of you.

Bucky just rolled his eyes before his smile widened as he pulled you into a tight hug, you breathed a sigh of relief and slumped into your friend. Your moment was interrupted by a loud voice chiming in from behind the both of you.

“Y/N!!!!” you and Bucky both separate, you with a look of amusement and Bucky with a look of annoyance. Peter’s joyful gaze found yours as he sprinted towards you. “I knew when you didn’t respond to the meme I sent you this morning, something was up!” he said excitedly as he spins you in a hug as a laugh bubbles out of you.

“Hey kid, yeah I was on a flight back from South Africa” you smile and separate from him before you see his joyful gaze darken at something behind you.

“Y/N.” you hear softly from behind you, and you freeze.

You turn around and place a polite smile on your face, not quite ready for the conversation ahead.

“Steve” you say and nod at him, he moves as though he’s going to hug you but thinks again and moves back and you’re somewhat grateful, you don’t think you’d be able to compose yourself.

You all stand in awkward silence for a bit before you break it, “I should uh” you gesture inside and he nods before he opens his mouth, “Can I help with your bags?” he asks nervously.

You were hoping to have a few minutes to compose yourself, but Steve is probably right to get the conversation out of the way.

As you both walk through the tower, you realise how quiet it is and make note to thank everyone for steering clear of the both of you.

As you both reached your old room since you had been sharing with Steve, you place you bag down before you turn to Steve who is standing sadly outside your room. “You can come in” you tease him and that snaps him out of his mood as he moves to sit at the desk in front of your bed and you sit on your bed.

“So” you both start before you motion to Steve to carry on.

“I love you y/n, I don’t want this to be the end, can we please work on this? I promise I’ll do better, and I won’t choose Sharon over you ever again.” He rushes out in what you assume is an attempt to stop the inevitable.

You smile at him in pity and before you can start talking you see him shaking his head as tears fill his eyes. “Steve, if you really wanted me as bad as you say you do, where was all this attention and affection this last month? Why did it take me leaving for you to realise how badly you fucked up?” you question and watch as he breaks in front of you.

The last week must have been hell for him, the same way the last month was for you.

“Please just let me try y/n, let me try please” he pleads as he moves from sitting in the small chair to kneeling before you as he grasps your hands.

You move your hands to grasp his face as you wipe his tears.

“Love, I will always love you but you need to realise how hard it was for me to sit here on standby every time you left me for Sharon, I need to choose myself for once” you confess and Steve sobs into your legs as you thread your hands through his hair as you try and calm him down.

You watch as Steve tries to compose himself in front of you before he looks into your eyes in determination. “I’m going to prove it to you” he says seriously, and you nod to placate him before he shakes his head in protest. “No, you don’t understand, I am going to prove to you how much you mean to me y/n” he says and some part of you is hopeful he tries as hard as he says he’s going to be this time.

“I’m not going to sit around and wait for you to make it up to me Steve, you’re going to have to work for it” you say, and he deflates but nonetheless nods in understanding, realistically he acknowledges that he deserved worse treatment. He just can’t stand the idea of you finding love and connection with someone that isn’t him.

#juliwrites #steve rogers angst #steve rogers imagine #steve rodgers x reader #steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #captain america #steve rogers x reader angst #steve rogers hurt #steve rogers hurt/comfort #steve rodgers imagine #mcu #marvel #marvel movies #bucky barnes #peter parker

[thetravelingmaster]

Short Story: Conquering the Dream

Male's Point of View - Hypnosis

I watched her jump on the sofa and couldn't help but smile.

"Look Master! I got a new pair of kitty ears! Aren't they the cutest?" she said excitedly. "I think I should wear them the next time you turn me into Kitten..."

My girlfriend was so gorgeous compared to me that most people couldn't figure out how we started to date. Which always makes me laugh in a way because in truth, she was much more than simply my girlfriend, but I couldn't very well tell people that she was also my hypnotic plaything and obedient slave.

Thankfully, the story of how we met is a fairly common story in college.

Well... The beginning of it anyway...

Pretty girl takes a class she isn't interested in, but knows it will give the credits she'll eventually get on job applications. Of course, she only aimed to pass said course and isn't truly interested in the material. Since she doesn't however, she finds herself in the sticky situation where she can't maintain a passing grade. Sadly, her calculations of getting a pass from the teacher because she's cute and flirty backfired because of his strong ethics.

Now the girl is desperate because failing an extra credit course looks much worse than not applying for the class in the first place.

Pretty girl then looks for an affordable tutor to help her get back on track and earn a passing grade. She eventually found me and as expected, she was very flirty and hinted that if I would give her some sort of discount on my tutoring fees, it would be worth my wild. Not being immune to the attentions of a pretty girl even if it was obviously a ruse to get me to tutor her for free, I offered a deal.

Since I was a psychology major, I told her that if she helped me with my hypnotherapy studies, I would help her with her class studies. I was about to add that I could use our hypnosis practice to help her focus on her classes, but she interrupted me by excitedly accepting.

Saying that she found the arrangement more than fair all while looking visibly relieved she didn't have to pay me. She was VERY skeptical about hypnosis in general and that actually helped me a lot in my studies because I had to be creative in my induction plans. Thankfully, she was a real sport about it since my tutoring was already showing promising signs in her class.

Eventually though, I was able to place her in a trance and to my utter delight, she turned out to be quite the open minded and trusting subject. Since I was a geek, she viewed me as completely harmless so her subconscious didn't put up any sort of defense when I began to explore her mind.

And tweak it...

I started slow, but when I saw that she remained clueless to my influence, even after I implanted a suggestion that she needed to be in her bra and panties for her tutoring session with me, I concluded that I could be bolder.

I knew very well that she didn't find me in any way attractive, but since she had come to trust me so completely, I had a solid base to work with and after a few clever sessions, I found a part of her that had the potential to find me attractive. Nurturing that sentiment went so much better than I could have hoped and before long, she was unconsciously dressing up extra pretty when she knew she was coming over to see me.

She didn't notice it at all when her body made every excuse to pose for me or brush up against me when I tutored her. Or at least, her conscious mind didn't notice.

Her subconscious definitely did and it fueled her growing attraction even more.

Since she proved to be so pliable, I decided to do a little experiment by having her strip naked while still in her trance. She didn't resist at all and I could even see tale tell signs that part of her was enjoying it. Getting even bolder, I had her wake up with the belief that she wasn't naked at all.

Admittedly, it was more than a little entertaining to watch her unconsciously flirt with me while she wasn't wearing a stitch of clothes. Since she still remained completely clueless to what she was truly doing, I decided to leave her subconscious with a few new things to think about before she left.

It took a few more sessions, but eventually those little sprouts of thought bore fruit as her attraction to me shifted to outright arousal. Since she had an unconscious habit to wear revealing clothes, it was plain to see how horny her body became in my presence.

And thanks to a few interesting suggestions, I was glad to see it react that much more when ever I phrased my instructions with words like 'you will do this now' instead of 'you should try this next time'. Even if I was slow and deliberate with my suggestions, it still fascinated me to no end that with all the changes I was making to her behavior, she still remained clueless, even when it became clear that our hypnosis sessions weren't at all something I could use in class.

Although... I'm sure most of my fellow students wouldn't have minded it at all if we did an 'adult' demonstration of the many triggers floating around in her mind.

Eventually, all my meddling came to a wonderful head when midterms came around and she passed her exam with flying colors. She was so happy and grateful for my help that she decided to offer me a home cooked meal at her place as a way to thank me for all my hard work. I hadn't specifically suggested anything more than a deep desire to reward me for my work, so I was pleasantly surprised by her offer.

All evening, she 'doted' and flirted with me until it was time to leave, where she honestly surprised me again by pushing me against the door so she could kiss me. I was always planning for her to feel overwhelmed by her growing attraction for me, but originally thought it would take longer to break down her preconceptions of me. It didn't take long for our lustful make out session to take us to her bedroom where she wouldn't take no for an answer.

Which may or may not be something I slipped into her mind...

Regardless, we fucked and for me, it was the best evening of my life! I learned afterwards, once we were done and I took advantage of our post coital cuddling to drop her in a trance, that unsurprisingly, even though she hadn't faked her release, it hadn't been as wonderful for her. Thankfully, her mind was so open to my influence by then that it took very little convincing to shape her memory of the event into something she thought was earth shattering and deeply meaningful.

After that first night, her attraction for me wasn't just something I had nurtured in her subconscious anymore so when we had our next hypnotic 'rendezvous', her mind took to my suggestions even better than before. So much so that she didn't even think to notice that I used a hypnosis session, which was supposed to be meant only for my studies, to have her do a long erotic strip tease for me once the 'trance' was over. As expected, she thought it was all her idea as a way to seduce me into sleeping with her again.

Which we obviously did and like before, I didn't waste the relaxing cuddling we enjoyed and dropped her back in a trance so I could work on her sexual appreciation of my meager talents in bed. Surprisingly enough, my previous 'work' had already made our second session of love-making much more agreeable for her, but nonetheless, I made sure to tweak her memories to make sure it was extra special.

Since everything had gone so well and she was still so utterly clueless about my hypnotic influence, I decided to kick things up a notch during our next session. So far, I had only made her strip during her trance while only giving her hypnotic suggestions of pleasure and enjoyment. However, once she dropped in a deep trance, I tested how she would react to a suggestion that made her masturbate. I held my breath as I watched her hand slowly make its way to her already dripping folds, but to my glee, she stayed perfectly entranced as her fingers began to play with herself.

After a long edge, I had her wake up, still naked, and talked with her as if our session was done. Like before, she gave no indication she realized she was naked, but moreover, she also didn't give off any indicators that told me she was aware she had just masturbated in front of me.

Needless to say, I started to include a lot more pleasure in her trances after that, which I made sure to link it to those initial fun suggestions that made her aroused whenever I 'commanded' her to do something. By the time we had our next fuck, I could already notice a sharp shift in her attitude in bed when I flexed my authority.

Obviously, when I dropped her after our fun, I made sure to expand those feelings and tweak her memories a little to make sure she noticed the link in her conscious mind.

To my immense delight, it worked like a charm because when we met up again for our usual tutoring, she was extra flirty and VERY attentive towards me. When we switched from our tutoring to her hypnosis session, I capitalized on that feeling and made it bloom even more into a deep desire to please me as she mindlessly masturbated for me.

By the time her trance was over, she was so overwhelmed with pleasure that she didn't even register that my cock was already in her mouth as she awoke from trance. Her desire to please mixed with her mind-melting pleasure so perfectly that she didn't miss a beat and sucked me off as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Obviously, I wasted no time and placed her in a VERY deep trance once I came. Just to make sure she remembered how enjoyable it was to please me like that. However, I didn't have to change her memories all that much because apparently, she had enjoyed it a lot already. That surprised me because up until that point, she hadn't really bothered to pleasure me orally during our fucks and it had made me assume it was because she didn't enjoy doing it. Needless to say, after that little conversation with her subconscious and her blooming desire to please me, she found herself quite eager to try it again the next time we were intimate and of course, I subsequently made doubly sure she remembered how incredible it felt.

Once she was firmly convinced of how awesome and satisfying it was to suck and fuck me, I began to introduce suggestions that would trigger when ever we were intimate. Or... To be more precise, whenever she gave my cock pleasure.

It wasn't anything like a deep trance, but the hypnotic suggestion still pulled her down in a mild compliant trance, which ended up doubling her enjoyment of our carnal time together because by that point, her mind was more than a little addicted to being in a trance. Plus, as an added bonus, her increased compliant mindset and enhanced pleasure did wonders to continually condition her.

Cementing her deep enjoyment of my control...

After a while, I couldn't resist the urge to implant an oral pleasure trigger and even if I knew that with all I had already done, the odds were that she wouldn't even realize it was a hypnotic manipulation, I was still mildly anxious the first time I trigger her while we relaxed and watched a movie. My angst was extremely short lived however because all she did when I spoke the trigger was smile mischievously as she 'thought' about something erotic she wanted to do to me.

I still remember how satisfying it felt to watch her giggle naughtily as she moved down on the sofa so she could blow me.

Spending almost every available night over at her place also meant that I could work on her subconscious as much as I wanted. It made it so easy to substitute the way she called me when we were alone. And still, her conscious mind remained completely clueless to the fact that she had started to call me Master. Even when I came over one night and casually collared her, she didn't think it was odd or weird at all because to her subconscious, she had already surrendered herself to me a thousand time over.

I'm honestly unsure if it was because of my patience and skill or if it was simply because her mind turned out to be so pliable, but by the time she moved in with me, her mind was so open to my influence that a firm command, if repeated a few times, acted as well as triggers without the need to place her in a deep trance.

For example, I commanded her to kneel and feel aroused whenever I snapped my fingers and even if it didn't quite work the first few times she consciously obeyed, I quickly realized that the instructions took hold in her subconscious because it didn't take long for it to work as intended. Nowadays, if she sees me snap my fingers, she instantly kneels with a deep moan as her pussy moistens in anticipation.

The last step that admittedly caused me anxiety was to make her aware that I was still hypnotizing her on a regular basis. Because of how clueless she had been to everything else, I didn't HAVE to do it, but I desired with her a little more openly at home and having a subject become fascinated with her own triggers was something I wished to experience with her.

As with every other step, it turned out I had no reason to be nervous at all because the moment I proposed erotic hypnosis, her eyes began to sparkle with anticipation. All she could think about was how much more pleasure she could offer me if we started to play like that. 

Honestly, I was still surprised that it never even occurred to her that I could use my hypnotic talents in the way that I did. But she never did and we’ve grown so comfortable and happy in our relationship that even our friends stopped finding our relationship weird.

No doubt they chalk it up to being some sort of modern fairy tale where the nerdy average guy manages to conquer the heart of the pretty girl through his hidden charm and brilliant intellect.

I mean… They aren’t totally wrong…

After all, I DID conquer her in my own brilliant way.

#short story #Conquering the Dream

[thekinkyleopard]

Late Night Tickle 2

A non-canon Snz Fic Remi x Levi Sequel

⚠️Content Warning⚠️

Messyish SnzFet, Smut, Drunk Sex

Author’s Notes: Mmmkay so by popular demand you guys said to allow Geez to pick a prompt and she chose the sequel to Late Night Tickle! Which was originally inspired off a prompt! So here we are hope you all enjoy! 😊 as always @aller-geez owns Remi, and did the cover art.

Description: Based loosely off this prompt with a smutty twist~

“HAHA!! No cause that’s so fucking true!!” Levi could be heard laughing loudly outside the door with a pair of muffled voices. Stumbling into the early morning of 3am was the small cat and his best friend Draeko, and his sister in law, Meeko.

“I know it is!!!” Draeko lazily slid against the other male as they shared their laughter, Meeko giggling along side them but starting to look more at her phone as the leopard struggled with the keys on his snow leopard printed lanyard.

“I had so much fun you guys, we have to do this more often…” Meeko smiled gently at the both of them before she continued “but I def gotta get back home to my partners…” the ginger haired woman winked before bumping Levi with her shoulder. “Have a good night you two!” Waving them off before she turned to walk toward her house on the large property they shared with Levi and Remi.

“Dijuwanna come in and watsh sum tv or you’re free to crash in the guess roomb, Drae,” Levi slurred extensively as he managed to push his front door open after seemingly struggling with the lock. The problem was he never had locked it. So he went to unlock it, but locked it, then had to unlock it. He was drunk. This took about 8 minutes while Drae hummed before shaking his head.

“Nah, Imma have Al come get me, cause Imma convince him to convince Nai into a 3 some tonight…” winking suggestively in the direction of his equally drunken friend, the two of them sharing a look of amusement before tossing into giggles.

“Hmmmm speaking of…yeah just make yourself comfy while you wait for Al, I’m, going to go do just that as well…minus the third party,” they both shared yet another good chuckle as their scuffling feet carried them through the threshold, and the mutt found his way to the couch.

“Word, good luck in there, night Lee!” Draeko threw up a peace symbol with his index and second finger before making himself comfortable, and scrolling through his phone.

“You too, D!” “….Now….wheres that big bad wolf at….” He snickered lustfully under his breath, his feet making light as they tip toed through the home, up the stairs and into the bedroom he shared with his lover, Remi. He eerily started to creak the door open steadily. His thin body slipping through the crack. Once inside he noted, long before entering, it was dark, but also, that Remi was fast asleep in bed, with his breathing at an incredibly audible decibel. Levi knew that sound. He was mouth breathing. Which could only mean one other thing, his lover was feeling a tad bit under the weather, or maybe allergy season, either way he could hear the subtle wheeze behind his exhales.

“Oh my poor lover….” The freckled, drunken man clicked his tongue sadly. ‘I leave for a few hours and suddenly…his immune system crashes…,’ he shakes his head, talking to himself inside the safety of his own head. Least Remi wake up to him having a conversation to himself. Slowly the smaller of the two, began to strip himself of his night time attire, the blazer, the tshirt, the tie…left with just his snow leopard print boxer briefs. He slowly slipped into bed, and instinctively the wolf opened up his limbs and then gracefully trapped his mate inside. Grunting weakly as he did so.

Levi bit his lower lip and tenderly closed his eyes, although, finding it to be a struggle while his head spun a million miles an hour. However, his hands searching and discovering Remi's and threading their fingers lovingly together he couldn't help but feel immediately comforted. His spins subsiding enough to allow him to peacefully close his lids once again. Yet, just when the cat was blissfully slipping away into dream land, he heard a soft, gentle, snuffle coming from behind him. Remi's hot, opened breath ghosting over the sensitive surface of his neck, his body shuddered.

The wolf was still clearly asleep and he was grasping tighter to the leopard while his body suddenly began to twitch, and spasm. His nose tickling, Levi could feel the wolf twisting and stretching his nose to avoid it taking over. He could also hear the shallowness in his breath, and each exhale sent goosebumps down his arms. "R-Rem?" he whispered behind his nerves as he tempted to see if the other was stirring in consciousness.

He wasn't, he didn't answer and the sound of his breathing only got more labored as time passed. "H--...Hih'...." Levi heard from behind him. Could it be? He held his own breath, his cerulean eyes staring into the darkened distance with anticipation. "hh'….!" Remi was fighting against them, pushing his leaking face against Levi’s shoulder, forcibly stretching his nose against the other’s moistening flesh as each second passed. It helped, but it didn’t cure. He snuffled, and continued to keep himself restrained. Until he felt it fighting back against him.

Remi, still not fully conscious or aware of his surroundings, felt as if the leopard next to him in the bed was asleep, and he was struggling to make sure he didn’t disturb the cat. Little to his knowledge that the male was just simply unable to rest in the first place. “H’GXNT!!” Remi shoveled his face into the crook of his boyfriend’s neck, muffling the sound, but putting himself completely on blast. There was no hiding it.

So when the feeling came back with its vengeance, the wolf had to blow the top of his lid completely off. “Huh'GDTS'ue!!” the dark haired man sneezed directly into the crook of the other's neck once more, slickening it with mess and sick. Though half expecting it, half thinking it was a waste of time to wait up for....Levi was startled by the sudden sound echoing in the canals of his hearing organs. Yet, unlike usual, his eyes rolled back and the feeling of the saliva raided areas cooling with each passing second, only brought him closer to sin.

"Bless you baby..." he whispered languidly, before rolling his hips back in a flirtatiously slick fashion. This caused the larger to stir and grunt, his hips instinctively moving to match Levi's motions. His opened maw only produced more hot air that was sending the cat into an almost frozen state of horny paralysis. He couldnt help it with the other at his neck like that.

"—hd'ISCHhh! Hh'iSHH!" Certainly this time the wolf would be awake from the insistent flood of onslaughting sneezes. Levi’s shoulder wet, decorated in the man’s spit and other misc ick he was sure. Typically something like this would make the smaller cringe and immediately wake the wolf from his slumber. Yet, another powerful wave of pleasure rolled through his spine.

“Rem…” he sighed outwardly, now finally turning around to actually face the other whose eyes gently peeped open at the movement of his partner.

“Hn?” He grunted once, looking lazily at his boyfriend in front of him now.

“You sick baby?” Levi asked gently within the darkness of their room.

“Juss…aller…g—hdt’ishhhh!” Now directly into the leopard’s face, leaving the wolf to blush profusely and bringing a corner of the blanket up to wipe off the mess he made. “I’m so sorry…” he winced, almost like he was expecting the other to get mad, but he didn’t. Levi simply giggled and pressed his forehead to the other’s and looked at his lover with hooded eyes.

“S’ok baby…bless you,” kissing the tip of Remi’s leaking nose, before dusting a few strands of hair from in front of his tired emerald eyes. Oh , it was starting to make sense why the other wasn’t cringing and trying to clean himself up immediately.

“You drunk?” Remi asked, smelling the extensively strong scent of alcohol between them.

“Mm’spossible,” he returned with yet another crinkle of his nose and a short snort before wrapping his arms around the other’s strong neck. “I missed you….” Nuzzling the tips of their noses together. Remi couldn’t help but melt under his adorable partner. How is he so extra cute when he’s drunk? The wolf wasted no time, wrapping his arms tightly around the other’s thin waist and pulling him tightly to his chest.

“I love when you’re drunk…sndf,” he snuffled lightly into the side of his mate’s neck again. Levi inhaled sharply, his lips pulling into a careless toothy smile, licking his lips as he felt the other’s chest up against his own.

“I love you!” He giggled kissing the side of Remi’s unsuspecting face, who could only laugh in response, but quickly he found himself under attack. Like a bursting flame through a pipe, he felt the sensation trickle down the base of his nose.

“I love you mo— Hah'ISSchuu!!” At the very least able to crook his head sharply to the left into the direction of the pillow, the sound still loudly audible.

“Bless you, Handsome~” Levi purred leaning over to nip, and lick at the other’s jawline. He pulled himself back enough to bring his thumb up to wipe below the other’s nostrils, swiping away the slickened mess there. Bringing the hand back down to wipe it across their sheets. He could wash those later.

Afterwards, playfully, his hands came up to entangle and thread through the other’s strands of raven hair. Remi shuddered, sniffling loudly afterwards to rid himself of the possible onslaught of slickened ick that was still inside him, despite the other’s help.

“Kitten….you’re playing with fire again…” he warned the small male that he was getting to his limit. Between his partner being half nude pressed up against him, being so sweet and specifically horny for his vulnerable state of being, he was finding it harder to return to his last state of relaxation. He needed Levi and he was getting closer to just taking it.

“I wanna get burned,” the leopard whispered with a huskier undertone than he had previously speaking. The wolf growled low in his chest, his hands around the other’s waist now trickled down to grip aggressively at each of Levi’s rear cheeks.

“Yeah?” Remi questioned the other teasingly, pushing him closer yet again, more or less just bumping their bodies together.

“Yeah,” the white haired male responded with an innocent sparkle behind his diamond eyes while his gaze switched between Remi’s still open breathing maw, and his glossy emerald eyes.

“Aren’t you just— tch’ISSH! iit’shHIEW! Fuck…” trying to remain an air of Dominance, but only being completely and utterly derailed by the explosions of irritant. Truthfully, it wasn’t anything within the usual, it was their first year out in Alaska, and this time of year a particular weed grew on the property. Levi hadn’t realized he made it worse coming home.

“Fuck…” Levi whimpered as he witnessed his suffering partner blast another short series of messy sneezes across their pillows. He bit his lower lip, his eyes lidded and Remi couldnt help but smirk seeing the display of arousal.

“Yeah? You like that?” Bringing a hand up and pushing it under the leopard’s neck, slipping his hand behind the other’s head and taking a gentle fistful of hair, tilting Levi’s skull upward.

“I do..” his thin pierced lips parted with anticipation as he watched Remi’s darkened expression deepen into his own.

“So fuckin naughty…” his nose twitched, Remi swiftly pushed and was suddenly atop the gapping cat, his fist still gripping his hair. “Ready?” His mouth pulled tightly closed as he encouraged his nostrils in a circular motion using centripetal force. Trying to trigger the unwanted pollen inside to slip through the ticklish sensors.

“Ready..?” Slightly confused by the question before he started to eventually realize what he was in for and his eyes widened.

“Open your mouth…H’hih…,” Remi demanded of his smaller partner, struggling against letting it out too soon, his malicious glowing greens making it practically impossible for the cat to deny.

“Re-,” it didn’t mean he wouldn’t try though, was he truly ready to expose himself to be such a slut ? He hesitated, almost sobering up, but the drunken devil inside his head picking at the insistent itch within.

“Open your fucking mouth,” there was no denying the man his request, that was being made extremely clear as the hand in his hair tightened substantially. Remi’s voice threatening and cold.

“Yes sir,” Levi dare not disobey his lover, so, obediently, the leopard opens his mouth and waits patiently as his eyes gaze over to see Remi, indulging while he tickled and tempted his nostrils by stretching and swiveling across his own face.

“H—hH…-h’dtTISHh!!” There it went, a mistral spray of ick and wet came flying at Levi’s open lips. It landed gently onto his flesh what one could assume TV static felt like in small doses. Levi whimpered and his whole body flinched upon impact but, the buldge in his boxers flexed and pushed up against Remi’s. “S’right, eat it, slut,” Remi hissed behind his gritted teeth while he bared down his hips and pushed their clothed lengths together roughly.

Levi shuddered with his entire being, his glossy cerulean eyes rolling in the back of his head as he licked his lips clean of Remi’s mess. “I love watching you lick up my sneezes off your own face,” he smirked shoveling his legs in between Levi’s, who instinctively wrapped them around the eager, still sniffling wolf. His nose and throat vibrating as they tickled deep within his sinuses. Trying his best to overpower the sensations as well as his mate.

Remi sat up a moment enough to bring his hands at the leopard’s boxers, making quick work of them and himself, spitting in the palm of his hand. “Tell me you like being my tissue,” he glared down at the wiggling and whining cat who looked at him with hooded eyes.

“I love it….” The sound was strained and it wasn’t done with enough passion for the wolf’s liking.

“Hm? I can’t hear you…And to whom are you addressing, Kitten? Don’t forget your manners,” Remi clicked his tongue in a condescending manner, tsking the smaller male with slight disappointment, which made Levi whimper in response. The wolf violently ripping their boxers clear off their bodies, taking his hands now and spreading his boyfriend’s ass apart to see his wanting hole puckering at him.

“I love being your tissue, Mister Connors….” It almost came out as a whine, the way it sounded. It went straight into Remi’s cock, hardening the inpatient organ.

“That’s what Daddy likes to hear,” spitting directly now across Levi’s spread open hole, legs pushed up to his delicate sternum. “Keep your mouth open, and your eyes on me—…Hd’IZTSsHHhhh’ih!!” Sliding his thick rod inside of the other, Levi’s dangling against his body, crying out, but meeting his lover’s demands before a waterfall of misted saliva fell down upon his face. “Just like that….HI’DTSCHIEW! -h’dtTISHh!!” As the larger wasted no time burying himself deep inside his lover’s hole, he spread and exposed his allergen attack sneezes across the smaller once more. He cared not where it landed, how it landed, the density….Levi let out a pleased hum, trying not to sound too desperate but his body continued to meld and match with each rough thrust inside himself as he was slickened by his mate.

“Re-Remi….” He gasped with a weakened mewl, reaching his hand down, he waited patiently, open palm in between the two waiting desperately for more of the wolf’s allergen triggered explosions.

“That’s my good—..Hh—hEhTXSSHhh’ih!! ih’TTSSHH!! Boy…” his praise interrupted by another shot of spattering saliva that came cascading across Levi’s bare stomach, but also the hand that was out stretched waiting. Once it was slickened the smaller made quick use, and brought it to his already leaking length. “Yeah baby? Am I making you that horny? SnDfF…” as the male hovered the other, he sniffled obnoxiously, trying to keep himself from dripping snot into his lover’s unsuspecting face. Luckily he could keep it down.

“Yes, Baby…I can’t stand it, you’re gonna make me…fucking cum….” Levi panted between each heavy, and aggressive thrust. It was almost enough to send the wolf into a bloody rage but he swallowed the pools that collected under his tongue. Knowing he’d get stuck with the cleanup. Instead, he drilled his cock into Levi’s tightening hole, all the while he could feel the younger getting closer to his limit.

“I can feel you….kitten…you’re getting so close aren’t you? —‘izTSHH!!” That one sneaking up from behind him as it took him by complete surprise, and Levi as well. The sneeze splashed the leopard across his unsuspecting features, and between the rough strokes, relentless usage, and assault of his prostate the cat was just unsuited for holding out any longer. He came hard over his stomach while the wolf shoved his hands down onto each side of Levi’s head, hooking himself forward and in as he rushed to his own orgasm, trying to follow closely behind the leopard.

“Fuuuuuckking shit….Remi…” He whined under a clenched jaw, his claws ripping the sheets underneath his grasp, and his other hand milking his spraying length. “Please.. baby…please I want to feel you fill me….” He sounded anguished as his hips continued their motions of meeting each hardened thrust.

“Shit that’s gonna do it….” Remi releases a hot steaming load inside the other’s ass, filling him with his seed. “Riiiiiight there….” He hissed. Shortly after he spent himself inside the cat, they both went limp and Remi collapsed ontop of his sweet boy. Levi wrapping his arms around the man’s strong, sweating shoulders. “I feel so much better…” he whispered breathlessly into Levi’s equally sticky and clammy flesh.

“Good…” Levi couldn’t help but notice he felt a hell of a lot more sober than he had before, and slightly grateful for it because it meant sleep would be much easier to obtain. “Me too….” They both gasped with labored breaths, their hands clasping around forearms, shoulders or necks just to feel grounded in someway. So nobody would float away.

“Sorry to mess you all up right when you get home…” Remi chuckles loosely as he looks up to hopefully meet eye contact with his boyfriend. Levi stretched his neck enough to look down at his mate, smiling back before shrugging without hesitation, he responded quickly.

“It was a benefit to us both, darling, like always,” running his thin fingers through the wolf’s blackened strands.

“I love you,” Remi let out a gentle sigh, exhaling through his mouth, as his nose was still blocked up from his previous fits in the night.

“I love you, more,” Levi giggled from under him, Remi’s head snapped up to look in his mate’s direction and dead in his eyes with the world’s most serious expression.

“Don’t,” he said shortly, followed slowly by a sarcastic toothy grin.

They both laughed together, the sound like wind chimes blowing in the wind, before silence fell amongst them and they wound up crashing in this strange position of the much taller male sleeping half on top of the other’s small body. Content, they still clasped each other’s arms as if forever reaching for one another.

The End 

Author’s Notes: I know it’s kind of shorter than I usually write? But I hope you guys enjoyed it 😭 I know y’all are on a hell boys kick so I hope this isn’t a Remi x Levi P.2 that goes unloved. LOL Expect the AlxKoxNai series next!!!

#original character #oc #writer #fic writer #remixlevi #snzblr #snz kink #snz #art #smut #lemons #snz fucker #snzfic #snz fic #snzfet #snzzzzz #snzfucker #snz fet #snz things #snzario

[tyrantisterror]

Criticizing the police in a superhero story is kind of straightforward, examples exist, but what about the military in a kaiju story? Like, it's one thing to have the monster be immune to weapons but how do you avoid the usual cliches?

I would say most kaiju movies are pretty critical of the military - and so are a lot of Western giant monsters movies, to a lesser extent. The military is almost always impotent at best in a kaiju movie, rarely accomplishing anything more than stalling for time, and often end up making the situation worse. All the military's actions in the original Godzilla, for example, do nothing but make the monster more pissed off, until his final and most horrible rampage is directly provoked by the military's incredibly thorough and diverse attempt to kill him with every weapon they can think of. That is not a flattering portrayal of the military.

In fact, this trope is so common in the kaiju genre that it wasn't until decades after its inception that people tried to go against it - one of the directors of the 90's Godzilla movies talked about how G-Force in those movies was made because he always felt annoyed as a child that the military never accomplished much, and wanted to have them put up a better fight. Yet even then, MechaGodzilla, Moguera, and the various super xs never win - they come close, but Godzilla proves indomitable in the end.

Victories in kaiju movies overwhelmingly hinge on noncombatants and diplomacy - the happy ending comes from a scientist creating an ingenious invention, or fairies convincing their moth goddess to save our ass, or simply allowing Godzilla to swim off into the sunset when he's done defending his territory from the invasive monster of the week.

Some modern American kaiju pastiches find interesting ways to make the military useful while trying to stick to the themes baked into the genre's bones - Godzilla 2014 has a protagonist who, while in the military, specifically works as a bomb disposal expert, i.e. someone who keeps violence from escalating rather than perpetuate. Said character is drawn as a direct reflection of Godzilla himself in the same movie - heroes defined by their desire to stop a violent situation from exploding rather to destroy for the sake of destroying.

Pacific Rim explicitly focuses on a military organization of pilots in giant robots trying to fend off alien invaders using kaiju as weapons - but in the movie's greatest break from reality, said force is woefully underfunded, stripped to just a handful of robots and pilots. While the Jaegers of Pacific Rim have the trappings of some real world miltiary stuff, I think ultimately they don't resemble the military that much in execution, being more akin to, like, a remnant of an army turned into a guerilla resistance force, and really they make more sense when you take them as a metaphor for the few people actively fighting against climate change in our world (which the movie makes pretty clear is basically the theme, more or less - the aliens are specifically seeking our world out because we've fucked up the environment enough to make it favorable to them). And, ultimately, the Jaegers only manage to get their job done thanks to the help of two very brave scientists.

But, in all honestly, I feel no need to do away with the "cliche" of the impotent military in kaiju flicks. Fuck the military. Show them as incompetent, war-mongering, overfunded and undereffective assholes. Fuck 'em. They get their cocks sucked by every other genre with a budget, they can take a few beatings in the kaiju flicks.

[scalefeathers]

I’m only partway through Act III but i want to talk about what seems to me to be primary theme of this game: agency. (Spoilers ahead)

On a micro level, all of the main characters have had their agency stripped from them in some way. Astarion and Karlach were enslaved against their will; Wyll was coerced into selling his soul to Mizora; Shadowheart and Lae’zel grew up in a death cult and a fascist dictatorship respectively. Even Gale has lost control of his own body and his connection to the Weave, although admittedly more through his own pride than through the actions of others.

Then you have the mindflayers, whose entire society (and biology!) is based on destroying the agency (and identity, personality, and individuality) of everyone they meet; the very first image shown in the game is a stone relief showing a multitude of thralls bowing in submission to an elder brain. And of course, even the elder brain is, ultimately, a slave to an even higher power (and boy howdy, is it not happy about that!). And of course, there’s the Emperor and Orpheus, which even based on what little I’ve seen is a whole essay in itself: a messianic figure whose very existence returns agency to those who have lost it, but whose own agency has been suborned (in part by someone who had once been enslaved more completely than any of the party members, even, and who seems willing to do anything in their power to hang onto the autonomy they’ve managed to claw back).

And the player character isn’t immune from this either. Before the game even starts you’ve already been kidnapped and imprisoned, and the very first thing that happens to you—the insertion of the tadpole—is a horrific violation of body and mind. (I can think of many instances where games take away the player’s agency during cutscenes in ways that are frustrating and immersion-breaking, but this time it actually gets you more invested in your character and in the story, I love it so much.)

It’s just such a compelling theme to base your game around, and it’s so well done on so many levels. Not only is this a game where your choices really do matter, it’s a game about having the freedom to make choices at all. It’s such an incredible feat of storytelling and game design, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

#bg3 #baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #baldur’s gate spoilers #I have so many feelings about the emperor you guys #anyone who knows me will be SHOCKED by this I’m sure #I don’t love what he’s doing but I absolutely understand why he’s doing it #I want there to be a way for both him and Orpheus to have the freedom they deserve #I just hope I’m capable of finding it

[misspickman]

if you’re doing the soft sentence starters may i request “all my choices lead me to you” for cissiecassie

You can never truly rid yourself of vigilantism; many had told Cissie so, from her mother to idiots on TV who knew nothing but loved to spew deep-sounding bullshit to win over the gullible. Though mostly when people talked about this, they'd talk of deep-seated traumas, nightmares and seeing the world through a different set of eyes.

It was all fair and true, as much as she loathed to admit it, but none of it was why she couldn't really quit vigilantism for good. No, it was because of her friends, who were meddling pieces of work and could never leave her alone, and where they came, trouble followed.

“I can never be free,” she gritted her teeth and complained, half heartedly. Her hands worked fast, still remembering the steps as if it hadn't been years since she had to patch someone up. “You can never let me be, can you?”

It wasn't fair. It was coming out of fear more than genuine anger, and some anger borne out of worry. As upset as she was, Cissie could admit that. And certainly Cassie, with her torso torn and bleeding still, could not pay attention to how unfair she was being, so Cissie could be granted this petty indulgence.

Cassie groaned, weak and airy. It sounded like a badly worn out boat whistle, and made Cissie grimace. Then she said, all creaky and pale, “I told them not to bring me here.”

And it broke Cissie’s heart a little, and some of that bitterness wore off instantly like doused with boiling water. It was never about not wanting to help, not even about hating them for bringing trouble to her doorstep—she knew how impossible it was to shake it off. She was not immune to it either.

But seeing Kon burst through her balcony door with crumbled Cassie in his arms had made all her shackles raise. Here she stood in her pajamas, ready to put on an episode of Gilmore Girls to fall asleep too, and her best friend was bleeding all over her couch. What could she possibly do to be of use—why would they count on her like this? Why put her in this position over and over again?

“I need to go,” Kon had said, and Cissie had been furious with him in that moment, even if she understood. Her place was the closest. More lives were at stake. Her brief discomfort was nothing against the vast evils they were probably going up against etcetera etcetera. She knew all that.

Kon promised, “I'll be back in a minute.”

Cissie couldn't stand to watch them hurt; she couldn't take it knowing they were hurt somewhere away from her. Her life was made out of contraries, and still whichever way you spun it, she couldn't help them in any real way. She could wash Cassie’s wounds and wrap bandages around her trembling stomach as she struggled to breathe, but that was all temporary. She couldn't even heal her in a way that mattered; Kon would return soon enough to take her to a real doctor, and this would become just another slip up they'll all laugh about in a month.

Maybe she hadn't been making this easy. But thinking of Cassie feeling hesitant to come here for Cissie’s sake… it was no better than knowing she had been hurt. Was that selfish of her? She really should pick a side.

“Don't say that,” Cissie chided, finishing up with the bandages that were already steadily being bled through. She dragged her palms over the naked strips of skin above the wound, both in some poor attempt to soothe her friend and to soothe herself, to feel Cassie’s warm skin move with her ragged breaths.

“I thought you didn't want me here.”

It was a joke. It didn't sound like one to an unfamiliar ear but Cissie knew it because she knew what Cassie’s face did when she tried to make a joke that she knew wouldn't land. Not that it had ever stopped her before.

“I always want you here,” she said. And it was true, and it was not nearly as simple as that.

Cassie hummed and stared up at the ceiling, tight lipped. It wasn't often that she allowed anyone to see through the cracks of blinding confidence to what Cissie had long known was a soft middle, stitched well but not always holding. She could see through it. Cassie let her, and that had to mean something. Even with the world of differences between them, this stayed the same.

Unwilling, Cissie pulled her hands away from Cassie’s skin. It was sticky with blood and sweat and now her hands were too, as she pressed the tips of her fingers one against the other.

On the now stained couch, Cassie mumbled, “You just can't escape me.”

Cissie scoffed. If she wanted—but this was so not the point. She couldn't imagine wanting it, even if Cassie came with all the baggage of a dangerous life.

“I'm not trying to. Idiot,” Cissie grumbled at her gently. Cassie laughed. Encouraged by the brief cheeriness,

Cissie let her fingers trail across Cassie’s knuckles—bloody and scraped, too, though that was less worrying. That was just Cassie. “I make the choice to stick around every time.”

Cassie frowned, her eyebrows creasing. She looked to be at the edge of consciousness, and Cissie bent closer to snap her fingers in front of her face. It felt mean but it made Cassie blink and her face fold in a funny expression, so it was worth it.

She groaned. “Stupid choices.”

There didn't seem to be a head wound among her injuries but there was blood clotting her golden curls. Cissie pushed back the strands clinging to her forehead. Sticky. She didn't mind. Was almost glad to share the experience, in some weird way.

“Maybe,” she said. “But all my choices lead me to you, so there must be some good in it.”

For a moment Cassie seemed dumbfounded, her red eyes still glued to the ceiling and open wide. She laid there with no further reaction for long enough that Cissie figured she hadn't heard her, or was too tired to continue the conversation—a first one they'd had in a while, with both of them busy, their lifestyles more and more incompatible as they went.

But then Cassie blinked, some of that shock washing away with it, and composed herself, as much as one can when lying half-conscious with a nasty gash in their side.

“Wow,” she said, the word a drawl in her slow mouth. “Do you like me or something?”

A sad attempt at sidetracking; very Cassie. Even that made Cissie swell with a well-known fondness.

She could let Cassie have that one. Because she was bleeding and exhausted and likely feeling terribly useless for having to be taken out of the fight before it ended. Worse, had to be carried away to another person to babysit her while her teammates continued doing their jobs.

If Cissie was in her place, she'd be mad too. The self sacrificial tendencies came with the job. That, too, was what made Cissie roll around in her bed at night.

It's not easy being friends with a bunch of superheroes, she'd told Cassie once, who had taken it badly and in a completely wrong way, as she tended to do. They'd never discussed it again and Cissie figured Cassie got over it and forgot about the whole thing.

Apparently not.

“I wouldn't change a thing,” she said, fingers lingering over Cassie’s forehead. She ran her thumb over her furrowed eyebrow and felt her relax under the touch. “It's not easy, but I'm glad it is the way it is.”

“What?” Cassie asked.

Playing dumb. That was fine. Cissie knew her words landed. Or would land, once Cassie’s head cleared a little bit.

No time for that; she heard the gentle knocks against the window frame before Kon flew in her living room, sheepishly avoiding the scattered glass he caused not an hour ago that couldn't hurt him either way. He looked rough, and still wore himself with all the grace of a flash of light in the air. The deep, uplifting voice came through.

“I've come for my gracious leader. Sorry about the door,” he said. “I'll pay you back?”

“It's fine,” Cissie shook her head. Except well, it wasn't, but it also was, and she'd already forgotten about it in a hurry to take care of Cassie.

That was out of her hands now. Thankfully, she thought, because she was no professional and Cassie needed actual medical attention. She thought this and she knew it, and still felt all queasy as Kon lifted Cassie up and away from her.

He gave Cassie a moment to adjust to the change in position, her head lolling over to rest on his shoulder, then saluted to Cissie and flew away. Just like that. It gave Cissie a strong sense of déjà vu.

After a brief sting of panic as she lost sight of them, she sent a text to Tim to let her know when Cassie is deemed okay. She was not surprised by not getting a response quickly, knowing they were definitely still busy with cleanup and dragging each other back to the HQ. Post-mission duties took time. She knew this. It didn't make the wait any less excruciating.

It was around 2am that Tim told her it was all a-okay; nothing but a flesh wound, he carried the message from Cassie. It relieved her of worry but didn't lessen the all familiar weight in the pit of her stomach as she sat next to the drying stain of blood on her couch, wide awake.

#thank you!! #i wrote this mostly at once so sorry for possible mistakes. its late #my writing #cissiecassie

[octoagentmiles]

Hello! I was wondering what you'd think the octo-agents would do if you got sick. Blorbo thoughts go burr

Natquik my beloved. He has at least 20+ years of Polar Scout first aid knowledge, and roughly 30 years of "pure adrenaline/spite-fueled survival in Antarctica" instincts; so you're either gonna get a nasal strip and a raw ginger root to chew on... or a surprise shove into an ice bath, followed by a cup of hot cocoa. You don't get to pick which one.

Pirates have their own unique "medical practices," if you can dare to call them that. So... Calico Jack WILL cure you of whatever's ailing ye, but you're in for one HELL of a ride. Have fun! :D

Tracker has over 20 years of Polar Scout first aid knowledge, so he's basically Natquik but without the 50/50 chance of being forcibly thrown into Arctic waters when you least expect it. He will make it his temporary life purpose to make you feel better. He will not sleep, eat, drink, or work until you are Fixed™. He will make himself sick in the process, this is inevitable.

Ranger Marsh has father instincts + who knows how many years of experience taking care of the Everglades critters when they're hurt or sick, so he's basically a certified medic. He might LITERALLY be certified. Either way, he's also kinda like Natquik in the sense that he definitely has a normal first aid kit/medicine cabinet,, but he's going to force you to take weird swamp cures anyway.

Pearl has mother instincts but they're still relatively new, so she might treat you like a baby with a fever: tell you to take a lukewarm bath, make sure you get snuggled up in a cozy bed to rest, and watch you like a hawk while you guzzle down 7346389 liters of fluids.

Paani will straight up sit there and stare at you. You can't tell me this guy takes care of himself properly when he feels sick, so he has no clue how to help you. Realistically he'd pass you on to someone else, but let's say he doesn't do that—instead I can see him trying to tell you that you can "speed up" getting better by going out and getting dirty, running around, eating spicy food, etc., and at the end of the day you'll either end up actually feeling a lot better, or 1000x worse–

Ryla is actually the same. She's gonna drag you out into some random cave whether you want to go or not, and tell you to eat those weird-smelling berries she found because they're "good for your immune system." Unlike with Paani though I feel like somehow this would 100% work. It's basic cave diving stuff, page 574 of her book, don't question it.

Min is the only normal person. She'll make you some tea, insist you take a nap, and tell the Octonauts to make sure that you really do (instead of saying you will, but then "forgetting"). She doesn't want to get herself sick, so you can expect most of her check-ins to be through video calls. She won't seem very worried about you, but that's only because she knows you're tough enough to get through this.

#octonauts #octonauts headcanons #ask #yippee finally answering an ask lol #got stuck on ryla and min #i LOVE min w my entire soul but i had no thoughts head empty for her for some reason </3 #and ryla's just. i struggle w ryla hcs so much in general lmao i'm like “uhhhhh??? i dunno somethin abt caves—” #i was tempted to do selva but i think i'll wait till s3 comes out in english before selvaposting #octonauts above and beyond #pinto would look at you and go “ew gross” and run away so he doesn't catch what you have #and koshi would probly make you a get well soon card. then also run away. #this ask is OLD so sorry anon lmao #i have zero awareness of the passage of time

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Cetus

CR 13

Chaotic Neutral Colossal Dragon

Bestiary 5, pg. 54

Among the cruelest creatures a DM could send after their players, the Cetus (I prefer to think it’s a singular, legendary creature rather than a species) makes for an excellent quest objective or even BBEG for a seaside campaign, its impossible power making it essentially unassailable by sea and capable of harassing an entire city on its own, and its only weakness difficult for some parties to take advantage of (or even know about, if treated as a singular legendary creature). Players may have to go on an entire separate quest to gain a weapon capable of harming the Cetus, and all the while the dim-witted but demanding dragon is free to take tithes from terrified townsfolk in the form of food, gold, or even sacrifices if it’s feeling particularly peckish or lazy.

But so long as the people within its territory keep up their side of the lopsided bargain, they see some benefit, however indirect. With Control Weather available to it 1/day, the divine serpent may gift its chosen beneficial and beautiful weather, free of storms or chaos. Cities protected/tyrannized by the Cetus is also all but invincible from the ocean, because the serpent has Quickened Control Water at will, letting it create an endless number of ship-swallowing whirlpools and destructive water spouts of truly tremendous size. If that weren’t enough, then an at-will Control Winds allows the beast to create cyclones 600ft wide to obliterate entire fleets at once and render it all but immune to ranged attacks, even those launched from cannons. With a caster level of 15, that gives the serpent just enough juice to raise the winds from Strong to Tornado-Force (or lower them by the same amount in case it wishes to protect its home from a storm), the 200 MPH winds reducing all but the largest of ships to toothpicks impaling screaming sailors. Or, should the beast be offended, wiping entire sections of its chosen city off the map. 

The “protection” offered by the Cetus is ephemeral at best, granted only to those who show it utter supplication, and its rage is downright apocalyptic. Thankfully, the creature’s gravely low Intelligence (7) and lack of any ranks in Sense Motive make it incredibly easy to trick and mislead, one of the few means a clever party (or desperate NPC) will have of defying the beasts and giving them time enough to find a way to beat it. This creates a tense time limit to gather the materials needed to combat it, because a straight-up brute force fight with the Cetus is nearly impossible.

The oceanic tyrant is practically built to thwart just about everything players can do. Its total control of wind and water makes assaults with war machines and heavy ships useless. It has Deflect Arrows for whatever reason, just in case something manages to sneak through its walls of wind. Its 30ft space and 30ft reach combine with its 120ft swim speed to give it a tremendous threat radius, nearly unmatched in the underwater combat the party will have to grapple with if they want to fight it toe to toe. And if you try to come at it from above? It has a unique ability called Impossible Leap, allowing it to use a full-round action to stretch its body to 1200ft and make a bite attack against any creature within that radius before returning to its former space. Yes, this creature can go from sea level to kissing the top of the Empire State Building in six seconds!

I hope whatever means you were using to stay aloft weren’t magical, either, because the Cetus is hard-coded to disrespect every method of flight and freedom. Its Dispelling Bite automatically targets any effect which would allow a creature to avoid being grappled or which would allow them to fly or hover. While this, thankfully, doesn’t strip creatures of their ability to swim, breathe underwater, or walk on water, that’s of little comfort to the unfortunate creature that just plummeted 100+ feet straight into the ocean.

But I’ve spoken of its ability to bite and what happens if it bites you without describing the bite itself! What does that look like? 6d6+27 plus Grab. That’s only when it’s swatting flies with Impossible Leap and striking fleeing foes with its Combat Reflexes, though; on its turn, its bite damage is actually 24d6+27 because it has Greater Vital Strike and literally no reason not to use it, so its average damage per round is hovering around 105, which is eyebrow-raising on its own even if it DIDN’T have extra bells and whistles. At the level a party can combat the tyrant serpent, that’s typically enough to knock a d8 Hit Dice haver from full to 0 unless they have some level of protection. Though it has 24 Spell Resistance, it has no status immunities aside from paralysis and sleep, so slapping it with as many debuffs as one can to drag down its otherwise monstrous +28 to attack rolls is one perfectly viable way to cut down its extreme DPS. With only one attack each round, if it misses that intimidating pile of d6s goes to waste.

if it hits, though? Whoof. Not only are victims potentially grappled, but the Cetus can Constrict such poor souls for 6d6+27 damage each round, and if that wasn’t enough? It can Rake grappled victims as a free action with its little arms for a not-so-little 4d6+18 damage. This is, of course, if it doesn’t simply Fast Swallow them into its gullet for 8d6+24 damage. Greater Vital Strike into a Grab to trigger Constrict, then Rake to follow up... Well that’s uh... That’s a very demoralizing number.

38d6+90 damage, or 230 on average, well over enough for a Cetus to kill even d12 Hit Dice owners.

It would be fine if the Cetus were a glass cannon, but it’s not. It has insurmountable DR 5, 28 AC, high saves for its level, and everyone within its 30ft reach is subject to Mariner’s Misfortune, a terrifying and terrifically powerful aura that forces every non-aquatic creature inside it to make a DC 26 Will save every round... which they must roll twice and take the lower result on. If they succeed, they cannot be afflicted by the aura for a full day, but if they fail? Oh god, if they fail? That’s disadvantage on ALL d20 rolls. Attacks, saves, skill checks, all of them. And this effect lasts for a full minute! And rounding off its defenses? Regeneration 10 that cannot be suppressed by any form of damage, making it unkillable even if the party managed to fight through its aura.

Thankfully, its Regeneration has a very specific weakness. Remember what I said about having to go on another quest to defeat this creature? I meant it. Much like its mythical namesake, the easiest way to beat the Cetus isn’t to fight it, but to kill it instantly. It has no resistance to instant-death effects or Polymorph effects, but more importantly it’s Vulnerable to Petrification. It takes a -4 penalty to any save to avoid being petrified, and even if it succeeds its saving throw it takes 1d4 Dexterity damage. What’s more, whether it passes or fails its save, it Regeneration shuts off for a full minute, allowing a party with the means to fight it on even terms and survive its damage 

Though its CR is low in comparison to heavy shakers like the demigods, the Kaiju, the Spawn of Rovagug, and others, it nonetheless shares the same role as an almost epic, ‘setpiece’ style monster one must go on special quest to find a means of defeating. Discovering the weakness is extremely hard on its own (especially, again, if you play the Cetus as a unique creature), likely requiring some form of divination or bargaining with a knowledgeable force, but then there’s finding the right weapon! Preferably one which can bypass its SR to assure there’s no room for failure. The head (or cooperation) of a Medusa, a tamed Gorgon, the gaze of a Basilisk, scrolls or other means to cast Flesh to Stone if desperate... or perhaps supplications to the extremely powerful Euryale are all means a DM could have players face off against the Cetus, possibly after the party found out the hard way just how hard it is to harm the thing in the first place, let alone kill it.

It is, however, endlessly amusing to me that this great and powerful serpent, blessed and protected by the ocean itself, can either be a nightmarish, down-to-the-wire DPS race against a foe that counters every reliable player tactic... or have the epic fight end in a single round, if the party caster guesses correctly with Flesh to Stone.

You can read more about it here.

#CR 11 to 15 #Monster Spotlight #Pathfinder #whoof this one was a long one #it needed to be though just LOOK at it

[blackwolfstabs]

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 22

DUALITY

What might've happened before Wayne Bailey woke up around broken glass and hunted his she-devil in disguise.

“Sam!”

Tara’s voice awakened her unconscious mind, faded among the ringing that grew louder and louder.

“Sam!”

Her voice wasn’t as muffled this time, and Sam was able to open her eyes. At first, she didn’t remember where she was or what happened, but when pain radiated through her muscles and stinging filtered beneath her skin—where fresh air seeped between her sliced flesh—it all came flooding back.

Through the blurriness, she could see Wayne’s unconscious body lying where they had landed from falling off the balcony. Broken, shattered glass was littered beneath them, and she could feel where some of the shards had cut through her clothing to stab her. The exposed skin of her arms and torso weren’t immune, feeling those intensify the longer she was lucid. The wooden strip that had collapsed onto her side was still there, promising a bruise to patch her ribs, if it wasn’t there already, while the entire side of her body that she fell on throbbed a deep pain. 

But then, the wood plank was moved, and a soft hand replaced it.

“Sam, can you hear me?” 

Tara.

Sam blinked, her eyes sliding to the corners to find her baby sister’s concerned face, but all she could manage to answer with was a nod. 

Tara hovered over her, unsure of whether or not it was safe to touch her for the fear that she might be more hurt than she looked. Her eyes jumped back and forth from her sister to Wayne, anxious that he would wake up any moment and take his chance to kill them both. “How bad are you hurt? Can you move?” she quizzed.

The other swallowed with a small jerk, the poignant, metallic taste of blood seeping into her taste buds. Tara was right, even though she didn’t say it directly. She had to move, so they could finish this. 

All of the shit done that couldn’t be taken back. All of the insults and threats that couldn’t be wasted on anyone else. All of the torn-up dignity and respect that couldn’t be put back together again. 

All of the lies and schemes that Sam would rip apart herself for the sake of her family and her bloodline…

“Yeah,” she rasped, and moved to prepare herself to get off the floor. Agony rippled beneath the surface of her entire left side, making her hiss as she raised her upper half. The movement had what felt like an invisible knife driving into the side of her head. She bowed it with a grunt, bringing her hand up to hold it.

“Sam…”

“I’m fine, Tara,” she nearly growled. She then lowered her hand to reach across her torso and pull a large piece of glass out from her side that was embedded. A pained whimper forced itself out of her as she threw it aside. She lifted her head and looked up at her sibling. “Are you okay?” Immediately, she was drawn to the large blood stain that painted her stomach.

But Tara nodded anyway, her adrenaline overriding what she knew she’d feel the next morning. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered and took another glance towards the fake detective, “but we gotta go.”

Her older sister silently agreed and pulled her knees in to steady herself. “Fuck…” She clutched the slash Ethan had given her just below where her clavicle and humerus conjoined. Having to balance herself on three limbs, she realized just how shaky and exhausted her body was.

“Are you good?” 

“Yeah.” But she pushed it aside and forced herself to her feet, having to tug a few more shards of glass from her figure along the way.

Meanwhile, Tara was navigating her way through the destruction, careful with her footing but even more careful with her volume. Her eyes studied Bailey’s seemingly lifeless body, circling him in search for what she knew would make his ending swift. “Sam,” she whispered in a hiss, “Where’s his gun?”

“We don’t need his gun.”

Her voice came from farther across the theater, making her look up to find her back turned and staring down at the floor. Her brow hardened as she stepped around the glass to move towards her.

Samantha blinked down at the black eyes and pale face that held her name in its shadow. The cracks and aged material that made up an entire mastermind. The sole object that everyone wanted her to bow down to and muzzle her true intentions for another’s. “He wants a legacy, he’s gonna get one.” 

She picked up her father’s mask, the one she had insisted she would never be seen in. And she wouldn’t be seen in it, because the only person who would tell see her would be dead by the time the sun rose.

Tara stood a few paces away, staring at the way her sister seemed to blend the idea of herself and her unstable bloodline into one. “What are you—?”

“Do me a favor, okay?” Sam interrupted, her voice cool and calm, as if she no longer felt any of the pain that once twisted her tongue. As if something stronger than the passion for pain corrupted her half-blood into a full-blood. She sounded like a killer—the serial killers that always kept a level head and spoke with so much control, it was chilling. Like her father. A purebred wolf.

The spitting image of Billy Loomis, who lived inside of her.

The mastermind’s daughter turned around and paced up to her little sister, who stared at her, gingerly holding the wound in her stomach. She then held her phone out with Detective Bailey’s contact glowing on the screen. “I think it’s your turn to ask the questions,” she said, insinuating the revenge the younger deserved from the humiliating and traumatizing phone call she was forced to endure. The one that served as her ticket into this mess of a franchise. The older Carpenter nodded. “You know what to do.”

Tara blinked down at the phone, before raising her eyes to find a dark streak in Sam’s. She took it, then glanced down at the mask, watching it as her older sister moved past her and towards the stage. “What are you gonna do?”

Samantha stopped with one foot on the first step of the staircase leading up. She turned her head over her shoulder, the blood leaking from her bicep giving her overall appearance a daunting aura that influenced her words.

“I’m gonna handle the rest.”

i had to cut this one short bc i'm running low on time to finish this challenge, but i really wanted to put more into this one! whatever, i hope it still serves well. maybe i'll rewrite it someday??

All my best! Stay frosty ♡ - parker

#scream #scream v #scream vi #sam carpenter #tara carpenter #carpenter sisters #wayne bailey #billy loomis #ghostface #ao3 #ao3 author #ao3 writer #ao3 fanfic #30 day writing challenge #duality

[md-confessions]

evil thad anon i agree with you, although im even more agressive on the topic. human AUs strip away core features of a non-human character that may affect parts of their personality or appearance. lets take V1 from ultrakill for example, V1 has no human face, and cannot express emotion to the same standard as a human, they would need to use body language, and if you've seen the animation set of V1's model, its very traditionally robotic and rigid. if we turned V1 into a human, suddenly V1 human capacities for emotion, but why would V1 use them? what benefit would they give?

hell, lets use the murder drones themselves, they have the hairband with a bunch of eyes on it that provide an extra field of view, both above and to the sides of them (if i had to guess, itd be like if you could look straight ahead, straight above, directly right, and directly left all at the same time without moving your head) as a human, suddenly N only has the 180 degree field of view like normal drones (assumed) or humans. you aint getting a sneak attack on him when he's already seen you the moment you approached at any angle other than directly behind and below him. Also N has to fuckin eat people, thats kinda important to his character development id personally say.

plus it gives chances to scenes that literally could not exist if they were humans. V having a bubble wand from thin air in the same place she gets an MP5? Doll faking being boot looped? Tessa- Tessa? being immune to being boot looped? (hold on, if that was cyn, how the fuck does she not boot looped during that scene?)

i like the characters as they are BECAUSE thats what they are. its like unmasking a masked character to me, i might legitimately not like murder drones as much as i do if it weren't for the fact that they're robots and some of them eat peopl- wait does this sound like i like vore

look, overall, i think i worded this similar to the way evil thad anon thinks about it, but more towards differences between humans and the drones. Plus, if you start making their human forms have parts of them that act similar to their drone forms... why not just make them drones??

.

#md confessions #murder drones #serial designation n #serial designation v #md doll #tessa james elliot

[outofangband]

Complex trauma and Angband Series: Hygiene

Angband World Building and Aftermath of Captivity Masterlist

Torture, especially in the deliberate and political sense is designed to eradicate the victim’s sense of self by, among other things, stripping away one’s basic physical needs (food, water, hygiene, rest,) and one’s  basic emotional needs (safety, comfort, belonging, privacy, hope, and identity). It also seeks to damage the relationship that the victim has with these needs.

I have a specific post about privacy that will overlap with some of this

content warnings: general Angband warnings of Captivity and abuse, trauma after torture, etc

Hygiene in Angband is very minimal. The slaves who work in the mines and forges are afforded very little supplies for washing, perhaps a few cloths and run off water if any can be saved and hoarded. Again this is a combination of items sorted through prisoners who have been there for a long time and know what can be saved without punishment as well as supplies given by the overseers.

Prisoners who work in the fortress itself are sometimes allowed a bit more water to clean themselves, depending on where they work, how visible they are, and what role they primarily fulfill. Prisoners who are more clean are often the favorites of various higher-ups who have a vested interest in their appearance or who use access to supplies as coercive ‘rewards’  and thus cleanliness rather than the opposite becomes stigmatized in many ways. This will have more detail on my post about the elves of the upper levels. Sauron’s personal servants of course have a high standard of hygiene as do the elven healers.

Among the small population of human slaves, diseases of poor water, food, and crowded conditions are common There are certain afflictions even the elves are not entirely immune to.  There are healers among them but they too have little supplies and must improvise (and yes I have many ideas for how mushrooms, evil herbs, algae, and other Angband possible ingredients could be implemented)

Access to a proper toilet is also next to nonexistent in much of the fortress. Some of the cells have a bucket but it’s not a priority among the elven prisoners. The slaves in the mines often have nothing while they work and in the forges it’s only marginally better (if only because urine is potentially reactive to some of the substances there). This is consistently demoralizing and humiliating and the level of control over one’s bodily functions is frequently utilized for punishments and even games.

Only in the medical wings and among the personal prisoners of some higher ups is consistent access to a proper toilet the norm.

The effects of all of this are profound and long lasting. Inability to bathe not only is an exertion of control felt acutely by the prisoners, it also often relates to an inability to feel like oneself.

Following captivity, many struggle to integrate bathing and grooming into their routine. Some continue to associate beauty and cleanliness with its associations in Angband.

Just like with other activities it takes great will to make even seemingly simple decisions such as going to bathe. Many survivors of Angband experience a constant dread that they are out of place or will be caught out of place.

Not to mention other aspects of complex trauma such as depression and self image issues as well as physical symptoms like chronic pain can impact ability to care for oneself in this way.

My own headcanons regarding my case studies, Maedhros and Húrin (feel free to request more about this or other prisoners)

-In Angband, I do still enjoy the headcanon Maedhros is bathed primarily when he was presented for some public occasion in the beginning(even before the cliffs he is a trophy…) and it’s harrowing and mortifying and invasive and as much a form of abuse as anything else. Angband is talented at making even and especially the most simple things into a horrible ordeal. This isn’t a common occurrence but it was enough to have an effect on his view of himself

-After Angband baths are very vulnerable especially and he has to relearn his right to privacy and this relates with self image issues. His view of himself is fragmented and he does not recognize his reflection.

-It takes awhile before the image of someone clean and put together in clothes he chose begins to feel like his own.

-The severe physical consequences of his time on Thangorodrim make this harder in the beginning too

-Húrin cares very little for his appearance after his release though at times suffers sensory flashbacks that lead him to try to wash away phantom touches, sometimes to the point of opening old scars.

#the silmarillion #maedhros #Húrin #the children of húrin #musing and meta #in the iron hell #post Angband

[olet-lucernam]

A Hollow Promise [22] chapter v, part iii

main tags : loki x original character, post-avengers 2012, canon divergence - post-thor: the dark world, canon-typical violence, mentions of torture

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summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, the Avengers need a few days to build a transport device for the Tesseract. With the Helicarrier damaged and surveillance offline, SHIELD sends an asset to guard Loki in the interim: a young woman who sees the truth in all things, and cannot lie.

Even long presumed dead, her memories lost to her, Loki would know her anywhere.

And this changes things.

Some things last beyond infinity. And the universe is in love with chaos.

(Loki was never looking for redemption. It came as an unexpected side-effect.)

-

chapter summary : despite his chains, loki begins gathering his pieces on the board. astrid works on escaping her own confines, and mitigating the damage of disasters to come.

recommended listening : venus in gemini, dezi

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[PREVIOUS] | [MASTERLIST] | [NEXT]

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“So. What do you think?”

The question rang slightly in the room, ricocheting against metal plates and graphite-grey walls.

Arms folded, facing out into the open floor, Fury allowed the slight turn of his head and expectant silence to serve as invitation.

After a moment, Alethia- sleekly attired for the autumn chill like a native Manhattanite, in black skinny jeans, mid-heeled ankle boots, and fine-knit turtleneck sweater of berry wool- pushed herself off the wall, stepping forward.

She and Romanoff had been on the roof before Fury called them into the VERITAS testing area, drinking coffee in the cold and soundscape of noise above the city. Alethia had stripped the long wool coat she had been wearing when she arrived inside, draping it over one of the chairs, but Romanoff was still wearing her camel leather jacket, curls soft and mouth faintly pursed, eyes fixed on Alethia’s back.

Glancing over the two of them, Fury could easily understand why Romanoff had identified with her. The resemblance between their circumstances was self-evident, but the subtler physical similarities were in the details; it was written small, in the simple facts of their heights, their builds, the way they moved- a confident ease with a slight tension underneath, like a dancer waiting to fall into the right steps.

They matched nicely against each other. Fury could envisage sending them out into the field together, on intelligence retrieval and social reconnaissance- Romanoff’s ability to assess and assimilate, and Alethia’s eye for truth and steel nerves, would make for an invaluable combination.

Fury’s eye flicked back to Romanoff where she remained in place, exuding a faint anxiety like the vapours from paint thinner.

He knew that Romanoff wasn’t unaware of her bias. But neither did that awareness make her immune to it.

Rather than letting it become a liability, Fury had warped it into an advantage; if Alethia saw the truth in all things, it was better to offer her a favourable truth, in the form of a handler who wanted her recruitment to be successful for reasons beyond fulfilment of mission parameters.

Alethia halted- coffee cup still in hand, its heat-sleeve stamped with SHIELD’s eagle insignia- before the centrepiece of the room, head tilted consideringly, the sheen of her curls shifting across her shoulders.

The wide chair was set on a high swivel, aggressively angular, constructed from darkly brushed titanium, strict right-angles, and heat-sensitive fabric. A biometric plate was affixed into the centre spine, metal cuffs locking at the armrests, leashed with black electrical cables; a unit reminiscent of a cranial halo capped the structure, winged forward to encase the temples of its occupant. Immediately behind where Alethia stood was a large, simple control centre, inset with a touchscreen display.

“The fruits of your labour.” Fury announced with a wry twist of aplomb. “Thought you might like to see it. Ninety-six variables in total, monitored and analysed by a unique algorithm, based on and verified in efficacy by your contributions. Say hello to the alpha version of VERITAS- the Verification Enhancement for Response Input Technological Analysis System.”

“Stars. If that acronym were any more tortured, the Geneva Conventions would have something to say about it,” Alethia quipped, almost more to herself than the room.

“It was the initial code name for the project,” Fury replied with the intonation of a shrug, unfolding his arms and stepping forwards, the leather drape of his overcoat shifting with the motion. “We’ve got a few like that. But, if you feel that strongly about it- give it a new name. The DNA of it is mostly yours.”

People tended to be more reluctant to destroy or abandon that which they felt personally invested in, Fury found.

Alethia gave a quiet hum from the back of her throat, and lifted a free hand to skim the closest cuff of the chair.

“You think so.”

“It wouldn’t have been possible without your input,” Fury admitted, “not on this time scale. Maybe not even in this generation-”

“It was your design, Nicholas. So- congratulations,” she lifted her voice to call out. “It is a highly sophisticated piece of scrap.”

She rapped a fingertip against the cuff, two neat taps.

“I hope that you’re satisfied.”

Fury took a long moment to study her.

In most cases, he would avoid rising to the bait. Not unlike another troublesome asset that came to mind, Alethia had an element of narcissism to her character- and worse, just cause for it; like Stark, she acted like she knew more than anyone else in the room because, most often than not, she did. Fury’s general policy was that they did not feed egos, particularly those attached to individuals that liked to provoke. Indulging it was a short-term solution that would result in long-term headaches.

Alethia was an exception. Unlike other consultants, they had little information to use as leverage, her available history alarmingly sparse- something that happened approximately never, given SHIELD’s not inconsiderable reach and resources. And as Alethia had deduced with irritating accuracy during their negotiations, the threat that had brokered her cooperation- to flag her with every agency that SHIELD had backchannels with, threatening her meticulously cultivated anonymity- was a card that could only be played once.

Romanoff’s evaluation had found that the most effective strategy was to play her game. Alethia would speak in circuitous riddles and rhetoric, but the more you paid attention to her words, the more you engaged, the more threads she would cast out to watch you follow, chasing towards the truth that she was hinting at.

It was a power play- but one that Fury could tolerate. The rules were consistent, for the most part, and Alethia played fair.

“That the most advanced lie detector system in the world,” he answered patiently.

“Nicholas, you couldn’t even use me properly.” Smoothly, she pivoted to face Fury, unimpressed and unusually direct. “This machine can’t talk back when you’re asking the wrong questions. If not scrap- it is a monument to irony.”

“With regards to what?”

Alethia pushed off the chair, shoulder set, a strange pressure gathering in the air.

“SHIELD is a monster. You might be the hand feeding it, but you are not the one holding the leash.”

She flicked her head back towards the gleaming chair.

“Call it Cassandra.”

With that parting shot, Alethia cut a path out of the door.

Romanoff shifted her weight, as though moving to follow her- but Fury halted her with an open palm and quelling look.

Six minutes later, Fury emerged onto the rooftop.

The Base- codenamed in recognition of its legacy as the original headquarters of SHIELD, after it was established on the foundations laid by the SSR- would have been an imposing building in any other city. Within the cloistered, oversaturated streets of Midtown, however, the broad tower block of dark stone and glass panes blended in amongst the billboard-plated skyscrapers and storefronts that lined the avenues, glossed over like any other corporate office building on the island. At over a dozen storeys tall, the roof was far enough above street level that the coordinated chaos melded together into a rush of tires on asphalt and idling engines and a miasma of passing chatter, punctuated by the distant blare of car horns, sirens, and rattle of construction work- a cocktail of sensory overload, diluted down to a half-ratio. The rubble of the Incident had been cleared, its smoking wounds cleaned and under repair, returning the great aortic chambers of the city to full capacity.

Alethia stood near the edge of the roof, gazing down at the traffic below, vanilla hair and underdressed torso caught in a cross-breeze. As the wind twisted around her, Fury thought he caught a snatch of a high-contrast melody- something that rang of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the golden age of Broadway showtunes and classic jazz standards.

“For someone who was so determined to keep her mouth shut when you got here, you’ve sure got a lot to say,” Fury interrupted, projecting his voice above the rush of traffic and whip of the winds, strolling up behind her.

“For someone who demands answers at every opportunity, you’re not very willing to listen,” Alethia retorted swiftly, knocking back the dregs in her cup and setting it on the raised edge of the roof. From the drop of liquid left on the plastic rim, it seemed that Romanoff was continuing to keep her sweet with a supply of matcha lattes.

“I’m listening now.”

“Ah, right. Like you were with the Tesseract?”

Fury’s visible eye narrowed.

“What did you mean by that jab? About monsters and leashes.”

Alethia drew her bottom lip between her teeth, glowering, eyes burning like a golden-hour sun behind storm clouds.

Eventually, she filtered out a shallow sigh, her expression cooling.

“There is a principle,” she began slowly, dark lashes lowered as she watched the traffic below, “in regards to statecraft, that you cannot design a seat of power solely with regards to what will allow one individual to do good- but must also consider what will prevent another from accomplishing evil, if they were to acquire the same position.”

Alethia looked directly at him, sombre in a way that she only was once she had given up any attempt to fight or undermine.

“I would strongly urge you to consider what evil could accomplish in your position, Nicholas.”

“Implying that you don’t think I’m evil,” Fury observed, with some intrigue.

It was an unexpected, and interesting concession; Alethia had made no secret that she held SHIELD wholly in contempt, and Fury by extension as the one at its helm.

“I think that you’re a manipulative, opportunistic bastard with few scruples and broadly altruistic intentions, which makes you very good at your job,” Alethia answered, glancing away with a dismissive air. “I also think that you’re arrogant enough to think that you’re paranoid enough, and about the right things, rather than what fits your worldview and skillset.”

Fury absorbed on her appraisal. He had received less scathing evaluations, but he found himself oddly unoffended by it.

“So what should I be paranoid about?”

She looked to him with a slow blink, her expression hard, more resolute than angry. Her irises seemed deeper than the usual hazel, verging upon amber, despite the flat light of the overcast midday skies.

“I told you. You are not holding the leash.”

The meaning clicked.

Fury’s initial, instinctive reaction was outright scepticism.

SHIELD was strictly compartmentalised for a reason. Trust was a commodity both coveted and scorned in the industry, and any system worth its salt in resilience did not merely trust in the integrity of its participants, but enforced it. SHIELD was no different. Its structure split its various branches and operations in such a way that its design could trap and isolate the first hairline-fracture roots of subversion, before they could sink deep enough to alter the fabric of the organisation, or its directives.

The structure of the organisation was not of Fury’s making, but it was one that he had maintained and improved upon since he had been appointed as director, and it worked. A certain level of grime was to be tolerated- in an organisation like SHIELD, entrenched as its operations were within the global network espionage, geopolitics, and commerce, both legal and black market, there was no such thing as clean hands, and even less so of a clean house. It would be the height of naivety and idealism to believe otherwise. But Fury would have detected the swells of a schism forming, of acceptable margins for disagreement becoming an unacceptable division. The sharks may circle, and there would always be blood in the water, but they would never get close enough for a bite.

SHIELD’s identity, and its purpose, was as secure as they had been when Peggy Carter and Howard Stark had founded it.

Common sense dictated that he should verbalise none of this to Alethia.

“So what do you recommend? Tell me what I should be looking at.” Fury began consciously convincing himself into a counter position that he could justify- that there was more to gain than to lose in hearing her, that it was eminently for Alethia to have noticed a risk that they had failed to assess.

Truth was the only shield that held against Alethia. If he didn’t believe it, then neither would she.

The irked tightening of her eyebrow was not encouraging.

“I know you’re humouring me, Nicholas, but let’s ignore the subpar charade otherwise for now.” Alethia shifted into resigned slant, arms folding against the brisk air. “Alright. First. You need a stricter delineation between personnel files, and dossiers on civilians and associates. Especially in regards to storage and access permissions. The keys to unlock one door should not work on another. It’s a security risk, and more than a little alarming that I have to bring it up. Second- stop kidnapping people. Human rights and due process aside, it’s a good way to build up ill will with the very people you may need help from in the near future. Less vinegar, more honey.”

“They are people of interest-”

“Stop kidnapping them.”

“So you’re telling us to ignore the risks-”

“I am telling you that the secret is out,” Alethia interrupted sharply, “and that the bell can’t be unrung. So- exploit it. Instead of trying to wrench the curve backwards, stay ahead of it. Advise the appropriate legislative bodies. Drive the drafting of fair laws to cover the hypotheticals that have become realities- just like with every other advancement in history. Provide evidence for public trials. Give people due process if and when they violate the law, and stop kidnapping people on the basis that they might, possibly, at some point, become a threat. Offer them the resources to help them control their abilities, instead of the choice between constant intrusive surveillance, working for you, or getting disappeared to a facility that doesn’t legally exist.” She paused, with all the ominous inertness of an active hotplate. “And get some actual oversight.”

“This may be hard for you to believe, but we have oversight.” Fury replied, wondering exactly how inept she was under the impression SHIELD was.

“Your oversight is faceless, tried to nuke Manhattan, and has yet to face any questions in regards to it.” She said flatly, staring at Fury with a particularly blank contempt. “Get better oversight.”

Regrettably, she had a point.

Although, Fury was slightly more concerned with where and how, exactly, Alethia had acquired that information.

“I am well aware of their shortcomings,” Fury answered evenly, “and, frankly, I’m a little insulted by the implication to the contrary.”

“Nicholas,” Alethia sighed, part impatience and part resignation, seething, “I don’t like you. But that does not make me intellectually dishonest. There is a reason why I am talking, despite the fact that you are proving incapable of listening. I know that you know. And I am aware that you are not unreasonable. Or- entirely incompetent.”

Fury ignored the qualifier. It was impressive that she had held out this long without a thinly veiled insult.

“But you don’t trust me.”

Alethia smiled slightly, in a way that declared I would have to be an idiot.

She wasn’t entirely wrong.

“You and yours are not answerable to the public,” she said simply, combing her hair out of her eyes as the wind picked up and tossed it into disarray. “And the Avengers have to be, if the project is going to be sustainable. You had a good idea, but- SHIELD is not the right organisation to execute it. It is not what you’re good at, or suited for.”

“Protecting the world from threats that it’s not ready for?”

“By sealing truth in the well. Yours is a war of cloak and dagger- a necessary one,” Alethia added with a pointed glance in Fury’s direction, as though daring him to accuse her of being unfair, “and you’re good at it. But you cannot protect the public by keeping them ignorant ad infinitum. And treating people as though they’re helpless children won’t help them develop critical thinking skills. It will just keep them- reactive, and uninformed, when the situation forces their awareness. This is not a terrorist cell with a glowing cube that defies the established laws of thermodynamics. This is an entire world that has been emerging for decades, and is past being kept a secret.”

Fury felt his chest expand with a deep, slow breath, his gun holster tightening briefly, leashing in his thoughts.

“So. Stronger protections for our data, more outreach to enhanced individuals, focus on laws, improvement of oversight.” Fury concluded. “Those are your recommendations?”

“It’s not a panacea,” Alethia said, lifting one shoulder, “it’s a safety net.”

“It’s a pretty reasonable report.”

“I’ve learned to lower my expectations.” She lifted her face to the open air, soaking in a sudden break of sunshine from between the clouds, warming her colours and sharpening the contrast between her golden complexion and fair hair. “Nothing that I mentioned should offend your sensibilities overmuch. Although, I notice that you omitted the no kidnapping clause.”

Not for the first time, Fury resented that Alethia was so determined to distrust SHIELD. In some respects, she reminded him of Maria Hill, driven and intelligent and unapologetically argumentative, first to point to flaws that no one else would mention due to adherence to chain of command.

The crucial difference was that Hill was capable of doing what she was told.

“I never thanked you,” Fury decided to say, eventually. “For guarding Loki."

It seemed gracious to acknowledge it, as they neared the end of Project VERITAS.

“It’s unnecessary to,” Alethia stated tonelessly. “You would have forced the issue if I had refused, and I had my reasons to say yes.”

“Such as?”

Alethia lowered her gaze, to cast it out over the city, serenely blank.

“Some that you wouldn’t understand. Others that- you probably wouldn’t credit.”

“Well, I might surprise you,” Fury murmured, before shrugging. “That was a pretty good pitch, by the way.”

“Oh- thank you,” Alethia said, the lightness of her cadence surprisingly devoid of sarcasm. “I spent a considerable amount of time refining it. Including editing out a point about SHIELD’s double standards, hypocrisy, and lack of self-awareness over the concept of unbridled, unknown power in the hands of obscure organisations with dubious motives. I thought it might be- unproductive?”

“Smart call,” Fury replied dryly.

Alethia’s mouth flicked into a smirk, before fading into something more solemn.

“But this doesn’t guarantee that you will take my advice, does it?”

Damn right. A good argument makes you a good orator, not a good strategist.

“You knew it probably wouldn’t. So why make the case?”

This time, Alethia laughed outright, sudden and disorientating as a sun-shower.

“Sometimes,” she said through a luminous smile, “I really just want to walk away, and let all of you die.”

But she wouldn’t.

That much had been proven, by the warnings she issued about the Tesseract, by the fact that she had taken up watch over Loki despite the considerable personal risk, by the arrogance-clad counsel that she offered an organisation that she openly abhorred.

Fury let his mouth quirk.

This, he could be satisfied with. Even if SHIELD had not acquired Alethia’s loyalty, her cooperation was no longer a complete impossibility.

And Fury was reluctant to slam any door shut forever. So long as it was left ajar, he could allow the matter to rest as success enough.

-

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