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refriedweeb · 4 years

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LOVE ME WHEN YOUR WRISTS ARE BOUND (18+ SMUT)

A/N: I’ve had a feral-ish predator/prey smut idea roaming around in my head for the past couple of weeks now and I finally figured out a premise for it to exist on which has lead to this sinful post.

Prompt: You’re Pro-Hero Prisma, the name speaking for itself as your quirk is being able to turn yourself and others around you invisible just by touching them. Hawks, your on again off again fling that is far too arrogant for your liking, is sent off to go to a training retreat where you’re there. An old age game of hero and villain tag goes underway...but what happens when the stakes are raised?

word count: 4,957

warnings: rough sex, feral sex, sex.

Your hands smooth back any flyaway hairs that might have come out of your slicked back ponytail. When dressed in your pro-hero costume, you try to remain as sleek as possible. It makes being able to turn yourself invisible far easier when there isn’t as much for you to focus on turning invisible. You’d been in the pro-hero game for a few years now, having your own fair share of rescues and criminal takedowns that has quickly procured you in the top ten heroes. While the listing isn’t as important to you as managing to do the job you’d dreamt of doing since you were a little girl, it is a nice ego booster to know that the public thinks so highly of you. Being able to help people, to bring peace to a troubled community, had done a lot for your confidence and journey of self-love, and you’re in a place of your life where you feel content with things in your personal life the way they are.

When the commission had told you that you would be heading to a resort with a handful of other heroes to get some training out of the way, you were stoked. It wasn’t as much of a vacation as much as it was a chance to reconnect with some pro-heroes and old friends that you didn’t get to see half as often as you would have liked given the demanding nature of your job. You’d packed your bag for the week long course and had jetted off to the foliaged location that kept the exact location of the hero training grounds a secret from any prying criminal eyes. And just as imagined, you got to see plenty of your old friends who were assigned to different distracts of work that you hadn’t since your days at UA.

And then...

“Well, well, well.” There was that infamous drawl that could send shivers down your spine when it was right at your ear. A voice that was so silken and rough around the edges at the same time just earring it sent a spark down your spine no matter how annoying the owner of it was. Son of a bitch. Or in this case, a hawk. “I see they’re just letting any old talent in the resort now.” And as arrogant as ever.

You turned around, your bag bumped against your hip. Hawks somehow managed to look as smug as he ever had, being none too subtle about the way that his body swept over your frame until he was looking you in the eyes. Damn those honey glazed eyes that had always managed to suck out the air in your lungs. But that wasn’t a temptation you were going to give into right now. The last thing Keigo Takami needed was a boost in his ego. You did the same, looking him up and down while you crossed your arms under your bust. “Look who it is, a lost chicken.” Your tone was drenched heavily in sarcasm, not one to have ever backed down from Keigo’s taunting and arrogant status. In response, Keigo stuck his tongue against the corner of his mouth, letting loose a dry chuckle. “You should go back to the city before a fox makes you lunch.”

“So hostile, kid,” Keigo murmured, coming to stand close to you. Close enough that his thigh bumped the edge of your bag and you were glad for that bit of buffer. It’d never been easy to have him close to you. “I’m just here for a little bit of fun.” His eyes dipped over you once more, the sun rising and setting in how he did. Damn him. Finally settling over your lips, Keigo smirked. “Among anything else worthwhile I might find.”

Hawks pushed past you, his shoulder brushing past you. While you’d been able to keep your cool at hearing his voice after months passing since the last time you’d seen one another, the physical contact between you stole a breath from you the moment the electricity crackled from the curve of your arm. You turned after Keigo, mouth hung open, expression narrowed at the audacity of this man.

Damn him. Damn him and everything that he was.

That interaction had been two days ago, and thankfully nothing had happened with Hawks. You were each given your own room to settle in for the next week, and you were living in the lap of luxury. Mount Lady was on the resort with you and you’d been spending most of the group training exercises with her. Strengthening your quirks, decreasing the weaknesses that came with overuse. It was similar to the ones you’d went on as a kid with UA, though this one was far more intense and there was less leniency with messing up as there was when you were still a student. But you didn’t mind. It drove you to be better, to refocus your purpose on why this was your calling. You felt good about the progress you made, the blinding spots and lights that came with overuse of your quirk fading quicker than they had in the past.

And, much to your determination not to give him the damn satisfaction, you’d only been mildly distracted by the bird man who knew how to drive you up a wall. It was hard not to watch him speeding through the air, the way he moved so graceful. Hawks had always been impressive even before he’d become a pain in the ass. His frame was lean, not exactly the type of body that you saw unless it was on a power quirk. But there was hidden strength in muscles that were hardly shown due to the jacket he wore as part of his costume. He was a show off, of course, but it was hard to ignore moving art in the sky.

Today was a different day in the training course, and as the group of pro-heroes lined up outside of a deep foliaged area, you had a twisting sensation in your stomach. This wasn’t going to just be a group training idea, there was something special about this one. And for some reason...your eyes went to Hawks. He was talking to Masaki Mizushima, otherwise known as Manual, when his eyes flickered to you. There was that dangerous curve of a closed-mouth smile that had your eyes snapping away. You chided yourself for even looking.

“Alright heroes,” your attention turned back to the instructor leading your training exercise today. “Today we’re doing capture and releases. You’ll be teamed up with a hero that has a quirk meant to makes yours difficult, and vice versa.” Your eyes widened, that sensation in your gut twisting. Son of a bitch. “This is to help adapt you to situations you’ll be in as pro-heroes where you’re not always the best suited quirk to take on your opponent’s.” The instructor’s voice faded away. This was some sort of karmic punishment for something that you’d done in a past life, you just knew it. You knew who the opposite of your quirk in that line up was, and it’d been the one person that you’d been trying to avoid all week. You listened as the instructor went down who was paired with who, and what role they’d be taking in the touch and go. You were grimacing, knowing what was coming.

“Prisma and Hawks, you’ll be teamed up. Prisma can turn herself invisible and will challenge Hawks to use his vision to the best advantage to spot her through the foliage. Hawks, you’ll be the Hero.” you gave a small groan. “Prisma, you’ll be the villain.” You turned to look at Keigo, letting out a sharp exhale through your nose to see that it was now he who was watching you, that smug expression larger than what it’d been several minutes ago. There was a waggle of his brows as he pushed his goggles over his nose and slapped his headphones on. If you were playing the role of villain through this exercise, it’d only make sense for the character if you killed him, right? Right?

You walked over towards the section of foliage you were assigned for your specific training exercise, Hawks watching you like a starved man as you swaggered over. One of his favorite parts of your body had always been your hips, curved and full, what your mother and grandmother had always stereotyped as ‘birthing hips’. He’d never been able to get enough of it, hands digging in at any given moment the two of you were together. There’d even been a point in time where he’d bit your ass because he’d been unable to help himself. Keigo Takami was a man who knew what he liked and had no problem showing it, and considering that your hero costume was as skin tight as it could possibly be due to your quirk, he was practically drooling. Frankly, you wouldn’t be surprised if he had some part in this.

“Shut up.” Is all you need to say before Keigo chuckles, zipping his mouth shut with his fingers and tossing the key. You know it’s not something that’ll last for long, but it’ll give you enough time to get over the blush you feel at your cheeks and ears.

“Prisma, Hawks. The objective of this training exercise is to exploit your weakness and strengthen it. Hawks, your weakness is that you can fly high up with great speed, but rely on your feathers too much. You’ll be challenged to look with your eyes on something you can’t see. Prisma, your weakness is that the longer you stay invisible, the worse your eyesight gets until you can’t see. You’ll have to focus on using your quirk intermittently with staying out of Hawks’ line of vision from the sky. You have until nightfall to either, as the villain escape, or as the hero apprehend the villain.”

You tip two fingers against your forehead in a lazy salute, sighing as you center yourself on what you’re about to do. Like hell you want to be caught by Hawks, dedicating your focus to avoid getting caught. You want to win, you want to work on straightening the limitation you have on your ability so you can help serve better. The two of you are stood at the entrance to your training area, a thick forest with trees of varying height that are either going to work to your advantage or disadvantage depending on how Hawks uses them. Speaking of the devil...

As your instructor walks away, Keigo comes to stand behind you, leaning forward just enough that he’s not touching you, but you can hear his voice in your ear. That same sarcastic drawl, dripping in arrogance like he’s already won. “How about we raise the stakes, kid?” Your stomach drops lower to the spot between your hips, and your back goes rod straight. “How about if I catch you before you make an escape, I get to fuck you where I find you.”

Your breath caught as the shivers raced up and down your spine. The feeling of Keigo’s fingers whispering against your hips almost enough to make your knees buckle. If there wasn’t a worse person that you could have been paired up with. It had to be the on again off person that you fucked. Your eyes rolled to the sky, taking in a deep breath. “Because you know...” he continued, breath hot against your ear. “I’ve always been a fan of catching prey when they’re on the run.” Your heart is hammering in your throat and you’re sure he can hear it. It’s hard to remember what it is to breathe in that moment, and you almost lean back into his body because, after all, old habits die hard.

“Who says you’re going to catch me?” you ask, turning your head so that you can catch his eye over your shoulder. That feeling hits deep in your belly once more once you see the narrowed slit of his pupil. Usually round, you know this look on Keigo. It’s predator, it’s hunter, it’s Hawks. And you know in that moment you’re going to be fighting more than one enemy in that simulation. It wasn’t just your weakness with your quirk that you were working against. It was your weakness with Keigo Takami as well.

“Because, kid,” Keigo’s eyes drop to your mouth. “I don’t lose.”

Damn.

“Well, Hawks,” you turn to him, taking slow and measured steps back into the foliage that was going to either aid you or ruin you. You made sure to lean into your hip heavily, swaying back and forth that had Hawks’ attention almost immediately. “Catch me if you can.”

And with that, the two of you split your separate ways. Hero and villain. Hawks shot into the sky in a flurry of red wings, and you coated yourself in invisibility as you ran into the foliage, careful not to step too heavily as you darted under the trees. Looking up, it was near impossible to spot Hawks speeding through the sky, dipping down and flying up as he looked for any sight of your impressions on the ground. Your terrain was an uphill one, and soon enough your trek uphill had left you out of breath. You dipped under a tree, letting your invisibility fall as you became visible to the outside world. Except, of course, you were not foolish enough. Keigo’s words in your head were still settled deep within your belly, but you weren’t about to lose just yet. You shed your boots, setting them at the base of a tree before you took coverage in a tree that you climbed. With your eyes turned towards the sky, it’s only a matter of time before Keigo’s wings come into focus, beelining straight for the boots.

He extended a gloved hand as if to grab for the boots and snatch you out, only to stop short and skid along the ground as he realized there was nothing attached to them. “Clever, kid.” He called out, doing a quick swipe around. Luckily, you’d cloaked yourself once more before he’d spotted the tree you were in. That would have been game over, though watching the sweat that clung to his forehead...didn’t seem too bad. You pinched yourself, reminding yourself that you were a villain and it was your objective to get out. “You’re somewhere here, aren’t you?”

But that didn't mean that you couldn’t have a little fun...right? Slowly, carefully, you lowered yourself from the branches you’d been hiding away, wincing at the slight rustle of ground gave in when you hit. Hawks whipped around again, eyes wide, pupils narrowed. “Come on songbird, let me hear you sing.” That static ripped through your belly again, and you took measured steps closer to him. You bent over, cloaking a rock once more before chucking it off on the other side of you that hit a tree. Hawks spun around again, a couple of small red feathers shooting out from his wings to try and pin what he thought was you against a tree. It took everything not to laugh in that moment, looking at how focused he was.

You were doing your best to ignore the feral look in his eyes. How windswept his hair was from his flying. How you knew what Keigo was like when he wanted to win at something. And to see how determined he was when you were the prize. You squeezed your thighs together, rolling your lower lip between your teeth. “What’s the matter, Keigo?” you asked, doing your best to throw off your voice from your current location, slowly edging up the steep incline. “I thought you wanted to fuck me.”

Hawks shot out from where he’d been, coming for where you’d been only seconds before. You took off running up the hill, ignoring the pain searing through your thighs at just how much you underestimated the sleepiness of the climb. Still, you pushed through it, your vision starting to dizzy as you ran. How long had you and Hawks been at this? It didn’t feel incredibly long, but then again the sun was in a much different positioning than when you’d started, and the sky was starting to turn shades of purple. Almost nightfall. Had the other pro-heroes finished their courses already? Maybe it hadn’t been the wisest decision to take off your boots, either, as you came in contact with a patch of wet mud. Your footing slipped, and with it your invisibility cloaking. A gasp hit you as you saw your hand clear as day, and in that moment you knew you were down for. In a last ditch attempt to redeem yourself, you cloaked back up but the sharp yank to the right as one of Hawks’ feathers tore through your hero costume.

A yelp escaped from your throat as you found yourself pinned to a tree at the nape of the neck, leaving you dangling from the trunk of the tree. With the gig finally up, you dropped your invisibility as you folded your hands under your chest. On one hand, you were pissed you’d been unable to outlast Keigo. On the other hand...you’d been taunting him just moments ago and knew what that did to him. The sound of rustling feathers came and Hawks sauntered around the tree, looking at you with that same infuriating expression from the beginning of the exercise.

“So close too, kid. So close.” He teased, running his tongue over his canine tooth. Keigo came to rest his hips against yours, your mouth dropping open at the presence of him there. It’d been so long since it’d been like between you two, but how could you forget that? “And you would have won, too, except you just had to go on teasing me like that. You know what your teasing does to me, kid. Damn near maddening.” he pulled off his glove with his teeth, coming to grip your jaw. “So damn mad.”

Your eyes widened as he dug his hands into your chin, holding you so tight that you couldn’t look either way. Only at him. Your throat was tight as you swallowed, Keigo continuing on as he pulled your hands apart, using a spare feather to pin your wrists to the bark above you by the fabric of your costume. Keigo, despite his earlier disposition, is serious now. And you know how in trouble you are. You can see it in that narrowed slit of his eyes, the color of the sun burning there. “Can’t let that go, songbird. I’ve gotta remind you not to fuck with me.” He leaned in, the hand that wasn’t gripping your jaw in an iron lock trailing down the curve of your side, coming to thumb the space between your thighs that you’d been ignoring ever since he whispered into your ear down at the base of the mountain. “Gonna have to remind you of that,” Keigo murmured, eyes lowering as he leaned in over you. You could feel the length of him against your thigh, instinctively angling it out so you could feel him closer to your core.

“Keigo-” you gasped as he rolled his hips in against you. “Keigo what if we get caught?” Though by the feeling of his presence, you didn’t know if you’d mind that much if you got your itch scratched.

“And what about it?” he breathed. His thumb slipped over you again, causing you to shudder. “You really think I give a damn who sees me fucking you? Claiming you like the little slut for me you are?” You squirmed against the hand he kept between your thighs, letting out a harsh exhale. “Already so needy for me. I’m starting to think you lost on purpose, kid.”

You opened your eyes, glaring at him. “I lost because I slipped.”

Hawks chuckled, giving a shrug. “If that’s what you wanna say there, kid. All I know is I won...and now I’m claiming my prize.” The static runs straight from your brain to your core, and you let out a whine. Keigo hummed, reaching up behind your back and leaving you with cool air against the heat that had been growing between your thighs as he undid the back of your uniform. “What a fuckin’ prize, huh, kid? I get to ruin this body all over again.”

The feather that had been pinning your wrists together removes itself, reforming to Hawks’ wings as he yanked you around, pressing your face in against the bark. It burned, but it was the furthest thing from your mind as Hawks pushed down the skin tight fabric of your pro-hero costume, his hands finding their way under the fabric and rolling it further and further down until it was just beneath your ass.

You yelped as the sound of a smack sounded through the air, the stinging sensation hitting your backside seconds later. He’d just landed a sharp slap across your ass and you were about to make another comment when another came again, causing you to squirm. “This is what you get for teasin’ me, kid.” he said, and you were able to catch the way that Hawks was leaned back, his eyes dragging down the length of your exposed back and skin. The leather of his gloved hand struck again, causing you to whine. Keigo’s eyes flashed to look up at you, the look there positively feral. You can feel the heat starting to seep through your legs, and that has Hawks’ attention in a matter of seconds. “So filthy, aren’t you? You like it when I slap you on the ass. You want to be punished for being such a filthy little slut,” the slap came again and your groaning, attempting to push your backside in against his hips. “So fuckin’ eager, kid.”

Keigo places his hands on your hips, pulling you back against his hips so you can feel how hard he’s gotten in the time he’s caught you. This is the whole thing. The chase is what excites him and the most and what better example of his highest fantasy is there then getting to chase you through foliage like the bird of prey that he is? And true to his word, he’s going to fuck you as his victory claim. You grind your backside his, angling yourself so that you can feel the full length of him slipping between you. You groan, your head falling back against your shoulders as Keigo realizes this, pushing up into you.

“I wanna hear you beg, kid. Swallow that fuckin’” a sharp slap comes across your behind again. “Cocky attitude you had earlier.” He slaps your backside again, and you can’t fight the moan that escapes you. “Your mind kid, I’m always gonna fuckin’” another slap. “Win.”

At this point you can feel the wetness between your thighs, and your squirming as he rocks his hips back and forth as if he’s already fucking you. “Keigo-” you whine pushing your hands against the tree so you can be flush with his hips. “Please.”

“Please, what?” You hear the sound of his belt coming undone, the buckle slumping.

“Keigo,” you breathe, only to feel that sharp leather across your backside that causes you to cry out.

“Please, what?” he repeats. His voice is hardened as the cock between his legs. The zipper of his pants sounds, and you can feel the rawness of him against your lips. He’s teasing you. He wants you to beg. To ask nicely. “Beg for it, songbird.”

“Please fuck me,” you gasp just as he pushes himself up and down the length of your lips again.

Keigo’s hands find their way to your hips again, fingertips digging in as he lines himself up. “Since you asked so fuckin’ nicely...”

You hold your breath in anticipation. Keigo’s wings puff out on either side of you, providing little coverage for what he’s about to do to you. You catch yourself admiring the beautiful red color of them before he’s slamming his hips in against yours, throwing you forward at the shock and power behind it. The sound of Keigo’s groan behind you turns your knees to putty, almost enough to cause your legs to give out from underneath you. “Ahh, fuck, there it is.” he groans, slowly pulling himself to the edge of his length before slamming back into you with the same intensity. You lurch forward again, hands pressing into the tree in front of you to keep from ramming in against it. “Feel so fuckin’ good, kid.” He fucks into you again, your head dropping to your shoulders once more. Eyes shut, you don’t see Keigo reach out with that gloved hand, and hook two fingers against the side of your mouth.

The sound of skin slapping against skin starts to fill the area between you along with the sounds of Keigo’s breathlessness and the small whines falling from your mouth. Despite his erratic breathing, he’s kept a good pace, your inner thighs positively soaked from what he’s done to you. He’s entranced by the way your skin bounces and moves each time he comes slamming back into you, filling you up with every ounce of his cock. “You like that, songbird, you like how fuckin’” slap “Good I feel inside of you?”

You struggle to answer him, your head wrenched back at an angle with Keigo’s leather wrapped fingers pulling out your cheek. Your legs are shaking, and it’s everything you can do to keep your muscles from collapsing underneath you as he fucks into you, creating a mess of your insides. Finally, you moan as a response, reaching an arm back just to be able to touch him in some respect. Keigo, not the complete asshole, leans forward so that you can grab onto the front of his jacket. The hand he’d been using to steady himself against your hips slips down to your front, massaging at your clit. This sends you into a spasm, wrestling against the overstimulation that your body was currently being sent through, desperately whining as he continues to tap, circle, and stimulate your clit meanwhile continuing the fluid motion of fucking in and out of you.

Keigo’s got the advantage here too, and seeing you struggle against getting him to lay off before you come, only sends him into more of a fury. His thrusts become faster, more erratic. They starting hurting as they hit into you, causing you to moan in pain and pleasure each time. You’re squeezing your legs together, clenching down around him as he fucks in and out of you. Your high is close, and your knees start to falter under you as it does. “K-Kei-” you’re unable to get his name out as another wave of pleasure rolls through you, threatening to push you over the bridge right there as Keigo starts to fuck you even faster, the wetness on your thighs crawling down further.

“You gonna cum, songbird? You gonna cum around this fuckin’ cock just like you always do?” The whine pushes through you as he yanks on your cheek. “Go on then, sing for me, you’re my fuckin’ songbird.”

And with the permission granted, you unravel around his finger and his cock, your legs spasming as you cry out, your inner thighs becoming even wetter than before. Your moan is none too quiet as it rips through you, your back arching as the shivers run up and down your spine once more as you ride out your orgasm. You’re panting, breathless, dripped in sweat, but Keigo isn’t done. “What a good fuckin’ slut, (Y/N).”

You moan as he returns both ands to your hips, spreading you further as he quickens his pace once more. “Gonna fill you up so good, so fuckin’ much.” You whimper as he buries himself in you, his thrusts sloppy and hurried now. He’s close now, and in order to help him reach his own orgasm, you lean back, body flush against his. “Fuck yeah, ah, fuck yeah.” he’s panting in your ear now, his face buried in the crook of your neck. Once you reach back and feel the space under his jacket and shirt where feather meets wing, it’s game over.

“I’m gonna cum, fuck, I'm gonna cum,” his voice is gravely, pained as he loses the last of his momentum. The sound of your moans mingle together as he does just that, spilling himself inside of you. His drip joins the slow race down your thighs, and with one final thrust, empties the rest of himself in the folds of your heaven.

The two of you remain there in silence for a period of time before he pulls out of you, leaving a mess between your lips. You’re immediately on your knees, unable to support yourself anymore from what he’d just done to your insides. Your breathing is still labored, as if you’d just run up and down the mountain without break. Your legs are spent, still riding out the tidal wave that was your orgasm. Behind you, you hear Keigo zipping up his pants, adjusting the buckle.

He looks as spent as you feel, and he pulls his glove on with his teeth as you lock eyes. That feral look is still there, and you doubt you’re done with one another for the night. You sure as hell don’t think you are. “What’s wrong, kid?” Keigo leans over, landing a gloved slap to your ass. “Get up, gotta go tell the instructor what a good hero I was in apprehending such a bad, bad villain.”

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jacksgreysays · 4 years

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anonymous: Could Have/Should Have/Actually Happened format as a prompt for Twelve Sessions

it could have gone like this:

Joy's ankle itches.

"I understand you're unlikely to be in a cooperative mood, but I hope over these next twelve weeks that we can find a way to work together in a way that benefits you..." says Simone Tallis, the court ordered therapist assigned to her. Joy knows Judge Palmer wanted to be harsher--some jail time at least--but given how Joy was finally caught, the city doesn't exactly have the leeway to be as strict as they'd like on notorious burglar, sometimes vigilante Jaguar.

She should have run when things went bad. Before they went bad. She should never have joined the team at all.

Or she should have thrown herself into it whole heartedly, the way Curtis and Brian and Alvin and Lea--

Her ankle itches.

Heroics on behalf of the city is as literal an interpretation of community service as can be. And twelve hours of talking to a stranger isn't all that difficult, though she's not really feeling up to being charming right now.

But her goddamn ankle fucking itches.

She could do without the hideous blinking accessory tracking her every move.

"... you're not even fucking listening to me, are you?"

The swear catches her attention, but Joy doesn't blink. "I didn't want to interrupt, but if you want some fucking dialogue there's no need to resort to crude language," Joy responds without a hitch, baring her teeth.

That's the way Leanne would phrase it. Even though Alvin's the shapeshifter, Joy was the one who bared her teeth at threats.

Simone Tallis isn't a threat in the traditional sense of the word. Nor in the excitingly new, nontraditional sense that Joy has become used to as Jaguar. But while Joy has lost her anonymity and freedom and most of her team, she hasn't lost all of her secrets.

And she certainly hasn't lost her will to fight either.

"Well now," Simon Tallis says, considering, "I suppose we'll get along just fine."

---

it should have gone like this:

Brian is sitting in the waiting room, intermittently squeezing a neon pink stress ball. He has reduced strength and control in his left hand. Already his muscles are starting to feel sore, but he persists for a few more squeezes before letting them rest.

He huffs, annoyed. Then, annoyed at his annoyance, sighs.

It could have been worse, is the thing. He knows how lucky he was to be able to walk away with relatively minor damage. He knows he could have lost the entire arm, or worse. He knows how close every attack was, how nearly lethal they were. His body sustained so much of its own damage that even with his ability it'll be months before he'll be field ready.

Which makes the twelve weeks of mandated therapy pretty convenient, actually. Better to do it now while he's focusing on healing physically, to also heal mentally.

The soft chime he has for an alarm goes off, signaling it's time for his session, but he stays seated for a few moments longer. The previous patient does not appear in the waiting room, but Brian makes his way to Simone's office anyway.

He barely raises his right hand to knock on the door when it opens. Simone smiles to see him, gives a low hum as she nods her head to a corner of her office.

Leanne sits on the floor, thumb flicking over the links of her pocket watch's chain, as soothing and rhythmic and near meditative as prayer beads. Around her--almost completely so, the size of his wolf form massive, curled and supportive like a living, snoring, couch--is Alvin.

"Hey," Brian says, "I thought group therapy was Friday."

Leanne's eyes flit over to him, her thumb pausing in its movement before she puts her pocket watch away. Instead, she reaches a hand out and pets the space between Alvin's pointed ears. Or, rather, one pointed ear and the scraggly bit of newly healed cartilage that is the other.

"I was still here when Alvin arrived for his appointment. He needed to sleep--apparently trying to raise three young shape-shifters isn't conducive to rest--and it's not like I need to be anywhere else," Leanne explains. "And it's not like Tallis minds."

"It lets me catch up on paperwork," Simone agrees mildly.

Unspoken and unnecessary to be spoken is the fact that Alvin can't sleep without listening to the heartbeat of at least one of his teammates. Not since the incident that nearly cost them too much.

Leanne pats the furry flank beside her. "There's plenty of room if you want to join the cuddling," she says. Then, she tilts her head to the door, silently asking if he wants her to wake Alvin up so they can leave and give Brian his privacy.

"Or we could go to the diner," Simone suggests, "I don't know about you, but I could always go for some pancakes." Another option so he won't feel guilty about waking Alvin up, but he can still speak to Simone without his teammates listening.

Brian considers them.

"How about Simone and I go get some food to bring back? We could also get something for Curtis, too, since he's next anyway." There, a compromise, one that has them all sharing smiles.

Not bad for a boy called Griever.

---

but it actually went like this:

"They were my family," Curtis says like its ripped out of him. He's holding his face in his hands, eyes squeezed shut. He can't bear to look at Simone's own face, don't know what expression she would have, don't know what he's dreading to see.

He's breathing heavily as if he's run the entire perimeter of the city when all he's done is sit here and talk about his feelings.

"I don't know if I can do this without them."

A/N: For the Could/Should/Actually Fic Ask Box Event!

#jacksgreyson #anonymous #prompt response #writing #original fiction #twelve sessions #simone tallis #joy guerrero #brian odell #leanne peridot #alvin chand #curtis ives #could should actually fic

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mst3kproject · 5 years

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607: Bloodlust

Guys. For the sake of yourselves and everything you love, never look for material related to this movie by searching the tumblr tags for bloodlust. Just don’t. While you will find the odd bit that’s actually relevant, you will also find… look, I’m sure your imaginations are equal to the task. Some of the bonus material this week will be stuff from the episode, but there will also be a few things I found in the tag that just made me go whaaaaaat?. None of them are gross, I promise, they’re just… odd.

A couple of blond dumbasses, who I think are named Johnny and Betty, and a couple of brunet dumbasses, possibly Jeannie and Peter, decide to have a picnic on a tropical island. Unsurprisingly this turns out to be the home of a transparently evil Vincent-Price-looking asshole, whose hobby is murdering his guests and taxidermizing their corpses (apparently ‘taxidermize’ is a real word – my spellcheck doesn’t underline it). Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s drunk flunky and cheating wife have an escape plan, but once that’s been foiled it’s just these idiots against the world’s self-proclaimed greatest hunter.

I am apparently in a minority, but I think this episode’s host sketches are brilliant. Pearl’s first appearance is classic and Crow ruining Mystery Dinner Theatre is great, but my favourite part is when the SOL’s hoedown descends into anarchy. I can watch that over and over. If I ever witness a riot I’m going to be very tempted to just shout, “and now promenade!” and see what happens.

Anyway, The Most Dangerous Game is one of those things they make you read in English class, and like many things I had to read in English class it left me mildly traumatized. It’s a deeply distasteful story about man’s bloodthirsty nature and how the only way to overcome evil is to sink to its level, and every so often I’ll remember it, or Harrison Bergeron, or The Lottery, and it makes my day seem a little more dismal. I’m pretty sure nobody ever reads it except high school students and the Zodiac Killer.

So if you were wondering why it took me so long to get around to reviewing this one… well, I felt like I had to revisit the story in order to do justice to a review of this movie, and I really really really didn’t want to do that. Just thinking about it gives me flashbacks to things like Sonnet 116 and that horrible story in which the floor was both lava and snakes. But I said every episode and so here I fucking am.

Anyway, my return to The Most Dangerous Game, or at least to its Cole’s Notes, proved very educational – it taught me that not only is Bloodlust a lousy movie, it’s also one of those adaptations that completely misses the point of the work it’s attempting to adapt. The main theme of The Most Dangerous Game is how the only difference between the hunter and the hunted is which one is in a position of power. Rainsford is himself a big game hunter, and discusses this with his friend Whitney. Upon finding himself on Zaroff’s island, he becomes the prey, because Zaroff is the one with all the power. At the end, Zaroff had believed Rainsford is dead, which gives Rainsford the advantage of surprise and turns the tables again.

Bloodlust completely discards this theme. There’s never any real discussion of the power imbalance. Worse, while Rainsford was an experienced hunter and fighter himself, somebody Zaroff considered a worthy adversary, these four clowns are just young people who blundered into this situation and aren’t even Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s preferred prey. He doesn’t hunt them like he does his escaped criminals, because he thinks it’ll be a challenge, he does it because the only other alternatives are to straight-up murder them or to let them go, neither of which are acceptable to him.

Rainsford was an expert on traps and tracking, which meant he could offer Zaroff a meaningful challenge. Of the four young people in Bloodlust, only one of them is kind of barely competent, that being Betty the judo expert. She’s smart enough to figure out how to get away with breaking the window, and manages to keep her head and chuck the lackey into the vat of acid. When confronted with the John the Baptist dude, however, she freezes and screams along with Jeannie. The group survives through nothing but sheer luck.

It was luck that allowed them to get out of the house and then back into it without getting seen. It was lucky that Vincent-at-half-the-Price chose to go after the drunken sea captain first and the boys later. It was just good luck that Jondor survived the quicksand and showed up in the nick of time to take revenge on his master. The supposed heroes are barely involved in their own salvation. At the end of The Most Dangerous Game, Rainsford had to sink to Zaroff’s level and become a murderer. The four idiots in Bloodlust just stand and watch.

The one kind of interesting spin the movie tries to put on things is when it takes some time to explore why Vincent-at-half-the-Price is the way he is. He describes how war inured him to killing until he came to consider it a pleasure. This invites us to think about people who become murderers – prevailing opinion seems to be that people like the aforementioned Zodiac Killer are born without compassion, that their killing sprees are inevitable. Some killers, like BTK or the Green River Killer, have stated themselves that they need to kill and couldn’t put it off forever, even when they managed to take long breaks. It’s true that many of these murderers come from terrible backgrounds – but other people are abused as children and don’t grow up to kill people.

Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s killing spree is not inevitable. He claims to have found it distasteful at first but it later became a pleasure as repeated kills eroded the value of human lives in his eyes. This is actually a bit more thoughtful than Zaroff, who started out killing animals and moved up when it no longer offered him enough of a challenge. He kills people because he thinks if they can’t escape him then they don’t deserve to live. Once again, however, this change loses one of the points The Most Dangerous Game was trying to make, which is that killing animals for sport is brutal and pointless. At the beginning of the story Rainsford and Whitney were on their way to the Amazon to hunt jaguars – not for food, or because the jaguar offers any threat to them, but simply because they can.

So while the source material may have left stains on my young psyche, it at least had something to say. I will also say that it’s pretty suspenseful, and leaves you honestly worried for Rainsford as Zaroff evades his traps and closes in on him. Bloodlust, on the other hand, is mostly just boring. You know they’re not going to kill off any of the four protagonists, because the movie just doesn’t have the guts to do it. It can’t kill the girls because they’re girls, and it can’t kill the boys because then the girls would be sad. Sandra and the two drunks are nothing but sacrificial victims, because the writers think you can’t have a horror movie without a body count.

Even aside of that, though, this movie would still be boring. Sandra and Drunk #2 come to the girls’ room (not the boys’ room, because they couldn’t afford another set) to tell them a bunch of things we’ve already figured out for ourselves. Vincent-at-half-the-Price monologues endlessly as if one of his tactics is boring his guests to death. We never actually believe that Sandra and Drunk #2 mean to come back for the protagonists, so it doesn’t really matter to us when they’re killed.

I keep wanting to refer to the main characters as ‘the kids’ but I refuse to do so. They’re at least not as annoying as the cast of your average 80’s slasher film, but they accomplish that mainly by being very bland. Johnny is Brave, Peter is Nerdy, Betty is Tough, and Jeannie is Scared, and that’s it. It’s really hard to care about any of them except Betty, who earns a modicum of sympathy by being the only really proactive one (and from my longstanding crush on June Kenney). Once we realize the movie isn’t going to kill any of them we just stop caring.

I’m not sure what to make of Vincent-at-half-the-Price’s cheating. This seems like they’re trying to make some kind of point with it – he takes a crossbow with three bolts, one for each intended victim, and gives them a gun with one bullet. This is supposed to be sporting. But the gun has been disabled, and when he uses the bolts he pulls them out of the corpses, cleans them off, and recycles them. Since the ending has him just pulling out a gun to shoot his cornered victims at point blank range, I guess the point is that for all he justifies it as a form of sport, really he just likes killing people. The story managed to say that about Zaroff in other ways.

So yeah, this one really sucks. Even Mike and the bots couldn’t save it. There’s a few odd lines that are really funny but most of them are so-so, and there’s stretches when the movie just doesn’t offer them anything to riff. Watching it without the intermittent relief offered by the host sketches was a chore, and it forced me to re-visit a bad experience from my childhood. Fuck this movie.

#mst3k #reviews #bloodlust #fuck this movie #flagged as inappropriate #60s

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storytellingape · 6 years

Text

mad about you

1521 words; clydeland

After Morgan, Stensland’s life sort of falls apart. ‘Sort of’ is actually putting it mildly. What happens is nothing short of catastrophic. First, he’s fired from his temp job at the furniture store. Then, after failing to pay the rent for the fourth month in a row, his landlord kicks him out. The worst part of it all is that he winds up through no fault of his own in Boone County, Wes Virginia: broke, friendless, and with no clear recollection of how he’d wound up there.

When Stensland tries to recall what might have led him to travel halfway across the country to what can only be described as ostensibly the middle of nowhere, what comes to mind is only a grey haze: flashes of memories too vague to whittle together into a concrete narrative. Liquor had been involved, naturally. As had been tears.

For a month he lives off Doritos and tins of Campbell’s mushroom soup before finding gainful employment at an innocuous little bar called Duck Tape where the job description remains largely unclear and his list of tasks ranges anywhere from entering a list of rolling expenses into a spreadsheet to mopping up vomit from the grimy bathroom floor.

Mostly he just stands around watching his boss, Clyde, serve drinks at the bar one-handed. He’d lost his hand during a tour in Iraq and now wears a prosthetic arm though by no means does that make him any less adept at making cocktails or driving stick shift or punching people in the face when they’re being a dick.

By all accounts, Stensland has no business working at the bar but for some reason Clyde keeps him around even if he can’t mix drinks to save his life and has the tendency to hog the jukebox whenever his favourite song comes on. Stensland can even barely hold his liquor: two shots and he’ll spiral into a bout of self-loathing, four and he’ll start taking off his clothes. It’s become a bit of a problem with Clyde having to wrangle Stensland off the pool table and lock him in the backroom until he promises to at least put his pants back on.

Then there’s the problem of Clyde himself which vacillates between horribly annoying to downright embarrassing. He’s got most of the qualities Stensland enjoys in a person: nice without being too nice, a good ear for stories, with a handsome face that rakes in tips. And he has an accent - jesus - so that when he forms words slowly and very carefully with his mouth, Stensland’s spine sings just a little. In short, Clyde is a good guy and Stensland could date him if he weren’t dead inside and doomed to a life of heartbreak — would have, maybe, in another life; they would have the cutest children.

Duck Tape is just like any other small town bar: dim and cosy, with pool tables and an old jukebox, a counter top that’s never not sticky and a bathroom that hasn’t seen better days since 1987. The profits come and go and so do the number of customers though Stensland has learned over time to remember names and faces, telling apart first timers from the crush of usual patrons, haggard guys clad in denim from head to toe often with the gait of the road-weary. Usually they’ll be trickling in late from work and seating themselves in their favourite corners.

Clyde makes strong drinks, has a generous pour, and he never forgets a face. He’s a good listener, smiling at all the right intervals, offering a drink on the house whenever the situation calls for it.

The first month, Stensland keeps dropping things and ends up almost breaking the ice machine. The second, and he’s close to having a breakdown, his arms aching all the time from lugging boxes of this and that to the store room. By the third, he’s still somehow employed but no less frazzled when Clyde has him working behind the bar, handing him bottles and refilling drinks. But he gets used to it, eventually, and gets better at deflecting wayward hands flitting in the general direction of his arse, falling into a rhythm of waking up late in the afternoon to choke down two coffees and work a twelve, sometimes fourteen hour shift.

Often, he gets home at seven in the morning, full of breakfast/dinner courtesy of Clyde. Clyde drops him off because he’s got a car, and because, he claims, it’s not out of the way at all, even though he lives in an opposite direction altogether; they listen to Motown on the radio with the windows pulled down, the wind making hell of their hair, and drive through sleepy roads still empty of traffic, sometimes talking, sometimes not.

He can get used to this, Stensland thinks as he tips face-first into bed after barreling straight through the front door, too tired to change out of his clothes. He listens to the soothing rumble of Clyde’s car driving off, kicking off his shoes and shimmying under the covers; then he’s asleep within seconds.

Stensland doesn’t have a lot of friends in Boone County; his entire social life revolves around Clyde and his family: there’s Mellie, his sister, gorgeous just like him, and tall, and Jim, who comes around the bar for free drinks sometimes bringing his precocious five year old daughter along.

On Sundays, when the bar is closed, Stensland sleeps in and wakes only to piss, shower, and eat because he’s hungry. Sometimes if he’s lucky, Clyde invites him to family barbecues, the location of which changes from time to time depending on whose turn it is to host it. This time it’s Clyde’s, and Stensland shows up bringing nachos, only because he’d feel like an interloper otherwise. Clyde’s house is small, but charming, a bungalow with a shingled roof and wrap-around porch, an actual white picket fence. There’s a bouncy castle set up in the lawn for the kids, and Stensland can already see Clyde slaving away at the grill even from a distance away, taking intermittent sips from a beer bottle and waving away bees. He’s wearing an apron over his clothes. He shouldn’t look good wearing it. But frankly, the man can wear a blanket and still look good, so the sight of him makes Stensland feel a bit faint though no more than usual.

“Hey,” Stensland says as he approaches, dodging a wayward kid on his way to the bouncy castle.

Clyde offers him a small smile. Stensland dies just a little. “I was lookin’ everywhere for you. I thought you were gonna flake on me.”

“Me?” Stensland laughs. “Never.” He sets the bag of Nachos on the table next to the array of other foodstuff: bowls of corn chips, some dip, plenty of coleslaw, a mountain of cornbread. “Need help with the grill?” he offers.

Clyde raises his good hand. “Nope, I got this. Now you just sit there and look pretty and enjoy yourself because you’re my guest and not working today. All right?”

Stensland flushes at being called pretty. Clyde doesn’t mean it of course; it’s just an expression. Still, it makes him oddly shy, and he bounces back on forth on his heels before confessing, “I don’t know anybody here.”

Clyde doesn’t look up from flipping a beef patty. “You can sit here then, if you’d like. Keep me company. I don’t know anybody neither. It’s mostly Jim’s friends from high school.”

“What about your friends?” Stensland asks.

Clyde just shrugs one shoulder, like that answers it. “There’s beer in the cooler.” He points to it with a spatula, and Stensland lets out a triumphant noise when he pops the lid off a Corona. It tastes like shit, but at least it’s free.

Free keeps him from going hungry. Stensland barely has any savings. He’s subletting a room/apartment in someone’s backyard, a square featureless building that had formerly been storage space, with terrible insulation and only one window looking out into a grey fence. The landlord sometimes forgets to unlatch the side-gate, resulting in Stensland having to climb inelegantly over the railing more times than not, with Clyde watching from the car and offering to help, giving him a boost that sometimes results in Stensland kicking him in the nose or straddling his face. Stensland’s whole living situation is shit, but it’s the only one Stensland can currently afford. He has a roof over his head, a mattress and an electric kettle. He can’t really complain.

#clydeland #kylux adjacent #stensland #clyde logan #my fic

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