#next chapter is already written | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Women make up for the other 50% of Tumblr’s audience.

#next chapter is already written

blindmagdalena · 2 months

Text

Eat Your Ego, Honey ( Ch 8 )

homelander x oc 18+ escort services, sex work, voyeurism, stalking, Homelander in general. see ao3 link for detailed tags. chapter index. check out the playlist!

chapter summary: After the disastrous spectacle that was Homelander's birthday celebration, America's "disgraced" hero is forced to reconcile with the demons in his head, and what that means for Layla, the woman standing precariously in their path.

additional tags: unhealthy/codependent dynamics, threats of violence, themes of abuse, canon deviation. 🖤

Sleep is a scarcity. Homelander fades in and out of consciousness, but he never truly rests. It’s strange to sleep somewhere he can't see the comfort of his own gaze endlessly mirrored back at him. Those mirrors make the world so much bigger, but for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t mind how small it is. What would normally be a dark, claustrophobic thing is now a great deal safer than the open expanse of a stage.

Layla’s warmth and the faint weight of her arm around him is the only thing that keeps him somewhat tethered. Her heartbeat is a steady metronome against his back, her breaths warmly ghosting over his neck and shoulder. It’s been hours, but it feels too soon when the covers move on his skin as she readjusts in her sleep, pulling her arm from him. He lifts the blanket and rolls to face her.

She’s turned away from him, her dark hair fanned out in a wild splay on the pillow beneath her. Light from the unsleeping city spills in through the window, illuminating her figure. It’s strange to see her sleeping in day clothes and not the sleepwear he’s used to seeing her in. She didn’t have the time to change tonight. She was too busy taking him back into her arms, into her bed, into her life. He brushes his knuckles down between her shoulder blades, the disheveled silk of her blouse soft beneath his fingers.

He’ll find out why Starlight’s scent is lingering on her when she wakes.

Sliding closer to her, he flattens his palm over her hip and noses at the line of her throat, inhaling deeply, chasing the scent beneath shampoo and lotion until he finds what’s simply her. Her wine flush has followed her into sleep, her skin warmer than usual. She responds to his touch with a sleepy sigh of pleasure. Even now, the sound of her voice does so much to quiet the storm in his heart. He screws his eyes shut and buries his face into the soft tresses of her hair, gritting his teeth against the urge to squeeze too tight.

The urge to keep.

The urge to break it all apart and let the storm rage. Instead, he keeps himself perfectly still, trying to swallow the thrumming energy coiling in his tense muscles. End this, the darkness in him hisses, tempting him. How many days has he resisted the urge to reach out, not with his hands but with this thing inside him, and ruin everything? Everyone? A flash of crimson is all it would take to cleave this world in half.

But he can’t afford to. Not then, not now.

The only way he made it out of the cold isolation of the lab, far away from the bad room, was by convincing the staff, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was good. He was their perfect man-made hero. Logically, he knows they can’t ever put him back in the bad room. He’d never let them. It doesn’t stop the nightmares.

He folds in on himself, doing his best to forget that he even has power to wield against others—a whim as sharp as glass. Now, just as then, he orders his body and mind to still, to calm.

If Layla had stayed yesterday morning, things would have been different. His tightly controlled grip on her hip flexes minutely. How can she sleep so deeply knowing that she’s ruined him?

What was she doing with Starlight?

The inkling of a deeper betrayal slithers into his mind. He slides his hand up the length of her torso, traversing the familiar scape of her body, and into her hair, coiling his fingers into a gentle fist of it. One twist is all it would take to quiet her soothing voice forever. Would hair ever feel the same to him again, or would it start to smell like burning tears and cornea? The stench of grief hits him so suddenly that his eyes sting with it, and he recoils from Layla like he himself has been burned.

Has she been scheming against him all along, too?

Fucked. He’s so completely and entirely fucked.

He exhales harshly, curling his hand into a tight fist and biting into the meaty curve just below his thumb, muffling a tearful keen. He can’t think back to that morning without reliving how horribly it went wrong, and how the dominos just continued to fall until he was losing his senses in front of the entire world.

Those moments on stage play over and over in his mind, but each instance of them grows more warped than the last. He’s starting to forget what he really said, conflating memories with nightmares. How much of himself did he really let slip? How ugly does the world think him to be now?

He can see the headlines now.

Homelander: America’s Fallen Hero

Homelander: Vought’s Poster Boy Throws a Tantrum

Homelander: Deranged Freak Snaps On Stage

He’s spiraling worse than he did during Stormfront’s smear campaign against him. It isn’t just dissenting opinions and slander—he’s finally given them real ammunition to use against him. The question is: how much, and how will he refute it? He needs to be able to recover from this.

His voice of reason is treacherously quiet. Nothing but the dreadful echo of I warned you.

With his thoughts twisting in on themselves like a pit of angry, writhing snakes, he finds it impossible to stay still any longer. His whole body is plagued with a restlessness that turns into agony. Carefully, he extracts himself from Layla’s side and slips out of her bed. He needs to see it for himself. He needs to understand the degree of damage that’s been done to him.

Stepping out into her living room, Homelander picks up the remote for her television and flips it on, dropping the volume to such a miniscule level that he’ll be the only one to hear it. He lowers himself down onto the couch and stares, watching his body move and speak, seemingly puppeteered by someone other than himself, operating in ways he’s never seen himself behave in front of a camera before.

“I’m done being persecuted for my strength–”

Erratic.

“Persecuted for my strength–”

Unhinged.

“Persecuted–”

Alive.

If they want to take us down, we’re going to take every last one of them down with us.

The sky is just barely beginning to turn with dawn’s light when Layla wakes to a chill that rolls up her spine. Her bed feels colder than it has any right to, and as the fractured events of last night spill back into her mind, it doesn’t take her long to figure out why.

Homelander—who knows if he’ll accept that name yet—is nowhere to be seen.

Her temples throb with the aftermath of emptying a hefty bottle of wine as she lifts herself from bed, running her hands through her hair, breaking apart the tangles with her fingers.

The breadcrumb trail of Homelander’s suit leading from her balcony to her bed tells her that he hasn’t left. The image of him streaking through the sky in the nude does occur to her, though. Straightening her borrowed blouse and tucking it back into the waist of her skirt, she steps lightly through the dark of her apartment, head on a swivel, until she spots her quarry.

Reclined on her couch, Homelander paints an image somewhere between a renaissance painting and a billboard for depression, his body illuminated by the flashing light of the television. His expression is morose, his hand sitting on the couch next to him at an angle, the remote tilted in his loose grasp. As she approaches, he begins tapping on the volume until his own recorded voice fills the empty space between them.

It’s his tirade from last night.

“Hey, babe,” he drawls from the couch, voice pitched low and despondent. The way he pops each consonant makes the pet name sound downright derogatory. “So, what’s the verdict?” He asks, lazily gesturing to the television with the remote. “Is it everything you thought it would be?” His gaze slides from the screen to her, his head lolling to the side with it.

Any concern or lingering sleepiness in her face is swiftly replaced with bewilderment. “Excuse me?”

“‘Excuse me?’” He mocks, pitching his voice up condescendingly. Her expression hardens as he stands, the remote bouncing along the couch cushions where he tosses it. “Don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not playing anything with you,” she responds tersely. She’s never been a morning person. Compound that with the ache in her skull and the naked pain in the neck standing in front of her, she’s not feeling her usual bounty of patience. Last night, he was a weepy, sopping mess. Now she doesn’t know what to expect from the tight line of his shoulders, or the agitated curl of his upper lip. “I have no idea what it is you think you’re picking at.”

“Since when are you and Starlight pals, then?” He hisses through his teeth.

Shit. Annie. She never sent that text.

“Since yesterday,” she answers, her calm stretched thin. “She saw me at the elevator. She offered a shower and a change of clothes. That’s all.” She doesn’t find it necessary to explain why Starlight might have offered such a thing. He knows exactly how she looked when she left his penthouse, bruised and disheveled.

The memory looks to serve as a crisp slap, some level of clarity filtering into the incensed glaze of his eyes. His grip flexes, and he bares his teeth in an animalistic flash of frustration. He isn’t willing to accept fault for that yet.

“Stop fucking lying to me!” He snaps, the sudden jump in volume startling her. He advances on her sharply, halting her step backwards with an iron grip, his palm against her throat, his thumb and index finger notching perfectly behind the curve of her jaw below her ears. The contact is minimal, and yet the strength in those two fingers alone is more than enough to hold her firmly in place.

“You’re all the fucking same! Agendas, lies, all of you trying to control me, use me, and you—you’re exactly the fucking same. You’ve taken everything from me,” he snarls. Despite his fervor, his grip remains remarkably controlled. Sometimes it’s as if his mind and his body are two independent entities: one an unstable, emotionally malnourished psyche, and the other a finely tuned weapon.

The human mind wants dangerous things to be ugly, but even now, Homelander’s twisted, angry expression is not an ugly thing. Though adrenaline surges the thrum of her heart, it isn’t laden with the fear any reasonable person would have. The thrill coursing through her isn’t rooted in some comfort that he won’t hurt her. It’s the knowledge that he—more devastating than any man she’s ever known—absolutely will if not handled correctly.

It’s like holding a thundering storm in her bare hands.

Layla stares wide-eyed and astonished, so thoroughly unaware of what he’s accusing her of that she struggles to speak around the hard lump in her throat. He leans closer yet, clutching her with all the same strength, tenderness and menace of the ocean cradling a ship.

“I killed her,” he whispers, the words passing between them like a confession to God himself. He’s so near, she could rest her forehead against his if she wanted. “I killed her for lying to me. I’ll kill you, too.”

Madelyn Stillwell. The name returns to her like a ghost, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling. Or was it Stormfront? The unnamed mother of his child? One was the victim of a domestic terrorist, one committed suicide, and the third is yet undetermined. All of them are apparent casualties of Homelander’s turbulent presence in their lives. Is she to be the fourth in a string of tragedies? Rage swells so suddenly in her heart that she almost chokes on the fire of it. What right does he have to interrogate her and threaten her?

“Are you glad?” She asks, her voice steady despite the tremble in her hand holding his wrist in turn. “Are you glad to have killed her?”

His expression flips as if he’s been struck, crinkled brows shooting up. “What?”

“Will you be glad to have killed me?” She asks tightly, her nails biting ineffectual crescents into his titanium flesh. Her tone is sharp and no longer meant to soothe. She speaks to cut. “Or will you just be even more alone?”

Like hers, his eyes turn glassy. “No,” he says softly. She doesn’t know if that’s an answer or a plea.

“Let me go,” she tells him firmly, fighting to hold onto the fires of her own indignant anger. His abrupt flashes of softness and vulnerability compromise her resolve.

“Go where, Layla?” He snaps, suddenly loud again. His broken desperation and seething anger make his voice reedy. “Where the fuck could you go that I wouldn’t still feel you? Kill you, fuck you, love you; you’re in my fucking head!”

You’re all the fucking same!

She isn’t dead, but he’s treating her like a ghost nonetheless. As if she’s already one of the many specters haunting him.

“You love me?” She asks him, snatching that precarious lifeline out of the messy slurry of his words. She’s not sure that he knows the meaning of it.

Does she?

The tension in Homelander’s face goes slack, stricken to hear those words fall from her lips. His mouth opens and closes as he tries and fails to form the right words. It’s too vulnerable to say yes, and too complicated to say no. Ultimately, he can’t bear to answer first.

“Do you love me?” He asks, defensive, as if she were the one who brought the terrifying gravity of love into the equation in the first place. The weight of it turns her tongue to lead.

There’s an adolescent sense of fumbling in this moment that would be endearing if he were not clutching her jaw with inhuman strength, the whispered promise of her death hanging over them like a creaky guillotine. In another life, this could have been a very sweet confession.

“Do you?” He prompts her again, desperate. He cups the back of her head with his other hand, taking a step closer. His chest bumps her forearms where she has them tightly braced, hands clamped tightly over his wrist. It’s a meager barrier to uphold, but she does so steadfastly. His hold on her is suffocating, his agonized ocean eyes filling up her vision. He’s larger than life, leaving space for little else in her life ever since he crashed into it.

Even when he’s gone, she is consumed by him like a fever that refuses to be sweated out. When her career first began, she knew well enough not to entertain superhumans. It wasn’t a bias she held against them per se, but the opposite: she knew from the start that she would become intoxicated on the danger of them. Homelander is the epitome of everything she’s ever been too afraid to let herself love. He’s the first person to ever be enough of a risk to scare her, and enough of a reward to satiate her. She can feel her destruction lurking in him just as plainly as her parents found their own in their shared thrill seeking.

“I want to,” she whispers, a secret she’s denied even to herself until now. “But you’re making it so fucking hard.”

He exhales roughly, something like hope softening the tension in his expression before he screws his eyes shut, another wave of agony contorting his features. His forehead thumps gently against hers. “I don’t know—I don’t know how else to be. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to make it easy.”

Finally, he releases her jaw from the snare of his grip, only to take either side of her face between his hands, pulling away to look at her. He’s always been younger than her in a multitude of ways, but in this moment, the agonized youth in his eyes takes her breath away. “I was—I was made to be loved. I was supposed to be everyone’s hero. They poked and prodded me, manufactured me in a-a fucking lab to be perfect, but no one—”

Layla’s eyes widen, her heart seized. What?

Homelander bares his teeth like a wounded animal, breath hissing in and out of his clenched teeth as tears roll down his cheeks. “But no one does, no one fucking does, no one loves me,” he says through his teeth, nearly choking on the words. “I don’t understand how to make it easy, Layla,” he sobs, hands shaking on either side of her face. She can’t tell if it’s from sheer emotion, or the restraint it takes not to crush her between them.

“So just—tell me what I need to do, please,” he begs her, devastatingly beautiful in the same way the sprawling webbing of a shattered mirror is. “Tell me how to be easy to love.”

Breathless, Layla stands there with her heart bleeding so freely, so painfully, that she swears there’s warm blood soaking onto the pristine white blouse she wears.

There is a monster in Homelander. At times, she can feel the claws of it in his grip on her. Hear it growling in her ear. When it comes to handling monsters, banishment is always the remedy. Slay the beast, free the man. Homelander’s monster is not so easily felled, nor is she certain it should be. He was not born with sharp teeth and claws. From what she’s gathered, they were filed into fine points long before he was a man.

People like to think of the monster within them as an outside force. Corruption, propaganda, the devil. Layla has spent enough time in bed with people’s deviance to know better. The proverbial devil is not outside of humanity, but embedded deep within It cannot be safely extracted any more than a beating heart can.

But corruption isn’t a heart—it’s a stomach.

It craves and yearns, it twists and aches and growls when hungry. Just as Eve ate of the apple, humans take bites of sin to satiate their monster. Like people, monsters come in a wide variety of shapes, temperaments, and cravings. Some beasts can be satisfied with a nibble here and there. Others require more. Some never learned how to know when they’re full.

After all he has been deprived of, Homelander may never be truly satisfied, but does that mean he doesn’t deserve to be fed at all?

No, Layla thinks. It doesn’t.

Both of their faces are streaked wet with tears as they hold one another’s gazes. Gingerly, she brings her own hands up to cup his face, wiping his tears with her thumbs. “Okay,” she whispers, afraid her own voice of reason will hear her. “Okay, my darling.”

Relief helps smooth the crease between his brows, but it doesn’t dissipate entirely. “Say it,” he urges her, the hands still upon her face giving the faintest nudge. “Say you love me.”

“I love you,” she says, teary and quiet, but with conviction. She leans in, and he allows her to, no longer holding her firmly in place for fear that she might suddenly vanish. “I love you,” she says again, a promise that ghosts his lips. He shudders. “I love you. You’re in my head,” she says, echoing his own words back at him. Her lips brush against his in a not-quite kiss. “You were from the start.”

He exhales a pained, keening sound, pushing his fingers into her hair and pulling her deep into a feverish kiss. His hunger for her is voracious, and his desire is a force she might not withstand—not by virtue of its violence, but because of its sheer magnitude. He kisses her fiercely, one arm slipping around her middle to keep her body from bowing under the weight of his love.

“I love you, too,” he breathes, the relief in his voice palpable. She takes the air of it into her lungs like it might save her. “I love you so fucking much.”

It’s dangerous, she knows, to trick herself into believing she can satiate his mountainous hunger. Danger is like an ice bath, though. You grow accustomed to the bite of it.

Morning light creeps slowly into Layla’s condo. Homelander trails her as closely as her own shadow, breathing in against the crook of her neck while she cooks breakfast. He’s partially dressed in his undershirt and underwear, his suit folded neatly upon her vanity for the time being. It’s nice to feel his arms around her without the obstructive padding of his suit. Without the bulk of it, she fits more closely against him, his superhuman warmth like a particularly cuddly space heater pressed against her back.

“One egg or two?” She asks him, plucking one from the container on the counter.

“Mmm… Two,” he says, the deliberation making it sound more like a trivia answer than a preference.

She cracks four eggs into the pan, one at a time. “Over easy, medium, hard…?”

He grins against her neck, and she gives his hand at her hip a playful little swat with the back of her silicone spatula. “I dunno,” he says, nuzzling her. “However you like it.”

“Have you never had eggs before?” She asks, looking back at him.

He’s got his chin propped up on her shoulder. His gaze flickers up from the sizzling pan to meet hers. “Just scrambled.”

…I was made… manufactured in a fucking lab…

She swallows a small lump in her throat, turning back to the eggs. She flips them all over easy and plates them with the toast. When she takes the toast off of the plates and begins slicing them into strips, Homelander makes an inquisitive noise.

“You’ll see,” she says cryptically, shooing him to the table as she plates their breakfasts and carries them to the table.

Homelander sits, and she sets his plate down in front of him. She sits on the adjoining corner to his, but within seconds he has a grip on her seat. The chair legs groan as he slides her closer to him, smiling at her look of surprise. “That’s better,” he says, his knee bumping hers.

He’d likely prefer she be in his lap. There’s always a lingering sense that she’s never quite close enough, even when they’re pressed tightly against one another. He might not be satisfied until he finds a way to open her up and crawl inside.

Huffing a small laugh, she gestures to his plate. “Use the toast sticks to break the yolk,” she tells him, and then demonstrates on her own meal, jabbing a piece of toast into the soft yellow yolk, coating it properly before taking a bite.

Blinking, Homelander does the same. He hums appreciatively, nodding with a mouthful of food.

“My gramma insisted that all food tastes better when it’s dipped. She always made my breakfasts this way,” she explains, her smile tinged with bittersweet nostalgia. “I can’t remember the last time I did it for myself.”

Silence follows. She glances up to find Homelander staring intently at his plate, a cut of toast pinched between his fingers, dripping yolk back down onto the egg. Layla takes a breath to speak, but that inhale is all it takes to snap him from his thoughts, his sharp blue eyes meeting hers.

“Ryan would like this, I think,” he says. She can tell he’s working to keep his voice conversational.

“Ryan?” She echoes, though it clicks a second after she says it.

“My son,” he confirms, clearing his throat gently. She shares his trepidation as he enters this particular topic of conversation, considering the fallout the last time it was broached. He dips the toast again and takes another bite, seemingly buying time with deliberate chews.

Layla bites her tongue, choking back her own knee-jerk response. She likes children just fine, in theory. She’s had very little practical experience. Still, words of unbidden advice bubble up on her tongue as if she’s an expert. She wants to tell Homelander to go to the boy, talk to him. He told her that she had taken everything from him, presumably referring to his very public meltdown, but that isn’t true in a number of ways. He has a son out there somewhere, confused and without either of his parents.

It sets a sympathetic churn in her gut. Grieving her own parents as a child made an adult of her far too soon. She may not have raised any children herself, but she can speak as a child who was left behind.

“He’s nine. He’s strong,” Homelander continues tentatively. “I mean, really strong. Strong like me,” he says, pride underlining each word, driving out the hesitance. “He’s so much like me. I never thought I’d see it, but he’s real. He’s—” he breaks into a small, incredulous laugh. “—He’s a miracle. A real, born miracle.”

Unlike you, she surmises from his tone. He said that Vought had made him. The world has been rocked by the revelation that supes are the result of Vought’s pharmaceutical ventures, but the way Homelander talks of his son makes him sound different. An exception to that fact, somehow.

“You should go to him,” she encourages, still holding onto a level of cautiousness on the matter. “I was left behind by my parents. I don’t wish it on anyone.”

“I didn’t leave him behind,” Homelander corrects sharply. She was right to tread lightly. “He left me,” he says, though he doesn’t speak with anger so much as he does woundedness. He’s never expressed anything but love—bordering on reverence—for his son, and yet he has completely roadblocked himself from reaching out.

It’s complicated, he told her before.

“He’s nine. It’s not his job to uncomplicate things or bridge the gap,” she says as gently as she can muster, though even she can hear the weariness in her own voice. “It’s yours. He needs you to be the adult, to help the world make sense. It’s one thing to give him space, but you can’t abandon him.”

At first, there is a flash of petulant defiance in Homelander’s eyes, obvious in the tight set of his jaw. To Layla’s relief, however, it fades into quiet consideration. He looks back down to his half-finished plate.

“You can’t take personally what anyone, much less a child, does out of grief,” she says softly, reaching out to put her hand atop his where it rests on the table. “Ryan needs wisdom. Support. People who love him. He needs his father.”

He looks up at her with a level of vulnerability in those ocean blue eyes that never fails to pull her into the depths. “You think so?”

“I know so,” she says firmly. To this day, she can’t imagine what she wouldn’t do for just one more day with her own father.

Slowly, the wateriness of his gaze becomes a sparkle. Homelander smiles. He has as many smiles as an ice cream shop has flavors, and this one says he’s just had an idea.

“What?” Layla asks after a beat, an edge of suspicion to her tone.

“Nothing,” he says placatingly. His smile shifts. She knows that flavor of smile. That one means he’s lying. “Just relieved is all. Could I use your phone?”

It’s a wonder the ease with which Homelander glides from mood to mood, as if he puts each one neatly in a box before he takes out the next one. Layla only hesitates for a second before she nods, sliding out of her chair to go and fetch her cellphone. She still needs to text Annie.

“Jesus,” she says softly, staring at her screen with a deep crease in her brow.

“What?” Homelander asks, leaning in his seat.

She has thirty missed calls, and about as many text messages.

THIS IS ASHLEY BARRET. HAVE YOU SEEN HOMELANDER? IF YOU KNOW WHERE HOMELANDER IS, PLEASE CONTACT ME. PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU KNOW WHERE HOMELANDER IS. MISS ALDEN PLEASE CONTACT ME AND ONLY ME IF YOU HAVE SEEN HOMELANDER. IF YOU CAN PLEASE INFORM HOMELANDER HE IS UP.

Ashley Barret. Layla recalls the name from Homelander’s initial booking. She had been the one to handle the details and arrange payment.

“Ashley Barret is very desperate to find you,” she says, reading the texts as she walks back towards him. “She says that you’re… up.” She stops at the table, looking at him. “What does that mean?”

The chair legs scrape audibly against the floor when Homelander stands up. “Give me that,” he says, taking the phone from her outstretched hand. His expression pinches tightly as he scrolls through the messages, lips parted. “I’m… up,” he says slowly, processing the words that mean nothing to Layla. With a tap, she hears a dial tone. Homelander holds the phone to his ear.

“Miss Alden–” answers a feminine voice immediately.

“What do you mean I’m up?” Homelander interrupts, a harshness to his voice that Layla doesn’t expect to hear outside of an argument.

“21 points with your base,” Ashley says breathlessly.

Homelander’s expression softens, becoming wonder-like. “What did you say?”

“21 points. They loved your speech!”

He looks at Layla, familiar glassiness returning to his eyes. He lifts his loose hand, which curls slowly into a fist, as if he’s taking hold of something precious, some nebulous concept of grace he had thought lost.

“A massive 44% uptick with white males in the Rust Belt.”

“Yes,” Homelander hisses through his teeth, pumping his fist triumphantly. “Fuck yes! Yes!” With that same hand, he suddenly takes hold of the back of Layla’s neck, pulling her into a deep kiss. Her noise of surprise is muffled against his lips, his tongue a slick demand on hers.

“They’re saying you’re confident and unapologetic!” Ashley’s voice continues to prattle from the phone, though Layla’s finding it hard to pay attention with the way Homelander’s taking a fistful of her hair, bowing her back, kissing her hungrily. “That you’re not afraid to be yourself!”

He outright moans against her lips. She breaks away from him with a gasp, hand pressed against her chest. “Should I give you a moment alone with Ashley?” She asks breathlessly, only half-joking. The man is absolutely alight against her, heat radiating in his touches. The news trips an alarm bell somewhere in the back of Layla’s mind, but she’s struggling to process it in the wake of his voraciousness.

“Christ, no,” he says. The phone hits the ground with a clatter, Ashley’s confused voice continuing distantly on the line. He cups both sides of Layla’s face and pulls her back in, exhaling a pleased little growl against her lips. “Did you hear? They love me. They fucking love me,” he says between kisses, breathless and downright giddy.

Drawing back, he strokes her cheeks tenderly with his thumbs, his smile broad, eyes shining with relief, joy, and something Layla can’t quite place, though it causes a small knot to form in her gut.

“They want me to be myself.”

#this chapter took everything out of me but it's here and i hope to god it doesn't take this long for the next chap #bc i already have portions written and i know where it's all going!!!#blood sweat and tears in this fic fr lmao #homelander x oc #homelander x original character #homelander fanfiction #eat your ego #my writing

81 notes · View notes

choccy-milky · 2 months

Note

I’ve already left a comment on AO3 but MY GOD CHOCCY it is rare that I shed REAL ACTUAL TEARS at a fic but here I am sniffling at my work desk trying to pretend I’m not thinking about how precious Seb and Clora’s love is 🥺😭💜

Honestly fantastic work, I hope you keep writing after this story is completed because I will read whatever you write at this point 💜

AWW BAHAHA i am both sorry and happy that the chap made u sniffle at ur desk at work🥺💖AND ILL DEFS KEEP WRITING!! im so happy ppl like my story and clora and seb and my writing in general😭💖THANK U💖💖

AYO WHAT??? HUH!!!!!!?!!!!!! I WOULD BE HONOURED???? ANON IF YOU DO THIS (OR SORRY, I MEAN IF YOUR *FRIEND* DOES THIS) YOU BETTER SHOW PICS!!! U ARE LEGALLY OBLIGATED!!!! now im just curious what drawing ur considering👀👀

live footage of me rn

ME TOO I HAVE SUCH OLDER SEB AND CLORA BRAINROT RN, i actually have another short comic of them in the works based off of a oneshot someone is writing of older seb/clora that ive read the WIP of and i 100000% consider it canon and IM SO EXCITED FOR IT😭😭😭LOL i dont really have any headcanons tho, i need to give older seb/clora some thought 🤔feel free to send some tbh🤔🤔 (ALSO THANK YOU💖💖) in the meantime heres some wip panels from the current oneshot comic to tie u over on older seb/clora content. LOVE ME SOME ANGRY OVERPROTECTIVE SEB

#ask #also to the anon asking if i already have the next chapter written I DONT SORRY LOL BUT THANK U IM GLAD UR SO EXCITED #gonna try to update faster this time around bc of that cliffhanger LOOL see?? im nice #AND TATTOO ANON IF THIS REALLY HAPPENS I SWEAR TO GOD U BETTER SHOW ME

92 notes · View notes

padfootastic · 7 months

Text

hello! i am back with yet another…thing. thank u for the tag @lovelymasks <3 (i realised, upon second reading, that this was supposed to be a sunday snippet but i’m an idiot n therefore this is now a saturday snippet mwuah)

I think you should go to a Healer, Sirius.

Why, he’d asked, flippant. What was there to do with a Healer when you were a convict on the run? Besides, Sirius was wrong in a way that couldn’t be made right. He was past the point of return. Healers would’ve barely known what to do with him before Azkaban, let alone in the condition he was in now.

Because you look like a stiff wind will blow you over, Harry’d answered, though the answering flippancy didn’t quite land the way he intended because what Sirius heard was ‘Because I don't want to lose anyone else.’

What Harry didn't say, and Sirius didn’t want to hear, was ‘Because I can’t lose another parent.’

He quietly acquiesced after that. The trembling, hopeful smile growing on his godson’s face was enough to wipe away all apprehensions after that.

Until now, when Harry was at Hogwarts, and he was second guessing this whole business.

Did he really need a Healer, like, really?

One look at the mirror in front of him gave him a solid, sturdy answer.

He was dressed in his old rags and it was a testament to the conditions of Azkaban that clothes from when he was younger, before hitting his final growth spurts, were barely just fitting him now. Sirius’ back was almost constantly bent these days--all days spent curled up in a ball seemed to have reshaped his skeletal structure, who knew--each vertebrae gaining a distinct notch in the column of his skin. His stomach was a fascinating blend of too small and too bloated. He couldn’t keep anything down, but he wasn’t able to eat much either. A mystery for the ages.

Less said about his face, the better. Sirius wasn’t vain, never had any reason to be, but there was a certain…pride he’d maintained, a level of outward appearance that was considered bare minimum for a Black, a conditioning he’d never managed to shake off.

It was that conditioning itching at him now, turning him away from any reflective surface before he could see his distorted features, grotesque and inhuman, staring back at him.

And ultimately, it was that, he realised with a shameful sort of guilt, that pushed him to see a Healer. Not his godson’s pleading look, not concern for his wellbeing--but leftovers from an upbringing that he hated, his mother’s words he couldn’t stop hearing, his father’s sharp commands.

Ultimately, it was his blood that made him give in, as it always did.

further tagging @jmagnabo92 @soopsiedaisies @groundzero-v 💜

#sirius black #harry potter #mwuahahahahaha #i am feeling. on top of the world #bc ive written like. 3k for FoD in the past couple days #and writing has been so hard recently!!!#but i had a therapy sesh the other day that actually literally rewired my neural pathways #so i guess here i am. turned a new leaf or wtv #anyway! this is from FoD ofc. from way down so it probably wont be posted for a bit #but i rly like it #and im trying to keep from posting the entirety of the nasty molly-sirius fight i just wrapped up #(ive already bothered the pf server w way too many snippets hehehe)#so this is what we're left wih #im so excited for the next chapter (even tho i sort of have to figure out what'll be in it--the fight or the trial or sumn else)#but just. yeah. its very fun.#pen’s writing #fic: foundations of decay

65 notes · View notes

theothermaidoftarth · 3 months

Text

we’re the ashes on the ground summary

Multi-chapter | M/16+ | Nettles x Cregan Stark

While the Wolf of Winterfell is away, the hounds of the north do play. In the ashes of civil war, a wilding raider makes a move which will change everything.

Nettles has a fine life in the Mountains of the Moon. Worshipped as a goddess by the mountain Valemen, she should want for nothing. The deadly dance has left the dragons of House Targaryen dead, and now she alone rides the largest one in all the world. It was a heady ascension going from orphaned bastard to dragonrider, let alone traitor to goddess.

Her world is turned upon its head yet again when a decree from the new boy-king and his regents sees Nettles pardoned and granted land in the North. But not out of the kindness of their hearts.

Sylas the Grim has led a force three thousand strong across the Wall while Cregan Stark and most of his fighting men are far south in King’s Landing; his actions cut short the Hour of the Wolf and the Warden of the North's quest for justice. Cregan turns his eyes to home and hearth, bristling with a need for vengeance and a new ambition to make a name for himself against the wildings like Theon Stark before him.

As a new era dawns around them, Nettles and Cregan find themselves drawn to each other against all odds. Can they transverse their changing world together, opening their hearts to one another and the prospect of happiness and love, or will the shadows of the past prove too strong?

Let me know if you're interested in joining the taglist!

#f&b fic #f&b au #nettles #nettles asoiaf #nettles f&b #we’re the ashes on the ground #nettles x cregan stark #nettles x cregan #rare pair #multichapter #OtherTarthianMaidWrites #rarepair #fire and blood fic #coming soon #current wip #My aim is to start posting when all the chapters have been written which I hope shall be within the next couple of months #most of the chapters have been written already

25 notes · View notes

stitchedragdoll · 3 months

Note

Hello! I wanted to ask. What do you think about Miss Peacekeeper? Do you hate, like, respect her?

Creator answering

Because there is a bunch of asks about Stitcher's relationship to Keeper, which is great ! I can go into nuance about those two

I wanna ramble about Stitcher creation too haha

Stitcher as been made because our story needed villains. I made her to he a real bother to Observer, a nemesis for Messenger and an antithesis for Keeper.

Much like Keeper, Stitcher is in some way in the theme of healing, as well as grief and death. Keeper helps heals the heart and gives people a place to rest, and Stitcher learned from that and wants to do the same, she wants to fix things and make it all better. Only Stitcher is going about it a very wrong way and has people around her that encourages this path. It's a lot of nuances but the themes are pretty important to me at least and I think it's interesting dynamics. Keeper somehow helped create what Stitcher is today and Stitcher knows it.

Stitcher's core theme is processing grief, and especially, she herself is unable to do it, so she thinks she heals when she doesn't ...But that much I'll get into later.

So, to answer the question

Stitcher respects and has a bit of admiration for Keeper !

This is one of the very first doodles of Stitcher, made back in early summer right after her creation ! It's been so long !

There is A LOT of content I don't post about Stitcher because it would be spoiler *cries* but I so want to show it

#welcome home au #welcome home multiverse #stitcher julie #wh au #wh multiverse #welcome home #wttmv #julie joyful #chit chats #I'm currently putting in order the asks to reveal Stitcher's backstory #i finally have enough asks to get it all in order !#isn't that great #i'm a little artblock and it will take time but hopefully before next year I will have answered about her full backstory #cause oh boi it's long #i want to make a comic version but there's actually already written chapters

37 notes · View notes

raayllum · 5 months

Text

Chapter length: 10.5k Summary: Ezran's Summit meeting has a few hiccups. Both Janai and Karim reach decisions regarding their sibling. And Callum and Rayla navigate the aftermath of leaving Katolis. a/n: featuring Grark, Aanya's adoptive older brother, and I love him

CHAPTER 5: Heavy is the Head

Queen Aanya had long been a friend of Katolis.

King Harrow had delivered her mother’s ring to her regent personally when she was too young to do much more than blink at it, and cry in confusion as the days turned into weeks and her mothers still did not return. She’d attended her first ball in Katolis, and the king had always kindly inquired after her without making comments about how much she’d grown or how tall she was getting like all the other monarchs. He’d treated her like a child while simultaneously treating her like a queen, a delicate balance she’d appreciated and was sure he’d passed down onto his sons.

Admittedly, Aanya didn’t know Prince Callum that well considering she’d saved his life. He’d been energetic if overly eager on the way back to the Pentarchy with their armies, and then moody and flighty once the boys’... friend had disappeared. The rest of the Pentarchy had been told that the Moonshadow elf, Rayla, had gone off on a personal mission of sorts for the boys, but Aanya knew the truth was far more worrying, and that she was far more akin to missing.

Ezran had been bereaved, too, but in a different way. Still always able to look ahead, still always able to force some cheer, still always able to wear his crown and a smile and chip away at the other monarchs’ egos and reservations until he got what he was advocating for. Most of the time.

Grark had encouraged her to make friends with him. “It might do you well,” her older brother said, dark hair falling over his eyes, “to have someone your own age around. He’s a monarch, too.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” she’d replied dryly, but much to Grark’s fond smugness, they had become friends—sending letters across their borders of daily matters and complaints rather solely diplomatic relations, weathering Neolandia and Del Bar’s ire together over their fallen forces, seeing one another a bright spot at otherwise stuffy or droll meetings and galas.

Read from the beginning here

#rayllum #tdp ezran #tdp #the dragon prince #the sunfire royal family #fic: teach me how to name the bigger light #my fic #fic #this is the longest chapter so far and i'm so mad about it #next chapter will probably be out much sooner bc decent chunks are already written

35 notes · View notes

we-were-so-beautiful · 4 months

Text

4. shower

wow look it's another chapter!!! like... not that long after the last one, even! honestly I had the first 3 sections of this basically entirely written not long after finishing the last one, but eventually I decided I should probably do literally anything else for a while (hyperfocus is a real dick lol), and so I'm just now getting back to it. I thought this was gonna be on the shorter side, but it's about the same as the last one, around 1.3k! there's a pretty important reveal in this one...

Content warnings for this chapter: box boy universe, pet whump, dehumanization, conditioning, infected wounds, (severe) illness. As always, please let me know if there's anything else I need to tag.

[masterlist] [chapter three]

Vanessa’s never been particularly sensitive to scents—it’s a saving grace, in a mind where too much light or sound or texture can make her feel like she’s dying. But by the time the guy lying shaking on the seats behind her practically falls out of the taxi in front of her stoop, even she’s having a hard time with the smell coming off of him. Given how the driver peels away with all his windows down the second she pulls the last scrap of soiled newspaper from his backseat, it probably isn’t just her.

She turns back to the guy, for the first time finally alone with him. She’s too short to be used to talking down to people, but he’s hunched himself into that weird curled-up position again, so when she speaks it's aimed vaguely toward the top of his head. “Okay. First things first, we’re getting your ass in the shower,” she tells him. “And then we can deal with the effects of my questionable life decisions.” She pauses for a moment, considers. “Well. This one, anyway.”

There’s no way she’s getting him in through the front like this. Too many stairs, and too much dirt. The garden door will have to cut it. She motions for him to follow her down the alley, and he unfurls himself just enough to shuffle after her.

As soon as the shadows close in around them, she looks back over her shoulder. When she’s satisfied that no one can see them, she unclasps the collar from around his neck and tosses it, leash and all, into the garbage.

—

Vanessa can’t say she’s ever been grateful for the fact that her parents are insane enough to have a swimming pool in the basement of their New York fucking brownstone. Quite frankly, she still isn’t; they got the fucker installed when she was a kid and she screamed for so many days they finally packed her off to a hotel with her nanny of the week just to shut her up. Which they probably should have done in the first place, given that she was nine and there was a jackhammer in her fucking basement.

What she is grateful for now, though, is that the part of this floor that isn’t taken up by the pool—or the hot tub, or the weirdly redundant multi-person bathtub—is a shower stall the size of her literal bedroom. Complete with benches, and removable showerheads, and, she’s hoping, everything else she could possibly need right now.

“In here,” she motions, and he drags himself onto the tiles. “I’d offer you the weirdly redundant multi-person bathtub, but you’ve barely been able to keep your head up all day and the last thing I need is to fucking drown a guy in my basement. Also no offense but you’re literally so dirty right now I’d have to drain the fucker the second you got in. After this you can have a bath whenever you want, if you’re into that sorta thing, but for right now you’re getting a damn rinse.”

—

Once he’s more or less situated on the built-in shower bench, propped up in the corner in hopes it’ll keep him from falling ass over, Vanessa gets to work, still fully clothed down to her chucks on the marble tile. She unhooks a showerhead and aims it at the drain while it warms up. “Is this okay?” she asks, pointing it at his feet, and he flinches sluggishly but doesn’t respond either way.

“I don’t know what that means, guy.” She tests the water again with her hand. “It can’t be that bad, can it?” she muses out loud. “It’s the same temperature I’d use for me, and fuck knows I’m… y’know, picky. So if you want it different you gotta tell me, okay.”

He doesn’t tell her shit. But he doesn’t flinch too much harder when she moves the stream of water up toward his knees, either, and she figures that’s the best she’s gonna get.

She leans over him and focuses the showerhead on his hair. It’s matted stiff as tree bark, the water barely able to permeate through the layers of filth. “Shit, I dunno man, your hair’s got so much crap in it. Not to mention it wouldn’t surprise me if that shelter gave you goddamn lice.” She shudders. “Might be better off just cutting it short.”

There’s a noise she barely registers as a gasp before his ice-pale eyes fly open and he clutches her arm, quicker than she’s seen him move by fucking light years. She jerks automatically out of his grip, dropping the showerhead in her alarm, but he fixes her with a lidless, panicky stare and the eye contact is so startling she’s frozen to the spot. “Please…” he wheezes, “don’t.”

“You fuckin’ what, dude?”

“Don’t… cut… my hair.”

She blinks, astonished. “That’s the first thing you’ve said all fucking day, isn’t it?” He doesn’t offer another. “Christ. Typical fuckin’ me not to notice.” She huffs quietly. “Well shit, dude, I guess if you give enough of a fuck to speak up about it it can stay. But so help me if I find a single fucking nit in there.”

He whimpers quietly, squeezing his eyes shut, but he doesn’t say another word.

—

Vanessa gingerly retrieves the showerhead from where it’s spattering up at the ceiling, along with an oversized lace bath pouf and a mostly-full bottle of body wash she’s pretty sure is fucking designer. If you could see me now, Mom, she thinks, squirting the gel at his left shoulder, the one closest to her. You… well, you probably still wouldn’t give a shit.

She touches the pouf to his sullied skin as gently as she can, and she knows she’s not well-coordinated at the best of times but she really doesn’t feel like she deserves the choked-off sound he makes or the way he shrinks away from her when she makes contact. “Oh cmon, guy, look I know but you gotta let me get this shit off you, there’s no way it’s not fucking your shit up worse than it already is,” she cajoles, and whatever she’s said it makes something in his posture go slack and he rolls back toward her, opening himself to her touch. “Thanks, uh, I think,” she hedges, and begins to lather him up with slow, concentrative strokes. She flicks the shower back on, sluicing suds and dirt from his skin in equal measure.

"Ohhh, fucking yiiiiikes," Vanessa says softly.

With the first layer of filth washed away, Vanessa can see the far grimmer reality that’s been hidden underneath. Rows of jagged, infected gashes streak their way across his shoulder to his chest. The skin around them burns an angry red, the wounds themselves all but smothered in sickly whitish-yellow. What narrow swathes of skin remain intact are mottled purple, and now that she’s touching him, she can tell he’s just… way too much hotter than any person should ever be.

She lowers the temperature of the water and keeps washing him, afraid to look but needing to see. Each stroke only reveals more of the same. His chest and left shoulder seem to have gotten most of the worst of it, but there are stripes across his arm, his back, his stomach, deep gouges in his legs. She hasn’t tried to touch his face yet, but now that she knows what to look for she thinks she can even see a scratch or several across his cheek, trailing up into his hairline. Jesus fuck.

It all makes a sinister sort of sense now, she thinks: the shallow breathing, the shivers, the near-total lack of response. And here she thought he just had regular rescuee trauma.

“Fuck,” she breathes out quietly, as the realization creeps over her like ice.

There’s something really, really wrong with this guy.

taglist: @maracujatangerine @pigeonwhumps @tragedyinblue @marchtothefuckingsea @octopus-reactivated @briars7

#whump #pet whump #rescue whump #recovery whump #bbu #box boy universe #vanessa + juniper #disaster caretaker #imperfectly consistent #tw dehumanization #tw conditioning #tw illness #tw injury #tw infection #do I like... need to tag for language?#I know using swears is pretty standard for bbu/pet whump stories #but I also use them kind of a uh. non standard amount.#I kinda feel like vanessa's house needs a tw of its own lmao #I honestly have fun making up all the increasingly ridiculous rich person shit #anyway I've got a decent bit of the next chapter written already (wrote it at some point back when I was working on 2 or 3 tbh)#and that's more or less it for stuff I have fully written out in advance #(from the main storyline at least)#but a lot of the stuff that follows that is stuff I've had in my head for ages #so hopefully it won't be too hard to write out! knock on wood #sometimes the things you think about that much come easily when you finally write them #and sometimes they're nigh on impossible bc you get obsessive with doing them justice #or at least just like. remembering all the ideas you've ever had for them when you finally sit down to write #hello it's me writing a novel in the tags again #anyway I've been falling asleep since somewhere in the middle of proofreading so I should probably wrap this up lol #if you read all this for some reason hi!

24 notes · View notes

thedemonscrawler · 10 months

Text

"the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial" Or– Eclipse has put too much effort into getting the star to give it up now. Even if it kills him.

Something with SAMS Eclipse, inspired by recent plot stuff (aka buddy that star is bad for your health, we're staging an intervention) because hooboy i cannot resist a self destructive spiral with an inevitable crash at the bottom, especially for our resident disaster

#fnaf security breach #the sun and moon show #tsams #fanfiction #i said eclipse escaped from the dryer #next part will probably go up in a week?#or a few days idk im playing it fast and loose here #its already written so #maybe now Clip will leave me alone and i can write on PS in peace #see i can write chapters of a normal length #i say like i didn't split the original oneshot into three parts because it was getting to about 12k words >>;;;#fanfic

58 notes · View notes

o-wyrmlight · 19 days

Text

Context: The end of Chapter 12 of A Toast to the Pigs. Or: Kim takes the jump into the harbor first.

#disco elysium #a toast to the pigs #i know that this is a week long but well. i already have most of the next chapter written out #just trying to figure out how to go about kim and the landing

17 notes · View notes

h3rmitsunited · 2 years

Text

Thinkin bout a merlin au where sorcerers get caught and trapped a la genie in a bottle and merlin was trapped by uther years ago and arthur comes across the bottle or lamp or whatever he's caught in and merlin pops out snarky and annoyed like yeah yeah three wishes or whatever but arthur has been so conditioned to see magic as evil that he is like no I am not making any wishes get away demon spawn and like whatever is keeping them in the bottle makes them only visible to the one that summoned them so nobody else can see merlin and arthur is half convinced he's going crazy and this merlin weirdo won't leave him alone and says he can't leave until he makes these wishes but he is not listening because magic is evil and he knows making a wish will corrupt him. But then of course merlin starts seeing the potential of arthur and guiding him to like do the right thing and they start becoming reluctant friends and merlin didn't talk about the whole uther imprisoning him thing because he sort of assumed arthur knew all about that and it's a bit of a sensitive subject but then as they get closer and maybe merlin instinctively saves arthur with his magic (without being asked or using the wishes) and then he tells arthur about it and arthur is like thats horrible I want to fix this and he's like I should use my wishes for that and like wishes idk some things to help magic and Camelot and then he has one wish left and he's like im gonna wish you free but then arthur gets hurt badly enough that merlins magic can't heal it unless he wishes it and begs arthur to use his last wish to save his own life instead of using it to free merlin and arthur is like uh uh nope and pulls a tangled and frees merlin and he's like suddenly visible and arthur dies but merlin is emrys and super powerful and without the bindings he like saves arthurs life with like a magic kiss because merthur rights lol and it's great and emotional and uther is so shocked he has a heart attack and dies the end

#kind of wanna write this but also i need to finish my witcher fic #and also the merlin fic i still have incomplete #but also imagine though.... itd be good #if there is already a fic like this out there pls send it to me #the only reason i would write this is to be able to read it but if it is written already and it would save me the trouble.... would be nice #merlin #merthur #arthur pendragon #merlin au #stupid brain giving me ideas ill never finish #i should be editing the next chapter of silver and honey and also writing the entire next chapter ill need to post the weel after #but no... more au ideas #work with me brain pls

783 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

willowandwilder

willow & wilder

narjisyehiasblog

سراب

studyblr-korean

Estudando Coreano

madeformargaret

Made for Margaret

ghai123

Untitled