#ogoa x reader

The Railroad Man x Non-binary Witch Reader

Pt. 2

Garbage summary: Witch lives alongside the railroad, they’re a community organizer, healer, teacher etc. After unsuccessfully trying to wrangle some control over the reader’s village, TRM gets a lot a little obsessed with controlling the town and the reader. The reader likes a challenge and is more curious about TRM than is safe and sane [Basically, where’s the TRM x Reader love? I mean he squicks me out in an attractive way? he’s an embodiment of capitalism and brutally uses people for his own gain… but hear me out]

TW: Mentions of bodily harm caused by working at the railroad. There will likely be more as I come up with ideas for this story.

The Man was by the rails again. You could see him from a gap in the curtains, standing tall on that hill, like a business man in a suit. You knew he was in a suit without even seeing him, gray like… mist wasn’t the right word, but neither was smoke… metal seemed more accurate, but only because he was always by those rails. Normally, you would have looked away by now, you always got the feeling he knew you were looking at him, but you fixed your attention more intensely as two figures seemed to rise from the hill coming from the rails. There was no stop, no station there, so why were these… men meeting there. As they came more into view, a sickening cold gripped your stomach.

They were not men.

They may look like men, but every fiber of your being screamed that they were not men, there was something important missing from them, gapping holes that would eat up a small village like yours. Not that the Man in the suit was a man either, but he felt less directly menacing to your village than the two dark shapes who looked like men, but were not men. The Man in the suit had never directly harmed anyone in the village, but you knew, you knew he was responsible, somehow, for the men brought into your mama’s home heat exhausted, blistered, broken, and destroyed in one way or another.

That was five years ago now. Some of the men made it through mostly intact, healed up by your mama’s efforts and your own, but others were carted away. You were told it was to better doctors than “just folk healers”. The odds didn’t seem like they would improve much for those men. That was the first time you’d seen him, and he’d strolled right into town in his gray suit attempting to… recruit young men. Tear them from their mother’s arms, rip them from their apprenticeships, and take them from their youth, all for a job, at the railroad. Something had come over you, fear, rage, terror, and something green pulled at the edge of your vision. The man turned to stare at you, you’d never forget the way his gray eyes narrowed and his smile grew sharp as a blade.

“We see what a job at the railroad does to men.” you bit out cooly, while his smile seemed to grow. Everything about him seemed gray except that smile, brilliantly white and predatory.

“Of course. There are many risks that come with important work like this, but there are wonderful rewards available for those loyal to hard work and ambition to connect this world“ he crooned with a voice like oil, slippery, dark, and cool. It was alluring you’d admit. It was a voice, that if you weren’t careful, might tug at the small gaps where the green was dark and rich like rot and raging like a bear. It might pull forth the part of you frustrated with how people talked to you, how they treated you. How they treated people who weren’t quite exactly what they were like, people who were different.

With your head spinning you shook your head, and willed. You willed him to leave, you will your community to stay strong and not be swayed by the Man’s charms. You willed them to remember how lovely their homes were, their friends, their loved ones…

You leaned closer to the window now, nearly half a foot from the glass, eyes narrowed, as the Man gestured vaguely, he seemed relaxed and confident, but it was too dark to tell exactly what was happening. Bile rose up a little in the back of your throat as you considered how he might just be telling them where your village was. You got the feeling he wasn’t one for communities like yours. Communities where people shared their abilities with one another rather than fighting tooth and nail for power and profit.

The men nodded. Turned. And walked down the hill. Towards the trains. Away from your community. A sigh slipped past your lips, and whistled over your mug as it rose to your face. Those men wouldn’t be coming yet, and you hoped they never would.

The Railroad Man x Non-binary Witch Reader

Pt. 1

Garbage summary: Witch lives alongside the railroad, they’re a community organizer, healer, teacher etc. After unsuccessfully trying to wrangle some control over the reader’s village, TRM gets a lot a little obsessed with controlling the town and the reader. The reader likes a challenge and is more curious about TRM than is safe and sane [Basically, where’s the TRM x Reader love? I mean he squicks me out in an attractive way? he’s an embodiment of capitalism and brutally uses people for his own gain… but hear me out]

TW: Mentions of bodily harm caused by working at the railroad. There will likely be more as I come up with ideas for this story.

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You could feel his smile on your skin, somehow, it was hard to explain. It has always felt dirty and sickly to have been caught looking, but even more so by him. You knew he wouldn’t get close, you’d warded the place so well that even well-meaning visitors wandered around lost for a bit before finding who they were visiting and anyone who wasn’t meant to be here never seemed to notice any of it. This helped prevent people from banks coming to evict community members because the bank decided they owned this little village jammed like a doorstop into the edge of the woods.

Still, there was a feeling of unease, and the next three hours were spent reinforcing the wards. He may not have succeeded in destroying the town to make way for newer capital last time, but his presence on the hill every week now, it used to only be once a month when he could pretend he was hidden by a moonless night, made you nervous. 

You didn’t get much sleep after that.

The morning brought a light that activated a small, but treatable, headache behind your eyes and a harsh knock at the door. It was a rhythm rushed and broken, so you knew who it was before you even opened the door. 

A dark-haired boy stood on the porch, stood was a kind way to phrase it, more like pacing in place to get his energy contained. Isaiah Maddox was twelve, big for his age, and strong as an ox, but he was twitchy and needed to be outdoors. He loved running errands for you in exchange for whatever you had decided to bake that day.

“Finished with your chores already?” you feigned disbelief. Isaiah had two sets of chores, one in the morning, and a longer one after dinner meant to boil off any of that excess energy in him before supper. 

Isaiah grinned “Not unless you got any more for me!”

You thought hard about it, you didn’t really want him to go into the woods and outside your wards if you could help it, not with whatever strange meeting the Man had, you didn’t see him as the helping-people-out-of-the-goodness-of-his-heart type and whoever he helped was likely the same. The best bet was to pick things he liked to do in town, that would help him stay busy and safe, but not be too suspicious about it or he’d know the man who led his father out of his life was slinking around the town again. You didn’t know how, but that boy knew more than was good for him, and he had too much energy to keep any of it to himself

“Well, I was thinking about fixing that fence there and then heading over to my mama’s place”, you said with a smile knowing she’d be able to come up with plenty of things to keep Isaiah out of trouble and help you figure out what to do. 

It seemed to do the trick, the boy’s face somehow lit up even more. 

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The Man had given them business cards and you barely saw them, grey and shining, as they were tucked away into shirt pockets, hat bands, shoes, really any place they could be easily and reliably stored. Isaiah was holding one despite being far too young for the type of labor the railroad required and staring at it with a puzzled expression, he mumbled something that you couldn’t quite hear.

“What was that, Isaiah?”

“Shit business card doesn't even have a way to reach him” he grumbled.

Usually, you’d pretend to uphold his mama’s wishes for Isaiah not to swear, give him a little look he’d pretend to get sheepish at, but you figured now was the best time for a little swearing, and no one else seemed to have heard him. But he was right, it was a plain card with an “R” and railroad tracks, no name, and no company. 

“Isaiah, give me the card.” You tried your best to sound firm but calm, rather than the creeping fear you felt at losing this small boy to… who knows what. He must have figured you out because he handed it to you silently and shoved his hands in his pockets kicking at the dirt to pretend he wasn’t interested. 

The card made your fingertips tingle, it wasn’t painful like pins and needles when your foot fell asleep, but it felt dangerous, like the buzzing of wasp wings. With your heart racing, you turned back to your home.

Nearly the entire day was dedicated to you collecting and destroying the business cards, you found you could only hold a few at a time before the tingling turned into a burning, and it was a pain to cleanse the cards and burn them out back. You weren’t about to burn them and release that energy into your home. Many men refused to listen to your pleas that only bad things could come from this Man, that the railroad took life and limb indiscriminately, and that they best think about their families and the community that relied on them. Besides, the rails on the hill have been done for a year and a half now, what more could they need? Neither sympathy, logic, nor approaches to their egos worked on them, they wanted the glory and wealth the Man in the gray suit had offered them. You didn’t blame them, you knew they wanted the best for their loved ones. Money wasn't much here, most people went out into fields owned by other men to tend crops they didn’t own, and others traveled together weekly to larger towns to sell wears they had made and buy whatever the town couldn’t grow in the community garden. You did your best to make sure everyone got to eat regardless of their individual successes, and you never asked for payment when you set bones, delivered medicine, or delivered children, but the truth was, everyone was struggling. 

And so the next dawn, the men who held their business cards with iron grips walked out of town and they never came back.

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You snapped back into focus as you approached the small cottage, Isaiah had been talking, and you’d been responding with as much attention as you could, but your nerves had really taken over as the day progressed. Your mama, who wasn’t exactly your mama but might as well have been, had the table laid out with food much to the joy of Isaiah. 

“Hello, ma’am” Isaiah shouted a bit too loud for the house.

“Isaiah, you better be heading out to wash up before you even think about touching that food” a voice yelled from the kitchen. Isaiah froze one hand hovering over a roll before slinking off to scrub off his hourly dirt collection. 

A hand grabbed your shoulder, and your mama gestured for you to join her in the kitchen.

“I take it he’s been showing up again?”