#queer x reader

Work was hard to find, however, and food to spare even harder. So you’d be at these vampires and their vampire “messiah’s” beck and call, but it was purely out of necessity.

That unknown presence settles behind you as you’re pushing open the door to your cot, raising the coiled hair at the base of your neck.

That night you meet your true and final demise at the hands of one of the few vampires at the Château to share your complexion. Are met with blossoming pain tearing into your neck and a delicate, deceptively strong hand holding your jaw in place while an arm restrains you.

“Delictable,” a voice finer than silk and as rich as cacao whispers, sending more shivers up your spine as you put up a useless struggle. The flat of a tongue presses over your rapidly pounding vein, eagerly tracing the trail of blood rushing from the wounds on your neck. “Finally someone ripe enough in the idiot Marquis’ underwhelming structure.”

Death is kindness when it comes to you.

That is until no afterlife meets you, until the darkness of the deceased begins to writhe, a living breathing thing around you and a foreign malevolence lashes through your spirit. Sinks inky tendrils into what’s left of you until you’re ripped back into the light.

Agony wails up your throat, wracking an unfamiliar body with tremors. Lighting your nerves on fire until arms that are familiar but shouldn’t be catch you when you fall from that devil’s machine, towering and hissing bouts of fire and pink flashes at your back.

“We meet again, Morcel,” silk intones, voice low and coiling in your ears.

A sob falls past dark lips you do not recognize any longer, your body that feels too big and too crowded and too wrong is racked with shivers.

Claws nip at your cheeks that no longer thrum with life, plush lips press to your overheated skin.

“Glorious,” Drolta murmurs, pulling away from the kiss planted on your forehead as your own foreign appendages twitch clumsily around you.

Humanity slips from you with every new, impure breath you take. Drolta’s siren song lulls you with its familiarity despite the dredges of who you used to be rioting against the string cut feeling that has you falling into her hold.

The demoness catches you, made anew herself with sprawling wings and sharp metal-tipped hair. Locs that writhe against you as she pulls you in.

Those same lips from before press to a pulse that no longer thrums with life.

“Look at you,” Drolta murmurs, hands gliding over the monstrosity that has become you with careful metal talons and the give of the pads of her fingers. The clack of hooves reverberates around the corridor you’re trapped in as she moves, pulling you closer. Steel cages close in all around you, and the fleshy press of her colorful wings curving around your body is little reprieve.

When her eyes meet your still adjusting ones they’re a blazing fushia, her once goddessesque features intact, but contorted into a vampiric abomination.

She coos down at you, physically tilts your head around for her inspection. The grin she gives you is sharp-toothed and mean, eyes going lidded. “What a glorious and beautiful thing,” she says to you, silk a cutting damnation.

Grand, onyx horns stretch from her temples. Crowning her head whilst she looms and chuckles and grabs you like she has a right.

“Come,” she murmurs, a large hand catching the tail that’s since sprouted from your body and tugging. It wiggles in her unrelenting grasp, you gasp at the strange sensation, and she remains unphased as she uses it to drag you along. "You will make a fine pet yet, Sweet Morcel.”

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!! ❤︎ ❤︎ ❤︎

The way every single Drolta form makes me lose my mind! She’s so great as an antagonist and she’s so pretttty, I need to rewatch the show after this.

From where she’s laying propped up against her bag and taking scant bites of cafeteria pizza, Bonnie laughs.

“Guys— guys. Stop messing with, Y/n, alright? She’s just not built to be an accomplice,” the brunette says, before her eyes light up and she throws you a wink and you know you’re screwed. “Besides, I’ve already accepted that she’s a bit of a pussy.”

“I’ve got a weak constitution!”

“Sure you do,” Bonnie snickers, her and Rochelle sharing a look that does nothing but heighten your urge to flip them off.

“And we still love you despite that,” Rochelle says, sounding sincere regardless of her laughter.

Sighing, you duck your head even as you roll your eyes. Heat travels swiftly up your dark cheeks, but you don’t hesitate to give in anymore and finally flip both of them off.

“You guys are the fucking worst. I don’t want the cops called on me anymore than you assholes do.”

“Aw, don’t be that way, Guppy,” Nancy teases, voice gritty and excited as she hooks her chin over your shoulder and one of her arms moves to wrap around your middle. “I think it’s cute when you freak over us lifting shit.”

“It’s still gonna get us caught though,” Rochelle sighs. She gives you a pointed look, using her newest stick of celery to gesture at you, “And out of everyone you know it’ll be us who takes the brunt of whatever punishment we get. Especially you, at least my dad’s white.”

“Oh thanks,” you roll your eyes, “good to know you care so much.”

“I do,” she stresses before a scoff falls past her lips a second later. "I just think it’s stupid the way you start vibrating out of your skin the second someone drops a tea candle or some jewelry down your pocket.”

You flip her off with both your middle fingers this time, can feel how Nancy’s breath hits the curve of your throat when she snickers. Her fingers snake under your school mandated button up to feel your bare stomach beneath your shirt and you let her, too busy dealing with your other friends.

Though whatever you and Nancy were probably didn’t constitute as “friends” anymore.

But, honestly, so what if you didn’t have the stomach for the shit they liked to pull? You hadn’t when they’d first run into you waiting for them to leave the mystic shop so you could go inside in peace, and you still don’t fuck with it now.

“I think,” Bonnie pipes up as she’s throwing a piece of the crust from her lunch at Mitt as he’s walking by.

It hits him right on the neck, and presumably tumbles down his shirt.

You're not above having to muffle your laughter into the sleeve of your leather jacket when he jolts and starts patting himself down while spinning in a desperate circle.

Unperturbed despite her smirk, Bonnie turns right back to you just as Mitt trips and slams straight into Trey when he’s coming to help.

You almost snort pudding up your nose and have to put the cup down with a cough.

“I think,” she continues, “that we should just let you be lookout or something. It’s not like you weren’t already doing that before we started talking to you.”

“Finally!” you exclaim. “A good idea.”

“Oh shut up,” Rochelle says, even through her smiling.

“So what? You gonna be our look out now, Baby?”

You laugh, “Hell no! If you’re shit enough to get caught, that's on you.”

“Aw,” Nancy pouts, “so you’d just let me rot in jail?”

“I don’t know…”— you turn your head so you can see her better and she tilts to the side to meet your dark gaze in turn —“maybe if you gave me a good incentive I’d hex someone for you.”

“Well, define ‘good’,” she teases.

“Maybe later,” you mutter, winking at her, and Nancy gives you a fake scandalized look before bursting into cackling laughter.

How her hair, more obsidian than any type of brown, bounces with her movements is hard to take your eyes off.

A small smile etches itself onto your lips.

Rochelle huffs.

“So what about the rest of us? It’s only Bonnie and me you’d leave to rot then?”

Turning to her with a grin, you snicker. It’s Nancy who answers however.

“Of course not, dingus. Obviously with the two of us together we’d be able to bust you both and then burn our records.”

“Does it even work like that?” Bonnie asks, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a shake of her head so she can better squint you guys’ way.

“Who cares,” Nancy exclaims, smiling wide. “It’s us and then the gods. Every other normie we come across are nothing but ants meant to be stepped on.”

“Hm,” you hum lightly, pressing back into Nancy’s hold and tapping at your spell book resting atop your thighs. “Now that I think about it, what's to stop us from erasing the memory of anyone trying to call the cops on us before getting arrested is even on the table?”

“Maybe the fact that we can’t do that,” the other black girl in your group deposits.

The witch you’re pressed against scoffs, “Hn, you limit yourself too much Roche. We can do anything we want now.”

“So long as we do it together, at least,” you tack on and Nancy turns her wild sapphire blue eyes onto you.

“Right on,” she mutters, leaning in to press a peck of a kiss to your lips. How she holds onto your chin, you know she wants to deepen it even with your friends’ giggling surrounding you.

A warm feeling settles in your gut at their mischief though, and you curl yourself into your partner even more. Letting the strength of your coven embolden you.

All of you end up having to test out that memory wiping theory sooner rather than later when Sister Clemons happened to pass by you all as you were making out with Nancy and she in turn was attempting to pull you onto her lap, never one to do anything in half measures.

It works. Though you guys do end up taking a bit more of her memory than you’d planned.

Still better than being suspended though.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!!

This is just supposed to be a cute little fic to showcase how the girls act and how they’re close but also lowkey antagonistic towards each other.

Once again writing the type of fics I desperately wanted to read in high school.

btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!

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Extra Banner —

Amber rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at everyone when they harass her over her new little buddy and call her crazy.

The hold she has around your waist only tightens though, especially when she hands you her Ghostface so she can flick Wes on the ear after he starts talking about criminal psychology and how the last Ghostface killers nearly killed his mom.

It’s not like Amber’s the only one either, everyone else starts to snore at Wes’s spiel because they’re assholes, and you’re no better when you have to bite back a giggle at the way Wes starts to snipe back at everyone in turn.

Amber doesn’t care about what all your friends have to say when all is said and done. Only smacks a loud, wet kiss to your cheek when she proudly proclaims that the plush was a gift, and if Gale Weathers can profit off of the mass deaths of teens then she can have one fucking toy.

Once you get to her house you can barely focus on your work because Amber — who’s firmly caught up on all her work for the week, but who’s still supposed to be helping you with your shit — keeps going on little rants about the plushie.

The most recent when you finally give in and put your work away for later — you were done with everything immediately due anyway — is her wondering out loud and trying to figure out which killer’s mask is specifically being replicated. When you point out that they all look the same to you, she scoffs and pinches your cheek before pulling you into a lingering kiss and hitting up Reddit for some ‘actual’ answers.

For the most part you don’t even mind either. Not when she’s dragging you down to spoon you, handing you the plush to cuddle with, and wrapping her arms around you so you can see her screen as she looks.

Amber waits for you to doze off with your pretty face smushed to the tiny mask before she goes into the less ‘family friendly’ chat rooms to see if she can find the seller and do her usual daily chats with Richie (who she’s not dating here, but is still online friends with).

She stays like that, your body flush with hers and the feel of your downy coils against her pale skin, and she’s in her happy place. Literally, the only place better would be a Stab-a-thon with you at her side in one of those ‘sexy’ Ghostface costumes (even if they were kinda antiquated).

Or you killing with her, honestly, but she’s not delusional enough to think that’ll ever happen.

How well you ignore the less stellar implications of Amber’s Stab obsession (and subsequent Ghostface love) is mostly due to you latching onto the fact that it’s at least the fictional movies she goes crazy over. Plus, it’s Amber, your girlfriend was no cold blooded killer.

Amber definitely sends a picture of the plush to Richie. He laughs at her for it in the same breath that he tries to play off asking her where she got it, and she revels in talking shit to him about his desperation being palpable before they get to talking about more important murder related plans.

Amber slips out her room to talk in overexcited whispers with Richie, but stops once you come looking for her. You chirp a ‘hello’ at the man that he reciprocates just as cheerfully before she hangs up.

“What happened to being careful about who you talked to online, huh?” you tease Amber as her arms circle your waist.

“We’ve literally met him, for one,” she mumbles, nipping at your bottom lip then pulling you into a kiss while you circle your arms around her shoulders.

Richie and you had met at the last Horror con a town over that your girlfriend had dragged you to right before the start of your current senior year. He was older than you both, and a little odd, but he’d matched Amber’s excitement over the Stab booth perfectly and you’d even watched the disappointment that eventually became of the Stab 9 announcement flash identical sneers on their faces.

You know they started talking after Amber’s explosive hate for the eighth Stab movie (that had ruined your first date, quite frankly). She’d dragged you home after that date and you’d binged the first seven Stab movies well into the next day afterwards, though, and that had more than made up for it.

So what if she got a little intense after a particularly brutal and drawn out kill in part four and kissed and groped you until your lips went numb and you were a trembling moaning mess beneath her? It was hot— in a marginally depraved sort of way.

Amber takes to dragging the Ghostface plush around more than you’d expected (which was not at all). Regularly giving it to you to hold because she ‘trusts you to keep him safe’ and taking pictures of you looking cute with the plush like her life depends on it. You roll your eyes every time, but you pose a little for her too, regardless.

Gifting her the plushie also unlocks a newer side to Amber. It's still her obsessive fangirl self, but now it’s the actual Woodsboro murderers she talks to you about.

Amber knows so much it worries you a bit, and when she gets all starry eyed the way she usually only does when looking at you while rubbing over little Ghostface’s mask and lamenting Roman Bridger’s prowess as the only singular Ghostface killer (a fact that you hadn’t known until then) it makes worry curl in your gut.

But this was Amber, you’re sure there was nothing to actually worry about; plenty of people liked dark and morbid things and didn’t become killers or abusers, why would she be any different?

Amber gets crass and more than a little agitated, too, when y’all are out and about in town and some people throw her odd looks for the Ghostface plush tucked under her arm or poking its head out of her bag.

Laughs and calls anyone who gives her shit, and the officer who’d wanted to lecture her, pussies. The only reason you don’t freak out more when she’s rolling her eyes at the cop and glaring at him is because she does it while you’re getting you guys’ coffee orders fixed well away from her stirring up shit. You do drag her away with a flighty, if stiff, apology halfassedly thrown out the cop’s way, calling her crazy and stupid all the while.

Sure, fuck cops, but Amber’s crazy ass was really playing with her life going out of her way to talk shit like that. Her uncanny ability to burst into ‘white woman tears’ on command to slither her way out of trouble be damned.

Amber carries a pocketknife no one else knows about everywhere with her, and she whips it out unnecessarily to cut a stray thread from the plushie’s tiny cloak one night while you’re curled up at her side. You startle at the metallic slash of it sounding through the air and she snickers, kissing you on the cheek. Tells you there’s nothing to worry about in the same breath she asks you what your favorite scary movie is, her pretty eyes cast in shadow.

The sight of the knife she pivots towards you, tapping the tip ever so slightly against the dewy brown skin of your cheek turns you on incomprehensibly. Amber, of course, notices and she loves it. Teases the blade against your skin until you shakily tell her to stop— it’s too overwhelming in her oddly practiced hands.

Amber stops, murmurs an apology she’d give no one else and actually mean, and says you’re cute when you’re all flustered for her with a wicked smile before kissing you fucking stupid, but the knife stays out.

Plush on its throne in her lap and you poised and cozy at her side, Amber twirls the blade around with the arm not wrapped around you as any number of schlocky slasher film she had you pick plays on the laptop in front of you both for the rest of its duration.

The next day, plushie squeezed between your palms now a vague comfort, you listen to her go on and on about the first murders while she helps you stretch out your docs with her boot stretcher Learn all about Billy and Stu — and did you know this is literally the house where the climax of it all went down, that was the best surprise after dad bought this place — and stubbornly you think nothing of it.

Not when Amber still locks inky brown eyes onto you like she can’t get enough, like she’d burn the world for you. Not when her hand curls in your thick curls and tugs exactly how you like it and her hair fanning against your skin when she leans in for a kiss is a familiar comfort and her lips feel like perfection against yours.

Later, you’ll look at her badly burned face and into her one good eye, the wound she inflicted on you wrapped and still raw, and will your tears from falling because you’d be crazy to mourn a murderer even if she was yours.

And the sense of longing almost breaks you, crashes over you in that moment as you wish for one last time that she could look at you like perfection again because you still love her. The plush you’d brought hidden in your bag (tasteless or not) to bury with her in her casket stays with you.

Amber has a Ghostface mask. You see the mask. You think nothing of the mask. She was a fan, why wouldn’t she have a mask?

When you go through her secret stash in her room, before her mother and the police raid it, you find plenty of polaroids you hide away for yourself.

A good bit of the photos are starring you; some you knew were being taken and some you didn’t. In one she’s in her full Ghostface getup, glinting knife and all, but the little bundle of levity in her hand not holding the knife is the Ghostface plush she’s posing with. It’s ridiculous, absurd even, but despite everything, you find it adorable. Running your thumb over the picture as her pained, dying screams still echo in your mind.

Overall, you are absolutely an enabler to Amber’s fixation, even if you don’t know the full extent of it.

She kisses both you and the plush goodbye some days, for fuck’s sake, and you’d stumbled across her ‘prop’ Stab knife. The writing was on the walls; you were just too lovestruck to read the signs for what they were when it came to Amber.

Stab nine comes out. Even Stab X. You go see both with the plushie your only companion before the series is completely rebooted with a tv show. You think of Amber the whole time: what she’d love and what she’d hate. The world keeps moving.

Now all the Ghostface plush that you, shamefully, can’t bring yourself to get rid of does is stare accusingly at you beside the pendant she gave you (a picture of the two of you kissing tucked carefully into it) beside the article you’d printed out describing the actual murders she’d planned, executed, and nonlethally shot you in pursuit of.

You hide your heartbreak well long into your first year off college, but, even if you don’t cry yourself to sleep over missed signs and longing anymore, you still curl up with the Ghostface plushie every night if you want any type of sound sleep.

The healed wound she gave you, her final gift, still aches when you think of her.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!

Yes, I did take this serious as all hell. Yes, it is a bit absurd, and I love it.

The plush in the banner is from Kidrobot again.

Swear I must’ve hallucinated the actual Stab mask being green in the in-universe movies we’ve been shown, because why did I think that so surely— and despite actively knowing better? Anyway, the justification I’ve written in for why the Ghostface mask would still be able to be sold after the events of the first movie is that going forward the readily available ones specifically from the Stab movies have a slight green tint bcs they’re glow in the dark to "differentiate" them from the real masks. Okay, bye!

For a woman you’d all thought dead Agatha looked well. Hair not clumpy, skin not worn or leathery. Even the way she held herself still bellied her comfort in mysticism, even dressed like a modern day woman as she was.

“Mm,” she hums shortly, turning in place with a few unhurried steps until she can cast narrowed eyes onto her apparent newest tag-along. Matching her stare head on you lean into the sun’s light a little more, your own thick curls brushing across a few low hanging branches where your hair is wrapped in cloth atop your head. “I don’t recall asking for an Obeah Woman,” she announces, tone bitingly light.

A scoff falls past your lips.

“And I didn’t expect the whispers for a coven would lead me to you, like this,” you twitch, letting your smile spread your plush lips thin, “broken and without your gifts.”

“I wouldn’t test me, New Girl,” she parries, and you hold your palms up in surrender.

Though your expression doesn’t sober.

The smile that rises to match your own in response to that is lopsided and sharp. Years worth of condescension she’d grown too used to falling back on without caution due to the magic coursing through her coming to the surface.

Agatha Harkness’s name in whispers had sent you into a fit at first — a witch of her caliber and age with your name on her mind never meant good — but looking at her now you could only tilt your head.

On the other hand, the boy with her seems eager to shake apart with laughter that grinds upon your nerves. Luckily, one look from the Salem veteran keeps him quiet.

Mostly.

In seconds she too is cackling, however — the boy’s muffled laughter acting as background noise — and you don’t bother stopping your sneer then.

“Oh, I see. You think you're hot shit,” she draws out, voice dropping an octave. “Don’t you operate a failing apothecary out of your apartment?”

Lips flattening, you step from the shadow, your face fixed without obvious malice to the best of your ability.

“It’s a side hustle,” you sniff. “And still better than being sentenced to 100 lashes and persecuted by the Danish; if I ever see the inside of a Christianshavn prison again I’ll frig up more than a few rum distilleries.”

“Of course. Now you just get persecuted by American Authority instead,” she says, the cut of her mouth sly.

With a flourish you wave her off. “Wretched as your worry is, it’s unneeded. Poison is no different than an elixir when you make it backwards.”

“Okay,” she simpers, shrugging herself, voice light and eyes never straying from your form as you glide closer over the concrete.

Powerless or not, something beneficial could surely come of making the occasional acquaintance of such a renowned woman.

Movement in your peripherals catches your attention though, and you stop moving to turn your head to find who you can only assume is the cause of your blight today.

Your sneer situates itself right back over your lips.

“Lilia,” you announce, the woman stops in her tracks and cuts you a brazen look out of the corner of her eyes. You take caution to only let your molars grind together for a second, releasing the tension in increments as your gaze narrows on her and you stand taller. “I should cut you down where you stand.”

The psychic huffs, shawl sliding a bit down the slope of her shoulder.

Slowly pulling the covering back into place she tuts at you, “Or…you could not. I mean, let’s face it, you would’ve been drawn here regardless of if I gave Agatha your name.”

“Unlikely,” you snap, words ground out like you’d rather spit on her than keep to something so civil as using mere words to express yourself.

And you would if you weren’t in such mixed company. Lilia was only meek when she was playing some angle after all.

You didn’t like anyone else making your moves for you, forcing you to speed up your timeline. Your own plans be damned.

“Witches, witches!” Agatha cuts in, holding her hands out to keep you and the psychic apart despite the way she’s only looking your way. “Let’s not tear each other apart just yet, hm?”

She eyes you from head to toe, taking her time to pan down as she takes in your flowing clothing and lightly clacking beads, before giving you a wicked look. “We wouldn’t want to mar anything too pristine before things really get interesting, now would we?”

Knocking your gaze to Lilia for a second you clock how she initially meets your glower, but keep your gaze steady regardless, just up until she finally twitches in discomfort. Only then do you ease up, tossing a grimace of a smile her way, before watching Agatha closely once more as the psychic wanders off somewhere out of sight with a few muttered curses you pay no mind to.

Meanwhile, Agatha’s expression has changed, having lost its begrudging appraisal and turned furrowed.

You raise your brows, “Harkness?”

She squints, obscuring fine cut hazel.

“I know you, don’t I?”

“Ah,” you grin without teeth, shoulders shaking, “so you can’t tell your porridge from your oats either I see.”

She rolls her eyes.

“The ‘wise sage’ act is very annoying, I have to tell you. It’s really ruining an otherwise beautiful package and I think you should work on that.”

“Should I?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Oh, alright,” you examine your bare nails, twisting your wrist this way and that to get a ‘better’ view of your cuticles, “you’ll have to put the request in with my secretary first, though, I fear.”

Agatha’s pet’s head pops up from over her shoulder, his face screwed up, “You have a secretary? …No offense.”

Sighing, you drop your hand back to your side and make a point of rolling your eyes hard enough to nearly make yourself dizzy.

“No. I don’t,” you tell him finally, though you don’t look away from the actual witch in front of you even as you do.

Immediately after you raise your brow at Agatha, however, “As for you, you know full well that I’m better than any sage, and that passing me up would be a waste when you need a potion maker. Regardless, no we haven’t met, but your backside is just as unpleasant as people describe.”

“Hm,” she hums in agreement, moving to toss her round brunette curls around to her back with a wink in your direction, “unpleasantly beautiful, you might say.”

“Worthless more like it,” you correct.

Agatha stops putting on her little show so quickly you might as well have just lashed her across the face.

Briefly, her eye spasms, “Watch it.”

“I might,” you say, “so long as you prove me wrong. Now, if we could get back on track.”

“Huh,” she scoffs, glaring at you now. “Fine. How bout’ this, unless you can make an elixir to make me invincible from every witch closing in on me, then scram. I’m dealing with enough ameatures as is.”

Head thrown back for a second, you laugh, letting your fervor echo throughout Lilia’s forever vacant parking lot.

“Oh, make no mistake, Harkness, I can do that...” you say eventually, voice easy in a way that gives the other woman pause. You jerk a brow up, briefly mirroring the way her interest seems to physically jump up to stare at you, “…for a price.”

Gaze finally brightening she moves to knock her male companion on the shoulder, gesturing your way afterwards before plastering a much “nicer” smile on her face.

“Teen’s got the money. Give the woman whatever she wants, come on.”

“Oh no, I don’t want money,” you cut in with a flick of your hand at the grabble she’s making for the boy’s wallet.

Agatha pauses in the middle of silently arguing with Teen, glancing your way from her slightly bent position.

“—You don’t?”

“I might not call myself a witch, but that in no way means I’m confused as to what you witch them does do.” You get closer to her, and how she straightens to meet your advance makes you preen. “I want a favor. A binding one.”

“As if,” the boy cuts in with. “A witch of her caliber doesn’t do binding spells, they’ll only hinder her.”

Oh my—

“You well fucking rude,” you say distastefully, giving him a harsh look. Irritatingly, his forward ass only lays his hand over his heart with a gasp.

For her part all Agatha does is laugh, knocking you lightly on the shoulder as if you’ve told a particularly funny joke, and taking you right out of your stare down. “You’re lucky you’re pretty, Dear. Cause you sure are delusional.”

She snorts.

You suck your teeth.

This back and forth routine was getting far more tiresome than you’d anticipated.

“The only lucky one here is you,” you deadpan.

She opens her mouth to respond, that same dismissal in the curve of her mouth, but then pauses. Expression twitching, she leans even closer to you to inhale.

Frowning, you pull your upper half away from her.

“What—?”

“—I should’ve known,” Agatha exclaims lowly, pointing her finger at you. “You reek of her plague, that's why you seemed so familiar. What have you been dabbling in, I wonder, to smell so thoroughly of Rio? Joining her plot against me?”

You shake your head, looking away from her. You’d only hung around Vidal for the same reasons you were hanging around Agatha: to gain connections and, better still, favors you could cash in on if you ever found yourself in a bind due to your own ventures.

You hadn’t been lying earlier when you’d said you’d start making drastic moves if you saw the inside of a cell again, you didn’t care where it was. You’d burn it all down until they had to put you down before you’d waste away imprisoned ever again.

“Absolutely not. Whatever cuhruckle that went down between you two is yours alone. All I’m worrying about is my deal.”

To the displeasure of your heightening pulse, however, Agatha doesn’t just look passingly interested or even admiring any longer. She looks like she’s been given a puzzle, and like she likes it.

“Too late,” she chirps, fluttering her lashes, “Rio is far too picky about the company she keeps alive for your involvement to be left unexplored.”

Hand coming up, she runs her nails along your jaw. You stave off a flinch from the ticklish sensation her touch elicits. “You’ve taken on too potent a poison, Darling, situating yourself in the middle of our fight,” Agatha finishes, clicking her tongue, before walking her digits back up the umber expanse of your skin to press the pads of them into the hinge of your jaw.

You swallow roughly, hope she can’t hear it.

Agatha smiles, pressing in until she can force you to meet her eyes again. They’re roving, almost manic when paired with her smile.

“Yes,” she breathes, eyes alight. “Maybe I do need an Obeah Woman after all. We’ll be going to the Witch’s Road, won’t you come with?”

No. It’s on the tip of your tongue. The feel of Rio’s blackened energy still a hot, sizzling brand across your lips.

One deal had been made already, yes, but were you sure about pursuing this one as well with the inevitability of getting caught in the middle of a centuries old rivalry so probable?

Unfortunately, your, “Fine,” slips past your lips before you can stop yourself, and rather than deal with the indignity of walking your agreement back you stay quiet.

Watching for her move. Reasoning with yourself that there were still benefits here despite this new hiccup, if only you played your cards right.

She doesn’t make you wait long.

A shiver rises over you as her presence does the same, her steps carrying her till there’s hardly a whisper between your bodies. Even without her magic, being this close to Agatha Harkness allowed her to snake herself across your soul same as Rio Vidal had when you’d also unintentionally peaked her curiosity a while back.

“Wonderful,” she coos, the pad of her thumb gliding up your cheekbone as her hazel bores deep into your brown, “let’s see about that deal then.”

Dammit to hell; this had better be worth whatever Agatha and Rio’s combined interest would do to you.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!

Fun fact, actually, I wrote this when I’d only watched episode two up until Agatha and Teen left Lilia’s place, and so didn’t know that Jen (gorgeous as she is) would be who they went to for poisons (or that that was in any way a requirement in the first place) so that was a fun little coincidence. Otherwise, the setting of this oneshot I just pulled out of my ass fr.

Also, character motivations are a bit funky but I can’t pinpoint the exact reason and really want to post this tonight so we’ll all have to deal.

btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!

—

Caribbean word of the day (i.e.,the glossary): “Frig” - an alternative way to say ‘fuck’. so ‘frig up’ = ‘fuck up’.

“Cuhruckle” - a fight or (intense) disagreement; drama.

*remember, though, that dialects are regional so the words in this glossary aren’t used by every caribbean* 

They stop too, but you don’t pay them any mind, too busy trying to catalog the sight of a flying object in the shape of a person hurtling through the sky.

Not the oddest thing you’ve seen in the last month alone, but certainly unusual this close to home.

For a moment all you can think outside of your confusion and mounting unease is: ‘damnit, what now?’

The shape of the suit rings familiar. Tony Stark and Iron Man were known by even the non scientifically minded amongst the population, though, so no surprise there. But you don’t realize just how familiar you are with the suit itself — that suit, not just the style of it — until it gets closer and the unique head shape and simple color scheme strikes through you like lighting.

What the fuck was Riri doing back here?

A different kind of anxiety pulses through you then, mercilessly winding you up.

The girl you’d once kind of, maybe, had a thing for (and maybe even with, but you weren’t the type to stay hung up on the shit you did in your underclassmen days before she surpassed you and skipped straight to college) should pretty firmly be at school right now.

MIT was a big fucking deal even if the amount of monetary accolades a college had meant little to you.

Not that the prospect of seeing Riri again didn’t have its appeal. She’d been offline for a few months now, even with you and Xavier, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t worry. Or want to know what she’d been up to.

Riri was a certified genius and when she got caught up in a project everything else became pretty secondary, but this past year had been the longest she’d ever gone without calling you. Let alone while consistently answering your texts days after you’d sent them.

Everybody had bouts of being a shitty friend, though, and you had a life to live and bills to pay, so you’d left her alone.

All bets were off if she was back though.

Fuck giving her space.

Riri—

A loud, whining zap and a red flash of light comes and a more pressing issue pounds at the back of your eyes as the sight of eight preteen boys settled frozen across the street from Mrs. Lydia and staring at her smoking mailbox greets you.

Shit.

Definitely not just a fancy laser pointer then.

Shit shit shit.

“Aye!” The woman herself slams out her house, pricklier than ever. This time you can’t blame her though. “What the fuck you boys doing out here?”

A minute passes after the moment the older lady caught sight of her destroyed mailbox and singed grass, and she’s starting to yell loudly enough your neighbors have started to come out to sweep their porches and blinds have started to shift, before you finally decide to intervene lest she pops something.

“Alright!” You yell, heaving yourself up from the steps and setting your laptop under the pillow of the patio bench to your left. Still talking, you rush over to the group, legitimately not wanting Mrs. Lydia to work herself up enough she ends up in the hospital with her hypertension or ends up waving Troy’s bad ass off through the window of a cop car. Likely both. “Troy gimme your phone! Let me talk to your daddy!”

Now did you want to talk to Matthew Jackson? Fuck no. Especially not with who you figured was Riri back in town, and with her suit. But better to live another day without the boy you used to let talk circles around you when you walked home from school follow his mother to an early grave after rotting in a jail cell.

─────

The sun has set, but it’s not too late into the night by the time you’re free enough to make your way to Ronnie’s place.

Xavier notices you first, catching sight of you over Riri’s shoulder— and you know it’s Riri’s lil ass standing in front of him. Would recognize that wide stance and raised chin anywhere; like she’s trying to make herself as big as possible so everyone can see she’s greater than their little perceptions of her.

He nods to you before continuing to excuse himself like he looked to be doing when you banked the corner, and it’s while he’s climbing the steps back to his apartment that Riri turns your way.

“Who—?” She starts to question, unsatisfied with Xavier only shrugging at her when she no doubt questioned his look to you, but she stops the second those busy eyes land on your quiet frame.

When she calls your name it’s with the air of someone who’s less shocked than they should be. Although, her jaw’s damn near dropped despite that, and her eyes stick to you sharply.

The pinpricks of her scrutiny prickle against your skin.

Those shoulders curl inward a little when she eventually tosses you this half smile, hands shoving into the pockets of her maraschino red jacket that sits a bit oversized over her body.

“I see those crash landing protocols you were working on the last time we talked came in handy,” you volley back, voice light.

“Hn,” she scoffs, glancing away from you while a slow grin pulls at her sealed lips. “Yeah, you know? Not my proudest moment, but they really did.”

“Good,” you smile at her. When she looks back at you it gets a bit bigger. “I’m glad. I miss you enough already as is.”

Too forward. Maybe. Definitely. But you have missed her and you’re not entirely above pointing out that she’s been ghosting you.

She cringes right on cue, too, expression steeping as she no doubt flushes beneath the rich tones of her skin.

“Aw, yeah,” she laughs, eyes widening some as she shuffles in place. “I have been kinda absent lately, haven’t I?”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Riri giggles, but she looks seconds away from melting into a puddle the entire time.

You hold back your own laughter because you’re nice like that.

As you’ve talked you’ve taken those moments to step closer to Riri. It’s her who closes the gap between you both, though, ambling over the last of the space between you with her hands twisting in her pockets.

When your gaze snags on them you want to hold them. Let her fiddle with your fingers instead while that brilliant brain of hers runs a mile a minute.

You bite your lip, force your glinting eyes up and away, and don’t give into that stray desire.

Damn, you really had missed her using you as a sounding board as she brainstormed.

“Do you wanna hang a little? Maybe?” Your eyes flint around the planes of her small face and bright cognac eyes. “We don’t have to do anything crazy. Could just go back to my place.”

Those eyes glitter and pool like liquid diamonds. Riri rocks on her heels.

“Yeah!” She exclaims softly. “Hell yeah. I don’t mind.”

“Really?”

The woman takes a second, deliberation creasing her features and making her scrunch her cute broad nose and purse plush lips.

When she meets your gaze next there’s a weight to her look that makes the breath in your lungs stutter and freeze for a moment.

“…Definitely,” she finally settles on— voice soft and pointed. She nods to herself for a second before grinning at you. “I missed you too.” She shrugs. “Just so you know and shit.”

The smile you’ve been halfheartedly biting back spreads across your plush lips like an inevitability. Big and wide and pure.

Riri rolls her eyes and reaches out to knock you on the arm, starting to edge onto the sidewalk so you guys can start the familiar trek back to your place.

The spot she hit tingles pleasantly.

To say you were down bad would be an understatement at this point.

“Alright,” she draws out, teeth flashing in the streetlights as she grins, both her hands shaking free of their fabric confines, “don’t let your head get too big now.”

You snort.

“Oh, you big-headed enough for the both of us, don’t worry.”

She squeals her affront and you throw your head back to cackle, mild breeze brushing over both of your thick curls as you guys rush to cross the vacant street with laughter ringing from your mouths.

For that slim second of time it’s almost as if nothing’s changed.

─────

“Hm,” she chuckles once you’ve entered your childhood home and she’s taken a very brief look around, sneakers squeaking against the well-worn wood varnish. “Not everything is different now at least. You still get that good bread from Papa’s?”

Brow bouncing up, you watch as Riri quite actively starts to look around with purpose, gaze quickly locking on the kitchen.

“Oh no,” you start, reaching for her as she closes in on the bread box sitting pretty on the counter. “Riri, don’t you dare.”

She glances at you from over her shoulder, one of her braids sliding down to her back and framing her face in a way that makes your stomach flutter.

“I meannnn,” she squints at you, “I could go far some cheese and bread.”

“You’ll live,” you sneer quietly, ignoring the urge to laugh at her shit, and reaching over to snatch her wrist up.

When Riri looks back at you it’s with a grin splitting her features, only the light from the streetlights and some from the moon outside making her face visible.

The glow is all hers though.

“I fear I won’t,” she deadpans, jerking out of your hold as you’re guffawing.

“Riri—!”

The two of you pause mid lunge, feet stumbling, as your hand slaps over your mouth hard enough to sting and your eyes go wide as saucers.

‘Girl’ your partner in crime’s eyes say, wide and fluttering as they are with her raised brows. A chastisement you will not stand for.

Glaring, you hope she can read you telling her about herself in your head through your eyes alone, this was her fault after all, and when she huffs a laugh where she caught herself from falling on the edge of the counter you know you at least succeeded in that.

The two of you wait a few beats. Breaths booming in the darkness while you wait for your penance, but when your parent doesn’t stir your shoulders slump in tandem.

“Bitch,” you whisper, grin of your own curling up the corners of your mouth despite yourself.

The woman ahead of you snickers and sticks her tongue out at you.

All of it sends a pang through your heart that you can’t blame on the fact she’s easing her way towards your bakery bread like she thinks she’s slick. Not convincingly. Not even to yourself.

It was nice having her back in your space and smiling. To say things had been somber the last time you saw her in person for more than thirty minutes, no matter how well you’d stayed in contact throughout her later college years and your working, would be an understatement.

Soft, comfortable Riri wasn’t something you got often.

The urge to ask her how she’s doing, if she’s ‘okay’, pounds against the backs of your teeth. With the stray, squinty, looks she thinks she’s hiding that she’s tossing you — like she’s just waiting to clam up the second you pry — you stop yourself from posing that million dollar question though.

But only just.

Watching her greedy little fingers, littered with tiny nicks and scratches from her crash landing and the scars of nicks past from her tinkering, unwrapping your bread and it’s baked in dried fruit and spices from the brown bag it’s in, you realize you missed this.

Missed her.

“You gon let me steal some cheese too? Or am I just supposed to eat this raw?” She asks, tossing that glittering smile your way and breaking the tastefully browned bun in two.

You roll your eyes, perfectly content to admit defeat with how eager you are to get closer to her. Leaning against the counter, both your oak colored eyes meeting, you take the half of the round bun she offers.

“The bread tastes just fine on its own,” you mutter, trying not to fiddle with the food in your hand. Riri’s impatient enough that while she waits for you to give her what she wants she nibbles on the corners of her slightly smaller half. You sigh, “Fine. Yeah. Cut some off the block for me too.”

Maybe all this wasn’t idle bonding time to some people, but fuck them anyway. Being able to have any time with Riri and her ever overeager mind was something you cherished, rare as it was.

So you let her eat your damn bread and pretend like you don’t shiver every time her deep eyes meet yours. Pretend like you haven’t spent the last couple years yearning for what was and for what could be.

Pretend like you aren’t hanging onto every single lingering glance you catch her giving you and storing those instances away in your memory bank to agonize over later.

“Can’t believe you’re still stealing my food at your big, grown age,” you grumble, taking the stuffed bun she gives you with little hesitation.

“You love it,” Riri says around her most recent mouthful. She flips you off for good measure too, the mischief on her face clear as anything despite the darkness as she snickers, and you can’t even be mad.

Riri’s right, after all.

You do love it.

Love her. Broken heart and all.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!! This one is very chill (and it was also really hard to find good shots of this show to make the banner).

I know she’s not wearing it in this fic, but please can we get a round of applause for her under-suit from episode three. 😫😫😫😫

Her and Tony in those lil matching slim fitting suits they wear under their armor get me every time.

Anyway, season one only being six episodes is a fucking crime. Tf was that? And also, cheese and bread rep (cause if I said I called it ‘bun and cheese’ I’d be a full ass liar).

Now, you’ve managed to work yourself up so much at Amber’s most recent disappearing act that you’d nearly ran home so you could safely text Mindy.

In a circumstance that was beginning to be rarer and rarer for you both, you couldn’t be up underneath each other right now and so her DM’s would have to suffice.

She was busy with the film club at the moment, but she’d never once begrudged you texting her whenever. Plus, after going out with her and her friends last night, then stewing over your observations all day, you needed to tell somebody what you thought.

You weren’t very close to the group Mindy hung out with — you fucked with your own company just fine — but you and Mindy had become close over your mutual hate of your philosophy class and eventually she’d stumbled through asking you to hang out as a group (still blunt as ever even despite her raging blush) so you’d been with her friends at the bar only because she asked.

Friendship obligations, and all that.

It wasn’t like you didn’t want to figure out who would do something so horrible just as much as they did either. It was just that you only truly cared for Mindy and Chad’s sakes.

Or at least as much as most of them wanted to figure this situation out.

Amber talked a big game about caring for Tara’s safety above all else and vetting everyone the smaller teen came into contact with, but after that jerk who got y’all kicked out Amber had disappeared too. She came back overly excited — weird considering her best friend was almost brutally murdered — and there had been smudges on her shoes. You couldn’t confirm that it was that guy's blood, but you certainly felt like it was. The glint of something thick and wet was pretty hard to miss even on black boots.

Which was why you needed Mindy to answer you. You couldn’t bank on Amber fucking off around the same time the news reported Ghostface killed that man being a happy little coincidence.

Amber was pushy and rude on a good day and on a bad you’d seen her be downright malicious before, tripping someone down the stairs after he’d bumped into her type of malicious.

Plus ever since you started hanging out with Mindy you’ve noticed her staring at you more often, and no matter the contemplative look on Amber’s face whenever you caught her staring, her attention still made the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.

Sighing, you unlock your phone and check your messages again, pacing around your room all the while, before something catches your eye.

That wasn’t Mindy’s handle. It just looked nearly identical.

Shit, no wonder she wasn’t responding.

Jolting to a stop in the middle of the room, you rush to delete the messages.

It’s as you’re deleting the fourth that the green ‘active now’ dot shows up beside the unfamiliar username and then ‘read’ pops up underneath your last three texts.

“Damnit,” you grumble, still deleting the last couple texts. It won’t do much now, but if you were fast enough the person at least won’t be able to show anyone else or prove what you said.

Your stomach flips a little as you see the three dots pop up in the vacant space left behind by your erasing spree.

You freeze.

And then, heart in your stomach, you just react, exiting out of the conversation and going to the person's account and blocking them.

Oh god, you were so fucked. Shit. You really hoped that wouldn't come back to bite you in the ass.

You sit down on your bed with a huff, heart beating so fast it feels like you just ran the mile in gym class again. Dropping your phone on your comforter you shake out your trembling fingers. You suppose that was a sign that maybe you should just keep your opinion to yourself.

You rub your hands down your face.

Yeah, okay. Problem kind of (maybe) avoided for now. You’d just have to hope for the best.

You grunt, “Okay, I need a nap.”

And then you take that nap. As is your right.

─────

You’re jarred from sleep a few hours later by the sound of a continuous series of buzzing, and glare sleep crusted eyes up at your blurred ceiling fan.

Mindy had better not be calling you for some contrite shit again, like helping her beat Chad at whatever late night game they’d decided to occupy their twin insomnia with at — rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you look at your phone — eleven pm.

Honestly though, who else would be ballsy enough to start rapid texting you like this in the goddamn middle of the night? The other girl knew you went to sleep around nine on school nights, but Mindy did whatever she—

It feels like your heart stops beating as your Face ID unlocks your phone and you finally read the messages. Ones sent from what looks like a throwaway account with a handle you don’t remotely recognize.

The particular messages, on the other hand, are horribly familiar.

Unknown:

- Mindy I’m telling you! - She keeps disappearing during the kills and then coming back all twitchy - Why aren’t you answering? You were all for looking into this shit earlier - Mindy! - I know you love Tara and they used to date or whatever but you know I’m right. - She’s probably Ghostface - Come on girl I’m being serious - •••

Wide eyed, you can’t do anything but watch as another series of messages are sent.

Unknown:

- you think I’m some bitch faced little girl - well I’ll show you - •••

Eyes widening, you suck in a sharp breath at that, the words running through your mind’s eye like string omens. You watch as more texts fight their way through with uneasy lungs.

Unknown:

- tell me - what’s your favorite scary movie?

Your heart drops.

And just like that you hear the power in the house cut off and watch with stilted breath as the service bar at the top of your screen goes down.

Immediately afterwards a message pops up on your phone to inform you that you’ve lost service even.

Shit.

You blink at your screen for another few seconds, brows furrowing, before whipping your head up to look around your room. Flashes of Tara battered to hell in the hospital and the memory of Sam telling you all about the attempted attack on her at that very same place, mere hours after Tara had been checked in, fill your brain to the brim.

Mind feeling stuffed with static you let out a harsh breath through your nose, hand squeezing hard onto your device, and take a glance out the broken blind in your window to clock that there for sure wasn’t a power outage happening anywhere else but at your house.

So someone was definitely fucking with you.

Fuck, you gotta think.

How the killer even got the dm’s you sent if they weren’t Amber wasn’t a question for now, but how you’d get out of this mess certainly was. With your younger sibling down the hall from you, and your parents still out of the house clubbing, there was only one other person you had to worry about.

Now you just had to figure out how to get to them without tipping off whoever the hell else was also in your house.

Hold on.

You never checked who exactly it was you’d been texting before.

Opening Snapchat, you simultaneously tumble as quietly as possible from your bed, only briefly getting caught up by your blanket tangling around your legs.

When you check you see that, yup, it was Amber’s account (who’s handle was now ridiculously similar to Mindy’s and was only saved on your phone in the first place because Mindy had asked you to send her one of your summer assignments from this year to copy).

Goddamnit.

“Why me?” you whisper; but truly, you should’ve made sure you were talking to the right person if you were going to start making fucking murder accusations.

This shit was on you.

Teeth grinding, you stuff your phone into the pocket of your shorts then start crawling around the floor till you can begin prying open your door. Opening it as far as you know it can go before it starts creaking then inching yourself the rest of the way into the hall.

Sure you had a problem if this wasn’t some elaborate prank — which you doubted, but the possibility was always there considering the kind of assholes you went to school with — but you couldn’t jump out of your window and just leave your sibling to die.

It’s when your mission is about halfway accomplished, and you’re nearly to your sibling's room, that you hear a creak.

You freeze alongside it. Breathing with your mouth slightly open to minimize the amount of noise you’re making.

Should you just make a run for their room? Should you duck back into yours? Should you shout their name and hope for the best?

In your periphery a flash of white streaks across the dark abyss that is the rest of your house.

Then, you’re only allowed enough time to start the beginnings of a scream before you’re being thrown into the hallway wall, cutoff exclamation choking in your throat and something blunt and heavy slamming into your forehead before you can catalog anything but the sound of fabric billowing in a rush and the feel of hands grabbing at you.

The shout you let out at the second hit is muffled by a gloved hand slapping over your mouth, the impact stinging your face and making your eyes water.

In that same motion your attacker catches you by the hip, hauling, and combined with the force they barreled into you with that’s all they need to make you trip backwards.

You slam into the wall with an ‘oof,’ but your attacker hardly pauses before using their body to flatten yours against the wall and force your wrists together in front of you.

As you’re blinking the spots from your eyes and trying to make out the person in the darkness a metallic click sounds through the air. All you can do is flinch as two icy, metal bands are cinched around your wrists in quick succession and your vision finally adjusts.

The metal locking together pinches at your skin but there’s so much else going on that you don’t even grimace, too busy trying to find your breath after the sight in front of you stole it.

A face. White, screaming in agony, and floating in the shadow like something straight out of Munch’s worst nightmares.

There’s a Ghostface mask less than a foot away from you.

Real and unavoidable and close enough for the starkness to hurt your eyes against the blanket of night all around you.

In Woodsboro it's a familiar sight, whether on the screen during local stabathons and tv edits at home or in costume shops around any one of the many killing spree anniversaries or Halloween.

Up close as it is to you in this scenario, however, it almost doesn’t feel real.

The mask is tilted in a way that feels like the person behind it is examining you; like a dissection. A hand sprouts from the darkness and shifts it back straight over the person’s face, however, and instantly your worry is no longer an assumption.

If you’d thought before that the tilt felt violating, the full force of Ghostface’s direct gaze actually on you feels heavy enough to strip flesh.

Like acid dripping past your throbbing head, over your face, and down the upper half of your body.

From how crooked the mask was you’d guess that’s what hit you, what’s caused the drowning thump thump pounding through your skull and the stinging sensation traveling across your forehead.

The freak had head butted you.

Slow as you can, you shift your head to the side — hoping there isn’t a streak of blood against the wall left in your wake — just enough to press your temple into the cool wall with a groan.

It’s then Ghostface’s head truly tilts and you get to know what the weight of their curiosity really feels like.

The movement itself is silent, but the click of a tongue and the hand that comes up to press over your forehead is not.

At the first touch of covered fingers to your dark skin your blood practically flash-freezes in your veins.

Gritting your teeth against your possible concussion you make a valiant attempt to meld into the wall, but a hand making itself remembered once more on your hip keeps you from fully running away, and the other reaching for you doesn’t relent.

“You’re so pretty like this, Y/n,” Ghostface’s modulated voice says, deep and smooth, as your assailant pushes on the sore area where your temple meets the wall until you turn to face them again; their tongue wrapping possessively around the call of your name without hesitation. “Submitting for me.”

“Jesus,” you whimper, shaking against the insistent feel of their thumb rubbing against the angry vein showing on your temple. “How do you know my—?”

“—Uh uh,” their overbearing timbre cuts in as they pull themselves closer to you, “keep asking questions like that and you’ll ruin the surprise.”

What fucking surprise? Did this asshole plan on dragging this out all night?

Could you figure a way out of this mess by then?

Biting the inside of your lip, you meet the abyss of a gaze in front of you in spite of the chill it sends down your spine. Try to think past the sensation of spiders crawling through your bloodstream that Ghostface’s generous touch elicits.

You swallow, saliva thick past the budding lump in your throat.

“Can you stop?” you force out.

The killer freezes.

You nearly pass out trying to keep yourself from recoiling or apologizing or both by holding your breath before they finally talk again.

“Why? You don’t want me to be concerned?”

Concerned?!

“I don’t,” you say, lips stiff.

What you wanted was to have this over with, not whatever twisted brand of care this Ghostface operated on.

A beat passes where you think they’ll keep pressing, maybe make a point of knocking you again, but then they…stop. Slim hands retreat from your space entirely and down to the killer’s sides.

You doubt their hands will stay still for long, though, and you haven’t thought up how you’re gonna get around them yet — call for your sibling to go get help, maybe?

You cut your eyes at the ghostly specter, at their height and intense focus on you, and remembering the speed they’d ambushed you with earlier you reconsider.

Risking your sibling’s life over a hunch that you already weren’t confident on wasn’t happening. There was no part of you that believed you’d stand a chance at overpowering this Ghostface long enough for no one but you to get hurt.

Something glints in the corner of your eye and you come out of your head with a start. There’s a knife in the killer’s hand now, twisting and twirling around deft fingers before their gaze swings back to you and the blade swings out to lazily point your way.

“Planning?”

“No.”

They laugh, likely not trusting your answer for a moment.

“Fine. Don’t tell me. We can play a game instead.” They pivot once, angling their body towards the door closest, and your heart skips a beat. “I spy with my little eye something that squeaks and creaks and leads to fresh meat.”

And just in case you managed to miss the killer’s meaning, they use the tip of their knife to point towards your sibling’s closed bedroom door twice in a motion too similar to stabbing for your liking.

“What do you think?” they ask, and take a slow deliberate step to the door right afterwards.

“Don’t!”

Lunging across the space Ghostface has made between you, you grab hold of their wrist with trembling hands and bite the proverbial bullet.

The “Please,” comes falling out your mouth like water, and only a tinge of something sour follows it.

Ghostface doesn’t do so much as twitch when they glance back at you, though, shoulders shaking under the cloak.

“‘Please’,” they repeat, roiling laughter clear even through the distortion, “but I thought you didn’t want my concern?”

“I’ll scream,” you counter, pushing past the sinking in your gut to bring your other hand up to form a double clamp around the killer.

Bottomless perpetually gaping eye cutouts stare back at glistening ebony brown eyes for one breath— four, until you yank.

There is no plan when you rush past them, just the sinking feeling that something was going to have to give soon and the knowledge that you’d be damned if it was the person in the room you're running to.

Your hand is on the doorknob, your sibling’s name on the tip of your tongue, when a sound cracks through the air. Your leg buckles, there’s a pressure at the back of your knee, the heat of another body latches onto your back, a hand claps over your mouth, and then you’re tipping over.

Ghostface brings you down with so little fanfare you’d be embarrassed if you had the wherewithal. Wrestles your flailing ass to the floor right in front of the door and keeps you down with their legs pinning your hips.

It’s not until you hit the floor that everything catches up with you.

Heat like you’ve never known screams from the bend of your knee like a piping kettle, and the wail that scratches its way up your throat when you instinctively try to get away by gaining purchase on the tile with your injured leg leaves you shaking into the floor.

With a chuckle your attacker shushes you, gloved hand made wet from your drool and tears patting against your open mouth.

“Shhh.” They shift back and you whimper at the feel of every millimeter of movement that even that small motion forces your foot to make. “You wouldn’t want your little sibling to hear, would you?”

The voice modulator makes the question sound even more taunting and the deep timbre of it curls your toes — the twitch making your left leg burn — coming from so close to your ear.

Gloved fingers run along the serrated edges of the hole in your cracked knee where the knife’s still embedded, circling the pounding back of your leg until shivers rack up your body.

The touch is light.

You want to saw your leg off so you never have to deal with even the memory of the feel of it ever again.

“I’d hate to have to deal with them if they come to investigate the strange noises, yeah?” Ghostface says, pausing right afterwards.

It’s a prompt if you’ve ever heard one. They even lift their hand from your leg.

Mind whirling with thoughts of the blood seeping out the sides of your knee to stain the floors and the agony emitting from the stab wound, it takes you a few seconds to answer.

You force your words out past your shaky lips eventually, however. The stuttering agreement tasting like ash on your tongue.

“Good girl,” the modulated voice damn near coos in response, and part of you wishes you’d gotten stabbed through the ears instead.

There’s shuffling from above you, the sounds of fabric slipping over something barely registering over the rushing of blood through your ears.

You’re bleeding—

You’ve been stabbed—

Fuck, your leg is on fire—

Without an ounce of remorse deft fingers press down on where the back of your knees’ been stabbed through again, hand holding tight to the side of your leg, and a whimper falls unbidden past your lips.

Breathy, throaty, feminine laughter sounds right beside your ear as your killer settles over you.

Soft lips brush the shell of your ear and wispy black locks of hair fall into your peripheral.

“I guess it was me after all,” a voice you recognize croons, barren of any modulation.

Holy shit, Mindy had been right.

“A- Amber…?”

Your voice is small where you get it out from between pants for breath, leg throbbing hard enough to cut your focus completely.

Nothing feels real except for the throbbing, not the floor beneath you or the drool running down your chin.

“Mhm,” she giggles, breath ticking the side of your neck and making you shiver. It only takes a second for her to shiver back, breathe against your skin stuttering when she groans and presses down harder on your wound. You mewl and can feel exactly how Amber’s smile spreads. “Aww, just like that, Hun. Now we’re getting to the good part.”

Amber rises up from over you and then relentlessly grabs ahold of your shoulders and has you twist around until your upper body is facing her, and fifty percent of your concentration has to go to keeping your lower body in the opposite direction than the rest of you so you don’t aggravate your knee anymore.

Hair wild and damp with sweat atop her head the smile she gives you is all teeth in the faint moonlight that halos her face.

“Bet you’re reconsidering who you got close to now, huh?”

You grit your teeth, trying and failing to get enough leverage so you can spit in her face.

At the angle she’s forced you into her weight over your hips was more effective than you’d thought, though. Spitting from where you were would only serve in getting you smacked in the face with your own saliva.

“Gah— fuck! It’s not Mindy’s fault you’re a fucking sociopath,” you say behind clenched teeth.

You wonder if your friend would care if you died. Would Mindy cry when your death was announced? Would she immediately suspect Amber again? Confront her?

You’d been the one to comfort her when the news about Tara had come through before Chad could get to you guys. She’d struggled for a few minutes before a few tears had trickled down her cheeks, tears that she’d wiped away with a personal vengeance until you took one of her hands and wove your fingers together. Mindy had given you this wide look you’d never seen before, hazel eyes lost, before finally letting herself sob curled up to your side with her hand in yours. Did you hold that same amount of space in her mind, though?

In her heart?

Amber clicks her tongue, and instantly you’re reminded that whether Mindy and you could’ve ever been more than friends won’t matter anymore. “Wrong answer, Sweetie,” she says, and without another word rips the knife from your body in one pull.

Just barely you manage to stop the scream you want to let out by clamping down on your lower lip, teeth completely bypassing putting an indent into the skin and instead cutting directly through the plush of it as you buck uncontrollably against Amber.

Chest heaving and with tears sprouting in your eyes and beginning to pool, you watch for her next move and are heartbroken to say you aren’t disappointed.

With a flourish she brings the knife up to your face. You watch it with wide shaky eyes, heart sounding louder than your labored breaths in your ears.

The sharp side of the blade runs feather light down the side of your face, her gaze intent on it. On how the silver contrasts with the little streams of blood it leaves in its wake against your dewy brown skin. On how your lashes flutter anxiously, and the muscles in your face twitch beneath her touch.

“I didn’t mean that,” she says softly. She shifts the blade so that she can splay the flat of it over your mouth and purses her lips, eyes glittering and crazed and a little hurt. “I meant that you should’ve picked me, Sweetheart. I like you. And I like that you were thinking about me so much you figured me out. If you had just picked me I would’ve spared you,” she whispers last, face closer to yours now, before leaning in to press a kiss to the other side of the blade over your quivering lips.

The scent of your own blood makes your stomach roil, but the feel of her breath fanning your skin and the ecstatic expression that takes over her face when she leans away to lick her lips forces a sob from you.

Shuddering, you look up at her, a tear finally breaking free to roll down your face.

There is no one to hold you when you break.

Amber giggles, the flash of her teeth bloody.

“Just let me do it,” she whispers, voice low as she moves to run the warm tip of the knife down your side. “Be good for me, be mine this once, and I won’t go into that room and paint those walls red with your sibling’s blood.”

And so you cooperate; biting down into your forearm as muffled cries and wails tear up your throat. Amber plunges the blade deep, hits organs and cracks through bone with low grunts, and each stab feels like a little more of your soul drifting away.

You jolt, she adjusts her weight to accommodate your pained reaction like it’s practiced. You bite down so hard you break skin, teeth sinking into your body and feeling like masochistic relief that at least this pain was your own doing, she leans over to lick around your teeth with a groan. She gives and you take and you don’t scream out loud.

What a perfect victim you’ve made.

The tears never stop flowing from your eyes. So much salt they begin to burn alongside the bite in your arm that’s steadily mixing with blood and snot, and the entire rest of your body that’s near indistinguishable apart from the pain.

Nothing feels real except for the way Amber rides out your death spasms and the never ending stream of pleas to keep yourself silent that have long since turned into a sequenced tune in your head that you’re already forgetting.

As Amber’s honeyed taunts follow you under you know without debate that you have never known pain so intimate as what she’s brought upon you, and nothing so tender as death’s incoming embrace.

At least your younger sibling would be okay.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!! I tried posting this yesterday, but it wasn’t showing up under any of the tags so I’m trying again. ❤︎

I missed some shit when editing for sure, but I will come back to catch them later. I also don’t know how I feel about the way this flows, but maybe I just need to not look at it for a bit idk.

So the reader-insert may not have actually died here, but I don’t know for sure just yet. I would like for the second part to be a GF!Mindy x Reader-Insert x Jealous!Amber type deal though.

It’s hours before anything worthwhile than ducking and hiding takes place.

Initially Steve’s group was primarily tasked with direct extraction of Lois Lane from behind enemy lines but you had run into her, and a small number of other survivors hiding in the nature reclaimed remains of what used to be London, first.

Your branch-off specifically is just meant to be gathering enough tangible evidence that the Amazon’s are taking human hostages to finally push the last remaining world leader to actually let Steve’s task force move in to save them.

Years ago you’d thought politics was hard to navigate. Now it was a literal minefield, one wrong move and someone would take off your head.

You’re hoping at the very least your wrong move doesn’t happen here.

The Amazons were brutal. What little clear footage that still remained showed their killing prowess off well. They didn’t level cities the way the Atlanteans did, but at the beginning of all this they’d conquered their way across the Mediterranean in less than a week and no one had even noticed.

The Atlanteans were too loud, even put up against the Amazons brutality and true disdain for humanity. Especially men. Atlantis had taken over the European Coast with brute force and luck that their extremely obvious assault couldn’t be stopped by any human forces.

If the human world had been anywhere near as technologically advanced and superhuman you’re sure that Atlantis would’ve fallen that day. King Arthur had put all of his forces, after the Amazon’s had near silently ran them off, into conquering Europe’s waters but he’d made a gamble in doing so.

The Amazon’s didn’t gamble.

Call it years of godly military practice coming into play or whatever but the Amazon’s were a strategic power house. They blew through everything they wanted to as if it was parchment paper in a way that the Atlanteans and their ‘throw everything at it until it sticks’ strategy could never.

The Queen didn’t take whatever she wanted, the rumored start of the war in the first place, because she was careless.

“Pilgrim to Mayflower, we’ve been caught in an ambush—”

Your radio crackles to life on your hip. You turn to your team leader but she only shakes her head. She gestures for you all to get closer together. She’s following protocol, if you have to leave team ‘Pilgrim’ behind you have to wait in silence five minutes before doing so, but if you get a response in that period you have to call in for backup.

Beside you Lois’s quiet as she stares at the radio in Boston’s hand, lip between her teeth.

The following crackle three and a half minutes in makes you all jump.

“—it’s The Queen. The Queen’s with them!”

This time it’s not Steve’s voice but a woman from his group. The air rushes from your lungs.

Queen Diana of Themyscira wasn’t careless.

Something presses down on the receiver and the sounds of screaming and gunfire reach your ears. Right behind it cheers of triumph follow.

All distinctly feminine sounding.

The Queen took what she wanted without hesitation because she was self assured in her prowess.

“Dammit to hell,” Boston curses.

Your heart feels tight all of a sudden.

The Queen.

The same one who started a whole world war because she didn’t bow down to such pitiful quirks as apologizing. The Queen who allegedly wore the crown of the woman she killed as a trophy.

When that exact crown, Atlantean in nature, crests over a row of rubble from toppled buildings towards you the sight of that golden headrest becomes an omen.

The Amazon’s are ruthless when they reach you. There’s barely a triumphant yell afterwards the fight was so close to already won once it started. In fact it’d probably be an insult to the Goddess Artemis herself to call it a fight at all.

A mild squabble maybe.

Like a kitten might give a gangly boy throwing her into a box to slowly meet its death. Or the inevitable but hopeless life of a fly when around a flytrap.

The Amazon’s had gained on you too fast for women who were supposed to be on the other side of the island right now.

As you’re thrown into the middle of a circle of stern-faced Amazon’s with your team, knocking right into Steve and his remaining crew, you start to feel a lot like a fly trapped because of its need to further inspect a predator so unequivocally greater than itself.

Your eyes prickle and your breath squeezes past your throat, but as you watch the towering few women around you your heart thuds not with fear but revelation.

In person the Amazon’s were every bit as terrifying as the stories and mission reports made them out to be, then some. Their armor was chinked and dusted with the brutal effects of war and yet they still seemed to glow brighter than the overcast sun as they set their ire upon you.

It was a lesson in skill to be present for the way they fought up close. Every strike and simple step was so clearly packed full with power and yet they moved as one graceful unit, where one woman leaned right two more would work to balance back out the open circle till closed again like feathers in the wind.

They were seamless even as they taunted Steve, held in The Queen’s lasso as he was. The center of everyone’s attention.

Something shamefully akin to envy prods at you incessantly. You do your best to ignore it.

Your fists clench and unclench at your side as you watch the warriors playing with their food. Lois looks like she can’t decide whether to throw up or throw something. For the sake of all your lives you pray she only vomits.

“You’re all Americans,” Queen Diana points out before tightening her hold on the lasso. Steve is forced to rise up on his knees at the movement, hands going to his throat in a fruitless effort to pry off the rope choking him. “But you’re going to tell me a little more about yourself. Who are you and what is your group’s goal?”

For a few seconds you all watch as Steve just…doesn’t answer. Your eyes narrow. Maybe the rumors about The Queen’s lasso were actually just rumors this time around, you’re pretty sure a gift from the gods isn’t supposed to have user defects.

The other Amazon’s seem to think the same thing as five of them huddle closer to their leader and soft murmurs travel around you from the ones that remain vigil.

“He’s resisting the lasso of truth! How is that possible Queen Diana?”

The Queen looks offended, jaw tightening.

“It’s not,” she says before wrapping more of the lasso around her hand and pulling Steve up so they’re face to face, his toes dragging in the dirt. “Who are you and what are you and your people doing in New Themyscira?”

You all gasp. Off to the side Boston starts to struggle, cursing up a storm as Steve truly goes red in the face. You can’t not watch her a bit impassioned, you know what’ll happen next. One Amazon, red haired and incredibly angry looking, kicks her in the face so hard that by the time her body falls to the dirt you can all tell she’s dead. Face crunched to all hell as her lifeless body faces you.

You shiver and look away.

“This is an outrage,” Lois murmurs.

You don’t argue in any direction with her, just turn back to The Queen.

“Thank you for shutting her up, Artemis. Now back to you, I believe I asked you a question.”

Steve can barely put up a token protest, still actively choking, before he starts to spill everything.

“My name is Colonel Steve Trevor of the United States Special Forces. Me and my team, the second of which was headed by the woman you just killed, Colonel Boston Knight, were tasked with gathering information about your base and with the retrieval of Lois Lane.”

The Queen’s brows furrow, “Who is this Lois Lane?”

You close your eyes. You can feel the very woman stiffen where she’s crouched next to you. Your next breath in feels too much like a hiccup.

“Lois Lane is a Politzer prize winning journalist who has been embedded in New Themyscira to gather intel on your Amazons for Cyborg. She’s…she’s also one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.”

Steve struggles, doing his best to clamp down on his jaw before some invisible force pries it back open and one of his trembling hands flick out to point. “And she’s over there.”

All eyes seem to shift to the woman no less than a foot away from you.

The Queen looks over at her with a haughty air as she takes in the new information.

“‘Most beautiful’ until me, that is,” she states while lowering him.

You're mesmerized as the glow of the lasso fades while she dismisses you all once again. The Queen’s attention quickly shifts to a blonde Amazon who nods and begins speaking immediately.

“Our information was correct, then, My Queen. Cyborg is amassing the outside world’s superhumans in an attempt to interfere in our war.”

“And he will fail,” her voice echoes across their foggy battlefield with surety. Wonder Woman scowls. “Now seize the Lane woman and take her back to our sanctum.”

“Yes, My Queen,” the blonde speaks up again as all the others quickly nod their assent.

Lois puts up a huge struggle, kicking out at a woman and briefly causing her to stumble before three more are on her. It takes a couple seconds before she stops, limbs twisted every which way as she’s held before the Queen’s unforgiving gaze.

She looks distinctly unimpressed as she and Lois stare down one another. The reporter definitely lived up to her reputation at least. Unfortunately so did Queen Diana.

“Go. I will deal with her later.”

They take Lois away and all you can do is watch.

The Queen glances over all of you again as the blonde waves the women off and then turns to Queen Diana with a wave in Steve’s direction.

“May I deal with this prisoner for you?”

She takes barely a second to decide.

“No, Persephone. The Queen of the Amazons is a servant to her people,” she rises then, taking Steve up with her and letting him dangle from the ropes. His gagging makes you curl in on yourself, “nothing is beneath her,” Queen Diana finishes as Steve takes his final struggling breaths.

The blood vessels on his face pop at the relentless pressure put on them as The Queen stares on impassively. The remaining Amazons cheer and the woman seems to bask in their praise.

“You must remember that this is a win for all of us!” Her exclamation is met with more cheers as she dangles Steve’s lifeless body through the air like a marionette.

“May the gods continue to look down favorably upon the daughters of Themyscira!” That cheer, from a dark skinned Amazon with snowy white hair, gets even Queen Diana calling out in excitement.

Their voices thunder around you all and in all your years both as black and as a woman you have never been made to feel so small as you do till now.

Like this, however, that feeling of absolute insignificance was damningly heady.

In the very next moment The Queen’s sharp gaze seems to snap to you and the skant air you’ve managed to gain seems to flee from your lungs in terror.

“Exactly sisters! And for that the fates of the spoils of our hunt today shall be decided by you!” She bows in mid air. “A gift from your ever faithful Queen.”

Seems the celebration won’t be stopping anytime soon then. You glance around at your teammates and see matching fear welling in their eyes.

Some of the people the Amazons choose are killed instantly and with gusto, others tossed between two of them like nothing as they’re tortured, some are even dragged away for who knows what, but you?

You’re left untouched.

Shaking you watch as everyone is picked off one by one around you and how in the rush The Queen's gaze still manages to stay locked on your form.

You’re watching her back with wide, nearly star struck eyes when she finally starts towards you. Your blood goes cold as she descends, carelessly dropping Steve in the process, before that damned lasso gets thrown around your body.

“Now you see that is a face of admiration!” She hoists you up into the air and your stomach drops. “Now tell me your truth, little human.”

“You’re…ethereal,” comes tumbling past your lips before you can hope to stop it.

The woman looks back at you in mild surprise before her laughter fills your ears.

“Of course I am.” She shifts you in her grip while motioning for the Amazons to move, hovering with you above them as they march back to their sanctuary.

You wonder if its location was one of the things Lois was going to share with you.

You were willing to bet it was too late to find out now.

─────

When you get back to the Queen’s new castle you feel like where they were hiding when they weren’t fighting should’ve been pretty obvious.

It was literally the former royal palace.

You walk in and can tell instantly that while some form of a fight must have occurred within the walls, the palace itself looked in otherwise perfect shape.

While most of the other Amazons that came with you disperse, some stay to debrief the Queen as she takes you along to the throne room.

At the entrance you’re met with a set of Amazons. Swiftly, they bow to their leader before opening the doors for her.

As you get a look inside your brows raise.

The throne that sits at the end of the velvet walkway is singular, first of all, and a lot bigger and more ornate than anything the British could’ve ever scrounged up. It makes even you impressed.

Queen Diana sits in it with all the air of a woman who knows without a moment of uncertainty that little can harm her.

In the following seconds she moves you to join her too, and you flush hard enough for a slight red hue to tint the deep brown of your cheeks.

The binding along your arms and midsection is so strong that you don’t even bother attempting to wiggle loose as you’re made to sit on the Amazon’s lap.

She’s completely self assured as she discusses her next steps with her council, and it makes you feel hopeless the way they blow off the US’s push back efforts as nothing. Easily solvable.

And all while you’re sitting on her lap like a trophy.

Eventually she dismisses everyone but the guards at the door and you're as alone as you’ll get.

You swallow thickly, glancing up at her through your lashes.

It’s a last ditch attempt but you try it anyway.

“If you kill me it’ll be all the US needs to join the war and deploy their forces.”

She looks down at you with a subtle raise of a brow.

“It’s adorable that you think you can scare me,” The Queen says. “Your government is so pathetic they jump at their own shadow. What threat could they ever possibly be to me when they can barely handle the problems within their own borders?”

She laughs, a boisterous sound that you feel just as much as you hear, and you’re unintentionally shaken in her hold. You knew it was a long shot but damn. She didn’t just shoot your idea down, she busted a fucking gut at it. You pout.

Yeah, you were screwed.

The Queen looked fucking unreal when she laughed though; you were a little winded.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!! I love dark!WW, and she was too good looking in the Flash Point animation style; fourteen year old me literally couldn’t handle it.

Also— boy, has this one been in the works for a hot ass minute, but at least now it’s finally out.

In general, though, I’m trying to get out fics with more of The Trinity as a focus that aren’t just Batman fics. So yeah.

The urge to turn your head just enough to plant the pudge of your cheek onto her bicep and just rub against her and take in more of her heat is one that has a whine bubbling up your throat. Even superhumanly muscular as she now was, her body was still flesh, still gave enough beneath the pressure of your touch to make you sigh.

“Aww,” a rough feminine voice coos, breath fans across the side of your neck just hot enough goosebumps couldn’t hope to form. “Cozy aren’t we, Honey? You wouldn’t try and leave now right?”

Betty’s voice is like velvet siphoned through speakers, its new natural base rumbling up your throat despite her low tone. In response you hum, matching the feel of that base with your own lighter tone, pressing yourself back into her even more and opting to press your smaller hands into Betty’s too for good measure.

Fingers, slim in comparison to your lovers’ and a mortal umber in contrast to her preternatural crimson, drag delicately over Betty’s rough knuckles. You wrap them around to circle your fist around her middle and index fingers then tug, asking silently for her to press into you more.

Against your overheated skin her palms are practically scalding. Turning you pleasantly and horribly pliant against her.

Entirely at her mercy.

The pocket of control, reassuringly constant, that she could count on you for in a life where everything seemed intent on trying to render Red powerless and Betty sniveling despite the steel in her spine.

“Mmm,” Betty chuckles, drags her pointed nails just a bit too harshly up the side of your thighs, ruddy welts forming in their wake all while your legs tremble, “you trying to light my fire, Honey?”

“Yes,” you gasp, shuttering into her. “Fuck yes, Red. Please?”

Betty doesn’t kiss you — can’t kiss you, not with the acidic nature of her yellow edged saliva — but she does coo. Broad hands drag back down your thighs before a hand lifts to land a resounding smack against the skin she just welted and warmed.

The yelp you let out doesn’t take long to shift into a wrecked moan.

Red’s guttural answering groan briefly vibrates the air around you.

Her touch turns the slightest bit softer afterwards. Rough, sturdy pads of her fingers rub down your tender, flushed skin as if to offer comfort.

The sharp grin you can just make out flashing in your peripheral when you gaze up at her ruins the intention. If only slightly.

Betty chuckles, a low growl builds in her throat, and you don’t get to know anything but her for the next twelve hours she secrets you away for.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!!❤️

Oh my gosh, Bettyyyy— ahhh! I’m actually really excited to finally be getting one of the Betty fics I’ve been working on posted, even if this Red Shulkie fic is the shortest of the few. She’s my girl fr.

Also, this isn’t a spurt simply because I wanted to add a picture.

The amount of red color coded characters I’m collecting is getting kinda funny atp.