I am a writer and artist, working in both fanfics and original works. I primarily do whump and hurt/comfort. (Without the whump, you can't get the good comfort, amiright?) I will always give my characters a happy ending; it just might take quite a while to get there.
I am a big fan of hero/villain whump, emotional whump, pet whump/BBU (mostly because of the focus on healing, but I have a soft spot for the "caretaker is the new master" misunderstanding trope), and supernatural whumpees. I don't like unhappy endings, gore, bug/parasite horror, or major character death.
I don't have side blogs, and will inevitably go on fandom rampages every so often. These may include but are not limited to: Danny Phantom (and many crossovers with it), Supernatural, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. You may be sucked into new fandoms via my reblogs. I probably should apologize, but... eh. Join me on the dark side.
I finally made a sideblog for my fandom content! This will likely not be a perfect separation, as I consider my fandom writing to still be whump (see Hunters and Halfas, my SuperPhantom writing, for example), but should cut down significantly on the amount of random stuff showing up on this blog! If you wanna see what my current fandom obsession is, head over to @lunar-fandom-eclipse!
I explicitly DENY CONSENT for my works to be used in AI generation.
Art commissions are open closed!
Find me on Ao3
Whump writing masterlist
My BTHB card
Please feel free to ask me about my current or former projects, or just say hi! I love hearing from you all.
And, if you feel like it, I have a Ko-fi where you can buy me a hot chocolate. (I don't actually drink coffee...)
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(🧽 ask from this game) cw: what it sounds like...but maybe not that bad in the way you would think...? idk
masterlist
Absence gnaws the air when he comes to. Even though it sinks its teeth into his mind instantly, impossible to ignore, he can’t quite put his finger on what’s missing. He feels it like an unexpected step between the rooms of sleep and consciousness. His stride falling through empty space for untethered seconds until it hits home, lower than anticipated, jolting the body with its newfound altitude. A few inches felt like miles.
He takes stock of himself but he doesn’t feel any new pain. There’s hardly any pain at all, it’s been days since Harrison cut into him. The most recent sutures have healed, leaving behind just the dull ache as his body tries to complete the closure layer by layer within.
It’s not until his heart shoulders off the initial disturbance, on its own descent, that he figures it out. For the first time in as long as he can remember, the monitor doesn’t echo back the stubborn, persistent metronomed proof that he continues to survive this hell. His heart beats alone.
Nothing but empty, cold air.
Something whispers over the skin of his left arm and it takes all his focus not to tense every muscle. His other arm rests against his side.
No heart monitor and no restraints? It must be a dream or a hallucination.
His desperate, fracturing mind conjuring a tender ghost from the past. But the air is cool against his skin, his body heavy where it meets the table, anchored by his weight. Heels, hips, shoulders, the back of his head; it feels so real.
The touch comes again, light as an exhale over his skin.
He stays perfectly still, eyes closed. Doesn’t even try to see if he could move because he doesn’t want to break the illusion.
The third touch is so light, it’s all-consuming.
His mind drives after the feeling. Willing it to turn back and meet him where he expects it, can embrace it. Instead, the sensation vanishes and takes his last restraint away too.
He opens his eyes carefully, as if the stroke of his eyelashes against the cold air could ripple through the room and disrupt whatever waits to be seen.
It must be a hallucination. His spectre looks like Harrison but is completely unrecognizable.
A new drug, one Harrison didn’t even bother allowing him to witness being doped with. Poison lacing reality with lies. He’s high out of his mind, there’s no other explanation.
Harrison—“Harrison”—stands over him, same white coat as always, same scrubs underneath.
What’s impossible is how tranquil he looks. Completely at peace, not a line visible on his face, not even to smile. His serenity runs so deep, it resonates in the air around him and doesn’t need to be named by such an insignificant expression. It’s clear in the perfect symmetry of his posture, the gentle bend in his neck, the balance and grace of his movements.
For an endless moment, all he does is drink in the differences as other-Harrison stands over him. Even the light in his eyes is changed, familiar brown revealing that all along they’ve been secreting away an undercurrent of ochre, warm to the core.
He keeps perfectly still, isn’t sure he wants to move, if he even can. Especially since Harrison doesn’t seem to realize he’s awake.
As wrong as this whole thing feels, disturbing it is an even more unsettling idea.
Harrison lifts a sponge out of a basin and he braces himself for the sting of ice-cold water but it’s neither hot nor cool. Like it’s been measured to the exact temperature of his skin. Harrison slides it over his stomach. In methodical, meditative sweeps, washes his whole torso. Focused entirely on the task, never a glance spared to see if his work is observed.
His mind somersaults under the touch, thoughts racing like goosebumps through his head. Second to the strangeness of Harrison is everything else about this situation.
He’s naked.
Harrison is bathing him.
How much has Harrison already washed? How much of this aching softness did he miss? How much more will he have to endure? Is he supposed to be awake? Is he supposed to be able to move?
He doesn’t want any of the answers.
Harrison starts for his shoulder and he lets his eyes slip closed. Surely Harrison will notice he’s awake in such close proximity. The idea of being caught sets his heart racing and he wonders if Harrison will catch sight of his pulse sprinting in his throat. Or detect the shift just by touching his skin.
But Harrison continues from his shoulder down his arm. The path of his sponge, slow and thorough, painfully familiar surgical precision. It could simply be careful maintenance of a delicate and valuable piece of machinery, vital equipment. A possession needing upkeep in order to perform. Thoroughbreds need to be curry-combed and brushed, hooves carefully cleaned and inspected after a ride. Even a dog needs to be washed if it runs through mud.
If only it were that.
He peeks one eye open.
Harrison doesn’t look up from where the sponge slides along the crease of his elbow.
He opens his other eye.
Something simple, dismissible, understandable.
Instead, each whispered brush of Harrison’s sponge feels like it’s painting him into existence. Right here on the table. The only anchor that’s ever mattered. Binding him to his bones, to the ache and cold. Every new touch is the first touch, all others before forgotten. Until he’s ringing with it, alone.
Harrison sweeps down his side.
He wants to roll into it, bend toward it. It’s all he can do to suppress a shudder, to maintain his breathing.
He’s more relaxed than he’s ever felt.
Keeping still is nearly impossible.
Harrison dips the sponge in the basin again, squeezes it out. The trickle of water echoes, thunderous in the empty air. Harrison cradles his wrist in one hand and passes the sponge over the back of his hand. His palm. Methodically twists over his thumb, washing each of his fingers in turn. Nothing missed, nothing overlooked. Surgically precise, cold.
He wonders if this is what Harrison looks like operating on him.
Cutting him open, tearing him apart. Serene and wholly at peace. Destroying the very fabric of his being in the name of innovation. And now bathing him with that same kind of ease, like they’re one in the same.
The thought is as terrifying as it is other. Something unnamable and dangerous that he can’t look at head-on but that wedges itself inside his ribcage, spined and barbed, digging in to make its presence undeniable.
He wants to destroy it. Crush this living thing like a moth caged in his palms. Trapped and writhing, uncomfortable between them. Wings beating like a heart. He can’t stand to let it go on, suffering alone. It will never survive, released into the open air.
Harrison lays his hand back down and picks up the basin to walk around the foot of the table, breaking the spell.
The bitterness of the poisonous hatred filling his head, his chest, almost takes his breath away. His desire to annihilate this unnameable thing. Pretend it never existed. A ghost without a name.
Harrison starts repeating the whole process on the other side. At least now he knows what to expect.
It’s no easier to bear.
He tries to distract himself by staring at the ceiling. Counting the familiar tiles. Counting the lights.
His eyes fall back to Harrison.
Again
and again.
Until he’s desperate to forget this version of Harrison and the alien air around him.
He can’t stop it from flooding his mind like poison, staining and burning itself into his memory. It’s impossible to keep his eyes closed. It takes all of his focus to keep himself still, to suppress the urge to twitch and jerk, just to see if he can. The fact that he can open his eyes, that he’s breathing on his own, thinking clearly—unreal Harrison aside—makes him think that he could move but that it’s very important he doesn’t.
Harrison continues to his hips.
Sweat prickles on the back of his neck. He definitely won’t be able to fly under the radar anymore.
There’s a good chance Harrison will hurt him for spying like this, on the care of his own body. For intruding to meet this version of Harrison he’s never been allowed to see. Affronts to Harrison’s person are usually punished with violence. Three broken fingers for a slap to the face, for calling him a sadist.
As Harrison moves the sponge lower, he braces himself.
What if—
What if—
What if—
He imagines the worst possible physical reaction he could have and the equal or amplified retaliation Harrison will rain down.
But there’s nothing different about the precise and careful way Harrison cleans between his legs. His touch is neither hurried nor lingering. It carries the same methodical attention used everywhere else and doesn’t feel any different either.
He’s relieved, numb.
He’s roaring and writhing, poisoned, blood-curdling, somewhere else. Far, far out of reach, alone.
The minutes ache forward, blurring together. He can’t remember what brought him to awareness anymore. How long he’s been the silent, invisible observer to this task, a ghost. Harrison continues to his legs, routine immersing him to the point of reverence. Like he’s done this a hundred times. A practiced mantra, a prayer, followed until it’s leading the way.
He thinks he’s glad to have missed the weight and repetition that wore this path so deep. The feeling that there is no other way this could go, no other order or process even considered besides the one Harrison follows. He doesn’t like to feel its density, existing outside his awareness as something so established, almost named.
Harrison cleans his feet like he cleaned his hands.
He wonders if he was ever ticklish. Nothing about this touch is ticklish, light as it is. There’s something about his skin that welcomes it, everywhere. Nothing but cold left in its wake.
He wants to claw the feeling of predetermination out of his cells.
Harrison’s expression never changes, immortal calm like he’s carved from stone.
Was every step of his life leading to this? Fate, destiny, piss poor luck. None of it was ever under his control and in the end he’s here. All paths led to this one, a master architect mapped it out, one thread to follow. Harrison uniquely equipped to take him apart not only in body but in mind.
Cutting him open, bathing him. It aches to consider the two acts in parallel, in convergence. They can’t exist on the same plane, let alone in the same person. He can’t even begin to reconcile this version of Harrison with the one he’s used to. The one who looks at him, speaks to him, listens and questions. Hits and hopes and waits.
What possible name can he give to this kind of creator?
Nothing is delicate enough to braid or knot or burn this thing born them. Alive and writhing, it evades interference. The moth again. Its existence is impossible and the fleeting, vulnerable life of it will pass. If not now, soon. It’s pulsing poison through his veins. All of this has an expiration date and it’s never in his control. He’ll die here, aware or not. Perhaps just like this, witnessing it all like a ghost. Alone in the cold, through to the end.
Harrison cuts him open with the same peaceful attention as bathing him; or he bathes him with the same serene consideration as cutting him open. One in the same; two different realities. He doesn’t want answers.
All that matters—
Harrison’s teeth snap together, the movement echoes through the rest of his face. Muscles in his cheeks tensing, brow furrowing.
His heart beats like a wing behind his ribs.
Harrison knows. He knows, he knows, he knows.
Harrison’s gaze snaps to his, eyes dark and as familiar as coming home; the only living thing he looks up to now.
He almost stops breathing. Except he didn’t do anything to raise the alarm. Nothing changed. Not a hitch in his breath or a twitch in his fingers.
Nothing at all prevented Harrison from noticing before.
It’s impossible he didn’t know all along.
An even deception. Holding onto pretense for fear of what might lie in its ruins.
Or the entire thing was intentional on Harrison’s part. It would mean he should be able to move his limbs, that Harrison was just waiting for him to be the one to give up the ruse.
Wave the white flag.
The air crushes from his lungs. The awful, haunting feeling growing where it implanted itself inside his chest. Roots inching deeper, poison spreading. It’s unfathomable.
He closes his eyes.
Removes his awareness, his participation, in the whole raw, binding, undoing exchange.
Just in time for Harrison to run the sponge over the hollow at his throat, where his pulse skips and jumps. Tracing his neck to his chin before curving up his jaw. Harrison ghosts across his forehead, down his nose, anointing each cheek in turn. Even his ears and behind them.
He expects pain, or discomfort at least, when Harrison moves behind him to attend to the crown of his head.
Harrison’s touch is gentler than a sigh.
He wants to choke, break, scream, wants to pull it under his skin. He doesn’t move, can’t move, doesn’t want to know if he ever had the choice. Wishes he’d never opened his eyes. That this poison spreading through his veins had already killed him. That he was the ghost.
Even if that would mean never catching the moth, ending it. Alive and fragile somewhere in the air between them, wings beating like a homeless heart.
Harrison finishes his task unhurried, unobserved. Just like every other time.
And leaves.
He’s cold, alone.
masterlist (harrison is at the bottom; maybe when he gets to 20 posts i'll make him his own...)
The dichotomy of Harrison is so unsettling to me. Whumpers who are consistent? Sure! Whumpers who are inconsistent on purpose? Awesome!
This, though? This way he truly does not seem to see a difference between a task as gentle as bathing Aiden, and as destructive as cutting him open? THAT throws me off like nothing else. I can't figure out what internal logic he's running on and it makes me simultaneously want to banish him to the outskirts of the universe and also put him under a microscope so I can find out exactly what's going on in his messed up little head.
Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."
And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.
This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?
"It's red on the inside?"
Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.
"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."
And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.
If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.
https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.
If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]
I think my revised belief is that if you are stuck at how to get better at something, spend a little while assuming there’s just some trick to it you’ve missed. You can try to generate the trick yourself, but it’s probably easier to learn it by observing someone else being good at the thing, asking them some questions, and seeing if you have any lightbulb moment.
My fiance played the clarinet when he was in school. When he was first learning to play, he rented an instrument from the school to learn on. He was the last chair clarinet, had been for years, because he could not make notes that required the register key. For years, they kept making him do embrature exercises and he started to get a few notes, with lots of effort. Eventually he had to get private lessons to stay in band.
Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.
When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.
He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.
Sometimes you don't need to brute force a problem. Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.
#i mean. bro #i hate to break this to you but #you are in fact good at the small amount of piano ur playing #it is not fake
Dude taught himself to compose and calls it fake
“Just string it together in any order, the more random it is the more complex it’ll sound" improvising music on the fly was one of Mozart’s party tricks
Not saying this guy is Mozart but he’s smart and clever and talented and way, way underappreciating himself
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This list is interesting..... I would add: refusing to acknowledge someone's presence. Just looking right through them like they're not even there; even they when speak, literally just acting like they don't exist. It puts someone off-balance, it's awkward, it's uncertain. Do I repeat myself, do I wait for them to acknowledge me?
A sub-type of this would be requiring that person to be present in situations that would typically be private / intimate and having no consideration for their violated modesty. Like they're just.... furniture.
Red is for posted, white is for requested/planned/written, feel free to send requests!
Marcus and Jake are finally safe from AMTEC - although their escape nearly cost them both their lives. Now they are free to heal and discover what they might be to each other - and they learn that AMTEC’s influence leaves not a single person in their lives untouched.
AO3
Masterlist
This is a sequel series to Beneath Gunmetal Skies. Start here, continued from here.
Contents: Marcus's Powers of Organization, recovery, aftermath of torture, hypervigilance, PTSD, misunderstanding whump, pleading, begging, paranoia, past murder, more Marcus dog metaphors, surveillance state, implied transphobia, past child abuse, protective caretaker
~
Lars stared at the rows of meticulously sorted needles, syringes, medication bottles, and vials stacked on each shelf. The labels were all facing out, open boxes at the front and unopened ones behind those, with a few broken down boxes in a pile by the door. The floor was swept, too, and every chrome surface in the room was shined to a spit polish. They could practically see their reflection everywhere they looked, their features warped by the curved surfaces. The jumbled pile of cleaning supplies that had once been stacked in the corner now lived in its own bin. They had no idea where Marcus had gotten the bin. Even the once-dusty bottles containing the cleaning supplies had been cleaned. The only thing that seemed even remotely out of place was the stool that Jake sat on, and even that seemed precisely placed in a corner of the room.
The place looked like a different room than the one they’d walked into earlier that afternoon. It might as well have been in a different building.
They only realized their mouth was hanging open when they went to speak. “I was… mostly joking,” they said quietly. “About you tidying up.”
Out the corner of their eye, they saw Marcus freeze. They shook their head numbly.
“No, no, sorry, I’m not mad, I just… holy fuck, Marcus.”
He shuffled his feet. “It makes more sense now,” he said, his voice low.
They blinked. “More sense?”
Marcus nodded once. “Yeah. The needles are all together now, and… there were different sizes, and they’re all arranged in ascending order. The syringes, too. Everything is… it’s all placed together, and in the right order, so it’s easier to find.”
“Right,” Lars murmured. They went to the first row of needles and, sure enough, they are all 18 gauges, followed by the 21s. They 25s sat next to them. They let out a breath. “Fuck, Marcus. I’ve been meaning to organize this closet for… a year?”
“Well,” he said. “It’s done now. And I can do more, but…” He was already moving to Jake’s side, and it was as if Lars could read his mind.
Not until after he’s rested.
Lars would have agreed with him, even if their shift wasn’t over. Jake looked… better than they’d been expecting, if they were honest. He looked a little pale, a little worn down, but he was still upright, and wasn’t having the sort of screaming meltdown that they would be having if they’d just been through…
Well. They didn’t have the full picture, but from Jake’s injuries, they had a pretty clear guess.
They’d known they could leave Jake with Marcus while they handled their patients, though. If Jake had a problem, Marcus would have come to them. And in the meantime, they had seen a new patient, increased Ezekiel’s testosterone, given four injections to people who came in weekly because they weren’t able to do it themselves, dispensed two patients a month’s worth of pills, given someone advice on who to see for a decent top surgery, and done the paperwork they felt safe doing to keep the place running; as far as AMTEC knew, Lars ran a drop shipping business that sent out garbage health supplements. It had been a busy three hours.
And Marcus had been very busy. Clearly.
Even so, they were ready to head home. They rubbed their eyes and heaved a jaw-cracking yawn.
“Fuck,” they sighed. “If you’re not careful, Marcus, I’ll have you put to work every shift. This is… seriously so, so good. Thank you. Seriously.” They watched with fascination as his brows furrowed and he stared at the floor, practically cringing under the praise. They chewed their lip and turned their attention to Jake. “You about ready to head out? Ready to get back in bed? Maybe after I’ve gotten some food in you?”
Jake slid off the stool and leaned hard against Marcus’s chest as he got his balance. “Y-yeah,” he mumbled. “Food would be… good. But bed. Mostly bed. Just… laying down.”
Lars held out a hand and gently felt Jake’s temperature. His skin felt warm – perfectly, normally warm. They let their hand drop. “Alright, good. I’ll get you home, and we’ll get you comfy.” As they led the two men from the supply closet, they threw a glance over their shoulder. “Was this an okay outing for you? About three or four hours here? Was it too much?”
“Not too much,” Jake said, but he still leaned heavily against Marcus’s side. Lars pursed their lips and closed the door to their office. As they led them back down the hall to the reception area, they checked each patient room. They were all empty. So was the front room, except for Celeste, who was packing up her laptop at the front desk. She raised an eyebrow at Marcus as the three of them crossed the foyer and headed toward the door.
Lars chose to ignore the look – for the good of everyone. “You good to lock up, Celeste?” they said, dipping their head at Jake. “I’ve got to get this one home.”
She just stuck her thumb out at Lars, keeping her head ducked low.
Lars blew out a breath. “Thanks for your help today,” they said to her as they held the door open for Marcus and Jake.
Lars controlled their annoyance as Marcus glared around the parking lot like he was in an active warzone. They watched as his eyes swept each shadow, flicked toward every source of noise, followed every pair of headlights that passed as they walked to the car. They turned their head toward… something, trying to figure out why the sound of the three of them walking sounded so weird.
They realized: they only heard two sets of footsteps. Even with him half-carrying Jake, Marcus was walking entirely soundlessly.
They shuddered, and unlocked the car. Marcus helped Jake into the back. Lars groaned as they got into the driver’s seat.
“Take a longer way home,” Marcus croaked as Lars started the car.
They stared at him in the rearview. “I’m sorry… what?” Their stomach felt cold.
He didn’t actually need them alive; the keys to the house were on their keyring. He had given back their gun, but he knew where they kept it. He could so easily kill them, stash their body, and continue living in their house for god knows how long. Or he could kill them and run. Again.
They had just shown him where the HRT clinic was, too, so if he wanted to—
“Please just… do it,” he said quietly. “A different way this time. In case someone… Just in case. Please.” His voice faded again, so Lars could barely hear the words: “for me…?”
They drew in a shuddering breath. They hated how fast – and how often – their brain turned towards their own murder whenever Marcus did the slightest thing. They hadn’t started out afraid of him. They’d brought him to their home, after all.
But then he leapt out of bed when he was half-dead, just so he could grab a hammer to bash their brains in. He shouldn’t even have been conscious, but he’d been able to do that. Then he’d stayed awake through most of the surgery that had removed his arm from his body, even as Lars had barely been able to hold back from losing their lunch all over Todd’s garage once or twice. And they were trained for that. But he took it like it was nothing.
He’d thrown them against a wall when they came between him and Jake. He hadn’t thought twice about it. It just happened.
How many people had Marcus killed? Lars knew the AMTEC admin they’d steered him toward was dead; his murder hit the local news the morning it happened. How many more people had it been? How many people had Marcus killed as a Lev? How many deaths had he been ordered to carry out?
Is a police dog responsible for the humans those teeth savage?
But Marcus wasn’t a dog. He was a person, and, Lev or not – conscript, slave, officer or not – he had killed before.
Marcus spoke again, tearing Lars from their reverie. “Please,” he whispered.
They nodded weakly. “Yeah, Marcus. Yeah. The long… long way. No problem.” They pulled out of the parking lot and turned in the opposite direction than they normally did.
Marcus let out a breath. “Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
They took a meandering path, turning down backroads, avoiding main streets. They knew which intersections had traffic cams on their regular route, but they didn’t feel like guessing with two wanted Levs in the car. They thought about telling Marcus and Jake to duck down, but… out of the three of them, Marcus was by far the most paranoid. If he wanted to do that, he would have already done it. Lars kept driving. Their eyelids drooped.
If they were honest, though, they probably should have been doing this from the beginning. It would be ridiculously easy for AMTEC to track them down if they had even the slightest inclination. It would take barely five minutes of analysis to see that a drop shipping business had a brick-and-mortar address where multiple other people went regularly for shifts, and multiple other people went with greater irregularity, most of whom looked suspiciously… well. It wouldn’t be the first time Lars had been targeted for looking like anything other than the long-haired princess their family expected. But if AMTEC targeted their patients…
Their fucking patients…
If it came down to Marcus and Jake, or their patients, they knew who they’d pick. It would be the easiest decision in the world.
As if Jake had read their mind, there was a gasp from the back seat. Lars glanced at the rearview mirror in alarm. “What?”
Jake was sitting straight upright and staring out the car window. His nose was pressed to the glass. “Lars?” he breathed. “Where are we?”
Lars glanced around. “Uh… Lincoln and Woodshire? I know it doesn’t look like much, but I wanted to stay away from—”
“No, I mean…” Jake swallowed hard. “What town are we in?”
Lars blinked. “Bradshaw?”
Jake let out a louder gasp and shied away from the window like he’d seen a ghost. He fell backward into Marcus’s arms. Lars’s foot fell off the gas. “What—”
“N-no,” Jake whimpered. “No, no, I c-can’t… can’t be back here, I, I can’t, please, oh no, no…”
Lars did their best to watch where they were driving as Jake dissolved into terrified whimpers. “Jake, I don’t—”
“Is this…” Marcus held Jake tight, cradling his face with his flesh-and-blood hand. “Is this where… he lives? John?”
Jake buried his face in Marcus’s chest and heaved a broken sob. “Please, Marcus,” he whimpered. “Please, I c-can’t… I can’t go back to him, not now, please don’t let him hurt me, I can’t… please…”
Lars swallowed. “Did he get… triggered by something? Or—”
“Get us home,” Marcus snapped. “Never mind about the long way. Just. Get us home. Don’t attract any attention. I need to get him home.” He unclipped Jake’s seatbelt and pulled him into his lap, cradling him against his chest like a child. Jake slung his unbroken arm around Marcus’s neck and sobbed into his neck, clinging to him like he was dangling over an abyss and Marcus was the only thing that could pull him out.
Lars immediately turned toward home, glancing in the rearview every now and then. They watched Jake shudder and sob in Marcus’s arms, and their heart broke at the sound of him crying, but their mind fixated on the low, steady sound of Marcus’s voice running beneath it, speaking in an almost constant litany: “I got you. You’re safe. You’re never going back to him. You got out, Jake. You’re safe. You’ll never have to see him again. I’d never let him hurt you. He doesn’t know you’re here, Jake, and he’ll never find you. It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re safe. You’re safe.”
And, once, the sentence that sent chills up and down Lars’s spine the moment the words left Marcus’s mouth: “I’ll kill him if he ever tries to hurt you again.”
When they pulled into the driveway, Lars wet their lips and stared at Marcus in the rearview. “Wh-who is John?” they said softly.
Marcus wouldn’t look at them. “Doesn’t matter,” he said shortly. “An asshole. A monster. Someone who deserves a fucking bullet in his head. The rest is up to Jake to tell.”
Jake didn’t say anything from the circle of Marcus’s arms. He only sniffled, and when Marcus got out of the car, he clung to Marcus’s side until they finally made it to bed together.
If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.
How many people had Marcus killed as a Lev? How many deaths had he been ordered to carry out?
Is a police dog responsible for the humans those teeth savage?
But Marcus wasn’t a dog. He was a person, and, Lev or not – conscript, slave, officer or not – he had killed before.
I LOVE Lars' POV here. I love seeing their instinctive panic around Marcus after seeing what he's capable of. I love their metacognition about it, recognizing the thought process and realizing it's unfair but being unable to stop that instinctive fear response.
YALL. Holly Black has a list of resources she's used for writing her books on the fair folk. I'm OBSESSED. I love her work and world building. it's so true to the heart of faeries
Some other resources that might be worth checking out (not strictly about faeries but related):
The Corpus of Electronic Texts, or CELT, a collection of Irish cultural materials. This includes English translations of Irish myths.
Mary Jones - similar to CELT, and a resource we used for translations in the Irish mythology class I took in undergrad.
An Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katherine Mary Briggs, a British folklorist.
The Folklore of Cornwall by Ronald M. James. Unfortunately this book is harder to access and is often only in university libraries, but if you're interested in piskies it's a potentially very helpful read.
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall by William Bottrell.
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I know most of those following me know this, but just to make it super clear. An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger/the Great Famine) was a deliberate genocide of the Irish people. There was enough food grown in Ireland to make sure everyone was alive and healthy and survived. Instead it was exported, sent to England and elsewhere for profit while men, women, and children starved in the streets. While the English landlords fucked off and evicted starving families who couldn’t afford rent. While babies were too weak to cry and died at the side of the road.
They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. And we owe so much thanks to the other oppressed peoples, in particular the Choctaw Nation and the Masai, who sent money and grain to us.
Let me repeat that. The Choctaw Nation who had just gone through the Trail of Tears sent us money to try save Irish lives. It’s led to an understanding between Irish people and Native American tribes, most recently when we donated to the Navajo and Hopi fundraisers for COVID-19 relief, because while it may be a different tribe, Irish people will never forget those who helped us and we’ll help back.
The entire population of the island is less than seven million people. We’re still a million less on this island than pre famine. And it’s not that long ago. My grandmother’s grandparents lived through it. We’ve told the stories, it literally changed the DNA of the country. We have a national fear of renting, because so many people were evicted. People joke about Irish people always offering loads of food, but it’s because there’s that cultural memory of not being able to.
They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. We will not let them take our lives, we will not let them take our language. We lost so much, but we will not lose it all.
This is why I get so angry when people say “it was the potato famine, it was because of monoculture/microbes.”
Nope. The potatoes were the only thing Irish people were allowed to fucking eat, because as pointed out, the rest of the crops they were growing were for their landlords to ship to England. So when the one “worthless” crop they were allowed to eat rotted in the field, the English crown, empire, landlords, all shrugged and carried on. People starved to death lying next to productive fields.
What people don’t know is the blight was all over europe but the famine was exclusive to Ireland because of generations of farming and property laws made to continuously shrink Irish land ownership and force them to sell to the English landlords.
By the start of the blight tenant and free farmers personal plots had become so small potatoes were the only crop that produced enough calorie-per-acre to feed them.
Ireland experienced a famine because its agricultural system had been so utterly broken in the name of feeding the English and making the landlords and grain merchants wealthy, and then any efforts to combat the famine such as importing grain from the USA were halted because they feared it might harm the merchants profit margins.
Famines are almost always man-made. Crops fail and lean years happen all the time, but it’s the result of human-factors pushing agriculture past breaking point that turns those into disasters and mass death.
Whumpee never wants to be weak again, so they push themself further and further on the training grounds. Seeking out opponents with a reputation for going all out, then for going too far. Goading their sparring partners into attacking them for real. Secretly conjuring up magical constructs who won't hesitate to draw live steel. Training until their callouses tear open, until their muscles scream, until they throw up (and wipe their mouth and get back to it), until they pass out in the dust.
And it doesn't work. They flinch at the sound of a sword unsheathing. They get sloppy and irrational. They get weak.
It's frustrating. They're furious at themself for it, and all they can do is try harder. They just want to improve! They have to get better! Why are they just getting worse?
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My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying
You actually cannot skip to being good at a creative endeavour that you haven't put much practice into. You cannot trick your way out of the 'knows that your work is not what you want it to be but don't know how to improve it' stage by planning or reading or talking about it really really hard. At some point you just have to craft through it until your brain finds it's own unique way back to the 'everything I make slaps' stage and be prepared to start the cycle all over again. You just have to make that project you're excited about slightly less good than you want it to be. (Says this standing in a pool of blood and covered in blood and also coughing up a little blood)
