Inspired by this video thanks to Val
Word count: 601
Silent Love (Keegan x Logan) - Before the Mission
The men were getting ready for a mission up in the Arctic. Infiltrating a base for some information on how to take down Rorke and the Federation.
Keegan had just finished putting on his gear. His stormy blue eye glanced over to the man he’d learned to love in such a short amount of time. The man’s eyes softened as he watched Logan struggling to push the buttons through the thick fabric.
He walked over, saying softly in his normal deep, gentle voice, “Here kid, let me help you with that.” The masked man said, raising his hands to gently move the fabric to where it needed to be before helping out with pushing the round plastics through. It was just another layer of protection to keep the warm coat on above the zipper that was already zipped up.
Logan watched the man with his brown eyes, seeming to want to speak inside the mostly empty room. The two had always gotten their gear last. Keegan due to his body dysmorphia, and Logan because he was just a shy guy as is. While Hesh was usually with him, guarding the door and such, his older brother was going over the mission a few more times with Merrick and Kick. And since Hesh already knew of Keegan’s and Logan’s relationship, he felt comfortable with Keegan being there with his younger brother.
Keegan was gently making sure that everything was inline, hands resting on the extra fabric when he heard his lover’s similar soft spoken voice.
“Keegan… Do you think I’m scary?” Logan whispered. The emotions that swirled in his voice was one of curiosity and guilt, maybe even a little shame.
There was no doubt it was some deep rooted fear. The silent man probably never had felt what the two had, always following his older brother and never really caring to make many friends.
The stormy eyed male let out a breathy chuckle as his eyes went from where his hands were to Logan’s uncertain eyes behind the balaclava he dawned, “Scary? My god, you're divine.” Keegan responded. His eyes were full of love, the kind that would make some people gag at how sweet this hardened soldier just melted from those ash-brown eyes.
Logan responded with a huff, eyes lowering as he wasn’t sure how to take the compliment, but Keegan could tell that the man was doubting the words. So the taller man gently put his pointer finger underneath Logan’s chin and raised it up.
“My love, if you’re scary, then I’ll love that part of you too. Knowing you can protect yourself in a scary way is so hot. Just like how you find me sexy when I do the same.” His voice purred out, leaning in close and gently planting a soft kiss. Keegan desperately wished there weren't two layers of fabric between them, wanting to taste his lover before the mission, but that could wait until after. “You’re divine, Logan. I don’t care how scary others see you. Mi luz, mi corazón, mi alama, mi amor.” He moved to kiss Logan’s forehead. “You are my world, Logan. Nothing will change that.”
He could tell that his words got the man to smile, his eyes narrowing with a curve, the light returning to his eyes. If it wasn’t for the black paint smeared on his face, he would for sure be blushing. As Keegan lowered his head slightly to stay in eye contact with Logan, despite his eyes being downcasted, the younger male gently pressed his forehead against Keegan’s.
Tw: Divorce, depression, neglect and a lot of angst
He really didn't know how it happened but one day you both had gotten into a slow routine where you were both acting more like roommates than a couple
Or more specifically YOU stopped acting like his spouse
It was slow at first, little changes here and there that didn't seem like a big deal at first but looking back at them they were warning signs he should have considered before the situation escalated into this.
At first they were complaints about how tired you had been feeling lately, how busy you had been with helping to repair the damages your era had faced by Dark Link plus his goons and how forgetful you had started being on time to your dates with Sky.
Then you started to slowly sleep in more during the morning,which Sky couldn't protest against too much since it meant more time for him to sleep but also more time to cuddle with you in his arms as you rested against him.
But soon after it got to a point where even HE was concerned with how many days you'd spend doing nothing but laying in your covers with the rare exception of work that was also on the edge of being forgotten in exchange for sloth.
He'd try to get you to get out more often by suggesting some of the things you loved to do together, unfortunately they also didn't work.
You want to go exploring? Sorry not today, your legs feel weak :(
You want to go flying? The weather is too cold/hot/humid/sunny, maybe next time
Do you want to go spar for a few rounds? You have an upset stomach,your head hurts or you just don't have the energy for it today.
At some point you stop eating as much as you use to, in fact you're barely eating at all
He tries his best to be a good spouse by bringing the food to you in bed which results in you refusing to eat and leaving behind a full plate or only patrically eating it while leaving most of it behind
Every time he'd try to question you on why you haven't been going out or caring for yourself he's met with either silence or a half answer excuse.
“Can you tell me what's been bothering you?” He'd ask
“It's nothing, I am just in a funk, I'll get out of it soon,Link.”
He doesn't want to push you beyond your limits and he genuinely believes you when you tell him those lines over to him
It's ok
You're ok
Everything is ok.
You're just in a bad mood, this will pass in time
He just needs to give you space and comfort then you'll be back to the same old you from before.
He just has to wait and be patient.
That's what he tells himself for weeks as you slowly start to get worse and worse over time.
It was bad enough when you were both acting so distant but now he was less of a spouse and more like a parent now.
It has been 6 months and you had stopped do all chores, stopped feeding yourself, stopped showering, stopped working, stopped going on dates completely and stopped,well, basically doing everything except breathing
Sometimes you'd get up to go to the bathroom, maybe eat a little bit of the food Link had gotten you and that was it before you plopped back down to bed with the old stained blanket
The room would stink of day-old food that was barely touched and Link would have to be the one to toss it out while he did the dishes along with the rest of the household chores he had been doing alone for some time now.
He’d find himself having to drag you out of bed to clean you since you refused to do it yourself.
He'd change out the bed sheets,blankets, pillows you had been sleeping in for Hylia knows how long.
He'd brush your hair,brush your teeth,clip your nails, change your clothes,do the laundry & do his daily activities outside while you continue to show no progress
He tries to talk to you a few more times but you don't even bother to give an excuse anymore which leads to a lot of one sided arguments that only frustrate him more as the relationship becomes more strained.
He tries to get you to do couples counseling and tries to seek help from his friends to mediate the situation only for it to fail as well.
He wants to help you.
He really does but he doesn't know how.
But the most frustrating part of it all is that it seems as though you aren't even trying at all
After a year & a half of consistently trying he finally gives you an ultimatum.
You either seek professional help and try to get better or there's a divorce.
He loves you
He absolutely loves you
He wants to spend the rest of his life with you
But he can't stay with you if you refuse to do anything to change or improve
He feels neglected
He feels alone
He wants the bright person you used to be to come back...
CW: body horror/non consensual body modification, implied sa, domestic violence, gore, forcemasc if you squint and if it makes it funnier
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My beloved nightmare returns to me in the night, grasping an eye in one hand, pressing her intestines into the cavity of her abdomen with the other. She’s smeared tip to talon with blood, dark and thick and clotting, dripping down her armpit like freshly boiled silk cocoon. There’s meat on her teeth, and her claws.
The soldier throws her inside her cell, in which I’ve been awaiting her arrival. There is nothing for her here but a mat to sleep on, graciously heated with fine lines of Core, and a mat for me, pressed edge to edge with hers. No Core in sight on my straw thing. I untangle my legs and stand, so I may greet her.
Kaugu grows handsomer every hour. Her jaw is hard, her spines long, her claws thick, her colors full. She’s is almost a spitting image of her father.
“What happened to you?” I ask. I always ask, because it lets her remind me why I suffer. There used to be a genuine sort of horror in my voice when she returned in such a state, a crack in my voicebox, a tear forming in my eyes. All I feel tonight is exhaustion.
She stumbles forth.
“That’s what you have to say?”
Kaugu yanks on my horns and forces me to my knees, so hard I can feel my flesh bruise against the cap. She’s still holding her eye, but her viscera spill free. She wraps her claws around my throat and begins to strangle me. I endure it. I endure as long as it takes for my vision to darken, long enough for my lungs to scream without words, long enough for her to roar and throw me aside as if I were a mold-clung slab of meat.
I gasp, retching up slime onto the sandstone floor. It drips onto the metal frame of my fingers. I spread them, and the slime clings.
“I’m sorry,” she sobs, “Depths be darker, it hurts. Tempo, it hurts…”
“I know,” I say, all inflection lost to the tin of my voicebox. “Come here.”
She sneers down at me, her claws curling around her bloody, hollow socket. I’ve heard this voice before. I’ve heard her nightmares.
“Come here, or you’ll regret it.”
I swallow, bathing my voicebox in saliva, and shuffle over, hands clasped in front of me, head down so she can’t see what lies in my own eyes.
I wait. I have to wait. She is my heiress, and I am her Tempo. She is the most monstrous girl in all of Malaro, she is the product of a ram and what tamed her, she is torment taken form, given mind, granted soul. I am a gift.
“Sing for your heiress.”
I sing for her. Of course I do. I raise my hands and heal her, like I’ve healed her for days, months, years.
Her eye returns, first a shimmering ball of viscera bulging from its socket as she screams in pain, then solidifying, quieting, rounding, a slitted pupil carving its way through the vitreous, a brown iris gurgling into shape.
Her abdomen sews itself back together. Her entrails slither back inside her, and she grunts and groans and doubles over as they rearrange themselves back into their proper positions, held in place by their membranes and mucus and gore. The blood doesn’t clean itself from her body, but she does not die.
And then the tune changes, and my heiress doesn’t notice.
You know, Tegai hadn’t always been one piece, like the way it is now. It was found not so long ago that we live not on a solid globe of rock, but sheets of stone and soil, floating upon magma, itself dancing around a molten core. Upon these sheets are the land we stand upon. And these sheets are never still. Nothing ever is.
Ever so slowly, the plates move. It takes thousands of millennia, but they move. Inch by inch. Scale by scale. The pattern shifts anew. Until one day, there is no recognizing what it had been before.
I finish with a high note and a snap of my wrist. My heiress gasps, mouth agape—she throws her head back, lets her spines flick blood into the ceiling, dotting it crimson. I look up. Reddened eyes stare down at us for just a moment—needle-pricks in skin, tiny pustules ready to burst—and then they drip, and clot, and dry, and flake.
My heiress collapses on my mat and grasps where her intestines had once spilled from her. She might notice when she runs her fingers over her belly. She might notice the new thickness of her scales. She might see the brightness of her colors. Or she might not. She hasn’t seen, felt, known for six long months.
I don’t blame her for tormenting me, honest. This is her escape, after all. What other life could she have, besides what my puny body has to offer? At least here, in her cell, with her Tempo, her nightmares can’t have her.
I find a new patch of necrosis dug into the meat of my calf the next morning. The scales have already sloughed off from the blemish. I should’ve suspected that my leg would be the next to go—there had been a sharp pain and a reddened blotch between my scutes right at the epicenter where the rot now lies. I roll up the silk of my trousers and prod it. It is soft, liquefactive, and utterly putrid. From what alive flesh surrounds my dying meat, pus oozes and cakes and dries.
I have to show my heiress. I have worse to fear if I don’t. Kaugu sets my leg on her lap, my sole pressed to her chest, and she tastes the rotted flesh.
“How does it feel?” she asks. Her tongue is dripping with gangrenous fluids and pus, slick and creamy on the meat of her.
“It hurts,” I answer.
“Good. Depths be darker, you’re so good for me.”
Her voice is deeper. She should feel it, should she not? The thickening of the vocal cords signals its arrival with ease. Her larynx swells, her throat grows hoarse. She speaks to herself, and grasps her own neck, and tries massaging away the ache. If she knew…
She might just kill me.
Each time she returns, each time I heal her, each time she’s furthered her father’s grip on Malaro, I sing a different tune, play a different note. The plates shift. Magma emerges from the cracks, solidifies and grows. Vegetation travels. Animals harden. The rot spreads up my leg, and one night she snaps it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, at the knee, and lets me taste necrotic bone. I walk with a cane while I await a rusted replacement. Her colors grow brighter still.
At night, her father calls. Before she leaves for him, she throttles me so severely I can hardly sing to her at all. In my dimming vision, I see my spittle spraying her face, her newly vibrant scales, her refreshed patterns, her lengthening, thickening horns. (Had she always had trouble fitting beneath doorways?)
She lets me go, leaving me to empty the meager contents of my stomach onto my mat. I wait, and then I follow her.
She fears him. I know this, because I know her. Her nightmares are the one which make her scream his name in the night, in utter terror, in utter fright.
Imperian Hei’s study is always locked, except for the tiny moment of time his daughter is let in. There are no guards, no Vis to witness, nobody to share the nightmare. Nobody except me. I see a sliver of the room, and in that room I see myself, staring back at me. And then it’s gone.
I don’t press my ear to the door so I can hear. I don’t want to hear, not all of it, not her voice which turns too quiet to ooze through the wood. Hearing offers too much pity to my heiress. To know a brute can suffer; it is only dispiriting to the one who worships her. I can’t see inside. I can’t hear everything he does. But I know he’s twisting the wire.
“Gaze upon yourself. Watch what hideous creature I’ve created.”
He describes the deformities that no longer exist. She looks at herself, and she sees them, because they’re from his mouth. My claws find their way through the crannies of my other arm, past the metal frame which makes them, into the sensitive sinew. My steel-core thrums, a song just for me. I listen, and I pluck my strings to her cries.
In the end, she should be thanking me, too. I’m tormenting him just as much. That thought could ease the nightmares, if she knew.
“Nobody wants to see you like this.”
Nobody indeed. I reach a nerve, and the pain whites out my vision.
When he’s finished with her, when he leaves, when she’s allowed her time with her body…
When she regains her breath, she sneaks a glance at herself in the mirror once more. She looks at her reflection, and her reflection stares back. She notices things, but she’s never fast enough.
My heiress is handsomer than ever. Her jaw has become harder. Her spines have grown longer. Her claws have thickened. Her colors are as vibrant as a wetwoods frog, bright as the sun beating down upon this hallowed cliffside. Green, blue, black, brown. The patterns are no longer recognizable, not as hers. She’s healed again, and again, and again.
She’s something new.
She’s something old.
She’s someone else.
She’s her.
She’s what made her.
Kaugu looks at her reflection, and her nightmares stare back.
One of the only two people in the multiverse who know of Ink having no soul
He literally questioned and investigated it for days after he found out
It knows just because his attacks can grab onto people’s souls, but he couldn’t grab Ink’s
No one believes Error about Ink not having a soul, only Fresh, but this just irritates Error
He/It pronouns, and probably a-spec as well, what, you thought he could stand a relationship, he can barely stand physical contact and friendships, much less that
Probably Autistic, or some form of neurodivergent
Man-Child
He rarely drinks, since in the Anti-Void, it removes your need for food or water, but when he does, it causes him to glitch out
When he blushes[embarrassment], a windows error sound is heard
Hates scissors with a BURNING passion, Ink have used too many against him
Has an entire phobia of Fresh Sans
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil
K1dn_aps Swap on a monthly basis
He’s not on Nightmare’s side or Dream. In fact, has likely tried to k1ll both of them
Earned the nickname Glitch from Ink
Feels bad about Blueberror, doesn’t know why
Swap’s been teaching him on how to be a good friend, but Error still can hardly stand other people aside from himself or Swap
He brought Swap the stuff to spike the nog in CPAU
Written for @thepassifloradiscord team bingo for the prompt sharing traditions.
Friday night movie nights had been a tradition of the Morhen boys ever since Vesemir had adopted all of them. It was a way for them to find common ground and bond in a non-destructive manner and Vesemir had encouraged it. As they started getting older the movie nights had begun to get stretched out, but they still made an effort to have at least one movie night a month. Lambert was nervous this month though, he had decided to introduce Aiden to his family, and that the family tradition of movie night would be the perfect time. If Eskel and Geralt could grow the balls to invite Jaskier and Yennefer, then damn it Lambert would do it too! Aiden didn’t seem nervous to meet his family at all though, he seemed excited and was practically vibrating in the passenger seat as Lambert drove them to Vesemir’s house.
“It's gonna go fine Lambs, I’ve never met anyone I didn't like, and you know I'm good at making friends.”
“I know… I don’t know why I'm so nervous about it.” Lambert whined back. He did know why he was nervous though. He and the old man had barely gotten along for a while after he’d been brought in, but he knew that Vesemir’s opinion meant a lot to him, as much as he liked to pretend it didn’t.
Soon enough they were pulling up to the house and Lambert wiped his hands on his pants.
“It’ll be fine Lambchop.” Aiden whispered, leaning over to peck his cheek. Lambert nodded and gave himself a shake to get rid of the nerves. “Alright, let's go.”
They got out and on the porch before the door burst open and Eskel and Geralt grinned at him. “I told you!” Eskel laughed, thumping Geralt on the back before rushing forward and crushing Lambert in a giant hug. “Awww Geralt, our little brother’s all grown up!”
Lambert wriggled. “Hey!” he shouted as his hair was mussed out of its style by Geralt.
“Indeed he is.”
Geralt held his hand out to Aiden. “I’m Geralt and that bear over there is Eskel.”
Aiden grinned and shook his hand enthusiastically. “Aiden. It’s great to meet you guys, I’ve heard so much.”
At that point Vesemir appeared in the doorway, watching the boisterous boys that he’d raised. “And who have you brought with you, Lambert?” he said after clearing his throat to get their attention.
Lambert finally wriggled free of Eskel’s grip and went to stand next to Aiden. “Vesemir this is my boyfriend, Aiden.” he said, steeling himself.
Vesemir grinned softly at them. “I’m glad to meet you, Aiden. Why don't you come in and help choose the movie?” he said, moving to the side of the door and showing Aiden in.
Aiden grinned. “It’d be my pleasure sir.”
Lambert let out the breath he’d been holding, relaxing as he watched his lover and his father-figure move inside and start getting to know each other. Suddenly he was weighed down by a heavy arm thrown over his shoulder and his hair was tousled. “He seems like a good partner.” Geralt said, nudging him. “You didn’t need to be so nervous.”
Lambert scowled at him. “Like you weren’t shitting yourself when you brought miss fancy pants around for the first time.”
Geralt hmmed and chuckled. “Maybe so.” He pulled Lambert inside as the brothers moved to the kitchen to get the movie snacks and drinks.
They tell us to be quiet.
It is their way of ensuring our safety, they say. If we are too loud, too proud, then others will follow and the rise of decadence will cause the fall of piety. If we are too happy, they will not see it as "wrong". If we are unpunished, they will not see it as a stain on the perfection of this white cloth.
We have taken this white cloth and dyed it with colors. See how it dances freely in the wind? See how it is dirtied from sediment that the air carries? Upon washing, the imprint remains- one of Warmth, another of Happiness, a marriage of the two underneath the grace of Freedom.
Color is forbidden. We are forbidden. Those of the white cloth hunt us down, shed our blood as sacrifice to their Monochrome God. They feed upon us like vultures. They take what we craft, announce it as blasphemy and steal safer achievements crafted by those same hands as their own.
There will be unhappy times for everyone but why is it fair to punish one more than the other? It is not a test, merely cruelty. What is the aftermath of cruelty? Where shall that child rest? Their fingers will never fly, stitching colorful patchworks of love, again. Where shall I rest, when I am gone? There are no graveyards for those like us. What shall become of the current me? My hands, covered with paint- my last questions, on this blank wall- the door, slowly creaking open-
You, at last, have come for me. How many have you hurt and how many will you kill? I laugh.
There are no apologies. ~the vulture was you but where is your guilt?
