Can you give us a hint on the dead dove fic?! So curious what it could be. Maybe even a line from it🙈
I'm happy to provide a little blurb if that's what y'all want! 👀 Here's a 300-word sneak peek of what's likely to be the next long-form one-shot:
As A Dog
Pairing: Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x Female Reader
Warnings: smut (18+), DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, Jealous!Cooper, canon-typical violence, pet play-ish activity, hard drug use, forced intoxication, slightly fucked-up conceptions of love and loyalty, slapping, boot licking, oral sex (male receiving), face fucking, rough sex, riding, orgasm denial (female), creampie.
Things were quiet between them as she fidgeted in her spot, the tension of an inescapable conversation in the air, but the desert's constant score, the hiss of sand across corroded asphalt, the soft rattle of the wind in the rocky hills, played on. His muddled ears played tricks on him, making him hear murmurs and distant gunshots and the echoing crack of his rifle butt into that farmhand's face, but he tuned them out, focusing on her steadying, but increasingly heavy breathing, his eyes unable to leave her mouth.
He let himself drink in the fact that she really was there, sat on her knees in the dirt before him and already begging him for his forgiveness, for his acceptance; corporeal, flesh and blood and her sweet smell and that wet, warm place between her legs. Only in his drug-induced private fantasies had he felt it, but he knew he wanted to bury himself there, as deep as possible, and never let her pull away.
She looked up at him so dreamily through those thick lashes, though whether it was real affection in her eyes or simply the haze from all the Jet he'd forced down into her lungs, he couldn't tell.
"I really am sorry, Coop." she whispered, those big, round eyes brimming with big, wet tears. It wasn't difficult to see her sincerity, even as he struggled to focus. But that hot coal of bitter anger still smoldered in his gut, not replaced by the lust he felt, but fed by it.
Slowly, his own movements labored under the weight of too many substances, he reached out and ran the thumb of his sullied glove along her smooth, smooth cheek. Smearing the trail of wetness there until he was tracing the outline of those pouty lips, he pushed it into her mouth.
"Prove it."
Fuck it, teaser for the next Harrenhal au fic below the cut
“You regret it” Catelyn said when she saw his face.
Immediately her tone grew harder, and Ned noticed she sat straighter in her chair as if she wanted to distance herself from him as much as possible without standing up and leaving.
“Do you not?” he asked.
She hesitated for a second before firing back another question.
“Should I?”
“Are you unable to decide that for yourself?”
A flash of anger showed in her eyes.
“And what do you mean by that?” she asked sharply.
Ned met her with the coolness he always fell back on whenever someone spoke to him that way.
How had the room become so hostile in such a short time? How had they got to where he wanted to flee?
“I meant nothing, I’m merely asking” he said.
Catelyn snorted.
“You ask a stupid question” she said as she left her chair. “Good evening, Lord Stark, I will see you on the morrow.”
Ned couldn’t bring himself to give her an answer, and she immediately left the room. The door slammed shut once more. He walked over to the windows and opened one of them again. The lands were the same as before, but appreciating their beauty was not possible any longer. The night was dark and he wanted nothing to do with it.
Still he wondered what would happen if he were to simply leave the castle and disappear into the darkness. It wouldn’t be hard, he could leave it all behind. Riverrun, Catelyn, the wedding, the war, everything. Robert always spoke of it, leaving. Traveling across the Narrow Sea and live out life in one of the free cities.
“No” Ned had to tell himself, turning away from the window.
Nothing would be better. He wouldn’t leave anything behind, he would leave behind his own ability to do something. He could never escape the deaths of Brandon and Father, he could never escape Lyanna’s disappearance and the wedding that was mere hours away. Marrying was his best chance at coming out of the war on the winning side, and find his sister.
And he had no wish to leave, not truly. It was the pain he wanted to escape, and that was impossible. He was well aware of it.
despite hank’s words, you were growing worried. as the minutes inched on and on, an uneasy feeling settled deep inside your stomach. a bubble is about to burst, and the only thing holding you is a thin strand of hope.
“he’s motherfuckin’ connor, he will come back,” hank tells you. and yet, you could detect the worry in his voice, how his face constantly looks toward the window. even sumo starts whining as if sensing the tension.
when the clock read 2AM, you bolt up and run out the door. hank screams at you, but even he couldn’t stop you now.
the street is dark and dimly lit, with drizzling rain. despite the temperature and weather condition, you remain stagnant and tense. you didn’t even bring your cell phone; you want to see him arrive.
then, as if summoned by some kind of force, you see a figure walking towards you. bit by bit, connor appears within your line of sight as you feel the worry ebb into relief.
“connor!” you run to him, never mind how slippery the ground is and your own lack of proper attire. your only thought is to embrace him and hear his warm voice enveloping you once again. but as you reach him, you stop. there is something off, something different about connor.
“miss (name),” he responds, curtly. instead of holding you, connor makes a move to walk past you, brushing against your shoulder as he passes. your hand immediately shoots out to grab his arm, heart pounding once again. “do you need something?” connor pauses in his steps and turns his face towards you.
“you’ve stopped calling me that,” you said, slowly. your lips tremble, as you remember what connor said before he left.
if i fail my mission, there is a high probability that i will be replaced.
yes, that time connor told you that. but he is connor and connor never fails his mission. “c-connor, please tell me you completed your mission,” you said, now turning fully to face him. the coldness of the night air seeps into your bones, chilling you. even now, you could somehow still feel the familiar warmth surrounding his figure. but as you look into his eyes, you see the coldness that was absent from the connor you love.
“my predecessor was unfortunately destroyed,” his voice is smooth and calm, so unlike your connor. and all of a sudden, dread once again hangs within you. slowly, you drop your hands, backpedaling as you stare at him. “all emotional barriers were erased to assure i am at peak performance,” connor then adds. he sent you a smile, but one so stiff and cold that it worsened your fear.
“connor? what’s going on?” hank’s voice spoke up from behind you both, having arrived without you knowing.
“he’s not our connor,” you told him. “h-he’s not him!” and with a rush of adrenaline, you felt something carry you to the android standing before you. you grab him by his jacket, hands digging into the material as you look up at him. “where is he? where is my connor?” tears roll down your face as you cry. you want to strangle this android, this fake.
connor stares down at you, emotionless, perhaps even haughty. he is the same connor that you saw when you first met him – cold, detached, and inhuman. a machine sent to accomplish its task, devoid of anything human except for its shell. then, in a cruel display of affection, he wraps his arms around you. “everything is fine now, miss (name). he may be gone but i can still love you,” connor said, softly.
you wince and you try to wrench yourself away as hank calls for you. connor’s arms tighten their grip as his head dips down further, mouth hovering against the shell of your ear.
Okay, first draft of the Morpheus fic is done. Now I have to edit and then decide whether I'm going to publish all 20,000 words of it or just the first chapter. Because I do still like the first chapter much more than the rest of it, but I also wrote all of the rest of it, so I may as well publish it, right? Idk. I'll decide while looking it over. Maybe it'll be like As Easy As Breathing where I was convinced it was terrible but then decided I liked it when rereading it to edit
It was the night of my sixteenth birthday, and I was making a mistake, but I was too drunk to care.
The jungle creaked and groaned as I stumbled through it, a swollen yellow moon watching carefully from its’ perch in the sky. My family didn’t care about birthdays, except to mark the passing of another year. Another slash on the wall. It didn’t mean anything to the faceless, nameless gods that lurked on the island, either. The mosquitoes paid more attention to me than they did.
Not that I cared. I was done praying.
“Hey, Ev. Ritual. Yaga. Focus,” I muttered to myself. I touched the handle of the knife sequestered in my belt, still warm and river-slick with blood. It was the first time I’d held a sacrificial blade. It wasn’t the first time I’d stolen something.
Reassured, I kept moving. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but whiskey and desperation told me it was a good idea. It will work, I promised the thick night air. It will work.
The path was unfamiliar and winding, but still present. I pressed forward without hesitation. The bottle in my hand was almost empty. Crickets rustled, dry and raspy, a chorus that sounded like crushed leaves and snapped bones. I shook my head to clear the thought. I usually try and leave the imagery to Di, but I get dramatic when I’m drunk.
I smiled into the dark and savage jungle.The crickets laughed alongside me.
A sudden lantern light broke into my vision. I looked up. The path widened out into a well-trodden layer of leaves. A few feet away there was a crouched hut, made from moss and broken sticks. It matched the jungle, draped with vines and a well-tamed wildness. I realized with an unpleasant jolt that the light wasn’t from a lantern— the hut itself was alight, a pale hue the same color as the moon.
I had found the Yaga. Or rather, the Yaga had found me.
The alcohol made my head swim, but I needed its warmth. I raised the bottle to my lips and drained the last dregs of the whiskey. It tasted like sweat and blood, mostly, salty-sweet. Then I knocked on the door. I knew better than to enter without permission.
I didn’t have to wait long. The Yaga appeared almost immediately, a dark-skinned woman with black clothing and clean teeth. The teeth unsettled me. They were cemetery-perfect, rows of little white headstones inside her dark and cavernous mouth. I knew her eyes would be yellow; I knew her nails would be sharp and crooked; I knew she would smell of witchcraft. But I didn’t know about the teeth. I looked away.
The Yaga spoke. Her voice was the ripple of a stone thrown in water. “A promise, a bargain, or a sacrifice?”
I hesitated. The whiskey slurred my thoughts. “Aren’t they all the same thing?”
“Clever child.” She smiled, drawing my unwilling gaze again to her teeth. They didn’t belong in her mouth, I was certain of that. Maybe she had stolen them. I shivered.
She stepped out of her house, closing the door behind her. The light vanished, and we were alone against the trees. Fear pricked at my skin. Even the crickets had fallen silent.
The Yaga assessed me. “Your brother almost talked with me, you know. And in exactly a year, your sister almost will as well. But you are the only one stupid enough to actually come.”
“Thanks.”
She shrugged— the movement was elegant, indifferent, almost feline. “Why do you run to me when your siblings turn away, Ev? What do you want?”
I drew a breath. “I want to be in control. I want to be free. I want to be holy. I want to sin. I want my shadow to be normal again. I want my parents to understand. I want to escape this place. I want to hide here forever. I want— I want—” My voice spun and stuttered and faded, an echo on the wind.
A frown creased the Yaga’s brow. “That’s a lot of wants,” she said, yellow eyes boring into me. “Are you sure you can handle them all?”
“I brought you an offering,” I said, by way of an answer. I unsheathed the blade from my belt and handed it to her.
“A blessed blade,” she said, and laughed. It sounded like the rattle of sabres being drawn. “What do I care for your misplaced faith?”
“It’s not my faith. And that’s not my sacrifice. It’s the blood.”
The Yaga sniffed, and then ran her tongue alongside the knife’s sharp edge, steel meeting skin. She licked the blood away until the knife shone silver. Her perfect teeth remained unmarred, though her lips were now dripping red. “I can taste the pain,” she said with a satisfied sigh. “Crude, yet effective.”
My head was starting to ache from the alcohol. I was tired of standing. “Will you help me?”
“We will need space.” She tapped the house once, twice, and the hut moved silently off into the darkness. The trees rustled as it moved. I stared. The Yaga and I now stood alone in the middle of a square of pressed leaves. “And I’ll take that, too.”
She snatched the empty whiskey bottle from my limp hand, and with a snap it vanished up one of her voluminous sleeves. The blatant magic made me both afraid and envious, which was hypocritical.
I don’t know why I wanted magic at that moment. I did have magic. I could feel it inside of me, something pressing against my skin from the inside, promising to rip me apart at the seams. It hurt. It always did.
The Yaga circled me, running her long fingers across my face. I felt no body heat from her. The absence of crickets was louder than ever.
“You brought one offering. That’s one wish,” she said.
“I want—” I hesitated, trying to pick my words properly. “I want my magic to be outside of my skin. I want to trap it outside of me.”
“Stand still. Close your eyes.”
I obeyed. I felt her fingers tracing my skin. Pain rippled through me wherever she touched, but I grit my teeth and stayed silent. This is the price of a promise. It will work. It will work.
Yaga is a strange word. I don’t know where it originated from. It is well known but little used, much like the people who claim it. Sometimes, it means to abuse, to belittle, to find fault. When pronounced properly, it means curse. It means bargain. It means witch.
The Yaga’s cold presence vanished. I opened my eyes. I caught only a glimpse of my skin-- was it different? it was different-- before my knees buckled and I passed out.
It wasn't so much that she wasn't expecting to come out of this situation very much on top-- But she simply doubted the ease with which she would get the precious thing to its destination. She'd pissed off someone that, if it wasn't for their familiarity, she would be loathe to even approach, let alone try to beat.
Surviving an endeavour such as this was something she'd begun to find familiar though, the dominatrix reminded herself as she crossed London in a fourth black cab. She was taking no risks, and swapping cars at almost every traffic light was a necessary complication. The rock sat with a weight of responsibility in the handbag on her lap, hair up, business face donned. This prat she had to deal with wasn't particularly favourable to the woman, but his chequebook was as good as any.
Plus there was no way he would have the guts to double-cross her. The road must have been resurfaced, she noted, as the cab's brake was applied with practised precision. The slow approach of the cab to a normally unremarkable junction sent a shiver down Irene's spine; it led to the home of the elder Moriarty. And as expected, the cab continued ahead, completely ignorant of its significance.
Clouds covered the winter sun, so finally her driver could flip the visor back up, distracting Irene's wavering attention for a split second. One hour and this whole ordeal would be over.
And she'd have to find an extravagant way to create a convincing apology.
