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bakerstreet2016-08-12 10:41 pm
shonenjump) wrote in bakerstreet2016-08-12 10:41 pm
the mutual captivity dependency (romance) meme
the mutual captivity dependency (romance) meme
No matter how hard you fought, how subtly or overtly you rebelled, or how many times you tried to escape, you ended up at this point all the same: you're a prisoner. Perhaps you're just a regular, run of the mill captive, perhaps a hostage, a science experience, a weapon to be used, yet, no matter what, you're not free.
But you're also not alone.
There's someone else confined along with you, who you met through your mutual imprisonment. The only thing you two may have in common is that you're both trapped here - and that's enough. The two of you grow close (it seems you're closer to them than you've ever been to anyone, but that could just be the situation); soon, something begins to start between you, tiny and delicate. You can't speak to what that something is, not in a place like this, but you know you want it to last. They are another reason to keep going.
Captivity, of course, has a way of stripping everything from you, including reasons to live. Surely, it is only a matter of time before this small - and still somehow world encompassing - comfort is taken from you...
...no. Not this time. They've taken all you have, right down to your freedom, and it stops now. You won't let the person who's become most precious to you in this hell be stolen away.
No matter what.
HOW TO PLAY
- Comment with your character and preferences. Are you open to AUs and assumed CR? What are your limits? Given the subject of the meme, there's likely to be triggering material here. Do you prefer very dark fare or a light at the end of the tunnel scenario?
- There's one prompt that could be smut, but feel free to play it in others if you're open to it. However, I'm going to be posting this as a smut meme on TLH later this week.
- Reply to others. RNG.
PROMPTS
- Prisoner of War: Who's side were you on? Or were you just an innocent civilian caught in the mire?
- Hostage: Take heart. You're worth more alive than dead.
- Scientific Experiment: What an interesting specimen you are. You will have to be tested.
- False Charges: One or both of you are here because of lies told against you; eventually, though, you may begin to believe that your worth is truly that low.
- Do the Dirty Work: Your powers are useful, maybe even enough to use you as an unwilling assassin.
- For Different Reasons: You're imprisoned for different reasons, and you still draw close. After all, does it matter when you're both stuck?
- Most Unforgivable Sin: One of you is a prisoner in the most basic of senses: hostage, slave, what have you. The other? Well, it's much more complicated. The other is a person forced against their will to be a lover, spouse, or sex slave of those in charge. What if that other does find someone they actually love? It could cost you both your heads.
- Equalized: Maybe you were in different social strata before, but now, you're both common dirt.
- Should Be in Charge: One of you has a higher ranking in the system. Will you use your power to manipulate them or to skew things in their favor.
- Beneficial: You both have something the other wants. It's a mutually beneficial set-up, and that's all it needs to be. At least, that's how it starts.
- Love at First Sight: You never thought you'd see someone like them here, and maybe it's because you've been cut off for some long, but you're feeling so smitten, even if that's usually not you.
- Needy: You're not cut out for this. Almost immediately, you reach out for anyone who can offer to take you under their wing.
- Won't Fall: To you, it's all to keep yourself sane. You won't actually fall in love, not in a million years.
- Traumatized: It's hard to care for someone so broken, someone who's seen such terrible things, but you do it anyway.
- Brainwashed: Before you met them, you never doubted your masters. But now...
- Flower of Hell: Such a beautiful ray of light should not belong here in this darkness. Cruelty will snuff if out. You don't want that to happen.
- Kindness: They showed you an unprecedented act of charity and selflessness. You feel drawn to them.
- Tend to Wounds: It's easy to get hurt while captive. At least you don't have to wait for your wardens to fix you up. You have someone kind or dedicated enough to tend to you and you alone.
- Anything to Protect You: They can't protect themselves, so you'll do it for them in any way you can.
- Using Them: Really, you don't care for them. You just want their protection and their help. At least, that's what you keep thinking.
- Burned Before: You had another prisoner before that you loved, and they were sent away or killed. You want let down your guard again.
- Human Contact: You've been deprived for so long, you crave any attention.
- Can't Touch: You're in cells, kept apart. You can never touch.
- Barely See You: There kept away from you and everyone else for most of the day, but you still have feelings for them.
- Separate: They're to be taken away, perhaps even to another outpost. What will you do?
- Frustration: How long has it been since you've been with someone? You may take any opportunity to get some privacy.
- Have Hope: You don't want your partner to lose faith, so despite your own beliefs, you'll stay positive.
- Promises: You keep telling them things, swearing that you'll follow through and you'll both be okay. Inside, a part of you may fear it's all hollow words.
- Escape: You're going to leave, but not without them.
- Punishment: For your crimes, both of you will be punished. How much will your affections mean then?
- Forced to Torture: Not only does your closest person have to be tortured, but you're the one who has to do it.
- All a Sham: The truth is out. They were only playing you. In fact, they may
- Turncoats: Your captors have pitted you against each other.
- Fight: You may argue or even come to blows, yet soon enough, you'll be wanting to forgive and forget because there's no one else to look out for you.
- Jealousy: They're all you have here, so you're not inclined to share.
- Taken by Another: Someone else captured here with you all saw what you had and decided they would steal away your significant other.
- Know How to Break You: Your tormenters know they can't hurt you with torture, but if they hurt the one you care for? That's another story.
- Death: There's no need for prisoners who won't keep on the straight and narrow. You've pushed the envelope too many times, and now, execution is the easiest option for your captors.
- Finally Free: The two of you have finally made it out alive. Suddenly, in the light of day, things seem different. Was all of this, all of these feelings...were they true or out of some desperate need?
- WILDCARD
Stiles Stilinski - Teen Wolf - M/M
nico di angelo ▪ heroes of olympus ▪ m/m
Bucky Barnes | MCU
Re: Bucky Barnes | MCU
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Steve didn't often feel woozy, but the world was spinning too fast as he was sat down in a metal chair, IV in his arm and bag strapped to his back. The continuous flow of drugs was needed to compensate for his healing factor and his increased metabolism. It wouldn't last forever. The people that had captured him were expecting it to wear off in the next few minutes and had planned for that and the fact that Steve would likely be immune to the drug again.
Even so, it was bonuses for the men and women in the lab that managed to find an answer to their biggest problem: taking down Captain America and keeping him down long enough to get him here.
Steve had no idea what had happened. One moment he was trying to decide on unpacking one of the many boxes in his new apartment in DC after a run around the reflecting pool and the next he was here.
Blue eyes blinked the last dregs of the blood out of his system and he looked around the room. He recognized this place. Or at least something similar. The SHIELD eagle on the center of the table gave it away. His eyes narrowed as the door opened and he stood up like a bear coming off of being shot with a tranq dart. He wasn't sure what to expect, but it wasn't Alexander Pierce. Or the shaggy haired, masked fella that was with him.
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Pierce was introduced as someone about Fury’s level, higher; supposedly one of the good guys who doesn’t have an issue getting his hands dirty but still, good.
Apparently Steve’s intel wasn’t accurate. Pierce keeps it short and sweet, says that it’s been decided that the world needs Stevemore than Fury's idea of SHIELD, and that his babysitter will be the charming man next to him. He doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t offer one. Only lifts his chin a fraction when he’s called “the Winter Soldier” by Pierce and continues to stare at Steve, locking eyes and the effect isn’t so much confrontational as it is clinical.
Eventually the Soldier sits down across from Steve in a chair across from him, one hand resting on his thigh, conveniently near his hip holster, the other gleaming chrome on the table through his fingerless gloves. There isn’t that flicker of recognition but he does seem almost….”interested” is too strong for what the Asset’s capable of, but he’s definitely giving him his full attention.
“If you try to run, you won’t make it far," the Winter Soldier says quietly, with a voice slightly hoarse from disuse.
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As for prompts, combo of 2-3?]
Matt Murdock | Daredevil
kyle reese | terminator genisys | ota
katana. suicide squad/dceu. ota
Rey | SW:TFA | OTA
Furiosa / Mad Max: Fury Road / ota
o/
Maybe a more experienced rider would have been able to do more when they ran into trouble.
In this place, when the first of the other vehicles had come into view, merging towards them from a slope on their flank, Aurus had only a slight tingle of foreboding. Then more had appeared—whole lines on either side of them, closing to box them in. He'd understood their threat from the way they drove and the way Furiosa drove in answer, the movements of the vehicles quickly coming clear as any body language. What he didn't understand was why—who these people were or what they wanted. But the road didn't leave much time for explanations, and Aurus had more sense than to ask for them then. Ultimately the 'why' mattered very little anyway.
For him, the chase that followed was as much a blur as the road itself. He knew his way around guns well enough and he would do what as she said, but the tactics used for fighting here were all foreign to him, and his weapons poorly suited to road battles. It was Furiosa's driving that kept them going, kept them safe, and it felt like she managed it for a long time with the air and the bullets and the fire lashing back and forth. Perhaps Aurus's sense of speed was too warped by then to know though.
He didn't clearly remember the crash—he certainly didn't know what had caused it or how they'd survived. He was dizzy by then, and the world kept jolting on its axis. By then what mattered was they were fighting for their survival, and fight he did—with his own weapons he still had a lot of fight left and between himself and Furiosa they made a damn good last stand. It was hard for the gang that circled them to hit a target that kept disappearing into a blur of mist, striking with a blade from somewhere ephemeral and unseen. He brought no few of their number down before he fell, and he kept fighting long after he knew it was an inevitably losing battle. Maybe he'd seen it was inevitable from the moment that they crashed. They were too badly outnumbered, and eventually the exhaustion and injuries were just overwhelming.
When he comes to again he doesn’t know where he is—it's shadowy and dim, though still hot, and the air carries the same deep weight of foreboding. His head pounds, but his body seems whole. Only his weapons are gone, his armor is gone, his boots are gone—they've taken all the metal off him, his chest is bare, and he's restrained, lashed to some sort of chair.
"Furiosa?"
He's testing his bonds and saying her name even before his vision has fully cleared, and he's hearing voices—more distant voices—laughing, jeering, preparing maybe. Snippets of their sentences come to him before he begins to make them out--their bodies, their faces: a motley audience looming around the periphery, like a penumbra circling a poorly spotlit stage.
"--peel some of them leaves off 'n see what's underneath," he hears one say, and into his mind comes the chilling image of a man pulling the wings one by one off a dragonfly just to indulge his curiosity of what will happen when he does so. Only in this place there are no dragonflies, he knows. No dragonflies but him.
so sorry this took me forever. wanted it to be good!
Still, she can't resist showing off on the first leg of their trip, taking shallow jumps and sharp curves with laughter and chilling, ululating war-cries. Considering half her grip and steering ability are dependent on an insensate metal prosthesis, she's a very impressive stunt cycliest. She trusts Aurus to be able to hold on, if nothing else. He's clearly strong, and a fighter, and despite her initial terror of him being all delicate tendrils and light, she's quickly coming to see him as at least her equal in toughness. The race against the attacking road gang, and the subsequent fight only confirm that opinion.
Unlike Aurus, she has a very good idea who these people are and what they want from the get-go. It's the worst possible band of scavenger trash they could have run into. After the conquering of the Citadel, even after the Sisters' and Furosa's best efforts to turn the place into a city they could love, that could be fair to men and women alike, there were bound to be dissidents. Some left the Green Towers, joined up with those who left Gastown and the Bullet Farm, and slowly added runaway Buzzards, Rock Riders, and other road warriors to their ranks. She doesn't know who is leading them now; a large gang with such a flux of membership is bound to have constant contention for rule. At one time, though, there was a rumor the group belonged to Kanis, an ex-Imperator of the Citadel itself, who witnessed the road war that killed Joe. She remembers Kanis. He was good at his job. Almost as good as she had been.
Of course, war boys are brilliant drivers and endlessly daring. Buzzards have less finesse, but they're twice as aggressive and will close ranks to run an enemy off the road. Rock Riders are more agile and prefer molotov cocktails to bullets or lances. Aurus and Furiosa see all of these techniques thrown at them as they struggle to make their escape. Shooting one-handed while driving a bike is a tall order even for Furiosa. If he can make use of her gun, she'll happily let him use it, but their best chance of salvation is speed.
The Buzzard contingent of their attackers are known for traps, alas, and despite their best efforts, they're herded into a miniature minefield that blows the bike right off its wheels. Both of them go flying, separated as their enemies close in. Furiosa can sense what's happening well enough as she fights to know her new acquaintance isn't going down quietly. Like him, she fights relentlessly. It will take unsconsciousness to quiet her completely.
Thus, she wakes in the dark lair only a little while before he does, with her own blood stinging her eyes, and the barrel of a rifle under the pit of her throat. They know her. They know her all too well, some of them, and she's been called out by name, taunted, before Aurus wakes and speaks. Still, she's aware that he's comparatively innocent of the type of people they've fallen amongst. "Hsst!" She hisses sharply when he says her name, and scolds with a wrecked voice. "Do not give them anything they haven't earned."
They won't hear his real name from her. "We're alive, Green." This is evidently his new nickname. "For the moment. Hel doesn't exist any more than Valhalla does."
It's been hell week all around. Not to worry.
Nothing they haven't earned. His real name. That's why she's not using his real name.
Then he needs also not to use hers.
Another name for her--that takes him longer still. But when he closes his eyes he finds that one comes to him: "Scorchrazor." He manages to turn his head towards her as he murmurs it, giving a crooked half-smirk, a small stubborn resistance.
Kalla Scorchrazor, a charr of the Blood Legion who led the rebellion that liberated her race from the oppression of Flame Legion rule. 'Kalla,' he feels, would sound too soft for Furiosa, but the surname--the name of the warband--that seems as right as anything can in this place. Maybe he'll get to explain the reference to her sometime.
What or where 'Valhalla' is...well, that's a question he can distract himself with when he has to think of something abstract and far away in whatever is to come. Because the way he's restrained, he already knows, means that there is to be pain in some measure and at someone's hands.
He tries to rotate a wrist slowly, subtly testing his bonds, though to no avail. And he tries to draw all of what's happened in clear clean lines in his mind. That doesn't go so well with this dull persistent ache in his head. If his hands were unbound he would reach up to feel the point on his temple from which the pain radiates, but he doesn't need his hand to come away covered in sap to know that it's there--a honey-colored smear across his skin, the sylvari equivalent of blood. It's one of his lesser problems.
He takes a slow, deep breath. He can tell that Furiosa, though seemingly not bound like him, is just as beat up and by no means at liberty to set him free. Neither one of them is going to manage to save the other, then. So somehow they're going to have to save each other together. And all while they have an audience watching, listening to them.
"Moments are variable. How long do you think this one will be?"
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"As long as we can make it," she says. "To survive." That's how it works in the Wasteland.
One of the men near her makes so bold as to put his hands on her, and finds she's slightly less subdued than they my have thought. There's a quick duck and a low swing of her left elbow into his abdomen, and he stumbles a half step back with a grunt. Retaliation would be swift and vicious--the other guard raises the rifle as if to hit her with it--but there's a warning hiss and snap from someone else in the room, and a lean, muscular human man comes into the circle of light. He's well-armed, forehead painted black, and wearing a dark scarf and leather bandoleer.
"Told you not to get too close. I remember when she killed a man with that elbow. Don't take your eyes off her," he scolds his men, then looks Furiosa over grimly. "Too useful to shred, though. Yet."
"Green," she says to Aurus but without taking her eyes off the other man, "This is Imperator Kanis. I used to work with him. Sorry to get you involved in something personal."
"Not that personal," the Imperator says, turning away to look at the bound sylvari. "Just picking up salvage, same as you, Fury."
"He is not salvage." She growls in response.
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For now he bides his time, his eyes following Kanis and then Furiosa, trying to read their history in their expressions, trying to gauge the danger of this particular familiarity.
So he already knows her. That makes Aurus's code name for her somewhat moot, he supposes, but he thinks he will keep it all the same. The gesture of it still seems valuable in this place--a place, he thinks, where what transpires, what they experience, might best be held at arm's length from who they truly are. Besides, he still likes the idea that they might talk about it later, that the history of the charr could be one more of the stories that they sit together telling the way they did in the storm-guarded peace of their cave.
"Any friend of yours," he answers her introduction with dry mock formality, turning an icy half-smile towards Kanis that makes the polite words into something more like an insult.
But his eyes narrow slightly at the word salvage and the way that it is directed at him. He watches Kanis shrewdly. No, he is not salvage, and yet... "I don't imagine that's likely to stop him trying. Is it?"
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This is both good and bad. It means he harbors no rage toward her for killing Joe. It also means he has no fear of her, the godkiller, as some of the old guard from the Citadel still do. Her best bet, she thinks, may be to stall, keep him talking, and hope Aurus can get his hands free, or has some other trick up his sleeve.
"I didn't know you were still alive," she tells Kanis. "You could have come to me for clemency. We'd let you live in Gastown, or work in the Bullet Farm. They always need new mine fodder."
"Hm." Kanis shakes his head, eyeing Aurus thoughtfully, circling him. "She used to be a brilliant Imperator, our Furiosa," he tells him. "Ruthless. Relentless. Bloody. Then she started listening to breeders and girl-children and forgot it takes more than pretty ideas to survive and thrive."
"You reckon he's from that Green Place they talk about, Imperator?" One of the other men asks. He's bound up in bandages, with rusty armor on top of the disturbing amalgam of clothing and rags.
"Might be. Are there more of you?" Kanis addresses Aurus calmly. He's expecting a hostile response, not a real answer, but he's making his position clear. Beginning to outline his demands.
Furiosa is stone-faced. She's certainly not about to respond to that in any useful way. "I keep better company than you, Imperator. I prefer green men and girl-children to filthy degenerates like these."
She's going to have to use stronger words than that to get her captors to rise to her bait, unfortunately. The guards around her just grin, amused.
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The problem, however, is what they would do then. He's starting to play the scenarios out in his mind: neither he nor Furiosa have their weapons, and even if they could wrest some away from their captors, they'd still be badly outnumbered and outgunned, not to mention caged with no clear escape route. He could summon the Tablet, and it could keep them alive, shield them briefly from the first barrage of bullets, but what then?
To his mind, it's better to bide their time than foolishly waste the element of surprise. Unfortunately, though, he has no good way to communicate this to Furiosa.
The only person he can speak directly to at the moment is Kanis, and he fixes his gaze on the man with a purposeful calm as he chooses an equally purposeful non-answer: "Do you know, we have Imperators where I come from as well. Save for one maniac who we put down in his mad attempt to ascend to godhood, they are exceptional, forward-thinking people. I suppose it's a pity you are like them in title alone."
He gives a thin, icy smile which makes it clear that he might as well have just said 'Go fuck yourself' in so many words. Perhaps it's not the wisest choice, provoking this man. But Aurus has never been the demure sort.
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How, then, are they looking at Aurus, she wonders? Do they see a delicate creature of leaf and light, as she did at first? If they can be encouraged to underestimate him and focus on her, that could leave an opening for him to make a move, if he's still capable of doing so with his injuries. What she needs is to get closer, to communicate with him in some silent way they can't track. She doesn't know how badly hurt he is, and she doesn't know what he might be able to do with magic, should the opportunity arise.
Kanis is a little nettled by the response he gets, but he's not wildly hot-tempered. His brows knit in a scowl, but he digs beneath the hostility for the tiny kernel of information underneath it. "Where you come from." He repeats, and though he doesn't say so, he assumes wherever Aurus came from is where Furiosa met him, and either coaxed or captured him to bring back.
There is something she hopes to gain by bringing this creature to the Citadel, he is sure of that. Furiosa is nothing if not a consummate survivor, in Kanis' experience. Her approach is very different from that of most wasteland warriors, but her goals--so he believes--are exactly the same. Turning on his heel, he moves toward Furiosa, eyes searching hers. "Still all about raids and supply runs, I see. So is he a weapon, a breeder, or simply food?"
Furiosa would hit him for that question if there weren't a half dozen guns trained on her, but she can follow Kanis' line of logic, and it offers a chance to string him along, and to buy time. "Doesn't matter," she answers. "I didn't bring him for you. By the time you figure out what he's for, it will be too late."
She's going to hate herself for this later, but if pretending Aurus is some kind of captured prize she's bringing home will keep them alive a little longer, she'll do it. We are not things. Except when we have to be.
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It would be possible for a person of less faith to feel a yammering of doubt here, of course. If Furiosa really had been deceiving him, if she really did have some ulterior motive, he certainly wouldn't know. The scenario is at least plausible. Perhaps really selling the idea would be in both their best interests: don't just play along, play it up.
Aurus's eyes trail from Kanis to Furiosa and back again as he decides that yes, this probably is the best move they've got. And so he picks this moment as the one to fight, to struggle against his bonds, gritting his teeth and trying to jerk his hands free, making the chair he's in creak and scrape slightly against the floor. He's acting as though he really has just realized that he's been betrayed, like he can be pressed into some sort of secret use, one which he and Furiosa both know, while Kanis is the only one left in the dark.
"So that's what you've been after all along, Scorchrazor? I damn well should have guessed. Weasel!" He lets his eyes flash at her with rage, the rage that's properly directed at their captors.
Admittedly, Aurus isn't really clear on what the end game here will be, but at least it's something. Some kind of opening. If nothing else it buys them time. Provided, of course, that Furiosa doesn't get fooled by his bluff too and think that he really has started to doubt her. The best signal he can give is the softening of his expression for a fleeting second when he believes no one is watching them. Beyond that, he'll now have to act like she's his adversary too.
ethan | teen wolf | m/m
tyler lockwood | the vampire diaries | m/m
okay here we go for round 2
From the beginning of the whole endeavor, they'd dangled the safety of three other prisoners in front of him to get him to work for them. Find this, steal that, take care of this person. And if he refused the fate of three people he'd come to know and care about was on the line alongside the life of Iris, Wally, Joe, Caitlin-- everyone. It might have been a bluff, Barry knew, but it wasn't a risk he was willing to take. And after one of his fellow prisoners decided to stand against their captors and they'd watch one of their own die a slow, agonizing death over two days time, Barry decided he couldn't let anyone suffer through that. Even if it meant he became the very thing he'd tried to stop as the Flash.
The one comfort he'd found over the course of the months he'd been locked away was Tyler. In that time, they talked. Tried to find ways to keep themselves busy in the small group of rooms they shared with minimum decorations and little in the ways of entertainment. Sometimes, they talked about life before this, other times what they'd do when they'd get out. Once, they'd talked about escaping. But they'd failed too many times to keep pursuing that dream, even if it was something they discussed now and again, late at night when they were sitting too close on hard floors, staring out through a window he couldn't phase through and none of them could break.
After a few months, Barry realized he'd gotten much closer to Tyler than he'd been with Cisco and Caitlin. Felt attached to him in a way he did to Iris. Which, he mused constantly, couldn't be healthy. Sometimes, he considered asking Tyler if it was the same for him, if the comfort and attachment was mutual, but every time he got close, he caught himself. If he'd learned anything during his time as the Flash, it was that feelings could complicate things. And this whole situation was complicated enough as it was.
Then he showed up. A fourth prisoner to replace the one they'd lost months ago that pushed into his space, took up a lot of his attention, and kept him from really getting the chance to spend time with Tyler. It lasted maybe a couple of weeks before Barry gave the other man the slip, turned up in Tyler's usual area in an attempt to soothe the unusual knot in his chest. ) Hey. ( He greeted with his best attempt at a smile, pushing his sleeves up absently as he took a few steps closer to the hybrid. )
You got a minute? ( It was a joke, the lightness of his tone said that much. Of course he had a minute, he knew. They had plenty of free time when they weren't 'employed'. )
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At first he'd been desperate to work against his captors, to foil the missions they sent him on but in the long run it wasn't worthwhile any more, not when he'd been shown pictures of Caroline, doped up on vervain, at their mercy. He'd decided in that moment he'd do whatever they asked of him, that he'd do what they wanted. The death of one of their own didn't kill him, not really. Tyler had seen death, so much death in the last few years that he could look upon its grimacing face without flinching. He could cause it too, which was something that was always lying under the surface, if he ever got in a room face to face with multiple members of the group who'd trapped him, then he'd show them just how much of a danger their pet could be when turned upon them rather than their chosen targets.
There was salvation here too, though, salvation from the most unlikely places. A man called Barry, a kind man who called himself a superhero who was here for the same reasons Tyler was, because he had a specialist set of skills that made him useful, made him a valuable commodity, something to be used. They spoke often, got to know each other better than Tyler knew some of the guys on the football team he used to captain. It was how these things worked, after all, throw people into a house together, make them occupy each other's time and space and those circumstances force things along further than they would in the real world. Especially when one of them was a man who belonged to a pack, a man who ran on instincts that were normally reserved for animals. Tyler was attached and so was his wolf, seeing Barry as something more than just a friend or acquaintance, getting close to him in a way he'd never actually anticipated with another man. Those were his main reservations, really... that he couldn't be this attracted to a man, not really that emotions were complicated. But the crux of the matter was more important, Hybrids felt things too fiercely, too intensely, and that was something Tyler was currently suffering.
Then there was their sudden and forced separation, something which felt to Tyler like suddenly having one of his senses muffled, as if their captors had put a blindfold on him. It killed him, he wouldn't say he was pining for the other man but his absence was noted. It left the hybrid frustrated, snappish, annoyed... it meant he took to his missions with too much gusto, that he began to favour the violent missions, those times he could unleash the anger that burned under his skin and let it burn through him, exhausting him so that when he got back to the house he noted Barry's absence less, cursing his own emotions and the fact they came too strong, that they were unmanageable without the extreme levels of alcohol he and his friends consumed back home. He could feel them all, his emotions, clawing at his insides and leaving him raw.
Which is why it came as a shock when Barry's face finally appears in front of him, in Tyler's own territory, in his space and those emotions come clawing their way up his throat again. He moves quickly to Barry's side, grabbing the other man by the back of the neck and pulling him close. It looked for a fraction of a second as if he were going to kiss the other man, instead he just buries his nose into Barry's hairline, breathing deeply. It'd been that long since they'd had one on one time with one another that Barry didn't even smell like him anymore and that seemed more devastating than anything. He held Barry there for a moment, his hand clenched around the other man's neck before he finally releases and lets out a heavy sigh, taking a step back and smiling as if there was nothing wrong.] Long time no see... but sure, I've got a minute I guess. Maybe half of one. [Because of course he'd still be a fuckboy after that, trying to pretend his hybrid nonsense was normal.]
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Still, the hand closing on the back of his neck and pulling him close was unexpected. The sudden sight of Tyler closing in on him made Barry's heart beat fast in his chest, so fast in fact, he felt as if it were vibrating against his rib cage. But the press of a nose against his hairline instead and the sound of the other breathing deep only made him stand still for a moment, as if waiting for Tyler to do something else. Step away, kiss him for real-- He stepped back as Tyler did, offering his own smile despite the sudden feeling of... something in chest. Something he couldn't quite place.
He reached up quickly, slipped a hand across his forehead and hair. Feeling the spot where Tyler's nose had been seconds ago as if he were trying to convince himself that it had happened at all with how normal Tyler seemed to be acting now. ) Yeah, the ah... new guy really knows how to sink his claws into you. ( For a while, he thought he might literally do that, he didn't bother to say. ) I just wanted to, you know. Stop by and see if you wanted to sit and talk or something for a bit.
( Maybe talk about what had just happened, he nearly added. Or how much he'd missed Tyler at all. Both things seemed strangely frightening though as he watched the other man. What if he mentioned missing Tyler, how comfortable and... content he gotten in his company and Tyler didn't feel the same? Or worse, found it uncomfortable in some way? He dismissed the thought, though, in favor of a smile. Comfortable, bright, and familiar. )
If you can give me more than half a minute, at least.
no subject
He watches Barry slide a hand through his hair and frowns, mostly at himself, knowing he'd crossed some strong line in the sand by shoving his nose in Barry's hairline, as if there weren't more subtle ways to sniff a dude. It wasn't anything weird or sexual, right? It was just... wolf stuff, like Mason used to explain to him. The wolf inside him did things differently, it needed to smell Barry to know his emotional state or if he was hurt or something. Tyler ignored the surge of emotion in his stomach, eyes fluttering closed as he moves to sit down, shaking it off and looking back up to Barry, listening to him, once more ignoring a pang of anger this time as Barry mentions someone else's claws.] But he hasn't, right? I'd hate for there to be another accident happen to someone on our team.
[He gestures to the couch beside him.] Yeah dude, c'mon, sit. Its been a long few weeks, huh? Been kinda strange not having time together every day. [He would've said I missed you if it weren't such a gay concept to come out with. He probably would've said so much, really, if it weren't for him stomping down his emotions, swallowing them back like bile.] I guess I can give you more than half a minute, since I won't be back on task again 'til tomorrow and I've got nothing else that needs done right now. At least 'til someone comes along and starts making demands again. [He doesn't mean to turn to Barry like his attention was completely undivided.] So, what's up?
no subject
Not that he had to worry about that. Nothing had happened. There was no reason to worry about Tyler worrying about him. )
Yeah, I feel like we haven't talked in ages. ( He agreed with a nod, leaning back against the cushions and considering for a moment what he wanted to say. He wished it was easy as it had been with Iris, that he could just come out and say he'd missed Tyler's company, that some knot in his chest was suddenly gone now that they were here together. Talking and at ease as if they hadn't been apart at all. Geez, he hadn't realized how much like his relationship with Iris it had become and that... that worried him. )
Not much. I mean, I've just been showing around the new guy. He's ah... he's a pretty intense guy. Not really the personal space type. ( He noted absently, nodding his head as if Tyler knew all this information already. Something about how stiffly Barry sat, one hand sliding across the back of his neck, said the whole encounter had been... awkward. It felt as if he betraying Tyler in some way, even if there was no reason to feel that way.
Smoothing his hand across his hair instead, he looked away briefly before turning his attention back to Tyler. ) What about you? Anything exciting going on?
no subject
Its definitely been a while... maybe that's deliberate, they don't want us getting too friendly or something. [When Barry relaxes beside him though some of the tension slips effortlessly away from Tyler, a stress that he'd been carrying in his muscles suddenly leaving him, making him seem a lot more relaxed than he had initially.]
I haven't spent a lotta time with him, but if I do I'll make sure to teach him exactly what personal space should be. [There's a glint in Tyler's eyes as if to say he'd very much like to teach the new recruit a lesson in that fact, except when he turns properly to Barry, shifting a leg up onto the sofa so he could look more at him than the room proper, he notices that stiffness and leans in, voice low.] You wanna tell me what happened that has you looking- [He waves a hand to encompass Barry's stiffness.] Or am I gonna have to wait and find out?
[He leans back to resume speaking normally, although his expression still intense on Barry.] Exciting, me? Never. They haven't even sent me to kill anyone or rough anyone up recently. Just a lot of stealing shit that isn't even worth stealing.
isaac lahey | teen wolf | m/m
damon salvatore | the vampire diaries | m/m
mashes a bunch of prompts together
He'd learned to track the days by the rotations of the guards, which ones came through, and how often they did. Beyond the periodic shifts in the schedule, he thought he'd done a good job of keep track of how long he'd been locked away in a strange cell with its clear but sturdy walls. Sometimes, though, he was able to catch sight of a date scribbled on a piece of paper as he was escorted from one room to another - shoved from one episode of restraints and unconsciousness into another with only new track marks on his arms to show he'd been bothered at all in his sleep.
It had been a little over a month by the time things had changed, and suddenly, the space in his cell was filled with a tall drink of water that made Theo painfully aware of how long it'd been since he'd seen anyone that wasn't a guard or member of the staff. His initial reaction had been to shove past the man and make a break for the door when he'd opened it to let him in, but these people had learned long ago to keep him on a short leash. A leash that took the form of a cuff around one ankle, just long enough to let him move about the far side of his cell and nothing more.
Their cell, as it was, was barely bigger than the average bedroom. A single bed was tucked in the far corner where Theo's chain began with a small shelf on the far side filled with old, ragged books that were just a few inches out of Theo's reach. Thankfully within reach was a small sink and toilet. A small chest was tucked neatly against the clear wall nearest the exit. Too far out of Theo's reach for him to do more than look. It was filled with small things - puzzles and magazines printed on cloth pages. Nothing to do actual harm. Even with the new addition to his cell, not much had changed beyond an extra pillow for the small bed.
He took to his new cell mate much more quickly than Damon took to him. Theo was fascinated by Damon, kept a curious eye on him from his corner of the cell, and took what attention and communication he could get when Damon was willing to offer it. Within a couple of weeks, he'd found being removed from the cell for his usual rounds of being injected with only god knew what made him eager to return if only to see Damon. To be near him and draw some form of comfort that he couldn't anywhere else.
And if the way Damon had started to act over the last few weeks was any indication, the feeling was turning out to be mutual. Damon disappeared for longer times than he did, came back bloody and often angry after a few hours. Theo did his best to soothe Damon in whatever ways he could, whether that was with a touch, soft words, or offering out a vein if that's what Damon had wanted. Whatever Damon wanted, he realized quickly, he was willing to give the vampire.
Their keepers learned the same thing quickly. And nearly a month and a half after their arrival, they'd taken to separating them, leaving them to watch one another through clear walls for days. No way to help each other, no way to offer comfort, or a chance of physical closeness. All there was a desperate ache in his chest that only vanished when they returned Damon to their cell.
After three months, instead of taking Damon from him and putting him in the cell beside him, they took him somewhere else. Somewhere Theo couldn't see him. He realized after a couple of days that it wasn't for a new round of torture trying to physically torture Damon. They were purposefully keeping them apart. That hurt worse than anything he could think of - knowing they'd taken Damon from him, that they were keeping them apart for their own sick amusement.
They hadn't seen one another in a week, and Theo was scared that it might be a permanent fixture. In the time Damon had been gone, he'd taken to doing whatever he could to remind him of the other. Laying in the same spot Damon would. Breathing in his scent from the pillow he usually used. Putting his hand against the glass in the same spot he always would when Damon was on the other side.
On the eighth day, a group of guards came into view - escorting Damon. As the door to their cell opened and they pushed the other man in, clean and seemingly unharmed, Theo felt his heart stop. Certain he was dreaming. )
Damon. ( He whispered, scrambling up from where he had been laid out on their small bed. He hurried to cross the distance to Damon, stumbling as the chain at his ankle caught and he nearly hit the ground from the force of his own movements being halted by the short length of the chain. ) Damon.
/ruins everything
He hadn't thought much of it when he'd been captured, weakened by vervain and escorted to a facility that, for all Damon could tell, was isolated from the rest of the world. It always happened this way, one moment of weakness caused by a concentrated dose of the stupidly powerful flower and suddenly he was limp, pliant in the hands of someone weaker than him, where usually he stood strong and savage.
This particular crew, however, had made one honest mistake in placing him in a cell with Theo, they'd given him nearly unrestricted access to blood, letting him have the one thing he needed to survive, to keep the magic alive. The second mistake, although one you could miss if you didn't know where to look, was wrapping that all important life force in the package of something beautiful. Beauty was one of Damon's weaknesses the same way his rage was. The vampire always found it, and when he did, coveted it. He'd been called obsessive before, and for good reason, but when you locked two people in a room and took away all other interactions? It was easy for those fires to spark and flare into life with a stunning voracity.
It helped him keep his mind, the same way Enzo had helped him keep his sanity all those years ago, it stopped Damon from becoming a beast, a weak spirit on the verge of death that had no chance of escape. It made him strong, where they'd otherwise like to keep him weak. Even through all of their experimentation they hadn't grown wise to it, why the vampire didn't scream during his torture sessions, why he wasn't the mess he was at Augustine, it was because they'd given him a tether, the idiots, something to hold onto to keep him together.
Which is why everything crashed harder the moment they started separating them. Why Damon found it harder and harder to keep a grip of himself with each passing hour they were taken to separate cells. These last eight days, they'd seemed like lifetimes, which for a man who'd been on the planet for over a hundred and seventy years was a significant way to describe them.
What was better is that his captors had suddenly realized that whilst they mightn't be able to do much to his body, they were more than capable of doing things to his mind. Changing their level of torture from something purely physical to something twisted and psychological, a seed of toxicity they planted in his brain and left to fester like a rotting wound. It meant that he couldn't escape it, his brain wasn't equipped to heal himself that way. It was as if they'd placed a werewolf bite into his very psyche and Damon would be forced to watch it burn everything up, unless he could move past it.
As it stood however, when he was released into the cell again his expression was almost cold. His desire to get back to Theo tempered as he reaches out arms, not to grab Theo but to hold him in place, an arms length away as Damon cast an eye over him, as if seeing him for the first time... as if he didn't know what to do with him.
Better yet? They'd kept him sated during his captivity, the bloodlust couldn't even penetrate the apparent lack of feeling as Damon almost scientifically appraises the boy before dropping his hands, his mouth falling open, head tilting in interest.] They... [He still had his memories of this, of how he thought he felt about Theo. His eyes narrow though, jaw becoming hard, anger seething forward before suddenly appearing stunted.] They switched it off. [He seemed almost bored now, even if his curiosity was peaked at just how they'd managed it.] I don't feel anything.
u asshole
But he realized the instant his eyes settled on Damon's face that that would hardly be the case here and now.
The hands that stopped him from embracing the other felt like cold steel, a form of restraint more powerful than anything he'd encountered so far. The gaze that looked him over was sharp and biting, felt as if it were physically digging into his skin and leaving vicious lines across his body. Damon might as well have done so, he mused, as he realized the look in the vampire's eyes, on his face... It wasn't affection or happiness. It was something disinterested and almost bored. )
What? ( Was the only response Theo could muster in that moment. Every muscle in his body stiffened, and for a moment, all he could bring himself to do was stop and stare at the other as if expecting Damon to laugh and say he was joking. That the words that had just left his mouth were a way of teasing him to add some flare to their reunion. ) Turned what off?
( In that moment, Theo wasn't sure if it had been Damon who mentioned it in the past of if it had been one of their keepers. But he knew exactly what the other meant. Vampires could turn off their feelings, and somehow, their keepers had found a way to do that to Damon. They'd separated them, caused him pain, dangled a hope of happiness in front of him only to rip it away. The realization made him feel simultaneously sick and angry. It was the latter that won out, his hands flexing as if they wanted to strike before he curled his fists instead. )
They can't do that.
i asshole indeed
He finally registers Theo was talking and turns to look at him, disinterest plain as day on his face.] Turned off my humanity? [He said it in a matter of fact voice, the kind of thing that usually would be followed with a duh.] Basically one of the many, many reasons vampires are better than humans. [He shrugs and finally drops his hands from Theo's shoulders, wiping them on his trousers.] Our emotions have a literal off switch, night night, fuse blown. [He smiles, but its a facsimile of the look he usually gave Theo.] I don't feel anything right now... and I can see you're getting mad and yes once upon a time I totally loved you... but right now? Nada. [He reaches out and pet's Theo's hair as if consoling him before smiling again and moving to sit down on the bed.
It was probably worse for Theo, so much worse because it wasn't like they wiped away months of memories, instead they just wiped away any emotional connection to those memories. Damon still had the experience, still had the right notes and knowledge, he just didn't give a fuck about them. It always made things that much worse because he was so blatantly in control of himself, it added insult to the injury of what their captors had done.]
Stefan Salvatore | The Vampire Diaries | M/M
Derek Hale | Teen Wolf | M/M
Jackson Whittemore | Teen Wolf | M/M
Heine Rammsteiner | DOGs: Bullets & Carnage | Ota
Brienne of Tarth | Game of Thrones
Will Scarlet { BBC Robin Hood}OTA
Sam Winchester | Supernatural (S2) | ota
jesse mccree | overwatch | open to all!