BLOOD BAG (sneak peek) ghoap/reader

• Once this fic is finished I don't know how much I'll be able to post here because of its content and Patreon's TOS but the beginning at least is fine.

• tw mention of rape

• This is clearly unedited sorry

The Uffizi is busy.

People shuffle from room to room, listlessly following behind tour guides or wandering through the halls with their heads tipped back, enraptured by the frescoes. Common behavior for a museum, especially a world renowned one.

Some scoff at you, they try to elbow you out of the way, dislodge you from the place where you stand-

Trapped in Medusa’s gaze.

They too, want a chance to look upon the Gorgon’s face and flinch. Scorn her. Mock her. Tell her how hideous she is.

You drift in front of her, lingering in her rage, an endless spiral of terror. His technique is a masterclass here, shadowed background creating a stage for the light of her face, dramatic contrast highlighting the deep well of emotion in her eyes. She stares back at you, snakes twisting, writhing, reaching out beyond the shield they’re confined to, trying to strike.

Mythology’s misunderstood creature, punished by the very power she worshipped, loved, for something out of her control.

A monster.

You wander until you find Judith.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her in person, you come here quite often, meandering through the rooms, studying strokes and texture until your eyes begin to cross. You’re not a tourist but not a resident, not a local, not anything close, but something weird and in between.

A lost girl. An artist not yet seen.

You call yourself an artist?

You snort. A woman to your left gives you a look and moves away, like she too, can sense your strangeness.

Artemisia’s version of Judith Beheading Holofernes is your favorite piece in this entire place. Not the Da Vinci, not The Birth of Venus or any of the Madonnas, the Christs. Not even Medusa. Judith is who you come for, again and again.

Violence. Blood. Power.

“She was under appreciated.” An involuntary flinch jerks your shoulders, and you look up to find the voice, peering directly into a swirl of cerulean sea, a tall man with a handsome face, an odd choice of a haircut. He’s standing so close to you, too close, even though this room is half empty. There’s plenty of space in front of this piece, yet he’s at your side, and you can smell him. Belladonna and tobacco, dead foliage and honey. Something is off about him, and the floor tilts under your feet, the whole building is moving, walls shrinking inward, lights flickering-

And then it’s all gone.

“Do ye think?” You swallow, trying to pull saliva from beneath your tongue to wet the words so they don’t stick.

“Yes.” Your focus returns to the blood spraying from Holofernes neck, its spout directly aimed at Judith’s chest. “She was ahead of her time.” You don’t know why you’re talking to this man, engaging with a stranger, an act you rarely perform. Maybe it’s your eagerness to praise Artemisia, your desire to share her with the world, purify her shame. To understand her art, to truly appreciate it, you must understand her, her vengeance, her statement, stamped upon her work for eternity to see.

Artemisia was raped at seventeen. Her father brought her rapist to trial but not for the act itself but the shame to his family, resulting in a months long event where she was tortured as a way to verify the truth.

The ordeal ended in her ridicule. She was ostracized. Rejected, shamed. Married off to be forgotten about.

In that time, or before, she was painting Susanna and the Elder, her first signed work, a clear repudiation of the considerably known narrative. Susanna wanted it, she teased them, welcomed them. It was painted by men, for them.

By not by Artemisia’s hand at seventeen. It was her first strike, her first foot forward in a world where she didn’t belong, where women weren’t painters, where they were hardly anything at all.

She went on to depict women as resilient and autonomous creatures capable of great violence.

An apt lesson then, and now.

As the stranger said, she was under appreciated.

“Have ye seen The Birth of Venus yet?” You can’t stop your eye roll, and he chuckles. It’s rich, like his accent. Scottish. “I’m surprised, she’s the reason most people come here.”

“Not for me.” Your life has turned you away from divinity, from the innocence of Venus. It chose a different path, a journey lined with shards of glass, and no one waits to anoint your feet.

“Do ye-” You turn your back to him, not bothering with a goodbye or a polite smile. You just… walk away, cutting off whatever it was he was going to say, too afraid of it to know.

He doesn’t finish his sentence, and you don’t look back.

You pause at the feet of Perseus, Medusa’s head hanging from his fist, her body broken beneath his feet. The Loggia is more crowded than the museum, gaggles of students and tourists alike crowding every corner, the summer heat beating down all of your backs, skin blistering in the Italian sun.

Perseus is the focus of this piece, all of his glory cast in bronze, and you’ve never cared for it. There’s no depth in any of it, unlike other statues lining the arches, and it all falls flat.

Your skin prickles, an odd sensation shivering down your spine. The weight of sight, of eyes. You’re drawn like a magnet to a behemoth who leans against a column, his hands in his pockets, a face broken and healed. He’s watching, studying, head tilted in consideration. Less man, more monster cracked from marble.

More dead foliage. More honey. Lethal nightshade. It all pools in the back of your throat, sticking to your tonsils.

Again, the world tips one way, then the other, and an omniscience whispers through the cortex of your brain, urging you in the opposite direction.

You don’t fight it.

You see the man from the Uffizi again in the Piazza where you’re folded up behind an easel, paintbrush hovering over canvas as you stare. He strolls across the square, death and honey on the wind behind him, and your breath catches when his gaze drifts across to stone to find yours, the ocean of blue so crystalline, so clear it’s as if he’s standing right in front of you.

He is standing right in front of you, hands in his pockets, a casual stance that seems anything but. It’s practiced, honed, movements stilted and swift,  and when he extends his hands, two sides of a battle slam into one another, pushing and pulling.

“Ye ran from me in the gallery before I could introduce myself.”

“Oh, I…” You drift. The warm breeze swirls around your ankles, picking up through your hair, and your words die, train of thought lost as you manage to stammer out your name.

He’s still holding your hand. Thumb rubbing the backs of your knuckles. Breeze now blanketing your shoulders, nearly stifling. He knows your name. Each shape of every letter.

“I’m Johnny.”

The Piazza has gone quiet, the usual boisterous midday crowd lulled into a hum, a soft hymn rattling through your bones, singing in your blood.

That can’t be right."