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marshmellowzz · 8 months

Note

can I request reader who’s kidnapped by the hantengu clones, and she tries to escape? can be a oneshot/scenario thing >.< (btw! I think it’d be funny if reader was small and weak, so they just kinda manhandle her…)

in their grasp

a/n: hi anon! i'm so sorry to everyone for my continuous inactivity on this account, i feel soooo bad about it. im having a lotta issues in my life right now, as well as a killer writers block - so i'm very very sorry for everyones requests who's been sitting in my ask box, i'll try my best to work through them! anyway! i made this one a little long, ill post it in two parts because i haven't finished the second half yet ! :3

content warning: mentions of kidnapping ! suggestive language and actions! graphic (i guess?), they dont see u as an equal and just treat u as their pet….

word count: 3.3k

[part 1]

You awoke with a start, your eyes flashed open and your heart racing as you let a sharp noise between a gasp and a scream leave your lips; piercing the stillness of the dark room you found yourself in. Your body seized up in fright, and waves of goosebumps rushed across your skin. Taking deep breaths to calm yourself down, you slowly sank back into the bed searching for something – anything - that could calm your nerves.

The blanket lazily placed onto you during the night was tangled around your feet, you were practically drenched due to sweat. You didn't even register that it was pitch black outside.

Your eyes were wide open, but all was silent. As quickly as the sensation came upon you, it faded away to nothing but silence. Your eyes whipped around the room - seeking out any movement that had escaped your attention.

This...This wasn't the safety of your home.

Suddenly, reminders began flashing into your mind.

Yes, you remembered.

You had a run in with a demon—four demons, actually.

They were all similar. Almost identical actually—which raised the question—were they all clones?

Although, you had only vividly remembered one—He was a giant of a man, towering over you as his vermillion eyes burned with rage. His muscled frame commanded your attention and sent shivers down your spine. His nails were long and sharp like daggers, digging into your skin to draw fresh wounds that dripped scarlet onto the floor. The malevolence in his gaze held you captive - the prominent frown on his face told of a ruthless disregard for your mortality, as if to imply that with one quick motion he'd be able snap you in two like a twig between his fingers.

It seemed like you were about to be nothing more than another savory course.

Every hair on your body standing up as you looked around in paranoia—were you in their home?

Had they took you here when you passed out? It was too quiet, you were all alone with your overwhelmed mind, and pained body. A sense of unease settled in your stomach and upon further investigation - you found a crudely wound web of bandages, stained by the seepage of blood, wrapped around your torso. It was poorly placed, and it was now stringing around you like twisted ribbons.

It looked like the demon...or demons were trying to stop you from bleeding out.

At this point, you wish you did.

You buried your head in your hands, trying to calm your racing mind. It was like you could still feel their heavy presence lingering in the room, even when nobody was there.

You let out a shaky sigh—they weren't ordinary demons, you could grasp that—perhaps they were some...Super demons?

You vaguely recalled seeing the kanji 'uppermoon 4' engraved onto the pupils of their eyes—they were definitely higher-ranked demons, and your poor self had the misfortune of running into them.

You slid your feet down, cautiously straightening yourself, and planting your feet onto the cold, wooden floor. You had tried your best to be quiet, in order not to alert them if they were present in the house—and to not draw their attention to you.

You stepped timidly into the hollow corridors, your feet softly pattered against the cold, hard floorboards beneath you. The sound of each step echoed off of the barren walls, almost as if calling out to you with an unspoken invitation; daring you to explore further.

Nobody. It was a dead silent, empty house.

The house was orderly, if slightly disheveled. Clothing laid scattered about in careless piles among the furniture, while occasional specks of dried blood made a grim contrast against the otherwise pristine walls. An unsettling mixture of domestic tranquility and disturbing reminders of violence hung in the air.

Just then, you were met with the sight of the front door.

You eyed it, in deep thought.

Well. You had to take your chance and escape, right?

There was no way of telling how far from the house they were now; all that you knew was that they weren't here at the moment

It didn't stop you from trying your luck.

If you actually pulled this off, you'll live, and be scot-free once again.

The only thing that has driven you was your hope—you may have been a bit too ambitious with what you were about to do right now, but you were going to try it anyway.

You take a deep, steady breath; your hand reaching out to open the door. It wasn't locked.

You quietly thanked the gods, and you opened the door, then gently closed it.

Without a moment's hesitation, you leapt forward, the icy wind rushing around your body as you darted into the forest. Your feet landing on the leaf-strewn forest floor, propelling your body further into its depths.

You had not a clue where you were going, but you were hoping that you weren't too far from civilization.

However.

That night, you had the misfortune of learning just how fast a high-ranking demon like Hantengu could travel. It seems like only a few minutes have passed after you've left the house when you hear a voice calling out.

In an instant, you feel a strong, taut arm latch onto your wrist and pull you back—you were whipped around, and forced to acknowledge his presence.

Their presence.

You felt a chill run through you as you sensed the presence of two distinct figures standing right behind your shoulder. The hairs on the back of your neck stood up in alarm and before you had time to turn around, their eyes met yours with an intensity that made you feel like a deer caught in headlights. Their gaze was heavy and seemed to be speaking volumes even without words being uttered, sending a message that made it clear: Don't move.

They had been nearby all along, close enough to notice your absence, close enough to hear your frantic footfalls, close enough to catch you. The fact that they were even there shocked you.

"Tsk tsk, bad pet." The green-eyed one tutted, his eyes aligned with contempt, and his lips stretching into a twisted, sickening smirk.

How did they get to you so fast?

You then yelped out, clearly startled by their sudden presence beside you.

You were certain you haven't even blinked and they had materialized beside you within a milisecond - you had only just registered the thoughts in your mind and they were already there, as if through some magical transference.

The other one stared down at you with bright blue eyes full of sorrow and disappointment. His face was puckered in a frown, adding to his sombre expression. "What are you doing, human?" he asked softly, despair evident in his voice. Like any normal person, your instincts were screaming at you to turn on your heel - and book it out. You panicked, you feel your heartbeat in your throat as your entire body tensed in pure. unbridled fear - your lungs seized and your feet seemed to lose the ability to move before they found their strength again in an instinctive attempt at flight, you then ran.

Running seemed futile, considering their strength and speed. It was obvious that the demons had an infinite advantage over you. No matter how hard you ran, all three of you knew it would never be enough to escape their pursuit after you. Even with such a crucial piece of information, it did nothing to stop the adrenaline pumping in your legs. Your legs trembled with fear as your mind raced for an escape route, telling yourself that maybe — just maybe—you could find one. All rationality had left you and all there was was the unquenchable desire to run away from this impending doom before it engulfed you altogether

Your heart hammered in your chest and terror immobilized you. You had to keep running, but every step was a struggle against the trapping gravity of fear that weighed down on you like an iron casket.

"Cute! Little human thinks she can outrun us, eh?" Karaku let's out a bark of laughter, watching you scramble away.

So slow. So weak. He almost feels like this is unfair to you.

"Ah...She's so pitiful." Aizetsu frowns.

You were fighting a losing battle.

They watch you hasten for a while longer, you're out of breath and desperate. Karaku let's another bark of laughter leave his lips, the two of them taking in your panic.

Suddenly, Karaku was on you. His lightning-fast stride brought him through the air and he locked his arms around your waist in an instant, pushing your body against the nearest tree with a strength that almost felt like an embrace. His palms were warm on your skin as he held you against the bark firmly, pressing against you so closely that you could feel every breath.

Before you had time to react, he knocked the oxygen out of your lungs with his sheer weight and strength as he quickly took hold of both of your wrists in one hand and pinned them above your head. Your stomach churned with nausea and apprehension, while a squeak resounded from deep within your throat before it was able to escape into the air around you. You felt completely disoriented, like you'd been spun around on a merry-go-round one too many times

But, he doesn't hurt you; even if he has all the power to do so, even if you were completely at his mercy - there wasn't any hint of aggression in him. Instead, he wore an amused smirk as if he was relishing some joke only he knew about. He held a firm grip on your wrists, caging your body against the tree with a playful grin on his face.

He looked down at you, his eyes filled with mirth - amused at the fact that you were trapped beneath him - amused that he could end your pathetic life with the flick of his wrist at any given moment - amused by your complete horror.

"So, thought you could outsmart us. Huh, little pet?" His relaxed expression irked you - the two of them found this all entertaining, or at least he did. His eyes twinkled with a strange delight at your distress. You could have screamed and begged for mercy but they both seemed so unphased by your presence it was like this entire situation was a game—and you were losing rapidly.

He had his hands wrapped vice-like around your wrists, pinning you where you stood. His grip was like iron and the more you tried to struggle against it the tighter it seemed to get.

Your legs shake due to overexertion, and to the overwhelming presence that the two of them shared. He really was the only thing keeping you up and stable as the strength left from your body and with each passing second.

Karaku leaned his frame down towards you. His eyes narrowed as they bore into yours; the mere inches of space between your faces felt like a chasm. He seemed to savor your weakened state, and as he closed in on you--his lips curling up into a crooked smile--he smelled it: fear. You could feel his finger pressing against your cheek, slowly, tracing its way down from there, and all too soon his voice resounded with the sickeningly smug musing of, "You smell afraid," he mumbles, almost... satisfied. "Is that my doing?" he snickers.

"How sad," Aizetsu mumbled apologetically, "She's feeding your ego..." His voice trailed off as his eyes focused on the floor shamefully, his words hung in the air like a cloud of despair as he spoke, hanging heavy with regret.

You screwed your eyes shut, feeling hot, stinging tears at the corner of your eyes. You cranked your head in another direction in a futile attempt to create distance between his face and yours. "No! Let me go!" You shrieked, a desperate glint in your eyes as you squirmed beneath him.

Karaku only laughed, a deep guttural sound that reverberated through the air. His amusement with your fear only grew as he slowly lifted his free-hand to your face once again, brushing his fingertips along your cheeks before squeezing. With gentle force, he guided you to look up at him, "I'm afraid I can't do that, pet." He purred; his voice carrying an ominous tone which revealed that something much more deadly was lying beneath the surface.

A raw, primal fear grappled its way to your throat and escaped in a bloodcurdling scream. Your body thrashed violently against his, desperate for an escape, but each futile attempt was met with heavy hands pinning your wrists down. "P-Please!" tears spilled from the corners of your eyes as you sobbed pitifully - pleading for help that never came, convinced by this point that you had been brought too far away from civilization for anyone to hear you. Helplessness filled every inch of you, there was no way you could fight back.

Karaku tightened his grip on your wrists and leaned in closer, seeming to take pleasure as you screamed. "I must say, you're much cuter when you're quiet." He purred into the crook of your neck while inhaling deeply, taking in your scent like a drug. His lips brushed against the sensitive flesh - his breath was hot on the skin of your collarbone, nuzzling his face further as a satisfied smirk crossed over his lips as he drawled "Smells good...Mmm".

Aizetsu however, seemed to grow more distressed at the sight of your tears, his eyes narrowed as he watched you squirm beneath Karaku. His lips pulled downward in a deep scowl, and his voice grew dark. "You try to escape us," he muttered, his words threatening as they left his mouth. "And then you scream and cry when we catch you." There was something almost petulant in the way he spoke; it seemed like he was a sulking child being denied of it's needs. "That hardly seems fair..." He pouted, his voice growing thick with disappointment and something else, a hint of bitterness barely contained.

"We can't trust that you won't run again. So, I guess...We'll have to lock you up." Aizetsu pouted; as if this was distressing for him.

Sweat came beading on your forehead as you felt the world begin to spin. Your breathing quickened and a heat began to fill your body, each thrash becoming more desperate and less considered than the last. The demons words echoed around you like an accusation, violence in his resonance - treating you like some rabid animal that needed restraint. Lock you up? What kind of sick joke was this? You didn't even know what these guys wanted from you - why the hell were you suddenly made their new fidget toy?! Karaku released your wrists with an enthusiastic chortle: "Lock her up? Now that sounds fun!" He expertly lifted you by your waist and threw you over his shoulder, your feeble kicks unable to slow the momentum of him whisking you up and carrying you away. The disorientation from the sudden manhandling made you feel dizzy as you tried in vain to twist free.

Despite your desperate thrashing, the demon seemed to take it all in stride as if this was a part of his everyday life. His steps continued even and unhurried, his grip on you tight yet seemingly effortless. The way he held you over his shoulder gave off an odd sense of familiarity, like he had done this thousands of times before - like he didn’t have to think twice about it. What the hell could you have done in your life to deserve getting kidnapped by demons? Upper-ranked, nutcase demons at that?

"...We'd better hurry, Karaku," Aizetsu said with a tense grimace. He glanced around the dense forest anxiously - as if expecting Sekido to appear at any moment in an explosion fit of rage. "Sekido’s got quite a temper on him these days and he'll be really mad if we're not back soon."

"Mm," He hummed softly in agreement before adding a sly comment; his voice barely above a whisper. "I think we should have the luxury of taking our time with her – Sekido this – Sekido that - He's not here now, is he?" His eyes danced playfully as they searched Aizetsu 's for signs of agreement.

Aizetsu shook his head, he couldn't help the frown that tugged at his lips, "No, he isn't here, but..." He trailed off. With a devilish spark in his eyes, he cut Aizestu off before he could finish his train of thought. "But nothing. Why don't we make the most of it?" He said as a smirk curled up on one side of his face. "Let's have a little fun."

Aizetsu didn't seem very convinced, his eyes quietly assessing the situation. Karaku leaned forward, you still over his shoulders. "Come on," he drawled, with a shrug of his shoulders. "If he really wanted to get his hands on her, he would have come along." His voice was smug as the words fell from between his lips; it made no difference how serious the circumstance was - Karaku would find any way to mess around.

"I-I suppose..." Aizetsu mumbled tentatively. A brief moment of silence passed, the idle chirping of the cicadas in the background. "Wanna play catch with her? I'll toss her to you and you-" Suddenly, you startlingly interjected with an exasperated "Hello?!", disrupting their idle chatter that seemed to be ignoring your existence. Your presence had gone neglected as they spoke about playing catch and tossing you around like a mere item - one possessed rather than personable. Both demons turned their attention to you - both having no intention of taking anything that'll leave your lips seriously.

"W-What the hell do you want from me...?" you stammered out. You had been dragged over his shoulder, your arms and legs dangling like a ragdoll for long enough. Continuing to thrash, each kick you delivered only made him grip you tighter, even as you vainly hit his back with closed fists, he didn't budge. "How pitiful." Aizetsu muttered underneath his breath.

Karaku let out a deep, rumbling chuckle. His eyes glinted mischievously in the moonlight as he spoke: "Isn't it clear? You're our plaything now." He seemed to relish his own words as if they were a special delicacy and he went on to mumble something about how having a human around made things more interesting for everyone. He laughed again happily, savoring every moment that your encounter lasted as he knew that eventually boredom will overcome them all. Right. It would just last until they got bored of you.

"And will you stop squirming? Seriously, it's like you're trying to tickle me."

It dawned on you. Truly, whatever you did, or said, nothing seemed to phase the demons steady pace, any resistance was futile. You had no choice but to give in and hang limply against his broad frame in silent defeat...

Karaku laughed darkly, his hand coming down hard onto your backside with a harsh smack. You gasped, mouth agape. "Good girl," he praised you before sending a pointed glance towards Aizetsu, "See? She gets it now." His words hung in the air as if challenging someone to disagree with him, you looked away in embarrassment and shame.

You felt as if you were slipping inexorably into a deep, dark abyss. A wave of humiliation and dread was washing over you; it threatened to swallow your meager remains whole. Your rights had been stripped from you in an instant and the title of 'plaything' was bestowed upon your weary shoulders by these demons - for what? Just for their temporary amusement? Were you really nothing but a docile creature now? Obediently awaiting to be forgotten when they decided that they'd had enough amusement at your expense? This couldn't be happening.

Why? Why was this happening? Your mind screamed, your thoughts frantic with terror as you were taken over his shoulder all the way back to where these sick monsters resided. The forest around you blurred past in a passing panorama and all you could do is wallow in helpless dread. Their voices were muted to mere murmurs, drowning into nothing beside the other sounds of nature - a backdrop to this nightmare that seemed never-ending; every step felt like an eternity as you treaded towards where they called home.

"So how about it? I think playing catch is a pretty good idea." 'K-Karaku...No." "Why not? I bet you, if Urogi was here he would've said yes in a heartbeat." You were doomed, thats for sure.

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sprout-fics · 1 year

Text

Speak Now

(Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick x F! Reader)

Read (Here) on AO3

Rating: Teen and up Word count: 4K Tags: Angst, Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Confessions, Mutual Pining, Blood and Injury, Happy Ending Warnings: Graphic depiction of blood and injury A/N: My blog needs more Gaz love. It also needs more Gaz whump, so here, have both. (Special thank you to @moondirti for her inspiration with this story!)

When the smoke clears, all you see is him.

The catastrophic explosion of the mine still thunders in your ears, a ceaseless reverberation that your heartbeat mimics in a poor mockery. The ground shakes under your feet for what feels like eons, and somehow you remain standing, immovable amidst the chaos like a flagpole under artillery. Dust and debris sifts downwards from the solemn grey sky like ash from a distant wildfire. It clogs your nose, sticks to your throat even as your lips part, eyes widen in horror. You can taste the chalky acridity of it across your tongue. Noxious, ruinous. An omen.

Then you see him.

Laying on his side, weapon tossed feet away from him. There's shrapnel stuck in him, jutting like stalagmites from his flesh. You think the dust has settled like a thick layer over his form, dark and dusty. It takes you too long to realize it's clotting to where blood oozes from his flesh, seeping past his form and into the cracked desert ground.

He's not moving.

You scream.

You feel the air leave your chest, a gale that rises up towards the sky, but you don't hear the sound. Not when the world is falling around you like the sound of shattering glass, fragmenting into silvery, piercing shards that rip at your soul.

"GAZ!!"

Heedless of the danger, you race forward, eyes frantic, breath caught in your chest. The sane, trained, logical recess of your brain screams in protest. There could be other mines, the sound has almost certainly given away your position, there could be hostiles waiting-

An arm settles around your middle like a band of steel, catching you mid-step and hauling you backwards even as you thrash and cry out.

"NO!" A voice bellows in your ear, commanding, cracking, devastated. Price.

It doesn't make sense. He's right there. He's not moving. How could the captain stop you? You can see him breathing.

"Gaz!" Price calls, grunting as he tries to keep you from racing forward and possibly setting off another mine. "Kyle!!"

Yet Gaz doesn't respond. You see him, see his chest rise with a sharp, wet inhale before he shudders once, goes still.

Price curses, but you don't hear him. He's barking at someone you can't see because your eyes are locked on his form, on the blood trailing from the cut above his ear. His face is slumped to the other side. You can't tell if his eyes are open.

You can't tell if he's alive.

"Rookie? ROOKIE!"

Your eyes snap to the captain's, and there's fear there, barely concealed under the unflinching resolve of a leader, of the man who has to make the hard decisions to spare the rest of you. The wound of his voice is warbled, uneven, tilted in a way you don't understand. Your ears are ringing, it's too loud.

"Look at me." He orders, and you do despite the urge to let your eyes wander to the fallen form of your teammate, of Gaz. "Look at me."

He shakes your shoulders, and the jolt is enough for the rest of the world to come rushing back all at once. His face is drawn, grim, brow wrinkled in focus and distress that he's tamping down on with all his strength. When his gloved hand settle on either side of your face he pauses, draws away his fingers from your ear. There's blood.

"We're going to get him." Price tells you, ignoring the stain left it only panic you futher. You desperately try to let his words register in the hollow inside you. "But we need to stay focused, you understand me? You need to be paying attention. To me. No fuckups. Not right now, you understand?"

You nod, and the harsh, unyielding clip of his words is enough to give you the air needed to swallow down the rising panic and blink, focus on your captain. Price nods at you only once, seeing the frantic despair dimming behind your gaze. He releases you and raises his weapon, pausing just long enough for you to fall into his shadow.

"Gun up. Weapons hot. Sweep for hostiles."

You do, and the effort it takes to not let your eyes drift to Gaz's bloodied and broken body as you both approach is immense. Your footsteps fall exactly where Price's are, an instinct bred by countless hours of training overtaking you in a near-primal resolve. Your scope is clouded by smoke and debris, but there's no motion you can see even as the dust clears.

When Price seizes Kyle by his vest and drags him back to safety it leaves a grotesque, abstract smear against the ground. For a moment, your eyes linger over it, forgetting your mission and instead allowing panic to once again rise within you.

There's so much blood.

Gaz doesn't make a sound, and that's even more horrifying than if he'd been screaming, crying, whimpering from the pain. It's only once he's concealed behind a low wall that you drop your gun back to your side, hands reaching, seeking, staining with his blood. You follow Price's instructions blindly, resorting to a part of you that acts entirely automatic. Yet you can't stop looking at his face. It's drawn, ashen, eyes closed even as his chest rises and falls under your hands. There's warmth between your fingers, his heartbeat in your hands, the thrum, the gush of blood oozing past your palms-

"Rookie!!"

Price's voice feels like it's the dull, distant thrum of churning ocean waves beyond your senses. Yet you turn your eyes to him anyways, the response trained in you to stop, to listen to your captain, the lighthouse in the squall.

Yet there's a flash of something in Price's gaze you don't recognize. It's a distant, churning emotion you feel reflected in your own stare. In him it's muted by age, years of experience, the weight of knowledge. You recognize it all the same.

Fear.

You don't hear the chopper until the dust around you billows, coats the inside of your eyelids. There's hands raising you, escorting you by your arm forward towards the waiting door. It's wrong, you know. You aren't injured, you don't deserve to be on the craft. The mission is still calling for you, but it's Price who's relieving you of your weapon, giving you a firm shove into the arms of the hel-evac medic.

"Keep him alive." He bellows over the sound of the blades, and you can't tell who he's talking to, if the words are meant for you. You catch his eyes for all of a moment, and there's an acceptance, a grief there you don't understand. You raise your voice, try and reach for him, but he's gone, and the ground under you fades, shifts as the choppers vanishes into the dull, overcast sky.

---

It takes seven horrible, long, excruciating days for Gaz to blink his eyes open.

They rush him back into medical the second you are on the ground. You hold his hand up until the moment he vanishes behind the steel doors. There's an asymmetric thump of your heart you don't recognize, one summoned by the ashen pallor of his face, the way his hand goes limp in your palm.

When they take him back you're left alone behind him, standing in the far too sterile hallway of the military hospital and somehow longing for the endless familiarity of a battlefield.

You don't know if he'll make it out.

It's only hours later, when your ears stop ringing and you remain glued to a rickety metal chair just outside the operating room, that a doctor in a blood-stained apron appears before you. The look in his eyes is grave, settled with a bone deep fatigue that burrows even more severely into you as he speaks.

"He's lucky." He murmurs tiredly, lips moving as you make out the words. "Very, very lucky."

You cry, and it's only then that you realize you can barely hear your sobs.

You were less than ten steps behind him, and the blast was severe enough to have left you with a burst eardrum. A small, insubstantial wound that's treated quickly by a medic and then left alone to heal. It's nothing.

Nothing compared to him.

Shrapnel embedded on his left thigh and forearm, blunt force damage to his lungs, his spleen. His leg is broken in three different places below the knee. It's nothing short of a miracle that he didn't lose it. The blast was enough to toss him over two yards. The concussion he's suffered is impossible to gauge while he's asleep. He's lost his hearing, you think, but the doctors assure you it's only temporary.

Just as long as he wakes up.

You hardly eat. Hardly sleep. Shellshock, you're told. It's not the truth, but you don't argue. You're far too trained to let a mere mine blast unsettle you. It lets you stay with him, keeps you by his side for just a little longer. There's a part of you that gnaws at your thoughts. A guilt for allowing yourself this. You've been trained to compartmentalize, to tamper down on behalf of the mission.

For you, Gaz is the mission.

Price, the others come by. You put on a face for them, but they see it in your eyes, see that you're changed now. Now that you could lose him. Soap makes jokes, but they're cracked in his throat, bitter. You smile at them anyway. Yet Soap's eyes linger over his friend, intubated, prone, his heart a small, distant beep on a monitor.

You're dozing off when he wakes up. Hand holding his, the sound of the chopper blades and your own scream echo in your thoughts. You see him, the single breath he took before going still, the stain left by his body poisoning your dreams. When you scream you don't hear the sound, reaching for him as the chopper pulls away from his dying form laying abandoned in the beige, dusty oblivion.

He twitches in your hand, and you almost don't feel it until you hear him take a deep breath before he speaks, his voice an arrow that pierces through the mirage of your dreams.

"Hi, doll."

---

You ask Price to approve your leave.

He eyes the paperwork with a wrinkled brow, gaze hovering over the medical excuse that is nothing more than a obfuscations lie. He sees through it. You know he does, but he only nods once at you, a quiet acceptance of the truth you keep hidden, the one he doesn't speak.

You aren't ready.

Not when Gaz is barely upright and eating on his own, when your eyes threaten warmth every time he laughs and then grimaces in pain, how you hear him whimper at night when he thinks no one can hear it. It's too soon. You're too shattered, broken at the edges and raw, fumbling blindly in the dark for a balance that's abandoned you.

"We still need you." Price tells you even as he signs the paper. "-But take the time you need. Get your head on straight."

You only nod, trying to ignore the stab of guilt you feel for being so selfish in asking for this. Yet Price is right. You can't focus, you're constantly distracted, shivering at the memory of Gaz's heartbeat in your hands, pulsing red and alive with a fatal, aleatory rhythm.

Even when you're beside him it haunts you. He's getting better every day, injured, tired, but alive. He smiles every time you visit him, smile tugging on his lips, teasing and jovial in the way he is only with you. There's a tenderness beneath it you long for, craving like a wolf does the moon, letting its gentle halo shine down onto your lonely heart.

"Hi, doll."

You put on a smile for him, one that doesn't reach your eyes. He listens as you talk about Price and the others, about the idle changes at the base, of your own recovery- things that are easy, mundane, that restore a needed sense of normalcy to both your lives.

You never talk about the nightmares, the ones that flicker over your waking gaze when his face contorts in pain as he moves.

About a week in, you start bringing books for him, relish the way his eyes light up with excitement at the wrinkled paperback covers. Often you both sit in comfortable silence, involved each in your own novel, absorbing the other's presence in a steady comfort that settles the ache deep in your bones.

He turns to you one day, his hand settling over yours and you want to curl into it, bring it to your lips and whisper your fears there, confess the plague of your dreams where he no longer exists.

"Read to me?" He asks, and there's a shy, almost hesitant smile there on his lips that allows that same tenderness to seep through once again.

"I-I've got a headache." He follows, eyes averting, shoulders tense. "It's a good chapter, I want to know how it ends but I-"

You take the book from him silently, the pads of your fingers brushing delicately over his knuckles and you ignore the way he shivers.

Gaz leans back into the hospital bed, looks up at the ceiling as your voice winds words around him like a lullaby. You try your best to contain your voice over a word on the page, tracing it with your forefinger.

Grief.

---

When Gaz is finally discharged, it's like the team has won a war.

It's at a bar, quiet, solitary. You and the others take up most of the space there, with a gratuitous supply of drinks and teasing, joyful laughter from the others. Mostly it's Soap, however, trying to fill the long gaps that linger in the conversation, the constant, darkened 'what if?' that hangs over you all like churning storm clouds.

Laswell herself makes a rare appearance, and she offers Gaz a hug like she would if he was hers, long and hard and conveying more meaning than she dares to speak aloud.

Thank God. It seems to say, the sentiment echoed in your own heart. I'm so glad you didn't leave us.

There's a victory between you all, a triumph at all of you emerging whole once more. Yet you all ignore the way it's clouded with regret, a sting that's summoned every time Gaz shifts and hides a wince that you see despite his effort to conceal it.

You could have lost him. They all know. It's a reality within your work. You as soldiers glow like firecrackers. You burn brilliantly, illuminate the darkness with scorching, radiant light. Yet in the end there's a fizzle, a singe until there's only embers, pulsating red and warm until there's nothing left at all. Sometimes you're there and gone in an instant, leaving only an iridescent afterglow that lingers in the back of your eyelids.

Now Gaz seems to glow, his smile warm and pleased as the others offer him pats of congratulations, another drink, small gifts of gratitude for the simple act of staying alive.

You slide a package over to him, the wrapping paper poorly taped over, the miscut edges hidden under a bow. He opens it to the silence of the others, and you try to ignore the way their gazes hover over you knowingly, the way your eyes melt into his smile.

A book, one of your favorites. The hardback is glossy, shiny with the metallic edges of the pages and he holds it up to the light, his smile even more radiant than the glint of the golden trimmings.

"Thanks, doll." He tells you, his grin crinkling his eyes. "Dunno what I'd do without you."

You don't want to think about it, don't want to again consider a future where he's not there.

---

When you get home, off base, it's too quiet. Empty.

There's no drone of a hospital here, no beeping monitors or rapid gunfire, no whirring choppers or incoming missile strikes. It's silent in the stillness of your apartment, the air hovering, frozen as if waiting for you to breathe.

Your mind fills the void. Your dreams chase you as you wake the next morning, seeping red and hot over your fingertips, dyeing them a shade of scarlet that reeks of permanence, an unavoidable ending. Phantasma clings to the back of your nostrils, stinking of iron over the smell of candles you use to obscure it with no avail.

Outside is overcast, like it was that day, when you saw the tickle of Gaz's smile under his grim, focused expression as he stepped one foot forward-

You reach out for him in your memories, haul him back to safety within your embrace, face pressed into the hollow of his shoulders and whispering there a confession you've kept secret for far too long.

As darkness descends you're alone once more, trying to find your footing in a place you're desperately unfamiliar with, one that longs to reach out and touch him. You wander your apartment as if chasing ghosts, expecting there to be phantoms when you flick on the lights and instead realizing they're inside of you where the glow doesn't reach.

It's then that your phone pings. A message, from him.

"Can I come over?"

He shows up less than an hour later, holding aloft a bag of takeout in his uninjured arm, his face mirroring the cheesy yellow smiley face on the plastic.

"Hi doll."

You settle on the couch, watching an old spy movie that you follow with a distant gaze. Boxes of food litter the coffee table before you both, the smell wafting pleasantly enough to dull the imaginary taste of blood on your tongue. There's silence again, but it's buoyed by the steady reassurance of his presence at the other end of the couch. Your feet are propped on his lap, and the gesture feels far too intimate for the state of your wounded heart. It's an indulgence you take part in nonetheless, his hand resting on your calf, fingers drumming in an uneven beat against your form.

When the movie ends his eyes shift, he offers you a conciliatory smile.

"I guess I'll be going then." He offers, turning to excuse himself, reaching for his jacket-

Your hand catches his shirt. Gaz freezes.

"Stay." You whisper, so small you wonder if he's actually heard it. "Please."

When his brown gaze turns back to you, the only thing you see is relief, a sadness he at last bares to you, as wounded and broken as you are.

Like two small children hiding from shadows, you curl into your bed together, the sheets crumpled under both your bodies. Facing each other, you entwine your souls along the frayed edges, silently weaving yourself together within the comfort of each other.

He talks about it at last, confesses to you in the darkness the fear, the confusion, the haze of memories clouded by crimson heartbeats.

"I heard you scream." He tells you, and even now he tries to mask the crack in his voice, afraid and desperate under the resolution of a warrior. "I thought it would be the last sound I ever heard."

Your thumb brushes over his knuckles, eyes unable to meet his gaze. Warmth threatens your blinking stare, emotions simmering, boiling higher in your chest.

You're scared.

You almost lost him. If you say what you're going to, if you confess to him this secret, then you could lose him all over again. Able to touch him, able to feel his heartbeat but never again basking in that tenderness that feels too much like moonlight, serene and blissful, pale and erasing shadows.

"I thought..." You begin, voice wavering, chest catching on your next inhale, the one before the world changes around you once more. "I thought I lost you, that..." You swallow down the taste of blood, try to replace it with the sensation of your imagination, a future where his lips at last meet yours.

"I would never get the chance to say I love you."

He blinks. You don't breathe.

Then, in the silence that follows, you burst into tears.

Like the final flake of snow that summons an avalanche, you shudder, let the weight roll of off you and into your cries. Tears, hot and wet, spill freely down your cheeks, not noticing as Gaz shifts, draws you into the warmth of him to shelter you there. His hand settles on your hair, pressing you forward into his chest, where you feel him tremble. You don't see his eyes, the way they water as he tries to speak, to summon the words he needs to tell you all that he's kept hidden in the tender confines of his heart too.

Instead he shudders too, lets you cling to him like he's a raft at sea and you're lost in the violence of regret, unable to feel him around you with the simple grace of his touch.

It feels like he's dying all over again, the way he doesn't speak and instead holds you, lets you empty your sobs into his waiting palms. You think for sure that this is the final, bitter end, that he'll at last pull back, give you that sad, regretful smile, an apology, and then vanish into a future where you can no longer bask in his gentleness you dare to dream is only for you.

Instead, when your sobs fade to hiccups, when you've soaked his shirt through with your tears, Gaz at last lets his voice fills the darkness.

"You can say it now." He whispers, voice cracking with emotion. Then, after an unsteady heartbeat. "...Please."

You feel your hiccups stutter to a stop and you tense in his embrace, trying to stare through your watery gaze and process his words.

It feels like a future you never considered, one you were unable to see, so convinced were you of his fate that you didn't even dream of the possibility. Yet now his words seem like a prophecy, an omen that summons blessings, a beautiful future where his smile is met with your own.

You shift in his arms, raise your head to look at him, at last see the tears clouding his beautiful, beloved brown eyes.

"I love you." You whisper into that future, drawing it closer with every shuddering exhale. "I love you, Kyle Garrick."

That same smile, as gentle and graceful as goddess Selene, washes over you. It bathes you in radiance, summons tranquility into the fractures of your wounded heart, fills them with pale moonlight like the drape of a silvery veil.

He whispers your name, and again the world shifts around you, blurring into a kaleidoscope of color where the axis revolves around him.

"I love you too." He murmurs, his voice cracking with an unnamed joy. "I love you. I love you so, so fucking much I can't stand it."

You laugh. It's a sudden sound, one that echoes out into the midnight where you both bathe under starlight, caught in the current of each other's embrace. His lips catch against it, pressing it back into you with a tenderness that melts the core of you, threatens tears all over again.

"Say it again." He murmurs against your shuddering gasp when he pulls away.

"I love you." You tell him, your smile like the brilliance of a sunrise that dawns over a new future. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

His hand snakes down to your waist, pressing you full against his form like he's trying to eclipse you. When he kisses you again you think you taste joy on his lips, his smile curving against you and he laughs.

"I never want to leave you alone again." He tells you, and there's a longing there you recognize- a choice between both a love and duty you share. It's for a different time, a future that will come inevitably, but one you'll face together.

"Then stay." You whisper to him, and he surges into you once more, drowns you both in the benediction of adoration where war no longer exists.

#kyle gaz garrick #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle 'gaz' garrick #mw22 #cod mw22 #my fics #my writing #oneshots

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frenchkisstheabyss · 10 months

Text

｡･ﾟﾟ･ｎｉｇｈｔｓｈｉｆｔ･ﾟﾟ･｡

Pairing: vampire!husband!taemin x chubby!fem!reader

Summary: Just a vampire struggling to escape his adorable image while his newly turned wife tries to adjust to not being human anymore

Genre: fluff of the vampire variety/horror

Word Count: 720

Warnings: imprisonment, a lil violence, a smidge of blood, implied death, & that's all

A/N: I wanted to start a series of short stories that'd be something fun. I love Taemin, I love slice of life, and I love vampires so here we are

The cries of a nameless man echo through the cavernous room he finds himself chained up in. He doesn’t know how he ended up here. He only knows that it’s cold and dark. That his arms are sore from swinging from the ceiling by his chained wrists. That his throat’s dry and his stomach’s empty. That any hope he had for rescue had long ago shriveled and died. No one’s coming.

No, somebody’s coming. A flame ignites the wick of a candle at the other end of the room. It seems an eternity away. Others follow. White candles line the walls, illuminating the space just enough that he can make out the silhouette of a man. Designer shoes kiss the stone floor, expensive footsteps drawing nearer and nearer until he’s finally able to make out his captor. A slender man in an expertly tailored suit, silken locks of black hair framing his youthful face.

The regal way in which he carries himself stands in stark contrast to the savage look in his eyes. “You must be so afraid” Taemin mocks, letting out what you might liken to the laugh of a cruel child who enjoys torturing small creatures. The man's body jerks, instinctively wanting to lash out at the one who holds him here. He curses Taemin through the thick black cloth that gags him. “

They taste so much better when they’re afraid” Taemin smiles, the tips of his sharp fangs poking out just enough to destroy everything the man thought he knew about this world. Taemin extends his hand, sharpened nails…claws almost…stroking the man’s tear-stained cheek. “Don’t be afraid. This will be a lot of fun…for me.” Taemin grips the man’s face, nails slicing into his cheeks. He’s as hungry as his prisoner. Hungrier even. There’s a golden glint in his dark eyes as he leans in closer, fangs bared, ready to…

“Taeminnie!” you shout, pushing open the heavy wooden door leading down to the dungeon. Taemin sighs, dropping his head in defeat. “Taeminnie!” you call out again, “Are you down there?” Taemin grits his teeth, smiling through the mild embarrassment, “Yes, honey! I’m here! What can I do for you?” “Oh good!” you cheer and you’re coming down the stairs with a plate of freshly baked cookies in your hand.

The chandelier overhead flicks on, making both men squint. Taemin releases the man’s face, straightening himself out to look more dignified in your presence. “My love, I don’t know why you insist on making these when we can’t eat them.” Ignoring his comments, you kneel down in front of your husband’s prisoner, your expression much more cheerful than his. “We can’t but he can. I’m sure the poor thing’s starving” you pout, plucking the gag from the man’s mouth.

Without fail, as they do every time, he begins to scream at the top of his lungs, a glimmer of hope rushing back to him at this opportunity, however small, to get someone’s attention. You wait patiently for him to run out of steam. No one will hear him anyway. You’d picked this home as newlyweds mainly due to its beauty but it doesn't hurt that there isn't a neighbor for miles. “Enough of that” you huff, shoving a cookie into his mouth. He spits it out sending spit soaked crumbs of cookie flying back onto you.

Taemin moves to grab him, prepared to tear his throat out for disrespecting his love, but you hold your hand up and he stills. You wipe yourself clean with the black cloth previously responsible for sealing his mouth shut before shoving it back inside. “You know” you sigh, “I spare the ones I like sometimes but I don’t like you.” Turning back to your darling husband, you rest a hand on his shoulder, planting a soft kiss on his cheek. “Tear him apart, Taeminnie.”

Taemin wraps an arm around your plush waist, "Anything for you." You take your time walking back upstairs, enjoying the sound of Taemin’s teeth tearing him to shreds like one might a grand, classical masterpiece. Shutting the door behind you, you pick up one of your cookies, figuring it couldn’t hurt to take a bite. You finish the rest of it in spite of the gurgling in your stomach and the bitter taste on your tongue, refusing to accept the reality that…well…you probably would’ve spit them out too.

#taemin x reader #taemin x you #taemin fluff #shinee x reader #shinee taemin #shinee fluff #chubby reader #plus size reader

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z3nitsusgf · 2 years

Text

sewn into my silver lining

billy butcher | you - 2.3k

cw: angst angst angst, no happy ending, mention of blood and violence, butcher being butcher, toxic dynamics

a/n: he’s sad pathetic and sad i hope his brain turns to swiss cheese fr (affectionately)

He comes to you bloodied and dripping in viscera.

Frenchie and Kimiko are off getting supplies, probably smooching in the middle of the snack aisle. Hughie is busy at work, being cushy with Neuman and getting his bagels stolen from his boss. MM is with his daughter, couldn’t be bothered with Butcher’s bullshit anymore. So that leaves you, sweet ol’ you, to take care of the English bastard when he comes blazing through the place.

Butcher doesn’t say much when he pushes open the door and stalks inside. His boots left red sticky patterns on the tile. He’s spattered in blood, the color so deep it looks almost black on his jacket. Another one of his ugly Hawaiian button-up’s ruined because he’s too in love with the feeling of fighting. His face smeared in the irony liquid and god - he reeks of copper and dirt.

Your lips curl at the sight of him. You’ve long since grown used to the sight, but he usually makes an attempt to clean up before he sees you. He says it’s because he doesn’t wanna hear your bitching, but you know deep down he’s saving you the anxiety of having to see him like that.

When he looks at you he gives you a wide feral smile, teeth glinting a pearly white, “Ello love, m’home.”

You can tell he’s exhausted, whether it’s physically or mentally you can’t decipher. Probably both knowing him. You scoff at his words, shaking your head as you glance over his stumbling body. He’s a wreck.

“You look like hell Butcher. What happened, ass-bomb another supe?” He fucking laughs because of course he does, his hands clutching his bruised ribs as he wheezes out breathy chuckles. Every exhale makes his eyes water, the fluttering along his ribcage shows signs of hairline fractures, a bitch to heal.

He’ll never ask for your help, only taking it when he needs it. Still, you offer it anyways.

“Good one love, but no.” He doesn’t explain anymore and you don’t ask. He gets cagey when you prod him for answers and you don’t really feel like dealing with a cunty Butcher right now.

You sigh, getting up from your place on the ragged couch. You don’t bother to turn off the TV, it's nice to have the background noise when he doesn’t speak. You’re pointing to the bathroom, a knowing look on your face.

“Come on old man, you smell like shit.” His thick brows draw up and he looks at you with a straight face, the smirk dropping off his mouth. You almost laugh, biting back the chuckle as he curls his lip at you.

“M’not that old.” He grumbles, allowing you to wrap your arm around his waist and guide him to the bathroom.

“Mhmm, yeah. Whatever helps you sleep at night, geezer.” He rolls his eyes at your words, hiding his smile.

The place is not glamorous, the building is old as shit and better left for rats and junkies. But it makes sure you all are hidden from The Seven, Homelander especially. You won’t lie though, you miss your clean, nice bathroom from your old apartment. This one is dingy, glowing with a gross-looking fluorescent that buzzes so loud you think you’ll go deaf. The porcelain tub is permanently stained with.. you don’t know what. But there’s clean(?) water and electricity, so you can’t complain too much.

He sheds his coat, the poor thing has seen more carnage than you will in your entire life, and he sits on the closed lid of the toilet, rolling his neck in a tired manner. The bones crack, the soft warm gush floods the nerves and he sighs out in relief.

You already know the drill, pulling out a relatively clean rag and running it under the tap and a small plastic first-aid kit. You stand between his legs, dabbing at the cut on his cheekbone with the damp cloth. He doesn’t flinch or wince or even make snarky comments while you clean his bloodied face, trying to be gentle with the cuts and bruises that littered his skin. The faded yellow and blue kiss all over his skin, disappearing into his beard where you know more scars lie.

“You need to be more careful.” You mumble, swiping along his forehead.

He grins, a cheeky smile on his lips, “Why? Ya worried about dear ol’ me?”

You scoff, pushing the rag harder against his skin. He just smiles harder at the pain, the lines of his face showing as he leers up at you.

“No, I’m just running out of bandages because you keep getting your ass handed to you.” You sass back, huffing at him like he’s a stubborn dog. And he is. A stubborn old dog that’s learned his tricks and won’t drop them now because they’re embedded into his system like cancer.

“Besides, you gotta keep this pretty face intact. What will Hughie do if you lose your teeth and have to get dentures?”

You pat his cheek in a mocking manner and Butcher clicks his tongue. He comes up and pinches the side of your waist, reveling in the yelp you give him.

“Don’t act like you don’t adore this pretty face.”

You go back to wiping the carnage from his face, humming under your breath. He is very pretty, handsome like the moon. With high resting cheekbones, how his words drip from his lips like nectar. Down to the sloping breach of his nose and the puffy waterline of his sunken eyes, blinking under heavy lashes. He’s an old type of beauty, one that gets better as he ages. You’ll never admit that to him though, you’ll just admire it from far, occasionally getting to touch it when he allows you to.

It’s the little things that you know about him that give you clarity. Those small quirks only you know or notice. Like the silent way he observes the world around him. And the blank way he stares into space and seemingly disappears into his own void. The way he clasps his palms together and holds them like a prayer, keeping them close to his thighs. the way he likes his coffee - strong with lots of sugar in it and no cream).

You’re both bathed in the glow of the bathroom, the faint buzzing of the lights and the scattered talking of the TV all blend together in a calm haze. It all feels too domestic.

You’re a sweet thing, like Hughie. Young, with the world at your feet. and Butcher is dragging you down with him. He hates that he doesn’t have the heart to let you go. To tell you that none of this is worth it, that he’s self-serving and bad for you. Butcher keeps his eyes down, dark eyelashes fluttering with each soft drag of the cool fabric across his heated skin. He hardly notices the sting of the water seeping into his cuts. It feels good, he doesn’t remember the last time someone touched him so softly. Years, he thinks. When she used to-

There’s a tenderness you show him. Like gentle April rain, you shower him in a sweetness he does not deserve. One that makes his lips purse and his jaw tick, one that reminds him too much of her.

You’re too focused on debating whether or not he’ll need stitches to notice his change in demeanor. Butcher grabs your wrist, fingers tightening around the bone. You can’t tell if he’s trying to push you away or pull you in.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, voice too soft for someone like him. You smooth your other hand over his hairline, uncaring of the sweat and blood that coats the pads of your fingers. What isn’t wrong? This whole façade is slipping out of his hands and he can’t keep pretending he’s not tired of getting up each time he gets knocked down. This world is so cruel, has been so cruel. And he doesn’t know what to do with it all.

He’s so full of rage. It’s dangerous to keep it all inside. A man only has a grip as tight as he does because he knows that if he lets go, even slightly, he will hurl himself into the abyss. He needs to hate the whole world and everything in it. Butcher doesn’t shed his pain, instead, he upholds it like a boulder over his shoulders.

He looks up at you, he feels himself wanting to just let you in. Just give up and crumble into your chest. There’s a pull in his chest that begs him to just completely open himself up to you. Let you smooth over his scarred wounds and heal the new ones. But he won’t.

His eyes harden and he’s letting go to smack your hand away from his face, the sting spreads across the back of your palm. Your lips part at the feeling.

“Quit treating me like I’m your fuckin’ daddy, cause I ain’t. You want someone to take care of so badly why don’t you get a fuckin’ dog.”

You joined knowing what kind of man he is. Hell-bent on getting rid of supes and stubborn as a mule. William Butcher was no saint, but he’s more broken than he’ll ever admit. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t burn whenever he’s mean.

“I-“

He’s snarling, lacing his tone with so much hot-spit rage that you draw back,

“You’re so fucking clingy n’ pathetic. You always need one of us to save ya and ya can’t even handle a bit of roughing up.”

You should be used to it by now, the brutal humiliation and the way he flips on a dime. You’ve seen it, with Hughie and Kimiko. But you’re not. You’re still soft in the center, still raw and open, still too naïve.

He’s not looking at you, he’s staring past you. Behind your silhouette and at the flickering of the bathroom light that casts dark shadows on the peeling wall. His jaw is clenched so hard you’re almost worried about him chipping his teeth, there’s a vein that pops on his forehead.

You clench the rag tighter in your fist, there are salty crystalline tears that prick your waterline. You always hate crying in front of the boys, especially Butcher.

“Fuck you, you’re such-“ You inhale shakily, the air so hot and humid you want to choke.

“You’re such an asshole, Butcher.”

It’s juvenile at best, your shitty little comeback is all you can throw back in his face. Words he’s heard a million times. He chuckles, eyes roaming over your face, he sees the glassy look in your eyes, the lip tucked between your teeth. He lands the final blow, severing it completely.

“One of us has to be. Can’t have you ruinin’ everything just cause you’re too weak to get it done.”

He twitches at the breathy inhale you give. He’s got this clenched look on his face, the plane of his features so blank you want to just crumble on the spot. His mouth is pursed, eyebrows drew together in a way that shows he’s serious.

How does he always manage to make you feel bad for wanting to be good?

Butcher knows he’s a piece of shit, knows that you’re just an innocent thing that got caught in the cross-fire. He’s always pushed and pushed and pushed everyone’s boundaries, to see how far they can go before they leave. But he still wants to punch himself when he hears your sniffles. The quiet quiver of your lip and the subtle tremble in your knuckles as you completely pull back from between his thighs.

He misses your warmth.

Sometimes you hate him, sometimes you wish he’d just disappear and never come back like he often threatened to do when everyone was getting too soft. Like right now, you want to smack him in the mouth for being so… so mean. You know it’s stupid, childish, but you want him to understand.

But then he saddles up to you like a beaten dog. Looking at you with soft dark eyes and giving you a worn smile that makes your heartache. You hate to admit that Butcher has wormed his way in, like smoke in your clothes. You always knew he would come back, even if he never made any promises. A silly childish part of you always hoped that he would stay.

Maybe that’s your mistake, thinking he would ever soften up. Even if it was for you.

He’s silent, brooding, acting like it’s not even a big deal. That makes you snap, the disregard he has for everyone. You snarl at him, lips curling over your teeth as you bare your incisors at him. You fling the rag into his face, turning on your heel as you call out over your shoulder,

“Clean yourself up or don’t, I don’t fucking care.”

Your tone is so watery, so filled with that tiredness that Frenchie and MM have. It makes him sick. Butcher jumps slightly when he hears you slam the front door. He can hear your boots as they stalk away, the muffled sniffles coming from your nose. he knows you’ll go off, whether to cry or be alone (or both), but he doesn’t make any move to stop you.

He’s alone.

He knows you’ll come back. Knows that in the dark of night you’ll slip back into the apartment. And if not, Kimiko and Frenchie will go and find you, pleading with you to come back and give it another chance. They always do.

Butcher clings to the rag you threw at him, fisting the material as he grits his teeth.

Why is he like this? Why can’t he just be satisfied with what he has? Why must he always crave more? Why is it so goddamn exhausting to keep himself indifferent? He’s never felt sad, only despair. Never mad, only full of resentment. He’s never been embarrassed, he only knows humiliation. And he loathes to feel this way because he constantly searches his brain for a time he was truly joyous, but he always comes up empty.

Always his fault, always. You’re just another unfortunate soul that got too close, bearing the brunt of his oozing heart.

#val.writes ❦#the boys.✮#the boys x reader #the boys x you #billy butcher x reader #billy butcher x y/n #billy butcher x you #billy butcher #the boys #the boys angst #billy butcher angst

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everlastingdreams · 5 months

Text

The Weeping Monk x Reader : Born In The Dawn Chapter 14

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Story Summary: Locked inside a dark room in a dungeon, kept alive only for your power, you believed you’d never see the daylight again. That is until the Weeping Monk finds his way down and steals you from your captors. It is the beginning of a journey that leads you through hardship and newfound hope, but nothing is assured in a world that is changing for the Fey. The magic that runs in your veins is drawing out the worst the world has to offer, does it include the man who pulled you from the dark?

Chapter Title: Semper Ad Meliora

Notes: /

Warnings: Grief. Violence. Torture. Sexual Assault. Rape Threat. Gore. Enemies To Lovers. Pining. Trauma. Flagellation. Manipulation. Strong Language. Blood. Gore?. Misogyny. PTSD. Spicy and smut parts. Slight redemption arc.

Other warnings: Jealousy. Forbidden Love. Romance. Slow-burn…

Word count of this fic: +190K

Chapter: 14/ It’s a secret.

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You were the first one awake and went down to the inn to stretch your legs.

The Innkeeper greeted you warmly, as did the barmaid. You took your chance and asked if there was perhaps a spare aketon left behind by a patron. The Innkeeper had indeed a spare and kindly gave it to you free of charge, you hoped it would fit the Monk.

It was nice to see some friendly faces, the inn’s environment felt quite welcoming.

Some people were there to eat their breakfasts, others used ale to start their day.

You looked around the place to pick a suitable target, you searched the patrons for signs of wealth, it wasn’t in you to steal from the poor.

The door of the Inn opened and in walked a wealthy looking young fella.

A gold chain around his neck, two golden rings on his fingers and garments the nobility would wear. A lord by the looks of it.

The lord ordered only a tankard of ale and paid for it without saying much else.

Lancelot and Squirrel came down the stairs and walked over to you.

The Monk saw that your attention was fixed on the man. “What is it?”

You did not let your target out of your sight. “I’m going to get us some coin.”

He sighed. “Something tells me that you will not earn this in a honest manner.”

You handed him the aketon. “You worry about your clothing, I’ll handle this.”

You did not give the Monk a chance to get the idea out of your head and went over to the lord.

The lord was drinking his ale alone, but not for long, you went to stand right next to him.

“Hello.” You offered your most charming smile.

His eyes traveled over you slowly, then snapped up to your face.

“Good day, milady.” He greeted you back with a shy smile.

He was wearing a long overcoat and long tunic under it, you had seen him take the coin out of the pocket of the overcoat.

You turned your body towards his. “Has anyone ever told you how well that your attire suits you?”

The compliment surprised him and he brushed a hand over his overcoat, “You believe so?”

You boldly touched his chest. “I do. How firm…”

He cleared his throat nervously and took a sip of his ale before putting the tankard down on a table. He was distracted enough by the looks of it.

Then you did your usual trick and walked around him like a feline searching for attention, close enough to quickly let your fingers slip into his pocket and catch some coins between them, you closed your hand to hide them.

Slowly the young lord turned and put his attention on you fully, having felt the light brush of your hand along his waist.

“Forgive me, I am being too bold.” You apologized and tried to step away, but the man’s interest was awakened.

The Monk was watching the interaction like a hawk.

When the stranger put his hand on you, he was ready to step in.

The man held on to your arm lightly. “Not at all, milady. I enjoy your appearance as well.”

In your vest with holes in it? And two visible old blood stains on the hem of your shirt?

They would say anything to try and melt a woman’s heart if it got them what they wanted.

Squirrel knew what his part in this act was and came over running to your side. “Mother! Should we not return to father before he thinks we have gotten lost?”

Not a single one of these men you had played this trick on had ever pursued you further when they saw you had a child.

And this lord was no different, he let go off your arm right away, stunned by it all.

You gave an apologetic smile and took Squirrel by the hand, walking past the Monk to nod towards the door of the inn. You slipped the coins in the satchel at your side.

The Monk followed right behind you and when you were outside, he took hold of Squirrel’s shoulder, telling the boy, “Go and mount Goliath. Now.”

Squirrel did as told and hurried towards the stables.

Then the Monk caught you by the elbow and steered you towards them too, “Did you steal from that man?”

“I did. We need to survive and he clearly has enough.” You answered.

He walked faster, pulling you along. “We need to leave, before he realizes you have robbed him.”

With that, you agreed.

Even Squirrel knew it was unwise to linger around the inn for longer, it was why he had listened to Lancelot.

You thanked the stable boy for looking after the horses well and quickly got on your horse.

The Monk was the first out of that stable and you followed Goliath’s canter.

Once the inn was out of sight, you calmed the horse’s pace and rode beside them.

“How much did you get?” Squirrel look over at you.

You dug your hand into your satchel and fished out some of the coins to show him.

Four golden ones, the other’s in the satchel felt smaller and were most likely silver ones.

“You two have done this before.” The Monk stated.

You and Squirrel grinned wickedly. “The moment the men see that a child is with me, they stop pursuing.”

“Why?” He asked.

You thought he was joking, he was not. “I am afraid it is not uncommon for men to lose their interest in a woman if they see she has a child. I think they fear the responsibility it would bring them.”

A frown settled on his face and you realized that this act would not have worked on someone like him, the presence of a child did not scare him off.

Squirrel was chirpy, “But we do get coins easily from them.”

“Exactly.” You were proud of the scheme you had thought of together.

Squirrel proceeded to tell the Monk some stories of times when that scheme had almost failed and you had to improvise together.

After taking a short break from riding to drink some water and eat something, you continued on your journey.

The boy wanted to get something off of his heart and told the Monk, “Before you saved me from that ugly paladin, when I tried to save the Green Knight, he made me a knight of the Fey.”

You put your attention on Squirrel, as did the Monk.

Squirrel turned around for a second to look at him, “Do you think he’s alive?”

The Monk was quite for a moment, then truthfully replied, “I am not sure. All I know is that he was taken to Uther’s camp.”

It saddened the boy. “I hope he survived…”

This child was mourning a friend and could possibly be mourning another if the Green Knight had not survived.

The apology for the Monk’s part in this came forth, “I am sorry, Percival.”

Squirrel looked down at his hands. “I’ll forgive you, as long as you don’t go back to the paladins.”

It was a fair agreement.

You were looking over at him expectantly and waiting for what he would say to that.

The Monk said it to Squirrel and looked at you, “I will not.”

There was still fear in you that he would turn his back on the Fey again, that he would return to the Church and ask for forgiveness, maybe it was your own struggle to trust others that made you see the worst in others before seeing the best.

Then Squirrelsought an answer to the question many would have, “Why did you kill Fey?”

The Monk grew uncomfortable, the boy was brave enough to ask things that could have painful answers.

He answered with what he was raised to believe in, “Death is not the end. Cleansing would save their souls.”

Squirrel was worried what that included. “Are you… going to cleanse us too?”

He firmly told the boy, “No.”

Death is not the end…

You had an idea where that came from, “Death is not the end, that is something the Hidden have been known to say. Is that were you heard it too?”

The Monk cast his eyes to yours. “Death is not the end-”

You found yourself saying, “Save them…”

The slight widening of his eyes said it all, the Hidden had not just called upon you, but upon him as well.

You were starting to understand how they had turned him against his own people. Father Carden made a child believe that the Hidden agreed on the cleansing, that death was not the end, cleansing them was saving them.

The Hidden’s words had been twisted until it fitted the narrative of the priest.

You quietly told him what you believed had happened, “What you heard from the Hidden was used to turn you against them by the Church. You really believed you were saving us…”

The Monk looked away, like shame came over him.

Squirrel sensed the turmoil in him and carefully asked, “How long were you with them?”

He was rather quiet when replying, as if he feared to be judged, “I was younger than you, around the age of six, when I was chosen by Father and began my training. My memories of life before the clergy are vague, but I remember how I became the Grey Monk.”

“How?” Squirrel asked.

He fidgeted with the reins. “After four years, in the midst of my training, Father took me along to a cleansing. The Fey there saw me, saw my cross bearing clothes, and attacked me. I no longer belonged with them, I belonged to the Church. Father offered me a chance to save myself from the influence of evil.”

So that dammed priest had made a Fey child believe that the Fey were dangerous.

You tried to understand his point of view and reasoned with him, “The Fey attacked you because they believed you to be the enemy, not because evil gods took control of them. They were just scared.”

As he must have been too after that.

The Monk was trying to find the truth between the lies, at least he seemed to think it all through now.

You could not begin to imagine what other tactics they had used to mould him into the Weeping Monk. “They twisted your mind until it fitted their purpose. A frightened child is easy to manipulate.”

“Oi!” Squirrel piped up.

You saved yourself out of that one. “A child. Not a knight.”

The boy was pleased with that.

The Monk did not reject the possibility that it was true. “I was not permitted to question the faith.”

It came as no surprise. “At least you are willing to hear our voice now. Maybe death is not the end, but I prefer to live life to the fullest before I skip to the next one.”

You shared a look with the Monk, who seemed appreciative of how calm you had managed to stay while speaking of this. Seeing him outside the inn last night in the gushing rain to mourn Father Carden’s death, had made you less vigilant towards him. There was good in him, under all that struggle with his identity, and only he could make the decision if he would embrace that or not.

Returning to the Fey or returning to the Church was his choice to make. And if he were to keep his promise on earning your forgiveness…

It was either the Fey or the faith, and for now he had chosen the Fey, albeit just two of them.

~~~♡~~~♡~~~♧~~~♡~~~♡~~~

When evening came, the Monk picked out a spot in the forest to set up camp for the night.

By now, it was evident that the three of you could work together when there was clear communication.

You were getting the package of linen from your horse’s saddle, feeling the wounds on your back protest against it.

The Monk handed Squirrel a piece of cheese and asked the boy to cut some slices off and put the rest of it back into Goliath’s saddle, he then came over to your side to help you with the stack of linen.

“Does your back hurt?” He asked while putting the stack on the ground and untying the rope from it.

“It burns, but I’ll live.” You admitted.

There was a worried expression on his face,“It will take some days before the pain lessens.”

He handed you some of the linen and then went to retrieve something from Goliath’s saddle bag, he returned with a loaf of bread.

You frowned at the sight of it, “Where did you get that?”

“From a table at the inn.” He confessed.

You blurted out, “You stole it?!?”

The Monk failed to fight off a grin. “While you were occupied with robbing that man. Some bread will go well with the cheese.”

You stared for a second, then smiled. “I should not be proud, but I am. Well done.”

That small smile made him feel a bit better.

He was doing something right.

He let you take the bread from his hands.

You gestured to the nearly forgotten aketon that was draped over Goliath. “I’ll help Squirrel make us a meal. You can try on that aketon if you want?”

The Monk gave a nod and took the aketon from the saddle. “Brown…”

You stopped walking towards Squirrel, having heard the comment. “Just try it on, anything’s better than walking around with that cross all the time. People notice.”

That was true.

He took off his cloak and draped it over Goliath, who stood unbothered by it all.

Squirrel was but all too excited to test the sharpness of the knife he had been given as he cut the slices of the cheese, and then the bread you handed to him.

Together you made the modest meal of cheese on bread.

“If we had a fire, we could get these nice and crispy.” You said.

Squirrel looked up over your shoulder, “Can you make a fire again?”

You turned to see the Monk wearing the aketon, he was looking a bit timid and uncertain about the change of garments.

“It looks great.” You told him, because it did look good.

The Monk appreciated it and gave a slight nod to you, then answered Squirrel, “I can. We’ll need some branches and dry grass to-”

The boy was already up and searching the ground to collect the items.

You got closer to the Monk and adjusted one of the leather buckles that wasn’t sitting correctly, “Is it comfortable?”

The friendly gesture took him off-guard. “I… yes.”

You went over to help Squirrel collect what was needed. “Good. Now let’s get to that fire. I’m starving.”

A little while later, Lancelot had made a modest fire and helped the two of you by putting the bread, with cheese, on thin branches and held it over the fire.

The scent of the cheese melting over the bread filled the air.

He handed the one he had started with to Squirrel who eagerly plucked the crispy bread off of it and almost burned his fingers before putting it in his lap to cool off.

You were imitating the Monk’s idea and patiently waited for your meal to have the right level of crisp, and watched Squirrel try to eat from the hot meal, he was pulling some pieces of the bread and putting them in his mouth.

“You remind me of someone.” You admitted to the boy.

Squirrel was curious, “Really? Who?”

It was rare for you to talk about your family with others. “My cousin.”

The Monk had heard, you had never mentioned to him that you had a cousin.

“Why?” Squirrel asked.

You grinned. “You can be quite adorable too.”

Squirrel scrunched his nose but could not hide the reddening of his face.

You weren’t going to mention it to the boy or tease him about it.

The Monk touched Squirrel’s arm to draw his attention. “I believe you are sitting too close to the fire, your face is getting red.”

The irritated child brushed the Monk’s hand from his arm. “I’m not!”

You scolded the cheeky Monk for it. “Leave him be.”

He in return smirked at you and the boy, but he stopped and ate his meal in silence.

After eating, you saw that the Monk had the discarded surcoat in his hands and was looking at the cross embroidered on it.

He approached the fire and fed the surcoat to it, watching it burn.

You shared a look with Squirrel but kept quiet about it.

An hour passed and darkness had spread it’s wings over the land. Lancelot had chosen a tree to sleep against for himself.

Squirrel was yawning but still walking around and giving the horses some attention.

You could see that the Monk’s eyes were distant again. He was mourning his father figure and burying the agony it brought him.

Part of you wanted to keep a distance, but part of you hated to see the suffering of others.

You were Dawn Folk, it was in your nature to help others.

You collected some linen sheets for yourself and shared a look with Squirrel, who looked back and forth between you and the Monk, you nodded.

With arms full of linen to use for the night, you went over to the tree the Monk had picked out for himself and put your linen sheets down against it too.

He was already sitting against a side of the tree and was about to get up from the grass, you put a hand on his shoulder to halt him.

“Mind if we sit here too?” You asked.

The question might have rattled him a bit, it took two counts before he answered. “I do not.”

Squirrel went to sit at his left side, you took place at his right.

You were already covering yourself with the sheet when you asked, “Am I breaking a rule by sitting next to you?”

There was a short pause before he answered, “No.”

But he was, by not getting up and preventing it.

The scriptures were strict regarding those of the clergy in the presence of women.

You sank back against the tree, nesting yourself under the sheet. “Just to warn you. If I see washed women’s clothing out to dry tomorrow, I intend to borrow some.”

Squirrel chimed in, “Because of the blood on yours?”

The child had not seen the back of your shirt, but the hem of it still showed the proof of the lashing. “Yes.”

The boy fired another question, “Are you going to steal a dress?”

Lancelot knew that these questions could continue for a long time and found himself listening in.

You were not even considering it. “Never.”

The next question came quick, “Why not?”

You rolled your eyes, knowing Squirrel could not see. “Dresses don’t suit me. Besides, it’s hard to fight in a dress. Too much fabric getting in the way.”

Squirrel seemed to agree on it.

The Monk suddenly said, “Careful. Do not cut your fingers.”

You leaned to the side to look past him and saw Squirrel playing with the knife.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have sharpened it so much.” You told the Monk.

He dared to say it, “You’re the one who wanted to give him a knife.”

You glared in the Monk’s direction, then told Squirrel, “Squirrel, put away the knife before you lose your fingers. Try to sleep, alright?”

“Fine.” The grumpy boy mumbled.

You had thought that Squirrel had listened.

Then Lancelot said, “Listen to y/n, Percival.”

Another “Fine.” was the answer he got, and this time the boy listened.

No one said a word for quite a while, and it wasn’t long before you heard Squirrel’s quiet snoring.

You were looking off to the side, trying to let the calmth of the forest calm you too. You sensed that the Monk had shifted his body a little but paid no attention to it.

Not until the Hidden’s faint melodic whispers were in your ears. Strange. You had not heard them sound like this before.

You turned your head and caught him quickly turning his head to look in front of him instead.

Almost had you caught him inhaling your scent. He did not understand why his heart’s pace increased because of it, or why the voices that haunted him were coercing him to do so.

“Did you just smell me?” You whispered a bit uncertain.

You weren’t sure, but you had a feeling that he had done it just now.

“I uhm…,” He paused and then sounded quite embarrassed about it. “I am sorry.”

You blamed it on the lack of change in your attire. “My clothes smell, don’t they? I should have searched in the inn for something else to wear.”

He did not say a word, and you considered getting up and sitting further away.

With his heightened sense of smell, it would be normal if he picked up on certain things quicker than others would.

You pushed back your self-consciousness and asked, “Do you want me to sit somewhere else?”

His answer was a fast and firm, “No.”

“You sure?” You asked.

He was brushing his hands over one another. “I am. Your scent does not bother me.”

It took you a moment to feel confident enough to lean back against the tree again.

And when he was looking at the trees, you discreetly smelled your clothing just to check. You shook the feeling off before insecurity could grow, none of you had been given the chance or time to take a long bath with everything that was going on.

You pulled your sheet up to your chin and turned to your side, away from him, to sleep.

Unlike you, Percival was not afraid to sleep facing his direction. The child had an amount of trust towards him that he wasn’t sure he was worthy off.

Lancelot was the only one still awake, both because he was not used to sleeping close to others, and because he felt responsible to make sure the two of you could sleep safely.

As you and Squirrel slept, the Monk kept watch for as long as his eyes could remain open and focused.

An hour passed, his eyes grew heavy and the quiet breathing surrounding him made sleep all the more alluring.

Then you turned over in your sleep, your hand was put on the bark of the tree to rest, where it slipped off and landed on his arm instead.

It brought him back from the sleepy state he had been in, from reflex he placed his hand over yours. He looked over at you and found you still very much asleep as you reached out for something to hold while you slept.

He lifted his hand from yours again, letting yours stay where it was.

For someone so vigilant, you sure looked a lot less intimidating while asleep.

The next thing he felt was Percival’s foot hitting his leg, the boy had turned over in his sleep as well and far less gentle and careful.

Lancelot did not even realize right away that he was smiling, he leaned back against the tree more and closed his eyes.

This did not feel wrong, it felt like something he had been missing.

A gentle touch, a spark of kindness. A reminder that there was still light and hope in the darkness. And that light came from where he had least expected it.

When he finally was on the brink of falling asleep, he heard something moving through the forest.

The howling that followed was what fully awakened him.

Taglist:

@ourlazydetectivekitten @the-great-adventures-of-me @linkpk88 @fxrchxldws @elenaoftheturks @slytherlight @beananacake @crystallizedtime @moonlightaura03 @angrygardendeer @have-aheart @5am-cigarette @arcanenature @thewinterskywalker @notyourwildestdream @coloursforyourportrait @koressecretidentity @nike90 @n1ghtlux @rachlovesactors @luckyzipperscissorsbat @morena-doing-stuff @the-fangirl-diaries @gipsydanger17 @heavenly1927 @phantasmalbeiing @labyrinthonmymind @asarcastic-thiamstan @rainyv-skies @kissingandromeda @stclairesplace @katjusja

Please let me know if you want to be added or removed from the taglist of this story.

#the weeping monk #weeping monk #cursed netflix #cursed #weeping monk x reader #lancelot x reader #weeping monk x you #cursed lancelot #lancelot #the weeping monk x reader

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kaylinalexanderbooks · 17 days

Text

Rewrite tag

Thanks @mk-writes-stuff here and @somethingclevermahogony here!

MK's line: [+ provided picrew]

“Lord Narcissus,” she said with a curtsy as she got close to him. “You’re looking lovely tonight.”

It wasn’t even a lie. He did look lovely. He had an elaborate red flowery hairpiece made out of real flowers, and he was wearing a tight red cocktail dress that, while definitely scandalous, did admittedly draw attention to his figure. Narcissus was a good-looking man – it was a shame that was his only virtue.

My rewrite:

She curtsied as she got close to him, taking the time to think of something to say. "Lord Narcissus," she said, "you look lovely tonight."

What irritated her was that she wasn't lying: he did look lovely. His dark hair was a stark contrast to the red flowery headpiece--which she was certain was real--that accentuated his eyes. His wavy hair framed his face well, and the choker emphasized his long neck. The scandalously tight cocktail dress matched the headpiece, and the fact that it did well for his figure irritated her to no end. It was a shame his looks were his only good virtue--the loveliness of his appearance couldn't help but be tainted by his repulsive personality.

C's line:

The blood dripped into the awaiting bowl and painted its alabaster walls crimson. Narul watched it trickled down his arm, skirting past the hairs, rolling veins, and moles. Despite these twenty years of blood lettings, he could not shake a creeping feeling of unease as his eyes followed its creeping path down his arm. He gazed back at himself from the scarlet pool, he could not meet his own eye, could not stand to look that creature in the face. He turned away.

My rewrite:

Narul watched as the blood dripped into the alabaster bowl. With each drop, the sides became more and more stained with the sickening yet almost satisfyingly familiar crimson. The blood slowly fell down his arms like rain against glass, past his hairs, moles, veins. Twenty years of bloodlettings could not quench his repulsion, but still he could not look away from it. His eyes followed each drop's path, until he accidentally caught his reflection in the carmine pool growing in the bowl. He looked away as quickly as he could, more disgusted at the creature in his face than the blood.

My line: (shaking it up and doing it from SOTL!!!)

Jack scrutinized the castle before him. It stretched up, up, up into the sky--and as they were already in the clouds, Jack didn’t want to know how high the tallest tower was above the ground--how he wouldn’t like to be the poor bloke who was defenestrated from it. The castle was made of some sort of dark stone, giving it the unsettling feel of a haunted house. There was the cobblestone path, yes, but on either side of it, Jack realized that yes, they were still on clouds, though where the castle was, the clouds were dark and gray, and when Jack listened closely enough, he realized that there was a booming irregular pulse of thunder that shook the ground ever-so-slightly, enough to cause the stone beneath his shoes to rattle.

I'll tag @gracehosborn @illarian-rambling @finchwrites @little-peril-stories @i-can-even-burn-salad @televisionjester @thepeculiarbird @willtheweaver @the-stray-storyteller @space-writes @leahnardo-da-veggie @elsie-writes @sleepywriter00 @sleepy-night-child @writingsfromspace @badluck990 + anyone else!

#school of the legends #sotl #seven station chronicles #testaments of the green sea #rewrite line #other writers #writing mutuals #my writing #sotl excerpt #writing tag game #writers on tumblr #writing community #writers of tumblr #writing on tumblr #writeblr #writeblr community

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bullet-prooflove · 10 months

Text

The North Star - Part Eighteen: Lucky - Terry Bruno x Reader (feat: Ed Tucker)

Tagging: @legit9thlunaticwarrior @bbyxoo @the-adzukibean @xoxabs88xox @crazy4chickennuggets @beardedbarba @wooshwastaken @justreblogginfics @im-just-a-mississippi-girl @storiesofsvu @anime-weeb-4-life @witches-unruly-heart @genius2050 @spaghettificationandpretzels @mysoulisasunflower @chavez-ashley @kiwiithecrazybird @proceduralpassion @crazy4chickennuggets @callsignartemis @kmc1989

Part One: Moments (NSFW)

Part Two: Case of the Ex

Part Three: Her Worse Half

Part Four: Always

Part Five: Ask Me Again (NSFW)

��Part Six: Degas

Part Seven: The Heist

Part Eight: A Part to Play

Part Nine: Home

Part Ten: Safe Space

Part Eleven: Weak

Part Twelve: Got Your Back

Part Thirteen: Familia

Part Fourteen: Gunplay

Part Fifteen: Friendly Fire

Part Sixteen: Alive (NSFW)

Part Seventeen: Karma

You stand in front of the mirror in your underwear, your gaze on the compass that adorns your throat. It sits perched above the curve of your breasts, shining brightly in the bedroom light. Your North Star, exactly where it was supposed to be. It hangs amidst the bruises that blossomed across your skin. One staining the space above your left breast and the other just underneath, that had been the one that collapsed your lung, the one that almost killed you. If Sinclair hadn’t been thinking on his feet, if the ambulance hadn’t arrived sooner…

But it had and comparatively your treatment plan was sedate compared to some of the other poor bastards who suffered similar injuries. You didn’t have to walk around with a chest tube sticking out of you, you hadn’t had to have surgery, you weren’t still laid up in the hospital. You were lucky. At least that’s what the doctors told you.

Lucky would have been not getting shot at all.

Lucky would have been never laying eyes on Paul first place.

Lucky, lucky, lucky…

The word revolved around your brain until your eyes began to blur and your chest heaves. You feel Terry’s palms coming to rest on your shoulders, thumbs tracing over the scars that decorate your skin. His chest presses against you, his lips brushing over the back of your head.

“You’re ok.” He murmurs, his palms slipping down to your hips before he wraps his arms around you and draws you into the comforting shelter of your body. “I got you pretty girl.”

Your breath catches in your throat. It felt like it had yesterday, when that second bullet hit, when the air erupted out of your lungs and the oxygen refused to filter back in. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t fucking breathe. Terry clasps you close, whispering into your hair, you couldn’t hear his words over the rush of blood in your ears but you can feel the sentiment. You inhale the essence of him, lavender and sandalwood. It floods over you, soothing over your frayed nerves as he holds you. There was a safety in him, there always had been. He was a man who would never hurt you, who would always love you.

“Baby, just breathe, ok?” he whispers into your ear. “In for four, hold for four, out for six remember? Do it with me.”

It's hard but you manage it. The slow intake of breath, the oxygen filling up your lungs before you exhale. Your head starts to clear; you can think again. Your fingertips wrap around the compass that Meredith had brought by earlier this morning. You’d still been dressed in one of Terry’s t-shirts and a pair of his boxers when her and Mike had shown up, with the necklace and a file filled with your greatest hits. Photographs from that night, witness statements and a whole lot more you didn’t want to read because you remember everything in technicolour.

“For IAB.” Mike had told you. “It’ll help your case.”

“Thank you.” You had whispered.

“I’m sorry.” You tell Terry, leaning back against him. “It was those pictures, seeing them again.”

“If this is too much…” he begins.

“No.” You say forcefully, turning around to face him.

Your forehead comes to rest against his, his hands cupping your face lovingly.

“I have to do this.” You say quietly. “If I don’t, it’ll weigh on me. I’ll never be free.”

“I know, pretty girl, I know.”

********************************************************************

You had never attended IAB headquarters before. The offices were cleaner, more modern than the precincts you had worked in. You thought you could see where some of the budget went. It was a small department but well maintained. Everyone knew their purpose, they went about their business as if you weren’t even there when you followed Tucker straight through the banks of desks and into his office.

The fact you were being led here was a surprise. Most of the IAB horror stories you heard took place in interrogation rooms with two officers and a camera to record the interview. He gestures for you to take the visitor’s chair across from his desk. You comply; your palms pressed between your knees as he takes his own seat.

You can’t read Tucker’s expression. His eyes are on you, studying your face as his fingertip taps at his temple.

“Russo’s dead.” He says abruptly.

You stare at him, unable to comprehend the words that were coming out of his mouth.

“He’s dead?” You repeat.

It doesn't seem real. You had spent so much time agonising over this decision, weighing the costs to you, to the people around you and now it had been taken out of your hands at the final hurdle.

“You’re telling me you didn’t know?” Tucker asks you pointedly.

You shake your head, unable to speak. A thousand possibilities ran through your head. An accident? Paul wasn’t the type to consider suicide…

“Cocaine overdose triggered a heart attack. The M.E said it was quick.” Tucker answers for you, before leaning forward and placing his elbows upon his desk. “I know it wasn’t you, and I know it wasn’t Bruno. I’ve checked out your foster sister and Duarte. They were tucked up in bed. And your team, wasn’t them either so what I think we’re looking at is his dealer. I think he knew that Russo was going down and thought he’d talk…”

“Why are you telling me this?” You ask him, pinching the bridge of your nose in an attempt to alleviate the tension that was building up behind your eyes. This feeling that had been sitting deep down inside of you, that fear, that anxiety, it should have dissipated but it didn’t. It sat in the pit of your stomach, clawing at your insides.

Tucker picks up his pen, using his thumb to click it intermittently.

“I got an email from Duarte this morning.” He tells you, his voice devoid of emotion. “I think you know what was in it.”

You thought of the file in your bag, the one that Mike had handed you this morning. He did what he did best, build a case. You knew why he had sent it to Tucker, he’d pulled the trigger just in case you couldn’t. You said nothing in response to his words because what was the fucking point?

“What Bruno said…” He begins, setting his pen down carefully on the desk. “When he had Russo up against the wall in the hospital. Was that true?”

You pull the sleeves of your blazer up to your elbows and thrust your wrists out in front of you so that he can see the purple finger marks gracing your flesh.

“There’s more if you need to see it.” You tell him.

He shakes his head in response to your words as you tug your sleeves back down over your wrists to cover the bruising.

“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” You say sagging back into the chair. “The investigation dies with him, right?”

“Yea.” Tucker says, rapping his fingertips on the manilla file situated in front of him. “We’ve had an open investigation on him for a couple of years. We suspected he’d been feeding intel to his dealer, running licence plates, tipping him off to raids, burning our C.Is. He was smart. We couldn’t prove anything, but we knew.”

“It started after me.” You murmur, your fingertips tracing over the scars embedded in the back of your neck. “That’s the reason this whole thing began, there was a drug debt… I guess they had him work it off.”

“We would have buried him with this.” Tucker tells you, picking up the folder before tossing it back on the desk.

You see it for what it was, an opportunity wasted. They’d had plans for Paul even before you’d come back on the scene. All of this, your suffering, your anguish, your pain it would have just been a vehicle for IAB to use to their advantage.

“You would have flipped him.” You find yourself saying. “Forced him to turn on his dealer, report to you about the other cops he had on his payroll.”

“That’s what my boss would have wanted.” Tucker tells you frankly. “Maybe this was a better ending.”

For who? You wonder because either way Paul’s crimes go unanswered for. It was as if none of it had ever happened.

Love Terry Bruno? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

#detective terry bruno #terry bruno #terry bruno x reader #terry bruno x you #terry bruno fic #ed tucker

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hungriestheidi · 2 months

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for the fic ask ; i think you could absolutely KILL (hah) a vampire fic. i’m inclined to lean towards sebchal charles vampire. but ofc take it any direction u feel! hope ur doing well lovely, thank u for my ask :)

Wanna know something? I had never thought about vampire sebchal. But know you got it in my brain and it's like a worm digging into my braincells. Because I think it would work so well. (tw: body horror, blood, this went out of control)

I think this would be a scenario of Charles being a vampire, someone turned against their will not too long ago. And he's angry, and sad, still mourning the loss of his humanity.

He can still share his family's home because not enoguh time has passed than can make it questionable he's not aging. But the thirst for blood is ever present. And sneaking out at night to a nearby farm and trying to muffle the sounds of the poor sheep he's ripping apart to drink out their blood... that is no sufficient. The blood is too easy, he needs more. And he's angry and he's sad and he's grieving and he's so. very. hungry.

There are towns he can skip over by train and on the train he can size up lonely strangers. There is a guy he sees once, bushy beard, nice smile, eyes wide, curious, too curious for his own good. And he catches him looking, his so pretty blue eyes, the elegance in the way he lights a cigarette on the platform station.

He's not so wise, this handsome man, following his beckoning. Charles knows what he is, the open wanting he can spill over his expression, how his face is but the opening act for so many men who see him, how easy it is for them to want him.

He lures him in, he looks to have a nice, broad neck, good enough to sink his teeth, to dry until he's sated, until the blood of a dishonest man fills him for a week or two. It's good, it's got to be. They waltz around each other for a moment, asking names, throwing lies. And he's pulling him in behind the old inn, a short walk from the train station, depleted of the want for the flesh and entirely consumed by that of the red life-giving liquid.

And then, with his lips tracing the line of the collumn of his throat, Sebastian rips his heart out of his chest. Literally. With hands sharp like claws, twisting and turning the fleshy bits inside his chest.

Charles stumbles back, the haze of the alluring blood melting bit by bit. He doesn't need his heart to keep living, it doesn't even beat any longer. But he knows enough now about this way of existing to know that the man in front of him is someone who knows what to do with a knife and a vampire heart.

"Don't panic," Sebastian says, voice soft yet mocking, a smirk splitting open his facade, the hand not holding his heart is covered in a light shimmering liquid. "I wish not to end your existence, I find you too beautiful to throw away all of you."

He twists the heart and Charles feels a hollow sort of pain shoot from the empty void in his chest. "I'd rather have you to myself, forever. Bind your existence it to mine."

It doesn't take much for Charles to put together that the man is drawing a sigil in the muscle of his formerly vital organ.

"Do you want to be my companion, Charles? Every conqueror needs a loyal second in command."

Charles doesn't understand much, just that he's mean and a brutal magic user embedded with too much knowledge, who speaks like a wise man out of a legend. And that he's got the most beautiful blue eyes Charles has even seen. And that if he must live forever, he may as well get to see beautiful eyes everyday.

"Are you going to fuck me or just stain me with your blood?"

Sebastian snorts, then sinks his teeth into Charles' heart and it that feels like a taste of heaven.

#hurricaneheatt #i'm just a girl (writes body horror)#fic asks #thank u for asking this ILY!!!!!!#im insane about vampire aus ngl

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weministertomonsters · 1 year

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Bloody Cycles

The front door creaked open and stuck halfway. Cursing, the girl shoved it open with her foot, bumping it against the body of a young man that lay on the doorstep, surrounded by tiny dead bats. He didn't look much older than her, with his gaunt face upturned to the sky he had most likely fallen from. The girl had lain in her bed last night and listened to the sound of his body hitting the door, his hands slipping over the silver handle, the scream of frustration as he was burned again and again. Vampires were always hungry.

She crouched, holding a broken broom handle in case he woke and she needed to stake him. She prodded his upper lip and smiled at his fangs, large enough that they curved down and dimpled the surface of his bottom lip. Not so young in vampire years then. He began to wake up, eyes fluttering underneath the nearly translucent skin of his eyelids. His skin was stained purple like bruised fruit. It had been ages since he had fed last, she guessed, no wonder he looked half dead. All the better for her.

The sun cast its first weak beam over the valley and the vampire woke sluggishly, hissing and pulling himself away from the light, trying to shield himself behind her.

"You poor thing," the girl tsked. "Come inside then." She stood, holding the door open for him like he was her prodigal housecat.

He half scrambled, half dragged himself inside, and tucked his body against the whirring fridge where it was darkest, chest heaving under his ragged shirt. The windows had been partially boarded over, leaving pools of sunlight sprinkled around the dingy room. Enough so that he could not reach her without burning himself when she stood in one. Something skittered across the floor, furry, brown, and well-fed. A rat. She stepped on it with a crunch and the rat squealed and died. She picked it up and approached him.

"Here you go," she said. "Drink from this."

He shook his head, turning his face away. Her lips thinned.

"I know it tastes bad but there is no way I'm letting you feed from me when you're in such a state. You'll suck me dry."

She approached, shoving the smelly rat under his nose. "Drink," she stressed. "It's already going stiff."

Again, he shook his head, throat dry and scratchy, fangs aching in his gums. Her eyes narrowed.

"Must I do everything?" She muttered in annoyance, straddling him. "Stop struggling, the only person you'll hurt is yourself," she chided, grabbing his jaw and holding his head still as she pressed the rat against his mouth.

His fangs did most of the work, piercing through so that the sluggish dead blood pooled in his mouth. Blood was blood, no matter how tainted. His hunger forced him to swallow, his large eyes staring up at her like he was seeing the devil.

"Obey me and I reckon I can keep you fed," she said, clear eyes gleaming. "If you're really good, I'll even let you have a taste of my blood now and then."

He struggled beneath her, his blunted claws scraping over her skin and drawing hot blood. His nostrils flared at the scent and he screeched. She was sitting on his chest now, knees clasped around his head to hold him still, grimacing as she pushed her fingers in his mouth and yanked, straining until a fang broke away. He wailed, blackish tears slipping out of his eyes.

"Don't be such a baby," she grunted, pulling the other one out. "They'll grow back."

She stood and backed away with her prize, watching him until she was satisfied that he was too weak to attack her.

"I have more mouths to feed, you know. Rats and pigeons don't come cheap these days and the fangs fetch a good price."

She washed them under the trickle of water that gurgled in the stained sink and then dropped the teeth into the jar which was already half filled with other yellow and ivory-colored fangs. "The shadows are deep enough over there," she tossed over her shoulder. "I'm going out to the garden."

The kitchen door swung shut behind her. The vampire uncurled from his position beside the fridge and gingerly stretched out to lick the drops of her blood from the floor.

#monster x reader #monster x human #terato #exophilia #horror #poor wumpire #monsterimagine

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sombrerokiwi · 5 months

Note

All shepards had duties.

This was common knowledge.

Tend to the sheep, ensure they all stayed in the pasture, and guide those who strayed.

Sometimes the lost sheep came to him in his searches, standing at his feet and begging to be brought back to the safety of the pasture.

And so he would. He would take the poor sheep back to the others, and all would be well.

Sometimes he would take a stroll beyond the pasture, and one sheep in particular would bleat at him indignantly.

It was almost amusing, seeing the lamb yell at him. He continued to stray beyond the pastures just to hear the bleats of frustration.

However, the game he played with the little lamb grew and developed, and soon changed completely.

Now, he would step beyond the pasture, and the little lamb would inch closer and closer to the edge where he stood, curious.

Sheparding was lonely business. There was no one there except the shepard and his flock, so one was wont to speak to his sheep.

The shepard was speaking to his little lamb, who had grown quite big at this point, in his usual spot outside of the pasture. The ram sat on the border between the pasture and the fields beyond it, listening intently to him ramble about old histories.

As he spoke, the ram, forever his little lamb, stepped into the field with him. He made no move to stop nor encourage the ram as it continued to venture further into the field, before sitting in front of him and staring at him.

Waiting for him to continue speaking.

Smiling, he resumed his story, and his ram listened.

Tragedy always befell the sheep who strayed too far from each other. A natural thing, he tried to tell himself.

Yet the stench of blood refused to leave his nose.

The blood of his lamb.

He had walked with the ram, talking and debating, when they stopped in front of a cave. It had seemed perfectly fine at the time, with no occupants inside that could hurt his precious ram.

Yet he had been careless. He hadn’t ensured the ram would stay with the other sheep that night, and it had gotten away, wandered back to that cave.

And had gotten gored beyond saving.

He would never forgive himself for allowing one of his rams to die such a terrible fate. It was his fault.

The blood of that ram, so precious and dear, would forever stain his hands.

What a terrible shepard, he told himself. Such an awful shepard, allowing the lamb to wander into the wolves’ den.

The ram stood at the feet of another shepard, begged to be led back to the flock. Begged forgiveness for going astray.

Yet the shepard said there was nothing to forgive. No punishments to be wrought.

The ram had simply been following a different shepard. It was not the ram's fault, nor was it his.

Neither sheep nor shepard were at fault for what the wolves had done.

The shepard dreamt that night. He dreamt of a man, kneeling at his feet and clutching at his robes. The man had the same golden hair as the shepard’s lamb, the same odd blue eyes.

The man begged and cried for forgiveness, called him by a name he had not heard in a long time.

“Temenos...” The man pleaded. “Please, forgive me... I beg forgiveness...”

And the shepard touched his face gently, cupped his cheek and kissed his tears from his face.

My little lamb, he said. There is nothing to forgive. You were doing as I had taught. The fault is mine.

And the man wept. He held tighter to the shepard’s robes, leaned into the gentle touches he offered.

“I should not have left you,” he sobbed. “Yet I swear forevermore I shall not leave your side. I no longer draw breath, but I shall remain. You may not see me if not in dreams, but I shall be here. I swear it.”

And when the shepard awoke the next morning after the man’s oath, he remembered only one thing. A name.

Crick.

JEEZ

Okay 10/10 fic but JEEZ. MAN.

OKAY I GUESS I'M GOING TO BE LIKE THIS FOREVER

#ask #bewilderedgrace #inbox fic #survivor au

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theoncelerishot · 2 years

Text

rubatosis- hisoka x reader

Summary: How does Hisoka show his love for you? You would like to think it was by him spoiling you - taking you out to fancy restaurants, buying expensive jewelry, even spoiling you in pleasure. But, Hisoka doesn’t think so. No, he would much rather show his love for you by leaving you shaking in fear.

ⁿᵒᵗᵉˢ﹕ ᵒᵐᵍ ʰⁱ ﹕ᵖ ⁱᵐ ᶠⁱⁿᵃˡˡʸ ᵇᵃᶜᵏ ˡᵐᵃᵒ. ᵈᵃʸˢ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ᵍᵒⁱⁿᵍ ᵇʸ ˢᵒ ᶠᵃˢᵗ, ᵉᵛᵉʳʸᵈᵃʸ ⁱˢ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵃᵐᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵐᵉ ᵃᵗᵖ ˡᵒˡ. ᵇᵘᵗ ʰᵉʳᵉˢ ᵃⁿᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ʰⁱˢᵒᵒᵏᵃ ᵖᵒˢᵗ! ᵘⁿᵉᵈⁱᵗᵉᵈ, ʰⁱˢᵒᵏᵃ ʷᵃˢ ᵃ ᵗᵒᵗᵃˡ ᵃˢˢʰᵒˡᵉ ᵃⁿᵈ ʷᵃʸʸʸ ᵗᵒᵒ ⁱⁿ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵉ. ⁱ ⁿᵉᵉᵈᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ᵃᵈᵈ ᵃᵗ ˡᵉᵃˢᵗ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ʰⁱˢᵒᵏᵃ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ⁱⁿ ʰᵉʳᵉ. ⁱᵐ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ʷʳⁱᵗᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ʰˣʰ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳˢ, ⁱ ᵃˡʳᵉᵃᵈʸ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵒʳᵏˢ ᵇᵘᵗ ʰⁱˢᵒᵏᵃˢ ᵉᵃˢⁱᵉˢᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵉ ᵗᵒ ʷʳⁱᵗᵉ ˢᵒ ʸᵉᵃʰ. ʰⁱˢᵒᵏᵃ ⁱˢ ˢᵗⁱˡˡ ᵏⁱⁿᵈ ᵒᶠ ᵃⁿ ᵃˢˢʰᵒˡᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰⁱˢ ˢᵒ ᵇᵉʷᵃʳᵉ, ᵇᵘᵗ ʰᵉ ʰᵃˢ ʰⁱˢ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ ⁽﹖⁾ ᵐᵒᵐᵉⁿᵗˢ ^^ ⁱᵗ ᵐⁱᵍʰᵗ ᵇᵉ ᵃ ᵗᵃᵈ ᵇⁱᵗ ᶜᵒⁿᶠᵘˢⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵒᵒ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ⁱ ʰᵃᵈ ᵃ ʰᵃʳᵈ ᵗⁱᵐᵉ ᵐᵃᵏⁱⁿᵍ ʰⁱˢᵒᵏᵃ ᵗᵒˣⁱᶜ ᵇᵘᵗ ᵃˡˢᵒ ᵐᵃᵏⁱⁿᵍ ʰⁱᵐ ᶜᵃʳᵉ ˢᵒᵐᵉʷʰᵃᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ.

----------------

Lying lateral on the middle of your bed, hugging your pillow, facing away from the man whispering sweet nothings in your ear while he presses his body flush against your own. You can't tell if his body warmth is assuring or if it adds to your dreadful, queasy stomach.

The only sound you could hear were his hushed whispers. You tried to distract yourself - listen to the breeze coming through the open window, even listen to your arrhythmic heartbeat, which felt like it was on the verge of bursting out.

"His screams were so delightful. It was fairly surprising. He even tried to fight back. But it's too bad.. He couldn't compare." Despite being scorching hot, his quiet breaths leave goosebumps on your skin.

In a piss-poor attempt to avoid hearing the rest of his story, you push your head further into the pillow, feeling as if it's your only comfort.

"His blood was everywhere, I'm sure I'll find stains on my clothes for ages. It was metallic, bitter... Nowhere as sweet as your own."

Your terror mounted with every word, fear gripped your trembling body, not threatening to loosen anytime soon. You felt so weak, so sick. What a sick bastard getting off on tormenting you.

He walks his slender fingers up your covered arm, his stiletto nails almost poking through the thin blanket. His laughter mocked you. It sounded as if a drum was being beat against as his face was inches away from your ear.

Hisoka makes a curious sound from the back of his throat, noticing you haven't spoken since his story began, "Oh dear.. Don't tell me you fell asleep on me." He says, feigning bewilderment.

In hopes that he will think you are asleep, you remain silent.

His breath gets hotter as he draws closer once again, “There’s no use in pretending, I can see your whole body trembling.” He mockingly speaks.

You stay silent for a while, not knowing what to say or do, until you feel Hisoka clamp his teeth down on your helix. Your loud yelp elicits a confident hum from him.

"Hisoka.." After so much silence, you speak with a dry throat, your eyes remain tightly shut.

Your body felt paralyzed in fear. It was obvious to you that you were getting into a toxic relationship when you first fell for him, but how he can talk about his most recent murder and laugh to you about it leaves you frightened beyond belief.

“Yes? With the way you faked being asleep, it makes me believe you don’t appreciate my story. ♠'" You know that he’s frowning, even if you can’t see his face.

You don’t - you can’t understand how any of this was entertaining. Was the death funny or is it just funny to watch you squirm?

You love him enough to let him make a fool out of you. How could you not love him when there's so much love between you two? How could you not love when there are so many reasons to do so? But you wished he wasn't like this, wasn't psychotic, wasn't obsessed with you in a gross, insane way. But that's just his way of showing his love for you, you tell yourself. He likes to tell you about his days, doesn’t that make you happy?

"N-no.. Not-not at all." You lie, stumbling over your words.

“What? Cat got your tongue, Y/N?" A soft whimper escapes you and it doesn't miss Hisoka's ears as you can hear him laugh condescendingly. "You know I hate it when you're reticent."

With an obvious sense of anxiety, you let out a breath, and turn your head toward the copper-headed man, "I'm just... so tired, I just want to go to sleep.. I'm just tired." You pleaded, repeating the same phrase.

Hisoka looks over your tired face, your puffy puppy-like eyes, your glossy frown, and your red under eyes. He thinks you look so beautiful like this. Especially with the moonlight enhancing your already gorgeous features. It makes him want to lock you away and throw away the key, so only he can view you.

You see an itch in his golden irises, and you turn back around and let out a muffled whine into your pillow - unsure of what he was thinking.

"Don't tell me you're scared… Who would've guessed you were so disgusted by a little gore." He taunts with a lace of venom.

Hisoka felt nauseous by the sight of your sad shaking body. Was this the strong person he came to treasure? It couldn't be. He wasn't pleased with you, he felt as if you were exaggerating everything. How could someone he shares the same bed with look so pathetic?

At the same time, Hisoka loved the thought of you being afraid of him. Wasn't that his calling after all? To make people afraid?

"So pretty when you're scared." He leans into you, giving a condescending peck on your jaw.

You feel already lightheaded as you take violent breaths in and out. Maybe if he let you fall asleep, your churning stomach would stop. But the constant urge to throw-up overpowers your fatigue.

"You poor thing. So pitiful seeing you like this," He says with false sympathy.

His words make you even more mad, or maybe more sick? It's hard to tell, it's such a fine line at this point.

"Please." You croak, on the verge of tears. You're unsure if you're begging for him to let you sleep or if you're begging him to leave you alone. It’s all the same to you now.

"Oh, the dramatics." He says while rolling his snake-like eyes. When did you become so easily scared? He remembers very clearly that you’re not soft, if anything, he always saw a part of himself in you.

It couldn’t be his constant violence, right? You’re stronger than that.

"Go to sleep," He says finally, tired of this sad show. Your aura was still strong, strong enough to make him lust over you. He guesses you could only take so much before you falter. He can’t have that happen. Maybe with sleep, your aura will awaken sturdier and stronger. It's a feasible hope.

#hisoka #hisoka x reader #hisoka hxh #hisoka fanfic #hisoka imagine #hxh 2011 #hxh headcanons #all my stories take place at night #i mention the moonlight at least once every story #hisoka oneshot #hisoka drabble #hisoka morow

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starlit-hopes-and-dreams · 1 year

Text

Chapter 4 ~ The Chase

Hidden Depths AU

Previous ~ Masterlist ~ Next (V.1🙂) ~ Next (V.2 Game Over 😭)

Genre: Fantasy whump

CWs: noncon nudity, noncon touch, captivity, creepy/intimate whumper, lady whump, forced to watch, restraints, muzzled/gagged whumpee, blood, knife whump, stabbing, flashback of prior noncon, panic attack, dissociation... fun times in the torture chamber, indeed :)

WC: 1949

A/N: Switching over to Carr's POV, which does overlap slightly with the last chapter. Poor thing is just not having a good time, not at all. :')

Keep in mind that if you kill me, I can't give you the next chapter 😅 (but maybe that's a good thing... uh, I mean... you love me! Yeah, that's better... *mumbles to self*)

Taglist: @kixngiggles

Carr

“Act like a wild animal, and I’ll muzzle you like one,” Marcus said, taking a step away from her.

Carr could feel herself slipping. The vines digging into her cheeks felt like overly large fingers, ones that took up her entire face. She struggled to draw enough air through her nose–in her mind, that was blocked too.

A sour, rancid scent permeated her senses, making her gag. She swallowed the reflex back, afraid of what would happen if she threw up. The hand across her face was slippery and slimy and so gross it made her skin crawl about as much as the whispering in her ear.

“Be a good girl now, and everything will be okay.” Hot breath caressed her cheek, and she thought she might die if she didn’t get to breathe.

Carr squirmed, managing to slip the finger away from her nostrils enough that a thin sliver of blessed air leaked through.

Not real. Not real!

Desperately, she struggled to separate herself from her past. There was a trick she’d learned by accident–if she focused on one thing and concentrated on her breathing, reality would settle. It had varying levels of success, but she had to… had to try. Her gaze skidded around the room, searching for something, anything, to use as an anchor.

She saw a man with sandy blond hair– noooo, not him.

Her heart thrummed in her chest, the individual beats no longer distinguishable. Black spots dotted her vision. She needed to… find something else. Something–-a rusty stain on the floor. No. An iron-banded door. It taunted her with freedom she had no access to. No no no. Chains–oh gods, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t–-

Dark brown eyes framed by lank curls. Red-rimmed, full of sorrow, and shining with unshed tears.

Resh.

His regard–his mere existence brought her back into the now. Not that the now was much better, but still.

Her next breath came a little easier, the fog of panic easing from her mind.

What was she supposed to do here? She didn’t look away from Resh, couldn’t look away from him, not while these thoughts raced in her mind. It wasn’t like there were a lot of options, just two, really. Two fucking shitty options.

Should she endure, let Marcus have his way with her? Hope he got bored and killed her quickly? The thought went against every instinct she had.

Or–

Resh’s eyes narrowed, sending a bolt of terrified resolve through Carr, jarring her. She closed her eyes.

Okay, then.

“Submit, and I might go easy on you,” Marcus said, crossing his arms over his chest.

The vines restraining her began to draw away, slithering against her bare skin. Her eyes snapped back open. When she looked at Marcus, she let everything that made her her slip away. Her sense of self burrowed deep, deep, deep, taking with it the pain, the fear, the vulnerability that accompanied the knowledge of what was to come.

One of these days, Carr supposed she might never reemerge, and all that would remain was the shell left behind. It was a shell that lashed out, striking like a threatened viper, driving venom deep into people’s veins to keep them away from her. One that felt nothing, nothing but fiery rage or icy calm.

Before she met Resh, she wouldn’t have cared if she had returned from that state. But now… she gave herself a mental shake. It didn’t matter anymore.

“Come here,” Marcus said, crooking his finger at her.

Carr said nothing. Did nothing.

Marcus sneered and shuffled forward. Apparently, he wanted to make the small distance between them last. Fucker. She wasn’t going to complain, though. His intimidation tactic would work in her favor.

Resh was shouting, and Carr glanced over at him, allowing herself just one moment to take him in for what was likely the last time. Her heart twinged before she ruthlessly shoved that useless feeling back where it belonged.

Impassive, she stared ahead while Marcus approached, busy assessing her body in the time she had left. The old lash marks on her back ached, and the wounds on her chest were on fire, still sullenly oozing blood. Exhausted already from her use of elemental earth and being awake all night, she’d need to make this fight with Marcus quick before blood loss slowed her even further.

Marcus was only a few inches away when Carr finally darted around him. She kept her flight to short, quick bursts while she crossed the room, aiming to frustrate him into doing something stupid while conserving her own energy.

But she slowed quicker than she had hoped, and Marcus caught her arm on the next dodge and feint. Before she could free herself, he spun her around and slammed her into the wall, face first.

Carr managed to turn her head in time to avoid a broken nose, which would’ve been a death sentence with the muzzle in place, but the impact still stunned her. Blood trickled down the side of her face. A dull throb took up residence in her head, and the slice on her chest flared with hot pain when Marcus pressed into her from behind.

“How about now?” he asked congenially, dragging his dagger up her bare thigh, deep enough that it was going to fucking hurt to put weight on now. When he was done, he pressed the tip into her side.

How about you go stick your dick in a rodent trap, Carr wanted to say. Tried to say, but all that came out was mumbled nonsense.

Marcus’ chest vibrated against her back, and the knife tip dug in a little deeper, breaking the skin.

Was he fucking laughing? Fuck. This.

Carr threw her elbow back, hitting something soft and fleshy. Marcus grunted, and she took the opportunity to twist away from his loosened hold and run.

It wasn’t until she stopped some distance away and turned to face him that she realized the cost of that maneuver. As she watched, panting, Marcus cleaned his blade on the front of his shirt, leaving a thick streak of her blood behind on the cream cloth. Too much for what he’d done to her thigh. She looked down, only now feeling the sticky warmth of her blood spilling down her side. The slice didn’t even hurt.

Shit. She pressed her hand against it, trying to stem the blood loss. She wasn’t going to have much longer at this rate.

“Whatever you do, keep fighting,” Resh whispered harshly from behind her, and Carr started, not having realized she was that close to him. “Make him pay for what he aims to take.”

She was trying, but it was all she could do to stay away from him. It was infuriating, really. In more typical circumstances, she could’ve kicked his ass. Well, really, she would’ve downed him with a thrown blade before it came to that, but still.

Marcus charged, ending her rest break, and they began the cycle again. Round and round the small room, her dodging and him chasing. Resh shouted in the background, but neither spared him any attention.

A few times, she dared an attempt to disarm Marcus, to steal that blade, but her efforts were for naught. She didn’t have the energy now for another go. Each breath whistled through her nose, making it harder and harder to fill her lungs. Flashes of light sparked in her vision, ones that didn’t dissipate when she furiously tried to blink them away. Her fingers were slick with blood where she pressed them to her side, and her leg screamed at her each time she put weight on it.

Her only consolation was that Marcus was working just as hard as she was. He no longer smiled, if that’s what one could call the fugly expression that tended to cross his dipshit face. Instead, his chest heaved with each breath, and he looked pretty irritated. Sweat soaked his shirt, spreading her blood across the individual threads of fabric in a starburst of crimson.

Marcus advanced again; this time, Carr was just a hair too slow. He slammed the hilt of his dagger into the wound on her thigh. Her admittedly sorry attempt at a dodge turned into a stumble while she shrieked into her gag. Marcus grabbed her, pulling her flush against his body. She sagged in his hold, barely able to keep herself upright.

It was over.

“No!” Resh shouted. His chains rattled as he pulled against them. “Don’t give up, Carr. Keep fighting!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the blood trickling down his arms. Proof of how he’d been struggling to reach her.

It hurt to see he’d been working so hard to get to her, and here she was, just admitting defeat. So, she tried. She lifted her arms, even though they weighed so much, pressed her hands to Marcus’ chest, and pushed.

With a hoarse bark of laughter, Marcus roughly spun her around. The dagger went to her throat while his hand splayed across her abdomen.

Carr froze. Lifting her gaze, she found he had positioned her so that she was face to face with Resh, who was glaring over her shoulder at Marcus.

“That’s more like it,” Marcus huffed, still sounding out of breath.

Resh’s face turned to stone when Marcus’ free hand started moving. Carr blanked it out, along with the feeling of him at her back. She had to. While Resh tried to reason with Marcus, she kept completely still, allowing Marcus his fun exploring.

Eventually, the razor-sharp edge of the dagger wasn’t digging into her throat anymore. She kept her mind blank, refusing to acknowledge where that hand was, where it had been. Who was watching.

Eventually, the muscles in Marcus’ arm relaxed.

The dagger drifted farther away from her throat.

Farther…

Now!

Carr snapped her head back. Something crunched, and Marcus yelped.

That fucking hand disappeared, along with his presence at her back, and Carr staggered away.

Sniffing and sniveling sounded behind her. Carr knew she needed to move, but her body was so done. She looked up at Resh, knew he could see it in the way she stood. It felt like exhaustion was seeping from her very pores.

Then Resh’s gaze sharpened, and he looked over her shoulder.

“You fucking bitch!” Marcus shouted. His voice was slightly muffled, like she had broken his nose.

Good. Now, if only she could force herself to move, follow up on the advantage of his shock.

“Carr. Move! Move now!” Resh yelled. He threw himself forward, only to have the chains cruelly yank him back.

It took her far too long to understand what Resh was telling her. Move not to attack Marcus, but move because Marcus was attacking her. Carr side-stepped and tried to twist away, but not fast enough.

Something slammed into her back.

White-hot pain exploded through her, a firecracker of agony racing through her bloodstream, burning through her nerve endings.

It was so shocking she couldn’t even cry out. He’d fucking stabbed her, in the fucking back! Cowardly cunting bastard.

The pain began to subside, slowly replaced by a curious numbness. Distantly, Carr wondered if this was what dying felt like. A sudden stab of fear twisted in her heart, and she tried to catch Resh’s eyes, but–

Marcus threw her to the floor at Resh’s feet.

She had no chance and even less strength to catch herself, so she landed hard. And as the impact jostled the dagger still in her back, practically paralyzing her with the pain reverberating throughout her body, she discovered she wasn’t that numb after all.

Next V.1 Next V.2 (Game Over)

Image Description

[ID: The banner is a sepia-colored version of the original blue-green background, with tree branches arching over a set of blue-green eyes, forming an approximation of a face. The words Hidden Depths AU are written in white above the eyes. end ID]

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scaryscarecrows · 4 months

Text

The Wolf kicked the spindly corpse of an old woman aside with a rough scoff and an unsympathetic, “Crazy fuck.”

The corpse, lips still pulled back in a terrible snarl, did not reply. The Hunter committed a further indignity of wiping her axe blade on the corpse’s skirts, nodded once, and moved on through the long grass.

There were rumors of a witch spreading through the fields and the town. Bodies had surfaced, with arcane symbols carved into their flesh and their eyes torn cleanly from their sockets. Neither man nor animal was safe–the earliest whispers had been about horses. Witchcraft was as likely as anything, but the Wolf cared only for putting an end to it. Yarnham had enough trouble without this.

Hemwick had always been an unpleasant region, she thought. Cold, damp and dark, and treacherous to boot; one wrong step would land you in the mire, and most folk never walked back out of there. Aside from that, the area was littered with hags, and if it wasn’t some old crone throwing molotovs, it was her slavering dog, covered in spikes, trying to tackle you to the ground. It was, to put it bluntly, a pain in the ass and only worth the bother to keep the witch–or would-be witch, if that be the case–from causing more problems in the city.

An old house, rotting from the inside out, rose up on the tor and the Wolf changed course to move towards it. It looked deserted enough, but most places did, these days. But nothing came at her, not even a bird, and when she stepped through the doorway, the little room was so dust covered that she almost thought twice…if it hadn’t been for the reek of blood and death, and the scarcely-imperceptible whispers that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. And, well, all the bodies. Some hung from the ceiling, some merely lay on the floor, but all of them were missing their eyes.

Something was here. Or using this place, at least.

She adjusted her grip on her axe, drew comfort from the weight of her gun, and stalked forward. Seemingly empty, but there was a smaller room on the far side, half-covered with mangled horsehide. As good a place to start as any.

Her lantern threw manic shadows on the walls and twice she leapt back at a sound that turned out to be creaking rafters, but soon enough she was pushing the horsehide aside with her gun.

This room was small, but busy: it was filled with broken-down bookshelves and heavy wooden tables laboring under the weight of knives and books. The floor was littered with decaying papers, a metal jug lay broken on the floor, and the planks were stained red with blood. Far more interesting, however, was the corpse bound to a chair in the middle of the room. The blood was likely his, given the damage to his clothes, and he hadn’t been here long enough to decay.

Poor bastard, she thought, advancing on him to check his pockets. What did she do to you–

The corpse sucked in a desperate breath all of a sudden, head snapping up. His face was battered and bruised, and at this range she could see that there were patches of skin flayed off his ribs, but his eyes were clear and if she squinted, she could see on his neck the same mark she had on her left palm.

“Good God,” she said, dropping to her knees and drawing a knife. “What the hell happened?”

The man’s throat worked, then his jaw, and finally his lips as he spat up a gob of blood. She peeled the ropes out of his wrists and chest before shrugging off her pack and rifling through it for a blood vial and some bandages.

“Rituals don’t quite stick,” he rasped. “You wouldn’t believe what it feels like to get your eyes scooped out.”

The Wolf hid a grimace behind her scarf. She’d had her fair share of mishaps, especially when she was still very new, but not that one.

“Lovely.”

“Mm-hm.” He flicked the syringe, found a hole in his ragged trousers, and rammed the needle into his thigh. “Thanks for the rescue. Much longer and I’d have gone mad.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Long enough.” He sat up a little more, clothing clinging to the chair for just a second, and raised his arms enough for her to wrap his ribs. They’d heal soon, but the sight of the bone, gleaming amongst tattered clothing and ragged flesh, was enough to unsettle even the hardiest of souls. “It isn’t just one witch. It’s two. Sisters, I think.”

Well, wasn’t that just wonderful. Lone witches could be rough, if they were strong enough, but two of them fed off each other, strengthened each other, and could easily cause a massive amount of trouble in a minimal amount of time.

Something in the main room screamed and she turned to her new companion. He still looked ghastly, injured and underfed, but she’d looked worse in her day and still come out on top.

“You up for a little revenge?”

Cracked lips split further when he grinned, blood spilling over his teeth and down his chin.

“You think you can keep up?”

She thrust out her hand to help him to his feet and he waved her off, instead reaching down for a cane and using that to lever himself upright. The brief glimpse she got showed serrated metal on the stick and a raven’s head that fit neatly into his palm. His gun was smaller than hers, a narrow pistol rather than a blunderbuss, with flying ravens engraved on the handle. She would be lying, now, if she said she wasn’t a tad nervous; the Raven was not a Hunter to cross. A witch, even two witches, getting the drop on him was not a good omen.

Something screamed again, something inhuman, and she adjusted her grip on her axe. Beside her, the Raven flicked his cane, loosening the whip, and nodded to the horsehide.

“Ladies first, or hide behind me?”

“Such a gentleman.”

And with that, she charged into the main room.

There was only one witch, or only one visible one. A hunched old crone, all but crawling along the floor, with long, sharp talons scratching at the wood. They descended on her, slashing at her eyeball-covered body, and she shrieked piteously.

Then something shrieked back.

The shadows melted and molded and moved, slowly, oh, so slowly. Humanoid yet not, with long, spiky hair and misshapen fingers wrapped tight around sickle handles, something shuffled out of the black.

A Mad One. She had only seen one once before, in a dark place, and she’d let it alone, then.

It kept coming, steps slow and patient, eyes glowing, and she shot it. It staggered and howled, and then, above on a decayed walkway, she saw more.

Dear God.

The Raven’s whip lashed out, catching it across the chest, and before it could recover he flicked it back the other way, this time snapping its head sideways with a sickening crack.

“Find those little bitches, I’ll keep these at bay.”

The witch had melted away, but there was an odd shimmering across the room and she dashed for it, raising her axe above her head and bringing it down just as the shimmering became an eyeball-laden back. The witch screeched, arching and clawing at the wooden floor, and she hacked at her again, blood and pus and mucus spattering across her clothes. She was already flickering again, trying to get away, and the Wolf made one last vicious slash at the back of her neck. It wasn’t quite enough, but it was damn fine all the same, and one more good whack should bring her down.

A gunshot rang through the room, followed immediately by a shriek and the tearing of flesh. A Mad One fell and the Raven whirled, whip glittering like stars, to slash at the two others trying to come up behind him. Above them, the air shimmered and she ran for the stairs.

Come on, come here, you sorry little–

What felt like a squeezing fist stopped her in her tracks, tightening until she could hardly breathe, let alone move. A choked curse and the sudden spooling clatter of metal said her companion was in the same boat.

This witch wasn’t injured like her sister, but that was the only difference. She came close, robe leaving sticky tracks as it dragged on the ground, and reached up, up, up towards the Wolf’s face.

True to her name, she bit the questing fingers and held on tight, jaw clenched and tongue rebelling at the taste of putrid flesh. The witch’s scream reached a new height as she yanked on her hand, thrashing the Wolf’s head back and forth, before a Mad One finally slashed her across the back. The shock and pain made her let go.

“You,” the witch hissed, clutching her fingers to her chest. “You are no better than the Beasts you hunt.”

“I learn from my prey.”

The witch cackled. The clenching fist dragged her towards the middle of the room, nearer to the Raven.

“Lovely, lovely eyes, sister!” she crowed. “We’ll have an infinite harvest of eyes now!”

The Wolf tried to kick out, to thrash free, to do something, but the invisible fist held firm. Beside her, the Raven was breathing slowly, his eyes closed as the blood dripped down his cheeks. The injured witch flickered into view, laughing breathlessly, and hitched towards him.

“I say we start now,” she wheezes. “I need to feed.”

She drew a finger through the blood trail and slurped it, too-long tongue winding around her skinny digit. When it was clean, she moved closer, fingers (talons) scratching at the rough bandages around his ribs.

Her mistake.

She’d moved too close, and the hand wasn’t a total restraint, certainly not enough to keep him from headbutting her. She squealed and staggered and the hand around the Wolf’s body loosened enough for her to kick and claw her way free, hurling herself at the nearest monster.

They hit the ground in a snarling ball. Fire enveloped the Wolf’s chest, burning through her clothes and her skin and deep into her bones, but she kept her knees firm on the boney hips as she brought her axe down on the head. Finally, mercifully, the flames died as the body shuddered and fell silent.

Gugh!

What felt like a rope wrapped around her throat, pulling taut and squeezing. Her axe hit the ground with a clatter as she clawed at it, trying in vain to get her fingers under it and just breathe just breathe just fucking breathe–

SQUELCH!

The witch shrieked and the rope was gone. The Wolf scrambled away, gasping, and turned in time to see the Raven rip his hand back out of the thing’s chest, fingers clenched tight around stringy, mangled organs. The creature finally fell to the floor and did not move.

“All right?” the Raven asked, dropping his bounty atop the corpse. She nodded.

“Thanks for that.”

Her chest still burned. It ought to–it was still smoking, even–but she couldn’t bring herself to care. It would heal.

She got up, snatching her axe as she went, and looked at the corpses. They were an ugly pair, even without having been hacked at. Their cloaks were the worst, covered with eyeballs as they were, the glassy, dead things gazing into the void.

The Raven kicked one over and crouched down, flicking out a penknife as he did so.

“Think I’ll take these,” he said easily. “Could do with some upgrades. You want the other?”

May as well. Waste not, want not.

Now, without the adrenaline, her back was stinging and her muscles were aching. She was looking forward to getting out of this filthy hovel, taking a minute to breathe before throwing herself back into the fray.

“You’re bleeding.”

“So are you.” Ugh. Eyes were slippery and thoroughly unpleasant to handle, gloves or not. “I’m low on vials or I’d offer you another one.”

“Be still.” He knelt down and scooped up a handful of the witch’s innards. “This’ll help the burn.”

“Thought that was a load’a rubbish.”

“No. Forgive me the impudence…”

His hands were firm under his gloves, but still gentle as he rubbed the innards against her smoldering chest. True enough, the burns felt soothed. When she risked looking at them, they looked less red than they should have been, the skin less flaky.

“There.” He sat back on his heels. “Little better, anyhow.”

“Thank you.” She suddenly remembered she ought to be breathing. “I need to take stock of my supplies, but I’m not doing it here.”

“Agreed.” He eyed the fallen witches warily. “If I never come back here, it will be too soon.”

“I know a house nearby,” she said suddenly, the words tumbling out without permission. “If you’d like a safe place for a few hours.”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

She stood up and thrust her hand out to haul him to his feet. Her back twinged at the pull, but she ignored it. It wasn’t the worst injury she’d suffered, not by a long shot.

“Right, then. With me.”

Hemwick had always been a wretched place. But this excursion had turned out all right.

THE END

#fic #bloodborne #i dunno man #i woke up at like 3 am and this needed to happen and like HELL am i keeping it to myself

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leadtohell · 5 months

Text

“ ‘Course, ‘s not th’seaside weddin’ we've been plannin', but I think she’d really like it — ”

Just how many nights had been spent like this? It was certainly something neither one seemed to complain about; Nellie waxes poetic about their future while the pies are in the oven, & Sweeney listens to her, polishing his pair of haircutting shears. Serena had been to bed hours ago, for all they are aware: she had been nothing but a wonderful, docile guest, not prone to curiosity, & they don’t consider her departing earlier than usual. Nellie sighs, dragging a loving hand through Sweeney’s hair, before settling in one giant rush of skirts at his side on the sitting couch. He glances up only slightly, belatedly moving to place the blades safely out of reach.

“ Just you an’ me an’ her… Think of it! ” Nellie continues, beaming. “ She deserves a nice little house. An’ a rose garden with mint. ”

Sweeney gives a half, wordless smile, nodding his head in coaxed agreement. He was never one to deny Nellie her fantasies, no matter how fanciful. She promptly curls against his side, quickly pecking him on the cheek. It takes only a moment for the act of domesticity to sour.

She hears it right away; the sound of a crash coming from upstairs in the tonsorial parlor. Her head pops off his shoulder immediately, her eyes wide with alarm. She squeezes his forearm.

“ Did you hear that? ” She asks.

Sweeney shakes his head.

A scream.

Nellie bolts off the couch in two seconds flat, grabbing her housecoat from the rack so quickly she knocks it over. Sweeney looks at her, confused.

She gestures helplessly upstairs. He makes no move from the couch. Nellie grunts in frustration.

“ You stupid man, get up! ” She hisses, turning on a heel & racing to put her hand on the railing. Her heart in her throat, she begins the ascent.

“ Serena? ” She’s calling her name before she’s even fully up there, dread deep within the pit of her belly. “ Serena?! ” Oh, God, what else could it be? Who else had a key to the parlor? She finds the door ajar.

Nellie moves to rush in, then stops in the doorway at the sight: red coats the wooden panels of the floor, & there’s a man shallowly drawing his last breaths, one of Sweeney’s razors laying adjacent to him.

& there is Serena, shuddering & terrified, covered in blood that is not her own.

Nellie does her best to disguise the concern upon her face, but unable to be helped, she’s stepping over the body to reach the poor girl. “ God, ” She says with a grimace, glancing back — he was a bum, no doubt, someone who had nothing good planned. “ Ugly blighter, that one is. Oh, Serena… ”

She cups her tear-stained cheek gently, then moves to dab at her face with her housecoat’s sleeve. Nellie manages a weak smile as she does so. Sweeney lingers in the doorframe, his eyes seemingly finally adjusting to what he was witnessing. He means to speak, his lips even part, but nothing comes. Nellie carefully retreats from her fussing once she has cleaned up what she deems to be enough, at least for the time being, before tutting & taking Serena into her arms.

“ He didn’t hurt you, did he? ” She smooths a soft touch down the girl's golden hair. “ You did the right thing, love… Please don’t cry. There’s a good girl, shhh... ”

@wihlted plotted for a starter.

#wihlted #[ ♰ ]⠀Writings⠀—⠀ATTEND THE TALE OF SWEENEY TODD!#tw long post #anyways take this literal mile-long starter YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MATCH LENGTH I WAS SETTING THE SCENE #BABY'S FIRST MURDER!!!!! BABY'S FIRST MURDER!!!!!!!!!#MOMMY AND DADDY R SO PROUD #LMFAOOOOOOO

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miraculart · 1 year

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Contemplations over Cookie Dough and Christmas Time in the Cabin

———

Christmas Writing Prompt themed one-shot.

Kazuto and Asuna share a tranquil moment in their new home. A well-earned, much needed reward.

———

“Don’t. You. Dare.” Asuna whipped around to face Kazuto, drawing her blade from its sheath. The look in her eyes was deadly, fires burning hotter than any dungeon he had seen decorated her irises. “That’s it,” he thought to himself, “there is nothing more terrifying than the woman who stands before me.” He had said it many a time before, yet every time he did, that fear became admiration, and that admiration reminded him of just how grateful he was to stand by her side. He would not want to fight her in earnest. Luck be with the poor sap caught on the wrong end of her blade.

He shuddered at the thought, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Alright. I won’t come any closer.” He sighed, slowly dropping his hands to his sides before darting under her arm.

Thinking he escaped the zone of danger, he shot out his arm, vying for the prize so close at hand. He was met with a resounding “thwack!” His fingers smarted obnoxiously, his poor, innocent digits were crushed under the pressure of Asuna’s lightning fast reflexes. The burning pain staggered up his tendons, causing him to drop to his knees on the floor, clutching his hand to his heart. Okay, so he was being dramatic. Why shouldn’t he try to gain some sympathy points?

Asuna sneered at him, “I told you. Don’t. Touch.” Kazuto rolled over to face her, cradling his injured fingers to his chest. He looked up at her with his best impression of a sopping wet kitten in a cardboard box. Outside in the rain. Alone. He let his hair dangle around his midnight eyes as he attempted to appeal to her softer, more nurturing nature- “Oh, don’t you start with that.” She rolled her eyes, scoffing at his childish display. She was grateful though. He was finally starting to act like himself again. They had been through so much, the two of them. And yet, here they were, facing their biggest challenge yet: Preparing to host a Christmas party.

He started up again, attempting a feint to get to the mixing bowl behind her. She parried, “If you eat any more cookie dough we won’t have enough cookies to decorate for everyone. Help me roll them out or go decorate something.” She gestured unenthusiastically to the remainder of the space, filled with big storage boxes filled with shiny and sparkly additions to their new home.

They’d finally done it this year. They found a little lake place like the one they bought in Aincrad all those years ago. The reality of that wasn’t lost on either of them, having lived so many lives over with one another, this reality, however tangible it may seem to others, was often a point of concern for the pair. They would wake up from nightmares consoling one another, reminding each other that this is the world they are truly living in, the lives they truly lead. Not to say that the experiences they’ve had up to this point haven’t been real, but that this reality isn’t a virtual existence.

As Kazuto busied himself setting up the dining area, rather haphazardly at that, Asuna couldn’t help the smile that crept on to her face. Finally, the memories they’re making aren’t under a death threat. A gun, a sword, a magic psychopath, or a super computer world domination scheme. These memories are pure, untainted by blood stains and death, by betrayal and battle fields. This peace was earned. This slice of heaven, straight out of a bad Christmas romcom was theirs. Finally and truly.

She continued rolling out cookie dough and pressing shapes into the slabs. Carefully moving each little snowflake and gingerbread man to the oven trays for baking. She hummed as she worked, dancing around the kitchen, in her element, hair tied up in a barely contained bun. And then she hit something solid in front of her.

She looked up from her work to find Kazuto, grinning silly over her, dangling a mangled piece of mistletoe from some forgotten holiday box of years past. He looked positively proud of himself, standing before her in his Christmas pajamas, hair tousled from their previous altercation, with his dried up, shriveled up, saddest-excuse-for-a-plant mistletoe that he found. The sight was akin to a young cat, presenting its owner with the toy mouse it had “hunted” and “killed.” God she loved him.

She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her lips as she cupped his face. His arm moved around her waist, holding her in an all-too-familiar embrace. She kissed him gently, forcing herself to move out of his grasp. There was still much work to be done after all! He groaned as she pulled away, tapping him lightly on the nose.

“We have guests in two hours, play time can wait until later.” She spun back to her work in the kitchen, a deep blush settled on her cheeks. No matter how many years, how many lifetimes they have been together, he still made her blush like a teenager. Not that she would admit that.

#sword art online #kirigaya kazuto #asuna yuuki #oneshot #sao #they need a break okay #I would give anything for a season that’s just them living a mundane life #slice of life #I’d take it #I forgot how writing works #tw gun mention #tw kill mention #I forgot how nice it feels to just write #alright enough tags already

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