#flower petals and blood | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stareiiez · 1 month

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𝑭𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓 𝑷𝒆𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒔 & 𝑩𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅

-- seven

Leonard Church ( Epsilon) x Reader

Lavernius Tucker x Reader

note: GETUP RVB FANS I'm here to serve something that's been sitting here for two years. Who's ready for restoration??

content: angst. slow burn relationships. love triangle. potential character death. smut in later chapters. pining. hanahaki disease. blood. bodily fluids. female reader. dark topics are used here a lot. 2.1k words.

The once steady thump- thump- thump- of your heart shattered at the image of Church standing in front of you. His presence, short but broad nearly blended into the lilac-altering shades that were painted on Doc's walls. You blink, once, twice, thrice, four or five times until the burning of your lungs quells your brain to force oxygen to filter into your nose and down your esophagus.

Your lungs fill, expanding in your brittle ribcage that tickles against the lung sacs. The carbon monoxide you exhale sounds shaky as it flows out of parted, chapped lips. You can't help it, not one sense of you, for the most part, is stable in this situation. You can nearly see the small, rusty wheel cogs turning in his brain as his helmeted head flows from your ashen face to the flower sitting calmly in Doc's hand. The smell doesn't hit him, it can't hit him because he's an A.I.; well .... 'ghost' for the most part. Your stomach turns as his head tilts back to you once his vision is glued to the wilting flower. Its petals were curling inwards like the oxygen surrounding it was lethal and would only kill it the more exposure it got to it.

"Well?" after a beat of silence, he speaks up again. His voice nearly makes you flinch, but with Doc by your side, you can't do much but slowly press your weight into his forearm armor. "What's with the flower? Actually, fuck that, what are you two talking about?"

His feet, soundless against the hard steel floor, take three steps to the two of you. His head tilts back and forth between the plant to yours, slowly turning, ashen face. You can only blink, sometimes you don't even dare to break the shocked eye contact you have with the pale gold visor of Church's helmet. "I'm waiting." His voice drips in sarcasm, and the heady impatience in the underlying tone of his words are only magnified when his hands are planted on his hips.

Doc clears his throat, his hand instantly curling around the flower in his bare palm. His nose wrinkles at the feel of the velvety soft petals crumbling and growing damp and squishy in his fist. "She was just showing me the first real flower that she managed to grow out here. Who knew stale old cave water could grow marvelous things! "

Church turns his scrutinizing gaze away from you just long enough to have his pale eyes look Doc up and down slowly. So slow in a way like he's trying to read out every single cell in the medic's body. "I didn't know you were into flowers, Doc."

The latter throws Church a smile, one that looks so nervous and not genuine, but he's trying his damn best to get all eyes off you and your borderline panic attack. "Sure! Botonology was going to be my new major if I didn't get immediately accepted into med school and shipped out here. Donut even offered to help me run my little flower shop when we get back home after this cruddy war." Doc stutters nervously, his cheeks flushing at the vain attempt to lie his way smoothly towards Church.

If you were in any right mind, you would have had a mark of your palm in the middle of your forehead from how hard you would have facepalmed. Instead, you can only breathe, count to ten in your whirring head, and try to come back to reality as fast as humanly possible. Your head tilts and catches the glint of light that bounces off Church's visor. He hadn't even been listening to whatever bullshit Doc spewed out of his mouth. He was busy watching you, studying, trying to figure out why you looked so tense and why your chest hadn't moved since the first moment he had even appeared in the room.

"Can I talk to you for a moment--" Church reaches for you, his fingers don't even have the chance to grasp at you because you're moving your arm away from his transparent touch. "Alone."

"Are you kicking me out of my room? You can't do that! I'll tell Sarge and he will . . . he'll come to yell at you and ---"

"It's fine, Doc." Your voice breaks the nearly growing ramble that leaves Doc's mouth, his cheeks are red and his glasses are growing just a tad hazy from how much he speaks. "It'll be fine."

Doc blinks, mouth snapping shut with the loudest clack of his molars striking against each other in abrupt shock. He blinks twice or three more times until he scurries out of the room. Your eyes faintly trail after the back of Doc's head. He doesn't have time to even turn back to you and offer some silent look of support before the sliding doors have closed and locked behind him. Church's part, how he hasn't grown aware he can hack into the ' mainframe ' of Red Base and manipulate objects by his will is a shock. The idiot has grown smarter. Your head tilts. The corner of your mouth lits in a soft curve upwards, shoulders shrug and you silently have one moment of smug to yourself. Shocker.

However, that feeling goes away when Church swims into your vision and his visor is locked onto your eyes. You knew his own were trained on you. The light color of his irises would be trying to drink your expression in. Figuring out emotions and trying his fucking best to start up a conversation. If he wasn't dead he would have approached you like some fucking feral animal that was backed into a corner, fear in its eyes and ready to pounce on whoever was there to help it.

You probably look like that feral animal. You haven't bathed in a couple of days ever since your coughing fits have turned into full-on vomit moments of colorful flowers. You couldn't sleep. Nightmares of drowning on dry land while blood and flower vines would seep from your nose and open mouth, your eyes would roll back and be poked out by sharp rose thorns that would rapidly creep from your body.

It was like hell on earth, and for some reason, Church was your Lucifer.

"Are you starting some kind of garden with Doc in the caves? You know they're used for Tucker to masturbate in right?" Church quips, his voice breaking the short moment of silence between you two.

"Do you think I care what Tucker does on his own?" More importantly, do you care about what he sexually does on his own? No. No, you don't.

"More importantly did you just decide to pop up because of my little 'garden adventures' with Doc, or is there something else you needed." Your voice sounds snappy. The longer he is here, standing around like he's the second dumbest person on the fucking planet. The more you start to ache.

Nausea smacks you around nearly as fast as the rate Church's hand tries to reach for your own. To hold and caress in that soft little way he used to do. For someone that was such a bitch boy. Who whined, complained, and threw temper tantrums if things didn't go his way or his team brought him to temperamental suicidal thoughts. He could always melt some of you into his open palm like putty.

Some part of you yearns for that feel of warm skin on your skin. Nerves fizzle, your skin twitches and you swear you nearly close your eyes just when you're about to picture a smooth palm grace your fingers. Hell, you would even take his hand to your cheek. A soft hand, fingers brushing against your cheekbone. Those same fingers tangling into your hair or brushing a strand away from your features. Your nose twitches briefly and you nearly hallucinate the smell of gunpowder, metal, and faint cologne. It smells like Tucker.

Your eyes blink the unfocused look you have in your colored orbs. The temporary daydream you have about the one fucking man who touched you, and not managed to have flowers sprout in your lungs, has ended. What you could have pictured as smooth and soft pale-colored skin was replaced and shifted back to the see-through baby blue of Church.

It's disappointing. Not only disappointing but it's weird how desperate the human body is when they crave physical contact or warmth. Your own body has you craving Tucker rather than the man who's trying to figure out what in the hell is wrong with you. It seemed like if you could close your eyes once again, really squeeze them shut, and pretend like Church didn't even exist in front of you, you could imagine the rich and earthy tones of Lavernius Tucker.

What the fuck.

Instead, Church is standing in front of you, concern etched in his eyes behind the visor of his helmet, and it's only growing more in the zeros and ones that make up his pupils. A sharp inhale leaves your lungs. You wish you could crumble the same way as the way the flower folded so easily against Doc's palm. You wanted to be ended rather than deal with the sharp questioning eyes of your situation.

"I'm concerned about you, and I never get concerned about anyone. You should be lucky." You couldn't help the scoff that leaves your bleeding lungs. Well, soon to be bleeding lungs.

"Except for Texas, glad I share the same area of concern with an old flame." Church flinches, his digital frame laps in the way those fuzzy vertical lines ran over an old TV screen. Nostalgia.

"It's different with you. You don't infest my brain. You also don't beat the shit out of me whenever I breathe too loud next to you." A smile would crack behind his visor if he could muster it. It's forced at best, just to try and ease the scowl you have on your face. " Just---- . . are you, healing? Feeling better? We can call someone if Doc isn't help-"

"NO." You bark. The thought of involving more people in your disease is the nightmare you wish not to experience. The UNSC would take you under the knife and scalpel. They'd treat you like some freakish science experiment and run tests before they ever attempt to find some cure for you. They'd make you worse before they decided to be humane enough to make you feel better.

"No, I'm okay. Besides it's only been a couple of days at least, I'll heal. Besides you get worse before you get better, right?" Your voice softens around the edges. It's a sign that has Church exhaling heavily like he, himself, was in your shoes and stressed behind compare. His frame wanders closer, golden visor tilting to look closer at you.

"Right. Well enough of asking about you, aren't you going to give a fuck about me and my travels as being a full-on ghost?" The tension between you two drastically shifts, it's a lot lighter now that the subject changed. It's accepted quickly, you don't have it in you to be mad he's back to his old selfish self once again. Your mouth tilts up into a small smile.

Lungs wetly rattle with a chuckle you grant him. If 'ghosts' could experience warmth from somewhere in their cores; Church would feel it. He'd give anything to feel the small flutter in his heart again whenever he witnessed the soft crinkles in your eyes and nose when you laughed because of him. Tex never laughed around him like you did. It was always rough and demeaning when she laughed at him. Your laugh was a drink of water for a man who didn't know he was dying of thirst. Something something, poetic bullshit. He just liked it when you lit up in amusement around his presence. That's all.

"Let me hear it. Tell me all about where you've been and if you've scared the shit out of anyone that deserves it." Your eyes soften in the corners as you focus your gaze on his armor. The walls that were surrounding you have lowered enough to let your shoulders lower from around your ears. The knots that have formed in your neck and back ache less now when you two settle into your banter back and forth like you used to when Church prattles on about his adventures in his 'haunts' around Blood Gulch.

It feels perfectly normal for the first time in what feels like forever.

#red vs blue #rvb #rvb tucker #lavernius tucker #rvb x reader #leonard church x reader #leonard church #doc dufrense #rvb doc #flower petals and blood #rvb church x reader #rvb church #rvb fic

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slightlyobsessedwithstories · 1 year

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5 Times They Had A Nightmare and 1 Time Lia Had a Nightmare

Summary: Yeah, title says it all.

Notes: Around 2900 words. Warnings here: death, gore, body horror.

The weeks after seeing their family die were full of nightmares. It got so bad that they tried staying awake as much as possible just so they wouldn't have to relive that moment.

It didn't work. Obviously, it wouldn't. Amalia even said it was a bad idea.

...

It was such a perfect day. They could hear the joyous laughs as Annie and their cousins play around the trees. Close by, they can hear their dad joking around with their aunt. They also finally manage to convince their mom to put down her work and for a moment she's laying down on the picnic blanket watching the clouds pass by with them at her side.

It was such a perfect day.

Why did it have to end?

They're overwhelmed with the mix of screams and the smell of iron.

They close their eyes shut. No matter how many times they see this it won't go away. It won't stop. They want it to stop. Please.

Their hands are still shaking as they try to keep themselves quiet. Keep themselves safe. Hope that the monsters don't get them.

Then they hear her.

Annie, their sweet little sister, begging for help.

They try to save Annie. They tried so many times to save her. They want to be able to save her at least once. At least give them the chance to make up for failing her in the real world.

This time they're carrying her in their arms. Holding her tightly like the day their parents let them hold her for the first time.

They try to outrun the monsters chasing them.

It doesn't work.

It never works.

It takes her.

They wake up, surrounded by empty cans of energy drinks, tears running down their face and... a blanket on them?

Slowly, they got their head up and right there close to the table is Amalia, who they're pretty sure is going to tell them that she was right and they should've listened to her, but she didn't.

Not right now.

She takes a moment to help calm them. They really needed that, their heart's still racing. After checking that they're fine, she helps them get to bed.

...

It's almost a year since they lost their family. The nightmares didn't stop and at this point they've accepted that it would haunt them for the rest of their life.

They've stopped forcing themselves to stay up.

Can't really stop sleeping. It's not like they can stop their body from falling asleep.

They're only human after all.

...

It's the same scene. The laughter, the jokes, but something's different this time.

Their mother isn't watching the clouds, she's watching them.

Her eyes staring into their soul.

They want to speak, but they can't.

She speaks instead.

"Why do you torture yourself, my child?"

They don't–they don't know what she meant by that.

Her haunting voice continues, "You're stuck here, in this moment of time. You have a purpose much greater than this that you cannot fulfill until you remember why you're here."

What? What does she mean by that?

Her features shift, she's now someone else...someone that should be familiar to them, but they can't remember who.

She's bleeding from her chest.

"I'm sorry, you have to wake up now."

Wait wha–

The person stabs them in the chest with the knife from her bleeding heart.

The last thing they see are her sad eyes staring at them.

They wake up with a jolt. Their hand goes to their chest, almost expecting blood, but they only find their rapidly beating heart.

They're not in the woods.

They're in Amalia's room.

They look around and spot her studying, she has her earphones on. She's tapping her foot to the beat of the song she's listening to.

It's cute.

Amalia's here. They're here. They're home.

Their heart slows down to a reasonable speed.

She notices them. She stops what she's doing and takes her earphones off.

Her focus is only on them.

"Did you have another nightmare?"

"Yeah, this one's...different though."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

They don't exactly want to tell their best friend that they dreamt about their own mother killing them.

"Not... really. Not right now."

"Okay, that's alright. You can tell me when you want to okay? You don't have to keep it all to yourself."

"Okay, thanks Lia."

She goes back to studying.

Her words keep repeating in their head.

They're gonna tell her.

They're gonna tell her the truth.

She wouldn't believe them, but they have to tell someone.

They don't have to deal with this alone.

...

So it's been a few months since they told her the truth about what happened that day. It was nice to have someone believe them and it for a moment they even had nice dreams.

But it didn't last.

...

They're in the woods again.

They walk around, hearing the occasional bird chirp.

It's calm...too calm.

The stench of rot hits their nose.

They're staring at a trail made with the dead bodies of their family.

Reluctantly, they follow it.

They see everyone. Their body parts strewn around, path splattered with blood, guts, and bones.

Someone is missing though.

At the end of the path, they find her.

In the middle of a circle of trees is their little sister, laying on the ground.

They run towards her and scoop her into their arms.

They can feel her heart beating. She's breathing. She's alive. Annie's alive. She's alive.

They have to leave.

They aren't safe here.

Oh good, Annie's waking up. She can hold on to them while they–

Why are her eyes blue?

She starts crying and shaking in their arms.

"...help..."

"Shh, I don't know what happened, but you're safe now, okay?"

She gives them a small smile.

Suddenly, the ground beneath them rumbles.

"Hold on tight, Annie."

Carrying her, they run as ground glows in cyan light.

Before they can get out of the circle of trees, something stops them.

They keep...hitting...something...

Why can't they go through?!

Annie screams.

Something's pulling her away from them.

No! They're not gonna let it take her! They just need to leave! They can finally be together!

They keep pushing and pushing, meanwhile there's something coming out of the ground behind them.

At the corner of their vision, they see a cyan blur.

Cyan tendrils wrap around them. Forcing their sister out of their arms.

It takes her.

Drags her back towards the center.

The light glows brighter.

She screams for their help.

They need to help her, but they can't!

It won't let them go. No matter how much they fight it.

It should be them. Not her.

Cyan light engulfs her.

They can't–

They can't close their eyes. They don't want to see this. They can't move. Can't turn away. They're forced to look at their suffering sister.

The light is inside her. It ripples and crawls under her skin. Mushrooms burst from her chest feeding off her decaying heart. Mycelium spreads and stretches around her torso, draining every bit of blood from her little body. Her limbs sprout dark leaves, wrapping around her arms and legs, whatever's left of her skin turns to bark. Her hair falls off in clumps, replaced by thick thorny vines.

She stops screaming.

The ground stops glowing.

They want to catch her as she falls.

But they can't.

She drops with a sickening crack.

She stands up as if nothing happened.

Her glowing cyan eyes stare at them.

"...Annie?"

"..."

The tendrils let them go.

They try to take a step towards her.

"Get away from me."

"I don't want to leave you!"

"I can't stop it."

That's not her voice.

"Run!"

They're so sorry.

They turn and run.

"Why are you running away from me?"

That's not Annie.

"Come back! Save me please!"

Don't listen to it.

"Don't leave!"

No matter how much it sounds like her, it's not her.

"I don't wanna be alone!"

Not anymore.

They're almost out of the forest and then–

They wake up. Her screams are still fresh. Still echo in their mind.

Their heart beats as if they've been running for ages.

They're not in the woods. They're crashing on the sofa at Amalia's apartment. They still got their monster hunting gear on and they really regret their sleeping position.

They wipe their face. There's tears and snot all over their arm.

It's a good thing Lia's roommates aren't here.

They hear a door handle turning.

They do not want to explain this to other people right now.

They close their eyes and pretend to sleep.

Lia's the one that enters. They know her footsteps anywhere.

"I know you're awake. You're really bad at pretending to sleep."

They stop pretending and got up to sit on the couch properly.

"Aw, I thought I did better this time."

"You sleep like a corpse when you don't get nightmares. Really freaks me out sometimes."

"I'll try to sleep less then."

She is glaring at them, "Don't."

"I know, I know. I still remember what happened the first time I tried it."

She sits next to them on the couch.

"Another nightmare?"

"...yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Are you prepared to hear what this one was about?"

"If it helps you, then yeah."

They tell her everything. The whole bloody scene, the possession, the transformation, her screams.

She holds them as they cry. At least someone else knows about it.

They stay like that for a while, one holding the other like a lifeline.

After some time passes. They let her go. She still needs to go back to sleep.

Amalia goes back to her room.

Oh, they got an email.

Westchester... something about that place keeps calling to them.

Maybe, it's all the supernatural stuff.

Maybe... it's because of the incident.

Either way they're going to have to go there anyway.

Westchester Community College is the only one that's accepting their college application.

...

It's been a week since they've been staying at Connor's cabin and it has been exhausting. Between finding out that they have powers, Annie being a ghost, a weird voice in their dreams, and to add on that college... is actually the least of their worries, but still, trying to do schoolwork while their brain's thinking about everything else is just ughhhh.

So getting to bed and falling asleep? Easy.

...

They're...in the library?

Wait... No!

They have to get out of there!

So they ran.

They try to find the doors.

They run through so many halls.

They've seen bookshelf after bookshelf.

But the library's a labyrinth.

They just have to avoid her then.

What section of the library are they in anyway?

... It's the dreams section.

...Of course.

They see cyan in the corner of their eye.

There's a book that's glowing.

"Things That Live In The Woods"

Against their will, they walk towards the book.

They touch it.

...

They're in the woods.

It's dark.

They stumble around, hearing the snaps of twigs as they do.

Then they hear her.

She's screaming.

They run towards her.

Their path becomes clearer with the moon lighting parts of the woods.

They can make it this time. They can save her. They won't fail her.

Not again.

They hear her shrieks.

They get weaker as they get closer.

They're at the spot.

They just fall to their knees.

They failed her again.

Her glossy eyes are staring at them.

The knife still stabs her heart.

Why can't they do it?

Why do the people they care for always die?

Maybe there's just something about them that's unlucky.

Maybe they're cursed.

The world around them shakes.

Why are they shaking?

"–up. Wake up."

...Is that Lia?

They open their eyes.

Her worried face is the first thing they see.

"Sorry for shaking you awake, but you were shouting."

They pull her into a tight hug. She lets them hold her while they cry right into her shoulder. She comforts them as they hold each other.

They... they have to ask her...

"Lia...do you think I'm cursed?"

"No. Why would you–"

"I mean if you think about it. It explains a lot. My family's dead, I have powers that could kill people, and mostly everyone I've ever been close to is either dead or they're as far away from me as possible."

Amalia is just silent. Is she shocked? Thinking about the right words to say? Or is she also agreeing?

They continued, "I'm just lucky you haven't–"

"Don't even say it."

Lia starts going into Lawyer Mode basically debunking practically everything that they said complete with evidence.

Of course it's her last point that ends up summarizing her whole argument.

"It wasn't your fault she died."

They know that. They know that they're not the one that killed her.

But she wouldn't be dead if she didn't help them.

She wouldn't be dead if–

"Hey," she squeezes their hand, "you're getting lost in your thoughts again."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. It's not your fault."

Still they have to ask.

"...we'll always be together, right?"

"Hey, we've been friends for a long time. Nothing could keep us apart."

...

It's hard to believe that Lia's right there, right beside them. She didn't have to come back. She didn't have to sleep next to them, but here she is, their best friend and the love of their life, sharing a bed together.

After confessing how they feel about each other.

As much as they would like to explore these feelings while in private, Connor hasn't stopped screaming and really the only reason why Amalia's asleep is because she managed to block some of the screams with her headphones. They took it off after a while; she's surprisingly a deep sleeper.

Sleep eventually comes for them.

...

It's a nice spring day in the woods.

Perfect for a picnic for two.

There's nobody here to disturb them.

They have something special planned for today.

They've set a spot for them in the middle of some Birch trees.

They get there and sit on the picnic blanket.

Amalia keeps sneezing, but that's fine.

What's a little pollen going to do?

So they look inside the basket and find...

A strawberry cake?

Wait, no. That's not right.

A cherry pie?

Yeah, maybe that can work.

So, they grab her a slice of pie.

While they're eating, Lia keeps scratching her throat.

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know. My mouth's itchy for some reason."

There's something that's familiar about what's happening to her.

Wait... is it the food?

Oh no.

Her allergies.

How could they forget that?

Okay, calm down.

Did they bring an Epipen?

They did! They saw it in the basket somewhere.

They can hear her struggle to breathe.

They have to find it.

...

Where did the basket go?

It was right there!

There's a thud.

They turn and see...

Lia, her body stiff and her face swollen.

She's dead.

She's dead and it's their fault.

Lia's dead because they don't remember anything.

They're not them. They're just a copy of them. Some spirit that decided to possess a dead body.

And now...

They hold on to her, their tears dropping down at her cold corpse.

They wake up, they're in Connor's cabin.

Lia...

She's next to them.

She's not dead.

She's still asleep.

Still alive.

Still breathing.

They hold her close.

Her heart beats with theirs.

She's so warm.

She turns and now she's facing them.

Still asleep, she has a little smile on her face.

She's...beautiful? Cute? A mix of both and so much more?

They're so lucky.

They're so fucking lucky that this amazing, wonderful woman is right at their side.

You know what, when all of this is over they're going to have a nice day at the beach with her. They'll prepare the most romantic beach date ever.

And after that?

They both deserve a break. At least before Lia's semester starts.

Maybe in the future, they'll have a nice domestic life far away from all of this.

Maybe they'll visit some of Lia's family.

They don't care what they'll do as long as she's with them.

They'll spend the rest of their life with her.

They're dying.

Matthias stabbed them.

What can she even do?

There's a vortex of power swirling around him.

He's cackling as he celebrates the success of his plan.

But her focus is only on them.

On the body on the altar.

She doesn't care what happens to her if she gets close.

She just wants...

She has to be with them.

She tries to ignore how cold their cheek feels.

Or how the light in their eyes is gone.

"Hey, honey. It'll be okay. All right? It'll be okay, I promise. I love you."

She presses a gentle kiss to their forehead.

Hoping. Praying.

That by some miracle that there's actually some magic in true love's kiss.

But that's a lie she's telling herself.

Her sobs echo in the cold cavern.

...

Amalia wakes up, her face stained with tears.

Some days, it's hard to believe that they're right there next to her.

She presses herself against their back.

Their soft snores and beating heart being the most calming sounds in the world.

And when they wake up.

Brown eyes staring back at her.

They'll kiss her gently on the forehead.

Remind her how much they love her.

The thought may be silly at times but maybe...

They did get their happy ending together in the end.

#playchoices #it lives within #amalia x mc #Amalia de León #fanfic #angst #hurt/comfort #blood #body horror #transformation #hey did you know that strawberries and cherries are related to each other?#they're part of the rosaceae family #... which would also include roses #which does make that bathtub scene a bit awkward #uhhh let's just say they're petals of a different flower

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