#[ corinthian in tears: i fucking hate it here ]

[formshaper]

📐 18ft square up 🧍‍♀️

well. this is terrifying.

but also. every so often...

:)

#( ooc. ) #monstriiss #[ logically i knew drath was huge but somehow my brain just did not properly capture. just how big she fucking is. ] #[ corinthian in tears: i fucking hate it here ]

[barakittens517]

PT VII: The Truth

Summary: In which hindsight is 20/20.

PT VI: The Revelation PT VIII: The Memory

Words: 2,271

Warnings: mentions of past violence/minor character deaths

Pairing: Morpheus x gender neutral reader

Notes: holy mother of pearl folks we're really at 7 parts rn!! remind me to finish this up before i run out of gifs y'all lol :')

Tag List: @ponyboys-sunsets @i-am-not-a-raccoon-anymore @memento-mora @freedomsofdream

“You’re joking,” you deadpan. “Please tell me you’re joking.” 

Morpheus gives you a solemn look. He does not have a punchline. 

“... Why?” Your voice comes out barely above a whisper. Tears, for the thousandth time, threaten to fall from your eyes. 

“I do not know,” Morpheus answers softly. “This is new to me.”

“How does he know?” you ask. Fiddler’s Green had never told you he recognized you, not even on the way back to the Dreaming. How many chances had he had to tell you what you are?

“I do not know,” Morpheus replies, “But I would not be so quick to blame him. Something else is wrong here.”

You’re struck with the overwhelming feeling that you are the wrong here. 

You are most certainly not going to own up to the trail of bodies you left in the waking world, not now. You may know your purpose, but you also know Morpheus was not a fan of the Corinthian’s hobbies while away. 

You’re convinced this has to be an elaborate joke. 

You spent all this time without a purpose, and now that you’re knee-deep in your own sins, you’re supposed to be someone’s soulmate?

The dream lord has had enough of the stunned silences. He does not know why he couldn’t- and still can’t- recognize you from before. And he doesn’t know why you’re so distraught at the news. 

Part of him wants to take immediate offense. After all, you’re supposed to be his companion, and you’re acting like it’s a fate worse than death. Is he truly that horrific of a being?

You haven’t moved. He hesitates for a moment. Considers the advice Lucienne, and Hob, and Death would give him. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have the patience to wait.

“We finally have some kind of answer, and you can’t even look at me?” 

“It’s not… that,” you reply. “It’s not because of you.”

Morpheus scoffs. “Then explain it to me. It is clear you know more than you’ve shared, for whatever reason.” 

“I don’t fucking know!” you yell in frustration, scaring a flock of birds from the top of the dogwood tree. Morpheus does not take this for an answer. He is silent as he moves to kneel in front of you. His anger radiates dangerously, and you wonder if he really will destroy you. After all, he has the blueprints. He could just… start over. 

You flinch as he reaches out, roughly grabbing your chin.

“Look at me,” he growls, and you’re so in shock that you do. 

You had snuck glances at him before, mostly while he had been speaking with Fiddler’s and Lucienne. They were pretty, in an unearthly way, and you’d been glad he had never caught you staring. 

Now, however, you don’t even think to close your eyes. What you had taken for eerie blues at a distance are black up close, like two inescapable voids. They’re speckled with starlight, as mesmerizing as those pictures from NASA satellites.

Morpheus’ expression has morphed from anger to awe. “Why do they glow?” you hear him whisper in amazement. 

You want to answer, to tell him that you have no idea, and that you’re terrified, but no sound comes out. 

To live as an Endless is to commit a million sins, none of which require any sort of guilt, or regret. Morpheus is unaffected by whatever compels people to confess, and for a fleeting moment you think you’re in the clear.

But whatever impact was meant for the dream lord changes course and strikes you. What seems like an eternity of hate, of anguish and sorrow and longing and love, hit like a ton of bricks. Like a tidal wave. 

Like the air has been sucked from your lungs, like your whole soul is being crushed. There are too many transgressions to even begin thinking of penance. Flashes of time, of a city of glass built into the sand that transforms to an orb, a prison that kept Morpheus from returning, from saving his raven. Jessamy. 

He wishes for death. He wishes for revenge. He wishes for a thousand things that never came to pass, and still haven’t. 

What you had considered forever in the waking world passes like minutes to the Endless.

The dream lord’s voice sounds warped and distant. You can hear your name being called, urgent and tinged with worry. The sound adds to your increasing anxiety- you wonder briefly if perhaps you’ve tried to off yourself in front of Morpheus, like the victims before you. That would make things… well, awkward, to say the least.

“Ellis!” 

You come to your senses and realize you’re tucked safely against the dream lord’s chest. You must have fallen forward as soon as you were struck with whatever that was. You’re incredibly aware of the fact that this feels right. Like you were meant to be here your whole life. 

You don’t even consider being embarrassed until you notice Morpheus’ face. He won’t make eye contact- obviously- but he looks as though he’s seen a ghost, or perhaps, something he shouldn’t have.

“Sorry,” you croak, and immediately push yourself away from him. You focus on the flowers instead. Those stupid fucking flowers. “That’s not supposed to happen.” 

The dream lord does not reply. So, of course, you fumble for a better explanation. 

“I swear, it didn’t used to happen this much, and it’s not…  I mean, it’s not me. It is me, but it’s not me. It got worse after I met Rin, but he doesn’t have eyes- I mean, he has eyes, but it never… And I wasn’t trying to make it happen, it just does. And I didn’t ever try to do bad, uh, like, bad stuff with it.

But I would never, I mean… not to you, I guess, I mean- Jesus, okay, uh… That is why I didn’t want to look at you.”

You’re out of breath now, and you can’t read Morpheus’ expression well enough to know what he’s going to do next. 

You sigh. “I would, um… I would understand if you just wanted to start over.” The thought makes you ill, but who would want a soulmate like you? 

The dream lord looks genuinely shocked. “Start over?” he asks incredulously. You shrug. 

“It would probably be easier,” you reply. It would probably be better, you want to say, but you don’t. 

“Ellis…” Morpheus starts, and then stops. He doesn’t want to tell you what he experienced in the same fleeting seconds. “I’m not going to start over.” 

Your breath catches in your chest for a moment- he wants you to stay?- before logic kicks in and forces you to consider what life is really going to be like.

You will always be a threat, even if Morpheus is capable of caring about you. 

“There must be a way to fix this,” he says, and while you know he means well, it stings.

Fixing a thing implies a current state of being broken. Do you consider yourself broken? 

“I don’t remember how it happened,” you comment. “I always thought I was just… I don’t know, made this way. I figured after meeting Rin that I was meant to be something like him.”

Meant to be a nightmare. Ha. You were too good-natured to be a nightmare, and too deadly to be a dream.   

Morpheus shakes his head. “No, you aren’t a nightmare. You were meant to be…” his voice falters, deciding on an adjective that won’t offend. “... Mine. You are meant to be mine.”

You’re grateful to be sitting down- your knees would have given out otherwise. “Yours,” you echo quietly.

Morpheus stands, brushing the dirt from his coat. He offers you his hand, and you take it. Your heart is beating wildly in your chest, and you hope to high heavens you’re the only one that hears it. 

“We will need to discuss this with Lucienne,” Morpheus states. “She may know how to find what you have forgotten.” 

You nod in agreement and start on ahead, following the trail of flowers back to the main path. You plan on keeping your distance, as much as you can without looking suspicious. It’s not that you don’t like Morpheus- you’re beginning to like him too much. And you’ve only known of his existence, what, three days? And what, all because of a fucking notebook doodle and some flowers? 

As much as you want to believe it could work, Verity’s voice comes ringing back, echoing your worst fears. 

No one ever wanted you. No one ever will. 

The universe will not miss you.

You pick up the last bits of self-preservation left in your heart and attempt to ignore the fact that your hand still burns from his touch. He had said that he wouldn’t start over, but you know it will always be an option. Who are you to blame him?

Morpheus seems to sense your apprehension and reaches for your hand again, pulling you back to stand in front of him.  

“What, am I heading the wrong way?” you ask, playing dumb. It doesn’t work. 

Morpheus frowns. He wishes so badly that he could look you in the eyes, and then you would know he’s telling the truth. He settles for brushing the loose strands of hair away from your face, a touch so gentle it leaves your face burning. 

“I don’t want to lose you again,” he says softly, and your heart swells at the sentiment.

“And I want you to trust me.” 

Goddamn, why did he have to go and ruin a good moment with that?

“Well, then, try and keep up,” you reply flippantly, turning on your heels. Morpheus lets you keep your distance this time, although his eyes never once lose sight of you. 

He understands more than he did before, when he took a personal offense to your emotions. 

While you drowned in his eternity of memories as an Endless, he could see each of your years spent in a century of the waking world. It wasn’t much in comparison, but to compare suffering is to compound it. You had been through your own brand of hell, one that you would never speak of. 

The beginning was murky, but he recognized Ms. Jude from your dreams, and the orphanage you had loved so dearly. You had felt guilty, thinking you could never do enough- after all, they were still in an orphanage, weren’t they? 

The Marwoods came next, and the monster that was Saul. Anger is not strong enough a word for what Morpheus felt, witnessing the years of unwarranted hate and abuse. He should have come for you first. 

Then came David Marwood’s death, and Eden’s subsequent mutism. As much as it pained you, you could not stay with them. You had confronted Saul one final time, freeing the family of his demons. His death, at your hands, was an event that never left your mind. He had poured lye into a bottle of whiskey and dropped dead within minutes. 

Your return to the orphanage did not last long. You thought perhaps you had control over your abilities. Ms. Jude had changed in the years since you left, and her motherly faith had possessed her to a traumatizing extent. You had begged her to let the children go to families that would love them, but she had become her own warped Mother Teresa. 

After a particularly bitter conversation, she sent the children to bed and locked the orphanage up for the night. Only after you heard the firemen yelling outside did you realize she had set the dormitory ablaze. 

Twenty-six children and one matron, dead on arrival. You were able to leap from the second story, soaking your clothes in ashen puddles on the lawn. No one even noticed you walk from the smoldering wreckage.

You stayed away from as much of society as you could after that- at first because the authorities had yet to rule it a suicide, and then because you were terrified any passing glance would send innocents to their deaths.

Lonely, guilt-filled decades preceded your voyage to the States. You had given up on finding any answers, resorting to a life on the edges of society. However, people had become suspicious seeing you throughout the years, never aging, never speaking. It was better to leave than face any repercussions.

And then there was the Corinthian.

Morpheus bristled at the sight of the blonde nightmare, so casual in his sins. He immediately saw through Rin’s lying by omission- of course you thought you were like him. 

Morpheus’ heart sank as he realized the Corinthian wanted you to meet him. He wanted to hurt the dream lord as badly as he could, and collateral damage did not matter. You didn’t even know you would be a pawn. 

He witnessed the death of the gas station attendant, of Blade Runner and Nimrod. Even though you had been protecting yourself, the guilt ate you alive. 

His view of your memories ended seconds before he had forced you to look at him. He saw everything- the fear, the shame, the guilt. It has always been with you. 

And now you’re supposed to be some kind of perfect soulmate? 

He feels terrible for how he has acted. Selfishly, he would not trade a moment of having you in his arms, if only for those fleeting moments.

Now you are determined to stay away, lest anyone get hurt.

He can’t blame you. But he can- no, he will- protect you. 

Come hell or high water, you aren’t going to be alone again.

#the sandman #morpheus #dream of the endless #Morpheus x reader #Dream x gn! reader #the corinthian #netflix sandman

[secondhandmckie]

It’s not about me. All these terrible things that weren’t supposed to happen? They happened. What happens next is up to you.

In the Meme Vault

"But why?" She cried, and it felt like the odd bubble of space and time they occupied quivered with it. That was fine--if she trembled, all of space and time should, too. "Why is it up to me? I'm not...I'm just one person, okay? I just...I'm just a regular person, and I'm lying in some hospital somewhere, waiting to wake up."

Molly brushed at her cheeks, dashing away tears that had begun to fall. Fuck, she hated this. Hated feeling weak and hated to look that way in front of something that would much rather just kill her and be done with it. At first, the Corinthian had provided an odd sense of comfort and familiarity--he'd protected her when she was very little, hadn't he? But no...this wasn't even the same Corinthian. Nothing here was comforting. Nothing was familiar. Nothing was fair.

"I was just a kid. I never asked for any of this. And I don't know what to do or how to fix it."

#;the corinthian #nightmarecountry #v; enter sandman #I can hear corinth now #'nut up and figure it out'

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Winging It - Corinthians 4:9

Summary: Shockingly, attempting to destroy an angel without consulting God first comes with consequences. There is more than one way to fall, and a thousand more ways to inconvenience an angel and a demon who just wanted to be left in peace. Characters: Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon Rating: T  

Prologue and all chapters are tagged as ‘winging it’ on my blog.

A/N: Gabriel has some questions for God. Gabriel cannot take a hint. (Updating slightly earlier than usual because I'm moving to a new flat and this means no reliable Internet.)

***

Gabriel waited for Aziraphale and his demon to be gone before he began looking for the Circle. 

Prior to leaving him alone in the bookstore for the evening - something about a new winery having opened - Aziraphale had plenty of recommendations for him, in order for him to remain safe through the night. He was not to open the doors under any circumstances; under no circumstances, in the extremely unlikely case someone got in, was he to sell any books. Or let anybody take any books. Which included him: he was Not Allowed to touch the books, either. 

The vast majority of recommendations had been about the safety of the books rather than his own, really. Obviously, nearly all of them had been entirely  useless; firstly because Beelzebub had gotten in without any need to open doors, their arrival announced by a sudden burning around Gabriel’s left wrist, and secondly because the Lord of the Flies clearly did not give a single, flying fuck about the well-being of the books. Or the entire bookstore.

“You could set this place on fire.”

“Why would I do that?”

Sitting on top of a table, the Prince of Hell shrugged. “Don’t know. Revenge? Because the traitor deserves to be punished?”

“I tried to get him punished, and look where it got me.”

“Because it would be amusing?”

Peering at the wall behind an armchair - still no Circle, but it had to be there, that was how Aziraphale kept in touch - Gabriel grunted. “It absolutely would not be amusing,” he said. He was no fan of the decor, too dark and old and dusty, nothing like the minimalism he enjoyed in Heaven, but didn’t quite hate it enough to do something that pointless.

“Aren’t you tempted?”

“No. Is this seriously your idea of tempting me into your side? Sitting there and telling me to set things on fire?”

Beelzebub’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. “It worked with Nero.”

“It did not,” Gabriel muttered, crouching down to check under a desk. Still nothing; maybe it was upstairs, or in the back. He should check there. “Our investigation concluded that the fire was entirely accidental, and that Emperor Nero was a victim of adverse PR. Hell had no hand in it.”

“Well, him blaming Christians afterwards was our doing,” Beelzebub pointed out, receiving absolutely no reply as Gabriel kept looking for the Circle. They growled. “Don’t you dare ignore me.”

Gabriel ignored them. Beelzebub pushed the pile of books next to them on the floor. The books landed with a thud, finally causing Gabriel to look back at them. He sighed.

“... Really?”

Beelzebub said nothing. They just made eye contact, unblinking, and began pushing another book towards the edge. 

“Don’t you dare--”

Thud.

“You can’t stop me, mortal.”

Gabriel gave a long, weary sigh, and went to pick up the books. “You could set the place on fire yourself, but you won’t. Maybe you are scared of them,” he muttered, and turned to put the books down someplace else so he could resume looking for the Circle.

Only to be sent tumbling forward by a sudden kick on the small of his back.

THUD.

“Ouch!”

“Angering me is not a wise idea,” Beelzebub spoke behind him. Biting back a retort - surely the Prince of Hell he could do worse that a kick in the arse, and goading them struck Gabriel as a rather Bad Idea - he picked up the books again and stood. 

“You know, the more time I spend in your company the less I am inclined to accept your--” he began, then trailed off. He had stumbled over a rug as he fell, dragging it, and in doing so he’d uncovered something drawn in chalk on the wooden boards. 

The Circle. He’d found it.

There was a long, somewhat buzzing sigh as Gabriel cast the books aside and pulled the rest of the rug off, struggling to pull it free from beneath the weight of an armchair. 

“You know this isn’t going to work, right?”

“It will. It must.”

“You are a mortal. You can light all the candles you want, chant whatever you want, dance naked around it all you want--”

“That’s really not how the ritual--”

“-- But without any powers on your end, it will remain a random circle drawn on floorboards.”

Gabriel shook his head, refusing to acknowledge what Beelzebub was saying. No, no, it had to work. Something had to happen. He had no wish to face again the ones who had mutilated him - his old friends, an insidious voice whispering in the back of his mind, far more hurtful than anything Beelzebub had said so far - but he had to know why he’d been cast out like that. 

Why had he been the only one to be punished? What was he supposed to do now? Was there a plan for him to follow? There had to be. He couldn’t even begin to think that God may have forsaken him entirely. He’d been happy to see Daniel so happy over the opportunity of getting back on his feet, but as they parted ways it made him wonder if his chance to go back to normal would ever come.

He had to know, and the only way to know was to ask God directly. Or Metatron, whoever would listen to his call. As long as someone would listen, and give him an answer.

I have failed you. I accept my punishment. Please, tell me how I can put it right.

“You’re being willfully ignorant.” The annoyance in their voice was turning into something closer to anger. “And to think the one thing I appreciated of you was practicality.”

“I need to know--”

“You’re grasping for straws, hoping you will be given a second chance. You won’t. No one gets second chances, but you want to think you’re so special, don’t you?”

Something about those words struck Gabriel, causing him to still, the seven candles he’d found in a drawer in his hands. “I…” he began, but he could think of nothing to retort. 

You want to think you’re so special.

A crime born of pride.

“God has forsaken you,” Beelzebub spoke again. Their voice was flat, somehow distant; not quite bitter, but not too far away from it either. “Just accept it. It gets easier once you accept it.”

Gabriel ground his teeth. “If God has forsaken me, then-- then they may as well tell me as much,” he snapped, and turned back to the circle, placing the candles in the correct places… or at least what he assumed to be the correct places. He had never used one of those things. 

Beelzebub watched him with renewed interest. “You think God owes you an explanation now?”

Of course, the thought alone was blasphemy. Not too long ago, Gabriel would have been horrified to realize such a thing had left his lips. Now he was… he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he was tired, lost as a compass without a North, and if there was still a plan for him, then… then he needed to know what it was. He needed a word, a sign, anything.

Why am I here? Why have I not Fallen? What do I have to do to feel Your grace again?

“I need answers,” Gabriel finally said, and began to light the candles. “You may want to hide.”

“Oh, so you won’t be seen with me? Good try, but I don’t have to do anywhere. Nothing will happen,” Beelzebub said, but Gabriel ignored them. He blew off the match, and joined his hands without getting up from his knees. 

If nothing happened, or worse yet if God spoke to condemn him, at least he would be already on the ground and be spared the indignity of collapsing. 

“This is… the former… Archangel Gabriel,” he managed to say, the word former almost getting stuck in his throat. He shut his eyes tightly swallowed painfully. “I need-- I beg-- to speak to… to a higher authority.”

Nothing happened; no noise broke the silence but the muffled sound of rain outside. When Gabriel opened his eyes, there was… nothing. Only the circle, the burning candles, and no light but that of the chandelier overhead; no otherworldly voice, no presence. He may as well be talking to the wall. He was alone.

The light of the candles blurred, his eyes filling up with tears. A taunting word from Beelzebub might have undone him right there and then, but they said nothing; no ‘I told you so’, not one sound. Gabriel shut his eyes again, letting the tears run down his cheeks. Had he turned, he would have noticed that Beelzebub was no longer there and a fly buzzed near the ceiling; but he didn’t turn, nor he heard the approaching steps. He bowed his head, and spoke again. 

“Please. If someone is listening, anyone, I need-- I--”

“What the Heaven do you think you’re doing??”

“GAH!” Gabriel’s yelp was only partly due to surprise and mostly due to the fact that something had suddenly hit him, like a violent gust of hissing wind that was so, so cold. White foam sprayed over him and then over the Circle, extinguishing the candles and hiding it from sight. “What--” Gabriel turned, trying to protest, only to get another spray of foam straight in the face. He fell back, sputtering, reaching up to wipe his eyes. When he finally managed to look up, he found himself staring at Crowley, fire extinguisher in hand. The demon… didn’t look pleased.

“You know, the reason why we didn’t tell you not to set things on fire is that we didn’t think you’d be that stupid,” he hissed. Had he been less bewildered, Gabriel may have noticed he wasn’t just angry; he looked haunted. “Let me spell this out - nothing burns in here again. Am I clear?”

“I-- you-- again…?” Gabriel sputtered, head reeling. Before he could come up with a reasonable response to a demon covering him in fire-extinguishing foam while he tried to get in contact with God - honestly, there weren’t any - Aziraphale stepped in the store, a paper bag in his hand.

“Found it! It was… behind the… passenger… seat.” His voice grew quieter with each word as his eyes took in everything - the demon with the fire extinguisher, Gabriel covered in foam on the floor where the Circle had been - and finally, slowly, he lowered the paper bag. He let out a very long, very tired sigh.

“... Maybe it’s best if I make some tea.”

***

“If you wanted to use the Circle, you only needed to ask. I can do that for you.”

Aziraphale had spoken kindly, but Gabriel seemed to shrink as though he’d just been threatened, grip tightening around his cup of tea. What Crowley had told him - “he reeks of guilt” - echoed in Aziraphale’s mind. 

Maybe he should address that, he mused; tell him what he was supposed to say - “I forgive you” - and leave it at that. Except that he knew guilt was an insidious feeling, one Gabriel was not accustomed to deal with to boot. He suspected forgiveness might be met with even more guilt… and that maybe, just maybe, it would make Aziraphale a liar. 

Despite the fact that forgiveness was supposed one of the strongest points of the angelic brand  following the Coming of Christ, maybe Aziraphale was not ready to forgive just yet. And, rather than lie, he chose to say nothing and offered his help instead. 

“I can use the Circle now. Ask on your behalf.”

Gabriel looked up from the cup, and was able to meet his gaze for a few moments before he lowered his eyes again. “That would be… much appreciated,” he murmured.

A nod. “Very well. Give me a few minutes to sort out the Circle, since someone decided to overreact.”

Sprawled on the sofa, Crowley snorted. “This entire place went up in flames once already,” he muttered. “No need to do that again.”

“Well…” Aziraphale hesitated a moment, then he reached to put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder. “I was only temporarily discorporated, though not by fire. I found my way back.”

“I’d rather you don’t have to do that again.” Crowley grumbled, but Aziraphale could feel some tenseness leaving him. He squeezed his shoulder before he went to fix the Circle. New candles were needed but, overall, it was a quick job. Soon enough, he was ready to call upstairs, except for the fact that… well…

“It might be best for you not to be seen,” Aziraphale said, turning, but it looked like Crowley had come to the same conclusion a few moments earlier: he had barely the time to glimpse the last few inches of a black-and-red snake slithering beneath the sofa, out of sight. He smiled faintly, and glanced over at Gabriel. “Come. Stand close to me.”

Still, even as he approached, the former archangel seemed hesitant. “... Is it allowed?”

“Hmm?”

“Performing this in the presence of… of a mortal.” He forced out the last word. Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. 

“I don’t recall a specific rule on the matter. Perhaps it is unconventional, but no more than it is for a mortal to try operating it,” he said, then smiled a little. “I don’t think I’ll get in trouble, if that worries you.”

Gabriel looked up, the frown fading a little, confirming to Aziraphale that it was, in fact, something that worried him. Quite extraordinary how he’d gone from trying to destroy him utterly to being concerned he might get in trouble on his behalf.

“I suppose you do get away with more than most,” Gabriel muttered, the faintest attempt at a smile curling his lips. Aziraphale chuckled. 

“Seems like I do,” he conceded. “In case they take umbrage with you being here, well… fear not. I’ll deal with everything,” he added, and turned to the Circle, joining his hands. “Now, stand back…”

It took a few moments, and some concentration, but the Circle did what it was meant to do. Within moments the store was bathed in light - Aziraphale faintly wondered if Crowley had the presence of mind of keeping the sunglasses on as a snake - and there was Metatron. 

“Er… good evening.” Aziraphale smiled, just a little nervously. Despite the fact that what had happened to Gabriel for trying to destroy him seemed to indicate that God didn’t mind what he’d done too much, he’d still-- oh dear, Gabriel. It had been Metatron to pronounce his sentence, spell out the order to cut off his wings and cast him out on God’s behalf. What if he reacted… badly at seeing him? 

He turned to glance at his right, and to his relief Gabriel wasn’t staggering back, nor he seemed about to start screaming as he had upon seeing Michael and the others. He was pale, granted, but he held his ground. 

“Principality Aziraphale,” Metatron spoke, voice reverberating across the room. “I don’t believe you are supposed to use the Circle in front of a mortal.”

Gabriel recoiled as though slapped. “I… certainly, given the… the circumstances, I am not just--”

“Had I shown myself in my full power, or had God answered, you would be ashes now,” Metatron pointed out, and Aziraphale squirmed, feeling… just a little foolish for not having thought of it. Right - there had been tales of mortals who had been destroyed or had their minds shattered by a heavenly being appearing before them, before they’d collectively learned to… kind of tone it down. Repeating 'fear not!' helps little when the mortal you're speaking to is a pile of ashes or lost their sanity. 

“Well--” he began, only to trail off when Metatron spoke again, still looking down at Gabriel. 

“Or is your pride such that you still believe yourself to be above the Design?” he asked, causing the former archangel to seemingly shrink, lowering his gaze. Aziraphale could tell now that he was trembling in every limb, but forcing himself to keep his voice as steady as he could. 

“I… I only wanted to ask--”

“You ask, after trying to claim for yourself powers that did not belong to you? Judgment that was not for you to pass?”

All right, maybe it would be best to never mention that Gabriel had actually tried to use the Circle on his own rather than asking for help. “Please, don’t be so harsh,” Aziraphale spoke up for him. He reached up to put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, entirely missing the surprised look that gained him. “He had little time to get used to his condition. He was an Archangel his entire existence, up to only a few days ago. He’s only seeking guidance.” 

A long, quiet look. “Seeking, or demanding?”

“Seeking. Mortals do that all the time,” Aziraphale added quickly. “To speak to you is to speak to God. If you would be so kind to listen…?”

A sigh, like autumn wind. “... I am listening.”

So far, so good. Aziraphale gave Gabriel what he hoped was an encouraging nod and stepped back, pushing him slightly forward in the same motion. Gabriel visibly swallowed, took a step forward… and fell on his knees. Well, all right: at least he hadn’t fainted as Aziraphale had feared for a moment. Aziraphale stepped back and watched and Gabriel bowed his head and joined his hands. Above him, Metatron’s expression remained unreadable. 

“I have failed God,” Gabriel choked out. “I have showed arrogance. I accept my punishment. I only-- please. What must I do to make it right?”

A long look. “Do you regret what you did, or do you only regret where it landed you?”

“I regret it. I do. I’m sorry, I thought-- the Great Plan-- everything we’d been working towards, I thought it was God’s will, I thought I was serving... the greater good…” Gabriel’s voice broke, and he lowered his head even more. He was no longer kneeling as much as he was slumping on the floor. “My pride was wounded. I let anger rule me. I wanted someone to pay.” His shoulders shook. “I’m sorry.”

Another silence, and a very long one. Aziraphale realized he was holding his breath - not that he needed to breathe, precisely, but it was a habit he’d grown accustomed to. He let it out slowly, and dared to speak. 

“He has my forgiveness,” he managed, not entirely sure how true it was and assuming that, even if found out, he could probably get away with lying to the Voice of God after getting away with stopping the Armageddon. Beneath the sofa, there was a slightly annoyed hiss. He elected to ignore it, hoping Metatron hadn’t heard it. “If I may ask-- what would it take for him to earn God’s?”

Metatron’s eyes flickered briefly towards him, then back on Gabriel. He seemed to lean forward, his face growing larger. “... Let him speak for himself, Principality Aziraphale. There is one more question he has yet to ask. His real question. So out with it, mortal.”

The word - mortal - again seemed to hit Gabriel like a slap. He winced, but mustered the strength to look up, to keep his voice firm. Even so, there was so much underlying terror in what he said next that Aziraphale could hardly bear to listen. “... Has God forsaken me?”

Another long sigh. “Can you imagine how many mortals asked the same before?”

“I--”

“God forsakes no one. Others may choose to forsake God, but never the Almighty - however much the serpent under that sofa may disagree.”

Ah. Aziraphale smiled a little sheepishly, thinking that maybe they should have known that slithering under the couch would not be enough to hide from Metatron. But to be fair he was the Voice of God, not their eyes, so they could assume--

As Crowley’s reptilian head poked out from beneath the sofa - trying to seem cool and actually quite sheepish, what an amazing range of emotions you can see on a serpent’s snout once you’ve gotten to know him well - Metatron turned his attention back to Gabriel.

“You are the Archangel Gabriel no longer. God asks of you what they ask of every mortal. Faith. Not in them necessarily, but faith nonetheless. Go through your mortal life, have faith, and do your best.”

Gabriel swallowed. “... How will I know I’m doing the right things?” he asked, sounding so anguished. Snakes are not supposed to be able to roll their eyes, but Crowley noticeably rolled his anyway.

“You won’t,” Metatron was saying, less scathingly than Crowley would have. “That’s what faith is all about.”

“I-- I see,” Gabriel said, still sounding rather lost. He probably needed some more time to come to grasp the entire concept of ‘free will’ and ‘ineffability’. Until very recently, he had always had a plan and, at least in theory, clear orders to follow. And when he’d tried to take a decision of his own - namely, Aziraphale’s death sentence - he’d been punished quite harshly for it. Granted, by now he had probably grasped that burning people for was frowned upon, greater good or not.

“If… if I do everything right, at the end of this mortal life--”

“Do you presume you can demand your position back?”

“No, no! I just… even as a simple soul, in the lower spheres, if I may just-- return home.” 

There was longing in his voice, unmistakable. It made something in Aziraphale’s chest ache, and Crowley did not roll his eyes for once. When Metatron spoke again his voice was firm, but less imperious.

“Don’t wonder what’s in it for you, mortal,” he said. “That way of thinking taints your every choice, and leads to Hell and Hell alone.”

The mention of Hell made Gabriel shiver noticeably. He bowed his head, and grasped his left wrist; a gesture Aziraphale hardly noticed. “I don’t want to go to Hell.”

“Hardly any mortal does. It depends entirely on you. Will that be all?”

Gabriel dropped his shoulders and nodded, the very picture of defeat. Metatron glanced back at Crowley and Aziraphale. “Do you have any more questions?”

Crowley hissed.

“That was no question, and quite rude to boot. I’ll elect to ignore it. Principality Aziraphale?”

Why did God take my side?, Aziraphale almost asked, but decided against it. Best not to ask in front of Gabriel; he didn’t need another fistful of salt rubbed into the wound. So he just shook his head, and Metatron nodded. 

“Very well. Never again use the Circle in the presence of a mortal, specifically this mortal, or a demon. Any demon.”

“Ah, I-- yes. Of course,” he nodded quickly, and breathed out a long sigh as the light faded and Metatron with it. While Crowley regained his human form - what had he told Metatron? Did he really want an answer to that? - Aziraphale quietly stepped up to Gabriel. He was still on his knees, head hanging low. He held a hand out to him, to help him up, and tried to smile. 

“See, God didn’t forsake you after all. That’s… pretty good news.

Gabriel glanced at his hand, and then up at him. His gaze was empty. “Not yet,” he murmured. “But they will. I don’t know what to do with this mortal life. I don’t know what God wants of me.”

“Most people don’t,”Aziraphale admitted, then his smile grew a little surer. With the mind’s eye he saw Gabriel coming to him for a mortal’s sake, and then taking said mortal to buy anything he may need for the upcoming job interview they already knew he would pass. Had he received instructions to do any of it? No. Was there something in it for him? No. Had he done it anyway? Yes. 

“You know,” he said, offering his hand again. “I think you have figured out more than you think.”

Gabriel blinked, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“Ah, maybe it’s best if I don’t tell you. Sounds like you’re meant to be improvising.” After all, it would do no good at all if Gabriel began doing good deeds only for his own advantage, thus making them invalid. “But trust me, you’re not doing too bad at all.”

Gabriel stared, taken aback, then he took his hand and let him help him up. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand a lot of things,” Crowley muttered. “You may want to be more specific.”

“Not now,” Aziraphale warned, and Crowley fell silent. “Now, forget all about the circle. You ought to have some dinner.”

“But I had lunch already today.”

Well, fine. Improvising was good and all, but perhaps he could use with a few more directions before he let him go his way, crossed his fingers, and hoped for the best.

***

Beelzebub, Prince of Hell and Lord of the Flies, was angry at God.

That was nothing new: they had been harbouring never-ending grudge and fury at God for the best part of several eons, after all, ever since the Fall… and maybe some time before that, really, which was what had led to the Fall in the first place. Anger at God - and their Son, the Holy Spirit, the Angels and whatnot -  was sort of a constant of existence; not being on friendly terms with the Almighty was a rather important requirement for the position of Prince of Hell. 

However, that anger was usually just background noise; always there, but not quite consuming their thoughts as it used to, causing gnashing of teeth and furious buzzing and no small amount of underlings burned to a crisp on a whim. Now it was back to the forefront of their mind, as they buzzed right beneath the ceiling of the book store where Gabriel had found refuge, trying to behave like any normal fly and thus not draw attention to themselves.

God forsakes no one, Metatron had said. 

As if. God was a complete lunatic who came up with rules upon rules to obey without any explanation as to why, and rebelling was the most obvious thing to do against someone who believed they had the right to order them around for… what? Creating them? None of them had asked to be created but there they were, glorified slaves to the whims of a Creator who would barely talk to them direction and stomped out any dissent.

Precious, precious humans could have their free will with a side dish of forgiveness, but no such luxury was afforded to the Fallen. Not that Beelzebub would take it - they regretted nothing and would remain in Hell until the end of times before they even contemplated returning to Heaven on God’s rotten terms - but it was the principle that irked them. Why should humanity get second chances? Why should Gabriel? Why should he be offered hope?

Others may choose to forsake God, but never the Almighty.

Fine, Beelzebub thought, it was just fine with them. All they had to do was to get Gabriel to take that step and renounce God. It had been their plan from the beginning, after all. They only needed to keep at it, because what hope Gabriel had been given was faint, frail, as easy to snuff out as a candle. And maybe God had only give it to him to crush it later, anyway. 

Beelzebub made one more round across the room, observing the situation. The traitor Crowley and his unburnt angel were sitting by the window in the light of a small lamp; Crowley was sprawled on the chair listening to something through headphones, tapping his foot, while the angel was reading, pausing occasionally to take a sip of some hot beverage. They looked disgustingly domestic, but that was fine with Beelzebub as long as they didn’t spot them. 

They already counted themselves lucky that Metatron had managed to entirely miss their presence, but then again the demon Crowley had never been that good at going unnoticed.

Beelzebub flew to the far side of the room, which was only dimly lit. Gabriel was sleeping, the way mortals do, curled up on the sofa with a blanket over him. 

Beelzebub landed on the pillow with a faint buzz that was not a simple buzz at all: it kept going, low but continuous and meant for Gabriel’s ears only, seeping into his mind and dreams.

“He lied, that’s all they do. Hypocrisy in every word. God has forsaken you. They will forget you. Maybe they already did. They have all forgotten you. Forget them, too. It is best. Just accept it.”

Soon enough, Beelzebub wasn’t entirely sure who they were talking to - Gabriel, or themselves? - but it did not matter. Evil as their intentions may be, they were speaking the truth. 

It gets easier once you accept it.

***

“Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.” -- Corinthians 4:9

***

[Back]

[Next]

#good omens #ineffable bureaucracy #ineffable husbands #archangel gabriel #beelzebub #crowley #aziraphale #winging it

[emmvline-blog]

˙ ˖ ✧ jennie kim, twenty-three, cisfemale, she + her // was that EMMALINE BYUN stepping aboard the GUCCI jet? oh now it’s a party! we all know they can be pretty INSOUCIANT, but also pretty OPEN-MINDED on a good day, just like an ARIES. they’ll be blasting STORMY WEATHER BY TINASHE for most of the plane ride, i can already tell. i think they added IBIZA, SPAIN to the list of places to visit this year. let’s pop the champagne and get going!

trigger/content warnings: divorce, child neglect

hi babes! i’ve been so excited for this group to open so i could bring my absolute awful trash princess to life.  she’s a total sasshole & is basically the product of money and a ton of trauma. a good fourteen years of her life were spent in the middle of a bitter divorce battle between her parents. her father was an exec for a record label, and her mom was a former model who seemed to know where every single skeleton in her ex-husband’s closet was located. that fact alone kept hefty alimony payments sent her way, and a blood feud between them that seemed never ending.

half the time, emmaline felt more like a pawn in their games rather than their actual daughter. any time spent with either of her parents would always wind up the same way: they’d grill her for information about the other, and create some sort of horrific narrative of them that emmaline was far too young to hear. fortunately, she spent more time with nannies and other employees of her parents’ than them, and whenever she’d question it, they’d just shower her in opulence any child would wish upon stars for. she knew nothing but being rewarded for venom and toxicity for much of her life, and the bulk of her behavior began to reflect the things she witnessed.

she constantly acted out in school; taking things from other children because she felt she was entitled to them, trying to embarrass any teacher who gave her a bad grade, her demeanor only growing colder as she aged. her parents didn’t do much to correct it, they’d only give her more presents to keep her quiet. as unfazed as she appeared to be, the fact that her parents didn’t seem to care about being around her or getting to know her was deeply hurtful. she figured if she had to feel that way, why not spread the misery around? of course it wasn’t the right thing to do, but the very people who were supposed to set an example did nothing but tear each other down. and she was nothing if not her parents daughter.

here are some skuhtistics

name: emmaline hana byun age: twenty - three gender/pronouns: cisfemale & she/her occupation: LOL like this bitch works sexual orientation: bisexual romantic orientation: biromantic social class: upper height: 5 ft 2 in weight: 116 lbs hair color: dark brown eye color: brown aesthetics: shimmering lipsticks, worn out credit cards, butterfly doors, corinthian column bed frames, black marble, gem encrusted high heels, lace bustiers, getting drunk in high end boutiques, backstabbing, twin holidays. hogwarts house: slytherin alignment: neutral evil mb: isfj favorite food: duck confit favorite cocktail: flaming volcano (will 100% try to house it by herself) favorite movie: st. elmo’s fire

i would really love any of the following connections for her!!

best frenemies - heavily inspired by this gifset. these two are each other’s closest friends and most bitter enemies. emmaline is extremely competitive and has a major inferiority complex so while she’ll smile in this person’s face and gossip with them about other people and do all the things annoyingly self-centered best friends do, she’ll also trash them behind their back, sabotage them at every turn and get extremely jealous anytime they get something she doesn’t, and vice versa honestly. i just want a super toxic dynamic where they both lowkey hate each other, but keep each other close regardless. whatchamacallit - inspired by this post, this post. romance has always just been a game to emmaline. her sexual partners are nothing more than toys for her to pass her time with. she is a legit fuckgrrl. this (and most of her other issues) stems from trauma she suffered as a child due to her parents’ highly tumultuous divorce that took up her formative years and beyond. she was used as a pawn in their battles with each other for over a decade, and it dealt a tremendous blow to her comfort with herself. she deflects this with an inflated ego and a lot of big talk, but i would absolutely love for there to be someone around her who renders those fort knox defenses completely inoperable. for her to have finally met her match, after years of playing cat and mouse with people’s feelings. to actually, maybe, possibly care for someone; another actual human?? and for it to make her so angry inside that she can barely stand to be around them, or she’ll get too flustered and start cussing someone. *chef’s kiss*

get in loser, we’re going shopping 1/?? - based on this post. just a big ol’ squad? THE BIGGEST SQUAD OF FRIENDS/ACQUAINTANCES PLS? emmaline is insecure, she literally always has to have people around her. shopping trips, yacht excursions, tropical vacays, ski weekends. what fun is any of it if you can’t invite ten of your dearest friends, half of whom’s name you can’t remember?? funding or planning the party has always been one of emmaline’s most tried and true ways of getting people to stick around, so a lot of superficial “friendships” based on that would be cool! - @guerrcros​

thought you were bae, turns out you were just fam - a relationship that actually ended amicably for emmaline? the fuck you say. no, it really did happen, and they’re still pretty cool with each other to this day. this person knows all of her dirty laundry anyway, so it’s not like she can just dip, right?? nah but she can actually let down her defenses a bit with this person since they (for some god forsaken reason bless their heart) bothered to try and get to know her despite her treatment of them in their relationship. they learned that emmaline wasn’t all bad, she just hated feeling inferior or unimportant, and it often presented as rude comments and other venomous behavior. they also came to find that a lot of her treatment of others was a direct result of the things she’d seen her parents do to each other and say to and about one another. these things had almost been normalized in her brain, and this person actually takes the time to try and work with her on it. they have hope she’ll wake the fuck up one day and stop emulating the bad things she once saw.

and honestly maybe exes that ended badly, people she’s connected to through her parents, flirtationships, friends who constantly roast each other, neighbors who hate each other are some other things i’d love to ddu-du ddu-du. i’m honestly down for whatever so pls do lmk if you’d like to plot with this gucci garbage pail <3

#luxe:intro

[shealynn88]

Love is Not a Victory March

Rating: T (language) Words: ~800 Warnings: angst Summary:  This love blasts in on razor wings, hauls him out of Hell, scars him out of the gate, tells him he’s nothing. Tells him he’s everything. Written for: @drawlight who requested song prompt “Hallelujah” - this was so much fun, thank you!

on ao3

The Bible lies about a lot of things.  But Corinthians, Dean thinks, is the worst.  The most insidious. Because love, he knows, is not patient.  Or kind. Or slow to anger.  It is a force of fucking nature, and it burns everything to the ground.

When Dean loves it’s an inferno.  It destroys everything. His family.  Himself. Anyone unlucky enough to get in the blast radius.  And so he swears off it early. Family, of course. Can’t help it, can he?  But anyone else? Hell no. He’ll take care of them.  He has to do that anyway.  Why the Hell else would he be here?  

But love?   Fuck, no.  That’s for people who aren’t killers, through and through.  That’s for people who aren’t themselves bombs and blades and gunpowder waiting to go off.

He doesn’t even see it coming - he’s blindsided completely, because he thought it would be soft, like that poem about fog and cat feet. That he would see the threat before it took root.

Fuck, no.  This love blasts in on razor wings, hauls him out of Hell, scars him out of the gate, tells him he’s nothing.  Tells him he’s everything.

Brings a holy blast radius of its own.

Dean hates until he suddenly doesn’t, until that fire burns a new color, until it’s made of lips and hands and desperate groans in dark corners.

Pleases, and sweethearts, and gasps and moans, and his name in a language that’s been dead for the entire history of the human race.  His name on lips made of flesh and Grace and all the things he’s never deserved.

The first time they kiss it’s knives and fire, and it’s supposed to be goodbye because Cas is going to die at the hands of another impossible being.  They grasp each other like it’s the end of the world, because it is. Like every other damn day. They burn together like those monks, immolating themselves in protest.  Cas is a force of Heaven in his arms, burning, biting, hard and soft and wanting and needing and when has Dean ever been able to say no to someone who needed him?

Never, that’s when.

Love is supposed to be never having to say your sorry, but they have to apologize forever, for the scars they inflict and the pain they cause, and it’s as close to hate as you can get without quite tipping over the edge.  They gut each other, knives and words interchangeable. Dean uses teeth to hurt, against skin, against syllables, making marks he wants to be permanent. Paint this motherfucker in blood, because whatever side they’re on, they belong to each other, and it’s the hardest thing Dean’s ever done.

“You’ve made me weak,” Castiel agonizes.  “I’m small, now.”

“You don’t have to be small for me,” Dean promises against his lips, fingers too tight.  “I don’t need you to be less.”

He never is again.  Never less than an atom bomb on the verge of exploding.

If he could go back, he thinks he’d never choose this kind of torture.  It’s Hell all over again, carved to the bone, exposed and moaning, possessed in ways Heaven never planned.  They own each other, down to the soul, the grace, scarred on an atomic level with that poison love. It torments them both.  They’re as likely to carve one another up as they are to fall into each other’s arms, pressing bodies together in desperation, until the chasm between them opens up again, throws them back into the tsunami of great beings’ whims.

They are puppets.

“Cas,” Dean breathes.

“Dean, please,” Cas asks, eyes closed, long fingers grasping.

He’s forgotten his body, lost the memory of skin on skin and shared breath, the sharp knife of fingernails and teeth and missed you, needed you.

Dean reminds him.

A momentary respite - hands, not swords.  Fingers against shoulder blades, where wings might be if they were somewhere else.  Mouths breathing each other’s air. Desperate and wanting. It’s never enough but they take what they can get. It’s cold.  Broken. It’s always been broken, and it’s not what either of them would take, left to their own devices. They might take their time, learn each other slowly, luxuriate in one another.

But love doesn’t wait for the right moment.  Love demands.  Love tears and burns and destroys.

Love rebuilds and scars over wounds that no one could recover from.  No one, but for love.

They leave each other shattered and they keep coming back, because love demands a price.  It takes its pound of flesh and comes back for more.

Because love is every single circle of Hell.

Love is everything.

Tagging: @all-or-nothing-baby

#destiel #destiel fanfic #sheawritesfic #supernatural fanfiction

[dykes]

|| 2 Corinthians 5:10 ||

"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." - 2 Corinthians 5:10

The story of how Deputy Addison Gully loses herself in the madness of it all.

fandom: far cry 5 / far cry new dawn

warnings: self-harm, implied brainwashing, mental disintegration, post-traumatic stress disorder, scarification, angst.

pairings: none but female deputy/faith seed is heavily implied/referenced.

inspired by something that @athurmorgan​ was speaking about irt their deputy.

also available on ao3

Gods.

She’d tried so hard she—

If she takes just too deep of a breath she can still smell them; gutted and burning alive out there. Whitehorse, Pratt, Hudson. Gods even Dutch ; this was his bunker.

She’d let them die. She’d killed them all. She did this. She did—

“Do not cry,” the singsong voice comes nearer and nearer, “You truly did the very best you could. If you had but only listened.”

“Stay away from me,” she manages to get out around the tightness in her throat, “You think you’re absolved of tragedy? You let your Brothers die for this. You let Rachel—”

“You forget who it was that pulled those triggers, snake. Rest now. Rest. Awake when you are feeling anew.”

She doesn’t miss the prick of pain in her arm or the buzz in her head.

“Fuck you,” she slurs before succumbing to sleep.

When he does finally release her from the chains on the bed she draws a line down the center of every hall and every room and throws the chalk down beside his scribbling hand.

“Stay on your fucking side and we won’t have any issues.”

“And if I do not?” he asks with vague amusement; like a parent to a child.

She hates him. She hates him. But they already have one dead body and she shudders about the possibilities for getting rid of that.

She won’t kill him. Not yet. She can’t—

“Just. Stay away from me,” she grinds out, stalking away from the communications room to one of the furthest in the bunker, pinning the door closed.

Her hands curled around her head do little to stop the ever-present hum of a hymn she can’t quite remember the words of.

Rachel— Faith— Whoever she was in the end of things; still shows up.

In dreams. In flashes of light. In the mist of tear burdened eyes.

The now ghost sits curled up beside Addison and touches gently at their hand and at their face and begs in fragmented words for forgiveness.

“I could have saved you,” she says, turning to look and soak the image of her former— something in, “I would have torn down the entire valley to save you, you know.”

“I chose my path, Adi,” the image says in soothing tones, “I chose my path.”

She huffs a laugh and slams, perhaps a little too hard, her head back against the wall, “You had your path chosen for you. You weren’t free from the moment he had his psychopathic fingers wrapped around your throat.”

“Do you wish they had been yours instead?”

Addison startles. This ghost. This figure. It’s her own imagination after all. A figment to deal with loss not yet recovered from.

“No,” she says eventually, “Not around your throat.”

“Do you see angels, Deputy?” her bunker mate asks, “Is that who you talk to late in the night? Ghosts and angels and images of the past?”

They don’t talk often. She makes very sure of that. If he enters a room she occupies she moves. And she’s far more in shape than him and can keep the game up for longer.

She’s sure it comes as a surprise when she willingly enters a room with him, clutching two barely heated meals in her hands.

It’s their first real meal together since they entered the damned prison a month before.

“I see— I don’t know what I see,” she all but whispers, scooping up the beans and shoveling them in her mouth. They’re bitter and bland and have awful texture and here she was— stuck with them forever.

He waits in silence. He waits and lets her stew and think and watches her like a hawk. He’s the predator still, even now. Or perhaps. Better put. She is more prey than ever.

“It’s all blurring together,” she admits long after their food is finished and their plates cold.

He’s gone back to reading but looks up with such languid calm movements that it would unnerving if she weren’t so— used to it.

“I see Rachel— Faith. I see Hudson and Whitehorse and Pratt. I see your Brothers. I see me. I see you.”

“It is the burden of Death to see all that she touches.”

“Do you expect me to kill you, Joseph?”

“I expect you to want to try.”

It’s not a real answer. Not really.

It still leaves a sour taste in her mouth as she throws her stained plate in his direction, “Do the washing,” she barks, leaving in a hurry with her proverbial tail tucked between her legs.

A month bleeds into two then three then four.

Faith appears more often than not. Faith now; not Rachel. Not like before, when she could pretend it was still her friend haunting her.

The others she loses in the mess of it all; first their voices go and then their eyes and then their faces. And soon all she sees is specters and horrors that keep her up at night with barely a name left on her lips.

“I don’t remember what they look like anymore,” she quietly admits, curled into the furthest corner of their shared room; lines drawn long forgotten, “I can’t— It’s like they don’t want me to see them anymore. Why would they do that?”

He doesn’t look at her with concern or empathy. He looks instead with the same curious eyes that he always had done; as if she were nothing more than an interesting play thing to him. A toy.

“It’s this place,” she continues, rocking just slightly, “It’s this fucking place. It’s the smell and the taste and the texture of the air. It’s the shadows that move. I hate this place. I hate it.”

“We will leave soon, child,” the calming voice comes, suddenly in front of her.

She doesn't know when he moved. Did he move? Did she? She rocks again. Back and forth. Eyes fluttering shut.

“Soon, child. Soon.”

There were three mirrors in the bunker when they entered.

There are none now. Just shards. Bloodied and broken. Smashed and stepped on and cut into the soles of hands and feet and chest and stomach.

Wrath. Pride. Wrath. Pride.

Carved and crossed out over and over again.

“You carve such ugly sins into yourself,” Not-Rachel speaks from her side, steadying her hand, stopping the sixth or seventh or eighth carving she’s not sure, “Such ugly sins.”

“He was right, you know?” she replies, letting the shard of glass tumble to the floor, shattering on impact, “He was right.”

“Now you see. Now you see what I saw. Go to him. Go to him and he will show you the world you denied yourself for so very long. He will show you a world you never dreamt possible.”

She hums and nods and steps in the broken shards of glass, feeling each pierce through the soles of her worn shoes and into her skin.

Faith, at least, stays and holds her bloodied hand.

God tells you, if I listen to you, it’s good and right, and I can help, and I can save people, and make it right, and everything will be okay.

If I judge as your judge, the judgement is right and just, the judgement is God’s Word.

I see now.

I am so sorry.

If only I had Faith.

Give me a mask, I am afraid, she scribbles, passing off the note to the man beside her.

He reads it once before putting it aside and reaching out, holding his face in her hands and twisting it this way and that.

“Do you believe if they cannot see you, that they will stop their haunting?” he asks, keeping her face held, “You removed your tongue to stop the talking and yet they still come; now you will remove your face?”

She taps the paper again. Insistent. A begging plea.

“Bring me wood and I will fashion you a mask and when it is done, we will emerge as Father and Judge and you will serve under God as I have and through me you will do his bidding.”

She reaches and scribbles out another note.

Thank you, Joseph.

Thank you, Father.

The mask is somehow between heavy and light; weighing like stone in her hands but a feather against her face.

It’s exterior is rough and pitted and if she runs her fingers too fast along the surface her skin catches on barbs and splinters and is left bleeding and raw.

He helps her put it on for the first time; knelt in front of him with her hands pressed up against his hips, eyes begging.

He anoints it too, dipping his own fingers in water and pressing them against the forehead.

She cries. Muted and ugly for her lack of tongue.

She cries and cries and cries; even after he has said his words and disappeared some rooms away.

Faith curling around her does little to quell the ache in her chest.

At first the sun is almost blinding; painful and all encompassing and far too hot.

She is grateful at least, that her mask blocks most of it out.

The Father takes it in stride; chest bare and shoulders flexing.

His people; her people; have awaited their return like the disciples of God and Jesus knelt around the Tomb of Jerusalem.

It’s been two years they say in wondrous adoration, falling to their knees in front of him; in front of her.

“The Prophet has risen,” they sing out in chorus, “The Father has returned to us.”

She turns and watches the image of Faith skip about at her side; white sundress fluttering about in the wind and innocent smile playing about her features.

‘Come on!’ the playful voice cries out, a hand reaching out towards her, ‘ Come play.’

She doesn’t miss the Father watching her watching the ghost. And when she turns to look at him, sees the almost imperceptible nod he gives for her to leave and return as she wishes.

After all, they’re Family now.

As much as he and Faith were. As much as she and Faith are.

So she follows, she reaches out and takes the hand of her former friend and lover; the one she had killed herself and let drown in the mighty river. She reaches out and takes the hand and allows herself the quaint feeling of peace in the wide open fields.

Thank you, Father.

#far cry #far cry 5 #far cry new dawn #fcnd spoilers #faith seed x deputy #kind of lmaom #asjdanhdjgjgk

[foofygoldfish]

the wedding; faith seed x alice riley

so uh - this is awkward as hell. but oh well. a sequel to @elusetta‘s wedding fic, this time featuring Adelaide and Mary May being upset that they dared to get married without either of them, as well as the presence of Claire and Carolina Denno, their foster daughters.

warning, this is cheesy as fuck and i have no idea what i’m doing for any of it lmao

there’s also a key at the end of the wedding party/involved people, because i spent way too much time figuring that out

The war had been over for five long years. Hope County was finally getting back on its feet, with buildings being repaired, families returning, and more small victories every day. Casey had permanently taken control of the Testy Festy, the Rye’s had monthly barbecues, and the Fall’s End churches were busier than ever, with regular services, as well as funerals (many, at first, then slowly petering out to a normal rate) and weddings.

Weddings, like the one that was happening today: former Deputy, now mayor, Alice Riley, and former Herald of the Project at Eden’s Gate, Faith Seed.

Whispers had been going around the valley for months. The couple had “officially” married a few years back, after Faith’s house-arrest had loosened to include more areas of the county, but - at Mary May and Adelaide’s insistence - they were finally having a big ceremony.

Nobody was sure if it was because they wanted to, if it was simply happening because of Adelaide’s insistence, or if it was for the benefit of their foster daughters, who had moved in with them nearly three years before.

It didn’t matter, of course - while the ceremony was for friends and family, everyone knew that at least half the county would show up to the reception at Primrose Ranch. Plenty of people didn’t approve of the match, even now. But, hey, free food? Even now, so long after the war, people had a hard time turning that down.

The whole thing started because of Adelaide: Mary May was upset she hadn’t been included in the original ceremony, but understood why it was so private. Adelaide?

Well, she insisted on planning a bigger ceremony. She became even more insistent after Claire and Carolina had settled into the family, saying that at the very least, they needed a picture to put on the mantle or something. A full ceremony, that’d be preferable, but… At least a picture.

Alice made the mistake of saying yes - to the picture.

It… Obviously didn’t stay as just a picture.

Planning was a flurry: trips to Missoula, then a weekend trip into Seattle (one for Alice, one for Faith), because no, their original dresses absolutely wouldn’t do, and they had to have a bridal shower (Alice won the no-presents argument, since the two had been living together for seven years now and didn’t really need anything), multiple consultations on flowers and decorations… Grace was bribed into making the wedding cake (by Alice, who thought Adelaide’s original ideas were too grand), and Casey and a friend of Elizabeth’s were handling the catering.

The bachelorette parties?

Both Alice and Faith would rather forget those.

But finally, the day was here, and the town was abuzz: the Fall’s End Church was fully-decorated, as was Primrose Ranch.

The couple both said they’d rather get ready together, at home, but both Adelaide and Mary May had insisted that they get ready separately.

Mary May’s old apartment above the bar was cleaner than the old cabin was, which was nice, but the fawning? Not as nice. Faith had gotten the house when they drew straws - she was smug, teasing Alice that she’d get pictures with the cats, but Alice wouldn’t.

“Alice, hold still.” Mary May crossed her arms, frowning when Alice stuck her tongue out at her. “Do you want to do this or not?”

“I did! Three years ago!”

“That doesn’t count!”

“Then what paperwork did I file?” Alice tugged her head away from Mary May’s grasp, sighing. “My hair is fine, Mary. It’s fine.”

Again with the frowning. “At least let me --”

“Mary May.”

“The fucking flower crown, Alice. Just let me put that on, then I’ll set you free.”

“No you won’t.” She sighed, settling back into the chair. As her friend carefully nestled the delicate flower crown in her hair - soft pink, even lighter than her hair, with white roses nestled within - she slid her hands down the chiffon of her skirt.

Even if this was more of a vow renewal than a wedding, it was still surreal. The dress was almost identical to the one she wore at her first wedding, a soft white (Adelaide’s insistence) chiffon number inspired by Grace Kelly’s blue dress in To Catch a Thief, minus the scarf. Adelaide had insisted on it - she would have prefered to wear her old dress, same with Faith, but… Sometimes you just don’t argue with Addie.

----

Holy shit.

Holy. Shit.

Alice hadn’t seen her uncle or brother in years - not since before she moved back to Hope County.

She’d sent them invitations, yeah, but… She didn’t think they could come, she thought their schedules were super busy -

But here they were.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, her uncle’s arm stretched out to help her to the door, tears barely hidden from his eyes. (Her brother? He was a mess. Caleb always was when emotions were involved and he wasn’t working)

“Hey, sweetie.”

Smiling, Alice barreled into her uncle, hugging him close. “I missed you, Uncle T. And you too, Caleb, fuck, I missed you guys.”

“Oh, uh -” Alice looked up the stairs, smiling as she saw Claire walking down. “Uncle T, Caleb, this is Claire, Grace and Joey are outside, uh, I think you’ve already met Hurk over there, and Mary May, Caleb, you remember  -”

Thomas shook Hurk’s hand, smiling, before crouching down in front of Claire. “So you’re the famous Claire?”

The little girl nodded, “Mmhm.”

“So, I hate to break this up - “ Grace poked her head inside the bar, nodding in the direction of the church. “But Joey said everyone’s in the church.”

Thomas gave Alice a reassuring smile, offering her arm to her. She smiled back, laughing when Caleb offered Claire a piggyback ride - the girl shook her head, but happily took her uncle’s hand.

The walk to the church was excruciating, and Alice barely remembered the walk up the aisle - it felt like a dream.

Mary May stood beside her, whispering words of encouragement, reminding her to take deep breaths.

It wasn’t the first wedding. They were already official.

But God.

Mary May’s going to tease her later for her immediately tearing up when Faith entered the church - but honestly? She doesn’t care.

Fuck.

This is happening.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her uncle smiling, her brother giving her a thumbs up, and Sharky -- fucking Sharky, being a dork, grinning like an idiot.

Faith grabbed Alice’s hand the instant she arrived at the altar, smiling at her wife. The pair turned to Pastor Jerome, who greeted the congregation.

“We are gathered here today to officially celebrate the union of Faith and Alice Riley. While I was there that day three years ago, someone, “ He looked at Mary May, who raised her hand, and laughed, “Convinced them to have a ceremony that included their friends and family. But enough of me - Thomas Riley, will be reading an excerpt from a favorite book of his.”

Oh, this is gonna be interesting.

Thomas took a deep sigh as he unfolded the paper with his reading, shooting the couple another reassuring smile. “Well, for those of you who don’t know, I’m Alice’s Uncle Thomas. Or T. Whatever. Her and Caleb moved in with me a good 15 years ago, and… Well, we may not have expected either to be where they are in life, but I know my wife and my brother would have been proud of them, and that they would have wanted to be here today. Uhm, I’m going to read y’all an excerpt from one of my - and my brother’s - favorite authors, Madeleine L’Engle.

“‘But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.’ I may not know the full details of what happened here in Hope County a few years back, but I do know that whatever happened lead my niece to Faith and even though it was risky, they stayed together. So. Congrats, you two. I love you.”

Fuckin’ hell. Alice didn’t think she’d be this much of a mess today.  “Love you too, Uncle T.”

“Now, Alice told me not to get too crazy with a bible passage - so a classic, I Corinthians 13:4-7. ‘Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.’” Pastor Jerome closed his bible, motioning to Faith. “Faith?”

“There’s no way I was going to remember this, so…” The former siren took a deep breath, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket. “There was no way I could have known how much you would mean to me, after seeing you the first time in Joseph’s church, no way that I could have thought we would get married that day two years ago.” Another deep breath - Alice noticed Faith’s hands shaking, and she reached over, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “I know not everyone likes me, and I know some people never will forget what happened. But… I’m so glad we’re together. And I’m so glad that we have everyone here - Claire, Caroline, your family, all of our friends - to witness this, and to hear me promise that in sickness and in health, richer, poorer, all of that - that I love you, I love our little family, and I always will.”

“Alice, I believe you said you had special vows?”

“Oh, Faith, you’re going to kill me. I know we said we wouldn’t get too crazy,” Alice laughed, and she heard a few snickers from the crowd. “So… Caleb and Mary May are probably the only ones who remember how much I loved this song when it came out - okay, well, maybe Staci too, but uh, I digress… So. This is a quote from one of my favorite songs, and I… It fits us. And how I feel about you. It’s not really a vow, but, Uh. ‘Your arms are my castle, your heart is my sky, you wipe away tears that I cry, the good and the bad times, we’ve been through them all, you make me rise when I fall.’”

It was cheesy as fuck, but… Faith’s smile? And the happy tears she could just see in the corner of her eyes - worth it.

“And now, the rings.” Jerome waved Sharky forward, and the man happily handed Alice and Faith their wedding rings. They were the same from before - each had handed over their original rings that morning, both happy that they had talked Adelaide into not buying them new ones. “I believe you two know what to say?”

“With this ring, I thee wed.” Faith slipped the ring onto Alice’s finger, smiling at her.

“With this ring, I thee wed. In front of everyone, this time.” Faith snorted as Alice spoke, receiving an eye roll in response.

“Well, I can’t really say that I now pronounce you wife and wife, but -” Jerome laughed. “By the power vested in me by God and the state of Montana, I happily, finally introduce Alice and Faith Riley.”

They skipped a kiss (Alice faintly heard Hurk yelling “come on,” but she ignored him), instead touching foreheads.

“I love you.”

Faith sighed. “I love you, too.”

The pair ducked into their house as guests filed out of the church, piling into cars to head to the reception at Elizabeth’s ranch.

Later, after a flurry of pictures in Fall’s End and on the ranch, they took a deep breath outside the tent the reception was in.

“You ready?”

“No.” Alice looked up at Faith, then sighed. “Ready as I can be.”

Faith laughed, kissing the top of Alice’s head, and lead her wife to the head table. There were cheers and whistles (Alice shot a glance at Sharky and Hurk, who laughed and settled back into their chairs) as they sat down.

It wasn’t as crazy as she had expected, honestly - Adelaide had talked big, but hadn’t gone as all-out as she had threatened. Twinkle lights hung between the tents supports, wrapped in fake vines, with tea lights and fresh bouquets of flowers on each table. It seemed like half the county was there, but with Hope County, that… That was to be expected. Even with the fact that it was one of the old enemies of the county being married - it was still the biggest party the county had seen since the day Joseph was arrested.

Boomer laying at her feet, wearing a little “dog of honor” bandana, chewing on a bone - Alice could tell that his presence was helping Faith, who still wasn’t used to being around so many people that used to hate her.

After a round of appetizers, and an awkward toast from her brother (no baby stories, thank God.), Wheaty called for them to come out for their first dance.

As the first notes of “Crazy He Calls Me” played, Faith rested her cheek against Alice’s. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I love you.”

Alice smiled, quickly kissing Faith. “I know.”

-

As the song ended, Wheaty announced that the floor was open to dancing, and Faith and Alice slipped outside with Claire and Carolina.

“So. We have a question for you two.” Alice wrapped her arm around Claire, Faith doing the same with Carolina. “You guys have been with us for a while now, and... “

“Well, what do you two think about becoming Rileys?” Faith smiled

Carolina looked between Faith and Alice, confused. “You mean….?”

“Welllll, we have the paperwork all finished, we just have to turn it in,” Alice said, looking up at Faith.

Claire squealed. “So you’re gonna be our moms?”

“If you want?” She looked at Carolina, then to Claire. “Uh, if you --”

Faith laughed as both Claire and Carolina hugged Alice, before being pulled in by Alice. “We love you two.”

-------

Eyyyy it was going to be super awkward after that so I’m ending it there!

I also spent way too much time figuring this out, so… Here’s the bridal parties/etc:

Alice’s Side

Maid of Honor: Mary May Bridesmaids: Hurk, Hudson, Grace, Claire Family: Uncle, brother, Sheriff Dad, Eli Walk down the aisle: Her uncle

Faith’s Side

Maid of Honor: Jane Bridesmaids: Elizabeth, Kim, Carolina Family: Sharky Walks her down the aisle: Nick? (because of Kim)

Gen

Officiant: Pastor Jerome Flower Girl: Baby Rye Ring Bearer: Sharky DJ: Wheaty Caterer: Grace/Casey Planner: Mary May Adelaide helps fund Jess avoids all the bridal stuff, but attends the wedding

#far cry 5 #faith seed #deputy alice riley #mariah writes stuff #THIS IS SO AWKWARD AD;SLKJF #ok for real if you notice anything weird please let me know #i've had monster headaches the last few days #so haven't been able to edit this with a clear mind

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine one-shot - “1 Corinthians 13:7″ (Rated NC17)

Did you miss me, Mr. Anderson-Hummel? (2361 words)

Vague summary is vague. I can’t really write a summary for this one. When you read it, you’ll see why. This is a re-write. Also, despite the title, this isn't about religion. But you should look it up to see what it says. Did you need to cry today? Read this ;( Warning for heavy angst, past character death, allusion to suicide, prescription drug use, drinking, depression, sexual content, and a bittersweet-ish happy ending depending upon your interpretation.  

Read on AO3.

A bottle of champagne. The sound of the ocean. Blaine running kisses down the column of Kurt’s neck while they watch the sun set from the balcony of their hotel room, his fingers working through the buttons of Kurt’s shirt beneath the jacket of his tuxedo.

“Blaine,” Kurt whines, tipsy and warm and so incredibly happy he could melt into the floor. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to get you undressed, love,” Blaine grunts, pinning Kurt to the scrolled iron bannister with his hips to keep his woozy husband (of five hours so far) upright, “but you’re not helping. Please put the camera down.”

“No.” Kurt butts Blaine back and turns clumsily around. “I wan’ to catch every second of this wonderful day.” He throws his arms wide and leans back over the railing, nearly teetering over in the process, but Blaine catches him just in time and holds him steady. “I’ve never been to Italy. I’ve never drunk $1,000 a bottle champagne.” Kurt lowers the swaying camera and gazes into his husband’s eyes. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been this much in love.”

“Me neither.” Blaine ducks his eyes and blushes furiously, one-handedly fumbling with Kurt’s belt. “But if you don’t put the camera away, the video diary of our honeymoon that you wanted to make for our parents is going to turn into a sex tape.” Blaine snaps his head up and Kurt giggles, both men getting the same idea at the same time. Blaine’s grin grows from ear to ear. “On second thought …”

Blaine takes the camera out of Kurt’s hand, ignoring his husband’s disgruntled, “Hey!” and his feeble attempts to grab it back. He puts an arm beneath Kurt’s ass and hoists him up, keeping the camera pointed at them while they waddle awkwardly to the bedroom. Kurt snickers into every kiss. Blaine loses his footing once or twice, the two inches or so of height that Kurt has on him knocking him a bit off kilter, but he still manages to keep them vertical.

“Are we … going to do … what I think … we’re going to do?” Kurt mumbles, talking in to Blaine’s mouth since he refuses to let Kurt break away for something as unimportant as conversation.

“Oh yeah,” Blaine answers, dropping Kurt to the bed and setting the camera on their bedside table. The table is petite and square, but overflowing with more bottles of champagne, an open box of truffles, a gold-rimmed plate with various finger foods arranged – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, squares of cheesecake - and a small bowl of chocolate ganache for dipping. Blaine has plans of eating dessert off of his husband tonight, but that might have to wait, at least until after round two or three. He has to have Kurt. He has to make love to him, plain and simple, and it has to be now, before the alcohol makes Kurt too giddy, and the adrenaline of the day wears thin and they crash. “Start getting undressed, baby, while I line up this shot.”

“Ooo.” Kurt slips his unbuckled belt out of its loops and tosses it off the end of the bed to the floor. “You sound so official. So … director-y.” Overwhelmed with giggles, he slumps face down onto the mattress, laughing uncontrollably, snorting when he runs short of breath.

“Okay,” Blaine says with a fond chuckle at his goofy husband. “Get a hold of yourself. And here I thought I was the one who couldn’t hold my liquor, remember?”

But Blaine doesn’t blame Kurt for having one too many. He had been an overwound bundle of knots and nerves, paler than a sheet when this whole thing started. Not because he had any doubts that he wanted to go through with the wedding. Blaine couldn’t remember seeing Kurt as excited to do anything as he was about marrying him – not graduating from NYADA, not performing in his first Broadway show (chorus, yes, but it was still an achievement), not becoming a contributing editor at Vogue – and it gave Blaine a huge ego.

All of those enviable accomplishments and Kurt Hummel was about to lose it entirely over marrying Blaine.

He’d even suggested they get married in the airport on the way over; that’s how badly he couldn’t wait. But now that that wedding anxiety is over, it’s kind of nice to see Kurt, who’s always been the designated driver in any situation involving alcohol, cut loose this way. “Don’t go loopy on me now. I’m not sure I can bring myself to have sex with you like this.”

“No, no, no, I’m good,” Kurt says, biting his tongue and quelling his laughter. “See? No more giggling.” He crawls up the bed as seductively as he can with the world around him rocking, preparing to sprawl out on his stomach, but Blaine grabs him by the hip, intent on turning him over.

“Come on, Kurt,” Blaine whispers. “Lie on your back. I want to look into your eyes.”

Kurt hums, the image of his husband on top of him, watching him cum, way more intoxicating than the expensive champagne coursing through him. “I can’t remember the last time you said that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever needed it as much as I do right now,” Blaine confesses, reaching around his husband’s body to continue ridding him of his clothes. He slides his jacket off his shoulders, followed by his shirt. “Can you handle that, Mr. Hummel?” Blaine asks, stroking down Kurt’s cheek with the backs of his fingers.

Kurt peeks coyly over his shoulder and pouts. “No.”

Blaine stops smiling.

“No?” He kneels up, sobering, though he had nowhere near as much to drink as Kurt. “What do you mean no?”

“I mean no” – Kurt flips over quickly, looping his arms around the back of Blaine’s neck and bringing him down to the bed – “as in, I’m not Hummel. Not anymore.”

“That’s right,” Blaine says, relaxing into his husband’s drunken humor. “You’re an Anderson-Hummel. But that’s a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care,” Kurt says, pecking kisses around Blaine’s mouth, tempting him with licks to kiss him deeper. “I like hearing it.”

“Okay” – Blaine kisses Kurt shallowly so he can talk in between. “Kurt … Anderson … Hummel.”

“Mmm” – Kurt turns his head to the side, giving Blaine a hint on where next he wants to be kissed – “say it again.”

“Anderson-Hummel,” Blaine whispers, lapping at Kurt’s collarbone. “Anderson-Hummel.” He nibbles it into the skin of Kurt’s flank as he slips off his pants and his boxer briefs. “Anderson-Hummel,” he murmurs before he takes his husband into his mouth, sinking slowly and burying his nose into the curls there, stopping and waiting until he has every last one of Kurt’s moans ringing in his ears.

“Oh, yes,” Kurt murmurs, bucking his hips gently to join with the heat constricting around him, following it when it pulls away, riding after it, chasing it like a wave. Kurt weaves his fingers into his husband’s hair, grabbing on tight when Blaine sucks a bit faster, legs spread wide to accommodate the man in the tuxedo kneeling between them. “Yes, Blaine,” Kurt mutters, unable to keep quiet. “Yes, Blaine, yes, yes, yes …”

“Do you like that, Mr. Anderson-Hummel?” Blaine chuckles, pulling off a moment to suck a mark into Kurt’s hip.

“Yes,” Kurt says, head rolling back and forth on the bed as his husband’s lips and tongue travel from one hip to the other.

“Do you love me?” Blaine whispers, standing halfway so he can see his husband’s face when he answers.

“God, yes,” Kurt moans, reaching a hand out to the image on the screen, hoping, praying that this time it will be real, that it will come back, that he will wake up from this life that has felt like a dream – a horrible, terrifying dream for too long. Kurt bucks up into his own fist, but it’s not the same. He runs his hand through the strands of his hair, trying to regain that feeling of his husband’s hair against his skin, but it’s gone. Completely gone. Kurt cums over his abs, soiling his hand, accompanied by a bitter, teeth-clenched groan and a well of tears pouring down his cheeks. There’s no pleasure in cumming this way. It’s a reaction to stimuli at this point.

He grew numb to it a long time ago.

“Oh, Blaine,” Kurt whimpers, sobbing as he watches his husband rise up to kiss him, his smile glorious, so proud to be there with him, to finally be married after the years they spent as friends, then as lovers, broken up, and then back together again. When, even when he hated Blaine, he missed him so much he couldn’t breathe, Kurt knew that it was all over. He’d never love another man the way he had loved Blaine Anderson.

God, Kurt misses him so fucking much.

A bottle of champagne. The sound of the ocean. Making love to his husband in the honeymoon suite of the Positano Art on the Amalfi Coast, and not a single care in the world. Blaine was Kurt’s everything, and life was beautiful as long as they were together. It’s been nine years since that trip. It was perfect, a fairy tale. It was everything Kurt had ever wanted and more. But really, he didn’t need all of that. They could have pitched a two-person tent in Central Park, eaten McDonald’s out of the bag, and shared a milkshake for all he cared. All he needed was Blaine.

He still does.

It’s been nine years since that amazing trip, but only three since the car accident that took Kurt’s husband away. Kurt turns to his bedside table and looks at the collection of items he has accumulated in that time, his constant companions – Blaine’s high school photograph, the one that Kurt kept up in his locker; the bowtie ring made of gum wrappers that Blaine gave Kurt in high school – what he considers his true engagement ring; the camera he took with them on their honeymoon, the SD card filled with pictures of the two of them being in love, being happy; a bottle of Evian; a bottle of Valium, Lorazepam, Xanax, Oxycodone to numb the pain in his shoulder that never healed when his seatbelt nearly cut through it; and a single bottle of that $1,000 champagne, the last of the ones they brought back from Italy. Kurt’s had it open for days, sipping it, trying to keep a shadow of that memory in his mind. The alcohol is warm, flat, and acidic, but the fruity notes still pop. When they hit his tongue, he can almost remember how it tasted in Blaine’s mouth.

Kurt cleans up the mess on his hand and his stomach while he and his husband laugh and kiss in the video that did indeed turn into a sex tape during their wedding night. But Kurt can’t watch it past this point. He can’t sit there alone in his bed and watch them make love. Not this time. He picks up the remote and points it at the TV, waiting a second until Blaine reaches over to readjust the angle of the video camera.

“Happy honeymoon, Kurt Anderson-Hummel,” Blaine growls into the lens.

“Happy anniversary, Blaine Anderson-Hummel,” Kurt answers, holding his breath for the next part. Blaine blows a kiss, and Kurt blows one back. He switches off the video, locking the ghosts away, keeping them safe for another year, when he’ll pull out the video and watch it again.

Kurt sobs in the silence. His chest shudders and it hurts – dull and heavy, like a punch. His eyes squeeze shut, the tears leaking down his cheeks burning as they go. He doesn’t want to cry. He doesn’t want to hurt anymore. Every day, he’s not living. He’s awake, and food and water in between keep him going, but he doesn’t move forward. He doesn’t work anymore. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t travel. He’s just passing time. He doesn’t feel anything until the day is done, and then all he feels is pain.

Every night he closes his eyes and hopes he disappears.

He opens one of the amber pill bottles – he doesn’t know which one. They all have the same effect on him now. They wipe his memory for about eight hours, knocking him unconscious like a brick to the back of the head, except lately, they don’t work as well as they used to. So on nights like tonight, when Kurt knows that the only thing waiting behind his eyelids are nightmares and what ifs – what if Kurt had driven instead of Blaine, what if they had just stayed home instead of going to another stupid gala, what if they’d left an hour earlier and missed the tractor-trailer jackknifing across the highway, what if they had stopped for coffee when Blaine said he felt like he was falling asleep - he takes a pill or two more than the prescription written on the label. He takes one last sip – one last gulp really – of that champagne that reminds him of his husband’s mouth, and tucks himself into his cold, lonely bed, allowing himself a second to imagine Blaine’s lips pressed against his temple. The more pills he takes, the sharper that feeling becomes, so he finds himself reaching for another.

Then another.

Then another.

It hits him quick, his lids becoming so heavy there’s nothing he can do but shut his eyes, even as he starts to feel nauseous, like he should crawl to the bathroom and be sick in the toilet so he doesn’t mess the bed.

This time, before the world goes black, he can almost hear his husband’s voice whispering in his ear, almost feel breath tickling his hairline, almost feel a hand cupping beneath his chin.

The breath and the hand are warm against Kurt’s skin that’s gone cold, as are the lips pressing against Kurt’s own.

And the taste of champagne on his tongue bursts to life again.

Did you miss me, Mr. Anderson-Hummel?

#klaine fanfiction #klaine fic #klaine #frankie writes

[serenagaywaterford]

what do you think fred was thinking when june and serena where having their one on one in front of him?? and uff june ignoring him so she could talk to serena is just *chef kiss* i

Honestly that scene… was brilliant. I think Fred is a pretty simple guy. IMO, there were only 3 things going through that tiny brain of his:

- Fury

- Impotence

- Self-pity

Probably in that order too. 

Fred has tried for so fucking long to get between these two. He loved it when they were at each other’s throats (or more importantly, when Serena was abusive and horrible to June). It allowed him to play the Good Guy to her Bad Guy and manipulate June into doing what he wanted, and getting what he wanted from her. (Which was for him to play his little man power games, his weird pregnancy fetish, his desire to roleplay with her/rape her, just… ew. I can go on but I won’t cos he’s scum.) 

So, June shows back up in the house and just completely ghosts him. She gives zero fucks about him in any way whatsoever. Her world at that point is 100% Serena. Which, for someone like Fred, is devastating. He has some grand delusion that June actually likes him (because he’s stupid and fell for June’s manipulation) and even after being called out by Serena on it in 2x11, still seems to think, “I’m the nice guy. She should want to be with me! Why wouldn’t she? I’m such a Nice Guy.” In 2x13, June comes down and rails on him for mutilating Serena and his response is, “Hey, like, wanna stay here and make more babies with me? I’ll let you stay with Nichole if you let me rape you some more.” (Completely ignoring the fact that Serena likely will never do another Ceremony. He’s so out to lunch. He thought cutting off her finger would actually make her more obedient? Does he even know his wife AT ALL?! (Okay, maybe he did. Maybe some other past Serena would have (I sincerely doubt any Serena at any point would have but hey). But this Serena? With June in her ear as well? No, dude. You’re so wrong.) 

LIKE… He’s screaming in June’s face and she just sees right through him. There is literally nothing in her world at that point other than Serena and you can see and hear how much it drives Fred mad. He goes on his rant and the first thing June says is, “She’s safe, Serena.” (First name! Which is far more intimate and effective than “Mrs. Waterford”. She only tends to use that formality when she really wants something and needs to suck up; she uses Serena when she’s appealing to Serena as a person.) It seems to confuse Fred for a second. Why isn’t she speaking to me? June says Serena’s name multiple times, just to drive it home.

Probably at first he was glad when Serena went raging at June cos that’s how he likes it. But holy shit, firstly he will never have that bond over Nichole. He never cared about that baby as anything more than a possession, a trophy. Serena, for all her flaws, loved that baby as a daughter. She wouldn’t have given her away otherwise. And I don’t wanna go into how important June and Serena’s conversation there was cos we all know. (Also that was Moss’ best acting in the whole first 3 episodes.) 

That look Fred has when they embrace, especially in that way. First, he’s angry. He has done everything in his delusional, weak power to separate them, to estrange them from each other. He literally belt-whipped the shit out of Serena in front of June to divide them (he does know his wife to a point. He knew it would humiliate her enough to drive a wedge between them again. That wasn’t about punishing her for reading/writing. He saw that rose she gave June and knew he had to divide them immediately.) Those two women together are the most dangerous thing to him and he’s not stupid that way, he knows it.

So, he’s furious here that not even June giving away “Serena’s daughter” managed to tear them apart. You’d think it would, right? But no, it brings them even closer! Which is the impotence. He’s useless. He has nothing on the connection they have to each other, and the bond that has formed despite all his best efforts. I think part of him expected Serena to back him up, to channel his same rage at June. But that dissipated so damn quickly. Serena is powerless against June, especially when June fights back (I gotta say I really appreciated not only June yelling at Serena about what it feels like to have a baby take, not only the fact she pointed and repeatedly said “you did this!”, but the fact that physically she fought too. She shook Serena, pushed at her. It may seem like a simple thing but June actively fighting Serena in every way, especially in front of Fred, is a big sign that she sees herself as equal to Serena finally.

I think there’s a point to be made here, as much as I really don’t want to cos I fucking hate the episode as a whole, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the callback in some way to 2x10. If we all want to begrudgingly remember the 2x10 rape (I call it that instead of just “June’s rape” because June’s rape happens a multitude of times with different men in different situations (not just the Ceremony, and many of them I consider equally violent tbh.)) I think we all remember--if we haven’t blocked it out--that June calls for Serena. Only Serena. She begs Serena to stop, not Fred. It’s Serena she knows is responsible for it even if she’s not the one actually raping her, it’s Serena she knows that could help stop it, she cries out for Serena’s mercy. Not once does she consider Fred.

I don’t think Fred really noticed then. He was having too much fun. I don’t want to get into a whole thing (again) about that 2x10, but this one here where Fred is literally dead air to June is similar. And again when June screams at Serena that “YOU did this, YOU did that!” June knows. She knows who matters and it ain’t Fred in either moment. 

Fred’s an appendage of Serena’s, not the other way around. Fred can call himself the boss, the master, whatever. It’s all a joke. Sure, he does have the power in this society. That’s why June knows Serena has to get back with Fred because he’s her power arm. As shitty as that is, they need to use him.

And in that moment when June is speaking only to Serena, only looking at Serena, screaming at Serena, touching Serena, comforting Serena*, crying with Serena, Fred is initially furious. Why wouldn’t June focus on him. He’s the master! He’s the boss! He’s the COMMANDER!!! 

June doesn’t give a shit. He’s nothing.

He seemed to have some realisation that he’s impotent in the face of the women together. He has no power when they’ve bonded over a baby. They’re so beyond his reach now and he recognises that no matter what he does, he’s useless. He will never be able to divide them now. (The only thing that can is Serena making shittyass decisions again, which we all know she will. Ugh. Yawn.) He’s done everything in his power to estrange them and it doesn’t matter at all. Every single time, they come back together. Despite all the horrible, cruel, brutal, abusive, violent, rapist things Serena has done to June, despite all the tricks and violence he’s employed to separate them, it doesn’t matter.

Fred Waterford is impotent, inept, powerless. Quite frankly, he’s sterile. And he sees it right there in 3x01. He should have known in 2x13 when June was there at Serena’s side immediately following the finger-chopping, when June confronted him on Serena’s behalf. But he was still playing his God-complex game. 

If taking Serena’s baby away and yet she still ends up in June’s arms, he’s fucked.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (Or, in the KJV, the translation is “charity”, instead of love.) [1 Corinthians 13:7-8]

I’m not even talking romantically, please note. (I may be a June/Serena shipper but I’m not totally crazy.) This is love of a child that bonds them, it’s a shared suffering. Or even ‘charity’. Whatever connection June and Serena have far exceeds what Fred has with Serena, and certainly more than he ever had with June. And he is sterile in the face of it... unless he can figure out a more insidious way of getting around/through it.

Then finally, owing to this movement from fury into the realisation of impotence, he ends at self-pity. Cos, after all, Fred is a fucking pathetic, pitiful little prick. Poor Freddy baby. Poor, poor Freddy. He just jumps right into that pit of pity for himself. I don’t think I really need to explain self-pity or why it’s so obvious here.

And we can see from every other scene he has that he’s just bathing in it. Fred, the hapless victim of women. Fred the sad man who just wants his trophy wife back. Fred playing the “I’m so self aware, I know I’ve been bad but I’m so sorry I was a bad husband.” card. Which literally nobody buys for a second. Bad husband is the craziest euphemism for man who oppresses, ignores, devalues, repeatedly cheats on, beats, (rapes**), and mutilates his wife, as well as all the other horrid shit he’s done to society and June, etc.

He just wants to be the centre of these women’s worlds. Even things like when he says later, “I drove you to desperation”. No, asshole. You’re only one part of the problem.

So, yeah. That’s a super long rant on what I think was going on with Fred in those 3 seconds lol.

[* I see people going “WTF?! Why is June comforting this bitch?” It’s sad that even now people don’t know who June is. June may want Serena to know how it feels, but she also knows how it feels. She’s experienced it--twice. Despite everything, June doesn’t want any mother to feel that way, but all the same, she’s glad Serena does. There’s a very human conflict in it that I love. It hurts June to see other mothers suffer as she has no matter who they are because it’s just the whole concept of suffering for that reason, NO ONE should have to feel that.]

[** Firstly, in case you’re unaware, that is a scene they cut from 2x11. Originally Fred raped Serena in Toronto, but Fiennes threw a tantrum so they cut it. Secondly, doesn’t it make everything make more sense. Including lending even more weight to Serena’s comment to her mother “I need you to know what it was like between us--” “No.” “The things that we did.” Obviously the latter is about the horrible crap they did--which it’s unclear which “things” she’s talking about, whether it was the DC attack, the law-writing, or the raping of June. Or something else. But the first part.. it’s heavy. Keeping in the marital rape (likely not even a crime in Gilead to rape your wife since, hey, she’s your property. But then it’s forbidden to even touch your wife sexually or even share a bed with her so... who knows.) would lend even more reason to Serena’s fairly sudden turn against him. It’s not just about her finger. It’s about the assault, the rape, and quite frankly, I think she has guilt too, specifically about the “things we did”. I dunno how much guilt or whether it’ll actually stick this time (I doubt it. Ugh.) but it’s there. It came out in 2x11, and as much as people seem to think 2x10 fell into some abyss of memory somewhere, I don’t think it did. And if it did, that was way back in 2x12 tbh when June came to Serena in the nursery after Eden’s murder. By 2x13, June was right back on that bed holding Serena’s hand. Okay, I don’t wanna go into a whole thing about the bed cos that’s a completely other essay lol. But this was just to mention that I consider the fact they cut the marital rape a shame. In some ways, I understand why. And in others, it makes this sort of shift make way more sense.]

ANYWAY

It was absolutely GLORIOUS to see June totally blank him. And Serena too. Neither woman even noticed him in the room with them. If that doesn’t make him feel like an insignificant little pissant, I don’t know what would.

And then, at the end of their tearful, emotional co-breakdown, he says to Nick to take June to her room. Which I also thought was interesting and I’m prolly reading too much into it cos the writers just wanted an excuse for Nick to follow June and yell at her. BUT, I think it was Fred’s final attempt to sever the ties. He knows Nick and June have a thing. So, he puts them to together and hopefully that breaks the connection his wife has to the Handmaid. You know? I don’t quite know how to explain this. But I think it was a direct calculation and purposeful move to insinuate Nick between them again. If he knows he can’t divide them, maybe Nick can. (Of course, he can’t but it’s worth a shot.) Divide and conquer. Which is essentially the entire basis of Gilead’s power structure. Divide up women, pit them against each other, and then conquer them.

Fred could have easily just said, “Go to your room.” to June. She didn’t need an escort. And it’s also pretty bold to say to the dude who just assisted in her escape to make sure she goes to her room. That’s why I think it was a calculation for a purpose. (Also, just necessary for the writing lol.)

And again, funny only to me perhaps, Nick was all indignant with June, acting like a jealous lover in the aftermath of the June/Serena bonding--which he wasn’t even there for but still. Of course, it’s legit cos like WTF June why are you back, you dumb bitch. And Nick has (for once) serious actual points.

So, yeah.

That scene was the best one in all the episodes so far. So fantastically acted, shot, delivered, everything.

#Anonymous

[7livky]

Dionysus - Park Jimin

CHAPTER 9

Baby, it's okay if I get drunk I'll drink you in deep now Deep into my throat The whiskey that is you

Kiss me on the lips A secret just between the two of us Deeply poisoned by the jail of you I cannot worship anyone but you and I knew The grail was poisoned but I drank it anyway

- Blood, Sweat & Tears by BTS

Diona's POV

With a resting pulse of probably over a hundred beats per minute, I was now standing in front of my lecturer.

I felt beads of sweat forming on my forehead as she watched my huge work. I closed my eyes before I started cursing. "This is all your fault."

"Pardon?"

We exchanged glances so I started to laugh hysterically. "Ah, ha hahaha ha" ,I pulled my hair back, "I mean everything is my fault. I knew you wouldn't like it."

Jimin, I hate you.

Rolling her eyes, I could feel the sweat under my armpits.

„Ew." I quickly put my hand over my mouth. This time she sighed loudly as she examined Medusa's snake hair.

I never thought I'd be someone like this someday.

A 20-year-old woman who based on a few...

A few?

Okay... who based on dozens of videos, has mutated into a fifteen-year-old girl who would get down on her knees for these seven men just to fulfill their every wish. Only two days since I haven't seen them, and in those 48 hours I haven't tried to make my painting look perfect, no. I've tried to stop myself from falling in love with every single one of BTS. And not just because of their stunning looks.

BTS are the angels on this planet who would give everything for Armys happiness, Armys wishes and just.. for Armys lifes. And by everything, I really mean everything they have.

Also-

"So Mrs. Park. Good organization of the picture surface, striking arrangement and colorfulness of the figure with the snakes, correct lighting. But the painting technique and brushwork..."

Can someone bring me my whiskey?

"..could really be those of a true artist."

She then winked at me, took a sip of her bitter coffee and typed something on her computer. "Full score. Now get out of my way, there's a new Cutie on probation!" With her shoulder, she pushed me aside and left me in her room.

What the fuck did just happen?

"Four meters to the right and you're at your destination."

I turned on my heels to see who?

Right, the pain in the ass who had to find me of all people on this earth.

"Oh, there you are!"

I crossed my arms and couldn't believe him. "How did you find me? In this huge, mazy university."

"Not with an app that hacks your phone and tells me your location! I swear to God!" He shrugged his shoulders while scratching the back of his head. How could he still look cute in his thick, black leather jacket and hot body?

"Did you get your results yet?" He pulled me out of the room before I could see my finished work lying on the table for the last time.

" Yeah." I murmured.

He stopped, showing me his sad face. "Failed?"

Nodding my head, I threw myself into Jongsuk's arms. I rolled my eyes as I inhaled the female scent when he stroke my head.

"Fuck it, shorty. Next time, just draw me and my beauty will blind them. Who the hell is Medusa?" ,he spoke up to make me laugh.

"Thank you Jong-suck suck. But..." ,I looked up at him while still hugging him, "Should I hear one more time" ,my sweet voice changed in a second, "that you hacked my phone to haunt me, then I'll boil your little eggs and make scrambled eggs out of them."

Disgusted, he looked down at me. "Why must your punishments always be so nasty?"

"Perhaps my predecessor was a goddess who enjoyed nasty punishments?"

After my answer, he let go of me and walked with big steps to the elevators. He waited for me until I was inside too and pushed the button. "Don't give me that shit again" ,he replied ten years later.

"What do you mean?"

"With the Gods" ,he answered whereupon we sat in the lobby, full of comfy sofas.

"Remember how you laughed at me when I said I met Jungkook?" ,I teased him.

He looked away in annoyance, " Yeah well, I should have believed you. But wait a minute?"

I tried to take a few sips of my canned whiskey without getting caught.

"Doesn't that mean that the old rich pedophile kookie monster is actually Jungkook?!"

He stared at me while I nodded. "Now the thousand dollars finally makes sense. The richest guys in South Korea found my best friend. Great!"

I ignored his sarcasm by opening up my Twitter. My entire home page was filled with BTS. Does that surprise me? I don't think so.

Beep.

new message (1)

from kookie-monster95

I just had five hundred butterflies thrashing around in my stomach.

hi!

can you come over to our place tonight?

"What? Why are you grinning like an idiot?"

Of course I can come over and bite your dimples off...

"Diona."

And paint your muscular body on your own wall at home.

"Oh my God! Is that Park Jimin?!"

What did he say?

"WHERE?"

Now my phone was in his hand. "I see. So that's how it is. Tell me, are you getting disloyal?"

I tried to hit him, "Give me that! And to whom should I be disloyal?" ,I growled.

Beep.

I could hear it vibrating in his big hand.

Jongsuk raised his one brow, "He wants you for something else? This is going too far! I'm coming too!"

I punched him in the chest, "What did he send?!" His arms were too long to be stopped.

"He doesn't want you there for the picture" ,he declared angrily and suddenly typed something.

"Jongsuk please stop!" I screamed as everyone stared at me. "Please!" I fidgeted in desperation.

Beep.

"Hey Jongsuk." He immediately turned around to see one of those college sluts. I took the opportunity to run away with my life in my hands. I immediately read the previous message.

from kookie-monster95

but not just for the painting..

from diona7

for what then you rabbit?

"Oh my God Jongsuk I will kill you!"

new message (1)

from kookie-monster95

Well, don't you think you should apologize to Jimin?

Absolutely not!

Flashback

"And then I witnessed your fist hitting his beautiful face."

Or do I?

- And here I was again. At the entrance of a heavenly ancient mansion.

Can anyone finally rid me of this dream? No common sense would ever be able to handle seeing BTS in private, would it? Can someone finally tell me that this fact can never be reality?

How can I ever face it? I want to finish this painting as soon as possible and never have to come back here again.

After my self-talk, I decided to make a next appointment with my therapist and got out. I dragged my heavy bag to the gate, looking at my trembling hand. "I should have drunk more" ,I murmured as the door suddenly opened by itself.

Great, now I had to deal with ghosts, too.

"Hello?"

I came in and moved my stuff in. I closed the door and stood on the mosaic floor I had fallen in love with.

"It's me, Diona." I looked around, but no one was there. And this time it was totally different. Knowing that two or three members lived here didn't take my nervousness away at all.

Knowing that Park Jimin lived here..

I put my hand on my chest and tried to keep my heart from popping out.

But I wanted to see more. More than the unpainted wall and the entrance hall. When I headed into the direction Jungkook was heading that day, something unexpected happened there.

The whole appearance, the building, the architecture was no longer the same as in the entrance hall.

It was a secular building of the Renaissance and Baroque at the same time. A palace that served as a residence, as a noble residence for rich and privileged families. But there was always an echo of an ancient Roman villa, with mosaic floors, hermen pilasters and grotto work, which surrounded me like a spring sanctuary.

I nodded decisively the more characteristics I recognized.

A strong beam shone in my eyes that belonged to the sun. I took my eyes from the window and followed the light coming from above. My eyes widened.

"Wow..." ,I whispered after I saw the ceiling. A pastel ceiling painting by an unknown artist. Depicted of people, with the assumed form of angels, helping two wingless people floating on clouds. When I lowered my head, I saw Corinthian columns decorated with animal heads.

The endlessness of the heavens.

As the sun set, the countless golden decorations sparkled throughout the room and all the small crystal chandeliers turned on.

I looked around immediately. "Is anyone there?" My stomach cramped up. With big steps I walked on before I stood in front of a big staircase with a wide marble staircase.

I left the first hall to climb the shiny steps. My small steps were the only disturbance that could be recorded. It was soulfully calm.

No way.

A large gallery of mirrors in thousandfold shapes on huge mirror walls with reflecting parquet flooring and a beautiful crystal chandelier that increased the light of countless candles.

With my inner concern, I ran towards my mirror images. Looking at my wavy hair, which took on a golden colour under the crystal chandelier, my yellowish light-brown eyes found me from all sides as I turned in circles. A hall that consisted only of mirrors.

Before I would see any other face than mine, I crossed this hall as fast as I could. I put out my cell phone to write Jungkook, but without success. I had no network. No wonder it takes him an hour to open the front door when he has to go through so many halls.

A cold breeze brushed against my skin, so I stroked my arms. I noticed a stream that probably seized me from the following hall. Coldness, an increasing echo and another sequent hall in front of me. Without even looking behind me, I hurried to the other side and was ready to see something sensational-

and not a hand in front of my eyes.

"Shhhh.."

I lost the ground under my feet and felt the fear down to my last pore. I opened my mouth slightly, but I could not speak, because my throat was closed. Raising my hand I felt the other hand under my fingers.

"Kill me softly.."

And there it was again. That melodious voice that sounded like velvet and warmed me.

"Close my eyes with your caress."

Jimin's words enveloped me like soft singing, awakening the desire in me to open my eyes so that I could see him.

My ears sensed sound waves of music with a slinking tempo as if the melody was flowing through my body and even touching my heart. My sense of sight was full of brilliance and silver shimmer. Transparent warm timbres that gave me a natural serenity.

I felt a deep trepidation when his other hand lingered at my waist and slowly moved me forward. On soft knees, he slowly followed me as he dragged me to a place.

I could hear someone snapping their fingers to the music. The next moment I heard a snap from the other direction, too, which matched the timbre of the song perfectly.

He removed his warm hands so that I could perceive everything again with my eyes and not just my hearing.

Flashback

But the most beautiful thing on his face was his cat-shaped eyes. They reminded me of the eyes of a predatory cat. To be more precise, he had the same of a desert lynx, as he had very dark and dense lower lashes, just like a eyeliner.

"Welcome, Diona. I am Taehyung." He winked at me with his broad smile as his hand floated in front of me.

"Pleased to meet you." I shook his hand, with which he later brushed through his turquoise hair. Then he sat down on the sofa to my left.

"So a rabbit then?"

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I turned to look to my right to see Jungkook lying on a beige sofa with his left leg resting on the backrest. With his legs spread, he pierced me with his eyes.

"That wasn't me, that was my friend Jongsuk. I'm sorry."

A door was shut behind me, which made me start up. I lowered my head to the side and stopped at my shoulder. I could already see him from the corner of my eye. With his back against the door, he watched me all the time.

"Isn't there something else you should be apologizing for?"

Every time he spoke, my nerves were strained to breaking point and I hated it. I turned on my heels and watched Jimin biting his lip. I counted every second his bite lingered on his lower lip and forgot everything I had learned. I gazed down at his crossed arms.

"Huh?" he almost complained.

Just another moment and I already sensed his dark aura around my own, over which he had seized power.

"Sorry that I hit you."

He lifted my chin so I could look him in the eyes. "I'll only forgive you," he licked his lips, "if you bear us company tonight."

He took his eyes away from me and looked at the boys behind me. I then heard a glass being filled with liquid.

"I'm just here to paint. Not to entertain you."

His smile didn't disappear, no. Instead, he smiled even stronger. "Oh.. But you already have been entertaining us since you came into this room, my beautiful."

My teeth clenched. I saw red with rage while he watched me amused.

"He's tipsy, don't listen to him" ,Jungkook spoke from the side, drinking his wine before sitting up.

Before anyone could say anything else, I left the room. "My beautiful" ,I imitated him as I stomped through the dark passage. "You can stick it right up your a-"

I heard a loud grunt.

"You'll regret this" ,Jungkook laughed as he passed me when I gave him my look of death to the back of his head. "Otherwise he'll drown you in booze."

I observed his trained back, which you could see through his white shirt but immediately turned around when he stopped to look at me. "I'm sorry if I come off bad too, but I've been drinking too. But actually.." He smiled shyly. „Actually I'm the cutest guy in the whole group, you know."

A soft clucking escaped me. "How is an international playboy supposed to be cute?"

He stared at me in shock when we arrived at the mirrors. "You... Where from? How-"

I rolled my eyes, "Yes Jungkook, everything you say is recorded and saved by millions of Armys as an insider. Good morning."

He just scratched the back of his head and ran down the stairs with me. I almost took a wrong turn, but he helped me right away. When we arrived at my place, I picked up my bag to get ready.

"I hope I don't faint again and can't start the painting a second time."

When nothing came up, I turned around as he looked like he'd been caught for a crime. "Ehh... ehehe" ,he half coughed, "scream out my name if you need me." He bowed respectfully before he disappeared from my sight.

"But how are you supposed to hear me!" I screamed after, but yeah.. Nevermind. I sighed in frustration before opening the lids of the acrylic paints. I put on my cape and pulled on the strings that I wrapped around my waist.

That song that just came out of my mouth as I hummed the melody, automatically thinking of his voice.

"Ugh" ,I hissed.

Why wasn't he the same in real life as he was in the videos? So sweet, loving and caring to everyone. Why wasn't he like in my dreams? The most beautiful angel I've ever been allowed to touch?

I digged out my finished sketch out of my sheets and held it in my other hand. Then I approached the wall to finally start with the base. Before dabbing my wide brush into the white paint, I waited. As always whenever the paint was about to touch a surface. Because after that there was no turning back. This kind of paint dried in seconds.

11:17 p.m.

That was my eighth yawn in a short minute, from when I knew I should stop. I put everything on the floor, which I had covered with old newspaper sheets to check the time on my phone.

"Three hours?!"

I shook my head in anger. "These assholes haven't asked once in three hours how far I've come or if I need anything?"

Crybaby.

"Shut the fuck up!" ,I screamed.

My senses suddenly picked up something unexpected. His scented essence. I froze at the sight.

"Yooou.. talk to yourself, tooooo?"

Have I lost my mind? Are my eyes no longer functioning properly?

Or did Jimin have silver streaks in his hair three hours before too?

"Wow!" He ignored me to stare at the wall. "Your hands can work wonders."

"Uh, thanks?"

His giggle sounded like a squeal. Just like I knew him from the videos.

"I should go now. This all has to dry by tomorrow, I can't put anything else on before then." I bent down to wrap everything up while he watched me silently as my nerves fluttered with fear.

"You can't just leave me like this. Not unless I tell you to" ,he said from up there.

Not this shit again...

"Let me guess. Because you're the one and only Dionysus?"

Even before I said that sentence, I already regretted it.

His veins popped out. Fuck.

He quickly pulled me up by my arm before a cold wall touched my back. He raised his hand, licked his thumb and put it against my cheek before he grazed a spot. After that, he showed me his thumb, which was tinted white. My cheeks heated up. God, how embarrassing. I didn't realize my face looked like a clown the whole time.

"You.. will come upstairs with me now and taste my unique wine. Understand?"

Nod. Just a nod that I could give him.

"Thank you, beautiful."

And for the first time, he locked his hand with mine.

Music is the wine,

which inspires new generative processes,

and I am Dionysus,

who presses out his glorious wine for mankind

and makes them spiritually drunk.

- Dionysus