#I have a chaotic one note that is filled with random nonsense and it’s so comforting | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tabletoptrinketsbyjj · 5 years

Text

Random Nightmares: Through history humans have put a great deal of stock into their dreams. The chaotic, ethereal worlds of nighttime fantasies can be a blissful place of rest, inspiration and unparalleled artistry. But as wondrous and magical as sweet dreams can be, far more stock and power rests in the realms of bad dreams. Nightmares, are a source of grim omens and bleak tidings for the future. Dark visions of death, cruelty or surreal fear can be the herald of plagues, droughts, war or that the Gods are displeased and demand appeasement and sacrifice. Unspeakable, nonsensical night terrors, worse than the strongest of bad trips on mundane hallucinogens, exist to prey on adventurers who have seen more than their fair share of trauma. A cleric’s healing words can mend the flesh but nothing truly mends the mind from the aberrant horrors, monstrous beasts and undead abominations, whose defeat is an adventurer’s main source of income. The brave souls who leave the comfort and shelter of their homes to sleep in poisonous swamps, dark dungeons and unhallowed crypts, wage a private war against their own psyche each time they close their eyes. This table grants a DM a first person narrative experience to present to a player or a whole party. Instead of simply saying, “Everyone who scored lower than 14 on their wisdom save experiences a nightmare during their rest.” a DM now has a host of specific examples to represent the PC’s nocturnal deliriums. ---Note: Fair warning, these nightmares cover a wide range of terrors from psychological horror and humiliation, to themes of murder, suicide, torture and death. DM’s should speak to their players about topics that they do not wish described to them in graphic detail, before forcing them to listen to something that may be emotionally disturbing for them.

You and your fellow party members are all dancing a complicated waltz with your most hated enemy and their minions in an elegant ballroom. Midway through the dance, the villains disperse into wafts of smoke but the dance continues. You find yourself in a circle with your party members, facing each other’s backs. The dance steps are becoming increasingly difficult to remember and you keep getting them just a bit wrong. Your allies seem to be having the same dilemma with their choreography. Your hands, as required by the dance, alternatively stretch out to the sides, reach forward to touch the back of the person in front of you, raise up high into the air as your hand swivels about its wrist, or drops to your side to clutch the hilt of your weapon. As the music reaches a crescendo, your hand drops and grasps the hilt, but this time you draw it from its sheath and in the final move of the dance, you plunge it into the back of the comrade directly in front of you, as they do the same. You look down at the blade projecting from your chest, and observe the spurt of blood before you all collapse, the dance at an end. As the world begins to darken and your life ebbs away in pools of radiant red, you notice the orchestra who have led this dance. It is you and the rest of the party and they too have collapsed over their instruments above pools of blood. You awake from the nightmare with a half-strangled gasp, sweating profusely.

You are delving into a dungeon, exploring a side passage when the floor gives way unexpectedly. You fall into a deep pit, your fall cushioned by a thick carpet of maggots. You can feel the crawling mass engulf your body sucking you deep into its depth as they worm their way down your shirts, into your ears, nose and mouth. You can see your companions are there with you, but appear to be unconscious. You make your way to one, turn him over, and see a desiccated half-eaten face stare back at you and smile. You awake in a cold sweat.

You are have been trekking through a damp cavern for hours with your allies in search of treasure. You find yourself in a larger opening with a great many mushrooms and fungi of unfamiliar species. There is a small pond at the side and you are reminded it has been some time since you had something to drink. As you bend down to fill your waterskin you catch your reflection. Your face is covered in large pus-filled wounds. As you turn to look at your companions a large wound on the cheek of one of your party members bursts forth in a spray of spores directly into your face. You stumble back and fall into the water and awake in a cold sweat.

You are walking along a safe and familiar path having a conversation with a loved one. You are having a wonderful time catching up and telling them of your adventures and exploits. After a while you realize that something is amiss and your loved one’s responses have become slow and stilted as if they aren’t quite themselves. You turn and inspect them when you realize in horror that it is not your loved one but in fact your most hated enemy who has cut off your loved one’s face and crudely affixed it to theirs. You scream as you remember every secret, detail and weakness you just admitted to the villain and there is no way your loved one is still alive after having their face flayed off. You sit up wide awake and it takes you a few moments to realize that you are still screaming.

You have been called to the royal court to be acknowledged for your service to the realm and to be handsomely rewarded. You have an audience with the king himself and you are greatly looking forward to it. When you arrive you notice the retainers are laughing behind your back and that no one is congratulating you. You try to rise above the lack of respect and the snobbish nature of the nobles and the king enters the chamber to address you. As soon as his majesty sees you he begins laughing as well. You look down in horror and realize you are naked.

—Keep reading for 60 more nightmares.

—I know it’s not a full d100 table but I wanted this posted so I can use it as a reference for other items. If you have written nightmares in this kind of format and would like to share please send them to me and they’ll fill out the table.

—Note: The previous 5 nightmares are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

You are staring at yourself in the mirror with a small basin resting on the table before you. You watch yourself open your mouth and begin to pull out your own teeth, one by one. You try to stop yourself but you are trapped within your own body- forced to watch yourself as blood cascades from your mouth and you drop the teeth one by one into the basin with a slow, methodical plink... plink...plink...plink.

You are with your lover, lying in bed after making love. The room is hot and sticky, and there are an unusual number of flies that buzz around annoyingly. You reach over and run your fingers through your lover's hair and notice a bump at the back of their head. They ask you what's wrong and you tell them. They roll over so you can see the bump. You part their hair, and in doing so the "bump" opens. Their entire head is hollow and filled with black flies that pour out in a never ending stream. The room fills with flies and you can feel them begin to bite at the back of your head, burrowing into your flesh to nest within your skull. You wake up writhing around swatting at the imaginary storm and frantically touching your head looking for bumps.

You are a child with your mother sitting comfortable in the place in which you grew up. The hearth is warm and inviting and your mother is sewing a tear in your clothing. You watch as she pulls the thread in, out, in, out, until the tear is closed expertly. She looks up at you and says kindly, "One more tear to fix." And takes the needle of black thread and brings it to your face. In, out, in, out, and expertly sews your mouth shut. "There, that's better" she says. You wake up clenching your jaw out of fear and for a moment believe that your mouth is actually sown shut before you’re able to relax and open your mouth.

You find yourself chained to a wall in a jail cell, opposite something humanoid but almost completely covered in chains. You’re able to determine its general size but the creature is so covered in the rusted metal that its appearance, gender, or even species is completely unidentifiable. It seems to realize that you are awake and leaps for you but the chains stop it just short, leaving your back against the wall and its fingertips inches from your face. Its breath is foul and pungent from between yellow teeth, and you can barely see pale skin and dry-cracked lips. It strains against the chains for hours lunging at you, trying to claw your flesh with its filthy unkempt claws, always coming close but never quite making contact. When you eventually wake up, the foul odor of its breath seems to linger for a moment before dissipating.

You are walking through a moonlit garden when you see in a secluded corner a pair of young lovers meeting. You watch as they stare adoringly into each other’s eyes and whisper promises of the future to one another. The shadows ripple near their corner and you see a number of black cloaked assassins creep out of the hedges with drawn blades. You try to call out a warning to the couple but your voice sounds weak and far away and they cannot hear you. The assassins kill them both at the same time, plunging daggers deep into their eyes and holding them down until the screams and struggling come to a stop. You sense something behind you, and as you turn you catch only the glint of steel before blinding pain erupts in your head. You awake immediately and your eyes have a hard time focusing for a few moments.

You are plunged into a body of cold water that saps the heat from your skin. You swim upwards, flailing your arms, and you feel your fingertips break the surface, but something keeps pulling downwards all around you. Though your eyes sting from opening them in the salty seawater, you can make out the outline of a pillar of water that seems to rise all around you, keeping the open air just out of your reach as a strong current shoves you back down over and over again. As you become desperate, something suddenly wraps around your head, and water pours into your mouth as though it were a living entity intent on filling your lungs and crushing your organs. You awake gasping and drenched in cold sweat.

You dream that you are falling through the sky engulfed by a cloud that never ends. You hear the echoing voices of angry children and suddenly there are actual youth falling all around you. They are smiling and seem content but their words and tones are of absolute hatred and malice. As more and more of them fill the sky around you, drifting closer with their hands outstretched to grab at you, their enraged voices rise to shouts and screams, while still looking so childlike and perfectly happy. They all close in and you feel a heavy mass of bodies crushing you from all around. When you wake up, you are tangled up in your sheets as if the fabrics had tried to strangle you.

You are in the middle of combat fighting a horde of skeletons. You destroy dozens but their numbers seem infinite and there is no escape that you can see. As you grow more and more tired you see the skin on your arms become pale and tight. Blue veins bulge out until they burst through your flesh causing it to slide down to your elbow in a thin jelly. Your tight skin dries and peels off and you feel your shriveled organs tumble out of your body. You glance up in horror to see another you looking at you with anger and disgust. Fueled by rage you reach out your sharp, skeletal fingers to claw the imposter you to death only to be easily cut down as the doppelganger shatters other walking skeletons left and right. Rather than the sweet embrace of death however your find yourself trapped in your own skull staring at a plain grey stone. Eventually the sounds of combat fade as does any source of light leaving you in silence, darkness and forgotten.

You're standing near the end of a large and ornate temple. The seats are filled and everyone is staring at you. You feel a chill and look down to realize you're wearing only your undergarments. The crowded temple begins laughing at you, their mocking tones fill you with shame. The laughter reverberates throughout the temple, slowly building in volume. The cackling is deafening, but none of their laughter changes, except the smiles you saw on their faces at the beginning of the laughter are gone. Each person now sports a blank, almost pained expression as they convulse in laughter. Hearing the unending guffaws now physically hurts as the sound continues to grow in intensity, like a roaring waterfall next to your head. Eventually the hundreds of pained laughing husks and the literally thundering laughter causes you to black out and awake.

Almost as soon as you close your eyes you are beset with a vision. You see the world spread out below you, the order of laid out fields and roads balanced against the verdant beauty of the wild places outside of man's control. You realize that you are on a cloud, and across a relatively short distance you see another cloud, dark and roiling. On that cloud you see more observers. One is your God, and he's (Or she’s) straining to reach you as the clouds drift apart. But the distance widens into a chasm as the stormy winds separate the two of you. The gap broadens still more, and you realize that the God is being carried away by forces beyond even their control. Thunderheads billow and rise between you, and you are completely cut off from them now. Then the rains come, and the world below darkens, your view of it obscured by storm and chaos. You find the cloud you stand upon dissolving, and you fall with the rain. The beauty, the balance of order and chaos you saw from on high is vanishing as you lose that godlike perspective, and are once again thrust into the here and now. And you feel cold and alone, an emptiness where the spirit of your god once was. The ground rushes at you and you awaken, sweating and shaking.

You are going about a typical daily routine when you notice your teeth beginning to grow longer so they no longer fit together properly. You find it odd but decide to deal with it later as you continue on with your day. Your teeth continue to grow steadily and you can no longer close your mouth and drool is freely running down your face as it becomes nearly impossible to swallow cleanly. By the end of your day your mouth is stretched to the limit and the pain is beyond belief. The growth continues and with a sickening popping noise your jaw dislocates and you gain a temporary respite from the pain until your cheeks start to tear, ripping open slowly from your lips back to your throat and the last thing you remember is drowning in your own blood after hours of unrelenting agony.

You slowly become aware of your surroundings as you rise stiff limbed and cramped from a long table haphazardly with large tomes. As you gaze about you recognize the endlessly array bookshelves as the Great Library of Knowing, the physical domain of the God of Knowledge. The countless rooms and halls are silently save for the faint sound of candles and the rustle of turning pages, you are all alone. Despite being in a place of boundless, readily available information you are unable to determine how you arrived here and more importantly, how to leave. Although you find that the physical necessities of hunger, tiredness and thirst are greatly lessened when actively reading or writing, you begin to waste away as there is nothing to consume between the never-ending stacks of books. After weeks of desperation you begin consuming the tallow candles to ward off starvation and in a state of delirium you attempt to drink molten wax to sooth your parched throat. Recoiling at the pain of your scalding flesh you throw a lit candle igniting a row of tightly packed scrolls, causing an inferno as the entire domain begins to fill with smoke and flame. You flee across endless corridors and antechambers from the blaze that consumes every scrap of word ever penned to paper. You feel the furious gaze of the God of knowledge upon you and are deafened by the deity’s enraged cursing. Hoping to save yourself from being smite by divine power you turn back and jump headlong into the fire, your emancipated body lasting only a moment before being turned to cinders. You aware feverish with a terrible hunger and a thirst that cannot be quenched simply by the knowledge that it was a dream.

You are looking through the clear pane glass window of a small bedroom. The lack of curtains allows the moon’s cool light to enter the room and barely highlight the curled-up figure of child hiding itself under a desk. You sympathize with the youth and reach out in an attempt to comfort them but recognize the expression on the child’s face as abject terror. Realizing this, two gleaming yellow eyes appear in the reflection of the glass, your own eyes. You grow ravenous, and know that it will intensify as the witching hour creeps forward. This hunger is an all-consuming one and you know somewhere deep inside that although you must soon feed, there is no escape from the foul cravings

You are walking in familiar area when you perceive eight red, beady eyes staring out, without expression, from a shadowy corner. As you bring your face closer to inspect the sight, you feel the pull of silken spider threads that cover your body like ethereal ropes. Sensing the tension of the cords, the crouching spider lashes out, biting into your hand. The necrotizing venom surges through your veins, burning your flesh before the world goes black. The next thing you’re aware of, you and your companions are cocooned in unbreakable spider silk, suspended in darkness awaiting the inevitable. You can do nothing but watch and weep in your silken death shroud as the monstrous arachnid kills and feeds from your companions one at a time over several days until you are the last to feel the burning pain of the spider’s digestive fluids injected into your body.

You’re sitting in a tavern and on the table in front of you rests a wooden chalice etched with a horrifying visage and topped with a bone covering. As you lift the lid, a cloud of red vapor wafts upward, carrying with it the scent of blood. You drink deeply and are suddenly aware of the heartbeats of all the creatures around you. After a few moments you experience more than their pulses and can sense the illness eating away at the bartender, the drunkenness of the bum outside, and the various longings of the other patrons. The area of the effect continues to expand and as the pains and sufferings of the innocent townsfolk around you continues to intensity and intrude into your mind, you begin to feel your sanity crumble. It does not take long before there is nothing but pain and you rationalize that ending their suffering would be a good and noble act to which no sane creature could fault you for. The nightmare ends as you stand up from the table, raise your weapon and go out into the street to put the entire town out if its collective misery.

As the nightmare begins you finds yourself in the bedroom of your childhood home. There is no door to exit the room and your parents (Or parental figures) are in the room staring at you intensely. You are unable to move, speak or even blink, as your parents begin to decay. Their flesh and hair blacken, shrivel and fall to the ground in ever increasing clumps until they crumble to the ground under the weight of their instantly desiccating bones. After a horrifyingly long length of time nothing remains but piles of dust, at which point you awaken.

As the nightmare begins you find yourself in the area and position you fell asleep in but are unable to move, speak or even blink. A shadowy figure stands off to the side just out of arm’s reach. Its limbs are mismatched and the monstrous creature looks like it was sewn together from assorted parts of nightmarish monsters. You want to move to confront or flee from the sinister being but your paralysis traps you in unmoving flesh barely even able to breath. The shadow vanishes and you wake in the same spot as you were in the dream and can still feel the shadow’s malevolent presence.

As the nightmare begins, you finds yourself in absolute darkness. In the silence you can hear your own heartbeat. You begin to feel the prickling sensation of pins and needles spread slowly from your extremities towards the center of your being. As it spreads, the sensation becomes more unpleasant as it pushes past the border into acutely painful. At a certain point you feel as though you were being stabbed unendingly with thousands of white hot needles. As the excruciating pain reaches the point the where you pray for death as a release from the torture, you see a pinprick of light burst from one of your fingers, finally illuminating the eternal darkness. The blazing needles of pain are replaced by razor thin rays of light bursting from patches of skin. The scattered rays multiply exponentially and each stitch of light-burst skin’s pain is replaced by a sense of overwhelming bliss. The nightmare ends as you see rays of light burst from your own eyes and your last few moments before waking are blinding white.

As the dream begins you find yourself floating in a deep pool of dark liquid in which float hundreds of severed heads. None of them are recognizable and you’re forced to tread water to stay afloat in the literal sea of faces. You feel a strong pressure on your head that wildly overpowers you and forces you below the liquid. When you resurface, the faces have all been wiped away leaving featureless heads. You hear laughter that is not your own but feels strangely familiar and you notice that the dark liquid that covered you is fresh blood. The sanguine baptism causes a feeling of…joy.. and you swim tirelessly among the heads until you awaken.

As the dream begins, you find yourself in a graveyard with a blood-red moon hanging low in the sky. A heavy fog wafts across the ivy laden tombstones, tinted crimson by the moon above. The beads of dew left by the thick mist are like droplets of blood coating every leaf and stone. Turning your head you see a small child whose eyes and mouth have been crudely sewn shut. The child’s head tilts to the side as a flicker of recognition seems to pass over it. After a moment of consideration, the mutilated youth drops to it a crouch and burst into a dead sprint on its hands and feet directly towards you. The monster crosses the graveyard in a matter of moments and leaps as it reaches out its small hands covered in grave soil towards the dreamer, who awakes the moment before contact is made.

As the nightmare begins, you find yourself in a dark, unfamiliar forest. In the corner of your eye, you see something is following you. Turning back, you see a menacingly large wolf, standing on its hind legs. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you notice the monster’s throat has been slit cleanly. The gaping wound opens and closes noisily with it’s the creature ragged breathing. As your gaze drifts downwards, you can see a large silver dagger covered in blood, clutched in one of your hands. Your heart pounds in your chest as both you and the wounded werewolf settle into fighting stances and sprint towards each other. Both parties crash into each other and grapple for dominance. The silver dagger plunges into the wolf’s furry hide as it’s monstrous claws flay your skin straight down to the bone. You manages to sink the blade between the creature’s thick ribs and into its heart but the dream ends as the monster clamps its toothy maw onto your neck causing your life’s blood to spurt out onto the forest floor.

You awaken in a blank room, surrounded by people you trust encircling you, past them, people you know less, and less going on and on until every acquaintance, every passer-by you've ever seen is there. You smile and open your mouth, and as you do words as white text physically escape your mouth, slowly at first but soon coming out like a waterfall, every secret, every lie, every horrible thing you've ever said, coming out and encasing you win a white sphere. Everyone around helps to dig you out, tears through the false words. It takes years, taxing, tiring years, but they finally do, only to find your shriveled corpse beneath. The last thing you hear before waking is one of your closest, most trusted friends asking "Was it even worth it?"

You’re standing in front of a mirror, looking at yourself. A silver strand connects you through the mirror to your refection. Your mirrored image suddenly smiles and puts their hand on the thread. It grabs hold, tugging slightly and you feel a stabbing pain in your chest where the silver thread has pierced your skin. You tell the reflection to stop but they pull harder and the pain gets worse. You scream in agony and the thread starts to drag out of your body. You grab at the thread to stop your reflection pulling more of it out of you, but the blood coating the thread as it leaves your body makes it too slick to get a good hold. Eventually you start to get weak, collapsing to the ground, and you fumble without any strength at your chest as something big pushes against your skin from the inside. The pain reaches an explosive climax and your vision fades, the last things you see is of your reflection holding the thread, attached to a heart, dangling it above their open, grinning mouth as your blood drips down their throat.

You stand in chains in an impossibly crowded courtroom, on trial before all those who have been affected by your rampant killings and other heinous crimes throughout your life. A wife who committed suicide after you killed her husband; a bandit. A son, clinging to his mother and asking when his father will be home. A woman, weeping for the loss of her daughter. A man brought to tears by the loss of his husband. An entire village that was attacked a year after you razed a nearby goblin fort. The scattered remnants of the goblin horde desperately attacked the village for food, supplies and revenge. A countless number of people whose souls were never able to move on and became restless angry ghosts because you never perform proper burial rites of any sort after killing them. The citizens of a large city where you aided the guards route out a major crime lord and his extended illegal operation. The resulting power vacuum created generations of gangs openly fighting for territory in the streets, harming thugs and innocents alike. Countless speak of the first or secondhand emotional trauma of you and your roving party of sociopathic mercenaries drifting through their lives, doling out violence, taking whatever you wanted, using them and discarding them the moment they had nothing more to offer. They all weep and ask why you brought them such pain and why you never considered the consequences or made amends for your actions. Not a soul speaks on your behalf and the judge and bailiff seem to only exist to keep you from speaking or running away. After what seems like an eternity the last witness speaks and the judge says that you are finally allowed to speak in your own defense and present evidence that you are a good and decent soul. As your mouth opens to present your good and noble intentions or your weak excuses placing the blame on others, you wake up before uttering a single word.

Your eyes open and you see a beautiful field with rabbits, deer and other fluffy creatures frolicking in the lush grass. The sky turns a dark angry red and the ground rumbles as the fields explode into rivers of magma, dark shadowed creatures rising from the depths. The land is a dark parody of what was before and one of the creatures take notice of you. A horrific aberration of twisted flesh, steam vents from its nostrils as it rears back and releases a blood-curdling scream before charging you. You awaken just as its unnatural claws wrap their jagged edges around your throat.

Your dream is fueled with terror as you watch helplessly while your friends, allies and family are tortured and flayed, one by one, by an unseen interrogator. You are bound in a comfortable chair in silken ropes and soft supple leathers that cause not pain but are too strong to break free of. You hear their screams and pleas for you to rescue them, or as the torture goes on, for you to put them out of their mercy with a quick end. You are not gagged and curse out the invisible torturer and attempt to comfort your bloodied companions until they expire from blood loss and exhaustion. The process lasts for days to weeks, you have no way of telling time in the torturer’s windowless dungeon and you never seem to hunger, thirst or tire. It occurs to you after the second or third of your loved one’s is murdered in front of your eyes that the unseen tormentor has not asked them or you a single question. The realization that there may not be a point to the torture simply sadism for its own sake, cracks your sanity and you drift further into madness with friends flayed to death before your increasingly deranged gaze.

You find yourself in a battle for whatever cause you champion, whether it be the safety of a loved one or the annihilation of your most despised enemies. The battle is a crucial one, one you’ve prepared for months; however, every strike you make falls short, your body feels sluggish whenever you move to attack and all your spells fizzle and fail as you find yourself unable to speak. You watch helplessly as you fail to protect your loved ones from horrible fates, your empire crumbles around you, and your every last pleasant dream lies in shambles at your feet.

You go out for a night on the town with your friends. All is well and you are having a great time. Eventually the inevitable time comes when you must rest. Finally alone, the faint music and noise of the tavern behind you, you feel relaxed and at ease. Strangely relaxed, even as a hand morphs out of the wall in front of you. It gives a slow wave, so you feel like it is friendly and even wave back. Strange, when did it get a friend? Why do they keep trying to touch you? You decide to leave and try to turn away but there are more hands beside you now grabbing you. No matter how hard you try, you cannot break free, more and more of them grab at you, pulling you towards the wall. You manage to get out a loud, panicked scream as they somehow pull you to the wall itself but you are cut off as a hand covers your mouth and pulls you through the wall. You see your friends rush into the area and you bite the hand, trying to shout to them, but they cannot hear or see you from this side of the wall. You watch them search for you fruitlessly until you are pulled screaming further into darkness.

You dream that you wake up normally and begin going about your daily routine, however as soon as you speak for the first time, you are interrupted mid-sentence by biting your own tongue. You try to curse the pain away only to spit blood and teeth from your mouth. Frantically you scramble to grab them with one hand while trying to stop the flow of blood from your mouth with the other. You can feel more of your teeth falling from your gums into the sea of blood filling your mouth. Strangely, the person you were talking to does not seem shocked by this and continues on normally. You try to shout to them for help, hell, for anything, even a bowl to catch the pieces of you falling off, but only succeed in spraying them with a mouthful of blood and your remaining teeth. They still seem unphased, even as you raise your hands to your mouth in surprise to feel it, only to have your lower jaw slough off. Panicking you reach for them, only to find that your limbs crumple at the joints as you try to move them. Your entire body slowly crumpled as bits break or fall off until you are nothing more than a blob of mangled human parts in disarray, staring up at your friend as breathing becomes harder and harder to do. You wake up just after you black out.

The weight of a cask of ale presses down upon your back as you return to your home village from the city. Birds sing as they fly through the sky's bright, cloudless blue. You set down the cask for a rest and begin to play a joyful tune on your ukulele. Gray clouds begin rise over the horizon but they don't look quite normal. After some thought you realize that it is smoke coming up from the only place you've ever known. The birds go silent as you leave the cask behind and start running. The cries of your people blend with screams of the invaders before echoing across the landscape. Praying to all of the gods, you continue only to run face to face with a strange person clad in dark armor and wielding a shining sword. Past them you can see your parents on the ground crying over the body of your sibling. Your childhood friend sees you and shouts to run while you can. The attacker grabs you and kicks you to the ground. Another one approaches and begins to mock you. You wish you could do something to stop this. You would willing surrender your life to end the suffering of your people. But that chance never comes, a sword pierces through your heart and you fall to the ground. The last sounds you hear are the cries of your parents and the angry shouts of your friend. Your vision fills with red before fading to black.

The bustling crowds push past you as you walk to your favorite bar. Once you arrive at your normal seat an unfamiliar dwarf comes up to you and sits down. "I have an opportunity for you." Intrigued you start paying very close attention. The dwarf pulls out a rune covered deck of cards, "How many do you want." After some questioning they explain that the cards are items of great power. You agree to take three cards and pull out the first one. On the first card a bright, golden, almost glowing orb appears. Years of experience flood through your mind while a belt wraps itself around you causing strength to surge through your body. Extremely satisfied with the outcome you pull out one more. On this card the image of a golden key glows before a powerful magic sword appears in your grasp. You can sense the sword would strip away the soul of anyone unfortunate enough to be killed by it. The third card has a cloaked figure on it and no apparent effect occurs. You try to thank the dwarf but find they have already left. After celebrating by getting thoroughly drunk you return to your home and pass out almost as soon as you enter. You awake to find your spouse standing over you and bring down your new sword on your throat. The air escapes your lungs and you hear nothing from them before your vision fades to dark and you are subjected to the unusual agony of your soul being ripped from your body and shredded on the weapon’s impossibly sharp blade.

You are sitting in a small sidewalk cafe in the open market, your body feels heavy and you are unable to stand. Waiters and then passers-by stop one after the other in front of you placing plates full of offal on your table. Disgust colors their faces as they take the plate away empty. You don’t remember eating but feel fuller and fuller with each departing plate. The crowds begin cutting of their own body parts to set on your table only to react in fear and loathing as empty plates are taken away. If you ever try to actually consume what is in front of you, you look down and see your own half eaten body and a thick coating of dried and fresh blood covering your hands before screaming yourself awake.

You are a gentle shepherd, tending to your flock of sheep. You feel relaxed as you count them jumping over a fence, one by one. After a few minutes the slow pace of the leaping increases steadily until the line of sheep coming over the fence or more akin to an avalanche of white wool. The animals swarm around you, and there is no escape from the torment of their inhuman bleating as they stare at you with their alien eyes. The sound is unbearable and the heat from the friction and pressure of thousands of sheep complete surrounding you builds and you scream in frustration, spooking the herd. The resulting stampede tramples you to death in a manner that is as painful as it is ridiculous.

You are traveling down a simple dirt road by yourself. The path begins to wrap around and suddenly you realize you're traveling in a circle you can't escape from. Nowhere to go but forward, you continue on and up ahead in the distance you see another traveler going in the same direction. As you catch up to them you notice that the person seems strangely familiar, although you are too far back to place them. As you get close enough, you see it is yourself, only horribly disfigured. There's a gaping wound in your chest and your face horribly scarred. This future version of you gasping for air says "Don't trust them..." and falls over dead. You hear a noise on the path behind you and turn swiftly only to awake suddenly before seeing whatever was sneaking up on you.

You are reliving the important parts of your life; the loss of your family, your hard upbringing, your first foray into adventuring, your first successfully cast spell or the first time you held a magical weapon, the first time you killed, or the times that you nearly died. Reexperiencing these character defining moments of your life you feel as though you personally had no choices in the matter and that oftentimes you charged into danger, murdering and looting with sociopathic abandon. Feeling that the choices made were not your own you look around in the midst of another memory to find that towering over you are a number of oddly dressed giants sitting behind enormous books, numerous dice and loose sheets of paper. One of the giants speaks and your body, mind and soul is compelled to follow the being’s commands regardless of how much you try to fight against. Unable to move your mouth of your own will, you scream internally at the revelation that you are nothing more than a puppet dancing to the tune of laughing, godlike beings who decide your fate with a casual toss of dice.

The dark takes your dreams, sleep brings calm, brings peace, brings rest. There’s a soft hum that seems to radiate around you. A welcoming softness. A light, not quite white, not quite dark, it’s a grayish, strangely familiar light. You feel it pull you forward, through stars. The distant night sky. You see beacons of light coast by. You see a dark sphere before you. Then there’s a flash of light, and you’re standing there and you’re holding the object in your hand which you keep. It’s welcoming. You look into it for a moment, and look ahead, and you see yourself. And you see another self and another. And a fourth you, fifth and an endless row of yous, all distinctly unique. All begin walking in different directions at once. You look down at the object and back up again and they’re all gone. You see a distant flame flicker and you feel yourself hypnotized by its movement. You look down again at it, and there’s something wonderful and ancient about this thing. You can’t grasp it, its scale is both too large and too small, too wide and too narrow all paradoxically at once. The more your mind tries to make sense of it, the more you feel yourself walking in an infinite amount of different directions at once. All those versions of yourself you saw before are all within you and they’re all pulling at different sides tearing your mind into scraps of memory and personality. The intense dissociation scares you for a moment but once again you focus back on this object and the warmth is comforting. You look up again at the stars; they’ve stopped passing by. They’re held in place. Looking down at the object under the light of the stars shows it for what it truly is. In your hands you hold your favored weapon covered with dried and fresh blood. Looking out you see that each and every one of the infinite versions of yourself are markedly different; strong, weak, whole, noble, peasant, damaged, mages, fighters, thieves but in all of their hands, the righteous and the wicked alike, every single one holds a bloodied weapon in their hands. In all of the infinite multiverse of endless, uncountable possibilities there is no world where you are not a killer. Not one where the blood of others never stains your hands and fuels your inner desire for sociopathic adventure and wanton destruction. You and your infinite selves close your endless eyes and for the first time in a long time, you feel at peace knowing who you truly are.

You’re wandering alone in a forest. It’s dark and cold but there’s no snow, just a bitter frost that clings to everything. You can feel the numbness in your fingertips slowly spread up your hands and arms. You vaguely understand that you won’t last long, and that you will die if you don’t find shelter from the cold. Up ahead you see a light, maybe an inn? Just a small cottage? At this point anything will do. You try to walk towards it, but you can’t control your shivering and you collapse on the forest floor. You can’t move your fingers, but you can claw your way forward, inch by inch. Finally, you’re at the edge of the clearing, but you’ve used the last of your strength. The cold binds your screams in your throat and your body shakes uncontrollably. Eventually even that ceases, and all you can do is watch the people through the windows as the frost covers your eyes. As you struggle to hang on to your last breath, knowing that once you breathe out no more air will enter your lungs, you wake and realize your chest hurts from holding your breath.

You are going about a daily routine when you begin to have trouble focusing on your surroundings and the task at hand. You were supposed to be doing something or going somewhere...what was it? You grasp your situation for a second but then it slips away again. The people around you suddenly seem unfamiliar, and you don't know where you are. You realize with a shock that you can't remember who YOU are. The distinction between your sense of self and your environment is starting to unravel. Your body collapses onto the ground, but you don't really feel it because it doesn't seem to be your body anymore. You are now in the world like a drop of water falling into an ocean. You are one with the universe, which feels impossibly vast but also completely contained within a single tiny atom. You are nothing and everything at the same time. You awaken slowly after what seems like an eternity of being an infinite universe and feel wildly claustrophobic in your own skin and bound by your own fleshy senses.

During your travels you come across a small chapel and enter for prayer and rest. The interior is well lit from the bright sun pouring through the stained glass windows. The sanctuary is beautiful and obviously well cared for despite the lack of a priest or attendant anywhere to be found. A quick glance around reveals a small door built into the ground covered with dust and notably shabby compared to every other square inch of the building. Filled with curiosity you pull open the door, revealing a ladder downward. Climbing down the rungs you find yourself in the an nearly identical chapel than the one you were just in, except that it is dingy and grimy where the last was clean and polished. This version of the chapel is just as void of anyone to speak to as the last and you find an identical trapdoor as the one above, also leading downwards. You continue to descend through dozens of similar chapels, each more decrepit and desolate that the one before. The light from the windows fades and in some the glass is broken or missing completely, layers of dust accumulate in some places inches thick as if no one had entered here in hundreds of years. With each battered incarnation of the building a feeling of being watched grows inside of you. Eventually you find that the front doors have be reinforced from the inside and that the small windows have been boarded up and seem heavily damaged. Descending even further you sees monstrous eyes looking into the chapel through the broken boards in the former windows than are now arrow slits. As the alien eyes focus on you with ravenous hunger you are startled by the sound of banging from the familiar trapdoor. You hear a muffled voice scream that the beast are inside and that you must open the door and help. You begin to open the door but stop suddenly as you recognize the terrified voice as your own. The walls shake with the meaty thumps of the monsters throwing themselves at the chapel's narrow openings and you flee attempting to go back up the ladder to the previous level to find it locked. One of the damaged arrow slits collapses inwards and a nightmarish aberration slithers into the chapel's sanctuary unconcerned of its desecration of the holy ground. You scream at the trapdoor that the beasts are inside and that you need help and you hear rustling above as the door's latch starts to creak open before the sounds stops and the person above flees. You gaze down at the parade of fiends who enter the chapel, breaking and defiling every stone and you wake just as they pull down the walls atop your head, collapsing the foundation of the countless chapel's above.

You carrying out your day to day goings on, when you come across the most wondrous and attractive person you’ve ever met. You decide to make a life with them and the two of you grow old together. Your lover is kind and giving, buying you presents, baking you cakes and massaging your feet after a long day. On your deathbed your lover is at your side, caring for you even in the twilight years. As you lay dying peaceful and comforted, your lover whispers into your ear “I’ve actually been two smaller people in a trenchcoat this entire time.” You wake up confused and with a strange interest in your future lovers wearing trenchcoats during intimate occasions.

As darkness takes your mind, dreamless like most, you await the emptiness of sleep to carry you to the day. Your sense of body fades, but your mind and the dark linger. Minutes, hours, days. Time loses real sense and meaning, but you’re conscious for it and its nearly maddening, in that split second or endless stretch of experience that you’re currently unable to express. As the time passes, the air grows colder around you. The faint shimmer of shifting midnight blue, muted and distant, now showing endless depth before you, rippling. You begin to flail about, your senses returning with the dropping temperature, but there is resistance to your limbs as you push in the space around you. You’re sluggish. There’s force. It’s not air, it’s water. You suddenly feel the burning pain in your lungs as your breath fights to escape you but you hold tight. You seize and swim in desperation, choosing any direction but the shimmering blue is directionless. There is no up, there is no down. There is only depth and movement. The universal shadows dance as one, right to left. With a speed that pulls you along with the current, you feel yourself being jostled. As it shifts again to the left to right, around behind you, you find yourself toppling, head over end, eventually coming to rest again. You spiral over and over again, the darkness swallowing you, tightening around you as this dance, this shape, this endless coil, this spiral around you. As the current tugs at you, battering you, you cannot fight any more as the increased power of the current pulls on your form. You cough, and the freezing waters rush into your body, the briny taste of salt water stinging your insides. Your wincing eyes open with the pain that clutches the interior of your chest, only to see a gargantuan mass moving through the water around you, like a massive noose closing in. The pain in your chest vanishes. As your breathing normalizes (Thicker than air, but breathable all the same) it feels strange yet weirdly familiar. In that moment, yellow light bursts before you in the shape of an enormous yellow eye. An impossibly low tone rumbles through the waters around you, shaking you to your core, like an organic war horn the size of a canyon. The eye narrows as the tone grows stronger. A thought enters your mind, a jumble of emotions that your brain attempts to make sense of until a word congeals into the center of your consciousness: “Watching.” The eye just looks at you, waiting expectantly. As you beg for mercy, threaten violence or babble incoherently, more words penetrate your mind “Learn. Grow. Provoke. Consume.” Before you can ask questions, the eye closes, and the light is gone. You feel the darkness and the cold completely suffuse your entire world as the panic and solitude, the true quiet of your unconsciousness, begins to take hold. At that moment, you gasp for breath, and your eyes open, coughing and sputtering in the morning air.

You find yourself at a gathering of all those you admire. Great heroes, beautiful lovers, and influential figures. Some are from your lifetime while others are heroes or legends from ages long since passed who have traveled across time to see you specifically. They're all looking at you with respect and admiration, waiting in great anticipation for you to speak. You step forward slowly and deliberately, savoring being the center of attention, taking in the sights of your personal idols gathered here in the flesh. You notice them in detail, some fanning themselves, others fidgeting with drinks, compulsively adjusting clothing and a ripple of other clearly anxious ticks. Your pride swells as you realize you are inspiring such nervousness in a gathering of famous figures and you approach a podium and ready yourself to address the crowd. You open your mouth to speak, but you feel your teeth begin to fall out. As each one clinks to the stone floor, you can feel their sudden and utter disgust roll over you. You attempt to soldier through your speech but your gathering of personal heroes jeer, hiss and boo at your misery. Their insults become personal, cruelly mocking your few “accomplishments” as petty and amateurish. The last of your teeth falls out and a steady stream of blood pours from each hole. The taste of your blood filling your mouth and running down your throat faster that you can spit it out makes you violently sick and you wake up gagging.

You are in the city of Baghdad, wandering through the marketplace buying provisions for your next journey. As you step out of the way of a horse and carriage you bump into a women dressed in long flowing robes with her hood pulled low. You begin to apologize for jostling her, you freeze mid-sentence as her hood raised up slightly and you recognize her as Death. The incarnation of mortality makes a threatening gesture towards you and you flee as quickly as you are able, away from the grim specter. You buy the first horse you see and ride it nearly to death, escaping to the town of Samarra, dozens of miles away where you believe Death will not find you. Taking a rest you visit Samarra's marketplace still needing to resupply. At the third stall you come face to face with the robed woman you recognize as Death. Your hopes dashed, you ask Death why she made a threatening gesture towards you before. Death replies that is was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. Death was astonished to see you in Baghdad, for she has an appointment with you tonight in Samarra...

It's hot. Humid. You're holding an unfamiliar crossbow-like weapon. You lie motionless in a row of bushes along the edge of a flooded grain field. Dragonfly-shaped airships circle overhead with a powerful thumping sound, and begin to debark men clad in green. With a stuttering roar, some kind of automated wand sprays red magic missiles into the green-clad men from somewhere on your left. Their crossbow-like weapons glow with flickering star-shaped flame as they respond. You hear your friends and allies scream in great pain and you raise your weapon and pull its strange trigger. Your fire-crossbow launches a hail of metal towards the invaders and the shock waves of the recoils, pains your arm and shoulder. Your enemies are alerted to your incredibly loud weapon and you feel heat and pressure over a dozen places along your body before you fall face first into the water of the flooded field. You wake with a start, wondering what that even was.

You are in complete agony, far and away the most extreme pain you have ever experienced. You place your hand over the source of the pain and pulling it away from your mouth you see your entire palm coated in fresh blood. Your mouth continues to drip blood down the sides of your face. Unable to stem the tide, you run to the nearby commoners walking among the streets begging for help except nothing you say makes sense. The words appear to be gurgled by the amount of blood. They look at you strangely and push you away as you bleed on their clothing. Looking into a mirror placed in front of a store, you use your hands to spread your mouth open and realize that your tongue has been crudely extracted. The amount of blood begins to overtake you and you begin to choke. It is at that moment you wake up with a burning sensation in the back of your throat. You were choking on saliva in your sleep.

You are wandering aimlessly in a beautiful garden filled with blooming flowers being pollinated by fat buzzing bumblebees. You come across a hedge maze and spend a few hours walking through its twists and turns in the light of a gorgeous day with a gentle breeze blowing fresh clean air over the tops of the bushes. You find a peaceful grove at the center of the maze with comfortable wooden benches and a pond of clear spring water. At the center of the grove stands a magnificent tree, spreading its full branches to provide shade and respite from the heat of the midafternoon. Hanging beside the glossy green leaves are luscious fist sized fruits of a species you’ve never encountered before in your life. They smell fresh and sweet and telling yourself that nothing in this charming garden could ever be harmful, you pluck one of the ripe fruits and eat from it. When bitten into, it fills your mouth with acrid blood. Inside the fruit is a fetal body of a monster, that twitches, mewls and wriggles its underdeveloped sticky pink appendages before dying and emitting a horrific stench. Horrified you stare in shocked silence for a moment before throwing the abomination into the pond. The water turns grey then black and red as dead rise float to the surface and the grass around the pong shrivels and dies. The dozens of others “fruits” on the tree begin to shake and make struggling crying sounds like newborns first gasping for air. The grey wave of death continues to spread outwards from the now fetid pond and you sink to your knees with the knowledge that not only have you tainted the pristine glade but you will never be able to rid the sight of it from your mind. Though you only had a moment of time before throwing the fruit, you know that you saw only half of a monster in the uneaten half and that in the shock of hurling the fruit and hyperventilating out of fear, you swallowed the portion you bit into. The whispering knowledge that fruit is simply a plant’s reproductive system slithers through your mind. That a ripe luscious fresh smelling fruit is simply an edible lure designed to house the seeds of the plant in order for it to propagate. You gaze down at your belly and you can see unnatural surges from it, like the fetal kicks of a heavily pregnant mother and you hear from your abdomen the same struggling, strangled cries that are emanating from the unplucked fruits. Bringing up your fingers to make yourself vomit up the profane seed, you double over in pain as your stomach feels as though you had swallowed a mouthful of broken glass. The last memory you have of the nightmare is a fleshy tearing sound coming from your torso before hearing the bawling sounds of a newborn.

You come to your senses slowly, the air is stale and you feel cramped and sore as if you’ve been resting in one place for too long a time. You move to stretch but immediately feel wooden confines surround you on all sides. Lying flat on your back on a bed of satin, you see in the pale light that you seem to be dressed in your best clothes. Cold, stomach dropping shock fills your veins as you are faced with the reality that you have been buried alive. Filled with rage, terror or simply a desire to live at all costs, you scream and yell at the top of your lungs as you scratch your nails bloody and ragged against the inside of the coffin’s lid. Faintly with you see that although the clawed gouges in the wood are deep, the lid is far too thick to break through without a miracle. Cursing yourself for a fool you realize that you shouldn’t be able to see at all while buried and wonder how there is any light in this coffin. From near your feet a faint beam of dim white light and as you inhale deeply to help assuage your nerves, you take the scent of freshly turned earth and cut grass. Fortunately for you the graveyard has followed the ancient practice of leaving a breathing vent to the surface just in case you were buried prematurely. Unfortunately they seem to have buried you the wrong way, the vent is at your feet rather than head. Remembering a key detail of burial practices you know that there should be a cord within reach of the bottom of the vent that attaches to a bell at the top. Pulling the cord will ring the bell, alerting the gravekeeper that you are alive and need to be rescued. Desperately you shrug off the footwear you were interred with and use your bare feet to search for the cord and upon finding it, pull the cord with your toes. The sharp clear ringing of the bell carries down the six feet of earthen tube down to your coffin and is the sweetest sound you have ever heard. You hear movement above and feel the thumping and pounding of shovels above you, frantically digging you out. You yell out encouragement and thanks offering great rewards to those who rescue you but you hear no words in return, only digging. After only a few minutes of frantic digging your rescuer has somehow began thumping on the outer shell of your coffin. Blackness covers the tube and you feel movement along your bare feet, chilled, wet and unpleasant but a better feeling than dying of thirst in your own grave. Clawing, thumping sounds come from all areas of the top of your coffin and pale moonlight breaks through the wood in a dozen different places at once. The holes are empty for a brief moment before they begin to smash open as black tentacles begin to writhe themselves inwards slowly filling the coffin with their cold, slimy touch. Your scream in horror as the unnatural appendages sap the heat from your skin and warp around your arms and legs pinning you down. The last thing you feel is a thin, slick tendril tickle the side of your face before wriggling up to your ear and in one motion plunge straight through your skull and coming out the other side.

You are putting on your coat in anticipation of leaving your house. You feel you like are forgetting something midway out the door and chuckling to yourself you turn back to grab your hat. The hat stand is strangely empty. You feel empty. Utterly empty. Hatless, you walk to work taking your usual route. Everyone you pass has a hat and is silently screaming, their eyes filled with agony and despair. You enter your work and pass your associates, all wordlessly screaming as they go about their daily tasks. You reach your workstation. There's your hat. A standard hat, well-made but fairly unremarkable. Nothing sinister about it at all that you can remember. The wooden on which the hat rests is cracked and etched as if acid had been oozing from the hat for hours. Your emptiness is being replaced by fear. By Dread. Horror. Unable to stop yourself you reach for the hat...

You awaken on a wooden slab when some cool, heavy liquid cascades onto you. It's hard to move or see, burning your eyes when you open them, but you can vaguely make out a gargantuan humanoid looming above you and skewers your chest and chops of your arm. You attempt to scream, the salty sweet liquid fills your mouth and drowns out your calls. The creatures picks up your severed arm and tosses it in its mouth, full feeling remaining as it masticates and swallows. As it drops in its stomach you are fully and agonizingly aware of the broken bones now being dissolved by the hot acid, and the serrated knife coming down for a second cut…

You awake to find yourself standing on something solid but looking down shows you nothing but air separating you from a long fall to the ground below. The world is bathed in twilight, the afterglow of a sunset that seems to never fade. You see the twinkling of lanterns and torches in some scattered villages far, far below you. Looking up, you see a gargantuan eye, floating in the void. The eye's gaze roves about the sky, focusing on clusters of stars twinkling in the distance. As the eye settles on each cluster in turn, you see them suddenly winking out. The sky darkens to unending black, an endless void that weighs upon your soul. They eye turns, focusing on you, the only thing separating it from the twinkling lights on the ground far below you. The void screams in your head, then everything goes silent. Everything is black and never will the light shine again…

You heeded the ancient warnings when the fog came to your town. You gathered together with all of your friends and neighbors every day to count your numbers and ensure everyone was safe. You were so proud after a week with no one taken. How proud after a month with each and every one accounted for. It was only when the fog cleared that you looked out at your once proud town and saw too many empty homes. It was only then that you began to realize the fog had not spared a single soul. You had simply forgotten the ones it took.

There are no fish in Mirror Lake. They all died and washed up on its shores. The people in town don't believe you but you saw them flood the beach. Their bodies were rounded up and eaten by the creatures in the woods. The few bones that are left are buried in the sand, but no one will come see them. The fishermen lost interest in the lake long ago. No one comes to Mirror Lake. No one except you lonely few who live on its edge. The others that live on its edge say the fish are still alive. But you know the truth. There are no fish in Mirror Lake. There is no life in Mirror Lake. Every ounce of living flesh tried to escape; the fish and the toads, the bottom dwellers and the reptilian. Everything that has tried to survive in Mirror Lake has failed. Now all that stays are the cold dead plants and the rotting bodies of the deceased. If you speak to the others around the lake they will tell you the lake is filled with life. They say the fish and toads are all around, and the bottom dwellers and the reptilian are only hiding. But you know the truth. There is no life in Mirror Lake. There are no waves on Mirror Lake. Its waters stay still through violent winds and pouring rain. A pebble can serve no ripple on its surface. A boulder would only sink calmly into its murky depths. The people believe that its surface moves. The others on its edge say it moves more than ever. But you have watched the water and you know the truth. There are no waves on Mirror Lake. There are no reflections on Mirror Lake. There is only the opaque pitch on its surface. Your image will not show on Mirror Lake if you look from above. The many trees and few houses are not displayed on its still water. The people in the town do not dare look into the murky water in Mirror Lake. The others that live on its edge say that they see the reflections on its surface fine. But you have stared into Mirror Lake for hours, and you know the truth. There are no reflections on Mirror Lake. Mirror Lake is dead. Its water is deep and unmoving. Its life is all dried up. There is nothing left on Mirror Lake. But you still do not dare look out my window at night. For you might see something that stirs its waters. You do not wish to see the thing that moves in Mirror Lake. Because you know there are no fish in Mirror Lake.

You and your two companions in the carriage were silent as you rode past the blank “Welcome To” sign and into the town with no name. The people all watched you with the same slack expression, their heads tilted at identical angles as if listening to a single far-off sound. For a moment, you heard it too. For a moment, the people in the carriage seemed like strangers and you couldn’t remember who you were or where you were going but then you passed the last house and it came back. You were all old friends. All travelling together. All Safe. All four of you.

You continuing along your day to day goings on when you come across the most wondrous and attractive person you’ve ever met. From the moment the lock eyes with the person it is love at first sight and you know that no matter what happens you want to spend the rest of your life with this person. Together you go on quests and brave the challenges of adventure and romance together as lovers and best friends. Wildly successful at both, the pair of you cement your relationship as true life partners in a ceremony of your choosing surrounded by all of your friends and family. The spoils of your adventuring lead to an early retirement and a shared life of pursuing passion projects, traveling, raising children, learning new skills and anything that sparks joy in you and your partner’s life. Each day you inspire each other to be better and to learn and grow and have fun and novel experiences. The obstacles in your life serve as life lessons, interesting encounters and puzzles that can be solved and they keep your life from being boring and monotonous without causing you undue stress harm or loss. As you grow older together, you and your soul mate plan for the biggest obstacle and milestone the two of you have faced. You strategize and communicate together like a well oil machine, each of you able to support the other’s flaw with your own strength and magnifying each other’s potential plans into strokes of pure genius. The night before the big event, you lay sleeping in each other’s arms, in a position of absolute trust and unconditional love. No words need to be said, you are both ready for anything that comes your way. As long as you are both together, no forces in the universe can stop the pair of you working as one. You gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes as you drift off to sleep. You wake up from the dream cold and alone, stiff from the uncomfortable surface you were forced to sleep on. You look around confused and realize in slowly growing horror that the idyllic life with the soul mate that you spent decades living in harmony with was no more than a dream. You remember every picturesque detail and feel an unspeakable loss knowing that you will never be able to hold your lover again, hear their voice or see their smile. As all dreams do the memories begin to fade the longer that you’re aware but the knowledge that you will never experience love and happiness like the life you just woke up from haunts you deeply. You are left knowing that deep inside, in your heart of hearts, that any future relationships you will have will be a pale imitation to the vague memories of the perfect soul mate that you left behind in the dreaming world.

You awake at home with huge, insect like creatures looming over your bed and scream your lungs out. They hastily leave the room and you stay up all night, shaking and wondering if it had been a bad dream. The next morning, there is a tap at your bedroom door. Gathering your courage, you open it to see one of them gently placing a plate filled with fried breakfast on the floor, then retreating to a safe distance. Bewildered, you accept the gift. The creature chitters excitedly. This happens every day for a few weeks. At first you are worried that they are fattening you up but after a particularly greasy breakfast that leaves you clutching your chest from heartburn, they were replaced by fresh fruit. As well as cooking, they pour hot steamy baths for you and even tuck you in when you go to bed. It is bizarre to say the least but you quickly grow fond of these strange creatures. One night you awake to the sounds of crossbow fire, combat and screaming. You race out of bed to find a decapitated burglar being devoured by the insects. You’re sickened but you dispose of the remains as best you can. You know that they had just been trying to protect you. One morning the creature won’t let you leave your room. You lay down confused but trusting as they usher you back into best. Whatever their motives, they aren’t going to hurt you. Hours later a burning pain spreads throughout your body. It feels like your stomach is filled with ground glass and razor wire. The insects chitter as you spasm and moan. It is only when you feel a terrible squirming feeling beneath your skin that you realize the insects haven’t been protecting you. They had been protecting their young.

You have arrived in Hell. You can’t quite remember how you died or what specifically you did to deserve punishment, but nonetheless you are here. The legends and myths aren’t true in most respects, Hell is not ostentatious or grand filled to the brim the pitchfork wielding demons. Hell is a room with two doors. The first shuts behind you as you step inside. It locks into the frame, never to open again. The second door stands at the opposite wall, a solid implacable barrier, its purpose utterly inscrutable. As soon as both doors are closed, your torment commences. The room houses a single unique punishment, dealt out at the deft sadistic hands of your custodian. You scream, you cry, and you watch your wounds heal just enough to keep the pain fresh, there is nothing you want more than escape. Once you have endured 24 hours of punishment, you are generously permitted a day off. The second door will swing open, revealing a bare, soft lit room. Any time you wish you can pick yourself up and shuffle, unimpeded, through the doorway into the grey stone room. The space is featureless except, as always, for two doors. As the door shuts behind you, your wounds will heal, your pain will subside and for 24 hours, nothing will happen. There are no special comforts, but in the quiet absence of ceaseless torment you drink every second like ambrosia. Hell is never without a catch however. When your time is up, when the second door opens and you are pulled inside, you will be in a new room, with a new tormentor and, importantly, your new punishment will be noticeably worse. It may take you a while to notice the pattern. You may notice immediately but just can’t take the pain. You may dash through the door as soon as it opens, eager for a day of peace. If you do so you’ll have it the worst. You’ll descend quickly beyond realms of imaginable suffering, and your yearning for release will only make those 24 hours more inadequate. You’ll start to think of their earlier punishments almost fondly, lamenting that you ever set foot in the grey room but unable to stop. But the real trick is played on you should you learn restraint. If you realize the bone rending torment you’re undergoing is better than anything beyond the grey room. Your heart breaks a thousand times, every moment you decide not to step into that next room. Your soul shatters the moment you decide they're going to stay in that room forever. Your Hell is a room with two doors. The first shuts behind you as you step inside. It locks into the frame, never to open again. The second door stands at the opposite wall, open and waiting. Reminding you with every agonizing second, that this is a Hell you chose.

The person that you treasure the most in your life, your heart and soul, your dearest love dies as a result of your actions. Something that you could have prevented. Something you should have prevented. Something that you can undo. For 30 years you have brought the body of your loved one to the churchyard on new-moon nights to attempt the ritual. For 30 years they did not stir. It wasn’t until the men with picks and shovels came to dig up the groaning earth that you realized the ritual had worked every single time. Just never on the corpse that mattered to you. Never on your mistake.

When the world fell, the last thing your mother told you was “Follow the tracks.” You walked through dead cities and empty towns, “Follow the tracks.” Past trees of hanged men and campsites strewn with corpses. “Follow the tracks.” You killed and bled and stitched yourself up more times that you could count before you realized that your mother never knew where the tracks led. But she knew that hell is easier to walk through when you pick a direction. Doomed you follow the tracks for years until your body gives out and your feet refuse to take another step. Falling forward, the last thing you see before waking up are the tracks leading out to the apocalyptic horizon.

You dream of the world after when end. Flashes of civilization collapsing and order dissolving race through your mind without explanation or reason. All that matters is the next meal. When the granaries were emptied and the root cellars picked bare you started hunting in the ruins. When the deer and rabbits died out you ate raccoon. Then pigeons. Then rats. When the rats went, you looked at each other, at your wet, red knives, and knew: Food is anything you are hungry enough to eat. You survive years after the extinction of the last rat, becoming a meal to someone finally hungrier than you.

Eight young friends in rows of two, knife scarred oak between, a table set with love and care, a host remains unseen. Though plates are full, they’ll wait to eat, for manners must be shown, The Kindly Man prepared a treat to Seven it’s unknown. A host appears! A Kindly Man! His smile lights the room! Seven grins reflect his face but One still hangs in gloom. A Kindly Man with bell like voice addresses One of Eight “Come dear friend, you may not leave until you’ve cleaned your plate” One of Eight now rises, “You are no friend of mine. For though they have forgotten, we came to you as nine”

You are going about routine, day-to-day activities in a busy marketplace when out of the corner of your eye you see the flesh begin sloughing from the bones of a creature that seemed perfectly ordinary. Its face contorts in pain as clusters of pale white worms burst forth, leaving only a pile of emaciated bones, rotten organs and half eaten skin. Perhaps more concerning than the sudden death and decay is that no one else in the marketplace seems to have noticed or cared about the event. In fact other creatures are stepping directly into the corpse making sickly squelching sounds of popping worms and wet crunching sounds of diseased bones shattering underfoot. Each footstep made into the corpse’s remains launches a small angry cloud of buzzing black flies that disperse into the crowd hunting for a victim. You see clouds swarm the heads of their prey and force their way into the victim’s face through their ears, eyes mouth and nose until every fly has penetrated their new host. The unfortunate being stands still for a moment shaken but seemingly unharmed and takes half a step forward before their flesh begins to slough from their bones. You watch helplessly as this process repeats itself dozens of times until the marketplace is ankle deep in worms, bones and viscera and you are the final victim of the inescapable clouds of black flies. You wake suddenly, midway through the agonizing nerve tearing feeling of your skin ceasing to remain on your bones and falling to the ground in bloody clumps.

#d&d #dnd #d&d 3.5 #d&d 4e #d&d 5e #d&d homebrew #d&d 5e homebrew #pathfinder #roleplaying #rpg #dungeons and dragons #dungeon master #dm #d&d ideas #d&d resources #tabletop homebrew

318 notes · View notes

wispandwhispers · 4 years

Text

moonboy

Pairings: Prinxiety, Logicality, qpr dukeceit

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Tw(s): Cursing, torture, blood, slightly unsympathetic remy for a bit, implied unrequited love, crying.

Words: 4412

Notes: This is so late I’m so sorry. I don’t wanna write for the next week. Christ.

The moment Roman pulled away, Virgil slapped him across the face.

"Why did you do that?" Lunapuer's query came out in staggered breaths, the type filled by adrenaline. He backed away from the other slowly. "Why. Did. You. Do. That?"

Shit. Should of asked for consent first.

"I don't know really, I thought that It would be romantic?"

The emo has started to pace around the room, "This doesn't make sense. You hate me. You despise the fact I breathe, you design a personalised ring of Dante's inferno to try and drive me to my tipping point." He whipped his head to face Roman, eyes voids of chaotic madness, of stars and nebulas and galaxies and everything beyond. The couch, coffee table and various other furniture had begun to slowly rise into the air, shaking with the distress that the boy must feel and almost primed to obliterate whatever was causing Virgil distress.

If I touched one of those floaty things, would get the galaxy on me?

"Why the fuck would you kiss me?" The tension wasn't thick, it was more sluggish. Harder to move through, harder to navigate and so much harder to leave. Roman was starting to feel ..disturbed ..by this and maybe he was starting to realise that Lunaper was..not normal.

Wait Lunapuer. Luna Puer. Moon Child. What?

"What..are you?"

A long lingering glare.

"I think it would be time for you to stare into my -"

The sound of a metal knocker hitting wood to the tune of One Jump Ahead interrupted the emo's train of thought.

Virgil eyes died down, putting his planned smiting on hold. He walked over to the source of the knocking and opened the front door to be met with a kid who couldn't be just anything more than a year older than him. And he wasn't being Xia's older brother.

Recognising him, Roman got off the floor and ran up to him, wrapping him in a hug. The boy hugged him back.

"Thomas, you know I love you but why exactly are you here?"

"I'll answer that when you tell me who you brought home. And why the couch is floating. But first the boy?"

Xia gave the emo a shaky grin, trying to mentally concoct a sentence that wouldn't immediately get him killed.

"Umm, Thomas this is Virgil, Virgil this is Thomas."

Despite Virgil only putting his hand out for a hand sake, Xia's cup his face and stare into his eyes.

"How 'bout on the beach...."

"On the beach for what?"

"For the wedd...," He noticed Roman's 'Not now' hand signal "..ling. Yeah for Wedling."

Thomas ignored the emo's confused facial expression.

"Anyway, Dad wants me to babysit you."

"What the fuck, I'm sixteen, I don't need supervision. I'm practically an adult."

(Thomas crouched down slightly so he was on Roman's eye level. "You and me both know that we barely have the cooking skills to cook a cup of ramen.")

("Ha, I'm calling you Ramen now, you don't have a choice.")

Thomas stood back up.

"That's what I said, but Remus' is going to need a fucking good lawyer for him to have a chance to see the light of day again."

"That bad? God.."

While the family was trying to figure out what they were going to do, Virgil put back on his jacket.

"Not to interrupt this lovely familial bonding moment but Remus isn't going to need a lawyer."

Thomas looked over to Virgil in shock.

"Oh yeah, Virgil, meet my elder brother Thomas and Thomas meet my ex- arch nemesis, who recently tried to kill/brainwash me, Virgil."

****

"It's my car, why can't I drive?"

Lunaper opened the clicked it open with his key.

"Without me, you won't be able to find Remy , ergo you won't be able to prove your brother's innocence . Also you've put me in a bad mood, so if you don't want me to finish what I started in the living room, I suggest you shut up."

During the emo's rant, the car had proceeded to float about a foot of the ground and the lifter's eyes seemed to be smoking with cosmos.

("I call shotgun!" Thomas ran to the front seat like a child.)

Roman, you can't get yourself killed, you haven't married him.

Xia climbed into the backseat.

"Fine but be gentle with it."

("I'll be gentle until I have to be rough with it.")

("What?")

(Virgil didn't respond.)

******

(Roman and Thomas talk to each other in the back about men.)

ThomasTheDankEngine: ...you're a bottom..

I'mRoyalty: Wtf, why would you even assume that?

ThomasTheDankEngine: So I didn't walk into a scene in the room? Cause you really seem to like him at least from what I've gathered (aha, you didn't deny liking him though)

I'mRoyalty: (Yes, I am attracted to the most beautiful creation on earth, leave me alone )You were barely in the house for 5 minutes,you couldn't have gathered any 'data'

ThomasTheDankEngine: The 'data' I have collected is the visuals of your eyes undressing him, you horny bastard.

I'mRoyalty: Hey, at least I'm not a Remus level of horny

ThomasTheDankEngine : Fair enough. On a different note, you are aware that your crush isn't even hitting the gas pedal. He's just staring at the road and moving the steering wheel. I'm calling it now, he's an alien

I'mRoyalty: Tbh, I don't think he even knows what he is. And I don't really care, I just want to kiss him. And marry him. And all that other couple stuff.

******

"Um, Virgil, why are we at the Station?"

"I don't know either..."

Unbuckling his seatbelt and stepping outside into the semi cool spring air, the trio made there way over to the police station door.

"Shit, is Pa actually crying?"

"Yeah, he's not doing that well.."

Thomas turned the younger.

"Okay, lets go in before I have an attack over this."

Roman could almost see Lunapuer eyes widen in realisation of something. Roman couldn't put his finger on it.

He isn't moving..

"Hey, Virgil, aren't you coming with us?"

The emo's neck turned.

"To your parents, I'm just some random ass kid with glitchy irises. I'm not immediate family so I don't have a fucking right to be inside."

"You'll be ok though?"

"Is that even a question. I'm never ok, I promise."

*****

The squeaky floors of the centre made Roman feel uncomfortable ,like they had to always clear up...something.

(He would leave the empty gap up to his brother. It was more his forte.)

Walking pass the seemingly pissed officer (who let them move after they were patted down and had stayed their full names, they were met with the face of -

Dad spotted us, time to use those lessons from Jan now.

Their Dad ran up to them and held there faces, almost like they would fade away into nothingness the minute they let go.

"Why the flipping fuck are you here?"

Okay, Dad can curse, my life is a lie.

"Me And Thomas wanted to see Remus." Roman stopped on his elder's foot, code for 'play along'.

The parent stepped back and only know he could see his Dad's dishevelled hair that was rash and messed up that looked like the type you would have after years on end of stress despite the fact when it was neat hours ago.

"Look, I would prefer you here for moral support and all that jazz but your brother and his partner have basically secured their cell, they keep on ranting about how there was a lemon fic -whatever that means- about you and hypnotism and Remington apparently being the reason why they are in this fucking mess- DO YOU ANY IDEA WHAT THIS NONSENSE MEANS!"

I know what it means but I don't need to chucked to Picani's for a session.

Thomas seemed to get the 'we got the information we need, let's roll' signal.

"Oh, shit, I think I left the the oven running, Roman let's roll."

("I new that theatre major would come in handy.")

"Come back when you're done!"

("Anyway, I don't understand what's happening or what you know so you fill him in."

"Okay!"

("I don't really have a choice anyway.")

******

"Get in the fucking car, we are going to cut a bitch."

******

Virgil parked the car at the opposite side of the road.He slammed it so hard that it dented its inside and he had probably broken the door, but Roman wasn't going to comment about that because he feared the earth that was contained in his crush.

He rushed over to Zenith who was laying in the sand of the bay, casually scrolling through his feed with a Starbucks cup in hand and not like the government had just pronounced him dead.

He noticed the angry man in purple charging towards him.

"Virgie, did you see-"

"Cut me none of that 'Virgie' bullshit Remington, you blackmailed someone into silence, you know you aren't allowed to abuse you abilities like that."

Remy pushed down the bridge of sunglasses, revealing his eyes that seemed even more chaotic than Lunapuer's but floating with clouds instead of space.

"This isn't some game anymore, people I care-"

("You care about my brother and Janus")

("While you were being a shit bag to me, I had to find someone who would show me where my classrooms were.")

"back to what I was saying- People I care about are going to suffer serious consequences for crap you should pay the price for-wait, why did Jan and Rem even try to drown you in the first place?"

The glasses are off, what does it mean?

"Cousin, if you think you are big enough to say my full name then you are big enough to deal with the consequences of my coffee break."

("Why the fuck are you having coffee so late?")

("You've seen me off caffeine. I'm not exactly a sane person."

"I don't even want to fight you because I might actually kill you."

Remy looked over his shoulder to see the setting sun glistening over the water he was supposedly dead in.

"(Oh, shit) Look, cuz-"

Where Virgil's eye sockets should be were replaced with a empty caverns of galaxy that was literally choking his cousin. The tendrils of the universe snaked up his neck and grasped onto it.

"C͈̈́Á͖͔͊L̢̖̘̎̄̉̿̓͟͢L̢̢̽̆ ͚͔̩̀̿̒MȆ̡̢̛̖͖̇͞ ̰̠̘̫͑̎̈́̄A ͇̖̙̽̐̓Ñ̜I̡̢͉̝͌̒̌̎C̗͛K̰͊Ň͔̮̘͚͙̎͗̇̄Ȃ̧̱̩͌̓M̰̙̰̿̉͡Ȩ̗̅͛ ̗̒O̡̡̟̜͛̄̃̽NE̗͉͇̿̎͌ ̩̲͛̆̽͟M̹̬͖̔̕̕O̮͖͍̝͑̈̓͆̽͢Ṟ̢̙̊̔̃E ̨̘͆̍T͇͐Ḭ͎̼͛̅̂M̻̠̩̾̆̈́E, ͔̥̭̜̎̽̄͡I͉͎̟̒̅̎͞ͅ ̛̛͉̼̪͇̎͡D̨̩̋̀A̼̒R̺͠E̬͎̓́ ͓̰̭͓͛͋͊͡Ÿ̙̭̱̐̊Ò͖͚̞͑̊̕ͅỦ̙̻̌!"

("So you have a a crush on a homicidal mystery man who is also a magical boy?")

(Roman just glared at his brother.)

"I DID IT TO PROTECT YOU FROM HIM!"

The turn of a necks in synchrony shattered the waves of the river bed they were on. Time was an illusion and two seconds could of passed and no one could tell the difference.

Zenith decided to break the peace.

"LOOK, I CARE ABOUT YOU, I ACTUALLY DO AND I'M NOT GONNA YOU FALL FOR A HEARTBREAKER ON MY WATCH!"

Virgil likes me back. VIRGIL ACTUALLY LIKES ME BACK!?

Lunapuer eyebrow lowered in concentration almost.

"N͙̤̹͚͂͌͐̕O͍͡ M̧͍̲̓̍̇Ą̠̻̤́̈̿́T͔̣̾͐T͓̙͉̈́̀̍Ę̥̠̻͚̏̍̓͊͝R̙̺̠̯̾̑̾̕ ̥̱̋̂Ẅ̨̞̜̉̊HAT̡̥͇͂́̈́̕͜ ̮͖͙̼̻̓̑̕̕͝R̨͓̾̓Ã͔͔̰̻̫͆̃͐̂ME̫͔̻̻͗̑́͡N͈̱̒͑ ̲̗̣̓́̌̆͜Ḋ̠ID ͍̻̣͕̎̍͂͡T̬̙̩̓̀͑O̙̘̻̓̍͂ ͙̺͈͈̀̃̀̑̽͟Y̺̖̖̻̍͛̋͛Ǒ̦͖̀̂͢U̱͊,̤͓͂̉ ̘̳̄̊Í̥̺̕T̠͂ ͔͚͋̑D̲̀̑͢OĚ̝̝̣̏̊S̖̆N̲͕̕͞'̛͙̝̜̎͐T̨̲̲͉͒͆̂̍ ̝̭̬͕̾̈́̌͡Ģ̊I̢̢͍��͐̊VE̥͕̾͛ ̝͌Ỹ̨̪͕͕̒̋̿OŮ̩͕̯̆̍ ̧̩̗̙̒̑͋̚A̘̜̙͊͝͝Ņ͉̽͆̈́͟Ý̞̣͔̩̂̄͠ ̯̀RI̲͚͔͔̔͆̃́Ģ̲̫̈̔̕HṬ̓ ͙̼͚̫̱͆̒͐͠͡Ţ͈͇͗͑̈O ̹̹̹͂̀͂D̛̠̖̍̅͟O̧͔͗͠ ̛̦W̖͇̹̮͊̌̊͆H͎̉A̩̫͇̽̅͊͜͠T̬̙͔̞̑͛͑̈́͗͢ ̖͖͉͂̆̈Y̯͚͓̜̣̆̈̀͊͊O̡̅Ṳ̜͕̈́̔͆ ̢̤̞͆̕͝D̢̡͈͙̤͗͊̃̽̍I̛͕̱̾D̯̃̓͟!"

The gripping got tighter.

"Plea-se, pleas-e, I am fully aware I am a cunt pile and don't even deserve redemption in the slightest, but let me live and maybe I can make it up to you."

For a single second, it looked like Virgil was genuinely going to finish off the job that Rem and Jan failed to do. But me showed mercy.

His eyes died down.

"Get in the back, use your powers to make today seem like one long ass fever dream, help us break Re and Jay out of prison and maybe you'll see the sunrise."

Remington picked up his shades and went to the back seat.

'Ramen' was shocked.

"Why exactly did you let him go?"

"As long as the moon is out, He will be the one worrying."

******

"Psst, Janus!"

No response.

"La Snits!"

"Remus had spiked my drink and I was high off my ass, wait why are you here?"

Janus turned his head to be met with Roman who was currently picking the lock on his cell.

"I'm getting really sick and tired of people asking that."

The lock mechanisms chimed open.

"Okay, listen: Virgil and Remy have powers that I don't even think they know how to control and are using them to put the whole town asleep. Your hypnotism made me have a 'veil' and made me hate Virgil for about two months. I'm back to normal now. Remy has apologised for blackmailing me and has promised to destroy you-know-what. And- What what happened to your face?"

Xia just noticed Vales face that a scar the look creepily akin to snake scales. It covered about half of it and it was still bleeding, not even looking like it would scab over.

"There is more than one reason why I am Zeneith's body should be at that bottom of the ocean currently."

How strong is Remy exactly?

"Kayyyy, lets get to your-"

"Jan!"

"Rem!"

Remus skidded against the floor, just in his socks to his partner.

"Look, my older brother is stopping me from deforming Starbuck slut's body because that's immoral or some shit and I really , really am sorry that we got caught. How was I supposed to know the fucker could respawn-"

"You're shaking."

And the hypnotist was right, Remus was practically vibrating.

"I'm fine , I just want to have Remy's intestines in my hands, that's it."

"Look, I'm not getting sappy in public but I don't really want a repeat of Canada,"

("Canada?!")

"So can you please calm down for me?"

Remus pouted like a four year old.

"If I do this, I get to kill him later,"

"Of course you can."

Janus may of then talked to Remus about his lack of shoes and maybe given him a piggy back because he was kind of tired, Roman wouldn't know. He was just looking listening to their happiness and feeling happy for his brother.

The hell ,Thomas?

The more mature brother ( his father's words , not his) was floating with the sir, accompanied by the galaxy aura thing that Virgil had.

"So because I stopped Remus from literally murdering Remy Virgil gave me floaty shoes. And Remy kind of apologised to him for something, I don't really understand, but floaty shoes!"

Roman just stared as his elder fanboying in awe of his newly acquired footwear, wondering how the fuck is he older than him.

"Remy won't need to worry, Janus has gotten him to calm down a little. I would say that he has a week left to live though."

"Wow, this day could of gone to shit but it didn't, it's almost like some omnipotent voice is going to say 'And they lived happily after' "

And with every happily ever after ,you get your true love as well.

"The stars are aligning!"

"What?"

Virgil seemed to just materialize out of nowhere, and even in the prison grade lighting, he was still the most beautiful thing Roman had ever left his eyes on. Even in the crappy yellow coming from the ceiling, he still shone like a the stars laced in the sky.

Roman stepped forward and took his hand, holding it loose enough that he could pull back at any time given.

"You know, The boys everyone made up with each other, except me and you and today has almost been perfect I'm just waiting for...you..."

Virgil slipped his hand out of Roman to return it to his side.

"Princey," He took a long pause, trying to find those right words "Life isn't like a Disney movie, it doesn't have a structured plot and it doesn't move at the speed you need it to. Not everything and everyone is going to make you happy because that's just how life is, lots of people getting fucked over. Janus and Remus might of forgiven you and I might of forgiven Remy for what he did but I experienced hell from you and even if that veil made you do dumb shit, I am still recovering from it. And yes I did like you, you are cute and handsome and funny and just a great guy but I can't have a relationship with you after the shit you did to me. But I can agree to try and move pass that."

Lunapuer shook out his hand.

"Deal?"

Roman shook it.

******

"Turn to page 37 on your-"

The bell broker up the music theory teacher's instructions.

"Remember to memorise the sheet for the 18th of .."

Roman didn't get the last of what he said, he rushed out the classroom to meet Virgil at his locker near Homeroom.

"Umm, here you go."

The sound of hard plastic hit the public school quality(shit) metal.

"Why did you buy these for me exactly?"

"Well, you're always listening to Starchild-"

"Starkid, It's Starkid."

How could you mess that up, dumbass.

"Yep, anyway, and I decided to buy you a a latest pair of headphones to try out. I even paid extra for it in purple and black."

The emo picked up the the case and looked at it and eyes widen when he saw the price of it.

"God, Princey, I don't know really what to say-"

"You don't have to say a single thing, this was a gift out of the kindness of my own-"

"But I can I have the receipt?"

"WHAT!"

He picked up the case and gave it back to the giver.

"These are so fucking amazing and just really nice and cool but I can't do these, I use earphones 'cause I like to fiddle with the wires, they ground me when I have my weekly existential crisis/panic attack and slow down the spiralling a little."

Roman just stood there stunned.

"You spent a lot of money on this and I am just putting it to waste but giving it back to you but I just feel more comfortable with wires, I guess."

Taking his artbook out of his locker for the period right after Lunch, he gave Xia a two finger salute and made the journey to the food hall.

A still stunned Roman concocted a solution to the problem of the gift he had bought.

******

Virgil walked into class the next day wearing purple earphones instead of white and hugged Roman.

The class promptly checked Lunaper for a fever.

******

"Kiddo, why are you up so late?"

"You don't really have a right to talk, you're the one whose up as well."

Roman's Dad reaches for the shelf.

"Wanna cookie?"

"Nah, I'm already had my 2am snack."

A little snort filled the still kitchen.

"You know, that reminds me of those weird dreams your father's been having since we were a king."

"What dreams?"

Roman scooted forward on his stool not to miss out of any of the tail.

"He always had these.. lucid dreams of a reality where we all lived together in Thomas' head."

"You're joking!"

"No I'm not, It's actually the reason why we picked Thomas from the orphanage, he had had fantasies of us looking after him and guiding him through life. We all had his face as well, I don't really understand it either."

He promptly shoved a cookie in his mouth.

"Anything else?"

The father figure paused his snacking.

"Look, If you are telling me a fable of us protecting Thomas, you better deliver on it."

"It's not really a fable, it's just Logie's imagination running wild. Anyway in the world we all had jobs, like your Dad was logic and a teacher, I was morality and a dad, you and your brother were a prince and a duke respectively and were both creativity."

Roman snorted the milk he was drinking.

"Oh, God these are so weird. I know me and Remus used to make believe play a lot as a kid but like that's so far fetched!"

His father joined in the cackling.

After a few moments of them calming down, Roman queried his Dad.

"If in some weird fever dream Pa has , I can be a prince, do you think I can get my happily ever after as well?"

The ran had started to splash against the window, making a faint tapping noise in the distance.

"Life won't always give you strict fairy-tale endings, but you can try and sculpt your ending so it makes you happy. "

******

"Princey, !"

"Why are you whispering?"

"Just come here you Disney reject."

"So I can't call you nicknames/insults but you can?"

"Life's not fair, get used to it."

Virgil passed him a note with some numbers on them.

"Can you god to my locker and get the book out of it?"

Roman obeyed said instructions and returned with a copy of Moby Dick.

"You never struck me as the type to read the 'Classics'."

"Yeah, 'cause I'm not." Virgil proceeded to open the book inside to find it was a shell that had-

Are those drugs?

"No they're not, fuuc.."

Lunapuer started to rub his temples akin to how you would if you had a headache or a brain freeze.

Xia knitted his eyebrows together, trying to plan his next step.

Can you hear my thoughts?

"Wow, I wonder why I responded when you said the pills were drugs."

"Woe is me for asking that apparently!"

"Look Ramen, the eclipse is coming in like three hours and I have the worst headache of the century. I use sass and sarcasm as a coping mechanism when I don't know what to say, so bare with me for the time being."

Roman scorched up next to his friend/crush/he didn't even know at this point.

"It would be nice if you enlighten me to how you can suddenly read my mind, but you don't have to."

"I can't really describe it, my brain almost starts cheat coding reality and I can hear voices suddenly that usually I can't. And if I use any of powers, they are so destructive that I could probably shatter the school by just touching the floor."

Xia just listened patiently, taking in his little pupils which were currently flickering from space mode and back to normal.

"So I'm guessing that Remy wears shades all the time because someone is always dreaming or something.."

"Yeah kinda...Ramen can I ask you for another favour?"

It's not even sure I could say no to you. I'm pretty sure the fabric of my being would be ripped apart.

(The emo may or not have looked away with a red tint in his cheeks)

"Yeah, what do you want?"

"I don't even think that I can make it back to class-I'll probably pass out anyway-can you get me to my bag and get me too the office?"

Before Virgil had even finished the sentence, Roman was already carrying him bridal style.

"Hey ,what the fuck?"

"You said you needed to get to the office, the quickest way is for me to get you there."

"What about my bag?"

"You're more important and I'll get it later."

Lunapuer didn't respond.

******

"Why did your dad introduce himself to me by giving a compliment wrapped in a insult?"

"It's just a thing he does, I don't think I've ever seen him introduce himself to anyone normal."

******

"What are you doing here, you should be out there, channeling your inner thespian or whatever.."

Just the muffled calamity of the drama hall could be heard. Also the pitter patter of Roman's tears.

"Shit, you're crying, why the fuck are you crying, did I do something wrong, God I knew I am a piece of shit, should I-

“No, It’s not your fault.”

Even if Roman’s face was currently leaking like a broken faucet, he still managed to have a steady voice by some miracle.

Virgil scooted over to the to the wall where Ramen’s back was on, looking above him to see the poster for the end of year play of Beauty and the Beast.

“You think you flopped it, don’t you?”

“Wow, I must be so easy to read, the queer theatre kid who never was able to make that part in the school play they always wanted. Next thing you know I’ll go insane and sell my soul to for something symbolic like a crown.”

“You’re queer?”

(The splashes of Roman’s tears just got more intense.)

“Yeah, I don’t really want to put a label on myself yet.”

(Some screamed ‘Next’. It was most likely a student trying to fuck with the drama teacher.)

“Well, I’m questioning still, I kind of like almost anyone. It’s confusing.”

Almost on cue with the end of Virgil’s statement, Roman started to ugly cry.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck why are you even here?”

“I was looking for you actually, Princey. I kind of got into a big fight with Remus over something and I came to you so we could vibe together.”

Even though Xia’s tears looked strong enough to break a dam, his mouth seemed to curl upwards.

“Look, that’s really nice but I don’t deserve you here, I fucked up a basic ass song and now I’m going to be casted as grass #4.”

“Ramen, I’m not leaving until you agree to brood with me.”

“I would really prefer if you didn’t refer me as a food stuff.”

“Roman!” And the tears stopped flowing. And the crude acting in the background stopped moving . And the clock stopped moving and life and death themselves had seemed to pause. Roman didn’t care if this was Virgil’s powers at work or someone had spiked his water bottle because the fact that he was so closed to his face and now he could see the condensed universe in his eyes made all the pain just drain away. The atmosphere was tense like almost the way that his ..better dreams with the boy dressed in stars would start.

“Roman I don’t like seeing you sad, but I know emotions don’t work like that.. And I’m pissed at your brother and I don’t know how to deal with that...”

Roman’s face and Virgil were a little bit close for comfort

“You said you wanted us to brood together., let’s do it.”

Virgil was the one to pull Roman’s shirt and claim his lips.

#moonboy au #logicality #qpr dukeceit #prinxiety #i hate this so much #i spent so fucking long on this bitchy chapter #roman sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #i

7 notes · View notes

gwilyoubemine · 5 years

Note

Having an argument with your boyfriend Gwilym and then Brian (being the father figure he is) comforting you as he heard, Brian then telling Gwilym to make up with you and everyone living happily ever after :)

i loved this a lot. i have an presentation exam tomorrow and here i am at 1am (nearly 2am oooops) doing this. what we can gather from this is that ayse is very silly. i hope you enjoy this! it’s a tad long.

going to the pub for the night was gwilym’s idea. you found a decent spot right at the back, an empty booth- which was a score on a busy friday night. you spent the first hour drinking and laughing over random nonsense. you talked about your day, argued over which movie you would watch later. you settled on a 80s movie and gwil was adamant on watching back to the future. you, on the other hand, wanted to watch the breakfast club. and after an intense debate concerning which movie was the ultimate choice, you both ended up chuckling over how silly it was to debate over such a thing. you decided that you would watch both movies and gwil gave you a kiss to seal the deal, mumbling an ’it’s a date then’ whilst flashing you his signature smile.

gwil also proposed that you both take a trip to the countryside at the weekend. and the thought of spending some quiet time with gwilym had you grinning in excitement instantly. long car rides, expanses of grass and trees, lakes that you could sit by. you gushed about how brilliant the idea was and teased that you would be in control of the music during the car ride because of the questionable songs he often played. he gave you a look of mock hurt and kicked your leg playfully under the table. “i caught you listening to my spotify playlist last week and i saw you dancing along!”

when gwilym had to leave to take a phone call, you hadn’t expected company. shortly after gwilym left, a man appeared at your table. he had blonde hair that fell into his eyes and a smile that was all teeth. “can i sit here?”

“i’m waiting for someone actually.” you told him, offering him an apologetic smile.

nevertheless, the man took a seat opposite you and you raised a brow at him, a gesture he seemed to take no notice of. at this point, you found it hard to ignore the alarm bells going off in your head, what would gwilym say when he got back?

“what if i offer to buy you a drink?” the stranger asked, his lips stretched into that big smile again. “you can’t possibly say no to one drink.”

“i think i could.’ you said, folding your arms over your chest. "and i also think you should be leaving.”

“you want me gone so soon?” he asked, feigning hurt. “can i not sit down next to a pretty woman and offer her a drink? there’s no crime in that.”

“maybe if that same woman is waiting for someone else and has already stated that clearly.” you mumbled, trying hard to control the annoyance bubbling up inside of you.

“i think you’re just saying that in an attempt to make me leave” he probably thought he was coming across as charming but you were honestly a few seconds away from storming off and finding gwilym. the phone call must have been a serious one for it to last that long- work perhaps, or maybe a family issue.

“c'mon, entertain me for a little while.” he leaned closer to you and you found yourself freezing, unable to pull away. his strong cologne quickly filled your senses. “the whole uninterested act isn’t fooling me.”

“can i help you?” an angry voice suddenly questioned from above you, just as the stranger’s hand had settled against your hair. the intensity behind gwil’s words had you sitting as far back in your seat as possible, your cheeks burning with embarrassment.

the man opposite you looked up at your boyfriend with wide eyes, clearly unable to come up with anything to say. “i was just offering to buy her a drink, man. no harm done.” he said after being prompted by gwilym to answer him.

“well, she doesn’t need a drink from you.” gwilym practically growled out, his eyes burning holes into the other man’s face. it was almost as if he was daring him to stay in that seat for any longer. “if i were you, mate, i would get the fuck out of here.”

the man scrambled away with a quiet “talk about possessive’, leaving you and gwilym in silence. the noise coming from the rowdy table nearby felt so much louder all of a sudden.

and that was probably the time for you to say something. to at least look at him. instead you kept your eyes planted on the table in front of you for what felt like an eternity, unable to meet his eyes.

"we’re leaving.” he said eventually, his voice tight. you glanced up at him to see that his jaw was locked and that the same look of anger was still plastered across his face. you were used to his features looking so gentle and kind. soft eyes that followed you around in admiration, an angelic smile that made you ache with the want to kiss his lips.

“gwil, can we talk about this?” you choked out, quickly fixing your bag over your shoulder.

gwilym looked away from you and mumbled something about not being in the mood. the walk back to his car was silent, and the absence of conversion only resulted in your thoughts circling at what felt like 100mph.

gwil kept his eyes firmly on the road and made no effort to talk during the ride home. he didn’t even connect his phone to the speakers to play his music. you found yourself missing his questionable song choices. missing the conversation you would usually engage in when driving home.

“gwilym.” you started, his name sounding a little shaky. “there’s really no reason to be mad. he was just a random man who appeared in front of me and i told him i was waiting for someone. he was just really persistent!”

gwilym sighed, his hands curling around the steering wheel more tightly. “so i’m not allowed to be angry? is that it?”

“no, i-”

“did you even register how close that man was to you, y/n? he was inches from your face. and his hand was going straight for your hair.” gwilym took a breath to calm himself. “why didn’t you move away from him? or at least tell him you had a boyfriend.”

“i just froze, okay…i don’t know what happened… and i told him to leave. maybe i could have been firmer but regardless of that, i still don’t see why you’re so angry with me.”

“can’t you just accept that i am pissed off right now? why does this have to be about you and how you feel like i shouldn’t be angry.” he snaped, moving his eyes from the road for a second to look at you. you stared back at him in shock, your stomach dropping. gwilym rarely ever acted this way. the expression on his face and the tone of his voice made you feel sick. “i don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

that night was awful. you both got ready for bed without exchanging a single word, and the sick feeling in your stomach only got worse as time ticked by. you sat on the bed with your legs pulled to your chest and thought about all the ways to start conversation back up. maybe gwilym was right, maybe you just needed to accept he was angry. you certainly would have been fuming if you saw a random woman all up in gwilym’s face.

gwilym emerged from the bathroom in nothing but his boxers. the navy ones you bought him last christmas. the sight only made your heart clench more painfully. his boxers clung to his ass in the most sinful way. he always looked good like this, with his broad chest and thick thighs on display. and your eyes were always hungry to take in as much as possible. on any other night, you would have wrapped your arms around his neck and whispered against his lips how hot he looked. and he would have grinned in an amused manner, cocking an eyebrow as his hands settled on your hips, murmuring out a “oh, do i, love?”

but there was none of that tonight. gwilym kept his eyes on the floor as he made his way over to the bed, clearly unhappy with how the night had played out. he crawled under the covers and you joined him shortly, painfully aware of the tension between you both. and with a barely audible “goodnight” he turned onto his side and closed his eyes. it seemed like forever until you got to sleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

the next morning, gwilym was no where to be seen. he had left early in the morning, and with no note telling you where he had gone. you ate your breakfast alone, wondering where gwil was and mulling over how badly last night turned out. you had never seen him so frustrated.

when the door bell rung around noon, you had no clue as to who had come by to pay you a visit. brian may’s concerned face was not what you expected when you finally got up to open the door.

“brian?” the shock was evident in your voice.

“hello y/n, can i come in?” he asked and you were quick to usher him inside, asking if he wanted a cup of tea. he declined with a polite smile and took a seat beside you on your sofa. his hair seemed curlier than ever, an endearingly chaotic mess of ringlets.

“to what do i owe this lovely surprise visit?” you questioned, folding your arms over your chest. you shot him a small smile. “or did you just want to say hello to me?”

“it’s always nice checking in on you, love, but there is a reason for my visit.” he settled his hands on his knees, his expression more serious now. “gwilym popped by a little earlier to discuss some things, just about the bohemian rhapsody special coming up in july. but with that aside, he looked quite upset. looked like he had lost some sleep to terribly honest with you.”

you stayed silent as brian continued. he obviously knew gwilym’s bad mood had something to do with you. “i’ve never seen the boy look so bloody upset. he didn’t want to talk about it but i got it out of him in the end. i heard you had somewhat of an argument last night.”

you sighed quietly, lifting your eyes to meet brian’s. “yes.” you exhaled, not bothering to hide how down you felt about the whole matter. “it was so stupid, just over some irrelevant guy at the pub. nothing even happened but gwilym was still so angry.”

“it happens to all of us.” brian murmured softly, wrapping an arm around you to give you a friendly squeeze. “y/n, i don’t know exactly what happened between the pair of you last night but i know gwilym, i reckon he was just feeling hurt about the whole thing. you know he gets jealous, love.”

“i know, i know. it just sucks when we’re not talking. it’s the worst feeling when i know gwilym is mad, especially when it’s to do with me.”

“that is completely understandable. i had a little talk with him that seemed to make him feel a bit better, i think i knocked some sense into him. he went to run some errands but i’m sure he will be back soon. i just came by to check if you were okay.”

“that is so sweet of you, brian. and i’m sure i’ll be fine soon. i just hope gwilym feels better.”

“he’ll be fine too, you two are strong. you’ll be back to being all cuddly and lovely before you know it, trust me on that one. and with that being said, i should be off. m'taking anita out for lunch so i can’t be late for that.”

you gave him a tight hug and showed him to the door. “thank you again, brian. i hope you have a lovely time with anita.” he flashed you his signature smile and gave your arm a squeeze. “anytime, love.”

thanks to brian, you already felt better about the whole situation with gwilym. you were ready to put it behind you. and when the door bell rang an hour later, you strode over to it with confidence, preparing yourself for facing gwil and apologising if need be.

as soon as you opened the door, a bouquet of flowers was being thrust into your hands. gwilym’s hands were on your cheeks within seconds, his lips capturing yours in a longing kiss. “m'sorry for being an jealous idiot.” he panted against your lips, the pads of his thumbs caressing your cheeks. you were still clutching onto the flowers. you looked down and saw that they were carnations, a mixture of pink and white.

you placed the flowers down next to you on the floor and reached for gwilym, your arms circling around his frame. “it’s okay. i’m sorry for not telling that guy to get lost.”

“no, you handled the situation fine, love. it just angered me to see another man so close to you.” he murmured, his gaze fixated on your face. “just seeing him flirting with you as i walked back over to our table had my blood boiling. i really handled the situation badly, i shouldn’t have been mad at you.”

“i understand, i would have gotten jealous too. let’s just move on from this, okay? that man was not worth the trouble.”

“sounds great. i love you.” gwilym murmured, his hand moving to tuck a piece of stray hair behind your ear. he pressed a chaste kiss to your lips as you drew him closer, your lips chasing his.

“i love you too, gwil.”

after a few minutes of non-stop kissing, gwilym pulled back to mutter something against your mouth.

“brian was here, wasn’t he?”

“yep.”

#hope you like it #help i should be sleeping #gwilym lee x reader #gwilym lee #headcanon

102 notes · View notes

aspiringauthorintraining · 5 years

Text

Partners in Crime #5

"So Flash, you got a girlfriend?"

(Y/N) munched on a Twizzler from Cisco's stash, bored out of her mind.

It was a slow day at STAR labs. No metahumans had popped up in town, and no criminals were doing bad things. It was a good thing, but that meant Team Flash had nothing to do, but lounge around the lab all day. It came to the point that (Y/N) took the liberty of counting how many Twizzlers Cisco had in his "secret" stash.

Dr. Wells wheeled into the room, noting the quietness of the usually chaotic atmosphere. "Well, it seems that even the bad guys have a day off." The team chuckled upon hearing him. "Why don't you all take the day off as well? No use wasting time here waiting for a crime that's not going to happen."

(Y/N)'s eyes lit up, having come up with an idea. "Hey, why don't we all go out today? We could invite Barry too!" She looked at her friends for their thoughts. Caitlin and Cisco both nodded in approval, while the Flash didn't seem too keen on the idea. Before she could ask what the problem was, Dr. Wells spoke up.

"Count me out, as well as the Flash. I need to run some tests on his biometrics." The Flash quickly nodded, agreeing with the doctor's statement.

"If there's work to be done still, then I'll stay too." (Y/N) frowned in disappointment, but didn't want to have Dr. Wells do all the work. She wasn't being paid to eat stolen Twizzlers..

"Nonsense, you all go out." He shooed them with his hands. "It's some small tests, so I assure you, I can conduct them myself."

Seeing the skeptical look in her eyes, he motioned for Caitlin and Cisco to lead her out of the lab.

"Fine, fine. I'll go," she said, being dragged out by her friends.

_______________________

"Caitlin, honey, I think you should stop drinking now." (Y/N) tried coaxing her friend to put down the new glass of vodka she had ordered, on her newly opened tab.

When the three friends left the lab, they had no idea where to go to. (Y/N) suggested the karaoke bar, that Caitlin had visited with Barry. She thought it would be good practice for Barry, for the Christmas caroling. Of course, Barry didn't know what he was going to be forced into, and accepted the invite. Once they got to the bar, however, she got distracted from her mission, instead trying to prevent Caitlin from having the worst hangover tomorrow morning.

"I need to pee." Caitlin mumbled, her face scrunching up.

"Alright, let's get you to a toilet." She turned to Cisco, whispering so Barry wouldn't hear her. "I'm going to take Cait to the bathroom. I bestow my mission unto you, brave soldier. I expect Barry to be on stage singing when we get back."

"Sir, yes sir!" Cisco saluted, assuring her he wouldn't let her down.

And he sure didn't let her down. After ten minutes in the bathroom, she walked out, with Caitlin leaning against her, to hear the crowd chanting.

"BARRY! BARRY! BARRY!"

Walking back to their table, she shot Cisco a questioning look, noticing Barry was absent from his seat. He titled his head over to the stage, where she could see Barry holding a mic, not looking too enthusiastic. She burst out in laughter, patting Cisco on the back.

"Good job soldier, I knew I could count on you." She continued to laugh as her eyes met Barry's and he threw her an annoyed glare. In response, she stuck her tongue out at him, playfully. But, she then noticed his glare turn into a smirk.

"Cisco, why is B-"

She was interrupted by Barry's voice over the microphone. "You know, my friend, (Y/N), promised that she would sing with me tonight."

If looks could kill, Barry would be dead.

She quickly planned an escape plan in her head. If she left now, she could make it out the door, and ask Cisco to bring Caitlin over to her car.

But there was no use. She knew she was doomed, when she heard another chant start to happen. And this time, she wasn't the one laughing.

"(Y/N)! (Y/N)! (Y/N)! (Y/N)!" She could feel the whole bar staring at her. Even Cisco started chanting along.

"Oh, you better run once the song's over Allen," she muttered under her breath, glaring darkly at the laughing Barry. With no choice left, she trudged up to the stage, glaring at her friend the whole way up.

Putting a hand over the mic, so the crowd wouldn't hear, she whispered to him.

"I hope you run fast."

Barry just chuckled, unfazed by the threat that came from the petite woman. A random song was picked, the music starting preventing the outbreak of an argument. Seeing that she was supposed to sing first, she sighed and glared at Barry.

"I really can't stay~"

Barry looked surprised, for a brief moment, before returning back to his smirk.

"But baby, it's cold outside," he responded.

She could see the teasing glint in his eyes. In front of her, she could hear some people in the crowd chuckle and a few whistle.

"I've got to go away~"

"But baby, it's cold outside." (Y/N) noted that her duet partner did really have a good voice, slowly forgetting about being forced to sing.

"This evening has been~"

"Been hoping that you'd drop in."

"~so very nice."

Barry, fully committing to the song, held her hand while singing, "I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice."

Playing along, she playfully swatted his hand away. "My mother will start to worry~"

"Beautiful, what's your hurry?"

"My father will be pacing the floor."

"Listen to the fire place roar~"

"So really, I'd better scurry~" she motioned walking off the stage.

"Beautiful, please don't hurry~" Barry turned her around and led her closer to the middle of the stage.

"But maybe just a half a drink more…" she smiled, letting him pull her in closer.

"I'll put some records on while I pour."

"The neighbors might think" She acted worried, going along with the lyrics of the song.

"Baby, it's bad out there." He held her side to prevent her from moving away.

"Say, what's in this drink?" She threw him a questioning glance.

"No cabs to be had out there."

"I wish I knew how"

Barry caught her eyes, in his gaze. His eyes lost all teasing, instead filled with something else. "You're eyes are like starlight tonight."

"To break this spell." She felt her cheeks heat up.

"I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell." He sang, while gently holding a lock of her hair.

"I ought to say no, no, no sir." She wiggled her finger in front of his face.

"Oh, mind if I move in closer?" He moved in closer, lessening the space between them.

"At least I'm gonna say that I tried." She felt a familiar feeling in her stomach.

"What's the sense in hurting my pride?" He continued to move in closer, barely leaving any space between them now.

"I really can't stay~" She sang, but didn't move away from him.

"But baby don't hold out"

They looked at each other before singing in unison. "Cause baby it's cold outside."

She moved away from his hold to sing the second verse. "I simply must go~"

A part of her wanted to leave. She wasn't sure what to think, when he looked at her with those eyes.

"But baby it's cold outside," he caught her before she could get closer to the edge of the stage.

"The answer is no, no, no~" She sang, but didn't try to leave again.

"Aw baby, it's cold outside"

"Your welcome has been~"

"How lucky that you dropped in."

"So nice and warm,"

"Look out the window, at that storm." He pointed towards the window, that seemed like a silent night.

"My sister will be suspicious."

"Gosh, your lips are delicious."

The both of them turned pink at the lyrics, but didn't break eye contact.

"And my brother will be there at the door," she continued to sing.

"Waves on a tropical shore."

"My maiden aunt's mind is vicious."

"Oom gosh, your lips are so delicious" She couldn't but blush again, while Barry smiled at her reaction.

"But maybe just a cigarette more."

"Oh never such a blizzard before." He motioned again to outside, playfully smiling.

"I've got to get home~"

"But baby, you'll freeze out there."

Barry tugged (Y/N) closer, bringing her into his embrace.

"Say lend me your coat." She tugged on the lapel of his coat.

"Oh, up to your knees out there."

"You've really been grand~"

"I thrill when you touch my hand." Barry grabbed her hand and put it in his pocket.

"But you don't see, no, no."

"How can you do this thing to me?"

There's bound to be talk tomorrow." They were so caught up in their duet, they didn't notice that the whole bar had their attention at them with knowing smiles on their faces.

"Think of my life long sorrow."

"At least there will be plenty implied." He gave her a wink.

"If you caught pneumonia and died."

"But I really can't stay."

"Get over that whole doubt."

Their eyes didn't leave each other's as they finished the last verse of the song in harmony. "Oh baby it's cold outside."

At the finish of their song, the bar cheered, whistling and clapping for the talented duo. The two proceeded with a short bow, while holding hands, then walked off the stage. When reaching their friends, (Y/N) saw Cisco smiling at them while holding up his phone. A light on the phone was turned on, indicating that it was recording a video. Caitlin, still drunk, was happily clapping with a big smile on her face.

She saw Cisco, from the corner of her eye, smile, while pointing at something next to her. Following his finger, Barry and (Y/N) noticed their still intertwined hands.

Before her face could turn into a tomato, she quickly withdrew her hand and turned her attention to Caitlin.

"How are you feeling?"

Her friend's smile turned to a sudden frown. "Not so good."

"Okay, time to go home. Barry, could you help me?" She pulled Caitlin up to her feet, but struggled to keep her standing. Barry held one of Caitlin's arm, while she held the other and they slowly walked to the exit. Cisco trailed behind them, offering to carry the girls' bag. Once getting Caitlin into her car, (Y/N) turned back to the others.

"Do you need a ride?" The question was directed to both of them, but she was unable to meet Barry's eyes, and settled for staring at Cisco instead.

"Yup." Noticing the awkward tension in the air, he quickly opened the door to the backseat and got in.

"Umm, what about you Barr? She had no choice now, but to look at him.

"Nah, I'll walk home. It's not far from here." Barry seemed very interested in his shoes.

"Okay then, I'll see you tomorrow…" She opened the driver's door and got in.

"Yeah."

Trying to break the awkwardness, she joked, "Try not to be late this time."

Before it could get anymore awkward, she gave him a quick wave and turned on the ignition, before driving off.

#cw imagine #the flash imagine #the flash x reader #barryallenxreader #barry allen x reader #barry allen imagine #barryallenimagine #partners in crime series #song: Baby It's Cold Outside

141 notes · View notes

blame-canada · 6 years

Text

Gold Plated - Creek

Chapter 7: Too Good to Be True

Token.

Time for another chapter! Hope you weren’t waiting too long. It’s a bit long so I’m going to put just the first scene of the chapter on Tumblr. Please take the time to read the rest of it on AO3 here! I made the title a link as well. Enjoy!

He didn’t mean to be stereotypical, but Craig really hated Monday today. It wasn’t so much the Monday that he hated however as much as he hated the anticipation, the knowing that the day was a Monday and therefore inherently bad, and that made getting out of bed a struggle. It didn’t help that school was now a war zone either, with two landmines moving freely about the map that Craig just couldn’t avoid. Well, more like a landmine and a half—Craig felt a little better about Kenny, who hadn’t really been the focal point of his distress in the first place, and thinking of his face didn’t make him immediately blanch with nausea. He just didn’t want to talk to him, preferably ever again.

The only thing that brought him comfort seemed to be the promise of seeing his friends, which hadn’t changed much from before—they had always been his lifeline. They had their own conversational merits, too, which Craig liked: Clyde for dumb bro stuff, Token for deep thoughts, Jimmy for laughs. With Craig’s deadpan sarcasm they were an unstoppable chaotic force, and that chaos got him to show up at school most days.

Which was how Craig found himself at the back of the school at lunch, wheeling Clyde around in a stolen cart from the CVS a block away. This was an extremely mild thing to do.

“You guys gotta be real with me right now, like, really real.”

Craig huffed a little laugh through his nose, turning the cart lazily around the figure 8 he was wearing into the broken up, shitty pavement. “Real about what?”

“Like, after we graduate real.”

Craig almost stopped driving. “Yeah?” Token encouraged, but Clyde didn’t have much else to follow up with.

“Yeah! Like, how are we gonna meet up, ‘n’ stuff.” Clyde put his legs up over the edge of the cart, sighing. “We don’t talk about this shit but it’s important, man.”

“Y-you been eating fish sticks lately?” Jimmy quipped, and Clyde growled at him.

“It’s not gay to talk about feelings sometimes, bro,” Token said, easily having put together the indirect joke Jimmy told regularly, and Craig leaned forward on the shopping cart’s handle. The metal put imprints in his chilly arms where they pressed in.

“He’s right. I never talk about my feelings,” Craig added, his inflection flat as a pancake. That, Clyde snickered at.

Token shot him a quick glare, but it wasn’t for real. “Anyway,” he emphasized, “we should actually talk about this. I mean, we know where we’re all going, but we haven’t talked about how we’re gonna come back.”

They group fell silent then, the only sound the squeaking of a bad wheel on the cart. The smoke from some nearby assholes’ cigarettes was wafting in their direction because of the wind, and it made the air stink. It was true, they only had a couple months left of high school, then a couple months of summer, and then the great journey into the unknown of college. None of them were going too far away except for Jimmy, who insisted on finding a school in California. Something about showbiz, Craig couldn’t remember. Then Clyde was off to Denver, a couple hours away, and Token to Boulder, a little further North. Then there was Craig, who’d opted for staying at home an extra two years to go to the Park County Community College, because he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.

In some ways, the fact that his friends were going to private universities for specific degree paths while he stayed home undecided made him feel kind of stupid. They insisted that wasn’t the case, but still, he couldn’t help but feel like staying in South Park would mean he was glued here, and he’d have an even harder time of leaving once he got his associate’s degree. The thought that he’d never know what he wanted to do terrified him, and only made choosing harder. His dad said it was smart to stay at home for cheaper school to start out, and that made sense, but again, still.

The biggest reason he felt stupid, though, was because half the reason he wanted to stay was because he knew Tweek was too.

Tweek, the source of all his problems right now—the landmine waiting to explode the moment they made eye contact. He was half the reason he was staying, and Craig hated himself for being so stupid to do that when they weren’t even dating in the first place.

“Ay Craig, lemme out,” Clyde said, snapping Craig out of his meandering, darkening thoughts, and he pitched the cart forward so that Clyde could tumble out of it. He did so with about as much grace as a baby deer, legs wobbly and crooked, but he gleamed a gigantic smile at him the moment he straightened up. Craig couldn’t help but return it, albeit only slightly.

The bell rang not too long afterward, and they grabbed all their stuff propped up against the school’s cement wall to hike to their next classes. Before Craig could separate completely, however, a hand patted at his arm gently. He whipped his head around, but relaxed the moment he realized it was just Token.

“Hey man, can we talk later?” he asked, and Craig turned to face him fully, confused.

“Yeah, why?”

Token just shook his head a bit then, which only made Craig more nervous. “I’ll text you bro. I figured we could hang out later tonight.”

Craig felt a little excited at the thought, actually, and he smiled at Token in a way that prompted him to smile back, the motion crinkling the skin at the corners of his warm brown eyes. “Yeah, okay,” he answered, and Token nodded before walking away in the opposite direction, but not before giving him another pat on the arm.

Token was a special friend. Craig realized that a long time ago, when they first spent time alone together and he realized that they bonded without even talking to each other, somehow. The simplicity of their relationship hadn’t changed over the years either, and Craig was grateful. He was going to be looking forward to hanging out tonight all day long now, and it put a smile on his face while he walked down the hall. Token hang-outs were the most relaxing, soothing thing sometimes, and he hoped to God he could make that same energy happen tonight too, because fuck did he ever need it, and he hadn’t even realized.

When Craig sat down in his next class and pulled out his notebook to copy down slides full of boring information, he opened up to a random page on accident first. And oh, what an accident it turned out to fucking be.

It was a Tweek page. Worse than little things scribbled in the margins of his notes, even. One of several pieces of paper in his notebooks covered in nothing but words that made him think of Tweek, randomly throughout the day, the week, all-time.

They were all beautiful words, always.

Frustrated, angry, Craig rifled back through his backpack to find the black sharpie marker he kept floating at the bottom that he’d stolen from the art room. The page made his mind blank and oily black instead of filling him with flowers, and he hated it, hated it!

He hated Tweek so fucking much right now!

Would he always?

With fire in his veins and electricity in his fingers, he gripped the marker tightly and wrote across the entire page in thick, angular letters, as purposefully as he could, so that they’d bleed through to the next goddamn page and cover as many nonsense overly-poetic words as he could manage.

MONSTER.

#craig tucker #token black #clyde donovan #jimmy valmer #craig and those guys #laura tucker #fanfiction #south park #south park fanfiction #sp fanfic #my fanfiction #my fanfic #gold plated

6 notes · View notes

uglymanchronicles · 6 years

Text

UMC:R Chapter 6: Stacktrace

This intro is taking longer than I expected:

The gentle crunching of leaves underfoot and the quiet swiff-swip sounds of branches brushing off his jacket might have been soothing and calming to someone other than Evan. Someone who hadn't made this trek five times already and didn't have to keep finding new routes to a rickety cabin in the middle of the Ozarks. Without any technological assistance. Evan was, not for the first time, glad that he'd forced himself through the years of work to become an Eagle Scout. He really didn't like being out in nature. He appreciated it, he respected it, and he could survive on his own for at least a week in the woods if need be, but... God, he hated it out here. His was the world of technology, of metal, of plastic and concrete and glass, of cities and industry and the press of human presence. After this he was going to make a concentrated effort to spend a LOT of time around man-made lights and noise. This isolation was necessary for his purposes, though, and not just because he needed somewhere he could set up a ritual with very intricate and esoteric requirements. It was because he was being followed.

He'd started to notice it about a week ago. He'd been going about the process of gathering reagents (he felt strange thinking about that word in the context of a real-world thing, as opposed to something fantastic) for the ritual (ditto with that word), which had been a relatively mundane, yet slightly surreal, process. Most of the preparations involved easily found or made ingredients prepared in bizarre ways: A few grams of powdered limestone, measured out by a small scoop hand-made (well, hand-bent, in this case) from aluminum which had been painted with a green paint mixed with cumin; a knife that had been used to cut cloth that had been used to make a bandage to mend a wound made from the same knife (Evan hoped that the fact that the wound closed in under a minute still made it count); a stone that had been skipped at least three times upstream in a river that the thrower was standing in while barefoot (he was not proud of how long it took for him to get that one right).

All the preparations involved things he could pretty easily go about getting and doing, but would never have actually done. There was just no reason to do any of it. Evan found himself thinking that maybe that was the secret to keeping this all hidden. Out of context, it all seemed like random nonsense. Hell, in context it still seemed absurd. But he'd seen evidence of the impossible, of the fantastically nonsensical, in his own body. He'd tried what he couldn't help thinking of as 'magic tricks' based on his own notes. Lighting a candle without a source of fire was amazing, even if it had taken him ten minutes. But just because magic was real didn't mean the Book of Fate was, he'd realized. He couldn't let himself fall into that trap of childlike wonderment or he’d be suckered by every paranormal con man he bumped into.

But if the Book was a hoax and nobody else would care, then why did he keep seeing the same pickup truck every couple hours, despite having moved across state lines over half a dozen times in five days? Sure, it was always different colors, and the license plates were different, but there were little details he started noticing. A little chip in the windshield on the upper driver's side. The same pair of strangely expensive-looking binoculars on the dashboard or on the seat. A tiny tear in the upholstery of the passenger's seat, near where the right shoulder of an average adult would have been. A glove compartment with a very strong-looking lock. It was too coincidental. It was definitely the same truck.

Evan hadn’t seen any sign of the driver, though, and that was what worried him. He’d done some counter-surveillance of his own and had never seen a sign of somebody actually moving the truck. He’d crouched on a rooftop for nearly eight hours and stared at the damn thing and nobody had touched it, but after he’d left for five minutes to find an alley to pee in, he came back to find it gone. That was frustrating, but it proved to him that somebody was watching him very closely. Evan found that both reassuring and very worrying.

So he’d taken precautions. A lot of elaborate, pain-in-the-ass precautions. The RV was now locked up two states away and he’d been puttering around in the Beetle, trying to grab everything he needed without standing out much. He kept seeing the truck, though, and that was why he was parking miles away from his ‘base’ each time and hiking for hours to attempt to throw off the trail. He’d turned off his phone (he hadn’t even thought about it being traceable when he bought the replacement. Amateur!) and disabled every piece of networkable electronics before he got anywhere near the edge of the forest. Navigating by compass was inconvenient, but he was begrudgingly capable of it. Hopefully the sheer volume of bullshit he was engineering would help guarantee him some privacy.The cabin he’d rented was almost impressive in how unimpressive it was. Two rooms, no running water, heat and light from a tiny rusted generator backed up by a woodburning stove and oil lamps, an outhouse without no toilet seat. Cozy. But it was over five miles from anything resembling civilization; that way, he figured, if he accidentally opened a gate to an inverse universe, set off an arcane nuke, or something equally catastrophic, the body count would be minimal.

Hopefully.

Evan dropped his gear by the cabin’s triple-padlocked door, then walked calmly around to the back of the small building. He leaned against the rough wooden wall and sighed deeply. Though the late afternoon sun was casting long shadows, the tightly packed trees looked far from threatening. Aside from the faint buzzing of insects and the occasional bird call, it was almost completely silent. Even the wind didn’t make much noise, the bulwark of foliage reducing even the strongest of gusts to a light breeze. This was nice, he finally admitted to himself. He could see the appeal. Maybe getting back to nature every now and then wasn’t too bad an idea. There was a calmness, a stillness, a simplicity about it all that brought back nostalgia-shaded memories of campfires, chasing fireflies, and warm summer evenings filled with mystery and promise.

Evan sighed again, smiling wistfully this time, and then went to check if the bear trap he’d hidden behind the outhouse was still set. It was, as were most of the assorted snares, alarms, and other inconveniences he’d scattered about the perimeter about ten yards into the woods. His paranoia temporarily sated, Evan returned to the front of the cabin and, after a few minutes of digging for keys and fighting with stubborn locks, let himself in.

The cabin was, thankfully, just how he’d left it. The meager furniture in the... living room? Dining room? The room that wasn’t the bedroom. He’d moved almost all the furniture from this room into the room that was the bedroom. In its place was an intricate, looping, eye-straining symbol that took up most of the room. This thing, this rune, or sigil, or whatever, had, by far, been the biggest pain in the ass of the whole endeavor. The instructions were very clear that the measurements need to be very precise. There was very little margin for error. This wouldn’t normally have been a problem for a detail-minded man like Evan, but the instructions were so ancient that he’d had to spent the better part of a day translating archaic units of measurement that he’d never even heard of into something he could work with. Then he’d spent countless (Evan had actually counted, though; it was something close to thirty-two) consecutive hours outlining this thing, measuring, re-measuring, and marveling at the weird beauty of it. And sweating and swearing. Lots of that.

The end result was, at first glance, a chaotic jumble of overlapping circles within circles and lines with no apparent purpose but to lay across the thing like a dropped handful of pick-up sticks. The more you looked at it, though, you started to see how the pieces came together as a greater whole. It was like the insides of an intricate watch, a mass of confusing pieces that coalesced into a beautiful, functional machine. Evan was almost proud of it. He still wasn’t certain that this thing would actually work, but he felt a sense of accomplishment from finishing it, even if it was basically a glorified connect-the-dots puzzle.

Evan’s doubts about the authenticity of the ritual--or, at least, his doubts that it was functional magic--were rapidly vanishing. With the fading light of the setting sun reduced to a trickle by the room’s single curtained window, the symbol was glowing faintly. The weird green-blue-white light somehow didn’t illuminate anything around it, despite the light itself somehow raising two or three inches out of the symbol. It undulated and rippled slightly, like a miniaturized version of the Northern Lights tethered to the floor. No heat came from it, and when had Evan carefully prodded it (after testing it with a stick first, to make sure it didn’t melt or burst into flames or something), his finger went right through it, registering only a slight tingling sensation. Satisfied after a cursory examination of the rune (It’s still glowing, so I guess it’s still okay), Evan made his way into the bedroom to unpack. Much like the...not-bedroom, it was sparse, even though he’d shoved all the furniture into it. In total, there was a small kitchen table, three chairs, a smaller table that he supposed was supposed to be a desk, and a bed with a straw mattress. Everything was lashed together out of barely-sculpted wood and coarse rope. It was, at the very least, thematically coherent.

Evan laid down on the bed, wincing slightly as the straw poked at him even through the sleeping bag he’d bought in an attempt to prevent exactly that. It was annoying, but he reminded himself that, if everything went according to plan, tonight would be the last night he’d have to spend in this anachronism. Better make sure I’ve got it right, then. By the light of a Coleman lantern, Evan settled back on the scratchy mattress and began to review his notes.

He’d either wait until the moon was up or until someone showed up to kill him. One or the other.

#my writing #chapter #Ugly Man Chronicles: Reignition #Ugly Man Chronicles

3 notes · View notes

hummingbirdsalt · 7 years

Text

Mag7 - Time Traveler AU

I really love the idea of Faraday being a time traveler, but in a universe where time traveling is an unexplained ability that some people are just born with. In this AU I picture Faraday living in modern times while the rest of the seven still exist in the past. This post is just gonna be a bunch of details and general ideas about this 'verse. :P

There’s no clear reason why anyone is capable of time travel, and those who are often discover it by accident when they're young. In Faraday's case, I imagine that when he's around 10 years old, his dog runs out into the street and gets hit by a car. In all the shock and pain of the moment, his mind makes a desperate plea to turn back time and stop his dog from dying. He doesn't expect anything to actually happen, but the world shifts and reverses around him. He stares incredulously as his dog springs up from the ground and moves backwards, coming to a stop at his side. Overwhelmed with surprise, young Faraday doesn't have the presence of mind to stop his dog from darting into the street for the second time. He’s left shaken and confused, and the only clear thought in his mind is that he can't let his dog die. Whatever just happened needs to happen again. So with one little thought, the world bends around him, and this time he holds firmly to his dog, watching in fascination as a familiar car rolls by without incident.

Over years of experimenting with the ability, Faraday learns that while he can travel back as far as he likes and return to his own present, the future always remains out of reach. He even tries going mere seconds forward, but with no success.

He learns early on that no one else is aware of time moving unnaturally, and hasn't figured out a way to make anyone aware. If he tries to hold onto someone while shifting time, they just get caught up in the shift no matter how hard he tries to focus on keeping hold of them. This limit in his ability becomes less relevant as he grows more hesitant to form close relationships.

While he'd been able to reverse his dog's death, he finds himself unable to reverse anything that happens to his own body. Injuries remain, and whenever he returns to the present, he's older than he ought to be, whether it's by minutes or months.

Eventually, he begins to come across other time travelers. Some are curious history geeks, some are people just trying to fix mistakes in their own life, and some... some have more extreme ideas. It's with a great sinking feeling that Faraday realizes every philosophical discussion he's ever heard about going back in time to prevent terrible events and potentially screwing things up even worse are far from hypothetical. It hadn't ever really occurred to him, as he'd never desired to mess around with anything that could be so catastrophic, and he hadn't known about other travelers.

He also discovers that while there are some who cause chaos, there are others who seek to keep things balanced, if far from perfect. He meets a woman who describes how she's able to sense moments in history that feel off, and she doesn't simply mean that they feel wrong. Countless occurrences in the history of the world are wrong, but she can tell when certain things are the result of a meddling time traveler. Not every result of that sort of meddling is harmful, in fact most aren't, but some leave things terribly unbalanced and tilting towards utter chaos. She, as well as many other travelers, do their best to correct these imbalances.

Faraday, out of curiosity more than anything, asks her if she can teach him how to sense that sort of thing. She tells him it's something that comes quite naturally to any time traveler, but most don't even think to attempt it. Not long after, Faraday is sharply aware of a great number of moments spread all throughout history, some of them jumping out like unexpected colors in a pattern, strange but not necessarily unwelcome. Others, however, spike out aggressively in his mind, seeming misplaced and dangerous. It's the danger that makes Faraday interested, and he's curious as to how one even goes about balancing the universe. With a shrug, he shifts time to find out for himself.

It becomes a regular thing for him, finding and fixing moments that don't belong. His motivation isn't exactly altruistic, but it's not entirely selfish either. While he's happy to play a small part in preventing the world from being twisted into a chaotic, destructive jumble of nonsense, the continued urge to do it is based more in the guarantee of excitement. Nearly every moment or event that needs fixing offers up one hell of an experience, often filled to the brim with risks. Faraday can't get enough of it, and he's always looking for the next adventure.

One potential adventure, an off balance incident in a town called Rose Creek, has his interest almost immediately. For one thing, due to the location and time period, he knows he'll get to play cowboy if he goes. In his travels, he's acquired a diverse knowledge and skill with firearms, and he's done plenty of horseback riding. Plus, he can't deny how much he enjoys it when he gets to put together a badass ensemble for a journey to the past. He's online looking at hats and holsters before he's even researched the circumstances he may be involving himself in.

When he does eventually focus in on Rose Creek to see what sort of mess he's dealing with, he can sense it wasn't a deliberate change but rather one result of some unrelated meddling. He could follow the trail backwards and see what caused the chain of events, but he usually avoids going about things that way. There's always a chance that the traveler who meddled with the initial moment is still around and might undo all his work afterwards. He finds it better to focus on the moment things really start to go off balance, and work from there. It's usually more dangerous that way, and a hell of a lot more fun.

This is a spot where things get kinda sketchy, because I'm not certain of the reason/s for things being off balance in Rose Creek. I definitely imagine things going terribly for the townsfolk and the rest of the seven, but I'm not really sure why. Part of it is that I think taking any of the seven out of the fight would change things dramatically, especially since only three of them make it out in the film. But at the same time, I'm not even going by canon, because in this 'verse I imagine they were all supposed to make it out alive before being affected by some random chain of events. So I don't know what I'm doing, but basically, Faraday's objective is to make sure we all get the Nobody Dies Ending. :P

I can't decide if I prefer Faraday being able to teleport to a certain location when traveling in time, or him having to physically go there beforehand. I think it'd be a good limit on his abilities, but I also love the image of him standing in his apartment in a cowboy getup. Either way, he gets where he needs to be, traveling back earlier than he needs to so he can settle into his surroundings.

It turns out that settling in mostly consists of drinking and playing several lucrative rounds of poker. He manages to get himself a horse with his earnings, though he doesn't have to pay much as the stable owner is glad to be rid of what he calls "a goddamn beast from hell". Faraday prefers the name Jack.

When Chisolm comes into the saloon one day, Faraday is keen to be on his good side, so he doesn't hesitate when the man sitting next to him goes for his gun. He pulls out his own gun, knowing Chisolm will take note if he has his back. The whole scenario, a lone badass shooting up a saloon, probably has Faraday feeling more giddy than he ought to.

A little later on, Faraday is keeping an eye on Chisolm, focusing in close when he sees a woman approach him with great purpose. He gets near enough to hear some of their conversation, and it doesn't take long for him to confirm that it pertains to Rose Creek. Cue Faraday attempting to be subtle as he stands leaning on a post, right in plain view as if to say, 'Wow, crazy how this woman's asking your for help and this dude who totally had your back earlier is just standing here with nothing better to do than tag along'. He doubts all of that is coming across, but he'll definitely be noticed.

Basically, Chisolm recruits him, and things are set in motion. We're gonna skip ahead a little here, because let's be real, this entire AU is just another way to imagine Faraday/Vasquez unfolding. :P Not that I'm disinterested in his interactions with other characters, because I think it's cool to consider what kind of dynamic modern!Faraday would have with the whole group. While I do think he'd put on some sort of a persona for the setting, I imagine he'd still come across differently than canon!Faraday, since he's someone from a different time with totally different experiences. But onto Vas, because we're several paragraphs deep into this nonsense and I haven't even mentioned him.

Faraday likes him the moment he's close enough to see him, or at least he very much likes what he sees. He dismounts a bit unsteadily as Sam and Goodnight have their reunion, finding that he's still in a bit of a drunken haze. One thing stands out clearly in the haze, though, and that's how unfairly attractive the man standing across from him is. At this point, it makes me laugh to think of Faraday being a bit more drunk than he realizes and slurring out something really stupid like, "Come here often, amigo?" which doesn't even make sense in the situation and would be a terrible line in any century and Vas would just be like ?? ? ? ????? But honestly, I can imagine their first interaction going several different ways. The point is Faraday has the hots for him immediately.

I imagine things become flirtatious between them, in a barbed, challenging sort of way. Faraday is no stranger to flirting with people from the past, but he doesn't often come across the type who can give him shit and leave him feeling strangely charmed in even the shortest of conversations. Vasquez senses something odd about Faraday from the very beginning, and can't help feeling intrigued. The man exudes a level of confidence Vasquez doesn't quite feel from any of the others, as if the chances of everything going horribly wrong don't weigh on him as much as they should. Of course, he has no way of knowing that the only thing Faraday has to worry about is keeping himself alive, as he can easily reverse things and try again if one of the others gets killed.

Honestly, the whole battle of Rose Creek is such a jumbled mess in my mind. This 'verse gives me so many options for how things could go down, and I can't make any clear decisions. Most likely, Faraday has to go through it multiple times and work out the kinks. One scenario I like to imagine, for temporary angst reasons, is one where Faraday has extreme difficulty reworking the battle to end without Vasquez dying. Like, after several adjustments, Vasquez keeps ending up dead and Faraday is faced with the possibility that this is a moments in time that can't be fully repaired. But of course he does eventually succeed, and it takes everything in him not to basically tackle Vas to the ground out of relief.

Another scenario is where Faraday pretty much does the same thing he did in the film, but manages to make it out alive. When he wakes up with multiple gunshot wounds and several other injuries that all seem to be fighting over who gets to make him cry more, he thinks he should probably get himself to a time with better medical care. But time traveling takes energy, and he's finding it difficult enough to keep his eyelids from drooping. Only after he's healed up some does he travel back to the present (and this is where it'd really work best if he could simultaneously teleport whilst time traveling) and get himself to a hospital to be looked at properly. I like to think he always goes to the same hospital and they just know him as the weird dude who always has strange, unexplained injuries.

While he's already accomplished what he needed to in Rose Creek, Faraday doesn't like to leave without a trace if he feels the people he's leaving deserve better than that. The six men he'd fought with certainly deserve some sort of goodbye, and though he won't admit it to himself, he finds the idea of leaving Vasquez very difficult.

When he returns to Rose Creek, he feels significantly better, though he still has plenty of healing to do. He climbs into bed, figuring he needs rest anyway so he might as well get it in a place where he can bid farewell to his companions. He expects they're all itching to get a move on and go their separate ways, and have only been waiting until he healed up well enough to where they could be sure he wouldn't die a lonely death. What he doesn't expect is Vasquez coming into his room with a dark look on his face, greatly contrasting the easy smile he usually wears. He doesn't expect Vasquez to start ranting angrily about how reckless he'd been almost blowing himself up, explaining that he couldn't bring himself to say all of this earlier when he hadn't been certain Faraday would survive his injuries. He doesn't expect Vasquez to care so goddamn much that he'd almost died. And he certainly doesn't expect the man to sit down next to him on the bed, his expression growing softer as his hand settles gently on top of Faraday's shoulder. He thinks he probably needs to stop trying to figure out what to expect when Vasquez tells him quietly, "I thought I was going to lose you, güerito."

Faraday has interacted with a lot of people in his lifetime, often in situations where emotions ran high, but no one has ever made his chest ache the way it does when Vasquez says those words to him. He doesn't like to get too invested in people when he knows full well he doesn't belong in their life, or their time for that matter. He hadn't been too worried about Vasquez, thinking a man on the run from the law would be quick to move on. But now, staring into his eyes, Faraday can see things are not as simple as he'd hoped. He knows he shouldn't complicate things more, and that's precisely what he tells himself. As he reaches towards his shoulder to place his hand on top of Vasquez's, he tells himself to stop, but the thought is drowned out by the pounding in his chest. His fingers curl slightly over Vasquez's hand, and he replies softly, "I'm sorry, Vas."

When Vasquez's lips press against his, there's a small part of Faraday still attempting to stop what's happening, but how in the hell is he supposed to pay any mind to that when he's so busy running his fingers through Vas's hair? So busy holding him closer and reveling in the way he feels, the way he tastes. One kiss, and he's well out of control, totally lost in how much he's been wanting to do this.

They don't do more than kiss, though the only thing stopping them is that Faraday is physically far from able. But Vas settles down beside him, holding him gently while Faraday's arm circles around to hold him as well. Vas falls asleep first, and lying there consumed by his own thoughts, Faraday can do nothing but panic in silence as he feels himself falling for a man who happens to be in completely the wrong time period.

I have it in my mind that so far in his life, Faraday has had several flirtations with people from different times, and probably a couple physical relationships where neither person involved was looking for more. But not once has he faced the possibility of someone loving him in that way, let alone someone from the wrong century. Things only get more complicated when the rest of the seven decide they’re gonna stick together, and they invite Faraday to join. Somehow, he’d let himself grow closer to all these men than he should’ve (much closer is Vas’s case), and returning to the present suddenly feels impossible.

So I have several more thoughts about this AU, but in this post I mainly wanted to lay out the basics and get to the point of Faraday falling for Vasquez, as well as realizing he’d become friends with all of them without meaning to. I love it when a character feels simultaneously out of place and also right where they belong. But anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now! ^_^

#mag7 #magnificent seven #faraquez #joshua faraday #vasquez #time traveler au #my stuff #not gonna lie if someone wanted to take any part of this concept and write a faraquez fic with it i would love them forever #because my ideas are a jumbled mess and i'm really not a writer :P

24 notes · View notes