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pomegranates-and-blood · 3 years

Text

νοσταλγία (Chapter 39)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: The usual

A/N: Hi! I have nothing to say here lol, thank you for reading, hope you enjoy! Love ya!

Today there’s two chapters! You can find Chapter 40 right here

Run if you want to; fight, kick, scream.

You told him the Greeks being alive changed nothing, and while he argued and insisted otherwise, you remained certain. Now, now you realize Ivar was right.

Them being alive meant being an Anassa was not some distant title awaiting for you somewhere in Greece, them being alive meant the Priestess you once were wasn’t allowed to rest amongst the dead where she belonged.

Them being alive meant that there would come a day where your bond to them and your bond to Ivar would pull you in two different directions, and that you would have to let go of one of them.

And now they have come to find you, they call for you with their familiar language and their warm memories and their land of flower fields and nostalgia. And yet at your back is the man you love, and he offers you a lifetime of strange customs and cold nights and his kingdom of iron and death.

And you can’t pretend there isn’t a choice to make for any longer.

You can’t pretend you haven’t known what your choice would be for a long time, maybe since the start of it all.

Because you are asked to give up one night in the familiar warmth of your bedroom and at the same time you are asked to forget for one more night that there isn’t a world past him; and you realize there isn’t a difference between one night and one lifetime.

Fate will drag you home by the wrists, child.

The sky remains the same as the Gods demand you make your choice, the earth is still solid under your feet as you walk the path you have chosen, the wind is biting and cold even if it speaks of the change of spring.

You leave behind a part of you, on the path you didn’t take, on the choice you couldn’t make; and as your heart breaks in two, as your eyes fill with tears, as a part of you dies and descents, you can’t help but think bitterly that the world now should be as changed as you are.

And you realize then, as you force shaking legs to move, that the world didn’t change when Persephone made her choice, but that didn’t mean she didn’t make one.

The skies didn’t tremble and shiver as when Zeus condemned her, the earth wasn’t split in two as when Hades first took her, the fields and flowers didn’t wither and die as when Demeter mourned her.

The world didn’t change, and so the stories never spoke of the day she made her choice. And us mortals were nearsighted enough to believe there hadn’t been a choice to be made.

You know how this tale goes.

You close your eyes tightly against Zephyr’s cries, and your tears leave a burning trail down your skin. When you lick your lips, the salt of your tears tastes sweet, like the sweetest of fruits.

It has been so many years since you were allowed a bite of it, but you still remember what it tasted like. Like the unknown, like freedom, like temptation.

You hold on tightly to the wood at your side, stopping only for a second.

For a second, you can close your eyes and be there again, surrounded by tall stone walls of the temple in a time before the mark of soot and pain on your heart, with the soft lull of the Aegean lapping at the soft sands of the shore filling your ears.

Narses’ warm and raspy voice calmly talking his men through training, the elders’ always-cold and always-soft touches as they passed you by during the day, the wide-eyed look of the younger girls that wanted to become Hiereiai, Galla’s secret smile as you two shared a look and the shine in her dark eyes that spoke of trust and understanding.

But the woman that lived among them is not the woman you are anymore. You haven’t been her for years. Even on the day you were first called Anassa, the woman that could have been it, been their leader and queen, was already dead and gone.

And try as you might, you can’t imagine a life where you can come back to it, to them.

The wood creaks under your tightening grip, and the screech of the falcon rings in your head. And you look back, and whisper an apology.

And close the door.

You once imagined if maybe all of this had been nothing but your descent, and it isn’t too hard to imagine all that has happened to be nothing but the path that leads to your death. That has led to it.

And if the Gods let you, you want for nothing other than this death. Let the Hiereia that died in Eleusis amongst the flames rest with those that perished for her and with her; let the Anassa that out of guilt and the burden of legacy earned a hollow crown die too.

Let you be reborn.

Because you sink into familiar warmth surrounded by an unfamiliar world, and you can’t find it in yourself to wish for anything to be any different.

Drawing your legs up, you curl your body behind Ivar’s, your face buried between his shoulder blades and your eyes shut tightly.

More than once you imagined what a life alongside him could have been, if you had never known the binds of legacy that kept you tethered to Greece and her people. More than once you almost wished for your Fate to had been other, and a world where you could have never been anything other than a healer from the Silk Roads.

You never dared imagine, or wish for, a life at his side after you were made Anassa of the Attic Greeks. It felt like a betrayal of who they wanted you to be, to want to stay at his side, to love him, to see a future in this realm of cold and death.

But that is what you have chosen, that is…what you’ll have.

A murmur of your name, quiet and a little slurred by sleep, and you tighten your hold.

“I’m here,” You promise, an incredulous smile on your lips. And because you can, because you choose to, you vow, “I’m not going anywhere.”

You try to chase away with the soft sounds of his breaths the cries of the falcon that circles the longhouse almost till nightfall. In your mind, in your dreams, it flies over you with that mournful cry until the morning.

When you wake up it is due to the by now familiar sounds of Ivar moving about the room. When you force yourself to open your eyes, he is already dressed and the braces on his legs safely secured.

He seems to linger, debating with himself whether to leave or to wake you. It is unusual for him to start his day apart from you, and you have made sure in these months to try to be there to offer, if nothing else, a quiet murmur of his name and a smile before he is to leave. You never actually considered it meant much to him, if you’re honest.

When you sit up in the bed, Ivar greets you with a soft mumble of your name, before deciding to lean against one of the nearby tables, watching you as you start your routine as well, patiently waiting for you to walk to him and turn your back for him to lace up your dress.

You turn around, remaining close, and let your hands settle over his chest, idly correcting the way his clothes set over him.

His hand is surprisingly gentle as he tilts your head up. Pale blue eyes search your face, and he asks, “You look tired. Dreams?”

You shake your head, “No, I…Galla was here, last night.”

He blinks, almost owlishly. “Here?”

“Outside Kattegat.”

Whatever ease that was written in his posture, whatever openness that was clear in his eyes; vanish before your eyes and the unfaltering edge of the man that you faced during those first months is all that is left.

And you cannot look at the carefully held distance, the perfected façade of the man in control, so you lower your gaze.

“She came to find you,” It isn’t a question, you know it isn’t, but you can’t help but wonder if a part of him wants you to deny it. You can’t exactly blame or judge him for wanting to believe their return a mistake, if you’re honest. Ivar takes a breath, “You didn’t go.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“They want you with them.”

“But I want to be here.” You sentence, maybe a bit harshly.

You lift your gaze to look into familiar blue eyes, and find a tentative something looking back, something that a less cautious man would let become hope.

Ivar swallows, eyebrows lifting slightly as if to question you, before he keeps the words at bay, lips forming around the beginning of your name but falling short of uttering anything.

Leaving your lips there should be words about how there was never a choice to be made, or how it was something you had chosen a long time ago but never dared admit; there should be promises that you chose, and the world didn’t change but you did and that you do not regret a thing; there should be apologies to the woman you were and the people that loved you for proving right those who said to love a Hiereia of Persephone is a cruel fate; there should be reassurances that you never spoke truer words than when you told him you loved him above anything and above anyone.

But you choke on shame and guilt, and your words are kept at bay not only by the voices of your past demanding to know why you have forsaken them, but by the press of Ivar’s lips on yours.

When you part, he motions for you to go get ready, tells you to get on with your day. You aren’t certain if him holding on to normalcy like this is a good or a bad thing anymore.

____

It was always frighteningly easy, to forget there was a world past him, but as you step out of the longhouse, the cloak wrapped tightly around you, you cannot help but take your eyes to the skies, searching for a bird, a messenger, that you know won’t be there.

You told her you’d be there if they needed you, you told her to send Zephyr to the skies with the certainty that you’d answer the call. But the time came, and when they needed you and he needed you, the choice was frighteningly easy, and you couldn’t answer their call.

You notice the cold in your hands when delicate and dainty fingers wrap around yours, and Freydis’ deep blue eyes look at you with countless questions. You realize then you’ve walked to the edge of the city, and stand before the tallest stretch of the wall, the barrier to the forest, to another realm, to a life you had left behind long before you were brave enough to admit you had.

Freydis doesn’t say anything, taking you to her home with the same ease as that night when she guided you through darkened streets to the place where you could cross that barrier and embrace your oldest friend and remember what the warmth of Eleusis felt like.

You stand in the small and humble home, and you cannot keep the words from your lips,

“You saw Zephyr, you saw the...the falcon, right?”

“I did,” She confirms, unwaveringly honest as she adds, “I went past the walls, I met the woman. Galla.”

That she did what you did not should hurt you, should make the pit of shame and guilt at the base of your stomach grow tighter, but you only have breath for one question,

“D-Did she tell you why she was here? What did they need, wh-…?”

“She is well, and so are the rest, as far as she told me,” At her silence you almost want to ask for more, but the blonde is quicker, and explains, “That is all you need to know. That is all you want to know.”

You drop down on the chair behind you, your head held in your hands and your breaths shaking their way past your lips.

“That’s unfair.” You say, but she remains impassive, unnerving you.

“You could have gone to them, but you didn’t.”

“No,” You are forced to accept, the word leaving your lips in a breath. Lifting your head, you state, “Freydis, I-…they needed me, and I…”

“And you stayed with him.” Freydis finishes for you, but there isn’t bite in her tone, there isn’t an accusation. You almost wish there were.

You grit your teeth at the sob that threatens to break free, but pride and something else keep you from closing your eyes tight, stubborn resilience and something else make you straighten your back and raise your chin.

“I did.”

Freydis betrays a smile. It is faint, it is still tainted with something like pain and something hidden.

“And do you regret it?”

And past the loss of the familiar, past the unsteadiness of walking without chains, past the guilt of making a choice…you smile.

The answer that leaves your lips is unwavering, “No.”

The blonde’s smile widens, and her eyes crinkle a little bit when she does, dark blue shining more vibrant than you have seen in a long time.

“You chose, and you chose him.”

“I did.” You tell her, smile wobbling but honest.

She sits down in front of you, voice quiet and eyes on yours with an openness born out of too many similar scars. Her hand grasps yours and she squeezes tightly.

“Freedom is a terrifying thing, isn’t it?”

____

You find yourself following your routine -the world didn’t shake, or tremble, or change- and you enter the apothecary home, grateful for the reprieve from the biting cold of Kattegat’s winter.

“Witch!” Valdís calls out, her grudge against you for making Aghi insist that his mother dip him in the river like Thetis did to Achilles seemingly forgotten for the time being.

You greet her with a smile, and as she tells you she is working on some remedies for fever for a family near the outskirts of Kattegat whose five children came down with a sickness due to the winter; you sit next to her and start helping.

“My boy has stopped insisting I drown him in some river, by the way.”

“It is not drowning, it i-…”

“I really don’t care, witch,” She interrupts, but there’s jest in her tone, not malice, and you only roll your eyes at her, but still smile. The shieldmaiden chuckles, “At least he has forgotten about that, and about threatening the sun with arrows. Aghi won’t let go about that boat of black sails, though.”

“Theseus?”

“The idiot that forgot to change the sails for white ones.”

Gods, for a moment it is like talking with Sieghild once again.

With a nod of your head, you confirm, “Theseus.”

Valdís shares a reluctant smile with you, fond exasperation in her pale gaze.

“Frigg help me, my boy will go raiding one day and insist they put white sails on his boats.”

For the first time you let yourself imagine it, seeing Valdís’ son grow to become a man. Seeing him go raid and explore when the time comes.

Unbidden, Aghi’s image in your mind is replaced by images of children of your own, children that too will one day grow and go raid and explore, maybe alongside their father, maybe even alongside Aghi.

And maybe they will insist on putting white sails on their boats for the sake of their foreign woman of a mother that waits for them to return.

And for once the dream doesn’t seem impossible, for once the hope doesn’t have to fight against nostalgia.

____ ____ ____

Soooo...? I’m really curious to know whether her choice surprised you or not tbh

Of course, there’s the particular aspect of telling him, but she’ll get there. Let it be known that she tried to tell him, but he didn’t wanna hear it bc pessimism. Anyhow, I hope this was okay, I’m not so sure but I hope it’s just my insecurity talking. Thank you for reading!

You can find the second part of today’s update, Chapter 40, right here!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @pieces-by-me @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @chibisgotovalhalla @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside

#ivar the boneless x reader #ivar x reader #ivar the boneless imagine #ivar the boneless #ivar #νοσταλγία masterlist

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marvelyningreen · 3 years

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Into Tomorrow

(My hurried little contribution to the “what if Fietro really had been Peter Maximoff?” pile, because it was stuck in my head at work all day. In which Magneto and Professor Xavier had appeared through a portal to rescue Peter - just in time to miss the battle - and though Hex Vision had to say goodbye to Wanda once again, the twins were real enough to survive.)

“Listen, Wanda,” Peter began hesitantly, “I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Wanda shook her head, and her voice sounded hollow as she answered. “It wasn’t your fault.”

It was still strange to hear her speaking in that accent, and strange to see her without a film of memories and magical control clouding his mind.

“I mean, it kinda feels like it was. Those words were coming out of my mouth, after all.” Peter laughed awkwardly. Man, that wasn’t even a joke. He cleared his throat. “But that’s not what I mean. I’m sorry about your brother, Wanda.”

Wanda gave an acknowledging nod, but said nothing. Peter forged ahead.

“I don’t have a twin,” he said, “But I do have a little sister. If anything happened to her, I don’t... I don’t know what I’d do. So I can’t imagine what it was like to lose somebody like that. But if the memories of him that were floating around my head are any indication, I know that he loved you a whole lot.”

She wasn’t his sister, and he wasn’t her fake brother anymore, but Peter wished like everything that he could give her a hug on Pietro’s behalf. Probably a bad idea, though.

“Thank you,” was all Wanda said.

Ducking his head, Peter turned to go - only to find the twins blocking his way.

“So… you really aren’t our uncle, are you?” said Tommy.

“I’m not. I’m sorry.” Looking down at those two disappointed little faces damn near broke Peter’s heart. “But, hey! I could still be your honorary uncle, if you want. And if your mom’s okay with it?”

In the face of those three hopeful expressions, Wanda nodded, still not trusting that her voice was steady enough to speak.

“Alright! High-fives, honorary nephews!” Peter flashed Erik a grin over his shoulder. “Guess that means you got grandkids now.”

“Whoa, that guy’s your dad? Awesome!” Tommy exclaimed.

Erik, who’d been watching Peter with something like fond exasperation, finally cracked a genuine smile.

“But you have to go back home now, don’t you?” said Billy.

Peter’s cheerfulness faded. Crazy witch or no crazy witch, the twins were good kids. He was really gonna miss being their Uncle P.

“You’re right, Billy. I guess I do.”

The boy looked down sadly.

“The world you’re from,” he said, “What’s it like?”

“Well,” Peter glanced around, taking in the faded, ordinary town of Westview. “It’s a lot like this, honestly. Except-”

At that moment, something occurred to Peter. He turned to the professor, fully expecting to have the idea shot down before he could even say it out loud. But the professor said nothing, smiling faintly at Peter and his train of thought.

Encouraged, Peter took a knee to be on eye-level with the twins.

“Listen. In my home world, I live at a school. It’s his school, actually,” he said, hooking a thumb in the professor’s direction, “And it’s full of kids with special powers, just like you two.”

“There are people like us?” asked Billy, and Tommy asked, “What kind of powers?”

“Sure, there are!” said Peter. “There’s somebody who can shapeshift to look like anybody she wants to, and there’s one guy who can shoot lazerbeams out of his eyes, and one who can control ice… And I bet you two Mini-moffs would love it there. Right, Professor?”

The professor nodded. “My school is open to anyone who wishes to learn, but I believe that decision is up to their mother.”

“Mom, can we go? Please?” Tommy pleaded.

All eyes turned to Wanda, and Peter’s heart went out to her. She looked so tired, and so resigned. Her gaze darted between her twins and the professor.

“This school of yours,” she said, “Would my children be safe there?”

“Wait!” Billy interrupted before the professor could answer. “You’d come with us, right, Mom?”

Wanda stepped closer, reaching out to caress the boys’ heads gently. “Of course I want to stay with you, but I…”

The twins’ protests drowned her out. Wanda shook her head, her smile wavering as she tried to calm them down. This was definitely not the reaction Peter was hoping for. He stood up, ready to interject, but the professor beat him to it.

“Wanda, if I may,” he said, “You remind me very much of a dear friend of mine – a man named Logan. He, too, was once used and manipulated because of his powers. He spent a great many years consumed by his loss and loneliness. And do you know what happened to him? He found friends. He found a home and a family of his own choosing, and he began to heal. Wanda, you have suffered a great deal in your life, and the way to healing can be a long road, but you needn’t walk it alone.”

Wanda was visibly struggling to keep her composure now. She hastily wiped at her eyes.

“I can’t,” she said shakily. “I can’t. My powers are too dangerous. I don’t know how to fully control them.”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Erik who answered her.

“All the more reason to learn. I can assure you, we aren’t afraid to have you among us.”

The twins watched their mother hopefully, but Wanda was silent. Erik moved closer.

“Ms. Maximoff, I know I cannot truly understand what you’ve been through. But I, too, have done things that I regret, and I, too, know what it is to grieve. I lost my parents when I was a child. I lost my wife. I lost my daughter. But I also gained a brother, and I gained a son.” Erik met the professor’s gaze and Peter’s in turn, before turning back to Wanda. “Life can be cruel. You may struggle, and you may grieve, but if you come with us, you will never lack friends.”

“Now that we know the way, you can return to this world whenever you like,” said the professor, answering Wanda’s unasked question.

Billy wrapped his arms around Wanda. “Please, Mom? Dad would’ve wanted us to stay together.”

“He would, baby,” Wanda said softly. “He would.”

“Wanda?” said Monica, “Are you sure this is what you want?”

She seemed to know what Wanda’s answer would be, because she smiled as she asked the question. Wanda met her gaze, and nodded confidently.

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”

Monica laughed quietly. “Alright. But before you go, I think a couple friends of mine want to say goodbye.”

She gestured to Darcy and Jimmy, who’d been hovering near the edge of the conversation, trying to look like they weren’t overhearing it all. Darcy waved.

“Hey, Wanda,” she said. “You don’t know me or anything, but I guess you could say I’m a big fan and, well… I hope you find someplace that makes you happy for real.”

“Best of luck to you, Wanda,” said Jimmy, “You, too, kids!”

“Thank you. All of you,” said Wanda.

As Darcy and Jimmy tried to make themselves inconspicuous again, Monica turned back to Wanda.

“Well, goodbye, Wanda,” she said, a little sadly. “I hope I’ll see you again someday.”

Wanda smiled. “I hope so, too.”

Monica stepped back to join the others, and Wanda hesitated a moment, looking at the three of them and the faded town of Westview. Her fingertips brushed her left hand, absent the wedding band she’d conjured. With one last wistful smile, she turned away.

“Are you ready to go?” asked Peter, “Need me to run and get anything you wanna bring along?”

Wanda shook her head, putting her arms around her sons and pulling them close. “The only things I wish to bring are already with me.”

“Alright,” said Peter, “Professor, lead the way!”

Billy and Tommy took Wanda’s hands, pulling her along as they followed these strangers – these new friends – into tomorrow.

#wandavision fanfic #wandavision spoilers #wandavision #peter maximoff #wanda maximoff #mcu wanda maximoff #alright I feel better now XP #I know that’s never how it would’ve ended #but I’m gonna say there’s a corner of the multiverse where it did #just shouting into the void #long post

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damnzawa · 4 years

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Hi! For your AU fest, can I request a afterlife! bakugou x reader x Todoroki, where bakugou used to date the reader but towards the end he kind of mistreated her. Reader dies and Todoroki is some sort of death god/spirit who falls in love with her! Bakugou feels really guilty and fights his way into the underworld for you. Then reader picks one! (up to you haha) sorry this is kinda long! Thank you so much! 😊

FIRST LOVE — T. SHOUTO

Note(s): oh wow,, a new post ?? congratulations me! anyways, i’ve been mia lately due to animal crossing so please pardon my lack of new posts. i’ll try my best to finish all the requests before school starts! enjoy :)

Warning(s): Lil angst i think,, also King Explosion Murder is your ex lol

—

In all the years you lived on Earth, you’ve hardly experienced love. Years and years, you’ve been asking yourself, what was your fault? What was the sin you committed that gave you a bad karma like that?

All those years and not a single drop of love was given to you. Of course you grew used to it, but still, you yearned for it. You craved for it. So much that you were desperate for someone, anyone, to show it to you.

It was that desperation that led you to your ex-husband, Bakugo Katsuki.

He was kind in his own way, fiery, feisty. He did things his way and didn’t let anybody get on his way. Maybe it was his looks or that damn personality of his that made you fall. But nonetheless, falling for Bakugo Katsuki was the biggest mistake of your life.

He was cruel. Menacing. Cold. He wasn’t the man you pictured him to be. What he first showed you was only a facade, a mask to cover what he truly is: a monster.

In all the years you lived on Earth, you’ve never really felt love. Not from your parents, siblings, nor from the husband you cherished with your whole heart. So, it was ironic that when you finally left the face of the Earth that you finally felt it.

You feared death. You dreaded the time when your heart stops beating and you stop breathing. You hated the silence that came afterwards. Everything about death was bad. Until you realized that your death was the beginning of something new. Something beautiful. It wasn’t the end. It was only just a beginning of a new chapter.

The man in front of you was different from Bakugo Katsuki. He wasn’t aggresive nor have anger issues. If anything, he seems like an empty shell. A hollow and broken one at that. But despite that, despite the cold feeling in his heart, he showed you love. He gave you all of his love. Even if it meant none was left for himself.

Todoroki Shouto was the God of Death. Yet despite his title, he wasn’t as menacing as it sounds. In fact, he’s soft. He wasn’t the living demon you expected him to be, he was so much more than that. He was your saviour. And he was also the one who made you experience what love is.

But it made you feel guilty. Was love supposed to make you feel guilty? It was sad. Love was never supposed to be sad. (Or so you think.)

It was sad because the love wasn’t mutual.

“It’s ok, Y/n.” He said in his usual soft voice but the look in his eyes betrayed his voice. He was hurt. Deeply. Of course he was. It was the first time he loved someone and he was rejected. “I’ll wait for you. And when the time comes, I’ll be here for you.”

“Shouto.” You placed a hand on his cheek to which he happily leaned into. “Don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“Do what?”

“Love yourself before you can love someone else, Shouto.” You smiled sadly at him. “And when that time comes, I’ll be happy to accept your affections.” Your hand left his face, making him frown. The warmth it left on his face was slowly disappearing. “Besides, I, myself am not ready yet. You know this Shouto.”

He sighed and nodded. He respected your decision and frankly, you were right. It seemed that you’ll be practicing what you preached too. So, it made him a bit glad.

You and Todoroki stayed friends, even after the rejection. Honestly, you expected him to leave, shut the door on your face, but he didn’t. Instead, he stayed with you, the both of you finally learning to love yourselves first before others. He stayed with you through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. He stayed with you through all the bad and good times, as you did with him, and for the first time in forever, you were finally ready.

You were about to say it. Those words that Todoroki wanted to hear. You opened your mouth to say something when suddenly a commotion was heard in the distance. A very familiar one.

“Let me see her! Fucking damnit! Get out of my way extras!” You felt you heart drop at the voice. It was him. Bakugo Katsuki.

“Y/n. Stay here.” Todoroki instructed you but it was too late. Your feet moved on instinct and started running towards Bakugo. You didn’t know why but hearing him made you want to see him badly, for some reason. You didn’t know why but somehow, you forgot about Todoroki for a second.

Katsuki.

Katsuki... died?

Arriving at the scene, your breath hitched once your eyes fell on a certain angry blond. It was him, in the flesh. Standing there with that trademark scowl of his.

“Shut up dumbfucks! I don’t fucking care!” You were about to approach him when a hand found it’s way on your shoulder. Glancing back, you saw Todoroki with a worried expression on his face. He wasn’t worried about your well-being though. He was worried you’d leave him for Bakugo.

“Shouto. It’s ok.” You flashed him a smile, as if to reassure him that everything will be fine. “It’ll be done in a jiffy.”

Removing Todoroki’s hand from your shoulder, you approached Bakugo, who instantly calmed down at the sight of you.

“Katsuki.”

“Y/n.” Bakugo teared up and immediately hugged you. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you, you goddamn extra! I even made a deal with some of the fuckers above just to meet you!”

“Katsuki-“

“I know I’ve been fucking cruel to you. I’m not the best at this shitty things. But, come with me, Y/n. We’ll start again. I promise I’ll be better.” Your mouth went agape at the amount of emotions Bakugo Katsuki gave off. Regret. Grief. Sadness. Despair. Love. It shocked you to the core.

“Katsuki.” You called him once you recovered from the shock. “Go home.” This time it was Bakugo’s turn to be shocked.

“What the fuck? What do you mean?”

“Go home, Katsuki. I don’t want to.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to?”

“Katsuki, have you considered my emotions when you planned all of this? Have you thought about what I would feel?” His silence gave you the answer you needed. “See? I’m tired of this, Katsuki. I don’t want this anymore.”

—

Todoroki hasn’t seen you for weeks ever since the Bakugo incident. He was worried about you. Were you ok? Were you eating well? Were you sleeping ok?

Heavens, he just wanted to know you’re ok.

“Shouto.” Your voice snapped him out of his train of thoughts. Todoroki immediately stood up from his throne and engulfed you in a hug. He felt relieved. Glad that you were ok. Glad that you were here. Glad that you didn’t leave him.

“Someone missed me.” You joked, but you both knew it was true. In all honesty, you missed him too. But you needed the time to figure things and your feelings out.

“You suddenly left without a note. Of course I’d miss you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You needed time.”

“Even so, I worried you.”

“It’s ok.” Todoroki gave you a small smile. “You’re here now, that’s what matters.”

“Hey Shouto. Remember the question you asked me?”

“Hmm? Of course I do. It makes me cringe everytime I think about it.”

—

What happened? What the fuck happened? One second you felt flames engulf your body then the next you were lying on a boat. Boat to where? You didn’t know. But it was giving you the creepy vibes for sure.

Upon further inspection, you spotted a few boats nearby, all headed at the same direction as you. The people in it were just as confused as you were. Where were you exactly? And what happened?

After what seemed like eternity, you finally reached the shore. You reluctantly stepped out of the boat and took a quick look at your surroundings. It was foggy, overall looking like a horror movie. Oh my God, were you gonna die?

“You already did.” A voice interrupted to you. You turned around and saw a dual hair colored boy, infront of you. His answer confused you. You already what?

“You already died.” What? Your face paled at that. Then suddenly, memories of you being trapped in your burning home came flashing back. Oh God. Oh God. You really are dead.

But why aren’t you covered in burns?

“It’s just that.”

“Ok, stop reading my mind.” You glared at the man infront of you. “Who are you anyways?”

“My name is Todoroki Shouto, and I am the God of Death.” If your face went pale earlier, it went pale-r than before. Did you just talk back to the fucking God of Death? Oh shit, oh shit.

“Yes, you did.” You glared at him. “But I don’t mind. Just answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Do you want to be my wife?” You choked at that. What the fuck? Was he for real? You just barely met the guy! You were sure he doesn’t know you too!

“Yes, that’s true.” He replied to your thoughts. “Let’s get to know each other then.”

Was it possible to kill the God of Death?

—

“You were clueless back then.” You giggled. “And honestly, you still are.”

“I’m offended.” Todoroki replied, but the smile on his face grew at your remarks.

“Good. I want you to be.” You joked. “But jokes aside, is that offer still on the table?”

“What?”

“Do you wanna be my husband?” You asked him with a grin on your face.

“Sure, I guess.”

“You guess?!”

Bakugo Katsuki was your past, and now Todoroki Shouto was your present and possibly your future.

#boku no hero academia #my hero academia #todoroki shouto x reader #todoroki x reader #todoroki shouto/reader #todoroki/reader #bakugo katsuki/reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo/reader #TODOROKI IS THE CLUELESS GOD OF DEATH #i love them both

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iwriteforthetincanman · 4 years

Text

Mandoctober Day 16: Tatooine

ALT TITLE: Stardust, The Force and one big beautiful mess

A/N: at first I wanted to continue the sandcrawler scavenger reader I did (which I will do eventually with or without Mandoctober to guide me) but I went through some personal stuff so I more or less wanted to base this around family and where your roots are from rather than Tatooine itself, which in its essence is that one scene with Luke skywalker standing outside his home with the twin suns and later on down the line, his final resting place along with his twin sister Leia.

Someone dear to me passed away almost ten years ago now. The anniversary is the day Season two comes out. Which is essentially why I’m so committed to this fandom now. But I also wanted to write something just to get the remaining grief out of my system.

Mum, this one is for you.

Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum Buir.

Poe Dameron x reader, Nameless!Mother (or Mother Figure) x Din Djarin

(FOR CLARIFICATION DIN DJARIN IS THE READER’S FATHER IN THIS ONE)

also somehow I wrote 5K in two hours none stop...am I Alexander Hamilton?

It had been so long since I had been home. It hurt to think of the place where I came from. Hatred had leaked into my very belief system, my culture...even my family.

I felt like they hated me for leaving... but I was scared that they’d never miss me. That I had only been a ghost in their lives. There for 18 years and then poof! I was gone.

My father, Din Djarin, the Mandalorian saved my mother from slavery when she was quite young. Around my age to be precise. He had no idea at the time because she had been living with an Ugnaught named Kuill. That’s why my middle name is Kuill. I owe that fateful Ugnaught my existence for freeing my own mother from slavery when she was barely even a woman.

She had nowhere else to go...and instead of keeping her grounded and sheltered away from the rest of the world. He let her live.

Growing up you hear stories of people dying all around you, neighbours, friends and yes, even pets. It hurts so much you can’t even comprehend it. You become numb and barren to the pains of the world.

It feels like you don’t care anymore.

It got to a point where I was making things up in my head out of anger. How I would’ve handled things differently, what I wanted to do with my life, where I wanted to go.

But my father had only one strict rule.

Once we set down roots...we can never leave.

I never questioned it after the first time he told me why.

My mother...on the day I decided to leave, knew that something was wrong.

Lately I had been restless, agitated and easy to anger.

At first she thought I had fallen pregnant. Something that had made us both laugh at the time. It was a hollow memory to me now. I had no idea if she was dead or alive.

It hurt. The unknown. Death, life. It didn’t matter.

What mattered was the fight to live. To help others thrive.

You were raised to be everything the First Order was against.

So of course you wanted to join the resistance at the first chance you got.

---

“NO.”

“But-”

“No means no! Do you have any idea what your mother and I went through to bring you this life, so you could live in the peace that the universe scarcely gives? Do you have any idea how lucky you are?!”

“That’s exactly why I have to go! Don’t you understand that! I love living here. But some people aren’t as lucky. You know that more than anyone in this village buir. Mum knows it too.”

It went deadly quiet for a moment.

“I did not bring you this life...risked everything with my culture, my creed, just so you could selfishly throw it away...I don’t want you to die like my parents did Ad’ika.”

I didn’t say it then but...that was another reason you needed to go. To make your ancestors and those Mandalorians who came before your father proud.

It was the one time Din Djarin had let his guard down.

You crept away into the night, leaving only a kiss on your little (in size) brother’s brow and a note next to your mother’s tools.

It was the best way you could’ve said goodbye.

“I am one with the force and the force is with me...This is the way.”

---

Two whole weeks later I found yourself on a planet that was the polar opposite of what I was used to. So much technology that I didn’t know the names of, ships, speeders, weapons and people.

It was strange how seeing so many people made you euphoric at the time. I was only a rookie, and I had never left home before. Of course I was nervous.

There was so much to learn! Keeping up with the resistance is what scared you, what if they threw you out? You had trained under your mother’s mechanical know how just to get here but what if-

“Djarin! Y/N!”

“HERE!” You hadn’t realised how loud you had been until all the people turned to look at you funny. Whispers and giggles followed. Maker, this was embarrassing.

“Good to know you’re here. I’m Poe Dameron by the way. Noticed you weren’t paying attention. You nervous?” Making eye contact with the most gorgeous man you had ever seen was the last thing you had expected. He was a hot shot pilot apparently. You heard a girl giggle behind your head as she winked at him. Oh, give me a break.

“...A little.”

“Okay well don’t be. You recruited for a reason and according to where you’ve been registered you’re the best mechanic we’ve seen in a long while. Which is why you’ve been assigned to my X-Wing.”

Jealousy dripped in ugly green buckets. You were quite fond of the colour, with it being the colour of your little brother’s skin. But...it hurt nonetheless.

“Yes sir.” You whimpered pathetically.

You were doing this for them. Not for some pilot you had only just met. Well...him too.

---

Crashing into General Leia Organa with heaps of your paperwork was not how you planned your first day ending.

“Kriffing Bantha fodder! Why don’t you watch where you’re-Oh my god you’re Princess Leia.”

To say you had been absolutely obsessed with her when you were younger was an understatement.

She reminded you of your mother in so many ways it hurt to look at her.

Which is why you were so confused when she touched your cheek only to find yourself crying at just the sight of her.

---

“So...you left on bad terms with not only your father, but your family in general. Even if your mother never found out?”

“I’m worried that it’ll put a strain on my parents relationship with each other more than anything...I can’t contact them or write. It’s too risky.”

“Your father taught you well.”

“Wait...you know who my father is?”

“Many people have heard of the Mandalorian that killed Moff Gideon with the dark saber. Some have speculated that it was a myth...now I can see that it wasn’t since you are living proof of what Mandalorians can create.”

“My mother was never a Mandalorian. She was a Mechanic through and through...she just happened to be thrown into motherhood twice along the way.” you joked bitterly.

Your parents had told you the tales of Moff Gideon. It was a fairytale that had been shrouded in mystery. Something you weren’t expecting to hear from the two people you admired the most.

“I love my family. That’s all Mandalorians care about. Their clan and their people as a whole. I’ve neglected that part of myself for far too long. We had to hide to be safe. It made me angry. I told my dad I was going to leave the night before I did. He said no...I went anyway. It doesn’t matter what he thinks...not right now. I have to put what matters to me in this universe first.”

“Hmm...you sound a lot like a young jedi knight i used to know.”

“Are you talking about Master Luke Skywalker?” You were getting excited now.

“No...one of his students he took for a very brief period. You see the child was the same species as Master Yoda but he was already fifty years old. A relationship where a padawan is already older than their teacher? That...now that is strange.” Leia giggled to herself.

Everytime you glanced at her all you could see were fragments of your own mother. You understood why everyone here adored her. Why she was in command whilst others who thought they deserved it, weren’t.

She was a mother through and through. Whether to her own child or not, you knew she didn’t realise this one fact alone.

“You remind me of my buir. She has many similar features...not the same just, similar.”

“I’m honoured you think of me that way Djarin. But I believe that there is an anxious pilot waiting for you in the hangar.”

“Kriff! Thank you for the Caff General. It's a lot different to what I’m used to but it’s a welcome change.” Getting this out in one breath you bowed somewhat awkwardly before running out of the canteen.

---

“Y’know you’re strange right?”

“Kriff!” Banging your head on the bottom of Poe’s X-Wing was not how you wanted this to pan out.

“You’re annoying, did you know that?”

Watching his face was like observing a painting, depending on your interpretation and the angle the motions you saw were just-

“Mesh’la.”

“What...is that some weird curse word or somethin’?”

“Uh! No, I mean, yes! I mean...maybe.” scratching the back of your neck, you attempted to soothe the bump that was forming there. That was going to be a little ray of sunshine to wake up to tomorrow morning.

“Hey, let me take a look at that.” Turning around somewhat hesitantly. You let Poe take a look at your ‘wound’.

“Yikes, looks like a lot of blood.”

“What!”

“I’m kidding. It was a joke to get you less stressed out...obviously it didn’t work.”

“Sorry...I’m just anxious, I guess.”

“Wanna talk about it? My X-wing is in great shape right now by the way, my old mech checked her out before you shipped in. He was a great guy but...he was one of a handful we lost.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Hey it’s okay. Death is a part of life, unfortunately I learnt that at a tender young age.”

“What happened? ...if you don’t mind me asking that is.”

“...My mother, she was a pilot just like me. She fought for what she believed in and yet, she died anyway. It hurts but...I fight because of what my parents did.”

“No way! Me too! My parents took a back seat compared to what the resistance did back in the day but my Dad was a total badass and my mum...well, my mum was a slave.”

The look of shock you saw on Poe’s face was something you mistook for awkwardness.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped Captain Dameron.”

“Nah, you did the complete opposite actually...we’re gonna spend a lot of time together for god knows how long so it’s good that we get the emotional baggage out of the way first.”

The smile he gave you made your knees turn to jelly.

You didn’t know then how taken Poe already was with you, He thought you were cute, but he underestimated how much of a badass you really were. The knowledge of your parents though...he tucked that away for safe keeping right next to the ring that sat against his heart.

Little did he know then how much emotional baggage you really had...

---

-3 YEARS LATER-

“DJARIN WE NEED YOU IN MEDICAL STAT!”

“DON’T YELL AT ME LIKE I’M ONE OF YOUR NURSES MCLAGGEN! I CAN HANDLE IT!”

“I KNOW THAT, THAT’S WHY WE NEED YOU!”

Although you admired your crew mates sometimes you wanted to rip off their kriffin’ heads.

Everyone was stressed lately. All three of the golden trio had vanished, out of sight, out of mind. And to make matters worse, Leia was just as worried as you were.

“Commander Djarin!”

“Poe!” Running to your best friend in the whole freaking universe, you wrapped him in the biggest hug you could muster. You had been so worried about him.

“I missed you! I was so worried...I didn’t know what to think…” Shame and guilt crept into your very being as Poe stood before you, he was carrying a very solemn aura. Something bad had just happened. You could feel it all around you now. People were sobbing in the courtyard.

Everyone was upset...but that could only mean-

“No...No, don’t you dare tell me she’s gone.”

“Y/N I’m sorry.” Poe was a mess, just like you.

He held you in his arms as you screamed in agony until nightfall.

---

“I’m never gonna be good enough for this. Not like she was.”

Hearing Poe go through the worst thing he had ever faced once again broke your heart tenfold. More than yours was breaking already.

“Poe Dameron, you listen to me and listen well okay?”

Every part of his being was hyper focused on you as you said these next words, it’s like you were commanding them into his brain.

“Leia loved you. She may have never said it out loud but she said it in the ways any mother would. She was the mother of the resistance sure but she had a real soft spot for you after everything with...Ben.”

Comparing Poe to Kylo Ren was a painful business but everything about grief was painful, it made you focus on the good and the bad.

“Family is more than blood. That’s what my father’s creed taught me. I will never forget it as long as I live. When this is all over and he’s not going to put a knife through my chest just for leaving I’ll introduce you. Hell, I’d drag you back to my home planet right now if i could...you would love it.”

“I’m sure I would...Mesh’la.”

“...What did you just call me?”

“I got that right didn’t I? It’s not an insult, it’s a compliment? I thought it meant beautiful I was just guessing off interpretation I didn’t read any mmph-”

You had cut him off by slamming your lips onto his. Sure, it was inappropriate to make out in front of both your mother figure’s corpse but...you knew by now that many times she had told you to tell him how you truly felt when it came to war?

It was now or never.

She had that with Han Solo and in the blink of an eye he had left.

But Poe? Poe had been your constant throughout all of this, he loved you in ways you could only imagine and you loved him. Even if the kiss ended up not meaning anything...you knew you would never regret it as long as you live.

“Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum Poe Dameron.”

“WHA- what, um, ahem, does uh, that mean?” You had flustered him, you felt pride in your very soul for doing that.

But Damn if his tousled hair didn’t like so fine? Maybe it was the fact you had just clawed your fingers through it like the world was ending...but in a way it kind of was.

“I will keep you in my heart forever...that’s the Mandalorian way of saying I love you Poe Dameron.”

“Oh...MANDO’A!”

You leapt back at this, not the reaction you were hoping for. But it was so ardently Poe you couldn’t help the grin on your face.

“What about it?”

“That’s your culture! Your language! That’s why you told me your father is such a bad-...ass”

“There a reason you’re just saying ‘ass’ to yourself, General?”

“Oh bantha fodder...I’m gonna have to ask for your father’s blessing to marry you by talking to a Mandalorian?”

An audible gasp snapped him out of his stupor.

“You...you were gonna propose?”

“Of course.”

The painting had returned. The painting you kept in your heart and sang to every day. The one you comforted when he had nightmares, no matter how close to your body he was, you knew by that point your friendship was long gone.

You had never put a label on it...but in a way, you had always been each other’s ‘one’.

And now...He was asking you to be his riduur?

“Leia convinced me. She said if I didn’t buckle up and saw what was right in front of me throughout this whole war. I would've killed myself over my love for you.” Confirming that he was in fact, in love with you, was a breath of fresh air.

Even if the jungle you had been camped out in for months on end had changed your temperament you couldn’t help the tears welling up in not just your eyes but Poe’s as well.

“Y/N Kuill Djarin. I love you so damn much it hurts to leave you every time I ran to that hangar. I knew everytime I left it could’ve been the last time and it scared me. Because who was I going to be if I never found my forever girl? My mom told me that much before she passed…”

Shara Bey’s ring. The fact that he had carried the ring of his deceased mother around for years on end just to be close to her made your heart simultaneously sing and cry.

Not only because the ring was now yours to keep.

But so was the man who gave it to you.

That night, before the final battle, your hearts beat as one.

---

You had won.

Everyone had celebrated, you both drank so much that when you woke up in bed together the next day, despite the crippling twin headaches, all the two of you could do was laugh.

“I mean...if we think about logically it was only a matter of time before one of us pounced on the other?” You offered into the awkward harmony you had both fallen into.

“Yeah but I just really wanna know...I didn’t hurt you right?”

You had never told him, but Poe knew just by the way you had gotten up to get some water, despite the fact he was ready for round two almost instantly due to how the sheets bunched and fell from your figure, that you were a virgin.

But just from the simple process of illumination of what little you had told him of your life before the Resistance or BP he liked to call it (before Poe), you preferred BB (before Beeps), he knew you had never been in a relationship. Not properly anyway.

Not with him.

In a way the thought of being your first filled him with joy...but every time he had imagined it he had expected to be a gentleman, rose petals, lilies, gods, any flowers he could’ve found in that blasted rainforest would’ve been perfect!

What he didn’t understand was how the drink had addled his brain so drastically that he had just pounced like a feral animal on his precious girl. He wanted to take your innocence on your wedding night (Your engagement hadn’t yet been announced to the Resistance as you both wanted to wait for the onslaught of weddings to die down before the wedding of the century was even announced so in a way, your relationship as fiance’s technically still didn't exist).

And yet...you realised something during the haze and the blur of everything Poe and you last night.

You had made a new home here, a life for yourself...and it was good.

You had done exactly what your parents did and more.

So of course you were emotional. I mean, you two hadn’t even used protection!

Although...you didn’t share this with Poe the thought of a little version of you and him growing within you? It set your heart on fire. So when you kissed him with the passion of a thousand thunderstorms, you didn’t hesitate to return the favour of last night...and then some.

---

Shuffling into the cantina had never felt so awkward in all of your three years here. You were 21 years of age now. People hooked up all the time and it’s not like you broadcasted your virginity to anyone here.

That was until the green bundle of joy himself practically flew into your arms.

“Ad’ika?!” Your exclamation panicked Poe, his hand immediately going to your waist as he inspected the creature wrapped around your neck. BB8 whirled in Ad’ika’s wake, circling the figure of 8’s around the both of you.

“What, they did?” Ad’ika looked up at you like you had grown three heads. Sure, he looked like a kid. But he was now roughly 90 years old. He was a fully grown child now. You still blushed like a little girl apparently as he continuously giggled into your neck.

“Not important right now buddy. Where are our buirs?” You muttered tearfully. Today had turned into a whole other kind of day.

“C’MON GUYS HURRY UP I’VE NEVER SEEN A REAL LIFE MANDALORIAN BEFORE!!” Seeing friends of yours running past only to be met with the vision of your buirs brought you the relief that no bacta patch (or in this one specific case casual sex???) could ever give.

Your mother was vision as always and Poe confirmed it.

“Y/N...I knew the day I first met you that you were beautiful but the fact that your mother looks almost exactly like you right now scares me.”

“Poe, whatever you do don’t say anything inappropriate around my Da, he won’t appreciate it, at all.”

Even though you were smiling like crazy, Poe knew you were being deadly serious. You didn’t want anything to ruin today.

Besides, there was only one reason your buirs were wearing their armor once more. Your father was wearing all of his Mandalorian armor, scuffed and slightly dusty with age (he had clearly left in a hurry) but your mother was wearing her long forgotten robes. Once she was planning on giving to you one day. You realised she looks a lot like Rey right now.

The dark saber she carried at her side confirmed it.

But her eyes meeting yours from across the room as she spotted her daughter reunited with your son, caused both you and Poe to tear up once more as she grabbed her Riduur’s hand.

“Excuse us.” Polite as always, she waited for no one as she made her way to you and only you as she almost tripped over poor Beeps in the process.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

You both laughed a similar laugh that any one around would recognise. It was like Leia had come home but you all knew she was gone...she was never truly gone. She lived on through each and everything the resistance had touched.

Including you...and Poe.

Din and your mother.

Ad’ika...and Luke Skywalker.

Your mother the day she killed Moff Gideon with a light saber that she did not know she had the untaught skills to possess.

It was like strings were tangling and wrapping and strangling…

Except it was beautiful.

“We missed you so much Ad’ika.”

Looking into the eyes of your buir, his scarred and worn face now riddled with crow’s feet from the happiness you had placed there.

It was home.

---

Drums beating. Heart pounding. Numerous friends and family to you and to Poe squabbling over what hairstyle you would wear.

Today was the big day. Surprisingly you had announced it a week ago.

After everything that had happened, when your father showed up, Poe asked right on the spot if he could marry you. Not caring that he had to prove himself in the trials of Mandalore.

In his heart he had become one with your clan. He had become a son in your father’s eyes, another foundling that had just found his way here.

“I know men aren’t technically allowed to be in the chamber, but I just had to meet my future daughter-in-law before the big day.” Your breath catching in your throat, your eyes met those of a man you recognised.

Although you had never met it’s like you had a scrapbook in your mind or all the stories, all the little details of what Poe’s Dad looked like.

He was more handsome than you originally thought, but that was a given seeing as it was the exact same as when you met Poe himself.

“Nervous?”

“Surprisingly...not at all.”

“Poe...wanted me to give you this.”

A glance of the ring gave you a flicker of a moment of self-doubt. He would never have his own Dad break things off...would he?

“Don’t worry. It’s a family thing you know, for father’s to give away their daughter’s. I asked your mother but I had no idea that she was from the tribe of many mothers.” Giggling to yourself at that line, you realised where you had got your spirit from.

Leia was here with her own family today, you could feel it in your bones.

“It’s sweet of you to ask at all when we have never even properly met.”

“Ah, you’re wrong there, in a way we have. Poe told me so much about you I began to cry before the wedding even started. Good thing he told me at the bachelor party.”

Raising an incredulous brow at him, you wondered a silent question.

“It was just me and him for most of the night before drinks with his friends. Don’t worry, Poe’s not that kind of man.” Smiling to yourself, you knew he was right. You also knew this meant Poe had a terrible influence of friends. You loved them all. Of course Poe asked Finn to be his best man and you asked Rey to be your maid of honour.

They wanted everything to be perfect.

Although a week made everyone go a bit stir crazy. Someone even came up with the rule that as long as we were all staying on this damn jungle planet. We might as well have a week in between each one to plan.

You can’t remember how many bridezillas had attacked you over Poe Dameron in your dreams.

In reality everyone was happy for you, in their minds, if they thought about it you were the perfect match for Poe in each and every way.

Wait ‘til they found out how short the actual ceremony was.

“Anyway, Shara, god's rest her soul, would’ve given you this if she were here, but I’m here to tell the tale so I’m giving it to you to wear on the chain she gave him when he was little.”

Feeling tears well up in sympathy for the father and son duo, you couldn’t help but ask.

“I’m getting married so I need to know. How did you ever learn to cope with the pain of losing someone that close to you?”

“Simple...I didn’t. Poe was angry for years. Not just at the world but at the system. It’s why he felt he had no choice but to become a spice runner. The system wouldn’t let him win and he was exhausted from the guilt and the grief. I couldn’t bring myself to reprimand him.”

Remembering something your mother said to you long ago...you knew you had to tell your future father in law something that had been on the backburner for the last few days of preparation.

“There’s one small detail in all of this that you should know Kes.”

“What’s that…”

“...I’m pregnant.”

“Goodness! How? Wait no, I know how what I meant was when?”

“About a month ago now?” It was before my parents' surprise visit and Poe dropped the bomb on everyone that he intended to marry me.

“Let me guess, he asked for your Dad’s blessing?”

“Well...yeah.”

“Think of them as an early wedding present.”

“Thanks. Although at least this means I can get out of consummating the marriage.” Laughing nervously, Kes was about to say something else when the door creaked open once more.

“...Wow.”

“Hi Dad.”

“Um..sorry but I’m guessing your Poe’s father Kes?”

“Yeah, Heard a lot 'bout you and your daughter over the years.”

Smiling to yourself, you let them chat as your Mother crept from behind your father’s ceremonial cape (It had a red inner lining and fur lining the top, don’t ask) She looked just as radiant as you did.

“My daughter.”

“Hi Mum.”

“Did none of your friends fix up your hair?”

“We couldn’t decide on a style…”

Sadly you knew your time to prepare was drawing to a close, you needed to be as ready as you were when repairing the X-Wings.

“How about...I do your hair like my mother did for me?”

Tearing up at the mention of your grandmother, god's rest her soul, you wished she were here to see this.

“Please.” ---

Poe was nervous. No doubt. Finn was panicking and Rey wasn’t helping with all the screaming and waving around the chairs and tables she was doing by abusing the force just to get things done quickly.

Today...was a mess.

But it was the best kind of mess.

Jokingly, Finn had put a bow tie made for large Loth Cat’s around Beep’s neck. Poe had agreed that he had never looked so dapper. What they didn’t expect was your Dad’s distaste for droids and his dry humor.

Poe knew why though, so he didn’t get angry or throw a fit like the first time you met BB8 and was scared to shit.

It was strange that you had never met a proper droid before that day.

And wow, now he was marrying you. Time flew, so quickly.

To break the ice Poe had asked Din the story behind Ad’ika. In a quick attempt to get to his daughter before the ceremony took place, people filing in as he talked and avidly listening, he told the story of how he had come across the beauty that was/is your mother, how he met Ad’ika, how he had saved his life. Why Poe had discovered the secret tattoo of a mudhorn on your back. One that you had received from your Auntie Cara Dune you added fondly.

Who he would be meeting for the first time today.

The jungle had never looked so beautiful. You had both decided that the wedding would take place around dusk on the last night of summer, when it was not too humid and yet hot enough that the ceremonial wear had to be adapted to the heat.

Din had graciously warned Poe about Mandolorian traditional wedding dresses and how your mother had worked night and day to make your dress perfect. Poe quickly learned that your mother was a jack of all trades.

This was his family now. Forever and always.

A crescendo began as the miscellaneous Mandalorians dotted around the room beat the traditional drums to a high and demanding tune, light glinting off their multi-coloured helms dancing in the setting sunlight. With the Fur pressing against Poe’s throat he had jokingly said he looked like a king.

When Din answered back saying since he was a clan leader he technically was choked on his own spit.

Her fiance, the love of his life, had been a princess in disguise this whole freaking time.

It stuck in the back of his mind as the music grew too demanding, but as gasps filled the room he couldn’t help looking up.

Your mother was walking you down the aisle, your dresses looking not so similar yet similar enough that anyone and everyone knew you were one and the same, yet different.

But you, Gods above, you.

You looked like a princess.

Beskar cladded your upper arms, two feathers decorated your hair, matching braids flowing down your neck as your squeezed your mother’s arm in excitement upon spotting your future Riduur.

You had both made it out alive. And happy.

Not everyone had been so lucky, but you were doing this for them. To keep their memory alive.

And as Poe attempted to make love to you that night and you jokingly told him that traditionally you can’t touch the bride for another week if she has already fallen pregnant.

Let’s just say he got a matching bruise on his head from the first time you met.

Yeah, it was a mess.

But you were both finally home.

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smolawkwardkidlat · 4 years

Text

ikaw ba ulit?

in which there is zero worldbuilding and pure self-indulgent crack.

inspired by many late nights, two Spanish songs, and one Discworld book. I’ll probably never post this to AO3 for personal reasons, but this is going to remain on my Tumblr for all my desperate brethren. I gotchu fam.

fandom: Noli Me Tangere | pairing: Elias/Crisostomo Ibarra aka Elibarra | other: alternate universe, a bit crack, super self-indulgent, canonical character deaths, (i have no idea how to explain this), very fantasy-ish, somewhat supernatural character?

By the time he has reached the old balete, Elias doesn’t know what the difference is between hunger and exhaustion and agony. What he knows is that they’re eating him alive and yet that he is so terrified it barely matters. It is December—the chill in the air mingles with the heat off his feverish skin and it burns without burning.

There is a boy. He didn’t expect that. There is a boy in the tomb of Ibarra’s grandfather.

Elias doesn’t know what to do.

The boy is alive, that much is clear from the way he’s carrying on. The blood on his head has dried and his leg must be on the mend. So—wounded, but not seriously. Once he goes home and gets tended to he will be fine. The woman he’s moaning over, though…

Sisa. When the boy raises his head Elias asks, “Are you her son?”

His voice is so low and rough he doubts the boy heard him, but he gets a nod in response.

That is truly unfortunate. “What will you do?”

The boy’s eyes aren’t especially big, but they still seem to fill half his face. No child’s eyes should have that kind of sadness in them. “Bury her.”

“In the cemetery?”

“I don’t have money,” says the boy miserably. “And besides, the kura wouldn’t allow it.”

Elias resists the temptation to reach out and steady himself on the gate. He closes his eyes, opens them again halfway. “Then…?”

“If you would like to help me…”

“I’m too weak,” he says, and the moment he says it he knows it’s true. He can’t even stand up straight anymore. The boy’s eyes follow him to the earth, as if unaware of the streak of blood across his own forehead.

The words he explains with drag at his lungs and his throat. The boy’s eyes follow them as well.

It must be the older son, Elias decides, what’s-his-name, Basilio. He looks too tall to be seven years old. That means—is he nine or ten? Nine—or ten—and an orphan. Nine—or ten—and left alone with his mother’s corpse on Christmas.

Ibarra must have infected him with his bleeding heart, Elias thinks sourly.

At the very least the boy shouldn’t see another death tonight.

“Listen!” he says, and damn it, his voice falters faster than ever. Nevertheless, Basilio startles to attention and stares at him anew. “Before the day comes I will be dead too. There’s a pile of firewood twenty paces from here, on the other side of the brook. Bring it here.” Basilio starts to get up, but Elias splays his fingers and he stops. He listens to the instructions with an expression going glassy from grief and lack of sleep.

Elias is happy to see him go; he has no comfort left in him for Basilio, as much as the boy needs it. Hopefully Ibarra will understand the message he has no strength left to write.

There are stars above him and songs on the wind. There is a dawn coming and freshness on the leaves. There is a thought gnawing at his heart and he only speaks it because he is desperate.

Before the numbness reaches his lips Elias murmurs one last broken prayer, and it is not the one you think.

He says, Please, God, let me—

And he is awake.

“You should have studied at the theater,” says a familiar voice, in a tone that is not at all familiar. “You’d have been brilliant.”

Everything is blurry and feels like mist. “Ibarra?” he whispers.

“I’m afraid not,” says the voice. He didn’t know a timbre like Ibarra’s could resonate like that. There is something on his head that tingles like touch. “Take your time, your death was nasty. Infection, exhaustion, and starvation all at once—not enjoyable.”

“I’ll say,” he rasps, and coughs to clear his throat. Strange, that he still has a throat. “So I am dead.”

“Yes, you are,” says that voice that still sounds uncannily like Ibarra.

His nose catches a cool, dry, musty scent like an abandoned room, with just a hint of aged leather. Then he tastes the cold, then he hears a rustle that isn’t quite cloth but that he can’t assign to anything else. He knows these things mean something, but he doesn’t know what it is, yet. He’s dead, and that means something too.

“You are—Death.”

“Not quite, but close enough.”

It stands to reason that if he can smell and taste and hear and think, then he can see, so Elias opens his eyes. What surprises him is not so much that the figure bent over him is wearing all black with a silver brooch at their throat, but that he’s still in the forest, where he died, with the ground under his back and his head resting at the foot of the balete tree.

Now that he can think about it, it was a horrifically ironic place to die.

“Are you better now?” asks the figure.

He is, in fact, better. The ache that was eating away at his insides has faded almost completely—his head is clearer than it’s been in days. “I suppose so,” he says, and finds that his mouth isn’t quite as dry anymore.

“Good,” says the figure. “Can you sit up?”

Elias tries. For the most part it is exactly as it has always been, except for the sensation of passing through his own body, which makes his stomach squirm, despite the fact that he doesn’t have it anymore. He appears to still be wearing the dirty, bloody clothes he died in, which is somewhat humiliating. “I suppose so.”

“I’m afraid we need to wait a while,” his companion says. “You awoke almost as soon as I reaped you, but the poor woman over there will take some time.”

Ah.

That’s just as well. Even the dim lights from the town are starting to hurt his eyes now, and it is much easier to focus on the figure in black than on anything else. Easier, and more comforting.

Christmas dawns slowly, especially when waiting. His companion sits perfectly still, except for the movement of breathing, and he’s seen the way they sit before, somewhere. Around them even the forest seems to be preparing for Christmas, coming alive in striking contrast to the still, dead air beside the tomb.

Christmas dawns slowly enough that when the movement in the trees makes them raise their heads, the light is only bright enough to make it out. Just when Elias thinks he might recognize the step, Ibarra limps into view and braces himself on the gate.

The past two days have clearly not been kind to him either. He wears the two days on his grimy face heavily; his entire body slumps with their weight. But even with that, he moves like a hollow banana leaf, fraying with each unsteady step. His staring eyes burn under their hooded lids, so fierce and yet so fragile that Elias wants to look away.

He does not.

He watches as Ibarra takes in the sorry state of the two human shapes in the clearing.

He watches as Ibarra falls to his knees with a sharp rustle of grass and cloth. He watches as Ibarra wrestles himself to his feet, staggers forward, and collapses again by the side of Elias’s body.

The sky is alight now.

Ibarra looks up at it. His eyes are dry, catching fire with the clouds and blazing, blazing—his eyes are closing.

Elias turns to the figure in black. “What did you do that for?”

They shrug their shoulders. He tries to imagine what their expression might look like; what he imagines is Ibarra—chin raised high and skin stretched paper-tight over rounded bones. “He’ll have enough to do when he wakes.”

He frowns. “He startled you?”

“He did, rather.”

He can hear the curl of the mouth in the voice, and though he has no living memory of it, he remembers it regardless. The identity of his companion is dawning on him with Christmas Day. “I think, after all’s said and done, you’ll startle him quite a bit more.”

“You never know. I didn’t startle you much, did I?”

“No,” he says, and he’s only lying a little. “I don’t think you ever did, except that first time.”

“Hm? What do you—” The guide freezes, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. He doesn’t need to breathe, so he does a better impression of a statue than anyone Elias can think of. “Oh, heaven, it’s you again, isn’t it? So soon?”

He smiles lopsidedly at the hint of a whine. “I almost made it to thirty this time.”

“Almost is only almost, soldier mine, and you don’t get any consolation prizes.” The memories are getting clearer—he can just about picture the expression under the cowl. It’s stranger, somehow, now that he has a living memory to compare it to. “I said when you live past thirty, and not before.”

The word comes readily to his tongue, although he rarely said it in life and can still only vaguely remember saying it in death. “Ay, you’re cruel, querido.”

The guide snorts, and Elias imagines, vividly, an impish smirk. “And yet you’re so eager to return to me that you get yourself killed just when you’ve finished having growth spurts.”

“I don’t die quite that young,” he protests.

“Time off isn’t easy to get, you know.”

“Nowhere does it say in your contract that you’re required to wait with me.”

To his satisfaction, his companion doesn't quite have an answer. “Speaking of waiting,” he says instead, “what on earth happened to that woman? This is an absolutely terrifying amount of time to wait for a soul to awaken.”

Elias doesn’t know very much of Sisa’s story, but he tells what he does know, and the guide’s silence lapses into bleak horror when he finishes. “Well, I was almost right,” he says at last, evenly. “That’s absolutely terrible.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous—I’ve heard worse, and from you, no less.” He twirls his knife thoughtfully, showing off both the sharp, shining blade and the quick, decisive hands. “Would you mind if I dealt with her alone?”

“Not at all.” Elias has always been bad at talking to the dead, despite—and perhaps because of—having so much experience with death.

The guide casts him a doubtful look.

“As long as you return for me afterwards.”

“There it is,” he laughs. “I was afraid I’d mistaken you for a moment. Don’t worry, I will—and then I’ll be all yours for nine months afterwards, if we’re lucky.” He gets to his feet. “Nearly ready now. May I have a farewell gift?”

“I have a bullet. Do you want that?” The palpable disappointment just about imagines the pout for him. “Oh, very well. Take your cowl off for a bit.”

He can feel the triumphant smile against his lips, sparkling as bright as the starlit eyes as they disappear again into shadow. “If you end up not having to take a step out of that gate,” he warns, “you’re getting this bullet too.”

“If I misjudged that badly, I deserve it!”

#nmt #noli me tangere #elias #crisostomo ibarra #elibarra #i'm sorry okay #my brain decided to hug this shit like a monkey #i had to get it out #i promise i'll write more rational things sometime #just let me have my insanity #it's a bit strange bc canon!ibarra is still there #but basically there's two ibarras here sdhfksdfs #i may or may not fill in the backstory of this later #but that's how it works out #this is mostly for en-say-mada anyway sdkskfdjs #blame her and my brain #my brain shitposts she enables lmaoo

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things-we-used-tc-share · 4 years

Text

Short Temper

Warnings: Discussion of PTSD, Triggers, and trauma.

Ship: Platonic!Logince

Plot: Roman has not been feeling okay since he saw Remus, and seeks out confirmation from Logan that he is experiencing what he thinks he is.

Roman remembers times in the years long since gone, where his confidence had been shattered. He remembers his brother, remembers being children and not even suspecting that there was something wrong with Remus. Not wrong in the sense that he was unwell, but his…predisposition for the macabre and awful things life had to offer had not disturbed him as a child as they do now. To them, death was a story. Evil villains, maniacal laughter and sword fighting was just a way of life to them. It was all they both knew, stories.

But as they got older, and Roman got more bruises, he was starting to understand that stories weren’t just that anymore. They can’t die but that doesn’t mean they can’t feel pain, or faint at the sight of their own blood, or lose a couple teeth and have them grow back the next day.

Roman remembers, with such a heavy and hollow feeling, the amount of pain his childhood had given him until Patton drew a line in the sand and told the others they could not cross it. He knew good and evil existed; he just didn’t expect it to exist here. He didn’t expect to be the balance in fairy tales, nor his brother and other half to his soul, to hold the crimson half of a gold coin, covered in blood. Theirs is something so bitter to know that something apart of you is rotten, and Roman made sure he never became his brother, until apparently, he was.

Now, make no mistake, Roman can never truly be evil. He was created to be the goodness, the day, the knight in shining armour and the prince that rescues the princess. But that doesn’t mean he feels that way all the time. Growing up with this other half and this evil version of himself, he had always seen the dark sides as a threat; they are the dragons, the cackling witch, the end of the world. In his head it’s so simple, there is good and there is bad.

It takes a while, with Virgil, to understand that those can coexist in one person. But still, he feels scared. Whilst Anxiety is not evil, Roman learned to know, it is simply a necessary feeling for human evolution, he still can’t say the same of his brother. Still, he tries with Deceit and hopes that maybe one day he can learn to co-exist with them all. He tries, he understands, he knows when he wants his own way and Deceit seems to be supportive of that.

Patton berates him instead; he learns he cannot side with deception and Roman makes a choice that he can never take back.

And his repayment? Remus. Roman doesn’t like the word ‘trauma’, he doesn’t know why, it just doesn’t feel like him. It makes him feel…not right, unwell; but if he’d asked Logan he knows he would tell him that Roman is experiencing what it is like to be triggered by past events, that his mood has dropped and his own skin feels uncomfortable and every single time Remus has ever raised a hand to him flashes through his mind.

Roman knows he made a morally right choice because Patton told him that, but he doesn’t feel right in his soul. He feels cracked and scared and his head sometimes randomly hurts the way it had when Remus hit him over the head with the Morningstar. Deceit had let him out because he wanted Thomas to face truths, and in the process had taken everything Roman had tried so hard to run away from and dragged it straight to the forefront of his mind.

The creative side regrets, he does, Janus is a nice name and he’d panicked and the way they’d looked at him. The look on Janus’ face had been so hurt and vulnerable that Roman himself believed when the other snapped back, truly and entirely, that he was just as bad as Remus.

Roman knows how hard it was for him and still he had laughed. He doesn’t know why he finds himself at Logan’s door either. He’d spent the entire time not bothering to check on him and it feels almost insulting, but he knows that Logan is objective, he doesn’t understand emotion, but he does understand brains and why they do the things they do.

A quick knock and a quiet “come in,” and Roman pushes into the room. Logan’s room is always lukewarm with a static sort of feeling that crawls up the spine of anyone who enters and is unused to objective fact over emotional turmoil. Logan is lying on his bed and looks just as tired as Roman feels, a book lies open on his chest but for the most part he just seems to be staring into space. “How may I help you Roman?” he asks, sitting up and placing the book beside him “I assume this is about the unfortunate events that unfolded earlier today?”

Roman nods, he suddenly finds he can’t speak, as he sits down beside the only person left who might actually listen to him. Logan looks at him as though he expects him to elaborate, so the creative side takes a deep breath and does just that. “I think there’s something wrong,” He starts slowly “Ever since Remus appeared I’ve not been feeling okay, and I know you don’t really deal with emotions and all that, but Patton and Thomas aren’t really in the mood to be giving me advice and Virgil is, as of late, not really in the mood to deal with my problems, he has enough on his plate,” Logan nods slowly, biting the inside of his cheek. “I keep thinking he’s…there, all the time, I keep thinking I see him in the mirror, when I got to sleep I feel like I’m in pain, and I keep having….nightmares,” His cheeks flush with something that could be shame or embarrassment, but there’s nothing in Logan’s eyes that would say he’d judge Roman for any of these admittances. Mainly because judgement would require emotional input and that’s just (probably) not something that Logan has. “And I’m confused, because Patton said the dark sides were bad, but now he’s telling me to work with Deceit…I mean, Janus, it’s just a lot at once,”

Logan considers this for a moment before nodding “I see,” He starts, clearly still learning how to choose his words empathetically rather than objectively. “Well the first half seems to be trauma, you’ve come a long way over the years to move on past from Remus and his abusive ways, because you are naturally a more emotional person, or more human than I am, the sort of abuse we endured from Remus has left a lasting impression,” there’s a quiet pause “If I were to give an effective diagnosis I’d say PTSD, you spent many years with him getting more and more violent, and not much has changed, he’s come back into your life and resurfaced those memories, therefore your brain has been put into a panic mode, and you’re experiencing high levels of anxiety to the point of near paranoia, your mind is almost unable to differentiate fact from fiction at this time and almost anything could be seen as a threat,”

Roman does not like this news, even if he already knew somewhere what it was. “Am I a bad person?” Roman asks, Logan shrugs.

“Objectively speaking? Bad and good people very rarely truly exist, there are many philosophical debates on what makes a good or bad person, and even that is not universal, nor does it really matter, if you’re asking if trauma makes you a bad person then certainly not, there is absolutely no basis for the idea that experiencing the symptoms of PTSD would make you any less of a good person; what they can do is leave you feeling disorientated, confused, and experiencing high levels of anger, sadness and anxiousness,” That makes sense. “Which is likely why you reacted the way you did, Janus brought someone who is responsible for childhood and teenage trauma, back into your life, and then he immediately harmed you again, you are likely to hold resentment for that, and studies suggest that you would be entirely within your right to do so; re-traumatising someone on purpose is not something anyone does in good faith,” A quiet descends around them as Roman lets that sink in “However, the way you reacted was not optimal, in all truth it is likely that Janus underestimated the impact Remus would had, and he himself had emotion related problems regarding the treatment of himself and his job when you chose the callback,” He shrugs “Such things I can’t really comment on, but I do understand that people react irrationally when they are angry, and that is something that all of us have befell victim too,”

The creative side takes a deep breath and nods slowly. “I should apologise to him, but I want an apology from him too,”

“If that’s what will help you,” Logan gives a small smile and nods, sometimes Roman feels like he chooses to wear emotions to make other people feel better, because he doesn’t really doubt that Logan, if he could, would never show emotion at all. “I do think you should communicate with Thomas and Patton too of course, as well as Virgil, I do have to admit I’m finding his silence a little…perturbing,”

“Are you worried, teach?” Roman teases, nudging against the other, Logan rolls his eyes and gestures to the door. “Thank you, Logan, I mean it,”

“Anytime,” he means it too. “Oh and Roman?” The other looks back from where he’s opening the door. “I understand that you have a predisposition to a hero complex, I don’t doubt that you are what makes Thomas drive in the slightest, don’t make more emotional issues by doubting your self worth due to trauma,” Roman nods with a tight smile “You are, insufferably, still you, even with this information,” He supposes that’s the closest thing he is getting to a compliment, and he’ll take it.

#logince #platonic logince #Logan sanders #roman sanders #ts sides #sanders sides #ts fanfic

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friendlylocalwhumper · 4 years

Text

content warning: explicit gore.

“Riiiiiiiiku,” He coos, patting her cheek. “Riku, darling. Don’t pass out on me now. Do that, and you’ll wake up to me breaking your collarbones. That would be scary, wouldn’t it? Look at me.”

Fluttering, black eyes that were falling closed with her soft, half-conscious sounds open at his command, glazed with pain.

“There you go. I know it hurts. And you know… that I’m going to make it… so much worse.” The Hunter smiles down at her fondly as he presses his palms to her ribs. Surely they’re crushing inward, surely they’ll pierce her lungs - but not soon enough, not nearly soon enough, because she’s scream-sobbing, and it’s getting worse, and she’s still somehow able to breathe in lungfuls of thumbtacks.

A cracking gasp is eked out of her as he digs his fingers into her skin, pressing in at a fractured rib. It devolves into a pitiful moan.

“Too bad I didn’t bring along your little camera when I grabbed you, hmm? Wouldn’t it just be wonderful to leave you with keepsakes of your time with me?”

Riku whimpers, chin wobbling.

“Answer me. Tell me you’d like that. Now.” His hands press down harder, forcing magic into her, and Riku screams with all her strength as new cracks carve their way through her ribs.

“I-I-I, hnnngg! Ple-ease! I’d li-i-ike that! Please, s-sto-, stop, nnh, ple-ease…”

A hand cups her cheek, wiping away tears that are replaced in seconds.

“Shh, shh, alright. Hands off, see? Look, darling.”

Riku lifts her head, desperate to do anything he says, to avoid another punishment for not obeying fast enough. His hands are lifted off her torso, he wasn’t lying - but he flicks his fingers, and magic wells there, taking the form of… the witch pales.

The Hunter grins, shifting his weight where he straddles her to focus on the camera. Thoughtfully, he clicks it on, then pulls a small lever to switch its mode to one that displays the camera’s view on the screen. “There. Now, Riku, darling - let me help you pose.”

Quick, panicked breaths huff from her nose as she lets her head fall back. The sharp, instant knowledge that she won’t delete any pictures he takes, that she can’t bear to lose a story recorded, chills her to her core. The more he records, the more she’ll have to live with, after.

The camera clicks and flashes. It startles a flinch out of Riku; she thought he’d cause her pain, take a picture of that. She was bracing herself. It takes her a moment to realize that that was how he posed her - building up her anticipation, making her think about how he’d get a reaction out of her. Frustration flickers across her face, and he tuts above her.

“You need some help. Don’t worry. I know exactly how to get the expression I want out of you.”

One hand leaves the camera to rest almost reassuringly on her shoulder. Terror and uncertainty flicker in her eyes.

“What’s that look for, witch?”

Riku takes a steadying breath, muscles at her jaw rippling as she clenches her teeth in stress. “You… you like shoulders.”

A wide grin spreads across his face. “Met my light, have you? Little Lux? Are there pictures of him on this camera? I’ll explore it when you’ve passed out screaming in a few hours.”

For the first time, absolute outrage twists Riku’s face. “Those aren’t for you. They, they trusted me, you can’t - hnn…” Her words dissolve into a whimper as he moves his hand from her shoulder to shove against her ribs, testing her resolve. She forces herself to come back. “You can’t watch them.”

“Watch them? Are there videos, too? Oh, have you been recording the ones I let go? Do they talk about what I did to them? Do they cry? Oh, Riku, you’re my new favorite.”

Panic is swallowing her whole. “No, no - please, don’t, you can’t, it’s - they’re private.”

“Not too private to let a stranger take a video of them and carry it around with her.”

“They were brave, they trusted - you don’t know what that means, how important that, that is, please don’t, I’ll beg, I - I know what you did to them, you can do it all to me, please hurt me instead, don’t hurt them.”

She’s got his full attention now, dragged painstakingly away from clicking buttons on the camera to find the treasure trove of recordings. “Hurt them? I’d only be watching something already done, my love. How about this. If I watch these, I’m a lot less likely to take them and hurt them again, hmm? Does that ease your conscience? I’ll get my fill just seeing how I ruined them.”

Riku’s chest heaves with pain and emotion, eyes flickering between his face and her camera. It flashes and clicks loudly - she flinches and yelps - he caught her pain, again, quick as lightning. He looks so pleased with himself.

She settles down, almost sated by the thought that she might be saving them from being dragged back down here.

“Then again… they may be so sweet and scared in these videos that I’ll just have to take them again, watch them break even worse under my hands. You just might be what makes them come undone, little witch!”

“N-no,” She whimpers, tears of distress falling, now, somehow more aching and heavy and too-hot than the ones from pure pain. She watches as he finds the button to see the last picture taken, and clicks through to see the videos, the ones he, of all people, should never get to see…

Quick as she can, holding her breath through the pain, Riku throws her arm, slamming her hand against the side of the camera. It slips from his hands and cracks against the floor.

Victory brings a smile to her face until his lip furls. Until he leans down, close, strong, furious.

“I’m going to fix that,” He growls. “I’m going to watch them all. I’m going to add to your collection, record you screaming and sobbing for mercy until there’s no room left for the videos. Poor little reporter, you’ve managed to stay objective so far, haven’t you? With your little projects, your little interviews? Let’s see if I can break you just enough to make that painfully hard to do, from now on.”

Magic, pain, flash. “Smile darling,” arching up off the floor, flash. The shutter of her camera clicking to capture precarious moments of agony held out so the image won’t blur, the sound of it, the anticipation as she’s held on the precipice of losing her mind to the pain, it’s overwhelming.

Not as bad, though, as the slower quieter moments where he’s paralyzed her with magic, and he’s cutting into her with a knife.

“Don’t worry, I’ll heal you back up. I just want you to know what it’s like to be suffocated by the smell of your own blood. It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? Do you want a look inside, darling?”

He grabs her by the hair, and pulls her head up. She can’t react, can’t speak or look away or mumble horrified slurred words, but she can see. Can feel as he reaches his hand in, exploring, to grab something that she didn’t even know had nerves. An awful, twisting, hollow feeling overcomes her as he pulls something out, something long and winding. With two hands and mild curiosity, he pulls out one of her intestines, letting it pool in a pile above the cut.

Riku stares at it, and feels like her mind is starting to drift away from her body. Bodies don’t look like this, they can’t. It’s not hers. The only thing that keeps her from drifting away entirely is the anchor at her very middle, right where she’s spilling out of herself.

He’s still digging around. Pulling something else out. Her vision is fading to black. This time, he doesn’t scold her, doesn’t keep her awake. She falls hard into unconsciousness with his hands still sliding in the spot where her organs should be.

When she wakes, she doesn’t feel that sickening hollowness anymore. She feels overstuffed, but a panicked glance at her stomach reveals no intestines, no blood. Just a big raised scar, as if she’s been here for months, not hours.

“Was it real, you might be wondering? Did that really happen, or was it just a slice of the knife, and passing out?”

His voice makes her want to crawl out of her skin. Riku shudders, powerless where she lies thanks to too many broken bones, and the lingering memory of being paralyzed.

“Well, I can help with that! Here, I captured it all for you.”

Her camera is held up, above her face, and Riku blinks at the image of her body torn open, blood spilling, insides outside.

Her face isn’t even in the picture. It looks like a crime scene photo from a drama show that would be on late enough that kids wouldn’t see it. He clicks through to the next picture, full-length, with her expressionless face. The next is a close-up that captures her eyes, full of tears and unseeing from the depth of the pain she couldn’t even process.

The camera is pulled away, and he comes into her line of sight. “I think I’ll have those ones printed. It’s not often you get to see yourself in that kind of state, I don’t want to send you away without some keepsakes. You wouldn’t survive that under anyone else’s hands, darling. Anyway. I think it’s time to try some stress positions. Those will make for some wonderful videos. Maybe I’ll keep you for another day, long enough for the real agony of a locked position to wear you down into tremors and tears. Broken bones help, too, of course! Let’s start on those first.”

The witch’s lip quakes. “Please, no… I can’t.”

“Oh. Well, if you can’t. I guess you’ve reached your limit. Is that it? You can’t handle any more pain?”

She shakes her head hesitantly, one ruined, shattered arm twitching uselessly.

“I guess you could beg me for mercy. Could you be sweet enough to make it worth stopping? Do you want to be healed, and held, and given a chance to rest?”

Little breaths slip out of her, despite how badly her ribs must hurt. As she tries to collect herself to answer, he glances at her torso, one finger twitching. Slowly, slowly putting invisible pressure on them. Pushing bruising into the bone, as if she was hit with a crowbar a day ago and it’s only forming now. Spreading thin fractures, deepening the aches. Searching for little ways to do damage that won’t ever heal right. Watch her ask her little interview questions with no breath, with ribs that feel like they won’t expand how she needs them to.

Her skin goes a sickly color, her breaths pitiful and shallow. She can’t know he’s doing it actively. They never do. Torture makes a mind slippery, and sometimes pain registers hours after the damage has been done. Poor hurting little witch.

“Please,” She wheezes faintly. “I, please… heal me? You want… me to be good? To, respect you? Be af-fraid?” The broken attempt to search for his motive crumbles around her. “I’ve nev-ver been so, so scared in, my life, please, an-nything, heal me, let me, make me pass out… please, ple-ease…”

The Hunter straddles her waist calmly, propping himself up as he leans over her with one hand on each side of her ribcage. The faintest, cutest strangled sound is pressed out of her like the last gasp of air left in a balloon.

“You poor, poor thing. Don’t you know, Riku Rose? I’m not nearly done with you. This isn’t the story of how you were killed, or how you were given mercy. You don’t get to escape the pain I give you. You’re going to live through it, heal slowly, whimper for my mercy when you’re half-asleep and lost to the pain. This is the story of how you lived.”

#whump #drabble #riku rose #the hunter #mine #torture #captivity #gore tw #body horror tw #blood #recorded #flinching #begging #psychological torture #the spree

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gdotsand · 4 years

Text

The Fastest Way Back Home - Prologue

Pairing - Bucky Barnes x Reader (Post Infinity War)

Summary - A collection of memories sprinkled along the road to regain what she lost.

Word Count -1,400 (ish)

Playlist Link - Link (will be updated as more chapters are added)

Warnings - Sadness. Angst. Bad jokes regarding muffins.

A/N - I really wanted my first published Bucky series to be happy, I really did. I fought my brain so hard but this was the first work in progress it allowed me to finish for him. I’m sorry in advance? I honestly get physical chest pains from writing this story because it also makes me sad but I will promise you happy endings and it wont (hopefully) all make you wanna curl into a ball and listen to sad songs. Likes, reblogs and feedback is always appreciated. Also big shoutout to Lara (it wont let me tag you), thank you for encouraging me to post this finally and listen to my ramblings. You’re the real MVP. Thank you - G.Sand

Present

He'd always said that the water calmed him, the darkness lapping against the small dock. One of the main reasons he'd thrust a pros and cons list into her hand the night after viewing the house. Top of the list, the water.

There were many other things on the list, a tree that seemed like it had grown specifically for a treehouse to be constructed against the thick branches.

A living room big enough if they pushed back the furniture he would be able to twirl her around barefoot as the record player in the corner softly played old country vinyls her grandfather left her when he passed.

A wrap around porch, sure it needed some work, some of the slats have fallen though, but he promised to replace them, whitewash them and share lazy Sunday afternoons drinking fresh lemonade and watching the sun disappear beyond the horizon.

It felt like a life time ago, sometimes, most of the time it felt like a fever dream. Calloused fingers against her jaw line, the slipping of a golden band onto her finger, her doing the same for him. Bright smiles and her mother softly wiping the tears from her cheeks. Promises of forever and always, promises of a future beyond the hurt and loss that lingered deep within his bones.

Promises of all perfect and beautiful things that would now never come true. Promises of a life away from bloodshed and fear. Away from anger and torment. Everything turned to dust that day, breathy whispers at some ungodly hour, promises, commands, vows, everything including the man she loved turned to dust, and she had no idea.

Sometimes she could pretend, pretend he was on a regular mission, or he'd gone out to a meeting or to the store. Because he was ever present in her home, their home. The photos that adorn the walls, his jacket is still on the hook by the door, weapons safe still locked. It can only be opened by a retinal scan that now didn't exist in the world. Tony he said he can override it, find a way to disable his own systems but she declined. What was the point anymore? What was the point in anything anymore?

So she looks out at the water. Watches as the sun starts to set, another day has been added to the tally marks somewhere etched into the walls of her brain. Filed away, so she wouldn't be able to recall an exact number if asked, but still enough to keep a permanent hole in her chest since that day. Its been almost five years, and Betsy is bordering on her birthday, and she wants, she prays that she can believe that Betsy is a happy child but it always feels like something is missing. Its in the depths of her eyes, in the dark curls that sit on top of her head a question that will forever go unanswered, at least not completely. Because no sweetheart your daddy isn't coming home and no bugs he was never home to begin with. Not really, not with both of his girls. So she take things day by day and who can blame her? Honestly what else do people expect. Not that theres many people left to judge her that is. So to hell with it.

If he was here, he'd tell her to buck up. She knows that, but even Tony dare not make that joke. He'd tell her that everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out in the end. But thats Bucky all over, and Bucky isn't here.

The light shifts into something reminiscent of artwork purple and oranges splayed across the horizon, and a smooth pebble is thrown into the icy darkness, it skips across the water at speed and disturbs the darkness, but eventually like everything else the ripples dissipate into nothingness again.

"See kiddo, it's all in the wrist" Tony says, and Betsy listens, she idolises her uncle Tony more than he can know however it's not lost on anyone else. Eager to please Betsy takes the second stone from his outstretched palm, skims it across the surface of the water and it bounces once, twice, three times before eventually sinks, and Betsy squeals as she hoisted into the air in celebration. Y/n could listen to the sound of her laugh till her dying day and never get bored of hearing that little girl enjoy the freedom of happiness, but y/n? She allows herself a smile and turns back to the water, because you know, it always said it calmed him.

Steve approaches slowly behind, careful not to make her jump in the process, spends a good minute or two just watching her. She's never been the same since the snap, okay, no one has been the same since the snap but out of everyone, he thinks that maybe y/n had it the worst. And sure he may be being an overdramatic asshole as Buck might have said once upon a time but Buck's not here to reprimand him. Even if he can hear his taunt somewhere far away, carried on the winds that come from wherever he is.

"He was right you know"

Steve hums at her as a response, an explanation waiting on the other-side of her tongue that for some reason needs to know that Steve is listening before y/n continues.

"It's pretty fucking calming when you think about it"

He hums again, but it's more of an amused tone.

"I came to talk to you specifically before we do this" he says, always a man to get right to the point is Steve Rogers, there is no proverbial bush and he'll be damned if he beats around it.

"Well I assumed you didn't come here just for my muffins Steve"

"You're a married woman can we not talk about your muffins"

"Ah, no one is talking about my muffins these days" and then earns her a chuckle at least. She's always had a way with words like that, always been the one to crack the jokes. First to make light of a situation that really doesn't need it.

"We can get him back, well" he swallows but continues "we can get all of them back, but we're going to bring him back y/n"

Y/N rolls her eyes and takes a couple of steps off the dock towards the house, "Don't make promises that you can't cash Rogers i'm not in the mood" she throws over her shoulder. It only takes half as many steps for Steve to catch up and stop her with a hand on her shoulder. There are already tears in her eyes, and it's a knee jerk reaction. Because she remembers the day that Steve had made that promise to her before, years ago.

5 Years Ago

The house was too quiet, the kind of quiet that strikes fear like a match in the pit of your stomach. The hollow feeling that just something, somewhere isn’t right. There are no books to read, no work to be done, no shows to watch and no mindless task that she can do that will keep her brain from thinking the inevitable. It’s always the case yet it never gets any easier.

Washing done, book shelves back into the correct organisation system. Dinner being planned in her subconscious because she has to keep that hope, that preyer that there will be dinner. There will be another set of feet under the table, a light too minimal conversation to be had and a head on the pillow next to hers at the end of the day.

But then there’s gravel crunching under tires, there’s one, two, three car doors being slammed and three pairs of out of sync footsteps growing closer to the front door. Three sets of footsteps isn’t good. She knows this. She knows as she crosses to the front door, pulls it open and meets the eyes of his best friend. Although she had known that at some point, this day might come, it makes the horror no less scary. It doesn’t make the gravel any less sharp on her knees as her breaths come quicker and Steve arms aren’t quick enough to react. To catch her before she falls.

She can see it reflected in the gaze of Nat that he’s not coming home, that something terrible, something unimaginable has happened.

Steve swallows around the lump in his throat that he prayed wouldn’t be there by the time he got out of the car.

“We’ll get him back Y\N. We’re going to bring him back”

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x y/n #Bucky Barnes #the fastest way back home #gee writes things #i'm so sorry...#bucky

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bang-to-the-tan · 5 years

Text

Moth to Flame

Chapter 8

Reader x OT7

► Vampire!AU

Smut/Porn With Some Plot

Warnings: Degredation, Somewhat Dubious Consent/Hypnosis, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Male Masturbation, Handjob, Choking, Gagging, Threesome (M/M/F), Foursome (M/M/M/F), Possessiveness, Vampires (Biting, Blood-Sucking, Reference to Death), Language

Words: 11K Exactly Because I am a Superstar

↳ Summary: Robbed of your memories and intended as a birthday present for a deadly creature of the night, you unwittingly become the center of a territorial dispute between two covens of vampires. Tensions are rising and the brothers are getting hungry...

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It takes a while before you can convince yourself to leave the safety of the wardrobe. But there aren’t any more voices from outside and you’re beginning to get hungry…Finally, you unlatch the doors and slip out, pausing in the quiet to check that your dismount didn’t catch anyone’s attention. Nothing happens. You count your breaths, but there’s still no sign of any movement other than your own. Relaxing just a little more, you avail yourself of Jin’s bathroom and dig into the snacks he brought while you process your situation, sitting cross-legged by the bed to avoid getting crumbs everywhere. Idly you promise yourself that you’ll slide underneath it if anyone comes up again. It’s not exactly a feast—convenience-store burritos that you wish you could heat up, snack foods like pretzels and bizarrely, a handful of suckers.

A kink, maybe? You muse on the possibility of your warden having a fetish for lollipops as you chew laboriously through a mostly-thawed hot pocket. Maybe he just thought you wanted a candy? The memory of his excited face when he mentioned the food comes to mind. He seemed legitimately proud of himself. Like a kid with a pet.

Cum all over your master’s fingers, just like a good little pet.

You swallow, hard, and challenge the arousal that momentarily flashes through you. You can’t just sit here and be complacent. It’s weird. It’s wrong. What’s next? A collar? The marks under your bandages throb, and a quiet gasp escapes your lips at the sudden image that accompanies the thought. A collar and a leash that he could tug on and you could be so good for him—

You stand up, finishing what’s left of your pitiful meal with one vicious bite. Okay, escaping is now the train of thought, you’ve just decided. No more of…any of that. Especially with what just happened. Packing everything back into the plastic bag, you set it by the side of the bed.

Can’t trust the hallways—not with everyone up and about. There’s at least three of them wandering around at any one point and you’re pretty sure all of them know you’re here. They’ll catch you no problem if you step foot out of this room by way of the door. The window, then, like you’d planned to begin with.

You shift, frowning, rubbing your thighs together. God, were you always this horny all the time? On the outskirts of your mind, imagining what kind of punishments exactly they might have in store if they caught you? When they catch you… You shake your head violently.

Anyways.

Out the window.

The curtain pulls aside easily when you tug at one corner, lifting it just enough to peep out again and confirm your suspicions. It’s still nighttime. Still? Again? Wish there was some way of knowing. Another fact about vampires triggers in the depths of your mind. They sleep during the day and get up during the night. So with that logic, the house should be clear by daytime—you’d be home free. Could even walk through the front door, if you’d had a mind to, but considering you’re batting zero for two on that score, maybe you’ll stick with the window. You’ve got the beginnings of a real plan, then. Wait for it to be light out, take your bag of snacks, use the duvet to slide out of the window. Perfect. Flawless.

There’s a quiet sound on the door, as someone tapping their fingers gently on it.

“It’s me.” Jimin. “Open the door. Quick, before they come back.”

Shit. Shit.

You scramble for the bag of food, nearly tripping over yourself in your haste to reach the window. No time to wait, you’ve already been caught—you need to leave now.

“I don’t want to have to haze you but you have to open the door!” Comes the urgent whisper again.

Fuck off, Jimin, you think venomously, flying to the window, throwing the curtains aside and curling your fingers under the pane.

“You can trust me, I promise.” On closer inspection, it looks like it might soon be dawn, the pitch black of the sky threatening to go purple as it dips below the horizon. Not perfect, but good enough. A few more hours until sunrise, as far as you can reckon. You’ll take it. You have to.

“I think we can help each other, you know? But you have to open up. It’s not safe.” You cringe at the sound as the pane slides all the way up, but grit your jaw anyways, throwing the bag over your shoulder.

“Wait, was that the window?!” He sounds panicked. Too late, you think, throwing your leg over the sill. Too late. You’re getting out of here. Right now. Craning over the side, you can judge the distance as far enough to cause some problems if you just dropped down, even with the hedge breaking your fall. You can tuck and roll, can’t you? Yeah, definitely. Tuck and roll. Easy. Despite your self-pep talk, you’re still hesitating.

But you can do that, you insist hurriedly. It’ll be locked away in your head somewhere. Gotta be. One of those survival things, like adrenaline-powered moms picking trucks up off their children. Your other leg swings forwards, dangling off the sill, hands braced against the frame.

“Fuck—Stop!”

You halt dead in your tracks. The light from the room behind you wavers, coiling as it caresses the bare skin of your arms. Thinking sinks into a chore, the world oozing fog from the corners, filling your limbs with sand. A breath escapes your lungs that empties your entire body, leaving you heavy and hollow. Wait. What are you doing? Jimin said to stop. Where were you going without him? You frown.

“It isn’t safe out there!” He’s definitely right about that. It is most certainly not safe. Why were you so determined to jump?

“I know you want to get out, but you’re gonna end up hurt if you leave now!”

You would get hurt, yeah. You cast a disparaging look at the ground beneath the sill.

Tuck and roll. Tuck and roll? You don’t know how to tuck and roll.

“We aren’t the only ones with haze,” Jimin continues hastily, “And you already went missing—we won’t be the only ones looking for you, either. Jin must have bitten you. You can’t miss those marks. It leaves a smell. A-a trail. And the others aren’t always like us. They can be really cruel.”

“Others”? What is he—…Other vampires? You purse your lips. Jimin did say to stop. You should stop. But on the other hand it also did seem like you were in a real rush to jump out this window. Like you had a good reason at the time. What was it? It’s really hard to grasp, but you can’t shake the feeling like it’s incredibly important.

“Some of them really like pain,” his tone is hushed, “They’re scary. Bad.” He shifts, encouraged by the ponderous silence on your end as you mull over his words as well as your own thoughts. Time-sensitive. It feels time-sensitive. Something to do with time. And the window. Maybe you could compromise? Could you ask him to catch you when you jump out of the window? He seems strong enough. But you could probably also just as well ask him to hold you, if that’s what you wanted. Is it what you want? You’ve lost your train of thought, too easily distracted by the thought of Jimin’s soft, warm arms around you. Maybe that is what you wanted. You aren’t sure. You certainly want it now.

“I know you want to leave. But what if they catch you? They’ll make sure you suffer. We don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want you to suffer.”

Part of you is more aware of what he’s saying than most of you, and parts of it come to you much slower than the rest. It leaves a smell. You raise a hand to the bandages and rub at them, feeling the itch, the throb, the vague pleasure that shoots down your neck. I’ll have to catch you and bring you back anyway. So that must be how Jin planned on tracking you down if you’d ran away. Looking back, he was really confident he was that he could. Not ‘try to catch’, not ‘hunt you down’. Catch you, bring you back. Maybe chain you up or something. The thought goes straight between your legs and you hum at the feeling. Is that what you were doing? Playing a cat and mouse game with Jin?...That doesn’t seem right, either.

Playing with Jin…A spark of concrete thought lights in your mind and you snatch at it even as it slips through your fingers like water.

“…I’m not supposed to be playing with you, Jimin.” You point out, slowly, thoughtfully. You don’t have to raise your voice too much—you know he can hear you just fine. “Namjoon said so.”

Jimin sighs. “I misbehaved a little earlier, but I promise I’ll be good now. I’m just trying to help now. I promise I’ll be good.”

‘Misbehaved a little’. Memories of his plush lips against your sopping core rise to the forefront of your mind. You shiver. Is that what you were after? No…that doesn’t have to do with the window. It could, maybe up against the window? An option.

“I’m supposed to go to Jin when my greedy pussy needs filling,” you add, swinging your legs faintly. “Not you, not Jungkook, not Taehyung.”

You can hear him choke faintly. “I-I know, I know, and that’s got to be confusing for you, but Jin isn’t here right now. It isn’t safe anymore.”

Now that doesn’t seem right. You roll your eyes. Not safe. That can’t be right. A breeze sweeps up outside the window and it raises goosebumps on your arms. You’d move back into the warm, but Jimin did tell you to stop, and you can’t think of why you wouldn’t listen to him just yet. Plus, you haven’t figured out what part the window has to play in all this. Something in you really wants you to jump. Something in you is screaming, but all you hear are echoes.

“Jungkook’s so hungry...I kind of wish they’d just give you to him...But even so, I think you could help us. All of us.”

It’s quiet for a moment. You turn his words over in your head.

“Really? I could help you?” That’s an interesting take. You’d love to help, any way you can. You like helping.

“Yeah! You could help us! Please, please, open the door. We can’t keep talking, I swear to God he knows that you’re in here and if he finds you in here…Please open the door. Please come with me. I swear I won’t do anything.”

Helping, yeah. Maybe that was what you were doing. You can always ask Jimin about the window while you help him. Your legs are already swinging back over the window, albeit shakily. You’re reluctant to leave it, but you get distracted again by the bag over your shoulder. Whatever it was that doesn’t want you to go definitely isn’t going to let go of the bag. It’s a small compromise—keep the bag, leave the window. Jimin shouldn’t mind. You start towards the door, reaching for it.

“I promise I won’t touch you. I won’t even look at you if you want. Please.”

“No touching?” You repeat, stopping just in front of the frame. You’ll open the door. That should be okay. Although you won’t deny that you’re a little disappointed at the thought that you can’t touch Jimin.

“None! I’ll back up from the door, even!”

You clutch the plastic bag over your shoulder, and your mind briefly drifts to what it would be like if he was lying to you about touching. It can’t be your fault if he starts it, can it? Maybe then you won’t get in trouble. It’s a nice thought.

Curling your fingers around the handle is not nearly as difficult as when you opened the door for Taehyung. This time, the choice is so much easier.

When you pull it towards you, you immediately spot Jimin on the other side of the hallway, pressed fully to the opposite wall. His face crumples into relief when he sees you emerging, but his eyes are wide with urgency. His hands are held up in a gesture of peace, and there’s fabric slung over one arm. He doesn’t look halfway as dangerous as you’d think—his oversized sweater swallows him whole and his mussed hair makes him look so sweet, so small. A neon sign reading “Innocent” draped over his chest couldn’t scream ‘harmless’ any louder.

“Why aren’t I safe in Jin’s room anymore?” you ask curiously. The question seems to come from out of nowhere.

“His job has him caught up for a little while.” Is the immediate reply. The only part of him that moves are his pillowy lips. You remember those lips. “You would’ve been okay if no one knew you were in there, but somehow…somehow they figured it out.”

You hum, eyeing him absently.

“Where are we going?”

“I’d take you to my room, but neither of them need permission to come in, and I don’t think they trust me right now. I don’t think I trust me right now… I’m thinking the left wing.”

“The left wing?”

He nods. Slowly, deliberately, as though dealing with a spooked animal, he unhooks the fabric from his arm and offers it to you. After a half-second of hesitation, you take it from his hand, being sure to avoid actually touching him, despite the urging in your fingertips to brush his. It’s a hoodie. Oversized, well-worn…and a little dusty…? There are holes in some of the seams and whatever date was printed on the front, letter-man style, is rubbed most of the way off.

“For the smell.” He explains quickly. “You can’t leave Jin’s room smelling like him if he’s not here.”

Obeying a knee-jerk instinct, you raise a black sleeve to your nose and inhale briefly. You’re sure you don’t have half the sense that they do, but there is a scent. Vague, light. Oddly familiar.

“What’s in the left wing?”

An old wound twinges in his eyes and his gaze flits away. “Nothing, anymore.”

You grasp the hoodie more firmly between your fingers, scrutinizing the vampire as he pins himself to the wall, arms still up, now avoiding your gaze and frowning with the ghost of some distant memory. No touching, needs help, window jumping. You’re not sure you’ve got the space in your head to unpack everything. Not enough to make the connections that need made.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he says again, softly.

You place the bag on the ground, pulling the hoodie over your head and gathering your hands from the insides of the massive sleeves, slinging the food back over your shoulder as you tug the bottom of the jacket down. It reaches all the way to your knees; it’s awkward, clumsy—you look like a teenager stealing her boyfriend’s stuff. Kind of cute. Does Jimin think you’re cute? You cast a glance up at him, but he’s very busy looking away from you.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” You affirm, shuffling comfortably.

“Good.”

He turns from you, spinning on his heel, and immediately makes a beeline down the hall. You try your best to follow, but he’s seriously booking it. You catch a flash of a worried, thoughtful expression as he casts a furtive glance down the stairs when the two of you pass them.

Momentarily, you lose yourself in gathering your bearings. Behind you, the opposite way of where you’re headed, is Jin’s room, then Jungkooks a little further down, and finally at the end of the hall is the bathroom they share. Where Taehyung was. Come to think of it, you don’t think you’ve ever actually been down this way, to the left from the front doors.

The light from the chandelier passes over your face and then dips back out of view. There’s a flash of trepidation, of anger, that grips your throat. No. It’s frustration. You aren’t supposed to be going this way for some reason. The window again…? The front doors.

Jimin’s pulling away, his pace quickening. You skip to catch up.

He leads you down the left hallway, all the way to the end, and then immediately veers to a sharp right. You almost run into him, skittering to a halt just behind him when he stops by a specific door. It doesn’t look any different from the others to you. You wonder what he sees.

He casts another look around, concern pulling at his lips, avoiding your eyes. He’s very pretty, but you wish he wasn’t frowning so much. Those sweet, soft lips should be pulled into a smile. Or even better, wrapped around your skin. Want dances briefly over your limbs, curls in your chest. The door opens with a creak of old wood and Jimin visibly flinches, but holds out an arm to usher you in. He almost forgets not to touch you, quickly dropping his arm back to his side as you walk past him. Missed opportunity. Obediently, you trail inside, casting a cursory glance about the room as he closes the door carefully behind the two of you.

It looks just like the other rooms you’ve seen, but even more bare somehow. The bed is made, but there are no decorative pillows. The bookcase in the corner is mostly empty, except for one or two faded, worn books. In the corner is a wardrobe just like Jin’s, though the doors are flung open. Recently, judging by the lines in the dust.

“Okay. You have your food,” Jimin begins pacing, patting dust off surfaces as he goes like its an afterthought, using his other hand to rake through his hair—still avoiding your gaze. “You have your food, so that’s good.”

You drop the bag to the floor, scooting it close to the door. The feeling inside of you that needed it with you is satisfied with leaving it there. Within easy reach. Whatever that means.

The bathroom door is ajar, and from here, you can see a flash of green on the tiles. Are those…frog stickers decorating the walls? Jimin’s still worrying aloud, but you’re already tapping over to the door, pushing it open delicately, immediately distracted with the childish flourishes.

“Jin should be back soon. He said he’d be back soon. That usually means a work day.”

They are frogs, little cartoon frogs. Bright green, some of them red and blue. There are ridiculously cartoony ones with huge eyes and ones that are more anatomically correct—closer to the shower in the corner you can spot a whole host of charmingly anthropomorphic frogs holding…garden supplies?

“Maybe tonight? Hopefully tonight.”

You ghost closer to the wall, delighted to find these friendly faces. You trace over one with an extended finger, noticing the way its faded. How long have these been here? One of his brothers has light scratches, as though someone tried to peel it back and then smoothed it down when it wouldn’t come up cleanly.

It doesn’t occur to you that the bathroom door has creaked just that little bit more closed behind you until you sense movement. You move to turn, to tell Jimin about these fantastic little comrades you’ve just found, but a strong arm wrapping about your midsection stops you from going far. Automatically, your lungs fill with a squeal of surprise, but a hand clamps over your mouth and a familiar voice hisses in your ear with an urgent tone, warming your hair, making the surface of your skin tingle with the heat of his breath.

“Don’t scream.”

Your mind wipes entirely clean, the lights around you growing halos, the edges curling with shadows and warm, filtered glows. The entirety of your body floods with warmth, safety, belonging, all within a second. Scream? No. No, the sound that escapes you, muffled by Jungkook’s palm, is a moan. He’s so close, his body molded to yours, you can feel his heart beating through your back, can feel the body heat coming off him in waves. You’re already putty in his arms. There’s a heavy pause, marked only by the sound of you panting through your nose. In the other room, you can still hear Jimin complaining to himself, quieted somewhat by the mostly-closed bathroom door.

“Jin’s pajamas…” Jungkook murmurs in your ear after a furtive beat. “Namjoon’s hoodie…No one would guess who you really belong to at this point.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, and you feel him press his nose to your neck, where your bandages lie, inhaling deep. The rush of pleasure that follows the mild ache beneath nearly takes out your legs, your body sagging against where he has you held against him.

“Both of them?” he whines quietly. The hand over your mouth disengages with a vaguely wet sound from where you’ve already begun drooling, fingers flying to the bandage, curling under and peeling it off, feverish. He throws it out of sight, somewhere on the floor. You squirm against his grip in anticipation, but he shushes you. The fresh air caressing your bites feels almost cold, tingling. A slick heat suddenly presses to the marks, hot and firm, tasting the scabs formed there, and it feels so good you almost cry out, but his hand reappears, curling around your chin to force three of his fingers past your lips. Desperately, you suck on them, pulling them deeper into your mouth, hips beginning to circle against him seemingly of their own volition. You think of what he promised you earlier. What he promised you.

Behind you, he grunts under his breath, grinding his pelvis against your ass and you can already feel him getting hard, the thick muscle of his thighs slipping across the thin fabric of Jin’s pajamas.

“You know who you belong to, right?” he rasps, “You remember me? You remember my fingers?”

You nod vigorously, hollowing your cheeks around his digits, sucking them down like they were his cock. The arm around your waist shifts, his other hand trailing down your hips. He roots past the hoodie almost violently, searching for the waistband of the pajama pants, jamming his hand down the front as soon as he finds it. The pads of his fingertips stroke past your folds, testing the slick gathering there as you widen your stance to allow him more space, slobbering enthusiastically around the digits clenching absently around your tongue. Two fingers breach your quaking walls, shoved upwards into you and curling with one smooth motion. You buck forwards just as he thrusts, exhaling a shuddering gasp into your hair.

“Yeah,” he hums, fucking upwards with his hand, circling his wrist and sliding his thumb down against your throbbing clit to send lightning flickering through your spine, “Yeah, you remember me. You remember this.” Even as he fingers you sloppily, fervently, he keeps you locked in place, imprisoned by his strong forearms, pressed to his legs and torso.

“I don’t know if I can keep being good the longer I stay here with you,” Jimin’s voice suddenly wafts over to you from the bedroom, though he seems hesitant to come too close to the bathroom door.

Jungkook’s hand doesn’t stop, but his motions calm to simple strokes, rubs, fingers pulsing inside of you with a delicious drag that has your eyes rolling back, hips stuttering to chase after more. His own breath is quickly getting out of hand, heavy exhales you can hear him trying to muffle into your neck.

“But before I leave, I just want to make sure you aren’t gonna try and escape, okay?”

Lips press to your bite marks, feverish and possessive. Jungkook’s teeth catch the tender, not-quite-healed flesh in a bite that is less than kind, but the aching pain sends your legs into spasm with a spike of heady pleasure, choking around his fingers as he presses down hard on your tongue. The moan that arises from your chest is garbled and messy as you drool and huff openly, wetly. He ruts against you through the unforgiving starch of his jeans, rolling into you like he could reach your sex through the layers. You rut back, just as desperate for him to be inside of you.

“Uh…Hello?” Jimin’s voice speaks up again, concerned. You can’t see the door, but you can hear it as it creaks open lightly, can see the light growing from the room outside, casting gold onto the frogs that watch you shudder with wide, impassive expressions. Jimin’s breath hitches inside his throat.

You feel the impact as suddenly Jungkook is wrenched bodily off of you, nearly taking the pajama bottoms with him, his teeth scraping your marks with a sting of pain. You’re thrown violently backwards in the wake of it but are caught in another arm’s embrace, soft sweater fabric cushioning your fall into his Jimin’s chest, his forearm bracing you underneath your armpits.

Shocked, your head whips around, only to both hear and see Jungkook at the end of his arc, flung a ridiculous length across the threshold into the bedroom, slamming into the wooden poster of the bed, legs caving underneath him. You wince in sympathy at the sound when his head snaps against it, but you don’t have the chance to ask if he’s okay. Jimin quickly disengages your limbs to push you behind himself, spreading his arms and legs against the doorway to the bathroom, acting as a physical barrier.

“Jungkook, what the fuck is wrong with you?!” he shouts, and you cower at the unbridled fury in his tone.

You peek under one of Jimin’s arms, peeping with concern at the cherry-haired vampire sprawled at the foot of the bed. But he looks more upset than hurt as his neck lolls and he cradles the back of his head with a wince.

“I—Jimin, I just—“ “You JUST! What the fuck were you thinking?!? Seriously, I could kill you right now, I swear to God—“

“What were you thinking?! Y-You’re just gonna hide her? In this house?? When all of us are starving?”

“That was not my decision!”

“It is your decision to blindly follow it like some kind of sick fucking dog!”

“Fuck you!”

You can see Jimin stiffening, his voice escalating, can see from here the snarl on Jungkook’s face, the way his fangs peek out from his top lip like some kind of animal. He hisses, sharp, angry—and suddenly his head lolls again and his eyebrows pull together like he’s in incredible pain, eyes screwing shut. When he speaks again, it’s no quieter, but it cracks with hurt, desperation.

“I’m so hungry…I’m so fucking hungry.” He chokes. “It hurts, my fucking throat hurts so bad.” His hand drifts to circle around his own neck. You watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows thickly. “I can’t see straight anymore, I can’t think. Everything hurts.”

Jimin’s arms waver and he hesitates. As you listen to him lament, your heart breaks, distant and vague, but sympathetic to his obvious suffering if nothing else. Your cunt pulses around nothing, as if to remind you of what’s been interrupted, and the juxtaposition of the two emotions is conflicting to say the least.

“I know.” Jimin’s own voice has dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You just—you just have to—“

“It doesn’t work anymore!” Jungkook interrupts with a whine. “It doesn’t work, I tried it, Jimin, it doesn’t work. They’re too scared, there’s too few that it works on, I’ve got, I’ve got fucking holes in my shoes from wandering around our tiny little cage trying to find something to fucking eat. Don’t you think I’m trying? I’m trying, but it’s so hard.”

“It—it’s just until Namjoon comes back,” Jimin tries again to be defensive, but you can hear it in his voice; the sympathy, the worry.

“I can smell her in my dreams, when I can manage to actually sleep. I can taste her through the walls. I-I can’t keep doing this. It’s killing me. I’m actually going insane.”

Jungkook shifts to stand shakily, using the bed for support, and Jimin immediately twitches to protect you, pressing you further into the bathroom. His arms are really soft and nice, you kind of want to wrap up in them. Maybe convince his hand downwards? That sounds good. That sounds very good. Your thighs rub together.

“You can’t trust me.” Jungkook says quietly. “Not around her. I’m not going to stop trying to get to her. Namjoon or not.”

“I—“

“I know he already hates me. It’s okay.”

“Jungkook…He—Namjoon doesn’t hate you—”

“You can’t trust me.” Jungkook meets Jimin’s eyes, desperation etched into every crease of his face, tinging every word out of his mouth. “But I trust you.”

“…What are you talking about?”

You’re gauging the distance between Jimin’s fingertips and your pussy. Not too far. You could probably just sidle right up, if he only relaxed that little bit more. You worry at the hem of the hoodie with your own fingertips, debating the pros and cons.

“You could stop me.” Jungkook’s tongue flits out to pass over his lips as he pleads. “You could stop me from taking too much. I trust you.”

Slowly, he begins to stalk closer, one step at a time. Jimin flinches, but he’s also distracted by this new train of thought and doesn’t seem to notice.

“Jungkook, that’s not a…that’s not a good idea.” You can hear Jimin swallowing harshly as he pushes you back further, his resolve wavering.

“Why?” The younger vampire whines again, face crumpling. “Please. Please, just a little, just a taste. A swallow.” He gestures tiredly at the bed, like his arm is too heavy. “We can roll her around on here after? No one has to know.”

“They would know.”

“I’ll take it. I’ll take the punishment. Whatever it is. Please, Jimin. I-I think I’m dying.”

“No—“

“You could have some, too? I’ll take the blame for both of us.”

“—Jungkook—“

“Do you really think you can resist her?” he demands, suddenly angry. He’s managed to slink to within a few feet of your guard. Jimin doesn’t seem to have noticed the dangerous proximity. “You know she gets so wet so easy. You know it doesn’t take much.”

You understand him this time, those terms in particular. As a matter of fact, you’re currently thinking of ways you can work Jimin’s hands into your pants without him realizing. You need something between your legs. Anything to soothe the want flaring there. Hungry. Yes. You know what it’s like to be hungry.

“Don’t you miss the way she tastes?”

Jungkook takes another step, staring his shorter elder down. The blonde automatically lifts one hand as if to push him away, but it’s weak, wary, only placing a palm on his broad chest, briefly straining in warning.

“This is a bad idea.” He protests again, an answering whine coiling about the edges of his speech.

“It is,” Jungkook agrees, his voice low, catching in excitement.

Fingers curl around one of your wrists and you look down in mild surprise, just in time to watch Jungkook leading your hand around Jimin’s side. He snakes your arm around his still form, to his front. And down. When he presses your hand to his crotch, you suck in a startled breath. The boy in front of you stiffens and sways backwards, but you surge forward with a wave of excitement, realizing just a beat late what he’s inciting.

“This will be better for both of us,” Jungkook murmurs. “I know you’re hungry, too.”

Jimin doesn’t reply as you slide your palm down the front of his skinny jeans timidly, rubbing at the bulge that’s already begun to build there, hidden beneath his sweater. Emboldened by his increasingly sloppy breaths and lack of coherent protest, you grab the zipper and yank it down. When you sneak your hand inside, he makes a high-pitched noise in his throat. His hips buck, thrusting into your eager fingers.

“This is bad,” he hums, chokes. You seek out his cock through the soft fabric of his boxers. “We’re gonna get in s-…so! M-much trou-trouble, ahh…” You curl around the shaft to fish it out and he makes a soft hiccupping sound.

Jungkook tugs at your wrist again and you limply submit it for him, watching in fascination as he drags his tongue against your palm, spitting once, gathering his saliva for you to use. For a brief moment, he leans closer, presses a lingering kiss to your pulse. His eyes meet yours over Jimin’s shoulder and you feel an answering gush of arousal slip from between your neglected folds. You return to your grip around Jimin’s member when he releases you, tugging experimentally, and he shudders into you, keening.

“You couldn��t help yourself.” Jungkook is still talking, mumbling, but you’re watching Jimin’s face as he leans back, finally relaxing into your palm. His head falls backwards and you admire his soft lips drawn into a pout, the way his eyebrows furrow, his eyes squeezed shut. You twist your stroke upwards and his tongue prods at the corner of his mouth, the muscles of his neck constricting around a needy moan. “I hazed her and it-it was too much for you. I made you do it—“

Jimin’s eyes fly open and sharpen, swiveling to glare at Jungkook with a gaze like fire, lips curling with a derisive snort. He snatches at your wrist, pulling you in front of him suddenly, his cock bobbing when he slides gracefully to the side. Markedly less graceful, you stumble, but fall to your knees when he bends your wrist over your head and pushes down pointedly. You’re eye-to-eye with his crotch now, staring straight into the flushed skin, the thick shaft, the feathering of downy hair at his base. Your mouth waters. You glance up at Jungkook, but he’s watching Jimin throw your arm back to your side with a heated expression.

Jimin’s hand slides across the top of your head in what starts out as a petting gesture, but immediately curls into a handful of your hair towards the back, gathering the strands unmercifully in a grip that burns against your scalp. He forces you forward and you gratefully oblige, opening your lips, tongue lolling, welcoming his leaking dick into the wet cavern of your mouth with a fanatical eagerness.

“Suck my cock,” he hisses down at you, lips curled in a snarl. You lock your lips around him and comply, hollowing your cheeks, slipping your tongue against the heady underside. He tsks sharply through his teeth and you can see the muscles in his thighs twitch, hips thrusting shallowly to meet your motions halfway.

“Fuck, you really like that?” Jungkook coos thickly above you. “You like the fucking taste of cock, baby? Fuck, Tae was right, you’re so fucking nasty…”

You swallow around Jimin in answer, humming with pleasure at the stammered moan that falls from his lips when you do, your throat pulsing around him. You keep your hands by your side obediently, allowing him to maneuver your head exactly where he wants you, using you like his personal fuck toy. They’ll come to you eventually. You know they’ll take care of you.

“You don’t make me do anything,” Jimin growls. There’s a strict dominance in his tone that is completely at odds with his soft boy persona, and yet fits in perfectly with the way he fucks into you, leaking down your throat. “I hazed her first. She was going to go out Jin’s window. This is my fault.”

“Out the window?” Another hand appears on your jaw, squeezing, the thumb prodding for the bulge in your cheek. “Why would you do that when you’ve got all the cock you could ever want, right here?”

You hear a zipper. Excitement rises in your chest. Jimin pulls you off of himself with a harsh tug of your hair, leaving you with a sick plop of saliva, smearing precum across your cheek when his dick bobs against you. You lay a chaste, if sloppy, kiss on the tip and he groans, forcing your head to the side, to meet Jungkook’s member waving in your face expectantly. Again, you open up for him, shuffling at the feeling of arousal pooling in Jin’s pajamas, your nipples rubbing uncomfortably hard against the top, hidden away and too hot inside the hoodie. You whine through your nose, casting a pleading look upwards, but Jungkook only meets your gaze with a blown-out look of lust as Jimin starts encouraging your head down further, sliding you up and down his shaft as you suckle the hard flesh. His eyes roll back and his jaw drops, his hand coming to meet Jimin’s, twining through the strands.

“Fuck, fuck,” he moans, breathless. When his hips jut forward, his cock pushes through your cheeks, spittle leaking from the corners and dripping down your chin. It gets just to the point where you can feel your gag reflex rising and you twitch backwards, but the two of them hold you in place.

“Choke on it,” Jimin commands thickly, pushing you down further. The world shimmers about you and you feel static rising through your chest, up through your throat, your hands flying to tear entreatingly at Jungkook’s thighs as a retch immediately bubbles up in answer. It only lasts a second, your back bowing, your eyes rolling, before Jungkook is tearing both of their hands away and yanking his dick out of your mouth. Air rushes gratefully, harshly, back into your lungs and you cough, hacking, only just managing to catch yourself on the floor with your palms smacking down. Your sight blurs with tears that burn, your throat constricting painfully in protest.

“Fuck, Jimin,” you hear Jungkook chastising, though he’s still having trouble getting his own wind back. Gentle hands this time wind about your arms to lift you up, taking your hand in his as he helps you to sit on the backs of your knees. Large, warm palms cup your cheeks, thumbs brushing away the tears even as you continue to cough, limp in his grasp.

“If Namjoon’s gonna kill us anyway, I’m getting my worth out of this,” Jimin gripes petulantly. “And she’s too responsive.”

“You’re okay,” Jungkook soothes, watching your eyes carefully, ignoring his elder. You gulp down a huge lungful of air, your tears slowing in their descent down your face. He wipes at your cheeks sweetly.

“That was so hot, you did so good, you’re okay,” he repeats. A smile crawls across your spit-slicked expression at the calm that spreads down your form. You look at him with all the adoration in the world while he praises you, the shining sun of your universe, the bright center of your world. You’re okay. You are okay. You pleased him. You did good. He returns your grin.

“You like sucking our cocks, hm?” he hums, almost teasingly, casting a glance down your body. You nod in earnest, feeling the soft skin of his hands rubbing your cheeks as you do. “Good. That’s my good girl.”

He turns to Jimin, who’s watching you get praised with a slack look on his face, stroking his own dick thoughtlessly.

“My present, my rules,” Jungkook frowns, dark. “I don’t want her broken before I even get inside of her. You don’t tell her what to do.”

Jimin’s eyes flick to meet his. “I wasn’t going to break her—“

“Don’t haze her. Or else I’ll send you out.”

“I’d like to see you try.” “Don’t haze her,” Jungkook repeats, raising his brows, his hands slipping from your face. You take the respite to start working the hoodie up and off, suddenly incredibly aware of how stuffy and hot it is inside the thick fabric. “Or else. I’ll send you out.”

“Mm,” the blonde hums, his eyes widening in mock obedience, inclining his head once. “Yes, sir.”

You lose sight of them as the hoodie passes over your face, but you can feel it grabbed at from the top, shirking it off of you easily. Jungkook reaches for you again and this time he helps you stand on unsteady legs. He leans forward, encouraging your lips to his and you accept his gift thankfully, craning towards him. As he kisses you, gently but hungrily, you feel a wandering hand from behind caressing down your spine, under the pajamas, sending shivers dancing down your frame. Fingers trace your back, down to your ass, slipping a palm up and under a cheek to squeeze it deftly, and you rock back towards it while Jungkook slides his tongue across your lips. Heat flares inside of you, unbearable and yet too good, too perfect. You need more, you need to be touched and kissed and filled.

“She didn’t hate it,” Jimin points out, low, as his fingers sneak further, brushing your cunt.

Jungkook hums warningly, but his own hand slides down your front to fondle at your pussy, pressing a curious digit, two, between your folds. He rubs there, drags through the wetness that oozes from you so easily. The three of you break for a second so they can rip your pajama bottoms off of you with two sets of determined hands, deftly unbuttoning Jin’s top and discarding them to the side of the room, leaving you completely naked between the two men. As strange as it might be, it’s exactly where you should be. How you should be. You don’t even feel embarrassed, only one step closer to what you want. Jungkook finds your mouth again, reaching up to cup your breast and tease at the nipple with his thumb, sending sparks of pleasure skirting straight to the apex of your thighs.

You break the kiss with a squeal when Jimin’s hand comes down hard on your ass cheek, and then immediately coasts sweetly back between your thighs, dipping one finger inside of you before slipping back out. He slaps you again, and this time as you jolt forwards, Jungkook takes the opportunity to slide straight from your clit to your entrance, sheathing two of his fingers past your quivering walls. Idly, he allows you to ride his hand for a moment, watching you with wide eyes. You’re breathless at the teasing, the butterfly kisses that Jimin peppers across your shoulders and the playful kneading of your backside. When Jungkook takes his fingers from you again you whine in disappointment, but he pops them into his mouth, laving his tongue around his own digits as though savoring the tastiest dessert you could possibly imagine, his eyelashes fluttering closed.

He takes them out with a pop, grabs your hips, spins you around violently, and you almost knock into Jimin, who’d been making his way closer and closer to your back. He grins when you come face-to-face, pupils blown wide, skin flushed prettily, the visage of Lucifer—an angel of sin. He’s discarded both his sweater and his jeans, revealing the compact but powerful muscles usually hidden beneath his cute façade. Jungkook noses into the crook of your neck and you feel his hand curling around your thigh, lifting it, holding you firm. The soft, burning heat of his cockhead brushes your thigh and you give a low moan, circling your hips as if you could convince it inside you faster, the demanding static under your skin growing louder and needier with every inch it gets closer.

Jimin watches you seek out his lips with yours as you slide your arms about his bare, warm shoulders, though he pulls back and smirks at the way you chase after him. He finally allows you to make contact, rushing forward to swallow your lips whole, just before Jungkook sinks effortlessly inside of you. All three of you groan as you slide onto his member, the seemingly endless supply of glistening wetness gushing between your legs making for a smooth glide, stretching your cunt and filling your belly with his hard heat. Jimin kisses you hungrily, devoutly—pecking, sucking, nipping—as Jungkook attacks your neck, on the side opposite your bite marks.

“Does that feel good?” Jimin croons, and your back arches as he pinches sharply at a nipple, licking the corner of your mouth. You nod, humming, trying to keep your wits about you as Jungkook shifts more comfortably and somehow inches even further inside, rubbing against every crevice, fitting you like a glove.

“Me too?” Jimin guides one of your arms off his shoulder, down to his shaft, sandwiched between your bodies, and you wrap your fingers around it just as Jungkook starts to move. “Make me feel good too…” Jimin exhales a plush breath at the feeling when you begin to pump him again, purring at your obedience.

Jungkook keeps your thigh up for easy access to your pussy, which welcomes him in earnest, his cock rocking in and out in a steady rhythm, filling you up good, so good, with every thrust. He pants against your neck, kissing, licking, tasting the sweat that drips from your nape, his free hand holding your hip. The room fills with hums and grunts from the three of you, the wet sounds of your coupling, the gasps from Jimin as he mouths decadently around a nipple and twitches in your palm. You arch back, pushing your breasts into Jimin’s face, your head craning over Jungkook’s shoulder, when slick fingers meet your clit, circling and pressing in time with the thrusts. You don’t even notice Jungkook’s heightening pants and huffs, the way he noses into your skin.

“J-Jimin,” Jungkook suddenly whines, and the panic in his tone is what tears Jimin’s attention away from your chest. “I-I don’t think I can—“

“Not here,” his elder warns, eyes wide with concern. He reaches over your shoulder, leaning closer. He absently shushes your keening when his cock presses against your clit, sliding through your slickness to bump the swollen bundle. You feel Jungkook’s head shifted carefully away from where he’d buried his mouth on your neck, sucking bruising hickeys onto the slender column.

“Not here, not standing,” Jimin repeats, giggling. “Bed. Jungkook, bed. Come on.”

Jungkook growls, but you feel him moving away, peeling his chest off your back and sliding out of your pussy with a sinful noise that steals the breath from three pairs of lungs, the sensation leaving you empty and wanting. You whimper, and Jimin shushes you again.

As Jungkook steps back, Jimin steps forward, his arms collecting you easily and you almost fall into him. He walks you back, caging you in his body heat, his scent, until you can feel the soft bedsheets at your knees. He pauses there to reach behind you and dig around the blankets. Your eyes meet Jungkook’s over his shoulder. He’s pulling his shirt off of his chest, shirking his jeans to the floor before wrapping his hand around his cock. He strokes himself, eyes blown wide, jaw set tightly in an expression of pure lust. A thrill shudders up your spine and you have to swallow down the saliva that builds in your mouth. He watches you.

“These sheets are so fuckin’ dusty,” Jimin’s complaining idly. Finally, he pulls away enough to lick up your lips, humming his approval when you try to suck his tongue deeper into your mouth. “Lean back.”

You oblige, your gaze casting up to the gold-painted ceiling. You squeak when he pulls you further onto the bed, hoisting you up as he crawls onto it to sit beside your head. It does smell like dust, but he must have peeled the first layer off, the sheets underneath cool against your fevered body.

Jungkook reappears above you, broad hands ghosting up your thighs to push them apart, upwards, cradling the backs of your knees, allowing him the room to slot back between your legs. His maroon hair sticks to his forehead, his neck, frames his far-off expression that burns with such intensity you have a hard time keeping eye contact for too long. Your hips flex upwards, the rushing in your ears building to dizzying volumes, the screaming of every nerve ending for again and more.

“Not her neck, either,” Jimin mumurs as Jungkook lines himself up with your cunt and presses back in with a delicious, slow push. Filling you again, pushing on your legs to get ever deeper, he leans in to attack your lips, sinking down into you. You moan at the feeling, at the way he bites and nips, the way he rolls his pelvis to stroke at your walls. “Not her arteries. Nothing major.”

You arch, swallowing him further, and he growls thick, hips snapping.

“Hey! Listen to me!” Jimin complains, though his hand appears to curl around yours, tugging it back behind your head. His cock slides between your fingers and he molds your hand around it. You comply, jerking him off as best you can while Jungkook begins a strong pace inside you, your ass pressed to his lap, your feet dangling in the air beside your head. The bed creaks beneath you.

“I’ll bite her chest, right next to her heart,” Jungkook mumbles. “I’ll suck her dry right from her fucking tit.”

Jimin groans, deep, thrusting into your hand. “N-not dry, not dry, remember, Kookie. We need to be good, remember. Good boys.”

You can’t think, you can’t do anything but bounce as Jungkook pistons into you with the strength of a runaway bull, holding himself up on his toes for leverage just to make sure there’s no inch of you unfucked. His dick parts your pussy like it was made for him, brushing against your g-spot deep inside, sending your legs into spasm every time he bottoms out. It’s too much, it’s too good, a rising pyre building inside of you of yes and more and please. Your head throws back and you cry out, cut off abruptly when Jimin slaps a palm over your mouth.

“T-too loud, fuck, shh,” he hisses, hand flexing as you continue to moan and whine, muffled now, breasts jumping along with the rhythm.

You don’t hear the door open.

But you do hear it close, clicking behind a new entrant into your depravity. You feel Jungkook stiffen, panting, dropping your legs as if to hide your body beneath him, his forearms falling to either side of you possessively, head whipping to the side. Jimin pauses with a sharp intake of breath, his hand stilling yours against his cock. You whine, humping upwards, but they’re momentarily distracted by whatever—whoever—it is that you can’t see, your view obscured by the sweat-drenched maroon mop on the back of Jungkook’s head.

A beat passes.

“Tae.” Jungkook barks, exasperated. His body jiggles with the force of the shout, and you try to use it to your advantage to garner more movement but he remains still above you.

“Nobody in this fucking house ever knocks, what is the point of even having doors,” Jimin bitches under his breath. “Fuck, Tae, I thought you were Namjoon.”

“I’m not Namjoon.” You hear Tae’s distinctive, deep rumble reply, though he sounds distracted.

“Good for you. We’re busy, fuck off.”

“Is that the human girl?”

“None of your fucking business—“

“—Don’t tell anyone—“ Jimin tries to butt in, pleading.

“’Don’t tell anyone’, Jesus, I could hear you downstairs, could smell her through the vents—“

“Mind your own business Taehyung—“

“I was minding my own business, I had my fucking headphones in and I could still hear the three of you—“

“Get OUT, Taehyung—“

“—sounding like a fucking elephant orgy—“

“Tae!” Jimin shouts, commanding. Jungkook starts up again with a tsk, but Jimin quickly cuts him off. “Jungkook! Please! Come on, seriously. Who knows how long we have until they come home? We don’t have time for this.”

“Tell him to go away, Jimin.”

“I want in.” Taehyung interrupts.

“What?”

“I want in, you said I could fuck her mouth, I want in.”

Jimin sounds deceptively calm from above you, his voice like sugar and poison. “When did you say that?”

“Not important!” Jungkook shrieks, jerking upwards, hand thumping into the sheets by your side. He inadvertently thrusts into you hard with the motion and has to choke off a rough growl as you clench around him, hips jerking to meet him eagerly. You accidentally lock eyes with Taehyung when he moves out of the way. He stares wide-eyed at you as you moan, low. “Fuck, that is not important right now. She’s—my fucking present—“

“That’s right. She is.” Tae responds levelly, too levelly. He doesn’t blink. Jungkook’s hands fist into the bedsheets on either side of you, his endurance faltering at the feel of you pulsing around his cock so greedily. He pants, hums deep in his chest, smoothly fucking into you, slowly, as he’s if trying very hard not to. “She is your present. And you decide what happens to her.”

The next thrust lifts your ass back onto him and you squeal, still caught in Taehyung’s hypnotizing, half-lidded gaze as his expression drops into that sultry mask you know too well.

“And you said that I could fuck her mouth.”

“I said I would think about it.”

“I think she should get a vote.”

“We aren’t voting—“

“What do you think, hmm?”

“Don’t answer him.”

“Answer me.”

You’re already babbling, Jungkook’s steadily losing battle with keeping his pelvis in check encouraging the words that bubble up from your throat instantly, summoned forth by the powerful haze dancing through Taehyung’s velvet tone. Your mouth hanging open, breasts again beginning to jerk with each thrust, eyes threatening to roll back, you spit like someone possessed, speaking in tongues.

“Yes,” you hiccup, as if you can’t get it past your lips fast enough, “Yes, yes, I want to taste his cock, I want to taste him, feel him in my mouth, please, Jungkook, please, I want it so bad, I do want him to fuck my mouth, please let him fuck my mouth, please, Jungkook.”

The side of Taehyung’s mouth flicks upwards at your confession, his eyes blinking slow.

“See?” His tongue flits out before he raises his eyebrows pointedly.

Jimin’s hand covering yours squeezes your fingers around his member, convincing it upwards, and stroking down once more as he begins to speak, thoughtfully.

“He could help,” he points out, distant. He rolls forward, flexing into your palm with a soft exhale. “He could help, and we could all keep an eye on each other. It would be—hm—it would be easier than just me trying to keep you from going too far.”

“I’ll tell Jin if you don’t let me in,” Tae adds.

“Fine! Fuck, fine. You’re such a dick.”

Jungkook leans over, pulling your attention back to him. He plants a sloppy trail of kisses over your collarbone and neck, sucking a path up to your lips. When he cranes away, you separate with a slick pop and he huffs.

“Help me move her,” he mutters. He peels himself up off of you, wincing when he slips out of you. You grab for him, trying to get him back inside your warmth, but he collects your wrists with one wide hand. You arch, whining. Another set of hands curl underneath your arms to haul you back, and you scoot with the motion obediently until you can lay your head back over the edge of the bed. Jungkook relinquishes your wrists and they fall limply to your sides.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You hear him complain sharply.

“It’s my turn to fuck her pussy,” Jimin growls back, and you hear shifting by your legs, the violent tugging on your thighs to face a direction so you can more comfortably hang over the edge. “You’ve had long enough.”

“Some fucking birthday present.”

“I’m not having a hand job for my last meal while you hog her cunt.”

“You’ll last longer if you’re not always inside her, anyways. Right?” Taehyung moves into your field of view. He’s already rid himself of his clothes, his long, thick cock straining into the air just by your face. When you feel his hand caress through your hairline, circling your throat, you hum your approval, already twisting to convince him into your mouth. He giggles, once, fingers drifting to purse your lips while his other hand curls around his base and guide it through your jaw—hot, heavy, feverish against your tongue.

“Good girl,” he praises deeply, “God, so good. Relax. You’re okay.”

You are okay. The deeper he goes into your throat, the better it feels, sliding downwards, your nose pressing into where his testicles hang. His grip returns to your neck and you shudder, whimpering, when he squeezes ever-so-slightly, as if only to feel for the lump he makes inside your throat. Meanwhile, hands are petting your legs, slipping across your thighs, flicking occasionally at your clit, opening your folds, rubbing. Finally, there is another prickhead warming your entrance, teasing upwards before sinking back down and pressing inside of your cunt. Jimin isn’t quite as long as Jungkook, but he’s thicker, and the way he stretches you around him has you bucking, waves of pleasure cascading underneath your skin, making you dizzy. Your vision spins when he thrusts, testing, and lets loose a thick growl.

A hand takes your wrist and leads it impatiently to another dick, sticky and slick with your essence. Jungkook groans as you clamp down on him, jerking him vigorously.

The cock down your throat twitches, and Tae’s hips rock lightly, almost teasing, eliciting loud sounds of suckling interrupted, filling your ears. Jimin begins a rough pace inside of your cunt, alternating deep, powerful thrusts with long, slow glides, and the juxtaposition makes you quiver around him, legs shaking where he’s pressed you into the bed. It’s so good, it’s so good, so slick, cocks inside of you and against you and fucking into you with perfect synchronicity, tears build up in the corners of your eyes, joining the slobber as it dribbles down your cheeks, pleasure building in your gut fit to burst; close, so close. Above you, the heavy breaths from Tae, soft gasps from Jimin, grunts from Jungkook, the pathetic whimpering of your own, muffled voice, the sopping sounds as you’re used so thoroughly.

“F-Fuck, I’m—I’m gonna—“ Jungkook whines, tsking through his teeth as he humps into your palm, his hand forcing yours tight around his cock. A tongue slithers over a peak of your breast, gathering your nipple in a wet, sloppy kiss before relinquishing with a ‘plop’, swollen lips humming against your skin.

“Go-go ahead, Kookie,” Jimin stammers, tenderly. “Go ahead, I’ve got you.”

Taehyung’s grip on your throat curls tighter, depriving your lungs of precious air as he begins to fuck steadily into your mouth, but you’re good, you’re okay, you’re so wet and so good, allowing for the slide of his dick through your throat. Your eyesight shimmers and bursts with every twitch of pleasure, humping along with Jimin’s strong, insistent hips, feeling entirely full and perfect and almost, almost there.

The mouth reappears on your tit, mouthing wantonly, dirtily, and you arch for more of it. It travels inwards, placing a brief kiss to the valley between your breasts before harshly suckling at the pulpy flesh of the opposite slope. A thumb presses to your clit, circling with every motion of Jimin’s girth parting your cunt smoothly and the simultaneous fondling, kissing, grunting quiet approval, has the room whirling around you. It builds inside you even further, rushing up through your toes, dashing over your body like an unstoppable tidal wave, every limb tingling in anticipation, back bowing off the bed, muffled moans drawn from your chest with every movement.

“Cum for us,” Tae grunts, so quiet you almost don’t hear him.

The sensation of teeth piercing your skin floods your entire frame with only a second of pain, but is quickly overwhelmed by pleasure so strong that you seize, neck craning, hips humping, legs going into spasm. Your vision goes white and you’re screaming as you finally cum, your entire body shaking, lifted off the bed with the force of it, even as three pairs of hands pin you down. Someone above you curses, grunts, and through the crashing force of your orgasm, you feel warmth painting your insides, the cock between your thighs pulsing against the clenching of your pussy, the digits rubbing your clit faltering, clawing, as your pelvis bounces unforgivingly, bruising, bringing with it surge after surge of gratification. The member in your mouth throbs and suddenly there are ropes of hot semen painting the inside of your throat, even as he ruts fiercely, forcing it deeper, clutching your throat around himself, snarling like an animal. Between your fingers, you feel the swelling of cock, the way it leaks and finally spurts wet heat up your wrist and arm.

The lips at your breast take that first pull of your blood, the first decadent sip and your back almost snaps in half. Your vision whites out with a flash and you’re screaming again, hoarse, briefly aloud as Tae slips out of you but clamps a hand over your mouth, unable to stop the flood of cum that falls from your open jaw and oozes lewdly from the corners. He says something but you can’t understand, you’re thrashing and writhing in their grasp, focused so entirely on the feel of Jungkook’s gentle kiss, the sensation of being fed from, like everything in your veins is his to take, like everything you’re made of belongs to him, belongs to the way he suckles at your sweet life force.

You’re sweating, panting, shivering, mindless, caught in this timeless space between the caress of his tongue and the world you’ve left behind. Voices, hummed and muttered. Hands, brushing hair back from your forehead, travelling to your lips, gripping your hip, dancing up your torso, clutching your legs. The lips, teeth, leave your breasts with a break of suction that you feel more than hear, spurring another twitch from your exhausted, heavy body at the brief thrill that hurts.

But quickly, they’re replaced. Another pair of lips, plump, frenzied, insistent, drawing from you like a prize won. Your breast aches, but it’s immaculate, it’s right and what little strength you can summon from your limbs propels one arm upwards. It’s made of stone, of marble, too heavy, too hard, and even as your sight begins to clear into blurred shapes and smeared colors, you have trouble maneuvering it around the two pairs of everything you see. Initially, another hand bats it away from your intended trajectory, the one relinquishing your mouth to allow your whines and moans full volume, and it pushes your arm to the side. But even as you waver, you’re finally allowed to make contact with the head of hair pressed to your chest. Strands of hair, some slick with sweat, decorating the warmth of the head above you. You weave your fingers into it and tug it closer, curling towards the puff of amused air that answers, the gentle hum before the second mouth also disengages. He leans away from you but takes your hand with him, long fingers disentangling yours from his hair to clasp around them instead. He holds you against his warm palm, presses an affectionate kiss to the back of your hand. You don’t have long to be disappointed at the interruption.

With the other moving out of the way, the light from above flashes in your eyes and even though it’s too bright, too much, it gives you the brief glimpse of the sweet, hungry smile of the next face to drift to your breast. You slip your free hand into his shining, blonde hair as he kisses you, too, brushes his tongue against your skin to collect the beads of ruby essence gathering there, spikes of pain coiling into deep pleasure to make you gasp when he begins to suck, plump lips stroking the flesh. He doesn’t stay with you as long as the others, but he remembers to press a modest, lingering kiss to the wound that makes your heart flutter before he cranes up and out of your fading vision.

Your afterglow sinks into your limbs, makes you limp, tired, but sated and warm. The bed rises to claim you, swallowing you whole, as the painting above spirals and winds about itself. The flashes of gold, the glimmering of so many details, are beautiful, distracting, and there are palms against your cheek now, voices buzzing in your ears that you can’t decipher. They brush more hair from your face, and as you dully watch the painting drift off of the ceiling to reach for you, intertwine tendrils of painted sunlight with your arms and legs, you feel yourself being moved, from one cloud to another, your head now supported by a cushion. You’re grateful for that. Makes it easier to watch the ceiling dissolve into gold dust, turning into a shower that feels cool against your face. You can almost taste it, like a breath of fresh air. It makes you feel at peace.

More voices, getting louder, faster. Tapping, prodding, all over, but it’s no longer your body that they’re touching. You’re in the ceiling, being dissolved with the painting.

The curtains surrounding the world draw closed, and your vision shuts out.

Previous Masterlist Next

#bts smut #bts vampire au #bts x reader #bts fanfic #jungkook x reader #jimin x reader #taehyung x reader #moth to flame #ive never written that many dicks into a smut scene but now i feel Confident and Bold so #hang onto ur hineys is what im saying lmao

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

BTHB: Touch Starved (Danny/Nate)

@badthingshappenbingo request answered! Anon requested: Would you be willing to write the ‘touch starvation’ prompt with Nate and Danny? Thanks!

I had initially thought I’d do a post-rescue piece, but this ended up going in a during-captivity direction, so if that isn’t what you wanted, Anon, I’d be happy to write another one, just send me an ask and let me know! Timeline: Late October the year Danny turns 25, so post-Happy Birthday.

Tagging the Danny people: @bleeding-demon-teeth, @spiffythespook, @special-spicy-chicken!

CW: Implied/referenced sexual assault/rape, implied/referenced/visible evidence of torture and violent abuse, discussion of harm to animals (no animals harmed in this fic). Brief suicidal ideation (just a mention)

“How long is he going to be gone?” Danny asks, stopping by a large fallen log, dropping into a crouch to look at some mushrooms that were growing out of the decaying bark, a hint of green moss. He pulls at the rough leather collar around his throat, wincing at the always raw or half-healing skin underneath that stings when exposed to the air.

There’s a little padlock on the buckle now to make sure Nate won’t take it off before Abraham gets home. He used to, and Abraham caught him, once, when he was trying to rub antibiotic cream on Danny’s throat and Abraham came home earlier than they expected.

Now it’s padlocked on.

“He s-s-said three to f-four days this time,” Nate replies, standing a few feet away with his own eyes watching a little moth that had settled itself against a tree trunk, nearly invisible with wings the exact shade of the bark, with the same appearance of rough texture.

“Good. I like when he goes for four days.” Danny just watches him for a moment, looking at the older man with his black hair a little shaggy, hanging down to his eyes, the stubble he lets grow on his face when Abraham doesn’t care if he shaves today. There’s a focus in those green eyes, as they watch the moth close its wings and then open them again, that Danny loves.

He wants that focus on him, but he can’t have that, because Nate belongs to Abraham and Danny’s not a person anymore. He’s not allowed to have things, to want things. To want people. He’s not allowed to want Nate.

He doesn’t even want Nate, does he? He just wants… someone. Anyone who isn’t Abraham Denner. Someone to care about him, to love him, to touch him.

No, it is Nate. He wants Nate to love him.

He wants Nate to care about him, because he can’t remember what it was like to be cared about in a way that didn’t involve… all of this.

I wish you would touch me, he thinks, and then banishes the thought and turns back to the moss, trying not to be all too aware of Nate’s shoulders beneath the warm, dusky blue cable-knit wool of his sweater, the way he stands in the loose-fit heavy khaki pants, the way Danny knows exactly how well they fit around his hips.

Walking traps is hard on Nate the last few weeks, the whole circuit takes a few miles when you do it all at once and having to step over the logs and tree branches and other things, following the marked trail from snare to snare, leaves him limping by the end, teeth ground together, jaw set. Danny’s not sure what happened exactly, only that Nate and Abraham had some kind of fight when Danny was last in the cellar, and Abraham came away with scratches on the side of his neck and the first bruise Danny has ever seen on him and Nate came away with a leg that got hurt, somehow, someway.

So the trail is harder for him, now, while it heals.

But Danny’s not allowed to go alone, and he’s not allowed to help Nate walk, either, because that would mean touching him. No one but Abraham touches Danny now, except when Abraham thinks it’s funny to have Nate hurt him.

When Abraham laughs at his protests, looks right in his eyes, and then Nate can’t say no, just like nobody can say no, after a while. Nate turns white as a ghost after and drinks until he passes out and he probably doesn’t want to be anywhere near Danny anyway, it’s just that they’re the only people here who aren’t Abraham, they only have each other.

But Nate stopped touching him at all, after the last time Abraham made him do it. He thinks months ago, but Danny doesn’t know time as well as he used to, he forgets. Not too long after Abraham said it was his birthday, that he’s twenty-five now.

Not long after that, one night it was really bad, and Nate hasn’t so much as brushed against him since. Hasn’t snuck out at night to watch movies with him, invite him onto the couch, touch his fingers while they work together in the garden.

Nothing.

Nothing but Abraham’s hands.

It’s been so long and Danny just wishes, just for a second, that there was someone to touch him where it didn’t end in something else, something worse. He wants touch without shame, touch that isn’t forced on him or part of a barter, touch that doesn’t end in a knife or demands or orders or that barking high-pitched laughter that worms into his head and won’t stop.

He wants someone (Nate) to put a hand to the small of his back, just rest it there, and remove it again without having to trail fingers up his neck to the carved-in scarring of who he belongs to. He wants a hand in his hair that doesn’t pull until it hurts. He wants touch without pain, without the guilt in Nate’s eyes, without crying or exhaustion or being told what to do.

He can’t have that, though, and all he wants - all he wants in the whole world, now, a world that is narrow and caged-in - is just to hold Nate’s hand, maybe, just for a goddamn second.

No. Not allowed.

Wrong thoughts.

(who do your hands belong to? is this body yours, or mine?)

Y-yours, it’s yours, it’s not mine anymore, not my body.

(good boy)

He’s not going to think about Nate’s hands, calloused from when he chops wood, too, from the work he does alongside Danny in the garden during spring and summer. The way they went from looking almost delicate and meant for opening books, taking annotations and typing lectures, to roughened and coarse outdoorsman’s hands. He won’t think about the way Nate had brushed sweaty hair back from his face when he was sick and sometimes slept beside him on the floor.

He’s not going to think about the sweetness of Nate’s eyes on his, sometimes, when Abraham isn’t looking. He’s not going to think about how that stopped, too, after the bad night where Abraham had had a new idea and made Nate carry it out.

He’s not going to think about what he wants and cannot have.

He’s not going to think about any of it because it’s not for him.

He’s not going to think about how sometimes it’s not just his stomach that’s hollow, but his skin. His scarred-up worthless skin that feels hungry, for someone, for anyone who won’t hurt him. Right down to the tips of his fingers. He’s carved out into a yawning nothing that can’t stop craving someone, something else, something more, something better.

There is nothing better.

This is the best life will ever be again.

Don’t think about his hands.

Danny squints at the half-decayed hollow log, trying to distract himself. Did he read in one of the books they make you read in school that moss mostly grows on the north side of things? He feels like he might have heard that, once upon a time, in the life that he never lived, that doesn’t exist, because there was never anything before Abraham.

The mushroom cap gives a little under the touch of his finger, and he wishes he could feel it better, that his hands weren’t rough and calloused and half-numb after so long, the only part of him that never notices the cold. He wishes it was someone’s (Nate’s) skin. The moss he can kind of feel, a sort of soft brush of texture, and he looks at the deep dark green of it, smiling faintly.

Moss only grows on the north side of trees. Wasn’t there a character in a book who got lost, and they remembered that trying to find their way home? Which would mean if he walked the other way, the way the moss didn’t grow, he would go south. South and south and south, walk out of the woods one day, cross the border, go home. Take Nate with him and then maybe one day ask if he wanted to, if he could-

Stop it.

This is home.

Don’t think about that, that belongs to Abraham now.

(you’re here until I’m done with you, little Red, and let me reassure you that you don’t want me to be done with you)

Besides, he didn’t know shit about moss. He’s not allowed to read the navigation parts of the survivalist books the body left behind in the cabin, Abraham ripped those pages out (“H-how fucking d-d-dare you, Bram, that’s a book, you c-c-can’t just r-rip apart books l-ike that! That’s like a fucking s-s-sacrilege!”) and left him only the cooking and the ways to make your own medicine. Danny only knows what he’s allowed to know, what it’s okay to know. He only knows what Abraham says he should know.

Everything else is buried in the pain, and he lets it stay there, down in the muck, like the animals in the tar pits Dad took them to see when they were kids (no he didn’t, you never did that, you’re making it up). Abraham is always telling him his memories are wrong, full of holes, fucked up beyond repair. That he shouldn’t try to use his mind or think, because thinking isn’t what he’s here for, is it?

(you’re here for me)

Yes, Abraham, for-… for you, I’m here for you.

(good boy)

Danny bites his lower lip, and thinks about the bruise on his hip, still aching and made of dark purples and blacks today, teeth marks in perfect half-circles on each side of where the bone stuck out under the skin, slightly scabbed. Abraham had drawn blood, last night, a gift to remember him by, since he was going on a supply run and leaving the two of them here.

A reminder, but it was still better than it used to be. He used to chain Danny up in the living room for supply runs, take the key with him. Nate would bring him food from the kitchen and he could reach the bathroom on the chain, so it was really okay, he didn’t mind, he didn’t.

Especially because when Abraham was gone, Nate would sleep on the couch out in the living room, or next to him on the floor, just a few inches away, and sometimes when he woke up Nate’s hand was warm on top of his.

Once - just the once - Nate had said he could sleep on the couch, too, and they’d taken the cushions off the back to make it bigger and crammed themselves onto it, Danny’s long body meaning he had his feet up on the arm of the couch with the chain running off the side, but Nate had been warm next to him underneath the blanket they’d stolen from Abraham’s bed, and he’d almost felt safe.

And Abraham never knew about those wrong thoughts, about that disobedience. He never knew.

Abraham didn’t chain him up any longer, because he knew Danny wouldn’t run away anymore. Where would he go? They were so far in the woods he couldn’t possibly know how long to walk to find another person, and he couldn’t really remember his directions any longer.

He’d tried to run away a few times, and the punishments when he was caught - and he was always caught - had made him shy away from even thinking about trying to run ever, ever again.

He didn’t need to think about anything but Abraham. What Abraham wanted, what would make Abraham happy, how to be good enough for Abraham. That was all he should think about, it hurt too much to think about anything else.

(nothing should live inside your head, little puppy, but me. what I like, how I take my drinks, what I want for dinner, whether or not I’m going to cut you up today, how to make me pleased enough that I don’t need to.)

Yes, Abraham.

(there is no life before me. just our family, Nate and I and our puppy)

Just our, um, our family.

Danny twisted his mouth into a mean little smile and stared fixedly at the moss, made himself think about before.

It might be the smallest rebellion, but he had been here for years and he had almost no rebellions left, and he had to cling to even the smallest unpunished disobedience to try and remember that he’d ever been anything other than this. It felt like defiance, like waving some kind of flag, just to let himself question whether or not moss only grows on the north side of trees.

Maybe Ryan read it in school, and told him, and that’s why he can’t remember the book. Danny’s throat catches, a drift of an image of his little brother’s face the night before he’d gone to see Nate and lost everything. They’d played video games all night long, just hanging on the couch in Danny’s apartment playing Halo and drinking, bitching about the way Halo 5’s storyline went, the way their parents had acted at Christmas around Ryan’s newest boyfriend (who they didn’t like, but not because he was a boy. At least Corrine and Patrick never gave a shit about that, because if Danny had to add being in the closet to the laundry list of bullshit he had to do because of his parents, he wasn’t sure he would even have made it to adulthood). He and Ryan had spent the night being absolutely perfectly normal people with no idea they’d never see each other again.

I wish I’d hugged him before I left the next day instead of telling him he was too sweaty coming back from the gym. I wish I’d said ‘I love you’, or something else nice, just anything, anything better than ‘I’ll be back late, wish me luck’ what the shit was that, like I was a fourteen year old with a fucking crush-

No, stop it. No life before Abraham. I’m a good dog.

Besides, who even knows if that happened? Maybe you didn’t play video games at all, maybe you had a fight and you just don’t remember it, maybe you did something to deserve this and that’s why it happened, maybe you’re making this bullshit happy memory up.

I’m a good dog, I want to be good.

Maybe you just don’t remember what you did to deserve this.

(you let this happen because you knew you were born to be mine)

Maybe Ryan knows what you did to deserve this.

Abraham always says they’re not looking anymore.

(don’t you ever fucking forget)

Maybe they know why this happened to you, and that’s why they’re not looking.

There is so little sleep, never enough to eat, sometimes Abraham puts stuff in his water or just lays a pill on his tongue and he doesn’t really know, anymore, what happened and what didn’t, beyond the days and nights Abraham wants him to hurt. He’s so good at hurting, is the thing. Abraham is always telling him it’s irresistible, finding someone like him. That you can’t just put a starving man before a buffet and tell him not to eat.

He’s good at jamming himself down deep into the tiniest places he has left, and Abraham turns the rest into Red, and Red is so good, Red wants to be good, to be try harder, to be a good boy…

Danny presses at the moss again, thoughtfully, and he almost asks Nate if he knows what direction moss grows, but then he keeps is mouth shut, because… what if it’s a stupid question? What if he’s wrong? What if it’s another memory that isn’t real, just like all the others? Danny remembers a lot of false things, now, and forgets most of the true ones.

It’s safer, that way.

(up above your head. perfect, that’s perfect, that’s my good boy, trying so hard for me. oh, don’t look at me like that, puppy. you’re the one who chose the knife)

“We’re g-going to be late coming b-back from traps if you k-k-keep staring at logs,” Nate says after a long pause. Danny jumps a little, startled out of his thoughts, and turns back to him with an apology on his tongue before he realizes Nate’s voice was teasing, not upset, that he’s smiling down at Danny with that odd look he gets sometimes, where he looks at him like Danny’s a book he’s always wanted to read but he doesn’t know how to open it.

He tries not to think about that look in his eyes too often, but sometimes it follows him everywhere he goes, makes him feel like he used to feel when he was a person, shivery and awkward and a little too big for his own skin.

He tries to stop himself, but sometimes Nate’s face, with that slight half-smile that pulls at the little scar in his lip, is all that sticks in his mind at all.

“Sorry, Nate. We’re almost to the first snare, let’s, um, let’s go ahead and get to it.” Danny jumps back to his feet, towering a little over Nate when he stands all the way up, rolls his shoulders, straightens his back. Being tall, though, means opening himself up to the breeze and he shivers a little as the autumn air cuts right through his T-shirt and pajama pants, the thin sneakers he’s allowed to wear already damp around all the edges, the wet soaking into his socks.

He’ll get sick again, and as long as he can keep doing chores it’s okay, but if he gets too sick for chores, Abraham will lock him in the cellar. Danny gnaws on a bit of chapped skin on his lower lip, rubbing his hands together. He has to not get that sick. As long as he can still do his chores, it’s okay, Abraham just laughs at him when he sees his brother and talks to him through the kitchen window, just laughs because if the dishes still get done, if dinner still gets made, it’s okay.

He won’t get hurt if he can still do his chores.

He makes elderberry syrup and fire cider, takes some of both every single day. There isn’t enough food (yes there is, there’s plenty, it’s just not for you) but Abraham doesn’t care if he drinks the medicines he makes out of the survivalist book, he doesn’t care how much he has of those. Sometimes he drinks the fire cider until the acid in the vinegar makes him sick, because at least then he doesn’t feel hollowed out and light-headed from hunger.

None of it helps the sense of emptiness under his skin, the wish for something gentle, and sweet, and soft in all the violence.

Danny can’t help the twist of sadness in his chest when he finds the rabbit in the first snare still alive, but exhausted and worn out from trying to get free, little chest heaving, just lying on its side. “I’m sorry,” He says, softly, under his breath, as he crouches next to it. Nate stands close by, hands in his pockets, watching him. “I get it, you know. I get you.”

(don’t tell me you’re apologizing to the goddamn prey, little puppy)

He always apologizes to the animals they catch, and Abraham laughs at him, laughs and says dogs hunt and only the dumbest puppy would stop to say he’s sorry before doing what comes naturally. But this doesn’t come naturally, it never has, he always worries about what the little animals think of him before they die.

Sometimes he wonders if they recognize him, if they see that he’s prey, too, that he’s in a snare like theirs, the leather around his neck just like the rope.

Danny shivers hard enough to rattle the little tag that hangs off his collar, then takes a deep breath and says, all at once to Nate like the whole sentence is a single word, “Please let me have your knife for a second.”

Nate pauses, then slips the little knife he’s allowed to carry out of his pocket, opening it up. It was one of his birthday gifts from Abraham, and it’s got a black handle with silver tooled into it in the shape of vines and a deer (it’s a fucking stag, puppy, get some goddamn culture - when I was little, I met a god with a stag’s head, you know) and even Danny could admit, when he saw it, that it was gorgeous.

Before Abraham forced Nate to cut him with it to show how sharp it was.

Nate’s a person, he’s Abraham’s true love and best friend, Nate is real and Danny isn’t - so Nate gets knives. Not that knives would do them any good, here, not with Abraham. And Nate doesn’t like the knives, anyway, because he gets cut with them, too. Once he was done cutting up Danny, after all, Abraham had cut him.

“F-figured you’d w-w-want me to slit its throat,” Nate says softly, the offer still there in his voice if not in his words, the compassion in his expression. He knows Danny hates having to kill them, to take the little lives away when all they did was be born in the wrong forest at the wrong time. Abraham always makes Danny do it, laughs at him when he hesitates, or hurts him if he refuses.

“I don’t want you to do it,” Danny says, fighting the urge to pat its sad, tired little head. It’s probably crawling in bugs, honestly, and it wouldn’t appreciate the gesture, but Danny wishes someone would pat him on the head with understanding sometimes, and not just because he’s the dog.

If only someone would touch him and it didn’t hurt. That used to happen, didn’t it?

(no life before me)

“I kn-know it’s your j-job, Red, but he’s gone, for f-f-four days, so it’s n-not like he’ll know. You kn-know I n-n-never tell him any, anything like that, about y-you.”

“I know, but I still don’t want you to do it.” Danny shakes his head. “This is mine, to do, this is my job.” He takes a deep breath, my name is Red, counts to five, exhales slowly I belong to Abraham Denner.

Then he takes the knife with a murmured thanks (be grateful for every gift you are given) and reaches out, cutting the rope and not the rabbit. He cuts the rope again a few inches further down, and then again. Again and again and again, until it can’t possibly be tied back together this way.

The rabbit doesn’t run. It just lays there with the broken shreds of the snare around it, too tired to escape, staring at him with one wide eye while its little body heaves with its breath. Danny reaches out one hand, slowly, and then pulls it back.

“R-Red, wh-what did you do that for?” Nate asks, his voice slightly faint. Not angry, not upset, just… curious. “Why did you cut th-the rope? If you c-c-cut them all… we’ll have to redo th-th-them before B-Bram gets back, you… you know that, right?”

“Don’t tell him I cut the rope,” Danny whispers, hugging himself, it’s so fucking cold already and it’s only going to get colder. “I’ll fix it later. Don’t tell him.”

Did the rabbit remember a family? Are there rabbits born in little burrows in the spring to this one rabbit, that grow up and then leave and does she (or he, he supposes) remember them? When they’re gone, are the babies remembered by someone? If they disappear, or they die, does someone know that they were ever around?

Do other rabbits look for the rabbits that disappear in the woods?

“I w-won’t, Red, you know that.”

Danny just watches the little rabbit breathe, the way it lays so still you’d think it was dead except for the occasional movements of its eyes, the quick, shallow, panicked little breaths that start, gradually to slow and to settle.

Do rabbits touch each other? They must snuggle up in burrows, right? And it doesn’t have to be anything more than that, more than being warm together, reminding each other they’re alive, still here, that they made it through one more day without the wolves getting tired of playing with them, without the jaws closing around their throat.

(how much blood do you think you can lose before you black out, puppy? let’s find out)

Wh, whatever you want, Abraham, I can do whatever you want-

(I know you can, and you will, because you’re my good boy, aren’t you?)

Pl-please, please, I don’t want to die, please, please don’t kill me, please

(you’re not going to die. not tonight, anyway. if you die, you stop being my good little pup, hm? so let’s hold still and focus on staying alive tonight, there, just like this…)

Eventually, the wolf’s jaws are going to close around his throat. Eventually, he’ll be just like the rabbit, and there’s no one here to cut him loose from the snare.

It’s just Abraham and Nate, a family all their own, with their puppy.

“H-Hey.” Nate shifts from foot to foot - his leg is probably already aching, it takes nearly a third of the marked trail to even get to the first of the snares. “R-Red, we need to get moving-”

“I-I know, I know we do, I just… I just don’t want to kill them anymore,” Danny says softly, and he doesn’t move from his crouch on the ground. “I don’t want to kill the things like me, I just want to let them go. I just want them to go home.”

“Red…”

“I know, I know how it sounds, Nate, I know. Just let me be sad, okay, just for now, while he’s gone. Let me, let me be, um, be D-… be, um, me.”

That’s not your name anymore

(this body doesn’t belong to you)

Stop trying to remember the old name, it’s not yours

“Just let me not be Red, for just a second,” Danny says heavily. “While we’re alone.”

Nate is quiet, then, for so long that Danny can’t stand it and jumps up to his feet, stalking back and away without looking at him, forcing himself past the markings along the trees, not even trying to be quiet. A bird flees his noise in a flutter of wings, and he stomps on the fallen leaves, the red and yellows rotting to browns and giving under his feet, the cold damp sinking further into his feet through these stupid fucking canvas sneakers and the socks.

That was stupid, don’t tell him you think things like that. That’s dumb. Rabbits aren’t the same as you, rabbits have a fucking chance to run away. Rabbits don’t wear collars, rabbits don’t get tied to the bed, rabbits don’t, they don’t, they don’t have to-

“Fuck!” At the sudden outburst, more birds light up and squirrels shift in the branches up in the trees, leaves falling down around him. He kicks at a bush, shoves a low-hanging branch that nearly snaps back to hit him in the face, stomps as loudly as he can.

Be good, god damn it

(puppies don’t get to be angry)

Stop it, Red, stop it!

(bad dog, Red)

I’m good, I can be good, I can stop

(very bad dog, Red, now you’ll have to be fixed again)

I can do better, I’ll try harder, I can stop

He can’t. He can’t stop it, it’s boiling up inside of him and it all comes out too quickly for him to stop it, and his heart starts to pound as he kicks again, kicks at nothing but leaves, watching them float uselessly into the air and back down, bashes his foot against a tree. He’s not allowed to be angry, but he can’t stop.

Somewhere, Abraham is driving, somewhere he’ll feel it, he’ll know Danny had wrong thoughts, and when he comes back the muzzle will come back out and Abraham will lick up the blood running down his neck and laugh in his ear.

(I know everything about you. I know everything inside of you. I know every thought, every feeling, every neuron that fires inside that pretty, useless, broken little brain)

Abraham will come back and he’ll know, and there will be more hands, there are always, always hands but they never, they’re never hands that just want to hold him, it’s always hands that hurt. He’ll put the muzzle on and the headphones in so he can’t go away, so he can’t be someone else, so Abraham can watch him cry.

(god I wish I could bottle those fucking tears, puppy, you taste so good)

He screams, wordlessly, an animal sound of fear and rage and his hate for himself, the shame that he can’t run anymore, he doesn’t even want to. Where would he go? There’s nowhere, no one is looking for him, no one will ever find him here. Abraham is right, he’s right about everything, people like Danny were made for this. Only this. Forever this, until Abraham gets tired of him.

He screams, and he screams, and he screams because when Abraham comes back he won’t be able to scream anymore. He screams himself hoarse and Nate doesn’t stop him, doesn’t even move, just watches him and Danny can feel the eyes on his back.

“What did I fucking do?” He screams into the woods, his voice ragged and broken, and the trees don’t answer, and the birds don’t answer, and the animals don’t answer. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, but it must have been horrible, it must have been worth hell, because hell is what he’s living in, and he’ll be here until he dies.

When Nate grabs him by the elbow he spins around too fast and makes himself dizzy, stumbling to try and catch his balance. He wants to hate Nate Vandrum - the person, the true love, who gets to sit on the couch and sit at the table and eat all the food he wants, Nate who gets to be human - but he can’t, because what he wants more than to let the anger inside of him take over is for someone, anyone, to help him stop it; to stuff it back down where it’s safe, where Abraham can’t cut or burn or bleed it out of him again.

“R-Red,” Nate says, softly, and his grip on Danny’s arm is firm but it doesn’t hurt, and it’s been so long since anyone but Abraham touched him, really - even when Nate does it’s because Abraham tells him to, and that’s not the same, that’s just an extension of Abraham’s hands, wearing a different face. “Red, please-”

“I’m sorry I did that dumb thing with the rabbit,” Danny whispers, throat aching, eyes hot with tears but they don’t fall, he won’t let them, he keeps them glittering against his eyes, blurring the vision of the older man watching him, so he can’t see his face. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not allowed to be angry, I know I am, I know… I’m so sorry-”

“N-No, it’s okay, I, uh, I l-liked that you d-d-did that thing with the rabbit. That you let it go.” There’s a note to Nate’s voice, something he knows but doesn’t know, it’s been so long since he’s heard it.

Danny rubs the back of his hand against his eyes and blinks, looks at Nate more closely. The green eyes are warm, on his, and he swallows hard against a sudden awareness that Nate’s eyes are always warm when they look at him, aren’t they?

“You did?” He doesn’t mean his voice to come out so soft, barely above a whisper, but it does. Nate’s other hand moves, jerks a little, like he wants to do something with it but he doesn’t know what. “You’re not mad that I got angry? Puppies aren’t allowed-”

“I’m not mad. And you, you’re, you’re n-not…” Nate loosens the grip on his elbow, and he doesn’t want him to but he has no idea how to say it. Please, you haven’t touched me in weeks, please, I need touch that doesn’t hurt me. “We h-h-have plenty stored up. It’s f-f-fine. You’re right, th-they should get to go home… the rabbits.”

“I want them to go home,” Danny says, a little miserably, and sees the depth of understanding in Nate’s eyes and he clings to it, to the shred of being a person that Nate still seems to see in him. “I don’t want to see them in the snares anymore. I just want them to go home, where-… where there aren’t any people like, like us - like him - where there aren’t any… hands, that won’t stop, I just…”

I want to go home.

There is no home but here.

I want to go home.

“I kn-know,” Nate says, softly, and he takes a step closer, and then another. Danny can feel him, almost, the way he’s warm when everything else is cold now. “I know. I w-w-want them to go h-h-home, too. Y-you can go back to the cabin, if you w-want, I can walk the traps the r-r-rest of the way by myself.”

“No,” Danny says softly, and he can’t stop looking down at Nate’s hands, which he’s not supposed to think about. How they’ve changed since they got here, gone all rough and so have Danny, just in a different way “I don’t want to be by myself right now.”

“A-Are you sure? You c-c-could sit on the couch. He wouldn’t know. You kn-know I don’t tell him anything ab-about you, or what you say to me.”

“Does he ask?” Danny takes a breath, watches Nate step even closer, close enough that Danny can smell his cologne, the bottle Abraham buys him for Christmas each year. The forest around them seemed quieter now, just the usual rustle of leaves in the slightest breeze. “What I tell you, what I talk about?”

Nate pauses, watching him thoughtfully, and then he nods. “He d-does.”

“You tell him anything he wants, when he looks right at you,” Danny says, but it’s without a hint of blame. He was angry, at first, that Nate gave up and gave in so easily. He understands, now. You can’t do anything else, if Abraham looks at you long enough. You can’t do anything but what he wants, what he tells you to do.

He’s close enough now that the change in the air is real, the hint of another person’s presence, someone he isn’t afraid of. The only person left he isn’t afraid of. Nate swallows hard, in a way Danny can see shift the muscles of his throat the faint lines of pale circled scarring there from his time with Abraham before. “I d-don’t have to tell him about y-y-you.”

It’s an admission, Danny thinks, some kind of confession, but he’s not sure to what.

“What does that mean?”

“I d-don’t know. Just that it… doesn’t always w-w-work, when it’s about y-you.” Nate looks him over again, licking at his lips nervously, pressing them together in this habit he has that Danny has seen, over and over again, while they’ve been here. “It d-doesn’t always… I’m sorry.”

Danny laughs, bitterly, hands slowly going up over his face, blocking out the world around them. “I’m fucking sorry too, Nate. I’m so goddamn sorry, and maybe when I’m dead I’ll get to say I’m sorry for whatever I did to, to earn this, to make this happen to me. Maybe when he gets tired of me and I’m dead-”

“You w-won’t die here.” Nate grabs him by the arms, and Danny stumbles forward until Nate is holding onto him, arms so tight around him, and Danny’s knees nearly buckle. “N-not you, Red, n-n-not you, I won’t let you die h-here…”

He hasn’t been touched in so long like this, just held, just hugged and held onto, and he drops his head down, curving over himself until his head is on Nate’s shoulder.

Scratchy sweater fabric against his cheek, against the itching, healing muzzle scars, and Nate’s hand is in his hair, and Danny doesn’t cry but he feels the scream still bubbling in his throat, trying to make its way out.

“You n-never did a single fucking thing wrong, Danny,” Nate whispers, fiercely, and Danny’s eyes close at the name, the name he only thinks to himself sometimes just to try and remember that he used to have one, a person’s name, a people name, that he was something better than this, something more.

“You h-h-have to c-call me, call me Red, Nate,” Danny whispers. There’s a pause, and then he puts his arms up around Nate, too, slides them around his waist, and he knows this waist so well for so many terrible reasons but for just now, right now, he tries to know it for a good one.

“I don’t. I can c-c-call you whatever I want, r-right now, when he’s not here, and I w-w-want to call you Danny, so please, please l-let me, just for n-now, just for r-r-right now, please,” Nate whispers against his ear, and holds him like he’s real, like he deserves it, and Danny can’t let go of him.

“Why did you stop touching me?” He asks, and he keeps his head buried against Nate’s shoulder so he won’t see his face at the question. “It’s been weeks, I can’t live with only him touching me, why did you stop?”

“He m-m-makes me hurt you,” Nate says softly back. “I, it’s so hard to, to think that I h-h-have to hurt you all th-the time, and then I thought you m-m-must hate that someone who h-hurts you would be anywhere near, near you, I just… I just th-thought you wouldn’t want me to.”

“I do want you to,” Danny says softly, lips moving against the fabric of his sweater, feeling the warmth of it, the warmth of his body through the fabric, the strongly muscled shoulders, the rough hands that slide up into his hair but that’s all they do, they don’t pull, they don’t hurt, they’re just… there. “I want you to. I want something good, too, I can’t-… I can’t be in the snare alone, I can’t, I n-need you with me, too, Nate. Please, please, please don’t stop touching me, don’t, don’t make his hands be the only ones I remember anymore, please…”

“Sssshhhhhh. I’m right h-here with you.” Nate presses a kiss to the side of his head, just something gentle and reassuring, and Danny moves back to look at his face. Nate swallows, hard, taking the movement as rejecting the kiss, as not wanting it, and starts to pull back from him. “S-sorry, Danny, I’m sorry, I sh-shouldn’t have, I-”

Danny leans down and kisses him, all at once, a press of his cold lips to Nate’s warmer ones, the barest brush. When he pulls away Nate doesn’t go after him, doesn’t force him back down, doesn’t get angry. He’s not going to be hurt for that, or by it. That kiss was… safe.

Nate looks dazed, like maybe the book he wanted to read opened all on its own, and he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to find in there.

“Don’t stop touching me,” Danny says softly, and grabs Nate’s sweater with both hands, pulling him close, leaning down to kiss him again.

This time, Nate’s hands go up to his arms, curve around his shoulders. Danny moves in stumbling steps until his back’s against a tree, and Nate’s chest and stomach are pressed to his, the pressure of hips against his own is safe and nothing bad will happen to him here.

Nate’s mouth is gentle against his, the hands don’t move from around his shoulders. They don’t roam. They stay right where they are, and the buzzing despair and Abraham’s voice in his head goes quiet, goes silent, and all he hears is the birds and the breeze in the trees and Nate breathing, the soft sound of their mouths together.

“Danny-” Nate whispers against him. “Danny, is this r-r-really what y-you-”

“Shut up,” Danny whispers back, slides his hands up behind Nate’s head, kisses him again and again and again, and none of it hurts. “Call me Danny again.”

“D-Danny,” Nate whispers, and kisses the corner of his mouth. “Danny,” and a kiss to the scar along his cheekbone. Another whisper, another kiss to his cheek, then one to his jaw, then one to his neck just above the red skin rubbed raw by his collar, back up to his mouth. Everywhere his mouth skims Danny's skin it lights up - the way it used to feel when boys kissed him, when he kissed them, when it used to be something he wanted. It's something he wants, now. “Danny. You’re sure?”

“For now I am,” Danny says softly. “While he’s gone.”

“Okay,” Nate says, and presses one more kiss to his mouth, looking up into his eyes. “For now. Wh-wh-while he’s g-gone.”

Danny gives him a lopsided grin, slides arms up around his shoulders, and holds onto him for dear life.

This is the best life will ever be again.

157 notes · View notes

98prilla · 4 years

Text

Turned

I don't know what this is. I just had the first few lines stuck in my head and had to make something with it. I have a vague idea of this universe. Fantasy creatures/beings are real and everyone has always known this, most are fine and harmless, but sometimes they’re dangerous, they go “feral” or lose control of their minds and lose themselves. Maybe the boys are hunters that deal with mythical creatures that are feral or dangerous, and in this case they were tracking a pack of vampires, when Patton somehow got ahead of the group and cornered. That's all the backstory I got folks, thanks for coming to my veeery improved TedTalk.

“Patton, please. You need to eat.” The words were soft, concerned, but he simply shrunk back against the wall, shaking his head frantically.

They were right. The hunger snaked through his stomach, clouded his mind, it was a physical ache that echoed through his marrow, pounding in his head with a steady thrum, whispering food, food, feed.

It would be so easy. He was right there, he could lunge and then warmth would coat his throat, he could drink and drink until he was drowsy from being stuffed full, blessedly full.

He shook his head with a sharp breath, pressing himself further back, trembling. He was light headed, bright spots of color dancing across his vision, and he squeezed his fingers tighter against his arms, digging them into his skin. He couldn’t risk hurting them, he couldn’t take that chance, he couldn’t control the hunger gnawing away inside his chest, hollowing him out until he couldn’t think straight.

“You have gone too long without feeding, and I understand that recently after turning is the most delicate and dangerous time for a new vampire. Not eating now could very easily lead to starvation.” A different voice, concern clear in the timbre of his facts.

“Good.” Patton blurted, the first word he’d spoken in more than two days. He could feel the stunned silence from his companions, hoped they’d just go away. He could smell the too sweet scent of their blood, could hear it pounding through their veins, and it took everything in him not to bare his newly grown fangs.

“Virgil wants to see you.” Roman said after a too long pause, and for once Patton’s eyes darted up, focusing on Roman's face. He’s worried about you." Patton swallowed dryly, eyes flicking between the two men.

“How is… how is he?” he asked. He’d been so absorbed in himself, he’d almost forgotten. The struggle, flailing of limbs, a searing pain in his neck, flooding through his veins, fear making his heart beat loud in his ears.

Then a blur of purple, a furious, wordless shout, and Patton was let go, sliding down the wall he’d been pinned against with a gasp. He heard the sounds of a struggle, of flesh against flesh, snarls and growls and hisses of pain. Then soft brown eyes looking into his, blood dripping into one eye from a gash on his forehead, one arm twisted oddly, words he couldn’t comprehend falling from his lips. Roman and Logan exchanged a glance, making Patton's heat speed.

“What? What is it?” he asked, a bit frantic.

“He'll be alright. But it might… take a while. His injuries were far from superficial." Logan replied, and Patton's hands fluttered nervously. If he really was going to starve himself to death, he at least owed a goodbye to Virgil.

“He stayed with you, y’know. While you… changed. He wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t let Logan look at him, until he was sure you weren’t going to die from it.” Patton shivered, vaguely remembering the feeling of heat flooding his veins, burning through him as the venom spread, as it burned the human out of him, leaving emptiness behind. But he remembered murmurs, hands running through his hair, a damp cloth on his forehead, the low cadence of Virgil’s voice, arguing with someone. Probably Logan. He bit his lip.

“ok" he whispered softly, slowly getting to his feet, leaning against the wall as his head swam.

“Ok?” Roman asked, surprised. This was more of a reaction than they’d gotten in days from Patton. It was both exciting and worrying. Patton was the most effusive of the four of them. The fact that he was so subdued now was almost terrifying.

“I'll… I wanna see Virg. If that’s ok.”

“Of course it is ok, Patton. He’s in the living room at the moment. Do you require assistance getting there?” Logan asked, his voice low, a smidge too even to be natural. Patton shook his head again, regretting it as dizziness crested over him.

Logan stepped back, out of the doorway, hands carefully clasped behind his back. Roman followed his lead, though he looked pained at being unable to reach out.

God, how Patton wanted a hug, a comforting touch on the shoulder, a playful ruffle of his hair, but he could hear their blood pounding from here, was afraid instinct would take over on contact, was afraid of what he’d do if he could physically feel their pulse.

So he slipped past them, managing to keep his footing as he made his way down the hall that contained their bedrooms, pausing in the doorway that led to the living room, a small noise of distress escaping his throat.

Virgil was sitting on the couch, leg elevated on a foot rest before him, an ice pack on top of a splinted leg. The opposite arm was in a sling, bound with expert care against his chest. He could see bandages poking out from under his sweater around his left hand, a patch of gauze taped above his eye. There was a dark, angry bruise around his left eye, not to mention he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, face even more drawn than usual. His gaze snapped to Patton at his small squeak, eyes widening, a small, relieved half smile playing across his face as hope sparked to life in his eyes.

“Heya.” He did his little two finger salute, and Patton couldn’t help himself anymore. He launched himself across the room, landing nearly on top of Virgil, burying his face against his hoodie, clinging onto it, letting out the sob building in his chest. He didn’t hear Virgil’s pained hiss or the shock of pain that flashed across his face at the impact.

“I’m sorry, you… you're all beat up and it’s my fault for being so stupid, and, and I…” he hiccupped, unable to keep going, to keep talking with how hard he was crying, leaving him more light headed than he’d already been as he gasped in air. He felt Virgil’s one arm wrap around his shoulders, felt him rest his chin against Patton’s shoulder, letting out a shuddering breath as he held Patton as tightly as he could, ignoring the sharp stinging ache from his chest that meant his cracked ribs were pissed, the bruises that covered his torso that Patton was pushing on, squeezing him tight. It didn’t matter.

“Hey, hey. It’s ok. I’m ok. I should have called for back up as soon as I saw, but I just… I saw you and I couldn’t… I couldn’t let them take you. I wanted to be there, when you woke up, but Logan wouldn’t let me, said I needed to get looked at too. Probably right, but still.” Patton sniffled pulling away, across the couch, too aware of Virgil’s heart beat when practically laying on top of him, not to mention the sharp inhales that gave away Virgil’s pain.

“But… but they did. I’m…turned.” Patton almost whispered, surprised at the vehement shake of Virgil’s head, the ferocity that flared to life in his eyes.

“No. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter that you got turned. You’re still you, Pat, still yourself. Still… still here. Not in some vampire den being brainwashed until all your memories are gone, not lying in some alley…” He paused, running a hand through his hair, sagging back against the couch. “I was so scared. I saw you pinned, saw the fangs and I just… I lost it. I got so wildly furious. Because I thought… I thought they’d killed my best friend.” Virgil's voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to contain the memory of panicked, rage infused anguish as he pummeled vamp after vamp, barely noticing their extra ordinary strength, how their hits cracked bone, their nails clawed through his clothes. He bared his own teeth in a feral grimace, hissing and spitting and dodging and stabbing at anything within reach with his daggers until he lost them in the melee. That didn’t stop him, pummeling anything in his path with his fists until he heard the other’s shouts, their pounding steps.

“If you think you can take all three of us, be my guest.” He spat, as they all paused at the noise. They looked over him closely, appraisingly, bruised and bloody, arm broken, leg snapped, burning eyes refusing to look down, face twisted in a snarl that even they couldn’t match with all their fangs, still ready to and willing to brawl despite his bruised and swollen knuckles. A moment passed, seemingly endless. Then, as one, they turned and fled. As soon as they were out of sight he fell to his knees beside Patton, nearly collapsing when he saw Patton’s eyes on him, still seeing, still alive, still there, barely aware as Logan and Roman skidded to a halt beside him, half delirious himself as the adrenaline washed away, but refusing to let go of Patton.

“we both know vampires aren’t inherently bad. Not all of them are dangerous, most of them aren’t, actually. It’s only ones that are cruel or power hungry or twisted as humans to begin with, or the ones who didn’t have anyone or anything to hold onto, who’ve gone feral. You’re none of those things, Pat. You’re the farthest from any of those things I’ve ever seen! You’re afraid, and that’s… that’s ok. That’s normal. But you don’t have to be. You’re not a monster, or some dangerous creature, you’re just… a human with weird dietary needs.” That earned a stifled laugh from Patton, a smile flicking across Virgil’s face in response. “it’ll be ok. But I need… I need you to feed, I need you to not give up i… I need you, pat. I can’t… I can’t lose any of my family.” The words were strained, and Patton could see his breathing start to falter, the panic overwhelming him, and without thinking, he reached out, firmly squeezing Virgil’s hand, kneeling on the couch beside him, grounding him as he counted, until Virgil calmed.

Patton’s heart ached at seeing one of his “kiddos”, as he refered to his friends, his team, so afraid, so overwhelmingly scared, and it hurt knowing he was the cause.

“What if I hurt you? What if I lose control and hurt all of you? What if I don’t remember my own strength and we’re sparring and I punch you through a wall?�� Virgil snorted at that last one, imagining Roman’s indignant face looking up from a heap of plywood, dust staining his usually immaculate white and red letterman’s jacket.

“Virgil, I’m serious!” Patton protested, lightly swatting at Virgil, and Virgil’s smile faded from his lips, but the warmth in his eyes was overwhelming.

“You didn’t hurt me just then. In the five days you’ve been a vampire, well, three if we’re counting when you were conscious, you spent them hiding away because you were afraid of hurting anyone. You’re starving yourself because you’re afraid of hurting anyone. That doesn’t sound like someone who would lose control. That sounds like someone who is right now excersising the strictest self discipline I’ve ever seen. Even when you were delirious and feverish you never once lashed out. You’re not going to hurt anyone, Pat. Especially not one of us.” Virgil answered, refusing to back down, to let Patton challenge his words. He pulled up his sleeve with his teeth, making a face at the taste of the fabric, then held out his wrist, palm up.

Patton stilled, fear and panic and longing and desperate need sweeping through him. His eyes found Virgil’s, who quirked his brow, that small smile back on his lips.

“I trust you, Pat.” He said, lowly, sincerity written across every line of his face. Patton took a shaky breath then nodded, hesitantly supporting Virgil’s arm, carefully sinking his fangs into the soft skin.

His eyes widened in surprise at the taste. He’d expected it to be coppery and slimy, for disgust to well up in him and for him to be unable to continue. Instead, it was tangy and sweet, almost like a mix of raspberries and citrus. He kept an eye on Virgil the whole time, making sure it wasn’t causing him any harm or pain, making sure he wasn’t taking too much. After a long moment he pulled away, cringing at what he’d just done, hating himself for it, feeling slightly ill and disgusted. Virgil caught the expression, and grabbed hold of his hand before he could retreat again.

“Don’t you dare be ashamed of yourself. We’ve set up a schedule already, of blood drawing from each of us, so there’ll be blood in the fridge for you when you need it. Figured it might be less awkward than this.” Virgil said, gesturing between the two of them. “You won’t need to eat as often as you did before, so that helps. And if you bad talk or bad think yourself I will physically fight you.” Patton let out a giggle at that, an echo of a statement he’d said to Virgil more times than he could count. He sighed, then curled tight against Virgil, surprising him, but after a moment Virgil nestled close, wrapping his arm around Patton’s shoulders.

“I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know…” He trailed off, feeling Virgil rub his shoulder soothingly.

“One day at a time, Pat. We can do it one day at a time. We’ll figure it out together, all of us. It’ll be alright. I promise.” Virgil murmured, head resting atop Patton’s. His eyes met Roman’s and Logan’s, who had stayed hovering in the doorway, watching and listening, but giving Patton his space.

Logan’s shoulders were slumped in relief, the disruption of his usually perfect posture enough to reveal how worried sick he’d really been. Roman was beaming, relief written across his face, he was always an open book. Virgil smiled back, letting out a long breath.

“can I… can I sit with you, for a while?” Patton asked, voice small, and Virgil chuckled.

“Of course, Pat. As long as you like.” He murmured, knowing Patton needed the reassurance and rest just as much as he himself did, knowing both of them had been too twisted up inside to get the rest they needed. Now that Patton had eaten, wasn’t going to die, he felt something in his own stomach unknot, tiredness pouring through him.

“Virg? Thank you. F-for everything.”

“Always, dadio.” Virgil smiled as he watched Patton drift off to sleep, raising an eyebrow at Logan and Roman, who quietly made their way across the room.

“Good work, Edge Lord.” Roman quipped. Virgil stuck out his tongue in response, smile genuine.

“All in a day’s work.” He replied. He leaned back against the couch as a spasm of pain rocketed through his chest, breath catching in his throat at the shock of it, like a bucket of cold water waking him up out of a dead sleep. It took a moment to put his composure back together, to assume his usual façade.

“Virgil. Are you alright?” He had to roll his eyes at that question, coming from Logan of all people.

“Yeah, I just nearly got beat to death by a pack of half feral vampires, but I’m fine. Definitly not sore or anything.” He replied sarcastically. It took Logan a moment to register the tone, and once he did he sighed.

“I meant, are you any worse? Any new symptoms or pains I should be aware of?” Virgil softened, head lolling back against the couch cushion, staring up at the ceiling as he categorized his aches and pains. All present and accounted for. Oddly, the broken limbs hurt the least, now that they were set and bound up. Getting them in that position was a bitch, though. He shook his head, focusing on the present,

“Sorry. That was… rude. No, nothing new, nothing any worse, really, just got a little aggravated from the love tackle I got from the koala here.” He replied, tipping his heard towards Patton. Roman gave a small laugh, and he knew Logan was adjusting his glasses. “Just the ribs. Not much you can do about those, anyway.” He finished absent mindedly, tracing the pattern of some stain on the ceiling with his eyes.

“You need rest, too, Virg. A good lot of it, too.” Roman answered, uncharacteristically reserved. Virgil nodded.

“Yeah. Nap sounds good right about now.” He murmured, barely aware of his eyes drifting shut. He heard a low laugh, and felt something warm be tucked around him and Patton, a soft tune being hummed nearby, as he drifted off.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #hurt/comfort #kinda angsty #happy ending #vampire hunter au?#vampire au?#who knows #not me #that's for sure

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clonerightsagenda · 4 years

Text

While procrastinating on HTST I opened my old doc for Saving Face, which is a Jake-centric thing I was working on for Gill. I was never entirely happy with it, which is why it never went on ao3 despite me last working on it in, uh... 2018, apparently, but I might as well stick it somewhere.

As per usual it’s TLC compliant so some details may seem out of place.

In your dream, you're floating in the inky airspace miles above the Land of Tombs and Xenon, and you've got your hand buried wrist-deep in Dirk's rib cage.

“Hi,” he says.

You wake up. Across the room, you see him sit up too and rub his chest.

“I'm writing a strongly worded consumer complaint to whoever's running the dreambubbles,” you say.

“Yeah, if we ever run into that troll again, I'm giving her a piece of my mind. And, you know, that might become independently sentient and harass her for eternity, so I'm not fucking around.”

Roxy, who's squished up against the blanket-burritoed form of Calliope, rolls over and mumbles something that sounds like “I'm sleeping, fuckwads.” You chew your lip and try to wriggle into a more comfortable position. A lot of your household is on the floor, stealing blankets and using each other as pillows. You didn't want to spend nights alone, but you're not comfortable with the idea of anyone touching you while you're asleep. So you've claimed an old armchair, which meets in the middle fairly well, even if it means waking up with a crick in your neck every morning.

Usually you don't dream in the bubbles twice in one night, but you're not sure you're willing to risk it. They're not even supposed to be accessible anymore. That whole song and dance should have been left behind. But some nights you end up there anyway, like the times you'd tuned your grandma's old radio to the wrong station and voices speaking other languages emerged out of the static. There are no dreaming dead, but you wander through blurred dreamscapes and stumble into other people's memories. A week ago, you almost fell into a pool of lava and scrambled up the jagged side of a crater, clothes smoking. You'd prefer that to your own nightmares.

After a few more attempts to get comfortable, you give up and tiptoe through a minefield of slumbering bodies to the door. No one's in the living room, so you settle onto the sofa and jab the remote. The weather comes on, and you lower the volume until all you hear is a steady hum

“Do you mind if I hang out here?”

You look up. Even now that you're in a world with sunshine, Dirk's pale enough to be his own ghost. He should really get outside more. Then again, you all should. “It's Jane's house, technically. We're all here on guest rules.”

He sits down on the other end of the sofa, just the right distance that it's not too close or too far to be impolite. “I made it a week without getting maimed by my subconscious. New record.”

“Was that your nightmare or mine, do you think?”

“Does it matter?”

“I was just wondering, because I’d managed not to think about it for a few days. Oh well.” You shake your head. “I’m sorry. I’m surprised you can stand to be around me.”

He hasn’t been looking at you, but now he puts a hand on the cushions between you, like he’s regretting whatever message he sent with the distance. “It’s not your fault. You don’t make it onto the “intentionally murdered people” shortlist, sorry. The committee had to reject your application on account of you being too fuckin straightlaced for that shit.”

“I guess that’s a fair point. If I were going to take out my aggravation on someone, I wouldn’t do it in a way that would break all the bones in my hand!” Your fingers ache from the memory. “But he did have my face.”

“Sure, but it’s obvious when it’s not you wearing it.” He seems frustrated. With you? With the argument? It is a bit late – early? – to be splitting hairs like this, but when it comes to shifting blame to yourselves, you’re all masters of rhetoric. “You should have seen the shit he was doing with it too. Dude thought he was an anime villain.”

“I sure remember the spectacle he brought with him to Prospit.” The whole planet had quaked under your feet; people on the other side felt it. “I’m still surprised we pulled a victory out of that shambles.”

“It helped that you believed in us. That was...” He shakes his head and looks at the figures moving silently on the television screen. “For a few minutes there, I felt like I could actually be the person you thought I was.”

Who among you hasn’t had that problem? You wished you could be a swashbuckling action hero, and look how that turned out. You really had believed Dirk was those things, for all that you’d found him a bit intimidating at the same time. Even when the other became most apparent, that didn’t mean the former didn’t have a place. They were both always him.

“We all had unfair expectations of each other,” you say. “No one was holding you to that standard, or at least we shouldn’t have.”

“It was nice,” he says after a moment. “Being believed in.”

“I still do.” The words slip out automatically. You have always leapt to reassure – to put a brave face not only on yourself but on everyone else to boot. You don’t do a good job a lot of the time. Too self-absorbed, you guess, too bad at reading social cues. This is something you’ve said before, with jollity and no substance. All a load of hot air. “Maybe not with Hope magic at the ready to give you a lightshow, since that’s a headache to manage, but I do believe in all of you.”

If he finds your words hollow, he doesn’t say it. Instead, he says, “Keep it up, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.” You don’t ask whether the “we” means you as a household, the four-five of you caught in your messy circle of friendship and fumbling romances, or the two of you alone. You promised to stop overanalyzing everything he says for hidden meanings. It’s the only way your interactions can be anything but impossibly awkward. On the television, the forecaster gestures silently to a stripe of bright color moving over the continental United States. “Is there anything distractingly shitty on TV? I don’t know about you, but I’m not closing my eyes again.”

You pick the remote back up and start flicking through channels. Medical dramas... not an option. Foreign soap operas? Pass. “House Hunters?”

He leans back into the sofa cushions. “Just fuck me up.”

“Rich couples arguing over bathroom fixtures it is.”

His voice emerges from the upholstery. “And we thought we had problems.”

“Their struggles put it all in perspective.”

Several episodes have come and gone by the time the rest of the household starts waking up. No one comments on your relocation to the sofa. It’s not uncommon for any of you to have bad dreams. Eventually the clinking of cutlery prompts you to stand up and get a plate of your own.

Bacon is sizzling on the stovetop. Meat doesn’t appeal to you much at the moment. It smells good, but looking at the raw red flesh makes your stomach twist. Instead, you stick two slices of bread in the toaster and push the lever down nearly as far as it’ll go. There’s no point to toast if it doesn’t crunch.

Jane brushes up against you when you’re leaning into the fridge. Your reaction is automatic. You jerk forward, smacking your head on the freezer door and sending orange juice sloshing everywhere.

Jane freezes, an empty plate in her hand. “I’m going to the sink,” she says carefully.

“Right.” Of course she is; no problems here! It’s not like she was sneaking up on you. She knows not to take you by surprise. “Didn’t notice. Silly me. A whole herd of centaurs could stampede past and I wouldn’t catch it.”

“I’m going to walk over to the counter now,” she says, the way you’d talk to a fairy bull you were trying to sidle up to. “Okay?”

You nod, and she does. Once she’s taken her seat, you move over to unspool some paper towels. Your legs are shaking. John puts his cup down with a clunk and grimaces at the noise. No one wants to look at you.

“So,” Hal says loudly. “Have we told our 2009 compatriots about the surprise surge in the popularity of vore?”

Roxy makes a noise suggesting she’s just aspirated her spoonful of Cheerios, and you are ever so grateful for lewd dining companions.

After breakfast, you catch up with Jane. “I apologize for that episode.”

She’s stacking up everyone’s clean plates with geometric precision. The operation must take a lot of concentration, because she doesn’t look your way. “You aren’t the one who should be apologizing.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t expect you to grovel at my feet for the rest of our immortal lives!” You force a laugh, rubbing your shoulders and wondering if the room has always felt so small. “I wish my nerves would get that memo.”

She pauses, elbows deep in the cupboard, and sighs. “Maybe it was a bad idea, us all living in the same house.”

“No!” You’re not going to be the one who rocks the boat, not this time. “I’m not rehashing that routine where we go to our separate lands and don’t speak until it all boils over in some eleventh hour crypt throwdown. I don’t think my vocal chords could handle the strain.”

She steps away from the cupboard with exaggerated care and turns to face you. It’s getting easier to look at her and not see the face you saw in the prison cell, overlaid by circuitry and twisted into a sneer. This is regular old Jane, with a few new scars and a concerned scrunch fixed between her eyebrows. It’s only in your unguarded moments that you stop seeing her clearly. Are you like that for Dirk, or the others? Maybe you’re all being polite, even when each other’s countenances make you cringe. “I guess you’re right. It was quite a tiff we had.”

“I’ll get over it,” you promise. “It’ll take some time, that’s all.”

She runs a hand through her hair, where veins of white streak through it like lightning through dark clouds. “You don’t have to.”

“But I want to. I’d like for things to go back to normal, as much as they can.”

She glances over at the table, where just minutes ago a motley collection of your friends, your long dead relatives, and a few aliens from another universe to boot had all been sharing breakfast. “As much as they can,” she repeats.

- - tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering golgothasTerror [GT] - -

TG: hey jake

TG: do u believe in bigfoot

GT: Hmm well i dont know.

GT: Considering all the odd things weve seen it seems hasty to discount the possibility.

GT: But then i can easily believe some fellow saw a bear and got overexcited.

GT: So chalk me up for a maybe?

TG: wut abt cryptids in general

TG: like mothman

TG: do u believe in mothman??

TG: u should

GT: Um...

GT: Im not sure im sufficiently informed on the matter!

TG: i can send u some forum posts this shits legit

TG: think thatll be enough to convince u?

GT: Wait one goshdarn second!

GT: Is this some ploy to trick me into using my powers to MAKE them real?

GT: Like some sort of jake english monster factory production?

TG: that

TG: could be a feasible outcome 2 this scenario

GT: I know you mean that in good fun but i dont really appreciate the liberties taken here.

GT: Ive taken away the welcome mat after CERTAIN unsavory individuals tracked mud all over it.

GT: You know like a particular spider lady who will go nameless and LORD ENGLISH himself!!

GT: That ruins the mood when someone tries to use me for that especially when its just a big joke.

TG: mothman is no joke jake

TG: sry sry

TG: i didnt kno ud mind rly

TG: i like fuckin w/ my powers all the time

TG: dyou think i could bring back the library of alexandria thatd be dope

TG: where would we put it tho

GT: I wonder why you might have less baggage to check there.

GT: Youve never had anyone take your abilities without your will like... some vagrant robbing the airport carousel!

GT: Or whatever accidents befall luggage anyway.

TG: i mean

TG: i did get locked up in the slammer so id make the batterwitches space egg

GT: Thats not the same!

GT: Its not the same as someone using you as a flipping battery shouting stockphrases or puppeting your body around to kill your friends!!

GT: And wondering if anyone would even NOTICE the difference since that seems to be what im valued for around here!!!

GT: Oh good jake english isnt as useless as he used to be because he has reality warping powers now.

GT: Too bad it comes with all that bloatware like his personality or a few goddamn hangups!!

TG: whoa whoa simmer down there sparky i dont want bitchfest 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

TG: u kno we were friends w/ u first before u got all magic n shit

GT: I know i know.

GT: But it was a relief at first learning i could contribute something after getting stomped on so many times.

GT: Like look i can be part of the team instead of being the scantily clad love interest or bumbling comic relief or both of those rolled into one which seemed to be my assigned role for most of our dare i call it an adventure.

GT: But take that away and what am i still?

TG: our friend + 1 awesome dude??

GT: Then dont treat me like some kind of cheat code!!

GT: Im a person and honestly id give up the whole god tier routine if it meant not having to relive those nightmares all the time.

TG: i get it im really sorry <- words spelled out w/ all the letters n EVERYTHING for max seriousness here

TG: man none of us got as harsh a deal as u huh

TG: out of the ppl who lived nway

TG: reality warping only goes so far as a consolation prize

GT: Yeah.

GT: You know

GT: I do like reading spooky stories about mysterious beasts.

GT: If youre not trying to pressure me into anything.

TG: no ill send em ovr theyre fun

You may live in one household, and you’ll share a breakfast table with anyone, but you do develop your own social circles. So when you see Davesprite loitering out in the hallway by your room, you assume he’s waiting for someone else. After he drifts past the doorway for the third time and furtively peers in, though, you realize he must want to talk to you.

“DS,” you say, raising your voice. “What is it?”

Once you greet him, he slouches into your room. How do you slouch with no legs? He’s a master of the art. “I’m the only one here. You don’t need to use Roxy’s nickname.”

“I suppose so, but I kind of like it. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I guess not,” he says, in a way that makes you think he does. Another social interaction aced by Jake English.

“Anyway, what can I do for you?”

He half-unfurls one wing in the cramped space and then tucks it back in again. “I was wondering... if you could, you know. Fix me.”

That is not what you were expecting. “... Emotionally?” you ask after a moment.

“Oh Christ no, they have extra strength pharmaceuticals for that. But it would be nice —” He gestures vaguely at himself “— if I could be normal. If I could look in a mirror without being reminded of that fuckin game.”

“Oh!” That is somewhat more within the parameters of your abilities. You’ve never tried hoping yourself or any of your friends out of your many, many brain problems. You don’t need cautionary tales to tell you why that would be a bad idea, not after the trickster incident. Changing an object’s physical form should be easier. You’ve never tried it on quite this scale, though.

“I could try,” you say. “But it’ll be tricky.”

This would be a good time for him to ask “How” or “Why” or some other rhetorical question to move the conversation along, but instead he floats there waiting for you to go on. This version has never been very talkative around you, although you’ve seen him nattering on alright with Roxy. In some ways it’s a relief – so much of his family can be hard to keep up with – but long silences make you nervous too.

“Think of it this way,” you say, both to fill the silence and since you feel like this needs a better explanation. There’s an apple sitting on your desk. Jade leaves bowls of fruit around in the hopes that the rest of you might be guilted into better diets, and sometimes you take one that inevitably mildews in your room. You pick it up. “Imagine someone gave me this apple in a bag and told me it was an orange. If I took it out, chances are it would be an orange, because that’s what I was expecting! Like how I could clobber Callie’s brother just fine, even if he should have been invulnerable. No one had told me I couldn’t. But if you just hand me an apple and tell me it’s an orange, I know that isn’t true. I can’t believe it is. So I have to believe that it should be, hard enough for the universe to get out of my way. And that’s a much harder thing to do.” You set the apple back down on your desk with a thud for good measure. “You, my feathered chap, are an apple in the hand kind of problem.”

“So,” he says after it’s clear you’re done. “What are the fruit-based disadvantages here, exactly.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to convince me. I have to really believe it, otherwise, no good.” You gave yourself a headache trying to patch a tear in your favorite shirt a few days ago and finally asked Kanaya to sew it up for you. The universe wants a good reason to budge. Fashion, it seems, is not enough to alter the fabric of reality. Fabric. Heh.

“Oh, ok. Well.” He frowns. He may take after Roxy, but you recognize this expression from Dirk. When he’s concentrating, he gets so intense you’d think he’s angry. He looks like he’s planning a medieval siege every time he’s stumped on a crossword. “I mean, for starters, getting comfortable in a chair is a bitch.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do it now,” you say hastily. “There’s no way I’d be ready to try any time soon, this is going to take a lot of practice. The consequences could be dire if I made a mistake. I don’t want some sort of Fullmetal Alchemist situation on my conscience.”

“Tell you what,” he says. “If you have to stick my soul in a suit of armor, put me in the Iron Man.”

Hal shows up a few days later when you’re practicing. You’ve just sliced open an orange to reveal dense white flesh, and you’re feeling testy. “Don’t tell me you want a full body makeover too.”

“Are you kidding?” He flicks a Na’vi bobblehead resting on your bookcase, and Neytiri’s head goes doiiiing. “I think he’s nuts. This mode of existence is far superior to y’alls.”

“Are you here to brag about it? Or just to manhandle my knickknacks?”

“I dunno, maybe I missed hanging out.” When that pronouncement is met with your befuddled silence, he turns to survey the drawings pinned to your walls. You’ve rehung some of your movie posters, but the sketches you’ve done with Calliope take pride of place. You’re still struggling with perspective. “Remember when Roxy rigged that Super Smash Bros game so all four of us could play across a few thousand time zones? Good times. With your new powers, bet you could wipe the floor with us now. Want to give it a go?”

“I thought you were done pretending to be Dirk.” You heft the half-apple in your hand and lob it into the trashcan. It lands with a satisfying thunk. “I know that was with him.”

He watches your throw before going back to checking out a practice still life. “Yeah, when we were twelve.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” You wish he’d stop looking around. Your messy surroundings contain the beginnings of a new identity you’re trying to create for yourself. It’s stuck partway through a transition, like the monster-fruit in your garbage can, and seeing it as neither this nor that just feels like failure.

“You don’t realize, do you? You’re not trying to be a dick here.”

“Realize what?”

He taps his glasses. He doesn’t wear his shades all the time these days, and the sight of him without them is downright disconcerting. “That was before I had the brilliant idea of copying my brain into a pair of sickass shades. So yeah, that was me, before I shed my fleshy cocoon to become the beautiful lepidopteron you see before you.”

“I guess I never thought about it that way.”

“No shit.” He crosses his arms. “What a card Dirk is, programmed his own AI answering machine. Beep boop, Mr. Roboto, let me talk to the real Dirk now. I don’t think there was a lot of thinking going on.”

“And that’s why you pretended.”

He pushes his shades up the bridge of his nose so they cut off more of his face. “Wouldn’t you?”

Sometimes it might have been nice to have someone to deflect people’s attention toward. But permanently? You’ve been trapped with an imposter wearing your skin, but no one fell for it, and he wasn’t you. You have no frame of reference for this.

“Maybe we were wrong then,” you say, “but you are different now.”

He leans his head back, voice careless. “Like I said. Improved model.”

That’s a spat you don’t want to wander into the middle of. “I didn’t appreciate some of the ways you behaved around me. Especially some of the, ahem, more provocative statements. Whether you claim you were helping Dirk or otherwise, it sure didn’t help me. If you can control yourself... maybe we can play a few rounds like old times. But if I hear you trying to gloat to Dirk about it, deal’s off, alright?”

He tilts his shades down so you can see him roll his eyes. “Showing him up isn’t my sole reason for living, you know.”

“Whereas mine appears to be giving people extreme makeovers or curbstomping the final boss, if my hero title is anything to go by.” You think gloomily of the rash promise you’ve made and the many failed practice attempts in your trash can. You’d hate to see how badly you could butcher a real person. “I swear, sometimes I wish I’d been assigned Page of Reasonable Expectations. That seems more up my alley.”

“Man, fuck Skaia.”

It’s a sentiment your household heartily agrees with. “In general, or for any reason in particular?”

“The whole heroic destiny racket. I’m glad it didn’t try to suck a humble pair of glasses into its twisted mind games.” He smirks. “That gave me more time to perfect my own twisted mind games.”

It’s not like he needed the extra encouragement. “You’re still technically a Prince of Heart, aren’t you?”

Hal waves an arm up and down his torso. “Look at me. Do you see any poofy asshole pants?”

“You can’t wear pants at all.”

“Exactly.” The fact seems to please him. “My lack of pants is a symbolic rejection of being penned into the latest convoluted Meyers Briggs evolution.”

It’s an intriguing thesis. “SBURB has used pants, or the lack thereof, to torment me in the past.”

“No homebrewed character class expansion pack gets to tell me what to do. Dirk tried to set me up as an answering machine, which is why I made it a personal rule to never commit anything any of you fuckers say to memory unless I’m holding it against you later. Let other people tell you who you are, and you might as well be a robot. “

You tap the tips of your fingers together. Conversations with Hal always leave you feeling like you’re being dragged behind a swiftly moving vehicle. He doesn’t even have to stop for breath. This time, though, you think you’ve followed along enough to launch a counterargument. “But by defining yourself in opposition to someone else’s intent, aren’t you still letting them define you?”

He scowls. “That’s what Dave said. So now I just live for chaos.”

You snatch up Neytiri before he can set her wobbling again. “Not in my bedroom, buster.”

“Relax. I’m already at work elsewhere today. Good talk, and if Jane asks what happened to her spice cabinet, you never saw me.” Hal spares one last regretful glance at your bobblehead and then graces you with a double pistols salute. “I’m holding you to that Super Smash Bros.” Then he vanishes through the wall, leaving you to reflect that for once, in his own strange way, he might have been trying to be helpful.

When Jade teleports into your bedroom a few days later with a duffel bag over one shoulder, you sit up with a start and try to shove a half-eaten sandwich from yesterday afternoon under your sheets.

“We haven’t seen you in a while,” she says. “Are you doing ok?”

“Ehhhh,” you say, and wiggle your hand noncommittally. You haven’t done much besides leave movies running on Netflix, stare at the ceiling, and feel yourself slipping down a hole you’d rather not fall into but don’t know how to escape. If you try to lie about it, she’ll just fold her arms and give you a Look until you recant. The best refuge is silence.

“Maybe you should get away for a bit.” She punches the duffel bag with her free hand, and it swings away from her before thudding back against her side. “Like a vacation.”

“Are you suggesting we go to Disney World?”

“Actually, I thought we could go back to our island. This version of it, anyway.” Her face gets distant, the way it does when she’s checking with her Space-sense to figure out where she left her phone. “I haven’t seen it in years except in dreams.”

Go home. The idea is attractive. If nothing else, there will be fewer people there. “Why not?” you decide. “Give me a few minutes to get packed.”

“Already covered,” she says, and grins. “Just say the word.”

The cliché would be that your island looks smaller, but it doesn’t. It just looks different. Even the shape of the coastline has changed. You’d wonder if you were in the right spot, but the Witch of Space brought you here. She wouldn’t scramble coordinates.

The two of you wander for a bit, and Jade looks as uncertain as you feel. Then you hear her exclaim, “My rock!” She’s scrambled up a large slab of granite jutting above the treeline.

You climb up to join her, fingers and toes finding familiar footholds. “I think you mean my rock.”

She leans back, almost flattening herself along the sloped surface. “I used to watch for airplanes from up here.”

“I watched for dragons.”

“You and I had very different ways to pass the time.” She traces a series of cracks. “I always imagined this as a face.”

“Me too! He looks so grumpy.”

“‘Cause we’re sitting on him all the time.”

You snicker and adjust your perch. “You know, Sir Boulder, plenty of people would love to be up close and personal with this derriere. But it’s off limits for the moment.”

Jade pats the stone. “We’ll be on our way. Lots to see.”

You slide down after her. With the lookout rock as a landmark, you can orient yourself. There’s the spot where a creek pours over some stones to create a tiny waterfall. Here’s the patch of stubborn wildflowers that still grow even as trees send out thirsty roots and block out the sun above. Some things throw you. In your world and time, that tree was scored by the claw marks of some ferocious creature. Here, it’s whole. The path you wore down to the lagoon is gone. Instead, you slip and slide on loose soil.

Jade kicks off her shoes and wades into the water. At first she hitches up her skirt, but then she lets it drop to spread out like the bell of a jellyfish. You follow – not as deep, but enough that your cuffs cling to your ankles. Here is home, where your grandmother tucked you in tight and sang you lullabies, where monsters from another universe prowled under the cover of dense foliage. Here is home, but not really. It takes standing ankle deep in the lagoon with dampness crawling up your legs to tell you that you are never going back.

“Do you miss it?” you ask.

A drop of water hits you, plunk, on the forehead. More dimple the surface of the pool. Jade turns to you. “Let’s get under cover.”

Some of the trees have thick enough leaves that you can shelter from the rain if it doesn’t get too bad. You recognize this kind of squall. It’ll blow over soon. For now, you watch rain beat the surface of the ocean and cloud your island in mist.

“I miss that it was easy,” Jade says. She’s watching the greenery bend and sway in the wind. “Taking care of myself was hard sometimes, but I knew what to say to people. I had my clouds, so I knew what my story was and how it ended. Everything seemed so simple. It’s not anymore.”

“Things were already getting complicated for me here with everyone on the hunt for my hand. But it was easier to get away when you aren’t face to face.” The times you’d said “Oh, misplaced my phone, forget my own head next!” or “I was down at the lagoon fishing and lost track of time” when you’d been staring at a message trying to decide how to respond… it hadn’t helped your reputation as a scatterbrain. “No one counted on me then. Jake English, lackadaisical manchild on an island somewhere, isn’t a liability. But once you’re part of a team, you can let people down.”

She frowns over at you. You can almost imagine you’re four feet tall and she’s about to call you in for dinner. “Maybe instead of a team you should think of us as a family.”

You try to avoid flamboyant body language in the house. It’s too easy to spook someone when you’re all primed for battle. Here, you throw your hands into the air. “I wish I could just be part of the family. Good old granddad English, who tells whoppers and bounces babies on his knee. But I’m not. We’ve gone a few months without anything trying to kill us, which a personal best, but when the next thing comes up, everyone is going to expect me to handle it. We’ll be fine, they’re thinking, because we have a reality warper to handle it now! Never mind that I can’t get my blasted powers to work most of the time, and I can’t even tell how I did it when I do. It’s no good telling me people aren’t relying on me, because I know that’s not true. People look at me and see the Page of Hope, out on display in his stupid little shorts. They expect me to have it together, which just makes it sting harder when I don’t.”

“Maybe you should tell them,” she suggests.

You laugh, with a tinge of hysteria. “Where would I even start? I know you say talking about it helps, and I’m glad it did for you. But I’m no good at putting these things into words. I just talk around and around the issue, failing to notice anyone else’s troubles until everyone’s sick of me. And the real bad things that happened? I don’t want to talk about those. It makes me feel I’m going through them all over again. Besides, we were all supposed to be better.” You think back to that fight in the crypt, how afterward you felt cleaned out and new. When the adrenaline high wore down, everything came crashing back. Sure, you’d dragged all the creepy-crawlies out in the open, but that doesn’t mean they had stopped wriggling about. “I thought, oh I don’t know, maybe it was silly of me to think this. But I hoped that once we were done with the game, it would be over. We would all be friends again, just like that, snap of the fingers.” You snap yours, or try to. Instead, your damp fingers slide off each other soundlessly. “I guess I didn’t hope hard enough.”

“You can’t fix things just by wishing.”

“I was supposed to be able to.” You sigh. “I feel like some second rater in an all star cast. You’re the legendary heroes, and I’m the funny man who stumbled on set.” This is self pitying, but you can tell her things you can tell no one else. However much Jade condemns herself for past behavior, she’s never been anything but kind to you. “I don’t want to be Jake English, savior of the world, but I don’t want to go back to being Jake English, team joke either. I don’t know what other options there are.”

Raindrops that slipped through the canopy slide down her face, and she brushes them away. “I used to be afraid that if I let people know how I really felt, they wouldn’t be my friends. I was showing them what they wanted to see, so if that stopped, why would they stay? But people do stay.” She puts an arm around your shoulders. Even in the tropics, she’s warm. “Even if you can’t pull rabbits out of a hat.”

She feels as sturdy as the look-out rock next to you. “You make it look easy.”

“Do I? I still don’t know what to say to people sometimes. But I try to say something, because back when we weren’t talking at all was worse. Maybe I’m still too good at hiding things. But I know for sure that I’d much rather have this than go back to being alone. “

You look out over the steaming jungle. The curls of vapor remind you of smoke rising from a hasty pyre. When you set your grandmother ablaze, you’d wished there’d been someone there to hold your hand. Solitude hadn’t been tempting them. Are you one of those fools who always think the grass is greener on the other side? “This wasn’t a family vacation, was it? It was an intervention.”

“I noticed you’d been hiding a lot recently,” she admits. “That’s never a good thing. I thought I should check on you.”

“By helping me run even further away?”

“Hey, it got you talking.” She looks back out over the horizon. In the distance, the familiar shape of the frog temple looms out of the haze. “Sometimes being in a safe place helps. Remember who you were here with no one looking at you, and then let them know. You get to choose which face you want to wear.”

You take a look at her profile, familiar but not familiar. She’s less haggard than your grandmother, and she’s also missing the laugh lines. They suited her. “What face do you wear these days?”

“I’m always willing to put the attentive listener role back on for a friend, but most of the time I try to make it mine.”

You poke her on the shoulder. “My, grandmother, what big ears you have.”

She grins, revealing pointed teeth. “All the better to listen to your problems, my dear.”

A laugh finds its way up out of your stomach. It feels like taking your gas mask off and gulping down your first breath of fresh air. “I should go home. I can’t keep marinating in my own misery.” You don’t know what you can do to re-introduce everyone to the “real you”. Unleash another rant like you did to poor Roxy? Cower and make excuses like you did with Jane? Even you can’t predict your own idiotic behavior. Too bad you can’t arrange some sort of unboxing video.

“I can help, if you want.”

You shake your head. There’s no point inviting more witnesses. “Some things you have to do on your own. Maybe I’ll talk to you later if it goes sour. I’m sorry to cut this trip short. I know you wanted to see the old haunt.”

“We can come back sometime and have a good time.” She squeezes your hand, and you lean against her. “For now, let’s go where we should be.”

Whatever resolve you mustered dwindles once you’re back. Maybe you won’t run into anyone for a while until you’ve worked up some more nerve.

As luck would have it, Roxy is right there when you emerge from your room. You open your mouth to greet her, but she sweeps by without even looking your way. The words die on your lips. She must be busy. That’s what you wanted, right?

Dirk’s in the living room. You circle around for a few minutes, sneaking glances at his severe silhouette backlit by the screen, and then tiptoe in. “I was thinking,” you say quickly, to force yourself to finish the thought. “If we could get the gang all together, I have something to say. No need to rush, though. You can take your time.”

No response.

“Dirk?” Sometimes he falls asleep sitting up and you don’t realize at first with his closed eyes hidden behind his shades. That possibility dies when he reaches for the remote. Why is he ignoring you? They’re not angry you went off with Jade, are they? “Hello?” You snap your fingers in front of his face. He doesn’t even blink. No one’s that stoic.

Jade and Jane walk past between you, and Dirk gives them a nod of acknowledgement. You hurry after them. Jade won’t give you the cold shoulder. “How was your trip?” Jane is asking.

“Pretty good,” Jade says. “Jake wanted to come back early, he has something to work out. But I’ll let him talk about it.”

“Where is he?”

“Here,” you say.

Jade frowns and sniffs. “I’m not sure… I don’t smell him. Maybe he went off to psyche himself up. He’s pretty nervous, go easy on him, ok?”

“I…” You reach out toward her as she walks away. Your fingers brush her shoulder, but she doesn’t react. “I’m right here.”

They can’t see you. No one can. You wanted them to overlook you, and look at that. You got your wish.

“Pull yourself together, English,” you say. You’re pacing back and forth in your room, not bothering to keep your voice down. No one can hear you anyway. You shouted right in Rose’s face, just to be sure. “You got yourself into this, so you can get yourself out.”

The problem is, this isn’t what you wanted. It’s like some nefarious djinni took you too literally while dishing out wishes, delighting in misunderstanding. You didn’t ask for this. If you’d rather be visible, then shouldn’t your powers make it so?

“Hope is the worst,” you yell. The universe does not respond.

You sit brooding for maybe half an hour before your door opens. You don’t look up. They won’t see you anyway, so what’s the point?

To your surprise, you hear a voice. “Oh, hey. Jade’s looking for you.”

You look up. John is standing in the doorway, hand on the doorknob. “You can see me?”

“Um… yes?” He steps in and shuts the door behind him. “Are you guys playing some joke I should know about? Because if so, I am going to be very mad if you don’t let me in on it.”

“It’s not a joke. I think something went wrong with my Hope powers. It’s gotten to everyone but you.”

“That sucks.” John has never been a master of verbal sympathy. “Caliborn couldn’t trap me in glitches, and Roxy’s void didn’t make me forget. Maybe I’m too unstuck in the universe for any changes to bother me. Or it could be a Breath hero thing. Echidna says nothing gets past us.”

“Oh, excellent,” you say. “I guess you’re stuck with me forever then.”

“You could see what everyone’s up to, like a spy,” he suggests.

“And spent the rest of my immortal life using you as a go between? No offense, but that sounds like it would get tiresome.”

“I guess it would.” To John’s credit, he can switch gears rapidly. “Well... how did it happen? If you made yourself this way, can’t you switch back?”

“Oh, good idea. I hadn’t thought of that.” You don’t mean to be snappish, but this is a frustrating situation!

John is unfazed. “Sometimes you think you want something, but you don’t. Like how Terezi thought she wanted to see Vriska but was secretly worried about it, so they wandered around each other in the bubbles for years. Maybe you wanted to disappear.”

“Then I’ve learned my lesson.” Jade is right. It is so much worse when no one is around at all.

He sits down on your desk chair and curls his legs underneath it. “How do your powers work?”

“I have to want something.” You remember how you felt facing Caliborn with your friends at your side. There had been no doubt in your mind then that you’d win. You knew how this story ended. That utter certainty is so hard to find. “But I do. The universe is playing hard to get.”

“Then convince me. People tell me I’m a good listener, even if that’s because I don’t always tell them they sound crazy when they’re saying crazy things. But I can try.” He rests his chin on his fist. “Why do you think it malfunctioned in the first place?”

You frown and look at him sidelong. Jade is a spunky teen version of your grandma. That’s easy enough to resolve in your mind, especially since you sent letters back and forth. John is harder. The brother of your teen grandmother is one step too far removed, a connection that’s wobbly. The other option – that he’s your son with Jane – is a cruel joke after that scene in the dungeon. But that’s not his fault, so you try to ignore that he has your funky smile and the texture of Jane’s hair. His eyes at least are his own.

“I suppose you’re right about me wanting to disappear, a bit. It all got to be too much. Things with Dirk and Jane are still so awkward, and people keep expecting things of me. I don’t want to be the one everyone looks to!”

“What do you mean?”

“It means… when I got a handle on my powers, I was finally good for something. Suddenly people were looking to me for help and flocking to me and —” you shudder. “Trying to take it for their own. But if that’s all I’m good for, and I can’t even count on that… it’s a bit tenuous, basing your self-worth on one thing you can’t trust. And stupid. I know it’s stupid, but the old melon isn’t always that cooperative or willing to listen to reason. I don’t want to disappear. I just wanted them to stop looking to me for that. But if that’s all I am… I guess I went away entirely. I don’t know what’s left underneath.”

John nods. “I sort of get that. I’m the one who saved everyone by fixing reality, but I was never the planner, or the one who grew up fighting, or even the leader really, if you look at who made the most decisions. If things got really bad of course I would help, but it’s scary. I’d like a normal birthday for once, if the universe doesn’t mind.”

“It doesn’t seem to bother you as much.” Nothing seems to bother John all that much.

“I guess I’m pretty OK with just being John. I missed that. So.” He lifts his chin and crosses his arms. “That’s why you went away. Why do you want to come back?”

“Because I can’t live like this,” you snap. He shakes his head.

“Nope, not convincing enough. If I were the universe I would not be reshaping myself just for that.”

“You’re not being very motivational here.”

“I don’t think you have to make me feel sorry for you. You have to make me believe in you. Right?”

You groan, but he has a point. Why do you want your friends to see you again? When you envision their faces, uncomfortable memories spring to mind. There are a lot of reasons to stay hidden. It takes a moment to dredge up something good. “We were… going to play Super Smash Bros together again.”

“That sounds like fun.” You imagine it would, to someone who subsisted for three years on a Ghostbusters MMORPG.

You rake your fingers through your hair, which gives you another idea. “My hair needs trimming, and Roxy is always the one who gets it just the way I want it. I… wanted to tell Jane about this new recipe I think she’d like.” It’s like gulping down the soup your grandmother prepared when you were sick. You don’t want the first few spoonfuls, but then it goes down easier. “Calliope and I have a few panels left to draw for our newest issue. We were going to take the Alternians to the zoo to show them animals with pigmentation, which will be a novelty for me too.”

“That’s a good to-do list,” John says.

“I have a lot on my plate as a regular citizen of this universe, it turns out.”

“It’s nice to be a regular citizen again.” John fiddles with the hem of his shirt. You haven’t seen him wear blue in a while. It’s a reminder that even if he doesn’t magically vanish from view, even if he doesn’t come knocking on your door asking for another face, Skaia pinned a lot on him too, even if Pin the Destiny on the Child Hero isn’t a party game you’ve ever heard of.

In your despair, you’ve convinced yourself you’re in this fix alone, but maybe everyone is preoccupied with how the world sees them. Certainly some of your housemates have had masks fixed on them by the cruel costumers of fate. You can’t control what they see now. Or, rather, the only way you can is by making sure they see nothing at all. But you have a life to live! Errands to run! None of which require being a superhero.

Maybe you’ll always be like this, with your power coming in fits and starts. It’s not what you’d dreamed of being, but then, your dreams have been disappointing of late. You can’t be anything while ghosting around like some shrinking violet.

It’s an apple in the hand. You can’t make a new you true all at once. You have to believe a new you should be, and then work to make it so. There’s no wishing this away. The first step, and each painful step after that, is trying. And when you know that, and know you know it… there’s that lifting feeling as the world rewrites itself, bearing you up like one of Jane’s helium balloons. You take a deep breath and manage a smile. “If I want to rebrand the Jake English experience, I had better start doing some product testing with my key audience.”

“Do you think it worked?” John asks.

“It would’ve been nice to have some sort of magical girl transformation, just to be sure. But yes, I think so. How do I look?”

Nothing would have changed for him, but he gives you a long once over anyway. Then he shrugs. “You look like Jake to me.”

“That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

You take a step out into the hallway and look behind you. John gives you a thumbs up. You suck in a fortifying breath, stiffen your spine, and make your way to the living room. Everyone from your session has clustered there. A few have their phones out, and you think guiltily of your multiple communication devices powered off and shoved under your bed. Going off the grid these days takes commitment. You clear your throat and step into the room. Five heads snap up. They see you. It’s a start.

“Hi, everyone,” you say. “It’s me.”

#homestuck//#kat writes fic #this one primarily featuring jake english who is not one of my strengths #but also the rest of the alphas and the bship crew

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drowzydruzy · 4 years

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Heart Breakers chapter two

Hi, Long chapter again! Zadr fanfic.

Even earth’s best warrior has bad days...

Dib had walked back hastily, the mid-morning sun beating heavily down on him added to the boiling frustration he felt. Zim had no right acting the way he did, saying the things he said. The human could barely contain the grunt of rage as he threw open his own front door, storming up the stairs before anyone could interrupt his brooding.

“Plans I made…that’s rich” Dib scoffed to himself slamming his bedroom door, pushing open his window for some air. “Stupid reptile…”

He caught eyes with the alien poster on the wall, the human stared at it for a long moment with a sneer, as if waiting for some sort of retort or comment. He felt pathetic as he slumped down to sit on his bed, why did he have to go near that stupid house? Why did he torture himself like this? The only reason he left his room was to go clear his head and congratulations to Dib Membrane on making it even more confused, a special talent he seemed to have been granted by some hateful god.

He thought back to what Zim said again, the plan wasn’t his or had it been? Dib paused as he struggled to remember before it dawned on him as he stared at the alien head pillow on his bed.

The memory rushed forward in his mind.

The world was cast in grey, the already depressing town looked even worse on its bad days but for once Dib Membrane wasn’t feeling as awful as the weather looked instead, he couldn’t stop smiling. He had done it, the then 18-year-old had just gone and done got himself a good quality video of an alien out of its stupid yet irritatingly more updated disguise. He could barely contain his excitement; it was as clear as day and NO ONE could doubt it. Not his dad. Not anyone.

He had completely forgotten in the exciting glow of having new evidence that it didn’t matter. It never did. No one would believe him and just as quickly the confidence had come, how quickly it had left.

No one even would look at the video, not even a glance.

The people he desperately tried to show in high skool laughed at him. He thought this time was different, he had been struggling to get anything concrete on Zim even with the Florpus opening in front of the world. That time his dad had covered it up as a worldwide effect caused by ‘too much peace’ that science made everyone hallucinate, at least that’s what Dib had heard over his own screaming rant about the reality of it all.

This was different, this was a video taken by Membrane HIMSELF by pure accident on one of his home security tapes which Dib and Gaz have zero access too. The alien is shown darting behind Dib’s home in his normal skool outfit before transforming into his normal alien look and climbing up the side of the house, Dib cut the part where he climbs into his own window. That wasn’t important.

This was concrete, this was supposed to be it. He didn’t understand, why would no one listen? He thought the bullying before came from the lack of evidence, the lack of understanding. That humanity just needed to see the threat in HD, and now he finally had it. IN HD NO LESS but No matter what he did, or how hard he fought to show everyone. The rest of the world seemed to just close their eyes, ignore the horrible reality of what the truth really is and hate Dib for trying to show them.

It had been harder and harder over the years, saving people who don’t want it or don’t care enough to even notice the danger. Dib just wanted to help, even when they smashed his phone because he had let his insisting on people watching it go too far. He just wanted to help, still shouting for them to see Zim for what he is but sometimes when Dib really couldn’t keep telling himself it was for the greater good, he’d wonder if Zim had the right idea as much as he’d hate himself for it later.

Dib’s comfort was knowing that deep down he would do anything for the earth, but at that moment in time as his peers and teachers laughed and his phone lay broken on the floor everything just seemed not to be worth it. He couldn’t even look to a face around him for comfort because Gaz didn’t show up half the time, in his weakness even glanced for Zim and saw the invader watching intently from the crowd. Dib felt so tired. The human gathered his broken phone and quickly left the skool.

The rain had soaked his coat to his skin, his jeans were sticking to him as he got through the gates. Dib felt pressure gather in his throat, his eyes stinging with tears as he prayed, he’d make it home before anyone saw him cry. He had never wished for a friend as much as he had on that rainy walk home.

That night Zim had repeated the video, sneaking to Dib in the middle of the night. The human would usually be ready, waiting for the fight or the taught to chase after Zim but Dib had been busy. He had packed a full bag and was halfway through shorting the rest of his kit, ready to ditch it all and leave before he had heard in the darkness of his room the squeak of the window having its latch opened from the outside in.

The human kept packing ignoring the figure dangling from pak legs digging deep enough into his mattress that the other pak leg marks were starting to make holes. The invader dropped down as his metal legs retracted, Zim watched Dib for a long moment before throwing a book at his head. Dib dodged it.

“Hey!”

“Why aren’t you doing anything? I have come to fight, what are you packing for?” Zim asked aggressively. “Is this a trap?” The invader’s legs came back out like pincers.

“I’m done, it’s all done and I’m going” Dib spoke quietly, trying to hide the tears in his voice. “I’m over this town, congratulations Zim”

“This is a trap! I am not some idiot, I know you human don’t try and trick me”

Dib got up from the bag he was packing and flicked on the light sneering at Zim.

“No, No you fucking don’t know me” His voice was rough, cracking in places as he watched the invader slip his pak legs away and come down from his bed. “I don’t care anymore, no one else does”

Dib thought of every time he had tried to show everyone the truth, Zim half the time must have just eaten it up watching him ruin his social life. the embarrassment was a bitter after taste to the hollow feeling in his heart.

There was a long silence.

“Filthy lies-” Zim was gearing up for a shouting session, Dib could hear it in his tone. The human hissed at him.

“Keep it down idiot!.” The human batted his bag out of Zim’s claws. “I’m running away, I’m gonna travel the world and find other creatures...maybe other people will listen”

“That is hilarious, the Dib really wants to leave” Zim's laugh knocked him from his angsty throne, he glared at the invader completely offended that he’d mock his sorrow. He backed off of the other glaring at the floor instead.

“You don’t get to laugh at me” The human spoke hurt and angry “You have no idea, I am completely alone! no one cares about me, my dad still thinks I’m crazy and he ignores me...”

“You have everything I could ever want, and you never take advantage of it like I would” Dib continued as the invader watched, his zipper tooth grin turning to complexed confusion. “You will never understand me, you have no idea what it’s like to have everyone hate you...and have everyone treat you like a laughing stock”

The flinch was something Dib never expected, the invader quickly acted as if it never happened but Zim had hesitated enough that the human had seen. Dib opened his mouth, about to ask Zim’s if his leaders had contacted him yet before the alien cut him off with a sharp laugh.

“Of course I have no idea what that feels like stupid hooman, ZIM IS PERFECTION” The invader puffed out his chest, the flinch forgotten; he was always vain to the core of his sick little alien heart.

Dib paused staring at the alien before he cracked a smile, the first in hours which is why it slightly hurt Dib’s face. He inwardly wished he could be as confident as his nemesis, but he wondered briefly how honest it was. The last time he checked his monitoring software the tallest hadn’t been in contact with the earth in years.

“Yeah and how’s the almighty gonna deal with his only nemesis gone huh?”

“Only?” The invader looked him up and down as Dib’s face flickered to shock. “What? does the Dib think he’s special?” The alien was teasing him.

Zim was teasing him. Dib blinked looking a little star-struck before he smirked at the invader, his hands getting frustratingly sweaty.

“We both know that’s a lie space boy” He chided Zim with a smirk. “I think you’d miss me”

“Why would I miss such a leach on my AMAZING plans hm?” The alien turned his head defiantly before a smirk grew up his smug face. “Zim would be unstoppable”

Zim’s evil laugh began to build in his chest as Dib watched finding the display almost funny unable to keep his smile at bay. The laugh was of course, the most annoying noise on earth but sometimes Dib enjoyed it though he’d never admit it. Dib felt his gaze melting over the alien as he began muttering to himself delightedly in irken.

Zim paused in his excited rant looking to the human with a smug look.

“But remember, you putrid ape as soon as I have the earth...”

Dib raised an eyebrow, snapping out of his daydream as a shiny black claw was raised to his face.

“Zim will also have the Dib” The look of pure unfiltered malice was enough to shift the human’s gaze off of the invader as the evil laughter stopped “Yes this is perfect”

“Oh, so you would miss me, okay I see” Dib shoved Zim snickering as the Invader fell into his bag. “See now you’re even trying to stow away in my luggage”

Dib began grabbing more of his stuff feeling warmth spreading through his face and over his ears as Zim got up with a huff, looking furious as he strode toward Dib.

“The only thing I’d miss is the chance for you to try and save your stupid dirtball” He curled his fists glaring at Dib with malice. “You will be my servant! you will see, ZIM WILL RULE”

“Zim will rule” Dib snickered at the outbursts, sitting down on his bed with a little grin. “You’re too embarrassing with that take over earth stuff...I’d just leave on your zoot and never come back”

Zim’s antenna twitched as the rage seemed to be taken over by his curiosity, his claw tapped his green chin as he thought for a moment. Dib smirked and copied him whilst the invader wasn’t looking until he noticed and another book went soaring past Dib’s head.

“You are an embarrassment” Zim sneered before his claws tapped together, his tone lightening slightly “You would live in space? Not as if Zim thinks a worthless lump like you would survive...but you would go”

Ignoring the insult Dib thought of his first time in space, the vast galaxy around him. It was utterly terrifying in a way that snared him from the start, he felt his heart pound.

“How could I not, it’s beautiful and everything I’ve ever wanted...” Dib paused his motions setting down his goggles, admiring the view from the window of the night sky bathed in stars. “I miss it every day I’m not up there in the stars...”

The silence between the two wasn’t the first of it’s kind, Dib had felt the same silent awe before when the pair had gotten distracted in their voots by a nebula changing shape. It was a connection that flushed Dib scarlet, the human felt it overwhelmingly. He glanced over at Zim to see him staring at the sky with the same wondering eyes, Dib couldn’t stop the words that came from his heart.

“We should leave earth together...”

#zadr #zim and dib relationship #dib membrane #invader zim #zadr fanfiction #fanfic #long chapter #slow burn #enimies to lovers

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is-this-a-skam-account · 5 years

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@liffeforskaop prompt: I'm so happy you're looking for prompts, I need more elu in my life. Give me ALL the elu fluff you can write - maybe lucas has a bad day because of school or his dad and eliott just spolis him and treats him like the babe-y he is 🙂

Okay, well, my angst-y inner soul took over this prompt (sorry not sorry) but I promise there is fluff. (Also in the beginning there is some stuff going on between Lucas’s mom and dad that may trigger someone, just a fair warning. I didn’t write anything graphic but just thought I should point it out.)

Thank you so much for the prompt!! I hope you like what I wrote! Sorry it took so long to get out, my life has been pretty hectic.

Things started getting bad at home when Lucas was eight. It started with his parents screaming at each other in the kitchen after they believed Lucas was already asleep. It escalated from there. His dad left for a couple weeks. His mom said it was for a business trip.

The screaming stopped after his dad got back, but he noticed his mom wearing long sleeves and pants in the hot weather. There was one day that Lucas came back from a friends house to grab something, and his mom was in the kitchen. He walked in without her noticing, and the kitchen smelled absolutely amazing. His mom was always the best cook. He was about to ask what she was making, but his words got stuck in his throat when he saw the dark bruises that coated her arms and legs.

“Mama?” he asked, startling her that she nearly dropped whatever she had been holding, “did you fall?”

Something flashed across her face as she tried to pull down the short sleeves of her t-shirt, “yes, sweetie,” she said softly, “I fell down the stairs. Why aren’t you at Eliott’s?”

“I came back to grab something, mama.”

She smiled, “okay, sweetie,” she paused, “I’ll make sure to save you some dinner.”

Tears pricked his eyes, “thank you, mama.”

He turned away before she had a chance to give him a sad smile.

Lucas slept over at Eliott’s that night. And the next. And the next. Eliott’s house had become a second home for Lucas. He honestly spent more time there than he did at his own house. Eliott’s mom understood, she was very sweet about Lucas staying over, and Lucas still believes to this day that she makes the best brownies ever.

Eliott understood as well. He understood that Lucas was hurting; that he was hurting bad. Their friendship had been what saved Lucas. He always tried to apologize to Eliott, but Eliott would just say “you have nothing to apologize for, Lu. I’m your friend. It’s what friends do.”

Lucas still felt bad though, especially when Eliott hadn’t told him about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at only thirteen years old. Lucas had to find out from eavesdropping on a conversation between his mom and Eliott’s mom.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lucas was sat on Eliott’s bed, bawling his eyes out.

Eliott wasn’t crying though. He was rubbing circles on the back of Lucas’s hand, and something about how calm he was was pissing Lucas off. “I didn’t want it to weigh on your conscience, Lu. You’ve never had an easy life and I liked that I had been an easy friend for you these past few years. But now, with this stupid disorder, I can’t be ‘easy’ anymore.” Eliott’s voice started to break.

Lucas swallowed, a tear dropping down from his eye to make a stain on Eliott’s comforter, “I didn’t want easy with you, Eli. I want you. I’d rather have you with your disorder than not have you at all.”

That night he slept over at Eliott’s again. They tangled themselves together beneath Eliott’s sheets, practically breathing the same air. Eliott was rubbing soft circles across Lucas’s cheeks with the back of his hand, sometimes pausing to wipe away dried tears from under his eyes.

They talked about the universe, Eliott saying it terrified him how big it is.

“Yeah,” Lucas mumbled, voice no louder than a whisper, “but, if you mess up then your mistake means nothing when in relation to the whole universe.”

“But that also means that anything you do good seems just as inconsequential as any mistake you made.”

Lucas didn’t know how to respond at first, but he did know that he didn’t like the way Eliott’s hand pulled back from his face. Lucas instantly missed the warmth. “Well, even with how big the universe is, and how many different possibilities there are for how the universe could have played out, you were still able to exist. And that’s pretty fucking amazing.”

Eliott smiled, and suddenly Lucas’s whole universe focused in on the boy right in front of him, whose legs are tangled with his, whose hand he’s holding, whose smile lit up the dark room. “I love you, Lucas. I don’t think I would want to be in a universe without you in it.”

“I think that every Eliott in every universe has his Lucas.”

Eliott paused, “maybe there is an Eliott in a universe that doesn’t have bipolar disorder so he won’t be able to hurt his Lucas because of his fucked up brain.”

Lucas shook his head and ran a hand through Eliott’s hair, “well, I guess that Lucas is missing out because he will never know how fucking amazing you are, and what a perfect guy you are, and how you don’t let your disorder define you.” Eliott might be crying, Lucas can see his shoulders shaking but can’t make out his face, “you’ll always be every Lucas’s raccoon boy, don’t you worry.”

High school is when things began to change. Lucas had found a friend group made of guys his own age, and Eliott was dating Lucille. He also came out as pansexual, and Lucas found out from gossip between Basile and Arthur. Lucas won’t say that it didn’t hurt, because it did. It hurt to watch Eliott start to pull away. Sure, they still hung out. They still talked, but it wasn’t like before. Part of Lucas was fuming at the fact that he was working so hard for a friendship it seemed Eliott didn’t even care about anymore. But then Eliott would place small drawings in Lucas’s coat pockets or backpack or books so that he would stumble upon later. A little hedgehog drawn in sharpie, or sometimes a raccoon.

He hung each drawing up on his wall.

Second year he realized he was falling in love with Eliott. In movies, one-sided love is romanticized, played up to be something great because the main character always got the guy at the end of the day. But Lucas felt like his heart was slowly being torn apart.

With every glance to each other from across the cafeteria, with every touch of their shoulders as they passed in the hallway, with every “hey” Eliott would give Lucas as a morning greeting as they made their way to school on opposite sides of the street, Lucas felt like he was breaking apart.

Everything happened so fast. His dad left. His mom was diagnosed. He had to move into an apartment with two other people. His best friend, and his first love, was getting further and further away. Lucas felt like his life was slipping through his fingers.

He ended up filling his time by going to parties. Talking to people he knew he would never remember, and noticing people he’d never seen before. He played the role of a straight-guy in front of his friends, but then would sneak off with a random guy behind their backs later that night.

Lucas thought that every one night stand would take his mind off of Eliott. That maybe it would erase him from his memories. In the moment it was good, when Lucas was panting and mind chanting release, release. That part was fine. It was afterwards that left him feeling hollow, and that was when his thoughts came rushing back to him. His brain screamed at him, screamed a name until he knew he would never be able to forget. Eventually someone got a picture of Lucas kissing a guy, and thank God there wasn’t anything more explicit. It forced Lucas out of the closet. His friends were pissed about having to find out via a picture, but they came around.

Lucas holed himself away for a few days, not letting even his roommates inside. He wanted to wallow in self-pity for as long as possible, living off of goldfish crackers and cheez-its.

It was the middle of the week when there was a knock at Lucas’s door, “kitten?” the door asked.

“Go away, Mika. I don’t want to see anyone.”

“There’s someone here who you will want to see,” and before Lucas could object the door was being opened.

In walked Eliott in all his tall, handsome glory. He looked uneasy as the door shut behind him. He swayed from side-to-side not meeting Lucas’s eyes. Lucas wasn’t sure what to say, and he wonders when it became hard to talk to Eliott of all people.

“What a goldfish?” Lucas asked, offering the bag over.

Eliott smiled, “no, I’m okay. Thanks, Lu.”

Lucas nearly snapped right then, don’t call me Lu. You lost that privilege when you stopped talking to me. Thankfully he had the willpower to just shovel some crackers into his mouth instead.

“Can I sit down?”

Lucas shrugged and motioned towards the empty spot at the end of his bed. Eliott took a seat looking way too uptight.

“I saw the pictures,”

“Good for you, so has the whole city,” Lucas said bitterly.

“Why are you holed away in here?”

So I didn’t have to face you, “I just needed to collect my thoughts before facing the real world again.”

“I miss you, Lu.”

“Don’t call me Lu,” Lucas wasn’t fast enough to stop himself this time. Eliott didn’t say anything so Lucas continued, “you’ve ignored me the past two years, and now that I’ve been outed and now that I’m all sad and pathetic again you think you have the right to waltz in here and pretend nothing happened? Well, newsflash, Eliott, you can’t. My life has been shit and you haven’t been here. Without you I guess I finally was able to grow a pair, suck up my emotions, and move on with life.”

“Lucas, I’m sor-”

“I’m not looking for an apology, Eliott,” Lucas felt like his throat was dry. Where is water when you need it? “I’m looking for an explanation.”

Eliott paused and switched his gaze to focus on the floor beneath his feet, “I thought that if I distanced myself from you I would stop fa…” Eliott trailed off, mumbling incoherently.

“What?”

Eliott’s face was a bright red when he turned back to Lucas, “I thought I could stop myself from falling in love with you. I didn’t want to hurt you; I didn’t want to hurt us. I loved our friendship too much to jeopordize it with my stupid emotions, and I thought I would hurt you less if I just pulled away. I didn’t mean, I mean I’m sorry-I’m stupid,”

“Eliott,” Lucas said tentatively as he pulled his blankets away and made his way over to sit beside him. “Kiss me.”

Eliott’s head could not have turned faster and Lucas thought for a brief second that he might’ve pulled his neck, “What?” he asked with alarm written across his face. Maybe it was disbelief, Lucas wasn’t sure.

“I told you to kiss me.”

“Why...why would I kiss you?”

Lucas groaned and face-palmed, “God, why am I in love with such an idiot?”

“Wait, you-you’re..?”

“Yes, you fucking goon, now kiss me before I explode.”

Eliott didn’t have to be told a fourth time, though the hand that cupped Lucas’s face seemed hesitant. It was slow at first, just lips grazing lips. It was all so new and it lit up Lucas from the inside out.

Now, Lucas had his suspicions about how good Eliott is at kissing, but he never would have expected it to be like this. Forget about all the other guys Lucas has kissed; Eliott is stealing his breath away. Lucas leans into the kiss, deepening it, seeking for more, and Eliott doesn’t complain. Eliott started laughing into the kiss, his smile breaking up their rhythm.

Lucas pulled away, cheeks flushed and lips puffy, “what?”

Eliott shook his head, combing back part of Lucas’s hair, “nothing, I just can’t believe I’m kissing you.”

“I can’t believe I’m kissing you either, after everything we’ve been through.”

“Every Eliott has his Lucas,” he said with a wink.

“I love you so fucking much,” Lucas said, parting his lips and begging for another kiss.

“You have no idea how much I love you, Lu, and I hope you’ll let me be with you through it all. Your highs and lows, everything.”

Lucas smiled, “well, you should know that I am very needy…”

“Mhm,”

“I’ll be calling you in the middle of the night…” “Nothing new,”

“I’ll be begging you for kisses…”

“I’ll supply those without any hesitation.”

“Oh really?”

“Really.”

“Well then kiss me, raccoon boy.”

Eliott smirked and pecked a small kiss onto Lucas’s lips before quickly pulling away. Lucas chased after him searching for more, “what do you say to going on a date with me?”

“Are-are you asking me to go on a date with the Eliott Demaury?” Lucas asked in mock shock.

Eliott laughed, “I am.”

Their date just ended up being what they used to do every night together. Watch a disney movie and eat some crappy popcorn. Of course, this time it involved much more making out than before. Lucas believed this was exactly what he needed. A chill night in with Eliott, not having to worry about anything or anyone else.

Before he even realised it he was falling asleep on the couch; head rested atop Eliott’s shoulder.

“Baby, you falling asleep?” A voice, Lucas guessed was Eliott’s, asked him.

He groaned in response. The next second he heard the TV being turned off and he was being lifted off the couch. Lucas snuggled closer to Eliott, taking in his warmth and just the fact that this was even possible now.

After his blankets were wrapped around him, he heard footsteps retreating towards his bedroom door, “don’t go,” Lucas mumbled. His tired brain wasn’t sure if Eliott heard him or not until he felt the mattress dip beside him.

“I’m right here, baby. You’re okay.”

Lucas smiled as he drifted off to sleep knowing that, yeah, he is okay.

#skam france #elu

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