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moni-logues · 11 months

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A Fine Line Bonus 2

The second AFL bonus chapter!

Pairing: Namjoon x f. reader

Genre: smut

Word count: 6.8k

Content: unprotected sex, oral sex (m. and f. receiving inc. deepthroat), fingering, orgasm denial

A/N: welp, what are we, like six months after the series finished when I first said I was going to do this?? 😅😅 I want to thank everyone who voted for which scene/chapter they wanted in Namjoon's POV. I had a real variety of answers (which was genuinely unexpected!) so I haven't been able to do all of them, but a combo of chapters 5 and 6 went together so easily, so that's what you've got!! It was actually kind of hard to get back into this mindset for this couple, because I am so invested in their happiness together lmao but I think I got there! I hope you enjoy and I hope it was worth the wait!

Bonus Chapter 1 | Masterlist | Bonus Chapter 3

Bonus Chapter 2 - Check

Namjoon heard the front door open and your muffled voice, the muffled voice of someone else. Sounded like a man. His eyes flicked to his closed bedroom door, just for a second, then went back to his book. He didn’t care who you had over. Wasn't his business.

But then he’d barely read more than a page before his door was swinging open and you were falling through it, held up by the arms of whoever that guy was.

“What are you doing?” Namjoon asked and you had the audacity to look genuinely surprised.

“Sorry, man,” the stranger replied.

You said nothing, but you just pushed him backwards and closed the door after you.

Namjoon stared at the closed door a second longer, curious now. He hadn’t thought that guy would be your type. Not that he knew what your type was. Or that he thought about it at all. That guy was tiny. Namjoon could take him easily. Not that he wanted to or actually would. But he looked so different from Namjoon. Maybe you just weren’t fussy. Or maybe this wasn’t anything more than a game to you.

He turned back to his book, determined to not let you get under his skin. Not tonight.

Easier said than done with all the noise the two of you were making. Namjoon realised he had been staring at the same page for minutes but hadn’t read a single word. All he could focus on was you, the other side of that wall. You and some guy on the other side of that wall. Making sounds he’d never heard from you. Sounds he’d heretofore only imagined. He wished he could block him out, your friend—boyfriend? Hook-up? – and isolate you. He imagined you, just you, just those noises you were making, on a track, on a loop, just for him.

Namjoon shuffled uncomfortably, pressing a palm against his dick, hard now and pulling that low ache from his abdomen. He tipped his head back and sighed, taking another deep breath before he got his act together. He wasn’t going to give into this. He wasn’t going to dance to your tune. He knew what this was, another step in your stupid little game. Well, Namjoon wasn’t playing.

He slammed his book shut and decided to have a shower. He did not pause momentarily outside his bedroom door. He didn’t. He didn’t have to steel himself again, didn’t clench his fists at his sides and grit his teeth together. Because he definitely didn’t hear you call some other guy’s name.

Hoseok. Who the fuck was Hoseok?

The water was hot when Namjoon stepped underneath it. He tipped his head back and let the water flow over his face. He tried to imagine all his tension flowing with it, out of his body and down the drain. His brain was having none of it. That loop of you he’d imagined was playing like a bassline in his head; blurry moving pictures of you, of what might or could have been your body, soft to the touch but tense under his hands swam in his mind. His dick leapt and he grasped it firmly in one hand, with every intention of giving in now, letting his mind wander all over you, imagining his hand was yours, imagining all the things he wanted most to do to you. Where was his resolve? Going down the drain with all the shower water, it seemed like. It was what you did to him.

This stupid fucking game of chicken. It was stupid. He was stupid for going along with it. He knew that, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop thinking about you. Couldn't stop fantasising about you beneath him. It kept him up at night. Sometimes, it kept him out of his own fucking apartment because he felt like he was on a hair trigger and you might do something just right, or just wrong, enough that he wouldn’t be able to keep it in any longer.

He didn’t know why he was playing along, letting you get in his head. He knew better. He was better than that. He was done with games, done with women who made him play them. That’s what he kept saying. And it was true. It had been true. Until you moved into his apartment.

He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t have a plan. Up to this point, he had assumed you didn’t either, but now he felt like you were playing chess while he had been playing draughts. You’d checked his king now. This was an escalation. And what was Namjoon doing about it? Getting himself off, alone, in the shower, while another guy fucked you so hard, Namjoon could still hear you over the running water. This wouldn’t do.

Maybe it wasn’t about him. Namjoon couldn’t decide. On the one hand, you seemed to be making a lot of effort recently to make sure he knew it was about him. On the other, you’d already made your point. Did you really need to go another round with this guy just to show Namjoon what he was missing? Did you really have to be doing whatever you were doing to him to make him that vocal? To make him growl your name like that? No, you didn’t. Which meant you were doing it because you wanted to. You wanted to fuck this guy just because, because of who he was, because he was fucking good at it, because he made you see God or what the fuck ever it was you were crying about now.

It was embarrassing, he decided. It was fucking embarrassing, you going on like that, making a show of yourself. As if you needed the whole building to hear you. As if you wanted the world to know you were getting it hit right by some guy. Namjoon didn’t have to just fucking lie there and listen to it. All your chatter about how he was a bad roommate—who was the bad roommate now?

Namjoon checked the time on his phone: definitely late enough to be annoyed. He raised a fist to thump on the wall and then thought twice about it.

He wasn’t embarrassed. You fucking should be. He stood up and took a deep breath before stomping heavily out of his bedroom. Without knocking, without quite knowing what he was doing, he flung open your bedroom door.

Fuuuuuuuuck.

He couldn’t look directly at you. You on your knees. You in the half-light. Someone else’s hands on your body.

“Do you fucking mind?” he growled.

It would have been rude to direct it to Hoseok—he was technically a guest, after all—but Namjoon still couldn’t look you in the eye. Couldn’t see them black and blown out. Couldn’t see the hair stuck to your forehead with sweat. He gulped and waited for your response, praying to every god he knew of that his dick would behave itself for once.

“What?” was all you said.

“I’m trying to fucking sleep.”

“And?”

This was safer ground. This was you being deliberately obtuse, like you always fucking were. This was you pissing Namjoon off. This was what got under his skin, this denial, this faux innocence and naivety, as if you had no idea what you were doing. As his anger flared, his lust dampened, and he finally looked you dead in the eye. You stared back.

“Keep the fucking noise down,” Namjoon said eventually, and he walked away. He slammed the door so hard it bounced back and eventually stopped swinging, coming to rest only half shut. He stood for a moment, not quite outside your bedroom, but not quite inside his yet.

“Do you want to shut the door?” he heard Hoseok ask.

“No, fuck it, who cares? He’s already fucking seen it.”

Namjoon’s jaw clenched and he shook as he carefully shut his own bedroom door, desperate though he was to slam it.

‘He’s already fucking seen it.’

Yes, he already fucking had. And he’d already fucking heard it. But he hadn’t already fucking fucked you.

The tension in the apartment was palpable. Namjoon didn’t have a next move. He’d never really had any moves at all. You led the charge, all the way; he played along, pretending you didn’t. But things were different now. This was an escalation. He was in check. That meant it was his turn. And all he’d managed to do was wank himself dry over you.

He was a little irritable, a little on edge, and a little annoyed that he was made to come all the way across town to a music video set—on a work day, for his real job—just because someone wanted the lyrics changing. He could have done that from the office; he could have done that on his phone over his lunch break. But no, his presence was demanded by the talent. That was one of the things that made Namjoon grateful he never went down that route, that he didn’t make it in the months before his parents found out he was a university drop out. He might well have become an insufferable, entitled brat, too.

He was hanging around, waiting for his changes to be approved so he could leave. He’d had to skip lunch, so he was picking at the food on offer, not really wanting any of it. A throat cleared near him.

“It’s Namjoon, right?”

He felt the muscle in his jaw twitch as he turned to see who it was. The man gestured to himself.

“Um, Hoseok. I don’t know if you rememb-”

“I remember.”

He couldn’t stop himself remembering. Every waking minute, most of his sleeping minutes too, full of you and fucking Hoseok. He hadn’t laid eyes on you since that night—you had both been doing a good job of avoiding each other—but he still couldn’t stop seeing you: your body in the dark, the moonlight on your skin, your hair tangled and stuck to your face, the glint in your eyes when they met his, the long arch of your back... He didn’t even have to shut his eyes to see it. You were always there.

What could this guy possibly want with Namjoon, other than to make his bad day worse?

“I saw you over here—I didn’t know you worked in this industry? I haven’t seen you around before? — and I...”

Hoseok paused and Namjoon had to clench all the muscles in his legs to stop himself just walking away, getting out of this situation. Hoseok looked reluctant to talk, but this was his idea in the first place so couldn’t he just spit it out?

“I have a thing about not getting in people’s business so I feel like I shouldn’t do this, but at the same time, I feel like I have to just say... about the other night-”

“What about it?”

“Well... This is a little awkward, obviously.”

Namjoon didn’t see why it should be but, for a man who kept himself balls deep inside you when walked in on during sex, Hoseok did seem surprisingly awkward now. Namjoon just shrugged.

“No, it isn’t. Why should it be?”

“I just wanted to say I didn’t know there was anything going on between the two of you an-”

“There isn’t anything going on between us.”

That seemed to wrongfoot Hoseok a little and he paused, mid-sentence, and then frowned, looking confused.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Why would I be kidding? There isn’t anything going on between us.”

How many fucking times was Hoseok going to make him say it? Namjoon’s patience was wearing painfully thin and he could feel a headache start to thump like a band across the top of his head.

For a second, Hoseok looked as if he was just going to walk away. Then he changed his mind and his face was serious now, suddenly dark where he had been all sunshine before.

“Sure, whatever you say. I just came over here to say that I didn’t mean to get in the middle of anything and I’m not the sort of person who gets involved in other people’s messes-” (Namjoon raised an eyebrow at that) “-but... She doesn’t know what she wants so, if you do, be nice, alright? I don’t know you or what you’re like, but I do know her and she’s sweet and she’s got shit going on and so whatever games you two are playing, just be sure you know what you want out of it. And be nice to her.”

Namjoon was briefly blind with rage. He had to blink away the red from his vision. Who the fuck did this guy think he was, coming over to tell him to be nice to you?! YOU. You who had instigated all of this shit. You who were responsible for it all. You... sweet? Hoseok got the sweet version of you, did he? So sweet that Hoseok clearly had no idea, that he thought Namjoon was the one who needed telling to behave himself.

“You think she doesn’t know what she wants?” His throat was so tight, he almost couldn’t speak at all, his words coming out as little more than a growl.

“You think she does?”

“You obviously don’t know her as well as you think you do.”

He knew he wasn’t exactly being generous, or gracious, or polite. Hoseok hadn’t really done anything wrong. If Namjoon had been close to his right mind, he would have even thought it commendable, the way Hoseok was putting himself in the line of fire to stand up for you. But he wasn’t close; he was livid.

Hoseok looked at him for a few seconds and Namjoon just stared him down. Then Hoseok raised both his hands slightly and took a step back.

“Ok, sure, maybe I don’t. I’ve said my piece so... Have a nice day, I guess.”

As he turned to walk away, Namjoon could see the baffled disbelief in Hoseok’s face, his raised brows, the way he lightly shook his head. Namjoon watched him walk away, thinking about you. Who the hell were you when you were with Hoseok? Sweet. The word clattered about in his brain, ricocheting and bouncing off the walls. Sweet. You. Sweet. Hoseok. Sweet.

Why were you never sweet to him? He could have gone there. He was nice. He was a good guy. He had every intention of being good to you, when you moved in. He’d been told you were going through something; he wasn’t a fucking monster, of course he wanted to be nice to you. Of course he wanted to be there for you. Of course he thought, right at the start, that you might have become friends. You apparently had had other ideas. So, there you both were.

Sweet.

‘She doesn’t know what she wants’.

‘Oh yes, she fucking does,’ Namjoon thought.

And it was all he could think. He stomped back to his office and sat at his desk, head aching in earnest now, making his brain feel squeezed and his eyes tired. He tried to distract himself, get stuck in a task—a long, complicated task would be good, something to really sink his teeth into—but he couldn’t. He couldn’t focus for more than ten seconds at a time because you kept coming back to him. Fucking sweet. Doesn’t know what she wants.

By the time the clock hit 6, Namjoon thought he was going to have a stroke. It was early for him, but he stood up abruptly, announced he had to leave, turned on his heel and walked out with not another word. He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t stand it. You had put him in check and Hoseok, your fucking knight, had flanked you and now it was Namjoon’s turn.

He was finally going to make a fucking move.

He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t get his brain to slow down and just think for a second, so he decided to wing it. Not his usual style, but sometimes you’ve got to be the change...

He still wasn’t thinking when he crashed through the front door and stomped straight to your bedroom. He didn’t even know if you would be in there, hadn’t thought about what he would find inside. But there you were, hurrying to your feet, and then looking up at him as he pinned you to the wall, wide-eyed, your lips slightly parted, breathing a little harder than normal. It was at that point that Namjoon realised you were topless and the realisation gave his brain a zap. Something was going to happen and he wanted to be the one to do it.

“What are you doing?”

He had wanted to start this. But what was he doing? What was his plan? He didn’t have one. He started from the top.

“Guess who I ran into today.”

“Who?”

“There’s a dancer at work, name’s Hoseok. I think you know him.”

You looked surprised, shocked even, and then worried, a miniscule crease between your brows appearing as you continued to stare up at him. He felt your breath hitch. It was almost too much: those big, shining eyes, your skin warm to the touch and so much of it on display.

“We had a very interesting conversation about you.”

If he weren’t so close to you, he might have believed you felt as nonchalant as you had sounded, but he had his thigh between your legs and your arms in his hands and he could feel you flush; he could practically hear your heart racing. Knowing that he was having this effect on you was like a supercharge; this hadn’t all been just a stupid game; it wasn’t in his head. You did want him. Which meant he had a chance to really play now, to show you that he could play this game, too, that the ball was in his court and he was going to lob it back to you and hard.

“He seems to think,” Namjoon continued, staring until you finally looked away, eyes cast down, a pink blush creeping up your neck. He leant in closer. “That you don’t know what you want.” Closer still, his lips next to your ear. “But I think we both know, don’t we?”

He felt you shiver under his fingers as he lightly trailed them down your naked torso. He toyed with the waistband of your underwear, almost giddy with the effect he was having on you. Your goosepimpled skin, your nipples tight, your skin hot. It was more than Namjoon could have imagined. He snapped the elastic hard against your skin and it seemed to shock you out of your daze. You squirmed.

“I have a date, Namjoon. Let me go.”

A date. He wondered who with. Hoseok? But he had said he was going to stay out of your business. Someone else already? How did you always manage to wrongfoot him like this? He took a small step backwards, ceding ground, but you didn’t move. You could have told him that immediately, battened down your hatches at his first hint of attack. You hadn’t.

You were just trying to run away. Because Namjoon finally had you exactly where he wanted you. Was it exactly where you wanted to be? Was he where you wanted him?

“I’m not holding you here. You can go if you want.”

His eyes pinned you to the wall and he felt the smallest flutter of doubt in his stomach while he waited for you to move, to leave. You didn’t.

“That’s what I thought.”

“What do you want?”

He almost laughed.

“Isn’t that obvious?”

He ground his hips against you and he had to bite back a groan. You turned your head and closed your eyes, a pink glow lighting up your cheeks. You had your bottom lip only just caught in your teeth and the sight of it, the sight of you, like that, as if you were shy, as if you could be coy, after everything you’d done... It made Namjoon want to laugh but it also made him want to ruin you. He wanted to ruin you and ruin all other men for you. He was pretty sure that was what you wanted, too. You had started this, after all.

“Don’t be coy, now; it’s not convincing,” he whispered to you. You gasped as he slipped his fingers past your underwear and pressed against your entrance. “Not when you’re this wet for me already.”

You whimpered as he pushed his fingers inside you and started moving them so slowly, curling against your front wall. The sound of you whimpering was better than he had imagined, all the sweeter that this time he was the one pulling it from you. It was a risky move, but one that had paid off in spades. He was right. He had been right all this time. You wanted this. You wanted him. But now he had to hear you say it. He wanted your whole surrender.

“Namjoon...”

A shiver ran up his spine. You’d never said his name like that before.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded.

And he thought you would say it, with the way your back was arching, pressing your body against his, the way your legs were starting to tremble and shake. He was getting you there and he knew it; he thought he had you.

“No.”

Shit.

Your defiance was even hotter than your submission, but he had to keep his head on straight. He couldn’t let you flip the script. This was his move. It was still his turn. He removed his fingers and stepped back with the most painfully-feigned shrug he had ever pulled off.

“Guess you’d better go on your date then.”

He adjusted his trousers and turned to leave. It was another risky move, but he was emboldened by the success of his last one and he was desperate to have you. Aim for the moon and all that bullshit. He felt you push against him and he had to suppress a grin as he turned around.

“What the fuck, Namjoon?”

“What?”

It was hard to act casual with a raging boner, but he was doing his best.

“What the fuck? You can’t just do that!”

You were angry. Genuinely angry. That was perfect. He’d fight you and then fuck you. You really were going to make every one of his fantasies come true.

“I told you to tell me what you want. Can’t very well do much of anything if you don’t.”

You didn’t have a smart comeback for that, just a feral growl and your hands on his chest again, trying to push, trying to shove, and getting nowhere. He had no idea you’d be this easy to wind up: there were so many buttons he was now dying to push. This was fun. He briefly chastised himself for not having done this sooner—but then again, maybe the pay-off wouldn’t have been quite this big.

“Fuck you,” you spat.

That was exactly the sort of thing he wanted to hear. He caught you by the wrists and could feel your pulse thudding hard and fast beneath his fingers.

“Oh, so she can be taught?” He grabbed your wrists and grinned triumphantly. “Was that so hard?”

You didn’t answer; you stared at him, doing absolutely nothing to hide either your annoyance or your desire. He could see it there, whether you wanted him to or not. Cat was out of the bag. He wondered what it would take to get you to cave, to get you to tell him, to say it. It would have been a lie if he’d said he wanted that more than he actually wanted to fuck you... but it was close.

He pulled you a little closer.

“If you say it, I’ll do it,” he whispered and he felt the shiver run through you. He meant what he said. He was enjoying the game, but he would get on his knees for you. Over and over and over again. You just had to ask.

You remained mute, so Namjoon did what he wanted. He wrapped one arm around you and brushed over your nipple with his other hand. He was so close to you now that his breath on your neck raised the hairs there and Namjoon felt drunk on you. He was going to have to keep himself in check: if you didn’t give in quickly (and he knew you wouldn’t), he had to make sure he was going to last. He was so hard, he hurt; he could feel the wet spot on his boxers, soaked through with pre-cum. If this didn’t end in sex, he thought he might well explode. He had never felt so tantalisingly close to what he wanted.

He hooked his fingers into your underwear and, when he pushed down, you didn’t stop him, didn’t even try. You stepped out of them and let him coax you backwards onto the bed. When he placed a knee on either side of you and leaned down, crawling over you, you just lay back and let him. He rested his hands beside your head and looked at you; he didn’t look down, didn’t scan the length of your body, finally, after all this time, naked in front of him. He had to keep his focus. He was playing chess now and he might have got his King out of check, but he wasn’t home free.

He looked at you and felt almost smug; he wondered if you knew just how transparent you could be. He knew you had secrets; there was plenty you were hiding. He could tell that, too, but often, when you really looked at him, he almost felt as if you wanted him to see through you. All the games you were playing, the way you were behaving suggested otherwise, but when you looked at him, he saw through it all. Just like now. He could see you.

“I don’t beg,” you said and Namjoon had to bite back a laugh. Maybe you didn’t. But you would.

“You will.”

He didn’t miss the little whimper that slipped out of your mouth as he reared back. He didn’t miss the intake of breath as he removed his shirt. And he certainly didn’t miss the dark, glazed look that came over you, the pout of your mouth, the pink of your tongue as it peeked out through your lips.

Your breath came accompanied by tiny moans, barely there little vocalised exhales when Namjoon finally put his mouth on you. Determined to make them louder, he spread your legs and pushed two fingers back inside you. The cry you let out made him shudder, his cock twitching, rock hard and throbbing in his pants. As he moved down your body, pressing his lips at every stop, you grabbed at his hair; you weren’t gentle, quite the contrary, as you tugged and pushed and tried to get his mouth where you wanted it. He was half-tempted to resist, but he was past the point of denying that he wanted this, so he gave you what you were asking for and sealed his lips around your clit.

You swore, you whined, you whimpered. Your back arched beneath him. You rolled your hips against his tongue. Your walls squeezed hard against his fingers. Your legs splayed and squirmed and shook. Namjoon’s grip on your thigh was tight, tighter than he thought it should be (though you didn’t seem to notice) but he needed to grip something, needed to hold on to something before he lost his head completely.

He wanted to show you what he could do, what he could do to you, what he could give to you. He was chasing that now, waiting not for you to beg, but for you to reward. And he was so close to getting it; he could feel you, he could hear you, he was just about to push you over the edge-

Then he remembered. He was making a move. FUCK.

He stopped. He retreated. He needed five seconds to get his head back together, to wipe your slick from around his mouth and blink back down to earth. That was close. He almost let you have it. Let you win.

“Namjoon,” you breathed. “Namjoon...”

He felt dizzy with arousal, half-crazed with want. He didn’t know how long you would hold out, if he would get to hear you say that you wanted him at all, but he couldn’t go one second longer with his dick still trapped in his boxers. He stood back and divested himself of all the clothing he had left on. His dick sprang free and Namjoon’s eyes went straight to your face. People always reacted. And you were no different.

“Oh...”

Your breath came out in a shaky exhale and you sat yourself up, biting your lip and reaching for it as if on instinct. Namjoon honestly couldn’t have asked for better. But then you wrapped your hand around him and flicked your eyes to his, looking at him through your lashes, somehow both obscene and innocent. Namjoon didn’t think he was capable of anything at that exact moment so he just let you do as you wished. He had to close his eyes when you put out your tongue and licked the precum from his tip. He had to clench his fists when you closed your lips around him. When you took him into your mouth and then into the warm, wet clutch of your throat, he thought he would pass out from trying not to come then and there.

You didn’t let up, not when tears streaked your face, not when drool dripped off your chin. Not until Namjoon groaned, unable to bite it back any longer. At that point, you pulled back, flicked your tongue on the underside of his head, sucked at his tip until he was pulling you back by the hair. He was sweating with the effort of not coming. He couldn’t let you do that to him; the victory of his cum in your mouth would have been pyrrhic somehow. It couldn’t happen that way. He had to get your mouth off him.

He pulled you upwards, his dick throbbing, dripping, twitching and waiting to get inside you. Namjoon prayed you wanted this as much as he did. He swore oaths of loyalty to any god that would bless him with you saying those words he wanted to hear. You had to give in now, surely? Surely you were as desperate for this as he was? Surely now you’d say it, you’d admit, you’d just let it be true that you wanted him to fuck you. Because god, he wanted nothing else, felt like he had never in his life wanted anything else but to fuck you into next week, to start fucking you and never stop.

Though, realistically, he would probably have to stop rather more quickly than he would’ve liked.

“On your back,” he demanded and you complied without a moment’s hesitation. See? You could do as you were told. You’d say it, he thought. You would now.

He leant forward, resting his weight on one hand, with his dick in the other. He held it at your entrance, still teasing, using every last ounce of strength to do it. You were writhing beneath him, trying to slither down, trying to manoeuvre yourself, trying to get closer, to draw him in. Namjoon was much stronger than you were. And he still had a point to prove.

“You want this?” he asked.

You shut your eyes and pressed your lips tight together to try to dampen the sound of your whimpering. You were so close, so close to saying it, Namjoon thought. He really thought you’d give in. You were just there.

And he was just there. The head of his dick was wet with your arousal; he could feel the heat of you; he could feel when you clenched your walls. He couldn’t believe you were still holding out. You must have had the strongest will-power of anyone alive. Or maybe you were just the most stubborn. He’d give you a taste. He’d give you just a taste of it. That had to break you. Or if it didn’t break you, it would him. He was learning: you were absolutely more competitive than he was and he was almost willing to lose this battle.

He pushed into you, just the tip. With every ounce and drop of strength in him, just the tip; then he held himself there as your back arched and your fists grabbed the bedsheets and you swore once, twice, and then a broken third time as he pulled out.

“Namjoon,” you whined, breathy and light; he grit his teeth together hard as a shiver ran down his spine at the sound. “Namjoon.”

Sure, ok, you were pleading now, but you weren’t saying what he wanted to hear. You were grabbing at him, nails digging into his skin; your eyes were pleading but your mouth remained resolutely silent.

He chuckled, though he was barely hanging on. He didn’t know how you were doing it. How you could look like that, sound like that, feel like that, and still not just give in to him. He didn’t have another fight in him. He wasn’t sure he had another second. He was going to have to reformulate. Find another strategy. Some other way to end this and win. It became clear that you weren’t up for surrender. Even though you closed your eyes to him, even though your body shivered under his touch. Incredible.

“You really are stubborn, aren’t you?” he chuckled. “I guess I can respect that.”

He admired it. He wished he could be that stubborn. He had underestimated you which had been foolish. But it was possible you’d underestimated him, too. Did you think that holding out on him would make him quit? That he’d just fuck you anyway? True, he was five short seconds from an aneurysm after the way he’d been trying to control himself, but there was more than one way to skin a cat.

He pumped himself slowly and then faster, his grip on your skin tightening as he pushed himself to, and then over, the edge. He came across your stomach with a sigh of satisfaction and an intoxicating sense of triumph. He knew he’d bottle it if he stayed any longer; he was already, in an instant, feeling his adrenaline drop, his muscles weaken and wobble. He just had to nail his exit. Then it would be done. He patted your thigh and shot you a grin that he hoped looked smug and not hysterical.

“See you next time.”

Then he stood, stepped into his trousers and left the room. He didn’t know if there would be a next time. Maybe you’d kill him for this. Maybe he’d deserve it.

With an empty head, he went to his studio and sat in his chair, shaking the mouse to wake the computer more out of habit than intention. He felt dazed. He felt electrified. He felt exhausted. He didn’t have time for much else before you banged into the room.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

If Namjoon hadn’t just come, he probably would have then. You were clearly furious, as you had every right to be, but you were naked and your hair was mussed and your eyes were wide and your breathing was heavy and you might have been small, but your presence was enormous.

“What?” he asked, sure that he should be thinking of something smart to say and trying to find the presence of mind to formulate it.

You were clearly doing the same as you just stared at him, mouth agape in disbelief. You threw something at him and he let it fall to the floor.

“How fucking dare you?”

You could barely choke out the words and Namjoon realised that, even though you still weren’t saying what he wanted, you weren’t not saying it. You had said and were saying it in so many different ways, carefully treading around the one way that he wanted you to say it. That felt nice. That felt like a victory, too. He had won, just not in the way he had expected to.

He stood and approached you, taking your face in his hands. Your fury was barely diminished by your surprise and it took Namjoon a second to tear himself away. He patted your cheek lightly.

“It’s like I said, one word is all it takes.”

He was aware of your eyes on him as he moved so he fiddled in the kitchen, looking in cupboards for a snack he didn’t want to eat and getting a glass of water he definitely did need to drink. You were still standing in the doorway to the studio when he’d finished and still standing when he sat back in his chair and still standing when he turned away from you. He turned back.

“Shut the door when you leave, would you?”

Now that he was still, now that you weren’t saying anything, the adrenaline was fading. He was clicking around in files, pressing buttons almost at random, unable to focus on anything but you standing in the doorway and pretending that he wasn’t hyperaware of you. He drank his glass of water and munched on a snack; he clicked and clicked and dragged and typed something for good measure.

Then you finally turned, stalked back to your bedroom, and slammed the door. Namjoon could hear you screaming into your pillow from two rooms away. He slumped back into his chair, suddenly wrecked with exhaustion. Exhausted but victorious. He had played your game and he had won this time.

Check.

Bonus Chapter 1 | Masterlist | Bonus Chapter 3

#namjoon x reader #namjoon fic #namjoon smut #bts x reader #bts smut #namjoon fanfic #bts fanfic

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0junemeatcleaver0 · 5 months

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Ok, babe, gonna try to do this without spoilers. But here we go:

The normies have really been freaking out about this one and like...it's not anything to freak out about re: the psychosexual stuff. Like, it's not as wild as they seem to think it is.

But that doesn't stop it from being a really good time!!! I had so much fucking fun watching this movie from, like, 15 minutes onward. The only thing that made the first 15 minutes difficult for me to watch was the realism of it--Oliver is so painfully an outsider that it physically hurts to watch.

Speaking of, there are few things that make me experience secondhand embarrassment or really make me squirm uncomfortably. But those things do exist and they're both in this movie and no one warned me because everyone who has never been on AO3 was too busy talking about the bathtub scene: social isolation at school and wrong side of the tracks fish out of water syndrome. This movie has both in spades for the first, like, 45 minutes.

And as I said, the writing and acting are so good and realistic that it was downright painful. Which is great--that's what they were going for and they nailed it. It was just difficult to know what I was heading into before hand because everyone was talking about other stuff.

Speaking of something that got overlooked in all the hype: I've yet to hear anyone talk about how wickedly funny this film is?? It's a thriller for sure but the darkly comedic elements are they and they really shine.

It's set in '06 and the mid-naughts glitz and sleaze is so fucking perfect. There are some real throwbacks culture wise but it never distracts, just adds to the ambiance.

What else...Rosamund Pike is phenomenal, as per. Plays the perfect WASP. Fucking kills it. But then again, everyone is acting their asses off in this.

Everyone wants to talk about the 'shocking' scenes but I think my favorite (you'll know it when you watch it) is the lunch scene. The red one? Yeah. Incredible writing, incredible acting.

Cinematography? Beautiful. Soundtrack? Bumpin'. Sound was also great, I was very impressed by the fact that it was the first modern film I've watched in a long time that wasn't mixed like pure dookie garbage. The music was never too loud that you couldn't hear dialogue (unless explicitly by design), nor were any diegetic sounds treated like a freight train barrelling through your living room. Wardrobe also fucking smashed it. Set dec was on point.

My only gripe is that it was 2 hours long. I know that's how long movies are nowadays. It didn't stop me from needing to get up every 15-30 minutes to stretch my legs or smoke a cigarette. That being said, the movie is very character driven which I think is best for a two hour run time, as it allows tension to build and arcs to unfold, etc. So ultimately it's fine bc that's a me-specific gripe and the pacing was actually very good.

It's not groundbreaking cinema by any means but it's a tightly contained story that had me thoroughly entertained. 10/10 for a fun, fucked up little movie.

And @apoptoses if you watch it you gotta come yell at me about it because I cannot wait for someone I know to have seen it.

#also #if anyone else has seen it #please feel free to #jump in my asks #and chat my ear off

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bearpillowmonster · 9 months

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Are Nintendo's Licenses Suited For Film?

Zelda - No.

This opinion I’m actually going to use for a lot of them and that’s because with Mario, there were already cartoons and blueprints other than the gaming franchise, with Zelda, there was a little known cartoon and the CDi games but the main antagonizer here is the silent protag, I can't see him talking, you put yourself in his shoes and solve the puzzles yourself. You don't get that gratification from a movie unless it's like "Oh, that's clever" or the movie itself is a puzzle.

Metroid - No.

Taking that silent protag (for most games) to the next level with her really being the only human most of the time. They “could” potentially add Federation members like they did Other M but is that the true Metroid experience that we’ve been wanting? What about the isolation? I see it going every which way. Even if they keep the Federation out, I can’t see a celebrity voice play Samus, I just can’t and then making the aliens talk, some “could” be fine, like maybe Ridley but imagine Samus having an animated companion like a talking Metroid or Deemer with a deep voice. *ugh*

Pikmin - Yes.

Imagine a mini man crashed on a planet where he has to learn to live off the land in huge proportions, learning to farm and take care of these strange aliens. Enough said, this speaks for itself, there's so many plots I could come up with. The freight company could want Olimar to bring the Pikmin back with him but that would be taking them out of their habitat. Just so good.

F-Zero - Yes.

Racing is pretty easy and I could see a lot being done with the tracks and speeders and tech and atmosphere. There was an anime that was well liked but this series was never popular enough with anything thus far. It doesn't even all have to revolve around racing that way though because most people know Cap from Smash Bros anyway, have some fights.

Animal Crossing - Maybe.

Simply because the characters are recognizable, therefore people will like to see them and their personalities. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot that I can come up with for that, if it was Harvest Moon even, I'd set up a compelling love story but this one is kind of beyond me as to a plot. It had a short little anime special but that's not really anything to go by. Maybe it's about crushing debt and finding ways to make money.

Splatoon - Yes.

I think it’s going to miss an essential value to the games but really, it’s a game of factions and that’s something that could work. One side maybe octopus and another side Squid, then balancing the line between kid and squid, aka soldier in a war of paint. I kinda love it.

Kirby - Maybe.

It wouldn’t be hard to make it if they go the route the cartoon did, which has some fans, but I didn’t say it would be a good movie, I just said it wouldn’t be hard. Kirby is very simplistic and his games resemble that with their short length, I just can't see this story giving me anything I haven't seen before.

Arms - Yes.

One of Nintendos more recent IPs and while it has the sports flavor, that's kind of what separates it from the rest here. It has style. It has distinct characters. It has possibilities with its world and the different arms that they switch out, easily an anime one-up, imagine Megalo-Box but with this. It's almost their version of Street Fighter, like the day time Chun Li who takes on the role as a cop but goes off to participate in fighting at night. Min-Min the noodle shop worker trying to make enough money to keep her story open but not to damage her brand, so she wears a mask.

Star Fox - Yes.

These ones talk so we don’t have that issue, in fact I don’t see why this hasn’t been done already when it’s been rumored to be in the works time and time again in various different ways that all sound appealing. My only hope with these sci-fi franchises that have to do with spaceships is that they don’t try and do the Ratchet and Clank thing where we see an origin story where all the guy wants to be a great pilot or prodigy. Make McCloud cool from the get-go, it doesn't have to be a humbling story, just show off some cool tricks! Neat planets, heck, some dinosaurs wouldn't even be too out of the realm of possibility, could you imagine? Even a series would do this one good, making mini-ops to help the planets.

#arms #movie #nintendo #kirby #star fox #film #splatoon #animal crossing #pikmin #f-zero #metroid #zelda #the legend of zelda

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goldeneyedgirl · 1 year

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Year of the OTP - February Prompt (Truth Pollen): Know Your Guilt

Ah yes, posting a February prompt in late March. How on brand. I absolutely fell flat on my ass in March, health and mental-health wise but I'm back and doing a lot of writing these last two weeks. Not promising anything because everything goes wrong when I do.

Anyway, another short space-verse ficlet; one, I'm in a world-building mood at the moment, and two, there's an anthology I'm planning on submitting to later in the year and I'm using space fic as a bit of a warm-up for that. However, March's piece is half done and I promise, it's a Canon AU.

When the call came in from Jovan, no one was thrilled to go. A small planet that prized its wild forests, the biggest settlement was little more than a village with a population that was deeply cautious around off-worlders. In recent years, small resistance groups calling for complete isolation had started protesting off-worlders and it was just… annoying. Annoying to have things thrown at them, supplies stolen, the ship vandalised. No one seemed particularly grateful for thousands of credits of medical supplies they desperately needed; or willing to offer food and water in return. There were only two reasons they went: the first was how solemnly Carlisle took his vow of helping without judgement, and the fact that the Federation paid them more than fairly for the trouble.

Alice was up and working again, shutting herself in the analyst office for hours every day with Edward. She was quiet and pale, and still visiting the med bay for oxygen and supplements regularly. Her new augmentations were fitted, but she was still limping as they settled, most of the muscle from her calf and thigh cut away. Jovan wasn’t an ideal job for someone so fragile, and Jasper honestly wished Carlisle had taken any other of the jobs on offer.

“It’ll be fine,” Emmett says, after Alice leaves breakfast having eaten only a minuscule portion, and chased it with a blue med-patch on her temple. “It’s boring, but we’ll get some decent fruit and some of that wine that fucks everyone up, and then Carlisle wants to dock with the Denali because Eleazer needs some bro time.”

It’ll be fine.

Famous last words.

—

So the protestors have become terrorists. No one was expecting that; the same way that no one was expecting Esme - of all people - to have grabbed a pistol from the gun-lock.

It’s a pretty routine visit. A lot of nodding regarding the supplies, a line up of worried looking women and children who need medical attention beyond the shaman and midwives the culture insists upon. The older men refuse all care with a silent mood of disdain and disinterest; the younger ones are curious but will not be witnessed to seek out Carlisle and Rose.

It’s dullest for him and Emmett, who are on security for the whole day; Rosalie is often a target of violence because of her former people’s beliefs, and people mistake Esme’s gentleness for weakness. And no matter how ‘peaceful’, a community is, there are always thieves.

Alice is seated in the corner with a tablet, logging supplies and patients quietly - few of the population will offer their real names or ages, so the records are nigh on useless for keeping track of the people, but the Federation demands them.

It all goes wrong when Rosalie inspects the cut on a leg of a boy just at puberty - all and wiry and very ill. Rose looks grim as she begins treatment (cutting the wound open to drain, medication and packing, wrapping, and antibiotics). The boy is weeping as she works, Esme talking quietly to him, and Jasper is sympathetic because the shiny black substance beneath the infection of the wound is bone. And whatever grass-scented poultice the shamans have used on him has inspired an angry, weeping allergic reaction. The kid is a mess.

It surprises everyone when the explosion - if it can be called that - happens. The bang in the village centre, just outside of the guest hut they use, sounds more like a cheap party cracker than a serious weapon. But Esme hands him the pistol and he and Emmett go out, and he can’t understand spoken Jovan well enough but Emmett certainly can and he looks horrified. People are moving away, vanishing into the words, into homes and businesses, as a group of very, very angry men begin yelling a message out.

“We’re leaving right now.” Emmett is closing off the gate to the hut, and no one complains that they haven’t attended to everyone.

Carlisle is complaining, and Rosalie is trying to work faster, and Esme is packing the things when the next explosion happens just outside the wall and half of the building crumples - made out of wood beams and huge leaves coated with some kind of amber-venom-resin substance, there is little resistance.

Alice is already dialling into the ship, to alert Edward to what is happening, to pull up the GPS location of the ship and their trackers on the big screen.

“Yeah, they just called for our deaths for invading their sacred space, we need to go,” Emmett snaps, and Emmett getting snappy is what makes them all get their shit together.

Except three more bombs are thrown as they emerge, and everyone scatters away from the path - supplies are dropped, Alice’s tablet is crushed underfoot, and they all dart into the forest; Jasper follows Rose’s blonde braid into the underbrush and when he turns around, the damn terrorists are following them.

He can’t see Alice, and the wheeze of Carlisle’s hydraulics has faded.

They run for a short time - away from the ship, which annoys the shit out of him - before they burst into a clearing, all from different angles.

The tree reminds him of an Earth Willow, with long drifting branches that he and Rose have to push through, throwing clouds of green-yellow pollen into the air. He’s relieved to see Emmett dragging Alice along, her gait lopsided and awkward. Both of them are filthy, with abrasions on their faces. Somehow, the faint dusting of pollen on Alice’s hair and face are beautiful, the way it clings to her eye lashes and hair.

“I love you.”

The words are husky and rough, and the thing that alarms him the most are the fact that they are said by him. Rosalie is looking at him incredulously, but in a way that implies something much bigger is happening, her hair sticking to her face.

Her short hair. Rose has long hair.

His mouth is so dry, and Carlisle is wheezing, and suddenly Rosalie is scratching at her face and letting out this terrible noise, and Esme drops to the ground and begins to sob and Alice just stands there and starts saying things, these things that he worries about late at night, and he can’t stop saying that he loves her and he’s sorry and he hates what he did.

Emmett is talking but everything is a blur of noise so he can’t understand it, but what he does finally understand, as Rose’s spine elongates and Emmett throws his stained jacket over her as a cloak, is that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Carlisle is gasping through words and Alice is calm, even if she is rocking as she talks, staring off into the distance.

And Jasper just dreads the moment when everything stops and he has to hear, really hear, every ugly little truth that’s been thrown into the air.

—

It takes another hour to find their way back to the ship. Rosalie is crying, but it’s an angry, rage-filled cry that sounds rasping and harsh; he cannot see her face from underneath the hood of Emmett’s jacket, but he doesn’t try very hard.

Edward is pacing as they climb the ramp, Emmett scowling at the message scrawled crudely across the hull.

“Know your guilt,” he mutters. “I’m not fucking coming back here, Carlisle.”

Jasper agrees.

—

The pollen sticks to them, green-yellow dust that stains the skin if they try to brush it away. The decontamination shower takes far too long to strip it from their skin, and it’s late as they take their places around the dining table. Esme has piled the table with odds and ends from their supplies, no one interested in preparing a fresh meal.

The seaweed noodles are particularly slimy and salty as leftovers, but reassuring in a silly way - like a favourite meal from childhood. How many times did Carlisle prepared seaweed noodles when she first joined the ship? It was the first meal he taught her to cook from scratch successfully.

She can’t look at anyone as she eats, the words still hovering in the air, the way they forced themselves out of her like she had been holding her breath and gasping for air.

You weren’t supposed to save me. I was supposed to die. Why didn’t you let me go?

Emmett’s putting the left over fritters on Rose’s plate, not making eye contact. Rose is icy and not really eating, her hair scraped so tightly into a bun that Alice’s own scalp pinches at the thought of it. Rose got it the worst, much worse than those words forcing themselves from her mouth - the pollen had stripped away her face, stripped her right back down to a Faceless. Seeing Rose hunched and curled over on herself, making a rasping noise that Alice likened to hysterical shrieks of rage.

(She’d never seen Emmett move so fast, peeling off his jacket as he rambled about cheating on an engineering test to get on his first ship, about reversing charges to afford to get all his siblings into the right classes, about being the one that killed Esme’s dansi plant. He’d draped it over Rose’s back and head, letting her cloak herself in fabric.)

Esme’s eyes are still red, and Carlisle looks a hundred years older.

Jasper she cannot look at. She’s been avoiding it since they got onto the ship, since Carlisle forced the masks on them all, pushing oxygen laced with inhalant painkiller, allowed them to clear the pollen from their lungs and tissue.

(“I love you, I always loved you and always will, and that why I hated you so much.”)

(“You didn’t love me enough not to hurt me, and that scared me more than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve been in the ugliest places, I’ve starved and been hunted like an animal, and your rage was what broke me.”)

Emmett had grabbed her by the arm after she dropped the tablet, half dragged her away. He’d been on Jovan before, during the last generation of extremists, back on his first or second ship. The way they executed anyone who came too close to the off-worlders - men, women, children. The ship had lost five people - two had been murdered falling behind during evacuation; one had disappeared, and two had been taken hostage and integrated into the community as some kind of warning or living sacrifice.

“I didn’t really speak much Jovan back then,” Emmett admitted, hoisting her over a fallen tree with one arm, still running. “Did a few trips out here, got to see the before and the after. Hoped the after would stick.”

The Federation had intervened back then, dealt with the extremists and put in place a strict agreement for Jovan. Then it had been a relatively chill place to visit - free fruit and booze, and a hefty Federation pay check. That was the Jovan Emmett had aggressively tried to remember.

“Religion fucks everything up,” Emmett had told her before they had both fallen down the side of a hill and she didn’t get a chance to agree.

(The pollen tasted sharp, and she’s not surprised that her mouth is bloody when she gets back to the ship, that something that could force out their darkest truths did so by burrowing into the soft flesh of their mouths and gums and noses. It’s the taste of the blood that lingers.)

—

She curls up on the bed in the guest suite, the oxygen mask tight over her mouth. Her lungs were still giving her trouble, something that Carlisle was keeping a careful eye on, and over the last few weeks, the feeling of the mask moulded flush over her face has become reassuring, the cool feeling of the oxygen.

There’s nothing that can take back all those things that she said, or the things Jasper said, staring at her desperately. Love and hate and regret and trauma was all twisted up into a mess; when she closes her eyes, she can see his desperate look, his eyes soft, and it’s like the old him is there - the one that made plans with her, that laughed often, and asked her to marry him with a fruit-flavoured kiss, and helped her save the flowers from her hair after the ceremony.

He’s right there, he’s so close, and he might as well be gone forever. And she deserved it. She knew the lie, she lived the lie, and she pretended that whatever they had was worth tucking it away and hiding it, that it was cruel to tell him - as if it wasn’t crueller and sneakier to hide it.

She might fear the rage, the violence that came with the truth, but she deserved it, earned it well. Whatever the others think, she didn’t leave because he scared her or hurt her or anything. She left to punish herself, to make sure he had the safe space. It was always her fuck up that ruined them.

(Sometimes, she dreams of that last night. Of his hand so tight in her hair that he pulled it out, threatening her in a dark voice. She cut her hair off after that, to her chin. Too short to hold her tight and frozen, to tangle around his hands. She’s blocked out everything else from that night, but not that. That memory sticks to her, along with the animal fear she felt, dangling off a precipice of something terrible about to happen.)

The idea that everyone knows everything, all the thoughts in her head that she tucks down and doesn’t talk about makes her feel sick and she wonders where she could go and hide. Call Carlisle’s bluff and get him to send her to a mental health spa. Or even go stay at Masen House for a while, use her health as an excuse. There’s still a few staff at Masen House, so it’s not like Carlisle would be paying for her upkeep specially.

(It wasn’t a death wish, really. She knew the doctors she sought out were, at best, shitty scam-artists who knew that she had no choice but to pay up and accepted whatever standard of care they gave her. And that she was sick again. She was tired, worn out, and done with everything. She didn’t plan to be dead, she just expected it. It’s why she didn’t have any food or water in her bag; seemed like a waste of money. And Jasper… he had the paperwork to prove he was her next of kin, if there was any debate. Her savings could have paid off his fines, a final apology for lying to him. It seemed very, very neat right up until Rose found her semi-conscious and decided to save her and ignored her when she tried to protest.)

Her lens beeps at her - someone wanting to come in - and she expects Carlisle when she absently accepts and the door unlocks.

But it’s Jasper.

She feels very vulnerable as he slips into the room, carrying a drink and a dish with something pink on it.

“Esme found some old dessert in the freeze,” he says awkwardly, setting the drink and plate down. “We thought you might need some.”

She nods. It’s always like this; her tiny and curled up in the big guest bed in flimsy ship-issue sleepwear because she hasn’t gotten around to digging out her old boxes from storage, with an oxy-mask strapped to her face; and Jasper looms over her in clean clothes, his hair tied off his face, looking exactly as he always does.

They haven’t talked since she woke up in med bay with him sitting beside her. Nothing beyond pleasantries, really.

“Thank you.” Her voice is muffled and raspy. He nods.

“…Do you want some company?”

He’s staring at the floor when he says that, and everything in her clenches up in a confusing mess of delight and hope and fear.

There are a million different things that ‘company’ could mean, and she’s just still so tired, she’s not sure she can manage any of them.

She looks at the sweets that Esme sent to her - a little pink sponge-square, with seeds pressed into the top. Sweet, like some kind of fruit-flower hybrid. Made by Esme, humming to herself in the kitchen. It’s a child’s sweet - offered to children from vendors in the parks of most cities - and something about that makes her sad.

“No,” she replies softly and she feels like a monster when Jasper flinches and nods, moving to leave.

“Not yet,” she manages, and that makes him turn back to look at her with desperate, naked hope in his eyes.

“Not yet?” He repeats and she nods. “You… you let me know when, okay?”

She nods, and he leaves, and she closes her eyes and pretends that the idea of ‘when’ isn’t terrifying and thrilling all at the same time.

(“You’re it for me. I love you. And that scares and angers and delights me, and I don’t know if it can ever happen again because of everything we did to each other. I think I ruined the one good thing that I ever had, and that makes me wonder why I even bother.”

The words taste bloody and tears of frustration roll down her face and the dry, angry sounds of Rosalie losing control feel right - raw and real and painful.)

#the twilight saga #alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #year of the otp #yoto23: truth pollen #prompts #my fic: know your guilt #my fic: one-shot #my fic: space-verse

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septembersghost · 1 year

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I really hope harry goes back to his pre hsh style in terms of lyrics for next album. songs like happily,wdbhg and ftdt are lyrically superior to hsh(Matilda and satellite are exception).He used to write "we were meant to be but a twist of fate made it so you had to walk away"(my fav lyric from him). I really miss that harry

i'm going to play lighthearted devil's advocate for you a little, because even though i do understand what you mean, i'd love to help open the album up for you more if i can at all! so, in fairness to h and the massive success of hs3, i do think it was stylized that way for a reason, and as an emblem of what he was trying to do with this record, which was be more evocative and stream-of-consciousness than it was meant to be more poetic or linear. the A-list pop playlist on apple right now says, "'Nothing to say, when everything gets in the way,' Harry sings on As It Was, a standout track from his 2022 LP Harry's House. Leading the way on A-List pop this week [...] it's a song that's bright but gauzy, cheerful but melancholy - all built around a repeating keyboard melody that sounds like it was beamed in from the early 80s. 'in this world, it's just us,' he sings in the chorus, a ravine of synths and twitchy guitars. 'you know it's not the same as it was.'" that's the album, a well of melancholy that could almost swallow you up, but instead edges around it, covers it in gossamer and glistening sounds and bluebird wings and escaping down an open road.

the central idea of hs3 is a kind of lonely yearning - things aren't the same as they were! he's vulnerable and spinning out, sitting on the floor, no good alone - and how to process that, how to find home when it isn't a physical space, how to still find calm in snapshots of memories even if they don't last forever (should we just keep driving?). my friend @lanne13 describes this well when she calls hs3 a "vibes album." he was setting a mood - a kitchen table, even - for us to sit down and have tea with honey and dance in the sunbeams through the hurt/anxiety, and just exist for 13 songs. it's more about the emotive feeling. it doesn't have a cohesive story like fine line (even though it's more "sonically cohesive") because it's a scrapbook instead. it's like he's reaching a hand out to us and saying, hey, things in the world have been overwhelming and isolated, would you like to come in and look at some photos? we sit together in that space for a moment.

harry's showed evolution and a different approach to his music on every record, which is cool to see and makes it hard to predict what he might do next, but i really do believe he'll play with other approaches to lyricism again. i think this album was supposed to exist at this very specific space and time, responding to the past two years, and the next one will be something new altogether.

#my toxic trait being that now that i'm used to the lyricism on hs3 i find it really comforting 🙈#this also plays into polly and my discussion last night about simpler lyrics working to convey different things #i get what you mean though and it's totally fine you feel that way but i hope someday there's warmth in the album for you too <3 #anonymous #letterbox #harry's house #harry styles

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riftwalker-limbro · 1 year

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bike ride today so i have roach thoughts to offer

roach comes back from duviri all sorts of confused and angry:

they did that? to themselves?

why did they do that? -> self loathing & hatred & also a smidge of fear of what they're capable of, fear of the apparent power of their own emotions -> will likely tune out of reality a lot to cope

a confusing mix of powerless & powerful (which are both somewhat invalid because it was always only their own imagination they were going up against - of course the duviri dax soldiers would always be stronger than them no matter how hard they tried, they were just built that way)

hatred and rage at all the time they've lost, wasted - all the suffering they've undergone for no reason (you survived buddy. that was the point)

shame and guilt for all of the above. you'll have to pry information about duviri out of them with a crowbar.

so when they come onboard ordis' shiny new(ly refurbished) squad-sized orbiter and find a bunch of people who are generally upbeat about their circumstances and somehow happy to see them (a danger, a liability) they just go. nu uh. and self-isolate to Not Contaminate the Vibe & not get their own racing thoughts too off track, because it does feel important that they process what happened, but they don't even know where to start and every time they try they go into a spiral - roach is very busy in their own head and generally angry towards people who try to interact with them (except for kelth).

and this hits wrong notes with several of the other residents. but then pule, who's taken being good at jokes to a professional level and knows it, tries to defuse the general permanent tension around roach with a stupid joke. and he miscalculates, very hard, and the joke does the complete opposite of landing - it pretty much explodes, roach explodes on him, threatens to stab him in Vulnerable Locations with Rumblejack, and then Disappears.

pule is very shaken (and feeling Horrible about this) so calls together the warframes (+ kelth) and they form a plan - they're gonna try see if roach would accept reverse transference therapy: a warframe soothing a tenno (equivalent). kelth brings it up with them because roach is most likely to take it seriously when it's coming from kelth. kelth does not tell them it was pule's idea.

roach is Very Tentative about it and mostly thinks it's interesting for the same reason that margulis locked away the tenno powers: they're afraid that they're out of control, and having a lens like a warframe to focus their power through sounds temptingly safe.

they first try out bruiser, but his raw power and ability to facetank most kinds of shit kind of causes them to go into a frenzy not unlike a duviri anger spiral - they go utterly berserk and bruiser is Not up for that so this test is called off.

next, they try out sufford. now, when i played the quest i obviously picked excalibur, so i think it'd be nice if roach also did that - let's say that in the main timeline, sufford has some Naps in between discovering the Zariman (post following about why specifically that point) and the new war, that kelth can't wake him up out of. helminth says he's just having some really deep dreams and kelth accepts that, still a bit suspicious. after TNW sufford doesn't have any more of these weird dreams so kelth kind of forgets about it (there's a Lot to keep track of). anyway, roach tries out sufford, and finds the same problems they had with him in duviri - he's too disciplined, too adherent to rules, too focused on stances and proper combat and - everything's just too fucking clean and cut neatly. battle isn't a fight with sufford, not even a dance - it's just a methodical routine. (this isn't to say that sufford doesn't enjoy his way of fighting - he does, a lot, and he enjoys the perfection he's brought his skills to - it's just not roach's speed)

vince isn't even on the docket for this one because he's not a fighter so they skip him altogether. he is Fine with this. i hope to wrangle everyone into a position where roach and vince Can just hang out together sometime doing something non-fighting, because i've literally defined vince as having cat energy and roach is also somewhat going in that direction, and i think that would be fun. but not for fighting.

verica has too much bullshit going on in her fighting style for roach to keep track of. there's- music and a ball rolling around and the beat and- nope. too much stuff that's only tangentially combat related. roach needs something simpler.

kali also isn't an option because- well. Reasons.

last is pule, and neither roach nor pule has been looking forward to this. roach, because they Don't Like This Guy since the stupid miscalculation of a joke, and pule, because tbh he's kind of scared after The Threats. but, sure, he can give them a show of how he works on a battlefield. and it's- the right amount of control over the battlefield, the right amount of self-support that makes him hard to down in addition to enough strength to dominate a decently sized group of enemies, and enough visual confirmations of his abilities - tendrils, maggots, infesting surfaces temporarily - that keep roach grounded into reality.

it also helps that pule can relate to feeling a bit like a monster - at least, in roach's case, on the inside.

#duviri spoilers #roach #warframe spoilers #pule #rotating #things were getting a little too cozy in here. time for angst #rift lore

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time-to-write-and-suffer · 1 year

Note

Fic linked here! And also PM is up again and updated pretty recently with New Content if ur still into that 🥺

Omg i read the fic and I really enjoyed it! It wa sso good!! And I'm off to reread some of PM before I go to sleep. Your writing is so enjoyable and your art is amazing. 👀

I love the way you write characters and the character voice so I was wondering if you had any advice regarding characterisation. 😊

Aaw, thank you! ❤ I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's the first fic I've ever posted online so that means a lot! ^^ Hope you like PM as well c:

I wish I had advice for you, but unfortunately everything in a first draft is just vibe-based and I only write consciously once I start rewriting and editing things down. Almost everything I post online is first draft stuff, and while I'm happy that some people think it's decent already, it unfortunately makes it hard to identify what exactly it is I'm doing, lmao.

But my approach to characters and characterization is pretty simple.

First: I generally rely on archetypes. Not tropes, that's a different thing that can also work, but archetypes. Having different archetypes to base your OCs on helps to distinguish them from each other in the story and in your brain. It also lets you introduce tension and low-level conflict early on. I'm also not necessarily talking about existing archetypes, but ones you make up in your head, about a particular OC. Take the most bastardized, flanderized version of your OC. Start with that and work backwards to figure out why they might be seen like this extreme version of them, what might lead them to be like this or to be perceived like this.

Second: I don't make huge casts from the start, so that lets me keep track of people and keep them distinct within the story.

Third: I try to keep in mind who the character is in everything they do. It sounds more difficult than it is, really. I generally just feel it out, but you can also write up a character sheet or do similar exercises so you have a reference to go back to. This isn't perfect, and sometimes you'll have to rewrite things to be more in-character (I did this a LOT with faery wip), which is totally fine and encouraged!

Fourth: I must also know the character's role in the world and the story before I write them, so everyone has some sort of purpose. This never works out perfectly from the start, so I often add or remove characters in edits.

Fifth: My main cheat is that I usually dump several characters of varying importance at the start and have them bounce off each other as an introduction to them and their world. People usually advise against this because you "overwhelm" the reader, but it's pretty useful for establishing character dynamics and thus characterization. Landing the first impression does a lot to convince the reader, and lays a lot of the groundwork for future characterization. The thing you want to avoid is frontloading information and treating every character as equally important.

Sixth: I put characters in situations to test them out. Both in the story itself but also as an unconscious writing exercise. Put them in a situation, preferably together, and see how they react. That's when they come out of their shells, not when you think of them in isolation. Want to know how to distinguish this one gruff assassin from your other gruff assassin from the same story and world? Imagine them talking to each other, or fighting, or competing for the same mark. Do they have different fighting styles? Are they perhaps gruff for different reasons? Perhaps one of them isn't gruff at all, and you've just figured out how to write them both by figuring out how not to write one of them! Fiction thrives on conflict, IMO, and by putting your blorbos in situations, you challenge them and force them to show themselves.

Hope this helped in some way! :')

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justplainwhump · 2 years

Note

for tyler: 18? 19? 34? 49? 69?

Content: BBU, whumper who doesn't see himself as problematic at all.

Tyler is a young WRU handler from [Angel's story]. Questions are from [this list].

Favorite punishment method?

"That makes it sound like I'm some sort of sadist. I'm not. I don't like punishment at all, and luckily with Handler Nguyen we don't administer it a lot. We use positive reinforcement. If I have to punish 238, I don't know... I guess that sounds weird, but... I guess my favourite are the ones where I don't have to look into her eyes? Isolation, sensory deprivation, that sort. The shock collar is fine, too, because I can keep a distance. I, uh. Yeah. Whatever."

Least favorite punishment method?

"Violence. I know some of the, uh, guys are really into beating up a trainee, or having some other trainee beat the one to be punished? It's pretty disgusting. I couldn't ever enjoy that."

How do you sleep at night?

"Good enough, I guess? I mean, it's been really hot outside lately, and my room goes to the railway tracks so, uh. Yeah, maybe I don't sleep well, but it really has nothing to do with my job, if that's what you mean. I'm pretty sure."

If you were to be forced to face the consequences of your actions, would you accept them?

"It's legal. WRU does perfectly legal business, whatever some of these pet lib guys on twitter say." There's some light sweat on his brow, probably because of the heat in his room. "I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, I do my job. The uh. The stuff that potentially could be... disputed, that happens before us handlers come in, anyway. I'm good. I do everything by the book."

Have you ever considered stopping?

"Have I..." He bites his lip. "Yeah. Of course. But... I guess once you're in, you're in. I'm part of it. And I want to stay on the handler side of things." He chuckles nervously. "I mean, that's like urban legends and all. But... my employer has ways to ensure loyalty. I guess. Like every big company has. Capitalism, right? That's how it is."

#bbu #Tyler ask #ask

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astraeal · 2 years

Text

hunted

ship: e. aster bunnymund/jack frost rating: explicit a/n: again, heavy headcanoning, but basically in this au pitch successfully corrupted jack during the arctic scene, and aster was already dark and terrifying prior to the events of the movie.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

Dark oak leaves trail against his haunches as he moves through the undergrowth. Dark paws churn over dark earth, muffled and silent with every step. He steps with a limp, throat clenched between fangs, dragging the carcass back towards their den. Jack had been extra skittish recently, and Aster hopes the fresh kill helps to bring him back down to himself.

The events of the past few weeks had weighed heavily on them both. Isolation does not fit the winter spirit, and Aster has to remind himself of that with every step. He needs to see other people, even though they would not view him the same way as they had before the corruption. It’s not his fault — but Aster has always been this way.

Jack had it forced upon him.

He brings the deer carcass to the front and then drops it, licking his fangs of blood. Ears perk forward and he waits for the inevitable sound of Jack running towards him. But he hears … nothing.

Cold slush fills his veins, and he slowly lowers his nose to the ground, sniffing for a few moments, before scenting the air. Wintergreen fresh air – stale, now, but there – flows out of the den, towards the forest. The Warren knows not to let Jack go, but Aster needs to find him. Abandoning the corpse, he turns and bolts, moving quickly and silently, ears straining for any noise, whiskers waiting for any cold wind that crosses his path.

He knows he won’t be too late, but he still worries. Who knows what could happen to his doe while he’s without protection?

He tracks him to where a small blizzard is beginning, killing the clearing of any life. Aster prowls through it, blood soaked paws dipping into the frozen slick covering of snow. He makes his way halfway to the winter spirit before chuffing towards him, announcing his presence without getting too close to the moon-eyed spirit.

Jack lays on his back in the midst of the blizzard, and he twists his body as he hears Aster’s chuff.

“Finally come to kill me?” comes the teasing response. “How exciting.”

He approaches, having seen that at least Jack is with it enough to chirp back at him. Soft lethality on gentle clawed paws, Aster pulls Jack flush against him, heedless of the blood smearing upon his jacket. He tucks his doe’s head beneath his chin and rubs him there, red smearing into white.

“You left,” he rumbles, heart racing behind a bone cage. “Why.”

Jack hums for a moment, seemingly unsure of what to say. “I needed to get out, so I went for a walk.”

“You need to tell me.” His mouth is not meant for speech such as this, ancient as it is, but he does what he must for his doe. He checks him over, inspecting him, before sitting him down in the snow and beginning to nuzzle over his abdomen and thighs, making sure no harm had come to him as it had the last time Aster hadn’t been there for him.

“Why? Because Pitch is out there? He’s not in the Warren, Aster. I mean, what’s he going to do to me that he hasn’t already done?”

Aster knows this. Pitch took an innocence from him, took the fun and playful side of winter and turned it into something dark. A snowflake with a razors edge. The other Guardians had turned their backs, but Aster was the only one to see past the corruption.

Small hands push insistently against the inspecting muzzle, signaling that he’s fine and over the gesture. “Why are you covered in blood?”

Disgruntled, he finally allows Jack to push him away. He sits back on his haunches, sitting tall, towering over the winter spirit. “You need to tell me when you aren’t happy. So I may fix.” A pause, and then, “I hunted. Food is at the den.”

“I’m happy,” Jack replies, laying back in the snow, hands folded behind his head. “Are you happy?”

Aster leans down over Jack, not wanting to pin him in but not completely satisfied with Jack having shoved him away. He sneaks a few more nuzzles in, even as he answers, “I am happy. I have my doe.”

How to explain that having his doe with him is all that he needs? That he could simply have Jack and nothing else and live a fulfilling life? He is used to solitude — Jack is not. So of course he wouldn’t be content in this same way.

“What ever would you do without me, Bunny?” Jack laughs, mostly to himself. There’s a pause, and then, “You know Pitch can’t get me in here, right?” Jack asks, looking up at his buck, eyes glowing bright.

He knows this, logically. But even still, he cannot help but wonder what so much darkness will bring when Pitch recovers his strength. “I know,” he says quietly, tail twitching behind him. “But one should never tempt fate.”

Read the rest here!

#jackrabbit #e. aster bunnymund #jack frost #rise of the guardians #rotg

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blue-kyber · 2 years

Text

Ok.

Looks like I'm in big trouble.

Being out of work for Covid hit me harder than I'd thought.

Work only paid me for the five days I was out to isolate. Not the extra 5 days I had to stay out due to still testing positive for the antigen test. I had to be out for a total of 14 days before I tested negative. Work wouldn't let me back until they got that negative test.

Considering I'm a server in a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant and I'm nose to nose with people, that's the requirement.

I've been very careful working in a restaurant to keep myself, my coworkers, and my customers safe. It took until June 14th for me to test positive for Covid for the first time.

Every single day since this began has been a major stress game of Russian Roulette with every person what walked through that door.

And then they scheduled me for only 3 days.

They only scheduled me for two days this upcoming week.

I've already begged them to give me more time. My manager said, "I'll try" which we all know means "Likely not" in restaurant business lingo.

My rent is due on the 15th in 3 days. I rent a room out of someone's apartment, and my rent is $1200/mo.

The person I rent from is out of touch with the world, and will likely try to evict me.

I have $388 in my bank account as of this moment in time.

There is no way in hell I can make $900 to cover rent, and give myself enough to put gas in the car and buy food until my next paycheck.

I'm also on Indeed and Glassdoor searching for a new or second job, because what they're doing to me is just stupid.

I was on the edge, but supporting myself just fine before I got Covid. :(

And my birthday is next Sunday.

SO.......

I'm pimping out my voice.

If you have a short story you would like to have narrated, an article, a kids book, a romance story, a short fan fiction, - whatever it is (just not porn) - let me know.

I have a professional setup at home, since I narrate audiobooks for Audible. The approval standards for ACX are high, so you can be guaranteed quality sound.

I have formal voice training in both singing and voice acting with industry renowned coaches like Julie Klewer, and Tony Oliver (Bang! Zoom! Ent. post production. usually deals with anime, but also other things.) I've done walla work for them before.

I have an acting background. I'm a trained actor and improvisational artist, and have been told I have a nice voice.

I will narrate your short story or poem or fan fiction, ect, engineer it, and deliver it in a WAV format or an MP3 format through Dropbox for large files.

I can add some music (I pay for an Epidemic Sound subscription to use their music on YT, but if you want to post that music on your channel, you'd need to get one.). But for your own use, go nuts. :)

My ACX profile has me at $100 - $200 per hour of finished audio (what you would hear in an audiobook.) So far I've only had royalty share gigs.

So, here's what I'm thinking - because narrating and engineering the audio takes time....

Poems: $15/each

Short stories up to 1000 words: $25

Short stories up to 5000 words: $50.

Added background music: $5 extra per track.

Here's a sample of what I sound like for the last audiobook I narrated and engineered:

And this is from a Star Wars Podcast I did where I am both the translator droid T4-ZO, and the background singer at Jabba's Palace. They gave me a Huttese dictionary and a backing track and told me to go nuts. The lyrics actually mean something. They translate to an actual song with verses and a chorus. I literally riffed the melody off the top of my head for a good 5 minutes. They used what they liked. If you can help, please, please send me an ask. Anons work, too.

If you can't, don't worry. It's ok. :) You can share this.

Thank you, guys.

You know I never ask for this. I can usually take care of myself. This is just a really, really, dire situation. :(

If you'd like, here's my paypal.

Thank you so much. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍

#writing #writeblr #doing something I hate to do and yet here I am #I have skills to trade.#I need some help #audiobook narrator #Will read your poem or short story #I have experience in narration and audio engineering.#I'm in need of help BUT I want to give you my skill and training and time and talent in return.#voice acting #star wars #historical fiction #I've improved since these recordings.

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child-of-the-cataclysm · 10 months

Text

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Through Khemora's Eyes

CONTENT WARNING: This chapter contains potentially upsetting content described from first-person. Readers are strongly encouraged to only read this chapter in a steady enough headspace to get through something quite rough.

Plink, plink, plink.

The sound of water, dripping from the windowslit and down into a puddle on the stone below.

Plink, plink, plink.

The marker of time progressing, bit by bit. Inconsistent, lacking in the regularity one needed to actually track that time, but all I really had.

Plink, plink, plink.

When it rained, time sped up for me. When there was a period without rain, time dragged on.

Plink, plink, plink.

In the periods without rain, I tried to speculate about why there was any water to drip at all. It was difficult, through everything they did to me, but I made my efforts.

Plink, plink, plink.

Eventually I decided wherever it was I was being held, there must be some sort of flowing water system above me. Probably so the rich folks I occasionally heard partying overhead could wash themselves without needing to go down to the well like a normal person.

Plink, plink, plink.

If it weren’t for having seen Metka and heard her testimony before, I wouldn’t have understood just what was happening. Somewhere nearby, my captors had a Child. One of my siblings in spirit, bound to something darker and stranger. Whoever they were, whoever they had been, they were now a tool for Morati, throwing the silver world onto others to extend their torture indefinitely.

Plink, plink, plink.

I was lucky, in honesty. Had the Child Morati had in his grasp been as skilled as Flick, the dilation I was experiencing would be far worse.

Plink, plink, plink.

Even still, it was often days before my captors would bring me water and food. It felt for all the world as if Morati had fine-tuned it, figuring out exactly how much time I was experiencing and sending only just what I needed to barely survive.

Plink, plink, plink.

Dehydrated and starving constantly, living in an empty stone cell with the Eye above my constant companion. Every so often the dark one or the green-eyed hulk would come in, the dilation ceasing for just long enough for me to endure a beating or an injection of some burning chemical or a piece of my body being ripped away.

Plink, plink, plink.

Most days I simply lay on the floor. The sound of the water, I thought, was likely driving me mad.

Plink, plink, plink.

Of course, mad was relative. The torture and isolation, the endless expanse of time itself before me, the dragon deep in my heart slowly spreading itself outwards, the dryness of my mouth and emptiness of my stomach… Any of these things could have driven one mad.

Plink, plink, plink.

Sometimes, I heard the Eye speak. Not so much physically. The sound didn’t come to my ears. I simply heard it in my mind. Lek had once mentioned to us around a campfire that in the wyldlands, you couldn’t see the Eye. To him it seemed bizarre, like some kind of eldritch deity we had simply accepted because it was always there.

Plink, plink, plink.

Of course, everyone who had been taught even remotely effectively knew that the Eye was just as much a natural part of the world as the moon or the sun or the stars. Every serious astrologer had long since decided that it was a natural stellar body, locked in step with our planet and the universe around us like any other.

Plink, plink, plink.

Lek thought otherwise. Lek thought it had been placed in the sky somehow by someone from our world, back before the Cataclysm. Lek thought it had some sinister purpose which was as-yet unseen.

Plink, plink, plink.

The voice of the Eye came sporadically, infrequently, whispering in the back of my mind of ages past and heroes dead and gone. It spoke of the scattering of my friends to the four winds, the descent of lead-spitters across all slices of the Shattered Kingdoms, and of the ascendancy of Morati within our own.

Plink, plink, plink.

Then it would be gone. Sometimes, I would hear the voice of the dragon I would become, grumbling about how slow things were moving these days. For that, I was almost grateful.

Plink, plink, plink.

The dark one came again. They were the worse of the two Morati had saddled me with. The green-eyed one would only ever beat me. The dark one seemed to revel in coming up with new and terrible ways to hurt me. Today, it seemed, a toxin was the name of the game.

Plink, plink, plink.

I curled up on the floor in agony, clutching at my knees, my arms, my stomach, raking my fingernails - carved by the dragon’s slow but ever-present growth into twisted yellowing claws - across my own flesh, the stone around me, anything. The pain was unbearable, impossible, twisting and weaving through each vein, leaving me drenched in sweat and piss and blood. My cries for help, for death, for anything but this fell on deaf ears if they were heard at all, until my throat was so hoarse and bloody from the screaming that I could not cry out any longer. Slowly, painfully, I reached the point of being unable to even continue to clutch and claw as my muscles spasmed and twitched with exhaustion and pain all at once. I could not curl up on the floor. I could only lay there, still but for the twitching brought on by the toxin. Through the window the Eye stared down at me. Through the bars of the cell, so too did the dark one, a sharp-toothed grin soaking in my agony.

Plink, plink, plink.

Slowly, day by day and week by week, I found myself less and less able to move even in the days where I wasn’t poisoned or ripped apart or beaten within an inch of my life. Even when I had food and water, to move expended energy I simply no longer had.

Plink, plink, plink.

So I began to simply lie there, unmoving, feeling my body waste away. Years of muscle forged first in the training of my friends - my family - and later in the fires of war withered away.

Plink, plink, plink.

I couldn’t completely decay. The dragon within wouldn’t allow it. Trapped in this twisted version of the silver world, the dragon couldn’t regrow my flesh fast enough to keep me functional, but it could prevent my death. I grew to hate it quickly.

Plink, plink, plink.

Occasionally, in my more cogent moments, I managed to worry about my friends. I knew they had escaped Morati at first, but had he discovered that? Were they still safe? Had they begun rebuilding the Hand, or had our utter defeat disheartened them? Were they out there looking for me? Were they dead?

Plink, plink, plink.

I tried drinking the water, once. I threw up for hours, after. They had poisoned it, somehow, made it undrinkable without making my life even worse.

Plink, plink, plink.

It was intentional, I think, the leak. Between its noise and the tantalising closeness of the water my captors so denied me, between their withholding of water until I absolutely needed it and their poisoning of this drip, it had to be intentional. It had to be.

Plink, plink, plink.

The Eye spoke to me again. It spoke of a directive, of lost masters and lost friends. The weave of its metal shifted and spun when it did. It remained a rough sphere, but the pattern on its surface was new and different. I fixated on it for a time, my mind feebly attempting to bring back some piece of its old deductive powers to find meaning in the pattern.

Plink, plink, plink.

Green-eyes came with food and water. I struggled to push myself up enough to eat and drink. Shamefully, I found I could no longer lift the tray, and had to instead lap at the water and bite down the food like an animal. When I was done, she beat me with the tray until I was broken, bruised, and bleeding.

Plink, plink, plink.

Morati came by. For a moment, I tricked myself into believing there was some shadow of regret on his face, but it could only have been a trick of my memory - of the Nileas who once was. He tried to speak with me, to strike up a conversation so that he could gloat about his conquests and how his victory had settled into place. I could not respond, even if I wanted to, and so I contented myself with glaring at him.

Plink, plink, plink.

Overhead, I heard the sounds of another ball. Rhythmic steps, locked in innumerable pairs, with the gentle sound of music.

Plink, plink, plink.

When the ball was done, Morati led his guests down past my cell. Finely dressed nobles, each clad in bright colours, frilly lace, and feathers, each with a face full of makeup painting them in shades of Morati himself, paraded past me, making a show of mock horror and disgust at the fallen leader of the group which dared to stand against Morati. Some few I recognized from my time in the box, being dragged to the capital by Rahkor. They looked richer, now.

Plink, plink, plink.

This time, when the Eye spoke, the dragon responded.

Plink, plink, plink.

When the Eye spoke, it spoke of freedom. The dragon inside stirred at the sound of it, and responded with a roar. Inside, it was immense, the sort of roar which once stopped Flick and I in our tracks. Dribbling weakly from my lips, it barely sounded like a squeak.

Plink, plink, plink.

The Eye told me of a gap in the security Morati had layered overtop of me. A tiny oversight in the overlapping patterns of patrol and overwatch, through which something might be slipped. In my pain, weakness, and exhaustion, I could barely register the thought of ever leaving this spot on the floor, but the dragon latched onto it, driving the knowledge of the gap home somewhere in my chest.

Plink, plink, plink.

As if in response to the communication between the Eye and the dragon, a third eye slid open on my forehead, refusing to close again now that it had come without bidding. In the reflection of the puddle on the ground of the cell, I saw its iris burning amethyst.

Plink, plink, plink.

Had days passed? Weeks? Months? Years? By watching the reflections in the Eye, I could tell the difference - however slight - between day and night, but the stone of my cell resisted all my efforts to record its passage. The water kept my time, such as it was, but would not record that which had passed. I found myself wishing for it all to end, even if that meant death.

Plink, plink, plink.

Slowly, miserably, my muscles withered down to nothing. Dehydration and starvation, combined with the drugs they intermittently gave me and the beatings of the green-eyed one left me unable to move without agony. The less I moved, the more my body decayed. The more my body decayed, the less I could move.

Plink, plink, plink.

I lost teeth, and the dragon grew me new ones. I cut my tongue on them more than once before I learned to keep it back.

Plink, plink, plink.

My hair began to fall out, strand by strand at first, then in larger clumps. The dragon grew me new hair, shimmering white as if all the colour had been drained of it.

Plink, plink, plink.

Skin that was once the standard brown of humankind began to lose its lustre. Bit by bit, colour faded away until I was as pale as Riota.

Plink, plink, plink.

Thinking of Riota was a mistake. Thinking of my family, out there in the world without my support, without the forces we had built to keep them safe… It only made things worse.

Plink, plink, plink.

I stopped wishing I was dead and began to believe that I had already died. Old pre-cataclysm stories of life after death, eternal torture, and the beings which inflicted it echoed in my mind. Perhaps the dark one was a demon after all.

Plink, plink, plink.

Green-eyes came again, feeding me by hand and tipping water into my mouth. I couldn’t do it on my own anymore, even if I had the will to do so. When she was done, she kicked me in the side until I vomited it back up.

Plink, plink, plink.

I lay in my own filth day in and day out. The smell was worse than anything I had ever experienced. Even the stench of blood and iron and death laying over a battlefield couldn’t compare.

Plink, plink, plink.

Enough chemicals had been injected into me that my body twitched and spasmed regularly, even when nothing was currently working its way through my system. Every so often, I would think it was gone at last, only for my head to twitch to the side, bashing against the stone and leaving a new bruise and a new line of trickling blood.

Plink, plink, plink.

My blood was the wrong colour. The life had gone out of it, leaving it sludgy and blackened. It wasn’t quite as vibrantly black as the dark one’s, it wouldn’t show through the skin, but when it was drawn by one of them or by my own spasms, it came out slow and dark. I was dying from the inside out.

Plink, plink, plink.

Something different finally came. Somehow, something had slipped through the gap the Eye had told me of. For a few blessed moments, stretched out infinitely long by Morati’s strange Child, the fox was here, pawing at the bars to my cell. The sound of someone at the door to the hall sent it scampering away, but my old friend, fur just as lustrous and silver as ever, had found the Eye’s way through to me.

Plink, plink, plink.

The water dripped down, over and over. Constant. Everpresent.

Plink, plink, plink.

Its purpose was to extinguish the flame of hope. To keep it from returning from that ember, and to tamp my spirit down while the rest of this place broke me.

Plink, plink, plink.

But if the fox had slipped its way through, certainly it could guide another.

Plink, plink, plink.

I pushed myself weakly along the floor of the cell, dragging myself along the stone until I reached the wall and pushed myself into a seated position. My eyes locked on their greater cousin in the sky.

Plink, plink, plink.

Whispers echoing through my mind spoke of hope, of a way through, of an end to the suffering. The dragon inside would keep me alive. I needed only to keep my mind from decaying alongside my body.

Plink, plink, plink.

The silver of my eyes in the puddle had faded, I could now see. The water showed me. They all mirrored the third, now. My eyes burned crystal-pure, fire-hot, with all the rage of a dragon.

Plink, plink, plink.

Slow breaths. Keep fixed on the Eye. Wait for the embers to be ignited. Wait for the fire to rage. Wait to rage alongside it.

Plink, plink, plink.

Piece by piece, I gave myself over to the dragon. The more of me it suffused, the more of my body would remain functional. I wouldn’t risk too much. I couldn’t. I needed my mind.

Plink, plink, plink.

Every piece of blue-black flesh was one more portion of my body I could rely on when the fires came. Every inch of vein which burned with purple fire was one more which could respond when the time came.

Plink, plink, plink.

We all make sacrifices to keep hope alive. I would rather sacrifice myself than another.

#CotC

0 notes

dearcraziness · 10 months

Text

Chapter 1.

It was quiet, not a sound was heard in the whole studio. However, there will be lots of funny noises, as usual. The rooms and corridor were not very brightly lit, but this didn't prevent Bendy and his friends from having very interesting time together. The surroundings seemed dark and gloomy. It was only in the interior of the rooms, nothing more. If a stranger had entered and seen the gray-yellow walls, the dull wooden floor, they would certainly have thought that they were in the most depressing place in the world, which was far from the truth. The creatures living here, called "ink creatures" or "monsters", had a great time every day, enjoying singing songs or drawing pictures. Often the word "monster" causes negative impressions, for example, fear or contempt. But black and white cartoon characters were created as such, and they chose kindness and sincerity instead of rage and urge to destroy. They didn't want to create chaos at all, because they knew that they already had the most important in their whole existence - each other. Nevertheless, terrible things were meant to appear... People who have drawn the characters and brought them to life have done terrible things...

One fine day, Bendy discovered something new in the recording studio. In general, the imp found reasons to have fun every day. He was constantly illuminated by new grandiose plans and ideas, which he shared with Boris and Lara. Today was no exception.

"Guys, let's go quickly!" he exclaimed with impatience. "I have to show you something!"

"I hope I didn't wake up at five o'clock in the morning in vain." Boris remarked sleepily.

"Don't even doubt it!" Bendy confirmed. - You will definitely like it!"

They went down the wide wooden steps. The friends approached the vocal room, isolated from the rest of the room by the additional wall. This is where friends used to record their voices.

"Here, take a look," showed Bendy. "The device located opposite the microphone can not only record sounds, but also add different effects! For example, I can record a song in reverse form or make a montage, and also remake our tracks or combine them together."

"So you woke us up to show what you were going to do?" mechanic emphasized the penultimate verb.

"Exactly." Bendy confirmed, ignoring his friend's reproach.

"Oh, it would be great to hear the sound of one of our songs in reverse," Laura said. "Quite an interesting device."

"Have you also noticed what an amazing range for creativity it expands?" the musician smiled. "We'll definitely experiment with the sound overlays."

"What I'm more interested in is how did all this come before us?" the girl asked quietly.

"If it appeared, then it was necessary for someone. Why guess?" Boris asked. "I'm much more concerned about where my gloves are. I'm going to look for them."

Then he left the recording studio, looking under each chair and pulling gears and tools out of boxes - what if the loss is there?

"Hmm, aren't they on the table in his room?" Lara thought.

Bendy chuckled.

"Let him remember. He'll find them anyway." he smiled.

The girl smiled back at him.

"You know, Bendy, I have to tell you something..."

Bendy froze.

"I think I wanted to tell you something too..." he said and immediately blushed.

"Remember when I said I didn't have my own songs? Actually, I've written a couple of tunes, but I can't show them yet. I hope you'll understand..."

Bendy immediately came to his senses.

"Oh, of course, you can keep your creative ideas secret and share them only when you feel ready! Just know that I will support any of your endeavors." he replied good-naturedly.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Well, see you soon then..."

"See you at lunch..."

Before leaving the room, Lara turned around and smiled at the young man. Bendy waved after her.

Mixed feelings of joy, sadness, embarrassment, and dreaminess crowded into his heart. But he knew one thing for sure - there was a lot of good events ahead of them... After all, their world is especially noticeably sparkling with magic and miracles.

#bendy and the ink machine

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papers-from-a-ghost · 1 year

Text

American Boyfriend is the best album I’ve ever had the chance to listen to. I found it last year by complete accident and now I’m listening to it for the hundredth time while fixing up my bag. There's no school today, but I’m still coming in. Why? VP duties probably. I'm hoping that when i arrive, i just have it turn out that there was no reason to be here, and proceed to go back home to probably do something that'll waste time.

In the timeframe between my bag and the bus, I get another update from my Instagram.

Red and Leo followed Aaron on Instagram. See their posts.

I'm not sure who Aaron is, but I guess there was nothing much to do at the moment. I click on their profile, there's only two posts. One of them is some video I didn't have time to really watch all the way through, and the other is a compilation of a few of my friends hanging out. I know my friends hang out whenever without me, but I feel bad every time I see them be happier without me. I'm not selfish, just secluded. In particular amongst them, J, as even til now I don't understand why he avoids me in a way that shows visible disdain - or annoyance - in his eyes. Its been like that since the first day I joined the group, but even my closest in that group, C, feels lost on that fact.

The interlude to the next song ends as I get on the bus, with everyone staring as if I’d done something wrong. Its weird to see an 11th grade come in on a day they wouldn't go. But I just shuffle to the back of the bus and drift off to sleep.

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

I'm walking down the track again, with the large field to my right bathing in sunlight for once at initial arrival. There was still a hint of uncertainty in the fact that I was given not much instruction by the moderator about today, other than to be here.

"..."

Then.

Suddenly, a staring contest. Across the track, a boy who's a head shorter than me, with thin pastoral glasses, and a stare that a stand-up would die to have. It was surprising to see them, my boyfriend, just bump into me not even 5 minutes into entering school, but it was even more of that when we started a chase. He had an unfair advantage of zero heavy baggage, but i still manage to get close within arm’s reach at the end of the tracks; and the second floor stairs; and the fourth; ending by the third door to your left.

"You, you're stupid-." I exchange intimately.

"..and you? u a bii- "

Our personal language is more on being dumb if anything, but I think we both find it cute that way. He laughs, I do so lightly, and we proceed to find ourselves in calming isolation for a while. He found me during the preparations of a mini-festival we did last year, where he played piano and I helped in the props and sound department. We'd walk back home together at that time, and a bit of me knew where he was going, figuratively.

Things didn't escalate any further until the next big project, an original play, where we started to be honest with eachother. We supported eachother, were there for eachother, and eventually left marks only we could see above the cloth. He's special to me, because he sees something that i can't - or bear - to witness.

"is it 4:20?" he asks

"yeah, I think we should fix up”

“you gonna check if miss is here?”

“of course.”

We didn't do anything for the record, much to the dismay of the CCTV that was watching us. We only just sat next to eachother as the sun rises in the windows. A few light kisses, yes, but more than tame compared to what other couples have been doing in this school, and this school had scandals go to court during junior years. Though enough ranting's to be said as we split off to our own work. I walk right, then straight, nudge to the left a bit as to give way to passerbys, turn right again, move straight to the faculty desk, and miss isn't here. The club moderator that asked me to be here, isn't here.

Its fine, its fine, there's still time to wait for 30 minutes maximum. I grab a book from the nearby library, and read it until there lies a paper heart in soft maroon between the pages. I beginning writing for the first draft of a third chapter to some random day and have it be cutoff by its continuation.

"-so miss said she made a mistake" my boyfriend says, as a surprise.

"...what"

"she made a mistake with the dates."

The thing that made the most sense, what was being hoped for in the blue hours of the day, became true. The wish has come true, but i felt compelled to stay for no particular reason.

"actually serious for a second, do you think i could help you guys with your work for a bit?"

"do you mean the props? are you sure? you could really go back home at anytime."

I don't really like home, or house if we're being really honest. If anything, I feel like home is someplace far from my house.

"Its fine! plus I get to help a dumbass."

"fuck u"

"love you too"

And so, 11 hours went by with me helping out my same friend group that happened to be part of the props department, and other higher levels, and somehow the day didn't feel wasted. The album reaches its main track, American Boyfriend, and I soon leave the school to meet my bedsheets face-first. Maybe the next day will be the same uphill battle to do something though, maybe I'll find out when I wake up then.

#writing #bad writing #novel #writers on tumblr #new here #new to tumblr #god help me how can i write better than this sh-#needs improvement

0 notes

seijorhi · 3 years

Text

nostos.

well it’s not exactly monster fucking but um... here there be monsters.

Kuroo Tetsurou x female reader

TW implied non-con, nsfw-ish, blood, gore, minor character death, animal death, um somebody gets munched...

Every good writer needs peace and quiet. Fresh air and a change of scenery.

You’re not running away, it’s more of a… tactical retreat. Two weeks disconnected from well meaning friends, pushy family members and your eternally irritating editor, with nothing but the beautiful, sprawling forests to keep you company.

The mountains are familiar, if isolating, you think, leaning against the porch railing with a warm mug in hand as the breeze picks up and the tall maple and birch trees rustle in response. The leaves are turning vibrant reds and gold with the falling temperatures and even in the eerie quiet of the cold morning, you can’t deny that it’s breathtaking.

It reminds you of your childhood, the countless vacations you’d spent here with your family, always in autumn, always in time to watch the leaves change before the first snows of winter set in. Fond memories of running through the trees chasing after cute little bunnies, giggling even when you tripped up and scraped your knees. There was something mystical about the forest back then, something special. But it’s been years since you’ve been here last, and the first time you’ve ever come alone.

And yet it feels different somehow, colder despite the nostalgia. You’re no longer a child, looking at the world through innocent, wondrous eyes. The forest is just a forest.

Of course, you weren’t an idiot; disappearing off the grid was one thing. Disappearing off the grid without anybody knowing where you were going was another entirely. They’d been surprisingly supportive of the plan – until you told them where it was you were planning on running off to.

‘Why go back to the mountain, honey?’ your mother had asked, her smile wavering and an odd tightness in her eyes. ‘Why not go to the coast instead? Or spend some time in the city?’

But this isn’t a fun little vacation. You don’t want to be distracted by beaches and crowds, you need space to finish your book and time to work through your mess of an emotional state without any interruptions. You want to be untraceable, at least for a week or two.

God knows the last thing you need right now is your ex tracking you down to try and apologise again.

Part of you had thought – somewhat naively, perhaps – that by coming back you’d spark… something. Your memories of the mountains are full of warmth and happiness, but as you stare out into the wilderness, all you feel is a cool chill that runs down your spine and the goosebumps that prickle at your skin.

Setting your now empty mug down, you pull tighter at the thick knit cardigan draped over your shoulders. Enough reminiscing, your manuscript awaits.

—

The mountain’s too quiet. You don’t notice it so much during the day, the sound of music softly pouring from your laptop and the gentle clacking of keys as you type enough to distract you from the eerie stillness outside the cabin. Even at night, you’re preoccupied with dinner, and then curled up on the couch with a warm throw rug watching reruns of your favourite shows on Netflix.

It’s only when you lie down, burrowed into the blankets to try and sleep that you notice just how silent the forest at your doorstep truly is. At first you think it’s simply being away from the hustle and bustle of home. There’s no cars driving past, or the sound of neighbours floating through your open windows, there’s not even the distant hooting of owls or dogs barking.

But it’s more than just quiet. There’s nothing. Even the trees seem to still once the sun falls beneath the horizon. And it shouldn't bother you, shouldn’t unsettle you, and yet…

The first few nights, you don’t sleep well. Tossing and turning in bed. When you do sleep, your dreams are plagued with unpleasant things. Not nightmares as such, but an uneasiness that bleeds into otherwise pleasant thoughts. On the fourth night you wake, gasping for air. Whatever dream you’d been in the grips of fades like smoke, and as you draw in another shuddering breath your throat itches and burns.

Water. You need water.

You don’t switch on the lights as you fumble your way down to the kitchen, trying to preserve what little remnants of sleep are still in your system. Even with the moon almost full and the night sky clear, the canopy shrouds it.

And it’s in that darkness, as your eyes flicker up from the faucet, that you see it for the first time.

A shape, huge and looming, silk shadow against black.

For a moment, as your heart hammers against your ribs, a chill creeping down your spine, you don’t dare trust your eyes. Maybe you’re asleep still, dreaming, or your mind’s playing tricks on you, because there’s nothing that should be lurking in the woods outside of your window that size.

Two golden, cat-like eyes peer back at you.

They’re still there when you race to flick on the lights, unblinking, curious as you skitter backwards, hand over your racing heart.

You’re tired, emotionally drained and this–

This is nothing more than a figment of an overactive imagination, a child creating monsters from the shadows in their bedroom. Yet even as you run back to the safety of the bedroom, yank the curtains shut and huddle under the meagre warmth your blankets afford you, squeezing your eyes shut, you feel it out there still, watching.

And in the stillness of the mountains outside, you swear you hear footsteps.

—

You wake to fresh snow, too early in the year, even at these altitudes. It dusts the ground, covering the mossy paths in glittering white, clings to the branches of the trees – the red leaves looking like droplets of blood scattered across a grey sky. The snow will undoubtedly melt as the sun rises, turn to slush and mix with the dirt, but for now it’s a thing of beauty.

For a moment, you allow yourself to forget how tired you are, how unsettled, venturing out from the cabin with wide, excitable eyes. It never used to snow when you were here as a kid, and while you get the occasional snowfall back home, it’s nothing like–

You stop dead in your tracks.

There’s two human footprints imprinted on the snow – only two – right outside your bedroom window, crisp and clean, as if they’d been left just moments before.

—

Your mother sounds worried when you call her. Of course, you don’t tell her about the lone footprints at your window, or the creepy pair of eyes you’d seen through the dark, you know how that sounds. You’re not crazy, and even if some part of you truly believed what you’d seen, your mom is the last person you’d admit it to.

Once upon a time, when you were little, she’d indulged in stories of fairies and spirits, but that was a long time ago. Now she turns up her nose and sneers at the myths and legends that your grandma still spouts, dismissing them with a scoff.

It’s not the kind of thing well-adjusted adults talk about in polite conversation.

She’s a good woman, but you can’t tell her this.

And you’re not even sure you’re entirely sold on it either. The eyes could have been from a wild animal – big cats might be rare in Japan, but they do exist here. You were half asleep (half terrified) when you had seen them, you don’t want to make a fuss over nothing. The footprints are less easy to explain away. If there’d been tracks leading away, you could convince yourself that it was a lost hiker and nothing more.

But there weren’t any tracks leading away; just the two footprints. And what kind of hiker doesn’t wear shoes in weather like this? It’s possible that this is some kind of prank, a mean spirited trick designed to unsettle you – a job well done, by the way – but you can’t quite bring yourself to believe that either.

In any case, you’re hardly going to admit over the phone that you’re freaking out over some footprints in the snow. God knows she’s already worried enough about your mental state, has been ever since the breakup, and you’re not going to give her any more ammunition.

But perhaps there is something to that maternal instinct, because despite your best efforts to reassure her that you’re doing just fine, that your novel’s going great and you’re so glad you came out here, she still sounds entirely unconvinced.

“Honey, you know you can tell me if something’s wrong,” she tells you, her voice strangely hesitant. “You don’t sound yourself, are you sure everything’s okay?”

You don’t know why you called her at all. You always have been a shitty liar, and she’s always been able to see right through you.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Honestly the fresh air’s doing me good,” you tell her. “It’s weirdly quiet here though, I’m not used to it,” you laugh, and even to your ears it sounds hollow and fake.

There’s a heavy pause on the other end of the line, and if you close your eyes you can almost picture it, your mom leaning against the kitchen counter, teeth worrying into her bottom lip–

“I just don’t like you out there all by yourself.”

Relax, what’s the worst that could happen?

The words almost, almost slip out, an instinctive reaction to a mother’s well meaning but overbearing concern. But it feels like tempting fate, and whether or not you’re fully convinced that there is something strange happening, you’re not that bold. Instead you begin to tell her (again) that everything’s fine when she suddenly speaks again.

“Bad things happen in those mountains. Just… just promise me you’ll be safe.”

Abruptly, the line goes dead.

Pulling the phone from your ear, you glance down at the illuminated screen, only to frown when you see the little ‘SOS Only’ flashing in the top corner. Huh, you’d had a few bars when you’d started the call, but…

The weather’s gotta be messing with your signal. Stranger things have happened, right?

Shaking your head you resolve to give her a call tomorrow. And yet, even as you try to put her parting words from your mind and throw yourself back into your writing, you can’t help but feel that familiar sense of cloying unease seeping through your skin once more.

What the hell had she meant, ‘bad things happen in those mountains’?

—

A good night’s sleep can do you wonders.

Well, theoretically speaking. You can’t remember the last actual decent sleep you’d had, but regardless, the point stands. All you need is an uninterrupted eight or nine hours, and this… paranoia will go away. Things’ll be clearer in the morning, so long as you sleep.

The mantra doesn’t help you any, of course.

You don’t need to peer through the window to feel those watchful eyes staring. And maybe it would be easier to ignore the prickling sensation at the nape of your neck if it weren’t for the noises.

Music isn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of the mournful wails, like a wounded animal crying out in pain. It’s incessant, inescapable, reverberating inside of your eardrums until it’s all you can focus on.

It’s instinctual, you think, the urge to creep from your bed and try to find the creature making that sound and help it. But even as your feet touch the cool floorboards, your gut clenches, hackles rising. Something deep inside of you warns you from leaving the safety of the cabin.

Whatever creature is making those noises, it’s not calling for help.

You don’t feel like you’ve slept at all, but you must have because at a certain point in the morning you blink your eyes awake, exhaustion clinging to you like a second skin.

And this time it’s not snow that greets you, but the mangled remains of a doe ripped apart on your porch. Deep, jagged gouge marks run along its flank, organs spilling from the cuts and there’s little left of its neck, the whole thing torn out with teeth. Yet for the gruesome injuries, the only blood you find is congealed, pooled beneath the poor creature.

Whatever happened to it, it didn’t happen here. The knowledge doesn’t soothe you like it should – the park ranger you spoke to on the phone mentioned that while it’s rare, sometimes bears venture a little too close to buildings, though he sounds doubtful even as he says it.

He sounds even less interested when you tell him this doesn’t look like a bear attack, but promises they’ll send someone down in the next few days to check everything out. In the meantime, he suggests, it’s best to stay indoors.

Yeah, not gonna be an issue.

And so with no feasible way of moving it, you’re left with the butchered corpse of a doe just outside your front door. And the thing that bothers you isn’t so much the body, though you still can’t look at it without wanting to throw up, but the fact that it was just… left there.

Not eaten. No, aside from the missing throat, the deer’s all there. Ripped apart with its guts spilling out, but otherwise untouched. Growing up you had a cat, the sweetest little thing, but every once in a while she would get out of a night, find some poor little creature to torment and without fail, she’d bring it back home, leaving it half dead on the doorstep like a gift.

‘See what a good hunter I am?’ she seemed to say, smugly sauntering back inside.

It wasn’t about food. It wasn’t hunger that drove her, but instinct. As you stare out the window at the doe, at the milky white emptiness of dead eyes, you wonder whether that’s the same here. There’s no tracks in the dirt, no blood smeared across the ground – it wasn’t dragged here. No animal could’ve done this.

A gift?

Or perhaps something less benevolent. A threat. You’ve crossed into territory you don’t belong and the deer, cruelly ripped apart and left to bleed out on your doorstep is a line in the sand.

Either way, as tears fill your eyes, a sob tugging free from your chest, you realise that it was a mistake to come here. You don’t know whether you trust your eyes and your ears anymore, but there is something deep inside of you that tolls like a warning bell and as much as you’d like to bury your head in the sand and pretend there’s nothing wrong here, you can’t.

Bad things happen in those mountains.

You need to leave.

The next ferry to the mainland doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning, but it’ll have to do. Once you stop shaking and calm down enough to carry a conversation, you call the local cab company to arrange a pick-up first thing.

You can survive one more night, you just need to throw yourself back into your writing… if you can only just ignore that sense of foreboding prickling at the back of your neck.

—

There’s a boy running through the trees, giggling as he glances back at you. His hand’s outstretched, wrapped ‘round yours tugging you along as he laughs at you to hurry up.

It’s late, the sun dipping below the horizon, but you don’t wanna go back just yet.

You’re having fun, playing in the forest. And the light is golden, filtering in through the pretty red leaves, your sides burn a little from all the chasing and laughter but it’s a good kind of ache. You don’t want today to end.

His name is Kohsuke, you remember, and he lives down in the village by the valley. He’s only one year older than you, and you’d follow him anywhere.

You think you might be a little in love with him.

‘C’mon, hurry up! It’s only a little further!’ he calls, and you nod, scrambling over the fallen trunk of an oak tree. There’s old spirits who live in this forest, he’d told you, and today you’re finally gonna see one.

It’s dark now. Cold too. You’re tired and hungry and you kinda want to go home, but Kohsuke won’t let you. ‘Just a little longer! Don’t you wanna see them?’

You do. Of course you do. It’s just that you’re starting to get a funny feeling in your stomach… Can he hear the footsteps too? Is somebody following you?

There’s a voice in your ear, a soft, silky purr that makes a shiver roll down your spine, but you can’t make sense of the words, they’re not in any language you understand. You don’t tell Kohsuke – he can’t hear it, otherwise he would have said something. You just clutch his hand tighter, skipping closer.

‘W-we should go back, Koh,’ you murmur, wincing when it comes out in a childish whine. ‘We’re gonna get in trouble.’

You aren’t supposed to stay out playing after dark, he knows it as well as you do. ‘You trust me, don’t you? Stop being such a chicken!’ he snickers as your cheeks heat.

The voice at your ear growls, low and threatening. You need to go back, now.

You blink, and the scene changes.

You’re curled up on the forest floor, hands covering your eyes. Somebody’s screaming – Kohsuke – crying out your name through ragged sobs, pleading–

There’s a crunch, a ripping sound, a wetness sprayed across your cheek.

Kohsuke’s not screaming anymore.

Something warm and heavy touches your head, drags through the locks of your hair and you just huddle tighter, eyes squeezed shut, shaking like a leaf as more tears spill. You don’t wanna die here.

The crunching sounds continue, and you keep your eyes tightly shut. It can’t hurt you if you don’t look.

It can’t hurt you if you don’t look.

It can’t–

A loud knocking jerks you back to consciousness, your body jolting upright, almost swiping your laptop off the table as you try and gather your bearings. Right, you’d been working on your novel, sitting up at the kitchen table, you must have dozed off… A quick glance out the window tells you that you must have been out of it for a while – the late afternoon shadows are starting to creep in, the sky a golden orange.

What the hell was that dream?!

“Hello? Uh, anybody home?” a masculine voice calls, another loud knock sounding. “We got a call about a wild animal attacking deer…”

Oh, you think, trying to shake yourself out of your stupor, the wildlife people, yeah. You feel a little nauseous, feverish and trembling, though maybe that’s just the result of your erratic heartbeat.

Swallowing down the bile in your throat, you turn your attention to the door. Truly you hadn’t actually expected that they’d send anybody out to investigate, much less that they’d arrive before you left, but you can hardly turn him away now.

Especially not when there’s a freshly butchered deer corpse lying only a few feet away from your front door. Quickly, you run a hand over your hair, taking a moment to try and collect yourself before you answer.

It doesn’t work – there’s a knot in your throat and for every step you take towards the door it feels like your legs are gonna give out from under you. You move in a daze to unlock the door, only just remembering to school your features into an expression slightly less alarming as it swings open.

A ranger, tall with a shock of black, messy hair that reminds you oddly of a rooster greets you with an easy grin. “Oh good, I was starting to think nobody was home. You the one that called?”

Distantly, you nod, fingers clutching at the edge of the doorframe. The ranger glances over at the remains of the deer, still lying in a pool of half dried blood, studying it for a moment, hazel eyes sweeping over the deep gashes in its side. You can’t bear to follow his gaze, you’re not sure you can look at that thing again without throwing up.

He whistles lowly, shaking his head, “Well you don’t see that every day,” he laughs.

Your eyes snap to his, narrowing slightly. It’s not his fault, you know that, but you can’t help the flicker of irritation that sparks at the cavalier attitude. This is just his job, you get it, but you don’t exactly feel like laughing right now.

“You still think a bear did this?” you retort, the words coming out a little sharper than intended.

But the ranger takes it in stride, shrugging as his smirk widens. “A bear, huh?” Amusement glitters in his eyes, sharp and mocking. “Why don’t I come inside and you can tell me all about it?” he offers, stepping closer towards you.

And there’s no reason for your heart to skitter, your blood running cold as he looms over you in the doorway, still wearing that stupid, irritating smirk. There’s no reason for your insides to clench either, or for the tiny, jerky step backwards you take, your body moving of its own accord.

The ranger pauses, head tilting to the side as he stares at you.

Really stares, like he’s waiting for something. And as discomfited as you are (and as much of an asshole as this guy is), a weary apology is halfway to your tongue when he shifts slightly, propping an arm up against the door – the last, dying rays of light catching his face.

It’s just for a second.

A heartbeat.

But long enough for you to watch those hazel eyes shift to gold, pupils elongating into slits.

You stumble backwards, breath coming in a short, ragged gasp as your eyes widen into saucers. “What are you?”

The ranger before you chuckles and you catch a glimpse of his teeth; pearly white and glinting, sharper than they had been only moments ago. “Why don’t you let me in and find out for yourself, kitten?”

You shake your head, retreating further into the cabin, heart pounding.

“No? You don’t like this body, is that it?” he asks, a cruel edge to his smirk as he takes a half step backwards and slowly spreads his arms. “Something more familiar, then.”

And you don’t think there’s any room left in your heart for more fear, your stomach already twisting in sickening knots, but you blink and standing right there in front of you is Kohsuke.

It’s a punch in the guts, a knife slipped between your ribs, yanked ruthlessly through your still beating heart. He’s beaming up at you, those same adorable dimples, the same ridiculous bowl cut, bleeding youthful innocence. “How about now?” he asks, holding out his hand and wriggling his fingers like he expects you to take it. “You’ll let me inside now, right?”

A strangled noise escapes you as you fall to your knees. Tears fill your eyes, blurring your vision – you blink them away but more take their place.

“You trust me, don’t you?” he asks, and you wail in response.

It’s too much. You shake your head, hugging yourself tightly, as if your arms are the only thing keeping you from falling apart entirely.

He calls your name – not in Kohsuke’s childish lilt, but that deep, ancient purr that makes the tiny hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. “Let me in.”

“Go away,” you gasp through tears. “Please– please go away.”

The creature shifts again, the dark haired ranger back in Kohsuke’s place. He eyes you, those unnatural gold irises watching with utter enthralment as you sob pathetically on the floor, still pleading – though you know it’ll do you no good – for him to leave.

“Last chance, kitten. Let me in, or I’ll make you come out.”

He – it – doesn’t sound nearly as put out by the prospect as it should be.

And you don’t know why giving permission matters, all you know, all you care about, is that it’s keeping that thing at bay for now. It can’t come inside and so long as you don’t leave the safety of the cabin, it can’t hurt you. The words are nothing but an empty threat.

Right?

You shake your head, defiant even as your voice hitches and trembles, “No.”

“Stubborn little thing,” the creature croons, the smirk on its face widening until the visage no longer resembles anything human – mouth splitting its face in two, rows of long, sharp teeth revealed. “So be it.”

A low growl resonates in its chest, and you can only watch, petrified, as thin, vein-like black marks begin to appear over pale skin, growing thicker, cracking as shadow curls from underneath. The creature itself starts to grow too, limbs elongating as muscles ripple and swell, claws bursting forth in place of fingernails, shoulders broadening – until it’s towering over you, wreathed in thick shadow, grinning with that terrifying mouth.

This is the thing you’d glimpsed that first night. A creature ripped from nightmares and primal fears, strong enough to tear you apart with a single hand. That’s what it’d done to Kohsuke, to the doe, what it’d do to you if you gave it half a chance.

“You wanna play, kitten?” it asks, head tilting to the side.

Slowly, it backs away from the door, keeping its gaze fixed firmly on you. For a moment, you think that it’s going to disappear back into the forest, or plant itself by your window to watch for another night, waiting you out till dawn, but instead it stops by the old oak that overhangs the porch and stills entirely, simply… waiting.

“Let’s play.”

Abruptly, the oak beside it bursts into flames. It takes only a heartbeat for the entire thing to be engulfed, red and orange flames licking along the trunk, the gnarled, spindly branches, even the leaves are alight, burning away into ash and floating off in the breeze. The heat from one tree alone is searing, the crackle of burning wood and your own horrified, shuddering breath the only sounds in the night.

It snowed only a few nights before, but the fire spreads with unnatural ease, flames racing across the canopy, embers lighting up the undergrowth, and in the space of a few seconds there’s an inferno raging through the forest before you. And through the smoke and the red, burning haze, the creature watches, smirking.

The heat from the wildfire sears painfully at your skin, the air around you suddenly thick with smoke, stinging your eyes, choking your lungs, and yet you can’t seem to tear yourself away. It’s like a dream, a nightmare, some kind of… hellscape.

And for a moment you forget that there was a purpose to this, too lost staring in mute horror as the forest you’d played in as a child burns–

At least until a single leaf from the oak tree, edges curling as it’s consumed by flames, falls, carried by the breeze and lands on the wooden railing of the porch. With a soft whoosh, the old wooden beam catches fire, and with your chest heaving, panicked breaths falling from parted lips, you rise to your feet as flames spread, the fire eating everything in its path until the entire porch is alight, burning.

Run.

You don’t know if the voice in your head is yours or not, you don’t have time to care. You scramble for the back door, throwing it open, and you run.

Run until your lungs burn, til’ your bare feet are scratched and bleeding, run, pushed forward by the sweltering heat at your back, the chilling crackle of laughter that follows. You run through tears, through pain and air so thick with smoke that it hurts to breathe.

And you know the creature’s giving chase, you know that you won’t – can’t – outrun it, nor the inferno that blazes around you. You know that it’s futile, that you’re probably running to your death, but that’s human, isn’t it?

To run when you’re scared?

The sky’s awash with a hazy red glow when it catches you, throwing you to the ground, and still you try to crawl. Desperate, choking on broken pleas and sobs, nails raking through the dirt as you try to pull yourself forward.

And when your pants are ripped from your legs, a puff of warm air ghosting over the nape of your neck as you’re shoved back down, those long, black arms settling either side of you, caging you in – you know that you’ve lost.

“Mine,” the creature growls, and you barely have time to scream before its cock shoves into you with one brutal, merciless thrust. “Mine.”

#yandere haikyuu #yandere kuroo #yandere kuroo x reader #yandere kuroo tetsurou #yandere kuroo tetsurou x reader #monster fic #horror fic #tw noncon #tw: noncon #tw: blood #tw: gore #tw: minor character death #tw: animal death #i am sorry #except not really tho

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