Insomnia
Content: creepy whumper; intimate whumper; non human whumper: defiant whumpee
Word Count: 630
It was quiet and dark, a dim orange light twinkling softly from the lamp on the bedside table. The embrace Fuyune was being held in from behind was strong but limp from sleep. The six fingered hands wrapped around his waist were a lovingly disgusting cage under the thick duvet's warmth.
His body was bruised and battered, exhausted from the abuse, taking in and out deep calm breaths. The clock ahead read 3am. Despite his eyes begging for sleep, Fuyune still felt not a shred of fatigue.
The insomnia wasn't unfamiliar to him but it wouldn't be as bad if he couldn't feel a certain man's chest pressed against his back and breath tickling his hair. He felt the most desperate need to stay awake. Solon was asleep now but if, even for a second, Fuyune let his guard down, who knows what mercies he might withhold from him while his allies were unaware.
With no escape or even an inane entertainment, he had nowhere to turn but his thoughts. His face showed nothing, comfortably nestled into his pillow, but all he could feel was rage. A pure and incomparable, constant feeling seated deep in his chest, the only thing he could seem to think about.
He asked Kashton for advice once about how he dealt with their situation. Kash had always been a very emotional person, always the first one to start crying and screaming whenever the situation called for it (or whenever it didn't) so Fuyune found it quite strange when everyone's lives got turned upside down and yet Kash, of all people, looked the calmest about it.
When he found out, he wasn't surprised: Kash had learned to lean into and enjoy the abuse he was subjected to. Being a very dependent person already, it was like second nature learning to give up total free will and submit to someone else completely.
Fuyune didn't take to this as easily. It's not that he didn't try, he really did. He tried so hard. But to even attempt stung his chest and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, as though he were violently allergic to the very concept. It left a bad taste in his mouth recalling it. Maybe that method worked for others but not for Fuyune. There was no way he could ever love this.
The only thing he could possibly feel toward this man and this life was hatred. There was nothing that Solon hadn't taken from him. He took his body parts, his strength and his dignity. He took his privacy and autonomy and his identity. He took his entire future.
He used to have everything. A family, a legacy, power, a reputation, expectations. His life didn't look like his anymore. Did he even still have the right to call himself Fuyune? If not, what specifically was the moment that had robbed him of that title? Had it slowly decayed over time or was he doomed the moment he set foot on that island?
It didn't matter. At the end of the day, it was all Solon's fault. He was the one who put him on that island. Fuyune's life was destroyed in the lonely office room that day, the first day he met Solon face to face.
After that day, the torture continued and today it continued still. November. It had almost been a whole year since the beginning of all this and in a few weeks it would begin again with new victims. But still with the same old Solon. Fuyune prayed for the safety of whoever might come after him, that Solon might show them more mercy than he did to him, but the prayer wasn't a hopeful one.
No, Fuyune wasn't hopeful. He was never hopeful.
Fuyune was angry. So, so very angry.
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Into Your Family
This is a Redactedverse!AU for some original characters in an original project of mine. Just because I liked the idea and, frankly, it kinda fit. Also I haven’t done a Redactedverse-all-OC fic in a while
2.0k words almost exactly!
—
Kyla hopped off the chair and surveyed her handiwork. “How’s that look, babe?” she asked.
Archer eyed the string lights she’d hung around the living room. “They look like they’re a little... much, but they still look nice,” he said. “I mean, we don’t really need the lights inside the house.”
“That’s not what you said when I hung fairy lights in our bedroom,” Kyla teased, popping a kiss on his jaw and strolling to the kitchen. Archer rolled his eyes affectionately and followed after her.
“The fairy lights in our bedroom are much softer and were meant to replace having obnoxious lamps,” Archer pointed out. “This is decorations.”
“Yeah! And it’s winter, so it gets dark early. So we get to have extra lights,” Kyla retorted playfully. “I think the pack’s gonna like them.”
Archer swung an arm out and grabbed his mate around the waist, pulling her in close to him and burying his nose in her hair. “I think you’re right,” he replied softly, speaking into her hair and neck. “And that’s why you’re the one decorating for the birthday party, not me.”
She chuckled and turned around in his hold, tilting up onto her tiptoes and giving him another kiss. One he bent down to accept gratefully. “You’re right,” she said. “If you were the one decorating, you’d have a plain banner that says, ‘It Is Your Birthday’ hanging on the wall with, like, two balloons. Maybe one streamer hanging off the bookcase. Then you’d call it good.”
“That is not true!” Archer protested while his mate laughed.
Kyla cackled and slipped out of his hands. He chased after her. As a shifter, he was a lot bigger and stronger than she was. Faster too. But she was nimble and small and that made her hard to catch.
Not to mention she was a damn Seer and knew where he’d try and grab her before it happened anyway.
He chased her around their house while she just laughed—until she finally led him into their bedroom and slammed to a halt.
Archer wasn’t expecting her to just stop and couldn’t slow down fast enough. He ran right into her, his momentum spilling them both onto the bed. Kyla was laughing as Archer frantically checked her over for injuries.
“Kyla—oh my God—are you okay?” he demanded.
She was still giggling. “I’m fine, baby. But you should have seen your face!”
He growled and rolled his eyes. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Of course I’d be concerned,” he grumbled.
“Awww. Big, tough, scary alpha all worried about his little mate,” she teased.
He climbed off of her. “You’re such a menace. C’mon. You finish decorating while I get the cakes started.” He climbed off of her and offered her his hand to help her up.
She took it—and paused. “Wait. Cakesss? With an ‘S’? As in, multiple?”
Archer nodded. “Oh... that’s right. This is your first birthday celebration with the pack. Yeah. We’re wolves, beautiful. We tend to eat more than normal people. So, yeah. I need to make... probably three. And even then, Kashton’s mom will still bring one or two and we’ll definitely get through most of it.”
Kyla blinked owlishly at him. “Alrighty then. Guess we better get going on that.”
“Mmhmm.”
—
“Auntie Kyla!” a young voice exclaimed as the front door to the house opened. The note taped to the door that said, Come On In! was doing its job, apparently.
Kyla turned to see Cedric running through the living room toward her. She bent her knees so she was closer to his eye level and held her arms out. He slammed into her in a hug. She held onto him tightly, deliberately ignoring the images of his future radiating off of him. “Hiii Ced!” she greeted. “Are you excited for Uncle Kashton’s birthday?”
“Uh-huh!” Cedric nodded enthusiastically, bonking his chin into Kyla’s shoulder.
He called her “auntie” more out of affection than relation. Archer was the alpha of the pack, but not related to either of Cedric’s parents; and Kyla was humanborn, not yet married to her mate. Kashton, however, was Cedric’s dad’s brother, and was actually Cedric’s uncle.
“Me too,” Kyla agreed. “I’m excited to celebrate with everyone.”
Cedric giggled as Kyla scooped him up and held him on her hip. For being seven, he was kinda small for his age and didn’t weigh much.
His parents chuckled as they followed him into the house. Liesl, his mother, gave Kyla a side-arm hug. “Lovely to see you, as always,” she said as Kepler, her mate and Cedric’s father, also gave a side-arm hug.
“Nice to see you both as well,” Kyla offered. She set Cedric down as he started squirming and let him go over to where Archer was spreading frosting over the cakes that had finally cooled down. “How’s everything going with you three?” She gave them both a grin, trying to be friendly. She’d known Archer longer than the rest of his pack, and was still working on getting to know everyone else the normal way. She’d gotten much better at ignoring the visions of people’s entire futures she got upon first meeting them because she wanted to get to know people the right way.
“Things are going okay,” Liesl said. Kepler nodded.
“That’s good. I’m happy to hear that,” Kyla replied with a grin.
Liesl held up a gift bag with tissue paper poking out of the top. “Where do presents go?”
“You can just set it on the coffee table by ours.” Kyla gestured over to where a wrapped box sat.
“Thanks.”
Kepler and Liesl were around Archer’s age. About twenty-five. Archer had mentioned to Kyla briefly that they’d Cedric really young. Liesl was humanborn—as was pack beta Lowell’s mate, Amara—and by the time Archer’s father and alpha-at-the-time Conri found her and realized she was a humanborn with no pack, she’d been about seventeen. She’d fallen for Kepler hard and fast and Cedric had been born a year later.
Apparently, at first, that had been a point of contention between Kepler and his parents. Until Cedric was actually born.
But the glimpses Kyla hadn’t ignored of the family’s futures showed they were going to be happy, overall.
The front door opened again. “The party has arrived!” another familiar voice announced.
Kyla turned to see Archer’s younger sister—who was closer to Kyla’s age at twenty-two—bursting into the house like a firework show. She had the same warm black hair and bronze skin as her brother, though she didn’t hold her summer tan quite as long through the winter.
“Hey Zinnia!” Kyla greeted. “The roomies right behind?”
“You know it.” Zinnia gave Kyla a hug before going to go bother her brother.
Trailing into the house after her were her two roommates, and fellow pack members.
Rory, the resident rebel, and the birthday wolf himself, Kashton. Rory gave Kyla a half-assed hug as she stepped into the house, brushing her short bangs out of her eyes, but Kashton threw his arms around Kyla with great enthusiasm. “Hey Kyyy!” he greeted.
“Hi Kash. Happy birthday.”
“Why thank you.” He gave her his lopsided smile, flipping his shaggy red curls out of his face as he stepped into the house and closed the front door behind him.
When Kyla had first started hanging around the pack, Kashton had flirted with her a lot. Until he realized exactly how serious Archer was about her and stopped.
“Kaaash!” Kepler greeted.
Over the next couple minutes, the rest of the pack turned up. Archer and Zinnia’s parents Conri and Elspeth. Archer’s beta Lowell and his mate Amara. Lowell’s parents, Rory’s parents, and Kashton and Kepler’s parents. Whose names Kyla was still struggling to remember. She loved Archer and cared deeply about his pack and his position in it—but the fact remained that they hadn’t been together long and she didn’t see the pack as often as he did and struggled with their names.
But Archer had been right—Kashton’s mother brought two birthday cakes of her own.
Kyla could have guessed that if she looked into the future, but she’d chosen not to.
She crossed into the kitchen to find Archer finishing his work on the frosting of the cakes. “They look delicious, my love,” she said, wrapping an arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to his arm since she wasn’t going to bother trying to reach anything higher.
He smiled. “Thank you,” he said. He leaned down and pressed a kiss into her hair. “Is tonight going to go well?”
She glanced up at him. “Of course it is.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You really want me to look at the outcome of a birthday party?”
“Kyla. It’s your first celebration with the pack. I know you’ve met all of them before but...” He sighed. “I don’t want anyone causing trouble for you. Or anyone else.”
Giving him a fond look, she blinked and let the future in.
The vision was brief but it always made her stumble when she took a deeper look into the future than the passive, surface-level images that she usually saw.
Archer caught her before she could stagger into the counter, supporting her weight by pressing her to his chest until her knees could handle her weight again. He cupped the back of her head and held her protectively.
She blinked hard. A slight violet tint to her dark brown eyes petered away as the magic stopped being used. “The party’s gonna be fine. There’s only a few threads of possibility where Lowell sets the kitchen on fire. Balance of probability? Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“Good.”
“Hey lovebirds!” Zinnia called from the living room. “Is it time for cake or what?”
Archer chuckled and picked up one of the cakes, gesturing for Kyla to grab the other with a nod. She beamed and snatched it up carefully. “On our way, you twerp,” Archer replied loudly.
They emerged into the living room, and Kyla started the Happy Birthday song. Everyone joined in quickly as Kashton and Kepler’s mom set one of her cakes in front of her younger son. There was already a candle on it. Kyla set her cake down and snapped her fingers, lighting the candle before the song could finish. Kashton’s mother gave her a grateful look. She just smiled.
The song reached its conclusion and Kashton laughed before taking a deep breath and blowing out the candles.
Archer put his arm around Kyla as the pack swarmed Kashton. He tugged her away from the crowd. “How are you faring?” he asked softly.
She looked up at him, her eyebrows scrunched with unasked questions. “Fine?” she said.
He tilted his head to the side slightly. “You sure? I mean, you’re... you’re young. I know we haven’t been living together long but are you still okay with it?” He cupped the side of her face to make sure she kept eye contact with him. He was twenty-five and she was twenty-two. He sometimes barely felt ready to live in a house with just his mate.
“Of course I’m still okay with it, Archer. I love you. You showed me a whole world where I’m not alone. I mean, sure, Seers are rare and humanborn Seers are practically nonexistent. But at least I’m not the only person on this planet with powers I can’t explain. And you... you welcomed me into your family before we ever started dating. Just because... you knew I needed it. My family threw me out for having powers, and you took me in and I’m so happy to be with you in our home.”
He pressed a deep kiss to her forehead. “I love you too, beautiful.”
She gave him a half-smile. “C’mon, love. Let’s go have some of that cake you made before your literal pack of ravenous wolves eats it all gone before we get the chance.” Winking at him, she tugged him toward his pack by the hand.
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