#they always work after a couple days but never fully kill the infection & as soon as i’m off them it’s back full force.

[ohraicodoll]

Honey

Joel Miller x f!Reader The Last of Us 3.2k Words/ 3rd POV Feral Reader Masterlist Summary: The first time there was an excuse, the second time was just about release. (If you’ve read the other stories, this would take place after Monsters/Teeth in the timeline. Have a little smut fic to make up for all the angst I’ve been writing.)

Warning: Explicit sexual content (18+ Minors DNI) “ With just a little taste of wasting time Looking for honey But she stings like she means it She's mean and she's mine “ It’d been a hard day.

The vehicle they’d manage to steal from the survivalist’s cabin didn’t last long. For all that group had worked and prepared their fortress, they hadn’t kept up with the maintenance on the car and it had crapped out after a couple of days, even driving slowly. They were back to walking, the dream of quickly getting to Wyoming vanishing. They’d hit a town that had seemed mostly empty, but there’d been a pocket of infected that had swarmed. It was pure luck that there had been no Clickers, only Runners, but it’d been a close call. Now they were holed up on the second floor of a shop, Joel having barricaded the stairs leading up to it and securing the whole floor while she helped set up for the night. They were exhausted and Ellie was a little extra quiet, rubbing her eyes and using some of the water they managed to get out of the pipes into a bucket to scrub out the blood off her jacket. She was still covered in it too, feeling it stick and crust to her neck and cheek, her hands. Joel sat down and they all ate out of cold cans in silence, only the clink of their spoons breaking the gloom. “Those runners…they were newer infected, weren’t they?” Ellie said gloomily. She sighed and Joel chewed slowly, looking up at the teen from beneath a furrowed brow, “They were most likely a group passing through. Got bit and all of them turned. The newer ones tend to be the fastest.” Ellie hummed thoughtfully and shrugged, “Maybe that means there’s not many infected left here if they were the only ones to come out? That mean we’re safe up here?” “Or they’re trapped inside the buildings,” she responded, not wanting to kill her hope but also being realistic, “But we’ll hear if anyone comes in and the barricade should delay them. We’re safe enough.” The young girl nodded and sighed, finishing her food and setting the can aside, “Okay…I’m gonna go to bed. I’m tired.” She sent her a soft “goodnight” and finished her food quietly, the light of the lantern between them all that was lighting the room. She was still wired from the fight, sleep not finding her any time soon. Without saying a word to her companion, she stood and went over to the bucket and picked it up before walking a little bit away to one of the mirrors the store had hanging on the far wall. Clothing racks and shelves were toppled everywhere, moth eaten rags hanging from them and trash littering the ground. She pulled over a cement block nearby and sat on it near the mirror, grabbing a rag off the rack and dipping it into the water. It wasn’t safe to drink but they could at least use it to clean up. The mirror was stained and dirty, foggy from years of neglect and exposure to whatever was in the air. She couldn’t see her reflection fully but could see enough to try and clean the crusted blood off her skin. It came off in flakes from her hands, blood and dirt leading way to clean skin. Boots walked towards her and she paused, looking up as Joel joined her along the shadowed wall, face always that tilted down frown and furrowed brow. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and looked at the water and rag before grabbing another cement block and scooting it in front of her, “Here. You can’t see shit in that thing, I’ll do it.” They hadn’t spoken about that night in the cabin. That night when he’d came and joined her on the floor, has slipped his fingers into her to help her relax and then fucked her into the ground. They’d woken up and went on like it never happened and hadn’t changed a thing. But something was different. They both felt it and didn’t want to acknowledge it. She knew he’d keep bugging her until she gave in so she handed him the rag with a roll of her eyes, turning to face him, their knees pressed together. He took it and dipped it into the water then his calloused fingers held her chin, holding it in place as he passed the rag over her cheek. They didn’t speak, didn’t even make eye contact, but there was a tension suddenly there the moment his skin touched hers. He was being gentle and it unnerved her because Joel was never gentle. Especially not with her. They were at each other’s throats constantly, Ellie being their only glue together. “You shouldn’t have used your knife on those,” he grunted and the sound wrapped around her in the darkness, “Too easy to get bit. If you had ran I coulda shot them.” “Bullets are a bit valuable nowadays, Tex, and I had it handled,” she bit out as he turned her face the other way to get the blood under her ear, “Using the knife conserves bullets.” “It’s not gonna conserve anything if I have to put one in your head because you got infected,” Joel hissed and his fingers pressed a little harder into her skin to emphasize the point. The pressure on her skin sent tiny sparks through her and her heart beat a little faster, his touch and smell all around her not helping at all. “Well if that happens you can say I told you so,” she rolled eyes and tried to not to focus on the slow drag of the cloth as it moved down her neck. Abruptly, he jerked her forward and her hands had to brace on his thighs to keep from toppling onto him. His fingers dug into her chin hard enough she wondered if it would bruise later on, his eyes dark and searing into her even covered by shadows. “Or you can fucking be careful and listen to me,” he growled, breath coasting along her face from his proximity. “Yes, sir,” she answered sarcastically, nose wrinkling with a raised lip. Something shifted in those dark irises and she caught the flicker of his eyes as they dipped to her lips, “Give me attitude and I’ll have you saying that while you fucking beg me.” Her skin was suddenly on fire, tightening at his words, aware of the muscle of his thighs underneath her hands. She felt hot and swallowed, aware he could feel the action with his hand still on her chin, “Sorry to break it to ya, but I’m not begging you for shit.” But then his mouth was smashing into hers, teeth cutting into her lip, and the hand with the rag curling around her neck. She could feel the cool water drip down her skin and run along her chest, the feeling icy against her heated skin. Kissing Joel was like drowning and she let herself, pressing back hard against his mouth and pushing her tongue between his lips, drinking in his groan as she did so. His hand briefly left her skin to ease himself off the cement block and onto the ground before he dragged her down into his lap, knees braced on either side of his thighs. She could feel him beneath her, already hard and pressing against her, the knowledge shooting straight to her core. She sucked on his lower lip, biting and sucking and letting him explore her mouth, his beard rough against her skin. The hand on her chin went to her waist and dug into the fabric of her shirt, pressing her harder against him and his hips rocked a bit, grinding his hard member into her through their jeans. She moaned softly, not wanting to attract the attention of the sleeping teen yards away. The rag in his other hand slid along her neck and he broke away to latch onto the newly cleaned skin there, biting into the spot just under her ear. She bit her tongue to keep her sounds at bay and dove her hand into his hair, gripping the salt and pepper curls tightly in her fist. The day had left her running on adrenaline, raw and vibrating, and she knew exactly what this was. A release. A way for them to get their energy out after fighting for their lives. There were worse ways to handle it. For all that Joel drove her crazy, losing herself in him had its appeal like now when she could touch and caress every part of him that had managed to snag her attention. She ran her hand over the tense muscles of his neck as he continued to press open mouth kisses along her own, biting and licking and sucking his way along the path the rag had cleaned the blood away. Her hand moved to the hard muscles of his biceps, the patch of hair at the opening of his shirt, the rough skin of his stomach after she untucked his shirt. He was untouchable in the day, out there on the road, but she’d take this moment and use it to explore what she could while she had the chance. She ached, need pulsing as he sucked on a particularly sensitive spot at the base of her neck, and ground down into him. He hissed and broke away, resting his forehead against her shoulder, “Fuck. You’re fucking impatient, darlin.” “I’m not impatient,” she rocked against him again and could feel him move to meet the motion, “I’m showing you what needs attention, Miller.” He dropped the rag and grabbed the back of her neck, raising his face to meet hers, their noses touching, “Joel. When I fuck you, you say my name. Not Miller, not Tex. Joel.” She skimmed her lips along his and grinned mockingly, canines showing, “Yes, sir.” He growled and pressed his lips back against hers bruisingly, the kiss a messy clash of teeth and tongue as if they were trying to fight against one another. His hand on her hip moved to the front of her jeans and began to unbutton them, hands jerky and rushed, practically ripping them open and shoving his hand inside. Joel swallowed her moan when his fingers found her mound, sliding through her lips and feeling the slickness there already. He rubbed back and forth and let her rock against his hand, talking against her mouth, “This where you’re needing attention?” “It ain’t obvious?” she huffed and shuddered as his thumb found her clit, pressing hard against it and making her jerk. Slowly he pushed two fingers into her, using her wet arousal to stretch her and slide in and out. His mouth moved back to her neck, listening as her breath left her in raspy moans almost silent around him. He started so slow, letting her get used to him, and then started pumping faster and harder. The friction of jeans, his rough hand, and his own jerky motions of his hips felt delicious and she clawed at his shoulder to brace herself, the other still tangled in his hair. “God, you’re so fucking wet,” he growled against her neck, scraping his beard across her sensitive skin. She could feel the beginning of her orgasm growing, the coil in her tightening and threatening to snap at any moment. His fingers were so thick inside of, filling her up, as his thumb kept circling and pressing down on her clit. And she was almost embarrassingly wet, knowing it was soaking through her jeans and covering his hand. Then, abruptly, he stopped and she gripped his hair and tugged his head painfully back as he removed his hand, “Miller-” “What’d I say ‘bout my name?” he snarled at her, the sound going straight to her throbbing center, “You beggin’ already?” Her tongue was pressed to the top of her teeth, eyebrow raised, as she shook her head in defiance. Instead she ground against him and the hard, straining member beneath his jeans. He was clenching his teeth, eyes fluttering shut briefly at the motion, the muscle in his jaw twitching as he fought hard to restrain himself. But she didn’t want him restrained and she certainly wasn’t going to beg. One of them was going to give in and it wasn’t going to be her. Joel Miller, for all his cleverness and practically, was not a patient man. The hand that had been inside her came up and stroked her chin, then her mouth, rubbing along her bottom lip as he watched. She continued to rock against him and scraped her nails against his scalp, then she teasingly touched her tongue to the thumb along her lip. Joel’s eyes flashed to hers and stayed there, burning in the darkness of the room, as she licked his thumb and let it slide into her mouth, sucking on it. She could taste her own arousal on his finger, the salt and slight grime still there. It was all Joel, perfect and rough and bitter. Her lips wrapped around the digit, pulling it into her hot wet mouth, her tongue licking him clean. His breath was coming out in heavy rapid pants, his other hand digging onto her thigh and sliding to her clothed ass, clenching it. Not once did she break eye contact. Even as her teeth scraped against his skin and her hand went to his belt buckle, she stayed watching him and seeing the fire light up in his dark irises. Then finally he snapped, the first to break. Before she could blink, he had pulled his thumb from her mouth and was lifting her up to her feet to rip her jeans down her legs. He did it swiftly, not caring if the tugging hurt or if he was jostling her around. He got them off her legs while she smirked and as she stood in front of him, he grabbed her thigh and yanked her forward, his mouth finding her cunt while one of his own hands moved to unbuckle his belt and jeans. She had to bite down on her lip to keep from making a sound, eyes flickering to where Ellie was still fast asleep, and sank her hand back into his hair to press his face against her. His tongue lapped at her desperately, beard rubbing against her sensitive skin, lips wrapping and sucking on her clit. It was exquisite, her legs shaking as he managed to coax her pleasure back to life. It was sloppy and rough and fast, her brain struggling to catch up to the lightning flaring up inside of her. His tongue dipped into her and she rocked against his face, desperate to find release. He hummed against her soaking warmth and then sucked hard on her clit, her orgasm hitting her so hard she had to brace herself on his shoulders to keep standing. It was fireworks, a lighting storm, everything hitting her at once as she came hard on his tongue. Joel gently coaxed her back into sitting on his lap, his jeans pulled down and his erection out and heavy against his thigh. She was still trying to catch her breath, hands resting on his naked thighs and head resting on his shoulder. His hand combed through her hair and tugged, using it to straighten back up and look at him, “Uh uh, darlin, I’m not done with you yet.” He kissed her roughly, her own taste all over his tongue and coating her mouth, while he pumped himself a few times. She groaned into his mouth, breathy little pants leaving her, then he was lifting her up to position her over his throbbing cock. She was still so sensitive and as she sank down onto him she squeezed her eyes tightly, biting down on her lips and pressing her forehead to his. Her being on top gave them a new angle that hit differently than last time, letting him fill her completely and hitting every spot that had sparks singing inside her skin. Fuck, he felt good and she had to fight so hard to keep from moaning out loud, could feel it in her throat wanting release. “That’s it,” he hummed to her, voice catching with his own moan, “Fuck, darlin’. I could come right now from being inside you.” Secretly, she was pleased to hear the praise and not be the only one affected. Sex had been good last time, but there’d been a tentative dance to it. Breaching the gap and testing the waters to see if they were on the same page. Now they both knew there was an attraction there and even if they hadn’t spoken about it, hadn’t said exactly what it was or if it had been a one time thing, there wasn’t a hesitation to jump that gap again. She started to move, lifting herself up and down, feeling him slide against the walls inside of her. Those sparks had started up again, building tight in her lower stomach and growing with each move. He began meeting her pace, thrusting up into her while leaning forward and placing hot kisses along her throat. His teeth found her collar bone, the small tattooed stars, and he nipped at them while his hands gripped her waist. He helped her bob up and down on him, starting slow and letting her get used to him. But she didn’t want it to be slow, didn’t want his gentleness. Bending down to his good ear, she breathily moaned and let his name slip out of her, “Joel.” And then the pace turned frantic and hard, his arms banding around her body and him thrusting his hips up into her wildly. His cock hit deep and the feeling bordered on pain, but it only intensified everything. She was soaking his lap in her arousal and his fingers were bruising her waist. It was overwhelming in its intensity, her already sensitive clit rubbing against the base of his erection, and she was climbing higher and higher. She wanted to drown in the feeling, lose herself in him and forget the world around them. Forget she was still covered in blood, forget her name, forget everything but this feeling of overwhelming pleasure. Then she was coming, whispering his name over and over again, him thrusting through her orgasm. She felt the moment he followed her, warmth filling her up completely as his release came inside of her and his movements became wild and slow. He held her tightly on his lap and her arms were around his shoulders, forehead resting against the side of his head. The silence began to seep back, awareness outside of their panting breaths, and the heat died down. She tried not to notice how he pressed one final, soft kiss to her collar bone before straightening up, his eyes meeting hers. “I didn’t beg,” she whispered, voice husky and raw from holding in her sounds. Joel huffed out a chuckle, eyes flickering to her lips then moving away, “Don’t sound so cocky, there’s still next time.” Next time. The words rolled around in her mouth and she tried not to feel pleased that there would in fact be a next time. Because it was something, some form of endearment towards her, outside of the constant bickering and getting after her. She smirked, “We’ll see, Joel.” _______________________ Tag List: @alouise20 @faceache111

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x feral reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x oc #joel miller #joel miller fanfic #tlou #the last of us #tlou fanfic #the last of us fanfiction #joel miller smut #raicodoll writes #series: feral

[1kook]

acatalepsy

— 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐨 ; 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦

chapter summary; The amount of times he’s seen you stretch yourself thin for this place was unreal. Jungkook liked Oleander as much as the next person, but occasionally he’d get hit with doubts. What would they do once the entity found them? Jungkook thinks he’d run. He’d take you and run far away, leaving this whole place behind. He’ll never tell you this, though, because he knew you loved Oleander too much. And if you didn’t, the responsibilities that tied you to it would never let you abandon the people like that anyway. overall warnings; gorey scenes, depictions of death, appearance of weapons, survival!au, apocalypse!au, super l o o s e bird box!au (no birds - jk is the bird 👀), eventual smut, dark and angsty, major character death chapter specifics; nudity, mentions of masturbation, unreal levels of horniness from jungkook, mentions of death, 1 fight scene, use of weapons, jungkook abusing tf outta pet names, loads of pessimistic jungkook word count; 10k

notes; as always ty to my amazing editor rumu 🥺<333 this part isn't as dark as part one, but anyway enjoy in love but on edge jungkook lmao 

part one ⇠ part two ⇢ part three (soon!)

[ twelve months later]

“Rise and shine!” Taehyung sings, ripping the flap of his tent open for the world (the base) to see, sunlight filtering in through the gap like the trickling of water over a brook. Satisfied with the disruption, Taehyung flounces off to wake another poor soul from their sleep, leaving Jungkook to fend against the rays of the sun by himself. There’s a breeze this morning, one that makes the flimsy flaps bristle with each gush of wind, sunlight roving over him in intervals that leave Jungkook groaning in annoyance.

He can only stand it for so long, eventually rolling off his sleeping bag when he hears more voices outside beginning to grunt, the pop of bones as people do their morning stretches. With a final yawn, Jungkook decides to show his face to the outside world, stumbling out of his tent with sleep crusted eyes that have him bumping into a kid first thing in the morning, a slew of apologies thrown his way.

“Sorry, Jungkook!” The group of them call, skirting off in a fit of giggles. Jungkook waves them off, stretching his arms out in front of him as he waits for Namjoon to wake up.

The man in the tent next door is usually pretty good at rising before Taehyung’s wake up call, more often than not waiting for Jungkook. Today, however, is seemingly an off day. Five minutes roll by and Jungkook's patience is as long as his pinky— short. Such is proven when he barges into the tent only to find Namjoon sprawled out like a starfish inside.

“Hey,” he says, nudging his foot against the unconscious man’s calf. “Joon, we gotta go if you wanna get the good spot by the river.” More silence. Eventually, Jungkook gets mean and leans down to pinch his side, an action that not only wakes Namjoon, but also has him squealing at the touch.

“I’m up, I’m up,” he gasps, scrambling far away from Jungkook in a frenzied rush. Only after he’s knocked over his plastic bottle and the makeshift twig drying rack he dries his clothes and towel on does he calm down. “Oh, Kook. It’s you.”

Jungkook nods, eyes struggling to stay awake. “Yes, it is I, Jungkook, who would love to take a bath before __ yells at me for being late to breakfast again.”

Namjoon grunts as he gets up, taking his towel and day clothes with him as they exit his tent. At the creek, Jungkook drops his boxers—one of the four he owns and wears on rotation—and has to endure three minutes of Seokjin catcalling him. Him and some other fellow are guarding the creek bed today, guns cradled against their chests as Jungkook, Namjoon, and a few more people crawl into the water.

When Jungkook had first arrived, the thought of bathing with so many people made him uncomfortable. His nude form wasn’t something he went around showing everyone, and now he was expected to just show it to a bunch of strangers? Even worse, the people who stood guard against the river, eyes peeled for any potential threats. It all made him very nervous.

Now Seokjin’s calculated expression as he glances over the treeline behind them comforts Jungkook. The world was weird like that.

“Holy shit,” Jungkook groans, the same way he does every other day they bathe, muscles jumping at the cold water that tickles his toes. He sighs as he walks deeper into the freezing coldness. He rinses himself off, half heartedly splashing his body with water; at its deepest it only reaches above his knee.

Namjoon is off today, probably from the extended watch they had last night, eyes scanned over the dark forest as they waited for you and some other people to return from a scavenging trip that took about three days. It was just before dawn when you returned and his replacements relieved them of their duties. When they sit down to wash their hair, he nearly falls face first into Jungkook’s knee.

Jungkook cackles at the sight, trying to pretend like his nipples aren’t freezing as he fully envelopes himself in the water. “You alright, man?” He asks, running his fingernails through his hair. A couple of the people bathing further down the creek get up and leave, dressing by the bank. He knew they were a little late today, but Jesus, were they fast or what?

Namjoon nods, and the poor guy doesn’t even have the energy to defend himself when Jungkook childishly slaps a wave of water his way. “Just tired,” he admits, beginning to wash his own hair. With most of the people finished, Seokjin lets the other guard go early, leaving just the three of them at the creek.

“Hurry it up, ladies,” Seokjin calls, and Jungkook is only a little disappointed that his splash doesn’t reach him all the way over by his perch.

Luckily, before he can retort, there’s a silkier voice drifting through his ears, one that immediately makes every hair on his body stand straight. “What are you trying to say about ladies, Seokjin?” You ask as you come up behind him, and Jungkook is immediately flooded with warmth at your early morning appearance. Seokjin flounders for an answer you pay no mind to, eyes snapping to where Jungkook is instead.

“Need you at the armory in five, Kook,” you tell him, and he wonders if you know the way your voice makes his chest pound.

Pushing those juvenile thoughts away, Jungkook quickly slaps on a goofy grin for you. “Oh? You hear that, boys? Our great leader needs some alone time with me,” he boasts, and Namjoon rolls his eyes at his antics.

“She’d rather choke than be with a pleb like you,” Seokjin snorts, finally dropping his guard stance as Namjoon and him get out of the water. “Jesus, Kook—again?” He groans, covering your eyes with his rifle as Jungkook stands up, half-hard boner and all.

He’s grown used to it, the occasional hard on he gets in the water, like he’s some superhuman who’s developed immunity to the usual effects of cold water on a hard dick. But he can’t help it, it’s been over a year since he last got his dick wet, and being disgustingly in love with a woman who didn’t know certainly didn’t help. “What’s wrong?” You frown, hand wrapping around the barrel of Seokjin’s gun that blocks your vision.

Namjoon tosses him his towel, and he’s just knotted it around his waist when you catch his eye again, unimpressed as usual. “Don’t worry about it, baby,” he teases, turning his body away from you as he shimmies his clothes on. He can still feel your glare on his exposed backside, but living in Oleander has made him comfortable in his birthday suit, so he really doesn’t mind. When he’s halfway dressed, pant legs haphazardly stuffed into the big, chunky boots Namjoon had brought back for him once, he turns around, shirt tossed over his bare shoulder, to follow you back to the base.

“And you’re requesting my presence so early in the morning, why?” He hums, toweling his hair dry as the two of you finally reach Oleander. There’s significantly more people milling about now, kids playing a game of soccer in the middle of the grounds, while others travel to and from the mess hall. There’s a wonderful scent emanating from the mess hall’s open front, and Jungkook wishes desperately you’ll lead him there instead.

You don’t, politely bidding people good morning until you reach the door to the armory, waving Jungkook in. “Needed you,” you explain, clattering around the space in search for something. The armory has gotten some pretty good upgrades in the past year he’s been here, graduating from a shabby box to full on storage container. It took a while to get it to this size, the wood working process more difficult than any of them thought, but they were all proud of it now.

Over the past year, Oleander has grown in size, a fact which causes great turmoil in Jungkook. On one hand, he’s glad he and the others have been able to save more people, take them under their wings in this scary new world. On the other, he feels like he’s always on edge.

It was a known fact that the entity was drawn to established civilizations, and with each new person that joined, Jungkook is left wondering what exactly that means. The last he heard, they were sitting somewhere near one hundred seventy. That was about one hundred more than when he first arrived. Was there some unknown number they had to avoid? Would the entity sense their presence once they reached two hundred residents, deem them an established society that needed wrecking?

He doesn’t know. They’ve been lucky enough so far, never having been caught by the entity on Oleander grounds. But other groups of scavengers hadn’t. Despite their growing numbers, they’ve lost people as well. Some they knew were caught up by neighboring bases—the Magnolians in particular, who killed on sight—and would return in groups smaller than when they were dispatched. Others never returned at all, presumably infected with the madness.

Nonetheless, Oleander continued to grow. They weren’t a spattering of tents and loose rules anymore, erecting more shabbily constructed buildings along the way. Like a privacy room for a pregnant woman they’d found and another small storage for the vegetables they began growing last fall.

Jungkook groans as he settles into a seat across from you, tugging his shirt over his shoulders. “That’s what I like to hear.”

You level him with an unamused glare, tossing a dirt-caked bullet at him. He catches it in one hand, twirls the bronzed metal between his fingers. “What happened to the quiet guy who couldn’t even look me in the eye?” You huff, pulling up a crate to sit before him.

Jungkook squints at the bullet, finally catching sight of an engraved brand name he’s almost certain they don’t have. “Life,” he murmurs absentmindedly. “Where did you get this?” He asks, finally glancing back at you.

Your arms are crossed over your chest, and he’s come to learn you do this one of two times: one when you’re feeling especially confident, unconsciously garnering everyone’s attention with such a pose, and the other when something is bothering you. Judging by the quirk of your lips, Jungkook guesses it’s the latter.

“Found it on our way back,” you relay, huffing as you recall the memory. Jungkook raises a brow at the news, gesturing for you to elaborate. “By the mouth of the creek.”

That’s a couple miles away, he thinks, sitting back in his seat in a pose that mimics yours. He and Taehyung had spent an entire day following the creek behind the base, traced it miles out until they’d reached a larger river that Jungkook only barely remembered learning about in high school geography. A river meant fish, a revelation that had excited them both after eating nothing but canned foods for the past few months. Of course, you hadn’t been as thrilled when they returned to base hours later, having left without telling anyone. He still remembers the watery sheen to your eyes as you had cursed them to hell and back.

“Our creek?” He asks, just to make sure, and you confirm with a nod. “Damn,” he scoffs, rubbing a hand over his chin in a habit he picked up from Hobi. “We gotta go check it out.”

The handful of bases they stumbled upon this past year were far and few between. Most times, you, their leader, would approach any camps you saw first and meet with their respective leader. They hardly ever interacted with you again, because there was always that looming sense of competition between survivor camps like yours.

In fact, the only group Jungkook could think of that blatantly went out of their way to cause problems was the one that had so lovingly almost beat him to death when he was at his lowest: Magnolia. It feels like a lifetime ago.

You agree. “That’s what I was thinking,” you sigh, raising to your feet. “But I don’t wanna risk anyone getting hurt if it is dangerous, y’know?”

He follows after you, leaning against a folding table he and the guys snatched off some lawn during their last scavenge. A bitch to carry back, but it was definitely worth it. “Yeah, keep it small,” he suggests, running through a list of all their active scavengers in his head. “Maybe five?”

You shake your head, nibbling your lip nervously. “Too risky. I was thinking less.”

“Less?” Jungkook chokes. “Babe, you can’t send a smaller group than that, that’s suicide.” Never mind the fact he and Taehyung had been completely okay with dallying off like that just a few months ago. Semantics Jungkook refuses to acknowledge. “Besides, I don’t think anyone would volunteer for that.”

You glance at him for a moment, and he can visibly see your brain working overtime, before you’re turning away with a determined look on your face. “Listen,” you sigh, hands flat on the table. Jungkook peers down at your twisted features. “I’m not asking anyone to volunteer,” you explain. “I’ll go.”

Jungkook scoffs. “Like hell you will,” he retorts. “And when those fuckers catch you all alone and kill you?” You don’t say a word, lower lip caught between your teeth as you glare down at the bullet.

“Then you move on,” you finally breathe. “Get a new leader. Probably move the camp.”

Jungkook could gouge his eyes out. “Babe, what,” he stresses. “No. You’re not gonna go on a mission like that alone.”

Finally turning away from whatever trance the bullet has you in, you cross your arms over your chest. “Really? And what’s stopping me?”

“Me,” he enforces, stepping into your space. “You aren’t gonna go and confront whatever psycho is out there. Baby, do you even realize how reckless that sounds?”

“I do!” You snap. “Which is why I don’t want other people going.” You step away, rub your fingers against your forehead as you lose yourself in an even deeper train of thought.

“Then I'm going too,” Jungkook announces, whirling away before you can tell him no.

A hand catches his shoulder, forcefully tugging him back around. He’s met with your wide eyes, flickering over his face in worry. “Jungkook, now’s not the time to play hero,” you plead.

He scoffs. “Could say the same to you.”

Groaning you push him away. “Please,” you huff. “Just stay here. It’s probably nothing and I’ll come back after sunset.”

“If it’s nothing then I don't see the issue with me going,” he points out. In the back of his head, he’s vaguely aware he’s volunteering himself for the very same plan he claimed no one would volunteer for just a few moments ago. It was crazy what one woman and a thundering heart could do to him. But he’d follow you on a thousand stupid missions if it meant keeping you safe. “When are we leaving?”

To prevent inciting any panic among the Oleanderians over one bullet, the only person you tell about this trip is Hoseok. Jungkook thinks it’s dumb. Actually, Jungkook thinks this whole idea is pretty dumb, and that they could benefit greatly from taking at least one more person along, even if that person was half-asleep Namjoon.

You don’t share the same sentiment as you haul a tiny bag of supplies over his shoulder, gesturing for Jungkook to get moving.

Right as the two of you step off Oleander grounds, Seokjin’s voice comes barreling around the corner. Jungkook sees the noticeable displeasure in your features as the two of you pause, watching the nurse torpedo towards the two of you. “Where are you two going?” He immediately begins interrogating. You glance at Jungkook who only glances back at you, urging you to respond to Jin. Normally, he would’ve told the guy to simply fuck off. But since this is your secret plan he wants to see what lie you’ll toss out this time.

With an indignant roll of your eyes you turn to face the older man. “I’m taking Jungkook out for some practice,” you fib, and Jungkook is a little offended you would even insinuate he needs more practice. “His knee has been hurting again so we wanna take it slow.”

It’s probably the lamest excuse you can give. Seokjin was well aware of the ache in his knee, caused by years of training on the field and torn ligaments that have long since healed over. He knows everything there is to know about Jungkook’s knee, especially the fact it only hurt after a scavenging trip, and as far as he was concerned, Jungkook hadn’t gone on a trip in the past two weeks.

“Uh huh,” Seokjin says, and Jungkook can tell he doesn’t believe the words coming out of your mouth for one second.

At this point, he’s desperate to start down the creek, prove there truly is no harm down there as you suspect, and whisk you back to the O quickly. If that means he has to put the charm on Seokjin, then that’s fine by him.

“Listen, big guy,” Jungkook steps forward, pushing you behind him. “Me and the boss are gonna get some practice,” a greasy wink he’s glad you don’t see, “if you know what I mean. So do me a solid and lay off this once?”

Jungkook’s excuse only makes Seokjin even more wary, but sensing he won’t get a serious answer out of the two of you, he backs off. “Fine,” he agrees, stepping away. He throws a glance over at you, “let me know if this sleaze tries anything with you.”

You nod, tugging Jungkook down towards the creek bed hastily. “Really? That was your best excuse?” You snap with a unbelieving look in your eye. “Another sexual joke?”

Jungkook shrugs. “What can I say? It’s my brand,” he halfheartedly defends, soon falling into step beside you as you hurry alongside the creek bed. He doesn’t see the need to rush, considering this will most likely be a long trip.

It takes about three and half hours to get to the huge river the creek trickles into. The long distance is the main reason fish hadn’t become completely integrated into the mess hall’s admittedly small menu like he and Taehyung had dreamt about. Normally he doesn’t mind the seven hours to and from if he’s with the guys, a scenic walk that’s filled with countless jokes here and there.

With you, however, every nerve in Jungkook’s body is lit ablaze, his thoughts bouncing wildly in his head as the realization he’ll get to spend the whole day with you alone dawns over him.

Despite the fact he’s known you for the past year, there’s still a lot of unknown mystery that surrounds you.

Well, not really a mystery.

Mostly just little things he wants to know about you, the woman who saved him when he was so alone and lost; the woman he feels himself growing more and more enamored with as the days go by.

From what he’s gathered, you were in a master’s program when the entity first appeared, living in a small town just outside the city. You had escaped the entity by sheer luck.

You were on a jog when it happened, you told him, headphones blasting when the calamity hit. Slowly, the world around you had crumbled, people falling victim to the madness and ending their lives before your very eyes. So terrified, you had dropped to the ground in a ball, sobbed to the soundtrack of some Top 50 playlist for hours amidst the dead bodies that littered the streets of your neighborhood. Until, eventually, the entity had left, losing your presence amongst all the death that surrounded you.

This was all something Jungkook had only learned about a few months ago, in a rare moment of vulnerability. That moment had been the only time you had ever laid your heart out like that, shared with him a piece of yourself. Ever since then, he was desperate to learn more.

Not wasting a second longer, Jungkook jumps headfirst into it. “Soooo, what’re we doing for your birthday this year?” He hums, peering down at your features.

You say nothing, eyes glancing furtively through the vast amounts of trees ahead of you for any signs of life. There’s no one out here, a fact both of you know, but he supposes it never hurts to be cautious. “You don’t know my birthday,” you remind him.

“How am I supposed to know it when you hide it away like it’s some mind blowing national secret?” He says cheekily. “I’ll tell you mine. It’s September first.”

Most men would feel discouraged by your lack of interest in the conversation, but not Jungkook. He’s grown used to your aloof exterior, finds it kind of endearing actually. After a moment, you pointedly announce, “Jungkook, I haven’t known what day it is for months now... birthdays practically mean nothing to me.”

“It’s June second,” he says right away, and his confidence surprises you if the way you pause is any indication. He stops beside you, tilts his head at your reluctant gaze.

“How would you know that?” You ask in disbelief, one hand on your hip. The semi-automatic pistol you have strapped to your waist bounces against your thigh. “We haven’t seen a calendar in months, and if we did, we wouldn’t even know what day it was.”

Jungkook shrugs. “It’s mostly just a guess,” he admits, pointing at a patch of pink flowers sprouting near the water. “Oleanders usually bloom at the end of spring. I’m surprised you didn’t know considering you named your little campgrounds after them,” he playfully jabs, crossing his arms over his chest as your eyes trail over toward the pink flowers beside your foot.

His heart falls straight out of his ass when you begin crouching down, fingers outstretched towards the flora. “They’re poisonous, you idiot,” he scolds, yanking you up by the elbow.

Jungkook can count on one hand the moments he’s truly left you flustered, and part of him is a little disappointed that it’s some stupid death flowers that make it onto the list. But your lips are adorably puckered, gaze flickering away from him in embarrassment at your slip up, and Jungkook can’t believe the hammering of his heart. “Oh,” you murmur, and then, impossibly quieter, “sorry.”

He sighs, quiets the thumping in his chest. After a moment, he throws a hand over your shoulders, guiding you back down the creek as if your little moment of stupidity didn’t just happen. “Wow, our brave leader sure is a dummy,” he exclaims, nearly faints at the small smile you hide from him.

“Shut up,” you retort, but there’s no malice in your words and you don’t push Jungkook’s arms away. “I’m bad at remembering which ones are harmful, okay? That’s more down Hoseok’s lane.” It certainly was down Hobi’s lane, considering the man had run a floral business prior to this catastrophe. Jungkook knows he’s the one who gave Oleander its name, at first just as a warning for the younger kids to avoid the flower, but it never hurts to tease you about it.

It’s little things like this that he treasures between the two of you, moments that nestle their way into the cracks of his heart. Not that you’ll ever understand.

The walk to the river ends up being shorter than he remembers, and after a few hours of bantering the tinkling trickle of the creek is replaced with the rapid currents ahead. “Where was it?” He asks, all traces of glee wiped from his face as he keeps his eyes focused on the tree line. He hears your telltale shuffling behind him as you retrace your steps, calculated steps that suddenly come to a halt. “Babe?” He calls out after a moment.

There’s a soft breeze in the air that ruffles his hair. It’s not the gust of wind that precedes the entity, but it still sets Jungkook on edge, hand reaching for his rifle.

A scuffle behind him causes him to whirl around, gun out and pointed at whatever made the sound, only to find you with a gun pressed to your temple. Jungkook swears.

Some guy he’s never seen before holds you captive, gloved palm pressed over your mouth uncomfortably, your hand clutching at his wrist. Jungkook takes comfort in the fact you at least put up a fight, matching the barrel against your forehead with a pistol to the guy’s neck. All in all, it’s pretty even on both ends. Well, not completely, Jungkook thinks, finger tightening on the trigger.

Before he can so much as think, there’s something prodding against his lower back, a low voice purring, “drop it, lover boy,” against his ear.

Knowing when he’s been outdone, Jungkook lowers his arms with a frustrated sigh, letting the guy that snuck up behind him tug the sack you carefully prepared off his shoulders and dump it onto the ground. He catches your gaze, dark eyes seeming to convey a message he doesn’t understand, not the least bit bothered by the man holding you at gunpoint. “Anything good?” The one holding you asks.

The one behind Jungkook steadies the weapon pressed to his back, nudges through the pile on the floor with his foot. “Some snacks, but nothing long lasting.”

The dark haired one cusses, tightening his hold on you. Jungkook wants nothing more than to lunge forward, tear the guy apart for laying his dirty hands on you. “Hey, lover boy,” he barks, and Jungkook’s glare only intensifies. “Where’d you find this stuff?”

Jungkook snorts. “I’m not telling you shit,” he spits, much to their dismay, and Jungkook groans when the one behind him slams the butt of his weapon against the back of his skull, sending him onto his knees. Another flurry of movement, and when his vision clears back up you’ve got your pistol pointed at the man behind Jungkook this time, leaving yourself completely defenseless against your captor. Jungkook curses at your recklessness.

Just once he wants you to put yourself first, value your life the same way he does. Now the both of you are left vulnerable, held at gunpoint by two men presumably from another camp.

“Well,” his attacker leers, “you sure managed to find yourself a good girl out here, huh?”

The second the words leave his mouth Jungkook knows they’re in for a show.

If there was one thing you hated more than anything in this fucked up world, it was being reduced to a man’s accessory. Anyone in Oleander could rave about how great you were—hell, Jungkook did it every chance he got. A lot of the Oleanderians held a lot of respect for you. You were their leader, a title they had pushed onto you until you accepted. To have your grueling efforts, your hard work, brushed aside because of your appearance enraged you like no other.

Just as he predicted, the flame in your gaze grows tenfold, the strength you’d been hiding coming out of the container you usually locked it up in. Your body moves swiftly, knocking back forcefully into your captor before leaning forward, using the hand on his wrist to haul him over your shoulder like a sumo wrestler. Neither of them see it coming, and in his shock, the dark haired one pulls his trigger, a bullet shooting into the ground with a loud crack.

The sound startles Jungkook and the other man but Jungkook capitalizes on their shock first, whirling around to meet the guy’s face for the first time, greeting him with a clenched fist. The intensity of his punch leaves the man recoiling, blindly stumbling back as Jungkook pushes on. When the man falls back, bloody nose and all, Jungkook reaches for his weapon, only to find a steel pipe in its place. Fuck, who were these conmen?

Eventually Jungkook corners him against the base of a tree, fuming at the fact these idiots had fooled him with empty threats, tricked him into thinking he was seriously in danger with a fucking scrap of metal.

Despite the way they had stealthily crept up on the two of you, these guys have neither the experience nor support to successfully pull off a stunt like this. This much is evident when he glances back and finds you wrestling the other guy’s arms behind his back. Following your example, he hauls his attacker up by the collar of his shirt, slamming him against the tree. “Who are you with?” He hisses, watching the guy squirm in his hold. “Who the fuck are you with?” He repeats, and the guy finally breaks.

“No one! No one. It’s just the two of us, me and Yoongi, no one else,” he rambles, and Jungkook glances back at you. You were significantly better than him at detecting lies, and one solemn nod from you has him releasing his grip, angrily kicking the damn piece of tubing far into the distance.

“So you’re strays,” you announce a few moments later, arms crossed over your chest in that famous power stance, eyes scanning over the figures of the two men Jungkook had pushed to their knees in front of you.

“Yes,” Jimin, the one who had originally attacked Jungkook, confirms. “It’s been just us two for a few months now.”

You let his answer sit for a few beats. “Where did you get this gun? This is the same one the  Magnolia carry,” you state, and Jungkook wants to laugh at your stern approach, because just minutes ago you were fighting off a smile at his fourth knock knock joke. Instead, he schools his expression, gathering their things back into the sack Jimin had so lovingly dumped earlier.

Yoongi sighs, and Jungkook is extra wary of him, because it seems he is the one who orchestrated their little attack. “We attacked two of them. Took the gun and some other things before they could call for help. We’ve only had it for a few weeks now,” he confesses.

Jungkook snorts. These guys sure were brave, he thinks. One measly gun and they became bold enough to pull a stunt like this. If it were up to him he’d take their admittedly small resources and throw them back out into the forest with nothing for their half-assed efforts.

Sadly, it’s not. He watches you mull over their responses, can practically hear the invitation sitting on the tip of your tongue. It’s not the first time he’s found himself in a situation like this with you, your overwhelming need to invite nearly every stray you stumbled upon back to the O. In fact, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen you turn someone away.

Briefly he wonders if you had the same doubts as him. How many people constituted a functional society? They’d never know until the day the entity shows up. Until then, he knows you’ll keep taking strays in.

As predicted, the offer appears. “We have a place,” you begin, and Jungkook’s eyes can’t roll far back enough. Leave it to you to invite these half-assed clowns back to Oleander.

Silently, Jungkook walks off to sulk elsewhere, still mad that he’d let some idiot take advantage of his lack of sight to trick him into believing he had a gun to his back.

Later, when you’re wrapping up your extensive history of Oleander to these two strangers, you wander back towards where Jungkook’s been leaning against a tree. The two men follow behind tentatively, and you gesture for them to start up the creek bed, pointing toward the general direction of Oleander.

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed glare, one you have no problem returning. “Really?” He drawls. “Inviting back the guys who tried to kill you?”

You ignore him, falling into step a few meters behind the two men. Jungkook follows. “They don’t have anywhere else to go,” you mention. “Besides, they’re not dangerous.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Babe, these guys were willing to kill you over a bag of granola bars and water,” he emphasizes, throwing a glance their way. “You think they won’t try that at the O?”

You shrug. Jungkook could strangle you.

“Kook, one of them had a pipe. He can’t really kill you with that,” you remind him, as if he isn’t embarrassed enough. “They’re obviously smart guys,” you add, your arm brushing against his. “It wouldn’t hurt to have people who can think like that back at Oleander.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “I can get creative, too, y’know,” he huffs.

His childishness makes you snort, a small hand patting the small of his back comfortingly. “I know you can,” you smile. “But for every smart Kook idea, I have ten dumb Namjoon ideas. It would help to have someone else to balance them out.”

Placated, Jungkook lets it go. “I just want you to be careful, babe,” he murmurs, watching the two men ahead of him with caution.

Nodding along to his concern, you call out to the men to carry on left when you reach a break in the creek. “I know, and I’m always grateful to you for that,” you reply, the hand on his back drawing soothing circles. He hates how easily you can calm him down. “Just please trust in my decisions this once.”

It’s a cruel jab that makes his heart ache.

Jungkook doesn’t want you to think he questions your decisions as their leader, even if sometimes he does. He knows how stressful it is for you to have all these people depending on you, so he’ll never tell you you’re doing a bad job. Still, you have your moments where you’re a little too reckless, a little too careless.

Like today. If you had come out alone, Jungkook doesn’t know what these men would have done to you. He doesn’t like when you make decisions like that, sacrifice yourself for others like that, but he also doesn’t want to make you think you’re a bad leader, because you’re not. Just a little dumb sometimes.

Jungkook says nothing, sensing this is a losing battle. They trek back to Oleander in relative silence, a three hour walk that ends a little past sunset.

Jimin and Yoongi get the same golden welcome as every new person does at Oleander, with Hoseok cheerily showing them around the grounds and letting Seokjin check over their health. It’s the exact same process Jungkook went through when he first came here, and perhaps that’s why he feels so put off by the way you skirt around your discovery of them when Hoseok asks. You lie and say you found them on the way back from your training, not mentioning the fact they attacked you.

They end up moving into Namjoon’s tent, with Namjoon moving in with Jungkook. He doesn’t seem the least bit critical of Jimin and Yoongi, and Jungkook guesses no one besides him ever will.

With summer upon them, the seeds they planted last fall sprout beautifully. The chefs at the mess hall serve the most organic pizza Jungkook’s ever had, made in the clay oven Namjoon spent hours on last fall. He eats and leaves right away, ignoring his friends’ confused expressions when he skips out on their evening gossip session at the hall.

The tent feels smaller with Namjoon’s sleeping bag squeezed inside, his casual clothes and Jungkook’s blue tracksuit pushed against the opposite end of the tent.

He wonders how he’s supposed to jack himself off now that he doesn’t have his own private space. The longer he thinks, he realizes this current moment might be the last semblance of privacy he ever has, and scrambles to take advantage of the opportunity. His hand has just unbuckled his belt, the zipper on his pants halfway down, when you suddenly appear unannounced.

“Holy shit,” he yelps, covering his crotch with his hands. You pay him no attention, eyes flickering over the newly remodeled space. “Can you knock?!”

“Jungkook,” you say, dropping down to sit beside him on the ground. He hurries to close the front of his pants. “Are you upset with me?”

“No,” he drones, his last peaceful masturbation session slipping between his fingers. “I was actually quite horny before you broke in and gave me a heart attack.”

You frown, glancing at the front of his pants as if you’re just realizing you interrupted a very precious moment of his. “I didn’t realize,” you mumble apologetically, but Jungkook waves you off quickly.

“Forget it,” he sighs, leaning back on his palms. “What’s up with you, doll?” He asks instead, suddenly aware of the worried pinch between your brows, lips downturned as you regard him.

“Nothing,” you assure him, hands cutely folded into your lap. In another life, in another universe, he imagines you would have sat like that on a first date, fingers nervously fiddling with each other. “It’s just…” you hesitate, something he rarely sees you do. “I get the feeling you’re still upset with me for bringing Jimin and Yoongi back to Oleander,” you confess. “You skipped out on dessert.”

Frankly, he is.

Despite the talk you shared on the way back, Jungkook can’t help but feel bringing those two back was a bad idea.

Sure, they’ve encountered and invited other strays who’d reacted in similar states of distress, refusing to believe that sane, kind people still existed after the appearance of the entity. They’d lash out, hiss at Jungkook and the rest, until they reached a point in which they could calmly talk it through. People lose themselves after being in solitude for so long. Jungkook had only been alone for a little less than a month, and even then he remembers being terrified of you and the others.

But never had a stray pointed a gun at them, at you, and that’s what bothers Jungkook the most.

Part of him worries these guys aren’t the strays they claim to be, but masked members of another survivor camp here to take them over, kill them off. Realistically, they’re baseless worries. One of them is thin beyond belief, and the other had told them their whole life story the second they arrived back at the O. They don’t have that killer aura that the Magnolians have, and Jungkook wants to believe they by no means have the expertise to be specially trained assassins.

If anything, they’re just really cunning strays who happened to draw a lucky card when they got that gun.

On top of that uncertainty was the worry that stemmed from your actions both today and for the past year if he’s being honest.

He’s never questioned your motives for bringing someone back to the haven before, usually trusting in you to do what’s right. After all, Jungkook was hardly the poster boy of moral decisions, so he always left that up to you.

That being said, he feels… disappointed by your lack of logical thinking today. He understands that Yoongi and Jimin are just doing what they can to get by, something he would’ve done too if he was alone. But Jungkook isn’t as forgiving and empathetic as you, which is probably why he feels like this.

“I don’t think it was a good idea,” he admits, listening to the quiet inhale you draw in at his admission. “I get that they’re strays and all… I just think you need to be more careful.” It’s rich coming from him, probably the least cautious person at the base.

You nod, the same understanding one you’d given him on the trip back.

Jungkook knew you had a tender heart. You and Hoseok both did, hence the reason you established Oleander in the first place. Admittedly, Hoseok is even worse than you, which is the main reason he doesn’t go out on scavenging trips, choosing to keep watch over the people they already have.

Before you can reiterate your reasoning from the afternoon, Jungkook cuts you off. He catches your hand, turns it over to knot your fingers with his. “Babe, I need you to take care of yourself first,” he says, watches the befuddled expression that crosses your features.

You blink. “I do?” You defend, and it’s so weak Jungkook could cry.

He sighs, squeezes your hand in his. “You don’t,” he feels a little weird explaining the state of your thoughts to, well, you. “I get that you wanna keep everyone here safe, but what about yourself?”

You say nothing. The quiet bustling of the base outside fills the silence between you.

Jungkook looks away first, choosing to stare a hole into the tent walls before him. “I know you have this huge responsibility on you and that it’s a lot of pressure, __,” he murmurs quietly. “But it’s okay to ask for help, y’know?”

Beside him, your knees curl up into your chest, chin resting on them. You don’t let go of his hand, so he takes it as a sign to continue.

“What’s happening is scary,” he admits. “But you’re not going through this alone. I want you to tell me when things become too much for you,” he emphasizes.

The amount of times he’s seen you stretch yourself thin for this place was unreal. Jungkook liked Oleander as much as the next person, but occasionally he’d get hit with doubts. What would they do once the entity found them? Jungkook thinks he’d run. He’d take you and run far away, leaving this whole place behind. He’ll never tell you this, though, because he knew you loved Oleander too much. And if you didn’t, the responsibilities that tied you to it would never let you abandon the people like that anyway.

From between his fingers, he can feel your hand trembling.  His heart throbs painfully in his chest. Jungkook wishes he could freeze this moment in time, keep the two of you inside this tent away from the crumbling world around you. In another life, in another universe, he reminds himself.

Eventually you let out a shaky exhale, eyes burning into the side of Jungkook’s face until he returns your gaze. Ever so quietly, you murmur, “Kook, I’m so scared.”

It’s the quietness of your confession, like you’re afraid admitting as much will lessen your credibility, that has him leaning forward, forehead knocking against yours gently.

“Oh, baby,” he frowns, doesn’t say a word when you throw yourself into his arms. Your face finds its home buried in the front of his shirt, shoulders shaking. He rubs your back soothingly, the same way you do to him every time he’s riled up, listening to the quiet sniffles that escape you.

“I don’t want people to get hurt,” you cry, your voice small and muffled against the front of his shirt.

His heart falters in his chest, suddenly realizing how small you are curled up in his arms. He can’t even begin to imagine the expression on your face, one you still hide from him, but he guesses it’s nothing less than glossy eyes and puffy face.

For the second time in the past year Jungkook’s known you, he gets a peek into your frail interior. A brief glance to see the woman who had watched the world around her crumble, all alone amidst wave after wave of deaths.

The city had been a horrible sight to see, but at least there he’d been comforted by the fact he was with a group of people he’d known and escaped with. It had been the first of many instances. For you, he can’t even fathom how you managed to pull yourself from the wreckage, maintain yourself until you found Hoseok.

“I’m sorry,” you choke, voice but a thin whisper he barely catches. He brushes you off, leaning his chin on the crown of your head as he continues to rub your back.

Eventually, you calm down.

The trembling of your body slows, and your muted cries disappear. When you lean away, Jungkook keeps his hands on your shoulders. Your eyes are still coated in a thin sheen of tears, the skin around flushed. Jungkook runs a knuckle along your cheekbone, following a faint trail of tears.

You rub the heel of your hand against your eye as you regain your composure. You don’t meet his eyes, but Jungkook doesn’t push. “Thank you, Jungkook,” you tell him, sniffling one last time. “I… really needed that.”

“Of course,” he murmurs, suddenly aware of how close you are. He could lean in and kiss you, but he doesn’t want you to think he’s taking advantage of your emotions. So he doesn’t.

You pat his cheek gently. He leans into the touch, eyes flickering over your bashful expression. “You were amazing today, Kook,” you quietly praise, and he’s never felt this light before. His cheeks flush red, the warmth slowly creeping up his face at your compliment.

Something in Jungkook has him leaning forward, puckered lips pressing against your temple. It’s only when his plush lips meet the skin of your forehead that he suddenly becomes aware of his actions. He stills, tries to find the perfect moment to pull away that will still make it seem friendly.

When his brain has dipped itself into frying oil three times over, it’s you who leans back with a soft smile on your features. You pat his knee once before standing up. “Actually, I heard something interesting today,” you mention, completely ignoring the redness of his face. “Follow me?”

“Anywhere,” he murmurs as he trails after you, passing the rowdy mess hall and the occasional group wandering about the grounds. Eventually you lead him into Seokjin’s medical tent, where Namjoon seems to be interrogating the hell out of Jimin. “What’s going on?” he asks, gaining everyone’s attention, and you motion towards where Jimin is babbling away.

“There they are,” Seokjin claps, “two experiments from the same lab.”

Jungkook flicks him on the forehead as he walks in, ignoring the sharp calling of his name coming from your mouth. “Not a lab experiment,” he defends, not that Seokjin cares. He squeezes around Jin, coming to stand beside Namjoon. Jimin is very quiet in his presence, probably still reflecting on their first meeting. Good, Jungkook thinks, he could drown in his guilt for all he cares.

“This guy says he knows where the new Magnolian base is set up,” Namjoon fills him in, eyeing Jimin. Jungkook doesn’t doubt it, after all, that’s apparently where they got their weapons from. Not that anyone besides you and Jungkook know that. “You believe him?”

Jungkook shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say, because none of you really suspected anyone would ask about Jimin and Yoongi’s origins after the lame story you had made up earlier. Jimin, it seems, is more of a chatterbox than he thought.

“I’m telling you, man,” he whines. “Me and Yoongs saw the damn camp. That’s where we—“

“-Were running from,” you intercept. Jungkook rolls his eyes at your feeble attempts at keeping a secret that was inevitably going to be found out. “Jimin and Yoongi were running from there when we found them.”

Jimin nods frantically. “It’s about twenty miles from here.”

Namjoon nods along, looking deep in thought as he ponders on what exactly that means for Oleander.

Jungkook can help. Basically, it means this: Magnolia setting up a camp in close range of Oleander can only be a result of one of two things:

Either they, A, are unaware that Oleander is in close range and most likely settled due to the various water sources around this area. When they eventually find its current inhabitants, they’ll undoubtedly attack on sight.

Or B, they have caught wind of Oleander’s presence here and have promptly come to, you guessed it, kill them all off just because they can. In both scenarios, Oleander remains at great risk, and everyone in the tent knows this.

“So now what?” He says more than asks, sensing they’ve all more or less reached the same conclusion.

Your foot taps against the ground, lower lip pulled taut between your teeth as you work through a dozen plans in your head.

Namjoon, ever the “wise man”, jumps to the forefront. “We have to do something about their base,” he says.

Jungkook laughs at that, plopping down beside Jimin. “Yeah, let’s just go run up on some psychos with no moral compass and kill them before they kill us. Except, wait—“ he exclaims with a little staged gasp, before leveling Namjoon with the most bored stare he can muster. “None of us have the guts to kill someone.”

Namjoon is very obviously flustered by Jungkook’s dry jab, looking at you to defend him. Jungkook simply brushes off the disapproving frown you send him.

“And when they realize we won’t kill them, guess what, guys?” he asks no one in particular, mimes someone breaking his neck. “We’re dead.”

Silence falls over the medical tent at his blunt descriptions.

Jungkook knows he’s being annoyingly pessimistic, but he can’t help it. His first encounter with Magnolia had left him bleeding at the mouth, body aching for weeks. Occasionally, he has nightmares about that day, about what would happen if you and your friends hadn’t shown up. In most of them, Jungkook’s mind conjures up violent scenes of his death.

You suck in a sharp breath that catches everyone’s attention. Straightening your spine, you step back into the middle of the space, hands on your hips like a superhero. “As much as I hate to admit it, Jungkook is right.” He grins in satisfaction. “Even if they’re not part of our community, I’m sure having too many people congregated in the same area will draw the Thing‘s attention.” Finally, some logical thinking. “But,” you suddenly add, snatching that cocky smirk straight off his face. “That being said, I think it’s best if we look for ways to—“

“No,” he cuts off, surprising everyone in the room with his curt tone. He never outwardly disagreed with you before, always hyped up your ideas like you were the greatest person alive. You were in his eyes, but there was some plans even Jungkook thought were stupid. And given the fact this would be your second stupid plan of the day, he’s more than happy to go against you in front of the others. “It’s stupid.”

“Hey,” Seokjin chides, leveling him with a cold glare he hasn’t seen in a while. “Let her speak.”

“No,” Jungkook repeats, turning his attention back to you. You don’t look the slightest bit pleased with him, and he already knows this will lead to days of you ignoring him like the time he and some of the guys snuck down to the creek after curfew one night. “Baby, going there is reckless—you know this,” he emphasizes, can’t help the gentle way he explains this to you like you’re nothing but a child.

“You haven’t even heard my idea,” you snap angrily. It takes every nerve in Jungkook’s body to keep him from crumbling beneath your hardened gaze. He hates when you look at him like that. “You won’t even let me say what I’m thinking, but you already think it’s stupid.”

“Because it is!” he yells, startling the other men in the tent. “Someone could get seriously hurt, and you know this,” he seethes, suddenly feeling like that whole heart-to-heart moment at his tent meant nothing to you. He deflates, rubs at his temples as if to rid him of the headache pounding behind his skull. “Doll, these are the Magnolians,” he murmurs. “They won’t just threaten you with a gun like Yoongi and Jimin, they will kill you on the spot.”

There’s a shared look of surprise between Seokjin and Namjoon at the news, and Jimin shifts nervously beside him. Jungkook could care less about his slip up, too engrossed in the way your lips pinch up indignantly.

“Fine,” you sneer. “Whatever we do, I’ll make sure to leave you off the list.” And with that, you’re exiting the tent with an angry tug against the door flaps.

A beat of silence as they all stare after you in shock. Jungkook has never been left off the list of scavengers.

“Kook,” Seokjin goes to soothe him, but he's already slipping out of the tent, eyes wildly scanning over the dark perimeter of the base in search of you. He finds you stomping in the direction of your tent, a small thing pressed against the side of the armory.

The ache in his knee be damned as he sprints across the clearing, narrowly avoiding the people who are still out. He catches you just as you duck inside, tearing the flap of your tent wide open.

You jump in surprise, but quickly pull on an expression of annoyance as he towers over you, arms crossing over your chest defensively.

“What did you say?” he seethes, letting the flap fall shut behind him, shrouding the two of you in darkness.

“I said you’re off the list,” you snap without missing a beat, anger rolling off you in waves. “Since you hate my ideas so much, your ass can stay here.”

Jungkook exhales loud and hard, stepping closer to you until you’re nose to nose. “I’m not off the fucking list,” he announces, jaw twitching. You go to retort, pushing him away with a palm flat on his chest that he catches in a flash, tugging you forward until you’re stumbling into his chest. You gape in shock at the hand that tightens around your waist, Jungkook’s steely eyes aiming to pierce into your soul. “If you wanna be stupid and break into the Magnolia base that’s fine by me,” he hisses, “but don’t think for a second I’d ever let you go without me, understood?”

You struggle in his arms. “I never said I wanted that,” you snarl, pushing yourself off and away from him. “But you wouldn’t know that because you wouldn’t even listen to me.”

Jungkook’s arms tighten around your waist, refusing to let you run straight into the hands of danger. “Maybe I would listen if you weren’t always trying to off yourself,” he barks, narrowly avoiding your elbow when you begin flailing in his arms.

“Jungkook— let me go!” you huff, growing more upset the longer he holds on to you. “I don’t wanna talk to you right now.”

He ignores you.

But he greatly underestimated your strength, which ends up being a huge mistake. He had watched you toss Yoongi over your shoulder just this afternoon, so he should’ve known better than anyone about the adrenaline-fueled feats you can do when you’re riled up.

You still, deluding him into thinking you’ve calmed down enough for him to loosen his grip. It’s in that tiny moment of weakness that you strike, wrapping your arms around his waist and throwing the two of you to the side. Luckily, you’re not blinded by fury enough to destroy your own tent, and end up slamming him against the wooden wall of the armory that sits flush to one side of your tent.

“Holy shit,” he gasps, the intensity of the push having a bounce back effect. He staggers forward, arms still around your waist, until the both of you stumble into the ground in a mess of limbs. You yelp at the heavy weight of his body on you, and Jungkook only has half a mind to roll off. “Oh fuck,” he groans, rubbing the back of his head.

The way you’d surged the two of you, him backwards, into the wall had left him vastly unprepared, skull slamming painfully into the wood. That on top of the good thwack Jimin had given him earlier with the pipe had his vision spotting now.

“Jungkook?” you call, shuffling to your knees over him, all traces of anger gone as worry floods over you.”Jungkook, oh my god,” you choke, sitting him up slowly, but given the fragile state of his head it seems fast anyway. The movement makes his head spin like a carousel. He’ll definitely need to see Seokjin for this. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I didn’t think you’d hit your head,” you cry, fluttering around your tent for something to give him. “Here, drink this,” you intrude, thrusting a water bottle into his hand.

He takes it in one hand, rolling his head around once. “Shit, babe, calm down. I’m not dying,” he cracks, though it ends in a groan. He definitely needed to sleep this off.

His joke only makes you more upset, and you lean forward to brush his hair from his face until your beautifully bothered expression is looking down over him. “No,” you groan, “please don’t try to make me feel better. That was a horrible thing for me to do.”

You tug him to his feet, Jungkook wincing at the sudden motion. “Yeah, that was pretty shitty,” he agrees, letting you throw an arm over your shoulders as you guide him out of the tent.

In all honesty the pain had subsided the second he’d sat up. Now he was just left with a slight pounding behind his temples, like a headache on steroids, but he played soccer his whole life; he knows when an injury was serious. This just seems like a mild concussion at most.

Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to milk every second of this. He leans into your side, your arm tightening around his waist.

“You know what’s even more shitty, though?” he prompts. You hum, more concerned with getting him to the safety of his tent. The base is mostly silent now, and the forest surrounding the camp is eerily dark. All the squirrels and rabbits they see during the day have gone to sleep, the only sound being that of the occasional owl hoot. The only people Jungkook sees are the ones on night duty sporadically standing around the perimeter of Oleander. Jungkook doesn’t answer right away, lets you sit in suspense, before announcing, “leaving someone off the list.”

You groan, finally stopping inside his tent. Upon getting closer, he’s reminded of his new roommate waiting for him inside, loud snores surely keeping everyone in a twenty foot radius awake. “I’m sorry,” you frown, moving to stand in front of him. The weight of your apology feels like you’re sorry for multiple things at once. Normally he would press, but you look like you’re about to cry just from upsetting Jungkook. For some reason he gets some twisted excitement from seeing you so torn up over him.

He shakes his head, lets the hair you pushed off his forehead fall back into place. “Don’t worry about it,” he assures you, reaching up to cup the side of your face like you did to him earlier. You lean into the touch, covering his hand with your own. Jungkook’s heart swells.

How could such a pretty little thing be this reckless? he thinks, watching the lashes that tickle your skin with every blink. “Go to bed, doll,” he commands, and you nod cutely, like a bobblehead. “Be stupid again tomorrow.”

He’s rewarded with a soft kick against his shin, a tiny smile curling around your features. “Okay,” you concede, fingers tracing over his knuckles as he finally pulls away. You watch him get into his tent, stay put until he’s glancing at you through the flaps to get moving. “Goodnight, Jungkook,” you make sure to say, waving goodbye as you begin walking back in the direction you came from.

It would’ve been the perfect night, mild concussion and all, if he had been able to truly savor your expressions that day. Instead, he goes to bed with a half hard cock and a snoring bear beside him.

Copyright © July 2020, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.

#goldenclosetnet #networkbangtan #ksmutclub #jungkook smut #jungkook fic #jeon jungkook smut #jeon jungkook fic #jjk smut #mine #ahHHHHHHH!!!!!

[readyourimgaines]

The Little Things

Summary: Derek knew fully well that moving in with Spencer was going to bring around some changes. Dr. Spencer Reid was different and Derek loved him for it. There were little quirks that the doctor showed at work and some Derek was still learning. So there must be some at home.

And a special thanks, of course, to @chaoticgremlinwholikescheese​ for helping me compile this list!

1. Alphabetizing Movies by Title

“Pretty Boy?” Derek was crouched down in front of their TV looking for their movie while Spencer did the dishes. The latter hadn’t seen Happy Gilmore and Derek couldn’t let that stand. 

“Yeah?” Spencer called from the kitchen. 

“I can’t find it?”

“What?” Spencer stepped away from the sink and went to the living room. Water dripped from his fingertips. “The movies are alphabetical. It’s between Hamlet and Ice Age.” He went to Derek’s side and gestured to the movie. “I was going to order them by director, but Hotch said most people don’t know directors very well. Which is a shame because J.J. Abrams destroyed Star Trek but Guy Riche-” 

Derek pressed a kiss to Spencer’s lips with a fond smile. Spencer blinked. 

“Sorry,” the doctor blushed. 

Derek just chuckled. “You know you’re adorable, right, Pretty Boy?” 

“You may have mentioned it a time or two,” Spencer laughed. 

“You can tell me all about directors later,” Derek promised. “I know a bit about the mainstream guys, but not a whole lot.”

“All you really need to know is that J.J. Abrams kills anything he touches and Peter Jackson doesn’t get as much attention as he should.”

*****

2. Morning Rituals

One thing that Derek very quickly learned about Spencer was that he 

had a specifically timed morning ritual when not on a case. And that if it was broken or disturbed, the whole rest of the day would go down hill like a train on greased tracks. 

He woke up at 6:17, was in the shower by 6:25, eating breakfast by 7:00, his bed made by 7:30, and shoes on his feet by 7:32. The last half hour before they left at 8:00 was free game. 

The first morning in their new place was the roughest. Spencer went 

about his usual morning, but Derek didn’t usually wake up until 7:45 because he took less time to get ready and ate in the car. So when Spencer finished breakfast and went back to their room to make the bed but Derek was still asleep… He paced for the next fifteen minutes and his head nearly went through the ceiling when Derek’s alarm went off. 

Spencer almost had a panic attack as he fumbled his way through making their bed and cramming his feet into his shoes. Needless to say, the extra half hour was spent- in vain- trying to calm the doctor down. None of the rest of the day lined up properly and Spencer was on edge and fidgety. Hotch even had to gently remind him to focus a few more times than the usual redirection of infodumps. 

That was the first and only time Derek didn’t follow Spencer’s morning routine. He found the same day that Spencer had a much simpler night ritual: Snack (sometimes) at 10:10, teeth brushed by 10:25, in bed by 10:35, reading until (supposed to be) 11:18, and then lights out. This routine was much more flexible and relaxed.

Derek found waking up and going to bed at the same time every day made the former much easier. He also found that Spencer reading to him most nights- no matter the book or topic- was very relaxing. And of course there were nights when Derek read to Spencer.

*****

3. Sugary Coffee

Derek took a sip of coffee from his travel cup and whistled. “Think I got yours, Pretty Boy. There’s enough sugar in this to hype up a six year old’s birthday party.” 

Spencer braced himself and took a sip of the coffee in his own cup. He was pleasantly relieved when the bitterly sharp taste expected never came. “I-I put sugar in both of them. I wasn’t thinking,” he said sheepishly. 

Derek shrugged. “You know what they say: I’ll try anything once.” He chuckled. “I’ll just brush my teeth for an extra three minutes.” 

Spencer scoffed as he got into the passenger seat of Derek’s car. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll like it. You don’t get the caffeine drop when the eight hour half-life is over.” 

“Is that why you put so much sugar in coffee?” Derek raised an eyebrow, thinking he already knew the answer. 

“And coffee tastes like battery acid. I’d rather drink vinegar than black coffee.” Spencer shuddered. 

Derek chuckled but didn’t say anything else as he pulled onto the street.

*****

4. Cuddly Sleeper

Even though Spencer wasn’t huge on PDA like Derek was, he sure was a cuddly guy. The second the door closed, he was a six foot koala. That included in bed- but usually not until after he was asleep. 

Some nights, Spencer would fall asleep reading. So Derek would take his book, close it, gently remove Spencer’s glasses, and turn out the lamp. Nine times out of ten, Spencer was curled up against his side before Derek was asleep himself. 

At first, Derek found himself wondering why Spencer wasn’t nestled against him before sleep took him. But after a while, it sunk in that the doctor unwound by reading. 

The look on Spencer’s face when he curled into Derek’s side always sent the older man over the moon. The absolute peace on the doctor’s face. One night, Derek almost woke Spencer up laughing. Derek rolled over to out the lamp and Spencer had gripped Derek’s arm tighter and whined in his sleep. Derek then had to assure his boyfriend- in soft whispers as to not actually wake him up- that he wasn’t going anywhere. 

Spencer never thought to question why his book and glasses were gone when he woke up.

*****

5. Leaves Books Everywhere

Anyone who had a 30 second conversation with Spencer- anyone who glanced at Spencer- could tell the man read more than he did anything else. 

Derek picked up the doctor’s satchel once and was moderately surprised the slim man hadn’t dislocated his shoulder with how heavy the bag was. But Spencer didn’t only keep books in his bag. No. They were all over the place. 

Their bedroom, the craft room where Derek made floor plans for his renovations, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room. Even both bathrooms and the basement. 

When the two first moved in together, Derek debated building an extension onto the living room for a library. He still debated it from time to time (just in case). But as time wore on, Derek grew to appreciate the countless (if seemingly random) books around the house. 

Spencer would read when Derek was working on floorplans, so Derek would read when Spencer worked on an academic paper or consult. 

“What’re you reading?” Spencer asked one night, finally looking up from his notebook. He was writing an essay on how handwriting analysis could help catch a serial killer and/or rapist. 

“I don’t even know,” Derek chortled. “Uh..” he looked at the cover, “it’s Introduction to Law by Joanne Banker and Yvonne Ekern.” 

“Oh! Hotch loaned that to me yesterday,” Spencer noted. “I should get that back to him soon.” 

Derek just shook his head. “You know, Pretty Boy, I didn’t read this much in college.”

Spencer smiled. “See? Maybe there’s a good side to not spending thousands of dollars on building a library,” he teased.

6. The Nightlight

In the bedroom, in the outlet closest to the door was a nightlight. But not just any night light. This nightlight made the move in the front pocket of Spencer’s satchel. 

“So what’s the story behind this platypus, Pretty Boy?” Derek had to ask one night as Spencer turned it on. “Because you’ve had this since before we were dating.” 

“My uh- my mom’s went on a sort of field trip with her hospital a couple years ago. It was on one of her good days. She saw this in the aquarium’s gift shop and bought it for me.”

“That’s pretty cute,” Derek encouraged. He knew Spencer didn’t open up about his mom often so Derek tried to learn everything he could about the woman during the rare occurrences. 

“We named him,” Spencer laughed. “Alfred Nicholas Brian Reid.” He giggled. “I just… He helps.”

*****

+1. Bleeding/Infected Hangnails

Spencer usually had something to stim or fidget with. A strip of paper, a pen or pencil to twirl, a shirt with a loose thread, something. On the off chance that he didn’t, the doctor somehow decided that his fingers were good enough. If Spencer didn’t have a hangnail, he’d start one. 

This was the one and only thing about Doctor Spencer Reid that Derek Morgan hated. He could see the minute flinch when Spencer held a utensil wrong and it pressed on the swollen skin. He heard the soft hiss when Spencer got tomato or orange juice in the broken skin. 

What Derek hated even more than that was when the hangnail would get infected. The skin around the nail or turn a greenish-yellow and harden. Which, in turn, gave Spencer another thing to pick at. 

“Pretty Boy, you gotta stop,” Derek sighed. He’d gone into a convenience store to get them something other than coffee- but tastier than water- to drink. While inside, he bought a box of Band-Aids and a tube of anti-bacterial cream. 

Spencer snapped out of his daze. “What?”

“Picking at your nails.” To prove his point, Derek took Spencer’s hand in his to show him, as well as to stop his current picking. “I know you’re worried about the case, Baby, but we’ll catch the son of a bitch and put his ass behind bars like we always do. You gotta stop destroying your hands.”

“I didn’t realize I was,” he admitted. 

“I know,” Derek said softly. He applied the cream and a Band-Aid to each finger that needed it (five in total between both hands). “We just gotta get you a couple of those fidget cubes Garcia has.”

Tag List: @mayonnaiseismycomfortfood​

#read your imagines #combefere's journal #criminal minds imagine #moreid imagine #spencer reid imagine #derek morgan imagine #5+1 things #6+1 things #moreid #moreid fluff

[bigskydreaming]

One trope in particular that’s always been a Batfandom fave is the de-aging trope, where various Batcharacters are de-aged to certain points in childhood and the others interact with them that way while trying to change them back. There’s a couple out there that use Dick as the one de-aged and younger him is surprisingly more angsty than his siblings were expecting but there’s one take that I’ve never ever seen done and that like, I would kill to read a fic of.

So like, I’ve mentioned before that one thing I particularly like about the juvie origin for Dick and part of why I always default to it, is because of how it specifically has Dick encounter Bruce as Batman BEFORE Bruce takes him in. That one scene of Dick barefoot on the rooftops just after escaping from juvie and then Batman’s just there, looming over him....

That’s always stuck out and resonated with me as just this amazing and largely untapped facet of the entire Batfamily and their dynamics.

Because see, when they meet on the rooftops, Batman tells Dick to go back to juvie before anyone notices he’s gone, and he’ll make sure he gets out in a way that he’ll be able to help bring in Zucco. He won’t be able to help if he’s a fugitive himself, Batman tells him.

Dick complies.....but not because he believes him. He has no idea who’s under the cowl, no idea that Bruce is planning on showing up the next day and making sure he gets out of there now that he knows that’s where they sent Dick.

And he has no reason to believe him either.

After all, for the past month, every adult Dick’s interacted with has basically just told him he belongs in juvie, he’s supposed to be there. In the place that everyone there acknowledges as ‘where they send the bad kids.’ As far as Dick’s concerned, every single person he’s interacted with since his parents died (with Dick still blaming himself for not telling anyone he saw Zucco threaten Haly before the show, thus probably feeling on some level that this is the reason he was sent there)...but point is, everyone he’s met has in all likelihood just taken it on face value, no matter what Dick says or does, that if someone put Dick in juvie he’s supposed to be there, and him saying otherwise is just what everyone says of course.

So Dick has absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that Batman doesn’t look at him on the roof that night and just see a criminal kid escaping from juvie. That he wasn’t just trying to get Dick to go back peacefully, and with Dick resentfully thinking the only reason he goes back is because he figures if he doesn’t, Batman will just drag him back anyway.

Point being.....Dick’s first view of Batman there isn’t seeing him as a hero, a protector. Someone who will be on his side and help and protect him.

Any and all respect and appreciation he developed for Batman came AFTER he got to know him.

Much like Jason...who reacted to Batman confronting him about his tires by attacking...because Batman was literally catching him in the act of committing a crime, technically. Jason has no reason not to assume Batman’s going to view him as anything other than a bad kid to be carted off to juvie, when he hits him with his tire iron and tries to run away.

Now, back to Dick, in the juvie origin, once Bruce gets him out of juvie and brings him to Wayne Manor, they don’t bond instantly or anything. In fact Dick is mostly just left alone and is miserable for the first few weeks...because he doesn’t get why Bruce did that, as Bruce is still keeping his identity a secret and thus keeping up his Brucie persona even at home, around Dick. It isn’t until Dick sneaks out to go after Zucco and Batman saves him from two of Zucco’s henchmen, that Dick figures out that Bruce is Batman and Bruce starts acting like himself around him and they really start getting to know each other.

But just like Jason, who had Bruce reveal his identity to him basically as soon as he decided to take Jason in after the Ma Gunn thing played out.....

The importance of this, to me, is that for both Dick and Jason....Batman was initially the enemy to be wary of, the bogeyman for them as much as the criminals Bruce crafts his reputation to scare specifically. I don’t think its ever really occurred to Bruce that Batman isn’t universally regarded as a source of comfort and likely protection by all children...that two of his own children were just as wary of him in that way as any criminal...because even though they knew they were just trying to survive, they didn’t trust that he would view it and them that way...and had no reason to.

So the thing is....as much as Bruce always valued his time with both Dick and Jason when they were in costume at his side as Robin....I think there’s a strong case to be made that he’s never fully understood that even though they enjoyed that a lot of the time....the time they spent together in costume wasn’t the same as the time when it was just them and Bruce in the Manor.

Because Bruce Wayne was their hero, before they came to view Batman that way. They only grew to trust and value Batman for what Bruce tried to do in that guise BECAUSE he eventually won their trust as BRUCE, first.

And this is, again quite interestingly to me....the exact opposite of say, Tim and Damian. Who sought Bruce out BECAUSE of Batman, BECAUSE they were seeking the hero, the legend, first and foremost. They both came and stayed for Batman first....and then grew to value their non-costumed interactions with Bruce just as much. Whereas Dick and Jason stayed for Bruce Wayne, the man under the cowl, and only later extended that to him in the cowl.

Which if you think about it, can account for SO MUCH of the disconnect in the various Batfamily member’s interactions and miscommunications....because the mantles sometimes get in the way. They didn’t all come into the family for the same reasons, and not just with different views....but completely contradictory views.

And this has never fully been acknowledged, and thus never reconciled.

So for instance, Dick and Jason both began pulling away from Bruce more and more....due to friction between he and them as Batman and his Robins, conflicts in costume. Differing ideologies. A lot of people forget that Dick and Bruce were having a lot of fights even before the encounter with the Joker that was Dick’s last real time as Robin at Bruce’s side. They were disagreeing more and more about their approaches to criminals....Dick thought Bruce was being too violent with criminals, and not differentiating enough between petty crimes and more violent offenders, brutal interrogation methods, that sort of thing. Ironic, given that it was Bruce who was critical of Jason being too violent, etc, in their conflicts there.

But the point being, their conflicts with him BEGAN in costume. And leaked over to their civilian lives from there...because Bruce has never really made a distinction between the two. He’s always viewed himself as...he IS Batman. Batman IS him. There’s no reason their argument in costume would be any different out of it......but for Dick and Jason, because of growing to trust Bruce first, THEN Batman.....there was more of a marked distinction. And slowly, conflicts that in their eyes began with Batman just...not understanding them and their point of view...with this not being totally surprising to them because they’d always be much more cognizant of where they came from and how they first viewed him...would have thus started to ‘infect’ their interactions with Bruce...their father...the one they’d ACTUALLY stayed for and trusted....but who was increasingly becoming less of a safe refuge...because of Batman, and his inability or unwillingness to understand where they were coming from and their priorities.

Whereas Tim and Damian....being in costume at Batman’s side WAS the refuge. The stable, comfortable environment, the familiar thing that was the reason they were here in the first place. It was as their civilian alter egos that they were always uncertain where they stood with Bruce, and unsure how to interact with him at times. When they were having personal disagreements, it was easier to shelve that away and refocus their attention for the moment on the larger than life figure of Batman and what he represented to them and had even before they knew him personally.

So of course you’re going to have a total mess of conflicts and misunderstandings when you have fundamentally opposing views on what even makes you a family in the first place.

Batman and Robin were the reason Dick and Jason started to no longer feel comfortable and secure in Wayne Manor...as Dick and Jason. In stark contrast to how for Damian and Tim, being at a Batman’s side as Robin was what AFFIRMED their feeling comfortable and secure in their place in the manor or the family.

I have thoughts on Cass and Duke and Steph all here too, but this is already getting long as fuck and those four are the most clear cut examples.

But anyway, this is why I would kill for a de-aging fic that regresses Dick to back just when he and Bruce are starting to get to know each other for real, when Bruce was actively working to win his trust. When Dick had found out that Bruce was Batman and in on the whole secret, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still a long way to go before reaching that ultimate camaraderie...and it all stemming from that still fairly fresh trauma of not just the loss of Dick’s parents, but the removal of all sense of stability in Dick’s world, where people locked him up for no real reason and adults weren’t trustworthy, etc.

Regressing Dick to this specific age and state of mind allows for several things, with ripple effects that have the potential to help with not just his own interactions with the various family members, but even the rest of theirs with each others’:

First, it vividly brings Bruce back to those earliest days with Dick and what it was like, and how hard he had to work to gain his trust...as well as all his reasons for doing it, and being glad he did. It forces Bruce to start taking a hard look at the road their relationship took since then, and acknowledge where he started taking Dick for granted as being ‘fixed or healed’ enough that he didn’t have to work as hard at keeping his trust, or mistakenly assuming that due to living with him long enough, Dick had started to become more like him to the extent that Bruce no longer had to put as much effort into trying to understand where he was coming from or bridge the gap in their life experiences AND world views.

At the same time, bringing things back to the start, so to speak, forces the other Batkids to see their eldest brother, that they’ve always had a ton of misconceptions about, in an entirely new light, unveiling for the first time entire sides of him and his past that have never really been talked about in their presence in all likelihood, for a number of reasons.

BUT. Given Dick’s overall loyalty to Batman over the years, even as much as they clash and disagree on all manner of things....

The BIGGEST shock to the system would IMO inevitably be the revelation that.....Dick didn’t trust Batman at first. Was wary of him. That Dick Grayson of all people, hadn’t always implicitly viewed the Batman as a protector.

And this opens the doors to so many of the conversations this family desperately needs to have.

Because see, Jason would understand exactly where this version of Dick is coming from, and would be able to speak to his mindset here, when their other siblings are still reeling and somewhat baffled by this very notion and Dick’s not in a hurry to explain himself further to even more costumed strangers who insist they’re not time travelers, he’s just fifteen years younger than he’s supposed to be right now.

And with Jason spelling that out for the members of the family who didn’t come into it from that perspective, you’d have Tim able to clearly speak to how that’s nothing like how he had viewed things and his place in the family and as Robin....connecting the dots at the same time to so many of his own issues with Dick AND Damian....as this helps to clarify for him that with them all approaching things from such radically different POVs...of course there would have been a large degree of disconnect between Dick and Tim over the Robin situation, because to Dick, always innately valuing their civilian connections over their costumed ones, it never really fully hit him just how not being Robin anymore threatened Tim’s sense of security as to where he stood with the family. 

While at the same time being an eye-opener to Tim and likely Damian as well, that they had such a huge source of common ground between them that they didn’t share at all with the brothers they considered themselves closer to....because its Tim and Damian who most definitively associated their being Robin with their reason for being a part of the family at all....which is why the two of them in particular were so reactionary and defensive to attempts to change their status as Robin.

And then of course, once you have them all accepting that Batman was never what forged the strongest connection with Dick....its a straight shot from there to the understanding that similarly, their own costumed relationships with Dick were never what he valued most...and weren’t going to win this younger, more untrusting version of him over now, while they still had no idea how long he was going to stay this way.

Which means just like Bruce now retracing his earlier footsteps in forging a bond with Dick as Bruce Wayne, and bringing back all those memories and associated feelings for him.....each of the other Batkids realize that if they want to forge any kind of bond with this version of Dick, who might stay that way for all they know....it was going to have to be as themselves. His brothers and sister and...Steph.

And just like it hadn’t been for Bruce the first time around....it wouldn’t be easy. Dick at this age had lots of reasons for being wary and prickly and the strangeness of this situation isn’t helping there. BUT, rather than easily falling into defensive frames of mind like they would when interacting with a prickly or angry adult Dick Grayson, their elder brother....its hard to react so defensively to the kid version of him who has very clear reasons for being that way and far less experience covering up his true feelings. It would highlight all the ways Dick is a lot more like each of them in various ways...and always had been....AND, from THAT, its easy to have them each be confronted with memories of their own earliest interactions with Dick....and how none of them had been the easiest to bond with, because of their own varied and understandable trust issues and prickliness...thus forcing them to acknowledge at last how much effort Dick had actually put into making those bonds with each of them in the first place....and how many of them had taken that for granted in different ways at different times.

Thus, now with the shoe being on the other foot, it can finally be a two way street with them now each in the position where its on them to be the one to make the effort and not be dissuaded.

And then you have Dick re-aged and still retaining the memories from while he was a kid again....and you have him with fresh reminders of what it was like when Bruce was putting in the work to win him over and be what he needed....and with Bruce recommitted to not taking him for granted as he’d been. While at the same time, finally having definitive proof of each of his siblings willing to put in the effort to bond with him and be there for him, like he’s done for each of them at times without always being sure whether it was actually reciprocated.

And all of them, by virtue of it having been the family’s eldest kid and the start of the legacy so many of them have fought over, and the first person at Batman’s side as well as to leave it....

Are all then equally in a position to make the most of this new awareness of how each of them view the family dynamics and their places within the family...and how that’s led to massive misunderstandings and miscommunications in the past, and how to avoid that in the future.

Or I mean.

Y’know. Whatever.

Something like that, I guess. Idk, I haven’t really put that much thought into it. Was just an idea. *shrugs*

sfhilakhlkaghlakg

[victorbakker]

I’m not afraid of dying ---

Getting out of Fairvale for a few days was right up Vic’s alley, though doing so alongside the barely twenty year old supply runners wasn’t exactly his ideal scenario. Last he’d checked Colette was barely even allowed to hold a gun and he could only imagine similar went for Merrick and Maverick. But supply running wasn’t exactly rocket science, either; when it came down to it, the task at hand was fetching supplies and bringing it back to camp. There really wasn’t anything to it. The risk wasn’t the task itself.

It was getting there and getting back that was the risk. Going beyond the walls of the camp wasn’t exactly the easiest task when there were fungus faces running amok left and right. Apparently sending whoever out into the wild was neither here nor there in this town, whether they could fight off infected on their own or not didn’t much matter in the grand scheme of things.

They’d been pretty lucky, though. They’d encountered very few of the turned in the trek there and upon reaching the shopping center they’d even come across a few locations that hadn’t been fully picked over. Some canned goods, clothing items, tools, even some medical supplies, practically a treasure trove. Vic had assumed it would all be for nothing, really; it had been a while since they’d come across a good haul and the cynical side of him imagined they’d be returning to Fairvale exhausted and empty handed. 

The day had ended up being long and exhausting - they’d spent the evening hauling goods and getting it ready to travel for the morning. Vic wanted nothing more than to rest once they’d set up and secured a camp for the night. He settled in with his head resting against his pack, arms folded across his chest and rifle laying beside him, hoping to get an hour or two before cycling in to cover the guard role for a couple hours more.

It happened when he least expected it. Of course...it always happened that way, didn’t it? Just when they thought they were safe, when they thought luck was on their side. That was when everything turned on its head. 

He would’ve thought their worst nightmare would be a hoard of infected coming upon their little camp without warning, giving them a run for their lives. But truthfully their worst enemies these days weren’t the infected - it was what the infection happened to bring to light. He’d heard whispers about such things but hadn’t yet encountered it first hand. What had happened in Fairvale just before his arrival. Bodies clean of bites but shot up with bullet holes. When the going got tough, humanity sunk to their most basic form. Survival of the fittest and all that bullshit. Thinking the world owed them something.

The butt of a rifle crashing into his temple was what rudely woke him. His reaction was instant; with his vision blurred he lunged for his rifle. But when his fingers were inches away, a boot slammed down upon his forearm to stop the advance. A howl of pain escaped him before it was silenced a moment later by a hand closing around his throat. The next thing he remembered, if only briefly, was being thrown into the back of a vehicle, blinded, hands tied behind his back.

How much time had passed? How long were they in the back of that truck before they were tossed out like trash and locked up like prisoners? He couldn’t quite piece it all together - who, what, when. But what he did know was that Merrick and Colette were here too. He hadn’t seen or heard of Maverick in the scuffle and he could only hope that didn’t mean the worst. If one of them was already dead, what would be the goal of keeping the rest of them alive?

An answer to that question came soon enough. He became incredibly familiar with the metallic taste of blood on his tongue, the aches and pains that went straight through to his bones. They wanted to know anything and everything there was to know about Fairvale. The inner workings of it. How they might break in past the defenses and seek some revenge that Vic didn’t even care to know about.

There was a part of him that thought to just answer the questions, give them what they wanted. He didn’t hold any love for Fairvale, after all. It was just a place, he didn’t need it. He could walk away from all this unscathed, let Fairvale go to shit for all he cared. But he was too proud, too smart. Who was to say if he gave away the answers they wanted they wouldn’t just kill him on the spot? He was worth more to them alive as long as they knew he might hold the answers they wanted. 

Being kept in his own cell wasn’t a problem for him. Being on his own wasn’t difficult; he’d spent much of his time in his own company for years. The difficulty was hearing their screams. He didn’t want to care about them. They didn’t matter. But imagining the torment they were going through, hearing the continued suffering, the anguish - he didn’t like it. It needled at him, fractured a piece of his soul. 

“You fuckers like tormenting little girls?” He spat as they came in for another go. “That get you off or something?” If they gave any response, it was lost in the blunt object thrust against his ribs, bones he was certain weren’t going to be whole by the end of this ordeal - if he got out of it alive at all. 

The reaction he gave them was probably not one they wanted, a rolling sort of chuckle as he tipped his head back to look up at them, a sly sort of smirk on his lips. “That the best you got?” He knew the lip wasn’t about to earn him any favors, but if it meant that the attention was focused on him rather than Merrick and Colette - well. That had to count for something, right? 

Minutes turned to hours with the never ending string of questions and the nonresponses Vic provided.

        Who is the leader? 

                   What is the guard schedule? 

                             How many survivors are there? 

                                       Where is the ammunition stored? 

                                                      What weaknesses are in the system? 

                                                                             Who do we need to be aware of?

It was all nonsense, all questions that Vic wasn’t planning to answer. Not in any useful manner, anyway. Fuck you, eat shit, fuck off, bite me, go to fucking hell. Those answers, of course, didn’t earn him much love. If he could walk out of here by the end of it it would be a miracle in and of itself, but it didn’t matter. A busted knee, broken wrist, cracked ribs, concussion, and countless cuts and bruises, more - hell, if it meant the rest of them survived, well. Maybe it was worth it. Maybe it would all mean something. 

Maybe.

                                                                         --- Pieces of me die all the time

#pd; missing #self para; missing #violence tw #torture tw #blood tw #self para

[kanene-yaaay-o-retorno]

You’re a WHAT

Kanene’s Notes:

I’m weak for carzy scenarios  and glitter, so BOOOM!! Why don’t get these two things together??? :D)/ This fic marks the end of my break, I will be (trying to) going back to my old projects and probably won’t be writing for some weeks kjnhgfvghjkjhg. Wish me luck! <33

This wasn’t suppose to take so much to be written but I lost my PC and life got in the way :v   Buuuut! I manage to finish it and I already count this as a victory! xP

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff:

* That fanfic has Remy and Roman. They’re friendos yay :3. Oh, and this is pretty crazy. Context: The morning after Black Friday when you’re grumpy and wanting to kick the society in the face. A LOT of swearing, Patton does not approve.  

* This characters do not belongs to me. They all belongs to the amazing Thomas Sanders in his series of Sanders Sides.

* Something around 2.900 words. -w-)b.

* Sorry for any spelling, pontuation and grammar mistakes! Any advice is very very welcome!

* Tô com preguiça de postar a versão em português brasileiro aaaa! Thankys for reading, my lollipops! Try and have fun with new hobbies, be safe, talk with the one that you love, drink water and sleep well! Byeioo!~

                             [~*~]

Roman thought himself as a really lucky human being. Unbelievable lucky.

 It wasn't due to the apartment where he currently lived - Too much dull for his personal taste and space, getting even smaller from the day he admitted a messy, sassy and with sleep problems roommate, since Roman just started his musical career and couldn't afford an own house yet. - or the fact that was finally able to pursue his dream after years and years of just picturing, painting this moment on his future, only to find out his fantastic breathtaking and incredible goals weren’t nearly close of the cold reality, at least for now (Who would know that, after umpteenth days of hard studying and training he would need years and years of experience in order to even START wondering in get out of his partial-time job on that Electronic Store) or any other reason someone would be able to consider himself a receptacle of pure, brute luck, enlightened by the spotlights of the good, pleasant destiny...

 ... Or at least the most pleasant it could be in the horrible and exhaustive middle of the night after a whole day filled with his attempts to survive and treat respectfully the unmerciful, dirty jungle that humanity was at Black Friday. Something around fifteen  hours working with massive hordes of unscrupulous zombies starved for a sale and able to even kill and die (more likely the first option) to get what they want and with souls (if they still got one) free of any slight sight of education, patience and morals to be inserted in a society which, as it seemed, was equally rotten as them. View point only proved as Roman was obligated to be working after his shift to "clean all the mess" - more like hide the bodies of exhausted warriors after such bloody battle. – the store because those sons of a...

 "... Bitch, YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!!!!" The poor, frustrated employed shouted to nowhere specific, his face turning towards the sky, seeking in some way to show his all his hate to the cinematography - because this was too much coincidence to NOT be part of a movie or some random fanfic on the black hole that was internet - rain falling at full force leading the weather to became even more freezing as soaked them both with its cool, thick drops.

Anyway, what he was daydreaming about?

"Roman." Oh, yeah, the reason why he viewed himself as a truly lucky person. "My gurl, if you try to impersonate a fucking, dramatic, bitch crow in my ear even again, I swear in the name of my life juice bean that I'm going to KILL you with my bare hands and these sunglasses."

 At least his best friend since, honestly, diapers, who coincidentally was his roommate and even more coincidentally, his coworker was just screwed as Roman himself. Which automatically made the duo less screwed, however equally pissed off, something that neither of them discovered if that was a good or bad thing, yet.

 "Fuck you, Remy" Roman whispered between an tired yawn, too much tired to even think about some nickname or to put real heat in his words as he got instinctively closer to the other, the one called taking off his jacket and lazily throwing it over their heads, doing his best to cover they both with the small available black leathered fabric, the act intertwined with grumpy grumbling and motions which would probably slap Roman's face if he wasn't careful. "I'm the one who buys your coffee."

 "Having my incredible, unique personality in your life should be motivation enough for you to buy me the entire Starbucks Company, be glad I'm weak to your cute face and am going easy on ya."

 " 'Cute'? Excuse me, I'm the most handsome, hottest and fabulous man you will ever met in your lowly life, mortal."

 Remy snorted at this "Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe, but if it's going to be like that your ego soon will have to pay his part at the rent."

 "Well, this 'ego' here was the only thing between your highness and jail after stopping you from committing all those murders today."

 "Bold of you to assume I wouldn't use my contacts to hide the evidences." Their tune were already completely sleepy, bodies instinctively leaning onto each other as the words stumbled, mixed and almost lost themselves in the soundly wind as slipped from their lips. Roman just laughed.

 "Well, if by ‘contacts’ mean 'Virgil' good luck getting him out of his bed on his free day. You would became the fucking new King Arthur." Roman rubbed his eyes, trying to physically force his eyelashes to not close, a new yawn finding its way to his mouth. He didn't even know about what they were talking anymore.

 "I roll the dice to cast Badass Nerd Bitch."

 “Logan??”

 “He likes to study nature stuff, especially at night, I’m sure he already knows some good spots to hide bodies. Glasses.”

 “Glasses?”

 “Glasses.”

 “OMG, the anime character with glasses.” Roman stopped, his mouth wide open as if all the secrets of the universe had been revealed to him.

 “Exactly.” Remy extended each syllable, grinning smugly.

 “I’ve never-“

“THIS IS A ROBERY!!”

 The sentence, which appeared to came out from nowhere, cut the air in a harsh, sharp tune, breaking the barriers and tying them up in the same place in a frozen position and wide eyes staring astonished the hooded form and their unreadable features under the bad illumination of the light poles helped by the increased storm. The wind trespassed them, stirring their clothes and making the muscles shake both of the alone employees in the middle of a dark, empty street at the dawn, even if the dangerously shiny knife directed towards their direction still in a hatred silence. 

 “My.” Roman knew he probably should be afraid, the freezing feeling running across his veins and frightening his brain and actions as infected his words in an unspeakable terror impossible to ignore nor escape. “fucking.” However, the only thing that slipped through his next was the purest, deepest, truest... “ASS.” Indignation.

 Roman thought about a lot of things. He thought about running away, grabbing Remy’s arm and sprinting across the street, about scream in the top of his lungs the waterfall of swearing already racing half way to his throat and even about kicking the knife out of the other’s hands and then kicking him - with a couple of cool moves he saw in some actions films - together with their frecking audacity to try to rob him of all the people in the world. Roman, who asked himself if he would have enough money to eat in the next week with a concerning frequency, who wondered if this is the life he will have until the end of his existence, if he will ever be able to accomplish his dreams.

 His gaze changed to Remy, who was paralyzed, trembling between the poor light of the street and the massive rain. Roman swallowed. Everything was in his hands.

 For a piece of Roman felt the strange urge to spill to the figure before him the story of his life, all his tries, all his battles, his everyday fights to make his dreams real. Blow by blow. Day by day. A life destined to go after everything he wished to himself, everything he wanted to life, to experience, to savor, to do everything in his hands to ignore and one day maybe, hopefully forget all the ghosts - these ones always accompanied by those emotionless, sharp whispers - asking, doubting nonstop if he ever would be able to do all of this, if he was doing the rights thing, if it was really worth all of it.

 However, before the first word even slipped of Roman’s tongue or his mind came fully back to Earth, Remy was already positioning himself strategically between the robber and his friend, the currently only one with the leather jacket falling on his shoulders. However, Remy didn’t seem nearly soaked as he should be, and for a heartbeat, the same one which Remy moved his hands to his jeans’ pocket, his fingers touching and firmly holding something there, Roman could swear that the unexpectedly shiver running across his spine wasn’t due the cold wind.

 Nor the sentence hurled in the clouds.

 “You know what?? Fuck it.”

 And then he unsheathed his magic wand.

 Roman loved with the entirety of his heart all kind of magic, he could easily spend an entire afternoon (which he already had, by the way) listing his favorites movies, musicals and stories with that theme. That also could be easily said by the thousands and thousands of worlds, universes and lifes he invented – in and out of his head - about the subject trough his childhood and handful of teenage years, random ideas and inspirations appearing and dancing in his mind until nowadays. If that only wasn’t enough to convince someone then the umpteenth memories of mornings and afternoons bathed in the smell of books, rocked by the calm silene of the public library as he turned one more page, his back lightly aching by the bad position assumed behind the shelters, in a place he strategically found and claimed as his own Bridge to Terabithia, enjoying every moment as if nothing else mattered. Perhaps you wouldn’t even need to swim in such deep, ancient waters to find out his love, since at least fifty percent of his day was dedicated to shout, hummer or murmur Disney songs.

 However, as rays of pure energy  - shiny and kind of glittery one - involved and swirled from Remy’s, who now was floating a few centimeters above the ground, wand in stripes that got lighter and lighter, begging to spin faster around the aforementioned, creating a spere of a power stunning and big enough to stop the rain in the corner.

 The silence resulting from the lack of the storm didn’t had the opportunity to fill the moment, being obligated to give its space to a soft, intense melody whispered in their ears. The notes standing some more moments in the air, the beating following the changes in the shadowed figure inside the spere. Hesitations taking over the loud, quick heartbeats when the song finally stopped.

 The power’s spere finally exploded, the impact leading to an unbelief and intensive force push both human meters away.

 “Get. Out.”  Remy’s tune still the same, his form – Now adorned by a gleaming crop top, his fluttering skirt over shorts floating in synchrony with the veils which surrounded his clothes and wrapping his arms, the ending spreading in the air as a bunch of angry powered and fancy snakes. - even with the new vestments full of glitter (this probably would be a hell to get off, later) still the same, his gaze, powerful – a new meaning pouring from this word – strong, still the same. But yet…

 Yet his wide eyed, heart hammering in his chest friend since he could remember found himself struggling to connect the same Remy who he had known – if he could still say that? -  all his life with the same being who gleamed dangerously before him.

 The magic wand danced in a quick flick and a trash can came of what seemed nowhere to hit the wobbled and absolutely terrified robber, who fell with a soft thumph in the ground, unconscious.

 “-man, Roman!!! Don’t just stay standing there like a tree, help me here, gurl!” Suddenly the called snapped from his own sea of thoughts, submerging and astonished blinking in Remy’s direction. The rain started to fell on them again, and when their eyes met, when Roman saw the same guy who spent afternoons climbing trees and pretending they were knights and dragons attacking or saving the world, when he recalled the silent sleepovers where they just sat near of each other enjoying the mutual company, the grumpy mornings in their apartment, the comfort hugs, the looks full of words, the smiles filled with meaning, the friendship stuffed with so many, many memories... 

 Nostalgia. The feeling that everything was changed albeit something… something important always stayed. Roman felt, truly felt it and fixed his glare into that brilliant – quite literally - glare adorned with a ‘I’m about to punch your cocky face if you keep fucking narrating every freaking second of your life, ya bitch’ he realized... 

 It was Remy.

 He took a deep breath, moving closer and gradually relaxing as the aforementioned focused in trying to lift the guy, swearing more frequently than raindrops fell from the sky.

 “Remy?”

 “Yeah?”

 “First crush.”

 The other stopped, frowning confused. Roman didn’t quiver, feeling he deserved some sort of answer. At least about this. “What?”

 “My first crush. Who?”

 “Kovu.” Remy maybe was a bit cold hearted, maybe he wasn’t the best with human interactions or knew exactly what Roman wanted with that… but he knew Roman enough to realize this was important. Essentially when the said seemed to relax, his form untensing itself and being allowed to get closer of the magic being.

 “Okay. Okay, okay…” Roman took a deep breath, grounding himself. Their gaze met, his next words coming a little calmer. “Okay.”

 “Please don’t make me sing that serenate you made for him. I’m gonna fucking quit.”

 “Oh, shut up!! Our first love is something special, mister I-Can’t-Choose-Between-The-Beast-And-The-Beauty.”

 Remy decided to ignore the words, slightly lowing his sunglasses with his special Judgmental ‘Bold of you to assume I have enough shame to be mocked’ Look. Roman just flipped in his direction, taking advantage that the other’s hands were occupied.

 It was still Remy, with a whole more of style and glitter – Why are there so much glitter here?? - but it was just Remy. Like just any other day.

 Before he even realized, Roman was already at his friend’s - and as it seems a magical being - side, helping him to carry the robber’s body to somewhere dry so he wouldn’t die of hypothermia.

 “Why don’t you- Ouch!! My feet, dammit!” His breaths came out as puffs, the effort leading to his already exhausted muscles only protest even more and very much probably curse him later with sore movements for the audacity to transport anything heavier than a pen. “Why don’t you use your... Wizard magic or something to carry him??”

 “Oh. My. Gosh. Roman, you are sooo intelligent, why aren’t you in Harvard? Ow! Ow! Ow!!” Remy’s sarcasm was cut when the other kicked, or did his best to with their actual position, him in protest.  “Homophobic.” He exhaled a mix of irritation and a snort, receiving a playful punch in his arm by their inside joke.  “I’m your Fairy Godmother, brainless. Unless it was you laid in this stupid, cold ground I can’t use my magic anymore... Except if this is someone of your family but I doubt-”

 “Wait, wait, wait, WAIT!!! YOU ARE MY FAIRY GODM-”

 “No, no way, nope, we are NOT having this conversation right now.” Remy, the Fairy Godmother let go of the unconscious body in a way that probably will make the guy wake up sore, perhaps with a concussion even, directing his index finger in Roman’s direction in a deep, determined stare full of darkness and things that Roman could swear would make Remy be expelled from the group of Friendly Fairy GodmotherS  or whatever... thing he was inserted. “Let me tell you what we are doing right now: We are going to home, change our clothes then I’m getting coffee and you will get sleep so I don’t have to face nor care about the freak consequences of my damn actions.”

 ...

 “That...” Roman stop, as if was considering his next words. Remy’s face just scrunched in a bigger, firmer frown. “That would be hella scary if you didn’t look like someone who just stole a store of glitter and got attacked by the gay, glitterly, shiny fairies who protected the place.”

 “Go fuck yourself. I’m locking you outside when we get there.”

 “Noo, please don’t! My evil stepmother didn’t let me go to the prince castle and now I need help! Crying emoji, crying emoji.” Roman mocked, imitating sad sobs and sniffles as quick his pace to follow the other, who flipped him.

 “I’m this far from knock you out with my magical wand and then you will see who is the evil stepmother.” His wand gleamed in warning, the red color getting mixed and trembled by the fast movements of his veils, one of them getting dangerously next to Roman’s face, who cleverly got silent for some heartbeats, the sound of the rain slowly calming their heartbeats and rocking them, the tiredness gaining the space which, piece by piece, was being unhanded by their adrenaline.

 They arrived home, both still quiet, feeling free as a relieved sign left their lips. Remy threw his soaked jacket in some dark corner, the bed being the only thing which was allowed to take over all his thoughts and will. 

 An awed gasp echoed behind him and he immediately regretted his move.

 “YOU HAVE WINGS????”

 Before his eyelashes closed, the shiny of the wand disappearing gradually as an ungodly amount of sleepiness gained complete control over his body, relaxing each one of his fibers and as a warm, magic good feeling fills every single cell in his being, Roman wondered if ‘Fuck it’ was the name of Remy’s spell.

#Remy #Roman #Magical beings #Sanders Sides #Oneshot #Sanders Sides AU #Alternative Universe #Tw robbery #Tw knife #I mean the robbery doesn't kind of happen but- #Remy and Roman are tired af #do not mess with them #Comedy #Tw Swearing #Like #A lot of swearing. It's Roman and Remy we'retalking about here #Kind of crack fic #Magic #Human AU but with magic #:DD #Kanene's Fanfic #Kanene's Art #English fic #This is kind of crack fdghjkilokjhyg #Glitter #A lot of it #WINGS #:DDDDD #Remy is a magic girl fight me #Bit of fluff

[jcmorrigan]

Tales from the Scrap Heap: Nothing to Lose but You

I decided to start “Tales from the Scrap Heap” as a little series on my blog for fanfiction ideas that I never got into print. Because my brain is really, really good at coming up with way more long-form plots than I can ever realistically hope to publish. I have to be picky about which plot bunnies I follow and which I don’t. The stories here are the ones that I considered and ultimately didn’t motivate me as much as what I have up on my AO3 account.

For the first one, I’m aware I’m putting myself in the Discourse Box here but it’s a Voltron: Legendary Defender fic. However, it’s for the absolute only ship I have never seen contested, largely because I don’t think anybody remembers these guys: Vakala/Remdax. Something about them really intrigued me (probably that they’re silly x straitlaced, have a size difference, and bicker constantly, which is almost a full row of JCMorrigan OTP Bingo). If you don’t remember, they’re the two aliens who found clone!Shiro on the ice planet shortly after he escaped (this is when we thought he was real!Shiro) and decided ultimately not to eat him and instead to give him a shuttle to escape back to Voltron. Anyhow, one day I just had too much Worldbuilding Juice and decided to come up with a little history for them, and because they’re rebels hiding in a remote location in a seemingly neverending war, it is one of the darkest story ideas I have. There’s a happy ending for our two leading men, but because this is indeed a wartime story, what I came up with to explain why they were on that ice planet and so willing to even cannibalize any Galra who showed up ended up having elements of colonialism, prison/labor camps, fugitive life, and a worldbuild flavoring that implies some noncon happened somewhere at some point. So if these things are not what you want to read in a hypothetical Voltron fanfiction outline, please keep movin’. Anyway, this is the one story I most regret never finishing because I had so much of it fleshed, but my Voltron muse is long gone and I have no enthusiasm, so here’s what I would’ve written, had I the energy.

·      Title is “Nothing to Lose but You” because the point of this story is these two go through the wringer and are literally all each other have. It’s that kind of story

·      I decided to call the planet Vakala and Remdax are from “Taxalai,” and the name for a resident is “Taxalan.” Taxalan society has a heavy emphasis on technology (which is why Remdax not knowing how to work a computer or being able to remember a password is such an oddity and so frustrating to pretty much any other Taxalan), and pretty much everything is computerized to some degree. Screens everywhere.

·      We open on Vakala, who is living in a mansion that used to belong to his family but has since been taken over by an invading Galra general. This was going to be an OC who I could just make nasty, but then I got re-introduced to Morvok, the Galra’s resident black sheep, and I will take any excuse to write Morvok so let’s just say it was he who took over Vakala’s family manor and just sits on the couch all day regaling people with stories of his greatness (none of which are true).

·      Vakala himself is a servant to Morvok, having to bring him whatever he wants and be at his beck and call.

·      One day, Vakala decides he’s done taking orders and declares he is no longer going to be in a position of servitude in his own house. Morvok simply dismissively says to “Take this one away wherever you take the ones that act up so I don’t have to look at him.”

·      And Vakala is arrested by a Galra squadron and brought to a prison camp many, many miles away.

·      It’s night when he’s delivered, so he’s brought right to the cramped barrack where a bunch of Taxalans who have been there longer are stacked in bunk beds. Vakala’s first night there, he screams and claws at the door that’s been sealed behind him, begging to be let out because he’ll follow orders this time.

·      The other prisoners there are veterans, so they all tell him to shut up because they’re never gonna listen. All but one.

·      Enter Remdax. He’s from another part of Taxalai – Vakala’s voice sounds more American to me while Remdax is definitely British, so I assume they have to come from different parts of the planet. They also have different physical structures that may suggest ethnic divides, though their color palette affirms they’re both of the same planetary origin. It’s also worth noting he has both eyes still at this point. This is very important.

·      Remdax is here because he was part of an anti-Galra rebel squad that was largely made up of his friends and family. The Galra found and closed in on their base, and Remdax ran out and got himself arrested for the purpose of slowing down the Galra officers enough that his friends and family could escape – which they did.

·      Anyway, that exposition would come some time later. For now, what’s happening is Vakala is having a panic attack in the middle of the night and everyone’s telling him to shut up because it’s futile. Except for Remdax. Remdax stands up and essentially says, “We’ve all done the same thing when we first arrived. Let him feel what he feels.”

·      And he approaches Vakala to try and calm him down verbally – just by saying his feelings are validated, and yes, it’s really awful, but he’ll survive, and Remdax will do his best to make sure Vakala survives. But he can’t really tell him it’s “okay” because it is quite clearly not.

·      Vakala eventually gives up and goes to sleep, quite depressed and for good reason.

·      The following morning, Vakala is put to work on an assembly line making Galra weaponry. This is what all the Taxalans in this particular camp must do. It’s very mechanically inclined, not many screens, not the way Taxalans usually work.

·      I don’t know if pacing-wise, it would be better to have this happen the first time or later, but Vakala ends up trying to pick up a cooling metal part way too soon and burning his palm horribly. He has to finish the rest of his shift one-handed.

·      Again, the other imprisoned Taxalans avoid this situation, largely because anxiety is high as-is, but Remdax steps forward once more, trying to care for the burn as best as he can. And he has zero supplies, so the best he can do is run a whole lot of cold water over Vakala’s hand and wrap it up in fabric he tore off his clothing.

·      Vakala ends up underperforming because of this injury and receives some punishment later. I didn’t think too much on exactly what – had I fleshed this out fully, I’d at least imply strongly what happened

·      Remdax has a bit of a crisis over this because he invested in protecting this guy, he failed, and there was literally nothing he could do. He’s in here for self-sacrifice in the first place, so he keeps thinking there’s always something he could do to help someone else if he gives something up for himself. But sometimes, he doesn’t even have an opportunity to do so, and it’s driving him into panic.

·      It’s shortly after this that he starts getting into his head that maybe the only way to help Vakala and himself is if he finds a way to escape.

·      There’s a day in which Remdax and Vakala are assigned to work outside on the grounds, and down comes an inspector from another sector on a shuttle. Remdax sees the opportunity and waves Vakala over.

·      They only have one shot, and it will unfortunately mean leaving the rest of their people behind, which is a horrible sacrifice, but it’s either they go on their own or nobody goes at all.

·      Remdax rushes the Galra inspector and attacks him. They get in a physical brawl while Vakala hurries in and hijacks the ship, which isn’t difficult for his technologically-inclined mind.

·      During this fight, Remdax either knocks out or kills the Galra inspector, but in the process, the inspector stabs one of his eyes completely out.

·      Remdax hops onto the ship and they have to go right away or else lose their freedom and maybe their lives forever. Vakala is freaking out because Remdax’s eye is bleeding, but Remdax is trying to act casual and make jokes about it because Vakala needs to be calm enough to drive.

·      They get off Taxalai on that stolen shuttle and land on the nearest planet, which I never named.

·      They’re aware they’re fugitives at this point.

·      They end up in a metropolitan area, where they check into a hotel so they have somewhere to sleep. I hadn’t worked out how they pay for the first night – maybe with favors, because Vakala eventually ends up a receptionist at this hotel and earns good wages, so maybe he gets his foot in the door by saying “I’ll do anything” and the receptionist is already pulling double duty and just goes “Do the second half of my fourteen-hour shift”

·      They have to finish wrapping up Remdax’s eye in that hotel room as best they can. Thankfully, it doesn’t get infected.

·      Immediately their first thought is to go out and find a way of bringing in income. As I said, Vakala makes a good receptionist and is excellent at filing client data on computers, so he ends up with a good-paying job that way.

·      Remdax takes a job down at a garage working with vehicle mechanics and engines, since that’s what he’s better at. Not in the manufacture of those parts (never again), but in fixing up broken vehicles. (I would’ve made it something more interesting than simply cars for this planet because Voltron planets are all about interesting possibilities for new civilizations.)

·      There’s some down-time where they live rather domestically this way, just earning enough to buy simple food and extend the stay in their small and shabby hotel room, but also bonding and becoming better friends.

·      A lot of people assume they already are a couple. Remdax in particular gets asked about his “husband” at the garage and he has to keep denying it.

·      There’s one night where they’re just having a relatively good time, taking a night to relax and appreciate that they can do nothing and be okay, and Remdax very gingerly brings up he wants to ask something of Vakala that might be too much. Vakala agrees to hear him out, and all Remdax wants is to be hugged for a bit while he thinks about how far they’ve come. So they hold each other, just lying on the bed and muttering to each other about the way things used to be, the way things are now, how lucky they are to have each other.

·      It’s actually some time later that they start seeing each other in a romantic light. Before this, they were a lifeline to each other, and in the heat of the worst moments, they couldn’t even really think about romance – they had to be preoccupied with survival. But now that their life is settling down and they’re starting to pack away funds for a small house, they start thinking…we’re basically life partners. Are we attracted to each other?

·      Answer: yes.

·      They kiss one night over a pretty meager dinner spread out picnic-style on their bed.

·      Shortly after this is when the Galra troops come into the city, looking for the two fugitives who attacked an inspector and fled custody.

·      Vakala and Remdax end up having to escape out the window, flee down the fire escape, and hijack a ship from Remdax’s garage.

·      They’re floating between worlds yet again.

·      They are eventually found by another ship, and they fear the Galra have finally captured them – but it’s a ship of rebels who’ve had similar stories. Vakala and Remdax are two of the Galra’s most wanted, and these rebels realized they would make great additions to the team in exchange for some stability.

·      So they work out a plan where Vakala and Remdax man an outpost on the ice planet, one of the most remote they have, that monitors Galra communications.

·      The rebels drop in supplies regularly and also have left a shuttle in case of emergency.

·      Vakala and Remdax both haaaaate the cold and so use the first week or so as an excuse to snuggle a lot.

·      And things go pretty okay. Remdax is still technologically illiterate and Vakala is just like “Are you even a Taxalan”

·      This is where they start bickering, which they like because finally, finally the stakes are low enough where they can afford to just rag on each other and still like each other at the end of the day.

·      They get more physical at this stage, too, but of course I can’t write a lemon to save my soul so it’s just a lot of implications

·      Things start going wrong when a Galra officer finds the base on a planet. This is far too dangerous and they both know it. If this guy gets two steps further, their location is blown and they are both dead. So Remdax kills him.

·      It’s been a while since their last supply delivery. And they figure it’s best not to waste anything…so they decide the Galra they killed has to go into food reserves.

·      Vakala nearly has a full-on panic attack while cannibalizing another person, even if that person was dangerous.

·      Some time later, another Galra shows up, but this one’s different. She claims to come in peace, and introduces herself as Acxa.

·      Remdax is ready to murder again, but Vakala holds him off because he can recognize Acxa isn’t a full-blooded Galra and in fact, he’s pretty sure there’s Taxalan in her genetic makeup based on how her face looks.

·      Acxa confirms. Her grandmother was a Taxalan and forced to be a servant of a Galra commander who impregnated her (here is the strongly implied noncon).

·      Acxa offers to help, swearing to secrecy. Vakala and Remdax deny her help but let her get away with her life, wondering if they’d made the right decision.

·      A month with no contact and they’re fairly secure Acxa didn’t snitch.

·      Then in comes Shiro, and canon events happen. These would be briefly recapped.

·      The important thing to note is that they let Shiro have their only shuttle, and that was a boo-boo, but it’s okay because the rebels are gonna drop off supplies anyway, so they shouldn’t need it.

·      And then the other rebels never show up.

·      I’m not sure if I’d have them literally be dead or leave it up in the air, but their supplies are cut off. They ration out their remaining food for the next few years. There’s at least one more Galra who shows up that they have to eat. And it does last a few years, until the end of VLD canon.

·      They’re starving to death. Skin and bone. And we get them eating their last ration over the fire and since they’re both used to cannibalizing Galra by now, their minds are on the obvious. Each is ready to kill himself so the other can live longer.

·      For dramatic effect I might have let them get close to pulling the trigger before the sound of someone showing up alerts them

·      They go outside, hoping they’re saved and not screwed…

·      And wouldn’t you know. It’s the paladins of Voltron. Also Acxa.

·      Allura has already been exchanged for the restoration of all realities (which Vakala and Remdax have no idea happened because when you’re in a reality that disappears and reappears, that has no bearing on your memory because you literally did not exist and suddenly existed again with no idea of the gap)

·      Altea and Daibazaal have been restored and now the paladins are working on bringing peace all over the universe

·      And Shiro remembered the two who helped his clone out because of…memory merging?...and Acxa brought up “We really need to check on those two”

·      They get Vakala and Remdax on a warm ship, find them food, get them cleaned up

·      And then bring them back to Taxalai, which has just been liberated from Galra control. We see the more unforgivable Galra getting their due punishment. The camp administrators are now incarcerated. Morvok is doing community service scooping poop at the zoo or something horrible because it’s Morvok

·      Shiro is considering his retirement, but first, he addresses Vakala and Remdax, asking if they want to govern the reclaimed Taxalai and help make it a beautiful place where their people can flourish

·      Vakala is trying so hard not to break down and cry, but it’s Remdax who hits his knees and starts bawling first

·      The final line would be about how they were finally “home” for the first time in their entire lives

#vakala #remdax #voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld #vakadax #tales from the scrap heap

[redladydeath]

Anxiety is asleep, post Lust arc headcanons

Nylpho was the daughter of the leader of a decently sized “tribe” native to Asmodean. Her marriage to Ilotte was part of an effort to create closer ties between ethnic Asmodeans and the Beelzenian nobility.

At the time of their marriage, Nylpho was 18 and Ilotte was 29. Ilotte had chosen to put off marriage until he he became duke.

Nylpho was an incredibly sweet, affectionate person who also happened to be a bit flighty and overemotional. Ilotte was a textbook psychopath, with an external charm but inability to form meaningful relationships with people on an emotional level. Nylpho, due to her personality and eagerness to be a good wife, was the one exception in his life and, as a result, he put her up on a pedestal in his mind as the perfect woman.

Sati’s mom, Avelina, was a friend of Nylpho’s. She was prompted by her father and brother to become close with the Venomania’s as part of their plan to establish themselves among the Asmodean nobility, but her affection for Nylpho was genuine. Ilotte proposing to her relatively soon after Nylpho’s death was quite a shock, but she graciously accepted and enjoyed her time as duchess.

Witnis was married to Annlee and the couple had twins. Life was good for a few months until Irina passed through their village. She set a house on fire for fun and the fire soon spread to encompass the town. Witnis and Annlee got out, but the children were left inside. Annlee sent Witnis back in for them, but he hesitated at a crucial moment and part of the burning roof caved in on him, knocking him unconscious. The twins died in the fire and Annlee couldn’t forgive Witnis for failing to save her children, resulting in them eventually separating.

Ilotte hired Witnis as a guard on a whim while Nylpho was heavily pregnant. He was in a good mood and needed more security as Nylpho got closer to giving birth.

Nylpho went mad with guilt after Cherubim was born and was in somewhat of a daze leading up to her suicide. She visited the nursery to say goodbye and had a brief interaction with Witnis, who had been stationed to guard the room. Nylpho started to break down while she was talking to Cherubim, and Witnis, deciding to try and comfort her, ended up making what at the time seemed like a redundant promise to protect her son for her.

Ilotte flew into a rage after Nylpho’s body was returned to the mansion and it was determined there was nothing to be done. He tore off to the nursery and nearly stabbed Cherubim before he was blocked by Witnis, who, not wanting to watch another baby die, managed to convince him that Nylpho wouldn’t have wanted him to murder their child. The basement was Ilotte’s compromise; punish/utterly remove the child from his life while still not technically killing it (even if he half expected Cherubim to die from exposure regardless).

As a toddler, Cherubim had all the hallmarks of a feral child, and it was only because Witnis realized this and decided to disobey Ilotte’s orders to simply stand guard and not pay him any mind that this outcome was avoided. Cherubim was still delayed and stunted when it came to speech/emotional/etc. development, but he did at least grow to be somewhat functional.

Cherubim hated most things about himself, but as a teenager/young adult he became particularly insecure about his stunted physical development. He was very small and skinny and a result of chronic malnutrition and most people, assuming he was much younger than he actually was, treated him as if he were a child. This resentment was aggravated by the fact that Cherubim did not fully understand concepts like masculinity and sexuality and therefore couldn’t articulate, even to himself, why he felt so insecure about such things to begin with.

It cannot be overstated how dramatically Cherubim’s upbringing affected his personal development. He only had a rudimentary understanding of many basic concepts and never reached a level of emotional maturity higher than that of a child. Even as Duke Venomania, many people were shocked by how little he understood many things, although by that point he had reached a level of confidence where people could write off his ignorance as a personality quirk rather than assuming he was “affected” as had frequently happened in his previous life.

Cherubim was incredibly clingy, both physically and emotionally; a trait that persisted even after the contract. While he was unaccustomed to positive physical contact, he desperately craved it. In the sin swap AU, when given license by Gumina, he basically never let stopped touching her and Sati, always wanting to be close to them and panicking when they had to separate, much to Sati’s discomfort. (basically, if he wasn’t afraid you were going to hit him, personal space didn’t exist for Cherubim)

The Venomania boys were basically the only people Gumina felt safe to let her walls down around. To everyone else she was cold and haughty, but with the brothers she was bright and fun loving. Sati’s betrayal and the eventual realization that Cherubim was Duke Venomania caused her to retreat progressively further into herself until she eventually reached a breaking point.

Although he never fully acknowledged it, Sati was rather traumatized by finding out about Cherubim’s existence. Up until that point he had thought of his father as this perfect, rational force in his life, and discovering that he had the capacity to treat one of his own children so horrifically shook him to his core. From that point onward, there was always a small, private fear in his mind that, if he crossed his father one to many times, he would punish him in just as terrible a way as he punished Cherubim. Of course, this never came to pass, but it did inform Sati’s lack of conviction when it came to helping Cherubim in any substantial way after getting him released from the basement.

Cherubim and Sateriasis did not look as though they were siblings, although if you took the time to look closely, you could notice some striking similarities. Cherubim was small and starved-looking, while Sateriasis was tall and athletically built; Cherubim inherited his mother’s curly hair, which he wore short, while Sati’s was long and pin-straight; Sati’s skin was a few shades lighter than Cheri’s, and Cheri had his mother’s abnormal luminous green eyes while Sati’s were a normal, handsome shade of brown (purple and blue in the main verse). However, they both inherited the same hooked nose and front tooth gap from their father, although Sati eventually got his gap fixed on a visit to Beelzenia (this was rather heartbreaking for Cherubim since it was one of the few traits they actually had in common).

Cherubim would not have been nearly as unnerving upon first glance were it not for the physical abuse he endured. The chronic malnutrition left him bony and hollow-looking; as a child, he had sustained an infection in his eye that left it milky white and blind; the facial deformity was not merely cosmetic and actually grew/worsened, resulting in the surrounding skin becoming purple-ish and veiny; and the various physical injuries he sustained from the other servants, local bullies, etc. left him constantly cut and bruised, with some wounds turning into lasting, jagged scars.

Gumina’s mother died when she was very young. On this level, she could somewhat relate to Cherubim, both having never known their mothers.

Cherubim was very taken with the flowers in the mansion’s garden, although he didn’t often get a chance to work with them.

AU where Cherubim never acquires language. Witnis, Sateriasis, and Gumina construct an informal sign language system with him, but hardly any of the other servants care to learn it. As the majority of them are also illiterate, Cherubim feels even more trapped as he literally cannot get anyone to pay any mind to what he has to say. During the big breakdown day, Sateriasis and Gumina both refused to pay attention to what he was trying to sign at them, and, after the stab, the reason Venomania couldn’t call out to Gumina is that he has once again lost the ability to communicate verbally.

Although he never told him, Witnis really did love Cherubim as a son and was constantly eaten at by guilt both before and after their separation in regards to him not doing more to take care of Cherubim or not being brave enough to take him and flee the mansion.

Ilotte was the first person to die in the Venomania massacre. After the engagement party concluded, Ilotte, having seen Cherubim and Gumina’s confrontation, went off to find Cherubim, who had run off after Gumina’s rejection and hadn’t been seen since. He found him curled up in the corner of a corridor and proceeded to tell him how disgusted he was by his audacity to speak to Gumina in public and his ungratefulness to both he and Sateriasis for their generosity to him, even indicating that he was going to lock him back in the basement as punishment. At that moment, Cherubim pulled a knife that he had taken from the kitchens earlier that day and, in a fit of rage, grief, and desperation, stabbed his father directly in the heart. Cherubim was in such a dissociative state afterwards that the killing might have stopped there had another servant not come in to investigate the noise.

Sateriasis was the last person to die in the massacre. He slept through the majority of it before being awoken by a scream and discovering that dozens of servants had been murdered. He shrieked and ran for help before running into Cherubim, who he did not immediately recognize as the murderer. However, that realization came fast and soon a chase began. Sateriasis made it all the way to the foyer before Cherubim, incensed by the idea of Sateriasis of all people getting away, lunged at him, tackling him down the staircase. On the way down, Sati cracked his head against one of the stairs and died only a few moments after reaching the bottom. Cherubim, seeing his brother rapidly slipping away, seized his knife and stabbed him, although he was just too late. Livid that the opportunity to exact revenge on Sateriasis had been taken from him, Cherubim began stabbing and mutilating the body in an absolute frenzy before gradually coming to his senses, realizing just what exactly he had done.

Avelina was very conflicted in regards to what should be done about Cherubim when she discovered he existed. Thanks to Sati’s insistence that he was, in fact, his brother, coupled with the distinctive green eyes Cherubim had inherited for Nylpho, Avelina very quickly put together that he was Nylpho’s lost son. She was absolutely horrified and demanded that Ilotte free him from his confinement. However, after Sateriasis and Cherubim were sent out of the room, Ilotte managed to convince her that, if Cherubim’s true identity was discovered, it would endanger Sateriasis’ claim to the dukedom and therefore he could not be allowed to go free. Avelina still could not allow Nylpho’s son to be sent back to the dungeons though, so the two of them eventually came to the agreement that Cherubim would work in the mansion as a servant. Sati was incensed by this plan as the whole reason he had revealed his knowledge about Cherubim was in hopes of getting him recognized as his brother, but Ilotte would not relent on the matter, and Cherubim, not fully comprehending the difference between the two options, did not try to fight it. Avelina always endeavored to treat Cherubim with kindness/understanding, but could never quite get past just how unnerving his mere existence was to her.

Cheri had an ingrained habit of staying quiet/silent even when in extreme pain/distress. There was such an emphasis put on staying quiet during his childhood that, even long after he was released from the basement, he would reflectively cover his mouth or bite his tongue when when he was unable to keep from crying out.

Cherubim’s name was derived from an Asmodean fairytale about a vain man who is transformed into a hideous monster by the gods as punishment for his hubris.

Gumina is “finish half a game of chess in one move” smart. Sati knows all the mechanics of chess and is good enough at it, but gets so caught up in the little details that he fails to notice the danger signs. Cherubim doesn’t know what chess is.

Asmodean/Lasaland was either just not being governed in EC 136 or Gumina was running things out of the basement, because Venomania didn’t have a clue or care in the world about how running a duchy actually worked.

Sateriasis is named after a great-grandfather of his from his mother’s side of the family.

The Venomania mansion housed about 50 people pre-massacre.

Sati is tol. Cherubim and Gumina are smol.

*concept* Cherubim: I want a father who‘s proud of me and a mother who looks after me Gilles and Irina: lol gross but okay i guess

#redlady speaks #evillious chronicles #lust arc #wrote these a couple days ago #been waiting to see if any more inspiration would strike me but it seems this is it for the moment

[crystallized-shadow]

Chapter: 1/1 Rating: Teen & up Pairing: Madara/Tobirama Word Count: 1843 Warnings:  Swearing and manipulative Hashirama  Summary: To secure peace, Hashirama offers Tobirama up as a bride to Madara. Feeling like a cow lead to the slaughterhouse, Tobirama can only see this ending in his death; Madara has other plans.

For @madatobiweek​ Day 1: Arranged Marriage 

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Today was the day he died, Tobirama was sure of it. He’d signed away his life to the Uchiha like the dutiful spare he was, all for the sake of his brother’s dream. Tobirama loved his brother, would do anything for his brother, but right now he didn’t like him very much. When the elders had demanded a marriage alliance, he knew Hashirama would agree; his village meant everything to him. However, he was still blindsided when Hashirama had told him he was to be Madara Uchiha’s bride. Nothing he’d said had swayed Hashirama and so Tobirama had accepted his fate quietly. Butsuma had always hold him he was worthless, just another disposable soldier, but he had always thought his anija saw him differently; it hurt to be proven so wrong.

Tobirama doesn’t remember the ceremony, he hadn’t bothered wasting the effort to listen to some pointless words, not when he would be dead soon enough. He’d ended Izuna’s shinobi life, reduced him to barely more than a civilian, there was no way Madara would let him live long. If Madara did keep him around for more than a few days, well Tobirama didn’t like that prospect either. The only part he does remember is how gentle the kiss had been, even if it had left no illusions that Madara was in charge.

Much too soon the Senju are leaving him behind for the Uchiha to drag off to hell. Tobirama remains silent, his face a blank mask; there was no way he going to show weakness around these vultures, no matter how a tiny piece of his heart chipped away with each step toward the Uchiha compound. Finding the house empty, save himself and Madara, Tobirama’s not sure if he should be grateful or brace for impact. Ignorant of his internal struggles, Madara heads into the kitchen to make tea.

“Sit.” The Uchiha orders when Tobirama just stands there and the former Senju does as told, not wanting to anger his husband so soon. Madara regards Tobirama for a long moment before the tea kettle whistles and draws his attention.

“Thank you,” Tobirama mutters as a cup is placed before him and the Uchiha sits across from him.

“Hashirama is more cruel than I ever gave him credit for,” Madara comments after a few minutes of awkward silence and Tobirama shrugs. “His first suggestion was to marry you to Izuna.” That gets a wince from Tobirama and Madara hums in agreement. “That was my reaction, he would have killed you the second you two were alone together.”

“And you won’t?” Tobirama mutters before he can stop himself. When Madara frowns and shakes his head, Tobirama narrows his eyes, the floodgates bursting open. “So, you intend to what? Keep me around to beat every time you’re reminded of the mess I made of our brother’s life? Maybe keep me as a bed warmer? A convenient warm body to fuck when you can’t find someone else to get your rocks off with? Is that the type of man you are Husband?” By the time Tobirama is done he’s panting and Madara’s face is unreadable.

“Are you done?” The Uchiha asks and Tobirama just nods, head bowed and waiting to be proven correct. “Look at me.”

It takes a lot of effort for Tobirama to listen, too many years spent avoiding eye contact with everyone, but when he does, he is fully expecting to find the Sharingan ready and willing to destroy his mind. Much to his shock Madara’s eyes are not only still black but the older man looks pained.

“Is that truly what you think of me? Of this marriage?”

“I…” Seeing the pointed look, Tobirama shrinks in on himself, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. “How can I think anything else?” He finally mutters, looking down at his clenched fists, “it’s not like I wanted to do this.”

There is a long moment of silence before Madara sighs and reaches across the table to grip Tobirama’s hand.

“I’m sorry Tobirama,” Madara states when the former Senju looks up at him. “Hashirama said you agreed to do this.”

“I didn’t fight him, I couldn’t.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this,” the Uchiha grumbles, drawing a raised eyebrow from Tobirama. “Uchiha don’t usually agree to arranged marriages; a loveless marriage go against everything our clan believes in. Hashirama knows this, but he assured me you were willing to marry me, so I took the chance.”

“What will you do now?” Tobirama finds himself asking, unsure how he wants the Uchiha to proceed.

“I should absolve this marriage and shove the ceasefire up Hashirama’s ass-”

“You can’t!” Tobirama interrupts because Hashirama’s happiness is always more important than his own. “Peace means everything to Hashirama!”

“-but I won’t,” Madara continues as though Tobirama hasn’t spoken, “because I can’t, in good consciousness, send you back to that lying bastard.”

“Why does it sound like you care about my well-being?” Tobirama asks with a raised eyebrow, “I almost killed your brother; you should want me dead.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned my brother’s condition,” Madara comments as he sips his tea, surprisingly calm given the subject, “do you even know Izuna’s condition?”

“Just what Hashirama passed onto me.”

“Which was?” Madara presses, making Tobirama squirm.

“Crippled for life, if he survives, he’ll be little more than a civilian,” Tobirama repeats, growing restless when Madara’s chakra stays eerily calm. “One lung completely useless and he’s been rendered blind due to infection.”

Madara is silent for a single, never ending tense moment before he springs to his feet, nearly tipping the table over in the process. “Don’t move,” he growls as he storms out of the room.

Tobirama stares at the empty spot his husband has just left in absolute shock. Why had his recount of Izuna’s injuries created such a violent reaction? Had Madara finally snapped and decided he needed to die? Tobirama’s thoughts come to a screeching halt when Madara returns with Izuna in tow. Izuna Uchiha, the man he supposedly crippled beyond repair according his anija, is standing there looking annoyed.

“Why am I here Aniki?” Izuna demands, his breathing sounding only slightly labored, “I’m not going to help you fuck him.”

“How?” Tobirama mutters, not aware he’s speaking, “you’re supposed to be on death’s door…”

“You’re not that great,” Izuna huffs, crossing his arms over his chest when Madara cuffs him over the head.

“Hashirama told my husband he crippled you,” Madara states and Izuna frowns as the brother’s share a look.

“I told you he couldn’t be trusted,” Izuna grumbles as he shifts his shirt to reveal his bandaged side. “I always wear under armor in case my main armor is damaged; your strike was good, it hurt like mother fucker and has put me out of a commission for a few battles, but I’ll recover.”

Tobirama just stares at the covered wound, even with the bandages blocking his view he knew it wasn’t as bad as Hashirama had led him to believe. “I don’t understand…”

“The fucking Senju lied to you,” Izuna snaps, his frown deepening, “I keep saying he can’t be trusted.”

“You’re supposed dying words…” Tobirama mumbles, more to himself as the gears start turning again, “you didn’t mean the Senju as a whole…just Hashirama.”

“Bingo!” Izuna’s snort is unattractive and a little grating on his nerves, but Tobirama supposes he deserves it. “Also, I’m not the blind one, Aniki is.”

“Izuna!” Madara snaps, flushing in embarrassment as Tobirama looks between the two. “I told you to keep that to yourself!”

“Madara’s…blind?”

“Pretty much,” Izuna shrugs, carefully avoiding his brother’s swinging fist, “I mean he has some sight left, but it’s getting worse. I’ve tried to get him to take my eyes, your two-faced brother probably heard me say that at some point, but Aniki refuses to listen.” Seeing the bewildered look stuck on Tobirama’s face, Izuna sighs and lets his Mangekyo Sharingan spin to life; Tobirama can’t even bring himself to look away. “This gift comes at the cost of our eyesight Snowflake; the only way to prevent it is to take another’s Mangekyo as your own.”

“Why don’t you two just trade eyes then?” Tobirama suggests, blurting out the first thought in his scrambled brain, “that should help both of you, right?”

“It could work…” Madara mutters as he and Izuna share a contemplative look, “it would put us both out of commission for a couple days but with the ceasefire now is the perfect time…”

“Do you trust your bride to take care of you?” Izuna asks, staring directly into his brother’s eyes, searching for even a hint of a lie. “I have Kagami to look after me.”

“I do,” Madara says honestly, shocking the other two men in the house, “he’s bound by his marriage oath just as I am, plus Hashirama betrayed him too.”

“I won’t try and kill you while you recover,” Tobirama huffs, feeling insulted that the Uchiha thought he would be the won to strike and ruin the tentative alliance.

“I’ll gather the healers tomorrow morning then,” Izuna says as he turns to leave, “for tonight I suggest you consummate this mockery of a marriage.”

“Keep your opinions to yourself Otouto,” Madara orders, his eyes amused even if his tone isn’t. “Or I’ll marry your precious Kagami off to a Hyuga.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Izuna screeches as he flees the house, “he’s too adorable to promise to those bastards!”

“Who is this Kagami?” Tobirama can’t help but ask after the door slams shut.

“My brother’s pupil,” Madara chuckles as he settles back into his previously vacated spot, a spark of chakra warming the tea back up, “but the teen has the hots for Izu and I fully expect a formal request to court my oblivious otouto once Kagami is of age.”

“Oh,” Tobirama mutters as he sips his tea, unsure how to cope with everything he’s just learned. One thing Madara had said stood out the most to him and he just couldn’t let it go. “You really trust me?”

“There are two things you should know about me,” Madara says as he sets his tea down. “One, Uchiha don’t stray from a marriage; once we pick a partner it’s for life. Regardless of how the marriage came about, we Uchiha are all in, no exceptions.”

“And?”

“Two, I’m in charge of the entire clan all day every day, I didn’t pick you so I could be in charge in the bedroom too.”

“I beg your pardon?” Tobirama sputters, nearly choking on his tea at that rather unexpected statement.

“What I’m saying is,” Madara begins with a predatory grin, “if you think you can get it up, I’m all for you fucking me into the mattress.”

Tobirama can’t but grin too, he’d be a liar if he said he’d never fantasized about shoving the Uchiha down and having his way with him. Now it seemed like instead of death awaiting him it was his most indulgent wet dream come to life.

#madatobiweek2019 #Day 1: Arranged Marriage #MadaTobi #TobiMada #Madara Uchiha #Tobirama Senju #Izuna Uchiha #Hashirama Senju #arranged marriage #manipulative Hashirama #Hashirama is a bad brother #Tobirama has some self-esteem issues #Madara really does care #even if Tobirama doesn't believe him #some emotional hurt/comfort #my writing #Crystal writes

[werewolfdays]

Recovery/Scars snippet

this is a snippet that fits a couple of the prompts from this lovely angsty @whumptober2019 post. Yeah it’s a little early, but I’ll definitely participate in more prompts during October

(Also as a little disclaimer, this drabble has a very brief abuse mention. Doesn’t go into details, but if its something you’d rather avoid I totally understand) -

Jayde poked her head into the bathroom, likely hearing all the shuffling I was making from gathering the things I needed from the cabinets, “What are you doing?”

“The stitches are ready to come out.” I explained while carefully pulling my shirt off. My shoulder didn’t hurt even a fraction as badly as it did when the crossbow bolt was being removed, and the soreness was mostly gone, but it was better to be careful with it until it was fully healed. 

“Here,” Jayde fully came into the bathroom and plucked the bottle of hydrogen peroxide I picked up out of my hand, “Let me.” 

I nodded in gratitude, my shoulders relaxing slightly. It would’ve been difficult to reach behind my shoulder. “You know how to do it?” 

“I’ve taken a lot of my own stitches out.” She told me, pulling my bra strap down and using a cotton swab to disinfect the healing wound on my back. “And I’ve helped Toby and Skye a few times.”

“Have you ever treated a human?” I asked curiously.

She placed the bottle and swab down to grab the small pair of scissors and tweezers, “No, but I think I can manage.” 

“I guess it’s not that different,” I smiled, “Apart from the slower healing and vulnerability to infections and diseases.” 

“It did take longer for you to heal than I was hoping for.” There was a small snip as she cut the first suture, slowly pulling it out with a pair of tweezers and moving on to the next, “I mean, it’s been weeks. I was starting to worry that something was wrong.” 

I shook my head, “Nope, just normal human recovery.” 

“It’s tedious.” Jayde sounded a little distracted.

I’ve never really thought about it before, having spent so much time working in a hospital. “Yeah, I can imagine it would drive someone like you crazy. Having to wait that long to heal.” 

“Not just that.” Jayde paused to gently rub ointment on the wound after the last suture was removed. “Seeing just how slowly you recover makes me feel… helpless. Knowing how long the pain lingers with you makes me sick. And pissed off.”

“It’s really not that bad, Jay.” I told her honestly, handing her a bandage when she reached for it. 

Jayde sighed, “I know you can handle it, I just prefer that you didn’t have to.”

“I know.” I replied quietly.

Once Jayde placed the bandage on the back of my shoulder, I turned around so she could work on the exit wound. My eyes met hers and she managed to give me a small smile despite her somber mood about what I went through. Her hands gripped my waist to gently lift me up and onto the counter. Maybe the angle made it easier for her, maybe she just wanted to be a little playful to lift the mood. I wasn’t complaining either way, grateful for her proximity and the comforting familiarity of having her between my legs. I felt her thumb brush the bare skin on my side before she let me go to tend to the stitches.

“Do you need these?” I joked, grabbing my glasses from the counter beside me. Jayde snorted, accepting them and putting them on. She raised an eyebrow at me, and I couldn’t deny the immediate reaction. “Okay, now I get why you like it when I wear them.”  

She chuckled, “Then maybe we should find some lensless ones or something, ‘cause I can’t see shit through these things.” Jayde took them off and blinked rapidly a few times, making me giggle. “Damn, I think I already have a headache.” 

I shook my head at her in amusement, “Hence, why I need them.” 

Jayde’s playful gaze caught mine for another moment longer before she started on my shoulder again. I watched her smile drift away to a concerned furrow in her brow while she carefully cut and removed every suture. The frown started as just concentration, but the longer she focused, the more I realized that there were twinges of pain on her face. Our strange role reversal didn’t escape me. This was one of the rare times that Jayde was the one patching me up. For once, it wasn’t me that had a worried frown. To me, it felt odd, but I could see it was hard for Jayde. 

“These are gonna scar…” Jayde mumbled, lightly brushing her thumb over the wound. 

“Yeah,” I agreed with a small nod, “They won’t be too bad, though.”

She didn’t look very placated, “I guess.”

“You have worse ones.” I pointed out as she applied the bandage. “Way worse.” 

“That’s different.” 

“How?”

“Because…” Jayde struggled for an excuse, “Because it’s me. I’m used to it. You never should’ve gotten hurt.” 

“You know, neither of us are strangers to pain.” I told her carefully. Being shot with the crossbow may have been the most pain I have ever been in, but my brother made sure that it wasn’t the first time I encountered it. 

Jayde’s face twisted in a pain that I’ve only seen a few times. A pain that was deep and rooted in rage. “Please don’t remind me.” She begged quietly. 

It wasn’t something I wanted to bring up either. I spent a lot of time pretending like I forgot, hoping that it would make it less real. But even when I wasn’t thinking about it, it was always there. I think it was always with Jayde too. As soon as I told her. Just like all of her suffering was with me. 

My hands went to her waist, where I gripped her shirt and began tugging it up. Jayde blinked at me in confusion, but let it happen. As soon as her shirt was pulled over her head, my eyes scanned all the scars I knew by heart. The tips of my fingers brushed over the one on her side that she got the day we met. My other hand ran down her arm, tracing another scar on her bicep that looked like a knife wound of some kind. I rarely ask her about the origins of her scars, knowing that a good number of them were from her time in captivity, and not wanting to reopen that wound more than necessary. 

Then I reached up to cup her face, caressing the largest scar on her right cheek while noting the others that marked her features. Like the one that must’ve been from a particularly nasty split lip. Or the one that cut through her eyebrow. Jayde watched my exploration curiously, which finally prompted my question.

“How’d you get this one?” I asked, the tip of my index finger following the marred line on her cheek that went all the way down to her jawline. 

“When the agency found us and killed my dad, I tried to fight back.” She explained, her voice sounding somewhat distant. “I don’t remember much because they beat the shit out of me, but I think it was a silver knife.” 

I took in a long inhale, holding it for a few seconds before letting it out. After that, I leaned in to place my lips against it. Willing away all of the pain and trauma with the gentle kiss. Both hers and mine. If only for a moment. Just to banish it for even a second was worth it. 

Jayde’s expression met mine when I pulled away, and I could tell that she understood my intent. The glint in her dark blue eyes told me she felt it. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to, because she bent her head down to plant a healing kiss of her own on my shoulder. I closed my eyes, letting my hand rest on the back of her neck to hold her there for a little while longer. The feeling was nearly indescribable. She made me feel so safe- so untouchable. Jayde’s lips promised to protect me from the world, and I believed them. 

More than anything, I wanted her to believe the same from mine. When she pulled back, I gave her a grateful smile, my hands going to her hips to gently urge her to turn around. I brushed her hair over her shoulder and took in all of the scars that marred her back as well. There was one in particular that looked surgical. It ran down most of her spine, starting between her shoulder blades and trailing down to the small of her back. As I slowly traced it, I felt her body shiver against my touch. Worried that it bothered her, I shifted my attention to some of the other smaller ones

“I got some catching up to do.” I said to break the silence.

“Don’t joke about that.” Jayde told me seriously, though I heard the faintest smile in her voice. 

My arms wrapped around her torso, pulling her closer to me. “Of course not.” I quipped, planting my lips between her shoulder blades. 

The warmth of her body enveloped me even though I was the one holding her. I concentrated on every slow inhale and exhale her lungs made with my eyes closed, letting the serene feeling of it wash over me with her comforting scent. My lips ran up along her skin to another scar on the back of her neck, giving her another kiss before I rested my forehead against the back of her head. 

I could stay like this forever if she let me. Hold her until the sun dies, and even then I wouldn’t let go. Jayde wasn’t in any rush to end it either. We seized every moment like this that we could. Knowing that is was more valuable than any amount of riches the world could hold. I wouldn’t trade this for anything. 

“All better?” I eventually asked. 

“Mhm,” Jayde confirmed with a small nod, bringing her hands up to rest on top of mine, “All better.” 

#ocs #original characters #original writing #original story #whumptober2019 #no.15 #no.30 #My writing #I may have mentioned it before but Nadya grew up with an older brother that emotionally and physically abused her #I don't think itll be something I will include in full detail but he will make an appearance #and not to be spoilery but he will get Fucked Up #because you KNOW Jayde will not stand for his existence for long #also considering that Jayde was held captive and more or less tortured should I tag any trigger warnings for that too in the future....? #just let me know I guess #anyway enjoy some soft hurt/comfort gayness #maybe the embrace prompt could fit in this one but id rather save that for another drabble #my ocs #Jayde #Nadya #Nadya pov

[virgilantejustice]

the infection (pt. one)

This is my first ever long fic!! if anyone has any feedback or advice, i am totally open to it, i want to make my work as good as it can be. And, please feel free to reblog, i’m only a small account, and i would be nice to get a few more notes.

Total word count: approx. 7000

Chapter word count: approx. 2500

Trigger warnings: Death and violence, dystopian setting

part two  part three  sea of stars  on the church steps  heartbreak

masterpost link

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     "Logan, please, you don't have to go!" He could see the pleading in Patton's eyes, yet he refused to let the trapped tears fall.

     "You know I do," he replied, desperately trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. He had to be strong, for him. "We're starving, Patton. There's nothing left."

     Patton turned his face to the ground. Logan put a hand under his chin and ran his thumb over the mole on his lower cheek, that formed the faint shape of a heart. The only part of his face not covered by scars. Through all that, the heart remained. Amazing in a way.

     "Just- " Patton whispered, "just stay safe. Come back." His eyes were sparkling, glistening, begging.      

     "I can't make any promises," Logan whispered back steadily,but his voice was catching in his throat. "But I'll try. For you, My Heart."

     Patton shrugged his leather jacket off his shoulders and pressed it into Logan's hands. He'd scavenged it from an old clothes shop years ago, it was his only protection, he couldn't use a knife. The leather was thick enough even to stop bites from the infected fangs.

     "No," Logan said firmly, pushing it back. "You need it, I have my knife."

     "You'll be more danger," Patton replied. He was always so stubborn.

     "What if they come?"

     "The knowledge that you're ok with keep me safe."

     "That's nonsense!"

     "Poetic though." A smirk crept on to his face. He knew how much Logan loved poetry, and his smile was infectious. "Please, Lo. Take it, and say you'll come back by dusk." Logan saw the honest pleading in his eyes and put on the jacket. Patton looked so vulnerable, but he knew that he would stay alive by sheer power of will if it came to it.

     "I"ll make sure of it," Logan muttered. "I've got to go," he brushed his lips against Patton's and pulled away. That was really all they could afford these days, when a couple of seconds was the difference between life and death. But nevertheless, Patton pulled him in close, nestling his face into Logan's neck, his breath smelled so sweet, stale and empty.  

     Logan gently eased him off. God knows he didn't want to go, but he had to, for him. With one more fleeting glimpse, he climbed onto the motorbike and rode away.

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           When the first wave hit eleven years ago, they were ready. The disease was wiped from the face of the Earth, or so they thought.

     During the first wave, the symptoms were obvious. The skin went yellow, the eyes black, the flesh rotting away, all this happening within minutes of infection. With the Military and gamer nerds, it was destroyed.

     But it wasn't. They were cocky, overconfident. They'd only made it stronger. It learned, evolved in the few years of peace in which the world was rebuilt, only for it to be torn down once again. The virus, it'd gaining power for the second wave, which swept the world like a tsunami eight years ago.  

     Then, the only immediate sign was the skin on the bridge of the nose. This was now the only part of the skin that turned yellow straight away. There were no other signs. The infected still walked, talked and breathed, but were suddenly overcome by terrible hunger. As soon as they indulged this urge to feed, the virus finally took over, and they fully transformed.

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     It took hours to get to The Ballroom. Logan stepped off the bike and wiped the tears from his cheeks, he had been strong for Patton, but as soon as he left, the mask dissolved.

     Logan felt the bulge in his pocket hit his leg as he swung it off the seat. Part of him felt guilty, part terrified, and a savage, primal part of him was excited. He tried to clear his mind of emotion though, he knew it wouldn’t help him. There was no place for sentimentality at the ball.

     Carefully, he hid his knife up his sleeve (it was better not to aggravate the other people so soon), and placed his mask on his face.

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   There weren't many people left after a few months, and barely any after the eight long years. Only a few thousand in each country, if that. The virus didn't leave survivors. Each zombie died a few weeks after the transformation, if they didn't starve. And most of the time, if you were bitten and didn't die from the wounds, you'd be shot by your own side as soon as the yellow appeared.

     Hostilities had quickly arisen. Old feuds resurfaced as the law crumbled into dust, but anyone with any sense learned to band together, as they had nothing.

     The water was contaminated, the Earth infertile and difficult to protect, and you could rarely risk hunting. Infected animal flesh was poisonous, they may not have become zombies like humans, did but they became potent enough to kill twenty. Most of the survivors had inside vegetable patches and collected rainwater as well as being experienced in identifying infected animals, but sometimes it wasn't enough. So they went to the ball.

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     The waiting room was filled to bursting, the air of intensity overwhelming, fear oozing from the very walls.

     The rules of the ball were simple: two hundred clean and one infected person in The Ballroom; wear a masquerade mask, so no one knows who the infected is; if you take off the mask, you get shot by one of the guards; whoever kills the infected gets enough supplies to set them up for months.

     By about a month into the second wave, only the rich had anything left, so obviously people began to beg. But the upper classes hearts where as hard and cold as their cash (not that dollars really mattered anymore).  

     There was no fee for the ball, no profit to be made. The superiority that the rich held infected them in another way, made them cruel and sadistic. They watched this as sport.  

     As soon as the doors opened, every poor soul who was desperate enough to come filed out in to the hall. It was largely empty, save a few chairs around the edges for anyone brave (or stupid) enough to sit. It still held more grandeur than any other room for miles despite the peeling paint and bare chandeliers.

     People had walked for days to be here, mainly adults, some ragged and desperate looking teenagers, and a couple of idiots had even brought their families ('must be their first time, the infected picked of the young, old and weak first,' Logan thought coldly). Suspicious eyes bored into his back, as everyone scoped the room, but the masks did their job well. Logan could feel his heavy on his nose, the ribbon tied tightly behind his head.  

     'Who was it? Who was it!' Logan frantically asked himself, his face not needing a mask for the facard of calmness that it was already fixed to. People were chatting, milling around, biding their time until the creature attacked. Was it the woman over there with the sharp chin, long brown hair and striped yellow mask? Or the short person with faded remnants of multicoloured dye in their hair? There was no way of knowing, not yet.

     Logan didn't talk to anyone. He stayed with his back pressed against the wall so no one could sneak up behind him. Waiting for a sign, trying to disappear.  

     He kept Patton's as image in his mind. Logan had only come here once before, and had come back practically falling to pieces, and only with a couple of cans that the victors had decided to share out of pity, but then he didn’t have the plan that he had now. As long as Logan kept thinking about him he knew he wouldn't leave him behind. He was the Heart, and nickname from years ago, but it held true. And Logan was the mind, as Patton would always call him, usually while stroking his cheek and coming in closer.

     'No!' Logan told himself, shaking the memory from his mind. He had to be focused, ready.

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When the second wave hit, it swept the world so fast, and there was no way to stop it.

     Logan and Patton were only fourteen when their parents died six years ago, they couldn’t defend themselves, so they did what their parents told them to do with their final breaths, and went into some old mines. A cave in was imminent at all times, but it was safer than the surface. They didn’t know how long they were down there, walking. There was no day or night, there was only blackness or fire.

     Therefore, Logan didn’t know where they were in relation to the sea, or where they grew up, or the remnants of anywhere that was a big city. In the six years since then, they'd explored for miles around their camp, but never found anything that they recognised. The world was just a barren, endless sheet of brown, with only a few ruined towns and cities to break up the wasteland.  

     They lived in an old church now, the only building still standing in the town in which they came up. It was big, and empty, and the windows were smashed making it drafty, but it was all they had. So Patton decided that they would decorate it and make it cosy, collecting blankets and shelves from the ruined houses. He had made it home for them.

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     Suddenly, the person with the dyed hair revealed a large blade from under their coat and plunged it into the stocky man standing before them. The man gasped and fell to the floor, pressing his hands to the crimson flower blooming on his chest, his once purple hair now dyed red with his own blood.

     One of the guards came over and pulled the mask from his still face. No yellow. Just a man. A young man, with laughter lines around his mouth from once upon a time. A dead man now. Dead for nothing.

     That one act of violence then sparked the inevitable chain reaction. The brown haired woman killed the first killer, not them. Then a person wearing an orange beanie bashed her head in, not her. Then their body hit the ground, not them!

     The pent up aggression that lay in everyone's hearts was unleashed. Knives flashed, bats swung, fists flailed. The rich onlookers behind the glass fence were cheering, choosing favourites and placing bets.

     Logan tried to stay to the side, he didn't want to kill anyone who was clean, but he knew he had to win.

     Finally, he caught a glimpse of something. A glimpse of yellow behind a slipping mask, a glimpse of a fang protruding from the lips. a glimpse of a person clearly infected.. It was a man wearing a snake-print mask and scars down one side of his face.  

     Logan fought his way over, dancing away from the blows and slashes that were sent in his direction. Finally he stood face to face with the man. He was covered in blood, his and others, and something dark lingered in his eyes.

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     Before Logan could even jump back in surprise, the man lunged for his neck. He grabbed his shoulders and tried to push him back but his grip was strong. The man bit mindlessly at him, but the leather kept the new fangs from his flesh.

    Logan slipped his knife out of his sleeve and plunged it into him, emptying himself of emotion before remorse could take hold. 'He's not human, not anymore' he told himself. But as the man fell, Logan saw something so human in his eyes. Something sad. Something agonised, as he pressed his hands to the gaping wound that Logan left in his stomach.  

     There was no need to remove the mask. There was so much blood everywhere, he must have swallowed a little and transformed. Fangs hung over his chin, his skin was dry and flaking, his eyes turned black, and his nails covered with red.

     Logan staggered backwards, clutching his temples. "I won," he shouted it to the protected upper classes, "i won!"  

     One of the guards threw a duffel bag at his feet. Logan looked inside, enough for a month, maybe more, but not enough.

     "No!" He cried. "I did not come here for this!"

     "That is your prize," replied a well dressed man, standing up from his plush armchair behind the glass. "Take it or leave it."

     Logan shook his head, fighting to stay calm, but quickly losing "Neither," he snarled. He pulled the object out of his pocket. The backup plan. A grenade.

     Everyone scrambled away from him when he held it up, they were frenzied. The guards ran towards him, but stopped in their tracks when he loosened his grip.

     "You're bluffing," one of the protected woman spat. "We'll all go up! You wouldn't dare!"  

     "Are you willing to take that chance?" Logan began to idly toss it between his hands. The first man gestured to one of the guards, who huffed and disappeared into one of the side rooms, to bring back another, larger bag.

     Logan picked it up and looked inside. The two bags were enough for months! He knew that he should have been happy, but a fiery rage still was building inside him.

      "You know what?" He said to the bomb in his hand. "You guys really fucking suck." And with that, he threw the grenade up into the air, grabbed the bags, and ran.

      It exploded before it even hit the ground.

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     Rubble flew everywhere at deadly speeds, striking guards and participants alike, but the nobles took it the hardest. Their glass prison shattered, crystal daggers embedding themselves into their flesh.  

     Dust and smoke filled the air, Logan stumbled, and ran into people, all charging in the vague direction that they knew the door to be in. He heard the guard's heavy boots thudding on the floor behind him, hot on his trail, but they were too slow.

     He ran and ran, and finally, he burst through the doors. The clouds overhead were thick and dark, blotting out the sun.

     As soon as he got to the motorbike and swung his leg over the seat, he felt someone else climb on behind him, too small to be a guard.

     "Drive! Fucking drive!!" Came the panicked voice, so he did. His priority was to get away from the people he knew were definitely trying to kill him.

     Logan rode in a zigzag to escape the bullets that were flitting past his head. Bullets were worth more than gold these days, and they were shooting wildly.

     The person behind him was practically bouncing on the seat. He felt the terror radiating from them, Logan wanted to stop and ask them questions, but he couldn't. He needed to go faster.

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#logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #sanders sides #thomas sanders #virgil sanders #deceit sanders #fan fic writing #fan fiction #fiction #my fic #fan fic #story #storytelling #short story #writing probz #writing #ts fandom #ts fanfic #fanfic #fantasy #fandom #logicality #the infection

[queen-scribbles]

Mariya Krinh Bio

(Look, it’s finally done! :D)

Before getting to Mariya herself, a teensy bit of background: Mariya’s parents--Priya and Desten--were adopted into the Mandalorian clan Krinh as teenagers when they aided the conquest of the planet they were enslaved on(”indentured servitude”, somehow still working off an originally 3-year debt their respective parents had agreed to before they were even born). They showed cunning, determination, and ferocity, and so were adopted by a couple of the families in the clan once free. Part of what impressed the Krinh chieftain was they asked to join, took initiative with their lives, so since they’d demonstrated very Mandalorian proclivities during the conquest(and already started bonding with some of the clan members, their request was granted. They fully immersed themselves in the culture, learned the language and the customs, and their close friendship turned to love and then marriage within a year or two after their adoption.

It took four or five years after their marriage for Mariya to be born, partially because both Priya and Desten enjoyed fighting alongside their new family so there wasn’t as much occasion (/cough) to make a baby as there might have been otherwise. Mariya was a bold little thing from an early age, outgoing personality clear from the time she was a few months old. No younger siblings followed, so when she was eight, Priya started training her as a warrior, which she took to like a thranta to flying. She also proved to be a naturally gifted tech; she tinkered with what technology there was in the clan, modifying and repairing it in her free time.Little things like boosting holo signals, and tweaking her mother’s vibroshiv so it had more kick to it.

Mariya’s eleven, halfway through her training when the clan chief hears reports of a colicoid nest on Balmorra boasting particularly large and aggressive examples of the species. He decides the clan needs a challenge beyond “sniping at the Republic’s fringes”, so they’re going to go take care of this problem the Republic and Empire haven’t been able to deal with on their own. So the clan packs up and travels to Balmorra to hunt gargantuan bugs. There’s some grumbling that this isn’t an intelligent enough enemy to be worth much honor, but the chief and his supporters are quick to point out what colicoids lack in intelligence they make up in ferocity. Which makes them just as valuable a foe as any more clever race might prove.

They don’t ask permission for this hunt, simply land and make their way to the valley with this nest. At first glimpse, these colicoids are indeed much bigger than average; easily twice over. Clan Krinh sets camp and starts planning the best way to eradicate this nest. Mariya half-listens to the planning while she tinkers with a sensor remote(she just knows she can boost the range so it can help with more effective strategizing). She trusts her parents to catch anything important, and besides, the children are told where to fight by the full warriors, so it’ll be fine.

It takes a few days, and several waves of attack, but Clan Krinh does achieve victory over their insectoid targets. They even triumphed with minimal injury and no casualties. Desten and Mariya’s best friend Jorrin were the ones to actually take  down the queen, so they’re lauded with special honors at the victory celebration. Proud as she is of them, halfway through the celebration, it finally hits Mariya what she needs to do for this sensor remote tweak that’s been eluding her(maybe it was that healthy sip of tihaar her mom let her have). So she slips out, tinkers with the remote, and borrows a speeder to travel a mile or so away to test it. It works, even better than she expected.

So she sees the approaching trio of blips on the screen even before the ships show up in the sky or the roar of engines reaches her as they swoop down to rain fire along the valley. Mariya, of course, barely waits for the bombers to disappear from view before grabbing her remote and heading back fast as the speeder will carry her(which isn’t nearly fast enough). When she reaches the camp, it’s completely and utterly destroyed, just rubble. No survivors from what she can see, and the sensor isn’t picking up any life signs. She still looks, hardly able to believe everyone she knows and cares about is dead. Her attempts at searching are severely hampered by the fire and extreme heat, so she eventually retreats a short distance to wait. It’s as she sits there, shell-shocked and watching her world burn, that it hits her.

Those were Imperial bombers. They have a very distinctive design, and she knows her ships.  The Republic’s not responsible for this, the Empire took everything from her. And she doesn’t even know why. Not that it matters; mistake, vendetta, whatever reason, her clan’s dead.

Soon as things cool down(takes about a day, which she spends with a growling stomach she barely noticed), Mariya goes back through the camp again, this time looking for bodies so can give them a proper funeral, and any food or supplies she can salvage. She spends three days digging everyone she can find from the rubble, piles the bodies for a single large funeral pyre as best she can, and performs the rites as best she remembers them She wasn’t able to ID everyone--some were too burnt or... missing pieces(which gives her nightmares)--but she does find for sure the clan chief, and Jorrin, and both her parents. That night she finds them is the only time she cries. After that, through finding more bodies, and the funeral, and the days that follow, there’s nothing. It’s too much to wrap her brain around for a true reaction. Plus, breaking down won’t do any good. It’ll distract her with emotion, and with the colicoids gone, other wildlife has started moving back in. She doesn’t relish the idea of being killed by a zeldrate because she was crying too hard to hear it approach.

She sets up a short distance off with her salvaged supplies while she figures out what to do. She’s just a kid, alone on a strange planet, with no one she can count on for help.  If she’s going to survive, she’s gonna do it on her own. And she very much plans to survive.

That’s where the Balmorran resistance find her when they come through to scout out rumors the colicoid nest is gone. Grubby zabrak girl, fire in her eyes, armed with a vibroshiv and a holdout blaster who refuses to speak a word. She doesn’t attack them outright, but she’s clearly very wary of them, and given the smoldering ruin of her clan’s camp nearby, it’s an easy guess as to why. There’s enough evidence of what happened, in extremely broad strokes at least, for them to piece it together. Upon the realization she’s out here by herself and almost out of supplies, the lead scout offers to take her back with their group.

Mariya’s hesitant, torn between self-reliance and the promise of food and medical attention. In the end, it’s the latter that convinces her to accept; she was bitten on the leg by a zeldrate, and the uxibeast calf she killed for food stomped on her hand in the process, so she’s 90% sure she has a couple broken fingers down. Having those treated properly seems smarter than toughing it out and letting them get infected. She goes with the scouts, but still refuses to talk. Nods/shakes her head and follows instructions so they know she can hear, but adamantly refuses to speak. ‘Trauma response,’ the lead scout grunts, and wraps her in a survival blanket. No one pushes the matter.

Once back at the resistance base, with her wounds treated and an actual bed to sleep in, it still takes a few days for Mariya to relax. As soon as she does, as soon as she’s convinced there’s no external danger, she gets several nights of progressively more horrible nightmares in a row. The wake-you-up-screaming kind. Always waves off concern without a word and curls back up. Until the fourth night, when she breaks down sobbing. Still won’t talk, but doesn’t fight when someone sits on her bed to rest a comforting hand on her back. She falls back asleep before she sees who it is, but that experience is the first step on a long road toward thinking of this as home.

She settles in over the next several weeks, helping with chores, eating their food(sometimes even with the group), and otherwise starting to acclimate. Still won’t talk, and by the end of the second or third week, most people have just accepted that she’s mute. The majority of them don’t interact with her more than they have to(Mariya’s not sure if that’s because she’s a kid or because she’s mute), but there are a few who are deliberately friendly and welcoming while also not pushing her to talk. First is Chorus, the cell’s lead strategist, who Mariya figures out pretty quickly was the one who sat with her the night she cried. Knowing that, Mariya bonds with her quickly, and since Chorus is a woman of few words herself, sitting with her while she plans raids or ambushes against the Imperials quickly becomes Mariya’s favorite thing to do. 

When Chorus is too busy talking to the leader or with other “adult stuff”, Mariya beelines for her second favorite place and person--the twi’lek gearhead who runs a garage not far from the half-blasted hospital the resistance cell is using for their base. She likes to hang out there, both from curiosity how things work--she’s never tinkered anything bigger than she could fit in her hands, but those speeder engines are really tempting--and as a great hiding place from the few who won’t stop trying to get her to talk. She knows as soon as she says a single word, people will want to know all the details of what happened, and she’s not ready to relive that yet.

The twi’lek--Saul--is accepting of her presence and encourages her curiosity about how things work. He’s sympathetic to the resistance, even if not openly part of it, so he doesn’t mind having one of their youngest members in his shop with increasing frequency. Sometimes his son hangs out in the garage, too, and when he does he proves to be a chatterbox who talks Mariya’s ear off. She likes being treated normal and doesn’t mind that he’s so talkative. (He’s the one to cajole her name out of her; up til then everyone had been calling her Ember). When the son’s not there, though, Saul starts letting Mariya help fix things, and it quickly becomes apparent she has a knack for this sort of thing. The garage just as quickly turns into  her favorite place to be, and is usually the first place Chorus or other people look when they can’t find her.  Soon she’s happily settled in as Saul’s assistant(apprentice, really), and is well on the way to being fast friends with his son, Numen. All without saying a word. She’ll still hang around with Chorus or in the resistance mess hall, but most of her time is spent in the garage.

She’s been in this new home, so to speak, for almost a year before she talks. She still bunks and eats and everything in the resistance hideout, but she spends at least half of every day in Saul’s garage. Finally the day comes when he trusts her with an engine repair. It’s not anything nasty or difficult, but he lets her wok on it all by herself, trusting that she can get it done without him. And she does. When the engine starts up, she fistpumps and whoops “Yes!” loud enough he hears her from across the vehicle bay. When he circles the airspeeder he was working on, Mariya points at the engine and grins. “I did it!”

“I see that,” he returns with a smile. “Good job.” and then just waits to see what she dos about the fact she just talked. She’s aware of what she did, but keeps her mouth shut the rest of the day until Numen starts talking her ear off at dinner, where she looks him dead in the eye and informs him he’s noisier than a Kowakian monkey lizard. He promptly forgets whatever he was saying about the new defenses the Imps added to Sobrik and instead--after an initial moment of shock--starts asking questions about her(he’s happy to not be the only one talking, and Mariya points out with a giggle he’ll probably still do enough for both of them). 

Word spreads quickly that the zabrak mute isn’t anymore, but it’s been long enough since she was grafted in that the cell leader only asks for basics; her full name, age, and how the hell she wound up on Balmorra and alone(Mariya Krinh, twelve now, I’m Mando and my clan was wiped out by Imperial bombers while celebrating the end of our hunt. No, I don’t know or care why). After a small burst of excitement over this development, things quickly settle back down. And just like that, Mariya’s part of the Balmorran resistance. By Mandalorian standards, she’s been adopted into their clan, this is her home now and she’ll fight just as hard to defend it as the rest of them(harder than some of them, it turns out, but that’s not a problem til a few years down the road).

The next several years are spent splitting her time between resistance work and Saul’s shop, and even that she uses to help the resistance. Saul is sympathetic--if not actively involved--even if Numen doesn’t show an particular interest. Mariya’s an able helper in funneling interesting tidbits and occasionally parts or supplies to the resistance caches, and they might every so often do a slightly substandard repair job on an Imperial-owned vehicle. Nothing terribly obvious or dangerous, just maybe put things back together so an engine whines or smokes a little, making them more distinct and obtrusive. When she’s fifteen, she starts flying supplies to other cells across Balmorra, using Ember as a call-sign. She picks up flying very quickly, and is soon adept at dodging all sorts of Imperial blockades and anti-smuggling measures.

It’s a complicated balancing act; acclimating to her new home and culture, fighting to defend it, while not losing what she remembers of the old one. She knows how to make a few Mandalorian dishes(tiingilar, gi dumplings, and uj’alayi) and brew tihaar, but the ingredients are next to impossible to get on Balmorra without sneaking into Sobrik. She hangs on to the language by muttering under her breath in Mando’a when she’s mad/irritated/excited and she doesn’t wanna share. Also, uses Mando’a to cuss out recalcitrant  engines when they’re hard to repair.

Despite her commitment to, and his ambivalence about, the resistance, Mariya and Numen remain close friends. They have a very playful-banter-verges-on-flirting edge to their relationship(probably sounds like flirting to people with no context), especially as Mariya settles in and her personality starts showing. She has a very snarky/sassy manner once she comes out of her shell, and Numen gets her better than most. So even if she doesn’t like the shady crowd he starts running with, they stay friends. He’s the only one who gets to call her Riya, and the only one who liked her hair right off the bat when she starts dyeing it pink and purple. She just wishes he’d stop hanging out with sleazy criminal types, and badgers him about whenever she can without overdoing it. (another complicated balancing act) It’s around the same time she starts flying supply runs for the resistance, ironically, that Numen accepts his first paying job smuggling guns offworld for a local criminal. It prompts the first really big fight  he and Mariya have, and one of the bigger ones with his dad, and he starts pulling away after that. Mariya misses him--he’s one of her best and only friends--and enjoys it when he does drop by, complete with playful flirty banter as if nothing ever happened, but she’s not mopey for little stuff. Self-imposed vow of silence after an incredibly traumatic childhood event, yes. Sulk around because her best friend doesn’t have his head on straight(in her opinion), not so much. She just works harder, both at the garage and for the resistance. And if there’s maybe the occasional bitchfest venting  to Chorus about how he’s an idiot and she can’t believe he’d rather do something dangerous and lucrative for personal gain over helping free his damn planet, no one ever hears about it because Chorus is very good at keeping confidence.

The next five or six years are a mix of hard times and bright spots. The Empire’s still ruthless, the Republic still won’t officially help them, so the resistance gets even more determined and self-reliant. She watches friends die, others go out on missions and never make it back, and she actually gets caught herself on one of her supply runs. The outpost that nabs her can’t believe they got their hands on the notorious pilot Ember(and that--at this point--she’s still a teenager), and don’t waste any time trying to interrogate her while waiting for an escort to take her back to Sobrik. She can tell tell they’re just a trio of bored kids, not much older than her, and just sasses them in circles the entire time. Gets a split lip for her efforts, but that’s more than they can say. She gives them nothing, and manages to escape before this escort shows up. It’s a couple years after that that things start looking real bad. Their supply lines are being cut, some of their undercover folks are either found out or under close scrutiny, and then--to Mariya’s utter dismay--Saul gets picked up for having “terrorist connections” while she’s on a delivery run, and when she gets back to pick up more supplies, the Imps impound her ship. It’s registered to Brock’s Garage, so if Saul’s under investigation, all his vehicles are, too.  There are three or four cells she hadn’t resupplied yet, still waiting and by now probably getting desperate. The cell leader and Chorus are out supervising a vital ambush near the Gorinth plateau, so she can’t report the hydrospanner in the works--not that she would right away, anyway. She’s self-reliant almost to a fault, and proud besides, wouldn’t want to admit til she has to that she can’t handle this herself. 

As luck would have it, just before she hits the point of admitting defeat, Numen strolls through the door for one of his random visits. Mariya spills what she knows about what happened and the tight spot this puts the resistance in. The idea hits her mid-conversation, and by the time they’re done talking, Mariya’s hired Numen to smuggle supplies to resistance camps(”just this one time”, she says. Once things aren’t so desperate they can work out something else) instead of guns for off-world crime syndicates. Tries to insist she’ll pay him out of her salary from the garage, but Numen won’t let her(he knows she doesn’t make much and puts most toward the resistance), says he’ll do it as a favor since she’s his best friend. “And just say I owe you one?” she jokes. ”Yeah, a pretty big one.” he teases.

Mariya goes with him as co-pilot, ostensibly because she knows all the passcodes and her being there will make it clear this isn’t a trap of some kind.  It’s mostly true.. There’s just also a little part of her that worries if Numen’s unsupervised he’ll make off with the supplies to sell to the highest bidder or something. She hates thinking that way about her oldest and best friend, but he’s run his mouth too frequently about how well criminals pay, and she doesn’t want to take chances with the fate of the resistance. She figures he won’t try anything if she’s along; their friendship means too much for him to betray her.

She needn’t have worried. For all his talk of money being the best cause of all, and worrying about yourself before you try to care for a whole damn planet, something visibly changes in Numen with their very first delivery. By the end of the run, five drop-offs total, there’s a very familiar light in his eyes. Mariya just smirks at him the whole way back  to the garage, even when he needles her about being smug. After all his apathy and ambivalence, Numen Brock has the same patriotic fire in his eye as she seen with herself, Chorus, dozens of other from her teens til now.

Still, it’s not as if he completely changes overnight, or even at all. He still maintains his less than savory connections, still dabbles in several things Mariya wishes he wouldn’t--selling stims to grunt-level Imps, for one. (If the Imperial higher-ups don’t figure out his game and string him up, she knows at least a handful of die-hard resistance fighters who would for “collaborating” with the enemy)

Numen’s a big boy, though, and even if she doesn’t want him to wind up tortured or killed, Mariya has bigger things to worry about. Like Saul being in Imperial custody. Aside from personal concern over the closest thing she’s had to a father figure for the past decade and change, all the vehicles--swoops, speeders, the skyhopper--that were registered in his name or the garage’s are locked down and she’ll be running the business essentially on her own til he’s back. She’s very stressed. Numen winks and tells her not to worry. She wonders how he can be so casual about his father being in Imperial custody--don’t you know what they do to people, Numen?!--but he says things’ll be fine and strolls out the door. it’s not even a full day before Saul’s back, only slightly worse for wear, and all the vehicle locks are lifted. She never finds out the details--figures it’s better not to ask--but pretty strongly suspects Numen did something(she’s just not sure she wants to know what).

After that whole mess, things even out, much as they can with he Empire still oppressing her home. Saul’s back, Chorus’ mission was a success of the unequivocal, zero casualties nature, and Numen starts smuggling supplies for the resistance. “Just don’t ask where I get some of the stuff.” he laughs. She doesn’t. Frankly, as long as their people are being supplied, she doesn’t give a damn. They get to work as a team now, and the Empire’s bringing down the gravhammer with enough force, the resistance can’t afford to be picky about sources.

It doesn’t take long before Numen’s achieved the same level of notoriety/folk hero status as Mariya(at least among the resistance), which tickles her pinker than her hair. They make a great team; he procures things and she gets them where they’re most needed. (turns out those criminal contacts are good for something; a lot of black market or stolen weapons get doled out to resistance cells) 

And then it turns out one of their offworld “volunteers” is an undercover SIS agent who thinks Numen is a contact the Republic could use as a ‘privateer’ to covertly aid the resistance. “You know they don’t care about the planet, just the factories, with the Treaty of Coruscant lookin’ so frangin’ strained.” she points out. Numen shrugs. “So? I can get paid to help the resistance, Riya. From somewhere more secure that the apartment you deemed a hovel on your one and only visit.”//”What’s the point of rolling in credits if you’re gonna live in a hole in the wall like that?!”//”Rolling in credits, of course.”

It’s a twist of irony that despite his shorter commitment(because of it, really), Numen makes a better point of contact for the Republic than Mariya because he has more connections and is less well-known to the Imperials. So when he accepts the contract and gets all set up in Bugtown, with her as a primary  “contact” to the resistance, she works with/for him. (”Do I hafta call you boss now?” she winks. She’s not gonna call him boss.)

So while it could be better--her home could be free--this isn’t an awful state for things to be in while they work toward making life better. And when she and Numen team up, they have a pretty great success rate. She’s confident they can continue that streak.

After all, Mandalorians don’t leave a job half done.

#queens fic #swtor oc #mariya krinh #look it's 4k words i'm calling it fic #holy moly #ah here we go #things kept popping up to prevent the proofread #i think it's all good now tho ;)

[the-colony-roleplay]

Constantin Lupei | Thirty Six;  Survivor

House: Torren Security Class: 2 Status: Infected - Telepathy

History

Constantin suspects he might have been one of the first people to see the asteroids coming in 2157. There were five of them on the International Space Station at the time: Constantin Lupei, Romanian, ISS systems engineer. Zander Koch, American, ISS mission commander. Fan Shi Hui, Chinese, ISS medical officer. Anaya Dolmen, English, botanist. And finally, Dostovalova Natalia Mikhailovna, Russian, ISS Navigator. When the asteroids came, Constantin had been there the shortest time, at only two months, and he was struggling to connect with the other astronauts as the only common language between them was English, and Costin’s grasp of the language had always been shaky. He was just a small-town Romanian boy, really, that had studied hard, worked his way through the ranks of the air force,  and achieved his goals. Every kid wants to be an astronaut; most grow out of it, but Costin never did. The difficulty he had communicating didn’t stop him from alerting everyone to the anomaly he saw from one of the windows, and the crew immediately jumped into action to alert those on the ground that an asteroid shower was heading directly for earth.

Their message got through, but there hadn’t been enough time for it to make any difference. Costin and the rest of the crew watched in numb horror as their home was buried in fire. They kept talking to those on the ground, gathered around the communications device until it was cut off. The other four soon left to mourn in private; that would turn out to be their greatest mistake, as the node containing the crew sleeping quarters would be struck by an asteroid shortly after.

Zander, Natalia, and Shi Hui were killed immediately. Anaya’s room was spared, but the passageway connecting her node to the Cupola module where Costin was was badly damaged. She was trapped, the connecting tube too badly compromised for them to be able to risk opening the doors, and their communications were down. The only mercy was that emergency rations were stored in each astronauts quarters, enough to supply them a month - more, if they were careful.

They kept busy; it wasn’t difficult, particularly for Costin with the whole station to roam. The ISS was badly damaged, and if they valued their lives then he would have to keep working on repairing it. He worked through his mourning, and at first Costin assumed the near-unbearable headaches were a grief response. They grew worse, making concentrating more and more difficult as his ears began to ring. And then after two months, something changed. He was sitting at the window through which he could still see Anaya, holding up notes to let her know that he was trying to work something out. Anaya was growing increasingly thin, eating only a third of the recommended rations each day, and nearly mad with loneliness as she was trapped between four small walls. As Costin was thinking how horrific it must be for her to be there, she sat bolt upright, and even from such a great distance, he could see how wide her eyes had gone. I CAN HEAR YOU, she wrote, and so it was that the Infections first began to manifest - they realise now that when the ship had been damaged, the strange orange gas that seeped through the cracks had affected them.

Over the next few weeks, Costin worked at his telepathy, ‘talking’ to Anaya as often as he could, while at the same time her telekinesis presented itself. After months of work and tentative planning, Costin began to teach her how she might repair the airlock and make it safe for her to cross. She didn’t have a spacesuit with her, but using her telekinesis she might be able to repair it enough that it wouldn’t matter. She was terrified, because one wrong move could be fatal, but she was also desperate as her rations ran frighteningly thin. Six months after D-Day, she finally managed it under Costin’s careful instruction. She hadn’t eaten for a week by then, and when she fell into Constin’s arms he knew she weighed next to nothing, even in zero gravity.

They both wept. And now that they were reunited, they discussed trying to return to earth in one of the emergency vessels. Having not seen any sign of life since the asteroids hit, and they weren’t sure if they could bear returning to a dead planet. So they tried to live, fixing up what parts of the ship they could, calculating how long the rations would last (a long time, between just the two of them), and what the point of it all was. They honed their Infections, Anaya’s being particularly interesting in zero-grav. For want of anything else to do, they began to experiment, taking extensive notes and writing papers just for their own satisfaction.

They were almost happy, for a time. The months turned into years, and somehow they learned to live. Sometimes they even laughed. That changed in July, 2162, when another shower of asteroids shot past. The ISS was spared any further damage, but the planet was once more aflame. The sight of it spurred Costin into action; he wasn’t sure what had changed in his perception, except for the fact that even if every single person on Earth had died, he and Anaya had survived. They wouldn’t be able to live up here forever, but if they returned to Earth, maybe they could salvage a life that would last beyond the next couple of years that their rations would allow.

If they died, Costin said, it was better to die in pursuit of a better life than to waste away up here when the food ran out. The emergency vessels had sustained only minimal damage, and he worked on one for several weeks until he was satisfied that it would be safe. They spent a day walking around, saying goodbye to the station that had been their home for the past four years, and packing as much research and rations into their return ship as they could fit.

And then, they left. Both sending out prayers that they would make it back, both white-knuckled with nerves, both absolutely silent until they re-entered the atmosphere. They came crashing down in the Atlantic, miraculously both alive and unharmed. Shortly after they were picked up by a merchant vessel who took them to shore.

Costin Today

After so many years in space, Costin and Anaya struggled to adjust to life back on earth, with the gravity wreaking havoc on their systems. They were taken first to Colony 4, until they had recovered their strength enough to travel a little further. Both of them were transported to Colony 22 in December, where it was hoped that they could provide assistance with the lab research thanks to their experience, both with lab work and their own Infections. It was soon ascertained however, after a few conversations with the CISM team, that neither of them were in any state to be working on sensitive material or be given too much responsibility.

Costin is by far the more outgoing of the two. Although his English skills are still lacking, he learned a lot with Anaya over the years, and he is keen to talk to people. He can seem gruff at first, thanks to his eastern European upbringing and years of near-isolation, but he means well and likes to be surrounded by people. In fact, he can be needy at times, desperate to stay close to anyone that will let him stick around. He is also, unfortunately, highly emotional. So much trauma has left him fragile, and he can be laughing loudly one moment, only to dissolve into tears the next. Open as he is with his emotions, they can be unpredictable, and until he gets a better grip on that it’s been made clear that he won’t be permitted to be around the research.

That’s fine by him, as he and Anaya have their little secret - all the research they conducted on the ISS. They had planned on sharing it, but seeing the NWRF in action made them reconsider. All of their work is handwritten, hidden in slits that they put in their mattresses, because they don’t want to help those in power. When it comes to training and the Games, Costin is a hard worker, but not the most proficient. His body is still weak from being in space for years longer than anticipated, so he tires easily. He does, however, have an aptitude for long range weaponry thanks to his training from the air force, and is finding it very therapeutic. He has excellent control over his telepathy, and although he doesn’t often use it during AP training, he uses it daily with Anaya. For all of his outgoing nature, Costin is struggling to fully trust anyone but her. He thought that the Infections were an incredible gift, but the NWRF clearly have other ideas, and so he is wary of saying too much: the physical proximity to other people feels like it is healing him, but the emotional proximity terrifies him.

RELATED BIOS: ANAYA DOLMEN

TAKEN; Original Character

#sebastian stan #sebastian fc #literate rp #oc rp #original rp #taken #male #infected #survivor #taken infected #taken survivor #taken male #telepathy #sc2 #Constantin Lupei

[felldragxn]

Log 1:

Jastira Vamaris. XX of XX, year XXXX. Soon after many of our younger citizens made their exit from Ethir in hopes of seeking knowledge beyond our walls, we were forced to close ourselves off from the outside world. An invader from Dalvensus, perhaps once intimidated by our numbers, seems to have wandered close… It is some sort of plant-like creature that is hard to describe. It seems like it has not fully bloomed, and for the sake of not allowing an infection to spread throughout the tower I have isolated it in a container from which it cannot escape. Those who found it have been instructed by the higher-ups not to mention it - it could be a scout, and we don’t want to cause any sort of panic among what remains of our citizenry.

...I… well, to be quite honest, I’m a bit amazed to have a live sample in our grasp after all this time. Previously they were killed on sight, but this subject seems to have put up little fight and, and I believe my pleading finally got through to one of the guards. One of the night guards, what was his name… He always gives me this look like he’s interested in my work… Aelin? No matter, no matter, I’ll deal with that later. I have to focus, and I may be getting carried away… Ahem.

As many of my younger assistants have left, it has been mostly Mona - er, that’s, Illimona, the one who transferred over from…. nevermind - and, well, myself. I have other assistants, but they have been rather busy in different points of research, you know. The fewer people who know about this, the better, though, and Mona is sworn to secrecy. Wouldn’t say a peep. We’re both very excited to get on with our research, but of course the higher-ups have to… They have to determine it’s safe to do anything with the damned thing. We don’t know how aether will affect a creature made from, from aetherical disturbances, you know! So in the meantime I’ve been examining it, but, but it doesn’t have any particularly interesting behavior so far. It has been extremely passive, leading me to uncertainties about that “scouting” theory I mentioned… I did mention that earlier, correct? Yes, well, if it’s a scout it’s not an especially good one. I don’t understand why it’s a plant monster, either.

Log 2:

Experimentation still not approved. Should be within the next couple of days, they said. What if it needs to eat? What if it dies before I can do anything on it? However, I’m no fool - we could capture another one alive eventually, we have nothing but time. Our surrounding allies have finally caught word of our closed borders, so the Seere is sending word of our reasons by means of their little aether pets, the… whatever they’re called. Ahem.

I spoke with Aelin last night, you know, and asked if he’d caught the damn thing alive just for me. But he said it didn’t even put up a fight, after they knocked it off the tower - it’d been climbing up, you see, and was uncomfortably close to the peak when they found it. None of the guards on the lower levels reported anything out of the ordinary, so I’m curious as to how it got so high while completely invading detection! The Seere is taking this breach in security very seriously, though, so, um, we put barriers up that will detect if anything living enters the tower or the surrounding area. It caught a fisherman who we had to kindly turn away, all the way from Urion! I know some of my students headed over that way. I wonder how they’re doing…

Sometimes I look at the thing. It’s barely moved. I don’t think it has eyes, but I feel like it’s… it’s staring at me? I threw a sheet over it.

Log 6:

Jastira here again, you know the drill. Experimentation approved - Mona? Can you come here so I know it’ll pick up your voice? (Yes’m.) Excellent, excellent. We’re doing the most basic of aetherical tests today, running a current through its body - without damaging it, of course. I’m worried pure aether will kill it, as it is, but I don’t… I don’t exactly have access to corrupted aether. (Only in Dalvensus, Jas. Are we good to go on this, or-?) Hold on, hold on.

Ahem, so this is test one. We’ll see if it reacts at all. Five seconds.

…

…

…

N...Nothing? Nothing. All righty, but it’s still alive, right? Its vitals haven’t changed, we haven’t detected any change in aether balance yet…. The aether we have stored is uncorrupted, strangely. (For the sake of the recording: I’ve made sure it filters out, so it doesn’t ruin the whole batch. If it gets corrupted we’ll have to immediately ship it off to assure its gotten rid of.) Yes, yes, but it’s surprisingly fine so far. The creature itself seems rather low-level, to be honest, I’m not sure if we’ll get much out of it. (Unlikely a scout, if that’s the case, so why send it all this way? Did it wander off a pack and end up at the nearest settlement?) Who knows! That’s what’s exciting - we’ve never directly dealt with the stupid things! But, but of course, we must take caution. It could be a ruse. (Are they that intelligent, even?) It’s impossible to tell, you know. But we have to be careful.

Log 14:

We’ve been filtering through the same aether, just…. Just normal aether, direct outta the earth. I’ve switched up the batch a bit, since so far no amount has had any reaction. I’m… Mona is out, today, because a few of the guards have gotten sick, so she’s taken over for one. Must be something going around. Aelin’s been sick, too, and I.... I can’t help but have a bad feeling. I don’t want to say it, but if this doesn’t work… you know. I’ll probably just kill the damn thing. I’ll say it… I’ll say it died or something. I don’t know. I don’t have high hopes, honestly, but this will have been a learning experience nonetheless. If aether doesn’t hurt the damn thing, that renders some of the more pure magic types a bit useless, doesn’t it?

Ahem, so, this… this batch is human-based aether. I want to see if it reacts to people. So, test… test seventeen? Yes, final test. I guess final log in this particular experiment file, if nothing goes according to plan. There’s not really a plan, I guess, just… you know. Ten seconds.

…

O-Oh! It’s blooming! That’s not good, is it? It’s a bright red sort of color, it’s…. As the aether goes into it, the flower gets bigger. Growing out of its head. Its vines are growing. A-Ah, the aether went off, and now it’s --

Log 15:

T… There was an issue. It got… it got too big for its container, damn thing cracked, the guards came and killed it after I pulled the alarm. I was hiding under the desk. I’m still hiding under the desk, pondering. That was like, it was like, an hour ago? An hour ago. They took the body away. If the aether in people makes it grow, perhaps it devours people, and maybe it hadn’t so it was… it was weak, or something of the sort, it was-- Ah-ah, somebody is banging on my door… Who is it?

(J-Jas, please open the door, please-)

Mona?

Log 16:

[There is static. Nothing but static.]

Log 19:

XX of X, XXXX….

I am changing. I can feel it. I’m beginning to see it. My eyes are so red now, they’re so… and my veins… It’s been… How long has it been? It’s been a few weeks… It’s been a few weeks and I’m shut up in my lab… They don’t try to get in here, I don’t… I can’t think straight…

Aelin… him and the other guards… They were sick, they were sick because… it was weak because it had already released its spores. It didn’t release any spores before they killed it. But the spores… they… they just burst out of its…. Body… I’m so, so tired…. They don’t try to get in… but they know I’m here…

I’m going… all the way to the bottom of the tower…. The bottom levels… If I turn on the… the emergency… god, they’ll kill me before I make it there… they’ll kill me…

#long post #v.Hiraeth #((Ethir didn't have a good end

[odderancyart]

Retribution

Chapter 6

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Summary: A late night, after yet another unfruitful day with no work, Detective Edge Serif receives a phonecall from the countryside. There seems to have been a murder.

Warnings: Murder, Violence, Swearing, Past Abuse, Past Rape (of a character not in the story)

Worry shines in Stretch’s eyes as he steps inside, placing the tray on one of the chests of drawers by the wall. Inspector Fuente keeps his eyes on him the entire time, and so does Edge. Trying to read any traces of guilt on the face of someone he’s nearly began considering a friend. He doesn’t want Stretch to be guilty, but what he wants doesn’t matter. Fate, or God, or the universe, doesn’t care. It’s with heavy soul he gestures for the other to take the office chair and pull it up so he can sit, facing them.

Stretch’s hands rests in his lap as he sits. It would’ve been the perfect picture of propriety, hadn’t he been fiddling. His shoulders are hunched the tiniest bit, but he meets their gazes straight on.

“Mr Fontaine,” the inspector says, grinning humourlessly. “Detective Serif has found that you delivered wine to the deceased the night he died. And I have gotten the autopsy back. He died by cyanide poisoning. Cyanide that had been mixed into wine. What do you have to say about this?”

“Nothing.” Stretch’s voice is tight. When Edge narrows his eyes, his expression becomes strained. He straightened and sighed. “I really don’t know how that happened. I did what I did every night: bring a glass of wine to the music room. Doctor Gaster always spent an hour or two there before going to bed, playing piano. Apparently his genius was stimulated by fine wine and music. I left, made myself ready for bed. Then I came back, just to check if he needed anything before I went to sleep, and I found him on the floor, whimpering. He went silent and limp within seconds.”

“Who else had access to the wine?”

“Everyone in the staff.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Edge rolls his pen between his fingers, trying to keep his calm. He has no right at all  to feel upset. Betrayed. Stretch owes him nothing, and they have known each other for absolutely no time at all. That he is pleasant company doesn’t mean anything.

It takes a few moments before Stretch answers. He closes his eyes and exhales. “Blue told me not to. Didn’t want any unnecessary suspicion on me. Or us.”

“Well, Mr Fontaine.” Inspector Fuente stands, taking a step forward until he’s almost in Stretch’s face. “That backfired badly, because you’re now our main suspect and I will need to search your rooms. And your brother’s too, in case he was involved as well. I can also charge him with obstruction of justice.”

Stretch visibly pales. Before Edge can do as much as react, he’s halfway out of his chair. “No, don’t-” He seems to catch himself and sinks back. “Blue’s only trying to protect me, as always. Don’t get my brother in trouble, please.” His expression is almost pathetically pleading. “Search our rooms, search the entire manor if you wish. But Blue’s only doing what he can to help me. Please.”

Inspector Fuente hums. He stares at Stretch for a few, long seconds before nodding and sinking back into the armchair. “Very well. He’ll walk free this time. But if any of you try to hide anything from me again, you will need an attorney.”

The relief on Stretch’s face is evident. He nods quickly. “Thank you, sir.”

“You may leave, Mr Fontaine.” Inspector Fuente waves toward the door. “But let your brother know what happened in here now, that you’re both our main suspects, and that we will be searching your rooms.”

“Of course, sir,” Stretch mumbles as he rises, half-bowing quickly before he exits. Edge stares after him, clenching his fists in his lap. It is stupid, how he has to resist the urge to rise and rush after him. They hardly know each other. And Stretch is suspected for murder.

In the back of his mind, Edge knows he can’t blame him if he did it. He knows he would’ve done it to the foreman if he ever had gotten the chance.  He still isn’t sure what he’d do if he ever sees the man again. Exhaling, he schools his face into gruff neutrality before he turns to the inspector. Inspector Fuente watches him with an eyebrow raised.

“What?”

“You seem fond of the butler, Detective.”

Edge glares at him. “I don’t see how that is any of your business, sir. I can relate to having an abusive employer, that is all.”

“Oh?”

“None of your damn business.”

The inspector grins, clasping his hands behind his neck. There’s almost something kind in his eyes, but not quite. Edge wonders if he’s capable of that. Probably not, members of the Police force seem incapable of showing compassion to anyone ‘below them’. He learnt that early. “It isn’t.” He leans forward, grin falling. “You do look like you’d like to talk about it though. Have you ever? I can swear by God Himself, or by my own honour if you’d prefer that, to keep silent about it. I already know some details, through my research. Your mother and your boss, eh?”

For a few seconds, Edge only stares tat him. How the fuck did he know that? Nevertheless, he was right. Edge hadn’t talked about it, even once. It wasn’t anyone’s business but his own.

No one had never asked before.

He is an idiot. A lonely fucking idiot.

“Fine. Swear. On both of them.”

Drawing a cross over his chest, the inspector swears.

“It’s a simple thing,” he says. “As the unwed mother of a bastard my mother had few choices. I got badly injured at work when I was fourteen, and the foreman, who had been trying to get her in bed for months, offered to pay for the medical care if she would sleep with him. And then she was in that trap. If she refused him, he could easily have us out on the streets. He started coming and going in our home as he wanted, got himself a key. And he was a violent, cruel man, and as much as he lusted after my mother, as much he disliked me because I refused to bend. I couldn’t. And now I couldn’t even escape him in my own home. Then she died, and I was on my own.”

“Shit.” Inspector Fuente stares at him, his eyelight flickering in shock.

“What’s your sob story then, Inspector?”

“Heh.” The corners of his mouth tilt upwards. “Afraid I ain’t got one. My mother’s a sweet lady from a good family and my father’s a preacher, an’ th’ kindest person I’ve ever met. They’re both disappointed I ain’t got much faith, but nothing that damages any familiar bonds, here. Most of our property survived the crash, even.”

“Hm. Lucky.” Shaking his head, he turns toward the wall with the pictures and texts. “Your thoughts?”

Luckily Inspector Fuente doesn’t comment on his obvious change of subject.

…

To be honest, the inspector doesn’t know much Edge hasn’t’ figured out himself. The background checks were more thorough, and he has a time of death that matches up with what Stretch had told them, but otherwise he didn’t give Edge anything else to work with. Soon enough they part, each going their own ways. Edge wanders through the hallways of the manor, searching for someone, when he hears quiet talking from behind the corner. Stopping dead, he considers whether he should leave or not as he hears his own name mentioned. His eyes widen. With a few careful steps, he goes up to the corner, leaning against the wall so he can listen.

“-to hide,” he hears. Blue. That is Blue’s voice, gentle and patient. “There is nothing to worry about, brother, because neither of us have done anything.”

A loud exhale. “I know, Blue. I know. But. They really seem to think it was me. I don’t- Blue, I didn’t kill Doctor Gaster, you know that.” Stretch’s voice shakes as he speaks with his brother. Edge closes his eyes, resisting the urge to walk around the corner and confront them. “I wouldn’t-”

“I know,” Blue assures him. “I know. And soon they will know too. They can’t prove something that didn’t happen.”

“True.” Stretch sighs loudly, his voice still trembling somewhat. “You should go back to work, Blue. Sir Razz will wonder where you are.”

“Will you be okay?”

“Aren’t I always?”

They say something else, quieter, something Edge can’t hear, before footsteps is heard. Edge freezes, but they disappear the other way and he relaxes again. He waits a couple minutes, but when Stretch doesn’t move either, he steps around the corner. The other stiffens when he sees him. He’s sitting curled up in the beige, old-fashioned couch standing along the wall, but immediately throws his legs off it and straightens.

“Dete-” he begins, his smile obviously straining on his face, and his hands balls together in his lap.

“Edge,” Edge interrupts him, sitting down next to him. Stretch twitches. Or perhaps it’s a flinch. It’s hard to tell. “I don’t think you did it.”

“Wha-”

“And honestly. I can’t blame you even if you did. The amount of times I wanted to kill my foreman…”

Stretch stares at him, mouth open, Edge’s expression is fully serious as he regards him before looking down on his own hands. There’s a perfectly straight crack running over his fingers. Straight as a ruler. He closes his eyes for a few moments, and when he opens them again, Stretch is still staring mutely at him, shock shining in his eyes. The corner of his mouth curls upward in a bitter smile. “Do you want to hear a sad story?”

Slowly, the other nods. He looks thoughtful as he regards Edge. And Edge has no idea why he’s doing this, but he is, and he doesn’t want to stop. Two times in a day, huh?

“Growing up in the slums isn’t easy, especially when you’re a bastard, and your mother isn’t married. She was a beautiful, kind-hearted woman, she could have done well, hadn’t she had me.” He’s been battling the guilt ever since he was old enough to realize that hadn’t he been born, his mother’s life would have been better. Even though she always had told him that it wasn’t true. “And when I got injured at fourteen, at the steel mill I worked, she was desperate to pay for the doctors. I was dying. My arm was crushed and the infections… Even with medical assistance, my chances for survival was slim, and she couldn’t afford it. So she made a deal with my foreman, who was lusting after her. I would say in love, except there was nothing loving about that man. She sold her body to him so he’d pay, and then there was no end to it. Even though I healed, he came back. And I’d spend nights lying on the kitchen couch where I slept, and I’d hear them. Hear her whimpering as she was raped. And he hated me. I’ve always been stubborn, and now he seemed to believe that because he was fucking my mother he could do anything to me. I-”

He swallows. Glancing around, he ensures no one is there. Stretch watches him, wide-eyed, as he takes off his coat and pulls up the back of his shirt. A horrified gasp escapes him. Edge knows he doesn’t have to explain, it’s obvious what happened from the criss-cross patterns across his back. Bone doesn’t heal as well as skin does. “Leather belt,” is all he says. He huffs out a quiet laugh. “Not the worst he did, but probably all you want to hear. Then he infected Mother with syphilis – I usually say the flu, but it wasn’t – and within half a year, I was alone. I was seventeen. He’s probably dead now too, that whore, but if I ever saw him, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Correcting his clothes again, he finally meets Stretch’s eyes. “Point is, I do know how it is to be abused by an employer you can’t escape even at home.”

“I’m so sorry,” Stretch whispers, compassion shining in his eyes. His hands rests over his mouth, horror evident in his expression.

“It’s fine. Was years ago.”

“No it’s not. You shouldn’t have had to-” Edge’s eyes widen as he realizes there’s tears in Stretch’s eyes, and the other smiles awkwardly as he wipes them away. “It’s just unfair, you know. That-”

He doesn’t seem capable of continuing, but Edge nods. “I know. It is.”

Unfair that they have to suffer. Unfair that the powerful are cruel. Unfair that the world doesn’t care for people like them.

The great clock on the wall rings. and Stretch twitches, glancing up at it. “I have to go. Sir Razz will be waiting for his tea.”

Edge nods. “Go.”

As Stretch disappears around the corner, he stands as well. He has a job to do.

…

He can hear the ringing of the church bell from over the meadows as he makes his way toward the library once more. It’s where he was pointed, so it’s where he goes. Stepping in there is much like stepping into another world. The room is dimly lit except for the reading lamp standing away by one of the armchairs, and the scent of dust and books is almost overwhelming.

In the armchair with the reading lamp lit, Sir Razz sits, a book in his hands. The new master of the house lowers the book as he hears Edge’s footsteps and nods in greeting. He gestures for him to sit down, and Edge takes place in the dark blue armchair next to him. All the armchairs in the room are old, that much is obvious from the design, though he has no idea how old.

Sir Razz’s smile is polite as he gestures toward the teapot standing on the table next to him, but Edge denies it politely. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes.” Putting away his book, Sir Razz nods. He clasps his hands in his lap. “I’d like to hear how the case is going. Inspector Fuente does not need to tell me anything as he works for the state, but as you are under my employment, I believe I can ask you this?”

“Yes,” Edge confirms. He can. He considers for a moment what to say: technically, Sir Razz is still a suspect, although he’s certainly the one who seems the least guilty right now. “Our main suspect is Stretch, though I personally am not convinced. Inspector Fuente is awaiting some constables to come help search his and Blue’s rooms at this very moment. If nothing is found, then it is only to keep investigating: everyone has a motive, though Stretch and Blue has the most obvious ones, which is to be expected as they knew Doctor Gaster the longest.”

“I see.” Drumming his fingers against his skirt-covered leg, Sir Razz looked thoughtful. “Well, I quite doubt it was either of them. Blue is the most loyal individual I have ever met, and Stretch does not seem like he’d be capable of murder. He cannot even bring himself to hurt those abhorrent cats.”

Edge nods. To be perfectly honest, he agrees. Nonetheless, someone in this house is a murderer, and he hasn’t the faintest idea who it actually is. Stretch and Blue sure do have motives,  but they don’t seem like the murder-y type. But then again, who knows? Anyone can be a murderer. One of the sweetest girls in his old class had been arrested for the murder of her husband only last year, it had caused quite the stir. She’d been driven to the edge by him threatening to kill their children if she wouldn’t obey. So she had killed him.

Desperation could bring people to do horrible things.

Though, to be perfectly honest, Edge isn’t certain if he would call the murder of an abuser, a would-be-murderer, and likely rapist horrible. Sounds like he’d deserved everything he got. If there is such a thing as Heaven and Hell, he better burn.

Both of them twitch as it knocks on the door. A young human man sticks in his head through the doorway, nodding in greeting. “Are you Sir Razz and Detective Serif?”

“Indeed we are,” Sir Razz confirms, standing up. “And you are?”

“Constable Johnson, sir. We are conducting the search and the inspector sent me to invite the detective.”

“Thank you.” Edge stands as well. Sir Razz follows him as he marched out of the room and followed the constable as he navigates through the manor’s countless hallways. At one point Sir Razz has to tell him he was taking the wrong way. It is a labyrinth. The rooms are on the ground plane. Not in the basement as he had expected, but in the back of the manor.

Stretch and Blue are standing outside of an open door, close together as they watched. Stretch hugs himself as he watches the Policemen poke around his room. Papyrus is there as well, watching the search attentively. Edge can’t help but wonder what he is doing there. Then again, surely it was a curious thing to see. Inspector Fuente stands just inside the room, leaning against the open door with his arms crossed. His suit jacket is unbuttoned, and his hat tilted on his head. He grins as the two of them show up.

“Come to see yer first proper investigation, Detective?” he asks, eyes glittering. When Edge only stares at him, he shrugs. “Come and take a look at what my constables find. Sir Razz,” he adds, tipping his hat.

“Inspector,” Sir Razz replies, sounding amused. He casts a short, concerned glance at his servants before smiling at Inspector Fuente and looking into the room. “Finding anything?”

“Not ye-”

“Inspector!” one of the constables calls out. Inspector Fuente immediately twists around, just in time to see a uniformed man step out of the wardrobe. He’s holding a box. “There’s hydrangea flowers in here, and a bottle with white powder. It’s literally marked Cyanide.”

Edge stiffens. Sir Razz stops dead behind him. And Inspector Fuente twists around again, staring straight at the butler, who is wide-eyed and gaping. “But-” Stretch begins, but doesn’t have time to get out anything else before the inspector steps up to him. His expression is serious as he grabs Stretch’s arms, twisting them behind his back. Stretch lets out a small noise but doesn’t fight as the handcuffs click into place.

When Edge meets his gaze for a moment, panic shines in them as the inspector proclaims him under arrest. Blue’s hands are slapped over his mouth but when the word arrest is uttered, he lets out a small shriek. “No! No my brother isn’t a murderer Inspector this isn’t-”

Sir Razz gently puts his hand on his arm, silencing him. He leans forward and says something that Edge can’t catch, but tears spring up into Blue’s eyes as he steps out of the way. Edge’s eyes flicker back up to Stretch’s face. Fear and confusion is written all over it.

The inspector leads him out of the room, past Papyrus who is silently watching everything unfold. Edge startles when he sees the cook’s face. His expression is compassionate, and he’s watching the events unfold with remorse on his face.

But there’s a faint glimmer of triumph in his eye.

#underfell #underswap #undertale #swapfell #noir detective #sf sans #uf papyrus #us sans #us papyrus #uf sans #ut papyrus #my writing #murder #death

[random-storykeeper]

My OHC compilation video is here! This time, I showcase all 29 entries I’ve submitted for One Hour Compos in 2018. The cover art in the centre of the thumbnail is done by my friend catnippackets and I still can’t get over how amazing it is that she took the time to make it for me. :)

Last time I did one of these compilation videos, I made it so that the blurbs I wrote about the individual pieces was on its own, private post. I forgot you could do read mores on video posts, so this time I figured, why not just make this all public? That’s in the full post below:

OHC 482 "Connect the Dots" - When the first OHC of 2018 kicked off, I had a lot of trouble thinking of ideas on how to approach this theme. Eventually, I just settled for keeping things simple, using chiptune with a little bit of guitar to create a more pleasant little nighttime piece.

OHC 483 "Patternwork" - When I first saw the images, I wanted to be direct as possible in terms of my theme approach musically. I would use guitars as my choice of string instruments to convey the “threads” and have them repeat simple patterns with triplets going against eighth notes, taking away and adding layers as the piece went along. I exhausted almost every guitar I had in my soundfont collection and ended up having to use an electric guitar. Surprisingly, it worked out pretty well.

OHC 484 "Going Your Own Way" - I usually approach underwater themes in the same matter - sine waves with lots of release. This time, I wanted to do something a little different, but still chiptune. So I decided to focus more on having a direct melody and using square waves instead. I actually quite like the carefree melody I came up with here - sadly, I didn’t really know how to develop it any further so I ended up just repeating it a lot throughout the piece, haha.

OHC 485 "Rays and Rain" - This theme was difficult to work with. I wasn’t really sure what to interpret the pictures as. I ended up just thinking of “rain with some light coming through” and kind of went off with that in a more laidback fashion. It was this compo that I discovered that slowing down the tempo while using delay that is synchronized to the current tempo creates a cool kind of pulsating effect, which is heard at the end.

OHC 486 "Distant Hearts" - This piece was one of the few vocal entries that felt like it kind of fell into place as I went along. I actually am using an excerpt of the post compo version I did for Chips Compo, the full version which I’ll be posting to my channel some time later this year. 

OHC 487 "Drivin' 'Round the Galaxy" - Space in a car = chiptune blues? Sure...and don’t forget the high whistle with plenty of vibrato. :P

OHC 488 "Glass Curiosity" - I’m really not good at doing “rave” or dance pieces, so I decided to just focus on making something that would kind of try to capture the feeling of “losing yourself” via drinking. I mean, it’s a really basic interpretation, but towards the end, I play around a ton with the tempo as well as the filters. 

OHC 491 "From the Earth" - Whenever we get nature or plant themes, I feel like I’ve always tried to make them happy and joyous. This time, I wanted to go for a more tranquil, calmer approach. With acoustic guitar, flute, piano and violin, everything started to fall into place from there.

OHC 492 "Cybernetic Rush Hour" - At this point, I realized that my own sounds were severely limiting me, particularly in the electric department. Chiptune sounds weren’t quite cutting it for me, so I ended up booting up Harmless and taking a couple presets from there. I only barely know how to use it, unfortunately. Maybe someday, I’ll learn. The piece only started working for me when I hit those running notes at the end, but by then, time was already running out. 

OHC 493 "Routine" - One of the first things I think of when I see a bunch of machines is “conformity” and sticking closely to regular tasks. So I tried to keep the notes as even as possible and then put in some vocals. Ironically, the “just don’t come out of the blue” line really does sound like it came out of the blue lol

OHC 494 "Iris Chase" - I remember playing this one Ludum Dare game that had a red eye similar to these pictures. You would play as a person trying not to die while trapped in a room with several other people. I think the eye would kill people based on a vote and if not it would just kill people randomly. Anyways, I wanted to go with this sort of idea - a sinister eye constantly searching for the kill. I tried to play it really weird with slow pitch LFO, maybe some distortion, tritones, a gradually faster tempo. This was a lot of fun to make, and felt a bit different from what I normally was used to making, which in my opinion, was good. 

OHC 495 "Palace 9" - So I pretty much had my instrument set in mind once I saw the images - harps, violins, pizzicato strings, y’know, things that would be light and heavenly. Then I realized, I didn’t really have a good lead. Turns out, the oboe makes a great lead. Although now that I think of it, pitch bending it doesn’t sound that good haha.

OHC 496 "Paws on the Sidewalk" - Seeing fur made me automatically think of white fluffy dogs, so I decided I wanted to make a piece about taking a dog out for a walk on a pleasant sunny day. And yeah...started out with the first few notes you hear on the guitar, and just sort of went at it from there.

OHC 497 "But Only For a Moment" - I really wanted to do a ballroom dance piece for this one. Not only that, but the experience of sort of “having that first dance”, heart pumping in your chest, the pause of anticipation. Of course, it didn’t exactly turn out that way, but the idea was to set a “beautiful” scene cut short by time. How appropriate, given that this is OHC. Surprisingly, this did well in the compo. 

OHC 501 "IV Dream" - This was a weird OHC to come back to. I had never worked with a text theme before, so I was a bit taken aback here. There were so many interpretations I could go for. The one I felt the most comfortable with doing was an ocean/underwater track, but I wanted to go for something different but still water related. Then I remembered: just the week before, I was in the hospital (I burst my appendix, it infected my lower abdomen and I had to stay there for a week) and they put an IV in my hand for the antibiotics and hydration. As I was falling asleep there, I would recall the dripping sounds as the fluids made their way into my hand. I dunno, I guess that was kind of a weird approach to the theme: “I’m dreaming of flying through the sky but I’m actually just stuck here in the hospital”. Plus my voice got all messed up from the operation, so the vocals probably sound a lot worse than they normally do. :P

OHC 502 "Chipititis" - I missed making straight-up chiptune, so I made straight-up chiptune. That’s all, lol.

OHC 503 "Open Up" - I chose to go with the theme of “solitude” being a more positive theme, maybe focusing more on the calmness/meditative side of being alone and allowing yourself to be open and free in isolation. The pads in my soundfont set, as I discovered in this compo, actually work really nicely to set a fuller atmosphere. 

OHC 504 "Long Lost Reconnections" - In this compo, I tried to make a song based on a dream I had that felt real to me. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could fully develop the lyrics and the theme didn’t come across as well as I had hoped. 

OHC 505 "Confrontation" - Falling. How on earth are you supposed to portray this musically? I decided I would have to go with the basics: fast, descending chords. Then I hit a bass groove and decided it really needed a sax melody, so I put in that sax. By then, I decided that this piece would be about constantly falling with no end in sight, and having to come to those terms that eventually, you’ve got to land on something...right?

OHC 506 "Being Bold" - When I made this piece, I put in a definite end, and regretted it soon after hearing it in the listening party. Personally, it sounds so much better when the notes at the end don’t resolve, like in the “where does the hope go from here?” sort of way. 

OHC 509 "Forgetful Traveller" - Another one of those “hard to convey” themes. The chords had to be just right, conveying someone moving forward, but also kind of thinking that “maybe I should have gone back because I forgot something”. Well, I tried my best.

OHC 510 "Conflicting Voices in My Head" - imo this is easily one of the roughest of the vocal entries I’ve ever done. In the original compo version, I had a lot of trouble getting the vocals to be loud enough for people to actually hear them. Third time’s the charm, I hope. 

OHC 511 "Porcelain and Plastic" - I wanted to do a spooky, unsettling piece for this one, so I tried to make a piece about “feeling strange because you’re being watched by a bunch of old dolls in a dimly lit room and also, you might be turning into one of them”. 

OHC 512 "Rest in Victory" - Before I started the compo, I wanted to make a piece that would keep building up until it got to a sort of “grand finale”. So for this one, I tried to keep it simple, with the same set of chords repeating and just adding different layers as I went along. I had this crazy idea of putting in electric guitars and wasn’t really sure how these were going to work, but I think there’s some ideas in there that I kind of like. 

OHC 513 "Lullaby For a Needlessly Productive AllNighter" - I submitted this with a weird title because it was almost too long to be submitted properly (there’s a weird glitch on OHC where if you submit a title that is too long, it just glitches your piece out entirely). As for the piece itself, I wanted to make a lullaby that was kind of related to my own problems of wanting to stay up to constantly get stuff done. 

OHC 530 "Giants" - I missed out of OHC for several months due to one of my classes last term directly conflicting with the time that OHC ran. So I was pretty excited to return. Live entries are always more nervewracking, but they’re a little easier to set up, in a sense - plus, you get more control over the tempo and stuff. That being said, since they are done in one take, there’s a lot that can go wrong. I almost got this one down until I messed up on the last few notes, oops. 

OHC 531 "So Just (Let Me Be)" - The theme page originally showed “sjsj” as the theme, so most people started basing their pieces off this. It wasn’t until a few minutes in that the official theme was actually posted. Rather than starting a new piece entirely, I decided to just combine the two themes together. I tried to make several lines of the lyrics start with “S” and “J” then I ran out of time. 

OHC 532 "Melting Point" - When I saw the hot springs, it immediately made me think of the hot springs I went to in Japan last summer. It was one of my favourite experiences there. But yeah, I tried to grab a combination of instruments that would sort of capture the contrast between the hot and cold. Vibraphone for a bell-like sound, pizzicato strings for the forest setting, marimba for a warmer sound. Marimba worked surprisingly well for this theme, and I wasn’t the only one in the compo who thought this. 

OHC 533 "Hibernal Regret" - Didn’t really want to do a vocal entry, but I couldn’t help myself - this piece needed words, so I put them in. I tried to keep them short and simple rather than spending a huge chunk of the hour just trying to come up with meaningful lyrics. This allowed me time to process them properly and polish things up a little more. Never really thought I’d be combining winter and space, but hey, it was an interesting combination.

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